The Magic of Two Hearts

Episode 9

“What can you think of me?” she said, falling on her knees by Agnes. But oh! I did not know what I was doing. "It was terror and my child,” and she kissed the sleeping infant passionately. “Also, I did not understand at the time—I was too dazed. And—that hero—he gave his life for me when the others wished to beat me off with oars. Yes, his blood is upon my hands—he who died that my child and I might live.”

Agnes looked at her and answered, very gently:

“Perhaps he did not die after all. Do not grieve, for if he did, it was a very glorious death, and I am prouder of him than I could have been had he lived on like the others who wished to beat you off with oars. Whatever it is, it is by God’s Will, and doubtless for the best. At the least, you and your child will be restored to your husband, though it cost me one who would have been—my husband.”

That evening, Agnes came upon the deck and spoke with the other ladies who were saved, learning every detail that she could gather. But none of the men, except Mr. Thompson, would she say a single word, and soon, seeing how the matter stood, they hid themselves away from her as they had already done from Mrs. Jeffreys.

The castle had hung about the scene of the shipwreck for thirty hours, and rescued one other boatload of survivors, including a stoker clinging to a piece of wreckage. But on the shore she had been unable to communicate, for the dreaded wind had risen, and the breakers were quite impassable to any boat. To a passing steamer bound for Port Elizabeth, however, she had reported the terrible disaster, which by now was known all over the world, together with the names of those whom she had picked up in the boats.

On the night of the day of Agnes’s interview with Mrs. Jeffreys, the Castle arrived off Durban and anchored, since she was too big a vessel to cross the bar as it was in those days. At dawn the stewardess awoke Agnes from the uneasy sleep in which she lay, to tell her that an old gentleman had come off in the tug and wished to see her; for fear of exciting false hopes she was very careful to add that word “old.” With her help Agnes dressed herself, and as the sun rose, flooding the Berea, the Point, the white town and fair Natal beyond with light, she went on to the deck, and there, leaning over the bulwark, saw a thin, gray-bearded man of whom after all these years the aspect was still familiar.

A curious thrill went through her as she looked at him leaning there lost in thought. After all, he was her father, the man to whom she owed her presence upon this bitter earth, this place of terror and delight, of devastation and hope supernal. Perhaps, too, he had been as much sinned against as sinned. She stepped up to him and touched him on the shoulder.

“Father,” she said.

He turned round with all the quickness of a young man, for about him there was a peculiar agility which his daughter had inherited. Like his mind, his body was still nimble.

“My darling,” he said, “I should have known your voice anywhere. It has haunted my sleep for years. "My darling, thank you for coming back to me, and thank God for preserving you when so many were lost.” Then he threw his arms around her and kissed her.

She shrank from him a little, for by inadvertence he had pressed upon the wound in her forehead.

“Forgive me,” she said; it is my head. It was injured, you know.”

Then he saw the bandage on her brow, and was very penitent.

“They did not tell me that you had been hurt, Agnes,” he exclaimed in his light, refined voice, one of the stamps of that gentility of blood and breeding whereof all his rough years and errors had been unable to deprive him. “They only told me that you were saved. It is part of my ill-fortune that at our first moment of greeting I would give you pain, someone who has caused you so much already.”

Agnes felt that the words were an apology for the past, and her heart was touched.

“It is nothing,” she answered. “You did not know or mean it.”

“No, dear, I never knew or meant it. Believe me, I was not a willing sinner, only a weak one. You are beautiful, Agnes—far more so than I expected.”

“What,” she answered, smiling, “with this bandage round my head? "Well, in your eyes, perhaps.” But inwardly she thought to herself that the description would be more applicable to her father, who, in truth, notwithstanding his years, was wonderfully handsome, with his quick blue eyes, mobile face, gentle mouth with the wistful droop at the corners so like her own, and gray beard. How, she wondered, could this be the man who had struck her mother? Then she remembered him as he had been years before when he was a slave to liquor, and knew that the answer was simple.

“Tell me about your escape, love,” he said, patting her hand with his thin fingers. You don’t know what I’ve suffered. I was waiting at the Royal Hotel here, when the cable came announcing the loss of the Atlantis and all on board. For the first time in many years, I drank spirits to drown my grief—don’t be afraid, dear—for the first time and the last. "Then afterward came another cable giving the names of those who were known to be saved, and—thank God, oh! Thank God—yours among them,” and he gasped at the recollection of that relief.

“Yes,” she said; I suppose I should thank him and another. Have you heard the story about how Mr. Holmes saved me, I mean?”

“Some of it. While you were dressing yourself, I was talking to the officer who was in command of your boat. "He was a brave man, Agnes, and I am sorry to tell you he is gone.”

She grasped a stanchion and clung there, staring at him with a wild, white face.

“How do you know that, Father?”

Mr. Bernard drew a copy of the Natal Mercury of the previous day from the pocket of his Ulster, and while she waited in agony he hunted through the long columns descriptive of the loss of the Atlantis. Immediately he came to the paragraph he sought, and read it aloud to her. It read:

The searchers on the coast opposite the scene of the shipwreck report that they met a Kaffir who was traveling along the seashore, who had a gold watch which he said he had taken from the body of a white man that he found lying on the sand at the mouth of the Umvoli River. Inside the watch is engraved, ‘To Anthony Holmes Anthony, from his uncle, on his twenty-first birthday.’ The name of Mr. Holmes appears as a first-class passenger to Durban by the Atlantis. He was a member of an old English family in Lincolnshire. This was his second journey to South Africa, which he visited some years ago with his brother on a big-game shooting expedition. All who knew him then will join with us in deploring his loss. Mr. Holmes was a noted shot and an English gentleman of the best stamp. He was last seen by one of the survivors of the catastrophe, carrying Miss Bernard, the daughter of the well-known Natal pioneer of that name, into a boat, but as this young lady is reported to have been saved, and as he entered the boat with her, no explanation is yet forthcoming as to how he came to his sad end.”

“I fear that is clear enough,” said Mr. Bernard, as he folded up his paper.

“Yes, clear enough,” she repeated in a strained voice. And yet—yet—oh! Father, he had just asked me to marry him, and I couldn’t believe that he was dead before I had time to answer.”