The Girl Without a Past

by E. R. Punshon

 

THE
GIRL WITHOUT
A PAST.

By E. R. Punshon

IT might have been the moment of her birth into this world. She opened her eves, she looked around, she was aware that she was sitting on a bench in Hyde Park, in the town of London, on a summer afternoon in the year 1909. She understood exactly all that that implied; but as for herself, her own identity, where she came from, who her friends were, what her history was, why she was sitting there, everything indeed that in any way concerned herself, all that had passed entirely from her mind. She glanced around her, so amazed and so bewildered that she was conscious of neither feeling, only of a certain something that she almost thought was amusement. An idea-even came into her mind that perhaps she had come here from another world. She got up and walked a few steps away, somewhat unsteadily. On a sudden an impulse took her to scream, but she resisted it. She thought she noticed a policeman looking at her, and she turned her back to him.

“I must be calm,” she said to herself, “I must think ... no doubt in a minute or two I shall remember ...”

She sat down on another bench, but her mind was so blank, so utterly and entirely vacant of her past, that she could not find it possible even to try to remember; it was as though she had no foothold on which to base her effort to recollect.

“But I must be someone,” she muttered aloud, and instantly a chill fear struck her lest perhaps she might be no one. She did not know what this meant, but she knew that it was terrible. She still continued to search her mind for some memory, some clue, some hint of recollection, but it was as though she wrestled in vacancy; as though she sought to see the invisible, to grasp the intangible.

She looked round her. The park presented its usual gay and animated appearance: carriages and horses, well-dressed men and women, the whole pageant of prosperous social life. To her it seemed a moving puppet show, a scene acted, with her for sole spectator. She closed her eyes again. In that moment she felt, as few feel in the whole course of their lives, the full meaning of the word “loneliness.” It struck her that perhaps she was mad.

“But I am not mad,” she said with emphasis.

She set herself to see if she could not find out from herself something about herself. Since her brain refused to answer, she questioned her dress, her appearance. Her clothing was good, even fashionable. She examined her boots and gloves with particular interest. They were new and good. She was not hungry or thirsty, so that it could not be long since she had eaten. On a sudden she noticed what before she had quite overlooked—that she held in one hand a small “vanity bag.” She opened it hurriedly, hoping to find in it some hint of her identity. It contained nothing but a handkerchief. Her first feeling was one of intense disappointment; but then she took out the handkerchief and examined it closely, and found in one corner the initial “G.” Tears came into her eyes, the relief was so great. Here at last was some slight thread connecting her with the world and her fellows; she was no longer quite so absolutely, so utterly alone. If others had names, homes, families, histories, friends, she had at least one thing, her initial “G.,’’ her blessed, dear, comforting, consoling “G.,” thrice happy letter.

She began to think of all possible names beginning with “G,” hoping to hit on her own and remember it—Gregory, Gregson, Grossmith, Gibson, Gibbs, and so on, and so on. She thought of many, but none seemed familiar. Then it struck her that perhaps this fortunate “G” might stand, not for her surname, but for her Christian name.

“Then I am _ perhaps Grace or Gwendolen,” she mused, “not Georgina, I hope ... anyhow, I have an initial.”

Heartened and encouraged to an extraordinary degree by this discovery, she set herself again to try to force some memory from the absolute emptiness of her past, and a new idea came to her.

“Can I be married?” she said to herself, “or engaged?” She almost tore the glove from her left hand and sighed with relief, for she found she wore no ring at all.

“It would have been too awful,” she reflected, “if I had turned out the mother of a large family, and perhaps with some horrid husband thing as well.”

She opened her vanity bag again, thinking she ought to look at it more carefully, and found, with a fresh shock of mingled wonder and relief, that inside the bag there was a name and address written. She looked eagerly and read: “Beatrice Glynn, 14, Overton Road, Bayswater.”

“There is who I am,” she said to herself. “Beatrice Glynn—I must go to Overton Road at once.” She hurried from the park as fast as she could, impatient to reach her home and end this strange bewilderment, this fantastic trick her brain had played her.

“Perhaps I only lodge there,” she thought, “or perhaps there is a big family of us—mother, sisters, brothers, perhaps dear me, it’s very odd. It will be most frightfully awkward.”

She found Overton Road without much difficulty. It seemed a long street of moderate-sized houses, at rents of perhaps seventy pounds to one hundred pounds a year. The house nearest to her was numbered seventy, and as she hurried on to get to No. 14, she noticed a smartly dressed girl coming out of the area gate of one of the houses. Evidently this was a servant on her afternoon out; and there came a swift, dismaying idea into the heart of the other girl hurrying so eagerly towards No. 14.

“Gracious!” she thought to herself; “supposing I’m a maid there and it’s not my home at all, and this is just my day out. Oh, dear.” She paused and turned back a few steps, trying in vain to reassure herself.

“Servants often dress very smartly,” she told herself. “I may quite easily be one—a parlour-maid, very likely.”

She had reached the main road again now, and noticing a draper’s shop with a mirror in it, she went across to look at herself.

“I don’t look like a servant,” she decided; “at least, I don’t think I do.” In fact, what she saw was the presentation of a very pretty, charming girl, very tastefully attired, with large dark blue eyes, fair hair and a very delicate complexion. Since this was the first time that, so far as her memory went, she had ever seen her own face, it is quite excusable that she should have continued to study it for some minutes with keen interest and attention. Certainly few people ever have the chance of seeing their own faces for the first time in their lives. But it was equally natural that her absorption in herself should be misunderstood. The sound of a titter made her look round quickly, to find herself an object of much interest and amusement to various onlookers.

“Never you mind ’em, miss,” said a small errand boy, consolingly. “Why, I often spends hours and hours at ’ome admiring of myself in a polished dish-cover.”

With a face as red as fire the girl hurried away, and when she had recovered her composure a little she decided that she had better go to 14, Overton Road and see what she could find out there. But when she reached No. 14 she surveyed it with some doubt and suspicion. The curtains were certainly atrocious, and the front door was painted in a style that made her feel quite queer, and as for the wall-paper of the dining-room just visible from the street—well, she really did not think that she could have lived here. She went up to the door and knocked with the courage of despair. A servant in cap and trailing strings opened it, and waited. It was plain that she at least did not know the newcomer, who felt at this perhaps more relief than anything else

“Oh, if you please,” she said, nervously, “does Miss Beatrice Glynn live here?”

“No,” answered the servant, stolidly; “it’s Mrs. Jones.”

“Ah,” said the girl, with a kind of gasp, “do you know I mean—Miss Beatrice Glynn——”

The servant shook her head with an air of some doubt and suspicion, for she recognised something unusual in the other's tones. A stout, middle-aged lady came hurrying out of a room near.

“What is it?” she asked. “Somebody asking for Miss Glynn?”

“Yes,” said the girl, tremblingly; “do you know——”

“Glynn?” the newcomer repeated; “why, that’s the name of the people who used to live here, but they’ve moved.”

‘Oh, moved,” the girl muttered, much taken aback, for she had not thought of that. “You couldn’t tell me——”

“No,” the stout lady answered. “I understood they went into the country. They didn’t like this part after the death of their daughter Beatrice.”

“It was her the lady was asking for,” interposed the servant, stolidly.

“Oh, didn’t you know?” said the stout lady. “Oh, yes, poor Miss Beatrice—yes, she was killed in an accident in Hyde Park.”

The girl muttered incoherent thanks and stumbled down the steps and walked away

“Poor thing,” said the mistress of No. 14, watching her. “Quite a shock, evidently. Strange she should not have known, for plainly she was a friend.”

But the girl walked away in the very strangest tumult of mind and feeling and sensation it is possible to conceive. She wondered if she were really dead; if perhaps in some way she were Beatrice Glynn come back to life. She even wondered if she were some other’s soul inhabiting the body of dead Beatrice Glynn!

