Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “Yes, you might be all that, and be a man; but you’d be an exceptional man, and I don’t think you’re an exceptional woman. If you’ve failed, it is n’t your temperament that’s to blame.”

  “I think it is. The wrong is somewhere in me individually. I know it is.”

  Dr. Mulbridge, walking beside her, with his hands clasped behind him, threw up his head and laughed. “Well, have it your own way, Miss Breen. Only I don’t agree with you. Why should you wish to spare your sex at your own expense? But that’s the way with some ladies, I’ve noticed. They approve of what women attempt because women attempt it, and they believe the attempt reflects honor on them. It’s tremendous to think what men could accomplish for their sex, if they only hung together as women do. But they can’t. They haven’t the generosity.”

  “I think you don’t understand me,” said Grace, with a severity that amused him. “I wished to regard myself, in taking up this profession, entirely as I believed a man would have regarded himself.”

  “And were you able to do it?”

  “No,” she unintentionally replied to this unexpected question.

  “Haw, haw, haw!” laughed Dr. Mulbridge at her helpless candor. “And are you sure that you give it up as a man would?”

  “I don’t know how you mean,” she said, vexed and bewildered.

  “Do you do it fairly and squarely because you believe that you’re a failure, or because you partly feel that you have n’t been fairly dealt with?”

  “I believe that if Mrs. Maynard had had the same confidence in me that she would have had in any man I should not have failed. But every woman physician has a double disadvantage that I hadn’t the strength to overcome, — her own inexperience and the distrust of other women.”

  “Well, whose fault is that?”

  “Not the men’s. It is the men alone who give women any chance. They are kind and generous and liberal-minded. I have no blame for them, and I have no patience with women who want to treat them as the enemies of women’s advancement. Women can’t move a step forwards without their sufferance and help. Dr. Mulbridge,” she cried, “I wish to apologize for the hasty and silly words I used to you the day I came to ask you to consult with me. I ought to have been grateful to you for consenting at first, and when you took back your consent I ought to have considered your position. You were entirely right. We had no common ground to meet on, and I behaved like a petulant, foolish, vulgar girl!”

  “No, no,” he protested, laughing in recollection of the scene. “You were all right, and I was in a fix; and if your own fears had n’t come to the rescue, I don’t know how I should have got out of it. It would have been disgraceful, wouldn’t it, to refuse a lady’s request. You don’t know how near I was to giving way. I can tell you, now that it’s all over. I had never seen a lady of our profession before,” he added hastily, “and my curiosity was up. I always had my doubts about the thoroughness of women’s study, and I should have liked to see where your training failed. I must say I found it very good, — I’ve told you that. You wouldn’t fail individually: you would fail because you are a woman.”

  “I don’t believe that,” said Grace.

  “Well, then, because your patients are women. It’s all one. What will you do?”

  “I shall not do anything. I shall give it all up.”

  “But what shall you do then?”

  “I — don’t know.”

  “What are you going to be? A fashionable woman? Or are you going to Europe, and settle down there with the other American failures? I’ve heard about them, — in Rome and Florence and Paris. Are you going to throw away the study you’ve put into this profession? You took it up because you wanted to do good. Don’t you want to do good any more? Has the human race turned out unworthy?”

  She cowered at this arraignment, in which she could not separate the mocking from the justice. “What do you advise me to do? Do you think I could ever succeed?”

  “You could never succeed alone.”

  “Yes, I know that; I felt that from the first. But I have planned to unite with a woman physician older than myself.”

  “And double your deficiency. Sit down here,” he said; “I wish to talk business.” They had entered the border of the woods encompassing Jocelyn’s, and he painted to a stump, beside which lay the fallen tree. She obeyed mechanically, and he remained standing near her, with one foot lifted to the log; he leaned forward over her, and seemed to seize a physical advantage in the posture. “From your own point of view, you would have no right to give up your undertaking if there was a chance of success in it. You would have no more right to give up than a woman who had gone out as a missionary.”

  “I don’t pretend to compare myself with such a woman; but I should have no more right to give up,” she answered, helpless against the logic of her fate, which he had somehow divined.

  “Well, then, listen to me. I can give you this chance. Are you satisfied that with my advice you could have succeeded in Mrs. Maynard’s case?”

  “Yes, I think so. But what” —

  “I think so, too. Don’t rise!”

  His will overcame the impulse that had betrayed itself, and she sank back to her seat. “I offer you my advice from this time forward; I offer you my help.”

  “That is very good of you,” she murmured; “and I appreciate your generosity more than I can say. I know the prejudice you must have had to overcome in regard to women physicians before you could bring yourself to do this; and I know how you must have despised me for failing in my attempt, and giving myself up to my feeble temperament. But” —

  “Oh, we won’t speak of all that,” he interrupted. “Of course I felt the prejudice against women entering the profession which we all feel; it was ridiculous and disgusting to me till I saw you. I won’t urge you from any personal motive to accept my offer. But I know that if you do you can realize all your hopes of usefulness; and I ask you to consider that certainly. But you know the only way it could be done.”

  She looked him in the eyes, with dismay in her growing intelligence.

  “What — what do you mean?”

  “I mean that I ask you to let me help you carry out your plan of life, and to save all you have done, and all you have hoped, from waste — as your husband. Think” —

  She struggled to her feet as if he were opposing a palpable resistance, so strongly she felt the pressure of his will. “It can’t be, Dr. Mulbridge. Oh, it can’t, indeed! Let us go back; I wish to go back!”

  But he had planted himself in her way, and blocked her advance, unless she chose to make it a flight.

  “I expected this,” he said, with a smile, as if her wild trepidation interested him as an anticipated symptom. “The whole idea is new and startling to you. But I know you won’t dismiss it abruptly, and I won’t be discouraged.”

  “Yes, yes, you must! I will not think of it! I can’t! I do dismiss it at once. Let me go!”

  “Then you really choose to be like the rest, — a thing of hysterical impulses, without conscience or reason! I supposed the weakest woman would be equal to an offer of marriage. And you had dreamt of being a physician and useful!”

  “I tell you,” she cried, half quelled by his derision, “that I have found out that I am not fit for it, — that I am a failure and a disgrace; and you had no right to expect me to be anything else.”

  “You are no failure, and I had a right to expect anything of you after the endurance and the discretion you have shown in the last three weeks. Without your help I should have failed myself. You owe it to other women to go on.”

  “They must take care of themselves,” she said. “If my weakness throws shame on them, they must bear it. I thank you for what you say. I believe you mean it. But if I was of any use to you I did n’t know it.”

  “It was probably inspiration, then,” he interrupted coolly. “Come, this isn’t a thing to be frightened at. You’re not obliged to do what I say. But I think you ought to hear me out. I have
n’t spoken without serious thought, and I didn’t suppose you would reject me without a reason.”

  “Reason?” she repeated. “There is no reason in it.”

  “There ought to be. There is, on my side. I have all kinds of reasons for asking you to be my wife: I believe that I can make you happy in the fulfilment of your plans; I admire you and respect you more than any other woman I ever saw; and I love you.”

  “I don’t love you, and that is reason enough.”

  “Yes, between boys and girls. But between men and women it isn’t enough. Do you dislike me?”

  “No.”

  “Am I repulsive in any way?”

  “No, no!”

  “I know that I am not very young and that I am not very good-looking.”

  “It is n’t that at all.”

  “Of course I know that such things weigh with women, and that personal traits and habits are important in an affair like this. I am slovenly and indifferent about my dress; but it’s only because I have lived where every sort of spirit and ambition was useless. I don’t know about city ways, but I could pick up all of them that were worth while. I spoke of going to Boston; but I would go anywhere else with you, east or west, that you chose, and I know that I should succeed. I haven’t done what I might have done with myself, because I’ve never had an object in life. I’ve always lived in the one little place, and I’ve never been out of it except when I was in the army. I’ve always liked my profession; but nothing has seemed worth while. You were a revelation to me; you have put ambition and hope into me. I never saw any woman before that I would have turned my hand to have. They always seemed to me fit to be the companions of fools, or the playthings of men. But of all the simpletons, the women who were trying to do something for woman, as they called it, trying to exemplify and illustrate a cause, were the silliest that I came across. I never happened to have met a woman doctor before you came to me; but I had imagined them, and I could n’t believe in you when I saw you. You were not supersensitive, you were not presumptuous, and you gave up, not because you distrusted yourself, but because your patient distrusted you. That was right: I should have done the same thing myself. Under my direction, you have shown yourself faithful, docile, patient, intelligent beyond anything I have seen. I have watched you, and I know; and I know what your peculiar trials have been from that woman. You have taught me a lesson, — I ‘m not ashamed to say it; and you’ve given me a motive. I was wrong to ask you to marry me so that you might carry out your plans: that was no way to appeal to you. What I meant was that I might make your plans my own, and that we might carry them out together. I don’t care for making money; I have always been poor, and I had always expected to be so; and I am not afraid of hard work. There is n’t any self-sacrifice you’ve dreamed of that I wouldn’t gladly and proudly share with you. You can’t do anything by yourself, but we could do anything together. If you have any scruple about giving up your theory of medicine, you needn’t do it; and the State Medical Association may go to the devil. I’ve said my say. What do you say?”

  She looked all round, as if seeking escape from a mesh suddenly flung about her, and then she looked imploringly up at him. “I have nothing to say,” she whispered huskily. “I can’t answer you.”

  “Well, that’s all I ask,” he said, moving a few steps, away, and suffering her to rise. “Don’t answer me now. Take time, — all the time you want, all the time there is.”

  “No,” she said, rising, and gathering some strength from the sense of being on foot again. “I don’t mean that. I mean that I don’t — I can’t consent.”

  “You don’t believe in me? You don’t think I would do it?”

  “I don’t believe in myself. I have no right to doubt you. I know that I ought to honor you for what you propose.”

  “I don’t think it calls for any great honor. Of course I shouldn’t propose it to every lady physician.” He smiled with entire serenity and self-possession. “Tell me one thing: was there ever a time when you would have consented?” She did not answer. “Then you will consent yet?”

  “No. Don’t deceive yourself. I shall never consent.”

  “I’ll leave that to the logic of your own conscience. You will do what seems your duty.”

  “You must n’t trust to my conscience. I fling it away! I won’t have anything to do with it. I’ve been tortured enough by it. There is no sense or justice in it!”

  He laughed easily at her vehemence. “I ‘ll trust your conscience. But I won’t stay to worry you now. I’m coming again day after to-morrow, and I’m not afraid of what you will say then.”

  He turned and left her, tearing his way through the sweet-fern and low blackberry vines, with long strides, a shape of uncouth force. After he was out of sight, she followed, scared and trembling at herself, as if she had blasphemed.

  XI.

  Grace burst into the room where her mother sat; and flung her hat aside with a desperate gesture. “Now, mother, you have got to listen to me. Dr. Mulbridge has asked me to marry him!”

  Mrs. Green put up her spectacles on her forehead, and stared at her daughter, while some strong expressions, out of the plebeian or rustic past which lies only a generation or two behind most of us, rose to her lips. I will not repeat them here; she had long denied them to herself as an immoral self-indulgence, and it must be owned that such things have a fearful effect, coming from old ladies. “What has got into all the men? What in nature does he want you to marry him for?”

  “Oh, for the best reasons in the world,” exclaimed the daughter. “For reasons that will make you admire and respect him,” she added ironically. “For great, and unselfish, and magnanimous reasons!”

  “I should want to believe they were the real ones, first,” interrupted Mrs. Breen.

  “He wants to marry me because he knows that I can’t fulfil my plans of life alone, and because we could fulfil them together. We shall not only be husband and wife, but we shall be physicians in partnership. I may continue a homoeopath, he says, and the State Medical Association may go to the devil.” She used his language, that would have been shocking to her ordinary moods, without blenching, and in their common agitation her mother accepted it as fit and becoming. “He counts upon my accepting him because I must see it as my duty, and my conscience won’t let me reject the only opportunity I shall have of doing some good and being of some use in the world. What do you think I ought to do, mother?”

  “There’s reason in what he says. It is an opportunity. You could be of use, in that way, and perhaps it’s the only way. Yes,” she continued, fascinated by the logic of the position, and its capabilities for vicarious self-sacrifice. “I don’t see how you can get out of it: You have spent years and years of study, and a great deal of money, to educate yourself for a profession that you’re too weak to practise alone. You can’t say that I ever advised your doing it. It was your own idea, and I did n’t oppose it. But when you’ve gone so far, you’ve formed an obligation to go on. It’s your duty not to give up, if you know of any means to continue. That’s your duty, as plain as can be. To say nothing of the wicked waste of your giving up now, you’re bound to consider the effect it would have upon other women who are trying to do something for themselves. The only thing,” she added, with some misgiving, “is whether you believe he was in earnest and would keep his word to you.”

  “I think he was secretly laughing at me, and that he would expect to laugh me out of his promise.”

  “Well, then, you ought to take time to reflect, and you ought to be sure that you’re right about him.”

  “Is that what you really think, mother?”

  “I am always governed by reason, Grace, and by right; and I have brought you up on that plan. If you have ever departed from it, it has not been with my consent, nor for want of my warning. I have simply laid the matter before you.”

  “Then you wish me to marry him?”

  This was perhaps a point that had not occurred to Mrs. Breen in her reco
gnition of the strength of Dr. Mulbridge’s position. It was one thing to trace the path of duty; another to support the aspirant in treading it. “You ought to take time to reflect,” Mrs. Green repeated, with evasion that she never used in behalf of others.

  “Well, mother,” answered Grace, “I didn’t take time to reflect, and I should n’t care whether I was right about him or not. I refused him because I did n’t love him. If I had loved him that would have been the only reason I needed to marry him. But all the duty in the world wouldn’t be enough without it. Duty? I am sick of duty! Let the other women who are trying to do something for themselves, take care of themselves as men would. I don’t owe them more than a man would owe other men, and I won’t be hoodwinked into thinking I do. As for the waste, the past is gone, at any rate; and the waste that I lament is the years I spent in working myself up to an undertaking that I was never fit for. I won’t continue that waste, and I won’t keep up the delusion that because I was very unhappy I was useful, and that it was doing good to be miserable. I like pleasure and I like dress; I like pretty things. There is no harm in them. Why should n’t I have them?”

  “There is harm in them for you,” — her mother began.

  “Because I have tried to make my life a horror? There is no other reason, and that is no reason. When we go into Boston this winter I shall go to the theatre. I shall go to the opera, and I hope there will be a ballet. And next summer, I am going to Europe; I am going to Italy.” She whirled away toward the door as if she were setting out.

  “I should think you had taken leave of your conscience!” cried her mother.

  “I hope I have, mother. I am going to consult my reason after this.”