I do not like to read those poets who write of pain as if they loved
it; the study of suffering is for the cold analyst, for the
vivisectionist, for those who may transfuse their knowledge of it to
the ultimate good of mankind. And although I am so heavily endowed with
curiosity concerning the people I find about me, my gift (or curse,
whichever it be) knows pause at the gates of the house of calamity. So,
if it were possible, I would not speak of the agony of which I was a
witness that night in the apartment of my friends at Madame Brossard's.
I went with reluctance, but there was no choice. Keredec had sent for
me.
... When I was about fifteen, a boy cousin of mine, several years
younger, terribly injured himself on the Fourth of July; and I sat all
night in the room with him, helping his mother. Somehow he had learned
that there was no hope of saving his sight; he was an imaginative child
and realised the whole meaning of the catastrophe; the eternal
darkness.... And he understood that the thing had been done, that there
was no going back of it. This very certainty increased the intensity of
his rebellion a thousandfold. "I WILL have my eyes!" he screamed. "I
WILL! I WILL!"
Keredec had told his tragic ward too little. The latter had understood
but vaguely the nature of the catastrophe which overhung his return to
France, and now that it was indeed concrete and definite, the guardian
was forced into fuller disclosures, every word making the anguish of
the listener more intolerable. It was the horizonless despair of a
child; and that profound protest I had so often seen smouldering in his
eyes culminated, at its crisis, in a wild flame of revolt. The shame of
the revelation passed over him; there was nothing of the disastrous
drunkard, sober, learning what he had done. To him, it seemed that he
was being forced to suffer for the sins of another man.
"Do you think that you can make me believe _I_ did this?" he cried.
"That I made life unbearable for HER, drove HER from me, and took this
hideous, painted old woman in HER place? It's a lie. You can't make me
believe such a monstrous lie as that! You CAN'T! You CAN'T!"
He threw himself violently upon the couch, face downward, shuddering
from head to foot.
"My poor boy, it is the truth," said Keredec, kneeling beside him and
putting a great arm across his shoulders. "It is what a thousand men
are doing this night. Nothing is more common, or more unexplainable--or
more simple. Of all the nations it is the same, wherever life has
become artificial and the poor, foolish young men have too much money
and nothing to do. You do not understand it, but our friend here, and
I, we understand because we remember what we have been seeing all our
life. You say it is not you who did such crazy, horrible things, and
you are right. When this poor woman who is so painted and greasy first
caught you, when you began to give your money and your time and your
life to her, when she got you into this horrible marriage with her, you
were blind--you went staggering, in a bad dream; your soul hid away,
far down inside you, with its hands over its face. If it could have
once stood straight, if the eyes of your body could have once been
clean for it to look through, if you could have once been as you are
to-day, or as you were when you were a little child, you would have cry
out with horror both of her and of yourself, as you do now; and you
would have run away from her and from everything you had put in your
life. But, in your suffering you must rejoice: the triumph is that your
mind hates that old life as greatly as your soul hates it. You are as
good as if you had never been the wild fellow--yes, the wicked
fellow--that you were. For a man who shakes off his sin is clean; he
stands as pure as if he had never sinned. But though his emancipation
can be so perfect, there is a law that he cannot escape from the result
of all the bad and foolish things he has done, for every act, every
breath you draw, is immortal, and each has a consequence that is never
ending. And so, now, though you are purified, the suffering from these
old actions is here, and you must abide it. Ah, but that is a little
thing, nothing!--that suffering--compared to what you have gained, for
you have gained your own soul!"
The desperate young man on the couch answered only with the sobbing of
a broken-hearted child.
I came back to my pavilion after midnight, but I did not sleep, though
I lay upon my bed until dawn. Then I went for a long, hard walk,
breakfasted at Dives, and begged a ride back to Madame Brossard's in a
peasant's cart which was going that way.
I found George Ward waiting for me on the little veranda of the
pavilion, looking handsomer and more prosperously distinguished and
distinguishedly prosperous and generally well-conditioned than ever--as
I told him.
"I have some news for you," he said after the hearty greeting--"an
announcement, in fact."
"Wait!" I glanced at the interested attitude of Mr. Earl Percy, who was
breakfasting at a table significantly near the gallery steps, and led
the way into the pavilion. "You may as well not tell it in the hearing
of that young man," I said, when the door was closed. "He is eccentric."
"So I gathered," returned Ward, smiling, "from his attire. But it
really wouldn't matter who heard it. Elizabeth's going to marry Cresson
Ingle."
"That is the news--the announcement--you spoke of?"
"Yes, that is it."
To save my life I could not have told at that moment what else I had
expected, or feared, that he might say, but certainly I took a deep
breath of relief. "I am very glad," I said. "It should be a happy
alliance."
"On the whole, I think it will be," he returned thoughtfully. "Ingle's
done his share of hard living, and I once had a notion"--he glanced
smiling at me--"well, I dare say you know my notion. But it is a good
match for Elizabeth and not without advantages on many counts. You see,
it's time I married, myself; she feels that very strongly and I think
her decision to accept Ingle is partly due to her wish to make all
clear for a new mistress of my household,--though that's putting it in
a rather grandiloquent way." He laughed. "And as you probably guess, I
have an idea that some such arrangement might be somewhere on the wings
of the wind on its way to me, before long."
He laughed again, but I did not, and noting my silence he turned upon
me a more scrutinising look than he had yet given me, and said:
"My dear fellow, is something the matter? You look quite haggard. You
haven't been ill?"
"No, I've had a bad night. That's all."
"Oh, I heard something of a riotous scene taking place over here," he
said. "One of the gardeners was talking about it to Elizabeth. Your bad
night wouldn't be connected with that, would it? You haven't been
playing Samaritan?"
"What was it you heard?" I asked quickly.
"I didn't pay much attention. He said that there was great excitement
at Madame Brossard's, because a strange woman had turned up and claimed
an insane young man at the inn for her husband, and that they had a
fight of some sort--"
"Damnation!" I started from my chair. "Did Mrs. Harman hear this story?"
"Not last night, I'm certain. Elizabeth said the gardener told her as
she came down to the chateau gates to meet me when I arrived--it was
late, and Louise had already gone to her room. In fact, I have not seen
her yet. But what difference could it possibly make whether she heard
it or not? She doesn't know these people, surely?"
"She knows the man."
"This insane--"
"He is not insane," I interrupted. "He has lost the memory of his
earlier life--lost it through an accident. You and I saw the accident."
"That's impossible," said George, frowning. "I never saw but one
accident that you--"
"That was the one: the man is Larrabee Harman."
George had struck a match to light a cigar; but the operation remained
incomplete: he dropped the match upon the floor and set his foot upon
it. "Well, tell me about it," he said.
"You haven't heard anything about him since the accident?"
"Only that he did eventually recover and was taken away from the
hospital. I heard that his mind was impaired. Does Louise--" he began;
stopped, and cleared his throat. "Has Mrs. Harman heard that he is
here?"
"Yes; she has seen him."
"Do you mean the scoundrel has been bothering her? Elizabeth didn't
tell me of this--"
"Your sister doesn't know," I said, lifting my hand to check him. "I
think you ought to understand the whole case--if you'll let me tell you
what I know about it."
"Go ahead," he bade me. "I'll try to listen patiently, though the very
thought of the fellow has always set my teeth on edge."
"He's not at all what you think," I said. "There's an enormous
difference, almost impossible to explain to you, but something you'd
understand at once if you saw him. It's such a difference, in fact,
that when I found that he was Larrabee Harman the revelation was
inexpressibly shocking and distressing to me. He came here under
another name; I had no suspicion that he was any one I'd ever heard of,
much less that I'd actually seen him twice, two years ago, and I've
grown to--well, in truth, to be fond of him."
"What is the change?" asked Ward, and his voice showed that he was
greatly disquieted. "What is he like?"
"As well as I can tell you, he's like an odd but very engaging boy,
with something pathetic about him; quite splendidly handsome--"
"Oh, he had good looks to spare when I first knew him," George said
bitterly. "I dare say he's got them back if he's taken care of himself,
or been taken care OF, rather! But go on; I won't interrupt you again.
Why did he come here? Hoping to see--"
"No. When he came here he did not know of her existence except in the
vaguest way. But to go back to that, I'd better tell you first that the
woman we saw with him, one day on the boulevard, and who was in the
accident with him--"
"La Mursiana, the dancer; I know."
