Damaged Goods Part 3

"And I know also," said the doctor, with a smile. "There is your prescription. You are going to take it to the drugstore and have it put up."

George took the prescription, mechanically, but whispered, "No, sir."

"Yes, sir, you are going to do as everybody else does."

"No, because my situation is not that of everybody else. I know what I am going to do."

Said the doctor: "Five times out of ten, in the chair where you are sitting, people talk like that, perfectly sincerely. Each one believes himself more unhappy than all the others; but after thinking it over, and listening to me, they understand that this disease is a companion with whom one can live. Just as in every household, one gets along at the cost of mutual concessions, that's all. Come, sir, I tell you again, there is nothing about it that is not perfectly ordinary, perfectly natural, perfectly common; it is an accident which can happen to any one. It is a great mistake that people speak if this as the 'French Disease,' for there is none which is more universal. Under the picture of this disease, addressing myself to those who follow the oldest profession in the world, I would write the famous phrase: 'Here is your master. It is, it was, or it must be.'"

George was putting the prescription into the outside pocket of his coat, stupidly, as if he did not know what he was doing. "But, sir," he exclaimed, "I should have been spared!"

"Why?" inquired the other. "Because you are a man of position, because you are rich? Look around you, sir. See these works of art in my room. Do you imagine that such things have been presented to me by chimney-sweeps?"

"But, Doctor," cried George, with a moan, "I have never been a libertine. There was never any one, you understand me, never any one could have been more careful in his pleasures. If I were to tell you that in all my life I have only had two mistresses, what would you answer to that?"

"I would answer, that a single one would have been sufficient to bring you to me."

"No, sir!" cried George. "It could not have been either of those women."

He went on to tell the doctor about his first mistress, and then about Lizette. Finally he told about Henriette, how much he adored her. He could really use such a word--he loved her most tenderly. She was so good--and he had thought himself so lucky!

As he went on, he could hardly keep from going to pieces. "I had everything," he exclaimed, "everything a man needed! All who knew me envied me. And then I had to let those fellows drag me off to that miserable supper-party! And now here I am! My future is ruined, my whole existence poisoned! What is to become of me? Everybody will avoid me--I shall be a pariah, a leper!"

He paused, and then in sudden wild grief exclaimed, "Come, now! Would it not be better that I should take myself out of the way? At least, I should not suffer any more. You see that there could not be any one more unhappy than myself--not any one, I tell you, sir, not any one!"

Completely overcome, he began to weep in his handkerchief.

The doctor got up, and went to him. "You must be a man," he said, "and not cry like a child."

"But sir," cried the young man, with tears running down his cheeks, "if I had led a wild life, if I had pa.s.sed my time in dissipation with chorus girls, then I could understand it. Then I would say that I had deserved it."

The doctor exclaimed with emphasis, "No, no! You would not say it.

However, it is of no matter--go on."

"I tell you that I would say it. I am honest, and I would say that I had deserved it. But no, I have worked, I have been a regular grind. And now, when I think of the shame that is in store for me, the disgusting things, the frightful catastrophes to which I am condemned--"

"What is all this you are telling me?" asked the doctor, laughing.

"Oh, I know, I know!" cried the other, and repeated what his friend had told him about the man in a wheel-chair. "And they used to call me handsome Raoul! That was my name--handsome Raoul!"

"Now, my dear sir," said the doctor, cheerfully, "wipe your eyes one last time, blow your nose, put your handkerchief into your pocket, and hear me dry-eyed."

George obeyed mechanically. "But I give you fair warning," he said, "you are wasting your time."

"I tell you--" began the other.

"I know exactly what you are going to tell me!" cried George.

"Well, in that case, there is nothing more for you to do here--run along."

"Since I am here," said the patient submissively, "I will hear you."

"Very well, then. I tell you that if you have the will and the perseverance, none of the things you fear will happen to you."

"Of course, it is your duty to tell me that."

"I will tell you that there are one hundred thousand like you in Paris, alert, and seemingly well. Come, take what you were just saying--wheel-chairs. One doesn't see so many of them."

"No, that's true," said George.

"And besides," added the doctor, "a good many people who ride in them are not there for the cause you think. There is no more reason why you should be the victim of a catastrophe than any of the one hundred thousand. The disease is serious, nothing more."

"You admit that it is a serious disease?" argued George.

"Yes."

"One of the most serious?"

"Yes, but you have the good fortune--"

"The GOOD fortune?"

"Relatively, if you please. You have the good fortune to be infected with one of the diseases over which we have the most certain control."

"Yes, yes," exclaimed George, "but the remedies are worse than the disease."

"You deceive yourself," replied the other.

"You are trying to make me believe that I can be cured?"

"You can be."

"And that I am not condemned?"

"I swear it to you."

"You are not deceiving yourself, you are not deceiving me? Why, I was told--"

The doctor laughed, contemptuously. "You were told, you were told! I'll wager that you know the laws of the Chinese concerning party-walls."

"Yes, naturally," said George. "But I don't see what they have to do with it."

"Instead of teaching you such things," was the reply, "it would have been a great deal better to have taught you about the nature and cause of diseases of this sort. Then you would have known how to avoid the contagion. Such knowledge should be spread abroad, for it is the most important knowledge in the world. It should be found in every newspaper."

This remark gave George something of a shock, for his father had owned a little paper in the provinces, and he had a sudden vision of the way subscribers would have fallen off, if he had printed even so much as the name of this vile disease.

"And yet," pursued the doctor, "you publish romances about adultery!"

"Yes," said George, "that's what the readers want."