Part 28

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."

I thought it might have been her husband's name as well as her son's.

"I mean your son. He was with you to-day; you were unkind to him."

"Was I?" she asked. "I have no son." Still her eyes gazed into mine as though searching for something, and as I looked I thought the tears rose in them and trembled, but they did not overflow. I was profoundly surprised. They had told me that she had no memory for any one, and yet she seemed to have told me that her husband was dead,--if indeed his name had been Paul,--and although she said she had no son, her tears rose at the mention of him. Probably for the very reason that I had not then had any experience of insane persons, the impression formed itself in my mind that this poor lady was not mad, after all. It seemed madness on my own part to doubt the evidence before me,--the evidence of attendants trained to the duty of watching lunatics, the assurances of a man who had grown famous by studying diseases of the brain as Professor Cutter had, the unanimous opinion of Madame Patoff's family. How could they all be mistaken? Besides, she might have been really mad, and she might be now recovering; this might be one of her first lucid moments. I hardly knew how to continue, but I was so much interested by her first answers that I felt I must say something.

"Why do you say you have no son! He is here in the house; you have seen him to-day. Your son is Paul Patoff. He loves you, and has come to see you."

Again the low, silvery laugh came rippling from her lips. She let the book fall from her hands upon her lap, and leaned far back upon the couch.

"Why do you torment me so?" she asked. "I tell you I have no son." Again she laughed,--less sweetly than before. "Why do you torment me?"

"I do not want to torment you. I will leave you. Shall I come again?"

"Again?" she repeated, vacantly, as though not understanding. But as I stood beside her I moved a little, and I thought her eyes rested on the figure of the professor, standing at the other end of the room, and her face expressed dislike of him, while her answer to me was a meaningless repetition of my own word.

"Yes," I said. "Shall I come again? Do you like to talk Russian?" This time she said nothing, but her eyes remained fixed upon the professor. "I am going," I added. "Good-by."