“About this time, as I was told afterwards, her mother died and, her sister and brother having married, she was left in charge of the house and of her father. It was soon evident that she had no particular qualifications for or interest in housekeeping, and a maiden sister of her father came to look after things. This did not necessarily darken the scene, but it did not seem to lighten it any. She liked this aunt well enough, although they had very little in common mentally. Marguerite went on as before. Parallel with all this, however, had run certain things which I have forgotten to mention. Her father had been growing more and more narrowly religious. As a matter of fact he had never had any sympathy for the shrewd mental development toward which her lack of beauty had driven her. Before she was twenty-three as I have already explained, her father had noted that she was indifferent to her church duties. She had to be urged to go to mass on Sunday, to confession and communion once a month. Also as he told me afterward, as something to be deplored, her reading had caused her to believe that her faith was by no means infallible, its ritual important; there were bigger and more interesting things in life. This had caused her father not only to mistrust but to detest the character of her reading, as well as her tendencies in general. From having some sympathy with her at first, as did her mother always, as the ugly duckling of the family, he had come to have a cold and stand-offish feeling. She was, as he saw it, an unnatural child. She did not obey him in respect to religion. He began, as I have hinted, to look into her books, those in the English tongue at least, and from a casual inspection came to feel that they were not fit books for any one to read. They were irreligious, immoral. They pictured life as it actually was, scenes and needs and gayeties and conflicts, which, whether they existed or not, were not supposed to exist; and most certainly they were not to be introduced into his home, her own starved disposition to the contrary notwithstanding. They conflicted with the natural chill and peace of his religion and temperament. He forbade her to read such stuff, to bring such books into his home. When he found some of them later he burned them. He also began to urge the claims of his religion more and more upon her.
“Reduced by this calamity and her financial dependence, which had always remained complete, she hid her books away and read them only outside or in the privacy of her locked room—but she read them. The subsequent discovery by him that she was still doing this, and his rage, caused her to think of leaving home. But she was without training, without any place to go, really. If she should go she would have to prepare herself for it by teaching, perhaps, and this she now decided to take up.
“About this time she began to develop those characteristics or aberrations which brought me into the case. As I have said, she began to manifest a most exaggerated and extraordinary interest in her facial appearance and physical well-being, an interest not at all borne out rationally by her looks. Much to her father’s and his sister’s astonishment, she began to paint and primp in front of her mirror nearly all day long. Lip sticks, rouge, eyebrow pencils, perfumes, rings, pins, combs, and what not else, were suddenly introduced—very expensive and disconcerting lingerie, for one thing.
“The family had always maintained a charge account at at least two of the larger stores of the city, and to these she had recently repaired, as it was discovered afterwards, and indulged herself, without a by-your-leave, in all these things. High-heeled slippers, bright-colored silk stockings, hats, blouses, gloves, furs, to say nothing of accentuated and even shocking street costumes, began to arrive in bundles. Since the father was out most of the day and the elderly aunt busy with household affairs, nothing much of all this was noted, until later she began to adorn herself in this finery and to walk the streets in it. And then the due bills, sixty days late; most disturbing but not to be avoided. And so came the storm.
“The father and aunt, who had been wondering where these things were coming from, became very active and opposed. For previous to this, especially in the period of her greatest depression, Marguerite had apparently dressed with no thought of anything, save a kind of resigned willingness to remain inconspicuous, as much as to say: ‘What difference does it make. No one is interested in me.’ Now, however, all this had gone—quite. She had supplied herself with hats so wide and ‘fancy’ or ‘fixy,’ as her father said, that they were a disgrace. And clothing so noticeable or ‘loud’—I forget his exact word—that any one anywhere would be ashamed of her. There were, as I myself saw when I was eventually called in as specialist in the case, too many flowers, too much lace, too many rings, pins and belts and gewgaws connected with all this, which neither he nor his sister was ever quite able to persuade her to lay aside. And the colors! Unless she were almost forcibly restrained, these were likely to be terrifying, even laughter-provoking, especially to those accustomed to think of unobtrusiveness as the first criterion of taste—a green or red or light blue broad-trimmed hat, for instance, with no such color of costume to harmonize with it. And, whether it became her or not, a white or tan or green dress in summertime, or one with too much red or too many bright colors in winter. And very tight, worn with a dashing manner, mayhap. Even high-heeled slippers and thin lacy dresses in bitter windy weather. And the perfumes with which she saturated herself were, as her father said, impossible—of a high rate of velocity, I presume.
