colonies did--dig and build new places--and there is no room in the
towns.’

‘There are a great many people down there,’ said I, running my eye over
the groups. ‘I wonder if any one of them has lost his memory.’

‘It would be a blessed thing,’ said Mrs. Lee, ‘for most of them,
perhaps for all of them, if they had left their memories behind them.
What have they to remember? Years of toil, of famine, of hardship,
years of heart-breaking, struggles for what?--for this! How big is this
world!’ she exclaimed, casting her eyes round the sea, ‘yet there is no
room for these people in it. How abundant are the goodly fruits of the
earth! And yet those people there represent hundreds and thousands who
cannot find a root in all the soil to provide a meal for themselves and
the children. Yet though we all say there is something wrong, who is to
set it right? Do you observe how that strange, fierce, dark woman is
staring at you?’

‘Yes. She is one of two wild-looking women who pressed forward to view
me when I came on board.’

‘What is her nation?’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee. ‘She looks like a gipsy.’

The woman sat upon the corner of the great square of hatch within
easy distance of the sight. Her complexion was tawny, her nose flat.
Thick rings, apparently of silver, trembled in her ears, and her head
was covered with a sort of red hood. The stare of her gleaming black
eyes was fierce and fixed. I had observed her without giving her close
attention, but now that my mind was directed to her, her unwinking
fiery gaze made me feel uneasy.

‘Let us walk,’ said Mrs. Lee.

We turned our faces towards the stern of the ship and paced the deck,
but every time we approached the edge of the poop I encountered the
cat-like stare of the toad-coloured woman’s eyeballs.

Our conversation almost wholly concerned Alice Lee. The mother’s heart
was full of her sweet daughter. When she began to speak of her she
could talk of nothing else. She hoped that the voyage would benefit
the girl, but the note of a deep misgiving trembled in the expression
of her hope, and I could not doubt that secretly within herself she
thought of her child as lost to her. Do you wonder that I should have
found such a warm-hearted sympathetic friend as Mrs. Lee in so short a
time? When I look back I believe I can understand how it was: she was
a woman with a heart heavy with sorrow, but in me she beheld a person
far more deeply afflicted than she was in her fears for her child, or
could be in her loss of her. Her daughter was dying--she might die; but
the memory of the girl’s sweetness, her purity, her angelic character
would be the mother’s whilst she drew breath. But what had gone out of
_my_ life? She could not imagine--but she would guess that love--love
not less precious nor less holy than hers for her child lay black, and,
perhaps, extinguished for ever in my past. It might be the love of a
parent, of a sister, nay of a sweetheart: thus she would reason; not
dimly for an instant conceiving me to be a married woman with children;
but some sort of love, not less precious and holy than her own, might
have passed out of my life by the eclipse of my mind. This she would
conjecture, and the sympathy of her own deep affliction would be mine
in a sense of friendship that association might easily ripen into
affection. In a word, she pitied me with a heart that asked pity for
herself, and she pitied me the more lovingly because of her daughter’s
tender touching interest in me.

We paced the deck for something less than an hour, during which we were
occasionally addressed by the passengers, and once joined by one of
the ladies who had contributed to what I may call my outfit. But this
was towards the end of our stroll, after we had talked long and deeply
of Alice Lee, and after Mrs. Lee had opened her heart to me in many
little memories of her life before God had widowed her.

When we entered the saloon my companion went to her berth, and a moment
after put her head out with her finger upon her lip and a slight smile
of gratification, by which I understood that Alice still slumbered; so
I walked to the stairs which conducted to the steerage, but as I put
my foot on the first step, the door of a berth opened, and Mrs. Webber
came forth. She immediately saw me, and called:

‘Where are you going, my dear Miss C----?’

‘I am going to my cabin.’

‘I will accompany you. I have not yet been downstairs, and I wish to
see the part of the ship you sleep in. Oh, I am making great progress
with the materials for the poem you are to be the heroine of. I wish I
could write prose. I believe the tale I have in my head would be more
readable in prose. Yet poetry gives you this strange advantage: it
enables you to be impassioned. You can make use of expressions which
cannot be employed in prose without provoking contempt, which is a
disagreeable thing.’

All this she said loudly, as we stood together at the head of the
steerage stairs. There were several passengers sitting about the
saloon, reading or dozing. Two or three of them exchanged a smile.
Perhaps they would have laughed outright had they not heard her
imperfectly. But a rolling ship is full of noises; all the strong
fastenings creak, doors clatter, there is for ever a rattle of
crockery, though one knows not whence it proceeds, and these and
other noises mingling with Mrs. Webber’s tones possibly rendered her
indistinct to the passengers sitting a little way off.

‘By all means come with me downstairs,’ said I.

So together we went downstairs, or ‘below,’ as it is called at sea, and
all the way to my cabin Mrs. Webber’s tongue was going.

‘This is a very gloomy corner,’ she cried, as we entered the steerage;
‘the captain ought to find you more cheerful quarters. But I believe
all the upstairs cabins are taken. So this is the place where the
second-class passengers live! Pray pause one moment, that the scene may
paint itself upon my mind. I shall probably require this interior as a
setting for you.’

Whilst she stood gazing round her a woman came out of a berth. She
carried a baby in her arms. It was the baby that I had held and
kissed, but the person who carried it now was the mother. Mrs. Webber
took not the least notice of the child. As the person who carried it
approached to pass us, I made a step to kiss the little creature. It
knew me and smiled. I kissed it and took it in my arms, and when I had
nursed it for a minute I returned it to the mother, who looked proudly
as she received the pretty little thing, and, with a respectful bow
that was half a curtsey, went on her way.

The child awoke no sensations. Why should that baby, I thought to
myself, have caused a dreadful struggle in my mind when I first saw it?
And why am I now able to nurse and kiss it without the least emotion?
Can the darkness be deepening? Is the surface of the mind hardening
under the frost and blackness of my sunless life?

‘I am very glad there is not a baby in the saloon,’ exclaimed Mrs.
Webber. ‘I did not know there was such a thing in the ship--I mean in
this part of it.’

‘Have you any children?’ said I, recalling my wandering mind with
difficulty.

‘I am thankful to say I have not. It is enough to have a husband.
My hubby is very good, but even _he_ does not permit me to enjoy
that perfect leisure of retirement which literature demands. He is
constantly looking in upon me at the wrong moment. Thought is a
spider’s web, and the least interruption is like passing your finger
through it. But how would it be with me if I had children? So this is
your cabin? Well, it is not so gloomy as I had feared to find it,’ and
seating herself she restlessly turned her eyes about; but there was
little enough for her to look at, and nothing whatever to inspire her.

However, she was in my berth, and I was her companion, and she was
resolved not to lose an opportunity she had been on the lookout for,
and so she began to tell me what she considered to have been my past.

‘You are not,’ said she, ‘a member of the noble family that Sir
Frederick Thompson talks of. I am sure I cannot tell who you are, but
you are not a Calthorpe. It is very wonderful, and I was almost going
to say delightful, to meet with so impenetrable a mystery as you in the
flesh. It is not as though your past and your name were _your_ secret.
You are as great a mystery to yourself as to everybody else, and there
is something awful and beautiful to my mind in such a thing. No, you
will find that you are the daughter of a country gentleman, who is
not very rich--pray excuse me! one never knows what ideas may be of
service: your being without jewellery makes me suppose that your people
live quietly somewhere; unless, indeed,’ she continued, looking at my
hands and at my ears and throat, ‘you were robbed. But that we need
not believe. I am not going to tell you how you came to be in an open
boat. No, if Captain Ladmore cannot understand that, how should I? Does
it not help you a little to hear you are the daughter a plain country
gentleman?’

I answered not, gazing at her earnestly, and straining my mind that I
might closely follow her words.

‘I have settled,’ she went on, ‘and the Miss Glanvilles are of my
opinion, that you were pretty before you met with your accident,
whatever it may have been, that turned your hair white and aged and
mutilated your poor face. You have a sweet mouth. I envy you your
teeth, and your eyes are wonderfully fine, and depend upon it you had a
very great deal of hair before it came out. Do I seem to suggest even a
faint fancy?’

‘None whatever,’ said I, still with my mind on the strain, and still
gazing at her eagerly.

‘Your age is about thirty,’ said she. ‘When you first came on board
you looked about forty. Now you might pass for six-and-thirty. How
delightful to be able to reverse the old-fashioned process! Ten years
hence you will be ten years younger, and I shall be ten years older.
But your real age--your age as you there sit--is from thirty to
thirty-two.’

She dropped her head on one side in a posture of enquiry. I gazed at
her in silence.

‘I am going to be very candid,’ said she. ‘You are not a married woman.
When a woman arrives at the age of thirty to two-and-thirty, and
perhaps a wee bit more, it is not often, very often let me say, that
she is engaged to be married, or, put it more pointedly, that she has a
sweetheart. Her life’s romance will in all probability have been lived
out.’ She paused to sigh. ‘There may be sweet, impassioned memories,
but at the age of thirty or two-and-thirty.... So the past I construct
for you amounts to this, Miss C----: you are not a nobleman’s daughter
as Sir Frederick will have it, but you are the daughter of a plain
country gentleman, who is not very well off. Your father and mother
are living. You probably have a brother, who is in the Army or Navy;
you see to the housekeeping at home. This, I must tell you, is Mrs.
Richards’ idea. You are heart-whole, and though your absence will of
course cause consternation and anxiety, yet when your memory comes back
to you and you return to your home, you will find all well, and in a
few weeks settle down as though nothing had happened.’

I listened with devouring eagerness. Had Mrs. Webber been a witch of
diabolic skill and potency, I could not have followed her words with
more consuming attention. She had but to look at my face, however, to
know that all her ingenious surmises had gone for nothing. She pursued
the matter a little further, afterwards talked of her poetry, and
presently, taking up the slender volume which she had sent to me by the
stewardess, read aloud the ‘Lonely Soul.’ She stayed with me for about
half an hour, and then left me.

CHAPTER XIV

AM I A CALTHORPE?

I dined in the saloon that day. Alice Lee remained in her cabin. Her
mother told me that the girl had slept for two hours, but that despite
her slumber she was languid and without appetite.

‘She is looking forward to your sitting with her this evening,’ said
Mrs. Lee.

‘I dread to weary her, and fear that she desires my company merely out
of the pity she takes on my loneliness.’

‘No’ exclaimed the little lady with sweetness, but with emphasis, ‘she
is sorry for you indeed, but did not I say that she has fallen in love
with you? You will not weary her--you will do her good.’

The dinner was a lengthy business, and to me somewhat tedious. Many
dishes were brought in by the steward through the doors which conducted
to the deck which the emigrants thronged in the daytime, and there was
a great deal of unnecessary lingering I thought in the distribution
and consumption of these dishes. But life at sea speedily grows very
tedious. If the port is a distant one, for a long while it stands at
too great a distance in the fancy to be much thought of; and the mind,
for immediate relief and recreation, makes all that it possibly can of
meal-time.

I wore Mrs. Richards’ short veil, pinned round one of her caps. Sir
Frederick Thompson stared much, and twice endeavoured to draw me into
conversation, but whenever I spoke I found that the people seated near
suspended their talk to catch what fell from my mouth, and their
curiosity so greatly embarrassed me that I answered the little City
knight in monosyllables only, and presently silenced him, so far as I
was concerned. I was thankful to notice, however, that my presence was
fast growing familiar to the majority of the passengers. The two Miss
Glanvilles, and one or two others, constantly gazed at me; it was,
in fact, very easy to see that I was much in the minds of those two
handsome girls. Nothing could so perfectly fit their romantic humours
as a veiled woman, an ocean mystery, a lonely soul-blinded creature,
from the pages of whose volume of life the printed story of the past
had been washed out by salt water, leaving a number of blank leaves
upon which their imagination might inscribe what tale they would. But
the rest of the passengers ate and drank and talked, and scarcely
heeded me. Some of the people sitting near the captain spoke of the
voyage and the present situation of the ship. I heard Captain Ladmore
say that he hoped to be abreast of Madeira next day sometime in the
afternoon!

‘Where is Madeira?’ I asked Mrs. Lee.

‘It is in the Atlantic,’ she said smiling; ‘it is an island. Did not
I tell you that I went there with Alice? Over and over again, before
your memory left you, have you heard of Madeira. Is it possible that
the image of an island does not occur to you when you pronounce the
name of it?’ I hung my head. ‘I shall be glad,’ she continued, ‘when we
have passed Madeira; for Alice will then be able to go on deck. The sun
will be hot, and every day it will grow hotter; yet I dread the heat of
the tropics. The fiery heat of that part of the sea often proves more
injurious to very delicate invalids like Alice than excessive cold; and
if we should be becalmed! _That_ fear makes me wish I had chosen a
steamer. And yet a steamer would have been too swift for our purpose.’

