NEW NOVELS.

THE DUCHESS OF POWYSLAND. By Grant Allen. 3 vols.

CORINTHIA MARAZION. By Cecil Griffith. 3 vols.

A SONG OF SIXPENCE. By Henry Murray. 1 vol.

SANTA BARBARA, &c. By Ouida. 1 vol.

IN THE MIDST OF LIFE. By Ambrose Bierce. 1 vol.

TRACKED TO DOOM. By Dick Donovan. 1 vol.

COLONEL STARBOTTLE’S CLIENT, AND SOME OTHER PEOPLE. By Bret Harte. 1 vol.

ADVENTURES OF A FAIR REBEL. By Matt. Crim. 1 vol.

IN A STEAMER CHAIR. By Robert Barr. 1 vol.

THE FOSSICKER: a Romance of Mashonaland. By Ernest Glanville. 1 vol.

London: CHATTO & WINDUS, 214 Piccadilly, W.

ALONE
ON A WIDE WIDE SEA
VOL. II.

PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON

ALONE ON A WIDE WIDE SEA

BY

W. CLARK RUSSELL

AUTHOR OF
‘MY SHIPMATE LOUISE’ ‘THE ROMANCE OF JENNY HARLOWE’
ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. II.

London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1892

CONTENTS
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME

ALONE ON A WIDE WIDE SEA

CHAPTER IX
THE CRY OF A CHILD

It was cold, but the sweep of the dry night-wind was refreshing and inspiriting to me, who had been confined to my cabin all day. A bull’s eye lamp burnt under the overhanging ledge of the poop-deck. Beneath it was the clock, and the small hand was close upon one. The gleams of the lamp touched no living figure, and so lonely looked the ship that I could have easily supposed myself the only human being on board of her. The great fabric was leaning over under a vast cloud of canvas, and a sound of stealthy hissing, such as the stem of a vessel makes when she is swiftly tearing over a quiet surface of ocean, rose into the wind on either hand.

A ladder was close beside me, conducting on to the poop, or upper deck. I mounted it, and stood at the head of the steps looking around me. I saw but two figures. One of them was on the other side of the deck. He was motionless, with his arm round a rope, and his shape stood out against the sparkling stars as sharply as though he were a statue in ebony. The other figure was at the aftermost end, at the wheel. There was a deep shadow of rigging and of sail where I had come to a pause. The dusky hue of the cloak I wore blended with the obscurity, and I was not observed by the figure opposite.

I looked over the side and watched the water sweeping past white as milk, with a frequent glitter of beautiful green lights in it. I looked away into the far distance, where the confines of the black plain of the ocean were lost in the darkness of the night, and fixed my eyes upon the stars, which were shining sparely in those dim and distant reaches, and said to myself, Where is my home? Which of all these countless stars is shining down upon my home now? But have I a home? How can I tell, for I do not know who I am? Then I looked up at the swollen, pallid breasts of sails climbing one on top of another into faint, almost visionary spaces where the loftiest were; and whilst I looked I heard two silver chimes ring out of the darkness forward. What can those bells mean? I wondered. How marvellous was the hush upon this great, speeding shadow of a ship, this dim bulk of symmetrical clouds waving its star-reaching heights in solemn measure as though to the accompaniment of some deep spiritual ocean-music, heard by it, but soundless to my ears! Where was the multitude of people who swarmed upon the deck when I had come on board in the morning? I knew they were resting below, and the thought of that great crowd slumbering in the heart of the sweeping, cloud-like shadow at which I gazed awed me; but the emotion changed into one of fear and of loneliness suddenly, and to rally myself I turned and walked towards the after-end of the vessel.

The moon was in the west, and the light in the sky that way was the silvery azure which I had witnessed through my cabin porthole. I walked to the extreme end of the ship, where the helm was, and stood by the side of the wheel. When I was on board the French vessel I had always found something fascinating in the machinery of the helm. I used to gaze with childish wonder at the compass-card, steadily in its brass bowl pointing out the little vessel’s course, and I would watch with surprise the instant response of the small fabric to the movement of the wheel.

But now as I stood here beside this wheel I surveyed a stretch of deck that seemed measureless, as the white planks, glimmering like sand from my feet went stretching and fading into the obscurity far forward. Behind me, from under the high, dark stern of the ship, rushed the pale and yeasty wake, like a line of pale smoke blowing over the sea. The stars danced in the squares of the rigging; they tipped as with diamond-points the sides of the sails, and they blazed at the summits of the three dim spires of the ship’s masts; and the moon in the west, poised in an atmosphere of delicate greenish silver, trembled a waving fan-shaped stream of light upon the summer pouring of the ocean under her.

All at once the helmsman, on the other side of the wheel, of whose presence I had hardly been sensible, uttered a strange low sort of bellowing cry, and tied along the deck to where the figure of the other man was. Involuntarily I put my hand upon the wheel, as though instinctively feeling that it must be held steady, and that it must be held in any case, or the ship would be without governance. The two men came slowly along. The motions of each were full of wariness, and suggestive in the highest degree of alarm and astonishment.

‘Dummed if it ain’t a-steering the ship,’ said one of them in a hoarse voice.

‘You scoundrel, it’s a woman!’ cried the other. ‘How dare you quit your post. You’ll have the ship in the wind in a minute,’ and they both arrived together at the wheel running, one being pushed by the other.

The man who pushed the other was dressed in a monkey-jacket with brass buttons and a naval cap. He was clearly one of the ship’s officers, but it was not surprising that I should be meeting him now for the first time. He thrust his face into my hood, and then backed a step and exclaimed, ‘Who are you?’ then immediately added, ‘Oh! of course. You’re the person that was taken out of the French brig. Come away from the wheel, will you, ma’m? Here’s an Irishman that believes you a ghost.’

The other muttered in his throat. I walked some paces away, and the officer accompanied me.

‘How is it that you’re not in your bed?’ said he.

‘I have been sleeping all day,’ I answered, ‘and have come up to breathe the air.’

‘We do not allow females to wander about the ship of a night,’ said he. ‘However, you cannot be supposed to know the rules.’ I saw him by the moonlight eye me strenuously and earnestly. ‘That’s a big bandage you have on, ma’m. I hope you are not much hurt?’

‘I was found lying injured and unconscious in a boat by the Frenchmen.’

‘And they tell me you have no memory.’

‘I can remember nothing,’ I answered.

‘What is that?’ cried he, pointing.

‘It is the moon,’ said I.

‘What is that but memory?’ he exclaimed.

‘I remember nothing of my past,’ said I. ‘Down to the hour in which I awoke to consciousness on board the French brig everything is black. But to whom am I speaking?’

‘You are speaking to the chief mate of the Deal Castle, and his name is Andrew Harris.’

‘What is a chief mate?’ I asked.

‘He is the person that is next in command to the captain.’

‘Then you are of consequence?’ said I.

He smiled broadly. ‘There are people who will run when I sing out.’

‘Nobody appears to be awake on board this ship, saving us who are here,’ said I.

