CHAPTER XVIII
ONCE MORE IN NEW YORK
Dr. Crossett was finding it a difficult matter to keep from falling tosleep. The dinner had been stupid, even for a formal affair of thissort, where one scarcely expects to be entertained. He had worked hardall day at the hospital, and after making a brief speech introducingthe guest of honor of the evening, he sat with his chair pushed backfrom the disordered dinner table and resigned himself to his fate. Aman could hardly be talked to death in two hours, he thought, andafter all there was hope; perhaps the half hour of informalconversation that always followed the speech-making might be lessdeadly than usual. What a fool he was to give his time to these riotsof platitude; he swore softly to himself as he looked through the hazeof tobacco smoke at the faces of many of the foremost medical andpsychological authorities of France, and, as he always did uponoccasions of this kind, laid elaborate plans for immediately resigningfrom the society. He had in fact almost finished a mental draft of hisletter of resignation, when the sound of a hundred voices blendinginto a confused babel of conversation warned him that the formalspeech-making was over.
"Thank God for that," he exclaimed in English, turning to hisright-hand neighbor, an American psychologist named Miller, whom hehad met for the first time that evening.
"You were not especially entertained?" questioned that gentleman, witha smile. "And yet we have listened to several rather deep and weightyopinions."
"Weighty, I grant you," replied the Doctor. "Heavy possibly would havebeen a better word. Why is it that a man, who in himself is both wiseand entertaining, always becomes both a pedant and a bore when hemakes an after-dinner speech?"
"The effort to dominate too many, and too varied an assortment ofminds, no doubt, a species of self-hypnotism; but Professor Carney'sremarks on the distinction between insanity and moral depravity wereinteresting. I have just arrived from America, and it is possible thatthe ideas he advanced, although fresh to me, may be an old story toyou."
"We have worked much together, Carney and I," replied the Doctor. "Heknows the subject well enough, although we do not agree in all things.He, for instance, classes many cases as insanity, which to me areplainly a lack of moral, not of mental, strength. He denies theexistence of an absolutely unmoral person whose mind is sound andwhose power of reasoning is normal. To him such a case does notexist."
"I wonder what he would have thought of a case I had an opportunity ofobserving a few weeks ago," remarked Mr. Miller. "There he could findno trace of insanity, no lack of logic, or of reason, but an absoluteabsence of any moral sense. I think I have never seen a more perfectexample of the thing he denies. Here was a young woman, beautiful,delicate of body, refined, of good manners, and moderately educated,to whom no law of man or of society was sacred, who denied the powerof God as lightly as she defied the opinion of the world; who knewnothing of shame, of duty, or of kindness, and whose mind was as clearas yours or mine, and whose mental process was absolutely regular."
"Tell me of her," said Dr. Crossett eagerly. "I have several timesfound cases that at first seemed to be as lacking in moral sense asthis one you describe, but always on close study I have found somepromptings of the softer impulses. I, for instance, have seen a thiefwho robbed the poor-box of a church share his booty to feed a hungrychild whom he met casually upon the street. I have seen a burly brute,who a few hours before had murdered his wife, weep over the sufferingsof an injured dog. Here there was not an absolute lack of the thing weperhaps might call soul, although that examples of total and absolutedepravity exist among the sane is a favorite theory of mine. Tell meof this woman!"
"She was a woman, although she looked to be little more than a child,"began Mr. Miller. "It was at Narragansett Pier, a summer resort, notfar from New York. I had noticed her from the first, my attentionbeing attracted by the curious fact that, in spite of her gracious andhappy manner, both my grandchild and her little dog seemed to beovercome by a queer aversion from the moment when they first came nearto her."
