Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  “I do not want to torment you. I will leave you. Shall I come again?”

  “Again?” she repeated, vacantly, as though not understanding. But as I stood beside her I moved a little, and I thought her eyes rested on the figure of the professor, standing at the other end of the room, and her face expressed dislike of him, while her answer to me was a meaningless repetition of my own word.

  “Yes,” I said. “Shall I come again? Do you like to talk Russian?” This time she said nothing, but her eyes remained fixed upon the professor. “I am going,” I added. “Good-by.”

  She looked up suddenly. I bowed to her, out of habit, I suppose. Do people generally bow to insane persons? To my surprise, she put out her hand and took mine, and shook it, in the most natural way imaginable; but she did not answer me. Just as I was turning from her she spoke again.

  “Who are you?” she asked in English.

  “My name is Griggs,” I replied, and lingered to see if she would say more. But she laughed again, — very little this time, — and she took up the book she had dropped and began to read.

  Cutter smiled, too, as we left the room. I glanced back at the graceful figure of the gray-haired woman, extended upon her couch. She did not look up, and a moment later Cutter and I stood again in the antechamber. The professor slowly rubbed his hands together, — his gigantic hands, modeled by nature for dealing with big things. Mrs. North rose from her reading.

  “I have an idea that our patient has recognized this gentleman,” said the scientist. “This has been a remarkably eventful day. She is probably very tired, and if you could induce her to go to bed it would be a very good thing, Mrs. North. Good-evening.”

  “Good-evening,” I said. Mrs. North made a slight inclination with her head, in answer to our salutation. I pushed aside the heavy curtain, and we went out. Cutter had a pass-key to the heavy door in the passage, and opened it and closed it noiselessly behind us. I felt as though I had been in a dream, as we emerged into the dimly lighted great hall, where a huge fire burned in the old-fashioned fireplace, and Fang, the white deerhound, lay asleep upon the thick rug.

  “And now, Mr. Griggs,” said the professor, stopping short and thrusting his hands into his pockets, “will you tell me what she said to you, and whether she gave any signs of intelligence?” He faced me very sharply, as though to disconcert me by the suddenness of his question. It was a habit he had.

  “She said very little,” I replied. “She said that ‘Paul’ was dead. Was that her husband’s name as well as her son’s?”

  “Yes. What else?”

  “She told me she had no son; and when I reminded her that she had seen him that very afternoon, she laughed and answered, ‘I tell you I have no son, — why do you torment me?’ She said all that in Russian. As I was going away you heard her ask me who I was, in English. My name appeared to amuse her.”

  “Yes,” assented Cutter, with a smile. “Was that all?”

  “That was all she said,” I answered, with perfect truth. Somehow I did not care to tell the professor of the look I thought I had seen in her face when her eyes rested on him. In the first place, as he was doing his best to cure her, it seemed useless to tell him that I thought she disliked him. It might have been only my imagination. Besides, that nameless, undefined suspicion had crossed my brain that Madame Patoff was not really mad; and though her apparently meaningless words might have been interpreted to mean something in connection with her expression of face in speaking, it was all too vague to be worth detailing. I had determined that I would see her again and see her alone, before long. I might then make some discovery, or satisfy myself that she was really insane.

  “Well,” observed the professor, “it looks as though she remembered her husband’s death, at all events; and if she remembers that, she has the memory of her own identity, which is something in such cases. I think she faintly recognized you. That flush that came into her face was there when she saw her son this afternoon, so far as I can gather from Carvel’s description. I wish they had waited for me. This remark about her son is very curious, too. It is more like a monomania than anything we have had yet. It is like a fixed idea in character; she certainly is not sane enough to have meant it ironically, — to have meant that Paul Patoff is not a son to her while thinking only of the other one who is dead. Did she speak Russian fluently? She has not spoken it for more than eighteen months, — perhaps longer.”

  “She speaks it perfectly,” I replied.

