The Gates Between Part 2

It is easier to philosophize about these things than it is to record them in cold fact. With shame and sorrow do I say it, but say it I must: My love went the way of the love of other men who feel (this was and remains the truth) far less than I. I, who had believed myself to love like no other before me, and none to come after me, and I, who had won the dearest woman in all the world--I stooped to suffer myself to grow used to my blessedness, like any low man who was incapable of winning or of wearing it.

It cannot be said, it shall not be said, that I loved my wife less than the day I married her. It must be written that I became accustomed to my happiness.

That ideal of myself, which my ideal of her created in me, and which no emergency of fate could have shaken, slipped in the old, fatal quicksand of use. Our ideal of ourselves is to our highest life like the heart to the pulsation. It is the divinest art of the love of woman for man that she clasps him to his vision of himself, as breath and being are held together.

Until the time mentioned at the beginning of my narrative, I had in no sense appreciated the state of the case, as it lay between my ideal and my fact. That I had been more or less impatient of speech in my own home for some time past, is probably true. The ungoverned lip is a terrible master; and I had been a slave too long. I was in the habit of finding fault with my patients. I was accustomed to be what we call "quick" with servants. Neither had, I thought, as a rule, seemed to care the less for me on this account. If I lost a patient or a coachman now and then, I could afford to. The item did not trouble me.

I was inconsiderate at times with personal friends. They said, It is his way, and bore with me. People usually bore with me; they always had. I looked upon this as one of the rights of temperament, so far as I looked upon it at all. I do not think this indulgence had occurred to me as other than a tribute. It is common enough in dealing with men of my sort. (And alas, there are enough of my sort; I must be looked upon rather as a type than a specimen.) Such indulgence is a movement of self-defence, or else of philosophy, upon the part of those who come in contact with us. To this view of the subject I had given no attention.

I had lived to be almost fifty years old, and no person had ever said: "Esmerald Thorne, you trust your attractive qualities too far. Power and charm do not give a man a permit to be disagreeable. Your temperament does not release you from the common-place human duty of self-restraint. A gentleman has no more right to get uncontrollably angry than he has to get drunk. The patience with which others receive you is not a testimony to your strength; it is a concession to your weakness. You are living upon concessions like disease, or childhood, or age."

No one had said this--surely not my wife. I can recall an expression of bewilderment at times upon her beautiful face, which for the moment perplexed me. After I had gone out, I would remember that I had been nervous in my manner. I do not think I had ever spoken with actual roughness to her, until this day of which I write. That I had been sometimes cross enough, is undoubtedly the case.

On that November day I had been overworked. This was no novelty, and I offer it as no excuse. I had been up for two nights with a dangerous case. I had another in the suburbs, and a consultation out of town.

There was a quarrel at the hospital, and a panic in Stock Street. I had seen sixty patients that day. I had been attacked in the "Therapeutic Quarterly" upon my famous theory of Antisepsis. Perhaps I may add the circ.u.mstance that my baby was teething.

This was, naturally, less important to me than to his mother, who thought the child was ill. I knew better, and it annoyed me that my knowledge did not remove her apprehension. In point of fact, he had cried at night for a week or two, more than he ought to have done. She could not understand why I denied him a Dover's powder. I needed sleep, and could not get it. We were both worn, and--I might fill my chapter to the brim with the little reasons for my great error. Let it suffice that they were small and that it was large.

We had been married three years, and our boy was a year old. He was a fine fellow. Helen lost her Greek look and took on the Madonna expression after he was born. Any woman who is fit to be a mother gains that expression with her first child. My wife was a very happy mother.

She was sitting in the library when I came in that evening. It was a warm, red library, with heavy curtains and an open fire--a deep room that absorbed colour. I fancied the room, and it was my wife's pleasure to await me in it with the child each evening at the earliest hour when I might by any chance be expected home. She possessed to the full the terrible power of waiting which women have. She could do nothing when she expected me. Although three years married, she could not read, or write, or play when she was listening for my step. I do not mean that she told me this. I found it out. She never called my attention to such little feminine weaknesses. She was never over-fond.

My wife had a n.o.ble reserve. I had never seen the hour when I felt that her tenderness was a treasure to be lightly had, or indifferently treated.

It should be said that the library opened from the parlours, and was at that time separated from them by a heavy portiere of crimson stuff, the doors not being drawn. This drapery she was in the habit of folding apart at the hours of my probable return, and as I came through the long parlours my eyes had the first greeting of her, before my voice or arms. Upon this evening, as upon others, I entered by the parlour door, and came--more quickly than usual--toward the library. I was in a great hurry; one of the acute attacks of the chronic condition which besets the busy doctor. As I crossed the length of the thick carpet, the rooms shook beneath my tread; I burst into, rather than entered, the library,--not seeing her, I think, or not pausing to see her, in the accustomed manner. When I had come to her I found that the child was not with her, as usual. She was sitting alone by the library table under the drop-light, which held a shade of red lace. She had a gown of white wool trimmed with ermine; a costume which gave me pleasure, and which she wore upon cool evenings, not too often for me to weary of it. She regarded my taste in dress as delicately and as delightedly as she did every other wish or will of mine.

She had been trying to read; but the magazine lay closed upon her knee below her folded hands. Her face wore an anxious look as she turned the fine contours of her head toward me.

"Oh," she cried, "at last!"

She moved to reach me, swiftly, murmuring something which I did not hear, or to which I did not attend; and under the crimson curtains met me, warm and dear and white, putting up her sweet arms.

I kissed her carelessly--would to G.o.d that I could forget it! I kissed her as if it did not matter much, and said:--

"Helen, I must have my dinner this instant!"

"Why, surely," she said, retreating from me with a little shock of pained surprise, "It is all ready, Esmerald. I will ring."

She melted from my arms. Oh, if I had known, if I had known! She stirred and slipped and was gone from me, and I stood stupidly looking at her; her figure, against the tall, full book-cases, shone mistily, while she touched the old-fas.h.i.+oned bell-rope of gold cord.

"Really, I hadn't time to come home at all," I added testily. "I am driven to death. I've got to go again in ten minutes. But I supposed you would worry if I didn't show myself. It is a foolish waste of time. I don't know how I am ever going to get through. I wish I hadn't come."

CHAPTER IV.

She changed colour--from fair to flush, from red to white again--and her hand upon the gold cord trembled. I remembered it afterward, though I was not conscious of noticing it at the time.

"You need not," she replied, in her low, controlled voice, "on my account. You need never come again."

"It is easier to come," I answered irritably, "than to know that you sit here making yourself miserable because I don't."

"Have I ever fretted you about coming, Esmerald? I did not know it."

"It would be easier if you did fret!" I cried crossly. "I'd rather you'd say a thing than look it. Any man would."

Indeed, it would have been a paltry satisfaction to me just then if I could have found her to blame. Her blamelessness irritated my self-complacence as the light irritates defective eyes.

"I am due at the hospital in twenty-two minutes," I went on, excitedly.

"Chirugeon is behaving like Apollyon. If I'm not there to handle him, n.o.body will. The whole staff are afraid of him--everybody but me. We sha'n't get the new ward built these two years if he carries the day to-night. I've got a consultation at Decker's--the old lady is dying.

It's no sort of use dragging a tired man out there; I can't do her any good; but they will have it. I'm at the beck and call of every whim.

Isn't that dinner ready? I wish I had time to change my boots! They are wet through. My head aches horribly. Brake telegraphed me to get down to Stock Street before two o'clock to save what is left of that Santa Ma stock. I couldn't go. I had an enormous office--forty people. I've lost ten thousand dollars in this panic. I've got to see Brake on my way to Decker's. I lost a patient this morning--that little girl of the Harrowhart's. She was a poor little scrofulous thing. But they are terribly cut up about it.... Chowder? I wish you'd had a good clear soup. I don't feel as if I could touch chowder.

I hope you have some roast beef, better than the last. You mustn't let Parsnip cheat you. Quail? There's no nourishment in a quail for a man in my state. The gas leaks. Can't you have it attended to? Hurry up the coffee. I must swallow it and go. I've got more than ten men could do."

"It is more than one woman can do"--she began gently, when I came to the end of this outbreak and my breath together.

"What did you say? Do speak louder!"

"I said it seems to be more than one woman can do, to rest you."

"Yes," I said carelessly, "it is. You can't do the first thing for me, except to do me the goodness to ring for a decent cup of coffee. I can't drink this."

"Esmerald"--

"Oh, what? I can't stop to talk. There, I've burned my tongue, now.

If there's anything I can't stand, it is going to a consultation with a burned tongue."

"How tired you are, Esmerald! I was only going to say that I am sorry.

I can't let you go without saying that."

"I can't see that it helps it any. I am so tired I don't want to be touched. Never mind my coat. I'll put it on myself. Tell Joe--no. I left the horse standing. I don't want Joe. I suppose Donna is uneasy by this time. She won't stand at night--she's got to. I'll get that whim out of her. Now, don't look that way. The horse is safe enough.

Don't you suppose I know how to drive? You're always having opinions of your own against mine. There. I must be off."

"Where's the baby, Helen?" I turned, with my hand upon the latch of my heavy oaken door, and jerked the question out, as cross men do.

"The baby isn't just right, somehow, Esmerald. I bated to bother you, for you never think it is anything. I dare say he will be better, but I thought I wouldn't let him come out of the nursery. Jane is with him. I've been a _little_ troubled about him. He has cried all the afternoon."

"He cries because you coddle him!" I exploded. "It is all nonsense, Helen. Nothing ails the child. I won't encourage this sort of thing.

I'll see him when I come home. I can't possibly wait--I am driven to death--for every little whim"--

But at the door I stopped. If the baby had been a patient he would have seen no doctor that night. But the father in me got the better of me, and without a word further to my wife I ran up to the nursery.

She stayed below; she perceived (Helen was always quick), although I had not said so, that I did not wish her to follow me. I examined the child hastily. The little fellow stopped crying at the sight of me, and put up both arms to be taken. I said:--

"No, Boy. Papa can't stop now," and put him gently back into his crib.

When I had reached the nursery door I remember that I returned and kissed him. I was very angry, but I could not be angry with my baby.

With the touch of his little lips, dewy and sweet, upon mine, I rushed down to my wife, and tempestuously began again:--

"Helen, I must have an end to this nonsense. Nothing ails the baby; he is only a trifle feverish with a new tooth. It really is very unpleasant to me that you make such a fuss over him. If you had married a greengrocer it might have been pardonable. Pray remember that you have married a physician who understands his business, and do leave me to manage it. Take the child out of the nursery. Carry him downstairs as usual for a few minutes. He will sleep better. There!