CHAPTER IX

THE CRY OF A CHILD

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.