"You knew the brother, didn"t you?" Jarvyse went on, breathing easier in the warmth of the vestibule. "Nothing out of the way there?"
"Absolutely not. He had the const.i.tution of a bull. But I fear he"s not handed it on to his son."
"Ugh, no! Nasty little cub. Those families don"t last. Daughters always stronger. I give him fifteen ... eighteen years," the alienist said placidly.
The inner door opened and Stanchon turned to go.
"Come up and see the patient," Jarvyse suggested, over his shoulder, one glove already off. "Pleased to have you, and so would she, of course. You"ll find her much happier."
But Miss Mary was not happier. Freed of the contemptuous _brusquerie_ of Edmund, the thinly-veiled dislike of the girls, the conscience-stricken attempts of her sister-in-law, she had felt for a time the relief of a strain abandoned, the comfort of a definite position. They had come to see her, too, and their timid overtures of interest, their obvious surprise at the ease with which this great change had been effected, their frank amazement at the luxury and silken routine in which they found her, had almost established relations long since fallen out of use. But the novelty had faded, the visits grew fewer and shorter, the very telephone messages languished; and as she sat brooding alone, in the few unoccupied half-hours that the omniscient System left her, a slow, sure conviction dropped like an acid on the clouded surface of her mind: she was alone. She was no longer a part of life as it was ordinarily lived. She and the others who shared that rich, tended seclusion were apart from the usages and responsibilities of the World that was counterfeited there. They were unreal. Through all the exercise and repose, the baths and manipulations, the music and the silences, the courtesies and the deprecations, the flowers and the birds that brought an artificial summer within the thick walls, one idea clanged like a bell through her weary mind: _This is not real_.
To Dr. Stanchon, who came in the intervals allowed by his work, she seemed sadly changed. It was not that her face looked heavier and more fretfully lined; not that her voice grew more monotonous; not that she seemed sunk in the selfish stupor that her type of suffering invariably produces. He had seen all this in others and seen it change for a better state. No; in Miss Mary the settled pessimism of a deep conviction had an almost uncanny power of communicating itself to those about her.
"She"s in bad, that one," one of the gardeners said to him, on a windy March day when he had hunted for her over half-a-dozen guarded acres, and found her sitting in one of her heavy silences under a sunny ledge of rock.
"She"s quiet and easy, but she"s one of the worst of "em, in my opinion."
And when she turned to him a moment later and said quietly: "Tell me, once for all, Dr. Stanchon, do you consider me insane?" his voice expressed all the simple sincerity of his eyes.
"Miss Mary, I tell you the truth--I don"t know."
"But you know they"ll never let me out?"
He braced himself. "How can they, Miss Mary, when you won"t promise----"
"Why should I promise anything, if I"m not insane? Would you promise never to state your opinion in your own house?"
He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
"You see!" he said gently.
Beyond them the gardener struggled with a refractory horse that refused to draw his load of brush and dead leaves. She stared at the group dully: six months ago she would have flinched at the great clambering hoofs and the man"s danger.
"And even if I did give up and promise everything, do you believe I"d get out, doctor?"
"I see no reason----"
"You don"t need to lie to me," she interrupted. "When I signed that paper, they fooled me: it was for good. It said six months--but it was for good."
He felt a great sympathy for her. It was hard, very hard. And yet, what they had been through with her!
"If only you hadn"t refused to travel," he began.
"But I agreed to--I agreed to, last month," she cried, "even though I"m never well travelling, I agreed to--and what happened? Dr. Jarvyse said it wouldn"t be best for me! And you did nothing..."
"How could I, Miss Mary?" he urged. "You know the only reason I see you so often is that I acquiesce and don"t interfere. The moment I thought it would do any good----"
"You mean you"re not sure, yourself!" she said keenly.
He sighed.
"You know I"m your friend," he said simply.
Her whole face changed. An almost disconcerting brightness flashed over it. Through all the heaviness and fatigue and despair that had yellowed her skin, dulled her eyes, and taken, it seemed, the very sheen from her black hair, her lost girlhood flared a moment. With the inconstant emotion of a child she smiled at him.
"I know you are," she murmured confidingly, "and I"ll tell you something, because you are."
"What is it, Miss Mary?" he said, but he sighed as he said it.
"Do you see how I"m dressed?" she half whispered. He looked, uncomprehending, at the long light ulster she wore.
