"Colonel Colquhoun and I are better friends now, if anything, than we have ever been," she added of her own accord, with inquiry in her eyes, as if she wanted to know what could have made me think otherwise.
I should have said myself that they were excellent friends, but what precisely did "friends" mean? I scented something anomalous here. However, it was not a point that I considered it advisable to pursue. I had ascertained that there was no morbid feeling in the matter, and that was all that I required to know. I only paid her a short visit that morning, and did not return for two days; but I had been thinking seriously about her case in the interval, and carefully prepared to inquire into it particularly; and an evident increase of languor and depression gave me a good opening.
"Tell me how you are to-day," I began. "Any trouble?"
"The worry in my head is awful!" she exclaimed. "Let me go downstairs. I am better there."
She was essentially a child of light and air and movement, requiring sunshine indoors as well as out to keep her in health. An Italian proverb says where the sun does not come, the doctor does, and this had been only too true in her case. It was pure animal instinct which had made the west window of the drawing room her favourite place. Nature, animal and vegetable, is under an imperative law to seek the sun, and she had unconsciously obeyed it for her own good. But she required more than that transient gleam in the western window; a sun bath daily, when it could be had, is what I should have prescribed for her; and from her next remark I judged that she had discovered for herself the harm which the deprivation of light was doing her.
"I can see the sun all day long beyond the shadow of the house," she continued, "but I want to feel it, too. I would like it to shine on me in the early morning, and wake me up and warm me. There is no heat so grateful; and I only feel half alive in these dark, damp rooms. I never had bronchitis or was delicate at all in any way until we came here. Let me go down, won"t you?"
"Well, as your cold is so much better, you may go downstairs if you like.
But you mustn"t go out," I answered. "How are you going to amuse yourself?"
"Oh!"--she looked around the room as if in search of something--"I don"t know exactly. Work, I suppose."
"You don"t read much?"
"No, not now," she answered, leaning forward with her hands clasped on her lap, and looking dreamily into the fire.
"Does that mean that you used to read once?" I pursued, "You have plenty of books here."
She looked toward the well-filled cases, "Yes," she said, "old friends, I seldom open any of them now."
"Do you never feel that they reproach you for losing interest in them?"
She smiled. "I think perhaps they are relieved because I have ceased from troubling them--from requiring more of them than they could give me," she answered, smothering a sigh.
"May I look at them?" I asked, antic.i.p.ating her permission by rising and going toward them.
"Yes; certainly," she answered, rising herself, and following me languidly. The books were arranged in groups--science, history, biography, travels, poetry, fiction; with bound volumes of such periodicals as the _Contemporary Review_, _The Nineteenth Century_, and the _Westminster_. I read the t.i.tles of the volumes in the science divisions with surprise, for she had never betrayed, nor had I ever suspected, that she had added the incident of learning to the accident of brains. But if she knew the contents of but half of these books well she must be a highly educated woman. I took out several to see how they had been read, and found them all carefully annotated, with marginal notes very clearly written, and containing apposite quotations from and references to the best authorities on the various subjects. This was especially the case with books on the natural sciences; the physical ones having apparently interested her less.
"These are not very elegant books for a lady"s boudoir," she said, referring to the plain dark bindings. "I dislike gorgeously bound books, and could never make a pet of one. They are like over-dressed people; all one"s care is concentrated upon their appearance, and their real worth of character, if they have any, escapes one."
"Were you ever an omnivorous reader?" I asked.
"No, I am thankful to say," she answered, her natural apt.i.tude for intellectual pursuits overcoming her artificial objection to them, as she looked at her books and became interested in them in spite of herself; "for I notice that the average reader who reads much remembers little, and is absurdly inaccurate. It is as bad to read everything as to eat everything; the mind, when it is gorged with a surfeit of subjects, retains none of them."
She had a fairly representative collection of French, Italian, German books, all equally well-read and annotated, each in its own language, the French and Italian being excellent, but the German imperfect, although, as she told me, she liked both the language and the literature very much the best of the three. "German suggested ideas to me," she said, "and that is why I paid less attention to the construction of the language, I think.
But I am afraid you will find no elegancies in any tongue I use, for language has always been to me a vehicle of thought, and not a part of art to be employed with striking effect. Now, here is Carlyle, the arch phrasemaker. I always admired him more than I loved him; but his books are excellent for intellectual exercise. He forced those phrases from his brain with infinite pains, and, when you take them collectively, you find yourself obliged to force them into yours in like manner."
She had become all interest and animation by this time, and I had never known her so delightful as she was that morning while showing me her books. She had no objection to lending me any that I chose, although I told her that I only wanted them to read her notes. I took a variety, but found no morbid tendency in any remark she had made upon them.
I paid my visit late in the afternoon next day, and found Evadne in the drawing room. She was standing in the window when I entered, but came down the room to greet me.
"I have been watching for you," she said. "I hoped you would come early.