‘What do you mean by being becalmed?’ said I.

‘A ship is becalmed when the wind drops and leaves her motionless,’
she answered. ‘I have heard of a ship becalmed on the equator for six
weeks at a time. Indeed, I wish I knew less about the sea than I do.
The captains who called upon my husband were full of the ocean, and
unsparing in their experiences. Imagine if we were to be for six weeks
in a roasting calm under the almost vertical sun! It might kill Alice.’

I left the dinner table some considerable time before the passengers
rose, and entered Alice Lee’s cabin. The girl reclined in an easy-chair
with a shawl over her shoulders, and a skin upon her knees. The time
was shortly after seven. In the east was a shadow of evening, but the
brassy tinge of the glory of the sunset sank deep into that shadow, and
flung a faint delicate complexion of rose upon the light that streamed
through the eastward-facing porthole into the interior. In this weak
light the sweet face of Alice Lee showed like a spirit as one thinks or
dreams of such things.

She fondled my hand as she greeted me. ‘Bring that chair close beside
me,’ she said; ‘and tell me how you have been passing the time.’

I seated myself beside her, and whilst she held my hand I brought a
smile to her face by telling her of my conversation with Mr. Harris,
the chief officer. And then I told her of what had passed in the
captain’s cabin, and I also repeated Mrs. Webber’s ideas concerning my
past.

We were uninterrupted. The evening in the east deepened into a bluish
darkness, and through the cabin window I saw a large trembling star
coming and going as the ship rolled. The berth was unlighted, but there
was an opening over the doorway, and through this opening when the
saloon lamps were burning there floated sheen enough to enable Alice
and me to dimly discern each other’s faces.

She told me that she had added a few names to the list she had made
out, and that, if I was willing, we would go through the whole of
them next morning. And then having discoursed on various matters, our
conversation, imperceptibly to myself--with such exquisite delicacy was
the subject introduced by her--wandered into solemn subjects.

Shall I tell you what she said? My memory carries every word of it. I
can open the book of my life, and betwixt the pages find the pressed
flowers of that dear girl’s thoughts and teaching, and the perfume
of those flowers is still so fresh, that never can they want life and
colour and beauty whilst their sweet smell clings to them.

But shall I tell you what she said? No; her words were not intended for
the rude light of this printed page. She spoke of God, and from behind
the sable curtains that lay upon the face of my mind her angel voice
evoked the Divine idea; with tears and adoration I knew my Maker again,
and by her side I knelt in prayer to Him.

There had been a hum of voices without, but a sudden silence fell upon
the ship when Alice Lee, whispering to me to kneel by her side, sank
upon her knees and prayed to that merciful Being whom she had revealed
to me to have mercy upon her lonely sister, to lighten my darkness, to
return me in safety to such dear ones as might be awaiting me. None
could have heard her but I who knelt close beside her in that shadowy
cabin, yet the hush lasted until her voice ceased.

We arose from our knees, and as we did so the piano in the saloon
was touched, and a clear, rich and beautiful voice began to sing. We
listened. I seemed to know the air. It was as though there was a magic
in it to run a thrill through my lifeless memory. I harkened with
parted lips, breathing fast and deep. The voice of the singer ceased.

‘What song is that?’ I asked.

‘It is “Home, Sweet Home,”’ answered Alice Lee.

And now for some days nothing of any moment happened. A strong wind
blew over the ship’s quarter, and drove her fast through the seas.
Wide overhanging spaces of canvas called studding-sails were set. They
projected far beyond the ship’s bulwarks, they swelled like the sides
of balloons to the sweep of the wind, and thus impelled, with one sail
mounting to another until, at the extremity of the ship, the vast
spread of milk-white canvas seemed to blot out half the sky, the _Deal
Castle_ sprang through the billows, whitening a whole acre of water in
advance of her as the crushing curtsey of her bows drove the sapphire
roaring into snow.

In this time I loved to stand alone beside the rail gazing down upon
the waters, and watching the wild configurations of the headlong
passage of foam. Was there no inspiration to visit memory from
those splendid and dazzling shapes of spume which rushed in endless
processions along the ship’s side? My imagination beheld many things
in those white forms. They were far more numerous than the pictures
painted by the clouds upon the sky. I beheld the gleaming shapes of
swimming women--vast trees spreading into a thousand branches--the
forms of castles and churches and of helmeted men; the heads of horses,
and many other such phantasies of foam. They came and went swift as the
wink of the eye, yet I saw them, and I would cry in my heart, ‘Is there
nothing in this sweeping throng of dissolving and re-forming shapes to
flash an idea upon my mind, to recall _something_--Oh it matters not
what!--that might serve as a point of fire amid the darkness upon which
to fix my eyes?’

The passengers without exception were exceedingly kind to me. If ever I
happened to be alone on deck one or another would procure me a chair,
lend me a book, stand awhile and chat with me. I was never vexed with
intrusion, by idle sympathy, by aimless questioning. Now and again
Mrs. Webber would talk till she teased me, but a world of good nature
underlay her vanity, and though often she made me wish myself alone,
yet I knew that, after the Lees, she was the kindest friend I had in
the ship.

There was one person, however, of whom I lived in fear. He was the
first officer of the _Deal Castle_, and his name, as you know, was
Harris. One would suppose that I had fascinated the man. No matter
whether he was on deck or whether he was seated at the cabin table, if
ever I chanced to glance his way I found his eyes directed at me. He
never lost an opportunity to accost me, but his speech was so odd and
rough that I was always glad of any excuse to abruptly quit him. I had
thought Mr. McEwan brusque, but, compared with Mr. Harris, the ship’s
surgeon was a polished gentleman. And still, though I wished to avoid
him, I could not feel offended by him either. He was at all events true
to himself. It was not to be supposed that a man occupying his position
would willingly make himself offensive, and therefore I did not resent
his behaviour; yet he succeeded in rendering me very uneasy.

First, I hated to be stared at. But that was not all. His persistent
way of watching me filled me with alarming thoughts. I believed that
he was rehearsing some extraordinary scheme to restore my memory. He
seldom addressed me but that he would affirm the only remedy for my
affliction was a shock, and whenever I observed him staring at me
I would think that man may be scheming to give me a shock. Dare he
attempt such a thing alone? The grave and serious Captain Ladmore
was not likely to listen to such a remedy, nor was it probable that
Mr. Harris would take the doctor into his confidence. Therefore
single-handed he might attempt some desperate trick upon my nerves,
not doubting--for of course he could not doubt--that the result would
justify his expectations and earn him the reputation of a very clever
man throughout the ship.

These were my fears, begotten of a low nervous condition. But I held
my peace lest I should be laughed at. Not to Mrs. Lee, nor even to her
daughter, did I utter a word on the subject; and yet it came to this,
that I never went to my lonely berth of a night without slipping the
bolt of the door, and peeping under the bunk that was high enough from
the deck to conceal the body of a man.

Captain Ladmore I occasionally conversed with. Once he gave me his
arm and together we paced the deck for nearly an hour; but he was a
reserved man, somewhat austere, grave and slow in speech, and the
expression of his face made one know that the memory of his bereavement
was always with him. For the most part he held aloof from us all,
walking a space of the deck from the wheel to the aftermost of the
skylights with his hands behind him, his tall figure very upright, his
eyes sometimes glancing seawards, sometimes up at the vessel. It was
hard to associate him with his calling. He had the air of a clergyman
rather than of a bluff sea-captain.

During this time, that is to say until we had reached some parallel of
latitude to the south of Madeira, Alice Lee kept her cabin. She had
slowly read the list of names she had made out, wistfully pausing after
each delicate utterance, and gazing earnestly at me with her sweet
affectionate eyes; but to no purpose. Name after name was pronounced,
but it was like whispering into deaf ears. How could it have been
otherwise? Alice was now always calling me by the name of Agnes; her
mother also called me by that name; it was my own--yet I knew it not.
How then could it have been otherwise than as it was with Alice
Lee’s list of names? Having given me the name of Agnes, she omitted
it from the list which we went through together; but even if she had
lighted upon my name in full--by happy conjecture contriving it _Agnes
Campbell_--it would have been all the same; I should not have known it.

‘No matter, dear,’ said she when she put the paper away, ‘there are
many more things to try.’

But she was mistaken. There were very few things indeed to try. My
memory was indeed so impenetrable that it rendered experiment almost
hopeless. So, by degrees, Alice Lee desisted, and I own that I was
grateful when she did so, for the dark struggles, the blind efforts
her questions and suggestions excited in me grew too fierce for my
strength. She of course never could have imagined the anguish she
caused me. But once I observed her viewing me steadfastly after she
had asked me some question, and from that time she gradually relaxed
her efforts to help me.

Mrs. Lee was glad to have me as a companion for her daughter. It made
me happy to wait upon the dear girl, and my ministrations lightened the
mother’s duties. I read aloud to Alice, and heard her read aloud to me.
She had a hundred things to tell me about her home, about Newcastle,
and the sister who had been taken from her. She possessed a little
draught-board, and she taught me to play that simple game--taught me
to play it though it had been one of the most familiar of our games at
home! She owned a volume of solemn, heart-inspiring thoughts, which
she loved to read to me and I to listen to. Often have I desired to
meet with that book since; but persistently as I have inquired never
could I hear of a copy. It was a collection of extracts from great
and holy thinkers. Many human griefs and sufferings were dealt with,
and the language of every man was simple and sublime, so that there
was scarcely a passage that Alice Lee read aloud which I was unable to
understand.

Never can I forget her look as we sat together in her cabin one
afternoon, she reading from this book and I listening. The subject
was Death. As she read her face lighted up. I gazed with wonder, with
something of awe and adoration at the tender triumphant enthusiasm of
her expression. A delicate flush tinged her cheeks, her bosom rose and
fell as though to a sobbing of joy. From time to time she paused with
lifted eyes, and her lips murmured inarticulately.

‘It is beautiful and it is true!’ she exclaimed as she closed the book.
‘Why is not death always thus represented? All must suffer. Why should
death be called the King of Terrors? The imaginations of men picture
sleep as an angel bending over the weary, lulling pain, wreathing
sorrowful lips with smiles. But death--the deeper sleep, the angel that
is God’s messenger to man--death must be made terrifying and shocking!
It is a dreadful spectre poising a lance! Oh, death is divine; it is
no terrifying skeleton, but an angel of love, whose gift of slumber is
sweet and sure, from whose dreamless sleep you arise to find yourself
in the presence of God.’

In this strain would she talk to me, but in words and thoughts more
exalted than I have memory for. When I look back and recall these
sentences I have just written down, I often think to myself that it was
faith and not death that was the holy, soothing, and healing angel she
spoke of, and God’s messenger to man; for it was faith that lighted up
her eye and painted an expression of rapture upon her face when she
looked up to heaven and thought of the grave as but the little gate
that was to admit her into the shining glorious highway. And, again,
when I think of her, I often say to myself, Who to obtain faith would
not exchange all the treasures of this world?--to feel a deeper joy in
surrendering all things than many know in the acquisition of a few,
to have your hope fixed high like some bright star in the heavens, to
desire death rather than to shrink from it, to feel that the deep night
of death is on _this_ side the grave, and that the true dawn breaks not
until the spirit stands on the other side of that little silent chamber
of earth in which the body rests--to know this, to feel this is the
sweet sure gift of faith, the angel in whose atmosphere of heavenly
light death the shadow perishes.

It was on the third or the fourth morning following the day on which
we had passed the island of Madeira--that is to say, on which we
had crossed the parallel of latitude on which the island of Madeira
lies--that, being in my cabin where I had passed ten minutes in gossip
with the stewardess, the door was thumped by a fist which I easily
recognised as Mr. McEwan’s, and the ship’s doctor entered.

‘Good morning.’

‘Good morning, Mr. McEwan.’

‘I am the bearer of a message,’ said he. ‘I have told Miss Lee that she
may go on deck this morning, and Mrs. Lee has asked me to request you
to accompany her daughter.’

‘I will do so with pleasure,’ I exclaimed. ‘I am very glad you have
given her permission to go on deck at last. How do you think Miss Lee
is?’

‘How do I think Miss Lee is? How do I think Miss Lee is? Ask after
yoursel’. How are you?’

‘I feel very much better. I am still very nervous, but less so than I
was. Do you think, Mr. McEwan, that the hair upon my eyebrow will ever
grow again?’

‘That will be, as you shall see,’ said he. ‘I trust it may; for there
is undoubtedly an advantage in two eyebrows.’

‘You do not answer my question?’

‘I believe it may grow,’ he exclaimed. ‘If not, eyebrows are cheap to
buy. There are plenty of mice, and mouse-skins are a drug. How’s your
hair? Does it continue to thin?’

