A KIND LITTLE WOMAN
When I awoke my gaze was directed at the face of Mr. McEwan, who stood
at the side of my bedplace looking at me. The cabin was full of strong
daylight, but the atmosphere was tinctured with a faint rose, and had I
at that moment given the matter a thought, I should have known that I
had slept far into the afternoon.
In spite of my eyes being open the ship’s surgeon continued to view me
without any change of posture or alteration of countenance. He might
have been waiting to make sure that I was conscious; he scrutinised
me, nevertheless, as though his eyes were gimlets, with which he
could pierce into my brain. He held a volume in his hand, but on his
appearing to make up his mind that I was awake he put the book into the
bunk that was above me, and said, ‘You sleep well.’
‘I have slept well to-day,’ I answered; ‘I bathed and was much
comforted before I lay down.’
‘Do you ever dream?’ he asked.
‘Never.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘My memory on this side of my recovery is good,’ I said; ‘and if I
dreamt I should recollect my dreams. I have longed with passion to
dream, because I have a fancy that my memory may return to me in a
vision.’
‘That is not unlikely,’ said he. He took the book from the upper bunk,
drew a chair close to me, and seated himself.
‘I have been looking at you in your sleep,’ said he, ‘and I am
confirmed in my first opinion--you are a young woman. Your age is
four- or five-and-twenty. You smiled shortly before you awoke, and
your smile was like a light thrown upon your youth hidden behind your
face. Some dream must have produced that smile--but the mere phantom of
a phantom of a dream, too colourless and attenuated for your mind to
recollect. And your hair! Has it been coming out of late?’
‘I have lost a great quantity. It came out in handfuls, but it no
longer falls as it did.’
‘Your hair was black,’ said he, smiling, ‘and very abundant and fine.
Before your calamity--whatever it might be--befell you you were a
handsome young woman, excellently shaped, with dark, speaking eyes, and
a noble growth of hair. Take my word for it. And now think. Do I give
you any ideas?’
I shut my eyes to think, and I thought and thought, but to no purpose.
‘No matter,’ he exclaimed; ‘do not strain your mind. Take things
perfectly easy. I have been reading in several volumes I possess on
cases resembling yours; and here is a book,’ he continued, ‘with some
examples, two of which you shall hear, that you may take heart.’
He balanced a pair of gold glasses on his nose and read as follows,
slowly and deliberately:--
‘A young clergyman, when on the point of being married, suffered
an injury of the head by which his understanding was entirely and
permanently deranged. He lived in this condition till the age of
eighty, and to the last talked of nothing but his approaching wedding,
and expressed impatience of the arrival of the happy day.’
‘What do you think of that?’ said the surgeon.
I did not answer.
‘Do you understand it?’ said he.
‘I understand it,’ I replied, ‘but I do not see what it has to do with
the memory.’
‘There is too much memory in it,’ he exclaimed with a dry smile; ‘but
you are right, and I’m very well satisfied that you should be able to
reason. Now I will read you something that _does_ concern the memory,
and you shall be consoled when you hear it;’ and he read aloud as
follows:--
‘On her recovery from the torpor she appeared to have forgotten nearly
all her previous knowledge: everything seemed new to her, and she did
not recognise a single individual, not even her nearest relatives. In
her behaviour she was restless and inattentive, but very lively and
cheerful: she was delighted with everything she saw and heard, and
altogether resembled a child more than a grown person. At first it was
scarcely possible to engage her in conversation: in place of answering
a question she repeated it aloud in the same words in which it was put.
At first she had very few words. She often made one word answer for
all others which were in any way allied to it: thus, in place of _tea_
she would ask for _juice_. She once or twice had dreams, which she
afterwards related to her friends, and she seemed quite aware of the
difference betwixt a dream and a reality.’
