“That is not a bad description. Is there anything against him?”
“I cannot say; I only knew him in Persia, — a chance acquaintance. People said he was very eccentric.”
“Eccentric?” asked John. “How?”
“Moody, I suppose, because he would sometimes shut himself up for days, and see nobody unless the minister sent for him. He used to beat his native servants when he was in a bad humor, and was said to be a reckless sort of fellow.”
“I hope he will not indulge his eccentricities here. Heaven knows, he has reason enough for being odd, poor fellow. We must make the best of him,” continued John hurriedly, as though regretting his last remark, “and you must help us to amuse him and keep him out of mischief. Those Russians are the very devil, sometimes, as I have no doubt you know, and just at present our relations with them are not of the best; but, after all, he is my nephew and one of the family, so that we must do what we can for him, and avoid trouble. Macaulay likes him, and I dare say he likes Macaulay. They will get on together very well.”
“Yes — perhaps so — though I do not see what the two can have in common,” I answered. “Macaulay can hardly have much sympathy for Patoff’s peculiarities, however much he may like the man himself.”
“Macaulay is very young, although he has seen something of the world. He has not outgrown the age which mistakes eccentricity for genius and bad temper for boldness. We shall see, — we shall see very soon. They will both hate Cutter, with his professorial wisdom and his immense experience of things they have never seen. How do you like him yourself?”
“Without being congenial to me, he represents what I would like to be myself.”
“Would you change with him, if you could?” asked John.
“No, indeed. I, in my person, would like to be what he is in his, — that is all. People often talk of changing. No man alive would really exchange his personality for that of another man, if he had the chance. He only wishes to adorn what he most admires in himself with those things which, in his neighbor, excite the admiration of others. He meditates no change which does not give his vanity a better appearance to himself, and his reputation a dash of more brilliant color in the popular eye.”
“Perhaps you are right,” said John. “At all events, the professor has qualities that any man might envy.”
We reached the station just as the train ran in, and Macaulay Carvel and Patoff waved their hats from the carriage window. In a moment we were all shaking hands upon the platform.
“Papa, this is cousin Paul,” said Macaulay, and he turned to greet me next. He is a good-looking fellow, with rather delicate features and a quiet, conscientious sort of expression, exquisite in his dress and scrupulous in his manners, with more of his mother’s gentleness than of his father’s bold frankness in his brown eyes. His small hand grasped mine readily enough, but seemed nerveless and lacking in vitality, a contrast to Paul Patoff’s grip. The Russian was as angular as ever, and his wiry fingers seemed to discharge an electric shock as they touched mine. I realized that he was a very tall man, and that he was far from ugly. His prominent nose and high cheek-bones gave a singular eagle-like look to his face, and his cold, bright eyes added to the impression. He lacked grace of form, but he had plenty of force, and though his movements were sometimes sudden and ungainly he was not without a certain air of nobility. His brown mustache did not altogether hide the half-scornful expression of his mouth.
“How is everybody?” asked Macaulay Carvel of his father. “We shall have a most jolly Christmas, all together.”
“Well, Mr. Griggs,” said Patoff to me, “I did not expect, when we parted in Persia, that we should meet again in my uncle’s house, did you? You will hardly believe that this is my first visit to England, and to my relations here.”
“You will certainly not be taken for a foreigner here,” I said, laughing.
“Oh, of course not. You see my mother is English, so that I speak the language. The difficulty for me will lie in learning the customs. The English have so many peculiar habits. Is Professor Cutter at the house?”
“Yes. You know him?”
“Very well. He has been my mother’s physician for some time.”
