Grace went to her own room to lay aside her shawl and hat, before going
to Mrs. Maynard, and found her mother sewing there.
“Why, who is with Mrs. Maynard?” she asked.
“Miss Gleason is reading to her,” said Mrs. Breen. “If she had any sort
of active treatment, she could get well at once. I couldn’t take the
responsibility of doing anything for her, and it was such a worry to
stay and see everything going wrong, that when Miss Gleason came in I
was glad to get away. Miss Gleason seems to believe in your Dr.
Mulbridge.”
“_My_ Dr. Mulbridge!” echoed Grace.
“She talked of him as if he were yours. I don’t know what you’ve been
saying to her about him; but you had better be careful. The woman is a
fool.” She now looked up at her daughter for the first time. “Why, what
is the matter with you what kept you so long? You look perfectly wild.”
“I feel wild,” said Grace calmly. “The wind went down.”
“Was that all? I don’t see why that should make you feel wild,” said
her mother, dropping her spectacles to her sewing again.
“It wasn’t all,” answered the girl, sinking provisionally upon the side
of a chair, with her shawl still on her arm, and her hat in her hand.
“Mother, have you noticed anything peculiar about Mr. Libby?”
“He’s the only person who seems to be of the slightest use about here;
I’ve noticed _that_,” said Mrs. Breen. “He’s always going and coming
for you and Mrs. Maynard. Where is that worthless husband of hers?
Hasn’t he had time to come from Cheyenne yet?”
“He’s on the way. He was out at his ranch when Mr. Libby telegraphed
first, and had to be sent for. We found a despatch from him at Leyden,
saying he had started,” Grace explained.
“What business had he to be so far away at all?” demanded her mother.
It was plain that Mrs. Breen was in her most censorious temper, which
had probably acquired a sharper edge towards Maynard from her
reconciliation with his wife.
Grace seized her chance to meet the worst. “Do you think that I have
done anything to encourage Mr. Libby?” she asked, looking bravely at
her mother.
“Encourage him to do what?” asked Mrs. Breen, without lifting her eyes
from her work.
“Encouraged him to—think I cared for him; to—to be in love with me.”
Mrs. Breen lifted her head now, and pushed her spectacles up on her
forehead, while she regarded her daughter in silence. “Has he been
making love to you?”
“Yes.”
Her mother pushed her spectacles down again; and, turning the seam
which she had been sewing, flattened it with her thumb-nail. She made
this action expressive of having foreseen such a result, and of having
struggled against it, neglected and alone. “Very well, then. I hope you
accepted him?” she asked quietly.
“Mother!”
“Why not? You must like him,” she continued in the same tone. “You have
been with him every moment the last week that you haven’t been with
Mrs. Maynard. At least _I’ve_ seen nothing of you, except when you came
to tell me you were going to walk or to drive with him. You seem to
have asked him to take you most of the time.”
“How can you say such a thing, mother?” cried the girl.
“Didn’t you ask him to let you go with him this afternoon? You told me
you did.”
“Yes, I did. I did it for a purpose.”
“Ah! for a purpose,” said Mrs. Breen, taking a survey of the new seam,
which she pulled from her knee, where one end of it was pinned, towards
her chin. She left the word to her daughter, who was obliged to take
it.
“I asked him to let me go with him because Louise had tortured me about
making her go out in his boat, till I couldn’t bear it any longer. It
seemed to me that if I took the same risk myself, it would be
something; and I hoped there would be a storm.”
“I should think you had taken leave of your senses,” Mrs. Breen
observed, with her spectacles intent upon her seam. “Did you think it
would be any consolation to him if you were drowned, or to her? And
if,” she added, her conscience rising equal to the vicarious demand
upon it, “you hoped there would be danger, had you any right to expose
him to it? Even if you chose to risk your own life, you had no right to
risk his.” She lifted her spectacles again, and turned their austere
glitter upon her daughter.
“Yes, it all seems very silly now,” said the girl, with a hopeless
sigh.
“Silly!” cried her mother. “I’m glad you can call it silly.”
“And it seemed worse still when he told me that he had never believed
it was going to storm that day, when he took Louise out. His man said
it was, and he repeated it because he saw I didn’t want her to go.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Mrs. Breen, “if he was willing to deceive her
then, he is willing to deceive you now.”
“He didn’t deceive her. He said what he had heard. And he said it
because he—I wished it.”
“I call it deceiving. Truth is truth. That is what I was taught; and
that’s what I supposed I had taught you.”
