A HEART OF A Three-Stranded Story.

Southern Cross, Volume 4, Issue 2, 11 April 1896, Page 13

A HEART OF A Three-Stranded Story.

By W. CLARK BUSSELL.

CHAPTER XXII. The Photographs. Jt was three or four days after this conversation with Captain Robins: a soft, blue glowing afternoon, the sparkling heaves of water lifting south along tbe course of the steamer, ■with a pearly feathering of the salt foam going straight as the metals of a railway astern where, in the distant blue air, hung the slowly dissolving shadow of .the island of Madiera quitted by us that morning. Many had gone ashore ; we were now a thin company aft, the poop and saloon almost yacht-like with room and comparative privacy. I had been having a short chat with Captain Robson on the quarter-deck whilst the skipper of the steamer was on the bridge talking with the first mate; I went slowly aft and got upon the poop, and whilst I was there, looking over the side into the exquisitely pure liquid recess of ocean on the port-beam with some orange star of sail glowing in it, whilst all between, the burnished swell was working in glassy swathes rich with the gleams of the splendour in the south-west, Captain Strutt joined me. 4 Robson,’ said he with a face of amusement, ‘is a comical qld gentleman. In my boyhood they called that soit of thing a sea-dog. It’s a dying tv pe. The skipper who wears the hat of the London streets and comes on deck in goloshes when the men are washing down, decays apace. We should take a long look at Robson, for when he is gone we shall not easily behold his like again. * His is a dry old mind,’ said I, tough as sailor’s beef, with the pickle of his experiences.’ ‘ He was telling me last night,’ said the captain, ‘ that you’re interested in the loss of the Lady Emma.’

‘ I have asked him, as a seaman, questions on the subject,’ said T. ‘ I read the account of her being dismasted in one of the papers,’ he exclaimed. ‘lt was made a bad job of, I thought, bj three people being left aboard the hull, two of them women. D’ye ever see the Shipping Gazette ?’ ‘No.’

‘ln a number ot it a week or two before we sailed, there was a strange piece quoted out of a Cape paper.’ ‘ A strange piece ?’ 1 exclaimed, scarcely understanding the expression. ‘ Had it anything to do with the Lady Emma ?’ ‘ Why, no,’ he answered, leaning upon the rail and looking with a seaman’s level, steady gaze at the orange-coloured sail on the horizon, talking carelessly in evident intention to amuse me merely. ‘ A large threemasted schooner picked up the body of a woman much about the parts where the hull of the Lady Emma was washing about. The master took it to be the corpse of the wife of a friend of his, and put it into brine or spirit to preserve it for Christian interment ashore. A queer item ot cargo, little relished by the Jacks in the schooner, 1 warrant ye ! And yet handsomely done, too, on the part of the master, if you think of it ; for, suppose one dear to you drowned, what would you give that the remains should be buried with a memorial atop P That’s always the feeling along-shore, even amongst the humblest : they’ll olier pounds’ reward for the body. It’s sentiment — and only to bury it in earth after all ! as if this,’ said he, waving his hond, ‘ wasn’t the freshest, the most spacious, the most splendid of all cemeteries, every white curl of sea a tombstone, and God’s voice in the wind to- keep ye sleeping and comforted.’

1 listened in silence, but intently. ‘ The schooner carried the body to the Cape,’ he went on, ‘ where of course it was promptly buried after they had photographed the poor thing.’ ‘ Did they photograph the body ?’ I exclaimed. He whipped upon me quickly, struck by my tone, no doubt, and eyed me keenly : he witnessed a change of face, and perhaps a sudden pallor, but took no further notice, lightly saying : ‘ Yes, the body was photographed and a couple of the pictures are aboard.’ ‘ In this steamer ?’ He again looked at me, then directing his eyes round the poop, said : 4 Do o you see that old gentleman sitting in the easy chair near the skylight P’ It was the old gentleman, who, some days previously, had asked Captain Robson at the dinner table what was the action of salt water on a body, to which the North Country Skipper had drily answered, ‘ It drowns.’ 4 Has that man photographs of tbe body ?’ I exclaimed, staring at the old gentleman with nervous tremors running through me, shaking the very voice in my throat, so sudden and unexpected was this. ‘ I can tell you his story ; he makes no secret of it,’ said the captain. ‘ His name’s Hoskins ; he is Mrs Ollier’s father. He is going to the Cape to make sure the body’s his child by opening the coffin if the authorities will permit it. Bub he’s in no doubt; he showed me the pictures; the master of the schooner knowing him very well sent two by steamer. He gays they’re the portrait of his girl. She had been stopping at Santiago with her sister, a married woman there ; and was bound round to Monte Yideo to join or await the arrival of her husband who sailed from the Thames in August in August in command of the ship York —what’s there in this P—Mr Moore, I hope this matter.’ He began to stutter and was full of concern seeing me suddenly lean against tbe rail, breathing hard with oppression, with a face which I might guess by ray emotions alarmed him. But guessing that my agitation would speedily take the eye of the many who were walking or sitting about the deck I asked, after pausing a minute to recover myself, if I could be alone with him for a little while, on which he at once conducted me to the chart room or some sort of interior dedicated to him as commander, but not a bedroom, furnished witn a horsehair couch, a clock, and the several instruments and conveniences for navigating a vessel. He hooked the door, leaving it a a little way open. Without preface I told 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 th 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 whs to examine the remains it the exhumation would be permitted. He listened with deep interest and a countenance of cordial sympathy. 4 Now, sir,’ said he, ‘ I can understand your motive in questioning old Captain Robson.’ ‘ If the body be not Miss Otway, I should like to know what chance she’s had aboard the hull. Robson’s an old sailor and I’ve drawn a little hope out of his talk providing —*

‘ Well,’ said he gathering ray meaning even from my pause, ‘I should say, sir, that a man would know his own child. Old Mr Hosking assured roe 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 wrtck.’ ‘ 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 band 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 be very well mistaken too. J 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 asSMarie 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 1 had view 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 and 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 charthouse deck, then flinging myself down miserable and mad with thought, A canary suddenly sang loudly in a cage under a clock ; in every plank .was the pulse of the engines, like a tingling of blood in veins ; from over the side came a note of stealthy hissing, subtly threading the noises of the deck like some one in a theatre lowhissing through the voices of the actors. In about twenty minutes the captain arrived with Mr Hoskins He brought the old gentleman in and hooked the door ajar. Mr Hoskins was a fresh-coloured old man, white-bearded, with intensely black eyebrows curling like moustachios over his glittering black eyes; he was dressed in black ; I had observed in him a patient way of looking, of speaking; bis voice was a little tremulous with time —he was probably sixty-five years of age. He held a large envelope which on entering he put down on top of his hat, and making me a bow slowly, he exclaimed in the broken tones of his years: • It is truly extraordinary, sir, that yon and I should be going to the Cape on the same errand, in the same ship.’ ‘ Truly indeed,’ I answered. ‘ The captain has told you my story ?’ and here I looked at Captain Strutt, who answered, ‘ Yes. Those are the portraits,’ and he pointed to the evelope. I glanced at the package as at a sheet or veil which conceals a face you love, which your heart shrinks from beholding in death. 1 She’s not your young lady, sir,’ said Mr Hoskins, slowly extending h;s arm to take up the envelope. ‘ She is my daughter. My niece and I instantly recognised, the likeness.’ He sighed heavily, seating himself with a slow movement, whilst he put the envelope upon his knee to draw a spectacle case from his pocket. Meanwhile he spoke : ‘ She was twenty-four years of age and had been married three years. Her husband took her to Santiago and left her there with her sister. She was to have joined him at Monte Video —but you have heard sir, you have heard ?’ I bowed, trembling with impatience, and still cold at heart, spite of his words, with the dread that had been mine since I heard of those photographs. He put on his spectacles, and laying his hand upon the envelope looked at me with magnified eyes. ‘ It is very wonderful,’ said he, ‘ that your young lady should have been left in a wreck close to the place where my poor child’s body was met with.’ Captain Strutt with a sudden fidget of his whole figure said, 4 Mr Hoskins, will you show Mr Moore the portraits ?’ But the old gentleman must first look at them himself : he pulled

