 CHAPTER 10 Two Graves Reynolds, greatly marvelling, followed his companion into the cave. After the necessary pause to accustom the sight to the interior gloom, Goodheart stepped to the old sea-chest and opening the lid, took from the bottom two thin bags united by a pair of shoulder straps. He carried these bags or satchels to the mouth of the cave. Each bag was formed of a waterproof tissue with a rope handle of silk connected with straps like a man's braces. It was easy to see that these satchels or bags had been made to wear on the back or chest. They were filled with folded documents. These, said Goodheart holding up the satchels, represent all that I possess in the world outside of what I carry in my pockets. They contain the product of thirty-five years of hard labour. He hung the satchels by their straps over his arm and extracted one of the documents, and opening it, handed it with his delightful smile to Reynolds, saying, There are eleven of them and they all carry the same face. The document in Reynolds' hand was a one-thousand pound Victoria four percent bond, the date of whose issue was 1885. It was shorn of the coupons which had matured. These bags continued Goodheart receiving and returning the bond to its sack, contain colonial government securities amounting to the value of eleven thousand pounds, and you will easily understand why I chose to remain a bloated body whilst the sailors stayed on the island. But why do you carry such things about with you, said Reynolds, who was not very much affected by the sight of the sacks, rather disappointed indeed, for he had looked for something solemn and deep, and not a commonplace exhibition of stock exchange securities, in his friend's invitation to follow him into the cave? All that money might have gone down in the Esmond. When it was suggested to me to convert the bonds into inscribed stock I found the difference in price sufficiently great to determine me to keep what I had got. Besides said Goodheart with his mild look and gentle smile had these bonds foundered with me I should have been disproving the general belief that a man cannot take his money with him to the grave. He was going to the chest to replace the sacks. Do you mean to keep them there, said Reynolds? Why not? Was such another crew as yours comes ashore? Would to God they would, and we are on the other side of the island, or they catch us napping, and they come to this cave and forthwith open the chest. Where shall I put them, said Goodheart, looking round the gloomy interior? Bury them, this is good dry soil. Reynolds went outside to fetch the shovel and began to dig a hole in the corner of the cave. You are right, said Goodheart, and we never could forget where we had placed them. And whilst Reynolds dug, his friend proceeded, plenty of time was allowed us aboard the Esmond. I went below and took off my coat and waistcoat and put these bags on. They bulked me out but not in such a way as to excite attention unless in a customs man whom I was not afraid of meeting. You noticed probably that I have always bathed in a furtive sort of way. Naturally I did not desire my satchels to be seen by the sailors. Marine tradition has been enriched by some dark stories founded on sums of money much smaller than the amount you are digging a grave for. Oh, yes, said Reynolds, manfully plying his shovel and scraping rather than digging into the hard dry cavern floor. I should have felt very uncomfortable of a night or even of a day to reflect that you were sleeping or going about bulged out with those bonds if their existence and the value of them had been known to the men. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. I am glad that you did not tell me that you had them upon you. I should have trembled for your safety if by the nearest accident the secret had been betrayed to the sailors. When the hole was made Reynolds went out and cut a quantity of dry grass with which he lined the grave, then putting in the bags he covered them up with the stuff he had thrown out. There said he with a final appreciative pat with the shovel, no gem could lie more secret fathoms deep in rock. They walked into the sunshine and down upon the lovely length of coral foreshore which they paced. The breaker was curling to them out of the blue water. The seabird hovered and glanced, glistened and darkened as it winged about. The morning light lay in glory upon the ocean and the offshore breeze was scented with the land. Eleven thousand pounds is a small sum to represent the savings and labours of thirty-five years, said Goodheart. It's more than you would have made as a philosopher, exclaimed Reynolds. I don't know, answered Goodheart, there are some professors who are ducidly well paid. I know a man who received two thousand a year and a more bigoted coxcomb, insolent and coxsure-ness, contemptively venomous in hostility, never led others astray. What are these professors paid for? To lecture for the most part answered Goodheart, with his lip taking a slight curl of contempt. Well, of all vocation, said Reynolds, I do hold the sea life to be the most beggarly. I mean the merchant's sea life. In the navy you get a pension. You invest your labours, for which the state pays you, and when it is done with you it sends you a sum annually that may make you easy for life. You shall serve a ship-owner for years, honestly, anxiously, most dutifully, and when he is done with you you go about your business, to the work-house for all the employer cares. How are you off? Badly. No savings? A few pounds. Is your wife money? A little, but if she had a million what good would it be to me? It is difficult to meet a man without a relation of some sort, said Goodheart, but that, as I told you, happens to be my case. Both my parents were only children. I am the sole survivor of my family. I have many acquaintances, but no friends, but I believe I have found a friend. He looked with a smile at Reynolds. Our association, he continued, has not been long, but it has given me very great pleasure, and I trust it may not end with our release. There is enough for two up there, he continued, inclining his head in the direction of the cave, and if I am called first, to whom but to a sufferer who has taught me to respect and admire and like him, should I wish it to go? The pale, worn and scarred face of Reynolds flushed with emotion, his eyes moistened, the passion of gratitude and of that sort of love which is born of beautiful feeling, cordial kindness and sincere sympathy between man and man, ran a trembling through him. It is not your money, Goodheart, he exclaimed in a low voice, catching his breath with a sharp hysterical shake of the head. It is your goodness. He was right in that, for surely it is the smile that sweetens the gift, it is the impulse of which the deed is the fruit, that endears and is best valued by the heart whose purest and most exalted emotions it excites. And it is quite conceivable that two men thrown into each other's company by the adversity of shipwreck should grow so attached that when their deliverance has come about they have chosen to dwell together as brothers. Let us not doubt that such things have happened for the story of marine peril runs back deep into time. But do not suppose, said Goodheart, with a little pensiveness in the arch look he put on, that I flatter myself on being sure of you, your first act on reaching England will be to inquire after your wife. To inquire perhaps, and there an end. No, you will learn that she is living somewhere and you'll write to her and entreat her to grant you an interview. I don't think so. My dear fellow, the fascination that one you must still be hers and when you see her the old spell will exert its magic. Spells are often broken, said Reynolds moodily. Enough had been said on this subject. Goodheart stopped to view the breakers as they curved in caves of liquid blue glass and broke with summer softness and tropic glory. It seems to me, said he, that science is a little too willing to overlook the precedent idea in nature. The ultimate link in the chain of causation is neglected because philosophy is indisposed to discuss the only hook by which it can be hung up. All that we produce in art is the result of antecedent idea, the house, the picture, the statue, the fountain. Without the idea of these things the things could not be engendered. Now why are we forbidden to witness idea, the divine idea, in what we behold in nature, the tree, the flower, the man? Molecules form themselves into shapes of beauty. I don't claim sentience for these particles of matter which may be a snowflake, a fiber of color in liquor, a red rose. He smiled as he spoke. But I claim these formations as the effect of a law which has been preceded by idea. Mind cannot create, it can only perceive, once wrote Charles Lloyd, a remark which deeply impressed the poet Shelley. We perceive the idea in nature and in our way we produce it as art. As we cannot create how should we be able to perceive the idea if it were not the antecedent of what we know and study. I think it is Dr. Alcock who expresses surprise that those whose business it is to create should have generally neglected the wonderful examples and perfect models which abound in nature. He tells us that all animated nature is full of hints for perfecting existing mechanical contrivances and of suggestions for inventions not even thought of. The tornado or shipworm inspired Brunet with the plan of tunneling which was employed by him in the Thames Tunnel, and yet science denies idea and commits itself to a fatuous theory of chance. I have always held the opinion you express, said Reynolds, and upon it I have based, as rootedly as a lighthouse upon a rock, my faith in the existence of God. It is Tyndall that speaks of matter continued good heart after a pause whilst he gazed at the arching breakers as possessed of a power of shaping itself into forms of beauty. It is a gift, who or what is the giver? Mark the beauty in those arching waters, in the conformation of that rock, in the spout and fall of those cascades, in all that meets the eye. When alum crystallizes, perfect octahedrons are formed, the crystallization of carbonate of lime results in beautiful rhomboids. By crystallizing silica you get hexagonal prisms, capped at the ends by pyramids, and of course you know that when carbon crystallizes you get the diamond. Surely all this loveliness must be the effect of the precedent idea reaching its end by laws which proceed from the creative mind. During my stay here, said Reynolds, I have discovered a flower that smells only by night. It is absolutely scentless when the sun is up. It will not be found at this season. I have wondered what virtue there is in darkness that puts most things to sleep to awaken life in a flower in the shape of perfume. You will probably find the phenomenon explained by the law of vibration, answered Goodheart. Take for example the sensation of hearing. If the sound vibrations number less than sixteen a second we are conscious only of the separate shocks. If they exceed thirty-eight thousand a second the ear does not receive the sound. The range of the best ear is said to be about eleven octaves. I suppose the sensation of smell may also be computed in octaves. What the range is, I can't imagine, but undoubtedly the vibrations of the flower that is scented by night only are so rapid in sunlight as to exceed the power of consciousness in the sense of smell. Now that I come to think of it, he added, Humboldt, I believe it is, tells us that from a certain position on the plains of Anturiz the sound of the great falls of Orinico resemble the beating of a surf upon a rocky shore and is much louder by night than by day. He held this to be due to the sound passing through an atmosphere which frequently changed its density. At night differences of temperature ceased and sound waves travelling through homogeneous atmosphere reached the ear undiminished by reflection. As operations of nature are uniform in their infinite variety the law that applies to the sound of the great falls may be the law under which comes the flower that is fragrant only at night. I am a little tired, I wish my heart was stronger. They walked slowly in the direction of the dell and sat down. And now on this day immediately following the boat's attempt to intercept the ship it was the destiny of these two men to enter into a spell of waiting and hoping until May 20th, 1892 when came a change, for though it is true that matter is indestructible it is equally true that things as they are do not last forever. In this time of expectation and during the course of their constant conversations it came to be clearly understood between them that if it should please God to call Goodheart away whilst he was on the island Reynolds must consider himself his heir and would take possession of the bonds and the property he would find upon the person of his friend. This indeed was obvious and inevitable because it was not to be supposed that if Reynolds survived Goodheart and was rescued he would leave eleven thousand pounds of securities to rot in a grave in a cave. Though had Goodheart owned connections and expressed his wishes, Reynolds was the man to have fulfilled his desires as completely as though Goodheart himself had acted. A true and honest love for each other had penetrated these men's hearts. There was a kinship of nature between them. They were congenial souls. Goodheart the loftier and the more simple but Reynolds was liberally endowed with those gifts of character which enable a man to adorn life when his means suffer him to occupy a position for their proper display. He would have done well in the Royal Navy. He would have been a popular officer as president of a gun-room mess or as talker or listener at the word-room table. He was too good for the merchant service as unhappily it is in these days in the main represented. Goodheart loved Reynolds for the simplicity of his nature, for his habit of thought, for a bouquet or aroma of character which cannot be conveyed by words. He sympathized with the deep, the apparently irreparable sorrow his wife had caused him, and affection is often in close alliance with sympathy. He liked him as a sailor himself having used the sea for a living. He compassionate his distress as a castaway whose fortune was broken, whose hearth was cold. Indeed Goodheart was a man in whose soul dwelt a quality of greatness, and his character was exalted by the nobility of his manhood and the possession of those virtues which make men blessed in the eyes of God, and Reynolds would have died for him. In all these dreary, weary and spirit quenching weeks they kept a close lookout for ship sails and the smoke of funnels, and held in readiness a stock of fuel in the hollow on the hill ready for the burning glass. But never once did Reynolds catch sight of a ship and Goodheart in all that while, four times only, three sail and one trail of smoke, all far in the north, two happening in a week and the others in three months, but all at such a distance as to make them of no more good to the poor disconsolate watchers than the sea-fowl that wheeled between. It seemed incredible to Goodheart that no ship should ever approach the island, but for all that he declared again and again that he would sooner take his chance of three, I or even of five years' captivity, than have trusted himself in that open boat to intercept a distant ship with oars only and a slender store of food and fresh water and eight men as there would have been. And again and again he would say in varying words when sunset flushed a desolate bare plain of ocean, and they had stood together looking into the liquid distance till they saw a star. No matter. It may be but one more night for us to wait. Tomorrow may find us on board ship, and how long will it take us to forget this brief detention? How easily we forget the operation we feared we should die under, the quarrel which we thought we should never be able to make up. I am fond of Swift's remark. It is always too hot or it is always too cold, but somehow or other God Almighty so contrives it that at the end of the year it is all the same. It was fortunate for them that they occupied an island which lies in the temperate latitudes where there is almost constantly a summer softness in the air and where even June, which is our December, has no fierceness. The cave was dry and sheltered them well and the tangle of bushes on either side of the entrance was a good screen when the wind blew into the mouth from the south-west. As the time wore on good heart would often fall into long fits of abstraction, moods of pensive withdrawal from the visible, a deep sinking into himself, with that inward turned expression of face which betrays the mind that is wandering through the long corridors of memory, lighted by the mystical irradiation which is also memories. Occasionally he complained of the weakness of his heart and there was no doubt that the privations he was enduring could not help him to fight this organic trouble. If he mounted a rise for even twenty feet he would pause to breathe with evident distress and Reynolds often watched him with deep solicitude. Came the twentieth of May, 1892, which is our November, Reynolds awoke and went out of the cave leaving good heart sleeping. The figure of his companion was easily visible to Reynolds, whose sight, fresh from the seals of sleep, found a good light reflected from the radiance outside the cave's mouth. He went about as usual to prepare the cookpit, taking a look at the sea, but in a sort of hopeless way which was a habit and would have been most moving to a spectator, and the look he directed was also influenced by the knowledge that unless a ship was hull up and within two or three miles she would be invisible to him. He walked down to the creek to fish. This was an inexhaustible source of supply. The fish never seemed to go away. No sooner was the bait sunk than a cod or a salmon-shaped fish or a fish shaped like a turbot but gloriously adorned would come up, and Reynolds, as you may suppose, was now an adroit artist in the use of his landing-basket. When he returned he found that good heart still remained inside. He cleaned and cut up his fish and lighted his fire every minute expecting good heart to appear. He prepared his shovel with a couple of slices, but before he set his strange pan upon the fire he thought he would look into the cave. After the necessary pause he stooped and peered at the sleeper. Good heart's eyes were partially closed. He was fat in the throat and when lying his chin reposed upon its own layers and prevented the jaw from dropping. Reynolds said softly, Good heart, then. Good heart, more loudly, then cried his name strongly taking him by the shoulder and shaking him. The corpse, though often entreated, has never yet responded to the human cry. Not one of the millions since the beginning of things has spoken to tell us what it means and what it has found out. Reynolds took up the dead man's hand. It was as cold as putty and fell like putty when released. A wild and frightful heart-cracking sensation of horror and consternation seized the unhappy, lonely, forsaken man. Again alone, how much lonelier now than when he was alone before, he but too surely knew. He reared his figure and gazed at the dead motionless as a statue. A flood of sorrow overwhelmed his soul. He fell upon his grass couch and hid his face and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. He rose again and looked at Good heart, then ran out into the sunshine and fell to pacing the ground as though he was mad. Nobody to speak to now, nobody to soothe him with precious and beautiful words of hope. He thinks his heart must break, he will die and again before his mental