The professor pushed aside the heavy curtain, and we entered a small
room, simply furnished with a couple of tables, a bookcase, one or two
easy-chairs, and a divan. The walls were dark, and the color of the
curtains and carpet was a dark green, but two large lamps illuminated
every corner of the apartment. At one of the tables a middle-aged woman
sat reading; as we entered she looked up at us, and I saw that she was
one of the nurses in charge of Madame Patoff. She wore a simple gown of
dark material, and upon her head a dainty cap of French appearance was
pinned, with a certain show of taste. The nurse had a kindly face and
quiet eyes, accustomed, one would think, to look calmly upon sights
which would astonish ordinary people. Her features were strongly marked,
but gentle in expression and somewhat pale, and as she sat facing us,
her large white hands were folded together on the foot of the open page,
with an air of resolution that seemed appropriate to her character. She
rose deliberately to her feet, as we came forward, and I saw that she
was short, though when seated I should have guessed her to be tall.
"Mrs. North," said the professor, "this is my friend Mr. Griggs, who
formerly knew Madame Patoff. I have hopes that she may recognize him.
Can we see her now?"
"If you will wait one moment," answered Mrs. North, "I will see whether
you may go in." Her voice was like herself, calm and gentle, but with a
ring of strength and determination in it that was very attractive. She
moved to the door opposite to the one by which we had entered, and
opened it cautiously; after looking in, she turned and beckoned to us
to advance. We went in, and she softly closed the door behind us.
I shall never forget the impression made upon me when I saw Madame
Patoff. She was tall, and, though she was much over fifty years of age,
her figure was erect and commanding, slight, but of good proportion;
whether by nature, or owing to her mental disease, it seemed as though
she had escaped the effects of time, and had she concealed her hair with
a veil she might easily have passed for a woman still young. Mary Carvel
had been beautiful, and was beautiful still in a matronly, old-fashioned
way; Hermione was beautiful after another and a smaller manner, slender
and delicate and lovely; but Madame Patoff belonged to a very different
category. She was on a grander scale, and in her dark eyes there was
room for deeper feeling than in the gentle looks of her sister and
niece. One could understand how in her youth she had braved the
opposition of father and mother and sisters, and had married the
brilliant Russian, and had followed him to the ends of the earth during
ten years, through peace and through war, till he died. One could
understand how some great trouble and despair, which would send a
duller, gentler soul to prayers and sad meditations, might have driven
this grand, passionate creature to the very defiance of all despair and
trouble, into the abyss of a self-sought death. I shuddered when I
remembered that I had seen this very woman suspended in mid-air, her
life depending on the slender strength of a wild cherry tree upon the
cliff side. I had seen her, and yet had not seen her; for the sudden
impression of that terrible moment bore little or no relation to the
calmer view of the present time.
Madame Patoff stood before us, dressed in a close-fitting gown of black
velvet, closed at the throat with a clasp of pearls; her thick hair,
just turning gray, was coiled in masses low behind her head, drawn back
in long broad waves on each side, in the manner of the Greeks. Her
features, slightly aquiline and strongly defined, wore an expression of
haughty indifference, not at all like the stolid stare which John Carvel
had described to me, and though her dark eyes gazed upon us without
apparent recognition, their look was not without intelligence. She had
been walking up and down in the long drawing-room where we found her,
and she had paused in her walk as we entered, standing beneath a
chandelier which carried five lamps; there were others upon the wall,
high up on brackets and beyond her reach. There was no fireplace, but
the air was very warm, heated, I suppose, by some concealed apparatus.
The furniture consisted of deep chairs, lounges and divans of every
description; three or four bookcases were filled with books, and there
were many volumes piled in a disorderly fashion upon the different
tables, and some lay upon the floor beside a cushioned lounge, which
looked as though it were the favorite resting-place of the inmate of the
apartment. At first sight it seemed to me that few precautions were
observed; the nurse was seated in an outer apartment, and Madame Patoff
was quite alone and free. But the room where she was left was so
constructed that she could do herself no harm. There was no fire; the
lamps were all out of reach; the windows were locked, and she could only
go out by passing through the antechamber where the nurse was watching.
