The Professor's Mystery Part 26

I have told you why."

"What have you told me?"

"I've told you that even if I did--care for you--that I could not let myself care--that I can only see you even, when you treat me as a friend, and only as a friend."

"You told me once, I remember, that there was some one else. I think now that you were mistaken. There neither is nor can be any one else."

"But there is." The words were scarcely audible, and her eyes were turned away from me.

"I know perhaps what you mean. I didn't know at the time--but I think I do now. Do you mean that the some one else, the person who stands between you and me, is your mother?"

Lady looked past me blankly. "My mother?" she questioned.

"You must see that I have to know the real truth now," I said. "You can surely trust me; and I am trying for something that means more than life. Lady, you must answer me fairly. Is it not because of your mother that you say these things?"

"What do you know of my mother?"

"I know," I answered as gently as I could, "that you all believe she is temporarily unbalanced; that Doctor Immanuel Paulus has declared her insane."

Lady had gone very white again.

"Yes, that is the reason," she said.

"But," I cried, "that is no reason at all! If you feared that my intimacy would betray this trouble you all guard as a secret--why, you see I know that now; and surely you can not doubt in your heart that I would guard any secret of yours more sacredly than anything in the world. Why has it anything to do with us?" I was speaking eagerly, with that foolish burst of argumentative logic which a lover fondly imagines potent, hurling breathless words against the impregnability of conviction.

"No," said Lady softly. "You are wrong, because you still do not know.

There is no taint of insanity in the family; we are not afraid of that.

Mother was taken out of herself by a great shock, not by inheritance."

"Yes," I said, "by the shock of your sister's death. I know that."

"Then you know almost everything," said Lady, "except perhaps--except the reason that mother gives for my sister's death--her marriage."

We were both of us for a long time silent.

"You see, it is no question of the truth." She went on at last, in that terribly distant and even voice. "It is true to her--and very dreadful--so that it is dangerous for her even to remember. That is why she shrinks from Walter; that is why I keep her wedding-ring." She touched the chain that hung about her neck. "And that is why--do you understand now?"

I nodded wordlessly, for the world seemed coming to an end. Then, thank G.o.d, I looked into the eyes of my love; and behind their despair I read appeal, the ageless call of a woman's heart to the one man of her faith.

And then I had taken her in my arms. I held her close and the fragrance of her hair was in my nostrils, and soft arms had crept around my neck, bending my head to meet the upturned face.

"Oh, Laurie, you will be kind to me," she said at last. "I can never do it all alone. You must help--oh, my dear, I have needed you so."

"It will be right. You know that it is right," I whispered.

"You must find the way, then, dear-- I have thought so long that it was wrong to tell you that even now I can't tell what is right. Only--G.o.d doesn't let some things be unless He means them--but I can't see the way. You must find it now, for her and us too."

What feeling I had of another presence I do not know; but half uneasily I turned. Between the curtains of the doorway stood Mrs. Tabor, her hands raised above her head gripped the curtains as if for support, so that she seemed rather to hang there than to stand; her eyes looked through and beyond us vacantly, and the pretty old-young face was twisted like a tragic mask. Then the curtains dropped before her, and from the hall came the gasp of a stifling sob. Lady was out of my arms and away as if I had not been there. Her cool voice pleaded for a moment with the rising hysteria without. Then all sound died, and I was left utterly alone; the silence of the great room about me, and before my mind the world of reality and the battle still to fight.

CHAPTER XXIII

I STAND BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

After a few empty minutes, I went quietly out of the house, and at the end of the drive paused to look back over the sunlit lawn with its bright flower-beds and heavy trees. My work was plain enough before me now; I saw what I had to do, and the only question was my method of approach. The impossibility of it somehow did not interest me. I did not want to think the situation over, but merely to decide at what point I should first take hold upon it; and I was eager to begin. As I stood there, I saw Doctor Reid, in loose flannels and with a tennis racket in his hand, come in the side gate and walk jerkily toward the garage in the rear. Here was one thing to be done at least, and I might as well attend to it while I was on the ground.

His springy step was on the stairs as I entered the building after him, and I overtook him at the top, shuffling from one foot to the other before an oaken door, while he hunted through his pockets for the key.

He turned sharply at the sound of my coming.

"What are you doing here?" was his greeting.

"Reid," said I, "I have to say to you that I regret forcing that matter on you the other night; and if you'll give me a little time, I want to tell you why. It will end in our pulling more or less together, instead of fighting each other."

His face set for an instant, then he made up his mind. "Very well. I'm free for a while. Come in. No occasion perhaps for an apology: spoke too hastily myself. No sense in being emotional." He threw open the door and stepped back. "My digestion wasn't normal that day, you see.