“This is more awful than anything,” she said, pushing her hands against her burning temples that throbbed as if they would burst. “It is awful enough not to know who one really is, but more awful still to suspect that one is really dead.”

It was by now some time since that moment when, as it were, she had first become conscious of herself, or rather of her present self, her present identity. Since then she had been walking continually, she had neither eaten nor drunk, and she had endured such a storm of conflicting emotions as few people experience in a lifetime. Exhausted, she returned to the park and sat down on a bench. A kind of peace settled on her, the stupor of absolute fatigue. It is true she still had no idea of her own identity or whence she came, but then she no longer cared. The matter had ceased to interest her. It was enough for her to sit and watch those who passed by, idly to note their appearance, to wonder faintly who they were and if they all possessed that tremendous and unsearchable knowledge of themselves. It began to grow late. A park-keeper passing by noticed her and thought of speaking, but did not. The character of the people in the park changed. They were no longer the gay, well-dressed crowd who had occupied it in the afternoon; the nursemaids and their charges had vanished too. Nor were there now, as there had been next, the stolid business men, the clerks, the workmen returning to their homes after the labours of the day Instead curious and furtive figures were appearing with the darkness, slinking to and fro on devious errands. But mingled with these were other and lovelier figures, young men and maidens pursuing their artless wooing under the trees of the London park as their first parents had done in the Garden of Eden. One couple strayed near the silent, motionless figure on the bench. They did not see her. Why should they? They faced each other, and their lips met in a long embrace. They passed on, unheeding and unaware of the girl on the bench, who now was trembling from head to foot, shaken with the dawn of memory returning as with the throes of a new birth.

‘God pity me,” she said; “was there not a man once who did that to me?”

She rose to her feet and stood still for a minute; her mien, her eyes were wild

“Who? who? who?” she panted.

She walked away with quick, irregular steps. The question beat itself upon her brain as a cobbler hammers leather. “Who?” It seemed to her she still felt that burning kiss upon her lips, but who had given it? Who?

“This is yet more awful than anything else,” she said, and if I do not soon remember I shall die.”

Her whole life was concentrated on the one effort to remember, to remember. How awful it was to know nothing of this man but his kiss. His kiss. That she still felt on her lips, and her brain was near to frenzy with the effort to remember, when she heard the sound of a man running. She turned. It had grown so dark she could not see his face. Nevertheless she knew, and peace fell upon her storm-tossed soul.

“Oh, Jack; is it you, Jack?” she said.

“Mary,” he exclaimed, with a kind of sob, “what has happened? We have looked everywhere ... a park-keeper told me ... Are you all right? ... Are you sure...?”

“Just take me home,” she said, softly; “I can’t bear any more. Just take me home.”

 

It was a day or two later before she could give any account of her adventures. Then she told her mother all about it.

“When you left me,” she said, “I just meant to walk home across the park. I was thinking—thinking how happy I was that Jack loved me, and that he had asked me to marry him the night before, and I remember how happy I felt, and how beautiful I thought all the world, and that made me think of poor Beatrice, my poor, dear sister Beatrice, and I thought how dreadful it was she should be killed in the park in that accident, while I was alive and so happy. Then I tried not to think of her any more, but just of Jack, and all at once I happened to look up and I was at the exact spot where Beatrice was killed—I had always avoided it, it was the first time I had seen it since that day. I remember I felt strange and I opened my bag to take out my handkerchief, and then I must have seen suddenly that it was not my own bag I had brought, but Beatrice’s, the one she left in my room that day. I must have taken it up by mistake. And then I don’t remember anything more till I found myself sitting on that bench wondering who I was and where I came from.”

“Poor child,” said her mother, touching her hand.

But it was not to her mother, but solely to someone else, that she confided how the first dawn of memory rising in her Was at the sight of a kiss exchanged.