It was cold, but the sweep of the dry night-wind
was refreshing and inspiriting to me,
who had been confined to my cabin all day.
A bull’s eye lamp burnt under the overhanging
ledge of the poop-deck. Beneath it
was the clock, and the small hand was close
upon one. The gleams of the lamp touched
no living figure, and so lonely looked the ship
that I could have easily supposed myself the
only human being on board of her. The
great fabric was leaning over under a vast
cloud of canvas, and a sound of stealthy
hissing, such as the stem of a vessel makes
when she is swiftly tearing over a quiet surface
of ocean, rose into the wind on either
hand.
A ladder was close beside me, conducting
on to the poop, or upper deck. I
mounted it, and stood at the head of the
steps looking around me. I saw but two
figures. One of them was on the other side
of the deck. He was motionless, with his
arm round a rope, and his shape stood out
against the sparkling stars as sharply as
though he were a statue in ebony. The
other figure was at the aftermost end, at the
wheel. There was a deep shadow of rigging
and of sail where I had come to a pause.
The dusky hue of the cloak I wore blended
with the obscurity, and I was not observed
by the figure opposite.
I looked over the side and watched the
water sweeping past white as milk, with a
frequent glitter of beautiful green lights in it.
I looked away into the far distance, where
the confines of the black plain of the ocean
were lost in the darkness of the night, and
fixed my eyes upon the stars, which were
shining sparely in those dim and distant
reaches, and said to myself, Where is my
home? Which of all these countless stars is
shining down upon my home now? But
have I a home? How can I tell, for I do
not know who I am? Then I looked up at
the swollen, pallid breasts of sails climbing
one on top of another into faint, almost
visionary spaces where the loftiest were; and
whilst I looked I heard two silver chimes
ring out of the darkness forward. What can
those bells mean? I wondered. How marvellous
was the hush upon this great, speeding
shadow of a ship, this dim bulk of
symmetrical clouds waving its star-reaching
heights in solemn measure as though to the
accompaniment of some deep spiritual ocean-music,
heard by it, but soundless to my ears!
Where was the multitude of people who
swarmed upon the deck when I had come on
board in the morning? I knew they were
resting below, and the thought of that great
crowd slumbering in the heart of the sweeping,
cloud-like shadow at which I gazed awed
me; but the emotion changed into one of
fear and of loneliness suddenly, and to rally
myself I turned and walked towards the after-end
of the vessel.
The moon was in the west, and the
light in the sky that way was the silvery
azure which I had witnessed through my
cabin porthole. I walked to the extreme
end of the ship, where the helm was, and
stood by the side of the wheel. When I
was on board the French vessel I had always
found something fascinating in the machinery
of the helm. I used to gaze with childish
wonder at the compass-card, steadily in its
brass bowl pointing out the little vessel’s
course, and I would watch with surprise the
instant response of the small fabric to the
movement of the wheel.
But now as I stood here beside this wheel
I surveyed a stretch of deck that seemed
measureless, as the white planks, glimmering
like sand from my feet went stretching
and fading into the obscurity far forward.
Behind me, from under the high, dark stern
of the ship, rushed the pale and yeasty wake,
like a line of pale smoke blowing over the
sea. The stars danced in the squares of the
rigging; they tipped as with diamond-points
the sides of the sails, and they blazed at
the summits of the three dim spires of the
ship’s masts; and the moon in the west,
poised in an atmosphere of delicate greenish
silver, trembled a waving fan-shaped stream
of light upon the summer pouring of the
ocean under her.
All at once the helmsman, on the other
side of the wheel, of whose presence I had
hardly been sensible, uttered a strange low
sort of bellowing cry, and tied along the
deck to where the figure of the other man
was. Involuntarily I put my hand upon
the wheel, as though instinctively feeling
that it must be held steady, and that it must
be held in any case, or the ship would be
without governance. The two men came
slowly along. The motions of each were full
of wariness, and suggestive in the highest
degree of alarm and astonishment.
‘Dummed if it ain’t a-steering the ship,’
said one of them in a hoarse voice.
‘You scoundrel, it’s a woman!’ cried
the other. ‘How dare you quit your post.
You’ll have the ship in the wind in a
minute,’ and they both arrived together at
the wheel running, one being pushed by the
other.
The man who pushed the other was
dressed in a monkey-jacket with brass
buttons and a naval cap. He was clearly
one of the ship’s officers, but it was not
surprising that I should be meeting him now
for the first time. He thrust his face into
my hood, and then backed a step and
exclaimed, ‘Who are you?’ then immediately
added, ‘Oh! of course. You’re the person
that was taken out of the French brig.
Come away from the wheel, will you, ma’m?
Here’s an Irishman that believes you a ghost.’
The other muttered in his throat. I
walked some paces away, and the officer
accompanied me.
‘How is it that you’re not in your bed?’
said he.
‘I have been sleeping all day,’ I answered,
‘and have come up to breathe the air.’
‘We do not allow females to wander
about the ship of a night,’ said he. ‘However,
you cannot be supposed to know the
rules.’ I saw him by the moonlight eye me
strenuously and earnestly. ‘That’s a big
bandage you have on, ma’m. I hope you
are not much hurt?’
‘I was found lying injured and unconscious
in a boat by the Frenchmen.’
‘And they tell me you have no
memory.’
‘I can remember nothing,’ I answered.
‘What is that?’ cried he, pointing.
‘It is the moon,’ said I.
‘What is that but memory?’ he exclaimed.
‘I remember nothing of my past,’ said I.
‘Down to the hour in which I awoke to
consciousness on board the French brig
everything is black. But to whom am I
speaking?’
‘You are speaking to the chief mate of
the Deal Castle, and his name is Andrew
Harris.’
‘What is a chief mate?’ I asked.
‘He is the person that is next in command
to the captain.’
‘Then you are of consequence?’ said I.
He smiled broadly. ‘There are people
who will run when I sing out.’
‘Nobody appears to be awake on board
this ship, saving us who are here,’ said I.
‘Have you come on deck to find that
out?’ he exclaimed; then directing his face
at the forecastle he uttered a cry, and out
of the shadow forward there instantly came
a response. He cried again, and a rumbling
‘Ay, ay, sir!’ came out of the shadow.
‘So you see,’ said he, ‘there are four, not
three of us, awake; and if I were to sing
out again, in about five seconds the decks
would be full of sailors running about. And
you’ve lost your memory? D’ye know what
part of England you hail from?’
‘I cannot even tell that I am English.’
‘What do they want to make out? That
you’re from Greenland? I am trying to
catch your accent. I have an A 1 ear for
accents. I hoped at first you might be
Lancashire, where I hail from. Then I
fancied I could hear Derbyshire in you. But
I reckon it’ll end in Middlesex’ he added
thoughtfully; ‘that’s to say if London’s in
Middlesex, which no man who goes to sea
can be sure of, for every time he returns
he wants a new chart, such is the growth
of the little village. Does my talk give you
any ideas?’ I shook my head. ‘Doesn’t
the word London give you any idea?’
I thought and thought, and said, ‘It is
a familiar word, but it suggests nothing.’
‘Curse the sea!’ he exclaimed, with an
irritable twist of his head, as he looked
round the horizon; ‘how ill it treats those
who trust themselves to it! It robs you of
memory, and it keeps me a poor man. Curse
it, I say! I should like to know the name
of the chap that was the first to go afloat.
I’d burn him in effigy. But it’s some comfort
to guess where his soul is. It wasn’t Noah.
Noah had to save his life, and I allow he
hated the sea as much as I do. All
animals—pooh! but not worse than emigrants.
And so you’ve lost your memory.
And now what’s to bring it back to you, I
wonder?’ He broke off to exclaim sharply
to the helmsman and repeated, ‘What’s to
bring it back to you, I wonder?’
He took a turn as though the remedy
were in his mind and merely demanded a
little thought. I watched him with deep
anxiety. How could I tell but that even
from him, that even from this man whom I
had never before seen, with whom I was now
discoursing in the heart of the ocean night,
amid the silence of a faintly moonlit deck, with
the sound of wind-brushed waters rising round
about us, and the pale shadows of the leaning
canvas soaring high above us—how could I
tell but that even from this stranger might
come the spark, the little leaping flame of
suggestion to light up enough of my mind to
enable me presently to see all? So I watched
him with deep anxiety, whilst he took two or
three turns.
Presently he halted facing me. He was
a short man, scarcely as tall as I, square-built,
and very firmly set on his legs. His
hair appeared to be the colour of ginger.
His chin was shaved, and he wore a bush of
beard upon his throat. As much of his face
as the moonlight silvered disclosed a dry,
arch, sailorly expression.
‘It requires thinking over,’ said he. ‘My
motto in physic is, Like cures like. What
sent your memory adrift? You’ll find it was
a shock. If the doctor would put you
through a course of shocks you’d come out
right. I’m a poor man, but I’d wager
every farthing I’ll receive for the voyage,
that if you were to fall overboard from the
height of the ship’s side, when you were
fished up you’d have your memory. Some
sort of shock did the mischief, and any sort
of shock’s going to undo it. That’s my belief.
When McEwan visits you again you tell
him what I say. Why, now, listen to this:
an uncle of mine was so crippled with rheumatism
and gout that he had to be carried
like a dead-drunk man on a litter to the
railway station. He was to consult some
professional nob in London. With much
backing and filling he was got into the railway
carriage, and there he lay like a log,
capable of moving nothing but his eyes. Half
an hour after the train had started it ran into
about forty waggons full of cattle. The bust-up
was as usual: engine off the lines, driver
in halves, the remains of the fireman in a
ditch, several carriages matchwood, a dozen
dead people under them, two-and-twenty
persons wounded, and the country round
about full of bleeding, galloping cattle. And
who do you think was the first man to get
out and run? My uncle. The collision cured
him. He was a well man from the instant
the locomotive bust into the waggons, and he
has never known an ache since. It’s a shock
that’s going to do your business, ma’m, take
my word for it.’
I understood him imperfectly. Many of
his allusions I did not in the least comprehend,
yet I listened greedily, and for some moments
after he had ceased I continued to hearken,
hoping and hoping for some word, some hint,
some suggestion that would help me to even
the briefest inward glimpse.
Three silver chimes floated out of the deep
shadow of the ship forward. ‘What are
those bells?’ I asked.
‘Half-past one,’ he exclaimed; ‘and, with
all respect, about time I think for you to be
abed. The captain may come on deck at any
moment, and if he finds you here he’ll be
vexed that I have not before requested you
to go below.’
I bade him good-night, but he accompanied
me as far as the head of the steps which conducted
to the quarterdeck.
‘A shock will do it,’ said he; ‘I’m the
son of a doctor, and my advice is—shocks.
The job is to administer a shock without
doing the patient more harm than good. I’ll
think it over. It’ll be something to kill the
time with. D’ye know the road to your
cabin? Well, good-night, ma’m.’
I silently opened the door of the saloon,
regained my berth, and after musing upon my
conversation with the officer on deck, I closed
my eyes and fell asleep.
‘Good morning, Miss C——,’ exclaimed
Mrs. Richards, entering the cabin with a
breakfast-tray. ‘I am glad to find you up
and dressed. It is a quarter to nine o’clock,
and a truly beautiful morning. There is a
nice breeze on the quarter, and the ship is
going along as steadily as a carriage. Have
you slept well?’
‘I have slept a little.’
‘Well, to-day you must appear on deck.
You will really show yourself to-day. All
the passengers are longing to see you, and do
not forget that by mingling amongst them,
and talking, and hearing them talk, ideas may
come, and your memory with them. Here
have you been a prisoner since yesterday
morning.’
‘No, I was on deck last night.’
‘What, in the dark?’
‘At one o’clock this morning.’
‘The captain would not like to hear that,’
said she, arching her eyebrows; ‘but you
will not do it again. I mean you will
not go alone on deck when everybody is
asleep except the sailors on watch. What
officer was on watch last night?’
‘The first officer, Mr. Harris,’ said I.
‘Did he talk with you?’
‘Yes; he told me that a shock might give
me back my memory.’
‘What did the man mean?’
‘He said he believed if I were to fall
overboard from the height of the ship, that
when I was taken out of the water the
shock would be found to have restored my
memory.’
She burst into a loud laugh. ‘He is a
truly comical gentleman,’ she exclaimed,
‘though he never intends to be funny, for he
is always in earnest. It is said of him that
ever since he was second officer, now getting
on for five years, he has offered marriage in
every voyage he has made to one of the
lady-passengers. Our head steward has been
shipmate with him three voyages, and on
every occasion he has offered marriage. He
is always rejected. A shock indeed!’ she
exclaimed, growing suddenly very grave—‘what
an idea to put into your head! You
might go and throw yourself overboard in the
belief that the act would cure you of loss of
memory. I will tell the doctor to give Mr.
Harris a hint not to talk too much. Now
make a good breakfast, and by-and-by I
will call and take you to see Mrs. and Miss
Lee.’
I sat at my solitary repast, which was
bountiful indeed, and reflected upon what
Mrs. Richards had said. No! it would not
help me to confine myself to my cabin. By
mingling, by conversing, by hearing others
discourse, by gazing at them, observing their
dress, their manners, their faces, some gleam
might come back to touch the dark folds of
memory. In the steerage they were breakfasting
somewhat noisily. There was a great clatter
of crockery, and a sound of the voices of men
and women raised as though in good spirits,
and the tones of children eagerly asking to be
helped. The light upon the sea was of a
dazzling blue; through the porthole I could
see the small blue billows curling into froth
as they ran with the ship, and the ship herself
was going along as smoothly as a sleigh, saving
a scarcely perceptible long-drawn rising and
falling, regular as the respiration of a sleeping
breast.
I was looking through the porthole, when
the door was thumped and opened, and the
ship’s doctor stepped in.
‘Well,’ said he, in his strong North accent,
knitting his brow and staring into my face
with his sharp eyes, ‘what are ye able to
recollect this morning, ma’m?’
‘My memory is good for everything that
has happened since I first opened my eyes on
board the French vessel,’ I answered.
‘Humph!’ He felt my pulse, examined
my brow, dressed the injury afresh, and said
that I should be able to do without a bandage
in a day or two.
‘The captain tells me,’ said he, plunging
his hands into his trousers pockets and leaning
against the edge of the upper bedstead,
‘that he means to keep you on board, trusting
that your memory will return meanwhile,
when he’ll be able to put you in the way
of reaching your friends. He cannot do
better.’
‘But my memory may continue dark even
to the end of the voyage,’ I exclaimed.
‘True, but you’re better here meanwhile.
You might be consigned to the keeping of a
captain who, on his arrival in England, would
set you on shore without considering what is
to become of you. How then, Miss C——, for
that is to be your name, I hear. But if
Captain Ladmore carries you round the world
there’ll be ten months of time before ye, and
it will be strange if you aren’t able to recollect
in ten months. And now tell me—have ye
never a sensation as of memory? What’s the
feeling in you when you try to look back?’
‘As though it were a pitch-dark night,
and I was groping with my hands over a
stone wall.’
‘Good! Try now to think if ye have any
other sensations.’
‘Yes, there is one; but how am I to
express it?’
‘Try.’
‘When,’ I exclaimed, after a pause, ‘I
endeavour to pierce the past, I seem to be
sensible as of the presence of waves of darkness,
thick folds of inky gloom swaying and
revolving in black confusion, and dripping
wet.’
He kept his eyes fastened upon me, lost
in reflection. My words seemed to have struck
him. Then, telling me it was a fine morning,
and that I must come on deck and get all the
air and sunshine possible, he went away.
I took up a book, but I could not fix my
attention. I was able to read—that is to say,
the printed characters were familiar to me,
and the words intelligible—but I could not
keep my mind fastened to the page. Growing
weary of aimlessly sitting or wandering about
in my berth, I opened the door and peeped
out. As I did so I heard the fat, chuckling
laugh of a baby tickled or amused. A young
woman sat at the table that was nearest to my
cabin, and in front of her, on the table, she
held a baby who shook and crowed with
laughter as she made faces at it. There was
nobody else to be seen. At the forward
end, all about the steps was a haze of sunshine,
floating through the open hatch there from
the front windows of the saloon; otherwise the
atmosphere was somewhat gloomy.
I stepped out of my berth and approached
the young woman in order to look at the
child. She turned her head, and, seeing me,
grew grave, and stared, whilst the baby instantly
ceased to laugh, and rounded its mouth
and eyes at me.
‘That is a dear little child,’ said I. ‘What
a sweet rippling laugh it has? Is it a boy or
girl?’
‘A girl,’ answered the young woman, with
a little suggestion of recoil in her posture, as
though I was an object she could not at once
make sure of.
‘May I kiss her?’
She held the baby up, and I kissed its
cheek. She was a golden-haired child of
seven or eight months, with large dark eyes.
She did not cry when I kissed her.
‘She is a fine child—a beautiful child!’
said I. ‘Are you the mother?’
‘No, I am the sister of the mother,’
answered the young woman, beginning to
speak as though her doubts of me were
leaving her. ‘Aren’t you the lady the sailors
rescued yesterday?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘How glad I am you were saved!’
She had a bonnie face, and I looked at her
and smiled, and said, ‘May I nurse baby for a
minute?’
She put the child into my arms. I kissed
it again, and the little creature stared at me,
but did not cry.
‘You nurse her nicely,’ said the young
woman. ‘How quickly a baby seems to know
an experienced hand! I cannot get the
knack of holding her comfortably.’
At these words or at that moment I was
seized with an indescribable feeling—a sightless
yearning, a blind craving, a sense of
hopeless loneliness, that, as though it had
been some exquisite pang of the heart, caught
my breath and clouded my vision, and the
blood left my face, and every limb thrilled as
though an electric current were pouring
through me. The baby set up a cry, and the
woman, with fear in her countenance, snatched
it out of my arms.
‘Oh, my God! what is this?’ I exclaimed,
bringing my hands to my breast. ‘Oh, my
God! what is this? I have lost—I have lost—oh!
what was it that came and went?’
‘What is the matter?’ exclaimed Mrs.
Richards, coming out of her berth, that was
immediately beside where I stood. ‘Is it you,
Miss C——? I did not know your voice. Are
you poorly?’
‘No,’ I answered; ‘a sudden fancy—but I
cannot give it a name—I cannot recall it—I
don’t know the meaning of it. Oh, my head,
my head!’ and I sat down at the table and
leaned my brow upon my hands.
‘A little passing feeling of weakness,’ said
Mrs. Richards. ‘Only think what this poor
lady has suffered,’ she added, addressing the
young woman, who had risen and gone a few
paces away, and was now standing and holding
the baby and staring. ‘How could
any one hope to be speedily well after such
sufferings as this lady has passed through?
But I know what will do you good, dear;’
and she slipped into her berth and returned
with a glass of her cherry-brandy, which
she obliged me to drink. ‘And now,’ said
she, ‘come to your cabin and compose
yourself, and then you shall pay Mrs. Lee
a visit.’
‘I do not feel ill,’ said I, as I seated
myself in my cabin; ‘it was a sensation. I
cannot describe it. I was holding the baby,
and as I looked at it I—I——’
‘It might have been a little struggle of
memory,’ said the stewardess.
‘But it gave me nothing—it showed me
nothing—it told me nothing,’
‘Never mind,’ said the stewardess. ‘How
do you know but it may mean that it is your
memory waking up? I have read that
people who have been restored to life after
having been nearly hanged or nearly drowned
suffered tortures, much worse tortures than
when in their death struggles. Might it not
be the same with the memory? It is not
dead in you, but it is lying stunned by
something dreadful that happened to you.
Now it may be waking up, and its first return
to life is a torment. Let us hope it, dear.
And how do you feel now?’
‘I should feel happy if I could believe
that what you say is true.’
‘Well, you must have patience and keep
your heart cheered up.’ She then looked at
my hair, and saying aloud, but to herself,
‘Yes, I believe it will be the very thing,’ she
left me.
When she returned she bore in her hand
a little mob-cap of velvet and lace. ‘Put
this on,’ said she. ‘It is one of four that
were given to me last voyage by a lady-passenger.
I intended them for a friend in
Sydney, but you are welcome to them.
Wear it, my dear.’
I put the cap on, and certainly it did
improve my looks. ‘I will not thank you
for your kindness with my lips,’ said I; ‘if I
began to speak my thanks I should tire you
out long before I could end them.’
She interrupted me. ‘Do not talk of
thanking me. I declare, Miss C——, I am
never so happy as when I am being helpful and
useful to others, and there are many like me.
Oh, yes! most of us have larger and kinder
hearts than we give one another credit for.
Do you feel equal now to paying a visit to
the saloon?’
I answered Yes, and she led the way
through the steerage and up the small flight
of steps which conducted to the after-part of
the saloon. The sunshine lay in a blaze upon
the skylights, and the interior was splendid
with light and with prismatic reflections of
light. There was a sound overhead as of
many people walking to and fro. The saloon
was empty; everybody would choose to be
on deck on so fine a morning.
Mrs. Richards walked to the door of one
of the centre berths and knocked. A soft
voice full of music bade her enter. She
turned the handle, and held it whilst she
addressed the inmate of the berth. ‘I have
brought Miss C——,’ she exclaimed. ‘The
lady is here, Miss Lee. May she step in?’
‘Oh, yes, pray,’ said the musical voice.
Mrs. Richards made room for me to pass,
and, pronouncing Miss Lee’s name by way of
introducing us, she added that she had a
great many duties to attend to, and quitted
the berth.
CHAPTER X ALICE LEE
A young lady was seated in a comfortable
armchair. A handsome skin marked like a
leopard’s covered her knees and feet, and in
her lap was an open volume. She had a
great quantity of rich brown hair, a portion
of which was plaited in loops upon the back,
whilst the rest crowned her head in coils. I
had no memory of fair faces with which to
compare hers; to my darkened mind it was
the first beautiful face I had seen, and as she
looked up at me, smiling, with her lips in
the act of parting to address me, I gazed
at her with wonder and admiration and
pity.
Oh, what a sweet, melancholy, exquisitely
beautiful face was Alice Lee’s! There was
death upon it, and it seemed the more beautiful
for that. Her eyes were large, of a soft
grey, with a sad expression of appeal in them
that was never absent whether she was grave
or whether she smiled. The hollows were
deep and dark-tinctured, as though they
reflected the shadow of a green leaf. Her
lineaments were of perfect delicacy: the
mouth small and slightly contracted, the
teeth brilliant pearls, the cheeks sunken,
slightly touched with hectic, and the complexion
of the sort of transparency that makes
one imagine if a light were held within the
cheek the glow of it would shine through
the flesh. The brow was faultlessly shaped,
and the blue veins showed upon it as in
marble. Her hands were cruelly thin and the
white fingers were without rings. She was
dressed in what now might be called a
teagown, and it was easy to see that her
attire was wholly dictated by considerations
of comfort.
Her smile was full of a sweetness that was
made sad by her eyes, as she said, ‘I am so
glad to see you. Forgive me for not rising.
You see how my mother has swathed my
feet. She will be here presently. Where
will you sit? There is a chair; bring it
close to me. I have been longing to see
you! I have heard so much of you from
Mrs. Richards.’
I sat down close beside her, and she took
my hand and held it whilst she gazed at me.
‘You are kind to wish to see me,’ said I.
‘It is happiness to me to meet you. I am
very lonely. I cannot recover my memory.
It is terrible to feel, that if I had my memory
I would know—I would know—oh, but not
to be able to know! Have I a home? Are
there persons dear to me waiting for me, and
wondering what has become of me? Not to
be able to know!’ said I, with my voice
sinking into a whisper.
‘Yes, it is terrible,’ she exclaimed gently.
‘But remember these failures of memory
do not last. Again and again they occur
after severe illnesses. But when is it that
the memory does not return?’
‘But when it returns, should it return,’
said I, ‘what may it not tell me that I have
lost for ever?’
‘But it will soon return,’ she exclaimed,
‘and things are not lost for ever in a short
time. How long is it since you have been
without memory? Not yet a fortnight, Mr.
McEwan told us. No! our minds would
need to be long blank for us to awaken
and discover that things dear to us are lost
for ever. It is only by death,’ she added,
softening her voice and smiling, ‘that things
are lost, and not then for ever.’
I looked at her! at her sunken eyes, at
her drawn mouth, at the malignant bloom
her cheeks were touched with, at her thin,
her miserably thin hands, and I thought
to myself, how selfish am I to immediately
intrude my sorrow upon this poor girl, who
knows that she is fading from her mother’s
side, and in whose heart therefore must be
the secret, consuming grief of an approaching
eternal farewell. Her wretchedness must be
greater than mine, because her trouble is
positively defined to her mind, whereas mine
is a deep shadow, out of which I can evoke
nothing to comfort me or to distress me, to
gladden my heart or to break it.
She gazed at me earnestly, and with a
touching look of sad affection, as though
she had long known me. I was about to
speak.
‘There is something,’ said she, ‘in your
face that reminds me of a sister I lost four
years ago. It is the expression, but only
the expression. Mother will see it, I am
sure.’
‘Was your sister like you?’ I asked.
‘No, you would not have known us for
sisters. Yet we were twins, and it is seldom
that twins do not closely resemble each
other.’
I bent my gaze downwards. I was
sensible of a sudden inward, haunting sense
of trouble, a sightless stirring of the mind,
that affected me as a pain might.
‘When I look at you,’ she continued, ‘I
fully agree with Mr. McEwan that you are
not nearly so old as your white hair makes
you appear. Most people look older as the
months roll on, but as time passes you will look
younger. Even your hair may regain its
natural colour, which the doctor says is
black. How strange it will be for you to
look into the glass and behold another face
in it! But the change will be too gradual
for surprise.’
‘You are returning to England in this
ship, I believe?’ said I.
‘Yes, we engaged this cabin for the round
voyage, as it is called. A long course of
sea-air has been prescribed for me. A
steamer would have carried us too swiftly
for our purpose. You can tell what my
malady is?’
She was interrupted by a little fit of
coughing.
‘What is your malady, Miss Lee?’
‘It is consumption,’ she answered.
‘I could not have told. I try to think
and to realise; but without recollection how
can one even guess? But now that you
tell me it is consumption, I understand the
word, and I see the disease in you. I
hope it is not bad; I hope the voyage will
cure it.’
‘It is very bad,’ she answered, looking
down, and speaking softly, and closing the
volume upon her lap, ‘and I fear the voyage
will not cure it. But I fear only for my
mother’s sake. I have no desire to live as I
am, ill as I am. Yet I pray that I may not
die at sea. I shrink from the idea of being
buried at sea. But how melancholy is our
conversation! You come to me full of a
dreadful trouble of your own, and here am
I increasing your sadness by my talk! Oh!
I wish you could tell me something about
yourself. But we know your initials. That
is surely a very great thing. I am going
to take the letters “A. C.”; and put all the
surnames and Christian names against them
that I can think of. One of them might
be your name.’
‘I fear I should not know it if I saw it,’
said I.
‘We can but try,’ said she, smiling; ‘we
must try everything. How proud it would
make me to be the first to help you to
remember.’
‘What did your twin sister die of?’
