CHAPTER VIII

A KIND LITTLE WOMAN

When I awoke my gaze was directed at the face of Mr. McEwan, who stood at the side of my bedplace looking at me. The cabin was full of strong daylight, but the atmosphere was tinctured with a faint rose, and had I at that moment given the matter a thought, I should have known that I had slept far into the afternoon.

In spite of my eyes being open the ship’s surgeon continued to view me without any change of posture or alteration of countenance. He might have been waiting to make sure that I was conscious; he scrutinised me, nevertheless, as though his eyes were gimlets, with which he could pierce into my brain. He held a volume in his hand, but on his appearing to make up his mind that I was awake he put the book into the bunk that was above me, and said, ‘You sleep well.’

‘I have slept well to-day,’ I answered; ‘I bathed and was much comforted before I lay down.’

‘Do you ever dream?’ he asked.

‘Never.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘My memory on this side of my recovery is good,’ I said; ‘and if I dreamt I should recollect my dreams. I have longed with passion to dream, because I have a fancy that my memory may return to me in a vision.’

‘That is not unlikely,’ said he. He took the book from the upper bunk, drew a chair close to me, and seated himself.

‘I have been looking at you in your sleep,’ said he, ‘and I am confirmed in my first opinion--you are a young woman. Your age is four- or five-and-twenty. You smiled shortly before you awoke, and your smile was like a light thrown upon your youth hidden behind your face. Some dream must have produced that smile--but the mere phantom of a phantom of a dream, too colourless and attenuated for your mind to recollect. And your hair! Has it been coming out of late?’

‘I have lost a great quantity. It came out in handfuls, but it no longer falls as it did.’

‘Your hair was black,’ said he, smiling, ‘and very abundant and fine. Before your calamity--whatever it might be--befell you you were a handsome young woman, excellently shaped, with dark, speaking eyes, and a noble growth of hair. Take my word for it. And now think. Do I give you any ideas?’

I shut my eyes to think, and I thought and thought, but to no purpose.

‘No matter,’ he exclaimed; ‘do not strain your mind. Take things perfectly easy. I have been reading in several volumes I possess on cases resembling yours; and here is a book,’ he continued, ‘with some examples, two of which you shall hear, that you may take heart.’

He balanced a pair of gold glasses on his nose and read as follows, slowly and deliberately:--

‘A young clergyman, when on the point of being married, suffered an injury of the head by which his understanding was entirely and permanently deranged. He lived in this condition till the age of eighty, and to the last talked of nothing but his approaching wedding, and expressed impatience of the arrival of the happy day.’

‘What do you think of that?’ said the surgeon.

I did not answer.

‘Do you understand it?’ said he.

‘I understand it,’ I replied, ‘but I do not see what it has to do with the memory.’

‘There is too much memory in it,’ he exclaimed with a dry smile; ‘but you are right, and I’m very well satisfied that you should be able to reason. Now I will read you something that _does_ concern the memory, and you shall be consoled when you hear it;’ and he read aloud as follows:--

‘On her recovery from the torpor she appeared to have forgotten nearly all her previous knowledge: everything seemed new to her, and she did not recognise a single individual, not even her nearest relatives. In her behaviour she was restless and inattentive, but very lively and cheerful: she was delighted with everything she saw and heard, and altogether resembled a child more than a grown person. At first it was scarcely possible to engage her in conversation: in place of answering a question she repeated it aloud in the same words in which it was put. At first she had very few words. She often made one word answer for all others which were in any way allied to it: thus, in place of _tea_ she would ask for _juice_. She once or twice had dreams, which she afterwards related to her friends, and she seemed quite aware of the difference betwixt a dream and a reality.’

‘Now mark this,’ continued the surgeon, looking at me over his glasses; and he then read:--

‘After a time Mrs. H---- was able to return to her home in England, where she passed the rest of her life happily with her husband. She was in the habit of corresponding by letter with her friends at a distance, and lived on the most agreeable terms with her immediate neighbours, by whom she was held in much regard on account of her kindly nature and charitable work.’

‘So you see,’ said Mr. McEwan, ‘that the poor thing got quite well.’

‘Is that a good book?’ said I, looking at it.

‘It is a first-rate book,’ he answered.

‘But the woman’s memory was not utterly gone, as mine is.’

‘She was far worse than you,’ said he. ‘Be of good cheer. Think of your brain as a theatre. The curtain has come down with a run, and the gentleman whose business it is to wind it up is drunk, or absent through illness. We’ll rout him out by-and-by, and the curtain will rise again. And now sit up, if you please, that I may look at your head.’

He was abrupt and off-hand in his speech, with something of the wag in him, but already was I sensible that there was an abundance of good-nature and of kindly feeling underlying his manner. He carefully renewed the plaister and examined the injured brow, then dressed it with some salve and bandaged it with a tender hand. I asked him if I was disfigured.

‘An excellent question,’ he explained; ‘a woman’s question. Go on asking every question that may occur to you; but do not strain your mind to recollect.’

‘Am I disfigured?’ I asked.

‘That is right,’ said he; ‘go on questioning me.’

‘Let me look at the glass.’

‘No; don’t you see that I am about to bandage you--so! Do not remove this bandage. There is something that needs to heal, and your young Frenchman’s sticking-plaister has not helped you.’

The surgeon left me after saying that he would send me a powerful tonic, which I was to take so many times a day, and when he was gone I got out of the bunk, in which I had slept fully dressed, and going to the glass over the washstand looked into it. The face that gazed back upon me was no longer the forbidding, the almost repulsive countenance that I remembered. The removal of the darkened and bloodstained strips of sticking-plaister had made a wonderful difference. In their place was a snow-white bandage, skilfully fitted. It hid a portion of the right brow, and descended so as to conceal the bridge of the nose, but it left my right eye visible; and when I looked at my eyes I observed that they were no longer leaden and lustreless, but that, on the contrary, there was the light of life in them, and the dark pupils soft and liquid.

This I knew by comparing my face with the face with which I had awoke to consciousness on board the brig; but I remembered no other face than _that_.

I stood for some while staring in the glass, recalling the assurance of the surgeon that I was a woman of four- or five-and-twenty, and contrasting that notion with the belief Alphonse had expressed, that my age was forty-five, and I kept on saying to myself, _Who am I?_ and silently repeating over and over again the letters A. C. until, recalling Mr. McEwan’s advice to me not to strain my brain, I broke away with a sudden horror, as of insanity, from the glass, and went to the cabin porthole.

I could see very little of the sky and sea, but what I saw was beautiful with the colouring of the rich dark gold of sunset. I gazed almost directly west, and as much as I could behold of the heavens that way was a glowing and a throbbing crimson, barred with streaks of violet gloriously edged with ruby flames. The sea ran red as the sky; every ridged head of purple broke into rosy froth. In the heart of this little circle of western magnificence formed by the porthole was a ship with orange-coloured sails. I watched her, and thought of the young Frenchman, and wondered whether the crew of the brig had perished, as Captain Ladmore supposed, or whether they had been picked up during the darkness of the night by some vessel that had passed at too great a distance to be observed by the people of the _Deal Castle_.

Whilst I stood thus looking and thinking, the door was opened by an under-steward to enable Mrs. Richards to enter with a tray, which she grasped with both hands.

‘I thought,’ said she, smiling as she placed the tray full of good things upon the deck, ‘that you would rather have your tea here than at the table outside, and with your leave I will drink a cup of tea with you. Ah! now you look better. Yes, your eyes have cleared wonderfully; and I don’t see the same expression of pain in your face. And how much better that bandage looks than the ugly sticking-plaister.’

She chatted thus whilst she gazed around, considering how she should dispose of the tray. At last she placed it in my bed, where it would be safe--where, at least, it would not slide, for there was a heave running from the sunset through the sea, and the ship regularly leaned upon it, but in motions so stately as scarcely to be noticeable. We seated ourselves by the side of the bed and ate and drank. She had brought cold fowl, and ham-and-tongue, and pressed beef, and fancy rolls of bread, all which, with other things, after the fare I had been used to on board the brig, were true dainties and delicacies to me, and particularly did I enjoy the tea with its dash of new milk.

‘I had some trouble,’ said the stewardess, looking into the milk-jug, ‘to coax this drop out of the steward. There is but one cow, and there are many demands upon poor Crummie. But I felt sure you would enjoy a cup of tea with milk in it.’

She then asked me what Mr. McEwan had said, and I told her.

‘He is a clever man, I believe,’ said she.

‘Oh, if he would only give me back my memory!’ I exclaimed.

‘I wonder what the captain means to do with you,’ said she.

‘And I, too, wonder. Have I a home? Surely I must have a home somewhere? It cannot be that I am utterly alone in the world, though I am so now.’

‘No, dear, you will not be alone. God will raise up friends for you until He gives you back your memory; and then----’

‘But this ship is going on a long voyage,’ said I, ‘and if I remain in her she will be carrying me away from where my home may be.’

