Our passage home was extraordinarily long. It took us seventy-five days to arrive at the English Channel from the latitude of the volcanic island. The captain thought himself under a spell, and swore that he believed his barque was to be made a ‘Flying Dutchman’ of. Yet she was a clipper keel, moulded in exquisite con[349]formity with all theories of swiftness in sailing, and when a fresh and favourable wind blew she ate through it as though with the iron bite of a powerful steamer. But had she spread the canvas of a ‘Royal George’ over the hull of a racing yacht she could have done nothing in the face of the dead calms and light baffling breezes which held us motionless or sent us sliding southwards for days and days. Scarce had we struck soundings indeed—that is to say, hardly had we entered the mouth of the English Channel—when a whole gale of wind blew down upon us from the eastward, and grove us a third of the distance across to the shores of the United States.

How bitterly sick I grew of this time I cannot express. I had lost everything that I had brought with me in the wreck of the ‘Bride,’ and was entirely dependent upon the kindness of the captain and the mates for a supply of the few wants I absolutely required. One lent me a shirt, another a pair of socks, a third a razor, and so on, but it was a miserable existence. A few weeks of it I should have found supportable by comparing the life with the horrors we had been delivered from; but as time went on gratitude languished, the sense of contrast lost something of its edge; I abhorred the recollection of the galleon, yet it really seemed as though we had merely exchanged one form of imprisonment for another; as if old ocean indeed were suffering us to amuse ourselves with a dream of escape, as a cat humours a mouse in that way, to drop with a spring upon us ultimately when she had sickened the patience out of our souls.

I need not say that Lady Monson made the worst of everything. She had to share a cabin with her sister, and to that extent, therefore, was associated with her, but her behaviour to Laura, as to me, was cold, haughty, disdainful. She froze herself from head to foot, gave us a wide berth when on deck, would break away abruptly if one or the other of us endeavoured to engage her in conversation, and was as much alone as she could possibly contrive to be. It is hard to say whether she disliked me more than her sister. Yet I could not but feel sorry for her, heartily as I hated her. What was her future to be? What had life in store for one whose memory was charged as hers was? Laura tried hard to find out what her intentions were, what plans she had formed, but to no purpose. But then it was likely that the woman had not made out any programme for herself.

Both she and my darling were desperately put to it for the want of apparel. Each had but the dress she stood in, for Laura’s box had contained little more than under-linen. They had arrived on board the barque without covering for their heads; but this was remedied by the second mate presenting Laura with a new straw hat, and later on we heard through Finn that one of the crew had a new grass hat in his chest which he desired to present to Lady Monson. I see her ladyship now in that sailor’s hat, over which she tied a long brown veil that had come ashore upon the[350] island in Laura’s box. I witness again the fiery gleam of her black eyes penetrating the thin covering. I behold the captain, with his slow Scotch gaze following her majestic figure as she glides lonely to and fro the deck, seldom daring to address her, and rapidly averting his glance when she chanced to round her face towards him on a sudden. And I see Laura, too, sweet as a poet’s fancy I would sometimes think, in the mate’s straw hat, perched on top of her golden hair, a sailor’s half-fathom of ribbon floating from it down her back, her violet eyes lovely once more with their old tender glow, and with the smiles which sparkled in them and with the love which deepened their hue as she let me look into them.

She had soon regained her health and spirits. I never would have believed that two women born of the same parents could be so absolutely dissimilar as these sisters. Laura made no trouble of anything. She ate the plain cabin food as though she heartily enjoyed it; cooled me down when I was slowly growing mad over some loathsome pause of calm; made light of the embarrassing slenderness of her wardrobe. She had always one answer: ‘This is not the galleon, Charles. We’re bound to England. You must be patient, my dear.’

I remember once saying to her, ‘Your dress is very shabby, my pet. It no longer sits to your figure as it did. It shows like shipwrecked raiment. Salt-water stains are very abundant; and your elbow cannot be long before it peeps out. How, then, is it that I find you more engaging, more lovely, more adorable in this castaway attire than ever I thought you aboard the “Bride,” where probably you had a dozen dresses to wear?’

‘Mere prejudice,’ she answered, laughing and blushing. ‘You will outgrow many opinions of this kind.’

