The doctor was a man about forty years of age, robust, with every appearance of a strong character. In the buttonhole of the frock coat he wore was a red rosette, the decoration of some order. Confused and nervous as George was, he got a vague impression of the physician’s richly furnished office, with its bronzes, marbles and tapestries.
The doctor signaled to the young man to be seated in the chair before his desk. George complied, and then, as he wiped away the perspiration from his forehead, stammered out a few words, explaining his errand. Of course, he said, it could not be true, but it was a man’s duty not to take any chances in such a matter. “I have not been a man of loose life,” he added; “I have not taken so many chances as other men.”
The doctor cut him short with the brief remark that one chance was all that was necessary. Instead of discussing such questions, he would make an examination. “We do not say positively in these cases until we have made a blood test. That is the one way to avoid the possibility of mistake.”
A drop of blood was squeezed out of George’s finger on to a little glass plate. The doctor retired to an adjoining room, and the victim sat alone in the office, deriving no enjoyment from the works of art which surrounded him, but feeling like a prisoner who sits in the dock with his life at stake while the jury deliberates.
The doctor returned, calm and impassive, and seated himself in his office-chair.
“Well, doctor?” asked George. He was trembling with terror.
“Well,” was the reply, “there is no doubt whatever.”
George wiped his forehead. He could not credit the words. “No doubt whatever? In what sense?”
“In the bad sense,” said the other.
He began to write a prescription, without seeming to notice how George turned page with terror. “Come,” he said, after a silence, “you must have known the truth pretty well.”
“No, no, sir!” exclaimed George.
“Well,” said the other, “you have syphilis.”
George was utterly stunned. “My God!” he exclaimed.
The doctor, having finished his prescription, looked up and observed his condition. “Don’t trouble yourself, sir. Out of every seven men you meet upon the street, in society, or at the theater, there is at least one who has been in your condition. One out of seven—fifteen per cent!”
George was staring before him. He spoke low, as if to himself. “I know what I am going to do.”
“And I know also,” said the doctor, with a smile. “There is your prescription. You are going to take it to the drugstore and have it put up.”
George took the prescription, mechanically, but whispered, “No, sir.”
“Yes, sir, you are going to do as everybody else does.”
“No, because my situation is not that of everybody else. I know what I am going to do.”
Said the doctor: “Five times out of ten, in the chair where you are sitting, people talk like that, perfectly sincerely. Each one believes himself more unhappy than all the others; but after thinking it over, and listening to me, they understand that this disease is a companion with whom one can live. Just as in every household, one gets along at the cost of mutual concessions, that’s all. Come, sir, I tell you again, there is nothing about it that is not perfectly ordinary, perfectly natural, perfectly common; it is an accident which can happen to any one. It is a great mistake that people speak if this as the ‘French Disease,’ for there is none which is more universal. Under the picture of this disease, addressing myself to those who follow the oldest profession in the world, I would write the famous phrase: ‘Here is your master. It is, it was, or it must be.’”
George was putting the prescription into the outside pocket of his coat, stupidly, as if he did not know what he was doing. “But, sir,” he exclaimed, “I should have been spared!”
“Why?” inquired the other. “Because you are a man of position, because you are rich? Look around you, sir. See these works of art in my room. Do you imagine that such things have been presented to me by chimney-sweeps?”
“But, Doctor,” cried George, with a moan, “I have never been a libertine. There was never any one, you understand me, never any one could have been more careful in his pleasures. If I were to tell you that in all my life I have only had two mistresses, what would you answer to that?”
“I would answer, that a single one would have been sufficient to bring you to me.”
“No, sir!” cried George. “It could not have been either of those women.” He went on to tell the doctor about his first mistress, and then about Lizette. Finally he told about Henriette, how much he adored her. He could really use such a word—he loved her most tenderly. She was so good—and he had thought himself so lucky!
As he went on, he could hardly keep from going to pieces. “I had everything,” he exclaimed, “everything a man needed! All who knew me envied me. And then I had to let those fellows drag me off to that miserable supper-party! And now here I am! My future is ruined, my whole existence poisoned! What is to become of me? Everybody will avoid me—I shall be a pariah, a leper!”
He paused, and then in sudden wild grief exclaimed, “Come, now! Would it not be better that I should take myself out of the way? At least, I should not suffer any more. You see that there could not be any one more unhappy than myself—not any one, I tell you, sir, not any one!” Completely overcome, he began to weep in his handkerchief.
The doctor got up, and went to him. “You must be a man,” he said, “and not cry like a child.”
“But sir,” cried the young man, with tears running down his cheeks, “if I had led a wild life, if I had passed my time in dissipation with chorus girls, then I could understand it. Then I would say that I had deserved it.”
The doctor exclaimed with emphasis, “No, no! You would not say it. However, it is of no matter—go on.”
“I tell you that I would say it. I am honest, and I would say that I had deserved it. But no, I have worked, I have been a regular grind. And now, when I think of the shame that is in store for me, the disgusting things, the frightful catastrophes to which I am condemned—”
“What is all this you are telling me?” asked the doctor, laughing.
“Oh, I know, I know!” cried the other, and repeated what his friend had told him about the man in a wheel-chair. “And they used to call me handsome Raoul! That was my name—handsome Raoul!”
“Now, my dear sir,” said the doctor, cheerfully, “wipe your eyes one last time, blow your nose, put your handkerchief into your pocket, and hear me dry-eyed.”
George obeyed mechanically. “But I give you fair warning,” he said, “you are wasting your time.”
“I tell you—” began the other.
“I know exactly what you are going to tell me!” cried George.
“Well, in that case, there is nothing more for you to do here—run along.”
“Since I am here,” said the patient submissively, “I will hear you.”
“Very well, then. I tell you that if you have the will and the perseverance, none of the things you fear will happen to you.”
“Of course, it is your duty to tell me that.”
“I will tell you that there are one hundred thousand like you in Paris, alert, and seemingly well. Come, take what you were just saying—wheel-chairs. One doesn’t see so many of them.”
“No, that’s true,” said George.
“And besides,” added the doctor, “a good many people who ride in them are not there for the cause you think. There is no more reason why you should be the victim of a catastrophe than any of the one hundred thousand. The disease is serious, nothing more.”
“You admit that it is a serious disease?” argued George.
“Yes.”
“One of the most serious?”
“Yes, but you have the good fortune—”
“The GOOD fortune?”
“Relatively, if you please. You have the good fortune to be infected with one of the diseases over which we have the most certain control.”
“Yes, yes,” exclaimed George, “but the remedies are worse than the disease.”
“You deceive yourself,” replied the other.
“You are trying to make me believe that I can be cured?”
“You can be.”
“And that I am not condemned?”
“I swear it to you.”
“You are not deceiving yourself, you are not deceiving me? Why, I was told—”
The doctor laughed, contemptuously. “You were told, you were told! I’ll wager that you know the laws of the Chinese concerning party-walls.”
“Yes, naturally,” said George. “But I don’t see what they have to do with it.”
“Instead of teaching you such things,” was the reply, “it would have been a great deal better to have taught you about the nature and cause of diseases of this sort. Then you would have known how to avoid the contagion. Such knowledge should be spread abroad, for it is the most important knowledge in the world. It should be found in every newspaper.”
This remark gave George something of a shock, for his father had owned a little paper in the provinces, and he had a sudden vision of the way subscribers would have fallen off, if he had printed even so much as the name of this vile disease.
“And yet,” pursued the doctor, “you publish romances about adultery!”
“Yes,” said George, “that’s what the readers want.”
“They don’t want the truth about venereal diseases,” exclaimed the other. “If they knew the full truth, they would no longer think that adultery was romantic and interesting.”
He went on to give his advice as to the means of avoiding such diseases. There was really but one rule. It was: To love but one woman, to take her as a virgin, and to love her so much that she would never deceive you. “Take that from me,” added the doctor, “and teach it to your son, when you have one.”
George’s attention was caught by this last sentence.
“You mean that I shall be able to have children?” he cried.
“Certainly,” was the reply.
“Healthy children?”
“I repeat it to you; if you take care of yourself properly for a long time, conscientiously, you have little to fear.”
“That’s certain?”
“Ninety-nine times out of a hundred.”
George felt as if he had suddenly emerged from a dungeon. “Why, then,” he exclaimed, “I shall be able to marry!”
“You will be able to marry,” was the reply.
“You are not deceiving me? You would not give me that hope, you would not expose me? How soon will I be able to marry?”
“In three or four years,” said the doctor.
“What!” cried George in consternation. “In three or four years? Not before?”
“Not before.”
“How is that? Am I going to be sick all that time? Why, you told me just now—”
Said the doctor: “The disease will no longer be dangerous to you, yourself—but you will be dangerous to others.”
“But,” the young man cried, in despair, “I am to be married a month from now.”
“That is impossible.”
“But I cannot do any differently. The contract is ready! The banns have been published! I have given my word!”
“Well, you are a great one!” the doctor laughed. “Just now you were looking for your revolver! Now you want to be married within the month.”
“But, Doctor, it is necessary!”
“But I forbid it.”
“As soon as I knew that the disease is not what I imagined, and that I could be cured, naturally I didn’t want to commit suicide. And as soon as I make up my mind not to commit suicide, I have to take up my regular life. I have to keep my engagements; I have to get married.”
“No,” said the doctor.
“Yes, yes!” persisted George, with blind obstinacy. “Why, Doctor, if I didn’t marry it would be a disaster. You are talking about something you don’t understand. I, for my part—it is not that I am anxious to be married. As I told you, I had almost a second family. Lizette’s little brothers adored me. But it is my aunt, an old maid; and, also, my mother is crazy about the idea. If I were to back out now, she would die of chagrin. My aunt would disinherit me, and she is the one who has the family fortune. Then, too, there is my father-in-law, a regular dragoon for his principles—severe, violent. He never makes a joke of serious things, and I tell you it would cost me dear, terribly dear. And, besides, I have given my word.”
“You must take back your word.”
“You still insist?” exclaimed George, in despair. “But then, suppose that it were possible, how could I take back my signature which I put at the bottom of the deed? I have pledged myself to pay in two months for the attorney’s practice I have purchased!”
“Sir,” said the doctor, “all these things—”
“You are going to tell me that I was lacking in prudence, that I should never have disposed of my wife’s dowry until after the honeymoon!”
“Sir,” said the doctor, again, “all these considerations are foreign to me. I am a physician, and nothing but a physician, and I can only tell you this: If you marry before three or four years, you will be a criminal.”
George broke out with a wild exclamation. “No sir, you are not merely a physician! You are also a confessor! You are not merely a scientist; and it is not enough for you that you observe me as you would some lifeless thing in your laboratory, and say, ‘You have this; science says that; now go along with you.’ All my existence depends upon you. It is your duty to listen to me, because when you know everything you will understand me, and you will find some way to cure me within a month.”
“But,” protested the doctor, “I wear myself out telling you that such means do not exist. I shall not be certain of your cure, as much as any one can be certain, in less than three or four years.”
George was almost beside himself. “I tell you you must find some means! Listen to me, sir—if I don’t get married I don’t get the dowry! And will you tell me how I can pay the notes I have signed?”
“Oh,” said the doctor, dryly, “if that is the question, it is very simple—I will give you a plan to get out of the affair. You will go and get acquainted with some rich man; you will do everything you can to gain his confidence; and when you have succeeded, you will plunder him.”
George shook his head. “I am not in any mood for joking.”
“I am not joking,” replied his adviser. “Rob that man, assassinate him even—that would be no worse crime than you would commit in taking a young girl in good health in order to get a portion of her dowry, when at the same time you would have to expose her to the frightful consequences of the disease which you would give her.”
“Frightful consequences?” echoed George.
“Consequences of which death would not be the most frightful.”
“But, sir, you were saying to me just now—”
“Just now I did not tell you everything. Even reduced, suppressed a little by our remedies, the disease remains mysterious, menacing, and in its sum, sufficiently grave. So it would be an infamy to expose your fiancee in order to avoid an inconvenience, however great that might be.”
But George was still not to be convinced. Was it certain that this misfortune would befall Henriette, even with the best attention?
Said the other: “I do not wish to lie to you. No, it is not absolutely certain, it is probable. And there is another truth which I wish to tell you now: our remedies are not infallible. In a certain number of cases—a very small number, scarcely five per cent—they have remained without effect. You might be one of those exceptions, your wife might be one. What then?”
“I will employ a word you used just now, yourself. We should have to expect the worst catastrophes.”
George sat in a state of complete despair.
“Tell me what to do, then,” he said.
“I can tell you only one thing: don’t marry. You have a most serious blemish. It is as if you owed a debt. Perhaps no one will ever come to claim it; on the other hand, perhaps a pitiless creditor will come all at once, presenting a brutal demand for immediate payment. Come now—you are a business man. Marriage is a contract; to marry without saying anything—that means to enter into a bargain by means of passive dissimulation. That’s the term, is it not? It is dishonesty, and it ought to come under the law.”
George, being a lawyer, could appreciate the argument, and could think of nothing to say to it.
“What shall I do?” he asked.
The other answered, “Go to your father-in-law and tell him frankly the truth.”
“But,” cried the young man, wildly, “there will be no question then of three or four years’ delay. He will refuse his consent altogether.”
“If that is the case,” said the doctor, “don’t tell him anything.”
“But I have to give him a reason, or I don’t know what he will do. He is the sort of man to give himself to the worst violence, and again my fiancee would be lost to me. Listen, doctor. From everything I have said to you, you may perhaps think I am a mercenary man. It is true that I want to get along in the world, that is only natural. But Henriette has such qualities; she is so much better than I, that I love her, really, as people love in novels. My greatest grief—it is not to give up the practice I have bought—although, indeed, it would be a bitter blow to me; my greatest grief would be to lose Henriette. If you could only see her, if you only knew her—then you would understand. I have her picture here—”
The young fellow took out his card-case. And offered a photograph to the doctor, who gently refused it. The other blushed with embarrassment.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I am ridiculous. That happens to me, sometimes. Only, put yourself in my place—I love her so!” His voice broke.
“My dear boy,” said the doctor, feelingly, “that is exactly why you ought not to marry her.”
“But,” he cried, “if I back out without saying anything they will guess the truth, and I shall be dishonored.”
“One is not dishonored because one is ill.”
“But with such a disease! People are so stupid. I myself, yesterday—I should have laughed at anyone who had got into such a plight; I should have avoided him, I should have despised him!” And suddenly George broke down again. “Oh!” he cried, “if I were the only one to suffer; but she—she is in love with me. I swear it to you! She is so good; and she will be so unhappy!”
The doctor answered, “She would be unhappier later on.”
“It will be a scandal!” George exclaimed.
“You will avoid one far greater,” the other replied.
Suddenly George set his lips with resolution. He rose from his seat. He took several twenty-franc pieces from his pocket and laid them quietly upon the doctor’s desk—paying the fee in cash, so that he would not have to give his name and address. He took up his gloves, his cane and his hat, and rose.
“I will think it over,” he said. “I thank you, Doctor. I will come back next week as you have told me. That is—probably I will.”
He was about to leave.
The doctor rose, and he spoke in a voice of furious anger. “No,” he said, “I shan’t see you next week, and you won’t even think it over. You came here knowing what you had; you came to ask advice of me, with the intention of paying no heed to it, unless it conformed to your wishes. A superficial honesty has driven you to take that chance in order to satisfy your conscience. You wanted to have somebody upon whom you could put off, bye and bye, the consequences of an act whose culpability you understand! No, don’t protest! Many of those who come here think and act as you think, and as you wish to act; but the marriage made against my will has generally been the source of such calamities that now I am always afraid of not having been persuasive enough, and it even seems to me that I am a little to blame for these misfortunes. I should have been able to prevent them; they would not have happened if those who are the authors of them knew what I know and had seen what I have seen. Swear to me, sir, that you are going to break off that marriage!”
George was greatly embarrassed, and unwilling to reply. “I cannot swear to you at all, Doctor; I can only tell you again that I will think it over.”
“That WHAT over?”
“What you have told me.”
“What I have told you is true! You cannot bring any new objections; and I have answered those which you have presented to me; therefore, your mind ought to be made up.”
Groping for a reply, George hesitated. He could not deny that he had made inquiry about these matters before he had come to the doctor. But he said that he was not al all certain that he had this disease. The doctor declared it, and perhaps it was true, but the most learned physicians were sometimes deceived.
