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. III.

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. III.

London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1892

CONTENTS
OF
THE THIRD VOLUME

ALONE ON A WIDE WIDE SEA

CHAPTER XVIII
A STRANGE OFFER

Small is the world of ship board, yet at sea there often happen contrasts in life not less violent and remarkable than those which one meets with in the crowded world ashore. This same day, after my conversation with Alice Lee, I quitted her cabin shortly before the luncheon hour, as she seemed drowsy, and sleep was all important to her whose slumbers were cruelly broken and short throughout the night. Mrs. Lee stole in upon her child, and finding her asleep came to her place by my side at the luncheon table.

The passengers understood that Alice was resting, and the conversation was subdued along the whole line of the table. I said nothing to Mrs. Lee as to what had passed between her daughter and myself. Though the mother knew that her daughter’s condition was hopeless, she could not bear any reference to the girl’s dying state. That is to say, she would speak of it herself, but with eyes that wistfully sought a contradiction of her fears.

Now, whilst I sat at table I observed that Mr. Harris regarded me with more than usual attention. There was an expression of speculation in his face, as though I were some singular problem which he was wearying his brains to solve. His air was also one of abstraction, and direct questions put to him by passengers sitting near were unheeded.

Shortly before lunch was over Mrs. Lee withdrew to her berth. I remained at table, having for the moment nothing else or better to do. Mrs. Webber, remarking that I was alone, left her seat and took Mrs. Lee’s chair at my side.

‘It is really too bad,’ said she, ‘that those wretched men’—referring to Mr. Clack and Mr. Wedmold—‘should be arguing on their eternal subject of literature when they know that poor Alice Lee is sleeping, and that their voices might awaken her.’

‘I have not been listening,’ said I. ‘They have not been talking very loudly, I think.’

I looked towards the two gentlemen, and my attention being directed to them, I discovered that they were arguing, and, as usual, on literary matters. But their voices were somewhat sunk, as though they recognised the obligation of speaking low.

‘My simple contention is,’ said Mr. Wedmold, ‘that criticism as we now have it is absolutely worthless. If I were a publisher I would not send a book of mine to the press. I would content myself with making it known to the public by advertisements. A man writes a review and it is published in a newspaper. Just before he sat down to write the review he was disturbed by a double knock, and his servant handed him a manuscript which he sent six weeks before to a firm of publishers. The manuscript is declined with thanks. What sort of a review will that man write? Or he may dislike the author of the book he is to review because he thinks him too successful; or he may personally know him and have reason to hate him; or he may not know him and yet have a literary prejudice against him; or, before he writes the review the tax-collector may call; or he may have had a quarrel with his wife over the weekly bills. But by the publication of his review he commits the aggregate intellect of the paper in which it appears to his opinion. For reviews are not quoted as the opinions of Jones or Smith, but as the verdict of the journal in which they write. On the other hand, there may be reasons why the reviewer should extravagantly praise a book which, were it written by you, Clack, or by me, he would probably dismiss in a couple of lines of contempt. Nevertheless, the aggregate intellect of the journal is as much committed to this gross lie of approval as it was to the equally gross lie of depreciation. The name of a newspaper should never be quoted in a publisher’s advertisement, unless it be understood that everybody connected with the newspaper sat in judgment upon the book. A book should be served as a defendant is served. The paper that reviews a book should convert itself into a jury. If one juror alone is to decide the question, then his name should be given. My argument is, why should publishers go on subjecting their wares to twopenny individual caprice?’

‘You will never get rid of criticism,’ said Mr. Clack, ‘until authors lose their desire of hearing people’s opinions on their books. Every man who produces his poor little novel, every woman who produces her poor little volume of poems, pesters his or her friends for their candid opinion. Now if that candid opinion is published in a newspaper and it happens to be rather opposed to the author’s own judgment of his book, the natural thirst of the author is for the extinction of all criticism.’

‘Did you ever hear two men talk such utter bosh in all your life?’ said Mrs. Webber.

‘I will go on deck for a turn,’ said I, observing that the saloon was fast emptying.

‘Those two men,’ continued she, looking at Mr. Clack somewhat spitefully, ‘remind me of a very old story. A Frenchman and an American made a bet that one would out-talk the other. In the morning they were found in bed, the American dead and the Frenchman feebly whispering in his ear.’

‘If you please, ma’m,’ said the captain’s servant, coming up to me, ‘Captain Ladmore’s compliments, and he will be glad to see you in his cabin if you can spare him five minutes.’

I arose and nervously followed the man to the captain’s cabin, wondering what could be the object of this message. Captain Ladmore made me a grave bow, placed a chair for me, and seated himself at the table at which I had found him reading.

‘I hope,’ said he, ‘you will not think me troublesome in desiring these visits. I have, not had an opportunity of conversing with you lately. You are very much taken up with poor Miss Lee. How does she do?’

‘She is very poorly,’ said I. ‘The malady seems to have rapidly gained upon her within the last few days.’

‘It is too often so,’ he exclaimed. ‘These poor consumptive people embark when it is too late. Mr. McEwan gives me no hope. I fear we shall lose the poor young lady—and lose her soon, too.’ He directed his eyes at the deck and his face grew unusually thoughtful and grave. ‘And how are you feeling?’ said he, after a pause. ‘Does this heat try you?’

‘No, Captain Ladmore; I feel very well, a different being, indeed, since I came into your kind hands.’

‘Your memory is still dormant?’

‘I am unable to remember anything previous to my awaking to consciousness on board the French vessel.’

‘It is truly wonderful,’ said he. ‘Had I not witnessed such a thing I should not have believed it. That is to say, I could understand total failure of memory, for I have heard of instances of that sort of affliction; but I should not have credited that recollection can lie dead down to a certain point and be bright and active afterwards, as it is in you. I have been talking to Mr. McEwan about you, and though we need lay no emphasis upon his opinion, it is right I should tell you that he fears your condition may continue for a considerable time.’

‘For a considerable time!’ I cried; ‘what can he mean by a considerable time, Captain Ladmore?’

‘Do not be agitated. I mention this merely for a reason you will presently understand. McEwan’s judgment may signify nothing. Doctors are a very fallible lot, and they talk blindfolded when they speak of the mind. But that my meaning in inviting you to visit me may be clear, I wish you to suppose that McEwan is right. In that case, what is your future to be?’

I gazed at his grave, earnest face, but made him no answer.

‘Let me repeat,’ said he, ‘that you are very welcome to the hospitality of this ship whilst she keeps the sea; but on our arrival in the Thames it will be necessary for you to find another asylum. What can be done for you, madam, shall be done for you, always supposing that your memory continues to prevent you from directing us. But it is a cold world——’ He paused abruptly.

‘Oh, Captain Ladmore! I hope my memory will have returned to me before we arrive in England—before we arrive in Australia.’

‘I hope so too, indeed,’ said he, ‘but if it should not—— You appear to have found a very warm friend in Mrs. Lee. Yet, from my experiences as a shipmaster, I would counsel you not to lodge too much hope in friends and acquaintances made upon the ocean. People are warm-hearted at sea; they are always full of good intentions; but a change comes when they step ashore.’

‘Captain Ladmore,’ I exclaimed, ‘if I am not to find a friend when I leave your ship, then indeed I shall not know what to do.’

‘That brings me,’ said he, ‘to my motive for inviting you to my cabin; and I will say at once that you appear to have found a very warm friend on board this ship.’ I imagined that he would name Mrs. Webber, but the notion vanished at his next utterance. ‘He appears to entertain a very great admiration for you. It is not,’ continued he, with a slow smile, ‘usual for men occupying our relative positions to confer on such a matter as he has in his mind, but I consider that he exhibited a proper delicacy of feeling in approaching me first. You are temporarily my ward, so to speak, and there are other considerations which induced him to confer with me on the subject.’

‘Of whom are you speaking?’ I asked.

‘I am speaking of Mr. Harris, my chief officer,’ he replied.

‘And what does Mr. Harris want?’ said I, feeling the blood forsake my cheeks.

‘Well, madam,’ said he gravely, ‘he desired me to sound you as regards your feelings towards him. It is his urgent request alone that makes me interfere, nor should I venture to move in the matter but for your present lonely, and I may say helpless, condition. You necessarily need a friend and an adviser, and it certainly is my duty as a master of this ship to befriend and counsel you. Mr. Harris is a man who, in the course of a year or two, ought certainly to obtain command. In the profession of the sea a man must be a prawn before he can become a lobster. His pay at present is comparatively small, yet it should suffice, with great care, to maintain a home. Long before I rose to be a captain I contrived to support a home out of my wages. Mr. Harris is a very respectable, honest man, and a good officer, and I believe his connections are rather superior to the average relatives of merchant mates.’

I listened whilst I stared at him; indeed, the confusion of my mind was so great that I scarcely grasped his meaning. He observed my bewilderment, and said, ‘The matter may be thus simply put: Mr. Harris is willing to offer you his hand in marriage. He is capable of supporting you, and will, I am convinced, prove an excellent husband. By making you his wife he secures you against that future which looks at present dark and hopeless. He is willing to waive all considerations of your antecedents. In that, Miss C., he tells me he hopes for the best.’ He added, after a pause, after viewing me steadfastly, ‘I have fulfilled my promise, and desire to do no more. In Mr. Harris you have met with a man who is willing and anxious in the most honourable way to provide for your future.’