‘No! But don’t you see what a moral shipwreck enables you to point to your sex, Laura?’ said I. ‘Girls will half-ruin their fathers, and wives almost beggar their husbands, for dress. They clothe themselves for men. No doubt you consider yourself wholly dependent for two-thirds of your charms upon dress. All women think thus—the young and the old, the beautiful and the—others. But what is the truth? You become divine in proportion as you grow ragged!’

‘When I am your wife you will not wish that I shall be divine only on the merits of rags,’ said she.

‘Well, my dear,’ said I, ‘old ocean has given me one hint concerning you. Should time ever despoil you of a single charm there is the remedy of shipwreck. We will endeavour to get cast away again.’

Thus idly would we talk away the days. No ship ever before held such a pair of spoonies, I dare swear, spite of the traditions of the East India Company. But sweet as our shipboard intercourse was, our arrival in England threatened delays and difficulties. First of all she declared that she could not dream of marrying without her father’s consent. This was, no doubt, as it should be, and surely I could not love her the less for being a good daughter.[351] But the consent of a man who lived in Melbourne, and who had to be addressed from England, signified, in those ambling times, the delay of hard upon a year.

‘A year, Laura!’ I cried on one occasion whilst debating this subject; ‘think of it! With the chance, perhaps, of your father’s reply miscarrying.’

She sighed. ‘Yes, it is a long time. Oh, if Melbourne were only in Europe. Yet it cannot be helped, Charles.’

‘But, my heart’s delight,’ I exclaimed, ‘Why should not we get married first and then write for your father’s consent?’

No; she must have her papa’s sanction.

‘All right, birdie,’ said I; ‘anyhow you will remain in England till you hear from him, and so we shall be together.’

‘It might shorten the time,’ she said with a little blush and a timid glance at me under the droop of her eyelids, ‘if you and I sailed to Melbourne.’

‘It would, my precious!’ I answered; ‘but suppose on your introducing me your father should object?’

‘Oh no, Charles, he will not object,’ she exclaimed with a confident shake of the head.

‘In fact then, Laura,’ said I, ‘you are sure your papa will sanction our marriage?’

‘Quite sure, dear.’

‘Then would it not come to the same thing if we got married on our arrival in England?’

This was good logic, but it achieved nothing for me, and since I saw that her father’s sanction would contribute to the happiness of her married life I never again attempted to reason with her on the subject.

At last, one morning we found ourselves in the English Channel, bowling over the green ridges of it before a strong south-westerly wind, and within fifty hours of making the Lizard Light the brave little barque ‘Star of Peace’ was being warped to her berth in the East India Docks. Down to that very moment, incredible as it may seem, Lady Monson had given neither her sister nor myself the vaguest hint of what she intended to do. As we stood waiting to step ashore she arrived on deck and, approaching Laura, exclaimed,

‘Mr. Monson, I presume, will escort you to an hotel.’

‘Won’t you accompany us, Henrietta?’ her sister asked.

‘No, I choose to be independent. I shall go to such and such an hotel,’ and she named the house at which she had stopped with Colonel Hope-Kennedy when she arrived in London on her way to Southampton. ‘You can address me there, or call upon me, Laura. I have not yet decided on any steps. In all probability I shall return to Melbourne, but not at present.’

She extended her hand coldly to her sister and gave me a haughty bow. Laura bit her lips to restrain her tears, but her pride was stung; disgust and amazement too fell cool upon her grief.

[352]

The last I ever saw of Lady Monson was as she passed along the quay towards the dockyard gates. As she paced forward, stately, slow, her carriage queenly and easy as though, sumptuously clothed and in the full pride of her beauty, she trod the floor of a ball-room, the scores of sailors, labourers, loafers who thronged the decks, turned, to a man, to stare after her. A strange and striking figure indeed she made, habited in the dress which she wore when the ‘Shark’ foundered, and which, as you may suppose, by this time showed very much like the end of a long voyage. The brown veil concealed her features and to a certain degree qualified the outlandish appearance of the sailor’s grass hat upon her head.

‘So!’ said I as she disappeared, ‘and now, Laura, it is for you and me to go ashore.’

We bade a cordial farewell to Captain Richardson and his mates and to Finn and Cutbill, both of whom promised to call upon me. I had the address of the owner of the vessel, and told the skipper that next day I would communicate with the office and defray whatever expenses we had put the ship to. I further took the addresses of the captain and his mates that I might send them some token of my gratitude for our deliverance and for the many kindnesses they had done us during the long and tedious passage.

