OF AN EXPEDITION AGAINST A GOODY, AND THE WALK BACK TO LOBJOIT'S. AND
THE WALK BACK AGAIN TO IGGULDEN'S. HOW FENWICK TOOK VEREKER'S
CONFIDENCE BY STORM. OF A COLLIER THAT PUT TO SEA. SUCCESSFUL
AMBUSCADE OF THE OCTOPUS. PROVISIONAL EQUILIBRIUM OF FENWICK'S MIND.
WHY BOTHER ABOUT HORACE? WHY NOT ABOUT PICKWICK JUST AS MUCH? THE
KITTEN WASN'T THERE--CERTAINLY NOT!
So it came about that during the remainder of that day and part of the
next Fenwick either made no further exploration of his past; or, if
he did so, concealed his discoveries. For he not only kept silence
with Rosalind, but even with Vereker was absolutely reserved, never
alluding to their conversation of the morning. And the doctor accepted
this reserve, and asked no questions.
As for Rosalind, she was only too glad to catch at the support of the
medical authority and to abstain from question or suggestion; for the
present certainly, and, unless her silence--as might be--should seem
to imply a motive on her part, to maintain it until her husband
revived the subject by disclosing further recollections of the bygone
time. Happily Sally knew nothing about it; _that_ her mother was
convinced of. And Sally wasn't likely to know anything, for Vereker's
professional discretion could be relied on, even if her suspicions
were excited. And, really, except that Fenwick seemed a little drowsy
and reflective, and that Rosalind had a semitone of consolation in her
manner towards him, there was nothing to excite suspicion.
* * * * *
After the cows--this is an expression borrowed from Sally, later in
the afternoon--conversation flagged through the rest of the walk home.
Except for regrets, more than once expressed, that it would be much
too late for tea when we got in, and a passing word on the fact that
at the seaside one got as greedy as some celebrated glutton--a Roman
emperor, perhaps--very few ideas were interchanged. But a little
conversation was made out of the scarcity of a good deal, for the
persistent optimism of Sally recognised that it was awfully jolly
saying nothing on such a lovely evening. Slight fatigue, combined
with the beauty of sky and sea and distant downland, the lengthening
shadows of the wheatsheaves, and the scarlet of poppies in the
stubble, seemed good to justify contemplation and silence. It was an
hour to caress in years to come, none the less that it was accepted as
the mere routine of daily life in the short term of its existence. It
was an hour that came to an end when the party arrived at the hedge of
the unripe sloes that had checked the onset of Albion Villas towards
the new town, and passed through the turnstile Fenwick and Vereker had
passed through in the morning. Then speech came back, and each did
what all folk invariably do after a long spell of silence--revealed
what they were being silent about, or seemed to be. Most likely
Fenwick's contribution was only a blind, as his mind must have been
full of many thoughts he wished to keep to himself.
"I wonder when Paganini's young woman's row with her mother's going
to come off--to-day or to-morrow?"
"I was wondering whether it would come off at all. I dare say she'll
accept the inevitable." Thus Rosalind, and for our part we believe
this also was not quite candid--in fact, was really suggested by her
husband's remark. But Sally's was a genuine disclosure, and really
showed what her mind had been running on.
"I've been meditating a Crusade," she said, with remoteness from
current topics in her voice. And both her companions immediately
made concessions to one that seemed to them genuine as compared with
their own.
"Against whom, kitten?" said her mother.
And Fenwick reinforced her with, "Yes, who's the Crusade to be
against, Sarah?"
"Against the Octopus." And Sally says this with the most perfectly
unconscious gravity, as though a Crusade against an octopus was a
very common occurrence in every-day life. The eyes of her companions
twinkle a little interchange across her unseen, but are careful to
keep anything suggesting a smile out of their voices as they apply
for enlightenment.
"Because of poor Prosy," Sally explains. "You'll see now. She won't
allow him to come round this evening, you see if she does!" She is
so intent upon her subject-matter that they might almost have smiled
aloud without detection, after all.
