Chapter 16 Pike After Death
Pike After Death
Holzmann, I knew the instant the words left my mouth that it was nonsense. Marry a dead man! Absurd. I was not even sure why I had said it.
Luckily, Pike gave no indication that he’d heard. He went to sleep, and I crept back downstairs and did the same.
He was very much changed.
“I am sorry, Miss Mary, that you must take such trouble over me,” he said one day as I was reminding him how to use a fork. “You must find it exceedingly vexing.”
“Not nearly so vexing as when you tried to steal my life’s work,” I said without thinking, then tensed.
But he only frowned. “Steal your life’s work? How could I…” His brow cleared. He sighed. “Oh, you mean the other fellow.”
“The other fellow?”
“Pike as was. The man before.”
“Are you telling me you do not remember?”
“No, I do, at least some of it. But… the things from before, they happened to him , not to me. The things he did were his, not mine.”
“Convenient,” I grumbled and turned to clear the dishes away. But he caught my hand.
“He hurt you,” he said. “He made you cry. I would not be him for all the world, Miss Bennet.” He smiled. “You saved me. I shan’t forget it. Or, since I do not feel that I am the same person… perhaps more apt to say that you created me.”
I admitted to myself that I quite liked the sound of that.
At first, it seemed that my creation was a very fine one. He quickly regained his faculties, and soon he spoke and moved as a gentleman. He really did seem a new man. He looked at me with gentle fondness, always eager to please.
Pike improved greatly but rather unevenly.
His memory continued to be rather spotty.
He had to grope for details of his past and, even when he did remember, referred to them as happening to “the other fellow.” His skills, however, returned intact no matter how obscure.
He corrected a mistake in one of my account books—and I keep them in code, which I have never taught a soul.
Yet he could not remember the names of his brothers and sisters.
It was remarkable, really. Were it possible, I should write a monograph on the differences between narrative memory (remembering that ) and functional memory (remembering how ).
My experience with Pike has left me quite convinced that they are stored in different areas of the brain.
If things had worked out differently, it would have been fascinating to dissect Pike’s; however, we’ve rather bigger fish to fry.
This “other fellow” business confounded me.
I did, of course, consider that it might be a ruse.
The “other fellow” was certainly capable of great deceit, and he and I had hardly parted on cordial terms. What if Pike was merely feigning this new innocence to gain my trust?
I fretted about it constantly. Once I even caught the old look of cunning in his eye.
When I whirled on him I found him swiftly slipping his hand out of his pocket.
“What’s that you have? What are you about?” I demanded. Behind my back I grasped the poker. Had I been foolish to let my guard down?
With a look of supreme shame, he produced a currant bun. I’d brought us one each for an early breakfast.
“I am sorry,” he said, with a face like a kicked dog. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I am!”
I loosened my grip on the poker. “It’s quite all right. You had only to ask. I do not wish you to go hungry.”
He gave me a sweet smile and wolfed it down in three bites. After that he stopped referring to himself in the third person, though I had the feeling this was only because he knew it upset me.
Pike came on so well that I soon felt it improper to conceal him in the attic, and late one night he climbed down the trellis and returned to his lodgings. (What they thought he was doing when he disappeared for three days, I’ve no idea—but rich young men are quickly forgiven their quirks.)
I’d another reason for getting him away. His affection was growing ever warmer, until I could barely meet his eyes because of the fondness there. Perhaps this was because of the foolish thing I’d blurted out.
For some weeks more I felt that my accidental experiment was not only a success but a triumph.
Pike appeared at local balls, as charming and well liked as ever.
He joked, rode to hunt, danced, ate with the correct fork, and was in every respect so gentlemanly and mild that I thought I ought to start a new factory turning out more Pikes.
He was, perhaps, a bit more taciturn, but he had never been a man of many words, so no one took much notice of this.
Not a soul but me knew that anything had happened.
I was a bit worried that he might again broach the subject of marriage—but perhaps, with this Pike, that would not be so bad.
I must marry someone, so why not a man I had constructed myself?
There was, however, the little matter of Pike’s engagement.
His invitations to Miss Charing to dance became fewer. She watched him with fond puzzlement, then with hurt, then pointedly did not watch him at all. At one public ball she appeared with puffy, reddened eyes and fled as soon as he arrived.
I tried not to feel too bad about this. She had always been rather nasty to me, after all.
Besides, with her lofty family name, she could get a new Pike in an instant.
Still, it would not do. He mustn’t jilt her.
When I’d blurted out that Pike was to marry me, I hadn’t been thinking of her.
I hadn’t been thinking of anything, really, except revenge.
“Pike, you cannot go on like this,” I insisted to him at one party when he was turning for me at the piano as usual. “You are practically engaged to the girl. You must not ignore her this way.”
“ He was practically engaged to her,” he muttered.
“ He is you!”
“I am not so sure.”
“Well, I am. Pike, if you jilt her, people will talk.”
I felt his stare at the side of my face. “Do you not wish me to jilt her? How am I to avoid it? I am to love you, obey you, and marry you.”
My face grew hot. Of course, this he could remember. “Pike… what I said when you awoke… it was… unfair.”
“What you said when I awoke? I do not recall, I am afraid. That time is a blur.”
“Then why do you say that you are to—” I choked on the words.
“To love you, honor you, and marry you?” He shrugged. “How does any man know who his great love is? It is inscribed upon his soul.”
If it was, then I was the scribe. “I told you that at an impressionable moment. I ought never to have said it. I release you from it. You may marry Miss Charing as you planned.”
“No, thank you,” he said, flipping the last page. I hardly needed it—my fingers had been mechanically picking out the well-known Scotch reel even as my mind was, itself, reeling.
In my defense, I really did try to repair the damage.
At every possible opportunity I urged him to resume his former life.
In most respects he did so, but resume his courtship of Miss Charing he would not do.
He ignored her most rudely, and it was me he always approached to ask for a dance first. And if I said no, he then offered to sit down with me for the rest of the night.
For a time I convinced myself that his behavior vis-à-vis Miss Charing was not a sign that something was amiss.
Perhaps even before his resurrection Pike had been tiring of her.
I myself had tired of her when we were four and she pushed me into a puddle.
Surely the impression my first words had left to this new Pike would soon wear off. But there was worse to come.