Katherine Cecil Thurston - "The Masquerader"

Written and Illustrated by Frederic Remington - "The Way of an Indian"

John Greenleaf Whittier - "Poems in Wartime"

William Shakespeare - "The Winter's Tale"

The Web of Life

R >> Robert Herrick >> The Web of Life







CHAPTER XVI


"Shall we walk over to the lake," the girl suggested gently, as if anxious
to humor some incomprehensible child. "There is a lovely ravine we can
explore, all cool and shady, and this sun is growing oppressive."

Sommers accepted gratefully the concession she made to his unsocial mood.
The ravine path revealed unexpected wildness and freshness. The peace of
twilight had already descended there. Miss Hitchcock strolled on,
apparently forgetful of fatigue, of the distance they were putting between
them and the club-house. Sommers respected the charm of the occasion, and,
content with evading the chattering crowd, refrained from all strenuous
discussion. This happy, well-bred, contented woman, full of vitality and
interest, soothed all asperities. She laid him in subtle subjection to her.
So they chatted of the trivial things that must be crossed and explored
before understanding can come. When they neared the lake, the sun had sunk
so far that the beach was one long, dark strip of shade. The little waves
lapped coolly along the breakwaters. They continued their stroll, walking
easily on the hard sand, each unwilling to break the moment of perfect
adjustment. Finally the girl confessed her fatigue, and sat down beside a
breakwater, throwing off her hat, and pushing her hair away from her
temples. She looked up at the man and smiled. 'You see,' she seemed to say,
'I can meet you on your own ground, and the world is very beautiful when
one gets away, when one gets away!'

"Why did you refuse to go abroad with Uncle Brome?" she asked suddenly. She
was looking out idly across the lake, but something in her voice puzzled
Sommers.

"I didn't want to go."

"Chicago fascinates you already!"

"There were more reasons than one," he answered, after a moment's
hesitation, as if he could trust himself no farther. The girl smiled a bit,
quite to herself. Her throat palpitated a little, and then she turned her
head.

"Tell me about the cases. Are they so interesting?"

"There is one curious case," the young doctor responded with masculine
literalness. "It's hardly a case, but an affair I have mixed myself up
with. Do you remember the night of the dinner at your house when Lindsay
was there? The evening before I had been at the Paysons' dance, and when I
returned there was an emergency case just brought to the hospital. They had
telephoned for me, but had missed me. Well, the fellow was a drunken brute
that had been shot a number of times. His wife was with him."

Sommers paused, finding now that he had started on his tale that it was
difficult to bring out his point, to make this girl understand the
significance of it, and the reason why he told it to her. She was
attentive, but he thought she was a trifle bored. Soon he began again and
went over all the steps of the affair.

"You see," he concluded, "I was morally certain that, if the operation
succeeded, the fellow would be worse than useless in this world. Now it's
coming true. Of course _I_ have no responsibility; I did what any
other doctor should have done, I suppose; and, if it had been an ordinary
hospital case, I don't suppose that I should have thought twice about it.
But you see that I--this woman has got her load of misery saddled on her,
perhaps for life, and partly through me."

"I think she did right," the girl responded quickly, looking at the case
from an entirely different side.

"I am not sure of that," Sommers retorted brusquely.

"What kind of a woman is she?" the girl inquired with interest, ignoring
his last remark.

"I don't think I could make you understand her. I don't myself now."

"Is she pretty?"

"I don't know. She makes you see her always."

The girl moved as if the evening wind had touched her, and put on her hat.

"She's a desperately literal woman, primitive, the kind you never
meet--well, out here. She has a thirst for happiness, and doesn't get a
drop."

"She must be common, or she wouldn't have married that man," Miss Hitchcock
commented in a hard tone. She rose, and without discussion they took the
path that led along the bluff to the cottages.

"I didn't think so," the doctor answered positively. "And if you knew her,
you wouldn't think so."

After a moment he said tentatively, "I wish you could meet her."

"I should be glad to," Miss Hitchcock replied sweetly, but without
interest.

Sommers realized the instant he had spoken that he had made a mistake, that
his idea was a purely conventional one. The two women could have nothing
but their sex in common, and that common possession was as likely to be a
ground for difference as for agreement. It was always useless to bring two
people of different classes together. Three generations back the families
of these two women were probably on the same level of society. And, as
woman to woman, the schoolteacher, who travelled the dreary path between
the dingy cottage and the Everglade School, was as full of power and beauty
as this velvety specimen of plutocracy. It was sentimental, however, to
ignore the present facts. Evidently Miss Hitchcock had followed the same
line of reasoning, for when she spoke again she referred distantly to Mrs.
Preston.

