



Produced by Al Haines









[Frontispiece: "He had a sudden flashing sense of being in a net that
was softly tightening."]




THE

STRANGE CASES OF

DR. STANCHON


BY

JOSEPHINE DASKAM BACON


AUTHOR OF

"THE INHERITANCE," "THE MEMOIRS OF A BABY,"

"THE MADNESS OF PHILIP," ETC.




NEW YORK AND LONDON

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1913




COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY

JOSEPHINE DASKAM BACON

  Copyright, 1908, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
  Copyright, 1909, 1910, by Harper and Brothers.
  Copyright, 1911, 1913, by the Crowell Publishing Company.
  Copyright, 1911, by the Curtis Publishing Company.


Printed in the United States of America




TO

M. A. T.

WHO WATCHED MANY OF

THESE STORIES IN THE MAKING

               J. D. B.




CONTENTS


  THE KEY
  THE CHILDREN
  THE CRYSTAL
  THE GOSPEL
  THE GYPSY
  THE WARNING
  THE LEGACY
  THE MIRACLE
  THE UNBURIED
  THE ORACLES




THE KEY

The young doctor stamped vehemently up the marble steps, to warm his
feet, and once in the warm, flower-scented halls, let a little shiver
escape him.  The butler was new--he was always new, the doctor
thought--and actually didn't know him.

"Mrs. Allen is at bridge, sir, with a party: she asks to be excused,"
he began mechanically.

(_"That's good!" Stanchon felt tempted to say, "and I hope the girls
are out, too!"_)  As if in answer to this indiscretion, the new butler
droned on:

"Miss Alida is at her riding-lesson and Miss Suzanne is--is engaged----"

(_"Now, what particular infernal idiocy is Suzanne at, I wonder?"
Stanchon pondered, still smiling lightly at the butler and warming
himself at every breath._)

"Mr. Edmund is--I think he could be found, sir," the voice went on.

(_"I don't doubt it," Stanchon agreed mentally, "at the side board, no
doubt; a nice time of day for a lad of twenty to be hanging about the
house!"_)

But all he said was:

"I am the doctor.  I called to see Miss Mary."

"Oh!"  Even this new butler assumed a look of burdened intelligence; he
leaned toward the visitor, "Oh, yes, sir--Miss Mary.  I understood that
it wouldn't be possible for Miss Mary to see anybody, sir, but I
suppose, the doctor----"

"Certainly," said Stanchon curtly.  "Please send word to her nurse that
I am here."

"Yes, sir," but the man hesitated, even as he took the hat held out to
him, "yes, sir, but--but... it isn't Dr. Jarvyse, is it, sir?"

A slow, dark red spread over Stanchon's forehead.

(_"So they've sent for Jarvyse--well, I might have known.  Nice,
tactful crowd, aren't they!"_)

He scowled slightly and set his jaw.

"No, I'm Dr. Stanchon," he said.  "Dr. Jarvyse is coming later, I
suppose.  Kindly let Miss Jessop know that I am here, will you?  I
haven't much time."

The man sped swiftly down the hall, after depositing his hatless charge
in a blue satin reception-room, and Stanchon stared, unseeing, at the
old Chinese panels and ivory figures that dotted its walls and tables.
The strong odour of freesias and paper-narcissus hung heavy in the
room; the roar of the great, dirty, cold city was utterly shut away and
a scented silence, costly and blue and drowsy, held everything.

Presently the nurse stood before him, smiling, and he saw that her
usual modish house dress was changed for the regulation white duck and
peaked cap of her profession.

"What's all this?" he asked, and she shrugged her broad shoulders.

"She told me to put it on to-day.  'You're really a nurse, you know,
Miss Jessop,' she said, 'and if I require one, it might as well be
known.'  Of course, I had it here, so I got it right out.  Poor Miss
Mary!"

"I see they've sent for Jarvyse?"

She nodded uncomfortably.

"Then it's all over but the shouting, I suppose?"  Again she shrugged.
The fatalism of her training spoke in that shrug, and the necessity for
taking everything as it comes--since everything is bound to come!

"H'm..." he meditated deeply, and all the youth went out of his face,
suddenly: he might have been forty-five or fifty.  At such times the
nurses and the other doctors always watched him eagerly; it was
supposed that it was then that those uncanny intuitions came to him,
that almost clairvoyant penetration of the diseased minds that were his
chosen study.

"How is she?" he asked abruptly.

"Oh, very much the same, doctor.  I can't see much difference."

"But you see a little?"

She moved uncomfortably.

"I don't say that... it's nothing she says or does--but--sometimes I
think she's a little more--a little less..."

"A little less normal?"

She rested, relieved.

"Yes, just that."

Across the broad halls came a wave of sudden sound: movement of
drapery, faint clashes of metallic substances and glass, broken
feminine cries and light, breathy laughter.  A difference in the air
became noticeable, new perfumes floated in to the little blue room,
perfumes and the odour of expensive, warm fur.

