 CHAPTER VIII. He did not insist on their marriage taking place at once, although in her mood of dull indifference she would not have objected to anything he might have proposed. It was his hope that after a while she might become calmer and more cheerful. He hoped to take in his at the altar a hand a little less like that of a dead person. Introducing her as his betrothed wife he found her very pleasant lodgings with an excellent family where he was acquainted. Interacted her with books and a piano, took her constantly out to places of amusement, and in every way which his ingenuity could suggest, endeavored to distract and divert her. To all this she offered neither objection nor suggestion. Nor did she, beyond the usual conventional responses, show the slightest gratitude. It was as if she took it for granted that he understood, as she did, that all this was being done for himself and not for her. She being quite past having anything done for her. Her only recognition of this reverential and considerate tenderness which he showed her was an occasional air of wonder that cut him to the quick. Shame, sorrow and despair had encrusted her heart with a hard shell, impenetrable to genial emotions. Nor would all his love help him to get over the impression that she was no longer an acquaintance and familiar friend, but somehow a stranger. So far as he could find out she did absolutely nothing all day except to sit brooding. He could not discover that she so much as opened the books and magazines he sent her. And to the best of his knowledge she made little more use of her piano. His calls were sadly dreary affairs. He would perhaps ask half a dozen questions which he had spent much time inframing with a view to interesting her. She would reply in monosyllables with sometimes a constrained smile or two. And then after sitting a while in silence he would take his hat and bid her good evening. She always sat nowadays in an attitude which he had never seen her adopt in former times, her hands lying in her lap before her, and an absent expression on her face. As he looked at her sitting thus, and recalled her former vivacious self-assertion and ever-new caprices, he was overcome with the sadness of the contrast. After he asked her about her health she replied that she was well, and indeed she had that appearance. Grief is slow to sap the basis of a healthy physical constitution. She retained all the contour of cheek and rounded fullness of figure which had first captivated his fancy in the days as it seemed so long ago. He took her often to the theatre, because in the action of the play she seemed at times momentarily carried out of herself. Once when they were coming home from a play she called attention to some feature of it. It was the first independent remark she had made since he had brought her to her lodgings. In itself it was of no importance at all. But he was overcome with delight, as people are delighted with the first words that show returning interest in earthly matters on the part of a convalescing friend whose soul has long been hovering on the borders of death. It would sound laughable to explain how much he made of that little remark, how he spun it out and turned it in and out, and returned to it for days afterward. But it remained isolated. She did not make another. Nevertheless, her mind was not so entirely torpid as it appeared, nor was she so absolutely self-absorbed. One idea was rising day by day out of the dark confusion of her thoughts. And that was the goodness and generosity of her lover. In this appreciation there was not the faintest glows of gratitude. She left herself wholly out of the account, as only one could do with whom wretchedness has abolished for the time all interest in self. She was personally past being benefited. Her sense of his love and generosity was as disinterested as if some other person had been their object. Her admiration was such as one feels for a hero of history or fiction. Often when all within her seemed growing hard and still and dead, she felt that crying would make her feel better. At such times to help her to cry, for the tears did not flow easily, she would sit down to the piano the only times she ever touched it, and play over some of the simple airs associated with her life at home. Sometimes after playing and crying a while, she would lapse into sweetly mournful daydreams of how happy she might have been if she had returned Henry's love in those old days. She wondered in a puzzled way why it was she had not. It seemed so strange to her now that she could have failed in doing so. Not all this time it was only as a might have been that she thought of loving him, as one who feels himself mortally sick thinks of what he might have done when he was well, as a life convict thinks of what he might have done when free, as a disembodied spirit might think of what it might have done when living. The consciousness of her disgrace ever with her had in the past month or two built up an impassable wall between her past life and her present state of existence. She no longer thought of herself in the present tense, still less the future. He had not kissed her since that kiss of their first interview, which threw her into such a paroxysm of weeping. And one evening when she had been more silent and dull than usual and more unresponsive to his efforts to interest her, as he rose to go he drew her a moment to his side and pressed his lips to hers, as if constrained to find some expression for the tenderness so cruelly balked of any outflow in words. He went quickly out, but she continued to stand motionless in the attitude of one startled by a sudden discovery. There was a frightened look in her dilated eyes. Her face was flooded to the roots of her hair with a deep flush. It was a crimson most unlike the tint of blissful shame with which the cheeks announce love's dawn in happy hearts. She threw herself upon the sofa and buried her scorched face in the pillow, while her form shook with dry sobs. Love had, in a moment, stripped the protecting cicatris of a hardened difference from her smarting shame. And it was as if for the first time she were made fully conscious of the desperation of her condition. The maiden, who finds her stainless purity all too lustilous a gift for him she loves, may fancy what were the feelings of Madeleine, as love, with its royal longing to give, was born in her heart. With what lilies of virgin innocence would she feign have rewarded her lover? But her lilies were yellow, their fragrance was stale. With what unworn crown would she have crowned him? But she had rifled her maiden regalia to adorn an imposter. And love came to her now, not as to others, but wetting the fangs of remorse and blowing the fires of shame. But one thing it opened her eyes to, and made certain from the first instant of her new consciousness, namely that since she loved him she could not keep her promise to marry him. In her previous mood of dead indifference to all things it had not mattered to her one way or the other. Reckless what became of her she had only a feeling that seeing he had been so good he ought to have any satisfaction he could find in marrying her. But what her indifference would have abandoned to him her love could not endure the thought of giving. The worthlessness of the gift which before had not concerned her now made its giving impossible. While before she had thought with indifference of submitting to her love she did not return, now that she returned it the idea of being happy in it seemed to her guilty and shameless. Thus to gather the honey of happiness from her own abasement was a further degradation, compared with which she could now almost respect herself. The consciousness that she had taken pleasure in that kiss made her seem to herself a brazen thing. Her heart ached with a helpless yearning over him, for the disappointment she knew he must now suffer at her hands. She tried but in vain to feel that she might, after all, marry him, might do this crowning violence to her nature and accept a shameful happiness for his sake. One morning a bitter thing happened to her. She had slept unusually well, and her dreams had been sweet and serene, untinged by any shadow of her waking thoughts. As if indeed the visions intended for the sleeping brain of some fortunate woman had by mistake strayed into hers. For a while she had lain half dosing, half awake, pleasantly conscious of the soft warm bed, and only half emerged from the atmosphere of dreamland. As at last she opened her eyes the newly risen sun bright from his ocean bath was shining into the room, and the birds were singing. A lilac bush before the window was moving in the breeze, and the shadows of its twigs were netting the sunbeams on the wall as they danced to and fro. The spirit of the jockened morn quite carried her away, and all unthinkingly she bounded out into the room and stood there with a smile of sheer delight upon her face. She had forgotten all about her shame and sorrow. For an instant they were as completely gone from her mind as if they had never been, and for that instant nowhere did the sun's far-reaching eye rest on a blither or more innocent face. Then memory laid its icy finger on her heart, and stilled its bounding pulse. The glad smile went out like a taper quenched in acheron, and she fell prone upon the floor, crying with hard, dry sobs. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God! That day, and for many days afterward, she thought again and again of that single happy instant ere memory reclaimed its victim. It was the first for so long a time, and it was so very sweet, like a drop of water to one in torment. What a heaven life must be which had many such moments! Was it possible that once, long ago, her life had been such a one, that she could awake mornings and not be afraid of remembering? Had there ever been such a time when the ravens of shame and remorse had not perched above her bed as she slept, waiting her waking to plunge their beaks afresh into her heart? That instant of happiness which had been given her, how full it had been of bly thanks to God, and sympathy with the beautiful life of the world! Surely it showed that she was not bad, that she could have such a moment. It showed her heart was pure. It was only her memory that was foul. It was in vain that she swept and washed all within, and was good. When all the while her memory, like a ditch from a distant morass, emptied its vile stream of recollections into her heart, poisoning all the issues of life. Years before, in one of the periodical religious revivals at Newville, she had passed through the usual girlish experience of conversion. Now indeed was a time when the heavenly compensations to which religion invites the thoughts of the sorrowful might surely have been a source of dome relief. But a certain cruel clearness of vision, or so at least it seemed to her, made all reflections on this theme but an aggravation of her despair. Since the shadow had fallen on her life, with every day the sense of shame and grief had grown more insupportable. In proportion as her loathing of the sin had grown, her anguish on account of it had increased. It was a poisoned tree, which her tears watered, and caused to shoot forth yet deeper roots, yet wider branches, overspreading her life with evidenser more noxious shadows. Since then on earth the purification of repentance does but deepen the soul's anguish over the past. How should it be otherwise in heaven, all through eternity? The pure in heart that see God, thought the unhappy girl, must only be those that have always been so. For such as become pure, by repentance and tears, do but see their impurity plainer every day. Her horror of such a heaven, where through eternity perfect purification should keep her shame undying, taught her unbelief, and turned her for comfort to that other deep instinct of humanity, which sees in death the promise of eternal sleep, rest and oblivion. In these days she thought much of poor George Bailey, and his talk in the prayer meeting the night before he killed himself. By the mystic kinship that had declared itself between their sorrowful destinies, she felt a sense of nearness to him greater than her new love had given or ever could give her toward Henry. She recalled how she had sat listening to George's talk that evening, pitifully indeed, but only half comprehending what he meant, with no dim foreboding warning that she was fated to reproduce his experience so closely. Yes, reproduce it, perhaps, God only knew, even to the end. She could not bear this always. She understood now, oh, how well, his longing for the river of Lethe, whose waters give forgetfulness. She often saw his pale face in dreams, wearing the smile he wore, as he lay in the coffin, a smile as if he had been washed in those waters he sighed for. CHAPTER IX Henry had not referred to their marriage after the first interview. From day to day and week to week he had put off doing so, hoping that she might grow into a more serene condition of mind. But in this respect the result had sadly failed to answer his expectation. He could not deny to himself that instead of becoming more cheerful she was relapsing into a more and more settled melancholy. From day to day he noted the change, like that of a gradual petrification, which went on in her face. It was as if before his eyes she was sinking into a fatal stupor, from which all his efforts could not rouse her. There were moments when he experienced the chilling premonition of a disappointment, the possibility of which he still refused to actually entertain. He owned to himself that it was a harder task than he had thought to bring back to life one whose veins the frost of despair has chilled. There were perhaps some things too hard even for his love. It was doubly disheartening for him thus to lose confidence, not only on his own account but on hers. Not only had he to ask himself what would become of his life in the event of failure, but what would become of hers? One day, overcome by this sort of discouragement, feeling that he was not equal to the case, that matters were growing worse instead of better, and that he needed help from some source, he asked Madeline if he had not better right to her mother, to come to Boston so that they too could keep house together. No! she said in a quick startled voice, looking up at him in a scared way. He hastened to reassure her, and say that he had not seriously thought of it. But he noticed that during the rest of the evening she cast furtive glances of apprehension at him, as if suspicious that he had some plot against her. She had fled from home because she could not bear her mother's eyes. Meanwhile he was becoming almost as preoccupied and gloomy as she, and their dreary interviews grew more dreary than ever, for she was now scarcely more silent than he. His constant and increasing anxiety, in addition to the duties of a responsible business position, began to tell on his health. The owner of the manufacturing of which he was superintendent called him into his office one day, and told him he was working too hard, and must take a little vacation. But he declined. Soon after, a physician whom he knew, button-hold him on the street, and managed to get in some shrewd questions about his health. Henry owned he did not sleep much nights. The doctor said he must take a vacation. And this being declared impossible, forced a box of sleeping powders on him and made him promise to try them. All this talk about his health, as well as his own sensations, set him to thinking of the desperate position in which Madeleine would be left in the event of his serious sickness or death. That very day he made up his mind that it would not do to postpone their marriage any longer. It seemed almost brutal to urge it on her in her present frame of mind. And yet it was clearly out of the question to protract the present situation. The quarter of the city in which he resided was suburban, and he went home every night by the steam-cars. As he sat in the car that evening, waiting for the train to start, two gentlemen in the seat behind fell to conversing about a new book on mental physiology, embodying the latest discoveries. They kept up a brisk talk on this subject till Henry left the car. He could not, however, have repeated a single thing which they had said. Preoccupied with his own thoughts, he had only been dimly conscious what they were talking about. His ears had taken in their words, but he had heard as not hearing. After tea in the gloaming, he called as usual on Madeleine. After a few casual words, he said gently, Madeline, you remember you promised to marry me a few weeks ago. I have not hurried you, but I want you now. There is no use in waiting any longer, dear, and I want you. She was sitting in a low chair, her hands folded in her lap. And as he spoke her head sank so low upon her breast that he could not see her face. He was silent for some moments, waiting her reply, but she made none. I know it was only for my sake you promised, he said again. I know it will be nothing to you. And yet I would not press you if I did not think I could make you happier so. I will give up my business for a time, and we will travel, and see the world a little. Still she did not speak. But it was to some extent a reassurance to him that she showed no agitation. Are you willing that we should be married in a few days? he asked. She lifted her head slowly and looked at him steadfastly. You are right, she said. It is useless to keep on this way any longer. You consent, then? he said, quite encouraged by her quiet air and apparent willingness. Don't press me for an answer to-night. She replied after a pause, during which she regarded him with a singular fixity of expression. Wait till to-morrow. You shall have an answer to-morrow. You are quite right. I've been thinking so myself. It is no use to put it off any longer. He spoke to her once or twice after this. But she was gazing out through the window into the darkening sky, and did not seem to hear him. He rose to go, and had already reached the hall when she called him. Come back a moment, Henry. He came back. I want you to kiss me, she said. She was standing in the middle of the room. Her tall figure in its black dress was flooded with the weird radiance of the rising moon. Nor was the moonshine whiter than her cheek, nor sadder than her steadfast eyes. Her lips were soft and yielding, clinging, dewy-wet. He had never thought a kiss could be so sweet. And yet he could have wept. He knew not why. When he reached his lodgings, he was in an extremely nervous condition. In spite of all that was painful and depressing in the association of the event, the idea of having Madeleine for his wife in a few days more had power to fill him with feverish excitement, and excitement all the more agitating because it was so composite in its elements, and had so little in common with the exhilaration and light-heartedness of successful lovers in general. He took one of the doctor's sleeping-powders, tried to read a dry book on electricity, endeavoured to write a business letter, smoked a cigar, and finally went to bed. It seemed to him that he went all the next day in a dazed, dreaming state, until the moment when he presented himself after tea at Madeleine's lodgings, and she opened the door to him. The surprise which he then experienced was calculated to arouse him had he been indeed dreaming. His first thought was that she had gone crazy, or else, had been drinking wine to raise her spirits, for there was a flush of excitement on either cheek, and her eyes were bright and unsteady. In one hand she held with a clasp that crumpled the leaves a small scientific magazine, which he recognized as having been one of a bundle of periodicals that he had sent her. With her other hand, instead of taking the hand which he extended, she clutched his arm and almost pulled him inside the door. Henry, do you remember what George Bailey said that evening