John Caldigate Part 3

'I'm not going to take the pledge, or anything of that kind,' continued the son, 'but I think I know enough of it all, not to fall into that pit.' During this discussion, Caldigate sat silent, for he had already had various conversations on this subject with his friend. He had entertained some fears, which were not, perhaps, quite removed by d.i.c.k's manly a.s.surances.

A cabin had been taken for the joint use of the young men on board the Goldfinder, a large steamer which was running at the time from London to Melbourne, doing the voyage generally in about two months. But they were going as second-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers and their accommodation therefore was limited. d.i.c.k had insisted on this economy, which was hardly necessary to Caldigate, and which was not absolutely pressed upon the other. But d.i.c.k had insisted. 'Let us begin as we mean to go on,' he had said; 'of course we've got to rough it. We shall come across something a good deal harder than second-cla.s.s fare before we have made our fortunes, and worked probably with mates more uncouth than second-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers.'

It was impossible to oppose counsel such as this, and therefore second-cla.s.s tickets were taken on board the Goldfinder.

A terrible struggle was made during the last fortnight to prevent the going of John Caldigate. Mr. Babington was so shocked that he did not cease to stir himself. Allow a son to disinherit himself, merely because he had fallen into the hands of a money-lending Jew before he had left college! To have the whole condition of a property changed by such a simple accident! It was shocking to him; and he moved himself in the matter with much more energy than old Mr. Caldigate had expected from him. He wrote heartrending letters to Folking, in spite of the hard words which had been said to him there. He made a second journey to Cambridge, and endeavoured to frighten Mr. Bolton. Descent of acres from father to son was to him so holy a thing, that he was roused to unexpected energies. He was so far successful that Mr. Daniel Caldigate did write a long letter to his son, in which he offered to annul the whole proceeding. 'Your uncle accuses me of injustice,' he said. 'I have not been unjust. But there is no reason whatever why the arrangement should stand. Even if the money has been paid to Davis I will bear that loss rather than you should think that I have taken advantage of you in your troubles.' But John Caldigate was too firm and too determined for such retrogression. The money had been paid to Davis, and other monies had been used in other directions. He was quite contented with the bargain, and would certainly adhere to it.

Then came the last night before their departure; the evening before the day on which they were to go from Pollington to London, and from London to Plymouth. All the heavy packages, and all the clothes had, of course, been put on board the Goldfinder in the London docks. The pleasant task of preparation was at an end, and they were now to go forth upon their hard labours. Caldigate had become so intimate with the family, that it seemed as though a new life had sprung up for him, and that as he had parted from all that he then had of a family at Folking, he was now to break away from new ties under the doctor's roof. They had dined early, and at ten o'clock there was what Mrs. Shand called a little bit of supper. They were all of them high in heart, and very happy,--testifying their affection to the departing ones by helping them to the nicest bits, and by filling their tumblers the fullest. How it happened, no one could have said, but it did happen that, before the evening was over, Maria and Caldigate were together in a little room behind the front parlour. What still remained of their luggage was collected there, and this last visit had probably been made in order that the packages might be once more counted.

'It does seem so odd that you should be going,' she said.

'It is so odd to me that I should ever have come.'

'We had always heard of you since d.i.c.k went to Cambridge.'

'I knew that there were so many of you, and that was all. Brothers never talk of their sisters, I suppose. But I seem to know you now so well!

You have been so kind to me!'

'Because you are d.i.c.k's friend.'

'I didn't suppose that it was anything else.'

'That's not nice of you, Mr. Caldigate. You know that we are all very fond of you. We shall be so anxious to hear. You will be good to him, won't you?'

'And he to me, I hope.'

'I think you are steadier than he is, and can do more for him than he can for you. I wonder, shall we ever see each other again, Mr.

Caldigate?'

'Why not?'

'New South Wales is so far, and you will both marry there, and then you will not want to come back. I hope I may live to see dear d.i.c.k again some day.'

'But only d.i.c.k?'

