Homeward Bound | Page 7

for succour, by the appropriate appellation of "Toast."
"I think we may safely claim this person, at least, for a countryman," said John Effingham: "he is what I have heard termed an American in a European mask."
"The character is more ambitiously conceived than skilfully maintained," replied Eve, who had need of all her retenue of manner to abstain from laughing outright. "Were I to hazard a conjecture, it would be to describe the gentleman as a collector of costumes, who had taken a fancy to exhibit an assortment of his riches on his own person. Mademoiselle Viefville, you, who so well understand costumes, may tell us from what countries the separate parts of that attire have been collected?"
"I can answer for the shop in Berlin where the travelling cap was purchased," returned the amused governess; "in no other part of the world can a parallel be found."
"I should think, ma'am," put in Nanny, with the quiet simplicity of her nature as well as of her habits, "that the gentleman must have bought his boots in Paris, for they seem to pinch his feet, and all the Paris boots and shoes pinch one's feet,--at least, all mine did."
"The watch-guard is stamped 'Geneva,'" continued Eve.
"The coat comes from Frankfort: _c'est une équivoque_."
"And the pipe from Dresden, Mademoiselle Viefville."
"The conchiglia savours of Rome, and the little chain annexed bespeaks the Rialto; while the moustaches are anything but _indigènes_, and the tout ensemble the world: the man is travelled, at least."
Eve's eyes sparkled with humour as she said this: while the new passenger, who had been addressed as Mr. Dodge, and as an old acquaintance also, by the captain, came so near them as to admit of no further comments. A short conversation between the two soon let the listeners into the secret that the traveller had come from America in the spring, whither, after having made the tour of Europe, he was about to return in the autumn.
"Seen enough, ha!" added the captain, with a friendly nod of the head, when the other had finished a brief summary of his proceedings in the eastern hemisphere. "All eyes, and no leisure or inclination for more?"
"I've seen as much as I warnt to see," returned the traveller, with an emphasis on, and a pronunciation of, the word we have italicised, that cannot be committed to paper, but which were eloquence itself on the subject of self-satisfaction and self-knowledge.
"Well, that is the main point. When a man has got all he wants of a thing, any addition is like over-ballast. Whenever I can get fifteen knots out of the ship, I make it a point to be satisfied, especially under close-reefed topsails and on a taut bowline."
The traveller and the master nodded their heads at each other, like men who understood more than they expressed; when the former, after inquiring with marked interest if his room-mate, Sir George Templemore, had arrived, went below. An intercourse of three days had established something like an acquaintance between the latter and the passengers she had brought from the River, and turning his red quizzical face towards the ladies, he observed with inimitable gravity,
"There is nothing like understanding when one has enough, even if it be of knowledge. I never yet met with the navigator who found two 'noons' in the same day, that he was not in danger of shipwreck. Now I dare say, Mr. Dodge there, who has just gone below, has, as he says, seen all he warnts to see, and it is quite likely he knows more already than he can cleverly get along with.--Let the people be getting the booms on the yards, Mr. Leach; we shall be warnting to spread our wings before the end of the passage."
As Captain Truck, though he often swore, seldom laughed, his mate gave the necessary order with a gravity equal to that with which it had been delivered to him; and even the sailors went aloft to execute it with greater alacrity for an indulgence of humour that was peculiar to their trade, and which, as few understood it so well, none enjoyed so much as themselves. As the homeward-bound crew was the same as the outward-bound, and Mr. Dodge had come abroad quite as green as he was now going home ripe, this traveller of six months' finish did not escape diver commentaries that literally cut him up "from clew to ear-ring," and which flew about in the rigging much as active birds flutter from branch to branch in a tree. The subject of all this wit, however, remained profoundly, not to say happily, ignorant of the sensation he had produced, being occupied in disposing of the Dresden pipe, the Venetian chain, and the Roman conchiglia in his state-room, and in "instituting an acquaintance," as he expressed it,