in meeting about the River of Lethe, in which souls were bathed and forgot the past? I remember something about it, he answered. There is such a river! It was not a fable! It has been found again!" she cried. Come and sit down, dear, don't excite yourself so much. We will talk quietly, he replied, with a pitiful effort to speak soothingly, for he made no question that her long brooding had affected her mind. Quietly! How do you suppose I can talk quietly? she exclaimed excitedly, in her nervous irritation throwing off the hand which he had laid on her arm. Henry, see here! I want to ask you something. Supposing anybody had done something bad and had been very sorry for it, and then had forgotten it all, forgotten it wholly, would you think that made them good again? Would it seem so to you? Tell me." Yes, surely, but it isn't necessary they should forget so long as they're sorry. But supposing they had forgotten, too. Yes, surely, it would be as if it had never been. Henry, she said, her voice dropping to a low, hushed tone of wonder, while her eyes were full of mingled awe and exultation. What if I were to forget it? Forget that you know, forget it all, everything, just as if it had never been. He stared at her with fascinated eyes. She was indeed beside herself, grief had made her mad. The significance of his expression seemed to recall her to herself, and she said, You don't understand, of course not! You think I'm crazy? Here, take it, go somewhere and read it. Don't stay here to do it, I couldn't stand to look on. No, hurry, read it and then come back. She thrust the magazine into his hand and almost pushed him out of the door, but he went no further than the hall. He could not think of leaving her in that condition. Then it occurred to him to look at the magazine. He opened it by the light of the hall lamp, and his eyes fell on these words, the title of an article. The extirpation of thought processes, a new invention. If she were crazy, here was at least the clue to her condition. He read on, his eyes leaped along the lines. The writer began with a clear account of the discoveries of modern psychologists and physiologists as to the physical basis of the intellect, by which it has been ascertained that certain ones of the millions of nerve corpuscles or fibres in the grey substance in the brain record certain classes of sensations and the ideas directly connected with them. Other classes of sensations with the corresponding ideas being elsewhere recorded by other groups of corpuscles. These corpuscles of the grey matter, these mysterious and infinitesimal hieroglyphics, constitute the memory of the record of the life, so that when any particular fibre or group of fibres is destroyed, certain memories or classes of memories are destroyed without affecting others, which are elsewhere embodied in other fibres. Of the many scientific and popular demonstrations of these facts which were reduced, reference was made to the generally known fact that the effect of disease or injury at certain points in the brain is to destroy definite classes of acquisitions or recollections, leaving others untouched. The article then went on to refer to the fact that one of the known effects of the galvanic battery as medically applied is to destroy and dissolve morbid tissues, while leaving healthy ones unimpaired. Given then a patient who by excessive indulgence of any particular train of thought had brought the group of fibres which were the physical seat of such thoughts into a diseased condition, Dr. Gustav Haydnhoff had invented a mode of applying the galvanic battery, so as to destroy the diseased core-puzzles, and thus annihilate the class of morbid ideas involved beyond the possibility of recollection, and entirely without affecting the other parts of the brain or other classes of ideas. The doctor saw patients Tuesdays and Saturdays at his office, on 39 Street. Madeline was not crazy, thought Henry. As still standing under the whole lamp he closed the article. But Dr. Haydnhoff certainly was. Never had such a sad sense of the misery of her condition been borne in on him as when he reflected that it had been able to make such a ferago of nonsense seem actually creditable to her. She had come with poignant sympathy and in serious perplexity how best he could deal with her excited condition. He slipped out of the house and walked for an hour about the streets. Returning he knocked again at the door of her parlour. Have you read it? she asked eagerly as she opened it. Yes, I've read it. I did not mean to send you such trash. The man must be either an escaped lunatic or has tried his hand at a hoax. It is a tissue of absurdity. He spoke bluntly, almost harshly, because he was in terror at the thought that she might be allowing herself to be deluded by this wild and baseless fancy. But he looked away as he spoke. He could not bear to see the effect of his words. It is not absurd, she cried, clasping his arm convulsively with both hands so that she hurt him and looking fiercely at him out of hot fevered eyes. It is the most reasonable thing in the world. It must be true. There can be no mistake. God would not let me be so deceived. He is not so cruel. Don't tell me anything else. She was in such an hysterical condition that he saw he must be very gentle. But, Madeline, you will admit that if he is not the greatest of all discoverers, he must be a dangerous quack. His process might kill you or make you insane. It must be very perilous. If I knew there were a hundred chances that it would kill me to one that it would succeed, do you think I would hesitate? She cried. The utmost concession that he could obtain her consent to was that he should first visit this Dr. Haydnhoff alone, and make some inquiries of and about him. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of Dr. Haydnhoff's process This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Matthew D. Robinson Dr. Haydnhoff's process by Edward Bellamy Chapter 10 The next day he called at 79 Blank Street There was a modest shingle bearing the name Dr. Gustav Haydnhoff fastened up on the side of the house, which was in the middle of a brick block. On announcing that he wanted to see the doctor, he was ushered into a waiting room, whose walls were hung with charts of the brain and nervous system, and presently a tall scholarly-looking man with a clean shaven face, frosty hair, and very genial blue eyes, deep set beneath extremely bushy gray eyebrows, entered and announced himself as Dr. Haydnhoff. Henry, who could not help being very favorably impressed by his appearance, opened the conversation by saying that he wanted to make some inquiries about the thought extirpation process in behalf of a friend who was thinking of trying it. The doctor, who spoke English with idiomatic accuracy, though with a slightly German accent, expressed his willingness to give him all possible information and answered all his questions with great apparent candor, illustrating his explanations by references to the charts which covered the walls of the office. He took him into an inner office and showed his batteries, and explained that the peculiarity of his process consisted not in any new general laws and facts of physiology which he had discovered, but entirely in peculiarities in his manner of applying his galvanic current, talking much about apodes, cathodes, cat-electrodinous and an-electrodinous, resistance and rheostat, reactions, fluctuations and other terms of galvanotherapeutics. The doctor frankly admitted that he was not in a way of making a great deal of money or reputation by his discovery. It promised too much, and people consequently thought it must be quackery, and as sufficient proof of this he mentioned that he had now been five years engaged in practicing the thought extirpation process without having attained any considerable celebrity or attracting a great number of patients. But he had a sufficient support in other branches of medical practice, he added, and so long as he had patience enough for experimentation with the aim of improving the process, he was quite satisfied. He listened with great interest to Henry's account of Madeline's case. The success of galvanism in obliterating the obnoxious train of recollections in her case would depend, he said, on whether it had been indulged to an extent to bring about a morbid state of the brain-fibers concerned. What might be conventionally or morally morbid or objectionable was not, however, necessarily disease in the material sense, and nothing but experiment could absolutely determine whether the two conditions coincided in any case. At any rate he positively assured Henry that no harm could ensue to the patient, whether the operation succeeded or not. It is a pity young man, he said with a flash of enthusiasm, that you don't come to me twenty years later. Then I could guarantee your friend the complete extirpation of any class of inconvenient recollection she might desire removed, whether they were morbid or healthy. For since the great fact of the physical basis of the intellect has been established, I deem it only a question of time when science shall have so accurately located the various departments of thought and mastered the laws of their processes, that, whether by galvanism or some better process, the mental physician will be able to extract a specific recollection from the memory as readily as a dentist pulls a tooth, and as finally, so far as the prevention of any future twinges in that quarter are concerned. Macbeth's question, canst thou not minister to a mind-diseased, pluck from the memory a wilted sorrow, raise out the written troubles of the brain? Was a puzzler to the sixteenth-century doctor, but he of the twentieth, yes, perhaps of the nineteenth, will be able to answer it affirmatively. Is the process at all painful? In no degree, my dear sir, patients have described to me their sensations many times, and the testimony is quite an agreement. When the circuit is closed, there is a