ON BOARD ‘NOTRE DAME’
On the afternoon of this second day of my rescue, I found myself
sufficiently strong to rise and repose in an old stuffed arm-chair,
which the young Frenchman brought from an adjoining cabin. My limbs
were weak and I trembled exceedingly. Nevertheless, I contrived to put
on my dress, which had been thoroughly dried, so Alphonse told me,
at the fire in the fore-part of the ship where the sailors’ food was
cooked.
This obliging and most humane young Frenchman also supplied me with
certain toilet requisites of a homely kind indeed; yet the refreshment
of washing my face and hands and of brushing my hair seemed to give me
new life. The young Frenchman hung his oval hand-glass upon the cabin
wall, and when he was gone I surveyed myself.
For a long while I could not lift the brush to my hair. I could only
gaze and dumbly wonder with memory writhing sightless within me. I
took the glass to the circular window; there was a strong yellow glow
in the air outside, and the afternoon light focussed by that circular,
tube-like window, lay upon my face. I intently examined my countenance,
but I witnessed nothing that gave me the least hint of the past. I
beheld a great quantity of snow-white hair, languid and lustreless dark
eyes, the lids of which were half closed, hollow cheeks, a skin scored
with innumerable fine lines, and the whole rendered repulsive by the
stripes of stained plaister. When presently, having washed my face and
hands, I began to brush my hair, many hairs came out on the brush.
I passed my fingers through my tresses, and my hand came away with a
quantity of white hair in it. I sighed and wondered, and trembled with
weakness, and with the miserable horror that again visited me.
But now, instead of wearily thinking over and over again ‘_Who am I?_’
my mind was haunted by those two letters ‘A. C.,’ which the young
Frenchman had found in the corner of my handkerchief. I uttered them
over and over again, fancying that the initials might suddenly expand
into the full name, for I believed that if I could remember my name I
should be able to recollect everything else.
When I had brushed and dressed my hair I drew forth my purse, and held
it in my hand with my gaze riveted to it. But the black conflict in my
mind grew too violent for my strength. I put the purse into my pocket
and rocked myself in my chair, crying and crying until you would have
thought my heart must break.
The Frenchman punctually brought me food and drink. He repeated that
he was certain I was a lady of title; he had waited on too many female
members of the British aristocracy to mistake. ‘You will see that I
am right, madame,’ said he, and with this conviction his politeness
increased, though more respectful his manner could not be.
During the evening I was visited by the uncle, whose speeches the young
man translated.
‘You are better,’ exclaimed this large, fat, stolid man, who could not
speak without nodding. ‘Take the word of Captain Regnier, who is not
often mistaken in his opinion. You are better, and you will soon be
well. But you must recover your memory before we arrive at Toulon, that
the British Consul at that port may be in a position to forward you to
your friends.’
‘But if I cannot remember, what is to become of me?’ said I.
‘Oh,’ he answered, ‘that will be the affair of the British Consul. Why
should not a Consul earn his salary? These gentlemen have very easy
times.’
‘It is settled,’ said Alphonse, ‘that you are English. It will be the
British Consul’s business to find out all about you.’
‘But if I cannot remember?’
‘It will still be his business,’ said Captain Regnier, who understood
me, ‘to find out all about you. My nephew is right. You are undoubtedly
an English lady of distinction,’ and he bowed to me with a strange
motion of his bulky form.
The conversation continued in this strain for some time. They then left
me.
The next afternoon the young Frenchman persuaded me to leave my cabin
for the living room in which Captain Regnier, his nephew, and the mate
Hénin took their meals. The young man gave me his arm and conducted me
to the living room with the grace and tender attention of a perfectly
well-bred gentleman. I found myself in a cabin many times larger
than the tiny berth I had quitted, yet it was a very small apartment
nevertheless. It is necessary that I should describe this interior
that you may be able to understand what befel me later on. Figure a
small square room, the ceiling within easy reach of the hand, the
walls of a grimy colour that might have been either brown or yellow.
In the centre of the ceiling was a large window, or rather several
windows in a frame not unlike those glass frames in which cucumbers
are grown. This window, as I afterwards came to know, would be called
a skylight. There was a square opening in the deck a little distance
behind this skylight, with a short steep flight of steps ascending to
it. This opening would be called the hatch, and the deck was gained by
passing through it. Close behind this ladder or flight of steps were
the doors of two berths, one of which I occupied, and under the steps I
observed a large cask, one end of which came very close to the door of
my berth. Do not suppose that I immediately noticed these details. When
I first entered that grimy and somewhat gloomy living room I took heed
of little indeed. There was a small square table in the middle of the
cabin and on either hand were rough dark fixed boxes termed lockers.
A lamp of a curious pattern swung under a beam overhead. Such was the
cabin of the brig _Notre Dame de Boulogne_.
Alphonse brought the arm-chair from my cabin and placed it near the
table. He then placed a bundle of old numbers of the _Charivari_ on my
lap, and I turned the pages with a mechanical hand, incessantly saying
to myself, ‘What can the letters “A. C.” stand for?’
I might know that it was a very fine evening by the clear crimson light
that tinctured the glass in the frame overhead. The motion of the brig
was easy and the lamp under the ceiling or upper-deck swung softly and
regularly. I heard the murmur of hissing waters, and occasionally the
voice of a man calling out abruptly echoed through the little opening
that conducted to the deck.
