"Father," asked Ralph, "who is Evelina Grey?"
Anthony Dexter started from his chair as though he had heard a pistol
shot, then settled back, forcing his features into mask-like calmness.
He waited a moment before speaking.
"I don't know," he answered, trying to make his voice even, "Why?"
"She lives in the house with my one patient," explained Ralph; "up on
the hill, you know. She's a frail, ghostly little woman in black, and
she always wears a thick white veil."
"That's her privilege, isn't it?" queried Anthony Dexter. He had
gained control of himself, now, and spoke almost as usual.
"Of course I didn't ask any questions," continued Ralph, thoughtfully,
"but, obviously, the only reason for her wearing it is some terrible
disfigurement. So much is surgically possible in these days that I
thought something might be done for her. Has she never consulted you
about it, Father?"
The man laughed--a hollow, mirthless laugh. "No," he said; "she
hasn't." Then he laughed once more--in a way that jarred upon his son.
Ralph paced back and forth across the room, his hands in his pockets.
"Father," he began, at length, "it may be because I'm young, but I hold
before me, very strongly, the ideals of our profession. It seems a
very beautiful and wonderful life that is opening before me--always to
help, to give, to heal. I--I feel as though I had been dedicated to
some sacred calling--some lifelong service. And service means
brotherhood."
"You'll get over that," returned Anthony Dexter, shortly, yet not
without a certain secret admiration. "When you've had to engage a
lawyer to collect your modest wages for your uplifting work, the healed
not being sufficiently grateful to pay the healer, and when you've gone
ten miles in the dead of Winter, at midnight, to take a pin out of a
squalling infant's back, why, you may change your mind."
"If the healed aren't grateful," observed Ralph, thoughtfully, "it must
be in some way my fault, or else they haven't fully understood. And
I'd go ten miles to take a pin out of a baby's back--yes, I'm sure I
would."
Anthony Dexter's face softened, almost imperceptibly. "It's youth," he
said, "and youth is a fault we all get over soon enough, Heaven knows.
When you're forty, you'll see that the whole thing is a matter of
business and that, in the last analysis, we're working against Nature's
laws. We endeavour to prolong the lives of the unfit, when only the
fittest should survive."
"That makes me think of something else," continued Ralph, in a low
tone. "Yesterday, I canvassed the township to get a cat for
Araminta--the poor child never had a kitten. Nobody would let me have
one till I got far away from home, and, even then, it was difficult.
They thought I wanted it for--for the laboratory," he concluded, almost
in a whisper.
"Yes?" returned Doctor Dexter, with a rising inflection. "I could have
told you that the cat and dog supply was somewhat depleted
hereabouts--through my own experiments."
"Father!" cried Ralph, his face eloquent with reproach.
Laughing, yet secretly ashamed, Anthony Dexter began to speak.
"Surely, Ralph," he said, "you're not so womanish as that. If I'd
known they taught such stuff as that at my old Alma Mater, I'd have
sent you somewhere else. Who's doing it? What old maid have they
added to their faculty?"
"Oh, I know, Father," interrupted Ralph, waiving discussion. "I've
heard all the arguments, but, unfortunately, I have a heart. I don't
know by what right we assume that human life is more precious than
animal life; by what right we torture and murder the fit in order to
prolong the lives of the unfit, even if direct evidence were obtainable
in every case, which it isn't. Anyhow, I can't do it, I never have
done it, and I never will. I recognise your individual right to shape
your life in accordance with the dictates of your own conscience, but,
because I'm your son, I can't help being ashamed. A man capable of
torturing an animal, no matter for what purpose, is also capable of
torturing a fellow human being, for purposes of his own."
Anthony Dexter's face suddenly blanched with anger, then grew livid.
"You--" he began, hotly.
"Don't, Father," interrupted Ralph. "We'll not have any words. We'll
not let a difference of opinion on any subject keep us from being
friends. Perhaps it's because I'm young, as you say, but, all the time
I was at college, I felt that I had something to lean on, some standard
to shape myself to. Mother died so soon after I was born that it is
almost as if I had not had a mother. I haven't even a childish memory
of her, and, perhaps for that reason, you meant more to me than the
other fellows' fathers did to them.
"When I was tempted to any wrongdoing, the thought of you always held
me back. 'Father wouldn't do it,' I said to myself. 'Father always
does the square thing, and I'm his son.' I remembered that our name
means 'right.' So I never did it."
"And I suppose, now," commented Anthony Dexter, with assumed sarcasm,
"your idol has fallen?"
"Not fallen, Father. Don't say that. You have the same right to your
opinions that I have, but it isn't square to cut up an animal alive,
just because you're the stronger and there's no law to prevent you.
You know it isn't square!"
In the accusing silence, Ralph left the room, and was shortly on his
way uphill, with Araminta's promised cat mewing in his coat pocket.