‘Now mark this,’ continued the surgeon, looking at me over his glasses;
and he then read:--
‘After a time Mrs. H---- was able to return to her home in England,
where she passed the rest of her life happily with her husband. She was
in the habit of corresponding by letter with her friends at a distance,
and lived on the most agreeable terms with her immediate neighbours, by
whom she was held in much regard on account of her kindly nature and
charitable work.’
‘So you see,’ said Mr. McEwan, ‘that the poor thing got quite well.’
‘Is that a good book?’ said I, looking at it.
‘It is a first-rate book,’ he answered.
‘But the woman’s memory was not utterly gone, as mine is.’
‘She was far worse than you,’ said he. ‘Be of good cheer. Think of
your brain as a theatre. The curtain has come down with a run, and
the gentleman whose business it is to wind it up is drunk, or absent
through illness. We’ll rout him out by-and-by, and the curtain will
rise again. And now sit up, if you please, that I may look at your
head.’
He was abrupt and off-hand in his speech, with something of the wag
in him, but already was I sensible that there was an abundance of
good-nature and of kindly feeling underlying his manner. He carefully
renewed the plaister and examined the injured brow, then dressed it
with some salve and bandaged it with a tender hand. I asked him if I
was disfigured.
‘An excellent question,’ he explained; ‘a woman’s question. Go on
asking every question that may occur to you; but do not strain your
mind to recollect.’
‘Am I disfigured?’ I asked.
‘That is right,’ said he; ‘go on questioning me.’
‘Let me look at the glass.’
‘No; don’t you see that I am about to bandage you--so! Do not remove
this bandage. There is something that needs to heal, and your young
Frenchman’s sticking-plaister has not helped you.’
The surgeon left me after saying that he would send me a powerful
tonic, which I was to take so many times a day, and when he was gone I
got out of the bunk, in which I had slept fully dressed, and going to
the glass over the washstand looked into it. The face that gazed back
upon me was no longer the forbidding, the almost repulsive countenance
that I remembered. The removal of the darkened and bloodstained strips
of sticking-plaister had made a wonderful difference. In their place
was a snow-white bandage, skilfully fitted. It hid a portion of the
right brow, and descended so as to conceal the bridge of the nose, but
it left my right eye visible; and when I looked at my eyes I observed
that they were no longer leaden and lustreless, but that, on the
contrary, there was the light of life in them, and the dark pupils soft
and liquid.
This I knew by comparing my face with the face with which I had awoke
to consciousness on board the brig; but I remembered no other face than
_that_.
I stood for some while staring in the glass, recalling the assurance
of the surgeon that I was a woman of four- or five-and-twenty, and
contrasting that notion with the belief Alphonse had expressed, that
my age was forty-five, and I kept on saying to myself, _Who am I?_
and silently repeating over and over again the letters A. C. until,
recalling Mr. McEwan’s advice to me not to strain my brain, I broke
away with a sudden horror, as of insanity, from the glass, and went to
the cabin porthole.
I could see very little of the sky and sea, but what I saw was
beautiful with the colouring of the rich dark gold of sunset. I gazed
almost directly west, and as much as I could behold of the heavens
that way was a glowing and a throbbing crimson, barred with streaks of
violet gloriously edged with ruby flames. The sea ran red as the sky;
every ridged head of purple broke into rosy froth. In the heart of this
little circle of western magnificence formed by the porthole was a ship
with orange-coloured sails. I watched her, and thought of the young
Frenchman, and wondered whether the crew of the brig had perished, as
Captain Ladmore supposed, or whether they had been picked up during the
darkness of the night by some vessel that had passed at too great a
distance to be observed by the people of the _Deal Castle_.
Whilst I stood thus looking and thinking, the door was opened by an
under-steward to enable Mrs. Richards to enter with a tray, which she
grasped with both hands.
‘I thought,’ said she, smiling as she placed the tray full of good
things upon the deck, ‘that you would rather have your tea here than at
the table outside, and with your leave I will drink a cup of tea with
you. Ah! now you look better. Yes, your eyes have cleared wonderfully;
and I don’t see the same expression of pain in your face. And how much
better that bandage looks than the ugly sticking-plaister.’