I sat alone for some time. After I had been sitting alone for about
half an hour, viewing the French comic paper with an eye that beheld
nothing, since it was for ever inwards turned, Alphonse came out of the
cabin next to mine with a fiddle in his hand.
‘Now madame,’ said he tapping it with the bow, ‘tell me what this is.’
‘It is a fiddle,’ said I.
‘Is not this a proof of memory?’ cried he. ‘How could you call it a
fiddle if you did not know it to be a fiddle? and in this case to know
is to remember.’
‘You reason well,’ I said smiling, and a sad smile I fear it was that I
gave him. ‘You converse as one who has been well educated.’
‘I was very well educated, madame,’ he answered. ‘Those of our
condition in England are not so well educated as we of France. We owe
much to the priests. There are no such schoolmasters in the world.
Otherwise I do not love priests. I am an infidel, and my opinions
coincide with those of Voltaire and Volney. What is your religion,
madame?’
I was unable to answer him. He put his fiddle against his shoulder and
asked if he should play me a tune and sing me a song. I begged him to
do so and forthwith he played and sang. He sang some merry French
rhymes and the air was very lively and pretty.
Hardly had he ended his song when a lad with a dirty face and a
quantity of brown hair hanging over his eyes came shambling down the
stairs, bearing a large teapot and a dish of fried ham. Alphonse
surveyed him with disgust, and withdrew to his cabin to put away his
fiddle. The boy prepared the table for a repast that I afterwards
understood was called supper by the Frenchmen. He lifted the lid of
one of the large dark fixed boxes and brought out some plates and
cups and saucers which he placed upon the table. He breathed hard and
idled in his business of furnishing the table that he might stare at
me. The meal, when ready, consisted of tea, ham, large brown biscuits,
marmalade, and a great piece of cold sausage. Alphonse returned and
stood looking at the table.
‘This would not do for an English milord to sit down to,’ said he, ‘it
would make him swear, and certainly your English milord knows how to
swear. I should not like to wait upon company at such a table as this.
But it is the sea--that sea which the English people love, but about
which they know less than the French, though they talk much of their
dominion maritime. Is there nothing on the table,’ he added with a
comprehensive gesture of the hand, ‘that gives you an idea, madame?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Can you pronounce the names of what you see?’
‘Yes.’
‘How droll! how incredible! _Mon Dieu_, what a thing is the human
intelligence! Because one little nerve or cell in the brain perhaps
is wrong,’ here he tapped his forehead, ‘all is gloom. It is like
turning off the gas. You go into a corner downstairs, you move a key
no longer than that, and a great hotel of seventy bedrooms and thirty
sitting-rooms is instantly plunged in darkness.’
He was interrupted by the arrival of his uncle, who, pulling off his
red cap, gave me a bow and seated himself. I drank a cup of the tea;
there was no milk, yet I found the beverage refreshing. I also ate
some biscuit and marmalade. The conversation was all about myself.
Captain Regnier’s speeches were translated by Alphonse, and my mind
was stimulated by what was said. I found myself capable of asking
questions; but few were the questions I could find to ask. I had
nothing to base them upon save the story of my rescue from an open
boat, as it had been related to me, and the Frenchman had nothing more
to tell me than that she was a boat with two masts.
‘Was I alone in her?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, you were alone,’ answered Alphonse.
‘How is it possible that I should be alone in an open boat?’ I
exclaimed.
‘It was a pleasure-boat,’ said Captain Regnier; ‘without doubt you
sailed on an excursion from some port, and were blown away to sea.’
‘But alone!’ I cried.
‘You were alone, madame,’ said Alphonse, and, eagerly addressing his
uncle as though a fine idea had occurred to him, he exclaimed; ‘Could
you not tell by the build of the boat what her nationality was?’
Captain Regnier shrugged his shoulders until his ears were hidden.
‘What is there of nationality in a boat of that size?’ he answered.
‘The boats of France, of England, of Europe in general--are they not
very much alike--especially in the dark?’
‘How long will it take you to arrive at Toulon?’ I asked.
Again Captain Regnier, when this inquiry was translated, shrugged his
shoulders and answered that it was a question for the wind.
‘I will fetch the chart,’ said Alphonse, ‘and madame shall remark our
situation for herself.’
He arose and walked to the forward part of the living room. I had
supposed that that part was wholly walled off from the other portion of
the ship. But the young Frenchman, putting his hand upon a ring in the
middle of the wooden wall, drew open a sliding door. Captain Regnier
said in broken English: ‘My cabin is there.’
In a few minutes Alphonse returned with a large map or chart, which he
unrolled upon a part of the table that he cleared to receive it. It was
too dark, however, to read the small print on the chart, and Captain
Regnier, breathing short and heavily with the exertion of moving
his vast shapeless form, lighted the lamp. My feebleness would not
suffer me to rise and bend over the chart, and perceiving this the two
Frenchmen held open before me the wide sheet of cartridge paper.
‘There,’ said Captain Regnier, pointing to a part of the chart with a
large fat forefinger on which glittered a thick silver ring, ‘there,’
said he, ‘is the situation of _Notre Dame de Boulogne_ at the present
moment.’
‘That point of land,’ exclaimed Alphonse after translating, ‘is
Finisterre. The brick then is off Finisterre. Does the name of
Finisterre give you any ideas?’
I continued to think, with my eyes rooted to the chart, and then I
answered, ‘None.’
