Aubert Gascoigne and Agathe Gascoigne

Aubert Gascoigne and Agathe Gascoigne are joined in the novel through a marriage ended by her death at sea and through the objects and gestures by which he continues to remember her. Years later, his attempt to comfort Anna Wetherell repeats the posture of holding Agathe, turning a present crisis into an involuntary return to the past. A black dress that once belonged to Agathe makes that connection tangible: it becomes clothing for Anna, but also a reminder that Gascoigne’s effort to begin again has not freed him from comparison with the dead.

Marriage and Agathe’s Death

Agathe, whom Gascoigne had first known as Agathe Prideaux, is remembered as quick-witted and teasing. She was consumptive when he proposed, but he had not taken her illness as a reason to refuse the marriage. They travelled south in pursuit of a climate thought capable of helping her. She died during the voyage, somewhere off the Indian coast, leaving Gascoigne with the lasting distress that he could not identify the precise place where it happened.

Agathe had made her wishes about her burial clear: if she died before they reached port, she did not want a coffin or an imitation of one. She wanted the mariners’ burial, sewn into a hammock. Gascoigne complied, and the scarlet of the hammock remained bound to his recollection of her death. Afterward he continued sailing until his money ran out. The account presents continued travel not as a resolution of bereavement but as the life he carried on after it.

What Remains

The material traces of the marriage are markedly few. Gascoigne kept Agathe’s miniature and one dress, while the rest of her clothes had been packed in a cedar case and lost when a steamer ran aground. The ship was looted and then flooded as it turned onto its side. For Gascoigne, the loss of the larger collection was also a relief: he wished to retain the miniature, not preserve every possession associated with his wife. His stated intention was to respect her memory while beginning his life again, a difficult balance rather than a clean break.

The surviving dress is black, with a tatted collar. Gascoigne had disliked it, but he kept it in a trunk beneath his bed, wrapped in dark linen. Its survival gives remembrance a practical, intimate form: it is not simply an image of Agathe but a garment that can be taken out, handled, and worn. At the same time, its presence shows how an object can outlast the circumstances that first gave it meaning. The other dresses disappeared with the wreck; this one remained available to shape a later encounter.

The Return of the Past

After Anna is released from gaol, Gascoigne holds her at the Gridiron Hotel while she is still shaken by the pistol misfire. The bodily arrangement recalls his marriage with unusual precision: Anna’s arms rest against his chest, and his hand lies beneath her shoulder blade. As he waits for her breathing to steady, he recognizes that he had held Agathe in the same way. The parallel belongs to Gascoigne’s perception; the scene does not establish that Anna and Agathe are alike in character or that Anna is a replacement for his wife.

Instead, the memory makes the present harder to separate from the past. Gascoigne reflects that new lovers can call the old ones to mind, leaving him caught in comparison and disappointed by the return of what cannot be recovered. Anna is more substantial and angular than Agathe, but even this distinction does not prevent the association. The living woman before him prompts recollection precisely because she is not the dead woman he remembers.

The Dress and Mourning

Gascoigne asks Anna to put on Agathe’s surviving black dress. He considers that it will fit poorly: Agathe was shorter, and the hem would need to be let down. He nevertheless gives it to Anna, who smooths the material over her knee before changing. The garment transfers a piece of Agathe’s history into Anna’s immediate circumstances, without erasing the difference between its former wearer and its new one.

Anna understands the black dress as a means of mourning, telling Gascoigne that she will now be able to mourn because she has never had a black dress before. Her response gives the object a meaning beyond Gascoigne’s private memory. For him it is the sole dress he retained from his wife; for Anna it becomes clothing she can associate with grief. The exchange is brief, but it places two distinct losses beside one another rather than making them identical.

Narrative Significance

The relation between Gascoigne and Agathe is conveyed through recollection inside a scene centered on Anna. The narrative pauses the immediate aftermath of the misfire to disclose the marriage, the voyage, the burial choice, and the objects left behind. It then returns to the present with the shared posture and the black dress. This movement makes memory active in the scene: Agathe is absent, yet her remembered body and surviving clothing shape how Gascoigne responds to Anna.

The episode also complicates Gascoigne’s intention to start over. He has continued living and has sought new intimacy, but the novel shows that beginning again does not prevent earlier attachment from recurring. The dress offers Anna a way to name her own mourning, while the embrace reveals Gascoigne’s ongoing comparison with Agathe. Their marriage therefore remains consequential not through new action between the spouses, but through the past’s continued influence on the living.