"Well, I can claim the merit--if it be a merit--of having arrived at that conclusion before I became--"
"Eminent?" she suggested.
"Before I had taken my degree," I corrected.
"So you came and established yourself as a doctor in this old place?"
She glanced round meditatively.
"That seems to surprise you?"
"It is the dual character that surprises me," she answered, "Your practice makes you a professional man, and you are a county magnate also by right of your name and connections."
She evidently knew all about me already, and I was flattered by the interest she showed, which I thought special until I found that she was in the habit of knowing, and knowing accurately too, all about everyone with whom she was brought into close contact.
"I cannot imagine how you find time for it all," she continued; "you are not a general pract.i.tioner, I believe."
"Not exactly," I answered. "Of course I never refuse to attend in any case of emergency, but my regular practice is all consultation, and my speciality has somehow come to be nervous disorders. Sometimes I have my house full of patients--interesting cases which require close attention."
"I know," she said, "and poor people who cannot pay as often as the rich who will give you anything to attend them."
"I should very much like you to believe the most exaggerated accounts of my generosity if any such are about," I hastened to a.s.sure her; "but honesty compels me to explain that I benefit by every case which I treat successfully."
"Goto! you do not deceive me," she answered, laughing up in my face.
Her manner had quite changed now. She recognized me as one of her own caste, and knew that however friendly and familiar she might be I should not presume.
When it was time to think of my other guests, she begged to be allowed to remain in the library until they had all arrived.
"It would be such an exertion to have to explain to each one separately how it is that I am here alone--and I do so dislike strange people," she added plaintively. "It makes me quite _ill_ to have to meet them.
And, besides," she broke out laughing, "as it is a new place, perhaps I ought to try and make myself interesting and of importance to the inhabitants by coming in late! When you keep people waiting for dinner you do become of consequence to them--to their comfort--and then they think of you!"
"But not very charitably under such circ.u.mstances," I suggested.
"That depends," she answered. "If you arrive in time to save their appet.i.tes, they will a.s.sociate a pleasant sense of relief with your coming which will make them think well of you for evermore. They mistake the sensation for an opinion, and as they like it, they call it a good one!"
She looked pretty when she unbent like that and talked nonsense--or what was apt to strike you as nonsensical until you came to consider it. For there was often a depth of worldly wisdom and acuteness underlying her most apparently careless sallies that surprised you.
She lingered long in the library--so long that at first I felt impatiently that she might have remembered that I had an appet.i.te as well as the strangers within my gates with whom it apparently pleased her to trifle, and I felt obliged, during an awkward pause, to account for the delay by explaining for whom we were waiting. If she were in earnest about wishing to make a sensation or attract special attention to herself, she had gained her end, for the moment I mentioned the name of Colquhoun, people began to speak of her, carefully, because n.o.body knew as yet who her friends might be, but with interest. I never supposed for a moment, however, that she was in earnest. There was something proudly self-respecting about her which forbade all idea of anything so paltry as manoeuvring. I did at first think that she might have fallen asleep; but, afterward, on recollecting that she was a nervous subject, it occurred to me that her courage might have failed her, and that she would never present herself to a whole room full of strangers alone. Excusing myself to my guests, therefore, as best I could, I went at last to the library, and found that this latter surmise was correct. She was standing in the middle of the room with her hands clasped, evidently in an agony of nervous trepidation. I went up to her, however, as if I had not noticed it, and offered her my arm.
"If you will come now, Mrs. Colquhoun," I said, "we will go to dinner."
She took my arm without a word, but I felt as soon as she touched me that her confidence was rapidly returning, and by the time we had reached the drawing room, and I had explained that Colonel Colquhoun had been detained by duty most unfortunately, but Mrs. Colquhoun had been kind enough to come nevertheless, she had quite recovered herself, and only a slight exaggeration of the habitual _noli me tangere_ of her ordinary manner remained in evidence of her shyness.
When we were seated at table, and she was undoubtedly at her ease again, I expected to see her vivacity revive; but the nervous crisis had evidently gone deeper than her manner, and affected her mood. I had left her all life and animation, a mere girl bent upon pleasure, but with every evidence of considerable capacity for the pursuit; but now, at dinner, she sat beside me, cold, constrained, and listless, neither eating nor interested; pretending, however, courageously, and probably deceiving those about her with the even flow of polished periods which she kept up to conceal her indifference. I thought perhaps her husband"s absence had something to do with it, and expected to see her brighten up when he arrived. He did not come at all, however, and only once at table did she show any sign of the genuine intellectual activity which I was now pretty sure was either concealed or slumbering in these moods. The sign she made was deceptive, and probably only a man of my profession, accustomed to observe, and often obliged to judge more by indications of emotion than by words, would have recognized its true significance. In the midst of her chatter she became suddenly silent, and one might have been excused for supposing that her mind was weary; but that, in truth, was the moment when she really roused herself, and began to follow the conversation with close attention. There was an old bore of a doctor at table that evening who would insist on talking professionally, a thing which does not often happen in my house, for I think, of all "shop," ours is the most unsuitable for general conversation because of the morbid fascination it has for most people. Ladies especially will listen with avidity to medical matters, perceiving nothing gruesome in the details at the moment; but afterward developing nerves on the subject, and probably giving the young pract.i.tioner good reason to regret unwary confidences. I tried to stave off the topic, but the will-power of the majority was against me, and finally I found myself submitting, and following my friend"s unwholesome lead.
"You must have some curious experiences, in your branch of the profession especially," the lady on my left remarked.