vision the picture of his body, supine, a ragged, bearded, rotten, shameless corpse, shaped itself, and his long fingernails dug themselves into the palms of his hands in the agony of his thoughts. The morning had advanced before the tempest of distress that flashed and groaned in the poor fellow was spent, and then he entered the cave and again looked at Good heart. Oh yes, he was dead. Death never made a plainer report that it was in possession. He went to the river to drink, and feeling faint with fasting remade his fire and cooked a piece of fish. What his reflections were you shall readily conceive, never was the enormous solitude of the island so oppressive, never did the horizon of the sea seem more remote, never the prospect of release more hopeless. He would go mad. Those birds uttering cries like the creaking of strange timber in a seaway, the melancholy monotonous roar of surf, the eternity of the dwarf trees of the falling cascades of those circling winged shapes, of that sliding, burning eye of sun, these things must by endless iteration drive the reason out of his skull. In the afternoon he went about to dig a grave. He was slow because he could not ply the shovel as though it were a spade. He chose the centre of the dell for a resting place for his friend as the soil was more easily dug up in this part than elsewhere. It is hard to imagine a more pathetic figure than this poor man made, bearded, pale and ragged, alone, died now and again by a circling sea-bird, digging a hole in which to secrete the remains of a man he had learnt to love. He had finished his sad task by sunset but not before. He made his way by the twilight to the river to drink and came back to eat the remains of his cooked fish, and that night he slept in the old Fisher, his bed-place of seven He was very low and nervous, distracted by the grief occasioned by his loss, subdued into a sense of dumb, aching suspense which was a sort of hysteria proper to raise a ghost again to pace the dell, and he could not bring himself to lie in the cave with the dead body. He obtained some rest in the night, and after attending his needs in the morning he proceeded with the task of burying Goodheart. Nothing could be more painful to him than the idea of dispoiling the body of its property, removing the clothes, and dragging the dead to its burial-place, but all this had to be done. Reynolds possessed the strictest title to all that Goodheart had left. The man who was dead had never named a relative. He had indeed stated again and again that he was as much alone in the world as Reynolds on his island, so that, his being dead, his bonds and belongings were as much Reynolds as if they had been willed to him, or as if he had preceded Reynolds in his lonely occupation of the island, and left his bonds and property to be taken by the first who was lucky enough to find them. Reynolds found these things in the dead man's pockets, a very handsome gold watch and chain, to which was attached a spade guinea and a small revolving seal, bearing his wife's initials on one side and his own on the other. A handsome Russia leather pocket book, the contents of which he did not then examine, but which he afterwards found to hold four Bank of England notes of fifty pounds each, eight of ten pounds each, and five of five pounds. Also four letters from his wife, one containing a lock of her hair, these he would have buried with the body if he had thought of inspecting the contents of the pocket book before the interment, but he was too much worried, affected. He was grieving too much over his loss and the sorrowful task imposed upon him to think of examining the value of his poor friend's pocket possessions. He also found an elaborate knife full of useful blades and tools, a gold pencil case, a purse containing some sovereigns and silver, a gold toothpick, and a silver matchbox. He put these things in the chest for the present as his clothes were little more than rags which hung upon him like wet weed on a rock and his pockets broken and useless, and then removed the coat, waistcoat, and trousers. This done with trembling hands and a sobbing heart, he gently and reverentially dragged the body down the slope to the grave he had dug, and after lining the trench with grass, with most pious hands, he contrived to let the corpse slide into the grave where it rested on its back, looking with sweet expression in death up to that God whom in life he had adored. With him was buried his wife's wedding ring and the ring he wore on his forefinger. Reynolds next covered the body with grass and leaves, and when this was done he knelt and pronounced aloud these simple words, Father, receive him, and do not forsake me. He arose and began to shovel in the earth haunted by this reflection, if I die here, who will bury me? And he shuttered again and again to the loathsome image that held aghast the vision of his mind. The hours passed in this melancholy work and in the afternoon he had heaped up a sight-catching grave which he resolved to memorialize. So next day with the axe he had hewed down a stout bow and made a cross out of it, and in the next two or three days during the intervals of providing for his own necessities he cut these words. John Goodheart died May 20, 1892, buried by his loving friend and mourner, Francis Reynolds. Lord have mercy upon us. The letters were small for the split surface on which they were traced was narrow, but they were cut deep and well. He was something of an artist with a knife and in Goodheart's he had a good tool. He could carve model sailing ships, make toy chests of drawers and doll houses, and had been chased and caned more than once in his youth for cutting his name in church sittings, school desks, park seats and the like. He was once again alone, lonelier than when he was formerly alone, lonelier by virtue of the knowledge he had gained that ships might pass and he would not see them unless they came close in. CHAPTER 11 OF ABANDONED by William Clark Russell Captain Francis Reynolds, bankrupt by shipwreck, was now a rich man. That is to say he was rich beyond any dreams of avarice which had ever entered his head. For how long does a master in the merchant service take as a rule to save out of perhaps the poorest paid calling in the world the handsome sum of eleven thousand pounds with a few hundred pounds on top in notes in gold just enough to open a pretty little banking account with. But Reynolds did not happen to take an inspiring view of the noble turn which Fortune had done him. He was never once visited by a single heartbeat of exaltation, the solemn and sturdy sense of satisfaction and repose of spirit which attend competence did not come to swell his heart. On the contrary, he regarded himself as the miserable, hopeless castaway as a wretch whose hideous doom prayer was not likely to avert and the bonds in the cave and the notes and property in the chest were as worthless in his sight as the leaf on the tree or the empty seashell on the sand. At the same time he was sensible that he had most honorably come by this little estate and he would sit and lament that he could make no use of it. The desire of his soul was that Lucretia should get it and learn from whom it came and in what state the husband she had forsaken had been when he contrived that she should receive it. Mrs. Lane was by no means well off Dr. Lane in his day had been tempted to gamble on the stock exchange. The old fool went into mines, his friend said. He could not ask for a simpler and sureer grave for the everlasting entombment of his capital which he had gotten by painful toil, by tedious anxious vigils and sick rooms, by exposure to weather and to the many morbid diseases to which flesh is air. Panic seized him. To rescue himself as wife and daughter from the workhouse he purchased an annuity on his own and Mrs. Lane's life, on which, on about one hundred a year, which Lucretia would come into on her mother's death and which represented money that had not gone to the jobbers, Mrs. Lane and Lucretia lived. All this was known to Reynolds and whenever he thought of the bonds in the cave he longed to give them to his wife, though convinced he would never meet her again. But how was this to be done? He pondered in vain. It was an end impossible to arrive at. Ideas occurred to him which he considered absurd. He had Goodheart's gold pencil and there was a flat pencil in the chest, a roll of paper was there, and in that chest were blank leaves of letters. Mrs. Goodheart's and a few of Lucretia's to him, whose wife's letters had been in his pocket when he was washed ashore. The ink had run, the writing was indecisivable, but he had kept the letters nevertheless and they had dried long ago and were fit where they were blank to receive pen or pencil. He said to himself, if I write my wishes how am I to dispatch them? I have not even an empty bottle to cork the missive up in and send it afloat. But suppose this could be managed. The man who picked up the bottle, if it did not go washing about till the crack of doom might value the secret too highly to betray it. Come to the island and carry off the bonds. It will be seen that in these speculations he conceived himself dead. But one day, being vastly exercised by thoughts of his wife and the bonds, he formed a resolution. He said to himself, I will write a sort of will and take my chance of its being found by one who will prove honest enough to carry out the instructions it contains. But he clearly understood that if he was to die on the island, the buried bonds must remain a secret forever. An eleven thousand pounds would be left to rot in a cave of no good to mortal man when by leaving a declaration of the existence of the treasure which it truly was it might per adventure come safely into his wife's hands and benefit the honest fellow who delivered it to her. He took the roll of old paper from the shelf in the chest