‘I will not marry Mr. Harris,’ said I.

‘It is a question for your own decision alone,’ he answered.

‘I would sooner die in one of the miserable asylums he talked about than marry Mr. Harris,’ I cried.

Captain Ladmore arched his eyebrows and made me a grave bow, as though he would say, ‘There is an end of the matter.’

‘I am sure the man means kindly,’ said I, my eyes beginning to smart with tears which I could not suppress, ‘but it renders my situation truly awful to understand that you and Mr. Harris consider I stand in need of the sort of assistance your first mate offers.’

‘Remember, madam,’ said Captain Ladmore gently, ‘that on your arrival in England you will need a friend if you are still unable by that time to tell us who your friends are, and to what part of the world you belong.’

‘I would far rather die than accept Mr. Harris’s offer,’ said I, with a shudder.

‘Let us then allow the matter to rest,’ said the captain; ‘no harm has been done.’

‘How dare he make such a proposal through you?’ cried I. ‘He may mean well, but how does he know who I am?’

‘He is willing to take all risks,’ said the captain; ‘but you do not entertain his proposal, and the matter therefore ends.’

We both rose at once from our chairs.

‘You have shown me the greatest kindness since I have been on board,’ said I, ‘and some further great kindness yet I will ask of you. It is that as the master of this ship you will command Mr. Harris not to speak to me about marriage.’

‘I will do so,’ said he.

‘I will beg you to command him to hold aloof from me, for I wish to have nothing to say to him.’

The captain bowed his head affirmatively.

‘And will you also command him, Captain Ladmore,’ I exclaimed, ‘not to whisper a syllable of what has passed?’

‘You may trust him to hold his tongue,’ said he smiling.

‘Were the news of his having made me this offer through you to reach the passengers I could never hold up my head again; I could never bear to quit my berth.’

‘The secret shall be entirely ours,’ said the captain.

I hurriedly made my way through the saloon, entered my berth in the steerage, closed and bolted the door, and flung myself into my bunk. I had wept in the captain’s cabin, but I was now too angry, too confounded to shed tears, though I longed for the relief of them. There was a sort of horror too upon me, such a feeling as might possess a woman who had met with a shocking insult; and yet I knew that no insult had been offered to me, so that the horror which was upon me was as inscrutable as ever the emotion had been at other times.

There is no occasion for me to refine upon my condition. The psychologist might well laugh at my speculations; yet I will venture to say this, that when I look back and recollect my feelings at this time, then, knowing that I was without memory to excite in me the detestation with which I had listened to Captain Ladmore’s communication of Mr. Harris’s offer, I cannot doubt that the wild antagonism of my heart to it must have been owing to the memory of instinct—a memory that may have no more to do with the brain than a deep-rooted habit has to do with consciousness.

But not to dwell upon this. I sat motionless on my bed for I know not how long a time, thinking and thinking; I then bathed my face and cooled my hands in water, and stood at the open window to let the draught caused by the rolling of the ship breathe upon me, and thus I passed the afternoon.

Shortly before the first dinner-bell rang Mrs. Richards knocked on my door. I bade her enter. She tried the handle, and found the bolt shot. This was unusual, and on entering she gazed at me with attention. She asked me what the matter was, and I answered that the heat had caused my head to ache, and that I had been lying down. No doubt she perceived an expression on my face which told her that something more than a headache ailed me, but she did not press her questions. She had come to say that Mrs. Lee sent her love, and wished to know what had become of me during the afternoon.

‘I hope to sit with Miss Lee this evening,’ said I; ‘but I shall not dine at the dinner table.’

‘Then I will bring you some dinner here,’ said she, and after we had conversed a little while about the heat of the weather, and about Alice Lee, the kind, motherly little woman left me.

I could not rally my spirits. The mere thought of what Captain Ladmore had said to me induced a feeling of crushing humiliation; and then there was that deep, mysterious, impenetrable emotion of loathing which I have before mentioned. Oh! it was shocking to think that my condition should be so cruelly forlorn as to challenge an offer of marriage from such a man as Mr. Harris. Nothing could have made me more bitterly understand how helpless I was, how hopeless, how lonely. I sought comfort in the recollection of Alice’s words; but not only did it miserably dispirit me to think that the dear girl must die before the wish she had expressed could take effect; I was haunted by the captain’s language—that the world was cold—that the kindly intentions of shipboard acquaintances were not often very lasting—that when people stepped ashore after a voyage the memories they carried with them speedily perished out of their minds.

I ate a little of the dinner that Mrs. Richards brought me, but I had not the heart to leave my cabin. I felt as though I had been terribly degraded and outraged, and my inability to understand why I should thus feel when all the while I was saying to myself, nothing but kindness was meant, no insult could possibly be intended—I say my inability to understand the dark, subtle protest and loathing and sense of having been wronged that was in my mind half crazed me.

Twice Mrs. Richards arrived with a message, first from Mrs. Lee and then from Alice, inviting me to their cabin; but I answered that my head ached, that I did not feel well; and when the door was closed I stood with my face at the port-hole breathing the air that floated warm off the dark stagnant waters, and watching the stars reel to the sluggish motions of the vessel.

Presently I heard the sound of a bell. I counted the chimes—they were eight; and so I knew the hour to be eight. Just then someone gently knocked on the door; it was not the stewardess’s familiar rap. I said, ‘Come in,’ and the door was opened.

‘All in the dark, Agnes?’ exclaimed the voice of Mrs. Lee, ‘what is the matter with you, my dear? Why have you not come to Alice, who has been expecting to see you all the evening?’

‘I am so low-spirited, dear Mrs. Lee, that I am not fit company for Alice,’ I answered.

‘Will you light the lamp,’ said she, ‘that we may see each other?’

I lighted the lamp and she closed the door and seated herself, viewing me steadily, and taking no notice of the interior of the berth, though this was her first visit to these steerage quarters.

‘You look pale,’ said she, ‘pale and worried. Are you really ill or is it the mind? Tell me, my dear. The mind might be making a great effort that affects you like physical sickness would, but it may be the very effort to pray for.’

I had felt that nothing could induce me to confess what had passed; but the tenderness of her voice and manner broke me down. Her sudden presence made me acutely feel the need of sympathy. But my heart was too full for speech. I took her hand and bowing my head upon it wept. She did not speak whilst I sobbed, but soothingly caressed my hair with a touch soft and comforting as her daughter’s.

After awhile I grew composed, and then, with my face averted, I told her that the captain had sent for me after lunch, and I repeated to her the offer Mr. Harris had requested him to make to me. She listened attentively and on my ending exclaimed:

‘Well, my dear, it is a proposal of marriage as extraordinary in its manner of reaching you as the whole character of the man who made it. But what is there in it to cause you to fret and keep yourself locked up in this dark place?’

‘It affects me as a dreadful insult.’

‘But why? It is not meant as an insult. Captain Ladmore is not a man to suffer one of his officers to insult you through him.’

‘I cannot explain, Mrs. Lee. This offer of marriage has shocked me as though it had been some horrid outrage, and I do not know why.’

She sat silently regarding me.

‘But that is not all,’ I continued. ‘The loathing, the horror the offer has caused is too deep; I feel that it is too deep to be owing merely to the offer. Some sense lying in blackness within me has been shocked and outraged. But that is not all: the offer has made me feel how lonely I am, how utterly hopeless my future must be if my memory does not return to me.’

‘It is very strange,’ said she, ‘that you should feel that this extraordinary recoil as of loathing comes not from Mr. Harris himself as it were, but from his offer.’

‘You exactly express it,’ I exclaimed; ‘it is not the man but the offer which fills me with loathing.’

‘And you do not understand why this should be?’ said she.

‘No, because the man means kindly. He approached me even with delicacy through the captain. There is nothing in him which should make me loathe him.’

‘And still his offer fills you with horror and disgust?’

‘Yes.’

She surveyed me for awhile, lightly running her eye over me with an expression of inquiry. She then said, ‘Do you remember what that gipsy woman told you?’

I reflected and answered, ‘She told me much that I remember.’

‘She told you,’ said she, ‘that you were a married woman. What else she said matters not. But she told you, Agnes, that you were married, and that you have left a husband who wonders and grieves over your absence.’

I drew a deep tremulous breath not knowing what meaning she had in her mind.

‘From what you have now told me,’ she continued, ‘I am disposed—mind, my dear, I only say disposed—to believe that the gipsy woman may be right.’

‘From what I have now told you!’ I echoed.

