"But," I protested, lost in wonder, "yesterday was years ago. How do
you account for that? Are you certain that you're not deceiving me?"
"I've told you the absolute truth," he responded. "On that I stake my
honour."
I stood aghast, glaring at my reflection in the mirror, open-mouthed, as
though I gazed upon some object supernatural. My personal appearance
had certainly changed, and that in itself convinced me that there must
be some truth in this man Gedge's statement. I was older, a trifle
stouter than before, I think, and my red-brown beard seemed to give my
face a remarkably grotesque appearance. I had always hated beards, and
considered them a relic of prehistoric barbarity. It was surprising
that I should now have grown one.
"Then according to your account I must have spent yesterday here--
actually in this house?"
"Why, of course you did," he responded. "We were engaged the greater
part of the day over Laffan's affair. Walter Halliburton, the mining
engineer, came down to see you, and we were together all the afternoon.
He left for London at five."
"And where did I dine?"
"Here. With Mrs Heaton."
"Don't speak of her as Mrs Heaton!" I cried in anger. "She's not my
wife, and I will not have her regarded as such."
He gave his shoulders a slight shrug.
"Now, look here, Mr Gedge," I said, speaking for the first time with
confidence. "If you were in my place, awakening suddenly to find that
six years of your life had vanished in a single night, and that you were
an entirely different person to that of twelve hours ago, what would you
believe?"
He looked at me with a somewhat sympathetic expression upon his thin
features.
"Well, I don't know what I should think." Then he added, "But surely
such a thing can't be possible."
"It is possible," I cried. "It has happened to me. I tell you that
last night was six years ago."
He turned from me, as though he considered further argument unavailing.
My head reeled. What he had told me was utterly incredible. It seemed
absolutely impossible that six whole years should have passed without my
knowledge; that I should have entered upon a business of which I had
previously known nothing; that I should have rapidly amassed a fortune;
and, most of all, that I should have married that powdered and painted
woman who had presented herself as my wife. Yet such were the
unaccountable facts which this man Gedge asked me to believe.
He saw that I was extremely dubious about the date, therefore he led me
back to the library, where there hung upon the wall a large calendar,
which quickly convinced me.
Six; years had really elapsed since yesterday.
In that vexing and perplexing present I reflected upon the puzzling
past. That happy dinner with Mabel at the Boltons, the subsequent
discoveries in that drawing-room where she had sat at the piano calmly
playing; her soft words of tenderness, and the subsequent treachery of
that dog-faced man Hickman, all passed before me with extraordinary
vividness. Yet, in truth, all had happened long ago.
Alas! I was not like other men. To the practical, level-headed man of
affairs "To-day" may be sufficient, all-engrossing; but to the very
large majority--a majority which, I believe, includes also many of the
practical, the business of to-day admits of constant pleasant excursions
into the golden mists of "long ago," and many happy flights to the rosy
heights of "some day." Most of those who read this strange story of my
life will remember with a melancholy affection, with a pain that is more
soothing than many pleasures, the house wherein they were born, or at
any rate the abode in which they passed the earlier years of their
lives. The agonising griefs of childhood, the disappointments, the
soul-racking terrors, mellowed by the gentle touch of passing years,
have no sting for our mature sensibilities, but come back to us now with
a pathos that is largely tinctured with amusement.
I stood there reviewing the past, puzzled, utterly unable to account for
it. Age, the iconoclast, had shattered most of the airy idols which my
youth had set up in honour of itself. I had lost six of the most
precious years of my life--years that I had not lived.
Yet this man before me declared most distinctly that I had lived them;
that I had enjoyed a second existence quite apart and distinct from my
own self. Incredible though it seemed, yet it became gradually
impressed upon me that what this man Gedge had told me was the actual,
hideous truth, and that I had really lived and moved and prospered
throughout those six unknown years, while my senses had at the same time
remained dormant, and I had thus been utterly unconscious of existence.
But could such a thing be? As a prosaic man of the world I argued, as
any one in his right mind would argue, that such a thing was beyond the
bounds of possibility. Nevertheless, be it how it might, the undisputed
fact remained that I had lapsed into unconsciousness on that winter's
night six years before, and had known absolutely nothing of my
surroundings until I found myself lying upon the floor of the
drawing-room of what was alleged to be my country house.
Six years out of a man's life is a large slice. The face of the world
changes considerably in that space of time. I found myself living a
life which was so artificial and incongruous to my own tastes as to
appear utterly unreal. Yet, as I made further inquiry of this man
Gedge, every moment that passed showed me plainly that what he had said
was the truth.
He related to me the routine of my daily life, and I stood listening
agape in wonder. He told me things of which I had no knowledge; of my
own private affairs, and of my business profits; he took big
leather-bound ledgers from the great green-painted safe, and showed me
formidable sums entered therein, relating, he explained, to the
transactions at the office up in London. Some documents he showed me,
large official-looking sheets with stamps and seals and signatures,
which he said were concessions obtained from a certain foreign
Government, and opened my private letter-book, exhibiting letters I had
actually written with my own hand, but without having any knowledge of
having done so.
These revelations took away my breath.
It could not be mere loss of memory from which I was suffering. I had
actually lived a second and entirely different life to that I had once
led in Essex Street. Apparently I had become a changed man, had entered
business, had amassed a fortune--and had married.
Assuredly, I reflected, I could never have been in my right senses to
have married that angular person with the powdered cheeks. That action,
in itself, was sufficient to convince me that my brain had been
unbalanced during those six lost years.
Alone, I stood, without a single sympathiser--without a friend.
How this astounding gap in my life had been produced was absolutely
beyond explanation. I tried to account for it, but the reader will
readily understand that the problem was, to me, utterly inexplicable.
I, the victim of the treachery of that man Hickman, had fallen
unconscious one night, and had awakened to discover that six whole years
had elapsed, and that I had developed into an entirely different person.
It was unaccountable, nay, incredible.
I think I should have grown confidential towards Gedge were it not that
he apparently treated me as one whose mind was wandering. He believed,
and perhaps justly so, that my brain had been injured by the accidental
blow. To him, of course, it seemed impossible that I, his master,
should know nothing of my own affairs. The ludicrousness of the
situation was to me entirely apparent, yet what could I do to avert it?
By careful questions I endeavoured to obtain from him some facts
regarding my past.
"You told me," I said, "that I have many friends. Among them are there
any persons named Anson?"
"Anson?" he repeated reflectively. "No, I've never heard the name."
"Or Hickman?"
He shook his head.
"I lived once in Essex Street, Strand," I said. "Have I been to those
chambers during the time--the five years you have been in my service?"
Never, to my knowledge.
"Have I ever visited a house in The Boltons, at Kensington?"
"I think not," he responded.
"Curious! Very curious!" I observed, thinking deeply of the graceful,
dark-eyed Mabel whom I had loved six years before, and who was now lost
to me for ever.
"Among my friends is there a man named Doyle?" I inquired, after a
pause.
"Doyle? Do you mean Mr Richard Doyle, the war correspondent?"
"Certainly," I cried excitedly. "Is he back?"
"He is one of your friends, and has often visited here," Gedge replied.
"What is his address? I'll wire to him at once."
"He's in Egypt. He left London last March, and has not yet returned."
I drew a long breath. Dick had evidently recovered from fever in India,
and was still my best friend, although I had had no knowledge of it.
What, I wondered, had been my actions in those six years of
unconsciousness? Mine were indeed strange thoughts at that moment. Of
all that had been told me I was unable to account for anything. I stood
stunned, confounded, petrified.
For knowledge of what had transpired during those intervening years, or
of my own career and actions during that period, I had to rely upon the
statements of others. My mind during all that time had, it appeared,
been a perfect blank, incapable of receiving any impression whatsoever.
Nevertheless, when I came to consider how I had in so marvellous a
manner established a reputation in the City, and had amassed the sum now
lying at my bankers, I reflected that I could not have accomplished that
without the exercise of considerable tact and mental capacity. I must,
after all, have retained shrewd senses, but they had evidently been
those of my other self--the self who had lived and moved as husband of
that woman who called herself Mrs Heaton.
"Tell me," I said, addressing Gedge again, "has my married life been a
happy one?"
He looked at me inquiringly.
"Tell me the truth," I urged. "Don't conceal anything from me, for I
intend to get at the bottom of this mystery."
"Well," he said, with considerable hesitation, "scarcely what one might
call happy, I think."
"Ah, I understand," I said. "I know from your tone that you sympathise
with me, Gedge."
He nodded without replying. Strange that I had never known this man
until an hour ago, and yet I had grown so confidential with him. He
seemed to be the only person who could present to me the plain truth.
Those six lost years were utterly puzzling. I was as one returned from
the grave to find his world vanished, and all things changed.
I tried to reflect, to see some ray of light through the darkness of
that lost period, but to me it seemed utterly non-existent. Those
years, if I had really lived them, had melted away and left not a trace
behind. The events of my life prior to that eventful night when I had
dined at The Boltons had no affinity to those of the present. I had
ceased to be my old self, and by some inexplicable transition,
mysterious and unheard of, I had, while retaining my name, become an
entirely different man.
Six precious years of golden youth had vanished in a single night. All
my ideals, all my love, all my hope, nay, my very personality, had been
swept away and effaced for ever.
"Have I often visited Heaton--my own place?" I inquired, turning
suddenly to Gedge.
"Not since your marriage, I believe," he answered. "You have always
entertained some curious dislike towards the place. I went up there
once to transact some business with your agent, and thought it a nice,
charming old house."
"Ay, and so it is," I sighed, remembering the youthful days I had spent
there long ago. All the year round was sunshine then, with the most
ravishing snow-drifts in winter, and ice that sparkled in the sun so
brilliantly that it seemed almost as jolly and frolicsome as the
sunniest of sunlit streams, dancing and shimmering over the pebbles all
through the cloudless summer. Did it ever rain in those old days long
ago? Why, yes; and what splendid times I used to have on those
occasions--toffee-making in the schoolroom, or watching old Dixon, the
gamekeeper, cutting gun-wads in the harness-room.
And I had entertained a marked dislike to the place! All my tastes and
ideas during those blank years had apparently become inverted. I had
lived and enjoyed a world exactly opposite to my own--the world of
sordid money-making and the glaring display of riches. I had, in a
word, aped the gentleman.
There was a small circular mirror in the library, and before it I stood,
marking every line upon my face, the incredible impress of forgotten
years.
"It is amazing, incredible!" I cried, heart-sick with desire to
penetrate the veil of mystery that enshrouded that long period of
unconsciousness. "All that you have told me, Gedge, is absolutely
beyond belief. There must be some mistake. It is impossible that six
years can have passed without my knowledge."
"I think," he said, "that, after all, Britten's advice should be
followed. You are evidently not yourself to-day, and rest will probably
restore your mental power to its proper calibre."
"Bah!" I shouted angrily. "You still believe I'm mad. I tell you I'm
not. I'll prove to you that I'm not."
"Well," he remarked, quite calmly, "no sane man could be utterly
ignorant of his own life. It doesn't stand to reason that he could."
"I tell you I'm quite as sane as you are," I cried. "Yet I've been
utterly unconscious these six whole years."
"Nobody will believe you."
"But I swear it to be true," I protested. "Since the moment when
consciousness left me in that house in Chelsea I have been as one dead."
He laughed incredulously. The slightly confidential tone in which I had
spoken had apparently induced him to treat me with indifference. This
aroused my wrath. I was in no mood to argue whether or not I was
responsible for my actions.
"A man surely can't be unconscious, while at the same time he transacts
business and lives as gaily as you live," he laughed.
"Then you impute that all I've said is untrue, and is due merely to the
fact that I'm a trifle demented, eh?"
"Britten has said that you are suffering from a fit of temporary
derangement, and that you will recover after perfect rest."
"Then, by taking me around this house, showing me those books, and
explaining all to me, you've merely been humouring me as you would a
harmless lunatic!" I cried furiously. "You don't believe what I say,
that I'm perfectly in my right mind, therefore leave me. I have no
further use for your presence, and prefer to be alone," I added harshly.
"Very well," he answered, rather piqued; "if you wish I'll, of course,
go."
"Yes, go; and don't return till I send for you. Understand that! I'm
in no humour to be fooled, or told that I'm a lunatic."
He shrugged his shoulders, and muttering some words I did not catch,
turned and left the library.