All that he was perfectly certain of, at that moment, was that he was awake, with a contused pain all over, and a very stiff left hand and foot. And that, knowing he had been insensible, he was striving hard to remember what something was that had happened just before he became insensible. He had nearly got it, once or twice. Yes, now he had got it, surely! No, he hadn't. It was gone again.
A mind that is struggling to remember some particular thing does not deal with other possibilities of oblivion. We all know the painful phenomenon of being perfectly aware what it is we are trying to remember, feeling constantly close to it, but always failing to grasp it. We know what it will sound like when we say it, what it will mean, where it was on the page we read it on. Oh dear yes!—quite plainly. The only thing we can't remember for the life of us is—what it was!
And while we are making stupendous efforts to recapture some such thing, does it ever occur to any of us to ask if we may not be mistaken in our tacit assumption that we are quite certain to remember everything else as soon as we try? That, in fact, it may be our memory-faculty itself that is in fault and that we are only failing to recall one thing because at the moment it is that one sole thing, and no other, that we are trying our brains against.
It was so in the pause of a few minutes in which this man we write of, left to himself and the ticking of the clock, and hearing, through the activity of the bluebottle and the monotony of the ceiling flies, the murmur of a distant conversation between his late companions, who for the moment had left him alone, tried in
vain to recover his particular thread of memory, without any uneasiness about the innumerable skeins that made up the tissue of his record of a lifetime.
When the young doctor returned, he found him still seated where he had left him, one hand over his eyes, the other on his knee. As he sat—for the doctor watched him from the door for a moment—he moved and replaced either hand at intervals, with implied distress in the movements. They gave the impression of constant attempt constantly baffled. The doctor, a shrewd-seeming young man with an attentive pale eye, and very fair hair, seemed to understand.
"Let me recommend you to be quiet and rest. Be quite quiet. You will be all right when you have slept on it. Mrs. Nightingale—that's the lady you saw just now; this is her house—will see that you are properly taken care of."
Then the man tried to speak; it was with an effort.
"I wish to thank—I must thank——"
"Never mind thanks yet. All in good time. Now, what do you think you can take—to eat or drink?"