Part 3 (2/2)

Tom reflected a moment with a puckered face. His father waited for him to ask more, hoping he would. The boy felt the sympathy and invitation.

'_Before_,' he repeated, picking out the word with sudden emphasis, his mind evidently breaking against a problem. 'But if I felt hungry for something I _hadn't_ had before----?'

'In that case you wouldn't call it hunger. You wouldn't know what to call it. You'd feel a longing of some kind and would wonder what it meant.'

Tom's next words surprised him considerably. They came promptly, but with slow and thoughtful emphasis.

'So that if I know what I want, and call it dinner, or pain, or--love, or something,' he exclaimed, 'it means that I've had it _before_? And that's why I know it.' The last five words were not a question but a statement of fact apparently.

The doctor pretended not to notice the variants of dinner. At least he did not draw attention to them.

'Not necessarily,' he answered. 'The things you feel you want may be the things that everybody wants--things common to the race. Such wants are naturally in your blood; you feel them because your parents, your grandparents, and all humanity in turn behind your own particular family have always wanted them.'

'They come out of the sea, you mean?'

'That's very well expressed, Tom. They come out of the sea of human nature, which is everywhere the same, yes.'

The compliment seemed to annoy the boy.

'Of course,' he said bluntly. 'But--if it hurts?' The words were sharply emphasised.

'a.s.sociation of ideas again. Toothache suggests the pincers. You want to get rid of the pain, but the pain has to get worse before it can get better. You know that, so you face it gladly--to get it over.'

'You face it, yes,' said Tom. 'It makes you better in the end.'

It suddenly dawned upon him that his learned father knew nothing, nothing at least that could help him. He knew only what other people knew.

He turned then, and asked the ridiculous question that lay at the back of his mind all the time. It cost him an effort, for his father would certainly deem it foolish.

'Can a thing happen before it really happens?'

Dr. Kelverdon may or may not have thought the question foolish; his face was hidden a moment as he bent down to put the Indian rug straight with his hand. There was no impatience in the movement, nor was there mockery in his expression, when he resumed his normal position. He had gained an appreciable interval of time--some fifteen seconds. 'Tom, you've got good ideas in that head of yours,' he said calmly; 'but what is it that you mean exactly?'

Tom was quite ready to amplify. He knew what he meant:

'If I _know_ something is going to happen, doesn't that mean that it has already happened--and that I remember it?'

'You're a psychologist as well as engineer, Tom,' was the approving reply.

'It's like this, you see: In emotion, with desire in it, can predict the fulfilment of that desire. In great hunger you imagine you're eating all sorts of good things.'

'But that's looking forward,'; the boy pounced on the mistake. 'It's not remembering.'

'That _is_ the difficulty,' explained his father; 'to decide whether you're antic.i.p.ating only--or actually remembering.'

'I see,' Tom said politely.

All this a.n.a.lysis concealed merely: it did not reveal. The thing itself dived deeper out of sight with every phrase. _He_ knew quite well the difference between antic.i.p.ating and remembering. With the latter there was the sensation of having been through it. Each time he remembered seeing Lettice the sensation was the same, but when he looked forward to seeing her _again_ the sensation varied with his mood.

'For instance, Tom--between ourselves this--we're going to send Mary to that Finis.h.i.+ng School in France where Lettice is.' The doctor, it seemed, spoke carelessly while he gathered his papers together with a view to going out. He did not look at the boy; he said it walking about the room.

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