It is an interesting coincidence, albeit a detail easily lost in a life already as unusual as Manly Cobb's, that no less than seven women who would later be of some importance to his life attended the appearance billed simply as The Return of Dr. Manly Cobb at the Moorsex Civic Hall. The title was deliberately vague and left a skeptical audience to expect little more than new findings recovered from the lost explorer, or perhaps even some block of ice with Cobb still inside it. Scarcely anyone could have seriously expected to actually meet the man, let alone be predestined to become his good friend.
It is a matter of record, for example, that Matilda Hirschhorn was there, along with a small contingent from the Hirschhorn banking family. Young Matilda was one of that offshoot of the Hirschhorns who had elected to semi-retire in Moorsex, yet they retained a deep and genuine interest in the various exploits of the Imperial Society, and Matilda herself was an earnest amateur student of archaeology and natural history. Also noteworthy was the groundbreaking female physician Dr. Sheila Hennessy, perhaps the single best chronicler of the recent radical changes in Moorsex womankind. Beyond Hirschhorn and Hennessy, celebrity status became a bit spottier. Vivienne Lunn was a notoriously irreverent wit, something of an adventuress, and the chess master of Moorsex. Katharine Baxendale was a noted sportswoman, markswoman, and huntress. In stark comparison to such esteemed women, Rosalind Pryke was simply Moorsex's most lovely, reliable, and ubiquitous domestic maid.
Being the only child of the keeper of the Cobb estate, Angelica Jolly got to sit up front, and it was only fair that a devotee of the life and work such as Emma Watkins should join her.
A hush fell over the audience as Dr. Jolly took the stage.
"Imperial Society, fellow Moorsexers, ladies and gentlemen. I welcome you on this snowy but pleasant evening to a night you are guaranteed to remember. It has long become legend in this county that sixty years ago our local son, Dr. Manly Cobb, traveled with his lifelong friend, my own grandfather Roger Jolly, on board the ship Leviathan to explore new parts of the continent of Antarctica, in search of signs of a prehistoric tropical epoch in that now frozen wasteland, and possibly even some sign of civilization far more ancient than anything yet discovered. My grandfather's story has always been clear: that Dr. Cobb was lost in a great crevasse, one from which he could not be recovered, and presumed dead. But tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I give you: the return of Dr. Cobb ... " |