She chatted thus whilst she gazed around, considering how she should
dispose of the tray. At last she placed it in my bed, where it would
be safe--where, at least, it would not slide, for there was a heave
running from the sunset through the sea, and the ship regularly leaned
upon it, but in motions so stately as scarcely to be noticeable. We
seated ourselves by the side of the bed and ate and drank. She had
brought cold fowl, and ham-and-tongue, and pressed beef, and fancy
rolls of bread, all which, with other things, after the fare I had been
used to on board the brig, were true dainties and delicacies to me, and
particularly did I enjoy the tea with its dash of new milk.
‘I had some trouble,’ said the stewardess, looking into the milk-jug,
‘to coax this drop out of the steward. There is but one cow, and there
are many demands upon poor Crummie. But I felt sure you would enjoy a
cup of tea with milk in it.’
She then asked me what Mr. McEwan had said, and I told her.
‘He is a clever man, I believe,’ said she.
‘Oh, if he would only give me back my memory!’ I exclaimed.
‘I wonder what the captain means to do with you,’ said she.
‘And I, too, wonder. Have I a home? Surely I must have a home
somewhere? It cannot be that I am utterly alone in the world, though I
am so now.’
‘No, dear, you will not be alone. God will raise up friends for you
until He gives you back your memory; and then----’
‘But this ship is going on a long voyage,’ said I, ‘and if I remain in
her she will be carrying me away from where my home may be.’
‘Yes, but if your home is in England, this ship will convey you back
there if you remain in her.’
‘How long will it take the ship to sail to the place you spoke of?’
‘Sydney. She is going to Sydney. Well, it may take her three months, or
it may take her four months, to get there, and she will stop at Sydney
for three months. We all hope--all of us, I mean, whose homes are in
England--to be home by next August.’
I turned her words over in my mind, but was unable to attach any
meaning to what she said. I could not understand _time_--that is, I
did not know what Mrs. Richards meant when she spoke of ‘next August.’
But I would not question her; my incapacity made me feel ashamed, and
exquisitely wretched at heart, and I asked no questions, lest she
should divine that I did not comprehend her.
There were people drinking tea at the tables outside. I heard the
occasional cry of a baby, the voices of children, the murmur of men
and women conversing. Mrs. Richards informed me that those people were
second-class passengers, who inhabited this part of the ship.
‘Are there many passengers in all?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, the ship is full of men and women,’ she replied.
‘Where do they come from?’
‘The ship sailed from London. The people joined her at the docks, or at
Gravesend, from all parts of the kingdom.’
‘Oh,’ cried I, clasping my hands, ‘if there were but a single person
amongst the crowds on board--a single person who knew me, who would be
able to pronounce my name and tell me where my home is--if, indeed, I
have a home!’
‘Well, who knows but there may be such a person?’ said the stewardess.
‘Big as this world is, we are constantly running against friends or
acquaintances. Everybody is asking after you. All my ladies, all the
people I attend on, make inquiries after you every time I see them.
There is a dear old lady on board, Mrs. Lee; she is the mother of the
poor consumptive girl. Not half an hour ago, as I was passing through
the saloon, Mrs. Lee left her chair and said to me, “Mrs. Richards, if
there is anything that I or my daughter can do for the poor lady who
was rescued this morning, I beg you will enable us to serve her. I fear
she is without clothes,” said Mrs. Lee. “How could it be otherwise,
indeed? Now my daughter and I have plenty of clothes, and the poor lady
is welcome to whatever she wants.”’
‘How good of her!’ I exclaimed. ‘Thank her, thank her for me, Mrs.
Richards.’
‘She is a dear old lady, and her daughter is the sweetest of girls.
Oh dear! oh dear! that the hand of Death should be drawing closer and
closer to steal away so much beauty and gentleness.’
