MEMORY
The days rolled into weeks and the weeks into months, and still my
memory remained clothed as with midnight. No whisper broke its silence.
I recollected with almost phenomenal accuracy everything that had
befallen me since my rescue; but all that had gone before was darkness,
hushed and impenetrable. I cannot remember that I was visited by the
dimmest intimation--that the dullest gleam, however instantaneous,
touched my inward gloom.
My story and condition created great interest in Newcastle; for a time
I was much talked about. Mrs. Lee had friends who were concerned in
the shipping trade, and two or three of them good-naturedly wrote
to correspondents at various parts of our coast, and to agents and
representatives abroad; but it was all one. Nobody gave information
that was in the slightest degree useful. A gentleman at Havre wrote
that he met with a sailor who had formed one of the crew of _Notre Dame
de Boulogne_, but the man could not tell so much of what happened after
the collision as I, because, when the _Notre Dame_ was struck, they
launched and crowded into their only boat, and were swept away in the
blackness of the night, losing sight of the brig, and the ship which
had run into her, and seeing nothing of the flares which the _Deal
Castle_ had burnt and the rockets she had sent up. They were rescued
next morning by a Spanish schooner, bound to the Mediterranean, and
safely landed at Toulon, their original destination, but with the loss
of all they possessed in the world. It was quite true, this man added,
that the _Notre Dame_ had fallen in with an open boat, and rescued a
woman whom they found unconscious, and severely wounded about the head.
The sailor had no more to tell.
It rejoiced me, however, to learn that Alphonse and his uncle had been
rescued and were safe. Strange indeed did it seem to hear of them in
such a roundabout way; and yet perhaps it would have been stranger
still had nothing been heard of the fate of the crew of the _Notre Dame
de Boulogne_, considering the paragraphs which had appeared about me,
and the letters which had been written, some of them being despatched
to shippers, consuls, and others, not only in France, but in Spain and
Portugal.
Mrs. Lee, fixing as well as she could the time of the month in
which I had been drifting about in the open boat, and willing to
suppose--merely to supply me with a further chance--that I had been
blown away from some part of the English coast, set her friends to
inquire if there had been any notice in the newspapers of that date of
a lady who had gone out in a boat and had not returned nor been heard
of. The files of local papers were searched; but, though there were
several accounts of boating accidents, none could be found that at all
fitted my case. A friend of Mrs. Lee, a Mr. Weldon, ‘fancied’ in a
vague sort of way that he had read, probably in a mood of abstraction,
of a lady who had gone out with a boatman from some part of the coast
which he could not recollect, but which he believed was the south-east
coast--it might have been Ramsgate or Folkestone, he could not be
sure--and he had some dim idea that the body of the boatman was
discovered, and the boat afterwards brought in ... he would look the
incident up ... he would endeavour to recollect the name of the paper
in which it was published. But if he gave himself any trouble it was to
no purpose.
* * * * *
The time went on; the interest I had excited died out; I heard not a
syllable from the owners of the _Deal Castle_; Mrs. Lee had long since
persuaded herself that, though I was undoubtedly of English parentage,
and perhaps born in England, my home was not in this country, and that
I had no friends in it. And this was now my belief also. My spirits
grew apathetic. I ceased to importune my memory. My past, let it hold
what it would, I regarded as dead as my sweet Alice Lee was--as buried,
mouldering, irrecoverable as her twin sister was.
Three years passed--three years dating from my rescue by the French
vessel. In all this while I had lived with Mrs. Lee as her companion.
I strove to keep up my heart for her sake, thanking God always for
finding for me so true a friend as she had proved, and praying to Him
always that He would give me back my memory. I know not how to express
my state of mind throughout all these months now running into years.
My intellect was dull, my conversation to strangers insipid. I found
myself constantly at a loss through inability to carry my memory back
past the point where it had vanished; but I read aloud very well, my
tastes corresponded with Mrs. Lee’s; she owned again and again that she
would not have known where to seek for such a companion as she desired
had my strange experiences not brought us together; there was no one
who could have talked about Alice as I did; my presence seemed to give
embodiment to the memory of her child, and in our many lonely rambles
our conversation was nearly wholly made up of our recollections of the
sweet girl’s closing days.
