Gwen went on talking; and at last, when she saw what was up, she ran and fetched my father, and the old lubber hoisted me somehow indoors, and shoved me into a hammock. I rather think I was what ye may call mad.
How long my mind remained so affected I can’t rightly judge. My first recollection is of seeing a pale face sitting by my side, and I heard a sound which brought me to.
It was Rhoda. Although she’d been forced into a marriage with that lubber David, she’d not forgotten me; and she’d come to tell me all. Yes, indeed. And what’s more, she’d come none to soon; for if Hugh Anwyl was somewhere in the latitude of lunacy, Rhoda was in the longitude of decline. She was dying! Yes, indeed!
She told me how they had hatched up a lie about my having made love to Gwen. To prove this, David had plotted to make me walk that evil night with his false sister to the Clwm Rock. Rhoda had at first refused to believe their story. But when she saw us—for she lay concealed behind the rock—pass by as if we were lovers, with Gwen’s darned face resting on my bosom, she was cheated into thinking me false. Still she would have heard me, and learned the truth before I left Glanwern, but her old father interfered; and when I was gone, and Gwen had never delivered my letter, she consented to wed David—just, as you may say, for the sake of peace—believing the yarn they invented, that I had run away to sea and would never come back. It was not, indeed, until she received my letter from Aberdeen that she learned how wickedly she had been deceived. From that moment she fell ill, and nothing would please her but to return to Miller Howell’s house. As for David, indeed, she would not look at him, or speak to him; and she did but sit still and wait for death, hoping, as she told me, that Hugh Anwyl might return before the end came.
My lads, her sweet voice somehow steadied my brain. I saw the whole spider’s web unfolded. Gwen and David had plotted to sink our craft, and there we lay waterlogged.
“Shall I smash the pair of them?” I said.
“For my sake, no, indeed,” she answered. “Let us forget them. It is too late, Hugh Anwyl.”
Mates, I rose from that hammock that very instant, a strong, hale seaman once more. My life was wrecked, in so far as happiness goes. But the strength remained to me. Not so, poor little Rhoda. Her cheek was hollow, and the bright eyes shone like the evening stars in the southern seas. So weak was she, that I had to support her back to Miller Howell’s house.
“Come in, Hugh Anwyl,” says the old, greedy father, looking as if he could drop down dead from shame and sorrow on the doorstep. “Come in. This is stormy weather.”
I couldn’t speak to the man. I would not reproach him with having been the cause of this wreck—for his features, indeed, displayed the punishment he had received. But I came in, and I sat down by Rhoda’s side on the sofa.