Together Part 69

Isabelle sat down in the shop and watched Mr. Short repair the sled, interested in the slow, sure movements he made, the painstaking way in which he fitted iron and wood and riveted the pieces together. It must be a relief, she thought, to work with one's hands like that,--which men could do, forgetting the number of manual movements Mrs. Short also made during the same time. The blacksmith talked as he worked, in a gentle voice without a trace of self-consciousness, and Isabelle had again that sense of VISION, of something inward and sustaining in this man of remote and narrow range,--something that expressed itself in the slow speech, the peaceful, self-contained manner. As she went back up the street to the house the thick cloud of depression, of intangible misery, in which she had been living as it seemed to her for eternity, settled down once more,--the habitual gait of her mind, like the dragging gait of her feet. She at least was powerless to escape the bitter food of idle recollection.

The doctor's house was a plain, square, white building, a little way above the main road, from which there was a drive winding through the spruces. On the sides and behind the house stretched one-story wings, also white and severely plain. "Those are the wards, and the one behind is the operating room," Margaret explained.

The house inside was as plain as on the outside: there were no pictures, no rugs, no useless furniture. The large hall divided the first floor in two.

On the right was the office and the dining room, on the left with a southerly exposure the large living room. There were great, blazing fires in all the rooms and in the hall at either side,--there was no other heat,--and the odor of burning fir boughs permeated the atmosphere.

"It's like a hospital almost," Isabelle commented as they waited in the living room. "And he has French blood! How can he stand it so--bare and cold?"

"The doctor's limitations are as interesting as his powers. He never has a newspaper in the house, nor a magazine,--burns them up if he finds them lying about. Yet he reads a great deal. He has a contempt for all the froth of immediate living, and still the whole place is the most modern, up-to-date contemporary machine of its kind!"

Outside was the blackness of the cold winter night; inside the grayness of stained walls lighted by the glow from the blazing fires. A few pieces of statuary, copies of the work of the idealistic Greek period, stood in the hall and the living room. All that meant merely comfort, homelikeness--all in a word that was characteristically American--was wanting. Nevertheless, as Isabelle waited in the room she was aware of a peculiar grave beauty in its very exclusions. This house had the atmosphere of a mind.

Some nurse came in and nodded to Margaret, then Mrs. Beck the matron appeared, and a couple of young doctors followed. They had been across the valley on snow-shoes in the afternoon and were talking of their adventures in the woods. There was much laughter and gayety--as if gathered here in the wilderness these people all knew one another very well. After some time Isabelle became aware of the entrance of another person, and turning around saw a thin, slight man with a thick head of gray hair. His smooth-shaven face was modelled with many lines, and under the dark eyebrows that had not yet turned gray there were piercing black eyes. Although the talk and the laughter did not die at once, there was the subtle movement among the persons in the room which indicated that the master of the house had appeared. Dr. Renault walked directly to Isabelle.

"Good evening, Mrs. Lane. Will you come in to supper?"

He offered her his arm, and without further word of ceremony they went into the dining room. At the table the doctor said little to her at first. He leaned back in his chair, his eyes half closed, listening to the talk of the others, as if weary after a long day. Isabelle was puzzled by a sense of something familiar in the man at her side; she must have met him before, she could not tell where. The dining room, like the living room, was square, panelled with white wood, and the walls stained. It was bare except for several copies of Tanagra figurines in a recess above the chimney and two large photographs of Greek athletes. The long table, made of heavy oak planks, had no cloth, and the dishes were of the coa.r.s.est earthenware, such as French peasants use.

The talk was lively enough,--about two new cases that had arrived that afternoon, the deer-hunting season that had just closed, bear tracks discovered on Bolton Hill near the lumber-camp, and a new piano that a friend had sent for the convalescent or "dotty" ward, as they called it.

The young doctor who sat at Isabelle's right asked her if she could play or sing, and when she said no, he asked her if she could skee. Those were the only personal remarks of the meal. Margaret, who was very much at home, entered into the talk with unwonted liveliness. It was a workshop of busy men and women who had finished the day's labor with enough vitality left to react. The food, Isabelle noticed, was plentiful and more than good. At the end of the meal the young men lighted cigarettes, and one of the nurses also smoked, while a box of cigars was placed before Renault. Some one began to sing, and the table joined the chorus, gathering about the chimney, where there were a couple of settles.

It was a life, so Isabelle saw, with an order of its own, a direction of its own, a strong undercurrent. Its oddity and nonchalance were refreshing.

Like one of the mountain brooks it ran its own course, strong and liquid beneath the snow, to its own end.

"You seem to have a very good time up here among yourselves!" Isabelle said to the doctor, expressing her wonder frankly.

"And why not?" he asked, a smile on his thin lips. He helped himself to a cigar, still looking at her whimsically, and biting off its end held a match ready to strike, as if awaiting her next remark.

"But don't you ever want to get away, to go back to the city? Don't you feel--isolated?"

"Why should we? Because there's no opera or dinner parties? We have a dinner party every night." He lighted his cigar and grinned at Isabelle.

"The city delusion is one of the chief idiocies of our day. City people encourage the idea that you can't get on without their society. Man was not meant to live herded along sidewalks. The cities breed the diseases for us doctors,--that is their one great occupation."

He threw the match into the fire, leaned back in his chair with his hands knit behind his head, and fastening his black eyes on Isabelle began to talk.

"I lived upwards of twenty years in cities with that same delusion,--not daring to get more than a trolley-car fare away from the muck and noise.

Then I was kicked out,--had to go, thank G.o.d! On the Arizona plains I learned to know what an idiot I had been to throw away the better half of a life in a place where you have to breathe other peoples' bad air. Why, there isn't room to think in a city! I never used to think, or only at odd moments. I lived from one nervous reflex to another, and took most of my ideas from other folks. Now I do my own thinking. Just try it, young woman; it is a great relief!"

"But--but--" Isabelle stammered, laughing in spite of herself.

"You know," Renault bore on tranquilly, "there's a new form of mental disease you might call 'pavement.i.tis'--the pavement itch. When the patient has it badly, so that he can't be happy when removed from his customary environment, he is incurable. A man isn't a sound man, nor a woman a healthy woman, who can't stand alone on his own two legs and be nourished intellectually and emotionally away from the herd.... That young fellow who has just gone out was a bad case of pavement.i.tis when he came to me,--couldn't breathe comfortably outside the air of New York. Hard worker, too. He came up here to 'rest.' Rest! Almost n.o.body needs rest. What they want is hard work and tranquil minds. I put him on his job the day he came.

You couldn't drive him away now! Last fall I sent him back to see if the cure was complete. Telegraphed me in a week that he was coming up,--life was too dull down there! ... And that little black-haired woman who is talking to Mrs. Pole,--similar case, only it was complicated. She was neurotic, hysterical, insomniac, melancholy,--the usual neurasthenic ticket. Had a husband who didn't suit or a lover, I suspect, and it got fastened in the brain,--rode her. She's my chief nurse in the surgical ward now,--a tremendous worker; can go three nights without sleep if necessary and knows enough to sleep soundly when she gets the chance.... Has relapses of pavement.i.tis now and then, when some of her fool friends write her; but I fix that! ... So it goes; I have had incurable cases of course, as in everything else. The only thing to do with 'em then is to send them back to suck their poison until it kills."

The whimsical tone of irony and invective made Isabelle laugh, and also subtly changed her self-preoccupation. Evidently Dr. Renault was not a Potts to go to with a long story of woe.

"I thought it was surgery, your specialty," she remarked, "not nervous prostration."

"We do pretty much everything here--as it is needed. Come in to-morrow morning sometime and look the shop over."

He rose, threw away his cigar, and at this signal the group scattered.

Renault, Margaret, and Isabelle went back to the bare living room, where the doctor stood silently in front of the fireplace for a few minutes, as though expecting his guests to leave. When they started, he threw open a long window and beckoned to Isabelle to follow him. Outside there was a broad platform running out over the crest of the hill on which the house was built. The land beyond fell away sharply, then rose in a wooded swell to the northern mountains. The night was dark with glittering starlight above, and the presence of the white ma.s.ses of the hills could be felt rather than seen,--brooding under the stars. There was the tinkle of a sleigh-bell on the road below,--the only sound in the still night.

"There!" Renault exclaimed. "Is there anything you would like to swap for this?"

He breathed deeply of the frosty air.

"It seems almost as if a voice were speaking in the silence!"

