The Collected Works of Jules Verne: 36 Novels and Short Stories (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics)

by Jules Verne

  And hence it was that Godfrey was now absent in the presence of Phina, indifferent when she spoke to him, deaf when she played the airs which used to please him; and Phina, like a thoughtful, serious girl, soon noticed this.

  To say that she did not feel a little annoyance mingled with some chagrin, is to do her a gratuitous injustice. But accustomed to look things in the face, she had reasoned thus,--

  "If we must part, it had better be before marriage than afterwards!"

  And thus it was that she had spoken to Godfrey in these significant words.

  "No! You are not near me at this moment--you are beyond the seas!"

  Godfrey had risen. He had walked a few steps without noticing Phina, and unconsciously his index finger touched one of the keys of the piano. A loud C# of the octave below the staff, a note dismal enough, answered for him.

  Phina had understood him, and without more discussion was about to bring matters to a crisis, when the door of the room opened.

  William W. Kolderup appeared, seemingly a little preoccupied as usual. Here was the merchant who had just finished one negotiation and was about to begin another.

  "Well," said he, "there is nothing more now than for us to fix the date."

  "The date?" answered Godfrey, with a start. "What date, if you please, uncle?"

  "The date of your wedding!" said William W. Kolderup. "Not the date of mine, I suppose!"

  "Perhaps that is more urgent?" said Phina.

  "Hey?--what?" exclaimed the uncle--"what does that matter? We are only talking of current affairs, are we not?"

  "Godfather Will," answered the lady. "It is not of a wedding that we are going to fix the date to-day, but of a departure."

  "A departure!"

  "Yes, the departure of Godfrey," continued Phina, "of Godfrey who, before he gets married, wants to see a little of the world!"

  "You want to go away--you?" said William W. Kolderup, stepping towards the young man and raising his arms as if he were afraid that this "rascal of a nephew" would escape him.

  "Yes; I do, uncle," said Godfrey gallantly.

  "And for how long?"

  "For eighteen months, or two years, or more, if--"

  "If--"

  "If you will let me, and Phina will wait for me."

  "Wait for you! An intended who intends until he gets away!" exclaimed William W. Kolderup.

  "You must let Godfrey go," pleaded Phina; "I have thought it carefully over. I am young, but really Godfrey is younger. Travel will age him, and I do not think it will change his taste! He wishes to travel, let him travel! The need of repose will come to him afterwards, and he will find me when he returns."

  "What!" exclaimed William W. Kolderup, "you consent to give your bird his liberty?"

  "Yes, for the two years he asks."

  "And you will wait for him?"

  "Uncle Will, if I could not wait for him I could not love him!" and so saying Phina returned to the piano, and whether she willed it or no, her fingers softly played a portion of the then fashionable "Départ du Fiancé," which was very appropriate under the circumstances. But Phina, without perceiving it perhaps, was playing in "A minor," whereas it was written in "A major," and all the sentiment of the melody was transformed, and its plaintiveness chimed in well with her hidden feelings.

  But Godfrey stood embarrassed, and said not a word. His uncle took him by the head and turning it to the light looked fixedly at him for a moment or two. In this way he questioned him without having to speak, and Godfrey was able to reply without having occasion to utter a syllable.

  And the lamentations of the "Départ du Fiancé" continued their sorrowful theme, and then William W. Kolderup, having made the turn of the room, returned to Godfrey, who stood like a criminal before the judge. Then raising his voice,--

  "You are serious," he asked.

  "Quite serious!" interrupted Phina, while Godfrey contented himself with making a sign of affirmation.

  "You want to try travelling before you marry Phina! Well! You shall try it, my nephew!"

  He made two or three steps and stopping with crossed arms before Godfrey, asked,--

  "Where do you want to go to?"

  "Everywhere."

  "And when do you want to start?"

  "When you please, Uncle Will."

  "All right," replied William W. Kolderup, fixing a curious look on his nephew.

  Then he muttered between his teeth,--

  "The sooner the better."

