Amnesiacs -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Mothers and daughters -- Fiction
"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 associations 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
principal 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 assent 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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