In the year 1832, within a week or two of the date that would make the time exactly five years since the “Meteor” lay off Gravesend, waiting to embark her captain and start for the port it was her doom never to reach, a large ship was sailing slowly up the river, her poop crowded with passengers, and many heads ranged along her bulwarks.

Far away aft, hard by the wheel, stood a man thickly bearded, dressed in dark clothes, his arms folded, and his eyes bent steadfastly upon the passing shore. He was alone; for the rest of the passengers, of whom there were many, were grouped about the break of the poop talking to one another excitedly, or pointing to the houses ashore, or watching the steerage passengers on the main-deck cording their boxes, cramming their clothes into bundles, and making preparations for landing that afternoon.

There was something in the expression of this man’s face which would have attracted and detained your attention; a mixture of profound melancholy and struggling surprise, clouded with what might have passed very well for a mood of deep abstraction. His features were thin and haggard, the nose pinched and white, his eyes dark and gleaming, and sunk in hollows, shagged by eyebrows of black hair mingled with white, which met in a perpendicular seam in his forehead. He presented the appearance of one suffering from some incurable constitutional malady which had wasted the flesh off his bones, arched his back, hollowed his chest, and brought into his face a permanent expression of mingled pensiveness and sorrow.

A round-faced, brisk, and busy-looking little man happening just then to pop his person out through the companion, stood looking awhile at the shore with eager twinkling eyes, and then, directing his gaze aft, caught sight of our lonely individual and approached him.

“Ah, Mr. Hampden! there you are! still puzzling, puzzling, eh?” he exclaimed in a hearty manner. “Come now, you have seen Folkestone, Margate, the Reculvers, eh, now? Confess that those places have helped you to remember all you want to know.”

The person addressed as Mr. Hampden, but whom we will continue to call by his proper name of Holdsworth, turned his eyes from the shore and answered with an effort, as though he could not at once break away from his thoughts.

“I know all those places well; and there’s not a house yonder, I may say, that doesn’t assure me I am on familiar ground. But they tell me nothing. My past is still a puzzle, doctor, of which these scenes are only fragments. There are many more things to come before I can piece it into a whole.”

“What is a cure for a decayed memory? what ought to revive old impressions?” exclaimed the little doctor, hammering a snuff-box with his knuckles. “You’ll never know, Mr. Hampden, how you have weighed upon my mind. I feel, sir, that I have no business to let you quit this ship uncured. And yet, what more than I have done can I do? I have exhausted my imagination in questions.”

“Yes, doctor, you have been very kind, and I thank you heartily for the interest you have taken in me.”

“Ay, but interest is of no professional use,” returned the doctor, sniffing up a huge pinch of snuff. “We look to results in our calling. I must say I should like to have been able to tell Mr. Sherman when I get back that I left you remembering everything. Eh, now? But I don’t believe there’s a medical man living who ever encountered such a case as yours. So much density of mental gloom, sir, seems psychologically impossible. If you could only have given me one end of the thread, so to speak, I might have drawn the whole skein out smooth. Look about you now. Here is genuine Thames scenery, which, if you are an Englishman, ought to go home straight to your heart and recall a thousand matters.”

Holdsworth stared around him, puzzling and biting his lip.

“I have often felt, and I feel now,” he exclaimed, “that if I could see something which was prominently identified with my past my memory would return. When we were off Margate, I grew breathless—breathless, doctor, believe me, under the shock of an indefinable sensation. I made sure that my memory was about to rush upon me—oh! it is impossible to explain what is inexplicable to myself. But there have been moments, since we first entered the river, when I have felt that a revelation was close at hand—and I have trembled whilst awaiting the flooding in of memory, which will not come—which will not come!”

“It will come. The power that you possess to remember the names and qualities of things which you see, has long ago persuaded me that your memory is not dead, but torpid. Keep your body up, when you get ashore, with nourishing food. Walk the streets constantly and use your eyes, and, when a recollection rises to the surface, don’t rush upon it voraciously, but leave it to its own will. Consider, memories are nothing but shadows; you can’t dodge and drive them into corners ...”