"When's it to come off, Sarah--the Crusade?"
"I was thinking of going round this evening if he doesn't turn up."
"Suppose we all go," Fenwick suggests. And Rosalind assents.
The Crusade may be considered organized. "We'll give him till
eight-forty-five," Sally says, forecasting strategy, "and then if
he doesn't come we'll go."
Eight-forty-five came, but no doctor. So the Crusade came off as
arranged, with the result that the Christian forces, on arriving in
the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, found that the Octopus responsible
for the personation of the Saracens had just gone to bed. It was an
ill-advised Crusade, because if the Christians had only had a little
patience, the released prisoner would have looked round as soon as
his janitor was asleep. As it turned out, no sooner were the visitors'
voices audible than the Octopus became alive to the pleasures of
society, and renounced sleep in its favour. She would slip something
on and come down, and did so. Her doing so was out of keeping with the
leading idea of the performance, presenting the Paynim as an obliging
race; but a meek and suffering one, though it never aired its
grievances. These, however, were the chief subjects of conversation
during the visit, which, in spite of every failure in dramatic
propriety, was always spoken of in after days as "the Crusade." It
came to an end in due course, the Saracen host retiring to bed, with
benedictions.
* * * * *
Vereker walked back with our friends to Mrs. Lobjoit's through the
sweet night-air a considerate little shower of rain, that came down
while they were sympathetically engaged, had just washed clean.
Vapour-drifts that were wavering between earth and sky, and
sacrificing their birthright of either cloudship or foghood, were
accompanying a warm sea-wind towards the north. Out beyond, and quite
clear of all responsibility for them and theirs, was a flawless
heaven with the stellar and planetary universe in it, pitiless and
passionless eyes perhaps--as Tennyson calls them--and strange fires;
but in this case without power to burn and brand their nothingness
into the visitors to St. Sennans, who laughed and talked and smoked
and took no notice; and, indeed, rather than otherwise, considered
that Orion's Belt and Aldebaran had been put there to make it a fine
night for them to laugh and talk and smoke in.
It was pleasant to Vereker, after his walk with Fenwick in the
morning, to find the latter like his usual cheerful self again. The
doctor had had rather a trying time with his Goody mother, so that the
day had been more one of tension than of peace, and it was a heavenly
respite to him from filial duties dutifully borne, to walk home with
the goddess of his paradise--the paradise that was so soon to come to
an end and send him to the release of his "locum," Mr. Neckitt. Never
mind. The having such a time to look back to in the future was quite
as much as one general practitioner, with a duty to his mother, could
in reason expect. Was Dr. Conrad aware, we wonder, how much the
philosophical resignation that made this attitude of thought possible
was due to the absence of any other visible favoured applicant for
Miss Sally, and the certainty that he would see her once or twice
a week at least after he had gone back to his prescriptions and his
diary of cases?
Probably he wasn't; and when, on arriving at Lobjoit's, Fenwick
announced that he didn't want to go in yet, and would accompany the
doctor back to Iggulden's and take a turn round, the only misgiving
that could try for an insecure foothold in the mind now given up to a
delirium it called Sally was one that Fenwick might have some new
painful memory to tell. But he was soon at rest about this. Fenwick
wasn't going to talk about himself. Very much the reverse, if one's own
reverse is some one else. He was going to talk about the doctor, into
whose arm he slipped his own as soon as he had lighted his second cigar.
For they had not walked quick from Iggulden's.
"Now tell me about Sir Dioscorides Nayler and the epileptiform
disorders."
"Miss Sally's been telling you...."
"No, she didn't--Sally did." Both laughed. The doctor will make it
Sally next time--that's understood. "You told Sally and she told me.
What's the damage to be?"
"How much did Sally tell you?" The little formality comes easier to
the doctor's shyness as it figures, this time, quotation-wise. It is
a repeat of Fenwick's use of it.
"Sally said three thousand."
"Yes, that's what I told her. But it's not official. He may want more.
He may let me have it for three. Only I don't know why I should have
it for less than any one else."
