HOW FENWICK AND VEREKER WENT FOR A WALK, AND MORE MEMORIES CAME BACK.
HOW FENWICK WAS A MILLIONAIRE, OR THEREABOUTS. OF A CLUE THAT KILLED
ITSELF. HARRISSON'S AFFAIR NOW! BOTHER THE MILLIONS! IS NOT LOVE
BETTER THAN MONEY? ONLY FENWICK'S NAME WASN'T HARRISSON NEITHER
"We thought it best to let you have your sleep out, dear. Sally
agreed. No, leave the pot alone. Mrs. Lobjoit will make some fresh
coffee."
"Who's the other cup?"
"Vereker. He came in to breakfast; to see if we were blown away."
"I see. Of course. Where are they now?"
"They?... oh, him and Sally! They said they'd go and see if Tishy
and her husband were blown away."
"Well, I have had my sleep out with a vengeance. It's a quarter
to ten."
"Never mind, darling. So much the better. Let's have a look at
you...." And the little self-explanatory colloquy ends with Rosalind
kissing her husband and examining him with anxious eyes. She sees
a face less haggard than the one she saw last night, for is it not
daylight and has not the wind fallen to a mere cheerful breeze you can
quite stand upright in, leaning slightly seawards? And are not the
voices and the footsteps of a new day outside, and the swift exchanges
of sunlight and cloud-shadow that are chasing each other off the
British Channel? And has not a native of eighty years of age (which
he ignores) just opened the street door on his own responsibility
and shouted along the passage that pra'ans are large this morning? He
is more an institution than a man, and is freely spoken of as "The
Shrimps." A flavour of a Triton who has got too dry on the beach comes
in with the sea air, and also a sense of prawns, emptied from a wooden
measure they have been honourably shaken down into, falling on a dish
held out to receive them by an ambassador of four, named by Sally
little Miss Lobjoit, the youngest of her race.
But for all that the rising life of the hours and the subsiding gale
may do to chase away the memory of the oppressions of the night from
one who was defenceless in its solitude, Rosalind can see how much
they leave behind. Her husband may do his best to make light of it--to
laugh it off as nothing but the common bad night we all know so well;
may make the most of the noises of the storm, and that abominable
banging door; but he will not conceal from her the effort that it
costs him to do so. Besides, had he not admitted, in the night, that
he "got worried and fidgeted by chaotic ideas"? What were these ideas?
How far had he penetrated into his own past? She was not sorry for the
few words she had had time to exchange with Dr. Conrad while Sally
went to seek her hat. She had renewed and confirmed her permission to
him to speak to her husband freely about himself.
"Are Mr. and Mrs. Paganini gone to sea?" This is said as Fenwick opens
negotiations rather mechanically with the fresh coffee Mrs. Lobjoit
has produced, and as that lady constructs for removal a conglomerate
of plates and effete eggs.
"Gone to sea, Gerry? Not very likely. What's the meaning of that?
Explain."
"Why, Sally and her doctor are staring out at the offing...."
"Well?"
"And didn't you say they had gone to find out if they were blown
away?"
"I supposed they changed their minds." Rosalind talks absently, as
if they didn't matter. All her thoughts are on her husband. But she
doesn't fancy catechizing him about his experiences in the night,
neither. She had better let him alone, and wait new oblivion or a
healthy revival.
He is also _distrait_, and when he spoke of Sally and the doctor he
had shown no interest in his own words. His eyes do not kindle at hers
in his old way, and might be seeing nothing, for all there is in them
to tell of it. He makes very short work of a cup of coffee, and a mere
pretence of anything else; and then, suddenly rousing himself with
a shake, says this won't do, and he must go out and get a blow. All
right, says Rosalind, and he'd better get Dr. Conrad, and make him go
for a walk. Only they are not to fall over the cliff.
"Fall over the cliff!" repeats Fenwick. He laughs, and she is glad at
the sound. "You couldn't fall over the cliff against such a wind as
this. I defy any one to." He kisses her and goes out, and she hears
him singing, as he hunts for a stick that has vanished, an old French
song:
"Auprès de ma blond-e
Comme c'est bon--c'est bon--c'est bon...."
Only, when he has found the stick and his hat, he does not go at once,
but comes back, and says, as he kisses her again: "Don't fidget about
me, darling; I'm all right." Which must have been entirely brain-wave
or thought-reading, as Rosalind had said never a word of her anxiety,
so far.
Fenwick walked away briskly towards the flagstaff where Sally and
Vereker had been looking out to sea. In the dazzling sunshine--all
the more dazzling for the suddenness of its come and go--and the
intoxicating rush of well-washed air that each of those crested waves
out yonder knew so much about--and they were all of a tale--and such a
companion in the enjoyment of it as that white sea-bird afloat against
the blue gap of sky or purple underworld of cloud, what could he do
other than cast away the thoughts the night had left, the cares,
whatever they were, that the revival of memory had brought back?
If he could not succeed altogether in putting them aside, at least
he could see his way to bearing them better, with a kiss of his wife
still on his face, and all St. Sennans about him in the sunshine, and
Sally to come. However, before he reached the flagstaff he met the
doctor, and heard that Miss Sally had actually gone down to the
machines to see if Gabriel wouldn't put one down near the water,
so that she could run a little way. She was certain she could
swim in that sea if she could once get through what she called the
selvage-wave. If Gabriel wouldn't, she should take her things up to
the house and put them on and walk down to the sea in a cloak. It was
quite ridiculous, said the merpussy, people making such a fuss about
a few waves. What was the world coming to?
"She'll be all safe," was Fenwick's comment when he heard this. "They
won't let her go in, at the machines. They won't let her leave the
Turkey-twill knickers and the short skirt. She always leaves them
there to dry. _She's_ all right. Let's take a turn across the field;
it's too windy for the cliff."
"You had a bad night, Fenwick."
"All of us had. About three in the morning I thought the house would
blow down. And there was a door banged, etc...."
"You had a worse night than the rest of us. Look at me straight in
the face. No, I wasn't going to say show me your tongue." They had
stopped a moment at the top of what was known as The Steps--_par
excellence_--which was the shortest cut up to the field-path. Dr.
Conrad looks a second or so, and then goes on: "I thought so. You've
got black lines under your eyes, and you're evidently conscious of the
lids. I expect you've got a pain in them, one in each, tied together
by a string across here." That is to say, from eyebrow to eyebrow,
as illustrated fingerwise.
Fenwick wasn't prepared to deny it evidently. He drew his own fingers
across his forehead, as though to feel if the pain were really there.
It confirmed a suspicion he couldn't have sworn to.
"Yes; I suppose I did have a worse night than the rest of you. At
least, I hope so, for your sakes." His manner might have seemed to
warrant immediate speculation or inquiry about the cause of his
sleeplessness, but Vereker walked on beside him in silence. The way
was along a short, frustrated street that led to the field-pathway
that was grass-grown, more or less, all but the heaps of flints that
were one day to make a new top-dressing, but had been forgotten by the
local board, and the premature curb-stones whose anticipations about
traffic had never been fulfilled. The little detached houses on either
side were unselfish little houses, that only wanted to be useful and
afford shelter to the wanderer, or provide a refuge for old age. All
made use, on placards, of the cautious expression "Apartments"; while
some flung all reserve to the winds and said also they were "To let"
outright. The least satisfactory one of the lot was almost invisible
owing to its egotism, but distinguishable from afar because the
cross-board on a standard that had been placed in the garden-front
had fallen forward over the palings like Punch's gallows. It didn't
much matter, because the placard attached was dissolving off in the
rains, and hanging down so low that a goat was eating it with relish,
standing against the parapet of the garden-fence.
They reached the point at which Albion Villas had been thwarted by a
hedge, rich in unripe sloes and green abortive blackberries, in their
attempt to get across a stubble-field to the new town, and passed in
instalments through its turnstile, or kissing-gate. Neither spoke,
except that Fenwick said, "Look at the goat," until, after they had
turned on to the chalk pathway, nearly dry in the warm sun and wind,
he added a question:
"Did you ever taste a sloe?"
"Yes, once."
"That is what every one says if you ask him if he ever tasted a sloe.
Nobody ever does it again."
"But they make sloe-gin of them?"
"That, my dear Vereker, is what everybody always says next. Sally
told me they did, and she's right. They console themselves for the
taste of the sloe by an imaginary _liqueur_ like _maraschino_. But
that's because they never tasted sloe-gin."
Vereker thinks he may conclude that Fenwick is talking for talk's
sake, and humours him. He can get to the memory-subject later.
"A patient of mine," he says, "who's been living at Spezzia, was
telling me about a fruit that was very good there, _diosperi_ he
called them. They must be very unlike sloes by his description."
"And naturally sloes made you think of them. I wonder what they
are--_diosperi_--_diosperi_----" He repeated the word as though
trying to recall it. Dr. Conrad helped the identification.
"He said they are what the Japs call jelly-plums--great big fruit,
very juicy."
"I know. They're persimmons, or a sort of persimmons. We used to get
lots of them in California, and even up at the Klondyke...."
He stopped abruptly and remained silent. A sudden change in him was
too marked to escape notice, and there could be no doubt about the
cause. The doctor walked beside him, also silent, for a few paces.
Then he spoke:
"You will have to bear this, Fenwick, and keep your head. It is just
as I told you it would be. It is all coming back." He laid his left
hand on his companion's shoulder as they stood side-by-side on the
chalk pathway, and with his right felt the wrist that was nearest
him. Fenwick was in a quiver all through his frame, and his pulse was
beating furiously as Dr. Conrad's finger touched it. But he spoke
with self-control, and his step was steady as they walked on slowly
together the moment after.
"It's all coming back. It _has_ come back. I shall remember all in
time." Then he repeated Vereker's words, "I must keep my head. I shall
have to bear this," and walked on again in silence. The young man
beside him still felt he had best not speak yet. Just let the physical
perturbation subside. Talking would only make it worse.
They may have walked so for two minutes before Fenwick spoke again.
Then he roused himself, to say, with but little hint in his voice of
any sense of the oddity of his question: "Which is my dream?--this or
the other?" Then added: "That's the question I want to ask, and nobody
can answer."
"And of course all the while each of us knows perfectly well the
answer is simply 'Neither.' You are a man that has had an accident,
and lost his memory. Be patient, and do not torment yourself. Let it
take its own time."
"All right, doctor! Patience is the word." He spoke in an undertone--a
voice of acquiescence, or rather obedience. "Perhaps it will not be so
bad when I remember more." They walked on again.
Then Vereker, noting that during silence he brooded under the
oppression of what he had already recovered from the past, and to
all appearance struck, once or twice, on some new unwelcome vein of
thought, judging from a start or a momentary tension of the arm that
now held his, decided that it would be as well to speak to him now,
and delay no longer.
"Has anything come back to you, so far, that will unsettle your
present life?"
"No, no--not that, thank God! Not so far as I can see. But much that
must disquiet it; it cannot be otherwise."
"Do you mind telling me?"
"No, surely, dear fellow!--surely I will tell you. Why should I not?
But what I say to you don't repeat to Sally or her mother. Not just
now, you know. Wait!"
There was a recess in the wall of mortar-bedded flints that ran along
the path, which would give shelter from the wind to light a cigar.
Fenwick stopped and took two from a cigar-case, Sally's present to him
last Christmas, and offered one to Dr. Conrad, who, however, didn't
want to smoke so early. He lighted his own in the recess, with
only a slight tremor of the hand, barely visible even to Vereker's
experienced eye; and then, as he threw away the match, said, without
anything that could be called emotion, though always with an apparent
sense of his bewilderment at his own words:
"I am that man Harrisson that was in all the newspapers just about
the time of the--you remember--when I...."
Vereker failed for the moment to grasp the degree of his own
astonishment, and used the residuum of his previous calmness to say:
"I remember. The time of your accident."
"_Am_ I that man? I mean ought I to say 'I _am_ that man'? I know
I _was_ that man, in my old dream. I know it now, in this one."
"Well, but--so much the better! You are a millionaire, Fenwick, with
mines at Klondyke...."
Dr. Conrad had been so taken aback at the suddenness of the
extraordinary revelation that his amazement was quite at a loss for
means of expression. A delayed laugh, not unmixed with a gasp,
expressed nothing--merely recorded a welcome to the good side of it.
For, of course, when one hears of Golconda one is bound to think it
good, failing evidence to the contrary.
"Yes, I _was_ that man--Algernon Harrisson. Now, the question is--and
you'll have to help me here, Vereker. Don't look so thunderstruck,
old chap--Shall I be that man again or not?"
"Why not, in Heaven's name? How can you help it?" The speaker is too
dumbfounded, so far, to be able to get the whip hand of the
circumstances. But the pace may be slacker presently.
"Let's be steady!" Fenwick's voice, as he says this, has a sense of
ease in it, as though he were relieved by his disclosure. He takes
Vereker's arm in his again, and as they walk on together is evidently
on good terms with his cigar--so the doctor thinks--and the tremor has
gone from his hands. A short pause, and he goes on speaking: "Until
we pitched on the Klondyke just now I knew nothing of this. I shall
get it all back in time. Let me see!..."
The doctor recovered his presence of mind. "Stop a minute," said he.
"Do you know, Fenwick, if I were you I shouldn't try to tell anything
until you're clearer about the whole thing. Don't talk to me now.
Wait till you are in a state to know how much you wish to tell."
But Fenwick would have none of this. He shook his head decidedly.
"I _must_ talk to some one about it. And my wife I cannot...."
"Why not?"
"You will see. You need not be frightened of too many confidences.
I haven't recollected any grave misdemeanours yet. I'll keep them
to myself when they come. Now listen to what I can and do recollect
pretty clearly." He paused a second, as if his first item was shaky;
then said, "Yes!--of course." And went on as though the point were
cleared up.
"Of course! I went up to the Klondyke almost in the first rush, in
'97. I'll tell you all about that after. Others besides myself became
enormously rich that summer, but I was one of the luckiest. However,
I don't want to tell you about Harrisson at Klondyke--(that's how I
find it easiest to think of myself, third person singular!)--but to get
at the thing in the dream, that concerns me most _now_. Listen!... Only
remember this, Vereker dear! I can only recall jagged fragments yet
awhile. I have been stunned, and can't help that...." He stopped the
doctor, who was about to speak, with: "I know what you are going to
say; let it stand over a bit--wait and be patient--all that sort of
game! All very good and sensible, but I _can't_!"
"Can't?"
"No! Can't--simply _can't_. Because, look you! One of the things
that has come back is that I am a married man--by which I mean
that Harrisson was. Oh dear! It _is_ such an ease to me to think of
Harrisson as somebody else. You can't understand that." But Vereker
is thoroughly discomposed.
"But didn't you say--only just now--there was nothing--_nothing_--to
unsettle your present life? No; I can't understand--I _can't_
understand." His reply is to Fenwick's words, but the reference is
to the early part of his speech.
"You will understand it better if I tell you more. Let me do it my
own way, because I get mixed, and feel as if I might lose the clue
any moment. All the time I was with the Clemenceaux at Ontario I was
a married man--I mean that I _knew_ I was a married man. And I remember
knowing it all that time. Indeed, I did! But if you ask me who my wife
was--she wasn't there, you know; you've got all that clear?--why, I
can't tell you any more than Adam! All I know is that all that time
little Ernestine was growing from a girl to a woman, the reason I felt
there could be no misunderstanding on that score was that Clemenceau
and his wife knew quite well I had been married and divorced or
something--there was something rum, long before--and you know Papists
would rather the Devil outright than have their daughter marry a
divorced man. But as to who the wife had been, and what it was all
about...."
He stopped again suddenly, seizing Vereker by the arm with a strong
hand that trembled as it had done before. His face went very white,
but he kept self-possession, as it were mechanically; so completely
that the long ash on his half-smoked cigar remained unbroken. He
waited a moment, and then spoke in a controlled way.
"I can remember nothing of the story; or what seems to come I _know_
is only confusion ... by things in it...." Vereker thought it might
be well to change the current of his thoughts.
"Who were the Clemenceaux at Ontario?" said he.
"Of course, I ought to tell you that. Only there were so many things.
Clemenceau was a jeweller at Ontario. I lived in the flat over his
shop, and used to see a great deal of his family. I must have lived
almost entirely among French Canadians while I was there--it was
quite three or four years...."
"And all that time, Fenwick, you thought of yourself as a married man?"
"Married or divorced--yes. And long before that."
"It is quite impossible for me--you must see it--to form any picture
in my mind of how the thing presents itself to you."
"Quite."
"It seems--to me--perfectly incredible that you should have no
recollection at all of the marriage, or divorce, or whatever it
was...."
"I did not say I had no recollection _at all_. Listen. Don't you know
this, Vereker?--of course you do, though--how one wakes from a hideous
dream and remembers exactly the feeling it produced, and how the
same feeling comes back when one recalls from the dream some fragment
preserved from all one has forgotten of it--something nowise horrible
in itself, but from its associations in the dream?"
"Oh yes, perfectly!"
"Well--that's my case. When I try to bring back the memories I know
I _must_ have had at that time in Canada, nothing comes back but a
horror--something like a story read in boyhood and shuddered at in
the night--but all details gone. I mean all details with horror in
them. Because, do you know?..."
"Yes----?" Vereker stopped beside him on the path, as Fenwick stopped
and hesitated. Utter perplexity almost forbidding speech was the
impression the doctor received of his condition at this moment. After
a moment's silence he continued:
"You will hardly believe me, but almost the only thing I can
revive--that is, have revived so far--is an occurrence that must
needs at the time have been a happiness and a delight. And yet it now
presents itself to me as an excruciating torment--as part of some
tragedy in which I had to be an actor, but of which I can seize no
detail that does not at once vanish, leaving mere pain and confusion."
"What was it? You don't mind...."
"Mind telling you? Oh no!--why should I? I may be happier if I can
tell it. It's like this. I am at a railway-station in the heat
somewhere, and am expecting a girl who is coming to marry me. I can
remember the heat and our meeting, and then all is Chaos again. Then,
instead of remembering more, I go over and over again the old thing as
at first.... No! nothing new presents itself. Only the railway-station
and the palm-trees in the heat. And the train coming slowly in, and
my knowing that she is in it, and coming to marry me."
"Do you mean that the vision--or scene--in your mind stops dead, and
you don't see her get out of the carriage?"
They had walked on slowly again a short distance. Fenwick made another
halt, and as he flicked away a most successful crop of cigar-ash that
he had been cultivating--so it struck Vereker--as a kind of gauge or
test of his own self-control, he answered:
"I couldn't say that. Hardly! I see a girl or woman get out of the
carriage, but _not her_...!"
Vereker was completely at a loss--began to be a little afraid his
companion's brain might be giving way. "How _can_ you tell that,"
said he, "unless you know who she ought to have been?"
Fenwick resumed his walk, and when he replied did so in a voice that
had less tension in it, as though something less painful had touched
his mind:
"It's rum, I grant you. But the whole thing is too rum to bear
thinking of--at least, to bear talking about. As to the exact reason
_why_ I know it's not her, that's simple enough!"
"What is it?"
"Because Mrs. Fenwick gets out of the train--my Rosey, here, Sally's
mother. And it's just the same with the only other approach to a
memory that connects itself with it--a shadowy, indistinct ceremony,
also in the heat, much more indistinct than the railway-station.
My real wife's image--Rosey's, here--just takes the place at the
altar where the other one should be, and prevents my getting at any
recollection of her. It is the only thing that makes the dream
bearable."
