morality can be said to be the power of reason to act."

"May be so, but you can't prove it by me. Let's get back to the other thing. We've got eight days on this ship. What are we going to do with them? Not be a pair of ugly bulls. I've been that way all my life, and I'm finished with it. Lets me human beings, even if we are men, even if there is a woman in the picture. Perhaps you don't know it. Barbara is on her way to Paris for a divorce. That lets me out. She didn't know I was going to be on this boat. That lets me out again. So just go ahead and act as if I wasn't here. It will be the truth. So far as she is concerned, I've never been 'here'. Never touched her. Never understood her. Doubt that she knew she was married. Even when she believed she loved me she was miles away in an enchanted land that had absolutely nothing to do with yours truly. And God, Hugh, that child can be simply wonderfully lovely, just beautiful." He bent his head and opened his hands as if with all his being he was releasing her.

Again there was a long silence until Hugh said, "You love her."

Hod's head jerked up. "Love her? I wonder. May be in my way I do."

"Then that lets me out."

"How do you mean?"

"Because I do not love her, and I have a private code which says that men should respect the feelings of other men, and thus in being loyal to their own sex also being loyal to the other sex too. The time was, when I felt as if I were a grand male when I cut some other fellow out; but after a sufficient number of years of this I suddenly realized how vain, how futile, how disruptive I was, taking something from both the man and the girl, giving

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nothing to either one, because I'd lose interest as soon as I had
spilt them apart. It wasn't until I myself really fell in love
that I saw how it was, felt how it felt to have some vain irrespon-
sible fellow try to cut in - not that he did or could, but the sight
of the blind disruptiveness of the human animal which sees nothing
and respects and values nothing except what appeals to the egotism
of the moment. It is when you not only love but love and take the
responsibility, that the other thing hits you."

"Feel sort of strongly about it, don't you?"

"Not without cause. The conditions that men make for men are
pretty terrible."

"Well, Hugh, we'll see how it works out."

Hod pushed his drink away, leaned back against the wall-seat,
and lit a cigarette. As he glanced around the smoking-room he
happened to spy the ugly fellow who had brushed shoulders with him
on deck. "Look over there, friend. See that big boy with the wicked
mug? We're going to have trouble. Bumped each other this morning,
and, would you believe it, I hate him, hate the bastard. Swell way
to start a trip."

Expected
Again something unexcepted happened to Hugh. Just suddenly all
the mixed feelings aroused in him by Hod surged unexcepted together
in one single deep affection. With his blood he affirmed Hod. With
blood
his and body he would fight for Hod, with Hod against all and
everything. He said, "We'll have that trouble together."

Hod turned on him. "What? You mean it? By Christ you do! Shake!
Shake, Hugh! I'm used to fighting my own battles but by God -
That's enough. That's all I need to know. We're together. The other
matters will take care of themselves."

105 9/1

sweeping onward with proud grace, solitary and majestic on the ocean.
Lights twinkled from cabin windows. Lights glowed faintly on the
decks. From portholes lights rayed out over the purple waters, The
*Burgundy*, a living being whose interior was light, with her huge
funnels trailing a long dark arm of smoke.

They entered the walk of the promenade deck.

Lights above in whiteness, lights raying through cabin windows,
through drawn curtains, lights shining on the white beams of the
deck ceiling, moving against white pillars, all the deck in light
and shadow, and the soft up-gleaming of planks of deck-wood.

Within this glow they walked, heels striking the planks with
regular thuds.

*Seaness, shipness* - the indwelling essence that made the sea the
sea, the ship the ship, the issuing quality.

Through the main door they came to the grand staircase. Hod,
without word or look, walked on. Hugh paused, gazed at Hod's
unaccountable moving form, and then went below.

Hod listened first and knocked on the door of Barbara's cabin.
No response, but he was sure she was there. He knocked again. A
stewardess, face set to send him off, appeared from nowhere it
seemed, and said that Mrs. Lorimer was not well and had asked not
to be disturbed by anyone. She made him feel he was guilty of
something awful. He hung his head and moved off. With a jerk he
turned back, put ten dollars in her hand, said he was Mr. Lorimer,
asked her to give his wife the very best attention and to call
him if anything went wrong.

Sid and Betty

At a table in the smoking-room sat Hod, Vera, Sid and Betty.
Nearby were Hugh, Marsh, Morgan and Thelma. They were having
after dinner coffee and liqueurs.

"This <u>is</u> life, isn't it?" exclaimed Betty as she took in her
surroundings and indulged her taste for cafés and swank night-life
that had never been satisfied. From Sid came a black glance which
said, "No, dammit, this <u>isn't</u> the life, you little fool. Don't you
realize what's happened to us? How in the name of God can you sit
there unconcerned, plump and glowing, as if it really were a holiday,
when you know that we're in one hell of a fix? We might at least
talk it over, now that I've had my sleep and feel equal to it. Don't
look so happy." But, black glance or no black glance, she couldn't
help it; she did feel happy as if there wasn't a trouble in the
world.

Hod rumbled, "See Andra over there with a young innocent in tow?
Looks old, doesn't she?"

"Old?" said Vera. "I don't think so. Every time I see her, which
is not often, I have to admit -"

"Admit what? I tell you she's old and falling to pieces. Five
years ago there wasn't a woman who could touch her. Now she's
just that painted bag of flesh and bones, an old bag at that. What's
the idea of robbing the cradle? That kid will fall head over heels
in love with her, look at him, and end by jumping overboard. She's
always got a tragic innocent in tow, swarms of them hanging around
her all the time. What's the idea? "

105 93

"You might ask her," said Vera. "I'm sure she'd like to see you."

"See me? She sees me now. Get that smile? It was meant for me. Get that by-play with the kid? For me too. I'd take him away from her and send him home to his mama if it would do any good."

"I meant, I'm sure she'd like to talk with you, explain herself as it were. I don't quite see how you are going to avoid it. A ship is a rather small place after all."

Hod scowled. "Avoid it? Who's avoiding anything? I'll talk with her if she wants me to. You've never seen me run away. She's a hurdle, damn her, and I'm going to jump her, but mind you, Miss Vera, in my own sweet time, in my own sweet way."

"I was sure you would."

Sid put in with a laugh, "Look out, Hod Holiday, Andra may turn the clock ahead. Seems to me I've heard of her doing such things even to our great world-rider."

"Yeah? Well, you won't hear of it again. In my pocket I've got the only clock in the world. The hands point to some time tomorrow."

"Not tonight?" asked Sid. "Going to waste a whole night? Things have changed. You are failing, my boy. Wouldn't be surprised if your bag were older than hers."

"Wouldn't, eh? No, not tonight. Not tonight despite your splendid encouragement. I just remember I have other business."

"To see that man about that dog?"

"Right!" said Hod. "Guess I better get going. Be back in a minute, but don't lose any of your precious sleep on my account."

"We won't," said Sid, and waved him off.

Sid and Vera exchanged glances, shook their heads. Betty was smiling.

106 94

"What's eating you?" asked Sid. "You're been sitting here all evening with that bovine smile. Vera, you'd think she had the world in her lap, now wouldn't you? Does she feel uprooted? Not on your life? Insecure? Not a sign. With absolutely nothing to go forward or back to - "

"She is perfectly right," said Vera. "Find me anyone who really has something to go forward or back to. If there is nothing, then why worry about it?"

"I didn't say that. You know what I mean, both of you. I agree there's no use worrying about anything, but you've got to take some things seriously - or they'll take you. See what I mean? We can't act as if nothing had happened. It's different with you. You have money."

"May not have it."

"Yes, true, *may* not. That's true of everybody. But you *have* it now, and we haven't. Haven't a red cent. No prospects of getting any, now that Hod's *prank* has played havoc with my standing in New York. It's so damned easy to be philosophical about money when you don't have to be."

Vera asked, "Is that all that's troubling you? I have more than enough for myself. You know how I feel about it. I've told you and Betty the same thing before."

Sid flushed and changed his tone. "Thanks, Vera. It's very fine of you. But that won't solve it. Hod will make the same offer. Once he wanted to open an account in our name. It's not the money - "

"Then what?"

Sid almost shouted, "What are we going to do? That's what."

Said Vera, "The question isn't at all peculiar to you. Why be

107 95

so emotional? I am asking the same of myself. Everyone on this ship,
everyone on all the ships of the world, are asking it."

"Of course, but I'm naturally concerned with myself."

"Naturally."

"And Betty is as unconcerned as if the thing were already answered
for once and for all. All she's aware of is this smoking-room with
its silly fish, human and otherwise. All she thinks of is that we're
off to France on the *Burgundy*. All she wants is to drink and dance.
And when I want to talk she thinks I'm a queer boy who'd rather have
an argument than any other kind of fun. I can't understand her."

Vera, herself now really looking at Betty, began feeling that
there was something to what Sid said - not his specific complaints
against her, but his sense that Betty was strangely whole, curiously
fulfilled, without any apparent cause; and Vera began wondering ,
searching for a possible explanation until she hit upon a not unusual
but, somehow, quite surprising guess; and from then on she kept
looking to test if her guess were true.

Betty spoke up and said to Sid, "You are right about me. I do
want to drink and dance; but that's not all I want. I realize
quite well that there's a serious side to this. I'm quite willing
to talk. You don't have to stir me up or bring me to my senses. I
realize as well as you do -"

"But you don't, Betty. You don't realize how I feel. Just suddenly
now I feel awfully queer, as if the bottom has dropped out and I'm
plunging down into a sickening hollow, an utter emptiness of
desolation. God, girl, I have feelings, and they are making me
suffer now. I'm not here. I'm not in the future. I'm not in the
past. I try to orient myself in the past by visualizing myself in

103 96

it. No use. That past has crashed and is wiped out. The me of that past does not exist."

"Then that's that," said Vera. "Don't cling to that past. Don't hold to that me. 'Let go!' as Hugh said at the lunch table."

"Let go!" exclaimed Sid. "Christ almighty, as if I haven't! I've been wrenched loose. That's what makes me mad. If I'd done it myself I'd be ready to take the consequences, but I didn't do it, it was done to me. I hate to have things done to me like that. So do you. So does everyone with any sense of dignity."

"Sometimes we have to have things done to us, else we will never be spurred to do things for ourselves."

Said Sid, "Philosophy again. I didn't want this thing done. Hod isn't God, He isn't Fate. He's not one of the old wise men you read about in ancient wisdom books. If a thing is done right, you don't feel about it as I do now. What have I? What's more to the point, what _am_ I? I've been blotted out back there. I don't exist here. Nothing is here but this awful abyss. I sit here and try to bring bits of _if_ my life into my consciousness, but these bits break into smaller bits and all go plunging down into the gulf."

"I know the feeling," said Vera.

"You?"

"I."

"But you aren't broken. I don't feel you that way. You are more yourself than you've ever been. I was amazed by you on deck this morning when you _am_ along and said you were sailing. Don't misunderstand. I know you're up against it too, out on the sea without base or anchorage, as we are, putting up a great fight for something. I'm not entirely blind to your difficulties. You've got a big

109 97

at struggle on your hands, and I am all with you. You know that. I don't know what it is. That's your affair. But whatever it is I believe you are going to win. I'm not so sure about Betty and myself - and that's just it."

Vera lowered her head and for a minute let her feelings flood over her. When she looked up she said, "Thank you, Sid. And now, I guess I'd better leave you two to yourselves. I have side-tracked you. It is something for you and Betty to work out. But may I say this one last word? You say the bottom has dropped. It was false, if it could drop from such a blow. That, however, is not what I wanted to say. Don't try to put in a bottom made up of blame and resentment against Hod, will you? That too would be false and not worthy of you. Better dangle a while than support yourself by mean feelings," and with this she arose and went over to the other table.

Betty and Sid looked at each other for a while. Then Betty faced him squarely, leaned forward, and braced her elbows on the table. He, after darting a questioning look at her, slouched back and lit a cigarette, suddenly feeling that Vera somehow made it easy for him to talk, that with her gone it would be difficult to say anything.

Betty broke the silence. "I know what you are going through. You won't believe me, but I do. I'm ready to talk, seriously; but before we begin I'd like to add my word to Vera's. It won't do a bit of good to blame Hod."

"Who's blaming him?"

"You have, ever since we got on the ship and before. He couldn't have done what he did unless we had let him. We are here because we did not resist him strongly enough, and we did resist him because

110 98

something in ourselves really wanted to go."

"The hell it did. Think I want one of his holidays? 'That's me, a holiday! Shake!' Imagine a blunderbus having a holiday. 'Let's drink and be merry!' He'll drink all right but try to picture him merry. Hod, with Barbara eating him, with Andra in the offing, with God knows what else. He got that fellow Hugh into the party, only to find he didn't want him. He'll rope in others. A fine mess he'll make. His only genius is to stir up trouble, and at that game he's in a class by himself."

Betty tried to interrupt him but he went on. "You know, it just strikes me that there's something infinitely pathetic about Hod's wish to be carefree, happy, whatever it is. There is, you know. I've been poking fun at it, but Jesus, it suddenly gets me."

"Make that is what I've been trying to make you see all along."

"No you haven't. You haven't seen him a person to pity. He's been your strong man. With him in the world you've felt you had nothing to fear, that your life would go on as it had always gone on, one lark after another - and this being on the Burgundy, simply the latest lark, with others awaiting you in Europe. Don't you realize -"

"I told you I do."

"But you don't. You sit here smiling, enjoying night-life on a great liner, pert and blissfully ignorant of the waters we're sailing over. Only there are no waters. All is hollow down there. There's nothing, I tell you. Can't you see? I feel just awful, as if we were at the vacant beginning of something we'll never see the end of. We can't stay like this. We've got to do something. We can't go back. As for going forward, take one simple small

H 99

practical matter which doesn't seem to have occurred to you."

"And it is?"

"How are we going to get off this boat? It's all right for Hod to say he'll get us off as he got us on. How's he going to work it? Our passports, thank God, are good for another month. What about the visas? How's he going to do it. A fine pickle if the Frenchmen wouldn't let us off and packed us back."

"One of those bridges."

"Betty, truly, you sometimes make me furious."

"That's beside the point. Hod will do it. If he doesn't - well, we ourselves are not entirely helpless. I've known you to be resourceful. In my day, I've been clever once or twice."

"You've plenty of confidence in him, haven't you?"

"I always have had. You know that. So have you."

"You mean I used to have. How can a sane person put faith in a man who behaves like Hod?"

"You don't mean that."

"Well," said Sid, rubbing his lips, shifting his position, "perhaps I don't. Let's leave Hod out of it and come back to our own problems. What are we going to do?"

"That is for you to decide."

"Of course. Every damn move we make is my responsibility."

Said Betty coolly, "I do not mean it that way. Besides, it is not true. I have carried my fair share. You would not have wanted to marry me unless you had felt sure I would. The men of this these days are as afraid of responsibility as savages were of ghosts."

Sid flushed. "Why bring that up? I've been taking on more and more, haven't I?"

112. 100

"Yes, you have."

"Then what are you driving at?"

Betty, still leaning forward with her arms braced, was thoughtful for a while. "Let me try to say it. You say we can't go back. Personally, I don't want to go back."

"Of course not. You are enjoying yourself."

"Let me speak. I don't want to go back and live as we have been living - in that narrowness, half paralyzed by attempts to hold on to what wasn't worth much if anything. Do you know? We've been as bad as Vera - as she was, I mean. She held on to nothing. We held on to little things like your career -"

"You didn't use to think it was little. You wouldn't think it was little now if it were taking you to France."

"Now don't be Sidish. You know what I mean. How many times have I heard you turn against teaching, lecturing, saying worse things than I've ever said. You weren't satisfied. It wasn't really using you. It gave you not the slightest sense of worthwhile accomplishment. Well, now, don't you see, you are out of it. Forget, for the moment, how you got out. Just realize that, whatever the means, you are out, you have let go. So now is your chance to do something important that will satisfy you."

"All right - but what?"

