Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Then he took him to a children’s hospital, and exhibited the effects of the father’s indulgence upon the third and fourth generation. Jim was an affectionate fellow, always fond of little ones, and this reached far and deep. He had seen only healthy babies before; these were a revelation to him.

  “You see, Jim,” said the doctor, “there are several sides to it. I’m not preaching morality to you; that’s not my line of work. But I can set forth the facts for you to look at. On one side you have a plain, hard fight with yourself. What of that? What’s your strength for? No man that is a man is afraid of a fight. Then, by and by, a wife, a home, children of your own. On the other side, you have — this.”

  The boy walked by his side, silent, shaken through and through with the heavy, drastic dose of naked facts. His young heart was sore with sympathy for those helpless, unwilling girl victims — sick with horror at the wrecks of manhood he had seen, and there were tears in his eyes from the thought of those patient babies, crippled and poisoned by their own fathers.

  “These young fellows want to know life,” said Dr. Newcome, after a little. “I wish they did. Better stay out, Jim; the water’s not so fine, eh?”

  And Jim stayed out.

  Not only so, but he astonished his brother by asking a loan to take him to Kansas. “I’m going to work in the harvest,” he said. “I’ll finish college when I can afford it.”

  Little Elma was not long a problem. Dr. Newcome spoke, not to her, but to the grocer, and the grocer’s young man, unexpectedly advanced in business, forthwith immured her in a small flat, and by means of the most flattering jealousy and much marital authority, kept her in safety till her charms were somewhat dimmed by continuous motherhood — thus adding quite unnecessarily to the doctor’s list of grateful, but unpaying patients.

  He worked steadily on, through the hot, monotonous days, and then, toward the end of office hours one morning a visitor surprised him, a young girl in cool, beruffled white. She rose as he stood in the doorway and came toward him.

  “I’m not next, I know, Dr. Newcome, but I just want to say a word. Mama is coming later, and I thought I’d meet her here. You don’t mind?”

  “You’re very welcome, Miss Briggs; just sit there by the table. What will you have to read?”

  “Oh, anything will do; I don’t mind waiting. Don’t let me disturb you.”

  Miss Daisy’s voice was not loud, but clear and high, and Dr. Newcome smiled to himself in his office as he heard a step on the stair and the voice of Gerald Battlesmith in the waiting room.

  The last patient had gone, but the doctor still sat quietly in his desk chair. Finally Gerald brought Miss Briggs to the door. “I’m so sorry, but I have an engagement at twelve-thirty, to arrange for some more tutoring. I know you’ll be glad to entertain Miss Briggs until her mother comes. So good of you to look in on us, Cousin Daisy!”

  Miss Daisy came in rosily fanning herself.

  “It is hot down here, after the mountains. I’m telling Cousin Gerald he ought to get out of town. Mother would have asked him to the camp, I’m sure, but we’re expecting Miss Yale, you know, and her last surprising protegee. We shall be pretty full. But Gerald — there’s the Barlow House. It’s very pleasant there.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said her cousin again. “I’d like to, you know how I’d like to! But I’ve got this tutoring to do, and I can hardly leave this summer.”

  He took himself off, with evident difficulty, and left his fair cousin leaning gracefully back in another chair the doctor had drawn out for her. She had started for the one beside his desk, but he said, “No, don’t sit there; that’s for the patients. You don’t look in the least like a patient, Miss Daisy.”

  “I don’t know about that,” she said guardedly, pushing the point of her white parasol against the tip of her white shoe. “I’ve often thought I’d like a little — serious advice.”

  “Now’s your time,” he answered cheerfully, “and here’s the place. You shall have any amount of advice, professional and friendly.”

  She did not seem in any haste to seek it, however, but applied the parasol tip to various lines in the rug beside her. “What seems to be the trouble?” he asked gently. “Is it physiological or psychological?”

  “I guess it’s both,” she admitted. “Doctor, I don’t suppose there’s anything really the matter, but there are times when I can’t sleep, and I don’t eat, and nothing interests me. I get so depressed! I feel sometimes as if there was nothing to live for — as though I’d better be dead.”

  She lifted a perplexed, pathetic face to him.

  “Will you pardon an older man, and a professional man, if he asks two direct questions?”

  “You may ask anything you like, Doctor; I don’t mind. I’m twenty-eight, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “That much I did know, Miss Daisy. My terrible questions are these: First, why do you not marry? Second, why do you not go to work?”

  Her chin was on her hand now, her eyes on the neat white shoes. “There are too many girls in Massachusetts for all of us to marry,” she answered, with truth, if not with frankness. “As for working, I have tried, but Mother was always against it, and Father, too. They have only me, you see. They say a girl’s place is at home.”

  He nodded, understandingly.

  “Of course, they were willing I should study,” she went on. “I went to Radcliffe, you know, and did some postgraduate work, and I tried a year in the art school, but I’m not artistic in the least bit.”

  “You like music better?”

  “Oh, much better,” she said eagerly. “I’ve worked hard on my music. They do say I’m an excellent accompanist.”

  Dr. Newcome smiled again. It occurred to him that Gerald, spending long, lonely evenings with his violin, often expressed a wish for an accompanist. “I don’t see any signs of serious disturbance,” he said, “and what you tell me does not indicate any need of treatment at present. But I would most earnestly advise you to take up some kind of work and stick to it. A full-grown woman with fifteen waking hours to fill has to do something to earn her sleep.”

  The bell rang again and Mrs. Leicester-Briggs entered, somewhat flushed. “What weather!” she panted. “Good morning, Doctor! I do not see how you stand it here in the summer. Daisy and I only came down on some errands and we are nearly dead. How long have you been waiting, Daisy?”

  “Sit here,” he said. “There’s a little air. Have a palm leaf. And now that you’ve come so far, I want you to stay and take a boardinghouse lunch with me.”

  “I’m afraid we can’t this morning, Dr. Newcome. You’re very kind.”

  “I’m sorry your cousin is not here to add his invitation to mine. He was called away this morning on some business, but do stay and keep me company. You have only a hotel to go back to, you know.”

  “Thank you, perhaps we will. I’m sure I’m glad to rest after shopping. But first I must tell you my errand. You’re not busy at this moment?”

  She looked around, as if suspecting patients concealed beneath the furniture.

  “Not at all,” said he. “It is after office hours and before lunch hour, and as it happened I had no pressing visits to make this morning.”

  “That’s good. Now, let me begin at the beginning and tell you all about it. You remember Mary Yale?”

  “I remember her with pleasure.”

  “You know how queer she is — always adopting people.”

  “I’ve heard that she is a — sort of international benefactor.”

  “Oh, yes, benefactor, of course. But she has no settled home of her own, except her flat here in Boston, which she’s hardly ever in. And I assure you these proteges of hers are sometimes a great care to her friends. You remember that little German boy, Daisy, that she left with us one summer?”

  “Yes, Mama; he was a nice boy.”

  “Oh, he was a nice boy enough, but he came down with scarlet fever, Dr. Newcome, right in the middle of the summer, and th
ere we were, way up in the Adirondacks, and couldn’t move him. We had to get a trained nurse, and cancel all our invitations. It was simply dreadful! Well, now we’ve got another one.”

  “Another little German boy?”

  “No, it’s a girl — German, or French, or Italian, I don’t know. She talks all three. Mary picked her up in Switzerland.”

  “She’s a perfectly lovely child, Dr. Newcome,” put in Daisy. “Bright as she can be. I thought you knew about her.”

  “Oh, the child is nice enough,” continued her mother, “a little black-haired thing, very pretty manners, but, Doctor, I’ve had a telegram this very morning and that child is sick.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear it. Not another case to quarantine, I hope. Shall I get you a nurse?”

  “Thank you very much. I thought you’d get me a good nurse, if it’s necessary. But I haven’t told you all about it yet. She sent the child over in the spring, with the Hallocks; sent her to me, and begged me to keep her this summer, so that she would be well and strong to go to school in the fall. Said she wanted her to go to American schools — I’m sure I can’t imagine why. Mary, herself, is not in America half her time. She’s fonder of this girl than any child she ever adopted, she says. Writes to me all the time about her, and now the worst of it is I’m expecting Mary herself in about a fortnight, with that young female prodigy of hers, and I can’t have the child sick. Mary’d never forgive me.”

  “That is awkward,” Dr. Newcome admitted. “Let us hope she will get well at once. You have a good practitioner up there?”

  “That’s just it,” protested Mrs. Briggs. “We haven’t. We haven’t anybody. Old Dr. Jones in the village is dead, and there’s nothing nearer than the Inn, twenty miles, over the mountains. Now, this is what I’ve come for. And I won’t take no for an answer. You’ve got to come back with us and cure that child.”

  “Oh, how perfectly delightful!” cried her daughter. “You will come, won’t you?”

  Dr. Newcome hesitated. He had made other plans for August. This was a totally unlooked-for and sudden change.

  Mrs. Leicester-Briggs saw him waver and pursued the attack. “We shall enjoy having you so much, for your own sake. It is a long time since we summered together. I’m sure you’ll like the country up there. There’s fishing, you know.”

  “Splendid fishing,” urged Daisy.

  “Miss Yale will be there later; she’s always an attraction. And this last pickup of hers, who really seems to be a credit to her — you won’t mind her, I’m sure. Or are you sensitive about women doctors?”

  “Not in the least,” he assured her. “You are really most kind, Mrs. Briggs.”

  “It will quite spoil our summer if you don’t come, Doctor. You’re so wonderful with children, Dolly will get well at once. And then I can face Mary Yale. You simply have to do it, you see. Just make your arrangements and take the night train with us.”

  “It is absolutely impossible,” said Dr. Newcome. “But I’ll do it, with pleasure. Thank you very much.”

  6. Coming Home

  Up and down the windy decks she walked and walked — swiftly, steadily, by herself; sometimes more slowly, an older woman on her arm; seldom with any of the officers, or passengers, who so obviously stood about at strategic points, seeking that privilege.

  She stood long by the rail, too, watching the white welter sliding by along the tall dark sides of the vessel, the wide heaving stretch of blue water, green water, gold water where the low sun blazed across it before them, silver water where the large moon made a palely tempting pathway behind them.

  Now that her ten years of exile were over — the years of education, the years of study, research and practice, the years of tender joy and pride, of ceaseless heartache and remorse that motherhood had meant to her — Margaret Yale was coming home. As the long wet miles flashed by, as each day’s record showed the distance shortening, her emotion grew more intense. In some strange way she felt as if she was coming back, not only to America, but to her own buried girlhood, to somehow face that shamed and terror-stricken child, Mag Wentworth.

  In all these years little had ever been said about her past. Miss Yale told her when she heard that Miss Joelba Bingham had died of pneumonia one unusually severe winter; and had also occasionally referred to the days behind as being gone forever; but in general she had wisely trusted to the healthful oblivion of youth and time. With no one else could the girl ever speak of home.

  She herself had early recognized the plain duty of forgetting; had steadily fixed her eyes on the future and refused to spend one thought upon the past — when she could help it. She had built wide and deep. The world of knowledge which had opened to her, the world of experience, the world of action, all these had helped to form a strong base of character, the new character of Margaret Yale.

  But through it all ran like a crimson wound her throbbing motherhood, that open way, which she could never even wish to close, yet down which came at any time, straight into her defenseless heart, pain, loneliness and shame. As she longed for her child, and strove with all her strength to work for that child’s future, she must needs remember that her baby’s orphanhood was its mother’s fault.

  Blaming the selfish, thoughtless father was no ease to her conscience. The more she learned and lived the more she felt that no excuse could relieve the mother of responsibility. And yet, from the hard-won heights of her knowledge and experience, she must have some pity for that ignorant girl-mother, herself an unprotected child.

  “If I had known!” she would groan to herself, in bitter, sleepless hours. “Girls ought to know! If I had only known!”

  But her health was too good, her courage too high, her days too richly full of work and study, for those hard hours to come often. Four things she had built up in those ten years: a vigorous body, graceful, strong, alert, skillful in many ways; a fine mind, clear, well-ordered, stocked with knowledge, trained in high uses; a character whose strength was tempered to softness by that hidden pain, whose pride was always kept in check by memory; and beyond these, a reputation which was wider than the girl knew.

  Mary Yale loved her as she had once hoped to love children of her own, with a deep congenial friendship which would have drawn them together if there had been no other tie, with frank admiration for her rich vigor, her all-around capableness, her genuine achievements in her profession, her vivid beauty; and besides all this she loved her with fond pride as a successful experiment. Few mothers personally enjoy the society of their daughters as this world-mother enjoyed her favorite child’s companionship.

  “Do come and sit down, Marguerite,” she urged her. “You’ll tire yourself out before you get there. You can’t go any faster than the ship!”

  “All right, Mother-friend. I’ll come and sit by you for a solid hour.” The tall girl pulled her steamer chair into closer alignment, arranged her Kenwood rug and buttoned herself in, turning a serene rosy face toward her companion.

  “It is good to look at you, child,” said the older woman. “You are ‘a sight for sair een.’”

  “It’s lucky for my modesty that I’ve had to do my work mostly away from you,” the girl replied. “You would have spoiled me over and over, just like any other mother!”

  Miss Yale reached out a hand and found Marguerite’s.

  “You blessed child! I wonder if you realize at all — in the faintest degree — what you are to me!”

  “Can’t possibly, because my limited mind is too wholly occupied with what you are to me, Mother dear.”

  They were silent for a bit, hands clasped under the rug, watching the tossing splashes of wind-whipped spray that spattered the deck before them. Hovering persons, both men and women, looked at Margaret as they passed as if more than willing to stop if invited; and one man, emboldened by previous acquaintance with Miss Yale, did stop to speak with them for a little.

  “She’s the hardest girl to get on with I ever saw,” he confided, later, to an older man in the smokin
g room.

  “I don’t find her so,” his friend replied. “I’ve talked with her quite a bit. She seemed to me one of the easiest to get on with.”

  “That’s just it. She’s too easy — just like a boy! She’s cheerful and good-natured and frank and polite and all that — and you slide off it!”

  His friend laughed. “Perhaps you try to stick too close. I don’t, you see. I always did enjoy coasting.”

  Another traveling acquaintance joined them. “Talking about that young Dr. Yale? Isn’t she a stunner? I’d no idea a woman doctor could — well, not show it, you know.”

  “The ship’s doctor thinks she shows it all right. He was much interested when he saw her name on the list. Says in Germany she’s thought a wonder. She’s a surgeon — actually. He had a lot to say about her.”

  “Jealous, I suppose.”

  “That’s the surprising thing. He admitted that he was, at first, and disapproved of women doctors, and all that — but now they are as friendly as —— —”

  “As any of us, eh? She’s all right!” said the third man, heartily, and they all agreed.

  After he had left them, Miss Yale began, quietly, “You’re feeling all right about going to the Briggses now, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Margaret slowly. “I guess you are right about it. I must meet your friends, of course, and one time is as good as another. And Dolly is there.”

  “Dolly is there. You and she can have a lovely time together for some weeks. You will get well rested before we make our beginning in Boston. Then we’ll find a good house on a good street, and hang out your little porcelain sign, and I shall be so proud!”

  “And you have the next floor for yours, Mother-friend — and Dolly with us. Oh, it’s too good to be true.” The girl gave a long sigh of relief.

  “It won’t be all beer and skittles, child, you know that.”

  “I do, indeed. I have to begin all over again and make a place for myself. I have to work, hard and long. I’m willing.”