His Other Self

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

 

His Other Self

THE STRANGE STORY OF THE MAN WHO WAS TWO MEN.

BY MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

I.

THE man on the bed waved away the cup of broth and turned with a groan to the wall. The woman stood looking down at his despairing figure, her mouth working convulsively. Then she leaned over and patted his shoulder with her work-hardened hand.

“Don't take on so, Joe! Let me bring the children in. The baby's been cryin' for daddy all day.” There was no answer, only a negative shake of the head. “An Tim's been here to see how you stood the operation, an' he says Miles is goin' to give you a new job soon's you're better.”

She stood for a moment; then, as the silence was unbroken, she darkened the room and went out, furtively wiping her eyes on her checked gingham apron. As the door closed behind her the man opened his eyes and turned around. Raising himself on his elbow, he looked with careful scrutiny at each object in the room—at the cheap furniture, the wallpaper, the gun over the mantel, even the suit of clothes which hung from a nail on the door. Nothing was familiar.

For the thousandth time since he had awakened to consciousness that morning, he tried to marshal into order the chaos of his mind. The woman's story was preposterous, of course. He was foolish to be agitated by it. And yet—he had heard of such things occurring. And then his hands—again he held them to the light and examined them. They were calloused and knotted with labor. Again he touched his chin. He was not dreaming—there was a heavy heard. God, if it were true!

He sank back on the pillow as the doctor entered, and submitted silently to the dressing of a wound in his head. When it was over, and the woman had left the room, he turned to the physician with puzzled eyes.

“What's the meaning of it all, doctor? This woman says that she is my wife, that these children running around are mine! Why, doctor, I could swear I had never seen any of them in my life before. There is some terrible mistake. You call me Joe. My name is not Joe, it is Frank, Frank Elbert Martin. Why, look here, do you think I ever had hands like these?”

He held them up as he spoke, the hands of a man who has earned his bread with them for years, knotted and large-veined, with the nails broken and misshapen.

“Queer hands for a fellow just out of college,” he said bitterly.

The doctor laid down his hat and case, and drew a chair to the bed.

“College! What college?” he asked, his eyes on the other's face.

“Yale, seventy-six. I have been here at the works only about a year. And ever since I came I have feared just what has happened. The magazine was entirely too close to the factory. Were many of the men injured?”

The doctor whistled. The magazine of the Rochester Ammunition Company had blown up just once in its history, in July, 1877, almost twenty-five years ago! He suddenly comprehended the terrible disaster that had taken this middle-aged man back to his youth.

“Quite a number,” he answered evasively. “Don't talk about it until you are stronger.”

“In the name of Heaven, doctor, don't put me off! Don't you see the suspense is driving me crazy? Can't you explain some of these things? How I got here, why my name is changed. and how I go to sleep clean-shaven and waken with a beard?”

The doctor took off his glasses and wiped them. He would have given a great deal to get away from the searching glance of the sunken eyes beneath the bandage. But he was not a coward, and a long experience with the sadder side of suffering humanity had taught him that the swiftest cut of the knife is the kindest.

“My poor fellow,” he said gently, “I have been your physician for fifteen years. I have always known you as Joe Kelly, and the woman who has just gone out as your wife.”

“My God, doctor, is this true?”

In his excitement the patient sat up in bed; then, as the doctor nodded affirmatively, he fell back, and, burying his face in the pillow, sobbed pitiably. The doctor leaned over and felt his pulse. Beneath his fingers it leaped along with unnatural velocity, but showed no signs of failure. From his tiny hypodermic case he extracted one of the microscopic vials, and dissolving a tablet in some water held it to the sick man's lips.

“When I started in practise here, some fifteen years ago, the men at the works told me of a young fellow who had been injured in the explosion, and whose recovery had been accompanied by a complete loss of memory. Such cases are not particularly rare, and I paid no special attention; but I remember that he learned to speak, and even to walk again.”

“And it was I?” with pale lips.

“It was you. Two years ago your wife persuaded you to consult me about the constant pain you had at the seat of the old injury in your head. I found a large area of the skull depressed, and pressing on the brain. At first you refused to sanction an operation, but the pains grew so intense that finally you consented, and I trephined your skull three days ago. What has happened must be the result of the operation. I wish I could offer you some consolation, but there is none, unless in time——”

“Time—with my best years gone? Time—when I have the heart and ambitions of a boy and the body of an old man?” He calmed himself with an effort. “What year is this?”

“Nineteen hundred and two.”

“Nineteen hundred and two! And in seventy-seven I was to have been married! Oh, Alice, Alice!”

So absorbed was he in his grief that the doctor picked up his case and slipped from the room unnoticed. Outside the door the woman was waiting, tear-worn and anxious.

“Do you think he will know me now?” she asked.

The doctor shook his head.

“Not yet. Just leave him alone for a while. Keep the children out and everything quiet. Above all, don't excite or contradict him. If he says you are not his wife, let it go at that.”

She looked after the doctor's retreating figure, her patient eyes dismayed and troubled. She longed to go in and take her rightful place in the sick-room, but with her hand on the knob her courage failed her.

The man within, every nerve quivering and awake, heard the light touch and called her. She came slowly, smoothing back her none too tidy hair as she came. He scrutinized her closely, and she felt the cold hostility of his glance. When he spoke his voice was as hard as steel.

“The doctor has told me a great many things. I find I have done you a wrong—that what you told me this morning is true. I have no recollection of ever having seen you before this morning; I do not even know your name”—she stepped forward appealingly, but he raised his hand for silence. “Have you”—he spoke with an effort—“have you your—our—marriage certificate?”

With a cry she threw herself down beside the bed and caught his hand.

“Joe, Joe, don't say you don't know me! Me that have been your wife for twenty years! And the children, Joe dear, don't you know your own children? Why, look at these hands, all worn with workin' for you and the babies! Look at my face—don't turn away!”

The man shuddered and looked away from her.

“Think, Joe—maybe it'll come back. Don't you remember the day we were married; and my gray silk dress that you said was so fine? And how the sun was shining, and don't you mind you said you wouldn't trade with a king that day?”

Her voice, which had been hopeful, grew more and more wistfully entreating, but the man on the bed was unmoved. He drew his hand away, and the woman, burying her face in the pieced counterpane, fell to sobbing. A baby wailed fretfully in an adjoining room, and after a long, heart-broken look at the set, unbending face of her husband, she groped her way blindly through the door.

Left alone, the man lay quiet, only the clenching and unclenching of his hands betraying the storm of emotion that shook him. His eyes wandered over the room, ever seeking some familiar object, some link to connect him with the past. But there was none. In spite of himself his eyes turned again and again, as if fascinated, to the gun over the mantel. What a quick, easy solution it offered! He put the temptation away, only to find it returning. In vain his conscience told him of the duty he owed to the woman he had married, and to their children.

Weak as he was, he slowly and painfully worked his way to the edge of the bed and to his feet. Reeling like a drunken man, he caught the back of a chair, and, holding to it, was able to reach the dresser. Then his courage failed-—he was afraid to look. He gazed at the wooden-backed hair-brush on the top of the dresser, at the imitation leather box marked “Collars,” at his strangely unfamiliar hands—but he dared not raise his eyes. Then, with a bitter smile at his weakness, he threw back his head and looked in the mirror. Before him was a ghastly white face, furrowed with lines and roughened with exposure—the face of a man past middle life. The short beard which masked the lower jaw was streaked with gray, as was the unkempt hair escaping from the turban-like bandages. The man gazed stupefied.

“My God, it is true!” he cried, and staggering back, fell to the floor.

The shock had taken the last remnant of his physical strength, but he had not lost consciousness, and even now his iron determination conquered his weakness. Crawling on his hands and knees, he laboriously moved toward the mantel and pulled himself to his feet. Then with a final effort he lifted down the gun from the nail upon which it hung. It struck the shelf with a crash. He must be quick—some one would hear. Dropping into a chair, he examined the gun with trembling hands. Although it was of an unfamiliar make, he saw that it was loaded.

There was a step outside the door. With some difficulty he reversed the gun, holding the muzzle to his forehead. As the door swung open there came a loud report and a woman's scream.

II.

Outside, in the narrow hallway, the children were gathered in a frightened group about their mother. The low song of a neighbor, putting the baby to sleep in a near-by room, and now and then subdued voices from beyond the closed door, were the only sounds that broke the stillness.

Inside the room two doctors bent over the prostrate figure on the bed. Towels and instruments were scattered about, and the air was heavy with chloroform. Finally the older man rose from his constrained position and drew a long breath.

“I think he will do very well now,” he said, “but he has undoubtedly injured the brain area that we operated on last week for pressure.”

The man moved slightly, and opened his eyes.

“His pulse is strong and steady,” said the doctor, closing his watch with a snap. “It will do no harm to let his wife see him.”

The assistant fastened the bandage he had been adjusting, and went to the door. As he stepped into the hallway the woman looked at him mutely. He saw the question in her eyes, and smiled reassuringly.

“He'll be all right. Come in!”

He opened the door, and as she stepped hesitatingly into the room her eyes went straight to the pitiful figure on the bed. The sick man smiled a little, and feebly held out his hand.

“Well, Marthy,” he said, “where's the baby?”