Vereker said nothing. He did not want to disturb any lull in the storm
in his companion's mind. After a slight pause the latter continued:
"The way I account for it seems to me sufficient. I cannot conceive
any woman being to me what ... or, perhaps I should express it better
by saying I cannot connect the _wife-idea_ with any image except hers.
And, of course, the strong dominant idea displaces the feeble memory."
Vereker was ready with an unqualified assent at the moment. For though
Sally, as we have seen, had taken him into her confidence the day
after her mother's wedding--and, indeed, had talked over the matter
many times with him since--the actual truth was far too strange to
suggest itself offhand, as it would have been doing had the doctor
connected the fact that Sally's mother went out to India to be
married with this meeting of two lovers at a simmering railway-station,
name not known. The idea of the _impossible per se_ is probably the
one a finite intelligence most readily admits, and is always cordially
welcome in intellectual difficulties--a universal resolution of
logical discords. In the case of these two men, at that moment, neither
was capable of knowing the actual truth had he been told it, whatever
the evidence; still less of catching at slight connecting-links.
Fenwick went on speaking:
"I don't know whether you will understand it--yes! I think, perhaps,
you might--that it's a consolation to me this way Mrs. Fenwick comes
in. It seems to bring fresh air into what else would be--ugh!" He
shuddered a half-intentional shudder; then, dropping his voice, went
on, speaking quickly: "The thing makes part of some tragedy--some sad
story--something best forgotten! If I could only dare to hope I might
remember no more--might even forget it altogether."
"Perhaps if you could remember the whole the painfulness might
disappear. Does not anything in the image of the railway-station give
a clue to its whereabouts?"
"No. It hardly amounts to an image at all--more a fact than an image. But
the heat was a fact. And the dresses were all white--thin--tropical...."
"Then the Mrs. Fenwick that comes out of the train isn't dressed as she
dresses here?"
"Why, n-n-no!... No, certainly not. But that's natural, you know.
Of course, my mind supplies a dress for the heat."
"It doesn't diminish the puzzlement."
"Yes--yes--but it does, though. Because, look here! It's not the
_only_ thing. I find myself consciously making Rosey look _younger_.
I can't help my mind--my _now_ mind--working, do what I will! But as
to where it was, I fancy I have a clue. I can remember remembering--if
you understand me--that I had been in Australia--remembered it at
Ontario--talked about it to Tina Clemenceau...."
If Vereker had had any tendency to get on a true scent at this point,
the reference to Australia would have thrown him off it. And the
thought of the Canadian girl took Fenwick's mind once more to his
American life: "It was my thinking of that girl made all this come
back to me, you know. Just after you left us, when we were throwing
stones in the sea, last night...."
"Throwing stones in the sea?..."
"Yes--we went down to the waves on the beach, and my throwing a stone
in reminded me of it all, after. I was just going to get to sleep,
when, all of a sudden, what must I think of but Niagara!--at least,
the rapids. I was standing with Mademoiselle Tina--no one else--on
a rock overlooking the great torrent, and I threw a stone in, and she
said no one would ever see that stone again. I said, 'Like a man when
he dies and is forgotten,' or something of that sort. I recollect her
now--poor child!--turning her eyes full on me and saying, 'But I
should not forget you, Mr. Harrisson.' You see how it was? Only it
seems a sort of disloyalty to the poor girl to tell it. It was all
plain, and she meant it to be. I can't remember now whether I said,
'I can't marry you, Tina, because I don't know that my wife is dead,'
or whether I only thought it. But I know that I then knew I was, or
had been, married and divorced or deserted. And it was that unhappy
stone that brought it all back to me."
"Are you sure of that?"
"Quite sure that began it. I was just off, and some outlying scrap
of my mind was behindhand, and that stone saw it and pounced on it.
I remembered more after that. I know I was rather glad to start off
to the new gold river, because of Ernestine Clemenceau. I don't think
I should have cared to marry Ernestine. Anyhow, I didn't. She seems
to me Harrisson's affair now. Don't laugh at me, doctor!"
