Chapter XVIII: A Mystery Solved

MISS HOWARD was leaving the hospital when she met the doctor in charge, who invited her to his private parlor, as he wished to consult her in regard to her protégé Neddy Carter.

"I suppose you are acquainted with Mr. Regy,' he said. "He knew your wishes about the boy."

"I know him well by report," she answered, "but I have never seen him."

"Indeed! He is certainly the most eccentric individual I ever met. Benevolent and tender-hearted to an extreme, he seems to me like a man who has learned to mistrust humanity so generally that he hides every evidence of weakness as carefully as though it were a crime. Why, the good deeds that man does almost defy belief."

"I can easily credit your statement, doctor. In my visits to my poor friends, I am constantly hearing of him. I have known of his paying rent for a widow who had a sick daughter, month after month, and at the same time providing her with medicines and food. Yet he would talk to her about her untidyness till he made her cry; and then he would go away grumbling that all he could say did no good."

"I heard some facts concerning his eccentricities from a gentleman who owns the place next his in the country," continued the doctor, "which, if they had not come to me from the best authority I would not credit; but my friend vouches for the facts.

"Near them lives a woman whose husband was killed on the railroad. She has two young children, is pleasing in appearance, but wanting in force. They had always lived in comfort, on the wages her husband earned. When he was killed, she seemed crushed with grief. The neighbors made up a purse for her, and Mr. Regy, who had given generously, was requested to carry it to her. He learned that she owned her small cottage, to which a barn was attached, but had no money. He found she had no idea of earning her own living, but when he proposed that the children be sent to the asylum, and she go out to work in a mill or family, she cried herself into hysterics, calling him a cruel, hard-hearted brute for proposing it, wished he would go away and never come again.

"This is all my friend learned from Mr. Regy, who denounced her as ungrateful, unnatural as a mother, a pest to society. Her neighbors supposed, of course, he gave her up; but he never did, for a day. He went and berated her till he quite roused her into action; and finally she said she had been brought up on a farm, and knew how to make butter and cheese.

"'What good will that do you?' he asked her, with a sneer. 'Where are your cows, to make butter from?'"

"It was some time before she learned what a true friend he was; but two excellent milkers found their way to her barn, and, in time, pans and a churn. Then she complained that she was sure she never could sell her butter and pot-cheese and cried a whole day at the scolding he gave her. To make a long story short, he sold all her butter and cheese for her at the highest price, taking the basket on his own arm, and carrying it to the houses of the regular customers. A lady on Forty-Second Street told my friend that he brought butter there regularly every week for more than a year. She supposed it was from his own farm; and she has a pile of his receipts signed M. Regy. Once she remonstrated in person with him for his high prices, when he flew into such a rage that she never dared approach the subject again."

"Very, very strange," remarked Marion. "I have a friend who is extremely odd and uncouth in manner, but is always doing kindnesses for the poor. His name is Lambert. In many respects your description of Mr. Regy would answer for both."

"Do you refer to Mr. M. R. Lambert, a rich old bachelor? Why, I always thought him the most sarcastic, sour, crusty, old man in my acquaintance."

"Only in manner, doctor. He possesses the milk of human kindness in an uncommon degree. He is a second Mr. Regy. I am confident that any sum of money I would consent to ask him for in behalf of my protégés would not be refused; and all the time he would be grumbling that it was good money thrown away on a thankless class of vagrants."

"What is Mr. Lambert's full address," inquired the doctor, rising in an excited manner.

"M. R. Lambert are his initials. I have scores of his cards."

"Regy is, I believe, his middle name, and he uses it for a nom de plume. It can scarcely be credited that there would be two so similar in their eccentricities. I am almost sure of it."

"Then he must disguise himself: Mr. Lambert's hair is short, and only beginning to turn gray."

"A gray wig is easy to procure. What can be his motive?"

"It is difficult to conceive, Doctor. I have sometimes imagined that Mr. Lambert had a motive in so constantly visiting the poorer classes; but it is only a suspicion. I feel sure, if it were true, it would do honor to the kindness of the man. I told him the story of Neddy Carter's injury. He entered into it with great interest,- said he would get him a place in a printing-office and was almost angry that any one else had thought of purchasing artificial legs for the boy."

