The Professor''s Mystery

  CHAPTER XXII

  I LEARN WHAT I HAVE TO DO

  I did not sleep very much that night; but it was no longer the frustratemisery of indecision. I was done with all that, with beating myselfaimlessly against blind bars and running weary circles in the wheel,with tossing helplessly in a mesh of irresoluble circumstances. I sawnow what I had to do; and the problem was not what the trouble might be,not even what I must accomplish, but only how I should accomplish it.The Carucci story might be true wholly, or in part, or practically notat all; it did not matter. Assuming all of it, if Lady was Miriam, andReid had married her when he was not free to do so, she was not his wifeeven in law. Whether his wife was now living or dead made no difference.Lady was not bound to him in theory and certainly not in reality. Shewas free to come to me if she chose, and I had only to make her see it.

  But I did not for a moment believe that the trouble was so directly herconcern. Mrs. Tabor was insane, or was feared to be: that was beyond adoubt, and that beyond a doubt was the root and center of it all; thatwas what the family had so elaborately striven to conceal, eitherbecause of the nature of her illusion, or because of some scandal in theevents which had brought it about. That was reason enough, grantingtheir determination to keep it secret, for all that I had seen, from themidnight alarm, which had driven me out of the house, to Mrs. Tabor'sterror of the alienist; and her absurd suggestion that he himself wasinsane clenched the matter. What supported it still more was that ifthis were so, then all these honest people had from point to pointspoken the truth; Mr. Tabor had, as he said, trusted me to the edge ofcaution; Lady had told the truth in fear, and Reid under pressure;Sheila had told the truth, only inflated and colored by superstition.And as I thought over the substance of what she had told me, I wonderedwhether by some chance her tale had not been truer than I thought,nearer than even the others knew to the heart of reality. I would nottake her ghosts too literally; but Mrs. Tabor might have some illusionof her dead daughter's presence, and I remembered the voice calledMiriam that had spoken in the circle of spirit-seekers. Was there notsurely some connection here?

  Yet, however that might be, it all closed round a single need. I carednothing, after all, what the shadow might be, except as that concernedmy taking Lady away from it. It would be like her loyalty to feel thefamily trouble a bond that she must not selfishly break, and like hergirlhood to dream her mother's delusion a taint that must forbid hermarrying. But she was wrong in both, and to-morrow I should tell her soand take her away with me. Even if she were right, I should do the same:I had grown to care for the others, and I was not wholly careless ofhumanity; but in the face of this greater matter, family and race andright itself, if need were, might go to the devil. I was fighting forher and for myself, and for that wherein we two were one desire.

  I fell asleep at last thinking of that, and imagining what I should needto say and do; and the next morning I went out to Stamford in a curiousmood of deliberation; feeling, on the threshold of crisis, unnaturallycalm and sure; as if I were somehow going with the stream, a smallembodiment of predetermined force, a mouthpiece of the thing which wasto be.

  As she had done once before, Sheila opened the door for me. It was veryplain that she was glad of my coming.

  "Sure it's Mr. Crosby!" she exclaimed softly. "What's the matter, sir?You look white and tired like. 'Tis all the world seems upset lately."

  "I want to see Miss Tabor, Sheila. Will you tell her that I am here?"

  "That's the very thing I'm not to tell her, sir. She said mostparticular that she was not to see any one to-day; but--" Sheila frownedat me forbiddingly, "you sit down an' wait a minute, sir, an' I'll do mebest. I'm a servant-girl no longer--ordhers is nothing to me."

  "But, Sheila--" I began nervously.

  "But nothin', Mr. Crosby. You sit down an' wait," and she was gonebefore I could say another word. I sat in the great room, as if at theportals of judgment day, every fiber of me keenly alive, and yet my mindknowing no particular focus of thought. The future gaped before me likeeternity, something too vaguely large for definition or comprehension. Iremember that I kept whispering dryly to myself that man was master ofhis fate, and feeling infinitesimally comforted by the sophistry.

  The curtains at the door parted, and Lady stood looking into my eyes. Isaw before she spoke that she knew why I had come.

  "I was sure that it was you," she said at last. "Sheila told me that ayoung man was down-stairs, and that she could not get him to go away."

  "She told me," I said, "that you did not wish to see me. Was that true?"

  Lady sank wearily into a chair. "Sheila should not have let you in," shesaid. "I was afraid that you might come here; and you know that it waswrong of you to come. You know that as well as I do."

  She spoke monotonously, with pauses between the words, leaning backalong the deep chair. The last few days must have been hard ones forher. She was very pale, the little blue veins in her temples distinctand clearly lined. It tore me to see her so; and for a moment I wonderedif I had done well to come, and felt a wave of that uncomfortablereaction which meets one on the threshold of a test; for a moment only,then I knew that even though I tired her the more, it was a price thatwe must pay for her sake as well as mine. No good ever comes of halfunderstandings.

  "No, I don't know that," I said slowly. "You don't believe that I'maltogether selfish, or that I would come now, when I know that manythings have distressed you, to give you any further reason fordistress."

  She leaned forward, one white hand raised. "Please," she said, "I am notsure--not really sure--why you have come. But I am certain of this, thatyou have made a mistake in coming. There's nothing on earth that you cando to help us just now--there's nothing anybody can do--there's nothinganybody can do."