‘Of consumption. Mother believes that
such a voyage as I am taking would have
saved her life. I fear not—I fear not. My
father died of that malady. He was a shipowner
at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and we live
at Newcastle, or close to it, at a place
called Jesmond, and I was hoping before I
met you that I should hear an accent in
your speech to tell me that you belong to
our part of England, for I believe I should
know a Northumbrian, at least a Tyneside
Northumbrian, anywhere, no matter how
cultivated his or her speech might be. But
you do not belong to our part.’
‘Have you sisters living?’
‘None. I am now the only child. Mother
has been a widow six years. But our talk
is again melancholy.’
‘No, it is not melancholy—indeed not.
It interests me. I have longed to meet
someone like you. I do not feel lonely
with you,’ and as I took her hand the tears
stood in my eyes.
She feigned not to observe that I was
crying. ‘Is not this a fine cabin?’ she
exclaimed cheerfully, gazing about her; ‘it
is the biggest in the whole row. It is
better off for furniture, too, than the others.
What a fine large window that is, and how
glad I shall be when I am able to keep
it open and feel the sweet tropic wind
pouring in! I am longing to get on deck,
but the doctor is afraid of my catching a
chill, and he tells me I must wait until
we arrive at a certain latitude. I hope
you will often come and sit with me. I
will read to you—it does not fatigue me
to read aloud, a little at a time.’
‘Indeed, I will often sit with you,’ said I.
‘Where is your cabin?’ I told her. ‘I
hope it is comfortable. But I am sure Captain
Ladmore would wish you to be comfortable.
He seems a most kind-hearted man,
and he has his grief too. What could be
sadder than for a sailor, after an absence of
many months, to return to his home full of
love and expectation, and find his dear ones,
his wife and his only child, dead? I felt truly
grateful to him when I heard that he did not
mean to send you home until you had your
memory.’
‘And I, too, am grateful,’ I exclaimed. ‘I
am without money, and in a strange place I
should be like one that is blind; and when I
arrived, to whom should I turn? What should
I be able to do? If I knew, oh, if I but knew
that my home was in England!’
The door was quietly opened, and a
middle-aged lady entered. She was fresh
from the deck, and wore a bonnet and cloak.
She was a little woman with soft grey hair,
and with some look of her daughter in her.
Her gown was of silk, and her jewellery old-fashioned.
She did not wait for her daughter
to introduce me, but at once approached with
her hand advanced, saying she knew who I
was; and with slow deliberate speech and
soft voice she asked me a number of questions
too commonplace to repeat, though
they were full of feeling and of good-nature.
‘Is your head badly hurt?’ she asked,
gazing with an expression of maternal anxiety
at the bandage.
‘I do not think so,’ said I. ‘I have not
yet seen the injury. I hope I am not greatly
disfigured.’
‘I do not think that you are disfigured,’
said Miss Lee. ‘The doctor says it is your
eyebrow that was hurt.’
‘I believe the upper part of my nose is
injured,’ I said.
‘How was it that you were hurt?’ asked
Mrs. Lee, seating herself, and viewing me
with a face of tender commiseration.
I answered that I supposed the boat’s
mast fell upon me when I was unconscious.
‘Might not such a blow account for
your losing your memory?’ said she,
speaking in a soft, slow voice delightful to
listen to.
‘I fear it matters not what took my
memory away,’ said I, with a melancholy
smile; ‘it is gone.’
‘It will return,’ said Miss Lee.
‘Do you remember nothing that happened
before you were found in the open
boat?’ asked Mrs. Lee.
‘Nothing,’ I returned.
She looked at her daughter, and tossed
her hands.
‘I hope we shall be much together,’ said
Miss Lee. ‘Mother, we must endeavour to
recover Miss C——‘s memory for her. You
must be patient,’ said she, smiling at me.
‘You will have to bear with me, I shall
scheme and scheme for you, and every
scheme I can think of we must try.’
‘It will be an occupation for you, Alice,
and a beautiful one,’ said her mother, and she
suddenly caught her breath, as though to
prevent a sigh from escaping her.
‘But,’ continued Miss Lee, ‘I shall not be
satisfied with Miss C—— as a name. It will
do very well for you to be known by in the
ship, but it is stiff, and I shall not be able to
call you by it. There are so many names of
girls beginning with A. Let me see. There
is my own name, Alice; then there is
Agatha, and then there is Agnes——’
I met Mrs. Lee’s eyes fixed upon me.
‘Do you seem to recollect any of these
names?’ she asked. ‘I hoped, by the expression
on your face——’ She hesitated,
and I answered:—
‘The names are familiar sounds, but I
cannot say that any one of them is mine.’
‘We must invent something better than
Miss C——,’ said her daughter.
‘There is plenty of time, my love,’ exclaimed
Mrs. Lee. ‘The captain is going to
keep you on board,’ she continued, addressing
me in her soft, slow-spoken accents, ‘until
your memory returns. It may return when
we have arrived at a part of the ocean where
it will be the same whether Captain Ladmore
keeps you with him or sends you home by
another ship. For instance, if your memory
were to return when we were within a week’s
sail of Sydney, it would be better for you to
remain in this ship, where you will have
friends, than to return in a strange vessel,
though you might save a few weeks by doing
so. In that case we shall be together, for
Alice and I are going round the world in the
Deal Castle. Were you ever in Australia?’
‘Oh, mother! that is an idle question,’
exclaimed Miss Lee.
‘Yes, I forgot,’ cried Mrs. Lee, with a
look of pain. ‘Oh, memory, memory, how
little do we value it when we possess it!
How all conversation is dependent upon it!
I have somewhere read that it is sweeter than
hope, because hope is uncertain and in the
future, but our memories are our own, many
of them are dear, and they cannot be taken
from us. But it is not so,’ said she, looking
at me.
‘Hope is better than memory,’ said Miss
Lee. ‘It is yours, and you must suffer
nothing to weaken it in you or to take it
from you.’
The mother and daughter then conversed
together about me, and asked me many questions,
and listened with breathless interest
and with touching sympathy to the account I
gave them of my having been locked up all
night in the cabin of the French brig. And
I also told them how generously and kindly
the young Frenchman, Alphonse, had behaved,
how tender had been his care of me, and
how he had been hurried away from the
attempt to preserve my life by his uncle’s
threats to leave him behind in the sinking
vessel.
‘I am astonished,’ said Mrs. Lee, ‘that
you should be able to remember all these
circumstances, whilst you cannot recollect
anything that happened before.’
‘But does not that mean that there will
be something for me to work upon?’ said
Miss Lee.
Her mother arose and, coming to my side,
gently laid her hand upon my arm, and,
looking into my face, said, ‘Alice and I know
that there must be many things which you
stand in need of. It could not be otherwise.
Were you a princess it would be the same.
You and my daughter are about of the same
figure; you, perhaps, are a little stouter.’
She again caught her breath to arrest a sigh.
‘For so long a voyage as this we naturally
brought a great deal of luggage with us,
and I wish you to allow us to lend you
anything that you may require.’ I thanked
her. ‘Most of our luggage is in the hold,’
she continued. ‘I will ask Mrs. Richards
to get some of our boxes brought on deck,
and Alice shall select what she thinks you
want. There is nothing of mine, I fear,
that would be of any use,’ and she looked
down her figure with a smile.
‘But we must let others have the pleasure
of helping, too, mother,’ said Miss Lee.
‘Mrs. Richards says there are several ladies
who desire to be of use.’
‘They shall lend what they like,’ said
Mrs. Lee.
‘I am tiring you, Miss Lee,’ said I, rising.
‘I have made a long visit.’
‘Have you been on deck?’ said Mrs. Lee.
I answered that I had not yet been on
deck.
‘Will you come with me for a little
turn,’ she exclaimed. ‘I will introduce you
to some of the passengers. I know most of
them now.’
‘I will accompany you with pleasure,’
said I, then faltered, and felt some colour in
my cheeks as I glanced at a looking-glass
opposite.
‘You are welcome to my hat and jacket,’
said Miss Lee; ‘will you wear them?’ she
added, with a sweet look of eagerness.
I took off the cap, and put on the hat, and
then the jacket; but the jacket did not fit
me—it was too tight, and it would not button.
‘Here is a warm shawl,’ said Mrs. Lee.
‘Does not Miss C—— remind you of
Edith?’ exclaimed the daughter.
Mrs. Lee looked hard at me, and, opening
the door, passed out.
‘You will come and see me again soon?’
said Miss Lee.
‘I will come,’ I answered, ‘as often as you
care to send for me.’
When we had walked a few paces down
the saloon towards the aftermost stairs Mrs.
Lee stopped, and, putting her hand on my
arm, exclaimed, ‘Oh, my poor child!’ I
imagined for the moment that the exclamation
referred to me. She continued: ‘She
is the only one that is left to me now. My
heart breaks when I look at her. I try to be
composed, and talk lightly on indifferent
matters, but the effort is often more than
I can bear. Do you think she looks very
ill?’
‘She looks ill,’ I answered, ‘but not very
ill.’
‘I ought to have taken her a voyage some
time ago—they tell me so, at least. I have
wintered at Madeira with her, and we spent
last winter in the south of France. But they
say that a voyage is worth all those resorts
and refuges put together. Is she not sweet?
She suffers so patiently, too.’
I longed to say something soothing, to
utter some hope, but my mind gave me no
ideas. Mrs. Lee looked at me whilst I stood
at her side with my head hung, fruitlessly
striving with my mind that I might say something
to console her. ‘I am keeping you
standing,’ cried she, and without further
words we went on deck.
It was a little before the hour of noon.
The sea was a wide field of throbbing blue,
laced with foam, every little billow curling
along the course the ship was pursuing, and
on high was a wide and sparkling heaven
of azure, along which many small clouds,
like puffs from musketry, were sailing.
Warmth but no heat was in the sunshine.
The great ship was travelling along almost
upright. She regularly and lightly curtseyed,
but did not roll. Her sails shone like satin,
and on one side they hung far over the
water, hollowing low down to a long pole or
boom, and the reflection of them in the water
under this boom was as though there was a
silver cloud in the sea sweeping along with us.
There were no awnings; the sun was not
yet hot enough for them. The white planks
of the decks sparkled freshly like dry sand,
and the shadows of the rigging ruled them
with streaks of violet as though drawn by the
hand. At the wheel stood a sailor in white
trousers and a straw hat; he munched upon
a piece of tobacco, and his little reddish eyes
were sometimes directed at the compass and
sometimes up at the sails, and never at anything
else, as though there was nothing more
to be seen. Not far from him, at the rail that
protected the side, stood the fine tall figure of
Captain Ladmore; he held a bright brass
sextant, which he occasionally lifted to his
eye. Some paces away from him was the
short, square, solid form of Mr. Harris, the
first officer, and he too held a sextant, though
it was not so bright and polished as the
captain’s. The raised deck on which I found
myself—termed by sailors the poop, and to
be henceforth so called by me—seemed to be
covered with moving figures, though, after
gazing awhile, I observed that they were not
so numerous as they at first appeared. They
were ladies and gentlemen and a few children;
there was much noise of talking, a frequent gay
laugh, a constant fluttering of female raiment.
I stood stock-still at the side of Mrs. Lee,
staring about me, and for some moments no
one seemed to observe us. At any time
in my life such a spectacle would have
been in the highest degree novel and of the
deepest interest. Now it affected me as it
would a child. It induced a simple emotion
of wonder and delight—the sort of wonder
and delight that makes young people clap
their hands. Beyond the poop was a deck
which I could not see; but in the bows of the
ship was a raised deck, called the forecastle,
and it was crowded with the emigrant folks
sunning themselves, the men lounging, squatting,
and smoking, the women, in queer
bonnets or bright handkerchiefs tied round
their heads, eagerly talking. I looked up at
the sails and around at the sea, and at the
scene on deck, brightly coloured by the clothes
of the ladies.
‘How wonderful! How beautiful!’ I
exclaimed.
‘Is she not a noble ship?’ said Mrs. Lee.
The captain turned his head and saw us.
He crossed the deck, and asked me in his
grave, kindly way how I did. I am glad
you have come on deck,’ said he. ‘The
mind will grow strong as the body grows
strong; but the sun is nearly at his meridian,
and I must keep an eye upon him,’ and he
stepped back to take his place at the rail.
I caught Mr. Harris, the first officer,
inspecting me furtively. When our gaze met
he pulled off his cap, and then, with a manner
of abrupt energy, reapplied himself to pointing
his sextant at the sea.
‘You have made the acquaintance of Mr.
Harris, the chief officer?’ said Mrs. Lee.
‘I met him on deck here at one o’clock
this morning,’ I answered. ‘We held a short
conversation, and he is of opinion that a
violent shock, such as my falling overboard,
would restore my memory.’
‘Sailors are a singular people,’ said Mrs.
Lee. ‘They love to give opinions on anything
which does not concern their profession,
yet outside their profession they know little—often
nothing. Many sea-captains used to
visit our house in my poor husband’s lifetime,
and out of their talk I might have collected
quite a bookful of absurd ideas and laughable
superstitions.’
But now my presence on deck had been
observed, and in a few moments a number of
the passengers gathered about me. I cannot
recollect what was said. I was confused by
many eyes being bent upon me. One hoped
that I was quite recovered, another congratulated
me upon my preservation, a third
marvelled that I had not died of fright in the
cabin of the French brig. Many such things
were said, and I had to shake hands with
several of the friendly people. There were
twenty-five or thirty passengers, and, though
a few held aloof, the crowd about me seemed
a large one.
A stout, handsomely-dressed, middle-aged
woman in a large hat exclaimed, ‘Mrs. Lee, I
hope the poor lady understands that whatever
I can lend her she may command.’
A tall gentleman with long whiskers and a
white wide-awake and an eyeglass, said, ‘My
wife is below in her cabin. It is her wish to be
of use to the lady. I contend that every living
person on board this ship is responsible for
her present situation. That is to say, morally
responsible. My wife clearly recognises that,
and is therefore anxious to be of use.’
The captain uttered an exclamation, Mr.
Harris raised his voice in a cry, and immediately
eight chimes, signifying the hour of
noon, were struck upon a silver-toned bell in
some part of the ship forward. The captain
and first officer left the deck. In twos and
threes the passengers fell away, leaving me to
Mrs. Lee. She asked me to give her my
arm, and we quietly paced a part of the deck
that was unoccupied.
But though the passengers had drawn
off, they continued to observe me. My appearance
doubtless struck them as remarkable.
My figure was that of a fine young woman
of five-and-twenty, and my face, with its
bandaged brow, its thin white hair, its fine
network of wrinkles—not, indeed, so minutely
defined as the delicate lines had shown when
I first observed them on the brig, but clear
enough to make a sort of mask of my countenance
when closely looked into—my face, I
say, might have passed for a person’s of any
age from forty to sixty. There were two tall
handsome girls who incessantly watched me
as I walked with Mrs. Lee.
‘I hope,’ said I, ‘the people will not
continue to stare. It makes me feel nervous
to be looked at, and it must come to my
waiting until it is dark to take the air on
deck.’
‘No rudeness is meant,’ said Mrs. Lee.
‘You are the heroine of the hour, and are
paying the penalty of being famous. Fame is
short-lived, and you will not long be looked
at.’
‘Who is that little man near the boat
there, with fur upon his coat? He is unable
to remove his eyes from me.’
‘He is Sir Frederick Thompson,’ replied
Mrs. Lee in her soft, deliberate voice. ‘Do
not look at him. I have heard who he is, and
will tell you. He is a City knight. I believe
he deals in provisions. I heard him tell
Captain Ladmore that after being the most
prosperous man in the City of London for
years everything suddenly went wrong.
People who owed him money became bankrupt,
a confidential clerk absconded, the price
of the commodities he dealt in fell, and his
goods being chiefly perishable, he had to sell
them at a heavy loss. He thereupon made
up his mind to go a voyage, hoping to find
that things had righted themselves by the
time that he returned. A rather rash resolution,
I think.’
‘And who are those two gentlemen who
seem to be arguing near the rigging at the
end of the deck on the other side?’
‘The gentleman with the yellow beard
and the ill-fitting clothes is Mr. Wedmold;
and the shorter man, whose stiff stickup
collars will not enable him to turn his head, is
Mr. Clack. I do not know what their callings
are, I am sure. They are constantly arguing,
and always on the same subject. Whenever
they get together they argue on literature.
I hope they will keep to literature, and not
break out into religion. They argue across
the table at meal-times. It matters not to
them who listens.’
I glanced at the brace of gentlemen with
languid interest, and then directing my eyes
at the sea, said, ‘Whilst my memory sleeps,
Mrs. Lee, my life must be like that circle.
Wherever I look I see the same thing.’
‘I do not in the least despair of you,’ she
answered. ‘I was talking to Mr. McEwan
yesterday on the subject of memory, and we
agreed that total loss was almost always associated
with insanity. Now, Miss C——, you
are not one bit mad. You can reason perfectly
well, you converse with excellent good sense.
Less than half what you have undergone—though
we can only imagine the character of
it—less than half, I say—nay, the mere being
locked up all night in the cabin of a ship that
one believed to be sinking would suffice to
drive ninety-nine persons out of every hundred
hopelessly mad for life. You have escaped
with the loss of your memory. That is to say,
with a partial loss. But the memory is a
single faculty, and if one portion of it be
active and healthy, as it is in your case, I
cannot believe that the remainder of it is
dead; therefore I do not at all despair of
you.’
I listened with impassioned attention to
her gently-spoken, slowly and deliberately
pronounced, words. At that moment a lady
came out of the saloon through the hinder
opening in the deck called the ‘companion-way.’
She was a lady of about forty years of
age, and she wore a handsome hat, around
which were curled some ostrich feathers.
Her hair was of the colour of flax, her eyes a
pale blue, and her face fat and pale. She
gave a theatrical start on seeing me, and then
with a wide smile approached us.
‘Oh! Mrs. Lee,’ she exclaimed, ‘your
companion, I am sure, is the shipwrecked
lady. I have been dying to see her. May I
address her?’
‘Let me introduce Mrs. Webber,’ said
Mrs. Lee. ‘Mrs. Webber is good enough to
take a great interest in you, Miss C——.
She wishes to share in the pleasure of being
useful to you.’
‘Yes, if you please,’ cried Mrs. Webber.
‘Do not let me keep you standing. There
are trunksful of things belonging to me somewhere
in the ship, and if you will make out a
list of your wants my maid shall see that they
are supplied. And you are to be called
Miss C——? How truly romantic! Mrs. Lee,
I would give anything to be known by an
initial only. What could be more delightfully
mysterious than to go through life as an
initial? Oh, I shall want to ask you so many
questions, Miss C——.’
‘Mrs. Webber is a poetess,’ said Mrs. Lee.
‘My daughter is very much pleased with your
poem, “The Lonely Heart,” Mrs. Webber. It
is truly affecting.’
‘I was certain she would like it,’ answered
Mrs. Webber; ‘yet it is not so good as the
“Lonely Soul.” The first I wrote with a pen
dipped in simple tears, the other with a pen
dipped in tears of blood. What a delightful
subject Miss C—— would make for a poem—not
a short poem, but a volume.’
‘There may be some sorrows which lie too
deep for poetry,’ said Mrs. Lee.
‘Too deep!’ cried Mrs. Webber.
‘Yes, in the sense that there are thoughts
which lie too deep for tears,’ said Mrs. Lee.
‘That line by Longfellow I never could
understand,’ said Mrs. Webber.
‘It is by Wordsworth,’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee.
‘Too deep!’ cried Mrs. Webber again;
‘why, I should have imagined that nothing
could be too deep or too high for poetry.
Take Browning; doesn’t he go deep? Take
Shelley; didn’t he go high? Over and over
again they disappear, and what’s a surer sign
of a great poet than to sink or soar out of
sight? Any simple fellow can make himself
understood. The sublime in writing is quite
another affair. Don’t you agree with me,
Miss C——?’
‘I am sorry I am not able to understand
you,’ I answered.
I observed Mrs. Lee give Mrs. Webber a
look. The latter cried, ‘Oh yes, I now remember.
And yet, do you know, as I was
telling my husband not an hour ago, I cannot
see that it is very dreadful to be without
memory. I mean to say, that it cannot be
very dreadful to forget one’s past. To be
able to recollect enough to go on with is
really all one wants. The condition of a
mind that cannot look back, but that can
look forward, must surely be romantically
delightful; because forward everything is
fresh; all the flowers are springing, there are
no graves; but behind—for my part, I hate
looking back.’
Mrs. Lee muttered low for my ear only:
‘This lady is no poetess.’
‘You will by and by let me ask you many
questions I hope, Miss C——,’ exclaimed Mrs.
Webber; ‘I should love to exactly realise
your state of mind. Of course I am highly
imaginative, but to me there is something
very beautiful in your situation. You remember
nothing save what has happened to
you upon the sea, and therefore you may
most truly be considered a genuine daughter
of old ocean, as much so as if you had risen
out of the foam like some ancient goddess
whose name I forget. I shall, perhaps, call
my poem about you “The Bride of the Deep.”
I might imagine that old ocean having fallen
in love with you had erased your memory of
the land, that you shall know him only and
be wholly his. What do you think of that
idea, Mrs. Lee?’ and she turned her light
blue eyes with a sparkle in them upon my
companion.
‘I think our friend’s sorrow is of too
solemn a character to make a book of,’
answered Mrs. Lee.
This answer seemed to slightly abash Mrs.
Webber, who, after gazing around her a little
while in silence, suddenly exclaimed: ‘There
are those two wretched men, Mr. Wedmold
and Mr. Clack, at it again. They stood
yesterday afternoon outside my cabin where
I was endeavouring to get some sleep, having
passed a wretched night, and for a whole hour
they argued upon Dickens and Thackeray—which
was the greater author—which was the
greater novelist. I coughed and coughed but
they took no notice. I shall certainly ask
Mr. Webber to speak to them if they argue
outside my cabin door again. They not only
lose their temper, their arguments are childish.
Besides, how sickening is this subject of the
relative merits of Dickens and Thackeray!
Really, to hear people talk now-a-days, one
would suppose that the only writers whose
names occur in English literature are Dickens
and Thackeray. But the truth is, Mrs. Lee,
though books are very plentiful in this age,
people read little. But they read Dickens
and Thackeray, and having mastered these
two names they consider themselves qualified
to talk about literature. I am truly sick of
the subject; and to have to listen for a whole
hour when I am trying to get some sleep! I
shall certainly ask Mr. Webber to speak to
those two men.’
She then declared her intention of enjoying
many a long chat with me, repeating that she
had an extraordinary imagination, with which,
should my memory continue lifeless, she would
undertake to construct a past that would
answer every purpose of conversation, reference,
and so forth. ‘Indeed,’ she exclaimed,
‘I believe with a little thinking, I should be
able to create a past for you so close to the
truth as, figuratively speaking, to light you to
the very door of your home.’
CHAPTER XI I AM SUPPLIED WITH CLOTHES
‘I did not think,’ said Mrs. Lee, when we
were alone, ‘that Mrs. Webber had so good
an opinion of herself. But she is well meaning,
and she will be useful to you.’
‘Do you think her imagination will help
me?’ said I.
‘Until your memory returns,’ she answered;
‘what could she tell you that you would be
able to say yes or no to? But let her question
you. On a dark morning, without a
compass, one can never tell in what quarter
the day will break.’
At this moment Captain Ladmore arrived
on deck, and he immediately joined us.
‘I hope, madam,’ said he, addressing me,
‘to have the pleasure of seeing you at the
saloon table to-day.’
‘You are extremely good,’ I answered,
‘but I do not yet feel equal to sitting at the
saloon table. The privacy of my cabin and
the society of Mrs. and Miss Lee, whenever
they will endure me, are all that I wish.
Besides, I cannot forget——’ I faltered and
was silent.
‘What cannot you forget?’ said he gravely.
‘I am not a passenger,’ said I, looking
down.
‘What is in your mind when you pronounce
the word passenger?’ he asked.
‘A passenger is one who pays,’ I answered.
‘How do you know that?’ said he.
‘I know it,’ said I, after thinking a little;
‘because Miss Lee told me that her mother
had hired the cabin for the round voyage.’
‘Ha!’ he exclaimed, exchanging a look
with Mrs. Lee. ‘Well?’ he continued, slightly
smiling, ‘you will consider yourself a passenger
who does not pay. You are the guest
of the ship. Some ships are hospitable and
liberal hostesses, and the owners of the
Deal Castle would wish her to be one of
them. Do, pray, be perfectly easy on that
score.’
I bowed my head, murmuring a ‘Thank
you.’
‘There is one consoling part to be borne
in mind,’ said he, addressing Mrs. Lee; ‘one
fact that should tend to console and soothe
this lady: it is this—she is single. She might
have been a married woman driven by disaster
from her husband, and, worse still, from her
children. But put it that she has parents—it
may not be so, who can tell that her parents
are living? But to be sundered from a mother
and a father to whom, in the course of time,
one is certain to return, is not like being torn
from one’s children. This is a consideration
to console you, Miss C——.’
‘Do not cry,’ said Mrs. Lee, taking my arm.
‘I fully agree with the captain. Only think
how it would be if, instead of being single,
you were a mother cruelly and strangely
taken away from your children.’
At this point, Sir Frederick Thompson,
who had been intently surveying us from the
other side of the deck, approached. He bowed,
and lifted a little white wideawake.
‘I beg pardon for intruding,’ said he,
‘but I should like to ask this lady a question.’
‘If it refers to anything that is past, Sir
Frederick,’ exclaimed Captain Ladmore, ‘I
fear she will not be able to satisfy your
curiosity.’
‘There’s no curiosity,’ said Sir Frederick;
‘it’s merely this: when I was sheriff, Lady
Thompson and me, for my poor wife was then
living, were invited to the ’ouse of Lord ——,’
and he named a certain nobleman; ‘and I
remember that at supper I sat next to his
lordship’s sister-in-law, Lady Loocy Calthorpe,
whose father was the third Earl ——,’ and
here he pronounced the name of another
nobleman. ‘What I wanted to say is that
this lady is the very himage of Lady Loocy,
excepting that Lady Loocy ’adn’t white ’air.
Now, mam,’ said he, addressing me; ‘of
course you’re not Lady Loocy; but you might
be a relative, for Lady Loocy had several
sisters and a great number of cousins.’
‘I do not know who I am,’ I answered.
‘How long ago is it since you sat beside
Lady Lucy Calthorpe at supper, Sir Frederick?’
asked the captain.
‘Why, getting on for two years and an
’arf.’
‘And you remember her distinctly enough
to enable you to find a likeness to her in this
lady?’
‘God bless you, captain, yes. If it wasn’t
for the white ’air, I should say that this lady
was Lady Loocy herself.’
‘Is Calthorpe the family name of the
Earl of ——?’ said Mrs. Lee.
‘Certainly, it is,’ answered Sir Frederick;
‘you’ll find it in the Peerage.’
‘The lady’s initials are A. C.,’ said the
captain.
Sir Frederick struck the palm of his hand
with his clenched fist, and his little eyes shone
triumphantly as he said: ‘I’d like to make a
bet, captain, that you’ve had the honour of
preserving the life of a Calthorpe. Such a
likeness as I see is only to be found in
families.’
‘The accident of the lady being on board
the French brig is accounted for,’ said the
captain, eyeing me thoughtfully and earnestly;
‘she was rescued out of an open boat. But
where did that boat come from?’
