Alone on a Wide Wide Sea, Vol. 3 (of 3)

by William Clark Russell

‘On his return.’

I blessed him in my heart, and kissed him in fancy. But the strain had proved too great. The strength I had put forth to uphold me in my resolution, not to know him as my husband whilst Mary lived, had taxed me too heavily. I sat down at the table to support my head till the fit of giddiness should pass, and when I opened my eyes again, Mrs. Lee told me that I had been unconscious for nearly a quarter of an hour.

She saw me to bed, and that my thoughts should not keep me sleepless all night, she procured and insisted on my taking a soothing draught, which threw me into a sleep from which I did not awaken until past eight o’clock next morning. My mind went often to my husband throughout the day, but oftener to my children, whom I was to expect on the following afternoon, and oftener still to my sister. In what part of England did she mean to hide herself? And was it not true, as John had said, that, supposing her hiding-place to be discovered, she would insist on remaining apart from us all, insuring concealment by change of quarters. It was certain she would not dwell with my husband whilst I was alive. It was certain she could not live with us if I chose to return to my husband. What then could she do? She must live apart, and her pride and her condition, which her letter had hinted at, would compel her to live in obscurity, even though, instead of having a hundred a year to subsist upon, she had the wealth of a Princess.

I talked earnestly, with tears and with passion, to Mrs. Lee about her; asked her how we should go to work to find out where she was; ‘Because,’ I said, ‘if she should not consent to live with you, she might consent to live with me and my children. My husband must support me, and Mary and I might be able to put enough together to keep a little home on.’

But Mrs. Lee answered somewhat coldly, and without interest. Her sympathy was not with my sister; it was with me and my husband and children. She told me that I had no right to render my children fatherless, to deprive them of their natural protection, and of their home, indeed, by finding out where my sister was hidden and dwelling with her. Indeed she strongly discountenanced my resolution not to rejoin my husband, and I let the subject drop, fearful lest some hot sentence should escape me, which might give pain to a friend and benefactress whom I loved only a little less tenderly than I loved my own sister.

I busied myself that afternoon, helped by the old housekeeper, Sarah, to prepare a room for my children and the nurse. I walked into Newcastle and purchased two little bedsteads, and I bought several toys and boxes of sweets as surprises and welcomes for my little ones; and when the evening had come, my thoughts at the time being much with my husband, I sat down, and for above two hours occupied myself in filling page after page of a letter to him.

I should only weary you to give you, even in the most abridged form, the substance of that long letter. It was a justification of my behaviour; it was an entreaty for my sister; and I also pointed out to him that now my children were coming to me, I could no longer remain dependent upon Mrs. Lee. I would be satisfied with the interest of the money my mother had given to me, and if that did not suffice to maintain my children and myself, I would endeavour by my industry to make up what was wanting.

My children came next day. My husband sent Mrs. Lee a telegram, giving the hour at which the train arrived, and I went to the railway station to meet my children. There were many people on the platform, and I do not doubt that my behaviour was observed, and that numbers went away saying that they had seen a mad woman. My joy at the sight of my children was indeed extravagant. First, I would take the baby from the nurse and hug it, and then pick up Johnny and hold him, and then put the little fellow down and take the baby again, laughing and crying alternately with such gestures of delight, with such impassioned speech to one or the other of the little ones, that, as I have said, many of the people who observed me must have certainly thought me crazy.

As we drove to Jesmond I plied the nurse with all sorts of questions, and heard, though I did not need to be told, of the devotion of Mary to my children. As for the nurse, I could not but treat her as a stranger. She had been with me a few months only before I was lost to my family, and now, after three years, she was as strange to me as though I had just engaged her. She it was, however, who told me of my sister’s fright and grief, when, at Piertown, the evening approached, the weather grew boisterous, and I did not return; how my sister had sent boatmen to seek for me, but how they came back in a very short while, bringing no news, and offering no hope; how further search was made next day when my husband arrived. And she told me of his grief, how his heart seemed broken, how messages were sent to adjacent ports along the line of coast stating the disaster, and requesting that a lookout should be kept, and that a search should be made; and then she spoke of the family’s return to Bath, of their going into mourning for me, though for months my husband refused to believe I was lost to him, in spite of the boatman’s body having been washed ashore, and his boat discovered upside down. She told me enough in her plain way to make me understand that I had been mourned by my husband with a passion of grief that had broken him down and forced him away for his health, and almost ruined his practice by rendering him for months unfit for business.

I secretly wept as I listened to her and often kissed my children, for his face as he had turned to look at me was before me, and his cry of ‘God forgive you, Agnes!’ rang in my ears.