"My dear boy"--Fenwick says this very quietly--"that"s exactly the reason why I said you would have to help me to settle whether I should be that man again or not. I say _not_, if the decision lies with me."
"Not?--not _at all_?" The doctor fairly gasps; his breath is taken away. Never perhaps was a young man freer from thought and influence of money than he, more absorbed in professional study and untainted by the supremacies of property. But for all that he was human, and English, and theoretically accepted gold as the thing of things, the one great aim and measure of success. Of other men"s success, that is, and _their_ aim, not his. For he was, in his own eyes, a humble plodder, not in the swim at all. But he ascribed to the huge sums real people had a right to, outside the limits of the likes of him, a kind of sacredness that grew in a geometrical ratio with their increase.
It gave him much more pain to hear that a safe had been robbed of thousands in gold than he felt when, on opening a wrapped-up fee, what seemed a guinea to the touch turned out a new farthing and a shilling to the sight. It was in the air that he lived in--that all of us live in.
So, when Fenwick made in this placid way a choice of conduct that must needs involve the sacrifice of sums large enough to be spoken of with awe, even in the sacred precincts of a bank, poor Dr. Conrad felt that all his powers of counsel had been outshot, and that his mind was reeling on its pedestal. That a poor man should give up his savings _en bloc_ to help a friend would have seemed to him natural and reasonable; that he should do so for honest love of a woman still more so; but that a millionaire should renounce his millions! Was it decent? was it proper? was it considerate to Mammon? But that must have been Fenwick"s meaning, too. The doctor did not recover his speech before Fenwick spoke again:
"Why should I claim all my property? How should I be the gainer if it made Rosey unhappy?"
"I see. I quite see. I feel with you, you know; feel as you do. But what will become of the money?"
"The poor darling money? Just think! It will lie neglected at the bank, unclaimed, forsaken, doing no more mischief than when it was harmless dust and nuggets in the sand of the Klond.y.k.e. While it was there, gold was a bit--a mighty small bit--dearer than it has become since. Now that it is in the keeping of chaps who won"t give it up half as easily as the Klond.y.k.e did, I suppose it has appreciated again, as the saying is. The difference of cost between getting it out of the ground and out of the bank is a negligible factor...." Fenwick seemed to find ease in chatting economics in this way. Some of it was so obviously true to Vereker that he at once concluded it would be cla.s.sed among fallacies; he had had experience of this sort of thing.
But he paid little attention, as he was thinking of how much of this interview he could repeat to Sally, to whom every step they took brought him nearer. The roar of a lion in his path was every moment more audible to the ears of his imagination. And it left him silent; but Fenwick went on speaking:
"We won"t trouble about the darling dust and nuggets; let them lie in p.a.w.n, and wait for a claimant. They won"t find Mr. Harrisson"s heir-at-law in a hurry. If ever proof comes of the death of Mrs.
Harrisson--whoever she was--I"ll be Mr. Harrisson again. Till then...."
"Till then what?"
"Till then, Vereker dear"--Fenwick said this very seriously, with emphasis--"till then we shall do most wisely to say nothing further to Mrs. Fenwick or to Sally. You must see that it won"t be possible to pick and choose, to tell this and reserve that. I shall speak of the recurrences of memory that come to me, as too confused for repet.i.tion.
I shall tell lies about them if I think it politic. Because I can"t have Rosey made miserable on any terms. As for the chick, you"ll have to manage the best you can."
"I"ll do my best," the doctor says, without a particle of confidence in his voice. "But about yourself, Fenwick?"
"I shall do very well, as long as I can have a chat with you now and again. You"ve no idea what a lot of good it has done me, this talking to you. And, of course, I haven"t told you one-tenth of the things I remember. There was one thing I wanted to say though just now, and we got off the line--what was it now? Oh, I know, about my name. It wasn"t really Harrisson."
"Not really Harrisson? What was it then?" What next, and next?--is the import of the speaker"s face.
"I"ll be hanged if I know! But it"s true, rum as it seems. I know I knew it wasn"t Harrisson every time I signed a cheque in America. But as for what it _was_, that all belongs to the dim time before. Isn"t that them coming to meet us?"
Yes, it was. And there was something else also the doctor had had it on his tongue to say, and it had got away on a siding. But it didn"t matter--it was only about whether the return of memory had or had not been due to the galvanic battery on the pier.
CHAPTER x.x.xVII
OF THE DOCTOR"S CAUTIOUS RESERVE, AND MRS. FENWICK"S STRONG COMMON-SENSE.
