Schuyler kissed them and bade them return to the nursery.
"How long can I keep it from them?" he asked bitterly. "What an atmosphere for children--my children!--to grow up in!"
"If you would do as I wish, and send her where she belongs--"
"I shall not. She is my wife. Moreover, concealment would then be impossible."
They had reached the third floor. He inserted a key in a door, hesitated a moment, then said abruptly: "I saw in a paper that _she_ had returned.
Can it be possible?"
"I saw her on the Avenue a few moments ago."
Was it the doctor"s imagination, or did the goaded man at his side flash him a glance of appeal?
They entered a room whose doors and windows were m.u.f.fled. The furniture was solid, too solid to be moved except by muscular arms. There were no mirrors nor breakable articles of any sort.
On the bed lay a woman with ragged hair and sunken yellow face, but even in her ruin indefinably elegant. Her parted lips were black and blistered within; her shapely skinny hands clutched the quilt with the tenacious suggestion of the eagle--that long-lived defiant bird. At the bedside sat a vigorous woman, the pallor of fatigue on her face.
The creature on the bed opened her eyes. They had once been what are vaguely known as fine eyes; now they looked like blots of ink on parchment.
"Give me a drink," she said feverishly. "Water! water! water!" She panted, and her tongue protruded slightly. Her husband turned away, his shoulders twitching. The nurse held a silver goblet to the woman"s lips.
She drank greedily, then scowled up at the doctor.
"You missed it," she said. "I should be glad, for I hate you, only you give me more relief than they. They are afraid. They tried to fool me, the idiots! But they didn"t try it twice. I bit."
She laughed and threw her arms above her head. The loose sleeves of her gown fell back and disclosed arms speckled as if from an explosion of gunpowder.
"Just an ordinary morphine fiend," thought the doctor. "And she is the wife of John Schuyler!"
An hour after dinner he told the husband and nurse to go to bed. For a while he read, the woman sleeping profoundly. The house was absolutely still, or seemed to be. Had pandemonium reigned he could hardly have heard an echo of it from this isolated room. The window was open, but looked upon roofs and back yards; no sound of carriage wheels rose to break the quiet. Despite the stillness, the doctor had to strain his ear to catch the irregular breathing of the sick woman. He had a singular feeling, although the most unimaginative of men, that this third floor, containing only himself and the woman, had been sliced from the rest of the house and hung suspended in s.p.a.ce, independent of natural laws. It was after the book had ceased to interest him that the idea shaped itself, born of another, as yet unacknowledged, skulking in the recesses of his brain. At length he laid aside the book, and going to the bed, looked down upon the woman, coldly, reflectively--exactly as he had often watched the quivering of an animal--dissected alive in the cause of science.
Studying this man"s face, it was impossible to imagine it agitated by any pa.s.sion except thirst for knowledge. The skin was as white as marble; the profile was straight and mathematical, the mouth a straight line, the chin as square as that of a chiselled Fate. The jaw was prominent, powerful, relentless. The eyes were deeply set and gray as polished steel. The large brow was luminous, very full--an index to the terrible intellect of the man.
As he looked down on the woman his thin nostrils twitched once and his lips compressed more firmly. Then he smiled. It was an odd, almost demoniacal smile.
"A physician," he said, half aloud, "has almost as much power as G.o.d.
The idea strikes me that we are the personification of that useful symbol."
He plunged his hands into his pockets, and walked up and down the long thickly carpeted room.
"These are the facts in the case," he continued. "The one man I love and unequivocally respect is tied, hand and foot, to that uns.e.xed dehumanized morphine receptacle on the bed. She is hopeless. Every known specific has failed, _must_ fail, for she loves the vice. He has one of the best brains of this day prolific in brains; a distressing capacity for affection, human to the core. At the age of forty-two, in the maturity of his mental powers, he carries with him a constant sickening sense of humiliation; a proud man, he lives in daily fear of exposure and shame. At the age of forty-two, in the maturity of his manhood, he meets the woman who conquers his heart, his imagination, who compels his faith by making other women abhorrent to him, who allures and maddens with the certainty of her power to make good his ideal of her. He cannot marry her; that animal on the bed is capable of living for twenty years.
"So much for him. A girl of twenty-eight, whose wealth and brain and beauty, and that other something that has not yet been a.n.a.lyzed and labelled, have made her a social star; who has come to wonder, then to resent, then to yawn at the general vanity of life, is suddenly swept out of her calm orbit by a man"s pa.s.sion; and, with the swiftness of decision natural to her, goes to Europe. She returns in less than three months. For these two people there is but one sequel. The second chapter will be written the first time they are alone. Then they will go to Europe. What will be the rest of the book?
"First, there will be an ugly and reverberating scandal. In the course of a year or two she will compel him to return in the interest of his career. She will not be able to remain; so proud a woman could not stand the position. Again he will go with her. In a word, my friend"s career will be ruined. So many novelists and reporters have written the remaining chapters of this sort of story that it is hardly worth while for me to go any further.
"So much for them. Let us consider the other victims--the children. A morphine-mother in an asylum, a father in a strange land with a woman who is not his wife, the world cognizant of all the facts of the case.
They grow up at odds with society. Result, they are morbid, warped, unnormal. In trite old English, their lives are ruined, as are all lives that have not had a fair chance."
He returned abruptly to the bedside. He laid his finger on the woman"s pulse.
"No morphine to-night and she dies. A worthless wretch is sent where she belongs. Four people are saved."
His breast swelled. His gray eyes seemed literally to send forth smoke; they suggested some noiseless deadly weapon of war. He exclaimed aloud: "My G.o.d! what a power to lie in the hands of one man! I stand here the arbiter of five destinies. It is for _me_ to say whether four people shall be happy or wretched, saved or ruined. I might say, with Nero, "I am G.o.d!"" He laughed. "I am famed for my power to save where others have failed. I am famed in the comic weeklies for having ruined the business of more undertakers than any physician of my day. That has been my role, my professional pride. I have never felt so proud as now."
The woman, who had been moving restlessly for some time, twitched suddenly and uncontrollably. She opened her eyes.
"Give it to me--quick!" she demanded. Her voice, always querulous, was raucous; her eyes were wild.
"No," he said, deliberately, "you will have no more morphine; not a drop."
She stared at him incredulously, then laughed.
"Stop joking," she said, roughly. "Give it to me--quick--quick! I am very weak."
"No," he said.
Then, as he continued to hold her eyes, her own gradually expanded with terror. She raised herself on one arm.
"You mean that?" she asked.
"Yes."
He watched her critically. She would be interesting.
"You are going to cure me with drastic measures, since others have failed?"
"Possibly."
Her face contracted with hatred. She had been a rather clever woman, and she believed that he was going to experiment with her. But she had also been a strong-willed woman and used to command since babyhood.
"Give me that morphine," she said, imperiously. "If you don"t I"ll be dead before morning."
He stood imperturbable. She sprang from the bed and flung herself upon him, strong with anger and apprehension.
"Give it to me!" she screamed. "Give it to me!" And she strove to bite him.
He caught her by the shoulder and held her at arm"s-length. She writhed and struggled and cursed. Her oaths might have been learned in the gutter. She kicked at him and strove to reach him with her nails, clawing the air. She looked like a witch on a broomstick.
"What an exquisite bride she was!" he thought. "And what columns of rubbish have been printed about her and her entertainments!"
The woman was shrieking and struggling.
"Give it to me! You brute! You fiend! I always hated you! Give it to me!
I am dying! I am dying! Help! Help!" But the walls were padded, and she knew it.
He permitted her to fling herself upon him, easily brushing aside her jumping fingers and snapping teeth. He knew that her agony was frightful. Her body was a net-work of hungry nerves. The diseased pulp of her brain had ejected every thought but one. She squirmed like an old autumn leaf about to fall. Her ugly face became tragic. The words shot from her dry contracted throat: "Give me the morphine! Give me the morphine!"