Heart of Oak: A Three-Stranded Yarn, vol. 3

by William Clark Russell

I answered I had thought over that, and knew it would prove a terrible ordeal. But it must be worse with me if I stayed at home, never stirring to find out if the body that lay in Cape Town cemetery was indeed that of the girl I loved.

'Suppose she is drowned,' I reasoned, 'I should not believe it for months, perhaps years. No man could persuade me she was dead. Time alone must convince me. But how long should I allow myself? Meanwhile I must live in expectation. My life would be a torment of suspense. But by going to the Cape I shall satisfy myself at once.'

'Yes,' said my father, 'but you will only be able to satisfy yourself that Marie does not lie buried in Cape Town if, when the grave is opened, the remains should prove another's.'

'It will satisfy me to know that, at all events,' I exclaimed.

'Will they let you exhume the body?'

This staggered me somewhat; but I replied I would take my chance of it. The corpse had been brought to Cape Town, and there buried with a view to identification. The case was extraordinary; and when the Colonial authorities heard my story they would not refuse to let me disinter the remains.

Several friends offered like objections. One suggested I should ask that the clothes should be sent home, and submitted to the inspection of those from whom Marie bought her outfit; the shopmen would know their own wares. If they asserted the clothes had been sold by them—had at any time passed through their hands—there would be something solid to go upon; I could then sail for the Cape and confirm by inspection what to most would pass as a foregone conclusion.

But my answer was, it was not very conceivable that those who held the clothes would part with them; it was no case of suspected murder, so as to admit of the introduction of the machinery of the law; moreover, if I waited, the remains would become unrecognisable. It was already a question how far the climate would admit of an identification of them. The body arrived at the Cape August 10; this was the close of October. December would have come before I landed; and December is the burning midsummer of South Africa.

But herein, as in all the rest, I was prepared to take my chance. I felt a secret reluctance in one direction only. It shocked me even in imagination to think, if the remains should prove Marie's, of the memory I must return home with and be haunted by to my death-bed.