KILLING NO MURDER.
In the vicinity of one of our great London Hospitals, there is a
pleasant Park. Very diversified in its character: laid out most
artistically in shady groves, sloping lawns of soft grass, retired
rockeries where water drips among giant ferns, and lakes winding in and
out between banks covered with fine trees and exotic flowers. It is one
of the most charming of the many charming oases in the vast Saharah of
brick and mortar. And yet the fashionable world know nothing of it save
by name. It is the playground of the people, and perhaps has never been
visited by any of the daughters of Mayfair, except on the one occasion,
when Royalty went down into that poverty-stricken quarter of the great
city, to formally open these beautiful gardens to the humblest of its
subjects.
But being within easy reach of the hospital, it was a common thing for
the worn-out house-surgeons, the nurses and others connected with that
noble charity, to snatch a few moments of fresh air in that pleasant
place, in the intervals of their labour among the sick.
It was early in November, but the autumn had been so mild, and so free
from the usual blustering South Westers, that the leaves were still on
the trees, and the glorious colouring of the foliage was such as to
remind Canadian visitors of their own mellow Indian summer.
Two young women were walking leisurely by the path which bordered the
lake. The elder of the two, who seemed to be about twenty-five, was of
middle height, well filled out, dumpy she might almost be called, not
over much so, however, but to that extent only that many of the other
sex prefer in a woman. She was pretty, decidedly so, but not of a _good_
prettiness; she had the sort of evil beauty that tempted the old saints,
the purely carnal attractiveness.
When a man's met her eyes, he was fascinated; but the thoughts that they
excited in him were of madness and lust, and not of the pure and
chastening delight which the beauty of the true woman inspires.
Those eyes were large, languid, with full pupils, and lids that
generally half closed over them--eyes that would not look frankly into
yours, though they would voluptuously--eyes that to him who can read the
tale the human features tell, betrayed the lascivious, deceitful, cruel
temperament--the three qualities so often go together--and let the man
that values his manhood avoid such eyes as he would the lord of hell,
who, as the hermits of old believed, created them.
If the affection of such a woman be cast upon a man he is lost; for it
is not the sweet flower of love that they will enjoy together, but
another, a flower indeed, but a flower of hell.
The other woman was taller, slighter, much younger, and of a very
different style of beauty; for this other was Mary Grimm, whereas her
companion was Susan Riley.
The two would-be baby-killers were now members of an association of lady
nurses, and were undergoing their training for ministry of the sick at
the neighbouring hospital.
They were conversing: Susan in a flippant volatile fashion, not
forgetting to cast sidelong glances of conquest through the corners of
her eyes at the men that passed her, as ever eager for admiration; Mary
in an earnest manner, not observing the people, and while she talked,
throwing, in an absent way, crumbs of bread she had brought with her
for the purpose to the tame swans and ducks that swam on the artificial
water.
The contrast between the two was immense, and indeed they were at the
opposite poles of womanhood.
Mary was speaking:
"And do you really find an absolute pleasure, as you say you do, in
being in the possession of a secret like this, Susan? I cannot say that
I do. It is necessary of course to work in the dark: but I should like
so much better if we could work out our ends openly, before all the
world, and not in round-about ways, in holes and corners."
Sister Susan laughed.
"You are not half a woman, Mary; why, you talk just like some silly
young man might. Love a secret! of course I do. All women love secrets.
Anything that smells of mystery and intrigue exerts a fascination on the
feminine imagination. I should not care a bit to be a leader of
revolution in the face of all the world--but to be an executioner of the
unknown terror, the pitiless secret punishment that works in silence,
that strikes in the dark, unseen, unexpected. I must confess that has
for me a delightful charm. It's quite irresistible."
Mary replied: "Yes, women may love secrets, but--"
Susan interrupted her with a hard laugh. "Love secrets! I should think
so, indeed; why, a woman is so fond of a secret and considers it such a
precious thing that she cannot even keep it to herself. She must needs
go, unselfish generous creature, and share the treasure with all her
friends. Nasty people hint so, anyhow. Now as you are not a bad little
thing, though a little fool, I'll tell you a secret. I'm going to leave
the hospital soon. I've got a very good _place_ through Sister Eliza."
"What are you going to do?" asked Mary, deeply interested, for she knew
what "a place" signified, without the emphasis which Susan had laid on
the expression.
"Nothing less than be a sort of nursery governess in Lord Doughton's
house," was the reply.
"Lord Doughton!" exclaimed Mary. "Why, Sister Eliza says that he is the
largest landed proprietor in England since his marriage with that
heiress whose estates adjoined his."
"Sister Eliza is quite right," said Susan. "She makes it her business to
keep a registry of all that concerns the great landed proprietors. Lord
Doughton has been married eleven years; he has three children; the
eldest is a boy of ten, a cripple. Think of that, no less than three to
get rid of. Aren't you jealous?"
"But you don't mean that a child as old as that has to be--to be--"
"But of course I do," interrupted Susan sharply, then continued with her
usual heartless flippant tones. "I'll tell you what it is, my girl, the
sooner you get the rest of this sentimentality out of you, the better.
It's sickening."
"Surely there is a great distinction between removing babies just born,
who have not really begun to live, and killing big boys and men."
Susan laughed.
"Bless me, here's a fine moral distinction! What _is_ the difference
pray, Miss Casuist? But turn off here, across the grass. If we are going
to talk of these things we had better go where there is no chance of
eaves-dropping. Our conversation would rather surprise that
shabby-looking old person there if he overheard it, wouldn't it? Let's
go and ask him what is the latest age at which it is justifiable to put
away a human being for the public good."
"For God's sake, Susan, let us talk seriously!" Mary said.
"For _whose_ sake? don't know him; but for your sake I'll be sober for a
little time as you hate joviality; you'll be jovial enough though when
you are as old as I am, and have gone through as much. It's by joviality
people who have suffered plenty make up for it when it's all over.
You'll find that out. People who have lived untroubled lives are seldom
jovial."
They walked on in silence a short distance, then Mary after looking
around her said:
"There is no one about here; there is no danger of anyone overhearing us
now."
"Right you are, Mary; so now I'll answer your question. _Did_ you ask me
a question by-the-bye?"
"I don't think so; but we were talking about this boy of Lord
Doughton's."
"Ah, yes! to be sure, the sprig of nobility you thought was too old to
die. I've heard of people being too young to die; but you seem to think
that one gets a sort of prescriptive right of living, that life's like
land out of which one shouldn't be turned if there have been so many
years undisputed possession. Droll theory! But I see you are frowning,
so I'll try to be serious. Now, what _is_ the difference between killing
a baby or a ten-year-older? The latter doesn't feel more pain in the
process of being put out of the way; why should his life be considered
to be of more value? Why, bless the girl! We must kill all the _heirs_,
whatever age they may be. Of course we must kill them as babies if
possible, because it is easier to get at them."
Mary had been scanning with great curiosity the woman's face as she
glibly chattered on in her flippant way.
"Susan," she asked, "_have_ you ever killed a child?"
"Yes, one," was the prompt reply, delivered in a cool matter-of-fact
fashion.
"Lately."
"No, long ago; not for the cause, before I even joined the Sisterhood,
or dreamed of all the theories and plots my head is now chokefull of. It
was my own baby."
The two women looked at each other, the one with a hard stare of brazen
effrontery, the other with an expression of terror and disgust.
"Ay!" went on the elder with a voice which, breaking through its usual
false ring, was full of malice and bitterness. "Ay! you cream-faced
beauty, you are shocked are you? Of course you are right. One should not
kill except for the good of the Society, other private killing is
objectionable. I know all that. But wait until you have gone through
what I have, and see what you will be then...." Changing back to her old
light tone she continued, "Ah, Mary! it was the same old story with me
as with the rest. A warm temperament"--and she laughed as she made this
cool confession--"a warm temperament, a man, and a baby, that's all--and
a little tragedy mixed up with it that won't be worth your while to hear
about now."
