The Story of a Maid Made Over
Dr. Satterfield Prince, physician to the leisure class, looked at his watch. It indicated five minutes to twelve. At the stroke of the hour would expire the morning term set apart for the reception of his patients in his handsome office apartments. And then the young woman attendant ushered in from the waiting-room the last unit of the wealthy and fashionable gathering that had come to patronize his skill.
Dr. Prince turned, his watch still in hand, his manner courteous, but seeming to invite promptness and brevity in the interview. The last patient was a middle-aged lady, richly dressed, with an amiable and placid face. When she spoke her voice revealed the drawling, musical slur and intonation of the South. She had come, she leisurely explained, to bespeak the services of Dr. Prince in the case of her daughter, who was possessed of a most mysterious affliction. And then, femininely, she proceeded to exhaustively diagnose the affliction, informing the physician with a calm certitude of its origin and nature.
The diagnosis advanced by the lady—Mrs. Galloway Rankin—was one so marvelously strange and singular in its conception that Dr. Prince, accustomed as he was to the conceits and vagaries of wealthy malingerers, was actually dumfounded. The following is the matter of Mrs. Rankin’s statement, briefly reported:
She—Mrs. Rankin—was of an old Kentucky family, the Bealls. Between the Bealls and another historic house—the Rankins—had been waged for nearly a century one of the fiercest and most sanguinary feuds within the history of the State. Each generation had kept alive both the hate and the warfare, until at length it was said that Nature began to take cognizance of the sentiment and Bealls and Rankins were born upon earth as antagonistic toward each other as cats and dogs. So, for four generations the war had waged, and the mountains were dotted with tombstones of both families. At last, for lack of fuel to feed upon, the feud expired with only one direct descendant of the Bealls and one of the Rankins remaining—Evalina Beall, aged nineteen, and Galloway Rankin, aged twenty-five. The last mortal shot in the feud was fired by Cupid. The two survivors met, became immediately and mutually enamoured, and a miracle transpired on Kentucky soil—a Rankin wedded a Beall.
Interposed, and irrelevant to the story, was the information that coal mines had been discovered later on the Rankin lands, and now the Galloway Rankins were to be computed among the millionaries.
All that was long enough ago for there to be now a daughter, twenty years of age—Miss Annabel Rankin—for whose relief the services of Dr. Prince was petitioned.
Then followed, in Mrs. Rankin’s statement, a description of the mysterious, though by her readily accounted for, affliction.
It seemed that there was a peculiar difficulty in the young lady’s powers of locomotion. In walking, a process requiring a coordination and unanimity of the functions—Dr. Prince, said Mrs. Rankin, would understand and admit the nonexistence of a necessity for anatomical specification—there persisted a stubborn opposition, a most contrary and counteracting antagonism. In those successively progressive and generally unconsciously automatic movements necessary to proper locomotion, there was a violent lack of harmony and mutuality. To give an instance cited by Mrs. Rankin—if Miss Annabel desired to ascend a stairway, one foot would be easily advanced to the step above, but instead of aiding and abetting its fellow, the other would at once proceed to start downstairs. By a strong physical and mental effort the young lady could walk fairly well for a short distance but suddenly the rebellious entities would become uncontrollable, and she would be compelled to turn undesirable corners, to enter impossible doorways, to dance, shuffle, sidestep and perform other undignified and distressing evolutions.
After setting forth these lamentable symptoms, Mrs. Rankin emphatically asserted her belief that the affliction was the result of heredity—of the union between the naturally opposing and contrary Beall and Rankin elements. She believed that the inherited spirit of the ancient feud had taken on physical manifestations, exhibiting them in the person of the unfortunate outcome of the union of opposites. That in Miss Annabel Rankin was warring the imperishable antipathy of the two families. In other words, that one of Miss Rankin’s—that is to say, that when Miss Rankin took a step it was a Beall step, and the next one was dominated by the bequeathed opposition of the Rankins.
Doctor Prince received the communication with his usual grave, professional attention, and promised to call the next day at ten to inspect the patient.
