The silly world shrieks madly after Fact,Thinking, forsooth, to find therein the Truth;But we, my love, will leave our brains unracked,And glean our learning from these dreams of youth:Should any charge us with a childish actAnd bid us track out knowledge like a sleuth,We'll lightly laugh to scorn the wraiths of History,And, hand in hand, seek certitude in Mystery.—When the Halcyon Broods.
The house of the occultist was one of a long row, all alike, which reminds the observer of an exercise in perspective, as one glances down the stretch of balustraded piazzas. Amidon walked straight across the street from the hotel, and counted the flights of stairs up to the fourth floor. There was no elevator. The denizens of the place gave him a vague impression of being engaged in the fine arts. A glimpse of an interior hung with Navajo blankets, Pueblo pottery, Dakota beadwork, and barbaric arms; the sound of a soprano practising Marchesi exercises; an easel seen through an open door and flanked by a Grand Rapids folding-bed with a plaster bust atop; and a pervasive scent of cigarettes, accounted for, and may or may not have justified, the impression. On the fourth floor the scent shaded off toward sandalwood, the sounds toward silence, Bohemia toward Benares. He walked in twilight, on inch-deep nap, to a door on which glowed in soft, purple, self-emitted radiance, the words:
MADAME Le CLAIREENTER
MADAME Le CLAIREENTER
MADAME Le CLAIREENTER
The invitation was plain, and he opened the door. As he did so, the deep, mellow note of a gong filled the place with a gentle alarum. It was sound with noise eliminated, and matched, to the ear, the velvet of the carpet.
The room into which he looked was dark, save for light reflected from a marble ball set in a high recess in the ceiling. None of the lamps, whose rays illuminated the ball, could be seen, and the white globe itself was hung so high in the recess that none of its direct rays reached the corners of the apartment. A Persian rug lay in the center, and took the fullest light. There were no sharp edges of shadow, but instead there was a softly graduated penumbra, deepening into murk. Straight across was a doorway with a portière, beyond was another, and still farther, a third, all made visible in silhouette by the light in a fourth room, seen as at the end of a tunnel.
Across this gossamer-barred arch of light, a black figure was projected, and swelled as it neared in silent approach. It came through the last portière, on into the circle of light, and stood, a turbaned negro, bowing low toward the visitor.
"Madame le Claire," said Amidon feebly, "may I speak with her?"
There was no reply, unless a respectful scrutiny might be taken for one. Then the dumb Sudanese, carrying with him the atmosphere of a Bedouin tent, disappeared, lingered, reappeared, and beckoned Amidon to follow. As they passed the first portière, that mellow and gentle gong-note welled softly again from some remote distance. At the second archway, it sounded nearer, if not louder. At the third, as Amidon stepped into the lighted room, it filled the air with a golden vibrancy. It was as if invisible ministers had gone before to announce him.
Amidon took one long look at the scene in the fourth room, and a great wave of unbelief rolled across his mind. Through this long day of shocks and surprises, he had reached that stage of amazedness where the evidential value of sensory impressions is destroyed. He covered his eyes with his hands, expecting that the phantasms before him might pass with vision, and that with vision's return might come the dear, familiar commonplaces of his commonplace life.
The room seemed to have no windows, and the roar of the New York street outside was gone, or faint as the hum of a hive. The walls were hung with fabrics of wool or silk, in dull greens and reds, and the floor was spread with rugs. With mouth redly ravening at him, and eyes emitting opalescent gleams, lay a great tiger-skin rug, upon which, on a kind of dais, sat a woman—a woman whose eyes sought his in a steady regard which flashed a thrill through his whole body as he gazed. For she seemed to emanate from the tiger-skin, as a butterfly from the chrysalis.
She seemed to emanate from the tiger-skin, as a butterfly from the chrysalis.[Illustration: She seemed to emanate from the tiger-skin,as a butterfly from the chrysalis.]
She seemed to emanate from the tiger-skin, as a butterfly from the chrysalis.[Illustration: She seemed to emanate from the tiger-skin,as a butterfly from the chrysalis.]
Her dress was of some combination of black and yellow which carried upward the tones of the great rug. Her bare arms—long, and tapering to lithe wrists and hands—were clasped by dull-gold bracelets of twisted serpents. Over shapely shoulders, the flesh of which looked white and young, there was thrown a wrap like feathery snow, from under which drooped down over the girlish bosom a necklace that seemed of pearl. The face was fair, its pallor tinged with red at lips, and rose on cheeks. The eyes, luminous and steady, shone out through heavy dark lashes, from under brows of black, and seemed, at that first glance, of oriental darkness. A great mass of dark-brown hair encircled the rather small face, and even in his first look, he noted at the temples twin strands of golden-blond which, carried out like rays in the fluffy halo about her brow, reappeared in all the twistings and turnings of the involved pile which crowned the graceful head. The yellow-and-black of the tiger appeared thus, from head to foot. It was afterward that he found out something of the secret of the peculiar fascination in the great dark eyes. One of them was gray, with that greenish tinge which has been regarded as the token of genius. The other was of a mottled golden-brown, with lights like those in the tiger's eye. In both, in any but strong light, the velvet-black pupils spread out, and pushed the iris back to a thin margin; and thus they varied, from gray or brown, to that liquid night, which Amidon now saw in them, as he stepped within the doorway, and looked so long on her, as she sat like a model for the Queen of the Jungle, that under other circumstances the gaze would have seemed rude. Some sense of this, breaking through his bewilderment, made him bow.