AND OF A LADY AT BUDA-PESTH. HOW HARRISSON WAS ONLY PAST FORGOTTEN NEWSPAPERS TO DR. VEREKER. OF THE OCTOPUS"S PULSE, HOW THE HABERDASHER"S BRIDE WOULD TRY ON AT TWO GUAS. A WEEK, AND OF A PLEASANT WALK BACK FROM THE RAILWAY STATION
"You never mean to say you"ve been in the water?"
It was quite clear, from the bluish finger-tips of the gloveless merp.u.s.s.y--for at St. Sennans sixes are not _de rigueur_ in the morning--that she _has_ been in, and has only just come out. But Fenwick, who asked the question, grasped a handful of loose black hair for confirmation, and found it wet.
"Haven"t I?" says the incorrigible one. "And you should have heard the rumpus over getting a machine down."
"She"s a selfish little monkey," her mother says, but forgivingly, too. "She"ll drown herself, and not care a penny about all the trouble she gives." You see, Rosalind wouldn"t throw her words into this callous form if she was really thinking about the merp.u.s.s.y. But just now she is too anxious about Gerry to be very particular.
What has pa.s.sed between him and Dr. Conrad? What does the latter know now more than she does herself? She falls back with him, and allows the other two to go on in front. Obviously the most natural arrangement.
"What has he told you, Dr. Conrad?" This is not unexpected, and the answer is a prepared one, preconcerted under pressure between the doctor and his conscience.
"I am going to ask you, Mrs. Fenwick, to do me a very great kindness--don"t say yes without hearing what it is--to ask you to allow me to keep back all your husband says to me, and to take for granted that he repeats to you all he feels certain of himself in his own recollections."
"He _has_ told you more?"
"Yes, he has. But I am far from certain that anything he has said can be relied upon--in his present state. Anyway, I should be very sorry to take upon myself the responsibility of repeating it."
"He wishes you not to do so?"
"I think so. I should say so. Do you mind?"
"I won"t press you to repeat anything you wish to keep back. But is his mind easier? After all, that"s the main point."
"That is my impression--much easier." He felt he was quite warranted in saying this. "And I should say that if he does not himself tell you again whatever he has been saying to me, it will only show how uncertain and untrustworthy all his present recollections are. I cannot tell you how strongly I feel that the best course is to leave his mind to its own natural development. It may even be that the partial and distorted images of events such as he has been speaking of to me...."
"I mustn"t ask you what they were?... Yes, go on."
"May again become dim and disappear altogether. If they are to do so, nothing can be gained by dwelling on them now--still less by trying to verify them--and least of all by using them as a stimulus to further recollection."
"You think I had better not ask him questions?"
"Exactly. Leave him to himself. Keep his mind on other matters--healthy occupations, surrounding life. I am certain of one thing--that the effort to disinter the past is painful to him in itself, quite independent of any painful a.s.sociations in what he is endeavouring to recall."
"I have seen that, too, in the slight recurrences he has had when I was there. I quite agree with you about the best course to pursue.
Let us have patience and wait."
Of course, Vereker had not the remotest conception that the less Fenwick remembered, the better his wife would be pleased. So the princ.i.p.al idea in his mind at that moment was, what a very sensible as well as handsome woman he was talking to! It was the way in which most people catalogued Rosalind Fenwick. But her ready a.s.sent to his wishes had intensified the doctor"s first item of description. A subordinate wave of his thought created an image of the girl Fenwick must have pictured to himself coming out of the railway carriage. He only repeated: "Let us have patience, and wait," with a feeling of relief from possible further catechism.
But in order to avoid showing his wish to abate inquiry, he could talk about aspects of the case that would not involve it. He could tell of a.n.a.logous cases well known, or in his own practice. For instance, that of a Frenchwoman who wandered away from Amiens, unconscious of her past and her ident.i.ty, and somehow got to Buda-Pesth. There, having retained perfect powers of using her mother-tongue, and also speaking German fluently, she had all but got a good teachership in a school, only she had no certificate of character. With a great effort she recalled the name of a lady at Amiens she felt she could write to for one, and did so. "Fancy her husband"s amazement," said Dr. Conrad, "when, on opening a letter addressed to his wife in her own handwriting, he found it was an application from Fraulein Schmidt, or some German name, asking for a testimonial!" He referred also to the many cases of the caprices of memory he had met with in his studies of the _pet.i.t-mal_ of epilepsy, a subject to which he had given special attention. It may have crossed his mind that his companion had fallen very thoroughly in with his views about not dissecting her husband"s case overmuch for the present. But he put it down, if it did, to her strong common-sense. It is rather a singular thing how very ready men are to ascribe this quality--whatever it is--to a beautiful woman.
Especially if she agrees with them.
Nevertheless the doctor was not very sorry when he saw that Sally and Fenwick, on in front, had caught up with--or been caught up with by--a mixed party, of a sort to suspend, divert, or cancel all conversation of a continuous sort. Miss Gwendolen Arkwright and her next eldest sister had established themselves on Fenwick"s shoulders, and the Julius Bradshaws had just intersected them from a side-alley. The latter were on the point of extinction; going back to London by the 3.15, and everything packed but what they had on. It was a clear reprieve, till 3.15 at any rate.
There could be no doubt, thought Rosalind to herself, that her husband"s conversation with Vereker had made him easier in his mind than when she saw him last, just after breakfast. No doubt he was all the better, too, for the merp.u.s.s.y"s account of her exploit on the beach; of how she managed to overrule old Gabriel and get a machine put down, contrary to precedent, common caution, and public opinion--even in the face of urgent remonstrance from her Swiss acquaintance, almost as good a swimmer as herself; how she had picked out a good big selvage-wave to pop in under, and when she got beyond it enjoyed all the comfort incidental to being in bed with the door locked. Because, you see, she exaggerated. However, one thing she said was quite true. There were no breakers out beyond the said selvage-wave, because the wind had fallen a great deal, and seemed to have given up the idea of making any more white foam-crests for the present. But there would be more wind again in the night, said authority. It was only a half-holiday for Neptune.
Sally"s bracing influence was all the stronger from the fact of her complete unconsciousness of anything unusual. Her mother had said nothing to her the day before of the revival of Baron Kreutzkammer, nor had Dr. Conrad, acting under cautions given. And all Sally knew of the wakeful night was that her mother had found Fenwick walking about, unable to sleep, and had said at breakfast he might just as well have his sleep out now. To which she had agreed, and had then gone away to see if "the Tishies," as she called them, were blown away, and had met the doctor coming to see if _she_ was. So she was in the best of moods as an antidote to mind-cloudage. And Fenwick, under the remedy, seemed to her no more unlike himself than was to be expected after not a wink till near daylight. The object of this prolixity is that it may be borne in mind that Sally never shared her mother"s or her undeclared lover"s knowledge of the strange mental revival caused--as seemed most probable--by the action of the galvanic battery on the previous day.
Vereker walked back to his Octopus, whom he had forsaken for an unusually long time, with his brain in a whirl at the strange revelation he had just heard. His medical experience had put him well on his guard anent one possibility--that the whole thing might be delusion on Fenwick"s part. How could such an imperfect memory-record be said to prove anything without confirmation from without?
His habits of thought had qualified him to keep this possibility provisionally in the background without forgetting it. There was nothing in the mere knowledge of its existence to prevent his trying to recall all he could of the story of the disappearance of Harrisson, as he read it in the newspapers a year and a half ago. There had been a deal of talk about it at the time, and great efforts had been made to trace Harrisson, but without success. The doctor lingered a little on his way, conscious that he could recall very little of the Harrisson case, but too interested to be able to leave his recollections dormant until he should get substantial information.
The Octopus could recollect all about it no doubt, but how venture to apply to her? Or how to Sally? Though, truly, had he done so, it would have been with much less hope of a result. Neither Sally nor her mother were treasure-houses of the day"s gossip, as _his_ mother was.
"We must have taken mighty little notice of what was going on in the world at the time," so thought the doctor to himself.
What _did_ he actually recollect? A paragraph headed "Disappearance of a Millionaire" in a hurried perusal of an evening paper as he rode to an urgent case; a repet.i.tion--several repet.i.tions--on the newspaper posters of the name Harrisson during the fortnight following, chiefly disclosing supposed discoveries of the missing man, sandwiched with other discoveries of their falsehood--clue and disappointment by turns. He could remember his own perfectly spurious interest in the case, produced by such announcements staring at him from all points of the compa.s.s, and his own preposterous contributions to talk-making about them, such as "Have they found that man Harrisson yet?" knowing himself the merest impostor all the while, but feeling it dutiful to be up-to-date. How came no one of them all to put two and two together?