第29章

"The same.When I returned from the country I found among my other letters a long letter from the consul.I have brought it with me, and I propose to read certain passages from it, which tell a very strange story more plainly and more credibly than I can tell it in my own words.""Will it be very long?" inquired Lady Janet, looking with some alarm at the closely written sheets of paper which her nephew spread open before him.

Horace followed with a question on his side.

"You are sure I am interested in it?" he asked."The consul at Mannheim is a total stranger to me.""I answer for it, "replied Julian, gravely, "neither my aunt's patience nor yours, Horace, will be thrown away if you will favor me by listening attentively to what I am about to read."With those words he began his first extract from the consul's letter.

* * * "'My memory is a bad one for dates.But full three months must have passed since information was sent to me of an English patient, received at the hospital here, whose case I, as English consul, might feel an interest in investigating.

"'I went the same day to the hospital, and was taken to the bedside.

"'The patient was a woman--young, and (when in health), I should think, very pretty.When I first saw her she looked, to my uninstructed eye, like a dead woman.I noticed that her head had a bandage over it, and I asked what was the nature of the injury that she had received.The answer informed me that the poor creature had been present, nobody knew why or wherefore, at a skirmish or night attack between the Germans and the French, and that the injury to her head had been inflicted by a fragment of a German shell.'"Horace--thus far leaning back carelessly in his chair--suddenly raised himself and exclaimed, "Good heavens! can this be the woman I saw laid out for dead in the French cottage?""It is impossible for me to say," replied Julian."Listen to the rest of it.The consul's letter may answer your question."He went on with his reading:

"'The wounded woman had been reported dead, and had been left by the French in their retreat, at the time when the German forces took possession of the enemy's position.She was found on a bed in a cottage by the director of the German ambulance--""Ignatius Wetzel?" cried Horace.

"Ignatius Wetzel," repeated Julian, looking at the letter.

"It is the same!" said Horace."Lady Janet, we are really interested in this.You remember my telling you how I first met with Grace? And you have heard more about it since, no doubt, from Grace herself?""She has a horror of referring to that part of her journey home," replied Lady Janet."She mentioned her having been stopped on the frontier, and her finding herself accidentally in the company of another Englishwoman, a perfect stranger to her.I naturally asked questions on my side, and was shocked to hear that she had seen the woman killed by a German shell almost close at her side.Neither she nor I have had any relish for returning to the subject since.You were quite right, Julian, to avoid speaking of it while she was in the room.I understand it all now.Grace, I suppose, mentioned my name to her fellow-traveler.The woman is, no doubt, in want of assistance, and she applies to me through you.I will help her; but she must not come here until I have prepared Grace for seeing her again, a living woman.For the present there is no reason why they should meet.""I am not sure about that," said Julian, in low tones, without looking up at his aunt.

"What do you mean? Is the mystery not at an end yet?""The mystery has not even begun yet.Let my friend the consul proceed."Julian returned for the second time to his extract from the letter:

"'After a careful examination of the supposed corpse, the German surgeon arrived at the conclusion that a case of suspended animation had (in the hurry of the French retreat) been mistaken for a case of death.Feeling a professional interest in the subject, he decided on putting his opinion to the test.He operated on the patient with complete success.After performing the operation he kept her for some days under his own care, and then transferred her to the nearest hospital--the hospital at Mannheim.He was obliged to return to his duties as army surgeon, and he left his patient in the condition in which I saw her, insensible on the bed.Neither he nor the hospital authorities knew anything whatever about the woman.No papers were found on her.All the doctors could do, when I asked them for information with a view to communicating with her friends, was to show me her linen marked with her, name.I left the hospital after taking down the name in my pocket-book.It was "Mercy Merrick."'"Lady Janet produced her pocket-book."Let me take the name down too," she said."I never heard it before, and I might otherwise forget it.Go on, Julian."Julian advanced to his second extract from the consul 's letter: