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$Title{(A) Message From The Sea
Chapter III - Part IV}
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$Author{Dickens, Charles}
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$Subject{honor
anne
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$Date{}
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Title:       (A) Message From The Sea
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter III - Part IV

Passages From James Lawrence's Journal

     London, August 11, 1829. - Honor Livingston has kept her word with me.  I
saw her last night as plainly as I now see this pen I am writing with, and the
ink-bottle I have just dipped it into.  I saw her standing betwixt the two
lights, looking at me, exactly as she looked the last time I saw her alive.  I
was neither asleep nor dreaming awake.  I had only drunk a couple of glasses
of wine at dinner, and was as much my own man as ever I was in my life.  It is
all nonsense to talk about fancy and optical delusions in this case; I saw her
with my eyes as distinctly as I ever saw her alive in the body.  The hall
clock had just struck eight, and it was growing dusk; exactly the time of
evening, as I well remember, when she came creeping round by the cottage wall,
and saw me through the open window, gathering up my books and making ready to
go away from Ashendell. She was the last thought to have come into my mind at
that moment, for I was just on the point of lighting my cigar and going out
for a stroll, before turning in at the Daltons to chat with Anne.  All at once
there she was, Honor herself!  I could have sworn it, had I not seen them put
her under ground just a twelvemonth ago.  I could not take my eyes off her;
and there she stood, as nearly as I can tell, a minute, - but it may have been
an hour, - and then the place she had filled was empty.  I was so much
bewildered and out of myself as it were, that for a while I could neither
think of anything, nor hear anything, but the mad, heavy throbbing of my own
pulses.  I cannot say that I was scared exactly; for the time I was completely
rapt away; the first actual sensation I had was of my own heart thumping in my
breast like a sledge-hammer.

     But I can call her up now and analyze her, - a wan, vague, misty outline,
with Honor's own eyes full upon me.  I can almost fancy I hear her asking
again, "Is it true you're going, James?  You're not really going, James?"

     Now I am not the man to be frightened by a shadow, though that shadow be
Honor Livingston, whom they say I as good as murdered.  I always had a turn
for investigating riddles, spiritual, physiological, and otherwise, and I
shall follow this mystery up, and note whether she comes back to me year by
year, as she promised.  I have never kept a diary of personal matters before,
not being one who cares to see spectres of himself at remote periods of his
life, talking to him again of his adventures and misadventures out of yellow
old pages that had better never have been written; but this is a marked event
worth commemorating, and a well-authenticated ghost story to me who never
believed in ghosts before.

     It was a rather spiteful threat of Honor, - "I'll haunt you till you come
to the Ashenfall, where I'm going now!" I might have stopped her, but it never
entered my mind what she meant until it was done.  I did not expect she would
make a tragedy of a little love-story; she did not look like that sort of
thing.  She was no ghost, bless her!  in the flesh, but as round, rosy,
dimpled a little creature as one would wish to see; and what could possess her
to throw herself over the fall, Heaven only knows. Bah!  Yes, I know; I need
tell no lies here, I need not do any false swearing to myself, - the poor
little creature loved me, and I wanted her to love me, and I petted and
plagued her into loving me, because I was idle and had the opportunity; and
then I had nothing better to tell her than that I was only in jest, - I could
not marry her, for I was engaged to another woman.  She would not believe it.
That sounded to her more like jest than the other.  And she did not believe it
until she saw me making ready to go, and then, all in a moment, I suppose
madness seized her, and she neither knew where she went nor what she did.  I
fancy I can see her now coming tripping down the field leading her little
brother by the hand, and I fancy I can see the saucy laugh she gave me over
her shoulder as I asked her if she had any ripe cherries to sell.  She looked
the very mischief with those pretty eyes, and I was taken rather aback when
she said, "I know you, Jemmy Lawrence." That was the beginning of it. Little
Honor and her mother lived next door to mine, and she had not forgotten me
though I had been full seven years away.  I did not know her, the gypsy, but I
must needs go in and see her that evening; and so we went on until I asked her
if she remembered when we went to dame-school together, and when she promised
to be my little wife?  If she remembered! Of course she did, every word of it,
and more; and she was so pretty, and the lanes in the summer were so pleasant
that sometimes my fancy did play Anne Dalton false, and I believed I should
like Honor better; and I said more than I meant, and she took it all in the
grand, serious manner.

     I was not much to blame.  I would not have injured her for the world; she
was as good a little soul as ever lived.  Love and jealousy, as passions, seem
to find their strongholds under thatch.  If Phillis, the milkmaid, is
disappointed, she drowns herself in the mill-pool; if Lady Clara gets a cross
of the heart, she indites a lachrymose sonnet, and marries a gouty peer; if
Colin's sweetheart smiles on Lubin, Colin loads his gun and shoots them both;
if Sir Harry's fair flouts him, he whistles her down the wind, and goes a
wooing elsewhere.  Had little Honor been a fine lady she would be living
still.  O the pretty, demure lips, and the shy glances, and the rosy blushes!
When I saw Anne Dalton to-day I could not help comparing her frigid gentility
with poor Honor.  Anne loves herself better than she will ever love any man
alive.  But then I know she is the kind of wife to help a man up in the world,
and that is the kind of wife for me.

     Honor Livingston lying on her little bed, and her blind mother feeling
her cold, dead face!  I wish I had never seen it.  I would have given the
world to keep away, but something compelled me to go in and look at her; and I
did feel then as if I had killed her.  Last night she was a shadowy essence of
this drowned Ophelia and of her living self.  She was like, yet unlike; but I
knew it was Honor; and I suppose, if she has her will, wherever her restless
spirit may be condemned to bide between whiles, - on the 10th of August she
will always come back to me, and haunt me until I go to her.

     Hastings, August 11, 1830. - Again!  I had forgotten the day, - forgotten
everything about that wretched business of poor Honor Livingston when last
night I saw her.

     Anne and I were sitting together out in the veranda, talking of all sorts
of commonplace things, - our neighbours' affairs, money, this, that, and the
other, - the sea was beautiful, and I was on the point of proposing a row by
moonlight, when Anne said, "How lovely the evenings are, James, in this place!
Look at the sky over the down, how clear it is!" Turning my head, I saw Honor
standing on the grass only a few paces off, her shadowy shape quite distinct
against the reds and purples of the clouds.

     Anne clutched my hand with a sudden cry, for she was looking at my face
all the time, and asked me passionately what I saw.  With that Honor was gone,
and, passing my hand over my eyes, I put my wife off with an excuse about a
spasm at my heart.  And, indeed, it was no lie to say so, for this visitation
gave me a terrible shock.

     Anne insisted on my seeing the doctor.  "It must be something dreadful,
if not dangerous, that could make you look in that way; you had an awful face,
James, for a moment."

     I begged her not to talk about it, assured her that it was a thing of
very rare occurrence with me, and that there was no cure for it.  But this did
not pacify her, and this morning no peace could be had until Dr. Hutchinson
was sent for and she had given the old gentleman her own account of me.  He
said he would talk to me by and by.  And when he got me by myself, I cannot
tell how it was, but he absolutely contrived to worm the facts out of me, and
I was fool enough to let him do it.  He looked at me very oddly, with a sort
of suspicious scrutiny in his eye; but I understood him, and said, laughing,
"No, doctor, no, there is nothing wrong here," tapping my forehead as I spoke.

     "I should say not, except this fancy for seeing ghosts," replied he,
dryly.  But I perceived, all the time that he was with me, that I was the
object of a furtive and carefully dissembled observation, which was
excessively trying.  I could with difficulty keep my temper under it, and I
believe he saw the struggle.

     I fancy he wanted to have some talk with Anne by herself, but I prevented
that by never losing sight of him until he was safely off the premises.  If he
proposed a private interview while I was out alone, I prevented that, too, by
immediately ordering Anne to pack up our traps, and coming back to town that
very day.  I have not been well since.  I feel out of spirits, bored, worried,
sick of everything.  If the feeling does not leave me, in spite of all Anne
may say, I shall take that offer to go to South America, and start by the next
packet.  I should like to see Dr. Hutchinson's face when he calls at our
lodgings to visit his patient and finds the bird flown.

