The Wiles of the Wicked
Page 30
meformidable sums entered therein, relating, he explained, to thetransactions at the office up in London. Some documents he showed me,large official-looking sheets with stamps and seals and signatures,which he said were concessions obtained from a certain foreignGovernment, and opened my private letter-book, exhibiting letters I hadactually written with my own hand, but without having any knowledge ofhaving done so.
These revelations took away my breath.
It could not be mere loss of memory from which I was suffering. I hadactually lived a second and entirely different life to that I had onceled in Essex Street. Apparently I had become a changed man, had enteredbusiness, had amassed a fortune--and had married.
Assuredly, I reflected, I could never have been in my right senses tohave married that angular person with the powdered cheeks. That action,in itself, was sufficient to convince me that my brain had beenunbalanced during those six lost years.
Alone, I stood, without a single sympathiser--without a friend.
How this astounding gap in my life had been produced was absolutelybeyond explanation. I tried to account for it, but the reader willreadily understand that the problem was, to me, utterly inexplicable.I, the victim of the treachery of that man Hickman, had fallenunconscious one night, and had awakened to discover that six whole yearshad elapsed, and that I had developed into an entirely different person.It was unaccountable, nay, incredible.
I think I should have grown confidential towards Gedge were it not thathe apparently treated me as one whose mind was wandering. He believed,and perhaps justly so, that my brain had been injured by the accidentalblow. To him, of course, it seemed impossible that I, his master,should know nothing of my own affairs. The ludicrousness of thesituation was to me entirely apparent, yet what could I do to avert it?
By careful questions I endeavoured to obtain from him some factsregarding my past.
"You told me," I said, "that I have many friends. Among them are thereany persons named Anson?"
"Anson?" he repeated reflectively. "No, I've never heard the name."
"Or Hickman?"
He shook his head.
"I lived once in Essex Street, Strand," I said. "Have I been to thosechambers during the time--the five years you have been in my service?"
Never, to my knowledge.
"Have I ever visited a house in The Boltons, at Kensington?"
"I think not," he responded.
"Curious! Very curious!" I observed, thinking deeply of the graceful,dark-eyed Mabel whom I had loved six years before, and who was now lostto me for ever.
"Among my friends is there a man named Doyle?" I inquired, after apause.
"Doyle? Do you mean Mr Richard Doyle, the war correspondent?"
"Certainly," I cried excitedly. "Is he back?"
"He is one of your friends, and has often visited here," Gedge replied.
"What is his address? I'll wire to him at once."
"He's in Egypt. He left London last March, and has not yet returned."
I drew a long breath. Dick had evidently recovered from fever in India,and was still my best friend, although I had had no knowledge of it.
What, I wondered, had been my actions in those six years ofunconsciousness? Mine were indeed strange thoughts at that moment. Ofall that had been told me I was unable to account for anything. I stoodstunned, confounded, petrified.
For knowledge of what had transpired during those intervening years, orof my own career and actions during that period, I had to rely upon thestatements of others. My mind during all that time had, it appeared,been a perfect blank, incapable of receiving any impression whatsoever.
Nevertheless, when I came to consider how I had in so marvellous amanner established a reputation in the City, and had amassed the sum nowlying at my bankers, I reflected that I could not have accomplished thatwithout the exercise of considerable tact and mental capacity. I must,after all, have retained shrewd senses, but they had evidently beenthose of my other self--the self who had lived and moved as husband ofthat woman who called herself Mrs Heaton.
"Tell me," I said, addressing Gedge again, "has my married life been ahappy one?"
He looked at me inquiringly.
"Tell me the truth," I urged. "Don't conceal anything from me, for Iintend to get at the bottom of this mystery."
"Well," he said, with considerable hesitation, "scarcely what one mightcall happy, I think."
"Ah, I understand," I said. "I know from your tone that you sympathisewith me, Gedge."
He nodded without replying. Strange that I had never known this manuntil an hour ago, and yet I had grown so confidential with him. Heseemed to be the only person who could present to me the plain truth.
Those six lost years were utterly puzzling. I was as one returned fromthe grave to find his world vanished, and all things changed.
I tried to reflect, to see some ray of light through the darkness ofthat lost period, but to me it seemed utterly non-existent. Thoseyears, if I had really lived them, had melted away and left not a tracebehind. The events of my life prior to that eventful night when I haddined at The Boltons had no affinity to those of the present. I hadceased to be my old self, and by some inexplicable transition,mysterious and unheard of, I had, while retaining my name, become anentirely different man.
Six precious years of golden youth had vanished in a single night. Allmy ideals, all my love, all my hope, nay, my very personality, had beenswept away and effaced for ever.
"Have I often visited Heaton--my own place?" I inquired, turningsuddenly to Gedge.
"Not since your marriage, I believe," he answered. "You have alwaysentertained some curious dislike towards the place. I went up thereonce to transact some business with your agent, and thought it a nice,charming old house."
"Ay, and so it is," I sighed, remembering the youthful days I had spentthere long ago. All the year round was sunshine then, with the mostravishing snow-drifts in winter, and ice that sparkled in the sun sobrilliantly that it seemed almost as jolly and frolicsome as thesunniest of sunlit streams, dancing and shimmering over the pebbles allthrough the cloudless summer. Did it ever rain in those old days longago? Why, yes; and what splendid times I used to have on thoseoccasions--toffee-making in the schoolroom, or watching old Dixon, thegamekeeper, cutting gun-wads in the harness-room.
And I had entertained a marked dislike to the place! All my tastes andideas during those blank years had apparently become inverted. I hadlived and enjoyed a world exactly opposite to my own--the world ofsordid money-making and the glaring display of riches. I had, in aword, aped the gentleman.
There was a small circular mirror in the library, and before it I stood,marking every line upon my face, the incredible impress of forgottenyears.
"It is amazing, incredible!" I cried, heart-sick with desire topenetrate the veil of mystery that enshrouded that long period ofunconsciousness. "All that you have told me, Gedge, is absolutelybeyond belief. There must be some mistake. It is impossible that sixyears can have passed without my knowledge."
"I think," he said, "that, after all, Britten's advice should befollowed. You are evidently not yourself to-day, and rest will probablyrestore your mental power to its proper calibre."
"Bah!" I shouted angrily. "You still believe I'm mad. I tell you I'mnot. I'll prove to you that I'm not."
"Well," he remarked, quite calmly, "no sane man could be utterlyignorant of his own life. It doesn't stand to reason that he could."
"I tell you I'm quite as sane as you are," I cried. "Yet I've beenutterly unconscious these six whole years."
"Nobody will believe you."
"But I swear it to be true," I protested. "Since the moment whenconsciousness left me in that house in Chelsea I have been as one dead."
He laughed incredulously. The slightly confidential tone in which I hadspoken had apparently induced him to treat me with indifference. Thisaroused my wrath. I was in no mood to argue whether or not I wasresponsible
for my actions.
"A man surely can't be unconscious, while at the same time he transactsbusiness and lives as gaily as you live," he laughed.
"Then you impute that all I've said is untrue, and is due merely to thefact that I'm a trifle demented, eh?"
"Britten has said that you are suffering from a fit of temporaryderangement, and that you will recover after perfect rest."
"Then, by taking me around this house, showing me those books, andexplaining all to me, you've merely been humouring me as you would aharmless lunatic!" I cried furiously. "You don't believe what I say,that I'm perfectly in my right mind, therefore leave me. I have nofurther use for your presence, and