"Never you mind why! That's no concern of yours, my dear boy. What
you've got to think of is of yourself and Mrs. Vereker. Dioscorides
will take care of himself--trust him!"
"Yes, of course, I have to think of my mother." One can hear in the
speaker's voice what may be either self-reproach for having neglected
this aspect of the case, or very tolerant indictment of Fenwick for
having mistakenly thought he had done so.
"What's the man thinking of? Of course you have, but I didn't mean
your mother. She's a dear old lady"--this came grudgingly--"but
I didn't mean her. I meant the Mrs. Vereker that's to come. Your wife,
dear fellow, your wife."
The way the young man flushed up, hesitated, stammered, couldn't
organize a sane word, amused Fenwick intensely. Of course he was, so
to speak, quite at home--understood the position thoroughly. But he
wasn't going to torment the doctor. He was only making it impossible
for him to avoid confession, for his own sake. He did not wait for
the stammering to take form, but continued:
"I mean the young lady you told Sally about--the young lady you
are hesitating to propose to because there'll be what you call
complications in medicine--complications about your mamma, to put it
plainly.... Oh yes, of course, Sally told me all about it directly."
Vereker cannot resist a laugh, for all his embarrassment, a laugh
which somehow had the image of Sally in it. "She _would_, you know.
Sally's the sort of party that--that, if she'd been Greek, would
have been the daughter of an Arcadian shepherdess and a thunderbolt."
"Of course she would. I say, Fenwick, look here...."
"Have another cigar, old man."
"No, I've smoked enough. That one's lasted all the time since we came
out. Look here--what I want to say is ... well, that I was a great
fool--did wrong in fact--to talk to Sally about that young lady...."
"And to that young lady about Sally," Fenwick says quietly. For half
a second--such alacrity has thought--Vereker takes his meaning wrong;
thinks he really believes in the other young lady. Then it flashes
on him, and he knows how his companion has been seeing through him
all the while. But so lovable is Fenwick, and so much influence is
there in the repose of his strength, that there is no resentment
on Vereker's part that he should be thus seen through. He surrenders
at discretion.
"I see you know," he says helplessly.
"Know you love Sally?--of course I do! So does her mother. So does
yours, for that matter. So does every one, except herself. Why, even
you yourself know it! _She_ never will know it unless she hears it on
the best authority--your own, you know."
"Ought I to tell her? I know I was all wrong about that humbug-girl I
cooked up to tell her about. I altogether lost my head, and was a fool."
"I can't see what end you proposed to yourself by doing it," says
Fenwick a little maliciously. "If Sally had recommended you to speak
up, because it was just possible the young lady might be pining for
you all the time, you couldn't have asked her _her_ name, and then
said, 'That's hers--you're her!' like the fat boy in 'Pickwick.'
No!--I consider, my dear boy, that you didn't do yourself any good by
that ingenious fiction. You know all the while you wouldn't have been
sorry to think she understood you."
"I don't know that I didn't think she did. I really don't know what I
did or didn't think. I quite lost my head over it, that's the truth."
"Highly proper. Quite consistent with human experience! It's the sort
of job chaps always do lose their heads over. The question now is,
What are we going to do next?" Which meant what was Vereker going to
do next? and was understood by his hearer in that sense. He made no
answer at the moment, and Fenwick was not going to press for one.
A Newcastle collier had come in to deliver her cargo some days since,
before the wind sprang up, and the coal-carts had been passing and
repassing across the sands at low water; for there was a new moon
somewhere in the sky when she came, as thin as a sickle, clinging
tight round the business moon that saw to the spring-tides, a phantom
sphere an intrepid star was daring to go close to. This brig had not
been disappointing her backers, for wagers had been freely laid that
she would drag her moorings in the wind, and drift. Fenwick and
Vereker stopped in their walk to lean on the wooden rail above the
beach that skirted the two inclines, going either way, up which the
waggons had been a couple of hours ago scrambling over the shingle
against time, to land one more load yet while the ebb allowed it.