and using Guthardt's pencil case he sat down on the grass employing the back of the shovel as a table a useful shovel as it served as a frying pan as a matuk for the burial of a man's bonds and then the man himself and now it was to supply the place of a desk. He wrote thus June 15, 1892 I who write this am Captain Francis Reynolds. I commanded the ship flying spur which sailed from Falmouth October 13, 1890 and was lost off this island to fire and in half a gale of wind February 2, 1891 I am the sole survivor of the whole ship company. This at least is my conviction. I remained alone till September 14, seven months of solitude when a boat arrived with six seamen of the crew of the Esmond that had gone down through a collision and Mr. John Guthardt of the Sydney, New South Wales. The sailor stayed on the island until October 2 on which day they chased to ship but the boat was without mast or sail and I am certain that she never came up with that ship and I am also persuaded that she will not again be heard of. Had her people been rescued they would have reported Mr. Guthardt and me as being left and we would have been fetched not necessarily by the ship that received the men but through the report of her master. Plenty of time having elapsed to allow for that report to reach the ears of a British consul who would consider it his duty to communicate with the commander in chief on the Pacific station. When the boat had left the island Mr. Guthardt showed me in a couple of waterproof saps, 11 Victoria 4% bonds, each of the value of 1,000 pounds. He informed me that his wife had died in child bed at Sydney and that he was absolutely without kith or kin. We conceived a great liking for each other. We were one in sympathy and tastes but his was a very great and noble mind. Our comradeship in privation and the sufferings which attend shipwreck heightened our affection and endeared us to each other. He told me that if he died on the island I was to consider myself his heir and take possession not only of his bonds but also of the property which was upon his person. As I shall continue to carry that property about with me in his clothes which I am wearing it will be found upon my remains which cannot lie far away from the spot. If indeed I do not die in the cave and the discoverer of this letter must seek my body and take what is on it and I implore him in God's name to bury me. To provide against the risk of a landing being affected unseen by us in which case the cave might be entered, the chest explored and the bonds removed I buried them with the approval of Mr. Guthardt and the place where they lie will be found marked by a short spade shaped stake which I drove into the ground to help me should my memory come to be weakened. My wife Lucretia when I left England was living with her mother Mrs. Lane in Chepstow Place, Bayswater London W and it is my earnest wish that she should be the recipient of these bonds and the property that may be found upon me. To which end I, a broken-hearted, desolate, dying man, humbly and affectionately greet the reader of this letter and do entreat him as he loves God and the truth and honor to convey these words and the property to my wife Lucretia Reynolds who for the trouble he is at in finding her if she has removed and in acting as my emissary will receive fifteen hundred pounds which he will more greatly enjoy as money honorably and virtuously gained than if he kept the whole sum thereby robbing the widow and blasting the only hope which keeps warm and alive the heart that dictates these words. Again I greet and bless you and thank you for the noble service you will be doing me, Francis Reynolds. The mere writing this letter was almost as good as a talk, almost as comforting to the poor fellow as the sound of a voice. He was even warmed when he had ended it and read it over by a little glow of hope. It was as something done to act with a possibility attached to it. He went into the cave and opening the chest took out an envelope that had been addressed to him by Lucretia but the ink had been dissolved by immersion into mere stains. The envelope was dry and he wrote upon it to the honorable stranger. He put his letter into the envelope and by working it with his knife drew a nail out of the ruptured lock and nailed the missive to the lid of the chest. This was a great day's work and he had not felt easier in spirits for many a long hour. He diverted or rather distracted his mind by conceiving the sort of person who would find the letter but his face lengthened. The faint tinge of color deserted his hollow cheek when fancy exerting her brush painted the image of a man cautiously entering the cave then staring at the old sea chest. Then bringing the letter away from the nail to the mouth of the cave to read it, then picking up the shovel and digging out the bonds, then proceeding to search for Reynolds dead body. He did not fear the passage from life into negation. He could not suppose it difficult to die. He was certain that in nearly all cases nature gently slopes the way and puts her child to rest as a mother or baby and he was fond of these lines. To die is landing on some silent shore where billows never beat nor tempest roar ere well we feel the friendly stroke to his oar. Doubtless it was the human instinct of decency where maybe it was the secret passion in most of us that our ashes shall be honorably used, that stirred in him. Somehow his very soul recoiled from the idea of his body lying unburied submitting a pitiful shocking spectacle to him who met with it. It is the pride of the spirit which demands that its earthly tabernacle shall not be dishonored when life is fled. There is nothing of human weakness in this quality. It is in true keeping with our most exalted thoughts that the spirit of man should desire that the shape of flesh which it warmed, which it informed, which expressed in brilliance of eye, in coloration of cheek, in play of mouth, in motion of limbs, the animation of its soul should, when that soul has departed, be reverently composed and decently draped for death and piously memorialized. This same day, being full of his will, as he chose to think of his letter, he took the guineas and silver out of the shelf in the chest and dropped them into Goodheart's purse which he returned to his pocket. Goodheart's clothes had been fairly new and of excellent quality and they fitted Reynolds, but who would have recognized in that pale, hollow, bearded, scarred face the lustrilous left eye, the ruined cheek at the corner of the mouth, in the long-haired street with gray, in that sad, wistful, harkening expression which attends long-watching and hope deferred. The good-looking, erect, close-haven man who had stood before the altar in St. Stephen's Church with Lucretia Lane on Wednesday afternoon, September 16, 1890. But not yet was Goodheart's prediction to be verified and Reynolds released from his long captivity and bitter solitude from his sad and solemn contemplations of the awful and stupendous chasms of silence in interstellar space, from the voice of the sea sobbing on the calm or bellowing in the gale, from the whispers as of spirit tongues in the trees, often to his visionary ear, cilibling his name as though he were summoned, from the weariness of his lonely strolls, his solitary labor in the creek and over the fire pit, the waking to the cold and desolate gray of the dawn, the going to rest with the seabird at the mandate of the dusk and the first of the stars. Came September 4, 1892, a cool, fair morning, light clouds moving lazily, a note of langer in the blow of the surge, Reynolds went for his bath and a drink of cold water. In returning, he stepped from the shorter way to the cave to ascend an elevation. The first thing he saw, on looking at the sea, was a small brig heading in. She bore about north-northwest, the wind was about west, and she flapped and curtsied as she floated softly onwards. At the sight of her Reynolds was transfixed for the space of a minute, then the powerful instinct of self-preservation broke the hysteric spill. With the speed of a madman, he rushed to the cave, picking up the shovel near the cook-pit as he went, drove with weight of foot and rage of muscle into the earth, exposed the bonds, tore off his coat and waistcoat, slung the sacks upon his chest and back, and struggling into his waistcoat ran headlong to the beach, wrestling into his coat as he dashed down the slope. On the brilliant whiteness of that foreshore of coral, nothing could have been more visible, not even the hill, behind a 300 feet, then Reynolds' figure, motioning like a firework in frenzy dumb show, had a sight been good he would have known he was seen. Invisible to him, but easily within reach of a good eye, a man stood near the wheel of the brig, waving a white grass hat above the bulwark rail. She was a little vessel of about 250 tons, her white breasts panted as she sank and rose upon the tireless swell of the sea. A band of white ran round her, broken by painted ports. The sun flashed a lightning glance from the metal dog-vane at the royal mass-head. In about half an hour, she shifted her helm and came slowly round into the wind, bracing her four yards forward and her after-yards aback, and there she lay, swaying her toy-like milky softness of cloths. Against the morning sky, with the firm sea-line ruling in indigo, from either hand, whilst a boat sang from her port davits, and two men and a man steering with an oar came along. Head for the creek shouted Reynolds when they were with an earshot, and he motioned in the direction of that familiar spot, walking rapidly towards it whilst the boat swerved and went that way in obedience to his diverting gestures. She entered the creek and Reynolds stood waiting for her, ready to jump in from the low shore. And even before she had lost way, when three or four feet separated her from the bank-side, even