‘What do you call a scrape, Captain Munday?’
’I should call it a scrape if a young gentleman
of your position and your prospects were to find himself
engaged on board ship to marry a woman he knew nothing
about.’
‘Do you know anything about my position and
prospects, Captain Munday?’
‘I know you are a gentleman.’
‘And I think you know less about the lady.’
‘I know nothing;—but I will tell
you what I hear.’
’I really would rather that you did not.
Of course, Captain Munday, on board your own ship
you are a despot, and I must say that you have made
everything very pleasant for us. But I don’t
think even your position entitles you to talk to me
about my private affairs,—or about hers.
You say you know nothing. Is it manly to repeat
what one hears about a poor forlorn woman?’
Then the Captain retreated without another word, owning
to himself that he was beaten. If this foolish
young man chose to make for himself a bed of that
kind he must lie upon it. Captain Munday went
away shrugging his shoulders, and spoke no further
word to John Caldigate on that or any other subject
during the voyage.
Caldigate had driven off his persecutors valiantly,
and had taught them all to think that he was resolute
in his purposes in regard to Mrs. Smith, let those
purposes be what they might; but nothing could be
further from the truth; for he had no purposes and
was, within his own mind, conscious of his lack of
all purpose, and very conscious of his folly.
And though he could repel Mrs. Callander and the Captain,—as
he had always repelled those who had attempted to
control him,—still he knew that they had
been right. Such an intimacy as this could not
be wise, and its want of wisdom became the more strongly
impressed upon him the nearer he got to shore, and
the more he felt that when he had got ashore he should
not know how to act in regard to her.
The intimacy had certainly become very close.
He had expressed his great admiration, and she had
replied that, ’had things not been as they were,’
she could have returned the feeling. But she did
not say what the things were which might have been
otherwise. Nor did she seem to attempt to lead
him on to further and more definite proposals.
And she never spoke of any joint action between them
when on shore, though she gave herself up to his society
here on board the ship. She seemed to think that
they were then to part, as though one would be going
one way, and one the other;—but he felt
that after so close an intimacy they could not part
like that.
Reaching Melbourne
