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Together, a novel by Robert Herrick |
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Part Two - Chapter 18 |
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_ PART TWO CHAPTER XVIII Isabelle did not regain her strength after the birth of her child. She lay nerveless and white, so that her husband, her mother, the Colonel, all became alarmed. The celebrated accoucheur who had attended her alarmed them still more. "Something's wrong,--she couldn't stand the strain. Oh, it's another case of American woman,--too finely organized for the plain animal duties. A lot of my women patients are the same way. They take child-bearing hard,--damned hard.... What's the matter with them? I don't know!" he concluded irritably. "She must just go slow until she gets back her strength." She went "slow," but Nature refused to assert itself, to proclaim the will to live. For months the days crept by with hardly a sign of change in her condition, and then began the period of doctors. The family physician, who had a reputation for diagnosis, pronounced her case "anaemia and nervous debility." "She must be built up,--baths, massage, distraction." Of course she was not to nurse her child, and the little girl was handed over to a trained nurse. Then this doctor called in another, a specialist in nerves, who listened to all that the others said, tapped her here and there, and wished the opinion of an obstetrical surgeon. After his examination there was a discussion of the advisability of "surgical interference," and the conclusion "to wait." "It may be a long time--years--before Mrs. Lane fully recovers her tone," the nerve specialist told the husband. "We must have patience. It would be a good thing to take her to Europe for a change." This was the invariable suggestion that he made to his wealthy patients when he saw no immediate results from his treatment. It could do no harm, Europe, and most of his patients liked the prescription. They returned, to be sure, in many cases in about the same condition as when they left, or merely rested temporarily,--but of course that was the fault of the patient. When Lane objected that it would be almost impossible for him to leave his duties for a trip abroad and that he did not like to have his wife go without him, the specialist advised California:-- "A mild climate where she can be out-of-doors and relaxed." Isabelle went to California with her mother, the trained nurse, and the child. But instead of the "mild climate," Pasadena happened to be raw and rainy. She disliked the hotel, and the hosts of idle, overdressed, and vulgar women. So her mother brought her back, as we have seen, and then there was talk of the Virginia Springs, "an excellent spring climate." A new doctor was called in, who had his own peculiar regime of sprays and baths, of subcutaneous medicine, and then a third nerve specialist, who said, "We must find the right key," and looked as if he might have it in his office. "The right key?" "Her combination, the secret of her vitality. We must find it for her,--distraction, a system of physical exercises, perhaps. But we must occupy the mind. Those Christian Scientists have an idea, you know,--not that I recommend their tomfoolery; but we must accomplish their results by scientific means." And he went away highly satisfied with his liberality of view.... On one vital point the doctors were hopelessly divided. Some thought Isabelle should have another child, "as soon as may be,"--it was a chance that Nature might take to right matters. The others strongly dissented: a child in the patient's present debilitated condition would be criminal. As these doctors seemed to have the best of the argument, it was decided that for the present the wife should remain sterile, and the physicians undertook to watch over the life process, to guard against its asserting its rights. The last illusions of romance seemed to go at this period. The simple old tale that a man and a woman loving each other marry and have the children that live within them and come from their mutual love has been rewritten for the higher classes of American women, with the aid of science. Health, economic pressure, the hectic struggle to survive in an ambitious world have altered the simple axioms of nature. Isabelle accepted easily the judgment of the doctors,--she had known so many women in a like case. Yet when she referred to this matter in talking to Alice Johnston, she caught an odd look on her cousin's face. "I wonder if they know, the doctors--they seem always to be finding excuses for women not to have children.... We've been all through that, Steve and I; and decided we wouldn't have anything to do with it, no matter what happened. It--tarnishes you somehow, and after all does it help? There's Lulu Baxter, living in daily fear of having a child because they think they are too poor. He gets twenty-five hundred from the road--he's under Steve, you know--and they live in a nice apartment with two servants and entertain. They are afraid of falling in the social scale, if they should live differently. But she's as nervous as a witch, never wholly well, and they'll just go on, as he rises and gets more money, adding to their expenses. They will never have money enough for children, or only for one, maybe,--no, I don't believe it pays!" "But she's so pretty, and they live nicely," Isabelle protested, and added, "There