CONCLUSION.
Our passage home was extraordinarily long. It took us seventy-five days
to arrive at the English Channel from the latitude of the volcanic
island. The captain thought himself under a spell, and swore that he
believed his barque was to be made a ‘Flying Dutchman’ of. Yet she was
a clipper keel, moulded in exquisite conformity with all theories of
swiftness in sailing, and when a fresh and favourable wind blew she
ate through it as though with the iron bite of a powerful steamer.
But had she spread the canvas of a ‘Royal George’ over the hull of
a racing yacht she could have done nothing in the face of the dead
calms and light baffling breezes which held us motionless or sent us
sliding southwards for days and days. Scarce had we struck soundings
indeed--that is to say, hardly had we entered the mouth of the English
Channel--when a whole gale of wind blew down upon us from the eastward,
and grove us a third of the distance across to the shores of the United
States.
How bitterly sick I grew of this time I cannot express. I had lost
everything that I had brought with me in the wreck of the ‘Bride,’
and was entirely dependent upon the kindness of the captain and the
mates for a supply of the few wants I absolutely required. One lent
me a shirt, another a pair of socks, a third a razor, and so on,
but it was a miserable existence. A few weeks of it I should have
found supportable by comparing the life with the horrors we had been
delivered from; but as time went on gratitude languished, the sense of
contrast lost something of its edge; I abhorred the recollection of the
galleon, yet it really seemed as though we had merely exchanged one
form of imprisonment for another; as if old ocean indeed were suffering
us to amuse ourselves with a dream of escape, as a cat humours a mouse
in that way, to drop with a spring upon us ultimately when she had
sickened the patience out of our souls.
I need not say that Lady Monson made the worst of everything. She had
to share a cabin with her sister, and to that extent, therefore, was
associated with her, but her behaviour to Laura, as to me, was cold,
haughty, disdainful. She froze herself from head to foot, gave us a
wide berth when on deck, would break away abruptly if one or the other
of us endeavoured to engage her in conversation, and was as much alone
as she could possibly contrive to be. It is hard to say whether she
disliked me more than her sister. Yet I could not but feel sorry for
her, heartily as I hated her. What was her future to be? What had life
in store for one whose memory was charged as hers was? Laura tried hard
to find out what her intentions were, what plans she had formed, but to
no purpose. But then it was likely that the woman had not made out any
programme for herself.
Both she and my darling were desperately put to it for the want of
apparel. Each had but the dress she stood in, for Laura’s box had
contained little more than under-linen. They had arrived on board the
barque without covering for their heads; but this was remedied by the
second mate presenting Laura with a new straw hat, and later on we
heard through Finn that one of the crew had a new grass hat in his
chest which he desired to present to Lady Monson. I see her ladyship
now in that sailor’s hat, over which she tied a long brown veil that had
come ashore upon the island in Laura’s box. I witness again the fiery
gleam of her black eyes penetrating the thin covering. I behold the
captain, with his slow Scotch gaze following her majestic figure as she
glides lonely to and fro the deck, seldom daring to address her, and
rapidly averting his glance when she chanced to round her face towards
him on a sudden. And I see Laura, too, sweet as a poet’s fancy I would
sometimes think, in the mate’s straw hat, perched on top of her golden
hair, a sailor’s half-fathom of ribbon floating from it down her back,
her violet eyes lovely once more with their old tender glow, and with
the smiles which sparkled in them and with the love which deepened
their hue as she let me look into them.
She had soon regained her health and spirits. I never would have
believed that two women born of the same parents could be so absolutely
dissimilar as these sisters. Laura made no trouble of anything. She ate
the plain cabin food as though she heartily enjoyed it; cooled me down
when I was slowly growing mad over some loathsome pause of calm; made
light of the embarrassing slenderness of her wardrobe. She had always
one answer: ‘This is not the galleon, Charles. We’re bound to England.
You must be patient, my dear.’
I remember once saying to her, ‘Your dress is very shabby, my pet. It
no longer sits to your figure as it did. It shows like shipwrecked
raiment. Salt-water stains are very abundant; and your elbow cannot
be long before it peeps out. How, then, is it that I find you more
engaging, more lovely, more adorable in this castaway attire than
ever I thought you aboard the “Bride,” where probably you had a dozen
dresses to wear?’
‘Mere prejudice,’ she answered, laughing and blushing. ‘You will
outgrow many opinions of this kind.’
‘No! But don’t you see what a moral shipwreck enables you to point to
your sex, Laura?’ said I. ‘Girls will half-ruin their fathers, and
wives almost beggar their husbands, for dress. They clothe themselves
for men. No doubt you consider yourself wholly dependent for two-thirds
of your charms upon dress. All women think thus--the young and the old,
the beautiful and the--others. But what is the truth? You become divine
in proportion as you grow ragged!’
‘When I am your wife you will not wish that I shall be divine only on
the merits of rags,’ said she.
‘Well, my dear,’ said I, ‘old ocean has given me one hint concerning
you. Should time ever despoil you of a single charm there is the remedy
of shipwreck. We will endeavour to get cast away again.’
Thus idly would we talk away the days. No ship ever before held such
a pair of spoonies, I dare swear, spite of the traditions of the
East India Company. But sweet as our shipboard intercourse was, our
arrival in England threatened delays and difficulties. First of all
she declared that she could not dream of marrying without her father’s
consent. This was, no doubt, as it should be, and surely I could not
love her the less for being a good daughter. But the consent of a
man who lived in Melbourne, and who had to be addressed from England,
signified, in those ambling times, the delay of hard upon a year.
‘A year, Laura!’ I cried on one occasion whilst debating this subject;
‘think of it! With the chance, perhaps, of your father’s reply
miscarrying.’
She sighed. ‘Yes, it is a long time. Oh, if Melbourne were only in
Europe. Yet it cannot be helped, Charles.’
‘But, my heart’s delight,’ I exclaimed, ‘Why should not we get married
first and then write for your father’s consent?’
No; she must have her papa’s sanction.
‘All right, birdie,’ said I; ‘anyhow you will remain in England till
you hear from him, and so we shall be together.’
‘It might shorten the time,’ she said with a little blush and a timid
glance at me under the droop of her eyelids, ‘if you and I sailed to
Melbourne.’
‘It would, my precious!’ I answered; ‘but suppose on your introducing
me your father should object?’
‘Oh no, Charles, he will not object,’ she exclaimed with a confident
shake of the head.
‘In fact then, Laura,’ said I, ‘you are sure your papa will sanction
our marriage?’
‘Quite sure, dear.’
‘Then would it not come to the same thing if we got married on our
arrival in England?’
This was good logic, but it achieved nothing for me, and since I saw
that her father’s sanction would contribute to the happiness of her
married life I never again attempted to reason with her on the subject.
At last, one morning we found ourselves in the English Channel, bowling
over the green ridges of it before a strong south-westerly wind, and
within fifty hours of making the Lizard Light the brave little barque
‘Star of Peace’ was being warped to her berth in the East India Docks.
Down to that very moment, incredible as it may seem, Lady Monson had
given neither her sister nor myself the vaguest hint of what she
intended to do. As we stood waiting to step ashore she arrived on deck
and, approaching Laura, exclaimed,
‘Mr. Monson, I presume, will escort you to an hotel.’
‘Won’t you accompany us, Henrietta?’ her sister asked.
‘No, I choose to be independent. I shall go to such and such an
hotel,’ and she named the house at which she had stopped with Colonel
Hope-Kennedy when she arrived in London on her way to Southampton. ‘You
can address me there, or call upon me, Laura. I have not yet decided on
any steps. In all probability I shall return to Melbourne, but not at
present.’
She extended her hand coldly to her sister and gave me a haughty bow.