‘What can cause this deep recoil in you from Mr. Harris’s offer? What can occasion your detestation of it and the bitter feeling of shame? His offer reached you in the most inoffensive manner possible. There is hardly a woman who would not find something in such an offer of marriage made by such a man under such conditions to laugh at. No honourable offer of marriage can fill a woman with loathing. A man can pay a woman no higher compliment than to ask her to be his wife, and no woman therefore is to be unutterably outraged, as you tell me you are, by the highest compliment our sex can receive. Nor is it as though Mr. Harris were a monster of a figure and face to justify the abhorrence his offer has excited. What, then, is the reason of this abhorrence?’

She sank into a little reverie during which I watched her almost breathlessly. ‘I shall not be at all surprised, Agnes,’ said she presently, ‘if you prove to be a married woman in spite of your not wearing a wedding ring. There must be a reason for your not wearing a wedding-ring, and some of these days, please God, you will be able to account for its missing from your finger. I believe—yes, I earnestly believe’—she went on looking me eagerly in the eyes—‘that your antipathy to this offer, the sense of insult that has attended this offer, arises from a rebellion of the instincts which possess the truth, though they are unable to communicate it to the intelligence. The impression of marriage—the great momentous step of every woman’s life—is too deep to perish. Your secret horror, your unaccountable loathing, is the subtle and unintelligible revolt of your chastity as a wife against an offer that is an insult to that chastity. I believe this, my dear, I do indeed.’

‘Oh God!’ I cried, and my bursting heart could find no other vent than that cry of ‘Oh God!’

‘You must not be distressed,’ continued the dear little woman, clasping my hand, ‘because our speculations should be tending the right way. Suppose we are able to satisfy ourselves that you are a wife; the knowledge will be a distinct gain, something to employ with profit on our return to England. But to be able to form no ideas whatever about you, my dear——And now I wish to say a word about your future. Can you believe that after our association on board this ship, after the friendship between you and my darling child, I could bear to lose sight of you on our return home?——But you have been so much upset by what has happened to-day that I will not talk to you now about the future. Come with me to Alice,’ said she rising; ‘it is not long after eight; she has been wanting you all the afternoon and evening, and will be glad if you will sit with her for an hour.’

* * * * *

And now happened another interval of shipboard life, during which there occurred nothing of interest enough to trouble you with. That Captain Ladmore had delivered my answer to Mr. Harris, and that he had also requested, perhaps commanded, his first officer to trouble me no further with his attentions, I could not doubt, for when, next morning, I met Mr. Harris at the breakfast table, I never once caught him looking my way. The twist of his mouth seemed a little dryer than usual, and his countenance might generally express a slight increase of acidity of feeling; nevertheless, he talked somewhat more freely than was commonly his custom, was attentive to what was said, and appeared to direct his eyes at everybody but at me.

His behaviour made me easy, the more so since I was sure he would not talk of what had passed, so that the ridiculous, and to me the humiliating incident, would be known to nobody on board excepting the Lees and the captain of the ship.

And here I may as well say—for it is time that I should dismiss the few shadowy figures which flit between this part of my story and the sequel—that ever after, whilst I remained on board the Deal Castle, the behaviour of Mr. Harris remained the same; that is to say, he never looked at me and never accosted me. If I approached that part of the deck where he was standing, he instantly walked away. For a day or two after I had received his ‘offer’ I would briefly salute him with a ‘Good-morning,’ or some such phrase, if we had not before met in the day, but he never turned his eyes to my face, nor answered me, nor took any notice of me; for which behaviour in him, as you may suppose, I was truly thankful. And yet somehow he so contrived his manner that his downright cutting of me, if I may so express it, was much less noticeable than his conduct had been whilst, as I may suppose, he was making up his mind to offer me marriage. Nobody remarked upon his behaviour; I never, indeed, heard a whisper about it.

He was, indeed, an extraordinary person in his way. I suffer my memory to dwell briefly upon him before he stalks ghost-like off the little stage of my dark and memorable experience. I have, I may say, no doubt whatever he was in earnest in his desire to marry me; and I have since understood that it was in the power of Captain Ladmore to have united us, for it seems that amongst the privileges enjoyed by the master of a merchant vessel is the right to solemnise holy matrimony, and to make two people one as effectually as though they were tied together by a clergyman on shore. I often recall the poor man and speculate on his motive. It would be ridiculous to feign that he had fallen in love with me; my face and thin, white hair must have preserved him from that passion. He might, indeed, have imagined in me certain intellectual graces and qualities, and fallen in love with his own ideal. Was it pure goodness of heart that caused him to take pity on my lonely and helpless condition? or—the notion having been put into his head by Sir Frederick Thompson—did he secretly believe that I belonged to a fine old family, that his marriage to me would connect him with people of title and wealth, and that, for all he knew, when my memory returned I would be able to tell him that he had married a fortune, or enough money, at all events, to release him from a calling which he appeared to hate?

His strange offer of marriage, however, resulted in persuading me that I was a married woman. It would never have entered my head to imagine such a thing but for Mrs. Lee; and then when I came to think over her words, and to reason upon the horror that had visited me whilst I listened to Captain Ladmore, there grew up in my mind a strong secret conviction that I was a wife. It was not a discovery. Indeed, as a surmise, it was no more helpful to my memory than the little City knight’s assurance that I was a member of the house of Calthorpe; and yet it could not have affected me more had it been a discovery. I would lie awake for hours during the night thinking of it. When I was with Alice my mind would wander from the book I read aloud to her from, or my attention would stray from her language, whilst my whole intellectual being sank as it were into the black chasm of memory, where the mind with sightless vision would go on fruitlessly groping until the useless quest grew at times into so keen a torment that often I was convinced I should go mad.

Again and again when alone in my berth I took down the little mirror, as I had been used to do in the earlier passages of this experience, and sitting with it in my hands in a posture that brought the light flowing through the port-hole on to my face, so that the reflection of my countenance lay brilliantly in the mirror, I would peruse my lineaments, search mine own eyes, dwell upon the turn of my lips, and all the while I would be asking myself with a soft whisper, but with a heart racked with the anguish of hopeless inquiry—‘Who am I? Can it be that I am a wife? Oh God! what is it which seems to assure me that Mrs. Lee’s belief that I am a wife is true?’ And then I would say to myself, whilst I sat gazing at my face in the mirror, ‘If I am a wife I may have children. Can it be that there are children of my own in the unknown home in the unknown country from which God has banished me in blindness—that there are children there whose mother I am, who call me mother, who have cried for me in the day and in the night as their mother who has gone from them? Can it be so?’ I would ask myself. And then I would bend the ear of my mind to the mute lips of my dead or sleeping memory, and imagination would strain within me to catch some echo of a child’s voice, of a child’s cry or laugh, that would remind me and give me back the image of what, since I now believed myself a wife, I imagined that I had lost.

CHAPTER XIX
I CONVERSE WITH THE GIPSY

A few days of sultry oppressive calm were followed by a violent storm. I was sitting with Alice Lee in her cabin when her mother entered and said:

‘Such a marvellous sunset everybody declares never was seen. Go and look at it, Agnes; I will sit with Alice.’

‘I will go with Agnes,’ said her daughter.

She arose, but her cough obliged her to sit. When her cough had ceased she arose again, but slowly and painfully, with a heart-rending suggestion of weakness and exhaustion in her whole manner.

‘Do not go on deck, dearest,’ said her mother; ‘the cabin steps will try you.’

‘Oh, mother! let me go and let me go quickly,’ exclaimed Alice. ‘I love to look at a glorious sunset, and the sunsets here are soon gone.’

Mrs. Lee gazed at her child with a pleading face, but made no further objection, and the three of us went on deck, the girl supported by her mother and me. Twice whilst ascending the short flight of cabin stairs Alice paused for breath. There is much that I have cause to remember in this time, but nothing do I see after all these years more clearly than the anguish in the mother’s eyes, as she looked at me on her child pausing for a second time during the ascent of that short flight of steps.

The sunset was indeed a magnificent spectacle. The western sky seemed in flames. Deep purple lines of cloud barred the fiery splendour, and the heavens resembled a mighty furnace burning in a grate that half filled the sky. In the immediate neighbourhood of the sun the light round about was blood red, but on either hand were vast lovely spaces resembling lagoons of silver and gold; spikes of glory shot up to the zenith, and the countless lines of them resembled giant javelins of flame arrested in their flight, with their barbed ends glowing like golden stars in the dimly crimsoned blue over our ship’s mast-heads. The ship’s sails reflected the light, and she seemed to be clothed in cloth of gold. Her rigging and masts were veined with gold, and our glass and brass-work blazed with rubies. The swell of the sea was flowing from the west, and the distant glory came running to us from brow to brow, steeping in splendour to the ship and washing the side of her with liquid crimson light. The calm was as profound as ever it had been; there was not a breath of air to be felt save the eddying of draughts from the swinging of the lower sails. The sea floated in undulations of quicksilver into the east, where, on the dark-blue horizon, there hung a red gleam of sail, showing like a little tongue of fire in the far ocean recess. I placed a chair for Alice, but she refused to sit.

‘We will return to the cabin in a few minutes,’ she exclaimed, and she stood looking into the west, holding by her mother’s and my arm.