  “What strange tricks this brain of ours will play us!” exclaimed the professor. “Here is a woman who has forgotten every circumstance of her former life, has forgotten her friends and relations, and is puzzling us all with her extraordinary lack of memory, and who, nevertheless, remembers fluently the forms and expressions of one of the most complicated languages in the world. At the same time we do not think that she remembers what she reads. I wish we could find out. She acts like a person who has had an injury to some part of the head which has not affected the rest. But then, she never received any injury, to my knowledge.”

  “Not even when she fell at Weissenstein?”

  “Not the least. I made a careful examination.”

  “I do not see that we are likely to arrive at a conclusion by any amount of guessing,” I remarked. “Nothing but time and experiments will show what is the matter with her.”

  “I have not the time, and I cannot invent the experiments,” replied the professor, impatiently. “I have a great mind to advise Carvel to put her into an asylum, and have done with all this sort of thing.”

  “He will never consent to do that,” I answered. “He evidently believes that she is recovering. I could see it in his face this evening. What do the nurses think of it?”

  “Mrs. North never says anything very encouraging, excepting that she has taken care of many insane women before, and remembers no case like this. She is a famous nurse, too. Those people, from their constant daily experience, sometimes understand things that we specialists do not. But on the other hand, she is so taciturn and cautious that she can hardly be induced to speak at all. The other woman is younger and more enthusiastic, but she has not half so much sense.”

  I was silent. I was thinking that, according to all accounts, I had been more successful than any one hitherto, and that a possible clue to Madame Patoff’s condition might be obtained by encouraging her to speak in her adopted language. Perhaps something of the sort crossed the professor’s mind.

  “Should you like to see her again?” he inquired. “It will be interesting to know whether this return of memory is wholly transitory. She recognized her son to-day, and I think she had some recognition of you. You might both see her again to-morrow, and discover if the same symptoms present themselves.”

  “I should be glad to go again,” I replied. “But if I can be of any service, it seems to me that I ought to be informed of the circumstances which led to her insanity. I might have a better chance of rousing her attention.”

  “Carvel will never consent to that,” said the professor, shortly, and he looked away from me as I spoke.

  I was about to ask whether Cutter himself was acquainted with the whole story, when Fang, the dog, who had taken no notice whatever of our presence in the hall, suddenly sprang to his feet and trotted across the floor, wagging his tail. He had recognized the tread of his mistress, and a moment later Hermione entered and came towards us. Hermione did not like the professor very much, and the professor knew it; for he was a man of quick and intuitive perceptions, who had a marvelous understanding of the sympathies and antipathies of those with whom he was thrown. He sniffed the air rather discontentedly as the young girl approached, and he looked at his watch.

  “Fang has good ears, Miss Carvel,” said he. “He knew your step before you came in.”

  “Yes,” answered Hermione, seating herself in one of the deep chairs by the fireside, and caressing the dog’s head as he laid his long muzzle upon her knee. “Poor Fang, you know your friends, d
on’t you? Mr. Griggs, this new collar is always unfastening itself. I believe you have bewitched it! See, here it is falling off again.”

  I bent down to examine the lock. The professor was not interested in the dog nor his collar, and, muttering something about speaking to Carvel before he went to bed, he left us.

  “I could not stay in there,” said Hermione. “Aunt Chrysophrasia is talking to cousin Paul in her usual way, and Macaulay has got into a corner with mamma, so that I was left alone. Where have you been all this time?”

  “I have heard what you could not tell me,” I answered. “I have been to see Madame Patoff with the professor.”

  “Not really? Oh, I am so glad! Now I can always talk to you about it. Did papa tell you? Why did he want you to go?”

  I briefly explained the circumstances of my seeing Madame Patoff in the Black Forest, and the hope that was entertained of her recognizing me.

  “Do you ever go in to see her, Miss Carvel?” I asked.

  “Sometimes. They do not like me to go,” said she; “they think it is too depressing for me. I cannot tell why. Poor dear aunt! she used to be glad to see me. Is not it dreadfully sad? Can you imagine a man who has just seen his mother in such a condition, behaving as Paul Patoff behaves this evening? He talks as if nothing had happened.”

  “No, I cannot imagine it. I suppose he does not want to make everybody feel badly about it.”

  “Mr. Griggs, is she really mad?” asked Hermione, in a low voice, leaning forward and clasping her hands.

  “Why,” I began, very much surprised, “does anybody doubt that she is insane?”

  “I do,” said the young girl, decidedly. “I do not believe she is any more insane than you and I are.”

  “That is a very bold thing to say,” I objected, “when a man of Professor Cutter’s reputation in those things says that she is crazy, and gives up so much time to visiting her.”

  “All the same,” said Hermione, “I do not believe it. I am sure people sometimes try to kill themselves without being insane, and that is all it rests on.”

  “But she has never recognized any one since that,” I urged.

  “Perhaps she is ashamed,” suggested my companion, simply.

  I was struck by the reply. It was such a simple idea that it seemed almost foolish. But it was a woman’s thought about another woman, and it had its value. I laughed a little, but I answered seriously enough.

  “Why should she be ashamed?”

  “It seems to me,” said the young girl, “that if I had done something very foolish and wicked, like trying to kill myself, and if people took it for granted that I was crazy, I would let them believe it, because I should be too much ashamed of myself to allow that I had consciously done anything so bad. Perhaps that is very silly; do you think so?”

  “I do not think it is silly,” I replied. “It is a very original idea.”

  “Well, I will tell you something. Soon after she was first brought here I used to go and see her more often than I do now. She interested me so much. I was often alone with her. She never answered any questions, but she would sometimes let me read aloud to her. I do not know whether she understood anything I read, but it soothed her, and occasionally she would go to sleep while I was reading. One day I was sitting quite quietly beside her, and she looked at me very sadly, as though she were thinking of somebody she had loved, — I cannot tell why; and without thinking I looked at her, and said, ‘Dear aunt Annie, tell me, you are not really mad, are you?’ Then she turned very pale and began to cry, so that I was frightened, and called the nurse, and went away. I never told anybody, because it seemed so foolish of me, and I thought I had been unkind, and had hurt her feelings. But after that she did not seem to want to see me when I came, and so I have thought a great deal about it. Do you see? Perhaps there is not much connection.”

  “I think you ought to have told some one; your father, for instance,” I said. “It is very interesting.”

  “I have told you, though it is so long since it happened,” she answered; and then she added, quickly, “Shall you tell Professor Cutter?”

  “No,” I replied, after a moment’s hesitation. “I do not think I shall. Should you like me to tell him?”

  “Oh, no,” she exclaimed quickly, “I should much rather you would not.”

  “Why?” I inquired. “I agree with you, but I should like to know your reason.”

  “I think Professor Cutter knows more already than he will tell you or me” —— She checked herself, and then continued in a lower voice: “It is prejudice, of course, but I do not like him. I positively cannot bear the sight of him.”

  “I fancy he knows that you do not like him,” I remarked.

  “Tell me, Miss Carvel, do you know anything of the reason why Madame Patoff became insane? If you do know, you must not tell me what it was, because your father does not wish me to hear it. But I should like to be sure whether you know all about it or not; whether you and I judge her from the same point of view, or whether you are better instructed than I am.”

  “I know nothing about it,” said Hermione, quietly.

  She sat gazing into the great fire, one small hand supporting her chin, and the other resting upon the sharp white head of Fang, who never moved from her knee. There was a pause, during which we were both wondering what strange circumstance could have brought the unhappy woman to her present condition, whether it were that of real or of assumed insanity.

  “I do not know,” she repeated, at last. “I wish I did; but I suppose it was something too dreadful to be told. There are such dreadful things in the world, you know.”

  “Yes, I know there are,” I answered, gravely; and in truth I was persuaded that the prime cause must have been extraordinary indeed, since even John Carvel had said that he could not tell me.

  “There are such dreadful things,” Hermione said again. “Just think how horrible it would be if” —— She stopped short, and blushed crimson in the ruddy firelight.

  “What?” I asked. But she did not answer, and I saw that the idea had pained her, whatever it might be. Presently she turned the phrase so as to make it appear natural enough.

