"'No,' I said, 'I'll go back to the Corydon. I know her and she knows me. When shall I join?'"
Again Mr. Carville paused, and appeared to be lost in thought, oblivious of our presence. An expression of gentle earnestness had settled upon his face, almost melancholy. I imagined for a moment that he was endeavouring to arrange his thoughts.
"I do hope," he remarked, without looking at us, "I do hope that anything I've said hasn't given offence." He turned to us with a slight smile. "I mix up so little with genteel people nowadays—you see?"
I nodded vaguely, and he relapsed into thought again.
"I was thinking," he observed presently, "as you are so quiet, I might have said something. I remember that was the way they signified dissent, so to speak. And—I wouldn't like to offend—anybody."
"Pray go on," I said. "We are not genteel in that sense of the word."
It was plain that, apart from any scruples concerning our gentility, he had some difficulty in picking up the thread of his story. It was a relief when he began to speak.
"I come now," he said, "to a time that I hardly know how to describe. The next few years, taken together, were my Wanderjähre. You know Wilhelm Meister, of course? My apprenticeship was over, but I wasn't a man yet for all that. There's an intermediate stage, what we engineers call being 'an improver,' in a man's life. It seems strange that I should speak of myself so at twenty-seven, but there it is; I was late maturing. Again, I like to think that the Dutch are right when they use the same word for husband and man. Until he is married a Dutchman is not a 'Man.' That's how I looked at it!
"When I rejoined the Corydon, the Chief said the Second was going to stay on one more trip, but old Croasan was clearing out and I could go Third. I wouldn't mention these details, only they are important, because—well, you'll see.
"Old Croasan was going ashore when I joined. Didn't even shake hands with the Chief! I thought he was going home to the bonny Scotland he always shouted about when he was canned, but the Second says, 'Na, na. He'll never go back to Grangemouth,' and Chief says, 'He'll get a job all right, all right.' Well, I was busy enough with my own concerns, and, as usual, there was a-plenty to do on the Corydon; but one evening I was up at Cully's Hotel talking to Miss Bevan, when in walks a smart, tidy-looking man of, say, forty-five, and calls for a bottle of Bass. I wouldn't have given him more than a passing glance if he hadn't looked me in the eye. 'Eh, lad,' says he. 'Will ye have a drink?' 'Croasan?' I said. 'Ah, it's me,' says he. 'Ah'm away the morn in yon big turret.'