Part 11

"Joy," I said, taking her hand and bringing her to the steps again, "I have been doing a good deal of thinking, and I have a theory that I'd like to prove. I'd rather not say anything about it till I'm sure of it, but when I am, I'll tell you. Have I your permission to use my own judgment, even to the point, perhaps, of eavesdropping?"

"Oh, is that necessary, do you think?" She clasped her hands nervously at the thought. "I don't know. It's all so mixed up in my mind. Who can settle the ethics of a case like this?"

"It may come to a fight between you and Edna, I think."

"Oh, that's what it _has_ come to!" she exclaimed. "That's what is killing me. Who is Edna? Where did she come from? Where does she belong? I must be fair--I want to be just to her, however she treats me. If I could only see her or hear her--if we could only communicate in some way, there might be an agreement. But she's like a ghost--a character in a book. Is she a different person, or only some phase of myself? Dare I come into open conflict with her? Why, I may be only destroying myself! I have to be _she_, don't I? Shan't I have to bear whatever I do to her? How do I know what danger may lie in any action I may take?"

"Yes," I replied, "I've thought of all that. I'm convinced that, as the doctor says, it's only a case of 'waking you up.' It's as if you were a somnambulist--walking in your sleep--dreaming half the time, irresponsibly. To wake you up may be uncomfortable for her. It may be like a surgical operation that she has to suffer, but when it's over you'll regain your health and reason, and, by the same token, so will she, and you'll forget all the pain. However, it hasn't come to that yet. What I want, now, is the right to explore, investigate, examine, experiment, perhaps, and then, when I have decided for myself, we can decide what course to adopt. If you're the White Cat, I'm going to be the Prince, and save you!"

She took my hand and pressed it affectionately.

"I trust you, Chester, and I'll agree to anything you think best. I feel as if I were being drawn into a maelstrom. Oh, what wouldn't I give to be just a normal, natural person, like every one else! Why am I tormented so? Yes, you _must_ help me, Prince!"

"Well, then, now we'll talk no more of it for a while. Let's forget it, and go and see the collies."

Her face cleared and she sprang up, tossed back her head with her characteristic gesture and went with me to the stable. The dogs were all out in the sun, and as soon as we appeared they surrounded us joyfully. Nokomis walked up to Joy in her stately way and offered a paw.

"Why, Nokomis!" Joy exclaimed, "how did you get this awful cut on your head! We must attend to it immediately! Chester, won't you go in and get me some water and some salve? Leah will give them to you."

When I came back she was sitting on the ground with the dog's head on her lap. Nokomis' deep brown, soft eyes looked up gratefully while the wound was washed and dressed. The tears actually came to my eyes at the sight. The scene of yesterday, when these two were arrayed against each other, seemed impossible. It should go without saying that I made no mention of it to Joy, for it was evident that she had no idea of Edna's treatment of the collies.

"Now, Nokomis," Joy said, getting up and shaking the dust off her skirt, "listen! I want you to go in the _house_ and get my _golf-jacket_, and _bring_ it to me." She spoke very distinctly, accenting the important words. Nokomis trotted to the kitchen door, barked sharply, and was admitted.

"I'm educating her," Joy explained to me. "I want to see how far I can get her to understand what I say. This is rather a test, for there are at least three related ideas, the house, the jacket and bringing it back. But she's extraordinary at picking up words; she has really quite a vocabulary. Of course, you hear a good many stories of the intelligence of collies, but I've never heard of their being systematically trained except in a utilitarian way. I'm experimenting with more and more complex ideas. I hate the ordinary dog tricks; they're undignified and unworthy. I'm tremendously interested in animal psychology. Queer, isn't it, when I can't even handle my own!"

Nokomis appeared, in a distressed frame of mind, and whined.

"Well, Noko, what's the matter! Can't you find it?"

Nokomis barked, ran a few steps towards the house, and returned.

"All right, we'll go in and see what's the matter."

So we followed her into the house. The red golf-coat that Edna had worn yesterday was hanging upon a hat-stand in the hall. Nokomis went to it, shook it with her teeth, turned round and whined. It was as near talking as a dog could do.

"Oh, I see," said Joy. "You got the house and the coat all right, but you thought I meant just to come back, did you? No, _bring_, Nokomis, _bring, bring, bring_!" As she spoke, she placed the jacket in Nokomis' teeth and showed her what was meant. "Next time you'll know, won't you?" she said.

