The house surgeon stretched his long legs lazily in a corner of the
office and looked at the hospital superintendent through the purplish
haze from his cigar. “I wonder, Goodno,” he said, “that you have time
to get interested in any one case among so many. I’d like to see the
one you speak of pull through; it’s a rather unusual case, and a
trephine always absorbs me.”
Dr. Goodno lighted a companion cigar. “My interest in him isn’t wholly
professional,” he answered slowly. “It’s personal. In the first place,
he isn’t an Italian stevedore or a Pole peddler from Baxter street. He
is a man of a great deal of promise. He has published a book or two, I
believe. And in the second place, my wife is very much concerned.”
“Always seems to be the trouble, doesn’t it? Enter a romance!” Dr.
Irwin waved his hand widely.
“Yes, it’s a romance. To tell the truth, Irwin, Mrs. Goodno knows of
the young woman, and I can’t tell you how anxious she is about him.
There’s nothing sadder to me than a case like that.”
“Ah!” the other said, “that’s because you’re a married man. The rest of
us haven’t time to grow sympathetic. I should say that the particular
young woman would be a great deal better off, judging from present
indications, if he _did_ die.”
“Why?”
“Because, if he should recover from this septic condition, he’s more
than likely to be a stick for the rest of his life. It’s even chances
he never puts foot to the ground again. Such men are better dead, and
if you gave them their choice, most of them would prefer it.”
“I didn’t know it was as bad as that. Dr. Faulkner’s earlier prognosis
was more favorable.”
“Yes, but I don’t like his temperature of the last two days. He’s got
septic symptoms, and you know how quickly such a course ends. Well,
we’ll soon know, though that’s more consolation to us than it might
be to him, I suppose.” He drummed with his fingers on the arm of the
chair. “As for the girl,” he continued. “Love? Pshaw! She’ll get over
it. What sensible woman, when she’s got beyond the mooning age and the
foreign missionary age, wants a cripple for a husband? If this patient
should live in that way, this girl you speak of would probably get the
silly notion that she wanted to marry him--trust a woman, especially a
young woman, for that! If she’s beautiful or wealthy, or particularly
talented, it’s all the more likely she would insist on tying herself
up to him and nurse him and feed him gruel till her hair was gray. And
what would she get out of it?”
“There might be worse lives than that.” Dr. Goodno spoke reflectively.
“For her, I presume you mean?”
“Yes. Woman’s love is less of a physical affinity and more a
consciousness of spiritual attraction than man’s.”
“Teach your women that. It’s not without its merits as a working
doctrine. The time a woman isn’t thinking about servants or babies she
generally spends thinking about her soul. The word soul to her is as
fascinating as a canary to an Angora cat. She takes so much stock in
heaven only because she’s been told it isn’t material. Your material
philosophies were all invented and patented by men; it’s the women who
keep your spiritual religions running.”
“How would _you_ have it?”
“Oh, it’s all right as far as heaven goes! Let them believe anything
they want to. But when you bring the all-soul idea down into every-day
life, it’s mawkish. When you go about preaching that love is a
spiritual ‘affinity,’ for instance.”
“Well?”
“You may believe it, understand. But you gloss over the other side.
The general opinion is that ‘bodily’ isn’t a nice word to use when we
discuss love. You and I, as physicians, see every day the results of
this dislike to recognize the material side in what has been called the
‘young person.’ Women are taught from childhood to regard the immensely
human and emotional sensibilities as linked to sin. The sex-stirring
in them, they are led to imagine evil and a wrong to possess. They are
taught instinctively to condemn rather than to respect the growth and
indications of their own natures. The profound attraction of one sex
to the other which marks the purest and most ennobling passion--the
trembling delight in the merest touch or caress--the bodily thrill at
the passing presence or footfall of the one beloved--these they come to
believe a shame to feel and a death to confess. It is the teaching that
makes for the morbid. A great deal of mental suffering which leaves its
mark upon the growing woman might be avoided if men and women were more
honest with themselves. A soulless woman is just as much use in the
world as a bodiless one--or a man either, for that matter.”
Dr. Goodno regarded him musingly. “Granted there is a good deal of
truth in what you say,” he said. “When I spoke of woman’s love as more
of a spiritual and less of a material affinity than man’s, I meant
that it does not require so much from the senses to feed upon. Sex has
a psychology, and it is a fact which has been universally noted that
all that concerns the mental aspect of sex is exhibited in greater
proportionate force by women. Does not this seem to imply that love to
a woman is more of a mental element and less of a physical?”