them out and surveyed them with a cou n tenahce of in ou rnihg, one in either hand, , his anderlip working garrulously, and again and again he sighed, till lifting my eyes from the portraits to his face I saw that his cheeks were wet. Then, but with one ; of his patient gestures, he put the pictures together and extended them to me. I looked first at one, and then at the other; the likenesses were not Marie. I could allow for the changes caused by drowning, by immersion, by the month-long action of, spirits or brine; and still with a wild throb of joy that half choked me I saw that the likenesses were not Marie. They were two portraits of one face, sad to look upon, one in profile, the other full, the body manifestly having been turned to confront the camera. The witeness of the face in the pictures was as shocking a part as any ; the cheeks were so sunk you,., would have thought she had sucked in her breath, with horrid scorn, a living woman, when the lens of the instrument was turned upon her.,. They had swept her hair off her brow for a clear view of the face: I sup-, posed it was pale hair by the look of it, but it was not Marie’s—it had not grown low on the forehead as her’s did; the eyebrows were not hers — they were too thick; the ears were too large for Marie’s, and, which convinced me absolutely, the shape of the nose was not my dear one’s ; no wast-, ing by the action of rolling water, no shrinking by long immersion, whether in brine or spirits, could work such structural change in |the nose as I here saw. 1 have those photographs in my . mind’s eye now: 1 cannot express their ghastliness. It was not only the forehead rendered naked by the manner in which the hair had been swept back by the artist: nor a more terrible sort of blindness in the droop and rigidity of the upper lids than anything to be ' imagined in death’s cold glazing of the balls of vision, nor the meaninglessness in the look of the mouth as though it had been some wild man’s carving of a grin on an idol, neither human nor yet of the beast, most sickening ! the deep and subtle horror found in that face was there through fancy of the terrific ocean solitude it had floated in, the icy^surge that had tossed it, the pitiless stars which had looked down upon it, the blasts of sleet and hail which had roared over it. I put the pictures together with a shudder and in silence handed them to Mr Hoskins. Both men waited for me to speak. I stopped to fetch a few breaths, then said : ‘ This poor girl is not Miss Otway.' ‘ She is my daughter,’ exclaimed the old man again, holding -up the pictures to view them. ‘ Oh, my poor child.!’ The canary began to sing loudly: the silencing of it enabled Captain Strutt to turn his back upon us; it was indeed moving to see that old man with his wet cheeks and talking in articulate anderlip, looking at the. two portraits. He placed them in his pocket after a minute or two, then palling off his glasses smiled faintly at me and said : ‘ The grief is mine, you see, sir.’ ‘And still mine, Mr Hoskins,’ I replied. ‘ Since that is your child you certainly know where she is, and therefore what has become of her: hut what can any man tell'me of Miss Otway P She was dear to me, ay, even as she was to you,’ said 1,, pointing to the breast of his coat where the picture lay. ‘We were to be married—oh, pray think, sir ! The news they brought home, the last news of her, told me of her abandoned with two companions in a dismasted hull, in the wildest ocean in the world—amongst the ice—heavenly God !’ I cried, springing to my feet, ‘ am I to believe her as that poor yirl is—but never to know —never to be sure that it was so, that it is so !’ And now I knew that the sight of those portraits had wrenched me to the very soul : by speaking of Marie as she might be—this, with the reaction ! for it was not my sweetheart

■who lay at Cape town : I had felt an instant’s joy on the discovery ; that •was past and it was as before, black uncertainty troubled and wild with a hundred shapeless fears and fancies. ‘ It’s a great pity,’ said Captain Strutt bluntly, ‘ that you didn’t know Mr Hoskins had those pictures. You could have gone ashore at Madeira and got home some time before we arrive at the Cape.’ ‘ Pray what nlay have convinced, you that my'poor girl as described in the papers was ' Miss Otway P said Mr Hoskins. I gave him all the reasons : the description tallying feature by feature, poiut by point in hair, 'stature, refinement of features and the like; the letter O on the garments; the serge dress and fur-trimmed jacket. The old gentleman lifted his hands and his gaze with one of his patient gestures and looks, now of surprise. ‘ It is more than remarkable,’ he cried : ‘ it exceeds belief.’ ‘Your daughter was married and therefore wore a wedding ring,’ said Captain Strutt. ‘ A wedding ring’s commonly a tight fit,’ ‘lt was no doubt as Captain Goldsmith wrote,’ said Mr Hoskins : ‘ The water shrivelled the fingers and the lings slipped off.’ ‘Miss Otway wore rings,’ said I; ‘the lady had none. Therefore the body having no rings proves nothing. Plunge yoiir warm hand into ice cold •water, and your tightest ring will wonderfully slacken.’ ‘ True,’ said Captain Strutt, ‘and still, Mr Moore, if I was in your place I shouldn’t rest satisfied with the evidence of those portraits.’ ‘ Oh, but Mr Hoskins and I are agreed,’ said I. ‘ He recognises his child, and I know that it is not Miss Otway.’ ‘ It’s my intention to exhume the remains—a sorrowful task- —if they 11 grant me permission,’ said Mr Hoskins. ‘ Since you must now proceed to the Cape, then, if it would satisfy you to look into the coffin when it ia opened, you will be very welcome, sir.’ I thanked him, adding, however, that I could not be more satisfied than I was. And so, after some further conversation, we quitted the captain’s private room. I might have supposed this discovery of the body not being Marie and was as convinced of it as though I positively knew she was alive—would have comforted me, helped something towards the cheering of my spirits ; instead, I seemed in my heart as much depressed as if the portrait of the dead girl had been hers. This was because had I known she was dead the worst would have been reached. But now I was to make a weary journey to the Cape to no imaginable purpose. I was to linger there till a returning steamer sailed, then measure all these leagues of water afresh to arrive home as ignorant of her fate as though I had never set foot out of London. During the rest of the passage which was absolutely uneventful, I held much aloof from the people : I was too low-spirited to join in their conversation and amusements ; I begged the captain and Mr Hopkins to allow my trouble to remain their secret and they very faithfully obliged me. Captain Strutt would often pace the deck for half an hour at my aide, and in such quiet walks our talk nearly always concerned the Lady Emma. He oy no means gave me the encouragement I had got from old Robson : he told me honestly that it was as likely as not the three had been taken off the wreck, but advised me not to hope too much in that way after I returned to England, ‘ because,’ said be, ‘ the news of such a ureecue is bound to come to band soon; things are not as they were forty years before; you have the telegraph and the steamer and the newspaper. They were wrecked in July,’ said he. ‘ If it was my business I’d allow eight months, then, hearing nothing, I’d give them up.’ He flatly differed from old Robson’s notion of the comparative safety of a dismasted hull amongst icebergs. ‘How ’ exclaimed he in a grave

