Sylvia's Marriage Part 25

When Sylvia and her husband came into the room, the faces of both of them were white. Sylvia stopped near the door-way; and poor Aunt Varina fluttered about, in agony of soul. When van Tuiver went to the cradle, she hurried to his side, and sought to awaken the little one with gentle nudges. Quite unexpectedly to her, van Tuiver sought to pick up the infant; she helped him, and he stood, holding it awkwardly, as if afraid it might go to pieces in his arms.

So any man might appear, with his first infant; but to Sylvia it seemed the most tragic sight she had ever seen in her life. She gave a low cry, "Douglas!" and he turned, and she saw his face was working with the feeling he was ashamed for anyone to see. "Oh, Douglas," she whispered, "I'm so _sorry_ for you!" At which Aunt Varina decided that it was time for her to make her escape.

4. But the trouble between these two were not such as could be settled by any burst of emotion. The next day they were again in a dispute, for he had come to ask her word of honour that she would never see me again, and would give him my letters to be returned unopened. This last was what she had let her father do in the case of Frank Shirley; and she had become certain in her own mind that she had done wrong.

But he was insistent in his demand; declaring that it should be obvious to her there could be no peace of mind for him so long as my influence continued in her life.

"But surely," protested Sylvia, "to hear Mary Abbott's explanation----"

"There can be no explanation that is not an insult to your husband, and to those who are caring for you. I am speaking in this matter not merely for myself, but for your physicians, who know this woman, heard her menaces and her vulgarity. It is their judgment that you should be protected at all hazards from further contact with her."

"Douglas," she argued, "you must realize that I am in distress of mind about this matter----"

"I certainly realize that."

"And if you are thinking of my welfare, you should choose a course that would set my mind at rest. But when you come to me and ask me that I should not even read a letter from my friend--don't you realize what you suggest to me, that there is something you are afraid for me to know?"

"I do not attempt to deny my fear of this woman. I have seen how she has been able to poison your mind with suspicions----"

"Yes, Douglas--but now that has been done. What else is there to fear from her?"

"I have no idea what. She is a bitter, jealous woman, with a mind full of hatred; and you are an innocent girl, who cannot judge about these matters. What idea have you of the world in which you live, of the slanders to which a man in your husband's position is exposed?"

"I am not quite such a child as that----"

"You have simply no idea, I tell you. I remember your consternation when we first met, and I told you about the woman who had written me a begging letter, and got an interview with me, and then started screaming, and refused to leave the house till I had paid her a lot of money. You had never heard such stories, had you? Yet it is the kind of thing that is happening to rich men continually; it was one of the first rules I was taught, never to let myself be alone with a strange woman, no matter of what age, or under what circ.u.mstances."

"But, I a.s.sure you, I would not listen to such people----"

"You are asking right now to listen! And you would be influenced by her--you could not help it, any more than you can help being distressed about what she has already said. She intimated to Dr. Perrin that she believed that I had been a man of depraved life, and that my wife and child were now paying the penalty. How can I tell what vile stories concerning me she may not have heard? How could I have any peace of mind while I knew that she was free to pour them into your ear?"

Sylvia sat dumb with questions she would not utter, hovering on the tip of her tongue.

He took her silence for acquiesence, and went on, quickly, "Let me give you an ill.u.s.tration. A friend of mine whom you know well--I might as well tell you his name, it was Freddie Atkins--was at supper with some theatrical women; and one of them, not having any idea that Freddie knew me, proceeded to talk about me, and how she had met me, and where we had been together--about my yacht, and my castle in Scotland, and I don't know what all else. It seems that this woman had been my mistress for several years; she told quite glibly about me and my habits. Freddie got the woman's picture, on some pretext or other, and brought it to me; I had never laid eyes on her in my life. He could hardly believe it, and to prove it to him I offered to meet the woman, under another name.

We sat in a restaurant, and she told the tale to Freddie and myself together--until finally he burst out laughing, and told her who I was."

