Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  "Why, sir, it is no theory of mine, but the testimony of universal consciousness, if you interrogate it aright, that the difference between the past and present selves of the same individual is so great as to make them different persons for all moral purposes. That single fact we were just speaking of—the fact that no man would care for vengeance on one who had injured him, provided he knew that all memory of the offence had been blotted utterly from his enemy's mind—proves the entire proposition. It shows that it is not the present self of his enemy that the avenger is angry with at all, but the past self. Even in the blindness of his wrath he intuitively recognizes the distinction between the two. He only hates the present man, and seeks vengeance on him in so far as he thinks that he exults in remembering the injury his past self did, or, if he does not exult, that he insults and humiliates him by the bare fact of remembering it. That is the continuing offence which alone keeps alive the avenger's wrath against him. His fault is not that he did the injury, for he did not do it, but that he remembers it.

  "It is the first principle of justice, isn't it, that nobody ought to be punished for what he can't help? Can the man of to-day prevent or affect what he did yesterday, let me say, rather, what the man did out of whom he has grown—has grown, I repeat, by a physical process which he could not check save by suicide. As well punish him for Adam's sin, for he might as easily have prevented that, and is every whit as accountable for it. You pity the child born, without his choice, of depraved parents. Pity the man himself, the man of today who, by a process as inevitable as the child's birth, has grown on the rotten stock of yesterday. Think you, that it is not sometimes with a sense of loathing and horror unutterable, that he feels his fresh life thus inexorably knitting itself on, growing on, to that old stem? For, mind you well, the consciousness of the man exists alone in the present day and moment. There alone he lives. That is himself. The former days are his dead, for whose sins, in which he had no part, which perchance by his choice never would have been done, he is held to answer and do penance. And you thought, young man, that there was such a thing as justice !"

  "I can see," said Henry, after a pause, "that when half a lifetime has intervened between a crime and its punishment, and the man has reformed, there is a certain lack of identity. I have always thought punishments in such cases very barbarous. I know that I should think it hard to answer for what I may have done as a boy, twenty years ago.

  "Yes," said the doctor, "flagrant cases of that sort take the general eye, and people say that they are instances of retribution rather than justice. The unlikeness between the extremes of life, as between the babe and the man, the lad and the dotard, strikes every mind, and all admit that there is not any apparent identity between these widely parted points in the progress of a human organism. How then? How soon does identity begin to decay, and when is it gone—in one year, five years, ten years, twenty years, or how many? Shall we fix fifty years as the period of a moral statute of limitation, after which punishment shall be deemed barbarous? No, no. The gulf between the man of this instant and the man of the last is just as impassable as that between the baby and the man. What is past is eternally past. So far as the essence of justice is concerned, there is no difference between one of the cases of punishment which you called barbarous, and one in which the penalty follows the offence within the hour. There is no way of joining the past with the present, and there is no difference between what is a moment past and what is eternally past."

  "Then the assassin as he withdraws the stiletto from his victim's breast is not the same man who plunged it in."

  "Obviously not," replied the doctor. "He may be exulting in the deed, or, more likely, he may be in a reaction of regret. He may be worse, he may be better. His being better or worse makes it neither more nor less just to punish him, though it may make it more or less expedient. Justice demands identity; similarity, however close, will not answer. Though a mother could not tell her twin sons apart, it would not make it any more just to punish one for the other's sins."

  "Then you don't believe in the punishment of crime?" said Henry.

  "Most emphatically I do," replied the doctor; "only I don't believe in calling it justice or ascribing it a moral significance. The punishment of criminals is a matter of public policy and expediency, precisely like measures for the suppression of nuisances or the prevention of epidemics. It is needful to restrain those who by crime have revealed their likelihood to commit further crimes, and to furnish by their punishment a motive to deter others from crime."

  "And to deter the criminal himself after his release," added Henry.

  "I included him in the word 'others,'" said the doctor. "The man who is punished is other from the man who did the act, and after punishment he is still other."