Promptly at the hour his electric runabout turned into the line of stylish autos and hansoms that wait along the pavements before the most expensive hostelry on American soil.
When Miss Annabel Rankin entered the reception parlour of their choice suite of rooms Doctor Prince gave a little blink of surprise through his brilliantly polished nose glasses. The glow of perfect health and the contour of perfect beauty were visible in the face and form of the young lady. But admiration gave way to sympathy when he saw her walk. She entered at a little run, swayed, stepped off helplessly at a sharp tangent, advanced, marked time, backed off, recovered and sidled with a manoeuvring rush to a couch, where she rested, with a look of serious melancholy upon her handsome face.
Dr. Prince proceeded with his interrogatories in the delicate, reassuring gentlemanly manner that had brought him so many patrons who placed a value upon those amenities. Miss Annabel answered frankly and sensibly, indeed, for one of her years. The feud theory of Mrs. Rankin was freely discussed. The daughter also believed in it.
Soon the physician departed, promising to call again and administer treatment. Then he buzzed down the Avenue and four doors on an asphalted side street to the office of Dr. Grumbleton Myers, the great specialist in locomotor ataxia and nerve ailments. The two distinguished physicians shut themselves in a private office, and the great Myers dragged forth a decanter of sherry and a box of Havanas. When the consultation was over both shook their heads.
“Fact is,” summed up Myers, “we don’t know anything about anything. I’d say treat symptoms now until something turns up; but there are no symptoms.”
“The feud diagnosis, then?” suggested Doctor Prince, archly, ridding his cigar of its ash.
“It’s an interesting case,” said the specialist, noncommittally.
“I say, Prince,” called Myers, as his caller was leaving. “Er—sometimes, you know, children that fight and quarrel are shut in separate rooms. Doesn’t it seem a pity, now, that bloomers aren’t in fashion? By separ—”
“But they aren’t,” smiled Doctor Prince, “and we must be fashionable, at any rate.”
Doctor Prince burned midnight oil—or its equivalent, a patent, electric, soft-shaded, midnight incandescent, over his case. With such little success did his light shine that he was forced to make a little speech to the Rankins full of scientific terms—a thing he conscientiously avoided with his patients—which shows that he was driven to expedient. At last he was reduced to suggest treatment by hypnotism.
Being crowded further, he advised it, and appeared another day with Professor Adami, the most reputable and non-advertising one he could find among that school of practitioners.
Miss Annabel, gentle and melancholy, fell an easy victim—or, I should say, subject—to the professor’s influence. Previously instructed by Doctor Prince in the nature of the malady he was about to combat, the dealer in mental drugs proceeded to offer “suggestion” (in the language of his school) to the afflicted and unconscious young lady, impressing her mind with the conviction that her affliction was moonshine and her perambulatory powers without impairment.
When the spell was removed Miss Rankin sat up, looking a little bewildered at first, and then rose to her feet, walking straight across the room with the grace, the sureness and the ease of a Diana, a Leslie-Carter, or a Vassar basketball champion. Miss Annabel’s sad face was now lit with hope and joy. Mrs. Rankin of Southern susceptibility wept a little, delightedly, upon a minute lace handkerchief. Miss Annabel continued to walk about firmly and accurately, in absolute control of the machinery necessary for her so to do. Doctor Prince quietly congratulated Professor Adami, and then stepped forward, smilingly rubbing his nose glasses with an air. His position enabled him to overshadow the hypnotizer who, contented to occupy the background temporarily, was busy estimating in his mind with how large a bill for services he would dare to embellish the occasion when he should come to the front.
Amid repeated expressions of gratitude, the two professional gentlemen made their adieus, a little elated at the success of the treatment which, with one of them, had been an experiment, with the other an exhibition.
