University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.

Bath Guide.

The assembling of the passengers of a packet-ship is at
all times a matter of interest to the parties concerned.
During the western passage in particular, which can never
safely be set down at less than a month, there is the prospect
of being shut up or the whole of that period, within
the narrow compass of a ship, with those whom chance has
brought together, influenced by all the accidents and caprices
of personal character, and a difference of nations,
conditions in life, and education. The quarter-deck, it is
true, forms a sort of local distinction, and the poor creatures
in the steerage seem the rejected of Providence for the time
being; but all who know life will readily comprehend that
the pêle-mêle of the cabins can seldom offer anything very
enticing to people of refinement and taste. Against this,

evil, however, there is one particular source of relief; most
persons feeling a disposition to 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 Vief
ville, 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 warant 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 bow-line.”

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 divers 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 the qualities being thoroughly
indigènes, as Mademoiselle Viefville would say.”

“Nay, cousin John, I will bandy words with you no
longer; for the last twelve months you have done little else
than try to lessen the joyful anticipations with which I return
to the home of my childhood.”

“Sweet one, I would not willingly lessen one of thy
young and generous pleasures by any of the alloy of my
own bitterness; but what wilt thou? A little preparation
for that which is as certain to follow as that the sun succeeds
the dawn, will rather soften the disappointment thou
art doomed to feel.”

Eve had only time to cast a look of affectionate gratitude
towards him,—for whilst he spoke tauntingly, he spoke
with a feeling that her experience from childhood had taught
her to appreciate,—ere the arrival of another boat drew
the common attention to the gangway. A call from the
officer in attendance had brought the captain to the rail;
and his order “to pass in the luggage of Mr. Sharp and
Mr. Blunt,” was heard by all near.

“Now for les indigènes,” whispered Mademoiselle Viefville,
with the nervous excitement that is a little apt to betray
a lively expectation in the gentler sex.

Eve smiled, for there are situations in which trifles help
to awaken interest, and the little that had just passed served
to excite curiosity in the whole party. Mr. Effingham
thought it a favourable symptom that the master, who had
had interviews with all his passengers in London, walked
to the gangway to receive the new-comers; for a boat-load
of the quarter-deck oi polloi had come on board a moment
before without any other notice on his part than a general
bow, with the usual order to receive their effects.

“The delay denotes Englishmen,” the caustic John had

time to throw in, before the silent arrangement at the gangway
was interrupted by the appearance of the passengers.

The quiet smile of Mademoiselle Viefville, as the two
travellers appeared on deck, denoted approbation, for her
practised eye detected at a glance, that both were certainly
gentlemen. Women are more purely creatures of convention
in their way than men, their education inculcating
nicer distinctions and discriminations than that of the other
sex; and Eve, who would have studied Sir George Templemore
and Mr. Dodge as she would have studied the animals
of a caravan, or as creatures with whom she had no
affinities, after casting a sly look of curiosity at the two
who now appeared on deck, unconsciously averted her eyes
like a well-bred young person in a drawing-room.

“They are indeed English,” quietly remarked Mr. Effingham;
“but, out of question, English gentlemen.”

“The one nearest appears to me to be Continental,” answered
Mademoiselle Viefville, who had not felt the same
impulse to avert her look as Eve; “he is jamais Anglais!”

Eve stole a glance in spite of herself, and, with the intuitive
penetration of a woman, intimated that she had come
to the same conclusion. The two strangers were both tall,
and decidedly gentleman-like young men, whose personal
appearance would cause either to be remarked. The one
whom the captain addressed as Mr. Sharp had the most
youthful look, his complexion being florid, and his hair
light; though the other was altogether superior in outline
of features as well as in expression; indeed, Mademoiselle
Viefville fancied she never saw a sweeter smile than that
he gave on returning the salute of the deck; there was
more than the common expression of suavity and of the
usual play of features in it, for it struck her as being
thoughtful and as almost melancholy. His companion was
gracious in his manner, and perfectly well toned; but his
demeanour had less of the soul of the man about it, partaking
more of the training of the social caste to which it belonged.
These may seem to be nice distinctions for the circumstances;
but Mademoiselle Viefville had passed her life in
good company, and under responsibilities that had rendered
observation and judgment highly necessary, and particularly
observations of the other sex.