"I wasn't laughing." And, indeed, this was true. The doctor was very
far from laughing.
They had walked some little way inland, keeping along a road sunk in
the chalk. This now emerged on an exposed hill-side, swept by the
sea wind; which, though abated, still made talk less easy than in the
sheltered trench, or behind the long wall where Fenwick lit his cigar.
Vereker suggested turning back; and, accordingly, they turned. The
doctor found time to make up his mind that no harm could be done now
by referring to his interview with Rosalind, the day before.
"Your wife told me yesterday that you had just had a tiresome
recurrence when you came out after us--at the jetty-end, you know."
"Surely! So I had. Did she tell you what it was?" Evidently, in the
stress and turmoil of his subsequent experience in the night, it had
slipped from him. The doctor said a reminding word or two, and it
came back.
"I know, I know. I've got it now. That was last night. But now--that
again! _Why_ was it so horrible? That was dear old Kreutzkammer, at
'Frisco. What could there be horrible about _him_?..." A clear idea
shot into the doctor's mind--not a bad thing to work on.
"Fenwick!--don't you see how it is? These things are only horrible
to you _because_ you half recollect them. The pain is only the baffled
strain on the memory, not the thing you are trying to recover."
"Very likely." He assents, but his mind is dwelling on Kreutzkammer,
evidently. For he breaks into a really cheerful laugh, pleasant in
the ears of his companion. "Why, _that_ was Diedrich Kreutzkammer!"
he exclaims, "up at that Swiss place. And I didn't know him from Adam!"
"Of course it was. But look here, Fenwick--isn't what I say true?
Half the things that come back to you will be no pain at all when
you have fairly got hold of them. Only, _wait_! Don't struggle to
remember, but let them come."
"All right, old chap! I'll be good." But he has no very strong
convictions on the subject, clearly. The two walk on together in
silence as far as the low flint wall, in another recess of which
Fenwick lights another cigar, as before. Then he turns to the doctor
and says:
"Not a word of this to Rosey--nor to Sallykin!" The doctor seems
perplexed, but assents and promises. "Honest Injun!--as Sally says,"
adds Fenwick. And the doctor repeats that affidavit, and then says:
"I shall have to finesse a good deal. I can manage with Mrs. Fenwick.
But--I wish I felt equally secure with Miss Sally." He feels very
insecure indeed in that quarter, if the truth is told. And he is
afflicted with a double embarrassment here, as he has never left Sally
without her "miss" in speaking to Fenwick, while, on the other hand,
he holds a definite licence from her mother--is, as it were, a
chartered libertine. But that's a small matter, after all. The real
trouble is having to look Sally in the face and conceal anything.
"Miss who?" says Fenwick. "Oh--Sally, you mean! Of course she'll
rush the position. Trust her!" He can't help laughing as he thinks
of Sally, with Dr. Conrad vainly trying to protect his outworks.
The momentary hesitation about how to speak of Sally may have
something to do with Vereker's giving the conversation a twist. It
turns, however, on a point that has been waiting in his mind all
through their interview, ever since Fenwick spoke of his identity
with Harrisson.
"Look here, Fenwick," he says. "It's all very fine your talking about
keeping Mrs. Fenwick in the dark about this. I know it's for her own
sake--but you can't."
"And why not? I can't have Rosey know I have another wife living...."
"You don't know she's alive, for one thing!"
"H'm!... I don't _know_, certainly. But I should have known, somehow,
if she were dead. Of course, if further memory or inquiry proves that
she _is_ dead, that's another matter."
"But, in the meanwhile, how can you prove your identity with Harrisson
and claim all your property without her knowing?... What I mean is,
I can't think it out. There may be a way...."
"My dear boy"--Fenwick says this very quietly--"that's exactly the
reason why I said you would have to help me to settle whether I should
be that man again or not. I say _not_, if the decision lies with me."
