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.

Simple typographical errors were corrected.