“Oh, I had no adventures, and I never noticed anything, only to ask how far we were from England, and to count the days till we should have finished all the work. I made a little calendar, as the girls do at school, the girls I mean who have real mothers, and I blotted out every day when it was over, and thought—‘one less now before I see Kit again.’ Of course I asked my father what had made him send for me, and he said it was my husband’s most earnest entreaty, and if I loved him I must ask no more, but keep up my spirits and obey his orders. Father never showed me this letter, or I think—though I can’t be quite sure—that I should have doubted about it. The writing is exactly like Kit’s in some places, but in others it is different, and the style is not like Kit’s. That wicked man stole several letters of Kit’s; I suspected it then, and now I know it.
“My father had not the smallest doubt, of course, but he was puzzled when I spoke about that telegram, you know what I mean—the one from Captain Jenkins at Falmouth, to say the ship was on her voyage, and to send good-bye to us. He had sent no such message, and had spoken no such ship, and said that it must be some extraordinary mistake. But you see now it was another piece of falsehood, to make it look impossible that I could be with my father.
“It was father himself who went to Baycliff to inquire, knowing that we had been there, and being near it. But he could not come here, and so he sent Dr. Cutler, who knows all this neighbourhood well, and managed it all to perfection with the help of some one, who was sent by agreement to meet him. Oh dear, when I think of that dreadful time; and I was not allowed to leave a line for my husband, except what I wrote, on the sly, in the Prayer-book. Well, that did him some good, at any rate; didn’t it, my own darling?
“I am quite ashamed to talk of my own sorrow, when I think of what Kit has been through for me. But I am sure I ate nothing for at least a month, and Dr. Cutler, who was in charge of the health of the ship’s company, became quite uneasy about me. As for their experiments, deep-sea dredging, and soundings, and temperatures, and all that, I did not even care to look at them, and I am not a bit more scientific than when I went out, though perhaps I shall talk as if I was, by-and-by. The only thing I felt any interest in was the rescue of a poor afflicted man—I think they called him a Spaniard, though he seemed to me more like an Englishman—who was kept as a prisoner among some savages in a desert place in South America. He was terribly afflicted with some horrible disease; and the sailors would not go near him, until they were ashamed when they saw me do it. We were all very kind to him, but he left us, and got on board another ship bound for home.
“Oh, how I used to tremble, Kit, whenever we saw a ship in the distance, hoping for news of you, my dear, and of Uncle Corny, and everybody. But we met very few ships, being generally employed in out-of-the-way places, and only landing anywhere two or three times, for water, or fruit, or vegetables.
“But when we got to Ascension Island, which is an English place, you know, what a joyful surprise there was for me! I shall always bless that little rocky spot, for it gave me back my life again. When father received my husband’s letter, for the first time in his life, he was in a real fury. Something or other had occurred before, besides that affair of the telegram, which made him a little doubtful about this wicked, wicked letter. And now he saw at once that he had been imposed upon most horribly. We were all afraid that he would have had a fit, but Dr. Cutler saved him.
“‘My poor injured child!’ he kept on exclaiming; ‘wretched for at least a year, and injured for life, by this monstrous villainy!’ He would have thrown up his command at once, if he could have done it honourably, and brought me home by the very next ship. But if he had done so, the cruise must have ended; for Lieutenant Morris, who was next to him, was invalided at Fort George. I was quite ready to come home alone, by any ship, English or foreign; but as it happened, Dr. Cutler received by the same mail an urgent request from his wife for his return; and so the very gentleman I ran away with brought me back to my husband. It was a long time before we could get a ship, and then it was only a sailing vessel, and oh how slowly she seemed to go! Then about a month ago, we had a very heavy storm, which drove us I don’t know how far out of our course, and I thought that I never should see Kit again. But now it seems all like a horrible dream. Father will be home, in November, I hope. I intend to work hard to help Uncle Corny; and Kit will soon be well again, with me to mind him.”
CHAPTER LXV.
HER OWN WAY.
“You must not let it drop, Kit; you can’t let it drop,” said Aunt Parslow, as she sat in our parlour, the next day, having ordered Parker’s fly, as soon as she received my letter; “for the sake of your sweet wife, you are absolutely bound to expose this horrid miscreant. I doubt if there ever was such a case before, though nothing ever surprises me. It was very nasty of you to steal that dog—why, you might have come and stolen Jupiter, on the very same principle of a pretty girl—and you have been punished, even more than you deserved. You deserved a month in the stocks perhaps, with all the dogs in the village sniffing at you; but you did not deserve to lose your own wife, just when you had time to get fond of her. I am not for revenge; I am too old to fancy that we can do much to right ourselves, even if the feeling was Christian; but I belong to an honourable family, in which the fair fame of a lady was never neglected.”