OF THE REV. SAMUEL HERRICK AND A SUNSET. THE WEDGE'S PROGRESS. THE
BARON AGAIN, AND THE FLY-WHEEL. HOW FENWICK KNEW HIS NAME RIGHT, AND
ROSALIND DIDN'T. HOW SALLY AND HER MEDICAL ADVISER WERE NOT QUITE WET
THROUGH. HOW HE HAD MADE HER THE CONFIDANTE OF A LOVE-AFFAIR. OF A
GOOD OPENING IN SPECIALISM. MORE PROGRESS OF THE WEDGE. HOW GERRY
NEARLY MADE DINNER LATE
It was quite true, as Sally had surmised, that poor Prosy had been
entangled in the meshes of his Octopus. But Sally had also recorded
her conviction that he would turn up at tea. He did so, with
apologies. You see, he hadn't liked to come away while his mother
was asleep, in case she should ask for him when she woke up, and
she slept rather longer than usual.
"She may have been trying to do too much lately," said he, with a
beautiful faith in some mysterious activities practised by the Goody
unseen. Sally cultivated this faith also, to the best of her ability,
but she can hardly be said to have embraced it. The way in which she
and her mother lent themselves to it was, nevertheless, edifying.
"You mustn't let her overdo it, doctor," said Rosalind, seriously
believing herself truthful. And Sally, encouraged by her evident
earnestness, added, "And make her take plenty of nourishment. That's
half the battle."
Whereupon Lætitia, swept, as it were, into the vortex of a creed,
found it in her to say, "As long as she doesn't get low." It was not
vigorous, and lacked completion, but it reassured and enforced. By the
time the little performance was done every one in the room believed
that Mrs. Vereker did down the stairs, or scoured out saucepans, or
at least dusted. Even her son believed, so forcibly was the unanimity.
Perhaps there was a taint of the incredulous in the minds of Fenwick
and Bradshaw. But each thought the other was heart-whole, and neither
suspected himself of insincerity.
Sally was curious to know exactly what lines the Octopus had operated
on. That would do later, though. She would get Prosy by himself, and
make him tell her all about it. In the course of time tea died a
natural death. Fenwick indulged in a yawn and a great shake, and
remembered that he had no end of letters to answer. Mr. and Mrs.
Julius Bradshaw suddenly thought, for no reasonable reason, that they
ought to be getting back. But they didn't really go home. They went
for a walk landward; as it was so windy, instead--remember that
they were only in the third week of their honeymoon! Sally, with
Talleyrand-like diplomacy, achieved that she and Dr. Conrad should
go for another walk in another direction. The sea was getting up and
the glass was going down, and it would be fun to go and see the waves
break over the jetty. So said Sally, and Dr. Conrad thought so too,
unequivocally. They walked away in the big sea-wind, fraught with
a great inheritance from the Atlantic of cool warmth and dry moisture.
And if you don't know what that means, you know mighty little of the
ocean in question.
Rosalind watched them through the window, closed perforce, and saw
them disappear round the flagstaff with the south cone hoisted,
holding their heads on to all appearance. She said to herself:
"Foolish fellow, why can't he speak?" And her husband answered either
her thought or her words--though he could hardly have heard them as
he sat driving his pen furiously through letters--with: "He'll have
to confess up, Rosey, you'll see, before he goes."
