"Gus," I said, "can you fellows help me find out who those people
are we picked up in the park last night? It's funny, but the man has
amnesia, and I think the woman's a little strange in the head."
Gus looked at me a little reproachfully. He laid the cap down, to pull
his handkerchief from his hip pocket and mop his brow.
"You mean that story you told me was the truth?" he asked. "I thought
they might be some relatives of yours, that had got into some sort of a
scrape. Both of them look a lot like you."
"Do they? Well, they're no relatives of mine. I'd like to know just who
they are. Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham Storm, she says."
"They don't come from Allertown," he said. "I'd know them if they was
from Allertown. But they was raised around in this country somewhere."
"How do you know that?"
"There's a way of talking folks have around here. You don't hear it
outside these three or four counties, and you wouldn't notice it if you
wasn't watching for it. Take my word for it, those folks was born and
raised not fifty miles from here."
"Well, just to be on the safe side, you'd better check to see that
they're not wanted criminals," I said. "Amnesia would make a good dodge
for a criminal."
"I've already done that," he said quietly. "They're not."
Wyn and Summer weren't missing persons from anywhere in our section of
the state, either. Gus looked into that angle very thoroughly during
the next few weeks, and reported failure.
Wyn got a job as clerk at McClellan's Dry Goods Store and, for reasons
he did not confide to me, enrolled in night classes at Slayden College.
He and Summer soon were established in the neighborhood as "that nice
young couple that Don Gracey brought in from somewhere out West." How
the townspeople got started on that Western origin theory, I don't
know; I suppose it's natural for people to tack some sort of an origin
on strangers.
I confess that their origin soon became a matter of minor importance
to me, although I remained curious about it. I found Wyn extremely
likeable; we became very close friends, although I estimate that I am
ten to fifteen years older than Wyn. And, as I say, I was in love with
Summer, although it was a long time before I admitted that to myself.
I told myself I felt about Summer as I would my own daughter, if a
bachelor like me could say such a thing; and I felt toward Wyn as
though he were my son. There was a good deal of accuracy to that
description of my feelings, but there was a mystery about Summer that
drew me powerfully.
I think the unattainable in woman is always irresistible. Summer
had the most peculiar air of unattainability about her I ever have
experienced. It was as though, when I touched her, it was a fleeting
touch; when I looked at her, I was constantly beset by the feeling that
she would, the next instant, shimmer into insubstantiality.
Talking with her heightened this illusion, rather than lessening it. A
conversation with Summer was a unique experience. It was a little like
two people trying to talk at once, each talking, then each hesitating
to let the other have his say. Our words crossed each other, like
scissor blades that do not quite meet. She might answer a question
before it was asked, or take the conversation off on tangent after
tangent. Disconnected, discontinuous--those adjectives describe our
conversations.
Except for his amnesia, dating back to the night in the park, Wyn
was perfectly normal. After some time, he confided that he, too,
was concerned about Summer's strangeness. I got the impression from
him--though he did not go into great detail--that it extended beyond
her conversation, to her actions.
"It seems to me that I ought to know what's wrong with Summer," he told
me, very puzzled about it. "I mean, it seems I ought to remember. But I
don't. I've gone so far as to talk it over with her."
"What did she say?" I asked.
"She said she wasn't going to tell me now. She said she'd tell me one
of these days, but that when she did, I'd leave her. She smiled all the
time she was saying it, in the strangest way."
Well, we had Summer examined. Old Doctor Lodge is no psychiatrist,
but a man isn't a general practitioner for as long as he's been at it
without learning something about the way a person's mind ticks. He said
there was nothing wrong with Summer, mentally.
"She acts like she's still suffering a little from some sort of shock,"
he said. "If she was right next to a lightning bolt when it struck, I'm
not surprised. It's lasting a little longer than such things usually
do, but it'll clear up."
It didn't clear up, but Wyn and I got used to it.
Amateurs, they say, shouldn't fool around with hypnosis, and I suppose
there's a sound reason behind that admonition. But I'm a little better
than the average amateur hypnotist. I've not only done a good deal
of it at club benefits and what not, but I've read pretty heavily in
psychology. I decided to see if hypnotizing Wyn would give me any clue
to his past and Summer's.
Summer sat beside me that night at their home, as I went through the
familiar motions and Wyn sank into hypnotic trance.
Under hypnosis, Wyn recalled easily everything that had happened since
that night in the park. But attempts to regress him past that night
brought only a death-like silence, in which he sat pale and immobile.
I tried several times, and at last succeeded in getting him in an
extremely deep hypnotic state.
Suddenly, Summer interrupted with an exclamation.
"That's me!" she exclaimed. "That's what I told him four years ago!"
"Quiet, Summer," I commanded, looking at her curiously. "I think I may
be able to get something out of Wyn now."
Despite total lack of response when regressed to ages 22 and 20, I
regressed him to age 18. He stirred and murmured. His eyelids fluttered.
"What do you see?" I asked eagerly. "What are you doing?"
"Wyn?" he exclaimed. His voice was clear and treble, the voice of a
woman, as he called his own name. He clenched his fists, and moved his
head from side to side. "Wyn, I'm going to have a baby!"
"What!" I exploded, amazed. "Wyn, what do you see?"
He opened his eyes.
"Why, I see you, Don," he said in his normal hearty voice. "What else
should I see?"
With a suddenness I never have seen before or since, he had come out
of the hypnotic state. I was afraid to delve any deeper. I didn't try
hypnosis again.
* * * * *
During these first few years, Wyn and Summer gradually lost that
identity of appearance which had made them look so much like twins the
night I found them in the park. Wyn aged, not excessively but as any
adult man would age in a few years. Summer, on the other hand, seemed
to have found the secret of eternal youth. She grew ever more delicate
and beautiful, and her fair skin seemed to take on a translucent glow.
I was a close friend of the couple, and I found that I was alone with
Summer a good deal. Summer had shown an interest in schooling, too.
She started in college with Wyn, then dropped back to high school,
and finally fell back on studying at home. It wasn't that she wasn't
bright. She seemed to recognize the facts she was studying almost at
once, but tests and examinations were her downfall. She never could
remember enough of the things she had studied to make a passing grade.
So I went to the house at 138 March Street often in the early evenings,
to help Summer in her studies.
Their son was born about six years after they came to Allertown. It was
a peculiar thing. There was no noticeable sign of pregnancy. Summer was
sure she was pregnant, but Doctor Lodge scoffed at her, right up to the
time of the birth.
"Sure, she has milk," he told Wyn and me, tugging at his white mustache
and giving us a wise smile. "It's not unusual. She isn't carrying a
child, though. It's a false pregnancy."
But the child was born. Then Doctor Lodge reversed himself and insisted
she was carrying an unborn twin. Again he was wrong. Summer gradually
but steadily recovered from the effects of the birth and regained her
slender figure.
I still do not attempt to excuse Wyn for leaving his wife and newborn
son. He was overwrought, it's true, but he should have taken them with
him.
Instead, he came to me, his suitcase packed, when the child was about a
month old. His face showed his agitation.
"Don, I'm leaving Summer," he said abruptly.
"Wyn! Why? What's happened?"
"I found out yesterday why she acts and talks so strangely. She
told me. I couldn't sleep last night, and I've decided I must leave
Allertown. Somewhere there may be people who can help me, but I can't
find the help I need here."
"Was it so terrible?" I asked, trying to calm him. "What did she tell
you, Wyn?"
He leaned forward intensely, pointing a finger at me, and opened his
mouth to speak. Then he shut it and sat back. He shook his head.
"No," he said. "Maybe it wouldn't affect you as it has me, but you
couldn't feel comfortable about it. All I want from you, Don, is the
promise that you'll take care of Summer and little Mark for me until I
come back."
"You know I'll do that. They can move in here right away. But I think
you're making a mistake, running away from whatever it is."
"I'm not running away," he replied. "I told you, I've got to have help."
That's all he would say. He left on the mid-afternoon train for Mayer
City, and I went around to 138 March Street to help move his wife and
child into my own home.
I didn't recall until three days later that Summer had predicted--or so
Wyn had said--that when she told him why she acted as she did, he would
leave her.
* * * * *
If I can't excuse Wyn for leaving his wife and child, I have even less
excuse for becoming his wife's lover. The fact that the interlude
may have been necessary to his very existence--and hers--is no
justification, for I did not know that then. Nor do I know it certainly
now.
But picture the plight of a man who has in his home a young and
beautiful woman, the realization growing on him, day by day, that he
has loved her for six years. And it was Summer's fault, as much as my
own. Perhaps more. Despite Wyn's words, I could not be sure that he
would return to her, and certainly she must have known that he would.
Despite this, she did more than merely encourage me.
I have wondered often about the philosophical implications of this
fact. If Summer had not encouraged me, I wouldn't have been bold enough
to make any advances on my own account ... and where would that have
left Summer?
On the other hand, it was the most natural thing in the world that
Summer should encourage me. She knew.
Wyn had been away only about two months when Summer, rousing herself
from a deeply pensive mood one night, sat down by my side on the sofa
and snuggled up close to me. I couldn't bring myself to pull away from
her, but I exclaimed:
"Summer, this isn't right. What about Wyn?"
"I don't understand this coolness toward me, Don," she said, laying
her head on my shoulder. "People who love each other shouldn't act so
aloof."
I was thunderstruck at this admission. But I couldn't help saying what
I said then.
"I do love you, Summer," I confessed, almost choking.
At once she arose and left me. I thought I had offended her, and I was
almost relieved that I had. It was best that she should be discouraged
about any ideas she might have about me.
But thirty minutes later she gave me a smile that made me not so sure
she was offended. And the incident seemed to increase, rather than
dampen, the warmth of her attitude toward me.
It was unpardonable, with Wyn gone so short a time, but I had no
strength to resist the inexorable attentions of a woman I loved. When
she came to me in negligee late one night a week later, I became
Summer's lover.
I have said it was partly Summer's fault, and the sequence of events
would make it appear almost entirely her fault. This is not true; and I
found out several years later why it is not true.
My inexcusable affair with Summer lasted for about a year, before the
conversation occurred which caused me to terminate it abruptly. I
had just entered the parlor, where Summer was curled in a big chair,
reading.
"I don't see any reason for our not loving each other, if we really do,
Don," she said petulantly. "Wyn says he's my husband, but I don't feel
that he is. Why should I be tied by a marriage ceremony I don't know
anything about yet?"
I could not answer, for I was looking at her through new eyes. Her tone
of voice had been so like that of an indignant child that it awakened
me to something I should have seen before.
How like an adolescent girl she was, really! The pale gold hair framed
a young face. Despite the rondures of her figure, there was a looseness
about the way her legs were attached to her pelvis, giving her frame
that impression of hollowness that is frequent among slender young
virgins.
In the seven years I had known her, how could I ever have built up in
my mind the picture of her as a mature woman?
When I thought about that sudden protestation of hers, made after we
had lived as man and wife for a year, it seemed to me that it could
only have arisen from remorse at such a situation. But it was neither
this nor the fact that I was wronging her and Wyn that caused me to
resolve then and there that never again would I so much as kiss her. It
was that she was too young!