第5章
ANOTHER PORTENT.
The saloon of the Excelsior was spacious for the size of the vessel, and was furnished in a style superior to most passenger-ships of that epoch.The sun was shining through the sliding windows upon the fresh and neatly arranged breakfast-table, but the presence of the ominous "storm-racks," and partitions for glass and china, and the absence of the more delicate passengers, still testified to the potency of the Gulf of California.Even those present wore an air of fatigued discontent, and the conversation had that jerky interjectional quality which belonged to people with a common grievance, but a different individual experience.Mr.
Winslow had been unable to shave.Mrs.Markham, incautiously and surreptitiously opening a port-hole in her state-room for a whiff of fresh air while dressing, had been shocked by the intrusion of the Pacific Ocean, and was obliged to summon assistance and change her dress.Jack Crosby, who had attired himself for tropical shore-going in white ducks and patent leathers, shivered in the keen northwest Trades, and bewailed the cheap cigars he had expected to buy at Mazatlan.The entrance of Miss Keene, who seemed to bring with her the freshness and purity of the dazzling outer air, stirred the younger men into some gallant attention, embarrassed, however, by a sense of self-reproach.
Senor Perkins alone retained his normal serenity.Already seated at the table between the two fair-headed children of Mrs.Brimmer, he was benevolently performing parental duties in her absence, and gently supervising and preparing their victuals even while he carried on an ethnological and political discussion with Mrs.
Markham.
"Ah, my dear lady," continued the Senor, as he spread a hot biscuit with butter and currant jelly for the youngest Miss Brimmer, "I am afraid that, with the fastidiousness of your sex, you allow your refined instincts against a race who only mix with ours in a menial capacity to prejudice your views of their ability for enlightened self-government.That may be true of the aborigines of the Old World--like our friends the Lascars among the crew"--"They're so snaky, dark, and deceitful-looking," interrupted Mrs.
Markham.
"I might differ from you there, and say that the higher blonde types like the Anglo-Saxon--to say nothing of the wily Greeks--were the deceitful races: it might be difficult for any of us to say what a sly and deceitful man should be like"--"Oor not detheitful--oor a dood man," interpolated the youngest Miss Brimmer, fondly regarding the biscuit.
1
"Then why has he never obtained it?" asked Mrs.Markham.
"He has always been oppressed and kept down by colonists of the Latin races; he has been little better than a slave to his oppressor for the last two centuries," said Senor Perkins, with a slight darkening of his soft eyes.
"Injins is pizen," whispered Mr.Winslow to Miss Keene.
"Who would be free, you know, the poet says, ought themselves to light out from the shoulder, and all that sort of thing," suggested Crosby, with cheerful vagueness.
"True; but a little assistance and encouragement from mankind generally would help them," continued the Senor."Ah! my dear Mrs.
Markham, if they could even count on the intelligent sympathy of women like yourself, their independence would be assured.And think what a proud privilege to have contributed to such a result, to have assisted at the birth of the ideal American Republic, for such it would be--a Republic of one blood, one faith, one history.""What on earth, or sea, ever set the old man off again?" inquired Crosby, in an aggrieved whisper."It's two weeks since he's given us any Central American independent flapdoodle--long enough for those nigger injins to have had half a dozen revolutions.You know that the vessels that put into San Juan have saluted one flag in the morning, and have been fired at under another in the afternoon.""Hush!" said Miss Keene."He's so kind! Look at him now, taking off the pinafores of those children and tidying them.He is kinder to them than their nurse, and more judicious than their mother.
And half his talk with Mrs.Markham now is only to please her, because she thinks she knows politics.He's always trying to do good to somebody.""That's so," exclaimed Brace, eager to share Miss Keene's sentiments; "and he's so good to those outlandish niggers in the crew.I don't see how the captain could get on with the crew without him; he's the only one who can talk their gibberish and keep them quiet.I've seen him myself quietly drop down among them when they were wrangling.In my opinion," continued the young fellow, lowering his voice somewhat ostentatiously, "you'll find out when we get to port that he's stopped the beginning of many a mutiny among them.""I reckon they'd make short work of a man like him," said Winslow, whose superciliousness was by no means lessened by the community of sentiment between Miss Keene and Brace."I reckon, his political reforms, and his poetical high-falutin' wouldn't go as far in the forecastle among live men as it does in the cabin with a lot of women.You'll more likely find that he's been some sort of steward on a steamer, and he's working his passage with us.That's where he gets that smooth, equally-attentive-to-anybody sort of style.
The way he skirmished around Mrs.Brimmer and Mrs.Markham with a basin the other day when it was so rough convinced ME.It was a little too professional to suit my style.""I suppose that was the reason why you went below so suddenly,"rejoined Brace, whose too sensitive blood was beginning to burn in his cheeks and eyes.
"It's a shame to stay below this morning," said Miss Keene, instinctively recognizing the cause of the discord and its remedy.
"I'm going on deck again--if I can manage to get there."The three gentlemen sprang to accompany her; and, in their efforts to keep their physical balance and hers equally, the social equilibrium was restored.