before the two men had thrown in their oars, Reynolds with a wild convulsive shout of joy sprang and was in the boat with arms out to shake hands with them all. The fellow who had steered with an oar had a cast in his eye, and the red beard on his chin was as stiff as a toothbrush. You don't mean to lose no time, said he, gazing with the others with great curiosity at the figure of the man. Who might you be? A shipwrecked sailor, answered Reynolds, a man who was in command of a ship that founded off here twenty months ago. Thank God you are Englishmen, I can talk to you. One of them who was a sweet rind, but his face sank instantly into its former stare of astonishment at the long hair and wild and rugged appearance of this newcomer. Twenty months, said the man of the toothbrush beard. Are you alone, sir? All alone. This is a non-inhabited island, then? Oh my God, yes. Is there any fruit or vegetables to be got? That's what we've been sent ashore to find out, and to bring off. You'll find nothing to eat ashore, said Reynolds. What have you kept yourself alive, on then, sir? Fish, look over the side. That's how I have fared. Any fresh water? Abundant. Two cataracts of delicious cold, bright water. Johnny, said the man, addressing one of his companions, I'll just up ashore and have a look round. And then we'll put you aboard, sir. God bless me, twenty months. His face, heart as leather, with weather and seafaring, softened its expression as he looked at Reynolds, and he said, What might have been the name of your ship, sir? The Flying Spur, ailing from where? From London. We are the brig Chanticleer, from Hobart to San Diego. Muddle master, and I'm her mate, and my name's Frost. You keep all on down here, sir, whilst I take the look around. The old man will expect a report. He got upon the shore, and walked up the slope. Reynolds sank into the stern sheet. He was trembling now, as he had trembled when he first beheld the apparition of the boatswain of the Esmond, looking down upon him as he sat with a slice of fish breaking his fast in the dell. His eyes were moist, his respiration short and distressing. The two men who remained observed his state, and you mainly let him be for a little, with the taste which would have done honour to well-bred gentlemen, directing their gaze at the island or at the water over the side, in whose glass-clear depths shapes of fish could be seen moving slowly. The sailors viewed anything rather than this rescued man, who was broken down with the joy of release, the transports of deliverance, for extremes of human passions are in close touch, and great griefs and great delights often affect us in the same way. I hope, exclaimed Reynolds, that Mr. Frost won't be long. You can't guess how mad I am to feel your brig's depths under my feet. He'll not be long, said the Swede, soothingly. He was about to give a look round, or the old man would haze him. He can haze that old man. Hey, Johnny, his shipmate grinned. I think, continued the Swede, I did note the flying spur. She was a bark? No, she was a ship. Then she was another. I don't reckon you've done much smoking here, sir, said Johnny. It's always backie that men miss most when they're locked up. I've got a pipe and backie on me here. Would you like a draw? he added, with a sailor's politeness. I have not smoked for many months, answered Reynolds, and thanking you much will not start just now. He sent an impatient look at the island for Frost. I have had no news for nearly two years, said he after a pause. Have you any to give me what's happened in all these months? There was a strike on amongst the sailors at Hobart when we sailed, said Johnny. I don't believe in unions myself. It was the same here, said the Swede. They make you pay to become member, said Johnny, and then keeps you out of work. No European, no English news, asked Reynolds. I read a piece and a paper before I leave. How that they have opened a new dock at Cartiff, on that a French trump runes into the Goodfin light ship and sinker. Reynolds could not forbear a smile. After twenty months of ocean solitude, this was to be his news of the world. One thing you'll find ain't much change since you was wrecked, said Johnny, and that sailor's wages on sailor's groob, said the Swede. Them's a nice show of oysters, exclaimed Johnny, looking at a richly dyed cluster on some rocks projecting from the shore of the creek. Jump on that rock, said Reynolds, and you'll find a stone shape like a cucumber. Knock them off with it. They are good eating. He did not need to ask if they had knives. Each man carried a blade in a sheath, belted to his hip. They sprang ashore and were soon busy in hammering oysters and swallowing morsels, truly delicious after peas soup and salt pork. It would be impossible to describe, though not hard to imagine, the dance of sensations, passions, and emotions in the mind of Reynolds whilst he sat waiting for the others in that boat. The island up rose before him. Goodheart was there in memory, and himself in his solitude, and again he beheld, with the vision of the spirit, the shadowless form that had walked bareheaded in the dell. How often had he watched those cascades, those birds out yonder, the ponderous coil of his surf rushing its load of splendour up the beach. He thought of the gloomy cave, his bed in the fissure, the stars beyond which his thoughts had winged to God, the grave he had dug, the cross he had made, the words he had cut upon it, and now he was to be rescued. He was seated in the boat, men were hammering and swallowing and talking hard by. Yonder was a brig to bear him back to civilization and liberty and the life of man in town or country. It was so much like a dream that he sweated with fear that it was, and got up and stepped into the boughs of the boat, returned, picked up an ore, opened a little locker under the stern sheets, ultimately sure that he was awake. Mr. Frost came leisurely along to the creek with a deep sea roll and his arms curved like spouting water, and seeing that his men were eating oysters, joined them, calling to Reynolds, won't you partake of some before we go on board? Reynolds called back, I've eaten enough and want no more. Indeed, he stuck to that boat as a barnacle to a ship and grappling the thwarts he might have defied the united efforts of the three men to heave him out. For this man had been shipwrecked and the shanticleer was the first vessel that had come to look at the island in twenty months and God knows how much longer, and he sat on that boat with the intention to stop. Impatience was working up into agony in him, whilst the three feasted. The shanticleer was a little brig, the discipline was not severe. If Mr. Frost was mate, he was man too, and was Jimmy, a shore, though Mr. on board. If this mate and his men had banquet it, they must need linger to knock off a little freight of oysters for the old man. But whilst they were thus employed, the old man appeared to be visited by some of Reynolds' impatience. For sending for his gun, he loaded and discharged it at the island over the lifting and sinking rail. All right, said Mr. Frost. Where are coming? They entered the boat and shoved out of the creek with about four dozen oysters at Reynolds' feet. You must have found it pretty dull, said Mr. Frost, deadly dull. Worse than a lighthouse, I guess. I came across a grave. Was that of your erecting? Yes. Ain't been alone all along then. No. I likewise looked into a cave. It had a broken chest in it with a few old pipes in the shelf. And there was a hole in the corner of the ground as if something had been buried and then dug up. Did you sleep in that fair cave? Sometimes. Did you observe a letter nailed to the lid of the box? I can't say that I did. Oh, why, yes, now that I come to think of it, I did take notice of what I thought was a label, sort of a dress card. You left it there? Why, certainly. Thanks. His answers were short. He scarcely listened. The man's heart was burning for the brig to get aboard her to sit safe and deep in her, bound for a port and human life. Six months, said the mate, gazing grimly behind him at the receding island. If I was cast away alone upon a bit of a watertight backyard like that, blow it if I know how I should be able to pass the time. Nobody to play cards with, even if a pack was to be add or invented near a parrot in sight to tame and learn to talk. There's no signs of life anywhere. Not even that dirndled goat which every man expects to fall in with when he's cast away. If a man was cast away, made a fine young female, I don't know, but that ship-fake was good, said the swede. You might still that swash, said the mate, with a very bristling, rugged nod. Several figures leaned over the side of the brig, watching the approaching boat. What product of the island dressed as a man was Jimmy Frost bringing aboard? The boat's bows struck the vessel, and in a breath or two, Reynolds had leapt the rail and was standing on the deck. Captain Muddle was a very short man, clad in a long coat, whose swelling skirts descended to midway the calves of his legs. When you took a back view of him and did not observe the projection of his long feet, whose toes curved upwards, you beheld the travesty of some provincial academic figure, say a village school master. It was a coat, a head, and a wide straw hat fixed securely on two stout wooden pegs. Nothing more at variance would the traditions of the beef face of the sea could be imagined than this singular little creature who were a beard who curled into a coil with soap the extremities of his moustachios and who gazed at you through a pair of heavily rimmed spectacles. He was stepping his piece of quarter-deck with a sort of skating or sliding motion with the dignity of an admiral taking the air in his stern walk. But stopped when Reynolds, jumping from the rail, sprang almost on top of him. The recoil of the short left leg in