Henry Harland

“ Has it ever struck you that this earth of ours is, after all, only a huge grave-yard, a colossal burying-ground; and that we living persons are simply waiting about—standing in a long queue, so to speak—till our turn comes to be interred? That seems to me a very pleasing fancy, and one which, considered as an hypothesis, clarifies many obscure things. Accepting it, we cease to wonder at the phenomenon of death, and regard it as the chief end, aim, object, and purpose of all human life—the consummation devoutly to be wished, which we are all attending with greater or less impatience. ”

“ So!—Now, then, suppose an accident of that sort should befall you? Everything you can hope for from death would come to pass, and yet you would live. What better could you desire?
“And yet I would live? Hardly. My body would live, true. But I, my personality, my identity, would have vanished. For is not the very pith and marrow of one's identity, remembrance? Is not memory the birthmark, so to speak, by which one recognises one's-self? Is it not the cord upon which one's experiences are strung, which holds them together, and establishes their unity? My body would live, true enough. ”

“ It is, so far as she is concerned, a choice between blindness and death. Nay, something worse than death: a hideous transformation of her identity, from that of a pure and innocent young bride, to that of a weary, heart-sick, sinful woman-convict. To cure her blindness by the means which they propose, would simply be to kill her; to abolish Miriam Benary and to substitute for her Louise Massarte. It is infinitely better that she should remain blind. Therefore, I am going to prevent that operation if I can. ”

“ Why man, investigating the causes of it, enlightened by his science, employing his cunning, should not be able at will to occasion it? Take this very case in hand—the total obliteration of a human being memory of the past. A blow upon the head, the result of an accident, can occasion it. Why not a blow upon the head, the result of man's deliberate purpose? Insanity, small-pox, consumption, paralysis, deafness, blindness—each of these it would be entirely possible for man voluntarily to induce. ”

“ Has ever truly longed for death.
What you crave under the name of death is forgetfulness. You yourself compressed the whole truth into five words when you said: 'To live is to remember.' Your inference was that to die is to forget. It is memory that agonizes you; it is the past which lives in memory that handicaps you, that hangs like a mill-stone round your neck, and goads you to despair. ”

“ Well, then, my good Josephine, I shall not act at all. There is no occasion for my acting. I should be most unjust and unreasonable to prevent these two young people getting what innocent pleasure they can from each other's friendship and society, simply because in the abstract it is true that they are not incapable of falling in love. I might, as reasonably enjoin Miriam against ever going out of doors, because it is possible that in the street she might be run over; against ever drinking a glass of water, because it is possible that the water might contain a disease-germ. ”

“ Fairchild has spoken to you, has he not?”
“Ah! Then you, too, know about it?” queried I.
“Miriam has just told me the whole story.”
“What does she say?”
“That Mr. Fairchild has asked her to be his wife; that she loves him, and has accepted him—conditionally, that is, upon your approval.”
“She says she loves him?”
“She says she loves him with all her heart. She says she is as happy as the day is long. She doesn't dream that you will have any hesitation about consenting.” ”

“ Louise Massarte is dead, annihilated, abolished from the face of creation. This is a new-born infant, this apparently full-grown woman lying here. Her soul is still to develop and unfold itself. It will be for us to shape it, to colour it, to direct it towards good or evil. Heredity has furnished the capacities, the propensities, which her environment will quicken, stimulate, cause to grow and to ripen. And it is for us to provide and to regulate that environment. ”

“ Putting aside altogether, as I was bound to do, the selfish consideration that her marriage would deprive us of the treasure and the blessing of our old age, and leave our home desolate and forsaken—could I in honour, could I in justice to the man, permit him to make Miriam Benary his wife, without first imparting to him so much as I myself knew concerning Louise Massarte? ”

“ For upwards of sixty hours—nearly three days—he lay in total unconsciousness. For six weeks he lay in a stupor just a hair's breadth removed from total unconsciousness; but by-and-by his wound had healed, and he was convalescent. Now, however, what was his mental condition? Precisely that of a new-born baby! His memory had been utterly destroyed. He had forgotten the simplest primary functions of life: how to speak, how to eat, how to walk, how to use his fingers. He could not remember his name; he could not recognise his wife. He had all the lessons of experience to learn anew. ”

“ You are labouring under great excitement, you are not accountable, you are not yourself. How can I let you go? I should never know another instant of peace if I stood by and suffered you to do yourself the injury that you contemplate. I should be a brute, a craven, a criminal, if I did that. I should be answerable for your death. As a human being, I am compelled to restrain you if I can. ”

“ She will forget everything that has occurred during the past four years, and will recall what occurred before. It is that same pressure of the bone upon the brain to which they rightly or wrongly attribute her blindness—it is that same pressure of the bone upon the brain which keeps Louise Massarte in quiescence, and makes Miriam Benary possible. Relieve that pressure, remove that point of bone, and instantly Louise Massarte will spring into life again, while at the same moment Miriam Benary will cease to exist. That is what Fairchild's letter means. ”

“ I take it, therefore, you are familiar with the first principles of science: with what they call, I think, the Law of the Persistence of Force, the Law of the Conservation of Energy. If you understand that law, you will not dispute this simple application of it: a crime once done can never be undone; its consequences are ineradicable and eternal. Well and good. It is a puerility, in the face of the Law of the Persistence of Force, to talk of atonement. Atonement could come to pass only by means of a miracle—a suspension of Nature, and the interposition of a Supernatural Power. ”

