CHAPTER VII

CAPTAIN FREDERICK LADMORE

A respectable-looking, pale-faced woman, attired in black, stood at the head of a staircase that descended through a large hatch in the forward part of this saloon. The young officer went up to her and said, ‘Mrs. Richards, we have just brought this poor lady off from the brig that was run down last night. The captain requests that you will take her below and make her comfortable. She has been locked up--think of it, Mrs. Richards--she has been locked up all night, without food or drink, in the berth of a craft that I dare say she supposed at any moment might sink under her feet. When you have thoroughly refreshed yourself,’ he exclaimed, addressing me, ‘the captain will be happy to see you.’

‘I think you had better come to my berth,’ said the person whom the young mate had called Mrs. Richards.

‘May I ask who you are?’ said I.

‘I am the stewardess,’ she answered.

She then conducted me down the stairs into what I afterwards learnt was called the steerage. It was a part of the ship that corresponded with the saloon, only it was not so broad, and there were but two tables in the central passage or corridor. As in the saloon so here, there were berths or sleeping compartments ranged on either hand, but these quarters compared with the saloon were gloomy, and I do not remember how daylight was obtained to illuminate the place; yet one could see fairly well even when fresh from the glare of the deck.

The stewardess, opening a cabin door at the after end of the wide passage, bade me step in, and I found myself in a plain but comfortable little cabin, lighted by a large porthole, and furnished with two mahogany sleeping shelves one above the other. Upon a table were one or two account-books and a number of papers on files.

‘Please to sit down, ma’m,’ said the stewardess, speaking kindly. ‘You look very weak and ill. Only fancy being locked up all night in that sinking boat! You are English?---- Yes, the third officer addressed you in English, and yet you may be French. Let me help you to take off that heavy cloak. It is a man’s cloak and a handsome one, I declare. I suppose you snatched at the first thing you could see to wrap yourself up in when our ship struck yours?’

She paused in her speech to hang up the cloak, and then surveyed me for a few moments in silence. I particularly observed that she ran her eye with an expression of surprise over my figure, as though she could not reconcile my white hair and withered face with my youthful shape. You will not require me to tell you that I was dressed in the plain, tight-fitting serge costume that I had worn when I made my last excursion with the boatman Hitchens. It had not suffered much from exposure, nor from the rude wear to which it had been subjected. It looked fairly fresh, and at any time I should have thought it still a wearable, serviceable dress.

‘You appear to have hurt your head very badly,’ said the stewardess. ‘But the injury does not seem fresh--the plaister is surely older than last night?’

‘Oh yes,’ I answered.

‘But questioning you is not carrying out the captain’s orders, is it?’ said she cheerfully. ‘Now what shall I get you? What could you fancy? Would you like a plate of chicken and ham and a fresh crisp roll hot from the oven and a cup of hot coffee?’

I thanked her. She then pointed to a little fixed washstand in the corner, and told me to make use of her hair-brushes and whatever else I might require, and she then left me.

A square looking-glass hung over the washstand. I approached and looked into it and then shrunk from it. Oh! I could not wonder that the people in this ship had stared when I came on board. My white hair that had been thinned by every application of the brush fell raggedly down my back and upon my shoulders. My sallow complexion was rendered peculiarly sickly by the pallor that had been put into it by my sufferings during the night. The plaister was no longer white, but soiled, and when for the second time I looked at my face, I again shrank back and the old blind cry of my heart, _Who am I?_ rose dumbly to my lips.

I sank trembling into a chair, and the words ‘Oh God!’ broke from me. But the word ‘God’ was no more than the echo of a sound, whose meaning was eclipsed. Again and again, and yet again, in my agony I had uttered that holy Name, but with no more sense of the meaning than the babe has when its tiny lips frame the syllables ‘ma-ma.’

After waiting a little I poured out some water and washed my hands and face, and I then brushed my hair, but I observed that not so many hairs came away in the bristles as heretofore. I seated myself again and looked around me, and with kindling interest at the little furniture in the stewardess’s berth. Near me hung a framed photograph of two children, a boy and a girl, and close by it hung another photograph of a respectably-dressed young woman in a bonnet, with an infant of a few months old on her knee. At these things I stared, and there followed an inward struggle that made me frown as I looked, and bite my lip and pluck at my dress with my fingers.

There were other photographs of grown-up people. I glanced at them, and at a little row of books, and at a work-basket, and at similar trivial details. But my eyes went quickly back to the portraits of the two children and the little baby, and I was still gazing at them when the stewardess entered, bearing my breakfast.

‘Who are those children?’ I asked her.

‘My little nephew and niece,’ she answered, smiling and lighting up as she spoke, ‘and that is my only sister with her first-born on her lap. Oh, such a little cherub as it is! The sweetest baby! One, only one did I have. He was sweeter, yes, even sweeter than that child,’ she added, her gaze lingering upon the photograph whilst her voice fell and her face grew grave. ‘I lost him three months after my husband died----after he died and left me to ---- to ----. But here is your breakfast now. Make a good meal. I am sure you need it.’

How much I needed it I did not know until I began to eat. I ate in silence, and the stewardess did not interrupt me by speech. She moved here and there, but all the while I was sensible that she eyed me furtively. When I had finished she said:

‘Do you feel equal to seeing the captain? Or would you rather lie down and take some rest? You look as if you needed a long sleep.’

‘Is the captain waiting to see me?’ I asked.

She drew out her watch. ‘He wishes to see you after breakfast, and the passengers will assemble at breakfast in a few minutes. Unless you feel very exhausted it might be as well that you should see him before you lie down. He will want to know where you come from, so as to be able to send you to your friends at the first opportunity. And then again you will wish to see the doctor? You must have been badly hurt to need so many straps about your head.’

‘I do not feel exhausted,’ I answered. ‘This meal has greatly strengthened and refreshed me. I will sit here, if you please, until the captain is ready to see me.’

‘I shall not be able to sit with you,’ said the stewardess. ‘My hands are very full. We are not long from port, and some of my ladies have not yet overcome their sea-sickness. And then I have a sweet, poor young lady to see after. She is very ill of consumption. I fear she will not live. Her mother is taking her on a voyage round the world, but, like most people who are ill of consumption, the young lady has started too late. At least, I fear so. I have seen too many instances in my time not to fear so.’

‘Will you tell me,’ said I, ‘where this ship is going to?’

‘To Sydney,’ said she, pausing with her hand upon the door. She continued to watch me for a few moments, and then with a smile said, ‘You know where Sydney is?’ I held my eyes bent downwards. ‘It is in Australia,’ said she; ‘in New South Wales. It is a beautiful city, and most people think that its harbour is the loveliest in the world.’

She opened the door, gave me a friendly nod, and passed out.

I remained seated, lost in such recent and slender thought as my mind could find to deal with. The ship was moving through the water. I could tell that by the tremble and hurry of light on the thick glass of the closed port. The movement was regular, buoyant, and wonderfully easy after the convulsive motions of the little brig. There was a clatter of crockery and subdued noise of talk outside in the somewhat darksome corridor, as I may call it, where some people--those no doubt who lodged in this part of the ship--were at breakfast. A baby was faintly crying in an adjacent cabin, but the compartments were stoutly divided, and every note reached the ear dimly. I sat thinking, and I thought of the terrible night I had passed, and of my abandonment by the young Frenchman and his companions, and also of the kind treatment I had met with on board the little French brig, and I thought of the days I had spent in her, and how the young Frenchman had said they had found me lying insensible, wounded, and bleeding in a boat with two masts; and, one thought leading to another, I suddenly arose and stepped to the looking-glass and gazed into it, and whilst I was staring at myself the door opened and the stewardess entered.

‘I have just left the captain,’ said she, ‘and he will be glad to see you in his cabin if you are equal to the visit.’

‘There are people about,’ I answered; ‘my face is--this plaister----’ I put my hand to my brow, at a loss to express myself. I was ashamed to be seen, yet I was not able to say so.

‘You look nicely--oh, you look nicely!’ exclaimed the stewardess cordially. ‘Consider what you have gone through. How many would look so well after being wounded as you have, and then locked up in a cabin all night in a sinking ship? But you will not be seen. There is a staircase at the end of this steerage, and it opens close against the cabin door. Come, dear lady!’

She was about to lead the way out when she stopped and said, ‘What name shall I give when I show you in?’

‘I do not know,’ I answered.

She stared and looked frightened.