‘It no longer comes out,’ I answered. ‘Were the eyebrow to grow I
should look less unsightly. I should be able to make my appearance
without a veil.’

‘Do not trouble yoursel’ about your appearance,’ he growled.

‘But tell me, Mr. McEwan, what you think of Miss Lee’s case?’

‘Are ye asking the question for Mrs. Lee?’

‘I am asking the question for myself. Alice Lee has taught me to love
her. She is a sister to me. Whilst she lives I am not alone.’

He looked at me gravely and said, ‘What d’ye think yoursel’?’

‘Oh, I do not know. Often I hope....’

He eyed me for a few minutes without speech; then, with a wooden face
and a stolid shake of his head, turned upon his heel and walked out.

I dressed myself for the deck and entered the saloon. The interior
was shadowed by awnings spread above, and it was as empty as though
the ship were in port. Through the open skylights came the sound of
people laughing and talking on deck. The motion of the ship was very
quiet, and the atmosphere warm, as though the breath of the tropics
was already in the gushing of the wind. I entered the Lees’ cabin,
and found the mother and daughter waiting for me. Alice was warmly
wrapped, and a green veil was pinned round her straw hat. Mrs. Lee
apologised for sending for me. ‘It was Alice’s wish,’ she said. I saw a
smile upon the girl’s face through her veil as she put her hand into my
arm, and the three of us went on deck.

A richer morning could not be imagined. There was not a cloud to be
seen, and the sky was a dark, deeply pure blue, like an English autumn
sky. A soft warm wind was blowing over the right-hand side of the ship,
and when I first breathed it I seemed to taste a flavour of oranges and
bananas, as though it came from some adjacent land, sweet-smelling with
sunny fruit. At the distance of about a mile was a large black steamer.
She was passing us on the homeward track, and there was a string of
gaudy colours flying from her masthead, and on lifting up my eyes to
our own ship I saw such another string of colours flying from the peak
as it is called. The steamer looked very stately under the sun, and
was as lustrous as though she were built of burnished metal. Points
of white fire burnt all over her, and her yellow masts were like thin
pillars of gold streaked with dazzling yellow light.

An awning covered the greater part of the poop of our ship, for the sun
this morning was very hot. A comfortable easy-chair had been placed
ready for Alice, and when she was seated I looked about me for chairs
for Mrs. Lee and myself. Whilst I thus paused with my eyes roaming over
the deck, Mr Harris, the first officer, who was walking upon the poop
at the forward extremity of it, snatched up a chair, without regard to
whom it might belong, and, approaching us with it, struck it down upon
the deck close against Alice Lee, as though he intended to drive the
four legs of it through the planks.

‘That’s what you’re in want of,’ said he to me, ‘I saw you looking.
Sit down. If the party who owns this chair wants another I’ll hail the
saloon,’ and so saying he wheeled round and marched forwards again.

‘What a very extraordinary manner Mr. Harris has,’ said Mrs. Lee. ‘I
sometimes think he is not quite right.’

I asked her to take the chair he had brought.

‘No, my dear, there are some matters I wish to attend to downstairs.
I will join you presently,’ and then she bent over her daughter and
asked her if she felt comfortable, and if the air refreshed her, and
so forth, and having lingered a little whilst she talked to Alice,
striving to see her child’s face through the veil which covered it, she
left us.

Some of the people were playing at deck quoits. Amongst the players
were the Miss Glanvilles, and their fine shapes showed to great
advantage as they poised themselves upon the planks, and with floating
gestures and merry laughter threw the little rings of rope along. Every
one bowed with sympathetic cordiality to Alice, and several people left
their seats to congratulate her upon her first appearance on deck. One
of these was Sir Frederick Thompson.

‘This is the sort of weather,’ said he, ‘to pull a person together.
Lor’ now, if one could always have such a climate as this in England!
Ten to one if there ain’t a dense fog in London this morning.’

‘Pray,’ asked Alice, ‘what are those flags, Sir Frederick, which that
lad in brass buttons there is pulling down?’

‘The ship’s number, miss. We’ve told that steamer out yonder who we
are, and when she arrives in the river she’ll report us, and our
friends’ll learn that all’s well with us so fur. I’ve got half a sort
of feeling, d’ye know, as if I’d like to be on board of that steamer
going home. I tell you what I miss--I miss my morning noosepaper. I
miss reading how things are. And how do _you_ feel this morning, Miss
C----? Pretty well, I hope?’

‘I am feeling very well, this morning, Sir Frederick.’

‘_That’s_ a good job. What’s life without ‘ealth? You must know I
haven’t changed my opinion about you. You’re a Calthorpe, and unless
your memory comes back to give me the lie, I’ll go to my grave swearing
it. What’s the latest argument against me? They say that if you’re like
Lady Loocy Calthorpe _now_, you couldn’t have been like her before you
was rescued, because you’re a changed woman from what you was. But
who’s to prove that? And what do they mean by change? Fright can turn
the hair white, but it don’t alter the colour of the heye, and it don’t
alter the shape of the nose, and it don’t alter the appearance of the
mouth. _That’s_ where I find my likeness,’ said he, leering at me.

And then, with his whimsical cockney English, he told us of a son of
a nobleman who, having quarrelled with his father, had shipped as a
common sailor on board a vessel, and made his way to Australia. He
arrived at a city in Australia, and tried in many ways to get a living:
he drove a cab, he wrote for a newspaper, he was a waiter, he worked
as a labourer on the quays, he was a billiard-marker at a hotel, and
one night, whilst he was scoring for some people who were playing at
billiards, a gentleman, who had been staring hard at him said, ‘Are
not you the Honourable Mr. ----?’ and he gave him his name. The young
fellow changed colour, but denied that he was the Honourable Mr.
So-and-so.

‘But the other wasn’t to be put off,’ said Sir Frederick Thompson.
‘“Don’t tell me,”’ says the gent. “I know your brother, and you’re
the image of him.” Such a likeness is out of nature unless it’s in
the family line, and at last the young fellow owned that he was the
Honourable Mr. So-and-so. ‘And now you’ll find,’ said Sir Frederick,
‘that I’ve discovered who you are, just as the Honourable Mr. So-and-so
was discovered by a likeness altogether too strong to be in nature
unless it’s in the family line.’

The little gentleman then pulled off his hat and left us.

‘Would he persist if he did not feel convinced?’ said I.

‘He is mistaken, dear. Let him account for your being discovered in
an open boat before he attempts to tell you who you are. And what
does he mean by a Calthorpe? That you are a sister of his friend,
Lady Lucy Calthorpe, or a relative? A sister is a relative, it is
true; but _relative_ is a word that will cover a very large number of
connections. What member of the family of Calthorpe does Sir Frederick
believe you to be? Agnes, do not give the little gentleman’s fancy
another thought.’

We were seated on a part of the deck that was not very far distant from
the wheel. The corner of the awning shaded us, but all about the wheel
was in the sun, and the glare of the white decks, and of the white
gratings, and of the white costume in which the sailor who held the
wheel was clad, and the white brilliance of the wheel itself, whose
circle was banded with brass and whose centrepiece was brass, paled the
blue of the sky over the stern, as though a silver haze of heat rose
into the atmosphere; and the dark blue sea itself was dimmed into a
faintness of azure by contrast with the glaring white light that lay
upon the after portion of the ship, which was unshadowed by the awning.

But within the awning the deck was as cool as a tunnel. The violet
gloom was for ever freshened by the mild blowing of the breeze through
the rigging and over the rail; and the soft wind was made the cooler
to the senses by the fountainlike murmur of waters broken by the quiet
progress of the ship, and by that most refreshing of sounds on a hot
day, the seething of foam.

CHAPTER XV

THE GIPSY

I went to Alice’s cabin, where I found Mrs. Lee writing in what
appeared to be a diary, took from a shelf the book Alice had asked me
to fetch, and returned to her side; and I had opened the volume and
had found the place where I had left off when I last read to her, and
was beginning to read aloud when I found my attention disturbed by the
sound of voices behind our chairs. I turned my head, and observed that
Mr. Wedmold and Mr. Clack had seated themselves, regardless of the heat
of the sun, upon a grating near the wheel. They were arguing.

‘It is impossible for me to read,’ I exclaimed, ‘while those men are
talking so loud.’

‘What are they arguing about?’ said Alice Lee; ‘let us listen.’

‘Yes, I am with you there,’ said Mr. Wedmold. ‘Defoe’s English is
admirable. But “Robinson Crusoe” is full of blunders.’

‘Blunders,’ cried Mr. Clack, whose collars held his neck so rigid that
he could not turn his head without moving his body from the waist. ‘I
have read “Robinson Crusoe” often enough, and cannot recollect a single
blunder for the life of me.’

‘Will you bet?’

‘No, I will not bet.’

‘Will you bet there are no absurdities in “Robinson Crusoe”?’

‘I will stand a drink,’ said Mr. Clack, ‘if you can point out--so as to
convince me--a single absurdity in “Robinson Crusoe”.’

‘Right you are!’ exclaimed Mr. Wedmold, with an accent of victorious
elation; ‘what about the mark of the foot?’

‘What d’ye mean?’ said Mr. Clack.

‘“It happened one day about noon,” I know the passage by heart,’ said
Mr. Wedmold, ‘“it happened one day about noon,” says Robinson Crusoe,
“going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a
man’s naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the
sand.”’

‘Well!’ said Mr. Clack.

‘Well,’ said Mr. Wedmold, ‘what are we to suppose? That the savage who
made that mark with his foot had a wooden leg? Only think of a single
imprint! Even two would have been unpardonable; there should have been
a whole flight of them. Could you walk upon sand capable of receiving
the imprint of your foot and stamp one impress only? Impossible!’

‘In all probability,’ said Mr. Clack, ‘the savage landed upon some
flat rocks which were skirted by sand; and in his walk he happened to
put his foot upon the sand once only, and hence Robinson Crusoe saw but
a single imprint.’

‘He evidently does not intend that Mr. Wedmold shall drink at his
expense,’ said Alice.

The two gentlemen continued to argue. It was impossible to read aloud.
It was impossible indeed not to listen to them, for they often raised
their voices so high that people at the other end of the deck turned in
their chairs to view them. The discussion was ended at last--so far at
least as Alice and I were concerned--by Mr. Clack telling Mr. Wedmold
that he did not believe he had quoted correctly from the story. On this
they both rose and walked away to seek through the ship for a copy of
‘Robinson Crusoe.’

There was now peace at our end of the vessel, and opening the book
afresh I began to read aloud, but before I had read two pages, Alice,
with the capricious taste of the invalid, though her manner was never
wanting in perfect sweetness and gentleness, stopped me.

‘I do not feel in the humour to listen to that book,’ said she. ‘It is
a book for the quietude of the evening, for the lamplight, a book for
the open window through which you can see the stars shining. It is not
a book for a sunny joyous morning like this. One should not be able to
see gay figures moving about, and hear the sound of laughter when one
reads it.’

I closed the volume and she talked of the sea and the wonder and beauty
of it, and recited some passages from the ‘Ancient Mariner’; but in
the midst of her recitation she was seized with a cough that almost
convulsed her. I raised her veil that she might breathe easily. She
sought to reassure me with a smile during the convulsions of her cough,
but it shook her to the heart. I seemed to hear death in the rattle
of that terrible cough. Never before in my presence had she been so
suddenly and violently seized.

The fit passed and she lowered her veil, breathing quickly, and for
some moments she was speechless. Presently I said to her; ‘Has this
attack been caused by your coming on deck?’

She shook her head and answered in a low voice, as though speaking with
difficulty. ‘No, I often cough, but chiefly during the night. Do not
tell mother of this attack.’

One might have imagined her cough noisy and distressing enough to win
the attention of everybody upon deck, and that nobody heeded it, unless
it was the sailor who stood a little distance behind us grasping the
wheel, was because, whilst Alice was coughing the passengers had
left their seats, had thrown down their books or work, had forsaken
their game of deck quoits to crowd about the head of the ladder on the
right-hand side of the deck--the ladder that conducted from the poop
on to the quarterdeck below. I was too much grieved and concerned by
Alice’s attack to notice this movement of the passengers; but now that
she had recovered and was able to speak and get her breath freely, I
looked at the people and wondered what had drawn them in a body to that
particular part of the deck.

‘Can an accident have happened?’ said I.

‘Will you go and see what is the matter, dear?’ exclaimed Alice.