She made no reply; but, feeling a bit tired, lay down to rest on
the sofa. And so powerful was the sea air, and the effect of a fair
allowance of exercise, that she fell into a doze in spite of the
intensely wakeful properties of Mrs. Lobjoit's horsehair sofa, which
only a corrugated person could stop on without a maintained effort, so
that sound sleep was impossible. She never became quite unconscious of
the scratching pen and the moaning wind; so, as she did not sleep, yet
did not want to wake, she remained hovering on the borderland of
dreams. One minute she thought she was thinking, sanely, about Sally
and her silent lover--always uppermost in her thoughts--the next, she
was alive to the absurdity of some dream-thing one of them had
suddenly changed to, unnoticed. Once, half awake, she was beginning
to consider, seriously, whether she could not legitimately approach
the Octopus on the subject, but only to find, the moment after, that
the Octopus (while remaining the same) had become the chubby little
English clergyman that had married her to Gerry at Umballa, twenty
years ago. Then she thought she would wake, and took steps towards
doing it; but, as ill-luck would have it, she began to speak before
she had achieved her purpose. And the result was: "Do you remember the
Reverend Samuel Herrick, Gerry, at Umb----Oh dear! I'm not awake....
I was talking nonsense." Gerry laughed.
"Wake up, love!" said he. "Do your fine intelligence justice! What was
it you said? Reverend Samuel who?"
"I forget, darling. I was dreaming." Then, with a nettle-grasping
instinct, as one determined to flinch from nothing, "Reverend Samuel
Herrick. What did you think I said?"
"Reverend Samuel Herrick or Meyrick.... 'Not negotiable.' I don't mean
the Reverend Sam, whoever he is, but the payee whose account I'm
enriching." He folded the cheque he had been writing into its letter
and enveloped it. But he paused on the brink of its gummed edge,
looking over it at Rosalind, who was still engaged getting quite
awake. "I know the name well enough. He's some chap! I expect you saw
him in the 'Chronicle.'"
"Very likely, darling! He must be some chap, when you come to think
of it." She says this slightly, as a mere rounding-off speech. Then
goes behind her husband's chair and kisses him over his shoulder as he
directs the envelope.
"Marmaduke, Copestake, Dickinson, and Humphreys," says he, as he
writes the names. "Now I call that a firm-and-a-half. Old Broad
Street, E.C. _That's_ all!--as far as _he_ goes. Now, how about
Puckeridge, Limited?"
"Don't write any more, Gerry dear; you'll spoil your eyes. Come and
look at the sunset. Come along!" For a blood-red forecast of storm in
the west, surer than the surest human barometer, is blazing through
the window that cannot be opened for the blow, and turning the
shell-work rabbit and the story of Goliath into gold and jewels. The
sun is glancing through a rift in the cloud-bank, to say good-night to
the winds and seas, and wish them joy of the high old time they mean
to have in his absence, in the dark.
The lurid level rays that make an indescribable glory of Rosalind's
halo-growth of hair as Gerry sees it against the window, have no
ill-boding in them for either--no more, that is, than always has
belonged to a rough night closing over the sea, and will do so always
until the sea is ice again on a planet sick to death. As he draws her
arm round his neck and she his round her waist, and they glance at
each other in the flaming glow, there is no thought in either of any
ill impending for themselves.
"I wish Sarah were here to see you now, Rosey."
"So should I, love! Only she would see you too. And then she'd make
you vainer than you are already. All men are patches of Vanity. But
I forgive you." She kisses him slightly in confirmation. They certainly
were a wonderful sight, the two of them, a minute ago, when the light
was at its best. Yes!--they wish Sally had been there, each on the
other's account. It was difficult to say which of the two had thought
of Sally first. Both had this habit of registering the _rapport_ of
everything to Sally as a first duty.
But a sunset glow, like this one, lasts, maybe, little longer than
a highest song-note may be sustained. It was to die. But Rosalind and
Gerry watched it out. His cheek was resting in the thick mass of soft
gold, just moving slightly to be well aware of it. The sun-ray touched
it, last of anything in the room, and died....
"What's that, dear love? _Why?_..." It was Rosalind that spoke.
"Nothing, dearest! No, nothing!... Indeed, nothing at all!"
"Gerry, what _was_ it?"
"What was what, dear?"
"What made you leave off so suddenly?"
For the slightly intermittent movement of his cheek on her hair--what
hairy thing is there that does not love to be stroked?--had stopped;
and his hand that held hers had slipped from it, and rested for a
moment on his own forehead.
