She went alone to New York on a train, slept restlessly in a hotel bedroom, and one morning she boarded a ship for Europe. In her cabin she found that the old judge had sent her an orchid. She detested orchids, and she detested improvidence, and the gaudy flower was both. Her first impulse was to fire it out of the porthole, but the porthole wouldn’t open, and on second thought it seemed to her that perhaps a flower was a necessary part of a traveler’s costume, a sign of parting, a proof that one was leaving friends behind. There was loud laughter, and talk, and the noise of drinking. Only she, it seemed, was alone.
Removed from the scrutiny of the world, she could seem a little foolish—she spent some time trying to find a place to hide the canvas money belt in which she kept her cash and documents. Under the sofa? Behind the picture? In the empty flower vase or the medicine cabinet? A corner of the carpet was loose and she hid her money belt there. Then she stepped out into the corridor. She wore black clothes and a tricorne hat, and looked a little as George Washington might have looked had he lived to be so old.
The festivities in the crowded staterooms had moved out into the corridor, where men and women stood drinking and talking. She couldn’t deny that it would have been pleasanter if a few friends had come down to put a social blessing on her departure. Without the orchid on her shoulder, how could these strangers guess that in her own home she was a celebrated woman, known to everyone and famous for her good works? Mightn’t they, glancing at her as she passed, mistake her for one of those cussed old women who wander over the face of the earth trying to conceal or palliate that bitter loneliness that is the fitting reward for their contrary and selfish ways? She felt painfully disarmed and seemed to have only the fewest proofs of her identity. What she wanted then was some common room, where she could sit down and watch things.
She found a common room, but it was crowded and all the seats were taken. People were drinking and talking and crying, and in one corner a grown man stood saying good-bye to a little girl. His face was wet with tears. Honora had never seen or dreamed of such mortal turmoil. The go-ashore was being sounded, and while many of the farewells were cheerful and lighthearted, many of them were not. The sight of a man parting from his little daughter—it must be his little daughter, separated from him by some evil turn of events—upset Honora terribly. Suddenly the man got to his knees and took the child in his arms. He concealed his face in her thin shoulder, but his back could be seen shaking with sobs, while the public-address system kept repeating that the hour, the moment, had come. She felt the tears form in her own eyes, but the only way she could think of to cheer the little girl was to give her the orchid, and by now the corridors were to crowded for Honora to make her way back to her stateroom. She stepped over the high brass sill onto a deck.
The gangways were thronged with visitors leaving the ship. The stir was tremendous. Below her she could see a strip of dirty harbor water, and overhead there were gulls. People were calling to one another over this short distance, this still unaccomplished separation, and now all but one of the gangways were up, and the band began to play what seemed to her to be circus music. The loosening of gigantic hemp lines was followed by the stunning thunder of the whistle, so loud it must ruffle the angels in Heaven. Everyone was calling, everyone was waving—everyone but her. Of all the people standing on the deck, only she had no one to part with, only her going was lonely and meaningless. In simple pride, she took a handkerchief out of her pocketbook and began to wave it to the faces that were so swiftly losing their outline and their appeal. “Good-bye, good-bye, my dear, dear friend,” she called to no one. “Thank you. . . . Thank you for everything. . . . Good-bye and thank you. . . . Thank you and good-bye.”
