Chapter III

In ordinary times my thrifty instinct might have led me to travel in the second class division of the great steamer. But it had happened that the sum I set aside to cover my travelling expenses proved more than ample. Several small unreckoned additions had been made to it during my last month in England; and the upshot was that I decided to travel by first saloon, and even to indulge myself in the added luxury of a single-berth, upper-deck cabin. For me privacy had for long been one of the few luxuries I really did value. Heron had mildly satirised my sybaritic plans as representing an ingenious preparation for hut life in the Australian bush, but I had claimed that comfort and privacy on the passage would give me a deserved holiday, and help put me into good form for my fresh start oversea. I am not sure which view was the more correct.

At all events I certainly was very comfortably placed on board the _Oronta_. My books I had deliberately packed in boxes marked 'Not wanted on voyage.' There was not so much as a sheet of manuscript paper among my cabin luggage. Beyond an odd letter or two for postage at ports of call, and any casual browsing in the ship's library to which I might feel impelled in my idleness, I was prepared to give no thought to reading or writing for the present; since for five-and-twenty years I had been giving practically all my days and half my nights to these pursuits as a working man of letters.

I had amused myself of late with elaborate anticipations of the delights of idleness during this passage to Australia. My ideas of sea travel were really culled from recollections of life on a full rigged clipper ship--not a steamboat. (The homeward passage from Australia had hardly been sea-travel in the ordinary sense for me, but rather six weeks of clerking in an office.) In my anticipations of the present journey, the dominant impressions had been based upon memories of the spotless cleanliness, endless leisure, and primitive simplicity of the old time sailing ship life. I do not mean that I had thought I should trot about the decks of the _Oronta_ bare-footed, as I and my childish companions had done aboard the _Ariadne_; but I do mean that the atmosphere of the _Ariadne_ life had coloured all my thoughts of what the present trip would be for me.

And that, of course, was a mistake. The smoothly ordered life of the _Oronta's_ saloon passengers was very much that of a first-class seaside hotel, say in Bournemouth. So far from sprawling upon the snowy deck of a forecastle-head, to watch the phosphorescent lights in the water under our ship's bow, saloon passengers on board the _Oronta_ were not expected ever to intrude upon the forward deck--the ship had no forecastle-head--which was reserved for the uses of the crew. Also, in the conventional black and white of society's evening uniform for men, I suppose one does not exactly sprawl on decks, even where these are spotless, as they never are on board a steamship.

The pleasant race of sailor men, of shell-backs, such as those who swung the yards and tallied on to the halliards of the _Ariadne_, may or may not have become extinct, and given place to a breed of sea-going mechanics, who protect their feet by means of rubber boots when washing decks down in the morning. In any case, I met none of the old salted variety among the _Oronta's_ multitudinous crew. For me there was here no sitting on painted spars, or tarry hatch-covers, or rusty anchor-stocks, and listening to long, rambling 'yarns,' or 'cuffers,' in idle dog-watches or restful night-watches, when the southern Trades blew steadily, and the braces hung untouched upon their pins for a week on end. No, in the second dog-watch here, one took a solemn constitutional preparatory to dressing for dinner; and in the first night-watch one smoked and listened willy-nilly to polite small talk, and (from the ship's orchestra) the latest and most criminal products of New York's musical genius. I never heard or saw the process of relieving wheel or look-out aboard the _Oronta_, and long before the beginning of the middle watch I had usually switched off for the night the electric reading-lamp over my pillow.

The fact is, of course, that I had never had any kind of training for such a life as that in which I now found myself. I will not pretend to regret that, for, to be frank, it is a vapid, foolish, empty life enough. But there it was; one could not well evade it, and I had had no previous experience of anything at all like it. The most popular breakfast-hour was something after nine. Beef-tea, ices, and suchlike aids to indigestion were partaken of a couple of hours later. Luncheon was a substantial dinner. The four o'clock tea was quite a meal for most passengers. Caviare and anchovy sandwiches were the rule in the half hour preceding dinner, which was, of course, a serious function. But ours was a valiant company, and supper was a seventh meal achieved by many. The orchestra seemed never far away; games were numerous (here again I had hopelessly neglected my education), and at night there were concerts, impromptu dances, and balls that were far from being impromptu.