Laura bit her lips to restrain her tears, but her pride was stung;
disgust and amazement too fell cool upon her grief.
The last I ever saw of Lady Monson was as she passed along the quay
towards the dockyard gates. As she paced forward, stately, slow, her
carriage queenly and easy as though, sumptuously clothed and in the
full pride of her beauty, she trod the floor of a ball-room, the scores
of sailors, labourers, loafers who thronged the decks, turned, to a
man, to stare after her. A strange and striking figure indeed she
made, habited in the dress which she wore when the ‘Shark’ foundered,
and which, as you may suppose, by this time showed very much like the
end of a long voyage. The brown veil concealed her features and to a
certain degree qualified the outlandish appearance of the sailor’s
grass hat upon her head.
‘So!’ said I as she disappeared, ‘and now, Laura, it is for you and me
to go ashore.’
We bade a cordial farewell to Captain Richardson and his mates and to
Finn and Cutbill, both of whom promised to call upon me. I had the
address of the owner of the vessel, and told the skipper that next day
I would communicate with the office and defray whatever expenses we
had put the ship to. I further took the addresses of the captain and
his mates that I might send them some token of my gratitude for our
deliverance and for the many kindnesses they had done us during the
long and tedious passage.
A few hours later I had comfortably lodged Laura in a snug private
hotel within an easy walk of my lodgings, to which I forthwith repaired
and took possession of afresh with such an emotion of bewilderment
excited in me by the familiar rooms, and by the feeling that I was
once more in London, with no more runaway wives to chase, no more
Dutchmen to fire into, no more duels to assist in, no more volcanic
rocks to split upon, and no more galleons to sleep in, that I felt like
a man just awakened from some wild and vivid dream whose impressions
continue so acute that the familiar objects his eyes open upon seem as
phantasms that must presently fade. My first act was to send a milliner
and a dressmaker to Laura, and to see in other ways to her immediate
requirements; my next to address a letter to Wilfrid’s solicitors, in
which I acquainted them with the loss of the ‘Bride’ and the death of
my cousin. Whom else to write to at once about the poor fellow I did
not know. I asked after his infant, and requested them to tell me if
the child was still with the lady with whom my cousin had placed it
before leaving England. I added that I should be pleased to see one of
the partners and relate the full story of the voyage, the object of
which I could not doubt Wilfrid had informed them of before sailing.
I spent the evening with Laura. All her talk was about what she was to
do until she had heard from her father, to whom she told me she had
written a long letter within an hour after her arrival at the hotel,
‘so as to lose no time, Charles.’ She had no relations in England,
scarcely an acquaintance for the matter of that; with whom was she to
live then? Even had Lady Monson settled down in a house she was not
a person with whom I could have desired the girl I was affianced to
to be long and intimately associated. The notion of her returning to
Australia alone was not to be entertained. There seemed nothing then
for it but for me to overhaul the list of my connections, to make
experiments in the direction of relations, and endeavour to find a home
for her with one or another of them until there should some day arrive
a mail from Australia giving me leave to take her to my heart.
Well, it was next morning that I had finished breakfast and was sitting
musing over a fire with a newspaper on my knee. My mind was full of the
past. I remember looking round me almost incredulously with eyes that
still found the familiar furniture of my room unreal and indeed almost
impossible, listening with ears that could scarcely accept as actual
the transformation of the roar and beat and wash of the seas into the
steady hum of ceaseless traffic in the great London roadway into which
the street I occupied opened. Years had elapsed, it seemed, since that
night when my servant had ushered in my cousin, and I saw in fancy the
wild roll of his eyes round the apartment, the crazy flourish of his
hands, his posture as he sank his head upon the table battling with his
sobbing breath.
I was disturbed by a smart knock at the door. ‘Come in.’ The landlord
entered; a thin, iron-grey, soft-voiced man, who had for many years
been butler in an earl’s family, and who had retired and started a
lodging-house on discovering that he had married a woman of genius in
the shape of a cook.