‘Is it known that--that----’
‘That you have lost your memory?’
I sank my head.
‘Why, yes. News flies fast on board ship. And why should it not be
known? Your not having your memory will explain a great deal.’
‘What will it explain?’
‘For instance, your having no name.’
‘My initials are A. C.,’ said I, and I pronounced the letters several
times over, and cried out, ‘What can they stand for?’
‘But would you know your name if you saw it?’ said the stewardess.
‘I cannot tell.’
As I made this answer the door was quietly rapped. ‘Come in,’ said the
stewardess, and the captain entered. The stewardess rose, and stood
as though a royal personage had walked in, and then made a step to the
door.
‘Do not go away, Mrs. Richards,’ cried Captain Ladmore. ‘I am glad to
see that you are carefully attending to the lady’--and he asked me if I
felt better.
I answered that I felt very much better, and that I did not know how
to express the gratitude which all the kindness I had received and
was receiving had filled my heart with. He pulled a chair and seated
himself near me.
‘I have been all day,’ said he with a grave smile, ‘considering what
course to adopt as regards your disposal. I should very well know what
to do if you could give me any hint as to where you come from.’ He
paused, as though hoping I might now be able to give him such a hint.
He then continued: ‘In my own mind I have little doubt that you are
English, and that your home is in England. But I cannot be quite sure
of this, and I should wish to be convinced before acting. At any hour,
whether to-morrow or the following day--at any hour we may fall in
with a ship bound to England whose captain might be willing to receive
you and to land you. But then, unless your memory returns during the
homeward run, what would a captain be able to do with you when he
reached port? He would land you--yes; but humanity would not suffer him
to let you leave his ship without your memory, without possessing a
friend to go to, and, pardon me for adding, with only a few shillings
in your pocket.’
I hid my face and sobbed.
‘Don’t take on, dear,’ said Mrs. Richards, gently clasping my wrist;
‘wait a little till you hear what the captain has to say. Yours is a
sorrowful, sad case, and it has to be thought over,’ and here her voice
failed her.
‘A bad disaster,’ continued the captain, ‘has brought you into my ship
and placed you under my care. I am obliged to put your own situation
and condition to you fairly and intelligibly. If your home is in
England, I should not wish to keep you on board my ship and carry you
to Australia. But your home may not be in England, and I dislike the
thought of sending you to that country, where, for all I know, you may
have no friends. When your memory returns we shall gather exactly how
to act.’
‘I do not seem able to think, I do not feel able to reason,’ I
exclaimed, putting my hand to my forehead.
‘Do not trouble to think or to reason either,’ said the stewardess;
‘the captain will do it for you.’
‘What,’ said Captain Ladmore, fixing his eyes upon Mrs. Richards, but
talking as though he thought aloud--‘what should I be able to tell the
shipmaster to whom I transferred this lady? I should have positively
nothing whatever to tell him. He might hesitate to receive her. His
reluctance would be justified. I myself should certainly hesitate to
receive a shipwrecked lady under such circumstances. I should say to
myself, When I arrive, whom shall I find to receive her? There might,
indeed, be philanthropic institutions to take her in, but if I could
not find such an institution, what should I do? I should have to take
charge of her until I could place her somewhere. I might, indeed,
advertise, send a letter to the newspapers, and trust by publishing her
case to make her existence known to her friends. But then she may have
no friends in England--and meanwhile? I have thought the matter over,’
said he, addressing me, ‘and believe that I cannot do better than keep
you on board, with a chance of your memory returning at any moment, and
enabling me _then_ to take the first opportuning of sending you to your
home, wherever it may be. What do you think?’
‘I cannot think. Oh, if but the dimmest idea would visit my mind to
help you and to help me! It would be dreadful,’ I said in a voice that
was failing me, ‘to find myself on shore, in destitution, without
friends, not knowing what to do, where to go. _That_ thought was a
horror to me in the French brig, when the Frenchmen talked of landing
me at Toulon and handing me over to the British Consul. I remember what
they said: What would the British Consul do for me?’ And then I sprang
from my chair and cried out, hysterically, ‘Oh, Captain Ladmore, what
is to become of me? what is to become of me?’
‘You are amongst friends. Do not take on so, dear,’ said the stewardess.
‘It is my dreadful loneliness,’ I cried, speaking out of the old terror
that was again upon me--the miserable terror that had possessed me
again and again on board the Frenchman.
‘All of us are alone,’ said the captain, in his deep, serious voice;
‘we arrive and we depart in loneliness. God Himself is alone.’
‘Think of that!’ said the stewardess.
‘Whilst you are with us,’ said Captain Ladmore, ‘it is proper that
you should be known by some name. Your initials are clearly A. C. Now
suppose we call you Miss C.? By so terming you we shall be preserving
as much of your real name as we can discover.’ He paused, and a moment
later added, addressing the stewardess, ‘Do you suggest Miss C. or
Mrs. C., Mrs. Richards?’
‘Oh! Miss C., sir, undoubtedly,’ she answered.
I lifted my head, and perceived the captain examining me as
scrutinisingly as the western light that was now weak and fast waning
would permit.
‘Then Miss C.,’ said he, rising slowly, and smiling gravely as he
pronounced the name, ‘you will consider yourself the guest of the ship
_Deal Castle_ for the present. By-and-by your memory will return to
you. We shall then learn all about you, and _then_, whatever steps I
take must certainly result in restoring you to your friends; whereas to
tranship you now---- But that is settled,’ he added, with a dignified
motion of the hand.
He pulled out his watch, held it to the porthole, and then bidding the
stewardess see that I wanted for nothing, gave me a bow and went out.
Mrs. Richards produced a box of matches from her pocket, and lighted a
bracket lamp.
‘What do you think of Captain Ladmore?’ she asked.
‘He is the soul of goodness, Mrs. Richards.’
‘He is, indeed. Who would suppose him to be a sea-captain? Sea-captains
are thought to be a very rough body of men. Before I come upon the
water as a stewardess I used to imagine all sea-captains as persons
with red faces wrinkled like walnut-shells, and boozy eyes. They
all had bandy legs, and used bad language. Since then I have met
many sea-captains, and some of them are as I used to think they all
were; but some are otherwise, and Captain Ladmore is one of them. On
his return home two or three voyages ago he found his wife and only
daughter dead. They had died while he was away. The blow was dreadful.
He cannot forget it, they say. It changed his nature--it made him a
sad, grave man, and thus he will always be. Well, now I must go and
attend to my work.’
I opened the door, and she passed out bearing the tray.
The floating swing of the ship was so steady that I was able to walk
about my cabin with comfort. I paced round and round it with my hands
clasped behind me and my eyes fixed on the floor, thinking over what
Captain Ladmore had said. On the whole I was comforted. It startled me,
it shocked me, indeed, when I thought that unless my memory returned I
was to be carried all the way to Australia. Not that I had any clear
ideas as to where Australia was, or its distance from the ship, and,
as I have before said, I was unable to grasp the meaning of time as
conveyed by the stewardess’s information that the passage out would
occupy three months or four months as it might be. But from what Mr.
McEwan and Captain Ladmore and Mrs. Richards had said among them, I
could in some manner understand that Sydney, whither the ship was
bound, was an immense distance off, and though I had not the least idea
where my home was--whether it was in England or in America, as the
young Frenchman had suggested, or in that very continent of Australia
to which the _Deal Castle_ was voyaging--yet the mere notion of being
carried a vast distance, and for no other purpose than to give my
memory time to revive, with the certainty, moreover, that if my memory
had not returned to me at the end of the voyage I should be as lonely,
miserable, and helpless as I now was: here were considerations, as I
say, to startle and shock me.
