SHE RECEIVES DREADFUL NEWS
The weeks went by. Day after day I eagerly expected to receive a letter
from Tom, making sure that he would grasp every chance to send me
his love and blessing and all the news about himself from those high
seas on which he was still afloat. But no letter reached me, ‘simply
because,’ Mr. Johnstone explained, ‘your Tom has not been fortunate
enough to fall in with a homeward-bound ship. You may often sail for
many days upon the sea, so I’ve heard your father say, without sighting
a vessel. When you hear from Tom it will be from Rio.’
But how I missed him! We had been incessantly together for nearly four
months. The weeks might roll by, but there was no magic in the time
they contained to weaken my sense of loss. I lived very quietly, was
much in my own home, where I sought to pass the hours by reading and
drawing. I took a kind of dislike to company, and refused a number
of invitations to quadrille and card parties and the like. It was my
delight to shape my conduct and habits by the fancy of such wishes as
I knew my sweetheart would express were he with me. My memory of him,
my love for him, lay in a spirit of control upon my heart. All impulse,
all desire was governed by the many gentle, noble counsels he had
wrapped up in our long, sweet, quiet talks together, when we rambled
in the outskirts or took oars upon the river. Never was man more truly
loved than was Tom. My aunt particularly noticed the change in me, and
said that Tom’s courtship had done me a very great deal of good.
‘You no longer roll your eyes,’ said she, ‘when you argue, and redden
and strut and heave up your breast when I venture to object to your
views. You have become thoroughly genteel, my dear, in your tastes and
habits. Your captain will have a treasure in you. And it is very well
that you did not marry him before he sailed, for I am certain that his
influence as a husband would not have been so considerable as it has
proved as a lover. Both he and you are now having plenty of leisure for
thought, and when you come together at the altar you will know exactly
what you are doing.’
In the month of November my little stepsister died of peritonitis. I
offered to nurse her when it reached my ears that she was ill in bed.
Mr. Stanford thanked me; and whilst I nursed her I learned to love
the poor little delicate creature, and my heart reproached me for the
unconquerable coldness I had ever felt towards her when I stooped and
kissed her white face in death and beheld a faint copy of my mother
there. I cannot tell to what degree Mr. Stanford was affected by his
loss; his colourless countenance betrayed but little of what might pass
in his mind. Had I found his grief very great, then the loneliness
of his state would have pleaded, and I might have forced myself into
some show of civility. But there was nothing in his behaviour after
his child’s death to appeal, and we speedily passed again into our
old cold relations of separate existence and fixed dislike of him on
my side as a fellow who had impudently thrust himself into my father’s
place.
The nursing of the poor child, however, together with my grief at her
death and my secret fretting over not hearing from Tom, made me look
ill if I did not feel so. My aunt was concerned and insisted upon my
seeing her medical adviser, who recommended her, spite of its being
winter, to take me to the seaside. It was the month of February--hard,
cold weather. My aunt knew and liked Ramsgate, and proposed that town.
Thither we went and took lodgings in Wellington Crescent, a pleasant
row of buildings immediately overlooking the English Channel.
After we had been in Ramsgate a few days I felt so poorly that I was
obliged to keep my bed. My aunt called in a doctor, who said that I was
‘out.’ He sent me physic, which I did not take, and told me to keep my
bed till I felt equal to rising. My bed was so situated that, when my
blind was up, I saw the ocean. If the day was clear, I could faintly
spy afar upon the horizon the delicate golden thread of the Goodwin
Sands. I’d watch the ships slowly floating past this side of the thin
line like little clouds of powder-smoke gliding ball-shaped from the
mouths of cannon, and listen to the faint thunder of the surf combing
the beach under the chalk cliffs, and find a meaning for the voice of
the wind as it shrilled with a hissing as of steam past the casement,
or sang in the interstices or muttered in the chimney. The sight of the
sea brought Tom very close to me, closer than ever he could lie upon my
heart at home, amid streets and the rattle of coaches and carts.
One morning, whilst I was confined to my bed, my aunt did not come to
my room as was her custom after breakfast. I inquired of the servant
how she was, and was told that she was pretty well, but that she had
passed an uneasy night. I asked if there were any letters, for I was
always expecting to hear from Tom under cover from my maid, whom I had
left at home; the girl replied that Mrs. Johnstone had received one
letter, and that there was none for me.
It was not until after twelve that my aunt came to see me. She looked
ill, and there was a peculiar expression of distress in her face. She
came to the foot of my bed and gazed at me earnestly, and asked me how
I felt. I said that I felt better, and hoped to find strength to rise
for a few hours towards evening.
‘You are not looking well, aunt.’
‘I am not feeling well, Marian.’
‘I hope you have not received bad news from home?’
‘I have had a broken night,’ said she, turning away and going to the
window, and speaking with her back upon me.
‘Have you news of Will?’
‘No! No!’ she cried quickly, still with her back turned. ‘There is no
news of Will. I believe you are better, my dear.’
And then she asked me what I could fancy for dinner, and so changed
the subject with a readiness which quieted the misgiving her looks had
excited.
She came and went during the day, as she had heretofore done; but she
was more silent, more reserved than usual, and often her eyes rested
upon me, though she shifted her gaze when I looked at her. I rose in
the afternoon, but in a few hours was glad to get to bed again. Next
day I felt decidedly better and stronger. It was a bright, still day,
cloudless, and the sun lay warm upon the land, and the sea stretched
like a polished plate of steel, full of gleams of different shades of
blue. I went down to the pier in an old-fashioned, rickety chair, and
my aunt walked by my side. The harbour was gay with the red canvas
of smacks. A number of ships, of many rigs, lay close in against the
wall, and their white canvas hung motionless in festoons, drying
after the rain or dew of the night. The sweet, salt, still atmosphere
was refreshing to one’s innermost life. All sounds came in a sort of
music from the town, and I heard a gay ringing of church bells as
for a marriage; the tones, silvered to the ear by distance, mingled
pleasantly with the noise of the foaming of the strong tide racing off
the rounded base of the pier.