"It's gone now. It was a sort of recurrence. I haven't been having
them lately...."
"Come and sit down, love. There, now, don't fidget! What was it
about?" Does he look pale?--thinks Rosalind--or is it only the
vanished glow?
He is uncommunicative. Suppose they go out for a turn before dinner,
he suggests. They can walk down to the jetty, to meet Sarah and her
medical adviser. Soon said, soon settled. Ten minutes more, and they
are on their way to the fisher dwellings: experiencing three-quarters
of a gale, it appears, on the testimony of an Ancient Mariner in a
blue and white-striped woollen shirt, who knows about things.
"That was _very_ queer, that recurrence!" Thus Gerry, after leaving
the Ancient Mariner. "It was just as the little edge of the sun went
behind the bank. And what do you think my mind hooked it on to, of all
things in the world?" Rosalind couldn't guess, of course. "Why, a big
wheel I was trying to stop, that went slowly--slowly--like the sun
vanishing. And then just as the sun went it stopped."
"Was there anything else?" Entire concealment of alarm is all Rosalind
can attend to.
"No end of things, all mixed up together. One thing very funny. A great
big German chap.... I say, Rosalind!"
"What, Gerry darling?"
"Do you recollect, when we were in Switzerland, up at that last
high-up place, Seelisberg--Sonnenberg--do you remember the great fat
Baron that gave me those cigars, and sang?"
"Remember the Baron? Of course I do. Perfectly!" Rosalind contrived
a laugh. "Was he in it?" Perhaps this was rash. But then, not to say
it would have been cowardice, when it was on her tongue-tip. Let the
nettle be grasped.
"He was in it, singing and all. But the whole thing was mixed up and
queer. It all went, quite suddenly. And I should have lost him out
of it, as one loses a dream, if it hadn't been for seeing him in
Switzerland. It was something to hold on by. Do you understand?"
"I think I do. _I_ had forgotten what I was dreaming about when I
woke on the sofa and talked that nonsense. But I held on to the name,
for all that."
"But then that wasn't a real person, the Reverend--what was
he?--Herrick or Derrick."
Rosalind passed the point by. "Gerry darling! I want you to do as I
tell you. Don't worry your head about it, but keep quiet. If memory
is coming back to you, it will come all the quicker for letting your
mind rest. Let it come gradually."
"I see what you mean. You think it was really a recollection of B.C.?"
"I think so. Why should it not?"
"But it's all gone clean away again! And I can't remember anything
of it at all--and there was heaps!"
"Never mind! If it was real it will come back. Wait and be patient!"
Rosalind's mind laid down this rule for itself--to think and act
exactly as though there had been nothing to fear. Even if all the
past had been easy to face it would have shrunk from suggestions.
So thought she to herself, perhaps with a little excusable
self-deception. Otherwise the natural thing would have been to
repeat to him all the Baron's story.
No! She would not say a word, or give a hint. If it was all to come
back to him, it would come back. If not, she could not bring it back;
and she might, in the attempt to do so, merely plunge his injured
mind into more chaotic confusion. Much safer to do nothing!
But why this sudden stirring of his memory, just now of all times?
Had anything unusual happened lately? Naturally, the inquiry sent
her mind back, to yesterday first, then to the day before. No!--there
was nothing there. Then to generalities. Was it the sea bathing?--the
sea air? And then on a sudden she thought of the thing nearest at
hand, that she should have thought of at first. Yes!--she would ask
Dr. Conrad about _that_: Why hadn't she thought of that before--that
galvanic battery?
Meanwhile, despite her injunctions to her husband to wait and be
patient, his mind kept harking back on this curious recollection.
Luckily, so it seemed to her--at any rate for the present--he did not
seem to recall the Baron's recognition of himself, or to connect it
with this illusion or revival. He appeared to recollect the Baron's
personality, and his liberality with cigars, but little else. If he
was to be reminded of this, it must be after she had talked over it
with Vereker.
