“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 Barbados.
“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