"Now we'll try your number lesson," Joy said as we went back to the stable. She and I sat down on a watering-trough, while Nokomis waited, her head tipped, her ears straight up, with the soft silky tips drooping like tassels. Her sloping eyes were quick and canny.

"One!" said Joy.

A single bark from Nokomis.

"Two!"

Correct, again.

"Three!"

Still correct.

"Four!"

Nokomis was perfect.

"Five!"

Four barks, then, after a pause, another.

"Six!"

This was too much for the collie. She barked, I think, eight times, having quite lost her head.

"Pretty good, isn't it?" said Joy, as I congratulated Nokomis--on the neck, at the spot dogs love. "This is straight culture, you know, no trick. I don't give her any sign, as they do stage dogs. I'm just trying to see how far she can go. I've begun, too, to teach her colors, but I haven't succeeded very well."

"It's immensely interesting," I said. "I wonder why collies are so much more intelligent than other dogs."

"They aren't. Caniches are fully as bright, but collies have been trained for generations with the sheep, and it has raised the level of perception. That's why I try to keep up their education, for of course they'll deteriorate if they're only bred for exhibition purposes. But the training of the shepherds isn't everything. My theory is that the reason why a collie is quicker is because his eyes are trained. Most dogs, you know, won't use their eyes if they can use their noses or their ears. Hunting dogs will run past quarry that's in plain sight, following a scent without looking. A collie has to watch his sheep sharply, and his eye is developed. Their ears have been trained, too, by the shepherds."

"How long would Nokomis keep this up, obeying your orders?"

Nokomis, who had been resting inattentively, looked up immediately.

"As long as I asked her to--wouldn't you, old girl?" Joy rubbed the dog's neck with her toe. "A dog's chief joy is to be in some way, in as many ways as possible, a part of his master. I never knew Nokomis to tire of doing anything that kept up and accented that relation. It is the mainspring of a good dog's life--it accounts for a dog's devotion. It's trite enough to say, but there is no love on earth so sure as a dog's love. It's unending! it's unchangeable!"

Did Nokomis know, as she watched her mistress there, of that strange soul that stole into the girl's form at night? Did she answer for herself instinctively, with an animal's secret prescience, the question that Joy had asked in anguish--"Who is Edna?" The thought came into my mind as I heard Joy's words, pathetic in their unconsciousness of how the love of Nokomis waxed and waned with her own obsession. Surely Nokomis was loyal and true. Surely she had never betrayed her mistress' confidence. Perhaps the collie alone knew the secret of the White Cat.

We took Nokomis with us, and walked over the hill as we had walked the day before. "We," I say, for, had any spectator been on the hillside to watch us pass on both days he could have seen no difference in the couple. With me was the same gracile creature abounding with life and beauty, the same small, brown-haired, brown-eyed woman with the flower-like hands.

But I need not say how different she was in talk, in gesture, in her mental attitude toward me. Yet, though I have shown Joy as intense, even as melancholy, this was not her natural quality. She could be as gay and debonair as Edna, but it was vivacity of a different key. Her laugh was as light and ringing, but it was provoked by other occasions. Her sallies were as joyous, but they sparkled with wit and comprehension. She was as frank, but she was keen as well. So it was not so much the sunny-dewy as against the quiet-shadowy, as it was April rivaled by June.

After luncheon with Leah, we went up to Joy's private sitting-room, or study, as she called it--and it was really that, as I saw by the books which lined its walls. She had indeed time enough to read them! It was a woman's room, but it was expressive of virility as well as taste. Like most of the other rooms, except the sleeping chambers and the dining-room, it was paneled to the ceiling--Joy confessed that she disliked plaster even when covered with paper. The wood here was a beautifully grained poplar and the general air of lightness and coolness was helped by the high, irregular, ceiled roof whose beams and ties stretched across from wall to wall. The ship-like bay-window which I had noticed from the outside was a nest of cushions of all colors of the rainbow--I speak literally--varying from violet, through blue, green, yellow and orange to red and purple again. There was a great table here where I saw a large microscope and case of slides. An upright piano stood in a corner. I noticed also a typewriter, and a camera on a tripod. The place had an air of work and study quite different from Edna's clutter and disorder. It showed me in a glance how it had been possible for her to live alone, so far away from civilization.