“I would trust Mr. Libby in anything,” returned the daughter. “He is
perfectly frank about himself. He confessed that he had done it to
please me. He said that nothing else could excuse it.”
“Oh, then you _have_ accepted him!”
“No, mother, I haven’t. I have refused him, and he is going away as
soon as Mr. Maynard comes.” She sat looking at the window, and the
tears stole into her eyes, and blurred the sea and sky together where
she saw their meeting at the horizon line.
“Well,” said her mother, “their that is the end of it, I presume.”
“Yes, that’s the end,” said Grace. “But—I felt sorry for him, mother.
Once,” she went on, “I thought I had everything clear before me; but
now I seem only to have made confusion of my life. Yes,” she added
drearily, “it was foolish and wicked, and it was perfectly useless,
too. I can’t escape from the consequences of what I did. It makes no
difference what he believed or any one believed. I drove them on to
risk their lives because I thought myself so much better than they;
because I was self-righteous and suspicious and stubborn. Well, I must
bear the penalty: and oh, if I could only bear it alone!” With a long
sigh she took back the burden which she had been struggling to cast
off, and from which for a time she had actually seemed to escape. She
put away her hat and shawl, and stood before the glass, smoothing her
hair. “When will it ever end?” she moaned to the reflection there,
rather than to her mother, who did not interrupt this spiritual ordeal.
In another age, such a New England girl would have tortured herself
with inquisition as to some neglected duty to God;—in ours, when
religion is so largely humanified, this Puritan soul could only wreak
itself in a sense of irreparable wrong to her fellow-creature.
When she went out she met Miss Gleason half-way down the corridor to
Mrs. Maynard’s door. The latter had a book in her hand, and came
forward whispering. “She’s _asleep_,” she said very sibilantly. “I have
read her to sleep, and she’s sleeping beautifully. Have you ever read
it?” she asked, with hoarse breaks from her undertone, as she held up
one of those cheap library-editions of a novel toward Grace.
“Jane Eyre? Why, of course. Long ago.”
“So have I,” said Miss Gleason. “But I sent and got it again, to
refresh my impressions of Rochester. We all think Dr. Mulbridge is just
like him. Rochester is my ideal character,—a perfect conception of a
man: so abrupt, so rough, so savage. Oh, I like those men! Don’t you?”
she fluted. “Mrs. Maynard sees the resemblance, as well as the rest of
us. But I know! You don’t approve of them. I suppose they _can’t_ be
defended on some grounds; but I can see how, even in such a case as
this, the perfect mastery of the man-physician constitutes the highest
usefulness of the woman-physician. The advancement of women must be as
women. ‘Male and female created he them,’ and it is only in remembering
this that we are helping Gawd, whether as an anthropomorphic conception
or a universally pervading instinct of love, don’t you think?”
With her novel clapped against her breast, she leaned winningly over
toward Grace, and fixed her with her wide eyes, which had rings of
white round the pupils.
“Do tell me!” she ran on without waiting an answer. “_Didn’t_ you go
with Mr. Libby because you hoped it might storm, and wished to take the
same risk as Mrs. Maynard? I _told_ Mrs. Alger you did!”
Grace flushed guiltily, and Miss Gleason cowered a little, perhaps
interpreting the color as resentment. “I should consider that a very
silly motive,” she said, helplessly ashamed that she was leaving the
weight of the blow upon Miss Gleason’s shoulders instead of her own.
“Of course,” said Miss Gleason enthusiastically, “you can’t confess it.
But I _know_ you are capable of such a thing—of anything heroic! _Do_
forgive me,” she said, seizing Grace’s hand. She held it a moment,
gazing with a devouring fondness into her face, which she stooped a
little sidewise to peer up into. Then she quickly dropped her hand,
and, whirling away, glided slimly out of the corridor.
Grace softly opened Mrs. Maynard’s door, and the sick woman opened her
eyes. “I wasn’t asleep,” she said hoarsely, “but I had to pretend to
be, or that woman would have killed me.”
Grace went to her and felt her hands and her flushed forehead.
“I am worse this evening,” said Mrs. Maynard.
“Oh, no,” sighed the girl, dropping into a chair at the bedside, with
her eyes fixed in a sort of fascination on the lurid face of the sick
woman.
“After getting me here,” continued Mrs. Maynard, in the same low,
hoarse murmur, “you might at least stay with me a little. What kept you
so long?”
“The wind fell. We were becalmed.”
“We were not becalmed the day _I_ went out with Mr. Libby. But perhaps
nobody forced _you_ to go.”
Having launched this dart, she closed her eyes again with something
more like content than she had yet shown: it had an aim of which she
could always be sure.
“We have heard from Mr. Maynard,” said Grace humbly. “There was a
despatch waiting for Mr. Libby at Leyden. He is on his way.”
Mrs. Maynard betrayed no immediate effect of this other than to say,
“He had better hurry,” and did not open her eyes.
Grace went about the room with a leaden weight in every fibre, putting
the place in order, and Mrs. Maynard did not speak again till she had
finished. Then she said, “I want you to tell me just how bad Dr.
Mulbridge thinks I am.”
“He has never expressed any anxiety,” Grace began, with her inaptness
at evasion.
“Of course he hasn’t,” murmured the sick woman. “He isn’t a fool! What
does he _say?_”
This passed the sufferance even of remorse. “He says you mustn’t talk,”
the girl flashed out. “And if you insist upon doing so, I will leave
you, and send some one else to take care of you.”
“Very well, then. I know what _that_ means. When a doctor tells you not
to talk, it’s because he knows he can’t do you any good. As soon as
George Maynard gets here I will have some one that can cure me, or I
will know the reason why.” The conception of her husband as a champion
seemed to commend him to her in novel degree. She shed some tears, and
after a little reflection she asked, “How soon will he be here?”
“I don’t know,” said Grace. “He seems to have started yesterday
morning.”
“He can be here by day after to-morrow,” Mrs. Maynard computed. “There
will be some one to look after poor little Bella then,” she added, as
if, during her sickness, Bella must have been wholly neglected. “Don’t
let the child be _all_ dirt when her father comes.”
“Mother will look after Bella,” Grace replied, too meek again to resent
the implication. After a pause, “Oh, Louise,” she added beseechingly,
“I’ve suffered so much from my own wrong-headedness and obstinacy that
I couldn’t bear to see you taking the same risk, and I’m so glad that
you are going to meet your husband in the right spirit.”
“What right spirit?” croaked Mrs. Maynard.
“The wish to please him, to”—
“I don’t choose to have him say that his child disgraces him,” replied
Mrs. Maynard, in the low, husky, monotonous murmur in which she was
obliged to utter everything.
“But, _dear_ Louise!” cried the other, “you choose something else too,
don’t you? You wish to meet him as if no unkindness had parted you, and
as if you were to be always together after this? I _hope_ you do! Then
I should feel that all this suffering and, trouble was a mercy.”
“Other people’s misery is always a mercy to them,” hoarsely suggested
Mrs. Maynard.
“Yes, I know that,” Grace submitted, with meek conviction. “But,
Louise,” she pleaded, “you _will_ make up with your husband, won’t you?
Whatever he has done, that will surely be best. I know that you love
him, and that he must love you, yet. It’s the only way. If you were
finally separated from him, and you and he could be happy apart, what
would become of that poor child? Who will take a father’s place with
her? That’s the worst about it. Oh, Louise, I feel so badly for you—for
what you have lost, and may lose. Marriage must change people so that
unless they live to each other, their lives will be maimed and useless.
It ought to be so much easier to forgive any wrong your husband does
you than to punish it; for that perpetuates the wrong, and forgiveness
ends it, and it’s the only thing that can end a wrong. I am sure that
your husband will be ready to do or say anything you wish; but if he
shouldn’t, Louise, you _will_ receive him forgivingly, and make the
first advance? It’s a woman’s right to make the advances in forgiving.”
Mrs. Maynard lay with her hands stretched at her side under the
covering, and only her face visible above it. She now turned her head a
little, so as to pierce the earnest speaker with a gleam from her dull
eye. “Have you accepted Walter Libby?” she asked.
“Louise!” cried Grace, with a blush that burned like fire.
“That’s the way I used to talk when I was first engaged. Wait till
you’re married a while. I want Bella to have on her pique, and her pink
sash,—not the cherry one. I should think you would have studied to be a
minister instead of a doctor. But you needn’t preach to me; I shall
know how to behave to George Maynard when he comes,—if he ever does
come. And now I should think you had made me talk enough!”
“Yes, Yes,” said Grace, recalled to her more immediate duty in alarm.