The grim, sardonic humour of the situation appealed strongly to Doctor
Dexter. "To think," he said to himself, "that only last night, that
identical cat was observed as a fresh and promising specimen,
providentially sent to me in the hour of need. And if I hadn't wanted
Ralph to help me, Araminta's pet would at this moment have been on the
laboratory table, having its heart studied--in action."
Repeatedly, he strove to find justification for a pursuit which his
human instinct told him had no justification. His reason was fully
adequate, but something else failed at the crucial point. He felt
definitely uncomfortable and wished that Ralph might have avoided the
subject. It was none of his business, anyway. But then, Ralph himself
had admitted that.
His experiments were nearly completed along the line in which he had
been working. In deference to a local sentiment which he felt to be
extremely narrow and dwarfing, he had done his work secretly. He had
kept the door of the laboratory locked and the key in his pocket. All
the doors and windows had been closely barred. When his subjects had
given out under the heavy physical strain, he had buried the pitiful
little bodies himself.
He had counted, rather too surely, on the deafness of his old
housekeeper, and had also heavily discounted her personal interest in
his pursuits and her tendency to gossip. Yet, through this single
channel had been disseminated information and conjecture which made it
difficult for Ralph to buy a pet for Araminta.
Anthony Dexter shuddered at his narrow escape. Suppose Araminta's cat
had been sacrificed, and he had been obliged to tell Ralph? One more
experiment was absolutely necessary. He was nearly satisfied, but not
quite. It would be awkward to have Ralph make any unpleasant
discoveries, and he could not very well keep him out of the laboratory,
now, without arousing his suspicion. Very possibly, a man who would
torture an animal would also torture a human being, but he was
unwilling to hurt Ralph. Consequently, there was a flaw in the
logic--the boy's reasoning was faulty, unless this might be the
exception which proved the rule.
Who was Evelina Grey? He wondered how Ralph had come to ask the
question. Suppose he had told him that Evelina Grey was the name of a
woman who haunted him, night and day! In her black gown and with her
burned face heavily veiled, she was seldom out of his mental sight.
All through the past twenty-five years, he had continually told himself
that he had forgotten. When the accusing thought presented itself, he
had invariably pushed it aside, and compelled it to give way to
another. In this way, he had acquired an emotional control for which
he, personally, had great admiration, not observing that his admiration
of himself was an emotion, and, at that, less creditable than some
others might have been.
Man walls up a river, and commands it to do his bidding. Outwardly,
the river assents to the arrangement, yielding to it with a readiness
which, in itself, is suspicious, but man, rapt in contemplation of his
own skill, sees little else. By night and by day the river leans
heavily against the dam. Tiny, sharp currents, like fingers, tear
constantly at the structure, working always underneath. Hidden and
undreamed-of eddies burrow beneath the dam; little river animals
undermine it, ever so slightly, with tooth and claw.
At last an imperceptible opening is made. Streams rush down from the
mountain to join the river; even raindrops lend their individually
insignificant aid. All the forces of nature are subtly arrayed against
the obstruction in the river channel. Suddenly, with the thunder of
pent-up waters at last unleashed, the dam breaks, and the structures
placed in the path by complacent and self-satisfied man are swept on to
the sea like so much kindling-wood. The river, at last, has come into
its own,
A feeling, long controlled, must eventually break its bonds. Forbidden
expression, and not spent by expression, it accumulates force. When
the dam breaks, the flood is more destructive than the steady, normal
current ever could have been. Having denied himself remorse, and
having refused to meet the fact of his own cowardice, Anthony Dexter
was now face to face with the inevitable catastrophe.
He told himself that Ralph's coming had begun it, but, in his heart, he
knew that it was that veiled and ghostly figure standing at twilight in
the wrecked garden. He had seen it again on the road, where
hallucination was less likely, if not altogether impossible. Then the
cold and sinuous necklace of discoloured pearls had been laid at his
door--the pearls which had come first from the depths of the sea, and
then from the depths of his love. His love had given up its dead as
the sea does, maimed past all recognition.
The barrier had been so undermined that on the night of Ralph's return
he had been on the point of telling Thorpe everything--indeed, nothing
but Ralph's swift entrance had stopped his impassioned speech. Was he
so weak that only a slight accident had kept him from utter
self-betrayal, after twenty-five years of magnificent control? Anthony
Dexter liked that word "magnificent" as it came into his thoughts in
connection with himself.
"Father wouldn't do it. Father always does the square thing, and I'm
his son." Ralph's words returned with a pang unbearably keen. Had
Father always done the square thing, or had Father been a coward, a
despicable shirk? And what if Ralph should some day come to know?
The man shuddered at the thought of the boy's face--if he knew. Those
clear, honest eyes would pierce him through and through, because
"Father always does the square thing."
Remorsely, the need of confession surged upon him. There was no
confessional in his church--he even had no church. Yet Thorpe was his
friend. What would Thorpe tell him to do?
Then Anthony Dexter laughed, for Thorpe had unconsciously told him what
to do--and he was spared the confession. As though written in letters
of fire, the words came back:
_The honour of the spoken word still holds him. He asked her to marry
him, and she consented. He was never released from his promise--did
not even ask for it. He slunk away like a cur. In the sight of God he
is hound to her by his own word still. He should go to her and either
fulfil his promise, or ask for release. The tardy fulfilment of his
promise would be the only atonement he could make_.
Had Evelina come back to demand atonement? Was this why the vision of
her confronted him everywhere? She waited for him on the road in
daylight, mocked him from the shadows, darted to meet him from every
tree. She followed him on the long and lonely ways he took to escape
her, and, as he walked, her step chimed in with his.
In darkness, Anthony Dexter feared to turn suddenly, lest he see that
black, veiled figure at his heels. She stood aside on the stairs to
let him pass her, entered the carriage with him and sat opposite, her
veiled face averted. She stood with him beside the sick-bed, listened,
with him, to the heart-beats when he used the stethoscope, waited while
he counted the pulse and measured the respiration.
Always disapprovingly, she stood in the background of his
consciousness. When he wrote a prescription, his pencil seemed to
catch on the white chiffon which veiled the paper he was using. At
night, she stood beside his bed, waiting. In his sleep, most often
secured in these days by drugs, she steadfastly and unfailingly came.
She spoke no word; she simply followed him, veiled--and the phantom
presence was driving him mad. He admitted it now.
And "Father always does the square thing." Very well, what was the
square thing? If Father always does it, he will do it now. What is it?
Anthony Dexter did not know that he asked the question aloud. From the
silence vibrated the answer in Thorpe's low, resonant tones:
_The honour of the spoken word still holds him . . . he was never
released . . . he slunk away like a cur . . . in the sight of God he
is bound to her by his own word still_.
Bound to her! In every fibre of his being he felt the bitter truth.
He was bound to her--had been bound for twenty-five years--was bound
now. And "Father always does the square thing."
Once in a man's life, perhaps, he sees himself as he is. In a blinding
flash of insight, he saw what he must do. Confession must be made, but
not to any pallid priest in a confessional, not to Thorpe, nor to
Ralph, but to Evelina, herself.
_He should go to her and either fulfil his promise, or ask for release.
The tardy fulfilment of his promise would be the only atonement he
could make_.
Then again, still in Thorpe's voice:
_If the woman is here and you can find your friend, we may help him to
wash the stain of cowardice off his soul_.
"The stain is deep," muttered Anthony Dexter. "God knows it is deep."
Once again came Thorpe's voice, shrilling at him, now, out of the
vibrant silence:
_Sometimes I think there is no sin but shirking. I can excuse a liar,
I can pardon a thief, I can pity a murderer, but a shirk--no_!
"Father always does the square thing."
Evidently, Ralph would like to have his father bring him a
stepmother--a woman whose face had been destroyed by fire--and place
her at the head of his table, veiled or not, as Ralph chose. Terribly
burned, hopelessly disfigured, she must live with them always--because
she had saved him from the same thing, if she had not actually saved
his life.
The walls of the room swayed, the furniture moved dizzily, the floor
undulated. Anthony Dexter reeled and fell--in a dead faint.
"Are you all right now, Father?" It was Ralph's voice, anxious, yet
cheery. "Who'd have thought I'd get another patient so soon!"
Doctor Dexter sat up and rubbed his eyes. Memory returned slowly;
strength more slowly still.
"Can't have my Father fainting all over the place without a permit,"
resumed Ralph. "You've been doing too much. I take the night work
from this time on."
The day wore into late afternoon. Doctor Dexter lay on the couch in
the library, the phantom Evelina persistently at his side. His body
had failed, but his mind still fought, feebly.
"There is no one here," he said aloud. "I am all alone. I can see
nothing because there is nothing here."
Was it fancy, or did the veiled woman convey the impression that her
burned lips distorted themselves yet further by a smile?
At dusk, there was a call. Ralph received from his father a full
history of the case, with suggestions for treatment in either of two
changes that might possibly have taken place, and drove away.
The loneliness was keen. The empty house, shorne of Ralph's sunny
presence, was unbearable. A thousand memories surged to meet him; a
thousand voices leaped from the stillness. Always, the veiled figure
stood by him, mutely accusing him of shameful cowardice. Above and
beyond all was Thorpe's voice, shrilling at him:
_The honour of the spoken word still holds him . . . he was never
released . . . he slunk away like a cur . . . he is bound to her still
. . . there is no sin but shirking_ . . .
Over and over again, the words rang through his consciousness. Then,
like an afterclap of thunder:
_Father always does the square thing_!
The dam crashed, the barrier of years was broken, the obstructions were
swept out to sea. Remorse and shame, no longer denied, overwhelmingly
submerged his soul. He struggled up from the couch blindly, and went
out--broken in body, crushed in spirit, yet triumphantly a man at last.