When we entered the saloon my companion went to her berth, and a moment after put her head out with her finger upon her lip and a slight smile of gratification, by which I understood that Alice still slumbered; so I walked to the stairs which conducted to the steerage, but as I put my foot on the first step, the door of a berth opened, and Mrs. Webber came forth. She immediately saw me, and called:
‘Where are you going, my dear Miss C——?’
‘I am going to my cabin.’
‘I will accompany you. I have not yet been downstairs, and I wish to see the part of the ship you sleep in. Oh, I am making great progress with the materials for the poem you are to be the heroine of. I wish I could write prose. I believe the tale I have in my head would be more readable in prose. Yet poetry gives you this strange advantage: it enables you to be impassioned. You can make use of expressions which cannot be employed in prose without provoking contempt, which is a disagreeable thing.’
All this she said loudly, as we stood together at the head of the steerage stairs. There were several passengers sitting about the saloon, reading or dozing. Two or three of them exchanged a smile. Perhaps they would have laughed outright had they not heard her imperfectly. But a rolling ship is full of noises; all the strong fastenings creak, doors clatter, there is for ever a rattle of crockery, though one knows not whence it proceeds, and these and other noises mingling with Mrs. Webber’s tones possibly rendered her indistinct to the passengers sitting a little way off.
‘By all means come with me downstairs,’ said I.
So together we went downstairs, or ‘below,’ as it is called at sea, and all the way to my cabin Mrs. Webber’s tongue was going.
‘This is a very gloomy corner,’ she cried, as we entered the steerage; ‘the captain ought to find you more cheerful quarters. But I believe all the upstairs cabins are taken. So this is the place where the second-class passengers live! Pray pause one moment, that the scene may paint itself upon my mind. I shall probably require this interior as a setting for you.’
Whilst she stood gazing round her a woman came out of a berth. She carried a baby in her arms. It was the baby that I had held and kissed, but the person who carried it now was the mother. Mrs. Webber took not the least notice of the child. As the person who carried it approached to pass us, I made a step to kiss the little creature. It knew me and smiled. I kissed it and took it in my arms, and when I had nursed it for a minute I returned it to the mother, who looked proudly as she received the pretty little thing, and, with a respectful bow that was half a curtsey, went on her way.
The child awoke no sensations. Why should that baby, I thought to myself, have caused a dreadful struggle in my mind when I first saw it? And why am I now able to nurse and kiss it without the least emotion? Can the darkness be deepening? Is the surface of the mind hardening under the frost and blackness of my sunless life?