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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Alone on a Wide Wide Sea, Vol. III (of 3), by 
-W. Clark Russell
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: Alone on a Wide Wide Sea, Vol. III (of 3)
-
-Author: W. Clark Russell
-
-Release Date: October 6, 2020 [EBook #63387]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALONE ON A WIDE WIDE SEA, VOL 3 ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Charlie Howard and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-NEW NOVELS.
-
-
-    THE DUCHESS OF POWYSLAND.  By GRANT ALLEN. 3 vols.
-
-    CORINTHIA MARAZION.  By CECIL GRIFFITH. 3 vols.
-
-    A SONG OF SIXPENCE.  By HENRY MURRAY. 1 vol.
-
-    SANTA BARBARA, &c.  By OUIDA. 1 vol.
-
-    IN THE MIDST OF LIFE.  By AMBROSE BIERCE. 1 vol.
-
-    TRACKED TO DOOM.  By DICK DONOVAN. 1 vol.
-
-    COLONEL STARBOTTLE’S CLIENT, AND SOME OTHER PEOPLE.  By BRET
-        HARTE. 1 vol.
-
-    ADVENTURES OF A FAIR REBEL.  By MATT. CRIM. 1 vol.
-
-    IN A STEAMER CHAIR.  By ROBERT BARR. 1 vol.
-
-    THE FOSSICKER: a Romance of Mashonaland.  By ERNEST GLANVILLE.
-        1 vol.
-
-
-London: CHATTO & WINDUS, 214 Piccadilly, W.
-
-
-
-
-  ALONE
-  ON A WIDE WIDE SEA
-
-  VOL. III.
-
-
-
-
-  PRINTED BY
-  SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW STREET SQUARE
-  LONDON
-
-
-
-
-  ALONE ON A WIDE WIDE SEA
-
-  BY
-  W. CLARK RUSSELL
-
-  AUTHOR OF
-  ‘MY SHIPMATE LOUISE’ ‘THE ROMANCE OF JENNY HARLOWE’ ETC.
-
-  [Illustration]
-
-  IN THREE VOLUMES
-  VOL. III.
-
-  London
-  CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
-  1892
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-OF
-
-THE THIRD VOLUME
-
-
-  CHAPTER                                    PAGE
-
-  XVIII.  A STRANGE OFFER                       1
-
-    XIX.  I CONVERSE WITH THE GIPSY            37
-
-     XX.  THE DEATH OF ALICE LEE               66
-
-    XXI.  I RETURN TO ENGLAND                 106
-
-   XXII.  MEMORY                              141
-
-  XXIII.  GENERAL RAMSAY’S LETTER             172
-
-   XXIV.  AT BATH                             208
-
-    XXV.  MARY                                241
-
-   XXVI.  THE END                             273
-
-
-
-
-ALONE ON A WIDE WIDE SEA
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII
-
-A STRANGE OFFER
-
-
-Small is the world of ship board, yet at sea there often happen
-contrasts in life not less violent and remarkable than those which
-one meets with in the crowded world ashore. This same day, after my
-conversation with Alice Lee, I quitted her cabin shortly before the
-luncheon hour, as she seemed drowsy, and sleep was all important to her
-whose slumbers were cruelly broken and short throughout the night. Mrs.
-Lee stole in upon her child, and finding her asleep came to her place
-by my side at the luncheon table.
-
-The passengers understood that Alice was resting, and the conversation
-was subdued along the whole line of the table. I said nothing to Mrs.
-Lee as to what had passed between her daughter and myself. Though the
-mother knew that her daughter’s condition was hopeless, she could
-not bear any reference to the girl’s dying state. That is to say,
-she would speak of it herself, but with eyes that wistfully sought a
-contradiction of her fears.
-
-Now, whilst I sat at table I observed that Mr. Harris regarded me with
-more than usual attention. There was an expression of speculation in
-his face, as though I were some singular problem which he was wearying
-his brains to solve. His air was also one of abstraction, and direct
-questions put to him by passengers sitting near were unheeded.
-
-Shortly before lunch was over Mrs. Lee withdrew to her berth. I
-remained at table, having for the moment nothing else or better to do.
-Mrs. Webber, remarking that I was alone, left her seat and took Mrs.
-Lee’s chair at my side.
-
-‘It is really too bad,’ said she, ‘that those wretched men’--referring
-to Mr. Clack and Mr. Wedmold--‘should be arguing on their eternal
-subject of literature when they know that poor Alice Lee is sleeping,
-and that their voices might awaken her.’
-
-‘I have not been listening,’ said I. ‘They have not been talking very
-loudly, I think.’
-
-I looked towards the two gentlemen, and my attention being directed to
-them, I discovered that they were arguing, and, as usual, on literary
-matters. But their voices were somewhat sunk, as though they recognised
-the obligation of speaking low.
-
-‘My simple contention is,’ said Mr. Wedmold, ‘that criticism as we now
-have it is absolutely worthless. If I were a publisher I would not
-send a book of mine to the press. I would content myself with making
-it known to the public by advertisements. A man writes a review and
-it is published in a newspaper. Just before he sat down to write the
-review he was disturbed by a double knock, and his servant handed him
-a manuscript which he sent six weeks before to a firm of publishers.
-The manuscript is declined with thanks. What sort of a review will that
-man write? Or he may dislike the author of the book he is to review
-because he thinks him too successful; or he may personally know him
-and have reason to hate him; or he may not know him and yet have a
-literary prejudice against him; or, before he writes the review the
-tax-collector may call; or he may have had a quarrel with his wife over
-the weekly bills. But by the publication of his review he commits the
-aggregate intellect of the paper in which it appears to his opinion.
-For reviews are not quoted as the opinions of Jones or Smith, but as
-the verdict of the journal in which they write. On the other hand,
-there may be reasons why the reviewer should extravagantly praise a
-book which, were it written by you, Clack, or by me, he would probably
-dismiss in a couple of lines of contempt. Nevertheless, the aggregate
-intellect of the journal is as much committed to this gross lie of
-approval as it was to the equally gross lie of depreciation. The name
-of a newspaper should never be quoted in a publisher’s advertisement,
-unless it be understood that everybody connected with the newspaper
-sat in judgment upon the book. A book should be served as a defendant
-is served. The paper that reviews a book should convert itself into
-a jury. If one juror alone is to decide the question, then his name
-should be given. My argument is, why should publishers go on subjecting
-their wares to twopenny individual caprice?’
-
-‘You will never get rid of criticism,’ said Mr. Clack, ‘until authors
-lose their desire of hearing people’s opinions on their books. Every
-man who produces his poor little novel, every woman who produces her
-poor little volume of poems, pesters his or her friends for their
-candid opinion. Now if that candid opinion is published in a newspaper
-and it happens to be _rather_ opposed to the author’s own judgment of
-his book, the natural thirst of the author is for the extinction of all
-criticism.’
-
-‘Did you ever hear two men talk such utter bosh in all your life?’ said
-Mrs. Webber.
-
-‘I will go on deck for a turn,’ said I, observing that the saloon was
-fast emptying.
-
-‘Those two men,’ continued she, looking at Mr. Clack somewhat
-spitefully, ‘remind me of a very old story. A Frenchman and an American
-made a bet that one would out-talk the other. In the morning they were
-found in bed, the American dead and the Frenchman feebly whispering in
-his ear.’
-
-‘If you please, ma’m,’ said the captain’s servant, coming up to me,
-‘Captain Ladmore’s compliments, and he will be glad to see you in his
-cabin if you can spare him five minutes.’
-
-I arose and nervously followed the man to the captain’s cabin,
-wondering what could be the object of this message. Captain Ladmore
-made me a grave bow, placed a chair for me, and seated himself at the
-table at which I had found him reading.
-
-‘I hope,’ said he, ‘you will not think me troublesome in desiring these
-visits. I have, not had an opportunity of conversing with you lately.
-You are very much taken up with poor Miss Lee. How does she do?’
-
-‘She is very poorly,’ said I. ‘The malady seems to have rapidly gained
-upon her within the last few days.’
-
-‘It is too often so,’ he exclaimed. ‘These poor consumptive people
-embark when it is too late. Mr. McEwan gives me no hope. I fear we
-shall lose the poor young lady--and lose her soon, too.’ He directed
-his eyes at the deck and his face grew unusually thoughtful and grave.
-‘And how are you feeling?’ said he, after a pause. ‘Does this heat try
-you?’
-
-‘No, Captain Ladmore; I feel very well, a different being, indeed,
-since I came into your kind hands.’
-
-‘Your memory is still dormant?’
-
-‘I am unable to remember anything previous to my awaking to
-consciousness on board the French vessel.’
-
-‘It is truly wonderful,’ said he. ‘Had I not witnessed such a thing I
-should not have believed it. That is to say, I could understand _total_
-failure of memory, for I have heard of instances of that sort of
-affliction; but I should not have credited that recollection can lie
-dead down to a certain point and be bright and active afterwards, as it
-is in you. I have been talking to Mr. McEwan about you, and though we
-need lay no emphasis upon his opinion, it is right I should tell you
-that he fears your condition may continue for a considerable time.’
-
-‘For a considerable time!’ I cried; ‘what can he mean by a considerable
-time, Captain Ladmore?’
-
-‘Do not be agitated. I mention this merely for a reason you will
-presently understand. McEwan’s judgment may signify nothing. Doctors
-are a very fallible lot, and they talk blindfolded when they speak of
-the mind. But that my meaning in inviting you to visit me may be clear,
-I wish you to suppose that McEwan is right. In that case, what is your
-future to be?’
-
-I gazed at his grave, earnest face, but made him no answer.
-
-‘Let me repeat,’ said he, ‘that you are very welcome to the hospitality
-of this ship whilst she keeps the sea; but on our arrival in the Thames
-it will be necessary for you to find another asylum. What can be done
-for you, madam, shall be done for you, always supposing that your
-memory continues to prevent you from directing us. But it is a cold
-world----’ He paused abruptly.
-
-‘Oh, Captain Ladmore! I hope my memory will have returned to me before
-we arrive in England--before we arrive in Australia.’
-
-‘I hope so too, indeed,’ said he, ‘but if it should not---- You appear
-to have found a very warm friend in Mrs. Lee. Yet, from my experiences
-as a shipmaster, I would counsel you not to lodge too much hope in
-friends and acquaintances made upon the ocean. People are warm-hearted
-at sea; they are always full of good intentions; but a change comes
-when they step ashore.’
-
-‘Captain Ladmore,’ I exclaimed, ‘if I am not to find a friend when I
-leave your ship, then indeed I shall not know _what_ to do.’
-
-‘That brings me,’ said he, ‘to my motive for inviting you to my cabin;
-and I will say at once that you appear to have found a very warm friend
-on board this ship.’ I imagined that he would name Mrs. Webber, but the
-notion vanished at his next utterance. ‘He appears to entertain a very
-great admiration for you. It is not,’ continued he, with a slow smile,
-‘usual for men occupying our relative positions to confer on such a
-matter as he has in his mind, but I consider that he exhibited a proper
-delicacy of feeling in approaching me first. You are temporarily my
-ward, so to speak, and there are other considerations which induced him
-to confer with me on the subject.’
-
-‘Of whom are you speaking?’ I asked.
-
-‘I am speaking of Mr. Harris, my chief officer,’ he replied.
-
-‘And what does Mr. Harris want?’ said I, feeling the blood forsake my
-cheeks.
-
-‘Well, madam,’ said he gravely, ‘he desired me to sound you as regards
-your feelings towards him. It is his urgent request alone that makes
-me interfere, nor should I venture to move in the matter but for your
-present lonely, and I may say helpless, condition. You necessarily
-need a friend and an adviser, and it certainly is my duty as a master
-of this ship to befriend and counsel you. Mr. Harris is a man who, in
-the course of a year or two, ought certainly to obtain command. In
-the profession of the sea a man must be a prawn before he can become
-a lobster. His pay at present is comparatively small, yet it should
-suffice, with great care, to maintain a home. Long before I rose to be
-a captain I contrived to support a home out of my wages. Mr. Harris is
-a very respectable, honest man, and a good officer, and I believe his
-connections are rather superior to the average relatives of merchant
-mates.’
-
-I listened whilst I stared at him; indeed, the confusion of my mind
-was so great that I scarcely grasped his meaning. He observed my
-bewilderment, and said, ‘The matter may be thus simply put: Mr.
-Harris is willing to offer you his hand in marriage. He is capable of
-supporting you, and will, I am convinced, prove an excellent husband.
-By making you his wife he secures you against that future which looks
-at present dark and hopeless. He is willing to waive all considerations
-of your antecedents. In that, Miss C., he tells me he hopes for the
-best.’ He added, after a pause, after viewing me steadfastly, ‘I have
-fulfilled my promise, and desire to do no more. In Mr. Harris you have
-met with a man who is willing and anxious in the most honourable way
-to provide for your future.’
-
-‘I will not marry Mr. Harris,’ said I.
-
-‘It is a question for your own decision alone,’ he answered.
-
-‘I would sooner die in one of the miserable asylums he talked about
-than marry Mr. Harris,’ I cried.
-
-Captain Ladmore arched his eyebrows and made me a grave bow, as though
-he would say, ‘There is an end of the matter.’
-
-‘I am sure the man means kindly,’ said I, my eyes beginning to smart
-with tears which I could not suppress, ‘but it renders my situation
-truly awful to understand that you and Mr. Harris consider I stand in
-need of the sort of assistance your first mate offers.’
-
-‘Remember, madam,’ said Captain Ladmore gently, ‘that on your arrival
-in England you will need a friend if you are still unable by that time
-to tell us who your friends are, and to what part of the world you
-belong.’
-
-‘I would far rather die than accept Mr. Harris’s offer,’ said I, with a
-shudder.
-
-‘Let us then allow the matter to rest,’ said the captain; ‘no harm has
-been done.’
-
-‘How dare he make such a proposal through you?’ cried I. ‘He may mean
-well, but how does he know who I am?’
-
-‘He is willing to take all risks,’ said the captain; ‘but you do not
-entertain his proposal, and the matter therefore ends.’
-
-We both rose at once from our chairs.
-
-‘You have shown me the greatest kindness since I have been on board,’
-said I, ‘and some further great kindness yet I will ask of you. It is
-that as the master of this ship you will command Mr. Harris not to
-speak to me about marriage.’
-
-‘I will do so,’ said he.
-
-‘I will beg you to command him to hold aloof from me, for I wish to
-have nothing to say to him.’
-
-The captain bowed his head affirmatively.
-
-‘And will you also command him, Captain Ladmore,’ I exclaimed, ‘not to
-whisper a syllable of what has passed?’
-
-‘You may trust him to hold his tongue,’ said he smiling.
-
-‘Were the news of his having made me this offer through you to reach
-the passengers I could never hold up my head again; I could never bear
-to quit my berth.’
-
-‘The secret shall be entirely ours,’ said the captain.
-
-I hurriedly made my way through the saloon, entered my berth in the
-steerage, closed and bolted the door, and flung myself into my bunk.
-I had wept in the captain’s cabin, but I was now too angry, too
-confounded to shed tears, though I longed for the relief of them. There
-was a sort of horror too upon me, such a feeling as might possess a
-woman who had met with a shocking insult; and yet I knew that no insult
-had been offered to me, so that the horror which was upon me was as
-inscrutable as ever the emotion had been at other times.
-
-There is no occasion for me to refine upon my condition. The
-psychologist might well laugh at my speculations; yet I will venture to
-say this, that when I look back and recollect my feelings at this time,
-then, knowing that I was without memory to excite in me the detestation
-with which I had listened to Captain Ladmore’s communication of Mr.
-Harris’s offer, I cannot doubt that the wild antagonism of my heart to
-it must have been owing to the _memory of instinct_--a memory that may
-have no more to do with the brain than a deep-rooted habit has to do
-with consciousness.
-
-But not to dwell upon this. I sat motionless on my bed for I know
-not how long a time, thinking and thinking; I then bathed my face and
-cooled my hands in water, and stood at the open window to let the
-draught caused by the rolling of the ship breathe upon me, and thus I
-passed the afternoon.
-
-Shortly before the first dinner-bell rang Mrs. Richards knocked on my
-door. I bade her enter. She tried the handle, and found the bolt shot.
-This was unusual, and on entering she gazed at me with attention. She
-asked me what the matter was, and I answered that the heat had caused
-my head to ache, and that I had been lying down. No doubt she perceived
-an expression on my face which told her that something more than a
-headache ailed me, but she did not press her questions. She had come to
-say that Mrs. Lee sent her love, and wished to know what had become of
-me during the afternoon.
-
-‘I hope to sit with Miss Lee this evening,’ said I; ‘but I shall not
-dine at the dinner table.’
-
-‘Then I will bring you some dinner here,’ said she, and after we had
-conversed a little while about the heat of the weather, and about Alice
-Lee, the kind, motherly little woman left me.
-
-I could not rally my spirits. The mere thought of what Captain Ladmore
-had said to me induced a feeling of crushing humiliation; and then
-there was that deep, mysterious, impenetrable emotion of loathing
-which I have before mentioned. Oh! it was shocking to think that my
-condition should be so cruelly forlorn as to challenge an offer of
-marriage from such a man as Mr. Harris. Nothing could have made me more
-bitterly understand how helpless I was, how hopeless, how lonely. I
-sought comfort in the recollection of Alice’s words; but not only did
-it miserably dispirit me to think that the dear girl must die before
-the wish she had expressed could take effect; I was haunted by the
-captain’s language--that the world was cold--that the kindly intentions
-of shipboard acquaintances were not often very lasting--that when
-people stepped ashore after a voyage the memories they carried with
-them speedily perished out of their minds.
-
-I ate a little of the dinner that Mrs. Richards brought me, but I had
-not the heart to leave my cabin. I felt as though I had been terribly
-degraded and outraged, and my inability to understand why I should thus
-feel when all the while I was saying to myself, nothing but kindness
-was meant, no insult could possibly be intended--I say my inability to
-understand the dark, subtle protest and loathing and sense of having
-been wronged that was in my mind half crazed me.
-
-Twice Mrs. Richards arrived with a message, first from Mrs. Lee and
-then from Alice, inviting me to their cabin; but I answered that my
-head ached, that I did not feel well; and when the door was closed I
-stood with my face at the port-hole breathing the air that floated
-warm off the dark stagnant waters, and watching the stars reel to the
-sluggish motions of the vessel.
-
-Presently I heard the sound of a bell. I counted the chimes--they were
-eight; and so I knew the hour to be eight. Just then someone gently
-knocked on the door; it was not the stewardess’s familiar rap. I said,
-‘Come in,’ and the door was opened.
-
-‘All in the dark, Agnes?’ exclaimed the voice of Mrs. Lee, ‘what is the
-matter with you, my dear? Why have you not come to Alice, who has been
-expecting to see you all the evening?’
-
-‘I am so low-spirited, dear Mrs. Lee, that I am not fit company for
-Alice,’ I answered.
-
-‘Will you light the lamp,’ said she, ‘that we may see each other?’
-
-I lighted the lamp and she closed the door and seated herself, viewing
-me steadily, and taking no notice of the interior of the berth, though
-this was her first visit to these steerage quarters.
-
-‘You look pale,’ said she, ‘pale and worried. Are you really ill or is
-it the mind? Tell me, my dear. The mind might be making a great effort
-that affects you like physical sickness would, but it may be the very
-effort to pray for.’
-
-I had felt that nothing could induce me to confess what had passed;
-but the tenderness of her voice and manner broke me down. Her sudden
-presence made me acutely feel the need of sympathy. But my heart was
-too full for speech. I took her hand and bowing my head upon it wept.
-She did not speak whilst I sobbed, but soothingly caressed my hair
-with a touch soft and comforting as her daughter’s.
-
-After awhile I grew composed, and then, with my face averted, I told
-her that the captain had sent for me after lunch, and I repeated to
-her the offer Mr. Harris had requested him to make to me. She listened
-attentively and on my ending exclaimed:
-
-‘Well, my dear, it is a proposal of marriage as extraordinary in its
-manner of reaching you as the whole character of the man who made it.
-But what is there in it to cause you to fret and keep yourself locked
-up in this dark place?’
-
-‘It affects me as a dreadful insult.’
-
-‘But why? It is not meant as an insult. Captain Ladmore is not a man to
-suffer one of his officers to insult you through him.’
-
-‘I cannot explain, Mrs. Lee. This offer of marriage has shocked me as
-though it had been some horrid outrage, and I do not know why.’
-
-She sat silently regarding me.
-
-‘But that is not all,’ I continued. ‘The loathing, the horror the offer
-has caused is too deep; I feel that it is too deep to be owing _merely_
-to the offer. Some sense lying in blackness within me has been shocked
-and outraged. But that is not all: the offer has made me feel how
-lonely I am, how utterly hopeless my future must be if my memory does
-not return to me.’
-
-‘It is very strange,’ said she, ‘that you should feel that this
-extraordinary recoil as of loathing comes not from Mr. Harris himself
-as it were, but from his offer.’
-
-‘You exactly express it,’ I exclaimed; ‘it is not the man but the offer
-which fills me with loathing.’
-
-‘And you do not understand why this should be?’ said she.
-
-‘No, because the man means kindly. He approached me even with delicacy
-through the captain. There is nothing in him which should make me
-loathe him.’
-
-‘And still his offer fills you with horror and disgust?’
-
-‘Yes.’
-
-She surveyed me for awhile, lightly running her eye over me with an
-expression of inquiry. She then said, ‘Do you remember what that gipsy
-woman told you?’
-
-I reflected and answered, ‘She told me much that I remember.’
-
-‘She told you,’ said she, ‘that you were a married woman. What else she
-said matters not. But she told you, Agnes, that you were married, and
-that you have left a husband who wonders and grieves over your absence.’
-
-I drew a deep tremulous breath not knowing what meaning she had in her
-mind.
-
-‘From what you have now told me,’ she continued, ‘I am disposed--mind,
-my dear, I only say disposed--to believe that the gipsy woman may be
-right.’
-
-‘From what I have now told you!’ I echoed.
-
-‘What can cause this deep recoil in you from Mr. Harris’s offer? What
-can occasion your detestation of it and the bitter feeling of shame?
-His offer reached you in the most inoffensive manner possible. There
-is hardly a woman who would not find something in such an offer of
-marriage made by such a man under such conditions to laugh at. No
-honourable offer of marriage can fill a woman with loathing. A man can
-pay a woman no higher compliment than to ask her to be his wife, and no
-woman therefore is to be unutterably outraged, as you tell me you are,
-by the highest compliment our sex can receive. Nor is it as though Mr.
-Harris were a monster of a figure and face to justify the abhorrence
-his offer has excited. What, then, is the reason of this abhorrence?’
-
-She sank into a little reverie during which I watched her almost
-breathlessly. ‘I shall not be at all surprised, Agnes,’ said she
-presently, ‘if you prove to be a married woman in spite of your not
-wearing a wedding ring. There must be a reason for your not wearing a
-wedding-ring, and some of these days, please God, you will be able to
-account for its missing from your finger. I believe--yes, I earnestly
-believe’--she went on looking me eagerly in the eyes--‘that your
-antipathy to this offer, the sense of insult that has attended this
-offer, arises from a rebellion of the instincts which possess the
-truth, though they are unable to communicate it to the intelligence.
-The impression of marriage--the great momentous step of every woman’s
-life--is too deep to perish. Your secret horror, your unaccountable
-loathing, is the subtle and unintelligible revolt of your chastity as
-a wife against an offer that is an insult to that chastity. I believe
-this, my dear, I do indeed.’
-
-‘Oh God!’ I cried, and my bursting heart could find no other vent than
-that cry of ‘Oh God!’
-
-‘You must not be distressed,’ continued the dear little woman, clasping
-my hand, ‘because our speculations should be tending the right way.
-Suppose we are able to satisfy ourselves that you are a wife; the
-knowledge will be a distinct gain, something to employ with profit on
-our return to England. But to be able to form no ideas whatever about
-you, my dear----And now I wish to say a word about your future. Can
-you believe that after our association on board this ship, after the
-friendship between you and my darling child, I could bear to lose sight
-of you on our return home?----But you have been so much upset by what
-has happened to-day that I will not talk to you now about the future.
-Come with me to Alice,’ said she rising; ‘it is not long after eight;
-she has been wanting you all the afternoon and evening, and will be
-glad if you will sit with her for an hour.’
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-And now happened another interval of shipboard life, during which
-there occurred nothing of interest enough to trouble you with. That
-Captain Ladmore had delivered my answer to Mr. Harris, and that he
-had also requested, perhaps commanded, his first officer to trouble
-me no further with his attentions, I could not doubt, for when, next
-morning, I met Mr. Harris at the breakfast table, I never once caught
-him looking my way. The twist of his mouth seemed a little dryer than
-usual, and his countenance might generally express a slight increase of
-acidity of feeling; nevertheless, he talked somewhat more freely than
-was commonly his custom, was attentive to what was said, and appeared
-to direct his eyes at everybody but at me.
-
-His behaviour made me easy, the more so since I was sure he would
-not talk of what had passed, so that the ridiculous, and to me the
-humiliating incident, would be known to nobody on board excepting the
-Lees and the captain of the ship.
-
-And here I may as well say--for it is time that I should dismiss the
-few shadowy figures which flit between this part of my story and the
-sequel--that ever after, whilst I remained on board the _Deal Castle_,
-the behaviour of Mr. Harris remained the same; that is to say, he
-never looked at me and never accosted me. If I approached that part of
-the deck where he was standing, he instantly walked away. For a day or
-two after I had received his ‘offer’ I would briefly salute him with a
-‘Good-morning,’ or some such phrase, if we had not before met in the
-day, but he never turned his eyes to my face, nor answered me, nor
-took any notice of me; for which behaviour in him, as you may suppose,
-I was truly thankful. And yet somehow he so contrived his manner that
-his downright cutting of me, if I may so express it, was much less
-noticeable than his conduct had been whilst, as I may suppose, he was
-making up his mind to offer me marriage. Nobody remarked upon his
-behaviour; I never, indeed, heard a whisper about it.
-
-He was, indeed, an extraordinary person in his way. I suffer my memory
-to dwell briefly upon him before he stalks ghost-like off the little
-stage of my dark and memorable experience. I have, I may say, no doubt
-whatever he was in earnest in his desire to marry me; and I have since
-understood that it was in the power of Captain Ladmore to have united
-us, for it seems that amongst the privileges enjoyed by the master of
-a merchant vessel is the right to solemnise holy matrimony, and to
-make two people one as effectually as though they were tied together
-by a clergyman on shore. I often recall the poor man and speculate on
-his motive. It would be ridiculous to feign that he had fallen in love
-with me; my face and thin, white hair must have preserved him from that
-passion. He might, indeed, have imagined in me certain intellectual
-graces and qualities, and fallen in love with his own ideal. Was it
-pure goodness of heart that caused him to take pity on my lonely and
-helpless condition? or--the notion having been put into his head by
-Sir Frederick Thompson--did he secretly believe that I belonged to a
-fine old family, that his marriage to me would connect him with people
-of title and wealth, and that, for all he knew, when my memory returned
-I would be able to tell him that he had married a fortune, or enough
-money, at all events, to release him from a calling which he appeared
-to hate?
-
-His strange offer of marriage, however, resulted in persuading me that
-I was a married woman. It would never have entered my head to imagine
-such a thing but for Mrs. Lee; and then when I came to think over her
-words, and to reason upon the horror that had visited me whilst I
-listened to Captain Ladmore, there grew up in my mind a strong secret
-conviction that I was a wife. It was not a discovery. Indeed, as a
-surmise, it was no more helpful to my memory than the little City
-knight’s assurance that I was a member of the house of Calthorpe;
-and yet it could not have affected me more had it been a discovery.
-I would lie awake for hours during the night thinking of it. When I
-was with Alice my mind would wander from the book I read aloud to her
-from, or my attention would stray from her language, whilst my whole
-intellectual being sank as it were into the black chasm of memory,
-where the mind with sightless vision would go on fruitlessly groping
-until the useless quest grew at times into so keen a torment that often
-I was convinced I should go mad.
