since in my early part of spectator I would be hidden anyway and the succor was omitted as irrelevant to the therapeutic purpose. Midbin himself did nothing but tend the camera.
Any tinugraph mill would have snorted at our final product and certainly no tinugraph lyceum would have condescended to show it. After some hesitation Midbin had decided not to make a phonoto, feeling the use of sound would add no value and considerable expense, so the film didn't even have this feature to recommend it. Fortunately for whatever involuntary professional pride was involved, no one was present at the first showing but the girl and me, Ace to work the magic lantern, and Midbin.
In the darkened room the pictures on the screen gave— after the first minutes—such an astonishing illusion that when one of the horsemen rode toward the camera we all reflexively shrank back. Despite its amateurishness the tinugraph seemed an artistic success to us, but it was no triumph in justifying its existence. The girl reacted no differently than she had toward the drawings; if anything her response was less satisfactory. The inarticulate noises ran the same scale from dismay to terror; nothing new was added. Nevertheless Midbin, his adam's apple working joyously up and down, slapped Ace and me on the back, predicting he'd have her talking like a politician before the year was out.
I suppose the process was imperceptible; certainly there was no discernible difference between one showing and the next. The boring routine continued day after day, and so absolute was Midbin's confidence that we were not too astonished after some weeks when, at the moment “Don Jaime” folded in simulated death, she fainted and remained unconscious for some time.
After this we expected—at least Ace and I did, Midbin only rubbed his palms together—that the constraint on her tongue would be suddenly and entirely lifted. It wasn't, but a few showings later, at the same crucial point, she screamed. It was a genuine scream, clear and piercing, bearing small resemblance to the strangling noises we were accustomed to. Midbin had been vindicated; no mute could have voiced that full, shrill cry.
Pursuing another of his theories, he soon gave up the idea of helping her express the words in her mind in Spanish. Instead he concentrated on teaching her English. His method was primitive, consisting of pointing solemnly to objects and repeating their names in an artificial monotone.
“She'll have an odd way of speaking,” remarked Ace; “all nouns, singular nouns at that, said with a mouthful of pebbles. I can just imagine the happy day: 'Man chair wall girl floor,' and you bubbling back, 'Carpet ceiling earth grass.'
“I'll supply the verbs as needed,” said Midbin; “first things first.”
She must have been paying at least as much attention to our conversation as to his instruction for, unexpectedly, one day she pointed to me and said quite clearly, “Hodge… Hodge…”
I was discomposed, but not with the same vexation I had felt at her habit of seeking me out and following me around. There was a faint, bashful pleasure, and a feeling of gratitude for such steadfastness.
She must have had some grounding in English, for while she utilized the nouns Midbin had supplied, she soon added, tentatively and questioningly, a verb or adjective here and there. “I… walk… ?” Ace's fear of her acquiring Midbin's dead inflection was groundless; her voice was low and charmingly modulated; we were enchanted listening to her elementary groping among words.
Conversation or questioning was as yet impossible. Midbin's “What is your name?” brought forth no response save a puzzled look and a momentary sinking back into dullness. But several weeks later she touched her breast and said shyly, “Catalina.”
Her memory, then, was not impaired, at least not totally. There was no way of telling yet what she remembered and what self-protection had forced her to forget, for direct questions seldom brought satisfactory answers at this stage. Facts concerning herself she gave out sporadically and without relation to our curiosity.
Her name was Catalina Garcia; she was the much younger sister of Doa Maria Escobar, with whom she lived. So far as she knew she had no other relatives. She did not want to go back to school; they had taught her to sew, they had been kind, but she had not been happy there. Please—we would not send her away from Haggershaven, would we?
Midbin acted now like a fond parent who was both proud of his child's accomplishments and fearful lest she be not quite ready to leave his solicitous care. He was far from satisfied at restoring her speech; he probed and searched, seeking to know what she had thought and felt during the long months of muteness.
“I do not know, truly I do not know,” she protested toward the end of one of these examinations. “I would say, yes; sometimes I knew you were talking to me, or Hodge.” Here she looked at me steadily for an instant, to make me feel both remorseful and proud. “But it was like someone talking a long way off, so I never quite understood, nor was even sure it was I who was being spoken to. Often—at least it seemed often, perhaps it was not— often, I tried to speak, to beg you to tell me if you were real people talking to me or just part of a dream. That was very bad, because when no words came I was more afraid than ever, and when I was afraid the dream became darker and darker.”
Afterward, looking cool and fresh and strangely assured, she came upon me while I was cultivating young corn. A few weeks earlier I would have known she had sought me out; now it might be an accident.
“But I knew more surely when it was you who spoke, Hodge,” she said abruptly. “In my dream you were the most real.” Then she walked tranquilly away.
Barbara, who had studiedly said nothing further about what Midbin was doing, commented one day, apparently without rancor, “So Oliver appears to have proved a theory. How nice for you.”
“What do you mean?” I inquired guardedly. “How is it nice for me?”
“Why, you won't have to chaperone the silly girl all over anymore. She can ask her way around now.”
“Oh yes, that's right,” I mumbled.
“And we won't have to quarrel over her anymore,” she concluded.
“Sure,” I said. “That's right.”
Mr. Haggerwells again communicated with the Spanish diplomats, recalling his original telegram and mentioning the aloof reply. He was answered in person by an official who acted as though he himself had composed the disclaiming response. Perhaps he had, for he made it quite clear that only devotion to duty made it possible to deal at all with such savages as inhabited the United States.
He confirmed the existence of one Catalina Garcia and consulted a photograph, carefully shielded in his hand, comparing it with the features of our Catalina, at last satisfying himself they were the same. This formality finished, he spoke rapidly to Catalina in Spanish. She shook her head and looked confused. “Tell him I can hardly understand, Hodge; ask him to speak in English, please.”
The diplomat looked furious. Midbin explained hastily that the shock which had caused her muteness had not entirely worn off. Unquestionably she would recover her full memory in time, but for the present there were still areas of forgetfulness. Her native language was part of the past, he went on, happy with a new audience, and the past was something to be pushed away since it contained the terrible moment. English on the other hand—
“I understand,” said the diplomat stiffly, resolutely addressing none of us. “It is clear. Very well then. The Seorita Garcia is heir—heiress to an estate. Not a very big one, I regret to say. A moderate estate.”
“You mean land and houses?” I asked curiously. “A moderate estate,” he repeated, looking attentively at his gloved hand. “Some shares of stock, some bonds, some cash. The details will be available to the seorita.”
“It doesn't matter,” said Catalina timidly.
Having put us all, and particularly me, in our place as rude and nosy barbarians, he went on more pleasantly, “According to the records of the embassy, the seorita is not yet eighteen. As an orphan living in foreign lands she is a ward of the Spanish Crown. The seorita will return with me to Philadelphia where she will be suitably accommodated until repatriation can be arranged. I feel certain that in the proper surroundings, hearing her natural tongue, she will soon regain its use. The—ah—institution may submit a bill for board and lodging during her stay.”
“Does he mean—take me away from here? For always?” Catalina, who had seemed so mature a moment before, suddenly acted like a frightened child.
“He only wants to make you comfortable and take you among your own people,” said Mr. Haggerwells. “Perhaps it is a bit sudden…”
“I can't. Do not let him take me away. Hodge, Hodge— do not let him take me away.”
“Seorita, you do not understand—”
“No, no. I won't. Hodge, Mr. Haggerwells, do not let him!”
“But my dear—”