"Madame le Claire?" said he.
"The same," said she. "How can I serve you, sir?"
The voice, a soft contralto, was the complement of the steady regard of the eyes. As she spoke, she rose and stepped toward him, down from the little dais to the rug. She rose, not with the effort which marks the act in most, but lightly, as a flower rises from the touch of a breeze. She was tall and lithe, and all the curves of her figure were long and low—once more suggesting the soft strength of the tigress. But when speech parted the lips, the smile which overspread her face won him.
"How can I serve you, my friend?" she repeated.
"I am in great trouble," said he.
"Yes," she purred.
"I saw your sign," he went on. "And I want you to tell me where I have been since June, 1896—and who is Eugene Brassfield? Did I kill him—or only rob him? And who is Elizabeth?"
She had stepped close to him now, as if to catch the scent of some disturbing influence which might account for such incoherence; but Amidon's breath was innocent of taint.
"Yes!" said she, "I think we shall be able to tell you all. But, are you well?"
"I have had no breakfast," said he. "When I found that I had lost five years—I forgot. And—once—I fainted. I'm not quite—well, I'm afraid!"
Madame le Claire stepped to the wall and pushed a button. The turbaned Sudanese reappeared at once.
"Aaron," said she, "tell Professor Blatherwick that Mr.—Mr.——"
"Amidon," said Florian hastily—"Amidon is my name."
"—Amidon will dine with us," Madame le Clair continued smoothly. "He has some very interesting things for us to look into. And have dinner served at once."
Aaron! and dinner! and Blatherwick! The delicious vulgarity of the names was sweet music. For be it remembered that Florian was a banker, and a man of position; and sandalwood, Sudanese, Bedouins and illusions were ill for the green wound of his mystery—which, in all conscience, was bad enough in and of itself! Some confidence in the realities of things returned to him, but he followed Madame le Claire like a faithful hound.
Now, Red-Neck Johnson's right hand never knew his left hand's game;And most diverse were the meanings of the gestures of the same.For, benedictions to send forth, his left hand seemed to strive,While his right hand rested lightly on his ready forty-five."Mr. Chairman and Committee," Mr. Johnson said, said he,"It is true, I'm tangled up some with this person's property;It is true that growin' out therefrom and therewith to arrive,Was some most egregious shootin' with this harmless forty-five:But list to my defense, and weep for my disease," said he;"I am double," half-sobbed Red-Neck, "in my personality!"—The Affliction of Red-Neck Johnson.
Madame le Claire led Mr. Amidon to the next room, turned him over to Aaron (now wonderfully healed of his dumbness) with a gesture of dismissal; and he was ushered by the negro into a most modern-looking chamber, in which was a brass bedstead with a snowy counterpane.
"Dinner will be suhved in ten minutes, suh," said Aaron.
They were waiting for him in the little dining-room, when he was wafted through the door by Aaron's obsequious bow. The tigrine Le Claire advanced from a bay-window, bringing a slender man with stooped shoulders.
"Papa," she said, "this is Mr. Amidon, whom I have induced to dine with us; Mr. Amidon, Professor Blatherwick."
Professor Blatherwick was bent, and much bleached, faded and wrinkled. His eyes seemed both enormous in size and sunk almost to his occiput, by reason of being seen through the thickest of glasses. His lank, grayish hair, of no particular color, but resembling autumnal roadside grasses, hung thinly from a high and asymmetrical head, and straggled dejectedly down into a wisp of beard on chin and lip—a beard which any absent-minded man might well be supposed to have failed to observe, and therefore to have neglected to shave. When Madame le Claire stopped in leading him forward, he halted, and feeling blindly forward into the air as if for Amidon's hand, though quite ten feet from him, he murmured:
"I am bleaced to meet you, sir."
"Evidently German," thought Amidon.
"I understandt," said the professor, opening the conversation, as Madame le Claire poured the tea, "that you haf hadt some interesding experiences in te realm of te supliminal."
Amidon's tension of mind, which had left him under the compulsion of the woman's mastery of him, returned at the professor's remark.
"I have been dead," said he, "since the twenty-seventh of June, 1896!"
Madame le Claire stared at him in unconcealed amazement. The professor calmly dipped toast in his tea.
"So!" said he. "Fife years. Goot! Dis case vill estaplish some important brinciples. Vill you be so kindt as to dell us te saircumstances?"
"Oh, papa!" broke in the lady. "You must wait until after dinner. I saw Mr. Amidon was weak and disturbed, and, I thought—hungry. So I asked him to stay."