He remembered something he had read in one of the medical books. “Dr. Ricord maintains that after a certain period the disease is no longer contagious. He has proven his contentions by examples. Today you produce new examples to show that he is wrong! Now, I want to do what’s right, but surely I have the right to think it over. And when I think it over, I realize that all the evils with which you threaten me are only probable evils. In spite of your desire to terrify me, you have been forced to admit that possibly my marriage would not have any troublesome consequence for my wife.”
The doctor found difficulty in restraining himself. But he said, “Go on. I will answer you afterwards.”
And George blundered ahead in his desperation. “Your remedies are powerful, you tell me; and for the calamities of which you speak to befall me, I would have to be among the rare exceptions—also my wife would have to be among the number of those rare exceptions. If a mathematician were to apply the law of chance to these facts, the result of his operation would show but slight chance of a catastrophe, as compared with the absolute certainty of a series of misfortunes, sufferings, troubles, tears, and perhaps tragic accidents which the breaking of my engagement would cause. So I say that the mathematician—who is, even more than you, a man of science, a man of a more infallible science—the mathematician would conclude that wisdom was not with you doctors, but with me.”
“You believe it, sir!” exclaimed the other. “But you deceive yourself.” And he continued, driving home his point with a finger which seemed to George to pierce his very soul. “Twenty cases identical with your own have been patiently observed, from the beginning to the end. Nineteen times the woman was infected by her husband; you hear me, sir, nineteen times out of twenty! You believe that the disease is without danger, and you take to yourself the right to expose your wife to what you call the chance of your being one of those exceptions, for whom our remedies are without effect. Very well; it is necessary that you should know the disease which your wife, without being consulted, will run a chance of contracting. Take that book, sir; it is the work of my teacher. Read it yourself. Here, I have marked the passage.”
He held out the open book; but George could not lift a hand to take it.
“You do not wish to read it?” the other continued. “Listen to me.” And in a voice trembling with passion, he read: “‘I have watched the spectacle of an unfortunate young woman, turned into a veritable monster by means of a syphilitic infection. Her face, or rather let me say what was left of her face, was nothing but a flat surface seamed with scars.’”
George covered his face, exclaiming, “Enough, sir! Have mercy!”
But the other cried, “No, no! I will go to the very end. I have a duty to perform, and I will not be stopped by the sensibility of your nerves.”
He went on reading: “‘Of the upper lip not a trace was left; the ridge of the upper gums appeared perfectly bare.’” But then at the young man’s protests, his resolution failed him. “Come,” he said, “I will stop. I am sorry for you—you who accept for another person, for the woman you say you love, the chance of a disease which you cannot even endure to hear described. Now, from whom did that woman get syphilis? It is not I who am speaking, it is the book. ‘From a miserable scoundrel who was not afraid to enter into matrimony when he had a secondary eruption.’ All that was established later on—‘and who, moreover, had thought it best not to let his wife be treated for fear of awakening her suspicions!’”
The doctor closed the book with a bang. “What that man has done, sir, is what you want to do.”
George was edging toward the door; he could no longer look the doctor in the eye. “I should deserve all those epithets and still more brutal ones if I should marry, knowing that my marriage would cause such horrors. But that I do not believe. You and your teachers—you are specialists, and consequently you are driven to attribute everything to the disease you make the subject of your studies. A tragic case, an exceptional case, holds a kind of fascination for you; you think it can never be talked about enough.”
“I have heard that argument before,” said the doctor, with an effort at patience.
“Let me go on, I beg you,” pleaded George. “You have told me that out of every seven men there is one syphilitic. You have told me that there are one hundred thousand in Paris, coming and going, alert, and apparently well.”
“It is true,” said the doctor, “that there are one hundred thousand who are actually at this moment not visibly under the influence of the disease. But many thousands have passed into our hospitals, victims of the most frightful ravages that our poor bodies can support. These—you do not see them, and they do not count for you. But again, if it concerned no one but yourself, you might be able to argue thus. What I declare to you, what I affirm with all the violence of my conviction, is that you have not the right to expose a human creature to such chances—rare, as I know, but terrible, as I know still better. What have you to answer to that?”
“Nothing,” stammered George, brought to his knees at last. “You are right about that. I don’t know what to think.”
“And in forbidding you marriage,” continued the doctor, “is it the same as if I forbade it forever? Is it the same as if I told you that you could never be cured? On the contrary, I hold out to you every hope; but I demand of you a delay of three or four years, because it will take me that time to find out if you are among the number of those unfortunate ones whom I pity with all my heart, for whom the disease is without mercy; because during that time you will be dangerous to your wife and to your children. The children I have not yet mentioned to you.”
Here the doctor’s voice trembled slightly. He spoke with moving eloquence. “Come, sir, you are an honest man; you are too young for such things not to move you; you are not insensible to duty. It is impossible that I shan’t be able to find a way to your heart, that I shan’t be able to make you obey me. My emotion in speaking to you proves that I appreciate your suffering, that I suffer with you. It is in the name of my sincerity that I implore you. You have admitted it—that you have not the right to expose your wife to such miseries. But it is not only your wife that you strike; you may attack in her your own children. I exclude you for a moment from my thought—you and her. It is in the name of these innocents that I implore you; it is the future, it is the race that I defend. Listen to me, listen to me! Out of the twenty households of which I spoke, only fifteen had children; these fifteen had twenty-eight. Do you know how many out of these twenty-eight survived? Three, sir! Three out of twenty-eight! Syphilis is above everything a murderer of children. Herod reigns in France, and over all the earth, and begins each year his massacre of the innocents; and if it be not blasphemy against the sacredness of life, I say that the most happy are those who have disappeared. Visit our children’s hospitals! We know too well the child of syphilitic parents; the type is classical; the doctors can pick it out anywhere. Those little old creatures who have the appearance of having already lived, and who have kept the stigmata of all out infirmities, of all our decay. They are the victims of fathers who have married, being ignorant of what you know—things which I should like to go and cry out in the public places.”
