 Chapter 15. Mr. Goodheart offers marriage. On the morning following the life-saving incident, Reynolds awoke and found himself heavy, depressed, low with malaise. He felt his pulse, seventy. He got out of bed, opened the dressing-case, and took out a clinical thermometer. His temperature was a hundred and three and a half degrees. He quite understood that this signified a return of malta fever, whether due to his plunge last evening, or to the perception of certain secreted microscopic bacilli that a time had come when they should make their presence felt, was not of the smallest consequence. The remedy was bed, patience, and abstinence. He kept his room all day, but his yearning after Lucretia was so great that he must needs right this note to her. Dear Mrs. Reynolds, I am confined to my room by a slight attack of Mediterranean fever, but hope to be well to-morrow, and in any case to be able to meet you on the day following. Possibly I shall find you on the East Cliff Esplanade at five o'clock, let me definitely name the day after to-morrow, when I hope you will return with me to drink tea. I am afraid I shall not be able to tell you anything about Captain Reynolds' money by then, because before the bank remits they will require proof of Captain Reynolds' death. But I have referred them to Lloyds and to other authorities, and have little doubt that before a week has passed I shall have the pleasure to hand you a check. With kind regards yours very truly, John Goodheart. He used pencil and took great care to disguise his hand, which he readily contrived as he wrote in bed, and his writing was a ragged scrawl. He sent this note to be delivered by hand. Next to talking to her it pleased him to write to her. Goodheart's prophecy had come to pass. The old magic had done its work, the spell was on him. How passionately was he loving her! Never more so than now, never even in days when his heart was younger by eight years, when it had not been chilled and sickened by unnatural and unwomanly revolt, when love was sweet and fresh with the glory of the rose on the bush, not the rose in the hand, nor the petal of memory betwixt the leaves in the shut volume of years. And it was his passion to possess her that determined him to go on wooing her as he now was, as Goodheart, a stranger, an acquaintance, a fast ripening friend of deep sympathy, a man to be trusted and honoured, to whose custody absolutely convinced that her husband Frank was dead, she might in time be coaxed and courted into committing the delicate precious charge of her virginal being. And you will suppose that to the degree of his desire for her was his fear of detection, lest the old loathing should return like the entry of a hideous fiend, to tear and rend to pieces the machinery of a mind that was to be likened to some hall of ice far north, a moonlit vision of white pillars and roof gleaming with cold stars, and a floor upon which no fairy that ever sang with the grasshoppers in the land of romance would choose to dance. He lay in a bedroom from which he could view the sea shining in a blue lake-like surface, and lying alone he thought much of his term of solitude on the island, how different his condition when he had the fever there from what it was now, how he had dragged his legs of lead and poised his head like a hot cannon-ball between his shoulders to the foam of the cataracts' stroke, how he had lain in his cheerless crack of earth, gazing with fevered eyes at the stars and wondering how long he should live, and thinking of Lucretia as he now thought of her. His mind rambled to the old sea-chest, and to the letter he had nailed to the lid, and this memory caused him to consider that he had not made a will, and if he died and nobody could prove his identity his money would be lost to Lucretia. He deliberated how he should go to work. He would not trust a local lawyer with the secret. The gentleman might be a member of the club at Ramsgate, and some provincial lawyers talk about their clients, as some provincial doctors talk about their patients, so that if he went to a lawyer in Ramsgate to make his will, his secret business might, God knows how, leak out and trickle to that one ear in the world whose reception of it might desolate his heart, and bring his fabric of self-respect down upon his head in dusty ruin. He rose early next day, being perfectly recovered from his attack, and took the train to deal. This little town is seated opposite the Downs. It is remarkable for the number of its public houses. Its beach is a shelving shore of shingle, up which the surf rushes with a noise like the escape of steam, and down which it shales in a conflict of foaming water and dark gleaming pebbles, which rattle as they are torn along. Boats called galley-punts repose on this shingle, with their noses pointed at the sea, and their sterns at tall skeleton captains to which they are connected by ropes. And when one of these boats comes ashore from a cruise, a number of aged men, who shape themselves out of you don't know what, or where, gather about the caps and the boat belongs to ship-bars, and begin to wind round and round, a slow, tuneless and melancholy circus of very old men in broken boots, patched breeches, tall hats, discoloured by age and weather into the aspect of bronze, and faces often so ancient that to explore them is like opening old coffins, or like watching a mask of almost eyeless wrinkles, vital in nothing-saver movement of jaw, which betokens that the withered curve of gum, with its one stump of ninety-three years, is still busy with the little cube of tobacco. The beach and esplanade are noticeable for a class of persons called boatmen, who wear yellow trousers and blue jerseys, from the breasts of which they will pull down a newspaper or a parcel of letters sent ashore by a skipper for the post, and these men, who are nearly always starving, and therefore ask most fraudulent and monstrous sums of money to take you off or put you ashore, devote the greater part of their lives to the study of that fine art of the British longshore, the art of lounging. No boatmen in Great Britain can loaf, lounge and lean with such superiority of lazy drunken idols sulking, dumbly cursing postures as the deal man. He is born for something to lean against, to lean upon with folded arms, to lean over, to lull at. The whole indolence of the man blends with the object he polishes with breech, elbow or hip, and he and the capstan he sprawls upon, or he and the pillar or post he leans against, are so much one that a dog and his tail are not more united. Reynolds walked from the station to the esplanade, the hour was a little after ten, early, but Reynolds desired to do his business and return to entertain Lucretia at his hotel. Ramsgate was lost to sight in the milky softness of cliff that contained it, and that faded in a glimmering white film in the blue air. The sea was brushed by a soft south-west wind, and glanced and danced in little frolicking curls, every one of which ran with a white feather in its head, and the broad liquid table, up bearing its burden of curtsying ships in the dams, was a wide and lovely tremble of sparkles, like the shivering of the tiny suns in summer trees, when the green leaves are fretted by the kisses of the breeze. Just there, where that brig with grey hull raking masts, the flag of Brazil at her triselgaf, her chocolate-coloured girl of figurehead sinking in endless bowels to the gaunt steamer ahead, sitting hollow upon the water, with the bewildered look of a balloon that comes down from the clouds suddenly to sea, and strains and floats for a little while, aimless and imbecile. Just there lay the flying spur in October 1890, and this was June 1898. Lucretia was on board loathing him. Lucretia was now yonder, where the low land lifted into a rampart of chalk. He was good heart, and she did not loathe him. What would be the mood that fired her, that should sweep her into his arms, or drag her back in renewed access of the passion of chastity when she discovered that he was her husband? Which must certainly happen before they came together, and therefore would happen, for he meant to possess her. A boatman who was leaning over the back of a seat called out, put your bar on his ship out there, sir? No, do you belong to