The Wiles of the Wicked Part 30

"Yesterday six years ago!" he echoed, looking at me in blank bewilderment. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that if what you've told me is really the truth," I cried, agape in wonder, "then it is the most astounding thing I've ever heard of.

Are you absolutely certain of the date?"

"Certain? Why, of course."

"Of the year, I mean?"

"Positive. It's eighteen ninety-six."

"For how long, then, have you been my secretary?" I inquired.

"Nearly five years."

"And how long have I lived in this place?"

"For nearly four."

"And that woman," I demanded, breathlessly--"is she actually my wife?"

"Most certainly," he answered.

I stood stupefied, stunned by this amazing statement.

"But," I protested, lost in wonder, "yesterday was years ago. How do you account for that? Are you certain that you're not deceiving me?"

"I've told you the absolute truth," he responded. "On that I stake my honour."

I stood aghast, glaring at my reflection in the mirror, open-mouthed, as though I gazed upon some object supernatural. My personal appearance had certainly changed, and that in itself convinced me that there must be some truth in this man Gedge's statement. I was older, a trifle stouter than before, I think, and my red-brown beard seemed to give my face a remarkably grotesque appearance. I had always hated beards, and considered them a relic of prehistoric barbarity. It was surprising that I should now have grown one.

"Then according to your account I must have spent yesterday here-- actually in this house?"

"Why, of course you did," he responded. "We were engaged the greater part of the day over Laffan's affair. Walter Halliburton, the mining engineer, came down to see you, and we were together all the afternoon.

He left for London at five."

"And where did I dine?"

"Here. With Mrs Heaton."

"Don't speak of her as Mrs Heaton!" I cried in anger. "She's not my wife, and I will not have her regarded as such."

He gave his shoulders a slight shrug.

"Now, look here, Mr Gedge," I said, speaking for the first time with confidence. "If you were in my place, awakening suddenly to find that six years of your life had vanished in a single night, and that you were an entirely different person to that of twelve hours ago, what would you believe?"

He looked at me with a somewhat sympathetic expression upon his thin features.

"Well, I don't know what I should think." Then he added, "But surely such a thing can't be possible."

"It is possible," I cried. "It has happened to me. I tell you that last night was six years ago."

He turned from me, as though he considered further argument unavailing.

My head reeled. What he had told me was utterly incredible. It seemed absolutely impossible that six whole years should have pa.s.sed without my knowledge; that I should have entered upon a business of which I had previously known nothing; that I should have rapidly ama.s.sed a fortune; and, most of all, that I should have married that powdered and painted woman who had presented herself as my wife. Yet such were the unaccountable facts which this man Gedge asked me to believe.

He saw that I was extremely dubious about the date, therefore he led me back to the library, where there hung upon the wall a large calendar, which quickly convinced me.

Six; years had really elapsed since yesterday.

In that vexing and perplexing present I reflected upon the puzzling past. That happy dinner with Mabel at the Boltons, the subsequent discoveries in that drawing-room where she had sat at the piano calmly playing; her soft words of tenderness, and the subsequent treachery of that dog-faced man Hickman, all pa.s.sed before me with extraordinary vividness. Yet, in truth, all had happened long ago.

Alas! I was not like other men. To the practical, level-headed man of affairs "To-day" may be sufficient, all-engrossing; but to the very large majority--a majority which, I believe, includes also many of the practical, the business of to-day admits of constant pleasant excursions into the golden mists of "long ago," and many happy flights to the rosy heights of "some day." Most of those who read this strange story of my life will remember with a melancholy affection, with a pain that is more soothing than many pleasures, the house wherein they were born, or at any rate the abode in which they pa.s.sed the earlier years of their lives. The agonising griefs of childhood, the disappointments, the soul-racking terrors, mellowed by the gentle touch of pa.s.sing years, have no sting for our mature sensibilities, but come back to us now with a pathos that is largely tinctured with amus.e.m.e.nt.

I stood there reviewing the past, puzzled, utterly unable to account for it. Age, the iconoclast, had shattered most of the airy idols which my youth had set up in honour of itself. I had lost six of the most precious years of my life--years that I had not lived.

Yet this man before me declared most distinctly that I had lived them; that I had enjoyed a second existence quite apart and distinct from my own self. Incredible though it seemed, yet it became gradually impressed upon me that what this man Gedge had told me was the actual, hideous truth, and that I had really lived and moved and prospered throughout those six unknown years, while my senses had at the same time remained dormant, and I had thus been utterly unconscious of existence.

But could such a thing be? As a prosaic man of the world I argued, as any one in his right mind would argue, that such a thing was beyond the bounds of possibility. Nevertheless, be it how it might, the undisputed fact remained that I had lapsed into unconsciousness on that winter's night six years before, and had known absolutely nothing of my surroundings until I found myself lying upon the floor of the drawing-room of what was alleged to be my country house.

Six years out of a man's life is a large slice. The face of the world changes considerably in that s.p.a.ce of time. I found myself living a life which was so artificial and incongruous to my own tastes as to appear utterly unreal. Yet, as I made further inquiry of this man Gedge, every moment that pa.s.sed showed me plainly that what he had said was the truth.

He related to me the routine of my daily life, and I stood listening agape in wonder. He told me things of which I had no knowledge; of my own private affairs, and of my business profits; he took big leather-bound ledgers from the great green-painted safe, and showed me formidable sums entered therein, relating, he explained, to the transactions at the office up in London. Some doc.u.ments he showed me, large official-looking sheets with stamps and seals and signatures, which he said were concessions obtained from a certain foreign Government, and opened my private letter-book, exhibiting letters I had actually written with my own hand, but without having any knowledge of having done so.

These revelations took away my breath.

It could not be mere loss of memory from which I was suffering. I had actually lived a second and entirely different life to that I had once led in Ess.e.x Street. Apparently I had become a changed man, had entered business, had ama.s.sed a fortune--and had married.

a.s.suredly, I reflected, I could never have been in my right senses to have married that angular person with the powdered cheeks. That action, in itself, was sufficient to convince me that my brain had been unbalanced during those six lost years.

Alone, I stood, without a single sympathiser--without a friend.

How this astounding gap in my life had been produced was absolutely beyond explanation. I tried to account for it, but the reader will readily understand that the problem was, to me, utterly inexplicable.

I, the victim of the treachery of that man Hickman, had fallen unconscious one night, and had awakened to discover that six whole years had elapsed, and that I had developed into an entirely different person.

It was unaccountable, nay, incredible.

I think I should have grown confidential towards Gedge were it not that he apparently treated me as one whose mind was wandering. He believed, and perhaps justly so, that my brain had been injured by the accidental blow. To him, of course, it seemed impossible that I, his master, should know nothing of my own affairs. The ludicrousness of the situation was to me entirely apparent, yet what could I do to avert it?

By careful questions I endeavoured to obtain from him some facts regarding my past.

"You told me," I said, "that I have many friends. Among them are there any persons named Anson?"

"Anson?" he repeated reflectively. "No, I've never heard the name."

"Or Hickman?"

He shook his head.

"I lived once in Ess.e.x Street, Strand," I said. "Have I been to those chambers during the time--the five years you have been in my service?"