"That will work out, if your attitude is right."

"I've heard more platitudes in this one day than in all the days of my life. Give me a rest, for God's sake."

"The truth is never a platitude. Sid, dear, don't you realize what a time this is, this age we are living in? I've heard you and Hod talk about it. Tremendous events are impending. Vera was

113-161

saying only yesterday that every person with real values who can
use his mind and influence should be enlisted. Hod has vision. So
have you. Both of you are too intelligent and dynamic to be
submerged, or to waste yourselves on jobs that most anyone can do.
The world needs you at your best and fullest. Sid, why don't you
and Hod really do something?" and she leaned forward eagerly, her
eyes bright, urging him.

"Yes, good. Do something, something big of course. But again I ask, precisely what? That's the question. Visions are all right but they won't feed and clothe you. This may be a 'tremendous' time but it's a bad time too. Be a little realistic. What in God's name do you think I can do? I'm no prodigy. I'm no leader of men, much less a Savior. Seems to me you are trying to make a good small man into a bad big man. I'm not big. Never was, never will be - not in this life. Where did you get all these ideas from?"

"You really want to know?" she asked, smiling. "Not from Hod, as you may suspect. Not from Vera. Not from any book. Most of them came direct from your own, at times, rather wise self."

"From me?"

"From you. From you when you didn't need them so much, when you only half believed them and were talking merely to be brilliant. I've saved them. Now I give you back what is yours - and mine too - at this time when you do need and must believe them through and through. And may I risk another platitude? This, Sid, is our life. Hear yourself? This is our life. We should have the courage to try to live it, let conditions be what they may. If one waits for better times, one will wait and wait. All times are critical - only, we do not realize it. We must exist. The main question is whether

114 102

we will exist meanly or splendidly. I would like to live splendidly.
If we agree on this, I am willing to do whatever I can that is
practically necessary. I can earn money. I've done it before. I'll
do it again."

It was sometime before Sid could move or speak; then, smiling
brokenly, he impulsively reached for her hand. "What a person! You
are the one too wonderful to be submerged," and he raised her hand
and kissed it.

Had she really moved him? Oh, she hoped so.

"Feel very much better now," he said. "Oh, very much. Can even
laugh again. Might even consider having some fun with you."

"When?"

He stood up. "Right now. There's a sea outside, and a boat-deck -
if they permit married people up there. So let's go up and, as
that uniquely crazy Hod would say, find the moon that smiles on
lovers."

Betty gazed up at him, feeling herself lift with her gaze until
she stood at his side.

They heard Morgan call over, "Off?"

Smiling brightly she nodded. "You, Mr Morgan, may like to know
that all our talk resulted in the simple conclusion that night time
is the right time to make love. Remember that wise song?"

Sid slipped his arm in hers.

"No!" exclaimed Marsh. "Sid has learned that at last?"

Sid thumbed his nose.

"Look out," Morgan cautioned. "Nature is fecund on the sea."

"That's your trouble," Betty threw back. "You and Marsh should
give her a chance."

103

## II. Stroke.

Hod, having visited his cabin and a certain bottle stationed there, was decidedly listing; nonetheless his head knew just where he was going and just what he was going to do. His body was a furnace.

Going down to tourist-third he stood in the doorway of the smoking-room. It was comparatively small, packed with people, heavy with smoke, hot, but gay with laughs and buzzing talk. Life was here, an atmosphere of bodies thick together in a good time. Off to one side was a student jazz band, not playing just then. Hod's eyes searched through the smoke. At a table of four he spotted what he wanted. She was pretty and frisky. Already she was flirting with him. When the music started he went straight to her and took her arm, disregarding the scowls of her companion. She let herself be led away.

They had that dance; and, after it, stood at the bar drinking. They had a second dance, and again stood at the bar. They had a third dance. Her body pressed against him. It was soft, curving, yielding. She understood him. He understood her yes. She laughed in his face and squeezed his hand. She frisked herself. He kissed her hair, rubbed his chin against her head. He bent over and bit her ear. She withdrew and quickly yielded again.

He led her outside into the passageway. "Where's your cabin?"

"Down there," she giggled and pointed to a flight of steps, "and then to the left." She pulled away from him, then curved into his body.

"Who's with you? Anyone?"

"What do you mean?" she asked haughtily.

"Come here. Who's with you?"

"Another girl, but I haven't seen her yet. I mean she's in the room there at the table where I was. Let me go."

"Sure, sure."

Lifting her up he almost carried her bodily down the steps and to the left.

Under protest she identified the cabin. "Suppose she comes? Suppose someone finds out?"

He said nothing. She tensed her limbs until they quivered like a bow-string. He pressed against her and opened the door, put her on the berth, and turned back to shoot the bolt into place.

Some time later Hod emerged on deck. Few people were about. It was as though he had the ship to himself. The breeze refreshed him, blew his coat flapping. Mopping his forehead he stood there wondering what to do next.

There seemed nothing to do. "What! Nothing?"

Suddenly he felt tired. The hell he did. Sleep? Nope. He didn't want to go down to his cabin. There were two other men in it. It would be hot and stuffy.

He wondered if Barbara was all right. What if she had sent for him? Vera entered his mind. Andra Feala. The girl he had just been with. Hit and run. But she was a sweet kid, damn right she was.

Hod strode back to the stern deck and leaned against the rail, looking forward into the sea-night.

117-105

Before him, the lighted **Burgundy**. Below and about him, boundless black waters, the vast black spread. And behind him the frothy wake of the ship, ghostlike. There was a clear night sky and a brilliant three-quarters moon which brightened the heavens and made the ocean glitter black silver.

The stern lifted; the stern dipped. He lifted and dipped.

Something was getting to him. He'd never had such a strange sensation in all his life.

Of a sudden his vision expanded and he had sight of the entire scene, the vast physical universe, worlds within worlds - a sense that this vastness was filled with life. Eyes recorded stars. He sensed life, boundless unending life. He was filled with joy and terror. He clutched himself. The experience was too great. It threatened to lift him from all known moorings and send him rocketing through living space.

He forced himself to focus on the ship, the tiny ship, millions of miles below the nearest star, fathoms above the ocean-bed, miles from land bow and stern - the tiny ship, all alight, with black funnels trailing a long dark arm of smoke, sailing over curved waters.

For some while he gazed. Then he shrank. Suddenly he felt diminutive, **S** smaller than a thumb. And now the scene was so coldly intense he could hardly bear it. It was as if he **W**ere the only soul alive in a black-bright metallic world. A monster machine; a pygmy man in its clogs.

-118 106

Into his consciousness came an understanding -

 Fight to arise! Struggle, strive to get out!
 There is a world up there!

We are nowhere. We have no origin, no past, no future, no purpose, no objective. We have been cut loose. We just happened to drift to this place. It is a strange place, an alien place. We ourselves are strange and alien, strange and alien to ourselves. We have no name. There is no one to identify us. We have no being. There is no one to claim us. We cannot recognize ourselves. We do not belong. Life is an epic of lost souls.

Struggle to arise! Strive to find! There is a life down here!

Behind his mask, to himself, irrespective of possessions, of interests, of earth-identifications; irrespective of career, badge, label, position - thy way is futile, man! - behind his mask to himself each one knows:

I am alone. I have heard the echo of my voice around the world. The less I belong to myself the more I want to belong to others. I want to have someone, something, belong to me. Life is cold. The less I possess myself the more I want possessions. I will not accept aloneness as ultimate. I want to surrender myself. I want to compel something to surrender itself to me. This separateness is unholy.

I begin nowhere. I span an emptiness. I end in nothing.

I want to be a part of things. Yet, try as I will, I do not mix, I do not blend. I cannot change. I cannot escape. This is the one reality I know. It has taken me a life to learn I am alone.

Struggle to arise! Strive to find! There is a world up there!

Hod ran from the stern and paced the deck. He could experience no more. One more thing and the pressure would burst him. He went to the bar, thankful for a human face. He and the bartender were old friends.

119 167

Out on deck again. He was much over-wrought. Perhaps sleep
would end it. He thanked God, or something, that man had been
so made that he could regularly forget life and die during the
hours of night. Some could thus die.

His cabin was dark. The low ceiling of the passageway, the
floor, the narrow walls, cramped him. He stood outside a
minute, them quietly opened the door. He heard sleep-breathing.
One man was snoring. He smelt the odor of socks, the odor of
hot bodies. Switching on the lights he saw his cabin-mates in
their tousled berths. After locating what he needed he switched
the lights off and in darkness prepared for bed.

He climbed up to his narrow little bunk. It was against the
inside wall, opposite the porthole, very stuffy and very hot.
He fell into a strange half-sleep, tortured.

Suddenly he sat bolt upright, his mind awake but his emotions
in nightmare. He saw water rushing in the porthole, the ship
listing and sinking, he unable to budge from his berth. The
stuffy cabin, making breathing difficult, gave a realistic
touch. The utter helplessness of it, the terror of being
drowned in a trap. His hands clutched the bed. His limbs prepared
to leap.

These movements completely awakened him. Fear subsided, but
perspiring and heavy breathing continued.

Never before, even in a dream, had he experienced fear of
being at sea. But as he sat there a short while pondering, the
thought came to him that though it was a nightmare, it did
depict a real possibility. If, during the night, the ship
should meet with accident, which it might; if the sea did pour

120 108

in his porthole, which it might; he and others would be hope-
lessly caught and drowned in their traps like rats.

The utter uncritical confidence which he, together with
most passengers, placed in - God knows what. Not the ship,
not the captain, not the sea, not themselves, not life ...

The men below him still slept, utterly confident and
utterly helpless.

109

~~12.~~

First Day

The **Burgundy**, silent and interior, glided towards the greying east. Her decks, freshly swabbed, were clean and bare. A solitary officer was on the bridge. No other signs of life. With consciousness indrawn and sleeping she glided, a majestic somnambulist.

They grey east became light, a subtle magic light that swiftly rayed the ocean-world and marked off the sky from the horizon and the horizon from the empty sea. The sea, endlessly waving, became vast. Banks of clouds grew bright, showing the spot where the sun would arise. The gold-red rim of the sun moved up, casting a tinted glow upon the waters. The **Burgundy** gleamed. She gleamed brighter and stood out sharply from the sky and sea. Still silent and interior she glided towards the rising sun.

So the Ark may have floated into the first day.

The sun arose, dispelling the clouds. The sun mounted a cloudless sky. The air became heavier and warmer. The world stirred.

Bustle began inside the **Burgundy**.

Early-risers emerged upon the decks. In haling the fresh briny wind they felt elation as if they were lords of the earth and rulers of all therein. They were possessive of the ship. With serious mien they strolled about, looked things over and seemed to feel they were Burgundy officers seeing that everything was ship-shape, ready to begin another day. Joining other early-risers they talked soberly and felt a kinship. They noted those who came later, until the number was too large for them to check.

The elderly lionine gentleman with the linen cap had witnessed

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the sea-dawn from the beginning, feeling it was a replica of
creation before the creation of man, as if he were Adam, the first
man, reborn by the measure of primeval energies that had also
entered him. Yet he was old, old and on the verge of seeing creation
after the disappearance of man. Rugged he was or seemed, but any
day, in a twinkling, a heart attack might carry him over.

Among the first out were four deck-tennis enthusiasts. They wanted
practice in the morning cool. Having brought on board their own rubber
rings they were prepared to go at it hot and heavy. The courts were
on the boat-deck to the rear of the swimming pool. Unminded of the
world-glory they selected the court on the port side and ~~exactly~~ started,
whooping it up. They loved the game. Besides, they were ambitious
to win the ship's tournament scheduled for a day near the end
of the passage.

Several hours later Andra Feala awoke. She opened her eyes and
lay quietly, large clear eyes, even now filled with a strange cold
passion. The curtains were drawn. Her cabin was greyish, save for
chinks of dancing sunlight. She could hear the swishing noise of
the waves as they rolled against the ship, a pleasant soothing
sounding which told her she was at sea. She heard the humming of
the ship's machinery, the faint creaking in her cabin as its parts
adjusted to the twists and tensions of a vessel moving across the
ocean. She felt this moving, the moving on and on of the great
*Burgundy*.

Andra smiled and yawned and stretched her body with a delicious
sense of luxury.

Luxury - this was life, was it not? Her body and its delights.
All physical things, drinks, food, motor-cars, dogs, men's bodies.

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Sensations, to be lured, coaxed, denied, and finally enjoyed. She laughed softly, a deep throaty laugh that gurgled and murmured and came out as clear and resonant as a large bell.

Presently she thought of Andy Sherman, the young fellow who had been with her in the night-club. His strange face, regular and good-featured and yet lopsided as if something were radically wrong with him. Something was. All of her young men were off. A sex-thing. All were sensitive and tragic and hurt and twisted, with a passion for telling her all about it. Andra laughed. Then she laughed doubtfully.

Andy had simply picked her up. How had he had the nerve? How had any of her young men had the nerve? Yet all had it, as if knowing by some sixth sense that she would not reject them or tangle them in play and intrigue as she did with any other type of man. It was as though she carried a sign on her back saying she was sympathetic to weak young men.

Before the night was over Andy had unburdened himself. She knew the whole story. The hell he had lived in with his family. As he put it, "God almighty, step-fathers and step-mothers strewn all over the map." He'd come near murdering them. Finally, to get rid of him, they'd given him an allowance and packed him off. "Wasn't that a sweet start in life. That was ten years ago, and I'm only twenty-five now."

Andy was bitter, hopeless, cracked somewhere.

He hinted at crimes, posed as a diabolical young criminal.

Already he was firmly attached to her. He would follow her about, seek to be with her day and night. He'd lavish on her every attention of which he was capable, she knew it all so well. He'd talk endlessly about himself, telling his life over and over, never

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getting anywhere, never coming out of his twists, unable to make
decisions, unable to do anything except drink, smoke cigarets,
get money from someone, somehow, and talk. Then, at some inopportune
moment, the dam would break and he'd try to make love.

Andra pictured Andy making love, clumsily, helplessly, like all
her young men. A rush of emotion would try to reach her. He'd work
himself up. She'd see it in his eyes and jaws, with his thin body
quivering, his breath feverish, his hands eager yet afraid to touch
her, eager yet afraid to take down his pants. Then he'd realize that
she saw how weak he was. He'd try to be manful and take her by storm.
Nothing would happen. Soon his force would be spent and he'd crumple
and end by burying his head upon her breast.

It was sort of disgusting. Why did she allow it? What was worse,
why did she encourage and even want it? It was grotesque. True, the
young men got something from it. So, apparently, did she. But what?
And why did she attract them? Why would she lead Andy on, enduring
his heat boasts and his fumbling impotence? For power? But how
could she feel power over weaklings? With a man like Hod it was
different. Sadistic? Did she love to see them squirm and suffer?
But she hated the grotesque more than she wanted to inflict pain.
Was she lonely, lonely far more than she would admit to herself; and
did she try to fill her life with her young men in order to forget?
She did not know. Now she did not care very much. The desire for
self-analysis had spent itself in asking the questions.

Placing her arms behind her head she smiled and called for the
image of Hod. A strong delicious sensation swept over her. She saw Hod
dark and powerful bending over her with his inexhaustible body. His
eyes were passionate, his lips quivered, his breath came fast and

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hot. His hands discovered her, desiring her - while she met him with
langorous coolness. Andra grew restless and tossed.

She thought of Hod as she had seen him across the smoking-room
surrounded by his friends. Those henchmen - and henchwomen - of
his, they gazed at her as if she were a tarantula, all sin, all
wickedness. She felt a sudden spurt of hate for them. One of these
days she'd give them good cause for thinking even worse.

Hod would evade her if he could. He'd fight her off. He had told
her so. He'd said that if they didn't separate they'd kill each
other. What rot. The truth was, he had suddenly gotten cold feet
at being unfaithful to the Holy Virgin - which was her private name
for Barbara. In any case, he had broken away. He had said the break
was final. He'd meant it. That was over a year ago. He still meant
it. Hod was that way. Once he got his teeth in a thing, for or
against, he'd never let go - unless made good to. Could she make
him? She still had power over him, she was sure. She could still
arouse his passion; and, unless he had changed very much, once the
blood ran hot in him he was won.

