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TWO WOMEN OR ONE?

From The Mss. Of Dr. Leonard Benary

By Henry Harland

New York

1890

_DEDICATION_

TO -------- --------, ESQUIRE.



               “I'll link my waggon to a star;”

               I'll dedicate this tale to you:

               Wit, poet, scholar, that you are,

               And skilful story-teller too,

               And theologue, and critic true,

               And main-stay of the-------Review.

               I'll link my waggon to a star,

               Does not the Yankee sage advise it?

               And yet I dare not name your name,

               Lest the wide lustre of its fame

               Eclipse my humble candle-flame:

               But you'll surmise it.

January 1890.





TWO WOMEN OR ONE?




CHAPTER I.--THE FIRST NIGHT.

|My name is Leonard Benary--rather a foreign-sounding name, though I am
a pure-blooded Englishman. I reside at No. 63, Riverview Road, in the
American city of Adironda, though I was born in Devonshire. And I am a
physician and surgeon, though retired from active practice. My age can
be computed when I say that I came into the world on the 21st day of
July, in the year 1818.

I must at the outset crave the reader's indulgence for two things.
First, my style. I am not a literary man; and my style will therefore
be ungraceful. Secondly, my provincialisms. I have lived in Adironda
for very nearly half a century, and I have therefore fallen into divers
local peculiarities of speech. But I have a singular, and I believe an
interesting and significant, story to tell, and I think it had better be
ill told than not told at all.

It begins with the night of Friday, June 13th, 1884.

Towards twelve o'clock on that night I was walking in an easterly
direction along the south side of Washington Street, between Myrtle
Avenue and Riverview Road, on my way home from a concert which I had
attended at the Academy of Music. Moving in the same direction, on the
same side of the street, and leading me by something like a hundred
feet, I could make out the figure of a woman. Except for us two, the
neighbourhood appeared to be deserted.

Anything about my fellow pedestrian, beyond her sex, which was
proclaimed by the outline of her gown as she passed under a
street-lamp--whether she was young or old, white or black, a lady or
a beggar--I was unable, owing to the darkness of the night, and to the
distance that separated us, to distinguish. Indeed, I should most likely
have paid no attention whatever to her, for I was busy with my own
thoughts, had I not happened to notice that when she readied the corner
of Riverview Road, instead of turning into that thoroughfare, she
proceeded to the terrace at the foot of Washington Street, and
immediately disappeared down the stone staircase which leads thence to
the water's edge.

This action at once struck me as odd, and put an end to my
pre-occupation.

What could a solitary woman want at the brink of the Yellow Snake River
at twelve o'clock midnight?

Her errand could scarcely be a benign one; and the conjecture that
suicide might possibly be its object, instantly, of course, arose in my
mind.

My duty under the circumstances, anyhow, seemed plain--to keep an eye
upon her, and hold myself in readiness to interfere, if needful.

After a moment's deliberation, I, too, descended the stone stairs.




CHAPTER II.--AT THE RIVER SIDE.

|Yet to keep an eye upon her was more easily said than done. At the
bottom of the terrace it was impenetrably dark. Not a star shone from
the clouded sky. The points of light along the opposite shore--and here
and there, upon the bosom of the stream, the red or green lantern of a
vessel--punctured the darkness without relieving it. Strain my eyesight
as I might, I could see nothing beyond the length of my arm.

But the lapping of the waves upon the strand, and about the piles of the
little T-shaped landing-stage that extends into the river at this
point, was distinctly audible, and served to guide me. Towards the
landing-stage I cautiously advanced; and when I felt the planking of it
beneath my feet, I halted. The whereabouts of the woman I had no
means of determining. “However,” thought I, “if her business be
self-destruction, she has not yet transacted it, for I have heard
no splash.”

Ah! Suddenly a flare of heat-lightning on the eastern horizon
illuminated the land and the water. It was very brief, but it lasted
long enough for me to take my bearings, and to discern the object of my
quest.

She was standing, a mass of shadow, at the very verge of the little
wharf, distant not more than three yards in front of me. A moment later
I had silently gained her side, stretched out my hand, and laid firm
hold upon her by the arm.

In great and entirely natural terror, she started back: as luck would
have it, not in the direction of the water, for else she had certainly
tumbled in, perhaps dragging me with her. And though she uttered no
articulate sound, she caught her breath in a sharp spasmodic gasp, and I
could feel her tremble violently under my touch.

I sought to reassure her.

“Do not be alarmed,” I said, speaking as gently as I could; “I mean you
no manner of evil. I saw you come down here from the street above; and
it struck me as hardly a safe place for a person of your sex to visit
alone at such an hour.”

She made no answer. A prolonged shudder swept over her, and she drew a
deep long sigh.

“You have no reason to fear me,” I continued. “I have only come to you
for the purpose of protecting you, of being of service to you, if I can.
Look--ah! no; it's too dark for you to see me. But I am a white-haired
old man, the last person in the world you need be afraid of. You would
not tremble and draw away like that, if you could know how far I am from
wishing you anything but good.”

She spoke. “Then release my arm.”

Her tone was haughty and indignant. She enunciated each syllable
with frigid preciseness. From the correctness of her accent and the
cultivated quality of her voice, I learned that I had to do with a woman
of education and refinement.

“Then release my arm.”

“No,” I said, “I dare not release your arm.”

“Dare not!” echoed she, in the same indignant tone, to which now was
added an inflection of perplexity. Sightless as the darkness rendered
me, I could have wagered that she raised her eyebrows and curled her
lip.

“I dare not,” I repeated.

“Possibly you will be good enough to explain what it is you fear.”

“Frankly, I fear that you mean to do yourself a mischief. I dare not let
go my hold upon you, lest you might take advantage of your liberty to
throw yourself into the water.”

“Well, and if I should?”

“That would be a very foolish thing to do.”

“But what concern is it of yours? What right have you to molest me? My
life is my own, is it not, to dispose of as I please?”

“That is a very difficult and subtle question, involving the first
principles of theology and ethics. I do not think we can profitably
enter into a discussion of it just now, and here. But this much I will
promise you,” said I, “I shall not let go my hold upon your arm until I
am persuaded that you have renounced your suicidal purpose.”

She gave a _tchk_ of exasperation. Then, after a momentary silence--

“You are insolent and intrusive, sir. You presume upon the fact that I
am a woman and alone, to take a shameful and unmanly advantage of me.”

“I am sorry if such is your opinion of me,” I returned. “I do only what
I must.”

“You tell me you are an old man. I am not old, and I am strong. I warn
you now to let me go. I assure you, you are unwise to trifle with me. I
am a very desperate woman, and shall not mind consequences. If you try
me beyond endurance--if we should come to a struggle----”

“Ah! but we will not,” I hastily interposed. “You will not improve your
superior strength against one who is moved by no other feeling than
goodwill toward you. And besides,” I added, “though it is true that I am
close upon sixty-six years of age, my muscles have still some iron in
them. I fancy I should be able to hold my own.”

This, I must acknowledge, was sheer braggadocio. I weigh but nine
stone, measure but five feet four in my boots, and am anything rather
than an athlete.

“You are a meddler, sir. Good or bad, your motives do not interest
me. Let me go. My patience is exhausted. I will brook no further
interference. Release my arm. Your conduct is an outrage.”

She spoke in genuine anger, stamping her foot, and tugging to escape my
grasp.

“What I do, madam, be it outrageous or otherwise, I am in common
humanity bound to do. I should be virtually your murderer if I did less.
It is my bounden duty to restrain you, to do what I may to help you.”

“Help me, sir? You are in no position to help me. I have not asked your
help. There is no help for me. You are meddlesome and officious. I will
not dispute with you further. _Let me go!_”

She spoke the last three words with threatening emphasis. I could hear
her teeth come together with a decisive click after them. Again she
tugged to break loose from me.

“You require of me the impossible,” was my reply. “It is impossible for
me to let you go. I implore you to control your anger, and to listen to
me for one moment. You are labouring under great excitement, you are not
accountable, you are not yourself. How can I let you go? I should never
know another instant of peace if I stood by and suffered you to do
yourself the injury that you contemplate. I should be a brute, a craven,
a criminal, if I did that. I should be answerable for your death. As a
human being, I am compelled to restrain you if I can. You must see that
it is impossible for me to let you go.”

“Well, have you finished?” she demanded, as I paused.

“Not quite,” I answered, “for now I must ask you to let me take you to
your home. Tomorrow morning you will feel differently, you will see all
things by a different light. You will thank me then for what you now
call an outrage. Think of your friends, your family. No matter what
anguish you may be suffering, no matter to what desperate straits your
affairs may be arrived, you have no right to attempt your life. Besides,
you say you are young. Therefore you have the future before you; you
have hope. I am older than you, and wiser. Be advised and guided by me.
Come, let me take you to your home.”

“Home!” she repeated bitterly. “Home, friends, family! Ha-ha-ha!” She
laughed; but her laughter was dry and sardonic, horrid to hear. “What
you say would be cruel, sir, if it were not so highly humorous. You
speak and act in ignorance. You are very far from comprehending the
situation. I have no home. I have no family, no friends, and, worst of
all, no money. There is not a roof in this city--no, nor in the whole
world, for that matter--under which I can seek a welcome; not a friend,
acquaintance, relation, not a human being, in short, to miss me, or even
to enquire after me, if I disappear. Except, indeed, enemies; except
those who would wish to find me for my further hurt: of them there are
plenty. Now will you let me go? I am in extreme misery, sir. There is no
help for me, no hope. My life is a wreck, a horror. I can't bear it,
I can't endure it any longer. Let me go. If you understood the
circumstances, you would not detain me. If you knew what I am, what I
have done, and what I should have to look forward to if I lived; if you
knew what it is to reach that pass where life means nothing for you but
fire in the heart: you would not refuse to let me go. You could condemn
me to no agony, sir, worse than to have to live. To live is to remember;
and so long as I remember I shall be in torment. Even to sleep brings me
no relief, for when I sleep I dream. Oh, for mercy's sake, let me go!
Go yourself. Go away, and leave me here. You will not repent it. You may
always recall it as an act of kindness. I believe you mean to be kind.
Be really kind, and do not interfere with me longer.”

She had begun to speak with a recklessness and a savage irony that were
shocking and repulsive; but in the end she spoke with a pathos and a
passion that were irresistible. I was stirred to the bottom of my heart.

“I wish, dear lady,” I said, “I wish you could know how deeply and
sincerely I feel for you, how genuine and earnest my desire is to help
you. Pray, pray give me at least a chance to do so. Look; I live in one
of those houses, above there, on the terrace--where you see the lights.
Come with me to my house. You say you have no roof under which you can
seek a welcome: I will promise you a welcome there. You say you
are friendless: let me be your friend. Come with me to my house. I
believe--nay, I am sure--I shall be able in some way to help you.
Anyhow, give me a chance to try. I am an old man, a physician. Come with
me, and let us talk together. Between us we shall discover some better
solution of your difficulties than the drastic one that you are looking
to. But I will make a bargain with you. Come with me to my house, and
remain there for one hour. If, at the expiration of that hour, I shall
not have persuaded you to think better of your present purpose--if then
you are still of your present mind--I will promise to let you depart
unattended, without further hindrance, to go wherever and to do
whatever you see fit. No harm can come to you from accompanying me to
my house--no harm by any hazard, but possibly much good. Try it. Try me.
Trust me. Come. Within an hour, if you still wish it, you may go your
way alone. I give you my word of honour. Will you come?”

“You leave me no free choice, sir. It will be my only means of
deliverance from you. I run a great risk, a great peril, greater than
you can think, in doing so. But it is agreed that at the end of one hour
I shall be my own mistress again? After that--hands off?”

“At the end of one hour you may go or stay, according to your own
pleasure.”

“Very well; I am ready.”




CHAPTER III.--WHENCE SHE CAME.

|I led her into my back drawing-room--which apartment I use as a library
and study--and turned up the drop-light on my writing-table.

Then I looked at her, and she looked at me.

She had said that she was young. I was not surprised to see that she
was beautiful as well. I do not know that I can explain just what had
prepared me for this discovery. Perhaps, in part, her voice, which
was exquisitely sweet and melodious. Perhaps simply the tragical and
romantic circumstances under which I had found her. However that may be,
beautiful she indubitably was.

She wore no bonnet. Her hair, dark brown, curling, and abundant, was cut
short like a boy's.

Her skin was fine in texture, and deathly pale. Her eyes, large, dark,
liquid, were emotional and intelligent. Her mouth was generous in size,
sensitive in form, and in colour perfect. But over her whole countenance
was written legibly the signature of hard and fierce despair.

From throat to foot she was wrapped in a black waterproof cloak.

“Be seated,” I began. “Put yourself at ease in mind and body. And first
of all, let me offer you a glass of wine.”

“You may spare yourself that trouble, sir,” she replied. “I have no
appetite for wine.”

“But it will do you good. A single glass?”

“I will not drink a single drop.”

“Well, then, a composing draught. You are my patient for the time being,
remember. You must let me prescribe for you. You are in a state of
excessive nervous excitement, bordering upon hysteria. Drink this.”

“I assure you, sir, my disorder is not of the body,” she said wearily.
“No medicine can relieve it.”

“Nevertheless, I will beg of you to give this a trial. It is but a
thimbleful. It can't hurt you, even if it should fail to benefit you.”

“For aught I know it may contain a drug.”

“It certainly does contain a drug. I should not offer you _aqua pura_.”

“You juggle words, sir. I mean a poison.”

“Come; that is good. Do you think I would have been at such pains to
dissuade you from suicide, immediately thereafter to seek to poison
you?”

“I don't mean a deadly poison. You could do me no greater kindness than
to offer me a deadly poison. I mean--it may contain some opiate, some
narcotic, to deprive me of power over myself, so that I shall be unable
to leave your house when the time is up.”

“Madam, look at me. Have I the appearance of a man who would attempt to
get the better of you by an underhand trick like that?”

“No, you do not look deceitful,” she answered, after a moment's scrutiny
of my face.

“Then trust me enough to drink this.”

Without further protest she took the glass I proffered, and emptied it.

“Now, if you are willing, we may talk,” said I.

“What is there to talk about? I, at any rate, have nothing to say. But
I am at your mercy for the term of one hour. You, of course, may talk as
much as you desire. But at the end of one hour---- Please look at your
watch. What o'clock is it now?”

“It is twenty minutes after midnight.”

“Thank you. Five minutes have already passed. At a quarter after one I
shall be free to leave.” Therewith she let her head fall back upon the
cushion of the easy-chair in which she was seated, and closed her eyes.

“Yes,” said I, “you will then be free to leave, if you still wish it.
But I doubt if you will.”

“Your doubt is groundless, sir. However, if it pleases you to cherish
it, you may do so till the hour is finished.”

“No, I cannot think my doubt is groundless. I told you I believed I
should be able to show you a better way out of your troubles than the
desperate one that you were purposing to take; and now I will make good
my promise.”

“Being more fully acquainted with my own affairs than you are, I assure
you that your promise is one which cannot by any possibility be made
good.”

“Time will prove or disprove the truth of that assertion. To begin with,
may I ask you a question or two?”

“You may ask me twenty questions. I do not pledge myself to answer
them.”

“Well, will you answer this one? Am I right in having understood you to
say, when we were below there, on the wharf, that you have no friends
or kindred whose feelings you are bound to consider in determining your
conduct, and no worldly ties or associations which you are bound to
respect?”

“Yes, you are right in that.”

“I am right in having understood you to say that; but is what you said
true?”

“Which would imply that you suspect me of having lied,” she returned,
with an unlovely smile. “Well, I don't blame you. I am a skilful and
habitual liar, and I daresay it shows in my face. But in that case I
broke my rule, and told the truth.”

“My dear madam, I intended no such imputation. But you were agitated and
excited; and sometimes under the stress of our excitement we unwittingly
exaggerate.”

“Well, I did not exaggerate. What I told you was literally true.”