     London, August 20, 1830. - This wretched state of things does not cease.
One day I feel in full, firm, clear possession of my soul, and the next,
perhaps, I am hurried to and fro with the most tormenting fancies. I see
shadows of Honor wherever I turn, and she is no longer motionless as before,
but beckons me with her hand until I tremble in every limb.  My heart is sick
almost to death.  For three days now I have had no rest.  I cannot sleep at
nights for hideous dreams; and Anne watches me stealthily, I see, and never
remains with me longer than she can help.  I can perceive that she is afraid
of me, and that she suspects something, without knowing what.  To-day she must
needs suggest my seeing a doctor here, and when I replied I was going to South
America, she told me that I was not fit for it, in such a contemptuous tone of
provocation that I lifted my hand and struck her.  Then she quailed, and while
shrinking under my eyes, she said, "James, your conduct is that of a madman!"
Since then I know she sits with me in silent terror, longing to escape and
find some one to listen to her grievances.  But I shall keep strict ward that
she does nothing of the kind.  I will not have my foes of my own household,
and no spying relatives shall come between us to put asunder those whom God
has joined together.

     Acapulco, March 17, 1831. - It is six months since I wrote the above. In
the interval I have been miserably ill, grievously tormented both in mind and
body; but now that I have got safely away from them all, with the Atlantic
between myself and my wicked wife, whose conduct toward me I will never
forgive, I can collect my powers of mind, and bend them again to my work.
Burton came out in the same ship with me to engage in the same enterprise.
After a few days' rest, we intend setting out on our journey to the mining
districts, where we are to act.  My head feels perfectly light and clear, all
my impressions are distinct and vivid again, and I can get through a hard
day's close study without inconvenience.  There was nothing but my miserable
liver to blame, and when that was set right all my imaginary phantoms
disappeared.  Umpleby said it had been coming gradually for months, and that
there was nothing at all extraordinary in my delusions; my diseased state was
one always so attended, more or less. And Anne, in her cowardly malignity,
would have consigned me for life to a lunatic asylum.  It was Umpleby who
saved me, and I have put his name down in my will for a handsome remembrance.
As for Anne, she has chosen to return to her family, and they may keep her;
she will never see my face again, of my free will, as long as I live.

     The picturesqueness of this place is not noteworthy in any high degree.
The harbour is enclosed by a chain of mountains, and has two entrances formed
by the island of Roquetta; the castle of St. Diego commands the town and the
bay, standing on a spur of the hills.  Burton has been to and fro on his
rambles ever since we landed; but I find the heat too great for much exertion,
and when we begin our journey into the interior I have need of all my forces;
therefore, better husband them now.

     Mexico, April 24, 1831. - We are better off here than we anticipated.
Burton has found an old fellow-pupil engaged as engineering tutor in the
School of Mines, and there are civilized amusements which we neither of us had
any hope of finding.  The city is full of ancient relics, and Burton is on
foot exploring, day by day.  I prefer the living interests of this strange
place, and sometimes early in the morning I betake myself to the market-place,
and watch the Indians dress their stalls.  No matter what they sell they
decorate their shops with fresh herbs and flowers until they are sheltered
under a bower of verdure.  They display their fruit in open basket-work,
laying the pears and raisins below, and covering them above with odorous
flowers.  An artist might make a pretty picture here when the Indians arrive
at sunrise in their boats loaded with the produce of their floating gardens.
Next week Burton, his friend, and I are to set out for the mines of Moran and
Real del Monte.  I should have preferred to delay our journey a while longer
for reasons of my own, but Burton presses, and feels we have already delayed
longer than enough.

     Moran, July 4, 1831. - I am sick of this place, but our business here is
now on the verge of completion, and in a few days we start on our expedition
to the mines of Guanamato.  The director, Burton, and myself are all of
opinion that immense advantages are to be gained by improving the working of
the mines, which is, at present, in a very defective condition.  There is
great mortality among the Indians who are the beasts of burden of the mines;
they carry on their backs loads of metal of from two hundred and fifty to
three hundred and fifty pounds at a time, ascending and descending thousands
of steps, in files which contain old men of seventy and mere children.  I have
not been very well here, having had some return of old symptoms, but under
proper treatment they dispersed; however, I shall be thankful to be on the
move again.