They struggled with the weather along the seaward face of the little
old fisher-town. The great wind was blowing the tar-laden atmosphere
of the nets and the all-pervading smell of tar landward; and
substituting flecks of driven foam, that it forced to follow landward
too, for all they tried to stop and rest. The population was mostly
employed getting the boats up as close to the houses as practice
permitted, and the capstans were all a-creak with the strain; and one
shrieked for a dab of lard, and got it, just as they passed. The man
with Bessie and the anchor on his arms--for it was his--paused in his
rotations with one elbow on his lever, and one foot still behind
the taut cable he was crossing. His free hand saluted; and then, his
position being defined, he was placed on a moral equality with his
superiors, and could converse. The old-fashioned hat-touch, now dying
out, is just as much a protest against the way social order parts man
from man as it is an acknowledgment of its necessity.
The lover of Bessie and Elinor and Kate was disposed to ignore the
efforts of the wind. There might, he said, be a bit of sea on, come
two or three in the marn'n--at the full of the tide. The wind might
get up a bit, if it went round suth'ard. The wind was nothing in
itself--it was the direction it came from; it got a bad character
from imputed or vicarious vice. It would be a bit rough to get a
boat off--the lady might get a wetting.... At which point Rosalind
interrupted. Nothing was further from her thoughts, she said, than
navigation in any form. But had the speaker seen her daughter go
by--the young lady that swam? For Sally was famous. He hadn't,
himself, but maybe young Benjamin had. Who, taking leave to speak from
this, announced frankly that he _had_ seen a young lady, in company
with her sweetheart, go by nigh an hour agone. The tattooed one
diluted her sweetheart down to "her gentleman" reluctantly. In his
land, and the one there would soon be for the freckled and blue-eyed
Benjamin, there was no such artificial nonsense. Perhaps some sense
of this showed itself in the way he resumed his work. "Now, young
Benjamin--a-action!" said he; and the two threw themselves again
against the pole of the mollified capstan.
If Rosalind fancied this little incident had put his previous
experience out of her husband's mind she was mistaken. He said, as
they passed on in the direction of the jetty, "I think I should like
to wind up capstans. It would suit me down to the ground." But then
became thoughtful; and, just as they were arriving at the jetty,
showed that his mind had run back by asking suddenly, "What was the
fat Baron's name?"
"Diedrich Kammerkreutz." Rosalind gave him her nearest recollection,
seeing nothing to be gained by doing otherwise. Any concealment, too,
the chances were, would make matters worse instead of better.
"It was Kreutzkammer, in my--dream or whatever you call it." They
stopped and looked at each other, and Rosalind replied, "It _was_
Kreutzkammer. Oh dear!" rather as one who had lost breath from some
kind of blow.
He saw her distress instantly, and was all alive to soothe it.
"Don't be frightened, darling love!" he cried, and then his great
good-humoured laugh broke into the tenderness of his speech, without
spoiling it. He was so like Gerry, the boy that rode away that day
in the dog-cart, when there was "only mamma for the girl."
"But when all's said and done," said she, harking back for a reprieve,
"perhaps you only recollected Sonnenberg in your dream better than
I did ... just now...." She hung fire of repeating the name Herrick.
"_Ach zo_," he answered, teutonically for the moment, from association
with the Baron. "But suppose it all true, dearest, and that I'm going
to come to life again, what does it matter? It can't alter _us_, that
I can see. Could anything that you can imagine? I should be Gerry for
you, and you would be Rosey for me, to the end of it." Her assent had
a mere echo of hesitation. But he detected it, and went on: "Unless,
you mean, I remembered the hypothetical wife?..."
"Ye--es!--partly."
"Well! I tell you honestly, Rosey darling, if I do, I shall keep her
to myself. A plaguing, intrusive female--to come between _us_. But
there's no such person!" At which they both laughed, remembering the
great original non-exister. But even here was a little thorn. For Mrs.
