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CHAPTER IX. OF FRIENDSHIPS
Again four years had gone by.
In the Atkinson household on the hill farm, already deprived of her mother,
a shocking change had taken place. The twins, twenty years old at the time,
had one evening declared to their father their intention to go to Winnipeg
in order to learn some business or trade. Mr. Atkinson had absolutely refused
his consent. It had come to terrible things, explanations of an acerbity
which would not have seemed possible between father and children. They had
left that very day; the breach seemed irreparable. Mr. Atkinson, when he told
Jane of what had happened, did not betray how much he felt wounded. He engaged
a married man to do the field-work which he could no longer attend to himself
and built a small cottage for him in the south-east corner of his farm. Jane
felt all the more that she could not burden him with the things she herself
was sinking under. These changes "at home" as characteristically, she still
called it, imposed on her a strict silence.
In her own, more intimate life, there had also been a great change. Norah, the child, was growing up and as the years went by began to resemble her father more and more strikingly. She was going to school now; and the whole household had to take that fact into account. Jane often reproached herself with the lack of an inner relation between her and the little girl.
Her social prominence in Stockton persisted, though she received less and was much more exclusive than she had been at the beginning of her married life. But her little affairs were all the more eagerly looked forward to. Yet, social life on the large scale had come to mean less and less to her since the circle of the four intimates -consisting, besides herself, of Ann Aikins, Stephen Carter, and "Joe" Henderson, the surgeon - had begun to meet almost daily, and quite informally, at her house.
The house itself had, during the last few years, undergone one
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important change: the whole of the upper floor had been rearranged and furnished throughout, so that Jane and Jim had entirely separate quarters, consisting each of two rooms. This had contributed towards a development in their relationship which had already been begun: they lived as so many people live, in innumerable households - each going pretty well his own way and considering the other only in as much as appearances must be preserved. This development was helped along by the fact that Jim was absent a great deal. That great and important piece of business - a promotion on a large scale - planned at the meeting for which Jane had leant her house was maturing at last: the little city of Stockton was drifting towards a "boom"; and the organisation of a nation-wide sales-force took Jim away for weeks at a time. In fact, it came to the point where his house was no more than an occasional "pied-à-terre" for him where he spent days as compared with the weeks during which he was absent. The breach between him and Jane had been, superficially, scarred over; and, whenever he spent a few days at home, there was, on his part, a reawakening of his former ardency, for Jane seemed to become more and more beautiful. She found these occasions distasteful; but she did not deny herself; it did not seem worth while. Yet she felt subtly defiled by them and discouraged their approach by an increasing icyness, often, now, making use of the presence of Mlle. Lefèvre, the governess of the child, in order to keep him within the bounds of cool conventionality. Jim, who seemed on the verge of a reversal of his whole attitude towards life, and especially towards domesticity, came to harbour a genuine hatred of this quiet and unattractive Frenchwoman. He was getting to be heavy, physically, and, perhaps as a consequence of that, inclined to take his business ironically; the fact was that a sense of the futility of his life was growing upon him. Jane was troubled by a sort of indistinct premonition of the development which was going on in him and which was leading him back to her.
She was troubled by it; for, the less her marriage had kept its
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promise to her - the promise to give her own life a new meaning - the more she had reverted to the preoccupations of her girlhood. She had once more become a student of literature. Truth to tell, this new trend of her interests, or this renewed trend, had taken its inception with the receipt of the little volume of Baudelaire's poems which the "magnificent Jew" had sent her. She had been slow in her appreciation of it. Literature had meant to her, as a girl, the presentation of a world within the world, meant to hold up before man's eyes an image of things as they ought to be, not as they were. Slowly, as she read and re-read such poems as "Les Phares", she changed her ideas: if she had, at present, been called upon to define what literature meant to her, she would without hesitation have answered, "A criticism of life", Thus she had become what she herself called "a modernist". Nobody was more surprised than she to find that this very development in her was destined to cement the friendship between her and the two men among her three intimates. When this volume - and many others which were added to it, began to trail about wherever Jane liked to sit, it led to the discovery that Stephen Carter was not only a lover of poetry but, in a modest way, an adept in the art himself; and Dr. Henderson had revealed to her his identity with the pseudonymous author of certain volumes of criticism which had their audience in England and, to a less extent, in the United States. Jane was amazed to find how little a person is apt to know even of his friends when he associated with them in a purely external, though perhaps daily intercourse. Yet, sometimes she felt that even after this discovery had been made, there remained between her and these friends a gulf that was never bridged.
As far as Ann Aikins was concerned, the original attraction between the two women was, of course, based on common memories of what now appeared as the glorious time of youth. Since that night of Jane's reception, however - when Ann had assisted her in pouring tea - there was added to this background of common memories a common mystery
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in their lives. Both had been among the most courted belles of their girlhood; both had been engaged to men whom they did not marry; both had married by reason of a love which had swept them off their feet as it were. They never discussed each other's affairs fully; some reticence kept them from doing that; but they communicated their tragedies to each other in the briefest possible hints.
"Just what..." Jane asked one day when Ann had dropped an indignant epigram about marriage.
"I know what you mean," Ann said when Jane did not proceed. "I'll tell you in a single word. Alcohol."
"You don't mean it, dear!" Jane exclaimed.
"Like so many medical men," Ann said. "And you?"
"Business, vulgarity, and...other things. Americanism."
Ann shrugged her regal shoulders and laughed at the succinct summary. She wore a large beauty - patch on her left cheek, near the lobe of her ear; and it set her high colouring off to admiration; in spite of the fulness of her forms it made her look girlish. Jane bent over to kiss her on her brow. Her skin was not smooth; its fine, roughened texture, with its dark reds and tanned whites was one of her greatest attractions though she complained of it. It gave her face the appearance of those much-admired Lombard blondes whom certain painters of the late renaissance loved to paint.
Things seemed to be drifting along. Not that Jane did not sometimes become conscious of the fact; and when she did, she tried to face issues. She was thirty-one, perhaps in the zenith of her beauty. Her hair, coal-black, glittering in overhead light with a semi-matte lustre, encased her pale head like a helmet. She dressed with the meticulous care of women who have nothing to do and who feel their own uselessness. She knew that, according to the common psychology of fashionable women, she was, and had for some time been, due for a reawakening of passion. Sometimes she longed for it; sometimes, in a
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sort of consciously idle and half frivolous curiosity, she wondered how she would behave should it come to her.
She knew there were men who were waiting for the least sign of encouragement in order to make love to her. On one or two occasions, she had received letters from Charles Rosebaum. They were perfectly formal letters; such as he might have written to any woman with whom he had become acquainted in a purely social way. But there were two facts which made them eloquent. Firstly, that he should write to her at all, after having met her for half an hour, years ago; secondly, that these letters, calling her attention to some books recently published in France, Germany, Norway were invariably composed in such a way as to require no answer. Instinctively she felt that thereby he placed her in the position of making advances should she choose to answer them. In morbid moods she sometimes played with the idea of doing so, in order to see what would come of it.
Once, in such a mood, she spoke of him to Ann Aikins without giving details . Ann drew her on. At last she let herself go and avowed that she often could not keep her thoughts away from this man seen eight years ago and for such a short time.
"Is he a man of culture?" Ann asked.
"Emphatically so."
"But, my dear, don't you find that cultivated men on this side of the world are almost without exception preternaturally old? Look at Joe, at uncle Carter."
"He isn't."
"Tell me more about him. How does he look?"
"Like a young Moses."
Ann laughed. "I don't seem him."
"Michelangelo's Moses. The hand in the beard; the imperious look. Imagine him at thirty instead of fifty."
Ann closed her eyes in order to intensify her mental vision. "Yes," she said. "Impulsive and imperious. But Moses was a Jew."
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"So is he."
Ann sat up. "Really?"
It was at this point that matters seemed to run away with Jane. "Don't make a mistake," she said. "All that is long past. But, had I met him with my present knowledge of life, free, being free myself, I should have said to him if need be, You are He. There would have been no need; he'd have anticipated me and said, You are She."