It chanced one day in October--three years from the time when I was
taken on board the _Deal Castle_--that, having occasion to go into
Newcastle for Mrs. Lee, and finding myself with some leisure on my
hands, I went on to the High Level Bridge to view the scene of the
river and the busy quayside. It was a somewhat cold, grey day. The wind
blew strong, and the rapid ripples of the rushing river broke in white
water upon the dingy banks. Many tall chimneys reared their stacks on
my right, and the smoke breaking from their orifices was again and
again flashed up by a ruddy glare as though the chimneys themselves
were full of living fire. Large steamers lay at the quayside under me;
steam broke from their sides, and there was an artillery-like sound of
rattling engines; scores of figures on the wharves hurried here and
there. And from time to time above my head would sound the thunder of a
train roaring past over the wondrous height of metal ways.
I was singularly depressed. Never before had I felt so low in spirits.
Heretofore my days had been passed in the coldness of settled grief, at
first in a capricious and now in an habitual acquiescence, charged with
despair, in my lonely, outcast, hopeless lot. But this day misery was
active in me. I might compare myself to a woman who, having for long
rested apathetically in her cell, is stimulated by some wild longing of
misery to rise and grope with extended hands in agony of mind round the
black walls outside which she knows the sun is shining.
My head ached, but the ache was a novel pain; it was a dull sick throb,
a thick and dizzy pulse, not in my brows, but on the top of my head,
in the middle of it. It was as though I had been stabbed there and
the wound ached. I stood upon the bridge, perhaps for twenty minutes,
gazing down at the sight of the vessels moored at the wharves, or
passing in mid-stream below me; and then, hearing the clock of the
church of St. Nicholas strike, I quitted the bridge and walked in the
direction of Jesmond.
It was a considerable walk--I had measured the distance both ways; and
when Mrs. Lee asked me if I felt ill, and I answered my head pained
me, she accounted for my headache and for my pallor by my having
over-fatigued myself. This I knew was not the case, for I had awakened
in the morning with a pain in my head, but it was not nearly as bad
then as it was now.
We passed the evening in the usual way. I read to Mrs. Lee, then she
dozed a while, and I picked up some work that I was upon, but could do
nothing with it, for my head ached so badly that my sight was confused
by the pain, and I could not see to thread a needle. Supper was ready
at nine o’clock, but I could not eat. Mrs. Lee felt my pulse and placed
her hand upon my brow.
‘Your head is cool,’ said she, ‘and your heart’s action regular.
Evidently you have overwalked yourself to-day. You had better go to
bed and get a good night’s rest. But first take this little glass of
brandy and water. There is no better remedy for a nervous headache than
brandy, such a liqueur brandy as this.’
I kissed and bade her good night and went to my bedroom. The grey day
had been followed by a clear dusk. There was a high, bright moon. It
poured a silver haze upon the farther land, and the nearer land it
whitened as with sifted snow, giving a silver edge to every leaf and
branch, and painting the shapes of the trees and bushes in indigo at
their feet. I stood at the open window for a minute or two, believing
that the cool of the night would ease the pain in my head; but the air
was chilly, it was the month of October, and, closing the window, I
undressed.
I extinguished the candle and got into bed leaving the window blind
up. The moon shot a slanting beam through the window, and the light
flooded the white cross which had belonged to Alice Lee and her Bible
that rested as she had left it at the foot of the white cross. The
haze of this beam of moonlight was in the room, and I could see every
object with a certain distinctness. The eye will naturally seek the
brightest object, and my sight rested upon the cross that sparkled in
the moonlight as though it had been dipped in phosphorus. The cold,
soft pillow, and the restful posture of my head had somewhat eased the
pain. My mind grew collected, and whilst my eyes rested upon the cross
my memory gave me back the form and face of Alice Lee.
I thought of her as I had first seen her, when her sweet, lovely but
wasted face was angelic with the sympathy with which she viewed me.
I recalled her as I beheld her when she lay dying, when the light of
heaven was in the smile she gave me, when the peace of God was in
her eyes as she gazed at her mother ere she turned her face to the
ship’s side. I recalled her natural, girlish fear of the great ocean
as a grave; I saw her as she lay in her white shroud; I looked at the
moonlit cross and thought how that same moon which was illumining the
symbol of her faith and the sure rock of her hopes was shining over her
ocean grave----
My eyes closed and I slumbered. And in my sleep I dreamt this dream.
I dreamt that I stood at the open window of a room whose furniture
was perfectly familiar to me. Without seeming to look I yet saw
all things; the pictures, the case of books, the ornaments on the
mantelpiece; and everything was familiar to me. Before me stretched a
garden sloping some considerable distance down. Beyond this garden were
green pastures, at the foot of which ran a river, and on the opposite
hillside rows of houses appeared to hang in clusters. The hour was
drawing on into the evening and the sun was sinking, and through the
long shadows which lay in the valley the river ran in gold.
While I gazed I beheld walking in the garden that sloped from the
window at which I stood, two figures; their backs were upon me, they
walked hand in hand, but though their steps gathered the ground their
figures did not appear to recede. On a sudden they halted, the man
turned and looked at me intently; it was my husband! I knew him, I
stretched out my arms to him, I cried aloud to him to come and take me
to his heart; but whether any sound escaped me in my sleep I do not
know. He continued to gaze fixedly at me, then putting his hand upon
the shoulder of his companion he pointed towards me. She, too, then
turned and looked, and I knew her to be my twin sister Mary. Again I
stretched forth my arms--I desperately struggled to approach them, but
my feet seemed nailed to the floor. The vision of my husband and my
sister, the familiar room in which I stood, the scene of gardens and
orchard and river and clustering houses dissolved, and I know that
I wept in my sleep and that I passionately prayed for the vision to
return that I might behold it all again.
But now came a change which hushed with awe and new emotions the
heart--cries and the spirit--yearnings of my slumber. I beheld a
strange light. It grew in brightness, and in the midst of it I
witnessed the marble cross of Alice Lee, resplendent as though wrought
of the brilliant moonlight which had been resting upon it when my
eyes closed in sleep. This cross flamed upon the vision of my slumber
for a while, and there was nothing more to be seen; then it faded and
I beheld the figure of Alice Lee where the cross had been. She was
robed in white. With her right arm she carried an infant, and with her
left hand she held a little boy. Oh, that vision was like a glorious
painting, ineffably bright and beautiful and vivid. The face of Alice
Lee was no longer wasted; it was not such a face as would come from the
grave to visit the bedside of a slumberer; it was a face fresh from
heaven, and with the radiance of heaven upon it, and her whole figure
was clothed with celestial light and the glory of heaven shone in the
beauty of her countenance.
I shrieked!--for the children she held, the one on her arm, the other
by the hand, were _mine_! Again I stretched forth my hands and my two
little ones smiled upon me. Then instantly all was blackness and I
awoke.
The room was in darkness. The moon had sailed to the other side of
the house, and the shadow of the night lay heavy upon the unblinded
window. My heart beat as though I was in a raging fever, and I could
not understand the reason of that maddening pulse, nor of the dreadful
consternation that was upon me, nor why when I put my hand to my brow
I should find it streaming with perspiration, nor why I should have
awakened trembling from head to foot; because it is true that often the
most vivid, the most terrific dream will not recur to the memory for
some time after the dreamer has awakened.
But presently I remembered. I beheld with my waking sense the whole
vision afresh, and I said to myself, even as I lay trembling from
head to foot, and even as my brains seemed thickened with bewilderment
that was like madness itself--I said to myself, speaking aloud in
the darkness, but calmly and with a gentle voice: ‘My name is Agnes
Campbell. I have seen my husband John, I have seen my sister Mary, and
my two little ones have come to me in my sleep. I remember that we took
a house at Piertown--I remember that I went out sailing in a boat--I
remember that the man who had charge of the boat fell into the water
and was drowned. I remember---- I remember----’
And _now_ the full realisation that my memory had returned to me swept
into my soul. I sat up in my bed and gasped for breath. I believed
I was dying, and that my memory had revisited me, sharp and vivid,
in the last moments of my life. But the overwhelming emotions which
possessed me mastered the hysteric condition, and leaping from my
bed I cast myself down upon my knees. But I could not pray. My tongue
was powerless to shape thoughts of appeal and impulses of thanks into
words. I arose from my knees, lighted the candle, and began to pace the
room.
Then all at once I was seized with a terrible fear: suppose my memory
should forsake me again, even in the next minute! Suppose all that I
could recollect of the vision I had beheld should in an instant perish
off my mind, and leave me inwardly as blind as I had been during the
past three years! I felt in the pocket of my dress that was hanging
against the door and found a pencil; but not knowing where to lay my
hand upon a piece of paper, unless I sought for it downstairs, and
urged by a very passion of hurry lest my memory should in a moment
fail me, I took Alice Lee’s Bible, carried it to the candle, and upon
the fly-leaf wrote my name and the names of my husband and my sister
and the children, also my address at Bath, together with the story,
briefly related, of my husband leaving Piertown for a couple or three
days, of my going out in a boat with a man named William Hitchens, of
my pulling off my rings, amongst them my wedding-ring, that I might row
without being inconvenienced by the pressure of them, of their being
cast overboard by the hoisting of the sail, of William Hitchens’ sudden
death by heart-disease or drowning, and of the horrible days and nights
of misery, despair, madness, and unconsciousness which followed.