“Indeed — I was not aware that he practiced as a physician.” I was surprised by the news, and a suspicion crossed my mind that the lady at Weissenstein might have been Patoff’s mother. Instantly the meaning of the professor’s warning flashed upon me, — I was not to mention that affair in the Black Forest to Carvel. Of course not. Carvel was the brother-in-law of the lady in question. However, I kept my own counsel as we drove rapidly homewards. The sun had risen higher in the cloudless sky, and the frozen ground was beginning to thaw, so that now and then the mud splashed high from under the horses’ hoofs. The vehicle in which we drove was a mail phaeton, and Macaulay sat in front by his father’s side, while Patoff and I sat behind. We chatted pleasantly along the road, and in half an hour were deposited at Carvel Place, where the ladies came out to meet us, and the new cousin was introduced to every one. He seemed to make himself at home very easily, and I think the first impression he produced was favorable. Mrs. Carvel held his hand for several seconds, and looked up into his cold blue eyes as though searching for some resemblance to his mother, and he met her gentle look frankly enough. Chrysophrasia eyed him and eyed him again, trying to discover in him the attributes she had bestowed upon him in her imagination; he was certainly a bold-looking fellow, and she was not altogether disappointed. She allowed her hand to linger in his, and her sentimental eyes turned upwards towards him with a look that was intended to express profound sympathy. As for Paul, he looked at his aunt Chrysophrasia with a certain surprise, and he looked upon Hermione with a great admiration as she came forward and put out her hand. John Carvel stood near by, and I thought his expression changed as he saw the glance his nephew bestowed upon his daughter. I slipped away to the library, and left the family party to themselves. Professor Cutter had not yet appeared, and I hoped to find him. Sure enough, he was among the books. Three or four large volumes lay open upon a table near the window, and the sturdy professor was turning over the leaves, holding a pencil in his mouth and a sheet of paper in one hand, the image of a student in the pursuit of knowledge. I went straight up to him.
“Professor Cutter,” I said, “you asked me last night whether I had ever heard anything more of the lady with whom I met you at Weissenstein. I have heard of her this morning.”
The scientist took the pencil from his mouth, and thrust his hands into his pockets, gazing upon me through the large round lenses of his spectacles. He glanced towards the door before he spoke.
“Well, what have you heard?” he asked.
“Only that she was Paul Patoff’s mother,” I answered.
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing.”
“And how did you come by the information, if you please?” he inquired.
“Very simply. Paul Patoff volunteered to tell me that you had been his mother’s physician for some time. I remembered that you warned me not to speak of the Weissenstein affair to our friend Carvel; that was natural enough, since the lady was his sister-in-law. She did not look at all like Paul, it is true, but you are not in the habit of playing physician, and it is a thousand to one that you have attended no one else in the last year who is in any way connected with John Carvel.”
The learned doctor smiled.
“You have made a very good guess, Mr. Griggs,” he said. “Paul Patoff is a silly fellow enough, or he would not have spoken so plainly. Why do you tell me that you have found me out?”
“Because I imagine that you are still interested in the lady, and that you had better be informed of everything connected with the case.”
“The case — yes — it is a very singular case, and I am intensely interested in it. Besides, it has very nearly cost me my reputation, as well as my life. I assure you I have rarely had to do with such a case, nor have I ever experienced such a sensati
on as when I went over the cliff at Weissenstein after Madame Patoff.”
“Probably not,” I remarked. “I never saw a braver thing more successfully accomplished.”
“There is small courage in acting under necessity,” said the professor, walking slowly across the room towards the fire. “If I had not rescued my patient, I should have been much more injured than if I had broken my neck in the attempt. I was responsible for her. What would have become of the ‘great neurologist,’ the celebrated ‘mad-doctor,’ as they call me, if one of the few patients to whom I ever devoted my whole personal attention had committed suicide under my very eyes? You can understand that there was something more than her life and mine at stake.”
“I never knew exactly how it happened,” I replied. “I was looking out of my window, when I saw a woman fall over the balcony below me. Her clothes caught in the crooked branches of a wild cherry tree that grew some ten feet below; and as she struggled, I saw you leaning over the parapet, as if you meant to scramble down the face of the cliff after her. I had a hundred feet of manilla rope which I was taking with me to Switzerland for a special expedition, and I let it down to you. The people of the inn came to my assistance, and we managed to haul you up together, thanks to your knowing how to tie the rope around you both. Then I saw you down-stairs for a few minutes and you told me the lady was not hurt. I left almost immediately. I never knew what led to the accident.”
Professor Cutter passed his heavy hand slowly over his thick gray hair, and looked pensively into the fire.
“It was simple enough,” he said at last. “I was paying our bill to the landlord, and in doing so I turned my back upon Madame Patoff for a moment. She was standing on a low balcony outside the window, and she must have thrown herself over. Luckily she was dressed in a gown of strong Scotch stuff, which did not tear when it caught in the tree. It was the most extraordinary escape I ever saw.”
“I should think so, indeed. But why did she want to kill herself? Was she insane?”
“Are people always insane who try to kill themselves?” asked the professor, eying me keenly through his glasses.
“Very generally they are. I suppose that she was.”
“That is precisely the question,” said the scientist. “Insanity is an expression that covers a multitude of sins of all kinds, but explains none of them, nor is itself explained. If I could tell you what insanity is, I could tell you whether Madame Patoff was insane or not. I can say that a man possesses a dog, because I can classify the dogs I have seen all over the world. But supposing I had never met any specimen of the canine race but a King Charles spaniel, and on seeing a Scotch deerhound in the possession of a friend was told that the man had a ‘dog:’ I should be justified in doubting whether the deerhound was a dog at all in the sense in which the tiny spaniel — the only dog I had ever seen — represented the canine race in my mind and experience. The biblical ‘devil,’ which ‘possessed’ men, took as many shapes and characteristics as the genus ‘dog’ does: there was the devil that dwelt in tombs, the devil that tore its victim, the devil that entered into swine, the devil that spoke false prophecies, and many more. It is the same with insanity. No two mad people are alike. If I find a person with any madness I know, I can say he is mad; but if I find a person acting in a very unusual way under the influence of strong and protracted emotion, I am not justified in concluding that he is crazy. I have not seen everything in the world yet. I have not seen every kind of dog, nor every kind of devil, nor every kind of madness.”
“You choose strange illustrations,” I said, “but you speak clearly.”
“Strange cases and strange examples. Insanity is the strangest phase of human nature, because it is the least common state of humanity. If a majority of men were mad, they would have a right to consider themselves sane, and sane men crazy. Your original question was whether, when she attempted suicide, Madame Patoff were sane or not. I do not know. I have known many persons to attempt to take their lives when, according to all their other actions, they were perfectly sane. The question of their sanity could be decided by placing a large number of sensible people in similar circumstances, in order to see whether the majority of them would kill themselves or not. That sort of experiment is not likely to be tried. I found Madame Patoff placed in very extraordinary circumstances, but I did not know her before she was so placed. The case interests me exceedingly. I am still trying to understand it.”
“You speak as though you were still treating it,” I remarked.
“A physician, in his imagination, will continue to study a case for years after it has passed out of his treatment,” answered my companion. “I must go and see Paul, however, since he was good enough to mention me to you.” Whereupon Professor Cutter buttoned up his coat and went away, leaving me to my reflections by the library fire.
