Chapter 1

“Impossible,” he said; “it would be agony to me to feel that I had incurred Chlorine’s contempt, even though I only know her through a photograph at present. If I were to back out of it now, she would have reason to despise me, would she not?”

“Perhaps she would,” I said.

“You see my dilemma—I cannot retract; on the other hand, I dare not go on. The only thing, as I have thought lately, which could save me and my honor at the same time would be my death on the voyage out, for then my cowardice would remain undiscovered.”

“Well,” I said, “you can die on the voyage out if you want to—there need be no difficulty about that. All you have to do is just to slip over the side some dark night when no one is looking. I tell you what,” I added (for somehow I began to feel a friendly interest in this poor slack-baked creature): “if you don’t find your nerves equal to it when it comes to the point, I don’t mind giving you a leg over myself.”

“I never intended to go as far as that,” he said, rather pettishly, and without any sign of gratitude for my offer; “I don’t care about actually dying, if she could only be made to believe I had died that would be quite enough for me. I could live on here, happy in the thought that I was saved from her scorn. But how can she be made to believe it?—that’s the point.”

“Precisely,” I said. “You can hardly write yourself and inform her that you died on the voyage.”

“You might do this, though: sail to England as you propose, and go to see her under another name, and break the sad intelligence to her.”

“Why, to be sure, I might do that!” he said, with some animation; “I should certainly not be recognized—she can have no photograph of me, for I have never been photographed. And yet—-no,” he added, with a shudder, “it is useless. I can’t do it; I dare not trust myself under that roof!”

“I must find some other way. You have given me an idea. Listen,” he said, after a short pause:

“You seem to take an interest in me; you are going to London; the Catafalques live there, or near it, at some place called Parson’s Green. Can I ask a great favor of you—would you very much mind seeking them out yourself as a fellow-voyager of mine? I could not expect you to tell a positive untruth on my account—but if, in the course of an interview with Chlorine, you could contrive to convey the impression that I died on my way to her side, you would be doing me a service I can never repay!”

“I should very much prefer to do you a service that you could repay,” was my very natural rejoinder.