Fermentation. Generally a physical basis for those things. Alcohol besides."

I preceded him into a sudden blaze of air and sunlight, a first impression of wide s.p.a.ce and staring cleanliness. While I blinked, Reid swung a leather covered chair toward me, with a word of hasty excuse.

"Just been exercising, you see, and I've got to take my shower. Great mistake sitting down without. I'll be with you in half a moment," and he vanished behind a rubber curtain that ran on a nickeled rod before an alcove at the back, leaving me to look about the room. It was very large, occupying the whole breadth of the building, and fitted up with an astonishing combination of convenience and hygiene. Dull red tiles covered the floor and rose like a wainscot half way up the walls. Above that ran a belt of white, glazed paper enameled to represent tiling; and the ceiling was of corrugated metal, also enameled white. Two large windows in front, and one on either side, wide open behind wire screens, and uncurtained, let in a flood of light and air which somehow in entering seemed to exchange its outdoor freshness for the sterilized, careful purity of a laboratory. Between the front windows a large gla.s.s-topped table bore a microscope and microtome covered by gla.s.s bells, a Bunsen burner, and a most orderly collection of bottles and test-tubes. On one side of this was a porcelain sink, and on the other a heavy oak desk with a telephone and every utensil in place. Steel sectional bookcases along the walls displayed rows of technical books and gleaming instruments. In one corner stood an iron bed, with a strip of green gra.s.s matting before it, and in the other a pair of Indian clubs and a set of chest-weights flanked an anthropometric scale. The only decorations were a large print of Rembrandt's _Anatomy_, two or three surprisingly good nudes, and a few glaring French medical caricatures. And everything possible about the room was covered with gla.s.s--tables, desk, bookcases, the shelves above the sink, and the very window-sills. If ever a room did so, this one declared the character of its inhabitant; and looking upon its comfortless convenience, I caught myself wondering how any normal woman could endure marriage with such an antiseptic personality. Then as Reid issued from his bath, glowing and alert with vivid energy and contagiously alive, the idea seemed not inconceivable after all.

"Pretty comfortable place, eh?" he burst forth. "Fine. Fine. All my own idea. Fitted it up according to my own notion. Everything I need right here, nothing useless, plenty of light and ventilation. Have a cigarette? I don't smoke often myself, but I keep 'em at hand. Best form to take tobacco, if you don't inhale. Popular idea all rot."

I lit one and settled back. "I've just asked Lady to marry me," I said, as quietly as I could. "She says that the only reason she won't is her mother. And I understand why."

His face lighted for a moment. "I told Tabor you'd be at the bottom of it eventually. As for the other matter--well, it has to be reckoned with. Strongest motive we have. The race has got to go on." He frowned suddenly: "How much do you know?"

"I know that Carucci lied; I know that Mrs. Tabor is out of her mind; I know that her delusion takes the form of a horror of marriage, because--" I stopped, searching for a softened form of words; but Reid took up the broken sentence and went evenly on, as impersonally scientific as if we had been speaking of strangers.

"Because of my wife's death. Hysteria aggravated by introspection. Fixed idea of Miriam's continual presence--what's that line?--'the wish father to the thought'-- The psychic element in these things, you know, does react on the physical. Whole thing moves in a circle. Then paranoia."

"She's got to get well," I said. "What's the best chance? What can we do?"

"We're doing all we can. We've called the best man in the country. You can't depend on any prognosis, you know. We don't understand these things perfectly, at best. There's no rigid line of demarcation between insanity and hysteria. Nervous and mental diseases run into each other.

You can't tell."

"Just what does Doctor Paulus say?"

"Paranoia. Says if there were continual external suggestions of Miriam he'd call it only hysterical; but we guard her as far as possible from anything of the kind. If she originates the hallucinations herself, it's mental. Nothing to do but keep her quiet, avoid all reminders, avoid excitement, lead her mind in other directions, suggest normality.

Nothing more possible, unless we take her abroad for hypnotic treatment, and that doesn't seem advisable. Nothing else to be done. Question of time."

"Then it's just a question of getting rid of this fixed idea?"

"Well, but that's begging the whole question, Crosby, don't you see? The fixed idea is the disease. You're a layman, you know, and you look at it with the simplicity of ignorance. No offense meant, but that's the plain fact, you know. Paulus doesn't call it hopeless, but Rome wasn't built in a day. Nothing to do but wait."

"I'm going to find something to do," I said, "because something has got to be done."

"Right spirit. Right way to face a difficulty. Always best to be optimistic. But of course, you mustn't risk any private experiments. You understand that. Might do harm. h.e.l.l's paved with good intentions, you know, and we've got an expert on the case. Where there's any work for you, we'll count you in, but you mustn't b.u.t.t in."