“And the rest that you said? That also you re-affirm? That you are
penniless, homeless, wretchedly unhappy, and weary of life? It seems
brutal for me to state it thus; but I must understand clearly, for a
purpose which you will presently see.”

“You need not apologise, sir. This is no occasion for mincing matters.
Yes, I am penniless, homeless, wretchedly unhappy, and weary of life.
But I am worse than that. I am bad. I am utterly base and degraded. Look
at me,” she added, fixing her eyes boldly, even defiantly, upon mine.
“Examine me. I am a rare specimen. Very probably you have never seen my
like before, and never will again. I am an example of--” she paused
and laughed; and there was something in her laughter that made me
shudder--“of total depravity,” she concluded. Then suddenly her manner
changed, and she became very grave. “Would you entertain a leper in your
house, sir? Yet I have been told that I am a moral leper. I have been
told that the corruption-spot upon me reaches in to the core. And I
think my informant put it very moderately. If you suspected the crimes
I have been guilty of, the worse crimes that I have meditated, and
only failed to commit because of material obstacles that I could not
overcome, you would not harbour me in your house for a single minute.
You would feel that my presence was a contamination: that I polluted
the chair I sit in, the floor under my feet. The glass I just drank
from--you would shatter it into bits, that no innocent man or woman
might ever put lips to it again. There! can't you see now that I am
beyond help, beyond hope? What have I to live for? I am an incumbrance
upon the face of the earth, and hateful to myself into the bargain.
Why keep me here an hour? Let us rescind our compromise.* Let me go at
once.”

     * It is possible that here and elsewhere Dr. Benary, in
     reporting conversations from memory, puts into the mouths of
     his interlocutors words and phrases from his own vocabulary,
     at the same time, without doubt, giving the substance and
     the spirit of their remarks correctly. “Let us rescind our
     compromise,” at any rate, falling from the lips of a woman,
     has, to say the least, an unrealistic sound.---Editor.

She rose, and stood restive, as if expecting a dismissal.

“No, no; you must stay out your hour, at all events,” I insisted. “Sit
down again. I am sure you are not so black as you paint yourself; and in
any case, guilt confessed and repented of is more than half atoned for.”

“That is not so, to begin with,” she retorted; “that is the shallowest,
hollowest sort of cant. It may pass with people who know guilt only by
hearsay, but is ridiculous to those who, like myself, have a knowledge
of the subject at first hand.

“Guilt, crime, is atoned for only when it is undone, and all its
consequences are obliterated. And now, speaking from my first-hand
knowledge of the subject, I will tell you two things--first, all the
confession and repentance in the world cannot undo a crime once done,
nor obliterate its consequences; secondly, nothing can. You are a
physician; I take it, therefore, you are familiar with the first
principles of science: with what they call, I think, the Law of the
Persistence of Force, the Law of the Conservation of Energy. If you
understand that law, you will not dispute this simple application of it:
a crime once done can never be undone; its consequences are ineradicable
and eternal. Well and good. It is a puerility, in the face of the Law of
the Persistence of Force, to talk of atonement. Atonement could come
to pass only by means of a miracle--a suspension of Nature, and the
interposition of a Supernatural Power. And that is where the Christians,
with their dogma of vicarious atonement, are more rational than all
the Rationalists from _a to zed_. So much for atonement. And now, as to
repentance--who said that I repented? Repentance! Remorse! I will
give you another piece of information, also speaking from firsthand
knowledge. Repentance and Remorse are unmeaning sounds. There are no
realities, no _things_, to correspond with them. I do not repent. No
man or woman, from the beginning of time, has ever yet repented, in your
sense of the word. We regret the losses that our crimes entail upon
us: yes. We suffer because our crimes find us out, because retribution
overtakes us: yes. But repent? We do not repent. Most of us pretend to.
But I will be frank; I will not pretend.

“I suffer because the punishment which, by my crimes, I have brought down
upon myself, is greater than I can bear; I suffer, too, because the last
purpose I had left to live for, which was also a criminal purpose, has
been defeated. But I do not repent. I will not pretend to repent.”

“Be all which as it may, I will repeat what I said before: I do not
believe that you are so black as you paint yourself. You, young,
beautiful, intelligent--no, no. But even if you were ten times blacker,
it would make no difference to me. For, look you, since you have
introduced a question of science, and favoured me with a scientific
generalisation, I will pursue the question a little further, and cap
your generalisation with another: namely, good, bad, or indifferent,
we are not our own creators; we do not make ourselves; we are the
resultants of our Heredity and our Environment; and our actions,
whether criminal or the reverse, are determined not by free-will, but by
necessity. I will not enlarge upon that generalisation; I will leave its
corollaries for your own imagination to perceive. But in view of it,
I will say again: even if you were ten times blacker, it would make no
difference to me. You are no more to blame for the colour of your soul
than for the colour of your hair.”

“You are very magnanimous,” she said bitterly, “and your doctrine would
sound well in a criminal court.”

“Think of me as scornfully as you will,” I returned, “I am very
sincerely anxious to befriend you.”

“If that is true, you have it in your power to do so with marvellous
ease.”

“How so?” I queried.

“Absolve me from my agreement to stay here an hour. Sit still there in
your chair, and let me go about my business unmolested and at once.”

“No; to that agreement I must hold you, for your own sake. I have much
to say to you, if you would only let me once get started.”

“Good God, sir!” she cried, springing up in passion. “You drive me to
extremes. Do you know that you are violating the laws of the State
in harbouring me here?--that you are exposing yourself to the risk of
prosecution?”

“I know that I should be violating the laws of humanity if I suffered
you to lay violent hands upon yourself so long as I have it in my power
to restrain you. As for the laws of the State, do you mean that you can
bring an action against me for damages in interfering with your personal
liberty? I doubt if you will do so. And I am sure no jury, apprised of
the circumstances, would find against me.”

“You are still in ignorance of the situation.” said she. “Now open your
eyes.”

With that she threw off the waterproof cloak in which she was enveloped,
and stood before me in the blue and white striped uniform of a Deadlock
Island convict.




CHAPTER IV.--THE DOCTOR SPEAKS.


|I confess my heart leapt into my throat, and I gasped for breath. She,
witnessing my stupefaction, laughed, as if in cynical enjoyment of it.

After a little: “I think now you will permit me to bid you good
evening,” she said with mock ceremoniousness.

“You--you have escaped from prison!” I faltered out.

“Yes, from the Penitentiary across the river. You see, though we have
never met until to-night, we have been neighbours, living within sight
each of the other's residence, for some time. Two years already I have
spent, somewhat monotonously, upon Deadlock Island; and, to employ
technical language, I was 'in' for a term of which that was but an
insignificant fraction. I had, however, certain business to transact
here in town--a little matter to arrange with the gentleman who was
the principal witness for the prosecution at my trial--and I seized,
therefore, upon the first opportunity that presented itself to come
hither incognito. But when I arrived I found that Fate, with her usual
perversity, had put it out of my power to transact that business, the
party of the second part having died from natural causes. Thus the
one last only purpose I had left to live for had become impossible of
accomplishment. And now I wish for nothing except death. At last even
you must see the absurdity of my staying longer here in your house. Let
me _go_.”

“You say,” I rejoined, having by this time recovered somewhat of my
equanimity; “you say that you wish for nothing except death. Say what
you will, I do not believe that you wish for death at all.”

“To that I can only answer that you deceive yourself.”

“No, it is you who deceive yourself. What you wish for is not death,
but change--a change of condition. No truer words were ever spoken than
those of Tennyson's:--

               Whatever crazy sorrow saith,

               No life that breathes with human breath

               Has ever truly longed for death.

What you crave under the name of death is forgetfulness. You yourself
compressed the whole truth into five words when you said: 'To live is
to remember.' Your inference was that to die is to forget. It is memory
that agonizes you; it is the past which lives in memory that handicaps
you, that hangs like a mill-stone round your neck, and goads you to
despair. If you could forget, if you could erase the entire past from
your consciousness, you would cease to suffer. Is not that true?”

“True enough, perhaps. But without pertinence. A quibble. Forgetfulness
is what I wish for, yes. But there is no forgetfulness except in
death--no Lethe save the Styx.”

“No forgetfulness _except_ in death? You assume, then, that there
_is_ forgetfulness in death; a bold assumption. Have you no dread of
something after death, the undiscovered country? Do you ignore the
possibility of a future life? Suppose, beyond the grave, you preserve
your identity--that is to say, your memory: in what respect will you
have gained by the change?”

“I must take my risks. This much I know for certain: there is no
forgetfulness in life. In death there may be. I will take my chances.
Am I not in hell now? Any change must be a change for the better. I will
take the risks.”

“You say there is no forgetfulness in life. But suppose there were?
Suppose it were possible for you to obtain total and permanent
forgetfulness without dying, without taking those risks, without taking
any risks at all? Suppose some one should come to you and say: 'See!
I have it in my power to bestow upon you total and permanent
obliviousness, so that the entire past, with all its events and
circumstances, shall be perfectly effaced from your mind; so that you
shall not even recall your name, nor your language; but, with unimpaired
bodily health and mental capacities, shall begin life afresh, like the
new-born infant, speechless, innocent, regenerated; another person, and
yet the same:--suppose some one should come to you and offer that?”

“It is an idle supposition! The age of miracles has passed.”

“An idle supposition? You deem it such? Let us see, let us consider.
To begin with, answer me this: Have you never heard or read--in
conversation, newspaper, medical report, or novel--have you never heard
or read, I say, of a case where, through an accident, a human being has
had befall him exactly the experience which I have just described? A
case where a lesion of the cerebral tissues, caused perhaps by disease,
perhaps by a concussion of the brain, or by a fracture of the skull,
has resulted in the total annihilation of memory, without injury to
the other intellectual faculties, so that the patient, upon recovering
health and consciousness, could remember absolutely nothing of the
past--neither his name, nor his nationality, nor the face of his father
or mother, nor even how to speak, walk, eat--but was literally _born
anew_, and had to begin life over again from the start? Surely,
everybody who has ears has heard, everybody who can read has read, of
cases of that nature?”

“Oh, yes; I have read of such cases, certainly.”

“Very well. You have read of such cases. So!--Now, then, suppose an
accident of that sort should befall _you?_ Everything you can hope for
from death would come to pass, and yet you would live. What better could
you desire?

“And yet _I_ would live? Hardly. My body would live, true. But _I_, my
personality, my identity, would have vanished. For is not the very pith
and marrow of one's identity, remembrance? Is not memory the birthmark,
so to speak, by which one recognises one's-self? Is it not the cord
upon which one's experiences are strung, which holds them together, and
establishes their unity? My body would live, true enough. But it would
be inhabited and animated by another spirit, another mind.”

“Well, even so? It is the extinction of your identity which you seek to
bring about by means of death. But you have no ground for supposing that
death involves any such extinction. Atheist, agnostic, what you will,
you must always acknowledge and allow for that possibility of a future
life. Whereas, the man or woman to whom the accident happens which
we have assumed, obtains for a surety that which he or she can only
dubiously hope for from death.”

“Ah, but there is a mighty difference. It is not within my power to
cause such an accident. It _is_ within my power to die.”

“Not within your power to cause such an accident? Not within _your_
power, I grant. But will you say that it is not within human power, not
within any man's power? Imagine whatever human circumstance you like,
which can come to pass by accident. Then, speaking _à priori_, tell me
of any conclusive reason why that circumstance should not be brought to
pass by design? Why man, investigating the causes of it, enlightened
by his science, employing his cunning, should not be able at will to
occasion it? Take this very case in hand--the total obliteration of a
human being memory of the past. A blow upon the head, the result of an
accident, can occasion it. Why not a blow upon the head, the result of
man's deliberate purpose? Insanity, small-pox, consumption, paralysis,
deafness, blindness--each of these it would be entirely possible for man
voluntarily to induce. Why not oblivion?”

“I have never heard of its being done. I once read a novel in which
something of the kind was related--'Dr. Heidenhoff's Process'--but even
in that novel, the author had not the audacity to pretend that his story
was possible; it turned out to be a dream. But then, after all, that
was quite a different thing. It was the obliteration not of the whole
memory, but simply the memory of one particular fact or group of facts.
The memory in respect of other facts remained intact.”

“Ah, that indeed! That, of course, it may not as yet be within the power
of science to accomplish. That, as yet, I will grant you, is only the
material for a romancer's fancy. I cannot cause you to forget any one
fact or train of facts, while leaving your memory unaffected regarding
other facts. But the obliteration of the whole memory is a very
different matter. It has happened frequently by accident. You have never
heard of its being effected by design, though you will acknowledge the
theoretical possibility of its being so effected. Well and good. Now
the truth is this: not only is it theoretically possible, but it is
practically feasible.. It can be done; and I, even I, can do it. That
same obliviousness which, as the case-books of physicians bear abundant
testimony, Nature often produces through the medium of disease or
violence, I--I who speak to you--I can produce by means of a surgical
operation.”

“It is incredible,” said she.

“Incredible or not, it is a fact,” said I. “What a stone striking you
upon the head may accomplish, I can accomplish with my instruments. I
can cause a depression of one of the bones of your skull, at a certain
point upon the tissues of the brain, so that, when you recover from the
influence of the anaesthetic which I administer, you are returned to the
mental and moral condition of infancy. You remember nothing. You know
nothing. Your mind is as a blank sheet of paper. The past is abolished.
The future is before you.”

“If what you say is true, you possess a terrible power. Are surgeons
generally able to do this?”

“Every intelligent surgeon must recognise the antecedent possibility of
the operation. But when you ask me whether surgeons generally know how
to perform it, I suppose that they do not. It is a discovery which
I have made, by the examination of a large number of skulls, and the
dissection of a large number of brains. I have never communicated it to
anybody else. Others, for all I know, may have made the same discovery
independently.”

“But why have you kept it a secret? It would have made you famous.”

“I have had many reasons for keeping it a secret. You yourself have
named one of them: it is a terrible power. I have not thought it prudent
as yet to put it into the hands of the faculty at large; but it will be
published after, if not before, my death.”

“You say you _can_ do this. _Have_ you ever done it?”

“Upon a human being--no. Upon animals--upon dogs, monkeys, and
horses--yes; often, and with unvarying success.”

“Animals, indeed!” She smiled. “But never upon a human being. It is a
descent from the sublime to the grotesque. You are anxious to obtain a
subject?”

“I will not deny that I should be glad to obtain a subject, if it
pleases you to put it in that downright way. I have never performed the
operation upon a human being; but I can predict with absolute assurance
just what its consequences upon a human being would be.”

“Let me hear your prediction.”