"Yes," Renault a.s.sented gravely. "There is a voice, and you can hear it up here--if you listen."

CHAPTER LVII

On their way home the two women discussed the doctor eagerly.

"I must have seen Dr. Renault somewhere," Isabelle said, "or rather what he might have been once. He's a person!"

"That is it,--he is a person,--not just a doctor or a clever surgeon."

"Has he other regular patients besides the children, the surgical cases?"

"He started with those alone. But latterly, they tell me, he has become more interested in the nervous ward,--what he calls the 'dotty'

ward,--where there are chiefly convalescent children or incurable nervous diseases of children. It is wonderful what he does with them. The power he has over them is like the power of the old saints who worked miracles,--a religious power,--or the pure force of the will, if you prefer."

After her evening with Renault, Isabelle felt that Margaret's description might not be too fervid.

Towards morning Isabelle woke, and in the sudden clarity of the silent hour thoughts flowed through her with wonderful vividness. She saw Renault's face and manner, his sharp eyes, his air of dictation, arrogant and at the same time kindly,--yes, there was a power in the man! As Margaret had put it,--a religious power. The word set loose numberless thoughts, distasteful ones, dead ones. She saw the respectable Presbyterian caravansary in St.

Louis where the family worshipped,--sermons, creeds, dogmas,--the little stone chapel at Grafton where she had been confirmed, and her attempt to believe herself moved by some spiritual force, expressed in the formulas that the old clergyman had taught her. Then the phrases rose in her mind.

It might have done her good once,--people found it helpful,--women especially in their hours of trial. She disliked the idea of leaning for help on something which in her hours of vigor she rejected. A refuge, an explanation,--no, it was not possible! The story of the atonement, the rewards, the mystical attempt to explain the tragedy of life, its sorrow and pain,--no, it was childish! So the word "religious" had something in it repellent, sickly, and self-deceptive.... Suddenly the words stood out sharply in her mind,--"What we need is a new religion!" A new religion,--where had she heard that? ... Another flash in her brooding consciousness and there came the face of the doctor, the face of the man who had talked to her one Sunday afternoon at the house where there had been music. She remembered that she wished the music would not interrupt their conversation. Yes, he was bidding her good-by, at the steps, his hat raised in his hand, and he had said with that same whimsical smile, "What we need is a new religion!" It was an odd thing to say in the New York street, after an entirely delightful Sunday afternoon of music. Now the face was older, more tense, yet with added calm. Had he found his religion?

And with a wistful desire to know what it was, the religion that made Renault live as he did, Isabelle dropped once more to sleep.

When Isabelle presented herself at the doctor's house the next morning, as he had suggested, the little black-haired nurse met her and made Renault's excuses. The doctor was occupied, but would try to join her later.

Meanwhile would she like to look over the operating room and the surgical ward? The young doctor who had been afflicted with pavement.i.tis--a large, florid, blond young man--showed her through the operating room, explaining to her the many devices, the endless well-thought-out detail, from the plumbing to the special electric lighting.

"It's absolutely perfect, Mrs. Lane!" he summed up, and when Isabelle smiled at his enthusiasm, he grew red of face and stuttered in his effort to make her comprehend all that his superlative meant. "I know what I am saying. I have been all over Europe and this country. Every surgeon who comes here says the same thing. You can't even _imagine_ anything that might be better. There isn't much in the world where you can't imagine a something better, an improvement. There's almost always a better to be had if you could get it. But here, no! ... Porowitz, the great Vienna orthopaedic surgeon, was here last winter, and he told me there wasn't a hospital in the whole world where the chances for recovery, taking it all round, were as large as up here in Grosvenor Flat, Vermont. Think of it!

And there is no hospital that keeps a record where the percentage of successful operations is as high as ours.... That's enough to say, I guess," he concluded solemnly, wiping his brow.

In the surgical ward the wasted, white faces of the sick children disturbed Isabelle. It all seemed neat, quiet, pleasant. But the physical dislike of suffering, cultivated by the refinement of a highly individualistic age, made her shudder. So much there was that was wrong in life to be made right,--partly right, never wholly right.... It seemed useless, almost sentimentalism, to attempt this patching of diseased humanity....

In the convalescent ward, Margaret was sitting beside a cot reading to her boy.