"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 a.s.sure 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 a.s.sure 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 eyeb.a.l.l.s 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 n.o.ble 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 circ.u.mstances 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 G.o.d 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-gla.s.s?"
"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!