Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (673 page)

After what Betteredge had told me, I naturally anticipated finding traces in the doctor’s face of the severe illness from which he had suffered. But I was utterly unprepared for such a change as I saw in him when he entered the room and shook hands with me. His eyes were dim; his hair had turned completely grey; his face was wizen; his figure had shrunk. I looked at the once lively, rattlepated, humorous little doctor — associated in my remembrance with the perpetration of incorrigible social indiscretions and innumerable boyish jokes — and I saw nothing left of his former self, but the old tendency to vulgar smartness in his dress. The man was a wreck; but his clothes and his jewellery — in cruel mockery of the change in him — were as gay and as gaudy as ever.

“I have often thought of you, Mr. Blake,” he said; “and I am heartily glad to see you again at last. If there is anything I can do for you, pray command my services, sir — pray command my services!”

He said those few commonplace words with needless hurry and eagerness, and with a curiosity to know what had brought me to Yorkshire, which he was perfectly — I might say childishly — incapable of concealing from notice.

With the object that I had in view, I had of course foreseen the necessity of entering into some sort of personal explanation, before I could hope to interest people, mostly strangers to me, in doing their best to assist my inquiry. On the journey to Frizinghall I had arranged what my explanation was to be — and I seized the opportunity now offered to me of trying the effect of it on Mr. Candy.

“I was in Yorkshire, the other day, and I am in Yorkshire again now, on rather a romantic errand,” I said. “It is a matter, Mr. Candy, in which the late Lady Verinder’s friends all took some interest. You remember the mysterious loss of the Indian Diamond, now nearly a year since? Circumstances have lately happened which lead to the hope that it may yet be found — and I am interesting myself, as one of the family, in recovering it. Among the obstacles in my way, there is the necessity of collecting again all the evidence which was discovered at the time, and more if possible. There are peculiarities in this case which make it desirable to revive my recollection of everything that happened in the house, on the evening of Miss Verinder’s birthday. And I venture to appeal to her late mother’s friends who were present on that occasion, to lend me the assistance of their memories —
 
— ”

I had got as far as that in rehearsing my explanatory phrases, when I was suddenly checked by seeing plainly in Mr. Candy’s face that my experiment on him was a total failure.

The little doctor sat restlessly picking at the points of his fingers all the time I was speaking. His dim watery eyes were fixed on my face with an expression of vacant and wistful inquiry very painful to see. What he was thinking of, it was impossible to divine. The one thing clearly visible was that I had failed, after the first two or three words, in fixing his attention. The only chance of recalling him to himself appeared to lie in changing the subject. I tried a new topic immediately.

“So much,” I said, gaily, “for what brings me to Frizinghall! Now, Mr. Candy, it’s your turn. You sent me a message by Gabriel Betteredge —
 
— ”

He left off picking at his fingers, and suddenly brightened up.

“Yes! yes! yes!” he exclaimed eagerly. “That’s it! I sent you a message!”

“And Betteredge duly communicated it by letter,” I went on. “You had something to say to me, the next time I was in your neighbourhood. Well, Mr. Candy, here I am!”

“Here you are!” echoed the doctor. “And Betteredge was quite right. I had something to say to you. That was my message. Betteredge is a wonderful man. What a memory! At his age, what a memory!”

He dropped back into silence, and began picking at his fingers again. Recollecting what I had heard from Betteredge about the effect of the fever on his memory, I went on with the conversation, in the hope that I might help him at starting.

“It’s a long time since we met,” I said. “We last saw each other at the last birthday dinner my poor aunt was ever to give.”

“That’s it!” cried Mr. Candy. “The birthday dinner!” He started impulsively to his feet, and looked at me. A deep flush suddenly overspread his faded face, and he abruptly sat down again, as if conscious of having betrayed a weakness which he would fain have concealed. It was plain, pitiably plain, that he was aware of his own defect of memory, and that he was bent on hiding it from the observation of his friends.

Thus far he had appealed to my compassion only. But the words he had just said — few as they were — roused my curiosity instantly to the highest pitch. The birthday dinner had already become the one event in the past, at which I looked back with strangely-mixed feelings of hope and distrust. And here was the birthday dinner unmistakably proclaiming itself as the subject on which Mr. Candy had something important to say to me!

I attempted to help him out once more. But, this time, my own interests were at the bottom of my compassionate motive, and they hurried me on a little too abruptly, to the end I had in view.

“It’s nearly a year now,” I said, “since we sat at that pleasant table. Have you made any memorandum — in your diary, or otherwise — of what you wanted to say to me?”

Mr. Candy understood the suggestion, and showed me that he understood it, as an insult.

“I require no memorandum, Mr. Blake,” he said, stiffly enough. “I am not such a very old man, yet — and my memory (thank God) is to be thoroughly depended on!”

It is needless to say that I declined to understand that he was offended with me.

“I wish I could say the same of my memory,” I answered. “When I try to think of matters that are a year old, I seldom find my remembrance as vivid as I could wish it to be. Take the dinner at Lady Verinder’s, for instance —
 
— ”

Mr. Candy brightened up again, the moment the allusion passed my lips.

“Ah! the dinner, the dinner at Lady Verinder’s!” he exclaimed, more eagerly than ever. “I have got something to say to you about that.”