'And you too, if you would care about it.'

'Of course I should care about it,' he said. And as he said so, of course he put his arm round her waist and kissed her. It did not mean much. She did not think it meant much. But it gave a little colouring of romance to that special moment of her life. He, when he went up to his bed, declared to himself that it meant nothing at all. He still had those large eyes clear before him, and was still fixed in his resolution to come back for them when some undefined point of his life should have pa.s.sed by.

'Now,' said d.i.c.k Shand, as they were seated together in a third-cla.s.s railway carriage on the following morning, 'now I feel that I am beginning life.'

'With proper resolutions, I hope, as to honesty, sobriety, and industry.'

'With a fixed determination to make a fortune, and come back, and be _facile princeps_ among all the Shands. I have already made up my mind as to the sum I will give each of the girls, and the way I will start the two younger boys in business. In the meantime let us light a pipe.'

Chapter V

The Goldfinder

There is no peculiar life more thoroughly apart from life in general, more unlike our usual life, more completely a life of itself, governed by its own rules and having its own roughnesses and amenities, than life on board ship. What tender friendship it produces, and what bitter enmities! How completely the society has formed itself into separate sets after the three or four first days! How thoroughly it is acknowledged that this is the aristocratic set, and that the plebeian!

How determined are the aristocrats to admit no intrusion, and how anxious are the plebeians to intrude! Then there arises the great demagogue, who heads a party, having probably been disappointed in early life,--that is, in his first endeavours on board the ship. And the women have to acknowledge all their weaknesses, and to exercise all their strength. It is a bad time for them on board ship if they cannot secure the attention of the men,--as it is in the other world; but in order that they may secure it, they a.s.sume indifference. They a.s.sume indifference, but are hard at work with their usual weapons. The men can do very well by themselves. For them there is drinking, smoking, cards, and various games; but the potency of female spells soon works upon them, and all who are worth anything are more or less in love by the end of the first week. Of course it must all come to an end when the port is reached. That is understood, though there may sometimes be mistakes.

Most pathetic secrets are told with the consciousness that they will be forgotten as soon as the ship is left. And there is the whole day for these occupations. No work is required from any one. The lawyer does not go to his court, nor the merchant to his desk. Pater-familias receives no bills; mater-familias orders no dinners. The daughter has no household linen to disturb her. The son is never recalled to his books.

There is no parliament, no munic.i.p.ality, no vestry. There are neither rates nor taxes nor rents to be paid. The government is the softest despotism under which subjects were ever allowed to do almost just as they please. That the captain has a power is known, but hardly felt. He smiles on all, is responsible for everything, really rules the world submitted to him, from the setting of the sails down to the frying of the chops, and makes one fancy that there must be something wrong with men on sh.o.r.e because first-cla.s.s nations cannot be governed like first-cla.s.s ships.

The Goldfinder had on board her over a hundred first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers, and nearly as many of the second cla.s.s. The life among them was much of the same kind, though in the second cla.s.s there was less of idleness, less of pleasure, and something more of an attempt to continue the ordinary industry of life. The women worked more and the men read more than their richer neighbours. But the love-making, and the fashion, and the mutiny against the fashion, were the same in one set as in the other. Our friends were at first subjected to an inconvenience which is always felt in such a position. They were known to have had saloon rather than second-cla.s.s antecedents. Everybody had heard that they had been at Cambridge, and therefore they were at first avoided. And as they themselves were determined not to seek a.s.sociates among their more aristocratic neighbours, they were left to themselves and solitary for some few days. But this was a condition not at all suited to d.i.c.k Shand's temperament, and it was not long before he had made both male and female acquaintances.

'Have you observed that woman in the brown straw hat?' d.i.c.k said to Caldigate, one morning, as they were leaning together on the forepart of the vessel against one of the pens in which the fowls were kept. They were both dressed according to the parts they were acting, and which they intended to act, as second-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers and future working miners. Any one knowing in such matters would have seen that they were over-dressed; for the real miner, when he is away from his work, puts on his best clothes, and endeavours to look as little rough as possible.

