running. We should have had concave glasses to protect our eyes, and we
spent part of our time washing our hands in bichloride solution.
“Mrs. Abbott, what is it?” whispered the woman.
“It has a long name,” I replied--“_opthalmia neonatorum._”
“And what has caused it?”
“The original cause,” I responded, “is a man.” I was not sure if that
was according to the ethics of the situation, but the words came.
Before long the infected eye-sockets were two red and yellow masses of
inflammation, and the infant was screaming like one of the damned. We
had to bind up its eyes; I was tempted to ask the doctor to give it an
opiate for fear lest it should scream itself into convulsions. Then
as poor Mrs. Tuis was pacing the floor, wringing her hands and sobbing
hysterically, Dr. Perrin took me to one side and said: “I think she will
have to be told.”
The poor, poor lady!
“She might as well understand now as later,” he continued. “She will
have to help keep the situation from the mother.”
“Yes,” I said, faintly; and then, “Who shall tell her?”
“I think,” suggested the doctor, “she might prefer to be told by a
woman.”
So I shut my lips together and took the distracted lady gently by
the arm and led her to the door. We stole like two criminals down the
veranda, and along the path to the beach, and near the boathouse we
stopped, and I began.
“Mrs. Tuis, you may remember a circumstance which your niece mentioned
to me--that just before her marriage she urged you to have certain
inquiries made as to Mr. van Tuiver’s health, his fitness for marriage?”
Never shall I forget her face at that moment. “Sylvia told you that!”
“The inquiries were made,” I went on, “but not carefully enough, it
seems. Now you behold the consequence of this negligence.”
I saw her blank stare. I added: “The one to pay for it is the child.”
“You--you mean--” she stammered, her voice hardly a whisper. “Oh--it is
impossible!” Then, with a flare of indignation: “Do you realise what you
are implying--that Mr. van Tuiver--”
“There is no question of implying,” I said, quietly. “It is the facts we
have to face now, and you will have to help us to face them.”
She cowered and swayed before me, hiding her face in her hands. I heard
her sobbing and murmuring incoherent cries to her god. I took the poor
lady’s hand, and bore with her as long as I could, until, being at the
end of my patience with prudery and purity and chivalry, and all the
rest of the highfalutin romanticism of the South, I said: “Mrs Tuis, it
is necessary that you should get yourself together. You have a serious
duty before you--that you owe both to Sylvia and her child.”
“What is it?” she whispered. The word “duty” had motive power for her.
“At all hazards, Sylvia must be kept in ignorance of the calamity for
the present. If she were to learn of it it would quite possibly throw
her into a fever, and cost her life or the child’s. You must not make
any sound that she can hear, and you must not go near her until you have
completely mastered your emotions.”
“Very well,” she murmured. She was really a brave little body, but I,
not knowing her, and thinking only of the peril, was cruel in hammering
things into her consciousness. Finally, I left her, seated upon the
steps of the deserted boat-house, rocking back and forth and sobbing
softly to herself--one of the most pitiful figures it has ever been my
fortune to encounter in my pilgrimage through a world of sentimentality
and incompetence.
16. I went back to the house, and because we feared the sounds of the
infant’s crying might carry, we hung blankets before the doors and
windows of the room, and sat in the hot enclosure, shuddering, silent,
grey with fear. After an hour or two, Mrs. Tuis rejoined us, stealing in
and seating herself at one side of the room, staring from one to another
of us with wide eyes of fright.
By the time the first signs of dawn appeared, the infant had cried
itself into a state of exhaustion. The faint light that got into the
room revealed the three of us, listening to the pitiful whimpering. I
was faint with weakness, but I had to make an effort and face the worst
ordeal of all. There came a tapping at the door--the maid, to say that
Sylvia was awake and had heard of my arrival and wished to see me. I
might have put off our meeting for a while, on the plea of exhaustion,
but I preferred to have it over with, and braced myself and went slowly
to her room.
In the doorway I paused for an instant to gaze at her. She was
exquisite, lying there with the flush of sleep still upon her, and the
ecstasy of her great achievement in her face. I fled to her, and we
caught each other in our arms. “Oh, Mary, Mary! I’m so glad you’ve
come!” And then: “Oh, Mary, isn’t it the loveliest baby!”
“Perfectly glorious!” I exclaimed.
“Oh, I’m so happy--so happy as I never dreamed! I’ve no words to tell
you about it.”
“You don’t need any words--I’ve been through it,” I said.
“Oh, but she’s so _beautiful!_ Tell me, honestly, isn’t that really so?”
“My dear,” I said, “she is like you.”
“Mary,” she went on, half whispering, “I think it solves all my
problems--all that I wrote you about. I don’t believe I shall ever
be unhappy again. I can’t believe that such a thing has really
happened--that I’ve been given such a treasure. And she’s my own! I can
watch her little body grow and help to make it strong and beautiful! I
can help mould her little mind--see it opening up, one chamber of wonder
after another! I can teach her all the things I have had to grope so to
get!”
“Yes,” I said, trying to speak with conviction. I added, hastily: “I’m
glad you don’t find motherhood disappointing.”
“Oh, it’s a miracle!” she exclaimed. “A woman who could be dissatisfied
with anything afterwards would be an ingrate!” She paused, then added:
“Mary, now she’s here in flesh, I feel she’ll be a bond between Douglas
and me. He must see her rights, her claim upon life, as he couldn’t see
mine.”
I assented gravely. So that was the thing she was thinking most about--a
bond between her husband and herself! A moment later the nurse appeared
in the doorway, and Sylvia set up a cry: “My baby! Where’s my baby? I
want to see my baby!”
“Sylvia, dear,” I said, “there’s something about the baby that has to be
explained.”
Instantly she was alert. “What is the matter?”
I laughed. “Nothing, dear, that amounts to anything. But the little
one’s eyes are inflamed--that is to say, the lids. It’s something that
happens to newly-born infants.”
“Well, then?” she said.
“Nothing, only the doctor’s had to put some salve on them, and they
don’t look very pretty.”
“I don’t mind that, if it’s all right.”
“But we’ve had to put a bandage over them, and it looks forbidding. Also
the child is apt to cry.”
“I must see her at once!” she exclaimed.
“Just now she’s asleep, so don’t make us disturb her.”
“But how long will this last?”
“Not very long. Meantime you must be sensible and not mind. It’s
something I made the doctor do, and you mustn’t blame me, or I’ll be
sorry I came to you.”
“You dear thing,” she said, and put her hand in mine. And then,
suddenly: “Why did you take it into your head to come, all of a sudden?”
“Don’t ask me,” I smiled. “I have no excuse. I just got homesick and had
to see you.”
“It’s perfectly wonderful that you should be here now,” she declared.
“But you look badly. Are you tired?”
“Yes, dear,” I said. (Such a difficult person to deceive!) “To tell the
truth, I’m pretty nearly done up. You see, I was caught in the storm,
and I was desperately sea-sick.”
“Why, you poor dear! Why didn’t you go to sleep?”
“I didn’t want to sleep. I was too much excited by everything. I came to
see one Sylvia and I found two!”
“Isn’t it absurd,” she cried, “how she looks like me? Oh, I want to see
her again. How long will it be before I can have her?”
“My dear,” I said, “you mustn’t worry--”
“Oh, don’t mind me, I’m just playing. I’m so happy, I want to squeeze
her in my arms all the time. Just think, Mary, they won’t let me nurse
her, yet--a whole day now! Can that be right?”
“Nature will take care of that,” I said.
“Yes, but how can you be sure what Nature means? Maybe it’s what the
child is crying about, and it’s the crying that makes its eyes red.”
I felt a sudden spasm grip my heart. “No, dear, no,” I said, hastily.
“You must let Dr. Perrin attend to these things, for I’ve just had
to interfere with his arrangements, and he’ll be getting cross pretty
soon.”
“Oh,” she cried with laughter in her eyes, “you’ve had a scene with him?
I knew you would! He’s so quaint and old-fashioned!”
“Yes,” I said, “and he talks exactly like your aunt.”
“Oh! You’ve met her too! I’m missing all the fun!”
I had a sudden inspiration--one that I was proud of. “My dear girl,” I
said, “maybe _you_ call it fun!” And I looked really agitated.
“Why, what’s the matter?” she cried.
“What could you expect?” I asked. “I fear, my dear Sylvia, I’ve shocked
your aunt beyond all hope.”
“What have you done?”
“I’ve talked about things I’d no business to--I’ve bossed the learned
doctor--and I’m sure Aunt Varina has guessed I’m not a lady.”
“Oh, tell me about it!” cried Sylvia, full of delight.
But I could not keep up the game any longer. “Not now, dear,” I said.
“It’s a long story, and I really am exhausted. I must go and get some
rest.”
I rose, and she caught my hand, whispering: “I shall be happy, Mary! I
shall be really happy now!” And then I turned and fled, and when I was
out of sight of the doorway, I literally ran. At the other end of the
veranda I sank down upon the steps, and wept softly to myself.
17. The launch arrived, bringing the nitrate of silver. A solution was
dropped into the baby’s eyes, and then we could do nothing but wait. I
might have lain down and really tried to rest; but the maid came again,
with the announcement that Sylvia was asking for her aunt. Excuses would
have tended to excite her suspicions; so poor Mrs. Tuis had to take her
turn at facing the ordeal, and I had to drill and coach her for it.
I had a vision of the poor lady going in to her niece, and suddenly
collapsing. Then there would begin a cross-examination, and Sylvia would
worm out the truth, and we might have a case of puerperal fever on our
hands.
This I explained afresh to Mrs. Tuis, having taken her into her own room
and closed the door for that purpose. She clutched me with her shaking
hands and whispered, “Oh, Mrs. Abbott, you will _never_ let Sylvia find
out what caused this trouble?”
I drew on my reserve supply of patience, and answered, “What I shall
let her find out in the end, I don’t know. We shall be guided by
circumstances, and this is no time to discuss the matter. The point is
now to make sure that you can go in and stay with her, and not let her
get an idea there’s anything wrong.”
“Oh, but you know how Sylvia reads people!” she cried, in sudden dismay.
“I’ve fixed it for you,” I said. “I’ve provided something you can be
agitated about.”
“What is that?”
“It’s _me._” Then, seeing her look of bewilderment, “You must tell
her that I’ve affronted you, Mrs. Tuis; I’ve outraged your sense of
propriety. You’re indignant with me and you don’t see how you can remain
in the house with me--”
“Why, Mrs. Abbott!” she exclaimed, in horror.
“You know it’s truth to some extent,” I said.
The good lady drew herself up. “Mrs. Abbott, don’t tell me that I have
been so rude--”
“Dear Mrs. Tuis,” I laughed, “don’t stop to apologize just now. You have
not been lacking in courtesy, but I know how I must seem to you. I am
a Socialist. I have a raw, Western accent, and my hands are big--I’ve
lived on a farm all my life, and done my own work, and even plowed
sometimes. I have no idea of the charms and graces of life that are
everything to you. What is more than that, I am forward, and thrust my
opinions upon other people--”
She simply could not hear me. She was a-tremble with a new excitement.
Worse even than _opthalmia neonatorum_ was plain speaking to a guest!
“Mrs. Abbott, you humiliate me!”
Then I spoke harshly, seeing that I would actually have to shock her.
“I assure you, Mrs. Tuis, that if you don’t feel that way about me, it’s
simply because you don’t know the truth. It is not possible that you
would consider me a proper person to visit Sylvia. I don’t believe in
your religion; I don’t believe in anything that you would call religion,
and I argue about it at the least provocation. I deliver violent
harangues on street-corners, and have been arrested during a strike.
I believe in woman’s suffrage, I even argue in approval of
window-smashing. I believe that women ought to earn their own living,
and be independent and free from any man’s control. I am a divorced
woman--I left my husband because I wasn’t happy with him, what’s more,
I believe that any woman has a right to do the same--I’m liable to teach
such ideas to Sylvia, and to urge her to follow them.”
The poor lady’s eyes were wide and large. “So you see,” I exclaimed,
“you really couldn’t approve of me! Tell her all this; she knows it
already, but she will be horrified, because I have let you and the
doctor find it out!”
Whereupon Mrs. Tuis started to ascend the pedestal of her dignity. “Mrs.
Abbott, this may be your idea of a jest----”
“Now come,” I cried, “let me help you fix your hair, and put on just a
wee bit of powder--not enough to be noticed, you understand----”
I took her to the wash-stand, and poured out some cold water for her,
and saw her bathe her eyes and face, and dry them, and braid her thin
grey hair. While with a powder puff I was trying deftly to conceal the
ravages of the night’s crying, the dear lady turned to me, and whispered
in a trembling voice, “Mrs. Abbott, you really don’t mean that dreadful
thing you said just now?”
“Which dreadful thing, Mrs. Tuis?”
“That you would tell Sylvia it could possibly be right for her to leave
her husband?”
18. In the course of the day we received word that Dr. Gibson, the
specialist for whom we had telegraphed, was on his way. The boat which
brought his message took back a letter from Dr. Perrin to Douglas van
Tuiver, acquainting him with the calamity which had befallen. We
had talked it over and agreed that there was nothing to be gained by
telegraphing the information. We did not wish any hint of the child’s
illness to leak into the newspapers.
I did not envy the great man the hour when he read that letter; although
I knew that the doctor had not failed to assure him that the victim of
his misdeeds should be kept in ignorance. Already the little man
had begun to drop hints to me on this subject. Unfortunate accidents
happened, which were not always to be blamed upon the husband, nor was
it a thing to contemplate lightly, the breaking up of a family. I gave
a non-committal answer, and changed the subject by asking the doctor
not to mention my presence in the household. If by any chance van Tuiver
were to carry his sorrows to Claire, I did not want my name brought up.
We managed to prevent Sylvia’s seeing the child that day and night, and
the next morning came the specialist. He held out no hope of saving any
remnant of the sight, but the child might be so fortunate as to escape
disfigurement--it did not appear that the eyeballs were destroyed, as
happens generally in these cases. This bit of consolation I still have:
that little Elaine, who sits by me as I write, has left in her pupils a
faint trace of the soft red-brown--just enough to remind us of what we
have lost, and keep fresh in our minds the memory of these sorrows. If
I wish to see what her eyes might have been, I look above my head to the
portrait of Sylvia’s noble ancestress, a copy made by a “tramp artist”
in Castleman County, and left with me by Sylvia.
There was the question of the care of the mother--the efforts to stay
the ravages of the germ in the tissues broken and weakened by the strain
of child-birth. We had to invent excuses for the presence of the new
doctor--and yet others for the presence of Dr. Overton, who came a day
later. And then the problem of the nourishing of the child. It would
be a calamity to have to put it upon the bottle, but on the other
hand, there were many precautions necessary to keep the infection from
spreading.
