Eighteen months swiftly passed with the little mother and her boy still
in Dr. Mulford's sanitarium. She had allowed herself to be persuaded
that he had the right to be her guide and helper in the first year's
training of the child.
The boy had steadily grown in strength and beauty of body and mind. The
Doctor persuaded her to spend one more winter basking in his sun-parlor
and finishing the final chapters of his book. Her mind was singularly
clever and helpful in the interpretation of the experiences and emotions
of motherhood.
She had stubbornly resisted every suggestion to see her husband or allow
him to see the child. The Doctor had managed twice to give Jim an hour
with the baby while she had gone to Asheville on shopping trips. He was
rewarded for his trouble in the devotion with which the young father
worshiped his son. The Doctor watched the slumbering fires kindle in
the man's deep blue eyes with increasing wonder at the strength and
tenderness of his newfound soul.
Jim had completed the furnishing of the bungalow with the advice and
guidance of his friend, and every room stood ready and waiting for its
mistress. He had insisted on making every piece of furniture for Mary's
room and the nursery adjoining. The Doctor was amazed at the mechanical
genius he displayed in its construction. He had taken a month's
instruction at a cabinet maker's in Asheville and the bed, bureau,
tables and chairs which he had turned out were astonishingly beautiful.
Their lines were copied from old models and each piece was a work of
art. The iron work was even more tastefully and beautifully wrought. He
had toiled day and night with an enthusiasm and patience that gave the
physician a new revelation in the possibility of the development of
human character.
His friend came at last with a cheering message. He began smilingly:
“I'm going to make the big fight today, boy, to get her to see you.”
“You think she will?”
“There's a good chance. Her savings have all been used up from her bank
account in New York. She is determined to go to her father in Kentucky.
I'll have a talk with her, bring her over to the bungalow, show her
through it on the pretext of its model construction and then you can
tell her that you built it with your own hands for her and the baby. You
might be loafing around the place about that time.”
Jim's hand was suddenly lifted.
“I got ye, Doc, I got ye! I'll be there--all day.”
“Don't let her see you until I give the signal.”
“Caution's my name.”
“We'll see what happens.”
Jim pressed close.
“Say, Doc, if you know how to pray, I wish you'd send up a little word
for me while you're talkin' to her. Could ye now?”
“I'll do my best for you, boy--and I think you've got a chance. She's
been watching the blue eyes of that baby lately with a rather curious
look of unrest.”
“They're just like mine, ain't they?” Jim broke in with pride.
“Time has softened the old hurt,” the Doctor went on. “The boy may win
for you----”
The square jaw came together with a smash.
“Gee--I hope so. I'll wait there all day for you and I'm goin' to try my
own hand at a little prayer or two on the side while I'm waiting. Maybe
God'll think He's hit me hard enough by this time to give me another
trial.”
With a friendly wave of his hand the Doctor hurried home.
He found Mary seated under the rose trellis beside the drive, watching
for his coming. The day was still and warm for the end of April. Birds
were singing and chattering in every branch and tree. A quail on the top
fence-rail of the wheat field called loudly to his mate.
The boy was screaming his joy over a new wagon to which Aunt Abbie had
hitched his goat. He drove by in style, lifted his chubby hand to his
mother and shouted:
“Dood-by, Doc-ter!”
The Doctor waved a smiling answer, and lapsed into a long silence.
He waked at last from his absorption to notice that Mary was
day-dreaming. The fair brow was drawn into deep lines of brooding.
“Why shadows in your eyes a day like this, little mother?” he asked
softly.
“Just thinking----”
“About a past that you should forget?”
“Yes and no,” she answered thoughtfully. “I was just thinking in this
flood of spring sunlight of the mystery of my love for such a man as the
one I married. How could it have been possible to really love him?”
“You are sure that you loved him?”
“Sure.”
“How did you know?”
“By all the signs. I trembled at his footstep. The touch of his hand,
the sound of his voice thrilled me. I was drawn by a power that was
resistless. I was mad with happiness those wonderful days that preceded
our marriage. I was madder still during our honeymoon--until the
shadows began to fall that fatal Christmas Eve.” She paused and her lips
trembled. “Oh, Doctor, what is love?”
The drooping shoulders of the man bent lower. He picked up a pebble from
the ground and flicked it carelessly across the drive, lifted his head
at last and asked earnestly:
“Shall I tell you the truth?”
“Yes--your own particular brand, please--the truth, the whole truth and
nothing but the truth.”
“I'll try,” he began soberly. “If I were a poet, naturally I would use
different language. As I'm only a prosaic doctor and physiologist I may
shock your ideals a little.”