“ Miriam suffered excruciatingly from seasickness. It was the most heart-rending sight I have ever witnessed, the agony she endured. I had never dreamed that sea-sickness could be so terrible; and the ship's surgeon said he had never seen so severe a case. What made it worse, of course, was the hopelessness of her obtaining any relief until the storm abated, or until we reached shore. There was nothing anyone could do. ”

“ I do not believe that you are so black as you paint yourself. You, young, beautiful, intelligent—no, no. But even if you were ten times blacker, it would make no difference to me. For, look you, since you have introduced a question of science, and favoured me with a scientific generalisation, I will pursue the question a little further, and cap your generalisation with another: namely, good, bad, or indifferent, we are not our own creators; we do not make ourselves; we are the resultants of our Heredity and our Environment ”

“ And what reason can you give them for saying no? It will seem all the harder to them, because it will seem so unreasonable and unnecessary, so unjustifiable and wanton. They will feel that it is an act of wilful cruelty, on the part of a selfish, tyrannical old man.”
“I know it, I know it,” I groaned. “And yet, on the other hand, if I say yes——”
“If you say yes, you will assure to them the greatest happiness their hearts can desire.”
“But how dare I say yes without sharing with Fairchild the secret of Miriam's origin? Without telling him the story of Louise Massarte?” ”

“ I am an incumbrance upon the face of the earth, and hateful to myself into the bargain. Why keep me here an hour? Let us rescind our compromise.* Let me go at once.”
* It is possible that here and elsewhere Dr. Benary, in reporting conversations from memory, puts into the mouths of his interlocutors words and phrases from his own vocabulary, at the same time, without doubt, giving the substance and the spirit of their remarks correctly. “Let us rescind our compromise,” at any rate, falling from the lips of a woman, has, to say the least, an unrealistic sound.—-Editor. ”

“ At the end of a month, or perhaps six weeks, Josephine said to me, “Do you think it well, Leonard, that two young people of opposite sexes should be thrown together as frequently and as closely as Mr. Fairchild and Miriam are?”
“Why not?” questioned I.
“The reasons are obvious. How would you be pleased if they should fall in love?”
“The Lord forbid! But I see no danger of their doing so.”
“There is always danger when a beautiful young girl and a spirited young man see too much of each other.”
“But Fairchild pays no more attention to Miriam than he does to you or to me. ”

“ Absurd, too, is the supposition that he ever knew Louise Massarte at all. He started and coloured up at sight of Miriam, for the very simple reason of her exceeding beauty. He is a young man, and he is an artist. What quick-blooded young man, what artist, would not colour up at the sight of so beautiful a girl? Or else, it is imaginable, he has seen Miriam herself somewhere before—in the street, in an omnibus, or where not—and has been impressed by her loveliness ”

“ A case where a lesion of the cerebral tissues, caused perhaps by disease, perhaps by a concussion of the brain, or by a fracture of the skull, has resulted in the total annihilation of memory, without injury to the other intellectual faculties, so that the patient, upon recovering health and consciousness, could remember absolutely nothing of the past—neither his name, nor his nationality, nor the face of his father or mother, nor even how to speak, walk, eat—but was literally born anew, and had to begin life over again from the start? ”

“ There are certain laws of nature which should not be ignored.”
“Well, what do you want me to do?” I enquired rather testily. “Shall I forbid Fairchild the house? Forbid my house to the man who saved my life?”
“Oh, no, of course not. You know I could not wish such a thing as that. Mr. Fairchild's claims upon our gratitude must never be forgotten. And besides, I like him, and I enjoy his visits as heartily as you do. Only——”
“Only what? If I don't forbid him the house, how can I prevent him and Miriam meeting? Shall I direct her to keep her room whenever he comes?” ”

“ As the materialists express it, that mind, thought, emotion, are but functions of the brain.”
“It would perhaps lend colour to that hypothesis; but it does not prove it. Nothing can be proved relative to the human soul. Like all elemental things, it is in its very essence an insoluble mystery. All elemental things? Nay, it is the elemental thing, the ultimate thing, the only thing we know at first hand. All other things we know only as they are mirrored in it; we know them only by the impressions they produce upon our souls. ”

“ So much for atonement. And now, as to repentance—who said that I repented? Repentance! Remorse! I will give you another piece of information, also speaking from firsthand knowledge. Repentance and Remorse are unmeaning sounds. There are no realities, no things, to correspond with them. I do not repent. No man or woman, from the beginning of time, has ever yet repented, in your sense of the word. We regret the losses that our crimes entail upon us: yes. We suffer because our crimes find us out, because retribution overtakes us: yes. But repent? We do not repent. Most of us pretend to. ”

“ In a new environment, treated with kindness, surrounded by wholesome influences, 'trained up in the way he should go,' and absolutely oblivious of every fact, event, circumstance, and association of his past, he became a new, another, an entirely different man. Now, of the million spiritual potentialities, predispositions, that heredity had implanted in him, those that made for good were vivified, those that made for bad left dormant. ”