  "Really, doctor," observed Henry, "I don't see that a man who fully believes your theory is in any need of your process for obliterating his sins. He won't think of blaming himself for them any way."

  "True," said the doctor, "perfectly true. My process is for those who cannot attain to my philosophy. I break for the weak the chain of memory which holds them to the past; but stronger souls are independent of me. They can unloose the iron links and free themselves. Would that more had the needful wisdom and strength thus serenely to put their past behind them, leaving the dead to bury their dead, and go blithely forward, taking each new day as a life by itself, and reckoning themselves daily new-born, even as verily they are! Physically, mentally, indeed, the present must be for ever the outgrowth of the past, conform to its conditions, bear its burdens; but moral responsibility for the past the present has none, and by the very definition of the words can have none. There is no need to tell people that they ought to regret and grieve over the errors of the past. They can't help doing that. I myself suffer at times pretty sharply from twinges of the rheumatism which I owe to youthful dissipation. It would be absurd enough for me, a quiet old fellow of sixty, to take blame to myself for what the wild student did, but, all the same, I confoundedly wish he hadn't.

  "Ah, me!" continued the doctor. "Is there not sorrow and wrong enough in the present world without having moralists teach us that it is our duty to perpetuate all our past sins and shames in the multiplying mirror of memory, as if, forsooth, we were any more the causers of the sins of our past selves than of our fathers' sins. How many a man and woman have poisoned their lives with tears for some one sin far away in the past! Their folly is greater, because sadder, but otherwise just like that of one who should devote his life to a mood of fatuous and imbecile self-complacency over the recollection of a good act he had once done. The consequences of the good and the bad deeds our fathers and we have done fall on our heads in showers, now refreshing, now scorching, of rewards and of penalties alike undeserved by our present selves. But, while we bear them with such equanimity as we may, let us remember that as it is only fools who flatter themselves on their past virtues, so it is only a sadder sort of fools who plague themselves for their past faults."

  Henry's quick ear caught a rustle in the retiring-room. He stepped to the door and looked in. Madeline was sitting up.

  CHAPTER XII.

  Her attitude was peculiar. Her feet were on the floor, her left hand rested on the sofa by her side, her right was raised to one temple and checked in the very act of pushing back a heavy braid of hair which had been disarranged in sleep. Her eyebrows were slightly contracted, and she was staring at the carpet. So concentrated did her faculties appear to be in the effort of reflection that she did not notice Henry's entrance until, standing by her aide, he asked, in a voice which he vainly tried to steady—

  "How do you feel ?"

  She did not look up at him at all, but replied, in the dreamy, drawling tone of one in a brown study—

  "I—feel—well. I'm—ever—so—rested."

  "Did you just wake up?" he said, after a moment. He did not know what to say.

  She now glanced up at him, but with an expression of only partial attention, as if stil
l retaining a hold on the clue of her thoughts.

  "I've been awake some time trying to think it out," she said.

  "Think out what?" he asked, with a feeble affectation of ignorance. He was entirely at loss what course to take with her.

  "Why, what it was that we came here to have me forget," she said, sharply. "You needn't think the doctor made quite a fool of me. It was something like hewing, harring, Howard. It was something that began with 'H,' I'm quite sure. 'H,'" she continued, thoughtfully, pressing her hand on the braid she was yet in the act of pushing back from her forehead. "'H,'—or maybe—'K.' Tell me, Henry. You must know, of course."

  "Why—why," he stammered in consternation. "If you came here to forget it, what's the use of telling you, now you've forgotten it, that is—I mean, supposing there was anything to forget."

  "I haven't forgotten it," she declared. "The process has been a failure anyhow. It's just puzzled me for a minute. You might as well tell me. Why, I've almost got it now. I shall remember it in a minute," and she looked up at him as if she were on the point of being vexed with his obstinacy. The doctor coming into the room at this moment, Henry turned to him in his perplexity, and said—

  "Doctor, she wants to know what it was you tried to make her forget."

