John Caldigate Part 7

'That's nonsense, you know.'

'Very likely.'

'I am trying to talk to you in earnest.'

'You make such a failure of it, old boy, that I am compelled to talk nonsense in return. The idea of your preaching! Here I am with nothing special to do, and I like to amuse myself. Ought not that to be enough for you?'

'But what is to be the end of it?' d.i.c.k Shand asked, very solemnly.

'How can I tell? But the absurdity is that such a man as you should talk about the end of anything. Did you ever look before you leaped in your life?'

'We are to be together, you know, and it won't do for us to be hampered with that woman.'

'Won't it? Then let me tell you that, if I choose to hamper myself with that woman, or with a whole harem of women, and am not deterred by any consideration for myself, I certainly shall not be deterred by any consideration for you. Do you understand me?'

'That is not being a true partner,' said Shand.

'I'm quite sure of this,--that I'm likely to be as true as you are. I'm not aware that I have entered into any terms with you by which I have bound myself to any special mode of living. I have left England, as I fancy you have done also, because I desired more conventional freedom than one can find among the folk at home. And now, on the first outset, I am to be cautioned and threatened by you because I have made acquaintance with a young woman. Of all the moral pastors and masters that one might come across in the world, you, d.i.c.k Shand, appear to me to be the most absurd. But you are so far right as this, that if my conduct is shocking to you, you had better leave me to my wickedness.'

'You are always so d---- upsetting,' said d.i.c.k, 'that no one can speak to you.' Then d.i.c.k turned away, and there was nothing more said about Mrs. Smith on that occasion.

The next to try her hand was Mrs. Callander. By this time the pa.s.sengers had become familiar with the ship, and knew what they might and what they might not do. The second-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers were not often found intruding across the bar, but the first-cla.s.s frequently made visits to their friends amidships. In this way Mrs. Callander had become acquainted with our two gold-seekers, and often found herself in conversation with one or the other. Even Miss Green, as has been stated before, would come and gaze upon the waves from the inferior part of the deck.

'What a very nice voyage we are having, Mr. Caldigate,' Mrs. Callander said one afternoon.

'Yes, indeed. It is getting a little cold now, but we shall enjoy that after all the heat.'

'Quite so; only I suppose it will be very cold when we get quite south.

You still find yourself tolerably comfortable.'

'I shall be glad to have it over,' said Caldigate, who had in truth become disgusted with d.i.c.k's snoring.

'I daresay,--I am sure we shall. My young people are getting very tired of it. Children, when they are accustomed to every comfort on sh.o.r.e, of course feel it grievously. I suppose you are rather crowded?'

'Of course we are crowded. One can't have a twenty-foot square room on board ship.'

'No, indeed. But then you are with your friend, and that is much pleasanter than a stranger.'

'That would depend on whether the stranger snored, Mrs. Callander.'

'Don't talk of snoring, Mr. Caldigate. If you only heard Mr. Callander!

But, as I was saying, you must have some very queer characters down there.' She had not been saying anything of the kind, but she found a difficulty in introducing her subject.

'Take them altogether, they are a very decent, pleasant, well-mannered set of people, and all of them in earnest about their future lives.'

'Poor creatures! But I dare say they're very good.' Then she paused a moment, and looked into his face. She had undertaken a duty, and she was not the woman to shrink from it. So she told herself at that moment. And yet she was very much afraid of him as she saw the squareness of his forehead, and the set of his mouth. And there was a frown across his brow, as though he were preparing himself to fight. 'You must have found it hard to accommodate yourselves to them, Mr. Caldigate?'

'Not at all.'

'Of course we all know that you are a gentleman.'

'I am much obliged to you; but I do not know any word that requires a definition so much as that. I am going to work hard to earn my bread; and I suppose these people are going to do the same.'

'There always will be some danger in such society,' said Mrs. Callander.

'I hope I may escape any great evil.'

'I hope so too, Mr. Caldigate. You probably have had a long roll of ancestors before you?'

'We all have that;--back to Adam.'

'Ah! but I mean a family roll, of which you ought to be proud;--all ladies and gentlemen.'

'Upon my word I don't know.'

'So I hear, and I have no doubt it is true.' Then she paused, looking again into his face. It was very square, and his lips were hard, and there was a gleam of anger in his eyes. She wished herself back again in her own part of the ship; but she had boasted to Miss Green that she was not the woman to give up a duty when she had undertaken it. Though she was frightened, still she must go on. 'I hope you will excuse me, Mr.

Caldigate.'

'I am sure you will not say anything that I cannot excuse.'

'Don't you think--' Then she paused. She had looked into his face again, and was so little satisfied that she did not dare to go on. He would not help her in the least, but stood there looking at her, with something of a smile stealing over the hardness of his face, but with such an expression that the smile was even worse than the hardness.

'Were you going to speak to me about another lady, Mrs. Callander?'

'I was. That is what I was going to speak of--'

She was anxious to remonstrate against that word lady, but her courage failed her.

'Then don't you think that perhaps you had better leave it alone. I am very much obliged to you, and all that kind of thing; and as to myself, I really shouldn't care what you said. Any good advice would be taken most gratefully,--if it didn't affect any one else. But you might say things of the lady in question which I shouldn't bear patiently.'

'She can't be your equal.'

'I won't hear even that patiently. You know nothing about her, except that she is a second-cla.s.s pa.s.senger,--in which matter she is exactly my equal. If you come to that, don't you think that you are degrading yourself in coming here and talking to me? I am not your equal.'

'But you are.'

'And so is she, then. We shan't arrive at anything, Mrs. Callander, and so you had better give it up.' Whereupon she did give it up and retreat to her own part of the ship, but not with a very good grace.

They had certainly become very intimate,--John Caldigate and Mrs. Smith; and there could be no doubt that, in the ordinary language of the world, he was making a fool of himself. He did in fact know nothing about her but what she told herself, and this amounted to little more than three statements, which might or might not be true,--that she had gone on the stage in opposition to her friends,--that she had married an actor, who had treated her with great cruelty,--and that he had died of drink. And with each of these stories there had been an accompaniment of mystery.

She had not told him her maiden name, nor what had been the condition of her parents, nor whether they were living, nor at what theatres she and her husband had acted, nor when he had died. She had expressed a hope that she might get an engagement in the colonies, but she had not spoken of any recommendation or letters of introduction. He simply knew of her that her name was Euphemia Smith.

In that matter of her clothes there had been a great improvement, but made very gradually. She had laughed at her own precautions, saying, that in her poverty she had wished to save everything that could be saved, and that she had only intended to make herself look like others in the same cla.s.s. 'And I had wanted to avoid all attention,--at first,'

she said, smiling, as she looked up at him.

'In which you have been altogether unsuccessful he replied, 'as you are certainly more talked about than any one in the ship.'

'Has it been my fault?' she asked.