think he knows," returned Mrs. Denham despairingly. "I must despatch a
courier to my husband; our old family physician is now with him at
Paris. I have just received a letter, and they are not coming this
week! They must come at once. I do not know how to telegraph them, as
they are about to change their hotel. Besides, I believe a telegram
cannot be sent from here; the nearest office is at Geneva. I must send
some messenger who will have intelligence enough to find Mr. Denham
wherever he is."
"I will go."
"You?"
"Why not? I shall waste less time than another. There should be no
mistake in the delivery of this message. A courier might get drunk, or
be stupid. I can do nothing here. If it had not been for me, possibly
this unfortunate thing would not have happened. I am determined to go,
whether you consent or not."
"I shall be grateful to you all my life, Mr. Lynde. I should not have
thought of asking such a favor. Ruth says I was rude to you yesterday.
I did not mean to be. I was distracted with anxiety at having her out
in such a storm. If there is any blame in the matter it is entirely
mine. You forgive me?"
"There is nothing to forgive, Mrs. Denham; blame rests on no one;
neither you nor I could foresee the rain. Write a line to Mr. Denham
while I pack my valise; I shall be ready in ten minutes. Who is his
banker at Paris?"
"I think he has none."
"How do you address your letters?"
"I have written but once since Mr. Denham's arrival, and then I
directed the letter to the Hotel Walther."
"He has probably left his new address there. However, I shall have no
difficulty in finding him. Mrs. Denham"--Lynde hesitated.
"Mr. Lynde?"
"Can I not see her a moment?"
"See Ruth?"
"My request appears strange to you, does it not? It would not appear
strange if you knew all."
"All? I don't understand you," replied Mrs. Denham, resting her hand on
the back of a chair and regarding him with slowly dilating pupils.
"If you knew how troubled I am--and how deeply I love her."
"You love Ruth!"
"More than I can tell you."
"Have you told HER?" Mrs. Denham demanded.
"Not in so many words."
Mrs. Denham slowly sank into the chair and for several seconds appeared
completely oblivious of the young man's presence; then, turning sharply
on Lynde, and half rising, she asked with a kind of fierceness, "Does
Ruth know it?"
"A woman always knows when she is loved, I fancy. Miss Denham probably
knew it before I did."
Mrs. Denham made an impatient gesture and subsided into the chair
again. She remained silent a while, staring at the pattern of the
carpet at her feet.
"Mr. Lynde," she said at length, "I was not prepared for this. The
possibility that you might grow interested in my niece naturally
occurred to me at first. I was pleased when I became convinced that the
acquaintance between you had resolved itself into merely a friendly
liking. I was thrown off my guard by your seemingly frank manner. I
trusted you. You have been alone with my niece but twice--once for only
ten minutes. I will do you the justice to say that you have made the
most of those two occasions."
"I made very little of those two occasions," said Lynde reflectively.
"I think you have been--treacherous!"
"I do not see what there can be of treachery in my admiring Miss
Denham," he replied, with a flush. "I entered into no compact not to
admire her."
"Mr. Lynde, Mr. Denham will not approve of this."
"Not at first, perhaps...but afterwards?"
"Neither now nor afterwards, Mr. Lynde."
"Why not?"
"He has other views for Ruth," said Mrs. Denham coldly.
"Other views!" repeated Lynde, paling. "I thought her free."
"She is not free in that sense."
The assertion Ruth had made to him the previous day on the mountain
side, to the effect that she had never known any gentleman as
intimately as she had known him, flashed across Lynde's memory. If Mr.
Denham had views for her, certainly Ruth was either ignorant of them or
opposed to them.
"Is Miss Ruth aware of Mr. Denham's intentions regarding her?"
"I must decline to answer you, Mr. Lynde," said Mrs. Denham, rising
with something like haughtiness in her manner.
"You are right. I was wrong to speak at present. I cannot conceive what
impelled me; it was neither the time nor the place. I beg you to
consider everything unsaid, if you can, and I especially beg you not to
mention this conversation in your note to Mr. Denham. The one important
thing now is to have proper medical attendance for your niece. The rest
will take care of itself."
Lynde bowed somewhat formally and was turning away, when Mrs. Denham
laid her fingers lightly on the sleeve of his coat. "I am sorry I have
pained you," she said, as if with a touch of remorse.