Harris brought back the name the Baron had known Gerry by. He did not
seem to have resumed it in his dream.
The jetty ran a little way out to sea. Thus phraseology in use. It
might have reconsidered itself, and said that the jetty had at some
very remote time run out to sea and stopped there. Ever since, the sea
had broken over it at high tides, and if you cared at all about your
clothes you wouldn't go to the end of it, if you were me. Because the
salt gets into them and spoils the dye. Besides, you have to change
everything.
There was a dry place at the end of the jetty, and along the edge of
the dry place were such things as cables go round and try hard to
draw, as we drew the teeth of our childhood with string. But they fail
always, although their pulls are never irresolute. On two of these sat
Sally and the doctor in earnest conversation.
Rosalind and her husband looked at each other and said, "No!" This
might have been rendered, "Matters are no forwarder." It connected
itself (without acknowledgment) with the distance apart of the two
cable-blocks. Never mind; let them alone!
"Are you going to sit there till the tide goes down?"
"Oh, is that you? We didn't see you coming."
"You'll have to look sharp, or you'll be wet through...."
"No, we _shan't_! You only have to wait a minute and get in
between...."
Easier said than done! A big wave, that was just in time to overhear
this conversation imperfectly, thought it would like to wet Sally
through, and leaped against the bulwark of the jetty. But it spent
itself in a huge torrential deluge while Sally waited a minute. A
friend followed it, but made a poor figure by comparison. Then Sally
got in between, followed by the doctor.... Well! they were really not
so _very_ wet, after all! Sally was worst, as she was too previous.
She got implicated in the friend's last dying splash, while Prosy
got nearly scot-free. So said Sally to Fenwick as they walked briskly
ahead towards home, leaving the others to make their own pace. Because
it was a case of changing everything, and dinner was always so early
at St. Sennans.
"Let them go on in front. I want to talk to you, Dr. Conrad."
Rosalind, perhaps, thinks his attention won't wander if she takes a
firm tone; doesn't feel sure about it, otherwise. Maybe Sally is too
definitely in possession of the citadel to allow of an incursion from
without. She continues: "I have something to tell you. Don't look
frightened. It is nothing but what you have predicted yourself. My
husband's memory is coming back. I don't know whether I ought to say
I am afraid or I hope it is so...."
"But are you sure it is so?"
"Yes, listen! It has all happened since you and Sally left." And then
she narrated to the doctor, whose preoccupation had entirely vanished,
first the story of the recurrence, and Fenwick's description of it
in full; and then the incident of the Baron at Sonnenberg, but less
in detail. Then she went on, walking slower, not to reach the
house too soon. "Now, this is the thing that makes me so sure it is
recollection: just now, as we were coming to the jetty, he asked me
suddenly what was the Baron's name. I gave a wrong version of it, and
he corrected me." This does not meet an assent.
"That was nothing. He had heard it at Sonnenberg. I think much more of
the story itself; the incident of the wheel and so on. Are you quite
sure you never repeated this German gentleman's story to Mr. Fenwick?"
"Quite sure."
"H'm...!"
"So, you see, I want you to help me to think."
"May I talk to him about it?--speak openly to him?"
"Yes; to-morrow, not to-day. I want to hear what he says to-night. He
always talks a great deal when we're alone at the end of the day. He
will do so this time. But I want you to tell me about an idea I have."
"What idea?"
"Did Sally tell you about the galvanic battery on the pier?" Dr.
Conrad stopped in his walk, and faced round towards his companion.
He shook out a low whistle--an _arpeggio_ down. "Did she tell you?"
repeated Rosalind.
"Miss Sa...."
"Come, come, doctor! Don't be ridiculous. Say Sally!" The young man's
heart gave a responsive little jump, and then said to itself, "But
perhaps I'm only a family friend!" and climbed down. However, on
either count, "Sally" was nicer than "Miss Sally."