Andra became impatient. The day was passing. She sat up and rang
for breakfast. Later she took special care with her make-up. She
swayed before the mirror and was satisfied. In the cabin-light her
hair seemed olive hued. It was rich, wavy, and exotic. Already her
skin showed a rich tan. Her large eyes had their strange, out-
looking, amused, coldly passionate gleam. Her lips were rouged
perfectly. She smiled as if saying, "Now the world is my prey."
Then she laughed at her own saying.

On deck the flood of sunlight blinded her. She recovered just in
time to avoid Andy Sherman. Doubtless he was looking for her, dressed

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to impress her in a trim blue coat and white trousers, with a white
carnation in his buttonhole. She stepped within a door and watched
him pass; larger BIGXWASXAWAITINGXWASX game was awaiting her this morn-
ing. Andy swung along with brisk determination, his jaw set, his
j
carriage jaunty and self-important. All bluff, she felt. His cheeks
were sallow. His weak eyes roved restlessly. Some unmistakable thing
about him told that he cringed from the ship's company and felt that
everyone was hostile. IN Poor Andy.

grinning boldly.

A man came up from behind and touched her arm. Andra turned with
a start and saw a stealthy heavy-set fellow bending towards her.

"Pardon me," he said, grinning boldly.

She eyed him with chill hauteur. "Perhaps I will if you tell me
what you want."

He drawled, "Just the say good morning."

"Need you have touched me to say that?"

"Guess not, but harm's done." He grinned. She looked at him.

"Well. You have said good morning."

"I know it. I'll say it again before long. Good evening too, and
then good night. In case you get curious, Miss Feala, my name is
Jim Phelps." With this he brushed past her and went off down the
deck.

"The nerve!" But something pleased her. Andra watched his broad
back retreating. How had the man learned her name? He must have
been waiting and watching for her to come on deck. Well, this trip
was starting better than most trips. Hod, Andy, Jim Phelps - yes,
three were a fair beginning at any rate.

Hod, by himself, was leaning against the rail, not seeing the
ocean, thinking of the girl he had been with last night, wondering
why he had done that. Simply because he wanted her? Or was it an

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escape? He felt nasty. He felt vaguely yet deeply troubled by some-
thing which oughtn't be vague at all. Just to be troubled was bad
enough; not to know why was a damned sight worse. A case of bad
conscience that gave him an intolerable sense of wrong-doing, of
something he should be ashamed of, a feeling of guilt similar to
that experienced when he had first run into Vera on shipboard. What
was eating him, anyway. What was working on him, rocking his
foundations? Bad conscience at this late date?

It wasn't like him to be bothered by a thing like that. Sex was
sex. Not for years had he felt any qualms about it. Long ago he had
rid himself of any and all moral sentiments. The human body was ah
animal body with passions natural to it. Sex was one of them - and
that was that. It did him good. It did the woman good. He was clean.
What more could be asked? And he didn't, whatever Sid said, he didn't
run around the streets dripping to go to bed with every pair of
legs he saw.

Of course Sid was forever dogging him. This was one thing. Perhaps
the little stiff had made more impression on him than he was aware
of. Sid said his sex was tangled up with his power-complex. He mis-
used sex for the egotistic motive of subjugating women. He ran to
women when he was defeated in other spheres. Might be something to
it; but how was one to know? - and, hells bells, if one always had
to probe into himself for hidden motives he might as well jump
overboard and be done with it. Sid also said he used sex as he used
drink. It was a narcotic, an easer of problems, a duller of pain.

Sid said, Sid said, Sid said - to hell with what Sid said. Sid
had a rigmarole worse than the moralists'. If you listened to him you
would go crazy. If you followed him you'd rid yourself of one set
of ideas only to become a slave to another set. Another case of

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jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Why couldn't all these
wordy people let life be? To hell with Sid and his psychology.

He had not doped Hod. That was a sure thing. Right now he was
uncomfortably awake with a feeling that something was being done
to him but he did not know what. But he'd find out damn soon.

He was changed towards Barbara. His pull, he was sure, had really
slackened. He wasn't working himself up. True, she still tugged
at him - as was natural, as any job unfinished or badly done tugged
at him until he finished it or was satisfied in himself that he had
done the best, absolutely the best he could. True too, he still
felt queer when he thought of Hugh and pictured Hugh and Barbara to-
gether. He was a jealous brute; he'd get over it. But all these
things notwithstanding, he was more calm, less in her, far more
in himself, with a new strength to be in himself and go it alone.

A finger touched his neck. It's slight pressure shot through to
his male organs. His jaw tensed. He did not turn or look but kept
his eyes gazing unseeingly over the ocean. The finger was with-
drawn. A female body slipped in beside his at the rail. He smelt
a perfume he could never forget. Even at this late date a contagion of
heat swept through him.

"Well, aren't you going to see who it is?"

"I don't need eyes."

"That is the first wonderful thing you've said to me in a long
while."

"Hope it is the last."

She tantalized, "You haven't changed a bit."

"Neither have you."

"Thanks again," she laughed. "I didn't expect you to make me so

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happy."

Hod turned on her. He looked at her grimly quite a while, feeling
and fighting her power to arouse him sensuality, and through his
sensuality master him. It wasn't the first time; he hoped to God
it would be the last. He'd won before; he'd win now.

"Well, recognize?"

He gave an unpleasant grunt.

"What are we going to do, my big man?"

"Wish to Christ I knew."

"May I say?"

"You may not," he ground out.

"How do I look? You aren't very complimentary. I did myself up
special for you."

"Yes, yes, yes - 'tis an old song. Thought I'd busted all the
instruments. Didn't we agree to break off?"

"Of course - but when we find each other on the same ship it
seems silly to pretend there's an ocean between us."

"There's more than an ocean."

"No there's not. I wouldn't want you much closer."

Hod drew away. Andra murmured, "Even now there is only half a
foot between us."

He swung on her. "What the hell do you want? Out with it, or I'll
wring your neck."

She arched her brows and indulged her laugh. "You haven't changed
a bit."

"That's none of your business, and if you don't keep your hands
out of it you'll get into trouble."

"Then, if I know you rightly, we'll really be together."

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"Aw, balls!" said Hod. He turned away, scowling.

Andra edged towards him. "Hod," she asked, "do you know a man
named Jim Phelps?"

"No." Then he added, "What about him?" In spite of himself he was
piqued.

"Oh, nothing special. There's a person by that name on board and
I just wondered if you knew."

"He interests you?" Already he felt a twinge of jealousy.

"A little."

Hod looked at her. "What's he like?"

"Oh, he's large and well-built and rather handsome in a devil-may-
care way. Rather nervy too."

"With a wicked look in his eye?"

"If he has," said Andra, "I didn't see it."

Hod grunted but said nothing. He was pretty sure this was the
same bird he had brushed shoulders with, who - now he suddenly
recalled - bowled past him down in tourist-third after he had left
that kid's cabin. And now, for some reason, he linked that kid
and this bird, this Phelps.

After a pause he asked, "Who was the innocent you had in tow last
night?"

"Andy Sherman. Approve?"

"No, Leave him alone."

She smiled but said seriously, "Come, Hod, let's stroll. I'm
tired of standing here."

With a quick deft movement she took his arm and before he knew
what was happening he found himself walking the deck. So he was a
shepp after all! Damn Andra! What if Barbara saw them? She'd think

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he had gone back on his word, fallen lower than ever. Damn Andra!
Damn the she-devil! Damn his own sheepish self! As if Sid were
walking behind him, taunting, he heard Sid's gleefuly bantering
words, "Cats, Hod, cats!"

And say! That past he was leaving at the pier!

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Deck Reflections
13,

13,

In a grey flannel summer suit, Hugh was curved back in his deck-chair, unmindful of the external world, mainly aware of himself, his thoughts and state. Up into his consciousness, as the body lifts a song even though the feelings are depressed, came a sentence, and it came again and again like a refrain - Life is deep, life is big, life is expanding.

His eyes listlessly took in the nearby people, the proud swathing ship, the railing with its white life-bouy, the glittering sunny ocean beyond. Again the sea-world was brilliant, hot, stimulating; but he felt a touch of second-day fatigue.

In one sense it was the first day out - the first full day upon the ocean. Psychologically it was the second - a sort of in-between day of reaction, let-down, latency, and deep sighs. During it the impulse of departure would finally spend itself. Land-tempos and old forms would die. All that had been carried on board from land would die down; and people, losing all feeling that they were New Yorkers, Chicagoans, doctors, lawyers, business men, would feel sluggish, empty, broken up. If they were like him they would.

Underneath, however, the energies of the ship-world, the materials, forms and rhythms of this world would begin stirring. Most everyone, now as Burgundians, members of the ship, would make contacts. The various groupings would get content and take shape. All that had to do with this passage of the *Burgundy* would stir, arise, and mount to manifest evidently the third day.

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Now all at once it seemed very curious that he was on the ship at all. Why just here? He thought of the way human beings usually accept their movements and locations without question or active sense, assuming that their superficial words and reasons really explain the thing; but how, now and again, something in them, some deep sense of location, awakes - and people suddenly become *af* aware of where they are, *that they are* - and then, even being in one's own familiar room seems strange.

Why was he on the ship? To tell himself that he was on shipboard because he was going to France to join friends was to say almost nothing: it merely voiced his verbalization of his motives while not really touching the heart of the matter. What did he really want in France? What on the ship?

He had a specially vivid sense of the vast difference between what one says to himself he is doing and what one really is doing. Our various labels and formulations merely simplify the matter and allow us to assume that we are definite, conscious, purposive - and thus we energize ourselves at the time, for the time. Energy must come up in us. It responds and flows to words and symbols. So we tell ourselves whatever will arouse it, whatever will aid us to pass through the present situation into the next - and thus we keep moving.

From this point of view, the calibre of the man can to some extent be judged by ascertaining what he tells himself, what he uses to stir his energies. Some are energized by prejudices, some by preferences, some by values. The various institutions of the world, the churches and schools for example, are organizations which tell men what to tell themselves.

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Objectives and formulations change from time to time. In the course of a life, one is moved by many different told-to-himself-goals. While, all the time, underneath all of it, is the continuity of that mysterious thing which we are really doing.

The business man tells himself he is working for power and profit, whatever it may be. The artist for art, the scientist for science. Each one for himself. So he is, in his own mind, in part of his mind - and it is part true. But the businessman also is mainly *living*, and his *human* life is moving towards the identical end (or not-end) towards which all human lives, irrespective of their badges and labels, are moving. We cannot dispense with formulating our aims and goals and occupations. Perhaps it is just as well. But we shouldn't fool ourselves into believing that what we tell ourselves is the sum-reality of it. Everyone should be conscious of the essential mystery that is the very core of his existence - and not allow words or knowledge to shrink this consciousness.

Suppose for example, that instead of sitting in a deck-chair he were standing at the bow of the *Burgundy*. At the bow he would get the realization sheerly, the realization of an inevitable moving towards an unknown sphere. The destination? The ship might say it was sailing to Havre. Which would be true yet untrue; for, having reached Havre, it would double back across the waters, and back and forth - to end where? And the earth, moving through space, to end where? And the earth carrying all its creatures - why and where?

Now, for some unknown cause, there came into Hugh's consciousness a sort of basic sentient registering of the horror of life, not a

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feeling, not dejection or depression or despair, but an underlying
plasmic ache because human conditions were so awful. Hence the need
to view life in larger terms, to seek a meaning, a purpose which
is served by the very horrors which human beings are committed to
pass through. What could this purpose be if not that people are
being developed by these conditions?

In the service of this development - a thing too intricate for
the human consciousness to regulate - there is what we call Fate.
The course or pattern of each human life.

The more he thought of it the more he was convinced that the
majority of human beings have neither the awareness nor the will
to self-direct their lives; yet, beneath the seeming chaos he
glimpsed a complicated and most amazing order of things - people
meeting people, events dove-tailing, the weaving in and out of human
careers, this person meeting that person just when he most needs
to meet that person, old relations ending when there is no more fruit
in them, new ones beginning just when the time and states are right,
something unforseen, unplanned, unwilled, happening today, which,
after it happens, you recognize to be inevitable and necessary, to-
day's happenings leading to similarly unforseen but necessary and
inevitable events tomorrow.

Take the present group on the ship. Though they had words and
explanations-to-oneself, not one of them really knew why he had
come on board. Not one could foresee or will what will happen on
board. Yet things will dove-tail and flow with lawful and, so far
as the personal consciousness is concerned, miraculous consequences.
Take himself. He was a complete stranger to all of them. Five days
ago he neither foresaw nor wished this group. Take Sid and Betty.

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Two days ago did they even imagine they'd be here? Yet here they are and things will happen in a definite way, things which they could not have gotten elsewhere or otherwise, and which will be seen to be necessary and inevitable in their lives. Usually it is only in retrospect that we can somewhat realize the rightness of what at the time appeared a matter of chance. Having happened, we cannot conceive of ourselves existing, and being what we are, without it.

And it was his very curious fate, just now and in particular,

a
And so, the real question to ask of human being, of human beings, was - in terms of essential growth and development what is happening to him or her? For what deep purpose are they together? Do you think people are no more than we believe them to be? Do you think our knowledge measures their possibilities? Do you think love and marriage and society are no more than our opinions of them? In the case of a man let us ask - towards what far objective is his soul tending? Through what mazes must it pass, through what purgatories to what heavens?

And it was his very curious fate, just now and in particular,
to have been touched and disappointed by two women the first day
of the life of this ship-world. And it did not end there. The whole
thing had aroused a hunger for a woman who would respond to him as
his nature demanded. And, strange creature that he was, this very
hunger set the field for a conflict.

For he was, as he had known for some time, two men in one. One of
these men wanted and valued a woman as the companion of a man's
life, a woman already had, with whom he lived, worked, shared

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everything, helped to grow - in fine, a woman whom he was *making*,
in the real and best sense of that word. This man, solid and
realistic, looked with scorn at the other man who romantically
wanted a woman to be "off there", the object of pursuit and high-
flown imaginings. Said the realistic to the romantic man, "Present
you with a charming girl and you can't get rid of your dignity
quick enough. You become adolescent and worse. Once you got her you
wouldn't want her. Inset had of making you are chasing." To these
true words the romantic fellow had no come back; yet neither did
he heed them; on he went romancing just the same.

And the real solution? Hugh thought he knew it - to see woman,
to see women as human beings related not to either one of his two
men but to himself as a human being - a sufficiently easy mental
resolution, a sufficiently difficult life-act. Too difficult for
the present. Now the best he could do was to side with the sane man
in himself.

So, to make doubly sure that the romantic fellow wouldn't go
off half-cocked after Barbara again, he passed this young lady
through his mind and minutely examined her.

Now he saw that her face was thin and narrow, with a sort of
stingy selfishness. She had a queer stupid stare as if she'd never
been awakened and went around in a daze. Her upper lip was oddly
tight. A little more and her neck would have been like a turkey's.
Her feet were too long. She was shrinking. Never would she have the
desire or the courage to stand beside a man on the strenuous frontiers
where some few men with terrific odds against them were struggling to
make a new people and build a new world. He had to grant that in all
probability the right values and ideals were there, or could be

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planted in her - which he'd love to do *until* he had done it, whereon,
she'd lose all interest for him; but he was sure she had no sense
of urge, no sense of wide life and its possibilities, no real
nerves, no, in a word, guts.

Just then, for the first time that morning, his eyes happened
to look out beyond himself and register, among the people in deck-
chairs, a young woman in blue. Beside her was an elderly person,
perhaps her mother. The girl had a stately aristocratic figure and a
poise of head which made him sit up. Her chin was firm, defined.
Her eyes regarded the world with steady mature interest. They way
she smoked intrigued him.

