asking me to call on her.
“Come at once,” she said, “as I want your advice above all things.” And
she signed herself, “Yours in all truth, O. G.”
I had had many notes from her, but none written in this strain; and
therefore, feeling that there was some circumstance to justify such
instant notice, I got up and went to her then, at ten o’clock in the
morning. She jumped up to meet me, giving me both her hands.
“Oh, Mr. Green,” she said to me, “I’m so glad you have come to me. It is
all over.”
“What is over?” said I.
“My chance of escape from the she baronet. I gave in last night. Pray
tell me that I was right. Yet I want you to tell me the truth. And yet,
above all things, you must not tell me that I have been wrong.”
“Then you have accepted Mr. Pryor?”
“I could not help it,” she said. “The temptation was too much for me. I
love the very cut of his coat, the turn of his lip, the tone of his
voice. The very sound which he makes as he closes the door behind him is
too much for me. I believe that I ought to have let him go,--but I could
not do it.”
“And what will Mr. Hoskins do?”
“I wrote to him immediately and told him everything. Of course I had
John’s leave for doing so.”
This calling of my sedate friend by the name of John was, to my feeling,
a most wonderful breaking down of all proprieties.
“I told him the exact truth. This morning I got an answer from him
saying that he should visit Russia. I am so sorry because of his mother
and sisters.”
“And when is it to be?”
“Oh, at once, immediately. So John says. When we resolve on doing these
things here, on taking the plunge, we never stand shilly-shallying on
the brink as your girls do in England. And that is one reason why I have
sent for you. You must promise to go over with us. Do you know I am half
afraid of him,--much more afraid of him than I am of you.”
They were to be married very early in May, and of course I promised to
put off my return for a week or two to suit them.
“And then for the she baronet,” she said, “and for all the terrible
grandeur of London!”
When I endeavoured to explain to her that she would encounter no great
grandeur, she very quickly corrected me.
“It is not grandeur of that sort, but the grandeur of coldness that I
mean. I fear that I shall not do for them. But, Mr. Green, I must tell
you one thing. I have not cut off from myself all means of retreat.”
“Why, what do you mean? You have resolved to marry him.”
“Yes, I have promised to do so; but I did not promise till he had said
that if I could not be made to suit his people in Old England, he would
return here with me and teach himself to suit my people in New England.
The task will be very much easier.”
They were married in Boston, not without some considerable splendour of
ceremony, as far as the splendour of Boston went. She was so unusual a
favourite that everyone wished to be at her wedding, and she had no idea
of giving herself airs and denying her friends a favour. She was married
with much _éclat_, and, as far as I could judge, seemed to enjoy the
marriage herself.
Now comes the question; will she or will she not be received in London
as a lady,--as such a lady as my friend Pryor might have been expected
to take for his wife?
THE JOURNEY TO PANAMA.
[Illustration: text decoration]
THE JOURNEY TO PANAMA.
There is perhaps no form of life in which men and women of the present
day frequently find themselves for a time existing, so unlike their
customary conventional life, as that experienced on board the large
ocean steamers. On the voyages so made, separate friendships are formed
and separate enmities are endured. Certain lines of temporary politics
are originated by the energetic, and intrigues, generally innocent in
their conclusions, are carried on with the keenest spirit by those to
whom excitement is necessary; whereas the idle and torpid sink into
insignificance and general contempt,--as it is their lot to do on board
ship as in other places. But the enjoyments and activity of such a life
do not display themselves till the third or fourth day of the voyage.
The men and women at first regard each with distrust and illconcealed
dislike. They by no means anticipate the strong feelings which are to
arise, and look forward to ten, fifteen, or twenty days of gloom or
sea-sickness. Sea-sickness disappears, as a general condition, on the
evening of the second day, and the gloom about noon on the fourth. Then
the men begin to think that the women are not so ugly, vulgar, and
insipid; and the women drop their monosyllables, discontinue the close
adherence to their own niches, which they first observed, and become
affable, perhaps even beyond their wont on shore. And alliances spring
up among the men themselves. On their first entrance to this new world,
they generally regard each other with marked aversion, each thinking
that those nearest to him are low fellows, or perhaps worse; but by the
fourth day, if not sooner, every man has his two or three intimate
friends with whom he talks and smokes, and to whom he communicates those
peculiar politics, and perhaps intrigues, of his own voyage. The female
friendships are slower in their growth, for the suspicion of women is
perhaps stronger than that of men; but when grown they also are
stronger, and exhibit themselves sometimes in instances of feminine
affection.