Here somebody called to him, on which the little man shook Holdsworth’s hand, and darted towards the group of passengers.

The ship was rapidly nearing Gravesend, where she would disembark her passengers. The Thames looked noble, with many vessels of all shapes and sizes breaking its shining waters, with the houses and wharves ashore, with here and there a short wooden pier running into the stream, and the green summer country smiling beyond.

It was a bright July morning, and the air had an exquisite transparency that so clarified and sharpened the outlines of objects, that it was like looking at them through highly-polished glass. Just such a day should greet all homeward-sailing ships, and make their inmates merry with a foretaste of the shore-life they are to enjoy after their long strife with the distant treacherous ocean.

Anon Gravesend opened, and then the pilot volleyed some quick orders along the ship. Down rattled staysails, and jibs, and yards with their spacious breadths of canvas; and the stately vessel, denuded of her towering costume, swam lazily into position off the town. Then rose a cry, “Stand clear of the chain-cable!” and the second mate, on the port side of the topgallant forecastle, brandished his arms as a warning to the people on the main-deck to crowd out of the road.

“Let go the anchor!”

Clank! clank! went the carpenter’s hammer. And then, with a deafening roar, down plunged the mighty weight of iron, and tore the huge cable with shrieks through the hawse-pipe. The ship swung slowly around and became stationary, with many hands aloft furling the sails, and the quarter-deck throbbing with the movements and struggles of excited passengers.

And now a dozen boats, some large some small, came tearing through the water to the ship. How the watermen pulled! Their faces all veins, and their arms all knots, and their hats anywhere! The canoes of cannibals, sneaking from the secret creeks and hidden points of an unexplored island, advance not more swiftly, nor, maybe, with feller or more rapacious designs, upon the intruder in their waters, than did our Gravesend wherries upon this ship fresh from Australia.

Many of the watermen were soon upon the quarterdeck, demanding monstrous sums to row three-quarters of a mile. You saw boxes and bundles seized and disappear, and excited ’tween-deck passengers elbowing a lane to the gangway, fired with a resolution to disembark or perish, while children screamed, and women implored, and men gesticulated, and even menaced one another. One by one the wherries put off, loaded to the gunwale with people and baggage. These wherries returned and returned again, until the ship was cleared of the majority of her passengers.

“Good-bye, captain,” said Holdsworth.

A sunburnt man in a blue cloth coat with gilt-buttons took Holdsworth’s hand, and grasped it cordially.

“Good-bye, Mr. Hampden, good-bye to you, sir. Any time these three months, if you have a mind to let me see your face, you will be able to find me out by calling at the Jerusalem Coffee House. I shall be glad, sir, as we all of us shall be, to hear that London has stirred up your recollection and restored your memory.”

Then the chief mate and second officers and some midshipmen pressed forward and shook his hand, and Holdsworth, pointing out his luggage to a waterman, descended the gangway ladder, and was rowed to Gravesend.

And now, whilst our hero, having been put ashore and eaten a hurried dinner, climbs on top of the coach that is to land him at Southwark, let us beguile an uninteresting interval by casting a brief glance backwards.

On the arrival of the “Jessie Maxwell” at Sydney, Holdsworth had accompanied Mr. Sherman to his house, and been then and there established as an inmate as long as he chose to remain. He was also given a clerkship in Mr. Sherman’s office, worth £250 a year, which was by no means an out-of-the-way price for a man’s labour in Australia in those days, though in Holdsworth’s case the salary was rendered nearly worth as much again by his friend providing him with board and lodging free. The truth was (1) Mr. Sherman wanted an honest man in his office; (2) Holdsworth’s sufferings, friendlessness, and perfect amiability, coupled with his deprivation of memory, which affected all whom he conversed with as something worse even than blindness, had obtained a permanent hold for him on his generous patron’s sympathy long before the “Jessie Maxwell” had sighted the Australian shore.

Mr. Sherman was a widower and childless. A maiden sister of his lived with him, a woman whose character and face were as like his as an egg is to an egg. Not knowing Holdsworth’s name, they agreed to call him Mr. Hampden, which would serve as well as any other, and which had at least the merit of beginning with the letter of his real name.