  "What would you say if I told you it was an old love affair?" replied the doctor, coolly.

  "I should say that you were rather impertinent," answered Madeline, looking at him somewhat haughtily.

  "I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon, my dear. You do well to resent it, but I trust you will not be vexed with an old gentleman," replied the doctor, beaming on her from under his bushy eyebrows with an expression of gloating benevolence.

  "I suppose, doctor, you were only trying to plague me so as to confuse me," she said, smiling. "But you can't do it. I shall remember presently. It began with 'H'—I am almost sure of that. Let's see—Harrington, Harvard. That's like it."

  "Harrison Cordis, perhaps," suggested the doctor, gravely.

  "Harrison Cordis? Harrison? Harrison?" she repeated, contracting her eyebrows thoughtfully; "no, it was more like Harvard. I don't want any more of your suggestions. You'd like to get me off the track."

  The doctor left the room, laughing, and Henry said to her, his heart swelling with an exultation which made his voice husky, "Come, dear, we had better go now: the train leaves at four."

  "I'll remember yet," she said, smiling at him with a saucy toss of the head. He put out his arms and she came into them, and their lips met in a kiss, happy and loving on her part, and fraught with no special feeling, but the lips which hers touched were tremulous. Slightly surprised at his agitation, she leaned back in his clasp, and, resting her glorious black eyes on his, said—

  "How you love me, dear!"

  Oh, the bright, sweet light in her eyes! the light he had not seen since she was a girl, and which had never shone for him before. As they were about to leave, the doctor drew him aside.

  "The most successful operation I ever made, sir," he said, enthusiastically. "I saw you were startled that I should tell her so frankly what she had forgotten. You need not have been so. That memory is absolutely gone, and cannot be restored. She might conclude that what she had forgotten was anything else in the world except what if really was. You may always allude with perfect safety before her to the real facts, the only risk being that, if she doesn't think you are making a bad joke, she will be afraid that you are losing your mind."

  All the way home Madeline was full of guesses and speculation as to what it had been which she had forgotten, finally, however, settling down to the conclusion that it had something to do with Harvard College, and when Henry refused to deny explicitly that such was the case, she was quite sure. She announced that she was going to get a lot of old catalogues and read over the names, and also visit the college to see if she could not revive the recollection. But, upon his solemnly urging her not to do so, lest she might find her associations with that institution not altogether agreeable if revived, she consented to give up the plan.

  "Although, do you know," she said, "there is nothing in the world which I should like to find out so much as what it was we went to Dr. Heidenhoff in order to make me forget. What do you look so sober for? Wouldn't I really be glad if I could?"

  "It's really nothing of any consequence," he said, pretending to be momentarily absorbed in opening his penknife.

  "Supposing it isn't, it's just as vexatious not to remember it," she declared.

  "How did you like Dr. Heidenhoff?" he asked.

  "Oh, I presume he's a good enough doctor, but I thought that joke about an affair of the heart wasn't at all nice. Men are so coarse."

  "Oh, he meant no harm," said Henry, hastily.

  "I suppose he just tried to say the absurdest thing he could think of to put me off the track and make me laugh. I'm sure I felt more like boxing his ears. I saw you didn't like it either, sir."

  "How so?"

  "Oh, you needn't think I didn't notice the start you gave when he spoke, and the angry way you looked at him. You may pretend all you want to, but you can't cheat me. You'd be the very one to make an absurd fuss if you thought I had even so much as looked at anybody else." And then she burst out laughing at the red and pale confusion of his face. "Why, you're the very picture of jealousy at the very mention of the thing. Dear me, what a tyrant you are going to be! I was going to confess a lot of my old flirtations to you, but now I sha'n't dare to. O Henry, how funny my face feels when I laugh, so stiff, as if the muscles were all rusty! I should think I hadn't laughed for a year by the feeling."

