"Why--why," he stammered in consternation. "If you came here to forget it, what"s the use of telling you, now you"ve forgotten it, that is--I mean, supposing there was anything to forget."
"I haven"t forgotten it," she declared. "The process has been a failure anyhow. It"s just puzzled me for a minute. You might as well tell me.
Why, I"ve almost got it now. I shall remember it in a minute," and she looked up at him as if she were on the point of being vexed with his obstinacy. The doctor coming into the room at this moment, Henry turned to him in his perplexity, and said--
"Doctor, she wants to know what it was you tried to make her forget."
"What would you say if I told you it was an old love affair?" replied the doctor, coolly.
"I should say that you were rather impertinent," answered Madeline, looking at him somewhat haughtily.
"I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon, my dear. You do well to resent it, but I trust you will not be vexed with an old gentleman," replied the doctor, beaming on her from under his bushy eyebrows with an expression of gloating benevolence.
"I suppose, doctor, you were only trying to plague me so as to confuse me," she said, smiling. "But you can"t do it. I shall remember presently.
It began with "H"--I am almost sure of that. Let"s see--Harrington, Harvard. That"s like it."
"Harrison Cordis, perhaps," suggested the doctor, gravely.
"Harrison Cordis? Harrison? Harrison?" she repeated, contracting her eyebrows thoughtfully; "no, it was more like Harvard. I don"t want any more of your suggestions. You"d like to get me off the track."
The doctor left the room, laughing, and Henry said to her, his heart swelling with an exultation which made his voice husky, "Come, dear, we had better go now: the train leaves at four."
"I"ll remember yet," she said, smiling at him with a saucy toss of the head. He put out his arms and she came into them, and their lips met in a kiss, happy and loving on her part, and fraught with no special feeling, but the lips which hers touched were tremulous. Slightly surprised at his agitation, she leaned back in his clasp, and, resting her glorious black eyes on his, said--
"How you love me, dear!"
Oh, the bright, sweet light in her eyes! the light he had not seen since she was a girl, and which had never shone for him before. As they were about to leave, the doctor drew him aside.
"The most successful operation I ever made, sir," he said, enthusiastically. "I saw you were startled that I should tell her so frankly what she had forgotten. You need not have been so. That memory is absolutely gone, and cannot be restored. She might conclude that what she had forgotten was anything else in the world except what if really was.
You may always allude with perfect safety before her to the real facts, the only risk being that, if she doesn"t think you are making a bad joke, she will be afraid that you are losing your mind."
All the way home Madeline was full of guesses and speculation as to what it had been which she had forgotten, finally, however, settling down to the conclusion that it had something to do with Harvard College, and when Henry refused to deny explicitly that such was the case, she was quite sure. She announced that she was going to get a lot of old catalogues and read over the names, and also visit the college to see if she could not revive the recollection. But, upon his solemnly urging her not to do so, lest she might find her a.s.sociations with that inst.i.tution not altogether agreeable if revived, she consented to give up the plan.
"Although, do you know," she said, "there is nothing in the world which I should like to find out so much as what it was we went to Dr. Heidenhoff in order to make me forget. What do you look so sober for? Wouldn"t I really be glad if I could?"
"It"s really nothing of any consequence," he said, pretending to be momentarily absorbed in opening his penknife.
"Supposing it isn"t, it"s just as vexatious not to remember it," she declared.
"How did you like Dr. Heidenhoff?" he asked.
"Oh, I presume he"s a good enough doctor, but I thought that joke about an affair of the heart wasn"t at all nice. Men are so coa.r.s.e."
"Oh, he meant no harm," said Henry, hastily.
"I suppose he just tried to say the absurdest thing he could think of to put me off the track and make me laugh. I"m sure I felt more like boxing his ears. I saw you didn"t like it either, sir."
"How so?"
"Oh, you needn"t think I didn"t notice the start you gave when he spoke, and the angry way you looked at him. You may pretend all you want to, but you can"t cheat me. You"d be the very one to make an absurd fuss if you thought I had even so much as looked at anybody else." And then she burst out laughing at the red and pale confusion of his face. "Why, you"re the very picture of jealousy at the very mention of the thing. Dear me, what a tyrant you are going to be! I was going to confess a lot of my old flirtations to you, but now I sha"n"t dare to. O Henry, how funny my face feels when I laugh, so stiff, as if the muscles were all rusty! I should think I hadn"t laughed for a year by the feeling."
He scarcely dared leave her when they reached her lodgings, for fear that she might get to thinking and puzzling over the matter, and, possibly, at length might hit upon a clue which, followed up, would lead her back to the grave so recently covered over in her life, and turn her raving mad with the horror of the discovery. As soon as he possibly could, he almost ran back to her lodgings in a panic. She had evidently been thinking matters over.
"How came we here in Boston together, Henry? I don"t seem to quite understand why I came. I remember you came after me?"
"Yes, I came after you."
"What was the matter? Was I sick?"
"Very sick."
"Out of my head?"
"Yes."
"That"s the reason you took me to the doctor, I suppose?"
"Yes."
"But why isn"t mother here with me?"
"You--you didn"t seem to want her," answered Henry, a cold sweat covering his face under this terrible inquisition.
"Yes," said she, slowly, "I do remember your proposing she should come and my not wanting her. I can"t imagine why. I must have been out of my head, as you say. Henry," she continued, regarding him with eyes of sudden softness, "you must have been very good to me. Dr. Heidenhoff could never make me forget that."
The next day her mother came. Henry met her at the station and explained everything to her, so that she met Madeline already prepared for the transformation, that is, as much prepared as the poor woman could be. The idea was evidently more than she could take in. In the days that followed she went about with a dazed expression on her face, and said very little.
When she looked at Henry, it was with a piteous mingling of grat.i.tude and appeal. She appeared to regard Madeline with a bewilderment that increased rather than decreased from day to day. Instead of becoming familiar with the transformation, the wonder of it evidently grew on her.
The girl"s old, buoyant spirits, which had returned in full flow, seemed to shock and pain her mother with a sense of incongruity she could not get over. When Madeline treated her lover to an exhibition of her old imperious tyrannical ways, which to see again was to him sweeter than the return of day, her mother appeared frightened, and would try feebly to check her, and address little deprecating remarks to Henry that were very sad to hear. One evening, when he came in in the twilight, he saw Madeline sitting with "her baby," as she had again taken to calling her mother, in her arms, rocking and soothing her, while the old lady was drying and sobbing on her daughter"s bosom.
"She mopes, poor little mother!" said Madeline to Henry. "I can"t think what"s the matter with her. We"ll take her off with us on our wedding trip. She needs a little change."
"Dear me, no, that will never do," protested the little woman, with her usual half-frightened look at Henry. "Mr. Burr wouldn"t think that nice at all."
"I mean that Mr. Burr shall be too much occupied in thinking how nice I am to do any other thinking," said Madeline.
"That"s like the dress you wore to the picnic at Hemlock Hollow," said Henry.
"Why, no, it isn"t either. It only looks a little like it. It"s light, and cut the same way; that"s all the resemblance; but of course a man couldn"t be expected to know any better."
"It"s exactly like it," maintained Henry.
"What"ll you bet?"
"I"ll bet the prettiest pair of bracelets I can find in the city."
"Betting is wicked," said Madeline, "and so I suppose it"s my duty to take this bet just to discourage you from betting any more. Being engaged makes a girl responsible for a young man"s moral culture."
She left the room, and returned in a few moments with the veritable picnic dress on.