‘I have lost my memory,’ I said, and as I pronounced the words, I clasped my hands and bowed my head and sobbed.

‘Ah, poor lady! God keep your heart! You have passed through a great deal surely,’ said the kindly creature instantly, with a woman’s sympathetic perception, witnessing the truth of my assurance and understanding my condition, and, tenderly taking my arm in her hand, she conducted me out of the berth.

She led me to a narrow staircase at the end of the corridor. I heard the voice of people at breakfast at the tables behind me, but I held my head bowed and saw nothing. We mounted the staircase and emerged at the aftermost end of the brilliant saloon, that was filled with the hum and busy with the clinking and clattering noises of passengers talking and lingering at the breakfast table. The stewardess knocked on the cabin door, and without waiting for a reply opened it, and we entered.

Two gentlemen arose from their chairs as I stepped in, and the stewardess, going up to one of them, said quickly but audibly, ‘She has lost her memory, sir,’ and so saying went out, giving me a smile as she passed.

The cabin into which I had been introduced was large and cheerful. It was furnished as a private sitting-room. On a table were a number of mathematical instruments; the deck was handsomely carpeted, and but for the movement to be felt, and but for one or two points of sea equipment, such as a silver telescope in a bracket and a sleeping-place or bunk that closed as though it were a horizontal cupboard, it would have been hard to imagine in this fresh, shining, comfortably furnished room that you were upon the ocean.

One of the gentlemen was the tall man who had been accosted by the young officer on our arrival. He was a very fine figure of a man indeed, above six feet tall and proportionately broad. His age was probably fifty, his complexion fresh, his eyes blue and kindly. There was but little of the look of the sailor, as we are taught by books to imagine him, in this man. With his grey whiskers, black-satin cravat, and dignified air, he might very well have passed for a well-to-do City banker or a country squire.

His companion on the other hand was a short man with sandy hair streaked with grey, and a dry, shrewd Scotch face. He was dressed in a suit of tweed, and I recollect that his boots resembled a pair of shovels, so square-toed were they.

‘I am happy,’ said the tall gentleman, in a slow, mild voice, after glancing at me with a mingled expression of pity and anxiety, ‘to have been the instrument of delivering you from a terrible fate.’ He placed a chair for me. ‘Pray be seated. My name is Ladmore--Captain Frederick Ladmore, and I am in command of this ship, the _Deal Castle_. This gentleman is Mr. McEwan, the ship’s surgeon.’

‘Who strapped your forehead up, may I ask?’ said Mr. McEwan, in a strong accent incommunicable by the pen, and he came close to me and stared at the plaister.

‘A young Frenchman who belonged to the vessel from which you rescued me,’ I answered.

‘And a young ’un he must have been,’ said Mr. McEwan, with a smile which disclosed gums containing scarcely more than four front teeth. ‘How did he lay those strips on, ma’m? With a trowel?’

‘You seem to have been badly hurt,’ said Captain Ladmore compassionately.

‘No, no, captain,’ interrupted Mr. McEwan, ‘never make too much of a woman’s troubles or complaints. There’s nothing to fret over unless the bridge of the nose be a trifle indented.’

‘How did it happen?’ inquired the captain.

‘I was found in an open boat, lying insensible, with the mast of the boat across my face.’

‘Oh! you were found in an open boat. By whom?’ inquired the captain.

‘By the people belonging to the French brig.’

‘Now I understand,’ said the captain. ‘I thought you might have been--in fact, it puzzled me to know what you were doing on board that little craft. How long were you in the open boat?’

‘I do not know.’

‘What sort of boat was she?’

‘I cannot remember.’

‘But you surely remember how it happened that you were in that boat, and also how it happened that you were alone in her when rescued?’

‘No, I do not remember,’ I answered, biting my lip, whilst I was sensible that my inward struggle and agitation was causing me to frown.

The two gentlemen exchanged looks. ‘I need not inquire whether you are English,’ said the captain; ‘your accent assures me on that head. And forgive me for saying that no one could hear you speak without being satisfied as to your station in life. Let me see if I can help your memory: you are a lady who in all probability engaged a pleasure boat to take a cruise in, and you were venturesome enough to go alone. The boat proved too much for you and she ran away with you. Or, dirty weather came on and blew you out of sight of land.’