“No matter,” she interrupted. “They couldn't well get a harder jolt than
they have had already.”
He nodded and went on:
“There are two elemental human forces that maintain life--hunger
and love. They are both utterly simple, otherwise they could not be
universal. Hunger compels the race to live. Love compels it to reproduce
itself. There has never been anything mysterious about either of
these forces and there never will be--except in the imagination of
sentimentalists.
“Nature begins with hunger. For about thirteen years she first applies
this force to the development of the body before she begins to lay the
foundation of the second. Until this second development is complete the
passion known as love cannot be experienced.
“What is this second development? Very simple again. At the base of the
brain of every child there is a vacant space during the first twelve or
fifteen years. During the age of twelve to fourteen in girls, thirteen
to fifteen in boys, this vacant space is slowly filled by a new lobe
of the brain and with its growth comes the consciousness of sex and the
development of sex powers.
“This new nerve center becomes on maturity a powerful physical magnet.
The moment this magnet comes into contact with an organization which
answers its needs, as certain kinds of food answer the needs of hunger,
violent desire is excited. If both these magnets should be equally
powerful, the disturbance to both will be great. The longer the personal
association is continued the more violent becomes this disturbance,
until in highly sensitive natures it develops into an obsession which
obscures reason and crushes the will.
“The meaning of this impulse is again very simple--the unconscious
desire of the male to be a father, of the female to become a mother.”
“And there is but one man on earth who could thus affect me?” Mary asked
excitedly.
“Rubbish! There are thousands.”
“Thousands?”
“Literally thousands. The reason you never happen to meet them is purely
an accident of our poor social organization. Every woman has thousands
of true physical mates if she could only meet them. Every man has
thousands of true physical mates if he could only meet them. And in
every such meeting, if mind and body are in normal condition, the same
violent disturbance would result--whether married or single, free or
bound.
“Marriage therefore is not based merely on the passion of love. It is
a crime for any man or woman to marry without love. It is the sheerest
insanity to believe that this passion within itself is sufficient to
justify marriage. All who marry should love. Many love who should not
marry.
“The institution of marriage is the great SOCIAL ordinance of the race.
Its sanctity and perpetuity are not based on the violence of the passion
of love, but something else.”
He paused and listened to the call of the quail again from the field.
“You hear that bob white calling his mate?”
“Yes--and she's answering him now very softly. I can hear them both.”
“They have mated this spring to build a home and rear a brood of young.
Within six months their babies will all be full grown and next spring
a new alignment of lovers will be made. Their marriage lasts during the
period of infancy of their offspring. This is Nature's law.
“It happens in the case of man that the period of infancy of a human
being is about twenty-four years. This is the most wonderful fact in
nature. It means that the capacity of man for the improvement of his
breed is practically limitless. A quail has a few months in which to
rear her young. God gives to woman a quarter of a century in which to
mold her immortal offspring. Because the period of infancy of one child
covers the entire period of motherhood capacity, marriage binds for
life, and the sanctity of marriage rests squarely on this law of
Nature.”
He paused again and looked over the sunlit valley.
“I wish our boys and girls could all know these simple truths of their
being. It would save much unhappiness and many tragic blunders.
“You were swept completely off your feet by the rush of the first
emotion caused by meeting a man who was your physical mate. You imagined
this emotion to be a mysterious revelation which can come but once.
Your imagination in its excited condition, of course, gave to your
first-found mate all sorts of divine attributes which he did not
possess. You were `in love' with a puppet of your own creation, and
hypnotized yourself into the delusion that James Anthony was your one
and only mate, your knight, your hero.
“In a very important sense this was true. Your intuitions could not make
a mistake on so vital an issue. But you immediately rushed into marriage
and your union has been perfected by the birth of a child. Whether you
are happy or unhappy in marriage does not depend on the reality of love.
Happiness in marriage is based on something else.”
“On what?”
“The joy and peace that comes from oneness of spirit, tastes, culture
and character. I know this from the deepest experiences of life and the
widest observation.”
“You have loved?” she asked softly.
“Twice----”
A silence fell between them.
“Shall I tell you, little mother?” he finally asked quietly.
“Please.”
He seated himself and looked into the skies beyond the peaks across the
valley.
“Ten years ago I met my first mate. The meeting was fortunate for both.
She was a woman of gentle birth, of beautiful spirit. Our courtship was
ideal. We thought alike, we felt alike, she loved my profession even--an
unusual trait in a woman. She thought it so noble in its aims that
the petty jealousy that sometimes wrecks a doctor's life was to her an
unthinkable crime. The first year was the nearest to heaven that I had
ever gotten down here.