I said to aunt: ‘When Tom and I are married, we shall often come to
Ramsgate, and perhaps live here. I do not wonder that you like the
place.’
In silence she stepped to the side of the pier, and seemed to look
earnestly at the figure of a smack that had dropped her anchor about a
mile off, her brown sails hoisted, and the image under her as perfect
as a mirror could reflect it. When she returned to my side, she spoke
of the beauty of the day and the difference between the air of Stepney
and that of Ramsgate, and we then leisurely returned to our lodgings.
I was sure that some trouble weighed upon her mind; but as my questions
seemed to make her peevish, as her worry might relate to something
which she would wish to conceal from me, I forbore further inquiry.
That day passed, and next day I was well enough to rise after breakfast
and go into the drawing-room, where I sat upon a sofa wheeled close to
the window. I was reading a novel, which my aunt had borrowed from the
Marine Library, and had wholly forgotten myself in the interest of the
story. My aunt had been absent for at least an hour. I believed she was
out shopping. She entered without her bonnet, and coming to the sofa,
sat down, took me by the hand and looked me in the face. The tears
gushed into her eyes suddenly, and for a few moments she moved her lips
in a vain effort to speak. She then said:
‘I dare not conceal it longer from you, Marian. But, oh, what news it
is! How am I to break it to you?’
I threw the book down. The neck of my dress seemed to strangle me.
Mechanically I removed my brooch and eased the tension of my neck with
my finger whilst I looked at her.
‘It concerns Tom,’ she said.
‘Is he dead?’ said I, speaking with a heightened note in my voice that
carried it out of recognition of my own hearing.
‘No.’
‘Is it very bad news?’
‘Marian,’ she said, beginning to cry again, ‘it is shocking bad news.
It is incredible. It may all come right, but it is not the less
terrible.’
I drew in several deep breaths, and said: ‘Why will you not tell me
this dreadful news of Tom?’
‘He is in London.’
‘In London!’ I shrieked, springing to my feet.
She pulled me gently to the sofa, and putting her hand in her pocket,
drew forth a letter.
‘Your health would not allow me to speak to you before,’ said she in a
broken voice. ‘Even now I fear that I am in too great a hurry. But what
am I to do? You would not thank me for any longer concealing the truth.
Tom is in prison, Marian.’
I stared at her and shivered.
‘Your uncle’s letter,’ she continued, opening it with both hands which
trembled excessively, ‘will better explain what has happened than I
can. Will you read it?’
I took it. The handwriting reeled. I returned the letter to her and
said:
‘Read it to me, aunt.’
She did so. It was to this effect. After all these years I am unable to
give it you word for word:
‘I have a terrible piece of news to convey to poor Marian through you.
Captain Butler is arrived in London, having been sent home by the
British Consul at Rio in H.M.S. _Crusader_. He is charged by the mate
and carpenter of the _Arab Chief_ with attempting to scuttle her. These
two men, together with two sailors belonging to the crew of the _Arab
Chiefs_ are landed with him from the _Crusader_. He instantly sent
for me, but I wish there were not so many witnesses against him. That
he is absolutely innocent, and that he is the victim of an atrocious
conspiracy, I have not the shadow of a doubt. He will be charged at Bow
Street on Monday, and will be advised to reserve his defence. He will
be committed, of course, to take his trial at the Old Bailey, and we
must hope to come off with flying colours. But I say again I could wish
there were fewer witnesses. Four to one are fearful odds.’
My aunt had read thus far when a flash of lightning seemed to pass over
my eyes, and I remembered no more.
I recovered from a fit rather than a swoon. I had been for above an
hour unconscious, and found myself on my bed, with the doctor on one
hand of me and my aunt on the other. The doctor went away soon after I
had regained my mind. Memory was slow in coming. It rushed in upon me
on a sudden with its burden of horror.
‘What are you going to do, Marian?’
‘I am going to London.’
‘Lie still, my dear child. You cannot go to London to-day. I’ll book
by the coach to-morrow morning. I’ll write to your uncle and send the
letter to Canterbury to catch the Dover mail-coach. He will be ready to
receive us and give us all the news.’
And, indeed, I should have found myself too weak in body to carry out
my resolution to go at once to London. The railway to Ramsgate was not
then made. I do not know that it was even in contemplation. A coach
left early for London from Ramsgate every morning; it carried the
mails, I think, and travelled by way of Canterbury. When my aunt found
me somewhat composed, she went to the office to secure places by the
coach on the morrow. She left me her husband’s letter, and I read it
again and again, and every time I read it I rolled my eyes around the
room, seeking to realise that I was awake.
There was something shocking and frightful to me in my uncle speaking
of the Old Bailey; I associated it with Newgate Prison. Living in the
City as I did, well did I know the grim, dark, massive walls of that
horrid jail. Would Tom be locked up in that prison which I could not
think of without a sickening fancy of the executions there--of the
remorseless human beasts, men and women white with gin, gaping with
the lust of blood, gathered together to witness the sight--of the
filthy tenements round about, every window pale with the eager faces
of cowards and devils, the grimy roofs littered with sightseers? What
was Tom charged with? What was the meaning of scuttling a ship? What
punishment was the act visited with? Was a man hanged for scuttling?
I paced about the room in the agony of my mind till I sank with
exhaustion into a chair. I dug the nails of my fingers into my palms
till the blood sprang. Tom in prison! The gentlest, the tenderest, the
truest, the most honourable of men charged with a dreadful crime, a
hanging crime perhaps, and locked up in jail!