But the most remarkable alliances are those made between gentlemen and
ladies. This is a matter of course on board ship quite as much as on
shore, and it is of such an alliance that the present tale purports to
tell the story. Such friendships, though they may be very dear, can
seldom be very lasting. Though they may be full of sweet romance,--for
people become very romantic among the discomforts of a sea-voyage--such
romance is generally short-lived and delusive, and occasionally is
dangerous.
There are several of these great ocean routes, of which by the common
consent, as it seems, of the world, England is the centre. There is the
Great Eastern line, running from Southampton across the Bay of Biscay
and up the Mediterranean. It crosses the Isthmus of Suez, and branches
away to Australia, to India, to Ceylon, and to China. There is the great
American line, traversing the Atlantic to New York and Boston with the
regularity of clockwork. The voyage here is so much a matter of everyday
routine, that romance has become scarce upon the route. There are one or
two other North American lines, perhaps open to the same objection. Then
there is the line of packets to the African coast,--very romantic as I
am given to understand; and there is the great West-Indian route, to
which the present little history is attached,--great, not on account of
our poor West Indian Islands, which cannot at the present moment make
anything great, but because it spreads itself out from thence to Mexico
and Cuba, to Guiana and the republics of Grenada and Venezuela, to
Central America, the Isthmus of Panama, and from thence to California,
Vancouver’s Island, Peru and Chili.
It may be imagined how various are the tribes which leave the shores of
Great Britain by this route. There are Frenchmen for the French sugar
islands, as a rule not very romantic; there are old Spaniards, Spaniards
of Spain, seeking to renew their fortunes amidst the ruins of their
former empire; and new Spaniards--Spaniards, that is, of the American
republics, who speak Spanish, but are unlike the Don both in manners and
physiognomy,--men and women with a touch perhaps of Indian blood, very
keen after dollars, and not much given to the graces of life. There are
Dutchmen too, and Danes, going out to their own islands. There are
citizens of the stars and stripes, who find their way everywhere--and,
alas! perhaps, now also citizens of the new Southern flag, with the
palmetto leaf. And there are Englishmen of every shade and class, and
Englishwomen also.
It is constantly the case that women are doomed to make the long voyage
alone. Some are going out to join their husbands, some to find a
husband, some few peradventure to leave a husband. Girls who have been
educated at home in England, return to their distant homes across the
Atlantic, and others follow their relatives who have gone before them as
pioneers into a strange land. It must not be supposed that these females
absolutely embark in solitude, putting their feet upon the deck without
the aid of any friendly arm. They are generally consigned to some
prudent elder, and appear as they first show themselves on the ship to
belong to a party. But as often as not their real loneliness shows
itself after awhile. The prudent elder is not, perhaps, congenial; and
by the evening of the fourth day a new friendship is created.
Not a long time since such a friendship was formed under the
circumstances which I am now about to tell. A young man--not very young,
for he had turned his thirtieth year, but still a young man--left
Southampton by one of the large West Indian steam-boats, purposing to
pass over the Isthmus of Panama, and thence up to California and
Vancouver’s Island. It would be too long to tell the cause which led to
these distant voyagings. Suffice to say, it was not the accursed hunger
after gold--_auri sacra fames_--which so took him; nor had he any
purpose of permanently settling himself in those distant colonies of
Great Britain. He was at the time a widower, and perhaps his home was
bitter to him without the young wife whom he had early lost. As he
stepped on board he was accompanied by a gentleman some fifteen years
his senior, who was to be the companion of his sleeping apartment as far
as St. Thomas. The two had been introduced to each other, and therefore
appeared as friends on board the “Serrapiqui;” but their acquaintance
had commenced in Southampton, and my hero, Ralph Forrest by name, was
alone in the world as he stood looking over the side of the ship at the
retreating shores of Hampshire.
“I say, old fellow, we’d better see about our places,” said his new
friend, slapping him on his back. Mr. Matthew Morris was an old
traveller, and knew how to become intimate with his temporary allies at
a very short notice. A long course of travelling had knocked all
bashfulness out of him, and when he had a mind to do so he could make
any man his brother in half an hour, and any woman his sister in ten
minutes.