"Not?--not _at all_?" The doctor fairly gasps; his breath is taken
away. Never perhaps was a young man freer from thought and influence
of money than he, more absorbed in professional study and untainted
by the supremacies of property. But for all that he was human, and
English, and theoretically accepted gold as the thing of things, the
one great aim and measure of success. Of other men's success, that
is, and _their_ aim, not his. For he was, in his own eyes, a humble
plodder, not in the swim at all. But he ascribed to the huge sums real
people had a right to, outside the limits of the likes of him, a kind
of sacredness that grew in a geometrical ratio with their increase.
It gave him much more pain to hear that a safe had been robbed of
thousands in gold than he felt when, on opening a wrapped-up fee,
what seemed a guinea to the touch turned out a new farthing and a
shilling to the sight. It was in the air that he lived in--that all
of us live in.
So, when Fenwick made in this placid way a choice of conduct that must
needs involve the sacrifice of sums large enough to be spoken of with
awe, even in the sacred precincts of a bank, poor Dr. Conrad felt that
all his powers of counsel had been outshot, and that his mind was
reeling on its pedestal. That a poor man should give up his savings
_en bloc_ to help a friend would have seemed to him natural and
reasonable; that he should do so for honest love of a woman still
more so; but that a millionaire should renounce his millions! Was
it decent? was it proper? was it considerate to Mammon? But that
must have been Fenwick's meaning, too. The doctor did not recover his
speech before Fenwick spoke again:
"Why should I claim all my property? How should I be the gainer if
it made Rosey unhappy?"
"I see. I quite see. I feel with you, you know; feel as you do. But
what will become of the money?"
"The poor darling money? Just think! It will lie neglected at the
bank, unclaimed, forsaken, doing no more mischief than when it was
harmless dust and nuggets in the sand of the Klondyke. While it was
there, gold was a bit--a mighty small bit--dearer than it has become
since. Now that it is in the keeping of chaps who won't give it up
half as easily as the Klondyke did, I suppose it has appreciated
again, as the saying is. The difference of cost between getting it out
of the ground and out of the bank is a negligible factor...." Fenwick
seemed to find ease in chatting economics in this way. Some of it was
so obviously true to Vereker that he at once concluded it would be
classed among fallacies; he had had experience of this sort of thing.
But he paid little attention, as he was thinking of how much of this
interview he could repeat to Sally, to whom every step they took
brought him nearer. The roar of a lion in his path was every moment
more audible to the ears of his imagination. And it left him silent;
but Fenwick went on speaking:
"We won't trouble about the darling dust and nuggets; let them lie
in pawn, and wait for a claimant. They won't find Mr. Harrisson's
heir-at-law in a hurry. If ever proof comes of the death of Mrs.
Harrisson--whoever she was--I'll be Mr. Harrisson again. Till
then...."
"Till then what?"
"Till then, Vereker dear"--Fenwick said this very seriously, with
emphasis--"till then we shall do most wisely to say nothing further
to Mrs. Fenwick or to Sally. You must see that it won't be possible
to pick and choose, to tell this and reserve that. I shall speak of the
recurrences of memory that come to me, as too confused for repetition.
I shall tell lies about them if I think it politic. Because I can't
have Rosey made miserable on any terms. As for the chick, you'll have
to manage the best you can."
"I'll do my best," the doctor says, without a particle of confidence
in his voice. "But about yourself, Fenwick?"
"I shall do very well, as long as I can have a chat with you now and
again. You've no idea what a lot of good it has done me, this talking
to you. And, of course, I haven't told you one-tenth of the things
I remember. There was one thing I wanted to say though just now, and
we got off the line--what was it now? Oh, I know, about my name. It
wasn't really Harrisson."
"Not really Harrisson? What was it then?" What next, and next?--is
the import of the speaker's face.
"I'll be hanged if I know! But it's true, rum as it seems. I know I
knew it wasn't Harrisson every time I signed a cheque in America. But
as for what it _was_, that all belongs to the dim time before. Isn't
that them coming to meet us?"
Yes, it was. And there was something else also the doctor had had it
on his tongue to say, and it had got away on a siding. But it didn't
matter--it was only about whether the return of memory had or had not
been due to the galvanic battery on the pier.