"We do," I said, answering her expectations against my better judgment, and partly, I think, because this was the moment when Evadne woke up. "I have had some myself. The extraordinary systems of fraud and deceit which are carried on by certain patients, for no apparent purpose, would astonish you. Their delight is essentially in the doing, and the one and only end of it all is invariably the same: a morbid desire to excite sympathy by making themselves interesting. I had one girl under my charge for six months, during which time she suffered daily from long fainting fits and other distressing symptoms which reduced her to the last degree of emaciation, and puzzled me extremely because there was nothing to account for them. Her heart was perfectly sound, yet she would lie in a state of insensibility, livid and all but pulseless, by the hour together.
There was no disease of any organ, but certain symptoms, which could not have been simulated, pointed to extensive disorder of one at least. It was a case of hysteria clearly, but no treatment had the slightest effect upon her, and, fearing for her life, I took her at last to Sir Shadwell Rock, the best specialist for nervous disorders now alive. He confirmed my diagnosis, and ordered the girl to be sent away from her friends with a perfect stranger, a hard, cold, unsympathetic person who would irritate her, if possible; and she was not to be allowed luxuries of any kind. I had considered the advisability of such a course myself, but the girl seemed too far gone for it, and I own I never expected to see her alive again. After she went abroad I heard that when she fainted she was left just where she fell to recover as best she could, and when any particular food disagreed with her, it was served to her incessantly until she professed to have got over her dislike for it; but in spite of such heroic treatment she was not at that time any better. Then I lost sight of her, and had forgotten the case, when one day, without any warning whatever, she came into my consulting room, looking the picture of health and happiness, and with a very fine child in her arms. "I suppose you are surprised to see me alive," she said. "I am married now, and this is my boy--isn"t he a beauty? And I am very happy--or rather I should be but for one thing--that illness of mine--when I gave you so much trouble--" "Oh, don"t mention that," I interrupted, thinking she had come to overwhelm me with undeserved thanks: "My only trouble was that I could do nothing for you. I hope you recovered soon after you went abroad?" "As soon as I thought fit," she answered significantly, "and that is what I have come about. I want to confess. I want to relieve my mind of a burden of deceit.
Doctor--I was never insensible in one of those fainting fits; I never had a symptom that I could not have controlled. I was shamming from beginning to end." "Well, you nearly shammed yourself out of the world," I said.
"Tell me how you did it?" "I can"t tell you exactly," she answered. "When I wanted to appear to faint I just set my mind somehow--I can"t do it now that I am happy, and have plenty of interests in life. At that time I had nothing to take me out of myself, and those daily doings were an endless source of occupation and entertainment to me. But lately I have had qualms of conscience on the subject.""
"And was she cured?" Evadne asked.
"Oh, yes," I answered. "There was no fear for her after she confessed.
When the moral consciousness returns in such cases, and there is nothing but relief of mind to be gained by confession, the cure is generally complete."
"But what could have been the motive of such a fraud?" somebody asked.
"It is difficult to imagine," I answered. "Had it been more extensive the explanation would have been easier; but as myself and the young lady"s parents were her only audience, I have never been able to account for it satisfactorily."
I noticed, while I was speaking, that Evadne was thinking the problem out for herself.
"She would not have given herself so much trouble without a very strong motive," she now suggested, "and human pa.s.sions are the strongest motives for human actions, are they not?"
"Of course," I said, "but the question is, what pa.s.sion prompted her. It could not have been either anger, ambition, revenge, or jealousy."
"No," she answered, in the matter-of-fact tone of one who merely arrives at a logical conclusion, "and it must therefore have been love. She was in love with you, and tried in that way to excite your sympathy and attract your attention."
"It is quite evident that view of the case never occurred to you, Galbraith," Dr. Lauder observed, laughing.
And I own that I _was_ taken aback by it, considerably--not of course as it affected myself, but because it gave me a glimpse of an order of mind totally different from that with which I should have credited Evadne earlier in the evening.
"But how do you treat these cases?" she proceeded. "Is there any cure for such depravity?"
"Oh, yes," I answered confidently. "They are being cured every day. So long as there is no organic disease, I am quite sure that wholesome surroundings, patience and kind care, and steady moral influence will do all that is necessary. The great thing is to awaken the conscience.
Patients who once feel sincerely that such courses are depraved may cure themselves--if they are not robbed of their self-respect. The most hopeless causes I have, come from that cla.s.s of people who give each other bits of their mind--very objectionable bits, consisting of vulgar abuse for the most part, and the calling of names that rankle. The operators seem to derive a solemn kind of self-satisfaction from the treatment themselves, but it does for the patient almost invariably."
This led to a discussion on bad manners, during which Evadne relapsed. I saw the light go out of her eyes, and she showed no genuine interest in anything for the rest of the evening; and when I had wrapped her up, and seen her drive away, I somehow felt that the entertainment had been a failure so far as she was concerned, and I wondered why she should so soon be bored. At her age she should have had vitality enough in herself to carry her through an evening.
"Colonel Colquhoun will regret that he has not been able to come," she said as she wished me good-bye.
And I noticed afterward that she was always most punctilious about such little formalities. She never omitted any trifle of etiquette, and I doubt if she could have dined without "dressing" for dinner.
CHAPTER V.
Colonel Colquohoun called next day himself to explain his absence on the previous evening. I forget what excuse he made, but it sufficed.
I saw Evadne, too, that same afternoon. She had been to make a call in the neighbourhood, and was waiting at a little country station to return by train. Something peculiar in her att.i.tude attracted my attention before I recognized her. She was standing alone at the extreme end of the platform, her slender figure silhouetted with dark distinctness against the sloping evening sky. She might have been waiting anxiously for someone to come that way, or she might have been waiting for a train with tragic purpose.
She wore a long dark green dress, the train of which she was holding up in her left hand. She showed no surprise when I spoke to her, although she had not heard me approach.
"What do the people here think of me?" she asked abruptly. "What do they say?"