ON BOARD THE "MERIDIANA"
A large transatlantic steamer lying at the wharf on a brilliant, sunny morning just before its departure is an interesting and suggestive object to those who are fond of following suggestion to its end.One sometimes wonders if it is possible that the excitement in the dock atmosphere could ever become a thing to which one was sufficiently accustomed to be able to regard it as among things commonplace.The rumbling and rattling of waggons and carts, the loading and unloading of boxes and bales, the people who are late, and the people who are early, the faces which are excited, and the faces which are sad, the trunks and bales, and cranes which creak and groan, the shouts and cries, the hurry and confusion of movement, notwithstanding that every day has seen them all for years, have a sort of perennial interest to the looker-on.
This is, perhaps, more especially the case when the looker-on is to be a passenger on the outgoing ship; and the exhilaration of his point of view may greatly depend upon the reason for his voyage and the class by which he travels.Gaiety and youth usually appear upon the promenade deck, having taken saloon passage.Dulness, commerce, and eld mingling with them, it is true, but with a discretion which does not seem to dominate.
Second-class passengers wear a more practical aspect, and youth among them is rarer and more grave.People who must travel second and third class make voyages for utilitarian reasons.
Their object is usually to better themselves in one way or another.When they are going from Liverpool to New York, it is usually to enter upon new efforts and new labours.When they are returning from New York to Liverpool, it is often because the new life has proved less to be depended upon than the old, and they are bearing back with them bitterness of soul and discouragement of spirit.
On the brilliant spring morning when the huge liner Meridiana was to sail for England a young man, who was a second-class passenger, leaned upon the ship's rail and watched the turmoil on the wharf with a detached and not at all buoyant air.
His air was detached because he had other things in his mind than those merely passing before him, and he was not buoyant because they were not cheerful or encouraging subjects for reflection.He was a big young man, well hung together, and carrying himself well; his face was square-jawed and rugged, and he had dark red hair restrained by its close cut from waving strongly on his forehead.His eyes were red brown, and a few dark freckles marked his clear skin.He was of the order of man one looks at twice, having looked at him once, though one does not in the least know why, unless one finally reaches some degree of intimacy.
He watched the vehicles, heavy and light, roll into the big shed-like building and deposit their freight; he heard the voices and caught the sentences of instruction and comment; he saw boxes and bales hauled from the dock side to the deck and swung below with the rattling of machinery and chains.But these formed merely a noisy background to his mood, which was self-centred and gloomy.He was one of those who go back to their native land knowing themselves conquered.He had left England two years before, feeling obstinately determined to accomplish a certain difficult thing, but forces of nature combining with the circumstances of previous education and living had beaten him.He had lost two years and all the money he had ventured.He was going back to the place he had come from, and he was carrying with him a sense of having been used hardly by fortune, and in a way he had not deserved.
He had gone out to the West with the intention of working hard and using his hands as well as his brains; he had not been squeamish; he had, in fact, laboured like a ploughman; and to be obliged to give in had been galling and bitter.There are human beings into whose consciousness of themselves the possibility of being beaten does not enter.This man was one of them.
The ship was of the huge and luxuriously-fitted class by which the rich and fortunate are transported from one continent to another.Passengers could indulge themselves in suites of rooms and live sumptuously.As the man leaning on the rail looked on, he saw messengers bearing baskets and boxes of fruit and flowers with cards and notes attached, hurrying up the gangway to deliver them to waiting stewards.These were the farewell offerings to be placed in staterooms, or to await their owners on the saloon tables.Salter--the second-class passenger's name was Salter--had seen a few such offerings before on the first crossing.But there had not been such lavishness at Liverpool.It was the New Yorkers who were sumptuous in such matters, as he had been told.He had also heard casually that the passenger list on this voyage was to record important names, the names of multi-millionaire people who were going over for the London season.
Two stewards talking near him, earlier in the morning, had been exulting over the probable largesse such a list would result in at the end of the passage.