‘Have you come on deck to find that out?’ he exclaimed; then directing his face at the forecastle he uttered a cry, and out of the shadow forward there instantly came a response. He cried again, and a rumbling ‘Ay, ay, sir!’ came out of the shadow. ‘So you see,’ said he, ‘there are four, not three of us, awake; and if I were to sing out again, in about five seconds the decks would be full of sailors running about. And you’ve lost your memory? D’ye know what part of England you hail from?’

‘I cannot even tell that I am English.’

‘What do they want to make out? That you’re from Greenland? I am trying to catch your accent. I have an A 1 ear for accents. I hoped at first you might be Lancashire, where I hail from. Then I fancied I could hear Derbyshire in you. But I reckon it’ll end in Middlesex’ he added thoughtfully; ‘that’s to say if London’s in Middlesex, which no man who goes to sea can be sure of, for every time he returns he wants a new chart, such is the growth of the little village. Does my talk give you any ideas?’ I shook my head. ‘Doesn’t the word London give you any idea?’

I thought and thought, and said, ‘It is a familiar word, but it suggests nothing.’

‘Curse the sea!’ he exclaimed, with an irritable twist of his head, as he looked round the horizon; ‘how ill it treats those who trust themselves to it! It robs you of memory, and it keeps me a poor man. Curse it, I say! I should like to know the name of the chap that was the first to go afloat. I’d burn him in effigy. But it’s some comfort to guess where his soul is. It wasn’t Noah. Noah had to save his life, and I allow he hated the sea as much as I do. All animals—pooh! but not worse than emigrants. And so you’ve lost your memory. And now what’s to bring it back to you, I wonder?’ He broke off to exclaim sharply to the helmsman and repeated, ‘What’s to bring it back to you, I wonder?’

He took a turn as though the remedy were in his mind and merely demanded a little thought. I watched him with deep anxiety. How could I tell but that even from him, that even from this man whom I had never before seen, with whom I was now discoursing in the heart of the ocean night, amid the silence of a faintly moonlit deck, with the sound of wind-brushed waters rising round about us, and the pale shadows of the leaning canvas soaring high above us—how could I tell but that even from this stranger might come the spark, the little leaping flame of suggestion to light up enough of my mind to enable me presently to see all? So I watched him with deep anxiety, whilst he took two or three turns.

Presently he halted facing me. He was a short man, scarcely as tall as I, square-built, and very firmly set on his legs. His hair appeared to be the colour of ginger. His chin was shaved, and he wore a bush of beard upon his throat. As much of his face as the moonlight silvered disclosed a dry, arch, sailorly expression.

‘It requires thinking over,’ said he. ‘My motto in physic is, Like cures like. What sent your memory adrift? You’ll find it was a shock. If the doctor would put you through a course of shocks you’d come out right. I’m a poor man, but I’d wager every farthing I’ll receive for the voyage, that if you were to fall overboard from the height of the ship’s side, when you were fished up you’d have your memory. Some sort of shock did the mischief, and any sort of shock’s going to undo it. That’s my belief. When McEwan visits you again you tell him what I say. Why, now, listen to this: an uncle of mine was so crippled with rheumatism and gout that he had to be carried like a dead-drunk man on a litter to the railway station. He was to consult some professional nob in London. With much backing and filling he was got into the railway carriage, and there he lay like a log, capable of moving nothing but his eyes. Half an hour after the train had started it ran into about forty waggons full of cattle. The bust-up was as usual: engine off the lines, driver in halves, the remains of the fireman in a ditch, several carriages matchwood, a dozen dead people under them, two-and-twenty persons wounded, and the country round about full of bleeding, galloping cattle. And who do you think was the first man to get out and run? My uncle. The collision cured him. He was a well man from the instant the locomotive bust into the waggons, and he has never known an ache since. It’s a shock that’s going to do your business, ma’m, take my word for it.’

I understood him imperfectly. Many of his allusions I did not in the least comprehend, yet I listened greedily, and for some moments after he had ceased I continued to hearken, hoping and hoping for some word, some hint, some suggestion that would help me to even the briefest inward glimpse.

Three silver chimes floated out of the deep shadow of the ship forward. ‘What are those bells?’ I asked.

‘Half-past one,’ he exclaimed; ‘and, with all respect, about time I think for you to be abed. The captain may come on deck at any moment, and if he finds you here he’ll be vexed that I have not before requested you to go below.’

I bade him good-night, but he accompanied me as far as the head of the steps which conducted to the quarterdeck.

‘A shock will do it,’ said he; ‘I’m the son of a doctor, and my advice is—shocks. The job is to administer a shock without doing the patient more harm than good. I’ll think it over. It’ll be something to kill the time with. D’ye know the road to your cabin? Well, good-night, ma’m.’

I silently opened the door of the saloon, regained my berth, and after musing upon my conversation with the officer on deck, I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

‘Good morning, Miss C——,’ exclaimed Mrs. Richards, entering the cabin with a breakfast-tray. ‘I am glad to find you up and dressed. It is a quarter to nine o’clock, and a truly beautiful morning. There is a nice breeze on the quarter, and the ship is going along as steadily as a carriage. Have you slept well?’

‘I have slept a little.’

‘Well, to-day you must appear on deck. You will really show yourself to-day. All the passengers are longing to see you, and do not forget that by mingling amongst them, and talking, and hearing them talk, ideas may come, and your memory with them. Here have you been a prisoner since yesterday morning.’

‘No, I was on deck last night.’

‘What, in the dark?’

‘At one o’clock this morning.’

‘The captain would not like to hear that,’ said she, arching her eyebrows; ‘but you will not do it again. I mean you will not go alone on deck when everybody is asleep except the sailors on watch. What officer was on watch last night?’

‘The first officer, Mr. Harris,’ said I.

‘Did he talk with you?’

‘Yes; he told me that a shock might give me back my memory.’

‘What did the man mean?’

‘He said he believed if I were to fall overboard from the height of the ship, that when I was taken out of the water the shock would be found to have restored my memory.’

She burst into a loud laugh. ‘He is a truly comical gentleman,’ she exclaimed, ‘though he never intends to be funny, for he is always in earnest. It is said of him that ever since he was second officer, now getting on for five years, he has offered marriage in every voyage he has made to one of the lady-passengers. Our head steward has been shipmate with him three voyages, and on every occasion he has offered marriage. He is always rejected. A shock indeed!’ she exclaimed, growing suddenly very grave—‘what an idea to put into your head! You might go and throw yourself overboard in the belief that the act would cure you of loss of memory. I will tell the doctor to give Mr. Harris a hint not to talk too much. Now make a good breakfast, and by-and-by I will call and take you to see Mrs. and Miss Lee.’

I sat at my solitary repast, which was bountiful indeed, and reflected upon what Mrs. Richards had said. No! it would not help me to confine myself to my cabin. By mingling, by conversing, by hearing others discourse, by gazing at them, observing their dress, their manners, their faces, some gleam might come back to touch the dark folds of memory. In the steerage they were breakfasting somewhat noisily. There was a great clatter of crockery, and a sound of the voices of men and women raised as though in good spirits, and the tones of children eagerly asking to be helped. The light upon the sea was of a dazzling blue; through the porthole I could see the small blue billows curling into froth as they ran with the ship, and the ship herself was going along as smoothly as a sleigh, saving a scarcely perceptible long-drawn rising and falling, regular as the respiration of a sleeping breast.