I at once arose and walked along the deck, keeping on the side opposite
that which was thronged with the passengers. When I arrived at the
brass rail that protected the extremity of the deck, I looked over
and saw a great crowd of emigrants gathered about the central mast and
hatchway. They grinned and elbowed amongst themselves as they stared at
the concourse of passengers upon the poop. Half-way up the ladder on
that side stood the swarthy fierce-looking gipsy, who had ejaculated
on catching sight of my face when I first came on board, and who had
watched me with eyes of fire when I had walked the deck with Mrs. Lee.
She appeared to be haranguing the passengers on the poop. Her voice was
a peculiar whine, and she showed a set of white strong teeth as she
grinned up at them. Fearing if she saw me that she would point or call,
or in some way direct attention to me, I returned to Alice, seated
myself at her side, and told her what I had seen. After a few minutes
the crowd of passengers at the head of the poop-ladder drew back, so
as to allow the gipsy woman to step on to the deck. The whole mob,
with the fierce-looking woman in the heart of them, then came surging
to the skylight lying nearest to the edge of the poop, and here all the
people halted, with the woman still in the thick of them. Mr. Harris
hovered on the skirts of the crowd, taking a peep now and again over
one or another’s shoulder with his acid, dry, twisted face; and great
was the curiosity of the poor emigrants; for unheeded, or at least
unrebuked by the mate, they thronged the poop-ladder on either hand to
look on and hear what was said.

The tawny, flashing-eyed woman could now and again be seen by us as
the people about her moved the better to hear or to accommodate one
another with room. Her white teeth gleamed; a fierce smile was fixed
upon her face; her eyes of Egyptian blackness sparkled under the red
hood or handkerchief that covered her head, her skin looked of the
colour of pepper in the sunlight; she talked incessantly, with frequent
exhortatory flourishings of her arms, and distant as she was--almost
the whole length of the long poop-deck separating us--I could see how
wild, fierce, and repellant was her smile, whilst she glanced from one
face to another as she jabbered and gesticulated.

Frequent laughter broke from the passengers, and sometimes one or two
of the ladies recoiled by a step, though they would thrust in again a
minute after.

‘What can they be doing with the woman?’ said Alice.

‘They seem to be making fun of her,’ said I.

‘It is more likely that she is making fun of them,’ said Alice. ‘Is she
a gipsy? She has the appearance of one.’

‘What is a gipsy?’ I asked.

‘A person who belongs to a strange wandering tribe; whether there are
more tribes than one I do not know. They are to be found everywhere,
I believe. They look like Jews, but they are not Jews. It is supposed
that they originally came from Egypt or India. I used to take a great
interest in reading about them. I never can pronounce the word gipsy
without an English country picture rising before me; a wayside tract of
grass off a dusty road, clumps of trees here and there, the trickling
sound of a little brook mingled with the humming of bees and the lowing
of cattle in a near pasture, a waggon covered with canvas, two or three
dark-skinned little children playing on the grass, a tawny woman like
that creature there, bending over an iron pot dangling above a gipsy
fire, a fierce, bushy-whiskered, chocolate-faced man, mending chairs,
or making baskets, or tinkering at a little forge.’

She gazed at me earnestly when she ceased to speak. I knew that she
sought in the expression of my face for some sign of my recognition of
the picture she had drawn, for some hint of recollection in my looks. A
sudden burst of laughter broke from the people gathered about the gipsy.

‘I believe she is telling fortunes,’ said Alice; ‘shall we go and
listen to her, dear?’

She took my arm and we approached the crowd. It was as Alice had said:
the woman was telling fortunes. She was holding the delicate white
fingers of the elder Miss Glanville, whose handsome face was rosy red.
Everybody was on the broad grin. The gipsy woman holding the girl’s
fingers talked with her eyes upon the palm of the hand, but sometimes
she would flash a look into Miss Glanville’s face. The creature spoke
deliberately, with a slow drawling whine. She seemed to heartily enjoy
her task, and to be in no hurry to proceed with her business of
divination. Her face was heavy, the features strong and coarse, and the
whole head would have better suited a man’s than a woman’s figure; yet
the countenance was not wanting in a certain wild comeliness. The nose
was of the true Egyptian pattern as we are taught to understand the
meaning of the word Egyptian by ancient chiselling and inscriptions,
and her hair, or as much as was visible of it, resembled a wig
manufactured from a horse’s tail.

‘He will make you unhappy,’ she was saying in her drawling whining
voice, ‘but you will be true to him. Yet you will not be sorry when he
dies, and a handsome man will be your second. But he will have to wait
for you, and cheerfully will he wait for you, my lady, for he’s waiting
for you now. True love is never in a ’urry.’ There was a laugh. ‘He
will not bring you money. No, it is your ladyship that will set him
up; but he’ll never be made to feel his want of money, for your ’art
beats fond.’

‘What stuff!’ said Alice.

‘It makes her blush, yet she does not look displeased,’ I whispered.

‘Can’t you name the two fortunate gentlemen, mother?’ exclaimed a tall,
slender young man known to me as simply Mr. Stinton.

‘Names is nothing,’ answered the gipsy woman, without lifting her eyes
from the girl’s hand, ‘it’s persons, not names, as my art deals with.’
And then she went on to tell the blushing Miss Glanville that her home
after her second marriage would not be in England but in Italy. She
would live by a lake; an Italian nobleman would fall in love with her,
and though there would be no reason for jealousy the Italian nobleman
would cause a little unhappiness between her and her second. The
Italian nobleman would praise her singing and excite a passion in her
for the stage, but it would not come to the stage, for her second’s
wishes would prevail, and the Italian nobleman after a time would
withdraw and never more be heard of.

Other rubbish of this sort did the fierce-looking gipsy woman drawl and
whine out, sometimes in language very well expressed, and sometimes
using slang or cant words which never failed to provoke the laughter of
the gentlemen.

Amongst those who pressed most eagerly forward to harken to the gipsy
was Mrs. Webber. She was dressed in white, and a very pretty straw hat
was perched on her high-dressed hair. Her pale face wore an expression
of enthusiastic credulity, and she kept her eyes fastened upon the
gipsy as though she devoured every word the creature uttered. Alice
and I stood on the other side of the crowd, and Mrs. Webber did not
observe us. I speak of ourselves as a crowd, and indeed we looked
so on the white deck of the ship and under the shadow of the awning
which produced an atmospheric effect of compression, diminishing the
width and even the length of the ship to the eye. I had no doubt that
Mrs. Webber would ask to have her fortune told, and I loitered, Alice
leaning on my arm, with some curiosity to hear what the gipsy would
say; but when the woman had dropped the hand of Miss Glanville, and
while she swept the adjacent faces with brilliant eyes as though she
should say, Whose turn next? the tall, slim young gentleman known to
me by the name of Mr. Stinton pressed forward close to the woman and
exclaimed:

‘I say, mother, I know something about you gipsy folks. My father was a
magistrate,’ and dropping his head on one side he smiled at her.

‘What you know about us is that we are a very respectable, honest
people,’ said she, grinning at him, with her large, strong, glaring
white teeth.

‘Do you still steal pigs?’ said he.

‘Oh, no, no,’ she cried with a vehement shake of the head and an
equally vehement motion of her hand before her face.

‘You no longer poison pigs and beg the carcases of the poor people to
whom they belonged and then clean them of the poison and roast them and
eat them, eh?’ said Mr. Stinton.

A general laugh arose on either hand from the emigrants who swarmed
upon the two ladders.

‘Oh, no, no,’ cried the woman, ‘we are respectable, hard-working
people, and get our money honestly.’

‘You no longer steal horses, then?’

‘Oh, no, no.’

‘Nor children?’

‘Why do you say such things?’ shrieked the woman, and her eyes blazed
as she looked at Mr. Stinton, and the flush that entered her cheeks
deepened her swarthy, ugly complexion by several shades. ‘By my God, if
you ask me any more such questions I will do you some mischief.’

‘None of that!’ cried Mr. Harris.

‘My father is a magistrate,’ said Mr. Stinton, who had stepped
backwards and now spoke over the shoulders of Mr. Webber.

‘It is a pity to insult the poor creature,’ said one of the ladies.

The gipsy looked for an instant at Mr. Stinton, her eyes then went to
Mrs. Webber, and her manner changed; it grew suppliant and cringing;
the fierce expression of her lips softened into a fawning smile.

‘Let me tell you your fortune, my gorgeous angel,’ she exclaimed,
resuming her former drawling, whining voice. ‘Oh, but I can see that
there is a happy fortune for that sweet face. Pull off your beautiful
little glove that I may see your hand, and whatever you crosses my own
hand with shall be welcome for the sake of your lovely eyes. Ah, what
mischief has my lady’s eyes done in their day, and what mischief are
they yet to do,’ and thus the woman proceeded.

I could not forbear a smile at the manner in which Mr. Webber
readjusted the glass in his eye, as though to obtain a clearer sight of
the gipsy, whilst he stroked down one of his whiskers.

‘This is sad nonsense,’ said Alice; ‘and I am a little weary of
standing. Shall we return to our seats, dear?’

I wished to hear Mrs. Webber’s fortune told, but Alice was not to be
kept standing, and together we walked to our chairs at the after-end
of the deck and seated ourselves. Just then Mrs. Lee came up from the
saloon. She inquired what the passengers were doing.

‘They are having their fortunes told, mother,’ answered Alice.

‘By our staring gipsy friend, no doubt,’ said Mrs. Lee, addressing
me. ‘Well, certainly life at sea is very dull, and you cannot wonder
that people should try to kill an hour, however stupidly.’ I fetched
a chair, and she sat down. ‘And yet,’ continued she thoughtfully,
letting her eyes rest upon her child, ‘I ought to be one of the last to
ridicule fortune-telling. When I was a girl of sixteen I was walking
with my mother--where we then lived--on the outskirts of Gateshead,
when we came across a gipsy encampment. A dreadful old hag stumbled out
of a group of dirty people, and begged to let her tell me my dukkerin,
as she called it--strange that I should remember the word after all
these years! My mother was for going on, but I stopped and put a
shilling into the old creature’s hand, and she told me my fortune.’

‘Was it a true fortune?’ said Alice.

‘It was true, every word,’ answered Mrs. Lee; ‘it was wonderfully true.
She described the man that I was to marry, and had she spoken with
your dear father’s portrait in her hand she could not have been more
accurate. She told me how many children I should have; but, what is
more extraordinary, she named not only the year but the month of the
year in which I should be married. And it came to pass exactly as she
had predicted.’

‘And what more did the gipsy tell you, mother?’ said Alice.

‘No more, my love,’ answered Mrs. Lee, but with a note of hesitation,
which made me suspect that more had been told to her by that old gipsy
than she was now willing to reveal.

Meanwhile there was much laughter amongst the passengers at the other
end of the deck. I could occasionally distinguish an hysterical giggle
uttered by Mrs. Webber, and once a deep unquiet Ha! ha! delivered by
her husband.

‘A ship seems a strange place for gipsies and fortune-telling,’ said
Alice. ‘Why is that woman going to Australia, I wonder? Are there any
of her tribe there?’

‘Probably some ancestor of hers was transported,’ answered Mrs. Lee.
‘He left descendants, and the woman is going to settle down amongst
them. Gipsies were constantly being transported for theft of all sorts
when I was a girl, in days when there were convict ships and when
unhappy wretches were banished for life from their country for crimes
which are now visited with a few months’ imprisonment. I am amazed that
there should be any gipsies left. There was more prejudice against
them than even against the Jews. They were hunted from town to town,
the parish eye was never off them, and they were really so wicked,
they committed so many sins, that it is amazing there should be any
survivors of the prisons.’

Whilst Mrs. Lee was thus speaking, Mrs. Webber came sailing out of the
crowd with a flushed face and a smile of excitement. Her flowing robe
of white cashmere fluffed out in ample winding folds as she advanced,
and she approached with an airy, floating gait that was like dancing.

‘Oh, Miss C----,’ she exclaimed, eagerly bending towards me, ‘I have
been having my fortune told; and, do you know, the ugly creature is a
witch; she is positively a witch! She has told me some extraordinary
things, I assure you. My poor husband was silly enough to “hem” once or
twice as though her prophecies disquieted him. Now, Miss C----, I want
you to let the woman tell you your fortune.’

‘No, if you please, Mrs. Webber,’ I exclaimed.

‘Oh, but you must let her tell you your fortune,’ she repeated. ‘Mrs.
Lee, I protest the creature is a witch. Do help me to persuade Miss
C---- to let the woman look at her hand.’

‘These people profess to tell the future only,’ said Mrs. Lee smiling.
‘Can that woman there read the past--a past that is hidden in darkness?
If she can,’ she continued, turning to me, ‘no harm can be done by your
crossing her hand.’

‘Only think,’ cried Mrs. Webber, ‘if something she said, some question
she put to you, should light up your memory.’

‘What could she invent that you or Mrs. Lee or Miss Lee could not ask?’
said I.

‘The woman is quite a witch,’ said Mrs. Webber, ‘you should give
yourself a chance. How can you tell who may help you or what may
inspire you?’