its trouser was an involuntary melodramatic stroke, an example to the Trudidian who starts at a ghost, and the little man's magnified eyes glared at the wild and hairy figure that confronted him. Are you Captain Muddle? exclaimed Reynolds, who was so profoundly affected by the sense of salvation and the knowledge of absolute safety that he was without control of his voice. He spoke in gasps. The whole fabric of his nerves appeared to have fallen to pieces. Yes, sir. My name is Muddle. Answered the little skipper, viewing the nearly two years' growth of hair, the long beard, the bloodless, haggard, injured face, the worn-out raiment of his visitor with a most visible expression of astonishment, not wholly uncolored by awe. Reynolds grasped his hand. May the merciful God bless you, he said, as the only man whose ship has touched at this island in twenty long months, during most of which time I have been alone. Here, about here, twenty months ago, my ship inflames the flying spur foundered. I commanded her. Where are you bound to? Oh, yes, I remember. Santiago. Am I awake? My God, am I awake? He looked around him and up at the brig's canvas. The sailors forward who were viewing him spoke not, did not smile nor nudge or give expression to any other emotion than that of the sensations with which their little skipper was filled by the pathetic pallor and worn and sorrowful countenance of this long-bearded man who pleaded as a castaway, who was imperiously significant, even to the most ignoble instinct by the magnitude of this twenty months of almost lonely confinement to yonder little island with its silver threads of cascades, its lifeless slopes, its dazzle of foreshore. I am very glad to receive you, said Captain Muddle. I was a bit out of my reckoning, and seeing this island close aboard at daylight, I thought I'd look in to find something that would give us a fresh mess. What's to be had, he asked, addressing the mate. I brought a few oysters, answered Mr. Frost. There's nothing else worth mentioning. There's fish, but fishes want catching, and catching means waiting. Is that water good that's spouting down that hill, said Captain Muddle, deliciously pure and cold and bright, answered Reynolds. Muddle sent a look at the oysters which the men had handed up. We might do with some more of them, said he. And suppose you turn two, James, and lower a couple of casks into the boat. We can do with a little pure, cold, bright fresh water. It may be all a week's sale yet, and fresh water at sea is fresh water, if it's fresh water anywhere. There are no place in this globe, though you shall call it Sahara. Have you eaten any breakfast, Captain? he continued, expressing much kindness in tone and manner, and some culture in enunciation. No, I've eaten nothing since yesterday, answered Reynolds. Then step below, sir. Joe, he shouted. A young sailor started from the rail over which he had been hanging, in the lazy, lounging posture of the merchant's seamen, when he is idle on board ship. Bring some hot tea after the cabin, get some coffee made, tell the cook to fry some bacon, and put some salt, beef and marmalade and ship's bread on the table. And he led the way, down into the cabin, through the little companion hatch, a brown, dusky interior with lockers for seats, and a chair for the skipper at the head of the table, a dingy skylight, a stove, and two little cabins aft, and two little holes of berths in the four part. Reynolds, cap in hand, stood gazing around him, done with the transport with which the sight of the cabin fired him. This interior, gloomy as it was, was raised by the spirit of this rescued man to the magnificence of a palace by the royal quality of liberty with which its darkling atmosphere was instinct. I thank thee, O God, his heart said mutely, and he turned up his eyes with a beautiful and touching look of adoration and gratitude. End of Chapter 11, Recording by Thelma Meyer Chapter 12 of Abandoned by William Clark Russell This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Gary Ullman. Abandoned by William Clark Russell Chapter 12. After eight years, one morning in May, 1898, a gentleman was driven to the Tavistock Hotel, Convent Garden. He alighted and entered the house, and having viewed his bedroom, proceeded to the coffee room and opened the London Directory. His beard and mustache were scissor-trimmed. He wore his hair short, but this was white. His beard was iron gray, dappled with white. The change which the hurl of the breaker had wrought his face had been confirmed by time, and no two men could have been more dissimilar than Frank Reynolds, who had married Lucretia Lane in 1890, and the Francis Reynolds, who had driven to the Tavistock Hotel on the morning of May 14, 1898. He turned to the addresses under the heading Tip Stow Place, the house in which Mrs. Lane had lived was now occupied by one William Johnson. He looked down the list of court addresses and found so many Mrs. Lanes that he easily saw he might spend a fortnight in driving about all over London only to fail to verify the individual he had in his mind. He shut the immense volume and went to eat the breakfast he had ordered. There was no need for him to report his safe arrival to the owner of the flying spur, Mr. George Blaney. Long before, whilst in Australia, he had learned that this gentleman, like his ship, had got under and that Mr. Blaney, as a man and owner, was as extinct as the crew who had never returned to take up their wages. Whilst he breakfasted, he thoughts were with his wife. He did not intend to justify Goodheart's prophecy that he would seek her out if living and endeavour to woo her back to him, but he most passionately desired to know if she were alive, where she was, if she was married and if she was well or badly off. The mold of his character was very visible on his face. You witnessed habitual melancholy, a habit of thought that was often carried by deep condit, deep sensibility that looked that practice of patient paints upon the human continents, with a firm cohesion of the whole in a spiritual tissue of resolution. This, in a brief survey, the gifted eye could easily construe. No, it was not his intention to woo his wife afresh if she was still in a state of life to be one, but he could not be in London, he could not see and hear and smell and taste London without the sensations thus excited, attacking memory and troubling it into the presentment of hot and oppressive images. The marriage, the delirious refusal to see or have anything to do with him, his visit to a solicitor, the stratagem that had decoyed her to the ship, unwomily, unwifely aversion, whilst on board and the inglorious victory of her departure at Fulmouth. After breakfast, he called the cab and drove to the office of a shipping paper off Grace Church Street. He said to a clerk, do you know if there is any reference to the loss of a full rigged ship called the Flying Spur in one of your back numbers? What date, sir? She was lost February 2nd, 1891 but I could not tell you the date when the news was published. They'll know all about it at Lloyds, said the clerk. I want to know if the news was published in the papers. You're welcome to turn over those back numbers, sir, said the clerk, eyeing him with some curiosity and indicating a table on which reposed a number of bound copies of the journal going back some years. Now Reynolds never had doubt in his mind that all hands of the ship's company saving himself had perished, in which case having regard to his own situation on the island the ship's loss could only have been assumed. She would have been posted at Lloyds ranked amongst the missing and then dismissed from the commercial memory as something extinct. But the boat of the Esmond, it will be remembered, had gone away to intercept a distant ship on October 2nd, 1891 and it was possible that her people had been taken out of her. In which case they would report that the flying spur had been lost off the island of Santo Cristo and that out of her whole crew, the captain alone, had survived by being cast in a life belt upon the island. So Reynolds turned to the volumes containing the issues of November and December, 1891 and to the succeeding volumes of 1892 and 1893. These he painfully and laboriously examined through a pair of spectacles and spent nearly two hours in this study but found not the smallest reference to a ship or her loss, nor to the escape of the Esmond's crew that had left the island. It was clear that this, that Captain Modell had admitted to report the circumstances of Reynolds' escape and Reynolds himself had been silent. The clerk said there was no fee. The volumes were for convenience of the public particularly subscribers and Reynolds departed. It was quite certain that if the shipping gazette which records everything about the merchant service had made no reference to the loss of the flying spur all papers in any way likely to meet the eye of Lucretia would be and had been silent also. Next morning Reynolds traveled by railway to Bayswater and he walked from the station to Chipstow Place. His breath grew somewhat difficult as he approached the house. All that had happened between pressed heavily upon his heart in a sensible weight of intellectual atmosphere. This was the pavement they had walked on when they returned from church. They walked by her side as inflexible mute as the corpse in a grave. What had provoked this cruelty in her? Why had she married him? Everything was present as though they all were of today. But the chasm demanded for its passage a bridge of size that had taken eight years to make and was it for him, a husband scorned, humiliated, forsaken on one side to measure that length or for her on the other side to cross it if alive. He subbed the servant and was admitted. The card he gave her was plain and honored he had written Mr. John Goodheart Tavistock Hotel, Coven Garden. He was shown