She had put on a veil, but she lifted it to look at the sun, and the western splendour lay full on her face as I gazed at her. Never so painfully thin and white had she appeared as she now did in this searching crimson glare. But an expression rested upon her countenance that entirely dominated all physical features of it; it was, indeed, to my mind then, and it still is as I think of it whilst I write, a revelation of angelic spiritual beauty. You would have thought her hallowed, empowered by Heaven to witness the invisible, for there was a look in her gaze, whilst she directed her sight into the west, that would have made you think she saw something beyond and behind those flaming gates of the sinking sun, that filled her soul with joy. Her expression was full of solemn delight, and her smile was like that which glorifies the face of one who, in dying, has beheld a vision of the Heaven of God and of the angels opening to him. Such a smile, I have read, sweetened the mouth of the poet Pope in his dying hour. Many who have stood beside the bed of death will know the entranced look.

Captain Ladmore, who was walking the deck close by, approached us.

‘That is a very noble sunset,’ said he.

‘Noble indeed!’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee. ‘I have seen many splendid sunsets in Newcastle, and there is no part of the world where you will witness grander sunsets, but never did I see such a sublime picture as yon.’

‘Sunsets of that sort are rare in the Tropics,’ said the captain. ‘It is noble, as I have said, but I do not like the look of it. It has a peculiar, smoky, thunderous appearance, which in plain English means change of weather.’

‘And I hope the change will soon come,’ said Mrs. Lee, looking from her daughter to Captain Ladmore, as though she would have him read her thoughts; ‘these prolonged calms are cruelly trying in this part of the world.’

‘God knows I do not love prolonged calms in any part of the world,’ said Captain Ladmore.

‘The captains who visited my husband used to have much to tell about the calms down here,’ said Mrs. Lee. ‘They called them the Doldrums.’ Captain Ladmore smiled. ‘I assure you,’ she continued, ‘I would rather meet with a fierce hurricane, to drive us into cool weather at the risk of our lives, than suffer a continuance of such a calm as this.’

Alice and I watched the sunset whilst Captain Ladmore and Mrs. Lee discoursed upon the weather. Even whilst we looked dark smoke-like masses of cloud had gathered about the huge rayless orb, and the splendour went out on a sudden in a sort of dingy flare, that floated in rusty streaks up into the darkling sky, and swiftly vanished as though they had been the luminous trails of rockets. I looked at Alice. The last faint gleam of red touched her face, and then the rapid tropic twilight swept westward in an eclipse, and the girl in it grew wan as a phantom. I felt her shiver.

‘Let us return to the cabin,’ said I, and, supported by her mother and me, she descended. It was the last time that Alice Lee was ever on deck.

The night fulfilled the stormy threat of the sunset. It came on to blow fresh shortly after the night had settled down upon the sea. The stars were shrouded by flying clouds, but the moon glanced through the many rifts of the winging shadows, and when I took a peep at the ocean at half-past nine that night it was already a wild scene of stormy ocean rolling in snow, the wilder for the flash of the darting moonbeam.

At ten o’clock it was blowing very hard indeed, and by midnight the gale had risen to half a hurricane, with much lightning and thunder. I cannot remember whether or not the wind blew fair for our course; the gale was so heavy that the captain was forced to heave the ship to, and all through the night we lay in the trough rolling and pitching furiously, with no more canvas set than served to keep the vessel in the situation the captain had put her into.

I got no sleep that night. The noises within and without were distracting. The steerage passengers took fright, believed the ship was going down, lighted the lantern and sat at the table—that is to say, most of the men and two or three of the women; and then, by-and-by, taking courage perhaps from the discovery that the ship continued to swim, though still not being easy enough in their minds to return to their beds, they produced a bottle of spirits and drank and made merry after their fashion, and the noise of their singing was more dreadful to hear than the sound of the storm. Nobody interfered with them; probably nobody with power to control them knew that they were awake and drinking and singing.

So, as I have said, I got no sleep that night. As the ship lifted the cabin window out of the foaming water the black interior in which I lay would be dazzlingly illuminated by violet lightning striking on the snow-like froth upon the glass of the port-hole. The sight was beautiful and terrifying. The port-hole looked like a large violet eye winking in the blackness. I could trace the crystals of the brine and the froth upon the glass as the window came soaring out of the seething foam into the fiery flash from the clouds. The flaming, blinking disk was as if some huge sea monster clung to the side of the ship, trying to peer into my cabin and unable to keep his eye steady at the aperture.

It blew hard all next day; too hard to allow the ship to resume her course. The captain said it was strange weather to encounter near the equator. He had crossed the line I know not how many times; but, said he, never had he fallen in with such weather hereabouts. We were all willing, however, to endure the stormy buffeting for the sake of the respite it gave us from the overpowering heat. The gale was a hot wind, but the spray that clouded cooled it as the dew refreshes the breath of the Indian night. The sensation of putting one’s head into the companion-way and feeling the sweep of the spray-laden blast was delicious after the motionless atmosphere that had pressed like hot metal against the cheek and brow.

Alice Lee seemed to rally. The saloon was full of air that rushed through it in draughts purposely contrived by leaving open one of the doors which conducted to the quarter-deck; the breeze filled the girl’s berth, and she appeared to revive in it as a languishing flower lifts its head and sweetens its fragrance when watered.

‘Sometimes I think—sometimes I dare believe, Agnes,’ poor Mrs. Lee said to me, ‘that if Alice has strength enough to survive the ordeal of the horrid equinoctial belt she will recover. Did not you fancy she was looking much better this morning? Her eyes have not the bright, glassy appearance which shocked me every time I looked at her. And did not you notice that she breathed with less labour, and that the red of her lips was more lifelike and healthy? Oh, my dear! God may yet hear my prayers, and my heart is seldom silent. If this gale will blow us to the south of the equator and drive us into cooler latitudes I shall live in hope. But now we are stationary, the ship is merely tossing up and down and making no real progress, and my dread is that when the weather breaks the calm will come again and leave us roasting.’

These observations Mrs. Lee addressed to me in the saloon as I was passing through it on my way from Alice’s cabin to my own berth; her words were running in my head when, after having occupied myself for a short time in my berth, I was returning to Alice. As I cautiously passed through the steerage, carefully providing against a dangerous fall by keeping my arms outstretched and touching or holding whatever was nearest to me, I saw Mr. McEwan standing at the foot of the stairs grasping the thick brass banisters, and peering about as though in search of somebody.

‘Seen Mrs. Richards?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I answered.

‘Mrs. Richards,’ said he, ‘answers to the descreeption of a midshipman’s chest; everything is on top and nothing at bottom. She’s always aboot—she’s to be seen everywhere—and is never to be found. And how are you this roaring day?’

I told him that I was pretty well.

‘D’ye know that you’ll be getting an eyebrow yet?’ said he.

‘I hope so,’ I said.

‘Gi’ us hold of your arm,’ said he; ‘I’ll take ye above.’

Without giving him hold of my arm, as he called it, I said, ‘The improvement in Miss Lee has greatly heartened her poor mother. Her hope is——’ and I told him what Mrs. Lee’s hope was.

‘Ye’re no talker, I trust,’ said he.

‘I can keep a secret,’ I replied.

He put one hand on my shoulder, swinging by the other hand that grasped the banister: ‘Your poor friend, Alice Lee,’ he exclaimed, ‘will not live another fortnight.’

‘Oh, do not say so!’ I cried.

‘One lung is useless; the other is so hampered that it scarcely enables her to pump in air enough for life. How can she live? And why are these puir creatures—men and women—girls and boys—brought to sea to die, that they may be thrown overboard in mid-ocean? Of course no cruelty is meant—not likely that any cruelty can be meant; but what greater cruelty would ye have people guilty of than to wait till a puir consumptive creature is past all hope, and then bring her to sea in a ship that is never steady, with food that she may not fancy but that they cannot replace by what she can eat, subjecting her to twenty climates in a month when one climate may prove too much for her? I am very sorry to say that medical men are much too much given to recommending sea voyages for consumptive people when they know that a sea voyage can do them no good. But the doctor comes to the end of his tether: “I canna save this patient,” says he to himself, and so he sends the puir thing on a voyage. Mark you now the rolling of this ship. D’ye feel how she heaves and bounds, and d’ye hear how the wind roars in the rigging, and how all those bulkheads yawl and squall as though there was another massacre of the innocents going on down here? Yes, ye hear it and ye feel it: ask yourself then if your friend Alice Lee should be here instead of ashore—here instead of lying in a pleasant room upon a steady couch, with every comfort which her mother’s purse could command within reach of her? She’ll not live another fortnight, I tell you. Where’s that d——d Mrs. Richards? No matter. Gi’ us hold of your arm, that I may save ye a broken neck.’

His language so disquieted me that when I had gained the saloon I was without heart to immediately enter Alice’s berth. Mr. McEwan was a man of intelligence, and I might be sure he knew what he was talking about. His roughness, amounting almost to brutality, seemed like the strong language and violent demeanour of that fine creation Matthew Bramble, assumed to conceal a thoroughly kind heart; and the note of true sympathetic feeling which ran through his rough words and harsh pronunciation accentuated his prediction to my fears and to my love for Alice Lee.

I seated myself on a sofa at the end of the saloon, where I found a book, which I placed on my lap and feigned to read. A few of the passengers sat here and there; most of the people were in their berths, and those who were present were clearly in no humour for conversation. Half an hour passed in this way, by which time I had somewhat settled my spirits; and, walking with exceeding caution to the Lees’ berth, I lightly tapped upon the door of it.

The door was opened by Mrs. Lee, who put her finger upon her lip. The gesture signified that Alice was sleeping, and, giving her a nod, I passed on to the forward end of the saloon that I might obtain a view of the rolling, straining ship, and the huge frothing sea rushing from under her. I stepped out into a recess on the quarter-deck formed by the projection of the cabin on either hand, and by the overshot extremity of the poop-deck. This recess provided a shelter from the gale which was howling over the bulwarks, and splitting in ringing, piercing whistlings upon the complicated shrouds and gear; and in a corner of it—of the recess I mean—squatted the gipsy woman. She was smoking a little sooty clay pipe, the bowl of which was upside down.

She was alone; a few of the emigrants were crouching on the lee or sheltered side of the house, called the galley, in which the food was cooked; otherwise the decks were deserted. As the ship rolled to the wind the huge seas in masses of cloudy grey water charged at her as though they must thunder in mighty falls over the rail; but the noble fabric rose with dry decks and screaming rigging to the wash of each foaming mountain, letting it run away from under her in a huge streaming sheet of white, and the wild, expiring foam hissed into the gale with the noise of an electric storm of wet and hail falling upon a calm sea.

The gipsy woman pulled the pipe out of her mouth and gave me a nod, with a wide grin of her white, strong teeth. Though her appearance was sufficiently fierce and disagreeable to occasion an instinctive recoil, yet, remembering what she had told me, and how what she had told me seemed confirmed by some strong secret instinct or feeling within me, and by Mrs. Lee’s conjectures or suspicions, I resolved to talk with her awhile; and, giving her a nod by way of returning her salutation, I made my way to her side, motioning with my hand that she should keep seated; and when I had drawn close enough to hear her speak I crouched against the saloon front to prevent myself from being thrown.

‘Do you want some more of your fortune told, my pretty lady?’ said the woman, knocking the ashes out of her pipe and putting it in her pocket.

‘No, I wish to hear no more of my fortune,’ I answered.

‘I am glad of that,’ said she; ‘I have told you all I know, and if I was to tell you more I should have to speak what is not the truth.’

‘I do not want any more of my fortune told,’ said I, ‘but I wish to ask you certain questions, which I dare say you will answer,’ and as I spoke I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out my purse, from which I extracted a shilling.

She took the shilling, and looked at the purse and said, speaking naturally—that is to say, without the drawling and whining tone which she had employed when addressing the passengers:

‘Is that your purse, lady?’

‘Yes,’ said I.

‘Did it come with you into the ship?’

‘Yes.’

‘Let me look at it, lady.’

She turned it about, examined the money in it, looked at the purse again, then returning it to me exclaimed, ‘This is English.’

‘How do you know?’ said I.

‘I know many things,’ she answered, ‘and one thing I know is that that purse was made in England.’

‘Well!’ said I, finding that she did not proceed in her speech.

‘Well!’ she echoed. ‘What would you think, lady, if you was to meet out upon the sea with a woman who did not know from what country she came, and who had in her pocket a purse made in England with English money in it, and who likewise had in her mouth good English such as you speaks? What would you think?’

‘I would think that she was English,’ said I.

‘And you are English,’ she exclaimed.

‘It does not help me to know that,’ cried I.

She stared into my eyes, but made no answer.

‘When you told my fortune,’ said I, ‘you said that I was a married woman. Since then feelings and fancies have visited me which make me believe you to be right. Now I want to know how you guessed that I was a married woman.’

‘We do not guess; we see,’ answered the gipsy.

‘Pray do not talk nonsense, but converse with me without any idea of fortune-telling. You looked at me, and knew me to be married woman. Plenty of others had looked at me, but none declared me to be a married woman, saving you. Tell me, then, what you saw in me to enable you to decide that I was a married woman?’

‘You are not only a married woman,’ she answered; ‘you are also a mother.’

‘How can you tell that by looking at me?’ I cried passionately.

She smiled, but with nothing of her former cringing and fawning expression. Her brilliant eyes seemed to flame into mine as she fixed them upon me.

‘Why should I teach you my art?’ said she. ‘But even if I was willing to teach it I could not make you understand it. There are some who can see clear writing upon what would be white paper to you, and to the likes of you, lady. There is that in your face which makes me know what I tell you. But look at yourself in a looking-glass whilst I stand behind and point to what I see, and what will you behold? Nothing but your face, just as it is.’

‘And you can read that I am a mother?’

‘Yes, yes,’ she answered, with such energy as made the nod she gave fierce.

‘Tell me all that you can read!’ said I, questioning her not, believe me, because I was credulous enough to conceive that she was anything more than a commonplace lying fortune-teller, but because I hoped she would be able to say something to strengthen my own secret growing fancies and feelings.

‘You want me to tell you your fortune again, lady,’ said she; ‘but have I not said I must invent if I speaks more?’

‘I do not want my fortune told. I wish you to make certain guesses. You are shrewd, and a single guess of yours might throw a light upon my mind; and if you can give me back my memory, whatever it may be in my power to do for you shall be done.’

She glared at me as though she was used to promises and disdained them.

‘What shall I guess, lady?’ she asked.

‘If I have children, what will be their age?’

She stared close into my face with so fierce and piercing a gaze that nothing but the excitement of my curiosity hindered me from rising and widening my distance from her.

‘What will be their age? What will be their age?’ she muttered, passing her hand over my face without touching it; ‘why, whether they are living or dead, they will be young, and the youngest will be an infant that is not eighteen months old, and the eldest will not yet be six. You will find that right.’

She watched me with a surly smile whilst I turned my eyes inwards and underwent one of my old terrible, dark conflicts. Presently I raised my eyes to her face, and said, ‘How many children do you guess I have?’

‘Guess! Guess!’ she answered; then, once more advancing her face close to mine, she looked at me, drew back, and said, ‘You have two children.’

‘If I am a married woman, why do I not wear a wedding ring?’ said I, not choosing to venture the word guess again.

‘That was a part of the fortune I told you,’ said she. ‘There are thieves at sea as there are thieves on land. Your rings were stolen.’

‘Why did the thieves leave my purse?’

‘Was I there to see?’ she exclaimed, hunching her shoulders. ‘Why did they not steal your clothes? Why did not they take your life? You are a married woman, I say, and you should wear a wedding ring according to the custom of your country; and if you have not a ring it is because it was stolen.’

She spoke with as much emphasis as though she positively knew that what she stated was the fact. I was influenced by her; I could not help myself. Had she possessed a plain English face my good sense must have ridiculed her pretensions as a sibyl, even though she spoke things which seemed to find a dull, hollow echo in the dark recesses of my mind; but her black, eastern eyes were full of fire, and eager and piercing, with a sort of wild intelligence that was scarcely human; her speech took weight and significance from the strange, fierce, repellent expression of her face; there was a kind of fascination too in her very adjacency, in her manner of staring into my eyes, in her way of passing her hand over my face.

‘If I have a husband and children, shall I ever see them again?’ said I.

‘You forget what I said when I told you your fortune, lady,’ she answered.

‘You spoke without knowing,’ said I. ‘You have a set of tales by heart, and you call them fortunes.’

‘I am a gipsy and can read baji,’ cried the woman, with her eyes beginning to flash. ‘Many fortunes have I told in my time and many prophecies have I uttered which have come to pass. Do not I read what you are? When you were walking the deck with the lady and I was sitting there,’ said she, pointing, ‘I looked at you and said to myself, “Let me see into her eyes and let me look at her hand, and I will tell her much that is not in her memory.”’

‘Are you a mother?’ said I.

‘I have had my bantlings,’ she answered sullenly. ‘They went home long ago.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They lies dead and buried,’ said she. ‘What other homes have us poor gipsies and our bantlings got but the grave? The likes of you goes to Heaven, lady; the likes of us don’t carry our thoughts so high. I wish I was at home with my bantlings, I do, instead of living to be a lone woman crossing the seas——’ Her voice failed her; and, pulling her little black pipe from her pocket, she dashed it on to the deck with a face of fury, and then, with a harsh and hideous voice, began to sing some strange gibberish, which, to judge by the expression in her eye, might very well have been a string of curses.

Her looks and behaviour alarmed me; and, without exchanging another word with her, I rose and re-entered the saloon.

CHAPTER XX
THE DEATH OF ALICE LEE

The storm passed away in the night, and when the morning came there was a breathless calm upon the sea. On my way from the steerage I looked out through the saloon door for a minute or two. All sail was set upon the ship, but there was no wind. The white canvas was pouring in and out somewhat heavily, and as it beat the masts the thunderous, crackling notes it rang through the motionless atmosphere were like the noise of the wheels of artillery drawn at a gallop over a stony street. The sea was breathing heavily after its conflict of the previous day, and the ship was rolling majestically, but at the same time very uncomfortably, upon the glass-white swell.

