CHAPTER XVIII

A STRANGE OFFER

Small is the world of ship board, yet at sea there often happen contrasts in life not less violent and remarkable than those which one meets with in the crowded world ashore. This same day, after my conversation with Alice Lee, I quitted her cabin shortly before the luncheon hour, as she seemed drowsy, and sleep was all important to her whose slumbers were cruelly broken and short throughout the night. Mrs. Lee stole in upon her child, and finding her asleep came to her place by my side at the luncheon table.

The passengers understood that Alice was resting, and the conversation was subdued along the whole line of the table. I said nothing to Mrs. Lee as to what had passed between her daughter and myself. Though the mother knew that her daughter’s condition was hopeless, she could not bear any reference to the girl’s dying state. That is to say, she would speak of it herself, but with eyes that wistfully sought a contradiction of her fears.

Now, whilst I sat at table I observed that Mr. Harris regarded me with more than usual attention. There was an expression of speculation in his face, as though I were some singular problem which he was wearying his brains to solve. His air was also one of abstraction, and direct questions put to him by passengers sitting near were unheeded.

Shortly before lunch was over Mrs. Lee withdrew to her berth. I remained at table, having for the moment nothing else or better to do. Mrs. Webber, remarking that I was alone, left her seat and took Mrs. Lee’s chair at my side.

‘It is really too bad,’ said she, ‘that those wretched men’--referring to Mr. Clack and Mr. Wedmold--‘should be arguing on their eternal subject of literature when they know that poor Alice Lee is sleeping, and that their voices might awaken her.’

‘I have not been listening,’ said I. ‘They have not been talking very loudly, I think.’

I looked towards the two gentlemen, and my attention being directed to them, I discovered that they were arguing, and, as usual, on literary matters. But their voices were somewhat sunk, as though they recognised the obligation of speaking low.

‘My simple contention is,’ said Mr. Wedmold, ‘that criticism as we now have it is absolutely worthless. If I were a publisher I would not send a book of mine to the press. I would content myself with making it known to the public by advertisements. A man writes a review and it is published in a newspaper. Just before he sat down to write the review he was disturbed by a double knock, and his servant handed him a manuscript which he sent six weeks before to a firm of publishers. The manuscript is declined with thanks. What sort of a review will that man write? Or he may dislike the author of the book he is to review because he thinks him too successful; or he may personally know him and have reason to hate him; or he may not know him and yet have a literary prejudice against him; or, before he writes the review the tax-collector may call; or he may have had a quarrel with his wife over the weekly bills. But by the publication of his review he commits the aggregate intellect of the paper in which it appears to his opinion. For reviews are not quoted as the opinions of Jones or Smith, but as the verdict of the journal in which they write. On the other hand, there may be reasons why the reviewer should extravagantly praise a book which, were it written by you, Clack, or by me, he would probably dismiss in a couple of lines of contempt. Nevertheless, the aggregate intellect of the journal is as much committed to this gross lie of approval as it was to the equally gross lie of depreciation. The name of a newspaper should never be quoted in a publisher’s advertisement, unless it be understood that everybody connected with the newspaper sat in judgment upon the book. A book should be served as a defendant is served. The paper that reviews a book should convert itself into a jury. If one juror alone is to decide the question, then his name should be given. My argument is, why should publishers go on subjecting their wares to twopenny individual caprice?’

‘You will never get rid of criticism,’ said Mr. Clack, ‘until authors lose their desire of hearing people’s opinions on their books. Every man who produces his poor little novel, every woman who produces her poor little volume of poems, pesters his or her friends for their candid opinion. Now if that candid opinion is published in a newspaper and it happens to be _rather_ opposed to the author’s own judgment of his book, the natural thirst of the author is for the extinction of all criticism.’

‘Did you ever hear two men talk such utter bosh in all your life?’ said Mrs. Webber.

‘I will go on deck for a turn,’ said I, observing that the saloon was fast emptying.

‘Those two men,’ continued she, looking at Mr. Clack somewhat spitefully, ‘remind me of a very old story. A Frenchman and an American made a bet that one would out-talk the other. In the morning they were found in bed, the American dead and the Frenchman feebly whispering in his ear.’