"She had got him to go through a marriage with her--"
"WHAT?" Ward's eyes flashed as he shouted the word.
"It seems inexplicable; but as I understand it, he was never quite
sober at that time; he had begun to use drugs, and was often in a
half-stupefied condition. As a matter of fact, the woman did what she
pleased with him. There's no doubt about the validity of the marriage.
And what makes it so desperate a muddle is that since the marriage
she's taken good care to give no grounds upon which a divorce could be
obtained for Harman. She means to hang on."
"I'm glad of that!" said George, striking his knee with his open palm.
"That will go a great way toward--"
He paused, and asked suddenly: "Did this marriage take place in France?"
"Yes. You'd better hear me through," I remonstrated. "When he was taken
from the hospital, he was placed in charge of a Professor Keredec, a
madman of whom you've probably heard."
"Madman? Why, no; he's a member of the Institute; a psychologist or
metaphysician, isn't he?--at any rate of considerable celebrity."
"Nevertheless," I insisted grimly, "as misty a vapourer as I ever saw;
a poetic, self-contradicting and inconsistent orator, a blower of
bubbles, a seer of visions, a mystic, and a dreamer--about as
scientific as Alice's White Knight! Harman's aunt, who lived in London,
the only relative he had left, I believe--and she has died since--put
him in Keredec's charge, and he was taken up into the Tyrol and
virtually hidden for two years, the idea being literally to give him
something like an education--Keredec's phrase is 'restore mind to his
soul'! What must have been quite as vital was to get him out of his
horrible wife's clutches. And they did it, for she could not find him.
But she picked up that rat in the garden out yonder--he'd been some
sort of stable-manager for Harman once--and set him on the track. He
ran the poor boy down, and yesterday she followed him. Now it amounts
to a species of sordid siege."
"She wants money, of course."
"Yes, MORE money; a fair allowance has always been sent to her. Keredec
has interviewed her notary and she wants a settlement, naming a sum
actually larger than the whole estate amounts to. There were colossal
expenditures and equally large shrinkages; what he has left is invested
in English securities and is not a fortune, but of course she won't
believe that and refuses to budge until this impossible settlement is
made. You can imagine about how competent such a man as Keredec would
be to deal with the situation. In the mean time, his ward is in so
dreadful a state of horror and grief I am afraid it is possible that
his mind may really give way, for it was not in a normal condition, of
course, though he's perfectly sane, as I tell you. If it should," I
concluded, with some bitterness, "I suppose Keredec will be still
prating upliftingly on the saving of his soul!"
"When was it that Louise saw him?"
"Ah, that," I said, "is where Keredec has been a poet and a dreamer
indeed. It was his PLAN that they should meet."
"You mean he brought this wreck of Harman, these husks and shreds of a
man, down here for Louise to see?" Ward cried incredulously. "Oh,
monstrous!"
"No," I answered. "Only insane. Not because there is anything lacking
in Oliver--in Harman, I mean--for I think that will be righted in time,
but because the second marriage makes it a useless cruelty that he
should have been allowed to fall in love with his first wife again. Yet
that was Keredec's idea of a 'beautiful restoration,' as he calls it!"
"There is something behind all this that you don't know," said Ward
slowly. "I'll tell you after I've seen this Keredec. When did the man
make you his confidant?"
"Last night. Most of what I learned was as much a revelation to his
victim as it was to me. Harman did not know till then that the lady he
had been meeting had been his wife, or that he had ever seen her before
he came here. He had mistaken her name and she did not enlighten him."
"Meeting?" said Ward harshly. "You speak as if--"
"They have been meeting every day, George."
"I won't believe it of her!" he cried. "She couldn't--"
"It's true. He spoke to her in the woods one day; I was there and saw
it. I know now that she knew him at once; and she ran away, but--not in
anger. I shouldn't be a very good friend of yours," I went on gently,
"if I didn't give you the truth. They've been together every day since
then, and I'm afraid--miserably afraid, Ward--that her old feeling for
him has been revived."
I have heard Ward use an oath only two or three times in my life, and
this was one of them.
"Oh, by God!" he cried, starting to his feet; "I SHOULD like to meet
Professor Keredec!"
"I am at your service, my dear sir," said a deep voice from the
veranda. And opening the door, the professor walked into the room.