But Mr. Fenwick did not lend himself to the agreeable antic.i.p.ation of Sally"s "lark." There was a pained distraction on his handsome face as he gave his head a great shake, tossing about the ma.s.s of brown hair, which was still something of a lion"s mane, in spite of the recent ministrations of a hairdresser. He walked to the window-bay that looked out on the little garden, shaking and rubbing his head, and then came back to where he had been sitting--always as one wrestling with some painful half-memory he could not trace. Then he spoke again.
"Whether the sort of flash that comes in my mind of writing my name in a cheque-book is really a recollection of doing so, or merely the knowledge that I _must_ have done so, I cannot tell. But it is disagreeable--thoroughly disagreeable--and _strange_ to the last degree. I cannot tell you how--how torturing it is, always to be compelled to stop on the threshold of an uncompleted recollection."
"I have the idea, though, quite!" said Sally. "But of course one never remembers signing one"s name, any particular time. One does it mechanically. So I don"t wonder."
"Yes! But the nasty part of the flash is that I always know that it is not _my_ name. Last time it came--just now this minute--it was a name like Harrington or Carrington. Oh dear!" He shook and rubbed his head again, with the old action.
"Perhaps your name isn"t Fenwick, but Harrington or Carrington?"
"No! That c.o.c.k won"t fight. In a flash, I know it"s not my _own_ name as I write it."
"Oh, but I see!" Sally is triumphant. "You signed for a firm you belonged to, of course. People _do_ sign for firms, don"t they?" added she, with misgivings about her own business capacity. But Mr. Fenwick did not accept this solution, and continued silent and depressed.
The foregoing is one of many similar conversations between Fenwick and Sally, or her mother, or all three, during the term of his stay at Krakatoa Villa. They were less encouraged by the older lady, who counselled Fenwick to accept his oblivion pa.s.sively, and await the natural return of his mental powers. They would all come in time, she said; and young Dr. Vereker, though his studious and responsible face grew still more studious and responsible as time went on, and the mind of this case continued a blank, still encouraged pa.s.sivity, and spoke confidently--whatever he thought--of an early and complete recovery.
When, in Fenwick"s absence, Sally reported to Dr. Vereker and her mother the scheme for applying to "Tat"s" for a wild horse to break in, the latter opposed and denounced it so strongly, on the ground of the danger of the experiment, that both Sally and the doctor promised to support her if Fenwick should broach the idea again. But when he did so, it was so clear that the disfavour Mrs. Nightingale showed for such a risky business would be sufficient to deter him from trying it that neither thought it necessary to say a word in her support; and the conversation went off into a discussion of how it came about that Fenwick should remember Tattersall"s. But, said he, he did not remember Tattersall"s even now. And yet hearing the name, he had automatically called it "Tat"s." Many other instances showed that his power of imagery, in relation to the past, was paralysed, while his language-faculty remained intact, just as many fluent speakers and writers spell badly. Only it was an extreme case.
A fortunate occurrence that happened at this time gave its quietus to the unpopular horse-breaking speculation. It happened that, as Mrs.
Nightingale was shopping at a big "universal providing" stores not far away, one of the clerks had some difficulty in interpreting a French phrase in a letter just received from abroad. No one near him looked more likely to help than Mrs. Nightingale, but she could do nothing when applied to; although, she said, she had been taught French in her youth. But she felt certain Mr. Fenwick could be of use--at her house.
French idiom was evidently unfamiliar in the neighbourhood, for the young gentleman from the office jumped at the opportunity. He went away with Mrs. Nightingale"s card, inscribed with a message, and came back before she had done shopping (not that that means such a very short time), not only with an interpretation, but with an exhaustive draft of an answer in French, which she saw to be both skilful and scholarly. It was so much so that a fortnight later an inquiry came to know if Mr. Fenwick"s services would be available for a firm in the City, which had applied to be universally provided with a man having exactly his attainments and no others. In less than a month he was installed in a responsible position as their foreign correspondent and in receipt of a very respectable salary. The rapidity of phrasing in this movement was abnormal--_prestissimo_, in fact, if we indulge our musical vocabulary. But the instrumentation would have seemed less surprising to Sally had she known the lengths her mother had gone in the proffer of a substantial guarantee for Fenwick"s personal honesty.
This seeming rashness did not transpire at the time; had it done so, it might have appeared unintelligible--to Sally, at any rate. She would not have been surprised at herself for backing the interests of a man nearly electrocuted over her half-crown, but why should her mother endorse her _protege_ so enthusiastically?
It is perhaps hardly necessary for us to dwell on the unsuccessful attempts that were made to recover touch with other actors on the stage of Fenwick"s vanished past. Advertis.e.m.e.nt--variously worded--in the second column of the "Times," three times a week for a month, produced no effect. Miss Sally frequently referred with satisfaction to the case of John Williams, reported among the Psychical Researches of the past years, in which a man who vanished in England was found years after carrying on a goods-store in Chicago under another name, with a new wife and family, having utterly forgotten the first half of his life and all his belongings. Her mother seemed only languidly interested in this ill.u.s.tration, and left the active discussion of the subject chiefly to Sally, who speculated endlessly on the whole of the story; without, however, throwing any fresh light on it--unless indeed, the Chicago man could be considered one. And the question naturally arose, as long as his case continued to hold out hopes of a sudden return of memory, and until we were certain his condition was chronic, why go to expense and court publicity? By the time he was safely installed in his situation at the wine-merchant"s, the idea of a police-inquiry, application to the magistrates, and so forth, had become distasteful to all concerned, and to none more so than Fenwick himself.
When Dr. Vereker, acting on his own account, and unknown to Mrs.
Nightingale and Fenwick, made confidential reference to Scotland Yard, that Yard smiled cynically over the Chicago storekeeper, and expressed the opinion that probably Fenwick"s game was a similar game, and that things of this sort were usually some game. The doctor observed that he knew without being told that nine such cases out of ten had human rascality at the bottom of them, but that he had consulted that Yard in the belief that this might be a tenth case. The Yard said very proper, and it would do its best, and no doubt did, but nothing was elucidated.
It is just possible that had Mr. Fenwick communicated _every_ clue he found, down to the smallest trifle, Dr. Vereker might have been able to get at something through the Criminal Investigation Department.
But it wasn"t fair to Sherlock Holmes to keep anything back. Fenwick, knowing nothing of Vereker"s inquiry, did so; for he had decided to say nothing about a certain p.a.w.n-ticket that was in the pocket of an otherwise empty purse or pocket-book, evidently just bought. He would, however, investigate it himself, and did so.
It was quite three weeks, though, before he felt safe to go about alone to any place distant from the house, more especially when he did not know what the expedition would lead to. When at last he got to the p.a.w.nbroker"s, he found that that gentleman at the counter did not recognise him, or said he did not. Fenwick, of course, could not ask the question: "Did I p.a.w.n this watch?" It would have seemed lunacy. But he framed a question that answered as well, to his thinking.
"Would you very kindly tell me," he asked, dropping his voice, "whether the person that p.a.w.ned this watch was at all like me--like a brother of mine, for instance?" Perhaps he was not a good hand at pretences, and the p.a.w.nbroker outcla.s.sed him easily.
"No, sir," replied he, without looking to see; "that I most certainly can _not_ tell you." Fenwick was not convinced that this was true, but had to admit to himself that it might be. This man"s life was one long record of an infinity of short loans, and its problem was the advancing of the smallest conceivable sums on the largest obtainable security. Why _should_ he recollect one drop in the ocean of needy applicants? The only answer Fenwick could give to this was based on his belief that he looked quite unlike the other customers. More knowledge would have shown him that there was not one of those customers, scarcely, but had a like belief. It is the common form of human thought among those who seek to have p.a.w.ns broked. They are a cla.s.s made up entirely of exceptions.
Fenwick came away from the shop with the watch that _must have been_ his. That was how he thought of it. As soon as he wore it again, it became _his_ watch, naturally. But he could remember nothing about it.
And its recovery from the p.a.w.nbroker"s he could not remember leaving it at became an absurd dream. Perhaps in Sherlock Holmes"s hands it would have provided a valuable clue. Fenwick said nothing further about it; put it in a drawer until all inquiries about him had died into the past.
Another little thing that might have helped was the cabman"s number written on his wristband. But here Fate threw investigation off her guard. The ciphers were, as it chanced, 3,600; and an unfortunate shrewdness of Scotland Yard, when Dr. Vereker communicated this clue, spotted the date in it--the third day of the sixth month of 1900. So no one dreamed of the cabby, who could at least have shown where the hat was lost that might have had a name or address inside it, and where he left its owner in the end. And there was absolutely no clue to anything elsewhere among his clothes. The Panama hat might have been bought anywhere; the suit of blue serge was ticketless inside the collar, and the shirt unmarked--probably bought for the voyage only.
Fenwick had succeeded in forgetting himself just at a moment when he was absolutely without a reminder. And it seemed there was nothing for it but to wait for the revival of memory.
This, then, is how it came about that, within three months of his extraordinary accident, Mr. Fenwick was comfortably settled in an apartment within a few minutes" walk of Krakatoa Villa; and all the incidents of his original appearance were getting merged in the insoluble, and would soon, no doubt, under the influence of a steady ever-present new routine of life, be completely absorbed in the actual past.
CHAPTER V
THE CHRISTMAS AFTER. OF THE CHURCH OF ST. SATISFAX, AND A YOUNG IDIOT WHO CAME THERE
When one is called away in the middle of a street-fight, and misses seeing the end of it, how embittered one"s existence is, and continues for some time after! Think what our friend the cabman would have felt had he missed the _denouement_! And when one finds oneself again on its site--if that is the correct expression--how one wishes one was not ashamed to inquire about its result from the permanent officials on the spot--the waterman attached to the cab-rank, the crossing-sweeper at the corner, the neolithographic artist who didn"t really draw that half-mackerel himself, but is there all day long, for all that; or even the apothecary"s shop over the way, on the chance that the casualties went or were taken there for treatment after the battle. One never does ask, because one is so proud; but if one did ask, one would probably find that oblivion had drawn a veil over the event, and that none of one"s catechumens had heard speak of any such an occurrence, and that it must have been another street. Because, if it had "a been there, they would have seen to a certainty. And the monotonous traffic rolls on, on, on; and the two counter-streams of creatures, each with a story, divide and subdivide over the spot where the underneath man"s head sounded on the kerbstone, which took no notice at the time, and now seems to know less than ever about it.
Are we, in thus moralising, merely taking the mean advantage the author is apt to imagine he has established over his reader when he ends off a chapter with a snap, and hopes the said reader will not dare to skip? No, we are not. We really mean something, and shall get to it in time. Let us only be clear what it is ourselves.
It refers, at any rate, to the way in which the contents of Chapters I. and II. had become records of the past six months later, when the snow was on the ground four inches thick on Christmas morning--two inches, at least, having been last night"s contribution--and made it all sweet and smooth all over so that there need be no unpleasantness.
As Sally looked out of her mother"s bedroom window towards the front through the Venetian blind, she saw the footprints of cats alone on the snow in the road, and of the milk alone along the pavement. For the milk had preferred to come by hand, rather than plough its tricycle through the unknown depths and drifts of Glenmoira Road, W., to which it had found its way over tracks already palliated by the courage of the early "bus--not plying for hire at that hour, but only seeking its equivalent of the _carceres_ of the Roman Coliseum, to inaugurate the carriage of twelve inside and fourteen out to many kinds of Divine Service early in the day, and one kind only of dinner-service late--the one folk eat too much pudding and mince-pie at, and have to take a dose after. During this early introductory movement of the "bus its conductor sits inside like a lord, and cla.s.sifies doc.u.ments. But he has nothing to do with our story. Let us thank him for facilitating the milk, and dismiss him.
"My gracious goodness me!" said Sally, when she saw the snow. She did not say it quite from the bottom of her heart, and as her own form of expression; but in inverted commas, as it were, the primary responsibility being cook"s or Jane"s. "You mustn"t think of getting up, mother."
"Oh, nonsense! I shall get up the minute the hot water comes."
"You won"t do any good by getting up. You had much better lie in bed.
_I_ shouldn"t get up, if I was you," etc., etc.
"Oh, stuff! My rheumatism"s better. Do you know, I really think the ring _has_ done it good. Dr. Vereker may laugh as much as he likes----"
"Well, the proof of the pudding"s in the eating. But wait till you see how thick the snow is. _Come--in!_" This is very staccato. Jane was knocking at the door with cans of really hot water this time.
"I said come in before. Merry Christmas and happy New Year, Jane!...
Oh, I say! What a dear little robin! He"s such a little duck, I hope that cat won"t get him!" And Sally, who is huddled up in a thick dressing-gown and is shivering, is so excited that she goes on looking through the blind, and the peep-hole she has had to make to see clear through the frosted pane, in spite of the deadly cold on the finger-tip she rubbed it with. Her mother felt interested, too, in the fate of the robin, but not to the extent of impairing her last two minutes in bed by admitting the slightest breath of cold air inside a well-considered fortress. She was really going to get up, though, that was flat! The fire would blaze directly, although at this moment it was blowing wood-smoke down Jane"s throat, and making her choke.
Directly was five or six minutes, but the fire did blaze up royally in the end. You see, it wasn"t a slow-combustion-grate, and it burned too much fuel, and flared away the coal, and did all sorts of comfortable, uneconomical things. So did Jane, who had put in a whole bundle of wood.
But now that the wood was past praying for, and Jane had departed, after thawing the hearts of two sponges, it was just as well to take advantage of the blaze while it lasted. And Mrs. Nightingale and her daughter, in the thickest available dressing-gowns, and pretending they were not taking baths only because the bath-room was thrown out of gear by the frost, took advantage of the said blaze to their heart"s content and harked back--a good way back--on the conversation.
"You never said "Come in," chick."
"I _did_, mother! Well, if I didn"t, at any rate, I always tell her not to knock. She is the stupidest girl. She _will_ knock!" Her mother doesn"t press the point. There is no bad blood anywhere. Did not Sally wish the handmaiden a merry Christmas?
"The cat didn"t get the robin, Sally?"
"Not he! The robin was too sharp by half. Such a little darling! But I was sorry for the cat."
"Poor p.u.s.s.y! Not our p.u.s.s.y, was it?"
"Oh no; it was that piebald Tom that lives in at the empty house next door."
"I know. Horrible beast!"
"Well, but just think of being out in the cold in this weather, with nothing to eat! Oo--oo--oogh!" Sally ill.u.s.trates, with an intentional shudder. "I wonder who that is!"
"I didn"t hear any one."
"You"ll see, he"ll ring directly. I know who it is; it"s Mr. Fenwick come to say he can"t come to-night. I heard the click of his skates.
They"ve a sort of twinkly click, skates have, when they"re swung by a strap. He"ll go out and skate all day. He"ll go to Wimbledon."
The girl"s hearing was quite correct. A ring came at the bell--Krakatoa had no knocker--and a short colloquy followed between Jane and the ringer. Then he departed, with his twinkly click and noiseless footstep on the snow, slamming the front gate. Jane was able to include a card he had left in a recrudescence or reinforcement of hot water. Sally takes the card and looks at it, and her mother says, "Well, Sally?" with a slight remonstrance against the unfairness of keeping back information after you have satisfied your own curiosity--a thing people are odious about, as we all know.