“Come on, you’re late!” and “Sit down here; I’ve had mine,” and “We missed you!” they cried. They were as friendly as a college reunion, as free of jealousy, and just as undiscriminating.
The Jewish buyer had two new anecdotes (against his own race, naturally), and they flowed down to dinner in a group.
The Captain’s Dinner on the Ultima occurred on the last night of the voyage, and much was made of it. The dining salon was draped in scarlet, the stewards were in red hunting-coats, champagne was served at the expense of the Line. Even prohibitionists were betrayed into smiles which indicated that they wanted to keep up the friendships of this halcyon week. Toasts were drunk from table to table, with many bows, and the large Seattle contractor, who always overdid everything, threw confetti, and tonight no one minded his alcoholic philanthropy. The Comtesse de Val Montique, who had been born in Chicago, who owned nine million dollars, two châteaux, and part of a beautifully varnished husband, who crossed the ocean regularly twice a year and was so aristocratic that she had for friends only her servants, was moved tonight to look amiable as people passed her table. And the old captain, his beard like a whisk broom, went about the room patting shoulders and chuckling, “You cross again with Papa, eh?”
Sam was raised to a quivering sensitiveness toward all of them. He was not drunk, certainly, but after two cocktails, half a bottle of champagne, and a cognac or two, he was released from his customary caution, his habitual concentration on his own affairs. He was excited by their merriment at first; then it seemed to him pitiful that all of them, and he himself, should so rarely cease thus their indignant assertion of the importance of their own little offices and homes and learnings, and let themselves rejoice in friendliness. They seemed to him like children, excitedly playing now, but soon to be caught by weary maturity. He felt a little the lacrimae rerum of the whole world. He wanted to weep over the pride of the waiters as—the one moment on the voyage when they were important and beautiful and to be noticed—they bore in the platters of flaming ice cream. He wanted to weep over the bedraggled small-town bride who for the moment forgot that she had not found honeymooning quite so glorious, nor the sea so restful. And he saw as pitiful the fact that Fran expected to find youth again merely by changing skies.
All the while he looked as little sentimental as possible, the large, grave man plodding through the courses.
That was the great dance of the trip, with Japanese lanterns making the starboard deck curiously like the verandah of the Kennepoose Canoe Club, years and years ago, when he had found Fran. But he did not explain it to her. He couldn’t. He said, “I adore you! You look mighty well in that gold and ivory dress.” He had, indeed, little chance for sentimental explanations. No flapper aboard had more partners than Fran; certainly none danced so smoothly. Lockert was proprietorially about her, always, and to Sam he snapped, “Want to have you at Lord Herndon’s for a weekend, if you’ll come, and I’d like to show you a bit of London. We’ll dine at Claridge’s.”
Sam was not at all sure that Lockert would do anything of the kind; he suspected that Lockert could forget people as quickly as he picked them up; yet it gave him a feeling of belonging a little to England. And there was Tub Pearson’s nephew at the American Embassy, and of course Hurd, the manager of the London Revelation agency. He belonged!
He was emboldened to ask for a dance with Sally O’Leary, the movie queen who had made seduction famous.
“I’m not much good at this,” he grumbled, as the steamer rolled and they struggled to dance uphill. “You ought to be dancing with one of these young fellows.”
“Don’t be silly! You’re a lovely partner. You’re a man, not one of these gigolos, or whatever the damn word is. If you didn’t have such a lovely wife, I’d probably lay my head on your lovely big chest and ask you to go out to Hollywood and kill a coupla lovely beauty-parlor cowboys for me!”
He was pleased to believe that she meant it. His heightened sensitiveness, his wistful perception of the loneliness of the world, was gone in a boisterous well-being. When he danced with Fran and she dutifully pointed out his roughness, he laughed. Always she had a genius for keeping herself superior to him by just the right comment on his clumsiness, the most delicate and needle-pointed comparison of him with defter men. But tonight he chuckled, “I’m no Nijinsky, but I’m enjoying myself so much that even you can’t make me mad!” He whirled her again, mercilessly; he slid gloatingly down the long deck, and marched her back to their table.
And, when Fran assured him they needed no more wine, there were joyful invasions of the smoking-room, where tablefuls of the shamelessly happy greeted him, “Come sit down!”
They liked him! He was Somebody! Not just as the president of the Revelation but in himself, in whatever surroundings!
He did sit down; he wandered from table to table in an ecstasy of friendliness … which became a little blurred, a little dizzy. … But they were the best company he’d ever known, everybody on board, all of ’em. … But he’d better watch out; he was slightly lit. … But they were the best folks—
He went out on deck, to clear his head; he swayed up to the boat deck. Then he stood fixed, and all his boisterousness vanished in a high, thin, clear ecstasy.
On the
