REMEMBERING is a very slow progress when your mind is confused by serious illness, weakness, and the breaking off for a time of all threads of meaning in the mind. Meredith took it up again in the morning, though not with the momentary gleam of conviction which had flashed upon him; and he worked very hard at it, as he might have worked at a case in his practice for the Bar or a mathematical problem. But it was harder than either of those. He made out easily enough his meeting with Janet at Mimpriss’s, and guessed rather than remembered that he had walked home with her, and thus exposed himself to being knocked down at Mrs. Harwood’s door; but he did not make out until he had returned to the question—his faculties freshened by a night’s sleep, and the new energy of the morning—why it was that he had met Janet, or that there was any special reason for their meeting. It flashed upon him all at once that he had made the appointment; that he had written to her to ask her to meet him; and then he remembered all at once the papers and the mystery which the papers had thrown so little light upon. He half started from his couch with excitement when it burst upon him that he was under the same roof as the mysterious recluse in the wing: and thus laid himself open to a grave reproof from his attendant, who called upon him to recollect that he had been very ill, that his escape was half-miraculous, and that to put his health in jeopardy by suffering himself to get excited would be “more than criminal.” He believed that she meant scarcely less than criminal, but he was humble, and expressed the deepest penitence.
“I was only thinking,” he said, “and something suddenly flashed upon me.”
“Thinking is the very worst thing you could do,” said the nurse, severely, “and to have things flashing upon you is what I cannot allow. If it occurs again I must appeal to the doctor.”
The nurse was a lady, so that he could not quench her as he would have done had she been Mrs. Gamp, and had to apologize again. But the compulsory pause did him good, for when he returned to the subject without any more starts and flashes, it all became clear to him again from the night of the ball upwards. The various events of that night came back like a picture to his mind. It had occupied him entirely in the short intervals that occurred between that discovery and the assault upon him at Mrs. Harwood’s door. Since then he had remembered nothing about it till now.
And now: he was under the same roof—he would have, as he got better and better, unbounded opportunities of finding out what that mystery was. The couch was now to be altogether discarded. He was to be allowed to walk and to sit in a chair like other people. Vicars the mysterious would be under his eye, and Mrs. Harwood—and Gussy in her present condition, softened with anxiety for him, and joy in his recovery, would disclose anything he might ask from her. He knew that she could not keep any secret from him now—if it were a secret she knew.
He felt greatly elated by the idea of the discovery which was so near, which lay under his hand, which he must be able to complete with his present advantages, and the thought of it led him very far on. True, he had almost forgotten Janet and the immediate yet lesser problem which he had to solve, i.e., how he came to be knocked down and almost killed at Mrs. Harwood’s, and who had done it. He left the other subject with a sigh and came back to this again for the moment. Yes, he had received from Janet the papers which she had put together for him—received them, he remembered, without a word, which had piqued and made him resolve to compromise Janet, and show her what a farce it was to be demure with him—at least, to compromise Janet as much as he could without compromising himself. It was for that reason, he remembered, that he insisted upon going all the way with and talking to her as only a lover had any right to do—for that reason, and also because she had a great attraction for him, far more than Gussy had ever had. He began to recollect even the things she had said—her little struggles against his appropriation of her, her gradually yielding—all that is most delightful for a suitor of his kind to recollect.
He liked to feel himself the cause of emotion in others—he smiled as he thought of it. Poor little Janet; she was angry and she was horrified. She felt probably that it was she who had brought him into the great danger under which he had fallen, and she was desperate to see that his illness had separated them more than ever, and made Gussy mistress of the situation. He forgave her, therefore, for her averted looks and unyielding face. She must know how it had all come about. He was certain from her looks that she knew, but she would not betray herself by telling, and he would not betray her by forcing her to tell, for in that case he would betray himself too.
Who could it be, he again asked himself, who had fallen upon him, and assaulted him in that terrible way? Meredith was not conscious of having enemies of that old-fashioned kind. There might be plenty of men who did not like him, as there were plenty of men whom he did not like; but between that and trying to murder him there was a great difference. He was not a man of the highest morals, perhaps, but he did not inflict injuries which would give any man a right to fling himself upon him in this way. It was a new idea to think that it might be a lover of Janet’s: but what lover could Janet have—some young fellow from the country, perhaps, driven frantic by seeing his beloved in such close colloquy with another man.