"Just what I wished to tell you from Mr. Regy. They are one and the same. Mr. Regy I shall continue to call him. See, here is the address he gave me."

"M. REGY, P.O. BOX 1009."

On her way home, Marion's thoughts were absorbed in trying to solve the motives which could govern such a man as Mr. Lambert, and induce him to figure in so many different characters; for the more she reflected the more she felt assured that he and Mr. Regy were the same. It might be that some early disappointment had thus twisted and gnarled a naturally lovely character. It might be that some one he had once loved and trusted had betrayed his confidence, and thus rendered him suspicious of all mankind. She resolved to watch him closely, and to endeavor to lighten his burden, whatever it might be.

Approaching her own door, she perceived a carriage standing there. With her thoughts still on the discovery she had made, she ran up the steps and encountered Eugene Cheriton struggling in the arms of James, who had been told to take him back to his mother in the parlor.

The boy readily yielded to her wish, and went upstairs with her, where she was both surprised and pleased to find not only Mrs. Cheriton but Mrs. Douglass awaiting her arrival.

The latter lady seemed to have taken out a new lease of life, since her return to the city. She acknowledged that she liked New York, and should leave it with reluctance.

"I hope you do not intend to leave it," urged Marion.

The lady glanced anxiously at her daughter before she answered. "Necessity may compel us to do so."

Mrs. Cheriton's countenance had no reflection of her mother's anxiety. She sat as usual, with her handsome head thrown a little back, her large, black eyes lustrous as ever, her lips wreathed in the same set smile; but there seemed no soul in her face. She appeared to have wrapped herself in a veil, which, in Marion's presence, had never been lifted for one instant.

Eugene, beautiful and restless as ever, ran here and there unrestrained, demanding the reason for this or that, preventing so effectually any attempt at conversation that Marion, who wished for an opportunity to talk with Mrs. Douglass, at last persuaded her to remain for the day, insisting that she herself had no engagements which would interfere with the pleasure of such a visit.

"While you are taking your siesta," she urged, "I can go to my pupils; and then we will have quiet chat, or drive in the park, as you prefer."

"This is just the opportunity I have long desired," remarked Mrs. Douglass, as after an hour's rest she had partaken of a nice lunch, and was seated in Marion's most comfortable chair. "I want to tell you some facts in my early life which will account for my being here in America."

"I shall feel honored by your confidence," returned Marion, gazing with affection into the still beautiful face, so like and yet unlike her daughter's. "Let me bring my crocheting, and we can be as cosey as we please."

"I told Mr. Angus some things about our history. He may have repeated them to you."

"Not a word, dear lady," bending over her work to conceal the rosy hue which colored her cheeks at the mention of his name.

"I told him, that, although Juliette and myself are living alone, we are neither of us widows,—at least we are not knowingly such,— but let me go back to early days.

"My father was an Englishman, and in his thirty-first year was sent to Spain as minister from the court of England. He was stationed at Madrid, where he met my mother, daughter of a nobleman in that city. The liking between them was mutual, and ended in marriage after an acquaintance of a few months. I have heard it said that seldom had a couple so distinguished for beauty, and every charm which makes life desirable, been witnessed in our proud old city.

"A year after their marriage a son was born, who was named Henreich, for my maternal grandfather. Three years later I appeared on the scene. As no other children followed, and we were the only grandchildren on the mother's side, you can easily imagine that our wishes, whims, and caprices ruled the entire household.

"Henreich, beautiful, bold, wilful, and unrestrained, became at last a terror to both parents and servants. To me only was he loving and gentle; but even when in a fury of rage, he would yield to my entreaties and tears. I need not say that he was my idol. I loved him as sister never loved brother before. What I suffered when, unable longer to endure the anxieties and terror which his bold daring continually occasioned my parents, he was sent to England to be educated, I have no words to describe.