The doctor paused, and then in a solemn voice continued: “I have told you all, without exaggeration. Think it over. Consider the pros and cons; sum up the possible misfortunes and the certain miseries. But disregard yourself, and consider that there are in one side of the scales the misfortunes of others, and in the other your own. Take care that you are just.”
George was at last overcome. “Very well,” he said, “I give way. I won’t get married. I will invent some excuse; I will get a delay of six months. More than that, I cannot do.”
The doctor exclaimed, “I need three years—I need four years!”
“No, Doctor!” persisted George. “You can cure me in less time than that.”
The other answered, “No! No! No!”
George caught him by the hand, imploringly. “Yes! Science in all powerful!”
“Science is not God,” was the reply. “There are no longer any miracles.”
“If only you wanted to do it!” cried the young man, hysterically. “You are a learned man; seek, invent, find something! Try some new plan with me; give me double the dose, ten times the does; make me suffer. I give myself up to you; I will endure everything—I swear it! There ought to be some way to cure me within six months. Listen to me! I tell you I can’t answer for myself with that delay. Come; it is in the name of my wife, in the name of my children, that I implore you. Do something for them!”
The doctor had reached the limit of his patience. “Enough, sir!” he cried. “Enough!”
But nothing could stop the wretched man. “On my knees!” he cried. “I put myself on my knees before you! Oh! If only you would do it! I would bless you; I would adore you, as one adores a god! All my gratitude, all my life—half my fortune! For mercy’s sake, Doctor, do something; invent something; make some discovery—have pity!”
The doctor answered gravely, “Do you wish me to do more for you than for the others?”
George answered, unblushingly, ‘answered, unblushingly, “Yes!” He was beside himself with terror and distress.
The other’s reply was delivered in a solemn tone. “Understand, sir, for every one of out patients we do all that we can, whether it be the greatest personage, or the last comer to out hospital clinic. We have no secrets in reserve for those who are more fortunate, or less fortunate than the others, and who are in a hurry to be cured.”
George gazed at him for a moment in bewilderment and despair, and then suddenly bowed his head. “Good-by, Doctor,” he answered.
“Au revoir, sir,” the other corrected—with what proved to be prophetic understanding. For George was destined to see him again—even though he had made up his mind to the contrary!
George Dupont had the most important decision of his life to make; but there was never very much doubt what his decision would be. One the one hand was the definite certainty that if he took the doctor’s advice, he would wreck his business prospects, and perhaps also lose the woman he loved. On the other hand were vague and uncertain possibilities which it was difficult for him to make real to himself. It was all very well to wait a while to be cured of the dread disease; but to wait three or four years—that was simply preposterous!
He decided to consult another physician. He would find one this time who would not be so particular, who would be willing to take some trouble to cure him quickly. He began to notice the advertisements which were scattered over the pages of the newspapers he read. There were apparently plenty of doctors in Paris who could cure him, who were willing to guarantee to cure him. After much hesitation, he picked out one whose advertisement sounded the most convincing.
The office was located in a cheap quarter. It was a dingy place, not encumbered with works of art, but with a few books covered with dust. The doctor himself was stout and greasy, and he rubbed his hands with anticipation at the sight of so prosperous-looking a patient. But he was evidently a man of experience, for he knew exactly what was the matter with George, almost without the formality of an examination. Yes, he could cure him, quickly, he said. There had recently been great discoveries made—new methods which had not reached the bulk of the profession. He laughed at the idea of three or four years. That was the way with those specialists! When one got forty francs for a consultation, naturally, one was glad to drag out the case. There were tricks in the medical trade, as in all others. A doctor had to live; when he had a big name, he had to live expensively.
The new physician wrote out two prescriptions, and patted George on the shoulder as he went away. There was no need for him to worry; he would surely be well in three months. If he would put off his marriage for six months, he would be doing everything within reason. And meantime, there was no need for him to worry himself—things would come out all right. So George went away, feeling as if a mountain had been lifted from his shoulders.
He went to see Henriette that same evening, to get the matter settled. “Henriette,” he said, “I have to tell you something very important—something rather painful. I hope you won’t let it disturb you too much.”
She was gazing at him in alarm. “What is it?”
“Why,” he said, blushing in spite of himself, and regretting that he had begun the matter so precipitately, “for some time I’ve not been feeling quite well. I’ve been having a slight cough. Have you noticed it?”
“Why no!” exclaimed Henriette, anxiously.
“Well, today I went to see a doctor, and he says that there is a possibility—you understand it is nothing very serious—but it might be—I might possibly have lung trouble.”
“George!” cried the girl in horror.
He put his hand upon hers. “Don’t be frightened,” he said. “It will be all right, only I have to take care of myself.” How very dear of her, he thought—to be so much worried!
“George, you ought to go away to the country!” she cried. “You have been working too hard. I always told you that if you shut yourself up so much—”
“I am going to take care of myself,” he said. “I realize that it is necessary. I shall be all right—the doctor assured me there was no doubt of it, so you are not to distress yourself. But meantime, here is the trouble: I don’t think it would be right for me to marry until I am perfectly well.”