"I confess I am pained," he replied, with the faintest smile, "but I am
not discouraged, Mrs. Denham."
A quarter of an hour later Lynde was on the way to Geneva. Life and the
world had somehow darkened for him within the hour. It seemed to him
incredible that that was the same road over which he had passed so
joyously two days before. The swollen torrents now rushed vengefully
through the arches of the stone bridges; the low-hanging opaque clouds
pressed the vitality out of the atmosphere; in the melancholy gray
light the rain-soaked mountains wore a human aspect of dolor. He was
not sorry when the mist gathered like frost on the carriage windows and
shut the landscape from his sight.
The storm had been terrible in Geneva and in the neighborhood. It was a
scene of devastation all along the road approaching the town. Most of
the trees in the suburbs had been completely stripped of foliage by the
hailstones; the leaves which still clung to the bent twigs were slit as
if volleys of buckshot had been fired into them. But the saddest thing
to see was field after field of rich grain mown within a few inches of
the ground by those swift, keen sickles which no man's hand had held.
In the section of the city through which Lynde passed to the railroad
the streets were literally strewn with broken tiles and chimney-pots.
In some places the brown and purple fragments lay ankle-deep, like
leaves in autumn. Hundreds of houses had been unroofed and thousands of
acres laid waste in a single night. It will take the poor of the canton
fifty years to forget the summer storm of 1875.
By noon the next day Lynde was in Paris. As he stepped from the station
and stood under the blue sky in the sparkling Parisian atmosphere, the
gloom and desolation he had left behind at Geneva and Chamouni affected
him like the remembrance of a nightmare. For a brief space he forgot
his sorrowful errand; then it came back to him with its heaviness
redoubled by the contrast. He threw his valise on the seat of a fiacre
standing near the crossway, and drove to the office of Galignani in the
Rue de Rivoli--the morgue in which the names of all foreign travellers
are daily laid out for recognition. The third name Lynde fell upon was
that of William Denham, Hotel Meurice. The young man motioned to the
driver to follow him and halt at the hotel entrance, which was only a
few steps further in the arcade facing the gardens of the Tuileries.
Mr. Denham was at breakfast in the small salon opening on the paved
square formed by the four interior walls of the building; he had just
seated himself at the table, which was laid for two persons, when the
waiter brought him Mrs. Denham's note and Lynde's card. Mr. Denham
glanced from one to the other, and then broke the seal of the envelope
with a puzzled air which directly changed into a perturbed expression.
"Show the gentleman in here," he said, speaking over the top of the
note-sheet to the servant, "and set another cover."
It was a strongly featured person of fifty or fifty-five, slightly
bald, and closely shaven with the exception of a heavy iron-gray
mustache, who rose from the chair and stepped forward to meet Lynde as
he entered. Lynde's name was familiar to Mr. Denham, it having figured
rather prominently in his wife's correspondence during the latter part
of the sojourn at Geneva.
"You have placed us all under deep obligations to you, sir," said Mr.
Denham, with a smile in which the severity of his features melted.
"The obligations are on my side, sir," replied Lynde. "I owe Mrs.
Denham a great many kindnesses. I wish I could have found some happier
way than the present to express my sense of them."
"I sincerely hope she was not justified in allowing you to take this
long journey. I beg of you to tell me what has happened. Mrs. Denham
has been anything but explicit."
She had merely announced Ruth's illness, leaving it to Lynde to inform
Mr. Denham of the particulars. That gentleman wrinkled his brows
involuntarily as he listened to Lynde's account of his mountain
excursion alone with Ruth and the result. "I have not seen Miss Denham
since," said Lynde, concluding his statement, in which he had tripped
and stumbled woefully. "I trust that Mrs. Denham's anxiety has
exaggerated her niece's condition."
"Ruth is far from strong," replied Mr. Denham, "and my wife is almost
morbidly quick to take alarm about her. In fact, we both are. Do you
know how the trains run to Geneva? Is there anything earlier than the
evening express?"
Lynde did not know.
"We will ascertain after breakfast," continued Mr. Denham. "Of course
you have not breakfasted yet. You ought to be in appetite by this time.
I am unusually late myself, this morning, and my friend, the doctor, is
still later. We tired ourselves out yesterday in a jaunt to
Fontainebleau. The doctor's an incorrigible sightseer. Ah, there he is!
