John Holdsworth, Chief Mate

by William Clark Russell

Holdsworth led the child to the sofa. The mother looked at her little girl, opened her arms, and burst into tears.

“Thank God for that!” said Holdsworth, turning away. Watching her face as her consciousness had dawned, he had felt that, if tears did not relieve her, her heart would break.

[CHAPTER XXXI.]
HUSBAND AND WIFE.

The little irritable man had brought true news. The report was all over the town: everybody was talking of Conway’s death. A woman living in the road called upon Mrs. Parrot to give her the story, not knowing that Mrs. Conway was within. Her husband had met Williamson, the man who found Conway, and had got the account from him clear of all exaggeration.

It was just this: Williamson was a carpenter, and was walking to Thorrold Marsh to execute a repairing job at a house there. He was this side of Hanwitch, just by the bridge facing Squire Markwell’s place, when he saw a human hand sticking out of the water. He peered and saw a man lying on his back, the water half a foot above his face, showing the drowned figure as plainly as if it were under glass. Williamson pulls off his coat, tucks up his shirt-sleeves, catches hold of the hand, and up comes the body like a cork. The moment he had the body ashore he knew who it was; left his bag of tools on the bank, and ran as hard as his legs would carry him into the town to give the alarm. The inspector and two constables, and a couple of men with a stretcher belonging to the Town Hall, start out of the High Street and are conducted by Williamson to the body. A crowd gathers about the tail of the procession, the body is put on the stretcher, covered up, and carried to the Town Hall in the sight of a multitude large enough to diffuse the news through the length and breadth of Hanwitch in ten minutes.

So dead Mr. Conway was, if ever a man was dead in this world; and now, the woman told Mrs. Parrot, people were only waiting for the coroner’s inquest, to learn how he came by his death.

But the verdict, however it might run, would be inconclusive, since there were no witnesses to show how Conway fell into the water. But this much was known; that yesterday Conway had called at the “Three Stars” and ordered a fine dinner to be got ready for him, with champagne and the best of wines; and to let the landlord understand that he meant what he said, he pulled out a handful of sovereigns and let them fall into his pocket again, chink! chink! When dinner was done, he left the house intoxicated, and what became of him the “Three Stars” didn’t know; but the “Pine Apple” did, for he came there in the afternoon and squeezed himself behind the bar, made love to the barmaid, drank some tumblers of rum, and got into an abusive argument with an ostler, whose eye he threatened to blacken if he contradicted him again. On which he was turned out.

That was his day’s history, so far as it was recorded in human knowledge. The rest could be guessed; and the public were not slow in explaining their theories. Of course he was drunk, had rolled into the water, and was too senseless to get out again, though the water where he lay was not above two and a half feet deep.

Nobody cared twopence about his death. It gave the shop-people something to talk about until customers dropped in, and then it was, “What’s the next article?” and Conway was forgotten. When a bubble explodes upon the surface of a stream, nothing mourns. The tide rolls on just the same, with sunshine or darkness in its breast, as the case may be; the pikes lose no jot of their voracity, and gudgeons swim into their maws; the minnows jump at the flies. Shall law, commerce, or anything else stop because a drunkard is drowned? Cover him up; let him hide his face until the pale jury come to take a peep; then pop him out of sight in a hole, and get back as fast as we may to dinner.