In America we have been bringing up our women like men, and treating
them like children. They have active minds with nothing to act upon.
Thus they are driven to think chiefly about themselves. With Jane
Hastings, self-centering took the form of self-analysis most of the
time. She was intensely interested in what she regarded as the new
development of her character. This definite and apparently final
decision for the narrow and the ungenerous. In fact, it was no new
development, but simply a revelation to herself of her own real
character. She was seeing at last the genuine Jane Hastings,
inevitable product of a certain heredity in a certain environment. The
high thinking and talking, the idealistic aspiration were pose and
pretense. Jane Hastings was a selfish, self-absorbed person, ready to
do almost any base thing to gain her ends, ready to hate to the
uttermost any one who stood between her and her object.
"I'm certainly not a lovely person--not a lovable person," thought she,
with that gentle tolerance wherewith we regard our ownselves, whether
in the dress of pretense or in the undress of deformed humanness.
"Still--I am what I am, and I've got to make the best of it."
As she thought of Selma's declaration of war she became less and less
disturbed about it. Selma neither would nor could do anything sly.
Whatever she attempted in the open would only turn Victor Dorn more
strongly toward herself. However, she must continue to try to see him,
must go to see him in a few days if she did not happen upon him in her
rides or walks. How poorly he would think of her if he knew the truth
about her! But then, how poor most women--and men, too--would look in
a strong and just light. Few indeed could stand idealizing; except
Victor, no one she knew. And he was human enough not to make her
uncomfortable in his presence.
But it so happened that before she could see Victor Dorn her father
disobeyed Dr. Charlton and gave way to the appetite that was the chief
cause of his physical woes. He felt so well that he ate the family
dinner, including a peach cobbler with whipped cream, which even the
robust Jane adventured warily. Martha was dining with them. She
abetted her father. "It's light," said she. "It couldn't harm
anybody."
"You mustn't touch it, popsy," said Jane.
She unthinkingly spoke a little too commandingly. Her father, in a
perverse and reckless mood, took Martha's advice. An hour later Dr.
Charlton was summoned, and had he not arrived promptly----
"Another fifteen or twenty minutes," said he to the old man when he had
him out of immediate danger, "and I'd have had nothing to do but sign a
certificate of natural death."
"Murder would have been nearer the truth," said Martin feebly. "That
there fool Martha!"
"Come out from behind that petticoat!" cried Charlton. "Didn't I spend
the best part of three days in giving you the correct ideas as to
health and disease--in showing you that ALL disease comes from
indigestion--ALL disease, from falling hair and sore eyes to weak
ankles and corns? And didn't I convince you that you could eat only
the things I told you about?"
"Don't hit a man when he's down," groaned Hastings.
"If I don't, you'll do the same idiotic trick again when I get you
up--if I get you up."
Hastings looked quickly at him. This was the first time Charlton had
ever expressed a doubt about his living. "Do you mean that?" he said
hoarsely. "Or are you just trying to scare me?"
"Both," said Charlton. "I'll do my best, but I can't promise. I've
lost confidence in you. No wonder doctors, after they've been in
practice a few years, stop talking food and digestion to their
patients. I've never been able to convince a single human being that
appetite is not the sign of health, and yielding to it the way to
health. But I've made lots of people angry and have lost their trade.
I had hopes of you. You were such a hopeless wreck. But no. And you
call yourself an intelligent man!"
"I'll never do it again," said Hastings, pleading, but smiling,
too--Charlton's way of talking delighted him.
"You think this is a joke," said Charlton, shaking his bullet head.
"Have you any affairs to settle? If you have, send for your lawyer in
the morning."
Fear--the Great Fear--suddenly laid its icy long fingers upon the
throat of the old man. He gasped and his eyes rolled. "Don't trifle
with me, Charlton," he muttered. "You know you will pull me through."
"I'll do my best," said Charlton. "I promise nothing. I'm serious
about the lawyer."
"I don't want no lawyer hanging round my bed," growled the old man.
"It'd kill me. I've got nothing to settle. I don't run things with
loose ends. And there's Jinny and Marthy and the boy--share and share
alike."
"Well--you're in no immediate danger. I'll come early to-morrow."
"Wait till I get to sleep."
"You'll be asleep as soon as the light's down. But I'll stop a few
minutes and talk to your daughter."
Charlton found Jane at the window in the dressing room next her
father's bedroom. He said loudly enough for the old man to overhear:
"Your father's all right for the present, so you needn't worry. Come
downstairs with me. He's to go to sleep now."