  He scarcely dared leave her when they reached her lodgings, for fear that she might get to thinking and puzzling over the matter, and, possibly, at length might hit upon a clue which, followed up, would lead her back to the grave so recently covered over in her life, and turn her raving mad with the horror of the discovery. As soon as he possibly could, he almost ran back to her lodgings in a panic. She had evidently been thinking matters over.

  "How came we here in Boston together, Henry? I don't seem to quite understand why I came. I remember you came after me?"

  "Yes, I came after you."

  "What was the matter? Was I sick?"

  "Very sick."

  "Out of my head?"

  "Yes."

  "That's the reason you took me to the doctor, I suppose?"

  "Yes."

  "But why isn't mother here with me?"

  "You—you didn't seem to want her," answered Henry, a cold sweat covering his face under this terrible inquisition.

  "Yes," said she, slowly, "I do remember your proposing she should come and my not wanting her. I can't imagine why. I must have been out of my head, as you say. Henry," she continued, regarding him with eyes of sudden softness, "you must have been very good to me. Dr. Heidenhoff could never make me forget that."

  The next day her mother came. Henry met her at the station and explained everything to her, so that she met Madeline already prepared for the transformation, that is, as much prepared as the poor woman could be. The idea was evidently more than she could take in. In the days that followed she went about with a dazed expression on her face, and said very little. When she looked at Henry, it was with a piteous mingling of gratitude and appeal. She appeared to regard Madeline with a bewilderment that increased rather than decreased from day to day. Instead of becoming familiar with the transformation, the wonder of it evidently grew on her. The girl's old, buoyant spirits, which had returned in full flow, seemed to shock and pain her mother with a sense of incongruity she could not get over. When Madeline treated her lover to an exhibition of her old imperious tyrannical ways, which to see again was to him sweeter than the return of day, her mother appeared frightened, and would try feebly to check her, and address little deprecating remarks to Henry that were very sad to hear. One evening, when he came in in the twilight, he saw Madeline sitting with "her baby," as she had again taken to calling her mother, in her arms, rocking and s
oothing her, while the old lady was drying and sobbing on her daughter's bosom.

  "She mopes, poor little mother!" said Madeline to Henry. "I can't think what's the matter with her. We'll take her off with us on our wedding trip. She needs a little change."

  "Dear me, no, that will never do," protested the little woman, with her usual half-frightened look at Henry. "Mr. Burr wouldn't think that nice at all."

  "I mean that Mr. Burr shall be too much occupied in thinking how nice I am to do any other thinking," said Madeline.

  "That's like the dress you wore to the picnic at Hemlock Hollow," said Henry.

  "Why, no, it isn't either. It only looks a little like it. It's light, and cut the same way; that's all the resemblance; but of course a man couldn't be expected to know any better."

  "It's exactly like it," maintained Henry.

  "What'll you bet?"

  "I'll bet the prettiest pair of bracelets I can find in the city."

  "Betting is wicked," said Madeline, "and so I suppose it's my duty to take this bet just to discourage you from betting any more. Being engaged makes a girl responsible for a young man's moral culture."

  She left the room, and returned in a few moments with the veritable picnic dress on.

  "There!" she said, as she stepped before the mirror.

  "Ah, that's it, that's it! I give in," he exclaimed, regarding her ecstatically. "How pretty you were that day! I'd never seen you so pretty before. Do you remember that was the day I kissed you first? I should never have dared to. I just had to—I couldn't help it."

  "So I believe you said at the time," observed Madeline, dryly. "It does make me not so bad," she admitted, inspecting herself with a critical air. "I really don't believe you could help it. I ought not to have been so hard on you, poor boy. There! there! I didn't mean that. Don't! Here comes mother."

  Mrs. Brand entered the room, bringing a huge pasteboard box.

  "Oh, she's got my wedding dress! Haven't you, mother?" exclaimed Madeline, pouncing on the box. "Henry, you might as well go right home. I can't pay any more attention to you to-night. There's more important business."