They could hear the yeo-yeo! of the sail-hoisters at work on the big
mainsail abaft, and wondered how on earth she was going to be got
clear with so little sea-way and the wind dead in shore. But they were
reassured by the ancient mariner with the striped shirt, whose mission
in life seemed to be to stand about and enlighten land-minds about
sea-facts. The master of yander craft had doon that much afower, and
he'd do it again. Why, he'd known him from three year old, the striped
shirt had! Which settled the matter. Then presently the clink-clink of
the windlass dragging at the anchor. They watched her in silence till,
free of her moorings, any one could have sworn she would be on shore
to a certainty. But she wasn't. She seemed mysteriously to be able to
manage for herself, and just as a berth for the night on the shingle
appeared inevitable, leaned over to the wind and crept away from the
land, triumphant.
Then, the show being over, as Fenwick and Vereker turned to look the
lateness of the hour in the face, and get home to bed, the latter
answered the question of the former, as though he had but just asked it.
"Speak to Sally. I shall have to." And then added, with an awestruck
face and bated breath: "But it's _awful_!" A moment after he was
laughing at himself, as he said to his companion, referring to a very
palpable fact, "I don't wonder I made you laugh just now."
They walked on without much said till they came to Iggulden's; when
the doctor, seeing no light in the sitting-room, hoped his worthy
mother had fulfilled a promise made when they came away, and gone to
bed. It was then past eleven. But he was reckoning without his host.
Fenwick said to him, as they stood on Iggulden's threshold and doormat
respectively--presuming rashly, on imperfect information, to delay
farewells--"Now look here, Conrad, my dear boy (I like your name
Conrad), don't you go and boil over to Sally to-morrow, nor next day.
You'll only spoil the rest of your stay, maybe.... What! well--what
I mean is that nothing I say prejudices the kitten. You'll understand
that, I'm sure?"
"Perfectly. Of course, if Sally were to say she knew somebody she
would like a deal better, there's no reason why she shouldn't....
I mean _I_ couldn't complain."
"Yes--yes! I see. You'd exonerate her. Good boy! Very proper." And
indeed the doctor had felt, as the words passed his lips, that he was
rather a horrid liar. But the point didn't matter. Fenwick laughed it
off: "Just you take my advice, and refer the matter to the kitten the
last day you're here. Monday, won't it be? And don't think about it!"
"Oh no! I'm a philosophical sort of chap, I am! Never in extremes.
Good-night!"
"I see. _Sperat infestis metuit secundis alteram sortem bene
præparatum pectus_--Horace." Fenwick ran this through in a breath;
and the doctor, a little hazy in school-memories of the classics,
said, "What's that?" and began translating it--"The bosom well
prepared for either lot, fears...." Fenwick caught him up and
completed the sentence:
"Fears what is good, and hopes for what is not. Cut away to bed, old
chap, and sleep sound...." Then he paused a moment, as he saw the
doctor looking a question at him intently, and just about to speak
it. He answered it before it came:
"No, no! Nothing more. I mean to forget all about it, and take my life
as it stands. Bother Mr. Harrisson!" He dropped his voice to say this;
then raised it again. "Don't you fret about me, doctor. Remember, I'm
Algernon Fenwick! Good-night!"
"Good-night!" And then the doctor, with the remains of heart-turmoil
in him, and a brain reeling, more or less, went up into what he
conceived to be an empty dark room, and was disconcerted by an
ill-used murmur in the darkness--a meek, submissive voice of one
accustomed to slights:
"I told her to blow it out and go to bed. It is all--quite--right, my
dear. So do not complain. Now help me with my things, and I will get
to bed."
"My dear mother! I _am_ so sorry. I had no idea you had not gone long
ago!"
"My dear!--it does not matter in the least now. What is done, is done.
Be careful with the grease over my work. These candles drop
dreadfully, unless you hold them exactly upright. And gutter. Now give
me your arm, and I will go to bed. I _think_ I shall sleep." And the
worthy woman was really--if her son could only have got his eyes freed
from the scales of domestic superstition, and seen it--intensely happy
and exultant at this fiendish little piece of discomfort-mongering.