-
-Again and again when alone in my berth I took down the little mirror,
-as I had been used to do in the earlier passages of this experience,
-and sitting with it in my hands in a posture that brought the light
-flowing through the port-hole on to my face, so that the reflection
-of my countenance lay brilliantly in the mirror, I would peruse my
-lineaments, search mine own eyes, dwell upon the turn of my lips, and
-all the while I would be asking myself with a soft whisper, but with a
-heart racked with the anguish of hopeless inquiry--‘Who am I? Can it
-be that I am a wife? Oh God! what is it which seems to assure me that
-Mrs. Lee’s belief that I am a wife is true?’ And then I would say to
-myself, whilst I sat gazing at my face in the mirror, ‘If I am a wife I
-may have children. Can it be that there are children of my own in the
-unknown home in the unknown country from which God has banished me in
-blindness--that there are children there whose mother I am, who call
-me mother, who have cried for me in the day and in the night as their
-mother who has gone from them? Can it be so?’ I would ask myself. And
-then I would bend the ear of my mind to the mute lips of my dead or
-sleeping memory, and imagination would strain within me to catch some
-echo of a child’s voice, of a child’s cry or laugh, that would remind
-me and give me back the image of what, since I now believed myself a
-wife, I imagined that I had lost.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX
-
-I CONVERSE WITH THE GIPSY
-
-
-A few days of sultry oppressive calm were followed by a violent storm.
-I was sitting with Alice Lee in her cabin when her mother entered and
-said:
-
-‘Such a marvellous sunset everybody declares never was seen. Go and
-look at it, Agnes; I will sit with Alice.’
-
-‘I will go with Agnes,’ said her daughter.
-
-She arose, but her cough obliged her to sit. When her cough had ceased
-she arose again, but slowly and painfully, with a heart-rending
-suggestion of weakness and exhaustion in her whole manner.
-
-‘Do not go on deck, dearest,’ said her mother; ‘the cabin steps will
-try you.’
-
-‘Oh, mother! let me go and let me go quickly,’ exclaimed Alice. ‘I love
-to look at a glorious sunset, and the sunsets here are soon gone.’
-
-Mrs. Lee gazed at her child with a pleading face, but made no further
-objection, and the three of us went on deck, the girl supported by her
-mother and me. Twice whilst ascending the short flight of cabin stairs
-Alice paused for breath. There is much that I have cause to remember
-in this time, but nothing do I see after all these years more clearly
-than the anguish in the mother’s eyes, as she looked at me on her child
-pausing for a second time during the ascent of that short flight of
-steps.
-
-The sunset was indeed a magnificent spectacle. The western sky seemed
-in flames. Deep purple lines of cloud barred the fiery splendour, and
-the heavens resembled a mighty furnace burning in a grate that half
-filled the sky. In the immediate neighbourhood of the sun the light
-round about was blood red, but on either hand were vast lovely spaces
-resembling lagoons of silver and gold; spikes of glory shot up to the
-zenith, and the countless lines of them resembled giant javelins of
-flame arrested in their flight, with their barbed ends glowing like
-golden stars in the dimly crimsoned blue over our ship’s mast-heads.
-The ship’s sails reflected the light, and she seemed to be clothed
-in cloth of gold. Her rigging and masts were veined with gold, and
-our glass and brass-work blazed with rubies. The swell of the sea was
-flowing from the west, and the distant glory came running to us from
-brow to brow, steeping in splendour to the ship and washing the side
-of her with liquid crimson light. The calm was as profound as ever it
-had been; there was not a breath of air to be felt save the eddying
-of draughts from the swinging of the lower sails. The sea floated in
-undulations of quicksilver into the east, where, on the dark-blue
-horizon, there hung a red gleam of sail, showing like a little tongue
-of fire in the far ocean recess. I placed a chair for Alice, but she
-refused to sit.
-
-‘We will return to the cabin in a few minutes,’ she exclaimed, and she
-stood looking into the west, holding by her mother’s and my arm.
-
-She had put on a veil, but she lifted it to look at the sun, and
-the western splendour lay full on her face as I gazed at her. Never
-so painfully thin and white had she appeared as she now did in this
-searching crimson glare. But an expression rested upon her countenance
-that entirely dominated all physical features of it; it was, indeed,
-to my mind then, and it still is as I think of it whilst I write, a
-revelation of angelic spiritual beauty. You would have thought her
-hallowed, empowered by Heaven to witness the invisible, for there was
-a look in her gaze, whilst she directed her sight into the west, that
-would have made you think she saw something beyond and behind those
-flaming gates of the sinking sun, that filled her soul with joy. Her
-expression was full of solemn delight, and her smile was like that
-which glorifies the face of one who, in dying, has beheld a vision of
-the Heaven of God and of the angels opening to him. Such a smile, I
-have read, sweetened the mouth of the poet Pope in his dying hour. Many
-who have stood beside the bed of death will know the entranced look.
-
-Captain Ladmore, who was walking the deck close by, approached us.
-
-‘That is a very noble sunset,’ said he.
-
-‘Noble indeed!’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee. ‘I have seen many splendid sunsets
-in Newcastle, and there is no part of the world where you will witness
-grander sunsets, but never did I see such a sublime picture as yon.’
-
-‘Sunsets of that sort are rare in the Tropics,’ said the captain. ‘It
-is noble, as I have said, but I do not like the look of it. It has a
-peculiar, smoky, thunderous appearance, which in plain English means
-change of weather.’
-
-‘And I hope the change will soon come,’ said Mrs. Lee, looking from
-her daughter to Captain Ladmore, as though she would have him read her
-thoughts; ‘these prolonged calms are cruelly trying in this part of the
-world.’
-
-‘God knows I do not love prolonged calms in any part of the world,’
-said Captain Ladmore.
-
-‘The captains who visited my husband used to have much to tell about
-the calms down here,’ said Mrs. Lee. ‘They called them the Doldrums.’
-Captain Ladmore smiled. ‘I assure you,’ she continued, ‘I would rather
-meet with a fierce hurricane, to drive us into cool weather at the risk
-of our lives, than suffer a continuance of such a calm as this.’
-
-Alice and I watched the sunset whilst Captain Ladmore and Mrs. Lee
-discoursed upon the weather. Even whilst we looked dark smoke-like
-masses of cloud had gathered about the huge rayless orb, and the
-splendour went out on a sudden in a sort of dingy flare, that floated
-in rusty streaks up into the darkling sky, and swiftly vanished as
-though they had been the luminous trails of rockets. I looked at Alice.
-The last faint gleam of red touched her face, and then the rapid tropic
-twilight swept westward in an eclipse, and the girl in it grew wan as a
-phantom. I felt her shiver.
-
-‘Let us return to the cabin,’ said I, and, supported by her mother and
-me, she descended. It was the last time that Alice Lee was ever on deck.
-
-The night fulfilled the stormy threat of the sunset. It came on to blow
-fresh shortly after the night had settled down upon the sea. The stars
-were shrouded by flying clouds, but the moon glanced through the many
-rifts of the winging shadows, and when I took a peep at the ocean at
-half-past nine that night it was already a wild scene of stormy ocean
-rolling in snow, the wilder for the flash of the darting moonbeam.
-
-At ten o’clock it was blowing very hard indeed, and by midnight the
-gale had risen to half a hurricane, with much lightning and thunder. I
-cannot remember whether or not the wind blew fair for our course; the
-gale was so heavy that the captain was forced to heave the ship to,
-and all through the night we lay in the trough rolling and pitching
-furiously, with no more canvas set than served to keep the vessel in
-the situation the captain had put her into.
-
-I got no sleep that night. The noises within and without were
-distracting. The steerage passengers took fright, believed the ship was
-going down, lighted the lantern and sat at the table--that is to say,
-most of the men and two or three of the women; and then, by-and-by,
-taking courage perhaps from the discovery that the ship continued to
-swim, though still not being easy enough in their minds to return to
-their beds, they produced a bottle of spirits and drank and made merry
-after their fashion, and the noise of their singing was more dreadful
-to hear than the sound of the storm. Nobody interfered with them;
-probably nobody with power to control them knew that they were awake
-and drinking and singing.
-
-So, as I have said, I got no sleep that night. As the ship lifted the
-cabin window out of the foaming water the black interior in which I
-lay would be dazzlingly illuminated by violet lightning striking on
-the snow-like froth upon the glass of the port-hole. The sight was
-beautiful and terrifying. The port-hole looked like a large violet eye
-winking in the blackness. I could trace the crystals of the brine and
-the froth upon the glass as the window came soaring out of the seething
-foam into the fiery flash from the clouds. The flaming, blinking disk
-was as if some huge sea monster clung to the side of the ship, trying
-to peer into my cabin and unable to keep his eye steady at the aperture.
-
-It blew hard all next day; too hard to allow the ship to resume her
-course. The captain said it was strange weather to encounter near the
-equator. He had crossed the line I know not how many times; but, said
-he, never had he fallen in with such weather hereabouts. We were all
-willing, however, to endure the stormy buffeting for the sake of the
-respite it gave us from the overpowering heat. The gale was a hot
-wind, but the spray that clouded cooled it as the dew refreshes the
-breath of the Indian night. The sensation of putting one’s head into
-the companion-way and feeling the sweep of the spray-laden blast was
-delicious after the motionless atmosphere that had pressed like hot
-metal against the cheek and brow.
-
-Alice Lee seemed to rally. The saloon was full of air that rushed
-through it in draughts purposely contrived by leaving open one of the
-doors which conducted to the quarter-deck; the breeze filled the girl’s
-berth, and she appeared to revive in it as a languishing flower lifts
-its head and sweetens its fragrance when watered.
-
-‘Sometimes I think--sometimes I _dare_ believe, Agnes,’ poor Mrs. Lee
-said to me, ‘that if Alice has strength enough to survive the ordeal
-of the horrid equinoctial belt she will recover. Did not you fancy she
-was looking much better this morning? Her eyes have not the bright,
-glassy appearance which shocked me every time I looked at her. And did
-not you notice that she breathed with less labour, and that the red of
-her lips was more lifelike and healthy? Oh, my dear! God may yet hear
-my prayers, and my heart is seldom silent. If this gale will blow us
-to the south of the equator and drive us into cooler latitudes I shall
-live in hope. But now we are stationary, the ship is merely tossing up
-and down and making no real progress, and my dread is that when the
-weather breaks the calm will come again and leave us roasting.’
-
-These observations Mrs. Lee addressed to me in the saloon as I was
-passing through it on my way from Alice’s cabin to my own berth; her
-words were running in my head when, after having occupied myself for
-a short time in my berth, I was returning to Alice. As I cautiously
-passed through the steerage, carefully providing against a dangerous
-fall by keeping my arms outstretched and touching or holding whatever
-was nearest to me, I saw Mr. McEwan standing at the foot of the stairs
-grasping the thick brass banisters, and peering about as though in
-search of somebody.
-
-‘Seen Mrs. Richards?’ he asked.
-
-‘No,’ I answered.
-
-‘Mrs. Richards,’ said he, ‘answers to the descreeption of a
-midshipman’s chest; everything is on top and nothing at bottom. She’s
-always aboot--she’s to be seen everywhere--and is never to be found.
-And how are you this roaring day?’
-
-I told him that I was pretty well.
-
-‘D’ye know that you’ll be getting an eyebrow yet?’ said he.
-
-‘I hope so,’ I said.
-
-‘Gi’ us hold of your arm,’ said he; ‘I’ll take ye above.’
-
-Without giving him hold of my arm, as he called it, I said, ‘The
-improvement in Miss Lee has greatly heartened her poor mother. Her hope
-is----’ and I told him what Mrs. Lee’s hope was.
-
-‘Ye’re no talker, I trust,’ said he.
-
-‘I can keep a secret,’ I replied.
-
-He put one hand on my shoulder, swinging by the other hand that grasped
-the banister: ‘Your poor friend, Alice Lee,’ he exclaimed, ‘will not
-live another fortnight.’
-
-‘Oh, do not say so!’ I cried.
-
-‘One lung is useless; the other is so hampered that it scarcely enables
-her to pump in air enough for life. How can she live? And why are
-these puir creatures--men and women--girls and boys--brought to sea
-to die, that they may be thrown overboard in mid-ocean? Of course
-no cruelty is meant--not likely that any cruelty can be meant; but
-what greater cruelty would ye have people guilty of than to wait till
-a puir consumptive creature is past all hope, and then bring her to
-sea in a ship that is never steady, with food that she may not fancy
-but that they cannot replace by what she can eat, subjecting her to
-twenty climates in a month when one climate may prove too much for
-her? I am very sorry to say that medical men are much too much given
-to recommending sea voyages for consumptive people when they know
-that a sea voyage can do them no good. But the doctor comes to the
-end of his tether: “I canna save this patient,” says he to himself,
-and so he sends the puir thing on a voyage. Mark you now the rolling
-of this ship. D’ye feel how she heaves and bounds, and d’ye hear how
-the wind roars in the rigging, and how all those bulkheads yawl and
-squall as though there was another massacre of the innocents going on
-down here? Yes, ye hear it and ye feel it: ask yourself then if your
-friend Alice Lee should be here instead of ashore--here instead of
-lying in a pleasant room upon a steady couch, with every comfort which
-her mother’s purse could command within reach of her? She’ll not live
-another fortnight, I tell you. Where’s that d----d Mrs. Richards? No
-matter. Gi’ us hold of your arm, that I may save ye a broken neck.’
-
-His language so disquieted me that when I had gained the saloon I was
-without heart to immediately enter Alice’s berth. Mr. McEwan was a
-man of intelligence, and I might be sure he knew what he was talking
-about. His roughness, amounting almost to brutality, seemed like the
-strong language and violent demeanour of that fine creation Matthew
-Bramble, assumed to conceal a thoroughly kind heart; and the note of
-true sympathetic feeling which ran through his rough words and harsh
-pronunciation accentuated his prediction to my fears and to my love for
-Alice Lee.
-
-I seated myself on a sofa at the end of the saloon, where I found
-a book, which I placed on my lap and feigned to read. A few of the
-passengers sat here and there; most of the people were in their berths,
-and those who were present were clearly in no humour for conversation.
-Half an hour passed in this way, by which time I had somewhat settled
-my spirits; and, walking with exceeding caution to the Lees’ berth, I
-lightly tapped upon the door of it.
-
-The door was opened by Mrs. Lee, who put her finger upon her lip. The
-gesture signified that Alice was sleeping, and, giving her a nod, I
-passed on to the forward end of the saloon that I might obtain a view
-of the rolling, straining ship, and the huge frothing sea rushing
-from under her. I stepped out into a recess on the quarter-deck formed
-by the projection of the cabin on either hand, and by the overshot
-extremity of the poop-deck. This recess provided a shelter from the
-gale which was howling over the bulwarks, and splitting in ringing,
-piercing whistlings upon the complicated shrouds and gear; and in a
-corner of it--of the recess I mean--squatted the gipsy woman. She was
-smoking a little sooty clay pipe, the bowl of which was upside down.
-
-She was alone; a few of the emigrants were crouching on the lee or
-sheltered side of the house, called the galley, in which the food
-was cooked; otherwise the decks were deserted. As the ship rolled to
-the wind the huge seas in masses of cloudy grey water charged at her
-as though they must thunder in mighty falls over the rail; but the
-noble fabric rose with dry decks and screaming rigging to the wash of
-each foaming mountain, letting it run away from under her in a huge
-streaming sheet of white, and the wild, expiring foam hissed into the
-gale with the noise of an electric storm of wet and hail falling upon a
-calm sea.
-
-The gipsy woman pulled the pipe out of her mouth and gave me a nod,
-with a wide grin of her white, strong teeth. Though her appearance was
-sufficiently fierce and disagreeable to occasion an instinctive recoil,
-yet, remembering what she had told me, and how what she had told me
-seemed confirmed by some strong secret instinct or feeling within me,
-and by Mrs. Lee’s conjectures or suspicions, I resolved to talk with
-her awhile; and, giving her a nod by way of returning her salutation,
-I made my way to her side, motioning with my hand that she should keep
-seated; and when I had drawn close enough to hear her speak I crouched
-against the saloon front to prevent myself from being thrown.
-
-‘Do you want some more of your fortune told, my pretty lady?’ said the
-woman, knocking the ashes out of her pipe and putting it in her pocket.
-
-‘No, I wish to hear no more of my fortune,’ I answered.
-
-‘I am glad of that,’ said she; ‘I have told you all I know, and if I
-was to tell you more I should have to speak what is not the truth.’
-
-‘I do not want any more of my fortune told,’ said I, ‘but I wish to
-ask you certain questions, which I dare say you will answer,’ and as I
-spoke I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out my purse, from which I
-extracted a shilling.
-
-She took the shilling, and looked at the purse and said, speaking
-naturally--that is to say, without the drawling and whining tone which
-she had employed when addressing the passengers:
-
-‘Is that your purse, lady?’
-
-‘Yes,’ said I.
-
-‘Did it come with you into the ship?’
-
-‘Yes.’
-
-‘Let me look at it, lady.’
-
-She turned it about, examined the money in it, looked at the purse
-again, then returning it to me exclaimed, ‘This is English.’
-
-‘How do you know?’ said I.
-
-‘I know many things,’ she answered, ‘and one thing I know is that that
-purse was made in England.’
-
-‘Well!’ said I, finding that she did not proceed in her speech.
-
-‘Well!’ she echoed. ‘What would you think, lady, if you was to meet
-out upon the sea with a woman who did not know from what country she
-came, and who had in her pocket a purse made in England with English
-money in it, and who likewise had in her mouth good English such as you
-speaks? What would you think?’
-
-‘I would think that she was English,’ said I.
-
-‘And you are English,’ she exclaimed.
-
-‘It does not help me to know that,’ cried I.
-
-She stared into my eyes, but made no answer.
-
-‘When you told my fortune,’ said I, ‘you said that I was a married
-woman. Since then feelings and fancies have visited me which make me
-believe you to be right. Now I want to know how you guessed that I was
-a married woman.’
-
-‘We do not guess; we see,’ answered the gipsy.
-
-‘Pray do not talk nonsense, but converse with me without any idea of
-fortune-telling. You looked at me, and knew me to be married woman.
-Plenty of others had looked at me, but none declared me to be a married
-woman, saving you. Tell me, then, what you saw in me to enable you to
-decide that I was a married woman?’
-
-‘You are not only a married woman,’ she answered; ‘you are also a
-mother.’
-
-‘How can you tell that by looking at me?’ I cried passionately.
-
-She smiled, but with nothing of her former cringing and fawning
-expression. Her brilliant eyes seemed to flame into mine as she fixed
-them upon me.
-
-‘Why should I teach you my art?’ said she. ‘But even if I was willing
-to teach it I could not make you understand it. There are some who can
-see clear writing upon what would be white paper to you, and to the
-likes of you, lady. There is that in your face which makes me know what
-I tell you. But look at yourself in a looking-glass whilst I stand
-behind and point to what I see, and what will you behold? Nothing but
-your face, just as it is.’
-
-‘And you can read that I am a mother?’
-
-‘Yes, yes,’ she answered, with such energy as made the nod she gave
-fierce.
-
-‘Tell me all that you can read!’ said I, questioning her not, believe
-me, because I was credulous enough to conceive that she was anything
-more than a commonplace lying fortune-teller, but because I hoped she
-would be able to say something to strengthen my own secret growing
-fancies and feelings.
-
-‘You want me to tell you your fortune again, lady,’ said she; ‘but have
-I not said I must invent if I speaks more?’
-
-‘I do not want my fortune told. I wish you to make certain guesses. You
-are shrewd, and a single guess of yours might throw a light upon my
-mind; and if you can give me back my memory, whatever it may be in my
-power to do for you shall be done.’
-
-She glared at me as though she was used to promises and disdained them.
-
-‘What shall I _guess_, lady?’ she asked.
-
-‘If I have children, what will be their age?’
-
-She stared close into my face with so fierce and piercing a gaze that
-nothing but the _excitement_ of my curiosity hindered me from rising
-and widening my distance from her.
-
-‘What will be their age? What will be their age?’ she muttered, passing
-her hand over my face without touching it; ‘why, whether they are
-living or dead, they will be young, and the youngest will be an infant
-that is not eighteen months old, and the eldest will not yet be six.
-You will find that right.’
-
-She watched me with a surly smile whilst I turned my eyes inwards and
-underwent one of my old terrible, dark conflicts. Presently I raised my
-eyes to her face, and said, ‘How many children do you guess I have?’
-
-‘Guess! Guess!’ she answered; then, once more advancing her face close
-to mine, she looked at me, drew back, and said, ‘You have two children.’
-
-‘If I am a married woman, why do I not wear a wedding ring?’ said I,
-not choosing to venture the word _guess_ again.
-
-‘That was a part of the fortune I told you,’ said she. ‘There are
-thieves at sea as there are thieves on land. Your rings were stolen.’
-
-‘Why did the thieves leave my purse?’
-
-‘Was I there to see?’ she exclaimed, hunching her shoulders. ‘Why did
-they not steal your clothes? Why did not they take your life? You are a
-married woman, I say, and you should wear a wedding ring according to
-the custom of your country; and if you have not a ring it is because it
-was stolen.’
-
-She spoke with as much emphasis as though she positively _knew_ that
-what she stated was the fact. I was influenced by her; I could not help
-myself. Had she possessed a plain English face my good sense must have
-ridiculed her pretensions as a sibyl, even though she spoke things
-which seemed to find a dull, hollow echo in the dark recesses of my
-mind; but her black, eastern eyes were full of fire, and eager and
-piercing, with a sort of wild intelligence that was scarcely human; her
-speech took weight and significance from the strange, fierce, repellent
-expression of her face; there was a kind of fascination too in her very
-adjacency, in her manner of staring into my eyes, in her way of passing
-her hand over my face.
-
-‘If I have a husband and children, shall I ever see them again?’ said I.
-
-‘You forget what I said when I told you your fortune, lady,’ she
-answered.
-
-‘You spoke without knowing,’ said I. ‘You have a set of tales by heart,
-and you call them fortunes.’
-
-‘I am a gipsy and can read _baji_,’ cried the woman, with her eyes
-beginning to flash. ‘Many fortunes have I told in my time and many
-prophecies have I uttered which have come to pass. Do not I read what
-you are? When you were walking the deck with the lady and I was sitting
-there,’ said she, pointing, ‘I looked at you and said to myself, “Let
-me see into her eyes and let me look at her hand, and I will tell her
-much that is not in her memory.”’
-
-‘Are you a mother?’ said I.
-
-‘I have had my bantlings,’ she answered sullenly. ‘They went home long
-ago.’
-
-‘What do you mean?’
-
-‘They lies dead and buried,’ said she. ‘What other homes have us poor
-gipsies and our bantlings got but the grave? The likes of you goes to
-Heaven, lady; the likes of us don’t carry our thoughts so high. I wish
-I was at home with my bantlings, I do, instead of living to be a lone
-woman crossing the seas----’ Her voice failed her; and, pulling her
-little black pipe from her pocket, she dashed it on to the deck with a
-face of fury, and then, with a harsh and hideous voice, began to sing
-some strange gibberish, which, to judge by the expression in her eye,
-might very well have been a string of curses.
-
-Her looks and behaviour alarmed me; and, without exchanging another
-word with her, I rose and re-entered the saloon.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XX
-
-THE DEATH OF ALICE LEE
-
-
-The storm passed away in the night, and when the morning came there
-was a breathless calm upon the sea. On my way from the steerage I
-looked out through the saloon door for a minute or two. All sail was
-set upon the ship, but there was no wind. The white canvas was pouring
-in and out somewhat heavily, and as it beat the masts the thunderous,
-crackling notes it rang through the motionless atmosphere were like the
-noise of the wheels of artillery drawn at a gallop over a stony street.
-The sea was breathing heavily after its conflict of the previous day,
-and the ship was rolling majestically, but at the same time very
-uncomfortably, upon the glass-white swell.
-
-The decks were crowded with emigrants. Children were tumbling and
-sporting in the channel under the bulwarks, called the ‘scuppers,’
-as though their instincts directed them to find a playground in the
-gutters of the ship. Some of the people appeared to be breakfasting.
-With one hand they grasped tin mugs full of a steaming black liquid,
-probably called tea by those who served it out to them, and in the
-other hand they held a piece of flinty biscuit, and with this dry,
-disgusting fare a number of the poor creatures were breaking their fast.
-
-There were some delicate faces amongst the women--two or three with
-eyes of beauty, and two or three with rich auburn hair. I longed to go
-amongst the poor people and ask them questions, and learn from what
-parts of the country they came. I thought to myself, one of those many
-men and women may have it in his or her power to give me back my memory
-by saying something that might serve as a burning brand for the dark
-galleries of my brain. But it was a desire which the rules of the ship
-forbade me to satisfy.
-
-Presently I caught sight of the gipsy woman. She showed her teeth and
-nodded demonstratively, as if she would have her fellow-passengers take
-notice that she and I were friends. I coldly nodded in return, and
-then, learning from the stewardess that Mrs. Lee had not yet left her
-berth, I walked to the end of the saloon, where I could sit retired,
-and there waited for the breakfast-bell to ring and for the passengers
-to appear.
-
-The first to come out of her berth was Mrs. Lee. She immediately saw
-and approached me. She looked as if she had been crying, and there was
-an expression of deep and settled grief in her face. I asked after
-Alice, but with a sinking heart, as I gazed at the poor, anxious,
-devoted mother.
-
-‘She has been very ill in the night,’ she answered. ‘She is very low
-this morning.’
-
-‘But yesterday she seemed so much better.’
-
-‘Oh! she is dying, Agnes, she is leaving me. God is fast withdrawing
-her from me now,’ and she wept afresh.
-
-I hung my head. I could not look into the face of her grief and find
-words.
-
-And now again the poor woman reproached herself for having brought her
-child to sea when it was too late. She talked indeed as though she had
-overheard what Mr. McEwan had said to me on the previous day, or as
-though he had repeated his discourse to her.
-
-‘She would have been comfortable at home,’ she exclaimed amidst her
-sobs. ‘Her rest is broken by the narrow bunk she lies in, and she
-is distressed by the movements of the ship. At home she would lie
-peacefully in her own bedroom, she would be surrounded by familiar
-objects, friends would come and sit with her, and--oh, Agnes!’ She
-stopped in her speech as though a spasm had wrenched her heart.
-
-I knew what was in her mind, and the tears sprang into my eyes.
-
-‘Her grave,’ continued Mrs. Lee in a whisper, ‘would not be far away
-from me. I should be able to visit it, to see that it is tended as her
-sister’s is: but----’ She stopped again in her speech and directed her
-eyes at one of the large circular windows through which, as the ship
-rolled, we could now and again catch a sight of the glassy volumes of
-water.
-
-While she talked of her dying child the breakfast-bell rang. She rose
-and said: ‘I cannot sit at the table. I cannot bear to be asked
-questions about Alice, though they are kindly meant. Come to me when
-you have breakfasted,’ and she returned to her berth.
-
-I felt, now that the mother was without hope, that there was no hope
-indeed. My own grief was so keen that I was as unequal to the task of
-sitting at the breakfast table as Mrs. Lee, and after drinking a cup
-of tea, which one of the stewards brought to me before the passengers
-assembled, I slipped downstairs to my cabin there to wait until it
-should be time to visit Alice. My low spirits were not only owing to
-the news which Mrs. Lee had given me: I had passed a miserable night
-disturbed by many shapeless undeterminable dreams, and broken by long
-passages of waking thought. The gipsy woman’s repeated deliberate
-assurance that I was not only a wife but a mother also influenced me
-as though her words were the truth itself. A secret voice within me
-was for ever whispering, ‘It is so! It is so!’ and I cannot express
-how dreadful was the anguish of my mind as I sought in the void within
-for any, the least, stir of shadow to which I could give some form of
-memory.
-
-And I was sensible too of a heartache as of yearning, though I knew not
-what I yearned for. I sought to explain to myself this subtle craving
-by saying, ‘I am a mother and I yearn for my children;’ and yet my
-children were to me then as though they had never been born! What,
-then, did this sense of yearning signify? Was it a desire put into my
-head by the gipsy woman’s talk--first, the belief that I was a mother
-as she had said, and then a craving to _know_ whether or not I had left
-children behind me in my unknown home? Or was it the deep, unfailing,
-deathless, maternal instinct whose accents were sounding to my heart
-out of the darkness that was upon my mind, as the whisper of a spirit
-falls upon the waking ear in the blackness of the night, serving as an
-impulse and an inspiration, though the listener knows not whence the
-sound proceeds nor what it is?