“Nonsense! More of a mental, but only so because more of a physical,
too. All love’s mental delights come originally from the physical
side. How many women do you see falling in love with twisted faces and
crooked joints? A hand stands for a hand-clasp; a face for a kiss! Love
becomes a ‘spiritual’ passion only after it has blossomed on physical
expression. Not before.”
The other shook his head doubtfully.
“If your view were the correct one,” pursued Irwin, “women, in all
their habitual acts of fascination (which are Nature’s precursors of
love) would strive more to touch the mental, the spiritual side of
men. But they don’t. They apply their own self-learned reasoning to
the opposite sex. They decorate themselves for man with the feathers
of male birds (you’ll find that in your Darwin), which Nature gave the
male birds to charm the females. They strike at his senses, and they
hit his mental side, when he has any, through them.”
“You’re a sad misogynist, Irwin!” Dr. Goodno was smiling, but there was
a sub-note of earnestness beneath the lightness of his tone. “And you
forget that women have an imaginative and ideal side which is superior
to man’s. They can create the mental, possibly, where men are most
dependent upon sense-impression. Love involves more of the soul in
woman, Irwin.”
The house surgeon unwound his legs. “Or less,” he said tersely.
“Havelock Ellis says a good thing. He says that while a man may be
said to live on a plane, a woman is more apt to live on the upward
or downward slope of a curve. She is always going up or coming down.
That’s why a woman, when an artificial civilization hasn’t stepped in
to forbid it, is forever talking about her health. And, spiritually, as
well as physically, she is just as apt to be coming down as going up.
Her proportion is wrong. Your bad woman disrespects her soul; your good
woman disrespects her body. The wholesome woman disrespects neither and
respects both. But very few young women are wholesome nowadays. Their
training has been against it! The best way for a woman to treat her
soul is to realize that her soul and body belong together, and have to
live together the rest of her natural life. She needn’t forget this
just because she happens to fall in love! No woman can marry a man
whom accident has robbed of his physical side and not wrong herself.
She shuts off the avenues of her senses. There is no thrill of ear or
hand--no comeliness for her eye to dwell upon, and her spiritual love,
so beautiful to begin with, starves itself slowly to death!”
“Very good on general principles,” said Dr. Goodno. “That’s the
trouble. It’s easy enough to sermonize in the pulpit, or the clinic
either, but when we come to concrete examples, it’s difficult. The
particular instance is troublesome. Now, in the case of this man in the
surgical ward, if he recovered at all, but remained a hopeless cripple,
you would pack him off into a rayless solitude for the rest of his
life, and tell the girl who loves him to go and love somebody else. You
wouldn’t leave it to her--even if he was willing.”
“Wouldn’t _you_?”
“No! I would be afraid to arrogate to myself the judgment upon two
human souls. There are times when what we call consistency vanishes and
something greater and more noble stands up to make it ashamed. I’ll
tell you now, Irwin, if the one woman in the world to me--the woman I
loved--if my wife--had been brought where the case we’ve been speaking
of promises to be--if there were nothing but her eyes left and the
something that is back of them--I tell you, I’d have married her! Yes,
and I’d have thanked God for it!”
His companion tossed the dead butt of his cigar into the grate and rose
to go to the ward. “Goodno,” he said, and his voice was unsteady, “I
believe it! You would; and I wish to the Lord I knew what that meant!”
* * * * *
The superintendent sat long thinking. He was still pondering when his
wife entered the room. “I’ve just been talking with Irwin,” he said,
“about the last trephine case--the one you spoke to me of. He doesn’t
seem too hopeful, I’m sorry to say.”
She did not answer.
“By the way,” he continued, “I saw your new nurse protégée to-day.
Langdon, I believe her name is. She is a lovely girl; I think I never
saw a brighter, sweeter face in my life.”
Mrs. Goodno had gone to the window and stood looking out. “Doctor,” she
said, “I’ve bad news. Dr. Faulkner has just seen Mr. Daunt, and--he is
dying.”
Something in her voice caught him. He rose and came beside her, and saw
that her eyes were full of tears. He drew her head to his shoulder and
smoothed her hair gently. He could feel her hands quiver against his
arm. His thoughts fled far away--somewhere--where the one for whose
sorrow she cried must be uncomforted. “Poor girl! Poor girl!” he said.