I listened to him with my eyes fastened upon the deck, greedily devouring his speech; but all remained dark. I hearkened and I understood him, and I believed that it might be as he had said, but I could not say that it was so. No! no more indeed than had he been telling me the experience of another of whom I had never heard.

‘In what part was your boat fallen in with?’ he asked after a pause.

‘I cannot tell.’

‘How long were you on board the brig?’

This question I could answer. He rose and took a chart from a corner of the cabin, and then sat again with his finger upon the open chart.

‘Concede an average of sixty miles a day to that brig,’ said he, addressing Mr. McEwan. ‘Her weather will have been ours, and we may take it that her average will not have exceeded sixty miles a day in the time during which the lady was aboard her.’ His lips moved as he calculated to himself, and then, passing his finger over the chart, he said: ‘The situation of the open boat when the French brig fell in with her would be about----’ and he indicated the place by stating the latitude and longitude of it.

‘That’ll be clear of the Chops, captain,’ said Mr. McEwan, ‘and at _that_, though the lady may hail from England, she never can have sailed from that country.’

‘It certainly would be a prodigious drift for a small boat,’ said the captain, looking at the chart and speaking in a musing way. ‘It should signify a week’s drift, unless the boat kept her stern to it with all sail set. Perhaps I do not allow enough for the brig’s average run.’

‘The lady may have been blown from a French port,’ said Mr. McEwan.

‘What French port?’ inquired the captain, moving the chart that the surgeon might see it.

‘I have an idea!’ said Mr. McEwan; ‘why must the lady have been blown from a port at all? And why should the boat in which she was discovered _necessarily_ have been a pleasure-boat? Who’s to say that she is not the sole survivor of some disastrous shipwreck? In that case she may have been coming home from the other side of the world. There’s more happened to her, Captain Ladmore,’ said he, speaking with his eyes fixed upon me, ‘than is to be occasioned by misadventure during a pleasure cruise.’

‘Cannot you describe the boat?’ said the captain to me.

‘The Frenchman told me that she was an open boat and that she had two masts,’ I answered.

‘Did they notice no more of her than that?’

‘No. She was entangled with the rigging and drove along with the brig for a short distance. She broke away after I had been taken out of her, and the Frenchman let her go. It was a little before daybreak, and there was scarcely any light to see by.’

‘You remember all that!’ exclaimed Mr. McEwan.

‘I remember everything that the Frenchman told me,’ I answered; ‘and I can remember everything that has happened from the hour of my returning to consciousness on board the brig.’

‘Would not a ship’s quarter-boat have two masts, captain?’ said Mr. McEwan. ‘Ye must know it is my theory that ’tis a case of shipwreck, and that this lady may be the only survivor. Who can tell?’

‘I have known a ship’s long-boat with two masts,’ answered Captain Ladmore, ‘but I never heard of a quarter-boat so rigged.’

‘Then the boat that the Frenchman fell in with may have been a long-boat,’ said the surgeon.

‘I wish to find out all about you,’ said the captain gravely and quietly, glancing at my bare hands and then running his eyes over my dress, ‘that I may be able to send you home. A home you must have--but where? Cannot you tell me that it is in England?’

I looked at him, and my swimming eyes sank. I could not speak.

‘This is sad indeed,’ said he. ‘Did you ever hear of so complete a failure of memory, McEwan?’

‘Oh yes,’ answered the surgeon. ‘I’ll show you fifty examples of utter failure in a book on the brain which I have in my cabin, and I can give you half a dozen instances at least out of my own experience. At the same time,’ he continued, speaking as though I were not present, ‘this case is peculiar and impressive. But I should regard it as hopeful on the whole because, ye see, there’s the capacity of recollecting everything on this side of whatever it may be that occasioned the loss.’

‘Did the Frenchman find nothing in the boat?’ asked the captain gently.

‘Nothing,’ I replied, ‘except a straw hat that was crushed by the fall of the mast, and stained by my wounds.’

‘It was your hat?’

‘They thought so,’ I answered.

‘Nothing more?’ said he, ‘merely a straw hat? But then to be sure it was in the dark of the morning, and they were able to see nothing more.’

He rose from his chair and took several turns about the cabin; meanwhile Mr. McEwan steadfastly regarded me. His air was one of professional curiosity. At last his scrutiny grew painful, but he did not relax it, though my uneasiness must have been clear to him.