bubbling murmur of sound in the ears, a warm sensation where the virus touched the clanium, and a feeling as if a motion through the brain, entailing at one point and going out at another. There are also sparks of fire seen under the closed eyelids, an unpleasant taste in the mouth, and a sensation of smell. That is all. But the mental sensations, said Henry. I should think they must be very peculiar, the sense of forgetting in spite of one's self. For I suppose the patient's mind is fixed on the very thoughts which the intent of the operation is to extirpate. Peculiar? Oh, no, not at all peculiar, replied the doctor. There are abundant analogies for it in our daily experience. From the accounts of patients, I infer that it is not different from one's sensations in falling asleep by thinking of something. You know that we find ourselves forgetting preceding links in the train of thought, and in turning back to recall what meant before, what came after is meanwhile forgotten. The clue is lost and be yielded to a pleasing bewilderment which is presently itself forgotten in sleep. The next morning they may or may not recall the matter. The only difference is that after the deep sleep which always follows the application of my process we never recall it. That is, if the operation has been successful. It seems to involve no more interference with the continuity of the normal physical and mental functions than does an afternoon's nap, but the after effects persist in Henry. Patients must surely feel that they have forgotten something, even if they do not know what it is. They must feel that there is something gone out of their minds. I should think this sensation would leave them in a painfully bewildered state. There seems to be a feeling of slight confusion, said the doctor, but it is not painful, not more pronounced indeed than that of persons who are trying to bring back a dream which they remember having had without being able to recall the first thing about what it was. Of course the patients subsequently find shreds and fragments of ideas, as facts in his external relations, which having been connected with the extirpated subject, are now unaccountable. About these the feeling is, I suppose, like that of a man who, when he gets over a fit of drunkenness or some nambulism, finds himself unable to account for things which he has unconsciously said or done. The immediate effect of the operation, as I intimated before, is to leave the patient very drowsy and the first desire is to sleep. Doctor, said Henry, when you talk it all seems for the moment quite reasonable, but you will pardon me for saying that as soon as you stop the whole thing appears to be such an incredible piece of nonsense that I have to pinch myself to be sure I am not dreaming. The doctor smiled. Well, said he, I have been so long engaged in the practical application of the process that I confess I can't realize any element of the strange or mysterious about it. To the eye of the philosopher nothing is wonderful, or else you may say all things are equally so. The commonest and so-called simplest fact in the entire order of nature is precisely as marvelous and incomprehensible at bottom as the most uncommon and startling. You've repardoned me if I say that it is only to the unscientific that it seems otherwise. But really, my dear sir, my process for the extirpation of thoughts was but the most obvious consequence of the discovery that different classes of sensations and ideas are localized in the brain and are permanently identified with particular groups of corpuscles of the groin matter. As soon as that was known, the extirpating of special clusters of thoughts became merely a question of mechanical difficulties to be overcome, merely a nice problem in surgery, and not more complex than many which my brethren have solved in the thoughtome and the thoughtlity, for instance. I suppose what makes the idea a little more startling, said Henry, is the odd intermingling of moral and physical conceptions in the idea of curing pangs of conscience by a surgical operation. I should think that intermingling ought not to be very bewildering, replied the doctor, since it is the usual rule. Why is it more curious to cure remorse by a physical act than to cause remorse by a physical act? And I believe such is the origin of most oeimos. Yes, said Henry, still struggling to preserve his mental equilibrium against this general overturning of his prejudices. Yes, but the mind consents to the act which causes the remorse, and I suppose that is what gives it a moral quality. Assuredly, replied the doctor, and I take it for granted that patients don't generally come to me unless they have experienced very genuine and profound regret and sorrow for the act they wish to forget. They have already repented it, and according to every theory of moral accountability, I believe it is hell that repentance balances the moral accounts. My process, you see then, only completes physically what is already done morally. The ministers and moralists preach forgiveness and absolution on repentance, but the perennial fountain of the penitent's tears testifies how empty and vain such assurances are. I fulfill what they promise. They tell the penitent he is forgiven, I free him from his sin. Remorse and shame and one regret have wielded their cruel sceptres over human lives from the beginning until now. Seated within the mysterious labyrinths of the brain, they have deemed their space secure, but the lightning of science has leached them on their thorns and set the bondman free. And with an impressive gesture the doctor touched the battery at his side. Without giving further details of his conversation with this strange master of life, it is sufficient to say that Henry finally agreed upon an appointment for Madeleine on the following day, feeling something as if he were making an unholy compact with the devil. He could not possibly have said whether he really expected anything from it or not. His mind had been in a state of bewilderment and constant fluctuation during the entire interview, at one moment carried away by the contagious confidence of the doctor's tone, and impressed by his calm, clear, scientific explanations and the exhibition of the electrical apparatus, and the next moment reacting into utter skepticism and contemptuous impatience with himself for even listening to such a preposterous piece of imposition. By the time he had walked half a block, the sights and sounds of the busy street, with their practical and prosaic suggestions, had quite dissipated the lingering influence of the necromantic atmosphere of Dr. Haydnhoff's office, and he was sure that he had been a fool. He went to see Madeleine that evening, with his mind made up to avoid telling her, if possible, that he had made the appointment, and to make such a report as should induce her to dismiss the subject. But he found it was quite impossible to maintain any such reticence toward one in her excited and peremptory mood. He was forced to admit the fact of the appointment. Why didn't you make it in the forenoon? She demanded. What for? It is only a difference of a few hours. He replied. And don't you think a few hours is anything to me? She cried, bursting into hysterical tears. You must not be so confident. He expostulated. It scares me to see you so when you are so likely to be disappointed. Even the doctor said he could not promise success. It would depend on many things. What is the use of telling me that? She said, suddenly becoming very calm. When I've just one chance for life, do you think it is kind to remind me that it may fail? Let me alone tonight. The mental agitation of the past two days, supervening on so long a period of profound depression, had thrown her into a state of agitation bordering on hysteria. She was constantly changing her attitude, rising and seating herself and walking excitedly about. She would talk rapidly one moment, and then relapse into a sudden chilled silence in which she seemed to hear nothing. Once or twice she laughed a hard, unnatural laugh of pure nervousness. Presently, she said, After I've forgotten all about myself and no longer remember any reason why I shouldn't marry you, you will still remember what I've forgotten, and perhaps you won't want me. You know very well that I want you anyway, and just the same whatever happens or doesn't happen, he answered. I wonder whether it will be fair to let you marry me after I've forgotten. She continued thoughtfully, I don't know, but I ought to make you promise now that you won't ask me to be your wife, for, of course, I shouldn't then know any reason for refusing you. I wouldn't promise that. Oh, but you wouldn't do so mean a thing as to take an unfair advantage of my ignorance, she replied. Anyway, I now release you from your engagement to marry me, and leave you to do as you choose tomorrow after I've forgotten. I would make you promise not to let me marry you then, if I did not feel that utter forgetfulness of the past will leave me as pure and as good as if, as if I were like other women. And she burst into tears and cried bitterly for a while. The completeness with which she had given herself up to the belief that on the morrow her memory was to be wiped clean of the sad past alternately terrified him and momentarily seduced him to share the same fool's paradise of fancy. And it is needless to say that the thought of receiving his wife to his arms as fresh and virgin and hard and memory as when her girlish beauty first entranced him was very sweet to his imagination. I suppose I'll have mother with me then, she said musingly. How strange it will be. I've been thinking about it all day. I shall often find her looking at me oddly and ask her what she is thinking of, and she will put me off. Why, Henry, I feel as dying persons do about having people look at their faces after they are dead. I shouldn't like to have any of my enemies who knew of about me see me after I've forgotten. You'll take care that they