‘Would not Miss C——’s handkerchief, the
handkerchief you spoke of, Captain Ladmore,
that has her initials, would it not be marked
with something more than plain initials if she
had rank?’ said Mrs. Lee.
‘I cannot tell,’ answered Captain Ladmore.
‘What should a simple sea captain know of
such things?’
‘The haristocracy,’ said Sir Frederick,
‘mark their linen all ways. I’m hable to
speak with authority. At a Mansion ’Ouse
ball a friend picked up an ’andkerchief, a
beautiful lace ’andkerchief, and brought it to
my poor wife. The word “Fanny” was worked
in the corner and that was my wife’s name,
and he thought the ’andkerchief was ’ers. But
it didn’t belong to ’er at all. It was the
property of Lady —— whose ’usband ’ad
been raised to the peerage in the preceding
year. There was no coronet on that ’andkerchief.’
Observing that I was expected to speak, I
exclaimed: ‘The names Sir Frederick mentions
suggest nothing to me.’
‘Well, all that I can say is,’ exclaimed
Sir Frederick, ‘that the likeness is absolutely
startling.’
He again lifted his little white wideawake,
and, crossing the deck, joined a group of
passengers with whom he entered into conversation.
‘There is nothing for it but to wait,’ said
Captain Ladmore.
‘If your name were Calthorpe,’ said Mrs.
Lee, ‘surely the utterance of it would excite
some sensations, however weak, in your mind.’
‘One should say so,’ remarked the captain.
‘I fear,’ said I, with much agitation, ‘that
if I were to see my name fully written I
should not know it. And yet it is strange!’
‘What is strange?’ asked Mrs. Lee.
‘You will not think me vain for repeating
it. There can be no vanity in a poor miserable
outcast such as I. But I remember that
one of the people of the French brig, the
young man Alphonse, who had been a waiter,
and who had attended upon a great many
English people—I remember him once saying
he was persuaded that I was a woman of
title, or, if not a lady of title, that I belonged
to the English aristocracy. I cannot imagine
why he should have thought so.’
‘Well,’ said the captain, smiling at Mrs.
Lee, ‘it may be that we have preserved
the life of the daughter of an Earl, or
better still of a Duke. Anything higher
we must not hope for. But enough for the
present, at all events, that Miss C—— should
be a fellow-creature in distress;’ and with
a bow that seemed to have gained something
in respectfulness, but nothing in
kindness, he walked away.
The luncheon-bell rang, and we descended
into the saloon. Mrs. Lee begged me to
join the company at table. ‘I will ask the
steward,’ she said, ‘to find you a place next
to my daughter.’ But I entreated her to
excuse me.
‘I do not like to show myself in company
with this bandage on,’ I said, ‘and I feel
weak and shy, and my talk I fear is often
childish. I hope to join you in a few days,’
and thus speaking I put her daughter’s hat
and the shawl she had lent me into her
hands, and made my way to my berth.
When I entered my berth I sat down
to rest myself and reflect. I felt weary.
The fresh air had rendered me somewhat
languid, and I had overtaxed my strength
with the several conversations I had held with
one and another on the poop. I said to
myself, can it be that the little man with
the fur on his coat is right? Is my name
Calthorpe, and am I a lady of title, and is
my home actually in England? And then
I hunted in my mind for an idea to help
me, but I found none. I groped, as it were,
with my inner vision over the thick black
curtain that had descended upon my past;
but nothing, no, not the most phantasmal
outline of recollection glimmered upon the
sable folds of my mind. The cries of my
heart were unanswered. No echo was
returned from the dreadful silent midnight
that hung upon my spirit. I looked upon
my naked hands; I drew forth my purse,
and for the twentieth time gazed at it, and
at the money in it; I examined the pocket
handkerchief and mused upon the initials
in the corner, and whilst I was thus occupied,
Mrs. Richards entered with my lunch.
‘I was sure,’ said she, ‘you would wish
to remain private for some little time yet.
I hope I have brought you what you like.
This red wine is Burgundy. Mr. McEwan
bade me give it you; he says it is a very
feeding wine. And what do you think I
have just heard?’
‘I cannot imagine,’ said I.
‘Why, Mrs. Webber stopped me as I was
passing through the saloon, and said, “What
do you think, Mrs. Richards? Sir Frederick
Thompson believes he has found out who
Miss C—— is. And who do you think he says
she is?” “I do not know, madam,” said I.
“A Calthorpe,” said she. “What is a
Calthorpe?” said I. “A Calthorpe,” she
answered, “is a member of one of the oldest
families in England. The Earl of —— is a
Calthorpe, and Sir Frederick finds an extraordinary
likeness between Miss C—— and Lady
Lucy Calthorpe. He is quite satisfied that
she is not Lady Lucy herself, because her
ladyship’s hair is brown, not white, but he
is willing to bet she is a Calthorpe.” “As
for the hair being white,” said I, “if Miss C——
is Lady Lucy Calthorpe, she has undergone
quite enough to change the colour of her
hair. But how could Sir Frederick,” said I,
“be sure of her with a bandage on?” “Well,
he is sure,” said Mrs. Webber, “sure I mean
that she is a Calthorpe,” and this was all
that passed; the passengers were arriving
to take their places, and I came away.
What do you think?’
‘Do not ask me, Mrs. Richards. I am
unable to think.’
‘Poor dear! Let me pour you out a
glass of wine. It will be strange if you
should prove a lady of title. And why
should you not be a lady of title? You have
the appearance of one. The moment I saw
you I said to myself—and I said it to myself
before I heard your story—“Though she has
come out of a nasty little brig, I can see
that she is a born lady.” Do you know
that you have left your cap behind you?’
‘It is in Mrs. Lee’s cabin,’ said I.
‘Try and eat your lunch,’ exclaimed the
stewardess, ‘and after lunch, if I were you,
I would lie down, and endeavour to get some
sleep.’
I passed the afternoon alone. I lay in
my bunk, unable to read, dozing a little,
and when I was not dozing strutting with
recollection, and often with fits of horror
and despair dreadful as madness. Some time
near five the stewardess looked in to say
that Mrs. Webber wished to visit me. She
was anxious to have a long quiet chat.
Would I receive her? I answered no. I
should require, I said, to feel very much
better to be able to endure a long quiet
chat with Mrs. Webber.
‘She asked me to give you this book,’
said Mrs. Richards. ‘She said she had
marked the pages which she would like you
to read.’
I took the book, and when Mrs. Richards
was gone, languidly opened it, and found
that it was a collection of verses written by
Eleanor Webber, and dedicated ‘To my
Husband.’ Two pages were dog’s-eared, and
one of them contained a poem called the
‘Lonely Heart,’ and the other a poem called
‘The Lonely Soul.’ I tried to read these
verses, but could not understand them. They
jingled unmeaningly, though not unmusically,
in a melancholy key. Why do they tease
one with such stuff? I said to myself, putting
the book down.
The wind had increased during the afternoon,
and the ship was leaning over with
steep decks, which reminded me of the
French brig. But how different was her
motion as she rose stately to the seas, every
massive heave of her satisfying and inspiring
one with its suggestion of victorious power!
I felt that the ship was rushing through
the water. There was a peculiar tingling
throughout her frame, as though she was
thrilled from end to end by the sting and
hiss of the milk-white brine which poured
from either bow and raced in hills along
her side, again and again clouding my cabin-window
with a leap of seething dazzle, the
blow and dissolving roar of which fell like
a thunder-shock upon the ear.
But for my unwillingness to meet the
passengers I should have gone on deck. I
felt a sort of madness upon me that afternoon.
It came and went, but when the
feeling was upon me I craved for the open
air, for the sweep and trumpeting of the
wind, for a sight of the great ship hurling
onwards, for a sight too of the warring
waters; and at these moments I said to
myself, I will not go on deck now and meet
the passengers; I will wait until the darkness
comes; I will wait until the people are
sleeping, and the silence of the slumber of
many is upon the ship, as it was last night,
and then I will steal on deck and ease the
torments of my sightless mind by blending
my thoughts with the dark picture of ship
and white-peaked seas and rushing black-winged
sky; and this I will do in some
obscure corner of the ship, where I shall
not be seen.
But when the inscrutable horror, the
insupportable agitation which drove me into
this resolution of going on deck at midnight
had passed, I shivered and stealthily wept,
for then I seemed to see an awful shadow,
a menacing shape of darkness, crouching
and skulking behind my impulse—a spectre
of self-murder, whose first step it would be
to impel me on deck in the darkness of
the night, and whose next step after I
should have stood lonely for some time on
deck would be to tempt me to leap overboard
into the ocean grave, where my
memory lay! Yes, there could be no doubt
that I was a little mad, sometimes more
than a little mad at intervals during that
afternoon, and one cause of those fits of
horror and despair, and of the desire to
mingle my spirit with the wild commotion
outside, and to pass out of myself into the
starry freedom of the blowing ocean-night,
lay in a sort of dumb, blind anguish that
racked me when the clouding of my cabin-window
by the passing foam carried my
thoughts to the speeding of the ship through
the sea. Though I knew not from what or
where, yet I seemed to feel with God knows
what muteness, and blindness and faintness
of instinct, that I was being borne away—that,
wherever my home might be, from it
I was being swept. Feeling indeed was no
more than seeming; I could be sure of
nothing; thought was absolutely indeterminate;
nevertheless there was a secret
movement in my dark mind that goaded me,
as though the tooth of something venomous,
unreachable, and unconjecturable was subtly
at work within me.
But having fallen into a short doze, I
awoke calm, and then I resolved that I would
not go on deck that night, for I feared, if
I should be visited whilst on deck, and in
darkness, by such moods as had tormented
me throughout the afternoon, I should
destroy myself.
Some dinner was brought to me by a very
civil under-steward, who stated that Mrs.
Richards was too busy to attend upon me,
but that she would be having occasion to call
upon me later on. Being without the power
of contrasting, I was unable to understand
how fortunate I was in having fallen into the
hands of such a man as Captain Frederick
Ladmore. I did not imagine that other
captains would not use me equally well;
indeed, I never gave that view of the matter
a thought. I ate and drank, and accepted all
the kindnesses which were done me as a child
might, and yet I was grateful, and the tears
would stand in my eyes when I sat alone
and thought of what had been done for me;
but my gratitude and my appreciation were
not those of a person whose faculties are
whole.
The under-steward had lighted the lamp,
and when he fetched the tray I got into my
bunk and sat in it and asked myself all the
questions which occurred to me. I then
arose and took the glass from the cabin wall,
and returning to my bunk fixed my eyes upon
my reflection. It may be, I thought to
myself, that I do not know who I am, because
ever since I returned to consciousness my face
has been obscured and deformed by sticking-plaister
and a bandage. If I remove the
bandage I may know myself. So I took the
bandage off and looked. The lint dressing
came away with the bandage and exposed the
injury, and I saw that my right eyebrow was of
a pale red, with a long dark scar going from
the temple to above the bridge of the nose.
The hair on the brow was entirely gone,
and my face, having but one eyebrow, had a
wild odd foreign look. I also perceived that
my nose, where it was indented betwixt the
brow and the bridge, was injured. It was
necessary to view myself in profile to gather
the extent of this injury; and this I could not
do, having but one glass.
Then I said to myself, it may be that I am
disfigured beyond recognition of my own eyes.
In the case of my face it is not my memory
that is at fault. Calamity and horror of mind
have ravaged my face, and I do not know
myself. If my face was now as it had been
prior to the disaster that has blinded my mind
and rendered me the loneliest woman in the
world, the sight of it would give me back my
memory. I continued to gaze at my reflection
in the mirror. I then readjusted the
bandage, hung up the glass, and resumed my
seat in my bunk.
I was sitting motionless, with my eyes
rooted to the deck, when the door was
vigorously thumped and thrown open, and
Mr. McEwan entered. He stood awhile looking
at me, swaying on wide-spread feet to the
movements of the ship, and then exclaimed:
‘I thought as much. But it won’t do.
Ye’ll have to come out of this.’ I looked at
him. ‘And you’ve been meddling with your
bandage. Did not I tell you to leave it alone?
Oh, vanity, vanity! is not thy name woman?
Did ye want to see how much beauty you’ve
lost? Come to the light that I may see what
you’ve been doing to yourself.’ He undid
the bandage, and said: ‘Well, it’s mending
apace, it’s mending apace. Another day of
that wrap and you shall have my permission
to appear as you are.’
He then with an air of roughness, but
with a most tender hand, bound my brow
afresh.
‘Now Miss C——,’ said he; ‘but am I to
call ye Calthorpe? Half the ninnies are swearing
that’s your name, on no better authority
than the dim recollection of a little old man
who would swear to a ducal likeness in a cook’s
mate, if by so doing he could find an excuse
to air his acquaintance with the nobility—what
I want to say is this: I’m your medical
adviser, and I desire to see ye with some
memory in your head that the captain may be
able to send you home. But if you intend to
mope in this cabin, sitting in yon bed and
glaring at vacancy, as though the physical
faculty of memory was a ghost capable of
shaping itself out of thin air and of rushing
into your body with a triumphant yell, then
it’s my duty to tell you that, instead of your
memory revisiting its old haunt, the ghost or
two of sense that still stalks in your brain will
make a bolt o’ t, leaving ye clean daft. Ye
understand me?’
‘I do not,’ said I.
‘Do you understand me when I say you
must get out of this cabin?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you understand me when I say that
you must mix with the passengers, take your
place at the saloon table, and humanise yourself
into the likeness of others by conversing,
listening to the piano playing, walking the
deck and surveying the beauties of the ocean?
Do you understand that?’
‘Yes,’ said I.
‘You look frightened. There is nothing
to be afraid of. But you must do what you’re
told, or how are you to get home?’
‘I will do anything,’ I cried passionately,
‘that will give me back my memory.’
‘Very well,’ said he, ‘to-morrow you shall
begin. To-morrow you must become a passenger
and cease to be a stowaway. Why,
only think of what your mind may be meessing.
The saloon dinner tables are stripped, there
are people amusing themselves at cards and
chess, and there is a young lady at the piano
singing, like a nightingale. She is singing, a
beautiful Scotch song, and the singer herself
is a beautiful woman, and how am I to know
that there may not be a magic leagues out of
sight of my poor skill to touch, to arouse, to
give life, colour and perfume to that delicate
flower of memory which you believe lies dead
in you?’
I started up. ‘I will go and listen to the
singing.’
‘No, rest quiet here for this evening.
Take your night’s rest. You shall begin to-morrow.
I’ll send Mrs. Richards to sit with
ye. You shan’t be alone. And now, d’ye
know, Miss C——, for all your scared looks
you’re better than you were when I opened
the door just now. Good-night.’
He spoke abruptly, but he grasped my
hand kindly and looked at me with kindness
and sympathy in the face.
The moment I was alone I opened the
door and put my head out, hoping to hear the
voice of the beautiful young woman, whoever
she might be, who was singing in the saloon,
but either the song was ended or the music
was inaudible down in this part of the ship
where my cabin was. Instead of the tones of
a beautiful young woman, rising and falling
in a sweet Scotch melody, I heard the
grumbling accents of four men playing at
whist at a table at the forward end of the
steerage. The movements of the ship were
indicated by the somewhat violent oscillations
of the lamp under which they sat, four
bearded men holding cards.
I was about to withdraw my head when I
observed Mrs. Richards coming along the
steerage. She bore a large bundle in her
arms under whose weight she moved with
difficulty, owing to the rolling of the ship;
and she came directly to my cabin.
‘Here it is,’ she exclaimed, letting the
bundle fall upon the deck. ‘How heavy
good under-linen is! It’s the rubbish that’s
light, though it looks more, and that’s why it
pays. Here, my dear, is quite an outfit for
you. You may take them as gifts or you
may take them as loans, that’s as your pride
shall decide. There’s some,’ said she, kneeling
and opening the bundle, ‘from Mrs.
Webber, and some from Mrs. Lee, and likewise
a dress from Miss Lee, which she hopes
will fit, and some from——;’ and she named
three other ladies among the passengers.
The collection was indeed an outfit in its
way. There was no essential article of female
attire in which it was lacking.
‘The ladies,’ said Mrs. Richards, ‘put
their heads together, and one said she’d give
or lend this, and another said she’d give or
lend that; so here’ll be enough to last you to
Sydney, ay, and even home again.’
The good little creature’s face was bright
with pleasure and satisfaction as she held up
the articles one after another for me to look
at.
‘How am I to thank the ladies for their
kindness?’ said I.
‘By wearing the things, my dear, and in
no other way do they look for thanks,’ she
answered; and then she proposed that I
should put on Miss Lee’s dress to see if it
fitted me.
It was of the right length, but tight in the
chest, though it fitted me in the back.
‘You shall shift the buttons,’ said Mrs.
Richards, ‘and then it will fit you. I’ll fetch
my work-basket and you shall make the
alteration this very evening, for the doctor
only a little while ago told me that you are
not to be allowed to mope in this cabin or
you will go mad.’
She withdrew, and in a few minutes returned
with her work-basket. She placed a
chair for me under the lamp, put the dress
and the work-basket on my knee, and preserving
her cheerful smile bade me go to work.
I believe she suspected I should be at a loss,
and at a loss I certainly should have been had
not the articles I required been set before me.
I could not have asked for scissors, needle,
thread, thimble, and the like; because I should
not have been able to recollect the terms nor
the objects which the terms expressed. But
when I saw the things my recognition of them
cost me no effort of mind. I took them up in
the order in which I required to use them,
picking up the scissors and cutting off a
button, then threading a needle, then putting
on a thimble, and all this I did as readily as
though my memory were as perfect as it now
is. Mrs. Richards watched me in silence.
Presently she said:
‘There is no reason, my dear, why you
should not belong to a noble family, but I do
not believe you are a lord’s daughter. You
use your needle too well to be the daughter
of a lord.’
‘I do not dream that I am the daughter
of a lord,’ said I.
‘You might be the daughter of a gentleman
whose brother is a lord, and there may
be reasons, which there is no accounting for
until your memory returns, why you should
have been taught to use your needle. No
nobleman’s daughter would think of learning
to sew. Why should she? She might learn
fancy work for her entertainment, but your
handling of the needle isn’t that of a fancy
worker. I shouldn’t be surprised if your
father is a clergyman. There are many
clergymen who belong to noble families; and
do you know, Miss C——, if you wore a wedding
ring I should be disposed to think that you
had plenty of times mended and made for
little ones of your own. Why do I say this?
Is it your manner of sitting? your way of
holding the dress? What puts it into my
head? I’m sure I can’t tell, but there it is.’
She came and went whilst I was busy with
the buttons of the dress, and when I had
made an end I put the dress on and it fitted
me. We then between us packed away the
linen and other articles in some drawers in a
corner of the cabin, and when this was done
she left me and returned with wine and
biscuits and a glass of hot gin and water for
herself, and for an hour we sat talking.
CHAPTER XII ‘AGNES’
It blew very hard in the night. It was a
black, wet gale, as they call it, but favourable,
and throughout the thick and howling midnight
hours the ship continued to thunder
along her course, with the sailors chorusing at
the ropes and running up the reeling heights
to shorten the canvas. Yet I knew nothing
of all this until I was told next morning how
the weather had been. The sun was then
shining, and a large, swollen, freckled sea
brimming to the ship’s side.
I had slumbered deeply during the night,
and awoke with a sense of refreshment and
of strength which lightened my spirits even
to cheerfulness. My spirits were easier because
I felt better, and I could not feel better
without hoping that, as I gained strength, my
memory would return to me. I was greatly
refreshed by putting on the under-linen that
had been lent to me. I also wore Miss Lee’s
dress, for it was my intention to mingle with
the passengers this day. The material was a
fine dark-green cloth. The shifted buttons
made the bosom a little awry, but this was a
trifling and scarce noticeable defect, and
wholly atoned for by the excellent fit of the
dress. Oh, it must be as they tell me, I
thought to myself as I looked into the square
of mirror. My figure is that of a young
woman. I cannot be so old as my face seems
to represent me. Who am I? Who am I?
But I was rescued from one of my depressing,
heart-subduing reveries by the timely
entrance of the stewardess with my breakfast.
She brought a message from Miss Lee. Would
I visit her at eleven? I answered ‘Yes, I
would visit her with the greatest pleasure.’
‘And will you lunch in the saloon?’ said
Mrs. Richards.
‘Yes,’ I answered.
‘That is right,’ said she, ‘and this breakfast
shall be your last meal in this gloomy
little cabin.’
I did not care to immediately leave my
berth after breakfast, so I opened one of
Mrs. Richards’ books and found I could read.
The book was ‘Jane Eyre,’ a novel that I had
formerly delighted in, but now it was all new
to me and I read it as for the first time. I
opened it by chance and my eye rested upon
a passage, and beginning to read I read on.
The part I had lighted on described Jane Eyre
wandering lonely, starving, soaked through,
in the dark of a bitter moorland night after
she flees from the house of Mr. Rochester.
I continued to read till the tears blurred the
page to my sight, and whilst I thus sat Mr.
McEwan entered.
‘Well, any memory this morning?’
I shook my head and put away the book.
He instantly saw that I had been weeping, but
took no notice.
‘I believe it’s that bandage,’ said he,
‘which keeps you mumping and dumping
down in this darksome steerage. You think
it is not becoming. Well, now let us see if
you can manage without it.’
He removed it, and backed away as though
looking at a picture. ‘Your nose is broken,’
said he.
‘I feared so,’ I exclaimed.
‘But it is broken,’ said he, ‘in such a way
as to improve your looks. Did you ever see
a portrait of the famous Lady Castlemaine?’
I said no. ‘Congratulate yourself,’ said he.
‘Your nose is now exactly the shape of the
nose in the portrait of the celebrated Lady
Castlemaine. The scar looks a little angry,
but you can do without the bandage. Pray,
my dear lady, don’t stare at the looking glass.
When are you coming into the saloon? Very
well; we shall meet at the luncheon table,’
said he, when I had answered him, and with
an abrupt nod he left me.
By daylight the scar did not look so formidable
as it had by lamplight. The eyebrow
was a long smear of sulky red without hair,
with a violet streak running through it. The
flesh of the eyebrow appeared to have been
torn off, and a new skin formed. I screwed
my head on one side to catch a view of my
profile, but my former face was not in my
memory. My present face was the only face
that I could recollect, and I was therefore
unable to perceive that the injury which had
changed the shape of my nose had in any
way modified the expression of my countenance.
But I did not choose to exhibit my face
with that sulky crimson scar streaming like a
red trail across my right brow, and not knowing
what to do I stepped to Mrs. Richards’
cabin, knocked, and found her busy with some
accounts. She started on seeing me, but
quickly recollected herself and exclaimed with
a smile: ‘Now, indeed, you look as you
should.’
‘I am ashamed,’ said I, ‘to go amongst
the passengers with this unsightly forehead.’
‘It is not unsightly, my dear.’
‘How can I conceal it?’
She reflected, and then jumped up. ‘I
believe I have the very thing you want,’ said
she, and after hunting in a box she produced
a short white veil. It was of gossamer, and
it had a gloss of satin; she pinned it round
my cap, contriving that it should fall a little
lower than the eyes.
‘Will that do?’ she exclaimed.
‘It is the very thing,’ I cried with a
child-like feeling of exultation; and then, as
it was nearly eleven o’clock, I walked to the
after steps and entered the saloon.
The concealment of my face gave me
confidence. People might stare at me now,
and welcome. There were a number of
passengers lounging on sofas and chairs in
various parts of the saloon, held under
shelter, no doubt, by the weather, for though
the sun was shining there was a brisk breeze
blowing which came cold with the white
spray that it flashed off the broken heads of
the swelling running waters. The first person
to see me as I was passing to Miss Lee’s
berth was Mrs. Webber. She sprang with
youthful activity from her chair and came to
me, floating and rolling over the slanting
deck with her hands outstretched.
‘I have quite made up my mind about
you, Miss C——,’ she exclaimed. ‘I have invented
a history for you, and I shall never
rest until you have recovered your memory,
and are able to tell me how far I am right
or wrong.’
‘Let me at once thank you for your great
kindness, Mrs. Webber,’ said I, returning the
bows of the ladies and gentlemen who were
now looking towards me.
‘Not a word of thanks, if you please.
When are we to have a good long talk
together?—Oh, sooner than some of these
days! Did you receive the volume of poems
I gave to Mrs. Richards?’
I replied that I had received the book,
and that I had read the poems she had
marked, and that I did not doubt I should
find them very beautiful when my mind had
become stronger. We stood a few minutes
conversing, and I then went to Miss Lee’s
cabin.
The mother and daughter were together;
the mother knitting, and the daughter reading
or seeming to read. The girl looked
very pale. There was a haggard air about
the eyes as though she had not slept, but
her smile of greeting was one of inexpressible
sweetness, and when I took her hand she
drew me to her and pressed her lips to my
cheek. The mother also received me with
as much warmth and kindness as though we
had been old friends.
I seated myself by the side of Miss Lee,
and after the three of us had conversed for
awhile, Mrs. Lee said:
‘Alice has made out a long list of names.
You will be surprised by her industry and
imagination, for she has had no book of
names to help her,’ and opening a desk that
lay upon the deck she extracted a number of
sheets of note paper filled with names—female
Christian names and surnames written
in a delicate hand in pencil.
I held the sheets of paper in my hand;—there
was a faint odour of rose upon them;
I knew not what that odour was—I could
not have given it a name; yet it caused me
to glance at Alice Lee with some dim fancy
in my mind of an autumn garden and of an
atmosphere perfumed by the breath of dying
flowers. Was this dim fancy a memory? It
came and went with subtle swiftness, but it
left me motionless with my eyes fixed upon
the sheets of paper in my hand.
‘We will go through those names together,’
said Alice Lee, ‘and until your
memory enables you to fix upon your real
name I have chosen one for you. If you do
not like it tell me, and we will choose
another. Miss C—— is hard and unmeaning—I
cannot call you Miss C——.’
‘What name have you chosen?’ I asked.
‘For your Christian name,’ she answered,
‘I have chosen Agnes. It is a pretty name.’
‘It is Alice’s favourite name,’ said Mrs.
Lee.
I repeated the word Agnes, but no name,
not the strangest that was to have been
suggested, could have been more barren to
my imagination.
‘If Sir Frederick Thompson is to be
believed,’ said Mrs. Lee, ‘you undoubtedly
belong to the Calthorpe family, whoever they
may be, for I am sorry to say I never before
heard of them.’
‘Does he continue to say that I am a
Calthorpe?’ said I.
‘Yes,’ she answered; ‘he offers to wager
any sum of money that you will prove to be
a Calthorpe.’
‘I am sure he is mistaken,’ said Miss Lee.
‘How would it be possible for him to
recognise a likeness in you when your face
was almost concealed by a bandage? And
besides, is it not certain that the terrible
sufferings you have undergone have greatly
changed the character of your face? You
may resemble the Calthorpe family now, but
you could not have resembled them before
your sufferings altered you, and therefore
Sir Frederick Thompson must be mistaken.’
‘That is cleverly reasoned, my love,’ said
her mother, looking at her fondly and wistfully;
‘nobody appears to have taken that
view. Everybody except Mrs. Webber seems
inclined to think Sir Frederick right. She,
good soul, will not allow him to be right
because she has a theory of her own.’
