He was perfectly sane, understood every word that was said to him, and could converse with all his wonted acuteness and sardonic cynicism, but he had forgotten everything excepting those things which had occurred in years long back. It was exactly as if the later years of his life, with all their experience, had been wiped clean from the tablets of his mind, and, as he sat in his easy chair looking out of the window, he was under the impression that his wife had just left him, and that Time had put back the hands on life’s dial twenty years.
The doctors were both startled and puzzled. If he had become actually insane and idiotic, they could have understood it; but that a man should lose all hold upon twenty years of his life, and yet be able to understand what was said to him and converse rationally, was little short of phenomenal.
They sent for Lord Cecil, who came hurriedly, and was received by the old man with a cold, haughty courtesy, as if they had not met for years.
“I am glad to see you, Cecil,” he said. “You have altered a great deal since I saw you last; you have grown, grown very much. I suppose you think of entering the army? Well, I will consider the matter. I imagine you would do as much mischief as a civilian as you will do as a soldier. Tell your father, my brother, that, though I bear him no good will, I will do my duty by you. Ask the steward to give you a five-pound note, and—you may go now, please,” and Lord Cecil, dismissed like a schoolboy, left the room, too embarrassed and confounded to utter a word.
“What is to be done?” he said to the doctors. “Will he remain like this? It is terrible, terrible!”
Sir Andrew shook his head.
“It is very extraordinary, very; but I must remind you, Lord Cecil, that it might be worse. His lordship is in possession of all his faculties, and, excepting this remarkable loss of memory, is as sane as you and I. I have had a long, and, I must add most interesting, conversation with him this morning, and he talked with all his old brilliance——”
“And bitterness,” said the other famous doctor, under his breath.
“As to how long this singular lapse of memory will affect him, I really cannot say. It is an altogether unusual case. It is very bad, my lord, I admit,” for Lord Cecil was much moved by the old man’s condition; “but, as I say, it might be worse. His lordship’s physical strength is improving daily, we may say hourly.”
Lord Cecil sighed.