‘Do not ask me, Mr. Harris. I remember nothing, and it would be all the same if the gipsy had told me I was the queen of England.’
He stood in the moonlight and I in the trunk-like shadow cast by the mast, and I observed that he regarded me steadfastly, with an expression of earnestness that might have gathered a deeper character than it really owned from the nature of the light; he eyed me as though he would read my face, but the shadow was as good as my veil, which I had not thought of putting on at that hour.
‘I’ll tell you what my notion is,’ said he; ‘that gipsy woman is full of lies. How should she know that you’re married? Wouldn’t you wear a wedding-ring if you were married? What does she want to make out: that your wedding-ring was stolen off your finger when you were in the boat? But those French chaps found you alone, didn’t they? You couldn’t have been very long unconscious, and who’s to tell me that you weren’t alone when you fell insensible? If there was a sailor with you, you must have been sensible when he was in the boat; and no man’s going to persuade me—whether you can remember that sailor plundering you or not—no man’s going to persuade me that any sailor or sailors—distressed as such people as were along with you must have been—supposing any parties to have been along with you——’ he paused, having lost the thread of his argument, and then, smiting the palm of his left hand with his fist, he exclaimed with subdued energy, ‘What I mean is, I don’t believe you were robbed.’
He glanced round to observe if anyone was near enough to have overheard him.
‘I can tell you nothing, Mr. Harris,’ said I.
‘The gipsy and her lies may be put on one side,’ said he. ‘In fact, if I catch her aft again with her confounded yarns I’ll make her wish that this ship had never been built with a poop. Sir Frederick Thompson’s opinion is another matter. I don’t reckon you’re a Calthorpe, as he calls it; for there’s no inward echo to the name, and an inward echo there’d be if a Calthorpe you were, so I think, and I believe I’m no fool. But if you’re not a Calthorpe, you may be somebody as good and perhaps better.’ After a pause he exclaimed, ‘Suppose your memory don’t return to you?’
‘Do not suppose it,’ I cried with bitterness.
‘I wish to say nothing to wound you, miss,’ said he, ‘but there can be no harm in us two talking matters over. It’s early as yet, the ship doesn’t want watching, a more beautiful night you may sail round the world twenty times over without falling in with. You’ve got to consider this; suppose your memory don’t return—what then?’ I did not answer. ‘Of course,’ continued he, ‘your memory is going to return some time or other. The faculty’s alive. It’s only turned in for the present. Some of these days something’ll happen to act like the thump of a bo’sun’s handspike, and the faculty’ll tumble up wide awake as though it was to a roar of “All hands!” But whatever it be that’s going to rout that sleeping faculty out may keep you waiting. And meanwhile?’
I had no answer to make him and held my peace.
‘The captain, no doubt,’ he went on, ‘will keep you on board this ship until her arrival in London, if so be your memory won’t enable him to send you home sooner. But when this ship arrives in dock, what then? You can’t go on living on board her. The captain’s got no home now that his wife and child are dead. He’s a good man and might find you a lodging for a bit, but he don’t stay ashore above a couple or three months. And what, I’ve been asking of myself ever since that gipsy was aft here with her lying yarns, what’s to become of you?’