John Holdsworth, Chief Mate

by William Clark Russell

The only concession granted was the enjoyment of such ghostly and barren pleasure as his heart could find in the knowledge of the close neighbourhood of the two who were so dear to him. Oh! bitter waking of memory, to recall him from the sunny vision of the old times when his joy was complete, and love a permanent possession to enrich his nature with all gracious and generous emotions, to thrust him into the gray and bleak twilight of a loveless and desolate life, which the recovered power could only embitter by recurrence to the things that were lost!

His eyes wandered ceaselessly and restlessly towards the window. From time to time people went by with the slow, aimless step of persons who walk for no other end than exercise. An old gentleman, with a white moustache and a dark skin, stopped, with another old gentleman, in high shirt-collars and a tail-coat, opposite Holdsworth’s window, and argued, with many galvanic flourishes of the arms and grimaces of the face. There was much political excitement abroad at that time, owing to the Reform Bill of the Grey Administration, to which the royal assent had been given; and the dark-skinned old gentleman—whose age, warmth, and intemperate flourishes were as demonstrative of his politics as his language—bade his companion take notice that, before five years were passed, England would be a tenth-rate power, governed by a mob, with a Jesuit seated on every hearth, a Nuncio preaching at St. Paul’s, not a Bible to be found in the country, and the gallows groaning under strings of honest patriots. The old gentleman in the high shirt-collars, who clearly shared his friend’s opinions, nodded savagely, asked with his shoulders, “What would you have?” and then moved on a dozen paces, to be stopped again by the other old gentleman with prophecies, maybe, more blood-chilling and awful than those he had already declaimed.

Presently Holdsworth, scarcely conscious of what he was about, left the window and approached the bookcase. He pulled out a volume, which proved to be an old copy of Gulliver’s Travels, “adorn’d with sculptures;” and his eye lighting on that passage in which Gulliver closes his account of his second voyage,[2] his thoughts trooped off to his old sea-faring life, the book closed upon his fingers, and he sank in deep meditation.

The restoration of his memory was comparatively so recent, that he had found no leisure to recall those frightful experiences of his which could not recur without overwhelming him with an unspeakable horror of the sea. He now understood that it should have been his duty to call upon the owners of the “Meteor,” and acquaint them with the circumstances of the wreck of their vessel, and the deaths of the persons who were in his boat, all whom he clearly remembered. There were friends, doubtless, both in England and America, who could wish to receive tidings of the fate of these people, though the long interval of five years should tell as plain a story as Holdsworth could relate. He knew not whether the inmates of the other boats had been saved, and he would have given much to ascertain this; but he understood that any communication he made to the shipowners would be almost sure to appear in print, by which his wife would learn that he was alive. “No! let the world think me dead!” he exclaimed bitterly. He had only to live for the past now—for that memory which had betrayed him and ruined his life. His future was bare and barren, and there was nothing in all the world that could kindle one ray of comfort in his hopeless heart but the bleak privilege of dwelling near his wife and child.

He restored the book to its place and returned to the window.

In the roadway, a few yards to the right, a little girl was standing, holding a doll. She was a very little creature, with bright yellow hair down her back, and she held the doll in motherly fashion on her arm, and caressed it with her hand.

Her back was towards Holdsworth, whose eyes were rooted upon her.

She turned presently and looked down the road, and Holdsworth saw a little face upon which God had graven a sign that made the poor father clutch at the wall to steady himself. For there was his own face in miniature—the face that Dolly had loved before the sufferings of the mind, and the anguish of hunger and thirst, had twisted from it all resemblance it had ever borne to what was manly and beautiful in the human countenance.

He pressed his hands to his eyes and gazed again, then ran to the bell-rope and pulled it. But when he had done this he wished it undone. For would not his agitation excite Mrs. Parrot’s suspicions? What was there in a stranger’s child that should so interest him?

He bit his lip and controlled himself with desperate will; and, when Mrs. Parrot opened the door, he said to her in a steady voice and with a forced smile: