Part 9

The suggestion of hypnotism remained in Carroll's mind, and it was not many days before he had a sufficiently plain but altogether disagreeable confirmation of the specialist's theory. He was with Alice in the old drawing-room, a place of quaint primness, with fine, staid Copley portraits, and an air of self-respecting propriety utterly at variance with psychical mysteries. He stood gazing out of the window, while Alice moved about the room looking for a book of which they had been speaking, and his eye was caught by a sparkling point of light on the sunlit wall of the house opposite. He made some casual remark in regard to it, and Alice came to look over his shoulder.

"What is it?" she asked.

"It must be a grain of sand in the mortar, I suppose," he answered. "It is making a tremendous effect for such a little thing."

She did not answer for an instant. Then she burst into a laugh which to him sounded strange and unpleasant, and clapped her hands.

"Well, I've come," she said joyously.

He wheeled quickly toward her. Her face seemed to have undergone a change, slight yet extraordinary. She was laughing with a glee that was not without a suspicion of malice, and she met his look with a boldness so different from the usual regard of Alice as to seem almost brazen. He could see that his evident bewilderment amused her greatly. A mischievous twinkle lighted her glance.

"Oh, of course you think I'm she; but I'm not. I'm a good deal nicer. She's a tiresome old thing, anyway. You'd like me a great deal better."

Carroll was entirely too confused to speak, but he was a physician, and could not help reflecting instantly upon the cause of this strange metamorphosis. He naturally thought of hypnotism, and he came in a second thought to realize that Alice had with amazing rapidity been sent into a hypnotic condition by looking for an instant at the glittering point on the wall of the house across the street. What the result might be, or what the words she spoke meant, he could not even conjecture.

"Don't stare at me so," the girl went on. "I'm Jenny."

"Oh," he repeated confusedly, "you're Jenny?"

"Yes; I'm Jenny, and I'm worth six of that silly Alice you're engaged to."

He took her lightly by the shoulders and looked at her, quite as much for the sake of steadying his own nerves as from any expectation of learning anything by examination. Her eyes shone with an unwonted brightness, and seemed to him to gleam with an archness of which Alice would not have been capable. The cheeks were flushed, not feverishly, but healthily, and the girl had lost completely the appearance of exhaustion which had troubled him so long. The head was carried with a new erectness, and as he regarded her she tossed it saucily.

"You may look at me as much as you like," she said gayly. "I can stand it. Don't you think I am better looking than she is?"

He was convinced that Alice could not know what she was saying, yet he involuntarily cried out:--

"Don't, Alice! I don't like it!"

She pouted her lips, lips which to his excited fancy seemed to have grown redder and fuller than he had ever seen them, and she made a droll little grimace.

"I'm not Alice, I tell you. Kiss me."

In all their long engagement Alice had never asked him for a caress, and the request hurt him now as something unwomanly. Instead of complying, he dropped his hands and turned away. She laughed shrilly.

"Oh, you won't kiss me? I thought it was polite to do what a lady asked! Well, if you won't now, you will some time. You'll want to when you know me better."

She moved away, but he caught her by the arm.

"Stop!" he ordered her, with all the determination he could put into the word. "Wake up, Alice! Be done with this fooling!"

The bright face grew anxious and the pouting lips beseeching.

"Don't send me away! I'll be good! Don't make her come back!"

"Alice," he repeated, clasping her arm firmly, "wake up!"

"You hurt me!" she cried half whiningly. "You hurt me! I'll go."

The wild brightness faded from the eyes, a change too subtle to be defined seemed to come over the whole figure, the old tired expression spread like mist over the face, and the familiar Alice stood there, passing her hand over her eyes.

"What is the matter?" she asked, in a startled way. "Did I faint?"

He was conscious that his look must have alarmed her, and he made a desperate effort to speak easily and naturally.

"I guess you came mighty near it," he answered, as naturally as he could. "It's all right now."

For some days nothing unusual happened, so far as Carroll knew. He watched Alice closely, and he plunged into all the literature on the subject of hypnotism upon which he could lay hands. He was not sure that at the end of a week's hard reading he was much clearer than at the beginning, although he had at least accumulated a fine assortment of terms in the nomenclature of animal magnetism. He cautiously questioned Abby, and learned that for some time Alice had been subject to what the old servant called "notional spells when she were n't herself." His friend the specialist was greatly interested in all that Dr. Carroll could tell him about the case.

"It is evidently a subliminal self coming to the surface," he pronounced. "I've seen cases somewhat similar, but only one where the patient was not hypnotized by somebody else."

"But what can I do about it?" George demanded. "I don't want any subliminal selves floating about. I want the girl I know."

"Build up her general health," the other advised. "You say she's run down and used up with taking care of her grandmother. Get her rested. That's the only thing I can say. She is n't really ill, is she?"

"God knows what you call it," was Carroll's response. "She can't be called well when she goes off the way she did the other day. I tell you it was frightful, simply frightful!"

The days went on, and once more George had the uncanny experience of a chat with Jenny. Alice had been looking over some of her grandmother's belongings, and when he called, came down to him with a necklace of rhinestones dangling and sliding through her fingers.

"See," she accosted him, in the buoyant manner he remembered only too vividly, "is n't this gay? I should wear it, only I'm in her clothes, and she won't wear anything but poky black."

Carroll tried to steady his nerves against the sudden shock.

"Of course you wear black, Alice," he said; "it is only six months since your grandmother died."

She made him a merry, mocking grimace.

"Now don't pretend you don't know I'm Jenny," she retorted. "I saw you knew me the minute you heard me speak. Alice! Pooh! She'd have come into the room this way."

She darted to the door and turned back, to advance with her face pulled down and her eyelids dropped.

"How do you do, dear?" she greeted him, with a burlesque of Alice's manner so droll that he laughed in spite of himself.

Jenny herself burst into a shout of merriment and whirled about in a pirouette, swinging the sparkling chain around her head.

"Is n't it fun?" she exclaimed, pausing before him with her head on one side; "she can't even look at a bright thing half a minute but off she goes, and here I am. Before I go this time, I'm going to stick up every shiny thing I can find where she'll see it."

Carroll had a sickening sensation, as if the girl he loved had gone mad before his very eyes; yet so completely did she appear like a stranger that the feeling faded as soon as it arose. This was certainly no Alice that he knew. He could not speak to her as his friend and betrothed, although it was equally impossible to address her as a stranger. He was too completely baffled and confused to be able to determine on any line of action, and she stood smiling at him as if she were entirely conscious of what was passing in his troubled brain.

"Did you know I cut up her letter?" Jenny demanded, with a smile apparently called up by the remembrance.

"Yes," he answered, exactly as if the question had been put by a third person.

"It was an awfully foolish letter," the girl went on. "I won't have her writing like that to you. You've got to belong to me."

He had neither the time nor the coolness to realize his emotions, but he accepted for the moment the assumption of the individuality of Jenny.

"You are nothing to me," he said. "I am engaged to Alice."

"Oh, that's all right. I know that. I know all about her; lots more than you do. But I tell you, you'd a great deal better take me. I'm just as much the girl you're engaged to as she is."

He looked at her darkly and with trouble in his eyes.

"Where is Alice?" he asked.

"Oh, she's all right. She's somewhere. Asleep, I think likely. I don't want to talk about her. I never liked her."

"Talk about yourself, then. Where are you when Alice is here?"

"Oh, that's stupid. I'd rather talk about what we'll do when we are married. Shall we go abroad right off?"

"It will be time enough to talk about that when there's any prospect of our being married."

"You would n't kiss me the other day," Jenny said, looping the necklace about his throat and bending forward so that her face was close to his.

A feeling of anger so strong that it was almost brutal came over him. He tore the necklace out of her hands and threw it across the room. Then, as on the previous occasion, he caught the girl by the wrists.

"Go away!" he commanded. "Let Alice come back!"

"Oh, you hurt me!" she cried. "I can't bear to be hurt! Let me go!"

He tightened his grasp.

"If you don't go, I'll really hurt. I won't have you fooling with Alice like this."

Her glance wavered on his; then the eyelids drooped; and he loosened his hold with the consciousness that Alice had come back.

"Why, George," she said, in her natural voice; "I did n't know you were here."

He took her in his arms with a feeling as near to the hysterical as he was capable of, and then instantly devoted himself to dissipating the anxiety which his obvious agitation aroused in her.

As time went on, the appearances of Jenny became more frequent. The fact that this secondary personality had once been in control of the body which it shared with Alice seemed to make its reappearance more easy. Alice evidently became more susceptible to whatever conditions produced this strange possession. It was clear to Carroll that each time the elfish Jenny succeeded in gaining possession of consciousness,--for so he put it to himself, entirely realizing what a confusing paradox the phrase implied,--she became stronger and better able to assert herself. He grew more and more disturbed, but he was also more and more completely baffled. Sometimes the matter presented itself to his professional mind as a medical case of absorbing interest; sometimes it appealed to him as a freak of gigantic irony on the part of fate; and yet again he was swept away by love or by passionate pity and sorrow for Alice. He felt that, all unconscious of her peril,--for she knew nothing of her mysterious double,--she was being robbed of her very personality.

Most curious of all was his feeling toward Jenny, who had come in his mind to represent an individual as tangible, as human, and as self-existent as Alice herself. He never allowed himself to encourage her presence, despite the fact that natural curiosity and professional interest might well make him eager to study her peculiarities. He insisted always upon her speedy departure from the body into which she had intruded herself--or so he doggedly insisted with himself--like an evil spirit. He had soon learned that her fear of physical pain was excessive; that, like the child that she often seemed, she could be managed best by dread of punishment; and he for a considerable time had been able to frighten her away by threats of hurting her. As the days went on, however, she began to laugh at his menaces, and he was obliged to resort to trifling physical force. The strong grasp on the wrists had sufficed at first, but it had to be increased as Jenny apparently decided that he would not dare to carry out his threats, and one day he found himself twisting the girl's arm backward in a determined effort to drive off this persistent ghoul-like presence. The idea of injuring Alice came over him so sickeningly that, had not his betrothed at that instant recovered her normal state, he felt that he must have abandoned the field. As it was, he was so unmanned that he could only plead a suddenly remembered professional engagement and get out of the house with the utmost possible speed.

There were other moods which were perhaps even worse. Now and again he was conscious of a strong attraction toward this laughing girl who defied him, looking at him with the eyes of Alice, but brimming them with merriment; who tempted him with Alice's lips, yet ripened them with warm blood and pouted them so bewitchingly; who walked toward him with the form of his betrothed, but swayed that body with a grace and an allurement of which Alice knew nothing. He felt in his nostrils a quiver of desire, and shame and self-scorn came in its wake. Not only did he feel that he had been false to Alice, but by a painful and disconcerting paradox he felt that he was offering to her a degrading insult in being moved by what at least was her body, as he might have been moved by the sensual attractiveness of a light woman. Jenny was at once so distinct, so far removed from Alice, and yet so identified with her, that his emotions confounded themselves in baffling confusion. It was not only that he could not think logically about the matter, but he seemed also to have lost the directing influence of instinctive feeling. Jenny represented nothing ethical, nothing spiritual, not even anything moral. He was filled with disgust at himself for being moved by her, yet humanly his masculine nature could not but respond to her spell; and the impossibility of either separating this from his love for Alice or reconciling it with the respect he had for her left him in a state of mental confusion as painful as it seemed hopeless.

He became so troubled that it was inevitable Alice should notice his uneasiness, and he was not in the least surprised when one evening she said to him:--

"George, what is the matter? Are you worrying about me?"

He had prepared himself over and over to answer such a question, but now he only hesitated and stumbled.

"Why--what makes you think anything is the matter?"

"I know there is; and I'm sure it's my fainting-spells."

She had come to speak of her seizures by this term, and George had accepted it, secretly glad that she had no idea worse than that of loss of consciousness.

"Why, of course I am troubled, so long as you are not well, but--"

"You don't like to tell me what is the matter," she went on calmly, but with an earnestness which showed she had thought long on the matter. "I dare say I should n't be any better for knowing, and I can trust you; but I know you are worrying, and it troubles me."

His resolution was taken at once.

"See here, Alice," he said, "the truth is that you need to get away from Boston and have an entire change of scene and climate. You used to be a good sailor, and a sea voyage will set you up. I'm going to marry you next week and take you to Italy."

"Why, George, you can't!"

"I shall."

"Even if I were well, I could n't be ready."

"Who cares? As to being well, you are going so you may get well. When I order patients to go away for their health, I expect them to go."

She became serious, and looked at him with eyes of infinite sadness.

"Dear George," she said, "I can't marry you just to be a patient. You must n't go through life encumbered by an invalid wife."

"I've no notion of doing anything of the kind," he responded brightly. "It would be too poor an advertisement, and that's the reason I insist on taking you abroad. What day do you choose, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday? We sail Saturday."

He would listen to no objections, but got Thursday fixed for the wedding, and pushed forward rapidly his preparations for going abroad. He enlisted the coöperation of a cousin of Alice, an efficient lady accustomed to carry everything before her, and, as Abby warmly approved of his decision, he felt that Alice would be ready. He saw Alice but briefly until Sunday evening, when he found her in a state of much agitation.

"I am really out of my mind," she said. "What do you think I have done?"

"I don't care, if you have n't changed your mind about Thursday."

"I ought to change my mind. Oh, George, I've no right--"

"That is settled," he interrupted decisively. "What have you done that is so dreadful?"

She produced a waist of dove-colored silk.

"Of course I could n't be married in black, you know, and this was to be my dress. See here."

The front of the waist was cut and slashed from top to bottom.

"I must have done it some time to-day. Oh, George, it's dreadful!"

For the first time in all the long, hard trial of their protracted engagement, she broke down and cried bitterly. He took her in his arms and soothed her. He told her he knew all about it, and that she was going to be entirely well; that he asked only that she would not worry, but would trust to him that she would come safely and happily out of all this trouble and mystery. She yielded to his persuasions, and, indeed, it was evident that she had hardly strength to resist him even had she not believed. She rested quietly on his shoulder and let him drift into a description of the route he had laid out, and in her interest she seemed to forget her trouble.

