A partial paralysis had befallen Reginald Grove. At his first stage of
consciousness, Mrs. Mancredo noticed that when a servant in clearing the
room took up the withered rosebud, his heavy gaze followed it. She
replaced it, and then bending over him said: “Do you want to see her?”
The eagerness of his attempt to respond showed his wish. Mrs. Mancredo
ordered her carriage for a drive past the gardens of the town, on the
lookout for moss roses.
“She must be a widow,” she was saying to herself, when her thoughts were
interrupted by the sight of a rosebush, much beaten down on the side
next the house-steps; and on the other, in the full glory of its mossy
beauty.
“Turn round, John, and go slowly back, and then come to this spot and
on, till I tell you to stop.”
As they passed the house the second time, Mrs. Mancredo had a good view
of the roses, and of a young woman whose every nervous motion meant
purpose, watering the bush. Mrs. Mancredo stopped the carriage and
descended. On approaching Miss Daksha she looked at her steadily a
moment, and then presented her card.
“I came—I came to look at your moss roses, and to talk about them. What
has happened to this bush?” she said abruptly.
“It has been abused.”
“Did you ever live on a farm?” said Mrs. Mancredo then, after a long
pause.
Ethelbert turned and looked at her, and then drawing chairs into the
shade, said with a strange, sweet smile: “No, I never did. Now please
sit here and I’ll sit with you, and you shall tell me what you really
want to know.”
Mrs. Mancredo was a bit overwhelmed; but she sat, and wheeling her guns,
said as suddenly as possible: “Reginald Grove wants to see you.”
“Is he ill?”
“You know him, then?”
“Why don’t you say whatever you have to say?” said Ethelbert simply.
“If I did, I should say that you gave him a rosebud and loaned him a
volume of Petrarch’s ‘De Vita Solitaria,’ and that he loves you, and is
sick, paralyzed, dying!—and wants to see you,” she said with Italian
impetuosity, leaning more and more toward Ethelbert, trying to shock the
secret out of her, with each added word. “You know him, you gave him the
rosebud—the book?”
“I spoke to him for the first time yester-morn. I have seen him several
times. I gave him the rosebud; I did not loan him the book.” She laid
her cool hand on this woman’s burning hot hand, saying: “He is nothing
to me more than any and every human being is. Any child five years old,
with beautiful possibilities, is more interesting.”
“Then why pin a rosebud on his coat?”
“He pinned it there as a sort of symbol of his lost sweet childhood,
which he wishes he could regain, and which I think he could.”
“O, this is stupidity!” said Mrs. Mancredo in quick Italian. “We all
know that can never be done! What is he, that he should have his
childhood back again, more than I should—more than thousands? No! he has
made his bed, and there he shall lie upon it, a paralyzed idiot, for
what I know. He is a bad man! Do you understand what that means? And he
is a rich bad man, and his visits to this simple house and to you mean
no good! Do you understand that?”
“I understand you,” said Ethelbert, rising and looking down upon her
visitor, “but you don’t understand me, and cannot. Till you have known
me a long while, you will misinterpret everything I say or do.”
“How old are you?” was the next angry question.
“Ages old. I am able to help you and this sick friend of yours. I am
sorry for your trouble,” said Ethelbert, with a divine pity in her voice
and look, and an uplifting power going forth like a cooling shadow
displacing the glare and scorch of passion; until, in the cool of it,
the tears which, unshed, had burned Mrs. Mancredo’s eyes ever since she
had seen Reginald groping upstairs the night before his shock, came
forth, relieving her spirit.
Then altogether perplexed, but believing Ethel’s every word, she said:
“Can you come down to the hotel and see if you can ease him? The doctor
says that his paralysis comes from the ‘functional disorder of the
nervous centers,’ whatever all-that-is.”
“That is hemiplegia,” said Ethelbert, “and means ‘I strike one-half,’—so
he is paralyzed on one side. If that is it, one corner of his mouth will
be drawn a little, and one cheek will look in a sort, withered and
drooping. If it is that, his mind will be curious.”
“You are a cold-blooded thing, any way,” said Mrs. Mancredo, frightened
and angry.
Ethelbert opened her eyes reflectively.
“Forgive me,” said the excitable woman, “and get into my carriage and
come now.”
“In a minute,” said Ethelbert; and in about that time she came back with
her hat and her mother, whom she introduced, saying:
“My mother will go, too.” And cutting some fresh roses she followed the
two elder ladies into the carriage, and they drove away to the hotel.
Reginald was awake when they entered; and Ethelbert had given the
flowers to Mrs. Mancredo, who walked with them to the sick man. He
smiled that strange half smile, which was contradicted by the paralyzed
muscles on the other side of his mouth. “He will get on in a way, you
know,—in a way,” said the physician. “He will perhaps be talking and
about again, in a way, you know,—in a way.”
“I found her, Reginald, she is here,” said Mrs. Mancredo, and she
motioned to Miss Daksha to approach. A look of heavenly rapture
overspread his countenance. In a strange, full voice he cried out: “My
mother!”
With an exclamation the physician started forward, but fell back, as
Ethelbert said all motherly: “Yes, Reginald.”
He looked at her with consuming eagerness. “You have been gone so long,”
he said, a little thickly. “Where is Cousin Alitza?”
A muffled shriek from Mrs. Mancredo thrilled through the room.
“You know what he means!” asserted Ethelbert, looking at Mrs. Mancredo,
who, with a perfectly bloodless face and a shrinking, stealthy step,
approached. Reginald Grove looked at her puzzled, and then said
fretfully, lifting his eyes to Ethelbert: “You have all been gone so
long; see how she has grown.”
There was an oppressive hush of bewilderment. The doctor was held back
by the unmoved air with which Ethelbert kept her post, giving way to her
as if she were the physician of the occasion in whom he trusted. She
stood, gently stroking Reginald’s head. He raised his other hand and
patted hers languidly, as a pleased child would do, and so presently
fell asleep. Then the other physicians came in, and a little apart
discussed the case, perplexed.
“He called you Alitza. Your card was marked Corrinne,” said Ethelbert;
and after scarce a moment’s halt Mrs. Mancredo said with truthful
rapidity: “I am—I was—Alitza Corrinne Roccoca, his cousin. I have seen
him but twice since I was seventeen, until I met him in this city. He
loved me when we were children; he hated me when I was older. He never
dreamed that Mrs. Mancredo was—is—Alitza.”
Ethelbert was silent; she was thinking of his perplexed words: “You have
all been away so long; see how she has grown,” and of the childlike
manner in which he had clung to her and called her “mother.” She
remembered a curious case of mental-aberration of which she had read.
“Doctors,” she said, “your patient’s mind has become blank, back to the
time before his mother’s death. Don’t you see? He thinks I am his
mother; and his mother passed away when he was five years old. He is a
child again; that is all.”
“Yes, but a paralyzed one,” said the physicians.