‘Can you give me any idea,’ said the captain, ‘of what became of the French crew?’

‘I cannot,’ I replied.

‘It was barbarous of them to leave you on board a vessel which they believed was sinking, or they would not have quitted her.’

‘I was kindly treated by them,’ I answered. One of them, a young Frenchman, endeavoured to release me that I might gain the deck. But he could not move the cask that was jammed between my door and the steps. His uncle, the captain, threatened to leave him behind. The young man would have saved me could he have procured help.’

‘That’s how it always is in a panic at sea,’ said the captain, addressing Mr. McEwan. ‘I can tell you exactly how it happened with those foreigners. When the brig was struck the seamen supposed that she would instantly founder. They launched the boat, probably their only boat.’

‘They had but one boat,’ I said.

‘Just so,’ exclaimed the captain; ‘they launched their only boat, and then as they lay alongside they shouted to their skipper that if he delayed they would leave him. No man has a chance with a cowardly crew at such a time. I dare say, had it depended upon the French captain and his nephew, you would have been brought on deck and taken into the boat. But well for you, poor lady, that they did not stay to release you! They blew away in the blackness, and in such a sea as was running it is fifty to one if the boat was not capsized.’

‘Are there no initials upon your linen, ma’m?’ inquired the surgeon.

I produced from my pocket the handkerchief which the young Frenchman had examined, and handed it to the surgeon, saying, ‘This was in my pocket when I was rescued, and it must therefore be mine. The letters “A. C.” are upon it. My under-linen is similarly marked.’

He looked at the initials, and then passed the handkerchief to the captain.

‘Do not the letters suggest your name to you?’ said the surgeon. I shook my head. ‘Would you know your name if I were to pronounce it, d’ye think?’

‘I cannot say.’

‘Have you run over any names for yourself?’

‘I cannot think of any names to run over,’ said I.

‘Ha!’ exclaimed the captain, ‘how great, how awful is the mystery of life, is the mystery of the mind!’ and as though overcome he stepped to the porthole and seemed to look out, keeping his back upon us. Mr. McEwan continued to scrutinise me.

‘Captain,’ he suddenly exclaimed again, speaking as though I were deaf or absent, ‘the lady’s hair is snow white, d’ye mark? Her hair, as we see it, doesn’t correspond with her figure. She’s much younger than the colour of her hair. She is much younger than the look of her face, captain. She’s a young woman that has been suddenly aged--to the sight. I can see the youth of her lurking under her countenance, like comely lineaments under a veil. As she recovers strength and health, her bloom will return.’ He turned to me. ‘When you entered the boat in which you were found insensible, your hair, m’am, was black.’

‘But all this is not to the point, McEwan,’ exclaimed the captain, coming from the porthole before which he had been standing with his back upon us. ‘The question is, where does this lady live? Has she friends in England. If so, it is my duty to send her home by the first ship. But your memory,’ said he to me, ‘may return in a day or two, and we are not acting kindly in detaining you from the rest which I am sure you need after such a night as you have endured.’

He opened the door of his cabin, and called to one of the stewards to send Mrs. Richards to him.

‘You’ll forgive me, ma’m,’ said Mr. McEwan, ‘but I observe that you have no rings. Now I’m sure you must have had rings on when you were found in the boat. Were they stolen from you, d’ye think?’

I looked at my hands and answered, ‘I was without rings when my consciousness returned.’

‘A pity!’ exclaimed the surgeon impatiently; ‘there might be the clue we seek in a ring of yours. Have ye no jewellery?’

‘I have nothing but this purse,’ I answered, and I gave it to him.

‘English money at all events, captain,’ he cried, emptying the contents into his hand. ‘But what does that tell? Merely that English money circulates everywhere.’

The stewardess entered.

‘Mrs. Richards,’ said Captain Ladmore, ‘you will please prepare a berth for this lady in the steerage. See that she is made perfectly comfortable, and the conveniences which she stands in need of that the ship can supply let her have.’

‘I do not know how to thank you,’ I said in a broken voice.

‘Not a word of thanks, if you please,’ he answered. ‘You have suffered sadly, and for no inconsiderable part of your suffering is this ship responsible. We must make you all the amends possible.’

He motioned to the stewardess who opened the door.

