“No, you should not. Now that my incubus has gone to Barbadoes, let me be free for a day or two. What chance is there, I wonder, that the ship’s machinery should all go wrong, and that we should be tossed about in the seas here for the next six months? I suppose it would be very wicked to wish it?”
“We should all be starved; that’s all.”
“What, with a cow on board, and a dozen live sheep, and thousands of cocks and hens! But we are to touch at Santa Martha and Cartagena. What would happen to me if I were to run away at Santa Martha?”
“I suppose I should be bound to run with you.”
“Oh, of course. And therefore, as I would not wish to destroy you, I won’t do it. But it would not hurt you much to be shipwrecked, and wait for the next packet.”
“Miss Viner,” he said after a pause,—and in the meantime he had drawn nearer to her, too near to her considering all things—“in the name of all that is good, and true, and womanly, go back to England. With your feelings, if I may judge of them by words which are spoken half in jest——”
“Mr. Forrest, there is no jest.”
“With your feelings a poorhouse in England would be better than a palace in Peru.”
“An English workhouse would be better, but an English poorhouse is not open to me. You do not know what it is to have friends—no, not friends, but people belonging to you—just so near as to make your respectability a matter of interest to them, but not so near that they should care for your happiness. Emily Viner married to Mr. Gorloch in Peru is put out of the way respectably. She will cause no further trouble, but her name may be mentioned in family circles without annoyance. The fact is, Mr. Forrest, that there are people who have no business to live at all.”
“I would go back to England,” he added, after another pause. “When you talk to me with such bitterness of five more days of living liberty you scare my very soul. Return, Miss Viner, and brave the worst. He is to meet you at Panama. Remain on this side of the isthmus, and send him word that you must return. I will be the bearer of the message.”