His eyes looked at me again with the painful expression of inquiry, so wistful, so vacant, so miserably helpless to see. He was evidently trying hard, and trying in vain, to recover the lost recollection. “It was a very pleasant dinner,” he burst out suddenly, with an air of saying exactly what he wanted to say. “A very pleasant dinner, Mr. Blake, wasn’t it?” He nodded and smiled, and appeared to think, poor fellow, that he had succeeded in concealing the total failure of his memory, by a well-timed exertion of his own presence of mind.

It was so distressing that I at once shifted the talk — deeply as I was interested in his recovering the lost remembrance — to topics of local interest.

Here, he got on glibly enough. Trumpery little scandals and quarrels in the town, some of them as much as a month old, appeared to recur to his memory readily. He chattered on, with something of the smooth gossiping fluency of former times. But there were moments, even in the full flow of his talkativeness, when he suddenly hesitated — looked at me for a moment with the vacant inquiry once more in his eyes — controlled himself — and went on again. I submitted patiently to my martyrdom (it is surely nothing less than martyrdom to a man of cosmopolitan sympathies, to absorb in silent resignation the news of a country town?) until the clock on the chimney-piece told me that my visit had been prolonged beyond half an hour. Having now some right to consider the sacrifice as complete, I rose to take leave. As we shook hands, Mr. Candy reverted to the birthday festival of his own accord.

“I am so glad we have met again,” he said. “I had it on my mind — I really had it on my mind, Mr. Blake, to speak to you. About the dinner at Lady Verinder’s, you know? A pleasant dinner — really a pleasant dinner now, wasn’t it?”

On repeating the phrase, he seemed to feel hardly as certain of having prevented me from suspecting his lapse of memory, as he had felt on the first occasion. The wistful look clouded his face again: and, after apparently designing to accompany me to the street door, he suddenly changed his mind, rang the bell for the servant, and remained in the drawing-room.

I went slowly down the doctor’s stairs, feeling the disheartening conviction that he really had something to say which it was vitally important to me to hear, and that he was morally incapable of saying it. The effort of remembering that he wanted to speak to me was, but too evidently, the only effort that his enfeebled memory was now able to achieve.

Just as I reached the bottom of the stairs, and had turned a corner on my way to the outer hall, a door opened softly somewhere on the ground floor of the house, and a gentle voice said behind me: —

“I am afraid, sir, you find Mr. Candy sadly changed?”

I turned round, and found myself face to face with Ezra Jennings.

CHAPTER IX

The doctor’s pretty housemaid stood waiting for me, with the street door open in her hand. Pouring brightly into the hall, the morning light fell full on the face of Mr. Candy’s assistant when I turned, and looked at him.

It was impossible to dispute Betteredge’s assertion that the appearance of Ezra Jennings, speaking from a popular point of view, was against him. His gipsy-complexion, his fleshless cheeks, his gaunt facial bones, his dreamy eyes, his extraordinary parti-coloured hair, the puzzling contradiction between his face and figure which made him look old and young both together — were all more or less calculated to produce an unfavourable impression of him on a stranger’s mind. And yet — feeling this as I certainly did — it is not to be denied that Ezra Jennings made some inscrutable appeal to my sympathies, which I found it impossible to resist. While my knowledge of the world warned me to answer the question which he had put, acknowledging that I did indeed find Mr. Candy sadly changed, and then to proceed on my way out of the house — my interest in Ezra Jennings held me rooted to the place, and gave him the opportunity of speaking to me in private about his employer, for which he had been evidently on the watch.

“Are you walking my way, Mr. Jennings?” I said, observing that he held his hat in his hand. “I am going to call on my aunt, Mrs. Ablewhite.”

Ezra Jennings replied that he had a patient to see, and that he was walking my way.

We left the house together. I observed that the pretty servant girl — who was all smiles and amiability, when I wished her good morning on my way out — received a modest little message from Ezra Jennings, relating to the time at which he might be expected to return, with pursed-up lips, and with eyes which ostentatiously looked anywhere rather than look in his face. The poor wretch was evidently no favourite in the house. Out of the house, I had Betteredge’s word for it that he was unpopular everywhere. “What a life!” I thought to myself, as we descended the doctor’s doorsteps.

Having already referred to Mr. Candy’s illness on his side, Ezra Jennings now appeared determined to leave it to me to resume the subject. His silence said significantly, “It’s your turn now.” I, too, had my reasons for referring to the doctor’s illness: and I readily accepted the responsibility of speaking first.

“Judging by the change I see in him,” I began, “Mr. Candy’s illness must have been far more serious that I had supposed?”

“It is almost a miracle,” said Ezra Jennings, “that he lived through it.”

“Is his memory never any better than I have found it to-day? He has been trying to speak to me —
 
— ”

“Of something which happened before he was taken ill?” asked the assistant, observing that I hesitated.

“Yes.”

“His memory of events, at that past time, is hopelessly enfeebled,” said Ezra Jennings. “It is almost to be deplored, poor fellow, that even the wreck of it remains. While he remembers dimly plans that he formed — things, here and there, that he had to say or do before his illness — he is perfectly incapable of recalling what the plans were, or what the thing was that he had to say or do. He is painfully conscious of his own deficiency, and painfully anxious, as you must have seen, to hide it from observation. If he could only have recovered in a complete state of oblivion as to the past, he would have been a happier man. Perhaps we should all be happier,” he added, with a sad smile, “if we could but completely forget!”

“There are some events surely in all men’s lives,” I replied, “the memory of which they would be unwilling entirely to lose?”