-
-It happened as Mrs. Lee had feared. As the wife of a shipowner she had
-met many seafaring men in her time, and she talked of the sea with
-something of the knowledge of an experienced ocean traveller. The calm
-weather which she had dreaded happened. For many days, whose number my
-memory does not carry, the sea stretched flat and lifeless round about
-the ship, and the rim of it was dim with the faint blue haze of heat
-whilst the central sky was a blaze of white light. Faint airs called
-catspaws occasionally tarnished the table-flat plain of the ocean; but
-so weak were these draughts that they expired long before they reached
-the ship, and for hours and for days the _Deal Castle_ sat upright upon
-the water without motion except a small swaying of her mast-heads,
-and there was so perfect a reflection of her fabric of black sides and
-star-white canvas under her that one might have believed on gazing over
-the side that she rested on a sheet of looking-glass.
-
-No sail could heave into view in such stagnant weather. Never was the
-hot, blurred edge of the ocean broken by the thread-like shadowing of
-a steamer’s smoke. There was nothing to see but water, and there was
-nothing for the passengers to do but to lounge and eat and sleep and
-grumble. The heat told fearfully on Alice Lee. The saloon and berths
-were unendurably hot, and the doctor ordered the girl to be carried on
-deck on a couch. She begged not to be disturbed; her mother entreated
-her to allow the people to carry her on deck, and then she consented;
-but when they put their hands upon her she fainted, and so deep and
-long was her swoon that we feared she had died. The doctor then
-directed that she should be left as she was.
-
-Her mother and I nursed her between us. Mrs. Richards put a little
-arm-chair in the dying girl’s berth, and I sat and watched whilst Mrs.
-Lee slept; and then, when it came to Mrs. Lee’s turn to watch, I would
-fall asleep in the chair, and thus we would pass the nights. Oh, it was
-a bitter sad time! The mother fought with her grief in the sight of her
-child that she might not witness the agony of her affliction; but often
-at night, when she lay down after several hours of watching, instead of
-sleeping she would weep, very silently indeed, but I could tell by the
-breathing that her tears were flowing.
-
-Alice’s sufferings were not great. Time after time in the silent
-watches of the night--and silent indeed were the watches of those
-breathless nights of equatorial calm--I would rise on observing the
-dear girl to move uneasily, bend over her, and ask if she suffered; and
-regularly would she answer me in her sweet voice and with her sweet
-smile that she was free from pain, that she desired but a little air,
-but that she was not suffering, and then she would extend her thin,
-damp, cold hand for me to hold, and ask me if her mother was sleeping,
-and then whisper that she was happy, that she was dying, that she
-knew she was dying, but that the holy peace of God which passes all
-understanding was upon her heart, and that she was praying for the hour
-to come when He would take her to Himself.
-
-Once she awoke uttering a cry as of rapture. I was at her side in an
-instant.
-
-She looked a little strangely at me, then, as an expression of
-recognition entered her eyes, she exclaimed; ‘I have been with my angel
-sister. Can it have been a dream? How real, how real it was! We stood
-together hand in hand--I do not know where--the light was that of the
-moon. Our dear mother was coming and we waited for her. Can it have
-been a dream?’ Her smile faded; she sighed, closed her eyes, and was
-presently asleep again.
-
-I could tell you many sweet things of this beautiful character as she
-lay dying in that little cabin, but it is my own, and not Alice Lee’s,
-story that I have undertaken to relate. Yet the mystical part that she
-played in the turning-point of my life is so truly wonderful that I
-cannot but dwell upon her blessed memory. She was the good angel of my
-life, and God afterwards sent her from Heaven to me, as you shall read
-when you come to that part of my experiences.
-
-And though I had known her but for a few weeks, yet as she lay dying
-on her bed my love could not have been deeper for her than had she
-been flesh of my own flesh, had she been my sister or my child, had her
-mother been mine, and we had grown together in years with never a day
-of separation.
-
-It was the night of the eleventh day of the calm, but this night the
-breathlessness of the atmosphere was broken by a faint air of wind. The
-window of Alice’s berth was wide open, but though I put my hand into it
-I felt no movement of air. Yet a small weak wind was blowing; it was
-past midnight, and in the stillness of this hour I heard the noise of
-waters faintly rippling, and the deep silence was unbroken by the notes
-of flapping canvas, for there was wind enough to ‘put the sails to
-sleep,’ as a pretty saying of the sea goes.
-
-Mrs. Lee had been lying down since ten o’clock, and was sleeping, but I
-should awaken her presently, for it had been arranged that she should
-watch from after midnight until three or four in the morning. I was
-faint, and there was a feeling of nausea upon me. The atmosphere of the
-cabin was oppressively close. In spite of the awning having been spread
-throughout the day the heat of the sun was in the planks of the deck,
-and this heat, though it was now the hour of midnight, was still in
-the planks, and it struck through into the atmosphere of the cabin as
-though a great oven rested on the ceiling of the little interior.
-
-There are many sorts of illness which are sad and afflicting to
-nurse, but none so sad and afflicting, I think, as consumption in
-its last stage. There was a weight upon my spirits; I panted for
-the deck, and for the starlit freedom of the cool night. Alice had
-been resting motionlessly for nearly an hour. I knew not whether she
-slept or was awake, and would not look lest I should disturb her if
-she was sleeping. Her eyes were closed, her thin hands were crossed
-saint-like upon her breast, her face was as white as though the moon
-shone upon it. Through the open window, that was somewhat above her
-sleeping-shelf and near her head, I saw a large golden star shining:
-the rolling of the ship was so slight that the star continued to shine
-in the aperture, sliding up and down, but never beyond the limits of
-the circle of window. The effect of the girl’s white face, and of this
-star that seemed to be sliding to and fro near it, was extraordinary.
-A strange fancy entered my head: I thought of the star as of Alice’s
-spirit hovering close to the form that was not yet inanimate, and
-waiting for death to give the signal for its flight to Heaven; and
-whilst I thus thought, looking at the white face and the golden star
-shining in the cabin window, a sweet low voice began to sing the
-opening lines of that beautiful hymn, ‘Abide with Me.’
-
-The voice was faint and sounded as though it came from a distance,
-but it was inexpressibly sweet. I started, believing that someone was
-singing on deck, for the voice of anyone singing on deck would strike
-faintly upon the ear through the open cabin window, even as this voice
-did. Then I said to myself, ‘It is Alice who is singing,’ and stepping
-to her side I was in time to witness the movement of her lips ere she
-ceased, after having sung but little more than the first two lines of
-the hymn. Her eyes were closed, her hands remained crossed upon her
-bosom; she had not stirred, and there was no doubt that she sang in her
-sleep.
-
-About this hour Mrs. Lee lifted her head from her pillow, then arose,
-and after gazing silently for awhile at her child, she approached me,
-put her lips to my ear, and bade me in almost breathless accents take
-the sleep I needed. I answered in a whisper that I could not sleep,
-and asked her to allow me to go on deck to breathe the cool air for
-a quarter of an hour or so, telling her where she would find me.
-She acquiesced with a motion of her head, and catching up a shawl I
-noiselessly passed out from the cabin.
-
-The saloon lamps had long been extinguished, but a plentiful haze of
-starlight floated through the open skylights. Not knowing but that Mr.
-Harris might have charge of the ship, and desiring to avoid him, though
-even if he were on the poop and saw me there I did not suppose he would
-address me, I passed through the saloon on to the quarter-deck, and
-seated myself half-way up one of the ladders which conducted to the
-poop, and, my attire being dark, and the darkness where I sat being
-deep, there was small chance of my being observed unless someone came
-to the ladder to mount or descend it.
-
-The night air was delicious. Low over the sea on my left hand side was
-a dark red scar of moon; it was floating slowly up out of the east with
-its fragment of disk large and distorted by the hot atmosphere through
-which it stared. The sails of the ship rose pale, and the topmost
-of them looked so high up that the faint pallid spaces seemed to be
-hovering cloud-like close under the stars. The faint breeze held the
-canvas motionless, and not a sound came from those airy heights.
-
-The figure of a man moved on the forecastle; otherwise the decks--so
-much of them, at least, as my sight commanded--were tenantless. The
-night was the more peaceful for the soft air that blew. The delicate
-noise of rippling waters lulled the senses, and at another time I
-should have fallen asleep to that gentle music of the sea, but my
-heart was too full to suffer me to slumber then; the tears fell from my
-eyes. A sweet girl was dying; the gentlest heart that ever beat in a
-woman’s breast might even now, as I sat thinking, have ceased to throb;
-one whom I dearly loved, whose tenderness for me had been that of a
-sister, was dying, might even now be dead, and as I sat thinking of her
-I wept.
-
-I looked up at the sky; it was crowded with stars, and many meteors
-glanced in the dark heights. I asked myself, ‘Where is Heaven?’ We look
-upwards and think that Heaven is where we direct our eyes, but I knew
-that even as I looked the prospect of the stars was slowly changing,
-so that if Heaven were _there_ where I was now gazing it would not be
-there presently. Where then was Heaven? And when the soul of the sweet
-girl who was dying in her cabin quitted her body whither would it fly?
-Then I remembered that she herself had told me that we looked upwards
-when we thought of Heaven because the light was there, the light of the
-sun, and the moon, and the stars, but that God whom she had taught me
-to remember and to pray to was everywhere.
-
-This thought of God’s presence--for if He was everywhere He must be
-where I now was--awed me, and, rising from the step upon which I was
-seated, I knelt and prayed, weeping bitterly as I uttered the words
-which arose from my heart. I prayed that my memory might be restored
-to me; I prayed that, if I were a wife and a mother, the image of my
-husband and my children would be presented to me that I might know them
-and return to them. But I did not pray for Alice Lee. She was already
-His to whom I knelt, and I knew in my heart that even if it had been
-in the power of prayer to save her she would not desire another hour of
-life unless--and here I turned my head and looked at the dark surface
-of sea and thought of it as her grave.
-
-I resumed the seat I had arisen from in order to kneel, and again
-surrendered myself to thought. I heard the measured tread of a man upon
-the poop-deck that stretched above and behind me. He came to the rail,
-and stood at the head of the steps which lay opposite to those on which
-I was seated. His figure showed black against the starless sky, and I
-saw that he was not Mr. Harris, but Mr. ----, the second officer of the
-vessel. He whistled softly to himself as he stood awhile surveying the
-sea and the ship.
-
-One reads often in poetry and in stories of the loneliness of the
-night watch on the ocean; but one should bear a secret part in such
-a watch--a part such as I was now bearing, with a heart of lead and
-with eyes which burnt with recent tears--to compass what is meant when
-the loneliness of the night watch at sea is sung or written of. Nobody
-stirred upon the ship but the figure of this second officer and some
-dim shadowy shape far forward on the forecastle, flitting among and
-blending with the deep masses of dye cast upon the atmosphere there by
-the sails. Not a sound was to be heard saving the sigh of the faint
-wind in the rigging, and the tinkling noise of rippling water. The
-fragment of moon was still red in the east, and as yet without power to
-touch the dark ocean under it with light. Two bells were struck on some
-part of the deck, and the tremulous chimes went floating up into the
-hollows of the sails, and trembled in the pallid concavities in echoes.
-The figure of the second officer moved away from the rail; and now,
-though a little while before I had believed myself sleepless, my head
-insensibly sank forward, my eyes closed, and I slumbered.
-
-I was awakened by a hand laid upon my shoulder. I started with a cry,
-and gazed around me. No situation would more bewilder one new to the
-sea than the being suddenly aroused and finding oneself on the deck of
-a ship, with the stars shining and the tall sails spreading over one,
-and the night wind of the deck blowing upon one’s face. The person who
-had awakened me was Mr. McEwan.
-
-‘This is a strange bed for a lady to be sleeping upon at this hour of
-the night,’ said he; ‘but I have no heart and no time now to represent
-the folly ye commeet in sleeping in such a dew as is falling. I have
-been to see Miss Alice Lee; she is dying. She will be gone before that
-moon there has climbed to over our mast-heads. She wishes to see you,
-and her mother asked me to find and send you to her. Go and comfort
-the puir old lady. God knows she needs comfort! There is nothing I can
-do for the girl,’ and he abruptly quitted me, and disappeared in the
-gloom of the saloon.
-
-I immediately made my way to Mrs. Lee’s cabin, but before entering I
-stood upon a chair that I might see the clock under the skylight. The
-time was a quarter to two. I was now able to read the clock, though
-when I had first come on board the _Deal Castle_, having no memory of
-the figures, I was unable to tell the time. I quietly opened the door
-and entered. Mrs. Lee was kneeling at the side of her sleeping-shelf,
-which was below the bunk in which her daughter lay, and she was so lost
-in prayer that she did not hear me enter. I crept to Alice’s side, and
-then her mother, perceiving me, arose.
-
-Though the cabin lamp was turned down, there was plenty of light to
-see by. Alice’s eyes were closed, but after I had stood a moment or
-two looking at her she opened them, saw me and knew me, and a smile of
-touching sweetness lighted up her wasted face. She feebly moved her
-hand, but with a gesture which made me know she wished me to hold it.
-I bowed my head close to her face, and asked her in a whisper if she
-was in pain. She answered no; and then I asked her if she was happy,
-on which she looked at me and smiled. Her lips moved, but she seemed
-powerless to give expression to her thoughts. I bent my ear close to
-her mouth, and I heard her say in a whisper as dim and far off as the
-voice one hears in a dream:
-
-‘I have been praying that God will give you back your memory----My
-beloved mother will be your friend----’
-
-The whisper ceased, she smiled again, twitched her fingers that I might
-relax my hold of her hand, and looked at her mother, who took her hand
-and held it.
-
-I withdrew to the chair in which I had been wont to keep a watch while
-Mrs. Lee slept, that the mother and daughter might, in that sacred
-time, be alone together. But the sweet girl never spoke again. Whilst
-her hand was still clasped by her mother she turned her face to the
-side of the ship and passed away, dying so quietly that her death was
-as noiseless as the fall of the leaf of a flower in the night--dying so
-quietly that her mother knew not when the soul of her child had fled,
-and continued holding her hand, with not a sound breaking the sacred
-stillness of that little cabin save the rippling of the water tinkling
-to the ear through the embrasure of the window, from whose dark disk
-the large golden star had gone.
-
-‘Mark,’ says the most eloquent of divines, ‘mark the rain that falls
-from above, and the same shower that droppeth out of one cloud
-increaseth sundry plants in a garden, and severally according to the
-condition of every plant. In one stalk it makes a rose, in another a
-violet, divers in a third, and sweet in all. So the Spirit makes its
-multiformous effects in several complexions and all according to the
-increase of God.’
-
-The rose of this fair garden was dead. But what says this same most
-eloquent of all divines, the rose being dead, and the perfume, which is
-its spirit, gone from it?
-
-‘As when the eye meets with light it is the comfort of the eye: when
-the ear meets with harmony it is the comfort of the ear. What is the
-most transcendent consolation therefore but the union of the soul with
-God?’
-
-Until long after the dawn had broken Mrs. Lee and I remained with the
-dead. The poor mother seemed at first stupefied. Mr. McEwan came in,
-looked at Alice, pronounced that all was over, and with a sigh and a
-gentle nod to Mrs. Lee softly quitted the cabin.
-
-And then it was that the poor mother appeared to have been changed into
-stone. She held the dead girl’s hand, and kept her eyes fastened upon
-the averted face. At last a sob convulsed her. Another and a third
-followed, and, releasing her child’s hand, she threw herself into a
-chair, hid her face, and wept. Oh how she wept! and I feared that her
-heart had broken. Then, when she had calmed down somewhat, I took
-her hand and said whatever I thought might soothe her. But there was
-nothing under Heaven to soothe grief so recent as hers, with the body
-of her sweet daughter lying within view, though she may have found a
-sort of sympathy which no other person on board could have possessed
-for her in my own distressed condition; for from time to time as I
-talked she would lift her streaming eyes to my face with an expression
-of deep pity that for the moment overlay the look of her own grief.
-It was indeed as though she should say, ‘Great as is my sorrow here,
-seeking to comfort me is one whose sorrow may be even greater than
-mine.’
-
-We passed the hours until some time after dawn had broken in prayer
-and in tears, and in whispering of the dead. Often the mother would
-rise to look at her, and then come back and talk to me about her--of
-the sweetness of her disposition even when she was a little child,
-of her tenderness and goodness as a daughter, of her simple innocent
-pleasures, of her tastes; how the poor whom she had visited and
-comforted loved her and blessed her name.
-
-When the morning had fairly come I saw it was no longer fit that the
-poor bereaved mother should continue in this cabin in sight of her
-child’s body, so, telling her that I would presently return, I entered
-the saloon, and, seeing nothing of Mrs. Richards, I descended into
-the steerage and found her in her cabin. I told her that Alice Lee
-was dead. She heard me with a look of sorrow, but it was impossible
-that she should feel surprise. I told her that Mrs. Lee was nearly
-heartbroken, and begged that another cabin might be prepared for her
-where she might remain private until after the funeral. She reflected
-and said:
-
-‘All the saloon cabins are occupied. It would not be right to offer
-her a berth in the steerage. I will speak to the captain at once; the
-surgeon is sure to have reported the poor young lady’s death to him;
-pray return to Mrs. Lee until I am able to tell you what can be done.’
-
-Shortly after I had returned to Mrs. Lee’s cabin a number of the
-passengers came out of their berths, and the news that Alice Lee was
-dead swiftly went from mouth to mouth. Then it was, as I afterwards
-came to know, that Mrs. Webber, meeting Mrs. Richards as she came from
-the captain’s cabin, learnt from the stewardess that there was no
-berth vacant in the saloon for the reception of Mrs. Lee, and that the
-poor bereaved mother would have to retire for awhile to a cabin in the
-darksome steerage. The good-natured, sympathetic Mrs. Webber would not
-hear of this; she bade Mrs. Richards wait for a little, and going to
-one of the ladies she promptly arranged to share her berth with her;
-Mr. Webber and the lady’s husband sleeping meanwhile in cabins occupied
-by single men. All this Mrs. Webber promptly arranged. Her sympathetic
-enthusiasm swept away every difficulty, and before the breakfast-bell
-summoned the passengers to the saloon table Mrs. Lee and I were
-installed in the Webbers’ cabin.
-
-The state of the weather required that the funeral should not be
-delayed, but I own that I was not a little shocked when I learnt that
-the ceremony was to take place at eleven that morning. I had met
-Captain Ladmore in the saloon as I came from my berth in the steerage
-to rejoin Mrs. Lee in her new quarters, and he stopped me to ask in his
-grave sad way how Mrs. Lee did, and to inquire after the last moments
-of the dear girl. I answered him as best I could, and then, seeing Mrs.
-Richards come out of the berth that had been occupied by Mrs. Lee, it
-entered my head to ask the captain when the funeral would take place.
-
-‘I have arranged,’ said he, ‘that it shall take place at eleven.’
-
-‘At eleven!--this morning?’ cried I, starting. ‘That is terribly soon,
-Captain Ladmore.’
-
-‘It is terribly soon, as you say,’ he answered, ‘but at sea there is no
-sentiment, and the claims of the living at sea are far more imperious
-than ever they can be ashore. I do not wish to intrude upon Mrs. Lee.
-Her sorrow is too fresh to admit of intrusion. I will ask you to tell
-her that the funeral takes place at eleven, and you will also say that
-I too have suffered keenly, even as keenly as she, and that I feel for
-her,’ and, giving me a slight hurried bow to conceal his emotion, he
-left me.
-
-I broke the intelligence as softly as I was able to the poor bereaved
-mother. A scared look entered her eyes, which were red with weeping,
-and she convulsively motioned with her arm as though she would speak
-but could not; she then hid her face in her hands and swayed her form
-as though she wrestled with the agony of her affliction. I stood at the
-port-hole, looking through it at the sea, but my eyes were blind with
-tears, and I could behold nothing but the image of Alice Lee, already
-draped, perhaps, in her sea-shroud--in less than two hours to have
-vanished for ever in that mighty sepulchre of ocean from which, as a
-grave, her pure sweet spirit had shrunk, so great was her horror of its
-vastness, albeit she knew that her Lord, in whom she believed and whom
-she loved, was awaiting and would receive her, though an ocean as wide
-as the heavens themselves rolled between her and Him. Presently I felt
-Mrs. Lee’s hand upon my arm.
-
-‘Agnes, will you attend my darling’s funeral?’
-
-‘If you wish it, dear Mrs. Lee, yes.’
-
-‘I could not be present--I could not----. You will tell me----’ She
-broke down and wept upon my shoulder; but I readily gathered her
-thoughts from her grief-broken utterance.
-
-Shortly before eleven I quitted her cabin. She looked me in the eyes
-and kissed me on the brow before I left her. I went to the berth that
-I had been occupying, but that I was to occupy no longer, and put on
-a black veil which Mrs. Lee had given to me to wear. I also put on a
-pair of black gloves which had belonged to sweet Alice Lee. I had no
-more mourning to wear. As I passed through the saloon I heard the sound
-of the ship’s bell tolling. It chimed in a funeral note, but the wide
-glory of the morning took all significance of grief out of it. The soft
-wind which had fanned the ship forward during the night still blew;
-the sun was within an hour of his meridian, and the rippling sea was a
-vast dazzling plain, a surface of white fire wrinkling southward. There
-could be nothing funereal in the tolling of a bell on such a morning as
-this; the life of the flashing universe was in every trembling pulse
-of the slowly recurring chimes.
-
-The emigrants crowded the deck in the forward part of the ship. They
-stared with eager eyes, and every face wore an expression of vulgar,
-morbid curiosity. The children amongst them stared too, but they were
-silent and wondering, and often would they look up at the sails and
-around at the furniture of the ship, as though all familiar objects had
-been rendered fresh and strange to their young eyes. Most of the crew,
-in clean white attire, stood in ranks in front of the emigrants. Every
-man’s shadow softly swung at his feet, and just past and close behind
-one bushy-whiskered face was the tawny countenance of the gipsy woman,
-her eyes full of fire, and her mouth wide with a grin that seemed to
-fling a complexion of irony upon the serious, vulgar, and grimy faces
-round about in her neighbourhood.
-
-The saloon passengers had clothed themselves in black. They were
-congregated on the quarter-deck, at a short distance from the part of
-the bulwark where the body was to be launched. The hour of eleven was
-struck, six blows on the bell announcing the time; and the captain,
-stalking gravely out of the saloon, Prayer-book in hand, took up his
-station close against the bulwarks, where the sailors had made an
-opening by lifting out a piece of the rail. A few moments later the
-body was borne forth from the saloon, and at the sight of it every man
-took off his hat, and a strange sound, like a subdued moan uttered by
-many persons at one instant, came from the crowd of emigrants.
-
-The body was carried by four sailors; it was covered by a large
-flag--the red ensign of the English merchant service--and the crimson
-edges of the flag trailed along the white planks as the sailors, with
-measured tread, bore their sweet and sacred burthen to the bulwarks.
-The captain, opening his book, began to read the funeral service in
-a deep, clear voice; but often there was a tremor, often there was a
-break of emotion in his tones, which made those who knew how it had
-been with him feel that his heart was away with his own dead in the old
-home. Sobs often broke from the ladies.
-
-So young! So sweet! So good! Whilst my eyes streamed with tears, and
-whilst my ears followed the touching words recited by the captain,
-my heart asked many questions. Why should one so gentle, so pure, so
-young, be taken? Why for years should she have been haunted by the
-terrible spectre of death, a shadow for ever creeping closer and closer
-to her, poising its certain and envenomed lance, for years haunting her
-hours and her dreams with its ever-growing apparition? Oh, how cruel!
-how hard to bear is the continuous dread and expectation of death! I
-thought. And when I remembered how she had answered me when I spoke
-aloud to her some such thoughts as were now running in my mind: how she
-had told me that the victory of the spirit over life, and all that life
-can tempt it with, is by suffering and pain; that the great triumph
-of our salvation was the fruit of suffering and of pain, the sweet,
-dear, glad voice spoke to me yet. I seemed to hear its pure accents
-creeping into my ear from the pale form hidden by the crimson flag. The
-voice told me that all was well with her, that the conquest was hers,
-that she had exchanged the dim pale shadows of this dream called life
-for the shining and glorious realities which had been promised to her
-by One whose word was Love, unfailing and imperishable, and that she
-was--as no one in this life can be--happy.
-
-At a signal from the captain the flag was removed, the grating on
-which the body rested was tilted, and the body, sewn up in snow-white
-sail-cloth, flashed from the ship’s side.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXI
-
-I RETURN TO ENGLAND
-
-
-And now it is necessary that I should skip a considerable period of
-time--no less a period of time indeed than ten months--that this story
-may bring me to a close relation of my own affairs; for the most
-extraordinary part of my strange adventures yet remains to be unfolded,
-and no purpose can be served by my keeping you dawdling on shipboard,
-when everything from this time material befell me on shore.
-
-I will not speak of the grief of Mrs. Lee; her bereavement left her
-childless, and, indeed, alone in the world, and her loss was as an
-arrow in her heart. Alice had been left to her when her first child
-was taken; but now Alice was gone, and loneliness and childlessness
-rendered the loss of this daughter a far deeper affliction than had
-been the death of the other. But Mrs. Lee was a woman of strong
-religious feelings; resignation grew in her with the help of prayer,
-and with the compassion of God, and through much silent meditation;
-and, long before we arrived in Australia, she could bear to say and to
-hear many things concerning Alice which, in the earliest stages of her
-grief, her faltering tongue could not have pronounced, nor her stricken
-heart endure to listen to.
-
-I think it was about three weeks after Alice’s death, that Mrs. Lee
-spoke to me very seriously about my future, repeated her daughter’s
-wishes, and asked me to live with her as companion whilst my memory
-continued dark, and whilst I remained homeless. I gladly assented,
-kissing her, and gratefully thanking her again and again for her
-offer; and she seemed as glad as I. She had liked me from the beginning
-of our acquaintance; now she loved me for my association with her
-lost child, and also because Alice had loved me. And she loved me for
-myself too, as the dear little woman would often tell me, though all
-the kindness, all the goodness was on one side. For I could do no more
-than feel grateful, and thank God for having found me a friend in her,
-and be with her, and oblige her, and comfort her as fully as my mind,
-enfeebled by the want of memory, would enable me.
-
-We arrived at Sydney, New South Wales; the passengers bade us farewell
-and went their ways. Some of them presented me with little gifts of
-jewellery to remember them by, and the tears stood in Mrs. Webber’s
-eyes when she said good-bye to me. Had the _Deal Castle_ touched at
-the Cape of Good Hope, Mrs. Lee would have gone on shore, taking me
-with her, and proceeded to England direct by one of the fine steamers
-of the Union Steamship line; but the ship stopped nowhere during the
-outward passage, and therefore, unless we chose to be transferred to a
-homeward-bound ship, we were obliged to proceed direct to Sydney. Mrs.
-Lee made up her mind to return home in the ship. She had paid her cabin
-fare for two for the ‘round voyage,’ as it is called; she liked Captain
-Ladmore, and she also liked his ship; and then, again, Mr. McEwan
-strongly recommended her to remain in the _Deal Castle_, affirming that
-her health would benefit by such a voyage as a sailing ship provided.
-
-So, for the reasons I have given, together with others which I need
-not enter into--as, for example, the cost of returning home by steam:
-a cost that must tax her purse, seeing that she had already paid for
-the voyage out and home--we returned to England in the _Deal Castle_
-living on shore at a hotel during the three months the vessel lay in
-Sydney harbour.
-
-You will ask whether, in this time, my memory had returned to
-me--whether, indeed, I was even capable of dimly recollecting? My
-answer is, _No!_ My memory seemed to grow even more impenetrable as
-the months went by. There had been times, as I have told you, when the
-cry of a child, when the gibberish of a gipsy woman would stir the
-gloom within me as though there were shadows or shapes of memory which
-moved, eagerly responsive to the cry or the syllables which fell upon
-my ear, but incapable of determining themselves to my mental vision. My
-feelings were, indeed, as the poet expresses a like state of mind:--
-
-    ‘Moreover, something is or seems,
-    That touches me with mystic gleams,
-    Like glimpses of forgotten dreams.
-    Of something felt, like something here;
-    Of something done, I know not where;
-    Such as no language may declare.’
-
-But time deepened the silence and the darkness. The old yearning grew
-sick, it languished; curiosity itself, the vulgar, commonplace quality
-of curiosity, fell mute and closed its eyes and seemed to sleep. The
-utter inability to penetrate, resulted in a sort of stagnation of soul.
-My mind lapsed into a condition of absolute passivity. I knew that I
-had a past; but of it, of all that entered into it, and created it,
-I was as ignorant as though it had never been. I believed it to be
-extinguished for ever, and I became resigned to the loss as we become
-resigned to the loss of those who have died; though a loss it was _not_
-to my unremembering brain in the sense that death is a loss to the
-mourner who has dried her tears; for _she_ can remember; but I, though
-conscious of a loss, and of a loss that for all I knew might have
-rendered me a widow and motherless for life, though with a husband and
-children living and craving for me, could not weep over it, for I knew
-not what I had lost.
-
-My condition excited much interest in Sydney; that is to say, amongst
-a circle of acquaintances whom we had got to know through some of
-the passengers who had come out in the ship with us. A doctor, whose
-reputation stood high in Sydney, was introduced to me, questioned me
-closely, subjected me to all the tests he could devise, carried Mrs.
-Lee and me here and there with some worthy, kind notion in his head of
-my memory taking fire from the sight of shops and streets, and gardens
-of beautiful flowers and the like; but all to no purpose. From nothing
-he could do, from nothing that I could see, did I get the least hint. I
-perfectly comprehended everything that I beheld, and everything that I
-heard; but no images of the past were presented to my mind.
-
-I went by the name of Miss C----, and was thus spoken of by everybody
-excepting Mrs. Lee, who always referred to me and addressed me by the
-name of Agnes. Before I left Sydney, however, my appearance had greatly
-improved. It might have been the change from the sea to the shore; it
-might have been that condition of passivity which I have mentioned,
-which had silenced in me to a very large extent the dreadful, wearing,
-benumbing, blind conflicts of my spirit with my memory; but be the
-reason what it might, I was looking so much better when Mrs. Lee and I
-rejoined the ship, when she was about to sail for England, that Mrs.
-Richards scarcely recognised me. My hair was growing very thick and
-abundant again; it remained as white as snow, but being very plentiful,
-it looked as though it were powdered; it contrasted finely with my
-dark eyes and gave them, as Mrs. Lee would tell me, a very rich and
-glowing expression. Hair had sprouted, as Mr. McEwan predicted it
-would, on the brow which had been injured and where the scar was; but,
-strangely enough, this hair was black, whereas the other eyebrow was
-as snow-white as the hair of my head. There was but one way to remedy
-this extreme of hue. I could not make the growing hair white; and
-therefore, to rescue my face from the odd cast which the differently
-coloured eyebrows imparted, I purchased some dye at Sydney, and so
-brought my left eyebrow to look like my right one. That the shape of
-my nose had been altered by its having been broken or indented above
-the bridge I very well knew, but I could not know to what extent its
-shape differed from its form before the accident befell me. It was
-now, as of course it has ever remained, what might be termed a Roman
-nose, though scarcely high-bridged enough for that shape; but I easily
-conceived that the structural change of it, coupled with my snow-white
-hair, and the scar over my right eye, that gave a somewhat overhanging
-look to the brow there--these were changes, I say, to make me easily
-conceive that, however my face may have shown in the past, it could
-hardly be more changed had I worn a mask. My complexion, however, had
-wonderfully cleared. Those strange fine lines, the effect, as Mr.
-McEwan declared, of a terrible shock to the nervous system, were fading
-out of my cheeks, though they lingered somewhat obstinately about my
-forehead. I was pale, but no longer sallow; my skin, indeed, had grown
-very clear; and I was not always pale either, for, being very nervous,
-and constantly possessed by a painful sense of embarrassment through my
-not having any memory, and through my being conscious that my intellect
-was weakened by the want of memory, a very little matter would bring
-the blood to my cheeks, and often I would turn scarlet when suddenly
-addressed.
-
-As you will suppose, I presented what may reasonably be called a
-very striking appearance, what with my white hair and dark eyebrows,
-and dark shining eyes and clear skin, and youthful well-proportioned
-figure. Mrs. Richards would tell me that amongst the passengers (during
-the homeward run) I passed for any age, from five-and-twenty to forty.
-
-But to proceed with my story. It was some time about ten months from
-the date of my being rescued from the French brig--whose people, more
-especially the kind young Alphonse, were often in my mind--that the
-_Deal Castle_ arrived in the River Thames. I stood on the deck with
-Mrs. Lee, all the canvas was furled, and the ship was being dragged up
-the river by a small steamboat. We had met with thick blowing weather
-in the Channel, and I had seen nothing of the English coast; but now
-we were in the River Thames; the land, with houses and gardens and
-fields, and blue hills in the far distance, was on either hand. It was
-a fine summer day; the river was crowded with ships of many kinds; one
-seemed to feel the beat of the mighty heart of the great metropolis
-that lay hidden beyond the bends and reaches, in this great artery of
-its river; and I gazed about me with an impassioned yearning.
-
-There was no detail of the busy, shining scene at which I did not
-thirstily stare--from the half-embowered church-spire ashore--from the
-windmill languidly revolving--from the white cloud of a locomotive
-speeding through a cutting--from the tall factory chimney soiling the
-pure azure with its dingy feathering of smoke; from these and from
-scores of such things as these, to the barge with chocolate-coloured
-sails lazily stemming the stream, to the stately ship towing past, to
-the great steamer whose destination might be the land whence we were
-newly returned, to the little wherry doggedly impelled by its lonely
-occupant in a tall hat.
-
-I gazed with a passion of anxiety and expectation, kindled afresh in me
-by the sight of the land--by the sight of what I had again and again
-been told was the land of my birth, the unremembered land in which my
-home was; but to no purpose. Nothing came back to me.
-
-‘We shall pass through London,’ said Mrs. Lee, ‘and your memory may
-return at the sight of the streets; for rest assured, even supposing
-your home is not in London, that you have visited the great city,
-perhaps very often. And if London gives you nothing, and there is still
-the journey to Newcastle, then there will be Newcastle itself. And
-if all remains blank, there is my home for you to share; and though
-I should rejoice, even as my angel daughter would, over the recovery
-of your memory, you have become so necessary to me, dear Agnes, as a
-companion, that parting with you would be almost like losing another
-child.’
-
-Before we arrived at the Docks where the ship was to be berthed, and
-where we proposed to land, Captain Ladmore invited Mrs. Lee and myself
-to his cabin; for his ship was now in the hands of the pilot, and the
-captain was, so to speak, a free man. First of all he asked Mrs. Lee
-for her address at Newcastle-on-Tyne, to enable the owners of the
-_Deal Castle_ to communicate with her, should any inquiries concerning
-me be made at their office. He informed us that it would be his duty
-to report the circumstance of his ship having been in collision with
-a French brig, on board of which there was found a single person, a
-woman, whose memory was gone--that is to say, who was unable to give
-any particulars of herself prior to her having been picked up by the
-French brig. This report, he said, would be printed in the shipping
-papers, and it would find its way into the London daily newspapers, and
-be copied by most of the provincial sheets; so that if I had friends
-in England, or, indeed, in any part of the United Kingdom, it would be
-strange indeed if the newspaper paragraph did not lead to the discovery
-of my identity.
-
-He then advised Mrs. Lee to send my case to the London police, and
-solicit such help as they would have it in their power to render
-by advertisements and by communicating with the provincial police;
-and he also recommended Mrs. Lee to repeat the paragraph in the
-newspapers--the paragraph I mean about his ship having found me in a
-brig--after a few weeks should elapse, that is to say, supposing the
-report which he himself would make, and which would be published,
-should lead to nothing.
-
-I bade farewell to this upright, worthy, humane captain with tears and
-expressions of gratitude again and again repeated. He had befriended
-me; he had protected me; his ship had been my home; he had done me a
-hundred kindnesses; and when I put my hand in his and said good-bye my
-heart was very full.
-
-And equally full was my heart when I said good-bye to Mrs. Richards,
-for she, too, had proved a true friend to me at a time when I was
-without friends, at a time when I was destitute, helpless, hopeless,
-and broken-hearted, and when sympathy and friendship were precious
-indeed to me. I gave her of what the passengers had given to me on
-our arrival at Sydney. I could not part from her without a gift. I
-possessed nothing but the trifles of jewellery which had been given to
-me by the passengers, and of these I chose the best, and when I put
-them into her hand I kissed her and blessed her for her kindness to me.
-
-Mr. Harris I did not see; Mr. McEwan I warmly thanked for his attention
-and interest in me, and then Mrs. Lee and I left the ship and drove to
-a hotel close to the railway station, whence we were to depart on the
-following morning for the north.
-
-On our way to this hotel I spoke little, so busy was I with looking.
-The sight of the streets and houses, however, did nothing for me but
-keep me bewildered. So profound had been the sense of loneliness
-occasioned by my loss of memory, that I felt as one who had been
-shipwrecked upon an uninhabited island, where I had lived solitary,
-hearing nothing but the cry of tropic birds, the noise of the wind in
-trees, the dull thunder of the gigantic breakers bursting upon the
-desolate shore. I was in a manner dazed by the crowds and the throng
-of vehicles, by the uproar of locomotion, by the seemingly endless
-complication of streets. No, assuredly, it was not in London that I was
-to find my memory.
-
-Mrs. Lee watched me as we sat in the cab, and when we had arrived at
-the hotel and were conversing in a quiet sitting-room she told me she
-was now certain I had never before been in London, and that, as it was
-impossible for her to imagine that any Englishwoman who belonged to
-such a station of life as was indicated by my manner and speech was
-never in London, her conviction was my home was not in England.
-
-We left for the north by an early train on the following morning, and
-arrived at Newcastle at about five o’clock in the afternoon. Throughout
-the long journey my eyes and my thoughts were as busy as they had
-been in the drive from the docks to the hotel. I gazed, half maddened
-by my passionate anxiety to recollect, at every little village or town
-we flew past; and whenever the engine’s whistle signalled that we were
-approaching a station at which we were to stop my head was out of the
-window and my heart beat furiously, whilst I kept crying to myself,
-Will _this_ be the town? Will _this_ be the place where my home is? and
-shall I know it when I see it?
-
-I had often heard dear Alice Lee talk of her home at Jesmond, and I
-could have made a sketch of the house without seeing it from her loving
-description. It was a pretty little house indeed, standing in about
-half-an-acre of garden. The house was removed from the road, very
-sheltered and retired. It had been left in charge of an old servant, a
-respectable Newcastle woman, now somewhat stricken in years, who had
-been in Mrs. Lee’s service almost throughout my dear friend’s married
-life. To this honest old housekeeper Mrs. Lee had written on the ship’s
-arrival at Gravesend; servants were engaged and the house thoroughly
-prepared to receive us.
-
-Mrs. Lee bore up bravely throughout the journey and down to the moment
-of her entering her home; but when the house-door was opened and she
-saw the old housekeeper standing within dressed in black--for she had
-written the news of Alice’s death from Sydney--she broke down.
-
-‘Oh, my child! my child!’ she cried, and went with a blind step into
-the parlour and sank into a chair, weeping bitterly. Ay, it is on
-such occasions as this that death is most terribly felt; when you
-go forth with someone beloved by you and return _alone_, then is
-the house desolate and every familiar object a pang and every sound
-will make you start as though the dear one were at hand and about
-to enter, and whatever your gaze rests on bristles with bitter-sweet
-memories. I knelt beside Mrs. Lee; the old servant stood in the doorway
-crying and looking at her mistress, but not offering to say a word of
-comfort--perhaps because of a little natural feeling of jealousy, for
-I cannot be certain that Mrs. Lee had made any reference to me in her
-letter, beyond saying that she was bringing a friend home with her. The
-poor old woman in the doorway might suppose, from my familiar manner
-of kneeling and speaking to Mrs. Lee and holding her hand and soothing
-her, that her mistress had adopted me as a daughter in the place of
-Alice.
-
-The room that Alice had occupied was to be mine. The old housekeeper,
-whose name was Sarah, conducted me to it at the request of Mrs. Lee,
-and left me to return to her mistress, who would now explain all about
-me and win the old thing’s sympathy for me.
-
-I stood in the room that had been Alice Lee’s and looked around. It
-was sacred ground to me--consecrated by love, death, and memory. Often
-had she spoken of this little room, of the view from the window, of
-the weeks during which she would lie ill in yonder bed, and she seemed
-to stand before me as I gazed; I saw her sweet, pale, wasted face, her
-gentle, touching, prayerful eyes, and the last smile she had given
-me--a smile that had lain like God’s glory upon her countenance as
-she put her hand into her mother’s and turned her face to the ship’s
-side. Often to amuse me she had, girl-like, spoken of her little
-possessions, and many of them I now saw and remembered as though I
-had seen them before. There was a little white marble cross; there
-was her Bible, lying at the foot of the steps of the cross; there
-were pencil-sketches and water-colours by her own hand, all dealing
-with subjects which showed that her heart was for ever with her God.
-Many more trifles of decoration could I name, such things as a sweet
-young soul, a tender girl, would love to collect and cherish as
-embellishments for her bedroom.
-
-I stepped to the window, that stood wide open, and I looked forth.
-The prospect was a fair English scene, clothed just now with summer
-evening beauty. For Jesmond, where Mrs. Lee’s house was situated, is
-universally considered the prettiest part of the neighbourhood of
-Newcastle-on-Tyne. The effect largely lies in contrast; for you come
-out of Newcastle, whose atmosphere is tinged with smoke and often
-poisonous with the fumes of the chemical works--you come from that
-great noisy town, or city as it now is, with its hard stony streets
-over which every vehicle roars, with its crowds upon the pavements,
-its horned cattle newly arrived from some Scandinavian port and
-thrashed bellowing through the throng, its tumult of newspaper urchins,
-its distracting cry of hawkers, its dark tide of Tyne smearing as
-though the mud of the banks through which it flows were tar--from all
-this you come into a country of gentle and sometimes of romantic beauty
-when you arrive at Jesmond, whose Dene, as it is called, lives in the
-memory of those who view it as one of the sweetest pictures that our
-garden-land of England has to offer.
-
-For some days we lived very retired. Nobody appeared to know that Mrs.
-Lee had returned, and this she had provided for by bidding the old
-housekeeper Sarah and the other servants hold their peace. She desired
-time to battle with the deep grief which visited her with the sight of
-the home in which she was now to live childless as she had before lived
-a widow; and when at last we made an excursion our first walk was to
-Jesmond cemetery, there to view the grave of Alice’s twin sister.
-
-The mother wept as she looked upon the grave. It had been carefully
-tended during her absence; it was rich with flowers, and the cross
-at the head of it was as white as the foam of the sea, and the gilt
-letters upon it burned in the sun. The mother wept, for her thoughts
-were with that other blessed child whose grave was the mighty deep.
-
-‘Oh,’ she cried to me, ‘if I could but have laid my darling by the side
-of her sister here!’
-
-As we returned home from this visit to the cemetery Mrs. Lee met the
-wife of the clergyman of the parish church, and after that there were
-many callers--for it seemed that the Lees had lived for the greater
-part of their lives at Newcastle-upon-Tyne and had a number of friends
-in the district. But she denied herself to most of the visitors; she
-received but a few and they had been Alice’s most valued friends.
-
-Five days had not passed since our arrival at Newcastle when the
-postman brought a newspaper addressed to Mrs. Lee. The wrapper was
-initialled ‘F. L.,’ and when she opened the paper her eye lighted upon
-a paragraph with a cross of red ink against it, under which were the
-initials ‘F. L.,’ so we might be sure that this newspaper had been sent
-to us by Captain Frederick Ladmore. The newspaper was the _Shipping and
-Mercantile Gazette_, and the paragraph indicated by the red mark was
-buried in a half column of shipping intelligence. It ran thus:--
-
-‘The ship _Deal Castle_, Ladmore, arrived in the Thames on ----. Her
-master reports that on such and such a date, when in latitude -- N.
-and longitude -- W., she was in collision with the French brig _Notre
-Dame de Boulogne_. The night was dark and squally, and a moderate sea
-was running. The _Deal Castle_ hove to within a mile of the vessel she
-had run into and for some time continued to burn flares and to send up
-rockets. At daybreak the French brig was found to be still afloat, and
-a boat was sent in charge of the third officer of the _Deal Castle_,
-who discovered that all hands of the Frenchman had left the brig,
-leaving behind them a woman who was imprisoned in her berth owing to
-a cask having been dislodged and rolled against the door. When this
-woman was brought aboard the _Deal Castle_ she was found to be without
-memory, and could give no further account of herself than saying that
-she had been fallen in with by the French brig, in an insensible
-condition, drifting about in a boat. It is supposed that she is the
-survivor of a wreck. She was landed in London, and those interested may
-obtain her present address on application to Messrs ----, etc.’
-
-Mrs. Lee read this paragraph aloud, and when she had ended it she
-said:--
-
-‘I fear this will not help us, Agnes.’
-
-‘Yet what more could be said?’ I asked. ‘It is the whole story so far
-as Captain Ladmore--so far as any of us could relate it.’
-
-‘Oh, but there is more to be said,’ she exclaimed: ‘the newspaper
-notices of your rescue should contain conjectures as to how it happened
-that you were drifting about in an open boat. And a description of you
-should be given--a description of those points, I mean, which could not
-be changed, such as your height, complexion, colour of eyes, and so
-forth.’
-
-She rose and paced about the room; then, stopping and gazing at me
-earnestly, with a look which reminded me of Alice, she said, ‘I am
-acquainted with a gentleman who is connected with the Newcastle
-press. His name is Francis Roddam. He was formerly a clerk in my
-poor husband’s office. I will write to him and ask him to sup with us
-to-morrow evening. He will be able to put together such a newspaper
-notice as is sure to attract attention; he will also advise us how
-best to place it. Indeed, I dare say he will himself send it to the
-newspapers. As to writing to the London police, as Captain Ladmore
-suggested’--she shook her head and added, ‘I fear they will not trouble
-themselves. Had you been the victim of a crime--but even supposing
-a representative of the police should call upon you, what can you
-say that will enable him to help you better than we are able to help
-ourselves?’
-
-She wrote to Mr. Roddam, and on the following evening he arrived to
-supper, and spent a couple of hours in discourse with us. He was a
-slow-minded but shrewd man, whose light-blue eyes seemed to bore deep
-into me as they pierced the spectacles he wore. He listened with
-the interest of a born journalist to my story, and, remarkable as he
-doubtless found it, I believe he thought it mainly so because of the
-opportunity it offered him of making stories and newspaper paragraphs
-out of it.
-
-He questioned me with great sagacity. Never since the hour of my
-rescue from the French vessel had my dead or slumbering memory been
-so critically ‘overhauled.’ To express my sensations by a material
-image: some of his inquiries flashed with the dazzle of the lightning
-brand upon the closed doors of a temple or sanctuary; but the midnight
-darkness within remained impenetrable. Sometimes I seemed to recollect;
-but when with a trembling heart and a white face, believing at such
-moments that my memory was astir--when, I say, I endeavoured to
-_realise_, I found that what I imagined to be recollection was no more
-than the effect of fancy acting upon what Mr. Roddam had, by his own
-inquiries and suggestions, put into my head.
-
-However, he took many notes, and told me he would send my story to
-several newspapers for which he acted as correspondent, one of them
-being a London daily paper and another a widely read influential
-journal published in Liverpool.
-
-‘The paragraph,’ he said, ‘will run the whole round of the British
-press, and, to ensure your hearing of your friends, should the
-paragraph meet their eye and lead to their inquiring after you, I will
-take care to give the address of the owners of the _Deal Castle_.’
-
-He was as good as his word, and in a day or two called upon us with a
-printed slip of the paragraph he had written and proposed to send. It
-was something more than a paragraph; it ran to the length of a short
-story, was very well written, and bore a title of a sort to catch the
-eye of the most indolent reader. In it he introduced the conjectures
-which Mrs. Lee considered needful, since one of them alone might serve
-to clear up the mystery of my identity. He put it that it was supposed
-either that I had formed one of a yachting party; or that I had been
-blown away from a French port whilst making an excursion in a small
-boat; or that I was the sole survivor of a shipwreck, the particulars
-of which might never be known unless my memory returned to me; or that
-I had been the victim of some great outrage at the hands of the captain
-or crew of the _Notre Dame de Boulogne_, the effects of which had lost
-me my memory and turned my hair white.
-
-This last was a guess of his own, and he insisted upon including it,
-though I pointed out to him that I had met with the humanest treatment
-it is possible to imagine on board the French vessel, and that there
-could be no doubt whatever that the young man Alphonse’s story of my
-being found drifting about in an open boat was absolutely true.
-
-‘Ay, that may be,’ he exclaimed with a knowing look at Mrs. Lee; ‘but I
-fully agree with those of your fellow-passengers who hold that _before_
-your disaster, whatever it may have been, you wore jewellery, and that
-your being found without rings, without a watch, with nothing of value
-upon you saving a few shillings in a purse, signifies robbery and more
-than robbery.’
-
-But to end this. The paragraph was published. I read it in the
-_Newcastle Chronicle_ and in five other journals sent to us by Mr.
-Roddam, who assured me that it had been reprinted in a hundred
-different directions; but nothing came of it--that is to say, nothing
-in any way material. About twenty letters reached me through the
-owners of the _Deal Castle_; but they contained nothing but idle
-inquiries; a few of them were impertinently curious, and the contents
-of them all were wretchedly purposeless. One was from a quack who
-offered to recover my memory for a certain sum; three were from people
-who desired to write an account of my adventures; another was evidently
-from a poor lunatic, who, writing as a mother, said that her daughter
-had perished by shipwreck twenty years before, and that she expected I
-was her child who had been restored to life by her prayers. She asked
-me for my private address that she might visit me.
-
-How can I express the passionate eagerness with which I awaited the
-arrival of the post, the recurring little pangs of disappointment as
-the man would go by time after time without knocking, the torment of
-hope with which I would tear open an envelope when a letter reached
-me at last, the cold despair that took possession of me when the weeks
-rolled by yielding me nothing!
-
-‘It must be, Agnes, as I have all along thought,’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee,
-‘your home is not in England, and you have no friends in this country.
-But let us be patient, my dear. Mr. Roddam’s paragraph will find its
-way to the Colonies, to India, to distant countries, and when _that_
-has happened, any day may bring glad tidings to you. But you must wait,
-and meanwhile you must make yourself as happy as you can with your poor
-bereaved friend.’
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXII
-
-MEMORY
-
-
-The days rolled into weeks and the weeks into months, and still my
-memory remained clothed as with midnight. No whisper broke its silence.
-I recollected with almost phenomenal accuracy everything that had
-befallen me since my rescue; but all that had gone before was darkness,
-hushed and impenetrable. I cannot remember that I was visited by the
-dimmest intimation--that the dullest gleam, however instantaneous,
-touched my inward gloom.
-
-My story and condition created great interest in Newcastle; for a time
-I was much talked about. Mrs. Lee had friends who were concerned in
-the shipping trade, and two or three of them good-naturedly wrote
-to correspondents at various parts of our coast, and to agents and
-representatives abroad; but it was all one. Nobody gave information
-that was in the slightest degree useful. A gentleman at Havre wrote
-that he met with a sailor who had formed one of the crew of _Notre Dame
-de Boulogne_, but the man could not tell so much of what happened after
-the collision as I, because, when the _Notre Dame_ was struck, they
-launched and crowded into their only boat, and were swept away in the
-blackness of the night, losing sight of the brig, and the ship which
-had run into her, and seeing nothing of the flares which the _Deal
-Castle_ had burnt and the rockets she had sent up. They were rescued
-next morning by a Spanish schooner, bound to the Mediterranean, and
-safely landed at Toulon, their original destination, but with the loss
-of all they possessed in the world. It was quite true, this man added,
-that the _Notre Dame_ had fallen in with an open boat, and rescued a
-woman whom they found unconscious, and severely wounded about the head.
-
-The sailor had no more to tell.
-
-It rejoiced me, however, to learn that Alphonse and his uncle had been
-rescued and were safe. Strange indeed did it seem to hear of them in
-such a roundabout way; and yet perhaps it would have been stranger
-still had nothing been heard of the fate of the crew of the _Notre Dame
-de Boulogne_, considering the paragraphs which had appeared about me,
-and the letters which had been written, some of them being despatched
-to shippers, consuls, and others, not only in France, but in Spain and
-Portugal.
-
-Mrs. Lee, fixing as well as she could the time of the month in
-which I had been drifting about in the open boat, and willing to
-suppose--merely to supply me with a further chance--that I had been
-blown away from some part of the English coast, set her friends to
-inquire if there had been any notice in the newspapers of that date of
-a lady who had gone out in a boat and had not returned nor been heard
-of. The files of local papers were searched; but, though there were
-several accounts of boating accidents, none could be found that at all
-fitted my case. A friend of Mrs. Lee, a Mr. Weldon, ‘fancied’ in a
-vague sort of way that he had read, probably in a mood of abstraction,
-of a lady who had gone out with a boatman from some part of the coast
-which he could not recollect, but which he believed was the south-east
-coast--it might have been Ramsgate or Folkestone, he could not be
-sure--and he had some dim idea that the body of the boatman was
-discovered, and the boat afterwards brought in ... he would look the
-incident up ... he would endeavour to recollect the name of the paper
-in which it was published. But if he gave himself any trouble it was to
-no purpose.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The time went on; the interest I had excited died out; I heard not a
-syllable from the owners of the _Deal Castle_; Mrs. Lee had long since
-persuaded herself that, though I was undoubtedly of English parentage,
-and perhaps born in England, my home was not in this country, and that
-I had no friends in it. And this was now my belief also. My spirits
-grew apathetic. I ceased to importune my memory. My past, let it hold
-what it would, I regarded as dead as my sweet Alice Lee was--as buried,
-mouldering, irrecoverable as her twin sister was.
-
-Three years passed--three years dating from my rescue by the French
-vessel. In all this while I had lived with Mrs. Lee as her companion.
-I strove to keep up my heart for her sake, thanking God always for
-finding for me so true a friend as she had proved, and praying to Him
-always that He would give me back my memory. I know not how to express
-my state of mind throughout all these months now running into years.
-My intellect was dull, my conversation to strangers insipid. I found
-myself constantly at a loss through inability to carry my memory back
-past the point where it had vanished; but I read aloud very well, my
-tastes corresponded with Mrs. Lee’s; she owned again and again that she
-would not have known where to seek for such a companion as she desired
-had my strange experiences not brought us together; there was no one
-who could have talked about Alice as I did; my presence seemed to give
-embodiment to the memory of her child, and in our many lonely rambles
-our conversation was nearly wholly made up of our recollections of the
-sweet girl’s closing days.
-
-It chanced one day in October--three years from the time when I was
-taken on board the _Deal Castle_--that, having occasion to go into
-Newcastle for Mrs. Lee, and finding myself with some leisure on my
-hands, I went on to the High Level Bridge to view the scene of the
-river and the busy quayside. It was a somewhat cold, grey day. The wind
-blew strong, and the rapid ripples of the rushing river broke in white
-water upon the dingy banks. Many tall chimneys reared their stacks on
-my right, and the smoke breaking from their orifices was again and
-again flashed up by a ruddy glare as though the chimneys themselves
-were full of living fire. Large steamers lay at the quayside under me;
-steam broke from their sides, and there was an artillery-like sound of
-rattling engines; scores of figures on the wharves hurried here and
-there. And from time to time above my head would sound the thunder of a
-train roaring past over the wondrous height of metal ways.
-
-I was singularly depressed. Never before had I felt so low in spirits.
-Heretofore my days had been passed in the coldness of settled grief, at
-first in a capricious and now in an habitual acquiescence, charged with
-despair, in my lonely, outcast, hopeless lot. But this day misery was
-active in me. I might compare myself to a woman who, having for long
-rested apathetically in her cell, is stimulated by some wild longing of
-misery to rise and grope with extended hands in agony of mind round the
-black walls outside which she knows the sun is shining.
-
-My head ached, but the ache was a novel pain; it was a dull sick throb,
-a thick and dizzy pulse, not in my brows, but on the top of my head,
-in the middle of it. It was as though I had been stabbed there and
-the wound ached. I stood upon the bridge, perhaps for twenty minutes,
-gazing down at the sight of the vessels moored at the wharves, or
-passing in mid-stream below me; and then, hearing the clock of the
-church of St. Nicholas strike, I quitted the bridge and walked in the
-direction of Jesmond.
-
-It was a considerable walk--I had measured the distance both ways; and
-when Mrs. Lee asked me if I felt ill, and I answered my head pained
-me, she accounted for my headache and for my pallor by my having
-over-fatigued myself. This I knew was not the case, for I had awakened
-in the morning with a pain in my head, but it was not nearly as bad
-then as it was now.
-
-We passed the evening in the usual way. I read to Mrs. Lee, then she
-dozed a while, and I picked up some work that I was upon, but could do
-nothing with it, for my head ached so badly that my sight was confused
-by the pain, and I could not see to thread a needle. Supper was ready
-at nine o’clock, but I could not eat. Mrs. Lee felt my pulse and placed
-her hand upon my brow.
-
-‘Your head is cool,’ said she, ‘and your heart’s action regular.
-Evidently you have overwalked yourself to-day. You had better go to
-bed and get a good night’s rest. But first take this little glass of
-brandy and water. There is no better remedy for a nervous headache than
-brandy, such a liqueur brandy as this.’
-
-I kissed and bade her good night and went to my bedroom. The grey day
-had been followed by a clear dusk. There was a high, bright moon. It
-poured a silver haze upon the farther land, and the nearer land it
-whitened as with sifted snow, giving a silver edge to every leaf and
-branch, and painting the shapes of the trees and bushes in indigo at
-their feet. I stood at the open window for a minute or two, believing
-that the cool of the night would ease the pain in my head; but the air
-was chilly, it was the month of October, and, closing the window, I
-undressed.
-
-I extinguished the candle and got into bed leaving the window blind
-up. The moon shot a slanting beam through the window, and the light
-flooded the white cross which had belonged to Alice Lee and her Bible
-that rested as she had left it at the foot of the white cross. The
-haze of this beam of moonlight was in the room, and I could see every
-object with a certain distinctness. The eye will naturally seek the
-brightest object, and my sight rested upon the cross that sparkled in
-the moonlight as though it had been dipped in phosphorus. The cold,
-soft pillow, and the restful posture of my head had somewhat eased the
-pain. My mind grew collected, and whilst my eyes rested upon the cross
-my memory gave me back the form and face of Alice Lee.
-
-I thought of her as I had first seen her, when her sweet, lovely but
-wasted face was angelic with the sympathy with which she viewed me.
-I recalled her as I beheld her when she lay dying, when the light of
-heaven was in the smile she gave me, when the peace of God was in
-her eyes as she gazed at her mother ere she turned her face to the
-ship’s side. I recalled her natural, girlish fear of the great ocean
-as a grave; I saw her as she lay in her white shroud; I looked at the
-moonlit cross and thought how that same moon which was illumining the
-symbol of her faith and the sure rock of her hopes was shining over her
-ocean grave----
-
-My eyes closed and I slumbered. And in my sleep I dreamt this dream.
-
-I dreamt that I stood at the open window of a room whose furniture
-was perfectly familiar to me. Without seeming to look I yet saw
-all things; the pictures, the case of books, the ornaments on the
-mantelpiece; and everything was familiar to me. Before me stretched a
-garden sloping some considerable distance down. Beyond this garden were
-green pastures, at the foot of which ran a river, and on the opposite
-hillside rows of houses appeared to hang in clusters. The hour was
-drawing on into the evening and the sun was sinking, and through the
-long shadows which lay in the valley the river ran in gold.
-
-While I gazed I beheld walking in the garden that sloped from the
-window at which I stood, two figures; their backs were upon me, they
-walked hand in hand, but though their steps gathered the ground their
-figures did not appear to recede. On a sudden they halted, the man
-turned and looked at me intently; it was my husband! I knew him, I
-stretched out my arms to him, I cried aloud to him to come and take me
-to his heart; but whether any sound escaped me in my sleep I do not
-know. He continued to gaze fixedly at me, then putting his hand upon
-the shoulder of his companion he pointed towards me. She, too, then
-turned and looked, and I knew her to be my twin sister Mary. Again I
-stretched forth my arms--I desperately struggled to approach them, but
-my feet seemed nailed to the floor. The vision of my husband and my
-sister, the familiar room in which I stood, the scene of gardens and
-orchard and river and clustering houses dissolved, and I know that
-I wept in my sleep and that I passionately prayed for the vision to
-return that I might behold it all again.
-
-But now came a change which hushed with awe and new emotions the
-heart--cries and the spirit--yearnings of my slumber. I beheld a
-strange light. It grew in brightness, and in the midst of it I
-witnessed the marble cross of Alice Lee, resplendent as though wrought
-of the brilliant moonlight which had been resting upon it when my
-eyes closed in sleep. This cross flamed upon the vision of my slumber
-for a while, and there was nothing more to be seen; then it faded and
-I beheld the figure of Alice Lee where the cross had been. She was
-robed in white. With her right arm she carried an infant, and with her
-left hand she held a little boy. Oh, that vision was like a glorious
-painting, ineffably bright and beautiful and vivid. The face of Alice
-Lee was no longer wasted; it was not such a face as would come from the
-grave to visit the bedside of a slumberer; it was a face fresh from
-heaven, and with the radiance of heaven upon it, and her whole figure
-was clothed with celestial light and the glory of heaven shone in the
-beauty of her countenance.
-
-I shrieked!--for the children she held, the one on her arm, the other
-by the hand, were _mine_! Again I stretched forth my hands and my two
-little ones smiled upon me. Then instantly all was blackness and I
-awoke.
-
-The room was in darkness. The moon had sailed to the other side of
-the house, and the shadow of the night lay heavy upon the unblinded
-window. My heart beat as though I was in a raging fever, and I could
-not understand the reason of that maddening pulse, nor of the dreadful
-consternation that was upon me, nor why when I put my hand to my brow
-I should find it streaming with perspiration, nor why I should have
-awakened trembling from head to foot; because it is true that often the
-most vivid, the most terrific dream will not recur to the memory for
-some time after the dreamer has awakened.
-
-But presently I remembered. I beheld with my waking sense the whole
-vision afresh, and I said to myself, even as I lay trembling from
-head to foot, and even as my brains seemed thickened with bewilderment
-that was like madness itself--I said to myself, speaking aloud in
-the darkness, but calmly and with a gentle voice: ‘My name is Agnes
-Campbell. I have seen my husband John, I have seen my sister Mary, and
-my two little ones have come to me in my sleep. I remember that we took
-a house at Piertown--I remember that I went out sailing in a boat--I
-remember that the man who had charge of the boat fell into the water
-and was drowned. I remember---- I remember----’
-
-And _now_ the full realisation that my memory had returned to me swept
-into my soul. I sat up in my bed and gasped for breath. I believed
-I was dying, and that my memory had revisited me, sharp and vivid,
-in the last moments of my life. But the overwhelming emotions which
-possessed me mastered the hysteric condition, and leaping from my
-bed I cast myself down upon my knees. But I could not pray. My tongue
-was powerless to shape thoughts of appeal and impulses of thanks into
-words. I arose from my knees, lighted the candle, and began to pace the
-room.
-
-Then all at once I was seized with a terrible fear: suppose my memory
-should forsake me again, even in the next minute! Suppose all that I
-could recollect of the vision I had beheld should in an instant perish
-off my mind, and leave me inwardly as blind as I had been during the
-past three years! I felt in the pocket of my dress that was hanging
-against the door and found a pencil; but not knowing where to lay my
-hand upon a piece of paper, unless I sought for it downstairs, and
-urged by a very passion of hurry lest my memory should in a moment
-fail me, I took Alice Lee’s Bible, carried it to the candle, and upon
-the fly-leaf wrote my name and the names of my husband and my sister
-and the children, also my address at Bath, together with the story,
-briefly related, of my husband leaving Piertown for a couple or three
-days, of my going out in a boat with a man named William Hitchens, of
-my pulling off my rings, amongst them my wedding-ring, that I might row
-without being inconvenienced by the pressure of them, of their being
-cast overboard by the hoisting of the sail, of William Hitchens’ sudden
-death by heart-disease or drowning, and of the horrible days and nights
-of misery, despair, madness, and unconsciousness which followed.
-
-The mere writing of all this steadied my mind. I kissed the sacred Book
-when I had ended, gazed upwards with adoration, as though the sweet
-saint who had come to me with my children and restored my memory were
-gazing down upon me, and then I began to pace the room again, thinking
-and thinking, but no longer struggling with memory: for all was clear,
-all had wonderfully, by a miracle of God’s own working through the
-intercession of one of the sweetest of his angels, come back to me; and
-_then_ my heart was filled with an impassioned yearning to be with my
-dear ones again, to return to them _immediately_, to write _now_, at
-this very instant, and tell them that I was alive, sending kisses and
-my heart’s love to my husband and sister, and kisses and blessings to
-my two little ones.
-
-But _then_, too, arose the thought that it was three years since I had
-been torn away from them. Three years! How much may happen in three
-years! My little Johnny would now be five years old, my little baby
-Mary would be three years and eight months old! I clasped my hands, and
-paused in my walk and wondered.
-
-What might not have happened in three years? Was my husband well--was
-my dear sister Mary living--were my children----? Oh, if you who are
-reading this are a mother and a wife, as you muse upon my situation at
-this time, your own heart will be telling more to you about me than
-ever I could convey of my own conflicts of mind, though I wrote with
-the most eloquent pen the world has ever known.
-
-Whilst I paced the room the door was softly knocked upon, and Mrs.
-Lee’s voice exclaimed:
-
-‘Are not you well, Agnes? Is your head still bad? I have heard you
-pacing the room for hours.’
-
-‘My head is better,’ I answered, for, being taken unawares, I knew not
-what to say, and wished to think out the thoughts which besieged me
-before communicating my dream to her.
-
-She was silent, as though in alarm, and cried nervously, ‘Who answered
-me? Is that you, Agnes?’
-
-On this I opened the door. She was clothed in a dressing-gown, and
-recoiled a step on my opening the door, and, after peering for a few
-moments, she exclaimed, ‘I did not recognise your voice.’
-
-‘I have had a wonderful dream,’ I said.
-
-She took me by the hand, turned me to the light, looked in my face, and
-shrieked, ‘Child, you have your memory!’
-
-‘Yes, it has all come back to me!’ I exclaimed, and casting my arms
-round her neck I bent my head upon her shoulder and broke into an
-uncontrollable fit of weeping that lasted I know not how long, for as
-often as I sought to lift my head I wept afresh.
-
-At length I grew somewhat composed, and then Mrs. Lee exclaimed: ‘It
-is five o’clock. I will dress myself, and return and hear what you
-have to tell me. Meanwhile, do you dress yourself. Day will be breaking
-shortly. Strange!’ she said. ‘I seemed to hear in your footsteps
-what was passing in your mind, and felt that something wonderful was
-happening to you.’
-
-She left me, and I made haste to dress myself. My trembling hands
-worked mechanically; my mind was distracted; so extreme was the
-agitation of my spirits, that anyone secretly viewing me must have
-supposed me mad to see how I would start and then pause, then laugh,
-then fling down whatever I might be holding that I might bury my
-face in my hands and rock myself, then laugh again and take a number
-of turns about the room with delirious steps, as though I were some
-fever-maddened patient who had sprung from her bed in the absence of
-her attendant.
-
-Before I had completely attired myself Mrs. Lee entered the room. I
-could see by her countenance she had composed her mind that she might
-receive with as little emotion as possible whatever I had to tell her.
-She lighted another candle, viewed me for a moment, and then said,
-‘Now, Agnes, be calm. Sit down and tell me of your dream, and what you
-can recollect of yourself.’
-
-‘Let me hold your hand, dear friend,’ said I, ‘whilst I sit and tell
-you what has happened to me. The pressure of your hand will keep me
-calm,’ and, sitting at her side and holding her hand, I related my
-dream to her.
-
-She endeavoured to listen tranquilly, but an expression of awe grew in
-her face as I proceeded, and when I described how I beheld her sainted
-daughter Alice robed in white, with my baby girl on one arm and holding
-my little boy by the hand, the three clothed in a mystical light, an
-expression of rapturous joy entered her face. She dropped my hand to
-raise hers on high, and lifting up her eyes, cried out, ‘Oh, my Alice!
-my Alice! Though I know now that you are in heaven, yet also do I feel,
-my blessed one, that you are near us. Oh, come to me with my beloved
-Edith, that I may behold you both, and know that you are happy and
-awaiting me!----’
-
-We sat eagerly and earnestly talking; for now all the mysteries of my
-past could be solved. Why it was that I was without a wedding-ring, how
-it came about that I was drifting in the wide ocean in a little open
-boat, why it was that I had been moved by indescribable, dark, subtle
-emotions when I heard a baby cry, and when the gipsy told me that I was
-a married woman, and with preternatural effort of guessing informed me
-that I had left a husband and two children behind me: these things and
-how much more were now to be explained.
-
-‘And your name is Agnes--your true name is Agnes?--and my darling in
-heaven gave you that name!’ cried Mrs. Lee.
-
-‘Yes,’ said I, ‘and she was one of twins, and I am one of twins,
-and who will say that there was not a magnetism in that to draw us
-together?’
-
-I turned my head and found the dawn had broken. The heavens were
-flooded with a delicate pale green, against which the trees stood
-black, as though sketched in ink. But even as I gazed the pink and
-silver haze of the rising sun smote the green and swept it like a veil
-off the face of the tender dewy blue of the early autumn morn.
-
-‘Oh, thank God, the day has come!’ said I. ‘I will go presently, before
-breakfast, to the railway station, and find out at what hour I can
-reach Bath.’
-
-‘To-day?’ cried Mrs. Lee.
-
-‘To-day,’ I echoed.
-
-‘You will not go to Bath to-day with my consent, Agnes,’ said Mrs.
-Lee; ‘and I will tell you why. You have been absent from your home
-for three years. What may have happened in that time? How do you know
-that your husband and children are still living at Bath? It is a long
-journey from Newcastle to Bath, and when you arrive there you may find
-that your husband has broken up his home and gone away, no one might be
-able to tell you where, for you must consider as beyond all question
-that your husband and sister have long ago supposed you dead. They may
-have left England for all you know. How can you tell but that they may
-be residing abroad? The newspaper paragraphs stating your case were
-very plentifully published: _that_ you know; and that they provoked no
-attention, signifies to my mind that your husband and family are either
-abroad, or that----’ She paused.
-
-‘What?’ I cried.
-
-‘Ah, you may well ask what!’ she exclaimed. ‘It is three years ago,
-remember, since you left your husband, and he has never received a
-syllable of news about you since. Suppose him to be still living
-at Bath with your sister and children: would not your going to the
-house be too fearful a trial for you, and too frightful a shock for
-them?--why, it is by suddenness of joy, by shocks of emotion of this
-sort that hearts are broken. You must not dream of going to Bath
-to-day, Agnes.’
-
-‘It is not likely that John has left Bath,’ said I, ‘he is in practice
-there as a solicitor. He will not have broken up his home; I am sure of
-that.’
-
-‘You must have patience. I will write cautiously and make inquiries. Of
-course you know many people in Bath?’
-
-‘I have several friends there.’
-
-‘Give me the name of a lady or gentleman to whom I may cautiously
-write.’
-
-I reflected, but I could not recollect a name, and then I grew
-terrified, and feared that my memory was deserting me again.
-
-‘Oh, Mrs. Lee,’ I cried, ‘I cannot remember a name. And yet I can see
-the people I have in my mind, in fancy. Oh, if my memory should be
-again deserting me!’
-
-‘It will not matter,’ she exclaimed, with one of her gentle, reassuring
-smiles, ‘everything is known to me now, and, besides, are not all
-things material written there?’ motioning with her head towards Alice’s
-Bible which I had shown her, and in which she had read the particulars
-I had written down on the fly-leaves.
-
-‘I have a name!’ I cried, with sudden elation: ‘General Ramsay--General
-William Stirling Ramsay,’ and my being able to recollect and pronounce
-this name in its entirety was as refreshing and comforting to me as is
-the inspiration of a deep and easy breath to one whose breathing has
-been a labour.
-
-Mrs. Lee asked me several questions about General Ramsay; how long my
-husband and I had been acquainted with him; if he was a good-hearted
-man, likely to give himself the trouble to answer a letter; ‘because,’
-said she, ‘my impatience is nearly as great as yours, and I shall want
-an answer by return of post.’ She then wrote down his name and the name
-of the street in which he lived; but I again felt frightened when I
-found that I could not recollect the number of his house.
-
-Wild as I was at heart to hurry off to Bath to clasp my dear ones to
-my heart, to fill them with the exquisite gladness of possessing me
-again, I was able, after some feverish thinking and pacing about the
-room, to perceive the wisdom of Mrs. Lee’s counsel. So, the sun being
-now high and the morning advanced, for by this time it was about
-half-past seven o’clock, my dear friend and I went downstairs together,
-and, opening her desk, Mrs. Lee sat down and wrote a letter to General
-Ramsay.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIII
-
-GENERAL RAMSAY’S LETTER.
-
-
-Three days must now certainly pass before I could receive news of my
-husband, sister, and children. I call the time three days, but I might
-have to wait very much longer than that, for how could I tell that
-General Ramsay still lived at Bath? And, supposing him to be living
-there, could I be sure that he would promptly answer Mrs. Lee’s letter?
-So that, if we did not hear from him presently, Mrs. Lee must apply to
-some others of the friends I had named to her. This I was resolved not
-to consent to. Expectation, uncertainty, the passionate yearning of the
-mother and wife worked in my mind in a torment that delay would render
-insupportable, and I made up my mind that if General Ramsay did not
-answer Mrs. Lee’s letter within four days of the time of her writing to
-him I would deafen my ears to every possible objection that Mrs. Lee
-might make, and go myself to Bath.
-
-I was too agitated, too expectant to leave the house. I wandered
-from room to room. I could not sit for five minutes at a time. The
-marvellous recovery of my memory, all in a moment as it might seem, did
-undoubtedly make me light headed during that first day, and Mrs. Lee
-would often eye me anxiously. I could think of nothing but my husband
-and children and my sister. Were they well? Suppose one of my precious
-ones had died during the long three years I had been missing! Suppose
-my husband were dead! Suppose they had broken up their home at Bath and
-had gone away, as Mrs. Lee had suggested, and there should be no one to
-tell me where they had gone, so that it might end in my knowing myself
-to be a wife and mother and not knowing where to find my husband and
-children!
-
-These and the like of these were maddening fancies, and they kept me
-restlessly moving here and there, as though I had lost my reason and
-Mrs. Lee’s house were a cell.
-
-A certain physician, a person who was highly esteemed by the people of
-Newcastle for his skill, called on the afternoon of this first day on
-his way back to Newcastle after visiting a patient, to inquire after
-Mrs. Lee’s health, her husband and this physician having been boys
-together. He knew all about my case, and had frequently visited me
-in a friendly way, but with a professional motive, owning himself at
-last powerless to do me any good. I did not know that he had called
-and that he was talking in the parlour to Mrs. Lee when I entered that
-room, and I was hastily withdrawing when, calling to me, he took me
-by the hand and in a few words, pronounced with the utmost cordiality,
-congratulated me on the return of my memory. Mrs. Lee begged me to sit
-and I did so, and then some discourse followed on the subject of my
-memory. But the physician’s language was much too technical and learned
-for me to recollect, even if I chose to repeat it. I remember, however,
-he told us that these abrupt recoveries were more frequent than slow
-returns. He cited instances of three persons whose memory, having
-utterly failed them, had returned on a sudden. The only difference
-between them and me was that I had been able to recollect from the
-period of my recovery on board the French vessel, whereas _they_ had
-been unable to recall events which had happened an hour before. The
-physician talked much of brain cells and of the nervous system, and was
-so deeply interested in my case and in his own views and arguments
-that he kept his carriage at our door for above an hour. I was glad
-when he went, for his observations upon brain cells and the nervous
-system made me feel faint, and the condition of my mind rendered
-listening and sitting for any length of time insupportable.
-
-I pass by the remainder of that day, I pass by the sleepless night
-that followed, and I pass by the next two days and their long wakeful
-nights. On the morning of the fourth day I arose early and stationed
-myself at the window, and for an hour and a half I stood with my eyes
-fixed upon the garden-gate, waiting for the arrival of the postman. At
-last I caught sight of him as he put his hand through the bars to lift
-the latch, and I flew to the hall door and received a letter addressed
-to Mrs. Lee, heavily sealed, and with the postmark of Bath upon it.
-
-Mrs. Lee had not yet left her bedroom. The beating of my heart almost
-deprived me of the power of speech. I knocked, and on her asking who
-was that, I was unable to make my voice heard, whereupon she opened
-the door. She took the letter from me, told me to come in and shut the
-door, and going to the window broke the seal and withdrew the letter
-from its envelope. Her back was upon me--purposely upon me, I was sure.
-She read the letter, and I could have shrieked aloud with impatience
-and vexation. She read the letter--I believed she would never cease to
-read it; then the hand which grasped it fell slowly to her side, and
-she turned to look at me with a face full of the deepest pity and grief.
-
-I saw the look and, clasping my hands, cried, ‘Oh, tell me!’ There was
-a hesitation which was a sort of horror in her manner. She did not seem
-to know what to do, nor would she speak. I could bear the suspense no
-longer, and, rushing to her side, I snatched the letter from her hand.
-
-It ran thus:--
-
-                              ‘Raby Place, Bath, October --, 18--.
-
-  ‘DEAR MADAM,
-
-  ‘I am in receipt of your letter, the contents of which I read with
-  interest. It may be known to you that Mrs. John Campbell with her
-  family, composed of her husband, sister, and two children, took a
-  house about three years ago at the seaside. Mrs. Campbell, during
-  her husband’s absence on business at this city, went on a boating
-  excursion, her sole companion being the boatman. She did not
-  return. The weather grew boisterous, and although one or two boats
-  were sent out in search they returned after a few hours, the men
-  professing themselves unable to keep the sea. Ten days after Mrs.
-  Campbell had been missing, the body of a man was brought ashore and
-  recognised as that of the sailor who had accompanied Mrs. Campbell.
-  A little later the boat was fallen in with; she was drifting about
-  upside down. She was towed to the harbour to which she belonged.
-
-  ‘These particulars I give you from memory. Mr. John Campbell
-  caused many inquiries to be made, but no news of his wife was ever
-  received. She was undoubtedly drowned. I have been absent from Bath
-  for some time, and since my return have been confined to my house
-  with the gout. I am able to state, however, that Mr. John Campbell,
-  his wife, and two children are in good health. About four months
-  ago he shut up his house and the family went to London. I believe
-  Mr. Campbell left Bath for no other purpose than to marry his
-  sister-in-law. The marriage was advertised in a Bath paper, but I
-  am unable to refer you to it. He returned with her as his wife, and
-  I hear from my daughter that they are living at their old address.
-  This, madam, is all that it is in my power to communicate.
-
-                              ‘Faithfully yours,
-                                  ‘W. STIRLING RAMSAY,
-                                      ‘_Major-General_.’
-
-I read this letter through, and as I approached the end of it I felt my
-heart turning into stone. There was something petrific in the horror,
-the consternation, the despair which rushed into me out of that letter.
-The hand with which I grasped it sank to my side even as Mrs. Lee’s
-had, and I looked at my friend though I knew not that I saw her. I
-felt as though some one had circled my breast with a rope which was
-being tightened and yet tightened into one of agony of constriction. My
-throat swelled, my breath came and went through it in a dull moaning,
-my head seemed formed of fire, my hands and feet of ice. I may guess
-now by the expression Mrs. Lee’s countenance reflected as she suddenly
-hurried to me, believing that I was about to fall, perhaps expire, that
-there was something shocking in my looks.
-
-I raised the letter again, dashed it from me, flung myself upon Mrs.
-Lee’s bed with a long cry, and lay moaning and moaning in the hands
-with which I had covered my face. Then I started up.
-
-‘I must have my children!’ I shrieked. ‘They are mine! They cannot
-keep them from me! They are my own flesh and blood! They are mine!’ I
-shrieked again.
-
-‘You shall have them, my love!’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee in a broken,
-tremulous voice. ‘They are yours--they cannot keep them from you. They
-shall come here and live with us, and they shall have my love as well
-as yours.’
-
-‘Married!’ I muttered. ‘Married! Married!’ I muttered, mumbling my
-words huskily--so dry were my lips, so tight was my throat--and looking
-at the letter which lay upon the floor. ‘My husband married to Mary!
-Oh, my God,’ I cried, flinging back my head and beating my brow with my
-fist, ‘what is this new thing that has come to me?’
-
-Mrs. Lee stood silent. What could she say? There were no words of
-comfort to utter at such a moment. Misery must be suffered to have its
-way with me, and she could do nothing but stand and gaze and wait.
-
-What I have set down I very well remember saying, but afterwards a
-sort of delirium fastened upon me, and I recollect but fragments of
-my dazed, broken-hearted speech. I remember lifting up my hands and
-calling upon God to slay me as I there stood. I remember cursing the
-moment that gave me back my memory since it was to yield me _this_. I
-remember exclaiming with passionate abhorrence against my husband’s
-infidelity to my memory, against my sister Mary’s--my twin sister
-Mary’s--cold, cruel, treacherous, disloyal appropriation of my place
-in my husband’s heart. I wandered about the room with the steps of
-madness, loud with lamentation, loud with abuse of my husband and
-sister, vengefully, with infuriate gestures, crying that I must have
-my children! They were mine! I must have my children. They were my own
-flesh and blood! They dared not keep them from me! pausing sometimes to
-say ‘they have driven me mad!’ and then raving afresh, but always with
-dry eyes, whilst poor Mrs. Lee stood apart, gazing at me with silent
-distress and dismay.
-
-Then in one of my transports I stood and picked up the letter and read
-it again, breathing fast, as though I had been racing, and when I
-had come to the end of it for the second time the horrible tightness
-in my throat was relaxed, as though a cord which had been choking me
-had suddenly broken, and, once again flinging myself upon the bed, I
-wept--crying as never had I cried before, often as my griefs had vented
-themselves in passions of weeping!
-
-Human sorrow may be compared to a river that, when it first springs,
-flows over a shallow bed with froth and noise, but presently the
-channel deepens, and then the river flows silently. As my grief flowed,
-it deepened; it grew hushed. I arose from Mrs. Lee’s bed, and sat upon
-the edge of it with my eyes fixed upon the floor. The dear little woman
-finished dressing in silence. She then took me by the hand, and we
-went downstairs into the parlour where breakfast awaited us.
-
-‘Now, Agnes,’ she exclaimed, ‘before we decide upon what steps you are
-to take we must first make sure that General Ramsay’s information is
-correct.’
-
-‘Oh, I feel within my heart it is correct,’ said I; ‘Mary is a
-beautiful girl; my husband always admired her. Oh, yes, they are
-married,’ and I wept silently.
-
-‘I should wish to be quite satisfied as to that,’ said Mrs. Lee. ‘I
-wish General Ramsay had given us the date of their marriage. However,
-after breakfast I will write to the offices of the Bath newspapers--you
-will be able to give me their names--and offer a reasonable price for a
-copy of any paper which may contain an announcement of the marriage.’
-
-‘I must have my children!’ I cried.
-
-‘Yes, yes, all shall happen as you wish. But God has been good to you.
-Continue to have faith in His goodness. Do not act hastily, do not let
-your feelings govern you; for, unless we reflect, we are certain to act
-rashly. Something we might do which would make you feel broken-hearted
-for life for having done. Remember this: _you are still your husband’s
-wife_. It is your sister who must be the sufferer--not you. She is
-your twin sister. Be sure that your love for her is deep, though for
-the moment the startling, dreadful news which we have received renders
-you insensible of that love. And you must be just, Agnes. It is hard
-for one who feels as you now do to be just, and still the truth must
-be as a star that nothing is to cloud, that you may be able to direct
-your steps unerringly by it. It is three years since your sister and
-husband have heard of you. They believe you dead. Who would not believe
-you dead on such evidence as General Ramsay’s letter contains? The
-body of the boatman who was known to be your sole companion is found,
-is brought to land, and identified. The boat in which you set sail is
-discovered drifting about upside down. Surely your husband had all
-imaginable right to consider himself a widower. He has waited two
-years and seven or eight months. Do not imagine that I justify his
-second marriage. It is not a right marriage. Indeed, it is not lawful.
-A man may not marry his deceased wife’s sister. But these unions are
-repeatedly happening for all that, and I for one do not oppose them
-for the reasons which are advanced against them, but merely because I
-object to second marriages altogether. But remember that you have two
-little ones. They need a mother’s care. Your husband has a business
-that takes him away from his home, and, failing your sister, the
-little ones must be at the mercy of a nurse throughout the day and
-night. Your sister took your place. She loved your children, as you
-have told me, with a love which was scarcely less than your own, and
-if this world had been any other world than it is, your sister, I have
-no doubt, would have gone on filling your place as a mother, without
-a thought ever occurring to her or to your husband of her taking your
-place as a wife. Whilst you were at home it was perfectly reasonable
-and correct that she should live with you. But when you were gone--that
-is to say, when it was believed that you were dead--it would not be
-considered proper by a society that drives people into a behaviour it
-condemns, that your sister should continue living as a single woman
-under the same roof with your husband, whom all Bath regarded as a
-widower; and yet, if she did not live under his roof, she could not
-look after your children! Oh, have mercy, my dear. Be just to those
-who loved you, whom you still love, hard as it may seem to you to
-render justice at such a time. And, above all, remember you are still
-the wife!--it is your sister, your dear twin sister, who must prove the
-sufferer.’
-
-She looked upwards with tears in her eyes; her own daughters were in
-her thoughts at that moment.
-
-To this, and to much more--for we sat talking until the morning was far
-advanced--I listened with tearful attention; but my passions were so
-hot, my emotions so violent, that whilst my dear friend talked I was
-not sensible of being influenced by her views. Knowing that my husband
-was again married, I could not bring myself to feel that I was still
-his wife. I had been replaced; he had given his love to my sister; for
-all I knew I might be as dead to his remembrance and love as I was dead
-in his belief.
-
-Oh, it was an exquisite pang of mortification to feel that there had
-been needed but a very little while--for what were three short years in
-the life of married love? nor was it even three short years, for, if
-General Ramsay spoke truly, my husband had been already married three
-or four months--I say it was exquisitely mortifying to my pride and to
-my love for my husband, to think how speedily and easily the memory
-of me had been turned out of his heart, leaving room for another to
-replace me, and that other my sister, whom I had loved so tenderly,
-that I would have laid down my life for her, even as I was sure she
-would have died for me.
-
-But after a while, and when I was alone, other and higher and nobler
-thoughts prevailed. The words of Mrs. Lee began to weigh with me. I
-fell very silent, and for the rest of the day sat or moved here and
-there engrossed in thought. Mrs. Lee contrived to leave me alone. She
-could perceive in my face the conflict that was happening in my mind,
-and, having given me her opinion and her counsel, she acted wisely in
-letting me solve, as best I could, with the help of God, the awful and
-tremendous problem which my returning memory had brought with it.
-
-When the night came I was still undecided. Mrs. Lee had written to
-the Bath papers during the afternoon, and nothing more had been done.
-Indeed, we had seen so little of each other throughout the day that,
-after our long discourse of the morning was ended, but a very little
-more had been said on the subject. She had counselled me; she had been
-perfectly conscious of the deep, and often the distracting, struggle in
-my mind, and now, I saw, she was resolved that, let the issue be what
-it might, it should be of my own contriving.
-
-I bade her good-night at ten o’clock, our usual time of separating, and
-entering my bedroom, closed the door, and putting Alice Lee’s cross
-upon a chair, knelt before it and prayed for aid and enlightenment,
-for support and for strength; and I prayed that I might be taught to
-know what was best to be done. I arose with refreshed heart and calmed
-feelings, and, replacing the cross, I paced about the room, not with
-agitation, but because I was sleepless, and because the mere mechanical
-effort of walking seemed to help me to think.
-
-But I had made up my mind. I had said to myself: my husband and my
-sister believe me dead, and I must remain dead to them, for if I
-return to my home and proclaim that I am alive, what is to become of
-my sister, who is now a wife, but who will not then be a wife? What is
-to become of her? A dreadful sacrifice is involved, and I must be the
-victim. Were Alice Lee to descend from heaven and speak to me, what
-would be her bidding? That my sister must remain a wife, yea, though my
-heart broke in securing her in that title.
-
-I love my husband; I love my sister. The great sacrifice, I said to
-myself, that I feel is demanded of me will prove my love. But my
-children! I cannot possess them without discovering myself. I must
-surrender them to my sister, who I know loves them with the love
-of their mother ... but here I stopped dead in my pacing the room
-and wept, but without agitation, without passion, for my prayer was
-brooding dove-like over my spirit, and though I wept I was calm.
-
-I could say no more to you, no, not if I were to write down every
-thought that had visited me throughout the day and in the silent
-watches of the night. They supposed me dead, they had wept for me--oh,
-well did my heart know how they had mourned for me! and a mother being
-wanted for my little ones, who, of all the countless women in this
-land, could so fitly take my place as my sister?
-
-But my children.... But my children? and I pressed my hand to my
-heart....
-
-In the morning when Mrs. Lee entered the parlour she found me standing
-at the window. She kissed me and then looked me in the face. She would
-know by my eyes that I had slept but little, she would also see that I
-had wept much, and she would gather from my face that I had formed a
-resolution. She listened in silence while I unfolded that resolution to
-her.
-
-‘You must not dream of banishing yourself from your home for ever,’
-said she.
-
-‘I must not dream of banishing my sister from the home which my
-supposed death has made her mistress of,’ said I. ‘She could not now
-live in the same house with me. She is friendless in the world, as I
-should be were you not my friend. If I claim my own, what is to become
-of _her_?’
-
-‘But your children!’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee.
-
-‘Oh, my children!’ I cried.
-
-‘Your estrangement from them, your estrangement from your husband is
-not to be thought of,’ said Mrs. Lee; ‘it is a terrible calamity to
-befall your sister, but your children’s claims upon you are greater
-than your sister’s.’
-
-I shook my head.
-
-‘And your husband has claims too,’ continued she. ‘He believes you
-dead. If he knew you to be alive, would not his love eagerly claim you
-and possess you, in spite of what has come between your hearts through
-the silence of three years?’
-
-I stared through the window, making no answer.
-
-‘It is quite certain,’ said Mrs. Lee, ‘that you cannot be separated
-from your children. You have a home, and it is your duty to occupy it.
-Now what passed in my mind last night is this: you are very dear to me,
-Agnes, but I must not keep you away from your husband and children.
-Yet when you go I shall be companionless and I know I shall find it
-very hard indeed to replace you. But your sister is certain to be like
-you. You are twins, and from what you have told me of her I am sure you
-differ but little in character. Let her take your place here. She will
-be dear to me for your sake, and if she has even but a little of the
-sweetness you have told me of we shall be happy together.’
-
-‘Dear Mrs. Lee, my sister is now a wife. I must leave her so. I am the
-stronger by my rights, and the stronger by my love, and the sacrifice
-must be mine.’
-
-‘You think nobly and God will bless you,’ said she; ‘but your sister is
-not your children, and it is of your children that I am thinking.’
-
-I made a motion of entreaty with my hand.
-
-‘Could your sister live independently of--of--your husband?’
-
-‘She has means of her own. She has the same amount that I possess, or
-rather that I possessed.’
-
-‘She can do what she likes with it?’
-
-‘Yes, unless she has given it to John.’
-
-‘As you did your portion?----Well, if your sister leaves your husband
-he must return the money he has taken from her that she may be
-independent to that extent. And she will take your place and live with
-me.’
-
-But I was not to be moved. I had made up my mind. The resolution I
-had formed was the offspring of bitter tears and long hours of inward
-torment. My sister, my sweet sister, must be first. Since the certain
-result of the assertion of my existence must be to expel her from
-her home, leaving her friendless, an orphan, and lonely to face the
-world, then I must remain dumb and hidden, as much so as if I were at
-the bottom of the sea. And there was another consideration, something
-that _might_ render the news of my being alive a dreadful and horrible
-affliction to her. She had been married four months.
-
-Mrs. Lee saw that I was not to be moved.
-
-‘I could sympathise with your resolution,’ said she, ‘if it were not
-for your children. Can we not get possession of them? You would then be
-happy, or at least happier than you are. But how is it to be done? They
-cannot be stolen,’ she cried, stepping about the room. ‘They can only
-be demanded in your name;’ then observing my distress and agitation,
-she added, ‘Well, we will wait a little. Something may happen to give
-a new turn to this strange, lamentable business. And you will not mind
-my having a good long talk with Mr. ----?’ and she named the clergyman
-of the church we attended. ‘He is a man of resources. Even my husband,
-who was a thoroughly business man, often found Mr. ----’s advice very
-useful. You may be able to exist without your husband, but with such a
-mother’s heart as you possess you will not be able to go on living long
-without your children.’
-
-One point I overlooked at this time, nor indeed did it occur to me
-until events had robbed it of the weight it must otherwise have had: I
-mean that by determining not to make my existence known to my husband
-and sister I should be continuing in a state of absolute dependence
-upon Mrs. Lee. This I could not have felt whilst my memory was wanting;
-but now it was known to Mrs. Lee that I was a wife and that my husband
-was in a good position and capable of supporting me. As you will
-perhaps remember, when my father died he left five thousand pounds to
-my mother; this on her death was divided equally between Mary and me.
-Mary invested her money and kept control of it; I gave my portion to my
-husband, who invested it in his business or in some other way. There
-was capital enough here to have yielded me about one hundred pounds
-per annum, and this was the income, I believe, that Mary obtained from
-her share; whilst I chose to remain as one that was dead, my little
-fortune, of course, could be of no use to me, but as I have just said,
-the matter did not pressingly occur to me at this time.
-
-It was on the day following that conversation with Mrs. Lee which
-I have just related that the dear little woman called upon her old
-friend the Rev. ---- and was closeted with him for two hours. When
-she returned she gave me the substance of what had passed between
-them, and added that Mr. ---- was going to Edinburgh, whither he had
-been suddenly summoned, but that on his return he would visit me and
-earnestly enter with me into my trouble and advise me.
-
-I asked Mrs. Lee what he had said, and she owned that though he had
-talked much he had left no very definite impressions upon her mind.
-
-‘Unhappily,’ said she, ‘there is no middle way in this sad business.
-You want your children: you must have them: but in order to obtain them
-your husband must be informed that you are alive. That is what you do
-not want. I tell you frankly, Agnes, Mr. ----’s opinion is, that for
-the sake of your children and for your own, and for your husband’s
-sake, it is your bounden duty to make your existence known.’
-
-‘And my sister?’ cried I; ‘he does not name my sister.’
-
-‘Yes, to deeply pity her, for she is the true sufferer. Your trouble
-is voluntary, and you can end it when you choose. However, let us
-wait until Mr. ---- returns. By that time a change may come over your
-mind, or Mr. ---- may be able to offer some suggestion of the utmost
-usefulness to us. And pray, my dear, also remember that in the eyes
-of my friend your sister is not a wife: nothing could make her your
-husband’s wife short of an Act of Parliament, and even if she could
-be legally married to him as his deceased wife’s sister, she still
-cannot be his wife whilst you are living. This was one of Mr. ----’s
-arguments, and he insisted that it was your duty to rescue your sister
-from the false and really odious position in which her ignorance of
-your being alive has placed her.’
-
-But I was now firm. Every hour of thought had served to harden my
-resolution. I did not choose to consider that my sister was in a false
-position because I was alive, but I did choose to consider that she
-would be in a false position if I announced my existence; and my fixed
-determination, therefore, was to remain dead to her and her husband,
-leaving it to the Almighty God who had watched over me in many terrible
-perils and distresses, and who had raised up a friend for me when I was
-absolutely friendless and blind in soul upon the great ocean, to find a
-way of His own to bring me and my little ones together.
-
-It was on the morning of the sixth day, dating from the receipt of
-General Ramsay’s letter, that Mrs. Lee opened a newspaper which had
-been addressed to her from Bath, and read aloud the announcement of my
-husband’s marriage to my sister. The statement was brief; merely that
-the marriage had taken place in London.
-
-I had passed a long miserable night of bitter thought, with a desire
-in me that had grown more and more impassioned as I lay dwelling upon
-it; and yet I know not that I would have given expression to it or
-have resolved upon gratifying it but for Mrs. Lee reading aloud this
-announcement of my husband’s marriage. But when she had read it, and
-sat gazing at me through her glasses in silence, I sprang up and cried:
-
-‘I must see my children. I have struggled hard with the yearning, but
-it will have its way.’
-
-Something like a smile of satisfaction lighted up her face as she
-answered:
-
-‘I was sure you would come round to my views. There are, I know,
-mothers, miserable creatures that they are! who could live without
-seeing their children; but you are not of them, Agnes, you are not of
-them.’
-
-‘Do not misunderstand me,’ I exclaimed; ‘I wish to see my
-children--merely to see them, but the darlings shall not know I have
-beheld them--and John and my sister shall not know that I am alive.’
-
-‘But you will have to call at the house to see them,’ said Mrs. Lee.
-
-‘I will visit Bath and return to you,’ said I, caressing her hand.
-‘Bear with me, dearest friend. Let me have my way.’
-
-‘You shall have your way,’ she exclaimed. ‘I shall do nothing and say
-nothing to hinder you. When do you wish to go?’
-
-‘To-day.’
-
-‘I will find out how much money you need. How long do you mean to stop?’
-
-‘Until I have caught sight of my children,’ I answered. ‘One look at
-them--to see if they are well--to see how much they have grown----’
-
-‘Well,’ said she, ‘let us hope, my dear, for your sake that the
-children are in Bath. You may have to wait some days before you obtain
-a glimpse of them, and if you are constantly about the house will not
-you be noticed, and excite suspicion? But I wish to say nothing to
-hinder you. If it will comfort you to get a sight of your children,
-then, my dear, go; and should you be kept waiting, write to me and I
-will remit as much money as you may think needful. But suppose your
-memory should fail you?’
-
-‘I will take care of that,’ said I, ‘by putting down my name and your
-name and address and other matters on a card. I can never be at a loss
-if I have such a card to refer to.’
-
-‘Take two cards,’ said Mrs. Lee, ‘one for your pocket, and one
-which I will stitch inside your jacket. It is not probable that your
-memory will play you false, but it would be a terrible thing to find
-yourself at a distance from me without being able to give your name and
-address.’
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIV
-
-AT BATH
-
-
-The train I caught did not reach Bath till half-past eight in the
-evening. It was a tedious, melancholy journey, so sad to me that I
-never recall it without emotion. The moment I had kissed and said
-good-bye to Mrs. Lee, and entered the train and started, I felt utterly
-lonely and miserable, as though, indeed, I were friendless, without
-memory, childless and widowed, and a blind wanderer. My luggage
-consisted of a travelling bag. I was dressed in black and wore a thick
-veil, but even without that veil I should not have feared recognition.
-I had looked into the glass before I started, and _now_, being able
-to remember my face as it was when my husband and sister last beheld
-me at Piertown, I was very sure that both of them might stare me in
-the eyes for an hour at a time, and find nothing in my white hair and
-in my changed lineaments, and in the expression which grief and time
-had stamped upon my countenance, and in my white eyebrows and the
-appearance of the flesh of my face that wore no longer the bloom of my
-happy days to give life to any sort of imagination which might visit
-them from the tone of my voice or from some subtle quality in my looks.
-
-As I have said, I arrived at Bath at half-past eight, wearied to the
-heart by the long journey, and drove to an old-fashioned hotel not very
-far from Milsom Street. I was too exhausted to walk, or even at that
-hour, after I had refreshed myself with a cup of tea, I would have
-crept forth and traversed the width of the city to view the home in
-which my little ones were resting. I went to the window and gazed into
-the street; there were brightly lighted shops opposite; the roadway
-shone with the light of gas lamps; many people were afoot and private
-carriages and vehicles of all sorts passed in plenty.
-
-I stood gazing, and my eyes may well have worn the expression of one
-who dreams. To think that for three years the old familiar city in
-which I now was, my pretty home past the avenue of chestnuts, the dear
-ones who dwelt within it, should have been as utterly extinguished from
-my brain as though I had died! I thought of the day when I had started
-from Piertown on an excursion, as I had imagined, of an hour or two; I
-thought of the French vessel, of my awaking in her from a swoon, and
-finding my face strapped, mutilated, unrecognisable, and I recalled
-the dumb, importunate cry of my heart, _Who am I?_ I thought of all
-that had happened afterwards, of the gipsy’s predictions which had been
-so fearfully verified, that I wondered if her darker predictions were
-still awaiting realisation; and then I pictured my home: the interior
-of the house: I beheld my children sleeping in their beds, and my
-husband and my sister sitting in the parlour, one reading to the other
-or conversing.... I sighed deeply and turned away from the window.
-
-I was in no hurry to rise next morning. It was the second day of
-November and a cold morning, though the sun shone bright with a
-frost-like whiteness in his brilliance, and I knew that my children
-would not be taken for a walk until the morning had somewhat advanced.
-I did not suppose that Johnny went to school. I knew that my husband
-had always been of opinion that no child should be sent to school under
-the age of ten; Johnny was but five.
-
-I descended to the coffee room, keeping my face carefully covered by
-a thick black veil: but when I found that I was the only occupant of
-the room I lifted the veil to the height of my eyes, the better to
-see through the wire blinds in the windows and to observe the people
-passing. The waiter who attended at my solitary meal looked very hard
-at me, but his gaze was one of curiosity merely. Well might it puzzle
-the man to reconcile my youthful figure and youthful complexion, pale
-as I was, with my hair and eyebrows, whose snowy whiteness was rendered
-remarkable by my dark eyes.
-
-I asked him how long he had lived in Bath, and he answered all his
-life; and that he had never been further than Swindon. I asked him a
-number of idle questions, and named one or two persons who lived in
-Bath, and I then spoke of Mr. John Campbell, solicitor, and inquired if
-he had left the city.
-
-‘No,’ he answered, ‘Mr. Campbell is my governor’s legal adviser. He was
-here yesterday; very like he’ll be here to-day. The governor’s got a
-lawsuit on. Are you acquainted with the gentleman, mum?’
-
-I asked him to tell me the time, and then saying it was uncertain at
-what hour I should return, I dropped my veil and walked into the street.
-
-It was about half-past ten o’clock. By this hour I knew that my husband
-would have arrived at his office; or, if he was not yet at his office,
-he would be on his way to business, and by going a little out of my
-road when I was in New Bond Street I might have passed the windows of
-his place of business; but I dreaded to see him. Veiled as I was I
-felt that if we met and his gaze rested upon me, though I should be no
-more known to him than the veriest stranger then in Bath, yet the mere
-sight of him would break me down. I should cry out or swoon, suffer
-from some convulsion of passion and feeling whose violence might result
-in betraying me by attracting a crowd, by bringing him to my side to
-inquire, by causing my pocket to be searched for my address; and,
-therefore, when I passed the street in which his office stood, I shrank
-within myself, and for ever as I walked I stared through my veil at
-the passing faces, never knowing but that I might meet my husband, and
-trembling and shuddering from head to foot at the mere contemplation of
-the encounter.
-
-But though I had had many acquaintances in Bath, I met no one that I
-knew; no, not a single familiar face did I see. As I walked I could not
-realise that three years had passed since I was last in these streets.
-The extinction of my memory had fallen upon me as a deep sleep might
-fall upon a person on a sudden, arresting her in her discourse or in
-whatever she might be doing, and the sleep might last for many hours;
-though when she awakens she proceeds in her speech or resumes what she
-was about with no idea of having been interrupted beyond a minute or
-two. Thus it was with me. I walked through the streets of Bath and I
-could not persuade myself that I had not trodden the same pavements
-yesterday. I passed down that wide, cold, windy thoroughfare called
-Pulteney Street and reached Sydney Place, where I came to a pause with
-my heart in my throat; for here are situated the public grounds called
-Sydney Gardens, where many a time had I walked with my children and the
-nurse, and as I looked at the trees, which were brown and burning with
-their late autumn tints and fast growing leafless, and thought of how I
-had romped with my little Johnny in the shade of them on summer days,
-and how I had sat with my baby in my arms upon the cool seats along
-the shadowed walks, and how happy I then was, I wept.
-
-The house which I intended to watch until I saw my children stood not
-far from the part at which I had arrived, and after I had walked a few
-hundred yards I came to a bend of the road which brought me to the
-foot of the hill. And now I walked very slowly, gazing in advance of
-me with impassioned eagerness, and with so great a craziness for clear
-vision that I could have torn the veil from my face. Very few people
-were about, and they took no notice of me. At times a cart from some
-neighbouring farm came spinning down the hill. It was a fine bright
-morning, no longer cold, as it had been, now that the sun was asserting
-his power, and I was sure that my children would be sent by Mary for a
-walk with the nurse. I entered the avenue of chestnuts and crept along
-up the hill very slowly until I had sight of the house, and then I
-stopped with a dreadful aching under my left breast as though my heart
-had broken.
-
-I stood partly sheltered by the trees, staring at the house. It was
-situated on the left-hand side of the road, and as I stood gazing on
-this same side I thought to myself, supposing my husband having been
-detained at home should _now_ come out. The thought affrighted me,
-and I hastily crossed the road and in a manner hid myself among the
-trees on that side. A gentleman and two ladies came from the direction
-of Bathampton; they stared very hard and turned their heads to view
-me after they had passed; their scrutiny vexed and agitated me, and
-stepping out I walked up the hill, passing my home.
-
-I dared not look too hard lest I should attract attention. The bedroom
-windows were open, but I could not see anybody stirring within. I
-looked at the window of the room that had been the day-nursery
-and that, very well knowing the accommodation the house offered, I
-might suppose was still occupied by my children by day; and whilst I
-instinctively paused in my walk to gaze at that window the hall-door
-was opened, and the nurse, the person I had taken to Piertown with me,
-she who had been in my service for a short while when I was lost to my
-husband and children--this nurse, I say, whose name was Eliza Barclay,
-came out and advanced as far as the gate and looked up and down the
-road as though waiting for somebody.
-
-I walked on with my eyes straight in front, but my heart beat so
-violently that I felt myself sway from side to side, and coming to a
-bench that was at the top of the hill and at some distance from the
-house, I sank upon it, breathing with great distress.
-
-Here on this eminence I commanded a view of our garden and of the
-river flowing through the valley, of the hills opposite with their
-clustered houses and spaces of garden-land and groups of trees, whose
-summits in parts feathered a line of roofs. Dogs were barking down by
-the river side; notes of life came floating from the fair city of Bath
-upon the November wind; the violet shadows of clouds sailed stately
-over the green slopes. I went to the hedge that divided the adjoining
-meadows from the side path and looked over, thinking I might catch a
-sight of my children in the garden. A man was at work there. I raised
-my veil to observe if he was the gardener whom we had employed when
-I was at home, but I could not distinguish his features, and if I
-approached the house the angle of the building must shut him out.
-
-The time passed. Twelve o’clock was struck by the clock of a church
-down in the valley, then one, and then two. Some tradesmen’s
-assistants had called at the house during this time, and a housemaid
-had come to the side-gate and stared with a servant’s idle curiosity
-up and down the road. Nothing more had happened. But I must see my
-children if I lingered all day; I must see my children, though to
-obtain but one glimpse of them I should be obliged to remain in Bath
-a month. Do you wonder if I wished to see my husband and my sister?
-Oh, do not ask me! If ever I thought of them the desire to behold them
-rapidly merged into a passionate yearning to see my children, and I
-could think of nothing else but my two little ones.
-
-The time passed. And now the next hour the Batheaston clock struck
-would be half-past three. All this while I had been wandering furtively
-about the chestnut avenue, and up and down the hill, never losing sight
-of the house, but taking care after the first hour of this grievous day
-of sad expectant watching to remain unseen by anyone who might come to
-its gate or look from its windows. There were times when I would walk
-on as far as Bathwick Street and there loiter, for if my children came
-down the hill I might be sure they would pass by the end of that street
-and I should see them.
-
-The road in which the chestnut avenue stood is but little frequented.
-Carts and private carriages drive along it, but few people use it
-merely for walking. It is traversed by those who live at Batheaston and
-Bathford and beyond, and such persons when they pass, whether coming
-into or going from Bath, are long in returning. There are also very
-few houses; the few there are for the most part stand back. All these
-points I had reckoned upon, knowing the neighbourhood thoroughly; and
-I state them that you may understand how it was that so conspicuous a
-figure as I made in my black dress and thick black veil should have
-haunted that road of the chestnut avenue for nearly a whole day without
-apparently receiving any further attention than now and again a stare
-from a passer-by.
-
-I had eaten nothing since my breakfast, and that meal had been slender
-enough; but I felt no hunger; though I had sat but little I was not
-conscious of any feeling of exhaustion. The craving for a sight of my
-children dominated all physical sensations.
-
-It was drawing on to the hour of four; I was slowly making my way up
-the hill in the direction of my house, and I was within a hundred yards
-of it when a little boy ran through the gateway on to the path, and was
-immediately followed by a lady.
-
-The little boy was my child. I should instantly have known him had I
-beheld him amongst a thousand children. His face was the same sweet
-face that I had left behind me three long years before; grown, indeed,
-but the eyes, the expression, were the same, the beautiful golden hair
-but a little darker in hue. He was tall for his years, and looked a
-noble, manly little fellow. He was dressed in the costume of a sailor,
-and when he ran from out the gateway he sprang with graceful agility
-across the side-walk into the road, pointing to a hedge that was
-opposite, and looking back as he cried: ‘Mother, mother, I saw a wabbit
-jump out of that ditch.’
-
-The lady was my sister. She was dressed in black, but was without a
-veil; her hat of black velvet with a black feather suited her beauty.
-She looked younger, sweeter than I remembered her; her complexion
-was of an exquisite delicacy faintly touched with bloom, and her
-golden-brown hair sparkled in the sunlight under the black velvet of
-her hat.
-
-My boy came running towards me, leaving my sister at some distance;
-then when he was close he stopped, child-like, to stare up at the
-strange veiled figure. I looked down into his upward-gazing face: I
-could have cried aloud out of the passion of the impulse that possessed
-me to lift him, to clasp him to my heart, to devour him with kisses.
-Then, all on a sudden, his own little figure, and the figure of my
-sister who was now nearing us, swept round, and I fell, with a roaring
-in my ears that was followed by blackness and insensibility.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-I opened my eyes and slowly turned them about. It was strange that the
-first idea which came to my awakening senses was that I was on board
-the French vessel, that in a few moments Alphonse would appear, that
-he would hold a mirror to me into which I would look and behold a
-face which I had never before seen. I closed my eyes and heard myself
-sighing deeply; then opening my eyes again I slightly raised my head
-and surveyed the place in which I was lying.
-
-It was a room, and as my eyes roamed over the various objects which
-formed the furniture of that room, I found everything I beheld familiar
-to my recollection, and still I could not tell myself where I was. I
-rested upon a sofa; there was a lamp with a deep green shade upon it in
-the centre of the dining-table: a small fire was burning in the grate,
-and I perceived the figure of a woman seated in an arm-chair beside the
-fire. She turned her head and directed her eyes at me; then, observing
-that I had returned to consciousness, she arose and came across to the
-sofa.
-
-When she was close to me I saw that she was the nurse whom we had taken
-with us to Piertown, and by this time having my senses fully, and every
-sense being rendered keen by dread of detection, I raised my hand to
-my head, meaning to pull down my veil, but found that my hat and veil,
-as well as my jacket, had been removed. The nurse’s name, as I have
-said, was Barclay; she looked at me earnestly, but without the least
-expression of recognition in her face, and said:
-
-‘I am glad you have got your senses, ma’am. You have been a long time
-in a faint. I will go and tell Mrs. Campbell you are awake: she is
-sitting with the doctor in the dining-room. The doctor asked me to let
-him know when you came to.’ She was about to leave me.
-
-‘I do not wish to see the doctor,’ I exclaimed feebly. ‘Where am I?’
-
-‘You are in Mr. John Campbell’s house, ma’am.’
-
-‘Why am I in his house?’
-
-‘You fainted away just outside his door and was carried in by me and
-the gardener.’
-
-‘I do not wish to see the doctor,’ said I. ‘Where is my hat and veil?’
-and I endeavoured to sit up, but fell back again, feeling as weak as
-though I had been confined to my bed for a month by a severe illness.
-
-At this moment I heard footsteps, and my sister entered the room,
-followed by a gentleman who instantly stepped to my side. He asked me
-how I felt, but I made no answer, and on his taking my wrist to feel my
-pulse I drew my hand away. I knew him very well; he was Doctor B----,
-he had attended me with each of my children; but now he looked at me
-with a subdued air of astonishment at my appearance--with nothing but
-_that_ expression in his face; he recognised me no more than my nurse
-did.
-
-‘I have asked for my hat and veil,’ said I, ‘I wish to return to the
-hotel at which I am stopping. I am quite well now,’ and again I essayed
-to rise, and again fell back.
-
-‘She appears to have overtaxed herself,’ said the doctor, speaking
-to my sister as though I were not present. ‘One would suppose she had
-walked from London and eaten nothing the whole way.’
-
-I drew my handkerchief from my pocket and held it to my mouth to hide
-my face as much as possible, and I also turned my head away from the
-light, which, indeed, was sufficiently subdued owing to the green shade
-that covered the lamp, and to the smallness of the fire.
-
-‘Do you live in Bath?’ said the doctor.
-
-‘No,’ I answered.
-
-‘Where are you stopping?’
-
-I named the hotel and said, ‘I wish to return to it.’
-
-‘My carriage is at the door,’ said he, ‘I shall be happy to drive you
-to your hotel.’
-
-My sister, who had been standing at a little distance with the shadow
-of the shaded lamp upon her face, said: ‘I cannot suffer the lady to
-leave until she is stronger and better.’
-
-‘Are you alone at the hotel?’ said the doctor.
-
-‘Yes,’ said I, answering him in a weak voice; ‘but that does not
-matter. I will thankfully accept your offer to drive me to my hotel,’
-and again I tried to sit up, but my having been on my feet from ten
-o’clock in the morning to four o’clock that afternoon, my having taken
-nothing to eat or drink--no, not so much as a glass of water--and,
-above all, the terrible agitation, the dreadful continuous expectancy,
-and the hundred feelings which had burnt like fires in my breast as
-I passed my home again and again, all this had done its work; a few
-hours’ rest might help to restore me, but as I now was I was incapable
-of any exertion.
-
-The doctor saw how it was. He drew my sister to the other side of the
-room and conversed with her. I tried to hear what was said, but caught
-only a few sentences. He seemed to advise her to keep me for an hour
-or two, then send me in a cab to the hotel. I heard him whisper: ‘A
-perfect stranger, you see, Mrs. Campbell’--‘a genuine case I don’t
-doubt’--‘I would not, if I were you, keep her through the whole
-night’--these, and one or two more sentences of counsel, were all I
-heard. He then bade my sister good-night; meanwhile I kept my face from
-the light and my handkerchief to my mouth.
-
-‘You will sleep here to-night,’ said the sweet voice of my sister, and
-looking up I perceived her bending over me. Her face was tranquil, her
-gaze perfectly calm with an expression of gentle sadness that had been
-there ever since I could remember. Pity was the only look in her face
-that was in any way marked. She glanced at my white hair, and her eyes
-rested for a little while upon my face, but her regard was without
-recognition. Her presence was a torture to me. My old love for her
-was strong and deep. There she stood, my sweet, my gentle, my beloved
-sister, and I dared not own myself--I dared scarcely look at her; for
-her occupation of my place was based on deep conviction of my death. I
-would have killed myself sooner than by confession of my existence have
-forced her from the position she had purely entered upon with a spirit
-which she would take to her grave clothed in mourning for the sister
-whom she believed dead.
-
-But her presence was an agony. I felt that it would be impossible to
-support even for a short time the ordeal of her ministrations; to
-listen to her low, sweet voice; to meet her clear, sad gaze; to suffer
-in silence the intolerable sense of loneliness born of her presence, of
-my being homeless in my own home, of the thought of my little ones, in
-a room above, taught to pray for a mother they could not remember and
-to give that holy name to another, even though she were my own sister.
-
-‘You will sleep here to-night,’ said my sister, bending over me.
-
-‘What is the time?’ I inquired, resolved to speak as little as possible.
-
-‘It is nearly eight o’clock. You have been a long time unconscious.
-Barclay, cut a few light sandwiches and bring some port wine. Be quick.
-I am sure this poor lady wants nourishment first of all. Tell Sarah to
-light a fire in the spare room and prepare the bed.’
-
-My sister then brought a chair to the table and seated herself.
-
-‘This light, I fear, taxes your eyes,’ said she, and stretching forth
-her hand she dimmed the lamp.
-
-Then followed a long silence; my sister did not appear to regard me.
-Her eyes seemed to steal to my face rather than look at it; but for the
-most part she kept her gaze bent downwards. Her behaviour suggested
-that she was struck, as all others whom I had met had been struck,
-with the contrast between my snow-white hair and white eyebrows and
-my youthful figure. Only at long intervals did I dare glance at her.
-I held my face averted and my handkerchief to my mouth, and twice I
-endeavoured to rise, fully meaning to leave the house if I found that I
-had strength to walk; but I was without strength as yet even to sit up.
-
-The housemaid brought in some port wine and sandwiches, and I drank the
-wine which my sister put to my lips. I then ate the sandwiches merely
-with the hope that they would diminish the feeling of faintness and
-give me strength enough to leave the house.
-
-I had eaten as much as my constricted throat would enable me to
-swallow, when suddenly I heard the noise of a key turned in a lock,
-then the hall door was shut and my sister went out. I caught the sound
-of my husband’s voice; but I should have known him by his tread alone
-as he stepped across the square hall, and thankful, indeed, was I that
-Mary had gone out to speak to him and detain him whilst she prepared
-him for seeing me--that is to say, for seeing a strange lady who had
-dropped in a fit near the house and been brought in; I was truly
-thankful, I say, for this delay, since it gave me time to fortify my
-mind for beholding my husband and being looked at by him, and perhaps
-spoken to by him; for had he come in upon me on a sudden, my white
-hair and changed face would have availed nothing: I must have betrayed
-myself, he would have detected me by signs I should have been unable to
-conceal.
-
-He and Mary conversed for some time in the hall. The door was ajar and
-I heard their voices, but not what they said. He ejaculated, as though
-expressing surprise and sometimes remonstrance; her sweet, low voice
-had a pleading note. Presently the door was pushed open and the two of
-them entered.
-
-I held my handkerchief to my mouth, but forced my eyes to look in the
-direction of my husband, never doubting that any emotion that my face
-might express would be attributed by him to my illness and condition.
-There was no more alteration in him than in Mary. He wore a little
-more whisker than formerly, and his hair was cut short in the military
-style, otherwise there was no change. He was dressed in dark grey
-clothes and, instead of a gold watch-chain, wore one of jet, to which
-was attached a locket which had formerly held, as it might still hold,
-a likeness of me and a piece of my hair.
-
-He slightly bowed as to a perfect stranger, and leaned upon the table
-to look across at me. I closed my eyes and averted my face; I could not
-bear the dreadful trial of looking at him and of seeing him look at me.
-Oh, he was my husband--he was the father of my children--he had been my
-first and only love--but though he was my husband still, my love for my
-sister stood between him and me in as iron-like a barrier as ever the
-divorce law of the land could erect between two hearts.
-
-Mary had gone to the end of the table where it faced the windows which
-overlooked the grounds; she stood with one hand upon it and the other
-resting upon her hip. When I opened my eyes she seemed to be gazing at
-me steadily, but the light was dim and I could not see her clearly.
-
-‘I am sorry to hear of your illness,’ exclaimed my husband, addressing
-me across the table, ‘I trust you are feeling better?’
-
-‘I believe I am well enough to return to my hotel,’ I answered in a
-tremulous voice, ‘will you kindly send for a cab?’
-
-‘No,’ said my sister, ‘you must sleep here to-night. You are alone in
-Bath. Should you return to the hotel and feel ill in the night you will
-not be able to obtain the attention you might require.’
-
-‘By what name shall I address you?’ said my husband.
-
-‘Do not trouble her with questions, dear,’ said Mary. ‘She is very
-poorly.’
-
-I had made up my mind to give the name of my old friend at Jesmond
-should it ever come to my having to give a name at all. This I had
-settled with myself before I left Newcastle. When Mary ceased I
-answered, ‘My name is Miss Lee.’
-
-‘Have you no friend in Bath?’ said my husband.
-
-‘None. I am returning to-morrow to the north.’
-
-‘My wife is anxious that you should stay the night,’ said my husband;
-‘you will be very welcome; but if it would make you more comfortable
-to return to your hotel, I will call a cab and personally attend you
-there; provide--for I am very well acquainted with the landlord of the
-house--that you be carefully looked after; and, if you should desire to
-communicate with your friends in the North by telegraph or by letter, I
-shall be very pleased to do your bidding.’
-
-‘Yes, I shall feel easier--my strength is returning,’ I exclaimed, and
-I forced myself to sit upright.
-
-‘John,’ said my sister, ‘it is settled that Miss Lee sleeps in this
-house to-night. It is not as though she had friends to go to. She is
-ill,’ she added, and for a moment her voice trembled. ‘The spare room
-is ready. I can take no denial.’
-
-She crossed the room and rang the bell.
-
-‘Be it as you wish, my dear,’ said my husband, and casting another look
-upon me of curiosity he left the room.
-
-The housemaid answered the bell; my sister told her to send the
-nurse, then poured out another glass of port and begged me to drink
-it. I drank it, for I needed strength. Already had I settled what to
-do, but I required more strength than I now possessed to carry out
-my resolution. The nurse arrived and my sister requested her help
-to convey me upstairs. I said not a word. I kept my eyes fastened
-upon the floor. I feared that I should betray myself by speech, by
-look, by tears, or by some subtle sign that would be interpretable by
-the penetrating, wonderful sympathy that exists between twins--the
-sympathy that had certainly existed between my sister and me. So far I
-had victoriously passed through one of the most terrible ordeals that
-a woman could be confronted with, and the sight and presence of my
-sister, her sweet voice, her sweet face, the memories which arose in me
-as I looked at her and listened to her, had still further heightened
-and hardened what I might have already deemed my unconquerable
-determination to remain dead to her and her husband that her happiness
-should not be disturbed, leaving it, as I have already said, to my
-Heavenly Father to bring my children to me in any way that should not
-bruise my sister’s heart, or cloud the clear serenity of her life as a
-wife.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXV
-
-MARY
-
-
-My sister took me by one arm and the nurse by the other, and assisted
-me to rise. I found myself a little stronger than I had imagined. I
-felt, indeed, fully equal to returning to the hotel, if my sister sent
-for a cab; but my bedroom was ready, I was now being helped upstairs,
-and, moreover, I had settled a plan which I did not intend to disturb.
-I looked neither to the right nor to the left, as I ascended the
-stairs, supported by my sister and the nurse. I feared the effect upon
-me of the familiar objects which my sight must encounter--the shield
-and stag’s head in the hall, the pictures on the staircase, the
-barometer, and other such details--in all which I had taken a young
-wife’s pride, choosing places for them, dusting them with my own hands.
-
-We mounted the stairs in silence. I was taken to a room over the
-dining-room, an apartment at the back of the house. This room had been
-the spare room with us ever since we had occupied the house. A cheerful
-fire burnt in the grate, and on a chair near it were my jacket, hat,
-and veil. Lighted candles stood upon the dressing-table; the curtains
-were drawn; the bed, draped with a new eider-down quilt, was open ready
-for my reception; there was a smell of flowers in the atmosphere, and
-the whole chamber was spotless and the picture of comfort.
-
-‘A long night’s rest will do you all the good in the world,’ said Mary.
-‘Do not hurry to rise in the morning.’
-
-I could not thank her; I could not feel grateful for hospitality shown
-to me in my own house; I could not bring my tongue to utter to my
-sister words which my heart would pronounce ironical. But I could have
-thrown my arms round her neck, I could have wept upon her breast, I
-could have poured forth the story of my life; and all this, too, my
-heart denied me.
-
-She sent Barclay, the nurse, for some hot spirits and water, and for
-another plate of sandwiches; but I refused to eat or drink. I said I
-was weary and would get into bed and rest. She asked me at what hour I
-wished to leave by train next day.
-
-‘If I can reach my destination by five or six o’clock in the evening I
-shall be satisfied,’ I answered.
-
-She looked around as though there was something, unremembered by her,
-that would add to my comfort, then softly said, ‘Good-night,’ and left
-the room, closing the door after her.
-
-I thanked God when she went out, for another few minutes must have
-betrayed me. No sooner, indeed, had she closed the door than my heart
-gave way, and I cried with a dreadful grief, burying my face upon
-the bed that the sound of my sobs might be unheard. My children, I
-knew, were sleeping on the same floor. I say I _knew_, because the
-disposition of the rooms would not admit of a day and night nursery on
-the floor above. My bedroom--the bedroom I had occupied--had been over
-the room in which I now was; it was the best room in the house, with a
-bath-room and dressing-room adjoining it, and this apartment I might be
-sure my husband still used. Therefore, knowing that my children were
-within a few yards of me, my yearning to visit them, to behold and
-kiss my baby--my little baby girl--to kiss my darling boy, to view
-them even for a moment only--this yearning was anguish inexpressible.
-But I dared not leave my room. I could not think of any excuse to make
-should I be found looking at my children. Indeed, my being found in
-their room, bending over them, would infallibly lead to my husband
-and sister making conjectures, and putting one thing and another
-together--for my husband was a lawyer and my sister a clever woman of
-quick intellect--and so discovering who I was.
-
-I partially unclothed, extinguished the lights, and got into bed--not
-to sleep, but that I should be found in bed if my sister visited me
-before she herself retired. I heard a distant clock strike nine. A few
-minutes later a child cried. I sat up, straining my ear to catch the
-precious voice of my baby girl. It was the cry of a sleeping child,
-and was not repeated; but, even if that cry of my child had found me
-drowsy, it would have awakened me to the very full of all my senses and
-held me sleepless for the rest of the night.
-
-All was quiet below. I heard no sound of my husband and sister
-conversing, though I supposed that they continued to occupy the
-dining-room beneath me. The distant church clock struck ten. The
-hall-door was then bolted, and the noise was followed by a faint
-tapping on my bedroom door. I made no answer. I knew by the character
-of the knocking that it was my sister, and wished her to think that
-I was asleep. I held my face to the wall, and kept my eyes closed
-and drew my breath regularly, as though I slumbered; but, though my
-eyes were closed, I was sensible of the presence of my sister at the
-bedside. The light she held dimly flushed my sealed vision, and I knew
-by the radiance that she held the candle close to my face, whence I
-might conclude she was inspecting me. That she had not recognised me I
-was sure, but I now dreaded this minute scrutiny. Some feature, some
-point of resemblance to our mother or to herself, some expression which
-I could not control, she might witness, and by it know me.
-
-I sighed and stirred, without opening my eyes, on which the light
-vanished; and when, after waiting a little, I stealthily lifted my
-eyelids, I found myself alone and the room in darkness.
-
-I was able to follow the flight of the hours by hearing the distant
-church-clock strike. Midnight rang out, and then one o’clock, and then
-two o’clock. The wind had risen. It made a noise in the chimney and
-hissed about the windows; otherwise the house was buried in silence,
-saving that at intervals I seemed to hear a sound of footsteps, a very
-soft movement, as of naked or slippered feet restlessly pacing. But,
-listen as I might, I could not imagine in what room the person, whoever
-it might be, was pacing; it was not overhead, and it did not sound as
-though it were on the floor where the room I occupied was. I therefore
-supposed it a deception of the ear, though it held me in check until
-after three o’clock had struck, at which hour it ceased.
-
-I waited until somewhat after four o’clock, then noiselessly rose,
-very softly lighted a candle, and completely dressed myself, with the
-exception of my veil, which I folded and put in my pocket. The fire had
-long ago gone out. A small pair of scissors lay upon the toilet-table,
-and on a chest of drawers was an Old Testament, with illustrations
-protected by sheets of tissue paper. The book had been my mother’s. I
-tore out several sheets of the tissue-paper, picked up the scissors,
-and, putting the candle in the grate, where it would be safe--I dared
-not move without a light, lest I should make a noise--I opened the
-door, crept forth on to the landing, and stood listening.
-
-All was silent, save the noise of the wind. At the extremity of the
-landing a door stood ajar, and a faint light shone through it. I knew
-that my children slept in that room, that the faint illumination
-proceeded from a night-light, and that the door was left ajar in
-pursuance of a custom established by myself, for I always required that
-my children should have air, but would not permit their bedroom window
-to be left open during the night. I put my boots on the landing-carpet,
-and crept on noiseless feet to the door where the light shone, and,
-looking into the room, saw the two little brass bedsteads side by side.
-I stood listening, and plainly heard the deep breathing of the nurse,
-who slept in a small room adjoining this bedroom.
-
-I crept to the side of one of the beds, and in it lay my little girl,
-Mary. I stood looking down upon her sleeping face, then cut off a
-little piece of her hair, and breathlessly pressed my lips to her
-cheek. Afterwards I stepped round to the bedside of my little boy,
-and, when I had looked down upon him for awhile, I cut off a little
-piece of his hair, and, with trembling but noiseless hands, placed the
-two curls in the tissue-paper and slipped them into my pocket. I then
-kissed my boy, and, going to the foot of the bedstead, knelt so that
-my posture might embrace both little forms, and, lifting up my eyes to
-God, I asked Him to look down and bless my children, and to give them
-to me soon, and to watch over them and preserve them whilst I continued
-absent from them.
-
-I then rose, and, with a weeping heart and one long, lingering look
-at the two faces, I soundlessly descended the staircase, and, being
-intimately acquainted with the house, as you will suppose, knowing
-exactly how the house-door was bolted and locked, I opened it without
-more noise than would have scared a mouse, gently pulled it to after
-me, so that it would have been impossible upstairs to have heard the
-click of the latch, so gradually did I draw the door to; then, seating
-myself on the step, I put on my boots, and, rising again, hurried away
-down the hill.
-
-It was snowing slightly, and the ground was thinly whitened. The
-wind blew piercingly cold. I had learnt that the railway-station was
-closed all night, and that the earliest train to London, which was the
-directest way to Newcastle from Bath, did not leave until eight o’clock
-or thereabouts. There was nothing for me to do but to walk about the
-cold, windy streets until the hotel where I had left my bag was opened.
-
-This I did. I met nobody. Bath seemed as silent and as deserted as
-though the old plague that had visited London two hundred years ago
-had attacked and desolated this city of the Abbey Church. At last, at
-about a quarter to seven, on passing the hotel for the tenth or twelfth
-time, I saw a man sweeping in front of the door, which stood a little
-way open. I entered and passed into the coffee-room, and found a large
-fire, newly lighted, burning in the grate, before which sat a man
-reading a paper by the gas-light, for the sky was dark with cloud and
-there was no daylight as yet. The man did not lift his head nor make
-room for me; he was probably a commercial traveller. I rang the bell,
-ordered some breakfast, desired that my bag should be brought from my
-bedroom, and, whilst I waited, I drew as close to the fire as the
-commercial traveller would suffer me, and warmed myself.
-
-I was very cold and very weary, but the rest I had taken at my
-husband’s house had given me strength enough to walk about the streets,
-and when I had warmed myself and breakfasted I found that my sense of
-exhaustion was considerably less than I had dreaded to find it. All the
-while that I had walked, and all the while that I was warming myself
-and eating my breakfast, I was thinking, ‘What will my sister say, or
-what will my husband suppose, when they find that their visitor, whom
-they so hospitably received, has fled from their house in the darkness
-of the night? Their first suspicion will be that my falling into a
-fit was a trick, and they will look over the house to see what I have
-stolen; then, on discovering that nothing whatever is missing, they
-will conjecture that my fit was epileptic, and that in an hour of
-madness I rose in the night and wandered from the house.’
-
-This notion made me hurry, lest my husband should come to the hotel
-to inquire after me; for though, if he came, he would know no more
-about me this morning than he did last night, yet he might agitate
-and confuse me with questions--perhaps cause me to be detained for
-inquiries, as it is called--and this apprehension, as I have said,
-made me hurry. As soon, then, as I had breakfasted, I paid the bill,
-took my bag, and told a porter who stood in the hall to call a cab. An
-hour later I was safe in a railway-carriage, gliding out of the Great
-Western Railway station at Bath on my way to London.
-
-I reached Newcastle at seven o’clock in the evening, and drove at once
-to Jesmond. I had telegraphed to Mrs. Lee from London, and I found her
-awaiting me, with a table cheerfully set forth and a great Newcastle
-coal fire roaring. She kissed me again and again; had I been her own
-child she could not have given me a gladder, more affectionate welcome.
-She saw exhaustion in my looks and the marks of much bitter weeping in
-my eyes, and asked no questions until after I had eaten and drunk and
-was resting upon the sofa before the fire, with my feet in comfortable
-slippers, and the dress in which I had travelled replaced by a warm
-dressing-gown.
-
-I then told her everything that had happened to me; but when I opened
-the travelling-bag, which I had kept at my side, and took from it the
-two little locks of hair and showed them to her, I broke down, and
-could not speak again for a long time for weeping.
-
-‘Well,’ said she, when my sobs had ceased, ‘your adventure has
-certainly been an extraordinary one. To think of neither your husband
-nor your sister knowing you! Surely that can only be accounted for by
-their conviction that you are dead? Your white hair, and the structural
-change of the shape of your nose, and the change in the shape of your
-right brow, coupled with other changes which they might be able to
-point out, have, of course, created a new face for you--a face such
-as friends, people whom you may have known for a few years but met at
-intervals only, would not recognise; but that the alteration should be
-so complete that your own sister and husband----no, it is because they
-believe you dead.’
-
-‘The light was dim when my husband saw me,’ said I.
-
-‘Ay, but your sister? She saw you when you were brought in from the
-street in daylight. No; I am sure that nothing could have saved you
-from recognition but their belief that you are dead--a belief that is
-now a habit of mind with them, not to be disturbed by the apparition
-of a white-haired woman, who, to be sure, looks some years older than
-the mere passage of three years only could have made her.’
-
-She then asked me what I meant to do, and I replied that the sight
-of my sister had hardened my resolution to leave her in undisturbed
-possession of her home and her peace of mind.
-
-‘But your children, dear?’
-
-‘I am in God’s hands,’ I cried. ‘I have left it to Him to bring them to
-me in His own good time.’
-
-She looked at me, shook her head, and fell into a fit of musing.
-
-I was so exhausted, however, that I was unable to maintain a
-conversation even on this subject of my children--a subject which so
-wholly occupied my heart that I could think of nothing else. I went to
-bed, and scarcely was my head upon the pillow when I fell asleep, and
-slept without moving the whole night through, without the disturbance
-of the least dream that I can remember. In fact, nature could support
-the burthen I had imposed upon her no longer; I had, in truth, scarcely
-closed my eyes for above a few hours from the time of the restoration
-of my memory, and this night I lay as one that had died. Next morning,
-when I awoke, I found my limbs so stiff that I was unable to rise,
-and I kept my bed all that day. Mrs. Lee came and sat by my side,
-and we talked long and gravely upon the subject of my future--what
-was best to be done; whether I had a right to divorce myself from my
-husband and remain as dead to him out of a sentimental tenderness for
-my sister, whose claims were not those of a mother’s, as mine were;
-whose claims were not those even of a wife’s, as mine were--because it
-would be all the same whether I was living or dead: she could not be
-my husband’s wife; the law did not suffer a man to marry the sister of
-his dead wife. In this way Mrs. Lee reasoned; and, after asking me some
-questions about my sister--as to her habits, tastes, appearance, and so
-forth--she said:
-
-‘Why will you not let me write to her, gently break the news of your
-being alive, ask her to come and see us here, and bring your children
-with her; then the three of us can talk the matter over? Her sensations
-on hearing the news of your being alive will soon pass; you will find
-that she will agree in my views and consent to come and live with me,
-taking your place, often seeing you and the children--for, of course,
-dear Agnes, you will be a regular visitor. I can imagine no other
-way of your regaining possession of your children. Whilst you have
-been away I have thought and thought, and I cannot imagine what Mr.
-----’ (naming the clergyman), ‘will be able to suggest beyond what
-we ourselves are quite capable of conceiving--namely, that, in order
-to obtain your children, you must make your existence known to your
-husband and sister. Since, therefore, _that_ is certain, the rest is
-inevitable. I mean that your sister, on hearing that you are alive,
-must at once quit your husband.’
-
-I lay in my bed listening to her, and often answering and agreeing with
-her in many points of her argument, but all the time perfectly resolved
-to remain dead to my husband, that my sister’s peace should not be
-ruined and her life wrecked. The problem of how I was to regain my
-children was indeed fearful, and, as I did think, insoluble; but I had
-seen them, I had kissed them in their sleep, they were alive and well.
-All this greatly comforted me, and though I was almost crazy with a
-mother’s yearning for them, I felt better capable of waiting, now that
-I had seen them, than before--better capable of exercising patience
-for my sister’s sake, looking to God to reward me for my sacrifice by
-uniting me with my children without desolating my sister’s life.
-
-When the night came I again slept well, and was awakened next morning
-by a knock on the door. The servant entered, and handed me a letter in
-deep mourning. I was startled by the deep black edge upon the envelope,
-and told the maid to open the curtains. She did so, flooding the room
-with light, and withdrew. I looked at the envelope, and instantly
-recognised the handwriting as that of my sister. It was addressed
-to Mrs. John Campbell, care of Mrs. Lee. In fact, the address was
-precisely the same as that which I had written upon the cards I had
-taken to Bath with me, one of which, as you will remember, Mrs. Lee had
-stitched inside of the back of my jacket, the only difference being
-that the envelope bore my name, Mrs. John Campbell.
-
-I trembled violently, and for some few minutes felt so faint that the
-letter drooped in my hand on to the coverlet, whilst I lay back for
-the support of the pillow. Then I looked at the letter again; it was
-in Mary’s writing. I knew the writing as well as though I had seen her
-with a pen in her hand addressing the envelope. For a long time I could
-not summon courage to open the letter. It was not only the handwriting
-and the seeing my name plain upon the envelope; it was the mourning
-also that terrified me, so significant was it of the character of the
-enclosure. At last I opened the letter, and read this:
-
-  ‘My own darling Sister,--When, after fainting at the sight of your
-  boy, you were brought into your house, and your hat and veil were
-  removed, I knew you. Beloved sister, I knew you instantly. Your
-  white hair, your changed appearance, could not disguise you from
-  the eyes of my love. They had told me that during a great part of
-  the day a woman in black, thickly veiled, had several times passed
-  this house, and when your veil was removed, and I saw that it was
-  you, Agnes, _then_ I knew all, I understood all. I knew that you
-  had come to catch a sight of your children, that you knew I had
-  become your husband’s wife, and I understood that your secret visit
-  meant that when you returned to your home you would never come here
-  again. And why? That your husband and I might think you dead, as we
-  have long believed you dead, and that I might be left to live as I
-  have lived since you were mourned as lost to us for ever.
-
-  ‘My darling sister! It was because I knew you that I insisted upon
-  your remaining in the house all night, for then you would have
-  rested, sleep would have given you strength, I should have been
-  able to see you in the morning, have heard your story, and have
-  told you mine. Oh! what has kept you from us for three years? What
-  sufferings have you undergone to change you so? I have loved and
-  tended your little ones as though they had been my own. You will
-  find them well, and very beautiful children. You saw but little of
-  Johnny. You fell whilst he was looking at you. I have been wakeful
-  all night, pacing the floor of a room that was above the one in
-  which you slept--not thinking over what I should do; no! what I was
-  to do I knew very well; but thinking about you, your three years’
-  absence, the meeting of two sisters who knew each other and loved
-  each other, and yet dared not speak to each other.
-
-  ‘And why did not I speak to you, Agnes? Because, my beloved, I
-  desired the morning to come, when, after having sat and conversed
-  with you in your bedroom, I should have been able to depart from
-  your house, leaving it to you to tell your husband the story of
-  your return, and of my going, when he came back to his home in the
-  evening.
-
-  ‘You know that I was married to him fourteen weeks ago. Your secret
-  visit convinced me that _that_ news had reached you. Oh! had the
-  gentle and all-merciful God brought you home to us but four months
-  earlier! I can write to you that I was married to John, but I could
-  not look at you and say so.
-
-  ‘Yet I believed you dead, dear sister, and your husband believed
-  you dead. The body of the man who attended you in the boat was
-  washed ashore, and the boat was afterwards found drifting about,
-  upside down. How could we doubt that you had perished? But I have
-  not come between you and your husband’s heart. Your memory is sweet
-  and sacred to him. Often does he talk of you. It is a subject that
-  he never wearies of. One to take the place of you was needed for
-  Johnny and little Mary, and who fitter than I? But oh! but oh! that
-  you had returned but four months earlier!
-
-  ‘And now with the tears standing in my eyes, and my heart aching as
-  though it must break, I am going to bid you farewell for ever. Do
-  not fear for me. God’s love will stay my hand. I will do nothing
-  that is rash or sinful. I shall hear of you and always in spirit
-  be with you, and my prayers shall ever be for you and for your
-  husband, and your little ones. By the time this letter reaches
-  your hands, your husband will have known all, and will in all
-  probability be on his way to Newcastle-on-Tyne.
-
-  ‘As for me, I go where no inquiries can ever reach me. It will be
-  useless to seek for me; not the utmost strength of our love, Agnes,
-  would ever be able to court me from my concealment. You may hear of
-  me in my death, but in no wise else, and some day you will know why
-  I have chosen to hide myself until the grave closes over me.
-
-  ‘But I could wish to receive one last letter from you, telling me
-  what has befallen you, and where you have been during these three
-  years, and sending me your blessing and your love, and a kiss.
-  Therefore write to me at the ---- Hotel, Leicester. Address me
-  there by return of post, that I may receive the letter as I pass
-  through that town. My beloved sister, farewell. Forgive me! Love me
-  with the strength of your old sweet love.
-
-                                                  ‘MARY.’
-
-I read this letter twice over, realising its full import. There
-then followed such a tumult of feelings in my mind that I cannot
-recollect even a little of my thoughts. I was struck to the heart by
-the knowledge that Mary had known me from the beginning, and had not
-spoken, and then horror fell upon me when I reflected that she had left
-her home; that she had as good as vowed never to be heard of until her
-death should come; that, despite her assurance, grief, misery, shame,
-homelessness, the remembrance of what she had lost, the fear of, as I
-could read in her letter, of what was yet to befall her, might tempt
-her to end her life!
-
-I hastily rose, dressed myself, and went downstairs. Mrs. Lee had not
-yet left her bed. I took pen and paper, and wrote to Mary. I wrote page
-after page, for I had much to relate and also to implore, to persuade,
-and to command. On the top of the third or fourth sheet of paper I
-began to tell her that it was my unalterable resolution never to live
-with my husband, or speak of him, or think of him as my husband whilst
-she was living; and I was going on to say that I asked for nothing but
-my children, when it flashed upon me that if I told her I would never
-have anything more to do with my husband _while she was alive_, her
-love for me, her determination to reinstate me might cause her to take
-her life! so that by making a widower of my husband, so far as she was
-concerned, there could be no longer any excuse remaining to keep me
-away from my home. This fear I say flashed upon me, and I tore that
-part of the letter up, and went on writing till I had said all that
-was in my heart; but even as I addressed the envelope I seemed to feel
-that this letter, full as it was of love and piteous pleadings to her
-to return to her home, would be no more than as a wreath laid upon a
-grave, and that my sister and I would never meet again in this world.
-
-I desired a servant to immediately post the letter, and then walked
-about the room, as was my habit when deeply agitated, waiting for the
-arrival of Mrs. Lee. She entered at last, kissed me, and looking at me
-affectionately, exclaimed: ‘You have heard from your sister, I am sure.
-The letter was brought to me in error, and I sent it immediately to
-you.’
-
-I put it into her hand in silence. She read it through, and then said:
-‘So she knew you, and yet made no sign! She must be a girl of great
-nobility of mind, of wonderful strength of character.’ She read the
-letter through again, and exclaimed: ‘And now, Agnes, you will return
-with your husband?’
-
-‘No,’ I answered. ‘I cannot, and will not, think of him as my husband
-whilst my sister lives.’
-
-She said much to dissuade me from this resolution, pointing out that
-great as might be my love for my sister, my husband must be first of
-all with me. Did I remember my marriage vows? Did I remember saying
-that I would forsake all others, and keep only to my husband? This was
-a vow solemnly uttered at the altar, and God was a witness to it, and
-I should be grievously sinning if I were false to that vow. I answered
-that I loved my husband, and that I remembered my marriage vows, but
-that my husband had married my sister, believing me dead, that she was
-his wife and must remain his wife. I asked for my children, I said; and
-when I had them--and here I broke into a passion of weeping, for God
-knows I spoke truly when I said that I loved my husband; and yet my
-love for my sister, my determination that she should not be dishonoured
-by my reappearing, after I was supposed dead, must certainly divorce
-me from my husband; and then there was the thought of my sister hiding
-for the remainder of her days alone, knowing no other happiness than
-such as would flow from the belief that I was happy--I say all these
-thoughts broke in upon me, and extinguished my speech in a passion of
-tears.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVI
-
-THE END
-
-
-The time passed, and now I was to prepare myself to receive my husband.
-My mind had been so wholly engrossed by my sister that I had given but
-little thought to the interview that was likely to happen that day, if
-it were true, as Mary had said, that my husband would come to Newcastle.
-
-It was not my fault, but the fault of my having been born a woman--of
-my being human, in short--that, whilst I thought of my husband’s
-arrival, I should find myself looking into the glass and comparing
-my face with my sister’s. Never had I seen her so sweet, so lovely,
-indeed, as when I beheld her in the road when my little boy came
-running to me. How different was my face from hers! And yet, if he
-loved me, if his love for my memory was as deep as my sister had
-declared it in her letter, surely my face could not signify. Had I
-found him shorn of his youth, maimed, ravaged by disaster, it would not
-have mattered, I should but have loved him the more.
-
-But then, I said to myself, whilst I looked in the glass, ‘What should
-it be to me if his love grows cold at the sight of my white hair and
-my altered countenance? Why should I care, though he came to me loving
-only Mary? for I swear’--and as I pronounced these words I knelt--‘I
-swear by my God that whilst Mary lives I will be no wife to John.’ And
-this I said on my knees, again and still again. Yet, when I arose,
-having been governed by a sudden bitter, powerful impulse to pronounce
-these words, my heart trembled within me, and I felt that I had sinned
-in directing myself by oath to a course, instead of trusting myself,
-child-like, to the guiding hand of Him whose loving eye had been, as I
-still hoped it was, upon me.
-
-I was in my bedroom that evening; the time was a little before eight.
-The room, as you may remember, was at the back of the house, and no
-sound of traffic from the roadway reached me. On a sudden Mrs. Lee
-opened the door without knocking, and said, with something of alarm
-in the expression of her face, ‘Agnes, your husband awaits you in the
-dining-room.’
-
-Had I not seen him when I secretly visited Bath, and had not Mary’s
-letter made me expect to see him at Jesmond almost immediately, I
-cannot tell what would have been the effect upon me of the announcement
-of his arrival. But I had had all day to think over it, and, as I
-have said, I had seen him when I went to Bath, though he did not
-know me; then, again, my capacity of emotion--or, in other words, my
-sensibility--was somewhat dulled by the manner in which my spirits had
-been strained since I had recovered my memory and received news of my
-family; for one reason or another, then, I merely started when Mrs. Lee
-announced my husband’s arrival, and, with a voice of composure, asked
-her to accompany me downstairs.
-
-‘No,’ said she, ‘go alone, Agnes. It will be a meeting too sacred for
-me to witness. I have welcomed him to my house, and he awaits you. Go,
-then!’
-
-I descended the stairs, but my heart beat very quickly. Sacred the
-meeting might be, but it could not possess the joy, the gladness, the
-happy tears, the pathos of the delight of reunion which must have
-made a golden and glorious memory of it whilst my life lasted had it
-chanced but four short months earlier. The dining-room door was ajar;
-I pushed it open and entered. A tall lamp stood upon the table; the
-globe was unshaded, and the light streamed full upon my husband, who
-stood at the table with his face turned towards the door. On seeing
-me, he cried, ‘Oh, Agnes! oh, my dearest wife!’ and in a moment he had
-embraced me, and once or twice he sobbed as he pressed his lips to my
-cheek. He held me to him for some moments, then released me, grasped my
-hands, and fell back a step to survey me.
-
-‘That I should not have known you,’ he cried, ‘when I looked at you as
-you lay upon the sofa! That you should have come to Bath, as Mary told
-me, to see your children, walking until you fainted in your exhaustion,
-and not entering your own house because--because--ah, God!’ he cried,
-broke off, hid his face, and then, looking at me, exclaimed, ‘Speak to
-me, Agnes!’
-
-‘Oh, John, I will speak to you! The love that I gave you when we were
-married is still yours. I will speak to you--but not as your wife.
-Look at these white hairs. Look at the deformity here and here. I have
-suffered much. For nearly three years have I been deprived of memory. I
-knew not my own name. I knew not,’ I added, in a low voice, ‘that I had
-a husband and children. My memory came back to me the other day, and
-then I heard that Mary was your wife. Would for her dear sake that I
-was dead, as you both believed me. Look in my face; you will see how I
-have suffered. But what have been my sufferings compared to Mary’s now?
-Oh! I have received a terrible letter from her.’
-
-I put my hand in my pocket and extended the letter to him. He looked
-at it, and then at me, and then at it again, standing motionless, as
-though paralysed. Presently he exclaimed, in a voice a little above a
-whisper:
-
-‘You will speak to me, you say, but not as my wife? You will speak to
-me, _but not as my wife_?’
-
-‘Oh, John! I love you, but whilst Mary lives I am not your wife.’
-
-He regarded me awhile, then extended his arms, as though he would
-have me run to him that he might clasp me. I could not bear his look,
-and, sinking upon a chair, I hid my face upon the table. He put his
-arm around me and caressed me, kissing my hands and stroking my hair,
-and calling me his precious wife whom God had returned to him. My
-resolution was a bitter hard one in the face of those endearments! I
-felt that he loved me. I believed in my heart that his marriage to my
-sister was mainly for the sake of my children, and to shield her from
-the whispers of the gossips by giving her his name. But, nevertheless,
-she was his wife in the eyes of God and in her own pure heart; it was
-not for me, her twin sister, to dishonour her; and with a cry forced
-from me from the _pang_ of determination renewed, even as I sat with
-buried face, caressed by my husband, I sprang to my feet, stepped a few
-paces away, and confronted him with dry eyes.
-
-‘Read this letter, John,’ I said; and I put Mary’s letter upon the
-table.
-
-He picked it up with one hand, and with the other drew a letter from
-his pocket.
-
-‘This, too,’ he said, ‘is from Mary.’
-
-It was addressed to my husband. It contained not above twenty lines.
-She said that the white-haired lady who had been carried into the
-house was Agnes, ‘my sister and your wife.’ She gave him my address,
-which she had doubtless found on the card that had been stitched to my
-jacket, and bade him go to me without delay. She then, in a few words,
-pointed out that I had come to Bath to see my children, that I knew
-she had been married to him, and that I had meant to remain as though
-dead to them that _her_ happiness might not be disturbed. Wonderful was
-the sympathy of the sweet and gentle heart that could thus interpret
-me! She briefly concluded by saying that she left him and the children
-with tears and love, and that day and night she would pray to God to
-continue to bless the house in which she had passed so many happy years.
-
-My heart wept tears of blood as I read this letter, but my eyes
-remained dry. My husband put the letter I had given to him upon the
-table after reading it, and stood with his head bowed. He looked pale,
-distress worked in his face, he had been travelling all day and was
-cold, and he was my husband and I loved him. I took him by the hand
-and led him to an arm-chair near the fire, and stood beside him.
-
-‘John,’ I said, ‘Mary is your wife, and out of her letter I interpret
-what you yourself must know. Can I dishonour my beloved sister by
-replacing her? Would you wish it? Could you endure the thought of it?
-You must seek her, take her to you again, cherish her. I ask only for
-my children. Give me them, for they are mine and I must have them.’
-
-‘I will seek her, Agnes, but you are my wife. I will seek her; but
-suppose I find her? It is not she who is my wife; it is you. Could I
-induce her to live with us under the same roof?’ He paused, and then
-said, a little wildly, ‘Why have you been silent for three years? What
-has become of you in all that long time?’
-
-I took a chair opposite him, and told him all that had befallen me,
-from the hour of the boatman falling overboard down to the time of
-the recovery of my memory. He often started up, as though pity and
-grief would make him clasp me. Then I told him of Alice Lee, and of
-Mrs. Lee’s goodness to me--how dear, true, and devoted a friend she had
-proved to me; and I also told him of the many inquiries she had caused
-to be made on our return to England, and of the paragraphs relating
-my story which had appeared in the newspapers. He declared he had not
-heard one word of those paragraphs. He asked me to name the time when
-they had appeared, and, when I answered, he said that in those months
-he was taking a holiday in France with Mary and the children, and
-this was the reason, no doubt, of his not having seen the newspaper
-paragraphs; but he was amazed that none of his friends had acquainted
-him with the publication of a story which must certainly have led to
-his discovering me, particularly as my disappearance from Piertown and
-my supposed death at sea had been much talked of amongst our friends in
-Bath, whilst the account of the disaster had been printed in a local
-paper.
-
-His mentioning the trip to France with Mary and the children led him to
-speak of the reason of his marrying my sister. I listened to him, and
-then said, ‘I have not one word to say. When I first received the news
-it grieved me indeed to think how short a time it takes for a man to
-banish the memory of his wife from his love.’
-
-‘No!’ he said passionately, ‘your memory was never banished from my
-love. What has been my sin? How I grieved over your loss, Mary knows.
-But the years stole away, two years and eight months passed; all this
-while Mary was living with me, the children wanted a mother’s care, and
-Mary was with them, and I could not part with her for Johnny’s and the
-baby’s sake. But already your sister had remained too long under the
-roof of one who was supposed to be a widower. People had been talking
-for some time. Our visitors grew fewer and fewer. Either Mary must
-leave my children, or I must protect her with my name.’
-
-‘John, I have not one word to say,’ I repeated, ‘but Mary is your wife,
-and if that be so, you cannot be my husband; therefore find her--you
-will send me my children?’ My voice failed me; nevertheless I arose,
-crossed to him, kissed his brow, and then found power to say: ‘I love
-you, but I also love my sister. Do not ask me to dishonour her. Sooner
-than do so I will kill myself,’ and speaking these words I pulled the
-bell.
-
-A servant opened the door, and I asked her to request Mrs. Lee to join
-us. In a few moments the dear little creature entered. ‘This has been
-my true best friend,’ I cried, throwing my arms around her neck.
-
-My husband took her by the hand, and thanked her with deep feeling for
-her kindness to me; ‘But,’ he added, looking at her with grief strong
-in his face, ‘she asks for her children, and means to live away from
-me, and to think of me as a stranger.’
-
-‘Mr. Campbell,’ said Mrs. Lee, speaking cheerfully, though with a
-little effort, ‘you must give your wife time. She has told you she was
-without memory for three years. The whole of her past life came to her
-suddenly, as I believe, as I truly believe, through the intercession of
-my sainted child. Here was a revelation that might wreck the reason.
-A lifetime is granted to a mortal to bear the sorrows and take the
-pleasures of a lifetime, but all that entered into the lifetime of your
-wife was utterly lost to her for three years, and then the mighty tide
-of memory floods her brain. Consider this, I pray you, and add to it
-the sad complication that has followed. Bear with her, grant her time;
-all will yet be well.’
-
-‘My sister must not suffer through me,’ said I.
-
-‘Neither must you suffer through your sister,’ she answered. ‘Mr.
-Campbell, I have ordered supper to be laid in the drawing-room, as I
-did not wish you to be interrupted. You must feel weary after your long
-journey.’
-
-‘I can eat nothing, thanking you much. I have left my portmanteau at
-the Central Station Hotel. I had hoped to return with Agnes to-morrow
-morning.’
-
-‘No, John, no!’ I cried. ‘When will you send the children to me?’
-
-‘Are you so resolved?’ he said in a low voice.
-
-‘I have sworn by my God,’ I cried, ‘that Mary shall not be dishonoured
-through me. She is your wife. It is your duty to seek her, to follow
-her, to find her. She is to be traced to Leicester, at all events.’
-
-He took up his hat that lay upon a chair, moving as though in a dream.
-
-‘God forgive you, Agnes,’ said he; ‘you are wronging and paining one
-who loves you.’
-
-He went to the door, and held it a moment with his eyes fixed upon me.
-I directed my gaze downwards; for not long could I have withheld that
-appealing look.
-
-‘God forgive you!’ said he again, and passed out, followed by Mrs. Lee,
-who closed the door behind her. She took him into the drawing-room,
-and a long half-hour passed. The hall-door was then opened and shut,
-footsteps sounded on the gravel-path, and Mrs. Lee came into the
-dining-room. She sank into a chair, and exclaimed, ‘Agnes, he is a
-good man, and he loves you. I have sent him away with a light heart.
-All will yet be well. We shall recover your sister, and she will live
-with me, and you will be a happy wife once more in your own home, with
-your husband and your children by your side.’
-
-‘Will he send the children to me?’ I said.
-
-‘Yes.’
-
-‘When?’
-
-‘On his return.’
-
-I blessed him in my heart, and kissed him in fancy. But the strain
-had proved too great. The strength I had put forth to uphold me in my
-resolution, not to know him as my husband whilst Mary lived, had taxed
-me too heavily. I sat down at the table to support my head till the fit
-of giddiness should pass, and when I opened my eyes again, Mrs. Lee
-told me that I had been unconscious for nearly a quarter of an hour.
-
-She saw me to bed, and that my thoughts should not keep me sleepless
-all night, she procured and insisted on my taking a soothing draught,
-which threw me into a sleep from which I did not awaken until past
-eight o’clock next morning. My mind went often to my husband throughout
-the day, but oftener to my children, whom I was to expect on the
-following afternoon, and oftener still to my sister. In what part of
-England did she mean to hide herself? And was it not true, as John had
-said, that, supposing her hiding-place to be discovered, she would
-insist on remaining apart from us all, insuring concealment by change
-of quarters. It was certain she would not dwell with my husband whilst
-I was alive. It was certain she could not live with us if I chose to
-return to my husband. What then could she do? She must live apart, and
-her pride and her condition, which her letter had hinted at, would
-compel her to live in obscurity, even though, instead of having a
-hundred a year to subsist upon, she had the wealth of a Princess.
-
-I talked earnestly, with tears and with passion, to Mrs. Lee about
-her; asked her how we should go to work to find out where she was;
-‘Because,’ I said, ‘if she should not consent to live with you, she
-might consent to live with me and my children. My husband must support
-me, and Mary and I might be able to put enough together to keep a
-little home on.’
-
-But Mrs. Lee answered somewhat coldly, and without interest. Her
-sympathy was not with my sister; it was with me and my husband and
-children. She told me that I had no right to render my children
-fatherless, to deprive them of their natural protection, and of their
-home, indeed, by finding out where my sister was hidden and dwelling
-with her. Indeed she strongly discountenanced my resolution not to
-rejoin my husband, and I let the subject drop, fearful lest some hot
-sentence should escape me, which might give pain to a friend and
-benefactress whom I loved only a little less tenderly than I loved my
-own sister.
-
-I busied myself that afternoon, helped by the old housekeeper, Sarah,
-to prepare a room for my children and the nurse. I walked into
-Newcastle and purchased two little bedsteads, and I bought several toys
-and boxes of sweets as surprises and welcomes for my little ones; and
-when the evening had come, my thoughts at the time being much with my
-husband, I sat down, and for above two hours occupied myself in filling
-page after page of a letter to him.
-
-I should only weary you to give you, even in the most abridged form,
-the substance of that long letter. It was a justification of my
-behaviour; it was an entreaty for my sister; and I also pointed out to
-him that now my children were coming to me, I could no longer remain
-dependent upon Mrs. Lee. I would be satisfied with the interest of
-the money my mother had given to me, and if that did not suffice to
-maintain my children and myself, I would endeavour by my industry to
-make up what was wanting.
-
-My children came next day. My husband sent Mrs. Lee a telegram, giving
-the hour at which the train arrived, and I went to the railway station
-to meet my children. There were many people on the platform, and I
-do not doubt that my behaviour was observed, and that numbers went
-away saying that they had seen a mad woman. My joy at the sight of my
-children was indeed extravagant. First, I would take the baby from the
-nurse and hug it, and then pick up Johnny and hold him, and then put
-the little fellow down and take the baby again, laughing and crying
-alternately with such gestures of delight, with such impassioned speech
-to one or the other of the little ones, that, as I have said, many of
-the people who observed me must have certainly thought me crazy.
-
-As we drove to Jesmond I plied the nurse with all sorts of questions,
-and heard, though I did not need to be told, of the devotion of Mary
-to my children. As for the nurse, I could not but treat her as a
-stranger. She had been with me a few months only before I was lost to
-my family, and now, after three years, she was as strange to me as
-though I had just engaged her. She it was, however, who told me of my
-sister’s fright and grief, when, at Piertown, the evening approached,
-the weather grew boisterous, and I did not return; how my sister had
-sent boatmen to seek for me, but how they came back in a very short
-while, bringing no news, and offering no hope; how further search was
-made next day when my husband arrived. And she told me of his grief,
-how his heart seemed broken, how messages were sent to adjacent ports
-along the line of coast stating the disaster, and requesting that a
-lookout should be kept, and that a search should be made; and then she
-spoke of the family’s return to Bath, of their going into mourning for
-me, though for months my husband refused to believe I was lost to him,
-in spite of the boatman’s body having been washed ashore, and his boat
-discovered upside down. She told me enough in her plain way to make
-me understand that I had been mourned by my husband with a passion of
-grief that had broken him down and forced him away for his health,
-and almost ruined his practice by rendering him for months unfit for
-business.
-
-I secretly wept as I listened to her and often kissed my children, for
-his face as he had turned to look at me was before me, and his cry of
-‘God forgive you, Agnes!’ rang in my ears.
-
-Two days after I had written to him I received a reply. He enclosed a
-cheque, told me what he was earning, and said that all should be mine
-if I would grant him a trifle to live upon in lodgings, because now
-that his children were gone and I refused to return to him his home was
-desolate, his life was made insupportable by the memories which arose
-as he sat alone of an evening. He would shut up the house, he said, and
-go into lodgings and there await me, for he had faith in my love and
-believed that I would return to him yet. He had much to tell me about
-Mary, repeated all that he had said in his conversation with me about
-his reasons for marrying her, said that he had made up his mind not to
-endeavour to discover her, because if he succeeded in finding her he
-was without any proposal to make. She was not his wife, he could not
-insult her by asking her to live with him, and she would not live with
-me if I rejoined him. Even if he could find her he would not propose,
-because he would not wish, that she and I should live together, for in
-that case it might come to his never seeing me nor his children again.
-Much more he said with which I will not weary you.
-
-But his appeals left my resolution unaltered. Day followed day and I
-was for ever hoping to receive a letter from my sister, or to hear
-from my husband that he had learnt where she was in hiding. But the
-silence remained unbroken. What could I do? Even should I make appeals
-to her through the newspapers and she read them she was not likely to
-tell me where she lived and what she was doing. I could not myself
-seek for her. It was impossible to know, indeed, whether she had not
-left England. I ascertained from my husband that she had withdrawn her
-securities, so there was no clue to her whereabouts to be obtained
-from the bank where she had deposited the documents. Bitterest of all
-was this consideration--that even if I employed some shrewd person to
-seek after her and he should find her, there was no other proposal to
-make than that she should live with me; a proposal that I knew would be
-hopeless, because she would feel that whilst she lived with me I could
-not live with my husband, and her reason in disappearing was that she
-should be as dead to us voluntarily as I had been forced to be through
-calamity, that I might return to my home.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Six months passed. Occasionally I heard from my husband. He had locked
-up the house and gone into lodgings, and every letter contained an
-impassioned entreaty to me to return to him with the children.
-
-One evening I was sitting with Mrs. Lee reading aloud to her. We had
-passed the afternoon in a long drive with the children; they were
-in bed sleeping soundly, and I had come down from seeing after them
-and was now sitting reading aloud to Mrs. Lee. It was the 21st of
-April, and, I believe, six months to the very day since the date of my
-husband’s visit to Jesmond.
-
-I was reading aloud mechanically; my thoughts had all day been very
-much with my husband and my sister, and I felt dull in my heart, when
-we were startled by a loud postman’s knock on the hall door, and a
-minute later the housemaid entered with a letter. It was addressed to
-me, and it was in my husband’s handwriting, and I said to Mrs. Lee,
-‘Here is a letter from John.’
-
-But on opening the envelope I found that the enclosure consisted of a
-letter addressed to Mrs. John Campbell at my house in Bath. I turned it
-about before opening it. It was sealed with black wax, but the envelope
-was not black-edged, and the handwriting was entirely strange to me.
-
-‘Can this be news of Mary?’ said I in a low voice, and looking at the
-post-mark I said, ‘it is from Manchester.’
-
-‘Open it, my love, and read it,’ said Mrs. Lee; ‘there is no other way
-to put an end to your conjectures.’
-
-The superscription of the letter was that of a vicarage taking its
-name from a very little town or village within an easy distance of
-Manchester. It was dated seven days earlier than this date of my
-receipt of it. I read it aloud:
-
-  ‘Dear Madam,--As the clergyman who attended your sister, Mary
-  Hutchinson, during her last moments, and as her friend and
-  confidant during the few months she resided in this neighbourhood,
-  it is my sad duty to inform you that she died on Saturday evening
-  last. She was confined of a still-born child on the previous
-  Tuesday, was very ill, having been long previously in a weakly
-  condition, but rallied, and the doctor had great hopes, when a
-  change happened for the worse, and I was sent for.
-
-  ‘My wife had helped to nurse her through her illness; she was
-  seldom absent from her side. The sad and singular story of your
-  sister was well known to us. She took lodgings in this quiet place
-  about five months since, and speedily attracted my attention by her
-  frequent attendance at church, by her devotional behaviour during
-  the services, and by her isolation, that seemed strange in one so
-  young and beautiful. My wife and I found out where she lodged,
-  and called. Our relations quickly grew friendly and ripened into
-  intimacy. She told us her story, the story of your own strange and
-  dreadful experiences, imploring our secrecy, and assuring us that
-  nothing could ever prevail on her to make her whereabouts known to
-  you and her husband. We admired the nobility of her resolution, nor
-  was it possible for us to counsel her otherwise than as her own
-  pure heart dictated. Indeed, dear madam, we had nothing to oppose
-  to her own views. She was right. God has now taken her to Himself,
-  and be satisfied that she is happy, for surely she was of those who
-  are tried by the Lord in this world only that they shall enter more
-  surely as partakers of the glory of God and the life everlasting of
-  His Kingdom.
-
-  ‘I propose that the funeral shall take place on Tuesday, if by
-  that date you and Mr. Campbell can conveniently reach this place.
-  Almost her last thoughts were with you and your husband and your
-  two children, and she desired me to send you her blessing, to tell
-  you that she was without pain, that the peace of God was upon her
-  spirit, and that she desired rest. One of the last wishes she
-  expressed was that her money should be divided between and settled
-  upon your two children.
-
-                              ‘I am, dear madam,
-                                  ‘Sincerely yours,
-                                      ‘JOHN F. TRUSCOTT.
-
-  ‘P.S.--I reopen this letter after an interval of a week, to express
-  my deep regret that owing to an oversight on the part of one of my
-  servants it was not posted when written. It was placed upon the
-  mantelpiece and the servant was directed to post it, but, by some
-  means I am unable to account for, it got hidden behind a large
-  clock that stands upon my mantelpiece. I beg your forgiveness. I
-  am bitterly grieved by this act of neglect. The remains of your
-  dear sister were buried on Wednesday. I trust this letter may
-  safely reach your hands, and should you or Mr. Campbell be unable
-  to immediately visit us I shall be happy to attend to any requests
-  you may have to make.’
-
-I read this letter aloud with tearless eyes to the last syllable of it,
-then remained gazing at it as though I had been turned to stone, and
-thus I sat, and nothing broke the silence in that room for many minutes
-but the tick of the clock or the fall of an ember in the grate.
-
-Then, lifting up my eyes and looking at Mrs. Lee, I said, ‘Mary is
-dead!’
-
-‘She is dead,’ said Mrs. Lee, beginning to weep, ‘and so is Alice, and
-so is Edith, and how much happier are they than we!’
-
-‘She is dead,’ I cried, ‘my sister is dead!’ and I rose and stepped
-about the room murmuring to myself, ‘She is dead---and I was not there
-to attend upon her---and whilst she lay dying I might have been playing
-with my children and not thinking of her---’And then, seeing Mrs. Lee
-weeping, the sight of her tears loosened mine, and I flung myself upon
-my knees at her side and buried my face in her lap.
-
-I felt my dear friend’s soft hand upon my head, and I heard her whisper
-in my ear, ‘Agnes, it is at such a moment as this that you need your
-husband’s love and sympathy.’
-
-‘Oh, John!’ I cried, starting to my feet, ‘if you were but here.’
-
-‘He is lonely--his grief will not be less than yours, Agnes,’ said Mrs.
-Lee. ‘Prove now a true wife to your husband.’
-
-‘I will go to him,’ I cried.
-
-She kissed me, and again I knelt by her side, and with clasped hands
-and streaming eyes we talked of Mary and of Alice and of my husband.
-
-
-THE END
-
-
-  PRINTED BY
-  SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
-  LONDON
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-Transcriber’s Notes
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-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.
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