'Two or three,' he answered quickly. 'They were of dark blue. Two she had. A third was added at Mrs. Burke's suggestion. What was the colour of the dress described here?'
He looked; but no colour was named. I got up and paced about the room.
'I have made up my mind,' I exclaimed. 'I will go to the Cape. If it be Marie—but I must make sure at all costs. The suspense, the waiting, the not knowing whether she lies dead at Cape Town, whether she has gone down in the hull, whether she has been rescued, carried to a distant port, and is lying ill, so that months might elapse before we should get news of her—all this I could not bear! I am already half mad with the grief of it. I will go to Cape Town,' I cried, 'and see with my own eyes, and settle expectation, so far as that body is concerned, one way or another, for ever.'
CHAPTER XXI MR. MOORE SAILS
I think, I will not be sure, that the date on which I returned to London from this visit to Sir Mortimer was October 26. In the year 1860 sailing ships bound to the Australias and the East Indies frequently, many of them regularly, touched at the Cape; small vessels, such as brigs and barques, also traded to that colony. There was steam communication, however, then. I believe the first of the steamers of the Union Steamship Company was despatched three years earlier, namely, in 1857.
Be this as it may, since steam was to be got I was resolved to have nothing to do with what the sailor calls tacks and sheets. A sailing ship might keep me four months upon the ocean in her struggles with head winds and failing catspaws. On the other hand, the Cape, by steam, was to be reached certainly within forty days. But having made up my mind, I found there was no time to lose, that is, if I resolved on steam; for, on reaching London, I learnt that the next Union steamer was the 'Cambrian,' sailing from Southampton on November 6.
It was this obligation of despatch, perhaps, which hardened me in my resolution. I meant to sail by the 'Cambrian' and there was no leisure for hesitation, no time for second thought. Not, indeed, that I was not passionately resolved; I had been so from the hour of clearly understanding that I must proceed to the Cape and procure the exhumation of the body if my mind was to be set at rest one way or the other. I mean, if I had been obliged to wait a month, say, for a sailing ship, I might have found myself troubled, my resolution a little unsettled, by the counsels of friends.
My father, for example, fully sanctioned my going, but advised me to consider how it would be with my memory if, when the coffin was opened, I recognised the body as Marie's.