I remember vividly the first time that the infant was fed: all of us
gathered round, with matter-of-course professional air, as if these
elaborate hygienic ceremonies were the universal custom when newly-born
infants first taste their mothers’ milk. Standing in the background, I
saw Sylvia start with dismay, as she noted how pale and thin the poor
little one had become. It was hunger that caused the whimpering, so the
nurse declared, busying herself in the meantime to keep the tiny
hands from the mother’s face. The latter sank back and closed her
eyes--nothing, it seemed, could prevail over the ecstasy of that first
marvellous sensation, but afterwards she asked that I might stay with
her, and as soon as the others were gone, she unmasked the batteries
of her suspicion upon me. “Mary! What in the world has happened to my
baby?”
So began a new stage in the campaign of lying. “It’s nothing, nothing.
Just some infection. It happens frequently.”
“But what is the cause of it?”
“We can’t tell. It may be a dozen things. There are so many possible
sources of infection about a birth. It’s not a very sanitary thing, you
know.”
“Mary! Look me in the face!”
“Yes, dear?”
“You’re not deceiving me?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean--it’s not really something serious? All these doctors--this
mystery--this vagueness!”
“It was your husband, my dear Sylvia, who sent the doctors--it was
his stupid man’s way of being attentive.” (This at Aunt Varina’s
suggestion--the very subtle lady!).
“Mary, I’m worried. My baby looks so badly, and I feel something is
wrong.”
“My dear Sylvia,” I chided, “if you worry about it you will simply be
harming the child. Your milk may go wrong.”
“Oh, that’s just it! That’s why you would not tell me the truth!”
We persuade ourselves that there are certain circumstances under which
lying is necessary, but always when we come to the lies we find them
an insult to the soul. Each day I perceived that I was getting in
deeper--and each day I watched Aunt Varina and the doctor busied to push
me deeper yet.
There had come a telegram from Douglas van Tuiver to Dr. Perrin,
revealing the matter which stood first in that gentleman’s mind.
“I expect no failure in your supply of the necessary tact.” By this
vagueness we perceived that he too was trusting no secrets to telegraph
operators. Yet for us it was explicit and illuminative. It recalled the
tone of quiet authority I had noted in his dealings with his chauffeur,
and it sent me off by myself for a while to shake my fist at all
husbands.
19. Mrs. Tuis, of course, had no need of any warning from the head
of the house. The voice of her ancestors guided her in all such
emergencies. The dear lady had got to know me quite well, at the more or
less continuous dramatic rehearsals we conducted; and now and then her
trembling hands would seek to fasten me in the chains of decency. “Mrs.
Abbott, think what a scandal there would be if Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver
were to break with her husband!”
“Yes, my dear Mrs. Tuis-but on the other hand, think what might happen
if she were kept in ignorance in this matter. She might bear another
child.”
I got a new realization of the chasms that lay between us. “Who are we,”
she whispered, “to interfere in these sacred matters? It is of souls,
Mrs. Abbot, and not bodies, that the Kingdom of Heaven is made.”
I took a minute or so to get my breath, and then I said, “What generally
happens in these cases is that God afflicts the woman with permanent
barrenness.”
The old lady bowed her head, and I saw the tears falling into her lap.
“My poor Sylvia!” she moaned, only half aloud.
There was a silence; I too almost wept. And finally, Aunt Varina
looked up at me, her faded eyes full of pleading. “It is hard for me to
understand such ideas as yours. You must tell me-can you really believe
that it would help Sylvia to know this-this dreadful secret?”
“It would help her in many ways,” I said. “She will be more careful of
her health-she will follow the doctor’s orders---”
How quickly came the reply! “I will stay with her, and see that she does
that! I will be with her day and night.”
“But are you going to keep the secret from those who attend her? Her
maid--the child’s nurses--everyone who might by any chance use the same
towel, or a wash-basin, or a drinking-glass?”
“Surely you exaggerate the danger! If that were true, more people would
meet with these accidents!”
“The doctors,” I said, “estimate that about ten per cent. of cases of
this disease are innocently acquired.”
“Oh, these modern doctors!” she cried. “I never heard of such ideas!”
I could not help smiling. “My dear Mrs. Tuis, what do you imagine you
know about the prevalence of gonorrhea? Consider just one fact--that I
heard a college professor state publicly that in his opinion eighty-five
per cent. of the men students at his university were infected with some
venereal disease. And that is the pick of our young manhood--the sons of
our aristocracy!”
“Oh, that can’t be!” she exclaimed. “People would know of it!
“Who are ‘people’? The boys in your family know of it--if you could get
them to tell you. My two sons studied at a State university, and they
would bring me home what they heard--the gossip, the slang, the
horrible obscenity. Fourteen fellows in one dormitory using the same
bathroom--and on the wall you saw a row of fourteen syringes! And they
told that on themselves, it was the joke of the campus. They call the
disease a ‘dose’; and a man’s not supposed to be worthy the respect
of his fellows until he’s had his ‘dose’--the sensible thing is to get
several, till he can’t get any more. They think it’s ‘no worse than a
bad cold’; that’s the idea they get from the ‘clap-doctors,’ and the
women of the street who educate our sons in sex matters.”
“Oh, spare me, spare me!” cried Mrs. Tuis. “I beg you not to force these
horrible details upon me!”
“That is what is going on among our boys,” I said. “The Castleman boys,
the Chilton boys! It’s going on in every fraternity house, every ‘prep
school’ dormitory in America. And the parents refuse to know, just as
you do!”
“But what could I possibly do, Mrs. Abbott?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Tuis. What _I_ am going to do is to teach the young
girls.”
She whispered, aghast, “You would rob the young girls of their
innocence. Why, with their souls full of these ideas their faces would
soon be as hard--oh, you horrify me!”
“My daughter’s face is not hard,” I said. “And I taught her. Stop and
think, Mrs. Tuis--ten thousand blind children every year! A hundred
thousand women under the surgeon’s knife! Millions of women going to
pieces with slowly creeping diseases of which they never hear the names!
I say, let us cry this from the housetops, until every woman knows--and
until every man knows that she knows, and that unless he can prove that
he is clean he will lose her! That is the remedy, Mrs. Tuis!”
Poor dear lady! I got up and went away, leaving her there, with clenched
hands and trembling lips. I suppose I seemed to her like the mad women
who were just then rising up to horrify the respectability of England--a
phenomenon of Nature too portentous to be comprehended, or even to be
contemplated, by a gentlewoman of the South!
20. There came in due course a couple of letters from Douglas van
Tuiver. The one to Aunt Varina, which was shown to me, was vague and
cautious--as if the writer were uncertain how much this worthy lady
knew. He merely mentioned that Sylvia was to be spared every particle
of “painful knowledge.” He would wait in great anxiety, but he would not
come, because any change in his plans might set her to questioning.
The letter to Dr. Perrin was not shown to me; but I judged that it must
have contained more strenuous injunctions. Or had Aunt Varina by any
chance got up the courage to warn the young doctor against me? His
hints, at any rate, became more pointed. He desired me to realize how
awkward it would be for him, if Sylvia were to learn the truth; it would
be impossible to convince Mr. van Tuiver that this knowledge had not
come from the physician in charge.
“But, Dr. Perrin,” I objected, “it was I who brought the information to
you! And Mr. van Tuiver knows that I am a radical woman; he would not
expect me to be ignorant of such matters.”
“Mrs. Abbott,” was the response, “it is a grave matter to destroy the
possibility of happiness of a young married couple.”