‘Yes, but if your home is in England, this ship will convey you back there if you remain in her.’

‘How long will it take the ship to sail to the place you spoke of?’

‘Sydney. She is going to Sydney. Well, it may take her three months, or it may take her four months, to get there, and she will stop at Sydney for three months. We all hope--all of us, I mean, whose homes are in England--to be home by next August.’

I turned her words over in my mind, but was unable to attach any meaning to what she said. I could not understand _time_--that is, I did not know what Mrs. Richards meant when she spoke of ‘next August.’ But I would not question her; my incapacity made me feel ashamed, and exquisitely wretched at heart, and I asked no questions, lest she should divine that I did not comprehend her.

There were people drinking tea at the tables outside. I heard the occasional cry of a baby, the voices of children, the murmur of men and women conversing. Mrs. Richards informed me that those people were second-class passengers, who inhabited this part of the ship.

‘Are there many passengers in all?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes, the ship is full of men and women,’ she replied.

‘Where do they come from?’

‘The ship sailed from London. The people joined her at the docks, or at Gravesend, from all parts of the kingdom.’

‘Oh,’ cried I, clasping my hands, ‘if there were but a single person amongst the crowds on board--a single person who knew me, who would be able to pronounce my name and tell me where my home is--if, indeed, I have a home!’

‘Well, who knows but there may be such a person?’ said the stewardess. ‘Big as this world is, we are constantly running against friends or acquaintances. Everybody is asking after you. All my ladies, all the people I attend on, make inquiries after you every time I see them. There is a dear old lady on board, Mrs. Lee; she is the mother of the poor consumptive girl. Not half an hour ago, as I was passing through the saloon, Mrs. Lee left her chair and said to me, “Mrs. Richards, if there is anything that I or my daughter can do for the poor lady who was rescued this morning, I beg you will enable us to serve her. I fear she is without clothes,” said Mrs. Lee. “How could it be otherwise, indeed? Now my daughter and I have plenty of clothes, and the poor lady is welcome to whatever she wants.”’

‘How good of her!’ I exclaimed. ‘Thank her, thank her for me, Mrs. Richards.’

‘She is a dear old lady, and her daughter is the sweetest of girls. Oh dear! oh dear! that the hand of Death should be drawing closer and closer to steal away so much beauty and gentleness.’

‘Is it known that--that----’

‘That you have lost your memory?’

I sank my head.

‘Why, yes. News flies fast on board ship. And why should it not be known? Your not having your memory will explain a great deal.’

‘What will it explain?’

‘For instance, your having no name.’

‘My initials are A. C.,’ said I, and I pronounced the letters several times over, and cried out, ‘What can they stand for?’

‘But would you know your name if you saw it?’ said the stewardess.

‘I cannot tell.’

As I made this answer the door was quietly rapped. ‘Come in,’ said the stewardess, and the captain entered. The stewardess rose, and stood as though a royal personage had walked in, and then made a step to the door.

‘Do not go away, Mrs. Richards,’ cried Captain Ladmore. ‘I am glad to see that you are carefully attending to the lady’--and he asked me if I felt better.

I answered that I felt very much better, and that I did not know how to express the gratitude which all the kindness I had received and was receiving had filled my heart with. He pulled a chair and seated himself near me.

‘I have been all day,’ said he with a grave smile, ‘considering what course to adopt as regards your disposal. I should very well know what to do if you could give me any hint as to where you come from.’ He paused, as though hoping I might now be able to give him such a hint. He then continued: ‘In my own mind I have little doubt that you are English, and that your home is in England. But I cannot be quite sure of this, and I should wish to be convinced before acting. At any hour, whether to-morrow or the following day--at any hour we may fall in with a ship bound to England whose captain might be willing to receive you and to land you. But then, unless your memory returns during the homeward run, what would a captain be able to do with you when he reached port? He would land you--yes; but humanity would not suffer him to let you leave his ship without your memory, without possessing a friend to go to, and, pardon me for adding, with only a few shillings in your pocket.’

I hid my face and sobbed.

‘Don’t take on, dear,’ said Mrs. Richards, gently clasping my wrist; ‘wait a little till you hear what the captain has to say. Yours is a sorrowful, sad case, and it has to be thought over,’ and here her voice failed her.

‘A bad disaster,’ continued the captain, ‘has brought you into my ship and placed you under my care. I am obliged to put your own situation and condition to you fairly and intelligibly. If your home is in England, I should not wish to keep you on board my ship and carry you to Australia. But your home may not be in England, and I dislike the thought of sending you to that country, where, for all I know, you may have no friends. When your memory returns we shall gather exactly how to act.’

‘I do not seem able to think, I do not feel able to reason,’ I exclaimed, putting my hand to my forehead.

‘Do not trouble to think or to reason either,’ said the stewardess; ‘the captain will do it for you.’

‘What,’ said Captain Ladmore, fixing his eyes upon Mrs. Richards, but talking as though he thought aloud--‘what should I be able to tell the shipmaster to whom I transferred this lady? I should have positively nothing whatever to tell him. He might hesitate to receive her. His reluctance would be justified. I myself should certainly hesitate to receive a shipwrecked lady under such circumstances. I should say to myself, When I arrive, whom shall I find to receive her? There might, indeed, be philanthropic institutions to take her in, but if I could not find such an institution, what should I do? I should have to take charge of her until I could place her somewhere. I might, indeed, advertise, send a letter to the newspapers, and trust by publishing her case to make her existence known to her friends. But then she may have no friends in England--and meanwhile? I have thought the matter over,’ said he, addressing me, ‘and believe that I cannot do better than keep you on board, with a chance of your memory returning at any moment, and enabling me _then_ to take the first opportuning of sending you to your home, wherever it may be. What do you think?’

‘I cannot think. Oh, if but the dimmest idea would visit my mind to help you and to help me! It would be dreadful,’ I said in a voice that was failing me, ‘to find myself on shore, in destitution, without friends, not knowing what to do, where to go. _That_ thought was a horror to me in the French brig, when the Frenchmen talked of landing me at Toulon and handing me over to the British Consul. I remember what they said: What would the British Consul do for me?’ And then I sprang from my chair and cried out, hysterically, ‘Oh, Captain Ladmore, what is to become of me? what is to become of me?’

‘You are amongst friends. Do not take on so, dear,’ said the stewardess.

‘It is my dreadful loneliness,’ I cried, speaking out of the old terror that was again upon me--the miserable terror that had possessed me again and again on board the Frenchman.

‘All of us are alone,’ said the captain, in his deep, serious voice; ‘we arrive and we depart in loneliness. God Himself is alone.’

‘Think of that!’ said the stewardess.

‘Whilst you are with us,’ said Captain Ladmore, ‘it is proper that you should be known by some name. Your initials are clearly A. C. Now suppose we call you Miss C.? By so terming you we shall be preserving as much of your real name as we can discover.’ He paused, and a moment later added, addressing the stewardess, ‘Do you suggest Miss C. or Mrs. C., Mrs. Richards?’

‘Oh! Miss C., sir, undoubtedly,’ she answered.

I lifted my head, and perceived the captain examining me as scrutinisingly as the western light that was now weak and fast waning would permit.

‘Then Miss C.,’ said he, rising slowly, and smiling gravely as he pronounced the name, ‘you will consider yourself the guest of the ship _Deal Castle_ for the present. By-and-by your memory will return to you. We shall then learn all about you, and _then_, whatever steps I take must certainly result in restoring you to your friends; whereas to tranship you now---- But that is settled,’ he added, with a dignified motion of the hand.

He pulled out his watch, held it to the porthole, and then bidding the stewardess see that I wanted for nothing, gave me a bow and went out. Mrs. Richards produced a box of matches from her pocket, and lighted a bracket lamp.

‘What do you think of Captain Ladmore?’ she asked.

‘He is the soul of goodness, Mrs. Richards.’

‘He is, indeed. Who would suppose him to be a sea-captain? Sea-captains are thought to be a very rough body of men. Before I come upon the water as a stewardess I used to imagine all sea-captains as persons with red faces wrinkled like walnut-shells, and boozy eyes. They all had bandy legs, and used bad language. Since then I have met many sea-captains, and some of them are as I used to think they all were; but some are otherwise, and Captain Ladmore is one of them. On his return home two or three voyages ago he found his wife and only daughter dead. They had died while he was away. The blow was dreadful. He cannot forget it, they say. It changed his nature--it made him a sad, grave man, and thus he will always be. Well, now I must go and attend to my work.’

I opened the door, and she passed out bearing the tray.

