Somehow Good by William Frend De Morgan (best short novels TXT) 📕

upstairs to revise and correct.

After a certain amount of slopping and splashing in the back room, uncorroborated by any in the front, Sally called out to her mother, on the disjointed lines of talk in real life:

"I like this soap! Have you a safety-pin?" Whereto her mother replied, speaking rather drowsily and perfunctorily:

"Yes, but you must come and get it."

"It's so nice and oily. It's not from Cattley's?"

"Yes, it is."

"I thought it was. Where's the pin?" At this point she came into her mother's room, covering her slightly _retrousse_ nose with her fresh-washed hands, to enjoy the aroma of Cattley's soap.

"In the little pink saucer. Only don't mess my things about."

"Headache, mammy dear?" For her mother was lying back on the bed, with her eyes closed. The speaker left her hands over her nostrils as she spoke, to do full justice to the soap, pausing an instant in her safety-pin raid for the answer:

"I've been feeling the heat. It's nothing. You go down, and I'll come."

"Have some eau-de-Cologne?" But, alas! there was no eau-de-Cologne.

"Never mind. You go down, and I'll follow. I shall be all right after a cup of tea." And Sally, after an intricate movement with a safety-pin, an openwork lace cuff that has lost a button, and a white wrist, goes down three accelerandos of stair-lengths, with landing pauses, and ends with a dining-room door staccato. But she isn't long gone, for in two minutes the door reopens, and she comes upstairs as fast, nearly, as she went down. In her hand she carries, visibly, Johann Maria Farina.

"Where on earth did you find that?" says her mother.

"The man had it. Wasn't it funny? He heard me say to Dr. Vereker that I was so sorry I'd not been able to eau-de-Cologne your forehead, and he began speaking and couldn't get his words. Then he got this out of his pocket. I remember one of the men at the station said something about his having a bottle, but I thought he meant a pocket-flask. He looks the sort of man that would have a pocket-flask and earrings."

Her mother doesn't seem to find this inexplicable, nor to need comment. Rather the contrary. Sally dabs her brow with eau-de-Cologne, beneficially, for she seems better, and says now go; she won't be above a couple of minutes. Nor is she, in the sense in which her statement has been accepted, for she comes downstairs within seven by the clock with the dutiful ratchet movement.

* * * * *


When she came within hearing of those in the room below, she heard a male voice that was not Dr. Vereker's. Yes, the man (whom we still cannot speak of by a name) was saying something--slowly, perhaps--but fairly articulately and intelligibly. She went very deliberately, and listened in the doorway. She looked very pale, and very interested--a face of fixed attention, of absorption in something she was irresolute about, rather than of doubt about what she heard; an expression rather out of proportion to the concurrent facts, as we know them.

"What is so strange"--this is what the man was saying, in his slow way--"is that I could find words to tell you, if I could remember what it is I have to tell. But when I try to bring it back, my head fails. Tell me again, mademoiselle, about the railway-carriage." Sally wondered why she was mademoiselle, but recognised a tone of deference in his use of the word. She did as he asked her, slightly interrupting her narrative to make sure of getting the tea made right as she did so.

"I trod on your foot, you know. (One, two, three spoonfuls.) Surely you must remember that? (Four, and a little one for the pot.)"

"I have completely forgotten it."

"Then I was sorry, and said I would have come off sooner if I had known it was a foot. You _must_ remember that?" The man half smiled as he shook a slow-disclaiming head--one that would have remembered so gladly, if it could. "Then," continues Sally, "I saw your thumb-ring for rheumatism."

"My thumb-ring!" He presses his fingers over his closed eyes, as though to give Memory a better chance by shutting off the visible present, then withdraws them. "No, I remember no ring at all."

"How extraordinary!"

"I remember a violent concussion _somewhere_--I can't say where--and then finding myself in a cab, trying to speak to a lady whose face seemed familiar to me, but who she could be I had not the slightest idea. Then I tried to get out of the cab, and found I could not move--or hardly."

"Look at mamma again! Here she is, come." For Mrs. Nightingale has come into the room, looking white. "Yes, mother dear, I have. Quite full up to the brim. Only it isn't ready to pour yet." This last concerns the tea.

Mrs. Nightingale moves round behind the tea-maker, and comes full-face in front of her guest. One might have fancied that the hand that held the pocket-handkerchief that caused the smell of eau-de-Cologne that came in with her was tremulous. But then that very eau-de-Cologne was eloquent about the recent effect of the heat. Of course, she was a little upset. Nothing strikes either the doctor or Mademoiselle Sally as abnormal or extraordinary. The latter resumes:

"Surely, sir! Oh, you must, you _must_ remember about the name Nightingale?"

"This young gentleman said it just now. _Your_ name, madame?"

"Certainly, my name," says the lady addressed. But Sally distinguishes:

"Yes, but I didn't mean that. I meant when I took the ring from you, and was to pay for it. Sixpence. And you had no change for half-a-crown. And then I gave you my mother's card to send it to us here. One-and-elevenpence, because of the postage. Why, surely you can remember that!" She cannot bring herself to believe him. Dr. Vereker does, though, and tells him not to try recollecting; he will only put himself back. "Take the tea and wait a bit," is the doctor's advice. For Miss Sally is transmitting a cup of tea with studied equilibrium. He receives it absently, leaving it on the table.

"I do not know if you will know what I mean," he says, "but I have a sort of feeling of--of being frightened; for I have been trying to remember things, and I find I can remember almost nothing. Perhaps I should say I cannot remember _at all_--can't do any recollecting, if you understand." Every one can understand--at least, each says so. Sally goes on, half _sotto voce_: "You can recollect your own name, I suppose?" She speaks half-way between soliloquy and dialogue. The doctor throws in counsel, aside, for precaution.

"You'll only make matters worse, like that. Better leave him quite alone."

But the man's hearing doesn't seem to have suffered, for he catches the remark about his name.

"I can't tell," he says. "I am not so sure. Of course, I can't have forgotten my own name, because that's impossible. I will tell it you in a minute.... Oh dear!..."

The young doctor seemed to disapprove highly of these efforts, and to wish to change the conversation. "Let it alone now," said he. "Only for a little. Would you kindly allow me to see your arm again?"

"Let him drink his tea first." This is from Miss Sally, the tea-priestess. "Another cup?" But no; he won't take another cup, thanks.

"Now let's have the coat off, and get another look at the arm; never mind apologizing." But the patient had not contemplated apology. It was the stiffness made him slow. However, he got his coat off, and drew the blue shirt off his left arm. He had a fine hand and arm, but the hand hung inanimate, and the fingers looked scorched. Dr. Vereker began feeling the arm at intervals all the way up, and asking each time questions about the degree of sensibility.

"I couldn't say whether it's normal or not up there." So the patient testified. And Mrs. Nightingale, who was watching the examination intently, suggested trying the other arm in the same place for comparison.

"You didn't see the other arm at the station, doctor?" she said.

"Didn't I?"

"I was asking."

"Well, no. Now I come to think of it, I don't think I did. We'll have a look now, anyhow."

"_You're_ a nice doctor!" This is from Miss Sally; a little confidential fling at the profession. She is no respecter of persons. Her mother would, no doubt, check her--a pert little monkey!--only she is absorbed in the examination.

The doctor, as he ran back the right-arm sleeve, uttered an exclamation. "Why, my dear sir," cried he, "here we have it! What more can we want?"--and pointed at the arm. And Sally said, as though relieved: "He's got his name written on him plain enough, anyhow!" Her mother gave a sigh of relief, or something like it, and said, "Yes." The patient himself seemed quite as much perplexed as pleased at the discovery, saying only, in a subdued way: "It _must_ be my name." But he did not seem to accept at all readily the name tattooed on his arm: "A. Fenwick, 1878."

"Whose name can it be if it is not yours?" said Mrs. Nightingale. She fixed her eyes on his face, as though to watch his effort of memory. "Try and think." But the doctor protested.

"Don't do anything of the sort," said he. "It's very bad for him, Mrs. Nightingale. He _mustn't_ think. Just let him rest."

The patient, however, could not resign himself without a struggle to this state of anonymous ambiguity. His bewilderment was painful to witness. "If it were my name," he said, speaking slowly and not very clearly, "surely it would bring back the first name. I try to recall the word, and the effort is painful, and doesn't succeed." His hostess seemed much interested, even to the extent of ignoring the doctor's injunctions.

"Very curious! If you heard the name now, would you recollect it?"

"I _wish_ you wouldn't try these experiments," says the doctor. "They won't do him _any_ good. _Rest's_ the thing."

"I think I would rather try," says Fenwick, as we may now call him. "I will be quiet if I can get this right."

Mrs. Nightingale begins repeating names that begin with A. "Alfred, Augustus, Arthur, Andrew, Algernon----"

Fenwick's face brightens. "That's it!" says he. "Algernon. I knew it quite well all the time, of course. But I couldn't--couldn't.... However, I don't feel that I shall make myself understood."

"I can't make out," said Sally, "how you came to remember the bottle of eau-de-Cologne."

"I did not remember it. I do not now. I mean, how it came to be in the pocket. I can remember nothing else that was there--would have been, that is. There is nothing else there now, except my cigar-case and a pocket-book with nothing much in it. I can tell nothing about my watch. A watch ought to be there."

"There, there!" says the doctor; "you will remember it all presently. Do take my advice and be quiet, and sit still and don't talk."

But half an hour or more after, although he had taken this advice, Fenwick remembered nothing, or professed to have remembered nothing. He seemed, however, much more collected, and except on the