Love in a Bottle

Realization

Bridie

The froward girl would not answer me; she stared stupidly at me and almost seeming to mock me, finally throwing her apron over her head and shreiking like an imbecile, ran pell-mell from the room. "Where is your mistress?" Not a difficult question, but apparently one for which she had no answer. I went from room to room, hardly noticing where I went, and there was no sign of Rosalie, or Bridie, or of any human or animal movement. Even our little King Charles spaniel was nowhere in evidence. Dust lay thick on some of the small tables, Rosalie's usual flowers were not in their crystal vases, rather dreary bent stems, and the vases themselves cloudeded and green-black from water long-ago evaporated. When I threw open the heavy drapes to admit the thin winter sun, a miasma of dust rose up into the room like old regrets. Somewhere below the stairs I heard a door slam, - Bridie's final defection, I supposed - and I was left alone in the house, where not even a clock ticked, and the silence settled round me like a shroud.

New York

With the Doctor's note clutched in my hand, I made my way to the alleyway in Five Points he'd directed me to, to procure the necessary insurances against the coming again of my weakness and dread illness. One should have feared the idle threats of the thugs who lined the streets, if only one had not seen massacred and mutilated corpses piled and burning dully under the desert sky, been riding with murderers, and endured countless narrow escapes from certain peril. Once that fateful packet was safely procured from its sinister dispenser, then, home, home to Rosalie, at last!

A Reckoning

Fair Winds

Fair winds carried us swiftly North. What joy to feel the breeze at one's back, to see the flying spray and study the curious leaps of fishes and those jovial sea-companions, the dolphin, sporting in the bow wave of the graceful ship! With the doctor's care, I am much restored and feel like myself again, in health and vigor. There are coolies aboard, bound for New York, no doubt serving an iron master in a distant Hong, but they are desirous of reading, a cleanly, polite and civil group. I have been teaching them their letters, - they are teaching me some of their complicated picto-grams! - and showing them how to read English. They are very eager and quick to learn, especially the young ones, but their accent is comical. The Oriental tongue cannot be brought to pronounce certain words, and their speech sounds like a curious sing-song no matter how assiduously I drill them in proper American pronunciation. The Doctor tells me that these good people, who have become quite dear to me, are likely to labor like slaves in some dark Hong in New York, Philadelphia or Boston, until the end of their days for some distant master in China, and will only be returned home in a box, at their death, by a Chinese Burial Society to the Heavenly Kingdom, which is China!