As the door closed behind them. Miss Annabel, her usually serious and pensive temper somewhat enlivened by the occasion, sat at the piano and dashed into a stirring march. Outside, the two men moving toward the elevator heard a scream of alarm from her and hastened back. They found her on the piano-stool, with one hand still pressing the keys. The other arm was extended rigidly to its full length behind her, its fingers tightly clenched into a pink and pretty little fist. Her mother was bending over her, joining in the alarm and surprise. Miss Rankin rose from the stool, now quiet, but again depressed and sad.
“I don’t know what did it,” she said, plaintively; “I began to play and that arm shot back. It wouldn’t stay near the piano while the other one was there.”
A ping-pong table stood in the room.
“A little game, Miss Rankin,” cried Professor Adami, gayly, trying to feel his way.
They played. With the racquet in the refractory arm, Miss Annabel played in fine style. Her control of it was perfect. The professor laid down his racquet.
“Ah! a button is loose on my coat,” said he. “Such is the fate of sorrowful bachelors. A needle and thread, now. Miss Rankin?”
A little surprised, but smiling acquiescence, Annabel brought the articles from another room.
“Now thread the needle, if you please,” said Professor Adami.
Annabel bit off two feet of the black silk. When she came to thread the needle the secret was out. As the hand presenting the thread approached the other holding the needle that arm was jerked violently away. Doctor Prince was first to reduce the painful discovery to words.
“Dear Miss and Mrs. Rankin,” he said, in his most musical consolation-baritone, “we have been only partially successful. The affliction, Miss Rankin, has passed from your—that is, the affliction is now in your arms.”
“Oh, dear!” sighed Annabel, “I’ve a Beall arm and a Rankin arm, then. Well, I can use one hand at a time, anyway. People won’t notice it as they did before. Oh, what an annoyance those feuds were, to be sure! It seems to me they should make laws against them.”
Doctor Prince looked inquiringly at Professor Adami. That gentleman shook his head. “Another day,” he said. “I prefer not to establish the condition at a lesser interval than two or three days.”
So, three days afterward they returned, and the professor replaced Miss Rankin under control. This time there was, apparently, perfect success. She came forth from the trance, and with full muscular powers. She walked the floor with a sure, rhythmic step. She played several difficult selections upon the piano, the hands and arms moving with propriety and with allied ease. Miss Rankin seemed at last to possess a perfectly well-ordered physical being as well as a very grateful mental one.
A week afterward there wafted into Doctor Prince’s office a youth, generously gilded. The hallmarks of society were deeply writ upon him.
“I’m Ashburton,” he explained; “T. Ripley Ashburton, you know. I’m engaged to Miss Rankin. I understand you’ve been training her for some breaks in her gaits—” T. Ripley Ashburton caught himself. “Didn’t mean that, you know—slipped out—been loafing around stables quite a lot. I say, Doctor Prince, I want you to tell me. Candidly, you know. I’m awful spoons on Miss Rankin. We’re to be married in the fall. You might consider me one of the family, you know. They told me about the treatment you gave her with the—er—medium fellow. That set her up wonderfully, I assure you. She goes freely now, and handles her fore—I mean you know, she’s over all that old trouble. But there’s something else started up that’s making the track pretty heavy; so I called, don’t you understand.”
“I had not been advised,” said Doctor Prince, “of any recurrence of Miss Rankin’s indisposition.”
T. Ripley Ashburton produced a silver cigarette-case and contemplated it tenderly. Receiving no encouragement, he replaced it in his pocket with a sigh.
“Not a recurrence,” he said, thoughtfully, “but something different. Possibly I’m the only one in a position to know. Hate to discuss it—reveal Cupid’s secrets, you know—such a jolly low thing to do—but suppose the occasion justifies it.”
“If you possess any information or have observed anything,” said Doctor Prince, judicially, “through which Miss Rankin’s condition might be benefited, it is your duty, of course, to apply it in her behalf. I need hardly remind you that such disclosures are held as secrets on professional honour.”
