Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “She’s threatened with pneumonia. We can’t tell how bad she may be.”

  “Why, of course I’ll telegraph. But I don’t think anything serious can be the matter with Mrs. Maynard.”

  “Dr. Mulbridge said that Mr. Maynard ought to know.”

  “Is that so?” asked Libby, in quite a different tone. If she recognized the difference, she was meekly far from resenting it; he, however, must have wished to repair his blunder. “I think you need n’t have given up the case to him. I think you’re too conscientious about it.”

  “Please don’t speak of that now,” she interposed.

  “Well, I won’t,” he consented. “Can I be of any use here to-night?”

  “No, we shall need nothing more. The doctor will be here again in the morning.”

  “Libby did not come in the morning till after the doctor had gone, and then he explained that he had waited to hear in reply to his telegram, so that they might tell Mrs. Maynard her husband had started; and he had only just now heard.

  “And has he started?” Grace asked.

  “I heard from his partner. Maynard was at the ranch. His partner had gone for him.”

  “Then he will soon be here,” she said.

  “He will, if telegraphing can bring him. I sat up half the night with the operator. She was very obliging when she understood the case.”

  “She?” reputed Grace, with a slight frown.

  “The operators are nearly all women in the country.”

  “Oh!” She looked grave. “Can they trust young girls with such important duties?”

  “They did n’t in this instance,” relied Libby. “She was a pretty old girl. What made you think she was young?”

  “I don’t know. I thought you said she was young.” She blushed, and seemed about to say more, but she did not.

  He waited, and then he said, “You can tell Mrs. Maynard that I telegraphed on my own responsibility, if you think it’s going to alarm her.”

  “Well,” said Grace, with a helpless sigh.

  “You don’t like to tell her that,” he suggested, after a moment, in which he had watched her.

  “How do you know?”

  “Oh, I know. And some day I will tell you how — if you will let me.”

  It seemed a question; and she did not know what it was that kept her — silent and breathless and hot in the throat. “I don’t like to do it,” she said at last. “I hate myself whenever I have to feign anything. I knew perfectly well that you did n’t say she was young,” she broke out desperately.

  “Say Mrs. Maynard was young?” he asked stupidly.

  “No!” she cried. She rose hastily from the bench where she had been sitting with him. “I must go back to her now.”

  He mounted to his buggy, and drove thoughtfully away at a walk.

  The ladies, whose excited sympathies for Mrs. Maynard had kept them from the beach till now, watched him quite out of sight before they began to talk of Grace.

  “I hope Dr. Breen’s new patient will be more tractable,” said Mrs. Merritt. “It would be a pity if she had to give him up, too, to Dr. Mulbridge.”

  Mrs. Scott failed of the point. “Why, is Mr. Libby sick?”

  “Not very,” answered Mrs. Merritt, with a titter of self-applause.

  “I should be sorry,” interposed Mrs. Alger authoritatively, “if we had said anything to influence the poor thing in what she has done.”

  “Oh, I don’t think we need distress ourselves about undue influence!” Mrs. Merritt exclaimed.

  Mrs. Alger chose to ignore the suggestion. “She had a very difficult part; and I think she has acted courageously. I always feel sorry for girls who attempt anything of that kind. It’s a fearful ordeal.”

  “But they say Miss Breen was n’t obliged to do it for a living,” Mrs. Scott suggested.

  “So much the worse,” said Mrs. Merritt.

  “No, so much the better,” returned Mrs. Alger.

  Mrs. Merritt, sitting on the edge of the piazza, stooped over with difficulty and plucked a glass-straw, which she bit as she looked rebelliously away.

  Mrs. Frost had installed herself as favorite since Mrs. Alger had praised her hair. She now came forward, and, dropping fondly at her knee, looked up to her for instruction. “Don’t you think that she showed her sense in giving up at the very beginning, if she found she was n’t equal to it?” She gave her head a little movement from side to side, and put the mass of her back hair more on show.

  “Perhaps,” said Mrs. Alger, looking at the favorite not very favorably.

  “Oh, I don’t think she’s given up,” Miss Gleason interposed, in her breathless manner. She waited to be asked why, and then she added, “I think she’s acting in consultation with Dr. Mulbridge. He may have a certain influence over her, — I think he has; but I know they are acting in unison.”

  Mrs. Merritt flung her grass-straw away. “Perhaps it is to be Dr. Mulbridge, after all, and not Mr. Libby.”

  “I have thought of that,” Miss Gleason assented candidly. “Yes, I have thought of that. I have thought of their being constantly thrown together, in this way. It would not discourage me. She could be quite as true to her vocation as if she remained single. Truer.”

  “Talking of true,” said Mrs. Scott, “always does make me think of blue. They say that yellow will be worn on everything this winter.”

  “Old gold?” asked Mrs. Frost. “Yes, more than ever.”

  “Dear!” cried the other lady. “I don’t know what I shall do. It perfectly kills my hair.”

  “Oh, Miss Gleason!” exclaimed the young girl.

  “Do you believe in character coming out in color?”

  “Yes, certainly. I have always believed that.”

  “Well, I’ve got a friend, and she wouldn’t have anything to do with a girl that wore magenta more than she would fly.”

  “I should suppose,” explained Miss Gleason, “that all those aniline dyes implied something coarse in people.”

  “Is n’t it curious,” asked Mrs. Frost, “how red-haired people have come in fashion? I can recollect, when I was a little girl, that everybody laughed at red hair. There was one girl at the first school I ever went to, — the boys used to pretend to burn their fingers at her hair.”

  “I think Dr. Breen’s hair is a very pretty shade of brown,” said the young girl.

  Mrs. Merritt rose from the edge of the piazza. “I think that if she hasn’t given up to him entirely she’s the most submissive consulting physician I ever saw,” she said, and walked out over the grass towards the cliff.

  The ladies looked after her. “Is Mrs. Merritt more pudgy when she’s sitting down or when she’s standing up?” asked Mrs. Scott.

  Miss Gleason seized her first chance of speaking with Grace alone. “Oh, do you know how much you are doing for us all?”

  “Doing for you, all? How doing?” faltered Grace, whom she had whisperingly halted in a corner of the hall leading from the dining-room.

  “By acting in unison, — by solving the most perplexing problem in women’s practising your profession. She passed the edge of her fan over her lips before letting it fall furled upon her left hand, and looked luminously into Grace’s eyes.

  “I don’t at all know what you mean, Miss Gleason,” said the other.

  Miss Gleason kicked out the skirt of her dress, so as to leave herself perfectly free for the explanation. “Practising in harmony with a physician of the other sex. I have always felt that there was the great difficulty, — how to bring that about. I have always felt that the TRUE physician must be DUAL, — have both the woman’s nature and the man’s; the woman’s tender touch, the man’s firm grasp. You have shown how the medical education of women can meet this want. The physician can actually be dual, — be two, in fact. Hereafter, I have no doubt we shall always call a physician of each sex. But it’s wonderful how you could ever bring it about, though you can do anything! Has n’t it worn upon you?” Miss Gleason darted out her senten
ces in quick, short breaths, fixing Grace with her eyes, and at each clause nervously tapping her chest with her reopened fan.

  “If you suppose,” said Grace, “that Dr. Mulbridge and I are acting professionally in unison, as you call it, you are mistaken. He has entire charge of the case; I gave it up to him, and I am merely nursing Mrs. Maynard under his direction.”

  “How splendid!” Miss Gleason exclaimed. “Do you know that I admire you for giving up, — for knowing when to give up? So few women do that! Is n’t he magnificent?”

  “Magnificent?”

  “I mean psychically. He is what I should call a strong soul You must have felt his masterfulness; you must have enjoyed it! Don’t you like to be dominated?”

  “No,” said Grace, “I should n’t at all like it.”

  “Oh, I do! I like to meet one of those forceful masculine natures that simply bid you obey. It’s delicious. Such a sense of self-surrender,” Miss Gleason explained. “It is n’t because they are men,” she added. “I have felt the same influence from some women. I felt it, in a certain degree, on first meeting you.”

  “I am very sorry,” said Grace coldly. “I should dislike being controlled myself, and I should dislike still more to control others.”

  “You’re doing it now!” cried Miss Gleason, with delight. “I could not do a thing to resist your putting me down! Of course you don’t know that you’re doing it; it’s purely involuntary. And you wouldn’t know that he was dominating you. And he would n’t.”

  Very probably Dr. Mulbridge would not have recognized himself in the character of all-compelling lady’s-novel hero, which Miss Gleason imagined for him. Life presented itself rather simply to him, as it does to most men, and he easily dismissed its subtler problems from a mind preoccupied with active cares. As far as Grace was concerned, she had certainly roused in him an unusual curiosity; nothing less than her homoeopathy would have made him withdraw his consent to a consultation with her, and his fear had been that in his refusal she should escape from his desire to know more about her, her motives, her purposes. He had accepted without scruple the sacrifice of pride she had made to him; but he had known how to appreciate her scientific training, which he found as respectable as that of any clever, young man of their profession. He praised, in his way, the perfection with which she interpreted his actions and intentions in regard to the patient. “If there were such nurses as you, Miss Breen, there would be very little need of doctors,” he said, with a sort of interogative fashion of laughing peculiar to him.

  “I thought of being a nurse once;” she answered. “Perhaps I may still be one. The scientific training won’t be lost.”

  “Oh, no? It’s a pity that more of them have n’t it. But I suppose they think nursing is rather too humble an ambition.”

  “I don’t think it so,” said Grace briefly.

  “Then you did n’t care for medical distinction.”

  “No.”

  He looked at her quizzically, as if this were much droller than if she had cared. “I don’t understand why you should have gone into it. You told me, I think, that it was repugnant to you; and it’s hard work for a woman, and very uncertain work for anyone. You must have had a tremendous desire to benefit your race.”

  His characterization of her motive was so distasteful that she made no reply, and left him to his conjectures, in which he did not appear unhappy. “How do you find Mrs. Maynard to-day?” she asked.

  He looked at her with an instant coldness, as if he did not like her asking, and were hesitating whether to answer. But he said at last, “She is no better. She will be worse before she is better. You see,” he added, “that I haven’t been able to arrest the disorder in its first stage. We must hope for what can be done now, in the second.”

  She had gathered from the half jocose ease with which he had listened to Mrs. Maynard’s account of herself, and to her own report, an encouragement which now fell to the ground “Yes,” she assented, in her despair, “that is the only hope.”

  He sat beside the table in the hotel parlor, where they found themselves alone for the moment, and drubbed upon it with an absent look. “Have you sent for her husband?” he inquired, returning to himself.

  “Yes; Mr. Libby telegraphed the evening we saw you.”

  “That’s good,” said Dr. Mulbridge, with comfortable approval; and he rose to go away.

  Grace impulsively detained him. “I — won’t — ask you whether you consider Mrs. Maynard’s case a serious one, if you object to my doing so.”

  “I don’t know that I object,” he said slowly, with a teasing smile, such as one might use with a persistent child whom one chose to baffle in that way.

  She disdained to avail herself of the implied permission. “What I mean — what I wish to tell you is — that I feel myself responsible for her sickness, and that if she dies, I shall be guilty of her death.”

  “Ah?” said Dr. Mulbridge, with more interest, but the same smile. “What do you mean?”

  “She didn’t wish to go that day when she was caught in the storm. But I insisted; I forced her to go.” She stood panting with the intensity of the feeling which had impelled her utterance.

  “What do you mean by forcing her to go?”

  “I don’t know. I — I — persuaded her.”

  Dr. Mulbridge smiled, as if he perceived her intention not to tell him something she wished to tell him. He looked down into his hat, which he carried in his hand.

  “Did you believe the storm was coming?”

  “No!”

  “And you did n’t make it come?”

  “Of course not!”

  He looked at her and laughed.

  “Oh, you don’t at all understand!” she cried.

  “I’m not a doctor of divinity,” he said. “Good morning.”

  “Wait, wait!” she implored, “I’m afraid — I don’t know — Perhaps my being near her is injurious to her; perhaps I ought to let some one else nurse her. I wished to ask you this” — She stopped breathlessly.

  “I don’t think you have done her any harm as yet,” he answered lightly.

  “However,” he said, after a moment’s consideration, “why don’t you take a holiday? Some of the other ladies might look after her a while.”

  “Do you really think,” she palpitated, “that I might? Do you think I ought? I’m afraid I ought n’t” —

  “Not if your devotion is hurtful to her?” he asked. “Send some one else to her for a while. Any one can take care of her for a few hours.”

  “I couldn’t leave her — feeling as I do about her.”

  “I don’t know how you feel about her,” said Dr. Mulbridge. “But you can’t go on at this rate. I shall want your help by and by, and Mrs. Maynard doesn’t need you now. Don’t go back to her.”

  “But if she should get worse while I am away” —

  “You think your staying and feeling bad would make her better? Don’t go back,” he repeated; and he went out to his ugly rawboned horse, and, mounting his shabby wagon, rattled away. She lingered, indescribably put to shame by the brutal common sense which she could not impeach, but which she still felt was no measure of the case. It was true that she had not told him everything, and she could not complain that he had mocked her appeal for sympathy if she had trifled with him by a partial confession. But she indignantly denied to herself that she had wished to appeal to him for sympathy.

  She wandered out on the piazza, which she found empty, and stood gazing at the sea in a revery of passionate humiliation. She was in that mood, familiar to us all, when we long to be consoled and even flattered for having been silly. In a woman this mood is near to tears; at a touch of kindness the tears come, and momentous questions are decided. What was perhaps uppermost in the girl’s heart was a detestation of the man to whom she had seemed a simpleton; her thoughts pursued him, and divined the contempt with which he must be thinking of her and her pretensions. She heard steps on the sand, and Libby came round the corner
of the house from the stable.

  VII.

  Libby’s friends had broken up their camp on the beach, and had gone to a lake in the heart of the woods for the fishing. He had taken a room at the Long Beach House, but he spent most of his time at Jocelyn’s, where he kept his mare for use in going upon errands for Mrs. Maynard. Grace saw him constantly, and he was always doing little things for her with a divination of her unexpressed desires which women find too rarely in men. He brought her flowers, which, after refusing them for Mrs. Maynard the first time, she accepted for herself. He sometimes brought her books, the light sort which form the sentimental currency of young people, and she lent them round among the other ladies, who were insatiable of them. She took a pleasure in these attentions, as if they had been for some one else. In this alien sense she liked to be followed up with a chair to the point where she wished to sit; to have her hat fetched, or her shawl; to drop her work or her handkerchief, secure that it would be picked up for her.

  It all interested her, and it was a relief from the circumstances that would have forbidden her to recognize it as gallantry, even if her own mind had not been so far from all thought of that. His kindness followed often upon some application of hers for his advice or help, for she had fallen into the habit of going to him with difficulties. He had a prompt common sense that made him very useful in emergencies, and a sympathy or an insight that was quick in suggestions and expedients. Perhaps she overrated other qualities of his in her admiration of the practical readiness which kept his amiability from seeming weak. But the practical had so often been the unattainable with her that it was not strange she should overrate it, and that she should rest upon it in him with a trust that included all he chose to do in her behalf.

  “What is the matter, Mr. Libby?” she asked, as he came toward her.

  “Is anything the matter?” he demanded in turn.

  “Yes; you are looking downcast,” she cried reproachfully.

  “I didn’t know that I mustn’t look downcast. I did n’t suppose it would be very polite, under the circumstances, to go round looking as bobbish as I feel.”