"Ah, well, you see, it is rather the things one IS going to do that are actually marked. The things one isn't going to do,--the innumerable negative things,--how could one expect THEM to be marked?""But the consequences of what one leaves undone may be positive?" "Horribly positive. My hand is the hand of a man who has suffered agreat deal in later life."
"And was it the hand of a man DESTINED to suffer?" "Oh, yes. I thought I told you that."There was a pause.
"Well," I said, with awkward sympathy, "I suppose all hands are the hands of people destined to suffer.""Not of people destined to suffer so much as _I_ have suffered--as I still suffer."The insistence of his self-pity chilled me, and I harked back to a question he had not straightly answered.
"Tell me: Was it marked in your hands that you were not going to pull that cord?"Again he looked at his hands, and then, having pressed them for a moment to his face, "It was marked very clearly," he answered, "in THEIR hands."Two or three days after this colloquy there had occurred to me in London an idea--an ingenious and comfortable doubt. How was Laider to be sure that his brain, recovering from concussion, had REMEMBERED what happened in the course of that railway-journey? How was he to know that his brain hadn't simply, in its abeyance, INVENTED all this for him? It might be that he had never seen those signs in those hands. Assuredly, here was a bright loophole. I had forthwith written to Laider, pointing it out.
This was the letter which now, at my second visit, I had found miserably pent on the letter-board. I remembered my promise to rescue it. I arose from the retaining fireside, stretched my arms, yawned, and went forth to fulfil my Christian purpose. There was no one in the hall. The "shower" had at length ceased. The sun had positively come out, and thefront door had been thrown open in its honor. Everything along the sea- front was beautifully gleaming, drying, shimmering. But I was not to be diverted from my purpose. I went to the letter-board. And--my letter was not there! Resourceful and plucky little thing--it had escaped! I did hope it would not be captured and brought back. Perhaps the alarm had already been raised by the tolling of that great bell which warns the inhabitants for miles around that a letter has broken loose from the letter-board. I had a vision of my envelop skimming wildly along the coast-line, pursued by the old, but active, waiter and a breathless pack of local worthies. I saw it outdistancing them all, dodging past coast-guards, doubling on its tracks, leaping breakwaters, unluckily injuring itself, losing speed, and at last, in a splendor of desperation, taking to the open sea. But suddenly I had another idea. Perhaps Laider had returned?
He had. I espied afar on the sands a form that was recognizably, by the listless droop of it, his. I was glad and sorry--rather glad, because he completed the scene of last year; and very sorry, because this time we should be at each other's mercy: no restful silence and liberty for either of us this time. Perhaps he had been told I was here, and had gone out to avoid me while he yet could. Oh weak, weak! Why palter? I put on my hat and coat, and marched out to meet him.
"Influenza, of course?" we asked simultaneously.
There is a limit to the time which one man may spend in talking to another about his own influenza; and presently, as we paced the sands, I felt that Laider had passed this limit. I wondered that he didn't break off and thank me now for my letter. He must have read it. He ought to have thanked me for it at once. It was a very good letter, a remarkable letter. But surely he wasn't waiting to answer it by post? His silence about it gave me the absurd sense of having taken a liberty, confound him! He was evidently ill at ease while he talked. But it wasn't for me to help him out of his difficulty, whatever that might be. It was for him to remove the strain imposed on myself.
Abruptly, after a long pause, he did now manage to say:
"It was--very good of you to--to write me that letter." He told me he had only just got it, and he drifted away into otiose explanations of thisfact. I thought he might at least say it was a remarkable letter; and you can imagine my annoyance when he said, after another interval, "I was very much touched indeed." I had wished to be convincing, not touching. I can't bear to be called touching.
"Don't you," I asked, "think it IS quite possible that your brain invented all those memories of what--what happened before that accident?"He drew a sharp sigh.
"You make me feel very guilty."
"That's exactly what I tried to make you NOT feel!" "I know, yes. That's why I feel so guilty."We had paused in our walk. He stood nervously prodding the hard wet sand with his walking-stick.
"In a way," he said, "your theory was quite right. But--it didn't go far enough. It's not only possible, it's a fact, that I didn't see those signs in those hands. I never examined those hands. They weren't there. _I_ wasn't there. I haven't an uncle in Hampshire, even. I never had."I, too, prodded the sand.
"Well," I said at length, "I do feel rather a fool." "I've no right even to beg your pardon, but--''
