Margarita's Soul Part 32

"Is her voice injured?"

"I am afraid so, yes," she said gently.

"But surely time and rest and proper treatment," I began, but she shook her head.

"The doctor examined her throat before he left," she said. "Of course he had no laryngoscope with him, but he didn't need one, really. The vocal cords are all stretched--he said the specialists might help her and take away a great deal of the hoa.r.s.eness, but that in his opinion she can never stand the strain of public singing again: he thinks excitement alone would paralyse the cords."

"Who's to tell her?" I said quietly.

You see, we'd all been stretched so taut that we couldn't use any more energy in exclamations or regrets.

"I thought you might," she said, but I shook my head.

"Miss Jencks--" I began, but it appeared that Miss Jencks felt unequal to it. So Harriet told her, of course, on the principle that when one has a heavy load he may as well carry a little more, I suppose.

And after all it wasn't so bad; for Margarita came down to me a little later, and told me she had known it all the time!

"But, of course, dear child," I said hopefully, "Doctor ---- is not a throat specialist, you know, and we can but try some of those famous fellows, a little later. Perhaps in a year or two----"

"You are very good to me, Jerry," she said, "but it is no use. I know.

I shall never sing again. I am sorry, because----"

"Sorry?" I cried, "why, of course you are sorry! What do you mean?"

"Because," she continued placidly, "it will not be so much to give Roger."

"Give Roger?" I echoed stupidly, "how 'give Roger'?"

"I was not going to sing any more, anyway," she said.

For a moment I was dazed and then the simplicity of it all flashed over me.

"Why, Margarita!" I cried--and that is all the comment I ever made.

"That was what I wanted to tell him when he did not know me," she explained. "I--I was going to tell him the night--the night it happened."

"And does he know it now?"

"Of course. That is why he got well," she said promptly.

And do you know, I'm not sure she was wrong? That life was killing him--I mean it ran across his instincts and feeling and beliefs, every way.

There was no doubt she meant it. She never referred to the subject again.

He wanted her to see somebody else about her throat, but she absolutely refused to leave the Island till he was out of bed--Sarah came on with the baby two weeks later--and they sat by him all day nearly, the two of them, and he hardly let go her hand. He had changed a great deal in one way--his hair was quite silvered. But it was very becoming.

I didn't leave till I saw him in a dressing-gown in a long chair by the fire. Harriet went back to her hospital, and when Roger was up to it they went South for a bit before he began to work again.

The day before I left he did an odd thing--one of the two or three impractical, sentimental things I ever knew him to do in his life. He asked me to bring him his history of Napoleon--it had been packed into their luggage by mistake--and deliberately laid it on the heart of the fire! I cried out and leaned forward to s.n.a.t.c.h it--to think of the labour it represented!--but he put his hand on my arm.

"Don't, Jerry--I hate every page of it!" he said.

Well, I have been wondering these twenty years if perhaps they'll talk about it--the whole thing--some day. At the time, we all acted as if it were the most natural thing in the world for Margarita to settle down as a _haus frau_--perhaps when _Nora_ got done with her studies of life (for I read Sue's Ibsen, you see) that is what she did, after all!

At any rate, I frankly hope so. For if all the wisdom and experience and training that the wonderful s.e.x is to gain by its exodus from the home does not get back into it ultimately, I can't (in my masculine stupidity) quite see how it's going to get back into the race at all!

And then what good has it done? I hope Mr. Ibsen knows!

CHAPTER x.x.xI

FATE EMPTIES HER CREEL

[FROM SUE PAYNTER]

PARIS, Feb. 10th., 189--

JERRY DEAR:

What must you think of me for delaying so long to write, after the few curt words I found for you that night? I hope you know that something must have kept me and have forgiven me already. Poor little Susy was taken very sick the night you sailed, with violent pains and a high fever. Fortunately there is a good American doctor here--a Doctor Collier--and we pulled her through, though it seemed a doubtful thing at one time. The doctor decided that she had appendicitis (I never heard of it before) and operated immediately on her, which undoubtedly saved her life. It seems that Mother Nature is not quite so clever as we have always thought her and has left a very dangerous little _cul-de-sac_ somewhere, that ought not to be there, so modern science takes it out.

Isn't that strange? The doctor has just come over to operate for this in Germany somewhere; he was an a.s.sistant of Dr.

McGee, whom you sent to the South, and can't say enough of the magnificent work he is doing there. He was much interested to find I knew all about it and that Uncle Morris stocked the dispensary. Isn't the world small?

I hope you're not feeling too badly about Margarita--don't.

Of course I understand what the stage has lost, and you will confess that I was as anxious for her career as anybody, even when I was sorriest for Roger. I wanted her to have her rights as an artist. But if _she_ doesn't want them--ah, that's a different pair of sleeves altogether. She has sent me her latest photograph, and the eyes are all I need. Of course, I have no such brilliant future to sacrifice, but if I had, I am sure I should throw a dozen of them over the windmill for two eyes like hers to-day!

I don't know why I am prosing along at this rate and avoiding the main object of this letter. I must plunge right into it, I suppose, and get it over.

Don't think I don't appreciate all your kind, your generous, offer meant, Jerry. I thought of it so often and so long before I gave you that brusque answer. And it tempted me for a moment--indeed it did. I think, as you say, that we could travel very comfortably together and we have many of the same tastes--I know no one so sympathetic as you. As for "nursing a rheumatic, middle-aged wanderer through a.s.sorted winter-climates," that is absurd, and you know it, though I should be glad enough to do it, if it _were_ true, as far as that goes. I know all you would do for the children, and how kind you would be to them. Not that I like that part, though, to be quite frank. I could never love another woman's children (especially if I loved their father) and I can't understand the women that do. So I always imagine a man in the same position. And I can't help feeling, Jerry, that if you _really_ loved me--loved me in the whole crazy sense of that dreadful world, I mean--that you wouldn't speak so sweetly about the children: how could you? How can any man--I couldn't, if I were one!

But this is very unfair, because you never said you did love me in that way--don't imagine that I thought so for a moment. Jerry dear, my best friend now, for I must not count on Roger any more, do you think I am blind? Do you think I have been blind for three years? And will you think me a romantic, conceited fool when I say that unless I--even I, a widow and a jilt, who hurt a good man terribly and got well punished for it!--can have the kind of love that you can never give me, because you gave it to someone else three years ago, I don't want to accept your generous kindness?

You see, I know how you can love, Jerry, just as I see now that I never knew how Roger could until those same three years ago. Of course he didn't either--would he ever have known the difference, I wonder, if we had married?

And there is another reason, too. You might just as well know it, for my conceit is not pride really, and it may be you know it already. Whatever love Frederick failed to kill in me--and the very idea of pa.s.sionate love almost nauseates me, even yet--is not in my power to give you, Jerry dear. It might, some day, later, wake again, but it would not be your touch that could wake it.

Now, since this is so of both of us, don't you see, dear, that things are better as they are? I promise you that if I ever need help, I will come to you _first of all_, since what you really want is to help me and make me comfortable and give me the pleasure of wide travel, you generous fellow! And if ever you _really_ need me, Jerry--but you won't, I am sure. No one else is quite what you are to me, or can be, now, and we must always be what we have always been--the best of friends. Tell me that you know I am right, and then let us never discuss it again.

Yours _always_,

SUE.

UNIVERSITY CLUB, May 20th, 189--

DEAR JERRY: