The Old Flute-Player | Page 9

was, by the stern necessities of life,
obliged to go still further from. Rarely, since the voyage had begun,
had he, when on deck, raised his gaze from the great vessel's churning
wake, which stretched, he liked to think, straight back toward Germany,
save when his daughter spoke to him and roused him, for a moment,
from his black depression. It was as if that thread of foam was the one

thing, brief, evanescent, futile, though it was, which bound him, now,
to the only land he cared for. His face was that of one who passes into
final exile. Only when his eyes were on his daughter's did the
expression of suppressed grief and despondency go from them for a
moment; but when they looked at her they lighted brilliantly with love.
He had found adjustment to his crude surroundings with the utmost
difficulty. Poor he had been in London, but his work had been among
musicians, and even cheap musicians have in them something better,
finer, higher than the majority of human cattle in the steerage of this
ship could show. He felt uncomfortably misplaced.
This had been apparent from the start to his most interested
observer--the handsome youth of the first cabin, whose glances
sometimes made the daughter's eyes dodge and evade. It added to that
young man's growing conviction that the aged man and beautiful young
girl were not at all of the same class as their enforced associates upon
the steerage-deck.
He remarked upon this to the second officer of the ship, who was
highly flattered by his notice and anxious to give ear. He, too, had
given some attention to the old man and his daughter and agreed with
Vanderlyn about their great superiority to their surroundings.
He would have agreed with Vanderlyn in almost anything, that second
officer, for every year he met and talked with some few thousand
passengers who said it was the longer voyage which had tempted them
to the old Rochester, while rarely was he in the least convinced by what
they said. With the Vanderlyns, who did not say it, he thought that it
was truth. Money they obviously had in plenty, and, inasmuch as they
were, therefore, such pronounced exceptions to the rule, he spent what
time with them he could. They were prosperous and yet they sailed by
that slow ship, therefore they loved the sea. Of this he was
convinced--and in his firm conviction was entirely wrong.
The real truth was that Mrs. Vanderlyn, made bold by the possession of
her money, had thought it was the magic key which certainly would
open every door for her. There were doors in New York City, which,

coming from the West, she had been palpitantly anxious to pass
through, and, to her amazement, she found that money would not open
them. Then there had occurred to her the brilliant plan of conquering,
first, the aristocracy of Europe, who, the newspapers had told her,
bowed in great humility before the eagle on the Yankee gold-piece. To
the doors with crests upon their paneling, abroad, she had therefore
borne her golden key that summer, only to discover that it fitted their
locks quite as ill as those upon Fifth Avenue. Her heart was saddened
with the woe of failure. The second officer could not guess that, sore
from buffetings from those who would have none of her, she had been
glad to secure passage on this ten-day boat, where, during the long
voyage, she could haughtily refuse to notice those of whom she would
have none. She had searched for a place and found one where she could
scorn as she had recently been scorned. Her soul was black-and-blue
from snubs. She wished to snub. A climber, who had failed to climb the
highest social ladder, the handsome, haughty lady found a certain
satisfaction in sitting for ten days upon the very apex of another
ladder--briefer, less important, very little, to be sure, but still a social
ladder--and giving it a quick, sharp shake as humble people put their
feet upon it timidly, bowing and smiling tentatively at her unresponsive
person. It was a sort of balm to her sore soul so see them tumble
metaphorically, upon their backs. Her demeanor on the Rochester was
the demeanor of a princess among aliens whom she utterly despises.
The Cook's tourists, traveling school-teachers and young married
couples homeward-bound after modest European honeymoons, were
plainly scum to her, and it gave her ardent joy to see that most of them
were hurt when she impressed this on them mercilessly. It was safer for
her son to talk about the interesting German couple to the second
officer than it was for him to talk about them to his mother, but, lo!
youth knows not wisdom.