Mary had never liked this woman, she now began to conceive an intense
dislike for her. Susan would never have converted her to the cause,
though she was the very person to win over girls naturally flighty and
wicked. But Mary concealed her dislike as much as possible, for she was
interested in drawing out this strange being, so wicked, so like a
female Mephistopheles, so different in every way to her own ideal, her
mistress, Catherine King.
"Did you have such a thing as a conscience when you were a little girl,
Sister Susan?" she inquired.
"I don't know--not much of a one anyhow. I never had the fight you had;
and yet your conscience still raises his head now and then. You are full
of pities, and scruples, and trashy sentiment. I'll tell you what it is.
Mary; I know what you want; I know what will soon make you happier, what
will altogether knock on the head that nasty, teasing conscience of
yours. Would you like to know what it is?"
"I wish you _would_ tell me the cure; but time is the only one. It is
not conscience though, it is cowardice."
"Indeed! I should not have taken you for a coward," Susan observed.
"But I am. It can be nothing else than cowardice. I know it is my
duty--I know it is for the good of the world that I should do certain
things. Of course I will do those things when I am ordered to do so.
But, oh! how I shall shirk that horrible duty! How I shall suffer! I
sometimes think I shall go mad when the time comes."
"Nonsense. I've heard young medical students talk like that. Yet see how
soon they get hardened into chopping and probing away into our quivering
anatomies. No! You go and try my patent cure for conscience--never known
to fail, cures pain at the heart, prevents softening--testimonials from
Mrs. Jezebel, several empresses of Rome, and many of the nobility and
gentry. Try it, Mary!"
"Well, what is it?" asked the girl, laughing in spite of her melancholy
frame of mind.
"_A regular bad man_," replied the other fiercely--"that's my
prescription, my dear. You've got a pretty face enough, so the drug can
be easily 'presented,' as the doctors say. It's not a difficult medicine
to procure. It is not even unpleasant to the taste at first--on the
contrary; but it rather upsets you when it's working its effect and
purging the morbid secretion conscience out of you. Go and get one, one
of your haw-haw club dandies; get him to fall in love with you, as they
will for a time. It's easy to make him do that--work on his vanity,
that's all. Flatter him--you'll catch any man like that. Talk about
woman's vanity--it's nothing to a man's. Then you must fall in love with
him--you may find that difficult, but it is necessary, else the medicine
won't work. Now after a period more or less long--after babies,
coolness, insult, desertion--after your hero proves but a mean,
heartless cad after all--after all this, the devil of a bit of
conscience you'll find left in you, I'll guarantee."
Mary looked at Susan, wondering at this strange nature, feeling a great
antipathy, yet not unmixed with pity, for the vain, wicked, hardened
creature by her side.
At last she said,
"I often wonder what you were like when you were a child, Susan."
Susan seemed buried in thought, and did not reply for a few minutes.
"You want to know how my antecedents developed the charming being, Susan
Riley? I don't suppose my nature was what some people would call a good
one to begin with; but, child--for you are a child to me--you have
suffered nothing to what I have. Your life at Brixton was an unhappy
one, there ends your suffering; my life as a child, too, was no merry
one. But it was what happened afterwards. It was _a man_ that completed
my education and finished my conscience. Ah, what a bringing up was
mine! I, full of animal life, high-spirited, was kept down by my parents
as few children have been. They, both father and mother, were religious
monomaniacs, cruel, selfish, hard Puritans of the severest school. And
what fools they were too! Just think of it! My father thought that any
person who did not exactly believe in his own narrow views, must be
altogether a child of sin--capable of any possible crime. So my brother,
who would not play the hypocrite enough, was so mistrusted by my father,
that when my cousin, a pretty girl, came to our house to tea, as she
often did, he was not permitted to escort her home afterwards. No! a
man-servant, a sneaking hypocrite, was sent with her instead--that man
seduced my sister, and, I believe, my cousin also. My brother was driven
to the dogs, of course, by the judicious treatment of his parents. I
will tell you what happened to him some day. Ha! there's an education to
drive religion out of you. How I hated the very name of it! How I hated
my father and mother, and all the sneaking, sickly crew that surrounded
them! Anyhow, my dear parents died broken-hearted at their children's
behaviour; that was one consolation for us anyhow."
Neither spoke for some time, then Mary asked, "Do you think, Susan,
that after I have once removed a child I shall be different, will this
feeling of horror go away then? Oh! it is awful, Susan. I believe even
you would pity me if you knew. My life is now like one long night-mare.
In the day-time I wish that it was night-time again, that I might be
asleep; and in the night it is no better and I wish it was day again;
and I always wish that I was dead. I would kill myself were it not for
my dear mistress. Are many of the sisters like this? Shall I go mad do
you think, Susan?"
Susan replied, "It is the first step that costs, as we used to translate
some sentence in the French exercise book when I was at school. I can't
give you the original, I've forgotten my French, and piano, and other
accomplishments now; but it means that when you have killed your first
baby you will feel better: that is the experience of all Nihilists. All
have the horrors, more or less, at first. They think that as soon as
they have done the deed some frightful bogie, some maddening remorse
worse than anything imaginable before, will jump up and seize them. It
is the dread of this bogie that does all the mischief. Now, as soon as
they have done the deed, they are so agreeably surprised to find that
this dreaded bogie does _not_ come, that a delightful reaction sets in.
You should see how mad some of them get with joy. As soon as you have
killed your first baby, or boy, or man, your horrors will go. You will
experience immediate relief. It's like having a tooth out."
"I see what you mean. It sounds natural enough, too," said Mary,
musingly.
"Of course; and at last you'll become a jovial body like me, and you'll
come to like your duties and take a relish in blood for its own sake."
Mary shuddered perceptibly, and said, "I shall never come to that I
hope--that is, I fear."
"Don't be afraid of speaking out, my dear! I'm not
thin-skinned--besides, I take pride in being cruel. I can hate. It
would be well for you if you could. You will always suffer somewhat. You
will have to keep a picture of your duty always before you, between you
and the sight of the blood. You will have to work yourself up to blind
enthusiasm every time you have work to do. I wouldn't wonder if you have
to take to opium. It is not a bad temporary conscience-duller. But look
how much more convenient my state of mind is. I don't require winding
up. I have no scruples. I enjoy my work."
"And I loathe it," exclaimed the girl. "It is all a matter of
temperament I suppose, Susan."
"I suppose it is," Susan continued. "Do you know, I have observed that
most voluptuous women are cruel as well. It is a curious fact, Mary. I
sometimes think that my nature is chiefly made up of these two noble
qualities. My man used to call me Faustina. Now you are all made up of
cold duties, and so you will suffer. Hot passions are better for the
Nihilists."
Mary with difficulty concealed her feelings of disgust, and spoke again.
"And yet I have known what hate is, how I hated my father and
step-mother! How cruel I felt I could have been! But now that I am away
from their persecution the hate seems to be all going. I even sometimes
find myself thinking of my father with pity, wishing I could see him;
yet he was always cruel to me."
"That sort of hate's no good. You are as fickle in your hates as I am in
my loves. Yours was an _artificial_ hate, such as a saint could acquire
if ill-treated as you were. But mine is a good, genuine, _natural_ hate,
Mary, and I'm proud of it."
"Ah! I wish I could be brave, and fearless, and thoughtless like you,
Susan."
"Do you?" cried Susan. "Perhaps I, too, have a skeleton hidden away in a
cupboard, somewhere, my girl. You always see me jolly. Yes! if it were
not for one horrid thing"--she spoke slowly and shivered--"I should be
perfectly happy."
"What is that?" asked Mary, wondering what possible secret sorrow could
be a constant bugbear to this frivolous being.
"The fear of old age, Mary," was the reply. "The dread of being old,
ugly--like withered Sister Jane, for instance. Oh! how I fear that
loathsome thing."
The woman's face actually blanched as she spoke these words, and her
accents betrayed an emotion that surprised Mary. Yes! this indeed was
the one phantom that ever pursued this butterfly creature. This terror
that possessed her was ever present to her, as happens sometimes to such
natures. To be no longer beautiful, to be no longer sighed after by men,
was to her imagination terrible as is the thought of hell to some.
"Let us sit down on this seat and rest a little, Susan," suggested Mary.
