I became a frequent visitor at the Doctor's, and gradually learned more and more of this remarkable man. His little daughter told me much, that I could never have guessed. She was a very serious child, perhaps of eleven years, and not very attractive. In fact, she was ugly, but her gravity seemed somehow to suit her so well that I could by no means dislike her. Her father was very fond of her; of an evening the three of us would sit in the west room; the Doctor would smoke and read; I would read some special matter--usually on philosophy--selected by my tutor; Lydia would sit silently by, engaged in sewing or knitting, and absorbed seemingly in her own imaginings. Lydia at one time said some words which I could not exactly catch, and which made me doubt the seeming poverty of her father, but I attributed her speech to the natural pride of a child who thinks its father great in every way. I was not greatly interested, moreover, in the domestic affairs of the household, and never thought of asking for information that seemed withheld. I learned from the child's talk, at odd times when the Doctor would be absent from the room, that they were foreigners,--a fact which. I had already taken for granted,--but I was never made to know the land of their birth. It was certain that Dr. Khayme could speak German and French, and I could frequently see him reading in books printed in characters unknown to me. Several times I have happened to come unexpectedly into the presence of the father and daughter when they were conversing in a tongue which I was sure I had never heard. The Doctor had no companions. He was at home, or at school, or else on the way from the one to the other. No visitor ever showed himself when I was at the cottage. Lydia attended the convent school. I understood from remarks dropped incidentally, as well as from seeing the books she had, that her studies were the languages in the main, and I had strong evidence that, young as she was, her proficiency in French and German far exceeded my own acquirements.
By degrees I learned that the Doctor was deeply interested in what we would call speculative philosophy. I say by degrees, for the experience I am now writing down embraces the winters of five or six years. Most of the books that composed his library were abstruse treatises on metaphysics, philosophy, and religion. I believe that in his collection could have been found the Bible of every religious faith. Sometimes he would read aloud a passage in the Bhagavadgita, of which he had a manuscript copy interleaved with annotations in his own delicate handwriting.
He seldom spoke of the past, but he seemed strangely interested in the political condition of every civilized nation. The future of the human race was a subject to which he undoubtedly gave much thought. I have heard him more than once declare, with emphasis, that the outlook for the advancement of America was not auspicious. In regard to the sectional discord in the United States, he showed a strange unconcern. I knew that he believed it a matter of indifference whether secession, of which we were beginning again to hear some mutterings, was a constitutional right; but on the question of slavery his interest was intense. He believed that slavery could not endure, let secession be attempted or abandoned, let secession fail or succeed.
In my vacations I spoke to my father of the profound man who had interested himself in my mental welfare; my father approved the intimacy. He did not know Dr. Khayme personally, but he had much reason to believe him a worthy man. I had never said anything to my father about the note he had written to the Doctor; for a long time, in fact, the thought of doing so did not come to me, and when it did come I decided that, since my father had not mentioned the matter, it was not for me to do so; it was a peculiar note.
My father gave me to know that his former wish to abridge my life in the South had given way to his fears, and that I was to continue to spend my winters in Charleston. In after years I learned that Dr. Khayme had not thought my condition exempt from danger.
So had passed the winters and vacations until the fall of '57, without recurrence of my trouble. I no longer feared a lapse; my father and the physicians agreed that my migrations should cease, and I entered college. I wrote Dr. Khayme a letter, in which I expressed great regret on account of our separation, but I received no reply.
On Christmas Day of this year, 1857, I was at home. Suddenly, even without the least premonition or obvious cause, I suffered lapse of memory. The period affected embraced, with remarkable exactness, all the time that had elapsed since I had last seen Dr. Khayme.
Early in January my father accompanied me to Charleston. He was induced to take me there because I was conscious of nothing that had happened since the last day I spent there, and he was, moreover, very anxious to meet Dr. Khayme. We learned, on our arrival in Charleston, however, that the Doctor and his daughter had sailed for Liverpool early in September. My father and I travelled in the South until November, 1858, when my memory was completely restored. He then returned to Massachusetts, leaving me in Carolina, and I did not return to the North until August, 1860.