  “What a horrible thing it would be if we found that poor aunt Annie only let us believe she was mad, because she had done something she was sorry for, and would not own it!”

  “Dreadful indeed,” I replied. Hermione rose from her deep chair.

  “Good-night, Mr. Griggs,” she said. “I hope we may all understand everything some day.”

  “Good-night, Miss Carvel.”

  “How careful you are of the formalities!” she said, laughing. “How two years change everything! It used to be ‘Good-night, Hermy,’ so short a time ago!”

  “Good-night, Hermy,” I said, laughing too, as she took my hand. “If you are old enough to be called Miss Carvel, I am old enough to call you Hermy still.”

  “Oh, I did not mean that,” she said, and went away.

  I sat a few minutes by the fire after she had gone, and then, fearing lest I should be disturbed by the professor or John Carvel, I too left the hall, and went to my own room, to think over the events of the day. I had learned so much that I was confused, and needed rest and leisure to reflect. That morning I had waked with a sensation of unsatisfied curiosity. All I had wanted to discover had been told me before bed-time, and more also; and now I was unpleasantly aware that this very curiosity was redoubled, and that, having been promoted from knowing nothing to knowing something, I felt I had only begun to guess how much there was to be known.

  Oh, this interest in other people’s business! How grand and beautiful and simple a thing it is to mind one’s own affairs, and leave other people to mind what concerns them! And yet I defy the most indifferent man alive to let himself be put in my position, and not to feel curiosity; to be taken into a half confidence of the most intense interest, and not to desire exceedingly to be trusted with the remainder; to be asked to consider and give an opinion upon certain effects,
and to be deliberately informed that he may never know the causes which led to the results he sees.

  On mature reflection, what had struck me as most remarkable in connection with the whole matter was Hermione’s simple, almost childlike guess, — that Madame Patoff was ashamed of something, and was willing to be considered insane, rather than let it be thought she was in possession of her faculties at the time when she did the deed, whatever it might be. That this was a conceivable hypothesis there was no manner of doubt, only I could hardly imagine what action, apart from the poor woman’s attempt at suicide, could have been so serious as to persuade her to act insanity for the rest of her life. Surely John Carvel, with his great, kind heart, would not be unforgiving. But John Carvel might not have been concerned in the matter at all. He spoke of knowing the details and being unable to tell them to me, but he never said they concerned any one but Madame Patoff.

  Strange that Hermione should not know, either. Whatever the details were, they were not fit for her young ears. It was strange, too, that she should have conceived an antipathy for the professor. He was a man who was generally popular, or who at least had the faculty of making himself acceptable when he chose; but it was perfectly evident that the scientist and the young girl disliked each other. There was more in it than appeared upon the surface. Innocent young girls do not suddenly contract violent prejudices against elderly and inoffensive men who do not weary them or annoy them in some way; still less do men of large intellect and experience take unreasoning and foolish dislikes to young and beautiful maidens. We know little of the hidden sympathies and antipathies of the human heart, but we know enough to say with certainty that in broad cases the average human being will not, without cause, act wholly in contradiction to the dictates of reason and the probabilities of human nature.

  I lay awake long that night, and for many nights afterwards, trying to explain to myself these problems, and planning ways and means for discovering whether or not the beautiful old lady down-stairs was in her right mind, or was playing a shameful and wicked trick upon the man who sheltered her. But though other events followed each other with rapidity, it was long before I got at the truth and settled the question. Whether or not I was right in wishing to pursue the secret to its ultimate source and explanation, I leave you to judge. I will only say that, although I was at first impelled by what seems now a wretched and worthless curiosity, I found, as time went on, that there was such a multiplicity of interests at stake, that the complications were so singular and unexpected and the passions aroused so masterful and desperate, that, being in the fight, I had no choice but to fight it to the end. So I did my very best in helping those to whom I owed allegiance by all the laws of hospitality and gratitude, and in concentrating my whole strength and intelligence and activity in the discovery of an evil which I suspected from the first to be very great, but of which I was far from realizing the magnitude and extent.