"There is one event in my life that I cannot account for," said
my companion, "and it has conditioned all my living, an event
psychologically strange. I appear, in a way, to have lost my memory at
one era of my existence. I look at the event I am going to relate,
and simply stare in perplexed wonder. Somewhere, somewhen, I lost
something in my mind! What was that something?
"Most people can tell the story of their life as they themselves
remember it. Their memory takes them back to their earliest years, and
the memory seems satisfactory to them. But there is a mystery in mine
which to my mind remains unexplained. I remember nothing before the
age of twenty-one. As far as my memory is concerned I might have been
born then. More strange still, I recognise nothing of a past before
then, and no one comes out of that past and claims recognition of me.
"This I remember in a dim phantasmal way as the very beginning of
things: my getting into a coach in a white mist. Even in that I
constantly feel a doubt that my imagination has been playing false
with memory. Certainly I do remember finding myself in a coach, but at
the startled moment when my conscious life began, it appeared to me
that I had never been anywhere in my life but sitting in the coach. A
certain intellectual _horror vacuum_ may have evoked that mental image
of an entering of the coach, but even then I wholly fail to fill in
the life and place from which I came. All behind that strange misty
entering on the coach-steps is grey, empty mist-land.
"It was a large, smooth-rolling coach, most like a commodious omnibus,
and full of a most jovial company. I sat half-way along one of the two
lengthy seats, and opposite me was a red-faced man, with large shiny
eyes and greasy hair. On one side of me was a jolly country girl of
about twenty-five, on the other a thin, dry-looking man. There was an
incessant din of conversation and singing; we were leaning towards one
another, and saying what jolly fellows we were, we should never part.
A bottle was always going round, and every now and then the postilion
blew his horn; six horses clattered in front, the dust rolled off
behind. I remember myself in a strange state of excitement.
"It was afternoon when I began to think. Actually, at that time I knew
I had no memory, but I dared not face the fact. I strove to evade
thought by being one of the company. How my cheeks burned as I laughed
and talked! I remember pulling a fat man by the sleeve, and whispering
in his ear some secret that made us roll back and collapse in
laughter. And the coach sped on.
"It seemed an eternal afternoon--chiefly because it filled up all the
past for me. I could remember nought before it.
"At last, however, a grand sunset ran scarlet over the whole sky--we
still jested, and it was at this time that a little dwarf-like man in
a corner appeared fearful to me; there was a fiery reflection of
the sunset in his eyes. I saw him once so, I dared not look again.
Thoughts were fighting me. My jollity was losing ground. I foresaw
that in a short time I should cease to belong to the company, that I
should belong utterly to myself, and there would be no escaping from
my thoughts. Then at last we passed out of the sunlit country into a
place of grey light. It was really natural; the sunset was gone, here
was grey twilight. But my disordered mind expected I know not what,
either eternal sunset or sudden black night; I cannot say now. I was
struck with terror. And standing still with myself, I felt absolutely
confounded by the self-question I asked.
"'Where are we going?'
"Till that moment I had not realised that ignorance of the Past meant
ignorance of the Future. I asked where we were going. The laughter and
conversation increased. I was answered, but in a jargon I found quite
incomprehensible. Another question.
"'Who under heaven were these people?'
"I stood up and staggered. I must have appeared drunk, for I was
greeted with howls and cheers, an inferno of cries and laughter; and
the red-faced man stood up also and clung to me, and brought his queer
face close up to mine. The girl also clung to me. Then it occurred to
me, this was the crisis of a nightmare; in a moment these phantasmal
restraints would burst, and I should find myself peacefully--where?
"I remember what seemed a prolonged struggle among laughter and sighs
and affectionate clingings, and I got at last out at the door and
down the steps. I found myself weakly turning about on my heels on an
excessively dusty road. Just ahead of me the coach rolled off into the
future stretches of the road, the postilion wound his horn, and the
clouds of dust rose up behind the wheels.
"And I was in an open place in the cool of evening. A grey-blue sky
above, with the faintest glitter of first stars! I was alone. The past
was a mystery; my future unexplored, full of the unimaginable; the
ultimate future of course like my past.
"Such was my beginning--the event of my life, in the shadow of which I
live and by virtue of which, though I know every road and house of the
world, I yet am homeless. No happening in my being but I must view it
in the light of that strange initial mystery. With the problem of that
past unsolved, I have never found anything in the ordinary matters of
life proposed as all-absorbing occupations. Because of that, I am upon
the road. I have made research, and have asked questions of all whom
I have met, but I got no answer, and I tired most people with my
problem. They say to me lightly, 'Your coach was a dream,' and I
answer, 'If so, then what before the dream? '"
"We are all of us like you and your coach," I said to my companion.
"Some of us know it and some do not, that is all. Some forget the
mystery and others remember it."
"_We_ remember it," said the wanderer. "Because of it we are
irreconcilables, but ..." he added, looking with a smile at the
beautiful world about our cave, "almost reconciled; inconsolable, yet
seeing how lovely is this mysterious universe, almost consoled. Most
men forget, but many remember; yet whether they remember or no, they
are all orphans nevertheless, lost children and homeless ones. We who
sing and write and who remember are the voices of humanity. We speak
for millions who are voiceless."