518
PARTISAN REVIEW
hello, David darling" said Jenny, and slipped her arm through his.
He gave it a little pressure, and she patted his hand before moving
away a step. Mrs. Treadwell nodded, and together they read the thin
array of pastimes, already somewhat frayed by repetition: horse races
at two o'clock, swimming at all hours, music on deck at five, tea in
the bar, a band concert after dinner, dancing on deck later.
The little flags on pins, stuck every day in the map to mark the
progress of the voyage, were marching in a curve across the blue
field of the Atlantic. "We are really getting somewhere," said Mrs.
Treadwell, "I can't sight land any more with my strongest telescope."
From the Carribeans to the Canari:es would be fourteen days; from
the Canaries to Vigo, to Gijon, to Southampton, to Bremerhaven,
eight days more or ten perhaps. News dispatches were rather nautical
in character and the movements of ships unknown to landlubbers were
thought worth mentioning, with passing reference to dock-workers'
strikes
in
San Francisco, New York, Lisbon, Gijon. Passengers adver–
tised on little thumb tacked slips of paper that they had lost or found
jewelled combs, down pillows, tobacco pouches, cameras, pocket mir–
rors. The ship's pool was there with the name of yesterday's winner.
Mrs. Treadwell traced with a bright red finger nail the ship's
course on the blue map. She spoke, perhaps to David. "It's true,"
she said, "we do not stop at Boulogne." Her face was amiable, timid,
composed into a smile. He watched her finger gliding into port, into
Boulogne.
"And that happens to be the only place I really wish to go,"
she told him, speaking into the air.
"Then why did you take this ship?" asked David. He waited
confidently for some preposterous feminine explanation. She was un–
doubtedly a woman who lost her keys, missed trains, and mailed let–
ters full of gossip to friends in the wrong envelopes. But she had a
reasonable answer.
"The man in Mexico City sold me a ticket for Boulogne and
~aid
the ship stopped there," she said, without indignation or com–
plaint. It was, she implied, nothing unusual or surprising. "My
ticket reads--"
She opened her purse, explored among a clutter of small objects
in metal and leather for a moment, and dosed it again without having
found what she was looking for. "Where do things go?" she asked
herself aloud. "At any rate, it said Boulogne, plainly."
"You haven't lost your ticket?" asked J enny, in alarm.
"I haven't it with me, but it's about somewhere. I am not the
only passenger for Boulogne. Those students. . . . "