  At these last words came a sudden interruption from Phina. The little finger of her left hand touched a G#, and the fourth had, instead of falling on the key-note, rested on the "sensible," like Ralph in the "Huguenots," when he leaves at the end of his duet with Valentine.

  Perhaps Phina's heart was nearly full, she had made up her mind to say nothing.

  It was then that William W. Kolderup, without noticing Godfrey, approached the piano.

  "Phina," said he gravely, "you should never remain on the 'sensible'!"

  And with the tip of his large finger he dropped vertically on to one of the keys and an "A natural" resounded through the room.

  CHAPTER IV.

  IN WHICH T. ARTELETT, OTHERWISE TARTLET, IS DULY INTRODUCED TO THE READER.

  If T. Artelett had been a Parisian, his compatriots would not have failed to nickname him Tartlet, but as he had already received this title we do not hesitate to describe him by it. If Tartlet was not a Frenchman he ought to have been one.

  In his "Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem," Chateaubriand tells of a little man "powdered and frizzed in the old-fashioned style, with a coat of apple green, a waistcoat of drouget, shirt-frill and cuffs of muslin, who scraped a violin and made the Iroquois dance 'Madeleine Friquet.'"

  The Californians are not Iroquois, far from it; but Tartlet was none the less professor of dancing and deportment in the capital of their state. If they did not pay him for his lessons, as they had his predecessor in beaver-skins and bear-hams, they did so in dollars. If in speaking of his pupils he did not talk of the "bucks and their squaws," it was because his pupils were highly civilized, and because in his opinion he had contributed considerably to their civilization.

  Tartlet was a bachelor, and aged about forty-five at the time we introduce him to our readers. But for a dozen years or so his marriage with a lady of somewhat mature age had been expected to take place.

  Under present circumstances it is perhaps advisable to give "two or three lines" concerning his age, appearance, and position in life. He would have responded to such a request we imagine as follows, and thus we can dispense with drawing his portrait from a moral and physical point of view.

  "He was born on the 17th July, 1835, at a quarter-past three in the morning.

  "His height is five feet, two inches, three lines.

  "His girth is exactly two feet, three inches.

  "His weight, increased by some six pounds during the last year, is one hundred and fifty one pounds, two ounces.

  "He has an oblong head.

  "His hair, very thin above the forehead, is grey chestnut, his forehead is high, his face oval, his complexion fresh coloured.

  "His eyes--sight excellent--a greyish brown, eyelashes and eyebrows clear chestnut, eyes themselves somewhat sunk in their orbits beneath the arches of the brows.

  "His nose is of medium size, and has a slight indentation towards the end of the left nostril.

  "His cheeks and temples are flat and hairless.

  "His ears are large and flat.

  "His mouth, of middling size, is absolutely free from bad teeth.

  "His lips, thin and slightly pinched, are covered with a heavy moustache and imperial, his chin is round and also shaded with a many-tinted beard.

  "A small mole ornaments his plump neck--in the nape.

  "Finally, when he is in the bath it can be seen that his skin is white and smooth.

  "His life is calm and regular. Without being robust, thanks to his great temperance, he has kept hi
s health uninjured since his birth. His lungs are rather irritable, and hence he has not contracted the bad habit of smoking. He drinks neither spirits, coffee, liqueurs, nor neat wine. In a word, all that could prejudicially affect his nervous system is vigorously excluded from his table. Light beer, and weak wine and water are the only beverages he can take without danger. It is on account of his carefulness that he has never had to consult a doctor since his life began.

  "His gesture is prompt, his walk quick, his character frank and open. His thoughtfulness for others is extreme, and it is on account of this that in the fear of making his wife unhappy, he has never entered into matrimony."

  Such would have been the report furnished by Tartlet, but desirable as he might be to a lady of a certain age, the projected union had hitherto failed. The professor remained a bachelor, and continued to give lessons in dancing and deportment.

  It was in this capacity that he entered the mansion of William W. Kolderup. As time rolled on his pupils gradually abandoned him, and he ended by becoming one wheel more in the machinery of the wealthy establishment.