‘There’s a person below named Muffin would like to see you, sir.’
I stared at him as if he were mad.
‘Muffin!’ I whispered.
‘That was the name he gave, sir,’ he exclaimed, astonished by my
amazement.
‘Muffin!’ I repeated, scarce crediting my hearing; ‘describe him, Mr.
Cork.’
‘A clean, yellow-faced man, sir, hair of a coal-blackness, looks down
when he speaks, sir, seems a bit shaky in the ankles; a gentleman’s
servant, I should say, sir.’
‘Show him up, Mr. Cork!’ I exclaimed, doubting the description as I had
the name, so impossible did it seem that this person could be Wilfrid’s
valet.
In a few moments the door was opened, and in stepped _Muffin_!--the
Muffin of the ‘Bride,’ Muffin the ventriloquist, Muffin the whipped and
ducked, and, as I could have solemnly sworn, Muffin the _drowned_! He
stood before me with the old familiar crook of the left knee, holding
his hat with both hands against his stomach, his head drooped, his lips
twisted into their familiar grin of obsequious apology. His yellow
face shone, his hair was as lustrous as the back of a rook; he wore
large loose black-kid gloves, and he was attired in a brand new suit
of black cloth. I know nothing in the way of shocks severer for the
moment, that tells more startlingly upon the whole nervous system,
than the meeting with a man whom one has for months and months believed
dead. I was unable to speak for some moments. I shrank back in my chair
when he entered, and in that posture eyed him whilst he stood looking
downwards, smiling and suggesting in his attitude respectful regret for
taking the liberty of intruding.
‘Well,’ said I, fetching a deep breath, ‘and so you are Muffin indeed,
eh? Well, well. Why, man, I could have sworn we left you a corpse
floating close to a volcanic island near the equator.’
‘So I suppose, sir!’ he exclaimed, ‘but I am thankful to say, sir, that
I was not drowned.’
I motioned him to sit; he put his hat under the chair, crossed his
legs, and clasped his hands over his knee. A sudden reaction of
feeling, supplemented by his strange appearance, produced a fit of
laughter in me. The image of his radish-shaped form, half naked,
quivering down the ranks of the seamen, with Cutbill grotesquely
apparelled compelling him to keep time, recurred to me.
‘You seem resolved that I shall believe in ghosts, Muffin,’ said I;
‘and pray how came you to learn that I was saved from the wreck, that I
had returned to England, was here in these lodgings, in short, where I
only arrived yesterday?’
‘Sir Wilfrid received a letter from his solicitors this morning, sir,
enclosing your letter to them.’
‘Sir Wilfrid!’ I shouted; ‘is he alive?’
‘Oh yes, sir, and very much better both in body and mind, I’m ’appy to
say, sir. He would have called on you himself, sir, but he’s suffering
from an attack of gout in his left foot, and has been obliged to keep
his bed for two days.’
I jumped from my chair and fell to pacing the room to work off by
locomotion something of the amazement that threatened to addle my
brains.
‘Wilfrid alive!’ I muttered. ‘What will Laura say to all this? Muffin,’
I cried, rounding upon him, ‘what you are telling me is a miracle!
a thing beyond all credibility. Why, we saw the yacht go to pieces!
nearly the whole mass of her in fragments came ashore, along with four
or five dead bodies. How, in heaven’s name, did Sir Wilfrid escape?’