"I have eaten nothing but this," said Mr. Amidon, "since June twenty-seventh, 1896——"
"So," said the professor calmly. "Dis vill brofe an important case."
"I saw the sign," said Amidon, "'All Mysteries Solved,' and I came here——"
"De sign," said the professor, "iss our goncession to te spirit of gommercialism, and te gompetitife system. It vas Clara's itea. But some mysteries ve do not attempt. In te realm of te supliminal, howefer, ve go up against almost any broposition. I am Cheneral Superintendent of Supliminal Enchineering; Clara is te executant. I make blance, and Clara does as she bleaces aboudt following dem. You vill, at your gonfenience, dell us all you can of your case. I vill analyze, glassify, and tiagnose; she vill unrafel."
It was late in the evening when the professor was through with his diagnosis. He made copious notes of Amidon's story. Several times his daughter called him away from some book in which he had lost himself while on an excursion in search of parallel cases. At last he paused, his face expressing the triumph of a naturalist at the discovery of a new beetle.
"You are not in te least insane!" said he, with the air of telling Florian something hard to believe; "ant you haf none of te stigmata of techeneration. I vould say that you are not a griminal—not much of a griminal anyhow, ant bropaply not at all!"
"Thank you! Oh, thank you!" fervently exclaimed Amidon.
"It iss a case," went on the professor, "of dual pairsonality. For fife years you haf bropaply been absent from Hazelhurst. You haf been someveres!"
"Where, where?" cried Amidon.
"Do not fear," said Madame le Claire, laying her hand on his arm. "If it is a case of dual personality, we shall soon find out all about it. You have mysteriously disappeared. Many men do. There was Lieutenant Rogers, of the navy; and Ansel Burns, of Ohio, who woke up in Kentucky in his own store, under the name of Brooks—Brooks' store, you know."
"And Ellis, of Bergen," said the professor, "who vas lost for a year, ant tiscofered himself in te pairson of a cook in a lumber-gamp in Minnesota, unter te name of Chamison. Oh, dere are many such! Te supchectife mind, te operations of vich are normally below te threshold of gonsciousness, suddenly dakes gontrol. Pouf! you are anodder man! You haf been Smidt; you are now Chones. As Chones you remember notting of Smidt. You go on, guided by instinct, ant te preacquired semi-intellichence of auto-hypnotismus——"
"Oh, papa!" said the tiger-lady, "those are awful words—for a sick man!"
"Vell," resumed Blatherwick, dropping into what he regarded as the vernacular, "you go on as Chones, all right all right. Some day, someveres—in dis case in a sleeping-car—you vake as Smidt again. You now do not remember Chones or te Chones life. You are all vorked up—vat you call it—flabbergasted. You come to Madame le Claire. Vat does she do? She calls te supchectife mind up abofe te threshold of gonsciousness, ant you are restored to te Chones blane of mentality. Hypnotismus, hypnotismus: that is vat does it!"
"And shall I stay—Jones?"
"No, no!" said Madame le Claire. "I will restore you. But while you are—Jones—I shall find out all you want to know about the—Jones—life, and I will tell you when you become yourself again. You will learn all about Bellevale, and Brassfield, and——"
"And Elizabeth?" asked Amidon.
Madame le Claire paused.
"Yes," said she, with much less cordiality, "I suppose so, if you want to know—about Elizabeth."
My lady's eyesEnsphere the skies,Abound in lovely mysteries:Behind their barsAre pent the stars,Warm Venus' glow, the shafts of Mars.
Once, murky nightShut in my sight:One glance revealed the source of light!Now, to be wiseOr gay, I rise,By gazing in my lady's eyes!—Song from The Oculist.
The process of bringing the "Jones plane of mentality" uppermost in Mr. Amidon would not have been regarded by the masculine reader of the unregenerate sort (though to such far be it from me to appeal!) as an operation at all painful. But Mr. Amidon, I must declare, was not of the unregenerate sort.
"Now," said Madame le Claire, "sit down in the arm-chair, and in a few minutes you will feel a sensation of drowsiness. Soon you will sleep. Think with all your power that you are to sleep."
She was sitting in a very high chair, he in a low one, so that her eyes were above his. The professor was blent with the shadows of some corner, in silent self-effacement, with a note-book in his hand.
Amidon tried to think with all his power that he was to sleep; but the lights and shadows and depths of the woman's eyes drew all thoughts to them. Uncle Toby, looking for the mote in the eye of the Widow Wadman, must have felt as did our wandering Florian. Never before had he noted for more than a fleeting glance the light that lies in woman's eyes. Now those limpid orbs met his in a regard, kindly, steady, eloquent of unutterable things. He noted the dark, arched, ebon sweep of the eyebrow, the long dark lashes curved daintily upward, the shining whiteness in the corners, and the wondrous irises. The one which was gray was dark like a moonlit sky; the other, like the same sky necked with clouds, and filled with the golden smoke of some far-off conflagration; and at the inner margin of both, the black of the dilated pupils seemed to spread out into the iris in rays of feathery blackness. They seemed to him like twin worlds—great, capacious, mysterious, alluring, absorbing. Behind the feathery curtains of those irises lay all the lovely things of which he had ever thought or dreamed—the things which sculptors and poets and painters see, and seek to express. And without changing his gaze, he saw below the eyes the downy cheek, and the red lips so sweetly curved. A new thrill ran through the man, and a new light came into his eyes. Madame le Claire blushed.
A new thrill ran through the man and a new light came into his eyes[Illustration: A new thrill ran through the manand a new light came into his eyes]
A new thrill ran through the man and a new light came into his eyes[Illustration: A new thrill ran through the manand a new light came into his eyes]
"Are you thinking of going to sleep?"
"I beg your pardon," said he; "I was thinking—I am afraid I was not!"
"Try again," said she; "and please control your thoughts. Think that you—are—going—to sleep. To sleep——Sleep! Sleep!—— Slee—ee—eep!"
Now Amidon's eyes sought hers again, and held there; and the twin worlds, sphered in some slowly-turning orbit, seemed swinging in their native space. Now the cheeks and hair and mouth came out in their places, returning to distinctness like features of a face on a screen. Now the eyes became twin stars again, casting on him once more the effulgence of their binary glow.
And now eyes and face and hair, and Madame le Claire—all passed away; and Florian Amidon became as naught, and the tigrine lady and the faded professor played with the thing which had been he, as upon a machine. The pillar of Hazelhurst society, the banker now five years lost, the bewildered wretch of the sleeping-car, was now, by his own act, given over as passively as some inert instrument, body and soul, to the guidance and manipulation of this shady occultist, not four hours known to him—while outside droned the muffled roar of the human cyclone which sweeps and whirls and eddies through Manhattan. So stripped of stability was the pillar, that he was now a mere feather of humanity, self-abandoned to the clasp of the storm of the modern Babylon. Madame le Claire questioned, Amidon answered (or Something answered for him), and Professor Blatherwick wrote in his book—wrote the data, of "te Chones blane of mentality."
"Dis iss enough," said the professor, "for vunce. Pring him to!"
Madame le Claire leaned back, gave her subject a long look, and then, walking to him, took his head tenderly in her hands. With the left, she held his forehead; the fingers of the right crept insinuatingly among the curls resting on his neck, swept thence over to his brow, and down across his eyelids, closing them; and Amidon sat, senseless as a statue, and almost as still.
"Right!" said Madame le Claire sharply. "Wake!"
Amidon opened his eyes wearily.
"When are you going to begin?" said he.
"Ve are t'rough," said the professor. "Ve know it all."
"And Brassfield? Did I——?"
"You have done him notting," said the professor. "You are all recht. You need not fear——"
"And the lady—Elizabeth?" suggested Amidon, as passing to the thing of next importance.
"It is near morning," said Madame le Claire, "and you are prostrated. We are all very tired. Aaron must take you to your hotel. You must sleep. Never fear, no harm is coming to you. When you wake, come to me, and I will tell you all about it—'All Mysteries Solved,' you know. Good night. You will sleep late in the morning."
The need of lucre never looms so largeAs when 'tis gotten in some devious way:It mitigates the blackness of the chargeThat every nether level yielded pay.
The man who dares e'en to the prison's margeShould bring back what he went for—or should stay!The need of lucre never looms so largeAs when 'tis gotten in some devious way.
Men can o'erlook the stain upon the targe,If from its boss the jewel shoots its ray;Or blood upon the pirate's sable bargeCovered by silks' and satins' bright array—The need of lucre never looms so largeAs when 'tis gotten in some devious way.—Rondels of the Curb.
Morning passed to noon, and the day aged into afternoon, before Amidon rose from the deep sleep which (according to Le Claire's prediction) followed his evening with her and the professor. With that odd sense of bewilderment which the early riser feels at this violation of habit, he went into the café for his belated breakfast. Impatient to finish the meal so that he might haste to the promised interview, he studied the menu, and with his eye scouted the room for a waiter—failing to bestow even the slightest glance on a man seated opposite. This fact, however, did not prevent the stranger from scrutinizing Amidon's face, his dress, and even his hands, as if each minutest detail were vitally important. He even dropped his napkin so as to make an excuse for looking under the table, and thus getting a good view of Florian's boots. Finally he spoke, as if continuing a broken-off conversation.
"As I said a while ago," he remarked, "Browning falls short of being a poet, just as a marble-cutter falls short of being a sculptor. You were quotingLove Among the Ruins, as the train stopped at Elm Springs Junction; or was itEvelyn——"
Amidon's eyes, during this apparently aimless disquisition, had been drawn from his meal to the speaker. He saw an elderly gentleman, clothed in the black frock-coat and black tie of the rural lawyer of the old school. His eyes shot keen and kindly glances from the deep ambush of great white brows, and his mouth was hidden under a snowy mustache. His features made up for a somewhat marked poverty of shape by a luxuriance of ruddy color, the culminating point of which was to be found in the broad and fleshy nose. His voice, soft and gentle when he began, swelled out, as he spoke, into something of the orator's orotund. When Amidon looked at him, the speaker returned the gaze in full measure, and leaning across the table, pointed his finger at his auditor, and slowly uttered the words, "—as—the train—stopped—at—Elm Springs Junction!"
"Why, Judge Blodgett!" exclaimed Amidon, "can this be you?"
"Can it be I?" exclaimed the judge. "Can it be me! No difficulty about that. Never mind the handshaking just yet—after a while, maybe. When it comes to the can-it-be part, how about you? How about the past five years, and Jennie Baggs keeping a place for you every meal for all this time, up to the present hour? I tell you, Florian, letting me down in that case of Amidon versus Cattermole, without a scrap of evidence, and getting me licked by a young practitioner who studied in my office, was bad—was damnable; but an only sister, Florian! and not one word in five years!"
"She's well, then, Jennie is?"
"She's as well, Florian, as a woman with the sorrow you've brought to her, and the mother of two infants, can be. But why do you ask?—why do you ask?—why is it necessary to go through the work of surplusage of asking?"
"Children, eh?" said Florian. "Good for Jennie! And how's Baggs?"
"Oh, Baggs, yes—why, Baggs has come through it all with his health about unimpaired, Baggs has! But no Baggs court of inquiry is going to switch me off the examination I'm now conducting; and I tell you, Mr. Amidon, you can't dodge me. What double life took you away from home, and property, and everything?"
"Judge Blodgett," said Mr. Amidon, in that low voice which, with the English language as the medium of communication, is known as the danger-signal the world over, "the term 'double life' has a meaning which is insulting. Don't use it again."
"Well, well, Florian," said the judge, evidently pleased, "sustaining the motion to strike that out, the question remains. You aren't obliged to answer, you know; but you know, too, what not answering it means."
"Judge," said Amidon, after a long pause, "to say that I don't know where I have been, or what I have been doing, since June twenty-seventh, 1896, until yesterday morning when I came to my senses in a moving sleeping-car, won't satisfy you; but it's the truth."
The judge looked off toward the ceiling in the manner of a jurist considering some complex argument, but was silent.
"Now I have found a way," said Amidon, "of having all this explained. Come with me, and let's find out. There may be complications; I may need your help. You are the one man in all the world that I was just wishing for."
"Complications, eh?" said the judge. "Well, well! Let us see!"
And now he dropped into the old manner so well known to his companion as his office style. Piece by piece, he drew from Amidon his story. He dropped back to previous parts of the narrative, and elicited repetitions. He slurred over crucial points as if he did not see their bearing, and then artfully assumed minute variations of the tale, but was always corrected.
"The prosecution is obliged to rest its case," said he, at last. "You're not crazy, or all my studies in diseases of the mind have done me no good. Your story hangs together as no fiction could. To believe you, brands us both as lunatics. Come on and let's see what your mesmerist frauds have to say. As a specialist in facts, I'm a drowning man catching at a straw. Come on: mesmerism, or astrology, or Moqui snake-dance, it's all one to me!"
Up the stairs again, this time with Judge Blodgett, warily snuffing the air, and shy of both Bohemia and Benares. Into the presence of Madame le Claire, now gowned appropriately for the morning, and looking—extraordinary, it is true, with her party-colored hair and luminous eyes—but not so jungly as when she greeted the despairing sight of Amidon the night before.
"Madame, and sir," said the judge, "as Mr. Amidon's friend and legal adviser, I am here to protect his interests."
"So! Goot!" said the professor. "Bud te matter under gonsideration is psychical, nod beguniary. Howefer, if you are interested in te realm of te supliminal, if you care for mental science——"
"Sir," said the judge, "I may almost claim to be a specialist (so far as a country practitioner is permitted to specialize) in senile and paretic dementia, since I had the honor to represent the proponents in the will case of Snoke versus Snoke. But it's only fair to say that I regard hypnotism as humbug—only fair."
"Goot, goot!" said the professor delightedly. "To temonstrate to an honest ant indellichent skeptic, is te rarest of brifileches. Ve vill now broceed to temonstrate. Here is our friendt Herr Amidon avokened in a car after fife years of lostness; he has anodder man's dotes, anodder man's dicket, letters—unt all. He gomes to Madame le Claire ant Blatherwick. He is hypnotized out of te Amidon blane of being, ant into anodder. He is mate to gife himself avay. Now ve vill broceed to dell aboudt his life since he vas lost—is it a dest, no?"
"Huh!" snorted the judge.
"Go on," cried Amidon; "tell me the story!"
"Vell," said the professor, "for four veeks after you left Elm Springs Chunction, you vandered—not, Clara?"
"Wandered," said Clara, "and to so many places that I can't remember them. Then you found oil, or traces of it—I can't get that very plainly—on a farm at Bunn's Ferry, Pennsylvania; and bought an option on the farm. Then you opened an office in Bellevale, and have been there in the oil business ever since.
"How's he been doin' financially?" interjected the judge.
"He has made a fortune," said Clara. "I believe him to be one of the principal men of the town, socially and in a business way. He didn't tell me this, but we think the circumstances seem to indicate it."
"Te saircumstances," said the professor, filling a pause, "show it."
"How is it," said the judge, "that no one has ever heard of his Bellevale career out in Hazelhurst, if he's so prominent? We read, out there, and once in a while one of us goes outside the corporation."
"His name," said Madame le Claire, "in Bellevale is not Florian Amidon."
"What is it?" cried Amidon. "Tell it to me!"
Madame le Claire restrained him with a calm glance.
"It is Eugene Brassfield," said she.
"It is your own dotes," cried the professor gleefully, "your own dicket, your own gorrespondence!"
Amidon was feeling in his breast-pocket for something. He withdrew his hand, holding in it a letter, and looked from it to Madame le Claire questioningly.
"Oh, yes!" said she, not quite in her usual manner, "it's yours. It's from Miss Elizabeth Waldron, of Bellevale, your affianced wife."
"Aha!" said the judge. "Now will you get mad when I speak of a double life? Engaged, hey?"
"I never saw the—the lady in my life," was the reply; "so how can I be—can I be—engaged to her?"
"In te Amidon blane of gonsciousness," said the professor, "you are stranchers. In te Brassfield pairsonality, you are:—Gott im Himmel, you are stuck on her, stuck on her—not, Clara? Vas he not gracey? Only Clara cut it short in te temonstration; but as a luffer, in te Brassfield blane, you are vot you call hot stuff."
"You had better read the gentlemen your notes," said Madame le Claire coldly. "And please excuse me. I hope to see you both again." And with a sinuous bow, she swept from the room.
Blodgett, keenly analytical, lost no word of the professor's notes. Florian sat with the letter from Miss Waldron in his hand, lost in thought. Sometimes his face burned with blushes, sometimes it paled with anxiety. His eyes ran over the letter full of sweet ardors; and when he thought of replying to them—or leaving them unanswered—his brow went moist and his heart sick. What should he do? What could he do?
When they returned to the hotel, the judge was in a fever of excitement.
"I tell you, Florian," said he, "I believe the professor is right about this. It seems that there are precedents, you know—cases on all-fours with yours. When I went to the telephone, up there, I called up Stacy and Stacy's and asked 'em to get me Dun's and Bradstreet's report on your Bellevale business. It ought to be up here pretty soon. There may be something down there worth looking after, and needing attention."
"Perhaps," groaned Amidon. "Do you know that I'm engaged——"
"One of the things I referred to," said the judge.
"—to a lady, down there, whom I shouldn't know if I were to meet her out in the hall? If I go back to Hazelhurst, she is put under a cloud as a deserted woman—to say nothing of her feelings. And if I go back to Bellevale—my God, Judge, how can I go back, and take my place in a society where every one knows me, and I know nobody; and be a lover to a girl who may be—anything, you know; but who has the highest sort of claims on me, and a nature, I'm sure, capable of the keenest suffering or pleasure—how can I?"
"Message, sir, from Stacy and Stacy," said a messenger boy at the door.
Judge Blodgett tore open the envelope, and read the telegraphic reports.
"M—m—m——Y—e—es," said he. "It'll take diplomacy, Florian, diplomacy. But, if these reports are to be trusted, and I guess they are, you've got about ten times as much at Bellevale as you have at Hazelhurst. And, as you say, the lady has claims. As an honorable man—an engaged man, who has received the plighted troth of a pure young heart—and a good financier, this Bellevale life demands resumption at your hands. Prepare, fellow citizen, to meet the difficulties of the situation."
Yea, all her words are sweet and fair,And so, mayhap, is she;But words are naught but molded air,And air and molds are free.Belike, the youth in charmèd hallSome fardels sore might miss,Scanning his Beauty's household all,Or ere he gave the kiss!—The Knyghte's Discourse to his Page.
Now it happened that at Bellevale, the young woman whom we—with the sweet familiarity of art—have had the joy to know as Elizabeth, moved about in unconsciousness, mostly blissful, of the annihilation of Eugene Brassfield. The mails might take to Mrs. Baggs at Hazelhurst vague letters from Judge Blodgett hinting at clues and traces of Florian, preparatory to the restoration of the lost brother; but Brassfield, never anything but a wraith from the mysterious caves of the subconsciousness, was non-existent for evermore, except through the magic of Le Claire. But Elizabeth Waldron, just home from college, full of the wise unwisdom of Smith and twenty-three, and palpitating with the shock which had broken the cables by which she had so long, long ago moored herself in the safe and deep waters of the harbor of a literary and intellectual celibacy, still dreamed of the bubble personality which had vanished, although at times waves of anxious unrest swept across her bosom.