But on the whole I felt comforted. It was the prospect of being
set ashore friendless at Toulon that had immeasurably added to my
wretchedness whilst on board the Frenchman. But now that threatened
state of hopelessness, of poverty, of homelessness, all to be
exquisitely complicated by total mental blindness, was indefinitely
postponed or removed. I had met with people who were taking pity on me,
and amongst whom I might find friends. My health, too, would now be
professionally watched. And then, again, if my home _were_ in England,
this ship would certainly in time return to that country, and in the
long weeks between it might be that my memory would be restored to me.
Therefore, as I walked about in my cabin I felt on the whole comforted.
Mrs. Richards brought me an armful of books, some of her own, and some
from the ship’s little collection. She said, as she put the volumes
down--it was about seven o’clock in the evening:--
‘Do you feel dull? If so, there are many in the saloon who would be
glad to meet you and converse with you.’
‘No, I am not dull. My mind is much more tranquil than it was. I am
thinking of last night. How glad I am to be here!’
‘Would you like to receive a visit? There are many who would be
delighted to visit you. Mrs. Lee will gladly come and sit with you if
you feel strong enough for a chat.’
‘I would rather remain quiet, Mrs. Richards. To-morrow I hope----
Perhaps in a day or two the doctor will remove this bandage.’
‘You must not think of your appearance,’ she said, smiling, ‘although
it is a good sign. A little vanity is always a good sign in invalids. I
would not give much for the life of an invalid woman who is without a
touch of womanly conceit. But you are very well; you look very nicely.
Do not think of your bandage,’ and with a kindly smile and nod she left
me.
When I went to bed I found myself sleepless. But sleeplessness I might
have expected after my deep slumbers during the day. At nine o’clock
Mrs. Richards had brought me some brandy-and-water and biscuits, and
when she left me I went to bed, and lay listening to the people in the
steerage outside. I gathered that some of them were playing at cards:
there were frequent short exclamations, and now and again a noisy peal
of laughter. The sea was smooth and the ship was going along quietly;
no creaking, no sounds of straining vexed the quiet when a hush fell
upon the players.
At ten o’clock there was a tap upon my door, and the voice of a man
bade me put my light out. I extinguished the lamp and returned to my
bed. All was silent outside now; nothing was to be heard save a dim
swarming noise of broken waters hurrying by, and at intervals the cry
of a baby. For some time I listened to this cry, and it produced not
the least effect upon me; but suddenly, on my hearing it more clearly,
as though the door of the cabin in which the infant lay had been
opened, a feeling of dreadful grief seized me--a feeling of dreadful
loneliness. I sat up in my bed and racked my mind--I know not how else
to express what I felt in my effort to _compel_ my mind to seek in the
black void of memory for the reasons why that infant’s cry had raised
in me so insufferable a sense of grief, so incommunicable an ache of
loneliness.
I grew calm and closed my eyes, but I could not sleep. Time passed,
and still finding myself sleepless, I quitted my bed and went to the
porthole, and perceived through the glass the bluish haze of moonlit
darkness, with many brilliant stars in it, rhythmically sliding to
the movements of the ship. I cannot sleep, I said to myself. I slept
too deeply to-day to slumber now; I will go on deck. The fresh air
will revive me. It is dreadful to be in this gloom, alone and bitterly
wakeful, thinking of this time last night.
So I put on my clothes--sheen enough flowed through the porthole to see
by--and I took from a peg on the door the cloak in which I had been
wrapped when I left the brig, and enveloped myself in it, pulling the
hood over my head, and quietly stepped out. I remembered that there was
a ladder at either end of the steerage, and that the deck was the more
easily to be gained by the foremost ladder. A lamp burnt at one end of
the steerage, and with the help of its rays I easily made my way to
the foot of the steps. All was buried in deep silence. I mounted the
steps and gained the foremost end of the saloon, and silently opening
a door I passed out on to the quarterdeck, into the windy, moonlit,
starry night.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
[Illustration]
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected.