CHAPTER XXIIMEMORY
Thedays 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 whowere 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 ofNotre Dame de Boulogne, but the man could not tell so much of what happened after the collision as I, because, when theNotre Damewas 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 theDeal Castlehad 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 withthe loss of all they possessed in the world. It was quite true, this man added, that theNotre Damehad 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 theNotre 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 driftingabout 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 ... hewould 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 theDeal 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 hercompanion. 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 wasnearly 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 theDeal 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 andthere. 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 thewound 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 confusedby 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 fora 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 mymemory 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 oceangrave——
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 perfectlyfamiliar 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, theone on her arm, the other by the hand, weremine! 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——’
Andnowthe 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 masteredthe 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 thecandle, 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 beganto 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; andthenmy heart was filled with an impassioned yearning to be with my dear ones again, to return to themimmediately, to writenow, 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.
Butthen, 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 threeyears? 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, andcried 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 andhear 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 byher 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 handto 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 truename 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 myconsent, 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:thatyou 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 aname, 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 easybreath 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 morningadvanced, 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.