‘No,’ I replied.
‘And Captain Finn is saved too. I’m so glad, sir.’
But the rogue gave me a look that clearly signified he was very sorry indeed.
An hour later I was sitting by my cousin’s bedside. He was stopping at an hotel near Charing Cross. I will say nothing of the warmth of our meeting. The tears were in my eyes as I grasped and retained his hand. He was perfectly rational, had a more sensible look in his face than I had ever witnessed in it, and his memory was as clear as my own. It seemed to me that the shock of shipwreck had worked wonders in him, though to be sure strong traces of congenital weakness were still visible in the quivering eyelids, the occasional, irrelevant, loud laugh, the boyish eagerness of manner, with now and again the passing shadow of a darkening humour. For a long time we seemed able to talk of nothing but the wreck of the ‘Bride’ and of our several experiences. I very delicately and vaguely referred to the delusion that had imprisoned him in his cabin, but his stare of surprise advised me that he had no recollection whatever of his craze, and it was like a warning to me to instantly quit the subject. He told me that Muffin had behaved with a touching devotion to him whilst they were in the boat, pillowing his head when he slept, cooling his hot brow with water, sheltering him from the heat of the sun by standing behind him with his jacket outstretched to the nature of a little awning. He asked tenderly after Laura, and made many inquiries after the men who had been saved, bidding me tell Finn, should he visit me, to call upon him, that he might obtain the names and addresses of the survivors, and enable them to replace the effects they had lost, by the foundering of the yacht.
‘You do not ask after your wife, Wilfrid,’ said I, a little nervously.
‘Oh, you told me she was saved,’ he answered languidly; then after a pause he added, ‘Where is she?’
‘She refused to accompany her sister,’ said I; ‘she loves independence. She has gone alone to such and such an hotel, where I presume she is still to be found.’
His face flushed to the name of that hotel; he instantly remembered. He bent his eyes downwards and said as if to himself,
‘Yes, she is of those who return to their vomit.’
‘What are your plans?’ said I.