The mere writing of all this steadied my mind. I kissed the sacred Book
when I had ended, gazed upwards with adoration, as though the sweet
saint who had come to me with my children and restored my memory were
gazing down upon me, and then I began to pace the room again, thinking
and thinking, but no longer struggling with memory: for all was clear,
all had wonderfully, by a miracle of God’s own working through the
intercession of one of the sweetest of his angels, come back to me; and
_then_ my heart was filled with an impassioned yearning to be with my
dear ones again, to return to them _immediately_, to write _now_, at
this very instant, and tell them that I was alive, sending kisses and
my heart’s love to my husband and sister, and kisses and blessings to
my two little ones.
But _then_, too, arose the thought that it was three years since I had
been torn away from them. Three years! How much may happen in three
years! My little Johnny would now be five years old, my little baby
Mary would be three years and eight months old! I clasped my hands, and
paused in my walk and wondered.
What might not have happened in three years? Was my husband well--was
my dear sister Mary living--were my children----? Oh, if you who are
reading this are a mother and a wife, as you muse upon my situation at
this time, your own heart will be telling more to you about me than
ever I could convey of my own conflicts of mind, though I wrote with
the most eloquent pen the world has ever known.
Whilst I paced the room the door was softly knocked upon, and Mrs.
Lee’s voice exclaimed:
‘Are not you well, Agnes? Is your head still bad? I have heard you
pacing the room for hours.’
‘My head is better,’ I answered, for, being taken unawares, I knew not
what to say, and wished to think out the thoughts which besieged me
before communicating my dream to her.
She was silent, as though in alarm, and cried nervously, ‘Who answered
me? Is that you, Agnes?’
On this I opened the door. She was clothed in a dressing-gown, and
recoiled a step on my opening the door, and, after peering for a few
moments, she exclaimed, ‘I did not recognise your voice.’
‘I have had a wonderful dream,’ I said.
She took me by the hand, turned me to the light, looked in my face, and
shrieked, ‘Child, you have your memory!’
‘Yes, it has all come back to me!’ I exclaimed, and casting my arms
round her neck I bent my head upon her shoulder and broke into an
uncontrollable fit of weeping that lasted I know not how long, for as
often as I sought to lift my head I wept afresh.
At length I grew somewhat composed, and then Mrs. Lee exclaimed: ‘It
is five o’clock. I will dress myself, and return and hear what you
have to tell me. Meanwhile, do you dress yourself. Day will be breaking
shortly. Strange!’ she said. ‘I seemed to hear in your footsteps
what was passing in your mind, and felt that something wonderful was
happening to you.’
She left me, and I made haste to dress myself. My trembling hands
worked mechanically; my mind was distracted; so extreme was the
agitation of my spirits, that anyone secretly viewing me must have
supposed me mad to see how I would start and then pause, then laugh,
then fling down whatever I might be holding that I might bury my
face in my hands and rock myself, then laugh again and take a number
of turns about the room with delirious steps, as though I were some
fever-maddened patient who had sprung from her bed in the absence of
her attendant.
Before I had completely attired myself Mrs. Lee entered the room. I
could see by her countenance she had composed her mind that she might
receive with as little emotion as possible whatever I had to tell her.
She lighted another candle, viewed me for a moment, and then said,
‘Now, Agnes, be calm. Sit down and tell me of your dream, and what you
can recollect of yourself.’
‘Let me hold your hand, dear friend,’ said I, ‘whilst I sit and tell
you what has happened to me. The pressure of your hand will keep me
calm,’ and, sitting at her side and holding her hand, I related my
dream to her.
She endeavoured to listen tranquilly, but an expression of awe grew in
her face as I proceeded, and when I described how I beheld her sainted
daughter Alice robed in white, with my baby girl on one arm and holding
my little boy by the hand, the three clothed in a mystical light, an
expression of rapturous joy entered her face. She dropped my hand to
raise hers on high, and lifting up her eyes, cried out, ‘Oh, my Alice!
my Alice! Though I know now that you are in heaven, yet also do I feel,
my blessed one, that you are near us. Oh, come to me with my beloved
Edith, that I may behold you both, and know that you are happy and
awaiting me!----’
We sat eagerly and earnestly talking; for now all the mysteries of my
past could be solved. Why it was that I was without a wedding-ring, how
it came about that I was drifting in the wide ocean in a little open
boat, why it was that I had been moved by indescribable, dark, subtle
emotions when I heard a baby cry, and when the gipsy told me that I was
a married woman, and with preternatural effort of guessing informed me
that I had left a husband and two children behind me: these things and
how much more were now to be explained.