“Places? what places?” said Forrest.
“A pretty fellow you are to go to California. If you don’t look sharper
than that you’ll get little to drink and nothing to eat till you come
back again. Don’t you know the ship’s as full as ever she can hold?”
Forrest acknowledged that she was full.
“There are places at table for about a hundred, and we have a hundred
and thirty on board. As a matter of course those who don’t look sharp
will have to scramble. However, I’ve put cards on the plates and taken
the seats. We had better go down and see that none of these Spanish
fellows oust us.” So Forrest descended after his friend, and found that
the long tables were already nearly full of expectant dinner-eaters.
When he took his place a future neighbour informed him, not in the most
gracious voice, that he was encroaching on a lady’s seat; and when he
immediately attempted to leave that which he held, Mr. Matthew Morris
forbade him to do so. Thus a little contest arose, which, however,
happily was brought to a close without bloodshed. The lady was not
present at the moment, and the grumpy gentleman agreed to secure for
himself a vacant seat on the other side.
For the first three days the lady did not show herself. The grumpy
gentleman, who, as Forrest afterwards understood, was the owner of
stores in Bridgetown, Barbadoes, had other ladies with him also. First
came forth his daughter, creeping down to dinner on the second day,
declaring that she would be unable to eat a morsel, and prophesying that
she would be forced to retire in five minutes. On this occasion,
however, she agreeably surprised herself and her friends. Then came the
grumpy gentleman’s wife, and the grumpy gentleman’s wife’s brother--on
whose constitution the sea seemed to have an effect quite as violent as
on that of the ladies; and lastly, at breakfast on the fourth day,
appeared Miss Viner, and took her place as Mr. Forrest’s neighbour at
his right hand.
He had seen her before on deck, as she lay on one of the benches, vainly
endeavouring to make herself comfortable, and had remarked to his
companion that she was very unattractive and almost ugly. Dear young
ladies, it is thus that men always speak of you when they first see you
on board ship! She was disconsolate, sick at heart, and ill at ease in
body also. She did not like the sea. She did not in the least like the
grumpy gentleman in whose hands she was placed; she did not, especially,
like the grumpy gentleman’s wife; and she altogether hated the grumpy
gentleman’s daughter, who was the partner of her berth. That young lady
had been very sick and very selfish; and Miss Viner had been very sick
also, and perhaps equally selfish. They might have been angels, and yet
have hated each other under such circumstances. It was no wonder that
Mr. Forrest thought her ugly as she twisted herself about on the broad
bench, vainly striving to be comfortable.
“She’ll brighten up wonderfully before we’re in the tropics,” said Mr.
Morris. “And you won’t find her so bad then. It’s she that is to sit
next you.”
“Heaven forbid!” said Forrest. But, nevertheless, he was very civil to
her when she did come down on the fourth morning. On board the West
Indian Packets, the world goes down to its meals. In crossing between
Liverpool and the States, the world goes up to them.
Miss Viner was by no means a very young lady. She also was nearly
thirty. In guessing her age on board the ship the ladies said that she
was thirty-six, but the ladies were wrong. She was an Irish woman, and
when seen on shore, in her natural state, and with all her wits about
her, was by no means without attraction. She was bright-eyed, with a
clear dark skin, and good teeth; her hair was of a dark brown and
glossy, and there was a touch of feeling and also of humour about her
mouth, which would have saved her from Mr. Forrest’s ill-considered
criticism, had he first met her under more favourable circumstances.
“You’ll see a good deal of her,” Mr. Morris said to him, as they began
to prepare themselves for luncheon, by a cigar immediately after
breakfast. “She’s going across the isthmus and down to Peru.”
“How on earth do you know?”
“I pretty well know where they’re all going by this time. Old Grumpy
told me so. He has her in tow as far as St. Thomas, but knows nothing
about her. He gives her up there to the captain. You’ll have a chance of
making yourself very agreeable as you run across with her to the Spanish
main.”
Mr. Forrest replied that he did not suppose he should know her much
better than he did now; but he made no further remark as to her
ugliness. She had spoken a word or two to him at table, and he had seen
that her eyes were bright, and had found that her tone was sweet.
“I also am going to Panama,” he said to her, on the morning of the fifth
day. The weather at that time was very fine, and the October sun as it
shone on them, while hour by hour they made more towards the South, was
pleasant and genial. The big ship lay almost without motion on the bosom
of the Atlantic, as she was driven through the waters at the rate of
twelve miles per hour. All was as pleasant now as things can be on board
a ship, and Forrest had forgotten that Miss Viner had seemed so ugly to
him when he first saw her. At this moment, as he spoke to her, they were
running through the Azores, and he had been assisting her with his
field-glass to look for orange-groves on their sloping shores,
orange-groves they had not succeeded in seeing, but their failure had
not disturbed their peace.
“I also am going to Panama.”
“Are you, indeed?” said she. “Then I shall not feel so terribly alone
and disconsolate. I have been looking forward with such fear to that
journey on from St. Thomas.”
“You shall not be disconsolate, if I can help it,” he said. “I am not
much of a traveller myself, but what I can do I will.”
“Oh, thank you!”
“It is a pity Mr. Morris is not going on with you. He’s at home
everywhere, and knows the way across the isthmus as well as he does down
Regent Street.”
“Your friend, you mean!”
“My friend, if you call him so; and indeed I hope he is, for I like him.
But I don’t know more of him than I do of you. I also am as much alone
as you are. Perhaps more so.”
“But,” she said, “a man never suffers in being alone.”
“Oh! does he not? Don’t think me uncivil, Miss Viner, if I say that you
may be mistaken in that. You feel your own shoe when it pinches, but do
not realise the tight boot of your neighbour.”
“Perhaps not,” said she. And then there was a pause, during which she
pretended to look again for the orange-groves. “But there are worse
things, Mr. Forrest, than being alone in the world. It is often a
woman’s lot to wish that she were let alone.” Then she left him and
retreated to the side of the grumpy gentleman’s wife, feeling perhaps
that it might be prudent to discontinue a conversation, which, seeing
that Mr. Forrest was quite a stranger to her, was becoming particular.
“You’re getting on famously, my dear,” said the lady from Barbadoes.
“Pretty well, thank you, Ma’am,” said Miss Viner.
“Mr. Forrest seems to be making himself quite agreeable. I tell
Amelia,”--Amelia was the young lady to whom in their joint cabin Miss
Viner could not reconcile herself,--“I tell Amelia that she is wrong not
to receive attentions from gentlemen on board ship. If it is not carried
too far,” and she put great emphasis on the “too far,”--“I see no harm
in it.”
“Nor I, either,” said Miss Viner.
“But then Amelia is so particular.”
“The best way is to take such things as they come,” said Miss
Viner,--perhaps meaning that such things never did come in the way of
Amelia. “If a lady knows what she is about she need not fear a
gentleman’s attentions.”
“That’s just what I tell Amelia; but then, my dear, she has not had so
much experience as you and I.”
Such being the amenities which passed between Miss Viner and the prudent
lady who had her in charge, it was not wonderful that the former should
feel ill at ease with her own “party,” as the family of the Grumpy
Barbadian was generally considered to be by those on board.
“You’re getting along like a house on fire with Miss Viner,” said
Matthew Morris, to his young friend.
“Not much fire I can assure you,” said Forrest.
“She aint so ugly as you thought her?”
“Ugly!--no! she’s not ugly. I don’t think I ever said she was. But she
is nothing particular as regards beauty.”
“No; she won’t be lovely for the next three days to come, I dare say. By
the time you reach Panama, she’ll be all that is perfect in woman. I
know how these things go.”
“Those sort of things don’t go at all quickly with me,” said Forrest,
gravely. “Miss Viner is a very interesting young woman, and as it seems
that her route and mine will be together for some time, it is well that
we should be civil to each other. And the more so, seeing that the
people she is with are not congenial to her.”
“No; they are not. There is no young man with them. I generally observe
that on board ship no one is congenial to unmarried ladies except
unmarried men. It is a recognised nautical rule. Uncommon hot, isn’t it?
We are beginning to feel the tropical air. I shall go and cool myself
with a cigar in the fiddle.” The “fiddle” is a certain part of the ship
devoted to smoking, and thither Mr. Morris betook himself. Forrest,
however, did not accompany him, but going forward into the bow of the
vessel, threw himself along upon the sail, and meditated on the
loneliness of his life.