     Pascuaro, August 11, 1831. - Can any man evade his thoughts, impalpable
curses sitting on his heart, mocking like fiends?  I cannot evade mine.  All
yesterday I was haunted by a terrible anxiety and dread. At every turn, at
every moment, I expected to see Honor Livingston appear before me, but I did
not see her.  The day and the night passed, and I was freed from that great
horror, - how great I had not realized, until its hour had gone and left no
trace.  This morning I am myself again; my spirits revive; I have escaped my
enemy, and have proved that it was, indeed, but a subtle emanation of my own
diseased body and mind.  But these thoughts, these troublesome, persistent
thoughts, how combat them? Burton, very observant of me at all times, was
yesterday watchful as an inquisitor; he said he hoped I was not going to have
the frightful fever which is prevailing here, but I know he meant something
else.  I have not a doubt now that Anne and all that confederacy warned him
before we set sail to beware of me, for I had been mad; that is the cursed lie
they set abroad.  Mad!  All the world's mad, or on the way to it!

     But if Honor had come back to me yesterday, we might have gone and have
looked down together into hell, through the ovens of Jorulla.  The
missionaries cursed this frightful place generations since; and it is accursed
if ever land was.  Nothing more awful than this desolate, burning waste, which
the seas could not quench.  When I remember it and all I underwent yesterday,
the confusion and horror return upon me again, and my brain swerves like the
brain of a drunken man.  I will write no more, - sufficient to record that the
appointed time came and went, and Honor Livingston did not keep her word with
me.

     New Orleans, February, 1832. - I left Burton still in Mexico, and came
here alone.  His care and considerateness were more than I could put up with,
and after two or three ineffectual remonstrances, we came to a violent
rupture, and I determined to throw up my engagement, rather than carry it out
in conjunction with such a man.  There was no avoiding the quarrel.  Was I to
be tutored day by day, and the wine-bottle removed out of my reach?  He dared
to tell me that when I was cool, clear, - myself, in short, - there was no man
my master in our profession; but that when I had drunk freely I was
unmanageable as a lunatic!  A lie, of course; but unscrupulous persecutors are
difficult to circumvent.  Anne's malice pursues me even here.  When I was out
yesterday, my footsteps were dogged pertinaciously wherever I went, and
perhaps an account of my doings will precede me home; but if they do, I defy
them all to do their worst.

     Ashendell, August 9, 1839. - This old book turned up to-day, among some
traps that have lain by in London all the years that I have spent, first in
Spain and afterwards in Russia.  What fool's talk it is!  but I suppose it was
true at the time.  I know I was in a wretched condition while I was in Mexico
and in the States, but I have been sane enough and sound enough ever since the
illness I had at Baltimore.  To prove how little hold on me my ancient horrors
have retained, I find myself at Ashendell in the very season of the year when
Honor Livingston destroyed herself, - to-morrow is the anniversary of her
death.  So I take my enemy by the throat, and crush him!  These fantastical
maladies will not stand against a determined will.  At Moscow, at Cherson, at
Archangel, the 10th of August has come and gone, unmarked.  Honor failed of
her threat everywhere except at Lisbon.  I saw her there twice, just before we
sailed.  I saw her, when we were off that coast where we so narrowly escaped
wreck, rising and falling upon the waves.  I saw her in London that day I
appointed to see Anne.  But I know what it means; it means that I must put
myself in Umpleby's hands for a few weeks, and that the shadows will forthwith
vanish.  Shadows they are, out of my own brain, and they take the shape of
Honor because I have let her become a fixed idea in my mind.  Yet it is very
strange that the last time she appeared to me I heard her speak.  I fancied
she said that it was Almost time; and then louder, "I'll haunt you, James,
until you come to the Ashenfall, where I am going now!" And with that she
vanished.  Fancy plays strange tricks with us, and makes cowards of us almost
as cleverly as conscience.