It is, I fear, a confession of natural perversity, but by the time we reached the Mediterranean I was exceedingly restless, and inclined to nervous depression.

I welcomed the various ports of call, and was properly ashamed of the unsocial irritability which made me resent the feeling of being made one of a chattering, laughing, high-spirited horde of tourists, whose descent upon a foreign port seriously damaged whatever charm or interest it might possess. At least the trading residents of these ports were far more sensible than I, their preference undoubtedly causing them to welcome the wielders of camera and guide-book in the vein of 'the more the merrier.'

It was in Naples, outside the Villa Nazionale, that it fell to me to rescue the elegant young widow, Mrs. Oldcastle, from the embarrassing attentions of a cabman, whose acquaintances were already rallying about him in great force. So far as speech went, my command of Italian was not very much better than Mrs. Oldcastle's perhaps; but at least I had a pocketful of Italian silver, while she, poor lady, had only English money. The cabman was grossly overpaid, of course, but the main point was I silenced him. And then, her flushed cheeks testifying to her embarrassment, Mrs. Oldcastle turned towards the gardens, and, in common courtesy, I walked with her to ascertain if I could be of any further service. The upshot was that we strolled for some time, took tea in the Cafe Umberto, walked through the Museo, visited one of the city's innumerable glove-shops, and finally, still together, drove back to the port and rejoined the _Oronta_.

As fellow-passengers we had up till this time merely exchanged casual salutations, Mrs. Oldcastle being one of the three who shared the particular table in the saloon at which I sat. No one else of her name appeared in the passenger list, in which I had already read the line: 'Mrs. Oldcastle and maid.' I imagined her age to be still something in the earliest thirties, and I had been informed by some obliging gossip that she was English by birth; that she had married an Australian squatter, who had died during the past year or so; that her permanent home was in England, but that she was just now paying a visit to the Commonwealth upon some business connected with her late husband's estates there.

'You have been most kind, Mr. Freydon,' she said, as we stepped from the gangway to the steamer's deck. 'I was in a dreadful muddle by myself, and now, thanks to you, I have really enjoyed my afternoon in Naples. Believe me, I am grateful. And,' she added, with a faint blush, 'I shall now find even greater interest than before in your books. Au revoir!'

So she disappeared, by way of the saloon companion, while I took a turn along the deck to smoke a cigarette. Naturally I had not mentioned my books or profession, and I thought it an odd chance that she should know them. She certainly had been a most agreeable companion, and----

'There's no doubt that life in any other country, no matter where, does seem to enlarge the sympathies of English people,' I told myself. 'It tends to mitigate the severity of their attitude towards the narrower conventions. If this had been her first journey out of England she might have accepted my help in the matter of the cabman, but would almost certainly have felt called upon to reject my company from that on. Instead of which-- H'm! Well, upon my word, I have enjoyed the day far more than I should have done alone. She certainly is very bright and intelligent.'

And I nodded and smiled to myself, recalling some of her comments upon certain figures in the marble gallery of the Museo that afternoon. There was nothing in the least inane or parrot-like about her conversation. I experienced a more genial and friendly feeling than had been mine till then toward the whole of my fellow-passengers.

'After all,' I told myself, 'this forming of hasty impressions of people, from snatches of their talk and mannerisms and so forth, is both misleading and uncharitable. Here have I been sitting at table for a week, and, upon my word, I had no idea that any one among her sex on board had half so much intelligence as she had shown in these few hours away from the crowd. The crowd--that's it. It's misleading to observe folk in the mass, and in the confinement of a ship.'

The passengers' quarters on an ocean liner are fully equal to the residences in a cathedral close as forcing beds of gossip and scandal. Thus, before we reached the Indian Ocean, I was aware that the gossips had so far condescended as to link my name with that of one whom I certainly rated as the most attractive of her sex on board. Indeed, it was Mrs. Oldcastle herself who drew my attention to this, with a little _moue_ of contempt and disgust.

'Really, people on board ship are too despicable in this matter of gossip,' she said. 'It would seem that they are literally incapable of evolving any other topic than the doings, or supposed doings, of those about them. And the men seem to me just as bad as the women.'