“For what?” he threw at me.
“Why, for bigamy,” I threw back.
He turned to me anew. “I am not talking about bigamy.”
“Then what in thunder are you talking about?”
“Something worse.”
Smoke is a sedative. I hailed a steward, got a cigar, and proceeded to light it. Before the process was completed he was at me again.
“I have only one wife. That is to say, I have been married but once. But where my wife is I do not know.”
On the table before me was a passenger list. Already I had looked it over. Now I examined it once more. Among the S’s was the following entry: “Silverbridge, Graf und Gräfin mit Dienerschaft.”
“Isn’t she on board?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then, without indiscretion,” I continued, handing him the list as I spoke, “who is the lady mentioned here?”
At this he nodded to me, ran his fingers again through his hair, and made answer: “There’s the point. I do not know.”
“But,” I gasped, “doesn’t she know?”
“Yes, she knows.”
“Well, then, who does she say she is?”
“Miss Fanny Bunker.”
“But, confound it,” I cried, “Miss Fanny Bunker is the girl you married.”
“Precisely,” he replied, and nodded again as though it ought now to be all perfectly clear. “But then you see the Fanny Bunker whom I married and the Fanny Bunker who is on board are not the same.”
“Of course not,” I exclaimed. “How could she be since she is now Lady Silverbridge. Previously she was a young girl. Now she is a married woman. That is difference enough.”
“The difference is wider than that,” he rejoined. “Much wider. They are not the same person.”
I pitched my cigar away. “Then will you please tell me how things got so damnably mixed?”
“Candidly, I can’t.”
At that, in mounting irritation, I would have left him. It seemed to me that he was cracked. I was about to say as much. But something in the melancholy of his eyes prevented.
“No,” he added, “I do not know how. But perhaps you can tell me. By the way, what was that stuff you used to stow at Heidelberg?”
“Psychology?”
“Yes, that’s it. I thought of it when I saw you getting aboard. I thought, too, that because of it I might ask your advice. I am not boring you, am I?”
“Boring me! Give me the gist of this thing or you will drive me to drink.”
Silverbridge, however, was not to be hurried. He got a letter from his pocket, consulted it, consulted the ceiling, then, leaning forward, he made this extraordinary statement: “There are two of her.”
I looked at him, but said nothing. After all, what was there to say? Yet, in my silence, there must have been the encouragement which he sought, for he ran on at once, quite volubly.
“It was in April we met. I cannot be sure, but I think between us it was love at first sight. I am sure, though, that I adored her at once. She exhaled all that is fetching in woman; simplicity, sympathy, sweetness, and strength. There was about her, too, an alertness, a vivacity, which I had never known. She went to my head. I think, too, I must have impressed her, for when I asked it was given. Our marriage was immediate. Somebody or other, a Frenchman I think, said that there are plenty of delightful marriages, but none that are delicious. The beggar was wrong. Ours was. But so appallingly brief! Four weeks, that is all. Yes, in four weeks she left me. One morning I awoke, aroused by a cry. At the other end of the room she was crouching and calling, ‘Where am I? Where am I?’ And when I sprang up to go to her, she crouched yet further away, screaming, ‘Who are you? Who are you?’ ”
“The devil!” I muttered.
“You will understand in a moment what I did not. I assumed, of course—and it was horrible to assume it—that she had gone suddenly mad. But no, she was entirely rational, except in this, she denied any knowledge of or acquaintance with me. She denied that she was my wife. At first it was difficult to get her to believe even that she was in England. When I convinced her of that she accepted the fact, but not the marriage. She said she had had no part in it. Meanwhile, it was obvious that she herself was totally different. Her speech and manner had altered. In no way was she the same. I got Simpson in. Simpson you know is—”
“Physician-in-ordinary,” I interjected.
“Yes, and he asked me concerning her antecedents. I could tell him but little. She had come to London for the season with some friends, and so soon after I met her as I could manage it we were married by special license. I told you it was love at first sight. I told him so, too. He advised me to write to her people.”
“Well?”
“I did. Here is a letter from her father. In it he says that had he had the time, had our marriage not been so precipitate, he would have told me—what do you suppose? That within her are two souls. Is such a thing possible?”
“Goethe said it was. ‘Within me,’ he declared, ‘two souls reside.’ ”
“But did they alternate? Her father says—”
“That hers is a case of dual personality.”
“Yes, those are his very words. But is there such a thing?”
“No,” I answered, after a moment. “It is a term serviceable merely for lack of a better one. You know, however, that the mind is dual. Ordinarily the two hemispheres of the brain work together. Now and again there is discord. The result is insanity. Less frequently while one of them is awake the other falls asleep, and vice versa. That, I suppose, is the case with Lady Silverbridge. What do you propose to do?”
“I have no choice. At her insistence and at her
