“NO LIGHT, BUT RATHER DARKNESS, VISIBLE.”
Holdsworth regained his strength slowly, and on the fourth day Mr.
Sherman, who attended him with the gentle and unobtrusive solicitude
of a perfectly benevolent mind, suggested that a visit on deck might
freshen him up and contribute to his recovery.
To this Holdsworth had been looking forward with indescribable
eagerness, believing that the sight of the boat of which Mr. Sherman
had spoken would recall his memory. His mind, indeed, presented a
phenomenon. He remembered nothing--literally _nothing_. His actual
life, as he was then living it, practically dated from the moment of
the return of his consciousness. All that had gone before was pitch
darkness. That the faculty of memory was not _dead_, was proved by his
capacity to remember his thoughts and feelings, the offices and faces
of those who waited on him, the food he had eaten, the names of those
he conversed with, during the time he had been in the cabin of the
barque. But behind this was impenetrable gloom, every glance at which
tortured him, so inexplicable was his helplessness to penetrate it.
The mind of an infant has been likened to a sheet of blank paper;
we may extend the image in Holdsworth’s case by conceiving that all
the characters which experience had written upon his mind had been
effaced, and that, what new characters there were upon it, were the
impressions only which he had received since he had been awakened from
the deadly stupor that had conquered him a few hours before his rescue.
Mr. Sherman was fully persuaded that Holdsworth’s memory would return
with his strength; and had therefore foreborne from making any
experiments by questions or allusions until the time should come when
the renewal of health would enable the sufferer to sustain the fatigue
of thought. He was impressed and touched by the poor fellow’s docility,
his sweetness of temper, and his gratitude, which moved him to tears
as often as he attempted to express it. But no clue was to be obtained
from his conversation as to the profession he had followed. There was
not a shoppish expletive in his language. He named things after the
established prescription of Johnson’s Dictionary, and might as well
have been a clerk, a dentist, a builder, a Member of Parliament, or
even an attorney, as a sailor.
The “Jessie Maxwell” was now in the hot latitudes. The fourth day was
lovely, with a north-east breeze on the port quarter, and a burning
sun, from which an awning protected the deck. An easy chair was placed
near the skylight for Holdsworth, who gained the deck, leaning on Mr.
Sherman’s arm. He halted on the last step of the companion-ladder, and
clung to his friend with a look of mingled surprise and fear in his
face.
Had there been any one, among those who watched him with curiosity,
who had known him as the chief mate of the “Meteor,” he could scarcely
have contemplated this wreck of a man without deep emotion. Conceive,
if you can, a face with every characteristic that had once contributed
to give it manly beauty, wrung out of it by sufferings which had
left ineffaceable marks on every inch of the whole surface of the
countenance. Conceive a stooped and trembling figure, the shoulders
forward so as to hollow the chest, and the back bowed like an old
man’s, the arms lengthened by the abnormal attitude and defeating every
faint suggestion of symmetry which the eye might still hope to find.
But this expresses nothing of the real transformation that had been
wrought; of that subtle modification of expression, of the spiritual
conditions of the face, of changes achieved by the most delicate
strokes, but which were as effectual as a recasting of the whole figure
and countenance could have been. He was dressed partly in his own
clothes, partly in some of the clothes belonging to the second mate,
who was a slight man, but whose garments hung loosely on Holdsworth. He
wore his own coat, which formerly had buttoned tight across his chest,
and which his muscular arms had filled out, as the fingers a glove; and
he could now have buttoned it nearly twice around him. The ring that
he had worn on his left hand had slipped from his skeleton finger long
ago, when he had been splashing the sea-water over his face in vain
endeavour to quench the burning agony in his head and throat. He might
have worn Dolly’s wedding-ring on his middle finger now, for his hands
were indeed scarcely more than bone.
Mr. Sherman eyed him anxiously as he stood tottering at the
companion-hatchway. It seemed as if the long-desired revelation had
come to the suffering man, and that he could now remember.
“Look about you,” he said, “and tell me if there is anything you see
that recalls old impressions.”
“I see nothing that does this,” replied Holdsworth in a low voice.
“Where is the boat I was taken from?”
“On the main-deck yonder.”
“I should like to see her,” said Holdsworth eagerly. “_One_ idea may
light up all.”
They walked slowly forward. Here and there a seaman repairing a sail,
or working in the lower shrouds, or doing one of the endless jobs of
splicing, whipping, tarring, cleaning, which are so many conditions
of the maritime life, looked at Holdsworth earnestly, but never
intrusively; and when he was at the boat some of the hands came up to
him with a spokesman, a middle-aged sailor in ear-rings, who said:
“Beg pardon, sir, but all hands wishes to say as they’re werry glad to
see you up and doing; and if there’s e’er a thing any man among us can
do in helping to make you comfortable while you’re with us, they’ll do
it and welcome; and no liberty is intended.”
“Thank you, and God bless you!” answered Holdsworth, greatly moved by
this speech, and with an expression on his face that could hardly fail
to let the honest seamen know that their goodwill was not the less
appreciated because it provoked no lengthened reply. The men retired,
saying among themselves that, “though the gentleman warn’t a sailor, he
ought to be one; and though he was nothing but a skeleting, he had as
honest a face on him as ever they seed.”
“This is the boat,” said Mr. Sherman.
