V

Done caught a fleeting glimpse of Lucy Woodrow next day, Tuesday.  She was certainly avoiding him.  The conviction made him bitter.  How well Schopenhauer knew these women!  Lucy’s squeamishness was further proof of a narrow and commonplace mind.  Had he suffered so much all his life at the hands of people of this class, and learned to measure them so well and hate them so sincerely, only to be won over by the prettiness of a simple girl?  He brooded over the matter for some hours, when it was driven from his mind by an important happening.  Early on the following morning the first mate reported that land had been sighted.  The news stirred the ship as an intruding foot stirs an anthill.  The people swarmed upon the decks, and strained their eyes in the direction pointed by Captain Evan’s glass, which was in eager demand amongst the cabin passengers all the forenoon.

One sailor, a canny Scot, produced a battered old telescope, and did a very profitable business with the excited emigrants, whom he charged ‘saxpence’ for their first peep at the land where fortune and glory waited them.  The telescope was quite unequal to the occasion, but its owner had carefully drawn a mark on the lens to represent the desired object, and there were no complaints, although the Australian coast-line sometimes sloped at acute angles, and often appeared to be quite perpendicular.

Jim awoke to new sensations, and all his hopes and ambitions surged back upon him with redoubled force.  A childish rapture possessed him; he had an impulse to run and jump, to act foolishly, and to yell like a boy at play.  It required some self-restraint to keep from throwing wide his arms to the warm sun, that seemed to instil delight into his very veins.

Meanwhile Lucy Woodrow had experienced another shock, and had been afforded some idea of the cheerful readiness with which a censorious world misconstrues our amiable intentions, and imputes selfish motives to the most disinterested missioner.  She found herself quite unable to work up a proper feeling of indignation against Done.  Her training impelled her to stigmatize his conduct as ungentlemanly, ungenerous, and absolutely shocking.  The words of condemnation came readily enough, but there was no proper spirit of maidenly pride behind them.  On the contrary, deep down in her breast there glowed a sense of triumph, an abiding joy, of which she made some effort to be ashamed.  Her avoidance of the young man on the day following his misdemeanour was a pathetic bit of dissimulation, an effort on Lucy’s part to deceive herself with a show of coldness and dignity.

During the Tuesday afternoon and evening Mrs. Donald Macdougal had assumed towards Lucy the touching airs of an injured innocent.  Her cough required more than usual attention, and her head was extremely bad, but she bore it all with conspicuous resignation.  She could not contain herself long, however, and gave utterance to her grievance in the evening.