As Mr. Hampden he was introduced to Mr. Sherman’s friends, who took a very great interest in him. Indeed, some of these people went to the extent of giving dinner-parties in his honour, and for a time he was a lion. All this attention, meant in perfect kindness, greatly disturbed him, for his loss of memory made him singularly sensitive, and his nervous system had entirely given way under the extraordinary sufferings he had endured. Mr. Sherman would have kept his secret, but Captain Duff and the officers and men of the “Jessie Maxwell” went and talked of him all over the city, and then the tale of his discovery and rescue was published in a newspaper and made the property of the public.

But the public soon forgot him. The colony was young, and the New Hollander had too many mines to sink, and houses to build, and acres to clear, and convicts to protest against, and home oppressions of every species to deal with, to keep his mind long fixed on one object. Holdsworth settled into a regular clerkly routine, and every day improved himself in Mr. Sherman’s opinion, by the peculiar sweetness of his amiability, and by his gratitude expressed in every delicate form that could vehicle the emotion of his full heart.

There was an able doctor at that time practising in Sydney, and Mr. Sherman invited him to his house, and introduced him to Holdsworth, believing that, by skilful handling, it was possible to restore the poor fellow’s memory. But the doctor after a few weeks shook his head, and pronounced the case hopeless, or at least beyond the reach of human skill.

Indeed, rarely had a more curious and baffling problem been submitted, than Holdsworth’s mind in those days.

Here was a man capable of recollecting with precision every incident that had befallen him since his rescue, exhibiting shrewdness in conversation, and accuracy in matters of current fact. His intellect was as healthy as that of the healthiest-headed man who conversed with him, but up to the period of his rescue everything was in darkness. The conjectures which were offered him—so close to the mark some of them, that they brushed the very skirts of real facts, and told the truth by implication—conveyed no ideas. His eternal rejoinder was no more than a shake of the head. Had he been a sailor? Did he remember the port from which he sailed? the rig or name of the vessel? his native town? Such questions, and hundreds of them, were asked, but though he grasped familiar names with almost passionate eagerness, they established no faintest clue as to his real past. And then inquiries becoming at last no better than fruitless importunities, were dropped, and Holdsworth was considered incurable.

Yet this could hardly have been thought, had those who gave in this opinion been conscious of the under-current of secret, but not the less powerful, yearnings, absolutely objectless, scarce owning definite forms, which yet the restless instincts of the man urged with greedy emphasis. These movements were, indeed, purely spiritual—the action of the soul groping in her cell and searching for that window of the mind which had been blackened, and through which no light could break. Of the mental torments this intellectual blindness occasioned, no words that I possess can describe the anguish. Month after month went by and still found him searching heart-brokenly in the gloom for some image, some substance, some sign, that should appease the piteous cravings of his instincts, which knew all, but could not speak.

Whatever feminine tact could suggest to give light to his mind, Mr. Sherman’s sister did. She made out a long list of names beginning with H, trusting that one among them might be his, and that the sight of it would recall many things or all.

But, long and patiently compiled as the list was, many names there must be which she would omit; and amongst them his own. Then she made out a list of the names of the ships; but here was an endless job, prosecuted for a long while with benevolent industry, and then abandoned in despair. She read the European papers carefully, hoping to find some account of the loss of the vessel in which, it was surmised, Holdsworth had been a passenger; but no such account ever rewarded her search. Numerous were the other remedies she resorted to, but none of them produced any result.

A few months of such unavailing work would soon extinguish hope. Both she and her brother desisted at last from their merciful endeavours in the full and final conviction that nothing but the hand of God could ever draw aside the black curtain that hung over Holdsworth’s past.

But not to dwell at needless length upon this part of the story:

More than four years had passed since Holdsworth had arrived in Sydney. Mr. Sherman had long learned to think of him as settled in the colony, had increased his salary, and congratulated himself not only on the possession of a valuable and trustworthy assistant, but upon a pleasant, amiable, and thoroughly gentlemanly companion. No expression of a wish to leave had ever escaped Holdsworth’s lips. He appeared not only contented, but resigned to the affliction that had practically deprived him of all knowledge of his past existence.

He came down to breakfast one morning with a face betokening great agitation. Mr. Sherman was in the breakfast-room, and instantly noticed Holdsworth’s air of bewilderment and distress.

“Mr. Sherman,” exclaimed Holdsworth at once to him, “do you remember telling me that it was possible for my memory to be revived by a dream?”

“Yes—has it happened?”

“I cannot tell; but this much I know, that a voice sounded last night in my ears, and bade me return at once to England. It was a woman’s voice—it had a clearly-remembered tone—and I knew it in my sleep; but when I awoke and tried to recall it I could not.”

“But your dream?”

“That was all.”

“Was your dream merely confined to the utterance of this voice?”

“I can remember nothing more than the voice.”

“And you cannot recall whose voice it resembled?”

“No.”

Mr. Sherman was silent, and Holdsworth watched him with anxiety, that was almost pathetic, so eager was his hope that his friend would find some light in this dim and curious night-fancy to help him with.

“I can see nothing serviceable in this,” said Mr. Sherman presently, “but it is hopeful. Wait a while. This voice may return, or you may dream something more tangible. Remember,” he added with a smile, “that the morning light does not flood the world suddenly. The pale, faint gray comes first, and there are many gradations of brightness between the first peep of dawn and the rising of the sun.”

But though Holdsworth waited, the voice did not return. Nevertheless it had sounded in his ears to some purpose. Day by day a longing grew in him to return to England, which became in time deep and fervent and irresistible. Superstition was the root of this yearning; but the poor fellow, urged by his instincts into an eternal searching amid the darkness, would scarcely pause to consider the nature of his keen desire, but submit to it as an ordinance from God commissioned to impel him into the Divine light of memory.

Mr. Sherman watched his increasing restlessness in silence, waiting for him to declare his intention. He announced it one day.

“Mr. Sherman, I feel guilty of deep ingratitude in harbouring a wish to leave you. But my longing to return to England has become so strong that I can no longer resist it. God knows if I am not taking a foolish step in voluntarily quitting so good and beloved a friend. But what are these instincts which govern me? Ought I to blind myself to them? Are they not given me for some end which can only be accomplished by my obeying them? I do not know what I am leaving you to seek; but I feel that whatever my past may hold which is precious to me is to be found in England.”

“If you have this confidence in your impulse,” answered Mr. Sherman, “you are right in obeying it. I am at least sure that your memory stands but a poor chance of recovery in a strange land, surrounded by objects which have no possible reference to your past, and can, therefore, have no value as an appeal. I shall be sorry, very sorry, to lose you, Mr. Hampden, but I think I can trace the hand of Providence in this longing of yours, and in all humbleness and sincerity I ask God to bless your endeavours and restore you the illumination of your memory.”

This resolution, now taken, was final. Mr. Sherman’s encouragement gave new strength to Holdsworth’s wishes, and the restlessness that beset him became almost unbearable to him. In ten days from that date a ship named the “Wellington” sailed for London; she was to carry many passengers, but one saloon berth was still vacant, and that Mr. Sherman himself procured and paid for, for Holdsworth. Nor did his kindness stop with this. A few days before the ship left Sydney he asked Holdsworth if he had saved any money.

“Yes, four hundred pounds.”

“Come! that will help you along for a time. Dr. Marlow, a friend of mine, is attending an old lady to England. I have explained your case to him, and begged him to give you his closest attention. He is clever, and the long term of intimacy you will enjoy before you reach London may be productive of some good to you. And now do me the favour to put this in your pocket,” he continued, handing Holdsworth a little parcel. “No need to examine its contents now. It is a small gift from my sister and myself. You will find my address inside it, which will remind you to write to us; for be sure that nobody can take more interest in you than we do. Above all, remember that if ever you should want a friend, you will find two very steadfast ones in Sydney, who will rejoice to welcome you back.”

The parcel contained bank-notes to the value of three hundred pounds.