"Those people--teachers--have their own clubs and society. Mrs. Bannerton
was a teacher in the schools before she was married. Do you know Mrs.
Bannerton?"

"I have met Mrs. Bannerton," Sommers answered indifferently.

He was annoyed at the trivial insertion of Mrs. Bannerton into the
conversation. He had failed to make Mrs. Preston's story appear important,
or even interesting, and the girl by his side had shown him delicately that
he was a bore. They walked more rapidly in the gathering twilight. The sun
had sunk behind the trees, and the ravine below their path was gloomy. The
mood of the day had changed, and he was sorry--for everything. It was a
petty matter--it was always some petty thing--that came in between them. He
longed to recall the moment on the beach when she had asked him, with a
flicker of a smile upon her face, why he had decided to remain in Chicago.
But they were strangers to each other now,--hopelessly strangers,--and the
worst of it was that they both knew it.

* * * * *

There was a large house party at the Hitchcock cottage. The Porters and the
Lindsays, with other guests, were there for the holidays of the Fourth, and
some more people came in for dinner. The men who had arrived on the late
trains brought more news of the strike: the Illinois Central was tied up,
the Rock Island service was crippled, and there were reports that the
Northwestern men were going out _en masse_ on the morrow. The younger
people took the matter gayly, as an opportune occasion for an extended
lark. The older men discussed the strike from all sides, and looked grave.
Over the cigars the general attitude toward the situation came out
strongly: the strikers were rash fools; they'd find that out in a few
weeks. They could do a great deal of harm under their dangerous leaders,
but, if need be, the courts, the state, the federal government, would be
invoked for aid. Law and order and private rights must be respected. The
men said these things ponderously, with the conviction that they were
reciting a holy creed of eternal right. They were men of experience, who
had never questioned the worth of the society in which they were privileged
to live. They knew each other, and they knew life, and at the bottom it was
as useless to kick against the laws of society as to interfere with the
laws of nature. Besides, it was all very good--a fair enough field for any
one.

Sommers was excited by the reports. It made him restless to be lolling here
outside of the storm when such a momentous affair was moving down the lake
under the leaden pall of the city smoke. He asked questions eagerly, and
finally got into discussion with old Boardman, one of the counsel for a
large railroad.

"Who is that raw youth?" old Boardman asked Porter, when the younger men
joined the ladies on the veranda.

"Some protege of Alec's," Brome Porter replied. "Son of an old
friend--fresh chap."

"I am afraid our young friend is not going to turn out well," Dr. Lindsay,
who had overheard the discussion, added in a distressed tone. "I have done
what I can for him, but he is very opinionated and green--yes, very green.
Pity--he is a clever fellow, one of the cleverest young surgeons in the
city."

"He talks about what he doesn't _know_," Boardman pronounced
sententiously. "When he's lived with decent folks a little longer, he'll
get some sense knocked into his puppy head, maybe."

"Maybe," Brome Porter assented, dismissing this crude, raw, green, ignorant
young man with a contemptuous grunt.

Outside on the brick terrace the younger people had gathered in a circle
and were discussing the polo match. Miss Hitchcock's clear, mocking voice
could be heard teasing her cousin Caspar on his performance that afternoon.
The heavy young man, whose florid face was flushed with the champagne he
had taken, made ineffective attempts to ward off the banter. Parker
Hitchcock came to his rescue.

"I say, Lou, it's absurd to compare us with the teams east. We haven't the
stable. Who ever heard of playing with two ponies?"

He appealed to Sommers, who happened to be seated next him.

"Steve Bayliss buys ponies by the carload and takes his pick. You can't
play polo without good ponies, can you?"

"I don't know," Sommers answered indifferently.

He was looking at the lights along the shore, and contriving some excuse to
cut short his visit. It was clear that he was uncomfortably out of his
element in the chattering circle. He was too dull to add joy to such a
gathering, and he got little joy from it. And he was feverishly anxious to
be doing something, to put his hand to some plough--to escape the perpetual
irritation of talk.

The chatter went on from polo to golf and gossip until the group broke up
into flirtation couples. As Sommers was about to stroll off to the beach,
Lindsay came out of the dining room and sat down by him with the amiable
purpose of giving his young colleague some good social doctrine. He talked
admiringly of the manner in which the general managers had taken hold of
the strike.

"Most of them are from the ranks, you know," he said, "fought their way up
to the head, just as any one of those fellows could if he had the ability,
and they _know_ what they're doing."

"There is no one so bitter, so arrogant, so proud as your son of a peasant
who has got the upper hand," Sommers commented philosophically.