“I believe I mentioned,” said Mr. Ashburton, his fingers still hovering around the pocket containing his cigarette case, “that Miss Rankin and I are ever so sweet upon each other. She’s a jolly, swell girl, if she did come from the Kentucky mountains. Lately she’s acted awful queerly. She’s awful affectionate one minute, and the next she turns me down like a perfect stranger. Last night I called at the hotel, and she met me at the door of their rooms. Nobody was in sight, and she gave me an awful nice kiss—er—engaged, you know, Doctor Prince—and then she fired away and gave me an awful hard slap in the face. ‘I hate the sight of you,’ she said; ‘how dare you take the liberty!’ ” Mr. Ashburton drew an envelope from his pocket and extracted from it a sheet of note paper of a delicate heliotrope tint. “You might read this note, you know. Can’t say if it’s a medical case, ’pon my honour, but I’m awfully queered, don’t you understand.”
Doctor Prince read the following lines:
My dearest Ripley: Do come around this evening—there’s a dear boy—and take me out somewhere. Mamma has a headache, and says she’ll be glad to be rid of both of us for a while. ’Twas so sweet of you to send those pond lilies—they’re just what I wanted for the east windows. You darling boy—you’re so thoughtful and good—I’m sure you’re worth all the love of Your very own Annabel. P.S.—On second thoughts, I will ask you not to call this evening, as I shall be otherwise engaged. Perhaps it has never occurred to you that there may be two opinions about the vast pleasure you seem to think your society affords others. Clothes and the small talk of clubhouses and racetracks hardly ever succeed in making a man without other accessories. Very respectfully, Annabel Rankin.
Being deprived of the aid of his consolation cylinders, T. Ripley Ashburton sat, gloomy, revolving things in his mind.
“Ah!” exclaimed Doctor Prince, aloud, but addressing the exclamation to himself; “driven from the arms to the heart!” He perceived that the mysterious hereditary contrariety had, indeed, taken up its lodging in that tender organ of the afflicted maiden.
The gilded youth was dismissed, with the promise that Doctor Prince would make a professional call upon Miss Rankin. He did so soon, in company with Professor Adami, after they had discussed the strange course taken by this annoying heritage of the Bealls and Rankins. This time, as the location of the disorder required that the subject be approached with ingenuity, some diplomacy was exercised before the young lady could be induced to submit herself to the professor’s art. But evidently she did so, and emerged from the trance as usual without a trace of unpleasant effect.
With much interest and some anxiety Doctor Prince passed several days awaiting the report of Mr. Ashburton, who, indeed, of all others would have to be depended upon to observe improvements, if any had occurred. One morning that youth dropped in, jubilant.
“It’s all right, you know,” he declared, cheerfully. “Miss Rankin’s herself again. She’s as sweet as cream, and the trouble’s all off. Never a cross word or look. I’m her ducky, all right. She won’t believe what I tell her about the way she used to treat me. Intimates I make up the stories. But it’s all right now—everything’s running on rubber tires. Awfully obliged to you and the old boy—er—the medium, you know. And I say, now, Doctor Prince, there’s a wonderful improvement in Miss Rankin in every way. She used to be rather stiff, don’t you understand—sort of superior, in a way—bookish, and a habit of thinking things, you know. Well, she’s cured all round—she’s a topper now of any bunch in the set—swell and stylish and lively! Oh, the crowd will fall in to her lead when she becomes Mrs. T. Ripley. Now, I say. Doctor Prince, you and the—er—medium gentleman come and take supper tonight with Mrs. and Miss Rankin and me. I’d be delighted if you would, now—I would indeed—just for you to see, you know, the improvement in Miss Rankin.”
It transpired that Doctor Prince and Professor Adami accepted Mr. Ashburton’s invitation. They convened at the hotel in the rooms of the Rankins. From there they were to proceed to the restaurant honoured by Mr. Ashburton’s patronage.
When Miss Rankin swept gracefully into the room the professional gentlemen felt fascination and surprise conflicting in their feelings. She was radiant, bewitching, lively to effervescence. Her mother and Mr. Ashburton hung, enraptured, upon her looks and words. She was most becomingly clothed in pale blue.
“Oh, bother!” she suddenly exclaimed, most vivaciously, “I don’t like this dress, after all. You must all wait,” she commanded, with a captivating fling of her train, “until I change.” Half an hour later she returned, magnificent in a stunning costume of black lace.
“I’ll walk with you downstairs, Professor Adami,” she declared, with a charming smile. Halfway down she left his side abruptly and joined Doctor Prince. “You’ve been such a benefit to me,” she said. “It’s such a relief to get rid of that horrid feud thing. Heavens! Ripley, did you forget those bonbons? Oh, this horrid black dress! I shouldn’t have worn it; it makes me think of funerals. Did you get the scent of those lilacs then? It makes me think of the Kentucky mountains. How I wish we were back there.”
“Aren’t you fond of New York, then?” asked Doctor Prince, regarding her interestedly.
She started at the sound of his voice and looked up vivaciously.
“Indeed I am,” she said, earnestly. “I adore New York. Why, I couldn’t live without theatres and dances and my daily drives here. Oh, Ripley,” she called, over her shoulder, “don’t get that bull pup I wanted; I’ve changed my mind. I want a Pomeranian—now, don’t forget.”
They arrived on the pavement.
“Oh, a carriage!” exclaimed Miss Rankin; “I don’t want a carriage, I want an auto. Send it away!”
“All right,” said Ashburton, cheerily, “I thought you said a carriage.”
In obedience to orders the carriage rolled away and an open auto glided up in its place.
“Stuffy, smelly thing!” cried Miss Rankin, with a winsome pout. “We’ll walk. Ripley, you and Doctor Prince look out for mamma. Come on, Professor Adami.” The indulgent victims of the charming beauty obeyed.
“The dear, dear child!” exclaimed Mrs. Rankin, happily, to Doctor Prince. “How full of spirits and life she is getting to be! She’s so much improved from her old self.”
“Lots,” said Ashburton, proudly and fatuously. “She’s picked up the regular metropolitan gaits. Chic and swell don’t begin to express her. She’s cut out the pensive thought business. Up-to-date. Why she changes her mind every two minutes. That’s Annabel.”
At the fashionable restaurant where they were soon seated, Doctor Prince found his curiosity and interest engaged by Miss Rankin’s behaviour. She was in an agreeably fascinating humour. Her actions were such as might be expected from an adored child whose vacillating whims were indulged by groveling relatives. She ordered article after article from the bill of fare, petulantly countermanding nearly everyone when they were set before her. Waiters flew and returned, collided, conciliated, apologized, and danced at her bidding. Her speech was quick and lively, deliciously inconsistent, abounding in contradictions, conflicting statements, “bulls,” discrepancies and nonconformities. In short, she seemed to have acquired within the space of a few days all that inconsequent, illogical frothiness that passes current among certain circles of fashionable life.
Mr. T. Ripley Ashburton showed a doting appreciation and an addled delight at the new charms of his fiancée—charms that he at once recognized as the legal tender of his set.
Later, when the party had broken up, Doctor Prince and Professor Adami stood, for a moment, at a corner, where their ways were to diverge.
“Well,” said the professor, who was genially softened by the excellent supper and wine, “this time our young lady seems to be more fortunate. The malady has been eradicated completely from her entity. Yes, sir, in good time, our school will be recognized by all.”
Doctor Prince scrutinized the handsome, refined countenance of the hypnotist. He saw nothing there to indicate that his own diagnosis was even guessed at by that gentleman.
“As you say,” he made answer, “she appears to have recovered, as far as her friends can judge.”
When he could spare the time. Doctor Prince again invaded the sanctum of the great Grumbleton Myers, and together they absorbed the poison of nicotine.
“Yes,” said the great Myers, when the door was opened and Doctor Prince began to ooze out with the smoke, “I think you have come to the right decision. As long as none of the persons concerned has any suspicion of the truth, and is happy in the present circumstances, I don’t think it necessary to inform him that the feuditis Beallorum et Rankinorum —how’s the Latin, doctor?—has only been driven to Miss Rankin’s brain.”