For one thing, that epistle of hers, made for his reading on the train—how could she have written it! Elizabeth's cheeks burned when she remembered it. Then she thought of the weeks of chaste dalliance between her acceptance of him and his departure, and of theélanwith which he had entered that safe harbor of hers, and swept her from those moorings; and the letter seemed slight return for the rites of adoration he had performed before her.
But (and now the cheeks burned once more) why, why had he not written to her as soon as he reached New York? Was he one with whom it was out of sight, out of mind? Or was he one of those business men who can not place anything more delicate than price-quotations on paper? Or—and here the cheeks paled—was he suddenly ill? She wished, after all, that she had not written it!
And one day, when a special-delivery letter came and surprised her, she ran out in the winter sun to the summer-house where she had sat so much with him, and read it in quiet. Whereupon the unrest increased, because the letter seemed as unlike Eugene as if he had copied it from someComplete Letter Writer.
Florian had agonized over this letter—had even tried the experiment of writing one while in the "Chones blane" under the influence of Madame le Claire; but it was too incoherent for any use—and he had done the best he could. Professor Blatherwick and Judge Blodgett were working out a code of behavior for Mr. Amidon when he should return to Bellevale. They kept him in the Brassfield personality for hours every day; but such a matter as this letter to Elizabeth, he could not intrust to them. Every day, though, he looked into the varicolored eyes of Clara and willed to sleep; and every day the operation grew less and less painful to him.
Vast and complex was the system of notes built up by the professor and the judge. They told him all about his various properties and holdings of stock; they listed the clubs and social organizations to which he belonged, and the offices he held in each. They made a directory of names mentioned by him in his abnormal state, and compiled facts about each person. It must have been very much like the copious information that we think we have about historical characters—elaborate, and the best thing possible in the absence of the real facts; but only the reflection of these people in the mind of some one else, after all. Finally the judge brought the whole to his friend, neatly typewritten, paragraphs numbered, facts tabulated, and all provided with a splendid index and system of elaborate cross-references.
Vast and complete was the system of notes built up by the professor and the judge[Illustration: Vast and complete was the system of notesbuilt up by the professor and the judge]
Vast and complete was the system of notes built up by the professor and the judge[Illustration: Vast and complete was the system of notesbuilt up by the professor and the judge]
"You see, my boy," said Judge Blodgett, "all any one really needs to know of his surroundings is actually very little. Otherwise, most people never could get along at all. Neander couldn't find his way to market—the greatest philosopher of his time. Now these notes tell you more—actually more—of your Bellevale life, than some folks ever find out about themselves—with a little filling in, on the spot, you know, why, they'll do first rate. For instance, under 'S' we have a man named Stevens, 'Old Stevens' you playfully call him. I figure him out to be an elderly man in some position of authority—he seems to sort of govern things, even you. The professor thinks he's your banker, but his intellectual domination leads me to the conclusion that he's your lawyer. There is a Miss Strong, evidently an important person. I venture the assertion that she's a literary woman, as you speak about asking her to 'look at her notes.' I shouldn't wonder if she's a rival of Miss Waldron's, eh, Professor?"
"Well," said Amidon impatiently, "who else?"
"Oh, lots of 'em," answered the judge. "Here's 'A' for instance, and under it a man named Alvord—a close friend of yours——"
"The one this telegram is from," said Amidon. "And I suppose this one in cipher is from Stevens, the lawyer or banker. It must be important."
"I shouldn't wonder," said Judge Blodgett; "and this Mr. Alvord I take to be a minister, for you connect him with some topic relating to 'Christian Martyrs' and 'rituals.' He must be a close friend, for you sometimes call him 'Jim,' in strict privacy, I presume. Oh, there's a regular directory of 'em here. I've even discovered that you have a little friend, a child of say seven or eight years—tell by the tone, you know—that you call 'Daisy' and 'Daise' and sometimes 'Strawberry.' These fondnesses for children and clergymen prove to me, Florian, that an Amidon is good goods on any confounded plane of consciousness you can throw 'em into—conservative, respectable, and all that, you know."
Amidon looked suspiciously at the notes, unappeased by this flattery. What justification there was for suspicion we shall be better able to say when we meet these Bellevale acquaintances of his.
"Is this the guide by which I am to regulate my conduct in Bellevale?" asked he, after looking it over.
"Well," said the judge, "it may not be quite like remembering all about things; but anyhow it will help some, won't it?"
"I suppose I'm to carry it with me, and when an acquaintance accosts me on the street, I'm to look him up in the index and find out who he is, before I decide whether to shake hands with him or cut him, am I?"
"Not exactly that way," said the judge; "that wouldn't be practicable, you know; but it's ten to one you'll find his name there. I tell you, that compilation——"
"Te tifision into gategories," broke in the professor, "according to te brinciples of lotchik was te chutche's itea. A vonderfully inchenious blan. It vill enaple you——"
"Has it any plan of reference," interrupted Amidon, "by which I shall be enabled to find out about a man when I don't know who he is?"
"N—no."
"Or, in such a case, to give me knowledge of my past relations with him, or whether I like him or hate him?"
"Of course," said the judge, "we only try to do the possible. The law requires no man to do more."
"Does this thing," said Amidon, shaking it in evident disgust, "tell where I live in Bellevale, whether in lodgings or at a hotel, or in my own house? Could I take it and find my home?"
"Damn it, Florian!" said the judge, "I'm not here to be jumped on, am I? No one can remember everything all the time. We'll get those things and put them into a supplement, you know."
"Not for me," said Florian. "I've made up my mind definitely about this. I'll not depend on it. If I go back to Bellevale, I must have at hand at all times the means of connecting things as I find them with the life of this Brassfield. I must take with me the bridge which spans the chasm between Brassfield and Amidon—I mean our friend Clara. Without her, I shall never go back. I haven't the nerve. I should soon find myself in a tangle of mistakes from which I could never extricate myself—I've thought it all out. The Cretan Labyrinth would be like going home from school, in comparison."
"Pshaw!" said the judge, looking lovingly at Blodgett'sNotes on the Compiled Statements of Brassfield, "you could feel your way along very well—with these."
"Would you go into the trial of a case," said Florian, "no matter how simple, in which not only your own future, but the happiness of others, might be involved, without even a speaking acquaintance with any of the parties, or one of the witnesses? I tell you, Judge, we must have Madame le Claire."
The judge rolled up the notes and snapped a rubber band about the roll. He said no more until evening.
"Then," said he, as if he had only just made up his mind to concede the point, "let's see if it can be arranged at once. Come over to the Blatherwicks' with me."
"I think," said Amidon slowly, "that I'll see her alone."
"Alone, yes—yes!" said the judge, changing an interjection into an assent. "By all means; by all means. Only don't you think there may be things down there needing attention, Florian—money matters—and—and other things, you know, my boy—and that we ought to be moving in the matter? I would respectfully urge," he concluded, using his orator's chest-tones to drown Amidon's protest against his joking, "that no time be lost in deciding on our course."
The judge had noted the increasing dependence of his client on the fair hypnotist, and the growing interest that she seemed to feel in him, and therefore showed some coolness toward the proposal to take her to Bellevale. The eyes inured to the perusal of dusty commentaries and reports were still sharp enough to see the mutual tenderness exchanged in the unwavering, eye-to-eye encounters whereby Amidon was converted into Brassfield, and to note the softness of the feline strokings by which Florian's catalepsy was induced or dispelled. He rather favored dropping the Blatherwick acquaintance: but he could not answer Amidon's arguments as to their need for its continuance.
So it was that, about the time when Elizabeth Waldron sat in the summer-house at Bellevale, with tears of disappointment in her pretty eyes, holding poor Florian's best-he-could-do but ineffective letter all crumpled up in her hand, the tigrine Le Claire rested her elbows upon a window-ledge in the attitude of gazing into the street (it was all attitude, for she saw nothing), and was disturbed by Aaron, who brought in Mr. Florian Amidon's penciled card. She gave a few pokes to her hair, of course, turned once or twice about before her mirror, and went into the parlor.
"The judge and your father," said Amidon, "have got up a wonderful guide from notes of this man Brassfield's talk."
"Yes," said she with a smile; "they are wonderful."
"And perfectly useless," he continued, "so far as my steering by them in Bellevale is concerned."
"As useless," she admitted, "as can be."
"You knew that?" he inquired. "Then why did you let them go on with it?"
"That's good," said she. "I like that! I was nicely situated to mention it, wasn't I?"
"The fact is, Clara," said he, "as you can see, that I've got to have you at Bellevale. I shall not go down there without you. I can't do it. I've thought it all out——"
"So have I," said she. "I knew that you'd have to have me—for a little while; knew it all the time. I was just thinking about it as you came up."
"Then can you—will you go?"
"Can I stay, Florian?" she inquired steadily. "Can I leave you like a just-cured blind and deaf man, and my work for you only begun? I must go! We were just talking about our going to Bellevale, as you came in, papa. Mr. Amidon will need us for a while when he first gets there."
"Surely, surely," said the professor. "Te most inderesting phaces of dis case vill arise in Bellevale. I grave te brifiletche of geeping you unter my opsairfation until—until to last dog is hunk! Let us despatch Chutche Blotchett to spy out te landt. In a day or two he can tiscofer vere dis man Brassfield lifes, vere te fair Fraulein Elizabeth resides, and chenerally get on to te logal skitivation. He vill meet up with us at te train, and see that ve don't put our foots in it. Ve vill dus be safed te mortification of hafing Alderman Brassfield, chairman of te street committee, asking te boliceman te vay to his lotchings; or te fiancé of Miss Valdering bassing her on te street vit a coldt, coldt stare of unrecognition or embracing her young laty friendt py mistake. Goot! Let te chutche dake his tebarture fortwith. Clara and I vill be charmed and habby, my friendt, to aggompany you. Supliminally gonsidered, it vill be great stuff!"