“Their ideal of propriety13 up country is very different from ours,” he said, beginning one of his long comments. “I don't say that it concerns the conscience more than ours does; but they think evil of different things. We're getting Europeanized,—I don't mean you, Dunham; in spite of your endeavors you will always remain one of the most hopelessly American of our species,—and we have our little borrowed anxieties about the free association of young people. They have none whatever; though they are apt to look suspiciously upon married people's friendships with other people's wives and husbands. It's quite likely that Lurella, with the traditions of her queer world, has not imagined anything anomalous15 in her position. She may realize certain inconveniences. But she must see great advantages in it. Poor girl! How she must be rioting on the united devotion of cabin and forecastle, after the scanty16 gallantries of a hill town peopled by elderly unmarried women! I'm glad of it, for her sake. I wonder which she really prizes most: your ornate attentions, or the uncouth17 homage18 of those sailors, who are always running to fetch her rings and blocks when she makes a wild shot. I believe I don't care and shouldn't disapprove19 of her preference, whichever it was.” Staniford frowned before he added: “But I object to Hicks and his drolleries. It's impossible for that little wretch20 to think reverently21 of a young girl; it's shocking to see her treating him as if he were a gentleman.” Hicks's behavior really gave no grounds for reproach; and it was only his moral mechanism22, as Staniford called the character he constructed for him, which he could blame; nevertheless, the thought of him gave an oblique23 cast to Staniford's reflections, which he cut short by saying, “This sort of worship is every woman's due in girlhood; but I suppose a fortnight of it will make her a pert and silly coquette. What does she say to your literature, Dunham?”
Dunham had already begun to lend Lydia books,—his own and Staniford's,—in which he read aloud to her, and chose passages for her admiration24; but he was obliged to report that she had rather a passive taste in literature. She seemed to like what he said was good, but not to like it very much, or to care greatly for reading; or else she had never had the habit of talking books. He suggested this to Staniford, who at once philosophized it.
“Why, I rather like that, you know. We all read in such a literary way, now; we don't read simply for the joy or profit of it; we expect to talk about it, and say how it is this and that; and I've no doubt that we're sub-consciously harassed25, all the time, with an automatic process of criticism. Now Lurella, I fancy, reads with the sense of the days when people read in private, and not in public, as we do. She believes that your serious books are all true; and she knows that my novels are all lies—that's what some excellent Christians26 would call the fiction even of George Eliot or of Hawthorne; she would be ashamed to discuss the lives and loves of heroes and heroines who never existed. I think that's first-rate. She must wonder at your distempered interest in them. If one could get at it, I suppose the fresh wholesomeness27 of Lurella's mind would be something delicious,—a quality like spring water.”
He was one of those men who cannot rest in regard to people they meet till they have made some effort to formulate28 them. He liked to ticket them off; but when he could not classify them, he remained content with his mere29 study of them. His habit was one that does not promote sympathy with one's fellow creatures. He confessed even that it disposed him to wish for their less acquaintance when once he had got them generalized; they became then collected specimens31. Yet, for the time being, his curiosity in them gave him a specious32 air of sociability33. He lamented34 the insincerity which this involved, but he could not help it. The next novelty in character was as irresistible35 as the last; he sat down before it till it yielded its meaning, or suggested to him some analogy by which he could interpret it.
With this passion for the arrangement and distribution of his neighbors, it was not long before he had placed most of the people on board in what he called the psychology36 of the ship. He did not care that they should fit exactly in their order. He rather preferred that they should have idiosyncrasies which differentiated37 them from their species, and he enjoyed Lydia's being a little indifferent about books for this and for other reasons. “If she were literary, she would be like those vulgar little persons of genius in the magazine stories. She would have read all sorts of impossible things up in her village. She would have been discovered by some aesthetic38 summer boarder, who had happened to identify her with the gifted Daisy Dawn, and she would be going out on the aesthetic's money for the further expansion of her spirit in Europe. Somebody would be obliged to fall in love with her, and she would sacrifice her career for a man who was her inferior, as we should be subtly given to understand at the close. I think it's going to be as distinguished39 by and by not to like books as it is not to write them. Lurella is a prophetic soul; and if there's anything comforting about her, it's her being so merely and stupidly pretty.”
“She is not merely and stupidly pretty!” retorted Dunham. “She never does herself justice when you are by. She can talk very well, and on some subjects she thinks strongly.”
“Oh, I'm sorry for that!” said Staniford. “But call me some time when she's doing herself justice.”
“I don't mean that she's like the women we know. She doesn't say witty40 things, and she hasn't their responsive quickness; but her ideas are her own, no matter how old they are; and what she says she seems to be saying for the first time, and as if it had never been thought out before.”
“That is what I have been contending for,” said Staniford; “that is what I meant by spring water. It is that thrilling freshness which charms me in Lurella.” He laughed. “Have you converted her to your spectacular faith, yet?” Dunham blushed. “You have tried,” continued Staniford. “Tell me about it!”
“I will not talk with you on such matters,” said Dunham, “till you know how to treat serious things seriously.”
“I shall know how when I realize that they are serious with you. Well, I don't object to a woman's thinking strongly on religious subjects: it's the only safe ground for her strong thinking, and even there she had better feel strongly. Did you succeed in convincing her that Archbishop Laud41 was a saint incompris, and the good King Charles a blessed martyr42.”
