Volume Three—Chapter Two.
Snuff.
Old Matt did not wake again for many hours, but, as the days slipped by, he partook with avidity of all that was allowed him, and grumbled for more. His friend the house-surgeon, whom he could look at now without imagining that he took notes inimical to his friend Septimus Hardon’s interest, reported favourably of his condition; while Septimus himself came again and again, each time more eager to get at that which was hidden by the confusion in old Matt’s brain.
“If he had only been so jolly anxious about the Somesham affair, first start off, what a difference it would have made!” grumbled Matt.
But it seemed useless to try and draw the old man’s attention to things he had talked of in the days shortly before his entry of the hospital, for here all seemed blank.
“Well, yes, sir,” Matt would say, “I have some faint recollection of saying something about medicine and attendance; but do you know, sir, I begin to think that one’s memory is in one’s blood? and they took so much out of me that last time, that I can’t remember anything at all. ‘Medicine and attendance,’ did I say? Why, it must have been the medicine and attendance here, and those old cats of nurses. My thinking apparatus is terribly out of order, sir; and when I try to look back at anything, it’s like peeping at it through a dirty window. P’r’aps it won’t come bright and clean again, eh?”
“Don’t try to think,” said Septimus with a sigh. “You will recollect some day; so let it rest.”
“Well, sir, that’s just what I should like to do; but since you’ve asked me, I can’t; for things won’t go just as I like, and I feel all in a muddle. Let’s see, now: you said something about this at your last visit, didn’t you, sir? when I asked you about that talking woman and the office for servants; for I do recollect that, you know.”
“Yes,” replied Septimus, “at every visit.”
“Just so,” said Matt; “I thought you did; but I can’t tell a bit about it now. Sometimes it seems that I heard it; sometimes that I read it, or saw it against a wall, or dancing before my eyes; but let’s see,” he said vacantly, as he held his hand to his head, “what was it we wanted to find?”