"But, my dear! Such men are not monogamic!"
"It would not have mattered!"
"Well," Ann said judiciously, "I don't know. But this encourages me to tell you of Bill."
Jane shuddered at the name. "Who is he?" she asked.
Ann laughed. "A drayman in love with me."
Jane also laughed. "Has he told you so?"
Suddenly Ann looked steadily into her friend's eye. "Bill is no coward."
Jane gasped.
"What is more," Ann went on, "I sometimes say to myself that, if I were not a coward, I'd run away with him."
"No," Jane said. "It isn't cowardice on your part, dear. I'll never believe it."
Ann looked at her in a queer way. "Have you ever given Joe a thought?"
"Dr. Henderson? In that way? What makes you ask?"
"It is no secret that you have saved him."
Jane sat up as if pricked with a needle. "I? Saved him? From what?"
"Don't you know?"
"I don't even know that there is anything to know."
"Don't you even know why old Mrs. Henderson, his mother - a puritan, mind you - courts the married woman with whom her son is in love?"
"Indeed I don't. If what you say is correct."
"If!" Ann exclaimed. "It's an open secret. Some guardians of
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morality have blamed the mother for her attitude."
"So I am the subject of gossip?"
Ann shrugged her shoulders. "Who is not? This city is too small for people to mind only what is their business."
"But you have not yet told me what I am supposed to have saved him from."
"Same as my worthy husband."
"Is that a fact?"
"Dearest," Ann laughed, "you are almost solemn. One might think you do take an interest in him."
"I do," Jane said. "He is one of my closest friends. He is an almost daily guest in this house. We call each other by our first names. We are interested in the same things. How can I help taking an interest in him?"
"Well, I will tell you what everybody knows. He used to drink. They said, the very boldness of his operations, most of which were successful, was due to the fact. It was a common joke to say of a patient of his that alcohol had saved him; nobody in his full senses would have dared to do what Joe did, they said. And he passes for a timid man. He does not drive his own car."
"And?" Jane asked, a strange look in her eyes.
"And nobody has seen him drink since you set foot in this town."
When Ann left, Jane felt profoundly disturbed. She could have wished Ann had not told her. In order to preserve your inner freedom in the face of certain situations it is best not to scan them too curiously. Jane knew that she was passing through a phase of her life when all things seemed complex and involved because she herself had lost sight of goal and path. And when we most wish to avoid temptation, the devil makes it his business to provide opportunities.--
A few days later Dr. Henderson and Stephen Carter were sitting with Jane in her library. On the little table to the right a few volumes of Verlaine's were lying open.
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Suddenly Stephen Carter lifted himself to his feet, saying, "Thin, thin, I tell you. Thin and grey. He hasn't led the life to give us the great things. But you'll have to excuse me. I don't feel well. I've caught a summer cold, I suppose; they're worse than winter colds. I believe I'll go home."
Jim was away on one of his business trips. Strange as it seemed, it was the absolutely first time in these long years that Jane and Joe were left alone in the house. She felt at once that things were coming to some issue.
Dr. Henderson seemed to feel it, too. Perhaps he merely felt that a long-waited-for moment was at last at hand. He stood and bent over the open volumes. Then he half turned and looked at Jane, straightening his back. "May I stay?" he asked with a curious smile.
"Of course," Jane said.
He turned to the table and picked one of the volumes up. Jane never took her eyes off his small, delicate, and finely-built figure. Yes, he was fine and delicate, she thought, in body and in mind.
"Thin, Stephen says. Grey. Perhaps. But there's beauty." And slowly he read:
"Triste, triste était mon âme
"À cause, à cause d'une femme."
Jane could not help it; she looked at him in a different light since Ann had told her of what gossip presumed to be fact. Thus gossip has the power of making fact out of fiction.
Having read the couplet, slowly and without emphasis, he stopped and looked at her. Jane had the impression as if he had chosen the lines by mere chance; but she found herself wondering whether his admiration or love for them was for the poetry only or the revealing personal reference to himself. When she saw his lips tremble, her question seemed answered. It was time for her to act.