Here we spent the afternoon discussing her condition and prospects. She asked me much about Edna, for, though she had always been kept informed of Edna's actions by Leah, and had attained by this time a pretty good comprehension of her alternate's character, she was much interested in my opinions and conclusions, and I was able to cast new lights upon this second self of hers which gave her a new point of view. I could not yet bring myself to speak of Edna's coquetries, for of this she had no suspicion. There had been few visitors to Midmeadows since she had lived there, only the doctor and her lawyer, I believe; for she had, of late years, become more and more retiring as Edna's appearances had become more frequent.

Whatever indiscretions Edna had permitted herself with the doctor had been well concealed, as they were so much alone. I myself would never have suspected anything, had she not been free enough with me to set me on the watch. And all this sort of thing, too, had evidently been only of recent growth--it was coincident with Edna's increasing "strength." I don't think that either Leah or I had, for an instant, any compunction on Edna's account against informing Joy of what might be going on. We were loyal to Joy alone--it seemed unquestionable that she was the rightful sovereign self, and that the other was an interloper--our devotion did not hesitate at any violation of confidence incident to such a revelation. But we wanted to spare Joy's feelings as long as possible. For, under whatever spell, it was still Miss Fielding whose

## actions we must criticize. Irresponsible as she was, she could hardly

bear to think of herself as appearing in such a light, knowing what the picture must be in our eyes, and her own. Indeed, it takes a more than ordinary amount of philosophy to know that one has shown a lack of taste or delicacy even under the effects of an anesthetic or an intoxicant, without suffering from mortification and shame. Her embarrassment would be quite as poignant as her sensibility was exquisite.

Joy had kept a diagram of her changes, and she got it out from her desk to show me. The first appearance of No. 2 had occurred when she was about fourteen years old; the second a month or so later, and there had been this usual interval until she was about twenty-one. From that time on, the appearance of No. 2 had increased in frequency, until for the last few years it had settled into a fairly regular average of two days in every week. There had been in her early childhood, beginning when she was seven years old, some curious abnormal tendencies that had not been recorded; it seemed, therefore, that her development was progressing, roughly, in seven-year cycles.

If that were so, the present daily alternation of personalities seemed to predict a gradual overthrow of her normal self, the original No. 1. The more I discussed it with her, however, the surer I was that this sudden access of strength on the part of Edna was chiefly attributable to the doctor's influence. I did not say so in so many words to Joy, for I wanted first to prepare my plan, but there was no doubt, in my mind, that whatever was his object in overthrowing Joy's control, and making Edna paramount, my coming had somewhat interfered with his experiments, and he had consequently increased his energy in a determination to succeed as soon as possible in his attempt at the replacement. How terrible this slow eclipse of her soul must be to Joy, I knew well enough.

It is hardly to be wondered at, therefore, that, thrown into intimate contact with so beautiful and so rare a character, I should bend all my will and powers toward helping her in her misfortune. I had decided already to make any sacrifice, and devote all my time to the task. Nor is it to be wondered at, I think, that, so devoting myself to her cause and being so privileged to study her closely, I should, by this time, have fallen deeply in love with her. Her very desperation, her hopeless, futile struggle against something outside any ordinary human experience drew me to her with an ever-increasing fondness. Her reliance on my aid strengthened the bond day by day, hour by hour. How much the doctor's interest in her had given me the additional fillip of jealousy, I would not care to say.

We came back to the incident of the gold chain more than once. What did that phenomenon mean? It was almost the first, and certainly the strongest and clearest symptom of a common share in Edna's life that Joy had ever had. Was it, then, Joy's dim vision of Edna's experience, or was it more sinister and significant, an evidence of Edna's ability to project herself into Joy's waking life? Did Edna, perhaps, have a coexistent, subconscious life? That it meant something, that it marked some new phase in this last cycle of development, we were both sure.

So we talked and talked that afternoon and through dinner. In the evening, exhausted with speculation, we gave it all up. Joy played her violin for me for an hour or so, and we lost all thought of the problem in our common enjoyment of her music. Then we started a game of chess, which, hard fought, lasted till bed-time.

Before we retired, Joy went out to see the dogs, and on returning she brought in Nokomis.

"I think I'll let her sleep in my room to-night, Leah, she's got such a poor, sore head," she remarked.

Leah looked at me as if to ask my help or advice.

"Aren't you afraid that--Edna may object in the morning, if she should be there?" I asked.

Instantly her suspicions were aroused. "Object to Nokomis! Dear old Nokomis, how could she!"