“And then, little mother, by one of those inexplicable mysteries of
nature she died when our baby was born. For a while the light of the
world went out. I quit New York, gave up my profession and came here
just to lie in the sun on this mountainside and try to pull myself
together. I didn't think life could ever be worth living again. But
it was. I found about me so much of human need--so much ignorance and
helplessness--so much to pity and love, I forgot the ache in my own
heart in bringing joy to others.
“I had money enough. I gave up the ambitions of greed and strife and set
my soul to higher tasks. For nine years I've devoted my leisure hours
to the study of Motherhood as the hope of a nobler humanity. But for the
great personal sorrow that came to me in the death of my wife and baby I
should never have realized the truths I now see so clearly.
“And then the other woman suddenly came into my life. I never expected
to love again--not because I thought it impossible, but because I
thought it improbable in my little world here that I could ever again
meet a woman I would ask to be my wife. But she dropped one day out of
the sky.”
He paused and took a deep breath.
“I recognized her instantly as my mate, gentle and pure and capable
of infinite joy or infinite pain. She did not realize the secret of my
interest in her. I didn't expect it. I knew that under the conditions
she could not. But I waited.”
He paused and searched for Mary's eyes.
“And you married her?” she asked in even tones.
“I have never allowed her to know that I love her.”
“Why?”
“She was married.”
Mary threw him a startled look and he went on evenly:
“I could have used my power over mind and body to separate her from
her husband. I confess that I was tempted. But there was a child. Their
union had been sealed with the strongest tie that can bind two human
beings. I have never allowed her to realize that she might love me. Had
I chosen to break the silence between us I could have revealed this to
her, taken her and torn her from the man to whom she had borne a babe.
I had no right to commit that crime, no matter how deep the love that
cried for its own. Marriage is based on the period of infancy of the
child which spans the maternal life of woman. God had joined these two
people together and no man had the right to put them asunder!”
“And you gave her up?”
“I had to, little mother. On the recognition of this eternal law the
whole structure of our civilization rests.”
Mary bent her gaze steadily on his face for a moment in silence.
“And you are telling me that I should be reconciled to the man who
choked me into insensibility?”
“I am telling you that he is the father of your son--that he has rights
which you cannot deny; that when you gave yourself to him in the first
impulse of love a deed was done which Almighty God can never undo.
Your tragic blunder was the rush into marriage with a man about whose
character you knew so little. It's the timid, shrinking, home-loving
girl that makes this mistake. You must face it now. You are responsible
as deeply and truly as the man who married you. That he happened at that
moment to be a brute and a criminal is no more his fault than yours. It
was YOUR business to KNOW before you made him the father of your child.”
“I tried to appeal to his better nature that awful night,” Mary
interrupted, “but he only laughed at me!”
“You owe him another trial, little mother--you owe it to his boy, too.”
Mary shook her head bitterly.
“I can't--I just can't!”
“You won't see him once?”
She sprang to her feet trembling.
“No--no!”
“I don't think it's fair.”
“I'm afraid of him! You can't understand his power over my will.”
“Come, come, this is sheer cowardice--give the devil his dues. Face him
and fight it out. Tell him you're done forever with him and his life, if
you will--but don't hedge and trim and run away like this. I'm ashamed
of you.”
“I won't see him--I've made up my mind.”
The Doctor threw up both hands.
“All right. If you won't, you won't. We'll let it go at that.”
He paused and changed his tones to friendly personal interest.
“And you're determined to leave me and take my kid away tomorrow?”
“We must go. I've no money to pay my board. I can't impose on you----”
“It's going to be awfully lonely.”
He looked at her with a strange, deep gaze, lifted his stooping
shoulders with sudden resolution and changed his manner to light banter.
“I suppose I couldn't persuade you to give me that boy?”
She smiled tenderly.
“You know his father did leave his mark on him after all! The eyes are
all his. Of course, I will admit that those drooping lids have often
been the mark of genius--perhaps a genius for evil in this case. If you
don't want to take the risk--now's your chance. I will----”
Mary shook her head in reproachful protest.
“Don't tease me, dear doctor man. I've just this one day more with you.
I'm counting each precious hour.”
“Forgive me!” he cried gayly. “I won't tease you any more. Come, we'll
run over now and see our neighbor's new bungalow before you go. You
admire this one and threaten to duplicate it. He has built a better
one.”
“I don't believe it.”
“You'll go?”
“If you wish it----”
“Good. We'll take the boy, too. He can drive his new wagon the whole
way. It's only half a mile.”