Colledge and I were good friends, and had long yarns together in our cabin and on deck. It was, maybe, because we shared a berth that I was more with him than with the others, though Mr. Johnson once attempted a stroke of irony by saying that of course my intimacy with Mr. Colledge had nothing whatever to do with the circumstance of his being the son of a lord, ‘which,’ added he, ‘speaks well for your heart, Dugdale, for he has very many excellent qualities.’
‘Mr. Johnson,’ said I, ‘I do not think you very brilliant as a genius, and I am sure you are not very richly stocked in gifts of satire. I would advise you to dedicate all you have in that way to your profession, lest, when you come to set up as a book-critic, you will find yourself gastados, as the Spaniards say—expended.’
But to return to Mr. Colledge: the characteristic I liked him best for was a certain naïveté. He would speak of his engagement with Fanny Crawley as a schoolboy might of a like experience, and not seem to know what to make of it. One day he was lying in his bunk smoking a pipe, with his leg over the edge, his head propped by his arm, his handsome face flushed, by the heat, and his soft dark-blue eyes shining as with wine. I had come warm and fatigued from the poop, and lay stretched upon the deck on my mattress. We had been talking of Miss Crawley, and he had lugged her portrait from his breast-pocket to have a look at it; which indeed was a habit of his when he spoke of her, as though he could hardly persuade himself that he was engaged without first taking a peep.
‘Upon my word, Dugdale,’ said he languidly, ‘hang me now, if it was not for Fanny here, I’d propose to Louise Temple. She’s a ripping girl, and the sort of woman my father would like; a fine stately presence for a drawing-room, eh? Figure the dignity with which she would kiss the hand of a sovereign, making the business quite the other way about by her salutation, and queening it to the confusion of every eye. My father doesn’t very much care about Fanny—has no style, he thinks—nothing distinguished about her.’
‘But you are engaged to her with his sanction, I presume?’
‘I don’t know,’ he answered.
I laughed, and said: ‘Has Miss Temple heard that you’re engaged to be married?’
‘No,’ he answered with a small air of confusion; ‘there was no need to tell her. What should there be in such a confession to interest her? You’re the only person on board the ship that I have mentioned the thing to. Of course I can trust to you,’ said he, soothingly.
‘Trust me!’ I exclaimed, laughing again. ‘There is nothing wrong surely in this engagement that you should fear the betrayal of the secret of it? But since it is a secret, it is perfectly safe in my keeping.’
‘Do you think I ought to tell Miss Temple that I’m engaged?’ said he.