"Sally told me about the electric entertainment at the pier-end. I'm
sorry I missed it. But if _that's_ what's done it, Fenwick must try
it again."
"_Mustn't_ try it again?"
"No--_must_ try it again. Why, do you think it bad for him to
remember?"
"I don't know what to think."
"My notion is that a man has a right to his own mind. Anyhow, one
has no right to keep him out of it."
"Oh no; besides, Gerry isn't out of it in this case. Not out of his
mind...."
"I didn't mean that way. I meant excluded from participation in
himself ... you see?"
"Oh yes, I quite understand. Now listen, doctor. I want you to do me a
kindness. Say nothing, even to Sally, till I tell you. Say _nothing_!"
"You may trust me." Rosalind feels no doubt on that point, the more so
that the little passage about Sally's name has landed her at some
haven of the doctor's confidence that neither knows the name of just
yet. He is not the first man that has felt a welcome in some trifling
word of a very special daughter's mother. But woe be to the mother who
is premature and spoils all! Poor Prosy is too far gone to be a risky
subject of experiment. But _he_ won't say anything--not he! "After
all, you know," he continues, "it may all turn out a false alarm. Or
false hope, should I say?"
No answer. And he doesn't press for one. He is in a land of pitfalls.
* * * * *
"What have you and your medical adviser been talking about all the
while, there in mid-ocean?" Fenwick forgets the late event with
pleasure. Sally, with her hair threatening to come down in the wind,
is enough to stampede a troop of nightmares.
"Poor Prosy!" is all the answer that comes at present. Perhaps if that
uncontrolled black coil will be tractable she will concede more anon.
You can't get your hair back under your hat and walk quick and talk,
all at the same time.
"Poorer than usual, Sarah?" But really just at this corner it's as
much as you can do, if you have skirts, to get along at all; to say
nothing of the way such loose ends as you indulge in turn on you and
flagellate your face in the wind. Oh, the vicious energy of that
stray ribbon! Fancy having to use up one hand to hold that!
But a lull came when the corner was fairly turned, in the lee of a
home of many nets, where masses of foam-fleck had found a respite, and
leisure to collapse, a bubble at a time. You could see the prism-scale
each had to itself, each of the millions, if you looked close enough.
Collectively, their appearance was slovenly. A chestnut-coloured man
a year old, who looked as if he meant some day to be a boatswain,
was seated on a pavement that cannot have soothed his unprotected
flesh--flint pebbles can't, however round--and enjoying the mysterious
impalpable nature of this foam. However, even for such hands as
his--and Sally wanted to kiss them badly--they couldn't stop. She
got her voice, though, in the lull.
"Yes--a little. I've found out all about Prosy."
"Found out about him?"
"I've made him talk about it. It's all about his ma and a young lady
he's in love with...." Fenwick's _ha!_ or _h'm!_ or both joined
together, was probably only meant to hand the speaker on, but the
tone made her suspicious. She asked him why he said that, imitating
it; on which he answered, "Why shouldn't he?" "Because," said Sally,
"if you fancy Prosy's in love with me, you're mistaken."
"Very good! Cut along, Sarah! You've made him talk about the young
lady he's in love with...?"
"Well, he as good as talked about her, anyhow! _I_ understood quite
plain. He wants to marry her awfully, but he's afraid to say so to
her, because of his ma."
"Doesn't Mrs. Vereker like her?"
"Dotes upon her, he says. Ug-g-h! No, it isn't that. It's the lugging
the poor girl into his ma's sphere of influence. He's conscious of
his ma, but adores her. Only he's aware she's overwhelming, and always
gets her own roundabout way. I prefer Tishy's dragon, if you ask
_me_."
At that point Sally is quite unconscious of Fenwick's amused eyes
fixed on her, and his smile in ambush. She says the last words
through a hairpin, while her hands take advantage of the lull to
make a good job of that rope of black hair. She will go on and tell
all the story; so Fenwick doesn't speak. Surprised at first by the
tale of Dr. Conrad's young lady, his ideas have by now fructified.
Sally continues:
"He's often told me he thought G.P.'s were better single, for their
wives' sakes--that sounds wrong, somehow!--but it isn't that. It's
his ma entirely. I suppose he's told you about the epileptiform
disorders?" No, he hadn't. "Well, now! Fancy Prosy not telling you
that! He's become quite an authority since those papers he had in
the 'Lancet,' and he's thinking of giving up general practice. Sir
Dioscorides Gayler's a cousin of his, you know, and would pass on
his practice to Prosy on easy terms. House in Seymour Street, Portman
Square. Great authority on epilepsy and epileptiform disorders. Wants
a successor who knows about 'em. Naturally. Wants three thousand
pounds. Naturally. Big fees! But he would make it easy for Prosy."
"That would be all right; soon manage that." Fenwick speaks with
the confidence of one in a thriving trade. The deity of commerce,
security, can manage all things. Insecurity is atheism in the City.
"But then," he adds, "Vereker wouldn't marry, even with a house and
big-fee consultations, because he's afraid his mother would hector
over his wife. Is that it?"
"That's it! It's his Goody mother. I say, it _is_ blowing!" It was,
and they had emerged from the shelter into the wind. No more talk!
* * * * *
As Fenwick, sea-blown and salted, resorted to the lodging-house
allowance of fresh water and soap, in a perfunctory and formal
preparation for dinner, his mind ran continually on Sally's
communication. As for the other young lady being valid, that he
dismissed as nonsense not worth consideration. Vereker had been
resorting to a furtive hint of a declaration, disguised as fiction.
It was a _fabula narrata de_ Sally, _mutato nomine_. If she didn't
see through it, and respond in kind, it would show him how merely
a friend he was, and nothing more. "Perhaps he doesn't understand
our daughter's character," said Fenwick to Rosalind, when he had
repeated the conversation to her. "Of course he doesn't," she
replied. "No young man of his sort understands girls the least.
The other sort of young man understands the other sort of girls."
And then a passing wonderment had touched her mind, of how strange
it was that Sally should be one of her own sort, so very distinctly.
How about inheritance? She grew reflective and silent over it, and
then roused herself to wonder, illogically, why Gerry hadn't gone
on talking.
The reason was that as his mind dwelt happy and satisfied on the
good prospect Vereker would have if he could step into his cousin's
specialist practice as a consulting physician, with a reputation
already begun, his thoughts were caught with a strange jerk. What
and whence was a half-memory of some shadowy store of wealth that was
to make it the easiest thing in the world for him to finance the new
departure? It had nothing to do with the vast mysterious possibilities
of credit. It was a recollection of some resourceful backing he was
entitled to, somehow; and he was reminded by it of his dream about the
furniture--(we told you of that?)--but with a reservation. When he
woke from the sleep-dream of the furniture, he in a short time could
distinctly identify it as a dream, and was convinced no such furniture
had ever existed. He could not shake off this waking dream, and it
clogged his mind painfully, and made him silent.
So much so that when Rosalind, soon completed for the banqueting-board,
looked into the adjoining room to see what progress Gerry was making,
and why he was silent, she only saw the back of a powerful frame in
its shirt-sleeves, and a pair of hands holding on each side an
unbrushed head. The elbows indispensable to them rested on the
window-bar.
"Look alive, Gerry darling!--you'll make dinner late.... Anything
wrong, dear love?" Sudden anxiety in her voice. "Is it another...?"
Another what? No need to define, exactly!
"A sort of one," Fenwick answers. "Not so bad as the last. Hardly
describable! Never mind."
He made no effort towards description, and his wife did not press
him for it. What good end could be gained by fidgeting him?
But she knew now that her life would be weighted with an anxiety
hard to bear, until his hesitating return of memory should make its
decision of success or failure. A guarantee of the latter would have
been most to her liking, but how could she hope for that now?