Holdsworth steadied himself by holding on to the gunwale and looked
into it. The bags of bread lay under the aftermost thwart; there was
the open locker which the sea had filled with water; there were the
empty kegs, whose hollow rollings, as the boat had swayed to and fro,
had formed such suggestive notes of torture, as one might think would
nevermore depart from the ear that had received the echo. If there
were impressions like red-hot brands to sear the mind with burning
transcripts of the ugly agonising facts they counterfeited, one, if
any of them, would surely be the impression conveyed by the scenes of
which the interior of the boat had been the theatre. Here the widow
had died, with her arm hanging over the side, yonder the General had
expired, pointing to the phantom of his native town, which dying memory
had evoked from the air; from that spot the actor had leaped; and on
that seat the boy had died, holding out his hands to the sinking sun.
The little arena should have been vital with memory, so small was the
space in which infinite human misery had been packed. But to Holdsworth
it conveyed no ideas. Not the faintest illumination entered his face
in surveying it. To Mr. Sherman it was a thousandfold more significant
than to Holdsworth, who was the chief actor in the heart-breaking
tragedy that had been enacted in it. Yet he knew that it _ought_ to
have an interest for him; and he stood clutching and staring at it,
with a frowning forehead, wrestling wildly with his mind, in which the
corpse of memory lay deep and hidden.
After a long interval he passed his hand across his eyes, and turned to
Mr. Sherman.
“It will not come,” he said.
Mr. Sherman was both disappointed and astonished; disappointed by the
fruitless result of an inspection, the good effect of which he had
counted upon, and astonished by this phenomenon of the utter extinction
of the most life-giving faculty of the mind.
He drew him to the boat again, and said:
“See now; you were found there, lying under that seat, and beside the
mast lay another man, a dark-faced man, dressed in sailor’s clothes. Do
you remember?”
“No.”
“Look at those bags of biscuit. They were found soaking in the locker.
Those bags contained all the food you had on board. You must have
suffered horribly from the dread of starvation when you found the
biscuit spoilt by the salt water. Recall your thoughts on making the
discovery. Can you?”
“No,” replied Holdsworth, pressing his hand to his head.
“There was a black flag--a piece of stuff, a portion of a woman’s dress
it seemed--fastened to the mast-head. Do you remember?”
Holdsworth said “No.”
“Had you a woman with you?”
“I cannot tell.”
“See if you can go farther back. Try to recollect where your ship
sailed from. Was it England?”
“England? Yes--I know England--but I do not remember if I came from
England,” Holdsworth replied, with profound anxiety in his eyes.
“Come! you remember England! Did you sail from Liverpool?”
“I know Liverpool!” he exclaimed quickly.
“And London?”
“Yes! yes!”
“And what was the name of your ship?”
Holdsworth thought and thought without avail.
Herein was the deception that misled Mr. Sherman: Holdsworth could
perfectly remember familiar names, but they had to be pronounced in
his hearing before he could recall them. In like manner he could tell
the names and discourse of the things he beheld, _because he saw them_.
Had Johnson lived, he would have known and called him Johnson. Had Mr.
Sherman spoken of Dolly, of Southbourne, of the London Docks, of the
“Meteor,” of any of the incidents connected with the “Meteor’s” loss,
Holdsworth would have remembered exactly as much as he heard. But,
in the absence of suggestion, his memory was powerless--absolutely
helpless--to generate independent conclusions as to the impressions his
mind had received previous to his rescue.
The real miracle lay in _this_ contradiction--in the death of memory,
dating _up to_ the moment of the swoon in the boat; in its resurrection
to health and vigour, dating _from_ the moment of his recovery.
He returned to the chair that had been placed for him near the
skylight, and Mr. Sherman, still not despairing of arousing this
dormant faculty, went below and returned with the parcel of things that
had been taken from Holdsworth’s pockets. These were given him one by
one, but he handled them without recognition.
“But you know their names?” said Mr. Sherman.
“Yes. This is a knife. This is a watch.”
“They are yours; found in your pockets.”
His hand trembled, and he gazed at them with devouring eyes; but no
other idea was conveyed to him by Mr. Sherman’s assurance than the
bare fact that they were his property. He could not remember having
purchased or owned them.
“It’s only a question of time, my man,” said Captain Duff, who stood by
looking on at these strange ineffectual experiments.
No mere effort of imagination can do justice to Holdsworth’s suffering.
The feeling that he _ought_ to remember, coupled with his incapacity
and the sense of the past holding, perhaps, memories of vital
consequence to him to recall, created a mental torture more afflicting
than it is in the power of any man, who has not suffered in this way,
to conceive. Loss of memory, even in trifling matters, always partakes
of the nature of pain. The fruitless effort to recall a name, a date,
begets uneasiness, and is soon converted into a positive torment. But
figure your mind haunted with a sense of the significance of the past,
not one faintest glimpse of which it is permitted to you to obtain.
Figure yourself groping in a dense gloom, saying: “There are things
here which I _feel_ are precious to me, which are of deep consequence
to my happiness and to the happiness of others, but I cannot recall
their names or their aspect!” and meanwhile the subtlest of your
instincts is driving you mad with importunities to prosecute your
search and lay the store of memory open to the light! This is worse
than blindness; it is death in life. The years that you have lived
are cut away from your existence, and with them all the precious
accumulations of experience--love, sorrow, and thought itself. God
preserve us all from such an affliction!