The Web of Life Part 11

Mrs. Preston winced under her sympathy and shook her head. "No, no! I am better alone. You mustn't stay."

"You'd ought to have _some_ woman here," the girl insisted, with the feminine instinct for the natural league of women. "At least, some one to look after the house and keep you company."

"I have thought of trying to find a servant," Mrs. Preston admitted. "But what servant--" she left the sentence unfinished, "even if I could pay the wages," she continued. "Anna comes in sometimes--she's a young Swede who has a sister in the school. But I've got to get on alone somehow."

"Well, if that's what getting married is, it's no wonder more of us girls don't get married, as I told Mr. Dresser."

There was a knock at the outside door. Miss M'Gann quickly barricaded herself behind the long table, while Mrs. Preston opened the door and admitted the visitor. Miss M'Gann came forward with evident relief, and Mrs. Preston introduced her visitors, "Dr. Sommers, Miss M'Gann."

Miss M'Gann greeted the doctor warmly.

"Why, this must be Mr. Dresser's Dr. Sommers." The young doctor bowed and look annoyed. Miss M'Gann, finding that she could get little from either of the two silent people, took her leave.

"I'll not forget you, dear," she said, squeezing Mrs. Preston's hand.

When she had ridden away, Mrs. Preston returned to the little sitting room and dropped wearily into a chair.

"_He_ has just gone, escaped!" she exclaimed. "Just before you came."

The doctor whistled. "Do you know where he's gone to?"

She pointed silently to the low wooden building across the neighboring avenue.

"If he makes a row, it will all get out. I shall lose my place."

The doctor nodded.

"Has it happened before?"

"He's tried of late. But I have kept him in and barred the door. This time he forced it open. I was not strong enough to hold it."

The doctor hesitated a moment, and then, as if making a sudden resolve, he took his hat.

"I'll try to bring him back."

From the open window she could see him walk leisurely down the lane to the street, and pick his way carefully over the broken planks of the sidewalk to the avenue. Then he disappeared behind the short shutters that crossed the door of the saloon.

For some reason this seemed the one thing unbearable in her experience. The bitterness of it all welled up and overflowed in a few hot tears that stung her hands as they dropped slowly from the burning eyes. It was a long time before the little blinds swung out, and the doctor appeared with her husband. Preston was talking affably, fluently, and now and then he tapped the doctor familiarly on his shoulders to emphasize a remark. Sommers responded enough to keep his companion's interest. Once he gently restrained him, as the hatless man plunged carelessly forward in front of an approaching car. As the pair neared the house, the woman at the window could hear the rapid flow of talk. Preston was excited, self-a.s.sertive, and elaborately courteous.

"After you, doctor. Will you come upstairs to my room?" she caught as they entered the gate. "My wife, doctor, is all right, good woman; but, like the rest of them, foolish."

And the babbling continued until some one closed the heavy door at the head of the stairs. Then there was noise, as of a man getting into bed. In time it was quiet, and just as she was about to make the effort of finding out what had happened, Sommers came downstairs and signed to her to sit down.

"I have given him a hypodermic injection. He won't trouble you any more to-night," he said, staring dreamily out into the twilight.

CHAPTER XI

"This is too much for you," Sommers observed finally.

After his meditation he had come to much the same obvious conclusion that Miss M'Gann had formed previously. The woman moved wearily in her chair.

"It can't go on," the doctor proceeded. "No one can tell what he might do in his accesses--what violence he would do to you, to himself."

"He may get better," she suggested.

Sommers shook his head slowly.

"I am afraid not; the only thing to be hoped for is that he will get worse, much worse, as rapidly as possible."

Mrs. Preston stood his questioning eyes as he delivered this unprofessional opinion.

"Meantime you must protect yourself. The least harm his outbreaks will do will be to make a scandal, to make it necessary for you to leave your school."

"What can I do?" she asked, almost irritably.

"There are inst.i.tutions."

"I have no money."

"And I suppose they would not do, now, while he is apparently getting better. They would not help him, even if we should get him confined. His is one of those cases where the common law prescribes liberty."

There was nothing further to say in this direction. Sommers seemed to be thinking. At last, with an impulsive motion, he exclaimed:

"It should not have been! No, it should not have been."

He paused. Her eyes had lowered from his face. She knew his unexpressed thought.

"And more than that, if you and I and the world thought straight, he _would not be here now_."

"No, I suppose not," she acquiesced quietly, following his thought word by word. "Well, as it is, I guess it's for life--for _my_ life, at least."

"If one could only love enough--" he mused.

"Love!" she exclaimed pa.s.sionately, at this blasphemous intrusion. "Does one love such as that,--the man who betrayed your youth?"

"Not you and I. But one who could love enough--"

Her disdainful smile stopped him.

"I followed him to the hospital. I took him here, I don't know why. I guess it's my fate. He was once mine, and I can't escape that--but as to love--do you think I am as low as that?"

"You have no duties except the duties love makes," the doctor suggested.

"He is no longer even the man you married. He is not a man in any sense of the word. He is merely a failure, a mistake; and if society is afraid to rid itself of him, society must provide for him."