Before he left, she asked him what she could tell the dressmaker, who would suspect if she was given no reason for being called upon to make a new waist. He took the injured garment, went to the writing-table, and splashed ink on the cut portions.

"You showed it to me," he said gayly, "and I was so incredibly clumsy as to spill ink on it. Men are so stupid."

She laughed, and he went away feeling that he could gladly have throttled Jenny, could he but succeed in getting her in some other body than that belonging to his betrothed. If he was irritated by this experience, however, he had one to meet later which tried him still more. Abby, on letting him into the house on Tuesday, once more led him mysteriously into the reception-room.

"Miss Alice's been writing to herself, sir."

She held toward him a sealed and stamped envelope addressed to Alice. He took it half mechanically, and as he wondered how he was to circumvent this new trick of the maliciously ingenious Jenny, he noted that the handwriting was strangely different from Alice's usual style.

"Did she give you this to post?" he asked.

"It was with the other letters, and I noticed it and did n't mail it."

"I'll take it," he said. "You did perfectly right."

He wondered whether the prescience of Jenny would enable her to discover that he had destroyed her note to Alice; then he smiled to realize how he was coming to think of her as almost a supernatural demon, and reflected that nothing could be easier than for her to leave a paper where Alice must find it. A couple of days later he found his thought verified when Alice said to him:--

"George, who is Jenny?"

As she spoke, she put into his hand an unsigned note which said only, "George loves Jenny." The instant which was necessarily taken for its examination gave him a chance to steady himself.

"You wrote it yourself," he said quietly. "Don't you recognize your paper and your writing? It's a little strange, but sleep-writing always is."

"Then I am a somnambulist!" she exclaimed, with flushing cheek.

"There is nothing dreadful in that," he replied. "You have promised to trust me about your health. I know all about it, and if you write yourself forty notes, you are not to bother."

She sighed, and then bravely smiled.

"I'll try not to worry," she told him; "but I am a coward not to send you away. I wonder why I should have chosen Jenny as the name of your beloved."

"I'm sure I don't know; it's an ugly name enough," he responded, with a quick thought that he hoped Jenny could hear. "At any rate, I tell you with my whole heart that you are the only woman in the world for me."

He did not see Jenny again until the evening before his marriage. He fancied she was avoiding him, especially as once Alice sent down word that she was too busy to see him. He received, however, a note on Wednesday. The hand, so like that of Alice and yet so unmistakably different, affected him most unpleasantly, nor was he made more at ease by the contents.

"You think you got ahead of me by telling Alice she was a sleep-walker, did n't you! Well, I don't care, for I'm going to get rid of her for always when we are married. I did n't mean to be married in that nasty old gray dress, and I won't be, either. You see if I am. You are very unkind to me. You might remember that I'm a great deal fonder of you than she is, because I've got real feeling and she's a kind of graven image. You'll love your little wifie Jenny very dearly."

Dr. Carroll began to feel as if his own brain were whirling. He could not reply to the note, since he could hardly address a letter to Jenny somewhere inside the personality of Alice. He realized that a strain such as this would soon so tell on him that he would be unfit to care for Alice, and he made up his mind that the time had come for the strongest measures. To tell what the strongest measures were, however, was a problem which occupied him for the rest of the day, and about which he consulted the specialist. Even when, that evening, he walked down West Cedar Street, he could hardly be sure that he would carry out his plan. He was told at the door by Abby that Miss Alice had given strict orders against his being admitted.

"When did she do that?" he inquired.

"This forenoon, sir, when she gave me that note to send to you. She was queer, sir. She had a cab and went down town shopping, and came back with a big box. Then she had a nap, and to-night she's all right."

"I'll go up, Abby. It is necessary for me to see her."

As he came into the drawing-room Alice sprang up to meet him.

"I began to be afraid you would n't come," she said. "I've been queer to-day, I know; and there's a dressmaker's box in my room I never saw, and it's marked not to be opened till to-morrow. Oh, George, I am so frightened and miserable! I know I ought to send you away, and not let you marry me."

"Send me away, by all means, if it will make you feel any better. I shan't go. Sit down in this chair; I want to show you something."

She took the seat he indicated. He trimmed the fire and left the poker in the coals. Then from his pocket he took a ball of silvered glass as large as an orange, and began to toss it in his hands. She stared at it in silence for half a minute. Then the unmistakable laugh of Jenny rang out.

"So you really wanted to see me, did you?" she cried. "I knew you would some time."

"Yes," was his reply. "You may be sure I wanted to see you pretty badly before I'd take the risk of doing something that may be bad for Alice."

"Oh, it's still Alice, is it?" Jenny responded, pouting. "I hoped you'd got more sense by this time. Honest, now," she continued, leaning forward persuasively, "don't you think you'd like me best? The trouble is, you think you're tied to her, and you don't dare do what you want to. I'd hate to be such a coward!"