Nokomis whined anxiously, stretched her forelegs and waited.

I did not know what to say. Joy knew, of course, that Edna was not

## particularly fond of the collies, but she had no idea of the extent of

her dislike. There was, I feared, some danger if, after what had happened yesterday, Edna and Nokomis found themselves together in the same room. Still, I wished to spare Joy, as long as possible, knowledge that would, I was sure, make her extremely sad. As Leah had tacitly left it for me to decide, I said:

"Leah, can't you call Nokomis out early in the morning, before Miss Fielding awakes--in case----"

"Yes, I think it will be all right," she replied.

If Joy suspected anything definite in this quick exchange of glances she did not inquire. She turned to bid me good night, and went up-stairs, Nokomis with her.

*V*

I was aroused in the night by a growling in Miss Fielding's room. Wide awake in an instant, I sat up in bed and listened intently, but I had not had time to get up before I heard a short, angry yelp, and then Nokomis' footsteps pattering out of the room and going down-stairs in hasty jumps. I struck a match and looked at my watch. It was a quarter past two o'clock. I knew well enough, then, that Edna would take Miss Fielding's place in the morning. It was much as if a ghost had entered the house and lurked in the darkness. For a long time I was too agitated to sleep.

The next day was cool and cloudy. I found a fire burning in the library when I went down-stairs and Leah was there, putting the room to rights. She looked up at me gratefully, as if it were a consolation to her to have some one to depend upon.

Leah had, by this time, begun to treat me quite as if I were her master. I had always tried to meet her upon terms which would prove that I had no prejudice on account of her color, but that very attitude of mine seemed to make her more willing to do me unlooked-for service. I am told that this is not, as a rule, true of negroes, and the Southerners, who by sentiment and tradition hold themselves as superior in virtue of their birth, keep the respect of colored folk and receive a willing acceptation of subservience that no Northerner, capable of no such race feeling, can achieve. That Leah's gratitude for my consideration did express itself in such devotion proves, perhaps, only that she was intrinsically finer--that she was, as I have already expressed it, ahead of her time. There was much pathos in it, nevertheless, for I was quite ready to regard her as a social, as she was, undoubtedly, a moral equal.

"Did you hear Nokomis?" she asked immediately.

"I should say! Didn't it awaken Miss Fielding?"

"Oh, no, she sleeps heavily at these times. But it awakened me--wasn't it horrible! It was Miss Edna coming in! Think of it!"

"How is she this morning?"

"Fretful and irritable--to me, at least. She asked for you, and she has been telephoning to the doctor again. Oh, I wish you might prevent that. What does she do it for, Mr. Castle?"

"He is probably making her do it," I replied. "You see, he has attained a sort of power over her, I suspect. Just how much, we must try to find out. Have you any idea what she said?"

"No; she sent me out of the room. But I think he'll probably be down to-day. How I dread it! Why does he come here so often?"

"He's coming down, Leah, because he realizes that we've begun to fight him. It will be open war, this time, I expect. We don't like each other, and I strongly suspect that by to-night the cards will be shown down."

"He's trying to get rid of me!" she said hopelessly, going on with her dusting.

"Well, he'll have to beat me there, first," I said. "So long as Edna doesn't have two days running I think I can keep you here safely. But we must be ready for the worst. Is there any place near here where you could stay, if necessary, for a day or so?"

She reminded me of the old cabin a little way down the road, and thought it might be fitted up well enough. She wouldn't be afraid to stay there alone, and could probably manage her meals somehow, through King, who was always ready to help her.

"Have you a revolver?" I asked.

"Miss Joy has one, and I can easily get it."

"It might be well to have it at hand," I suggested. "I'd advise you to ask Uncle Jerdon to clean up the cabin for you. And be sure that the collies are fastened up, too, won't you? Where's Nokomis now?"

"Nokomis came down-stairs and spent the rest of the night in the kitchen. When King opened the door, she went out. She'll not come back, I think, till Miss Joy's herself again."

"That will be to-morrow, I trust. But by that time we must have something definite to report to her. To-day, if possible, I am going to find out exactly what the doctor is up to. I shall hold back for no scruples; I'll listen, I'll lie and I'll cheat to find out his game and how to outwit him!"

"I'll do anything you say, too, Mr. Castle. I'm willing to take the same pledge." This was, for her, the consummate sacrifice. She would, I am sure, have given her honor, if necessary, to save her mistress.