Mr. Lynde, my friend, Dr. Pendegrast."
Lynde did not start at hearing this unexpected name, though it pierced
his ear like a sharp-pointed arrow. He was paralyzed for an instant; a
blur came over his eyes, and he felt that his hands and feet were
turning into ice However, he made an effort to rise and salute the
elderly gentleman who stood at his side with a hand stretched out in
the cordial American fashion.
Evidently Dr. Pendegrast did not recognize Lynde, in whose personal
appearance three years had wrought many changes. The doctor himself had
altered in no essential; he was at that period of man's life--between
fifty and sixty--when ravaging time seems to give him a respite for a
couple of lustrums. As soon as Lynde could regain his self-possession
he examined Dr. Pendegrast with the forlorn hope that this was not HIS
Dr. Pendegrast; but it was he, with those round eyes like small
blue-faience saucers, and that slight, wiry figure. If any doubt had
lingered in the young man's mind, it would have vanished as the doctor
drew forth from his fob that same fat little gold watch, and turned it
over on its back in the palm of his hand, just as he had done the day
he invited Lynde to remain and dine with him at the asylum.
"Why, bless me, Denham!" he exclaimed, laying his ear to the crystal of
the time-piece as if he were sounding a doubtful lung, "my watch has
run down--a thing that hasn't happened these twenty years." As he stood
with his head inclined on one side, the doctor's cheery eyes
inadvertently rested upon Mr. Denham's face and detected its unwonted
disturbance.
"Mr. Lynde has just come from Chamouni," said Mr. Denham, answering the
doctor's mute interrogation. "It seems that Ruth is ill."
Dr. Pendegrast glanced at Lynde and turned to Mr. Denham again.
"I imagine it is only a cold," Mr. Denham continued. "She was caught in
a rain-storm on the mountain and got very wet. Mrs. Denham is of course
worried about her, and Mr. Lynde has been kind enough to come all the
way to Paris for us."
"That WAS very kind in him."
Dr. Pendegrast drew a chair up to the table and began questioning
Lynde. Beyond satisfying such of the doctor's inquiries as he could,
Lynde did not speak during the meal. He managed to swallow a cup of
black coffee, which revived him; but he was unable to eat a mouthful.
The intelligence he had brought so occupied his companions that the
young man's very noticeable agitation and constraint escaped them. In a
few minutes Mr. Denham rose from his seat and begged the two gentlemen
to finish their breakfast at leisure, while he went to consult the
time-table at the bureau of the hotel.
"The doctor can give you a genuine Havana," he remarked to Lynde. "I
will join you shortly in the smoking-room."
While Dr. Pendegrast silently drank his coffee, Lynde pieced his
scattered thoughts together. What course should he pursue? Should he
take the doctor into his confidence, or should he let himself drift?
How could the doctor help him in the circumstances? Ruth had been
insane. What could do away with that dreadful fact, the revelation of
which now appalled him as if he had never suspected it. Ruth, Ruth--the
very name was significant of calamity! Flemming's words rang in his
ears: "You would not marry her!" He had not replied to Flemming that
night when the case was merely supposititious. But now--it seemed to
Lynde that he had never loved Ruth until this moment. The knowledge of
her misfortune had added to his love that great pity of which he had
spoken to his friend. But could he marry her? He did not dare put the
question squarely, for he dared not confess to himself that he could
not give her up. This, then, was the key to Mrs. Denham's cold
rejection of his suit; it explained, also, Ruth's unwillingness to have
him speak to her of his love. How poignant must have been her anguish
that day on Montanvert if she cared for him! She loved him--how could
he doubt it?--but she had accepted the hopelessness of the position. In
his own mind he had accused her of coquetry in their walk at the
cascade of Nant d'Arpenaz. He saw through it all now; the scales had
fallen from his eyes. She was hiding her misery under a smooth face, as
women will. A sudden reflection sent a chill over Lynde; what if she
had recognized him that first day at dinner in Geneva and had been
playing a part all the while! Then she was the most subtile actress
that ever lived, and the leading lady of the Theatre Francais might
indeed go and take lessons of her, as Flemming had said. The thought
gave Lynde a shock. He would not like to have the woman he loved such
an actress as that. Had Ruth revealed everything to the aunt, and was
she too playing a part? In her several allusions to Dr. Pendegrast Mrs.
