Amnesiacs -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Mothers and daughters -- Fiction
"I'm sure there's something wrong," says Mrs. Nightingale, and gets
up to go into the front-room rather wearily. "I shall go to bed soon,
poppet," she says, "and leave you to do the honours. Is anything wrong,
doctor?" She speaks under her voice to Vereker, looking very slightly
round at Fenwick, who, after the movement that alarmed her--a rather
unusually marked head-shake and pressure of his hands on his eyes--is
standing looking down at the fire, on the rug with his back to her, as
she speaks to Vereker.
"I fancy he's had what he calls a recurrence," says the doctor. "Nothing
to hurt. These half-recollections will go on until the memory comes
back in earnest. It may some time."
"Are you talking about me, doctor?" His attention may have been caught
by a reflection in a glass before him. "Yes, it was a very queer
recurrence. Something about lawn-tennis. Only it had to do with what
Miss Wilson said about the police fishing Sally out of the water." He
looks round for Miss Wilson, but she is at the other end of the room
on a sofa talking to Bradshaw about the Strad, as recorded once before.
Sally testifies:
"Tishy said it wouldn't work--trying to drown yourself if you could
swim. No more it would."
"But why should that make me think of lawn-tennis? It did." He looks
seriously distressed by it--can make nothing out.
"Kitten," says Sally's mother to her suddenly, "I think I shall go away
to bed. I'm feeling very tired."
She says good-night comprehensively, and departs. But she is so clearly
the worse for something that her daughter follows her to see that the
something is not serious. Outside she reassures Sally, who returns. Oh
no, she is only tired; really nothing else.
But what drove her out of the room was a feeling that she must be alone
and silent. Could her position be borne at all? Yes, with patience and
self-control. But that "why should it make me think of lawn-tennis?"
was trying. Not only the pain of still more revived association, but
the fear that his memory might travel still further into the past. It
was living on the edge of the volcano.
Her own memory had followed on, too, taking up the thread of that old
interview in the garden of twenty years ago. She had felt again the
clasp of his arm, the touch of his hand; had heard his voice of
passionate protest--protest against the idea that he could ever forget.
And she had then pretended to make a half-joke of his earnestness. What
would he do now, really, if she were to tell him she preferred his
great friend Arthur Fenwick to him? That was nonsense, he said. She
knew she didn't. Besides, Arthur wanted Jessie Nairn. Why, didn't they
waltz all the waltzes at the party last week?... Well, so did we, for
that matter, all-but.... And just look how they had run away together!
Wasn't that them coming back? Yes, it was; and artificial calm ensued,
and more self-contained manners. But then, before the other two young
lovers could rejoin them, she had time for a word more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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