He responded by telling me the story. Johnson, the man who had died
upon the island, was perfectly right in saying that he believed a
number of men had rushed to one of the boats shortly after the yacht
had struck. I myself remember being felled by a gang of people flying
aft in the blackness. Muffin was one of them. The white water over
the side enabled them to see what they were about. The boat, a noble
structure, of a lifeboat’s quality of buoyancy, was successfully
lowered, seven men got into her, one of whom was Muffin. The yacht
was then fast breaking up. The men, to escape being pounded to pieces
by the battering rams of the wreckage hurled on every curl of sea,
headed out from the island, straining their hearts at the oars; but
they were again and again beaten back. There were but five oars, and
Muffin and one of the seamen having nothing to do sat crouching in
the stern-sheets. Suddenly a figure showed close alongside crying
loudly for help; Muffin grasped him by the hair of his head, the other
fellow leaned over, and between them they dragged the man in. It was
my cousin! By dint of sustained and mad plying of oars they drew the
boat clear of the wreckage, bringing the white line of the thunderous
surf on the island beach upon their quarter; they then gave the stern
of the little fabric to the wind and seas and fled forwards like smoke,
and when the dawn broke they were miles out of sight of the rock. A day
and a night of dead calm followed; they were without food or water, and
their outlook was horrible; but at sunrise on the third day they spied
the gleam of a sail, towards which they rowed, and before the darkness
fell they were safely on board a large English brig bound to Bristol.
Such was Muffin’s story. He said that Sir Wilfrid, on being told it was
Muffin who had rescued him, promised to take him back into his service
on reaching England. He added that my cousin had entirely lost the
craze that had possessed him concerning his bulk and stature. The yacht
on going to pieces had liberated him, and with his sudden and startling
enlargement his mad fancy entirely passed away. So that poor old Jacob
Crimp came very near the truth when he had suggested to me that my
cousin’s senses might be recovered by a great fright.
Muffin asked me the names of the others who were saved. I told him who
they were.
‘And Mr. Cutbill wasn’t drowned, sir?’ said he.
‘No,’ I replied.
‘And Captain Finn is saved too. I’m so glad, sir.’
But the rogue gave me a look that clearly signified he was very sorry
indeed.
An hour later I was sitting by my cousin’s bedside. He was stopping
at an hotel near Charing Cross. I will say nothing of the warmth of
our meeting. The tears were in my eyes as I grasped and retained his
hand. He was perfectly rational, had a more sensible look in his face
than I had ever witnessed in it, and his memory was as clear as my
own. It seemed to me that the shock of shipwreck had worked wonders
in him, though to be sure strong traces of congenital weakness were
still visible in the quivering eyelids, the occasional, irrelevant,
loud laugh, the boyish eagerness of manner, with now and again the
passing shadow of a darkening humour. For a long time we seemed able
to talk of nothing but the wreck of the ‘Bride’ and of our several
experiences. I very delicately and vaguely referred to the delusion
that had imprisoned him in his cabin, but his stare of surprise advised
me that he had no recollection whatever of his craze, and it was like a
warning to me to instantly quit the subject. He told me that Muffin had
behaved with a touching devotion to him whilst they were in the boat,
pillowing his head when he slept, cooling his hot brow with water,
sheltering him from the heat of the sun by standing behind him with his
jacket outstretched to the nature of a little awning. He asked tenderly
after Laura, and made many inquiries after the men who had been saved,
bidding me tell Finn, should he visit me, to call upon him, that he
might obtain the names and addresses of the survivors, and enable them
to replace the effects they had lost, by the foundering of the yacht.
‘You do not ask after your wife, Wilfrid,’ said I, a little nervously.
‘Oh, you told me she was saved,’ he answered languidly; then after a
pause he added, ‘Where is she?’
‘She refused to accompany her sister,’ said I; ‘she loves independence.
She has gone alone to such and such an hotel, where I presume she is
still to be found.’
His face flushed to the name of that hotel; he instantly remembered. He
bent his eyes downwards and said as if to himself,
‘Yes, she is of those who return to their vomit.’
‘What are your plans?’ said I.
‘As regards Lady Monson, do you mean?’
‘Well, she is still your wife, and what concerns her concerns you, I
suppose, more or less.’
‘I shall not meddle with her,’ said he, making a horrible grimace to an
involuntary twitch of his gouty foot; ‘she can do what she pleases.’
‘She talks of returning to Australia.’
‘Let her go,’ said he.