Dunham did not answer till he had choked down some natural resentment43. He had, several years earlier, forsaken44 the pale Unitarian worship of his family, because, Staniford always said, he had such a feeling for color, and had adopted an extreme tint45 of ritualism. It was rumored46 at one time, before his engagement to Miss Hibbard, that he was going to unite with a celibate47 brotherhood48; he went regularly into retreat at certain seasons, to the vast entertainment of his friend; and, within the bounds of good taste, he was a zealous49 propagandist of his faith, of which he had the practical virtues50 in high degree. “I hope,” he said presently, “that I know how to respect convictions, even of those adhering to the Church in Error.”
Staniford laughed again. “I see you have not converted Lurella. Well, I like that in her, too. I wish I could have the arguments, pro14 and con3. It would have been amusing. I suppose,” he pondered aloud, “that she is a Calvinist of the deepest dye, and would regard me as a lost spirit for being outside of her church. She would look down upon me from one height, as I look down upon her from another. And really, as far as personal satisfaction in superiority goes, she might have the advantage of me. That's very curious, very interesting.”
As the first week wore away, the wonted incidents of a sea voyage lent their variety to the life on board. One day the ship ran into a school of whales, which remained heavily thumping52 and lolling about in her course, and blowing jets of water into the air, like so many breaks in garden hose, Staniford suggested. At another time some flying-fish came on board. The sailors caught a dolphin, and they promised a shark, by and by. All these things were turned to account for the young girl's amusement, as if they had happened for her. The dolphin died that she might wonder and pity his beautiful death; the cook fried her some of the flying-fish; some one was on the lookout53 to detect even porpoises54 for her. A sail in the offing won the discoverer envy when he pointed55 it out to her; a steamer, celebrity56. The captain ran a point out of his course to speak to a vessel57, that she might be able to tell what speaking a ship at sea was like.
At table the stores which the young men had laid in for private use became common luxuries, and she fared sumptuously58 every day upon dainties which she supposed were supplied by the ship,—delicate jellies and canned meats and syruped fruits; and, if she wondered at anything, she must have wondered at the scrupulous59 abstinence with which Captain Jenness, seconded by Mr. Watterson, refused the luxuries which his bounty60 provided them, and at the constancy with which Staniford declined some of these dishes, and Hicks declined others. Shortly after the latter began more distinctly to be tolerated, he appeared one day on deck with a steamer-chair in his hand, and offered it to Lydia's use, where she sat on a stool by the bulwark61. After that, as she reclined in this chair, wrapped in her red shawl, and provided with a book or some sort of becoming handiwork, she was even more picturesquely62 than before the centre about which the ship's pride and chivalrous64 sentiment revolved65. They were Americans, and they knew how to worship a woman.
Staniford did not seek occasions to please and amuse her, as the others did. When they met, as they must, three times a day, at table, he took his part in the talk, and now and then addressed her a perfunctory civility. He imagined that she disliked him, and he interested himself in imagining the ignorant grounds of her dislike. “A woman,” he said, “must always dislike some one in company; it's usually another woman; as there's none on board, I accept her enmity with meekness66.” Dunham wished to persuade him that he was mistaken. “Don't try to comfort me, Dunham,” he replied. “I find a pleasure in being detested67 which is inconceivable to your amiable bosom68.”
Dunham turned to go below, from where they stood at the head of the cabin stairs. Staniford looked round, and saw Lydia, whom they had kept from coming up; she must have heard him. He took his cigar from his mouth, and caught up a stool, which he placed near the ship's side, where Lydia usually sat, and without waiting for her concurrence69 got a stool for himself, and sat down with her.
“Well, Miss Blood,” he said, “it's Saturday afternoon at last, and we're at the end of our first week. Has it seemed very long to you?”
Lydia's color was bright with consciousness, but the glance she gave Staniford showed him looking tranquilly70 and honestly at her. “Yes,” she said, “it has seemed long.”
“That's merely the strangeness of everything. There's nothing like local familiarity to make the time pass,—except monotony; and one gets both at sea. Next week will go faster than this, and we shall all be at Trieste before we know it. Of course we shall have a storm or two, and that will retard71 us in fact as well as fancy. But you wouldn't feel that you'd been at sea if you hadn't had a storm.”
He knew that his tone was patronizing, but he had theorized the girl so much with a certain slight in his mind that he was not able at once to get the tone which he usually took towards women. This might not, indeed, have pleased some women any better than patronage72: it mocked while it caressed73 all their little pretenses74 and artificialities; he addressed them as if they must be in the joke of themselves, and did not expect to be taken seriously. At the same time he liked them greatly, and would not on any account have had the silliest of them different from what she was. He did not seek them as Dunham did; their society was not a matter of life or death with him; but he had an elder-brotherly kindness for the whole sex.
Lydia waited awhile for him to say something more, but he added nothing, and she observed, with a furtive75 look: “I presume you've seen some very severe storms at sea.”
“No,” Staniford answered, “I haven't. I've been over several times, but I've never seen anything alarming. I've experienced the ordinary seasickening tempestuousness
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