“Well, to begin with, let me tell you the circumstances of an actual
case, which came under my observation, where the thing happened
accidentally. The patient was a Frenchman, thirty-two years old, in
robust health. I think, from the point of view of morals, he was the
most depraved wretch it was ever my bad fortune to encounter. He was a
brute, a sot, a liar, a thief--a bad lot all round. I chanced to know
a good deal about him, because he was the husband of a servant in my
family. The affair occurred more than thirty years ago. I say he was a
depraved wretch. What does that mean? It means that, like every mother's
son of us, he came into this world a bundle of potentialities, of
latent spiritual potentialities, inherited from his million or more of
ancestors, some of these potentialities being for good, others of them
for evil; and it means that his environment had been such, and had so
acted upon him, as to develop those that were for evil, and to leave
dormant those that were for good. That wants to be borne in mind. Very
well. He was the husband of a servant in my family, a most respectable
and virtuous woman, also French, who would have nothing to do with him;
but whom it was his pleasantest amusement to torment by hanging around
our house, seeking to waylay her when she went abroad, striving to gain
admittance when she was within doors. Late one evening we above stairs
were surprised by the noise of a disturbance in the kitchen: a man's
voice, a woman's voice, loud in altercation. I hurried down to learn the
occasion of it. Halfway there, my ears were startled by the sudden short
sound of a pistol-shot, followed by dead silence. I entered the kitchen,
but arrived a moment too late. Our woman servant stood in the centre
of the floor, holding a smoking revolver in her hand. Her husband
lay prostrate, unconscious, perhaps dead, at her feet. I demanded an
explanation. It appeared that he had stolen into the kitchen, where his
wife sat alone, and, coming upon her suddenly, had attempted to abduct
and carry her off by main force. The foolish woman confessed that some
days before she had bought herself a pistol, with a view to just such
an emergency as this; and now she had used it. Well, I examined the man,
and I found, to my great relief, that he was not dead, and that, she
being but an indifferent marks-woman, the ball had not even entered his
body. It had struck him on the head at an oblique angle, and had glanced
off. However, it had injured him quite seriously enough, having, indeed,
fractured his skull at a certain point. We carried him upstairs, and
put him to bed. For upwards of sixty hours--nearly three days--he lay
in total unconsciousness. For six weeks he lay in a stupor just a hair's
breadth removed from total unconsciousness; but by-and-by his wound
had healed, and he was convalescent. Now, however, what was his mental
condition? Precisely that of a new-born baby! His memory had been
utterly destroyed. He had forgotten the simplest primary functions of
life: how to speak, how to eat, how to walk, how to use his fingers. He
could not remember his name; he could not recognise his wife. He had all
the lessons of experience to learn anew. But you must recollect that,
being an adult, his brain, as an organ, was full-grown, was mature.
Therefore, he acquired knowledge with astonishing rapidity--learning
almost as much in a fortnight as a child learns in a year. At the end
of one month after we began his education, he could walk, feed himself,
dress himself, and was beginning to talk. At the end of six months he
spoke as fluently as I do--English, mind you, not French, which had been
his mother-tongue. At the end of a year he read without difficulty, and
wrote a good hand. What was most remarkable, however, though entirely
natural, his moral nature had undergone a complete transformation. In
a new environment, treated with kindness, surrounded by wholesome
influences, 'trained up in the way he should go,' and absolutely
oblivious of every fact, event, circumstance, and association of his
past, he became a new, another, an entirely different man. Now, of the
million spiritual potentialities, predispositions, that heredity had
implanted in him, those that made for good were vivified, those that
made for bad left dormant. He was as decent and as honest a fellow as
one could wish to meet, and he had plenty of intelligence and common
sense. I kept him in my service, as a sort of general factotum, for
more than twenty years; then he died. Before his death he made a will,
bequeathing to me the only thing of especial value that he had to leave
behind him. Here it is.”

I unlocked a cabinet, and produced from it a skull.

“Let me see it,” she said eagerly.

She took it in her hands, without the faintest show of repugnance, and
studied it intently.

“It is like a fairy-tale. It is marvellous,” she said at last.

“Science abounds in marvels no less stupendous,” said I. “It was my
observation of that man's case, and of the beneficent results of it,
that suggested to me the possibility of bringing such things to pass of
a set, purpose.”

“For years I have made the brain and the skull a study, with that
possibility in view. I am able to say now that I can perform the
operation with perfect certainty of success.”

“But,” she went on, after a pause, “it is scarcely inspiring to think
that the character, the morality, of a human being, can be influenced,
can be radically altered, by a mere physical condition like that--to
think that the character of the soul can be changed by a change in the
structure of the body. It is enough to establish materialism pure
and simple; the only logical consequences of which are cynicism and
pessimism.”

“It is certainly one of the many psychological facts which go to prove
that while it is the tenant of the body the soul must adapt itself to
its habitation.”

“It would seem to prove that the soul is not simply the tenant of the
body, but its slave, its victim, its creature. As the materialists
express it, that mind, thought, emotion, are but functions of the
brain.”

“It would perhaps lend colour to that hypothesis; but it does not prove
it. Nothing can be proved relative to the human soul. Like all elemental
things, it is in its very essence an insoluble mystery. All elemental
things? Nay, it is _the_ elemental thing, the ultimate thing, the only
thing we know at first hand. All other things we know only as they are
mirrored in it; we know them only by the impressions they produce upon
our souls. Ten thousand hypotheses concerning it--concerning its origin,
its nature, its meaning, its destiny--are equally plausible, equally
inadequate. It cannot by seeking be found out.”

She was silent now for a long while. At last, “Will you describe your
operation to me?” she inquired.

“You would need a medical education to follow such a description.”

“Is it anything like what they call trepanning, or trephining?”

“But very remotely. A partial fracture, and a depression, of the bone
are caused; but no particle of it is removed.”

“What is the worst that could happen, in case of the operation
miscarrying? What would be the chances of the subject's losing not only
his memory, but his reason--becoming an imbecile or a maniac?”

“There is no chance of that. The worst that could happen would be death.
It is as safe an operation as any in which the knife is employed. But,
of course, in all operations which involve the use of the knife there is
some danger. There is always the possibility of inflammation. But
that possibility is by no means a probability. The chances are largely
against it.”

“So that you are sure one of two things would happen either the
operation would prove a success, or the patient would die?”

“Exactly so.”

“How much time would have to elapse after the operation, before the
patient would be able to take care of himself again--before he would
have regained sufficient knowledge to act as a responsible and competent
human being?”

“I should say a year. Perhaps more, perhaps less. But I will say a
year.”

“And during that year? Suppose, for example, that I should offer myself
to you as a subject--how should I be provided for during the period of
my incompetence? And what education should I receive?”

“You would be provided for by me. You would be lodged and taken care of
here in this house. My sister, ten years younger than I, the kindest
and the gentlest of women, would be your nurse, your companion, and your
teacher. We would give you the same education that we would give a child
of our own.”

“I beg your pardon, but you have not told me your name.”

“My name is Benary--Leonard Benary.”

“Well, Dr. Benary, I am willing to submit to your operation. I make
no professions of gratitude, for--though, whether it kills me or
regenerates me, I shall be equally your debtor--I take it you are not
sorry to find a subject to experiment upon; and therefore it will be a
fair exchange, and no robbery. Will you proceed with the operation here,
now, to-night?”

“Oh, dear me, no. You must have some sleep first. I will call my sister.
She will show you to a room. Then, perhaps, to-morrow, after a good
night's rest, you will be in a favourable condition.”

“But your sister--what will she say to this?” She pointed to her
prison-garb.

“If you will wait here while I go to summon her, I can promise you a
kindly welcome from her. I shall explain all the circumstances to her;
and she will not mind your costume.”

And I went upstairs to rouse my sister, Miss Josephine Benary.




CHAPTER V.--THE DOCTOR ACTS.

|Next morning, at about eleven o'clock, my good sister Josephine came to
me in my study, and said, “She is awake now and wishes to see you.”

“I am at her service,” I replied. “Will she join me here?”

“She is eager to have you operate. She asked me where you would do so. I
told her I supposed there, in her bed. Then she said she would not waste
time by getting up, and wished me to tell you that she is waiting to
have it done. I suspect that she is partly influenced by a reluctance to
put on her prison uniform again. I should have offered her the use of my
wardrobe, but she is so much taller and larger than I, that that would
be absurd.”

“Yes, to be sure, so it would. Very well. I will go to her directly. If
she is in a favourable condition of mind and body, it will, perhaps, be
as well not to delay. But first tell me--you have held some conversation
with her?”

“Yes, a little.”

“And what impression do you form of her character?”

“She is very pretty. She is even beautiful.”

I laughed. “What has that to do with her character?99

“I infer her character as much from her appearance as from her
behaviour, as much from her physiognomy as from her speech.”

“Oh, I see. And your inference is?”

“I cannot be quite sure. There is a certain hardness in her face, a
certain cynical listlessness in her manner, which may indicate a vice of
character, but which may, on the other hand, result simply from hardship
and suffering. She is undoubtedly clever. She has received a good
education; she expresses herself well; she has a marvellously musical
voice. Yet, on the whole, I cannot say that I find her likeable or
agreeable. She seems to proceed upon the assumption that nobody is moved
by any but selfish motives; that everybody has an axe to grind; and that
she must be constantly on her guard lest we take some advantage of her.
She is horribly suspicious.”

“Well, go on.”

“Well, I do not know that I can say anything more. I cannot quite fathom
her--quite make her out. It is a question in my mind whether she is
naturally a young woman of good instincts, whose passions have betrayed
her into the commission of some crime, or whether she is inherently and
intrinsically corrupt.”

“Towards which alternative do you incline?”

“I do not like to express a final opinion; but I am afraid, from what
little I have seen of her, I am afraid that I incline towards the
latter.”

“That she is intrinsically bad. Well, it will be interesting, after our
operation, to see whether, in a new environment, under new conditions,
the good that is latent in her--as good is latent in every human
soul--will be developed. And now will you come with me to her room?”

“Will she not prefer to see you alone?”

“Why should she? Come, let us go.”

We found her sitting up in bed, waiting for us. By daylight she seemed
to me even more beautiful than she had seemed by gaslight. Her features
were strongly yet finely modelled; her skin was exquisitely delicate,
both in texture and in colour; and her eyes were wonderfully liquid and
translucent. But an expression of deep melancholy brooded over her whole
countenance; while underlying that again, was certainly visible the
cynical hardness that Josephine had complained of.

Having wished her good-morning, I proceeded at once to my business as a
physician; ascertained her pulse and her temperature, and inquired how
she had slept.

“I have not had such a night's sleep for I know not how long,” she
answered. “Heaven knows I had enough to think about to keep me awake,
yet I must have lain in total unconsciousness for fully nine hours. What
was most grateful, I did not dream. All which leads me to suspect that,
despite your protestations to the contrary, the medicine you made me
drink last evening contained an opiate.”

“The medicine I prevailed upon you to drink last evening,” I explained,
“was the mildest composing-draught known to the Pharmacopoeia--a most
harmless mixture of orange-flower water, bromide, and sugar. If it had
the effect of a sleeping-potion, I am very glad to learn it, for it
indicates the degree of your nervous susceptibility--a point upon which
it is highly desirable that I should be informed. And are you still
of the same mind in which I left you? You have not reconsidered your
determination?”

“No. I am still ready to be killed or regenerated--I am really quite
indifferent which. When I awoke this morning, I could not help fancying
that the conversation which I seemed to recall had never really taken
place--that I had dreamed it. But this lady, your sister, assures me
that my doubt is groundless. Now I can only request you to begin and get
over with it as soon as possible.”

“My beginning must be in the nature of an interrogatory. I must ask you
for certain information.”

“Very well. Ask.”

“My questions shall be few: only those formal ones which, as a
physician, I should put to any patient whom I was about to treat.
First, then, what is your name?”

“My name is Louise Massarte, spelt M-a-s-s-a-r-t-e.”

I opened my case-book, prepared my fountain-pen for action, and wrote
“Louise Massarte.”

“It is a foreign name, is it not?” I inquired “Were you born in this
country?”

“Like the other hopeful subject of whom you told me last night, I was
born in France--at the city of Tours.”

“Native of France,” I wrote. Then aloud s “Of French parents?”

“Yes, I am French by descent and by place of birth. But I have lived in
America all my life. I was brought here when I was two years old.”

“But you speak French, I take it?”

“I speak French and English with equal ease.”

“Any other language?”

“No other.”

“How old are you, if you will forgive my asking?”

“I shall be six-and-twenty on the eighth of August.”

“Are your parents living?”

“Both my father and mother are long since dead.”

“Have you any brothers or sisters?”

“I was an only child.”

“Are you married or single?”

“I have never been married.”

“And now, finally, is there any fact or circumstance which you would
like to mention and have recorded? For, you must bear in mind, you will
shortly have forgotten everything connected with your past; and if there
is anything you will wish to remember, you had better tell it to me now,
and I will make a memorandum of it.”

“There is nothing that I shall wish to remember,” she replied. “Nothing
but what I shall be glad to forget. However, I fancy what you say is but
a hint to the effect that you are curious to know my history. I have no
objection in telling it to you. It is not an edifying history. Most
women, I daresay, would be ashamed to tell it; but I have got beyond
even pretending to feel ashamed of anything; and if you desire to hear
it, you have only to say so.”

“On the contrary,” I rejoined, “you must not think of telling it.
It would excite you and fatigue you; whereas it is of the highest
importance for the success of our operation that you should be at
rest in mind as well as in body. Besides, and irrespective of that
consideration, it is better that neither my sister, nor I, nor indeed
any living person, should hear it. You yourself will in a little while
have forgotten it. What right has anybody else to remember it?”

“Oh, well, you will doubtless find the gist of it in the morning paper.
It will in all likelihood be printed with an account of my escape from
the Penitentiary,” she returned.

At which insinuation my sister Josephine cried out, “You little know
my brother. There is indeed something about your escape in the morning
paper; but the instant he discovered the headlines of the article, he
said, 'This is something, Josephine, that neither you nor I must read.'
And he threw the paper into the fireplace, and applied a match to it.”

The woman made no answer.

I left the room and descended to my study, where I procured my
instruments and the requisite anæsthetic.




CHAPTER VI.--MIRIAM BENARY.

|I watched her carefully as she recovered from the effects of the ether.
An uncommonly small quantity of that drug had sufficed to deprive her of
her senses; and now her recovery was unusually speedy.

Having taken her respiration, her temperature, and her pulse, and
having found each to be nearly normal, I looked her straight in the
eyes, and demanded, making every syllable clear and emphatic,
“Louise Massarte, do you know me?”

Had I addressed my inquiry to a month-old infant, the result would have
been the same.

I repeated the question in French: “Louise Massarte, _me reconnaissez
vous?_”--with precisely the same negative result.

I then wrote the question both in French and English upon a slip of
paper, and held it before her eyes.

No sign of intelligence.

In the end I applied tests to each of her five senses, and satisfied
myself that each was unimpaired.

After which, “Well, Josephine,” I said, “unless all signs fail, we have
succeeded to admiration. None of her senses have sustained the slightest
injury, yet she has lost the knowledge of language, both spoken and
written. Louise Massarte is dead, annihilated, abolished from the face
of creation. This is a new-born infant, this apparently full-grown woman
lying here. Her soul is still to develop and unfold itself. It will be
for us to shape it, to colour it, to direct it towards good or evil.
Heredity has furnished the capacities, the propensities, which her
environment will quicken, stimulate, cause to grow and to ripen. And it
is for us to provide and to regulate that environment. May Heaven guide
our labours.”

“Amen, heartily. It is an awful responsibility. And yet-------”

“And yet?”

“And yet I cannot help hoping for the best. Look at her, brother. See
how beautiful she is. Surely, such a beautiful face must be meant to
go with a beautiful spirit. Already the expression of bitterness, of
hardness, of suspicion, seems to have faded from it. It is as if it had
been washed in some element infinitely cleansing. I never saw a more
innocent face than hers has become already. Yes, I am sure we may hope
for the best.”

“Well, for the present, we need concern ourselves only for the welfare
of her body. We must darken the room. Inflammation is the only ill
consequence we have to fear; and that can be averted, if we keep her in
darkness and in silence until the wound has healed.”

The wound healed quickly. Not an unpleasant symptom of any kind
manifested itself. And, as I had foreseen she would do, our patient
relearned the primary lessons of life with an ease and a rapidity that
seemed almost incredible. I had anticipated this because she was an
adult; because, that is to say, her brain, as an organ, was of mature
development.