     August 10. - I have had a very unpleasant impression on me all day. I
wish I had resisted Linchley's persuasions more steadily.  I ought never to
have come down here again.  The excitement of its miserable recollections is
too much for me.  The man at the inn called me by my name this morning, and
said he recollected me, - looking up toward the church as he spoke.  Damn him!
All day I seem to have been acting against my will.  What should possess me to
go there this afternoon?  Round about among the graves, until I came to the
grassy hillock on the north side of the church where they buried Honor that
night without a prayer.  I sat down on the low wall, and looked across to the
hills beyond the river, listening to the monotonous sign-song of the fall.  I
would give all I possess to-day to be able to tread back or to untread a score
of the years of my life.  It seems such a blank; of all I planned and schemed
how little have I accomplished?  Watching by Honor's grave, I fell to thinking
of her.  What had either of us done that we should be so wretched?  Is it part
and parcel of the great injustice of life that some must suffer so signally
while others escape?  The coarse grass is never cut at the north side of the
church, nettles and brambles grow about the grave.  Honor was mad, poor soul!
they might have given her a prayer for rest, if they were forbidden to believe
she died in hope.  I prayed for her to-day, - more need, perhaps, to pray for
myself, - and then there came a crazed whirl in my brain, and I set off to
find Linchley.  As I came down near the water, the fall sounded very
tumultuous; it was sultry, hot, and I should have liked to turn down by the
river, but I said, "No, it is the 10th of August!  If I am to meet Honor
Livingston to-day, I'll not meet her by Ashenfall!" So I came home to our
lodgings, to find that Linchley had gone over to Warfe, and had left a message
that he should not return until to-morrow.  I have the night before me alone;
it is not like an English night at all; it is like the nights I remember at
Cadiz, which always heralded a tremendous storm.  And I think we shall have a
storm here, too, before the morning.

     Those were the last words James Lawrence ever wrote, gentlemen. Further
than this no man can speak of his death; it is plain to me that one of his mad
fits was coming on before he left Lisbon; that it grew and increased until he
came here; and that here it reached its climax, and urged him to his death.  I
believe in the ghosts James Lawrence saw, as I believe in the haunting power
of any great misdeed that has driven a fellow creature into deadly sin.

     When David Polreath had finished, the chairman gave the teetotum such a
swift and sudden twirl, to be beforehand with any interruption, that it
twirled among all the glasses, and into all corners of the table, and finally
flew off the table and lodged in Captain Jorgan's waistcoat.

     "A kind of a judgment!" said the captain, taking it out.  "What's to be
done now?  I know no story, except Down-Easters, and they didn't happen to
myself, or any one of my acquaintance, and you couldn't enjoy 'em without
going out of your minds first.  And perhaps the company ain't prepared to do
that?"

     The chairman interposed by rising and declaring it to be his perroud
perrivilege to stop preliminary observations.

     "Wa'al," said the captain, "I defer to the President, which ain't at all
what they do in my country, where they lay into him, head, limbs, and body."
Here he slapped his leg.  "But I beg to ask a preliminary question. Colonel
Polreath has read from a diary.  Might I read from a pipe-light?"

     The chairman requested explanation.

     "The history of the pipe-light," said the captain, "is just this: that
it's verses, and was made on the voyage home by a passenger I brought over.
And he was a quiet crittur of a middle-aged man, with a pleasant countenance.
And he wrote it on the head of a cask.  And he was a most etarnal time about
it, tew.  And he blotted it as if he had wrote it in a continual squall of
ink.  And then he took an indigestion, and I physicked him, for want of a
better doctor.  And then to show his liking for me he copied it out fair, and
gave it to me for a pipe-light.  And it ain't been lighted yet, and that's a
fact."

     "Let it be read," said the chairman.

     "With thanks to Colonel Polreath for setting the example," pursued the
captain, "and with apologies to the Honourable A. Parvis and the whole of the
present company for this passenger's having expressed his mind in verses, -
which he may have done along of bein' seasick, and he was very, - the
pipe-light, unrolled, comes to this:

     We sit by the fire so wide and red,
     With the dance of the young within,
     Who have yet small learning of cold and dread,
     And of sorrow no more than of sin;
     Nor dream of a night on a sleepless bed
     Of waves with their terrible wrecks o'erspread.

     We sit round the hearth as red as gold,
     And the legends beloved we tell,
     How battles were won by the nobles bold,
     Where hamlets of villains fell:
     And we praise our God, while we cut the bread,
     And share the wine round, for our heroes dead.

     And we talk of the Kings, those strong, proud men,
     Who ravaged, confessed, and died;
     And of churls who rabbled them oft and again,
     Perchance with a kindred pride, -
     Though the Kings built churches to pierce the sky,
     And the rabbling churls in the cross-road lie.

     Yet 'twixt the despot and slave half-free,
     Old Truth may have message clear;
     Since the hard black yew and the lithe young tree
     Belong to an age - and a year,
     And though distant in might and in leaf they be,
     In right of the woods they are near.

