cross-examination, and Sylvia would worm out the truth, and we might
have a case of puerperal fever on our hands.
This I explained afresh to Mrs. Tuis, having taken her into her own
room and closed the door for that purpose. She clutched me with her
shaking hands and whispered, "Oh, Mrs. Abbott, you will _never_ let
Sylvia find out what caused this trouble?"
I drew on my reserve supply of patience, and answered, "What I shall
let her find out in the end, I don't know. We shall be guided by
circumstances, and this is no time to discuss the matter. The point
is now to make sure that you can go in and stay with her, and not
let her get an idea there's anything wrong."
"Oh, but you know how Sylvia reads people!" she cried, in sudden
dismay.
"I've fixed it for you," I said. "I've provided something you can be
agitated about."
"What is that?"
"It's _me._" Then, seeing her look of bewilderment, "You must tell
her that I've affronted you, Mrs. Tuis; I've outraged your sense of
propriety. You're indignant with me and you don't see how you can
remain in the house with me--"
"Why, Mrs. Abbott!" she exclaimed, in horror.
"You know it's truth to some extent," I said.
The good lady drew herself up. "Mrs. Abbott, don't tell me that I
have been so rude--"
"Dear Mrs. Tuis," I laughed, "don't stop to apologize just now. You
have not been lacking in courtesy, but I know how I must seem to
you. I am a Socialist. I have a raw, Western accent, and my hands
are big--I've lived on a farm all my life, and done my own work, and
even plowed sometimes. I have no idea of the charms and graces of
life that are everything to you. What is more than that, I am
forward, and thrust my opinions upon other people--"
She simply could not hear me. She was a-tremble with a new
excitement. Worse even than _opthalmia neonatorum_ was plain
speaking to a guest! "Mrs. Abbott, you humiliate me!"
Then I spoke harshly, seeing that I would actually have to shock
her. "I assure you, Mrs. Tuis, that if you don't feel that way about
me, it's simply because you don't know the truth. It is not possible
that you would consider me a proper person to visit Sylvia. I don't
believe in your religion; I don't believe in anything that you would
call religion, and I argue about it at the least provocation. I
deliver violent harangues on street-corners, and have been arrested
during a strike. I believe in woman's suffrage, I even argue in
approval of window-smashing. I believe that women ought to earn
their own living, and be independent and free from any man's
control. I am a divorced woman--I left my husband because I wasn't
happy with him, what's more, I believe that any woman has a right to
do the same--I'm liable to teach such ideas to Sylvia, and to urge
her to follow them."
The poor lady's eyes were wide and large. "So you see," I exclaimed,
"you really couldn't approve of me! Tell her all this; she knows it
already, but she will be horrified, because I have let you and the
doctor find it out!"
Whereupon Mrs. Tuis started to ascend the pedestal of her dignity.
"Mrs. Abbott, this may be your idea of a jest----"
"Now come," I cried, "let me help you fix your hair, and put on just
a wee bit of powder--not enough to be noticed, you understand----"
I took her to the wash-stand, and poured out some cold water for
her, and saw her bathe her eyes and face, and dry them, and braid
her thin grey hair. While with a powder puff I was trying deftly to
conceal the ravages of the night's crying, the dear lady turned to
me, and whispered in a trembling voice, "Mrs. Abbott, you really
don't mean that dreadful thing you said just now?"
"Which dreadful thing, Mrs. Tuis?"
"That you would tell Sylvia it could possibly be right for her to
leave her husband?"
18. In the course of the day we received word that Dr. Gibson, the
specialist for whom we had telegraphed, was on his way. The boat
which brought his message took back a letter from Dr. Perrin to
Douglas van Tuiver, acquainting him with the calamity which had
befallen. We had talked it over and agreed that there was nothing to
be gained by telegraphing the information. We did not wish any hint
of the child's illness to leak into the newspapers.
I did not envy the great man the hour when he read that letter;
although I knew that the doctor had not failed to assure him that
the victim of his misdeeds should be kept in ignorance. Already the
little man had begun to drop hints to me on this subject.
Unfortunate accidents happened, which were not always to be blamed
upon the husband, nor was it a thing to contemplate lightly, the
breaking up of a family. I gave a non-committal answer, and changed
the subject by asking the doctor not to mention my presence in the
household. If by any chance van Tuiver were to carry his sorrows to
Claire, I did not want my name brought up.
We managed to prevent Sylvia's seeing the child that day and night,
and the next morning came the specialist. He held out no hope of
saving any remnant of the sight, but the child might be so fortunate
as to escape disfigurement--it did not appear that the eyeballs
were destroyed, as happens generally in these cases. This bit of
consolation I still have: that little Elaine, who sits by me as I
write, has left in her pupils a faint trace of the soft
red-brown--just enough to remind us of what we have lost, and keep
fresh in our minds the memory of these sorrows. If I wish to see
what her eyes might have been, I look above my head to the portrait
of Sylvia's noble ancestress, a copy made by a "tramp artist" in
Castleman County, and left with me by Sylvia.
There was the question of the care of the mother--the efforts to
stay the ravages of the germ in the tissues broken and weakened by
the strain of child-birth. We had to invent excuses for the presence
of the new doctor--and yet others for the presence of Dr. Overton,
who came a day later. And then the problem of the nourishing of the
child. It would be a calamity to have to put it upon the bottle, but
on the other hand, there were many precautions necessary to keep the
infection from spreading.
I remember vividly the first time that the infant was fed: all of us
gathered round, with matter-of-course professional air, as if these
elaborate hygienic ceremonies were the universal custom when
newly-born infants first taste their mothers' milk. Standing in the
background, I saw Sylvia start with dismay, as she noted how pale
and thin the poor little one had become. It was hunger that caused
the whimpering, so the nurse declared, busying herself in the
meantime to keep the tiny hands from the mother's face. The latter
sank back and closed her eyes--nothing, it seemed, could prevail
over the ecstasy of that first marvellous sensation, but afterwards
she asked that I might stay with her, and as soon as the others were
gon
e, she unmasked the batteries of her suspicion upon me. "Mary!
What in the world has happened to my baby?"
So began a new stage in the campaign of lying. "It's nothing,
nothing. Just some infection. It happens frequently."
"But what is the cause of it?"
"We can't tell. It may be a dozen things. There are so many possible
sources of infection about a birth. It's not a very sanitary thing,
you know."
"Mary! Look me in the face!"
"Yes, dear?"
"You're not deceiving me?"
"How do you mean?"
"I mean--it's not really something serious? All these doctors--this
mystery--this vagueness!"
"It was your husband, my dear Sylvia, who sent the doctors--it was
his stupid man's way of being attentive." (This at Aunt Varina's
suggestion--the very subtle lady!).
"Mary, I'm worried. My baby looks so badly, and I feel something is
wrong."
"My dear Sylvia," I chided, "if you worry about it you will simply
be harming the child. Your milk may go wrong."
"Oh, that's just it! That's why you would not tell me the truth!"
We persuade ourselves that there are certain circumstances under
which lying is necessary, but always when we come to the lies we
find them an insult to the soul. Each day I perceived that I was
getting in deeper--and each day I watched Aunt Varina and the doctor
busied to push me deeper yet.
There had come a telegram from Douglas van Tuiver to Dr. Perrin,
revealing the matter which stood first in that gentleman's mind. "I
expect no failure in your supply of the necessary tact." By this
vagueness we perceived that he too was trusting no secrets to
telegraph operators. Yet for us it was explicit and illuminative. It
recalled the tone of quiet authority I had noted in his dealings
with his chauffeur, and it sent me off by myself for a while to
shake my fist at all husbands.
19. Mrs. Tuis, of course, had no need of any warning from the head
of the house. The voice of her ancestors guided her in all such
emergencies. The dear lady had got to know me quite well, at the
more or less continuous dramatic rehearsals we conducted; and now
and then her trembling hands would seek to fasten me in the chains
of decency. "Mrs. Abbott, think what a scandal there would be if
Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver were to break with her husband!"
"Yes, my dear Mrs. Tuis-but on the other hand, think what might
happen if she were kept in ignorance in this matter. She might bear
another child."
I got a new realization of the chasms that lay between us. "Who are
we," she whispered, "to interfere in these sacred matters? It is of
souls, Mrs. Abbot, and not bodies, that the Kingdom of Heaven is
made."
I took a minute or so to get my breath, and then I said, "What
generally happens in these cases is that God afflicts the woman with
permanent barrenness."
The old lady bowed her head, and I saw the tears falling into her
lap. "My poor Sylvia!" she moaned, only half aloud.
There was a silence; I too almost wept. And finally, Aunt Varina
looked up at me, her faded eyes full of pleading. "It is hard for me
to understand such ideas as yours. You must tell me-can you really
believe that it would help Sylvia to know this-this dreadful
secret?"
"It would help her in many ways," I said. "She will be more careful
of her health-she will follow the doctor's orders---"
How quickly came the reply! "I will stay with her, and see that she
does that! I will be with her day and night."
"But are you going to keep the secret from those who attend her? Her
maid--the child's nurses--everyone who might by any chance use the
same towel, or a wash-basin, or a drinking-glass?"
"Surely you exaggerate the danger! If that were true, more people
would meet with these accidents!"
"The doctors," I said, "estimate that about ten per cent. of cases
of this disease are innocently acquired."
"Oh, these modern doctors!" she cried. "I never heard of such
ideas!"
I could not help smiling. "My dear Mrs. Tuis, what do you imagine
you know about the prevalence of gonorrhea? Consider just one
fact--that I heard a college professor state publicly that in his
opinion eighty-five per cent. of the men students at his university
were infected with some venereal disease. And that is the pick of
our young manhood--the sons of our aristocracy!"
"Oh, that can't be!" she exclaimed. "People would know of it!
"Who are 'people'? The boys in your family know of it--if you could
get them to tell you. My two sons studied at a State university, and
they would bring me home what they heard--the gossip, the slang, the
horrible obscenity. Fourteen fellows in one dormitory using the same
bathroom--and on the wall you saw a row of fourteen syringes! And
they told that on themselves, it was the joke of the campus. They
call the disease a 'dose'; and a man's not supposed to be worthy the
respect of his fellows until he's had his 'dose'--the sensible thing
is to get several, till he can't get any more. They think it's 'no
worse than a bad cold'; that's the idea they get from the
'clap-doctors,' and the women of the street who educate our sons in
sex matters."
"Oh, spare me, spare me!" cried Mrs. Tuis. "I beg you not to force
these horrible details upon me!"
"That is what is going on among our boys," I said. "The Castleman
boys, the Chilton boys! It's going on in every fraternity house,
every 'prep school' dormitory in America. And the parents refuse to
know, just as you do!"
"But what could I possibly do, Mrs. Abbott?"
"I don't know, Mrs. Tuis. What _I_ am going to do is to teach the
young girls."
She whispered, aghast, "You would rob the young girls of their
innocence. Why, with their souls full of these ideas their faces
would soon be as hard--oh, you horrify me!"
"My daughter's face is not hard," I said. "And I taught her. Stop
and think, Mrs. Tuis--ten thousand blind children every year! A
hundred thousand women under the surgeon's knife! Millions of women
going to pieces with slowly creeping diseases of which they never
hear the names! I say, let us cry this from the housetops, until
every woman knows--and until every man knows that she knows, and
that unless he can prove that he is clean he will lose her! That is
the remedy, Mrs. Tuis!"
Poor dear lady! I got up and went away, leaving her there, with
clenched hands and trembling lips. I suppose I seemed to her like
the mad women who were just then rising up to horrify the
respectability of England--a phenomenon of Nature too portentous to
be comprehended, or even to be contemplated, by a gentlewoman of the
South!
20. There came in due course a couple of letters from Douglas van
Tuiver. The one to Aunt Varina, which was shown to me, was vague and
cautious--as if the writer were uncertain how much this worthy lady
knew. He
merely mentioned that Sylvia was to be spared every
particle of "painful knowledge." He would wait in great anxiety, but
he would not come, because any change in his plans might set her to
questioning.
The letter to Dr. Perrin was not shown to me; but I judged that it
must have contained more strenuous injunctions. Or had Aunt Varina
by any chance got up the courage to warn the young doctor against
me? His hints, at any rate, became more pointed. He desired me to
realize how awkward it would be for him, if Sylvia were to learn the
truth; it would be impossible to convince Mr. van Tuiver that this
knowledge had not come from the physician in charge.
"But, Dr. Perrin," I objected, "it was I who brought the information
to you! And Mr. van Tuiver knows that I am a radical woman; he would
not expect me to be ignorant of such matters."
"Mrs. Abbott," was the response, "it is a grave matter to destroy
the possibility of happiness of a young married couple."
However I might dispute his theories, in practice I was doing what
he asked. But each day I was finding the task more difficult; each
day it became more apparent that Sylvia was ceasing to believe me. I
realized at last, with a sickening kind of fright, that she knew I
was hiding something from her. Because she knew me, and knew that I
would not do such a thing lightly, she was terrified. She would lie
there, gazing at me, with a dumb fear in her eyes--and I would go on
asseverating blindly, like an unsuccessful actor before a jeering
audience.
A dozen times she made an effort to break through the barricade of
falsehood; and a dozen times I drove her back, all but crying to
her, "No, No! Don't ask me!" Until at last, late one night, she
caught my hand and clung to it in a grip I could not break. "Mary!
Mary! You must tell me the _truth!_"
"Dear girl--" I began.
"Listen!" she cried. "I know you are deceiving me! I know
why--because I'll make myself ill. But it won't do any longer; it's
preying on me, Mary--I've taken to imagining things. So you must
tell me the truth!"
I sat, avoiding her eyes, beaten; and in the pause I could feel her
hands shaking. "Mary, what is it? Is my baby going to die?"
"No, dear, indeed no!" I cried.
"Then what?"
"Sylvia," I began, as quietly as I could, "the truth is not as bad
as you imagine--"
"Tell me what it is!"
"But it is bad, Sylvia. And you must be brave. You must be, for your
baby's sake."
"Make haste!" she cried.
"The baby," I said, "may be blind."
"Blind!" There we sat, gazing into each other's eyes, like two
statues of women. But the grasp of her hand tightened, until even my
big fist was hurt. "Blind!" she whispered again.
"Sylvia," I rushed on, "it isn't so bad as it might be! Think--if
you had lost her altogether!"
"_Blind!_"
"You will have her always; and you can do things for her--take care
of her. They do wonders for the blind nowadays--and you have the
means; to do everything. Really, you know, blind children are not
unhappy--some of them are happier than other children, I think. They
haven't so much to miss. Think--"
"Wait, wait," she whispered; and again there was silence, and I
clung to her cold hands.
"Sylvia," I said, at last, "you have a newly-born infant to nurse,
and its very life depends upon your health now. You cannot let
yourself grieve."
"No," she responded. "No. But, Mary, what caused this?"
So there was the end of my spell of truth-telling. "I don't know,
dear. Nobody knows. There might be a thousand things--"
"Was it born blind?"
"No."
"Then was it the doctor's fault?"
"No, it was nobody's fault. Think of the thousands and tens of
Sylvia's Marriage Page 14