A few hours later I had comfortably lodged Laura in a snug private hotel within an easy walk of my lodgings, to which I forthwith repaired and took possession of afresh with such an emotion of bewilderment excited in me by the familiar rooms, and by the feeling that I was once more in London, with no more runaway wives to chase, no more Dutchmen to fire into, no more duels to assist in, no more volcanic rocks to split upon, and no more galleons to sleep in, that I felt like a man just awakened from some wild and vivid dream whose impressions continue so acute that the familiar objects his eyes open upon seem as phantasms that must presently fade. My first act was to send a milliner and a dressmaker to Laura, and to see in other ways to her immediate requirements; my next to address a letter to Wilfrid’s solicitors, in which I acquainted them with the loss of the ‘Bride’ and the death of my cousin. Whom else to write to at once about the poor fellow I did not know. I asked after his infant, and requested them to tell me if the child was still with the lady with whom my cousin had placed it before leaving England. I added that I should be pleased to see one of the partners and relate the full story of the voyage, the object of which I could not doubt Wilfrid had informed them of before sailing.

I spent the evening with Laura. All her talk was about what she was to do until she had heard from her father, to whom she told me she had written a long letter within an hour after her arrival at the hotel, ‘so as to lose no time, Charles.’ She had no relations in England, scarcely an acquaintance for the matter of that; with whom was she to live then? Even had Lady Monson[353] settled down in a house she was not a person with whom I could have desired the girl I was affianced to to be long and intimately associated. The notion of her returning to Australia alone was not to be entertained. There seemed nothing then for it but for me to overhaul the list of my connections, to make experiments in the direction of relations, and endeavour to find a home for her with one or another of them until there should some day arrive a mail from Australia giving me leave to take her to my heart.

Well, it was next morning that I had finished breakfast and was sitting musing over a fire with a newspaper on my knee. My mind was full of the past. I remember looking round me almost incredulously with eyes that still found the familiar furniture of my room unreal and indeed almost impossible, listening with ears that could scarcely accept as actual the transformation of the roar and beat and wash of the seas into the steady hum of ceaseless traffic in the great London roadway into which the street I occupied opened. Years had elapsed, it seemed, since that night when my servant had ushered in my cousin, and I saw in fancy the wild roll of his eyes round the apartment, the crazy flourish of his hands, his posture as he sank his head upon the table battling with his sobbing breath.

I was disturbed by a smart knock at the door. ‘Come in.’ The landlord entered; a thin, iron-grey, soft-voiced man, who had for many years been butler in an earl’s family, and who had retired and started a lodging-house on discovering that he had married a woman of genius in the shape of a cook.

‘There’s a person below named Muffin would like to see you, sir.’

I stared at him as if he were mad.

‘Muffin!’ I whispered.

‘That was the name he gave, sir,’ he exclaimed, astonished by my amazement.

‘Muffin!’ I repeated, scarce crediting my hearing; ‘describe him, Mr. Cork.’

‘A clean, yellow-faced man, sir, hair of a coal-blackness, looks down when he speaks, sir, seems a bit shaky in the ankles; a gentleman’s servant, I should say, sir.’

‘Show him up, Mr. Cork!’ I exclaimed, doubting the description as I had the name, so impossible did it seem that this person could be Wilfrid’s valet.

In a few moments the door was opened, and in stepped Muffin!—the Muffin of the ‘Bride,’ Muffin the ventriloquist, Muffin the whipped and ducked, and, as I could have solemnly sworn, Muffin the drowned! He stood before me with the old familiar crook of the left knee, holding his hat with both hands against his stomach, his head drooped, his lips twisted into their familiar grin of obsequious apology. His yellow face shone, his hair was as lustrous as the back of a rook; he wore large loose black-kid gloves, and he was attired in a brand new suit of black cloth. I know nothing in the way of shocks severer for the moment, that tells more startlingly[354] upon the whole nervous system, than the meeting with a man whom one has for months and months believed dead. I was unable to speak for some moments. I shrank back in my chair when he entered, and in that posture eyed him whilst he stood looking downwards, smiling and suggesting in his attitude respectful regret for taking the liberty of intruding.

‘Well,’ said I, fetching a deep breath, ‘and so you are Muffin indeed, eh? Well, well. Why, man, I could have sworn we left you a corpse floating close to a volcanic island near the equator.’

‘So I suppose, sir!’ he exclaimed, ‘but I am thankful to say, sir, that I was not drowned.&rsquo............