‘Perhaps now,’ said Miss Lee, ‘that your
face is more concealed by your veil than it
was by your bandage Sir Frederick will discover
a likeness in you to somebody else.’
‘There is no good in speculating,’ exclaimed
Mrs. Lee; ‘did not you say, Miss
C——, that you would not know your own
name if you were to see it written down?’
‘I fear I should not know it,’ I answered.
‘We must call her Agnes, mother,’ said
Miss Lee; ‘and, Agnes, you will call me
Alice.’
‘It is an easy name, and sweet to pronounce,’
said I, smiling.
‘But if our friend’s name should not be
Agnes, my love,’ said Mrs. Lee. ‘Miss C——
is more sensible, and C is certainly the initial
of her surname. But since it is your wish,
my darling, and if you do not object,’ she
added, addressing me with a manner that
made me understand that she lived but for
her daughter, and that her life was an impassioned
indulgence of the beautiful fading
flower, ‘I will call you Agnes.’
Her daughter’s face lighted up, but a
violent fit of coughing obliged her to conceal
it in her handkerchief the next instant. Her
mother watched her with an expression of
bitter pain, but she had smoothed it before
Alice could lift her eyes and see her. There
was a brief silence; the fit of coughing had
taken away the girl’s breath, and she held her
hand to her side, breathing short, with a
glassier brightness in her eyes, and a tinge of
hectic on her cheeks.
‘I am sure it comforts you to conceal
your face,’ said Mrs. Lee, breaking the silence
with an effort. ‘The concealment is certainly
effectual. I can scarcely distinguish your
eyes through the gossamer.’
‘The scar is an unsightly one,’ I exclaimed,
and I raised the veil that they might see my
forehead.
‘It is not so bad as I had feared,’ said
Miss Lee, leaning forward and gazing with a
face exquisitely touching and beautiful, with
the pure, unaffected heart-sympathy in it.
Mrs. Lee gazed in silence, with a look of consternation
which she could not immediately
hide.
‘It was a terrible wound,’ she murmured;
‘who can doubt that the blow which produced
that dreadful wound bereft you of your
memory?’
‘Mother, you frighten poor Agnes. The
scar is not so very dreadful, dear; indeed it
is not. When the eyebrow grows the marks
will not be seen.’
‘My nose is broken,’ I said, putting my
finger above the bridge of it.
‘I should not know that,’ said Mrs. Lee,
taking her cue of cheerful sympathy from her
daughter. ‘I assure you, whether it be
broken or not, there is no disfigurement.’
I let fall the veil. Alice Lee kept her eyes
fastened upon me. What was passing in her
mind who can tell, but her face was that of an
angel, so spiritually beautiful with emotion
that to my sight and fancy it seemed actually
glorified, as though her living lineaments were
a mere jugglery of the vision clothing an
angelic spirit in flesh for a passing moment
that the physical sight might behold it.
This cabin occupied by the Lees was so
comfortable, fresh, and bright, that I never
could have supposed the like of such a bedroom
was to be found at sea. The sleeping
shelves were curtained with dimity, which travelled
upon brass rods. The beds were draped
as on shore. There were chests of drawers,
some shelves filled with books, a few framed
photographs suspended against the cabin wall
by loops of blue ribbon. As the vessel rolled
the white water that was racing past rose,
gleaming and boiling, and the flash of it flung
a lightning-like dazzle into the sunshine
that was pouring upon the large cabin
porthole and filling the berth with the
splendour of the wide, windy, foaming,
ocean morning.
When I had let fall my veil I sat silent,
with the eyes of Alice Lee tenderly dwelling
upon me. Mrs. Lee pulled out her watch
and said, ‘It is half-past twelve. Luncheon
is served at one. You will take your place
at the table, I hope, Agnes?’ she added,
pronouncing the word with an air of
embarrassment and a smile at her daughter.
‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘I intend to take my
meals henceforth in the saloon.’
Mrs. Lee looked at Alice, who immediately
said, ‘I will lunch at table to-day.’
‘But do you feel strong enough to do so?’
exclaimed Mrs. Lee anxiously.
‘I can withdraw when I feel tired,’ said
the girl; ‘it is not far to walk, mother;
but Agnes, sister Agnes, must sit next to
me.’
‘I will speak to the steward,’ said Mrs.
Lee, and, throwing a shawl over her shoulders,
she smiled at me and quitted the berth.
‘We will go over the names I have
written down this afternoon,’ said Alice. ‘It
may be that you will not know your own
name if you see it! But, supposing you
should see it and remember it! There are
many things I shall think of to try. And,
Agnes, we must not forget to ask God to help
us and to bless our efforts.’
‘God?’ I repeated, and I looked at her.
A startled expression came and went in
her eyes. ‘Lift up your veil, dear,’ said she;
‘I wish to see your face.’
I raised the veil, and directed my gaze
fully at her.
‘Can it be,’ said she in a low, sweet voice,
‘that you have forgotten the sacred name of
God?’
‘No,’ I answered; ‘I have not forgotten
the name of God. Tell me——’ I paused.
‘It is so! How strange!’ she exclaimed.
‘Yet God must live in the memory too. It is
hard to realise. Oh, Agnes, this brings your
loss home to me as nothing else could. Lonely
indeed you must be if you do not feel that
you are being watched over, and that your
Heavenly Father is with you always.’
Her eyes sank, and she fell into a reverie;
her lips moved, and she faintly smiled. I
continued to watch her, but within me there
had suddenly begun a dreadful conflict. I
pronounced the word ‘God,’ but I could not
understand it, and the struggle of my spirit
rapidly became a horror, which, even as my
companion sat with her eyes sunk, faintly
smiling and her lips moving, caused me to
shriek aloud and bury my face in my hands.
In a moment I felt her arm round my
neck; I felt the pressure of her cheek to
mine; and I heard her voice murmuring in
my ear.
‘It is my loneliness,’ I cried; ‘it is my
heart-breaking loneliness! I walk with
blinded eyes in utter darkness. Oh, if I could
but know all, if I could but know all now,
I would be content to die in the next
instant.’
She continued to fondle me with her arm
round my neck, and to soothe me with words
which I understood only in part. Presently
she removed her arm, on which I arose and
went to the porthole, and looked at the white
sea swelling into the sky as the ship rolled;
then, turning, I saw that Alice had resumed
her seat and was wistfully watching me
with a face of grief. I went to her side,
and, kneeling down, hid my face on her
lap.
‘You will teach me to feel that I am not
alone,’ I exclaimed. ‘Speak to me about God.
Make me know Him and understand Him,
that, if my memory should never return to
me, if my life should be the horrible blank it
now is, I may not be alone.’
I felt her fingers toying with my hair.
‘I have seen the steward,’ exclaimed Mrs.
Lee, opening the door; and then, pausing,
she cried out, ‘What is the matter?’
‘Do not ask, mother.’
‘But, my darling, I fear that anything
that affects you may prove harmful.’
I returned to my chair and dropped my
veil. I felt the truth of the mother’s words,
and could not bear to meet her gaze.
‘Will the steward find a place at my side
for Agnes?’ asked Alice.
Mrs. Lee replied yes, looking from her
daughter to me as though she sought, but
was unwilling to ask for, an explanation for
my kneeling at the girl’s side and hiding
my face in her lap.
‘That is the Church of St. Nicholas, at
Newcastle-on-Tyne,’ said Alice, pointing to a
photograph upon the cabin wall; ‘and that,’
said she, pointing to another photograph, ‘is
our home at Jesmond.’
I arose to look at them, and whilst I
looked, Alice talked of Newcastle-on-Tyne,
and of the scenery of Jesmond Dene, and of
Gosforth and the Town Moor. Her pleasant
gentle speech brought her mother into the
subject, and some while before the luncheon
bell was rung in the saloon I had recovered
my composure.
When the bell rang, we stepped forth.
Alice took my arm. Her mother made a
movement as though to support her; they
exchanged a look, and Mrs. Lee passed out
alone. Sweet as a blessing from loved lips,
grateful as slumber after hours of pain, was
this girl’s sympathy to me. The pressure
of her arm on mine extinguished the sense
of loneliness in my heart. Her companionship
supported me. It enabled me to face
the ordeal of that crowded table without
shrinking, and I loved her for guessing that
this would be the effect of her taking my arm
and walking with me to our seats.
The chair which the head steward pointed
to placed me between the mother and
daughter. As I seated myself, Mrs. Lee
whispered in my ear:
‘Alice has fallen in love with you. I am
truly thankful. You will be just such a
companion as I would choose for her. But
she is very emotional, and her health—but
you can see what her health is. We must
endeavour to protect her against any excitement
that is likely to react upon her.’
I was unable to reply to this speech,
owing to Alice on the other side asking me
some question that demanded an instant
answer, and when I had responded, my
attention was occupied in bowing and in
murmuring responses to the greetings of the
people at the table.
It was a bright and cheerful scene. The
long centre table was handsomely furnished
with good things, and the whole surface of
it was as radiant as a prism with the glitter
of crystal and decanters and plate. The ship
rolled steadily, and the movement was without
inconvenience. Her canvas supported
her. Had she been a steamer she would
have rolled most of the articles off the table,
so high was the sea. Through the skylight
glass you saw the swollen white sails rising
into a dingy blue sky, across which large
rolls of cloud were journeying. The captain
occupied the head of the table, and when
our eyes met he gave me a low bow, but
called no salutation. At the foot of the
table sat the first officer, Mr. Harris. He
too gave me a bow—but it was an odd one.
The passengers looked at me, some of them,
almost continuously, yet with a certain
furtiveness. But my veil and the having
Alice by my side gave me all needful courage
to bear a scrutiny that otherwise I should
have found too distressing for endurance.
Yet I could not wonder that I was stared
at. The mere circumstance of my appearing
in a veil heightened me as a mystery in the
eyes of the people. Who was I? Nobody
knew. I was a woman that had been
strangely met with at sea, and found to be
without memory, unable to give myself, or
my home, or my country a name. And then
piquancy was added to the mystery by Sir
Frederick Thompson’s discovery that I was
a Calthorpe. He might be mistaken, but
he might be right also; and to suppose me
a Calthorpe, or, in other words, a person
of far loftier social claims than anyone could
pretend to on board that ship, was to create
for me an interest which certainly nobody
could have found had it been suspected that
I was merely a poor passenger on board
the French brig, or the wife of the captain,
or the sister of his nephew the waiter.
Sir Frederick Thompson sat opposite me.
He was for ever directing his eyes at my
face, and often he would purse up his mouth
into an expression which was the same as
saying that the longer he looked the more
he was convinced. But my veil kept him
off, as I believe it kept others off. People
stared, but they seemed to hesitate to accost
me through that gossamer screen, which
scarcely gave them a sight of my eyes.
As Mrs. Webber sat on my side of the
table some distance down, she was unable
to speak to me, for which I was thankful.
From time to time she stretched her neck
to catch a view of me, but I was careful
not to see her for fear of her obliging
me to raise my veil in answer. Some
handsome girls were sitting at the bottom
of the table near the chief officer; they were
showily dressed, and their gowns fitted them
exquisitely. One of them I supposed had
been Mr. McEwan’s beautiful singer of the
preceding evening. They could not see too
much of me, I thought. Indeed their eyes
were so often upon me that after a little I
found myself looking at them eagerly, with
a tremulous hope that at some time in our
lives we had met, and that they would be
able to suggest something to my memory,
I whispered this hope to Alice; she glanced
at them and said:
‘I fear it is no more than girlish curiosity,
together with the idea that you may be a
titled lady. Did you hear them ask Mr.
McEwan about you just now after he had
given you one of his strange, abrupt nods?
I am afraid they will not be able to help
us.’
‘Do you observe,’ said Mrs. Lee, on the
other side, ‘how the chief officer, Mr. Harris,
watches you?’
‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘Probably he is
thinking of our conversation the other night.
He may have another idea about my memory
to offer.’
‘He should attend to the navigation of
the ship,’ said Mrs. Lee; ‘but, like most
sailors, he will be glad to trouble himself
about anything else.’
My sweet companion made no lunch.
She feigned to eat to please her mother, who
frequently projected her head past me to see
her. I noticed that every eye which rested
upon the beautiful fading girl wore an expression
of pity.
The conversation became general, and the
long and gleaming interior was filled with the
hum of it, with the sounds of corks drawn,
with the noise of knives and forks busily
plied upon crockery ware. There was also a
dull echo of wind, a dim hissing of broken
and flying waters, that gave a singular effect
to this hospitable picture of gentlemen and
well-dressed ladies eating and drinking.
I listened to the conversation, but what I
heard of it conveyed no meaning to my mind.
For example, Sir Frederick Thompson spoke
of having visited a certain London theatre a
couple of nights before the vessel sailed.
‘I never saw such a full ’ouse,’ he said.
‘Yet it was Shakespeare—it was “’Amlet.”
They clapped when Ophelia came on mad,
but it was the scenery that gave the satisfaction.
Without the scenery there would
have been no ’ouse; and though I consider
Shakespeare top-weight as a writer, what I
say is, since it’s scenery that takes, why don’t
managers draw it mild and give us plays easy
to follow and written in the language that
men and women speak?’
He seemed partly to address this speech
to me, and I listened, but hardly understood
him. Others talked of Australia and the
growth of the colonies, of England, of emigration,
of many such matters; but, so far as
my understanding of their speech went, they
might have discoursed in a foreign tongue.
The captain, at the head of the table, spoke
seldom, and then with a grave face and a
sober voice. Occasionally he glanced at me.
I do not doubt that many watched me, to
remark how I behaved. Knowing that I had
no memory, they might well wonder whether
I should not often be at a loss, and stare to
see if I knew what to do with my glass, my
plate, and my napkin.
Before lunch was half over Mr. Wedmold
and Mr. Clack, who immediately confronted
Mrs. Webber, raised their voices in a discussion.
Mrs. Lee, leaning behind me to her
daughter, exclaimed:
‘Those unhappy men are going to begin!’
‘What do they intend to argue about?’
said Alice, in her soft voice, looking towards
them.
There was no need to inquire of our
neighbours, for the two gentlemen’s voices
rose high above all others.
‘It is idle to speak of Carlyle as a good
writer,’ exclaimed Mr. Wedmold; ‘his style
is as barbarous as his matter is trite. Never
was reputation so cheaply earned as Carlyle’s.
His philosophy is worth about twopence-ha’penny.
Here is a great original writer,
who goes to the Son of Sirach, and to Solomon,
and to Collections of the Proverbs of
Nations, and taking here a thought and there
a thought, he dresses it up in a horrid jargon,
harder than Welsh, more repulsive than
Scotch, more jaw-breaking than German,
puts his name to it, and offers the fine old
fancy in its vile new dress as something
original!’
‘It is not Dickens and Thackeray to-day,’
said Mrs. Lee.
‘Well, you may sneer as much as you
like at Carlyle,’ cried Mr. Clack, ‘but to my
mind his style is the most magnificent in the
English tongue. He is sometimes obscure, I
admit; but why? His style is a Niagara
Fall of words, and it is veiled by the mist
that rises from the stupendous drench.’
‘Give me Swift for style,’ exclaimed Mr.
Webber, a gentleman whom I have before
described, with long whiskers and a glass in
his eye.
‘Pray do not be drawn into the discussion,’
said Mrs. Webber, calling across to
him.
‘I beg your pardon? You mentioned——’
exclaimed Mr. Wedmold.
‘I said Swift. Give me Swift for style,’
rejoined Mr. Webber, pulling down one
whisker.
‘Swift has no style,’ said Mr. Wedmold.
‘Swift wrote as he thought, as he would
speak; so did Defoe. Style is artificial. Talk
to me of De Quincey’s style, of the style of
Jeremy Taylor, of Johnson, of Macaulay; but
I never want to hear of the style of Swift.’
‘Give me Goldsmith for style,’ exclaimed
a little elderly man seated next to Mrs. Lee.
‘And give me Paris for style!’ said Mrs.
Webber, in a loud voice.
There was a general laugh.
‘These arguments are incessantly happening,’
said Mrs. Lee. ‘I wish the captain
would put a stop to them.’
‘Can you follow what has been said?’
whispered Alice.
‘Some of the names mentioned are
familiar to me,’ I answered; ‘but I can
collect no ideas from them.’
‘Shall we withdraw?’ said she.
I at once arose and gave her my arm.
Her mother remained seated at the table.
When I left my chair Sir Frederick Thompson
stood up, and I paused, believing he was
about to address me, but quickly perceived
that his movement was a mark of respect. I
had scarcely entered the Lees’ berth when
someone tapped on the door, even whilst I
still grasped the handle of it, and, on looking
out, I perceived that it was the steward or
servant who waited upon the captain.
‘Captain Ladmore’s compliments, madam;
he wishes to know if it will be convenient to
you to visit him in his cabin presently?’
‘I will visit him with pleasure,’ I replied;
and, closing the door, I turned to Alice Lee
and said, ‘What can the captain want?’
‘Do not be nervous, dear. I will go with
you if you wish, or mother shall accompany
you. He intends nothing but kindness, you
may be sure.’
‘I dread,’ I exclaimed, putting my hand
upon my heart, ‘to be sent into another
ship.’
‘No, no; he will not do that.’
‘What would become of me in another
ship? I shall be without friends, and my
loneliness will be the darker for the memories
which I shall take away from this vessel.
And what will they do with me on board
another ship? Where will they take me?
Wherever I arrive I shall be friendless. Oh,
I hope the captain does not mean to send me
away.’
‘Do not fear. It is not likely that he will
send you away until your memory returns
and enables you to tell him who you are and
where your home is.’
I placed a rug over her knees, and sat at
her side and waited. Presently Mrs. Lee
entered the berth.
‘Captain Ladmore has asked me to say
he is ready to see you, my dear,’ said
she.
‘Will you go with Agnes, mother?’ said
Alice.
‘But Captain Ladmore does not want to
see me, my love,’ exclaimed her mother;
then, looking from me to her daughter, the
good little woman cried, ‘Oh, yes! I will go
with you, Agnes. Give me your arm.’
CHAPTER XIII THE SHIP IS MY HOME
The saloon was empty of passengers, and the
stewards were occupied in clearing the long
table. We walked to the door of the captain’s
berth, knocked and entered. Captain
Ladmore put down a pen with which he was
writing in a book, and, rising, received us
with a grave bow.
‘You are very good, Mrs. Lee,’ he exclaimed,
‘to take Miss C—— under your
protection.’ He placed chairs for us. ‘I am
happy to observe, Miss C——, that you have
found kind friends in Mrs. Lee and her
daughter.’
‘They are kind, indeed, Captain Ladmore.
How kind I have no words to tell you.’
‘My reason for wishing to see you is this,’
said the captain. ‘Sir Frederick Thompson,
a shrewd, keen-eyed man of business, whose
opinion on any matter must carry weight,
persists in declaring that you are a Calthorpe.
Whether you are the Honourable Miss Calthorpe
or Lady So-and-so Calthorpe he does
not pretend to guess. He persists in holding
that the likeness between you and Lady Lucy
Calthorpe is too striking, altogether too extraordinary
to be accidental, by which he
would persuade us that you are a member of
the family.’ He paused to give me an opportunity
to speak. I had nothing to say. ‘I
own,’ he continued, ‘that I am impressed by
Sir Frederick’s conviction, for that is what it
amounts to. On leaving the table just now
I said to him, “I am about to see the lady
on the subject. You have no doubt?” “I
would venture five hundred pounds upon it,”
said he. “Yet you only met Lady Lucy Calthorpe
once; how can you remember her?”
“I do remember her all the same,” said he,
“your shipwrecked lady is a Calthorpe.
Take my word for it!” Now, if Sir Frederick
is right my duty is plain.’
‘Sir Frederick is not right,’ said Mrs. Lee.
The captain arched his brows. ‘Why,
madam,’ said he, ‘if Miss C—— can tell you
who she is not, she ought to be able to tell
you who she is.’
‘She has told me nothing,’ said Mrs. Lee;
‘it is my daughter’s common sense which
settles Sir Frederick’s conjectures to my mind.’
The captain bent his ear. ‘Lift your veil,
my dear,’ said Mrs. Lee. I did so. ‘Now,
Captain Ladmore, look at this poor lady’s
face. We are all agreed that her figure
proves her to be a young woman. But her
face is that of a middle-aged woman. And
how has that come about? Some horrible
adventure, some frightful experience, of which
we know nothing, of which she, poor dear,
knows nothing, has whitened her hair and
cruelly thinned it, and seamed her face. And
judge now how she has been wounded, and
why it is that her memory has gone.’
Her voice failed her, and for a few moments
she was silent. Captain Ladmore
viewed me with a look of earnest sympathy.
‘If,’ continued Mrs. Lee, ‘our friend is
like Lady Lucy Calthorpe now, she could not
have been like her before she met with whatever
it may be that has changed her. Therefore,
since Sir Frederick believes her to be a
Calthorpe simply because of her resemblance
to that family, she cannot be anybody of the
sort, seeing that she must have been a different-looking
woman before she was found in
the open boat.’
‘Well, certainly, that is a view which did
not occur to me,’ said the captain, continuing
to observe me and gravely stroking his chin.
‘But how are we to know, Mrs. Lee, that our
friend was a different-looking person before
she was found in the open boat?’
‘Her face tells its own story,’ answered
Mrs. Lee, looking at me pityingly.
I let fall my veil.
‘But to return to the motive of this
interview,’ said the captain with an air of
perplexity. ‘If I am to suppose, with Sir
Frederick Thompson, that you are a member
of Lord ——’s family, then my duty is plain.
I must convey you on board the first homeward-bound
ship which we can manage to
signal, acquaint the captain with Sir Frederick’s
opinion, and request him to call upon
the owners of this ship in order that members
of the Calthorpe family may be communicated
with.’
‘I cannot imagine that Calthorpe is my
name,’ I cried, pressing my brow.
‘She is not a Calthorpe, captain,’ exclaimed
Mrs. Lee, ‘and, since she is comfortable
here and with friends, it would be cruel
to remove her until her memory returns and
she is able to give you the positive information
you require.’
Captain Ladmore smiled. ‘I hope not to
be cruel,’ said he; ‘whatever I do, I trust to do
in the lady’s own interest. Then, addressing
me, he continued, ‘You shall decide for yourself,
Miss C——. You are quite welcome to
remain in this ship. No feeling of being
obliged need disturb you. We nearly drowned
you, and it is our duty to keep you with us
until we can safely place you. But consider
that time is passing, that it may be of the
utmost importance to your present and your
future interests that your safety should be
known to your friends. Whether you be a
Calthorpe or not, yet if your home is in
England, which I do not doubt, there are
abundant methods of publishing the story of
your deliverance and safety, so that it would
be strange, indeed, if your friends did not get
to hear of you.’
Mrs. Lee watched me anxiously. I gazed
at the captain, struggling hard to think; a
horror of loneliness possessed me. I was
again filled with the old terror that had
visited me on board the French brig when I
thought of being landed friendless, and blind
in mind, without money, without a home to
go to, or, if I had a home, of arriving in a
country where that home might not be.
‘She does not wish to leave the ship,’ said
Mrs. Lee.
‘Then by all means let her remain,’ said
the captain.
‘Her memory,’ continued Mrs. Lee, ‘may
return at any time. Suppose, then, that she
should tell you her home is not in England,
and that she has no friends there. How glad
you will be that you kept her.’
Again the captain gravely smiled. ‘What
are your ideas as to her past, Mrs. Lee?’
‘I have no ideas whatever on the subject.’
‘But you do not doubt that she is English?’
‘No, I do not doubt that she is English,’
said Mrs. Lee, ‘but though she be English
still she may have no residence, and even no
friends in England.’
‘Granting her to be an English woman,’
said the captain, ‘where would you have her
live?’
‘Anywhere in Europe—anywhere in
America—anywhere in the world, Captain
Ladmore,’ answered Mrs. Lee.
‘But here is a lady,’ said the captain,
‘found in an open boat, not very far south of
the mouth of the English Channel. Now
what more reasonable to suppose than that the
lady was blown away from an English port?’
‘Why not from a French port?’ said Mrs.
Lee.
‘She had English money on her,’ exclaimed
the captain.
‘English people who live in France often
have English money on them,’ said Mrs. Lee.
‘But why do you say she was blown away
from a port? Is it not more likely that she
is a survivor of a shipwreck, the horrors of
which have extinguished her memory? Assume
this, Captain Ladmore,’ said the little
woman with an air of triumph, ‘and in what
part of the world are you going to tell me
her home is?’
‘Well, Miss C——,’ said the captain, ‘the
matter need not be discussed any further. If
you are satisfied to remain, I am satisfied to
keep you.’
I left my chair and took his hand and
pressed it in silence. I was unable to speak.
As we left the captain’s cabin, Mrs. Lee
said: ‘My husband was a shipowner, and I
know how to reason with sea captains. I
believe I have made Captain Ladmore see
your case in its true light. We shall hope
to hear no more of Sir Frederick Thompson’s
absurd notion.’
‘Oh, Mrs. Lee,’ I exclaimed, ‘I feel happy
now. It would break my heart to be removed
to another ship, not knowing what was to
befall me there and afterwards.’
‘Will you come on deck for a turn?’ said
she. ‘You can join Alice later on. I wish
her to rest every afternoon,’ and she then
asked me to send the stewardess to her, as
she desired to unpack a bonnet and cloak
which were at my service.
At the foot of the stairs, which conducted
to the steerage, I found Mr. Harris, the chief
officer. I had not before encountered him in
this part of the ship. He was talking to a
bearded steerage passenger, who was leaning
with folded arms against a table, but on seeing
me, Mr. Harris turned his back upon the
bearded passenger, and saluted me by raising
his cap.
We stood in the light floating through the
wide hatch from the saloon fore windows, and
now, having a near and good view of his face,
I was struck by its whimsical expression. His
skin was red with years of exposure to the
weather; one eye was slightly larger than the
other, which produced the effect of a wink;
his eyebrows, instead of arching, slanted irregularly
into his forehead, and the expression
of his somewhat awry mouth was as though,
being a sour sulky man, he had been asked
to smile whilst sitting for his photograph!
These were points I had been unable to
observe when I met Mr. Harris at one o’clock
in the morning, and at table this day I had
barely noticed him.
‘Good afternoon, mam,’ said he.
‘Good afternoon,’ I answered.
‘There’s a gossip running about the passengers
aft,’ said he, ‘that you belong to a
noble family. What d’ye think yourself?’
‘How can I tell, Mr. Harris?’ I exclaimed.
‘I do not know who I am.’
‘I haven’t rightly caught the name of
the noble family,’ said he. ‘I’m a poor
hand at fine language. Perhaps you know
it?’
‘Sir Frederick Thompson,’ I answered,
says that I resemble a certain Lady Lucy
Calthorpe.’
‘Ah, that’s it,’ he exclaimed. ‘Calthorpe’s
the word. Don’t the mention of it give you
any inward sensations?’
‘No,’ I answered.
‘Then bet your life, mam, you’re somebody
else. That’s what I’ve been wanting to
find out. No inward sensations! Over goes
the show as far as concerns Calthorpe.’
‘Mrs. Lee is waiting for me,’ said I, making
a step.
