Seven Frozen Sailors Part 18

None answered. No, indeed, none. My dear boys, I felt desperate; so, with a firm hand, I knocked at the door-handle.

In a jiffy, out comes Miller Howell, with a face like the mast of a rakish yacht, long, and thin, and yallow.

"What d'ye want, Hugh Anwyl?"

The words was spoken harsh indeed, and angry. I started as if he had struck me across the face, or ordered me into irons.

"Master," says I, "I'm going away for along journey, perhaps never to come back again; and I wish to say good-by to your daughter Rhoda."

He looks at me from top to toe, and up again from toe to top. The man's features were as hard and pitiless as if they had been cut out of a block of Welsh granite. Then, without a word, he slams the door in my face.

Friends and messmates, I'm a Welshman, with the hot blood of Caedmon in my veins. I couldn't bear this, indeed; so I stood outside and cried, at the top of my voice, "Rhoda--Rhoda Howell, I, Hugh Anwyl, beg and pray you to come and wish me a farewell! Rhoda, answer me, for I am going away!"

Silence! She would have come out, indeed, but was prevented. That I heard afterward. So I left--I'm not ashamed to own the truth--with the tears a-streaming down my cheeks and my heart breaking. I could have gone straight and drownded myself, I was so distraught. Presently I felt a finger on my sleeve.

"Hugh!" whispers a soft voice, "I'm downright grieved for you."

It was Gwen Thomas.

I didn't answer, mates--for why? Because I couldn't; my eyes was leaking, and my timbers all of a s.h.i.+ver, and I seemed without so much as a helm. But I suffered her to lead me into the back room of old Thomas's cottage, not knowing for what port I was being steered. Then I sat down, and she clasped my hand quite tender.

"Hugh Anwyl," she says, "whatever I am--and I know I'm not as good-looking as others--I'm a true, sincere friend. Being so, I tell ye, I am grieved to see ye thus wrecked within sight of land."

I couldn't talk to her; but, after a bit, she got me calmed down, and I quite felt as if I must try to please her--in a sort of a tame-cat fas.h.i.+on.

At last, she says, quite as if the thought had come into her false head accidental indeed, "Write Rhoda a letter, and I'll promise you she shall have it safe. I'll give it her myself."

I was that excited, I took the girl in my arms and embraced her. Then I sat down and I wrote to Rhoda, telling her the whole tale, and how, for her sake, I was going to risk my life on a whaling expedition; and praying her to keep single for me till I came back again with money in my hand so as to buy the consent of her father.

When I done that, my lads, I gave it, sealed careful, to Gwen Thomas; and, kissing the girl, who cried, as I thought, uncommon unaccountably, I lurched forth, and turned my back upon Glanwern.

Here I ought to pull up and rest a bit, for there's what you may call a break in my yarn. I was far away from the girl I loved, toiling, as we mariners only toil, for the cursed gold which should make two miserable souls happy.

To cut my story short, however, I was gone, as near as may be, twelve months. Our first venture failed. We met with nothing but bad luck, and ran into Aberdeen harbour as empty-handed as we went. So, as I wouldn't come home without the necessary money, I just slips a short line into the post to let Rhoda know that Hugh Anwyl was alive, and to beg her to be patient. Then, indeed, I joined a second expedition, which was fortunate. We brought back with us a fine cargo of sealskins, besides whalebone; and when I drew my share, it amounted, all told, to nigh upon two hundred pounds, together with some furs, and a few curiosities.

I ran down straight from Aberdeen, travelling night and day by the railway, just such another autumn night as the one when I started. I rolled, unsteady like, into Glanwern village, and the first soul I meets was Gwen Thomas. My stars! you should have heard her give tongue. If I'd been Evan Dhu himself in the guise of a seafaring man, she couldn't have looked more terrified.

"Why, Gwen, la.s.s!" cried I, "you ain't never afeard of Hugh Anwyl?"

She was afeard, though; and she'd good cause, too.

"How's Rhoda?" asks I. I ought to hae mentioned my father, but my mind ran, like a s.h.i.+p in a whirlpool, to one centre.

