II

Lanfear's question persisted through the night, and it helped, with the

coughing in the next room, to make a bad night for him. None of the

hotels in San Remo receive consumptive patients, but none are without

somewhere a bronchial cough. If it is in the room next yours it keeps

you awake, but it is not pulmonary; you may comfort yourself in your

vigils with that fact. Lanfear, however, fancied he had got a poor

dinner, and in the morning he did not like his coffee. He thought he had

let a foolish scruple keep him from the Grand Hotel Sardegna, and he

walked down towards it along the palm-flanked promenade, in the gay

morning light, with the tideless sea on the other hand lapping the rough

beach beyond the lines of the railroad which borders it. On his way he

met files of the beautiful Ligurian women, moving straight under the

burdens balanced on their heads, or bestriding the donkeys laden with

wine-casks in the roadway, or following beside the carts which the

donkeys drew. Ladies of all nations, in the summer fashions of London,

Berlin, St. Petersburg, Paris, and New York thronged the path. The sky

was of a blue so deep, so liquid that it seemed to him he could scoop it

in his hand and pour it out again like water. Seaward, he glanced at the

fishing-boats lying motionless in the offing, and the coastwise steamer

that runs between Nice and Genoa trailing a thin plume of smoke between

him and their white sails. With the more definite purpose of making sure

of the Grand Hotel Sardegna, he scanned the different villa slopes that

showed their level lines of white and yellow and dull pink through the

gray tropical greenery on the different levels of the hills. He was duly

rewarded by the sight of the bold legend topping its cornice, and when

he let his eye descend the garden to a little pavilion on the wall

overlooking the road, he saw his acquaintances of the evening before

making a belated breakfast. The father recognized Lanfear first and

spoke to his daughter, who looked up from her coffee and down towards

him where he wavered, lifting his hat, and bowed smiling to him. He had

no reason to cross the roadway towards the white stairway which climbed

from it to the hotel grounds, but he did so. The father leaned out over

the wall, and called down to him: "Won't you come up and join us,

doctor?"

"Why, yes!" Lanfear consented, and in another moment he was shaking

hands with the girl, to whom, he noticed, her father named him again. He

had in his glad sense of her white morning dress and her hat of

green-leafed lace, a feeling that she was somehow meeting him as a

friend of indefinite date in an intimacy unconditioned by any past or

future time. Her pleasure in his being there was as frank as her

father's, and there was a pretty trust of him in every word and tone

which forbade misinterpretation.

"I was just talking about you, doctor," the father began, "and saying

what a pity you hadn't come to our hotel. It's a capital place."

"_I've_ been thinking it was a pity I went to mine," Lanfear returned,

"though I'm in San Remo for such a short time it's scarcely worth while

to change."

"Well, perhaps if you came here, you might stay longer. I guess we're

booked for the winter, Nannie?" He referred the question to his

daughter, who asked Lanfear if he would not have some coffee.

"I was going to say I had had my coffee, but I'm not sure it _was_

coffee," Lanfear began, and he consented, with some demur, banal enough,

about the trouble.

"Well, that's right, then, and no trouble at all," Mr. Gerald broke in

upon him. "Here comes a fellow looking for a chance to bring you some,"

and he called to a waiter wandering distractedly about with a "Heigh!"

that might have been offensive from a less obviously inoffensive man.

"Can you get our friend here a cup and saucer, and some of this good

coffee?" he asked, as the waiter approached.

"Yes, certainly, sir," the man answered in careful English. "Is it not,

perhaps, Mr. and Misses Gerald?" he smilingly insinuated, offering some

cards.

"Miss Gerald," the father corrected him as he took the cards. "Why,

hello, Nannie! Here are the Bells! Where are they?" he demanded of the

waiter. "Bring them here, and a lot more cups and saucers. Or, hold on!

I'd better go myself, Nannie, hadn't I? Of course! You get the crockery,

waiter. Where did you say they were?" He bustled up from his chair,

without waiting for a distinct reply, and apologized to Lanfear in

hurrying away. "You'll excuse me, doctor! I'll be back in half a minute.

Friends of ours that came over on the same boat. I must see them, of

course, but I don't believe they'll stay. Nannie, don't let Dr. Lanfear

get away. I want to have some talk with him. You tell him he'd better

come to the Sardegna, here."

Lanfear and Miss Gerald sat a moment in the silence which is apt to

follow with young people when they are unexpectedly left to themselves.

She kept absently pushing the cards her father had given her up and down

on the table between her thumb and forefinger, and Lanfear noted the

translucence of her long, thin hand in the sunshine striking across the

painted iron surface of the garden movable. The translucence had a

pathos for his intelligence which the pensive tilt of her head enhanced.

She stopped toying with the cards, and looked at the addresses on them.

"What strange things names are!" she said, as if musing on the fact,

with a sigh which he thought disproportioned to the depth of her

remark.

"They seem rather irrelevant at times," he admitted, with a smile.

"They're mere tags, labels, which can be attached to one as well as

another; they seem to belong equally to anybody."

"That is what I always say to myself," she agreed, with more interest

than he found explicable.

"But finally," he returned, "they're all that's left us, if they're left

themselves. They are the only signs to the few who knew us that we ever

existed. They stand for our characters, our personality, our mind, our

soul."

She said, "That is very true," and then she suddenly gave him the cards.

"Do you know these people?"

"I? I thought they were friends of yours," he replied, astonished.

[Illustration: A LIVELY MATRON, OF AS YOUTHFUL A TEMPERAMENT AS THE

LIVELY GIRLS SHE BROUGHT IN HER TRAIN, BURST UPON THEM]

"That is what papa thinks," Miss Gerald said, and while she sat dreamily

absent, a rustle of skirts and a flutter of voices pierced from the

surrounding shrubbery, and then a lively matron, of as youthful a

temperament as the lively girls she brought in her train, burst upon

them, and Miss Gerald was passed from one embrace to another until all

four had kissed her. She returned their greeting, and shared, in her

quieter way, their raptures at their encounter.

"Such a hunt as we've had for you!" the matron shouted. "We've been

up-stairs and down-stairs and in my lady's chamber, all over the hotel.

Where's your father? Ah, they did get our cards to you!" and by that

token Lanfear knew that these ladies were the Bells. He had stood up in

a sort of expectancy, but Miss Gerald did not introduce him, and a

shadow of embarrassment passed over the party which she seemed to feel

least, though he fancied a sort of entreaty in the glance that she let

pass over him.

"I suppose he's gone to look for _us_!" Mrs. Bell saved the situation

with a protecting laugh. Miss Gerald colored intelligently, and Lanfear

could not let Mrs. Bell's implication pass.

"If it is Mrs. Bell," he said, "I can answer that he has. I met you at

Magnolia some years ago, Mrs. Bell. Dr. Lanfear."

"Oh, I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanfear," Miss Gerald said. "I couldn't

think--"

"Of my tag, my label?" he laughed back. "It isn't very distinctly

lettered."

Mrs. Bell was not much minding them jointly. She was singling Lanfear

out for the expression of her pleasure in seeing him again, and

recalling the incidents of her summer at Magnolia before, it seemed, any

of her girls were out. She presented them collectively, and the eldest

of them charmingly reminded Lanfear that he had once had the magnanimity

to dance with her when she sat, in a little girl's forlorn despair of

being danced with, at one of those desolate hops of the good old Osprey

House.

"Yes; and now," her mother followed, "we can't wait a moment longer, if

we're to get our train for Monte Carlo, girls. We're not going to play,

doctor," she made time to explain, "but we are going to look on. Will

you tell your father, dear," she said, taking the girl's hands

caressingly in hers, and drawing her to her motherly bosom, "that we

found you, and did our best to find him? We can't wait now--our carriage

is champing the bit at the foot of the stairs--but we're coming back in

a week, and then we'll do our best to look you up again." She included

Lanfear in her good-bye, and all her girls said good-bye in the same

way, and with a whisking of skirts and twitter of voices they vanished

through the shrubbery, and faded into the general silence and general

sound like a bevy of birds which had swept near and passed by.