‘Here is Toulon,’ said Captain Regnier, ‘and this is the course of the
vessel to that port,’ and he ran his fat finger down the chart, past
the coast of Spain and through the Straits of Gibraltar to the Gulf of
Lyons.
‘It is a long way to Toulon,’ said I.
‘Yes,’ answered Alphonse, ‘it is a voyage.’
Captain Regnier addressed his nephew. ‘Superb! Admirable!’ cried the
young Frenchman. ‘Ah, my uncle is a clever man! What do you think he
proposes? That you shall look at the coast of England and read the
names upon it, and if you are an English lady who, as my uncle says,
has been blown away in a pleasure-boat from a port in England, why----’
and with great excitement he pulled the end of the chart out of his
uncle’s hand, rolled it up until only that portion which contained the
English Channel was left open, and then placed the chart thus rolled up
upon my knees.
I looked, and the two Frenchmen stood viewing me. I trembled with
eagerness and fear, for I thought to myself, ‘Here may be the
spark that will flash up the whole of the blackened galleries of my
memory--and yet it may not be here!’ and shiver after shiver ran
through me as I looked.
‘Read aloud, madame; read aloud,’ exclaimed Alphonse.
I read aloud; name after name I pronounced, taking the towns one after
the other, from the Thames to the Land’s End, and then with trembling
finger and whispering lips I traced the coast on the western side, even
to the height of Scotland; and then I continued to read down on the
eastern coast until I came to the River Thames.
‘Ah, my God! my God!’ I cried, and I hid my eyes and sobbed. The chart
rolled from my knees on to the deck.
‘Patience,’ exclaimed Captain Regnier. ‘The memory will return. Give
her some wine, Alphonse.’
I drank, but though I recovered my composure there had happened such a
deadly struggle within me, so fierce and rending a conflict--betwixt,
what shall I say? the spirit, shall I call it, grappling with eyeless
memory?--that I lay back in my chair, prostrated, incapable of speech.
And how am I to convey to you, who are following my story, the effect
produced by the words I read--by the names of the towns I read
aloud--upon my mind? This was the difficulty I foresaw when I undertook
to relate my experiences. But let me do my best. The effect was this:
the names I uttered--that is to say, the names of those towns which I
had heard of; for some little places which I had never heard of were
marked upon the chart--the names, then, of places which I had heard of
and known sounded as familiarly to my ear as my own name would have
sounded before my memory went. But that was all. I could associate
no ideas with them. They presented no images. They were perfectly
familiar _sounds_ and no more. Though the chart was of French, or at
all events of foreign manufacture, all names in Great Britain were
printed as they are spelt by us. Therefore I could not console myself
with reflecting that the words I had read were spelt in the French way,
and without suggestion to one whose memory was gone. No, every word was
in English. Often have I since wondered whether Piertown was included
in that chart. Probably it was not. So insignificant a place would not
be deemed worth marking down.
‘The lady is undoubtedly English,’ said Captain Regnier to his nephew.
‘Only a native of her country could pronounce its tongue as she does.’
‘I am not so sure of that,’ answered Alphonse. ‘I have known Germans
and Danes, and I have known Dutchmen and Swedes who have spoken
English as well as madame. Uncle, I know a thing or two. Be a waiter
and you will learn much to astonish you. But I agree that she is an
Englishwoman, yet not because she speaks English well. Her style is
English, and you will find that she is a lady of rank.’
This conversation I was able to imperfectly follow. I felt too ill, too
miserably sick at heart to sit in that cabin conversing, and begged
Alphonse to conduct me to my berth. He did so with the same gentleness
and courteous attention with which he had led me from it. Before
leaving me he said, ‘If it is fine to-morrow I shall have the pleasure
to take you on deck. The fresh air will do you a great deal of good.
And, who knows? your memory doubtless left you while you were in the
boat. It is, therefore, in the sea, and when you look at the sea it may
come up to you out of it.’
I enjoyed some hours’ sleep that night and awoke refreshed and
stronger. I tried to remember if I had dreamt. Before I fell asleep it
entered my head to fancy that if I dreamt of even a little bit of my
past--that even if in a vision, the merest corner of the black curtain
would rise to enable me to catch a glimpse of what was behind when I
awoke--then by remembering _that_ I should end in remembering all. But
when I tried to think if I had dreamt I found that my slumber had been
without visions. I dwelt upon those dark hours of sleep, but they had
been dreamless, and there was nothing to evoke.
It was a fine bright morning. The vessel was sailing along almost
upright, with a regular succession of floating falls and risings of
that hinder part of her in which my berth was situated. The glory of
the ocean morning was upon the waters; they flashed in blueish silver
windily, and the dazzle rising off them streamed in trembling splendour
through the porthole, and filled the little coarse and homely berth
with ripples of lustre.
Alphonse brought me some soup, biscuit, and a new-laid egg from the
hencoop in which were stocked the few hens which the brig carried. When
I had finished the repast I arose and dressed myself, and entered the
cabin or living-room, where sat Alphonse playing the fiddle, whilst
the mate, Hénin, seated on one of the chests or lockers, with half a
tumbler of claret in one hand and a biscuit in the other, kept time by
nodding.
‘Very good, indeed, madame; very good, indeed!’ cried Alphonse, putting
his fiddle down and clapping his hands. ‘I did not believe you would
get up until the afternoon. Come! you are better, and you will be well
before we arrive at Toulon, where you will find your memory waiting for
you.’
‘I do not understand,’ exclaimed the fierce-looking mate Hénin, staring
at me with gleaming eyes, though he addressed Alphonse and spoke in
French, ‘why it is that the lady does not remember. Can she recollect
yesterday? Undoubtedly,’ he exclaimed with a savage gesture. ‘Then the
brain that can recall yesterday should be able to bring back as many
yesterdays as it needs. Let the lady try, and she will remember.’
‘Bah!’ said Alphonse. ‘Do not mind this man,’ said he. ‘He does not
understand English, and I can say what I like. Do not suppose him
fierce because he looks so. He has a tender heart, and weeps easily.
Yet there is not a more excellent sailor in the French marine; at
least my uncle says so, and my uncle is a very clever man. Shall I now
conduct you on deck?’
‘I should like to go on deck,’ said I.
‘Let me see; you will want a chair. You are not yet able to stand long
or walk very far, and you have no covering for your head.’
I put my hand to my hair and exclaimed, ‘Was I without covering to my
head when you found me?’
‘No. You wore a straw hat. It was crushed by the fall of the mast. When
the sailors raised you to bring you on board, the hat fell off, and
they left it in the boat. One of the men in the bad light saw a dark
mark upon the straw, and he said it might be blood.’
‘It was a straw hat?’ said I. ‘A straw hat?’ and I mused until I began
to _think_ myself into one of those black and frightful conflicts of
mind which had before prostrated me with their unspeakable anguish. I
checked the horrible internal struggle by forcing myself to speak, and
so diverting my thoughts.
‘What is there that I can wear to protect my head?’
The mate Hénin, who continued to stare at me with fiery eyes, said,
‘What does the lady say?’ Alphonse explained. ‘Wait,’ cried Hénin
fiercely, and, putting down his glass and biscuit, he went to the
ring in the forward wall of the cabin, slided the door open, and
disappeared. In a minute he returned with a long cloak hanging over his
arm. He ran his eye over my figure, then held up the cloak to compute
its size. It was a dark green cloak, of a very monkish pattern; it had
a large hood, and was comfortably lined with some sort of delicate fur.
‘Let the lady wear this,’ exclaimed the man. ‘It is almost new, and
therefore clean. She is welcome to it,’ and he flung it into the
outstretched hands of Alphonse, and, with a fierce countenance, resumed
his seat.
I put on the cloak; it was loose, and completely enveloped me. I then
drew the hood over my head, and, assisted by the young Frenchman,
painfully ascended the steep steps and gained the deck. The first
sweep of the fresh sunlit wind almost overpowered me; I reeled and
closed my eyes, but this swooning sensation speedily passed.
The huge fat figure of Captain Regnier stood near the wheel; Alphonse
called to him to give me the support of his arm until the chair was
brought on deck. After the comparative gloom of the cabin the brilliant
morning sunshine nearly blinded me, and for some while I was forced to
keep my eyes half closed. In a few moments Alphonse came up the stairs
with the arm-chair, which he placed in the sunshine, but in a part of
the deck that was sheltered from the wind by the box or hood that was
fitted over the little hatch that conducted to the cabin. And now, my
sight having grown used to the dazzle, I looked about me.
I found myself on the deck of a small vessel, whose shape resembled
that of a box rather than that of a ship. She had two masts, across
which were stretched sheets of patched and discoloured canvas. On the
top of the hinder mast was a small red streamer, surmounted by a little
brass ship that shone like a ray of white fire in the air as it pointed
with its red streamer attached directly in the path along which the
brig was being steered. The planks of the deck were dark, and every
object that the eye rested upon suggested dirt and neglect. I remarked
a boat painted white standing upside down near a little wooden house
like a sentry-box, whose roof was pierced by a chimney from which a
trail of dark smoke was blowing over the bows. I gazed earnestly at
that boat; it seemed a familiar object to me; all else was strange--the
tall masts, the wide-spread sails, the straight black lines of rigging,
the dingy green paint of the bulwarks, the twenty details of rope
hanging in coils, of pumps, of skylight, and I know not what else,
for how should a woman be able to give names to the strange furniture
of the sea? All else was new. I searched my dark mind, and the picture
of this brig sailing along with the wind blowing over her stern into
her dingy wings was as novel as though she were the only vessel in the
world, and I was beholding her for the first time.
But the boat seemed familiar. I could not take my eyes off it for some
minutes. Why should this be? I asked; and then my sightless memory
began to struggle, and I addressed the young Frenchman, who stood at my
side, for the relief to be found in speech.
‘I seem to have seen that boat before.’
‘Impossible, madame.’
‘What does the lady say?’ exclaimed Captain Regnier, who leaned against
the bulwarks with his hands in his pockets opposite me.
Alphonse repeated my words. The large fat man pulled one hand out of
his pocket to emphasise his speech with gestures.
‘My uncle says no. You cannot remember that boat,’ said the young
Frenchman. ‘He has owned this brick twenty years, and the boat is
twenty years old, and in all that time she has belonged to the brick.’
‘Why, then, should she seem familiar to me?’
He reflected, and then put his forefinger to the side of his nose.
‘I think I know. We took you out of a boat; all your sufferings were
in a boat; the idea of a boat has been burnt in upon your mind by pain
and misery; and now when you see a boat you cry out--“Ah! surely I know
her.” You will say that of any boat. It is a very good sign. I say it
is a very good sign that you should think you know that boat.’
He then volubly addressed his uncle, who nodded, and grunted, and
shrugged, and appeared to agree.
I remarked two or three men about the deck in the fore-part of
the brig. They were ill-clad, lean and yellow, and grim, dark and
forbidding for want of the razor. They stared very hard at me, ceasing
in their work to do so, and certainly their curiosity was more than
justified, for I can well believe that I made an extraordinary figure
with my plaistered and withered face, and white hair showing in the
twilight of the large hood, and the rest of me draped by the cloak to
the very plank of the deck.
It was a beautiful morning, the hour about eleven. The ocean was of the
colour of sapphire, and it flowed with the brig in long and regular
lines, and here and there the froth fitfully flashed and faded. The
sky on the left was shaded with a high delicate network of cloud, but
elsewhere the firmament was of purest blue, graced and relieved by
widely scattered little bodies of pearl-like vapour, all sailing our
way. The wind was sweet and mild, and now every breath that I took of
it seemed to give me a new spirit.
‘Look there, madame,’ exclaimed Alphonse, ‘you have not yet seen that
beautiful sight,’ and directing my eyes over the bulwark on the right,
I beheld a stately ship, a large, lovely, and radiant fabric, with
sail upon sail of the milk-white softness of sifted snow swelling and
diminishing one above another to an altitude that made one think of the
little gold buttons on the top of her masts as stars. She was passing
us swiftly. A small white line of foam throbbed along the long red
streak that rose up her side a little above the level of the water.
Soft flames of white fire broke from many parts of her as she swept
her windows and the glass upon the deck and many ornaments of furniture
of polished brass into the direct flash of the sun.
‘Oh! that is a beautiful sight, indeed,’ said I.
‘Does it give you no idea, madame?’ said the young Frenchman; then
finding that I continued to gaze without answering him, he exclaimed:
‘Look now at the sea. Is there not something in the sight of that sea
to make you remember? Figure land yonder, and imagine for yourself a
town upon it. What sort of town shall it be? Come, it must be the town
you sailed from in the boat with two masts. And see now if we cannot
create it. It will have a pier--there will be sands: or say it has no
pier, and the cliffs are white----’
‘Oh God, my heart will break,’ I cried.
Another day and yet another day passed. And now I had been a little
longer than a week on board the French brig.
It was Sunday. The day had broken in gloom, and when I arose and
dressed myself at ten o’clock I could scarcely see in my cabin. There
did not seem to be any wind. The vessel was rolling somewhat heavily,
and alternately she plunged the circular window of my cabin under
water, and then the dusk turned black with nothing but a green glimmer
where the porthole was; and then as she rolled away on the other side
and lifted the little window weeping and roaring out of the swollen
hill of green water, there was a noise as of the explosion of guns; but
no foam flew about the window, whence I judged that the vessel was not
making any progress.
By this time I had grown accustomed to the motions of a ship at sea.
I moved without difficulty, and poised myself to the slanting of the
deck under my feet with something of the ease of habit. When I had
dressed myself on this Sunday morning I put on the cloak that the mate
Hénin had lent me, and entered the little state cabin or living room.
The young Frenchman, Alphonse, sat at the table with an open volume
before him. He looked up as I approached.
‘Well,’ said he, ‘is it as bad as you feared?’
‘Yes,’ I answered; ‘if my hair goes on falling out as it now does, I
shall be bald before we arrive at Toulon.’
He smiled and said: ‘Oh no! You have a great deal of hair. Many ladies
have I seen, but never one with such abundance of hair as you.’
‘I am losing it fast.’
‘It will grow again. It is not as if you were very old.’
‘Very old!’ I exclaimed, ‘what is my age? What do you think it
is? Tell me. I earnestly wish to guess.’ Then, observing a certain
expression to enter his face, I added with vehemence: ‘Do not attempt
to flatter me. Tell me exactly what you believe my age to be. Even out
of _that_ may come an idea to me.’
‘It would not be fair to you to guess,’ said the young man, with the
little French smirk that had entered his face swiftly fading out of
it; ‘look how your forehead is bound up! Figure yourself in good
health--your face entirely visible--_bien coiffée_ besides--but you ask
me for the truth, and I will tell you what I suppose. You are, madame,
about forty-five years old.’
‘It may be so,’ I answered, and my head sank, and for some moments
my senses seemed to leave me, so benumbing was the bewilderment that
possessed me as I tried to think, wondering why I could not remember
my age, wondering why I could not remember my name, wondering whether
the sable curtain before which the hand of calamity had placed me would
ever rise.
‘The French,’ said Alphonse, ‘are hair-dressers in perfection. There
is a hair-dresser of genius at Toulon. He is my friend. I will speak
to him, and it will be strange if he does not possess the secret
of preventing your hair from falling out.’ He closed his book and
continued: ‘I believe you will not much longer require to wear that
plaister, yet I would advise you to keep it on until you are able to
consult a physician. A friend of mine at Toulon is an excellent doctor.
I will speak to him about you. But how gloomy--how gloomy is this day!
I hope there will not be a storm. Would you like to go on deck?’
I mounted the steps and looked about me. The scene of ocean was indeed
a melancholy one. The sea was running in large heaps of ugly green,
and there was not a breath of air to wrinkle the polished slopes. The
sky was a wide and sullen shadow of grey, nowhere broken, and the
sweeping folds of the water worked and throbbed all round the base of
that mighty stretch of shadow as though they washed the foot of a vast
circular wall. The vessel rolled from side to side, and at times her
canvas slapped the mast with a noise like a sudden clap of thunder. At
a distance lay a ship rigged as ours was. She had very little canvas
set, but what she showed was white, and it glared out like the breaking
head of a sea as she swayed her masts.
Mate Hénin was on deck. He stood at the bulwark, and supported his
rocking figure by holding a rope, and the scowl upon his face as he ran
his gleaming eyes over the sea was as dark as the scowl upon the sky.
‘How is this weather to end?’ called Alphonse to him.
‘In wind,’ he answered.
‘Will it be a fair wind?’
‘The devil alone knows. But better a hurricane than this.’ He uttered
a malediction. ‘Is it to be Toulon with us? Or is it to be six months
of the Bay of Biscay? Are we to run short of water and provisions? I
am no oyster, I. Give me a hurricane sooner than six months of the Bay
of Biscay in this tumbling shell.’ He uttered another malediction, and
scowled even yet more fiercely as he looked up at the sky and then
around him.
Alphonse translated his speech with a smile. ‘Do not mind him,’ he
exclaimed; ‘he has a tender heart and no man sheds tears more easily.’
It began to rain and I returned to the cabin. I removed the cloak,
seated myself on a locker and gave myself up to thought. If I could
not remember who I was, what was to become of me? When this brig
arrived at Toulon whither should I proceed for shelter and protection?
Captain Regnier had spoken of the British Consul; but I was a stranger
to the British Consul. I had nothing whatever to communicate to him
about my past, saving that I was found far out at sea in a little
sailing-boat, and rescued by the people of the brig _Notre Dame de
Boulogne_. Would he house me or elsewhere find shelter and food for
me until he had discovered who I was? But how would he be able to
discover who I was? And when he found that inquiry was futile would he
go on sheltering and protecting me? My thoughts filled me with terror.
I was ignorant of the duties of a Consul, and I could not understand
that there might be anything to hope or to expect from him. Then,
again, my memory being gone, I was as much at fault when I reasoned
forwards as when I directed the eyes of my mind backwards. I could not
conceive, for instance, that on my landing at Toulon, and representing
my dreadful and helpless condition to the British Consul, he would
take steps to send me home, because I had no imagination of home. I
could not positively affirm that I was English; I was in the condition
of a mute--nay, I was far worse off than a mute, because a mute has
his memory, and can express what is in his mind by writing or by dumb
show; whereas I had nothing to tell. I could speak, and the words I
pronounced were English; but that was all. However my tale might run,
it would be without meaning: and when I thought of myself as landing
at Toulon, of arriving at a place where I had not a friend--though
if there had been twenty friends there I should not have remembered
them--when I thought of the few shillings my purse contained, that
all the wearing apparel I possessed was upon me, that I should not be
able to say who I was, where I came from, in what part of the world my
home was situated--when I thought thus I trembled in every limb, my
heart felt cold as stone, and I strove to ease the agony of my mind by
weeping; but no tears flowed. I had wept so often of late throughout
the days, and in the dark hours of the nights, that the source of my
tears seemed to have been dried up.
The good-natured Alphonse, observing the dreadful and insupportable
misery in my face and posture, thought to cheer me up; he sat beside
me, entreated me not to fret, and spoke cheerfully of the future. But
my inward anguish was too extreme to suffer me to listen to him, and
after awhile he withdrew to his cabin and played somewhat stealthily
upon his fiddle, thinking, perhaps, I could not hear him, yet wishing
to divert himself.
Shortly before the cabin dinner hour, that is to say, a little before
one o’clock, there was a sudden commotion on deck, a noise of ropes
hastily flung down, the sounds of men running about, accompanied by
Captain Regnier’s bull-like bawlings. In a few minutes I heard a
strange hissing, and the vessel leaned over and continued to lean
down until she had arrived at so sharp an angle that I was only saved
from sliding off the locker by pressing at the whole length of my
arms against the table. The shouts of the men on deck were confused
and incessant. Every man seemed to be roaring out orders on his own
account. There was likewise an alarming noise of canvas violently
shaken. The vessel was plunging heavily, and every now and then she
received a blow from a sea that thrilled through her as a house shakes
when a loaded van is passing the door, and every blow was followed by
a fierce noise of seething like the sound of water poured on fire.
The young Frenchman’s cabin door opened and Alphonse crawled out on his
hands and knees. He climbed up the slope of the deck to the side of the
table at which I sat, and gazed at me with an ashen countenance.
‘This is terrible!’ he cried.
‘What has happened?’ I asked.
‘A frightful storm has burst upon us!’ he answered. ‘Blessed Virgin!
why does not the brick lift herself out of the water?’ and here he
made the sign of the Cross upon his breast, which led me to suppose
that, like many other Frenchmen, and like many other people who are not
Frenchmen, Alphonse was an infidel only in fine weather.
We remained seated, hearkening with terrified ears to the uproar on
deck and to the thunderous beating of the sea against the little
vessel. After some while the brig grew more upright, the halloaing
above ceased, and there was nothing to be heard save the creaking of
the old structure as it pitched and wallowed, and a subdued noise of
angry, raving, foaming waters.
The light in the hatchway was eclipsed, and the immense mass of Captain
Regnier descended the steps. His coat was streaming, and on his gaining
the cabin he pulled off his sodden red cap and flung it with a furious
gesture into a corner.
‘Oh, uncle, what is the matter?’ cried Alphonse, clasping his hands.
‘Matter!’ answered Captain Regnier, ‘why here is a dead foul wind
blowing strong enough, if it lasts for twenty-four hours, to lose us
every league we have gained in the last three days.’
‘Is there any danger?’ asked Alphonse.
The large fat man eyed him in silence for a moment, then, pulling a big
silver watch from the waistband of his trousers, he roared out: ‘Let us
dine or there will be plenty of danger.’
This said he ascended the steps until his head was in the air above the
cover, and having delivered himself of a bull-like shout he returned,
pulled off his great overcoat, and seated himself in his shabby
velveteen jacket.
‘But you will tell me if there is any danger?’ said Alphonse.
‘I will tell you nothing until I have dined,’ answered Captain Regnier.
The young man sat with a white face viewing his uncle wistfully. There
was expression enough in the fat Frenchman’s stolid face to reassure
me; moreover, I could not suppose that he would think of his dinner and
apparently of nothing but his dinner in a time of danger. Yet, had he
informed Alphonse that the brig was in peril I should have listened
to the news with indifference. My dejection was heart-crushing. I was
wretched to the inmost recesses of my spirit with the despair that
comes of hopelessness, and never before had I felt so lonely.
The brig’s movements were horribly uncomfortable. It was blowing very
hard and the sea was growing. I do not know whether the vessel was
sailing--that is to say, whether she was making any progress through
the water--but they were steering her so as to cause her side to form
an angle with the gulfs of the foaming billows, and the dance of the
light structure was as though she must at any moment go to pieces.
Despite the jerky, convulsive, dislocating movements, the grimy French
lad who waited in the cabin contrived to place the dinner upon the
table. The meal was composed largely of soup, and I cannot conceive
how the youth managed. I drank a little soup and ate a piece of
biscuit, and this with a small draught of red wine formed my dinner.
Alphonse ate nothing; he continuously gazed at his uncle, who addressed
himself to the meal with both hands, gradually lying back as he drained
the contents of a large tin dishful of soup, and then placing a bottle
half full of wine at his lips and emptying it, and then grasping a
large piece of sausage with one hand and a whole biscuit with the other
and rapidly devouring them.
‘This is not a moment to think of knives and forks,’ said he; ‘if we
are to perish let us meet our end well lined.’
‘To perish!’ cried Alphonse.
‘Bah!’ exclaimed Captain Regnier, with his mouth full. ‘Did you not
tell me the other day that if I were a waiter I would know a thing or
two? Well, I now imagine myself a waiter, and am talking as one. As
a waiter I pronounce that we shall perish, but as a sailor I say no!
no! we shall not perish this time. There are many napkins remaining
for you to fashion into fans and cocked-hats before you are drowned by
shipwreck.’
The young Frenchman’s vivacity immediately returned to him.
‘It is inspiriting to even think of napkins at such a time,’ said he.
‘They awaken fancies of the hotel, the _table-d’hôte_, of a thousand
agreeable things. After Toulon--the deluge. You do not catch me
returning to Boulogne with you, uncle. Give me the railway. I now
detest the sea. Ciel! how the ship leaps. And remark this poor lady.
How has the sea served her?’ He snapped his fingers, and extended his
hand for a piece of the sausage.
Both men spoke in French, but I understood enough of their discourse to
enable me to repeat the substance of it.
‘If this wind holds,’ said Captain Regnier, ‘it will be the deluge
before Toulon. A thousand thunders! To think that it should come on to
storm dead ahead! What virtue is there in patience when there is no end
to waiting?’
‘Why not sail the ship to a convenient port,’ said Alphonse, ‘and wait
there in comfort and serenity until the weather changes?’
‘Go! you are a sot,’ responded Captain Regnier, scowling at him.
The motion was so excessive that it pained me to sit upright. I spoke
to Alphonse, who addressed his uncle, and the captain, going to my
berth, brought the mattress from the sleeping shelf, and placed it on
one of the chests or lockers on what is called the ‘lee side’--that
is, on the depressed side of the vessel--and when he had fetched the
bolster I lay down.
The afternoon slowly passed away. The skylight was shrouded with wet,
and the shadow of the storm-coloured sky was upon it, and in the cabin
it was so gloomy that Alphonse told the lad who waited at table to
light the lamp. I was not sea-sick, but the swift risings and fallings
of the brig gave me a dreadful headache, and so dimmed my sight that I
could scarcely see.
You who read this may very well know the sea as it is to be experienced
in large ships. You may have rolled and plunged over mountainous waves
in a steam-vessel of vast bulk, whose cabin is radiant with mirrors and
lamps of polished metal, and with furniture as sumptuous as that of the
drawing-rooms of a palace! You have had a luxurious berth to withdraw
to, attentive stewards or stewardesses to minister to you, and all the
while you have been comforted with a sense of incessant progress, with
the assurance of the pulse in everything that you touch, in everything
that you feel, that the noble engines are magnificently doing their
work, and ruthlessly forcing the crushing and shearing stem of the
powerful metal structure along the path that leads to your destination.
But exchange such a ship as this for a brig of small burthen; exchange
the brilliant interior of the great ship for the dingy, snuff-coloured
living-room of a little brig with scarcely light to see by, and
with the air full of the thunder of the warring without. Often the
lamp swung so violently under the beam from which it dangled that I
languidly watched to see it extinguish its own flame against the upper
decks. There was a sickening sound of sobbing waters over my head, and
there were many furious discharges of spray or wet upon the planks,
the noise of which was like the abrupt fall of a terrible hailstorm
liberated from the black breast of a tropical electric cloud.
The afternoon passed and the evening came, and when Captain Regnier
descended from the deck to eat his supper he told his nephew, who had
hidden himself in his berth during the afternoon, that the weather was
moderating, and that, though he expected the night would be very dark,
the wind would enable him to make sail. It befel as he had predicted.
By seven o’clock the wind was no more than what sailors would term a
moderate breeze, and the sea was fast going down, though at this hour
the brig was still plunging heavily. It was pitch dark, however, on
deck. When the mate Hénin came into the cabin to fetch a warm coat to
keep his watch in, or, in other words, to wear whilst he took charge
of the brig from eight o’clock until some late hour of the night, he
addressed a number of sentences with great vehemence and impetuosity to
the young Frenchman, who, on the mate withdrawing, informed me that
Hénin declared that in twenty-eight years’ experience of the sea he had
never remembered such blackness as was at this time upon the ocean.
‘Would you believe it, madame?’ cried Alphonse. ‘Hénin swears that the
very foam which breaks close alongside the brick is not to be seen.
What do you think of that?--I will go and look at the night for myself.’
He ascended the steps, but speedily returned. ‘It is raining,’ said
he, ‘and it is cold too, I can tell you. And does Hénin call it black?
Black is too weak a word. I will tell you what it is like: it is like
the blackness of a stormy night, when you look at it after your eyes
have been fearfully dazzled by a flash of lightning.’
All this while I remained extended upon the mattress upon the locker,
covered by mate Hénin’s cloak, and with head pillowed on the rude
bolster that had been withdrawn from my sleeping-shelf. Soon after the
mate had gone on deck, Captain Regnier came down the stairs. He took
his seat at the table under the lamp, and Alphonse produced a box of
dominos. The captain, who on a previous occasion had learnt that I did
not object to the smell of tobacco, filled a strange pipe formed of a
great Turk’s head and a long curved stem, and smoked. He likewise put
his hand into an adjacent locker and mixed himself a tumbler of white
liquor which, that it might not upset, he placed upon a small tray that
was oscillating above the table. The two men then played with singular
gravity, the fat man smoking with stolid deliberation, whilst the young
man watched the game with impassioned intentness.
The little brig groaned and pitched and tossed; the skylight glass
overhead lay in panes of ebony, and duskily and gleamingly reflected
the figures of the two domino players; through the open hatch that
conducted to the deck came the roaring and hissing noise of conflicting
waters and the whistling of the wind in the rigging. It was raining
hard; the rain-drops lashed the glass of the skylight. I gazed at the
two men, but I did not know that I watched them. All the while I was
asking myself, What can the letters ‘A. C.’ stand for? And I tried to
recollect the names of women, but in vain. Then I said to myself, Am
I English, or is it likely that the young Frenchman was right when
he said that I might be a German who spoke English with a perfect
accent, and who now, by some caprice of the reason cruelly afflicted by
suffering, is compelled to speak in the English tongue, forgetting her
own?
Many extraordinary thoughts or fancies of this kind visited me as I lay
watching those two domino players. Imagine yourself without memory,
not merely unable to recollect in this or in that direction: no. But
imagine your mind without power to suggest a single idea to you, to
submit a single image to you that had existence previous to an hour
comparatively recent!
At nine o’clock I withdrew to my berth. By this hour the two men had
finished with their dominos. Alphonse replaced the mattress and bolster
in my sleeping-shelf, and whilst he was thus occupied I said to him: ‘I
feel a strange horror upon me to-night. There is a sense of loneliness
in me that seems to be breaking my heart.’
‘Madame must cheer up. She will find her memory at Toulon.’
‘My mind is hopelessly dark and silent. I have been all this evening
trying to think, and the struggle has made me ill.’
‘I will fetch you some brandy and water.’
‘No, thank you. What you gave me half an hour ago is sufficient. It
is not that--I dread the darkness of the long night--the fearful
solitude--oh, the fearful solitude! Will not Captain Regnier permit me
to burn a light.’
‘He is timid, and very properly timid,’ answered Alphonse. ‘Conceive
a fire breaking out. A fire at sea, and on such a night as this!’
He shuddered, and then looked up at the strange globular lamp that
depended from the centre of the ceiling of my cabin. We conversed with
the door open, and the lamp that burned in the living room shed a faint
light upon the interior of my berth. ‘But it _is_ lonely,’ the young
Frenchman continued in a voice of pity. ‘I dare say my uncle will not
mind--at all events he need not know.’ He raised his hand to the lamp,
and with a twist removed the metal bowl or compartment for the oil and
mesh out of the globe. ‘I will fill this, and bring it back to you,’
said he.
He returned after a short absence, lighted the wick, and turned it down
that it might burn dimly, then screwed it into the globe. I felt deeply
grateful, and took his hand and held it whilst I thanked him. He left
me, and putting on mate Hénin’s cloak to keep me warm, I got into my
miserable little sleeping shelf and lay down, grateful for, and feeling
even soothed by, being able to see.