I was sitting motionless, with my eyes rooted to the deck, when the door was vigorously thumped and thrown open, and Mr. McEwan entered. He stood awhile looking at me, swaying on wide-spread feet to the movements of the ship, and then exclaimed:
‘I thought as much. But it won’t do. Ye’ll have to come out of this.’ I looked at him. ‘And you’ve been meddling with your bandage. Did not I tell you to leave it alone? Oh, vanity, vanity! is not thy name woman? Did ye want to see how much beauty you’ve lost? Come to the light that I may see what you’ve been doing to yourself.’ He undid the bandage, and said: ‘Well, it’s mending apace, it’s mending apace. Another day of that wrap and you shall have my permission to appear as you are.’
He then with an air of roughness, but with a most tender hand, bound my brow afresh.
‘Now Miss C----,’ said he; ‘but am I to call ye Calthorpe? Half the ninnies are swearing _that’s_ your name, on no better authority than the dim recollection of a little old man who would swear to a ducal likeness in a cook’s mate, if by so doing he could find an excuse to air his acquaintance with the nobility--what I want to say is this: I’m your medical adviser, and I desire to see ye with some memory in your head that the captain may be able to send you home. But if you intend to mope in this cabin, sitting in yon bed and glaring at vacancy, as though the physical faculty of memory was a ghost capable of shaping itself out of thin air and of rushing into your body with a triumphant yell, then it’s my duty to tell you that, instead of your memory revisiting its old haunt, the ghost or two of sense that still stalks in your brain will make a bolt o’ t, leaving ye clean daft. Ye understand me?’
‘Do you understand me when I say you must get out of this cabin?’
‘Do you understand me when I say that you must mix with the passengers, take your place at the saloon table, and humanise yourself into the likeness of others by conversing, listening to the piano playing, walking the deck and surveying the beauties of the ocean? Do you understand that?’
‘You look frightened. There is nothing to be afraid of. But you must do what you’re told, or how are you to get home?’
‘I will do anything,’ I cried passionately, ‘that will give me back my memory.’