Page 303 - tender-is-the-night

that is no longer here and not yet there. The hazy yellow
vault is full of echoing shouts. There are the rumble of trucks
and the clump of trunks, the strident chatter of cranes, the
first salt smell of the sea. One hurries through, even though
there’s time; the past, the continent, is behind; the future is
the glowing mouth in the side of the ship; the dim, turbu-
lent alley is too confusedly the present.
Up the gangplank and the vision of the world adjusts it-
self, narrows. One is a citizen of a commonwealth smaller
than Andorra, no longer sure of anything. The men at the
purser’s desk are as oddly shaped as the cabins; disdain-
ful are the eyes of voyagers and their friends. Next the loud
mournful whistles, the portentous vibration and the boat,
the human idea—is in motion. The pier and its faces slide
by and for a moment the boat is a piece accidentally split off
from them; the faces become remote, voiceless, the pier is
one of many blurs along the water front. The harbor flows
swiftly toward the sea.
With it flowed Albert McKisco, labelled by the news-
papers as its most precious cargo. McKisco was having a
vogue. His novels were pastiches of the work of the best peo-
ple of his time, a feat not to be disparaged, and in addition
he possessed a gift for softening and debasing what he bor-
rowed, so that many readers were charmed by the ease with
which they could follow him. Success had improved him
and humbled him. He was no fool about his capacities—he
realized that he possessed more vitality than many men of
superior talent, and he was resolved to enjoy the success he
had earned. ‘I’ve done nothing yet,’ he would say. ‘I don’t

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