Denham had called him "the doctor" simply, or "an old friend of our
family," and never once pronounced his name. "Was that accidental or
intentional?" Lynde wondered. "It was inevitable that he and I should
meet sooner or later. Was she endeavoring to keep the knowledge of Dr.
Pendegrast from me as long as possible? The exigency has unmasked her!"
"Now, Mr. Lynde, I am at your service."
Lynde gave a start, as if the doctor had suddenly dropped down at his
side from out of the sky.
Dr. Pendegrast pushed back his chair and led the way across the
quadrangle, in which a number of persons were taking coffee at small
tables set here and there under oleander-trees in green-painted tubs.
The smoking-room was unoccupied. Lynde stood a moment undetermined in
the centre of the apartment, and then he laid his hand on the doctor's
shoulder.
"You don't remember me?"
"Ah, then I HAVE seen you before!" exclaimed Dr. Pendegrast, transfixed
in the act of drawing a cigar from his case. "Your name and your face
puzzled me, but I could not place you, so I didn't mention it. You must
pardon an old man's bad memory. I am confused. When and where have I
had the pleasure of seeing you?"
"It was scarcely a pleasure," said Lynde, with bitterness.
"Indeed! I cannot imagine that; it is a pleasure now," returned the
doctor courteously. "It was three years ago, at your asylum. As you
will recollect, I was brought there by mistake the day the patients"--
"Bless me!" exclaimed the doctor, dropping the ignited match. "How
could I forget you! I took such a great liking to you, too. I have
thought of that awkward affair a thousand times. But, really, coming
across you in this unexpected manner"--
"I suppose I have changed somewhat," Lynde broke in. "Dr. Pendegrast, I
am in a very strange position here. It is imperative you should be
perfectly frank with me. You will have to overlook my abruptness. Mr.
Denham may return any instant, and what I have to say cannot be said in
his presence. I know that Miss Denham has been under your charge as a
patient. I want to know more than that bare circumstance."
The doctor recoiled a step. "Of course," he said, recovering himself,
"you must have recognized her."
"I met your friends six or seven weeks ago at Geneva," continued Lynde.
"I recognized Miss Denham at once; but later I came to doubt and
finally to disbelieve that I had ever seen her elsewhere. I refused to
accept the testimony of my eyes and ears because--because so much of my
happiness depended on my rejecting it."
"Does Mrs. Denham know that you are in possession of the fact you
mention? Denham of course doesn't."
"No; it is my meeting with you that he turned my discarded doubt into a
certainty."
"Then, I beg of you," said Dr. Pendegrast throwing a glance across the
quadrangle, "not to breathe a syllable of this; do not even think of
it. It has been kept from every one--from even the most intimate
friends of the family; Ruth herself is not aware of her temporary
derangement."
"Miss Denham does not know it?"
"She has not the remotest suspicion of the misfortune which befell her
three years ago."
"Miss Denham does not know it?" repeated Lynde in a dazed way.
"That--that seems impossible! Pardon me. How did it happen, Dr.
Pendegrast?"
"I assume that you are not asking me through idle curiosity," said the
doctor, looking at him attentively.
"I have vital reasons for my question, Doctor."
"I do not see why I should not tell you, since you know so much. The
family were in Florida that spring. Ruth had not been well for several
months; they had gone South on her account. It was partly a pulmonary
difficulty. On their return North, Ruth was prostrated by a typhoid
fever. She recovered from that but with her mind strangely disordered.
The mental malady increased with her convalescence. Denham and I were
old friends; he had faith in my skill, and she was placed in my care.
She was brought to the asylum because I could not attend to her
anywhere else. I considered her case serious at first, even hopeless.
The human body is still a mystery, after science has said its last
word. The human mind is a deeper mystery. While I doubted of her
recovery, she recovered. At the first intimation of returning health,
she was taken home; when her wandering thought came back to her she was
in her own room. She remembered that she had been very ill, a long time
ill; she had a faint impression that I had attended her meanwhile; but
she remembered nothing more. The knowledge of her affliction was kept a
secret from her--unwisely, I think. They put it off and put it off,
until it became very awkward to tell her."
Lynde started as he recalled his conversation with Miss Denham on the
rocks overhanging the Mer de Glace. With unwitting cruelty he had told
Ruth her own pathetic story, and she had unconsciously pitied herself!