  After all, he was a brave man, in spite of his eccentricities. Everybody liked him. He liked Godfrey, he liked Phina, and they liked him. He had only one ambition in the world, and that was to teach them all the secrets of his art, to make them in fact, as far as deportment was concerned, two highly accomplished individuals.

  Now, what would you think? It was he, this Professor Tartlet, whom William W. Kolderup had chosen as his nephew's companion during the projected voyage. Yes! He had reason to believe that Tartlet had not a little contributed to imbue Godfrey with this roaming mania, so as to perfect himself by a tour round the world. William W. Kolderup had resolved that they should go together. On the morrow, the 16th of April, he sent for the professor to his office.

  The request of the nabob was an order for Tartlet. The professor left his room, with his pocket violin--generally known as a kit--so as to be ready for all emergencies. He mounted the great staircase of the mansion with his feet academically placed as was fitting for a dancing-master; knocked at the door of the room, entered--his body half inclined, his elbows rounded, his mouth on the grin--and waited in the third position, after having crossed his feet one before the other, at half their length, his ankles touching and his toes turned out. Any one but Professor Tartlet placed in this sort of unstable equilibrium would have tottered on his base, but the professor preserved an absolute perpendicularity.

  "Mr. Tartlet," said William W. Kolderup, "I have sent for you to tell you some news which I imagine will rather surprise you."

  "As you think best!" answered the professor.

  "My nephew's marriage is put off for a year or eighteen months, and Godfrey, at his own request, is going to visit the different countries of the old and new world."

  "Sir," answered Tartlet, "my pupil, Godfrey, will do honour to the country of his birth, and--"

  "And, to the professor of deportment who has initiated him into etiquette," interrupted the merchant, in a tone of which the guileless Tartlet failed to perceive the irony.

  And, in fact, thinking it the correct thing to execute an "assemblée," he first moved one foot and then the other, by a sort of semi-circular side slide, and then with a light and graceful bend of the knee, he bowed to William W. Kolderup.

  "I thought," continued the latter, "that you might feel a little regret at separating from your pupil?"

  "The regret will be extreme," answered Tartlet, "but should it be necessary--"

  "It is not necessary," answered William W. Kolderup, knitting his bushy eyebrows.

  "Ah!" replied Tartlet.

  Slightly troubled, he made a graceful movement to the rear, so as to pass from the third to the fourth position; but he left the breadth of a foot between his feet, without perhaps being conscious of what he was doing.

  "Yes!" added the merchant in a peremptory tone, which admitted not of the ghost of a reply; "I have thought it would really be cruel to separate a professor and a pupil so well made to understand each other!"

  "Assuredly!--the journey?" answered Tartlet, who did not seem to want to understand.

  "Yes! Assuredly!" replied William W. Kolderup; "not only will his travels bring out the talents of my nephew, but the talents of the professor to whom he owes so correct a bearing."

  Never had the thought occurred to this great baby that one day he would leave San Francisco, California, America, to roam the seas. Such an idea had never entered the brain of a man more absorbed in choregraphy than geography, and who was still ignorant of the suburbs of the capital beyond ten miles radius. And now this was offered to him. He was to understand that _nolens volens_ he was to expatriate himself, he himself was to experience with all their costs and inconveniences the very adventures he had recommended to his pupil! Here, decidedly, was something to trouble a brain much more solid than his, and the unfortunate Tartlet for the first time in his life felt an involuntary yielding in the muscles of his limbs, suppled as they were by thirty-five years' exercise.

  "Perhaps," said he, trying to recall to his lips the stereotyped smile of the dancer which had left him for an instant,--"perhaps--am I not--"

  "You will go!" answered William W. Kolderup like a a man with whom discussion was useless.

  To refuse was impossible. Tartlet did not even think of such a thing. What was he in the house? A thing, a parcel, a package to be sent to every corner of the world. But the projected expedition troubled him not a little.

  "And when am I to start?" demanded he, trying to get back into an academical position.

  "In a month."

  "And on what raging ocean has Mr. Kolderup decided that his vessel should bear his nephew and me?"

  "The Pacific, at first."

  "And on what point of the terrestrial globe shall I first set foot?"