‘I’ll not worry you now with looking at your head and dressing it,’ said Mr. McEwan; ‘take some rest first. I’ll call in upon you by-and-by.’

We passed into the brilliant saloon. The sun was now high, and his beams glittered gloriously upon the skylights, and were multiplied in a hundred sparkling prisms in the mirrors, lamps, and globes of fish. Through the windows of the skylight some of the sails of the ship were visible, and they rose swelling and towering and of a surf-like whiteness to the windy sky that lay in a hazy marble over the mastheads. The stewards were stripping the tables of the breakfast things, and at the forward end of the saloon stood a group of ladies conversing, and looking through a window on to the decks beyond, where a multitude of the emigrant or third-class passengers were assembled.

I held my head bowed, for I was ashamed to be seen. The stewardess took me to her berth, and when I had entered it I sat down, and putting my hands to my heart I rocked myself and tried to weep, for my heart felt swollen as though it would burst, and my head felt full, and my breathing was difficult; but the tears would not flow. Many hours of anguish had I passed since consciousness had returned to me on board the brig, but more exquisite than all those hours of anguish put together was the agony my spirit underwent as I sat in the stewardess’s berth rocking myself. No light! no light! Oh, I had hoped for some faint illumination from the questions which had been asked me, from the sentences which the captain and the surgeon had exchanged about me. The blackness was as impenetrable as ever it had been. I groped with my inward vision over the thick dark curtain, but no glimmer of light crossed it, no fold stirred. The silence and the blackness were of the tomb. It was as though I had returned to life to find myself in a coffin, there to lie straining my eyes against the impenetrable darkness, and there, in the grave, to lie hearkening to the awful hush of death.

‘Come, cheer up, dear,’ said the stewardess, putting her hand upon my shoulder. ‘Stay, I have something that will do you good,’ and going to a shelf she took down a little decanter of cherry-brandy and gave me a glassful.

‘They told me things that may be true, and I do not know whether they are true or not,’ said I.

‘What did they say, dear?’

‘They said that I was young, and that my hair was black before I lost my memory; and they said that I might be the only survivor of a shipwreck, and that there was nothing--nothing--oh! _nothing_ to tell where I came from, where my home was, what my name is----!

‘Now you must have patience, and you must keep up your courage,’ said the stewardess. ‘Wait till you see poor Miss Lee. You will not think that yours is the greatest or the only trouble in this world. _She_ is certainly dying, but you will not die, I hope. You will get strong, and then your memory will return, and you will go home, and the separation will not be long, you will find. It is not like dying. There is no return then,’ said she, glancing at the photograph of the little baby on the woman’s knee; ‘and besides,’ she continued, looking at my hand, ‘whether you remember or not, you may be sure that you are not married, and, therefore, have no husband or children wondering what has become of you. You may, indeed, have a father and mother, and perhaps sisters, and others like that, but separation from _them_ is not like separation from husband and children. So, dear, think how much worse it might be, and go on hoping for the best. And now I am going to prepare a berth for you, and get a bath ready. There is an empty berth next door, and you shall have it. And you shall also have what you sadly need, a comforting change of linen.’

She then left me.

An hour later I was lying, greatly refreshed, in the berth which the good-hearted Mrs. Richards had got ready for me. A warm salt-water bath had taken all the aching out of my limbs. No restorative could have proved so life-giving. It soothed me--Oh! the embrace and enfoldment of the warm, green, sparkling brine was deliciously grateful beyond all power of words after the long days which I had passed in my clothes--in clothes which the rain had soaked through to the skin, and which had dried upon me. When I had bathed, I replaced my underclothing by some clean linen lent to me by the stewardess. And when, having entered my new berth, I had brushed my hair and refreshed my face with some lavender water which Mrs. Richards had placed with brushes and other toilet articles upon a little table--when, having done this, I got into my bunk, or sleeping-shelf, and found myself resting upon a hair mattress, with a bolster and pillow of down for my head, I felt as though I had been born into a new life, as though some base and heavy burden of sordid physical pain and distress had been taken from me. My mind, too, was resting. The inward weary wrestling had ceased for a time. I lay watching the lines of golden sunlight rippling upon a circle of bluish splendour cast by the large circular porthole upon the polished chestnut-coloured bulkhead near the door, until my eyes closed and I slumbered.