And I have also been watching that party of jubilant ducks waddling down the road. Come and see them. I believe they belong to us. They must have escaped from the yard. But aren"t they enjoying the ramble! That old drake is quite puffed up with excitement and importance! He goes along nodding his head, and saying again and again to the ducks: "Now, didn"t I tell you so! and aren"t you glad you took my advice and came?" And all the ducks are smiling and complimenting him upon his wisdom and courage. They ought to be driven back, but I haven"t the heart to spoil their pleasure just yet by informing against them."
I was standing beside her in the window now, and she looked up at me, smiling as she spoke. She was brighter under the immediate influence even of the watery winter sun, now a red ball, glowing behind the brown branches of the leafless trees, than she had been in her gloomy north room; and I took this lively interest in the adventurous ducks to be a glimpse of the joyous, healthy mind, seeing character in all things animate, and gifted with sympathy as well as insight, which must naturally have been hers.
"When am I to go out?" she asked, "I begin to long for a sight of my fellow-creatures. I don"t want to speak to them. I only want to see them.
But I am sociable to that extent--when I am in my right mind."
"Tell me about this mental malady," I begged.
"Ah," she began, laughing up at me, but with a touch of bitterness. "I interest you now! I am a case! You do not flatter me. But I mean to give you every help in my power. If only you could cure me!" She clasped her hands and held them out to me, the gesture of an instant, but full of earnest entreaty.
"Come from the window," I said. "It is chilly here."
"Yes, come to the fire," she rejoined, leading the way; "and sit down, and let us have tea, and talk, and be cosey. You want me to talk about myself, and I will if I can. I was happy just now, but you see I am depressed in a moment. It is misery to me to be so variable. And I constantly feel as if I wanted something--to be somewhere, or to have something; I don"t know where or what; it is a sort of general dissatisfaction, but it is all the worse for not being positive. If I knew what I wanted, I should be cured by the effort to obtain it."
She rang the bell, and began to make up the fire; and I sat down and watched her because she liked to do those things in her own house.
"Strangers wait upon me," she said, "but my friends allow me to wait upon them."
When the servant had brought tea and retired, she began again.
"Now question me," she said, "and make me tell you the truth."
"I am sure you will tell me the truth," I a.s.serted.
"I am sure I shall try," she replied; "but I am not so sure that I shall succeed. If you provoke me, I shall fence with you; if you confuse me, I shall unwittingly say "yes" when I mean "no." In fact, I am surprised to find myself confiding this trouble to you at all! It has come about by accident, but I am very glad; it is such a relief to speak. But how _has_ it come about?" she broke off. "Did you suspect?"
"Suspect what?"
"That I am insane."
"You are not insane," I answered harshly.
She looked at me as if my words or manner amused her. "I remember now,"
she said. "I complained of the worry in my head, and then you questioned me."
"It is not an uncommon complaint," I rejoined.
"Is it not?" she answered. "Well, I don"t know whether to be sorry for the other sufferers, or relieved to think that I am not the only one, which is what you intend, I believe. But, doctor, the misery is terrible, especially now that it has become almost incessant. It drives me--fills my mind with such dreadful ideas. I have actually meditated murder lately."
"Murder in the abstract, I supposed?"
"No, murder actually, murder for my own benefit, or what I fancy in that mood would be for my benefit; the murder of one poor miserable creature whom I pity with all my heart and really care for--when I am in my right mind."
My heart sank. It was not necessary for me to know, and I had no inclination to ask, who the "one poor miserable creature" was.
"And when the impulse is on you, what do you do?" I said.
"It is not an impulse exactly," she answered; "at least, it is nothing which I have ever had the slightest inclination to act upon. I am just possessed by the idea--whatever it may be--and then I cannot sit still. I have to rush out."
"Into Regent Street, for example?" I suggested, her last remark having thrown a sudden side-light upon that occurrence.
"Yes," she said. "But I didn"t know I was going to Regent Street. I had read of d.i.c.kens prowling about the streets of London late at night when he was suffering from the effects of overwork, and recovering his tranquillity and power in that way, and I thought I would try the experiment; so I went out and just walked on until I was tired, and then I got into an omnibus, so as to be with the people, and when it stopped and they all got out, I got out too, and walked on again, and then that horrid old man spoke to me. It was a great shock, but it had the happiest effect.
I woke up, as it were, the moment I got rid of him, and felt quite myself again; and then I hurried back, as you know. You still disapprove? Well, in one way, perhaps you are right; but still it did me good." She stopped, and looked into the fire thoughtfully; and then she smiled. "Forgive me, do!" she said. "I know I behaved badly next day; I could not help it. The sudden relief to my mind had sent my spirits up inordinately for one thing; and then your face! Your consternation was really comical! If I had injured you irreparably in your estimation of the value of your own opinion of people, you could not have cared more. But I am sorry, very, very sorry," she added, with feeling, "that you should have lost your respect for me."