Henriette gave an exclamation of dismay.
“I am sure we should put it off,” he went on, “it would be only fair to you.”
“But, George!” she protested. “Surely it can’t be that serious!”
“We ought to wait,” he said. “You ought not to take the chance of being married to a consumptive.”
The other protested in consternation. He did not look like a consumptive; she did not believe that he WAS a consumptive. She was willing to take her chances. She loved him, and she was not afraid. But George insisted—he was sure that he ought not to marry for six months.
“Did the doctor advise that?” asked Henriette.
“No,” he replied, “but I made up my mind after talking to him that I must do the fair and honorable thing. I beg you to forgive me, and to believe that I know best.”
George stood firmly by this position, and so in the end she had to give way. It did not seem quite modest in her to continue persisting.
George volunteered to write a letter to her father; and he hoped this would settle the matter without further discussion. But in this he was disappointed. There had to be a long correspondence with long arguments and protestations from Henriette’s father and from his own mother. It seemed such a singular whim. Everybody persisted in diagnosing his symptoms, in questioning him about what the doctor had said, who the doctor was, how he had come to consult him—all of which, of course, was very embarrassing to George, who could not see why they had to make such a fuss. He took to cultivating a consumptive look, as well as he could imagine it; he took to coughing as he went about the house—and it was all he could do to keep from laughing, as he saw the look of dismay on his poor mother’s face. After all, however, he told himself that he was not deceiving her, for the disease he had was quite as serious as tuberculosis.
It was very painful and very trying. But there was nothing that could be done about it; the marriage had been put off for six months, and in the meantime he and Henriette had to control their impatience and make the best of their situation. Six months was a long time; but what if it had been three or four years, as the other doctor had demanded? That would have been a veritable sentence of death.
George, as we have seen, was conscientious, and regular and careful in his habits. He took the medicine which the new doctor prescribed for him; and day by day he watched, and to his great relief saw the troublesome symptoms gradually disappearing. He began to take heart, and to look forward to life with his former buoyancy. He had had a bad scare, but now everything was going to be all right.
Three or four months passed, and the doctor told him he was cured. He really was cured, so far as he could see. He was sorry, now, that he had asked for so long a delay from Henriette; but the new date for the wedding had been announced, and it would be awkward to change it again. George told himself that he was being “extra careful,” and he was repaid for the inconvenience by the feeling of virtue derived from the delay. He was relieved that he did not have to cough any more, or to invent any more tales of his interviews with the imaginary lung-specialist. Sometimes he had guilty feelings because of all the lying he had had to do; but he told himself that it was for Henriette’s sake. She loved him as much as he loved her. She would have suffered needless agonies had she known the truth; she would never have got over it—so it would have been a crime to tell her.
He really loved her devotedly, thoroughly. From the beginning he had thought as much of her mental sufferings as he had of any physical harm that the dread disease might do to him. How could he possibly persuade himself to give her up, when he knew that the separation would break her heart and ruin her whole life? No; obviously, in such a dilemma, it was his duty to use his own best judgment, and get himself cured as quickly as possible. After that he would be true to her, he would take no more chances of a loathsome disease.
The secret he was hiding made him feel humble—made him unusually gentle in his attitude towards the girl. He was a perfect lover, and she was ravished with happiness. She thought that all his sufferings were because of his love for her, and the delay which he had imposed out of his excess of conscientiousness. So she loved him more and more, and never was there a happier bride than Henriette Loches, when at last the great day arrived.
They went to the Riveria for their honeymoon, and then returned to live in the home which had belonged to George’s father. The investment in the notary’s practice had proven a good one, and so life held out every promise for the young couple. They were divinely happy.
After a while, the bride communicated to her husband the tidings that she was expecting a child. Then it seemed to George that the cup of his earthly bliss was full. His ailment had slipped far into the background of his thoughts, like an evil dream which he had forgotten. He put away the medicines in the bottom of his trunk and dismissed the whole matter from his mind. Henriette was well—a very picture of health, as every one agreed. The doctor had never seen a more promising young mother, he declared, and Madame Dupont, the elder, bloomed with fresh life and joy as she attended her daughter-in-law.
Henriette went for the summer to her father’s place in the provinces, which she and George had visited before their marriage. They drove out one day to the farm where they had stopped. The farmer’s wife had a week-old baby, the sight of which made Henriette’s heart leap with delight. He was such a very healthy baby that George conceived the idea that this would be the woman to nurse his own child, in case Henriette herself should not be able to do it.
They came back to the city, and there the baby was born. As George paced the floor, waiting for the news, the memory of his evil dreams came back to him. He remembered all the dreadful monstrosities of which he had read—infants that were born of syphilitic parents. His heart stood still when the nurse came into the room to tell him the tidings.
But it was all right; of course it was all right! He had been a fool, he told himself, as he stood in the darkened room and gazed at the wonderful little mite of life which was the fruit of his love. It was a perfect child, the doctor said—a little small, to be sure, but that was a defect which would soon be remedied. George kneeled by the bedside and kissed the hand of his wife, and went out of the room feeling as if he had escaped from a tomb.
All went well, and after a couple of weeks Henriette was about the house again, laughing all day and singing with joy. But the baby did not gain quite as rapidly as the doctor had hoped, and it was decided that the country air would be better for her. So George and his mother paid a visit to the farm in the country, and arranged that the country woman should put her own child to nurse elsewhere and should become the foster-mother of little Gervaise.
