I went slowly down the doctor's stairs, feeling the disheartening conviction that he really had something to say which it was vitally important to me to hear, and that he was morally incapable of saying it. The effort of remembering that he wanted to speak to me was, but too evidently, the only effort that his enfeebled memory was now able to achieve.
Just as I reached the bottom of the stairs, and had turned a corner on my way to the outer hall, a door opened softly somewhere on the ground floor of the house, and a gentle voice said behind me:—
'I am afraid, sir, you find Mr. Candy sadly changed?'
I turned round, and found myself face to face with Ezra Jennings.
CHAPTER IX
The doctor's pretty housemaid stood waiting for me, with the street door open in her hand. Pouring brightly into the hall, the morning light fell full on the face of Mr. Candy's assistant when I turned, and looked at him.
It was impossible to dispute Betteredge's assertion that the appearance of Ezra Jennings, speaking from a popular point of view, was against him. His gipsy-complexion, his fleshless cheeks, his gaunt facial bones, his dreamy eyes, his extraordinary parti-coloured hair, the puzzling contradiction between his face and figure which made him look old and young both together—were all more or less calculated to produce an unfavourable impression of him on a stranger's mind. And yet—feeling this as I certainly did—it is not to be denied that Ezra Jennings made some inscrutable appeal to my sympathies, which I found it impossible to resist. While my knowledge of the world warned me to answer the question which he had put, acknowledging that I did indeed find Mr. Candy sadly changed, and then to proceed on my way out of the house—my interest in Ezra Jennings held me rooted to the place, and gave him the opportunity of speaking to me in private about his employer, for which he had been evidently on the watch.
'Are you walking my way, Mr. Jennings?' I said, observing that he held his hat in his hand. 'I am going to call on my aunt, Mrs. Ablewhite.'
Ezra Jennings replied that he had a patient to see, and that he was walking my way.
We left the house together. I observed that the pretty servant girl—who was all smiles and amiability, when I wished her good morning on my way out—received a modest little message from Ezra Jennings, relating to the time at which he might be expected to return, with pursed-up lips, and with eyes which ostentatiously looked anywhere rather than look in his face. The poor wretch was evidently no favourite in the house. Out of the house, I had Betteredge's word for it that he was unpopular everywhere. 'What a life!' I thought to myself, as we descended the doctor's doorsteps.
Having already referred to Mr. Candy's illness on his side, Ezra Jennings now appeared determined to leave it to me to resume the subject. His silence said significantly, 'It's your turn now.' I, too, had my reasons for referring to the doctor's illness: and I readily accepted the responsibility of speaking first.
'Judging by the change I see in him,' I began, 'Mr. Candy's illness must have been far more serious that I had supposed?'
'It is almost a miracle,' said Ezra Jennings, 'that he lived through it.'
'Is his memory never any better than I have found it to-day? He has been trying to speak to me——'
'Of something which happened before he was taken ill?' asked the assistant, observing that I hesitated.
'Yes.'
'His memory of events, at that past time, is hopelessly enfeebled,' said Ezra Jennings. 'It is almost to be deplored, poor fellow, that even the wreck of it remains. While he remembers dimly plans that he formed—things, here and there, that he had to say or do before his illness—he is perfectly incapable of recalling what the plans were, or what the thing was that he had to say or do. He is painfully conscious of his own deficiency, and painfully anxious, as you must have seen, to hide it from observation. If he could only have recovered in a complete state of oblivion as to the past, he would have been a happier man. Perhaps we should all be happier,' he added, with a sad smile, 'if we could but completely forget!'
'There are some events surely in all men's lives,' I replied, 'the memory of which they would be unwilling entirely to lose?'
'That is, I hope, to be said of most men, Mr. Blake. I am afraid it cannot truly be said of ALL. Have you any reason to suppose that