She began to speak as soon as ever we allowed ourselves to speak in
her presence, at first simply imitating the sounds we made, but very
speedily coming to employ words with understanding. A single lesson
taught her how to walk. After my sister had dressed her twice, she was
perfectly well able to dress herself--no trivial achievement when the
intricacy of the feminine toilet is borne in mind. At the end of an
incredibly short period of time she could read and write as easily as I
can. Of the former capability she made good use, devouring eagerly all
such books as we thought wise to give her. Her progress, in a word,
precisely corresponded to that made by a bright child, only it was
infinitely more rapid; and what a fascinating thing it was to observe, I
need not stop to tell. It was like watching the growth and blossoming
of some most wonderful and beautiful flower. We were permitted, so
to speak, to be eye-witnesses of a miracle. If you had met her at the
expiration of one year, and had conversed with her, you would have put
her down for a singularly intelligent and well-informed, yet at the same
time singularly innocent and unsophisticated, girl of eighteen. Yes,
I mean it--a girl of eighteen. For the most astonishing result of my
operation--most astonishing because least expected--was this: that in
body as well as in mind she seemed to have been rejuvenated. With the
obliteration of her memory, every trace of experience faded from her
face. You would have laid a wager that it was the face of a young
maiden not yet out of her teens. She had said that she was all but
six-and-twenty. It was unbelievable when you looked at her now. To the
desperate-eyed woman whom I had dissuaded from self-destruction on that
clouded <DW15>'s night a year gone by, she bore only such a resemblance
as a younger sister might have borne. To Josephine I remarked, “Is it
possible that we have builded better than we knew? That we have stumbled
upon the discovery which the alchemists sought in vain--the Elixir of
Youth?”

“Indeed,” Josephine assented, “she has grown many years younger. She has
the appearance and the manner of seventeen.”

“It only proves,” said I, “the truth of the oft-repeated commonplace:
that it is experience and not time which ages one; time being simply the
receptacle and measure of experience. Could we double the rate of our
experience--experiencing as much in one year as we are now able to
experience in two--we should grow old just twice as quickly, reaching
at thirty-five the limit which we now reach at threescore-and-ten.
Contrariwise, could we halve the rate of our experience--requiring two
years to experience what we can now experience in one--we should grow
old just twice as slowly, being mere boys at forty, and at seventy in
the very prime of early manhood. Our consciousness of time, in other
words, is simply the consciousness of so much experience. Well and good.
Now, in this case, her experience has been undone. That is to say, her
memory, the storehouse of her experience, has been destroyed. Past time,
so far as it affects her mind, has been neutralised, has been cancelled
out of her equation. Hence this return to adolescence. Her bodily
structure--the size and shape of her bones, and all that--of course
remains as it was. But her spirit returns to the condition of youth;
and, since it is the spirit which animates the body, it gives to her
body the expression and the activity of its own age.”

Then I offered to perform my operation upon Josephine herself, to the
end that she also might enjoy a restored youth: which offer Josephine
haughtily declined.

“It is very fortunate,” she added, “that this alteration in her
appearance has taken place, for now it will be impossible for anybody
who may have known her in former days to identify her: a danger which
otherwise we should have had to fear.”

“Yes,” I acquiesced, “that is very true.”

The disposition which our visitor developed, furthermore, better
than answered to our most sanguine anticipations. Her new environment
vivified the best of those propensities which heredity had implanted in
her, and left dormant those that were for evil. Her quality was so
sweet and winning, that in a little while she had taken our old hearts
captive, and become the delight and the treasure of our home. We loved
her like a daughter; and the notion that we might some time have to
part with her was intolerable. Therefore, we put our heads together, and
entered into a pious conspiracy, agreeing to represent to her that she
was our niece, the child of our brother, an orphan, eighteen years old,
by name Miriam, who, on the 14th day of June, 1884, had sustained an
accident which had destroyed her recollection of the past. As our niece,
recently arrived from England, we introduced her to our friends. She
reciprocated our affection in the tenderest manner, called us aunt and
uncle, and was in every respect a blessing to our lives--so beautiful,
so gentle, so merry, so devoted.

This mysterious and impressive circumstance I must not for one moment
allow to be lost sight of:--That, of all living human beings, she who
least suspected that such a woman as Louise Massarte had ever lived,
sinned, suffered, was Miriam Benary. She upon whom Louise Massarte's
life, sins, and sufferings had least effect or influence, was Miriam
Benary. Her identity was in every respect as separate, and as distinct
from that of Louise Massarte, as mine is from my reader's. Louise
Massarte was dead, dead utterly. Into her tenement of clay a new soul
had entered It was a fearful and wonderful metamorphosis, rich in
suggestiveness; a _datum_, it seems to me, bearing importantly upon
three sciences: Psychology, Divinity, and Ethics.

*****

Thus nearly four years elapsed, and it was Monday, the 12th day of
March, 1888, the day of the memorable snowstorm, called the Blizzard.




CHAPTER VII.--WITHIN AN ACE.

|On that day certain imperative business demanded my presence in the
lawyer's quarter of the town. I had been summoned, in short, to appear
as a witness in a litigation that was pending in the Court of Common
Pleas--a summons which I felt myself the more disposed to obey inasmuch
as a penalty of two hundred and fifty dollars attached to contempt of
it. Therefore, despite the unprecedented brutality of the weather,
and against the earnest remonstrances of Josephine and Miriam, I was
foolhardy enough to venture out.

The clock on our drawing-room mantel marked a few minutes before ten
when I left the house, my immediate destination being the Jefferson
Street Station of the Overhead Railway--distant not more than a quarter
of a mile from my own door, and in ordinary circumstances an easy five
minutes' walk.

However, it must be remembered, I was at that time within a few months
of completing my seventieth year; and such a storm was raging, and such
a gale blowing, as might have strained the mettle of a youngster one
third my age: a veritable tempest, indeed, the like of which Adironda
had never in the memory of man experienced before. The mercury stood
below zero Fahrenheit; the wind was travelling at the pace of sixty
miles an hour; and the snow was falling in such unheard of quantities as
to obscure the air like fog. I don't mind owning, therefore, that I was
pretty badly exhausted when I arrived at my journey's end, and that I
had consumed a good half-hour in the process of getting there.

My path, as it were, had led through one continuous and unbroken drift,
knee-deep at its shallowest, waist-high at its average, and frequently
engulphing me up to my chin. Through this I had dug and ploughed my way,
with the wind cold and furious in my teeth, and under a running fire of
snow-flakes, frozen so hard, and driven with such force, that they stung
my face like bird-shot, and nearly put out my eyes. I can assure the
reader that it was no child's play. My nose and ears, from burning as if
in a bath of scalding water, had become numb and rigid, like features of
wood. The moisture from my breath had congealed in my beard, until
that appendage felt like an iron mask. My legs were stiff and heavy.
My shoulders ached. My respiration had become painful and laborious; my
heart-action so faint as to induce sickness similar to that which one
suffers at sea.

And finally, to cap the climax, when I reached the station, I found a
chain stretched across the entrance to the booking-office, and a placard
announcing that no trains were running! So that I had earned my labour
for my pains; and there was nothing for me to do but to turn my face
back toward home, and retrace my steps.

Exhausted as I was, then, I set forth at once upon that undertaking.
Of course, it was excessively imprudent for me to do so, without first
seeking shelter in some public house, and resting there until I had got
warmed through, and in a measure recovered my strength. But I suppose
I did not realise at the moment how far gone I was; and the prospect of
regaining the comfort of my own fireside was a deliciously tempting one.
So off I started, down Jefferson Street, towards Myrtle Avenue.

Very soon, however, I had reason to repent my rashness. A hundred yards
or thereabouts from the corner, a mountainous drift of snow stretched
diagonally across the road. I was half blinded; my wits were half
frozen; I underestimated both its depth and its width, and plunged
boldly into it.

Next instant I found myself buried up to my neck.

I struggled to push on. My legs were as immovable as if bound with
ropes.

Then I strove to dig myself free with my hands. My arms, too, I learned,
were pinioned as in a strait-waistcoat.

Here was a pleasant predicament, and one that constantly increased in
interest; for, to say nothing of the deadly and aggressive cold, the
snow was pouring down upon me by the bucket-full; and I appreciated very
vividly the fact that unless I speedily effected an escape, I should be
covered over my head.

My only hope, it was obvious, lay in calling for assistance. Whether
other human beings were within hearing distance or not, I had no means
of discovering; for, so opaque was the atmosphere rendered by the
multitude of snow-flakes that filled it, I could see nothing beyond a
radius of two or three yards; and even the houses that lined the street
were indistinguishable, except when, by fits and starts, for a second at
a time, the wind rent asunder the veil that hid them. Nevertheless,
my only hope lay in trying the experiment of a cry for help; and that
accordingly I did, with the utmost energy I could command:

“Help! help!”

But at the sound of my voice, my heart sank. It was the still, small
ghost of itself, to such a degree had the exposure and the hardship of
the last half-hour depleted my physical resources; and besides, dampened
by the blanket of snow in which I was enveloped, and lost in the roar
of the hurricane, the likelihood that it would carry beyond a rod in any
direction seemed infinitesimally slight.

“Well, I am lost,” thought I. “Here, not five hundred yards from my own
doorstep, lost as hopelessly as if wrecked in mid-ocean. Ah, well! they
say death by freezing is comparatively painless. Anyhow, it will soon be
over. Yet----”

Suddenly, with the desperate unreasonableness of a man in
extremities--like him who, drowning, clutches at a chip--I repeated my
feeble signal of distress: “Help! help!”

I waited half a minute, and then repeated it for a third time: “Help!”

Conceive my emotions, to hear instantly, and from immediately behind me,
the response, in the lustiest of baritones: “Hello, there!”

“Heaven be praised!” I gasped. Then: “Can you help me out of this
drift?”

“That remains to be tried,” came the reply. “I shouldn't wonder,
though.”

And therewith I felt myself seized by two strong arms, lifted bodily
from off my feet, and a moment later set down upon a spot of the
pavement which the wind had swept clean, where I had a chance to see and
to thank mv rescuer.




CHAPTER VIII.--A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE.

|He was a tall and athletic-looking man, perhaps thirty years old, with
a ruddy, good-humoured face, an honest pair of blue eyes, and a curling
yellow beard. He wore a sealskin cap which came down over his ears,
sealskin gloves which reached up above his coat-sleeves nearly to his
elbows, a pea-jacket, and rubber top-boots. His beard, his eyebrows,
and so much of his hair as was exposed, were dense with frozen snow, and
from his moustache depended a series of icicles, like tusks, where his
breath had condensed and congealed.

“I believe I have to thank you for saving my life,” I began, in such
voice as I could muster, and I noticed that my utterance was thick, like
that of a drunken man. “A very little more and I had been done for.”

“Yes, you were in rather a nasty box,” he admitted. “But all's well
that ends well; and you're safe enough now. When I heard you calling, I
thought it was a child, your voice was so thin and faint.”

“It's highly fortunate for me that you heard me at all. I had given
myself up for lost. What a storm this is!”

“Yes; glorious, isn't it? It's the grandest spectacle I've ever seen. I
tell you, sir, it's well for us that Nature should occasionally show
us her sharp claw; otherwise we'd get to considering her a quite tame
domestic pet, which she's not by any means. She's man's hereditary foe;
there stands a perpetual feud between her and us, a _vendetta_ handed
down from father to son, from generation to generation. It's only by the
exercise of an eternal vigilance and industry that we manage to subsist
in spite of her. She's constantly striving, one way or another, to
exterminate us: freeze us out, roast us out, starve us out--I know not
what all. Here we are, huddled together upon this bleak, mysterious
planet, parasites upon its surface, like mould on cheese, sheltering
ourselves in fortresses of straw--wondering whence we came, why we're
here, whither we're bound, and what the fun of the whole thing is--while
she whirls us through her dark immensities, and seeks hourly to shake
us off; which is rather unmannerly of her, seeing it was she herself who
brought us here. Life which she gives us with one hand, she withholds
with the other. She begrudges what she lavishes. Oh, it is strange, it
is magnificent; it's some grand paradoxical farce, which we haven't
wit enough to see the point of. Still, there's an exhilaration in the
conflict, unequal though it is. She's sure to win in the end; she plays
with us like a cat with a mouse, amused at our desperate antics, but
confident of her power to administer a quietus when they begin to pall;
yet there's a pleasure, somehow, in the struggle. They say, you know,
the fox enjoys being hunted. To-day she's in a particularly frolicsome
mood, and puts vim into her buffets. For my part, I'm grateful to her.
She'll laugh best, because she'll laugh last; but she can't prevent my
relishing my laugh meanwhile. I have not lived in vain, who have lived
to experience this storm. Isn't it stimulating? I vow, it makes a man
feel like a boy.”

I had stood shivering, teeth chattering, while he delivered himself of
this extraordinary harangue. Now, “That would depend somewhat upon the
age and the physique of the man,” I stammered.

“Why, yes, true enough. Your observation is altogether apposite and
just. But for me, I declare, it is like wine. Which way do you go?”

“I go east and south--to my home, which is in Riverview Road, if you
know where that is. But to tell you the truth, I doubt my ability to go
at all. _I'm_ pretty badly used up. I think I shall ask to be taken in
at one of these neighbouring houses.”

“As you like it. But I know where River-view Road is; in fact I'm bound
in that direction myself, being curious to see how the storm affects
the Yellow Snake. It must be a sight for the gods--the writhing and
the lashing of the reptile river under such a wind. If you please
we'll march together. I suspect, with my assistance, you'll be able to
arrive.”

“You've already saved my life, and now you offer to see me safely home.
I shall owe you a heavy debt. But I could never consent to take you out
of your way.”

“As I've already had the honour to intimate, that's precisely what you
won't do. I was bound for the riverside--upon my word. Come on.”

And the next thing I knew, my robust interlocutor had again lifted me
from my feet, and was trudging off towards Myrtle Avenue, bearing
me like a child in his arms--which, of course, was altogether too
ignominious a position for me to occupy without protest.

“Oh, this is needless. I beg of you to put me down. Really, I can't
submit to this. Let me walk at your side, and lean upon your arm, and I
shall do very well.”

“My dear sir,” he rejoined, “permit me to observe--and I beseech you
not to resent the observation as personal--that if ever a mortal man was
completely tuckered out, you are. You've lost your wind, and your legs
are as shaky as if you had the palsy. Pardon my austere frankness--the
circumstances compel it. You couldn't get as far as the corner yonder
to save your neck. You are, to employ the politest of modern
languages, _hors de combat_. You are _ansgespielt_, you are _non compos
corporis_--that is to say, in pure Americanese, you are _busted_. Now,
so far as I am concerned, on the contrary, I don't mind carrying you any
more than I would a baby. At the outside you don't weigh ten stone; and
what's the like of that to a fellow of my horse-power? Lie still, and I
sha'n't know you're there. Lie still and rest, recover your breath, and
be yourself again.”

“But the thing is too ridiculous. I can't in dignity consent to it, I
entreat you to put me down.”

I attempted to release myself, but his arms were like bands of iron.

“There, there--resign yourself! I prithee, wriggle not,” he said. “I
shall put you down presently--when the time is ripe. And as for your
dignity, remember the device of Cæsar: _Esée quant videri_. This, sir,
is an occasion for choosing between appearances and a very grim reality.
I can understand that, other things equal, you wouldn't care to have
the world see us in our present situation; but console yourself with the
reflection that the storm answers every purpose of a dose of fern-seed,
and renders us beautifully invisible. Anyhow, I take it, your dignity
isn't as precious to you as your health; and I will go bail for this,
that if you tried to foot it another hundred yards, you'd pay for your
temerity with a fit of sickness. Consider, furthermore, that I am old
enough to be your son. Let me play a son's part for the nonce, and carry
you home.”

“Well, I have no right to quarrel with you,” I answered; “but you place
me under an obligation which I shall never be able to discharge. It will
bear as heavily upon my conscience as I now weigh upon your muscles.”

“Then it will cause you mighty slight annoyance. To tell you the
truth, it's a jolly good lark for me. It's an added excitement, a most
interesting adventure; and it will provide a capital chapter for the
winter's tale that I shall have to tell. But a truce to talk. Let's
waste no further breath in that way. You lie still there and meditate.
I'll devote my energies to the business of getting on.”

So for a good while we forbore speech. At length, “Now, then,” he
announced, “here's Riverview Road. Our toilsome journey's o'er; and,
all our perils past, in harbour safe at last we rest. What would you
more?--What's your number?”

