"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 a.s.sent 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 sc.r.a.p 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 a.s.sents, 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 a.s.sents 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 embarra.s.sment 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 ident.i.ty 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 ident.i.ty 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...."