On board the Serrapiqui, the upper tier of cabins opened on to a long
gallery, which ran round that part of the ship, immediately over the
saloon, so that from thence a pleasant inspection could be made of the
viands as they were being placed on the tables. The custom on board
these ships is for two bells to ring preparatory to dinner, at an
interval of half an hour. At the sound of the first, ladies would go to
their cabins to adjust their toilets; but as dressing for dinner is not
carried to an extreme at sea, these operations are generally over before
the second bell, and the lady passengers would generally assemble in
the balcony for some fifteen minutes before dinner. At first they would
stand here alone, but by degrees they were joined by some of the more
enterprising of the men, and so at last a kind of little drawing-room
was formed. The cabins of Miss Viner’s party opened to one side of this
gallery, and that of Mr. Morris and Forrest on the other. Hitherto
Forrest had been contented to remain on his own side, occasionally
throwing a word across to the ladies on the other; but on this day he
boldly went over as soon as he had washed his hands and took his place
between Amelia and Miss Viner.
“We are dreadfully crowded here, Ma’am,” said Amelia.
“Yes, my dear, we are,” said her mother. “But what can one do?”
“There’s plenty of room in the ladies’ cabin,” said Miss Viner. Now if
there be one place on board a ship more distasteful to ladies than
another, it is the ladies’ cabin. Mr. Forrest stood his ground, but it
may be doubted whether he would have done so had he fully understood all
that Amelia had intended.
Then the last bell rang. Mr. Grumpy gave his arm to Miss Grumpy. The
brother-in-law gave his arm to Amelia, and Forrest did the same to Miss
Viner. She hesitated for a moment, and then took it, and by so doing
transferred herself mentally and bodily from the charge of the prudent
and married Mr. Grumpy to that of the perhaps imprudent, and certainly
unmarried Mr. Forrest. She was wrong. A kind-hearted, motherly old lady
from Jamaica, who had seen it all, knew that she was wrong, and wished
that she could tell her so. But there are things of this sort which
kind-hearted old ladies cannot find it in their hearts to say. After
all, it was only for the voyage. Perhaps Miss Viner was imprudent, but
who in Peru would be the wiser? Perhaps, indeed, it was the world that
was wrong, and not Miss Viner. “_Honi soit qui mal y pense_,” she said
to herself, as she took his arm, and leaning on it, felt that she was no
longer so lonely as she had been. On that day she allowed him to give
her a glass of wine out of his decanter. “Hadn’t you better take mine,
Miss Viner?” asked Mr. Grumpy, in a loud voice, but before he could be
answered, the deed had been done.
“Don’t go too fast, old fellow,” Morris said to our hero that night, as
they were walking the deck together before they turned in. “One gets
into a hobble in such matters before one knows where one is.”
“I don’t think I have anything particular to fear,” said Forrest.
“I dare say not, only keep your eyes open. Such haridans as Mrs. Grumpy
allow any latitude to their tongues out in these diggings. You’ll find
that unpleasant tidings will be put on board the ship going down to
Panama, and everybody’s eye will be upon you.” So warned, Mr. Forrest
did put himself on his guard, and the next day and a half his intimacy
with Miss Viner progressed but little. These were, probably, the dullest
hours that he had on the whole voyage.
Miss Viner saw this and drew back. On the afternoon of that second day
she walked a turn or two on deck with the weak brother-in-law, and when
Mr. Forrest came near her, she applied herself to her book. She meant no
harm; but if she were not afraid of what people might say, why should he
be so? So she turned her shoulder towards him at dinner, and would not
drink of his cup.
“Have some of mine, Miss Viner,” said Mr. Grumpy, very loudly. But on
that day Miss Viner drank no wine.
The sun sets quickly as one draws near to the tropics, and the day was
already gone, and the dusk had come on, when Mr. Forrest walked out upon
the deck that evening a little after six. But the night was beautiful
and mild, and there was a hum of many voices from the benches. He was
already uncomfortable, and sore with a sense of being deserted. There
was but one person on board the ship that he liked, and why should he
avoid her and be avoided? He soon perceived where she was standing. The
Grumpy family had a bench to themselves, and she was opposite to it, on
her feet, leaning against the side of the vessel. “Will you walk this
evening, Miss Viner?” he asked.