"That is the news--the announcement--you spoke of?"
"Yes, that is it."
To save my life I could not have told at that moment what else I had expected, or feared, that he might say, but certainly I took a deep breath of relief. "I am very glad," I said. "It should be a happy alliance."
"On the whole, I think it will be," he returned thoughtfully. "Ingle"s done his share of hard living, and I once had a notion"--he glanced smiling at me--"well, I dare say you know my notion. But it is a good match for Elizabeth and not without advantages on many counts. You see, it"s time I married, myself; she feels that very strongly and I think her decision to accept Ingle is partly due to her wish to make all clear for a new mistress of my household,--though that"s putting it in a rather grandiloquent way." He laughed. "And as you probably guess, I have an idea that some such arrangement might be somewhere on the wings of the wind on its way to me, before long."
He laughed again, but I did not, and noting my silence he turned upon me a more scrutinising look than he had yet given me, and said:
"My dear fellow, is something the matter? You look quite haggard. You haven"t been ill?"
"No, I"ve had a bad night. That"s all."
"Oh, I heard something of a riotous scene taking place over here," he said. "One of the gardeners was talking about it to Elizabeth. Your bad night wouldn"t be connected with that, would it? You haven"t been playing Samaritan?"
"What was it you heard?" I asked quickly.
"I didn"t pay much attention. He said that there was great excitement at Madame Brossard"s, because a strange woman had turned up and claimed an insane young man at the inn for her husband, and that they had a fight of some sort--"
"d.a.m.nation!" I started from my chair. "Did Mrs. Harman hear this story?"
"Not last night, I"m certain. Elizabeth said the gardener told her as she came down to the chateau gates to meet me when I arrived--it was late, and Louise had already gone to her room. In fact, I have not seen her yet. But what difference could it possibly make whether she heard it or not? She doesn"t know these people, surely?"
"She knows the man."
"This insane--"
"He is not insane," I interrupted. "He has lost the memory of his earlier life--lost it through an accident. You and I saw the accident."
"That"s impossible," said George, frowning. "I never saw but one accident that you--"
"That was the one: the man is Larrabee Harman."
George had struck a match to light a cigar; but the operation remained incomplete: he dropped the match upon the floor and set his foot upon it. "Well, tell me about it," he said.
"You haven"t heard anything about him since the accident?"
"Only that he did eventually recover and was taken away from the hospital. I heard that his mind was impaired. Does Louise--" he began; stopped, and cleared his throat. "Has Mrs. Harman heard that he is here?"
"Yes; she has seen him."
"Do you mean the scoundrel has been bothering her? Elizabeth didn"t tell me of this--"
"Your sister doesn"t know," I said, lifting my hand to check him. "I think you ought to understand the whole case--if you"ll let me tell you what I know about it."
"Go ahead," he bade me. "I"ll try to listen patiently, though the very thought of the fellow has always set my teeth on edge."
"He"s not at all what you think," I said. "There"s an enormous difference, almost impossible to explain to you, but something you"d understand at once if you saw him. It"s such a difference, in fact, that when I found that he was Larrabee Harman the revelation was inexpressibly shocking and distressing to me. He came here under another name; I had no suspicion that he was any one I"d ever heard of, much less that I"d actually seen him twice, two years ago, and I"ve grown to--well, in truth, to be fond of him."
"What is the change?" asked Ward, and his voice showed that he was greatly disquieted. "What is he like?"
"As well as I can tell you, he"s like an odd but very engaging boy, with something pathetic about him; quite splendidly handsome--"
"Oh, he had good looks to spare when I first knew him," George said bitterly. "I dare say he"s got them back if he"s taken care of himself, or been taken care OF, rather! But go on; I won"t interrupt you again.
Why did he come here? Hoping to see--"
"No. When he came here he did not know of her existence except in the vaguest way. But to go back to that, I"d better tell you first that the woman we saw with him, one day on the boulevard, and who was in the accident with him--"
"La Mursiana, the dancer; I know."
"She had got him to go through a marriage with her--"
"WHAT?" Ward"s eyes flashed as he shouted the word.
"It seems inexplicable; but as I understand it, he was never quite sober at that time; he had begun to use drugs, and was often in a half-stupefied condition. As a matter of fact, the woman did what she pleased with him. There"s no doubt about the validity of the marriage.
And what makes it so desperate a muddle is that since the marriage she"s taken good care to give no grounds upon which a divorce could be obtained for Harman. She means to hang on."
"I"m glad of that!" said George, striking his knee with his open palm.
"That will go a great way toward--"
He paused, and asked suddenly: "Did this marriage take place in France?"
"Yes. You"d better hear me through," I remonstrated. "When he was taken from the hospital, he was placed in charge of a Professor Keredec, a madman of whom you"ve probably heard."
"Madman? Why, no; he"s a member of the Inst.i.tute; a psychologist or metaphysician, isn"t he?--at any rate of considerable celebrity."
"Nevertheless," I insisted grimly, "as misty a vapourer as I ever saw; a poetic, self-contradicting and inconsistent orator, a blower of bubbles, a seer of visions, a mystic, and a dreamer--about as scientific as Alice"s White Knight! Harman"s aunt, who lived in London, the only relative he had left, I believe--and she has died since--put him in Keredec"s charge, and he was taken up into the Tyrol and virtually hidden for two years, the idea being literally to give him something like an education--Keredec"s phrase is "restore mind to his soul"! What must have been quite as vital was to get him out of his horrible wife"s clutches. And they did it, for she could not find him.
But she picked up that rat in the garden out yonder--he"d been some sort of stable-manager for Harman once--and set him on the track. He ran the poor boy down, and yesterday she followed him. Now it amounts to a species of sordid siege."
"She wants money, of course."
"Yes, MORE money; a fair allowance has always been sent to her. Keredec has interviewed her notary and she wants a settlement, naming a sum actually larger than the whole estate amounts to. There were colossal expenditures and equally large shrinkages; what he has left is invested in English securities and is not a fortune, but of course she won"t believe that and refuses to budge until this impossible settlement is made. You can imagine about how competent such a man as Keredec would be to deal with the situation. In the mean time, his ward is in so dreadful a state of horror and grief I am afraid it is possible that his mind may really give way, for it was not in a normal condition, of course, though he"s perfectly sane, as I tell you. If it should," I concluded, with some bitterness, "I suppose Keredec will be still prating upliftingly on the saving of his soul!"
"When was it that Louise saw him?"
"Ah, that," I said, "is where Keredec has been a poet and a dreamer indeed. It was his PLAN that they should meet."
"You mean he brought this wreck of Harman, these husks and shreds of a man, down here for Louise to see?" Ward cried incredulously. "Oh, monstrous!"
"No," I answered. "Only insane. Not because there is anything lacking in Oliver--in Harman, I mean--for I think that will be righted in time, but because the second marriage makes it a useless cruelty that he should have been allowed to fall in love with his first wife again. Yet that was Keredec"s idea of a "beautiful restoration," as he calls it!"
"There is something behind all this that you don"t know," said Ward slowly. "I"ll tell you after I"ve seen this Keredec. When did the man make you his confidant?"
"Last night. Most of what I learned was as much a revelation to his victim as it was to me. Harman did not know till then that the lady he had been meeting had been his wife, or that he had ever seen her before he came here. He had mistaken her name and she did not enlighten him."
"Meeting?" said Ward harshly. "You speak as if--"
"They have been meeting every day, George."