And this, thought I, is the issue of your wild pursuit of her! Had
he but waited a few months, disgust and aversion would have grown
strong in him. He would have been guiltless of shedding the blood of a
fellow-creature--he would have preserved his noble yacht--but then, to
be sure, I should probably never have met Laura!
His eye was upon me while I mused a little in silence.
‘My solicitors advise proceedings in the Divorce Court,’ said he, ‘but
I say no. I certainly should never try my hand at marriage again, and
therefore a divorce would serve no end of my own. But it might answer
_her_ purpose very well indeed; it would free her, and I do not intend
that she shall have her liberty.’
‘You will have to maintain her.’
‘Oh, my solicitors will see to that,’ he answered with a curious smile.
‘Wilf,’ said I, ‘she may fall very low, and then, when nobody, else
will have anything more to do with her, she will return to you as your
lawful wife, and play the devil with your peace and good name.’
‘I am not going to free her,’ said he snappishly.
‘Do you mean to make any stay in London?’ said I.
‘I am waiting till the gout leaves me,’ he answered, ‘and shall then
go abroad. I have been recommended to do so. It is pretty sure to
come to the ears of Colonel Hope-Kennedy’s friends that I shot him in
a duel. He was a widower and childless, but he has a sister, a Lady
Guthrie, who adored the ground he trod on and thought him the noblest
creature in the universe. My solicitors advise me not to wait until I
am charged with the fellow’s death, and so I am going abroad.’
‘Humph,’ said I; ‘and how am I to be dealt with as an accessory?’
‘Pooh!’ he exclaimed, ‘one never hears of seconds being charged.’
‘You will take baby with you, I presume?’
He answered no. During his absence a cousin of his had lost her
husband, a colonel in India. She had arrived in England with two
grown-up daughters, and was so poor that she had asked Wilfrid to help
her. He had arranged that she and the girls should occupy his seat in
the North and take charge of his child. This in fact had been settled,
and Mrs. Conway and her daughters were now installed at Sherburne
Abbey. On hearing this it instantly suggested itself to me that Mrs.
Conway would provide Laura with the very home that she needed until
we heard from Mr. Jennings. Wilfrid of course acquiesced; he was
delighted; he loved Laura as a sister, and his little one would be
doubly guarded whilst she was with it. So here was a prompt and happy
end to what had really threatened to prove a source of perplexity, and
indeed in some senses a real difficulty.
And now to end this narrative. A fortnight later Wilfrid went abroad
to travel, as he said, in Italy and the South of France, and with him
proceeded Mr. Muffin. During that fortnight Laura and I were frequently
with him, but it was only on the day previous to his departure that
he mentioned his wife’s name. In a careless voice and offhand manner
he asked if we had heard of her, but neither of us could give him
any news. We had not chosen to learn by calling if she continued at
the hotel to which she had gone on her arrival. She had not written
to her sister, nor had she communicated with Wilfrid’s solicitors.
However, about a fortnight after I had returned to London from the
North, whither I had escorted Laura, there came a letter to my lodgings
addressed to my sweetheart. I guessed the handwriting to be Lady
Monson’s. I forwarded it to Laura, who returned it to me. It was a
cold intimation of her ladyship’s intention to sail in such and such a
vessel to Melbourne on the Monday following, so that when I read the
missive she had been four days on her way. For my part I was heartily
glad to know that she was out of England.
Soon after my arrival I sent a description of the volcanic island and
the galleon on top of it to a naval publication of the period. It
was widely reprinted and excited much attention and brought me many
letters. But for that article I believe I should have heard no more of
Dowling and Head. It chanced, however, that my account of the island
was republished in a West Indian journal, and I think it was about
five months after my return to this country that I received a letter
from the master of a vessel dated at the Havannas and addressed to me
at the office of the journal in which my narrative had been published.