‘One minute,’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve been
turning over the matter of shocks in my
mind. There’s nothing for it, I fear, but a
shock. Now, if you are willing, I’ll have a
talk with the captain, and tell him the scheme
that’s running in my head. But you must
know nothing about it, or it won’t be a
shock.’
‘I am not willing, Mr. Harris,’ said I. ‘I
do not like the idea.’
Seeing that I was moving away he exclaimed:
‘If you leave yourself in the
hands of the doctor he’ll do nothing for
you. Place yourself in my hands. I’m your
man.’
Thus speaking he climbed the stairs, and I
entered my berth. I considered Mr. Harris,
the chief officer, eccentric and well meaning,
and I dismissed him from my mind when,
having sent the stewardess to Mrs. Lee, I
entered my berth.
I stood with my eyes fixed upon the cabin
porthole, that was at one moment buried in
the white thunder of the pouring waters and
at the next lifted high and weeping into the
windy dazzle of the afternoon, thinking over
what had passed in the captain’s cabin; and
whilst I thus stood, a strange and awful feeling
as of the unreality of all things took possession
of me. Everything seemed part of
the fabric of a dream, and I, the central
dreamer of it all, seemed the most dreamlike
feature of the mocking and startling vision.
Oh, what a strange and horrible feeling was
that!
It was dispelled by the entrance of Mrs.
Richards. Her hearty, homely presence
brought me to my senses.
‘Well, it is good news indeed!’ cried she.
‘Mrs. Lee has told me what the captain said,
and I am truly glad to know that there is no
chance of your leaving the ship until your
memory is able to point true to your own
home. What think you of this bonnet? And
what do you say to this cloak? I am sure the
Lees, mother and daughter, are the very soul
of goodness. But who could help being kind
to one in your condition? So helpless! So
lonely! And Mrs. Lee has settled that you’re
not a Calthorpe. Well, I daresay she’s right.
And yet, do you know that little City gentleman
don’t look much of a fool either. But
whatever you be you’re a born lady. There’s
breeding in your voice—oh! I’ve got an ear
for quality voices. The cloak’s a bit short,
but it looks very well. Let me pin that veil
for you.’
And now, being equipped for the deck, I
ascended to the saloon. Mrs. Lee waited for
me near the hatchway. She said that her
daughter was sleeping, and then putting her
hand with an affectionate gesture upon my
arm she exclaimed:
‘Alice has told me what passed between
you before lunch. I am sure she will be able
to help you. She is my child, she is flesh of
my flesh, yet I think of her as an angel of
God, and His praises no angel in heaven
could sing with a purer and holier heart, and
He will forgive me for believing this.’
She released my arm, and bowed her head
and stood silent a minute, struggling with
emotion. We then mounted on to the deck.
The scene was noble and inspiring. The
high seas came brimming to the ship, their
colour was sapphire, and as they rolled they
broke into dazzling masses of foam. The
stately swollen white clouds of the morning
were still on high; they floated in slow processions
across the masts which reeled solemnly
as though to music. The sails upon
the ship were few, and their iron-hard, distended
concavities hummed like a ceaseless
roll of military drums in their echoing of the
pursuing thunder of the wind. The water
roared in snowstorms from either bow as the
great ship rushed onwards, and the broad
and hissing furrow she left behind seemed to
stream to the very horizon, lifting and falling
straight as a line, like the scintillant scar of a
shooting star on the cold blue heights of the
night.
A sail showed in the far windy distance;
she was struggling northwards under narrow
bands of canvas, and sometimes she would
vanish out of sight behind the ridge of the
sea, and sometimes she would be thrown up
till the whole body of her was visible. Her
hull was black and white, and a long length of
copper flashed out like gold every time she
rose to the summit of a billow.
Walking was not difficult. The slanting
of the deck was so gradual that one’s form
swayed to the movement with the instinct
and the ease of a wheeling skater. Not
above half a dozen passengers were on deck,
and Mrs. Webber, I was glad to see, was not
amongst them; in truth, I was without the
spirits, and perhaps without the strength just
then, to support a course of her voluble
tongue.
When we approached the forward end of
the poop we paused to survey the scene of
the deck beneath us and beyond. I do not
know how many emigrants the Deal Castle
carried; her decks appeared to be filled with
men, women, and children that afternoon.
You did not need to look at their attire to
know that they were poor. There was everywhere
an air of sullen patience, bitterly expressive
of defeat, and of a dull and sulky
resignation that might come in its way very
near to hopelessness. Here and there were
children playing, but their play was stealthy,
snatched with fear, dulled by vigilance as
though they knew that the blow and the
curse could never be far off. A growling of
voices ran amongst the men, and this noise
was threaded by the shrill-edged chatter of
women. But I do not remember that ever a
laugh rose from amongst them.
‘Are all those people going to Australia?’
I asked Mrs. Lee.
‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘this ship does not
call at any port. She is proceeding direct to
Australia.’
‘They appear to be very poor.’
‘Most of them,’ said she, ‘have probably
sold all they possess in the world, with the
exception of the clothes upon their backs, to
enable them to get to Australia. Poor creatures!
I pity the women, and even more do I
pity the children. How are they fed? Not
so well, I am sure, as the pigs under that big
boat yonder. And what sort of quarters
have they below? Oh, gloomy, dark and
evil-smelling be sure, and suffocating when
the weather is heavy and the hatches are
closed.’
‘I should like to see the place where all
those poor people sleep,’ said I.
‘I would not accompany you,’ she answered.
‘It is miserable to witness sufferings
which one cannot soothe or help.’
‘And what will they do when they arrive
in Australia?’
‘A good many will starve, I daresay, and
wish themselves home. The colonies are full.
There is plenty of land, but people when they
arrive will not leave the towns. They will
not do what those who created the colonies
did—dig and build new places—and there is
no room in the towns.’
‘There are a great many people down
there,’ said I, running my eye over the groups.
‘I wonder if any one of them has lost his
memory.’
‘It would be a blessed thing,’ said Mrs.
Lee, ‘for most of them, perhaps for all of
them, if they had left their memories behind
them. What have they to remember? Years
of toil, of famine, of hardship, years of heart-breaking,
struggles for what?—for this! How
big is this world!’ she exclaimed, casting her
eyes round the sea, ‘yet there is no room for
these people in it. How abundant are the
goodly fruits of the earth! And yet those
people there represent hundreds and thousands
who cannot find a root in all the soil to provide
a meal for themselves and the children.
Yet though we all say there is something
wrong, who is to set it right? Do you observe
how that strange, fierce, dark woman is
staring at you?’
‘Yes. She is one of two wild-looking
women who pressed forward to view me when
I came on board.’
‘What is her nation?’ exclaimed Mrs.
Lee. ‘She looks like a gipsy.’
The woman sat upon the corner of the
great square of hatch within easy distance of
the sight. Her complexion was tawny, her
nose flat. Thick rings, apparently of silver,
trembled in her ears, and her head was
covered with a sort of red hood. The stare
of her gleaming black eyes was fierce and
fixed. I had observed her without giving
her close attention, but now that my mind
was directed to her, her unwinking fiery gaze
made me feel uneasy.
‘Let us walk,’ said Mrs. Lee.
We turned our faces towards the stern of
the ship and paced the deck, but every time
we approached the edge of the poop I encountered
the cat-like stare of the toad-coloured
woman’s eyeballs.
Our conversation almost wholly concerned
Alice Lee. The mother’s heart was full of
her sweet daughter. When she began to
speak of her she could talk of nothing else.
She hoped that the voyage would benefit the
girl, but the note of a deep misgiving trembled
in the expression of her hope, and I could not
doubt that secretly within herself she thought
of her child as lost to her. Do you wonder
that I should have found such a warm-hearted
sympathetic friend as Mrs. Lee in so short a
time? When I look back I believe I can
understand how it was: she was a woman
with a heart heavy with sorrow, but in me she
beheld a person far more deeply afflicted than
she was in her fears for her child, or could be
in her loss of her. Her daughter was dying—she
might die; but the memory of the girl’s
sweetness, her purity, her angelic character
would be the mother’s whilst she drew breath.
But what had gone out of my life? She could
not imagine—but she would guess that love—love
not less precious nor less holy than hers
for her child lay black, and, perhaps, extinguished
for ever in my past. It might be the
love of a parent, of a sister, nay of a sweetheart:
thus she would reason; not dimly for
an instant conceiving me to be a married
woman with children; but some sort of love,
not less precious and holy than her own,
might have passed out of my life by the
eclipse of my mind. This she would conjecture,
and the sympathy of her own deep
affliction would be mine in a sense of friendship
that association might easily ripen into
affection. In a word, she pitied me with a
heart that asked pity for herself, and she
pitied me the more lovingly because of her
daughter’s tender touching interest in me.
We paced the deck for something less
than an hour, during which we were occasionally
addressed by the passengers, and
once joined by one of the ladies who had
contributed to what I may call my outfit.
But this was towards the end of our stroll,
after we had talked long and deeply of Alice
Lee, and after Mrs. Lee had opened her
heart to me in many little memories of her
life before God had widowed her.
When we entered the saloon my companion
went to her berth, and a moment after
put her head out with her finger upon her
lip and a slight smile of gratification, by
which I understood that Alice still slumbered;
so I walked to the stairs which conducted
to the steerage, but as I put my foot
on the first step, the door of a berth opened,
and Mrs. Webber came forth. She immediately
saw me, and called:
‘Where are you going, my dear Miss
C——?’
‘I am going to my cabin.’
‘I will accompany you. I have not yet
been downstairs, and I wish to see the part
of the ship you sleep in. Oh, I am making
great progress with the materials for the
poem you are to be the heroine of. I wish
I could write prose. I believe the tale I have
in my head would be more readable in
prose. Yet poetry gives you this strange
advantage: it enables you to be impassioned.
You can make use of expressions which
cannot be employed in prose without provoking
contempt, which is a disagreeable
thing.’
All this she said loudly, as we stood together
at the head of the steerage stairs.
There were several passengers sitting about
the saloon, reading or dozing. Two or three
of them exchanged a smile. Perhaps they
would have laughed outright had they not
heard her imperfectly. But a rolling ship
is full of noises; all the strong fastenings
creak, doors clatter, there is for ever a rattle
of crockery, though one knows not whence
it proceeds, and these and other noises
mingling with Mrs. Webber’s tones possibly
rendered her indistinct to the passengers
sitting a little way off.
‘By all means come with me downstairs,’
said I.
So together we went downstairs, or ‘below,’
as it is called at sea, and all the way to my
cabin Mrs. Webber’s tongue was going.
‘This is a very gloomy corner,’ she cried,
as we entered the steerage; ‘the captain ought
to find you more cheerful quarters. But I
believe all the upstairs cabins are taken. So
this is the place where the second-class
passengers live! Pray pause one moment,
that the scene may paint itself upon my mind.
I shall probably require this interior as a
setting for you.’
Whilst she stood gazing round her a
woman came out of a berth. She carried
a baby in her arms. It was the baby that
I had held and kissed, but the person who
carried it now was the mother. Mrs. Webber
took not the least notice of the child. As
the person who carried it approached to pass
us, I made a step to kiss the little creature.
It knew me and smiled. I kissed it and took
it in my arms, and when I had nursed it for
a minute I returned it to the mother, who
looked proudly as she received the pretty
little thing, and, with a respectful bow that
was half a curtsey, went on her way.
The child awoke no sensations. Why
should that baby, I thought to myself, have
caused a dreadful struggle in my mind when
I first saw it? And why am I now able to
nurse and kiss it without the least emotion?
Can the darkness be deepening? Is the surface
of the mind hardening under the frost
and blackness of my sunless life?
‘I am very glad there is not a baby in the
saloon,’ exclaimed Mrs. Webber. ‘I did not
know there was such a thing in the ship—I
mean in this part of it.’
‘Have you any children?’ said I, recalling
my wandering mind with difficulty.
‘I am thankful to say I have not. It is
enough to have a husband. My hubby is
very good, but even he does not permit me to
enjoy that perfect leisure of retirement which
literature demands. He is constantly looking
in upon me at the wrong moment. Thought
is a spider’s web, and the least interruption is
like passing your finger through it. But how
would it be with me if I had children? So
this is your cabin? Well, it is not so gloomy
as I had feared to find it,’ and seating herself
she restlessly turned her eyes about; but there
was little enough for her to look at, and nothing
whatever to inspire her.
However, she was in my berth, and I was
her companion, and she was resolved not to
lose an opportunity she had been on the lookout
for, and so she began to tell me what she
considered to have been my past.
‘You are not,’ said she, ‘a member of
the noble family that Sir Frederick Thompson
talks of. I am sure I cannot tell who you
are, but you are not a Calthorpe. It is very
wonderful, and I was almost going to say
delightful, to meet with so impenetrable a
mystery as you in the flesh. It is not as
though your past and your name were your
secret. You are as great a mystery to yourself
as to everybody else, and there is something
awful and beautiful to my mind in such
a thing. No, you will find that you are the
daughter of a country gentleman, who is not
very rich—pray excuse me! one never knows
what ideas may be of service: your being
without jewellery makes me suppose that
your people live quietly somewhere; unless,
indeed,’ she continued, looking at my hands
and at my ears and throat, ‘you were robbed.
But that we need not believe. I am not going
to tell you how you came to be in an open
boat. No, if Captain Ladmore cannot understand
that, how should I? Does it not help
you a little to hear you are the daughter
a plain country gentleman?’
I answered not, gazing at her earnestly,
and straining my mind that I might closely
follow her words.
‘I have settled,’ she went on, ‘and the
Miss Glanvilles are of my opinion, that you
were pretty before you met with your accident,
whatever it may have been, that turned
your hair white and aged and mutilated your
poor face. You have a sweet mouth. I
envy you your teeth, and your eyes are wonderfully
fine, and depend upon it you had a
very great deal of hair before it came out.
Do I seem to suggest even a faint fancy?’
‘None whatever,’ said I, still with my
mind on the strain, and still gazing at her
eagerly.
‘Your age is about thirty,’ said she.
‘When you first came on board you looked
about forty. Now you might pass for six-and-thirty.
How delightful to be able to
reverse the old-fashioned process! Ten years
hence you will be ten years younger, and I
shall be ten years older. But your real age—your
age as you there sit—is from thirty
to thirty-two.’
She dropped her head on one side in a
posture of enquiry. I gazed at her in
silence.
‘I am going to be very candid,’ said she.
‘You are not a married woman. When a
woman arrives at the age of thirty to two-and-thirty,
and perhaps a wee bit more, it
is not often, very often let me say, that she
is engaged to be married, or, put it more
pointedly, that she has a sweetheart. Her
life’s romance will in all probability have
been lived out.’ She paused to sigh. ‘There
may be sweet, impassioned memories, but at
the age of thirty or two-and-thirty.... So
the past I construct for you amounts to this,
Miss C——: you are not a nobleman’s daughter
as Sir Frederick will have it, but you are
the daughter of a plain country gentleman,
who is not very well off. Your father and
mother are living. You probably have a
brother, who is in the Army or Navy; you
see to the housekeeping at home. This, I
must tell you, is Mrs. Richards’ idea. You
are heart-whole, and though your absence will
of course cause consternation and anxiety,
yet when your memory comes back to you
and you return to your home, you will find
all well, and in a few weeks settle down as
though nothing had happened.’
I listened with devouring eagerness. Had
Mrs. Webber been a witch of diabolic skill
and potency, I could not have followed her
words with more consuming attention. She
had but to look at my face, however, to
know that all her ingenious surmises had
gone for nothing. She pursued the matter a
little further, afterwards talked of her poetry,
and presently, taking up the slender volume
which she had sent to me by the stewardess,
read aloud the ‘Lonely Soul.’ She stayed
with me for about half an hour, and then
left me.
CHAPTER XIV AM I A CALTHORPE?
I dined in the saloon that day. Alice Lee
remained in her cabin. Her mother told me
that the girl had slept for two hours, but that
despite her slumber she was languid and
without appetite.
‘She is looking forward to your sitting
with her this evening,’ said Mrs.
Lee.
‘I dread to weary her, and fear that she
desires my company merely out of the pity
she takes on my loneliness.’
‘No’ exclaimed the little lady with sweetness,
but with emphasis, ‘she is sorry for you
indeed, but did not I say that she has fallen
in love with you? You will not weary her—you
will do her good.’
The dinner was a lengthy business, and to
me somewhat tedious. Many dishes were
brought in by the steward through the doors
which conducted to the deck which the emigrants
thronged in the daytime, and there
was a great deal of unnecessary lingering I
thought in the distribution and consumption
of these dishes. But life at sea speedily grows
very tedious. If the port is a distant one, for
a long while it stands at too great a distance
in the fancy to be much thought of; and
the mind, for immediate relief and recreation,
makes all that it possibly can of meal-time.
I wore Mrs. Richards’ short veil, pinned
round one of her caps. Sir Frederick Thompson
stared much, and twice endeavoured to
draw me into conversation, but whenever I
spoke I found that the people seated near
suspended their talk to catch what fell from
my mouth, and their curiosity so greatly embarrassed
me that I answered the little City
knight in monosyllables only, and presently
silenced him, so far as I was concerned. I
was thankful to notice, however, that my
presence was fast growing familiar to the
majority of the passengers. The two Miss
Glanvilles, and one or two others, constantly
gazed at me; it was, in fact, very easy to see
that I was much in the minds of those two
handsome girls. Nothing could so perfectly
fit their romantic humours as a veiled woman,
an ocean mystery, a lonely soul-blinded
creature, from the pages of whose volume of
life the printed story of the past had been
washed out by salt water, leaving a number
of blank leaves upon which their imagination
might inscribe what tale they would. But
the rest of the passengers ate and drank
and talked, and scarcely heeded me. Some
of the people sitting near the captain spoke
of the voyage and the present situation of
the ship. I heard Captain Ladmore say that
he hoped to be abreast of Madeira next day
sometime in the afternoon!
‘Where is Madeira?’ I asked Mrs. Lee.
‘It is in the Atlantic,’ she said smiling;
‘it is an island. Did not I tell you that I
went there with Alice? Over and over again,
before your memory left you, have you heard
of Madeira. Is it possible that the image of
an island does not occur to you when you
pronounce the name of it?’ I hung my
head. ‘I shall be glad,’ she continued,
‘when we have passed Madeira; for Alice
will then be able to go on deck. The sun
will be hot, and every day it will grow hotter;
yet I dread the heat of the tropics. The
fiery heat of that part of the sea often proves
more injurious to very delicate invalids
like Alice than excessive cold; and if we
should be becalmed! That fear makes me
wish I had chosen a steamer. And yet a
steamer would have been too swift for our
purpose.’
‘What do you mean by being becalmed?’
said I.
‘A ship is becalmed when the wind drops
and leaves her motionless,’ she answered. ‘I
have heard of a ship becalmed on the equator
for six weeks at a time. Indeed, I wish I
knew less about the sea than I do. The
captains who called upon my husband were
full of the ocean, and unsparing in their experiences.
Imagine if we were to be for six
weeks in a roasting calm under the almost
vertical sun! It might kill Alice.’
I left the dinner table some considerable
time before the passengers rose, and entered
Alice Lee’s cabin. The girl reclined in an
easy-chair with a shawl over her shoulders,
and a skin upon her knees. The time was
shortly after seven. In the east was a
shadow of evening, but the brassy tinge of
the glory of the sunset sank deep into that
shadow, and flung a faint delicate complexion
of rose upon the light that streamed through
the eastward-facing porthole into the interior.
In this weak light the sweet face of Alice
Lee showed like a spirit as one thinks or
dreams of such things.
She fondled my hand as she greeted me.
‘Bring that chair close beside me,’ she said;
‘and tell me how you have been passing the
time.’
I seated myself beside her, and whilst she
held my hand I brought a smile to her face
by telling her of my conversation with Mr.
Harris, the chief officer. And then I told her
of what had passed in the captain’s cabin,
and I also repeated Mrs. Webber’s ideas concerning
my past.
We were uninterrupted. The evening in
the east deepened into a bluish darkness, and
through the cabin window I saw a large
trembling star coming and going as the ship
rolled. The berth was unlighted, but there
was an opening over the doorway, and
through this opening when the saloon lamps
were burning there floated sheen enough to
enable Alice and me to dimly discern each
other’s faces.
She told me that she had added a few
names to the list she had made out, and
that, if I was willing, we would go through
the whole of them next morning. And then
having discoursed on various matters, our
conversation, imperceptibly to myself—with
such exquisite delicacy was the subject introduced
by her—wandered into solemn
subjects.
Shall I tell you what she said? My
memory carries every word of it. I can
open the book of my life, and betwixt the
pages find the pressed flowers of that dear
girl’s thoughts and teaching, and the perfume
of those flowers is still so fresh, that never
can they want life and colour and beauty
whilst their sweet smell clings to them.
But shall I tell you what she said? No;
her words were not intended for the rude
light of this printed page. She spoke of God,
and from behind the sable curtains that lay
upon the face of my mind her angel voice
evoked the Divine idea; with tears and adoration
I knew my Maker again, and by her side
I knelt in prayer to Him.
There had been a hum of voices without,
but a sudden silence fell upon the ship when
Alice Lee, whispering to me to kneel by her
side, sank upon her knees and prayed to that
merciful Being whom she had revealed to
me to have mercy upon her lonely sister, to
lighten my darkness, to return me in safety
to such dear ones as might be awaiting me.
None could have heard her but I who knelt
close beside her in that shadowy cabin, yet
the hush lasted until her voice ceased.
We arose from our knees, and as we did
so the piano in the saloon was touched, and
a clear, rich and beautiful voice began to
sing. We listened. I seemed to know the
air. It was as though there was a magic in
it to run a thrill through my lifeless memory.
I harkened with parted lips, breathing
fast and deep. The voice of the singer
ceased.
* * * * *
‘What song is that?’ I asked.
‘It is “Home, Sweet Home,”’ answered
Alice Lee.
And now for some days nothing of any
moment happened. A strong wind blew over
the ship’s quarter, and drove her fast through
the seas. Wide overhanging spaces of canvas
called studding-sails were set. They projected
far beyond the ship’s bulwarks, they swelled
like the sides of balloons to the sweep of the
wind, and thus impelled, with one sail mounting
to another until, at the extremity of the
ship, the vast spread of milk-white canvas
seemed to blot out half the sky, the Deal
Castle sprang through the billows, whitening
a whole acre of water in advance of her as
the crushing curtsey of her bows drove the
sapphire roaring into snow.
In this time I loved to stand alone beside
the rail gazing down upon the waters, and
watching the wild configurations of the headlong
passage of foam. Was there no inspiration
to visit memory from those splendid and
dazzling shapes of spume which rushed in
endless processions along the ship’s side? My
imagination beheld many things in those
white forms. They were far more numerous
than the pictures painted by the clouds upon
the sky. I beheld the gleaming shapes of
swimming women—vast trees spreading into
a thousand branches—the forms of castles and
churches and of helmeted men; the heads of
horses, and many other such phantasies of foam.
They came and went swift as the wink of
the eye, yet I saw them, and I would cry in
my heart, ‘Is there nothing in this sweeping
throng of dissolving and re-forming shapes to
flash an idea upon my mind, to recall something—Oh
it matters not what!—that might
serve as a point of fire amid the darkness
upon which to fix my eyes?’
The passengers without exception were
exceedingly kind to me. If ever I happened
to be alone on deck one or another would
procure me a chair, lend me a book, stand
awhile and chat with me. I was never vexed
with intrusion, by idle sympathy, by aimless
questioning. Now and again Mrs. Webber
would talk till she teased me, but a world of
good nature underlay her vanity, and though
often she made me wish myself alone, yet I
knew that, after the Lees, she was the kindest
friend I had in the ship.
There was one person, however, of whom
I lived in fear. He was the first officer of the
Deal Castle, and his name, as you know, was
Harris. One would suppose that I had fascinated
the man. No matter whether he was
on deck or whether he was seated at the
cabin table, if ever I chanced to glance his
way I found his eyes directed at me. He
never lost an opportunity to accost me, but
his speech was so odd and rough that I was
always glad of any excuse to abruptly quit
him. I had thought Mr. McEwan brusque,
but, compared with Mr. Harris, the ship’s
surgeon was a polished gentleman. And still,
though I wished to avoid him, I could not
feel offended by him either. He was at all
events true to himself. It was not to be supposed
that a man occupying his position
would willingly make himself offensive, and
therefore I did not resent his behaviour; yet
he succeeded in rendering me very uneasy.
First, I hated to be stared at. But that
was not all. His persistent way of watching
me filled me with alarming thoughts. I
believed that he was rehearsing some extraordinary
scheme to restore my memory.
He seldom addressed me but that he would
affirm the only remedy for my affliction was
a shock, and whenever I observed him
staring at me I would think that man may
be scheming to give me a shock. Dare
he attempt such a thing alone? The grave
and serious Captain Ladmore was not likely
to listen to such a remedy, nor was it probable
that Mr. Harris would take the doctor
into his confidence. Therefore single-handed
he might attempt some desperate trick upon
my nerves, not doubting—for of course he
could not doubt—that the result would
justify his expectations and earn him the reputation
of a very clever man throughout the
ship.
These were my fears, begotten of a low
nervous condition. But I held my peace lest
I should be laughed at. Not to Mrs. Lee, nor
even to her daughter, did I utter a word on
the subject; and yet it came to this, that I
never went to my lonely berth of a night
without slipping the bolt of the door, and
peeping under the bunk that was high
enough from the deck to conceal the body
of a man.
Captain Ladmore I occasionally conversed
with. Once he gave me his arm and together
we paced the deck for nearly an
hour; but he was a reserved man, somewhat
austere, grave and slow in speech, and the
expression of his face made one know that
the memory of his bereavement was always
with him. For the most part he held aloof
from us all, walking a space of the deck from
the wheel to the aftermost of the skylights
with his hands behind him, his tall figure
very upright, his eyes sometimes glancing
seawards, sometimes up at the vessel. It was
hard to associate him with his calling. He
had the air of a clergyman rather than of a
bluff sea-captain.
During this time, that is to say until we
had reached some parallel of latitude to the
south of Madeira, Alice Lee kept her cabin.
She had slowly read the list of names she had
made out, wistfully pausing after each delicate
utterance, and gazing earnestly at me
with her sweet affectionate eyes; but to no
purpose. Name after name was pronounced,
but it was like whispering into deaf ears.
How could it have been otherwise? Alice
was now always calling me by the name of
Agnes; her mother also called me by that
name; it was my own—yet I knew it not.
How then could it have been otherwise than
as it was with Alice Lee’s list of names?
Having given me the name of Agnes, she
omitted it from the list which we went
through together; but even if she had lighted
upon my name in full—by happy conjecture
contriving it Agnes Campbell—it would have
been all the same; I should not have known
it.
‘No matter, dear,’ said she when she put
the paper away, ‘there are many more things
to try.’
But she was mistaken. There were very
few things indeed to try. My memory was
indeed so impenetrable that it rendered experiment
almost hopeless. So, by degrees,
Alice Lee desisted, and I own that I was
grateful when she did so, for the dark struggles,
the blind efforts her questions and suggestions
excited in me grew too fierce for my
strength. She of course never could have
imagined the anguish she caused me. But
once I observed her viewing me steadfastly
after she had asked me some question, and
from that time she gradually relaxed her
efforts to help me.
Mrs. Lee was glad to have me as a companion
for her daughter. It made me happy
to wait upon the dear girl, and my ministrations
lightened the mother’s duties. I read
aloud to Alice, and heard her read aloud to
me. She had a hundred things to tell me
about her home, about Newcastle, and the
sister who had been taken from her. She
possessed a little draught-board, and she
taught me to play that simple game—taught
me to play it though it had been one of the
most familiar of our games at home! She
owned a volume of solemn, heart-inspiring
thoughts, which she loved to read to me and
I to listen to. Often have I desired to meet
with that book since; but persistently as I
have inquired never could I hear of a copy.
It was a collection of extracts from great and
holy thinkers. Many human griefs and sufferings
were dealt with, and the language of
every man was simple and sublime, so that
there was scarcely a passage that Alice Lee
read aloud which I was unable to understand.
Never can I forget her look as we sat together
in her cabin one afternoon, she reading
from this book and I listening. The
subject was Death. As she read her face
lighted up. I gazed with wonder, with something
of awe and adoration at the tender
triumphant enthusiasm of her expression. A
delicate flush tinged her cheeks, her bosom
rose and fell as though to a sobbing of joy.
From time to time she paused with lifted eyes,
and her lips murmured inarticulately.
‘It is beautiful and it is true!’ she exclaimed
as she closed the book. ‘Why is not
death always thus represented? All must
suffer. Why should death be called the King
of Terrors? The imaginations of men picture
sleep as an angel bending over the weary,
lulling pain, wreathing sorrowful lips with
smiles. But death—the deeper sleep, the
angel that is God’s messenger to man—death
must be made terrifying and shocking! It is
a dreadful spectre poising a lance! Oh, death
is divine; it is no terrifying skeleton, but an
angel of love, whose gift of slumber is sweet
and sure, from whose dreamless sleep you
arise to find yourself in the presence of God.’
In this strain would she talk to me, but in
words and thoughts more exalted than I have
memory for. When I look back and recall
these sentences I have just written down, I
often think to myself that it was faith and not
death that was the holy, soothing, and healing
angel she spoke of, and God’s messenger
to man; for it was faith that lighted up
her eye and painted an expression of rapture
upon her face when she looked up to heaven
and thought of the grave as but the little
gate that was to admit her into the shining
glorious highway. And, again, when I
think of her, I often say to myself, Who
to obtain faith would not exchange all the
treasures of this world?—to feel a deeper
joy in surrendering all things than many
know in the acquisition of a few, to have your
hope fixed high like some bright star in the
heavens, to desire death rather than to shrink
from it, to feel that the deep night of death is
on this side the grave, and that the true dawn
breaks not until the spirit stands on the other
side of that little silent chamber of earth in
which the body rests—to know this, to feel
this is the sweet sure gift of faith, the angel
in whose atmosphere of heavenly light death
the shadow perishes.
It was on the third or the fourth morning
following the day on which we had passed the
island of Madeira—that is to say, on which
we had crossed the parallel of latitude on
which the island of Madeira lies—that, being
in my cabin where I had passed ten minutes
in gossip with the stewardess, the door was
thumped by a fist which I easily recognised as
Mr. McEwan’s, and the ship’s doctor entered.
‘Good morning.’
‘Good morning, Mr. McEwan.’
‘I am the bearer of a message,’ said he.
‘I have told Miss Lee that she may go on
deck this morning, and Mrs. Lee has asked
me to request you to accompany her
daughter.’
‘I will do so with pleasure,’ I exclaimed.
‘I am very glad you have given her permission
to go on deck at last. How do you
think Miss Lee is?’
‘How do I think Miss Lee is? How do I
think Miss Lee is? Ask after yoursel’. How
are you?’
‘I feel very much better. I am still very
nervous, but less so than I was. Do you
think, Mr. McEwan, that the hair upon my
eyebrow will ever grow again?’
‘That will be, as you shall see,’ said he.
‘I trust it may; for there is undoubtedly an
advantage in two eyebrows.’
‘You do not answer my question?’
‘I believe it may grow,’ he exclaimed.
‘If not, eyebrows are cheap to buy. There
are plenty of mice, and mouse-skins are a
drug. How’s your hair? Does it continue
to thin?’
‘It no longer comes out,’ I answered.
‘Were the eyebrow to grow I should look
less unsightly. I should be able to make my
appearance without a veil.’
‘Do not trouble yoursel’ about your appearance,’
he growled.
‘But tell me, Mr. McEwan, what you
think of Miss Lee’s case?’
‘Are ye asking the question for Mrs. Lee?’
‘I am asking the question for myself.
Alice Lee has taught me to love her. She is
a sister to me. Whilst she lives I am not
alone.’
He looked at me gravely and said, ‘What
d’ye think yoursel’?’
‘Oh, I do not know. Often I hope....’
He eyed me for a few minutes without
speech; then, with a wooden face and a stolid
shake of his head, turned upon his heel and
walked out.
I dressed myself for the deck and entered
the saloon. The interior was shadowed by
awnings spread above, and it was as empty as
though the ship were in port. Through the
open skylights came the sound of people
laughing and talking on deck. The motion
of the ship was very quiet, and the atmosphere
warm, as though the breath of the
tropics was already in the gushing of the
wind. I entered the Lees’ cabin, and found
the mother and daughter waiting for me.
Alice was warmly wrapped, and a green veil
was pinned round her straw hat. Mrs. Lee
apologised for sending for me. ‘It was Alice’s
wish,’ she said. I saw a smile upon the girl’s
face through her veil as she put her hand
into my arm, and the three of us went on
deck.
A richer morning could not be imagined.
There was not a cloud to be seen, and the
sky was a dark, deeply pure blue, like an
English autumn sky. A soft warm wind was
blowing over the right-hand side of the ship,
and when I first breathed it I seemed to taste
a flavour of oranges and bananas, as though
it came from some adjacent land, sweet-smelling
with sunny fruit. At the distance of
about a mile was a large black steamer. She
was passing us on the homeward track, and
there was a string of gaudy colours flying
from her masthead, and on lifting up my eyes
to our own ship I saw such another string of
colours flying from the peak as it is called.
The steamer looked very stately under the
sun, and was as lustrous as though she were
built of burnished metal. Points of white
fire burnt all over her, and her yellow masts
were like thin pillars of gold streaked with
dazzling yellow light.
An awning covered the greater part of the
poop of our ship, for the sun this morning
was very hot. A comfortable easy-chair had
been placed ready for Alice, and when she
was seated I looked about me for chairs for
Mrs. Lee and myself. Whilst I thus paused
with my eyes roaming over the deck, Mr
Harris, the first officer, who was walking upon
the poop at the forward extremity of it,
snatched up a chair, without regard to
whom it might belong, and, approaching us
with it, struck it down upon the deck close
against Alice Lee, as though he intended
to drive the four legs of it through the
planks.
‘That’s what you’re in want of,’ said he to
me, ‘I saw you looking. Sit down. If the
party who owns this chair wants another I’ll
hail the saloon,’ and so saying he wheeled
round and marched forwards again.
‘What a very extraordinary manner Mr.
Harris has,’ said Mrs. Lee. ‘I sometimes
think he is not quite right.’
I asked her to take the chair he had
brought.
‘No, my dear, there are some matters I
wish to attend to downstairs. I will join you
presently,’ and then she bent over her
daughter and asked her if she felt comfortable,
and if the air refreshed her, and so
forth, and having lingered a little whilst she
talked to Alice, striving to see her child’s
face through the veil which covered it, she
left us.
Some of the people were playing at deck
quoits. Amongst the players were the Miss
Glanvilles, and their fine shapes showed to
great advantage as they poised themselves
upon the planks, and with floating gestures
and merry laughter threw the little rings of
rope along. Every one bowed with sympathetic
cordiality to Alice, and several people
left their seats to congratulate her upon her
first appearance on deck. One of these was
Sir Frederick Thompson.
‘This is the sort of weather,’ said he, ‘to
pull a person together. Lor’ now, if one
could always have such a climate as this in
England! Ten to one if there ain’t a dense
fog in London this morning.’
‘Pray,’ asked Alice, ‘what are those flags,
Sir Frederick, which that lad in brass buttons
there is pulling down?’
‘The ship’s number, miss. We’ve told
that steamer out yonder who we are, and
when she arrives in the river she’ll report us,
and our friends’ll learn that all’s well with
us so fur. I’ve got half a sort of feeling, d’ye
know, as if I’d like to be on board of that
steamer going home. I tell you what I miss—I
miss my morning noosepaper. I miss
reading how things are. And how do you
feel this morning, Miss C——? Pretty well,
I hope?’
‘I am feeling very well, this morning, Sir
Frederick.’
‘That’s a good job. What’s life without
‘ealth? You must know I haven’t changed
my opinion about you. You’re a Calthorpe,
and unless your memory comes back to give
me the lie, I’ll go to my grave swearing it.
What’s the latest argument against me? They
say that if you’re like Lady Loocy Calthorpe
now, you couldn’t have been like her before
you was rescued, because you’re a changed
woman from what you was. But who’s to
prove that? And what do they mean by
change? Fright can turn the hair white, but
it don’t alter the colour of the heye, and it
don’t alter the shape of the nose, and it don’t
alter the appearance of the mouth. That’s
where I find my likeness,’ said he, leering at
me.
And then, with his whimsical cockney
English, he told us of a son of a nobleman
who, having quarrelled with his father, had
shipped as a common sailor on board a vessel,
and made his way to Australia. He arrived
at a city in Australia, and tried in many ways
to get a living: he drove a cab, he wrote for
a newspaper, he was a waiter, he worked
as a labourer on the quays, he was a
billiard-marker at a hotel, and one night,
whilst he was scoring for some people who
were playing at billiards, a gentleman, who
had been staring hard at him said, ‘Are not
you the Honourable Mr. ——?’ and he gave
him his name. The young fellow changed
colour, but denied that he was the Honourable
Mr. So-and-so.
‘But the other wasn’t to be put off,’ said
Sir Frederick Thompson. ‘“Don’t tell me,”’
says the gent. “I know your brother, and
you’re the image of him.” Such a likeness is
out of nature unless it’s in the family line, and
at last the young fellow owned that he was
the Honourable Mr. So-and-so. ‘And now
you’ll find,’ said Sir Frederick, ‘that I’ve discovered
who you are, just as the Honourable
Mr. So-and-so was discovered by a likeness
altogether too strong to be in nature unless
it’s in the family line.’
The little gentleman then pulled off his
hat and left us.
‘Would he persist if he did not feel convinced?’
said I.
‘He is mistaken, dear. Let him account
for your being discovered in an open boat
before he attempts to tell you who you are.
And what does he mean by a Calthorpe?
That you are a sister of his friend, Lady Lucy
Calthorpe, or a relative? A sister is a relative,
it is true; but relative is a word that will
cover a very large number of connections.
What member of the family of Calthorpe does
Sir Frederick believe you to be? Agnes, do
not give the little gentleman’s fancy another
thought.’
We were seated on a part of the deck
that was not very far distant from the wheel.
The corner of the awning shaded us, but all
about the wheel was in the sun, and the glare
of the white decks, and of the white gratings,
and of the white costume in which the sailor
who held the wheel was clad, and the white
brilliance of the wheel itself, whose circle was
banded with brass and whose centrepiece
was brass, paled the blue of the sky over the
stern, as though a silver haze of heat rose
into the atmosphere; and the dark blue sea
itself was dimmed into a faintness of azure by
contrast with the glaring white light that lay
upon the after portion of the ship, which was
unshadowed by the awning.
But within the awning the deck was as
cool as a tunnel. The violet gloom was for
ever freshened by the mild blowing of the
breeze through the rigging and over the rail;
and the soft wind was made the cooler to the
senses by the fountainlike murmur of waters
broken by the quiet progress of the ship, and
by that most refreshing of sounds on a hot
day, the seething of foam.
CHAPTER XV THE GIPSY
I went to Alice’s cabin, where I found Mrs.
Lee writing in what appeared to be a diary,
took from a shelf the book Alice had asked
me to fetch, and returned to her side; and I
had opened the volume and had found the
place where I had left off when I last read to
her, and was beginning to read aloud when
I found my attention disturbed by the sound
of voices behind our chairs. I turned my
head, and observed that Mr. Wedmold and
Mr. Clack had seated themselves, regardless
of the heat of the sun, upon a grating near
the wheel. They were arguing.
‘It is impossible for me to read,’ I exclaimed,
‘while those men are talking so
loud.’
‘What are they arguing about?’ said
Alice Lee; ‘let us listen.’
‘Yes, I am with you there,’ said Mr.
Wedmold. ‘Defoe’s English is admirable.
But “Robinson Crusoe” is full of blunders.’
‘Blunders,’ cried Mr. Clack, whose collars
held his neck so rigid that he could not turn
his head without moving his body from the
waist. ‘I have read “Robinson Crusoe” often
enough, and cannot recollect a single blunder
for the life of me.’
‘Will you bet?’
‘No, I will not bet.’
‘Will you bet there are no absurdities in
“Robinson Crusoe”?’
‘I will stand a drink,’ said Mr. Clack, ‘if
you can point out—so as to convince me—a
single absurdity in “Robinson Crusoe”.’
‘Right you are!’ exclaimed Mr. Wedmold,
with an accent of victorious elation; ‘what
about the mark of the foot?’
‘What d’ye mean?’ said Mr. Clack.
‘“It happened one day about noon,” I
know the passage by heart,’ said Mr. Wedmold,
‘“it happened one day about noon,”
says Robinson Crusoe, “going towards my
boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the
print of a man’s naked foot on the shore,
which was very plain to be seen in the sand.”’
‘Well!’ said Mr. Clack.
‘Well,’ said Mr. Wedmold, ‘what are we
to suppose? That the savage who made that
mark with his foot had a wooden leg? Only
think of a single imprint! Even two would
have been unpardonable; there should have
been a whole flight of them. Could you
walk upon sand capable of receiving the
imprint of your foot and stamp one impress
only? Impossible!’
‘In all probability,’ said Mr. Clack, ‘the
savage landed upon some flat rocks which
were skirted by sand; and in his walk he
happened to put his foot upon the sand once
only, and hence Robinson Crusoe saw but a
single imprint.’
‘He evidently does not intend that Mr.
Wedmold shall drink at his expense,’ said
Alice.
The two gentlemen continued to argue.
It was impossible to read aloud. It was impossible
indeed not to listen to them, for they
often raised their voices so high that people
at the other end of the deck turned in their
chairs to view them. The discussion was
ended at last—so far at least as Alice and I
were concerned—by Mr. Clack telling Mr.
Wedmold that he did not believe he had
quoted correctly from the story. On this
they both rose and walked away to seek
through the ship for a copy of ‘Robinson
Crusoe.’
There was now peace at our end of the
vessel, and opening the book afresh I began
to read aloud, but before I had read two
pages, Alice, with the capricious taste of the
invalid, though her manner was never wanting
in perfect sweetness and gentleness,
stopped me.
‘I do not feel in the humour to listen to
that book,’ said she. ‘It is a book for the
quietude of the evening, for the lamplight,
a book for the open window through which
you can see the stars shining. It is not a
book for a sunny joyous morning like this.
One should not be able to see gay figures
moving about, and hear the sound of laughter
when one reads it.’
I closed the volume and she talked of the
sea and the wonder and beauty of it, and
recited some passages from the ‘Ancient
Mariner’; but in the midst of her recitation
she was seized with a cough that almost convulsed
her. I raised her veil that she might
breathe easily. She sought to reassure me
with a smile during the convulsions of her
cough, but it shook her to the heart. I
seemed to hear death in the rattle of that
terrible cough. Never before in my presence
had she been so suddenly and violently seized.
The fit passed and she lowered her veil,
breathing quickly, and for some moments she
was speechless. Presently I said to her;
‘Has this attack been caused by your coming
on deck?’
She shook her head and answered in a
low voice, as though speaking with difficulty.
‘No, I often cough, but chiefly during the
night. Do not tell mother of this attack.’
One might have imagined her cough noisy
and distressing enough to win the attention
of everybody upon deck, and that nobody
heeded it, unless it was the sailor who stood
a little distance behind us grasping the wheel,
was because, whilst Alice was coughing the
passengers had left their seats, had thrown
down their books or work, had forsaken their
game of deck quoits to crowd about the head
of the ladder on the right-hand side of the
deck—the ladder that conducted from the
poop on to the quarterdeck below. I was
too much grieved and concerned by Alice’s
attack to notice this movement of the passengers;
but now that she had recovered and
was able to speak and get her breath freely,
I looked at the people and wondered what
had drawn them in a body to that particular
part of the deck.
‘Can an accident have happened?’ said I.
‘Will you go and see what is the matter,
dear?’ exclaimed Alice.
I at once arose and walked along the
deck, keeping on the side opposite that which
was thronged with the passengers. When I
arrived at the brass rail that protected the
extremity of the deck, I looked over and saw
a great crowd of emigrants gathered about
the central mast and hatchway. They
grinned and elbowed amongst themselves as
they stared at the concourse of passengers
upon the poop. Half-way up the ladder on
that side stood the swarthy fierce-looking
gipsy, who had ejaculated on catching sight
of my face when I first came on board, and
who had watched me with eyes of fire when
I had walked the deck with Mrs. Lee. She
appeared to be haranguing the passengers on
the poop. Her voice was a peculiar whine,
and she showed a set of white strong teeth
as she grinned up at them. Fearing if she
saw me that she would point or call, or in
some way direct attention to me, I returned
to Alice, seated myself at her side,
and told her what I had seen. After a
few minutes the crowd of passengers at the
head of the poop-ladder drew back, so as
to allow the gipsy woman to step on to the
deck. The whole mob, with the fierce-looking
woman in the heart of them, then came
surging to the skylight lying nearest to the
edge of the poop, and here all the people
halted, with the woman still in the thick of
them. Mr. Harris hovered on the skirts of
the crowd, taking a peep now and again over
one or another’s shoulder with his acid, dry,
twisted face; and great was the curiosity of
the poor emigrants; for unheeded, or at least
unrebuked by the mate, they thronged the
poop-ladder on either hand to look on and
hear what was said.
The tawny, flashing-eyed woman could
now and again be seen by us as the people
about her moved the better to hear or to
accommodate one another with room. Her
white teeth gleamed; a fierce smile was fixed
upon her face; her eyes of Egyptian blackness
sparkled under the red hood or handkerchief
that covered her head, her skin looked
of the colour of pepper in the sunlight; she
talked incessantly, with frequent exhortatory
flourishings of her arms, and distant as she
was—almost the whole length of the long
poop-deck separating us—I could see how
wild, fierce, and repellant was her smile,
whilst she glanced from one face to another
as she jabbered and gesticulated.
Frequent laughter broke from the passengers,
and sometimes one or two of the ladies
recoiled by a step, though they would thrust
in again a minute after.
‘What can they be doing with the
woman?’ said Alice.
‘They seem to be making fun of her,’
said I.
‘It is more likely that she is making fun
of them,’ said Alice. ‘Is she a gipsy? She
has the appearance of one.’
‘What is a gipsy?’ I asked.
‘A person who belongs to a strange wandering
tribe; whether there are more tribes
than one I do not know. They are to be
found everywhere, I believe. They look like
Jews, but they are not Jews. It is supposed
that they originally came from Egypt or
India. I used to take a great interest in
reading about them. I never can pronounce
the word gipsy without an English country
picture rising before me; a wayside tract of
grass off a dusty road, clumps of trees here
and there, the trickling sound of a little brook
mingled with the humming of bees and the
lowing of cattle in a near pasture, a waggon
covered with canvas, two or three dark-skinned
little children playing on the grass,
a tawny woman like that creature there,
bending over an iron pot dangling above a
gipsy fire, a fierce, bushy-whiskered, chocolate-faced
man, mending chairs, or making
baskets, or tinkering at a little forge.’
She gazed at me earnestly when she
ceased to speak. I knew that she sought in
the expression of my face for some sign of
my recognition of the picture she had drawn,
for some hint of recollection in my looks. A
sudden burst of laughter broke from the
people gathered about the gipsy.
‘I believe she is telling fortunes,’ said
Alice; ‘shall we go and listen to her, dear?’
She took my arm and we approached the
crowd. It was as Alice had said: the woman
was telling fortunes. She was holding the
delicate white fingers of the elder Miss Glanville,
whose handsome face was rosy red.
Everybody was on the broad grin. The
gipsy woman holding the girl’s fingers talked
with her eyes upon the palm of the hand, but
sometimes she would flash a look into Miss
Glanville’s face. The creature spoke deliberately,
with a slow drawling whine. She
seemed to heartily enjoy her task, and to be
in no hurry to proceed with her business of
divination. Her face was heavy, the features
strong and coarse, and the whole head would
have better suited a man’s than a woman’s
figure; yet the countenance was not wanting
in a certain wild comeliness. The nose was
of the true Egyptian pattern as we are taught
to understand the meaning of the word Egyptian
by ancient chiselling and inscriptions,
and her hair, or as much as was visible of it,
resembled a wig manufactured from a horse’s
tail.
‘He will make you unhappy,’ she was
saying in her drawling whining voice, ‘but
you will be true to him. Yet you will not be
sorry when he dies, and a handsome man will
be your second. But he will have to wait for
you, and cheerfully will he wait for you, my
lady, for he’s waiting for you now. True
love is never in a ’urry.’ There was a laugh.
‘He will not bring you money. No, it is
your ladyship that will set him up; but he’ll
never be made to feel his want of money, for
your ’art beats fond.’
‘What stuff!’ said Alice.
‘It makes her blush, yet she does not look
displeased,’ I whispered.
‘Can’t you name the two fortunate gentlemen,
mother?’ exclaimed a tall, slender young
man known to me as simply Mr. Stinton.
‘Names is nothing,’ answered the gipsy
woman, without lifting her eyes from the
girl’s hand, ‘it’s persons, not names, as my art
deals with.’ And then she went on to tell the
blushing Miss Glanville that her home after
her second marriage would not be in England
but in Italy. She would live by a lake; an
Italian nobleman would fall in love with her,
and though there would be no reason for
jealousy the Italian nobleman would cause a
little unhappiness between her and her second.
The Italian nobleman would praise her singing
and excite a passion in her for the stage,
but it would not come to the stage, for her
second’s wishes would prevail, and the Italian
nobleman after a time would withdraw and
never more be heard of.
Other rubbish of this sort did the fierce-looking
gipsy woman drawl and whine out,
sometimes in language very well expressed,
and sometimes using slang or cant words
which never failed to provoke the laughter of
the gentlemen.
Amongst those who pressed most eagerly
forward to harken to the gipsy was Mrs.
Webber. She was dressed in white, and a
very pretty straw hat was perched on her
high-dressed hair. Her pale face wore an
expression of enthusiastic credulity, and she
kept her eyes fastened upon the gipsy as
though she devoured every word the creature
uttered. Alice and I stood on the other side
of the crowd, and Mrs. Webber did not observe
us. I speak of ourselves as a crowd,
and indeed we looked so on the white deck of
the ship and under the shadow of the awning
which produced an atmospheric effect of compression,
diminishing the width and even the
length of the ship to the eye. I had no
doubt that Mrs. Webber would ask to have
her fortune told, and I loitered, Alice leaning
on my arm, with some curiosity to hear what
the gipsy would say; but when the woman
had dropped the hand of Miss Glanville, and
while she swept the adjacent faces with brilliant
eyes as though she should say, Whose
turn next? the tall, slim young gentleman
known to me by the name of Mr. Stinton
pressed forward close to the woman and
exclaimed:
‘I say, mother, I know something about
you gipsy folks. My father was a magistrate,’
and dropping his head on one side he smiled
at her.
‘What you know about us is that we are
a very respectable, honest people,’ said she,
grinning at him, with her large, strong,
glaring white teeth.
‘Do you still steal pigs?’ said he.
‘Oh, no, no,’ she cried with a vehement
shake of the head and an equally vehement
motion of her hand before her face.
‘You no longer poison pigs and beg the
carcases of the poor people to whom they
belonged and then clean them of the poison
and roast them and eat them, eh?’ said Mr.
Stinton.
A general laugh arose on either hand
from the emigrants who swarmed upon the
two ladders.
‘Oh, no, no,’ cried the woman, ‘we are
respectable, hard-working people, and get our
money honestly.’
‘You no longer steal horses, then?’
‘Oh, no, no.’
‘Nor children?’
‘Why do you say such things?’ shrieked
the woman, and her eyes blazed as she looked
at Mr. Stinton, and the flush that entered her
cheeks deepened her swarthy, ugly complexion
by several shades. ‘By my God, if
you ask me any more such questions I will do
you some mischief.’
‘None of that!’ cried Mr. Harris.
‘My father is a magistrate,’ said Mr.
Stinton, who had stepped backwards and now
spoke over the shoulders of Mr. Webber.
‘It is a pity to insult the poor creature,’
said one of the ladies.
The gipsy looked for an instant at Mr.
Stinton, her eyes then went to Mrs. Webber,
and her manner changed; it grew suppliant
and cringing; the fierce expression of her lips
softened into a fawning smile.
‘Let me tell you your fortune, my gorgeous
angel,’ she exclaimed, resuming her
former drawling, whining voice. ‘Oh, but I
can see that there is a happy fortune for that
sweet face. Pull off your beautiful little
glove that I may see your hand, and whatever
you crosses my own hand with shall be
welcome for the sake of your lovely eyes.
Ah, what mischief has my lady’s eyes done in
their day, and what mischief are they yet to
do,’ and thus the woman proceeded.
I could not forbear a smile at the manner
in which Mr. Webber readjusted the glass in
his eye, as though to obtain a clearer sight
of the gipsy, whilst he stroked down one of
his whiskers.
‘This is sad nonsense,’ said Alice; ‘and I
am a little weary of standing. Shall we return
to our seats, dear?’
I wished to hear Mrs. Webber’s fortune
told, but Alice was not to be kept standing,
and together we walked to our chairs at the
after-end of the deck and seated ourselves.
Just then Mrs. Lee came up from the saloon.
She inquired what the passengers were doing.
‘They are having their fortunes told,
mother,’ answered Alice.
‘By our staring gipsy friend, no doubt,’
said Mrs. Lee, addressing me. ‘Well, certainly
life at sea is very dull, and you cannot
wonder that people should try to kill an
hour, however stupidly.’ I fetched a chair,
and she sat down. ‘And yet,’ continued she
thoughtfully, letting her eyes rest upon her
child, ‘I ought to be one of the last to ridicule
fortune-telling. When I was a girl of
sixteen I was walking with my mother—where
we then lived—on the outskirts of
Gateshead, when we came across a gipsy
encampment. A dreadful old hag stumbled
out of a group of dirty people, and begged
to let her tell me my dukkerin, as she called
it—strange that I should remember the word
after all these years! My mother was for
going on, but I stopped and put a shilling
into the old creature’s hand, and she told me
my fortune.’
‘Was it a true fortune?’ said Alice.
‘It was true, every word,’ answered Mrs.
Lee; ‘it was wonderfully true. She described
the man that I was to marry, and had she
spoken with your dear father’s portrait in her
hand she could not have been more accurate.
She told me how many children I should
have; but, what is more extraordinary, she
named not only the year but the month of
the year in which I should be married. And
it came to pass exactly as she had predicted.’
‘And what more did the gipsy tell you,
mother?’ said Alice.
‘No more, my love,’ answered Mrs. Lee,
but with a note of hesitation, which made me
suspect that more had been told to her by
that old gipsy than she was now willing to
reveal.
Meanwhile there was much laughter
amongst the passengers at the other end of
the deck. I could occasionally distinguish an
hysterical giggle uttered by Mrs. Webber,
and once a deep unquiet Ha! ha! delivered
by her husband.
‘A ship seems a strange place for gipsies
and fortune-telling,’ said Alice. ‘Why is that
woman going to Australia, I wonder? Are
there any of her tribe there?’
‘Probably some ancestor of hers was
transported,’ answered Mrs. Lee. ‘He left
descendants, and the woman is going to settle
down amongst them. Gipsies were constantly
being transported for theft of all sorts when
I was a girl, in days when there were convict
ships and when unhappy wretches were
banished for life from their country for crimes
which are now visited with a few months’
imprisonment. I am amazed that there should
be any gipsies left. There was more prejudice
against them than even against the Jews.
They were hunted from town to town, the
parish eye was never off them, and they were
really so wicked, they committed so many
sins, that it is amazing there should be any
survivors of the prisons.’
Whilst Mrs. Lee was thus speaking, Mrs.
Webber came sailing out of the crowd with
a flushed face and a smile of excitement.
Her flowing robe of white cashmere fluffed
out in ample winding folds as she advanced,
and she approached with an airy, floating gait
that was like dancing.
‘Oh, Miss C——,’ she exclaimed, eagerly
bending towards me, ‘I have been having my
fortune told; and, do you know, the ugly
creature is a witch; she is positively a witch!
She has told me some extraordinary things,
I assure you. My poor husband was silly
enough to “hem” once or twice as though
her prophecies disquieted him. Now, Miss
C——, I want you to let the woman tell you
your fortune.’
‘No, if you please, Mrs. Webber,’ I exclaimed.
‘Oh, but you must let her tell you your
fortune,’ she repeated. ‘Mrs. Lee, I protest
the creature is a witch. Do help me to persuade
Miss C—— to let the woman look at
her hand.’
‘These people profess to tell the future
only,’ said Mrs. Lee smiling. ‘Can that
woman there read the past—a past that is
hidden in darkness? If she can,’ she continued,
turning to me, ‘no harm can be done
by your crossing her hand.’
‘Only think,’ cried Mrs. Webber, ‘if something
she said, some question she put to you,
should light up your memory.’
‘What could she invent that you or
Mrs. Lee or Miss Lee could not ask?’
said I.
‘The woman is quite a witch,’ said Mrs.
Webber, ‘you should give yourself a chance.
How can you tell who may help you or what
may inspire you?’
I looked at Alice. ‘I think Mrs. Webber
is right,’ said she; ‘you never can tell what
may awaken recollection.’
‘I will not go amongst that crowd and
have my fortune told,’ said I.
‘I will bring the woman to you,’ exclaimed
Mrs. Webber; and, full of curiosity
and excitement, and with her eyes bright
with the animal spirits which had been excited
by the gipsy’s flattering observations,
she sailed away from us.
‘What will the gipsy be able to say?’
exclaimed Mrs. Lee, laughing a little nervously.
‘But more wonderful than her predictions
must be the credulity that can listen
to such stuff. And stuff I call it, in spite of
the old woman who told my fortune rightly.
Poor Mrs. Webber! There are many ladies
after her kind in this world, perfectly good-hearted
creatures, but——My husband
used often to say that the strongest of all
human passions is curiosity, and that the
speediest and surest way of making money
is to work upon that passion.’
‘Here comes the gipsy woman,’ said Alice.
I felt extremely nervous and uneasy. I
did not like the idea of being stared at close
by that flaming-eyed toad-coloured woman.
And neither did I like the idea of being
stared at close by the passengers whilst the
gipsy whined at me. But it was now too
late to draw back; Mrs. Webber and the
gipsy were coming along the deck, followed
by at least two-thirds of the passengers, and
now the fierce-looking woman was dropping
curtsies to me and to Mrs. Lee and to Alice.
She instantly addressed me in a drawling,
fawning voice.
‘Ah, my sorrowful angel, it has been a
bad time for you, and when I first saw your
ladyship I said to myself, She’s of Egypt, and
if she has bantlings they are tawny, and I
cried, Tiny Jesus, what a face! for the sight
of it was like poison to my heart. Oh yes,
my sorrowful angel, I did think you one of
us, and Roman you might well be,’ she cried
with her flashing eyes fastened upon my veil,
‘but for your delicate skin and a look of
high-born beauty which the likes of us never
has. Come, sweet lady, cross my hand, and
let it be silver, that I may tell ye your true
fortune.’
By this time, we were pretty fairly surrounded
by the passengers, and a little way
back, with his eyes fixed full upon me, was
Mr. Harris, the chief officer. The gipsy stood
unpleasantly close. Her features were more
massive and coarse, her complexion more
loathsome, her teeth bigger and stronger if
not whiter, and her eyes wilder, more flaming
and more searching than I had imagined
them, though I had not stood far from her
when she was telling fortunes in the crowd.
I remember observing many minute dots of
black upon her chin, as though she shaved
or had been pricked by a needle dipped
in India ink. Her figure was lame and
muscular, her bust enormous and slack,
her whole appearance indeed so repellent
now that she was close to me that I
heartily wished myself in my cabin out of
sight.
‘You do not mean to tell us,’ exclaimed
Mr. Webber, ‘that you mistook the lady for
a gipsy.’
‘Indeed I did, dear gentleman,’ she
answered; ‘when she first came on board
I took her for one of my people.’
‘Chaw!’ exclaimed Mr. Harris over the
shoulder of Mr. Stinton.
Mrs. Lee felt for her purse.
‘Let the poor sorrowful lady cross my
hand with a piece of money of her own,’ said
the gipsy.
I put my hand in my pocket and drew
out a shilling and placed it in the broad
palm of the gipsy’s outstretched hand. The
passengers gazed with excitement. Mr.
Harris drew closer by a stride. The two
ladders at the forward end of the deck and
the bulwark rail that rose to midway the
height of the ladders on either hand were
still crowded with emigrants, none of whom,
however, trespassed an inch beyond the topmost
step. All this keen interest was easy
enough to understand. Was it possible that
the gipsy, though she should be unable to
restore my memory, would be able to peer
into the darkened mirror of my past and
witness there what was hidden from myself?
‘You must lift up your veil, dear lady,’
said the gipsy, ‘there are signs in your
face that I shan’t be able to find in your
hand.’
‘What is this?’ suddenly exclaimed the
grave voice of Captain Ladmore. ‘Whom
have we here? And what is she doing?’
‘She’s telling fortunes, sir,’ answered Mr.
Harris, in a voice of disgust.
‘Who brought her on to the poop,’ exclaimed
Captain Ladmore.
‘I did,’ said Mrs. Webber. ‘Pray do not
meddle, my dear captain. The interest is just
now red hot.’
The gipsy woman ducked with a wild sort
of curtsey at the captain, grinning with all
her teeth at him as she did so. He gazed at
her with a sober frown, and I hoped that he
would order her off the deck, but he said
nothing, merely stood looking gravely on,
towering half a head above the people
who stood in front of him, whilst Mr. Harris,
at his side, scarcely removed his eyes from
my face.
‘Lift up your veil, if you please, my dear
lady, that I may see your eyes,’ said the
gipsy.
‘I had supposed that the sight of my
hand would be enough for you,’ said I.
‘I can tell your ladyship’s fortune by your
hand,’ said she, ‘but the past lies in your
eyes. They are the windows of your memory,
and I must look through them to see what’s
indoors.’
‘What do you think of that for a poetical
touch, Kate?’ I heard Mr. Webber
say.
‘Raise your veil, Agnes,’ whispered Alice
softly, ‘if it is only for a moment, dear. I
am curious to hear what the woman means
to tell you. There may be a meaning in this—something
may come of it.’
So I put my hand to my veil and raised
it above my eyes, contriving that it should
keep my scarred forehead screened.
CHAPTER XVI MY FORTUNE
The gipsy woman stooped and stared at me.
Her face was close to mine, I seemed to feel
her hot breath and shrunk in my chair.
Never can I forget those eyes of hers. To
this day do they revisit me in my sleep and
glare upon me in dreams. Oh, such eyes as
that woman had! The pupils were like liquid
indigo; they contracted and enlarged as
though they were fluid, indeed, upon the
orange ground of the balls. They seemed on
fire as their gaze flashed deep and full into
my own vision. The scrutiny swiftly grew
intolerable and I dropped my veil.
‘That will do, my sweet lady,’ said she,
preserving the horrid whining note in her
voice, and then, taking my hand, she feigned
to explore it for some moments, perhaps
minutes, so long did the pause seem.
She stood with my fingers in her hand,
poring upon the palm. I cast a look around
me, and in spite of my nervousness and uneasiness,
that amounted to positive distress, I
had some difficulty to prevent myself from
breaking into an hysterical laugh at the countenances
which surrounded us. Mrs. Webber
seemed unable to draw her breath; the Miss
Glanvilles stood with their mouths partly
open; Sir Frederick Thompson’s face was distorted
by a grin of expectation; but it would
need the brush of a great comic artist to reproduce
the looks of those people whilst they
waited for the gipsy to speak.
She suddenly let fall my hand, drew
herself erect and receded a step, causing a
momentary confusion amongst the passengers
who stood immediately behind her. She
muttered awhile, and then in a sort of singsong,
drawling voice addressed me, as nearly
as I can recollect, as follows:—
‘It is not true that you are a single woman
as they are saying throughout this ship. It
is nothing to me that you have no wedding
ring, for what signifies the want of a wedding
ring when a poor lady is found as you were,
bleeding and insensible? What signifies a
wedding ring, I say, to such as you, found as
you were, my sorrowful lady?—for are there
not thieves upon the sea as there are thieves
upon the land? And I do not need to
be told that a sailor may be a good man
until he is tempted, and then he will turn
thief; yes, he will turn thief, even though he
would give all that he has stolen for a drink
of water and a piece of biscuit.’
‘How extraordinary!’ I heard Mrs. Webber
say.
‘Oh yes,’ continued the gipsy, slightly
gesticulating with her right hand, ‘the
wedding ring does not signify. You are a
married woman. I have looked into your
eyes and I have seen a husband there; I
have looked into your eyes and I have seen
children there. You are a married woman,
my lady. I tell you that, and I will tell you
more; you are a young married woman.
You have not long been married. Your
husband is mourning for you, but he will not
mourn long. Give me your hand.’ She
seized my hand with impassioned energy, and
continued to speak with her eyes fixed upon
the palm of it. ‘You will be long separated
from your husband. A dark shadow will
stand between you. Oh, it is very clear—here
is the sign: it is the shadow of death,
that will stand between you. It will roll
away, but another shadow of death will take
its place, and though it will not stand between
you and your husband, it will be dark upon
your soul, aye, even unto the grave.’
‘The woman certainly talks poetically,’
said Mrs. Lee, in a low voice in my ear, ‘and
it is clever of her to say what it has not occurred
to other people to think of.’
The gipsy viewed me with her bright eyes
and her teeth bared, but apparently she had
no more fortune to tell me.
‘I say, missis,’ exclaimed Sir Frederick
Thompson, ‘I should like to have your
opinion upon the lady’s quality. If she ain’t
a titled woman, don’t she spring from a noble
stock now?’
‘Ah, my pretty gentleman,’ whined the
gipsy turning to view him, ‘The duckkerin
dook does not tell me that.’
‘You’ve told fortunes enough in your
time to be able to tell breeding, I hope, when
you see it,’ said Sir Frederick.
‘Oh, my pretty gentleman,’ drawled the
woman, ‘to us poor gipsies all the world is
alike. We are all brothers and sisters, and
those that are kind,’ said she, bobbing a curtsey
at him, ‘we love best and think most of,
and they are the true quality people of the
earth.’
‘But you have not done with the lady yet,
I hope?’ cried Mrs. Webber. ‘You have told
her nothing.’
‘My gorgeous angel,’ answered the woman,
‘I have told the sorrowful lady all I know,
and what I know is the truth.’
‘What’s her country, mother?’ inquired
Mr. Stinton.
She eyed him sideways with a cat-like
look, but made no reply.
‘Tell us, my good woman, in what country
you think her home is?’ said Mr. Webber.
‘Who can tell? I will not answer that,’
said the gipsy. ‘There are many countries
for the likes of such as the sorrowful lady to
have a home in. There is Russia and Spain
and ’Olland. In them countries are plenty of
English gorgios. Where her home may be I
cannot tell, for the dook is silent.’
‘What Dook is she talking of?’ exclaimed
Sir Frederick Thompson.
‘Oh, sweet gentleman,’ she said, turning
upon him again, ‘the dook is the spirit that
enables me to tell dukkeripen.’
‘Hearing you speak of Spain, mother, I
thought you might have meant the Dook of
Wellington,’ said Sir Frederick.
Mrs. Webber looked at her husband with
a face of vexation, as though irritated by the
vulgar jokes of the little city gentleman at
such a moment of romance.
‘Your dook is but a shabby expounder of
riddles if he cannot tell us why the lady
should be found insensible and washing about
the ocean in a little bit of an open boat,’ said
Mr. Wedmold. ‘Can’t the dook make a guess?’
‘You forget, Mr. Wedmold, that fortune-telling
means reading the future, not the
past,’ said Mrs. Webber.
‘And that is right, my beautiful lady,’
cried the gipsy; ‘but I have told the sorrowful
lady her past too, and by-and-bye the
dook may tell me what her name is and where
her ’ome is, and how many childer she has;
and if I enable her to return to her friends,
I hope,’ said she, sinking her knees in a
curtsey, ‘that the poor gipsy woman will be
remembered.’
Captain Ladmore, who had been looking
on and listening all this while, stalked away
from the crowd of us to the rail, and remained
there, gazing seawards.
‘And shall I tell you your fortune, my
sweet young lady?’ exclaimed the gipsy,
addressing Alice Lee. ‘Give me your poor
thin hand, and though you cross mine with
the littlest bit you have, you shall have your
fortune as truly told as though you gave me
gold.’
‘My daughter does not require her fortune
told,’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee, jumping up
with an air of mingled consternation and
excitement, and planting herself between the
gipsy and Alice.
‘I think we have had about enough of
her for one watch,’ exclaimed Mr. Harris, in
his sourest voice. ‘Suppose you go forward
now.’
‘Let me tell you your fortune, my pretty
gentleman,’ exclaimed the gipsy; ‘you are an
officer of the ship, and I will tell you your
fortune for nothing.’
‘Get along forward to your quarters,’ said
Mr. Harris. ‘When I want lies told about
me I’ll get ’em from somebody who’ll have
sense enough to fit my tiptop wishes. What
can ye tell me? That after this voyage I’m
going to marry a German princess and be
voted ten thousand a year by the British
House of Commons? You’d want sixpence to
tell me that lie, and there’s never a man for’ards
that wouldn’t spin me fifty better yarns
about my prospects for a single tot of grog.
So away with you to your quarters,’ and he
made as though he would drive her; whereupon,
dropping curtsies to me, to Mrs. Webber,
and to one or two others, the gipsy walked
forward with a face rendered extraordinary
by the wild grin on her lips and the scowl
upon her brow like a visible shadow there,
sharpening and brightening the fiery glancings
of her eyes.
The crowds of emigrants on the two
ladders melted away, the mob of passengers
broke up, but Mrs. Webber remained.
Mrs. Webber, as I have said, remained;
but for some moments neither she nor Mrs.
Lee nor her daughter spoke. Their eyes
were bent upon my face, and they waited,
hoping no doubt that when I aroused myself
from the reverie into which I had sunk I
would exhibit some sign of returning
memory. I held my head down, and kept my
gaze fixed upon the deck, and, rightly guessing
that I would not be the first to speak,
Mrs. Webber said:
‘Tell me now, has the gipsy woman
helped you at all?’
I looked at her, and after a pause shook
my head and answered, ‘She has not helped
me in the least.’
‘What could have put the idea of your
being married into the creature’s head?’ exclaimed
Mrs. Lee.
‘It is a strange idea,’ said Alice, looking
at me earnestly; ‘but I suppose those gipsy
people understand the need of saying strange
things. They cannot be too dark and mysterious
and startling to please the sort of
folks who cross their hands.’
‘But why should not Miss C—— be married?’
said Mrs. Webber.
‘I hope she is not—but I am sure she is
not!’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee.
Mrs. Webber ran a curious eye over me,
and said: ‘I had my theory, but I own the
gipsy creature has driven it out of my head.
Is it quite impossible, my dear Mrs. Lee, that
Miss C—— may have been robbed of her
rings? Why should she be found without
any jewellery upon her? Your station in
society is easily guessed, Miss C——, and I
must say, now the gipsy woman has suggested
the idea, that your having been found without
rings, without a watch and chain, without
earrings or brooch, without, in short, a single
ornament such as one might most reasonably
expect to find a lady wearing, looks uncommonly
like as though you had been robbed.
In which case,’ she added, somewhat breathlessly,
‘you may have worn a wedding ring.’
‘Miss C—— had a purse with money in
it in her pocket,’ said Mrs. Lee, who never
called me by the name her daughter had
given to me before strangers. ‘A thief who
would steal rings or a watch and chain
would certainly steal a purse with money
in it.’
‘But—forgive me for being candid, Miss
C——; whatever I say, whatever I may say,
is wholly for your sake—is wholly with the
idea of helping you to remember,’ said Mrs.
Webber; ‘is it likely that a lady occupying
your position in society would be without a
single ring?’ She glanced at her own plump
white hands, upon which sparkled a variety
of valuable gems.
Alice Lee pulled off her silk gloves, and,
lifting up her poor thin hands, exclaimed with
a smile in her voice—her face was concealed
by her veil—‘You may see, Mrs. Webber,
that I do not wear rings.’
‘There may be a reason,’ exclaimed Mrs.
Webber, looking a little nonplussed.
‘Yes, there is a reason to be sure,’ said
Mrs. Lee, bringing her eyes away from her
daughter’s hands with a look of pain in her
face, ‘Alice never cared for jewellery of any
sort.’
‘I could name two girls of my acquaintance,
Mrs. Webber,’ said Alice, putting on
her gloves, ‘who do not wear rings, not
because they cannot get them, their fathers
are rich merchants at Newcastle-on-Tyne,
but because, like me, they do not care for
rings. I dare say we could name others,
mother, if we were to take the trouble to
think.’
‘But would you be without a watch, Miss
C——?’ said Mrs. Webber.
‘Do not ask me!’ I cried. ‘All the while
you are conversing I am struggling with my
mind.’
‘Take a few turns with me, dear,’ said
Alice, rising, ‘and then we will go downstairs
and lunch together quietly in our cabin. I
do not feel well enough to lunch in the
saloon.’
So I gave her my arm, and we paced the
deck. Mrs. Webber took my chair and talked
with Mrs. Lee in a voice which she softened as
we approached, gesticulating with considerable
energy, as though she sought to convince
her companion. After we had taken four or
five turns, Alice complained of feeling weary;
we then descended into the saloon and passed
into the cabin.
* * * * *
At about nine o’clock that evening I went
to my berth in the steerage, having spent the
greater part of the day since the hour of
lunch with Alice Lee and her mother. The
girl’s cough had been somewhat troublesome
during the afternoon. It had abated, but it
had left her weak, and there had been a hint
of querulousness in her manner, but scarcely
so much as to vex her sweetness; nay, I could
liken it to nothing better than to the passage
of a summer breath of night-wind over some
exquisitely calm breast of water, causing the
reflection of the stars to tremble in the pure
mirror, and shaking a little further sweetness
yet out of the lilies.
I helped her to undress, and saw her into
bed, and I sat and read aloud to her until she
fell asleep. Her mother had sat in an armchair
watching her, until some one began to
play on the piano, whilst I was reading to
Alice, on which Mrs. Lee softly went out to
silence the music, as I might suppose, for it
presently ceased, and before she returned
Alice had fallen asleep; whereupon, creeping
from the berth, I whispered to Mrs. Lee that
her daughter slumbered, and went to my own
cabin.
The bracket lamp was alight, but it burnt
dimly, and I brightened it for the sake of the
cheerfulness and the companionship of the
flame. I was sad at heart, and my head
ached, but I was not sleepy. Secretly I had
been greatly agitated by what the gipsy
had said. Of course I knew it was pure
invention on the woman’s part; but even
as mere suggestions her words had sunk
deep. Could it be that I was a married
woman? Could it be that I had children?
The thought raised an agony of desire
to know—to be sure; but it brought
with it no other yearning. I knew not that
there were dear ones at home mourning over
me as dead, and therefore my heart could not
crave for them. To my eclipsed and blackened
mind my husband and my children
were as the unborn infant is to the mother
that may yet bear it. I was without memory
and, no matter what might be the imaginations
infixed in my mind by the suggestions
and conjectures of others, I was without the
power to realise.
But not the less was the struggle after
recollection a dreadful anguish. Sometimes I
sat and sometimes I paced the deck of the
cabin, and all the while I was saying to myself,
‘Suppose that I am a wife! Suppose
that I have left a husband and children
behind me at my home, wherever it may be!’
And then I would come to a stand, and fold
my arms tightly across my breast, and close
my eyes and with knitted brow search in the
blackness within me, till the fruitless quest
grew into physical pain unendurable as
though some cruel hand were upon my
heart.
And there was something more than my
own intolerable mental condition to depress
me. I could not doubt that Alice Lee was
dying. She might be spared for some weeks;
she might even be spared to find a grave in
Australia. But when I had looked at her
after her fits of coughing that afternoon, and
when I had taken a final glance at her as she
lay sleeping, I could not doubt that her time
was short, that whether or not she should
live to reach Australia she would certainly
never behold her native country again.
Short as had been our association, I could not
have loved her more had she been known to
me and had she been dear to me all her life.
I loved Mrs. Lee, but I loved Alice Lee more
than I loved her mother. My grief was selfish,
but then all grief is more or less so.
When this girl dies, I thought to myself, what
friends shall I have? Who will compassionate
my loneliness as she does? Who will
make me feel as she does, whilst my memory
remains black, that I am not utterly solitary?
I know that whilst she lives I shall have a
friend, someone who will care for me, someone
who will not lose sight of me when this
voyage is ended and the homeless world is
before me. But she will die before the
voyage is ended, and what then will become
of me? O God, take pity upon me! I cried
out of the anguish of my soul; and, throwing
myself upon my knees, I clasped my hands
and prayed for mercy and for help to
Him to whom Alice Lee had taught me to
pray.
The night was very quiet. The steerage
was silent; one man I had observed
reading at a table under the lamp; but
the fine night, as I might suppose, detained
his fellow-passengers on deck. There
was a bright moon; the silver sheen lay
upon the glass of the cabin porthole and
so obscured it with misty radiance that the
stars and the dark line of the horizon were
invisible. The wind was fair and fresh,
and the noise of the water washing past
penetrated the silence. The ship rocked
stately and slow; indeed it was true tropic
sailing, with a tropic temperature in the
cabin and a tropic night without, to judge by
the glory of the moonlight upon the cabin
window.
The minutes crept on, but feeling sleepless
I had no mind to undress myself. Indeed, I
had a longing to go on deck, for the temperature
of the berth was uncomfortably warm;
I did not know how to open the porthole, nor,
though I had been able to open it, should I
have dared to do so lest a sudden roll of the
ship might submerge the orifice and fill the
berth with water. The temptation, therefore,
to go on deck was keen, and it was rendered
the keener by my hot brow and headache;
in imagination I tasted the sweet night wind
cool with dew, and beheld the wide-spread
splendour cast by the moon upon the vast
dark surface of the sea. But then it would
shortly be ten o’clock, at which hour a man
regularly tapped upon my door and bade me
extinguish my lamp; and then, again, I remembered
how Mr. Harris and Mrs. Richards had
stated that it was against the rules of the ship
for women to wander alone upon the decks
after the hour for extinguishing the lights
had been struck upon the ship’s bell.
Suddenly I heard a voice calling down
the hatchway at the forward end of the steerage;
someone gruffly replied, possibly the
man who had been seated reading under the
lamp. I paid no heed to these cries; they
were frequent enough down in this part of
the ship. But about five minutes after the
cry had sounded my cabin door was lightly
beaten and opened, and Mrs. Richards entered.
‘I am glad to find you dressed,’ she exclaimed.
‘I believed you would have been
in bed in spite of your light burning. There
is a fine sight to be seen on deck. What do
you think it is? A ship on fire! You may
make many voyages without seeing such a
sight.’
‘A ship on fire!’ I exclaimed. ‘Oh, I
should greatly wish to see it! But it is nearly
ten o’clock.’
‘And what of that?’ said she.
‘Why, did I not understand you to say
that women are not allowed to be alone on
deck after the lights are out?’
She laughed and answered, ‘The Captain
would not like women to be wandering on
deck alone at one o’clock in the morning as
you were, my dear; but there are always
passengers about in warm weather at ten
o’clock, and sometimes after midnight, and
whilst there are passengers on deck no notice
will be taken of your being there.’
‘If I had known that,’ said I, ‘I should
have gone on deck half an hour ago.’
I put on my shawl and hat—I call them
mine—and, parting with Mrs. Richards at her
own cabin door, went on to the poop by one
of the ladders conducting to that raised platform
from the quarter deck. It was a very
fine glorious night. The moon rode high, and
under her the sea lay brightly silvered. The
sky was rich with stars, some of them a delicate
green and two or three of them rose, and
the firmament in which they sparkled had a
soft and flowing look as though the velvet
dusk were liquid. The ship was clothed with
canvas to the starry altitude of her trucks.
The swelling sails reflected the light of the
moon, and their gleam was as that of snow
against the dark sky as they rose with an
appearance of cloud-like floating one above
another, dwindling until the topmost sail
seemed no more than a fragment of fleecy
mist wan in the dusky heights. There was a
pleasant breeze, and it blew over the rail cool
with dew and sweet with that flavourless
freshness of ocean air that is to the nostrils as
a glass of water from a pure crystal spring is
to the mouth.
I stood at the corner of the poop near
the head of the ladder in the shadow made
by the great sail called the mainsail, one
wing or extremity of which was stretched
a long way beyond the shrouds. Many
passengers were on the poop; they were
whitened by the moonlight, and as they
moved here and there their figures showed
as though beheld through a very delicate
silver mist, but their shadows swayed black
and firm from their feet upon the white
planks. The forecastle of the ship was
crowded with emigrants. The moonshine
was raining down in silver upon that part of
the vessel, and the people had a ghostly
appearance, every face whitened, and their
clothes white as though they had been
powdered, as they stood staring across the
dark sweep of sea upon the right-hand bow
of the ship.
