The weeks went by. Day after day I eagerly expected to receive a letter from Tom, making sure that he would grasp every chance to send me his love and blessing and all the news about himself from those high seas on which he was still afloat. But no letter reached me, ‘simply because,’ Mr. Johnstone explained, ‘your Tom has not been fortunate enough to fall in with a homeward-bound ship. You may often sail for many days upon the sea, so I’ve heard your father say, without sighting a vessel. When you hear from Tom it will be from Rio.’
But how I missed him! We had been incessantly together for nearly four months. The weeks might roll by, but there was no magic in the time they contained to weaken my sense of loss. I lived very quietly, was much in my own home, where I sought to pass the hours by reading and drawing. I took a kind of dislike to company, and refused a number of invitations to quadrille and card parties and the like. It was my delight to shape my conduct and habits by the fancy of such wishes as I knew my sweetheart would express were he with me. My memory of him, my love for him, lay in a spirit of control upon my heart. All impulse, all desire was governed by the many gentle, noble counsels he had wrapped up in our long, sweet, quiet talks together, when we rambled in the outskirts or took oars upon the river. Never was man more truly loved than was Tom. My aunt particularly noticed the change in me, and said that Tom’s courtship had done me a very great deal of good.
‘You no longer roll your eyes,’ said she, ‘when you argue, and redden and strut and heave up your breast when I venture to object to your views. You have become thoroughly genteel, my dear, in your tastes and habits. Your captain will have a treasure in you. And it is very well that you did not marry him before he sailed, for I am certain that his influence as a husband would not have been so considerable as it has proved as a lover. Both he and you are now having plenty of leisure for thought, and when you come together at the altar you will know exactly what you are doing.’
In the month of November my little stepsister died of peritonitis. I offered to nurse her when it reached my ears that she was ill in bed. Mr. Stanford thanked me; and whilst I nursed her I learned to love the poor little delicate creature, and my heart reproached me for the unconquerable coldness I had ever felt towards her when I stooped and kissed her white face in death and beheld a faint copy of my mother there. I cannot tell to what degree Mr. Stanford was affected by his loss; his colourless countenance betrayed but little of what might pass in his mind. Had I found his grief very great, then the loneliness of his state would have pleaded, and I might have forced myself into some show of civility. But there was nothing in his behaviour after his child’s death to appeal, and we speedily passed again into our old cold relations of separate existence and fixed dislike of him on my side as a fellow who had impudently thrust himself into my father’s place.
The nursing of the poor child, however, together with my grief at her death and my secret fretting over not hearing from Tom, made me look ill if I did not feel so. My aunt was concerned and insisted upon my seeing her medical adviser, who recommended her, spite of its being winter, to take me to the seaside. It was the month of February—hard, cold weather. My aunt knew and liked Ramsgate, and proposed that town. Thither we went and took lodgings in Wellington Crescent, a pleasant row of buildings immediately overlooking the English Channel.
After we had been in Ramsgate a few days I felt so poorly that I was obliged to keep my bed. My aunt called in a doctor, who said that I was ‘out.’ He sent me physic, which I did not take, and told me to keep my bed till I felt equal to rising. My bed was so situated that, when my blind was up, I saw the ocean. If the day was clear, I could faintly spy afar upon the horizon the delicate golden thread of the Goodwin Sands. I’d watch the ships slowly floating past this side of the thin line like little clouds of powder-smoke gliding ball-shaped from the mouths of cannon, and listen to the faint thunder of the surf combing the beach under the chalk cliffs, and find a meaning for the voice of the wind as it shrilled with a hissing as of steam past the casement, or sang in the interstices or muttered in the chimney. The sight of the sea brought Tom very close to me, closer than ever he could lie upon my heart at home, amid streets and the rattle of coaches and carts.
One morning, whilst I was confined to my bed, my aunt did not come to my room as was her custom after breakfast. I inquired of the servant how she was, and was told that she was pretty well, but that she had passed an uneasy night. I asked if there were any letters, for I was always expecting to hear from Tom under cover from my maid, whom I had left at home; the girl replied that Mrs. Johnstone had received one letter, and that there was none for me.
It was not until after twelve that my aunt came to see me. She looked ill, and there was a peculiar expression of distress in her face. She came to the foot of my bed and gazed at me earnestly, and asked me how I felt. I said that I felt better, and hoped to find strength to rise for a few hours towards evening.
‘You are not looking well, aunt.’
‘I am not feeling well, Marian.’
‘I hope you have not received bad news from home?’
‘I have had a broken night,’ said she, turning away and going to the window, and speaking with her back upon me.
‘Have you news of Will?’
‘No! No!’ she cried quickly, still with her back turned. ‘There is no news of Will. I believe you are better, my dear.’
And then she asked me what I could fancy for dinner, and so changed the subject with a readiness which quieted the misgiving her looks had excited.
She came and went during the day, as she had heretofore done; but she was more silent, more reserved than usual, and often her eyes rested upon me, though she shifted her gaze when I looked at her. I rose in the afternoon, but in a few hours was glad to get to bed again. Next day I felt decidedly better and stronger. It was a bright, still day, cloudless, and the sun lay warm upon the land, and the sea stretched like a polished plate of steel, full of gleams of different shades of blue. I went down to the pier in an old-fashioned, rickety chair, and my aunt walked by my side. The harbour was gay with the red canvas of smacks. A number of ships, of many rigs, lay close in against the wall, and their white canvas hung motionless in festoons, drying after the rain or dew of the night. The sweet, salt, still atmosphere was refreshing to one’s innermost life. All sounds came in a sort of music from the town, and I heard a gay ringing of church bells as for a marriage; the tones, silvered to the ear by distance, mingled pleasantly with the noise of the foaming of the strong tide racing off the rounded base of the pier.