However I might dispute his theories, in practice I was doing what he
asked. But each day I was finding the task more difficult; each day it
became more apparent that Sylvia was ceasing to believe me. I realized
at last, with a sickening kind of fright, that she knew I was hiding
something from her. Because she knew me, and knew that I would not do
such a thing lightly, she was terrified. She would lie there, gazing
at me, with a dumb fear in her eyes--and I would go on asseverating
blindly, like an unsuccessful actor before a jeering audience.
A dozen times she made an effort to break through the barricade of
falsehood; and a dozen times I drove her back, all but crying to her,
“No, No! Don’t ask me!” Until at last, late one night, she caught my
hand and clung to it in a grip I could not break. “Mary! Mary! You must
tell me the _truth!_”
“Dear girl--” I began.
“Listen!” she cried. “I know you are deceiving me! I know why--because
I’ll make myself ill. But it won’t do any longer; it’s preying on me,
Mary--I’ve taken to imagining things. So you must tell me the truth!”
I sat, avoiding her eyes, beaten; and in the pause I could feel her
hands shaking. “Mary, what is it? Is my baby going to die?”
“No, dear, indeed no!” I cried.
“Then what?”
“Sylvia,” I began, as quietly as I could, “the truth is not as bad as
you imagine--”
“Tell me what it is!”
“But it is bad, Sylvia. And you must be brave. You must be, for your
baby’s sake.”
“Make haste!” she cried.
“The baby,” I said, “may be blind.”
“Blind!” There we sat, gazing into each other’s eyes, like two statues
of women. But the grasp of her hand tightened, until even my big fist
was hurt. “Blind!” she whispered again.
“Sylvia,” I rushed on, “it isn’t so bad as it might be! Think--if you
had lost her altogether!”
“_Blind!_”
“You will have her always; and you can do things for her--take care of
her. They do wonders for the blind nowadays--and you have the means; to
do everything. Really, you know, blind children are not unhappy--some of
them are happier than other children, I think. They haven’t so much to
miss. Think--”
“Wait, wait,” she whispered; and again there was silence, and I clung to
her cold hands.
“Sylvia,” I said, at last, “you have a newly-born infant to nurse, and
its very life depends upon your health now. You cannot let yourself
grieve.”
“No,” she responded. “No. But, Mary, what caused this?”
So there was the end of my spell of truth-telling. “I don’t know, dear.
Nobody knows. There might be a thousand things--”
“Was it born blind?”
“No.”
“Then was it the doctor’s fault?”
“No, it was nobody’s fault. Think of the thousands and tens of thousands
of babies that become blind! It’s a dreadful accident that happens.” So
I went on--possessed with a dread that had been with me for days, that
had kept me awake for hours in the night: Had I, in any of my talks with
Sylvia about venereal disease, mentioned blindness in infants as one
of the consequences? I could not rememher; but now was the time I would
find out!
She lay there, immovable, like a woman who had died in grief; until at
last I flung my arms about her and whispered, “Sylvia! Sylvia! Please
cry!”
“I can’t cry!” she whispered, and her voice sounded hard.
So, after a space, I said, “Then, dear, I think I will have to make you
laugh.”
“Laugh, Mary?”
“Yes-I will tell you about the quarrel between Aunt Varina and myself.
You know what times we’ve been having-how I shocked the poor lady?”
She was looking at me, but her eyes were not seeing me. “Yes, Mary,” she
said, in the same dead tone.
“Well, that was a game we made for you. It was very funny!”
“Funny?”
“Yes! Because I really did shock her-though we started out just to give
you something else to think about!”
And then suddenly I saw the healing tears begin to come. She could not
weep for her own grief-but she could weep because of what she knew we
two had had to suffer for her!
21. I went out and told the others what I had done; and Mrs. Tuis
rushed in to her niece and they wept in each other’s arms, and Mrs. Tuis
explained all the mysteries of life by her formula, “the will of the
Lord.”
Later on came Dr. Perrin, and it was touching to see how Sylvia treated
him. She had, it appeared, conceived the idea that the calamity must be
due to some blunder on his part, and then she had reflected that he was
young, and that chance had thrown upon him a responsibility for which he
had not bargained. He must be reproaching himself bitterly, so she had
to persuade him that it was really not so bad as we were making it-that
a blind child was a great joy to a mother’s soul-in some ways even a
greater joy than a perfectly sound child, because it appealed so to
her protective instinct! I had called Sylvia a shameless payer of
compliments, and now I went away by myself and wept.
Yet it was true in a way. When the infant was brought in to be nursed
again, how she clung to it, a very picture of the sheltering and
protecting instinct of motherhood! She knew the worst now--her mind was
free, and she could partake of what happiness was allowed her. The child
was hers to love and care for, and she would find ways to atone to it
for the harshness of fate.
So little by little we got our existence upon a working basis. We lived
a peaceful, routine life, to the music of cocoanut-palms rustling in the
warm breezes which blew incessantly off the Mexican Gulf. Aunt Varina
had, for the time, her undisputed way with the family; her niece
reclined upon the veranda in true Southern lady fashion, and was read
aloud to from books of indisputable respectability. I remember Aunt
Varina selected the “Idylls of the King,” and they two were in a mood
to shed tears over these solemn, sorrowful tales. So it came that the
little one got her name, after a pale and unhappy heroine.
I remember the long discussions of this point, the family-lore which
Aunt Varina brought forth. It did not seem to her quite the thing to
call a blind child after a member of one’s family. Something strange,
romantic, wistful--yes, Elaine was the name! Mrs. Tuis, it transpired,
had already baptised the infant, in the midst of the agonies and alarms
of its illness. She had called it “Sylvia,” and now she was tremulously
uncertain whether this counted--whether perhaps the higher powers might
object to having to alter their records. But in the end a clergyman
came out from Key West and heard Aunt Varina’s confession, and gravely
concluded that the error might be corrected by a formal ceremony. How
strange it all seemed to me--being carried back two or three hundred
years in the world’s history! But I gave no sign of what was going on in
my rebellious mind.
22. Dr. Overton on his return to New York, sent a special nurse to take
charge of Sylvia’s case. There was also an infant’s nurse, and both had
been taken into the doctor’s confidence. So now there was an elaborate
conspiracy--no less than five women and two men, all occupied in keeping
a secret from Sylvia. It was a thing so contrary to my convictions that
I was never free from the burden of it for a moment. Was it my duty to
tell her?
Dr. Perrin no longer referred to the matter--I realised that both he and
Dr. Gibson considered the matter settled. Was it conceivable that anyone
of sound mind could set out, deliberately and in cold blood, to betray
such a secret? But I had maintained all my life the right of woman to
know the truth, and was I to back down now, at the first test of my
convictions?
When the news reached Douglas van Tuiver that his wife had been informed
of the infant’s blindness, there came a telegram saying that he was
coming. There was much excitement, of course, and Aunt Varina came to
me, in an attempt to secure a definite pledge of silence. When I refused
it, Dr. Perrin came again, and we fought the matter over for the better
part of a day and night.
He was a polite little gentleman, and he did not tell me that my views
were those of a fanatic, but he said that no woman could see things in
their true proportion, because of her necessary ignorance concerning the
nature of men, and the temptations to which they were exposed. I replied
that I believed I understood these matters thoroughly, and I went on,
quite simply and honestly, to make clear to him that this was so. In
the end my pathetically chivalrous little Southern gentleman admitted
everything I asked. Yes, it was true that these evils were ghastly, and
that they were increasing, and that women were the worst sufferers from
men. There might even be something in my idea that the older women
of the community should devote themselves to this service, making
themselves race-mothers, and helping, not merely in their homes, but in
the schools and churches, to protect and save the future generations.
But all that was in the future, he argued, while here was a case which
had gone so far that “letting in the light” could only blast the life
of two people, making it impossible for a young mother ever again to
tolerate the father of her child. I argued that Sylvia was not of the
hysterical type, but I could not make him agree that it was possible to
predict what the attitude of any woman would be. His ideas were based on
one peculiar experience he had had--a woman patient who had said to him:
“Doctor, I know what is the matter with me, but for God’s sake don’t
let my husband find out that I know, because then I should feel that my
self-respect required me to leave him!”
23. The Master-of-the-House was coming! You could feel the quiver of
excitement in the air of the place. The boatmen were polishing the
brasses of the launch; the yard-man was raking up the dry strips of palm
from beneath the cocoanut trees; Aunt Varina was ordering new supplies,
and entering into conspiracies with the cook. The nurses asked me
timidly, what was He like, and even Dr. Gibson, a testy old gentleman
who had clashed violently with me on the subject of woman’s suffrage,
and had avoided me ever since as a suspicious character, now came and
confided his troubles. He had sent home for a trunk, and the graceless
express companies had sent it astray. Now he was wondering if it was
necessary for him to journey to Key West and have a suit of dinner
clothes made over night. I told him that I had not sent for any
party-dresses, and that I expected to meet Mr. Douglas van Tuiver at
his dinner-table in plain white linen. His surprise was so great that I
suspected the old gentleman of having wondered whether I meant to retire
to a “second-table” when the Master-of-the-House arrived.
I went away by myself, seething with wrath. Who was this great one whom
we honoured? Was he an inspired poet, a maker of laws, a discoverer
of truth? He was the owner of an indefinite number of millions of
dollars--that was all, and yet I was expected, because of my awe of him,
to abandon the cherished convictions of my lifetime. The situation
was one that challenged my fighting blood. This was the hour to prove
whether I really meant the things I talked.
On the morning of the day that van Tuiver was expected, I went early to
Aunt Varina’s room. She was going in the launch, and was in a state of
flustration, occupied in putting on her best false hair. “Mrs. Tuis,” I
said, “I want you to let me go to meet Mr. van Tuiver instead of you.”
I will not stop to report the good lady’s outcries. I did not care,
I said, whether it was proper, nor did I care whether, as she finally
hinted, it might not be agreeable to Mr. van Tuiver. I was sorry to have
to thrust myself upon him, but I was determined to go, and would let
nothing prevent me. And all at once she yielded, rather surprising me
by the suddenness of it. I suppose she concluded that van Tuiver was the
man to handle me, and the quicker he got at it the better.
It is a trying thing to deal with the rich and great. If you treat them
as the rest of the world does, you are a tuft-hunter; if you treat them
as the rest of the world pretends to, you are a hypocrite; whereas, if
you deal with them truly, it is hard not to seem, even to yourself, a
bumptious person. I remember trying to tell myself on the launch-trip
that I was not in the least excited; and then, standing on the platform
of the railroad station, saying: “How can you expect not to be excited,
when even the railroad is excited?”
“Will Mr. van Tuiver’s train be on time?” I asked, of the agent.
“‘Specials’ are not often delayed,” he replied, “at least, not Mr. van
Tuiver’s.”
The engine and its two cars drew up, and the traveller stepped out upon
the platform, followed by his secretary and his valet. I went forward to
meet him. “Good morning, Mr. van Tuiver.”
I saw at once that he did not remember me. “Mrs. Abbott,” I prompted. “I
came to meet you.”
“Ah,” he said. He had never got clear whether I was a sewing-woman, or
a tutor, or what, and whenever he erred in such matters, it was on the
side of caution.
“Your wife is doing well,” I said, “and the child as well as could be
expected.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Did no one else come?”
“Mrs. Tuis was not able,” I said, diplomatically, and we moved towards
the launch.
24. He did not offer to help me into the vessel, but I, crude
Western woman, did not miss the attention. We seated ourselves in the
upholstered leather seats in the stern, and when the “luggage” had been
stowed aboard, the little vessel swung away from the pier. Then I said:
“If you will pardon me, Mr. van Tuiver, I should like to talk with you
privately.”
He looked at me for a moment, and then answered, abruptly: “Yes, madam.”
The secretary rose and went forward.
The whirr of the machinery and the strong breeze made by the boat’s
motion, made it certain that no one could hear us, and so I began my
attack: “Mr. van Tuiver, I am a friend of your wife’s. I came here to
help her in this crisis, and I came to-day to meet you because it was
necessary for someone to talk to you frankly about the situation.
You will understand, I presume, that Mrs. Tuis is not--not very well
informed about the matters in question.”
His gaze was fixed intently upon me, but he said not a word. After
waiting, I continued: “Perhaps you will wonder why your wife’s
physicians could not have handled the matter. The reason is, there is
a woman’s side to such questions and often it is difficult for men to
understand it. If Sylvia knew the truth, she could speak for herself;
so long as she does not know it, I shall have to take the liberty of
speaking for her.”
Again there was a pause. He did nothing more than watch me, yet I could
feel his affronted maleness rising up for battle. I waited on purpose to
compel him to speak.
“May I ask,” he inquired, at last, “what you mean by the ‘truth’ that
you refer to?”
“I mean,” I said, “the cause of the infant’s affliction.”
His composure was a thing to wonder at. He did not show by the flicker
of an eyelash any sign of uneasiness.
“Let me explain one thing,” I continued. “I owe it to Dr. Perrin to make
clear that he had nothing whatever to do with my coming into possession
of the secret. In fact, as he will no doubt tell you, I knew it before
he did; it is possible that you owe it to me that the infant is not
disfigured as well as blind.”
I paused again. “If that be true,” he said, with unshaken formality, “I
am obliged to you.” What a man!
I continued: “My one desire and purpose is to protect my friend. So far,
the secret has been kept from her. I consented to this, because her very
life was at stake, it seemed to us all. But now she is well enough to
know, and the question is SHALL she know. I need hardly tell you
that Dr. Perrin thinks she should not, and that he has been using his
influence to persuade me to agree with him; so also has Mrs. Tuis----”
Then I saw the first trace of uncertainty in his eyes. “There was a
critical time,” I explained, “when Mrs. Tuis had to be told. You may be
sure, however, that no hint of the truth will be given by her. I am the
only person who is troubled with the problem of Sylvia’s rights.”
I waited. “May I suggest, Mrs.--Mrs. Abbott--that the protection of
Mrs. van Tuiver’s rights can be safely left to her physicians and her
husband?”
“One would wish so, Mr. van Tuiver, but the medical books are full of
evidence that women’s rights frequently need other protection.”
I perceived that he was nearing the end of his patience now. “You make
it difficult for me to talk to you,” he said. “I am not accustomed to
having my affairs taken out of my hands by strangers.”
“Mr. van Tuiver,” I replied, “in this most critical matter it is
necessary to speak without evasion. Before her marriage Sylvia made an
attempt to safeguard herself in this very matter, and she was not dealt
with fairly.”
At last I had made a hole in the mask! His face was crimson as
he replied: “Madam, your knowledge of my private affairs is most
astonishing. May I inquire how you learned these things?”
I did not reply at once, and he repeated the question. I perceived that
this was to him the most important matter--his wife’s lack of reserve!
“The problem that concerns us here,” I said, “is whether you are willing
to repair the error you made. Will you go frankly to your wife and admit
your responsibility----”
He broke in, angrily: “Madam, the assumption you are making is one I see
no reason for permitting.”
“Mr. van Tuiver,” said I, “I hoped that you would not take that line of
argument. I perceive that I have been _naive._”
“Really, madam!” he replied, with cruel intent, “you have not impressed
me so!”
I continued unshaken: “In this conversation it will be necessary to
assume that you are responsible for the presence of the disease.”
“In that case,” he replied, haughtily, “I can have no further part in
the conversation, and I will ask you to drop it at once.”
I might have taken him at his word and waited, confident that in the
end he would have to come and ask for terms. But that would have seemed
childish to me, with the grave matters we had to settle. After a minute
or two, I said, quietly: “Mr. van Tuiver, you wish me to believe that
previous to your marriage you had always lived a chaste life?”
He was equal to the effort it cost to control himself. He sat examining
me with his cold grey eyes. I suppose I must have been as new and
monstrous a phenomenon to him as he was to me.
At last, seeing that he would not reply, I said, coldly: “It will help
us to get forward if you will give up the idea that it is possible for
you to put me off, or to escape this situation.”
“Madam,” he cried, suddenly, “come to the point! What is it that you
want? Money?”
I had thought I was prepared for everything; but this was an aspect of
his world which I could hardly have been expected to allow for. I stared
at him and then turned from the sight of him. “And to think that Sylvia
is married to such a man!” I whispered, half to myself.
“Mrs. Abbott,” he exclaimed, “how can anyone understand what you are
driving at?”
But I turned away without answering, and for a long time sat gazing over
the water. What was the use of pleading with such a man? What was the
use of pouring out one’s soul to him? I would tell Sylvia the truth at
once, and leave him to her!
25. I heard him again, at last; he was talking to my back, his tone
a trifle less aloof. “Mrs. Abbott, do you realize that I know nothing
whatever about you--your character, your purpose, the nature of your
hold upon my wife? So what means have I of judging? You threaten me with
something that seems to me entirely insane--and what can I make of it?
If you wish me to understand you, tell me in plain words what you want.”
I reflected that I was in the world, and must take it as I found it. “I
have told you what I want,” I said; “but I will tell you again, if it is
necessary. I hoped to persuade you that it was your duty to go to your
wife and tell her the truth.”
He took a few moments to make sure of his self-possession. “And would
you explain what good you imagine that could do?”
“Your wife,” I said, “must be put in position to protect herself in
future. There is no means of making sure in such a matter, except to
tell her the truth. You love her--and you are a man who has never been
accustomed to do without what he wants.”
“Great God, woman!” he cried. “Don’t you suppose one blind child is
enough?”
It was the first human word that he had spoken, and I was grateful for
it. “I have already covered that point,” I said, in a low voice. “The
medical books are full of painful evidence that several blind children
are often not enough. There can be no escaping the necessity--Sylvia
must _know._ The only question is, who shall tell her? You must realize
that in urging you to be the person, I am thinking of your good as well
as hers. I will, of course, not mention that I have had anything to
do with persuading you, and so it will seem to her that you have some
realization of the wrong you have done her, some desire to atone for it,
and to be honourable and fair in your future dealings with her. When she
has once been made to realize that you are no more guilty than other men
of your class--hat you have done no worse than all of them----
“You imagine she could be made to believe that?” he broke in,
impatiently.
“I will undertake to see that she believes it,” I replied.
“You seem to have great confidence in your ability to manage my wife!”
“If you continue to resent my existence,” I answered, gravely, “you will
make it impossible for me to help you.”
“Pardon me,” he said--but he did not say it cordially.
I went on: “There is much that can be said in your behalf. I realize it
is quite possible that you were not wholly to blame when you wrote to
Bishop Chilton that you were fit to marry; I know that you may have
believed it--that you might even have found physicians to tell you so.
There is wide-spread ignorance on the subject of this disease. Men have
the idea that the chronic forms of it cannot be communicated to women,
and it is difficult to make them realize what modern investigations have
proven. You can explain that to Sylvia, and I will back you up in it.
You were in love with her, you wanted her. Go to her now, and admit to
her honestly that you have wronged her. Beg her to forgive you, and to
let you help make the best of the cruel situation that has arisen.”
So I went on, pouring out my soul. And when I had finished, he said,
“Mrs. Abbott, I have listened patiently to your most remarkable
proposition. My answer is that I must ask you to withdraw from this
intimate matter, which concerns only my wife and myself.”
He was back where we started! Trying to sweep aside these grim and
terrible realities with the wave of a conventional hand! Was this the
way he met Sylvia’s arguments? I felt moved to tell him what I thought
of him.
“You are a proud man, Mr. van Tuiver--an obstinate man, I fear. It is
hard for you to humble yourself to your wife--to admit a crime and beg
forgiveness. Tell me--is that why you hesitate? Is it because you fear
you will have to take second place in your family from now on--that you
will no longer be able to dominate Sylvia? Are you afraid of putting
into her hands a weapon of self-defence?”
He made no response.
“Very well,” I said, at last. “Let me tell you, then--I will not help
any man to hold such a position in a woman’s life. Women have to bear
half the burdens of marriage, they pay half, or more than half, the
penalties; and so it is necessary that they have a voice in its affairs.
Until they know the truth, they can never have a voice.”
Of course my little lecture on Feminism might as well have been
delivered to a sphinx. “How stupid you are!” I cried. “Don’t you know
that some day Sylvia must find out the truth for herself?”
This was before the days when newspapers and magazines began to discuss
such matters frankly; but still there were hints to be picked up. I had
a newspaper-item in my bag--the board of health in a certain city had
issued a circular giving instructions for the prevention of blindness
in newly-born infants, and discussing the causes thereof; and the United
States post office authorities had barred the circular from the mails. I
said, “Suppose that item had come under Sylvia’s eyes; might it not have
put her on the track. It was in her newspaper the day before yesterday;
and it was only by accident that I got hold of it first. Do you suppose
that can go on forever?”
“Now that I am here,” he replied, “I will be glad to relieve you of such
responsibilities.”
Which naturally made me cross. I drew from my quiver an arrow that I
thought would penetrate his skin. “Mr. van Tuiver,” I said, “a man in
your position must always be an object of gossip and scandal. Suppose
some enemy were to send your wife an anonymous letter? Or suppose there
were some woman who thought that you had wronged her?”
I stopped. He gave me one keen look--and then again the impenetrable
mask! “My wife will have to do as other women in her position do--pay no
attention to scandal-mongers of any sort.”
I paused, and then went on: “I believe in marriage. I consider it a
sacred thing; I would do anything in my power to protect and preserve a
marriage. But I hold that it must be an equal partnership. I would fight
to make it that; and wherever I found that it could not be that, I would
say it was not marriage, but slavery, and I would fight just as hard to
break it. Can you not understand that attitude upon a woman’s part?”
He gave no sign that he could understand. But still I would not give up
my battle. “Mr. van Tuiver,” I pleaded, “I am a much older person than
you. I have seen a great deal of life--I have seen suffering even worse
than yours. And I am trying most earnestly to help you. Can you not
bring yourself to talk to me frankly? Perhaps you have never talked with
a woman about such matters--I mean, with a good woman. But I assure
you that other men have found it possible, and never regretted the
confidence they placed in me.”
I went on to tell him about my own sons, and what I had done for them;
I told him of a score of other boys in their class who had come to me,
making me a sort of mother-confessor. I do not think that I was entirely
deceived by my own eloquence--there was, I am sure, a minute or two
when he actually wavered. But then the habits of a precocious life-time
reasserted themselves, and he set his lips and told himself that he was
Douglas van Tuiver. Such things might happen in raw Western colleges,
but they were not according to the Harvard manner, nor the tradition of
life in Fifth Avenue clubs.
He could not be a boy! He had never had any boyhood, any childhood--he
had been a state personage ever since he had known that he was anything.
I found myself thinking suddenly of the thin-lipped old family lawyer,
who had had much to do with shaping his character, and whom Sylvia
described to me, sitting at her dinner-table and bewailing the folly
of people who “admitted things.” That was what made trouble for family
lawyers--not what people did, but what they admitted. How easy it was
to ignore impertinent questions! And how few people had the wit to do
it!-it seemed as if the shade of the thin-lipped old family lawyer were
standing by Douglas van Tuiver’s side.
In a last desperate effort, I cried, “Even suppose that I grant your
request, even suppose I agree not to tell Sylvia the truth--still the
day will come when you will hear from her the point-blank question: ‘Is
my child blind because of this disease?’ And what will you answer?”
He said, in his cold, measured tones, “I will answer that there are a
thousand ways in which the disease can be innocently acquired.”
For a long time there was silence between us. At last he spoke again,
and his voice was as emotionless as if we had just met: “Do I understand
you, madam, that if I reject your advice and refuse to tell my wife what
you call the truth, it is your intention to tell her yourself?”
“You understand me correctly,” I replied.
“And may I ask when you intend to carry out this threat?”
“I will wait,” I said, “I will give you every chance to think it
over--to consult with the doctors, in case you wish to. I will not take
the step without giving you fair notice.”
“For that I am obliged to you,” he said, with a touch of irony; and that
was our last word.
26. Our island was visible in the distance and I was impatient for the
time when I should be free from this man’s presence. But as we drew
nearer, I noticed a boat coming out; it proved to be one of the smaller
launches heading directly for us. Neither van Tuiver nor I spoke, but
both of us watched it, and he must have been wondering, as I was, what
its purpose could be. When it was near enough, I made out that its
passengers were Dr. Perrin and Dr. Gibson.
We slowed up, and the other boat did the same, and they lay within a few
feet of each other. Dr. Perrin greeted van Tuiver, and after introducing
the other man, he said: “We came out to have a talk with you. Would you
be so good as to step into this boat?”
“Certainly,” was the reply. The two launches were drawn side by side,
and the transfer made; the man who was running the smaller launch
stepped into ours--evidently having been instructed in advance.
“You will excuse us please?” said the little doctor to me. The man who
had stepped into our launch spoke to the captain of it, and the power
was then put on, and we moved away a sufficient distance to be out of
hearing. I thought this a strange procedure, but I conjectured that the
doctors had become nervous as to what I might have told van Tuiver. So
I dismissed the matter from my mind, and spent my time reviewing the
exciting adventure I had just passed through.
How much impression had I made? It was hard for me to judge such a man.
He would pretend to be less concerned than he actually was. But surely
he must see that he was in my power, and would have to give way in the
end!
There came a hail from the little vessel, and we moved alongside again.
“Would you kindly step in here with us, Mrs. Abbott?” said Dr. Perrin,
and when I had done so, he ordered the boatman to move away once more.
Van Tuiver said not a word, but I noted a strained look upon his face,
and I thought the others seemed agitated also.
As soon as the other vessel was out of hearing, Dr. Perrin turned to me
and said: “Mrs. Abbott, we came out to see Mr. van Tuiver, to warn him
of a distressing accident which has just happened. Mrs. van Tuiver was
asleep in her room, and Miss Lyman and another of the nurses were in the
next room. They indiscreetly made some remarks on the subject which we
have all been discussing--how much a wife should be told about these
matters, and suddenly they discovered Mrs. van Tuiver standing in the
doorway of the room.”
My gaze had turned to Douglas van Tuiver. “So she _knows!_” I cried.
“We don’t think that she knows, but she has a suspicion and is trying to
find out. She asked to see you.”
“Ah, yes!” I said.
“She declared that she wished to see you as soon as you returned--that
she would not see anyone else, not even Mr. van Tuiver. You will
understand that this portends trouble for all of us. We judged it
necessary to have a consultation about the matter.”
I bowed in assent.
“Now, Mrs. Abbot,” began the little doctor, solemnly, “there is no
longer a question of abstract ideas, but of an immediate emergency. We
feel that we, as the physicians in charge of the case, have the right to
take control of the matter. We do not see----”
“Dr. Perrin,” I said, “let us come to the point. You want me to spin a
new web of deception?”
“We are of the opinion, Mrs. Abbott, that in such matters the physicians
in charge----”
“Excuse me,” I said, quickly, “we have been over all this before, and we
know that we disagree. Has Mr. van Tuiver told you of the proposition I
have just made?”
“You mean for him to go to his wife----”
“Yes.”
“He has told us of this, and has offered to do it. We are of the opinion
that it would be a grave mistake.”
“It has been three weeks since the birth of the baby,” I said. “Surely
all danger of fever is past. I will grant you that if it were a question
of telling her deliberately, it might be better to put it off for a
while. I would have been willing to wait for months, but for the fact
that I dreaded something like the present situation. Now that it has
happened, surely it is best to use our opportunity while all of us
are here and can persuade her to take the kindest attitude towards her
husband.”
“Madam!” broke in Dr. Gibson. (He was having difficulty in controlling
his excitement.) “You are asking us to overstep the bounds of our
professional duty. It is not for the physician to decide upon the
attitude a wife should take toward her husband.”
“Dr. Gibson,” I replied, “that is what you propose to do, only you wish
to conceal the fact. You would force Mrs. van Tuiver to accept your
opinion of what a wife’s duty is.”
Dr. Perrin took command once more. “Our patient has asked for you, and
she looks to you for guidance. You must put aside your own convictions
and think of her health. You are the only person who can calm her, and
surely it is your duty to do so!”
“I know that I might go in and lie again to my friend, but she knows
too much to be deceived for very long. You know what a mind she has--a
lawyer’s mind! How can I persuade her that the nurses--why, I do not
even know what she heard the nurses say!”
“We have that all written down for you,” put in Dr. Perrin, quickly.
“You have their recollection of it, no doubt--but suppose they have
forgotten some of it? Sylvia has not forgotten, you may be sure--every
word is burned with fire into her brain. She has put with this
everything she ever heard on the subject--the experience of her
friend, Harriet Atkinson-all that I’ve told her in the past about such
things----”
“Ah!” growled Dr. Gibson. “That’s it! If you had not meddled in the
beginning----”
“Now, now!” said the other, soothingly. “You ask me to relieve you of
the embarrassment of this matter. I quite agree with Mrs. Abbott that
there is too much ignorance about these things, but she must recognise,
I am sure, that this is not the proper moment for enlightening Mrs. van
Tuiver.”
“I do not recognise it at all,” I said. “If her husband will go to her
and tell her humbly and truthfully----”
“You are talking madness!” cried the old man, breaking loose again. “She
would be hysterical--she would regard him as something loathsome--some
kind of criminal----”
“Of course she would be shocked,” I said, “but she has the coolest head
of anyone I know--I do not think of any man I would trust so fully
to take a rational attitude in the end. We can explain to her what
extenuating circumstances there are, and she will have to recognise
them. She will see that we are considering her rights----”
“Her _rights!_” The old man fairly snorted the words.
“Now, now, Dr. Gibson!” interposed the other. “You asked me----”
“I know! I know! But as the older of the physicians in charge of this
case----”
Dr. Perrin managed to frown him down, and went on trying to placate
me. But through the argument I could hear the old man muttering in
his collar a kind of double bass _pizzicato_: “Suffragettes! Fanatics!
Hysteria! Woman’s Rights!”
27. The breeze was feeble, and the sun was blazing hot, but nevertheless
I made myself listen patiently for a while. They had said it all to
me, over and over again; but it seemed that Dr. Perrin could not be
satisfied until it had been said in Douglas van Tuiver’s presence.
“Dr. Perrin,” I exclaimed, “even supposing we make the attempt to
deceive her, we have not one plausible statement to make----”
“You are mistaken, Mrs. Abbott,” said he. “We have the perfectly
well-known fact that this disease is often contracted in ways which
involve no moral blame. And in this case I believe I am in position to
state how the accident happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know whether you heard that just before Mrs. van Tuiver’s
confinement, I was called away to one of the other keys to attend a
negro-woman. And since this calamity has befallen us, I have realized
that I was possibly not as careful in sterilizing my instruments as I
might have been. It is of course a dreadful thing for any physician to
have to believe----”
He stopped, and there was a long silence. I gazed from one to another of
the men. Two of them met my gaze; one did not. “He is going to let you
say that?” I whispered, at last.
“Honour and fairness compel me to say it, Mrs. Abbott. I believe----”
But I interrupted him. “Listen to me, Dr. Perrin. You are a chivalrous
gentleman, and you think you are helping a man in desperate need. But
I say that anyone who would permit you to tell such a tale is a
contemptible coward!”
“Madam,” cried Dr. Gibson, furiously, “there is a limit even to a
woman’s rights!”
A silence followed. At last I resumed, in a low voice, “You gentlemen
have your code: you protect the husband--you protect him at all hazards.
I could understand this, if he were innocent of the offence in question;
I could understand it if there were any possibility of his being
innocent. But how can you protect him, when you know that he is guilty?”
“There can be no question of such knowledge!” cried the old doctor.
“I have no idea,” I said, “how much he has admitted to you; but let me
remind you of one circumstance, which is known to Dr. Perrin--that I
came to this place with the definite information that symptoms of the
disease were to be anticipated. Dr. Perrin knows that I told that to Dr.
Overton in New York. Has he informed you of it?”
There was an awkward interval. I glanced at van Tuiver, and I saw that
he was leaning forward, staring at me. I thought he was about to speak,
when Dr. Gibson broke in, excitedly, “All this is beside the mark! We
have a serious emergency to face, and we are not getting anywhere. As
the older of the physicians in charge of this case----”
And he went on to give me a lecture on the subject of authority. He
talked for five minutes, ten minutes--I lost all track of the time. I
had suddenly begun to picture how I would act and what I would say when
I went into Sylvia’s room. What a state must Sylvia be in, while we sat
out here in the blazing mid-day sun, discussing her right to freedom and
knowledge!
28. “I have always been positive,” Dr. Gibson was saying, “but the
present discussion has made me more positive than ever. As the older of
the physicians in charge of this case, I say most emphatically that the
patient shall not be told!”
I could not stand him any longer. “I am going to tell the patient,” I
said.
“You shall _not_ tell her!”
“But how will you prevent me?”
“You shall not _see_ her!”
“But she is determined to see _me!_”
“She will be told that you are not there.”
“And how long do you imagine that that will satisfy her?”
There was a pause. They looked at van Tuiver, expecting him to speak.
And so I heard once more his cold, deliberate voice. “We have done
all we can. There can no longer be any question as to the course to be
taken. Mrs. Abbott will not return to my home.”
“What?” I cried. I stared at him, aghast. “What do you mean?”
“I mean what I say--that you will not be taken back to the island.”
“But where will I be taken?”
“You will be taken to the mainland.”
I stared at the others. No one gave a sign. At last I whispered, “You
would _dare?_”
“You leave us no other alternative,” replied the master.
“You--you will practically kidnap me!” My voice must have been rather
wild at that moment.
“You left my home of your own free will. I think I need hardly point out
to you that I am not compelled to invite you back to it.”
“And what will Sylvia----” I stopped; appalled at the vista the words
opened up.
“My wife,” said van Tuiver, “will ultimately choose between her husband
and her most remarkable acquaintance.”
“And you gentlemen?” I turned to the others. “You would give your
sanction to this outrageous action?”
“As the older of the physicians in charge of this case----” began Dr.
Gibson.
I turned to van Tuiver again. “When your wife finds out what you have
done to me--what will you answer?”
“We will deal with that situation when we come to it.”
“Of course,” I said, “you understand that sooner or later I shall get
word to her!”
He answered, “We shall assume from now on that you are a mad woman, and
shall take our precautions accordingly.”
Again there was a silence.
“The launch will return to the mainland,” said van Tuiver at last. “It
will remain there until Mrs. Abbott sees fit to go ashore. May I ask if
she has sufficient money in her purse to take her to New York?”
I could not help laughing. The thing was so wild--and yet I could see
that from their point of view it was the only thing to do. “Mrs. Abbott
is not certain that she is going back to New York,” I replied. “If she
does go, it will not be with Mr. van Tuiver’s money.”
“One thing more,” said Dr. Perrin. It was the first time he had spoken
since van Tuiver’s incredible announcement. “I trust, Mrs. Abbott, that
this unfortunate situation may at all costs be concealed from servants,
and from the world in general.”
From which I realized how badly I had them frightened. They actually saw
me making physical resistance!
“Dr. Perrin,” I replied, “I am acting in this matter for my friend.
I will add this: that I believe that you are letting yourself be
overborne, and that you will regret it some day.”
He made no answer. Douglas van Tuiver put an end to the discussion by
rising and signalling the other launch. When it had come alongside, he
said to the captain, “Mrs. Abbott is going back to the railroad. You
will take her at once.”
Then he waited; I was malicious enough to give him an anxious moment
before I rose. Dr. Perrin offered me his hand; and Dr. Gibson said, with
a smile, “Good-bye, Mrs. Abbott. I’m sorry you can’t stay with us any
longer.”
I think it was something to my credit that I was able to play out the
game before the boatmen. “I am sorry, too,” I countered. “I am hoping I
shall be able to return.”
And then came the real ordeal. “Good-bye, Mrs. Abbott,” said Douglas van
Tuiver, with his stateliest bow; and I managed to answer him!
As I took my seat, he beckoned his secretary. There was a whispered
consultation for a minute or two, and then the master returned to the
smaller launch with the doctors. He gave the word, and the two vessels
set out--one to the key, and the other to the railroad. The secretary
went in the one with me!
29. And here ends a certain stage of my story. I have described Sylvia
as I met her and judged her; and if there be any reader who has been
irked by this method, who thinks of me as a crude and pushing person,
disposed to meddle in the affairs of others, here is where that reader
will have his satisfaction and revenge. For if ever a troublesome puppet
was jerked suddenly off the stage--if ever a long-winded orator was
effectively snuffed out--I was that puppet and that orator. I stop and
think--shall I describe how I paced up and down the pier, respectfully
but emphatically watched by the secretary? And all the melodramatic
plots I conceived, the muffled oars and the midnight visits to my
Sylvia? My sense of humour forbids it. For a while now I shall take
the hint and stay in the background of this story. I shall tell the
experiences of Sylvia as Sylvia herself told them to me long afterwards;
saying no more about my own fate--save that I swallowed my humiliation
and took the next train to New York, a far sadder and wiser
social-reformer!