Ten days had passed, and for Morris ten weary, almost sleepless, nights.The tragedy of the destruction of the new rector's daughter in the ruinsof the Dead Church no longer occupied the tongues of men and paragraphsin papers. One day the sea gave up the hood of her brown ulster, thesame that Morris had been seen arranging by Stephen and Eliza Layard; itwas found upon the beach. After this even the local police admitted thatthe conjectures as to her end must be true, and, since for the lackof anything to hold it on there could be no inquest, the excitementdwindled and died. Nor indeed, as her father announced that he wasquite satisfied as to the circumstances of his daughter's death, wasany formal inquiry held concerning them. A few people, however, stillbelieved that she was not really drowned but had gone away secretly forunknown private reasons. The world remembers few people, even if theybe distinguished, for ten whole days. It has not time for suchlong-continued recollection of the dead, this world of the living whohurry on to join them.
If this is the case with the illustrious, the wealthy and the powerful,how much more must it be so in the instance of an almost unknown girl, astranger in the land? Morris and her father remembered her, for shewas part of their lives and lived on with their lives. Stephen Layardmourned for the woman whom he had wished to marry--fiercely at first,with the sharp pain of disappointed passion; then intermittently; and atlast, after he was comfortably wedded to somebody else, with a mild andsentimental regret three or four times a year. Eliza, too, when onceconvinced that she was "really dead," was "much shocked," and talkedvaguely of the judgments and dispensations of Providence, as though thisvictim were pre-eminently deserving of its most stern decrees. It wasrumoured, however, among the observant that her Christian sorrow was,perhaps, tempered by a secret relief at the absence of a rival, who, asshe now admitted, sang extremely well and had beautiful eyes.
The Colonel also thought of the guest whom the sea had given and takenaway, and with a real regret, for this girl's force, talents, andloveliness had touched and impressed him who had sufficient intellectand experience to know that she was a person cast in a rare and noblemould. But to Morris he never mentioned her name. No further confidencehad passed between them on the matter. Yet he knew that to his son thisname was holy. Therefore, being in some ways a wise man, he thought itwell to keep his lips shut and to let the dead bury their dead.
By all the rest Stella Fregelius was soon as much forgotten as thoughshe had never walked the world or breathed its air. That gale had donemuch damage and taken away many lives--all down the coast was heard thevoice of mourning; hers chanced to be one of them, and there was nothingto be said.
Stella Fregelius: A Tale of Three Destinies Page 27