George paid a good price for the service, far more than would have been necessary, for the simple country woman was delighted with the idea of taking care of the grandchild of the deputy of her district. George came home and told his wife about this and had a merry time as he pictured the woman boasting about it to the travelers who stopped at her door. “Yes, ma’am, a great piece of luck I’ve got, ma’am. I’ve got the daughter of the daughter of our deputy—at your service ma’am. My! But she is as fat as out little calf—and so clever! She understands everything. A great piece of luck for me, ma’am. She’s the daughter of the daughter of our deputy!” Henriette was vastly entertained, discovering in her husband a new talent, that of an actor.
As for George’s mother, she was hardly to be persuaded from staying in the country with the child. She went twice a week, to make sure that all went well. Henriette and she lived with the child’s picture before them; they spent their time sewing on caps and underwear—all covered with laces and frills and pink and blue ribbons. Every day, when George came home from his work, he found some new article completed, and was ravished by the scent of some new kind of sachet powder. What a lucky man he was!
You would think he must have been the happiest man in the whole city of Paris. But George, alas, had to pay the penalty for his early sins. There was, for instance, the deception he had practiced upon his friend, away back in the early days. Now he had friends of his own, and he could not keep these friends from visiting him; and so he was unquiet with the fear that some one of them might play upon him the same vile trick. Even in the midst of his radiant happiness, when he knew that Henriette was hanging upon his every word, trembling with delight when she heard his latchkey in the door—still he could not drive away the horrible thought that perhaps all this might be deception.
There was his friend, Gustave, for example. He had been a friend of Henriette’s before her marriage; he had even been in love with her at one time. And now he came sometimes to the house—once or twice when George was away! What did that mean? George wondered. He brooded over it all day, but dared not drop any hint to Henriette. But he took to setting little traps to catch her; for instance, he would call her up on the telephone, disguising his voice. “Hello! Hello! Is that you, Madame Dupont?” And when she answered, “It is I, sir,” all unsuspecting, he would inquire, “Is George there?”
“No, sir,” she replied. “Who is this speaking?”
He answered, “It is I, Gustave. How are you this morning?” He wanted to see what she would answer. Would she perhaps say, “Very well, Gustave. How are you?”—in a tone which would betray too great intimacy!
But Henriette was a sharp young person. The tone did not sound like Gustave’s. She asked in bewilderment, “What?” and then again, “What?”
So, at last, George, afraid that his trick might be suspected, had to burst out laughing, and turn it into a joke. But when he came home and teased his wife about it, the laugh was not all on his side. Henriette had guessed the real meaning of his joke! She did not really mind—she took his jealousy as a sign of love, and was pleased with it. It is not until a third party come upon the scene that jealousy begins to be annoying.
So she had a merry time teasing George. “You are a great fellow! You have no idea how well I understand you—and after only a year of marriage!”
“You know me?” said the husband, curiously. (It is always so fascinating when anybody thinks she know us better than we know ourselves!) “Tell me, what do you think about me?”
“You are restless,” said Henriette. “You are suspicious. You pass your time putting flies in your milk, and inventing wise schemes to get them out.”
“Oh, you think that, do you?” said George, pleased to be talked about.
“I am not annoyed,” she answered. “You have always been that way—and I know that it’s because at bottom you are timid and disposed to suffer. And then, too, perhaps you have reasons for not having confidence in a wife’s intimate friends—lady-killer that you are!”
George found this rather embarrassing; but he dared not show it, so he laughed gayly. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said—“upon my word I don’t. But it is a trick I would not advise everybody to try.”
There were other embarrassing moments, caused by George’s having things to conceal. There was, for instance, the matter of the six months’ delay in the marriage—about which Henriette would never stop talking. She begrudged the time, because she had got the idea that little Gervaise was six months younger than she otherwise would have been. “That shows your timidity again,” she would say. “The idea of your having imagined yourself a consumptive!”
Poor George had to defend himself. “I didn’t tell you half the truth, because I was afraid of upsetting you. It seemed I had the beginning of chronic bronchitis. I felt it quite keenly whenever I took a breath, a deep breath—look, like this. Yes—I felt—here and there, on each side of the chest, a heaviness—a difficulty—”
“The idea of taking six months to cure you of a thing like that!” exclaimed Henriette. “And making our baby six months younger than she ought to be!”
“But,” laughed George, “that means that we shall have her so much the longer! She will get married six months later!”
“Oh, dear me,” responded the other, “let us not talk about such things! I am already worried, thinking she will get married some day.”
“For my part,” said George, “I see myself mounting with her on my arm the staircase of the Madeleine.”
“Why the Madeleine?” exclaimed his wife. “Such a very magnificent church!”
“I don’t know—I see her under her white veil, and myself all dressed up, and with an order.”
“With an order!” laughed Henriette. “What do you expect to do to win an order?”
“I don’t know that—but I see myself with it. Explain it as you will, I see myself with an order. I see it all, exactly as if I were there—the Swiss guard with his white stockings and the halbard, and the little milliner’s assistants and the scullion lined up staring.”
“It is far off—all that,” said Henriette. “I don’t like to talk of it. I prefer her as a baby. I want her to grow up—but then I change my mind and think I don’t. I know your mother doesn’t. Do you know, I don’t believe she ever thinks about anything but her little Gervaise.”
“I believe you,” said the father. “The child can certainly boast of having a grandmother who loves her.”
“Also, I adore your mother,” declared Henriette. “She makes me forget my misfortune in not having my own mother. She is so good!”
“We are all like that in our family,” put in George.
