He hooked the door, leaving it a little way open. Without preface I told him that Miss Marie Otway, only daughter of Sir Mortimer Otway, was my sweetheart; she had gone a voyage for her health in the 'Lady Emma'; soon after the news of that ship having been dismasted reached home, there arrived the extraordinary tale of the body of a woman having been picked up in the latitude and longitude the hull was in when abandoned by the crew; the description of the body, I told him, was that of Miss Otway, and my only motive in making the voyage to the Cape was to examine the remains, if the exhumation would be permitted.
He listened with deep interest and a countenance of cordial sympathy.
'Now, sir,' said he, 'I can understand your motive in questioning old Captain Robson.'
'If the body be not Miss Otway I shall want to know what chance she's had aboard that hull. Robson's an old sailor, and I've drawn a little hope out of his talk, providing——'
'Well,' said he, gathering my meaning even from my pause, 'I should say, sir, that a man would know his own child. Old Mr. Hoskins assured me, whilst telling his story, with the tears standing in his eyes, that the portrait sent him was the likeness of Mrs. Ollier, his daughter. That being so, it's reasonable you should ask questions about the wreck.'
'Would Mr. Hoskins show me those portraits, do you think?'
'Show them? Why, yes, sir. When he hears the story, he'll be glad to be of use. If you'll stop here, I'll go and manage the matter out of hand for you.'
I thanked him and he departed.
I continued alone for some time with my mind tormented by anxiety and expectation. Though old Mr. Hoskins declared the portraits to be his daughter's, yet he might very well be mistaken, too. I waited in dread. The distress of expectation and suspense was complicated by the fear that the action of the sea, the convulsion and agony of drowning, had so wrought as to make a cheat of the face: to the old man it was to be his child, and to me it was to plead dimly as Marie out of its shrunk, ghastly looks! How should we decide then? Indeed, none might ever get to certainly know who it was, and I should go home fancying I had viewed the face of my beloved in death, and fancying, too, for months to come, that she had been rescued and, by the many strange crosses of travel and adventure, detained, but that she was coming and I should hear.
Thus I sat, my mind in anguish, starting up sometimes to pace the few feet of charterhouse deck, then flinging myself down miserable and mad with thought.