don't, won't you, Henry? Why, dear, that is morbid. What is it to a dead person whose soul is in heaven who looks at his dead face? It will be so with you after tomorrow if the process succeeds. She thought a while and then said, shaking her head. Well, anyhow, I'd rather none but my friends of those who used to know me should see me. You'll see to it, Henry. You may look at me all you please and think of what you please as you look. I don't care to take away the memory of anything from you. I don't believe a woman ever trusts in a man as I do you. I'm sure none ever had reason to. I should be sorry if you didn't know all my faults. If there's a record to be kept of them anywhere in the universe, I'd rather it should be in your heart than anywhere else, unless maybe God has a heart like yours. And she smiled at him through those sweetest tears that ever welled up in human eyes, the tears of a limitless and perfect trust. At one o'clock the next afternoon Madeleine was sitting on the sofa in Dr. Haydnhoff's reception room with compressed lips and pale cheeks, while Henry was nervously striding to and fro across the room and furtively watching her with anxious looks. Neither had had much to say that morning. Already, said the doctor, putting his head in at the door of his office and again disappearing, Madeleine instantly rose. Henry put his hand on her arm and said, Remember, dear, this was your idea, not mine. And if the experiment fails, that makes no difference to me. She bowed her head without replying, and they went into the office. Madeleine, trembling and deadly pale, sat down in the operating chair, and her head was immovably secured by padded clamps. She closed her eyes and put her hand in Henry's. Now, said the doctor to her, Fix your attention on the class of memories which you wish destroyed. The electric current more readily follows the fibers which are being excited by the pleasant passage of nervous force. Touch my arm when you find your thoughts somewhat concentrated. In a few moments she pressed the doctor's arm, and instantly the murmurous, bubbling hum of the battery began. She clasped Henry's hand a little firmer, but made no other sign. The noise stopped. The doctor was removing the clamps. She opened her eyes and closed them again drowsily. Oh, I'm so sleepy. You shall lie down in my arms, and you shall lie down and take a nap, said the doctor. There was a little retiring room connected with the office where there was a sofa. No sooner had she laid her head on the pillow than she fell asleep. The doctor and Henry remained in the operating office, the door into the retiring room being just a jar, so that they could hear her when she awoke. END OF CHAPTER X How long will she sleep, doctor? asked Henry, after satisfying himself by looking through the crack of the door, that she was actually asleep. Patients do not usually awake under an hour or two, replied the doctor. She was very drowsy, and that is a good sign. I think we may have the best hopes of the result of the operation. Henry walked restlessly to and fro. After Dr. Haydnhoff had regarded him a few moments, he said, You are nervous, sir. There was quite a time to wait, and it is better to remain as calm as possible, for, in the event of an unsatisfactory result, your friend will need soothing, and you will scarcely be equal to that if you are already yourself excited. I have some very fair cigars here. Do me the honour to try one. I prescribe it medicineally. Your nerves need quieting. And he extended his cigar case to the young man. As Henry, with a nod of acknowledgement, took a cigar and lit it, and resumed his striding to and fro, the doctor, who had seen himself comfortably, began to talk, apparently with the kindly intent of diverting the other's mind. There are a number of applications of the process I hope to make, which will be rather amusing experiments. Take, for example, the case of a person who has committed a murder, come to me, and forgotten all about it. Suppose he is subsequently arrested, and the fact ascertained that while he undoubtedly committed the crime, he cannot possibly recall his guilt, and so far as his conscience is concerned, is as innocent as a newborn babe. What then? What do you think the authorities would do? I think, said Henry, that they would be very much puzzled what to do. Exactly, said the doctor, I think so too. Such a case would bring out clearly the utter confusion and contradiction in which the current theories of ethics and moral responsibility are involved. It is time the world was waked up on that subject. I should usually enjoy precipitating such a problem on the community. I am hoping every day a murderer will come in and require my services. There is another sort of case which I should also like to have. He continued, shifting his cigar to the other side of his mouth, and uncrossing and recrossing his knees. Suppose a man has done another a great wrong, and being troubled by remorse, comes to me, and has the sponge of oblivion passed over that item in his memory. Suppose the man he is wronged, pursuing him with a heart full of vengeance, gets him at last in his power, but at the same time finds out that he has forgotten, and can't be made to remember the act he desires to punish him for. It would be very vexatious, said Henry. Wouldn't it, though? I can imagine the pursuer, the Avenger, if a really berlin fellow, actually weeping tears of despair as he stands before his victim, and marks the utter unconsciousness of any offense with which his eyes meet his own. Such a look would blunt on the very stiletto of a Corsican. What sweetness would there be in vengeance if the Avenger, as he plunged the dagger in his victim's bosom, might not hiss in his ear, remember? As well, find satisfaction in torturing an idiot or mutilating a corpse. I am not talking now of brutish fellows who would kick a stalker's stone which they stumbled over, but of men intelligent enough to understand what vengeance is. But don't you fancy the Avenger, in the case you supposed, would retain some bitterness toward his enemy, even though he had forgotten the offense? Ah, fancy he would always feel a certain cold dislike and aversion for him, replied the doctor, an aversion such as one has for an object or an animal associated with some painful experience. But any active animosity would be a moral impossibility if he were quite certain that there was absolutely no guilty consciousness on the other's part. But scarcely any application of the process gives me so much pleasure to dream about, as its use to make forgiving possible, full, free, perfect, joyous forgiving, in cases where otherwise, however good our intentions, it is impossible, simply because we cannot forget. Because they cannot forget, friends must part from friends who have wronged them, even though they do from their hearts wish them well. But they must leave them, for they cannot bear to look in their eyes and be reminded every time of some bitter thing, to all such what good tidings will it be to learn of my process. Why, when the world gets to understand about it, I expect that two men or two women or a man and a woman will come in here and say to me, we have quarrelled and outraged each other, we have injured our friend, our wife, our husband, we regret, we would forgive, but we cannot because we remember, put between us the atonement of forgetfulness that we may love each other as of old. And so joyous will be the tidings of forgiveness made easy and perfect, that none will be willing to waste even an hour in enmity. Raging foes in the heat of their first wrath will be think themselves, ere they smite, and come to me for a more perfect satisfaction of their feud than any vengeance could promise. Henry suddenly stopped in his rustle's pacing, stepped on tiptoe to the slightly open door of the retiring room, and peered anxiously in. He thought he heard a slight stir. But no, she was still sleeping deeply, her position quite unchanged. He drew noiselessly back, and again almost closed the door. I suppose, resumed the doctor after a pause, that I must prepare myself as soon as the process gets well enough known to attract attention to be roundly abused by a theologians and moralists. I mean, of course, the thicker-headed ones. They'll say I've got a machine for destroying conscience, and am sapping the foundations of society. I believe that is the phrase. The same class of people will maintain that it is wrong to cure the moral pain which results from a bad act who used to think it wrong to cure the physical diseases induced by vicious indulgence. But the outcry won't last long, while nobody will be long in seeing that the morality of the two kinds of cures is precisely the same. If one is wrong, the other is. If there is something holy and God-ordained in the painful consequences of sin, it is as wrong to meddle with those consequences when they are physical as when they are mental. The alleged reformatory effect of such suffering is as great in one case as the other. But, bless you, nobody nowadays holds that a doctor ought to refuse to set a leg which its owner broke when drunk or fighting so that the man may live through life as a warning to himself and others. I know some foggy-minded people hold in a vague way that the working of moral retribution is somehow more intelligent, just, and equitable than the working of physical retribution. They have a nebulous notion that the law of moral retribution is, in some peculiar way, God's law, while the law of physical retribution is the law of what they call nature, somehow not quite so much God's law as the other is. Such an absurdity only requires to be stated to be exposed. The law of moral retribution is precisely as blind, death, and meaningless and entitled to be respected just as little as the law of physical retribution. Why, sir, of the two, the much abused law of physical retribution is decidedly more moral, in the sense of obvious fairness, than the so-called law of moral retribution