“Yes, doctor, you have been very kind, and I thank you heartily for the interest you have taken in me.”
“Ay, but interest is of no professional use,” returned the doctor, sniffing up a huge pinch of snuff. “We look to results in our calling. I must say I should like to have been able to tell Mr. Sherman when I get back that I left you remembering everything. Eh, now? But I don’t believe there’s a medical man living who ever encountered such a case as yours. So much density of mental gloom, sir, seems psychologically impossible. If you could only have given me one end of the thread, so to speak, I might have drawn the whole skein out smooth. Look about you now. Here is genuine Thames scenery, which, if you are an Englishman, ought to go home straight to your heart and recall a thousand matters.”
Holdsworth stared around him, puzzling and biting his lip.
“I have often felt, and I feel now,” he exclaimed, “that if I could see something which was prominently identified with my past my memory would return. When we were off Margate, I grew breathless—breathless, doctor, believe me, under the shock of an indefinable sensation. I made sure that my memory was about to rush upon me—oh! it is impossible to explain what is inexplicable to myself. But there have been moments, since we first entered the river, when I have felt that a revelation was close at hand—and I have trembled whilst awaiting the flooding in of memory, which will not come—which will not come!”
“It will come. The power that you possess to remember the names and qualities of things which you see, has long ago persuaded me that your memory is not dead, but torpid. Keep your body up, when you get ashore, with nourishing food. Walk the streets constantly and use your eyes, and, when a recollection rises to the surface, don’t rush upon it voraciously, but leave it to its own will. Consider, memories are nothing but shadows; you can’t dodge and drive them into corners ...”
Here somebody called to him, on which the little man shook Holdsworth’s hand, and darted towards the group of passengers.
The ship was rapidly nearing Gravesend, where she would disembark her passengers. The Thames looked noble, with many vessels of all shapes and sizes breaking its shining waters, with the houses and wharves ashore, with here and there a short wooden pier running into the stream, and the green summer country smiling beyond.
It was a bright July morning, and the air had an exquisite transparency that so clarified and sharpened the outlines of objects, that it was like looking at them through highly-polished glass. Just such a day should greet all homeward-sailing ships, and make their inmates merry with a foretaste of the shore-life they are to enjoy after their long strife with the distant treacherous ocean.
Anon Gravesend opened, and then the pilot volleyed some quick orders along the ship. Down rattled staysails, and jibs, and yards with their spacious breadths of canvas; and the stately vessel, denuded of her towering costume, swam lazily into position off the town. Then rose a cry, “Stand clear of the chain-cable!” and the second mate, on the port side of the topgallant forecastle, brandished his arms as a warning to the people on the main-deck to crowd out of the road.
“Let go the anchor!”