‘If you please, ma’m,’ said the captain’s servant, coming up to me, ‘Captain Ladmore’s compliments, and he will be glad to see you in his cabin if you can spare him five minutes.’

I arose and nervously followed the man to the captain’s cabin, wondering what could be the object of this message. Captain Ladmore made me a grave bow, placed a chair for me, and seated himself at the table at which I had found him reading.

‘I hope,’ said he, ‘you will not think me troublesome in desiring these visits. I have, not had an opportunity of conversing with you lately. You are very much taken up with poor Miss Lee. How does she do?’

‘She is very poorly,’ said I. ‘The malady seems to have rapidly gained upon her within the last few days.’

‘It is too often so,’ he exclaimed. ‘These poor consumptive people embark when it is too late. Mr. McEwan gives me no hope. I fear we shall lose the poor young lady--and lose her soon, too.’ He directed his eyes at the deck and his face grew unusually thoughtful and grave. ‘And how are you feeling?’ said he, after a pause. ‘Does this heat try you?’

‘No, Captain Ladmore; I feel very well, a different being, indeed, since I came into your kind hands.’

‘Your memory is still dormant?’

‘I am unable to remember anything previous to my awaking to consciousness on board the French vessel.’

‘It is truly wonderful,’ said he. ‘Had I not witnessed such a thing I should not have believed it. That is to say, I could understand _total_ failure of memory, for I have heard of instances of that sort of affliction; but I should not have credited that recollection can lie dead down to a certain point and be bright and active afterwards, as it is in you. I have been talking to Mr. McEwan about you, and though we need lay no emphasis upon his opinion, it is right I should tell you that he fears your condition may continue for a considerable time.’

‘For a considerable time!’ I cried; ‘what can he mean by a considerable time, Captain Ladmore?’

‘Do not be agitated. I mention this merely for a reason you will presently understand. McEwan’s judgment may signify nothing. Doctors are a very fallible lot, and they talk blindfolded when they speak of the mind. But that my meaning in inviting you to visit me may be clear, I wish you to suppose that McEwan is right. In that case, what is your future to be?’

I gazed at his grave, earnest face, but made him no answer.

‘Let me repeat,’ said he, ‘that you are very welcome to the hospitality of this ship whilst she keeps the sea; but on our arrival in the Thames it will be necessary for you to find another asylum. What can be done for you, madam, shall be done for you, always supposing that your memory continues to prevent you from directing us. But it is a cold world----’ He paused abruptly.

‘Oh, Captain Ladmore! I hope my memory will have returned to me before we arrive in England--before we arrive in Australia.’

‘I hope so too, indeed,’ said he, ‘but if it should not---- You appear to have found a very warm friend in Mrs. Lee. Yet, from my experiences as a shipmaster, I would counsel you not to lodge too much hope in friends and acquaintances made upon the ocean. People are warm-hearted at sea; they are always full of good intentions; but a change comes when they step ashore.’

‘Captain Ladmore,’ I exclaimed, ‘if I am not to find a friend when I leave your ship, then indeed I shall not know _what_ to do.’

‘That brings me,’ said he, ‘to my motive for inviting you to my cabin; and I will say at once that you appear to have found a very warm friend on board this ship.’ I imagined that he would name Mrs. Webber, but the notion vanished at his next utterance. ‘He appears to entertain a very great admiration for you. It is not,’ continued he, with a slow smile, ‘usual for men occupying our relative positions to confer on such a matter as he has in his mind, but I consider that he exhibited a proper delicacy of feeling in approaching me first. You are temporarily my ward, so to speak, and there are other considerations which induced him to confer with me on the subject.’

‘Of whom are you speaking?’ I asked.

‘I am speaking of Mr. Harris, my chief officer,’ he replied.

‘And what does Mr. Harris want?’ said I, feeling the blood forsake my cheeks.

‘Well, madam,’ said he gravely, ‘he desired me to sound you as regards your feelings towards him. It is his urgent request alone that makes me interfere, nor should I venture to move in the matter but for your present lonely, and I may say helpless, condition. You necessarily need a friend and an adviser, and it certainly is my duty as a master of this ship to befriend and counsel you. Mr. Harris is a man who, in the course of a year or two, ought certainly to obtain command. In the profession of the sea a man must be a prawn before he can become a lobster. His pay at present is comparatively small, yet it should suffice, with great care, to maintain a home. Long before I rose to be a captain I contrived to support a home out of my wages. Mr. Harris is a very respectable, honest man, and a good officer, and I believe his connections are rather superior to the average relatives of merchant mates.’

I listened whilst I stared at him; indeed, the confusion of my mind was so great that I scarcely grasped his meaning. He observed my bewilderment, and said, ‘The matter may be thus simply put: Mr. Harris is willing to offer you his hand in marriage. He is capable of supporting you, and will, I am convinced, prove an excellent husband. By making you his wife he secures you against that future which looks at present dark and hopeless. He is willing to waive all considerations of your antecedents. In that, Miss C., he tells me he hopes for the best.’ He added, after a pause, after viewing me steadfastly, ‘I have fulfilled my promise, and desire to do no more. In Mr. Harris you have met with a man who is willing and anxious in the most honourable way to provide for your future.’

‘I will not marry Mr. Harris,’ said I.

‘It is a question for your own decision alone,’ he answered.

‘I would sooner die in one of the miserable asylums he talked about than marry Mr. Harris,’ I cried.

Captain Ladmore arched his eyebrows and made me a grave bow, as though he would say, ‘There is an end of the matter.’

‘I am sure the man means kindly,’ said I, my eyes beginning to smart with tears which I could not suppress, ‘but it renders my situation truly awful to understand that you and Mr. Harris consider I stand in need of the sort of assistance your first mate offers.’

‘Remember, madam,’ said Captain Ladmore gently, ‘that on your arrival in England you will need a friend if you are still unable by that time to tell us who your friends are, and to what part of the world you belong.’

‘I would far rather die than accept Mr. Harris’s offer,’ said I, with a shudder.

‘Let us then allow the matter to rest,’ said the captain; ‘no harm has been done.’

‘How dare he make such a proposal through you?’ cried I. ‘He may mean well, but how does he know who I am?’

‘He is willing to take all risks,’ said the captain; ‘but you do not entertain his proposal, and the matter therefore ends.’

We both rose at once from our chairs.

‘You have shown me the greatest kindness since I have been on board,’ said I, ‘and some further great kindness yet I will ask of you. It is that as the master of this ship you will command Mr. Harris not to speak to me about marriage.’

‘I will do so,’ said he.

‘I will beg you to command him to hold aloof from me, for I wish to have nothing to say to him.’

The captain bowed his head affirmatively.

‘And will you also command him, Captain Ladmore,’ I exclaimed, ‘not to whisper a syllable of what has passed?’

‘You may trust him to hold his tongue,’ said he smiling.

‘Were the news of his having made me this offer through you to reach the passengers I could never hold up my head again; I could never bear to quit my berth.’

‘The secret shall be entirely ours,’ said the captain.

I hurriedly made my way through the saloon, entered my berth in the steerage, closed and bolted the door, and flung myself into my bunk. I had wept in the captain’s cabin, but I was now too angry, too confounded to shed tears, though I longed for the relief of them. There was a sort of horror too upon me, such a feeling as might possess a woman who had met with a shocking insult; and yet I knew that no insult had been offered to me, so that the horror which was upon me was as inscrutable as ever the emotion had been at other times.

There is no occasion for me to refine upon my condition. The psychologist might well laugh at my speculations; yet I will venture to say this, that when I look back and recollect my feelings at this time, then, knowing that I was without memory to excite in me the detestation with which I had listened to Captain Ladmore’s communication of Mr. Harris’s offer, I cannot doubt that the wild antagonism of my heart to it must have been owing to the _memory of instinct_--a memory that may have no more to do with the brain than a deep-rooted habit has to do with consciousness.

But not to dwell upon this. I sat motionless on my bed for I know not how long a time, thinking and thinking; I then bathed my face and cooled my hands in water, and stood at the open window to let the draught caused by the rolling of the ship breathe upon me, and thus I passed the afternoon.