I was looking through the porthole, when the door was thumped and opened, and the ship’s doctor stepped in.

‘Well,’ said he, in his strong North accent, knitting his brow and staring into my face with his sharp eyes, ‘what are ye able to recollect this morning, ma’m?’

‘My memory is good for everything that has happened since I first opened my eyes on board the French vessel,’ I answered.

‘Humph!’ He felt my pulse, examined my brow, dressed the injury afresh, and said that I should be able to do without a bandage in a day or two.

‘The captain tells me,’ said he, plunging his hands into his trousers pockets and leaning against the edge of the upper bedstead, ‘that he means to keep you on board, trusting that your memory will return meanwhile, when he’ll be able to put you in the way of reaching your friends. He cannot do better.’

‘But my memory may continue dark even to the end of the voyage,’ I exclaimed.

‘True, but you’re better here meanwhile. You might be consigned to the keeping of a captain who, on his arrival in England, would set you on shore without considering what is to become of you. How then, Miss C——, for that is to be your name, I hear. But if Captain Ladmore carries you round the world there’ll be ten months of time before ye, and it will be strange if you aren’t able to recollect in ten months. And now tell me—have ye never a sensation as of memory? What’s the feeling in you when you try to look back?’

‘As though it were a pitch-dark night, and I was groping with my hands over a stone wall.’

‘Good! Try now to think if ye have any other sensations.’

‘Yes, there is one; but how am I to express it?’

‘Try.’

‘When,’ I exclaimed, after a pause, ‘I endeavour to pierce the past, I seem to be sensible as of the presence of waves of darkness, thick folds of inky gloom swaying and revolving in black confusion, and dripping wet.’

He kept his eyes fastened upon me, lost in reflection. My words seemed to have struck him. Then, telling me it was a fine morning, and that I must come on deck and get all the air and sunshine possible, he went away.

I took up a book, but I could not fix my attention. I was able to read—that is to say, the printed characters were familiar to me, and the words intelligible—but I could not keep my mind fastened to the page. Growing weary of aimlessly sitting or wandering about in my berth, I opened the door and peeped out. As I did so I heard the fat, chuckling laugh of a baby tickled or amused. A young woman sat at the table that was nearest to my cabin, and in front of her, on the table, she held a baby who shook and crowed with laughter as she made faces at it. There was nobody else to be seen. At the forward end, all about the steps was a haze of sunshine, floating through the open hatch there from the front windows of the saloon; otherwise the atmosphere was somewhat gloomy.

I stepped out of my berth and approached the young woman in order to look at the child. She turned her head, and, seeing me, grew grave, and stared, whilst the baby instantly ceased to laugh, and rounded its mouth and eyes at me.

‘That is a dear little child,’ said I. ‘What a sweet rippling laugh it has? Is it a boy or girl?’

‘A girl,’ answered the young woman, with a little suggestion of recoil in her posture, as though I was an object she could not at once make sure of.

‘May I kiss her?’

She held the baby up, and I kissed its cheek. She was a golden-haired child of seven or eight months, with large dark eyes. She did not cry when I kissed her.

‘She is a fine child—a beautiful child!’ said I. ‘Are you the mother?’

‘No, I am the sister of the mother,’ answered the young woman, beginning to speak as though her doubts of me were leaving her. ‘Aren’t you the lady the sailors rescued yesterday?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘How glad I am you were saved!’

She had a bonnie face, and I looked at her and smiled, and said, ‘May I nurse baby for a minute?’

She put the child into my arms. I kissed it again, and the little creature stared at me, but did not cry.

‘You nurse her nicely,’ said the young woman. ‘How quickly a baby seems to know an experienced hand! I cannot get the knack of holding her comfortably.’

At these words or at that moment I was seized with an indescribable feeling—a sightless yearning, a blind craving, a sense of hopeless loneliness, that, as though it had been some exquisite pang of the heart, caught my breath and clouded my vision, and the blood left my face, and every limb thrilled as though an electric current were pouring through me. The baby set up a cry, and the woman, with fear in her countenance, snatched it out of my arms.

‘Oh, my God! what is this?’ I exclaimed, bringing my hands to my breast. ‘Oh, my God! what is this? I have lost—I have lost—oh! what was it that came and went?’

‘What is the matter?’ exclaimed Mrs. Richards, coming out of her berth, that was immediately beside where I stood. ‘Is it you, Miss C——? I did not know your voice. Are you poorly?’

‘No,’ I answered; ‘a sudden fancy—but I cannot give it a name—I cannot recall it—I don’t know the meaning of it. Oh, my head, my head!’ and I sat down at the table and leaned my brow upon my hands.

‘A little passing feeling of weakness,’ said Mrs. Richards. ‘Only think what this poor lady has suffered,’ she added, addressing the young woman, who had risen and gone a few paces away, and was now standing and holding the baby and staring. ‘How could any one hope to be speedily well after such sufferings as this lady has passed through? But I know what will do you good, dear;’ and she slipped into her berth and returned with a glass of her cherry-brandy, which she obliged me to drink. ‘And now,’ said she, ‘come to your cabin and compose yourself, and then you shall pay Mrs. Lee a visit.’

‘I do not feel ill,’ said I, as I seated myself in my cabin; ‘it was a sensation. I cannot describe it. I was holding the baby, and as I looked at it I—I——’

‘It might have been a little struggle of memory,’ said the stewardess.

‘But it gave me nothing—it showed me nothing—it told me nothing,’

‘Never mind,’ said the stewardess. ‘How do you know but it may mean that it is your memory waking up? I have read that people who have been restored to life after having been nearly hanged or nearly drowned suffered tortures, much worse tortures than when in their death struggles. Might it not be the same with the memory? It is not dead in you, but it is lying stunned by something dreadful that happened to you. Now it may be waking up, and its first return to life is a torment. Let us hope it, dear. And how do you feel now?’

‘I should feel happy if I could believe that what you say is true.’

‘Well, you must have patience and keep your heart cheered up.’ She then looked at my hair, and saying aloud, but to herself, ‘Yes, I believe it will be the very thing,’ she left me.

When she returned she bore in her hand a little mob-cap of velvet and lace. ‘Put this on,’ said she. ‘It is one of four that were given to me last voyage by a lady-passenger. I intended them for a friend in Sydney, but you are welcome to them. Wear it, my dear.’

I put the cap on, and certainly it did improve my looks. ‘I will not thank you for your kindness with my lips,’ said I; ‘if I began to speak my thanks I should tire you out long before I could end them.’

She interrupted me. ‘Do not talk of thanking me. I declare, Miss C——, I am never so happy as when I am being helpful and useful to others, and there are many like me. Oh, yes! most of us have larger and kinder hearts than we give one another credit for. Do you feel equal now to paying a visit to the saloon?’

I answered Yes, and she led the way through the steerage and up the small flight of steps which conducted to the after-part of the saloon. The sunshine lay in a blaze upon the skylights, and the interior was splendid with light and with prismatic reflections of light. There was a sound overhead as of many people walking to and fro. The saloon was empty; everybody would choose to be on deck on so fine a morning.

