An Ocean Tragedy

by William Clark Russell

‘I fear, sir,’ he exclaimed, looking down, ‘that yesterday’s ’orrid tragedy has preyed upon his nerves, which, as you are of course aweer, sir, is uncommonly delicate.’

I thought this probable, and, as the man was going to his master’s cabin with a cup of tea from the breakfast-table, I told him to give Sir Wilfrid my love and to say that I should be glad to look in and sit with him. He returned to tell me my cousin thanked me, but that he would be leaving his berth presently, and would then join me in a pipe on deck.

There was a fresh breeze blowing, and the yacht was plunging through it in a snowstorm, rising buoyant to the bow surge with a broad dazzle of racing water over the lee-rail, and a smother of white roaring in a cataract from under her counter. There was wind in the misty shining of the sun and in the spaces of dim blue between the driving clouds. The ocean was gay with tints, flying cloud-shadows of slate, broad tracts of hurrying blue rich and gloriously fresh, with a ceaseless flashing of the heads of the dissolving billows, dashes of lustrous yellow to the touch of the sun that you would see sweeping a rusty ball of copper through a mass of smoke-like vapour, and then leaping out, moist and rayless, into some speeding lagoon of clear heaven. The horizon throbbed to the walls of the dimness that circled the line all the way round, and my first glance was for a ship; but all was bare ocean. From time to time the fellow on the topgallant-yard ogled the slope over either bow in a way that made me imagine some sort of hope of the ‘Shark’ heaving into view had come to the sailors out of this rushing morning. I waited for Miss Jennings, thinking she would arrive on deck; but, after stumping to and fro for a half-hour or thereabouts, and passing the skylight, I saw her and Wilfrid in close conversation standing almost directly beneath, he gesticulating with great energy, but speaking in a subdued voice, and she watching him with a troubled face. Passing the skylight again, a little later on, I caught sight of Wilfrid’s figure marching up and down with irregular, broken strides, whilst the girl, leaning with her hand upon the back of a chair, continued to gaze at him, with now and again a little movement of the arm which suggested that she was endeavouring to reassure or to reason with him.

I got alongside of Finn and fell into a yarn with him. One thing led to another, and Lady Monson’s name was mentioned.

‘Was she a pleasant lady?’ said I.

‘Ay, to look at, your honour. Up to the hammer. A little too much of her, some folks might think, but such eyes, sir! such teeth! and talk of figures!’ and here he delivered a low prolonged whistle of admiration.

‘She was a tolerably amiable lady, I suppose?’ said I carelessly.

‘Well, sir, if you’ll forgive me for saying of it, that’s just what she wasn’t,’ he replied. ‘She was one of them parties as can be very glad and very sorry for themselves and for nobody else. She steered Sir Wilfrid as I might this here “Bride.” She needed but to set her course, and the craft answered the shift of helm right away off. Ye never saw her, sir?’

‘Never.’

‘Well, she hadn’t somehow the appearance of what I tarm a marrying woman. She looked to be one of them splendid females as can’t abide husbands for the reason that, being made up of wanity, nothing satisfies ’em but the sort of admiration that sweethearts feels. I took notice once that, she being seated in a cheer, as it might be there,’ said he, indicating a part of the deck with a nod of his long head, ‘Sir Wilfrid draws up alongside of her to see if she were comfortable and if he could run on any errand for her; she scarcely gave him a look as she answered short as though his merely being near fretted her. But a minute arter up steps a gent from the cabin, the Honourable Mr. Lacy, and dawdles up to her, pulling at his bit of a whisker and showing of his teeth over a long puking of “Haw! haws!” and “Yaases:” and then see the change in her ladyship! Gor bless my heart and soul, your honour, ’twarn’t the same woman. She hadn’t smiles enough for this here honourable. Her voice was like curds and whey. She managed the colour in her cheeks, too, somehow, and bloomed out upon the poor little dandy when a minute afore her face to her husband was as blank as a custard. No, Mr. Monson, sir, her ladyship wasn’t a marrying woman. She was one of them ladies meant by natur to sit in a gilt cheer in the heart of a crowd of young men all a-bowing to and a-worshipping of her; very different from her sister, sir. That little lady down below there I allow’ll have the true makings of an English wife and an English mother in her, for all she’s an Australian.’