Shortly before the first dinner-bell rang Mrs. Richards knocked on my door. I bade her enter. She tried the handle, and found the bolt shot. This was unusual, and on entering she gazed at me with attention. She asked me what the matter was, and I answered that the heat had caused my head to ache, and that I had been lying down. No doubt she perceived an expression on my face which told her that something more than a headache ailed me, but she did not press her questions. She had come to say that Mrs. Lee sent her love, and wished to know what had become of me during the afternoon.

‘I hope to sit with Miss Lee this evening,’ said I; ‘but I shall not dine at the dinner table.’

‘Then I will bring you some dinner here,’ said she, and after we had conversed a little while about the heat of the weather, and about Alice Lee, the kind, motherly little woman left me.

I could not rally my spirits. The mere thought of what Captain Ladmore had said to me induced a feeling of crushing humiliation; and then there was that deep, mysterious, impenetrable emotion of loathing which I have before mentioned. Oh! it was shocking to think that my condition should be so cruelly forlorn as to challenge an offer of marriage from such a man as Mr. Harris. Nothing could have made me more bitterly understand how helpless I was, how hopeless, how lonely. I sought comfort in the recollection of Alice’s words; but not only did it miserably dispirit me to think that the dear girl must die before the wish she had expressed could take effect; I was haunted by the captain’s language--that the world was cold--that the kindly intentions of shipboard acquaintances were not often very lasting--that when people stepped ashore after a voyage the memories they carried with them speedily perished out of their minds.

I ate a little of the dinner that Mrs. Richards brought me, but I had not the heart to leave my cabin. I felt as though I had been terribly degraded and outraged, and my inability to understand why I should thus feel when all the while I was saying to myself, nothing but kindness was meant, no insult could possibly be intended--I say my inability to understand the dark, subtle protest and loathing and sense of having been wronged that was in my mind half crazed me.

Twice Mrs. Richards arrived with a message, first from Mrs. Lee and then from Alice, inviting me to their cabin; but I answered that my head ached, that I did not feel well; and when the door was closed I stood with my face at the port-hole breathing the air that floated warm off the dark stagnant waters, and watching the stars reel to the sluggish motions of the vessel.

Presently I heard the sound of a bell. I counted the chimes--they were eight; and so I knew the hour to be eight. Just then someone gently knocked on the door; it was not the stewardess’s familiar rap. I said, ‘Come in,’ and the door was opened.

‘All in the dark, Agnes?’ exclaimed the voice of Mrs. Lee, ‘what is the matter with you, my dear? Why have you not come to Alice, who has been expecting to see you all the evening?’

‘I am so low-spirited, dear Mrs. Lee, that I am not fit company for Alice,’ I answered.

‘Will you light the lamp,’ said she, ‘that we may see each other?’

I lighted the lamp and she closed the door and seated herself, viewing me steadily, and taking no notice of the interior of the berth, though this was her first visit to these steerage quarters.

‘You look pale,’ said she, ‘pale and worried. Are you really ill or is it the mind? Tell me, my dear. The mind might be making a great effort that affects you like physical sickness would, but it may be the very effort to pray for.’

I had felt that nothing could induce me to confess what had passed; but the tenderness of her voice and manner broke me down. Her sudden presence made me acutely feel the need of sympathy. But my heart was too full for speech. I took her hand and bowing my head upon it wept. She did not speak whilst I sobbed, but soothingly caressed my hair with a touch soft and comforting as her daughter’s.

After awhile I grew composed, and then, with my face averted, I told her that the captain had sent for me after lunch, and I repeated to her the offer Mr. Harris had requested him to make to me. She listened attentively and on my ending exclaimed:

‘Well, my dear, it is a proposal of marriage as extraordinary in its manner of reaching you as the whole character of the man who made it. But what is there in it to cause you to fret and keep yourself locked up in this dark place?’

‘It affects me as a dreadful insult.’

‘But why? It is not meant as an insult. Captain Ladmore is not a man to suffer one of his officers to insult you through him.’

‘I cannot explain, Mrs. Lee. This offer of marriage has shocked me as though it had been some horrid outrage, and I do not know why.’

She sat silently regarding me.

