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The Web of Life, a novel by Robert Herrick |
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Part 1 - Chapter 17 |
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_ Part I Chapter XVII Mrs. Ducharme opened the door of the cottage in response to Sommers's knock. Attired in a black house dress, with her dark hair smoothly brushed back from round, fat features, she was a peaceful figure. Sommers thought there was some truth in her contention that "Ducharme ought to get a decent-looking woman, anyway." "How is Mr. Preston?" he asked. Mrs. Ducharme shook her head mournfully. "Bad, allus awful bad--and _pitiful_. Calling for stuff in a voice fit to break your heart." "Mind you don't let him get any," the doctor counselled, preparing to go upstairs. "Better not go up there jest yet," the woman whispered. "He _did_ get away from us yesterdy and had a terrible time over there." She hitched her shoulders in the direction of Stoney Island Avenue. "We ain't found out till he'd been gone 'most two hours, and, my! such goings on; we had to git two perlicemen." "I suppose you were out looking for Ducharme?" the doctor asked, in a severe tone. "It was the last time," the woman pleaded, her eyes downcast. "Come in here. Miss Preston ain't got back from school,--she's late to-day." Sommers walked into the bare sitting room and sat down, while Mrs. Ducharme leaned against the door-post, fingering her apron in an embarrassed manner. "I've got cured," she blurted out at last. "My eye was awful bad, and it's been most a week since you sent me here." "Did you follow my treatment?" "No! I was out one afternoon--after Mrs. Preston came back from school--and I had walked miles and miles. Comin' home I passed a buildin' down here a ways on the avenue where there were picter papers pasted all over the windows; the picters were all about healin' folks, heaps and heaps in great theaters, a nice white-haired old preacher doin' the healin'. While I was lookin' at the picters, a door opened and a young feller came along and helped 'em carry in a cripple in his chair. He turns to me arter finishin' with the cripple and says, 'Come in, lady, and be healed in the blood of the lamb.' In I went, sure enough, and there was a kind of rough church fitted up with texts printed in great show-bills, and they was healin' folks. The little feller was helpin' em up the steps to the platform, and the old feller was prayin', and at last the young feller comes to me and says, 'Want ter be healed?' and I just got up, couldn't help it, and walked to the platform, and they prayed over me--you aren't mad, are you?" she asked suspiciously. Sommers laughed. "Mrs. Preston said you'd be very angry with such nonsense. But at any rate the old fellow--Dr.--Dr.--Po--" "Dr. Potz," Sommers suggested. "That's him. He cured me, and I went back again and told him about Ducharme. And _he_ says that he's got a devil, and he will cast it out by prayin'. But he wants money." "How much will it cost to cast out the devil?" the doctor inquired. "The doctor says he must have ten dollars to loosen the bonds." "Well," Sommers drew a bill from his pocket, "there's ten dollars on account of your wages. Now, don't you interfere with the doctor's work. You let him manage the devil his own way, and if you see Ducharme or the other woman, you run away as hard as you can. If you don't, you may bring the devil back again." The woman took the money eagerly. "You can go right off to find the doctor," Sommers continued. "I'll stay here until Mrs. Preston returns. But let me look at your eye, and see whether the doctor has cast that devil out for good and all." He examined the eye as well as he could without appliances. Sure enough, so far as he could detect, the eye was normal, the peculiar paralysis had disappeared. "You are quite right," he pronounced at last. "The doctor has handled this devil very ably. You can tell Mrs. Preston that I approve of your going to that doctor." "I wonder where Mrs. Preston can be: she's most always here by half-past four, and it's after five. He," the woman pointed upstairs to Preston's rooms, "is sleeping off the effects of the dose Mrs. Preston gave him." "The powders?" the doctor asked. "Yes, sir. She had to give him two before he would sleep. Well, I'll be back by supper time. If he calls you, be careful about the bar on the door." After Mrs. Ducharme had gone, the doctor examined every object in the little room. It was all so bare! Needlessly so, Sommers thought at first, contrasting the bleak room with the comfortable simplicity of his own rooms. The strip of coarse thin rug, the open Franklin stove, the pine kitchen table, the three straight chairs--it was as if the woman, crushed down from all aspirations, had defiantly willed to exist with as little of this world's furniture as might be. On the table were a few school books, a teacher's manual of drawing, a school mythology, and at one side two or three other volumes, which Sommers took up with more interest. One was a book on psychology--a large modern work on the subject. A second was an antiquated popular treatise on "Diseases of the Mind." Another volume was an even greater surprise--Balzac's _Une Passion dans la Desert_, a well-dirtied copy from the public library. They were fierce condiments for a lonely mind! His examination over, he noiselessly stepped into the hall and went upstairs. After some fumbling he unbolted the door and tiptoed into the room, where Preston lay like a log. The fortnight had changed him markedly. There was no longer any prospect that he would sink under his disease, as Sommers had half expected. He had grown stouter, and his flesh had a healthy tint. "It will take it out of his mind," he muttered to himself, watching the hanging jaw that fell nervelessly away from the mouth, disclosing the teeth. As he watched the man's form, so drearily promising of physical power, he heard a light footstep at the outer door, which he had left unbarred. On turning he caught the look of relief that passed over Mrs. Preston's face at the sight of the man lying quietly in his bed. What a state of fear she must live in! Without a word the two descended, Sommers carefully barring and bolting the door. When they reached her room, her manner changed, and she spoke with a note of elation in her voice: "I was _so_ afraid that you would not come again after sending me help." "I shall come as often and as long as you need me," Sommers answered, taking her hand kindly. "He has had another attack," he continued. "Mrs. Ducharme told me--I sent her out--and I suppose he's sleeping off the opiate." "Yes, it was dreadful, worse than anything yet." She uttered these words jerkily, walking up and down the room in excitement. "And I've just left the schoolhouse. The assistant superintendent was there to see me. He was kind enough, but he said it couldn't happen again. There was scandal about it now. And yesterday I heard a child, one of my pupils, say to his companion, 'She's the teacher who's got a drunken husband.'" Her voice was dreary, not rebellious. "I don't know what to do. I cannot move. It would be worse in any other neighborhood. I thought," she added in a low voice, "that he would go away, for a time at least, but his mind is so weak, and he has some trouble with walking. But he gets stronger, stronger, O God, every day! I have to see him grow stronger, and I grow weaker." "It is simply preposterous," the doctor protested in matter-of-fact tones, "to kill yourself, to put yourself in such a position for a man, who is no longer a man. For a man you cannot love," he added. "What would be the use of running away from the trouble? He has ruined my life. Alves Preston is a mere thing that eats and sleeps. She will be that kind of thing as long as she lives." "That is romantic rot," the doctor observed coldly. "No life is ruined in that way. One life has been wrecked; but you, _you_ are bigger than that life. You can recover--bury it away--and love and have children and find that it is a good thing to live. That is the beauty of human weakness--we forget ourselves of yesterday." In answer to his words her face, which he had once thought too immobile and passive for beauty, flamed with color, the dark eyes flashing beneath the broad white brow. "Am I just caught in a fog?" she murmured. "You are living in a way that would make any woman mad. I might twist myself into as many knots as you have. I might say that _I_ had caused this disaster; that March evening my hand was too true. For I knew then the man ought to die." He blurted out his admission roughly. "I knew you did," she said softly, "and that has made it easier." His voice trembled when he spoke again. "But I live with facts, not fancies. And the facts are that that ruined thing should not clog you, ruin _you_. Get rid of him in any way you will,--I advise the county asylum. Get rid of him, and do it quickly before he crazes you." When he had finished, there was an oppressive stillness in the room, as if some sentence had been declared. Mrs. Preston got up and walked to and fro, evidently battling with herself. She stopped opposite him finally. "The only thing that would justify _that_ would be to know that you grasped it all--real happiness in that one bold stroke. Such conviction can _never_ come." "Happiness!" he exclaimed scornfully. "If you mean a good, comfortable time, you won't find any certainty about _that_. But you can get freedom to live out your life--" "You fail to understand. There _is_ happiness. See,--come here." She led him to the front window, which was open toward the peaceful little lawn. On the railroad track behind the copse of scrub oak an unskilful train crew was making up a long train of freight cars. Their shouts, punctuated by the rumbling reverberations from the long train as it alternately buckled up and stretched out, was the one discord in the soft night. All else was hushed, even to the giant chimneys in the steel works. One solitary furnace lamped the growing darkness. It was midsummer now in these marshy spots, and a very living nature breathed and pulsed, even in the puddles between the house and the avenue. "You can hear it in the night air," she murmured; "the joy that comes rising up from the earth, the joy of living. Ah! that is why we are made--to have happiness and joy, to rejoice the heart of God, to make God live, for _He_ must be happiness itself; and when we are happy and feel joy in living, He must grow stronger. And when we are weak and bitter, when the world haunts us as I felt this afternoon on leaving the superintendent, when men strike and starve, and others are hard and grasping--then He must shrink and grow small and suffer. There _is_ happiness," she ended, breathing her belief as a prayer into the solitude and night. "What will you do to get it?" Sommers asked, shortly. "Do to get it?" She drew back from the window, her figure tense. "When it comes within my grasp, I will do everything, everything, and nothing shall hinder me." "Meantime?" the doctor questioned significantly. "Don't ask me!" She sank into a chair and covered her eyes with her hand. And neither spoke until the sound of footsteps was heard on the walk. "There is Mrs. Ducharme coming home from the charmer of devils. It is time for me to go," Sommers said. The room was so dark that he could not see her face, as he extended his hand; but he could feel the repressed breathing, the passionate air about her person. "Remember," he said slowly, "whenever you need me--want me for anything--send a message, and I shall come at once. We will settle this thing together." There was a sharp pressure on his hand, her thin fingers drawing him toward her involuntarily. Then his hand dropped, and he groped his way to the door. _ |
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