An Ocean Tragedy

by William Clark Russell

She extended her hand coldly to her sister and gave me a haughty bow. Laura bit her lips to restrain her tears, but her pride was stung; disgust and amazement too fell cool upon her grief.

The last I ever saw of Lady Monson was as she passed along the quay towards the dockyard gates. As she paced forward, stately, slow, her carriage queenly and easy as though, sumptuously clothed and in the full pride of her beauty, she trod the floor of a ball-room, the scores of sailors, labourers, loafers who thronged the decks, turned, to a man, to stare after her. A strange and striking figure indeed she made, habited in the dress which she wore when the ‘Shark’ foundered, and which, as you may suppose, by this time showed very much like the end of a long voyage. The brown veil concealed her features and to a certain degree qualified the outlandish appearance of the sailor’s grass hat upon her head.

‘So!’ said I as she disappeared, ‘and now, Laura, it is for you and me to go ashore.’

We bade a cordial farewell to Captain Richardson and his mates and to Finn and Cutbill, both of whom promised to call upon me. I had the address of the owner of the vessel, and told the skipper that next day I would communicate with the office and defray whatever expenses we had put the ship to. I further took the addresses of the captain and his mates that I might send them some token of my gratitude for our deliverance and for the many kindnesses they had done us during the long and tedious passage.

A few hours later I had comfortably lodged Laura in a snug private hotel within an easy walk of my lodgings, to which I forthwith repaired and took possession of afresh with such an emotion of bewilderment excited in me by the familiar rooms, and by the feeling that I was once more in London, with no more runaway wives to chase, no more Dutchmen to fire into, no more duels to assist in, no more volcanic rocks to split upon, and no more galleons to sleep in, that I felt like a man just awakened from some wild and vivid dream whose impressions continue so acute that the familiar objects his eyes open upon seem as phantasms that must presently fade. My first act was to send a milliner and a dressmaker to Laura, and to see in other ways to her immediate requirements; my next to address a letter to Wilfrid’s solicitors, in which I acquainted them with the loss of the ‘Bride’ and the death of my cousin. Whom else to write to at once about the poor fellow I did not know. I asked after his infant, and requested them to tell me if the child was still with the lady with whom my cousin had placed it before leaving England. I added that I should be pleased to see one of the partners and relate the full story of the voyage, the object of which I could not doubt Wilfrid had informed them of before sailing.

I spent the evening with Laura. All her talk was about what she was to do until she had heard from her father, to whom she told me she had written a long letter within an hour after her arrival at the hotel, ‘so as to lose no time, Charles.’ She had no relations in England, scarcely an acquaintance for the matter of that; with whom was she to live then? Even had Lady Monson settled down in a house she was not a person with whom I could have desired the girl I was affianced to to be long and intimately associated. The notion of her returning to Australia alone was not to be entertained. There seemed nothing then for it but for me to overhaul the list of my connections, to make experiments in the direction of relations, and endeavour to find a home for her with one or another of them until there should some day arrive a mail from Australia giving me leave to take her to my heart.

Well, it was next morning that I had finished breakfast and was sitting musing over a fire with a newspaper on my knee. My mind was full of the past. I remember looking round me almost incredulously with eyes that still found the familiar furniture of my room unreal and indeed almost impossible, listening with ears that could scarcely accept as actual the transformation of the roar and beat and wash of the seas into the steady hum of ceaseless traffic in the great London roadway into which the street I occupied opened. Years had elapsed, it seemed, since that night when my servant had ushered in my cousin, and I saw in fancy the wild roll of his eyes round the apartment, the crazy flourish of his hands, his posture as he sank his head upon the table battling with his sobbing breath.

I was disturbed by a smart knock at the door. ‘Come in.’ The landlord entered; a thin, iron-grey, soft-voiced man, who had for many years been butler in an earl’s family, and who had retired and started a lodging-house on discovering that he had married a woman of genius in the shape of a cook.

‘There’s a person below named Muffin would like to see you, sir.’