"Oh," says Gwen, turning away her head, "she's still ill!"

"What d'ye mean?" I sings out, clutching her arm tight.

"Don't!" says she. "You sailors are so rough, indeed."

"You speak the truth, then!" cries I; for I guessed from her look and the queer colour in her darned figurehead, that something was tarnation wrong with my Rhoda.

She looks at me as steady as a gunner taking aim.

"Hugh," she says, "you'll have to hear what will hurt you sooner or later. Rhoda is married to David!"

I didn't speak. Neither did a tear escape my eye. But I sat down on a stone by the roadside, and I felt as if I'd been struck by a flash of lightning.

Gwen went on talking; and at last, when she saw what was up, she ran and fetched my father, and the old lubber hoisted me somehow indoors, and shoved me into a hammock. I rather think I was what ye may call mad.

How long my mind remained so affected I can't rightly judge. My first recollection is of seeing a pale face sitting by my side, and I heard a sound which brought me to.

It was Rhoda. Although she'd been forced into a marriage with that lubber David, she'd not forgotten me; and she'd come to tell me all.

Yes, indeed. And what's more, she'd come none to soon; for if Hugh Anwyl was somewhere in the lat.i.tude of lunacy, Rhoda was in the longitude of decline. She was dying! Yes, indeed!

She told me how they had hatched up a lie about my having made love to Gwen. To prove this, David had plotted to make me walk that evil night with his false sister to the Clwm Rock. Rhoda had at first refused to believe their story. But when she saw us--for she lay concealed behind the rock--pa.s.s by as if we were lovers, with Gwen's darned face resting on my bosom, she was cheated into thinking me false. Still she would have heard me, and learned the truth before I left Glanwern, but her old father interfered; and when I was gone, and Gwen had never delivered my letter, she consented to wed David--just, as you may say, for the sake of peace--believing the yarn they invented, that I had run away to sea and would never come back. It was not, indeed, until she received my letter from Aberdeen that she learned how wickedly she had been deceived. From that moment she fell ill, and nothing would please her but to return to Miller Howell's house. As for David, indeed, she would not look at him, or speak to him; and she did but sit still and wait for death, hoping, as she told me, that Hugh Anwyl might return before the end came.

My lads, her sweet voice somehow steadied my brain. I saw the whole spider's web unfolded. Gwen and David had plotted to sink our craft, and there we lay waterlogged.

"Shall I smash the pair of them?" I said.

"For my sake, no, indeed," she answered. "Let us forget them. It is too late, Hugh Anwyl."

Mates, I rose from that hammock that very instant, a strong, hale seaman once more. My life was wrecked, in so far as happiness goes. But the strength remained to me. Not so, poor little Rhoda. Her cheek was hollow, and the bright eyes shone like the evening stars in the southern seas. So weak was she, that I had to support her back to Miller Howell's house.

"Come in, Hugh Anwyl," says the old, greedy father, looking as if he could drop down dead from shame and sorrow on the doorstep. "Come in.

This is stormy weather."

I couldn't speak to the man. I would not reproach him with having been the cause of this wreck--for his features, indeed, displayed the punishment he had received. But I came in, and I sat down by Rhoda's side on the sofa.

In a minute or two, the door opens, and a figure intrudes itself.

Rhoda put her hands in front of her face, as if she was shamed beyond all bearing, indeed. I started to my legs, for I could have killed the man.

It was David Thomas!

Yes, mates, David Thomas, come to see his lawful wife, Rhoda Thomas, who was married to him six months ago.

Rhoda put her finger on my arm, and I sat down like a lamb. It was impossible to avenge her wrong.

"Be off out of this house, which you have brought ruin into!" says Miller Howell, speaking to his son-in-law.

The lubber sheered off.

My mates, I can tell no more. We sat as we was, on that there sofa, till sunset; and then--and then, poor Rhoda died in my arms!

Yes, mates, she dropped off to sleep; and, for all her miserable end, she died happy indeed!

As for Hugh Anwyl, he went back to sea. But after every voyage he returns to Glanwern churchyard, and he puts a bunch of flowers on a gra.s.sy mound--for that is his only home.