She frankly glanced in his direction. Hugh sensed something
personal, a recognition, a query.

Presently a man came up, bowed, spoke to her, and stood waiting.

As she left her chair and walked away his eyes followed her,
nothing that her carriage matched everything else. It was graceful,
balanced, straight ahead.

Who is she? he wondered. He determined to find out.

Then suddenly he was jolted to see Barbara herself approaching,
picking her way through the promenaders. From a distance she looked
not at all like his negative picture of her. She was fresh,
girlish, with quite a style and very lovely. Without realizing the
change in himself that her presence produced, he stood up and was
prepared to be the gallant gentleman.

"Good morning," he said. "I'm glad to see you out. Feel better?"

"Much, thank you."

He arranged the cushion and pillow on the chair next to his.

"There you are."

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But she did not at once take the chair as he had assumed and
wished she would. "I may not stay."

"Not stay? Why not?" Her saw her indecision; for the first time
he saw the faint but tell-tale lines under her eyes, around her
mouth, the pain and wistfulness - and tenderness filled him. "Yester-
day afternoon I wanted to ask if I couldn't do something. When
you didn't appear at dinner - "

"It's not that. I'm all right, thank you. Only - I just came
out to walk around, thought I ought to get a little exercise. It
is very hot here."

He smiled, but felt disappointed. "I misunderstood. You must
forgive me - but you see, I saw you coming and you came straight
here, so I naturally thought you wanted to be in your chair a
while. I guess it was only my own wish."

She looked at him queerly.

"Does it surprise you that I wish that?"

She simply looked at him.

it

"Oh, come, sit down. You'll like it after the first five minutes.
Not afraid of your complexion, are you? You needn't be, with that
hat! Why wear it? You and the sun ought to become friends."

He was surprised to see her suddenly settle into her chair.

He took his and shortly said, "Not so bad, is it?"

"No," she agreed, and allowed herself to smile.

"Like the ocean?"

"Not very much."

"The ship?"

She shook her head.

"All these people, doesn't it interest you to see them, wonder

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where they have come from, where they are going, what will happen?"

"Yes. I'd like to be more curious - I mean really interested in people."

"Aren't you?"

"I'm told I'm only interested in myself."

"Suppose I were to tell you, as it is called, my life-story."

"I wouldn't want you to."

"Wouldn't be interested?"

She gazed at him for a time. "I don't know why. I simply wouldn't."

He turned his eyes away.

Soon he asked, "Know something? Now I too feel much better. I was a bit loggy all morning. Usually am the second day. The unaccustomed motion of the ship, different food and water. Now I feel fine. You have given me my sea-legs."

"I?"

"Just you."

She hesitated. "I'm glad if I did that."

"Are you really glad?"

"I don't know."

"Want to know something else? You are the loveliest person I've seen in many and many a day."

Almost as if struck she recoiled, her face blanched, her eyes looked frightened and hunted. "You don't - you can't mean that. You do not know me. Wait until you do and you will change your mind."

He wanted to ask, "Has Hod hurt you so?" He actually said, "I have two eyes, quite good ones."

"What have they seen? What could they have seen that would appeal

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to you? I don't understand many things. I'm not brilliant. I have no
talents. I'm going to Paris for a divorce - and you know what that
means."

He said, "There are scores of people, brilliant in their respective
fields. This is valuable for them and their associates. But suppose
they are stupid in relation to me? Don't you see? As for talent,
you have plenty of it, talent **to be**, to be sweet and charming and
rare. I can fill my own head, my dear. I want a woman to fill my
heart. You have talent to make me love you."

"No," she said strongly.

"Why not? But don't worry. I've had illusions before. You happen
to be my latest, perhaps my last - but, Barbara, you are a very
dear one."

"No," she said again.

"Yes," he came back, "and you may run from me all you want but I'm
very much afraid you'll travel in that fatal circle."

"Oh, dear! What shall I do?"

"That is simple. Let yourself feel what you really feel. Do not
pretend what you don't, one way or the other. That is fair. That **MK**
is sincere. You really can trust me to this extent."

"But," she said earnestly, "that's the trouble. I don't know what
I feel. I never do. I'm always confused."

"Perhaps I can help you clear things?"

"Can you?" she asked suddenly.

"Perhaps. I don't know."

And now while they talked he looked at her searchingly, noting
those features of hers which he liked and disliked, the hat he wishe
ed she wouldn't wear because it hid her loveliness, her delicate

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face with itschinwistful eyes and rather too thin lips, a certain
honesty of character, a simplicity, more strength than one would
think, her instability, her remoteness as of something he could
never approach or attain. And she did the same with him - his strange
forehead with its wing effect, his generous deep eyes, his sharp
nose, mobile lips, the refined strength of his chin, his sureness
and independence, his dark masculinity which both attracted and
repelled her, certain ways that reminded her of Hod, a probing
almost satanic insight that made her most uncomfortable so that,
like a girl in a story, she wanted to pick up her skirts and run
away.

"Perhaps," he repaid. "I don't know. I do know this. I care for
you. If I care for a person I can sometimes do something that the
person will find of value. Know what it is to care?"

"I ought to, but may be you mean something different."

"Caring is a flow of deep regard for a fellow being. It has
ntohing to do with a sense of burden or unwanted responsibility.
It is happy to have the responsibility of being intelligently
concerned for another's welfare. The wish to bring well-being to
another, this is caring. A sensitive, alert regard, without worry,
without slavery, but with a tinge of sorrow because it knows that
the ways of human life on this planet are always difficult and
often tragic. One might call it a feeling. It is more. Better - a
state of being, the state of being in which one person flows out
to another and participates in the complete flowing of the life
of that other, with an impartial need to do everything for that
person that he can. Understand what I mean?"

"I think I do," but she was amazed and not a little disturbed

143 / 31

that any man could say so much to her on such short acquaintance.
He seemed to have forgotten it, but she could not forget that they
had met only yesterday.

He went on, "It is not limited to sex or age or class or race
or religion or anything. Some people can care. Some people can evoke
caring. A straight sheer thing from human being to human being. It
is more constant than love. In truth, my belief is that caring is
the base upon which love should rest. Surely it is the base of
marriage. If two people love without caring they may tear each
other to pieces - yes? It is impossible to care without loving, though
by this I do not mean that caring involves sex or personal possessive
love, by no means. They are quite different matters.

"And, Barbara, if you would like to hear one more thought, it is
this. That just this feeling or state of being, just this flowing of
alert and deep regard for one's fellow beings, is the key to the
kind of life men wish for and ought to have.

"It is because there is so little genuine wise caring that we are
inhuman or subhuman to each other. Egos clash with egos. Greed,
avarice, self-love, hate, suspicion. To bring about a new order,
men attempt herculean projects of economic and social reform. Well,
good, let us grant. But with what force, with what pure energy are
they going to turn the wheels of a new and better life? This is
the question that our so-called leaders seldom ask and never answer.
The best of them assume that knowledge is enough. It is not. History
is packed with examples of the ease with which egotism, greed, hate,
and prejudice misuse knowledge. Right now we have sufficient knowledge
for all immediate good purposes. Knowledge is not enough. Christ
knew that centuries ago. There must be a world-wide release of

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a certain kind of emotional-moral force. Then and only then will we witness *and* transformed people inhabiting a transformed world."

He paused, smiled at her, scratched his cheek, lit a cigarette, and laughingly remarked, "Didn't know you were going to run into a cure-all-ills this morning, did you?"

She laughed too. "No, but I'm glad I did. You've given me lots to think about. Thank you."

"You are quite welcome."

After a silence he said, "Now to come to you. We were going to clarify something, weren't we?"

She didn't reply at once. He saw her glance at him guardedly again, hesitate, start to speak, think better of it.

"No rush," he said. "I simply wanted to remind you, to bring you back to where we started from, after that detour."

"I'd like to -"

"Then do it, then."

She opened for a moment; and then he could see her shut tight, retreat behind suspicion, feeling distrust of him, believing he might be a horrible man bent on dissecting her. A mocking smile came on his features.

At length she said, "I can't think now. I have nothing to say."

"Why don't you simply say, 'I don't want to.' It is quite all right with me. You may think so, but believe me I have not the slightest wish to probe into your life. I've been sincere with you. Be sincere with me. Then we'll continue being friends. I hate distrust."

She winced, flushed, felt injured, then angry. He was a horrid man, just as she had thought. It was dreadful to have a person read

145 / 33

your motives.

She stood up. "I'm going now. Thank you for everything."

He stood up too. "May I walk a way with you?"

"I'd rather not."

"But suppose I wish?"

From Hugh she felt a pressure and a weight like Hod's. Hugh put his arm through hers and led her past the maze of chairs and people towards the promenade deck.

Rounding the turn by the deck-cafe they ran smack into Hod and Andra - and sparks flew. Barbara clutched Hugh's arm and drew back. Hod broke into pieces and then glared at Hugh. Andra's sun-tawny face smiled with a hint of mockery. She, apparently, was the only one enjoying it.

"Taking a walk?" Hod mumbled to Barbara. "Thought you were sick."

She managed to say she felt better now. In fact, she felt worse. Andra's presence made her feel creepy as if she were being contaminated. She tugged Hugh's arm to get him to go on.

Hod remembered to introduce Andra. Then Andra asked, "Is Mr. Langley related to you?"

"He is not," said Hod emphatically.

"No," said Hugh. "Why do you ask?"

His eyes were caught by her white dress. It was of lovely material perfectly cut, with delicate green embroidery. He kept looking at it, admiring it. He kept looking at her too.

This first close-up of Andra Feala was surprising him, notwithstanding all that Marsh had told him about her the night before. She was alluring, surely, glamorous, perhaps wicked too, with something hard and calculating; but she had a keenness, a clean freshness he

146 134

had not expected, with not a trace of the pianted, shopworn or
decaying "bad woman".

As he gazed into her amazing cool gleaming eyes he thought they
were quite beautiful, but soulless. They fascinated him but he could
not admire them. What he did admire was her restraint and command,
a mocking but authentic sureness. He felt her magnetism too, and
had a definite idea he would have felt it more had he been alone
with her. No wonder Hod was involved. No wonder all the stir when
Sid had first announced that she was on board. Beside her, Barbara
was but a timorous defensive child, and Vera was cloistered and
nun-like.

Andra - a man's woman, but soulless. But, soul or no soul,
Hugh felt her quick power with him. As if she were the external
duplicate of the serpent in him, she asked for his power, for
the dark force that lay sleeping in the roots of his body, the
force he did not want touched or aroused, that he did not want to
give to her or to anyone or to anything, not now, not yet, not
until he was sure he could use it without fear of destroying
himself. How did Andra know it was there, this which Barbara, for
one, would never suspect? Andra did know. What was more, she knew
he knew she knew.

He saw her catch sight of a passing man. The next thing he knew
she was calling, "Mr Phelps, just a minute, please. I would like
to introduce you to some friends of mine."

Hugh now recognized Phelps. He watched Hod and Phelps buffer.
He felt Barbara shrink as from creatures from another world.

"Well," said Andra shortly, "now that we five jolly passengers
of the Burgundy have met, shall we continue our stroll, Hod?"

147-135

"Excuse me," Phelps flung out, and strode off.

"I must go," said Barbara. "I'm glad to have met you, Miss Feala."

Hod, without looking up, marched Andra Off.

Hugh and Barbara continued forward. They passed Vera, nodded, and kept moving. Barbara felt people in the low rows of deck-chairs eyeing her. She withdrew her arm from his.

At the door of her cabin she held out her hand. "Goodby."

"Goodby?"

"Just for now."

"Oh," said Hugh, "that's better. For a moment I feared you were saying goodby forever - something like that."

"Maybe I was. I don't - I hardly know what I'm saying, but I've changed my mind - about the goodby, I mean. I must rest now. I really must. I'll want to see you again. I know I will. Thank you - and - goodby -"

136

14.

Stretch, Sea

Vera, having passed Hugh and Barbara, continued walking, walking the deck and down steps and winding through passageways and up steps past the machine-maze of the fore-deck until she found herself at the ship's bow.

Blow, wind, blow,
I'll stand to you
As if you were
All resistance
To my sincere way.

Hod was with Andra. Hugh was with Barbara. Sid with Betty, Morgan with Marsh. She was alone.

Her surroundings meant nothing. She simply wanted to be at the sheer bow, at the tip of the _Burgundy's_ direction, where the bare wind whipped and blew, where the ship ended and the vast blue spread began and stretched away and stretched far and m endlessly.

End, ship, end. End, O _Burgundy_. Thou, whose passage has just begun, end thyself and me and let the motion of pure direction carry pure you and pure me through spreading oceans to an island of white piled clouds.

Stretch, sea, stretch away. I am following thee. Thy lead is dangerous and glorious. Stretch thyself and me. Make me live to mount the ladder of horizons until I reach the blue plateau.

Hod was with Andra. Hugh was with Barbara. She was alone.

Ordinary life was futile and hopeless. Let it be shed and left behind, as by one who takes vows of indifference to the world and commits herself to robed oblivion. What sense in its hungers and longings, its prides, vanities, pains and pleasures, dreams,

149-137

loves, tangles and struggles, its ceaseless shuffling and re-
shuffling of human cards?

Proximity... One found herself near other cards, always near,
never with or in. One liked or disliked, loved or hated them - and
a mere hand-tjst would make you hate tomorrow the one you loved
today. No virtue, no meaning in it. One did not love or hate a
special card because it was the special card. One loved or hated
it because it was a card, because one was next to it in the pack.
Let another card be substituted - a Hugh-card for a Hod-
card - and one would love or hate it just as readily. One was
made to love or hate cards, and could not do otherwise.

Suggestible human beings covered the reality in dreams and
illusions. One kind of illusion attributed a specialness to each
person and each happening. One kind of dream read significance into
each feeling, simply because it was one's own - and people are made
to dream. See through the haze, be candid with yourself, touch card
after card, sink down and down until your very blood and marrow
knew the truth of it - and what?

Eyes would see nothing. Hands would touch nothing. Heart would
love nothing. Life would disavow itself; and the body with its
bones would take on a robed oblivion.

Robed...oblivion robed...dressed for God in a monastery in the
mountains...reading a book...kissing the cross...and all robed and
white...kneeling to paradise...forgotten and at rest...to die and
be resurrected beyond oblivion robed...

End, ship, end. End, O Burgundy. Thou, whose passage is on,
end thyself and me and let the motion of pure direction carry you

150 138

and me through spreading oceans to an island of white piled clouds.

I breathe, therefore I am. Being is not oblivion, or ever will be.
So, unrobed being. Unrobed I am.

Stretch, sea, stretch away. I am following thee. Thy lead is
dangerous and glorious. Stretch thyself and me. As man to me, make
me, make me live to mount the ladder of horizons until I know I
am.

139

15.

Rounds

It was mid-afternoon. The group had separated, some having gone down for a nap. After an hour watching Sid and Betty play shuffleboard for a while, Hugh strolled off.

The singing that had started in his body before the appearance of Barbara was still going on. His thoughts had not stopped it, Barbara had not numbed it, Hod and Andra and the people at lunch had not cut across. Now it was a gladness, a nascent song of wonder; and he knew that wonder was again coming into his life; into his world the sun was coming, and a limitless blue sky, and a white ship sailing.

He chanced to think of that trait in him which made him want, on the one hand, to elevate and assure whoever was self-depreciating and insecure; and, on the other, to take down and disturb whoever was "up", cocksure, whoever bucked him. Thus he would be two different persons to say, Barbara and Marsh. He would spare no pains, including hurts to his real feelings as well as to his pride and ego, to lift Barbara. So also he would spare no pains to upset and dominate, not Marsh, but a woman with her aggressiveness, exaggerated.

With Andra Feala? That was still to be seen. She was not in the picture yet, and he was strongly inclined to keep her out.