deal? Why, I should rather think I do, answered the man, grinning over the folded arms he leaned upon. Who's a good lawyer in this town? A good lawyer? Echoed the fellow with a large and silly stare at another man who had indolently strolled up, sending half a pint. If you want a good lawyer, you'll find him in one of them ships' foxels, with a nod at the ships in the downs. They knows what's what, and mourns what's what if they're foreigners. You'll get no advice worth listening to at deal, unless it's a magistrate, so lock your up for a month if it's the bobby's wish, and aim in with your wife, and both want in your out of it. He scowled at his mate. The question appeared to have touched a sore in the man's mind. Indeed, his feelings were so strong that he even stood upright to deliver his views. Reynolds walked into the High Street, obtained the address of a solicitor from a stationer who produced a directory, and called at once at the office. He was kept waiting, and sat listening to a bald-headed clerk on a three-legged stool, scratching time with his pen to the ticking of a large, leering clock over his head. A man entered. He was dressed in blue cloth and kept his cap on. His face was like a piece of underdone beef, blue and red, cobwebbed with scarlet filaments, and his eyes glowed damply like the reflection of the sun in the Thames on a foggy day. Mr. Grundy in, he asked. Engaged, sir, answered the clerk. How longly, be? A few minutes this gentleman's waiting. Good morning! said the man, bestowing a purple nod on Reynolds and sitting down. Reynolds slightly started. He knew the man, as one Captain Carson had met him at several ports, and had dined with him at Singapore. His nod alarmed him. Was he recognized? His mind speedily cleared. Captain Carson did not know him. Are you sure on business, sir? said Captain Carson, pulling out a case of cigarettes and extending it to Reynolds, who declined. Then to the clerk, who with obvious regret also declined. All my business is done, are sure, answered Reynolds. Oh, I thought you belonged to my cloth. You're lucky not to be master of a ship. And he began a story about his crew, how they all came aboard drunk, how the ship was brought to Gravesend by lumpers and runners, where she was left to swing till her men were sober enough to stand upright. How, after letting go the anchor in the downs, they all lay aft, and said they didn't mean to proceed in the ship, as she leaked which was a lie. As most of her principal masks were sprung, which was another lie, as she was down by the head and all her running gear rotten, and not a rattling strong enough for a rat to sling by. All lies. They were ashore, and so was he. All the time this Captain talked, Reynolds marveled at the change that had been wrought in his own personal appearance, so that this man should not have the least idea who he was, which somehow impressed him even more than his wife's failure to detect him. He was liberated from the obligation of following a violent attack on the character of the merchant sailor by somebody stepping out of the inner office, and the solicitor in the doorway asking him to walk in. His business was simple and was to be easily disposed of. He wished to leave all that he owned to his wife, in language unclouded by legal verbiage, so that his intention could not be misunderstood. He named the manager of the bank he did business with in London, and a gentleman who resided in Sydney, New South Wales, as executors. When can you let me have this will? The day after tomorrow. Tomorrow is county court, and I have a number of cases to attend to. A good deal of quarrelling goes on here, I believe. The boatmen love the law, and numbers of petty tradesmen in the district, village grocers and the like, who sell everything from a joint of beef to a birdcage, are constantly failing or stewing or being sued. Kindly address the document to Mr. John Goodheart, said Reynolds, naming the hotel and town, and paying the fee he walked out, exchanging a nod with Carson as he passed. He returned to Ramsgate with a heart as light as the June day about him, that rejoiced in the blue sky, in the song of the lark. He was acting his part well, and who or what sings more sweetly and gratefully to a man than his own conscience when it is happy and at rest. His heart was putting in some special pleading for Lucretia. His concessions were liberal. If her faith had been unfaithful, she had not been falsely true. She wore his ring, and his likeness rose and fell with the breathing of her breast and the beating of her heart. She had remained his wife, though she believed herself a widow. In this was she true to herself or to him. The solution of such a problem could signify nothing. Few know themselves. Perhaps no man, however searching in lifelong introspection, knows himself. The mood of the hour before dinner is not the mood of the hour after dinner. Lucretia before her marriage was surely not the Lucretia she was changed into by her marriage, or would she have married? At half-past five he was on the esplanade, waiting, a pale young woman of London holding a small boy by the hand came along. When she saw Reynolds she cried out, Oh, Georgie, there's the gentleman that saved your life! And with an emotion of gratitude that gave a moment's refinement of beauty to the coarseness of her prettiness, she added, I do thank you so much, sir. I couldn't have borne to lose him. What would my husband have thought? It's right and gladly to thank you if not too great a liberty, but your name and address are unknown. Reynolds smiled and called the little boy to him, and taking a crown piece from his pocket said, Georgie, you can be a sailor and feel easy. You are not born to be drowned. Which would you like best, a horse and cart, or a ship to swim in a pool in the sands? Echoed the boy in a level voice. Then go and buy her, said Reynolds. The boy's small fingers hooked themselves upon the big coin with the avariciousness of tender youth. I thank you kindly, sir, said the London mother. Thank the gentleman, Georgie. Every night you kneel down you will ask God to bless him, won't you? I'd like him to thank you, sir, by singing a little song his father learned him. But just then Lucretia turned the corner. The London mother's eyes followed Reynolds' gaze, and she saw it was time to go. I hope you are very much better, Mr. Goodheart, said Lucretia. Mulder fever is like a brother who has gone wrong. He makes you hear of him from time to time," answered Reynolds. She was dressed in white, and was in truth a very handsome, indeed beautiful, presence, princess-like, if by that term dignity, stature, carriage, and command of person be meant. Never a man passed by who did not favour her with a glance or stare, nor were her words her with a glance or stare, nor were her own sex unobservant of her. I hope I made my meaning clear in the scrawl I sent from my bed, he said. Perfectly! I thought it so very kind of you to think of me when you were ill. It gives me pleasure to serve you," he exclaimed, with cautious warmth, feeling his way. It seems strange, said she, that one who reminds me indefinitely of my husband should have found his letter, brought his gift, and continue to act towards me as though you had been friends. I showed you his likeness. I suppose you never met him. What commands did he hold? Oh! he went as captain of two or three male steamers. I think the line was the elder Dempster. There is such a firm? Certainly. And he also commanded several sailing ships. One was a celebrated clipper, and he would speak with enthusiasm of her beauty under sail or lying at anchor. She was called the Lancashalas. I know the ship," said Reynolds gravely. My husband, when he sailed on his last voyage in 1890, had been about eighteen years at sea. He must have been young when he held command. He was, but in these days of steam, voyages are so rapid that, as captain Reynolds used to say, you can pack three or four voyages into a year, and if you obtain fresh appointments, whether in the same company or others, a comparatively young sailor may claim to have seen a great deal in a short time. True. It would be strange," she exclaimed, looking thoughtfully upon the ground as they walked. If you had met him unconsciously, I mean, on a pier or in a street in a foreign port, and in ignorance that you had once looked at him or he at you, you had brought home his letter. It may be that Reynolds and I have met in the way you suggest. Englishmen are plentiful. They are repeatedly coming across one another," said he, speaking behind his beard, moustache, and pants-nay, with a face that was purely good-heart to her. They entered the hotel and were presently seated at a tea-table at an open window. He told her that he had run across to deal in the morning, and they chatted on several no-matters, till Reynolds brought the conversation back again to them both. I think you told me that captain Reynolds meant take you to see with him when he went on his last voyage. She raised her eyebrows and exclaimed, Did I? I don't remember. Had you gone, he continued, you would have been shipwrecked. It's true your life might have been preserved as his was, but if he was the only survivor, no sailor would give the value of that strawberry in your hand for your chances. For your husband's first care would be for you. It must have been the lowered boat, and since none lived but he, you would have gone with the rest. Yet my place as his wife was with him, she said, looking through the window at the sea. It was fortunate for the concealment he sought that their eyes did not meet, whilst the sudden look that almost transformed his face stayed for a few breaths only. He took up a prawn and seemed lost in contemplation of its workmanship, but after a long pause said, No doubt a wife's right and only place is at her husband's side. I have felt the truth of this since you brought me captain Reynolds' letter, she said quietly. I understand. You feel as almost see that your husband's last thoughts were with you. The subject is a sad one, Mr. Goodheart. He was very willing indeed to change the conversation, but though his heart was on fire with her words, he perfectly understood that if ever a moment for the revelation of his identity was to come, it had not come yet. Memory rising between them, shaped herself spirit-wise, forefinger on lip, hand lifted in command of silence. She spoke in intuition, exhorting him not to hasten, but to consider that his avowal of imposition as Goodheart might flood his wife with the disgust that had been excited by the grave's end stratagem which had kidnapped her to no purpose. I find this hotel expensive, at least for my purse, said he, but I am so well pleased with Ramsgate that I mean to stay on. He looked at her significantly. She did not seem to heed him, but if any thought present in him was interpreted by her, its construction produced not the slightest change in her face. I shall go into lodgings. I have no home, indeed I have had no home since my wife left me. The colonial is more cosmopolitan than other peoples who have countries. He loves the land of his birth and would die for her with as much enthusiasm and loyalty as any Britain for the old home, but he does not suffer as others do from contraction of mind in respect of his thoughts of his country. The roving spirit that made his sire's colonists is still unquenched, though in a few generations it will be extinct. The Australian can make himself a home anywhere and be happy in it. The Britain is always yearning to return. I could make myself very happy in Ramsgate. He was again addressing her with significance of look and tone. Where shall I find a comfortable lodging? I doubt if I know as much of the place as you do. Shall you seek another afternoon engagement? He asked, smiling at her. Yes, and I shall be thankful to find one. Meanwhile, as you are at liberty, it would be delightful to me to enjoy a larger share of your company than your time has permitted. If, instead of being Reynolds, he had in good soothe been good heart, it might be held that he was pressing her a little unhandsomely, for she was under a great obligation to him, and he was still in course of obliging her, and his advance would appear as though he was taking advantage of his singular relations with her. Her colourless cheeks slightly flushed, but she smiled whilst she said, I must hope not to have too much time on my hands. Are you disengaged tomorrow afternoon? Yes. Will you come for a drive and dine with me here? I will go for a drive with pleasure, but you must excuse me for declining your kind invitation to dine. Now why? he asked, with a broad, blunt candour that caused her to bring her brows a little together in the seeking, the penetrating look she fastened upon him. What time shall I be here, Mr. Goodheart? she inquired, with a release of gaze that left her face charged and troubled with thought. He named three o'clock, perceiving it was not her wish he should call for her. They lingered a while in odds and ends of talk. She then put on her gloves, and he conducted her to the entrance of the hotel, where they parted. At three next afternoon a carriage stood at the door of the hotel. Lucretia arrived with the punctuality of royalty. She got into the carriage, Reynolds followed, and they were driven away for a summer jaunt through broad stairs to the North Forland. There is no pleasanter drive in this smiling country of green lanes and spreading orchards and gleaming coil of river, and green slope of down and large moist eye of vile at sea betwixt the breaks of coast, than this that Reynolds and Lucretia were taking. She was dressed as on the previous day, and her enjoyment of the drive was soon expressed in a clearer brilliance of eye, and in that illumination of face which is not a smile though it produces the effect of one. Their talk was for a long while on very little matters. She was particular in her inquiries about Sydney. She avowed a very strong leaning towards making use of the money Mr. Goodheart had kindly sent her through Mr. Wembley-Jones by trying her fortune in Australia. If more was to come, then, if the summer mounted to even a hundred pounds, she believed she would make up her mind to go out and start a school. Reynolds smiled, but offered no further opinion. Here, said he as they drove through broadsters, lived a man who knew human nature as well as Shakespeare. You might give offence if you said that he knew human nature better. But if you find no Lear nor Hamlet nor Macbeth in the works of Dickens, neither in the works of Shakespeare do you find Mrs. Gamp nor Mr. Bumble and Mr. Squeers and Mantellini and how many more immortals. They say he wrote Bleak House in that building perched up yonder. Of course you love Dickens. I remember that my husband was always quoting from him. The more you tell me about Captain Reynolds, the higher you raise him in my esteem. I wish it had been my good fortune to have found him on the island and brought him back to you. Coachman! Sir, you can stop at the lighthouse. We'll get out and take a turn. This fallen cliff is not tall, but it is bold, and its face of rugged chalks stares upon the most wonderful maritime highway in the world. Ships pass comparatively close in, and the picture is vivid with dimension, grand and romantic in colour and shape, and profoundly interesting one should imagine to even a thin thinker by virtue of its infinite variety and the ideas with which contemplation of it swells and elevates the mind. As they alighted from the carriage, a bright sketch was in full view large upon the water. It was a steel sailing ship, close hauled, laughing up for the downs under all plain sail, three pyramids of ascending clouds of snowy whiteness, with many silent, delicately shadowed wings between. The foam was rolling forwards from her sharp metal forefoot, but a steady stream of it ran along her sides to united her rudder in a wake of prisms and bells of froth and leapings and lights which struck into the blue air, closing down with the sudden transcendent splendour of the diamond. She was not so far off, but that you saw a figure or two moving upon her quarter-deck. Reynolds stood still and looked at her. Lucretia was by his side. Within a short distance rose the sturdy, storm-defiant figure of the lighthouse with its building and its lantern that at nightfall should change into a roaring star, reverberating in flashes the light of a sun. What a very pretty sight! exclaimed Lucretia. I always think a sailing ship makes a daintier picture than a steamer. It may be because sails give a blandness and fullness and dignity which a chimney-stack can never supply. She should remind you of a ship your husband commanded, said Reynolds, bringing his thoughts away from a sudden vision of a ship on fire in the thick of a living gale and a little island close aboard. The flying spur. No, that clipper you spoke of, ah, the Lancashalass. I wonder what will be the fate of Yondercraft. Every ship has her destiny, as man has. If I were a ship I should say let me perish by fire or foundering or in any fashion that touches not the honour of the ship, but do not make me a coal-hulk. Were you ever seen a sailing ship? I accompanied Captain Reynolds to Falmouth in the flying spur. How did you enjoy the trip? I was very sick and—she turned her eyes a little round about her and added, I could not enjoy myself for I was angry at being taken and you cannot enjoy yourself when you are in a bad temper. Why should you have gone if you didn't like the idea of the trip? But, of course, Mrs. Reynolds, you went to gratify your husband. Had you persevered your sickness would have passed, and with it, naturally, your bad humour. It would tease the reader to be informed of every turn of eye, every tone of speech, every shade of gravity, which was indeed, in his case, irony and satire. There were several manners he put on when he conversed with her. Sometimes he would observe her silently and intently regarding him, but his performance was so adroit he was so deceptive in his language about his wife having left him, by which he understood him to mean Mrs. Goodheart's death. To his references to himself as if he were an Australian and the like, that, believing her husband dead in his island, and perceiving nothing but certain traits or opinions in this, Mr. Goodheart, that in any way brought up her, Frank Reynolds of St. Stephen's Church before her, she lay under as complete a deception during this drive as she had in all their previous meetings and conversations. They were now addressing each other with that easiness, it need not be called familiarity or freedom, which results from association. They roamed about for a short while, inspecting the interior of the lighthouse, chatting with the keeper, who told them of beautiful and strange birds, swept by the storm of the night against the radiant glass, and found dead, and of the dullness of his life when he was lightsmen aboard the gull, and afterwards the East Goodwin, and then the south sand-head lightships. How in his day the old Triton did the relieving work, a vessel that rolled heavily in still waters at her birth at the West Pier, that could not steam above four-and-a-half knots, that could not do six with a gale of wind a stern of her, so that in heavy weather the lightsmen who kept watch in the lonely hulks round about the sands, and from the North Fallen to Dungeon S, were sometimes obliged to wait a fortnight in three weeks for the relief. Hard upon men, sir, who in winter consider a month's old newspaper fresh, and have nothing to do but tend the lights and watch for shipsflares to send up rockets for the lifeboat. Lucretia declined to ascend to the summit of the lighthouse she said she was afraid, so they returned to the carriage and drove away towards Ramsgate. Won't you reconsider your decision as to dining with me, Mrs. Reynolds? said he. I am sure you'll excuse me. Will you drink tea at broadstairs? It is disagreeable to me to think that you should bear the fatigue of this long drive and the heat without refreshment. I shall enjoy a cup of tea very much indeed, but there is no fatigue, the drive is charming, and the heat with this breeze is delightful. Reynolds told the coachman to stop at the best hotel in broadstairs. There they stayed for half an hour, drinking tea and eating brown bread and shrimps. Though their talk was of anything, she could not fail to notice that Mr. Goodheart's eyes were very constant in their observation of her. She was perfectly sensible that she was in the presence of a man who admired her and was even in love with her, and her manner grew very thinly glazed as they sat at the tea-table in the bay window. This cold surface, though transparent enough to suffer the visual expression of any play of feeling, tranquilized her exterior to a calmness that was not remote from austerity. He recollected that much such an expression of face was hers when they had stood side by side at the altar and walked side by side back to Mrs. Lane's modest little house. There was a tone of constraint in her voice. If she attended to his speech with a look, it was soon averted. Indeed, in her eyes he saw that her spirit had hoisted its glittering storm-signals, and it was with the transport of her husband about to attempt an experiment whose success would be a death-blow to his vanity and his love that he saw that any claims which Mr. Goodheart might have upon her gratitude would not entitle him even to a peep into that sanctuary of her heart in which the flame of the one love of her life, though burning dimly, was to be found, and perhaps he could but hope it to be fanned and fed into the sweet, clear light it was when she consented to be his wife. They left the hotel and again entered the carriage. The way before them was a short drive. Scarcely were they in the carriage and in motion than planting his eyes upon her through his past knee, he exclaimed, It has given me a great, singular pleasure to make your acquaintance. She bowed and smiled, but her smile was no encouragement to him to proceed. I am alone in the world," he continued. I have often regretted that since it was the will of God Mrs. Goodheart should die. Her little one had not been preserved to yield the sunshine and warmth of a child's love to its parent. You too are alone, Mrs. Reynolds. I do not know what you would wish to say to me, Mr. Goodheart. She answered with a visible hardening of her whole demeanour and an undissembled shrinking of her fine figure into the corner of the seat she occupied. I have never felt less lonely since the term of my loneliness began. Said Reynolds, with a melancholy and solemnity of tone and look that was markedly effective in its impression on her, as he easily saw in the shining inquisitorial stare of her enlarged eyes. Then, during the time I have spent in Ramsgate and in your society, I am a man of independent means. Nothing could render me so happy as to feel that I was the instrument of providing you with a settlement that should make you independent of a vocation you abhor, that should indeed keep you easy and comfortable in your circumstances for the rest of your life. It is true I am not a young man. I have no special favours of face or person to grace my suit or enrich it by that silent eloquence which women much, indeed chiefly admire in men. I have led a hard life. The sea is an exacting calling. It has left me rugged, but it has left me an honourable man with a heart capable of dedicating itself in lifelong affection to such a woman as you, Mrs. Reynolds. Will you be my wife? She looked steadily away from him for some moments. Her face was as rigid and in truth as colourless as marble. I am sorry, Mr. Goodheart, she said, turning slowly in her stately way upon him, that you should have asked me that question. You have been so kind to me that the pain you cause me by obliging me to absolutely refuse you must be keener than any I can inflict. No, no. I should be grieved indeed to lose your friendship, but our relations could never go beyond that. Am I to think that you still believe your husband to be alive? He asked, always preserving his gravity and his melancholy. I was not the wife I should have been to my husband. I remember all, and before God I vow that whilst life remains I shall be his wife and true to him. She spoke with a vehemence that was dangerous in one so passionless, so collected, so resolved, of a deportment and exterior so admirably under control. Why did he not then and there confess himself? His making love to her as Goodheart had touched the mute chords of her memory of Reynolds and woke them into music and feeling. The hand seemed upon the second, the mood seemed to exactly fit the wish. The ripened fruit, to fall, seemed to need no more than the breath that is