are other things to live for besides having a lot of children--" "What?" the older woman asked gravely. "Your husband"; and thinking of John's present homeless condition, she continued hastily, "and life itself,--to be some one,--you owe something to yourself." "Yes," Alice assented, smiling,--"if we only knew what it was!" "Besides if we were all like you, Alice dear, we should be paupers. Even we can't afford--" "We should be paupers together, then! No, you can't convince me--it's against Nature." "All modern life is against Nature," the young woman retorted glibly; "just at present I regard Nature as a mighty poor thing." She stretched her thin arms behind her head and turned on the lounge. "That's why the people who made this country are dying out so rapidly, giving way before Swedes and Slavs and others,--because those people are willing to have children." "Meantime we have the success!" Isabelle cried languidly. "_Apres nous_ the Slavs,--we are the flower! An aristocracy is always nourished on sterility!" "Dr. Fuller!" Alice commented.... "So the Colonel is going with you to the Springs?" "Yes, poor old Colonel!--he must get away--he's awfully broken up," and she added sombrely. "That's one trouble with having children,--you expect them to think and act like you. You can't be willing to let them be themselves." "But, Isabelle!" "Oh, I know what you are going to say about Vick. I have heard it over and over. John has said it. Mother has said it. Father looks it. You needn't bother to say it, Alice!" She glanced at her cousin mutinously. "John thought I was partly to blame; that I ought to have been able to control Vick. He speaks as if the poor boy were insane or drunk or something--because he did what he did!" "And you?" Isabelle sat upright, leaning her head thoughtfully on her hands, and staring with bright eyes at Alice. "Do you want to know what I really believe? ... I have done a lot of thinking these months, all by myself. Well, I admire Vick tremendously; he had the courage--" "Does that take courage?" "Yes! For a man like Vickers.... Oh, I suppose she is horrid and not worth it--I only hope he will never find it out! But to love any one enough to be willing, to be glad to give up your life for him, for her--why, it is tremendous, Alice! ... Here is Tots," she broke off as the nurse wheeled the baby through the hall,--"Miss Marian Lane.... Nurse, cover up her face with the veil so her ladyship won't get frostbitten," and Isabelle sank back again with a sigh on the lounge and resumed the thread of her thought. "And I am not so sure that what John objects to isn't largely the mess,--the papers, the scandal, the fact they went off without waiting for a divorce and all that. Of course that wasn't pleasant for respectable folk like the Lanes and the Prices. But why should Vickers have given up what seemed to him right, what was his life and hers, just for our prejudices about not having our names in the papers?" "That wasn't all!" "Well, I shall always believe in Vick, no matter what comes of it.... Marriage--the regular thing--doesn't seem to be such a great success with many people, I know. Perhaps life would be better if more people had Vick's courage!" Isabelle forced her point with an invalid's desire to relieve a wayward feeling and also a childish wish to shock this good cousin, who saw life simply and was so sure of herself. Alice Johnston rose with a smile. "I hope you will be a great deal stronger when you come back, dear." "I shall be--or I shall have an operation. I don't intend to remain in the noble army of N.P.'s." "How is John?" "Flourishing and busy--oh, tremendously busy! He might just as well live in New York or Washington for all I see of him." "Steve says he is very clever and successful,--you must be so proud!" Isabelle smiled. "Of course! But sometimes I think I should like a substitute husband, one for everyday use, you know!" "There are plenty of that kind!" laughed Alice. "But I don't believe they would satisfy you wholly." "Perhaps not.... How is Steve? Does he like his new work?" "Yes," Alice replied without enthusiasm. "He's working very hard, too." "Oh, men love it,--it makes them feel important." "Did you ever think, Belle, that men have difficulties to meet,--problems that we never dream of?" "Worse than the child-bearing question?" queried Isabelle, kicking out the folds of her tea-gown with a slippered foot. "Well, different; harder, perhaps.... Steve doesn't talk them over as he used to with me." "Too tired. John never talks to me about business. We discuss what the last doctor thinks, and how the baby is, and whether we'll take the Jackson house or build or live at the Monopole and go abroad, and Nan Lawton's latest,--really vital things, you see! Business is such a bore." The older woman seemed to have something on her mind and sat down again at the end of the lounge. "By the way," Isabelle continued idly, "did you know that the Falkners were coming to St. Louis to live? John found Rob a place in the terminal work. It isn't permanent, but Bessie was crazy to come, and it may be an opening. She is a nice thing,--mad about people." "But, Isabelle," her cousin persisted, "don't you want to know the things that make your husband's life,--that go down to the roots?" "If you mean business, no, I don't. Besides they are confidential matters, I suppose. He couldn't make me understand...." "They have to face the fight, the men; make the decisions that count--for character." "Of course,--John attends to that side and I to mine. We should be treading on each other's toes if I tried to decide his matters for him!" "But when they are questions of right and wrong--" "Don't worry. Steve and John are all right. Besides they are only officers. You don't believe all that stuff in the magazines about Senator Thomas and the railroads? John says that is a form of modern blackmail." "I don't know what to believe," the older woman replied. "I know it's terrible,--it's like war!" "Of course it's war, and men must do the fighting." "And fight fair." "Of course,--as fair as the others. What are you driving at?" "I wonder if the A. and P. always fights fair?" "It isn't a charitable organization, my dear.... But Steve and John are just officers. They don't have to decide. They take their orders from headquarters and carry them out." "No matter what they are?" "Naturally,--that's what officers are for, isn't it? If they don't want to carry them out, they must resign." "But they can't always resign," "Why not?" "Because of you and me and the children!" "Oh, don't worry about it! They don't worry. That's what I like a man for. If he's good for anything, he isn't perpetually pawing himself over." This did not seem wholly to satisfy Alice, but she leaned over Isabelle and kissed her:-- "Only get well, my dear, and paw some of your notions over,--it won't do you any harm!" That evening when the Lanes were alone, after they had discussed the topics that Isabelle had enumerated, with the addition of the arrangements for the trip to the Springs, Isabelle asked casually:-- "John, is it easy to be honest in business?" "That depends," he replied guardedly, "on the business and the man. Why?" "You don't believe what those magazine articles say about the Senator and the others?" "I don't read them." "Why?" "Because the men who write them don't understand the facts, and what they know they distort--for money." "Um," she observed thoughtfully. "But are there facts--like those? _You_ know the facts." "I don't know all of them." "Are those you know straight or crooked?" she asked, feeling considerable interest in the question, now that it was started. "I don't know what you would mean by crooked,--what is it you want to know?" "Are you honest?" she asked with mild curiosity. "I mean in the way of railroad business. Of course I know you are other ways." Lane smiled at her childlike seriousness. "I always try to do what seems to me right under the circumstances." "But the circumstances are sometimes--queer?" "The circumstances are usually complex." "The circumstances are complex," she mused aloud. "I'll tell Alice that." "What has Alice to do with it?" "She seems bothered about the circumstances--that's all,--the circumstances and Steve." "I guess Steve can manage the circumstances by himself," he replied coldly, turning over the evening paper. "She probably reads the magazines and believes all she hears." "All intelligent women read the magazines--and believe what they hear or else what their husbands tell them," she rejoined flippantly. Presently, as Lane continued to look over the stock page of the paper, she observed:-- "Don't you suppose that in Vickers's case the circumstances may have been--complex?" Lane looked at her steadily. "I can't see what that has to do with the question." "Oh?" she queried mischievously. He considered the working of her mind as merely whimsical, but she had a sense of logical triumph over the man. Apparently he would make allowances of "circumstances" in business, his life, that he would not admit in private affairs. As he kissed her and was turning out the light, before joining the Colonel for another cigar, she asked:-- "Supposing that you refused to be involved in circumstances that were--complex? What would happen?" "What a girl!" he laughed cheerfully. "For one thing I think we should not be going to the Springs to-morrow in a private car, or buying the Jackson house--or any other. Now put it all out of your head and have a good rest." He kissed her again, and she murmured wearily:-- "I'm so useless,--they should kill things like me! How can you love me?" She was confident that he did love her, that like so many husbands he had accepted her invalidism cheerfully, with an unconscious chivalry for the wife who instead of flowering forth in marriage had for the time being withered. His confidence, in her sinking moods like this, that it would all come right, buoyed her up. And John was a wise man as well as a good husband; the Colonel trusted him, admired him. Alice Johnston's doubts slipped easily from her mind. Nevertheless, there were now two subjects of serious interest that husband and wife would always avoid,--Vickers, and business honesty! She lay there feeling weak and forlorn before the journey, preoccupied with herself. These days she was beset with a tantalizing sense that life was slipping past her just beyond her reach, flowing like a mighty river to issues that she was not permitted to share. And while she was forced to lie useless on the bank, her youth, her own life, was somehow running out, too. Just what it was that she was missing she could not say,--something alluring, something more than her husband's activity, than her child, something that made her stretch out longing hands in the dark.... She would not submit to invalidism. _ |
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