At such a first meal as this, so to speak, when, barring one, we had all come together for the first time, there was no want of British reserve and shyness. We chiefly contented ourselves with staring. Colonel Bannister alone talked freely; he was loud on the subject of army grievances, and was rendered indeed, intolerably fluent and noisy by the respectful attention he received from a gentleman who sat over against him, one Mr. Hodder, a tall, thin, nervous, yellow-faced man, with a paralytic catching up of his breath in his speech, who was going to India to fill some post of responsibility in a college. Mrs. Bannister with her hawks-bill nose, grey hair, and full figure, sat bolt upright, eating with avidity, and sweeping the faces round about her with a small severe eye.
I watched little Mrs. Radcliffe with attention. It was not hard to guess that she was an amiable, fidgety, anxious body, of elastic properties of mind, easily, but only temporarily, to be repressed. She talked in a quick way to her niece, darting what she had to say into the girl’s ear, with an abrupt withdrawal of her head, and an earnest look at Miss Temple’s face. The other would sometimes faintly smile, but for the most part her air was one of haughty abstraction. Indeed, it was easy to see that, so far as her opinion of her fellow-passengers went, it was not quite flattering to the bulk of us.
It was a noble morning, indeed, on deck. There was a long blue heave of swell from the northward, quiet as the rise and fall of a sleeper’s breast, and the white buttons of the ship’s trucks, glancing like silver against the moist blue of the sky, swung so slowly and tenderly to and fro that one could almost watch them without perception of any movement. The ocean was of a deep sea blue, all to eastward flashing under the sun, and the small waves chased us with a voice of summer in the caressing seething of the snow of their heads against the sides of the Indiaman. The ship had studdingsails set, and under these far overhanging wings the water trembled back the radiance that fell from the swelling cloths, as though there were a floating thinness of quicksilver there prismatic as a soap-bubble.
Very soon after breakfast the poop was filled, and I marked the Jacks forward staring aft at the sight of us all. It was not hot enough for an awning, and there was still too much edge in the breeze, warmly as the sun looked down, to suffer the ladies to sit for any length of time. The picture was a cheerful one, full of movement and life and colour. The white-headed skipper, skewered up in his bebuttoned and belaced frock-coat, patrolled the weather side of the deck with Mrs. Radcliffe on his arm. Mr. Emmett paced the planks with Mrs. Joliffe and her daughters, and I could hear him bidding them admire the contrast between the violet shadowing in the hollows of the sails and the delicate sheen of the edges against the blue, as though at those extremities they dissolved into pure lustre. Little Mr. Saunders trotted alongside the orbicular form of Mynheer Hemskirk, who showed as a giant as he looked down into the earnest upstaring face of the big-headed little chap. Three Civil Service youths lounged upon a hencoop, looking askant at the young ladies, and laughing under their breaths at what one or another of them said. Near the foremost skylight stood Mr. Johnson and Colonel Bannister. One did not need to listen attentively to understand that the colonel was falling foul of the calling of journalism, and that Mr. Johnson was endeavouring to defend it by repeating over and over again: ‘Granted—I admit it—I’m not going to say no; but give me leave to ask, where on earth would your profession be, sir, if its actions were not chronicled?’ These remarks he continued to reiterate till the colonel was in a white heat, and I had to walk away to conceal my laughter.
As I passed the companion hatchway, which you will please to understand is the hooded entrance to the cuddy by way of the poop, Miss Temple came up out of it, closely followed by Mr. Colledge. There was something like a smile on her pale face, and he was talking with animation. She wore a black hat, wide at the brim, with a large black feather encircling it, and a sort of jacket with some rich trimming of dark fur upon it. I was close enough to overhear them as they emerged.
‘I quite remember my dear father speaking of Lord Sandown,’ she said, coming to a stand at the head of the companion steps, and sending a sparkling sweeping look along the decks. ‘Is not Lady Isabella FitzJames an aunt of yours, Mr. Colledge?’
‘Oh yes. I hope you don’t know her,’ he answered. ‘She writes books, you know, and fancies herself a wit; and her conversation is as parching as the seedcake she used to give me when I was a boy.’
‘I have met her,’ said Miss Temple. ‘I rather liked her. Perhaps she neglects to be clever in the company of her own sex.’
‘Ever been to India before?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she answered in a voice whose note of affability somehow by no means softened her haughty regard of the passengers as they walked past. ‘I am entirely obliging my aunt by undertaking the trip. My uncle is very old, and too infirm to make the passage to England, and he was extremely anxious for my mother and me to spend some months with him. Of course it was a ridiculous invitation as far as poor mamma is concerned. You know she is a helpless cripple, Mr. Colledge.’