‘And your name is Agnes--your true name is Agnes?--and my darling in
heaven gave you that name!’ cried Mrs. Lee.
‘Yes,’ said I, ‘and she was one of twins, and I am one of twins,
and who will say that there was not a magnetism in that to draw us
together?’
I turned my head and found the dawn had broken. The heavens were
flooded with a delicate pale green, against which the trees stood
black, as though sketched in ink. But even as I gazed the pink and
silver haze of the rising sun smote the green and swept it like a veil
off the face of the tender dewy blue of the early autumn morn.
‘Oh, thank God, the day has come!’ said I. ‘I will go presently, before
breakfast, to the railway station, and find out at what hour I can
reach Bath.’
‘To-day?’ cried Mrs. Lee.
‘To-day,’ I echoed.
‘You will not go to Bath to-day with my consent, Agnes,’ said Mrs.
Lee; ‘and I will tell you why. You have been absent from your home
for three years. What may have happened in that time? How do you know
that your husband and children are still living at Bath? It is a long
journey from Newcastle to Bath, and when you arrive there you may find
that your husband has broken up his home and gone away, no one might be
able to tell you where, for you must consider as beyond all question
that your husband and sister have long ago supposed you dead. They may
have left England for all you know. How can you tell but that they may
be residing abroad? The newspaper paragraphs stating your case were
very plentifully published: _that_ you know; and that they provoked no
attention, signifies to my mind that your husband and family are either
abroad, or that----’ She paused.
‘What?’ I cried.
‘Ah, you may well ask what!’ she exclaimed. ‘It is three years ago,
remember, since you left your husband, and he has never received a
syllable of news about you since. Suppose him to be still living
at Bath with your sister and children: would not your going to the
house be too fearful a trial for you, and too frightful a shock for
them?--why, it is by suddenness of joy, by shocks of emotion of this
sort that hearts are broken. You must not dream of going to Bath
to-day, Agnes.’
‘It is not likely that John has left Bath,’ said I, ‘he is in practice
there as a solicitor. He will not have broken up his home; I am sure of
that.’
‘You must have patience. I will write cautiously and make inquiries. Of
course you know many people in Bath?’
‘I have several friends there.’
‘Give me the name of a lady or gentleman to whom I may cautiously
write.’
I reflected, but I could not recollect a name, and then I grew
terrified, and feared that my memory was deserting me again.
‘Oh, Mrs. Lee,’ I cried, ‘I cannot remember a name. And yet I can see
the people I have in my mind, in fancy. Oh, if my memory should be
again deserting me!’
‘It will not matter,’ she exclaimed, with one of her gentle, reassuring
smiles, ‘everything is known to me now, and, besides, are not all
things material written there?’ motioning with her head towards Alice’s
Bible which I had shown her, and in which she had read the particulars
I had written down on the fly-leaves.
‘I have a name!’ I cried, with sudden elation: ‘General Ramsay--General
William Stirling Ramsay,’ and my being able to recollect and pronounce
this name in its entirety was as refreshing and comforting to me as is
the inspiration of a deep and easy breath to one whose breathing has
been a labour.
Mrs. Lee asked me several questions about General Ramsay; how long my
husband and I had been acquainted with him; if he was a good-hearted
man, likely to give himself the trouble to answer a letter; ‘because,’
said she, ‘my impatience is nearly as great as yours, and I shall want
an answer by return of post.’ She then wrote down his name and the name
of the street in which he lived; but I again felt frightened when I
found that I could not recollect the number of his house.
Wild as I was at heart to hurry off to Bath to clasp my dear ones to
my heart, to fill them with the exquisite gladness of possessing me
again, I was able, after some feverish thinking and pacing about the
room, to perceive the wisdom of Mrs. Lee’s counsel. So, the sun being
now high and the morning advanced, for by this time it was about
half-past seven o’clock, my dear friend and I went downstairs together,
and, opening her desk, Mrs. Lee sat down and wrote a letter to General
Ramsay.