The Wiles of the Wicked Part 31

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 lost to me for ever.

"Among my friends is there a man named Doyle?" I inquired, after a pause.

"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. d.i.c.k 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 of unconsciousness? Mine were indeed strange thoughts at that moment. Of all that had been told me I was unable to account for anything. I stood stunned, confounded, petrified.

For knowledge of what had transpired during those intervening years, or of my own career and actions during that period, I had to rely upon the statements 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 a manner established a reputation in the City, and had ama.s.sed the sum now lying at my bankers, I reflected that I could not have accomplished that without the exercise of considerable tact and mental capacity. I must, after all, have retained shrewd senses, but they had evidently been those of my other self--the self who had lived and moved as husband of that woman who called herself Mrs Heaton.

"Tell me," I said, addressing Gedge again, "has my married life been a happy one?"

He looked at me inquiringly.

"Tell me the truth," I urged. "Don't conceal anything from me, for I intend to get at the bottom of this mystery."

"Well," he said, with considerable hesitation, "scarcely what one might call happy, I think."

"Ah, I understand," I said. "I know from your tone that you sympathise with me, Gedge."

He nodded without replying. Strange that I had never known this man until an hour ago, and yet I had grown so confidential with him. He seemed 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 from the grave to find his world vanished, and all things changed.

I tried to reflect, to see some ray of light through the darkness of that lost period, but to me it seemed utterly non-existent. Those years, if I had really lived them, had melted away and left not a trace behind. The events of my life prior to that eventful night when I had dined at The Boltons had no affinity to those of the present. I had ceased to be my old self, and by some inexplicable transition, mysterious and unheard of, I had, while retaining my name, become an entirely different man.

Six precious years of golden youth had vanished in a single night. All my ideals, all my love, all my hope, nay, my very personality, had been swept away and effaced for ever.

"Have I often visited Heaton--my own place?" I inquired, turning suddenly to Gedge.

"Not since your marriage, I believe," he answered. "You have always entertained some curious dislike towards the place. I went up there once 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 spent there long ago. All the year round was suns.h.i.+ne then, with the most ravis.h.i.+ng snow-drifts in winter, and ice that sparkled in the sun so brilliantly that it seemed almost as jolly and frolicsome as the sunniest of sunlit streams, dancing and s.h.i.+mmering over the pebbles all through the cloudless summer. Did it ever rain in those old days long ago? Why, yes; and what splendid times I used to have on those occasions--toffee-making in the schoolroom, or watching old Dixon, the gamekeeper, cutting gun-wads in the harness-room.

And I had entertained a marked dislike to the place! All my tastes and ideas during those blank years had apparently become inverted. I had lived and enjoyed a world exactly opposite to my own--the world of sordid money-making and the glaring display of riches. I had, in a word, 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 forgotten years.

"It is amazing, incredible!" I cried, heart-sick with desire to penetrate the veil of mystery that enshrouded that long period of unconsciousness. "All that you have told me, Gedge, is absolutely beyond belief. There must be some mistake. It is impossible that six years can have pa.s.sed without my knowledge."

"I think," he said, "that, after all, Britten's advice should be followed. You are evidently not yourself to-day, and rest will probably restore your mental power to its proper calibre."

"Bah!" I shouted angrily. "You still believe I'm mad. I tell you I'm not. I'll prove to you that I'm not."

"Well," he remarked, quite calmly, "no sane man could be utterly ignorant 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 been utterly unconscious these six whole years."

"n.o.body will believe you."

"But I swear it to be true," I protested. "Since the moment when consciousness left me in that house in Chelsea I have been as one dead."

He laughed incredulously. The slightly confidential tone in which I had spoken had apparently induced him to treat me with indifference. This aroused my wrath. I was in no mood to argue whether or not I was responsible for my actions.

"A man surely can't be unconscious, while at the same time he transacts business and lives as gaily as you live," he laughed.

"Then you impute that all I've said is untrue, and is due merely to the fact that I'm a trifle demented, eh?"

"Britten has said that you are suffering from a fit of temporary derangement, and that you will recover after perfect rest."

"Then, by taking me around this house, showing me those books, and explaining all to me, you've merely been humouring me as you would a harmless lunatic!" I cried furiously. "You don't believe what I say, that I'm perfectly in my right mind, therefore leave me. I have no further use for your presence, and prefer to be alone," I added harshly.

"Very well," he answered, rather piqued; "if you wish I'll, of course, go."

"Yes, go; and don't return till I send for you. Understand that! I'm in no humour to be fooled, or told that I'm a lunatic."

He shrugged his shoulders, and muttering some words I did not catch, turned and left the library.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

BROKEN THREADS.

He is a faint-hearted creature indeed who, while struggling along some dark lane of life, cannot, at least intermittently, extract some comfort to himself from the thought that the turn must come at last--the turn which, presumably, will bring him out upon the well-metalled high-road of happy contentment.

I do not know that I was exactly faint-hearted. The mystery of it all had so stunned me that I felt myself utterly incapable of believing anything. The whole thing seemed shadowy and unreal.

And yet the facts remained that I was alive, standing there in that comfortable room, in possession of all my faculties, both mental and physical, an entirely different person to my old self, with six years of my past lost and unaccountable.

Beyond the lawn the shadow of the great trees looked cool and inviting, therefore I went forth, wandering heedlessly across the s.p.a.cious park, my mind full of thoughts of that fateful night when I had fallen among that strange company, and of Mabel, the woman I had loved so fondly and devotedly.

Sweet were the recollections that came back to me. How charming she had seemed to me as we had lingered hand-in-hand on our walks across the Park and Kensington Gardens, how soft and musical her voice! how full of tenderness her bright dark eyes! How idyllic was our love! She had surely read my undeclared pa.s.sion. She had known the great secret in my heart.