itself. Four, while the hardened offender virtually escapes all pangs of conscience, he can't escape the diseases and accidents which attend to vice and violence. The whole working of moral retribution, on the contrary, is to torture the sensitive soul, who would never do much harm anyway, while the really hard cases of society, by their very hardness, avoid all suffering. And then again see how merciful and reformatory is the working of physical retribution compared with the pitilessness of the moral retribution of memory. A man gets over his accident, or disease, and is healthy again, having learned his lesson with the renewed health that alone makes it of any value to have had that lesson. But shame and sorrow for sin and disgrace go on forever, increasing in intensity and proportion as they purify the soul. Their worm dyeth not, and their fire is not quenched. The deeper the repentance, the more intense the longing and love for better things, the more poignant the pang of regret and the sense of irreparable loss. There is no sense, no end, no use in this law, which increases the severity of the punishment, as the victim grows in innocency. Ah, sir, exclaimed the doctor, rising and laying his hand caressingly on the battery, while a triumphant exaltation shone in his eyes. You have no idea of the glorious satisfaction I take in crushing, destroying, annihilating these black devils of evil memories that feed on hearts. It is a triumph like a god's. But oh, the pity of it, the pity of it, he added softly, as his hand fell by his side, that this so simple discovery has come so late in the world's history. Think of the infinite multitude of lives it would have redeemed from the desperation of hopelessness, or the lifelong shadow of paralyzing grief to all manner of sweet, good, and joyous uses. Henry opened the door slightly and looked into the retiring room. Madeline was lying perfectly motionless, as he had seen her before. She had not apparently moved a muscle. With a sudden fear at his heart, he softly entered, and on Diptoe crossed the room and stood over her. The momentary fear was baseless. Her bosom rose and fell with long, full breathing. The faint flush of healthy sleep tinged her cheek, and the lips were relaxed in a smile. It was impossible not to feel, seeing her slumbering so peacefully, that the marvellous change had been indeed wrought, and the cruel demons of memory that had so often lurked behind the low white forehead were at last no more. When he returned to the office, Dr. Haydnhof had seated himself and was contemplately smoking. She was sleeping, I presume, he said. Soundly, replied Henry. That is well. I have the best of hopes. She is young. That is a favourable element in an operation of this sort. Henry said nothing, and there was a considerable silence. Finally the doctor observed, with the air of a man who thinks it is just as well to spend the time talking. I am fond of speculating what sort of a world, morally speaking, we should have if there were no memory. One thing is clear. We should have no such very wicked people as we have now. There would, of course, be congenitally good and bad dispositions, but a bad disposition would not grow worse and worse as it does now, and without this progressive badness the depths of depravity are never attained. Why do you think that? Because it is the memory of our past sins which demoralizes us, by imparting a sense of weakness and causing loss of self-respect. Take the memory away, and a bad act would leave us no worse in character than we were before its commission, and not a bit more likely to repeat it than we were to commit it the first time. But surely our good or bad acts impress our own characters for good or evil, and give an increased tendency one way or the other. Excuse me, my dear sir. Acts merely express the character. The recollection of those acts is what impresses the character, and gives it a tendency in a particular direction. And that is why I say, if memory were abolished, constitutionally bad people would remain at their original and normal degree of badness, instead of going from bad to worse, as they always have done hitherto in the history of mankind. Memory is the principle of moral degeneration. Remembered sin is the most utterly diabolical influence in the universe. It invariably either debauches or moderizes men and women, accordingly as it renders them desperate and hardened, or makes them a prey to one dying grief and self-contempt. When I consider that more sin is the only end of dying for sin, and that the only way to cure the ache of conscience is to harden it, I marvel that even so many as do us say the bitter and hopeless way of repentance and reform. In the main, the pangs of conscience so much vaulted by some do most certainly drive one deeper into sin where they might bring one back to virtue. But, remarked Henry, suppose there were no memory and men did forget their acts, they would remain just as responsible for them as now. Precisely, that is, not at all, replied the doctor. You don't mean to say that there is no such thing as responsibility, no such thing as justice? Oh, I see. You deny free will. You are a necessitarian. The doctor waved his hand rather contemptuously. I know nothing about your theological distinctions. I am a doctor. I say that there is no such thing as more responsibility for past acts, no such thing as real justice in punishing them, for the reason that human beings are not stationary existences, but changing, growing, incessantly progressive organisms, which in no two moments are the same. Therefore justice, whose only possible mode of proceeding is to punish in present time, for what is done in past time, must always punish a person more or less similar to, but never identical with, the one who committed the offense, and therein must be no justice. Why, sir, it is no theory of mine, but the testimony of universal consciousness, if you interrogate it all right, that the difference between the past and present selves of the same individual is so great as to make them different persons for all moral purposes. That single fact we were just speaking of, the fact that no man would care for vengeance on one who had injured him, provided he knew that all memory of the offense had been plotted utterly from his enemy's mind, proves the entire proposition. It shows that it is not the present self of his enemy that the avenger is angry with at all, but the past self. Even in the blindness of his wrath, he intuitively recognizes the distinction between the two. He only hates the present man, and seeks vengeance on him insofar as he thinks that he exalts and remembering the injury his past self did, or, if he does not exalt, that he insults and humiliates him by the bare fact of remembering it. That is the continuing offense which alone keeps alive the avenger's wrath against him. His fault is not that he did the injury, for he did not do it, but that he remembers it. It is the first principle of justice, isn't it, that nobody ought to be punished for what he can't help. Can the man of today prevent or affect what he did yesterday? Let me say rather, but the man did out of whom he has grown, has grown, I repeat, by a physical process which he could not check saved by suicide. As well punish him for Adam's sin, for he might as easily have prevented that, and as every wit is accountable for it. Do pity the child born without his choice of depraved parents. Pity the man himself, the man of today who, by a process as inevitable as a child's birth, has grown on the rodent's dock of yesterday. Think you, that it is not sometimes with a sense of loathing and horror unutterable, that he feels his fresh life thus inexorably knitting itself on, growing on, that old stem. For mind you well, the consciousness of the man exists alone in the present day and moment. There alone he lives. That is himself. The former days are his dead, for whose sins, in which he had no part, which per chance by his choice never would have been done, he is held to answer and dependence. And you thought, young man, that there was such a thing as justice? I can see, said Henry after a pause, that when half a lifetime has intervened between a crime and its punishment, and the man has reformed, there is a certain lack of identity. I have always thought punishments in such cases very barbarous. I know that I should think it hard to answer for what I might have done as a boy twenty years ago. Yes, said the doctor. Flavorant cases of that sort take the general eye, and people say that they are instances of retribution rather than justice. The unlikeliness between the extremes of life, as between the babe and the man, the lad and the daughter, strikes every mind, and all admit that there is not any apparent identity between these widely parted points in the progress of a human organism. How then? How soon does identity begin to decay? And when it is gone? In one year? Five years? Ten years? Twenty years? Or how many? Shall we fix fifty years as the period of a moral statute of limitations? After which punishment shall be deemed barbarous? No, no. The gulf between the man of this incident and the man of the past is just as impassable as that between the baby and the man. What is past is eternally past. So far as the essence of justice is concerned, there is no difference between one of the cases of punishment which you called barbarous, and one in which the penalty follows the offense within the hour. There is no way of joining the past with the present, and there is no difference between what is a moment past and what is eternally past. Then the assassin as he withdraws a celletto from his victim's breast is not the same man who plunged it in? Obviously not, replied the doctor. He may be exalting in the deed, or more likely he may be in a reaction of regret. He may be worse. He may be better. His being better or worse makes it neither more nor less just to punish him, though it may make it more or less expedient. Justice