And all this had no doubt been seen and felt, and discounted among our friends' fellow-pa.s.sengers.

'I have seen her every day, of course,' said Caldigate, 'and have been looking at her for the last half hour.'

'She is looking at us now.'

'She seems to me to be very attentive to the stocking she is mending.'

'Just a woman's wiles. At this moment she can't hear us, but she knows pretty nearly what we are saying by the way our lips are going. Have you spoken to her?'

'I did say a word or two to her yesterday.'

'What did she say?'

'I don't recollect especially. She struck me as talking better than her gown, if you know what I mean.'

'She talks a great deal better than her gown,' said d.i.c.k. 'I don't quite know what to make of her. She says that she is going out to earn her bread; but when I asked her how, she either couldn't or wouldn't answer me. She is a mystery, and mysteries are always worth unravelling. I shall go to work and unravel her.'

At that moment the female of whom they were speaking got up from her seat on one of the spars which was bound upon the deck, folded up her work, and walked away. She was a remarkable woman, and certainly looked to be better than her gown, which was old and common enough. Caldigate had observed her frequently, and had been much struck by the word or two she had spoken to him on the preceding day. 'I should like ship-life well enough,' she had said, in answer to some ordinary question, 'if it led to nothing else.'

'You would not remain here for ever?'

'Certainly, if I could. There is plenty to eat, and a bed to sleep on, and no one to be afraid of. And though n.o.body knows me, everybody knows enough of me not to think that I ought to be taken to a police office because I have not gloves to my hands.'

'Don't you think it wearisome?' he had asked.

'Everything is wearisome; but here I have a proud feeling of having paid my way. To have settled in advance for your dinner for six weeks to come is a magnificent thing. If I get too tired of it I can throw myself overboard. You can't even do that in London without the police being down upon you. The only horror to me here is that there will so soon be an end to it.'

At that time he had not even heard her name, or known whether she were alone or joined to others. Then he had inquired, and a female fellow-pa.s.senger had informed him that she was a Mrs. Smith,--that she had seen better days, but had been married to a ne'er-do-well husband, who had drank himself to death within a year of their marriage, and that she was now going out to the colony, probably,--so the old lady said who was the informant,--in search of a second husband. She was to some extent, the old lady said, in charge of a distant relative, who was then on board, with a respectable husband and children, and who was very much ashamed of her poor connection. So much John Caldigate had heard.

Though he had heard this he did not feel inclined to tell it all to d.i.c.k Shand. d.i.c.k had professed his intention of unravelling the mystery, but Caldigate almost thought that he would like to unravel it himself. The woman was so constantly alone! And then, though she was ill-dressed, untidy, almost unkempt on occasions, still, through it all, there was something attractive about her. There was a brightness in her eye, and a courage about her mouth, which had made him think that, in spite of her appearance, she would be worth his attention--just for the voyage. When he had been speaking to herself they had been on the deck together, and it had been dusk and he had not been able to look her in the face; but while Shand had been speaking to him he had observed that she was very comely. And this was the more remarkable because it seemed to him to be so evident that she made the worst rather than the best of herself. She was quite a young woman;--probably, he thought, not more than three or four and twenty; and she was there, with many young men round her, and yet she made no effort to attract attention. When his eye had fallen upon her she had generally been quite alone, doing some piece of coa.r.s.e and ordinary work.

'I have had another conversation with her,' said Shand to him that night.

'Have you unravelled the mystery?'

'Not quite; but I have got the fact that there is a mystery. She told me that you and I and she herself ought not to be here. When I asked her why, she said that you and I ought to be gentlemen and that she ought to be a lady. I told her that you and I were gentlemen, in spite of our trousers. "Ah," she said, "there comes the difference; I'm not a lady any longer!" When I contradicted her she snubbed me, and said that I hadn't seen enough of the world to know anything about it. But I'll have it all out of her before I've done.'