Homeward Bound - James Fenimore Cooper (free e books to read .txt) 📗

yield to the circumstances in which they are placed, with the laudable and convenient desire to render others comfortable, in order that they may be made comfortable themselves.

A man of the world and a gentleman, Mr. Effingham had looked forward to this passage with a good deal of concern, on account of his daughter, while he shrank with the sensitiveness of his habits from the necessity of exposing one of her delicacy and plastic simplicity to the intercourse of a ship. Accompanied by Mademoiselle Viefville, watched over by Nanny, and guarded by himself and his kinsman, he had lost some of his apprehensions on the subject during the three probationary days, and now took his stand in the centre of his own party to observe the new arrivals, with something of the security of a man who is entrenched in his own door-way.

The place they occupied, at a window of the hurricane-house, did not admit of a view of the water; but it was sufficiently evident from the preparations in the gangway next the land, that boats were so near as to render that unnecessary.

" Genus cockney; species , bagman," muttered John Effingham, as the first arrival touched the deck. "That worthy has merely exchanged the basket of a coach for the deck of a packet; we may now learn the price of buttons."

It did not require a naturalist to detect the species of the stranger, in truth; though John Effingham had been a little more minute in his description than was warranted by the fact. The person in question was one of those mercantile agents that England scatters so profusely over the world, some of whom have all the most sterling qualities of their nation, though a majority, perhaps, are a little disposed to mistake the value of other people as well as their own. This was the genus , as John Effingham had expressed it; but the species will best appear on dissection. The master of the ship saluted this person cordially, and as an old acquaintance, by the name of Monday.

"A mousquetaire resuscitated," said Mademoiselle Viefville, in her broken English, as one who had come in the same boat as the first-named, thrust his whiskered and mustachoed visage above the rail of the gangway.

"More probably a barber, who has converted his own head into a wig-block," growled John Effingham.

"It cannot, surely, be Wellington in disguise!" added Mr. Effingham, with a sarcasm of manner that was quite unusual for him.

"Or a peer of the realm in his robes!" whispered Eve, who was much amused with the elaborate toilet of the subject of their remarks, who descended the ladder supported by a sailor, and, after speaking to the master, was formally presented to his late boat-companion, as Sir George Templemore. The two bustled together about the quarter-deck for a few minutes, using eye-glasses, which led them into several scrapes, by causing them to hit their legs against sundry objects they might otherwise have avoided, though both were much too high-bred to betray feelings--or fancied they were, which answered the same purpose.

After these flourishes, the new comers descended to the cabin in company, not without pausing to survey the party in the hurricane-house, more especially Eve, who, to old Ann's great scandal, was the subject of their manifest and almost avowed admiration and observation.

"One is rather glad to have such a relief against the tediousness of a sea-passage," said Sir George as they went down the ladder. "No doubt you are used to this sort of thing, Mr. Monday; but with me, it is voyage the first,--that is, if I except the Channel and the seas one encounters in making the usual run on the Continent."

"Oh, dear me! I go and come as regularly as the equinoxes, Sir George, which you know is quite, in rule, once a year. I call my passages the equinoxes, too, for I religiously make it a practice to pass just twelve hours out of the twenty-four in my berth."

This was the last the party on deck heard of the opinions of the two worthies, for the time being; nor would they have been favoured with all this, had not Mr. Monday what he thought a rattling way with him, which caused him usually to speak in an octave above every one else. Although their voices were nearly mute, or rather lost to those above, they were heard knocking about in their state-rooms; and Sir George, in particular, as frequently called out for the steward, by the name of "Saunders," as Mr. Monday made similar appeals to the steward's assistant for succour, by the appropriate appellation of "Toast."

"I think we may safely claim this person, at least, for a countryman," said John Effingham: "he is what I have heard termed an American in a European mask."

"The character is more ambitiously conceived than skilfully maintained," replied Eve, who had need of all her retenue of manner to abstain from laughing outright. "Were I to hazard a conjecture, it would be to describe the gentleman as a collector of costumes, who had taken a fancy to exhibit an assortment of his riches on his own person. Mademoiselle Viefville, you, who so well understand costumes, may tell us from what countries the separate parts of that attire have been collected?"

"I can answer for the shop in Berlin where the travelling cap was purchased," returned the amused governess; "in no other part of the world can a parallel be found."

"I should think, ma'am," put in Nanny, with the quiet simplicity of her nature as well as of her habits, "that the gentleman must have bought his boots in Paris, for they seem to pinch his feet, and all the Paris boots and shoes pinch one's feet,--at least, all mine did."

"The watch-guard is stamped 'Geneva,'" continued Eve.

"The coat comes from Frankfort: c'est une équivoque ."

"And the pipe from Dresden, Mademoiselle Viefville."

"The conchiglia savours of Rome, and the little chain annexed bespeaks the Rialto; while the moustaches are anything but indigènes , and the tout ensemble the world: the man is travelled, at least."

Eve's eyes sparkled with humour as she said this: while the new passenger, who had been addressed as Mr. Dodge, and as an old acquaintance also, by the captain, came so near them as to admit of no further comments. A short conversation between the two soon let the listeners into the secret that the traveller had come from America in the spring, whither, after having made the tour of Europe, he was about to return in the autumn.

"Seen enough, ha!" added the captain, with a friendly nod of the head, when the other had finished a brief summary of his proceedings in the eastern hemisphere. "All eyes, and no leisure or inclination for more?"

"I've seen as much as I warnt to see," returned the traveller, with an emphasis on , and a pronunciation of , the word we have italicised, that cannot be committed to paper, but which were eloquence itself on the subject of self-satisfaction and self-knowledge.

"Well, that is the main point. When a man has got all he wants of a thing, any addition is like over-ballast. Whenever I can get fifteen knots out of the ship, I make it a point to be satisfied, especially under close-reefed topsails and on a taut bowline."

The traveller and the master nodded their heads at each other, like men who understood more than they expressed; when the former, after inquiring with marked interest if his room-mate, Sir George Templemore, had arrived, went below. An intercourse of three days had established something like an acquaintance between the latter and the passengers she had brought from the River, and turning his red quizzical face towards the ladies, he observed with inimitable gravity,

"There is nothing like understanding when one has enough, even if it be of knowledge. I never yet met with the navigator who found two 'noons' in the same day, that he was not in danger of shipwreck. Now I dare say, Mr. Dodge there, who has just gone below, has, as he says, seen all he warnts to see, and it is quite likely he knows more already than he can cleverly get along with.--Let the people be getting the booms on the yards, Mr. Leach; we shall be warnting to spread our wings before the end of the passage."

As Captain Truck, though he often swore, seldom laughed, his mate gave the necessary order with a gravity equal to that with which it had been delivered to him; and even the sailors went aloft to execute it with greater alacrity for an indulgence of humour that was peculiar to their trade, and which, as few understood it so well, none enjoyed so much as themselves. As the homeward-bound crew was the same as the outward-bound, and Mr. Dodge had come abroad quite as green as he was now going home ripe, this traveller of six months' finish did not escape diver commentaries that literally cut him up "from clew to ear-ring," and which flew about in the rigging much as active birds flutter from branch to branch in a tree. The subject of all this wit, however, remained profoundly, not to say happily, ignorant of the sensation he had produced, being occupied in disposing of the Dresden pipe, the Venetian chain, and the Roman conchiglia in his state-room, and in "instituting an acquaintance," as he expressed it, with his room-mate, Sir George Templemore.

"We must surely have something better than this," observed Mr. Effingham, "for I observed that two of the state-rooms in the main cabin are taken singly."

In order that the general reader may understand this, it may be well to explain that the packet-ships have usually two berths in each state-room, but they who can afford to pay an extra charge are permitted to occupy the little apartment singly. It is scarcely necessary to add, that persons of gentlemanly feeling, when circumstances will at all permit, prefer economising in other things in order to live by themselves for the month usually consumed in the passage, since in nothing is refinement more plainly exhibited than in the reserve of personal habits.

"There is no lack of vulgar fools stirring with full pockets," rejoined John Effingham; "the two rooms you mention may have been taken by some 'yearling' travellers, who are little better than the semi-annual savant who has just passed us."

"It is at least something , cousin Jack, to have the wishes of a gentleman."

"It is something , Eve, though it end in wishes, or even in caricature."

"What are the names?" pleasantly asked Mademoiselle Viefville; "the names may be a clue to the characters."

"The papers pinned to the bed-curtains bear the antithetical titles of Mr. Sharp and Mr. Blunt; though it is quite probable the first is wanting of a letter or two by accident, and the last is merely a synonyme of the old nom de guerre 'Cash.'"

"Do persons, then, actually travel with borrowed names, in our days?" asked Eve, with a little of the curiosity of the common mother whose name she bore.

"That do they, and with borrowed money too, as well as in other days. I dare say, however, these two co-voyagers of ours will come just as they are, in truth, Sharp enough, and Blunt enough."

"Are they Americans, think you?"

"They ought to be; both