She took all her courage in her hand. She was going to use his own tool, the surgeon's knife. Yet a thought hammered away in her
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unconscious self, I like him! I like his fine, delicate thought! His temper! I am even fond of him. Fond of my friend whom I do not want to lose; for his loss would leave me that much more alone! I could say to his mother, without having to blush, We both love him. But I made a vow at the altar; it was a mistaken vow which I should not have made-but having made it, it is my nature that I cannot depart from it. Not now, not ever.
Something of what was coming was somehow conveyed to him through the strangeness of her look. Had it not been for that look - which itself was a consequence of her new knowledge of what lived in his heart, they might have gone on as before. He blanched and stood rigid. For the sudden presence of this moment, created by the chance quotation from a book, was as unexpected to him as to her.
And, in turn, the expression of his face made it impossible for her not to go on and bring things to an issue. Her eyes still on him, she rose.
They were separated by half the length of the room. Between them, low down, stood a brass-topped tabouret with an ivory paper-knife on it. For a moment they saw nothing else but each other and, in the light reflected from below, from the brass top of the tabouret, that paper-knife on it.
Seeing what was in her heart - not love but pity - he wished to postpone what was coming; and yet he felt that it was too late.
In her mind, thoughts seemed to flit past some unknown centre from which they were judged. One motion, one word -and this man would rush forward and throw himself at her feet or enfold her in his arms. She knew it; and yet, sadly, she had no desire to make that motion or to say that word. She knew, if she could summon or simulate that desire, they would be lovers; but that was exactly what they could never be.
As her thoughts had reached that point, the tension between them had become so great that it seemed to take bodily form. It was as if
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between them the silence reared up and then folded over him, crushing him with its weight.
For a moment her eyes became unseeing; when she refocused them, she saw tears in the eyes of the man. With a sudden seizure about her heart she said, "Joe!" and she knew that it was not at all what she had meant to say.
But he understood. He smiled and shook his small head so that the light played in golden reflexes over his short, smooth, auburn hair.
"Jane," he said, "you have pronounced a sentence of death."
"On whom?" Her voice failed.
"On my better life."
"Joe," she said, "I have heard things which I cannot believe."
"They are true. There has been only one thing which has held me up, out of the mire, since you first came to town."
She raised her hands. "What is it, Joe!" It was not a question; it was an exclamation of deprecating despair.
"How could I tell you?"
"Joe!" She dropped back into her chair. "Sit down, dear. Let us discuss this!"
He obeyed. "Is there anything else to be said?"
"Yes. This. You face woman, you face me with your animal nature. As if there were nothing else. Everything else you can have." He nodded. "I know everything except love."
"You can have even love. You can have it all except the symbols of love."
"The symbols, as you call them, melt two lives into one. What is the use of all this? We are discussing a thing which must never be discussed. The moment it is touched on in speech, it becomes impossible in fact. It is the great mystery of life. I might just as well use scientific terms. It is selection. I have been dismissed." He rose.
"No. Joe, listen. Don't go. I can't let you go."
He stood and looked at her, a challenging smile on his lips.
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Despondently she shrugged her shoulders.
"You see," he said.
She rose and followed him into the hall. While he fetched his hat, she stood at the entrance to the cloak room. She was under the sway of a turmoil of conflicting impulses. She felt that she must keep her friend; but she could not do so at the price he demanded. And yet, was the price so great? Who was she that she should regard herself in this matter? And suddenly she stepped into the cloak room where it was almost dark, the only light coming through the window, from an arc in the deserted street.
She took his head between her hands and kissed his brow. "Joe," she whispered, "this is more than I can bear. You don't know how lonely I am. The thing you ask, in one way of looking at it, seems such a trifle..."
He laughed. To her, it was a terrible laugh. "If it is a trifle," he said, "I will not have it. It must be the supreme, unconscious gift of a love that knows not self."
Once more she kissed him: alms given to a beggar. He felt it; she felt it. Her arms sank down.
He went to the door; and she followed him, wordless.