I looked at Alice. ‘I think Mrs. Webber is right,’ said she; ‘you never
can tell what may awaken recollection.’

‘I will not go amongst that crowd and have my fortune told,’ said I.

‘I will bring the woman to you,’ exclaimed Mrs. Webber; and, full of
curiosity and excitement, and with her eyes bright with the animal
spirits which had been excited by the gipsy’s flattering observations,
she sailed away from us.

‘What will the gipsy be able to say?’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee, laughing a
little nervously. ‘But more wonderful than her predictions must be the
credulity that can listen to such stuff. And stuff I call it, in spite
of the old woman who told my fortune rightly. Poor Mrs. Webber! There
are many ladies after her kind in this world, perfectly good-hearted
creatures, but----My husband used often to say that the strongest of
all human passions is curiosity, and that the speediest and surest way
of making money is to work upon that passion.’

‘Here comes the gipsy woman,’ said Alice.

I felt extremely nervous and uneasy. I did not like the idea of being
stared at close by that flaming-eyed toad-coloured woman. And neither
did I like the idea of being stared at close by the passengers whilst
the gipsy whined at me. But it was now too late to draw back; Mrs.
Webber and the gipsy were coming along the deck, followed by at least
two-thirds of the passengers, and now the fierce-looking woman was
dropping curtsies to me and to Mrs. Lee and to Alice. She instantly
addressed me in a drawling, fawning voice.

‘Ah, my sorrowful angel, it has been a bad time for you, and when I
first saw your ladyship I said to myself, She’s of Egypt, and if she
has bantlings they are tawny, and I cried, Tiny Jesus, what a face!
for the sight of it was like poison to my heart. Oh yes, my sorrowful
angel, I did think you one of us, and Roman you might well be,’ she
cried with her flashing eyes fastened upon my veil, ‘but for your
delicate skin and a look of high-born beauty which the likes of us
never has. Come, sweet lady, cross my hand, and let it be silver, that
I may tell ye your true fortune.’

By this time, we were pretty fairly surrounded by the passengers, and
a little way back, with his eyes fixed full upon me, was Mr. Harris,
the chief officer. The gipsy stood unpleasantly close. Her features
were more massive and coarse, her complexion more loathsome, her teeth
bigger and stronger if not whiter, and her eyes wilder, more flaming
and more searching than I had imagined them, though I had not stood
far from her when she was telling fortunes in the crowd. I remember
observing many minute dots of black upon her chin, as though she shaved
or had been pricked by a needle dipped in India ink. Her figure was
lame and muscular, her bust enormous and slack, her whole appearance
indeed so repellent now that she was close to me that I heartily wished
myself in my cabin out of sight.

‘You do not mean to tell us,’ exclaimed Mr. Webber, ‘that you mistook
the lady for a gipsy.’

‘Indeed I did, dear gentleman,’ she answered; ‘when she first came on
board I took her for one of my people.’

‘Chaw!’ exclaimed Mr. Harris over the shoulder of Mr. Stinton.

Mrs. Lee felt for her purse.

‘Let the poor sorrowful lady cross my hand with a piece of money of her
own,’ said the gipsy.

I put my hand in my pocket and drew out a shilling and placed it in the
broad palm of the gipsy’s outstretched hand. The passengers gazed with
excitement. Mr. Harris drew closer by a stride. The two ladders at the
forward end of the deck and the bulwark rail that rose to midway the
height of the ladders on either hand were still crowded with emigrants,
none of whom, however, trespassed an inch beyond the topmost step. All
this keen interest was easy enough to understand. Was it possible that
the gipsy, though she should be unable to restore my memory, would be
able to peer into the darkened mirror of my past and witness there what
was hidden from myself?

‘You must lift up your veil, dear lady,’ said the gipsy, ‘there are
signs in your face that I shan’t be able to find in your hand.’

‘What is this?’ suddenly exclaimed the grave voice of Captain Ladmore.
‘Whom have we here? And what is she doing?’

‘She’s telling fortunes, sir,’ answered Mr. Harris, in a voice of
disgust.

‘Who brought her on to the poop,’ exclaimed Captain Ladmore.

‘I did,’ said Mrs. Webber. ‘Pray do not meddle, my dear captain. The
interest is just now red hot.’

The gipsy woman ducked with a wild sort of curtsey at the captain,
grinning with all her teeth at him as she did so. He gazed at her with
a sober frown, and I hoped that he would order her off the deck, but he
said nothing, merely stood looking gravely on, towering half a head
above the people who stood in front of him, whilst Mr. Harris, at his
side, scarcely removed his eyes from my face.

‘Lift up your veil, if you please, my dear lady, that I may see your
eyes,’ said the gipsy.

‘I had supposed that the sight of my hand would be enough for you,’
said I.

‘I can tell your ladyship’s fortune by your hand,’ said she, ‘but the
past lies in your eyes. They are the windows of your memory, and I must
look through them to see what’s indoors.’

‘What do you think of that for a poetical touch, Kate?’ I heard Mr.
Webber say.

‘Raise your veil, Agnes,’ whispered Alice softly, ‘if it is only for a
moment, dear. I am curious to hear what the woman means to tell you.
There may be a meaning in this--something may come of it.’

So I put my hand to my veil and raised it above my eyes, contriving
that it should keep my scarred forehead screened.

CHAPTER XVI

MY FORTUNE

The gipsy woman stooped and stared at me. Her face was close to mine,
I seemed to feel her hot breath and shrunk in my chair. Never can I
forget those eyes of hers. To this day do they revisit me in my sleep
and glare upon me in dreams. Oh, such eyes as that woman had! The
pupils were like liquid indigo; they contracted and enlarged as though
they were fluid, indeed, upon the orange ground of the balls. They
seemed on fire as their gaze flashed deep and full into my own vision.
The scrutiny swiftly grew intolerable and I dropped my veil.

‘That will do, my sweet lady,’ said she, preserving the horrid whining
note in her voice, and then, taking my hand, she feigned to explore it
for some moments, perhaps minutes, so long did the pause seem.

She stood with my fingers in her hand, poring upon the palm. I cast
a look around me, and in spite of my nervousness and uneasiness,
that amounted to positive distress, I had some difficulty to prevent
myself from breaking into an hysterical laugh at the countenances
which surrounded us. Mrs. Webber seemed unable to draw her breath; the
Miss Glanvilles stood with their mouths partly open; Sir Frederick
Thompson’s face was distorted by a grin of expectation; but it would
need the brush of a great comic artist to reproduce the looks of those
people whilst they waited for the gipsy to speak.

She suddenly let fall my hand, drew herself erect and receded a step,
causing a momentary confusion amongst the passengers who stood
immediately behind her. She muttered awhile, and then in a sort of
singsong, drawling voice addressed me, as nearly as I can recollect, as
follows:--

‘It is not true that you are a single woman as they are saying
throughout this ship. It is nothing to me that you have no wedding
ring, for what signifies the want of a wedding ring when a poor lady is
found as you were, bleeding and insensible? What signifies a wedding
ring, I say, to such as you, found as you were, my sorrowful lady?--for
are there not thieves upon the sea as there are thieves upon the land?
And I do not need to be told that a sailor may be a good man until he
is tempted, and then he will turn thief; yes, he will turn thief, even
though he would give all that he has stolen for a drink of water and a
piece of biscuit.’

‘How extraordinary!’ I heard Mrs. Webber say.

‘Oh yes,’ continued the gipsy, slightly gesticulating with her right
hand, ‘the wedding ring does not signify. You are a married woman. I
have looked into your eyes and I have seen a husband there; I have
looked into your eyes and I have seen children there. You are a married
woman, my lady. I tell you that, and I will tell you more; you are a
young married woman. You have not long been married. Your husband is
mourning for you, but he will not mourn long. Give me your hand.’ She
seized my hand with impassioned energy, and continued to speak with
her eyes fixed upon the palm of it. ‘You will be long separated from
your husband. A dark shadow will stand between you. Oh, it is very
clear--here is the sign: it is the shadow of death, that will stand
between you. It will roll away, but another shadow of death will take
its place, and though it will not stand between you and your husband,
it will be dark upon your soul, aye, even unto the grave.’

‘The woman certainly talks poetically,’ said Mrs. Lee, in a low voice
in my ear, ‘and it is clever of her to say what it has not occurred to
other people to think of.’

The gipsy viewed me with her bright eyes and her teeth bared, but
apparently she had no more fortune to tell me.

‘I say, missis,’ exclaimed Sir Frederick Thompson, ‘I should like to
have your opinion upon the lady’s quality. If she ain’t a titled woman,
don’t she spring from a noble stock now?’

‘Ah, my pretty gentleman,’ whined the gipsy turning to view him, ‘The
duckkerin dook does not tell me that.’

‘You’ve told fortunes enough in your time to be able to tell breeding,
I hope, when you see it,’ said Sir Frederick.

‘Oh, my pretty gentleman,’ drawled the woman, ‘to us poor gipsies all
the world is alike. We are all brothers and sisters, and those that are
kind,’ said she, bobbing a curtsey at him, ‘we love best and think most
of, and they are the true quality people of the earth.’

‘But you have not done with the lady yet, I hope?’ cried Mrs. Webber.
‘You have told her nothing.’

‘My gorgeous angel,’ answered the woman, ‘I have told the sorrowful
lady all I know, and what I know is the truth.’

‘What’s her country, mother?’ inquired Mr. Stinton.

She eyed him sideways with a cat-like look, but made no reply.

‘Tell us, my good woman, in what country you think her home is?’ said
Mr. Webber.

‘Who can tell? I will not answer that,’ said the gipsy. ‘There are many
countries for the likes of such as the sorrowful lady to have a home
in. There is Russia and Spain and ’Olland. In them countries are plenty
of English gorgios. Where her home may be I cannot tell, for the dook
is silent.’

‘What Dook is she talking of?’ exclaimed Sir Frederick Thompson.

‘Oh, sweet gentleman,’ she said, turning upon him again, ‘the dook is
the spirit that enables me to tell dukkeripen.’

‘Hearing you speak of Spain, mother, I thought you might have meant the
Dook of Wellington,’ said Sir Frederick.

Mrs. Webber looked at her husband with a face of vexation, as though
irritated by the vulgar jokes of the little city gentleman at such a
moment of romance.

‘Your dook is but a shabby expounder of riddles if he cannot tell us
why the lady should be found insensible and washing about the ocean in
a little bit of an open boat,’ said Mr. Wedmold. ‘Can’t the dook make a
guess?’

‘You forget, Mr. Wedmold, that fortune-telling means reading the
future, not the past,’ said Mrs. Webber.

‘And that is right, my beautiful lady,’ cried the gipsy; ‘but I have
told the sorrowful lady her past too, and by-and-bye the dook may tell
me what her name is and where her ’ome is, and how many childer she
has; and if I enable her to return to her friends, I hope,’ said she,
sinking her knees in a curtsey, ‘that the poor gipsy woman will be
remembered.’

Captain Ladmore, who had been looking on and listening all this while,
stalked away from the crowd of us to the rail, and remained there,
gazing seawards.

‘And shall I tell you your fortune, my sweet young lady?’ exclaimed the
gipsy, addressing Alice Lee. ‘Give me your poor thin hand, and though
you cross mine with the littlest bit you have, you shall have your
fortune as truly told as though you gave me gold.’

‘My daughter does not require her fortune told,’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee,
jumping up with an air of mingled consternation and excitement, and
planting herself between the gipsy and Alice.

‘I think we have had about enough of her for one watch,’ exclaimed Mr.
Harris, in his sourest voice. ‘Suppose you go forward now.’

‘Let me tell you your fortune, my pretty gentleman,’ exclaimed the
gipsy; ‘you are an officer of the ship, and I will tell you your
fortune for nothing.’

‘Get along forward to your quarters,’ said Mr. Harris. ‘When I want
lies told about me I’ll get ’em from somebody who’ll have sense enough
to fit my tiptop wishes. What can ye tell me? That after this voyage
I’m going to marry a German princess and be voted ten thousand a year
by the British House of Commons? You’d want sixpence to tell me that
lie, and there’s never a man for’ards that wouldn’t spin me fifty
better yarns about my prospects for a single tot of grog. So away
with you to your quarters,’ and he made as though he would drive her;
whereupon, dropping curtsies to me, to Mrs. Webber, and to one or two
others, the gipsy walked forward with a face rendered extraordinary by
the wild grin on her lips and the scowl upon her brow like a visible
shadow there, sharpening and brightening the fiery glancings of her
eyes.

The crowds of emigrants on the two ladders melted away, the mob of
passengers broke up, but Mrs. Webber remained.