“Sixty-three, the fourth house from the corner.”

“Well, here you are on your own doorstep.--There!”

He set me upon my feet.

“And now, sir,” he concluded, “trusting that you may suffer no ill
effects from your experience, I will wish you farewell. Farewell, a long
farewell. This is a life made up of partings. Again, farewell.”

“Farewell by no manner of means,” I hastily retorted. “You must come in.
You must do me the honour of entering my house, and allowing me to offer
you some refreshment. And besides, if, as you said, you are anxious to
watch the play of the storm upon the river, you could possess no better
coigne of vantage than one of my back windows.”

“Such an inducement, sir, is superfluous. Your invitation in itself
would be quite irresistible. For, aside from the pleasure I derive
from your society, and the instruction from your conversation, I will
confidentially admit to you that I shall be glad to thaw out my nose.”

I opened the door with my latch-key, and preceded him into my study.




CHAPTER IX.--JOSEPHINE WRITES.

|A beautiful fire was blazing in the grate. The transition from the
cold and uproar of the street, to the snug quiet and warmth of this cosy
book-lined room, was an agreeable one, I can tell you. I was pretty
well rested by this time; and, except for the tingling of my nose, ears,
toes, and fingers, felt very little the worse for my encounter with the
elements.

“Now,” said I to my guest, “the tables are turned. But a moment since, I
was your prisoner; now you are mine. Draw up to the fire. Throw off your
over jacket and your rubber-boots. I hope you are not wet through; for,
we are built respectively upon such different patterns, it would be
ironical for me to offer you dry garments from my wardrobe.”

“You need give yourself no uneasiness upon that score, sir. Im as dry as
a Greek lexicon.”

“In that case, let me at once offer you a drop of something wet,” I
said, producing a decanter and a couple of glasses.

“Yes,” he assented, “a toothful of this will do neither of us harm.”

We clinked our glasses, and drank.

“Ah,” he cried, smacking his lips, “sweet ardent spirit of the rye, may
the shade of Christopher Columbus be fed upon you thrice every day, to
reward him for the discovery of this continent. I've tasted Irish and
I've tasted Scotch, Dutch barley-brandy and Slavonic vodka; but of all
distillations to make glad the inmost heart of man, give me Kentucky
rye! Another glass? Thank you, kind sir, not e'en another drop. 'Twere
desecration worthy only of a widower to take a second after so rare a
first. And now, by-the-bye, since I find myself the beneficiary of
your hospitality, it behoves me to introduce myself. My name is Henry
Fairchild, and by trade I am a sculptor.”

“My name is Leonard Benary, physician and surgeon. And I trust, Mr.
Fairchild, that you have no urgent affairs to call you from my house,
for I should never feel easy in my mind if I permitted you to leave it
before this storm has abated; and that doesn't look like an imminent
event. My affairs are not urgent. In fact, as I believe I have already
remarked, when we ran across each other I was abroad for my diversion,
pure and simple. But that is no reason why I should abuse your kindness.
If I may thaw here before your fire for a half-hour, I shall be in
perfect condition to make my way home.”

“That would depend upon the distance of your home from mine.”

“My home is in my studio. And my studio is in St. Matthew's Park.”

“So far! Very well, then. I shall certainly not hear of your leaving
me so long as the storm continues. It would be as much as your life is
worth to attempt such a journey in such circumstances. It's a matter of
three, four, well-nigh five miles. And since all public conveyances are
at a standstill, you'd have to trust yourself for the whole distance
to Shanks's mare. I shall count upon your spending the night here, at
least. There's no prospect of the weather moderating before to-morrow.
And now, if you will excuse me, I will leave you here for a few moments,
while I go to change my clothes.”

“That's the wisest thing you could possibly do,” he returned. “I shall
amuse myself excellently looking out of the window; but as for your kind
invitation to remain over night----”

“As for that, since you acknowledge that you have no pressing business
to call you elsewhere, I will listen to no refusal.”

I went upstairs, my first care being to make known my return to
Josephine and Miriam, who, of course, were thereby greatly surprised
and relieved. They professed they had suffered the acutest anxiety ever
since I had left the house; and as they listened to the account I gave
them of my misadventures, they paled and shuddered for very terror.

“Mr. Fairchild, the young man who came to my rescue, is even now below
stairs in the library,” I concluded.

“Oh, is he? Then,” cried Miriam, addressing Josephine, “let us go to him
at once, and tell him how we thank him. To think that, except for him,
my uncle might----” She completed her sentence by putting her arms
around my neck, and giving me three of the sweetest kisses that were
ever given in this world: one on either cheek and one full on the lips.
“Now, sir,” she went on, shaking the prettiest of fingers at me, “I hope
that you have learned a lesson, and will never do anything again that we
two wise women warn you not to.”

“I promise to be a good, obedient, little old man in the future,” I
replied; and was rewarded for my docility with a fourth kiss--this time
imprinted among the wrinkles on my forehead.

The two wise women went off downstairs.

I joined them as soon as I had got into dry clothing; and we sat down to
luncheon--the young sculptor enlivening and entertaining us with a
flow of droll, high-spirited talk. He and Miriam got on famously
together--chatting, laughing, exchanging bits of repartee, with the
vivacity that was becoming to their age. Josephine and I hearkened and
enjoyed. At least, I enjoyed; and I had no reason to suppose that my
sister did not. Luncheon concluded, we adjourned to the drawing-room.
There, observing the piano, Fairchild demanded of Miriam whether she
played. She answered, “Yes.” (We had procured for her the best musical
instruction to be had in Adironda; and she had mastered the instrument
with a facility which proved that Louise Massarte must have been a
talented pianist.) Miriam answered, “Yes,” and then Fairchild said--

“Will you not be persuaded to play for us now?”

She played one of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, and then something of
Chopin's, and then something of Schumann's; after which, leaving the
piano, she said to Fairchild--

“Now you must sing for us.”

“Why, how do you know I can sing?” cried he.

“It is evident from the _timbre_ of your voice,” she answered.

“You must not be too sure of that,” he protested. “The speaking voice
and the singing voice are two very different things.”

“Nevertheless, please sing for us,” she repeated.

“Very good,” said he, taking possession of the key-board, “I will sing
for you; but at your peril. The beauty of the song, however, may perhaps
be allowed to atone for the deficiencies of my execution. It is by the
English composer, Marzials, a man of the rarest genius, too little known
out of his own country. He wrote both words and music, and the song is
entitled 'Never Laugh at Love.'”

Therewith, to his own accompaniment, he sang in his sweet baritone
one of the pleasantest and wittiest songs of its kind that I have ever
heard.

          Oh, never laugh at Love, Miss, fancy free,

          Lest the wanton boy should laugh at thee!

          Should he but aim in play his tiny dart--

          Ping! 't will break your heart!

          I knew a queen with golden hair,

          Few so proud, and none so fair;

          Her maids and she, one twilight gray,

          Went wand'ring down the garden way.

          A pretty page was standing there;

          Their eyes just met. Oh, long despair!

          For both have died of love, they say.

          So never laugh at Love, Miss, fancy free,

          Lest the wanton boy should laugh at thee!

I cannot forbear quoting that one verse, to give a notion of the quaint
mediæval charm of the words. * I wish I could transcribe the melody as
well, which was delicious with the same quaint flavour.

     * The Editor of this work must disclaim all responsibility
     Dr. Benary's opinions upon matters literary and aesthetic.

Fairchild having finished his song, he and Miriam plunged into an
animated conversation about music in the abstract, which I, for
one--being, though an ardent lover of music, no musician--found of
dubious interest.

“Wherefore, I think,” I interrupted them to say, “if you will forgive
the breach of ceremony, Mr. Fairchild, I shall retire to my bedroom for
a bit, and take a nap. I feel somewhat fatigued after the exertions of
the forenoon; and, anyhow, I am accustomed to my forty winks at this
hour of the day. I am sure I leave you in good hands when I leave you to
my sister and my niece.”

“Indeed, Dr. Benary, the kindest thing you can do for me--you and your
good ladies--will be to let me feel that in no wise do I interfere with
your convenience or your pleasure. Otherwise, I shall be compelled to
take my departure _instanter_; and I confess that by this time I am so
deeply penetrated by the comfort of your interior that I should hate
mortally to renew close quarters with the storm.”

So I withdrew to my bed-chamber, and was sound asleep in no time. Nor
did I wake till the mellow booming of the Japanese gong, which serves as
dinner-bell in our establishment, broke in upon my slumbers.

As I rose to my feet, something dropped from the counterpane to the
floor.

Stooping to pick it up, I discovered that it was a sheet of paper,
folded in the form of a cocked hat, and bearing my name written across
it in Josephine's hand.

“What earthly occasion can Josephine have for writing me a note?” I
wondered.

Donning my spectacles, I read as follows:

“What ever shall we do? I cannot come and say this to you in person, for
I dare not leave them alone together. But he has recognised Miriam!--J.”

It took fully a minute for the significance of that sentence: “He has
recognised Miriam,” to percolate my understanding, still thick with the
dregs of sleep. Then I started as if I had been stung; and rushing into
the passage, I called “Josephine! Josephine!” at the top of my lungs.




CHAPTER X.--JOSEPHINE EXPLAINS.


|The passage was quite dark. From the end of it, directly behind me,
came the response, “Yes, Leonard.”

“Ah, you are there?” I questioned.

“I have been waiting for you to wake. I did not wish to disturb your
sleep,” she explained.

“And they--where are they now?”

“Mr. Fairchild is in the guest-chamber, where he is to sleep. Miriam is
in her room. I could not come to you so long as they were together. It
would not do to leave them alone. That is why I wrote the note.”

By this time we were between my own four walls, and I had closed the
door behind us.

“And now, for Heaven's sake, explain to me what this means,” I said,
holding up the sheet of paper.

“It means what it says. He has recognised Miriam.”

“Oh, it is impossible,” I declared.

“I only wish you were right,” sighed Josephine dolefully.

“But how--but why--but what--what makes you think so?” stammered I.

“His action when he first saw her--when she and t entered the room where
he was, to greet him, this forenoon.”

“Oh, it is impossible--impossible!” I repeated, helplessly. “What was
his action? What did he do?”

“He caught his breath, he started, he  up, and then turned
white, and then red again.”

“Merciful Heavens!” I gasped, panic-stricken.

“What shall we do? What can we do?” my poor sister groaned.

“Did--did Miriam notice his embarrassment?”

“I think not. She did not appear to, anyhow.”

There befell a pause, during which I tried to collect my wits, and to
reflect upon the situation.

“Well,” persisted Josephine, after the silence had continued for a
minute or two, “what shall we do?”

“It is impossible, it is absolutely impossible,” I said. “Her own mother
would be unable to recognise her. She is altered beyond recognition.
Why, that dead woman would by this time be nearly thirty years of age;
whereas Miriam doesn't look two-and-twenty. Besides, the whole character
and expression of her face are changed. There remain the same bony
structure and the same general complexion: that is all that remains the
same. Confess that the thing is impossible.”

“When he saw her, he started and  up.”

“Well, even so. What of it. He started and  up. What does that
prove? Perhaps it was because of her resemblance to the dead woman, whom
we will suppose him to have known. But as for identifying them as one
and the same, he'd never dream of it. A merry, innocent young girl, of
one or two-and-twenty, and a sad-eyed, sorrow-stricken, sinful woman,
eight years her senior! The thing is on the face of it absurd. Absurd,
too, is the supposition that he ever knew Louise Massarte at all. He
started and  up at sight of Miriam, for the very simple reason
of her exceeding beauty. He is a young man, and he is an artist. What
quick-blooded young man, what artist, would not colour up at the sight
of so beautiful a girl? Or else, it is imaginable, he has seen Miriam
herself somewhere before--in the street, in an omnibus, or where
not--and has been impressed by her loveliness; and then he started for
surprise and pleasure at finding himself under the same roof with
her. You, my good Josephine, you have jumped to a most unwarranted
conclusion. Your fear was the father of your thought.--Afterwards, for
instance? Did he follow up his start with such conduct as was calculated
to justify you in your suspicion?”

“No. He simply returned our salutations, and behaved toward her as he
did toward me--as if she were a perfectly new acquaintance.”

“Good! And then, consider the freedom and the nonchalance with which he
talked to her at luncheon. No, no; it is impossible. Well, I will keep
an eye upon him during dinner. And when you and Miriam leave us to our
cigars, I'll seek to find out what the true explanation of the matter
may be.”

And my sister and I descended to the drawing-room.




CHAPTER XI.--REASSURANCE.

|Throughout the meal that followed, I carefully observed Fairchild's
bearing toward my niece; and great was my satisfaction to see in it
only and exactly what under the circumstances could rightly have
been expected. Frank, gay, interested, attentive, yet undeviatingly
courteous, respectful, and even deferential, it was precisely the
bearing due from a young gentleman of good breeding toward the lady at
whose side he found himself, and whose acquaintance he had but lately
made.

“So that,” I concluded, “of all conceivable theories adequate to account
for his behaviour at first setting eyes upon her, Josephine's is the
farthest-fetched and the least tenable.”

For the matter of that, as I had assured my sister, I was confident that
her own mother, had she been alive, must have failed to identify her,
so essentially was she altered both in expression of countenance and
in apparent age, to say nothing of her totally transformed personality.
That Fair-child did not do so I was certain. His manner exhibited
neither surprise, mystification, curiosity, nor constraint. It would
have required a far cunninger hypocrite than I took him to be, so
effectually to have disguised such emotions, had he really felt them;
and he could not have helped feeling them if, having known the
dead woman, Louise Massarte, he had recognised her in the young and
unsophisticated maiden, Miriam Benary. The right theory by which to
explain his conduct at first meeting her, I purposed discovering, if I
could, when he and I were alone.

He and Miriam had a deal of fun together making the salad, in which
enterprise they collaborated--not, however, without much laughing
difference as to the best method of procedure. He pretended that,
instead of rubbing the bowl with garlic, one should introduce a
_chapon_--or crust of bread discreetly tinctured with that herb--and
“fatigue” it with the lettuce: whereas our niece vigorously maintained
the contrary. And finally they drew lots to determine which policy
should prevail, Miriam winning.

“I am defeated but not disheartened,” Fair-child declared. “If there is
anything upon which I pride myself, Miss Benary, it is my erudition in
the science, and my dexterity in the art, of gastronomy. You have taken
it out of my power to display my skill in salad-making; but now, if you
are a generous victor, you will give me an opportunity to distinguish
myself in the confection of an omelet. It is an omelet of my own
invention, a sort of cross between the ordinary _omelette-au-vin_ of
the French and the Italian _zabaiano_, I shall require the use of that
chafing dish and spirit-lamp which I see yonder on the sideboard, the
sherry decanter, and half a dozen eggs. I can promise your palates
a delectable experience; and you, Miss Denary, by watching me, will
acquire an invaluable talent.”

So, with much merriment, he proceeded with the manufacture of his
omelet, Miriam observing and assisting. When it was complete, we
unanimously voted it the most delicious thing in the way of an omelet
that we had ever tasted. But Miriam sighed, and said, “It is all very
simple except the most important point. The way is toss it up into the
air, and make it turn over, and then catch it again as it descends--I am
sure I shall never be able to do that.”

“Never? That is a long word. You must practise it with beans,” said
Fairchild. “A pint of beans--dry beans--the kind Bostonians use for
baking. Three hours daily practice for six months, and you will do it
almost as easily as I do.”

After the fruit the ladies left us; and having filled our glasses and
lighted our cigars, we sipped and smoked for a few minutes without
speaking. Fairchild was the first to break the silence.

“I can do nothing,” he began, “but congratulate myself upon the happy
chance--if chance it was, and not a kind Providence--that brought about
our encounter this morning. For once in my life I was in luck.”

“It seems to me,” I replied, “that it is I who was in luck, and who have
the best occasion for self-gratulation.”

