The pièce-de-résistance of the evening was provided by a “comic” singer, got up like a very-much-the-worse-for-wear curate, who sang to us about a girl with whom he had once been in love. Matters apparently went smoothly enough until one fateful day he discovered his inamorata’s nose was false, and, what seemed to trouble him more than all, was stuck on with cement. It came off at some awkward moment. This was meant to be funny. If such an uncommon thing happened that a woman had no nose, and more uncommon still, got so good an imitation as to deceive him as to its genuineness in the first place, it would not be affixed with cement. But allowing such improbabilities to pass in the sacred cause of providing amusement, surely the woman’s point of view would give us pause. It would be so awful for her in every way that it would quite swamp any discomfort the man would have to undergo. I felt far more inclined to cry than laugh, and the transcendent vulgarity of it all made one ashamed of being there.
The next item on the programme was a Human Snake, who promised us faithfully that he would dislocate his neck. He marched on to a gaudy dais, and after tying himself in sundry knots and things, suddenly jerked, and his neck elongated, swinging loosely from his body. It was a very horrid sight. An attendant stepped forward and told us the Human Snake had kept his promise. The neck was dislocated. My only feeling in the matter was a regret he had not gone a step farther and broken it. All this was because I have no sense of humour. I don’t like music-hall entertainments. I would put up with being smoked into a kipper if the performance rewarded one at all. It is so automatic, so sad. There is no joy, or freshness, or life about it. ’Tis a squalid way of earning money.
At last every arrangement was arranged, our clothes for the trip duly packed. Being women, we had naturally given much thought to this part of the affair. We said “Adieu” to our wondering and amazed relatives, who, with many injunctions to us to “write every day,” and requests that we should at all times abjure damp beds, saw us off en route for Berbera, via Aden, by a P. and O. liner.
I think steamer-travelling is most enjoyable—that is, unless one happens to be married, in which case there is no pleasure in it, or in much else for the matter of that. I have always noticed that the selfishness which dominates every man more or less, usually more, develops on board ship to an abnormal extent. They invariably contrive to get toothache or lumbago just as they cross the gangway to go aboard. This is all preliminary to securing the lower berth with some appearance of equity. What does it matter that the wife detests top berths, not to speak of the loss of dignity she must endure at the idea even of clambering up? Of course the husband does not ask her to take the top berth. No husband can ask his wife to make herself genuinely uncomfortable to oblige him. He has to hint. He hints in all kinds of ways—throws things about the cabin, and ejaculates parenthetically, “How am I to climb up there with a tooth aching like mine?” or “I shall be lamed for life with my lumbago if I have to get up to that height.”
Having placed the wife in the position of being an unfeeling brute if she insists on taking the lower berth for herself, there is nothing for it but to go on as though the top berth were the be-all of the voyage and her existence.
“Let me have the top berth, Percy,” she pleads; “you know how I love mountaineering.”
“Oh, very well. You may have it. Don’t take it if you don’t want it, or if you’d rather not. I should hate to seem selfish.”
And so it goes on. Then in the morning, in spite of comic papers to the contrary, the husband has to have first go-in at the looking-glass and the washing apparatus, which makes the wife late for breakfast and everything is cold.
Cecily and I shared a most comfortable cabin amidships, together with a Christian Science lady who lay in her berth most days crooning hymns to herself in between violent paroxysms of mal-de-mer. I always understood that in Christian Science you do not have to be ill if you do not want to. This follower of the faith was very bad indeed, and didn’t seem to like the condition of things much. We rather thought of questioning her on the apparent discrepancy, but judged it wiser to leave the matter alone. It is as well to keep on good terms with one’s cabin mate.
Nothing really exciting occurred on the voyage, but one of the passengers provided a little amusement by her management, or rather mismanagement, of an awkward affair. Almost as soon as we started I noticed we had an unusually pretty stewardess, and that a warrior returning to India appeared to agree with me. He waylaid her at every opportunity, and I often came on them whispering in corners of passages o’ nights. Of course it had nothing to do with me what the stewardess did, for I am thankful to say I did not require her tender ministrations on the voyage at all. Well, in the next cabin to ours was a silly little woman—I had known her for years—going out to join her husband, a colonel of Indian Lancers. She made the most never-ending fuss about the noise made by a small baby in the adjoining cabin. One night, very late, Mrs. R. could not, or would not, endure the din any longer, so decided to oust the stewardess from her berth in the ladies’ cabin, the stewardess to come to the vacated one next the wailing baby. All this was duly carried into effect, and the whole ship was in complete silence when the most awful shrieks rent the air. Most of the inhabitants of my corridor turned out, and all made their way to the ladies’ cabin, which seemed the centre of the noise. There we found the ridiculous Mrs. R. alone, and in hysterics. After a little, we could see for ourselves there was nothing much the matter. She gasped out that she had evicted the stewardess, and was just falling off to sleep when a tall figure appeared by the berth, clad in pale blue pyjamas—it seemed to vex her so that it was pale blue, and for the life of me I could not see why they were any worse than dark red—and calling her “Mabel, darling!” embraced her rapturously.