Mrs. Webber, as I have said, remained; but for some moments neither she
nor Mrs. Lee nor her daughter spoke. Their eyes were bent upon my face,
and they waited, hoping no doubt that when I aroused myself from the
reverie into which I had sunk I would exhibit some sign of returning
memory. I held my head down, and kept my gaze fixed upon the deck, and,
rightly guessing that I would not be the first to speak, Mrs. Webber
said:

‘Tell me now, has the gipsy woman helped you at all?’

I looked at her, and after a pause shook my head and answered, ‘She has
not helped me in the least.’

‘What could have put the idea of your being married into the creature’s
head?’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee.

‘It is a strange idea,’ said Alice, looking at me earnestly; ‘but
I suppose those gipsy people understand the need of saying strange
things. They cannot be too dark and mysterious and startling to please
the sort of folks who cross their hands.’

‘But why should not Miss C---- be married?’ said Mrs. Webber.

‘I hope she is not--but I am _sure_ she is not!’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee.

Mrs. Webber ran a curious eye over me, and said: ‘I had my theory, but
I own the gipsy creature has driven it out of my head. Is it _quite_
impossible, my dear Mrs. Lee, that Miss C---- may have been robbed of
her rings? Why should she be found without any jewellery upon her? Your
station in society is easily guessed, Miss C----, and I must say, now
the gipsy woman has suggested the idea, that your having been found
without rings, without a watch and chain, without earrings or brooch,
without, in short, a single ornament such as one might most reasonably
expect to find a lady wearing, looks uncommonly like as though you had
been robbed. In which case,’ she added, somewhat breathlessly, ‘you
_may_ have worn a wedding ring.’

‘Miss C---- had a purse with money in it in her pocket,’ said Mrs. Lee,
who never called me by the name her daughter had given to me before
strangers. ‘A thief who would steal rings or a watch and chain would
certainly steal a purse with money in it.’

‘But--forgive me for being candid, Miss C----; whatever I say, whatever
I may say, is _wholly_ for your sake--is wholly with the idea of
helping you to remember,’ said Mrs. Webber; ‘is it likely that a lady
occupying your position in society would be without a single ring?’ She
glanced at her own plump white hands, upon which sparkled a variety of
valuable gems.

Alice Lee pulled off her silk gloves, and, lifting up her poor thin
hands, exclaimed with a smile in her voice--her face was concealed by
her veil--‘You may see, Mrs. Webber, that I do not wear rings.’

‘There may be a reason,’ exclaimed Mrs. Webber, looking a little
nonplussed.

‘Yes, there is a reason to be sure,’ said Mrs. Lee, bringing her eyes
away from her daughter’s hands with a look of pain in her face, ‘Alice
never cared for jewellery of any sort.’

‘I could name two girls of my acquaintance, Mrs. Webber,’ said Alice,
putting on her gloves, ‘who do not wear rings, not because they cannot
get them, their fathers are rich merchants at Newcastle-on-Tyne, but
because, like me, they do not care for rings. I dare say we could name
others, mother, if we were to take the trouble to think.’

‘But would you be without a watch, Miss C----?’ said Mrs. Webber.

‘Do not ask me!’ I cried. ‘All the while you are conversing I am
struggling with my mind.’

‘Take a few turns with me, dear,’ said Alice, rising, ‘and then we will
go downstairs and lunch together quietly in our cabin. I do not feel
well enough to lunch in the saloon.’

So I gave her my arm, and we paced the deck. Mrs. Webber took my
chair and talked with Mrs. Lee in a voice which she softened as we
approached, gesticulating with considerable energy, as though she
sought to convince her companion. After we had taken four or five
turns, Alice complained of feeling weary; we then descended into the
saloon and passed into the cabin.

At about nine o’clock that evening I went to my berth in the steerage,
having spent the greater part of the day since the hour of lunch
with Alice Lee and her mother. The girl’s cough had been somewhat
troublesome during the afternoon. It had abated, but it had left her
weak, and there had been a hint of querulousness in her manner, but
scarcely so much as to vex her sweetness; nay, I could liken it to
nothing better than to the passage of a summer breath of night-wind
over some exquisitely calm breast of water, causing the reflection of
the stars to tremble in the pure mirror, and shaking a little further
sweetness yet out of the lilies.

I helped her to undress, and saw her into bed, and I sat and read
aloud to her until she fell asleep. Her mother had sat in an armchair
watching her, until some one began to play on the piano, whilst I was
reading to Alice, on which Mrs. Lee softly went out to silence the
music, as I might suppose, for it presently ceased, and before she
returned Alice had fallen asleep; whereupon, creeping from the berth, I
whispered to Mrs. Lee that her daughter slumbered, and went to my own
cabin.

The bracket lamp was alight, but it burnt dimly, and I brightened it
for the sake of the cheerfulness and the companionship of the flame. I
was sad at heart, and my head ached, but I was not sleepy. Secretly I
had been greatly agitated by what the gipsy had said. Of course I knew
it was pure invention on the woman’s part; but even as mere suggestions
her words had sunk deep. Could it be that I was a married woman? Could
it be that I had children? The thought raised an agony of desire to
_know_--to be _sure_; but it brought with it no other yearning. I
knew not that there were dear ones at home mourning over me as dead,
and therefore my heart could not crave for them. To my eclipsed and
blackened mind my husband and my children were as the unborn infant is
to the mother that may yet bear it. I was without memory and, no matter
what might be the imaginations infixed in my mind by the suggestions
and conjectures of others, I was without the power to realise.

But not the less was the struggle after recollection a dreadful
anguish. Sometimes I sat and sometimes I paced the deck of the cabin,
and all the while I was saying to myself, ‘Suppose that I am a wife!
Suppose that I have left a husband and children behind me at my home,
wherever it may be!’ And then I would come to a stand, and fold my
arms tightly across my breast, and close my eyes and with knitted brow
search in the blackness within me, till the fruitless quest grew into
physical pain unendurable as though some cruel hand were upon my heart.

And there was something more than my own intolerable mental condition
to depress me. I could not doubt that Alice Lee was dying. She might
be spared for some weeks; she might even be spared to find a grave
in Australia. But when I had looked at her after her fits of coughing
that afternoon, and when I had taken a final glance at her as she lay
sleeping, I could not doubt that her time was short, that whether or
not she should live to reach Australia she would certainly never behold
her native country again. Short as had been our association, I could
not have loved her more had she been known to me and had she been dear
to me all her life. I loved Mrs. Lee, but I loved Alice Lee more than I
loved her mother. My grief was selfish, but then all grief is more or
less so. When this girl dies, I thought to myself, what friends shall I
have? Who will compassionate my loneliness as she does? Who will make
me feel as she does, whilst my memory remains black, that I am not
utterly solitary? I know that whilst she lives I shall have a friend,
someone who will care for me, someone who will not lose sight of me
when this voyage is ended and the homeless world is before me. But she
will die before the voyage is ended, and what then will become of me?
O God, take pity upon me! I cried out of the anguish of my soul; and,
throwing myself upon my knees, I clasped my hands and prayed for mercy
and for help to Him to whom Alice Lee had taught me to pray.

The night was very quiet. The steerage was silent; one man I had
observed reading at a table under the lamp; but the fine night, as I
might suppose, detained his fellow-passengers on deck. There was a
bright moon; the silver sheen lay upon the glass of the cabin porthole
and so obscured it with misty radiance that the stars and the dark
line of the horizon were invisible. The wind was fair and fresh, and
the noise of the water washing past penetrated the silence. The ship
rocked stately and slow; indeed it was true tropic sailing, with a
tropic temperature in the cabin and a tropic night without, to judge by
the glory of the moonlight upon the cabin window.

The minutes crept on, but feeling sleepless I had no mind to undress
myself. Indeed, I had a longing to go on deck, for the temperature
of the berth was uncomfortably warm; I did not know how to open the
porthole, nor, though I had been able to open it, should I have dared
to do so lest a sudden roll of the ship might submerge the orifice and
fill the berth with water. The temptation, therefore, to go on deck was
keen, and it was rendered the keener by my hot brow and headache; in
imagination I tasted the sweet night wind cool with dew, and beheld the
wide-spread splendour cast by the moon upon the vast dark surface of
the sea. But then it would shortly be ten o’clock, at which hour a man
regularly tapped upon my door and bade me extinguish my lamp; and then,
again, I remembered how Mr. Harris and Mrs. Richards had stated that it
was against the rules of the ship for women to wander alone upon the
decks after the hour for extinguishing the lights had been struck upon
the ship’s bell.

Suddenly I heard a voice calling down the hatchway at the forward end
of the steerage; someone gruffly replied, possibly the man who had been
seated reading under the lamp. I paid no heed to these cries; they were
frequent enough down in this part of the ship. But about five minutes
after the cry had sounded my cabin door was lightly beaten and opened,
and Mrs. Richards entered.

‘I am glad to find you dressed,’ she exclaimed. ‘I believed you would
have been in bed in spite of your light burning. There is a fine sight
to be seen on deck. What do you think it is? A ship on fire! You may
make many voyages without seeing such a sight.’

‘A ship on fire!’ I exclaimed. ‘Oh, I should greatly wish to see it!
But it is nearly ten o’clock.’

‘And what of that?’ said she.

‘Why, did I not understand you to say that women are not allowed to be
alone on deck after the lights are out?’

She laughed and answered, ‘The Captain would not like women to be
wandering on deck alone at one o’clock in the morning as you were, my
dear; but there are always passengers about in warm weather at ten
o’clock, and sometimes after midnight, and whilst there are passengers
on deck no notice will be taken of your being there.’

‘If I had known that,’ said I, ‘I should have gone on deck half an hour
ago.’

I put on my shawl and hat--I call them mine--and, parting with Mrs.
Richards at her own cabin door, went on to the poop by one of the
ladders conducting to that raised platform from the quarter deck. It
was a very fine glorious night. The moon rode high, and under her the
sea lay brightly silvered. The sky was rich with stars, some of them
a delicate green and two or three of them rose, and the firmament in
which they sparkled had a soft and flowing look as though the velvet
dusk were liquid. The ship was clothed with canvas to the starry
altitude of her trucks. The swelling sails reflected the light of the
moon, and their gleam was as that of snow against the dark sky as they
rose with an appearance of cloud-like floating one above another,
dwindling until the topmost sail seemed no more than a fragment of
fleecy mist wan in the dusky heights. There was a pleasant breeze, and
it blew over the rail cool with dew and sweet with that flavourless
freshness of ocean air that is to the nostrils as a glass of water from
a pure crystal spring is to the mouth.

I stood at the corner of the poop near the head of the ladder in
the shadow made by the great sail called the mainsail, one wing or
extremity of which was stretched a long way beyond the shrouds. Many
passengers were on the poop; they were whitened by the moonlight, and
as they moved here and there their figures showed as though beheld
through a very delicate silver mist, but their shadows swayed black and
firm from their feet upon the white planks. The forecastle of the ship
was crowded with emigrants. The moonshine was raining down in silver
upon that part of the vessel, and the people had a ghostly appearance,
every face whitened, and their clothes white as though they had been
powdered, as they stood staring across the dark sweep of sea upon the
right-hand bow of the ship.

Woman-like I gazed everywhere but in the right direction when I first
gained the poop; but, observing some people on the other side of the
deck to point with shadowy hands, I immediately beheld what resembled
a globe of red fire upon the sea. It looked like a huge star setting
red as blood. I could not imagine how far off it might be, nor, but for
the stewardess’s information, should I have supposed it to be a ship on
fire. I had expected to see a great conflagration, a wide space of the
night sky crimsoned with forked and writhing tongues of flame, and I
was disappointed; but after I had stood gazing for a few minutes alone,
for there was nobody in that corner of the deck where I had planted
myself, a feeling of dismay, of consternation, even of horror possessed
me. I knew that the dark red globe burning upon the sea yonder was a
ship on fire, and knowing this I imagined that there might be living
people on board of the flaming mass. The whole spirit of the solitude
of this mighty scene of night, beautiful as it was with moonlight and
with starlight, seemed to be centred in that distant point of fire;
and the thought of the helplessness of the people on board the flaming
fabric amid so vast a field, their horrible loneliness, the awful
despair which that loneliness must excite--this thought, and other
thoughts which visited me from that distant mass of fire, presently
grew so insupportable to the deep melancholy which was upon me and
which had been upon me throughout the evening that I crossed the deck
in the hope of finding Mrs. Lee, that I might forget something of
myself in conversing with her.

But Mrs. Lee was not to be seen. She was in her berth, probably in bed,
and they would not give her the news of the ship on fire for fear
of disturbing her daughter. The passengers stood in groups, pointing
to the burning vessel and speaking in tones of excitement. I went
from one to another, gazing into their faces and receiving nods and
enquiries as to what I thought of the ship on fire. Captain Ladmore
walked the hinder part of the deck alone. But as there was nobody near
him who resembled Mrs. Lee, I returned to that part of the deck where
I had first stationed myself, being in no humour to mingle with the
passengers on the other side.

