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 than 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?’
‘That is, I hope, to be said of most men, Mr. Blake. I am afraid it cannot truly be said of all. Have you any reason to suppose that the lost remembrance which Mr. Candy tried to recover—while you were speaking to him just now—was a remembrance which it was important to you that he should recall?’
In saying those words, he had touched, of his own accord, on the very point upon which I was anxious to consult him. The interest I felt in this strange man had impelled me, in the first instance, to give him the opportunity of speaking to me; reserving what I might have to say, on my side, in relation to his employer, until I was first satisfied that he was a person in whose delicacy and discretion I could trust. The little that he had said, thus far, had been sufficient to convince me that I was speaking to a gentleman. He had what I may venture to describe as the unsought self-possession, which is a sure sign of good breeding, not in England only, but everywhere else in the civilised world. Whatever the object which he had in view, in putting the question that he had just addressed to me, I felt no doubt that I was justified—so far—in answering him without reserve.
‘I believe I have a strong interest,’ I said, ‘in tracing the lost remembrance which Mr. Candy was unable to recall. May I ask whether you can suggest to me any method by which I might assist his memory?’
Ezra Jennings looked at me, with a sudden flash of interest in his dreamy brown eyes.
‘Mr. Candy’s memory is beyond the reach of assistance,’ he said. ‘I have tried to help it often enough since his recovery, to be able to speak positively on that point.’
This disappointed me; and I owned it.
‘I confess you led me to hope for a less discouraging answer than that,’ I said.
Ezra Jennings smiled. ‘It may not, perhaps, be a final answer, Mr. Blake. It may be possible to trace Mr. Candy’s lost recollection, without the necessity of appealing to Mr. Candy himself’
‘Indeed? Is it an indiscretion, on my part, to ask—how?’
‘By no means. My only difficulty in answering your question, is the difficulty of explaining myself. May I trust to your patience, if I refer once more to Mr. Candy’s illness: and if I speak of it this time without sparing you certain professional details?’
‘Pray go on! You have interested me already in hearing the details.’
My eagerness seemed to amuse—perhaps, I might rather say, to please him. He smiled again. We had by this time left the last houses in the town behind us. Ezra Jennings stopped for a moment, and picked some wild flowers from the hedge by the roadside. ‘How beautiful they are!’ he said, simply, showing his little nosegay to me. ‘And how few people in England seem to admire them as they deserve!’