"The son of a peasant?" Lindsay repeated, bewildered.

"Yes, that's what our money-makers are,--from the soil, from the masses.
And when they feel their power, they use it worse than the most arrogant
aristocrats. Of course the strikers are all wrong, poor fools!" he hastened
to add. "But they are not as bad as the others, as _those who have_.
The men will be licked fast enough, and licked badly. They always will be.
But it is a brutal game, a brutal game, this business success,--a good deal
worse than war, where you line up in the open at least."

Sommers spoke nonchalantly, as if his views could not interest Dr. Lindsay,
but were interesting to himself, nevertheless.

"That's pretty fierce!" Lindsay remarked, with a laugh. "I guess you
haven't seen much of business. If you had been here during the anarchist
riots--"

Sommers involuntarily shrugged his shoulders. The anarchist was the most
terrifying bugaboo in Chicago, referred to as a kind of Asiatic plague that
might break out at any time. Before Lindsay could get his argument
launched, however, some of the guests drifted out to the terrace, and the
two men separated.

Later in the evening Sommers found Miss Hitchcock alone, and explained to
her that he should have to leave in the morning, as that would probably be
the last chance to reach Chicago for some days. She did not urge him to
stay, and expressed her regret at his departure in conventional phrases.
They were standing by the edge of the terrace, which ran along the bluff
above the lake. A faint murmur of little waves rose to them from the beach
beneath.

"It is so heavenly quiet!" the girl murmured, as if to reproach his
dissatisfied, restless spirit. "So this is good-bye?" she added, at length.

Sommers knew that she meant this would be the end of their intimacy, of
anything but the commonplace service of the world.

"I hope not," he answered regretfully.

"Why is it we differ?" she asked swiftly. "I am sorry we should disagree on
such really unimportant matters."

"Don't say that," Sommers protested. "You know that it is just because you
are intelligent and big enough to realize that they _are_ important
that--"

"We strike them every time?" she inquired.

"Laura Lindsay and Caspar would think we were drivelling idiots."

"I am not so sure they wouldn't be right!" She laughed nervously, and
locked her hands tightly together. He turned away in discomfort, and
neither spoke for a long time. Finally he broke the silence,--

"At any rate, you can see that I am scarcely a fit guest!"

"So you are determined to go in this way--back to your--case?"

At the scorn of her last words Sommers threw up his head haughtily.

"Yes, back to my case."




CHAPTER XVII


Mrs. Ducharme opened the door of the cottage in response to Sommers's
knock. Attired in a black house dress, with her dark hair smoothly brushed
back from round, fat features, she was a peaceful figure. Sommers thought
there was some truth in her contention that "Ducharme ought to get a
decent-looking woman, anyway."

"How is Mr. Preston?" he asked.

Mrs. Ducharme shook her head mournfully.

"Bad, allus awful bad--and _pitiful_. Calling for stuff in a voice fit
to break your heart."

"Mind you don't let him get any," the doctor counselled, preparing to go
upstairs.

"Better not go up there jest yet," the woman whispered. "He _did_ get
away from us yesterdy and had a terrible time over there." She hitched her
shoulders in the direction of Stoney Island Avenue. "We ain't found out
till he'd been gone 'most two hours, and, my! such goings on; we had to git
two perlicemen."

"I suppose you were out looking for Ducharme?" the doctor asked, in a
severe tone.

"It was the last time," the woman pleaded, her eyes downcast. "Come in
here. Miss Preston ain't got back from school,--she's late to-day."

Sommers walked into the bare sitting room and sat down, while Mrs. Ducharme
leaned against the door-post, fingering her apron in an embarrassed manner.

"I've got cured," she blurted out at last. "My eye was awful bad, and it's
been most a week since you sent me here."

"Did you follow my treatment?"

"No! I was out one afternoon--after Mrs. Preston came back from school--and
I had walked miles and miles. Comin' home I passed a buildin' down here a
ways on the avenue where there were picter papers pasted all over the
windows; the picters were all about healin' folks, heaps and heaps in great
theaters, a nice white-haired old preacher doin' the healin'. While I was
lookin' at the picters, a door opened and a young feller came along and
helped 'em carry in a cripple in his chair. He turns to me arter finishin'
with the cripple and says, 'Come in, lady, and be healed in the blood of
the lamb.' In I went, sure enough, and there was a kind of rough church
fitted up with texts printed in great show-bills, and they was healin'
folks. The little feller was helpin' em up the steps to the platform, and
the old feller was prayin', and at last the young feller comes to me and
says, 'Want ter be healed?' and I just got up, couldn't help it, and walked
to the platform, and they prayed over me--you aren't mad, are you?" she
asked suspiciously.

Sommers laughed.

"Mrs. Preston said you'd be very angry with such nonsense. But at any rate
the old fellow--Dr.--Dr.--Po--"

"Dr. Potz," Sommers suggested.

"That's him. He cured me, and I went back again and told him about
Ducharme. And _he_ says that he's got a devil, and he will cast it out
by prayin'. But he wants money."

"How much will it cost to cast out the devil?" the doctor inquired.

"The doctor says he must have ten dollars to loosen the bonds."

"Well," Sommers drew a bill from his pocket, "there's ten dollars on
account of your wages. Now, don't you interfere with the doctor's work. You
let him manage the devil his own way, and if you see Ducharme or the other
woman, you run away as hard as you can. If you don't, you may bring the
devil back again."

The woman took the money eagerly.

"You can go right off to find the doctor," Sommers continued. "I'll stay
here until Mrs. Preston returns. But let me look at your eye, and see
whether the doctor has cast that devil out for good and all."

He examined the eye as well as he could without appliances. Sure enough, so
far as he could detect, the eye was normal, the peculiar paralysis had
disappeared.

"You are quite right," he pronounced at last. "The doctor has handled this
devil very ably. You can tell Mrs. Preston that I approve of your going to
that doctor."

"I wonder where Mrs. Preston can be: she's most always here by half-past
four, and it's after five. He," the woman pointed upstairs to Preston's
rooms, "is sleeping off the effects of the dose Mrs. Preston gave him."

"The powders?" the doctor asked.

"Yes, sir. She had to give him two before he would sleep. Well, I'll be
back by supper time. If he calls you, be careful about the bar on the
door."

After Mrs. Ducharme had gone, the doctor examined every object in the
little room. It was all so bare! Needlessly so, Sommers thought at first,
contrasting the bleak room with the comfortable simplicity of his own
rooms. The strip of coarse thin rug, the open Franklin stove, the pine
kitchen table, the three straight chairs--it was as if the woman, crushed
down from all aspirations, had defiantly willed to exist with as little of
this world's furniture as might be. On the table were a few school books, a
teacher's manual of drawing, a school mythology, and at one side two or
three other volumes, which Sommers took up with more interest. One was a
book on psychology--a large modern work on the subject. A second was an
antiquated popular treatise on "Diseases of the Mind." Another volume was
an even greater surprise--Balzac's _Une Passion dans la Desert_, a
well-dirtied copy from the public library. They were fierce condiments for
a lonely mind!

His examination over, he noiselessly stepped into the hall and went
upstairs. After some fumbling he unbolted the door and tiptoed into the
room, where Preston lay like a log. The fortnight had changed him markedly.
There was no longer any prospect that he would sink under his disease, as
Sommers had half expected. He had grown stouter, and his flesh had a
healthy tint. "It will take it out of his mind," he muttered to himself,
watching the hanging jaw that fell nervelessly away from the mouth,
disclosing the teeth.

As he watched the man's form, so drearily promising of physical power, he
heard a light footstep at the outer door, which he had left unbarred. On
turning he caught the look of relief that passed over Mrs. Preston's face
at the sight of the man lying quietly in his bed. What a state of fear she
must live in!

Without a word the two descended, Sommers carefully barring and bolting the
door. When they reached her room, her manner changed, and she spoke with a
note of elation in her voice:

"I was _so_ afraid that you would not come again after sending me
help."

"I shall come as often and as long as you need me," Sommers answered,
taking her hand kindly. "He has had another attack," he continued. "Mrs.
Ducharme told me--I sent her out--and I suppose he's sleeping off the
opiate."

"Yes, it was dreadful, worse than anything yet." She uttered these words
jerkily, walking up and down the room in excitement. "And I've just left
the schoolhouse. The assistant superintendent was there to see me. He was
kind enough, but he said it couldn't happen again. There was scandal about
it now. And yesterday I heard a child, one of my pupils, say to his
companion, 'She's the teacher who's got a drunken husband.'"

Her voice was dreary, not rebellious.

"I don't know what to do. I cannot move. It would be worse in any other
neighborhood. I thought," she added in a low voice, "that he would go away,
for a time at least, but his mind is so weak, and he has some trouble with
walking. But he gets stronger, stronger, O God, every day! I have to see
him grow stronger, and I grow weaker."

"It is simply preposterous," the doctor protested in matter-of-fact tones,
"to kill yourself, to put yourself in such a position for a man, who is no
longer a man. For a man you cannot love," he added.