The sea was smooth, the wind fair and fresh, the spread of canvas
vast, and the ship was sweeping through the water at a rapid rate. She
was going through it clean as a sharp-built yacht would, making no
noise save under the bows, whence arose a sound of shearing as though
produced by a knife passing through thin ice. The marbled waters, moon
touched, whirled past alongside, softly hissing as they fled by, and
from the flight of those glimmering wreaths and eddies of foam I judged
of the fast pace at which the ship was sailing.

Gradually the distant globe of fire enlarged, and now the sky was
reddened all about it, and as I gazed there stole out of the blood red
haze of light the dark shadow of a ship lying within a quarter of a
mile of the burning vessel. Mr. Harris, who stood near some passengers
on the opposite side of the deck, let fall a night-glass that he had
been holding to his eyes and called out to the captain,

‘There’s a barque hove to close alongside of the burning vessel, sir.’

‘I see her, sir,’ answered the captain; and in a few moments the
palpitating fiery mass upon the sea slided a little away from the
bow. I was sailor enough to understand that our ship had been steered
for the burning vessel, but that Captain Ladmore, now perceiving that
assistance was close at hand, had resumed his course. Every five
minutes of sailing was rendering that picture of fire more splendid
and awful. She seemed a large ship, three-masted like our own. Great
columns of smoke rose from her, and into these sooty volumes the
flames would leap out of the burning hold, turning them crimson to a
great height, and the smoke hung like a thunder-cloud over the sea
where the ship lay burning; it eclipsed the stars, and it reverberated
in lightning-like flashes the darting of the red flames; and so
exactly did these flames resemble lightning that I heard some of the
passengers, who believed the cloud of smoke to be an electric storm,
express surprise that no thunder was to be heard.

But the sublimity of the scene lay chiefly in the effect of contrast.
In one part of the ocean was the silver reflection of the moon, with
the bright, serene orb poised high and small over her own wake; the
dark waters streamed into that brilliant reflection which trembled
with the racing of the silver lines; and in another part of the ocean
lay the great flaming ship, with her masts and yards all on fire, and
showing as though they were painted upon the darkness in flames; and
a little distance from her hung the shadow of a large vessel, whose
canvas stole out in spaces of dim red, and then darkened again as the
flames soared and sank; and behind and over the mastheads of the two
vessels floated a huge dark body of smoke, which came and went to the
eye with its sudden sullen colouring as from lightning; and the whole
picture was made awful by its suggestions of terror and of destruction.

It was a scene to hold the most thoughtless mute and to detain the most
wandering eye. But whilst I stood gazing two figures drew near; as they
approached I could hear they were arguing.

‘You can never persuade me,’ said Mr. Wedmold, ‘that the Americans have
humour in the true meaning of the word, and there is but one meaning.
They are funny, but they are not humorous. Their fun is either purely
verbal or ridiculous exaggeration.’

‘What humourist have we ever produced,’ exclaimed Mr. Clack, ‘who can
compare with ----’ and he named a funny American writer.

Mr. Wedmold’s silence was expressive of disgust.

‘Or take Holmes,’ said Mr. Clack.

‘Holmes’s humour is entirely English,’ said Mr. Wedmold; ‘by mentioning
Holmes you strengthen my argument.’

‘What do you mean by verbal humour?’ said Mr. Clack.

‘The Yankee gets his grins out of odd words, some few of which still
survive in our kitchens,’ said Mr. Wedmold; ‘or he gets his grins out
of exaggerating or understating a situation. He will tell you, for
instance, that, two men falling out, one threw the other over Niagara
Falls, and the fellow got wet. The Yankee will look for a loud laugh at
_got wet_; but there is no humour in it. A Yankee in telling a story
will wind up by saying “So I said you git, and he got.” The laugh must
come in here, for this “git” and “got” is the point of the story. But
this sort of thing--and American humour is all this sort of thing--is
by no means humour, and very little indeed of it is even fun. One
page of Elia is worth the productions of the whole of the American
humourists put together, from the date of Bunker’s Hill down to the
latest effort of ----,’ and he again mentioned the name of a funny
American writer.

I walked away and took up a position on the deck where I was unable
to hear this argument on American humour, and where I could watch the
burning ship in peace.

Very suddenly the great blaze upon the sea vanished. My eyes were upon
the strong wild light when it went out, and I noticed that just before
it disappeared the flaming masts of the vessel reeled so as to form a
fiery arc, and then all was blackness where the light had been; whence
it was to be supposed that the ship, in filling with water, had heeled
over, and gone down like a stone. The vessel that hung near showed now
very distinctly by the moonlight, and immediately over the spot where
the burning ship had foundered, hung a great dim white cloud, which
reflected the moonbeams as a cobweb might; but as I gazed this immense
body of steam melted away, and nothing was to be seen but the pallid
sails of the befriending vessel showing out against the dark cloud of
smoke.

CHAPTER XVII

MY DYING FRIEND

Captain Ladmore descended into the saloon, and several of the
passengers followed him to finish the brandy and water or wine which
they had been sipping when called upon to view the ship on fire. A
figure came across the deck to where I stood in the shadow of the mast.
I had supposed myself hidden, so dark was the shadow cast by the mast,
and I stood in the shadow. The figure was Mr. Harris, the chief officer.

‘Good evening,’ he exclaimed.

‘Good evening,’ I answered.

‘Been looking at the burning ship?’ said he.

‘Yes, I have been looking at the burning ship.’

‘Ever seen a ship on fire before?’

‘I suppose I never have.’

‘What d’ye think of a ship on fire as a show?’

‘It is a wonderful but a terrible sight,’ said I. ‘I hope no poor
creature has perished by the burning of that ship.’

‘No chance of it,’ he exclaimed; ‘the vessel that was hove to close by
long ago took every living creature aboard. Fine night, isn’t it?’

‘It is a beautiful night,’ said I.

‘It’s a bit early still,’ said he, making a step to cast his eye upon a
clock that stood in one of the skylights. ‘There’s no hurry this time;
not like one o’clock in the morning.’

‘If Mrs. Lee were on deck,’ said I, ‘I should be glad to remain here
and walk a little. The air is sweet and refreshing, and the headache I
have had this evening has gone. It is very warm in the steerage.’

‘It’ll be warmer by-and-by,’ said he. ‘I should be happy to take a turn
with you, but I have charge of the deck and strolling wouldn’t be in
order. But there’s no law to hinder a man from talking on a fine clear
night like this, and with your permission I shall be glad of a short
yarn with you, miss.’

‘What do you wish to say?’ said I, feeling uneasy. ‘I hope you do not
mean to talk to me about shocks. I do not like the idea of such things,
and beg that you will not say a word about them.’

‘It’s not shocks to-night,’ said he, ‘though--but as I see you don’t
like the subject I’ll drop it. What I want to talk to you about is that
gipsy woman. I’ve been turning over what she said as to your being
married and having a husband waiting for you at home, and the like of
that. What are your sentiments on what that tar-brush of a woman told
you this afternoon?’

‘Do not ask me, Mr. Harris. I remember nothing, and it would be all the
same if the gipsy had told me I was the queen of England.’

He stood in the moonlight and I in the trunk-like shadow cast by
the mast, and I observed that he regarded me steadfastly, with an
expression of earnestness that might have gathered a deeper character
than it really owned from the nature of the light; he eyed me as though
he would read my face, but the shadow was as good as my veil, which I
had not thought of putting on at that hour.

‘I’ll tell you what my notion is,’ said he; ‘that gipsy woman is full
of lies. How should she know that you’re married? Wouldn’t you wear
a wedding-ring if you were married? What does she want to make out:
that your wedding-ring was stolen off your finger when you were in
the boat? But those French chaps found you alone, didn’t they? You
couldn’t have been very long unconscious, and who’s to tell me that
you weren’t alone when you fell insensible? If there was a sailor
with you, you must have been sensible when he was in the boat; and
no man’s going to persuade me--whether you can remember that sailor
plundering you or not--no man’s going to persuade me that any sailor
or sailors--distressed as such people as were along with you must have
been--supposing any parties to have been along with you----’ he paused,
having lost the thread of his argument, and then, smiting the palm of
his left hand with his fist, he exclaimed with subdued energy, ‘What I
mean is, I don’t believe you were robbed.’

He glanced round to observe if anyone was near enough to have overheard
him.

‘I can tell you nothing, Mr. Harris,’ said I.

‘The gipsy and her lies may be put on one side,’ said he. ‘In fact, if
I catch her aft again with her confounded yarns I’ll make her wish that
this ship had never been built with a poop. Sir Frederick Thompson’s
opinion is another matter. I don’t reckon you’re a Calthorpe, as he
calls it; for there’s no inward echo to the name, and an inward echo
there’d be if a Calthorpe you were, so I think, and I believe I’m no
fool. But if you’re not a Calthorpe, you may be somebody as good and
perhaps better.’ After a pause he exclaimed, ‘Suppose your memory don’t
return to you?’

‘Do not suppose it,’ I cried with bitterness.

‘I wish to say nothing to wound you, miss,’ said he, ‘but there can be
no harm in us two talking matters over. It’s early as yet, the ship
doesn’t want watching, a more beautiful night you may sail round the
world twenty times over without falling in with. You’ve got to consider
this; suppose your memory don’t return--what then?’ I did not answer.
‘Of course,’ continued he, ‘your memory is going to return some time or
other. The faculty’s alive. It’s only turned in for the present. Some
of these days something’ll happen to act like the thump of a bo’sun’s
handspike, and the faculty’ll tumble up wide awake as though it was to
a roar of “All hands!” But whatever it be that’s going to rout that
sleeping faculty out may keep you waiting. And meanwhile?’

I had no answer to make him and held my peace.

‘The captain, no doubt,’ he went on, ‘will keep you on board this ship
until her arrival in London, if so be your memory won’t enable him to
send you home sooner. But when this ship arrives in dock, what then?
You can’t go on living on board her. The captain’s got no home now
that his wife and child are dead. He’s a good man and might find you
a lodging for a bit, but he don’t stay ashore above a couple or three
months. And what, I’ve been asking of myself ever since that gipsy was
aft here with her lying yarns, what’s to become of you?’

I drew myself erect and my foot tapped the deck with vexation and
distress.

‘For God’s sake, miss,’ said he, ‘don’t feel offended by anything I may
say. You have friends aboard, and I want to be one of them, and prove
myself one of them by behaving as a friend, and perhaps as more than a
friend. My object in keeping you yarning here is to ask you to think
over what’s to become of you if your memory hasn’t returned by the time
the ship reaches England.’

I bit my lip and answered with a struggle, ‘What would be the good of
my thinking? My memory may return. In any case I must trust in God to
help me.’

‘Well, you’ll be safe in trusting in God,’ said he, ‘but someone to
trust in on this earth wouldn’t be out of the way either. You see,
miss, it may come to this: the ship arrives in dock and you’ve got to
go ashore; where will ye go to? You don’t know. There may be scores of
friends of yours within hail, but owing to your memory being at fault
ne’er a one of them can be of more use to you than if they were in
their graves. It seems cruel to talk of the Union; but my notion is,
that whenever one’s in a mess the first thing to do is to take a good
look round. I believe there are homes for destitute females, but for my
part I’d rather go to the workhouse if I was a lonely girl. So you see,
miss, it comes to this: you must have a friend....’

I could bear this talk no longer, and walked in the direction of one
of the ladders in order to return to the steerage.

‘One minute,’ he cried, accompanying me, and so contriving to walk as
to oblige me to halt. ‘I’ve brought tears to your eyes, and I ask your
forgiveness. There’s been no rudeness intended in what I’ve said, God
knows. You’ll find that out before long, I hope. You’ll be discovering
that I wish you well. Though my parents were gentle folks, my college
was a ship’s forecastle and I’m without polish, and, what’s more, I
don’t want any. I’m a plain seaman, but I hope I can feel for another
as well as the best, and I want to be your friend, and perhaps more
than your friend.’

‘I am sure you mean nothing but kindness,’ said I, ‘but your words have
distressed me. You make my future appear hopeless and dreadful.’

‘That’s how I want you to view it,’ said he, ‘by correctly realising
it you’ll be able to deal with it.’

‘Good-night,’ I exclaimed; and without another word I left him and
returned to my berth.

As I have before said, I considered Mr. Harris eccentric, unpleasantly
well meaning, and not a man to be angry with because he spoke bluntly
and said things which were disagreeable and even offensive to hear. But
the language he had held destroyed my night’s rest. I could not sleep
for thinking of his miserable talk about the workhouse and asylums
for destitute females. What he meant by saying that he wished to be
something more than a friend to me did not trouble my head. All that I
could think of was the picture he had drawn of the arrival of the _Deal
Castle_ in dock, of my being without memory, and stepping ashore unable
to recollect the name of a friend likely to help me.

