An Ocean Tragedy

by William Clark Russell

‘Yes,’ she replied, with just enough of heat or temper, or whatever you like to call it, in her voice to render her utterance distinct with unconscious emphasis; ‘he adored his wife. Can a man tear his love into pieces in a day, as though it were no more than a tedious old letter? He thinks he hates her; he does so in a sense, no doubt; but in a sense, too, he still worships her. Mad! that is what you mean.’

I was beginning to protest.

‘Yes, it is what you mean, and you are right and wrong. If he does not pursue her, if he does not recover her, she is lost for ever. She is lost now, you will tell me. Ay,’ she cried with a little stamp, ‘lost so far as her husband’s heart goes, so far as her honour is concerned; but not so utterly lost as she will later be if she is not rescued from that—that man, who must be so served, Mr. Monson, as to render it impossible for him ever again to trouble the peace of another home, to break the heart of a noble-minded creature and rob a little infant of its mother. Hate him! Oh, girl as I am, I declare before my Maker I would shoot him with my own hand!’

There was nothing in the least degree theatrical in her way of speaking. The words came in a hurry to her lips from her indignant heart, and I heard the sincerity of them so clearly in the mere utterance, I did not doubt for an instant that, put a pistol in her hand and set up the figure of the Colonel in front of her, she would have sought for his heart, if he had one, with the barrel of the weapon without so much as a sigh at having to kill him. I felt abashed; her sincerity and resentment were overwhelming; her strength of feeling, too, won a peculiar accentuation from the character of airy delicacy, of tender fragility, the moonlight gave to her fair and golden beauty. It was like listening to a volume of sounds poured forth by a singing bird, and wondering that such far-reaching melody should be produced by so small a creature.

‘I fear,’ said I, ‘you don’t think me very sincere in my sympathy with Wilfrid——’

‘Oh, yes, Mr. Monson,’ she interrupted; ‘do not suppose such a thing. It is not to be imagined that you should take this cruel and miserable affair to heart as he does, or feel it as I do, who am her sister.’

‘The truth is,’ said I, ‘it is impossible for a bachelor not to take a cynical view of troubles of this sort. A man was charged with the murder of his sweetheart. The judge said to him, “Had the woman been your wife, your guilt would not have been so great, because you would have no other means of getting rid of her save by killing her; but the unhappy creature whose throat you cut you could have sent adrift without trouble.” What I mean to say is, Miss Jennings, that a husband does not merit half the pity that is felt for him if his wife elopes. He is easily quit of a woman who is his wife only by name. I am for pitying her. The inevitable sequel—the disgrace, desertion, and the rest of it—is as punctual as the indication of the hands of a clock.... But see how nimbly the “Bride” floats through all this darkness and quietude. We shall be passing that vessel shortly, and yet for canvas she might really be one of the pyramids of Egypt towing down Channel.’

We went to the rail to look, I, for one, glad enough to change the subject, for it was nothing less than profanity to be arguing with so sweet a little woman as this—in the pure white shining of the moon, too, and with something of an ocean freshness of atmosphere all about us—on such a gangrenous subject as the elopement of Lady Monson with Colonel Hope-Kennedy. Out of all my sea-going experiences I could not pick a fairer picture than was made by the brig we were passing, clad as she was in moonlight, and rising in steam-coloured spaces to mere films of royals motionless under the stars. She was a man-of-war; the white of her broad band, that was broken by black ports, gleamed like the ivory of pianoforte keys; her canvas was exquisitely out and set, and trimmed as naval men know how—one yardarm looking backwards a little over another, the rounded silent cloths, faint in the radiance with a gleam as of alabaster showing through a delicate haze, and high aloft the tremor of a pennant like the expiring trail of a shooting star. All was as hushed as death upon her; her high bulwarks concealed her decks; nothing was to be seen stirring along the whole length of the shapely, beautiful, visionary fabric that, as we left her slowly veering away upon our quarter, looked to lose the substance of her form, as though through the gradual absorption of the light her own white canvas made by the clearer and icy radiance of the soaring moon.

‘To think now,’ said I, ‘of the thunder of adamantine lips concealed within the silence of that heap of swimming faintness! How amazing the change from the exquisite repose she suggests to the fierce crimson blaze and headlong detonations of a broadside flashing up the dark land and dying out miles away in a sullen roar. But, d’ye know, Miss Jennings, I shall grow poetical if I do not light another cigar. Women should encourage men to smoke. Nothing keeps them quieter.’

We exchanged a few words with Captain Finn, who, together with the mate, was keeping a bright look-out, and then resumed our walk, and in a quiet chat that was ended only by a small bell on the forecastle announcing the hour of ten by four chimes, Miss Laura gave me the story of my cousin’s introduction to her family, described the marriage, talked to me about Melbourne and her home there, with more to the same purpose, all very interesting to me, though it would make the merest parish gossip in print. Her mother was dead; her father was a hearty man of sixty who had emigrated years before in dire poverty, ‘as you will suppose,’ said she, ‘when I tell you that he was the son of a dissenting minister who had a family of twelve children, and who died without leaving money enough to pay for his funeral.’ Mr. Jennings had made a fortune by squatting, but he had lost a considerable sum within the past few years by stupid speculation, and as Miss Laura said this I could see, by hearing her (to use a Paddyism), the pout of lip; for, bright as the moonlight was, the silver of it blended with the golden tint of her hair without defining any feature of her clearly saving her eyes, in which the beam of the planet would sparkle like a diamond whenever she raised them to my face. She told me her father was very proud that his daughter should become a lady of title, and yet he opposed the marriage, too. In short, he saw that Wilfrid’s mind was not as sound as it should be, though he never could point to any act or speech to justify his misgivings. But this was intelligible enough; for, to speak of my cousin as I remembered him in earlier times, the notion you got that he was not straight-headed, as I have before said, was from his face, and the suspicion lay but dully in one, so rational was his behaviour, so polished and often intellectual his talk; till on a sudden it was sharpened into conviction on your hearing that there was insanity in his mother’s family.