  "Oh, things aren't so bad as that." I knew that I was only temporizing,and raged inwardly at myself.

  Lady's eyes dropped, and one hand played nervously with a loop of thechain that hung about her neck.

  "I don't believe you can understand just how bad they are. The worst ofit is that I can't tell you--oh, it wasn't fair of you to cometo-day"--her voice broke ever so little, and her eyes brimmed withunshed tears--"I'm tired and disheartened, and I want advice andcomfort--no, don't come near me--I can't tell you anything--there'snothing I can tell to anybody in the world."

  I was standing before her. "No, I can't comfort you now," I said. "I'mhere to ask you things, and perhaps to hurt you very much. But youmustn't think I've come carelessly. I came because I had to--becausethere are things I have to understand to go on living."

  Her eyes were frightened, but she settled herself back as if to meetwhatever blow my questioning might give. "I don't think that you arevery generous to-day," she said; and her voice grew harder than I hadever heard it. "Neither shall I answer anything that I may not. But--butperhaps you are right--perhaps there are some things that you shouldknow. Please say what you have to say and have it done."

  "You told me once," I began gently, "that your name was Margaret. Wasthat true?"

  "True?" she wrinkled her brow. "Of course it was true." It was evidentlynot a question that she had expected.

  "Then who is Miriam?"

  "Oh, I told you the truth then. Do you doubt it? Why should you askthese things again?"

  I paused. Certainly she was not to hear that ugly story if it were nottrue and I could in any way prevent it.

  "It may seem very strange to you," said I, "but some day I will tell youall about it. I have to know this now: Do you mean that it is true youhave a sister, that her name is Miriam, and that she is--that she wasDoctor Reid's wife?" The question was out at last, and my heart stoppedfor the answer.

  "Why, yes," she answered, in the same disinterested tone, as if she weretelling dry facts in distant history--"Miriam married Walter when hecame back from studying abroad. She only lived about a year. They had alittle girl, you know, that lived not more than about an hour. I thinkif she had lived, Miriam would have lived too. But it was to
o much forher to bear. She died three days after her baby died."

  The unshed tears were falling now, falling quietly in the mere physicalrelief of tender sorrow. Every rigid line of tragedy and pain haddisappeared, and her trouble came upon her naturally, like sleep, arelaxation and a rest after hot-eyed days. I did not even feel anysorrow for her, so full was I of the new certainty that we were free.Very reverently I came closer to her, and like a child she turned to meand hid her face against my shoulder. So we rested for a space. I do notthink that either of us had any definite thought--only that peacewrapped us like a garment and that the tension of the past few weeks hadsomehow vanished away. At last Lady drew herself quietly from me, halfsmiling as she brushed away her tears.

  "I have been very silly," she whispered, "but it's all over now. It wasgood of you to let me cry," and she reached her hand toward me with agesture so intimately grateful that my love fairly broke its bounds, andI caught it almost fiercely in my own.

  "Lady, Lady dearest," I cried, "can't you see what it all means? Oh, mydear, you must see. I love you. That is all I know in the world, andnothing else matters or can matter."

  "No, no--you must not--" she drew back from me frightened. "You must nottell me that. You have no right--and you are spoiling it all."

  "Don't you love me?" I persisted.

  Lady raised her eyes sadly. "There can be no such thing for you and me.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 letmyself care--that I can only see you even, when you treat me as afriend, and only as a friend."

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

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

  "I know perhaps what you mean. I didn't know at the time--but I think Ido now. Do you mean that the some one else, the person who standsbetween 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 cansurely trust me; and I am trying for something that means more thanlife. Lady, you must answer me fairly. Is it not because of your motherthat 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 istemporarily unbalanced; that Doctor Immanuel Paulus has declared herinsane."

  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 myintimacy would betray this trouble you all guard as a secret--why, yousee I know that now; and surely you can not doubt in your heart that Iwould guard any secret of yours more sacredly than anything in theworld. Why has it anything to do with us?" I was speaking eagerly, withthat foolish burst of argumentative logic which a lover fondly imaginespotent, hurling breathless words against the impregnability ofconviction.

  "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--exceptthe 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 thatterribly distant and even voice. "It is true to her--and verydreadful--so that it is dangerous for her even to remember. That is whyshe shrinks from Walter; that is why I keep her wedding-ring." Shetouched the chain that hung about her neck. "And that is why--do youunderstand now?"

  I nodded wordlessly, for the world seemed coming to an end. Then, thankGod, I looked into the eyes of my love; and behind their despair I readappeal, 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 fragranceof 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 doit 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 waswrong to tell you that even now I can't tell what is right. Only--Goddoesn't let some things be unless He means them--but I can't see theway. You must find it now, for her and us too."

  What feeling I had of another presence I do not know; but half uneasilyI turned. Between the curtains of the doorway stood Mrs. Tabor, herhands raised above her head gripped the curtains as if for support, sothat she seemed rather to hang there than to stand; her eyes lookedthrough and beyond us vacantly, and the pretty old-young face wastwisted like a tragic mask. Then the curtains dropped before her, andfrom the hall came the gasp of a stifling sob. Lady was out of my armsand away as if I had not been there. Her cool voice pleaded for a momentwith the rising hysteria without. Then all sound died, and I was leftutterly alone; the silence of the great room about me, and before mymind the world of reality and the battle still to fight.