"Ah! You believe then----"
"Only that instinct warned them that this woman was not a friend. I,myself, in spite of my age, felt a marked attraction, as all men did.The appeal of sex in this woman was overpowering, although I looked invain for the evidences of a passionate nature; physically she wasnormal, a slight valvular trouble of the heart I fancy, from what Iheard, but nothing more. She had left a good home to travel about witha rather dissipated party, all of whom were of much coarser fibre thanherself. I later had a long conversation with the young man, who hadspent in a few weeks a small fortune upon her. He loved her in hisway. She traded upon his love, but I am convinced that she neverrewarded it. I happened to come upon her one day as she lay asleep onthe sand; her face was like a mirror, reflecting the thoughts thatwere running through her mind. At first I saw a fierce sexual passionthat frightened me; then as that passed another nature seemed to claimher, and her look became so pure, so innocent, that I found myselfinstinctively raising my hat and standing bareheaded in the sun. Waveafter wave of feeling passed over her sensitive features, goodfollowing bad, purity following lust, the innocence of a childfollowing the look seen only on the face of one to whom all innocenceis a thing to laugh at. Doctor, I saw on that girl's face what onemight almost call a struggle between good impulses, inherited perhapsfrom a pure mother, nurtured no doubt in an honest home, and the evilof a nature in which, when she was conscious, there was no spark ofdecency or honor left. It was like looking on at the struggles of adivided soul, and slowly seeing the defeat of the good, the triumph ofthe evil."
"This is indeed a terrible case," exclaimed Dr. Crossett. "What wasthe end?"
"What the real end will be one can only guess," replied Mr. Miller."The end, so far as this episode of her life is concerned, began by abrutal killing of my little granddaughter's dog, quite the mostdreadful scene I ever witnessed, and ended by her leaving the hotel inthe company of a man, who for her sake forgot the daughter whom heloved with a most unusual affection and, blinded by the power of thiscreature's animal sex appeal, made himself a laughing stock to hisacquaintances and a sorrow to his friends. The father disgraced in hisold age, the dupe of this girl who was but little older than thedaughter he left ashamed and heart-broken. Two men, one a younglife-guard, the other the fellow with whom she left her home, each ofthem she left with good cause to remember her, and left with a pooreropinion of the world and a bitterness against all women that will inthe end help on the evil she created in their hearts. To my littlegrandchild she brought her first knowledge of the wickedness of theworld. To all whom she met she brought a sorrow; upon all whom sheleft she left a trace of her own unworthiness."
"This is horrible, Mr. Miller," exclaimed Dr. Crossett. "Who was thiswoman?"
"Her name," replied Mr. Miller, "was Lola Barnhelm! Doctor!" He sprangto his feet as he saw the look on Dr. Crossett's face. "Doctor!"
"All right, sir, I--I beg your pardon."
Dr. Crossett slowly poured himself a glass of brandy from the smalldecanter on the table and raised it to his lips with a hand thattrembled visibly. "I--I am not quite myself to-night, sir," hecontinued; "I am going to ask you to excuse me. Gentlemen." He rose, alittle unsteadily, and stood looking about him at the smiling facesthat turned to him. "Gentlemen," he repeated, "I find that I mustleave you. Will you pardon my lack of formality and allow me to saygood night?"
He left the room, refusing the many anxious offers of company, for hewas a rarely popular man, and there was something in the gray pallorof his face that told them that he was suffering, and jumping into acab he gave the address of his apartment. During his long drive acrossParis, for he lived at the further end of the Boulevard St. Germain,he sat motionless, struck dumb with the horror of the thing he hadheard.
"Lola! Lola! Her mother." He could see them both until the tearsblinded his eyes. "That she should come to this. Lola, to her child,the child that might have been his! Great God!" As he unlocked thedoor of his private hall his man came out
to meet him.
"A letter, Doctor, marked important."
"Very well, Louis; you need not wait."
He went slowly into his study, and was about to drop the lettercarelessly on the table as the New York post-mark caught his eye. Helooked again; the envelope was addressed in what looked like a child'sunformed handwriting. He opened it.
"'My dear doctor,'" he read, "'if you love the doctor like I think you love him, come; he needs you. He is sick, and he looks like he wanted to die. There ain't nobody else. Please come. Excuse spelling and things and come; we need you. MARIA.'"
He caught the next steamer from Liverpool.