There was a singular lack of all those little objects which encumbered
the drawing-room of Carvel Place; there was not a bit of porcelain or
glass, nor a paper-knife, nor any kind of metal object. There were a few
pictures upon the walls, and the walls themselves were hung with a light
gray material, that looked like silk and brilliantly reflected the
strong light, making an extraordinary background for Madame Patoff's
figure, clad as she was in black velvet and white lace.
We stood before her, Cutter and I, for several seconds, watching for
some change of expression in her face. He had hoped that my sudden
appearance would arouse a memory in her disordered mind. I understood
his anxiety, but it appeared to me very unlikely that when she failed to
recognize him she should remember me. For some moments she gazed upon
me, and then a slight flush rose to her pale cheeks, her fixed stare
wavered, and her eyes fell. I could hear Cutter's long-drawn breath of
excitement. She clasped her hands together and turned away, resuming her
walk. It was strange,--perhaps she really remembered.
"He saved your life in Weissenstein," said Cutter, in loud, clear tones.
"You ought to thank him for it,--you never did."
The unhappy woman paused in her walk, stood still, then came swiftly
towards us, and again paused. Her face had changed completely in its
expression. Her teeth were closely set together, and her lip curled in
scorn, while a dark flush overspread her pale face, and her hands
twisted each other convulsively.
"Do you remember Weissenstein?" asked the professor, in the same
incisive voice, and through his round glasses he fixed his commanding
glance upon her. But as he looked her eyes grew dull, and the blush
subsided from her cheek. With a low, short laugh she turned away.
I started. I had forgotten the laugh behind the latticed wall, and if I
had found time to reflect I should have known, from what John Carvel had
told me, that it could have come from no one but the mad lady, who had
been walking in the garden with her nurse, on that bright evening. It
was the same low, rippling sound, silvery and clear, and it came so
suddenly that I was startled. I thought that the professor sighed as he
heard it. It was, perhaps, a strong evidence of insanity. In all my life
of wandering and various experience I have chanced to be thrown into the
society of but one insane person besides Madame Patoff. That was a
curious case: a hardy old sea-captain, who chanced to make a fortune
upon the New York stock exchange, and went stark mad a few weeks later.
His madness seemed to come from elation at his success, and it was very
curious to watch its progress, and very sad. He was a strong man, and in
all his active life had never touched liquor nor tobacco. Nothing but
wealth could have driven him out of his mind; but within two months of
his acquiring a fortune he was confined in an asylum, and within the
year he died of softening of the brain. I only mention this to show you
that I had had no experience of insanity worth speaking of before I met
Madame Patoff. I knew next to nothing of the signs of the disease.
Madame Patoff turned away, and crossed the room; then she sank down upon
the lounge which I have described as surrounded with books, and, taking
a volume in her hand, she began to read, with the utmost unconcern.
"Come," said the professor, "we may as well go."
"Wait a minute," I suggested. "Stay where you are." Cutter looked at me,
and shrugged his shoulders.
"You can't do any harm," he replied, indifferently. "I think she has a
faint remembrance of you."
You know I can speak the Russian language fairly well, for I have lived
some time in the country. It had struck me, while I was waiting in the
study, that it would be worth while to try the effect of a remark in a
tongue with which Madame Patoff had been familiar for over thirty years.
I went quietly up to the couch where she was lying, and spoke to her.
"I am sorry I saved your life, since you wished to die," I said, in a
low voice, in Russian. "Forgive me."
Madame Patoff started violently, and her white hands closed upon her
book with such force that the strong binding bent and cracked. Cutter
could not have seen this, for I was between him and her. She looked up
at me, and fixed her dark eyes on mine. There was a great sadness in
them, and at the same time a certain terror, but she did not speak.
However, as I had made an impression, I addressed her again in the same
language.
"Do you remember seeing Paul to-day?" I asked.
"Paul?" she repeated, in a soft, sad voice, that seemed to stir the
heart into sympathy. "Paul is dead."