With Vera? He was sort of startled now to think of her. He hadn't seen her at lunch; she had slipped his mind. How would he treat her, that is, if he treated her at all? Naturally. As being to being, trying neither to elevate or demolish her, simply and really meeting her. Yes, and for this very reason, she, who by rights

152-140

ought to, would not interest him. While capturing elusive Barbara
and sparingly with sharp Marsh, he would ignore Vera, precisely
because she was so very much "all there." In fine, she did not need
him. He could do nothing for her. She was already made and complete.
Nothing for him to do in the way of building or destroying. And, if
he could do nothing, he would do nothing - expect, perhaps, admire
her, whenever she didn't slip his mind.

Mounting the steps to the boat-deck, Hugh watched a deck-tennis
match and then sauntered over and joined the on-lookers at the
swimming tank just to the rear of the ship's great funnels. The
swimmers shouted, laughed, frolicked about. The water looked cool,
clear, salty, very tempting; and he was muggy. On impulse he ran
down to his cabin, got into his suit, raced up on deck and himself
had fun in the pool.

Later, feeling much set-up, he resumed sauntering. In the radio
reception room he heard a new broadcast from New York telling of
an earthquake disaster, a war in China, a social upheaval in
Europe, items about the uncertain financial situation...

New York! Yes, truly, it did exist far westward back across
the waters, New York and America. But for some reason it shocked him
to be reminded, giving him a queer unreal feeling. Unreal too
seemed the natural and human catastrophes. How could there be earth-
quakes, wars, and revolutions? The glittering sea-waters were not
quaking. The brilliant sky was not breaking. No Upheaval on board
the *Burgundy*. And to him just now this sea-world was the only world
there was.

Nonetheless he remained jolted and reminded, tenuously yet
astrONGLY linked with the greater humanity, the human worlds
backward and beyond, which suffered and groped and killed and sank

153 141

and rose up in critical travail.

At the main salon he stood in the doorway looking in. It was a
grand room, really. It made him think of an opera house. At the far
end was a sort of theatre with a stage surrounded by palm trees and
rubber plants. On the platform the orchestra gave afternoon and eve-
ning concerts. The theatre was used for the ship's show towards the
end of the trip.

Yes, grandeur, luxury, and a sense of art were here - but so
were the main salon's inmates, wrapped in a fog of stodginess. Of
course. The main salon was the ship's front parlor and it always drew
its clientele, parlor people, Sunday people, good people, some
genuinely so, others haughty and hypocritical, people who exuded a
narrow properness, whom the ship could not liberate, whom the sea
could not expand. On them, indeed, a transatlantic passage had just
the opposite effect. It increased their stiffness, their fear and
hate of life, the feeling that they must be narrowly upright, suspicious,
and on guard. And here they were, fulfilling their kind
of processes even on the Burgundy. Gathered in some numbers, each
had his chair, each her book or magazine or what not. Now and again
they eyed each other glassily.

Suppose the sea should quake? Suppose a mutiny or a revolt
broke out on board?

And now Hugh noted something he had never observed before.
Everyone of them seemed to be doing penance. How queer! How odd!
All of these goodly people doing penances ... for what?

He sighted a piano, and, as if to assert his will against the
salon's stodginess, went towards it. It was in a far corner directly
under a window opening on the promenade deck. Lifting the
cover he began playing chords, his back to the window. A number
of parlor people

157 142

glared in his direction. They glared whether they approved or dis-
approved. Some dismissed him; and their high noses descended and they
resumed their several serious penances. Some kept glaring. Later he
swore that one vital dowager actually snorted. With impish glee he
banged the instrument. A little more and the purser would have receiv-
ed a battalion of complaints from outraged inmates.

Over his shoulder he heard a girl's voice saying, "Please play something for us." He swung around and saw his lady in blue and a younger woman smiling through the window. The girl pleaded, "Won't you?" She was naive, school-girlish, not at all like her sophisticated companion.

"As though I have not been playing," he rebuked her and pretended to be injured. His gaze shifted to the lady in blue, his eyes twinkled. "I've been trying my best to entertain the main salon. Why don't you come in? It is something of an experience to be in a prison whose warden is invisible."

"Oh, no!" said the girl, "I don't mean that. The chords were beautiful, but we'd like to hear you play a long piece. Won't you?"

"Something in the grand manner with great virtuosity?"

She giggled. "If you wish."

"But suppose I do not wish?"

"You will be mean."

"But suppose I cannot?"

"But you can," she insisted. "Look at those long fingers."

"Ah, yes," he smiled, "but long fingers do not guarantee music - no more than a large head guarantees sense."

"Oh, go on and play."

"I am playing."

"I mean the piano," she laughed. "Aren't you a musician or some

158-143

kind of an artist? I bet you are. I bet you've lived in Paris and
given concerts in New York. What's your name?"

The lady in blue spoke for the first time. She seemed a trifle
put out. Her voice had a tartness. "Perhaps if we stop annoying him
he will play."

"Perhaps," he said, smiling. But her tone had called his inner
sensing to attention. It was as though he had received a challenge.

"Then we will leave you," said the lady, and with-
out any other word they disappeared from the window.

Now he was piqued and annoyed and puzzled too.

Not long after he ran into Marsh and Morgan and the three of
them went to the bow, he telling them of how he had played bad boy
in the salon but saying nothing about the lady in blue.

The wind was strong. It whizzed and muffled them. Pressing against
it they leaned over the side and looked down. The prow was steep
and sheer. There was the ship's anchor resting in its socket like a
great rusty eye, a huge thing, large enough, it seemed, to hold an
island in the ocean. Their eyes followed the prow down to the sea.
Waves were multitudinous. The stem moved through them steadily, with
a strange onward motion, cutting wings of bottle-green water and
white foam. It was a blown, queerly dizzy experience.

Flying fish entertained them, fish scared into the air by the
Burgundy's approach. Up they came and flashed through the air, wings
spread, bodies gleaming blue-white like steel torpedos. Skimming the
waves they remained in flight a distance and then, with a clean
splash, dove into the sea. So they might have behaved if a big fish
were after them. Ever so often the ship would scare up a school.
There'd be a mad scuttling and skimming before the prow, and down

150 144

into the waves again.

Marsh had much fun with them. Morgan, turning his back to the
wind, talked about the sea's inhabitants, disclosing a fund of in-
formation and, among other things, an enthusiastic familiarity with
M Herman Melville.

One idea especially interested Hugh. Morgan contended that fish
were better adjusted to their environment than man was to his: evolu-
tion had carried the fish just far enough to make them fit the water,
whereas with man the process had taken him a step ahead of the con-
ditions of his habitat: hence, for man, things were out of balance
and would remain so until man or Nature or both had brought the
human environment to a point where it would correspond to man's
needs. Adjustment, that was the big thing, the desirable thing, the
key to all human problems.

"Fit in," said Morgan, "and our troubles are over. Fit in and
tune up. Our difficulties are similar to those a modern motor-car
would have if we tried to take it through a jungle. Clear the jungle
and lay it with roads and the car will speed along as merrily as you
want."

The discussion was cut short because Marsh had had enough of the
fish. She wanted a new thrill.

As they made their way back Hugh caught sight of two girls perch-
ed on a piece of deck-machinery. One wore blue. "I'll join you later
in the bar," he said to the Bradleys. He and Marsh exchanged winks.

The lady in blue smiled as she saw him coming. Then, lowering her
head as though she were indifferent to him, she engaged herself in
the sufficiently difficult and absorbing task of lighting a cigarette
on the wind-swept deck. One match was blown out, another. She was

160-145

annoyed with herself.

"Try it this way," Hugh offered.

She glanced up and seemed surprised to see him. However, she did
try it his way and it did work; and now she was a bit annoyed at him.

"Did you play a real piece when we weren't there?" asked the young
girl.

Hugh replied. They joked about his musical talents and lack of them.

The lady in blue was silent until, in the course of a rambling
talk between Hugh and the girl, the subject of airplanes came up. "I
love flying, don't you? I've just about decided to train for a pilot's
license."

"So!" said Hugh. "You should make a good pilot."

"Why?"

"Oh, you are steady and in command of yourself." He took a sharp
look at her. She was poised and level-headed, with clear steady eyes,
firm chin, shoulders rather broad for a woman, somewhat masculine,
amazingly well-set-up, dignified, handsome, aristocratic - with some
as yet unknown quality that subtly rasped him.

He too subtly worked against her, but she sensed his admiration and
allowed herself to smile.

Then, on impulse, and feeling he might be treading on dangerous
ground, he suddenly began joshing her about being a completely mod-
ern woman, enthused by machines, their uses and misuses.

With a warning gleam in her eyes she retorted that of course she
was modern, radically different from the generation of women represent-
ed by her mother. She herself and women like her had learned a number
of rather bitter lessons, one of them, not to let men misrule the
world, another, that life was to be lived to the full for women as

161-146

well as men. She was a debtor, not a conservator like women of other centuries. She was free to spend. She was more free in general. And her tone asked, "Do you doubt it?" Her expression - "Of course you would."

Hugh knew he had touched something but he could not help baiting her. "Just how? How much more free?"

"How?" she raised her brows as if to say that the answer was quite evident to her and should be to him.

"I don't believe it is so simple," he pressed. "Yes, one can point to a hundred and one things modern woman can do that women of previous generations could not. To do them may be pleasurable and desirable, but they are not necessarily fundamental and they may not relate to the satisfying of any deep need or wish. On the contrary, they may be signs that woman is farther away than ever from achieving what she really desires."

"How do you know what woman desires?"

"I don't. I don't even know what man desires. I'm simply raising the question. To you it seems to be a known and settled matter. I am sure of this. That many women of today are falling under the illusion that so often captures those who have been dominated, the illusion, namely, of believing that the way to happiness consists in being like the dominant class or race or nation or sex. Do you believe that men have full rich lives? Do you believe that to be like a man - if that were possible - would guarantee you a full rich life?"

Her reply was short. "I didn't say it would. I simply said that women should have and are going to have all the opportunities men have. Once that is achieved, we can move on from there. Of course I know that men, merely because they are men, do not have 'full rich lives.' But I know equally well that their lives are richer than

162

women's have been. Are you a lawyer? You have a faculty for making me appear to say what I did not say."

Hugh laughed. He squirmed too. She had a mind, x this lady, and a caustic steely quality which said he had met his match. "All right. Score one for you. But another point. You mentioned spending, not conserving. Suppose Nature designed woman to be, among other things, a deep reservoir of life, a vessel of permanence. Do you think she can violate Nature and yet fulfill herself?"

She took him with complete seriousness. About this subject she could see no place for humor. "Men would like to believe that, wouldn't they?" she asked scornfully. "And they would like to make women believe it. They would love to make women save so they can spend. They always bring in God or Nature or Motherhood whenever they fear women will escape them. It is an old male custom, tried but not so true." Giving Hugh a look of caustic amusement she shrugged and dropped the subject as if feeling it was a waste of energy to discuss it further with such a typical vainglorious obtuse member of his sex.

This was what she wanted to feel; she couldn't, quite. Some dark intangible power was in him, standing there behind his words and ideas, redeeming his facetiousness; and a sense of it gave her one of the strangest sensations she'd ever had in her life.

Both tingled with mixed feelings. Neither had expected that their meeting would be like this; and they were surprised, even startled, by what had come out so swiftly with such heat. Both were intrigued, darting covert glances when one believed the other wasn't looking.

Sex hostility, the same sort of spontaneous combustion Marsh provoked him to feel - only, much stronger because his lady in blue, apparently lacking all sense of humor, was a much stronger

163-148

woman.

The young girl had followed the queer set-to, sometimes having to check her impulse to giggle, sometimes frowning, unable to get the drift and sense of it. Now that the others were silent she simply brushed it aside and herself became talkative, telling all to Hugh in one of those outbursts of confidence which often occur on ship-board.

She was from Cleveland, of Irish stock, just past twenty, an art student going abroad for the first time. She liked Cleveland and would be glad to return, but she was having great fun on the _Burgundy_ and looked forward eagerly to visits in France, England, and Ireland. She was returning on another boat, an English ship which sailed from Liverpool. She and the lady in blue had known each other in Cleveland. Had he ever been there? Did he like it? She liked it better than New York. There were a number of girls and fellows in her party, all art students. Only by an act of grace had they gotten first class passages on the _Burgundy_. She wouldn't like to travel alone. Was he alone? What did he do? Was he really an artist of some kind? How often had he been to Europe? She bet he could speak many foreign languages. She wished she could. Had he seen the whale and the porpoises and the old rusty freighter so low in the water that it looked as if the waves would wash over and sink it? On she ran.

"Oh, look!" she exclaimed. "There go the flying fish again." And, having called attention to them, she began singing "On the Road to Mandalay."

Hugh said, "Well, it's about time for the bar. Would you like to join me?" They would. He had half-expected his militant lady to refuse. "We are likely to run into some of my friends. I'd better

Cabin Interior

Hod was glum. His eyes smouldered. His jaws worked as if they were grinding. With savage flings he tossed drinks into his mouth as though they were poison. The thought of Andra galled. Hugh, Barbara, everyone and everything tore at him. A sweet thing. The godawful idiocy of it! Was he a world-rider? Oh, sure. Was he going to ride Andra? Sure he was - and she had stepped up and led him by the nose all around the boat. Was he strong and strongly within himself? Sure, sure - and she had touched his neck and taken him in tow, as easily as if he'd been that weak kid, Andy. Was he the world's greatest cat-vanquisher? Oh, sure - and the cats had jumped on him until it was nobody's business. In short, a fixer of businesses, his had been fixed.

And Barbara, now there was a cry in him to talk with her - and he was scared to death, scared to approach her, scared to knock on that closed white door, scared to say it was Hod, scared she might send him off, scared she might say come in, ashamed to face her.

Was he? Well, he'd see.

He jerked himself up and strode away from the table. With fists clenched as though believing that with his hands he could hold on to himself, he made his way to her cabin. He knocked. Barbara's voice asked who was there. He said Hod, and there was a dead silence. He mustered courage and asked if he could come in. Nothing happened, but he heard her moving about. The door opened, he walked in, not daring to look at her.

He must have stood there quite a while, fumbling his hands, blinking at her, trying to think of something to say. Her eyes

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were frightened and at bay, her face twitched, her hands sort of fluttered; and when he saw this happening he was thrown into an even worse state. Poor kid, like himself she seemed to feel that life was raining blows at her, blow after blow, with no respite, pounding her, sweeping her out, out...

"Sit down, won't you?"

"Won't stay long."

He took a chair too small and creaky, got up and went over to the bed. She gingerly let herself down into her cool wicker rocker, and there she sat, holding herself very upright, looking directly at him, waiting for him to speak.

"How do you feel?"

"All right. Perfectly fine."

"Have a good morning?"

"An interesting morning, I would say."

"Find Hugh interesting?"

"Yes, but -"

"But what?"

"Please, Hod, let's not talk about that."

He shot a look at her, let his eyes drop, said nothing for a while. "Nice cabin you have." He glanced around and was surprised to see how really nice it was, with reflections of the bright seawaters dancing on the ceiling. Barbara, he noted, had fixed it up, transformed it, made it her own. It had her dainty wistful atmosphere, her charm and fragrant simplicity. Christ, and he was losing this, had lost this!

"I'll come to the point. You want to know why I'm here. Now wait, Barbara, wait a minute. You needn't throw up any defenses."

I'm worse off than you for being scared and confused. I'm all broken up, weak as a kitten." His voice, a voice entirely new for him, was strangely gentle as he said, "Believe me, you won't need guards. Don't blame you for feeling you will, but you won't. Truly you won't. You can come out. Can you believe me?"

He was encouraged to see her relax somewhat. "I've changed since we were - you know what I mean. I've changed even since last night, this morning even. Don't hold it against me that you saw me with Andra. That was a mistake - we'll call it that. Something is happening to me. Don't know what it is. I'd tell you of an experience I had last night, but it wouldn't interest you, from me. All I want to say is that I'm beginning to realize there are other people in the world, really realize it, if you know what I mean. Yup, you may even say I'm getting moral, getting a conscience after all these years. Don't know why I'm telling you all this," and he paused to see if she would tell him why.

