Six precious years of golden youth had vanished in a single night. All my ideals, all my love, all my hope, nay, my very personality, had been swept away and effaced for ever.
“Have I often visited Heaton—my own place?” I inquired, turning suddenly to Gedge.
“Not since your marriage, I believe,” he answered. “You have always entertained some curious dislike towards the place. I went up there once to transact some business with your agent, and thought it a nice, charming old house.”
“Ay, and so it is,” I sighed, remembering the youthful days I had spent there long ago. All the year round was sunshine then, with the most ravishing snow-drifts in winter, and ice that sparkled in the sun so brilliantly that it seemed almost as jolly and frolicsome as the sunniest of sunlit streams, dancing and shimmering over the pebbles all through the cloudless summer. Did it ever rain in those old days long ago? Why, yes; and what splendid times I used to have on those occasions—toffee-making in the schoolroom, or watching old Dixon, the gamekeeper, cutting gun-wads in the harness-room.
And I had entertained a marked dislike to the place! All my tastes and ideas during those blank years had apparently become inverted. I had lived and enjoyed a world exactly opposite to my own—the world of sordid money-making and the glaring display of riches. I had, in a word, aped the gentleman.
There was a small circular mirror in the library, and before it I stood, marking every line upon my face, the incredible impress of forgotten years.
“It is amazing, incredible!” I cried, heart-sick with desire to penetrate the veil of mystery that enshrouded that long period of unconsciousness. “All that you have told me, Gedge, is absolutely beyond belief. There must be some mistake. It is impossible that six years can have passed without my knowledge.”
“I think,” he said, “that, after all, Britten’s advice should be followed. You are evidently not yourself to-day, and rest will probably restore your mental power to its proper calibre.”
“Bah!” I shouted angrily. “You still believe I’m mad. I tell you I’m not. I’ll prove to you that I’m not.”
“Well,” he remarked, quite calmly, “no sane man could be utterly ignorant of his own life. It doesn’t stand to reason that he could.”