demands identity. Similarity, however close, will not answer. Though a mother could not tell her twins sons apart, it would not make it any more just to punish one for the other sins. Then you don't believe in the punishment of crime? said Henry. Most emphatically I do, replied the doctor. Only I don't believe in calling it justice or ascribing it a moral significance. The punishment of criminals is a matter of public policy and expediency, precisely like measures for the suppression of nuisances or the prevention of epidemics. It is needful to restrain those who by crime have revealed their likelihood to commit further crimes and to furnish by their punishment a motive to deter others from crime and to deter the criminal himself after his release, added Henry. I included him in the word others, said the doctor. The man who was punished is other from the man who did the act and after punishment he is still the other. Really doctor, observed Henry. I don't see that a man who fully believes your theory is in any need of your process for obliterating his sins. He won't think of blaming himself for them in any way. True, said the doctor, perfectly true. My process is for those who cannot attain to my philosophy. I break for the weak the chain of memory which holds them to the past. But stronger souls are independent of me. They can unloose the iron links and free themselves. Would that more had the needful wisdom and strength thus serenely to put their past behind them, leaving the dead to bury their dead and go blightly forward, taking each new day as a life by itself and reckoning themselves daily newborn, even as verily they are. Physically, mentally, indeed, the present must be forever the outgrowth of the past, conformed to its conditions, bear its burdens, but more responsibility for the past to the present has none, and by the very definition of the words can have none. There is no need to tell people that they ought to regret and grieve over the errors of the past. They can't help doing that. I myself suffer at times pretty sharply from twinges of the rheumatism which I owe to youthful dissipation. It would be absurd enough for me, a quiet old fellow of sixty, to take blame to myself for what the wild student did, but all the same, I confoundedly wish he hadn't. Ah, me, continued the doctor. Is there not sorrow and wrong enough in the present world, without having moralists teach us that it is our duty to perpetuate all our past sins and shames in the multiplying mirror of memory? As if, forsooth, we were any more the causers of the sins of our past selves than of our father's sins. How many a man and woman have poisoned their lives with tears for some one's sin far away in the past! Their folly is greater because sadder, but otherwise just like that of one who should devote his life to a mood of fatuous and imbecilic self-complacency over the recollection of a good act he had once done. The consequences of the good and the bad deeds our fathers and we have done fall on our heads in showers, now refreshing, now scorching, of rewards and of penalties alike undeserved by our present selves. But while we bear them with such equanimity as we may, let us remember that it is only fools who flatter themselves on their past virtues. So it is only a sadder sort of fools who plague themselves for their past faults. Henry's quick ear caught our bustle in the retiring room. He stepped to the door and looked in. Madeline was sitting up. End of Chapter 11 Recording by Todd Chapter 12 of Dr. Haydnhoff's process This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Read by Angelique Campbell February 2019 Dr. Haydnhoff's process by Edward Bellamy Chapter 12 Her attitude was peculiar. Her feet were on the floor. Her left hand rested on the sofa bar side. Her right was raised to one temple and checked in the very act of pushing back a heavy braid of hair which had been disarranged in sleep. Her eyebrows were slightly contracted and she was staring at the carpet. So concentrated did her faculties appear to be in the effort of reflection as she did not notice Henry's entrance until standing by her side. He asked in a voice which he vainly tried to study. How do you feel? She did not look up at him at all but replied in a dreamy drawing tone of one in a brown study. I feel, well, I'm ever so rested. Did you just wake up? He asked after a moment. He did not know what to say. She now glanced up at him. But with an expression of only partial attention as if still retaining a hold on the clue of her thoughts. Been awake some time. Trying to figure it out, she said. Think out what? He asked. With a feeble affectation of ignorance he was entirely at loss what course to take with her. Why, what it was that we came here to have me forget? She said sharply. You needn't think the doctor made quite a bowl of me. It was something like hewing, herring, Howard. It was something that began with H. I'm quite sure H. She continued thoughtfully, pressing her hand on the braids she was yet in the act of pushing back from her forehead. H. Or maybe K. Tell me, Henry, you must know, of course. Why, why? He stammered in consternation. If you came here to forget it was the use of telling you, now you've forgotten it, that is, I mean, supposing there was anything to forget. I haven't forgotten it, she declared. The process has been a failure anyhow. It's just puzzled me for a minute. You might as well tell me. Why, I've almost got it now. I shall remember it in a minute. And she looked up at him as if she were on the point of being vexed with his obstinacy. The doctor, coming into the room at this moment, Henry turned to him in his perplexity and said, Doctor, she wants to know what it was you tried to make her forget. What would you say if I told you it was an order love affair? replied the doctor, coley. I should say that you were rather impertinent. Answered Madeline, looking at him somewhat heartily. I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon, my dear. You do fiddle to resent it. But I trust you will not be vexed with an ordered gentleman, replied the doctor, beaming on her from under his bushy eyebrows with an expression of gloating benevolence. I suppose, Doctor, you were only trying to plague me so as to confuse me. She said, smiling, but you can't do it. I shall remember presently. He began with H. I am almost sure of that. Let's say Harrington, Harvard, that's like it. Harrison Cortis, perhaps, suggest that the doctor gravely. Harrison Cortis, Harrison? Harrison, she repeated, contracting her eyebrows thoughtfully. No, it was more like Harvard. I don't want any more of your suggestions. You'd like to get me off the track. The doctor left the room, laughing, and Henry said to her, his heart swelling with an exaltation which made his voice husky. Come, dear, we'd better go now. The train leaves at four. I'll remember yet. She said, smiling in him with a saucy toss of the head. He put out his arms and she came into them, and their lips met in a kiss, happy and loving on her part, and brought with no special feeling, but the lips which hers touched were tremulous. Slightly surprised at his agitation, she leaned back in his clasp and, resting her glorious black eyes on his head, how you love me, dear. Oh, the bright, sweet light in her eyes. The light he had not seen since she was a girl. In which I had never shown for him before. As they were about to leave, the doctor drew him aside. The most successful operation I ever made, sir, he said enthusiastically. I saw you vastartled that I should tell her so frankly what she had forgotten. You need not have been so. That memory is absolutely gone and cannot be restored. She might conclude that what she had forgotten was anything else in the world, except what it really was. You may always allude with the perfect safety before her, to the real thoughts. The only risk being that you, if she doesn't think you are making a bad joke, she will be afraid that you are losing your mind. All the way home, Madeline was full of guesses and speculations as to what it had been which she had forgotten. Finally, however, settling down to the conclusion that it had something to do with Harvard College, and when Henry refused to deny explicitly that such was the case, she was quite sure. She announced that she was going to get a lot of old catalogues and read over the names and also visit the college to see if she could not revive the recollection. But upon his solemnly urging her not to do so, lest she might find her associations with an institution not altogether agreeable if revived, she consented to give up the plan. Although, do you know she said, there is nothing in the world which I should like to find out so much as what we went to Dr. Heidenhoff in order to make me forget. What do you look so sober for? Wouldn't I be glad if I could? It's really nothing of any consequence, he said, pretending to be momentarily absorbed in opening his pen-knife. Supposing it isn't. It's just as vexatious not to remember it, she declared. How did you like Dr. Heidenhoff? he asked. Oh, I presume he's a good enough doctor, but I thought that joke about an affair of the heart wasn't at all nice. Men are so coarse. Oh, he meant no harm, said Henry hastily. I suppose he just tried to say the absurdest thing he could think of to put me off the track and make me laugh. I'm sure I felt more like boxing his ears. I saw you didn't like it either, sir. How so? Oh, you needn't think I didn't notice the start you gave when he spoke and the angry way you looked at him. You may pretend all of you want to, but you can't cheat me. You'd be the very one to make an absurd fuss if you thought I'd even so much as looked at anybody else. And then she burst out laughing at the rad and pale confusion on his face. Why, you're the very picture of jealousy at the very mention of the thing. Dear me, what a tyrant you were going to be. I was going to confess a lot of my old flirtations to you, but now I shan't dare