A lump came into his throat as he remembered it.
"That was a mistake," said Lynde, with an effort, "not to tell her."
"An absurd mistake. It has given my friends no end of trouble and
embarrassment."
"How long was she afflicted this way?"
"Something less than two months."
"It was the result of the fever?"
"That chiefly."
"It was not--hereditary?" Lynde lingered on the word.
"No."
"Then it is not likely to occur again?"
"I cannot think of anything more unlikely," returned the doctor,
"unless the same conditions conspire, which is scarcely supposable, as
I could easily prove to you. You can understand, Mr. Lynde, that this
has been a sore trial to Denham and his wife; they have had no
children, and their hearts are bound up in Ruth. The dread of a
recurrence of the trouble has haunted them night and day in spite of
all the arguments I could advance to reassure them. They have got what
our French friends call a fixed idea, which is generally an idea that
requires a great deal of fixing. The girl ought to marry--every woman
ought to marry, it is her one mission; but between their affections and
their apprehensions, my friends have allowed Ruth no opportunity to
form attachments."
"I'm glad of that," said Lynde quietly.
"Are you!" snapped the doctor. "I am not. I would like to see her
married some day. Meanwhile I would like to see a dozen lovers about
her. It is as natural for a young girl to coquet as it is for a canary
to peck at its seed or trim its bill on a bit of fishbone. It is had
for the girl and the canary when they are prevented."
"There is something human in this crisp old doctor," said Lynde to
himself, and then aloud: "So Mr. Denham has no matrimonial plans for
her?"
"None whatever. Since Ruth's recovery the family have been constantly
on the wing, either at home or abroad. Most of Ruth's life has been
passed over here. I trust to your discretion. You will perceive the
necessity of keeping all this to yourself."
"I do, and I now see that your travelling with the Denhams is a
circumstance in no way connected with the state of Miss Denham's
health."
"Not in the most distant manner, Mr. Lynde. I am with them because they
are my old friends. I was worn out with professional work, and I ran
across the sea to recuperate. It is fortunate I did, since Ruth chances
to need me."
Lynde pondered a moment, and then asked abruptly: "Does Mrs. Denham
know of my former meeting with her niece?"
"I never breathed a word to Mrs. Denham on the subject of Ruth's
escapade," replied the doctor. "It would have pained her without
mending matters. Besides, I was not proud of that transaction."
Mrs. Denham's suppression of the doctor's name, then, in speaking of
him to Lynde, had been purely accidental.
"Miss Ruth's strange hallucination, in her illness, as to personality,
her fancy about the Queen of Sheba--what was that traceable to?" asked
Lynde, after a pause.
"Heaven only knows. She was reading the Old Testament very much in
those days. I have sometimes accepted that as an explanation. It often
happens that a delusion takes its cue from something read, or thought,
or experienced in a rational state. In the case of the man Blaisdell,
for example--you remember him, with his marble ship? He was formerly an
enterprising ship-builder; during the Southern war he filled a contract
with government for a couple of ironclads, and made his fortune. The
depression in shipping afterwards ruined him--and he fell to
constructing marble vessels! He is dead, by the way. I wonder if his
reason has been given back to him--in that other world."
Lynde did not speak immediately, and the doctor relighted his cigar,
which had gone out.
"Dr. Pendegrast, you have lifted a crushing weight from me. I cannot
explain it to you now and here; but you shall know some day."
Dr. Pendegrast smiled. "I didn't recollect you at first, Mr. Lynde; my
memory for names and faces is shockingly derelict, but I have retained
most of my other faculties in tolerably good order. I have been
unreserved with you because I more than suspect"--
The doctor's sentence was cut short by Mr. Denham, who entered at the
instant. He had learned that there was no train for Geneva before the
night-express. Lynde lighted the cigar which he had been unconsciously
holding between his fingers all this while, and on the plea of cashing
a draft at a banker's left the two gentlemen together. He wandered
absently into the Place de la Concorde, crossed the crowded bridge
there, and plunged into the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter.
Finding his way back after an hour or so to the other bank of the
Seine, he seated himself on one of those little black iron chairs which
seem to have let themselves down like spiders from the lime-trees in
the Champs Elysees, and remained for a long time in a deep study.