With an almost formal gesture he held out his hand; and she put hers in it, limply.
A moment later he had turned into the street at the gate. She looked after him, seeing his hat move horizontally along, above the hedge.
Several days went by. Jane lived in unceasing agitation, restless because she felt that she had determined the course of a life. Yet, as if to justify herself, she kept repeating, He, too, faced me with his animal nature!
Then, one forenoon, Jim came home, to leave again at once. At lunch - the only meal at which they met - he remarked casually, "I suppose you have heard that young Henderson has committed suicide? There went a good prospect."
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Jane came near fainting. She had to grip the edge of the table in order to steady herself.
Jim had hardly gone when she went to her library and called up Ann Aikins over the telephone. Her friend was not at home.
So she sat down at her little desk and wrote a note to
Stephen Carter, asking him, if he was not too sick, to come to her at once. He had no telephone in his house; nobody, he said, was ever going to have a chance of breaking in on his leisure or his rest by jingling a bell. She sent one of the maids to deliver the missive.
He came. Jane was watching for him and opened the door herself.
She led the way to the privacy of her room and closed both doors.
"Stephen," she said, "I suppose you have heard?"
He gravely nodded his head.
"I'll never forgive myself!"
He squinted a look at her.
"He was here the other night, you remember when you were ill and left us alone. I drove him to despair; and now, this!"
Stephen Carter drew his breath in through his teeth, with a wheezing whistle. "That's the way you explain it, is it?"
"It's the only way I can explain it, isn't it?"
"It's what set the thing going. But it isn't all."
"Not all?"
He was on his feet and caught her by an elbow. Then, turning her away from him, he held both her arms. Thus he spoke, without raising his voice, and yet imparting to it a terrible vigour. "Jane Forrest," he said, "Jane Atkinson that was, can you stand it to see life? Can you stand it to look the sphinx in her eye?"
She fought to free herself; but he held her. "I can stand the truth," she cried. "I cannot stand this."
He released her. "Sit down," he said. "I will tell you all."
He sat down himself. "I'll be brutal. You worship idols. I must destroy them. A desperate illness demands desperate remedies. You
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suffer from a common disease, a disease of your courage. When, timidly, you dare to be you, you get scared at the consequences." He stopped for a moment before he went on. "Last Thursday morning Dr. Henderson was called to Fisher Landing by the local physician, Dr. Weatherhead who is not a surgeon. It was a case of acute appendicitis. It was understood, over the telephone, that Dr. Weatherhead was to administer the anaesthetic. Unfortunately, when Dr. Henderson arrived, Dr. Weatherhead was himself laid up with a sudden attack of lumbago and unable to move; the thing had come on like a stroke of lightning. Mrs. Weatherhead, a very energetic woman, had, however, already phoned to a certain Dr. Andrews, a dentist practising in town who happens to be a skilled anaesthetician. He had promised to meet Dr. Henderson at the house of the patient within half an hour.
"Now it had already been observed that Dr. Henderson was by no means sober when he arrived. He used the short delay before the operation to meet a number of local tipplers at the hotel and to reach the final stage of intoxication. Then a gruesome scene was enacted at the house of the poor woman.
"There, the parlor had been transformed into an improvised operating room. A mattress had been placed on the dining table and covered with a rubber sheet. The husband of the patient and the nurse attending the case had transferred her to this bed. The dentist was present.
"At last Dr. Henderson arrived, hardly able to handle himself. Still, though not without misgivings, the dentist administered the anaesthetic; the nurse, an elderly, experienced woman, prepared the field; and Dr. Henderson, who seemed somewhat sobered, made the incision. But, when everything was ready, he suddenly lost all hold on himself; perhaps from the fumes of the ether added to the alcohol which he had imbibed. When he reached into the wound, with his forceps, he did so in the wrong place, unable to find the appendix. After several fruitless attempts he staggered back and sat down, looking
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stupidly at dentist and nurse. These two, boiling over with indignation, held a quick consultation. As luck would have it, the dentist had assisted at many such operations. He stepped forward, reached in with his hand, found the thing, cut it, and stitched the intestine up. That moment the patient stirred; and the dentist had to attend to the anaesthesia. Dr. Henderson had looked on with glazed eyes. He now rose from his chair and reached for needle and silk. But, as he bent over the patient's body, his knees gave way, and he fell with his face into the wound. The nurse lifted him, pushed him aside, and closed the incision. The patient is on the way to recovery now.