"I - I don't know what to say. I want to say something - let you know - but I feel everything has been said already. I'm glad, I mean I'll be interested -"

"Will you? And you won't think of me as something terrible that came along -"

"I'll try not to, if you don't -"

"I won't. Believe me, I won't. Now I know what it's like to be in the other fellow's shoes. It's a mean feeling, I can tell you. I don't want to give it to anyone any more. I won't bully. I won't hold you or try to force anything. I belong more to myself, and I can let you belong to yourself. I've learned a few things. May not make much difference to your feeling for me, but I hope you

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won't mistake the Hod who sits here for the Hod of several months
ago. Ages have passed since then."

"That is true, I mean it is true that ages have passed. Every-
thing is different. I want it to be different. We can be friends.
I hope we will be."

"That's it - good friends. What I want too. You know, Barbara,
we human beings are awfully much alone, and awfully afraid of being
alone. That's why we want so desperately to possess and to be
possessed. That's why we make drives for love. I grant that when
we get it we don't know what to do with it; but, as the old saying
goes, one must live and learn. I've learned my lesson, and I simply
want you to know it. You needn't run from me. You don't have to stay
in here all the time. I was crude on deck this morning. Couldn't
help it. Andra had cut me up; and when I saw myself with her - where
I didn't want to be - and Hugh with you - where I did want to be -
I had plenty of nasty feelings then all right. It won't happen again.
Andra is out, has been for a long time. I've got hold of myself in
a new way. I want you to come on deck and be with the party and
have a good time. You deserve a good time, and nobody knows it as
well as I do. Don't let Betty and Vera get under your skin. They
don't really mean anything by it. Person to person they really like
you, you know that. It was only because of your relation to me.
I'm out now, and that will be different too. And there's Hugh, he's
a fine fellow. If you like him, well, like him. He ought to be with
a girl like you. You ought to be with a man like him. He can do
things for you. He's got something, that man has. Don't know what,
but he's got it. I won't butt in. Love him if you want to."

She said quite firmly, "But I don't want to love him, Hod."

"Don't you?" and his eyes looked up. Now he realized he had been

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talking to find out how she really did feel about Hugh. "He's a
fine man. No one on the boat I'd rather see you with."

"I know he is, but you must believe me. I really do not want to
love him."

"What do you mean, you do not *want*? Mean you're fighting it,
that he already makes you feel that much?"

She was pale and silent.

He lowered his head to conceal and control the feelings that
tore into him.

"My fault," he said at length. "Had no right to ask you."

Still she was silent and rigid.

"If I'm going to mind my own business I'd better begin at once.
I'm sorry. Let's forget about Hugh. I only asked because, you see,
I still care for you. Why not say what I mean - because I still
love you. Well, that's my cross. You've given me the answer I came
for. If a woman loves, she doesn't act like you. Maybe I don't love,
either. Maybe if a man loves he doesn't act like me. But I feel -
God, I feel that way down at the core there's something wrong with
life. I'm wrong. You're wrong. Everybody is wrong. We shouldn't be
as we are. Only - I don't know what to do about it. I do not. When
I'm in my right mind I want to go on trying, to keep on keeping on.
But when I see what a failure I've made with you I want to jump
overboard - and that's the truth of it, if I never speak another
word."

After a pause during which he wondered if he had touched her but
dared not look to see, he felt something final in the air, as if
everything that could be said had been said, as if all were done
and finished, with nothing more possible between himself and her.

He stood up, toiled his body up, and stood looking without seeing her but as if asking, "Haven't you one single thing to say? In all our lives we may never meet this way again. One word, haven't you one single word for Hod?"

It seemed not.

So he forced himself to bring out, "Remember what I told you. I'll not interfer. I want you to have the full run of the ship and a very happy time, now and always."

And the man whose heart was conquering his ego turned about and left the cabin as if he were going from her life forever.

17.

The Past Becomes Desirable

Cocktail-time...

The smokingroom lighted, light filtering through the geometric white grey green glass ceiling, luminous fish flashing and wriggling in their bands around the walls, curling smoke, drinks, tables filled with smartly dressed people, laughter, buzzing talk - according to Betty it was a grand place.

She noted how well Hugh wore his evening suit. It brought out his distinguished side. Morgan too, he was ruddy and sort of magnificent with his wide forehead, young face, and romantic grey hair. Sid looked dapper and well-conditioned, but formal clothes did nothing special for him; they simply made him seem more carefully groomed than usual.

Where was Hod? Something strange was going on. Barbara seldom had cocktails. Hod seldom missed them. Barbara, very much present in a particularly becoming gown of pale blue chiffon, was anything but the strained sickly looking girl of yesterday; she was in one of her swimmy happy states, livelier than she had been in many a day, like herself before she had married Hod. What was up? Betty exchanged glances with Sid and Vera. All three watched the increasing play between Barbara and Hugh.

Across the room was Andra Feala with Jim Phelps and Andy Sherman. Andy was sulking. At a nearby table were a Mr and Mrs Raymond, people whose place was adjacent to theirs in the dining-room. Down the way sat Edith Gilroy, her mother, and a man. Mary Quinn was with her party of art students. The two sisters with shocks of black curly hair had found men. A young fellow with bright roving eyes was making life and laughter for his group. A ship's officer came in and joined

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the elderly gentleman. People wondered who the officer was. They were curious about the old gentleman too. Rumor had it that he had begun his career as a sailor and was now a wealthy importer with one of the best private art-collections in the country.

Marsh picked out a tall distinguished French woman for special admiration.

"Starting with tonight," said Hugh, "we'll see the dividing of the wolves from the sheep."

Marsh looked at him. "You don't say! I didn't know there were animals on board."

"Little you know."

"I suppose you're going to tell us we're on the Ark."

"At least that."

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Noah."

"The wolves are those who will frequent the smoking-room. The sheep are those who will never enter it but, all the passage long, will sit in deck-chairs or in the front palor and do penance, and gossip, my dear Marsh, will be their most reckless adventure."

"Pleased to meet you, Mr Wolf. Better look out for him, Barbara. I'm not afraid because I'm experienced. Are you?"

"Not yet," said Barbara.

watch

"Then wtaek your step, little girl. Don't want to frighten you, but you're a friend of mine and I feel protective. That's the word, isn't it?"

Barbara wondered if she were joking or serious.

Marsh added, "Remember, you met him only yesterday. All of us our dear mothers have warned us about being friendly with strange men especially on shipboard where anything can happen and all that

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happens happens quickly."

Hugh, himself in doubt as to Marsh's intention, was nevertheless
getting irritated. So too, for some strange reason, was Vera. To
Marsh she suddenly said, "Stop putting those ideas in Barbara's
head."

"Putting them there?" asked Marsh. "I'm simply reminding her of
her careful up-bringing. She was sick last night, and, heartless
creatures that we are, not one of us went to see if we could do
anything. Hope I never get sick. Tonight she is well. I want to
keep her so - protect her, as I said. That's what you want, isn't
it, Barbara? Security and protection. Know I would if I were in her
place."

"Are you serious?" asked Vera.

Marsh suddenly laughed. "I was just asking that myself. I don't
know. Guess not."

Hod appeared at dinner, said little, said nothing at all that
would give Betty a clue as to what was happening. In his evening suit
he looked handsome, with a touch of military severity. To the others
he seemed uncommonly grave and, at the same time, uncommonly
considerate, passing them things, asking if they wouldn't like
something special. Everyone could not help but note his treatment
of Barbara, his dignified reserve.

In his mind he was still going over the episode in Barbara's
cabin. Yup, he had behaved well. He had behaved as Hod Lorimer ought
to behave. He had met her squarely and sincerely. Without protest
or scheming he had put his cards on the table, straight out from
his heart, clear from his mind. No more and no better could he have
done. On this score he had reason to be satisfied. Satisfied with

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the expression from himself, gratified with what, at self-sacrifice, he had accomplished. She was free, in so far as it was in his power to make her so. Not again would he interfere in her life, not if he had to cut his hands off. Yes, he was still devoted to her in his strange way; but from now on his joy would be not in his own selfish desires but in seeing her made happy the way she wanted to be. There was, after all, a mellowness, a deepening, a sense of reality and real achievement, in surrender and renunciation. As a sign of what had happened he'd change her place at the table and put her next to Hugh. He'd do it right away. No, the meal was half through. He'd do it tomorrow.

Then, without warning, a reaction set in and his ego was involved. He saw Barbara sitting upright in her chaste wicker chair, tight, pulled in, hugging herself, suspicious, nervous but really quite feelingless. Pale, prim, narrow, with her fear of getting hurt standing between them. He had uncovered himself, all but grovelled at her feet. She had sat there as if in judgement, as stiff and unyielding as a poker. Not once had he moved her. He might as well have poured out his heart to the wind - with this difference, that from the wind he would expect nothing, that from a woman he did expect something a little human. The more fool was he. Hadn't he yet learned that life and woman took delight in violating man?

What an ass he was! It was not hismanness but his assness that made Barbara happy, made them all happy - while they either deserted him or played him for a fool. Barbara had left him. Betty had deserted him. Sid was in revolt. Hugh was his rival. Vera didn't count. His world was empty. Life had brought to his door no new full

world. And in his empty world he was a fool. He scowled at the party. Look at them sitting there ogling him.

"Pigs," he shouted, "aren't your bellies full yet?"

It happened they were. They had been patiently waiting for him to finish.

"Come on then," he flung out, standing up and leading the way from the room, "I'll give a prize to the man who beats me getting drunk."

At the table in the smoking-room he scowled and snapped. He was bitter against himself. With cynical delight he told of how everyone was sick and painted a picture of the Burgundy as a hospital carrying mutilated Americans to the graveyards of Europe.

Music started. He sneered as Hugh and Barbara left for the first dance. Let Hugh try to melt the charming icicle. Hugh too was an idealistic fool with notions about human relationships. Let him try to change her and make something come of it. Let him carve her into an idol and smash himself at her feet. Let her enthrall him and bleed him and break him.

Hod guffawed when Sid, Betty, Morgan and Marsh got up. What were these invalids doing trying to dance? To dance - it was an orgiastic pagan thing, a riot of wild energies and hot blood. These tame bloodless invalids, they couldn't even put on a show macabre. Skeletons were things. Skeletons could dance better than these sick grasshoppers.

He sighted Andra across the room. No, by God, she wasn't sick. She had vital blood that went back into antiquity and came forward to produce one of Nature's aristocrats. She was a thoroughbred in the wrong paddock. Sick bodies should love sick bodies. Dead bodies

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dead bodies. Living men should seek their kind.

For what nonsense had he broken with her? Some idea, some ideal, some ass-ideal that the woman he loved should have a soul, a beautiful spirit which burned with the desire to perfect life and make all existence sacred. To have a healthy & female body was not enough. No, no. She must be a Mary, a madonna, an angel. Andra was body only, an impassioned body. To be denied, therefore. Denied. Oh, sure. Too much fire. They'd consume each other. Now he remembered the idiotic line. And beneath the line? Fear, funk. Fear that she would open the veins of his sex force and bleed him until he died - dominate him through his sensuality. Afraid of her, the plain damn truth.

He himself must have been sick. Sick bodies always feared. Well, he wasn't sick now. The most living man on the ship. In fact he was the most living man in the world, its greatest rider. There sat the most living woman. What, then? It was a Q.E.D. conclusion. N'est ce pas? You're goddam right!

He jerked to his feet and strode towards her.

"Good evening, Mr Lorimer. We are favored."

Hod saw Phelps tense, Andy draw into a sulk - and he chuckled to himself.

"He took a vacant chair and asked, "What'll you have?""

Andra said, "You are with us. What will you have?"

"Dance?" he asked.

"Not for a while."

When she did dance it was with Andy, leaving Hod and Phelps to get acquainted. Then, later, she left Hod and Andy to do the same thing.

"All right," said Hod, "I get your message. You needn't rub it in."

She was a bitch, this Andra; but she had life, and now he really wanted her, and he was going to get her if it was the last thing he ever did.

Rumors

Hugh watched Barbara with a champagne high-ball. She liked it, he could see, but took little sips as though fearful it might go to her head. The music started. It was his turn to dance with Marsh, Morgan's with Barbara. He did not move, nor did Morgan. But few couples went on the floor.

Marsh asked, "Do you suppose there's a student orchestra in tourist-third? I'm not crazy about this."

"Want to see?" asked Morgan.

"Lets. I want to dance but I won't up here any more. Why don't they get a decent band?"

"What fun!" exclaimed Barbara. "I've never been - what do you call it? - downstairs in a ship."

It wasn't his idea, and Hugh wasn't going to fall in with it, not without a protest. "What's the matter with this?"

"Plenty," said Marsh. "I'm not dead yet. I don't want a funeral, all this moaning and groaning with the tunes my grandmother liked to sing. I want jazz. If they can't afford an honest-to-goodness outfit why don't they get a radio or an orthophonic? I'm ashamed of the *Burgundy*. Let's go."

"Rather be ashamed of yourself. If you and others would continue dancing you'd find this orchestra warming up. They can't play to an empty floor."

"Don't care. They're not going to warm up on Marsh. Come on, Barbara, if the gentlemen do want to accompany us we'll find some down there."

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She stood up, Barbara with her. Hugh was inclined to let them go, and to hell with them. He wasn't used to being forced into things like this, tagging along at that. "Go ahead," he said.

"Come, Morgan," said Marsh.

"Not without Hugh."

"Must we beg Mr Hugh?"

Hugh caught sight of Vera's expression. She was at the next table, and had evidently taken in the little scene. Her smile made him feel she was saying to herself, and to him too, that he deserved what he was getting, this indignity and worse, for chasing Barbara and playing around with her when he might be engaged in a more becoming occupation for one of his age and experience. He arose and said to Marsh, "No, you won't have to beg me."

At the door leading from the first-class cabins to the tourist section a steward sat guard. He saw four people approaching. When he was sure of their intentions he stood up, prepared to tell them they were not permitted to pass.

Morgan, acting as if it were his right to do such things, nodded to the steward, "it is quite all right," suavely opened the door and ushered the others through.

"Neat Crash," said Marsh. "Class barriers may be disappearing elsewhere but they still try to maintain them on these boats."

"Why shouldn't they? They get paid for it."

Marsh with Morgan, Barbara with Hugh, down a narrow dim passage-
way they went. It was smelly and gloomy, so different from their
quarters that it seemed they were on another ship, an old ship that
ought to be taken out of service. No carpets, no bright lights. Bare
planks under their feet, planks clean but deeply worn. The sounds

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of their heels ricocheting, voices echoing, a din and clattering
as if they were a boisterous army charging down a corridor.

Rough-looking ship's men in sweaters and rope shoes passed by
with a muffled shuffle and stealth.

"Frightened?" asked Hugh.

Barbara, wide-eyes, shook her head.

A smell of men, a smell of the ship, of its private quarters,
the odor which each ship, like each bedroom, has. Pungent and,
until they grew somehow what used to it, a decidedly unpleasant
odor, musty, closed in, reminiscent of socks, soiled underclothes,
and wood which the sun and winds never touched.

Now an odor of food came to them. Soon they passed a kitchen
where men were still cleaning up.

Now too they clearly heard the ship's great engines, the propell-
er-shafts, a roaring whizzing sound. Felt a pronounced vibration.

As the vessel moved and lurched through the sea the woodwork
adjusted with creaks and cracks. Hugh fancied he could see the
beams writhe, snake-like. It was like being inside a monster fish,
seeing the ribs. Like being underground in the bowels of the earth,
close to the source of earth-works and earth-eruptions which those
above would see only when the eruptions shot into the air from the
earth's crust.

Morgan asked fux a passing figure for directions. The man motioned
they should turn left at the next passageway.