between lips meeting in a kiss. Thoughts flew through his brains with the velocity of the clouds, of the mind driven by the gales of the passions. He reasoned, if I say I am Frank Reynolds, she, after the first convulsion and riot of feeling, might find herself possessed again by the spirit that banished me and widowed her and chagranned mortification might accompany the discovery that for the second time I had duped her. Memory exhorted him to hold his peace in the name of his love, his honour and his dignity. After a silence that ran into many moments he said, without looking at her, you are infinitely raised in my admiration. You do well to be loyal to a man who was manifestly loyal to you, even in his lonely dying hours. You make me feel ignoble as an intruder. No, no, Mr. Goodheart! She cried in a sobbing voice, I thank you for the gracious way in which you have taken me. We shall remain friends. Oh, I hope so! She exclaimed cordially, with emotion colouring her smile with a tender sweetness her lips did not always wear in approval or mirth. The hotel was in sight. She asked that the carriage might be stopped. I have thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon. She said, as they stood together at the side of the carriage, but the pleasantest part has been the last part because now you allow me to think of you as a friend and, above all, we understand each other. They shook hands and she walked towards her lodging whilst Reynolds re-entered the carriage to be driven to the hotel. End of Chapter 15 Chapter 16 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 16 Husband and Wife The deal solicitor was punctual in sending Captain Reynolds his will. It was witnessed by the manager of the hotel and a bookkeeper to both of whom, of course, Reynolds remained John Goodheart, Esquire because, as a rule, test-taters do not read aloud the contents of their wills to the people who would test them. The possession of this will made Reynolds very happy. Happened what might to him Lucretia would be provided for and though they should never come together as husband and wife, he was still, though masquerading as Mr. Goodheart, the frank Reynolds of a choice and denial, who would watch over her and provide for her by such expedience as love, such honorable and such noble love as his, is very cunning in. Two days after he had taken the drive with Lucretia, he went to London and called at his bank, where he had a short interview with the manager who wrote and signed a check upon the bank that was countersigned by the accountant. He returned from London by a late train and next morning took lodgings in the Augusta Road so that by looking out of the window he could see the house in which Lucretia lived. After lunch he strolled out with the hope of meeting her. He returned to his rooms and wrote this note, I was in London yesterday and had a good news for you. As you seem to have an aversion to invitations to dinner, would you drink tea with me this evening at 5.30? Your sincerely, John Goodheart. As before when he scrolled the letter to her in his bed, he wrote with studious ambition of concealment and handwriting and was as successful in this art as in nature. He was a triumph in his representation of Goodheart. Within half an hour note was left at his lodgings. Mrs. Reynolds would do herself the pleasure to drink tea with Mr. Goodheart. She came with the punctuality that was one of the graces of her characteristics. Is it necessary to describe her dress? Close fitting navy blue surge and a sailor hat. The weather was sultry and she was pale and carried a fan. A lovely bouquet of flowers stood upon the table and refreshed the atmosphere with the incense of half a score of different growths of beauty. The window was still open, but the road was a quiet one and the lace curtains effectually screened the occupants of the room from the inspection of the profane and vulgar passerby who with a packet of shrimps in his pocket which he picks at and eats as he rolls along. His hard hat on the back of his head and his legs traveling somewhat tipsily in a pair of check trousers of a pattern so enormous that a giant of 15 feet high could not reduce the eyesore to the proportion. Old Ramgate to be after Margate, the only place in all of England to do himself proud in with what he calls a howling. They had not met since the day of the carriage drive but neither exhibited embarrassment. She was too self-possessed to be disturbed by a feeling that like naivety may be defined in the Frenchman's expression as une nuance de base, presque de base de elevation whilst he found all the fortitude he needed in the circumstance of his being her husband. You have not gone very far, said she, sitting and fanning herself and looking at the flowers on the table. No, I can easily see where you live. What glorious flowers. I was sure you would think them worth the trouble of carrying home. Thanks so much, they will grace my poor room. It needs it. No one will say that whilst you are its occupant. He rang the bell for tea. Have you found any afternoon pupils? Not yet. I have put an advertisement this week in a Ramsgate paper. I have some news for you but I'll wait till the servant has come and gone. She looked about the room and said, won't you find a very dull hair after life in a hotel? I dislike life in a hotel. As Dickens the writer, your husband admired so greatly. Truly says, in a hotel nobody is glad to see you nor cares how long you stop or where you go. You become a number. You lose individuality and are changed into a particle in a stream of figures in a ledger. You can't enjoy seclusion unless you invoke the genius of insolvency and establish yourself in a set of private apartments from a price which yield a comfortable income apiece to four or five vickers and beyond the most strenuously exerted earning power of even a popular country medical practitioner to a price which, if an American girl had it in the shape of a weekly revenue, would buy her a British lord or an Italian prince. Now in lodgings you can dine off a chop, smoke a pipe, drink stout from the public house, humor the landlady's cat and live through the life of the day without that critical inspection from which all human beings suffer in the public rooms of hotels and boarding houses. And then Mrs. Reynolds' lodgings may be cheap. It was manifest to him, even whilst he spoke, that the attention with which she accompanied the movements of his lips was due not to the amenable desire to be amused but to something lying very much deeper. When he ceased, she exclaimed, if my husband had been pleading on behalf of lodgings against hotels, he would have put his views just as you have in the same spirit. I might declare in the very same words. Very lightly said Reynolds, quietly, looking at the tea tray, which the servant was then placing on the table. But his answer would not do. She was troubled. She directed at him a scrutiny that made her frown. Her toe tapped the carpet and she looked down. Will you give me a cup of tea? She drew to the table and filled two cups in silence. But three or four times whilst she did this she dotted her Britain gaze at him. His breathing grew a trifle labored. The motions of his heart a little swifter. He believed that her mind was at the very touch-hole of detection and he waited for the flash and what was to follow. What was to follow the flash. But the suspicion that discolored and even in its way distorted, her beauty soon dissolved. But the suspicion that discolored and even in its way distorted, her beauty soon dissolved under the warm breath of conviction. Indeed, she never had supposed. She never could suppose the man who confronted her to be her husband. He was an Australian. His wife lay buried in Sydney. He had come to hear of Captain Reynolds by one of the hundred accidents of the sea. He had not her husband's face, nor his voice, nor his enunciation. And if Frank had been alive the eight years, why did he return now? Why not earlier? She drew a breath that had the depth of a suspicion and said, It is very strange. Coincidences are strange, he answered, breathing easily again. I never allow them to weigh. They resemble dreams. We remember the two or three that came to pass and forget the thousands that vanished unverified. He seems to acquiesce, in this opinion, by an inclination of her head. He looked at her and thought to himself, it is wonderful that loving her as I find I do, as deeply as I loved her when I married her. I should have waited eight years to return and seek her, but Goodheart was right. I did not know myself. He pulled out a pocketbook. I was in London yesterday, he said. And what about your business? The bank is satisfied with my representations and the information I obtained from Lloyds and other sources as to Captain Reynolds and I have much pleasure in handing to you this check. The balance of the money a husband left at the bank before he sailed. He extended an envelope with a large official red wax seal that was addressed to Mrs. Reynolds, the care of John Goodheart, Esquire. She broke open the envelope and withdrew the check that was folded in a sheet of paper, which was lithographed with the manager's compliments. The check was for 218 pounds. She colored, her eyes brightened, gratitude sweetened her beauty with the tender smiling light with which that gentle and lovely quality cast upon the face. How am I to thank you, Mr. Goodheart? I should never have heard of this or thought of it but for you. He used his hand in a causal gesture of remonstrance. 218 pounds, she explained, why this and the money you brought to me from the islands are a fortune. I feel rich, how good of you. She paused and looking at the check said with a sudden sorrow and a tone, a sudden sorrow and look, poor Frank. He fastened his gaze upon the ground for he knew just then that there was a dangerous moisture in his eyes and not put a life of him durst he have spoken. Her poor Frank had struck to his heart and for a moment or two the man wept inwardly. To whom shall I send a receipt for this check, she inquired after a welcome interval of thought. Acknowledge it to me and I will forward your letter to the bank, he answered, managing his voice by speaking low. She asked no more questions. It did not occur to her how it happened that the bank should pay over her husband's money to a stranger without her authority. How Mr. Goodheart had succeeded in satisfying the law and sequentially the bank that Captain Francis Reddles was dead. Mr. Goodheart had behaved most nobly and honorably and the money was a godsend. Will you give me another cup of tea, Mrs. Reddles? She put the check in her pocket. He took the cup from her, a smile was gracious as she handed it to him. The distressed poet scratching verses under a map of the gold mines of El Dorado done by his wife and the milkman may and as a matter of fact does call money dross, filthy lucre in the light. But there seems to exist in this dross an inherent property of such electrical vitality that when applied it will force laughter from anguish loom the sickliest countenance informed with a passion of dance the gout itself and liberate the virtues from the webs into which the spider poverty coaxes them to roll them up. By the way said Reddles looking up from some notes he had made on a piece of paper did you ever meet a man named Featherbridge? The man I mean continued Reddles filled with your husband as chief mate of the flying spur. Yes I knew him, indeed he acted as my husband's best man at our marriage. She spoke in a wary way as though she distressed this subject. Suddenly a mood burst into impassioned life and she cried. Why do you ask if I know Mr. Featherbridge? Is he alive? Have you met him? Have you news of my husband? He had by this time holy master himself. I was in a city yesterday he said and turned into some dining rooms near the mansion house for lunch. I took a seat opposite a man who after viewing me a while pronounced my name. I immediately recollected him. He was Mr. Charles Hall member of the firm of London Ship Brokers. He had sailed with me as a passenger in a vessel I commanded. We fell into a conversation and it was natural perhaps that our talk should have large reference to the sea. He told me that in all his experience he never remembered so many ships posted as missing. I can scarcely tell you how it came about, but in speaking of missing ships he mentioned the flying spur in whose fate he was interested as his firm had negotiated the sale of her to the person who owned her when your husband obtained command. I told him that I had the pleasure of knowing the widow of Captain Reynolds. Indeed, said he, that strange Reynolds chief mate was a Mr. Featherbridge whose mother lives where I do, a pleasant old lady whom my wife and I have been acquainted with for many years. The last letter, Mrs. Featherbridge, ever received from a son, was dated at Madeira where the ship had called. Did you hear from your husband at Madeira? No, she answered. It was a long letter Mr. Hall said and it was nearly all about Captain Reynolds and you. Lucretia slightly colored but remained silent. Shall I proceed, Mrs. Reynolds? I don't want to pain you, but I believe that whatever concerned your husband after his departure would interest you and so I took down some notes. I took down some notes of Mr. Hall's conversation to help my memory. If it is your wish that I should tell you what Mr. Featherbridge wrote to his mother, I'd be glad to hear she said distantly. He returned to his notes. You were living with your mother in Bayswater when you were married. After your marriage you locked yourself up in your bedroom and refused to see, to speak to or to have anything whatever to do with Captain Reynolds. It is very wonderful that Mr. Hall should remember the contents of a letter all about a stranger so very, very accurately. A sclaimed Lucretia darkly, nervously, suspiciously. As though she thought that Mr. Goodaud had something of the devil in him. He removed his glasses to polish them. Whenever he was without spectacles or a pinched knees, the dull ball of a left eye lusterless stained and veined like those marbles boys call allies hallowed by a sort of Archeus senilis these and the rinkies where he had wounded himself. The scar, the deflected arch of an eyebrow utterly changing the character of the face were very visible and instantly took the eye. I certainly shall not go on if I annoy you, but I thought that knowing what your feelings are for your husband the latest news of him down to vanishing point for he disappears afterward as a soap bubble explodes with interest you. It does, but you can't say he disappears. You brought news of him from the island news that is later than this feather bridge letter that was posted, you say at Madeira. Oh, that island news is very negative news. Its report is merely that Captain Reynolds was on the island conceived himself dying, nailed all he was worth to the lid of a sea chest with an appeal to the honor of the stranger who found it to hand it to you. And then we must suppose that one day or night he stiffened his spine and looking up to God passed out. That's not the news I got from Mr. Hall. There is no reason to believe that my husband is dead because he was not seen on the island by the officer you sent on shore. She exclaimed with temper in her eyes and voice. Shall I go on? He asked. Oh, certainly she replied in a large sarcastic bland matter. He resumed the spectacles and seemed to consider his notes. Featherbridge told his mother that he had helped Captain Reynolds to decoy his wife to the ship. So I gathered from Hall. But his aversion was so violent, so menacing to Reynolds character among the crew that in despair he sent her ashore at four month and proceeded on his voyage alone. Hall told me that Featherbridge who appeared to have been a gentleman and a man of education described your husband's grief as a form of sorrow that affected him more than any sort of human misery he had witnessed. He foresilked his food. His cheeks fell in. He would often in pacing halt and stand rooted and gaze at the sea in an agony of mind. And once he clutched Featherbridge by the arm and looked him in the face with his swimming eyes and after such a groan through heartbreaks, whose spirit flies, whose whole moral being falls into ruin. He cried, oh my God, what have I done that she, the one, the only love of my life, my own, my beautiful, my dearest wife what have I done that she should abandon me? Lucretia shrieked and sprang to my feet. I can endure no more. I cannot indeed. You will drive me mader than I then was. No more, I beg. She brought her foot to the ground with a stamp that shook the ornaments on the metal piece and fanned herself on an extravagant motions. He pocketed his glasses and his notes and put on his pinceniz and as she was standing he stood. It is too much, he exclaimed, with mounting color and a large nostril and eye dramatized into a fine expression of wrath and beauty by her spirit's adjustment of noble, lid, lash and brow. That a matter so sacred and personal to myself as the relations between my husband and me should be talked about in a London eating house. Nothing of the sort, Mrs. Reynolds. Mr. Hall and I sat apart. He spoke of you and your husband in terms of sympathy. I'm sure you would appreciate Mr. Featherbridge. I hated that man, burst out Lucretia. He could look you in the face and say, Mr. Featherbridge, continued Reynolds, approaching her by a step or two and keeping his eyes steadily bent upon hers referred to you in his letter as one of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen and he declared himself utterly at a loss to understand why you who did undoubtedly love your husband well enough to marry him should immediately after the marriage find something in the man of your choice. This comely, honorable sailor who adored you to excite the loathing that broke his heart and widowed you. She fanned herself furiously when he ceased to speak a deep blush burned her face. The sting of the blood was insupportable. She went to the open window and turned her back upon him. But after a brief interval without moving her figure she looked sideways and said how dared that man, Featherbridge, say that. I loathed my husband. Well, Mrs. Reynolds, I trusted that the very last news of your husband that could be given would interest you. I hoped, despite my clumsy method of communicating it, we still remained friends. He saw her swaying as she stood in an instant. She was in his arms in a swoon. He carried her to the sofa, laid her upon it, removed her hat, eased her neck, fanned her. If every human love spoke in gesture and face it was to be interpreted in the richest eloquence of exalted emotion in that man as he stood over his unconscious wife ministering to her. Wild at heart to kiss her even once but not denying himself. No. Restrained by noble recognition of her rights as a woman whose heavenly offense was chastity and of her command as his wife who was a virgin. After some little time she sighed, opened her eyes, looked at him with bewilderment, shivered like one suddenly awakened from sleep and sitting upset. What has happened to me? You are all right now. The heat overcame you. It is certainly very oppressive. He stepped to a sideboard and mingled a little brandy with some soda water. She drank, seated up turning to her rich eyes to him and banking him with a smile which was lovely with his mingled colors of emotion and as the nose gay is sweet and delightful by a variety of you. Do you feel better? He asked straightjacketing the deep solicitude of his soul with the demeanor of a commonplace courtesy much. It was the heat. You will send me an acknowledgement of the money? Oh yes, this evening. Do you keep a banking account at Ramsgate? I have banked it. Then you will be able to deal with the check I gave you this afternoon. I can ever be of service to you in any business or other direction you may indicate. I do beg that you will command my services. She thanked him and rose to go, stepping to the mantle piece to adjust her hat and collar. May I see you to the door? It is but a step. Goodbye, Mr. Goodheart. Believe me sincerely, grateful for all of your kindness. Do not forget your flowers, Mrs. Reynolds. He watched her from the doorstep with anxiety until she entered her lodging house. He paced his room much harassed by thought. He could not bring himself into a resolution to confess the truth to her. Exhibitions of loyalty of love that and her as a wife wanted the consecrating element of a more in this of gratitude of contrition. These had been in sufficient abundance of furniture, basis for hope or even an incentive to action. Yet could not he persuade himself that if he pulled the mask off him, she would not shrink from the intimacy of wedded association as she had shrunk eight years before. She might elude him by silently leaving the town and he could not find will enough to determine him to take his chance and challenge a new repulse, a new insult, a new degradation to his feelings as a man and his rights as a husband. He smiled when he opened her acknowledgement of the check and kissed the signature. They met only once in the six days it followed. She had found work for an hour and a half in the afternoon but he was careful not to lose his hold of her. Almost every day he reminded her of his existence by a gift, a box of peaches, a basket of strawberries, a bouquet of flowers. When he met her on the days preceding the last, which was to dawn fraught with the issue of a lifetime to this couple, she thanked him for his constant kindness. Indeed, she felt overwhelmed. His persistent goodness embarrassed her. She really had no claim upon him. A man was gracious yet there was a constraint in it that was perceptible. It was indeed as though she had said to him, I do not know if it is your intention to take advantage of my situation and the obligation you have placed me under to push kindness into persecution. But you have done so much that more must cease to be agreeable. Her meaning was as clearly intimated by her behavior and speech as though she had pronounced it in the above words. There was a little coolness in the way she said good night to him. He exactly understood and took delight in what was poising in her mind. And he also judged and rightly judged that she was not drawn closer to Mr. Goodhard by his knowledge of a treatment of her husband. Came the sixth day following the afternoon of which Lucretia had drunk tea with Mr. Goodhard and received a check for 218 pounds. She had risen somewhat late. A slight headache had detained her in bed. She did not feel well enough to walk through the glaring heat on a July morning. It was about 10 o'clock when she left her room to tea. Three young girls whose parents lived at the westernmost extremity of the west cliff. She sat at breakfast in a shabby parlor. Mr. Goodhard's yesterday's gift of flowers glowed on the little dinghy cheffoneer in which she kept her tea and sugar. A man was bawling fresh souls in the street and his eye through the open window was as distracting as though he was in the room. The guilt of the cheap mandelblass was carefully estranged by red muslim from the blow of the housefly. Lucretia's appetite was not invited by the plain boiled egg which she neglected for a piece of toast and butter and a cup of tea. The postman knocked. The landlady, very weedy in widow's weeds, entered with a letter. It was addressed to her and the first address had been to Chepstow Place. This had been erased and the address of the office in which Dr. Lane had purchased an annuity substituted. This had been erased and replaced by the name and address of Wembley Jones which in their had suffered eviction and yielded to 28 Bellevue Road Ramsgate. The envelope bore the Valparaiso postmark and the Chilean stamp. A sudden sensation of tightness that made difficult the systole and diastole of the post came upon Lucretia's heart. She's very well remembered that the South Pacific port to which the flying spur had sailed was not far distance from Valparaiso and this though as a matter of fact it was perfectly irrelevant as a stimulus to thought quickened in her hysterical and that she seemed to feel it in a frightening imagination that this letter was from a husband. Was the address in his handwriting but in eight years the handwriting of some of many will change more or less. She opened the envelope it enclosed the letter and an envelope containing a letter the envelope addressed in pencil to the honorable stranger. This envelope was pierced as though a nail had been pierced through it a dark eyes took on a light and largeness of wonder with presence of alarm the shadow in expression of the dread of calamity the look of fear that is in the gaze of one to whom the shape had come to depart no more the letter ran thus ship wildfire Valparaiso April 4 1898 dear madam I am the third maid of this ship which sailed from Liverpool for this port in December last year we found ourselves be calmed off the island of Santa Cristo three weeks ago and the captain sent me a shorter look for turtle and fruit I found neither but in overhauling the island I came across a cave in which was an old sea chest with the letter I enclose nailed to its lid I pulled out the nail and read the letter but found that the bonds had been dug up for a shovel lay close alongside the hole in which they had been buried it was the hole right enough for it was marked as Captain Reynolds describes I guess he was rescued and took away the bonds himself for I hunted right and left for anything like human remains and if he had died upon the island he was bound in due course to become a skeleton and there is no skeleton or anything answering to a man's bones in that island in a hollow not far from the cave is Mr. John Gerhard's grave with a cross raised by your husband as the inscription cut upon it proves I thought it my duty to forward the enclosed as you will naturally wish to hear about your husband and trusting this letter may safely come in your hands I am yours truly Samuel Murdoch with no more prophetic insight with no more apprehension by intuition of the truth whose blaze of light was suddenly to flood her then had the letter she had held been a tradesman bill she took the enclosure from the envelope curiously labeled to the honorable stranger the paper was very old over a hundred years old yellow stained of course texture a most singular piece of paper which with its scroll of pencil might and could the dead right be just such a letter as one might expect to receive from a dead man you remember what Reynolds wrote how conceiving that he must be left to perish on the island and his love forever holding his wife in view he with good odds gold pencil and an old roll of paper taken from the chest in the cave frame the appeal to the honorable stranger which Lucretia was now holding and was now reading though it was but a scroll she knew the handwriting and indeed it was contained in an envelope that she herself had addressed to him but from which the ink had been washed by immersion when he was in the life belt she read her face blanched into marble whiteness she read the blood stormed in a red hot torrent to the roots of her hair she read and looked upwards and thought he is my husband had not I guessed it had not I suspected it in 20 shapes of look and speech and smile again she read and when she came to this part she sobbed as if her heart must break my wife Lucretia when I left England was living with her mother Mrs. Lane in Chepstow Place in 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 reminding her if she has removed and enacting as my emissary will receive 1500 pounds which he will more greatly enjoy is money honorably and virtuously gained than if he kept the whole son thereby robbing the widow and blessed in the only hope which keeps warm and alive the heart that dictates these words again I greet and bless you for the noble services you will be doing me Francis Reynolds the truth was very clear to her now Mr. Goodheart was her husband was her husband who I brought her the 150 pounds not from the island but as a gift from his love and loyalty but oh why had he waited all these years why had he not come sooner it was her husband who had caused the bank to send a check for 218 pounds he had dwelt near her and rooted over her and courted her as Goodheart and her heart smiled in remembrance of a triumph and death why had he not come sooner why had he not revealed himself her instincts as a woman pierced to the very sanctuary where the truth was enshrined and his motives were as intelligible to her as though he had explained them she stood rooted in thought with her eyes on the papers in her hands she sat down at the table and wrote my frank you are revealed to me by the enclose come to me come quickly and forgive me Lucretia she put this note the letter she had received into an envelope which she addressed to John Goodheart Esquire and rang the bell the landlady's daughter appeared Miss Simkins will you please run with this at once to Mr. Goodheart's lodgings the girl of 14 took the letter and vanished and Lucretia from her window saw her rapidly walk to the house in Augusta Road handed the letter and leisurely returned for there were dishes to wash and beds to make and the little Miss Simkins was in no hurry Reynolds was reading a London daily paper when the servant gave him Lucretia's letter he read it and sprang to his feet pausing for a moment in a swift distraction or delirium of reverie upon his letter which he had written in the island for into it swept with the velocity of sunshine the whole of that heavy term of ocean solitude and for an instant the full picture was before him with Goodheart's grave and the cave and the shovel and the cook put just as at midnight the broad circle of the sea or the hills and the plains of a face of country are flashed into brilliance by a dot of lightning he put on his cap and in a minute or two had measured the distance that divided his own from Lucretia's lodgings he knocked was admitted passed into the parlor the door of which he closed and stood cap at hand looking at his wife manifestly since sending to him she had been struggling to school herself for this meeting you saw that in her posture and demeanor she stood at the table which remained covered with the breakfast things but the fragile foundations and props of a woman's resolution must sink under the weight of a woman's passion and emotion she said oh Frank I know you now I see you in your changed face and but then the constricted cords in her throat refused to deliver the message of her mind all on a sudden she sank down on her knees by the table and hiding her face in her arm wept and wept he rushed to a side fell upon his knees and put his arm about her he pressed his cheek to hers and murmured in dearments calling her his only love is dear wife his noble Lucretia but it seemed that she would not have any of this just yet for rising in a blind way she got round to the other side of the table with such a deadly chill of fear of her reception that for a space he remained and looked like a figure in stone not yet Frank, not yet she exclaimed extending her hands towards him but in the posture of repulsion Mr. Featheridge told a lie when he wrote that I loathed you loathed oh no I loved you I loathed myself but something worked in me with a power that was stronger than the love of loathing and I could not I could not you violated that mad spirit in me that would have wasted itself had you given me time had you gone your voyage when you brought me by a false hit to your ship but I afterwards knew that even when I silently left you at formant I was loving you as I had loved you when I accepted you and I also knew that a power had worked in me which had made me false but oh Frank more faithless to myself than to you he moved as though to go to her but her outstretched arms held him off but what was your love she continued you went away and have never written never made a sign never came home to see if I were alive and true to you eight years and I have thought you did otherwise I should have known you changed as you are you are the Frank I loved and married I should have known you you would have found me alone when had you returned and sought me and claimed me you would have found me your law wife loving you deploring you accusing myself of a wicked this whose memory works in me in torment and again and again in thinking of you and recalling my conduct at our marriage I could have destroyed myself her arms slowly fell to a side her head sank Lucretia he said in a low voice thrilled with his love and the thoughts her words had excited I do not dare seek you because I dreaded your reception I am a man and you have the feelings of a man and I feared you you might have spurned me again you might even yet spurned me no she cried rant him and he folded her in his arms and pressed his lips upon hers and thus they stood husband and wife end of chapter 16 recording by Gary Oman West Palm Beach, Florida