This man, it seems, having sighted the rock about three weeks after we
had got away from it in the ‘Star of Peace,’ hauled in close to have a
good look at an uncharted spot that was full of the deadliest menace
to vessels, and observed signals being made to him from what he was
afterwards informed was the hull of a fossilised ship. He sent a boat
and brought off two men, who, it is needless to say, were Dowling and
Head. They very frankly related their story, told the master of the
vessel how they were survivors of the schooner-yacht ‘Bride,’ and how
they had declined to leave the island because of their expectation of
meeting with treasure aboard that strange old ship of weeds and shells.
Day after day they had toiled in her, but to no purpose. They broke
into the piles of shells, but found nothing save rottenness within,
remains of what might have been cargo but of a character utterly
indistinguishable. There was not a ha’p’orth of money or treasure;
so there was an end of the poor fellows’ princely dreams. They were
received on board and worked their passage to Rio, where they left the
ship, which then proceeded to the Havannas.
There can be little doubt that shortly after this the volcanic rock
subsided and vanished off the surface of the sea, after the usual
manner of these desperate creations. The editor of the naval journal
received several copies of logs kept by ships which had traversed the
part of the ocean where the island had sprung up, and it was gathered,
after a careful comparison of these memoranda, that the rock must have
disappeared very shortly after Dowling and Head had been taken off it,
for the log-book of a vessel named the ‘Martha Robinson’ showed that
three days later she had passed over the exact spot where the island
had stood and all was clear sea.
My time of waiting for the hand of Laura was not to prove so long as
I had feared. Very unexpectedly one morning I received a letter from
my darling from the Abbey. Her father had arrived on the preceding
day. She could scarcely believe her ears when a servant came to tell
her that Mr. Jennings had called and was waiting to see her. Of
course he had not received her letter. He had taken it into his head
to visit England, both his daughters being there, mainly with the
intention of taking Laura back with him when he returned. He was almost
broken-hearted, so Laura wrote, when she told him about Lady Monson.
However, he was in England, and after waiting a few days so as to give
him time to recover the dreadful shock caused him by the news of his
daughter’s behaviour, I went down to Westmoreland, was introduced to
the old gentleman, and found him a bluff, hearty, plain-spoken man. He
told me he could settle twenty thousand pounds upon his child, and
seemed very well satisfied to hear that I was not without a pretty
little income of my own. He approached the subject of insanity with
a bluntness that somewhat disconcerted me. I assured him that so far
as I could possibly imagine I was not mad, that my cousin’s craziness
came from a source which did not concern me in the least degree. He
was pleased afterwards to tell Laura that he could see by my eye that
my intellect was as sound as a bell; an observation upon which I
thought I had some right to compliment myself, for to be suspected of
being ‘wanting’ is often to involuntarily and unconsciously look so,
and I must say that whilst Mr. Jennings and I talked about Wilfrid’s
craziness and where it came from, he regarded me with a keenness that
was at times not a little embarrassing.
Laura and I had been married two years when we heard of Lady Monson.
Mr. Jennings had returned to Australia, but in one or two letters we
had received from him he never mentioned Henrietta’s name. Then came a
missive in deep mourning. Lady Monson was dead. She had been received
into the Roman Catholic Church, so wrote the father in a letter whose
every sentence seemed as though he wrote with a pen dipped in his
tears. She had, apparently, given up all thoughts of this world and
devoted her days and nights to ministering to the poor. One day she
returned to her home looking ill; two nights later she was delirious.
She broke from the grasp of her attendants and marched with stately
step, singing in her rich contralto voice as she went, to an upper
chamber that had been Laura’s bedroom, where, planting herself before a
mirror, she fell to brushing her rich and beautiful hair, singing all
the while, till on a sudden she fell with a shriek to the ground, was
carried back to her bed, and two hours later lay a corpse.
THE END.