The floating swing of the ship was so steady that I was able to walk about my cabin with comfort. I paced round and round it with my hands clasped behind me and my eyes fixed on the floor, thinking over what Captain Ladmore had said. On the whole I was comforted. It startled me, it shocked me, indeed, when I thought that unless my memory returned I was to be carried all the way to Australia. Not that I had any clear ideas as to where Australia was, or its distance from the ship, and, as I have before said, I was unable to grasp the meaning of time as conveyed by the stewardess’s information that the passage out would occupy three months or four months as it might be. But from what Mr. McEwan and Captain Ladmore and Mrs. Richards had said among them, I could in some manner understand that Sydney, whither the ship was bound, was an immense distance off, and though I had not the least idea where my home was--whether it was in England or in America, as the young Frenchman had suggested, or in that very continent of Australia to which the _Deal Castle_ was voyaging--yet the mere notion of being carried a vast distance, and for no other purpose than to give my memory time to revive, with the certainty, moreover, that if my memory had not returned to me at the end of the voyage I should be as lonely, miserable, and helpless as I now was: here were considerations, as I say, to startle and shock me.

But on the whole I felt comforted. It was the prospect of being set ashore friendless at Toulon that had immeasurably added to my wretchedness whilst on board the Frenchman. But now that threatened state of hopelessness, of poverty, of homelessness, all to be exquisitely complicated by total mental blindness, was indefinitely postponed or removed. I had met with people who were taking pity on me, and amongst whom I might find friends. My health, too, would now be professionally watched. And then, again, if my home _were_ in England, this ship would certainly in time return to that country, and in the long weeks between it might be that my memory would be restored to me. Therefore, as I walked about in my cabin I felt on the whole comforted.

Mrs. Richards brought me an armful of books, some of her own, and some from the ship’s little collection. She said, as she put the volumes down--it was about seven o’clock in the evening:--

‘Do you feel dull? If so, there are many in the saloon who would be glad to meet you and converse with you.’

‘No, I am not dull. My mind is much more tranquil than it was. I am thinking of last night. How glad I am to be here!’

‘Would you like to receive a visit? There are many who would be delighted to visit you. Mrs. Lee will gladly come and sit with you if you feel strong enough for a chat.’

‘I would rather remain quiet, Mrs. Richards. To-morrow I hope---- Perhaps in a day or two the doctor will remove this bandage.’

‘You must not think of your appearance,’ she said, smiling, ‘although it is a good sign. A little vanity is always a good sign in invalids. I would not give much for the life of an invalid woman who is without a touch of womanly conceit. But you are very well; you look very nicely. Do not think of your bandage,’ and with a kindly smile and nod she left me.

When I went to bed I found myself sleepless. But sleeplessness I might have expected after my deep slumbers during the day. At nine o’clock Mrs. Richards had brought me some brandy-and-water and biscuits, and when she left me I went to bed, and lay listening to the people in the steerage outside. I gathered that some of them were playing at cards: there were frequent short exclamations, and now and again a noisy peal of laughter. The sea was smooth and the ship was going along quietly; no creaking, no sounds of straining vexed the quiet when a hush fell upon the players.

At ten o’clock there was a tap upon my door, and the voice of a man bade me put my light out. I extinguished the lamp and returned to my bed. All was silent outside now; nothing was to be heard save a dim swarming noise of broken waters hurrying by, and at intervals the cry of a baby. For some time I listened to this cry, and it produced not the least effect upon me; but suddenly, on my hearing it more clearly, as though the door of the cabin in which the infant lay had been opened, a feeling of dreadful grief seized me--a feeling of dreadful loneliness. I sat up in my bed and racked my mind--I know not how else to express what I felt in my effort to _compel_ my mind to seek in the black void of memory for the reasons why that infant’s cry had raised in me so insufferable a sense of grief, so incommunicable an ache of loneliness.

I grew calm and closed my eyes, but I could not sleep. Time passed, and still finding myself sleepless, I quitted my bed and went to the porthole, and perceived through the glass the bluish haze of moonlit darkness, with many brilliant stars in it, rhythmically sliding to the movements of the ship. I cannot sleep, I said to myself. I slept too deeply to-day to slumber now; I will go on deck. The fresh air will revive me. It is dreadful to be in this gloom, alone and bitterly wakeful, thinking of this time last night.

So I put on my clothes--sheen enough flowed through the porthole to see by--and I took from a peg on the door the cloak in which I had been wrapped when I left the brig, and enveloped myself in it, pulling the hood over my head, and quietly stepped out. I remembered that there was a ladder at either end of the steerage, and that the deck was the more easily to be gained by the foremost ladder. A lamp burnt at one end of the steerage, and with the help of its rays I easily made my way to the foot of the steps. All was buried in deep silence. I mounted the steps and gained the foremost end of the saloon, and silently opening a door I passed out on to the quarterdeck, into the windy, moonlit, starry night.

END OF THE FIRST 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.

Simple typographical errors were corrected.