The Woman of Knockaloe: A Parable by Sir Hall Caine - HTML preview

CONCLUSION

Queenstown, April, 1919.—Rather more than a week ago the bodies of a young man and a young woman, tightly strapped together, closely clasped in each other’s arms, and floating out towards the ocean, were picked up by Kinsdale fishermen as they were returning to harbour in the early hours of morning. Inquiries into identity appear to show that the young man was a German of good family and superior education, who, until recently, was a prisoner at Knockaloe, the well-known internment camp for alien civilians in the Isle of Man, and that the young woman was a native of the island, a girl of fine character, the owner of a farm which is connected with the camp and called by the same name.

It is known that, in spite of the difference of race and notwithstanding the difficulties of their position, they became strongly attached, and that when, shortly after the Armistice, the order was given that prisoners of war should be returned to the countries of their origin, the young German tried, first, to remain in England with the girl, whom he wished to marry, and afterwards to be allowed to take her back with him to Germany. Failing in both efforts, he fell into a deep melancholy, which seems to have communicated itself to the young woman, and to have resulted in a death-pact.

When the time came for the camp to be closed the young man had disappeared, and later it was discovered that the young woman was also missing. How they escaped is unknown, but it is assumed that they threw themselves into the sea from the cliffs of Contrary, the most westerly headland in Man, and, being caught in the Gulf stream, which flows close to the island at that point, were carried down to the waters in which they were found.

The mackerel fishers of Kinsdale (simple, but imaginative and often religious men, belonging to many nationalities—Irish, Scotch, French, and even German) have been deeply touched by the fate of the young lovers who, finding their love doomed by the hatred between their races, and nothing left to them in life, preferred death to separation. A few days ago they asked permission to bury the bodies, and yesterday they did so, choosing as the place of rest the summit of Cape Clear, which looks out on the Atlantic. To-day they have built over the spot a broad and lofty cairn, which will henceforth be the first thing seen by the passengers on the great liners who are coming in from the New World to the Old, and the last by those who are going out from the Old World to the New.—The Times.

“Love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave.... Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.”

END