--"You don't mean to say that you discard from a strong suit--always?"

"My dear, I had nothing but that queen--nothing!"

--"And that's why, as Elwell says...."

--"And so he absolutely refuses to play with women!"

Evidently a door had been opened, somewhere.  The next moment brought a
new whiff of cold, fresh air and the sound of a motor, then silence
again, sudden and profound, from the street-side.  A deep, almost
dramatic voice silenced the confused babble.

"My dear, I'm frightfully sorry, but I simply could _not_ manage to get
here before!  Why weren't any of you at the lecture?  _Moyen Age_
house-furniture and decoration--terribly interesting.  It's a shame to
miss a thing like that.  Is my table all made up?  Never mind, I can
cut in any time.  Yes, Mrs. Allen, I know, but really, you ought not to
neglect the intellectual side, entirely, you know!"

The door closed instantly, and again they stood alone in the heavy
silence.  It was as if a curtain had been lifted swiftly on some
bustling, high-lighted scene and dropped as swiftly.  Only a strong,
heady scent floated in on them, troubling, suggestive, complicated.

"What is that?" Stanchon asked, sniffing.

"Oh, one of those new Russian perfumes," the nurse said.  "I hate them."

"Russian?" he looked puzzled.

"Don't you know it's a Russian season?" she instructed him.  "Dancers
and music and hats--those high fur ones--and perfumes?  And all that
Byzantine embroidery?  You must have noticed!"

"Oh!"  He considered thoughtfully.  "I _had_ noticed the perfumes.  But
I didn't know why it was....  Well, am I to see Miss Mary?"

"I don't know why not, doctor," she said.  "She always likes to see
you.  And I suppose you'll consult with Dr. Jarvyse, won't you?"

"I suppose so," he agreed, "though, of course, nobody's asked me.  Is
she going out, this weather?"

"No: I wish she would.  She says it tires her too much.  It's a pity
she hates the South so."

They walked to the tiny tapestried lift, beyond the curve of the great
stairs, and she pressed the ivory button that sent them up.  At the
fourth floor the car settled lightly and they stepped out.

"She's not speaking much," the nurse warned him, "but of course she
may, for you.  Very gloomy, for two days, she's been."

She knocked lightly at a door and entered without waiting.  The room
was very light, with bowls of cut flowers everywhere and a pair of
green love-birds billing eternally on a brass standard: they chirped
softly now and then.  A miniature grand piano filled one corner, and
the light fell richly on the tooled leather of low book-cases, and
slipped into reflected pools of violet, green and blood-red on the
polished floor.  A great tiger skin stretched in front of a massive,
claw-legged davenport, and in the corner of it, away from the cheerful,
crackling fire, a black-haired woman sat, tense and silent, her eyes
fixed in a brooding stare.  She was all in delicate, cunningly mingled
tints of mauve, violet and lavender; near her neck tiny diamond points
winked; magnificent emeralds edged with diamonds lay like green stains
on her long white hands.  In her dark immobility, among the rich, clear
objects scattered so artfully about the sun-lighted chamber, she had a
marvellous effect of being the chief figure in some modern French
artist's impressionistic "interior."  She gave a distinct sense of
having been bathed and dried, scented and curled, dressed--and
abandoned there, between the love-birds and the polished piano: a large
gold frame about the room would have supplied the one note lacking.

"Well, Miss Mary, and how goes it?" Dr. Stanchon said, sitting beside
her and taking her hand easily, since she failed to notice his own
outstretched.

She lifted her eyes slightly to his, moved her lips, then sighed a
little and dropped her lids.  She might have been a young-looking woman
of forty, or a girl of twenty-five who had been long ill or distressed.

"Come, now, Miss Mary, I hear you've given me up--wasn't I high priced
enough for you?  Because I can always accommodate, you know, in that
direction," Stanchon went on persuasively.

Again she raised her eyes, swallowed, appeared to overcome an almost
unconquerable lethargy of spirit, and spoke.

"It's no use, doctor, all that.  I've given up.  It's all one to me,
now.  Don't bother about me."

Stanchon looked genuinely concerned.  He had worked hard over this
case, and it cut his pride to have the great specialist, with his
monotonous inflexible system, summoned against his express wish.  That
meant they were all tired, disgusted, sick of the whole business.  They
were determined to be rid of her.

"I wish you wouldn't look at it that way, Miss Mary," he said gently.
"I don't believe you need give up--if you'll only make an effort.  But
it's fatal to give 'way: I've always told you that."

"Yes.  You always told me that.  You were always open and fair," she
said wearily, "but now you see it is fatal, for I _have_ given 'way.
Please go," she added nervously.  "I feel more like crying.  Ask him to
go, Miss Jessop..."

Her voice grew peevish and uncontrolled, and he bowed slightly and left
her.  It was too bad, but there was nothing to do.  Once or twice in
his brilliant career he had felt that same heavy hopelessness,
realized, to his disgust, that the patient's dull misery was creeping
over him, too, and that he had no power to help.