Mrs. Richards walked to the door of one of the centre berths and knocked. A soft voice full of music bade her enter. She turned the handle, and held it whilst she addressed the inmate of the berth. ‘I have brought Miss C——,’ she exclaimed. ‘The lady is here, Miss Lee. May she step in?’

‘Oh, yes, pray,’ said the musical voice.

Mrs. Richards made room for me to pass, and, pronouncing Miss Lee’s name by way of introducing us, she added that she had a great many duties to attend to, and quitted the berth.

CHAPTER X
ALICE LEE

A young lady was seated in a comfortable armchair. A handsome skin marked like a leopard’s covered her knees and feet, and in her lap was an open volume. She had a great quantity of rich brown hair, a portion of which was plaited in loops upon the back, whilst the rest crowned her head in coils. I had no memory of fair faces with which to compare hers; to my darkened mind it was the first beautiful face I had seen, and as she looked up at me, smiling, with her lips in the act of parting to address me, I gazed at her with wonder and admiration and pity.

Oh, what a sweet, melancholy, exquisitely beautiful face was Alice Lee’s! There was death upon it, and it seemed the more beautiful for that. Her eyes were large, of a soft grey, with a sad expression of appeal in them that was never absent whether she was grave or whether she smiled. The hollows were deep and dark-tinctured, as though they reflected the shadow of a green leaf. Her lineaments were of perfect delicacy: the mouth small and slightly contracted, the teeth brilliant pearls, the cheeks sunken, slightly touched with hectic, and the complexion of the sort of transparency that makes one imagine if a light were held within the cheek the glow of it would shine through the flesh. The brow was faultlessly shaped, and the blue veins showed upon it as in marble. Her hands were cruelly thin and the white fingers were without rings. She was dressed in what now might be called a teagown, and it was easy to see that her attire was wholly dictated by considerations of comfort.

Her smile was full of a sweetness that was made sad by her eyes, as she said, ‘I am so glad to see you. Forgive me for not rising. You see how my mother has swathed my feet. She will be here presently. Where will you sit? There is a chair; bring it close to me. I have been longing to see you! I have heard so much of you from Mrs. Richards.’

I sat down close beside her, and she took my hand and held it whilst she gazed at me.

‘You are kind to wish to see me,’ said I. ‘It is happiness to me to meet you. I am very lonely. I cannot recover my memory. It is terrible to feel, that if I had my memory I would know—I would know—oh, but not to be able to know! Have I a home? Are there persons dear to me waiting for me, and wondering what has become of me? Not to be able to know!’ said I, with my voice sinking into a whisper.

‘Yes, it is terrible,’ she exclaimed gently. ‘But remember these failures of memory do not last. Again and again they occur after severe illnesses. But when is it that the memory does not return?’

‘But when it returns, should it return,’ said I, ‘what may it not tell me that I have lost for ever?’

‘But it will soon return,’ she exclaimed, ‘and things are not lost for ever in a short time. How long is it since you have been without memory? Not yet a fortnight, Mr. McEwan told us. No! our minds would need to be long blank for us to awaken and discover that things dear to us are lost for ever. It is only by death,’ she added, softening her voice and smiling, ‘that things are lost, and not then for ever.’

I looked at her! at her sunken eyes, at her drawn mouth, at the malignant bloom her cheeks were touched with, at her thin, her miserably thin hands, and I thought to myself, how selfish am I to immediately intrude my sorrow upon this poor girl, who knows that she is fading from her mother’s side, and in whose heart therefore must be the secret, consuming grief of an approaching eternal farewell. Her wretchedness must be greater than mine, because her trouble is positively defined to her mind, whereas mine is a deep shadow, out of which I can evoke nothing to comfort me or to distress me, to gladden my heart or to break it.

She gazed at me earnestly, and with a touching look of sad affection, as though she had long known me. I was about to speak.

‘There is something,’ said she, ‘in your face that reminds me of a sister I lost four years ago. It is the expression, but only the expression. Mother will see it, I am sure.’

‘Was your sister like you?’ I asked.

‘No, you would not have known us for sisters. Yet we were twins, and it is seldom that twins do not closely resemble each other.’

I bent my gaze downwards. I was sensible of a sudden inward, haunting sense of trouble, a sightless stirring of the mind, that affected me as a pain might.

‘When I look at you,’ she continued, ‘I fully agree with Mr. McEwan that you are not nearly so old as your white hair makes you appear. Most people look older as the months roll on, but as time passes you will look younger. Even your hair may regain its natural colour, which the doctor says is black. How strange it will be for you to look into the glass and behold another face in it! But the change will be too gradual for surprise.’

‘You are returning to England in this ship, I believe?’ said I.

‘Yes, we engaged this cabin for the round voyage, as it is called. A long course of sea-air has been prescribed for me. A steamer would have carried us too swiftly for our purpose. You can tell what my malady is?’

She was interrupted by a little fit of coughing.

‘What is your malady, Miss Lee?’

‘It is consumption,’ she answered.

‘I could not have told. I try to think and to realise; but without recollection how can one even guess? But now that you tell me it is consumption, I understand the word, and I see the disease in you. I hope it is not bad; I hope the voyage will cure it.’

‘It is very bad,’ she answered, looking down, and speaking softly, and closing the volume upon her lap, ‘and I fear the voyage will not cure it. But I fear only for my mother’s sake. I have no desire to live as I am, ill as I am. Yet I pray that I may not die at sea. I shrink from the idea of being buried at sea. But how melancholy is our conversation! You come to me full of a dreadful trouble of your own, and here am I increasing your sadness by my talk! Oh! I wish you could tell me something about yourself. But we know your initials. That is surely a very great thing. I am going to take the letters “A. C.”; and put all the surnames and Christian names against them that I can think of. One of them might be your name.’

‘I fear I should not know it if I saw it,’ said I.

‘We can but try,’ said she, smiling; ‘we must try everything. How proud it would make me to be the first to help you to remember.’

‘What did your twin sister die of?’

‘Of consumption. Mother believes that such a voyage as I am taking would have saved her life. I fear not—I fear not. My father died of that malady. He was a shipowner at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and we live at Newcastle, or close to it, at a place called Jesmond, and I was hoping before I met you that I should hear an accent in your speech to tell me that you belong to our part of England, for I believe I should know a Northumbrian, at least a Tyneside Northumbrian, anywhere, no matter how cultivated his or her speech might be. But you do not belong to our part.’

‘Have you sisters living?’

‘None. I am now the only child. Mother has been a widow six years. But our talk is again melancholy.’

‘No, it is not melancholy—indeed not. It interests me. I have longed to meet someone like you. I do not feel lonely with you,’ and as I took her hand the tears stood in my eyes.

She feigned not to observe that I was crying. ‘Is not this a fine cabin?’ she exclaimed cheerfully, gazing about her; ‘it is the biggest in the whole row. It is better off for furniture, too, than the others. What a fine large window that is, and how glad I shall be when I am able to keep it open and feel the sweet tropic wind pouring in! I am longing to get on deck, but the doctor is afraid of my catching a chill, and he tells me I must wait until we arrive at a certain latitude. I hope you will often come and sit with me. I will read to you—it does not fatigue me to read aloud, a little at a time.’

‘Indeed, I will often sit with you,’ said I.

‘Where is your cabin?’ I told her. ‘I hope it is comfortable. But I am sure Captain Ladmore would wish you to be comfortable. He seems a most kind-hearted man, and he has his grief too. What could be sadder than for a sailor, after an absence of many months, to return to his home full of love and expectation, and find his dear ones, his wife and his only child, dead? I felt truly grateful to him when I heard that he did not mean to send you home until you had your memory.’

‘And I, too, am grateful,’ I exclaimed. ‘I am without money, and in a strange place I should be like one that is blind; and when I arrived, to whom should I turn? What should I be able to do? If I knew, oh, if I but knew that my home was in England!’

The door was quietly opened, and a middle-aged lady entered. She was fresh from the deck, and wore a bonnet and cloak. She was a little woman with soft grey hair, and with some look of her daughter in her. Her gown was of silk, and her jewellery old-fashioned. She did not wait for her daughter to introduce me, but at once approached with her hand advanced, saying she knew who I was; and with slow deliberate speech and soft voice she asked me a number of questions too commonplace to repeat, though they were full of feeling and of good-nature.

‘Is your head badly hurt?’ she asked, gazing with an expression of maternal anxiety at the bandage.

‘I do not think so,’ said I. ‘I have not yet seen the injury. I hope I am not greatly disfigured.’

‘I do not think that you are disfigured,’ said Miss Lee. ‘The doctor says it is your eyebrow that was hurt.’

‘I believe the upper part of my nose is injured,’ I said.

‘How was it that you were hurt?’ asked Mrs. Lee, seating herself, and viewing me with a face of tender commiseration.

I answered that I supposed the boat’s mast fell upon me when I was unconscious.

‘Might not such a blow account for your losing your memory?’ said she, speaking in a soft, slow voice delightful to listen to.

‘I fear it matters not what took my memory away,’ said I, with a melancholy smile; ‘it is gone.’

‘It will return,’ said Miss Lee.

‘Do you remember nothing that happened before you were found in the open boat?’ asked Mrs. Lee.

‘Nothing,’ I returned.

She looked at her daughter, and tossed her hands.

‘I hope we shall be much together,’ said Miss Lee. ‘Mother, we must endeavour to recover Miss C——‘s memory for her. You must be patient,’ said she, smiling at me. ‘You will have to bear with me, I shall scheme and scheme for you, and every scheme I can think of we must try.’

‘It will be an occupation for you, Alice, and a beautiful one,’ said her mother, and she suddenly caught her breath, as though to prevent a sigh from escaping her.

‘But,’ continued Miss Lee, ‘I shall not be satisfied with Miss C—— as a name. It will do very well for you to be known by in the ship, but it is stiff, and I shall not be able to call you by it. There are so many names of girls beginning with A. Let me see. There is my own name, Alice; then there is Agatha, and then there is Agnes——’

I met Mrs. Lee’s eyes fixed upon me. ‘Do you seem to recollect any of these names?’ she asked. ‘I hoped, by the expression on your face——’ She hesitated, and I answered:—

‘The names are familiar sounds, but I cannot say that any one of them is mine.’

‘We must invent something better than Miss C——,’ said her daughter.

‘There is plenty of time, my love,’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee. ‘The captain is going to keep you on board,’ she continued, addressing me in her soft, slow-spoken accents, ‘until your memory returns. It may return when we have arrived at a part of the ocean where it will be the same whether Captain Ladmore keeps you with him or sends you home by another ship. For instance, if your memory were to return when we were within a week’s sail of Sydney, it would be better for you to remain in this ship, where you will have friends, than to return in a strange vessel, though you might save a few weeks by doing so. In that case we shall be together, for Alice and I are going round the world in the Deal Castle. Were you ever in Australia?’

‘Oh, mother! that is an idle question,’ exclaimed Miss Lee.

‘Yes, I forgot,’ cried Mrs. Lee, with a look of pain. ‘Oh, memory, memory, how little do we value it when we possess it! How all conversation is dependent upon it! I have somewhere read that it is sweeter than hope, because hope is uncertain and in the future, but our memories are our own, many of them are dear, and they cannot be taken from us. But it is not so,’ said she, looking at me.

‘Hope is better than memory,’ said Miss Lee. ‘It is yours, and you must suffer nothing to weaken it in you or to take it from you.’

The mother and daughter then conversed together about me, and asked me many questions, and listened with breathless interest and with touching sympathy to the account I gave them of my having been locked up all night in the cabin of the French brig. And I also told them how generously and kindly the young Frenchman, Alphonse, had behaved, how tender had been his care of me, and how he had been hurried away from the attempt to preserve my life by his uncle’s threats to leave him behind in the sinking vessel.

‘I am astonished,’ said Mrs. Lee, ‘that you should be able to remember all these circumstances, whilst you cannot recollect anything that happened before.’

‘But does not that mean that there will be something for me to work upon?’ said Miss Lee.

Her mother arose and, coming to my side, gently laid her hand upon my arm, and, looking into my face, said, ‘Alice and I know that there must be many things which you stand in need of. It could not be otherwise. Were you a princess it would be the same. You and my daughter are about of the same figure; you, perhaps, are a little stouter.’ She again caught her breath to arrest a sigh. ‘For so long a voyage as this we naturally brought a great deal of luggage with us, and I wish you to allow us to lend you anything that you may require.’ I thanked her. ‘Most of our luggage is in the hold,’ she continued. ‘I will ask Mrs. Richards to get some of our boxes brought on deck, and Alice shall select what she thinks you want. There is nothing of mine, I fear, that would be of any use,’ and she looked down her figure with a smile.

‘But we must let others have the pleasure of helping, too, mother,’ said Miss Lee. ‘Mrs. Richards says there are several ladies who desire to be of use.’

‘They shall lend what they like,’ said Mrs. Lee.

‘I am tiring you, Miss Lee,’ said I, rising. ‘I have made a long visit.’

‘Have you been on deck?’ said Mrs. Lee.

I answered that I had not yet been on deck.

‘Will you come with me for a little turn,’ she exclaimed. ‘I will introduce you to some of the passengers. I know most of them now.’

‘I will accompany you with pleasure,’ said I, then faltered, and felt some colour in my cheeks as I glanced at a looking-glass opposite.

‘You are welcome to my hat and jacket,’ said Miss Lee; ‘will you wear them?’ she added, with a sweet look of eagerness.

I took off the cap, and put on the hat, and then the jacket; but the jacket did not fit me—it was too tight, and it would not button.

‘Here is a warm shawl,’ said Mrs. Lee.

‘Does not Miss C—— remind you of Edith?’ exclaimed the daughter.

Mrs. Lee looked hard at me, and, opening the door, passed out.

‘You will come and see me again soon?’ said Miss Lee.

‘I will come,’ I answered, ‘as often as you care to send for me.’

When we had walked a few paces down the saloon towards the aftermost stairs Mrs. Lee stopped, and, putting her hand on my arm, exclaimed, ‘Oh, my poor child!’ I imagined for the moment that the exclamation referred to me. She continued: ‘She is the only one that is left to me now. My heart breaks when I look at her. I try to be composed, and talk lightly on indifferent matters, but the effort is often more than I can bear. Do you think she looks very ill?’

