The old ladies, with a twittering and fluttering like that of their feathered favorites, charitably surrounded this pink perfection of innocence and desirability. "Poor creature!" said Miss Belfrage, "undoubtedly some man has brought her to this condition."
"Some devil!" said Miss Morrison. This remark afforded infinite amusement to the lubber fiend, who stood invisibly by. He could not resist giving Miss Morrison a little pinch, of a sort entirely new to her experience. "Dear me! Did you do that, Miss Shank?" cried Miss Morrison. "Surely you did not do that?"
"I? I did nothing," said Miss Shank. "What is it?"
"I felt," said Miss Morrison, "a sort of pinch."
"So did I," cried Miss Belfrage. "I felt one that very moment"
"So do I," cried Miss Shank. "Oh, dear! Perhaps we shall all lose our memories."
"Let us hurry with her to the hospital," said Miss Morrison. "The Park seems all wrong this morning, and the birdies won't come near. They know! What experiences she most have gone through!"
These kind old ladies took our beautiful but unfortunate she-angel to a hospital for nervous diseases, where she was received charitably and to some extent enthusiastically. She was soon hurried into a little room, the walls of which were of duck's-egg green, this color having been found very soothing to girls discovered wandering in Central Park with neither their clothes nor their memories. A certain brilliant young psychoanalyst was put in charge of her case. Such cases were his specially, and he seldom failed to jog their memories to some purpose.
The fiend had naturally tagged along to the hospital, and now stood there picking his teeth and watching all that transpired. He was delighted to see that the young psychoanalyst was as handsome as could be. His features were manly and regular, and his eyes dark and lustrous, and they became more lustrous still when he beheld his new patient. As for hers, they took on a forget-me-not glimmer which caused the devil to rub his hands again. Everyone was pleased.
The psychoanalyst was an ornament to his much maligned profession. His principles were of the highest and yet no higher than his enthusiasm for his science. Now, dismissing the nurses who had brought her in, he took his seat by the couch on which she lay.
"I am here to make yon well," said he. "It seems you have had a distressing experience. I want you to tell me what you can remember of it"
"I can't," said she faintly. "I can remember nothing."
"Perhaps you are in a state of shock," said this excellent young analyst. "Give me your hand, my dear, so I may see if it is abnormally warm, or cold, and if there is a wedding ring on it."
"What is a hand?" murmured the unfortunate young she-angel. "What is warm? What is cold? What is a wedding ring?"
"Oh, my poor girl!" said he. "Quite evidently you have had a very severe shock. Those who forget what wedding rings are often get the worst of all. However, this is your hand."
"And is that yours?" said she.
"Yes, that is mine," he replied.
The young angel said no more, but looked at her hand in his, and then she lowered her delightful eyelashes, and sighed a little. This delighted the heart of the ardent young scientist, for he recognized the beginning of the transference, a condition which indescribably lightens the labors of psychoanalysts.
"Well! Well!" said he at last. "We must find out what caused you to lose your memory. Here is the medical report. It seems you have not had a blow on the head."
"What is a head?" she asked.
"This is your head," he told her. "And these are your eyes, and this is your mouth."
"And what is this?" said she.
"That," said he, "is your neck."
This adorable young angel was the best of patients. She desired nothing more than to please her analyst, for, such is the nature of the transference, he seemed to her like some glorious figure out of her forgotten childhood. Her natural innocence was reinforced by the innocence of amnesia, so she pulled down the sheet that covered her, and asked him, "And what are these?"
"Those?" said he. "How you could have possibly forgotten them. I shall not forget them as long as I live. I have never seen a lovelier pair of shoulders."
Delighted by his approbation, the angel asked one or two more questions, such as at last caused this worthy young analyst to rise from his chair and pace the room in a state of considerable agitation. "Unquestionably," he murmured, "I am experiencing the counter-transference in its purest form, or at least in its most intense one. Such a pronounced example of this phenomenon should surely be the subject of experiment. A little free association seems to be indicated, but with a bold innovation of technique. In my paper I will call it The Demonstrative Somatic Method as Applied to Cases of Complete Amnesia. It will be frowned upon by the orthodox, but after all Freud himself was frowned upon in his time."
We will draw a veil over the scene that followed, for the secrets of the psychoanalytic couch are as those of the confessional. There was nothing sacred, however, to Tom Truncheontail, who by this time was laughing his ugly head off. "Because," thought he, "what sin in the world could be greater than to make such an exemplary young psychoanalyst forget himself, his career, and all the ethics of his profession?"
At a certain moment the wily old devil allowed himself to become visible, leaning over the end of the couch with a cynical smile on his weather-beaten face.
"Oh, what is that, darling?" cried the young she-angel, in accents of frustration and dismay.
"What is what?" asked the analyst, who was at this moment somewhat preoccupied by his researches.
The young she-angel became very silent and melancholy. She knew what she had seen, and now remembered things she wished she had thought of before. It is well-known that this makes sins of this sort no smaller. "Alas," said she, "I think I have recovered my memory."
"Then you are cured," cried the analyst in delight, "and my method has been proved correct, and will be unanimously adopted in the profession. What an inestimable benefit I have conferred upon my colleagues, or at least on those whose patients are half or a quarter as beautiful as you are! But tell me what you remember. I ask you, not as your doctor, but as your future husband."
How easily one sin follows upon another, particularly the sin of lying upon that which had just been committed! The poor angel could not find it in her heart to destroy his happiness by telling him that after seven years he would have to relinquish her to the gross and bristly fiend. She murmured something about having fallen asleep in her bath, and having a tendency to somnambulism. Her story was eagerly accepted, and the happy young analyst hastened out to procure a marriage license.
The fiend immediately made himself visible again, and smiled upon his victim with abominable good-nature. "Quick work!" said he. "You've saved me a lot of trouble. There are girls in this town who'd have shilly-shallied for the best part of a week. In return, I'll get you a box or two with some clothes in 'em, so your story will hold together, and you can marry the guy and be happy. You have to hand it to old Tom T. he hasn't a jealous hair in his tail!" The truth is, the old rascal knew she'd sooner or later many someone or other, and as actually he was as jealous as a demon, he thought it better to be jealous of one than of two. Also, he felt she might just as well choose a good provider, with a well-stocked ice-box and liquor closet, and a basement furnace beside which he could sleep warm of nights. Psychoanalysts are always well furnished in these respects. And what had finally decided him was the reflection that a marriage which is founded on a lie is usually fertile in other transgressions, as pleasant to the nostrils of a fiend as are roses and lilies to the rest of us.
In this last respect, we may say at once that the old villain was bitterly disappointed. No wife could possibly be more angelic than our angel. In fact, the sweet odours of domestic virtue became so oppressive to the devil that he took himself off to Atlantic City for a breath of fresh air. He found the atmosphere of that resort so exhilarating that he remained there most of the seven years. Thus the angel was almost able to forget the future in the extreme happiness of the present. At the end of the first year she became the mother of a sturdy boy, and at the end of the third she had a beautiful little girl. The apartment they lived in was arranged in the best of taste; her husband rose higher and higher in his profession, and was cheered to the echo at all the principal meetings of psychoanalysts. But as the seventh year drew to a close the fiend came around to see how things were getting along. He told her much of what he had seen in Atlantic City, and embroidered on the life they would live together when her time was up. From that day on he appeared very frequently, and not only when she was alone. He was utterly without delicacy, and would permit himself to be seen by her at moments when even an elephant-hided devil should have realized his presence was embarrassing. She would close her eyes, but fiends are seen more easily with the eyes dosed. She would sigh bitterly.