Woman-like I gazed everywhere but in
the right direction when I first gained the
poop; but, observing some people on the
other side of the deck to point with shadowy
hands, I immediately beheld what resembled
a globe of red fire upon the sea. It looked
like a huge star setting red as blood. I could
not imagine how far off it might be, nor, but
for the stewardess’s information, should I have
supposed it to be a ship on fire. I had expected
to see a great conflagration, a wide
space of the night sky crimsoned with forked
and writhing tongues of flame, and I was disappointed;
but after I had stood gazing for
a few minutes alone, for there was nobody in
that corner of the deck where I had planted
myself, a feeling of dismay, of consternation,
even of horror possessed me. I knew that
the dark red globe burning upon the sea
yonder was a ship on fire, and knowing this
I imagined that there might be living people
on board of the flaming mass. The whole
spirit of the solitude of this mighty scene of
night, beautiful as it was with moonlight and
with starlight, seemed to be centred in that
distant point of fire; and the thought of the
helplessness of the people on board the
flaming fabric amid so vast a field, their
horrible loneliness, the awful despair which
that loneliness must excite—this thought, and
other thoughts which visited me from that
distant mass of fire, presently grew so insupportable
to the deep melancholy which was
upon me and which had been upon me
throughout the evening that I crossed the
deck in the hope of finding Mrs. Lee, that I
might forget something of myself in conversing
with her.
But Mrs. Lee was not to be seen. She
was in her berth, probably in bed, and they
would not give her the news of the ship on
fire for fear of disturbing her daughter. The
passengers stood in groups, pointing to the
burning vessel and speaking in tones of excitement.
I went from one to another, gazing
into their faces and receiving nods and enquiries
as to what I thought of the ship on
fire. Captain Ladmore walked the hinder
part of the deck alone. But as there was
nobody near him who resembled Mrs. Lee,
I returned to that part of the deck where I
had first stationed myself, being in no humour
to mingle with the passengers on the other
side.
The sea was smooth, the wind fair and
fresh, the spread of canvas vast, and the ship
was sweeping through the water at a rapid
rate. She was going through it clean as a
sharp-built yacht would, making no noise
save under the bows, whence arose a sound
of shearing as though produced by a knife
passing through thin ice. The marbled
waters, moon touched, whirled past alongside,
softly hissing as they fled by, and from the
flight of those glimmering wreaths and eddies
of foam I judged of the fast pace at which
the ship was sailing.
Gradually the distant globe of fire enlarged,
and now the sky was reddened all
about it, and as I gazed there stole out of the
blood red haze of light the dark shadow of a
ship lying within a quarter of a mile of the
burning vessel. Mr. Harris, who stood near
some passengers on the opposite side of the
deck, let fall a night-glass that he had been
holding to his eyes and called out to the
captain,
‘There’s a barque hove to close alongside
of the burning vessel, sir.’
‘I see her, sir,’ answered the captain; and
in a few moments the palpitating fiery mass
upon the sea slided a little away from the
bow. I was sailor enough to understand that
our ship had been steered for the burning
vessel, but that Captain Ladmore, now perceiving
that assistance was close at hand, had
resumed his course. Every five minutes of
sailing was rendering that picture of fire more
splendid and awful. She seemed a large ship,
three-masted like our own. Great columns
of smoke rose from her, and into these sooty
volumes the flames would leap out of the
burning hold, turning them crimson to a
great height, and the smoke hung like a
thunder-cloud over the sea where the ship
lay burning; it eclipsed the stars, and it
reverberated in lightning-like flashes the darting
of the red flames; and so exactly did
these flames resemble lightning that I heard
some of the passengers, who believed the
cloud of smoke to be an electric storm, express
surprise that no thunder was to be
heard.
But the sublimity of the scene lay chiefly
in the effect of contrast. In one part of the
ocean was the silver reflection of the moon,
with the bright, serene orb poised high and
small over her own wake; the dark waters
streamed into that brilliant reflection which
trembled with the racing of the silver lines;
and in another part of the ocean lay the great
flaming ship, with her masts and yards all on
fire, and showing as though they were painted
upon the darkness in flames; and a little distance
from her hung the shadow of a large
vessel, whose canvas stole out in spaces of
dim red, and then darkened again as the
flames soared and sank; and behind and over
the mastheads of the two vessels floated a
huge dark body of smoke, which came and
went to the eye with its sudden sullen colouring
as from lightning; and the whole picture
was made awful by its suggestions of terror
and of destruction.
It was a scene to hold the most thoughtless
mute and to detain the most wandering
eye. But whilst I stood gazing two figures
drew near; as they approached I could hear
they were arguing.
‘You can never persuade me,’ said Mr.
Wedmold, ‘that the Americans have humour
in the true meaning of the word, and there
is but one meaning. They are funny, but
they are not humorous. Their fun is either
purely verbal or ridiculous exaggeration.’
‘What humourist have we ever produced,’
exclaimed Mr. Clack, ‘who can compare
with ——’ and he named a funny
American writer.
Mr. Wedmold’s silence was expressive of
disgust.
‘Or take Holmes,’ said Mr. Clack.
‘Holmes’s humour is entirely English,’
said Mr. Wedmold; ‘by mentioning Holmes
you strengthen my argument.’
‘What do you mean by verbal humour?’
said Mr. Clack.
‘The Yankee gets his grins out of odd
words, some few of which still survive in
our kitchens,’ said Mr. Wedmold; ‘or he
gets his grins out of exaggerating or understating
a situation. He will tell you, for
instance, that, two men falling out, one
threw the other over Niagara Falls, and
the fellow got wet. The Yankee will look
for a loud laugh at got wet; but there is no
humour in it. A Yankee in telling a story will
wind up by saying “So I said you git, and he
got.” The laugh must come in here, for this
“git” and “got” is the point of the story.
But this sort of thing—and American humour
is all this sort of thing—is by no means
humour, and very little indeed of it is even
fun. One page of Elia is worth the productions
of the whole of the American humourists
put together, from the date of Bunker’s
Hill down to the latest effort of ——,’ and
he again mentioned the name of a funny
American writer.
I walked away and took up a position on
the deck where I was unable to hear this
argument on American humour, and where I
could watch the burning ship in peace.
Very suddenly the great blaze upon the
sea vanished. My eyes were upon the strong
wild light when it went out, and I noticed
that just before it disappeared the flaming
masts of the vessel reeled so as to form a fiery
arc, and then all was blackness where the
light had been; whence it was to be supposed
that the ship, in filling with water, had heeled
over, and gone down like a stone. The
vessel that hung near showed now very distinctly
by the moonlight, and immediately
over the spot where the burning ship had
foundered, hung a great dim white cloud,
which reflected the moonbeams as a cobweb
might; but as I gazed this immense body of
steam melted away, and nothing was to be
seen but the pallid sails of the befriending
vessel showing out against the dark cloud
of smoke.
CHAPTER XVII MY DYING FRIEND
Captain Ladmore descended into the saloon,
and several of the passengers followed him to
finish the brandy and water or wine which
they had been sipping when called upon to
view the ship on fire. A figure came across
the deck to where I stood in the shadow of
the mast. I had supposed myself hidden, so
dark was the shadow cast by the mast, and I
stood in the shadow. The figure was Mr.
Harris, the chief officer.
‘Good evening,’ he exclaimed.
‘Good evening,’ I answered.
‘Been looking at the burning ship?’ said
he.
‘Yes, I have been looking at the burning
ship.’
‘Ever seen a ship on fire before?’
‘I suppose I never have.’
‘What d’ye think of a ship on fire as a
show?’
‘It is a wonderful but a terrible sight,’
said I. ‘I hope no poor creature has perished
by the burning of that ship.’
‘No chance of it,’ he exclaimed; ‘the
vessel that was hove to close by long ago took
every living creature aboard. Fine night,
isn’t it?’
‘It is a beautiful night,’ said I.
‘It’s a bit early still,’ said he, making a
step to cast his eye upon a clock that stood
in one of the skylights. ‘There’s no hurry
this time; not like one o’clock in the morning.’
‘If Mrs. Lee were on deck,’ said I, ‘I
should be glad to remain here and walk a
little. The air is sweet and refreshing, and
the headache I have had this evening has
gone. It is very warm in the steerage.’
‘It’ll be warmer by-and-by,’ said he. ‘I
should be happy to take a turn with you, but
I have charge of the deck and strolling
wouldn’t be in order. But there’s no law to
hinder a man from talking on a fine clear
night like this, and with your permission I
shall be glad of a short yarn with you, miss.’
‘What do you wish to say?’ said I, feeling
uneasy. ‘I hope you do not mean to talk to
me about shocks. I do not like the idea of
such things, and beg that you will not say a
word about them.’
‘It’s not shocks to-night,’ said he, ‘though—but
as I see you don’t like the subject I’ll
drop it. What I want to talk to you about
is that gipsy woman. I’ve been turning over
what she said as to your being married and
having a husband waiting for you at home,
and the like of that. What are your sentiments
on what that tar-brush of a woman
told you this afternoon?’
‘Do not ask me, Mr. Harris. I remember
nothing, and it would be all the same if the
gipsy had told me I was the queen of England.’
He stood in the moonlight and I in the
trunk-like shadow cast by the mast, and I
observed that he regarded me steadfastly, with
an expression of earnestness that might have
gathered a deeper character than it really
owned from the nature of the light; he eyed
me as though he would read my face, but the
shadow was as good as my veil, which I had
not thought of putting on at that hour.
‘I’ll tell you what my notion is,’ said he;
‘that gipsy woman is full of lies. How should
she know that you’re married? Wouldn’t
you wear a wedding-ring if you were married?
What does she want to make out: that your
wedding-ring was stolen off your finger when
you were in the boat? But those French
chaps found you alone, didn’t they? You
couldn’t have been very long unconscious, and
who’s to tell me that you weren’t alone when
you fell insensible? If there was a sailor
with you, you must have been sensible when
he was in the boat; and no man’s going to
persuade me—whether you can remember
that sailor plundering you or not—no man’s
going to persuade me that any sailor or sailors—distressed
as such people as were along
with you must have been—supposing any
parties to have been along with you——’ he
paused, having lost the thread of his argument,
and then, smiting the palm of his left hand
with his fist, he exclaimed with subdued
energy, ‘What I mean is, I don’t believe you
were robbed.’
He glanced round to observe if anyone
was near enough to have overheard him.
‘I can tell you nothing, Mr. Harris,’ said I.
‘The gipsy and her lies may be put on
one side,’ said he. ‘In fact, if I catch her aft
again with her confounded yarns I’ll make
her wish that this ship had never been built
with a poop. Sir Frederick Thompson’s
opinion is another matter. I don’t reckon
you’re a Calthorpe, as he calls it; for there’s
no inward echo to the name, and an inward
echo there’d be if a Calthorpe you were, so
I think, and I believe I’m no fool. But if
you’re not a Calthorpe, you may be somebody
as good and perhaps better.’ After a pause
he exclaimed, ‘Suppose your memory don’t
return to you?’
‘Do not suppose it,’ I cried with bitterness.
‘I wish to say nothing to wound you,
miss,’ said he, ‘but there can be no harm in
us two talking matters over. It’s early as
yet, the ship doesn’t want watching, a more
beautiful night you may sail round the world
twenty times over without falling in with.
You’ve got to consider this; suppose your
memory don’t return—what then?’ I did
not answer. ‘Of course,’ continued he, ‘your
memory is going to return some time or other.
The faculty’s alive. It’s only turned in for
the present. Some of these days something’ll
happen to act like the thump of a bo’sun’s
handspike, and the faculty’ll tumble up wide
awake as though it was to a roar of “All
hands!” But whatever it be that’s going to
rout that sleeping faculty out may keep you
waiting. And meanwhile?’
I had no answer to make him and held
my peace.
‘The captain, no doubt,’ he went on, ‘will
keep you on board this ship until her arrival
in London, if so be your memory won’t enable
him to send you home sooner. But when
this ship arrives in dock, what then? You
can’t go on living on board her. The captain’s
got no home now that his wife and
child are dead. He’s a good man and might
find you a lodging for a bit, but he don’t stay
ashore above a couple or three months. And
what, I’ve been asking of myself ever since
that gipsy was aft here with her lying yarns,
what’s to become of you?’
I drew myself erect and my foot tapped
the deck with vexation and distress.
‘For God’s sake, miss,’ said he, ‘don’t feel
offended by anything I may say. You have
friends aboard, and I want to be one of them,
and prove myself one of them by behaving
as a friend, and perhaps as more than a friend.
My object in keeping you yarning here is to
ask you to think over what’s to become of
you if your memory hasn’t returned by the
time the ship reaches England.’
I bit my lip and answered with a struggle,
‘What would be the good of my thinking?
My memory may return. In any case I must
trust in God to help me.’
‘Well, you’ll be safe in trusting in God,’
said he, ‘but someone to trust in on this
earth wouldn’t be out of the way either.
You see, miss, it may come to this: the ship
arrives in dock and you’ve got to go ashore;
where will ye go to? You don’t know.
There may be scores of friends of yours within
hail, but owing to your memory being at fault
ne’er a one of them can be of more use to you
than if they were in their graves. It seems
cruel to talk of the Union; but my notion is,
that whenever one’s in a mess the first thing
to do is to take a good look round. I believe
there are homes for destitute females,
but for my part I’d rather go to the workhouse
if I was a lonely girl. So you see,
miss, it comes to this: you must have a
friend....’
I could bear this talk no longer, and
walked in the direction of one of the ladders
in order to return to the steerage.
‘One minute,’ he cried, accompanying me,
and so contriving to walk as to oblige me to
halt. ‘I’ve brought tears to your eyes, and I
ask your forgiveness. There’s been no rudeness
intended in what I’ve said, God knows.
You’ll find that out before long, I hope.
You’ll be discovering that I wish you well.
Though my parents were gentle folks, my
college was a ship’s forecastle and I’m without
polish, and, what’s more, I don’t want any.
I’m a plain seaman, but I hope I can feel for
another as well as the best, and I want to be
your friend, and perhaps more than your
friend.’
‘I am sure you mean nothing but kindness,’
said I, ‘but your words have distressed me.
You make my future appear hopeless and
dreadful.’
‘That’s how I want you to view it,’ said
he, ‘by correctly realising it you’ll be able to
deal with it.’
‘Good-night,’ I exclaimed; and without
another word I left him and returned to my
berth.
* * * * *
As I have before said, I considered Mr.
Harris eccentric, unpleasantly well meaning,
and not a man to be angry with because he
spoke bluntly and said things which were
disagreeable and even offensive to hear. But
the language he had held destroyed my
night’s rest. I could not sleep for thinking
of his miserable talk about the workhouse
and asylums for destitute females. What he
meant by saying that he wished to be something
more than a friend to me did not
trouble my head. All that I could think of
was the picture he had drawn of the arrival
of the Deal Castle in dock, of my being without
memory, and stepping ashore unable to
recollect the name of a friend likely to help
me.
Many to whom my story is known have
since that miserable time expressed wonder
that Captain Ladmore did not put me on
board a homeward-bound ship—that is to
say, a ship proceeding to England—with a
request to her captain to inform the owners
of the Deal Castle in what manner their vessel
had fallen in with me, and to beg them to
make my case public in the newspapers, so
that if I had friends in England they could
come forward and claim me.
But then, as I have already explained in a
preceding chapter, Captain Ladmore did not
know whether I had a home or friends in
England or not. For all he could tell I might
be the sole survivor of a shipwreck, or the
surviving occupant of one of the boats which
had put off before the ship went down, and if
that were so—and there was nothing improbable
in the supposition—then I might
have been a passenger coming from America,
or Australia, or India. It would not follow,
according to his humane reasoning, that,
because I was undeniably an Englishwoman,
I lived in England and had friends in that
country. And if I had no friends and no
home in England, then his sending me there
at the first opportunity whilst my memory
remained a blank would be nothing short of
cruelty; for when I landed I should be
destitute, without money and without friends,
and, being without memory, more helpless
and worse off than the veriest beggar that
might crawl past me in rags. But by keeping
me on board his ship he hoped to give my
memory time to recover its powers, so that,
as he himself had said, whatever steps he
took to restore me to my friends would be
sure, for he would know where to send me.
Then, again, it must be remembered that I
had begged and prayed to remain on board
whilst my memory continued dark, and that
I had spoken with horror and with tears
of the prospect of being landed without a
shelter to go to.
This, then, is my answer to the wonder
that has been expressed by my friends since
this frightful passage of my life came to an
end, and I enter it here as much to explain
Captain Ladmore’s motives as to accentuate
his humanity.
Propelled by pleasant winds, which sometimes
blew over the stern and sometimes off
the beam, the fine ship Deal Castle stemmed
her way into the tropics, and every twenty-four
hours brought the equator nearer to us
by many leagues. All day long the deck was
kept shadowed by the awning, in whose violet-tinted
coolness lounged the passengers. It
was growing too hot for active exercise. The
deck quoit was cast aside, the walk to and
fro the white planks was abandoned for the
American folding-chair, the piano was but
languidly touched, seldom were the voices of
the singers amongst us heard, and there were
hours when it was too sultry to read.
But the weather continued gloriously
beautiful, the sky cloudless, the ocean a rich
dark blue with the slopes of the swell wrinkled
by the wind, and here and there a glance of
foam as the ship stole through the waters,
rippling the blue into lines as fine as harp-strings,
which the sun turned into gold
as they spread from the bows. And the
flying-fish flashed from the side, and steadily
in the blue calm of the water astern hung
the slate-coloured shape of a shark, the inevitable
attendant of the mariner in those
fiery waters.
I was now going about without my veil.
Mrs. Richards had advised me to bear being
looked at for a little while, promising me that
the curiosity of the passengers would rapidly
pass, and she proved right. The people took
little or no notice of me, and I was able to
enjoy the freedom of my own face, which was
no trifling comfort, for often I longed for all
the air I could get, and the veil was like
a warm atmosphere upon my forehead.
Nor was I so unsightly as I had been
when I first came on board the Deal Castle.
The wound had healed. The scar was indeed
visible and gave an air of distortion to the
brow it overran; but this was remedied to the
eye by some toilet powder which Mrs. Webber
gave me. I applied it plentifully with a
puff, and the powder not only concealed the
scar but paired with my remaining eyebrow,
which, as I have told you, had turned white
with my hair.
By this time I had much improved in
health and in some respects in appearance.
My eyes had regained their brightness, and
there seemed no lack of the light of intelligence
in them, though, as I should have
supposed, in a person without memory, one
would expect to find the gaze dull and slow
and the glow of the sight dim. My figure
had improved. I held myself erect, and a
certain grace had come to my movements
from my capacity as a dancer—for I was
always thought a very good dancer—to take
the moving platform of the deck. My cheeks
had grown plump; the hollows had filled
up, and the haggard look was gone. Nevertheless
my face still showed as that of a
woman of forty I remember once saying to
Mr. McEwan, ‘What could have caused those
fine lines to be drawn over my face?’
‘Nerves,’ he answered, in his short abrupt
way.
‘They are not wrinkles,’ said I.
‘If they were wrinkles it would be Time,’
said he. ‘Be satisfied with that explanation.’
‘Would the shock that turned my hair
white thread the skin of my face with these
fine lines?’ said I.
‘It all happened at once,’ he answered; ‘I
would lend you a book on nerves if I did not
fear that the reading of it would turn ye
daft.’
‘Will the skin of my face ever grow
smooth?’ said I.
‘Never smoother than it is,’ he answered.
‘Isn’t it as smooth and soft as kid? What
more d’ye want?’
‘What I meant to ask was, will these fine
lines which disfigure my face ever disappear?’
‘Heaven defend us!’ he cried, feigning a
warmth which his countenance belied; ‘your
sex are all alike. Your questions are all
prompted by vanity. It is not “Is there any
chance, doctor, of my ever recovering the
faculties of my mind?” but “Shall I ever
regain my beautiful complexion?” “Never
mind about my sight failing; will the glasses
you order me to wear become me?” “Never
mind about my heart being affected; shall I
be able to go on lacing so as to keep my
waist?”’ and he departed leaving my question
unanswered.
My complexion, however, had cleared
with the improvement of my health; the
dingy sallow colour was gone out of my
cheeks, and a faint bloom had taken its place.
It was as though my youth struggled to show
its rosy face through the mask which calamity
had stamped upon my countenance. This
faint bloom, as I call it, might, in spite of the
interlacery of fine lines, have brought my
appearance to within a few years of my real
age had it not been for my white hair, which
was so fleecy and thin that you would only
think of looking for the like of it on the head
of an old lady of seventy or eighty years.
Indeed, what with my figure, which was that
of a fine young woman of seven- or eight-and
twenty, what with my eyes and teeth, which
corresponded with my figure, and what with
my white hair, white eyebrow, scarred temple
and finely-lined skin, as though the flesh had
been inlaid with a spider’s web, I doubtless
presented to the eyes of my fellow-passengers
the most extraordinary compound of youth
and age it could have entered into the nimblest
imagination among them to figure.
Nearly the whole of my time was spent
in the company of Alice Lee. I read to her,
I helped her to dress, I accompanied her on
deck, indeed I was scarcely ever absent from
her side. Mrs. Lee encouraged our companionship.
Whatever served to sustain her
daughter’s spirits, whatever contributed to
lighten the tedium of the girl’s long hours of
confinement to her cabin, must needs be
welcome to the devoted mother. Often it
happens that the sufferer from the disease of
consumption, though of an angelic sweetness
of heart, and though of a most beautiful,
loving, gentle nature, will unconsciously be
rendered petulant by the ministrations of one,
by the devoted association, and by the heart-breaking
anxiety of one, who may be the
dearest of all human beings to her in this
world, even her own mother. She is fretted
by the importunities of love. The devotion
is too anxious, too eager, too restless.
Mrs. Lee tried hard to conceal what was
in her heart, but it must have vent in some
shape or form. It rendered her vigilance
impassioned. Indeed, I once took the liberty
of telling her that the expression of pain and
grief her face unconsciously wore when she
sat with Alice, and heard her cough, or
beheld any increase of languor in the movement
of her eyes or in her speech, proved
harmful to her child by poignantly reminding
her of her mother’s sorrow and of the reason
of it. And so it came about that Mrs. Lee
welcomed my intimate association with her
daughter and promoted it by leaving us much
alone together.
Sometimes Mrs. Webber joined Alice and
me when we were on deck, and occasionally
she visited us when we were in the Lees’
cabin. I never liked her better than at such
times. She subdued her manner, there was
an air of cheerful gravity upon her, and her
behaviour was as one who has known sorrow.
She sank all the coxcombries of her literary
talk when she was with us, had not a word
to say about her own poetry, and ventured
no opinions on the merits of authors. I took
to her very warmly after she had visited
Alice once or twice in her cabin.
Much sympathy was exhibited by the
other passengers, but their good taste and
real kindness of heart made the expression of
it reserved and askant, as it were. Both the
Miss Glanvilles sang very finely, and knowing
that Alice loved certain songs which they
sang with great sweetness, one or another
would come and ask her if she should sing to
her, and then sit down and soothe and charm
the dear girl for an hour at a time. But
neither they nor any of the other passengers
ever dreamt of opening the piano until they
learnt that Alice was awake or in a humour
not to be teased by the noise of the music.
The hot weather tried her terribly. It
was indeed as her mother had feared, and I
could only pray that Mrs. Lee’s dread of the
ship being becalmed upon the equator under
the roasting sun for a long term of days
would prove unfounded. Sometimes the girl
rallied and exhibited a degree of vivacity
that filled her mother with hope, and then a
change would happen on a sudden. She
would be wrenched and shattered by a dreadful
cough, her head would sink, her eyes
grow leaden, her breathing pitiably laboured;
she would turn from the food placed before
her, and lay her head upon her mother’s
breast or upon my shoulder as I sat beside
her, and at such times I would think the end
was close at hand.
As I have before said, she did not in the
least fear death. She seemed to have but
one dread—that she should be buried at
sea. I sat beside her one morning in her
cabin fanning her. The window lay wide
open, but not a breath of air entered the
aperture. The ship was becalmed: she had
been becalmed since midnight, and now I
did not need to inquire what was the meaning
of the word. I had been on deck before
I visited Alice, and looked around me and
beheld a wonderful breathless scene of stagnant
ocean. I know not what our latitude
was; I dare say we were five or six hundred
miles north of the equator. The sea undulated
thickly, faintly and sluggishly, as
though it were of oil, and it reflected the
rays of the sun as oil might, or indeed as a
dull mirror would, and gave back the burning
light from its surface in an atmosphere
of heat that swung to the lip and cheek with
the light roll of the ship in folds like escapes
of air from a fiery oven.
It was cooler below than on deck, and
Alice and I sat in the cabin. She was languid
and very pale; there was a deeper dye than
usual in the hollow of her eyes, and her fair
brow glittered with moisture. We had been
talking, and were now silent whilst I fanned
her. As the vessel rolled, a delicate noise of
sobbing rose from the side. She had not
seemed to notice this sobbing noise before,
but on a sudden it caught her ear: she
listened and looked at me a little wildly, then
rose and went to the porthole and stood
gazing at the dim blue haze of heat that
overhung the horizon, and at the dull blue
undulations of oil-like water sulkily rolling
to the slope of the sky. She returned to her
chair, and putting her cold moist hand upon
mine, exclaimed:
‘Oh, Agnes, I hope that God will have
mercy upon me and spare me until we reach
Australia, that I may be buried on shore.’
‘Have courage, my dear, have faith in
God’s goodness,’ said I. ‘Do not talk of
dying. Keep up your dear heart, and
remember that this is the most trying part
of the voyage. In a few days we shall be
meeting with cooler weather, and then you
will be yourself again.’
She smiled, but without despair in the
expression of her smile. It was sad, but it
took its colouring of sadness from her thin
face, not from her heart. She turned her
eyes towards the open window, and said:
‘I am foolish, and perhaps wicked, to
dread being cast into the sea. There are
many who would rather be buried at sea
than on shore. It is a spacious grave, and
one thinks of it as lying open to the eye of
God. But the thought of the loneliness of
an ocean grave weighs down my heart. Oh,
I should be happy—happier in my hope of
death and in the promises of my dear
Saviour—if I knew I was to be buried where
my mother could visit me. It is a weakness—I
know it is all the same—I am in God’s
hands, and I am happy;’ and she hid her
face that I might not see the tear which rose
to her eyes when she spoke of her mother
visiting her grave.
But there was little need for her to hide
her face, for the tears rained down my own
cheeks as I listened to her and looked at
her. When she saw I was crying she gently
led the talk to other matters, brightened
her face, and after we had conversed awhile
she said, looking at me with a smile of
tenderness that was like a light from heaven
upon her:
‘Agnes, I have been longing to say that
in case your memory should remain silent
after this ship has arrived in England my
mother will take care that you shall not
want. This she will do as much for my
sake as for your own, and out of her own
love for you too. I have not spoken of this
before, dear, because I disliked even to hint
at any arrangements which implied that your
memory might be wanting after so long a
time as the voyage of this ship will take to
complete. And yet I have also thought that
it would comfort you to know that your
future, should your mind continue sightless,
will not be friendless.’ She took my hand,
and whilst she caressed it continued, ‘It will
come to your taking my place. When I
am gone my mother will be alone, and my
earnest wish is that you should be her companion.’
‘Oh, Alice,’ said I, ‘you will live to
remain your mother’s companion. Would
that God permitted that one life laid down
availed to save another’s....’
END OF THE SECOND VOLUME
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made
consistent when a predominant preference was found
in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.
