It was one of the quaintest things imaginable to watch the attitude of the various passengers towards the cause of all the trouble. A community of people shut up together on board ship become quite like a small town, of the variety where every one knows everyone else, and their business. Previous to the semi-subdued scandal Captain H. had been in great request. He was a fine-looking man, and a long way more versatile than most. Now many of the people who had painstakingly scraped acquaintance with him felt it necessary to look the other way as he passed. Others again—women, of course—tried to secure an introduction from sheer inquisitiveness.
The sole arbiter of what is what, a multum in parvo of the correct thing to do, we discovered in a young bride, a perfect tome of learning. I think—I thought so before I met this walking ethic of propriety—there is no doubt Mrs. Grundy is not the old woman she is represented to be, with cap and spectacles, though for years we have pictured her thus. It is all erroneous. Mrs. Grundy is a newly married youthful British matron of the middle class. There is no greater stickler for the proprieties living. Having possessed herself of a certificate that certifies respectability, she likes to know everyone else is hall-marked and not pinchbeck. She proposed to bring the romance of the stewardess and the officer before the notice of the directors of the company, and had every confidence in getting one or two people dismissed over it. All hail for the proprieties! This good lady markedly and ostentatiously cut the disgraced warrior, who was her vis-à-vis at table, and when I asked her why she considered a man guilty of anything until he had been proved beyond doubt to merit cutting, she looked at me with a supercilious eyebrow raised, and a world of pity for my ignorance in her tone as she answered firmly: “I must have the moral courage necessary to cut an acquaintance lacking principle.”
“Wouldn’t it be infinitely more courageous to stick to one?” I said, and left her.
We had a very narrow little padre on board too, going out to take on some church billet Mussoorie way. He was bent on collecting, from all of us who were powerless to evade him, enough money to set up a screen of sorts in his new tabernacle. Although he did not approve of the sweepstakes on the day’s run, he sacrificed his feeling sufficiently to accept a free share, and would ask us for subscriptions besides, as we lounged about the deck individually or in small groups, always opening the ball by asking our valueless opinions as to the most suitable subject—biblical, of course—for illustration. He came to me one day and asked me what I thought about the matter. Did I think Moses with his mother would make a good picture for a screen? I had no views at all, so had to speedily manufacture some. I gave it as my opinion that if a screen picture were a necessity Moses would certainly do as well as anybody else—in fact better. For, after all, Moses was the greatest leader of men the world has ever known. He engineered an expedition to freedom, and no man can do more than that.
But I begged the padre to give Moses his rightful mother at last. For the mother of Moses was not she who took all the credit for it. The mother of Moses was undoubtedly the Princess, his father some handsome Israelite, and that is why Moses was for ever in heart hankering after his own people, the Israelites. The Princess arranged the little drama of the bullrushes, most sweetly pathetic and tender of stories, arranged too that the baby should be found at the crucial moment, and then gave the little poem to the world to sing through the centuries.
I shocked the parson profoundly, and he never asked me to subscribe again. He was a narrow, bigoted little creature, and I should think has the church and the screen very much to himself by now. I went to hear him take service in the saloon on Sunday. He was quite the sort of padre that makes one feel farther off from heaven than when one was a boy.
I often wonder why so clever a man as Omar asked: “Why nods the drowsy worshipper outside?” He must have known the inevitable result had the drowsy worshipper gone in.
I fell asleep during the sermon, and only wakened up as it was about ending, just as the padre closed an impassioned harangue with “May we all have new hearts, may we all have pure hearts, may we all have good hearts, may we all have sweet hearts,” and the graceless Cecily says that my “Amen” shook the ship, which was, I need hardly tell you, “a most unmitigated misstatement.”
Aden was reached at last—“The coal hole of the East.” As a health resort, I cannot conscientiously recommend it. The heat was overwhelming, and the local Hotel Ritz sadly wanting in some things and overdone in others. We found it necessary to spend some days there and many sleepless nights, pursuing during the latter the big game in our bedrooms. “Keatings” was of no use. I believe the local insects were case-hardened veterans, and rather liked the powder than otherwise. What nights we had! But every one was in like case, for from all over the house came the sound of slippers banging and much scuffling, and from the room opposite to mine language consigning all insects, the Aden variety in particular, to some even warmer place.
In some ways the hotel was more than up to date. Nothing so ordinary as a mere common or garden bell in one’s room. Instead, a sort of dial, like the face of a clock, with every conceivable want written round it, from a great desire to meet the manager to a wish to call out the local Fire Brigade. You turned on a small steel finger to point at your particular requirement, rang a bell—et voilà! It seems mere carping to state that the matter ended with voilà. The dials were there, you might ring if you liked—what more do you want? Some day some one will answer. Meanwhile, one can always shout.