"Very well; but it's getting late, and my time will soon be up. Ah! I
wish I was like you, Mary, living at home with that amiable old
Catherine King, instead of being boxed up with a lot of foolish women in
that hospital, with strict discipline about being out at nights and so
on. I must say I like my liberty: but luckily this won't be for long."
"I never could make out how they allowed the rules to be broken through
in my case," Mary said. "There was another nurse who wanted to live with
her mother. But she was told they would not have her in the hospital
unless she lived there altogether, as the rest do."
"The King has great influence in all directions. She must be very fond
of you, must the King--your aunt as she calls herself now. Ah! I wish
she would adopt me and take me out of this hateful place. I would make
her a most dutiful niece."
"Yet, most of the nurses seem to be well contented with their home,"
urged Mary.
"Oh! it's nice enough for those women--innocent creatures--they have
never known the delights of sin and liberty. I'm not like them--like
Miss Anerly for instance. She's fun, isn't she? They have put her to
sleep in the same room as I do. She is always at me about saying my
prayers. She kneels down for half an hour at least, before getting into
bed, and when she gets up, she has a sort of way of looking at me with a
superior see-how-much-better-I-am-than-you air, that is sickening. I
often feel tempted to bring out some remarks that will make her open her
weak, little, grey eyes; but of course that won't do. What do you think;
she insists on reading a chapter in the Bible to me every morning before
I get up."
Mary replied with a deep sadness in her voice. "Ah! it is well for us to
laugh, that know so much, but how happy are these people with their
Bible! They cannot know our suffering. They find such comfort in their
superstition. They say in the Bible that the tree of knowledge is the
tree of evil; we have proved it so."
"Some wise man once said, Wherever truth is, there too is Golgotha," put
in Susan.
"That is very true," continued Mary. "Wherever truth is, there too is
Golgotha. I feel that. Now that I know so much, now that I know that all
this religion that keeps society together is a fable, I feel as if I was
no longer as other people, as if I was some other sort of being,
standing quite apart from my fellow-creatures, with such different
instincts and ideas that we can never understand each other again, that
there can never more be pleasant sympathies between us."
Susan again laughed her disagreeable laugh. "Dear me! Why, you are a
sort of Miltonic Satan, Mary; but it's too late to rant on in this
ignorance-is-bliss style, now, my girl."
"But don't you feel it yourself sometimes, Susan?" asked the girl in
wonder. "Don't you feel dreadful, when you pass by all these crowds of
happy people, and think that if they only knew what you were they would
loathe you, and tear you to pieces? It is horrible to me to be
separated from all the world by such a barrier as that of our _Aim_.
Never to approach them, never to know their little joys, and hopes, and
affections. They seem only foolish to our eyes, but how detestable would
we appear in theirs if they only knew."
Susan turned and looked contemptuously into the girl's face. "Why, Mary,
you are talking treason. You'll be going back to your dear Bible next."
"Go back to the Bible--no, never! It would be better if I could ...
perhaps. Ah, Susan, I sometimes think that mankind will never get on
without religion, that _truth_ will bring worse tyrannies and horrors
than _superstition_ ever did. A fearful outlook--man must have a
religion or die; and yet there is no religion to be had."
"Oh, Mary, you are a little fool! When will you be wise and cunning like
me? You talk of the horror of being different from other people; I
delight in it. It amuses me to look at the happy simpletons, and know
that I have secrets that would make their cheeks blanch to hear. You
have not got the proper temper for a Nihilist."
Mary thought in silence for a few minutes, then said, "Susan, I have
often wondered what motives led you to join the society. You are a
zealous member, I know; but yet I can scarcely believe that it was a
good motive, that it was a true love of humanity, an unselfish desire to
benefit the world, like our Chief's, that induced you to become a
conspirator in the first instance."
"Mary, shall I tell you my real reason?"
"Do."
"Because I am a woman--that is a sufficient reason. We women are driven
to do strange things, by motives that cannot be put into words, motives
that we cannot ourselves analyze. But see, here comes the doctor. He's
sweet on me--so he's safe to come and talk with us."