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Updated: May 5, 2025
She was bound on a three-years' cruise; and Gilbart, who happened to know this and was besides something of a sentimentalist, detected pathos in this departure on a festival morning.
The Admiral's wife was giving a dinner and a dance, and already a small crowd had gathered to see the earlier guests arrive. The sight dashed Gilbart. Suddenly he remembered that the letter had reached him by the afternoon post. It was now half-past seven, and he would have to explain the interval; for of course the Admiral would suspect the whole story at first.
"I grieve for you, my poor woman; he is past recovery," he said, and went on to attend to others. Little Mark sat by his dead brother's side, gazing at him with awe. No one disturbed him. Mrs Gilbart waited on, hope not yet abandoned. More men came up, some fearfully injured.
She tightened her grip on the handkerchief and kept her lips firmly compressed. Gilbart saw that, though tearless, her eyes wore traces of tears no redness, but some swelling of the lids, with dark semicircles underneath. "To them," he went on, nodding toward the holiday-keepers, "it's only regatta day. To them she's only a passing ship helping to make up the pretty scene.
Once or twice certainly not half a dozen times he had at a casual word pulled open for an instant the doors of his heart and given Gilbart a sensation of looking into a furnace, into white-hot depths, sudden and frightening.
Gilbart knew the official manner; he had been privileged to study the fine flower of it in this particular Admiral one afternoon six months before, when the great man had condescended to sit on the platform at the Mission anniversary. "Tut, tut a stupid practical joke " that would be the beginning; and then would follow cross-examination in the coldest court-martial fashion.
These and other arrangements, and the vast amount of machinery now employed, had not, however, been introduced when Mark Gilbart began life as a "trapper." The most dangerous operation is the opening of a new passage, from which foul air may suddenly escape and poison the miners inhaling it, or a stream of water may rush forth, rilling up the gallery, and drowning all within its reach.
"I am about to ask you, Mr Gilbart, to accompany my son Frank on a tour of considerable extent, to visit some of the more important mines in Europe, and, if there is time, in other parts of the world, and he is anxious to have a practical man who will enable him to comprehend the different matters connected with them more clearly than he would be able to do by himself.
Now and then she looked up as if listening for some sound or movement in the room overhead, but after a moment or two began to ply her needle again. The needle moved more slowly stopped she bowed her head over the stocking. Gilbart knew why. She was the wife of a petty officer on the Berenice. The old man in the chair went on reading.
Well, he could explain; but it would be just as well to have the story pat beforehand. One minute ten minutes went by. Cabs rattled up and private carriages; officers in glittering uniforms, ladies muffled in silk and swansdown stepped past the policeman behind whom Gilbart hesitated. This would never do; better he had gone in with the story hot on his lips. He twitched the policeman's elbow.
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