Paul Patoff Part 17

"Wait a minute," I suggested. "Stay where you are." Cutter looked at me, and shrugged his shoulders.

"You can't do any harm," he replied, indifferently. "I think she has a faint remembrance of you."

You know I can speak the Russian language fairly well, for I have lived some time in the country. It had struck me, while I was waiting in the study, that it would be worth while to try the effect of a remark in a tongue with which Madame Patoff had been familiar for over thirty years.

I went quietly up to the couch where she was lying, and spoke to her.

"I am sorry I saved your life, since you wished to die," I said, in a low voice, in Russian. "Forgive me."

Madame Patoff started violently, and her white hands closed upon her book with such force that the strong binding bent and cracked. Cutter could not have seen this, for I was between him and her. She looked up at me, and fixed her dark eyes on mine. There was a great sadness in them, and at the same time a certain terror, but she did not speak.

However, as I had made an impression, I addressed her again in the same language.

"Do you remember seeing Paul to-day?" I asked.

"Paul?" she repeated, in a soft, sad voice, that seemed to stir the heart into sympathy. "Paul is dead."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I am going," I added. "Good-by."

She looked up suddenly. I bowed to her, out of habit, I suppose. Do people generally bow to insane persons? To my surprise, she put out her hand and took mine, and shook it, in the most natural way imaginable; but she did not answer me. Just as I was turning from her she spoke again.

"Who are you?" she asked in English.

"My name is Griggs," I replied, and lingered to see if she would say more. But she laughed again,--very little this time,--and she took up the book she had dropped and began to read.

Cutter smiled, too, as we left the room. I glanced back at the graceful figure of the gray-haired woman, extended upon her couch. She did not look up, and a moment later Cutter and I stood again in the antechamber.

The professor slowly rubbed his hands together,--his gigantic hands, modeled by nature for dealing with big things. Mrs. North rose from her reading.

"I have an idea that our patient has recognized this gentleman," said the scientist. "This has been a remarkably eventful day. She is probably very tired, and if you could induce her to go to bed it would be a very good thing, Mrs. North. Good-evening."

"Good-evening," I said. Mrs. North made a slight inclination with her head, in answer to our salutation. I pushed aside the heavy curtain, and we went out. Cutter had a pa.s.s-key to the heavy door in the pa.s.sage, and opened it and closed it noiselessly behind us. I felt as though I had been in a dream, as we emerged into the dimly lighted great hall, where a huge fire burned in the old-fas.h.i.+oned fireplace, and Fang, the white deerhound, lay asleep upon the thick rug.

"And now, Mr. Griggs," said the professor, stopping short and thrusting his hands into his pockets, "will you tell me what she said to you, and whether she gave any signs of intelligence?" He faced me very sharply, as though to disconcert me by the suddenness of his question. It was a habit he had.

"She said very little," I replied. "She said that 'Paul' was dead. Was that her husband's name as well as her son's?"

"Yes. What else?"

"She told me she had no son; and when I reminded her that she had seen him that very afternoon, she laughed and answered, 'I tell you I have no son,--why do you torment me?' She said all that in Russian. As I was going away you heard her ask me who I was, in English. My name appeared to amuse her."

"Yes," a.s.sented Cutter, with a smile. "Was that all?"

"That was all she said," I answered, with perfect truth. Somehow I did not care to tell the professor of the look I thought I had seen in her face when her eyes rested on him. In the first place, as he was doing his best to cure her, it seemed useless to tell him that I thought she disliked him. It might have been only my imagination. Besides, that nameless, undefined suspicion had crossed my brain that Madame Patoff was not really mad; and though her apparently meaningless words might have been interpreted to mean something in connection with her expression of face in speaking, it was all too vague to be worth detailing. I had determined that I would see her again and see her alone, before long. I might then make some discovery, or satisfy myself that she was really insane.

"Well," observed the professor, "it looks as though she remembered her husband's death, at all events; and if she remembers that, she has the memory of her own ident.i.ty, which is something in such cases. I think she faintly recognized you. That flush that came into her face was there when she saw her son this afternoon, so far as I can gather from Carvel's description. I wish they had waited for me. This remark about her son is very curious, too. It is more like a monomania than anything we have had yet. It is like a fixed idea in character; she certainly is not sane enough to have meant it ironically,--to have meant that Paul Patoff is not a son to her while thinking only of the other one who is dead. Did she speak Russian fluently? She has not spoken it for more than eighteen months,--perhaps longer."

"She speaks it perfectly," I replied.

"What strange tricks this brain of ours will play us!" exclaimed the professor. "Here is a woman who has forgotten every circ.u.mstance of her former life, has forgotten her friends and relations, and is puzzling us all with her extraordinary lack of memory, and who, nevertheless, remembers fluently the forms and expressions of one of the most complicated languages in the world. At the same time we do not think that she remembers what she reads. I wish we could find out. She acts like a person who has had an injury to some part of the head which has not affected the rest. But then, she never received any injury, to my knowledge."

"Not even when she fell at Weissenstein?"

"Not the least. I made a careful examination."

"I do not see that we are likely to arrive at a conclusion by any amount of guessing," I remarked. "Nothing but time and experiments will show what is the matter with her."

"I have not the time, and I cannot invent the experiments," replied the professor, impatiently. "I have a great mind to advise Carvel to put her into an asylum, and have done with all this sort of thing."

"He will never consent to do that," I answered. "He evidently believes that she is recovering. I could see it in his face this evening. What do the nurses think of it?"

"Mrs. North never says anything very encouraging, excepting that she has taken care of many insane women before, and remembers no case like this.

She is a famous nurse, too. Those people, from their constant daily experience, sometimes understand things that we specialists do not. But on the other hand, she is so taciturn and cautious that she can hardly be induced to speak at all. The other woman is younger and more enthusiastic, but she has not half so much sense."

I was silent. I was thinking that, according to all accounts, I had been more successful than any one hitherto, and that a possible clue to Madame Patoff's condition might be obtained by encouraging her to speak in her adopted language. Perhaps something of the sort crossed the professor's mind.

"Should you like to see her again?" he inquired. "It will be interesting to know whether this return of memory is wholly transitory. She recognized her son to-day, and I think she had some recognition of you.

You might both see her again to-morrow, and discover if the same symptoms present themselves."

"I should be glad to go again," I replied. "But if I can be of any service, it seems to me that I ought to be informed of the circ.u.mstances which led to her insanity. I might have a better chance of rousing her attention."

"Carvel will never consent to that," said the professor, shortly, and he looked away from me as I spoke.

I was about to ask whether Cutter himself was acquainted with the whole story, when Fang, the dog, who had taken no notice whatever of our presence in the hall, suddenly sprang to his feet and trotted across the floor, wagging his tail. He had recognized the tread of his mistress, and a moment later Hermione entered and came towards us. Hermione did not like the professor very much, and the professor knew it; for he was a man of quick and intuitive perceptions, who had a marvelous understanding of the sympathies and antipathies of those with whom he was thrown. He sniffed the air rather discontentedly as the young girl approached, and he looked at his watch.

"Fang has good ears, Miss Carvel," said he. "He knew your step before you came in."

"Yes," answered Hermione, seating herself in one of the deep chairs by the fireside, and caressing the dog's head as he laid his long muzzle upon her knee. "Poor Fang, you know your friends, don't you? Mr. Griggs, this new collar is always unfastening itself. I believe you have bewitched it! See, here it is falling off again."

I bent down to examine the lock. The professor was not interested in the dog nor his collar, and, muttering something about speaking to Carvel before he went to bed, he left us.

"I could not stay in there," said Hermione. "Aunt Chrysophrasia is talking to cousin Paul in her usual way, and Macaulay has got into a corner with mamma, so that I was left alone. Where have you been all this time?"

"I have heard what you could not tell me," I answered. "I have been to see Madame Patoff with the professor."