“That would depend upon the dubious question of the value of life,” said
he. “Has it ever struck you that this earth of ours is, after all, only
a huge grave-yard, a colossal burying-ground; and that we living persons
are simply waiting about--standing in a long _queue_, so to speak--till
our turn comes to be interred? That seems to me a very pleasing fancy,
and one which, considered as an hypothesis, clarifies many obscure
things. Accepting it, we cease to wonder at the phenomenon of death,
and regard it as the chief end, aim, object, and purpose of all human
life--the consummation devoutly to be wished, which we are all attending
with greater or less impatience. Anyhow, I am sceptical whether we
confer a boon or inflict a bane upon the human being whom we bring into
existence, or whose exit therefrom we prevent. It is indeed probable
that, except for our casual meeting this morning, you would at the
present hour have been numbered among the honoured dead. But, very
likely--either enjoying the excitements of the happy hunting-ground or
sleeping the deep sleep of annihilation--very likely, I say, you would
have been better off than you are actually, or can ever hope to be in
the flesh. About my good fortune, contrariwise, debate is inadmissible.
Here I am in veritable clover-smoking a capital cigar after a capital
dinner, in capital company, to the accompaniment of a capital glass of
wine, and the richer by the acquisition of three new friends--for as
friends, I trust, I may be allowed to reckon you and your ladies. Had
we not happened to run across each other in the way we did, on the other
hand, I should now have been seated alone by my bachelor's hearth, with
no companions more congenial to me than my plaster casts, and no voice
more jovial to cheer my solitude than the howling of the gale.”

“It is very flattering of you to put the matter as you do,” said I;
“but being modish in no respect, I am least of all so in my metaphysics.
Therefore I cannot share your pessimistic doubt of the value of life;
and I assure you I should have hated bitterly to leave mine behind me
in that ungodly snowbank. It is true, I am perilously close to the
Scriptural limitation of man's age; and I ought perhaps to feel that
I have had my fit and proper share of this world's vanities, and to be
prepared for my inevitable journey to the next. But, I must confess, I
am so little of a philosopher, I should dearly like to tarry here a
few years longer; and hence, I maintain, my obligation to you is
indisputably established.”

“Well, then, so far as I can see, we may say measure for measure; and
consider ourselves quit.”

“Hardly. The balance is still tremendously in your favour.”

After that we again smoked for a while without speaking. Then again
Fairchild broke the silence.

“I wonder whether you would take it amiss, Dr. Benary, if I should
mention something which has been the object of my delighted admiration
almost from the moment I entered your house?”

“Ah! What is that?” I queried.

“I fear you will condemn me as overbold if I answer you candidly; but I
shall do so, and accept the consequences. The circumstance that I am an
artist may be pleaded in my behalf, if I seem to transcend the bounds of
the conventional.”

“You pique my curiosity. What is it that you allude to? I do not think
you need be apprehensive of my wrath. My extended 'Life of Sir Joshua'?
That is the fruit of ten years' hard labour. Or my Japanese woman by
Theodore Wores? It's a wonderful piece of flesh-painting. It looks as
though it would bleed if you pricked it” *

“Yes, it is in Worcs's best vein. But that is not what I have in mind.
Neither is the 'Life of Sir Joshua.' which, by-the-bye, I have not
seen.”

     * The Editor of this work must disclaim all responsibility
     Dr. Benary's opinions upon matters literary and aesthetic.

“Not seen it? Oh, well, I must show it to you directly we go upstairs.
It's my particular pet and pride. But what, then? I do not know what
else I have worthy of such admiration as you profess.”

“You have--if you will tolerate my saying so--you have a niece; and I
allude to her extraordinary beauty.”

My pulse quickened. Here had he, of his own accord, broached that very
topic upon which I was anxious to sound him.

“Ah, yes; Miriam,” I assented, a trifle nervously, and wondering what
would come next. “Miriam. Yes, Miriam is a very pretty girl.”

“Pretty!” echoed he. “Pretty? Why, sir, she's---- why, in all my life
I've not seen so beautiful a woman. And it isn't simply that she is so
beautiful; it's her type. Her type--I believe I am conservative when I
call it the least frequent, the rarest, in the whole range of womanhood.
Forgive my fervour: I speak in my professional capacity--as an artist,
as one to whom the beautiful is the subject-matter of his daily studies.
It is a type of which you occasionally see a perfect specimen in antique
marble, but in flesh and blood not oftener than once in a lifetime.
To say nothing of her colouring, which a painter would go mad over,
consider the sheer planes and lines of her countenance! That magnificent
sweep of profile--brow, nose, lips, chin, and throat, described by one
splendid flowing line! It's unutterable. It's Juno-esque. It's worth
ten years of commonplaceness to have lived to see it in a veritable
breathing woman.''

“Yes,” I admitted, “it's a fine profile--a noble face.”

“Her type is so rare,” he went on, “that, as I have said, Nature
succeeds in producing a perfect specimen of it scarcely oftener than
once in a generation. Of faulty specimens--comparable, from a sculptor's
point of view, to flawed castings--she turns out many every year. You
have been in Provence? In the Noonday of France? Arles, Tours, Avignon,
teem with such failures--women who approach, approach, approach, but
always fall short of, the perfection that your niece embodies.”

“Yes, I know the Méridionales, and I see the resemblance that you refer
to. But, as you intimate, they are coarse and crude copies of Miriam.
That expression of high spirituality, which is the dominant note in her
face, is usually quite absent from theirs.”

“They compare to her as the pressed terracotta effigies of the Venus
of Milo, which may be bought for a song in the streets, compare to the
chiselled marble in the Louvre. In all my life I have never known but
one woman who could properly be mentioned in the same breath with her.
And even she was a good distance behind. Of her I happened to see just
enough to perceive the divine potentiality of the type. Ever since,
I have been watching for a faultless specimen. And to-day, when Miss
Benary came into the room where you had left me, I declare for a moment
my breath was taken away. I could scarcely believe my eyes. Such beauty
seemed beyond reality; it was like a dream come true. In my admiration
I forgot my manners: it was some seconds before I remembered to make my
bow. The point of all which is that when our friendship is older, you,
Dr. Benary, must permit _me_ to model her portrait.”

Thus was my mind set at ease.

Presently we rejoined the ladies, and while Fairchild and Miriam chatted
together in the bow window, I drew Josephine aside, and communicated to
her the upshot of our post-prandial conversation. She breathed a mighty
sigh, and professed herself to be enormously relieved.




CHAPTER XII.--THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA.

|Fairchild became a frequent visitor at our house, and an ever-welcome
one. His good looks, his good sense, his droll humour, his honesty, his
high spirits, made him an extremely pleasant companion. We all liked him
cordially; we were always glad to see him. I told him that if pot-luck
had no terrors for him, he must feel at liberty to drop in and dine with
us whenever his inclination prompted and his leisure would permit. He
took me at my word, as I meant he should; and from that time forth he
broke bread with us never seldomer than one evening out of the seven.

At the end of a month, or perhaps six weeks, Josephine said to me, “Do
you think it well, Leonard, that two young people of opposite sexes
should be thrown together as frequently and as closely as Mr. Fairchild
and Miriam are?”

“Why not?” questioned I.

“The reasons are obvious. How would you be pleased if they should fall
in love?”

“The Lord forbid! But I see no danger of their doing so.”

“There is always danger when a beautiful young girl and a spirited young
man see too much of each other.”

“But Fairchild pays no more attention to Miriam than he does to you
or to me. They are never left alone together. They are simply good
friends.”

“As yet, perhaps, yes. But time can change friendship into love.
He begins, you must remember, with the liveliest and most profound
admiration for her; she, with the deepest sense of gratitude towards
him. True, as you say, they are never left alone together--not exactly
alone, that is. But are they not virtually alone when you and I are
seated here in the library over our backgammon-board, and he and she are
therein the drawing-room at the piano?”

“But, my dear sister, the two rooms are as one. The folding doors are
never closed.”

“True again: we are all within sight and hearing of one another. But
as a matter of fact, you and I give no heed to them, nor do they to us.
There are certain laws of nature which should not be ignored.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?” I enquired rather testily. “Shall
I forbid Fairchild the house? Forbid my house to the man who saved my
life?”

“Oh, no, of course not. You know I could not wish such a thing as that.
Mr. Fairchild's claims upon our gratitude must never be forgotten.
And besides, I like him, and I enjoy his visits as heartily as you do.
Only----”

“Only what? If I don't forbid him the house, how can I prevent him and
Miriam meeting? Shall I direct her to keep her room whenever he comes?”

“I do think, brother, it would be well if she were not always present
when he comes. If you wish to hear my honest opinion, I believe it is
to see her that he comes so often, and not to see a couple of sober,
elderly folk like you and me. I cannot think that you and I are so
irresistibly attractive as to draw him to our house as frequently as
once or twice a week. However, I only wished to call your attention to
the matter. It is for you now to act as your best judgment dictates.”

“Well, then, my good Josephine, I shall not act at all. There is no
occasion for my acting. I should be most unjust and unreasonable to
prevent these two young people getting what innocent pleasure they can
from each other's friendship and society, simply because in the abstract
it is true that they are not incapable of falling in love. I might, as
reasonably enjoin Miriam against ever going out of doors, because it is
possible that in the street she might be run over; against ever drinking
a glass of water, because it is possible that the water might contain a
disease-germ. You have conjured up a chimera. Your fears are those of
a too imaginative woman. When I perceive the first symptom of anything
sentimental existing between them, it will be time enough to act.”

“Perhaps then, Leonard, it will be too late,” retorted Josephine, and
with that she dropped the subject.

*****

Well, of course, as the reader has foreseen, that very complication
which my sister feared and warned me of, and which I refused to
consider--of course that very complication came to pass. Fairchild fell
in love with Miriam, and Miriam reciprocated his unfortunate passion.
Otherwise his name would never have been introduced into this narrative;
or, rather, there would have been no such narrative for me to recite.

In June, 1888, Josephine, Miriam, and I went down to the little village
of Ogunquit, on the coast of Wade, there to rusticate until the autumn.
Toward the end of July, Fairchild joined us there, pursuant to an
arrangement made before we left town; and it was on the evening of the
15th of August that he requested a few minutes' private talk with me,
and then informed me of the condition of affairs.

“I love your niece with all my heart and soul, Dr. Benary. Indeed, I
have loved her from the day I first became acquainted with her--the day
of that blessed Blizzard. I should like to know, who could help loving
her: she is so good and so intelligent, to say nothing of her beauty.
To-day I emptied my heart out to her, and she has made me the happiest
man in Christendom by signifying her willingness to become my wife. So,
now, it only remains for you to give us your approval and benediction. I
have an income sufficient to keep the wolf from the door, over and above
my earnings; and for the rest, you know me well enough to judge of my
eligibility for yourself.”

What answer could I give him?

Putting aside altogether, as I was bound to do, the selfish
consideration that her marriage would deprive us of the treasure and the
blessing of our old age, and leave our home desolate and forsaken--could
I in honour, could I in justice to the man, permit him to make Miriam
Benary his wife, without first imparting to him so much as I myself knew
concerning Louise Massarte?

But the latter was a thing which, I was persuaded, I had no manner of
right to do. The secret of her connection with Louise Massarte, Miriam
herself was ignorant of. Surely, no other human being had the shadow
of a claim to learn it Miriam Benary had never even heard of Louise
Massarte. Louise Massarte was dead and abolished utterly. Therefore, to
saddle Miriam, in her youth and her innocence, with that dead woman's
name and history, to put upon her the burden of the dead woman's sin
and shame, it would be to do her not only a most grievous, but a most
unwarrantable, wrong.

No, I could not, I would not, I must not, tell Fairchild the story of
Louise Massarte's annihilation, and the consequent existence of Miriam
Benary. Yet how could I say, “Yes, you may marry her,” and keep that
story to myself? What excuse could I invent wherewith to ease my
conscience, if I should practise such deceit upon him in an issue
that involved his dearest and most vital interests? _Suppressio veri,
suggestio falsi_. I should be as bad as any liar if I gave my consent
to their marriage, while allowing him to remain in error respecting
the truth about his bride--truth which, if made known to him, might
radically modify his intentions.

But furthermore, and on the other hand, suppose I should say in reply
to his demand, “No, you cannot marry her”--what right had I to say
that? What reason could I allege in justification of my refusal? Not the
actual reason; for that would be to tell him the very story which, I
had made up my mind, I must not and should not tell. And if I alleged a
fictitious reason, I should simply escape the devil to plunge into the
deep sea--I should simply exchange a lie for a falsehood. These young
people loved each other. Therefore, to set up impediments to their
union, would be to impose upon each of them endless unmerited pain. What
right had I to do that? It was a vexed and difficult quandary. There
were strong arguments for and strong arguments against either course out
of it.

“Well, Dr. Benary, you do not answer me,” Fairchild said.

“I can't answer you. You must give me time--time to consider, to consult
my sister, to make up my mind.”

We had been strolling together, he and I, up and down the sands. Now
we returned to the inn. Josephine was seated on the verandah, near the
entrance.

“Ah, Leonard, at last!” she exclaimed, starting up the moment she caught
sight of me. “I have been waiting for you.”

I accompanied her to her room.

“Well,” she began, as soon as the door was closed behind us, “the worst
has happened, as I suppose you know. Mr. Fairchild has spoken to you,
has he not?”

“Ah! Then you, too, know about it?” queried I.

“Miriam has just told me the whole story.”

“What does she say?”

“That Mr. Fairchild has asked her to be his wife; that she loves him,
and has accepted him--conditionally, that is, upon your approval.”

“She says she loves him?”

“She says she loves him with all her heart. She says she is as happy
as the day is long. She doesn't dream that you will have any hesitation
about consenting.”

For a little while we were silent. At last, “Well, what are you going to
do?” my sister asked.

“That is what I wish to advise with you about.”

“Have you given any answer to Mr. Fair-child?”

“I have said to him that I must take time for reflection, and for
consultation with you.”

“Well?”

“Well, it is a most difficult dilemma.”

“But you have got to make up your mind, one way or the other; and that
speedily. It is cruel to keep them in suspense.”

“I know that, my dear sister.”

“Do you mean to say yes or no?”

“That's just it. That's just the difficulty, isn't it?”

“But it is a difficulty which must be solved. You will have to say one
of the two.”

“How dare I say yes?”

“They love each other.”

“What right have I to say no?”

“It is their life-happiness which is at stake.”

“Exactly, exactly; therefore, if I say no, it will be to condemn
them both to great misery, and misery which they have done nothing to
deserve.”

“It certainly will--it will break Miriam's heart. And what reason
can you give them for saying no? It will seem all the harder to them,
because it will seem so unreasonable and unnecessary, so unjustifiable
and wanton. They will feel that it is an act of wilful cruelty, on the
part of a selfish, tyrannical old man.”

“I know it, I know it,” I groaned. “And yet, on the other hand, if I say
yes----”

“If you say yes, you will assure to them the greatest happiness their
hearts can desire.”

“But how dare I say yes without sharing with Fairchild the secret of
Miriam's origin? Without telling him the story of Louise Massarte?”

“Surely, you cannot purpose doing that! You cannot mean to confide to
another knowledge affecting her which she herself is unaware of!”

“No, of course not. But there's just the rub. How, without doing that,
how can I honourably permit him to make her his wife?”

“It is a choice of evils: to break their hearts or to suppress certain
facts. You must choose the lesser evil of the two.”

“That is very easily said. But the trouble is to determine which of the
two evils _is_ the lesser. Deceit or cruelty?”

“Forgive me, my dear brother, for reminding you of it: but if you had
listened to my warning in the first place, this painful alternative
would never have come about.”

“What could I do? You yourself agreed with me that I couldn't forbid
Fairchild the house. And so long as he had the run of the house, how
could I prevent him and Miriam meeting? And meeting as frequently as
they did, I suppose it was inevitable that they should come to love each
other. There's no use reproaching me--no use regretting the past. What
was bound to happen has happened. That's the whole truth of it.”

“I did not intend to reproach you, Leonard. I merely wished to say that,
since, in a manner, you have been responsible for the state of things
which has come to pass--since, in other words, you neglected to take
such measures as would have prevented that state of things from coming
to pass--it seems as if now you were under a sort of moral obligation
not to stand between them and their happiness. The time for action
was the outset. You did not act then. It seems as if you had thereby
forfeited your right to act. Since you have allowed things to go so far,
it seems as if you had no right to forbid their going farther.”

“That is to say, you counsel me to consent.”

“_I_ do not see how you can do otherwise now. It is too late for you to
step in and separate them.”

“And the point of honour? I am to suppress the truth? I am to stand
still and suffer Fair-child to make Miriam his wife, in ignorance of
certain facts which, if he were aware of them, might totally change his
feeling? How can I do that? It would lie for ever on my conscience.”

“So far from totally changing his feeling I do not believe those facts,
if Fairchild knew them, would weigh with him so much as one hair's
weight. They would not, if his love for Miriam is love in any vital
sense of the word. He would agree with us in looking upon her as an
entirely different person from Louise Massarte. However, he must not
know, he must not even dream those facts. Therefore, as I said before,
it is a choice of evils. The negative evil of suppressing the truth
does not seem to me so great as the positive evil of inflicting pain.
Besides, after all, is it not Miriam's prerogative to decide this matter
for herself? What right have you or I to do anything but stand aside,
with hands off, and let her choose her husband without constraint or
interference? She is of full age and sound mind; and our relationship
with her, which would give us our pretence for interfering, is, as you
know, only a fiction She could not wish for a better husband than Mr.
Fairchild. No woman could.”

“What you say, my dear Josephine, and what you suggest, are Jesuitry,
pure and simple.”

“There come emergencies in which Jesuitry is the only feasible policy.”

A long silence followed. In the end, “Where is Miriam now?” I asked.

“She was in her room when I left her.”

“Will you find her, and send her to me? Or rather, bring her. You must
be present, too, to lend me countenance--to give me moral support in
the grossly immoral action which I am going to perpetrate. I feel like a
pickpocket. I need the encouragement of my accomplice.”

Josephine went off. In three minutes she returned, leading Miriam by the
hand.

Miriam's cheeks and throat turned crimson as she saw me; and she dropped
her eyes, and stood still, waiting.

“My dear----” I called, holding out my hands.

She came to me, and put her arms around my neck, and buried her face
upon my shoulder.

“So this young rascal of a sculptor has asked you to be his wife?” I
began.

“Yes,” she murmured, scarcely louder than a whisper.

“And so--the double-faced rogue!--it was not, as we had supposed,
because of his great fondness for your aunt and uncle, that he became
a frequenter of our camp, but because he had covetous designs upon our
chief treasure!”

“Oh! but he is very fond of my aunt and uncle, too,” she protested.

“Is he, indeed! Well, what answer have you given him?”

“I said--I said I--I said I liked him.”

“Ah! I see. You said you liked him. That was rather irrelevant, wasn't
it?--a little evasive? He asked you to become his wife, and you said you
liked him. Did you give him no more categorical an answer than that?”

“I said he must ask you.”

“Ask me? Ask me what? It isn't I that he wants to marry. And I wouldn't
have him, anyhow. Why should he ask me?”

“You know what I mean. I told him I could not marry without your
consent.”

“And suppose I should withhold my consent?”

“I should be very unhappy.”

“But I don't really see what my consent matters. It's for you to decide.
You're of full age. I have no right to forbid you. Now, then, what are
you going to do?”

“I said I would be his wife, unless you wished otherwise.”

“Well, I suppose you must keep your word. The poor fellow is waiting on
the anxious seat to learn his fate. I really think, instead of tarrying
here, you ought to seek him out, and put an end to his suspense.”

She hugged me and kissed me, and said some very jubilant and some very
complimentary things; and then she began to cry, and then she laughed
through her tears; and at last she went off to find her lover, and to
convey to him the joyful tidings.

* * * * *

They were married on the 15th day of December, and that same afternoon
they set sail for Havre aboard the steamship _La Touraine_, to pass six
months abroad. Anxiously did Josephine and I count the days that must
elapse before the post would bring us their first letter; and little did
we dream what ominous news that letter would contain.




CHAPTER XIII.--NATURE BEGINS REPRISALS.

|OF course, we watched the newspapers for an announcement of the
_Touraine's_ arrival. A fast steamer, ordinarily accomplishing the
passage within seven days, she ought to have reached Havre on the 22nd.
She was not reported, however, until Monday, the 24th, being then two
days overdue.

It was on Friday, the 4th of January, that we at last got a letter. The
envelope was superscribed not in Miriam's band, but in Fairchild's; and
when we tore it open we saw that the letter itself had been written by
the groom, and not by the bride. This struck us as rather odd, and made
us a little uneasy. We hastened to read:

“Hôtel de la Grande Bretagne,

“Havre, December 25.

“Dear Dr. Benary,

“Christmas day, and such news as I have to give you! I should put off
writing until we reach Paris, in the hope that when we are there the
face of things may have altered for the better; only I know, if you
don't receive a letter sooner than you would in that case, you will be
alarmed.

“What I have to tell you is so horrible in itself, it must shock you
dreadfully whatever way I put it. I can't hope to make it any less
painful for you by mincing it, or beating about the bush. Yet it seems
brutal to state the hideous fact downright. Miriam has become blind,
totally blind.

“Whether incurably so or not, we do not yet know. Of course we hope for
the best, but we can be sure of nothing till we reach Paris, where we
shall consult the best oculists to be found. Meantime, you may imagine
our state of mind.

“We had a most frightful passage, and that was the cause of it. We ran
into a storm directly we left Cape Thunderhead; and it followed us all
the way across. Bad enough at the outset, it got steadily worse and
worse until we reached port. It had only this mitigation--it was behind
us, and moved in the same direction with us. Therefore we were delayed
but about forty-eight hours. If it had been against us, there's no
telling when we should have got ashore; and twenty-four hours more of it
Miriam could never have survived.

“For six consecutive days (from the 17th to the 23rd) the hatches were
battened down; no passengers were allowed on deck; and not only were
the port-holes kept permanently closed, but the inner iron shutters were
screwed up, lest the sea should break in and swamp us. The skylights
also were, covered. Thus daylight was excluded, as well as fresh air.
Then the electric-lighting machine got out of order, and we had to fall
back upon candles and petroleum. The atmosphere in the cabins became
something unendurable. Much of the time, owing to the violent motion, it
was impossible to keep even the candles or the petroleum lamps burning;
and we were condemned to total darkness. At last, however, they got the
electric machine into running gear again, so that we had light. From
second to second, day and night, the sea broke over us with a roar
like the discharge of cannon, making every timber of the ship creak and
tremble. It was enough to drive one frantic, that everlasting rhythmic
thunder.

“And all the while we were tossed up, down, and around, as if that giant
vessel were a cockle-shell. Standing erect or walking was not to be
thought of. I had to creep from place to place on hands and knees. And
then the never-ending motion, and the incessant noise: the howling
of the wind, the pounding of the water, the creaking of timbers, the
snapping of cordage, the clanking of chains, the crashing of loose
things being knocked about, the shouts and tramping of sailors overhead,
the groans of sea-sick people, the shrieks of scared women and children,
the darkness, the loathsome air--I tell you it was frightful; it was
like pandemonium gone mad; the memory of it is like the memory of a
nightmare.

“Miriam suffered excruciatingly from seasickness. It was the most
heart-rending sight I have ever witnessed, the agony she endured. I had
never dreamed that sea-sickness could be so terrible; and the ship's
surgeon said he had never seen so severe a case. What made it worse, of
course, was the hopelessness of her obtaining any relief until the storm
abated, or until we reached shore. There was nothing anyone could do.
I just sat there beside her, and held her hand, while she either lay
exhausted, or started up and went through the torments of the damned. I
can give you no idea of what she suffered. It was hard work to sit
still there, and watch her sufferings, and realise that I was utterly
powerless to help her in any way. From Monday, the 17th, until last
night, when we had been ashore some hours--precisely one week--she did
not taste food. Once in a while she would drink a little water, with a
drop of brandy in it; but even that distressed her cruelly. On the 20th
she was seized with convulsions, awful beyond description. From then on,
until we left the ship, she simply alternated between terrible paroxysms
and utter prostration. Four days! I thought she was going to die,
her convulsions were so violent, the prostration that ensued was so
death-like. The ship's surgeon himself admitted that there was great
danger--that death might result from exhaustion. For those four
days--from the 20th to the 24th--he kept her almost constantly under the
influence of opiates. On Saturday she seemed a little better--that is,
her convulsions occurred seldomer, and were of shorter duration. When
not in convulsions, she would lie in a stupor, as if asleep, only most
of the time her eyes were half open, and she would groan. But on Sunday
she was worse again; and it was on Sunday night, about ten o'clock,
that, after she had lain perfectly quiet for an hour or so, all at once
she started up, and asked me whether the electric lights had gone
out again. The lights were at that moment burning brightly in our
state-room; and I told her so. Then she cried: 'I can't see you. I can't
see anything. It is all dark. What has happened? I believe I am blind.'

“Of course, I thought it must be some hallucination caused by her
sickness. I could not believe that she had really become blind. But the
ship's surgeon came and made an examination, and discovered that it was
so. He could attribute it only to a paralysis of the optic nerve,
the consequence of shock and exhaustion. What the danger of its being
permanent was he could not say.

“Yesterday, thank God, that hellish voyage came to an end. The instant
we reached this hotel, I got her into bed and sent off for the best
medical men this town holds. They simply corroborated the judgment of
the ship's doctor--that she is suffering from shock and exhaustion, and
that her blindness is due to a paralysis of the optic nerve. _They think
it will probably not be permanent_. She must keep her bed until she
is thoroughly rested, which will take several days. Then we must go to
Paris, and put her under the treatment of Dr. Geoffroy Désessaires, who,
it seems, is the great French specialist in diseases of the eye.

“She is in bed now, in the next room, sleeping. She sleeps most of the
time--or rather, dozes. Her convulsions are over now, I hope for good.
But all last night they occurred from time to time--very much less
violently, however, than when on ship-board. She has not yet been able
to take much nourishment, but as often as she wakes, I give her a little
beef-tea.

“That is about all there is to tell down to the present moment. You will
understand that I am in no condition of mind to write at greater length
than is necessary, having gone without sleep for the greater part of a
week, to say nothing of anxiety and distress. When she wakes she talks
of you and bids me say how she loves you. And of course you always means
yourself and Miss Josephine.

“I pray God that in my next letter I may have more cheering news to
write.

“Always yours,

“Henry Fairchild.”


The dismay which the foregoing epistle occasioned Josephine and myself
the sympathetic reader will conceive without my telling. But it was
as nothing to that which we experienced when we read the next, and
considered its purport:--

“Hôtel de la Bourdonnaye,

“Paris, January 1, 1889.

“Dear Dr. Benary,

“Miriam improved rapidly after I posted my letter of Christmas day.
Rest, quiet, and nourishment were what she needed--and those she had.
The doctors gave us permission to leave Havre yesterday; and we arrived
here in the afternoon. She is pale and weak, and wasted to the merest
shadow of herself, having lost _twenty-six pounds_ in weight. But she
does not suffer any more bodily pain; though what her agony of mind must
be it is not difficult for those who love her to imagine. However, that
will soon be over.

“I telegraphed in advance to Dr. Désessaires, requesting him to call
upon us here at our hotel last evening. He came at eight o'clock, and
put Miriam through a thorough examination. He confirmed what all the
other doctors had said--that it was a paralysis of the optic nerve. He
enquired all about her health in the past, and particularly whether she
had ever had any trouble of the brain or spine. Then, of course, we told
him of that accident which she met with in 1884, which had deprived
her of her memory, 'Ah! said he, 'that gives me the key to the whole
difficulty.' He proceeded very carefully to examine her head, and when
he had finished he said there was a depression of the bone at the point
where she had been hurt at that time, and a consequent pressure upon the
brain; and it was that pressure upon the brain which accounted for the
extraordinary violence of her sea-sickness and the resultant blindness.
Finally, he said that an operation to relieve that pressure would, if
made at once, restore her sight; but that, unless such an operation was
performed, she must remain permanently blind. He assured me that the
operation was not a dangerous one; that it would consist in the removal
of a minute fragment of the bone--what is called trephining. Of course,
there was nothing for us to do but consent to having the operation
performed; and thereupon he went away, saying he would return this
morning.

“At eleven o'clock this morning he arrived, accompanied by four other
physicians--Dr. Cidolt, also an oculist; Dr. Gouet, the famous alienist;
Dr. Marsac, a general practitioner of very high standing; and Dr.
Larquot, said to be the most skilful surgeon in France. They made a long
examination, and then withdrew to consult together. At the end of
nearly two hours they came to me with their report, which was simply
a repetition of what Dr. Dêsessaires had already said--that trephining
would be necessary, that it would be effective, and that it would be as
free from danger as such an operation ever is. It must be performed as
soon as possible, so that atrophy of the optic nerve may not have time
to set in; but before they can safely undertake it, Miriam must be
perfectly recovered in general health. They have set upon this day
fortnight--the 14th--as probably a favourable time. Meanwhile she is
under the care of Dr. Marsac. Dr. Larquot is to conduct the operation.

“The brave little woman! She supports her calamity so patiently! And
she looks forward to that dreadful ordeal with an amount of nerve and
courage that a man might be proud of. God grant that all may go well.

“There is nothing more for me to write at present.

“Always Yours,

“Henry Fairchild.”

At the close of Fairchild's letter this postscript was added, in a hand
that we recognised as Miriam's, though it was cramped and irregular, as
if she had written with her eyes shut:--

“Dear Ones,--I cannot see to write to you; but I love you and love you,
with all my heart.

“Miriam.”

When my sister Josephine read that, she burst out crying like a child.

I waited till she had dried her tears, Then, “Well, my dear sister,” I
questioned, “do you realise what that letter means?”

“What it means? Why, that her blindness is only temporary, and can be
cured. That she will recover her sight.”

“Nothing else?”

“What else?”

“What else! This else--and I am surprised that you do not see it for
yourself--it means that the same operation which will restore her sight
will also restore her memory. Do you understand? She will become
Louise Massarte again. She will begin at the precise point where Louise
Massarte left off. She will forget everything that has occurred during
the past four years, and will recall what occurred before. It is that
same pressure of the bone upon the brain to which they rightly or
wrongly attribute her blindness--it is that same pressure of the bone
upon the brain which keeps Louise Massarte in quiescence, and makes
Miriam Benary possible. Relieve that pressure, remove that point of
bone, and instantly Louise Massarte will spring into life again, while
at the same moment Miriam Benary will cease to exist. That is what
Fairchild's letter means.”

“Good Heavens!” gasped Josephine, holding up her hands in helpless
dismay. “But--but surely---- but what--what is to be done?”

“Which, in your opinion, would be the lesser of the two evils--to have
her remain permanently blind, or to have her regain her memory? She
would recollect all that she is happiest in forgetting, she would forget
all that she is happiest in remembering. The four years during which
she has lived here with us as our niece would be utterly obliterated and
undone. She would rise from that operation in mind and spirit exactly
where she was, and exactly what she was, just before you and I put her
under the influence of ether on the 14th day of June, 1884. Which, I
want you to tell me--which would be the lesser evil: the blindness of
Miriam Benary, or the resurrection of Louise Massarte?”

“Oh, there is no room for question about that. Better a thousand times
that she should never see the light of day again, than that she should
cease to be herself, and return to her dead personality. Why, it is--it
is Miriam's very life, her very existence, which is at stake.”