She had scored; there was no doubt of it. She was even turning it over
in her own mind whether it would not bear repetition at a future
time; and quite intended, if so, to enjoy herself over it. Now the
doctor was contrite and heavy at heart at his cruel conduct; walking
about--just think!--and talking over his own affairs while his
self-sacrificing mother was sitting in the dark, with the lamp out!
To be sure there was no visible reason why she should have had it
put out, except as a picturesque and imaginative way of rubbing her
altruism into its nearest victim. Unless, indeed, it was done in order
that the darkened window should seem to announce to the returning
truant that she had gone to bed, and to lull his mind to
unconsciousness of the ambush that awaited him.
Anyhow, the doctor was so impressed with his own delinquency that he
felt it would be impossible, the lamp having been put out, to take his
mother into his confidence about his conversation with Fenwick. Which
he certainly would have done--late as the hour was--if it had been
left in. So he said good-night, and carried the chaos of his emotions
away to bed with him, and lay awake with them till cock-crow.
* * * * *
As Fenwick walked back home, timing his pace by his expectation of
his cigar's duration, he wondered whether, perhaps, he had not been
a little rash. He felt obliged to go back on interviews with Sally, in
which the doctor had been spoken of. He recalled for his justification
one in particular. The family conclave at Krakatoa Villa had recurred
to a remark of Rosalind's about the drawback to Vereker's practice of
his bachelorhood. He was then, as it were, brought up for a second
reading, and new clauses added to him containing schedules of possible
wives. Fenwick had noticed, then, that Sally's assent to the insertion
of any candidate's name turned on two points: one, the lady's consent
being taken for granted; the other, that every young single female
human creature known by name or describable by language was actually
out of the question, or inadmissible in its answer. She rejected
almost all applicants for the post of a doctor's wife without
examining their claims, on the ground of moral or physical defect--as,
for instance, you never would go and tie up poor Prosy to a wife that
golloped. Sylvia Peplow, indeed! Interrogated about the nature of
"golloping," Sally could go no nearer than that Miss Peplow looked as
if she couldn't help it. And her sister was worse: she was perfectly
pecky, and shut up with a click. And as for the large Miss Baker--why,
you knew how large _she_ was, and it would be quite ridiculous!
Besides, her stupidity!
The only candidates that got the least consideration owed their
success to their names or expectations. Caroline Smith had, or would
have sometime, a thousand a year. But she squinted. Still, she might
be thought over. Mrs. Pollicitus Biggs's cousin Isabella would have
two thousand when her mother died, but the vitality of the latter was
indescribable. Besides, she was just like her name, Isabella, and did
her hair religiously. There was Chariclea Epimenides, certainly, who
had got three thousand, and would have six more. She might be worth
thinking of....
"Why don't you have him yourself, Sarah?" Fenwick had asked at this
point. Rosalind had just left the room to speak to Ann. But he didn't
want Sarah to be obliged to answer, so he went on: "Why are all these
young ladies' incomes exactly in round thousands?"
To which Sally had replied: "They always are, when you haven't got
'em." But had fallen into contemplation, and presently said--out of
the blue--"Because I'm an unsettled sort of party--a vagrant. I
shouldn't do for a G.P.'s wife, thank you, Jeremiah! I should like
to live in a caravan, and go about the country, and wood fires out
of doors." Was it, Fenwick wondered, the gipsies they had seen to-day
that had made her think of this? and then he recalled how he afterwards
heard the kitten singing to herself the old ballad:
"What care I for my goose-feather bed?
What care I for my money oh?"
and hearing her so sing had somehow imputed to the parade of bravado
in the swing of its rhythm a something that might have belonged to a
touched chord. Like enough a mistake of his, said Reason. But for all
that the reminiscence played its part in soothing Fenwick's misgivings
of his own rashness.
