Mrs. Ducharme opened the door of the cottage in response to Sommers's
knock. Attired in a black house dress, with her dark hair smoothly brushed
back from round, fat features, she was a peaceful figure. Sommers thought
there was some truth in her contention that "Ducharme ought to get a
decent-looking woman, anyway."
"How is Mr. Preston?" he asked.
Mrs. Ducharme shook her head mournfully.
"Bad, allus awful bad--and _pitiful_. Calling for stuff in a voice fit
to break your heart."
"Mind you don't let him get any," the doctor counselled, preparing to go
upstairs.
"Better not go up there jest yet," the woman whispered. "He _did_ get
away from us yesterdy and had a terrible time over there." She hitched her
shoulders in the direction of Stoney Island Avenue. "We ain't found out
till he'd been gone 'most two hours, and, my! such goings on; we had to git
two perlicemen."
"I suppose you were out looking for Ducharme?" the doctor asked, in a
severe tone.
"It was the last time," the woman pleaded, her eyes downcast. "Come in
here. Miss Preston ain't got back from school,--she's late to-day."
Sommers walked into the bare sitting room and sat down, while Mrs. Ducharme
leaned against the door-post, fingering her apron in an embarrassed manner.
"I've got cured," she blurted out at last. "My eye was awful bad, and it's
been most a week since you sent me here."
"Did you follow my treatment?"
"No! I was out one afternoon--after Mrs. Preston came back from school--and
I had walked miles and miles. Comin' home I passed a buildin' down here a
ways on the avenue where there were picter papers pasted all over the
windows; the picters were all about healin' folks, heaps and heaps in great
theaters, a nice white-haired old preacher doin' the healin'. While I was
lookin' at the picters, a door opened and a young feller came along and
helped 'em carry in a cripple in his chair. He turns to me arter finishin'
with the cripple and says, 'Come in, lady, and be healed in the blood of
the lamb.' In I went, sure enough, and there was a kind of rough church
fitted up with texts printed in great show-bills, and they was healin'
folks. The little feller was helpin' em up the steps to the platform, and
the old feller was prayin', and at last the young feller comes to me and
says, 'Want ter be healed?' and I just got up, couldn't help it, and walked
to the platform, and they prayed over me--you aren't mad, are you?" she
asked suspiciously.
Sommers laughed.
"Mrs. Preston said you'd be very angry with such nonsense. But at any rate
the old fellow--Dr.--Dr.--Po--"
"Dr. Potz," Sommers suggested.
"That's him. He cured me, and I went back again and told him about
Ducharme. And _he_ says that he's got a devil, and he will cast it out
by prayin'. But he wants money."
"How much will it cost to cast out the devil?" the doctor inquired.
"The doctor says he must have ten dollars to loosen the bonds."
"Well," Sommers drew a bill from his pocket, "there's ten dollars on
account of your wages. Now, don't you interfere with the doctor's work. You
let him manage the devil his own way, and if you see Ducharme or the other
woman, you run away as hard as you can. If you don't, you may bring the
devil back again."
The woman took the money eagerly.
"You can go right off to find the doctor," Sommers continued. "I'll stay
here until Mrs. Preston returns. But let me look at your eye, and see
whether the doctor has cast that devil out for good and all."
He examined the eye as well as he could without appliances. Sure enough, so
far as he could detect, the eye was normal, the peculiar paralysis had
disappeared.
"You are quite right," he pronounced at last. "The doctor has handled this
devil very ably. You can tell Mrs. Preston that I approve of your going to
that doctor."
"I wonder where Mrs. Preston can be: she's most always here by half-past
four, and it's after five. He," the woman pointed upstairs to Preston's
rooms, "is sleeping off the effects of the dose Mrs. Preston gave him."
"The powders?" the doctor asked.
"Yes, sir. She had to give him two before he would sleep. Well, I'll be
back by supper time. If he calls you, be careful about the bar on the
door."
After Mrs. Ducharme had gone, the doctor examined every object in the
little room. It was all so bare! Needlessly so, Sommers thought at first,
contrasting the bleak room with the comfortable simplicity of his own
rooms. The strip of coarse thin rug, the open Franklin stove, the pine
kitchen table, the three straight chairs--it was as if the woman, crushed
down from all aspirations, had defiantly willed to exist with as little of
this world's furniture as might be. On the table were a few school books, a
teacher's manual of drawing, a school mythology, and at one side two or
three other volumes, which Sommers took up with more interest. One was a
book on psychology--a large modern work on the subject. A second was an
antiquated popular treatise on "Diseases of the Mind." Another volume was
an even greater surprise--Balzac's _Une Passion dans la Desert_, a
well-dirtied copy from the public library. They were fierce condiments for
a lonely mind!
His examination over, he noiselessly stepped into the hall and went
upstairs. After some fumbling he unbolted the door and tiptoed into the
room, where Preston lay like a log. The fortnight had changed him markedly.
There was no longer any prospect that he would sink under his disease, as
Sommers had half expected. He had grown stouter, and his flesh had a
healthy tint. "It will take it out of his mind," he muttered to himself,
watching the hanging jaw that fell nervelessly away from the mouth,
disclosing the teeth.