"It could scarcely be expected that a high-spirited lad, accustomed to have his own way, would yield at once to authority; at least Henreich did not, and soon fell into such disgrace that he was expelled from the school. My uncle, to whose care he had been committed, wrote, resigning the charge. He reproached my father in the most unmeasured terms for neglecting to restrain the boy's temper, which had led him in an ungovernable fit of fury to attempt the life of one of his teachers, after which he fled, and nothing could be heard from him. Father went to England at once. I never knew what occurred there, but when he came home he said Henreich was dead to us, and forbade that his name ever be mentioned.

"You will see later why I dwell so long on these sad events. I mourned over my brother, and, not being allowed to speak of him, I brooded over his troubles until at last I forgot that he had been to blame for them. I even came to regard him as a hero, who had been unjustly treated.

"All the fond pride which would have been cherished for both of us was now lavished on me. I scarcely had a wish but it was gratified. With the exception of my trouble at the separation from my brother, I scarcely knew the meaning of the word, till in my fourteenth year I accompanied my parents to England, and they left me to finish my education.

"I was now in the same country where Henreich had been, but I never, except on one occasion, heard his name mentioned. I asked my uncle Douglass if he knew where my brother was, and was answered, with a terrible frown,—

"'No, I do not. He may be dead, for all I care.'

"I never inquired again.

"I was in England two years, and returned to Spain 'finished,' as my graduation from school with high honors was called. It was then I entered on a course of gayety, such as I had never even imagined. Though very young, my hand was asked frequently in marriage; but my heart was never touched till one evening, at a gay assembly, I met a young American, with whom I danced nearly all night. Only the third time we met he told me he loved me, and asked me to be his wife. I confessed that I returned his affection, and sent him to my father.

"But now, for the first time in my life, I met opposition. My father and mother, foolishly fond and proud of their only child, considered it quite beneath me to marry an untitled foreigner. They talked as though royalty itself might be honored by an alliance with me. This opposition naturally fixed my determination to marry the man of my choice, notwithstanding all obstacles. I instantly invested him with the whole catalogue of virtues and when, added to these, sadness on his part proved his undying attachment, I made a martyr of him,— a martyr dying for my love.

"Under these circumstances I gave my parents no rest. My lover offered letters to prove that he was worthy; and at length, worn out by my entreaties and my evident loss of bloom, father did secretly write to a friend in London, requesting him to ascertain from Mr. Post, banker in that city, in regard to his position and prospects.

"This it was easy to do through correspondents from the London Banking House, and the result was so satisfactory, both as to character and wealth, that my friend was allowed to renew his visits, which speedily terminated in my betrothal. I have often thought since, that, had my parents allowed the acquaintance to proceed at first without opposition, all would have ended differently; for as the intimacy advanced, even before our marriage, I discovered certain traits which greatly annoyed me.

"I had been accustomed to the expression of admiration, and enjoyed it; but I was faithful and true to my lover. He considered the looks and tones of flattery an insult both to me and to him. He constantly urged our immediate union; but to this my parents would not consent, except on one condition. Until I was twenty-one, my home must be with them. On my eighteenth birthday, with the reluctant consent of all my relatives, I became a wife. For a month or two I was very happy. I found my husband intelligent, with a cultivated mind, and a kind heart. We were alone in a villa belonging to my grandfather, and proved so sufficient for mutual happiness that I returned home with great regret. Oh, that we had never returned!"

Marion had been so absorbed in the recital that she had failed to notice the increasing pallor of the narrator. Struck with the intense sadness of the last tone, she started to find her visitor sinking back in her chair, her lips blanched, her hands trembling.

Throwing aside her work, she ran to her chamber for cologne, with which she bathed the forehead and hands of the lady, then rang for James to bring her a cup of fresh coffee.

She insisted that Mrs. Douglass should rest before she continued her interesting story; but the lady, with a sigh, urged,—

"I may never have so favorable an opportunity to finish. My sad tale is nearly ended, and I shall be greatly relieved when I have told my only American friend my folly and my punishment; so resume your work, and let me end the recital as briefly as possible."