“You will please me through and through, child. Go ahead and fence. We’ll beat them at their own game.”
The following years were full of satisfaction for Miss Yale. It was quite true that a large majority of her human investments had been total or partial failures, some worse than failures; but now she felt sufficiently pleased to make up for many losses.
Up in that little Swiss valley was a strong and happy child, here was a vigorous young woman, full of health and promise, already crowned with honors in her studies and developing steadily. What she undertook she mastered, whether it was in her chosen work or in the sports she deliberately selected from year to year, and in addition to her rising affection for the girl, Miss Yale now developed a pride that was almost maternal.
Miss St. Clair’s prophecy that her whilom “Cousin Marguerite” would develop beauty was well fulfilled.
With years of nourishment and exercise the spare young frame had filled and rounded, not only with the softness of womanhood, but with the smooth interplay of strong muscles under a satin skin. There were no freckles, now, but a warm tan in the long, light summers, and the steady glow of health at all times.
Her hair had steadily deepened in color, its raw red turning to a coppery brown, dark in the heavy shadows, fiery gold in the curling lights. It crowned her shapely head like a coiled flame. Her very eyes were darker, or looked darker, beneath their darkening brows and lashes.
Yet the men who were drawn by the light of this vivid beauty were painfully disappointed by its lack of warmth. She turned on them a clear disheartening steady glance, that seemed to understand, but not to feel, and the red mouth had a hardness of determination wholly incongruous with her years.
“It is the cruel study!” they said. “It unsexes a woman! How terrible — that a beautiful young creature like that should be so cold!”
She had lovers of various nationalities, of various age and station, some most passionately sincere, but to none was given any ground for hope.
“I have my profession to live for,” she said, if any insisted on forcing the question.
They cursed the profession, the unnatural unfeminine profession which stood between her and “love.” They did not know what set her whole nature in such a stern revulsion against their advances, that between them stood the grave of love itself, love premature, ill-born, most cruelly killed and shamed; neither did they know that the heart they sought to win for themselves was already wholly given — to a little child.
5. In a Doctor’s Office
The first floor of a city boardinghouse ever seeks to adorn itself with a doctor’s eminently respectable small sign. The house of Mrs. Murray, conveniently placed not far from Boston’s beloved Trinity Square, had attained its desire in this respect, and was otherwise comfortably filled. Nevertheless, she continuously trembled on the verge of disaster, and confided her fears to her boarders for lack of other family, notably to her “star boarder” on the first floor.
He had three rooms: a bedroom in the back, whose high windows opened upon a naked little balcony and a view of the usual civic flora, fauna and rearward architecture; the middle chamber, of an unavoidable dimness, yet antiseptically clean and smelling like it, used as a waiting room; and in front, the office.
Early one hot morning in mid-July there sat in this front room, in a high-backed wooden office chair — a chair that swung almost automatically toward the one placed beside the desk for patients, or tipped back with a resigned squeak when the occupant was thinking — a tall, lean, dark-skinned man, reading Le Journal de Médecine. The strong, tanned face wore an expression of quiet pleasure as he slowly reread the columns devoted to incidents of recent progress, and the clear, deep-set, iron-gray eyes smiled as well as the mouth. The broad desk was piled high with current literature of his profession, and the book-lined walls resembled those of a library of a medical college. One case, however, was filled with volumes attractive to the lay mind, if it was a well-trained one. In the waiting room was a more miscellaneous array, warranted to please visitors of any age, class, sex, or nationality, with a large proportion of alluring children’s books among them.
The doctor laid down the paper he was reading, glanced at his watch, opened a drawer and took out a number of similar papers carefully marked with red ink, covering a period of several years. He arranged them in sequence, and read the marked places evidently not for the first time. As evidently he enjoyed what he read, taking up one paper after another, sometimes going back to one he had laid down. He put them all together again and carefully returned them to the drawer, sitting back in his chair for a while, with gray eyes looking far away, and tilting slowly back and forth, regardless of the squeak.
He rose presently and paced thoughtfully up and down the room, glanced at the various diplomas which set forth so solemnly how Henry T. Newcome was entitled to the degree of Doctor of Medicine, and to other impressive initials following his name, and stood for a long time before two photographs upon the mantel. One was of an elderly woman, whose grave, kind eyes and square brow were very like his own; the other, younger, prettier, in a bride’s veil.
Dr. Newcome’s practice was large, his income tolerable, though much reduced by the great proportion of patients who paid him only in polyglot blessings, and his position well established. Among the younger men of Boston he stood highest in his chosen field of pediatrics; some placed him above old Dr. Goldhill, of national fame; but that sweet-faced mother, only last year dead, and that little sister, only this year married, had kept him poor. Neither of them had ever imagined it. If they criticized his locality, he told them a doctor could not afford to change — his patients knew where to find him. If they pitied him for living in a boardinghouse, he praised the handiwork of Mrs. Murray’s last cook, and extolled the tender mercies of that good woman herself.
“Why don’t you marry, dear?” his mother had urged. “I should be so much happier about you — when I go.”
“Don’t go till I do, then, Mother dear,” he would reply, and promise that he would marry as soon as he found a woman his mother would think good enough.
She had gone, unexpectedly soon. Alice was in good hands now — and Dr. Newcome turned with a little sigh and sought the basement dining room.
He was, as usual, the earliest down, and as usual, Mrs. Murray was on hand, partly to wait on him and more especially to confide to him her various perplexities and troubles.
Mrs. Murray was one of those women who cause one to speculate on the ruthlessness of fate. One feels at first as if the inefficiency, the heavy, ill-borne load of responsibility of these struggling women who cannot keep house successfully as a business, was a well-chosen penalty meted out to them for previous inefficiency as private housekeepers when they did not have to pay the bills. Continued observation shakes this theory. It can hardly be that all these good ladies, so numerous, so industrious, so pathetic in their visible and audible incapacity, are thus singled out for punishment. They seem in no way to differ from other ladies of their age and station less unfortunate. Then rises the horrid thought— “Suppose these are merely average women, robbed of ‘the shelter of a home’ and forced to expose their housekeeping abilities to the glaring light of business competition!”
Then do their abilities seem as disabilities. Then does it appear that the ripe wisdom Miss Ida Tarbell supposes to accrue from the mere practice of “keeping house” fails to manifest itself, when put to the test of keeping a boardinghouse. They have difficulties with their servants, difficulties with their bills, difficulties with their boarders, and no one “higher up” on whom to unload these difficulties.
Wherefore the pathetic failure of many of these necessary institutions, and the uncomfortable atmosphere of many more that continue to totter on. Mrs. Murray’s establishment had been tottering during the six years Dr. Newcome had occupied its first floor, and that it still pursued its unsteady way was largely due to his presence there, not only to his cheerful encouragement and wise ad
vice, but partly to his custom of paying board in advance, which made him regard her business as almost in the nature of an investment.
“Doctor,” she said in an anxious whisper, “may I speak with you about something important?” and she advanced a plate of hot corn-bread with two well-browned corner pieces as a species of preliminary tribute.
“Certainly, Mrs. Murray — go ahead.”
“It’s about Elma,” she said, sinking her voice. “You know you wanted me to keep her — to sort of look out for her — but I’m afraid I can’t.”
Elma at this moment came in with the doctor’s eggs, and hovered about for a moment, seeking to do something more for him.
“You needn’t wait, Elma,” said Mrs. Murray, and she departed with an adoring look at the tall man.
“She’s going on with that young Battlesmith, I’m afraid,” pursued her employer. “Not Mr. Gerald, of course — but his brother. I know he’s only a boy — but I can’t have it, you know, in my house. I’ll have to send her off — let me give you some hot coffee.”
Dr. Newcome stirred and sipped it. He had cream in his coffee, whatever the pitcher held for later comers.
“Now, honestly, Mrs. Murray, as between man and man,” he smiled at her in a way she always found completely disarming, “which of these two young people does the going on? I ought to know that before I can advise.”
“Well, of course, he’s the active party, so to speak — but I can’t turn him out, you know.”
The doctor sighed. “No, of course you can’t. I appreciate your position, Mrs. Murray. That child is too pretty and too light-headed to be safe anywhere. But if you turn her off, she’ll find the same luck wherever she goes. I hoped, with your wide experience and good judgment” — Harry Newcome’s years of “jollying” his patients had, it is to be feared, somewhat shaken his instinct for absolute veracity— “that you could shield her till she was safely married. Didn’t you tell me the grocer’s man was decorously attentive?”
“Oh, they’re all attentive enough — I can’t say how decorously — but, Doctor, I must do something!”
“Will you leave it to me another day? I can set Jim Battlesmith straight, I think.”
Jim’s brother entering at this moment, she could do no more than nod mysteriously behind him, and departed to the kitchen.
“Good morning, Doctor,” said the newcomer gloomily, and put sugar on his small plate of blackberries with no great interest. Henry Newcome had known and liked Mr. Battlesmith ever since that summer when they had toiled as comrades bearing picnic baskets up steep hills. Himself a hard worker, winning his own education under difficulties, he had sympathized keenly with the boy’s long struggle through college, and continued to sympathize during the later years, when a teacher’s salary proved all too little to support comfortably the young man in Boston and his small brothers and sisters in Maine. Ten years had left him but one as wholly dependent, a boy of eighteen, bigger, stronger and far more strenuous in disposition than the brother who supported him. Gerald’s quiet face was anxious, his pleasant blue eyes turned to his friend with a worried look.
But other boarders came in and he said nothing till Dr. Newcome rose, when he accompanied him upstairs.
“Can you give me five minutes, Doctor?”
“Certainly, come in — it’s not ‘office hours’ yet. Fire ahead!”
But Mr. Battlesmith did not seem to find it easy. He walked around the office and looked at the pictures and books, coming back to the desk at last with a little shrug.
“It’s Jim,” he said.
The doctor nodded understandingly.
“He’s not sick — that I know of; but Doc — I can’t hold on to him anymore. He ought to be up on the farm, and he will hang on here.
He’s got in with a gay crowd. He likes you, Doctor; he admires you. I wish you’d say a word to him. He’d have respect for what you say. I’ve got him to agree to listen to you, anyhow. He thinks you’d be on his side! Here he is now.”
There was a brisk knock and the boy entered. He was a stalwart young fellow, rather heavily built, with a fresh color and an air of cheerful assurance, perhaps a little forced.
“Good morning, Doctor! I won’t apologize — Jell has dragged me into this. And you can cut it as short as you like — the shorter the better.”
Gerald particularly disliked this nickname, as his brother well knew, but he only said “Thank you, Jim,” and went out.
The boy lounged forward and seated himself in the patient’s chair, in a comfortable position. “Can you give me an anesthetic with the sermon?” he cheerfully inquired, “or put it in capsules?”
Dr. Newcome sat silent, turning his long paper cutter over and over on the green blotter. Then he wheeled his chair sharply toward his visitor.
“Tell me your side, first,” he said.
This was a little discomforting. The boy had expected to be questioned, lectured, advised; had even hoped for a little high-handed, “man-of-the-world” encouragement.
“Why — I haven’t anything to say, particularly,” he said. “It’s all Gerald’s talk. You see, I’m grown up now” — he flushed a little— “and I’ve been — well — just been going with the boys some. And he’s cutting up about it.”
“Only with ‘the boys’?” Dr. Newcome gently inquired.
“Oh, you know what I mean,” said Jim, flushing a little more. “It’s a question of a fellow’s health, you know.”
“Yes, I know it is,” the older man agreed. “You have been reading Esterly and Hendling, and a bit of Greer, haven’t you?”
“How’d you know?” the boy demanded.
“I was in your shoes some seventeen years ago, and I read them. It is easy to believe what agrees with your feelings, isn’t it? I suppose you’ve tried some Nietzsche, too — and enjoy Wells — and Ellen Key?”
Young Battlesmith agreed, evidently impressed with the doctor’s penetration.
“And how do you sum it up? What is your position?” His tone was even, his manner one of scientific inquiry. The young man was encouraged to proceed.
“Why, I think — of course — early marriages would be the ideal thing. With free divorce. But while economic conditions are what they are — why, a fellow has to put up with — has to get along the best he can,” he concluded with less assurance.
“There are new men, good ones, who disagree with the books you’ve had. Have you read any of these?” asked the doctor, showing him a list of authorities of such weight that even this student knew their names. Then he laid before him facts and figures, showed plates, diagrams, statistics; clearly presented the later views of wider-visioned men, who teach that continence and health are quite compatible.
But Jim was at the age when the ego is strongest, both in body and mind, and preferred to believe what seemed to him convincing views on his own side of the case.
“There’s a difference in men!” he burst forth at last. “Of course, there are some that don’t have any trouble.”
The doctor looked at him so steadily that his eyes fell.
“Yes, there is a difference in men — and there is a difference in the same man at different ages. My boy, this is not a question of men, alone, you understand. It is a question of women. And of children, and of the health of the whole population.”
Again he showed the results to the world of what he was so lightly considering as a “natural indulgence,” and again the boy fell back on the irresistible power of what he called the “life force.”
“It’s all very well for Gerald to talk,” he said. “He’s different. He doesn’t know how I feel.”
“I know,” said Dr. Newcome. “I’ve been there.”
The boy looked up at him. He had, as his brother had said, a hearty admiration for the tall, sinewy frame, keen mind, the high reputation of the man before him. He knew him, not only as a physician, but as a winner of cups and breaker of records in more than one line of athletics.
“I was just
such a young fool as we all are,” said the older man quietly, “plus the illimitable knowledge of a medical student. I knew it all, just as you do, son, and more. And went the pace.”
He stood up and braced his broad shoulders.
“I was just a plain fool, Jim. You are just a plain fool. I learned better after the event. You may learn better, beforehand. There is only one small shade of advantage out of all that smear and stain behind me — I can with a better grace advise others. Now, if you wish to qualify as a signpost, at your own expense, at the risk of your own life, reason, health, and those of your wife and children — why, go ahead. If you have the sense I credit you with, quit. Quit beforehand.”
“But old Gerald’s such a granny,” began the boy.
“Now, look here, Jim. That brother of yours is a man. He worked his way through college, which is more than you are doing. He has carried your mother and all you kids for eight years. The least you can do is to run straight till you’re on your own feet, and if you’re the man I think you, you’ll keep on till you’ve cleared your score with him. By that time you’ll get the habit.”
The doctor smiled, that wise and winning smile of his, and held out his hand. “You want to see life, Jim — will you let me show you some? I’d like to take you about for a week or so. Will you come?” This could hardly be refused, and they presently entered upon a course of social pathology together. Grave, silent, or with scant comment, the doctor showed him in sordid repetition the miserable lives of the lower grade of those women he had vaguely figured as creatures of gaiety and charm; told him their numbers, their proportion of disease, their sure and rapid death, their literal imprisonment, and the means used to recruit their decimated ranks. He showed them in the prison, in the hospital, in the morgue.
Elsewhere, he showed him what women must endure who bring forth a child.
He showed him men, too — men with locomotor ataxia, with paresis, idiots, lunatics, all the sequelae of a “life of pleasure.”
Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Page 57
