"Yes, it's that," he replied musingly—"as broad as it is long. I haven't got a hundred pounds, that I know of." He repeated this twice, becoming very absent and thoughtful.
Sally felt apologetic for reminding him of his position, and immediately said so. She was evidently a girl quite incapable of any reserves or concealments. But she had mistaken his meaning.
"No, no, dear Miss Sally," said he. "Not that—not that at all! I spoke like that because it all seemed so strange to me. Do you know?—of all the things I can't recollect, the one I can't recollect most—can you understand?—is ever being in want of money. I must have had plenty. I am sure of it."
"I dare say you had. You'll recollect it all presently, and what a lark that will be!" Sally's ingenious optimism made matters very pleasant. She did not like to press the conversation on these lines, lest Mr. Fenwick should refer to a loan she knew her mother had made him; indeed, had it not been for this the poor man would have been hard put to it for clothes and other necessaries. All such little matters, which hardly concern the story, had been landed on a comfortable footing at the date of this conversation.
But Mr. Fenwick did not lend himself to the agreeable anticipation of Sally's "lark." There was a pained distraction on his handsome face as he gave his head a great shake, tossing about the mass of brown hair, which was still something of a lion's mane, in spite of the recent ministrations of a hairdresser. He walked to the window-bay that looked out on the little garden, shaking and rubbing his head, and then came back to where he had been sitting—always as one wrestling with some painful half-memory he could not trace. Then he spoke again.
"Whether the sort of flash that comes in my mind of writing my name in a cheque-book is really a recollection of doing so, or merely
the knowledge that I must have done so, I cannot tell. But it is disagreeable—thoroughly disagreeable—and strange to the last degree. I cannot tell you how—how torturing it is, always to be compelled to stop on the threshold of an uncompleted recollection."
"I have the idea, though, quite!" said Sally. "But of course one never remembers signing one's name, any particular time. One does it mechanically. So I don't wonder."
"Yes! But the nasty part of the flash is that I always know that it is not my name. Last time it came—just now this minute—it was a name like Harrington or Carrington. Oh dear!" He shook and rubbed his head again, with the old action.
"Perhaps your name isn't Fenwick, but Harrington or Carrington?"