An Ocean Tragedy

by William Clark Russell

I thought Miss Jennings would rebuke me for what I had said, and I gathered myself together, in an intellectual sense, for a little gentle fencing with her for a bit; for, let her hate the Colonel as she might, and let her be as eager as she would that her sister should be speedily rescued from the villain she had sacrificed her honour for, I had made up my mind not to suffer her to imagine that I regarded a meeting between the two men as a necessary effect of the Colonel’s action; but that, on the contrary, I should consider it my duty to vehemently discountenance a duel, until I found that there was nothing in argument to dissuade my cousin; when of course I would render him such services as he might expect from me.

In short, as you will see, I took a cold-blooded view of the whole business. The prosaic arbitrament of the law! that was my notion! The shears of a dispassionate judge: no pistols and coffee for two, thank’ee! Methinks when it comes to one’s wife preferring Jones or Tomkins to one’s own lovely self, her new emotions should be helped, not by giving the latest darling of her heart the chance to kill one, but by starting one’s attorney to play upon the blissful couple with the cold black venom of his ink-horn!

Miss Jennings, however, made no reference to my speech, nor to the manner of Wilfrid’s going. She remained quiet, and showed herself subdued and grieved for some time, and then we talked about the testing of the men’s sight, and I repeated what Captain Finn had said to me on that subject. On a sudden she exclaimed:

‘You told me, Mr. Monson, that you have never seen my sister?’

‘No, only heard of her, and then quite indirectly.’

She went to her cabin, moving in a very inimitable, floating, graceful, yielding way to the heave of the deck, never offering to grasp anything for support, though the lee-lurches were at times somewhat staggering, and I thought I never saw a more perfect little figure as she withdrew, her hair glowing when her form was already vague as she flitted into the shadow astern of the companion steps towards the dark corridor or passage which conducted to her cabin. She returned after a short absence with a miniature painting set in a very handsome case, on which was my cousin’s crest with initials beneath, signifying that it was a gift from him to Laura Jennings. I carried it under the skylight to see it clearly.

‘When was this done?’ I asked.

‘About a year ago,’ she answered. ‘Wilfrid sent it to Melbourne as a gift to me.’

Now it might be that I was then—taste, of course, changes—no very passionate admirer of dark women; brunettes, I mean, of a South European sort, which the face in the miniature was after the pattern of; and that is why, no doubt, the expectation in me of the ripe and tropic graces I was to behold was not a little disappointed. Anyone could see by the likeness that Lady Monson was a fine woman; her hair was raven black, but there was a want of taste in the fashion in which it was dressed; her eyes were bright, imperious, rather too staring, with something of haughty astonishment in their expression; but this might have been the artist’s misinterpretation of their character. She was as like her sister Laura as I was like her. Her mouth was somewhat large, rich, voluptuous; the throat very beautiful, with something about the line or curve of the jaw which would have made you suspect, without knowing the original, that the character of this part of the face was exquisitely reproduced. It was a heaviness to communicate a slightly masculine air to the whole countenance. I turned to Miss Jennings and found her eyes intent on my face.

‘She is a handsome lady,’ said I, ‘handsomer, I should think, than she is here represented: quite apart, I mean, from the glow of countenance, the animation of look, and all the rest of the things which go to make up two-thirds at least of human beauty.’