“Precisely. It is, so far as she is concerned, a choice between
blindness and death. Nay, something worse than death: a hideous
transformation of her identity, from that of a pure and innocent young
bride, to that of a weary, heart-sick, sinful woman-convict. To cure her
blindness by the means which they propose, would simply be to kill her;
to abolish Miriam Benary and to substitute for her Louise Massarte. It
is infinitely better that she should remain blind. Therefore, I am going
to prevent that operation if I can.”

“If you can indeed! But how can you? They are three thousand miles away.
How can you?”

“Well, let us see. To-day--to-day is the 12th, is it not?”

“Yes, to-day is Saturday the 12th. Well?”

“Well, the day set for the operation is the 14th--that is, the day after
to-morrow, Monday.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I shall go at once and cable to Fairchild, imploring him,
commanding him, no matter at what cost, to postpone the operation until
I arrive in Paris. Then I shall engage passage aboard the first swift
steamer that sails. The South German Clyde steamers sail on Mondays.
They make the passage in seven days, and touch at Cherbourg. Do
you, meanwhile, prepare my things, so that I may take ship day after
tomorrow. Once arrived in Paris, I will persuade Fairchild to relinquish
the idea of the operation for good and all. I will convince him that
Miriam's life will be imperilled. Or, failing in that, I may find myself
compelled to tell him the truth about Louise Massarte. Anything will be
better than to have her regain her memory.”

“Yes, anything. God grant that he may not disobey your telegram. But
you must engage passage for me as well as for yourself. I cannot stay
at home here idle. You must let me go with you. I should die of anxiety
alone here at home.”

I went to the nearest telegraph office, and sent the following cable
despatch:--

“Fairchild, Hôtel Bourdonnaye, Paris.

“At all costs postpone operation till I arrive. Miriam's life
endangered. Sail Monday, viâ Cherbourg.

“Benary.”

Then I hastened to the steamship company's office in Bowling Slip, and
engaged staterooms for my sister and myself aboard the _Egmont_ which
was to sail promptly at noon on Monday the 14th.

Yet, despite these precautionary measures, a heavy load of anxiety lay
upon my heart. What if Fairchild should suffer the operation to proceed,
notwithstanding my protest? I could not banish that contingency from my
mind, nor its ghastly _corollaries_ from my imagination.




CHAPTER XIV.--ALTER EGO.

|Though by no means so stormy as that described by Fairchild, our voyage
was an unconscionably long one. To say nothing of fogs and head winds,
an accident befell our machinery, whereby we were compelled to lie to
for sixteen precious hours, while the damage was repaired. We did not
make Cherbourg till the afternoon of Friday, January 25.

Ashore, my first act was to enquire when a train would leave for Paris.
A train would leave at midnight, due at the capital at half past nine
in the morning. My next act was to telegraph Fairchild, informing him of
our arrival, and warning him to expect us on the morrow.

At half past nine to the minute, Saturday, we drew into the Gare St.
Lazare. We were a little surprised not to find Fairchild there to meet
us, and perhaps also a little disturbed. Was Miriam so ill that he dared
not leave her? After seeing our luggage through the Customs House, we
got into a cab, and were driven to the Hôtel de la Bourdonnaye.

I inquired for Mr. Fairchild.

“Monsieur Fairchild is in his room, Monsieur.”

“Show us thither at once,” said I.

“Pardon, Monsieur. If Monsieur will have the goodness to send up his
card---”

“Josephine,” I exclaimed, “how do you account for this? Apparently we
are not expected. He does not meet us at the railway station; and here
at his hotel we are required to send up our card.”

“Well, send it up. We shall soon have an explanation,” Josephine said;
and I acted upon her advice.

In two minutes Fairchild appeared.

“What! Arrived!” he cried, seizing each of us by a band. “Your
steamer was overdue; when did you get in? Why didn't you telegraph from
Cherbourg?”

“Why _didn't_ I telegraph? But I did. Do you mean to say you haven't
received my despatch?”

“Not the ghost of one. If I'd known you were coming this morning---- But
wait.”

He stepped into the office of the hotel. Issuing thence in a moment,
“There!” he cried, exhibiting a blue envelope, “here's your telegram.
In America I should have received it twelve hours ago. But they manage
these things better in France. It came last night, after I'd gone to bed
and the authorities of this hostelery were too considerate to wake me.
Then this morning, they say, they thought I was so much occupied that,
they would do best to wait about delivering it till I was at leisure.
That's French courtesy with a vengeance. However, you're safely arrived
at last, and that's the important thing.”

“And Miriam? Miriam?” I demanded impatiently.

“The doctors are with her even now,” he answered.

“You got my cable despatch, of course, and put off the operation?”

“Yes, I got your despatch; and we put off the operation until all the
physicians insisted that it must not be put off longer--that, if put off
longer, it would be ineffective.”

Panic-stricken, “You don't mean to say,” I gasped, “you can't mean to
say that it has been performed!”

“As I just told you, they're with her now. They are performing it at
this moment?”

“Heavens and earth, man! Didn't I say in my telegram that it would
imperil her life? Didn't I entreat you at all costs to postpone it until
I arrived?”

“You did, certainly. But these other medical men, who were on the spot,
and could examine her for themselves, were of one mind in declaring that
her life would not be imperilled, but that the longer the operation was
delayed, the greater would be the danger of atrophy of the optic nerve.
Finally, on Wednesday of this week, they fixed upon this morning as
the furthest date to which they could consent to postpone it. It was a
choice between going on without your presence, and taking the risk of
permanent blindness. So I had to let them proceed.”

“You don't know what you have done! You have done that which you will
repent to your dying day!!” I groaned, wringing my hands. “You might
have known that I never should have telegraphed as I did--that I
never should have packed up and taken ship for Europe at two days
notice--unless it was a matter of life and death But where are they?
Take me to them. Perhaps it is not yet too late. Perhaps I am still in
time to prevent it. Take me to them at once.

“I doubt whether they will admit you. They would not allow me to be
present, and I am her husband. I have had to walk up and down the
corridor, waiting.”

“Not admit me! They will admit me, if have to break down the door. Take
me to them this instant.”

“Very well,” he assented. “This way.”

He led me up a flight of stairs, and halted before a door, upon which he
gently rapped.

The door was immediately opened by an elderly man, in professional
broad-cloth, who said in French: “You may enter now. It is finished.”

My heart turned to ice. For a breathing-space I could neither move nor
speak.

At last, with the stolidity that is born of despair, “Finished!” I
repeated. “You have then trephined?”

“We have.”

“And the patient----?”

“She is not yet recovered from the anaesthetic.”

We entered the room. Miriam, pale and beautiful, lay unconscious upon
a sofa near the windows. Two other professional-looking gentlemen stood
over her, one of whom was fanning her face.

Fairchild presented me: “The English physician, Dr. Benary, the uncle of
my wife.”

I was in no mood to be courteous or ceremonious. Having bowed,
“Gentlemen, I must beg you to leave me alone with the patient,” I began,
addressing the company at large.

My remark created a sensation. The French physicians exchanged perplexed
and astonished glances; and a chorus of indignant “Mais, monsieurs,”
 rose about my ears.

“Fairchild, I am in earnest,” I said. “I insist upon these gentlemen
leaving me alone with my niece. I look to you to see that they do so.
I have neither the leisure nor the inclination to discuss the matter.
Every second is precious.” Somehow or other Fairchild prevailed upon
them to withdraw. I suspect they saw that I was in no frame of mind to
bear trifling with.

“I may remain?” Fairchild queried.

“No, not even you. I must be quite alone with her for the present.”

“But-----”

“Nay, do not waste time is controversy. Leave me at once.”

Fairchild reluctantly went off.

I sat down at the side of Miriam's couch, and fanned her.

By-and-by she opened her eyes, and they rested upon my face.

From their expression, it was obvious that she saw me. Her blindness had
been cured.

Almost at once, however, she closed her eyes again; and then for a
little while she lay still, like one half asleep.

Suddenly she drew a deep quick breath, sat up, and looking me intently
in the face, “Well, is it over?” she asked.

“Yes, dear; it is over,” I replied. “Well, then, it is a failure--a
total, abject failure! I remember everything. My memory was never
clearer or more circumstantial. And you--you said there was no chance of
failure! Oh, I was a fool to believe you. But what were you, to tell me
such monstrous lies?”

With these words, she sighed, and fell back upon her pillow, while I,
with a deadly sickness at the heart, realised that the worst which I had
feared had come to pass.

She was Louise Massarte now. Where was Miriam Benary? She was Louise
Massarte. She had taken up her former life at the exact point where
Louise Massarte had dropped it. She had begun anew at the exact point
where Louise Massarte had left off. And the operation which she had in
her mind when she asked, “Is it over?” was the operation which I had
performed upon her nearly five years before. Those intervening years
were as perfectly erased from her consciousness as if they had been
passed in dreamless sleep.

Where was Miriam Benary? What had become of that sweet and winning
personality? And of the innocent pure love with which she had blessed
our lives? Oh, it was a hideous transformation. Miriam was gone into the
infinite void of Nothingness, leaving this changeling in her place. It
was more unbelievable, it was more horribly impossible, than any wild
nightmare phantasy, than any ancient grisly tale of necromancy; and
yet it was true, it was undeniable, it was irremediable. It was worse,
incomparably worse, than it would have been if she had died. For had she
died, we could at least have hoped that her soul still lived, good and
true and beautiful as ever. But now her soul had simply changed its
form, and become the corrupt and sinful essence of Louise Massarte--just
as in books of the Black Art we read of the fair virgin Princess being
changed at a touch into a wicked grinning ape.

“Yes, you have failed, you have failed,” she said again.

Then, all at once, starting up, and speaking passionately: “Oh, why did
you interfere with me last night? Why did you cross my path and thwart
my will? Why did you not let me die then, when it would have been so
easy? Why did you bring me here to your house, to fill me and intoxicate
me with hopes that were doomed to be disappointed? Oh, it was cruel, it
was cruel of you. I was insane to listen to you. I was mad to place any
sort of credence in what you said. It was so obvious a fairy-tale. I
ought to have known that you promised the impossible, that you were
either a liar or a lunatic.--But it is not yet too late. Leave me. Leave
the room. Let me get up and dress myself, and go away. Where is your
sister? She put away my clothes. Send her to me. I will not be detained
here longer. Give me my clothes. I will get up, and go away, and throw
myself into the river, before they have a chance to retake me, and send
me back to prison.”

What could I do? What could I say? “Oh, Miriam, Miriam,” I faltered
helplessly. “Calm yourself. For Heaven's sake, lie quiet. You will work
yourself into a fever, into delirium. Your agitation may cost you your
life. Lie quiet and let me think. My poor wits are distracted.”

She caught at the name Miriam.

“Miriam? Miriam! Who is Miriam? Have I not told you my name? My name is
Louise Massarte. Why do you call me by another? Miriam!--Miriam! Am I in
a madhouse? _Oh, oh! my head!_” she screamed sharply, putting her hand
to her head. “What have you done to my head? What have you done to me?
Oh, I had such a pain! It shot through my head. Oh! fool, imbecile, that
I was, ever to enter your house.”

At this juncture the door opened, and Fair-child came into the room.

“I could wait outside no longer,” he explained. “I heard her scream. I
cannot stay away from her.”

To my unspeakable amazement, she, at the sight of her husband (whom,
I had every reason to suppose, she would not recognise), started
violently, and, catching her breath, exclaimed--

“What! You! Henry Fairchild! Henry Fairchild! Here! Good God!”

“Yes, dear Miriam,” Fairchild answered, coming forward, and putting out
his hand to take hold of hers.

But she drew quickly away from him.

“Miriam again! Miriam! What farce is this? Am I really in a mad-house?
Or have I gone mad? I believe you are both maniacs, that you call me
Miriam. Or is it some charade that you are acting for my bewilderment?
And you, Henry Fairchild! What are you doing here? You, of all men!
Oh! this is some frightful trick that has been played upon me! This
glib-tongued old man, with his innocent face and his protestations of
benevolence, has trapped me here to send me back across the river. But
why so much ceremony about it. Call your officers at once, and give me
up to them. One thing I'll promise you: they'll never get me back
there alive. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! And so, Mr. Fairchild, your friend, Roger
Beecham, is dead. I came to town last night for the especial purpose of
calling upon him, and settling our accounts; and then I learned that he
had died from natural causes. Well, there is one consolation: unless the
dogma of hell be a pure invention, he is roasting there now. I daresay I
shall join him there presently, and then we will roast together! What a
blow his death must have been to you, his faithful Achates!” During
the first part of her speech, it was plain that poor Fairchild simply
fancied her to be raving in delirium; but when she mentioned that name,
Roger Beecham, an expression of terrified amazement, mingled with blank
incomprehension, fell upon his face, and he stood staring at her, with
knitted brows and parted lips, like a man dumbfoundered and aghast.

“Oh, I hope he died hard!” she cried. “I hope his mortal agony was
excruciating and long-drawn out. I hope his death-bed was haunted and
surrounded by twenty thousand hateful memories!” Fairchild found his
tongue.

“Roger Beecham,” he repeated, as if dazed. “What do you know of Roger
Beecham?”

“That's good! That's exquisite!” cried she. “What do I know of Roger
Beecham? You play your comedy very well, though I confess I don't see
the point of it. What does Louise Massarte know of Roger Beecham? What
does she _not_ know of him?”

Fairchild became rigid.

“Louise Massarte!” he gasped. “What have you to do with Louise
Massarte?--the murderess of Beecham's wife! Was she--for God's sake, was
she related to you? Long ago I noticed a certain resemblance--a certain
remote resemblance--such a resemblance as might exist between an angel
and a devil. But why do you speak to me of her? What can you know of
her? Louise Massarte!---- Dr. Benary, what has happened to my wife? She
is delirious. Yet how comes she to know these names? What can be done?”

“I am not delirious, Mr. Fairchild,” she put in, hastily. “But either
you are, or you are a most clever actor, and have missed your vocation
in failing to go upon the stage. As I said before, I cannot see the
point of your mummery; but you do it uncommonly well. Why do you pretend
not to recognise me? Surely, I can't have changed beyond recognition in
two years.”

“Not recognise you? Not recognise you, Miriam, my wife! Oh, what
dreadful insanity has come upon her?”

“I? Miriam? Your wife?” She laughed. “Come, Mr. Fairchild, a truce to
this mystery.”

Fairchild sank upon a chair, and pressed his brow between his hands.
“She is out of her senses. But how comes she to know those names?” he
said, as if speaking to himself. Then, turning to me: “Perhaps you, Dr.
Benary, can clear this puzzle up?”

“This is hardly a fitting time or place for attempting to,” I replied.
“If you had only respected my desires, there would have been no such
occasion.”

“Will you answer me this one question? Do you understand what she means
by her reference to Louise Massarte?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Explain that meaning to me.”

“Not now, Fairchild. Not now. Later I will tell you everything. I have
not the heart nor the wit to explain anything just now.”

“But the relation, the connection, between that woman and my wife? Were
they sisters?”

“No, not sisters.”

“What then?”

“Fairchild, I implore you----” I began, but I got no further.

From the couch upon which Miriam lay came a low peal of sarcastic
laughter. Then suddenly it expired in a most piteous moan. She gave a
sharp cry, and swooned.

Fairchild was at her side in a twinkling. He knelt there, seizing her
hands, and gazing with wild eyes into her face.

“She is dead! She is dead!” he groaned frantically.

“No, she has only fainted, from pain and exhaustion. But the
consequences of a fainting fit in her condition may be terrible,”
 said I.

“Oh, my darling! my darling!” he sobbed, bending over till his cheek
swept her breast.

* * * * *

She never regained consciousness.

I have not the heart to dwell upon what followed.

This paragraph, cut from _Galignant's Messenger_ of February 1, tells
its own story:--

“_Fairchild.--On Wednesday morning, January 30, at the Hôtel de la
Bourdonnaye, of _phrenitis_, Miriam Benary, wife of Henry Fairchild, of
Adironda._”


THE END.









End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Two Women or One?, by Henry Harland

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