"The kitten's all right," said he to himself. "And if she doesn't want
Master Conrad, the sooner he knows it the better!" But he had little
doubt of the course things would take as he stopped to look at that
venturesome star, that seemed to be going altogether too near the moon
for safety.
In a few moments he turned again towards home. And then his mind
must needs go off to the thing of all others he wished not to think
of--_himself_. He had come to see this much clearly, that until
the veil floated away from between him and his past and left the
whole atmosphere transparent, there could be no certainty that a
recrudescence of that past would not be fatal to his wife's happiness.
And inevitably, therefore, to his own. Having once formulated the idea
that for the future _he_ was to be one person and Harrisson another, he
found its entertainment in practice easier than he had anticipated. He
had only to say to himself that it was for her sake that he did it, and
he did not find it altogether impossible to dismiss his own identity
from the phantasmagoria that kept on coming back and back before his
mind, and to assign the whole drama to another person; to whom he
allowed the name of Harrisson all the easier from his knowledge that
it never had been really his own. Very much the easier, too, no
doubt, from the sense that the function of memory was still diseased,
imperfect, untrustworthy. How could it be otherwise when he still was
unable to force it back beyond a certain limit? It was mainly a vision
of America, and, previous to that, a mystery of interminable avenues
of trees, and an inexplicable horror of a struggle with death. There
he always lost himself. In the hinterland of this there was that vision
of a wedding somewhere. And then bewilderment, because the image of
his living wife, his very soul of the world he now dwelt in, the woman
whose daughter had grown into his heart as his own--yes, not only the
image, but the very name of her--had come in and supplanted that of the
forgotten wife of that forgotten day. So much so that more than once,
in striving to follow the clue given by that railway-carriage, his mind
had involuntarily called the warm living thing that came into his arms
from it "Rosey." In the face of that, what was the worth of anything he
should recollect now, that he should not discard it as a mere phantasm,
for her sake? How almost easy to say to himself, "that was Harrisson,"
and then to add, "whoever he was," and dismiss him.
Do you--you who read--find this so very difficult to understand? Can
you recall no like imperfect memory of your own that, multiplied a
hundredfold, would supply an analogy, a standpoint to look into
Fenwick's disordered mind from?
After his delirious collision with his first vigorous revival of the
past, he was beginning to settle down to face it, helped by the
talisman of his love for Rosalind, whom it was his first duty to
shield from whatever it should prove to hold of possible injury to
her. That happy hour of the dying sunset in the shorn cornfields, with
her and Sally and the sky above and the sea beyond, had gone far to
soothe the perturbation of the night. And his talk of the morning with
this young man he had just left had helped him strongly. For he knew
in his heart he could safely go to him again if he could not bear his
own silence, could trust him with whatever he could tell at all to any
one. Could he not, when he was actually ready to trust him with--Sally?
So, though he was far from feeling at rest, a working equilibrium was
in sight. He could acquiesce in what came back to him, as it came;
need never struggle to hasten or retard it. Little things would float
into his mind, like house-flies into the ray from a shutter-crack in
a darkened room, and float away again uncaptured, or whizz and burr
round and against each other as the flies do, and then decide--as the
flies do--that neither concerns the other and each may go his way. But
he was nowise bound to catch these things on the wing, or persuade
them to live in peace with one another. If they came, they came; and
if they went, they went.
Such a one caught his thoughts, and held them for a moment as,
satisfied that astronomy would see to that star, he turned to go
straight home to Lobjoit's. That would just last out the cigar. But
what was it now? What was the fly that flew into his sun-ray this
time, that it should make him remember a line of Horace, to be so
pat with it, and to know what it meant, too?
