"Why, then, she lives not far off. When her husband died, she came, my
wife Katie tells me, and lived for one year down somewhere in the East
End, among the needlewomen. And now she's got a large house hereby, with
fifty or more in it, all at work together, sharing the earnings among
themselves, and putting into their own pockets the profits which would
have gone to their tyrants; and she keeps the accounts for them, and
gets the goods sold, and manages everything, and reads to them while
they work, and teaches them every day."
Crossthwaite went on to speak of Mackaye.
"When old Mackaye's will was read, he had left £400 he'd saved, to be
parted between you and me, on condition that we'd go and cool down
across the Atlantic, and if it hadn't been for your illness, I'd have
been in Texas now."
Often did I see Eleanor in those days of convalescence, but it was not
till a month had gone by that I summoned courage to ask after my cousin.
Eleanor looked solemnly at me.
"Did you not know it? He is dead--of typhus fever. He died three weeks
ago; and not only he, but the servant who brushed his clothes, and the
shopman who had a few days before brought him a new coat home."
"How did you learn all this?"
"From Mr. Crossthwaite, who found out that you most probably caught your
fever from a house near Blackfriars, and in that house this very coat
had been turned out, and had covered a body dead of typhus."
Half unconscious, I stammered Lillian's name inquiringly.
"She is much changed; sorrow and sickness--for she, too, has had the
fever--have worn her down. Little remains now of that loveliness----"
"Which I idolised in my folly."
"I tried to turn you from your dream. I knew there was nothing there for
your heart to rest upon. I was even angry with you for being the
_protégé_ of anyone but myself."
* * * * *
Eleanor bade me go, and I obeyed her, and sailed--and here I am. And she
bade me write faithfully the story of my life, and I have done so.
Yes, I have seen the land! Like a purple fringe upon the golden sea. But
I shall never reach the land. Weaker and weaker, day by day, with
bleeding lungs and failing limbs, I have travelled the ocean paths. The
iron has entered too deeply into my soul.
* * * * *
This is an extract from a letter by John Crossthwaite.
"Galveston, Texas, October, 1848.
"And now for my poor friend, whose papers, according to my promise to
him, I transmit to you. On the very night on which he seems to have
concluded them--an hour after we had made the land--we found him in his
cabin, dead, resting peacefully as if he had slumbered."
* * * * *