     And old Truth's message, perchance, may be:
     "Believe in thy kind, whate'er the degree,
     Be it King on his throne or serf on his knee.
     While our Lord showers light, in his bounty free,
     On the rock and the vale, - on the sand and the sea."

     They are singing within, with their voices dear,
     To the tunes which are dear as well;
     And we sit and dream while the words we hear,
     Having tale of our own to tell, -
     Of a far midnight on the terrible sea,
     Which comes back on the tune of their blithe old glee.

     As old as the hills, and as old as the sky, -
     As the King on his throne, - as the serf on his knee,
     A song wherein rich can with poor agree,
     With its chorus to make them laugh or cry, -
     Which the young are singing, with no thought nigh,
     Of a night on a terrible sea:
     "I care for nobody; no not I,
     Since nobody cares for me."

     The storm had its will.  There was wreck, - there was flight
     O'er an ocean of Alps, through the pitch-black night,
     When a good ship sank, and a few got free,
     To cope in their boat with the terrible sea.

     And when the day broke, there was blood on the sea,
     From the wild, hot eye of the sun outshed,
     For the heaven was aflame as with fire from Hell,
     And a scorching balm on the waters fell,
     As if ruin had won, and with fiendish glee,
     Sailed forth in his galley to number the dead.

     And they rowed their boat o'er the terrible sea,
     As mute as a crew made of ghosts might be;
     For the best in his heart had not manhood to say,
     That the land was five hundred miles away.

     A day and a week.  There was bread for one man;
     The water was dry.  And on this, the few
     Who were rowing their boat o'er the terrible sea,
     To murmur, to curse, and to crave began.
     And how 't was agreed on, no one knew,
     But the feeble and famished, and scorched by the sun
     With his pitiless eye, drew lots to agree,
     What their hideous morrow of meat must be.

     O then were the faces frightful to read,
     Of ravening hope, and of cowardly pride
     That lies to the last, its sharp terror to hide;
     And a stillness as though 'twere some game of the Dead,
     While they waited the number their lot to decide, -
     There were nine in that boat on the terrible sea,
     And he who drew nine was the victim to be.

     You may think what a ghastly shiver there ran,
     From mate to his mate, as the doom began.

     Six - had a wife with a wild-rose cheek;
     Two - a brave boy, not a year yet old;
     Eight - his last sister, lame and weak,
     Who quivered with palsy more than with cold.

     You may think what a breath the respited drew,
     And how wildly still sat the rest of the crew;
     How the voice as it called spoke hoarser and slower;
     The number it next dared to speak was - four.

     'Twas the rude black man, who had handled an oar
     The best, on that terrible sea, of the few,
     And ugly and grim in the sunshine glare
     Were his thick parched lips, and his dull, small eyes,
     And the tangled fleece of his rusty hair; -
     Ere the next of the breathless the death lot drew,
     His shout like a sword pierced the silence through.

     Let the play end with your number Four.
     What need to draw?  Live along you few
     Who have hopes to save and have wives to cry
     O'er the cradles of children free!
     What matter if folk without home should die,
     And be eaten by land or sea?
     "I care for nobody; no, not I,
     Since nobody cares for me."

     And with that, a knife - and a heart struck through -
     And the warm red blood, and the coal-black clay.
     And the famine withdrawn from among the few,
     By their horrible meal for another day!

     So the eight, thus fed, came at last to land,
     And the tale of their shipmate told,
     As of water found in the burning sand,
     Which braves not the thirsty, cold.
     But the love of the listener, safe and free,
     Goes forth to that slave on that terrible sea.

     For fancies from hearth and from home will stray,
     Though within are the dance and the song;
     And a grave tale told, if the tune be gay,
     Says little to scare the young,
     While they sing, with their voices clear as can be,
     Having called once more for the blithe old glee, -
     "I care for nobody; no, not I,
     Since nobody cares for me."

     But the careless tune, it saith to the old,
     Who sit by the hearth as red as gold,
     When they think of their tale of the terrible sea;
     "Believe in thy kind whate'er the degree,
     Be it King on his throne, or serf on his knee,
     While Our Lord showers good from his bounty free,
     Over storm, over calm, over land, over sea."