‘She looks ill,’ I answered, ‘but not very ill.’

‘I ought to have taken her a voyage some time ago—they tell me so, at least. I have wintered at Madeira with her, and we spent last winter in the south of France. But they say that a voyage is worth all those resorts and refuges put together. Is she not sweet? She suffers so patiently, too.’

I longed to say something soothing, to utter some hope, but my mind gave me no ideas. Mrs. Lee looked at me whilst I stood at her side with my head hung, fruitlessly striving with my mind that I might say something to console her. ‘I am keeping you standing,’ cried she, and without further words we went on deck.

It was a little before the hour of noon. The sea was a wide field of throbbing blue, laced with foam, every little billow curling along the course the ship was pursuing, and on high was a wide and sparkling heaven of azure, along which many small clouds, like puffs from musketry, were sailing. Warmth but no heat was in the sunshine. The great ship was travelling along almost upright. She regularly and lightly curtseyed, but did not roll. Her sails shone like satin, and on one side they hung far over the water, hollowing low down to a long pole or boom, and the reflection of them in the water under this boom was as though there was a silver cloud in the sea sweeping along with us.

There were no awnings; the sun was not yet hot enough for them. The white planks of the decks sparkled freshly like dry sand, and the shadows of the rigging ruled them with streaks of violet as though drawn by the hand. At the wheel stood a sailor in white trousers and a straw hat; he munched upon a piece of tobacco, and his little reddish eyes were sometimes directed at the compass and sometimes up at the sails, and never at anything else, as though there was nothing more to be seen. Not far from him, at the rail that protected the side, stood the fine tall figure of Captain Ladmore; he held a bright brass sextant, which he occasionally lifted to his eye. Some paces away from him was the short, square, solid form of Mr. Harris, the first officer, and he too held a sextant, though it was not so bright and polished as the captain’s. The raised deck on which I found myself—termed by sailors the poop, and to be henceforth so called by me—seemed to be covered with moving figures, though, after gazing awhile, I observed that they were not so numerous as they at first appeared. They were ladies and gentlemen and a few children; there was much noise of talking, a frequent gay laugh, a constant fluttering of female raiment.

I stood stock-still at the side of Mrs. Lee, staring about me, and for some moments no one seemed to observe us. At any time in my life such a spectacle would have been in the highest degree novel and of the deepest interest. Now it affected me as it would a child. It induced a simple emotion of wonder and delight—the sort of wonder and delight that makes young people clap their hands. Beyond the poop was a deck which I could not see; but in the bows of the ship was a raised deck, called the forecastle, and it was crowded with the emigrant folks sunning themselves, the men lounging, squatting, and smoking, the women, in queer bonnets or bright handkerchiefs tied round their heads, eagerly talking. I looked up at the sails and around at the sea, and at the scene on deck, brightly coloured by the clothes of the ladies.

‘How wonderful! How beautiful!’ I exclaimed.

‘Is she not a noble ship?’ said Mrs. Lee.

The captain turned his head and saw us. He crossed the deck, and asked me in his grave, kindly way how I did. I am glad you have come on deck,’ said he. ‘The mind will grow strong as the body grows strong; but the sun is nearly at his meridian, and I must keep an eye upon him,’ and he stepped back to take his place at the rail.

I caught Mr. Harris, the first officer, inspecting me furtively. When our gaze met he pulled off his cap, and then, with a manner of abrupt energy, reapplied himself to pointing his sextant at the sea.

‘You have made the acquaintance of Mr. Harris, the chief officer?’ said Mrs. Lee.

‘I met him on deck here at one o’clock this morning,’ I answered. ‘We held a short conversation, and he is of opinion that a violent shock, such as my falling overboard, would restore my memory.’

‘Sailors are a singular people,’ said Mrs. Lee. ‘They love to give opinions on anything which does not concern their profession, yet outside their profession they know little—often nothing. Many sea-captains used to visit our house in my poor husband’s lifetime, and out of their talk I might have collected quite a bookful of absurd ideas and laughable superstitions.’

But now my presence on deck had been observed, and in a few moments a number of the passengers gathered about me. I cannot recollect what was said. I was confused by many eyes being bent upon me. One hoped that I was quite recovered, another congratulated me upon my preservation, a third marvelled that I had not died of fright in the cabin of the French brig. Many such things were said, and I had to shake hands with several of the friendly people. There were twenty-five or thirty passengers, and, though a few held aloof, the crowd about me seemed a large one.

A stout, handsomely-dressed, middle-aged woman in a large hat exclaimed, ‘Mrs. Lee, I hope the poor lady understands that whatever I can lend her she may command.’

A tall gentleman with long whiskers and a white wide-awake and an eyeglass, said, ‘My wife is below in her cabin. It is her wish to be of use to the lady. I contend that every living person on board this ship is responsible for her present situation. That is to say, morally responsible. My wife clearly recognises that, and is therefore anxious to be of use.’

The captain uttered an exclamation, Mr. Harris raised his voice in a cry, and immediately eight chimes, signifying the hour of noon, were struck upon a silver-toned bell in some part of the ship forward. The captain and first officer left the deck. In twos and threes the passengers fell away, leaving me to Mrs. Lee. She asked me to give her my arm, and we quietly paced a part of the deck that was unoccupied.

But though the passengers had drawn off, they continued to observe me. My appearance doubtless struck them as remarkable. My figure was that of a fine young woman of five-and-twenty, and my face, with its bandaged brow, its thin white hair, its fine network of wrinkles—not, indeed, so minutely defined as the delicate lines had shown when I first observed them on the brig, but clear enough to make a sort of mask of my countenance when closely looked into—my face, I say, might have passed for a person’s of any age from forty to sixty. There were two tall handsome girls who incessantly watched me as I walked with Mrs. Lee.

‘I hope,’ said I, ‘the people will not continue to stare. It makes me feel nervous to be looked at, and it must come to my waiting until it is dark to take the air on deck.’

‘No rudeness is meant,’ said Mrs. Lee. ‘You are the heroine of the hour, and are paying the penalty of being famous. Fame is short-lived, and you will not long be looked at.’

‘Who is that little man near the boat there, with fur upon his coat? He is unable to remove his eyes from me.’

‘He is Sir Frederick Thompson,’ replied Mrs. Lee in her soft, deliberate voice. ‘Do not look at him. I have heard who he is, and will tell you. He is a City knight. I believe he deals in provisions. I heard him tell Captain Ladmore that after being the most prosperous man in the City of London for years everything suddenly went wrong. People who owed him money became bankrupt, a confidential clerk absconded, the price of the commodities he dealt in fell, and his goods being chiefly perishable, he had to sell them at a heavy loss. He thereupon made up his mind to go a voyage, hoping to find that things had righted themselves by the time that he returned. A rather rash resolution, I think.’

‘And who are those two gentlemen who seem to be arguing near the rigging at the end of the deck on the other side?’

‘The gentleman with the yellow beard and the ill-fitting clothes is Mr. Wedmold; and the shorter man, whose stiff stickup collars will not enable him to turn his head, is Mr. Clack. I do not know what their callings are, I am sure. They are constantly arguing, and always on the same subject. Whenever they get together they argue on literature. I hope they will keep to literature, and not break out into religion. They argue across the table at meal-times. It matters not to them who listens.’