“So arrayed, then, she would go forth, whenever she could contrive it, to attend a theatre, a lecture, a moving picture, or to walk the streets. And yet, strangely enough, and this was as curious a phase of the case as any, she never appeared to wish to thrust her personal charms, such as they were, on any one. On the contrary, as it developed, there had generated in her the sudden hallucination that she possessed so powerful and self-troubling a fascination for men that she was in danger of bewildering them, enticing them against themselves to their moral destruction, as well as bringing untold annoyance upon herself. A single glance, one look at her lovely face, and presto! they were enslaved. She needed but to walk, and lo! beauty—her beauty, dazzling, searing, destroying—was implied by every motion, gesture. No man, be he what he might, could withstand it. He turned, he stared, he dreamed, he followed her and sought to force his attention on her. Her father explained to me that when he met her on the street one day he was shocked to the point of collapse. A daughter of his so dressed, and on the street! With the assistance of the maiden sister a number of modifications was at once brought about. All charge accounts were cancelled. Dealers were informed that no purchases of hers would be honored unless with the previous consent of her father. The worst of her sartorial offenses were unobtrusively removed from her room and burnt or given away, and plainer and more becoming things substituted.
“But now, suddenly, there developed a new and equally interesting stage of the case. Debarred from dressing as she would, she began to imagine, as these two discovered, that she was being followed and admired and addressed and annoyed by men, and that at her very door. Eager and dangerous admirers lurked about the place. As the maiden aunt once informed me, having wormed her way into Marguerite’s confidence, she had been told that men ‘were wild’ about her and that go where she would, and conduct herself however modestly and inconspicuously, still they were inflamed.
“A little later both father and sister began to notice that on leaving the house or returning to it she would invariably pause, if going out, to look about first; if returning, to look back as though she were expecting to see some one outside whom she either did or did not wish to see. Not infrequently her comings-in were accompanied by something like flight, so great a need to escape some presumably dangerous or at least impetuous pursuer as to cause astonishment and even fear for her. There would be a feverish, fumbled insertion of the key from without, after which she would fairly jump in, at the same time looking back with a nervous, perturbed glance. Once in she would almost invariably pause and look back as though, having succeeded in eluding her pursuer, she was still interested to see what he was like or what he was doing, often going to the curtained windows of the front room to peer out. And to her then confidante, this same aunt, she explained on several occasions that she had ‘just been followed again’ all the way from Broadway or Central Park West or somewhere, sometimes by a most wonderful-looking gentleman, sometimes by a most loathsome brute. He had seen her somewhere and had pursued her to her very room. Yet, brute or gentleman, she was always interested to look back.
“When her father and aunt first noted this manifestation they had troubled to inquire into it, looking into the street or even going so far as to go to the door and look for the man, but there was no one, or perchance some passing pedestrian or neighbor who most certainly did not answer to the description of either handsome gentleman or brute. Then sensibly they began to gather that this was an illusion. But by now the thing had reached a stage where they began to feel genuine alarm. Guests of the family were accused by her of attempting to flirt with her, of making appealing remarks to her as they entered, and neighbors of known polarity and conventional rigidity of presuming to waylay her and forcing her to listen to their pleas. Thus her father and aunt became convinced that it was no longer safe for her to be at large. The family’s reputation was at stake; its record for freedom from insanity about to be questioned.
“In due time, therefore, I was sent for, and regardless of how much they dreaded a confession of hallucination here the confession was made to me. I was asked to say what if anything could be done for her, and if nothing, what was to be done with her. After that I was permitted to talk to Marguerite whom of course I had long known, but not as a specialist or as one called in for advice. Rather, I was presented to her as visiting again as of yore, having dropped in after a considerable absence. She seemed pleased to see me, only as I noticed on this, as on all subsequent occasions, she seemed to wish, first, not to stay long in my presence and more interesting still, as I soon noted, to wish to keep her face, and even her profile, averted from me, most especially her eyes and her glances. Anywhere, everywhere, save at me she looked, and always with the purpose, as I could see, of averting her glances.