Miss Gerald sank quietly into her place, and sat as if nothing had

happened, except that she looked a little paler to Lanfear, who remained

on foot trying to piece together their interrupted tête-à-tête, but not

succeeding, when her father reappeared, red and breathless, and wiping

his forehead. "Have they been here, Nannie?" he asked. "I've been

following them all over the place, and the _portier_ told me just now

that he had seen a party of ladies coming down this way."

He got it all out, not so clearly as those women had got everything in,

Lanfear reflected, but unmistakably enough as to the fact, and he looked

at his daughter as he repeated: "Haven't the Bells been here?"

[Illustration: "SHE SHOOK HER HEAD, AND SAID,... 'NOBODY HAS BEEN HERE,

EXCEPT--'"]

She shook her head, and said, with her delicate quiet: "Nobody has been

here, except--" She glanced at Lanfear, who smiled, but saw no opening

for himself in the strange situation. Then she said: "I think I will go

and lie down a while, now, papa. I'm rather tired. Good-bye," she said,

giving Lanfear her hand; it felt limp and cold; and then she turned to

her father again. "Don't you come, papa! I can get back perfectly well

by myself. Stay with--"

"I will go with you," her father said, "and if Dr. Lanfear doesn't mind

coming--"

"Certainly I will come," Lanfear said, and he passed to the girl's

right; she had taken her father's arm; but he wished to offer more

support if it were needed. When they had climbed to the open flowery

space before the hotel, she seemed aware of the groups of people about.

She took her hand from her father's arm, as if unwilling to attract

their notice by seeming to need its help, and swept up the gravelled

path between him and Lanfear, with her flowing walk.

Her father fell back, as they entered the hotel door, and murmured to

Lanfear: "Will you wait till I come down?" ... "I wanted to tell you

about my daughter," he explained, when he came back after the quarter of

an hour which Lanfear had found rather intense. "It's useless to pretend

you wouldn't have noticed--Had nobody been with you after I left you,

down there?" He twisted his head in the direction of the pavilion, where

they had been breakfasting.

"Yes; Mrs. Bell and her daughters," Lanfear answered, simply.

"Of course! Why do you suppose my daughter denied it?" Mr. Gerald asked.

"I suppose she--had her reasons," Lanfear answered, lamely enough.

"No _reason_, I'm afraid," Mr. Gerald said, and he broke out hopelessly:

"She has her mind sound enough, but not--not her memory. She had

forgotten that they were there! Are you going to stay in San Remo?" he

asked, with an effect of interrupting himself, as if in the wish to put

off something, or to make the ground sure before he went on.

"Why," Lanfear said, "I hadn't thought of it. I stopped--I was going to

Nice--to test the air for a friend who wishes to bring his invalid wife

here, if I approve--but I have just been asking myself why I should go

to Nice when I could stay at San Remo. The place takes my fancy. I'm

something of an invalid myself--at least I'm on my vacation--and I find

a charm in it, if nothing better. Perhaps a charm is enough. It used to

be, in primitive medicine."

He was talking to what he felt was not an undivided attention in Mr.

Gerald, who said, "I'm glad of it," and then added: "I should like to

consult you professionally. I know your reputation in New York--though

I'm not a New-Yorker myself--and I don't know any of the doctors here. I

suppose I've done rather a wild thing in coming off the way I have,

with my daughter; but I felt that I must do something, and I hoped--I

felt as if it were getting away from our trouble. It's most fortunate my

meeting you, if you can look into the case, and help me out with a

nurse, if she's needed, and all that!" To a certain hesitation in

Lanfear's face, he added: "Of course, I'm asking your professional help.

My name is Abner Gerald--Abner L. Gerald--perhaps you know my standing,

and that I'm able to--"

"Oh, it isn't a question of that! I shall be glad to do anything I can,"

Lanfear said, with a little pang which he tried to keep silent in

orienting himself anew towards the girl, whose loveliness he had felt

before he had felt her piteousness.

"But before you go further I ought to say that you must have been

thinking of my uncle, the first Matthew Lanfear, when you spoke of my

reputation; I haven't got any yet; I've only got my uncle's name."

"Oh!" Mr. Gerald said, disappointedly, but after a blank moment he

apparently took courage. "You're in the same line, though?"

"If you mean the psychopathic line, without being exactly an alienist,

well, yes," Lanfear admitted.

"That's exactly what I mean," the elder said, with renewed hopefulness.

"I'm quite willing to risk myself with a man of the same name as Dr.

Lanfear. I should like," he said, hurrying on, as if to override any

further reluctance of Lanfear's, "to tell you her story, and then--"

"By all means," Lanfear consented, and he put on an air of professional

deference, while the older man began with a face set for the task.

"It's a long story, or it's a short story, as you choose to make it.

We'll make it long, if necessary, later, but now I'll make it short.

Five months ago my wife was killed before my daughter's eyes--"

He stopped; Lanfear breathed a gentle "Oh!" and Gerald blurted out:

"Accident--grade crossing--Don't!" he winced at the kindness in

Lanfear's eyes, and panted on. "That's over! What happened to _her_--to

my daughter--was that she fainted from the shock. When she woke--it was

more like a sleep than a swoon--she didn't remember what had happened."

Lanfear nodded, with a gravely interested face. "She didn't remember

anything that had ever happened before. She knew me, because I was there

with her; but she didn't know that she ever had a mother, because she

was not there with her. You see?"

"I can imagine," Lanfear assented.

"The whole of her life before the--accident was wiped out as to the

facts, as completely as if it had never been; and now every day, every

hour, every minute, as it passes, goes with that past. But her

faculties--"

"Yes?" Lanfear prompted in the pause which Mr. Gerald made.

"Her intellect--the working powers of her mind, apart from anything like

remembering, are as perfect as if she were in full possession of her

memory. I believe," the father said, with a pride that had its pathos,

"no one can talk with her and not feel that she has a beautiful mind,

that she can think better than most girls of her age. She reads, or she

lets me read to her, and until it has time to fade, she appreciates it

all more fully than I do. At Genoa, where I took her to the palaces for

the pictures, I saw that she had kept her feeling for art. When she

plays--you will hear her play--it is like composing the music for

herself; she does not seem to remember the pieces, she seems to

improvise them. You understand?"

Lanfear said that he understood, for he could not disappoint the

expectation of the father's boastful love: all that was left him of the

ambitions he must once have had for his child.

The poor, little, stout, unpicturesque elderly man got up and began to

walk to and fro in the room which he had turned into with Lanfear, and

to say, more to himself than to Lanfear, as if balancing one thing

against another: "The merciful thing is that she has been saved from the

horror and the sorrow. She knows no more of either than she knows of her

mother's love for her. They were very much alike in looks and mind, and

they were always together more like persons of the same age--sisters, or

girl friends; but she has lost all knowledge of that, as of other

things. And then there is the question whether she won't some time,

sooner or later, come into both the horror and the sorrow." He stopped

and looked at Lanfear. "She has these sudden fits of drowsiness, when

she _must_ sleep; and I never see her wake from them without being

afraid that she has wakened to everything--that she has got back into

her full self, and taken up the terrible burden that my old shoulders

are used to. What do you think?"

Lanfear felt the appeal so keenly that in the effort to answer

faithfully he was aware of being harsher than he meant. "That is a

chance we can't forecast. But it is a chance. The fact that the

drowsiness recurs periodically--"

"It doesn't," the father pleaded. "We don't know when it will come on."

"It scarcely matters. The periodicity wouldn't affect the possible

result which you dread. I don't say that it is probable. But it's one

of the possibilities. It has," Lanfear added, "its logic."

"Ah, its logic!"

"Its logic, yes. My business, of course, would be to restore her to

health at any risk. So far as her mind is affected--"

"Her mind is not affected!" the father retorted.

"I beg your pardon--her memory--it might be restored with her physical

health. You understand that? It is a chance; it might or it might not

happen."

The father was apparently facing a risk which he had not squarely faced

before. "I suppose so," he faltered. After a moment he added, with more

courage: "You must do the best you can, at any risk."

Lanfear rose, too. He said, with returning kindness in his tones, if not

his words: "I should like to study the case, Mr. Gerald. It's very

interesting, and--and--if you'll forgive me--very touching."

"Thank you."

"If you decide to stay in San Remo, I will--Do you suppose I could get

a room in this hotel? I don't like mine."

"Why, I haven't any doubt you can. Shall we ask?"