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. LTD., COLCHESTER
LONDON AND ETON
Transcriber's Note
The following apparent errors have been corrected:
p. 8 "presence" changed to "presence."
p. 15 "“Jim,’" changed to "“Jim,”"
p. 17 "head, uprose" changed to "head uprose"
p. 31 "‘Finn" changed to "Finn"
p. 34 "A little" changed to "‘A little"
p. 38 "plain," changed to "plain."
p. 45 "guilt" changed to "gilt"
p. 49 "blew," changed to "blew"
p. 51 "Wilfrid,’" changed to "Wilfrid,"
p. 57 "shillin,’" changed to "shillin’,"
p. 58 "nor in in" changed to "nor in"
p. 61 "child?" changed to "child?’"
p. 61 "Hope-Kennady" changed to "Hope-Kennedy"
p. 68 "say." changed to "say.’"
p. 72 "‘Bride,’" changed to "’Bride.’"
p. 73 "catch her;" changed to "catch her;’"
p. 73 "‘Shark’" changed to "‘Shark’:"
p. 106 "cannon,’" changed to "cannon,"
p. 115 "_All!_’" changed to "‘_All!_’"
p. 115 "BABY!’" changed to "BABY!”’"
p. 116 "‘Shark," changed to "‘Shark,’"
p. 126 "him." changed to "him.’"
p. 127 "him?" changed to "him?’"
p. 120 "ablcok" changed to "ablock"
p. 144 "forth irst" changed to "for thirst"
p. 144 "a-running." changed to "a-running.’"
p. 154 "deck?" changed to "deck?’"
p. 155 "My good" changed to "‘My good"
p. 158 "“Shark,”" changed to "“Shark,”’"
p. 167 "but there" changed to "‘but there"
p. 170 "it?" changed to "it?’"
p. 174 "‘Wilfrid" changed to "Wilfrid"
p. 175 "might" changed to "‘might"
p. 177 "“Bridesmaid,”" changed to "“Bridesmaid,”’"
p. 186 "‘Wilfrid" changed to "Wilfrid"
p. 187 "in him" changed to "in him."
p. 191 "Best" changed to "‘Best"
p. 192 "Wilf." changed to "Wilf?"
p. 195 "shaddows" changed to "shadows"
p. 209 "Robbins,”" changed to "Robbins,”’"
p. 226 "avoit" changed to "avoid"
p. 236 "the heart," changed to "the heart,’"
p. 238 "“Liza Robbins.”" changed to "“’Liza Robbins.”"
p. 239 "‘Liza Robbins,’" changed to "‘’Liza Robbins,’"
p. 252 "imprisonment." changed to "imprisonment.’"
p. 253 "hatch." changed to "hatch.’"
p. 254 "resolutions!" changed to "resolutions!’"
p. 258 "leagues." changed to "leagues.’"
p. 259 "leave him." changed to "leave him.’"
p. 266 "know." changed to "know.’"
p. 267 "said I" changed to "said I."
p. 268 "upright." changed to "upright.’"
p. 268 "“Bride,”" changed to "“Bride,”’"
p. 272 "theremometer" changed to "thermometer"
p. 278 "past it." changed to "past it,"
p. 279 "weight" changed to "weight."
p. 279 "stem" changed to "stern"
p. 288 "sir. changed to "sir.’"
p. 299 "Ay, sir" changed to "‘Ay, sir"
p. 323 "all." changed to "all.’"
p. 325 "Weeds" changed to "‘Weeds"
p. 328 "I wish" changed to "‘I wish"
p. 328 "man" changed to "men"
p. 330 "light?" changed to "light?’"
p. 330 "belived" changed to "believed"
p. 330 "command," changed to "command,’"
p. 331 "here," changed to "here,’"
p. 332 "imperceptily" changed to "imperceptibly"
p. 332 "How" changed to "‘How"
p. 338 "bouyant" changed to "buoyant"
p. 359 "he rich" changed to "her rich"
Inconsistent spelling, hyphenation and punctuation have otherwise been
kept as printed.
End of Project Gutenberg's An Ocean Tragedy, by William Clark Russell