“Really,” laughed the wife. “Well, anyhow—the last time that we went down in the country with her—you had gone out, I don’t know where you had gone—”
“To see the sixteenth-century chest,” suggested the other.
“Oh, yes,” laughed Henriette; “your famous chest!” (You must excuse this little family chatter of theirs—they were so much in love with each other!)
“Don’t let’s talk about that,” objected George. “You were saying—?”
“You were not there. The nurse was out at mass, I think—”
“Or at the wine merchant’s! Go on, go on.”
“Well, I was in the little room, and mother dear thought she was all alone with Gervaise. I was listening; she was talking to the baby—all sorts of nonsense, pretty little words—stupid, if you like, but tender. I wanted to laugh, and at the same time I wanted to weep.”
“Perhaps she called her ‘my dear little Savior’?”
“Exactly! Did you hear her?”
“No—but that is what she used to call me when I was little.”
“It was that day she swore that the little one had recognized her, and laughed!”
“Oh, yes!”
“And then another time, when I went into her room—mother’s room—she didn’t hear me because the door was open, but I saw her. She was in ecstasy before the little boots which the baby wore at baptism—you know?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Listen, then. She had taken them and she was embracing them!”
“And what did you say then?”
“Nothing; I stole out very softly, and I sent across the threshold a great kiss to the dear grandmother!”
Henriette sat for a moment in thought. “It didn’t take her very long,” she remarked, “today when she got the letter from the nurse. I imagine she caught the eight-fifty-nine train!”
“Any yet,” laughed George, “it was really nothing at all.”
“Oh no,” said his wife. “Yet after all, perhaps she was right—and perhaps I ought to have gone with her.”
“How charming you are, my poor Henriette! You believe everything you are told. I, for my part, divined right away the truth. The nurse was simply playing a game on us; she wanted a raise. Will you bet? Come, I’ll bet you something. What would you like to bet? You don’t want to? Come, I’ll bet you a lovely necklace—you know, with a big pearl.”
“No,” said Henriette, who had suddenly lost her mood of gayety. “I should be too much afraid of winning.”
“Stop!” laughed her husband. “Don’t you believe I love her as much as you love her—my little duck? Do you know how old she is? I mean her EXACT age?”
Henriette sat knitting her brows, trying to figure.
“Ah!” he exploded. “You see you don’t know! She is ninety-one days and eight hours! Ha, ha! Imagine when she will be able to walk all alone. Then we will take her back with us; we must wait at least six months.” Then, too late, poor George realized that he had spoken the fatal phrase again.
“If only you hadn’t put off our marriage, she would be able to walk now,” said Henriette.
He rose suddenly. “Come,” he said, “didn’t you say you had to dress and pay some calls?”
Henriette laughed, but took the hint.
“Run along, little wife,” he said. “I have a lot of work to do in the meantime. You won’t be down-stairs before I shall have my nose buried in my papers. Bye-bye.”
“Bye-bye,” said Henriette. But they paused to exchange a dozen or so kisses before she went away to dress.
Then George lighted a cigarette and stretched himself out in the big armchair. He seemed restless; he seemed to be disturbed about something. Could it be that he had not been so much at ease as he had pretended to be, since the letter had come from the baby’s nurse? Madame Dupont had gone by the earliest train that morning. She had promised to telegraph at once—but she had not done so, and now it was late afternoon.
George got up and wandered about. He looked at himself in the glass for a moment; then he went back to the chair and pulled up another to put his geet upon. He puffed away at his cigarette until he was calmer. But then suddenly he heard the rustle of a dress behind him, and glanced about, and started up with an exclamation, “Mother!”
Madame Dupont stood in the doorway. She did not speak. Her veil was thrown back and George noted instantly the look of agitation upon her countenance.
“What’s the matter?” he cried. “We didn’t get any telegram from you; we were not expecting you till tomorrow.”
Still his mother did not speak.
“Henriette was just going out,” he exclaimed nervously; “I had better call her.”
“No!” said his mother quickly. Her voice was low and trembling. “I did not want Henriette to be here when I arrived.”
“But what’s the matter?” cried George.
Again there was a silence before the reply came. He read something terrible in the mother’s manner, and he found himself trembling violently.
“I have brought back the child and the nurse,” said Madame Dupont.
“What! Is the little one sick?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the matter with her?”
“Nothing dangerous—for the moment, at least.”
“We must send and get the doctor!” cried George.
“I have just come from the doctor’s,” was the reply. “He said it was necessary to take our child from the nurse and bring her up on the bottle.”
Again there was a pause. George could hardly bring himself to ask the next question. Try as he would, he could not keep his voice from weakening. “Well, now, what is her trouble?”
The mother did not answer. She stood staring before her. At last she said, faintly, “I don’t know.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“I asked. But it was not to our own doctor that I went.”
“Ah!” whispered George. For nearly a minute neither one of them spoke. “Why?” he inquired at last.
“Because—he—the nurse’s doctor—had frightened me so—”
“Truly?”
“Yes. It is a disease—” again she stopped.
George cried, in a voice of agony, “and then?”
“Then I asked him if the matter was so grave that I could not be satisfied with our ordinary doctor.”
“And what did he answer?”
“He said that if we had the means it would really be better to consult a specialist.”
George looked at his mother again. He was able to do it, because she was not looking at him. He clenched his hands and got himself together. “And—where did he send you?”
His mother fumbled in her hand bag and drew out a visiting card. “Here,” she said.
And George looked at the card. It was all he could do to keep himself from tottering. It was the card of the doctor whom he had first consulted about his trouble! The specialist in venereal diseases!