As he watched the man's form, so drearily promising of physical power, he
heard a light footstep at the outer door, which he had left unbarred. On
turning he caught the look of relief that passed over Mrs. Preston's face
at the sight of the man lying quietly in his bed. What a state of fear she
must live in!
Without a word the two descended, Sommers carefully barring and bolting the
door. When they reached her room, her manner changed, and she spoke with a
note of elation in her voice:
"I was _so_ afraid that you would not come again after sending me
help."
"I shall come as often and as long as you need me," Sommers answered,
taking her hand kindly. "He has had another attack," he continued. "Mrs.
Ducharme told me--I sent her out--and I suppose he's sleeping off the
opiate."
"Yes, it was dreadful, worse than anything yet." She uttered these words
jerkily, walking up and down the room in excitement. "And I've just left
the schoolhouse. The assistant superintendent was there to see me. He was
kind enough, but he said it couldn't happen again. There was scandal about
it now. And yesterday I heard a child, one of my pupils, say to his
companion, 'She's the teacher who's got a drunken husband.'"
Her voice was dreary, not rebellious.
"I don't know what to do. I cannot move. It would be worse in any other
neighborhood. I thought," she added in a low voice, "that he would go away,
for a time at least, but his mind is so weak, and he has some trouble with
walking. But he gets stronger, stronger, O God, every day! I have to see
him grow stronger, and I grow weaker."
"It is simply preposterous," the doctor protested in matter-of-fact tones,
"to kill yourself, to put yourself in such a position for a man, who is no
longer a man. For a man you cannot love," he added.
"What would be the use of running away from the trouble? He has ruined my
life. Alves Preston is a mere thing that eats and sleeps. She will be that
kind of thing as long as she lives."
"That is romantic rot," the doctor observed coldly. "No life is ruined in
that way. One life has been wrecked; but you, _you_ are bigger than
that life. You can recover--bury it away--and love and have children and
find that it is a good thing to live. That is the beauty of human
weakness--we forget ourselves of yesterday."
In answer to his words her face, which he had once thought too immobile and
passive for beauty, flamed with color, the dark eyes flashing beneath the
broad white brow.
"Am I just caught in a fog?" she murmured.
"You are living in a way that would make any woman mad. I might twist
myself into as many knots as you have. I might say that _I_ had caused
this disaster; that March evening my hand was too true. For I knew then the
man ought to die."
He blurted out his admission roughly.
"I knew you did," she said softly, "and that has made it easier."
His voice trembled when he spoke again. "But I live with facts, not
fancies. And the facts are that that ruined thing should not clog you, ruin
_you_. Get rid of him in any way you will,--I advise the county
asylum. Get rid of him, and do it quickly before he crazes you."
When he had finished, there was an oppressive stillness in the room, as if
some sentence had been declared. Mrs. Preston got up and walked to and fro,
evidently battling with herself. She stopped opposite him finally.
"The only thing that would justify _that_ would be to know that you
grasped it all--real happiness in that one bold stroke. Such conviction can
_never_ come."
"Happiness!" he exclaimed scornfully. "If you mean a good, comfortable
time, you won't find any certainty about _that_. But you can get freedom to
live out your life--"
"You fail to understand. There _is_ happiness. See,--come here."
She led him to the front window, which was open toward the peaceful little
lawn. On the railroad track behind the copse of scrub oak an unskilful
train crew was making up a long train of freight cars. Their shouts,
punctuated by the rumbling reverberations from the long train as it
alternately buckled up and stretched out, was the one discord in the soft
night. All else was hushed, even to the giant chimneys in the steel works.
One solitary furnace lamped the growing darkness. It was midsummer now in
these marshy spots, and a very living nature breathed and pulsed, even in
the puddles between the house and the avenue.
"You can hear it in the night air," she murmured; "the joy that comes
rising up from the earth, the joy of living. Ah! that is why we are
made--to have happiness and joy, to rejoice the heart of God, to make God
live, for _He_ must be happiness itself; and when we are happy and
feel joy in living, He must grow stronger. And when we are weak and bitter,
when the world haunts us as I felt this afternoon on leaving the
superintendent, when men strike and starve, and others are hard and
grasping--then He must shrink and grow small and suffer. There _is_
happiness," she ended, breathing her belief as a prayer into the solitude
and night.
"What will you do to get it?" Sommers asked, shortly.
"Do to get it?" She drew back from the window, her figure tense. "When it
comes within my grasp, I will do everything, everything, and nothing shall
hinder me."
"Meantime?" the doctor questioned significantly.
"Don't ask me!" She sank into a chair and covered her eyes with her hand.
And neither spoke until the sound of footsteps was heard on the walk.
"There is Mrs. Ducharme coming home from the charmer of devils. It is time
for me to go," Sommers said.
The room was so dark that he could not see her face, as he extended his
hand; but he could feel the repressed breathing, the passionate air about
her person.
"Remember," he said slowly, "whenever you need me--want me for
anything--send a message, and I shall come at once. We will settle this
thing together."
There was a sharp pressure on his hand, her thin fingers drawing him toward
her involuntarily. Then his hand dropped, and he groped his way to the
door.