But this fact, that he could not tell how he came to know its meaning,
showed him how decisively the barrier line across the memory of his
boyhood was drawn, or, it might be, his early manhood. He could not
remember, properly speaking, the whole of his life in the States, but
he could remember telling a man--one Larpent, a man with a club-foot,
at Ontario--that he had been there over fifteen years. This man
has nothing to do with this story, but he happens to serve as an
illustration of the disjointed way in which small details would tell
out clear against a background of confusion. Why, Fenwick could
remember his face plainly--how close-shaven he was, and black over the
razor-land; how his dentist had inserted an artificial tooth that
didn't match, and shone out white. But as to the fifteen years he had
spent in the States, that he had told Mr. Larpent of, they grew dimmer
and dimmer as he tried to carry his recollection further back. Beyond
them--or rather, longer ago than they, properly speaking--came that
endless, intolerable labyrinth of trees, and then, earlier still, that
railway-carriage. It was getting clearer; but the worst of it was that
the clearer it got, the clearer grew the Rosey that came out of it.
As long as that went on, there was nothing of it all he could place
faith in. He had been told that no man could be convinced, by his own
reason, of his own hallucination. He would supply a case to the
contrary. It would amuse him one day, if ever he came to know that
girl of the railway-carriage was dead, to tell Rosalind all his
experiences, and how bravely he fought against what he knew to be
delusion.
But he must make an effort against this sort of thing. Here was he,
who had just made up his mind--so he phrased it--to remain himself,
and refuse to be Harrisson, no sooner was he left alone for a few
minutes than he must needs be raking up the past. And that, too,
because of a line of Horace!--sound in itself, but quite cut asunder
from its origin, the book he read it in, or the voice he heard read
it. What did that line matter? Leave it for Mr. Harrisson in that
state of pre-existence. As well make a point of recalling the
_provenance_ of any little thing that had happened in this his present
life. Well, for instance, Mary and the fat boy in "Pickwick." Rosalind
had read him that aloud, he knew, but he couldn't say when. Was he
going to worry himself to recall that which could do him no harm to
know? Surely not. And if so, why strive to bring back things better
forgotten? It is useless to endeavour to make the state of Fenwick's
mind, at this point of the imperfect revival of memory, appear other
than incredible. A person who has had the painful experience of
forgetting his own name in a dream would perhaps understand it best.
Or, without going so far, can no help be got towards it from our
frequent certainties about some phrase (for instance) that we think we
cannot possibly forget? about some date that we believe no human power
will ever obliterate? And in five minutes--gone--utterly gone! Truly,
there is no evidence but a man's own word for what he does or does
not, can or cannot, recollect.
* * * * *
"I say, Rosey, when was it you read to me about Mary and the fat boy
in 'Pickwick'?" Fenwick, having suggested a doubt to himself about his
power to recall what he supposed to have happened recently, had, of
course, set about doing it directly. His question was asked of his
wife as he came into her bedroom on his return. He mounted the stairs
singing to himself,
"Que nous mangerons Marott-e,
Bec-à-bec et toi et moi,"
till he came in to where Rosalind was sitting reading, with her
wonderful hair combed free--probably by Sally for a treat. Then he
asked his question rather suddenly, and it made her start.
"I was in the middle of my book, and you made me jump." He gave her
a kiss for apology. "What's the question? When did I read to you about
Mary and the fat boy? I couldn't say. I feel as if I had, though."
"Was it out in the garden at K. Villa? It wasn't here." He usually
called Krakatoa "K." for working purposes.
"No, it certainty wasn't here. It must have been at home, only I
can't recollect when. Ask Sally."
"The kitten wasn't there."
"She would know, though. She always knows. She's not asleep yet ...
Sallykin!" The young person is on the other side of a mere wooden
partition, congenial to the architecture of Lobjoit's, and her reply
conveys the idea of a speaker in bed who hasn't moved to answer.
"What? Be quick. I'm going to sleep."
"I'm so sorry, chick. When was it I read to this man Mary and the
fat boy in 'Pickwick'?"
"How should I know? Not when I was there."
"All right, Sarah." Thus Fenwick, to whom Sarah responds:
"Good-night, Jeremiah. Go to bed, and don't keep decent Christian
people awake at this hour of the night. Take mother's book away,
and cut it."
Rosalind closes her book and says: "_I_ don't know, darling, if
Sally doesn't. Why do you want to know?"
"Couldn't say. It crossed my mind. I know the kitten wasn't there,
though. Good-night, love.... Oh yes, I shall sleep to-night. Ta, ta,
Sarah--pleasant dreams!"
But he had not reached the door when the voice of Sarah came again,
with the implication of a mouth that had come out into the open.
"Stop, Jeremiah!" it said. "It wasn't at K. Villa."
"Why not, chick?"
"Because Pickwick's _lost_! It was lent to those impossible people
at Turnham Green, and they stole it. I know they did. Name like
Marylebone."
"The Haliburtons? Why, that's ever so long ago." Thus Rosalind.
"Of course it is. It's been gone ages. I'm going to sleep.
Good-night!" And Jeremiah said good-night once more and departed.
Sally didn't go straight to sleep, but she made a start on her way
there. It was not a vigorous start, for she had hardly begun upon
it when she desisted, and sat up in bed and listened.
"What's that, mother? Nothing wrong, is there?"
"No, darling child, what should be wrong? Go to sleep."
"I thought I heard you gasp, or snuffle, or sigh, or sob, or click
in your throat. That's all. Sure you didn't?"
"Quite sure. Now, do be a reasonable kitten, and go to sleep; I
shall be in bed in half-a-second."
And Sally subsides, but first makes a stipulation: "You _will_ sleep
in your hair, mother darling, won't you? Or, at least, do it up, and
not that hateful nightcap?"
But though Rosalind felt conscientiously able to disclaim any of
the sounds Sally had described, something audible had occurred in her
breathing. Sally's first word had gone nearest, but it was hardly
a full-grown gasp.
Her husband's question about "Pickwick" had scarcely taken her
attention off an exciting story-climax, and she really did want to
know why the Archbishop turned pale as death when the Countess kissed
him. Gerry was looking well and cheerful again, and there was nothing
to connect his inquiry with any reminiscence of "B.C." So, as soon
as he had gone, she reopened her book--not without a mental allusion
to a dog in Proverbs--and went on where she had left off. The writer
had not known how to manage his Archbishop and Countess, and the story
went flat and slushy like an ill-whipped _zabajone_. She put the book
aside, and wondered whether "Pickwick" really _had_ been alienated by
the impossible Haliburtons; sat thinking, but only of the thing of
_now_--nothing of buried records.
So she sat, it might be for two minutes. Then, quite suddenly, she had
bitten her lip and her brows had wrinkled. And her eyes had locked to
a fixed look that would stay till she had thought this out. So her
face said, and the stillness of her hand.
For she had suddenly remembered when and where it was she had read to
that man about Mary and the fat boy. It was in the garden at her
mother's twenty-two years ago. She remembered it well now, and quite
suddenly. She could remember how Gerry, young-man-wise, had tried to
utilise Thackeray to show his greater knowledge of the world--had
flaunted Piccadilly and Pall Mall before the dazzled eyes of an
astonished suburban. She could remember how she read it aloud to him,
because, when he read over her shoulder, she always turned the page
before he was ready. And his decision that Dickens's characters were
never gentlemen, and her saying perhaps that was why he was so
amusing. And then how he got the book from her and went on reading
while she went away for her lawn-tennis shoes, and when she came
back found he had only two more pages to read, and then he would
come and play.
But it spoke well for her husband's chances of a quiet time to-night
that he should hold this memory in his mind, and yet be secure against
a complete resurrection of the past. Nothing else might grow from it.
He evidently thought the reading had been at Shepherd's Bush. He would
hardly have said, "the kitten wasn't there," unless his ideas had been
glued to that spot. But then--and Rosalind's mind swam to think of
it--how very decisively the kitten was "not there" in that other
garden two-and-twenty years ago.
It was at that moment the gasp, or sigh, or sob, or whatever it
was, awoke Sally. Her mother had been strong against the mere memory
of the happy hour of thoughtless long ago; but then, this that was
to come--this thing the time was thoughtless of! Was it not enough
to force a gasp from self-control itself? a cry from any creature
claiming to be human? "_The kitten wasn't there!_" No, truly she
was not.