He showed me his sex; excited himself before me, while assuring me he meant to have a Miss LeBreton, a governess who was going out to take up a position in Pittsburg.
“But suppose you put her in the family way?” I asked.
“That’s not my funeral”, was his answer, and seeing that the cynicism shocked me, he went on to say there was no danger if you withdrew in time. Ponsonby never opened a book and was astoundingly ignorant: he didn’t seem to care to learn anything that hadn’t to do with sex. He introduced me to Miss LeBreton the same evening. She was rather tall, with fair hair and blue eyes, and she praised my reciting. To my wonder she was a woman and pretty, and I could see by the way she looked at Ponsonby that she was more than a little in love with him. He was above middle height, strong and good-tempered, and that was all I could see in him.
Miss Jessie kept away the whole evening and when I saw her father on the “upper deck”, he glowered at me and went past without a word. That night I told Ponsonby my story, or part of it, and he declared he would find a sailor to carry a note to Jessie next morning if I’d write it.
Besides, he proposed we should occupy the cabin alternate afternoons; for example, he’d take it next day and I mustn’t come near it, and if at any time one of us found the door locked, he was to respect his chum’s privacy. I agreed to it all with enthusiasm and went to sleep in a fever of hope. Would Jessie risk her father’s anger and come to me? Perhaps she would: at any rate I’d write and ask her and I did. In one hour the same sailor came back with her reply. It ran like this: “Dear love, father is mad, we shall have to take great care for two or three days: as soon as it’s safe, I’ll come—your loving Jess”, with a dozen crosses for kisses.
That afternoon, without thinking of my compact with Ponsonby, I went to our cabin and found the door locked: at once our compact came into my head and I went quietly away. Had he succeeded so quickly? and was she with him in bed? The half certainty made my heart beat.
That evening Ponsonby could not conceal his success but as he used it partly to praise his mistress. I forgave him.
“She has the prettiest figure you ever saw”, he declared, “and is really a dear. We had just finished when you came to the door. I said it was some mistake and she believed me. She wants me to marry her but I can’t marry. If I were rich I’d marry quick enough. It’s better than risking some foul disease”, and he went on to tell about one of his colleagues, John Lawrence, who got Black Pox, as he called syphilis, caught from a negress.
“He didn’t notice it for three months”, Ponsonby went on, “and it got into his system; his nose got bad and he was invalided home, poor devil. Those black girls are foul”, he continued, “they give everyone the clap and that’s bad enough, I can tell you; they’re dirty devils.” His ruttish sorrows didn’t interest me much, for I had made up my mind never at any time to go with any prostitute.
I came to several such uncommon resolutions on board that ship, and I may set down the chief of them here very briefly. First of all, I resolved that I would do every piece of work given to me as well as I could, so that no one coming after me could do it better. I had found out at school in the last term that if you gave your whole mind and heart to anything, you learned it very quickly and thoroughly. I was sure even before the trial that my first job would lead me straight to fortune. I had seen men at work and knew it would be easy to beat any of them. I was only eager for the trial.