Many to whom my story is known have since that miserable time expressed
wonder that Captain Ladmore did not put me on board a homeward-bound
ship--that is to say, a ship proceeding to England--with a request to
her captain to inform the owners of the _Deal Castle_ in what manner
their vessel had fallen in with me, and to beg them to make my case
public in the newspapers, so that if I had friends in England they
could come forward and claim me.

But then, as I have already explained in a preceding chapter, Captain
Ladmore did not know whether I had a home or friends in England or not.
For all he could tell I might be the sole survivor of a shipwreck, or
the surviving occupant of one of the boats which had put off before the
ship went down, and if that were so--and there was nothing improbable
in the supposition--then I might have been a passenger coming from
America, or Australia, or India. It would not follow, according to
his humane reasoning, that, because I was undeniably an Englishwoman,
I lived in England and had friends in that country. And if I had no
friends and no home in England, then his sending me there at the first
opportunity whilst my memory remained a blank would be nothing short
of cruelty; for when I landed I should be destitute, without money and
without friends, and, being without memory, more helpless and worse
off than the veriest beggar that might crawl past me in rags. But by
keeping me on board his ship he hoped to give my memory time to recover
its powers, so that, as he himself had said, whatever steps he took to
restore me to my friends would be sure, for he would know where to send
me. Then, again, it must be remembered that I had begged and prayed to
remain on board whilst my memory continued dark, and that I had spoken
with horror and with tears of the prospect of being landed without a
shelter to go to.

This, then, is my answer to the wonder that has been expressed by my
friends since this frightful passage of my life came to an end, and
I enter it here as much to explain Captain Ladmore’s motives as to
accentuate his humanity.

Propelled by pleasant winds, which sometimes blew over the stern and
sometimes off the beam, the fine ship _Deal Castle_ stemmed her way
into the tropics, and every twenty-four hours brought the equator
nearer to us by many leagues. All day long the deck was kept shadowed
by the awning, in whose violet-tinted coolness lounged the passengers.
It was growing too hot for active exercise. The deck quoit was cast
aside, the walk to and fro the white planks was abandoned for the
American folding-chair, the piano was but languidly touched, seldom
were the voices of the singers amongst us heard, and there were hours
when it was too sultry to read.

But the weather continued gloriously beautiful, the sky cloudless, the
ocean a rich dark blue with the slopes of the swell wrinkled by the
wind, and here and there a glance of foam as the ship stole through
the waters, rippling the blue into lines as fine as harp-strings,
which the sun turned into gold as they spread from the bows. And the
flying-fish flashed from the side, and steadily in the blue calm of the
water astern hung the slate-coloured shape of a shark, the inevitable
attendant of the mariner in those fiery waters.

I was now going about without my veil. Mrs. Richards had advised me
to bear being looked at for a little while, promising me that the
curiosity of the passengers would rapidly pass, and she proved right.
The people took little or no notice of me, and I was able to enjoy
the freedom of my own face, which was no trifling comfort, for often
I longed for all the air I could get, and the veil was like a warm
atmosphere upon my forehead.

Nor was I so unsightly as I had been when I first came on board the
_Deal Castle_. The wound had healed. The scar was indeed visible and
gave an air of distortion to the brow it overran; but this was remedied
to the eye by some toilet powder which Mrs. Webber gave me. I applied
it plentifully with a puff, and the powder not only concealed the scar
but paired with my remaining eyebrow, which, as I have told you, had
turned white with my hair.

By this time I had much improved in health and in some respects in
appearance. My eyes had regained their brightness, and there seemed
no lack of the light of intelligence in them, though, as I should have
supposed, in a person without memory, one would expect to find the gaze
dull and slow and the glow of the sight dim. My figure had improved. I
held myself erect, and a certain grace had come to my movements from my
capacity as a dancer--for I was always thought a very good dancer--to
take the moving platform of the deck. My cheeks had grown plump; the
hollows had filled up, and the haggard look was gone. Nevertheless my
face still showed as that of a woman of forty I remember once saying to
Mr. McEwan, ‘What could have caused those fine lines to be drawn over
my face?’

‘Nerves,’ he answered, in his short abrupt way.

‘They are not wrinkles,’ said I.

‘If they were wrinkles it would be Time,’ said he. ‘Be satisfied with
that explanation.’

‘Would the shock that turned my hair white thread the skin of my face
with these fine lines?’ said I.

‘It all happened at once,’ he answered; ‘I would lend you a book on
nerves if I did not fear that the reading of it would turn ye daft.’

‘Will the skin of my face ever grow smooth?’ said I.

‘Never smoother than it is,’ he answered. ‘Isn’t it as smooth and soft
as kid? What more d’ye want?’

‘What I meant to ask was, will these fine lines which disfigure my face
ever disappear?’

‘Heaven defend us!’ he cried, feigning a warmth which his countenance
belied; ‘your sex are all alike. Your questions are all prompted by
vanity. It is not “Is there any chance, doctor, of my ever recovering
the faculties of my mind?” but “Shall I ever regain my beautiful
complexion?” “Never mind about my sight failing; will the glasses you
order me to wear become me?” “Never mind about my heart being affected;
shall I be able to go on lacing so as to keep my waist?”’ and he
departed leaving my question unanswered.

My complexion, however, had cleared with the improvement of my health;
the dingy sallow colour was gone out of my cheeks, and a faint bloom
had taken its place. It was as though my youth struggled to show
its rosy face through the mask which calamity had stamped upon my
countenance. This faint bloom, as I call it, might, in spite of the
interlacery of fine lines, have brought my appearance to within a few
years of my real age had it not been for my white hair, which was so
fleecy and thin that you would only think of looking for the like of
it on the head of an old lady of seventy or eighty years. Indeed, what
with my figure, which was that of a fine young woman of seven- or
eight-and twenty, what with my eyes and teeth, which corresponded with
my figure, and what with my white hair, white eyebrow, scarred temple
and finely-lined skin, as though the flesh had been inlaid with a
spider’s web, I doubtless presented to the eyes of my fellow-passengers
the most extraordinary compound of youth and age it could have entered
into the nimblest imagination among them to figure.

Nearly the whole of my time was spent in the company of Alice Lee. I
read to her, I helped her to dress, I accompanied her on deck, indeed
I was scarcely ever absent from her side. Mrs. Lee encouraged our
companionship. Whatever served to sustain her daughter’s spirits,
whatever contributed to lighten the tedium of the girl’s long hours
of confinement to her cabin, must needs be welcome to the devoted
mother. Often it happens that the sufferer from the disease of
consumption, though of an angelic sweetness of heart, and though of a
most beautiful, loving, gentle nature, will unconsciously be rendered
petulant by the ministrations of one, by the devoted association, and
by the heart-breaking anxiety of one, who may be the dearest of all
human beings to her in this world, even her own mother. She is fretted
by the importunities of love. The devotion is too anxious, too eager,
too restless.

Mrs. Lee tried hard to conceal what was in her heart, but it must have
vent in some shape or form. It rendered her vigilance impassioned.
Indeed, I once took the liberty of telling her that the expression of
pain and grief her face unconsciously wore when she sat with Alice, and
heard her cough, or beheld any increase of languor in the movement of
her eyes or in her speech, proved harmful to her child by poignantly
reminding her of her mother’s sorrow and of the reason of it. And so
it came about that Mrs. Lee welcomed my intimate association with her
daughter and promoted it by leaving us much alone together.

Sometimes Mrs. Webber joined Alice and me when we were on deck, and
occasionally she visited us when we were in the Lees’ cabin. I never
liked her better than at such times. She subdued her manner, there
was an air of cheerful gravity upon her, and her behaviour was as one
who has known sorrow. She sank all the coxcombries of her literary
talk when she was with us, had not a word to say about her own poetry,
and ventured no opinions on the merits of authors. I took to her very
warmly after she had visited Alice once or twice in her cabin.

Much sympathy was exhibited by the other passengers, but their good
taste and real kindness of heart made the expression of it reserved
and askant, as it were. Both the Miss Glanvilles sang very finely,
and knowing that Alice loved certain songs which they sang with great
sweetness, one or another would come and ask her if she should sing to
her, and then sit down and soothe and charm the dear girl for an hour
at a time. But neither they nor any of the other passengers ever dreamt
of opening the piano until they learnt that Alice was awake or in a
humour not to be teased by the noise of the music.

The hot weather tried her terribly. It was indeed as her mother had
feared, and I could only pray that Mrs. Lee’s dread of the ship being
becalmed upon the equator under the roasting sun for a long term of
days would prove unfounded. Sometimes the girl rallied and exhibited
a degree of vivacity that filled her mother with hope, and then a
change would happen on a sudden. She would be wrenched and shattered
by a dreadful cough, her head would sink, her eyes grow leaden, her
breathing pitiably laboured; she would turn from the food placed before
her, and lay her head upon her mother’s breast or upon my shoulder as
I sat beside her, and at such times I would think the end was close at
hand.

As I have before said, she did not in the least fear death. She seemed
to have but one dread--that she should be buried at sea. I sat beside
her one morning in her cabin fanning her. The window lay wide open,
but not a breath of air entered the aperture. The ship was becalmed:
she had been becalmed since midnight, and now I did not need to
inquire what was the meaning of the word. I had been on deck before I
visited Alice, and looked around me and beheld a wonderful breathless
scene of stagnant ocean. I know not what our latitude was; I dare
say we were five or six hundred miles north of the equator. The sea
undulated thickly, faintly and sluggishly, as though it were of oil,
and it reflected the rays of the sun as oil might, or indeed as a dull
mirror would, and gave back the burning light from its surface in an
atmosphere of heat that swung to the lip and cheek with the light roll
of the ship in folds like escapes of air from a fiery oven.

It was cooler below than on deck, and Alice and I sat in the cabin.
She was languid and very pale; there was a deeper dye than usual in
the hollow of her eyes, and her fair brow glittered with moisture.
We had been talking, and were now silent whilst I fanned her. As the
vessel rolled, a delicate noise of sobbing rose from the side. She had
not seemed to notice this sobbing noise before, but on a sudden it
caught her ear: she listened and looked at me a little wildly, then
rose and went to the porthole and stood gazing at the dim blue haze of
heat that overhung the horizon, and at the dull blue undulations of
oil-like water sulkily rolling to the slope of the sky. She returned to
her chair, and putting her cold moist hand upon mine, exclaimed:

‘Oh, Agnes, I hope that God will have mercy upon me and spare me until
we reach Australia, that I may be buried on shore.’

‘Have courage, my dear, have faith in God’s goodness,’ said I. ‘Do not
talk of dying. Keep up your dear heart, and remember that this is the
most trying part of the voyage. In a few days we shall be meeting with
cooler weather, and then you will be yourself again.’

She smiled, but without despair in the expression of her smile. It was
sad, but it took its colouring of sadness from her thin face, not from
her heart. She turned her eyes towards the open window, and said:

‘I am foolish, and perhaps wicked, to dread being cast into the sea.
There are many who would rather be buried at sea than on shore. It is
a spacious grave, and one thinks of it as lying open to the eye of
God. But the thought of the loneliness of an ocean grave weighs down
my heart. Oh, I should be happy--happier in my hope of death and in
the promises of my dear Saviour--if I knew I was to be buried where my
mother could visit me. It is a weakness--I know it is all the same--I
am in God’s hands, and I am happy;’ and she hid her face that I might
not see the tear which rose to her eyes when she spoke of her mother
visiting her grave.

But there was little need for her to hide her face, for the tears
rained down my own cheeks as I listened to her and looked at her.
When she saw I was crying she gently led the talk to other matters,
brightened her face, and after we had conversed awhile she said,
looking at me with a smile of tenderness that was like a light from
heaven upon her:

‘Agnes, I have been longing to say that in case your memory should
remain silent after this ship has arrived in England my mother will
take care that you shall not want. This she will do as much for my
sake as for your own, and out of her own love for you too. I have not
spoken of this before, dear, because I disliked even to hint at any
arrangements which implied that your memory might be wanting after so
long a time as the voyage of this ship will take to complete. And yet I
have also thought that it would comfort you to know that your future,
should your mind continue sightless, will not be friendless.’ She
took my hand, and whilst she caressed it continued, ‘It will come to
your taking my place. When I am gone my mother will be alone, and my
earnest wish is that you should be her companion.’

‘Oh, Alice,’ said I, ‘you will live to remain your mother’s companion.
Would that God permitted that one life laid down availed to save
another’s....’

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME

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

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected.