He ended with a little laugh. The fierce eagerness had burned itself out. Of the two, Eleanor was now the more disturbed.
"I should like to know how it feels," she said thoughtfully, "to be without a memory, to start life at twenty-two."
"The things outside your own personal experiences are never lost to you," he said. "They come back in a perfectly effortless manner. You will find yourself accepting them as a matter of course."
"How do you know that?" she asked. "One might have to learn to read and write again. Life without any background at all would become a gigantic embarra.s.sment."
"There is no fear of anything of the sort," he a.s.sured her. "Halkar"s friend and the girl related to me their own experiences. They were precisely similar. It was of events and persons alone that their mind was swept bare. Their stock of acquired knowledge remained unimpaired.
Sometimes they even dimly remembered people."
"But there are also many other considerations," she said. "What will become of me afterward?"
"My dear young lady," he said, "I do not ask you to risk your life, however remotely, for nothing. I would give half my fortune, were it necessary, to win your consent. As it is, I promise you freedom and independence. You shall live the life which seems good to you. You will be removed into another sphere altogether, and it is possible that you may take with you a somewhat cloudy recollection of this portion of your life. Your reward will be an established position in the world and an honorable one. Beyond this I cannot say a single word. In fact, you must consider the whole thing as only a possibility.
"I consent," she said simply.
There was a momentary flash in his gray eyes--otherwise he showed no emotion. He had long since taken her consent as a matter of course.
"There is one thing more which is necessary," he said. "You must tell me who you are, and if you have any friends who would be likely to make inquiries for you. I take it for granted that you have no closer ties.
It is imperative that I have this knowledge."
She looked up at him with white face. "Do you mean that?"
"You can surely see the necessity for it yourself," he answered. "You are virtually going to change your ident.i.ty. The Eleanor Surtoes of a month hence will know nothing of your past. Some one must be entrusted with that knowledge."
"It is a great pain to me," she said wearily, "to speak of it at all.
But to-night nothing seems to matter. My name is Eleanor Surtoes Marston. My father was Sir Robert Marston. He was a banker at Hull--Ellifield, Marston and Ellifield. You read the papers. I dare say you remember."
He inclined his head slowly.
"My mother was dead. I had neither brother nor sister, nor any friends save those whom my father"s prodigality had brought together. When exposure came, my father killed himself. He left a letter telling me where to find a large sum of money which he had put on one side. He had meant to leave England secretly. I returned the money to the bank. They heard afterward that I was dest.i.tute, and they sent me ten pounds. I came to London, and did my best to get a situation, but I was ignorant, ill brought up, and uselessly educated. I could do a great many things in a small way, but nothing well enough to teach. With only a few shillings left, I wrote to a large firm of drapers in Hull with whom I had dealt. They sent me an introduction to Bearmain"s, and I entered their employ as a shop girl ten months ago. I have done my best, but I left to-night, knowing that whatever happened I should never return."
"There is no one, then," he asked, "who is likely to make inquiries about you? No one who could trace you here?"
"There is no one," she answered bitterly.
Powers looked at his watch.
"I am going to leave you alone for a quarter of an hour," he said. "I do not think that it will make any difference, but I should like you to have that time for unbiased reflection."
"As you like," she answered. "I shall not change my mind. I am ready."
She sat before the fire, her eyes fixed upon the burning coals. She heard m.u.f.fled voices in the hall, she heard Powers enter an adjoining room, and close the door behind him. Her fingers clutched the sides of her chair, her eyeb.a.l.l.s were hot. For the first time a spasm of physical fear seized her. He had gone to make ready. What if it should be death?
She had spoken boldly of it but a moment before. Yet she was young, for good or evil her life was as yet unlived. Then with a rush came back the memory of the last ten months. The hopeless weariness of those days behind the counter, the miserable humiliation of it, the web of bitter despair drawn so closely and inevitably around her. All the petty tyrannies to which she had been subject, all the fettering restrictions which had gone to turn servitude into slavery were suddenly fresh in her mind. A hideous vista of dreary days and lonely nights--nowhere a ray of hope; the same, yesterday, to-day, and all other days. The fear pa.s.sed away from her. Death might have its terrors, but a return to Bearmain"s would be a living h.e.l.l. She heard the door open without a single tremor.
She even smiled as she saw Powers standing upon the threshold.
"You have not changed your mind?" he asked.
"There was never any fear of that," she answered. "I am quite ready."
He held open the door. "Will you come this way?" he said.
She rose at once, without reluctance or fear--even gladly. He was beckoning her into a new life.
Sir Powers Fiske permitted himself the luxury of a rare emotion. His patient had come back to life. The faint flush of recovery was upon her cheeks, the light of a dawning intelligence was in her eyes. The first stage of his great experiment had been successfully reached.
"So you are better, I see!" he remarked, standing by her bedside.
She answered him a little weakly, but distinctly enough.
"I suppose I am. I feel quite well enough to get up. Only----"
"Well?"
There was trouble in her eyes as she looked up at him.
"It seems as though I must be dreaming. I can"t remember what has happened to me--why I am here!"
He smiled at her rea.s.suringly.
"I wouldn"t bother about it," he said. "You are with friends, and you must try to get well quickly. I dare say when you are stronger that it will all come back to you."
She looked at him reflectively.
"You are a stranger to me," she said slowly. "Is there no one here whom I have ever seen before?"
He felt a sudden chill. Yet, after all, it was what he had expected.
"I do not suppose that there is," he answered. "You see, you are in London now. I thought, perhaps, that you might have remembered me. I was in India, and came to see you when you were a little girl."
"In India!" she repeated vaguely. "Why, what can have happened to me? I do not remember anything about India."
She raised her hand to her temples. Her eyes were full of an undefined fear. The words came from her lips in a broken stream.
"You are my doctor, they say, and this is your house. Tell me what it means--tell me. I try to think, and there is nothing. Something has happened to my head. Have I been ill for long? Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here?"
"I will answer all your questions," he said quietly, "but you must please not excite yourself. Your name is Eleanor Hardinge, and you were shipwrecked on your way from India here. Your father is an old friend of mine, and you were coming to England to visit my mother. You met with a very unusual accident. You will notice that your head is still bound up, and, no doubt, it will affect your memory for some little time. You must try to make the best of it. You are among friends, and we shall all do our best to look after you."
She felt the bandage around her head.
"I can"t even remember the accident," she said. "I suppose it will all come back some day."
"There is no doubt about it," he answered. "All that you have to do now is to keep as quiet as you can. The less you try to think the better."
The nurse entered with a tray. Eleanor sat up and smiled with the satisfaction of a child.