LADIES' COLUMN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7808, 12 September 1903, Page 3

LADIES' COLUMN.

ELIXIR OF LOVE. (Kfl« Tork Herald.) "I am married to a woman wbo is not mv wife." It was onj a liner, after dinner. The big ship had lurched. Into the smoking-a.'oom where I sat, Lord Silverbridge had lurched wibh it. He had dropped into a eeait beside me. I had asked how he did. It was in amswer to that question that he made this curious remark. As he spoke he looked down and away, and raal his long, thin fingers through his bright, thick haln. "What?" I exclaimed. "And she is one of your oompaunote, too." . • Lady Silverbridge, formerly Miss Fanarue Bunker, was a Bostoniam. Of that I was perfectly aware. At her wedding I had sent, wtth my Micrtat-ons, a fish knife. I had not been previously honoured with her acquaintance, but Silvenbridge I had known through a series of tolerably orgiao semesters at Heidelberg, where his name waa merely Jones. With what miracles of death such pro-oe-sskxns of relatives ware mown d»,wn that from nobody, he had become peer it is idle tb bunden this narrative. Yet the. fact tha* we had worn identical student caps and fought identical student duels had eluded time ; it had eluded, too, tra_-S_tio__3, and still survived. It waa to this survival that I attributed the rather intimatfe confidence of his curious remark. Of the purport of the lattea* I bad not so muoh as an- idea. The day previous I had embanked at Cherbourg for New York, aud found Silverbridge on board. It was then early in August. His lnairiaige had taken place in Ixrndon late in May. At the tjme I waa co the Continent. It was the fish knife that represented ma Subsequently the Press supplied me with accounts of the wedding, and of the bride's beauty as well. I never believe a word I read in uhe papers, but of the jginTs beauty I knew by repute. Besides, I had seen her picture. In thait picture I had seen that she embodied the ideal, filled the heart and stirred it, toojust as Austin Dobson said of Autonoe — with pulse of 'spring. . These things take long in the telling, but when S-lverb-idge made his curious remark memory promptly ladled them out. I thnow them in here to get rid of them. "What?" I repeated. Silverbridge looked up. "Yes," he presently resumed; "it is beastly to boast, but I am up a bagger tree than anyone you ever heard of. My wife is not my wife,, and though I am married to her I aim not her husband." At tbis, of course, possibilities of anterior entanglements suggested themselves. It ocounred to me that when Silverbridge was Jones he might in some unhallowed moment hove gone and done it. "You are not beating about the bush to tall me thab there is another of them; are you?" I iasfaed.;. - He turned to me quickly. "How. did you hit on it? Is it common— dn the States, Imean?" ..*.'-■ " Oo*rr_mon— oo_an_o__,'' I . mumbled. "I don't know that I should caii it that: ■It seems to me devilish awkward. I haven't the Penal Code at the end of any fingers, but 1 fancy it mrustbe tern years. How much do they give you in England?" " For what?" he threw at ua©. " Why, for bigamy," t threw baok. He turned to me anew. " tarn not talking about bigamy." ■■'■..■'* "Then what in thunder are you .talking about?" ■ "Something worse." Smoke is a sedative. T hailed a steward, got a cigar, and proceeded to light it. Before the prooess was completed he was at me again. " i haye 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 over it. Now I looked over it once more. Among the 'iSs" was the following ent_y : — 44 Silverbridge, Graf und Grafin, mit Dienerschaft." "Isn't she oni board?" I asked. "No." "Then," withont discretion, I continued, handing him the list as I spoke, "who is the lady mentioned here?" At this be nodded at me, ran his fingers again through his hair, and made answer : '- There's the point. Ido not know." " But," I gasped, " doesn't she know?" "Yes; she knows." "Well, then, who does she say she is?" "Miss Fanny Bunker." "But, oonfound 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 dear. "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 can 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 sanie person." I pitched my cigar away. "Then, will you please tell me how things got so dreadfully mixed " " Candjdly, I can't." At that, in my 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 »f his eyes prevented. "No," he continued 1 , "I do not know how; but perhaps you caa tell me. By the way, what was that stuff you used to stow away 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. 1 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 I looked at him, but said nothing. After all, ""That was there to say? Yet in my silence there must have been the encouragement which ho sought, for he ran on at once, quite volubly. " Ifc was in April we met. I cannot be sure, but I think, between us, it was love at first sight. lam sure, though, that I adored her at onoe. . She exhaled all that is fetching in woman — simplicity, sympathy, sweetness and strength. There was about her, too, an alertness, a vjvacity, which I had never known. She went to my head. I think I, too, must have impressed her. When I asked it was given N Our marriage was immediate. Somebody or other — a Frenchman, I think — said there are plenty of delightful marriages, but nome that are delicious. Tlie 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 n~i I?' And when I sprang up to go to her she crouched yet furtiher 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 that 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, ig "