All her helpfulness was soon to be needed. The disease, which had
lingered more than usual in the early stages, suddenly approached a
crisis. That night Mrs. Maynard grew so much worse that Grace sent
Libby at daybreak for Dr. Mulbridge; and the young man, after leading
out his own mare to see if her lameness had abated, ruefully put her
back in the stable, and set off to Corbitant with the splay-foot at a
rate of speed unparalleled, probably, in the animal’s recollection of a
long and useful life. In the two anxious days that followed, Libby and
Grace were associated in the freedom of a common interest outside of
themselves; she went to him for help and suggestion, and he gave them,
as if nothing had passed to restrict or embarrass their relations.
There was that, in fact, in the awe of the time and an involuntary
disoccupation of hers that threw them together even more constantly
than before. Dr. Mulbridge remained with his patient well into the
forenoon; in the afternoon he came again, and that night he did not go
away. He superseded Grace as a nurse no less completely than he had
displaced her as a physician. He let her relieve him when he flung
himself down for a few minutes’ sleep, or when he went out for the huge
meals which he devoured, preferring the unwholesome things with a
depravity shocking to the tender physical consciences of the ladies who
looked on; but when he returned to his charge, he showed himself
jealous of all that Grace had done involving the exercise of more than
a servile discretion. When she asked him once if there were nothing
else that she could do, he said, “fires, keep those women and children
quiet,” in a tone that classed her with both. She longed to ask him
what he thought of Mrs. May nard’s condition; but she had not the
courage to invoke the intelligence that ignored her so completely, and
she struggled in silence with such disheartening auguries as her
theoretical science enabled her to make.
The next day was a Sunday, and the Sabbath hush which always hung over
Jocelyn’s was intensified to the sense of those who ached between hope
and fear for the life that seemed to waver and flicker in that still
air. Dr. Mulbridge watched beside his patient, noting every change with
a wary intelligence which no fact escaped and no anxiety clouded;
alert, gentle, prompt; suffering no question, and absolutely silent as
to all impressions. He allowed Grace to remain with him when she liked,
and let her do his bidding in minor matters; but when from time to time
she escaped from the intolerable tension in which his reticence and her
own fear held her, he did not seem to see whether she went or came.
Toward nightfall she met him coming out of Mrs. Maynard’s room, as she
drew near in the narrow corridor.
“Where is your friend—the young man—the one who smokes?” he asked, as
if nothing unusual had occupied him. “I want him to give me a cigar.”
“Dr. Mulbridge,” she said, “I will not bear this any longer. I must
know the worst—you have no right to treat me in this way. Tell me
now—tell me instantly: will she live?”
He looked at her with an imaginable apprehension of hysterics, but as
she continued firm, and placed herself resolutely in his way, he
relaxed his scrutiny, and said, with a smile, “Oh, I think so. What
made you think she wouldn’t?”
She drew herself aside, and made way far him.
“Go!” she cried. She would have said more, but her indignation choked
her.
He did not pass at once, and he did not seem troubled at her anger.
“Dr. Breen,” he said, “I saw a good deal of pneumonia in the army, and
I don’t remember a single case that was saved by the anxiety of the
surgeon.”
He went now, as people do when they fancy themselves to have made a
good point; and she heard him asking Barlow for Libby, outside, and
then walking over the gravel toward the stable. At that moment she
doubted and hated him so much that she world have been glad to keep
Libby from talking or even smoking with him. But she relented a little
toward him afterwards, when he returned and resumed the charge of his
patient with the gentle, vigilant cheerfulness which she had admired in
him from the first, omitting no care and betraying none. He appeared to
take it for granted that Grace saw an improvement, but he recognized it
by nothing explicit till he rose and said, “I think I will leave Mrs.
Maynard with you to-night, Dr. Breen.”
The sick woman’s eyes turned to him imploringly from her pillow, and
Grace spoke the terror of both when she faltered in return, “Are
you—you are not going home?”
“I shall sleep in the house.”
“Oh, thank you!” she cried fervently.
“And you can call me if you wish. But there won’t be any occasion. Mrs.
Maynard is very much better.” He waited to give, in a sort of
absent-minded way, certain directions. Then he went out, and Grace sank
back into the chair from which she had started at his rising, and wept
long and silently with a hidden face. When she took away her hands and
dried her tears, she saw Mrs. Maynard beckoning to her. She went to the
bedside.
“What is it, dear?” she asked tenderly.
“Stoop down,” whispered the other; and as Grace bowed her ear Mrs.
Maynard touched her cheek with her dry lips. In this kiss doubtless she
forgave the wrong which she had hoarded in her heart, and there
perverted into a deadly injury. But they both knew upon what terms the
pardon was accorded, and that if Mrs. Maynard had died, she would have
died holding Grace answerable for her undoing.