FIRST PRIZE ESSAY.
“When My Ship Comes Home.”
From childhood Harry Millbrooke resolved to marry Chatty Reeve when his ship came home. Now, Chatty declines to face the drudgery and monotony of domestic life. Harry regrets that she is influenced by her sister’s family worries, but he will not say good-bye to the old dream. Chatty determines to be a strong-minded spinster seeking her fortune in London where employment on the staff of a journal is promised by Joan Atherstone. Leaving Harry amidst the ruins of his fairy palace, she bids farewell to Audrey Woodville whose ship has come home with a lover who, after seven years’ absence, seeks his freedom. Audrey soars above her own trial, warns Chatty that she will not find the wilderness a paradise, and cheers Harry by assuring him that his ship will come home.
Chatty is disillusioned in London. The boarding-house is crowded. Some of its inmates are noisy and selfish. Poverty and care are stamped on all faces. Existence is a sad, despairing struggle. Joan forsakes the office in the Strand for a bicycle tour, and leaves Chatty to endure the burden of extra work in a stifling atmosphere. The country girl pines for the fresh breezes and sparkling waves of Northsea. She perceives the blessings she has cast away and the home she has despised. Chatty is lonely when Phœbe goes to keep house for an uncle, and after Esther’s wedding she feels an out-of-date regret that while her friend is happy on the old lines, she is unhappy on the new.
The climax comes. Faint and bewildered in crossing the street, Chatty regains consciousness in a hospital. When welcomed to her sister’s home she has changed from a self-reliant girl to a reserved woman. Barbara and Edward Purcell are very kind to her, and she resumes her post of governess, but all the old ties cannot be renewed so easily. Harry Millbrooke is in Copenhagen, and his mother has adopted pretty Etta Churton. Chatty reflects with a sigh that when her ship came home she sent it again to sea.
One balmy autumn day Harry returns and finds Chatty on the sea-shore. “Has my ship come home?” he asks. The answer is, “Yes, with torn sail and almost a wreck! But I know where my true haven is. I never want to go back to the waves of this troublesome world. I am safe in port at last.”
So this story, which our beloved authoress has woven round an attractive title, depicts the spirit of the age—the cry for emancipated womanhood, and ends to the happy music of wedding bells.