to. Oh, Henry, how funny my face feels when I laugh, so stiff as if the muscles were all rusty. I should think I hadn't laughed for a year by the feeling. He scarcely dared leave her when they reached her lodgings, or fear that she might get to thinking and puzzling over the matter, and possibly, at length, might head upon a clue which, followed up, would lead her back to the grave so recently covered over in her life and turning her raving mad with a horror of the discovery. As soon as he possibly could, he almost ran back to her lodgings in a panic. She had evidently been thinking matters over. How came we here in Boston together, Henry? I don't seem to quite understand why I came. I remember you came after me. Yes, I came after you. What was the matter? Was I sick? Very sick. Out of my head? Yes. That's the reason you took me to the doctor, I suppose. Yes. But why is it mother here with me? You... You didn't seem to want her, answered Henry. A cold sweat covering the space under this terrible inquisition. Yes, she said slowly. I do remember your proposing that she should come and might not wanting her. I can't imagine why. I must have been out of my head, as you say. Henry, she continued, regarding him with eyes of sudden softness. You must have been very good to me. Dr. Heidenhoff could never make me forget that. The next day her mother came. Henry met her at the station and explained everything to her, so that she met Madeline already prepared for the transformation. That is, as much prepared as the poor woman could be. The idea was evidently more than she could take in. In the days that followed, she went about with a day's expression on her face and said very little. When she looked at Henry, it was with a piteous mingling of gratitude and appeal. She appeared to regard Madeline with a bewilderment that increased rather than decreased from day to day. Instead of becoming familiar with the transformation, the wonder of it evidently grew on her. The girl's old, buoyant spirits, which had returned in full flow, seemed to shock and pain her mother with a sense of incongruity she could not get over. When Madeline freighted her lever to an exhibition of her old imperious tyrannical ways, which to see again was to him sweeter than the return of day, her mother appeared frightened and would very feebly try to check her and addressed little deprecating remarks to Henry that were very sad to hear. One evening, when he came in in the twilight, he saw Madeline sitting with her baby as she had again taken to calling her mother in her arms, rocking and soothing her. While the old lady was crying and sobbing on her daughter's bosom, she mopes, poor little mother, said Madeline to Henry, I can't think what's the matter with her. We'll take her off with us on our wedding trip. She needs a little change. Damn me, no, that would never do! protested to the little woman, but the usual half-brightened look at Henry. Mr. Burr wouldn't think that nice at all. I mean that Mr. Burr shall be too occupied in thinking how nice I am to do any other thinking. That's like the dress you wore to the picnic at Hemlock Hollow, said Henry. Why, no, it isn't either. It only looks a little like it. It's light and cut the same way. That's all the resemblance, but of course a man couldn't be expected to know any better. It's exactly like it, maintained Henry. Would you bet? I'll bet. The prettiest pair of bracelets I can find in the city. Betting is wicked, said Madeline. And so I suppose it's my duty to take this bet just to discourage you from betting any more. Being engaged makes a girl responsible for a young man's moral culture. She left the room and returned in a few minutes with a veritable picnic dress on. There, she said, as she stepped before the mirror. Ah, that's it. That's it. I give in. He exclaimed, regarding her aesthetically, how pretty you are that day. I've never seen you so pretty before. Do you remember that was the day I kissed you first? I should never have dared to. I just had to. I couldn't help it. So I believe you said at the time, observed Madeline dryly. It does make me not so bad. She admitted, inspecting herself with a critical air. I really don't believe you could help it. I ought not to have been so hard on you, poor boy. There, there. I didn't mean that. Don't. Here comes Mother. Mrs. Brand entered the room, bringing a huge pasteboard box. Oh, she's got my wedding dress. Haven't you, Mother? exclaimed Madeline, pouncing on the box. Henry, you might as well go right home. I can't pay any more attention to you tonight. There's more important business. But I want to see you with it on. Hit a mirrored. You do? Yes. Very much. The worst kind. Well, then, you sit down and wait here by yourself for about an hour, and maybe you shall. And the women were off upstairs. At length, there was a rustling on the stairway, and she re-entered the room. Oh, sheenie-white and lustrous satin. Behind the gauzy veil that fell from the coronal of brown hair down the shoulders, her face shone with a look he had never seen in it. It was no longer the mirthful, self-reliant girl who stood before him, but the shrinking, trustful bride. The flashing, imperious expression that so well became her bold beauty at other times had given place to a shy and blushing softness, inexpressibly charming to her lover, and her shining eyes, a host of virginal alarms were mingled with a tender, solemn trust of love. As he gazed, his eyes began to swim with tenderness, and her face grew dim and misty to his vision. Then her white dress lost its sheen in form, and he found himself staring at the white window-shade of his bedroom through which the morning light was peering. Startled, bewildered, he raised himself on his elbow in bed. Yes, he was in bed. He looked around, mechanically taking note of one and another familiar feature of the apartment to make sure of his condition. There, on the stand-by-his-bed side, lay his open watch, still taking and indicating his customary hour of rising. There, turned on its face, lay that dry book on electricity he had been reading himself to sleep with. There, on the bureau, was the white paper that had contained the morphing and sleeping powder which he had taken before going to bed. That was what had made him dream. For some of it must have been a dream, but how much of it was a dream? He must think. That was a dream certainly about our wedding dress. Yes, and perhaps, yes, surely, that must be a dream about her mother's being in Boston. He could not remember writing Mrs. Brand since Matlin had been to Dr. Hydenhoff. He put his hand to his forehead, then raised his head, and looked around the room with an appealing stare. Great God! Why, that was a dream, too. The last waves of sleep ebbed from his brain and to Issa Rao's consciousness the clear, hard lines of reality disaverted themselves sharply from the big contours of dreamland. Yes, it was all a dream. He remembered how it all was now. He had not seen Matlin since the evening before when he had proposed their speedy marriage and she had called him back in that strange way to kiss her. What a dream! That sleeping powder had done it. That and the book on electricity and that talk on mental physiology which he had overheard in the car of the afternoon before. These rude materials, as unpromising as the shapeless bits of glass which the kaleidoscope turns in the schemes of symmetrical beauty where the stuff his dreams were made of. It was a strange dream, indeed. Such a one as a man has once or twice in a lifetime. As he tried to recall it, already it was fading from his remembrance. That kiss Matlin had called him back to give her the night before. That had been strange enough to have been a part also of the dream. With sweetness, with sadness, were in the touch of her lips. Ah, when she was once his wife, he could contend at better advantage with her depression of spirits. He would hasten their marriage. If possible, it should take place that very week. There was a knock at the door. The house-boy entered, gave him a note, and went out. He was in Matlin's hand, and dated the preceding evening. It read as follows. You have, but just gone away. I was afraid, when I kissed you, that you would guess what I was going to do and make a scene about it. And, oh dear, I am so tired that I couldn't bear a scene. But you didn't think. You took the kiss for a promise of what I was to be to you, when it only meant what I might have been. Poor dear boy, it was just a little stupid of you not to guess. Did you suppose I would really marry you? Did you really think I would let you pick up from the gutter a soiled rose to put in your bosom, when all the fields are full of fresh daisies? Oh, I love you too well for that. Yes, dear, I love you. I've kept the secret pretty well, haven't I? You see, loving you has made me more careful of your honor. Then when in my first recklessness I said I would marry you in spite of all. But don't think, dear, because I love you that it is a sacrifice I make in not being your wife. I do truly love you, but I could not be happy with you, for my happiness would be shamed to the end. It would be always with us as in the dismal weeks that now are over. The way I love you is not the way I loved him, but it is a better way. I thought perhaps you would like to know that you alone have any right to kiss my lips and dreams. I speak plainly of things we never spoke of, for you know people talk freely when night hides their faces from each other, and how much more if they knew that no morning shall ever come to make them shamed faced again. A certain cold white hand will have wiped away the flush of shame forever from my face when you look on it again, for I go this night to that elder and greater redeemer whose name is Death. Don't blame me, dear, and say I was not called away. Is it only when Death touches our bodies that we are called? Oh, I am called. I am called indeed. Madeline. End of Chapter 12 End of Dr. Haydnhoff's process by Edward Bellamy.