"But dentist and nurse were indignant. When Dr. Henderson had gone, they talked matters over and came to the conclusion that they could not let this thing rest. Between them they drew up a report, signed it under oath before a J.P., and sent it in to the licensing board of physicians at Winnipeg. At once an investigation was ordered, and a copy of the report was sent to Dr. Halstrom in this city. He is a member of that board. He saw Henderson and gave him a copy of the charges made. Henderson who was by that time completely sobered, demanded time to think his answer over. Then he came to see me and showed me the report. He admitted its probable truth.
"Now, my dear, I wish you'd take a hold on yourself before I go on."
"We were both agreed that no professional man could face that charge without being able to deny its truth. He could do only one thing: sentence himself and execute the verdict. He had himself arrived at that conclusion."
"But there was a difficulty which I understood the moment he had told me what had happened here at this house on Wednesday night. He knew that, the moment he was dead, this thing would be hushed up, and his death would be liable to misinterpretation. That was the reason why he saw me before he did what he had to do. I took it upon myself to tell you the truth. I have done so. Basta."
Jane sat white and aghast. Then she shivered. She lived in a nightmare. For several minutes not a word was said. At last her hands
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fluttered in an erratic motion. "How terrible!" she said tonelessly. And, as if that word had restored the power of speech to her, she added, "And it was I who drove him back to his failing."
Stephen Carter frowned as he looked sideways at her. Then he spoke very rapidly, the words tumbling over each other as he pronounced them. "My dear, I undertook the task to tell you because I am your friend and was his till I knew what he had done at this house on Wednesday night. This has gone quite far enough. I have something to add which I had never intended saying to you while I am alive. I see it is necessary in order to work a cure in your own disease."
Jane heard what he said; but, she being preoccupied with a thought of her own, it did not enter her consciousness just yet. She shrank in her chair and stammered with colourless lips, "Why is it? Why is it that I should be mixed up in this? Is life nothing but a disintegration?"
"Disintegration!" Stephen Carter exclaimed scornfully; and with the force of hammer blows he went on, "Life is an integration my dear, if we are what we are. If we are brave and true to ourselves. I don't disintegrate; and you mustn't."
"What was that?" she asked almost distractedly. "You said you had something to add?"
He went on without even lowering his head. "Do you think he was the only one who was in the case in which he professed himself to be?"
In extreme agitation she rose. "Stephen! Don't say that! Don't deprive me of the last friend I have!"
"I won't," he said with a steady look. "Not if you can grasp what I'm going to say. If I love you, what business is it of yours unless you love me?"
She stared at him.
He, too, rose, so agitated that, for the first and only time since their acquaintance, she saw him flinging his arms as he spoke. "What kind of a man is he, my dear, who, because he loves a young woman,
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must force her to love him; or, unless she does, must intrude some horror into her life, some vice or weakness; or the mistaken idea that she is guilty of his death. I told that man before he did what he had to do; I told him what I thought of his action, not at the bedside of the poor woman whom he might have killed; but the night before, at this house where, knowing how you might take his death, he had poured poison into your life. What is death? The necessary end of all life, a condition of that very life. But a poisoned life is a real evil. I want to save you from that."
She had a wan smile on her lips.
"I know," he cried, "what you want to say. You are wrong. If you allow what I have said and what I had to say in order to make you see the other thing in its true light -if you allow that to stand between us, you will commit a sin against yourself. I am an ugly mass of living flesh; but within me there is a living soul; and it is clean. Never while I live shall I speak of this to you again. I am not a sex-mad whipster. And...there are others."
Slowly, as he stood before her, glowing in all his ugliness, she turned to him with a sad smile and said, "Stephen, forgive me. You are a hero."
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