"Oh, well, you can't win out all the time," he said to himself
philosophically, "and it isn't as if she wouldn't have every comfort.
Old Jarvyse looks after them well: I'll say that for him."

The new butler met him as the lift reached the drawing-room floor.

"Mr. Edmund would like to see you a moment, sir," he murmured.
"He's--he's in the dining-room, doctor."

Stanchon turned abruptly and plunged into the great, dim leather-hung
apartment.  He always felt as if he were entering into some vast cave
under the sea, when he crossed the threshold of this room, and the
peculiar odour of the leather always caught at his breath and choked
him for a moment.  Edmund looked sulkier and more futile than usual,
even, and the cigarette that dropped from his trimmed and polished hand
had a positively insolent angle.

"Oh!  How do!" he said discontentedly.  "Been upstairs, I hear?"

"Yes," Stanchon answered briefly.

"Well,... how about it?"

"I'm sorry to say your aunt is a little worse to-day; it may be,
probably is, nothing but a passing phase----"

"Ah, go on!" Edmund burst out.  "Phase, nothing!  She's as dippy as
they make 'em, Stanchon, and I'm through with it!"

The older man looked his disgust, but Edmund scowled and went on.

"After day before yesterday afternoon, I told Suzanne I'd come to the
end of my rope, and I meant it.  I suppose you heard about it?"

"No."

"Oh, Miss Jessop knows.  Upsetting a whole luncheon, and one the girls
had worked over, too, I can tell you!  Why, they had three reporters on
their knees to hear about that luncheon!"

"Really?" Stanchon inquired politely.

"Yes.  But Alida wouldn't let mother say a word.  And that was all
right, too.  And then what does Aunt Mary do but say she's coming?  And
mother weakened and said we'd have to let her, because either she is
all right or she isn't, and according to you, we're not to admit she
isn't--yet.  So she comes, and what does she do but insult two of the
biggest swells there, right to their face!  And when Suzanne tried to
carry it off, she just turns stubborn and never opens her mouth again.
Queered the whole thing.  Broke the women all up.  Suzanne says, never
again!  And I'm with her.  I had Jarvyse called in and he's going to
make his final decision today.  Of course, if he wants to consult,
we'll be glad----"

"Dr. Jarvyse and I will settle all that, thanks," Stanchon interrupted
coldly.  "I regret that your sisters should have been annoyed, but as I
explained to your mother, inconveniences of this sort would be bound to
occur, and the only question was----"

"The only question is," Edmund blustered, "are we to be queered in New
York for good by a woman who ought to have been shut up long ago!  It's
up to me, now, as the man of the house, and I say, no."

He dabbed his cigarette viciously into a wet ring on the silver tray
beside him and filled a tiny glass from a decanter; his hand shook.

Stanchon's mounting wrath subsided.  The boy became pathetic to him;
behind his dapper morning clothes, his intricate studs and fobs and
rings, his reedy self-confidence, the physician saw the faint, grisly
shadow of a sickly middle-age, a warped and wasted maturity.

"I'm sorry for you all," he said kindly.  "Don't think I don't
appreciate the strain... your mother has tried her best, I'm sure.
And--and go slow on those cigarettes, Allen, why don't you?  They won't
help that cough, you know.  And you told me you'd cut out the Scotch."

"Oh, that's all right," Edmund assured him.  "I was seasoned in the
cradle, doc!  Remember the old man's cigars?"

Stanchon put on his gloves.

"Your father was a very strong man," he said quietly, "and a hard
worker.  And I've already reminded you that he didn't inhale.  And for
more years than you've lived, Allen, he worked out of doors.  I don't
want to nag at you, but just give it a thought now and then.  And let
me know if I can do anything for you, ever.  My regards to your
sisters."

As he paused at the curb, a short man in heavy motoring furs stumbled
out of a luxurious landaulet and would have gone down on the
treacherous pavement without Stanchon's quick arm.

"All right, doctor, all right," he smiled, as he braced himself for the
little man's weight.  "Glad I was here.  I've just left Mary--she's
getting a little unmanageable, I hear."

"Yes, yes," the little man panted, "she'll do better out of the family.
Yes, yes.  They often do, you know.  Position's perfectly anomalous
here, you know--constant friction."

"I see," said Stanchon.  "Let me walk up to the door with you--I've
practiced on the steps, once today.  You make it..."

"Oh, clear paranoia," Jarvyse finished the sentence promptly.  "They go
right along, you know.  Perfectly typical.  Good days--yes.  Of course.
Everybody encouraged.  Come to a ladies' luncheon--fat in the fire
directly.  No keeping servants, you know.  All that sort of thing.
Ever show you my card-catalogue of women between thirty-eight and
thirty-nine?  No?  Ask me some day."

The younger man pressed the electric button and turned the bronze knob
of the outer door, wrought and decorated like some great public tomb.

"Thanks, I'd be interested," he said.

"You knew the brother, didn't you?" Jarvyse went on, breathing easier
in the warmth of the vestibule.