What an explanation it all was, even at the best, and so far as outlines, went! Need one give more than those here? Indeed, there would hardly be room. Storm-driven to a little village, without railroad or telegraph connections, and storm-and-sickness-stayed when once there, Mr. Marcy and his friend (or rather his patient nurse, for Mr. Saxton was in a dangerously morbid state of mind and body) had known literally nothing, suspected nothing, heard nothing, shut away from all the rest of the world as they were. The letters and duplicated telegrams were probably all safely lodged at this minute in the town they had expected to reach days earlier, whither they had ordered the mail to be sent from the Ossokosee. At first Mr. Marcy had hoped to go straight back to his hotel, taking the unnerved father. So he set that address. But Saxton languidly prolonged their journey southward, and his moodiness kept it variable and slow.
“I was tempted lots of times,” said Mr. Marcy, “to telegraph to Knoxport and elsewhere, to alter the forwarding of our mail; but I was every day less certain of what route Saxton here would urge, and I knew business was done up for the season. So I said, ‘Let it go as it is, for once.’ I’ll never be able again to think that such a shiftless thing will make no difference. Probably it wont again, though.”
“And it was the newspaper, after all, that brought you the news?”
“The newspaper? I should say so. A peddler came up to the Fork with a fresh Boston paper in his pocket and I bought it. Do you know how Saxton here behaved when I read the paragraph to him? He did just what you did, Philip, this morning—fainted.”
“And do you know what Mr. Marcy did, Touchtone?” asked Mr. Saxton, flushing. “He dropped the paper and sobbed like a boy—and never tried to bring me to!”
“Come, now, shut up, Saxton!” exclaimed Mr. Marcy, turning red, and giving Philip a slap on the shoulder. “These little retaliations aren’t gentlemanly, really.”
But he gave Philip a glance that was eloquent of the affection he had for him and of the grief which his loss would have brought to him, during all his busy life. They had had several moments by themselves during the day.
“Well, that rascal was right, you see, after all,” resumed Marcy. “We were stuck fast in a most particularly out-of-the-way place. And Gerald’s father, here, was any thing but a well man. His was a good guess, even with his having read the papers in which the steamer’s sinking was written up.”
Saxton laughed.
“I thought we should sink ourselves, in the rattle-trap we had to trust ourselves to, Gerald, to get to the railroad connection. The track was almost dangerous on account of the rain. You were on that island, you say, all through the storm?”