Spanish omelette, sang the voice at the counter, and farther off the other voice intoned a fainter Spanish omelette, and the busboy flung the coarse dishes harshly upon a tray. Forty cents. Ten cents for carfare, and ten for a new pair of shoelaces. He must arrange to have his mail forwarded to the hospital. Telephone Elizabeth.… And find out, by means of a guarded question, whether she had yet seen Schmidt.
FAREWELL! FAREWELL! FAREWELL!
I.
Margaret O’Brien dreamed that she woke up late—the alarm clock on the table by her bed said eight o’clock—she couldn’t account for it, and jumped out of bed in a panic. The Converses expected breakfast at eight-thirty. She flew down to the kitchen, without stopping to put up her hair or wash her face, and rushed to the stove. It was out. The grate was full of half-burned coal and ashes, cold, and she dumped out the whole thing; a cloud of dust filled the air, and she began to cough. Then she found that the kindling box was empty, and that she would have to go down to the cellar and get some. She stuffed newspapers into the grate, flung her hair over her left shoulder, and went to the door which led down to the cellar. It was locked or stuck. She pulled at the knob, wrestled with it, shook it violently; and just at that moment she heard Mrs. Converse’s voice in the distance, calling her: “Margaret!—Margaret!—Margaret!” The bell began ringing furiously and prolongedly in the indicator over the sink, and she turned around and saw all the little arrows jumping at once. Someone—perhaps Mr. Converse—was running down the front stairs, running and singing. The voice trailed off forlornly, with the sinister effect of a train whistle. A door slammed—Mr. Converse had gone off without waiting for his breakfast—and she woke up.
Sweet hour, what a dream! She rubbed her hand across her forehead, looked up, and saw something unfamiliar over her head; it was the upper bunk of the stateroom, with long leaded slats of wood to support the mattress. Then there was a rack with a life-belt in it. Of course; she was on a steamship, going to Ireland. How funny! She relaxed, smiled, turned her head on the hard little pillow, and looked across to the other bunk; and there was Katy looking back at her and grinning. The ship gave a long, slow lurch, and the hooked door rattled twice on its brass hook. She put her hand quickly to her mouth.
“Gosh, what a dream I had!” she said. “I’m going to get out of this, or I’ll be sick.”
“Me, too,” said Katy. “You could cut the air with a knife.”
“What time is it, I wonder?”
Katy slid a bare leg out from under the bedclothes.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I heard a gong, but I don’t know if it was the first or the second.”
II.
It was a lovely day, and the ocean was beautiful. It was much smoother than they had expected it to be, too—a lazy blue swell with fish-scale sparkles on it. A sailing ship went by on the south, with very white sails, and tiny rowboats hung up on the decks, and one hanging over the stern. They could see a little man running along the deck and then hauling up a bunch of flags, some kind of signal. It was the kind of day when it is warm, almost hot, in the sun, but cold in the shade. They walked round and round the decks, after eating some oranges, and wished there was something to do. At eleven o’clock the band began playing in the lounge, and they went in for a cup of beef-tea. The room was crowded, and children were falling over people’s legs. Some women were playing cards at a table. The deck-steward went round with a tray of beef-tea cups and crackers.
While they were drinking their beef-tea they saw him again—the gentleman who had the room next to theirs; he just looked into the lounge for a minute, with a book under his arm, and then went out again. He was the nicest man on the ship: so refined-looking, so much of a gentleman, with a queer, graceful, easy way of walking and such nice blue eyes. He reminded Margaret a little of Mr. Converse, but he was younger; he couldn’t have been more than thirty. She thought it would be nice to talk to him, but she supposed he wouldn’t come near her. He had been keeping aloof from everyone, all the way over, reading most of the time, or walking alone on the deck with that book under his arm, and never wearing a hat.
“I’d like to talk to that man,” she said, putting down the cup under her chair.
“Well, why don’t you?” said Katy. “I guess he wouldn’t bite you.”
“He looks like Mr. Converse; I guess he’s shy.”
“I don’t see what’s the matter with Pat, if you want to talk to somebody.”
“Oh, Pat’s all right.…”
Pat, however, was in the steerage, and when Margaret wanted to talk to him they had to go down the companionway to the forward deck. It was all right, but it did seem a pity, when you were in the second cabin, to be spending so much time down in the steerage. And Katy had taken up with old man Diehl, the inventor, who was in the second cabin. He was after her all the time to play cards or walk on the deck or sit and talk in the smoking room. It was all right for Katy, but not much fun for Margaret. She couldn’t always be tagging along with them, and she didn’t like to feel that Mr. Diehl was paying for her glass of Guinness every time they had a drink.
A crowd of people rushed out to the decks, and others went to the windows, pointing; so they went out too, to see what the excitement was about. It was only another steamer coming from the opposite direction, with black smoke pouring out of its smokestacks. They walked along to the place where they played shovelboard, but some kids had it; so then they didn’t know what to do. They looked down at the steerage deck, and there were Pat and the girls having a dance. Pat was playing his concertina. His black curly hair was blowing in the wind, and he looked up and saw them. He jerked his head backward as a signal to them to come down, so they did. They danced for a while, and one of the girls passed round a box of candy.
“I guess you think you’re too good for us,” said Pat, grinning.
“No, we don’t,” Margaret said. “But they don’t like to have us going up and down these stairs. It’s against the rules of the ship.”
“Ah, tell it to the marines,” said Pat.
He shut up his eyes and began playing “The Wearing of the Green,” beating time with his foot on the deck.
“I hear Katy has a swell sweetheart,” one of the girls said.
They talked about old man Diehl, and how he always carried around the blueprints of his inventions with him, and showed them all the time to everybody in the smoking room. Katy said she liked his voice; such a deep rumble, it carried all over the dining room—you could hear it above everything else, even the music. And it wasn’t that he was talking loudly, either. He seemed to have lots of money. His daughter was with him, very pretty, but with a bad heart. She was kind of stuck-up, and wouldn’t have anything to do with Katy, and was always dragging the old man out of the smoking room on one excuse or another. But she looked very pretty at the dance in that orchid dress.
“I guess he made a lot of money out of those inventions,” said Katy.
“What did he invent?” one of the girls asked.
“One of those amusement things they have at Coney Island,” said Katy.
Just then the whistle blew for noon, deafening everybody, and the steerage passengers had their dinner at noon, so they began going away. Pat strapped up his concertina and ran his hand through his hair.
“So long,” he said. “Give us a look again, when you haven’t got any swell company.”