Meredith’s reason, however, rejected this hypothesis. The young man from the country would not be such a tragical fool as to rush upon an unknown stranger and try to murder him solely because that stranger was walking home with his sweetheart. No! and besides, he remembered something—something which had been presented to his intelligence at the very last moment before that intelligence was temporarily quenched—something—what was it that he remembered? It was all perfectly clear up to this point. He saw every step as distinctly as if it were in a case he had studied from a brief, but here the evidence broke down. And yet it was lying somewhere in a corner of his mind if he could only get at it. He knew that it was there.
“How is our patient to-day?” said Gussy, coming in, with the privilege of her long nursing, after Meredith had made his toilette, and was lying on the sofa to rest after that operation.
The nurse shook her head.
“Our patient,” she said, “has been thinking. He has been using his mind a great deal too much—he has been smiling to himself and knitting his brows as if he were trying to remember something. You will please to tell him, Miss Harwood, that this sort of thing will not do. I have done so, but he does not mind me.”
“How cruel of you to say so!” said Meredith, “when you know that I mind you in everything! I never take an invigorating glass of soda-water without asking you if I may.”
She shook her head again.
“It is not glasses of soda-water that are in question, but using your head, Mr. Meredith, when it’s not in a fit state.”
“With two or three holes in it,” said Meredith, ruefully.
“No; you must not,” said Gussy, soothing him. “I am glad you think you have found a clue, but that is enough for to-day.”
Yes, it was enough for to-day; he was compelled in his weakness to acknowledge that he could do no more.
“And you must not think. You must not even attempt to think,” said Gussy; “thinking is not a thing for you to do. Promise me you will not try.”
He took her hand to reassure her, but he did not promise, and even in the act of holding Gussy’s hand and looking up tenderly into her face in requital of her care, he glanced round to make sure that Janet saw this little affectionate episode. He wished her to see, with a sense of pique at the indifference she had shown, and a desire that she should be made aware how little her indifference was shared by others. In his weak state it was doubly necessary to him to be surrounded by care and attention, to have love to wait upon and consider him in all things. He was pleased for himself to caress and be caressed, but he loved to have a spectator to whom he could make those little traitorous asides which increased his enjoyment, or whom he could at least mortify with the sight of his entire mastery over some one else if he had ceased to move her.
But, though this little play with the feelings of others pleased him, he did not give up on that account the quest upon which his mind had entered. Meredith had no inclination to let off or pardon the offender who had so nearly taken his life. Whoever it might be, he was determined to hunt him out and punish him. And he only relinquished this, the process in his mind of putting together such evidence as he had got possession of and working it out, as he might have put aside any piece of manual work till his fatigue had passed away and he was able to take it up again. It would not do to throw himself back by getting a headache, by injuring his nerves or his sleep. His mind was sufficiently trained to enable him to do this; to put thoughts aside when they hurt him, to take them back again when he was in a fit state to do so—which is a capacity always very astonishing to those who have never learned to discipline and rule their thoughts.
Janet thought with relief that whatever suspicions may have gleamed across him, whatever half recollections might have formed in his mind, they had passed away like clouds, when she saw him submitting to all Gussy’s half-nurse, half-lover attentions, leaning back upon his pillows, suffering himself to be silenced and soothed, smiling upon his anxious ministrant, and professing to do everything she told him.
“Was there ever so docile a slave?” he said; “I have no will but my lady’s.”
“You mean patient,” said Gussy, with the soft flush that lit up her face, “and it is your nurse whom you obey.”
“Fortunately the two things are the same in my case,” he said.
To think that he could indulge in this badinage while his mind was still following out the thread upon which another man’s life hung, was incredible to Janet. She thought it had all passed from his mind, and that she and her secret, and, still more, Dolff and his, must now be safe. And presently she was asked to go again and play for the soothing of the invalid, a request which she obeyed with suppressed indignation. Why should she be made to minister to him too—she whose eyes had been opened, who had just escaped, or hoped that she had escaped from him, almost at the risk of her life? Janet was impatient of him, and half disappointed after the excitement into which his tentative questions and looks had thrown her, that he had let it drop again and float off in nothingness. She was quieted in her fears, but she almost resented it, and despised the man who had so little nerve and force left.
Janet was wrong, it need scarcely be said. Meredith retired a little earlier than usual on the pretence of being tired. He lay very still in the quiet of his room, which nobody but the nurse was now permitted to enter, till his headache was quite gone, and then he returned to the search of his own mind and recollections, and to the finding out of the something which he remembered, yet for the moment had forgot.