He paused, to let this sink in. "Now, suppose your friend, Mary Abbott, had met that woman! I don't imagine she is particularly careful whom she a.s.sociates with; and suppose she had come and told you that she knew such a woman--what would you have said? Can you deny that the tale would have made an impression on you? Yet, I've not the least doubt there are scores of women who made such tales about me a part of their stock in trade; there are thousands of women whose fortunes would be made for life if they could cause such a tale to be believed. And imagine how well-informed they would be, if anyone were to ask them concerning my habits, and the reason why our baby is blind! I tell you, when the rumour concerning our child has begun to spread, there will be ten thousand people in New York city who will know of first-hand, personal knowledge exactly how it happened, and how you took it, and everything that I said to you about it. There will be sneers in the society-papers, from New York to San Francisco; and smooth-tongued gentlemen calling, to give us hints that we can stop these sneers by purchasing a de-luxe edition of a history of our ancestors for six thousand dollars. There will be well-meaning and beautiful-souled people who will try to get you to confide in them, and then use their knowledge of your domestic unhappiness to blackmail you; there will be threats of law-suits from people who will claim that they have contracted a disease from you or your child--your laundress, perhaps, or your maid, or one of these nurses----"

"Oh, stop! stop!" she cried.

"I am quite aware," he said, quietly, "that these things are not calculated to preserve the peace of mind of a young mother. You are horrified when I tell you of them--yet you clamour for the right to have Mrs. Abbott tell you of them! I warn you, Sylvia--you have married a rich man, who is exposed to the attacks of cunning and unscrupulous enemies. You, as his wife, are exactly as much exposed--possibly even more so. Therefore when I see you entering into what I know to be a dangerous intimacy, I must have the right to say to you, This shall stop, and I tell you, there can never be any safety or peace of mind for either of us, so long as you attempt to deny me that right."

5. Dr. Gibson took his departure three or four days later; and before he went, he came to give her his final blessing; talking to her, as he phrased it, "like a Dutch uncle." "You must understand," he said, "I am almost old enough to be your grandfather. I have four sons, anyone of whom might have married you, if they had had the good fortune to be in Castleman County at the critical time. So you must let me be frank with you."

Sylvia indicated that she was willing.

"We don't generally talk to women about these matters; because they've no standard by which to judge, and they almost always fly off and have hysterics. Their case seems to them exceptional and horrible, their husbands the blackest criminals in the whole tribe."

He paused for a moment. "Now, Mrs. van Tuiver, the disease which has made your baby blind is probably what we call gonorrhea. When it gets into the eyes, it has very terrible results. But it doesn't often get into the eyes, and for the most part it's a trifling affair, that we don't worry about. I know there are a lot of new-fangled notions, but I'm an old man, with experience of my own, and I have to have things proven to me. I know that with as much of this disease as we doctors see, if it was a deadly disease, there'd be n.o.body left alive in the world. As I say, I don't like to discuss it with women; but it was not I who forced the matter upon your attention----"

"Pray go on, Dr. Gibson," she said. "I really wish to know all that you will tell me."

"The question has come up, how was this disease brought to your child?

Dr. Perrin suggested that possibly he--you understand his fear; and possibly he is correct. But it seems to me an ill.u.s.tration of the unwisdom of a physician's departing from his proper duty, which is to cure people. If you wish to find out who brought a disease, what you need is a detective. I know, of course, that there are people who can combine the duties of physician and detective--and that without any previous preparation or study of either profession."

He waited for this irony to sink in; and Sylvia also waited, patiently.

At last he resumed, "The idea has been planted in your mind that your husband brought the trouble; and that idea is sure to stay there and fester. So it becomes necessary for someone to talk to you straight. Let me tell you that eight men out of ten have had this disease at some time in their lives; also that very few of them were cured of it when they thought they were. You have a cold: and then next month, you say the cold is gone. So it is, for practical purposes. But if I take a microscope, I find the germs of the cold still in your membranes, and I know that you can give a cold, and a bad cold, to some one else who is sensitive. It is true that you may go through all the rest of your life without ever being entirely rid of that cold. You understand me?"

"Yes," said Sylvia, in a low voice.

"I say eight out of ten. Estimates would differ. Some doctors would say seven out of ten--and some actual investigations have shown nine out of ten. And understand me, I don't mean bar-room loafers and roustabouts.

I mean your brothers, if you have any, your cousins, your best friends, the men who came to make love to you, and whom you thought of marrying.

If you had found it out about any one of them, of course you'd have cut the acquaintance; yet you'd have been doing an injustice--for if you had done that to all who'd ever had the disease, you might as well have retired to a nunnery at once."

The old gentleman paused again; then frowning at her under his bushy eye-brows, he exclaimed, "I tell you, Mrs. van Tuiver, you're doing your husband a wrong. Your husband loves you, and he's a good man--I've had some talks with him, and I know he's not got nearly so much on his conscience as the average husband. I'm a Southern man, and I know these gay young bloods you've danced and flirted with all your young life. Do you think if you went probing into their secret affairs, you'd have had much pleasure in their company afterwards? I tell you again, you're doing your husband a wrong! You're doing something that very few men would stand, as patiently as he has stood it so far."

All this time Sylvia had given no sign. So the old gentleman began to feel a trifle uneasy. "Mind you," he said, "I'm not saying that men ought to be like that. They deserve a good hiding, most of them--they're very few of them fit to a.s.sociate with a good woman. I've always said that no man is really good enough for a good woman. But my point is that when you select one to punish, you select not the guiltiest one, but simply the one who's had the misfortune to fall under suspicion. And he knows that's not fair; he'd have to be more than human if deep in his soul he did not bitterly resent it. You understand me?"

"I understand," she replied, in the same repressed voice.

And the doctor rose and laid his hand on her shoulder. "I'm going home,"

he said--"very probably we'll never meet each other again. I see you making a great mistake, laying up unhappiness for yourself in the future; and I wish to prevent it if I can. I wish to persuade you to face the facts of the world in which we live. So I am going to tell you something that I never expected I should tell to a lady."

He was looking her straight in the eye. "You see me--I'm an old man, and I seem fairly respectable to you. You've laughed at me some, but even so, you've found it possible to get along with me without too great repugnance. Well, I've had this disease; I've had it, and nevertheless I've raised six fine, st.u.r.dy children. More than that--I'm not free to name anybody else, but I happen to know positively that among the men your husband employs on this island there are two who have the disease right now. And the next charming and well-bred gentleman you are introduced to, just reflect that there are at least eight chances in ten that he has had the disease, and perhaps three or four in ten that he has it at the minute he's shaking hands with you. And now you think that over, and stop tormenting your poor husband!"

6. One of the first things I did when I reached New York was to send a little love-letter to Sylvia. I said nothing that would distress her; I merely a.s.sured her that she was in my thoughts, and that I should look to see her in New York, when we could have a good talk. I put this in a plain envelope, with a typewritten address, and registered it in the name of my stenographer. The receipt came back, signed by an unknown hand, probably the secretary's. I found out later that the letter never got to Sylvia.

No doubt it was the occasion of renewed efforts upon her husband's part to obtain from her the promise he desired. He would not be put off with excuses; and at last he got her answer, in the shape of a letter which she told him she intended to mail to me. In this letter she announced her decision that she owed it to her baby to avoid all excitement and nervous strain during the time that she was nursing it. Her husband had sent for the yacht, and they were going to Scotland, and in the winter to the Mediterranean and the Nile. Meantime she would not correspond with me; but she wished me to know that there was to be no break in our friendship, and that she would see me upon her return to New York.

"There is much that has happened that I do not understand," she added.

"For the present, however, I shall try to dismiss it from my mind. I am sure you will agree that it is right for me to give a year to being a mother; as I wish you to feel perfectly at peace in the meantime, I mention that it is my intention to be a mother only, and not a wife. I am showing this letter to my husband before I mail it, so that he may know exactly what I am doing, and what I have decided to do in the future."

"Of course," he said, after reading this, "you may send the letter, if you insist--but you must realize that you are only putting off the issue."

She made no reply; and at last he asked, "You mean you intend to defy me in this matter?"

"I mean," she replied, quietly, "that for the sake of my baby I intend to put off all discussion for a year."

7. I figured that I should hear from Claire Lepage about two days after I reached New York; and sure enough, she called me on the 'phone.

"I want to see you at once," she declared; and her voice showed the excitement under which she was labouring.

"Very well," I said, "come down."

She entered my little living-room. It was the first time she had ever visited me, but she did not stop for a glance about her; she did not even stop to sit down. "Why didn't you tell me that you knew Sylvia Castleman?" she cried.

"My dear woman," I replied, "I was not under the least obligation to tell you."

"You have betrayed me!" she exclaimed, wildly.