into the parlor. This was the little room in which Mrs. Lane had displayed those refreshments of which the wedding guests had not partaken. The image of Lucretia shaped itself in the velocity of memory upon the eyes of his spirit. He was alone and there she stood in the doorway at the doorway at the table as she had again and again stood tall, nobly, molded with a light that should have been love in the luminous gloom of her eyes with glowing hair and firm lips and a demeanor of tranquility which he had long ago translated into fashionless nature, ice cold in chastity, bleak and sterile by refrigeration of virginal impulse, a beautiful flower without odor, a lovely star without heat, a woman into whose creation entered many of the perfections of her sex but from whom he had been withheld the sanctifying touch that creates womanliness. Mr. William Johnson walked in, a white-whisket band and bald who apologized for resenting himself in a dressing-down. This house, said Reynolds, after a few sentences, had been exchanged, was occupied a few years ago by a widow named Lane, Mrs. Lane. Yes, I took it after her death. Oh, she is dead then? exclaimed Reynolds with the calmness that betrayed the preconcerted arrangements between the nerves and the understanding. Yes, I happen to know something about her. As a matter of fact, I am the late manager of the insurance office in which Dr. Lane purchased an annuity on the joint lives of self and wife. There was a Miss Lane, I believe there was. Do you know if she's alive? I'm afraid I can't tell you nothing. I merely happen to remember the name of Lane as a client of the office. I know a friend of hers, said Reynolds, who wants to hear about her. How shall I go to work to obtain the information? Mr. Johnson studied Reynolds' face with some attention, with the attention of a man who has passed his life in taking lives. It was an interesting, striking, in all respects, very remarkable face. I rather fancy, said he, after a little reflection, that if you were to call it by old office, they will be able to give you the name of Mrs. Lane's solicitor, who had something to do with her will, for I remember that he wrote to us about the annuity. I am greatly obliged. How long has Mrs. Lane been dead, do you suppose? I took possession here in February 1895. I was her immediate successor, and as these houses do not long remain empty, we may assume that her death was then comparatively recent. Reynolds bowed and left the house. After transacting certain business at the London and Westminster bank, he walked to the insurance office, which was within a couple of streets. The letter book was examined, and the address of the late Mrs. Lane's solicitor found. He was Mr. J. Wembley Jones, Lincoln's in Fields. It was too late to call that day. Reynolds returned to the hotel. A man alone in London without friends or acquaintances seldom feels lonelier than when in a London hotel. The bigger the hotel, the vaster the desert, the wider the amplitude of the swing of the pendulum of dullness. And perhaps what is least agreeable of London in flavor, sound and sight, you will discover by putting up at a hotel in Covent Garden. The prevalent property of the district is cabbage. The residual music is the ebrew throat of the salesman and the bray of the coasters donkey. The climate is fog, and the prospect strictly limited. Reynolds had felt with crushing severity the burden of solitude imposed by his island. But the feeling of loneliness, which depressed him that evening as he sat now in a coffee room, now in the smoking room of the hotel through differing in kind, was not in degree very remote, from the feeling that he had weighed him down in Santo Cristo. Was his wife alive? He could form no reason to suppose her dead. He assumed her living and logically thought therefore of her as alive and it must be added alone for to presume her married in the belief that he was dead was to mangle and ruin his theory of her. That bannered keen principle of chastity that had kept him at bay, that had dispatched him to a remote part of the globe as much a bachelor as if there was not a woman in the world must surely have kept another off, all others off, unless indeed the cold and pitless weapon had sunk at the cat-core of poverty or to the rainbow of elegance of title and estate. Was his habit to think of Lucretia as alive, alone and this conception working in him as a truth troubled him by the creation of a subtle learning, a straining of mind which his consciousness refused to heed because he had resolved not to seek her nor to have relations with her but desire was in him nevertheless as pain is in sleep causing the suffering to moan and toss. He sent in the same sort of card he had delivered at Chepstow Place. Next day to Mr. Wembley-Jones in Lincoln's Innsvale an antennaed office where he was received by a tall, thin, whiskered man with a big hook nose and a Caspian sea of shirt front on the top of which under stiff stand-up collars sat a black bow. He took a chair and Mr. Wembley-Jones examined him with keen attention. I have a certain Mr. Reynolds that you were the late Dr. Lane Solicitor. That is so. Dr. Lane apparently had a daughter continued Reynolds who became Mrs. Reynolds and as I have a communication to make to her I should feel obliged if you would give me her address. Mr. Wembley-Jones summoned a clerk from the adjacent office. Find out if you can in the letter book Mrs. Reynolds' last address the Mrs. Reynolds who is the daughter of Dr. Lane. I'll explain to you as briefly as I can the object of this visit said Reynolds. I happened to be off the island of Santa Cristo be calmed and sent the maid ashore to examine and report with respect to fresh water and provisions. When was that sir? Last year. Mr. Wembley-Jones bowed. The mate returned and bought a letter which he said he had found nailed to the lid of a chest in a cave. It was addressed to the Honorable Stranger. It contained 150 pounds in banknotes and a letter signed by one Francis Reynolds begging the finder to send the money to his wife Mrs. Reynolds. Here Reynolds pulled out a pocketbook and seemed to refer care of Mrs. Lane, Chepstow Place, Bayswater. These are the notes that he taking them from his pocket. The book. Have you the letter? I put it into a locker for safekeeping and when I wanted it I could not find it. These notes were nailed to the lid of the chest but you'll observe that they are not perforated, said Mr. Wembley-Jones blandly but with professional suspicion coloring his smile. The notes were folded thus said Reynolds with dramatic emphasis and a warm cheek. The envelope was lodged. The nail obviously missed the notes. How else should it have been prey? Do you know what has become of Francis Reynolds in Quieter Solicitor? Reynolds shrugged the shoulders. Do you think that he died on the island? A man who writes such a letter as I read is not far from his end was the answer. But all the same he might have been rescued. In the face of this evidence he would not in the eyes of the law be considered dead. How about the disposal of the money? said Reynolds with an air of callousness as though he wished to complete his mission without further trouble. At that moment the clerk entered with the letter book. Yes said Mr. Wembley-Jones after humming through the impression of a letter which the clerk had placed before him. Mrs. Reynolds had occasion to write to me about an investment under her father's will. The date I see is June 1896. Her address then was Mrs. Reynolds Lady School Cathedral Place Canterbury. I have not heard of or from her since. Will you take charge of this money on her account? said Reynolds with the tranquility of a man with many months of ocean solitude had converted into an admirable artist in self-control and facial tokens. I'll first ascertain if she's in Canterbury answered the solicitor and then communicate with you. He added picking up the card you will then instruct me or act for yourself as you think proper. Did the officer you sent on the shore observe no signs whatever of human life on the island? The place was empty of life as that of a hat said Reynolds. It is important that Mr. Reynolds should be made acquainted with what you have told me and might rescue her from a very disagreeable position. We cannot be convinced by your statement that if Francis Reynolds is dead and his wife should be advised not to entertain the idea of a second marriage for some time to come. Reynolds inclined his head as though he should say this is no business of mine. Are you making any stay in town inquire the solicitor? I shall stop at the hotel for a few days. I think, Mr. Goodheart, you shall hear from me when I have news to send you about Mrs. Reynolds. Reynolds rose, bowed, walked out. Mr. Simpson said Wimbledon Jones to the clerk who had been a silent auditor since his arrival with the letterbook. Did you ever see a more remarkable looking man? Never so. I was thinking so. That man said the solicitor has known trouble. He has suffered hardship. What's his calling, sir? Why the sea, I suppose? He talked to being off an island and sending his maid on shore. An interesting face, almost fascinating. A very honorable man, too. To bring the handsome sum of 150 pounds in notes for remittance to a stranger. He drummed on a table for a moment, lost in thought. With his eyes planted on the window like a doctor thinking of a prescription whilst the patient waits. Send Mr. Wilkins here, please. Five days after his visit to Mr. Wimbledon Jones, Reynolds received a letter from the gentleman informing him that Mrs. Reynolds had left Canterbury in October, 1896, and taken a situation as governess at Margate. She was there in August, 1897. He had written to her at Margate, but down to the present had received no reply. Reynolds, in answer, said he would place the amount in his bank. That letter's address to him at the hotel in Covent Garden would be forwarded, and that on his hearing that Mrs. Reynolds' address was known he would send Mr. Wimbledon Jones a check. All this seemed a little better than Beetle Talk, but it is necessary as containing particulars which are links that must be made visible to this chain of sequences. Two facts Reynolds had come to discover. First, that his wife was alive. Next, that she was poor. Poor, she certainly must be. Because had her income been sufficient to enable her to live without work, she, though a clever, well-read, even accomplished woman by which is meant that she sang well, played the piano well, danced with splendid grace, could speak French and read in German a language she had taught herself and had covered a range of English literature which very few young ladies had ever heard about was one of the last of her sex to have dreamt of offering her services in a walk of life whose thankless and underpaid toil she would speak of with pity and aversion. Evidently, she had started and failed. He was moved to think of her as alone and struggling, as alone and poor in a world where to be poor is to entitle man or woman to the sympathy of the mongrel dog, that this flight flees and the mange is taught by nature how to earn a living to rejoice in the sunshine and exalt with complacency its stumpy vibrio of tale and the emotion thus induced quickened yet that subtle and finally burning desire which is reasoned decline to recognize but then he would argue in varying terms over and over again if suddenly she found me loathom enough to abandon eight years ago when I was comely and younger how shall it be now if she meets me and sees me broken face this changed and charged expression if she should see the man she had shrunk from and hissed at and at and forsaken clothed in a trunk of flesh molded by the finger of the breaker and painted by the viewless brush of the island spirit of solitude in short he feared to meet her dreading the horror and wrath which would flame in him consume him and make a pitiful wrench of him if forgiving the past she spurned him and turned from him as at chepstow place as on board the flying spur as at fall mouth when she departed without giving him a single look when he was on the island his heart clamored for the civilization of great cities his dreams were of crowded streets and bustling shops now that he was in the middle of the greatest city the world has ever probably known he began to pine for the repose of the country or the hundred pictures of the coast he was consistent however in his dislike of London he might have been likened to the case of a man who having received a blow on the head loses the sense it may be taste or smell or both Reynolds associated London with his marriage his marriage was intellectually knocked on the head and an extinguished all capacity of relishing London it was not because he believed his wife to be in Margate that he resolved to spend a month into an Ramsgate as you have just heard he trembled at the idea of meeting her not because he did not most passionately desire to behold her but because he feared the moral the ruining consequences to himself of an encounter but even supposing Lucretia to be in Margate the town was as far from Ramsgate as Ramsgate from Deal or Deal from Dover and there was no more reason why he should come across her in Ramsgate than if he remained in London or vindicated his pre-nupchill aspirations by making the tour he had planned for his honeymoon he liked the old town of Ramsgate he had spent many a holiday in his boyhood his recollection of an embracing pier the bright and folded water of the harbour reflected the red or brown of the drooping sail of the smack Okalia the sparkle of windows looking eastward over the edge of the low white ramparts the placent hours he had passed in fishing over the side of a boat went to the thrilling tug at the baited hook he would strike and haul up a place as big as a turbot who made sport choice and delicious by the resistance of its heavy curved shape in the water his recollection of these and more when life was young and blood romped through his heart and the horizon of the passing year was gay with the penions hoisted by the hope or remembered as pleasures freshened him to the very spirit as the salt sweet breath of sea vivifies and enriches to the inmost depth of existence and one morning about three weeks after his arrival in London he packed his portmanteau and drove to sharing cross station it was the month of June a pleasant month in old England no where pleasanter than by the sea when the ocean blends her gifts of weed and shell and sand with the colour odorous produce of the land in Australia he had added four thousand pounds to the value of good hearts bonds by prudent speculation or wise investment and his income was about six hundred a year on this amount a single man may if he is discreet make a figure he cannot indeed run a theatre or start a London daily paper or race or keep a yacht but he can for instance when he arrives at such a place as Ramsgate treat himself to the best hotel and this Reynolds did putting his name down as John Goodheart this hotel is situated on the east cliff and bears the name of a bland old politician who is long a lord warden and remembered for his affirmation that on the advice of his doctor he dropped port for a year at the end of which the gout had not only returned in full force but had made room for seven even worst fiends so that he not only had to writhe under his disease but also under the memory of having lost twelve months of port wine to no purpose Reynolds arrived in town for the table de hote and then strolled out to view the place Ramsgate it is said has been greatly improved by its new road and the disappearance of parts of the old town the improvement is much the same as that made by the section of a redbrook cherry built villa in the midst of houses where architecture is two door or older yet where everything but this flaunting place of worst in cockney and pertinence with his farthing affections of porch and pillar its carrot, haired roof and impulent assertion of bay window where everything else breeds in a poetry of soft and happy keeping style blending with style shadow with shadow decay with decay until the soft and pure rhythm the adjustment of harmonies the gradual but beautiful revelation of meaning both in man's work and time's relation with his work makes an idol or sonnet of the spot this was much about Reynolds judgment of the improved Ramsgate he viewed as he strolled with memory eagerly and fondly painting the old sea town with its gap of harbour street betwixt two clips like dumpton gap a little way behind its terraces of chalk in those days undisfigured by the railroad station and the black hole of tunnel that belches a furious vapor at the glaring advertisements hung up just outside its spacious stage of sands on which were enacted a hundred agreeable buffooneries the fat women screaming laughter on the galloping donkey the milkman limping under cans and helping goat milk fresh from the cow the sweet song of the brandy boar man the orgies in the surf where shrieked the timid and stood still the brave where elderly men fell out of the machines like little colleges and disappeared in foam where figures of blubber bobbed and vanished where girls who went apparel for the esplanade looked a dream of fair women emerged in shrunk and clinging shapes pallid hair wrenched and sexless to the male eye it was the hour of sunshed over the levels between minister and sandwich the red light was streaming in penions of glory with certain large clouds over the town reverberated and dispatched in a delicate orange into the liquid velvet sofas over France yonder opposite deal in walmer where the downs where the sea line covered with small dim sketches of ships motionless in the distance Reynolds leaned upon the rail that stopped people from falling over the cliff and gazed at the remote prospect of water a headwind had forced him to bring up there eight years ago in the flying spur with Lucretia on board the staining him acting indeed as though she loathed them eight years ago right opposite of Katia was slowly flapping along for ram's gate harbor her sails were curled by the sun glow and they panted like the human breast as she strove with the stream of tide eight years ago where was Lucretia now? tomorrow he would go to work to find out if she was at Margate and if she was in that town he would instruct Mr. Wembley Jones to send her the money for which he would remit his check he could not endure to think of her as alone and poor and struggling how could he tell but that she might be in actual want the dusk drew down found them watching the sea a few years people paced a lot to and fro the light of the good ones sparkled and the Calais lantern glanced its lighting into the distant gloom yonder lurid spark is the brilliant star which the Frenchman's kindly hand had set upon the forehead of his rock of greenness a band was playing somewhere but not too near to trouble a weaving mine lights like the glowing tips of cigars burnt at the ends of the pier whose dark curves framed a gleaming shadow restful with slumbering shapes of moored craft a rest not broken by the vision of white wing creeping from sea would be tricks to pier heads like a wreath of mist in the sad color of the dawn what was the light making the dark atmosphere look sultry with tincture as of volcanic vomit beyond the good ones it was the rising moon she lifted a swollen distorted bulk freed herself from the clinging draperies of the atmosphere and zored into an orb of brilliance rolling down the water under her fan shaped river of brightness someone stopped just behind Reynolds he turned to see who it was who stood so close and behold his wife in the clear glow watching the moon End of Chapter 12 Recording by Gary Elman Middletown, New York