I glanced at the brace of gentlemen with languid interest, and then directing my eyes at the sea, said, ‘Whilst my memory sleeps, Mrs. Lee, my life must be like that circle. Wherever I look I see the same thing.’

‘I do not in the least despair of you,’ she answered. ‘I was talking to Mr. McEwan yesterday on the subject of memory, and we agreed that total loss was almost always associated with insanity. Now, Miss C——, you are not one bit mad. You can reason perfectly well, you converse with excellent good sense. Less than half what you have undergone—though we can only imagine the character of it—less than half, I say—nay, the mere being locked up all night in the cabin of a ship that one believed to be sinking would suffice to drive ninety-nine persons out of every hundred hopelessly mad for life. You have escaped with the loss of your memory. That is to say, with a partial loss. But the memory is a single faculty, and if one portion of it be active and healthy, as it is in your case, I cannot believe that the remainder of it is dead; therefore I do not at all despair of you.’

I listened with impassioned attention to her gently-spoken, slowly and deliberately pronounced, words. At that moment a lady came out of the saloon through the hinder opening in the deck called the ‘companion-way.’ She was a lady of about forty years of age, and she wore a handsome hat, around which were curled some ostrich feathers. Her hair was of the colour of flax, her eyes a pale blue, and her face fat and pale. She gave a theatrical start on seeing me, and then with a wide smile approached us.

‘Oh! Mrs. Lee,’ she exclaimed, ‘your companion, I am sure, is the shipwrecked lady. I have been dying to see her. May I address her?’

‘Let me introduce Mrs. Webber,’ said Mrs. Lee. ‘Mrs. Webber is good enough to take a great interest in you, Miss C——. She wishes to share in the pleasure of being useful to you.’

‘Yes, if you please,’ cried Mrs. Webber. ‘Do not let me keep you standing. There are trunksful of things belonging to me somewhere in the ship, and if you will make out a list of your wants my maid shall see that they are supplied. And you are to be called Miss C——? How truly romantic! Mrs. Lee, I would give anything to be known by an initial only. What could be more delightfully mysterious than to go through life as an initial? Oh, I shall want to ask you so many questions, Miss C——.’

‘Mrs. Webber is a poetess,’ said Mrs. Lee. ‘My daughter is very much pleased with your poem, “The Lonely Heart,” Mrs. Webber. It is truly affecting.’

‘I was certain she would like it,’ answered Mrs. Webber; ‘yet it is not so good as the “Lonely Soul.” The first I wrote with a pen dipped in simple tears, the other with a pen dipped in tears of blood. What a delightful subject Miss C—— would make for a poem—not a short poem, but a volume.’

‘There may be some sorrows which lie too deep for poetry,’ said Mrs. Lee.

‘Too deep!’ cried Mrs. Webber.

‘Yes, in the sense that there are thoughts which lie too deep for tears,’ said Mrs. Lee.

‘That line by Longfellow I never could understand,’ said Mrs. Webber.

‘It is by Wordsworth,’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee.

‘Too deep!’ cried Mrs. Webber again; ‘why, I should have imagined that nothing could be too deep or too high for poetry. Take Browning; doesn’t he go deep? Take Shelley; didn’t he go high? Over and over again they disappear, and what’s a surer sign of a great poet than to sink or soar out of sight? Any simple fellow can make himself understood. The sublime in writing is quite another affair. Don’t you agree with me, Miss C——?’

‘I am sorry I am not able to understand you,’ I answered.

I observed Mrs. Lee give Mrs. Webber a look. The latter cried, ‘Oh yes, I now remember. And yet, do you know, as I was telling my husband not an hour ago, I cannot see that it is very dreadful to be without memory. I mean to say, that it cannot be very dreadful to forget one’s past. To be able to recollect enough to go on with is really all one wants. The condition of a mind that cannot look back, but that can look forward, must surely be romantically delightful; because forward everything is fresh; all the flowers are springing, there are no graves; but behind—for my part, I hate looking back.’

Mrs. Lee muttered low for my ear only: ‘This lady is no poetess.’

‘You will by and by let me ask you many questions I hope, Miss C——,’ exclaimed Mrs. Webber; ‘I should love to exactly realise your state of mind. Of course I am highly imaginative, but to me there is something very beautiful in your situation. You remember nothing save what has happened to you upon the sea, and therefore you may most truly be considered a genuine daughter of old ocean, as much so as if you had risen out of the foam like some ancient goddess whose name I forget. I shall, perhaps, call my poem about you “The Bride of the Deep.” I might imagine that old ocean having fallen in love with you had erased your memory of the land, that you shall know him only and be wholly his. What do you think of that idea, Mrs. Lee?’ and she turned her light blue eyes with a sparkle in them upon my companion.

‘I think our friend’s sorrow is of too solemn a character to make a book of,’ answered Mrs. Lee.

This answer seemed to slightly abash Mrs. Webber, who, after gazing around her a little while in silence, suddenly exclaimed: ‘There are those two wretched men, Mr. Wedmold and Mr. Clack, at it again. They stood yesterday afternoon outside my cabin where I was endeavouring to get some sleep, having passed a wretched night, and for a whole hour they argued upon Dickens and Thackeray—which was the greater author—which was the greater novelist. I coughed and coughed but they took no notice. I shall certainly ask Mr. Webber to speak to them if they argue outside my cabin door again. They not only lose their temper, their arguments are childish. Besides, how sickening is this subject of the relative merits of Dickens and Thackeray! Really, to hear people talk now-a-days, one would suppose that the only writers whose names occur in English literature are Dickens and Thackeray. But the truth is, Mrs. Lee, though books are very plentiful in this age, people read little. But they read Dickens and Thackeray, and having mastered these two names they consider themselves qualified to talk about literature. I am truly sick of the subject; and to have to listen for a whole hour when I am trying to get some sleep! I shall certainly ask Mr. Webber to speak to those two men.’

She then declared her intention of enjoying many a long chat with me, repeating that she had an extraordinary imagination, with which, should my memory continue lifeless, she would undertake to construct a past that would answer every purpose of conversation, reference, and so forth. ‘Indeed,’ she exclaimed, ‘I believe with a little thinking, I should be able to create a past for you so close to the truth as, figuratively speaking, to light you to the very door of your home.’

CHAPTER XI
I AM SUPPLIED WITH CLOTHES

‘I did not think,’ said Mrs. Lee, when we were alone, ‘that Mrs. Webber had so good an opinion of herself. But she is well meaning, and she will be useful to you.’

‘Do you think her imagination will help me?’ said I.

‘Until your memory returns,’ she answered; ‘what could she tell you that you would be able to say yes or no to? But let her question you. On a dark morning, without a compass, one can never tell in what quarter the day will break.’

At this moment Captain Ladmore arrived on deck, and he immediately joined us.

‘I hope, madam,’ said he, addressing me, ‘to have the pleasure of seeing you at the saloon table to-day.’

‘You are extremely good,’ I answered, ‘but I do not yet feel equal to sitting at the saloon table. The privacy of my cabin and the society of Mrs. and Miss Lee, whenever they will endure me, are all that I wish. Besides, I cannot forget——’ I faltered and was silent.