If Carvel had intended to have a family party in his house at Christmas, including his nephew whom he had never seen, and whose mother had been mad, and the great scientist who had attended her, it seemed strange that he should have asked me as directly as he had done to spend the whole winter under his roof. I had never been asked for so long a visit before, and had never been treated with such confidence and received so intimately as I now was. I could not help wondering whether I was to be told the reason of what was going on, whether, indeed, anything was going on at all, and whether the air of depression and mystery which I thought I observed were not the result of my own imagination, rather than of any actual foundation in fact. The professor might be making a visit for his pleasure, but I knew how valuable his time must be, and I wondered how he could afford to spend it in mere amusement. I remembered John Carvel’s hesitation as we drove to the station that morning, and his evident annoyance when I proposed to leave. He knew me well enough to say, “All right, if you don’t mind, run up to town for a day or two,” but he had not said it. He had manifested the strongest desire that I should stay, and I had determined to comply with his request. At the same time I was left entirely in the dark as to what was going on in the family, and whispered words, conversations that ceased abruptly on my approach, and many other little signs told me beyond all doubt that something was occurring of which I had no knowledge. Without being inquisitive, it is hard to live in such surroundings without having one’s curiosity roused, and the circumstance of my former meeting with the professor, now so suddenly illuminated by the discovery that the lady whose life he had saved was the sister-in-law of our host, led me to believe, almost intuitively, that the mystery, if mystery there were, was connected in some way with Madame Patoff. As I thought of her, the memory of the little inn, the Gasthof zum Goldenen Anker, in Weissenstein, came vividly back to me. The splash of the plunging Nagold was in my ears, the smell of the boundless pine forest was in my nostrils; once more I seemed to be looking down from the upper window of the hostelry upon the deep ravine, a sheer precipice from the back of the house, broken only by some few struggling trees that appeared scarcely able to find roothold on the straight fall of rock, — one tree projecting just below the foundations of the inn, ten feet lower than the lowest window, a knotted wild cherry, storm-beaten and crooked, — and then, suddenly, something of uncertain shape, huddled together and falling from the balcony down the precipice, — a woman’s figure, caught in the gnarled boughs of the cherry-tree, hanging and swinging over the abyss, while shriek on shriek echoed down to the swollen torrent and up to the turrets of the old inn in an agonized reverberation of horror.
It was a fearful memory, and the thought of being brought into the company of the woman whose life I had seen so risked and so saved was strange and fascinating. Often and often I had wondered about her fate, speculating upon the question whether her fall was due to accident or to the intention of suicide, and I had tried to realize the terrible waking when she found herself saved from the destruction she sought by the man I had seen, — perhaps by the very man from whom she was endeavoring to escape. I was thrown off my balance by being so suddenly
brought face to face with this woman’s son, the tall, blue-eyed, awkward fine gentleman, Paul Patoff. I sat by the library fire and thought it all over, and I said to myself at last, “Paul Griggs, thou art an ass for thy pains, and an inquisitive idiot for thy curiosity.” I, who am rarely out of conceit with myself, was disgusted at my lack of dignity at actually desiring to find out things that were in no way my business, nor ever concerned me. So I took a book and fell to reading. Far off in the house I could hear voices now and then, the voices of the family making the acquaintance of their new-found relation. The great fire blazed upon the broad hearth within, and the wintry sun shone brightly without, and there came gradually upon me the delight of comfort that reigns within a luxurious library when the frost is biting without, and there is no scent upon the frozen fields, — the comfort that lies in the contrasts we make for ourselves against nature; most of all, the peace that a wanderer on the face of the earth, as I am, can feel when he rests his weary limbs in some quiet home, half wishing he might at last be allowed to lay down the staff and scrip, and taste freely of the world’s good things, yet knowing that before many days the devil of unrest will drive him forth again upon his road. So I sat in John Carvel’s library, and read his books, and enjoyed his cushioned easy-chair with the swinging desk; and I envied John Carvel his home, and his quiet life, and his defenses against intrusion, saying that I also might be made happy by the trifling addition of twenty thousand pounds a year to my income.
But I was not long permitted to enjoy the undisturbed possession of this temple of sweet dreams, reveling in my imagination at the idea of what I should do if I possessed such a place. The door of the library opened suddenly with the noise of many feet upon the polished floor.
“And this is the library,” said the voice of Hermione, who led the way, followed by her mother and aunt and Paul; John Carvel brought up the rear, quietly looking on while his daughter showed the new cousin the wonders of Carvel Place.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 266