Abruptly they found themselves at the head of a flight of iron
steps. Jazz, and a buzz of voices floated up. Down they went and
soon were at the entrance to the tourist-third smoking-room. A thick
odor of sweat, tobacco, and alcohol assailed them. Now they felt

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the heat oppressively, became conscious of their evening dress.

It was a comparatively small place containing a bar and many tables with a space cleared for dancing, its dominant color a dull bilious brown. Most of the men, of a type more like steerage than one usually finds in tourist, were in shirt-sleeves, perspiring freely. The students, the professors, the artists, the writers, where were they?

Off in a corner a student band was playing and swaying. Jazz
ear
volleyed against the walls, beat against the walls-drums, mastered
bodies and legs. A master of ceremonies was laughing and shouting,
playing buffoon, directing a mock dance-contest.

Barbara smiled but her face was pale and she made little comic
gestures as though she wanted to clap her hands on her ears.

"Sounds good," said Marsh, "but they'll have to do better if
they want to catch up to Duke Ellington."

The minute they stood in the doorway an unexpected stir went
around. Couples on the floor almost stopped dancing to stare,
some with curiosity, some with hostility. Tourists at tables
forgot their beer, leaned together, nodded towards the door, began
talking, saying things about the tails and gowns that had
condescended to descend from first-class to their hole.

Marsh seemed not to notice. Barbara quailed, then rallied with
her own kind of curiosity when she told herself that these people
might be communists, this her first close-up view of them in actual
life. Hugh felt they might have a nasty experience, and was at a
loss to explain it.

A steward edged towards him. Hugh asked why the stir. The man
shrugged. More questioning brought forth the answer that the tourists
had been aroused by the doings of some man from the first cabins

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who had come down and played free with one of their girls, and the
lover of the girl had set the whole place against him.

Hod popped into Hugh's mind, bowling Hod. It would be just like Hod
to start something and get himself into trouble.

The steward, once having opened, went on to confide that, in
addition to the other thing, they had a crazy man in tourist, an
agitator, one of those fellows with cracked ideas who wanted to
reform the world along socialistic lines, who didn't know when to
speak and when to keep his mouth shut.

"But it's nothing," he concluded. "We've our orders. This fellow
Joe Homan won't get anybody into trouble except himself. Ships have
places for the likes of him." He added that Hugh's party shouldn't
mind the stir. They were quite safe and should dance if they wished.

Morgan and Marsh did step into the next one. Barbara held back,
then decided that since she had come down she might as well go
through with it. It was not pleasant. People jostled them. Hugh
was sure he was given several intentional shoves. When the music
stopped they had had enough. Marsh fanned herself and even she had
had enough. Fresh air, that was what she wanted now.

On the flight of iron steps a man charged down and past them.
It was Jim Phelps.

"There goes Hod's little playmate," said Marsh.

It was good to be in the bright, well-conditioned first class
again. Through the wide double door leading to the promenade deck
they caught the sea air, and caught, too, a glimpse of Andra and
Andy Sherman strolling by. No Hod.

Marsh and Morgan wanted to take several turns about the deck and
then retire. Hugh tried to persuade Barbara.

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"I'd love to," she said, "but I'm very tired."

"Very well."

He said nothing more to her until, at her cabin, he said a brief
curt goodnight.

As he walked off alone he tried to smother his burning resentment
that she had been so eager to go down to that *fx* fizzle in tourist-
third, so backward about taking a walk with him out on deck, out
near the sea, under the stars of the universe, where he and she could
really be together.

Well, so much for her. He'd take that walk by himself - and then
investigate happenings in the smoking-room.

Water, black sea-water...a ship, the lighted *Burgundy*...wind and
brine and the far-reaching night-world...the swash of waves...the
weird humming, the orchestra of sounds of a vessel swathing across
the ocean...the *gkkak* boundless ocean, the vast black heap...and
a man walking the deck past rows of shiny red deck-chairs...a breath-
ing being...man and ship, being and sea *i* alike isolate...and the
wish to be isolate, the hunger to blend...that awful ecstatic moving
out, being drawn out, out of himself...that endless quest...and the
sudden horror of the prospect of having to spend the rest of the
night alone.

In the smoking-room he found just what he had expected to find.
People sitting around with grotesque stiffness as if they were
sinking into a noxious element that was slowly turning them into
stone. Waiting, wondering, worrying, but not knowing what they were
waiting for, why they were wondering, what to expect. Existing with
everything suspended but threatening. That awful sitting around -
as people everywhere were sitting around in the cafes and clubs

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and rooms of the world.

Closing his eyes to any people he might know, he went to an inconspicuous table, ordered a drink, settled himself, smiled sardonically, and prepared to indulge denial and blasphemy.

First he asked himself, this incurably hopeful man himself, how many times had he crossed the ocean. Then why, why against the evidence of repeated experiences was he ever and forever hopeful that each new passage, each new phase of life as it unfolded, would bring gifts of being to satisfy his being?

"Eight dull days" - so most people would characterize most trips across the Atlantic. "Eighty dull and futile years, moved by blind motives, imperfectly connected, impurely alone, goaded by hunger, pain, fear, relieved at far intervals by moments of love, beauty, happiness, the human spirit shrunk and stifled yet still alive and hoping..." - so most human beings, other than professional romancers, boosters, hypocrites, and idiots would characterize their life-spans. Then why the absurd feeling, the unshakeable obsession, that life held for him some special marvel?

He knew, and there was nothing he knew so well, that only by effort and suffering had he achieved the slightest thing worthwhile. He also knew, on the other hand, that, of himself by will, he could not achieve even this slight thing. Whatever came, came as pure gift, often unexpectedly. From the sky it was simply placed in one's lap, in one's mind, in one's heart. Human beings were recipients of miracles, and the best they themselves could do was to keep their vessels clean and open.

The group, the ship, had stimulated him. Let them. Indeed he could not help himself. But this once, let him also be wise enough not to

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expect fulfillment. Human beings were queer, stubborn, pathetic creatures. Each wished completion in company with others of his kind. They mutually stimulated this wish in all they met. They mutually failed to satisfy what they had stimulated. Hence the perpetual mad emptiness of the human race.

People were hungry - and a hungry person is and can be concerned only for the satisfaction of his hunger - hence egotism. People needed to take; and by this very condition they could not give. When all people are foraging who is to be the feeder?

People were in chaos - and a chaotic person is and can be concerned only with his own chaos and forming - hence egotism again. People need to be formed; and by that very condition they cannot help form others because each one is taxed and spent by holding himself. When all people are disintegrating, who is to be the integrator, who the builder?

A special marvel for himself, did he say? But "special marvel" was abstract. What precisely did he want? What images did his wishes put into his mind? He was not in doubt about this. It started with himself, as was natural - the way he wanted to see himself, the way he wanted to live and be - himself a genuinely regal man - living a life of purpose and dignity, the father of a family, the center of his world, evoking dignity, purpose and respect in those around him, something akin to a patriarch - and from this patriarchal state extending himself and others into a conscious exploration of man and the universe.

A fine chance he had. To be regal? When everyone valued being casual and common, when men demanded little or nothing of themselves expect that they climb the financial grade - and often not even

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this, when women, though wanting it, were, because of mishandling, hostile to anyone who even ventured to show himself as a possible man. To have dignity and purpose? when people were merely bodies of inertia meeting other inertias - and content to be this way. To be man in this age of fire-sales, the bargain-counters of the nations heaped with shopworn men and marked down women, with one to purchase them even at closing-out figures because the price to pay is that the buyer put meaning into their lives? A fine chance he had.

So he would turn from the window and walk step back into his room, seeing himself as a man of resignation, eternally wanting something he could never have. Not that he wouldn't continue to work for it, not that he expected to find the kind of life he wanted already made; but simply that he would cease to hope for it, as Life seemed to have no use for a man of his nature, and, therefore, would not reward him.

Hod and Andy

Hod was feverish. As he paced the deck this bright sea-morning
his internal state absorbed him, blurred the outside world. He
hardly knew he was on shipboard.

So he was ditched, shoved out for that shrimp Andy. All last night
Andra had played him, played Phelps, and then said ta-ta and walked
off with the kid.

And what did he do? Stand up like a man and say, "Come here my
sweet bitch?" Oh, sure. No, he thought he'd get clever and turn a
trick on her - wait until she got tired of Andy, tired of the game,
then crash her cabin and take her.

So he had thought. But actually? While waiting he'd gone to his
cabin, fallen in with a cabin-mate, and between them they'd killed
a bottle of cognac. Yes, and then?

Then he'd bowled out to take her. But, midway in some anonymous
passageway - well, some strange thing had happened right there. He'd
suddenly stopped short as if a bullet had been planted in his rump.
Perhaps afraid he'd find her sleeping with Jim Phelps.

Yes, and then? The next thing he knew he was sitting in with a
bunch of engineers, lapping up onion soup. Fine fellows. Great soup.

But Andra? And his proposed night of pleasure upon her body?

Now in his mind came a picture of Andra's cabin, of Andra warm
in bed, voluptuous and penetrable.

The picture worked. He worked on himself.

Suddenly he was striding towards her cabin. He could feel himself
trembling, hear himself giving strange grunts. He chuckled when
people got out of his way as he bowled through passageways.

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Broad daylight? What of it?

Without knocking he entered the door leading into her sitting room. The shades were drawn. An odor of perfume, Andra's exotic perfume. With heart pounding he tip-toed forward, paused at the curtained entrance to the bed-room, then cautiously drew the portiere aside and peered in.

There she lay, much as he had pictured her. But, beside her for Christ's sake was the bundle of another body! Snuggling against her, the tousled sleeping head of Andy! Hod blinked and recoiled.

Now he knew she was awake. Her eyes opened, she smiled one of her mocking smiles and put a finger over her lips.

Suddenly he was furious. Who in hell was she to tell him to keep still? He moved towards the bed as if to take hold of Andy and hurl him out. Again she cautioned silence.

where

Andy stirred. Hod stopped when he was, and behind Andy's back. Something about Andy's thin body, the way it was curled, struck Hod with pity all at once, and he wished he could slip from the cabin and leave them alone. What a hell of a position to find himself in.

"Good morning," said Andy to Andra.

"Rested?" she asked.

"Guess so, as much as I'll ever be. Time to get up? Suppose I should. You've had enough. You've been swell, Andra. Why did you do it? Oh, don't answer. If you told me the truth it would only hurt and I'm awfully tired of being hurt. Can't stand much more." He chanced to catch a look in her eyes. "What's the matter? What are you looking at?" Before she could answer he twisted around - "What the hell?" His face turned pale, his lips worked, he screwed up anger and flung out to Hod, "How did you just get in here?"

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"Sorry," said Hod, backing away. "I'm leaving."

"You ought to be. Get the hell out of here."

"Now wait a minute, son. Don't get on your high horses. I told you I'm sorry. I told you I'm leaving."

"Then do it. Don't 'son' me. I'm no kid of yours."

"Didn't say you were."

"Then what are you talking about? Why are you standing there?"

"Andy -" Andra tried to quiet him.

Said Hod, "Now look here, you are the last person I want trouble with and I've told you I'm sorry but if that won't satisfy you you're going to get something else."

"Oh, I am, eh?"

"Yes you are," and before he knew what was happening he had lept forward, laid hold of Andy, dragged him from bed, and landed at the chair where his clothes were piled. "Now get into them."

His fight suddenly gone, Andy shivered. With fists clenched he huddled against himself, glaring. "You damn bully."

"Get going."

Andra sprang from bed and rushed at Hod. "Leave him alone."

"Then tell him to hurry."

Andy got into his things as fast as he could. Now a sound broke from him, a sob, a groan - "O, Christ! O, God Almighty!" Finished dressing, he cast a horrible bloddless look at his tormentor, Hod, at Andra who had been so good to him but who had not saved him from this, and bolted from the room.

The minute he had gone, Hod himself let out a cry, "God forgive me, what have I done to the kid?"

He swung on Andra. There she stood, Andy's defender no more. That-

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damn smile, that wicked mocking smile. With revulsion he shoved her away and ran from the cabin. He'd tend to her later. Now he must find Andy, talk to him, redeem himself, remove that awful thing from life.

At the bar he found him, hair still tousled, face unwashed, his thin body crumpling against the woodwork, an unsteady hand pouring a drink into his mouth.

"Andy -"

"What do you want? Leave me alone."

Hod threw an arm around his shoulder, looked at him with pained eyes, a lump in his throat.

Andy disengaged himself. "What's all this for? Can't you leave me alone?"

"I can, but I don't want to - not until I've apologized and set things straight. God is my witness, I'm sorry. Wouldn't have done it for anything. Was clean out of my head. Don't buck me now. Don't be nasty. God knows I didn't want to hurt you. I'll do anything to make up. Name it and I'll do it. Mind you, I'm to blame and I'm not blaming her, but Andra gets men into the most godawful scrapes."

"She does, eh? Go on away. Can't you see I don't want you, and if you can't be decent to her I'd thank you to keep your big mouth shut."

"So?"

"Yes, so."

Hod with difficulty remembered his purpose. He explained. He pleaded. He demeaned and flagelated himself.

Andy stubbornly held back. Now, however, he was secretly pleased that he had Hod in such a position. To have the great Hod Lorimer

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making up to him was almost worth the scene in Andra's cabin. Not
quite. Every time he recalled that scene it was all he could do to
keep from bursting into x screaming pieces, and he hated Hod as he
had never known he could hate anyone.

"Go away, will you? You aren't so much yourself. Just a bully.
Jim Phelps says if you'd ever tackle a man your size you'd be shown
up plenty."

"He did, eh? Why doesn't he say that to me?"

"He will - and I'm going to be there when he says it."

More words. Andy's sneering increased.

So he was a nasty little trouble-maker. Hod was on the verge of
squashing him when, all at once, Andy's cheeks went deathly pale,
and his head jerked down as if his neck had been snapped. Out of
his mouth came words - "I'm rotten. O, Christ, how rotten I am."

Hod caught hold of him and led him to a nearby table. With real
concern he asked if he could do anything. Perhaps Andy should see
the ship's doctor.

"Jesus, no, not that. Don't need any doctor. Another drink."

Hod called a steward. Andy lifted his eyes and gave him one of
the most disquieting glances he'd ever received. In the same eyes
of the same man - thanks, and hatred.

Andy gulped his drink, lit a cigarette, dragged at it, lowered
his head and let his eyes rest on his hands, hands clenched into
fists and clenched so hard that the knuckles protruded and were
dead white.

Hod glanced around the room, his cognizance of the outside world
beginning to stir. They were at a table in an out of the way corner.

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It was dark, sort of musty. The sunlight, brilliant on the decks, flooding through some of the windows, did not reach it. Nor did the sea wind. Hod felt he was in an underground hole odorous with the reek of stale tobacco smoke. He wanted to get out, get away from this nightmare of himself and Andy.

People were coming into the room, more and more, filling the bright tables, people in gay sport suits, buzzing and laughing. Hod stared. Suddenly he snorted. "The ship's gay company. Righto, cheerio, the ship's gay company," and for the first time in hours he realized he really was on a ship moving across the big waters.

Then he slowly turned and stared at Andy with his head bent upon his narrow chest, a kid who had lost his grip. "What's the matter with you? I'm asking as a friend. Wish to God you'd tell me. You won't have a doctor. You won't have me. You can't go on like this. You can't sit all caved in forever. Come, Andy, you've got to pull yourself together."

Andy's arms jerked across his body. Even the slightest thing seemed to pain him beyond endurance. Lifting his eyes he looked at Hod with an awful expression. "I've told you. Why do you torment me? Is this what I must pay for my drink? Expose myself? Tell you everything? I'm rotten. I'm rotten, do you hear?" and he raised his voice to a yell.

"All right. All right. Don't tell the whole ship."

Eyes from other tables turned their way. Andy also saw them. He toned down. "I've murdered better people."

"How old are you?"

"None of your business."

"I asked, how old are you?"

