THE DANGERS OF AN UNKNOWN PAST. NETTLE-GRASPING, AND A RECURRENCE. WHO
AMONG US COURTS CATECHISM ABOUT HIMSELF? A UNIVERSALLY PROVIDED YOUNG
MAN. HOW ABOUT THE POOR OLD FURNITURE?
We defy the acutest of psychologists to estimate precisely the hold
love has on a man who is diagnosed, in the language of the vulgar
child Sally, as "spooney." Probably no patient has ever succeeded in
doing this himself. It is quite another matter when the eruption has
broken out, when the crater is vomiting flames and the lava is pouring
down on the little homesteads at the mountain's base, that may stand
in the metaphor for all that man's duties and obligations. By that
time he _knows_. But, while still within the "spooney" zone he knows
no more than you or I (or that most important _she_) what the morrow
means to bring. Will it be a step on or a step back? An altogether
new _she_, or the fires of the volcano, let loose beyond recall?
Fenwick was certainly not in a position to gauge his own feelings
towards Mrs. Nightingale. All previous experience was cut away from
him, or seemed so. He might have been, for anything he knew, a married
man with a family, a devoted husband. He might have been recently
wedded to an adoring bride, and she might now be heart-broken in her
loneliness. How could he tell? The only thing that gave him courage
about this was that he _could_ remember the fact that he had had
parents, brothers, sisters. He could not recollect _anything whatever_
about sweetheart, wife, or child. Unearthly gusts of half-ideas came
to him at times, like that of the girl and the dog-cart. But they only
gave him pain, and went away unsolved, leaving him sick and dizzy.
His situation was an acutely distressing one. He was shackled and
embarrassed, so to speak, by what he knew of his relations to
existence. At any moment a past might be sprung on him, bringing him
suddenly face to face with God knows what. So strongly did he feel
this that he often said to himself that the greatest boon that could
be granted to him would be an assurance of continued oblivion. He was
especially afflicted by memories of an atrocious clearness that would
come to him in dreams, the horror of which would remain on into his
waking time. They were not necessarily horrible things at all, but
their clearness in the dream, and their total, if slow, disappearance
as the actual world came back, became sometimes an excruciating
torment. Who could say that they, or some equivalents, might not reach
him out of the past to-day or to-morrow--any time?
For instance, he had one morning waked up in a perfect agony--a cold
perspiration as of the worst nightmares--because of a dream harmless
enough in itself. He had suddenly remembered, in the dream-street he
could identify the houses of so plainly, a first-floor he had occupied
where he had left all his furniture locked up years ago. And he had
found the house and the first-floor quite easily, and had not seen
anything strange in the landlord saying that he and his old woman
often wondered when Mr. Fenwick would come for his things. It was not
the accumulation of rent unpaid, nor that of the dirt he knew he
should find on the furniture (all of which he could recollect in the
dream perfectly well), but the fact that he had forgotten it all, and
left it unclaimed all those years, that excruciated him. Even his
having to negotiate for its removal in his shirt did not afflict him
so much as his forgetfulness for so long of the actual furniture; his
conviction of the reality of which lasted on after his discovery about
his costume had made him suspect, in his dream, that he was dreaming.
To a man whose memory is sound, who feels sure he looks back on an
actual past in security, such a dream is only a curiosity of sleep. To
Fenwick it was, like many others of the same sort, a possible herald
of an analogous revelation in waking hours, with a sequel of dreadful
verification from some abysm of an utterly forgotten past.
His worst terror, far and away, was the fear that he was married and a
father. It might have been supposed that this arose from a provisional
sense of pity for the wife and children he must have left; that his
mind would conceive hypothetical poverty for them, or sorrow,
disease, or death, the result direct or indirect of his disappearance.
But this was scarcely the case. They themselves were too intensely
hypothetical. In this respect the blank in his intellect was so
unqualified that it might never have occurred to him to ask himself
the question if they existed had it not been suggested to him by Mrs.
Nightingale herself. It was, in fact, a question she almost always
recurred to when Miss Sally was out of the way. It was no use trying
to talk seriously when that little monkey was there. She turned
everything to a joke. But the Major was quite another thing. He would
back her up in anything reasonable.
"I wish more could be done to find out," said she for the twentieth
time to Fenwick one evening, shortly after the musical recital of last
chapter. "I don't feel as if it was right to give up advertising.
Suppose the poor thing is in Australia or America."
"The poor thing is my hypothetical wife?"
"Exactly so. Well, suppose she is. Some people never see any newspapers
at all. And all the while she may have been advertising for _you_."