"Underneath, I"m in black," she said softly, "a whole suit. I have a little bag packed right under this rock, and I have ninety dollars in my bag, here." She tapped her waist, where a small shopping bag dangled. "And I have an umbrella. I always sit near this gate."
"Why do you do such things, dear Miss Mary?" he said sadly. "It does you no good--please try to believe me!"
"I never did, until I had the dream," she answered calmly. "This is the third night I"ve had it. I dreamed I was near some gate, and I looked down, and right before me on the path I saw a key--a great, brown key! So I started to pick it up, and then I realised that I wasn"t prepared, that I had no money, and that I"d just be caught and brought back. Then I woke. But I dreamed it over again the next night, so I packed the bag and got it out here under this steamer-rug, and asked for some money to buy presents when that embroidery woman came from Lakewood. And I got it, of course, and bought some. She said she was coming again. So I got more. Last night I dreamed it again, and it looked like this gate, in the dream. That"s three times.
Suzanne has those dreams, you know--she"s like me, Suzanne--and they always happen. So perhaps mine will. I tell you, because you"re my friend. And you would never have put me here."
Stanchon bit his lip. A sudden disgust of everything seized him.
"No, I wouldn"t have put you here--once," he said slowly, then rose abruptly.
"Hi, there, hold him! hold him, you fool!" he shouted. "Sit on his head!"
The gardener"s horse, beyond all control, now, was rolling furiously, neighing and snapping. The man clung to the reins, keeping his distance, but as the animal gained his feet with a lurch, his finger slipped and he, too, rolled over and over down the little slope to the gravelled path. Stanchon was after the horse before the attendant had picked himself up and was calling him angrily.
"Don"t be alarmed, miss," the man panted. "The doctor and I can settle him!" and staggering to his feet made off to the rescue. As he ran, something clinked and rattled about his boots, and a bunch of keys lay quiet on the gravel.
Miss Mary rose instantly, walked to them and put her foot over them, but the man was several yards away and Stanchon and the horse were struggling towards the wagon. Miss Mary stooped down and lifted the keys; all had metal tags and the one in her hand read, _East Gate, by shrubbery_. She stepped to the ledge, drew out a fair sized black hand-bag, tucked her umbrella under her arm and looked about her. The nearest gate, set in dense shrubbery, lay in a direct line with the ledge, and as she slipped behind it the two men and the horse were wiped out of her vision. With her usual quiet, long step she reached the gate, fitted the key, turned it and opened the gate. She closed it behind her, considered a moment, then tossed the keys back among the thick, glossy rhododendrons.
"Just as I dreamed," she muttered, "but where is the carriage?"
She stood on the edge of a road she had never seen, a quarter of a mile from the great wrought-iron entrance that had closed behind her half a year ago, and looked vaguely about her, at the mercy of Fate. And Fate, that quaint old lady who holds you and me and Miss Mary in the hollow of her hand, smiled and gave a tiny pat and a push to the shiny little electric run-about of Miss Winifred Jarvyse, a handsome young Diana, who had never seen the inside of the great walled estate next her father"s private grounds, so that she waved her hand cordially, stopped out of pure good feeling for the absent-minded stranger in the beautiful coat, and asked if she could drop her at the station!
"Why, yes, thank you," said Miss Mary, still vaguely.
"It"s going to rain and I"ve no cover on," said Winifred. "It"s a pity about your coat."
"I can turn it," said Miss Mary, and standing up for a moment she slipped the sleeves of the ulster, shook herself slightly and sat down a totally different woman. So that when (such was the perfection of the System) a quick call to the ticket office set the agent searching twenty minutes later for a tall woman in a light tan coat, alone, without luggage, he replied very truly that no such person had entered his station. Only a friend of Miss Jarvyse had come to the 2:15, a lady in a dark plaid ulster with bag and umbrella, in Miss Jarvyse"s car.
"I hope you found your friends--er--doing well?" said Miss Jarvyse delicately.
"Thank you, they were very well," said Miss Mary gravely. And she took the 2:15 for New York.
Nothing further than the immediate moment was in her mind. To her thought, long confused and fleeting, the dreamlike character of this sudden change seemed natural and simple. She had no plan of campaign, no route of escape, no future. Her mind, relaxed from the quick decision that had cleared its mists in the moment of action, began to dull and settle and fall into its old rut of mechanical despair, when suddenly the voices of two women in the seat behind her grew louder and rose above the jar of the train.