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"Well, if you must know, I'm twenty-five. Know any more now?
What right have you to pry into my life? It's a rotten life but
it's mine and I intend to keep it or dispose of it without anybody's
help. Understand? Get that through your thick skull? Haven't you done
enough already? Is this morning typical of the way you spend your
life? Oh, God..." You would be the one to try to tell me, help me,
save me, save another white soul for Our Lord."

"Twenty-five! Is that all? Why, say - you're too young to be
rotten. No one under thirty or over sixty is rotten. Rottenness
comes to a man of my age. When I was -"

"Oh, and now I'm going to hear all that."

Hod laughed for the first time. "Just what you are. Listen to
me, young fellow," and he went on to tell of how at twenty-five
he'd had the entire world before him, of his desires, abilities,
of the great energy and enthusiasm with which he had tackled life.
"All youth is that way. I was no exception. I had a dream, a great
dream - and I was going after it. You can bet I was. That's what
you need. That's the only trouble with you. You need something to
live and work for. You aren't rotten. Forget it. Don't let that
notion eat your heart out. You just feel rotten because you've
nothing worthwhile to do. I can put you in touch, give you letters,
get you a good job. Like to work on a building job?"

Andy sneered. A dream, indeed. So that was all the matter with
him. A pipe dream. Bah! How little this big clumsy mouthy galoot
Hod Lorimer knew.

"A job? Doing what? Hauling bricks? Think that's the dream I
need?"

"Now don't get snooty. I'm saying this for you. I'm making you

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an offer, going out of my way to do it, for your sake, not for
mine. I'll tell you what I was going to say. It's like this. In
your twenties you try to build up something fine, make something
out of life worthwhile. In your thirties, life comes along and knocks
it down. Then you got to gather the bits, and gather yourself, and
start all over again. That's where I am. I'm thirty-nine. I know,
Andra's filled your head with stories about me. Not a word of truth
in them. Right, I used to be that way - Hod the great guy, the steam-
roller, the world-rider, the fellow who could fix everybody's
business but his own. I know. No more. I've been knocked down, taken
for a ride, and I know it. Had the nonsense knocked out of me. Now
I'm down. Got to gather myself. Meanwhile, together with hundreds
of my countrymen, other survivors of the Great War, the American
dollar-war I mean, I'm on this Burgundy, this floating hospital,
going to Europe to convalesce - then back to America and into the
fight again."

"Floating hospital, did you say? Not bad. I give the devil his
due. You're not as stupid and boring as you seem."

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it," and Andy, though he wanted to, thought
perhaps he'd best not say what was on his mind as regards convalesc-
ing in Europe and returning to the American war. What fatuous
he-man nonsense. Here was a man's man for you! Bah! And Hod Lorimer
was supposed to be somebody - which was just the way he'd always
found it: the strong men were so stupid that they desired
but did not deserve to live; the weak men, so intelligent that
though they deserved they did not desire to live.

"Say," said Hod, as a new idea struck him, "we'll set you going

192-182

at once, right now on the ship. Sure you don't want to see the
doctor first? I happen to know him. A great fellow, the understand-
ing kind."

"Hell, no! How many times have I got to tell you?"

"All right. All right. Hold on to yourself. I'll tell you what
we'll do. You need to know some real people. Andra and Phelps can't
do you any good. The wrong bunch for you. I'll introduce you to
my crowd. How's that?"

Andy scowled. He shrank back. He was amazed too. Such an in-
credibly stupid elephantine ass he'd never met. "Can't you see I
want to be left alone? Haven't I told you and told you? Is your
fanny where your head should be? I don't want to meet your goddam
crowd and I don't want any more of you. Isn't that plain? Goodby!
Clear out! Oh, Christ Almighty, leave me alone!"

After that blast, any one other than Hod would have washed his
hands of Andy. Not Hod. Now he had come under the power of one of
his ideas and wasn't to be stopped. It was just the thing; Andy's
resistance simply further aroused him. So he bowled over the
insults and, in the end, wore the weaker man out.

Wearily and bitterly concluding that he had been caught up by
a maniac and that the only way to get rid of him was to yield to
him, Andy allowed himself to be led, first to the washroom and then
out on deck.

The sunlight blinded them. The hot sea-wind struck them as from
a furnace. But, Hod leading, they made their way through the maze
of chairs and people until they came upon the group.

183

Chapte 10

20.

Gulf Stream

"Meet a friend of mine," said Hod. "Barbara, Vera, Hugh, here's
the most interesting young fellow on the ship - Andy Sherman."

He saw Barbara close tight and barely nod. Vera smiled. Hugh looked inquiringly. He saw Andy snap back from his mask as if he had been slapped. It wasn't happening as he had planned. They seemed to be asking, "Andy Sherman, who is he? Why bring him here?" He'd show them. If he introduced somebody, that was all there was to it. They ought to and they'd have to accept him.

He pulled up a chair next to Barbara's. "Here Andy, sit down."

As he plumped Andy into the seat he could feel his body quivering
with revolt. When he himself sat down there was an awkward lull.

"Swell morning, isn't it?" he asked.

No one responded.

"What's going on? Been talking? Don't let us interrupt."

No one responded.

Andy felt that they were stiff and silent on his account. In
particular he felt that Barbara was snubbing him. So this was Mrs.
Hod Lorimer? Hod had said he would like her. Oh, yes? Out of one eye
he looked her up and down. A pampered doll. An empty-headed society
girl. How'd she like to know that just that morning her great
husband had been thwarted from having an affair with Andra Feala?
For two cents he'd tell her, just to see her crack up.

The drinks were wearing off. Andy craved another. How could he
give out of this, this snobbish menagerie of God's worst animals?
His eyes fastened on Hod. If it were the last thing he did he'd
like to kill the stupid bully.

194-184

Two people came up. He heard them greeted as Marsh and Morgan. He saw them welcomed and included. Two more of Hod's awful friends. He was glad Hod didn't introduce them. Sound, healthy, successful people, gaily futile and as stupid as corks.

By now, Hod himself felt he had made another of his mistakes. Andy looked like a ghost on a rack. He didn't fit. He didn't mix. But here he was, sneering and glaring. How could he get him out of it without causing more damage?

More damage, more damage... Every thing he did, good or bad, got him into trouble. He turned from Andy and looked at Hugh with mixed feelings. Suddenly he was again jealous of what might be happening between Hugh and Barbara. But more than this, right now, he both envied and admired Hugh. Hugh seemed so sure of himself, contained, with all problems solved, with all stress and strain held in balance. Or was it all fake? Maybe if you said boo he'd crack and fall to pieces. Maybe he was hollow inside, and didn't feel anything. But how would it be to control life, as Hugh seemed to do? Never getting entangled, never losing his head? To be above life instead of under it? What a blissful state!

"And you, this morning?" Hugh was asking Morgan.

"Look," said Marsh, "as red as a lobster."

"He looks wonderful," Barbara put in.

"No," said Marsh, "too red. I want him tanned, not boiled."

"When it tones down," said Hugh, "he'll look like one of the grand old men of France."

"Of France?" she objected. "I didn't know there were any grand old men in France. All I've seen are little men with black mustaches - like the one you have - and ridiculous hats and high pants as though

195-185

there was a national shortage of cloth."

"Oh, no," Morgan laughed. "I'll have to take you where you can see them, my dear. The French upper-class produces handsome men."

"Then I've only seen the lower class. What's the matter with England? Aren't there any grand old men in England? And America? You shall be a grand old man of the United States. Say," she paused in surprise to make sure of her sudden feeling, " know something? I'm homesick. I want to go back. I'm tired of the ocean. I want to see land, my land, the New York skyline, mainstreet and all the mainstreets and all the houses and the people back there. Gosh, I didn't realize how much I loved it. Do any of you feel this way?"

"I do," said Barbara.

Asked Marsh, "And you, Mr. Hugh, are you a patriot?" Then she remembered something else and ran on, "We met some awfully nice people this morning. Played shuffleboard with them. A Mr. and Mrs. Tilden. She's the mother of that boy, remember? The one you said looked so self-reliant. You wouldn't think it. She's so slim and young-looking. Besides the boy she has a girl of twelve. She doesn't look a day older than I."

Said Morgan, "Tilden is foreign manager for one of the big cars. Nice job. He travels about superintending organization and publicity. On a trip now that will take him a good part of a year, through France, England, Holland, Germany, Poland, Russia, and perhaps the Orient."

"My!" exclaimed Barbara, "I'd like to take a trip like that."

"More news for you," said Marsh. "See that striking young girl and her elderly beau? I've found out about them. She is Margaret Shattuck of Chicago. He is John J. Appling, of Chicago too. He did

196-186

start life as a sailor. I heard him spinning yarns to her of his days
before the mast. The **Burgundy** must seem tame. I know He's a marvelous
old man. Ever hear of him, Hugh? Didn't you tell Morgan you used to
live in Chicago? Where haven't you lived? I'd like to see a few pages
of your past life."

"Only a few?"

"You know," said Marsh, "I envy that girl."

"Why?"

"Oh - I've watched her. When I was her age I didn't know what to
do with myself. I was awkward and timid."

"Timid?"

"You may find it hard to believe, but I was. All I wanted to do
was to read. I lived in books. The mere act of having to go out
and meet people - Here she is on this ship. She has more self-
possession and poise than her mother, than I have today. Wonder what
it is. I've seen it in a lot of young people. They seem to feel
that the world is theirs, and as for fear - they don't know what it
is - and think of the conditions they are growing up in." She addressed
Hugh in particular. "Can you explain it?"

"If he can, I wish he would," said Barbara.

"Sure, sure," boomed Hod. "We'll put a turban on his head and set
him up in a booth. Yogarama Hugh. There's money in it, if women are
around."

Said Hugh to him, "You too may pay me. Men also sometimes become
interested if enough cats get after them."

"Go chase yourself."

"Not until I've tried to answer Marsh. Let's begin by asking this.
Did Nature originally intend that human beings grow up, as we grew
up, at the mercy of the surrounding world? I doubt it. Among animals

197 187

we find various natural protective devices. These devices work, and, at the same time, the rest of the animal functions normally. But we, owing to some unfortunate circumstance, are without natural protection. So what do we do? We are forced to resort to unnatural devices which interfere with the normal functioning of the rest of ourselves. It takes time to get them working. Meanwhile, as you described yourself, we shrink from life, and even at that we are constantly being hurt. Later, when the device does work, it works with tragic results. For while it protects us to some extent from the hurts that rain upon us from the outside, it drugs and strangles us - from the inside. In fine, we are in a bad way.

"Now suppose that for us too there is a natural form of protection, an atmosphere, let us say, which, like the atmosphere of the earth, prevents life-destroying things from reaching its body, while at the same time allowing the free passage of constructive impressions and influences. We, the adults of today, have no such atmosphere, no such natural buffer. But it is just possible that Nature has succeeded in giving one to the generation that came after us. Suppose it is so. These young people will not be hurt as we were. They will not fear or shrink. They will not have to throw up artificial defenses. They will not be self-strangled. They will have a sort of inviolable individuality. They will automatically reject bad impressions. They will not allow themselves to be mishandled. They'll know nothing of the chaos we've struggled through -"

"Wait a minute," boomed Hod. "I've tried to keep still until you had finished. But hold on. You can't explain by supposing. You've got to have facts. This buffer you talk about. Ever seen one?"

"No."

198 188

"Has anyone?"

"Can't say."

"But you can say at some length that Miss What's-her-name has one?"

"Possible."

"Possible my eye!"

When Hod stopped laughing Vera said to Hugh, "What happens when one does away with his artificial device, when she tears off her mask and throws it away?"

"I have a feeling you know."

"What does one do? Can people of our age develop buffers, or is it too late?"

"At any age an atmosphere can be formed provided that first the mask is thrown away."

"Thank you," she said, and looked down.

"There," said Hod. "What did I tell you? Everybody satisfied? Got your money's worth? Sure you have. Hugh is a Yogarama from way back."

Just then Sid came up and drew attention to himself.

"Hi, there!" said Hod. "A welcome interruption. Where've you been? Fishing?"

"Just made a discovery. Know that boarded-off place to the left of the funnels on the boat-deck? What do you think they've got in there? No less than an airplane!"

"No."

"I saw it."

"What's so surprising about that?" asked Marsh. "The <u>Burgundy</u> carries airmail."

199- 189

"An eight-day boat?"

"Well, have it a mystery if you want."

Sid shrugged. Soon it became evident that something was worrying him. Vera felt it had to do with Betty. She asked. He shifted about, at first denied anything, then belittled it, and finally admitted that Betty wasn't well.

"Sea sick?" asked Hod.

"No, I don't think."

Vera arose. "I'm going to see."

"Wish you would. She told me not to mention it but she's been in the cabin all morning and I'm sure she wants to see you."

So Vera went to her. She found Betty in bed, propped on an elbow, a quilted bathrobe on, her face flushed, her eyes sort of startled and wondering.

Said Vera, "In this heat what are you doing with that on? How are you?"

"I don't know. All right."

Vera was standing near the bed. They gazed at each other with a puzzled intentness until a communication flashed between them and Vera caught what was in her friend's mind. She leaned forward, clasped Betty in her arms, then sat beside her on the bed.

"I'm so glad. I hope it is."

"I hope so too," said Betty.

"Your expression has changed. Your body feels different. You are different. I feel sure. Does Sid know?"

"He knows what I think. He was queer all morning, pacing the cabin, stopping to stare at me, coming over and kissing me, withdrawing in that troubled way of his. He was happy and he was worried

200-190

and he was gentle and understanding - as Sid always is when there's
a real thing to face and after he's fretted and assured himself that
not a single troublesome feature has been overlooked. I can't
blame him for this. An added responsibility -

"Betty, promise you won't worry. Hod will do his part. If he
doesn't, I will - if you will let me. But Hod will do it, I'm sure.
He may not do the right thing but he always does the square thing,
if he remembers that he has it do, I'll, and I'll remind him. A
strange man. Just this morning he came up with Andy Sherman, introduc-
ed the young man to us, and expected that of course we'd
receive him with open arms simply on Hod's say-so. Well, it didn't
come off and the young man was hurt and Hod glowered at us as if
we were at fault."

"Who is Andy Sherman?"

Vera told her all she knew. Then she went on to recount other
events of the morning, with him frequent mention of Hugh.

Betty gazed searchingly. "Hugh seems to have become very important
all at once?"

"Does he?"

"Yes he does. Vera -"

Vera returned her gaze.

Something happened. Never before had Vera opened herself to
another woman. Now, with intense sincerity, with a luminous candor
that stirred Betty and made her feel she was witnessing a human
soul unlock and free itself, she confided every experience, beginn-
ing with the night of the farewell party, ending with -

"Rejections sometimes give us back to ourselves."

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## Chapter two

21.

### Between Sky and Sea

As Hugh was mounting the main stairway after lunch he ran into Edith Gilroy and proposed that they walk around the deck. After several turns they stopped at the rail on the shady side of the ship and for a while silently gazed out to sea.

A fresh wind whizzed by them. The sky was blue and brilliant. The ocean, myriad-formed, glittering. As the waves rushed up and swashed against the ship's black gliding side-plates they peeled back bottle-green filled with bubbles, floating white foam.

"I wonder if you feel what I do when I stand like this and feel myself being carried onward beneath such a sky, across such waters. You really have a sense that you are moving through the great universe, don't you?"

"Do you?" she asked. "The universe is too large to feel anything about. Moving over the earth, yes."

"With a feeling that one himself is blue and brilliant like the sky, inside? That kind of thrill and excitement?"

"Very."

"Where are you going?"

"To Paris. I am taking mother to Paris."

He heard her voice and was surprised, as if only now he were hearing it for the first time, a low full voice with a deliberateness as though she weighed and measured every single thing she said. He studied her face, the level blue eyes, the strong nose, the feminine lips, the chin like a man's.

"To Paris. Taking your mother," he echoed. "Would the typical