“They were right, I think, for when we came to break the thing to him, and warn him of what might happen, although all was said to excuse what I had done, and to soften the consequences that might come of it, he raved like one distracted. 'Let him leave my cottage!' cried he; 'he has worked mischief enough already; he has robbed me of my daughter's love, and now he would take from me my good name. Let him leave this honest roof!' 'But where he goes, I must go, father,' replied Lucy, with her arms about the old man's neck; and in the end he was brought to see that it must be so. So I changed my name to that of Derrick, which I bear now, and fled from home to a great seaport, and there, on board an emigrant-ship bound for the other side of the world, took passage not only for myself and wife, but for her parents. It was agreed that all were to begin life again in a strange land, so that I, too, might begin it once more with that fair start which I had lost in my own country. Thus the poor old man and his wife were torn from the comfortable home that had sheltered them for half a century, and forced in their old age to cross the seas. No, not to cross them: would to Heaven they might have been suffered so to do! It was ordained that I, who had thus far caused their wretchedness, should also be the means of their death. A most terrible storm overtook us at midnight, while yet in sight of lights on English land, and in the midst of it our vessel sprung a leak. I knew that I had a brave woman for my wife, but then I found she was a heroine; I knew my Lucy was good as she was fair, but then she proved herself an angel. There were men on board who screamed and wailed like children. She never uttered a cry or shed a tear. She felt that she was going to heaven with all she loved (for she always thought the best of every one), and therefore death had no terrors for her. But I—I felt myself a murderer. I did what I could to save the two old people, and got them into the only boat that left the ship; but it had not parted from us twice its length, before it capsized before our eyes. Lucy had refused to leave me, and when the vessel began to sink, I lashed her to a spar, and then myself; and so for a little time we floated. But the great waves drenched us through and through, and dashed upon us so that we had hardly time to breathe. The spar was not large enough for both our weights, which sank it too low in the water; and so I secretly unloosed the cords that fastened me, and clambered to my Lucy's side, and kissed her cold wet cheek, and whispered: 'Fare well, Lucy.'”
Here the speaker paused, and covered his rough face. My Lady, too, was deeply moved. For near a minute, neither spoke. Then the man resumed: “I slipped into the sea, and struck out aimlessly enough, but with the instinct of a swimmer. Fool that I was to wish to live!” Again he paused; but this time, to mutter an execration.
“And did not all your care and unselfish love suffice to save her?” asked the listener tenderly.
“No, Lady. She was drowned. I never expected otherwise in such a sea. The whole ship's company were lost, except myself. When nearly spent, I came upon a huge piece of the wreck, and held on to it till daylight, when I found myself at sea. I would to God that it had not been so! I was nearer Heaven at that time than I have ever been since, and I ought to have perished then, when all which made life precious had already gone: it would have been far better to have died with her, than to live without her. But I did live. After two days and three nights of hunger and thirst, a vessel picked me up, a sodden mass of rags, half-dead and half-mad. They nursed me and made me well—it was a cruel kindness—and after many days, I was able to tell them what had happened. 'Ay, then,' said they, 'the pilot was right who came to us off Falmouth. It was the North Star that went to pieces in the storm; you are the sole survivor, man, of all on board. Nothing came on shore that night, or could have come on such a coast as that, save spars and corpses.'”
There was silence for a minute's space: the strong man's chest laboured in vain to give him breath for utterance; in vain his horny hand dashed the big tears from his brown cheeks; they still rained on.
“Alas, poor man!” said my Lady, in a broken and pitiful voice, “I feel for you from my very soul. And when you found your three-weeks' bride was dead—I think you said you had married her but three weeks—what then became of you?”
“What matters?” asked the man half-angrily, “It mattered nothing even to myself. The vessel took me—it was all one to me whither she was bound—to New South Wales. And in the New World I did indeed begin a new life—but it was a far worse one than in the old, I was reckless, hopeless already, and I was not long in becoming Godless. When that is said, a man's history is the same, wherever he lives, whatever he does, and however he ends.”
He stamped his foot upon the ground, as though he would keep down some rising demon, and his voice once more resumed the hoarseness it had exchanged for something almost plaintive throughout his story.
“Ralph, Ralph,” began my Lady reprovingly, and touching his rough sailor's sleeve with her gloved hand——
“And how the devil should you know my name is Ralph?” interrupted the other in blank amazement.