That was in April, 1910, and news of the loss of the Selma, in the ice of the Antarctic Circle was cabled from Honolulu at the beginning of last month. An American Antarctic Expedition, having concluded a mission of exploration in the summer season of 1910, finding upon the coast of King Edward Land the few survivors of the Swedish Steam and Sail Antarctic Research Expedition making preparations to winter in a wooden hut built out of the wreckage of their teak-built sailing-steamer—rescued and carried them on their homeward route. The saved men, later interviewed at San Francisco, were unable to give news of their leader, save that the Captain, taking a dog-sledge and a little stock of provisions and instruments, and a hearty leave of all of them, turned that lined bronze face of his and those eyes with the far-away look in their wide pupils, to the dim, mysterious, uncharted regions lying South, in the lap of the mysterious Unknown, and with a wave of a fur-gloved hand, was lost in them.
“He is dead, Arthur is dead!� moaned Geraldine Magellison, in the depths of conjugal anguish and a lace-covered sofa-cushion, when the Press and Hawting-Holliday broke the news between them. “Dead!—and I loved him so—I loved him so!�
“It is a pity, under the circumstances,� said Hawting-Holliday, carrying out his promise of being a friend to Magellison’s wife by telling that wife the truth, “that you were so economical in your expressions of affection. For I do not think that when the Captain left you he had any remaining illusions as to the nature of your regard for him.�
“How cruel you are—how cruel!� gasped Geraldine, as her maid bore in a salver piled with the regrets of Learned Societies and the sympathy of distinguished Personages and private friends.
“Let me for once use the trite and hackneyed saying that I am cruel only to be kind!� said Hawting-Holliday, emphatically, “and that I speak solely in the interests of—a friend whom I love.�
Mrs. Magellison flushed to the roots of her superb golden hair, and consciously drooped her scarcely-reddened eyelids as she held up a protesting hand.
“No, no, Sir Robert!� she pleaded. “If I—as you infer—have gravely erred in lack of warmth toward poor, poor, dearest Arthur! let me at least be ungrudging in respect of his great memory. Forget what you have said, carried away by a feeling which in honor you subdued after the rude awakening of many months ago, and do not revert to—the subject for—for at least a year to come!�
At that Hawting-Holliday got upon his legs, and thrusting his hands deep into his trouser-pockets, made the one and only harangue of his existence.
“Mrs. Magellison, when you suggest that in the very hour when the intelligence of grave disaster to your husband’s vessel has reached us, I am capable of addressing you in what the poetic faculty term—Heaven knows how idiotically and falsely!—the language of love, you gravely err. The friend in whose interests I spoke just now, was—your husband. Is your husband—for I do not accept by any means the theory that because he has been lost sight of, he is dead. I believe him to be living. I shall go on believing this until I see his body, or meet with some relics of him that supply me—his friend!—with the evidence that you, his wife, are so uncommonly ready to dispense with.