She had changed the conversation so suddenly, rushing off from that great question as to the condition of women generally to the very unimportant matter of the dancing powers of the ladies who were manoeuvring before them, that Caldigate hardly knew how to travel with her so quickly. 'They all dance well enough for ship dancing,' he replied; 'but as to what you were saying about women—'
'No, Mr. Caldigate; they don't dance well enough for ship dancing. Dancing, wherever it be done, should be graceful. A woman may at any rate move her feet in accordance with time, and she need not skip, nor prance, nor jump, even on board ship. Look at that stout lady.'
'Mrs. Callander?'
Everybody by this time knew everybody's name.
'If she is Mrs. Callander?'
Mrs. Smith, no doubt, knew very well that it was Mrs. Callander.
'Does not your ear catch separately the thud of her footfall every time she comes to the ground?'
'She is fat, fair, and forty.'
'Fat enough;—and what she lacks in fairness may be added on to the forty; but if she were less ambitious and had a glimmer of taste, she might do better than that. You see that girl with the green scarf round her? She is young and good-looking. Why should she spring about like a bear on a hot iron?'
'You should go and teach them.'
'It is just what I should like; only they would not be taught; and I should be stern, and tell them the truth.'
'Why don't you go and dance with them yourself?'
'I!'
'Why not? There is one second-class lady there?' This was true. For though none of the men would have been admitted from the inferior rank to join the superior, the rule of demarcation had so far been broken that a pretty girl who was known to some of the first-class passengers had been invited to come over the line and join the amusements of the evening. 'She dances about as well as any of them.'
'If you were among them would you dare to come out and ask me to join them? That is a question which you won't even dare to answer.'
'It is a little personal.'
'"No," you ought to say. "I could not do that because your clothes are so poor, and because of your ragged old hat, and I am not quite sure that your shoes are fit to be seen." Is not that what you would say, if you said what you thought?'
'Perhaps it is.'
'And if you said all that you thought, perhaps you would remind me that a woman of whom nobody knows anything is always held to be disreputable. That girl, no doubt, has her decent belongings. I have nobody.'
'You have your friends on board.'
'No, I have not. I have not a single friend on board. Those Cromptons were very unwillingly persuaded to take a sort of interest in me, though they really know nothing about me. And I have already lost any good which might come from their protection. She told me yesterday, that I ought not to walk about with Mr. Shand.'
'And what did you say?'
'Of course I told her to mind her own business. I had no alternative. A woman has to show a little spirit or she will be trodden absolutely into the dirt. It was something to have a woman to speak to, even though I had not a thought in common with her;—though she was to my feeling as inferior to myself as I no doubt am thought to be by that fat prancing woman to herself. Even Mrs. Crompton's countenance was of value. But if I had yielded she would have taken it out in tyranny. So now we don't speak.'
'That is a pity.'
'It is a pity. You watch them all and see how they look at me—the women, I mean. They know that Mr. Shand speaks to me, and that you and Mr. Shand are the two gentlemen we have among us. There are, no doubt, a dozen of them watching me now, somewhere, and denouncing me for the impropriety of my behaviour.'
'Is it improper?'
'What do you think?'
'Why may we not talk as well as others?'
'Exactly. But there are people who are tabooed. Look at that Miss Green and the ship doctor.' At that moment the ship's doctor and the young lady in question came close to them in the dance. 'There is no harm in Miss Green talking by the hour together with the doctor, because she is comfortably placed. She has got an old father and mother on board who don't look after her, and everything is respectable. But if I show any of the same propensities I ought almost to be put into irons.'
'Has anybody else been harsh to you?'
'The Captain has been making inquiries—no doubt with the idea that he may at last be driven to harsh measures. Have you got a sister?'
'No.'
'Or a mother?'
'No.'
'Or a housemaid?'
'Not even a housemaid. I have no female belongings whatever.'
'Don't you know that if you had a sister, and a mother, and a housemaid, your mother would quite expect that your sister should in time have a lover, but that she would be horrified at the idea of the housemaid having a follower?'
'I did not know that. I thought housemaids got married sometimes.'
'Human nature is stronger than tyranny.'
'But what does all this mean? You are not a housemaid, and you have not got a mistress?'
'Not exactly. But at present;—if I say my outward woman you'll know what I mean perhaps.'
'I think I shall.'
'Well; my present outward woman stands to me in lieu of the housemaid's broom, and the united authority of the Captain and Mrs. Crompton make up the mistress between them. And the worst of it all is, that though I have to endure the tyranny, I have not got the follower. It is as hard upon Mr. Shand as it is upon me.'
'Shand, I suppose, can take care of himself.'
'No doubt;—and so in real truth can I. I can stand apart and defy them all; and as I look at them looking at me, and almost know with what words they are maligning me, I can tell myself that they are beneath me, and that I care nothing for them. I shall do nothing which will enable any one to interfere with me. But it seems hard that all this should be so because I am a widow—and because I am alone—and because I am poorly clothed.'
As she said this there were tears in her eyes, true ones, and something of the sound of a broken sob in her voice. And Caldigate was moved. The woman's condition was to be pitied, whether it had been produced with or without fault on her own part. To be alone is always sad—even for a man; but for a woman, and for a young woman, it is doubly melancholy. Of a sudden the dancing was done and the lamps were taken away.
'If you do not want to go to bed,' he said, 'let us take a turn.'
'I never go to bed. I mean here, on board ship. I linger up on deck, half hiding myself about the place, till I see some quartermaster eying me suspiciously and then I creep down into the little hole which I occupy with three of Mrs. Crompton's children and then I cry myself to sleep. But I don't call that going to bed.'
'Take a turn now.'
'I shall feel like the housemaid talking to her follower through the area-gate. But she is brave, and why should I be a coward?' Then she put her hand upon his arm. 'And you,' she said, 'why are not you dancing in the other part of the ship with Mrs. Callander and Miss Green, instead of picking your way among the hencoops here with me?'
'This suited my pocket best—and my future prospects.'
'You are making a delightful experiment in roughing it—as people eat pic-nic dinners out in the woods occasionally,