The New Magdalen

"I WENT first to Mannheim, Lady Janet, as I told you I should in my

letter, and I heard all that the consul and the hospital doctors could

tell me. No new fact of the slightest importance turned up. I got my

directions for finding the German surgeon, and I set forth to try what I

could make next of the man who performed the operation. On the question

of his patient's identity he had (as a perfect stranger to her) nothing

to tell me. On the question of her mental condition, however, he made a

very important statement. He owned to me that he had operated on another

person injured by a shell-wound on the head at the battle of Solferino,

and that the patient (recovering also in this case) recovered--mad. That

is a remarkable admission; don't you think so?"

Lady Janet's temper had hardly been allowed time enough to subside to

its customary level.

"Very remarkable, I dare say," she answered, "to people who feel any

doubt of this pitiable lady of yours being mad. I feel no doubt--and,

thus far, I find your account of yourself, Julian, tiresome in the

extreme. Go on to the end. Did you lay your hand on Mercy Merrick?"

"No."

"Did you hear anything of her?"

"Nothing. Difficulties beset me on every side. The French ambulance

had shared in the disasters of France--it was broken up. The wounded

Frenchmen were prisoners somewhere in Germany, nobody knew where.

The French surgeon had been killed in action. His assistants were

scattered--most likely in hiding. I began to despair of making any

discovery, when accident threw in my way two Prussian soldiers who had

been in the French cottage. They confirmed what the German surgeon told

the consul, and what Horace himself told _me_--namely, that no nurse

in a black dress was to be seen in the place. If there had been such a

person, she would certainly (the Prussians inform me) have been found in

attendance on the injured Frenchmen. The cross of the Geneva Convention

would have been amply sufficient to protect her: no woman wearing that

badge of honor would have disgraced herself by abandoning the wounded

men before the Germans entered the place."

"In short," interposed Lady Janet, "there is no such person as Mercy

Merrick."

"I can draw no other conclusion," said Julian, "unless the English

doctor's idea is the right one. After hearing what I have just told you,

he thinks the woman herself is Mercy Merrick."

Lady Janet held up her hand as a sign that she had an objection to make

here.

"You and the doctor seem to have settled everything to your entire

satisfaction on both sides," she said. "But there is one difficulty that

you have neither of you accounted for yet."