Paul Patoff

by F. Marion Crawford

"Good-night, Miss Carvel."

"How careful you are of the formalities!" she said, laughing. "How two years change everything! It used to be 'Good-night, Hermy,' so short a time ago!"

"Good-night, Hermy," I said, laughing too, as she took my hand. "If you are old enough to be called Miss Carvel, I am old enough to call you Hermy still."

"Oh, I did not mean that," she said, and went away.

I sat a few minutes by the fire after she had gone, and then, fearing lest I should be disturbed by the professor or John Carvel, I too left the hall, and went to my own room, to think over the events of the day. I had learned so much that I was confused, and needed rest and leisure to reflect. That morning I had waked with a sensation of unsatisfied curiosity. All I had wanted to discover had been told me before bed-time, and more also; and now I was unpleasantly aware that this very curiosity was redoubled, and that, having been promoted from knowing nothing to knowing something, I felt I had only begun to guess how much there was to be known.

Oh, this interest in other people's business! How grand and beautiful and simple a thing it is to mind one's own affairs, and leave other people to mind what concerns them! And yet I defy the most indifferent man alive to let himself be put in my position, and not to feel curiosity; to be taken into a half confidence of the most intense interest, and not to desire exceedingly to be trusted with the remainder; to be asked to consider and give an opinion upon certain effects, and to be deliberately informed that he may never know the causes which led to the results he sees.

On mature reflection, what had struck me as most remarkable in connection with the whole matter was Hermione's simple, almost childlike guess,—that Madame Patoff was ashamed of something, and was willing to be considered insane, rather than let it be thought she was in possession of her faculties at the time when she did the deed, whatever it might be. That this was a conceivable hypothesis there was no manner of doubt, only I could hardly imagine what action, apart from the poor woman's attempt at suicide, could have been so serious as to persuade her to act insanity for the rest of her life. Surely John Carvel, with his great, kind heart, would not be unforgiving. But John Carvel might not have been concerned in the matter at all. He spoke of knowing the details and being unable to tell them to me, but he never said they concerned any one but Madame Patoff.

Strange that Hermione should not know, either. Whatever the details were, they were not fit for her young ears. It was strange, too, that she should have conceived an antipathy for the professor. He was a man who was generally popular, or who at least had the faculty of making himself acceptable when he chose; but it was perfectly evident that the scientist and the young girl disliked each other. There was more in it than appeared upon the surface. Innocent young girls do not suddenly contract violent prejudices against elderly and inoffensive men who do not weary them or annoy them in some way; still less do men of large intellect and experience take unreasoning and foolish dislikes to young and beautiful maidens. We know little of the hidden sympathies and antipathies of the human heart, but we know enough to say with certainty that in broad cases the average human being will not, without cause, act wholly in contradiction to the dictates of reason and the probabilities of human nature.

I lay awake long that night, and for many nights afterwards, trying to explain to myself these problems, and planning ways and means for discovering whether or not the beautiful old lady down-stairs was in her right mind, or was playing a shameful and wicked trick upon the man who sheltered her. But though other events followed each other with rapidity, it was long before I got at the truth and settled the question. Whether or not I was right in wishing to pursue the secret to its ultimate source and explanation, I leave you to judge. I will only say that, although I was at first impelled by what seems now a wretched and worthless curiosity, I found, as time went on, that there was such a multiplicity of interests at stake, that the complications were so singular and unexpected and the passions aroused so masterful and desperate, that, being in the fight, I had no choice but to fight it to the end. So I did my very best in helping those to whom I owed allegiance by all the laws of hospitality and gratitude, and in concentrating my whole strength and intelligence and activity in the discovery of an evil which I suspected from the first to be very great, but of which I was far from realizing the magnitude and extent.

You will forgive my thus speaking of myself, and this apology for my doings at this stage of my story; but I am aware that my motives hitherto may have appeared contemptible, and I am anxious to have you understand that when I found myself suddenly placed in what I regard as one of the most extraordinary situations of my life, I honestly put my hand out, and strove to become an agent for good in that strange series of events into which my poor curiosity had originally brought me. And having thus explained and expressed myself in concluding what I may regard as the first part of my story, I promise that I will not trouble you again, dear lady, with any unnecessary asseverations of my good faith, nor with any useless defense of my actions; conceiving that although I am responsible to you for the telling of this tale, I am answerable to many for the part I played in the circumstances here related; and that, on the other hand, though no one can find much fault with me for my doings, none but you will have occasion to criticise my mode of telling them.