"Physioian 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 as 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." "WeU?" " 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 suoh a thing possible." "Goethe said it was. 'Within me,' he said, 'two souls reside.'" "But did they alternator Her farther says " "That hers is a case of dual personalty-" .. _» t> «. "Yes; those are bis 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 proP TI have no choice. At her insistence and at her father's request I am taking her to Boston." ■ "As Lady Silverbridge. ■*•' She won't admit that she is that, b&e declares that she is Miss Bunker. ' "Permit me. What is her attitude toward you?" ■ „ _ ... . . "Wroil Civil, but chilly; I think she hates me." . . " And you want my advice? To this question Silverbridge nodded hopelessly. ■ ' , " Then," I added, "take her back as you took her from church." With the same hopeless look Silverbridge nodded again, " Yes ; it is easy to say, but nowadays there is no elixir of love.* "Indeed there is," I retorted. "Given tact, /opportunity, propinquity, and the desire, and any man— who is .a man — can change indifference into affection, 'hate into love. But the ingredients must be fused. They constitute the elixir." To this Silverbridge assented. " That's of course ; but for the elixir to work the girl must be normal. Fanny isn't. She is abnormal." "I am not so sure," I replied. "And yet, if you come to that, are any of us normal? How often it happens that we do or say things that we had no intention of doin" or saying— things which afterward we were unable to account for. In the course of every life there are such changes of personality that could each phase of , our existence be incarnated in distinct individuals and those individuals got together, so dissimilar and antipathetic would they be that it is only a, question of time when they would come to blows. ■ . v "No," I presently resumed, "we all change. It is a law of nature. But we change so gradually that the change is unperceived. Lady Silverbridge has changed, too; only the change in her, instead of ' being gradual, has been abrupt. But she is not, therefore, abnormal. For that matter, nobody is. Every being,, however constituted, has his or her raison d'etre." " Yes," said Silverbridge after a moment; "that is probably ture. Yet, even so, I don't see how it helps me." "Why, very clearly," I replied. "The moment you recognise that the condition of your wife is normal you may proceed to administer the elixir. Your wife is a i young and sensitive woman. B ar ring a violin, there is nothing more impressionable than a woman ajrho is; young and sensitive. Take, by the way, the violin for analogy. In /the hands of an artist it is vibrant -with harmony. In the hands of an artisan it is discordant. Of course, there are violins so wretched that no artist could draw from them quavers other than cracked and thin. But, given a virtuoso and a Cremona, what duos, what trios even, the conjunction will bring ! A young and sensitive woman is a Cremona in flash and blood. The L harmonies, the duos and trios of which she is capable, . depend on the maestria of the man by whom she is approached. Now you, I will assume, are a virtuoso, and your wife a violin. If you wish .her to go with you to Boston as she went with you from church treat her as ah artist should." Silverbridge beckoned a steward and ordered some beer. "That is all very, fine," he remarked, when I stopped to draw breath ; ; " very fine in theory, but in practice " "In practice," I interrupted, "it is finer still. You know the ingredients of the elixir. These ingredients you have. You have but to compound them, feed her with them, and once more she is yours." The steward approached with the beer. 'Silverbridge swallowed it, student fashion, at a gulp. . "Were not Lady Silverbridge already your wife," I resumed, "the process which I am about to indicate would be perhaps inconvenient, certainly unconventional, but not impractical. As it is, it will appeal to you as being entirely proper,' poetic to boot, and psychologic as well." -Silverbridge looked into his empty glass, and then inquiringly at me. But though there, was an inquiry in his eyes the melancholy and loneliness ' in them abided. " Go to her stateroom to-night," I continued: "Go there when she is asleep; go there when she is in her first sleep. Then whisper your name in her ear; whisper it again; then again. Whisper to her that she loves you, but be careful not to awake her. In an hour return and whisper anew. Theft . leave her. The breathing of your name and the suggestion in her ear will make her dream of you. In that dream it may be either that the two hemispheres of her brain will begin to work in unison, or it may be that the one that knew you will be aroused and the other submerged. But, in any event, whichever Fanny Bunker awakes to-mor-row, that Fanny Bunker will be ypurs. Then it will depend but on you to renew the harmonies that you created." I stood up to go. For a moment yet be detained me. His face, previously drear, was now flushed. From his eyes the melancholy and hopelessness were departing. "Is— is this receipt one of your own manufacture, or — or- — " "You will not find it in the pharmacopoeia," I answered, "but you will find it sovereign." . "It bas been tried?" "Again and again." "Successfully?" . "Always." At this Silverbridge got also from his ' seat. ' "Thank you," he said, very gravely. "Thank you. I, too, will try it." With that, for the night, we parted. The next day I looked for him. He did not seem to be about. On .the morrow, on the promenade deck, I ran into him. At his side was a beauty. "Let me introduce you," he said. As he spoke he smiled. The beauty smiled also. That smile of his and of hers supplied me with obvious deductions. An exchange of the usual platitudes ensued. But the deductions I was in haste to examine. ■ I made them into a bundle, which presently, after more platitudes, I took with me to the smoking-room. There, later, Silverbridge joined me. "The prescription worked all right, did it not?" I asked. "Like an essence of bonbons! I am mamed now to a woman who is my wife." . "But to which of them?" "To both," he luxuriously replied. "Lady Silverbridge is certainly a host in hewielf," I ventured to xwmark. " But thei^

so, too, is every Cremona. She is a very impressionable woman. Should sho get away again " , , l "If she should," Silverbridge, with hopeful and beautiful confidence, exclaimed, "have I not the psychologist's stone m this lovely elixir?" " You have something better than that," I concluded. "You have Love's writ of habeas corpus!"