The decks were crowded with emigrants. Children were tumbling and sporting in the channel under the bulwarks, called the ‘scuppers,’ as though their instincts directed them to find a playground in the gutters of the ship. Some of the people appeared to be breakfasting. With one hand they grasped tin mugs full of a steaming black liquid, probably called tea by those who served it out to them, and in the other hand they held a piece of flinty biscuit, and with this dry, disgusting fare a number of the poor creatures were breaking their fast.

There were some delicate faces amongst the women—two or three with eyes of beauty, and two or three with rich auburn hair. I longed to go amongst the poor people and ask them questions, and learn from what parts of the country they came. I thought to myself, one of those many men and women may have it in his or her power to give me back my memory by saying something that might serve as a burning brand for the dark galleries of my brain. But it was a desire which the rules of the ship forbade me to satisfy.

Presently I caught sight of the gipsy woman. She showed her teeth and nodded demonstratively, as if she would have her fellow-passengers take notice that she and I were friends. I coldly nodded in return, and then, learning from the stewardess that Mrs. Lee had not yet left her berth, I walked to the end of the saloon, where I could sit retired, and there waited for the breakfast-bell to ring and for the passengers to appear.

The first to come out of her berth was Mrs. Lee. She immediately saw and approached me. She looked as if she had been crying, and there was an expression of deep and settled grief in her face. I asked after Alice, but with a sinking heart, as I gazed at the poor, anxious, devoted mother.

‘She has been very ill in the night,’ she answered. ‘She is very low this morning.’

‘But yesterday she seemed so much better.’

‘Oh! she is dying, Agnes, she is leaving me. God is fast withdrawing her from me now,’ and she wept afresh.

I hung my head. I could not look into the face of her grief and find words.

And now again the poor woman reproached herself for having brought her child to sea when it was too late. She talked indeed as though she had overheard what Mr. McEwan had said to me on the previous day, or as though he had repeated his discourse to her.

‘She would have been comfortable at home,’ she exclaimed amidst her sobs. ‘Her rest is broken by the narrow bunk she lies in, and she is distressed by the movements of the ship. At home she would lie peacefully in her own bedroom, she would be surrounded by familiar objects, friends would come and sit with her, and—oh, Agnes!’ She stopped in her speech as though a spasm had wrenched her heart.

I knew what was in her mind, and the tears sprang into my eyes.

‘Her grave,’ continued Mrs. Lee in a whisper, ‘would not be far away from me. I should be able to visit it, to see that it is tended as her sister’s is: but——’ She stopped again in her speech and directed her eyes at one of the large circular windows through which, as the ship rolled, we could now and again catch a sight of the glassy volumes of water.

While she talked of her dying child the breakfast-bell rang. She rose and said: ‘I cannot sit at the table. I cannot bear to be asked questions about Alice, though they are kindly meant. Come to me when you have breakfasted,’ and she returned to her berth.

I felt, now that the mother was without hope, that there was no hope indeed. My own grief was so keen that I was as unequal to the task of sitting at the breakfast table as Mrs. Lee, and after drinking a cup of tea, which one of the stewards brought to me before the passengers assembled, I slipped downstairs to my cabin there to wait until it should be time to visit Alice. My low spirits were not only owing to the news which Mrs. Lee had given me: I had passed a miserable night disturbed by many shapeless undeterminable dreams, and broken by long passages of waking thought. The gipsy woman’s repeated deliberate assurance that I was not only a wife but a mother also influenced me as though her words were the truth itself. A secret voice within me was for ever whispering, ‘It is so! It is so!’ and I cannot express how dreadful was the anguish of my mind as I sought in the void within for any, the least, stir of shadow to which I could give some form of memory.

And I was sensible too of a heartache as of yearning, though I knew not what I yearned for. I sought to explain to myself this subtle craving by saying, ‘I am a mother and I yearn for my children;’ and yet my children were to me then as though they had never been born! What, then, did this sense of yearning signify? Was it a desire put into my head by the gipsy woman’s talk—first, the belief that I was a mother as she had said, and then a craving to know whether or not I had left children behind me in my unknown home? Or was it the deep, unfailing, deathless, maternal instinct whose accents were sounding to my heart out of the darkness that was upon my mind, as the whisper of a spirit falls upon the waking ear in the blackness of the night, serving as an impulse and an inspiration, though the listener knows not whence the sound proceeds nor what it is?

It happened as Mrs. Lee had feared. As the wife of a shipowner she had met many seafaring men in her time, and she talked of the sea with something of the knowledge of an experienced ocean traveller. The calm weather which she had dreaded happened. For many days, whose number my memory does not carry, the sea stretched flat and lifeless round about the ship, and the rim of it was dim with the faint blue haze of heat whilst the central sky was a blaze of white light. Faint airs called catspaws occasionally tarnished the table-flat plain of the ocean; but so weak were these draughts that they expired long before they reached the ship, and for hours and for days the Deal Castle sat upright upon the water without motion except a small swaying of her mast-heads, and there was so perfect a reflection of her fabric of black sides and star-white canvas under her that one might have believed on gazing over the side that she rested on a sheet of looking-glass.

No sail could heave into view in such stagnant weather. Never was the hot, blurred edge of the ocean broken by the thread-like shadowing of a steamer’s smoke. There was nothing to see but water, and there was nothing for the passengers to do but to lounge and eat and sleep and grumble. The heat told fearfully on Alice Lee. The saloon and berths were unendurably hot, and the doctor ordered the girl to be carried on deck on a couch. She begged not to be disturbed; her mother entreated her to allow the people to carry her on deck, and then she consented; but when they put their hands upon her she fainted, and so deep and long was her swoon that we feared she had died. The doctor then directed that she should be left as she was.

Her mother and I nursed her between us. Mrs. Richards put a little arm-chair in the dying girl’s berth, and I sat and watched whilst Mrs. Lee slept; and then, when it came to Mrs. Lee’s turn to watch, I would fall asleep in the chair, and thus we would pass the nights. Oh, it was a bitter sad time! The mother fought with her grief in the sight of her child that she might not witness the agony of her affliction; but often at night, when she lay down after several hours of watching, instead of sleeping she would weep, very silently indeed, but I could tell by the breathing that her tears were flowing.

Alice’s sufferings were not great. Time after time in the silent watches of the night—and silent indeed were the watches of those breathless nights of equatorial calm—I would rise on observing the dear girl to move uneasily, bend over her, and ask if she suffered; and regularly would she answer me in her sweet voice and with her sweet smile that she was free from pain, that she desired but a little air, but that she was not suffering, and then she would extend her thin, damp, cold hand for me to hold, and ask me if her mother was sleeping, and then whisper that she was happy, that she was dying, that she knew she was dying, but that the holy peace of God which passes all understanding was upon her heart, and that she was praying for the hour to come when He would take her to Himself.

Once she awoke uttering a cry as of rapture. I was at her side in an instant.

She looked a little strangely at me, then, as an expression of recognition entered her eyes, she exclaimed; ‘I have been with my angel sister. Can it have been a dream? How real, how real it was! We stood together hand in hand—I do not know where—the light was that of the moon. Our dear mother was coming and we waited for her. Can it have been a dream?’ Her smile faded; she sighed, closed her eyes, and was presently asleep again.

I could tell you many sweet things of this beautiful character as she lay dying in that little cabin, but it is my own, and not Alice Lee’s, story that I have undertaken to relate. Yet the mystical part that she played in the turning-point of my life is so truly wonderful that I cannot but dwell upon her blessed memory. She was the good angel of my life, and God afterwards sent her from Heaven to me, as you shall read when you come to that part of my experiences.

And though I had known her but for a few weeks, yet as she lay dying on her bed my love could not have been deeper for her than had she been flesh of my own flesh, had she been my sister or my child, had her mother been mine, and we had grown together in years with never a day of separation.

It was the night of the eleventh day of the calm, but this night the breathlessness of the atmosphere was broken by a faint air of wind. The window of Alice’s berth was wide open, but though I put my hand into it I felt no movement of air. Yet a small weak wind was blowing; it was past midnight, and in the stillness of this hour I heard the noise of waters faintly rippling, and the deep silence was unbroken by the notes of flapping canvas, for there was wind enough to ‘put the sails to sleep,’ as a pretty saying of the sea goes.

Mrs. Lee had been lying down since ten o’clock, and was sleeping, but I should awaken her presently, for it had been arranged that she should watch from after midnight until three or four in the morning. I was faint, and there was a feeling of nausea upon me. The atmosphere of the cabin was oppressively close. In spite of the awning having been spread throughout the day the heat of the sun was in the planks of the deck, and this heat, though it was now the hour of midnight, was still in the planks, and it struck through into the atmosphere of the cabin as though a great oven rested on the ceiling of the little interior.

There are many sorts of illness which are sad and afflicting to nurse, but none so sad and afflicting, I think, as consumption in its last stage. There was a weight upon my spirits; I panted for the deck, and for the starlit freedom of the cool night. Alice had been resting motionlessly for nearly an hour. I knew not whether she slept or was awake, and would not look lest I should disturb her if she was sleeping. Her eyes were closed, her thin hands were crossed saint-like upon her breast, her face was as white as though the moon shone upon it. Through the open window, that was somewhat above her sleeping-shelf and near her head, I saw a large golden star shining: the rolling of the ship was so slight that the star continued to shine in the aperture, sliding up and down, but never beyond the limits of the circle of window. The effect of the girl’s white face, and of this star that seemed to be sliding to and fro near it, was extraordinary. A strange fancy entered my head: I thought of the star as of Alice’s spirit hovering close to the form that was not yet inanimate, and waiting for death to give the signal for its flight to Heaven; and whilst I thus thought, looking at the white face and the golden star shining in the cabin window, a sweet low voice began to sing the opening lines of that beautiful hymn, ‘Abide with Me.’

The voice was faint and sounded as though it came from a distance, but it was inexpressibly sweet. I started, believing that someone was singing on deck, for the voice of anyone singing on deck would strike faintly upon the ear through the open cabin window, even as this voice did. Then I said to myself, ‘It is Alice who is singing,’ and stepping to her side I was in time to witness the movement of her lips ere she ceased, after having sung but little more than the first two lines of the hymn. Her eyes were closed, her hands remained crossed upon her bosom; she had not stirred, and there was no doubt that she sang in her sleep.

About this hour Mrs. Lee lifted her head from her pillow, then arose, and after gazing silently for awhile at her child, she approached me, put her lips to my ear, and bade me in almost breathless accents take the sleep I needed. I answered in a whisper that I could not sleep, and asked her to allow me to go on deck to breathe the cool air for a quarter of an hour or so, telling her where she would find me. She acquiesced with a motion of her head, and catching up a shawl I noiselessly passed out from the cabin.

The saloon lamps had long been extinguished, but a plentiful haze of starlight floated through the open skylights. Not knowing but that Mr. Harris might have charge of the ship, and desiring to avoid him, though even if he were on the poop and saw me there I did not suppose he would address me, I passed through the saloon on to the quarter-deck, and seated myself half-way up one of the ladders which conducted to the poop, and, my attire being dark, and the darkness where I sat being deep, there was small chance of my being observed unless someone came to the ladder to mount or descend it.

The night air was delicious. Low over the sea on my left hand side was a dark red scar of moon; it was floating slowly up out of the east with its fragment of disk large and distorted by the hot atmosphere through which it stared. The sails of the ship rose pale, and the topmost of them looked so high up that the faint pallid spaces seemed to be hovering cloud-like close under the stars. The faint breeze held the canvas motionless, and not a sound came from those airy heights.

The figure of a man moved on the forecastle; otherwise the decks—so much of them, at least, as my sight commanded—were tenantless. The night was the more peaceful for the soft air that blew. The delicate noise of rippling waters lulled the senses, and at another time I should have fallen asleep to that gentle music of the sea, but my heart was too full to suffer me to slumber then; the tears fell from my eyes. A sweet girl was dying; the gentlest heart that ever beat in a woman’s breast might even now, as I sat thinking, have ceased to throb; one whom I dearly loved, whose tenderness for me had been that of a sister, was dying, might even now be dead, and as I sat thinking of her I wept.

I looked up at the sky; it was crowded with stars, and many meteors glanced in the dark heights. I asked myself, ‘Where is Heaven?’ We look upwards and think that Heaven is where we direct our eyes, but I knew that even as I looked the prospect of the stars was slowly changing, so that if Heaven were there where I was now gazing it would not be there presently. Where then was Heaven? And when the soul of the sweet girl who was dying in her cabin quitted her body whither would it fly? Then I remembered that she herself had told me that we looked upwards when we thought of Heaven because the light was there, the light of the sun, and the moon, and the stars, but that God whom she had taught me to remember and to pray to was everywhere.

This thought of God’s presence—for if He was everywhere He must be where I now was—awed me, and, rising from the step upon which I was seated, I knelt and prayed, weeping bitterly as I uttered the words which arose from my heart. I prayed that my memory might be restored to me; I prayed that, if I were a wife and a mother, the image of my husband and my children would be presented to me that I might know them and return to them. But I did not pray for Alice Lee. She was already His to whom I knelt, and I knew in my heart that even if it had been in the power of prayer to save her she would not desire another hour of life unless—and here I turned my head and looked at the dark surface of sea and thought of it as her grave.

I resumed the seat I had arisen from in order to kneel, and again surrendered myself to thought. I heard the measured tread of a man upon the poop-deck that stretched above and behind me. He came to the rail, and stood at the head of the steps which lay opposite to those on which I was seated. His figure showed black against the starless sky, and I saw that he was not Mr. Harris, but Mr. ——, the second officer of the vessel. He whistled softly to himself as he stood awhile surveying the sea and the ship.

One reads often in poetry and in stories of the loneliness of the night watch on the ocean; but one should bear a secret part in such a watch—a part such as I was now bearing, with a heart of lead and with eyes which burnt with recent tears—to compass what is meant when the loneliness of the night watch at sea is sung or written of. Nobody stirred upon the ship but the figure of this second officer and some dim shadowy shape far forward on the forecastle, flitting among and blending with the deep masses of dye cast upon the atmosphere there by the sails. Not a sound was to be heard saving the sigh of the faint wind in the rigging, and the tinkling noise of rippling water. The fragment of moon was still red in the east, and as yet without power to touch the dark ocean under it with light. Two bells were struck on some part of the deck, and the tremulous chimes went floating up into the hollows of the sails, and trembled in the pallid concavities in echoes. The figure of the second officer moved away from the rail; and now, though a little while before I had believed myself sleepless, my head insensibly sank forward, my eyes closed, and I slumbered.

I was awakened by a hand laid upon my shoulder. I started with a cry, and gazed around me. No situation would more bewilder one new to the sea than the being suddenly aroused and finding oneself on the deck of a ship, with the stars shining and the tall sails spreading over one, and the night wind of the deck blowing upon one’s face. The person who had awakened me was Mr. McEwan.

‘This is a strange bed for a lady to be sleeping upon at this hour of the night,’ said he; ‘but I have no heart and no time now to represent the folly ye commeet in sleeping in such a dew as is falling. I have been to see Miss Alice Lee; she is dying. She will be gone before that moon there has climbed to over our mast-heads. She wishes to see you, and her mother asked me to find and send you to her. Go and comfort the puir old lady. God knows she needs comfort! There is nothing I can do for the girl,’ and he abruptly quitted me, and disappeared in the gloom of the saloon.

I immediately made my way to Mrs. Lee’s cabin, but before entering I stood upon a chair that I might see the clock under the skylight. The time was a quarter to two. I was now able to read the clock, though when I had first come on board the Deal Castle, having no memory of the figures, I was unable to tell the time. I quietly opened the door and entered. Mrs. Lee was kneeling at the side of her sleeping-shelf, which was below the bunk in which her daughter lay, and she was so lost in prayer that she did not hear me enter. I crept to Alice’s side, and then her mother, perceiving me, arose.

Though the cabin lamp was turned down, there was plenty of light to see by. Alice’s eyes were closed, but after I had stood a moment or two looking at her she opened them, saw me and knew me, and a smile of touching sweetness lighted up her wasted face. She feebly moved her hand, but with a gesture which made me know she wished me to hold it. I bowed my head close to her face, and asked her in a whisper if she was in pain. She answered no; and then I asked her if she was happy, on which she looked at me and smiled. Her lips moved, but she seemed powerless to give expression to her thoughts. I bent my ear close to her mouth, and I heard her say in a whisper as dim and far off as the voice one hears in a dream:

‘I have been praying that God will give you back your memory——My beloved mother will be your friend——’

The whisper ceased, she smiled again, twitched her fingers that I might relax my hold of her hand, and looked at her mother, who took her hand and held it.

I withdrew to the chair in which I had been wont to keep a watch while Mrs. Lee slept, that the mother and daughter might, in that sacred time, be alone together. But the sweet girl never spoke again. Whilst her hand was still clasped by her mother she turned her face to the side of the ship and passed away, dying so quietly that her death was as noiseless as the fall of the leaf of a flower in the night—dying so quietly that her mother knew not when the soul of her child had fled, and continued holding her hand, with not a sound breaking the sacred stillness of that little cabin save the rippling of the water tinkling to the ear through the embrasure of the window, from whose dark disk the large golden star had gone.

‘Mark,’ says the most eloquent of divines, ‘mark the rain that falls from above, and the same shower that droppeth out of one cloud increaseth sundry plants in a garden, and severally according to the condition of every plant. In one stalk it makes a rose, in another a violet, divers in a third, and sweet in all. So the Spirit makes its multiformous effects in several complexions and all according to the increase of God.’

The rose of this fair garden was dead. But what says this same most eloquent of all divines, the rose being dead, and the perfume, which is its spirit, gone from it?

‘As when the eye meets with light it is the comfort of the eye: when the ear meets with harmony it is the comfort of the ear. What is the most transcendent consolation therefore but the union of the soul with God?’

Until long after the dawn had broken Mrs. Lee and I remained with the dead. The poor mother seemed at first stupefied. Mr. McEwan came in, looked at Alice, pronounced that all was over, and with a sigh and a gentle nod to Mrs. Lee softly quitted the cabin.

And then it was that the poor mother appeared to have been changed into stone. She held the dead girl’s hand, and kept her eyes fastened upon the averted face. At last a sob convulsed her. Another and a third followed, and, releasing her child’s hand, she threw herself into a chair, hid her face, and wept. Oh how she wept! and I feared that her heart had broken. Then, when she had calmed down somewhat, I took her hand and said whatever I thought might soothe her. But there was nothing under Heaven to soothe grief so recent as hers, with the body of her sweet daughter lying within view, though she may have found a sort of sympathy which no other person on board could have possessed for her in my own distressed condition; for from time to time as I talked she would lift her streaming eyes to my face with an expression of deep pity that for the moment overlay the look of her own grief. It was indeed as though she should say, ‘Great as is my sorrow here, seeking to comfort me is one whose sorrow may be even greater than mine.’

We passed the hours until some time after dawn had broken in prayer and in tears, and in whispering of the dead. Often the mother would rise to look at her, and then come back and talk to me about her—of the sweetness of her disposition even when she was a little child, of her tenderness and goodness as a daughter, of her simple innocent pleasures, of her tastes; how the poor whom she had visited and comforted loved her and blessed her name.

When the morning had fairly come I saw it was no longer fit that the poor bereaved mother should continue in this cabin in sight of her child’s body, so, telling her that I would presently return, I entered the saloon, and, seeing nothing of Mrs. Richards, I descended into the steerage and found her in her cabin. I told her that Alice Lee was dead. She heard me with a look of sorrow, but it was impossible that she should feel surprise. I told her that Mrs. Lee was nearly heartbroken, and begged that another cabin might be prepared for her where she might remain private until after the funeral. She reflected and said:

‘All the saloon cabins are occupied. It would not be right to offer her a berth in the steerage. I will speak to the captain at once; the surgeon is sure to have reported the poor young lady’s death to him; pray return to Mrs. Lee until I am able to tell you what can be done.’

Shortly after I had returned to Mrs. Lee’s cabin a number of the passengers came out of their berths, and the news that Alice Lee was dead swiftly went from mouth to mouth. Then it was, as I afterwards came to know, that Mrs. Webber, meeting Mrs. Richards as she came from the captain’s cabin, learnt from the stewardess that there was no berth vacant in the saloon for the reception of Mrs. Lee, and that the poor bereaved mother would have to retire for awhile to a cabin in the darksome steerage. The good-natured, sympathetic Mrs. Webber would not hear of this; she bade Mrs. Richards wait for a little, and going to one of the ladies she promptly arranged to share her berth with her; Mr. Webber and the lady’s husband sleeping meanwhile in cabins occupied by single men. All this Mrs. Webber promptly arranged. Her sympathetic enthusiasm swept away every difficulty, and before the breakfast-bell summoned the passengers to the saloon table Mrs. Lee and I were installed in the Webbers’ cabin.

The state of the weather required that the funeral should not be delayed, but I own that I was not a little shocked when I learnt that the ceremony was to take place at eleven that morning. I had met Captain Ladmore in the saloon as I came from my berth in the steerage to rejoin Mrs. Lee in her new quarters, and he stopped me to ask in his grave sad way how Mrs. Lee did, and to inquire after the last moments of the dear girl. I answered him as best I could, and then, seeing Mrs. Richards come out of the berth that had been occupied by Mrs. Lee, it entered my head to ask the captain when the funeral would take place.

‘I have arranged,’ said he, ‘that it shall take place at eleven.’

‘At eleven!—this morning?’ cried I, starting. ‘That is terribly soon, Captain Ladmore.’

‘It is terribly soon, as you say,’ he answered, ‘but at sea there is no sentiment, and the claims of the living at sea are far more imperious than ever they can be ashore. I do not wish to intrude upon Mrs. Lee. Her sorrow is too fresh to admit of intrusion. I will ask you to tell her that the funeral takes place at eleven, and you will also say that I too have suffered keenly, even as keenly as she, and that I feel for her,’ and, giving me a slight hurried bow to conceal his emotion, he left me.

I broke the intelligence as softly as I was able to the poor bereaved mother. A scared look entered her eyes, which were red with weeping, and she convulsively motioned with her arm as though she would speak but could not; she then hid her face in her hands and swayed her form as though she wrestled with the agony of her affliction. I stood at the port-hole, looking through it at the sea, but my eyes were blind with tears, and I could behold nothing but the image of Alice Lee, already draped, perhaps, in her sea-shroud—in less than two hours to have vanished for ever in that mighty sepulchre of ocean from which, as a grave, her pure sweet spirit had shrunk, so great was her horror of its vastness, albeit she knew that her Lord, in whom she believed and whom she loved, was awaiting and would receive her, though an ocean as wide as the heavens themselves rolled between her and Him. Presently I felt Mrs. Lee’s hand upon my arm.

‘Agnes, will you attend my darling’s funeral?’

‘If you wish it, dear Mrs. Lee, yes.’

‘I could not be present—I could not——. You will tell me——’ She broke down and wept upon my shoulder; but I readily gathered her thoughts from her grief-broken utterance.

Shortly before eleven I quitted her cabin. She looked me in the eyes and kissed me on the brow before I left her. I went to the berth that I had been occupying, but that I was to occupy no longer, and put on a black veil which Mrs. Lee had given to me to wear. I also put on a pair of black gloves which had belonged to sweet Alice Lee. I had no more mourning to wear. As I passed through the saloon I heard the sound of the ship’s bell tolling. It chimed in a funeral note, but the wide glory of the morning took all significance of grief out of it. The soft wind which had fanned the ship forward during the night still blew; the sun was within an hour of his meridian, and the rippling sea was a vast dazzling plain, a surface of white fire wrinkling southward. There could be nothing funereal in the tolling of a bell on such a morning as this; the life of the flashing universe was in every trembling pulse of the slowly recurring chimes.

The emigrants crowded the deck in the forward part of the ship. They stared with eager eyes, and every face wore an expression of vulgar, morbid curiosity. The children amongst them stared too, but they were silent and wondering, and often would they look up at the sails and around at the furniture of the ship, as though all familiar objects had been rendered fresh and strange to their young eyes. Most of the crew, in clean white attire, stood in ranks in front of the emigrants. Every man’s shadow softly swung at his feet, and just past and close behind one bushy-whiskered face was the tawny countenance of the gipsy woman, her eyes full of fire, and her mouth wide with a grin that seemed to fling a complexion of irony upon the serious, vulgar, and grimy faces round about in her neighbourhood.

The saloon passengers had clothed themselves in black. They were congregated on the quarter-deck, at a short distance from the part of the bulwark where the body was to be launched. The hour of eleven was struck, six blows on the bell announcing the time; and the captain, stalking gravely out of the saloon, Prayer-book in hand, took up his station close against the bulwarks, where the sailors had made an opening by lifting out a piece of the rail. A few moments later the body was borne forth from the saloon, and at the sight of it every man took off his hat, and a strange sound, like a subdued moan uttered by many persons at one instant, came from the crowd of emigrants.

The body was carried by four sailors; it was covered by a large flag—the red ensign of the English merchant service—and the crimson edges of the flag trailed along the white planks as the sailors, with measured tread, bore their sweet and sacred burthen to the bulwarks. The captain, opening his book, began to read the funeral service in a deep, clear voice; but often there was a tremor, often there was a break of emotion in his tones, which made those who knew how it had been with him feel that his heart was away with his own dead in the old home. Sobs often broke from the ladies.

So young! So sweet! So good! Whilst my eyes streamed with tears, and whilst my ears followed the touching words recited by the captain, my heart asked many questions. Why should one so gentle, so pure, so young, be taken? Why for years should she have been haunted by the terrible spectre of death, a shadow for ever creeping closer and closer to her, poising its certain and envenomed lance, for years haunting her hours and her dreams with its ever-growing apparition? Oh, how cruel! how hard to bear is the continuous dread and expectation of death! I thought. And when I remembered how she had answered me when I spoke aloud to her some such thoughts as were now running in my mind: how she had told me that the victory of the spirit over life, and all that life can tempt it with, is by suffering and pain; that the great triumph of our salvation was the fruit of suffering and of pain, the sweet, dear, glad voice spoke to me yet. I seemed to hear its pure accents creeping into my ear from the pale form hidden by the crimson flag. The voice told me that all was well with her, that the conquest was hers, that she had exchanged the dim pale shadows of this dream called life for the shining and glorious realities which had been promised to her by One whose word was Love, unfailing and imperishable, and that she was—as no one in this life can be—happy.

At a signal from the captain the flag was removed, the grating on which the body rested was tilted, and the body, sewn up in snow-white sail-cloth, flashed from the ship’s side.

CHAPTER XXI
I RETURN TO ENGLAND