The Blue Wall Part 39

"Call her She," he suggested with a leer. "Here is an address. Send a messenger boy whenever you like. Every one thinks I am a perfume manufacturer."

This was the opening of greater comfort to me; my terror of detection was lessened. As time pa.s.sed I found that my moral sense was being dulled, little by little. I was fulfilling my destiny. I was living according to my arrangement of brain cells. In spite of his warning--or perhaps solely because of it--the fears of my foster father were realized. I was I!

Four weeks ago came a new thing. It burst like dynamite. It gripped my heart. It felt along the chords of my womanhood. I could not escape its presence. It cried to me in the darkness. It walked beside me in the sunlight.

CHAPTER II

THIS NEW THING

It has been hard for me to tell coldly of my first weakness; it will be harder still for me to write of what has followed, without letting escape on this page the emotions which are in my heart. This new thing awakened me with a start from my slumber of indifference and my philosophy of defeat.

With a sudden return of my old self I began to have my first doubts about the powers of heredity. I began to wonder if fear of myself, inspired by knowledge of whence I came, rather than any true inherited traits, had not been my undoing. I found that I had not changed so much, after all. The goodness in me had not gone. I saw in my mirror the Julianna you had known and loved. I felt new faith.

I felt new faith in the goodness of the plan under which men and women live and strive. I had always believed in a Divine Spirit if for no other reason than that I and all living things through all time had sensed somewhere beyond their full understanding the existence of a dynamic of creation and order. I believed, if you wish me to phrase it so, in G.o.d. It seemed to me in my new awakening that no human creature could be made by such a Spirit the plaything of so cruel a thing as all-powerful heredity.

"He must give us all a chance," I cried with tears on my cheeks. "It must be true that I can save myself by fight. It cannot be that I will be deprived of the opportunity of putting an end to this evil descent.

My father sought to strangle me because he believed he would appear in my blood. Now it is I, who, finding him there, must strangle him!" And I, in my agony, fell upon my knees and prayed.

You were asleep when, in my bare feet, forgetful of the cold, I stood hour after hour at the window of my room, listening to your breathing.

In those hours, little by little I realized that it was not escape from a single weakness or indulgence which I must seek, but that I must reestablish mastery over myself. I knew that no help from without would accomplish this mastery. I made up my mind to fight single-handed, and to stake myself and if necessary, my life, in a battle to place again my will upon its throne.

Accordingly I took, as I supposed, my last dose of opiate and under its influence, which gave me strength, I pleaded with you to leave me alone in this house for three weeks. You yielded. I then ordered all furnis.h.i.+ngs out of my chamber, and all the servants except Margaret out of the house, to the end that no sight or sound should draw my attention or my thoughts from my purpose.

I had a plentiful supply of my drug. You will doubtless want to know what I did with it. I took it with me into my retreat.

My first day I suffered the deprivation but little; it was on the second that I moved my mattress where I could concentrate all my attention on a single wall of the four. On the third day I began to lose track of time.

I had feared much, but not the degree of suffering which the pains of denial now piled upon me in an acc.u.mulating load.

Often I fell forward prostrate on the floor, squirming in my agony of body and mind, while within me a battle went raging on between the spirit and the flesh. My eyes would search for the packet of drugs lying on the floor within my reach and rest upon the sight of it, staring as mad persons must stare. It was my will that held my hand.

Can you imagine the eternal vacillation of such a contest? Then you will know that desire fighting against reason now drove my will back step by step until it was tottering on the brink of chaos, and again, in a triumph of resistance, my determination swept everything before it until I longed to rise, to throw my arms upward, fingers extended, and cry aloud my victory.

On the other hand, a thousand moments came when, ready to yield to my temptation, I have dropped on my knees on the boards and, with my eyes fixed upon that wall, have prayed like mad, hour after hour, my lips parched and blood running from my bare knees.

Voices whispered to me that I was a fanatic, pinning my faith to superst.i.tion and the practices of savagery. I whispered back to them that they should see me victorious at last.

"How long will you fight?" said they mockingly.

"Till desire is gone and the will has nothing to fight for," I answered them.

"You are insane," they said, speaking like so many devils.

"We shall know better at the end," I replied softly.

These dialogues, the torture of which no one can know, went on eternally. They were arguments, I knew, between my ingenious mind and the will which was trying to reclaim its mastery of my thought.

Night and day became all one to me. I lost count of the hours, then of the days. I became filled with the fear that three weeks would go by, that you would return too soon, that interruption would come before my fight had been determined one way or the other. This terror was enough to weaken me. I felt it many times and on each occasion drew so near the bare wall that I could throw my weight against it and lose all external thoughts by staring at the blank surface, with all but one purpose banished from my mind.

I have eaten merely to live, slept only to repair my strength. Each morsel of food has added to my bodily anguish, each falling asleep has meant a horrible awakening to new, exquisite torture of the body. My hands have become black by resting on the bare boards, my nails torn by scratching over the covering of my mattress. My hair is matted. My throat, dry with prayers, is almost voiceless, my lips are cracked like old leather.

I do not tell you these things to gain your sympathy, but so that, if you should want to come back to me, you will not be shocked to find me horrible.

I must go on.

Five days ago my craving began to yield. The blessedness of the relief is beyond description. Little by little the resistance to my will weakened. Little by little my will gained mastery. It seemed a youthful giant, learning its power. It seemed to fill the room, to seek to reach beyond and find new labors for its strength. I felt the moment approach when I, no longer a slave of myself, could indeed rise from thanks to G.o.d and feel my triumph sure.

I dared three days ago to touch my drugs, to take them in my hand, to mock them.

Yesterday I got up. I began to write this message.

I could hear martial music as I wrote and the tramp of a million feet.

It was the army of men and women who have fought against evil and won,--they who have been masters of themselves. As they pa.s.sed, they cheered me, each one; they waved their hats and hands!

And afterward there came a little child and smiled and stretched his arms out to me. He was glad.

For he is to be my own.

BOOK IX

BEHIND THE WALL

CHAPTER I

AN ANSWER TO MACMECHEM

Such was the message Julianna had sent her husband. I read it and, without speaking, I arose and touched Estabrook on his shoulder.

"Doctor," said he pathetically.

"Come," said I.

We went up to her door. It was not locked; it opened. She was there.

She was there with a smile of greeting--a beautiful woman, pale with her suffering, pale as the flower of a night-blooming cactus, but warm with the vitality given to women who love. The pink light of dusk was on her calm face.

She was leaning back against the wall. Her great eyes fixed themselves upon Estabrook without seeing me at all. She did not speak. She seemed in doubt.