"Oh no; we should have been sure to see or hear."
"But why? Now I ask you, Mr. Fenwick, suppose she advertised half a
dozen times in the 'Melbourne Argus' or the 'New York Sun,' _would_
you have seen it, necessarily?"
"_I_ should not, because I never see the 'Melbourne Argus' or the 'New
York Sun.' But those agents we paid to look out go steadily through
the agony columns--the personal advertisements--of the whole world's
press; they would have found it if it had ever been published."
"I dare say they only pocketed the money."
"That they did, no doubt. But they gave me something for it. A hundred
and twenty-three advertisements addressed to Fenwicks--none of them
to me!"
"But have we advertised enough?"
"Oh, heavens, yes. Think of the answers we've had! I've just received
the hundred and forty-second. From a lady in distressed circumstances
who bought a piano ten years ago from a party of my name and
initials--thought I might be inclined to buy it back at half-price.
She proposes to call on me early next week."
"Poor Mr. Fenwick! It _is_ discouraging, I admit. But, oh dear! fancy
if there's some poor thing breaking her heart somewhere! It's easy
enough for you--_you_ don't believe in her."
"That's it; I don't!" He dropped a tone of pleasantry, and spoke more
seriously. "Dear Mrs. Nightingale, if my absence of conviction of
the existence of this lady did not rise to the height of a definite
disbelief in her altogether--well, I should be wretched. But I feel
very strongly that I need not make myself a poor miserable about her.
I _don't_ believe in her, that's the truth!"
"You don't believe a man could forget his wife?"
"I _can't_ believe it, try how I may! Anything--anybody else--but his
wife, no!"
Fenwick had come in late in the evening, as he was in the habit of
doing, often three or four times in the week. He looked across from
his side of the hearthrug, where he had been standing watching the
fire, but could not see the face opposite to him. Mrs. Nightingale was
sitting with her back to the light sheltering her eyes from the blaze
with a fire-screen. So Fenwick saw only the aureole the lamp made in
her hair--it was a fine halo with a golden tinge. Sally was very proud
of mamma's hair; it was much better fun to do than her own, said the
vulgar child. But even had she not been hidden by the screen, the
expression on her face might have meant nothing to him--that is,
nothing more than the ready sympathy he was so well accustomed to.
A little anxiety of eye, a tremor in the lip, the birth of a frown
without a sequel--these might have meant anything or nothing. She
might even have turned whiter than she did, and yet not be said to
show the cross-fire of torments in her heart. She was, as we told you,
a strong woman, either by nature, or else her life had made her one.
For, think of what the recesses of her memory held; think of the past
she looked back on, and knew to be nothing but a blank to him. Think
of what _she_ was, and _he_ was, as he stood there and said, "Anybody
else, but his wife;" and then rather shaped the "No" that followed
with his lips than said it; but shook an emphasis into the word with
his head.
"When are you going to get your hair cut, Mr. Fenwick?" said she;
and he did think she changed the subject abruptly, without apparent
cause. "It's just like a lion's mane when you shake it like that."
"To-morrow, if you think it too disreputable."
"I like it. Sally wants to cut it...."
The last few words showed the completeness of Fenwick's _tame
cattitude_ in the family. It had developed in an amazingly short time.
Was it due to the old attachment of this man and woman--an attachment,
mind you, that was sound and strong till it died a violent death? We
do not find this so very incredible; perhaps, because that memory of
their old parting in the garden went nearer to an actual revival than
any other stirring in his mind. But, of course, there may have been
others equally strong, only we chance to hear of this one.
That was not our purpose, however, in recording such seeming trivial
chat. It was not trivial on Mrs. Nightingale's part. She had made up
her mind to flinch from nothing, always to grasp her nettle. Here was
a nettle, and she seized it firmly. If she identified as clearly as
she did that shaken lion-mane of Fenwick's with that of Gerry, the
young man of twenty years ago, and seeing its identity was silent,
that would be flinching. She would and did say the self-same thing she
could recall saying to Gerry. And she asked Fenwick when he was going
to get his hair cut with a smile, that was like that of the Indian
brave under torture. A knife was through her heart. But it was well
done, so she thought to herself. If she could be as intrepid as that,
she could go on and live. She tried experiments of this sort when the
watchful merry eyes of her daughter were not upon her, and even felt
glad, this time, that the Major was having a doze underneath a "Daily
Telegraph." Fenwick took it all as a matter of course, mere chaff....
Did he? If so, why, after a few words more of chat, did he press his
hands on his eyes and shake a puzzled head; then, after an abrupt turn
up and down the room, come back to where he stood at first and draw a
long breath?
"Was that a recurrence, Mr. Fenwick?" she asked. They had come to
speak of these mental discomforts as _recurrences_. They would afflict
him, not seldom, without bringing to his mind any definite image. And
this was the worst sort. When an image came, his mind felt eased.
"A sort of one."
"Can you tell when it came on?" All this was nettle-grasping. She was
getting used to it. "Was it before or after I said that about your
hair?"
"After. No, before. Perhaps just about then." Mrs. Nightingale decided
that she would not tempt Providence any further. Self-discipline was
good, but not carried to danger-point.
"Now sit down and be quiet," she said. "We won't talk any more about
unpleasant things. Only the worst of it is," she added, smiling,
"that one's topics--yours and mine, I mean--are so limited by the
conditions. I should ask any other man who had been about the world,
as you _must_ have done, all sorts of questions about all sorts of
places--where he had been, whom he had seen. You can't answer
questions, though I hope you will some day...."
She paused, and he saw the reason. "You see," said he, with a
good-humoured laugh, "one gets back directly to the unpleasant
subject, whether one will or no. But if I could remember all about
my precious self, I might not court catechism about it...."
"_I_ should not about mine." This was said in a low tone, with a
silent look on the unraised eyes that was almost an invitation not to
hear, and her lips hardly moved to say it, either. He missed it for
the moment, but finished his speech with the thought in his mind.
"Still, it's an ill-wind that blows nobody good. See what a clear
conscience I have! But what was that _you_ said?"
She dropped the fire-screen and raised her eyes--fine eyes they were,
which we might have likened to those of Juno had the eyes of oxen been
blue--turning them full on him. "When?" said she.
"Just this minute. I ought to have apologized for interrupting you."
"I said I should not court catechism about myself. I should not."
Fenwick felt he could not assign this speech its proper place in the
dialogue without thinking. He thought gravely, looking to all seeming
into the fire for enlightenment; then turned round and spoke.
"Surely that is true, in a sense, of all mankind--mankind and
womankind. Nobody wants to be seen through. But one's past would need
to be a very shaky one to make one wish for an oblivion like mine to
extinguish it."
"I should not dislike it. I have now all that I wish to keep out of
the past. I have Sally. There is nothing I could not afford to forget
in the past, no one thing the loss of which could alter her in the
least, that little monkey of a daughter of mine! And there are many,
many things I should like to see the last of." From which speech
Fenwick derived an impression that the little monkey, the vulgar
child, had come back warm and living and welcome to the speaker's
mind, and had driven away some mists of night, some uglinesses that
hung about it. How he wished he could ask: "Was one of them her
father?" That was not practicable. But it was something of that sort,
clearly. His mind could not admit the idea of a haunting remorse, a
guilty conscience of an action of her own, in the memory of the woman
who spoke to him. He was too loyal to her for that. Besides, the
wording of her speech made no such supposition necessary. Fenwick's
answer to it fell back on abstractions--the consolation a daughter
must be, and so forth.
"There she is!" said her mother; and then added, as perturbation
without heralded Miss Sally's approach: "I will tell you what I meant
some other time." For there she was, no doubt of it, wild with
excitement to report the splendid success of the great sestet, the
production of which had been the event of the musical gathering she
had come from. And you know as well as we do how it is when youth and
high spirits burst in upon the sober stay-at-homes, intoxicated with
music and lights and supper and too many people talking at once.
Sally's eyebrows and teeth alone would have been enough to set all the
birds singing in the dullest coppices decorum ever planted, let alone
the tales she had to tell of all the strange and wonderful things that
had come to pass at the Erskine Peels', who were the givers of the
party, and always did things on such a scale.
"And where do you think, mother, Mrs. Erskine Peel gets all those
good-looking young men from that come to her parties? Why, from the
Stores, of course. Just fancy!... How do I know? Why, because I talked
to one of them for ever so long, and made him tell me all about it. I
detected him, and told him so straight off. How did I recognise him?
Why, of course, because he's that young man that came here about the
letter. Oh, _you_ know, Mr. Fenwick! Gracious me, how slow you are!
The young man that brought you the letter to translate. Rather tall,
dark eyes."
"Oh yes, certainly. I remember him quite well. Well, I expect he made
a very good young man for a small tea-party."
"Of course he did, and it's quite ridiculous." By which the vulgar
child meant that class distinctions were ridiculous. She had this way
of rushing subjects, eliding the obvious, and relying on her hearers.
"He told me all about it. He'd been universally provided, he said; and
I promised not to tell. Miss Erskine Peel--that's Orange, you know,
the soprano--went to the manager and said her mother said they _must_
get more men, though it wasn't dancing, or the rooms looked so bad;
only they mustn't be fools, and must be able to say Wagner and Liszt
and things. And he hoped I didn't think he was a fool."
"What did you say?"
"Said I couldn't say--didn't know him well enough. He might be, to
look at. Or not, accordingly. I didn't say _that_, you know, mamma."
"I didn't know, darling. You're very rude sometimes."
"Well, he said he could certainly say Wagner and Liszt, and even more,
because--it was rather sad, you know, mamma dear----"
"Sally, you've told that young man he may call; you know you have!"
"Well, mamma dear, and if I have, I don't see that anybody's mare's
dead. Because, do listen!" Fenwick interposed a parenthesis.
"I don't think you need to be apprehensive, Mrs. Nightingale. He was
an educated young man enough. His not knowing a French phrase like
that implies nothing. Not one in a hundred would." The way in which
the Major, who, of course, had come out of his doze on the inrush of
Miss Sally, looked across at Fenwick as he said this, implied an
acquired faith in the judgment of the latter. Sally resumed.
"Just let me tell you. His name's Bradshaw. Only he's no relation to
_the_ Bradshaw--in a yellow cover, you know. We-e-ell, I don't see
anything in that!" Sally is defending her position against a smile her
mother and Fenwick have exchanged. They concede that there is nothing
in it, and Sally continues. "Where was I? Oh, Bradshaw; yes. He was an
awfully promising violinist--awfully promising! And what do you think
happened? Why, the nerves of his head gave way, and he couldn't stand
the vibration! So it came to being Cattley's or nothing." Sally
certainly had the faculty of cutting a long story short.
She thought the story, so cut, one that her mother and Mr. Fenwick
might have shown a more active interest in, instead of saying it was
time for all of us to be in bed. She did not, however, ascribe to them
any external preoccupation--merely an abstract love of Truth; for was
it not nearly one o'clock in the morning?
Nevertheless, a little incident of Mr. Fenwick's departure, not
noticed at the moment, suddenly assumed vitality just as Sally was
"going off," and woke her up. What was it she overheard her mother
say to him, just as he was leaving the house, about something she had
promised to tell him some time? However, reflection on it with waking
faculties dissipated the importance it seemed to have half-way to
dreamland, and Sally went contentedly to sleep again.
Fenwick, as he walked to his lodgings through the dull February night,
did not regard this something, whatever it was, as a thing of slight
importance at all. He may have been only "spooney," but it was in a
sense that left him no pretence for thinking that anything connected
with this beautiful young widow-lady could be unimportant to him. On
the contrary, she was more and more filling all his waking thoughts,
and becoming the pivot on which all things turned. It is true, he
"dismissed from his mind"--whatever that means--every presumptuous
suggestion that in some precious time to come she might be willing to
throw in her lot with his own, and asked himself what sort of thing
was he that he should allow such an idea to come even as far as
contradiction-point? He, a poor inexplicable wreck! What was the Self
he had to offer, and what else had he? But, indeed, the speculation
rarely got even to this maturity, so promptly was it nipped in the
bud. Only, there were so many buds to nip. He became aware that he
was giving a good deal of attention to this sort of gardening.
Also, he had a consciousness that he was growing morbidly anxious for
the maintenance of his own oblivion. That which was at first only
a misgiving about what a return of memory might bring to light, was
rapidly becoming a definite desire that nothing should come to light
at all. How _could_ he look forward to that "hypothetical" wife whom
he did not in the least believe in, but who might be somewhere, for
all that! He knew perfectly well that his relations with Krakatoa
Villa would _not_ remain the same, say what you might! Of course, he
also knew that he had no relations there that _need_ change--most
certainly not! At this point an effort would be made against the
outcrop of his thoughts. Those confounded buds were always bursting.
It was impossible to be even with them.
Perhaps it was on this evening, or rather early morning, as he walked
home to his lodgings, that Fenwick began to recognise more fully than
he had done before Mrs. Nightingale's share in what was, if not an
absolute repugnance to a revival of the unknown past, at least a very
ready acquiescence in his ignorance of it. But surely, he reasoned
with himself, if this cause is making me contented with my darkness,
it is the more reason that it should be penetrated.
An uncomfortable variation of his dream of the resurrected first-floor
crossed his mind. Suppose he had forgotten the furniture, but
remembered the place, and gone back to tenant it with a van-load of
new chairs and tables. What would he have done with the poor old
furniture?