I said to aunt: ‘When Tom and I are married, we shall often come to Ramsgate, and perhaps live here. I do not wonder that you like the place.’
In silence she stepped to the side of the pier, and seemed to look earnestly at the figure of a smack that had dropped her anchor about a mile off, her brown sails hoisted, and the image under her as perfect as a mirror could reflect it. When she returned to my side, she spoke of the beauty of the day and the difference between the air of Stepney and that of Ramsgate, and we then leisurely returned to our lodgings.
I was sure that some trouble weighed upon her mind; but as my questions seemed to make her peevish, as her worry might relate to something which she would wish to conceal from me, I forbore further inquiry. That day passed, and next day I was well enough to rise after breakfast and go into the drawing-room, where I sat upon a sofa wheeled close to the window. I was reading a novel, which my aunt had borrowed from the Marine Library, and had wholly forgotten myself in the interest of the story. My aunt had been absent for at least an hour. I believed she was out shopping. She entered without her bonnet, and coming to the sofa, sat down, took me by the hand and looked me in the face. The tears gushed into her eyes suddenly, and for a few moments she moved her lips in a vain effort to speak. She then said:
‘I dare not conceal it longer from you, Marian. But, oh, what news it is! How am I to break it to you?’
I threw the book down. The neck of my dress seemed to strangle me. Mechanically I removed my brooch and eased the tension of my neck with my finger whilst I looked at her.
‘It concerns Tom,’ she said.
‘Is he dead?’ said I, speaking with a heightened note in my voice that carried it out of recognition of my own hearing.
‘No.’
‘Marian,’ she said, beginning to cry again, ‘it is shocking bad news. It is incredible. It may all come right, but it is not the less terrible.’
I drew in several deep breaths, and said: ‘Why will you not tell me this dreadful news of Tom?’
‘He is in London.’
‘In London!’ I shrieked, springing to my feet.
She pulled me gently to the sofa, and putting her hand in her pocket, drew forth a letter.
‘Your health would not allow me to speak to you before,’ said she in a broken voice. ‘Even now I fear that I am in too great a hurry. But what am I to do? You would not thank me for any longer concealing the truth. Tom is in prison, Marian.’
I stared at her and shivered.
‘Your uncle’s letter,’ she continued, opening it with both hands which trembled excessively, ‘will better explain what has happened than I can. Will you read it?’
I took it. The handwriting reeled. I returned the letter to her and said:
‘Read it to me, aunt.’
She did so. It was to this effect. After all these years I am unable to give it you word for word:
‘I have a terrible piece of news to convey to poor Marian through you. Captain Butler is arrived in London, having been sent home by the British Consul at Rio in H.M.S. Crusader. He is charged by the mate and carpenter of the Arab Chief with attempting to scuttle her. These two men, together with two sailors belonging to the crew of the Arab Chiefs are landed with him from the Crusader. He instantly sent for me, but I wish there were not so many witnesses against him. That he is absolutely innocent, and that he is the victim of an atrocious conspiracy, I have not the shadow of a doubt. He will be charged at Bow Street on Monday, and will be advised to reserve his defence. He will be committed, of course, to take his trial at the Old Bailey, and we must hope to come off with flying colours. But I say again I could wish there were fewer witnesses. Four to one are fearful odds.’
My aunt had read thus far when a flash of lightning seemed to pass over my eyes, and I remembered no more.
I recovered from a fit rather than a swoon. I had been for above an hour unconscious, and found myself on my bed, with the doctor on one hand of me and my aunt on the other. The doctor went away soon after I had regained my mind. Memory was slow in coming. It rushed in upon me on a sudden with its burden of horror.
‘What are you going to do, Marian?’
‘I am going to London.’
‘Lie still, my dear child. You cannot go to London to-day. I’ll book by the coach to-morrow morning. I’ll write to your uncle and send the letter to Canterbury to catch the Dover mail-coach. He will be ready to receive us and give us all the news.’
And, indeed, I should have found myself too weak in body to carry out my resolution to go at once to London. The railway to Ramsgate was not then made. I do not know that it was even in contemplation. A coach left early for London from Ramsgate every morning; it carried the mails, I think, and travelled by way of Canterbury. When my aunt found me somewhat composed, she went to the office to secure places by the coach on the morrow. She left me her husband’s letter, and I read it again and again, and every time I read it I rolled my eyes around the room, seeking to realise that I was awake.
There was something shocking and frightful to me in my uncle speaking of the Old Bailey; I associated it with Newgate Prison. Living in the City as I did, well did I know the grim, dark, massive walls of that horrid jail. Would Tom be locked up in that prison which I could not think of without a sickening fancy of the executions there—of the remorseless human beasts, men and women white with gin, gaping with the lust of blood, gathered together to witness the sight—of the filthy tenements round about, every window pale with the eager faces of cowards and devils, the grimy roofs littered with sightseers? What was Tom charged with? What was the meaning of scuttling a ship? What punishment was the act visited with? Was a man hanged for scuttling?
I paced about the room in the agony of my mind till I sank with exhaustion into a chair. I dug the nails of my fingers into my palms till the blood sprang. Tom in prison! The gentlest, the tenderest, the truest, the most honourable of men charged with a dreadful crime, a hanging crime perhaps, and locked up in jail!