  "On the soil of New Zealand," answered William W. Kolderup; "I have remarked that the New Zealanders always stick their elbows out! Now you can teach them to turn them in!"

  And thus was Professor Tartlet selected as the travelling-companion of Godfrey Morgan.

  A nod from the merchant gave him to understand that the audience had terminated. He retired, considerably agitated, and the performance of the special graces which he usually displayed in this difficult act left a good deal to be desired. In fact, for the first time in his life, Professor Tartlet, forgetting in his preoccupation the most elementary principles of his art, went out with his toes turned in!

  CHAPTER V.

  IN WHICH THEY PREPARE TO GO, AND AT THE END OF WHICH THEY GO FOR GOOD.

  Before the long voyage together through life, which men call marriage, Godfrey then was to make the tour of the world--a journey sometimes even more dangerous. But he reckoned on returning improved in every respect; he left a lad, he would return a man. He would have seen, noted, compared. His curiosity would be satisfied. There would only remain for him to settle down quietly, and live happily at home with his wife, whom no temptation would take him from. Was he wrong or right? Was he to learn a valuable lesson? The future will show.

  In short, Godfrey was enchanted.

  Phina, anxious without appearing to be so, was resigned to this apprenticeship.

  Professor Tartlet, generally so firm on his limbs, had lost all his dancing equilibrium. He had lost all his usual self-possession, and tried in vain to recover it; he even tottered on the carpet of his room as if he were already on the floor of a cabin, rolling and pitching on the ocean.

  As for William W. Kolderup, since he had arrived at a decision, he had become very uncommunicative, especially to his nephew. The closed lips, and eyes half hidden beneath their lids, showed that there was some fixed idea in the head where generally floated the highest commercial speculations.

  "Ah! you want to travel," muttered he every now and then; "travel instead of marrying and staying at home! Well, you shall travel."

  Preparations were immediately begun.

  In the first place, t
he itinerary had to be projected, discussed, and settled.

  Was Godfrey to go south, or east, or west? That had to be decided in the first place.

  If he went southwards, the Panama, California and British Columbia Company, or the Southampton and Rio Janeiro Company would have to take him to Europe.

  If he went eastwards, the Union Pacific Railway would take him in a few days to New York, and thence the Cunard, Inman, White Star, Hamburg-American, or French-Transatlantic Companies would land him on the shores of the old world.

  If he went westwards, the Golden Age Steam Transoceanic would render it easy for him to reach Melbourne, and thence he could get to the Isthmus of Suez by the boats of the Peninsular and Oriental Company.

  The means of transport were abundant, and thanks to their mathematical agreement the round of the world was but a simple pleasure tour.

  But it was not thus that the nephew and heir of the nabob of Frisco was to travel.

  No! William W. Kolderup possessed for the requirements of his business quite a fleet of steam and sailing-vessels. He had decided that one of these ships should be "put at the disposal" of Godfrey Morgan, as if he were a prince of the blood, travelling for his pleasure--at the expense of his father's subjects.

  By his orders the _Dream_, a substantial steamer of 600 tons and 200 horse-power, was got ready. It was to be commanded by Captain Turcott, a tough old salt, who had already sailed in every latitude in every sea. A thorough sailor, this friend of tornadoes, cyclones, and typhoons, had already spent of his fifty years of life, forty at sea. To bring to in a hurricane was quite child's play to this mariner, who was never disconcerted, except by land-sickness when he was in port. His incessantly unsteady existence on a vessel's deck had endowed him with the habit of constantly balancing himself to the right or the left, or behind or in front, as though he had the rolling and pitching variety of St. Vitus's dance.

  A mate, an engineer, four stokers, a dozen seamen, eighteen men in all, formed the crew of the _Dream_. And if the ship was contented to get quietly through eight miles an hour, she possessed a great many excellent nautical qualities. If she was not swift enough to race the waves when the sea was high, the waves could not race over her, and that was an advantage which quite compensated for the mediocrity of her speed, particularly when there was no hurry. The _Dream_ was brigantine rigged, and in a favourable wind, with her 400 square yards of canvas, her steaming rate could be considerably increased.