wondering voice, ‘ could < any'" sailorman talk such stuff ? It’s likeo hisprejudice against the - North Pole. What’s to hinder l ? dismasted vesselfrom being flung against ice and hammered to pieces ? I don’t talk to dispirit you sir, but my reasoning is, if a loss must be a loss, then for God’s sake, let it be made and have done.’ The Cambrian entered Table Bay; December 13th. It was early in the morning, ’ but the ■ sun was ' already high, and when I went on deck and looked around me I beheld 'as flashing and noble a scene of blue water' and lofty mountain as this earth has to show. The atmosphere was brimful of white and even splendour ‘ so that the azure of the Sky looked cold in it. Wonderful to my eyes was the sight of a gale of wind so local in its fury that the frothing confined to the torn water curved like a line of beach, this being smooth ■ and glittering, softly fanned with a little air out of the west where the white light was so lustrous that the leaning sails of the Malay boats flickered in it with a look of frosted silver. Afar, and marvellously clear cut in their hundred miles of distance, loomed a range of lofty mountains; the fierce wind was blowing out of a glorious white mist which veiled with falling and ascending draperies of vapour the greater bulk of the tawny mass on the right ; but so marvellously brilliant was the atmosphere through which the gale was rushing, the sense of distance vanished. The huge steep lifting and disappearing in its splendour Of mist, drew close ; I saw the curves of the cloofs, every wrinkle of broken rock, and patches of bush, though it was all miles off and high in air. The white houses spread like toys of ivory to the base ; and the wide waters of the bay, full of the gleams of the brushing westerly air, and foaming under the shrieking lash of the gale where the breast of blue rounded to the town, were framed by a sparkling snowwhite beach, past which the swelling country showed in reds and greens till the sight died upon the phantom blue of distant heights. There were no docks in those days, nor can I recollect that they had begun to build the breakwater. We brought up in the splendid weather outside the thrashing storm, but it seemed we were to be kept aboard till the south-easter had blown itself out. Many ships, a few very large and fine, lay straining at their archors some within and some without that spray-white sheet of foul 1 weather. I stood at the rail looking at a little barque which lay within easy hail of the voice. Mr Baynton, chief officer of the Cambrian approached to look at a boat that lay c ose under alongside. But his seaman’s eye went quickly to the barque, and turning to me he said : ‘ That’s what they call a spoil ter.’ ‘ A whaler ?’ ‘Yes. She looks it, sir. See the boats at her cranes. What sort of daylight filters through those greasy scuttles in her side, I wonder P She is an American: three years out by the looks of her, fresh from parts where’s its always too hot or always too cold, and with how many barrels aboard, ha! It’s said no seaman thinks anything of a man as a sailor who’s learnt his trade in a : greaser. For my part I respect ’em. What Jack of us all sees the like of their sea-faring P Let alone the weather, and that touches the extremes. What magnificent work in boats; what nerve and determination ! To think of one of those eggshells,’ said he nodding at the boats at the whaler’s cranes, being in tow of a rushing mountain of sinking black flesh, shooting blood and brine sky high, every thrash of the tail a Niagara drench of roaring water —ha !’

He sucked in his cheeks, blew them out again in a low whistle of admiration, and walked off.

I did not land till four o’clock in the afternoon, Mr Hoskins, when we parted, put his card into my hand with an address at Cape Town upon it, and begged me to let him know the house I ! put up at that he might communicate, in ease I should

think proper to confirm -the revelation of the photographs Jby an inspection of-the remains. (To be continued.))