Each of the strangers had a servant; and while their
luggage was passed up from the boat, they walked aft
nearer to the hurricane-house, accompanied by the captain.
Every American, who is not very familiar with the world,
appears to possess the mania of introducing. Captain
Truck was no exception to the rule; for, while he was
perfectly acquainted with a ship, and knew the etiquette of
the quarter-deck to a hair, he got into blue water the moment
he approached the finesse of depertment. He was
exactly of that school of élégants who fancy drinking a
glass of wine with another, and introducing, are touches of
breeding; it being altogether beyond his comprehension
that both have especial uses, and are only to be resorted to
on especial occasions. Still, the worthy master, who had
begun life on the forecastle, without any previous knowledge
of usages, and who had imbibed the notion that
“manners make the man,” taken in the narrow sense of
the axiom, was a devotee of what he fancied to be good
breeding, and one of his especial duties, as he imagined, in
order to put his passengers at their ease, was to introduce
them to each other; a proceeding which, it is hardly necessary
to say, had just a contrary effect with the better
class of them.

“You are acquainted, gentlemen?” he said, as the three
approached the party in the hurricane-house.

The two travellers endeavoured to look interested, while
Mr. Sharp carelessly observed that they had met for the
first time in the boat. This was delightful intelligence to
Captain Truck, who did not lose a moment in turning it to
account. Stopping short, he faced his companions, and,
with a solemn wave of the hand, he went through the ceremonial
in which he most delighted, and in which he piqued
himself at being an adept.

“Mr. Sharp, permit me to introduce you to Mr. Blunt;
—Mr. Blunt, let me make you acquainted with Mr. Sharp.”

The gentlemen, though taken a little by surprise at the
dignity and formality of the captain, touched their hats
civilly to each other, and smiled. Eve, not a little amused
at the scene, watched the whole procedure; and then she
too detected the sweet melancholy of the one expression,
and the marble-like irony of the other. It may have been

this that caused her to start, though almost imperceptibly,
and to colour.

“Our turn will come next,” muttered John Effingham:
“get the grimaces ready.”

His conjecture was right; for, hearing his voice without
understanding the words, the captain followed up his advantage
to his own infinite gratification.

“Gentlemen,—Mr. Effingham, Mr. John Effingham”—
(every one soon came to make this distinction in addressing
the cousins) — “Miss Effingham, Mademoiselle Viefville:
—Mr. Sharp, Mr. Blunt, ladies;—gentlemen, Mr. Blunt,
Mr. Sharp.”

The dignified bow of Mr. Effingham, as well as the faint
and distant smile of Eve, would have repelled any undue
familiarity in men of less tone than either of the strangers,
both of whom received the unexpected honour like those
who felt themselves to be intruders. As Mr. Sharp raised
his hat to Eve, however, he held it suspended a moment
above his head, and then dropping his arm to its full length,
he bowed with profound respect, though distantly. Mr.
Blunt was less elaborate in his salute, but as pointed as the
circumstances at all required. Both gentlemen were a little
struck with the distant hauteur of John Effingham, whose
bow, while it fulfilled all the outward forms, was what Eve
used laughingly to term “imperial.” The bustle of preparation,
and the certainty that there would be no want
of opportunities to renew the intercourse, prevented more
than the general salutations, and the new-comers descended
to their state-rooms.

“Did you remark the manner in which those people took
my introduction?” asked Captain Truck of his chief mate,
whom he was training up in the ways of packet-politeness,
as one in the road of preferment. “Now, to my notion,
they might have shook hands at least. That's what I call
Vattel.”

“One sometimes falls in with what are rum chaps,” returned
the other, who, from following the London trade, had
caught a few cockneyisms. “If a man chooses to keep his
hands in the beckets, why let him, say I; but I take it as
a slight to the company to sheer out of the usual track in
such matters.”

“I was thinking as much myself; but after all, what can
packet-masters do in such a case? We can set luncheon
and dinner before the passengers, but we can't make them
eat. Now, my rule is, when a gentleman introduces me, to
do the thing handsomely, and to return shake for shake, if it
is three times three; but as for a touch of the beaver, it is like
setting a top-gallant sail in passing a ship at sea, and means
just nothing at all. Who would know a vessel because he
has let run his halyards and swayed the yard up again?
One would do as much to a Turk for manners' sake. No,
no! there is something in this, and, d— me, just to make
sure of it, the first good opportunity that offers, I'll — ay,
I'll just introduce them all over again!—Let the people ship
their handspikes, Mr. Leach, and heave in the slack of the
chain.—Ay, ay! I'll take an opportunity when all hands
are on deck, and introduce them, ship-shape, one by one, as
your greenhorns go through a lubber's-hole, or we shall
have no friendship during the passage.”

The mate nodded approbation, as if the other had hit
upon the right expedient, and then he proceeded to obey the
orders, while the cares of his vessel soon drove the subject
temporarily from the mind of his commander.