‘What cannot you forget?’ said he gravely.

‘I am not a passenger,’ said I, looking down.

‘What is in your mind when you pronounce the word passenger?’ he asked.

‘A passenger is one who pays,’ I answered.

‘How do you know that?’ said he.

‘I know it,’ said I, after thinking a little; ‘because Miss Lee told me that her mother had hired the cabin for the round voyage.’

‘Ha!’ he exclaimed, exchanging a look with Mrs. Lee. ‘Well?’ he continued, slightly smiling, ‘you will consider yourself a passenger who does not pay. You are the guest of the ship. Some ships are hospitable and liberal hostesses, and the owners of the Deal Castle would wish her to be one of them. Do, pray, be perfectly easy on that score.’

I bowed my head, murmuring a ‘Thank you.’

‘There is one consoling part to be borne in mind,’ said he, addressing Mrs. Lee; ‘one fact that should tend to console and soothe this lady: it is this—she is single. She might have been a married woman driven by disaster from her husband, and, worse still, from her children. But put it that she has parents—it may not be so, who can tell that her parents are living? But to be sundered from a mother and a father to whom, in the course of time, one is certain to return, is not like being torn from one’s children. This is a consideration to console you, Miss C——.’

‘Do not cry,’ said Mrs. Lee, taking my arm. ‘I fully agree with the captain. Only think how it would be if, instead of being single, you were a mother cruelly and strangely taken away from your children.’

At this point, Sir Frederick Thompson, who had been intently surveying us from the other side of the deck, approached. He bowed, and lifted a little white wideawake.

‘I beg pardon for intruding,’ said he, ‘but I should like to ask this lady a question.’

‘If it refers to anything that is past, Sir Frederick,’ exclaimed Captain Ladmore, ‘I fear she will not be able to satisfy your curiosity.’

‘There’s no curiosity,’ said Sir Frederick; ‘it’s merely this: when I was sheriff, Lady Thompson and me, for my poor wife was then living, were invited to the ’ouse of Lord ——,’ and he named a certain nobleman; ‘and I remember that at supper I sat next to his lordship’s sister-in-law, Lady Loocy Calthorpe, whose father was the third Earl ——,’ and here he pronounced the name of another nobleman. ‘What I wanted to say is that this lady is the very himage of Lady Loocy, excepting that Lady Loocy ’adn’t white ’air. Now, mam,’ said he, addressing me; ‘of course you’re not Lady Loocy; but you might be a relative, for Lady Loocy had several sisters and a great number of cousins.’

‘I do not know who I am,’ I answered.

‘How long ago is it since you sat beside Lady Lucy Calthorpe at supper, Sir Frederick?’ asked the captain.

‘Why, getting on for two years and an ’arf.’

‘And you remember her distinctly enough to enable you to find a likeness to her in this lady?’

‘God bless you, captain, yes. If it wasn’t for the white ’air, I should say that this lady was Lady Loocy herself.’

‘Is Calthorpe the family name of the Earl of ——?’ said Mrs. Lee.

‘Certainly, it is,’ answered Sir Frederick; ‘you’ll find it in the Peerage.’

‘The lady’s initials are A. C.,’ said the captain.

Sir Frederick struck the palm of his hand with his clenched fist, and his little eyes shone triumphantly as he said: ‘I’d like to make a bet, captain, that you’ve had the honour of preserving the life of a Calthorpe. Such a likeness as I see is only to be found in families.’

‘The accident of the lady being on board the French brig is accounted for,’ said the captain, eyeing me thoughtfully and earnestly; ‘she was rescued out of an open boat. But where did that boat come from?’

‘Would not Miss C——’s handkerchief, the handkerchief you spoke of, Captain Ladmore, that has her initials, would it not be marked with something more than plain initials if she had rank?’ said Mrs. Lee.

‘I cannot tell,’ answered Captain Ladmore. ‘What should a simple sea captain know of such things?’

‘The haristocracy,’ said Sir Frederick, ‘mark their linen all ways. I’m hable to speak with authority. At a Mansion ’Ouse ball a friend picked up an ’andkerchief, a beautiful lace ’andkerchief, and brought it to my poor wife. The word “Fanny” was worked in the corner and that was my wife’s name, and he thought the ’andkerchief was ’ers. But it didn’t belong to ’er at all. It was the property of Lady —— whose ’usband ’ad been raised to the peerage in the preceding year. There was no coronet on that ’andkerchief.’

Observing that I was expected to speak, I exclaimed: ‘The names Sir Frederick mentions suggest nothing to me.’

‘Well, all that I can say is,’ exclaimed Sir Frederick, ‘that the likeness is absolutely startling.’

He again lifted his little white wideawake, and, crossing the deck, joined a group of passengers with whom he entered into conversation.

‘There is nothing for it but to wait,’ said Captain Ladmore.

‘If your name were Calthorpe,’ said Mrs. Lee, ‘surely the utterance of it would excite some sensations, however weak, in your mind.’

‘One should say so,’ remarked the captain.

‘I fear,’ said I, with much agitation, ‘that if I were to see my name fully written I should not know it. And yet it is strange!’

‘What is strange?’ asked Mrs. Lee.

‘You will not think me vain for repeating it. There can be no vanity in a poor miserable outcast such as I. But I remember that one of the people of the French brig, the young man Alphonse, who had been a waiter, and who had attended upon a great many English people—I remember him once saying he was persuaded that I was a woman of title, or, if not a lady of title, that I belonged to the English aristocracy. I cannot imagine why he should have thought so.’

‘Well,’ said the captain, smiling at Mrs. Lee, ‘it may be that we have preserved the life of the daughter of an Earl, or better still of a Duke. Anything higher we must not hope for. But enough for the present, at all events, that Miss C—— should be a fellow-creature in distress;’ and with a bow that seemed to have gained something in respectfulness, but nothing in kindness, he walked away.

The luncheon-bell rang, and we descended into the saloon. Mrs. Lee begged me to join the company at table. ‘I will ask the steward,’ she said, ‘to find you a place next to my daughter.’ But I entreated her to excuse me.

‘I do not like to show myself in company with this bandage on,’ I said, ‘and I feel weak and shy, and my talk I fear is often childish. I hope to join you in a few days,’ and thus speaking I put her daughter’s hat and the shawl she had lent me into her hands, and made my way to my berth.

When I entered my berth I sat down to rest myself and reflect. I felt weary. The fresh air had rendered me somewhat languid, and I had overtaxed my strength with the several conversations I had held with one and another on the poop. I said to myself, can it be that the little man with the fur on his coat is right? Is my name Calthorpe, and am I a lady of title, and is my home actually in England? And then I hunted in my mind for an idea to help me, but I found none. I groped, as it were, with my inner vision over the thick black curtain that had descended upon my past; but nothing, no, not the most phantasmal outline of recollection glimmered upon the sable folds of my mind. The cries of my heart were unanswered. No echo was returned from the dreadful silent midnight that hung upon my spirit. I looked upon my naked hands; I drew forth my purse, and for the twentieth time gazed at it, and at the money in it; I examined the pocket handkerchief and mused upon the initials in the corner, and whilst I was thus occupied, Mrs. Richards entered with my lunch.