"What would be the use of running away from the trouble? He has ruined my
life. Alves Preston is a mere thing that eats and sleeps. She will be that
kind of thing as long as she lives."

"That is romantic rot," the doctor observed coldly. "No life is ruined in
that way. One life has been wrecked; but you, _you_ are bigger than
that life. You can recover--bury it away--and love and have children and
find that it is a good thing to live. That is the beauty of human
weakness--we forget ourselves of yesterday."

In answer to his words her face, which he had once thought too immobile and
passive for beauty, flamed with color, the dark eyes flashing beneath the
broad white brow.

"Am I just caught in a fog?" she murmured.

"You are living in a way that would make any woman mad. I might twist
myself into as many knots as you have. I might say that _I_ had caused
this disaster; that March evening my hand was too true. For I knew then the
man ought to die."

He blurted out his admission roughly.

"I knew you did," she said softly, "and that has made it easier."

His voice trembled when he spoke again. "But I live with facts, not
fancies. And the facts are that that ruined thing should not clog you, ruin
_you_. Get rid of him in any way you will,--I advise the county
asylum. Get rid of him, and do it quickly before he crazes you."

When he had finished, there was an oppressive stillness in the room, as if
some sentence had been declared. Mrs. Preston got up and walked to and fro,
evidently battling with herself. She stopped opposite him finally.

"The only thing that would justify _that_ would be to know that you
grasped it all--real happiness in that one bold stroke. Such conviction can
_never_ come."

"Happiness!" he exclaimed scornfully. "If you mean a good, comfortable
time, you won't find any certainty about _that_. But you can get freedom to
live out your life--"

"You fail to understand. There _is_ happiness. See,--come here."

She led him to the front window, which was open toward the peaceful little
lawn. On the railroad track behind the copse of scrub oak an unskilful
train crew was making up a long train of freight cars. Their shouts,
punctuated by the rumbling reverberations from the long train as it
alternately buckled up and stretched out, was the one discord in the soft
night. All else was hushed, even to the giant chimneys in the steel works.
One solitary furnace lamped the growing darkness. It was midsummer now in
these marshy spots, and a very living nature breathed and pulsed, even in
the puddles between the house and the avenue.

"You can hear it in the night air," she murmured; "the joy that comes
rising up from the earth, the joy of living. Ah! that is why we are
made--to have happiness and joy, to rejoice the heart of God, to make God
live, for _He_ must be happiness itself; and when we are happy and
feel joy in living, He must grow stronger. And when we are weak and bitter,
when the world haunts us as I felt this afternoon on leaving the
superintendent, when men strike and starve, and others are hard and
grasping--then He must shrink and grow small and suffer. There _is_
happiness," she ended, breathing her belief as a prayer into the solitude
and night.

"What will you do to get it?" Sommers asked, shortly.

"Do to get it?" She drew back from the window, her figure tense. "When it
comes within my grasp, I will do everything, everything, and nothing shall
hinder me."

"Meantime?" the doctor questioned significantly.

"Don't ask me!" She sank into a chair and covered her eyes with her hand.
And neither spoke until the sound of footsteps was heard on the walk.

"There is Mrs. Ducharme coming home from the charmer of devils. It is time
for me to go," Sommers said.

The room was so dark that he could not see her face, as he extended his
hand; but he could feel the repressed breathing, the passionate air about
her person.

"Remember," he said slowly, "whenever you need me--want me for
anything--send a message, and I shall come at once. We will settle this
thing together."

There was a sharp pressure on his hand, her thin fingers drawing him toward
her involuntarily. Then his hand dropped, and he groped his way to the
door.




CHAPTER XVIII


The cars were still whirring up and down Stoney Island Avenue when Sommers
left the cottage, but he did not think to stop one. Instead, he walked on
heedlessly, mechanically, toward the city. Frequently he stumbled and with
difficulty saved himself from falling over the dislocated planks of the
wooden walk. The June night was brilliant above with countless points of
light. A gentle wind drew in shore from the lake, stirring the tall rushes
in the adjacent swamps. Occasionally a bicyclist sped by, the light from
his lantern wagging like a crazy firefly. The night was strangely still;
the clamorous railroads were asleep. Far away to the south a solitary
engine snorted at intervals, indicating the effort of some untrained hand
to move the perishing freight. Chicago was a helpless giant to-night. When
he came to the region of saloons, which were crowded with strikers, he
turned away from the noise and the stench of bad beer, and struck into a
grass-grown street in the direction of the lake. There he walked on,
unmindful of time or destination, in the marvellous state of conscious
dream.

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