‘But that is not all,’ I continued. ‘The loathing, the horror the offer has caused is too deep; I feel that it is too deep to be owing _merely_ to the offer. Some sense lying in blackness within me has been shocked and outraged. But that is not all: the offer has made me feel how lonely I am, how utterly hopeless my future must be if my memory does not return to me.’

‘It is very strange,’ said she, ‘that you should feel that this extraordinary recoil as of loathing comes not from Mr. Harris himself as it were, but from his offer.’

‘You exactly express it,’ I exclaimed; ‘it is not the man but the offer which fills me with loathing.’

‘And you do not understand why this should be?’ said she.

‘No, because the man means kindly. He approached me even with delicacy through the captain. There is nothing in him which should make me loathe him.’

‘And still his offer fills you with horror and disgust?’

‘Yes.’

She surveyed me for awhile, lightly running her eye over me with an expression of inquiry. She then said, ‘Do you remember what that gipsy woman told you?’

I reflected and answered, ‘She told me much that I remember.’

‘She told you,’ said she, ‘that you were a married woman. What else she said matters not. But she told you, Agnes, that you were married, and that you have left a husband who wonders and grieves over your absence.’

I drew a deep tremulous breath not knowing what meaning she had in her mind.

‘From what you have now told me,’ she continued, ‘I am disposed--mind, my dear, I only say disposed--to believe that the gipsy woman may be right.’

‘From what I have now told you!’ I echoed.

‘What can cause this deep recoil in you from Mr. Harris’s offer? What can occasion your detestation of it and the bitter feeling of shame? His offer reached you in the most inoffensive manner possible. There is hardly a woman who would not find something in such an offer of marriage made by such a man under such conditions to laugh at. No honourable offer of marriage can fill a woman with loathing. A man can pay a woman no higher compliment than to ask her to be his wife, and no woman therefore is to be unutterably outraged, as you tell me you are, by the highest compliment our sex can receive. Nor is it as though Mr. Harris were a monster of a figure and face to justify the abhorrence his offer has excited. What, then, is the reason of this abhorrence?’

She sank into a little reverie during which I watched her almost breathlessly. ‘I shall not be at all surprised, Agnes,’ said she presently, ‘if you prove to be a married woman in spite of your not wearing a wedding ring. There must be a reason for your not wearing a wedding-ring, and some of these days, please God, you will be able to account for its missing from your finger. I believe--yes, I earnestly believe’--she went on looking me eagerly in the eyes--‘that your antipathy to this offer, the sense of insult that has attended this offer, arises from a rebellion of the instincts which possess the truth, though they are unable to communicate it to the intelligence. The impression of marriage--the great momentous step of every woman’s life--is too deep to perish. Your secret horror, your unaccountable loathing, is the subtle and unintelligible revolt of your chastity as a wife against an offer that is an insult to that chastity. I believe this, my dear, I do indeed.’

‘Oh God!’ I cried, and my bursting heart could find no other vent than that cry of ‘Oh God!’

‘You must not be distressed,’ continued the dear little woman, clasping my hand, ‘because our speculations should be tending the right way. Suppose we are able to satisfy ourselves that you are a wife; the knowledge will be a distinct gain, something to employ with profit on our return to England. But to be able to form no ideas whatever about you, my dear----And now I wish to say a word about your future. Can you believe that after our association on board this ship, after the friendship between you and my darling child, I could bear to lose sight of you on our return home?----But you have been so much upset by what has happened to-day that I will not talk to you now about the future. Come with me to Alice,’ said she rising; ‘it is not long after eight; she has been wanting you all the afternoon and evening, and will be glad if you will sit with her for an hour.’

* * * * *

And now happened another interval of shipboard life, during which there occurred nothing of interest enough to trouble you with. That Captain Ladmore had delivered my answer to Mr. Harris, and that he had also requested, perhaps commanded, his first officer to trouble me no further with his attentions, I could not doubt, for when, next morning, I met Mr. Harris at the breakfast table, I never once caught him looking my way. The twist of his mouth seemed a little dryer than usual, and his countenance might generally express a slight increase of acidity of feeling; nevertheless, he talked somewhat more freely than was commonly his custom, was attentive to what was said, and appeared to direct his eyes at everybody but at me.

His behaviour made me easy, the more so since I was sure he would not talk of what had passed, so that the ridiculous, and to me the humiliating incident, would be known to nobody on board excepting the Lees and the captain of the ship.

And here I may as well say--for it is time that I should dismiss the few shadowy figures which flit between this part of my story and the sequel--that ever after, whilst I remained on board the _Deal Castle_, the behaviour of Mr. Harris remained the same; that is to say, he never looked at me and never accosted me. If I approached that part of the deck where he was standing, he instantly walked away. For a day or two after I had received his ‘offer’ I would briefly salute him with a ‘Good-morning,’ or some such phrase, if we had not before met in the day, but he never turned his eyes to my face, nor answered me, nor took any notice of me; for which behaviour in him, as you may suppose, I was truly thankful. And yet somehow he so contrived his manner that his downright cutting of me, if I may so express it, was much less noticeable than his conduct had been whilst, as I may suppose, he was making up his mind to offer me marriage. Nobody remarked upon his behaviour; I never, indeed, heard a whisper about it.

He was, indeed, an extraordinary person in his way. I suffer my memory to dwell briefly upon him before he stalks ghost-like off the little stage of my dark and memorable experience. I have, I may say, no doubt whatever he was in earnest in his desire to marry me; and I have since understood that it was in the power of Captain Ladmore to have united us, for it seems that amongst the privileges enjoyed by the master of a merchant vessel is the right to solemnise holy matrimony, and to make two people one as effectually as though they were tied together by a clergyman on shore. I often recall the poor man and speculate on his motive. It would be ridiculous to feign that he had fallen in love with me; my face and thin, white hair must have preserved him from that passion. He might, indeed, have imagined in me certain intellectual graces and qualities, and fallen in love with his own ideal. Was it pure goodness of heart that caused him to take pity on my lonely and helpless condition? or--the notion having been put into his head by Sir Frederick Thompson--did he secretly believe that I belonged to a fine old family, that his marriage to me would connect him with people of title and wealth, and that, for all he knew, when my memory returned I would be able to tell him that he had married a fortune, or enough money, at all events, to release him from a calling which he appeared to hate?

His strange offer of marriage, however, resulted in persuading me that I was a married woman. It would never have entered my head to imagine such a thing but for Mrs. Lee; and then when I came to think over her words, and to reason upon the horror that had visited me whilst I listened to Captain Ladmore, there grew up in my mind a strong secret conviction that I was a wife. It was not a discovery. Indeed, as a surmise, it was no more helpful to my memory than the little City knight’s assurance that I was a member of the house of Calthorpe; and yet it could not have affected me more had it been a discovery. I would lie awake for hours during the night thinking of it. When I was with Alice my mind would wander from the book I read aloud to her from, or my attention would stray from her language, whilst my whole intellectual being sank as it were into the black chasm of memory, where the mind with sightless vision would go on fruitlessly groping until the useless quest grew at times into so keen a torment that often I was convinced I should go mad.

Again and again when alone in my berth I took down the little mirror, as I had been used to do in the earlier passages of this experience, and sitting with it in my hands in a posture that brought the light flowing through the port-hole on to my face, so that the reflection of my countenance lay brilliantly in the mirror, I would peruse my lineaments, search mine own eyes, dwell upon the turn of my lips, and all the while I would be asking myself with a soft whisper, but with a heart racked with the anguish of hopeless inquiry--‘Who am I? Can it be that I am a wife? Oh God! what is it which seems to assure me that Mrs. Lee’s belief that I am a wife is true?’ And then I would say to myself, whilst I sat gazing at my face in the mirror, ‘If I am a wife I may have children. Can it be that there are children of my own in the unknown home in the unknown country from which God has banished me in blindness--that there are children there whose mother I am, who call me mother, who have cried for me in the day and in the night as their mother who has gone from them? Can it be so?’ I would ask myself. And then I would bend the ear of my mind to the mute lips of my dead or sleeping memory, and imagination would strain within me to catch some echo of a child’s voice, of a child’s cry or laugh, that would remind me and give me back the image of what, since I now believed myself a wife, I imagined that I had lost.