Sylvia's Marriage Part 22

I bowed in a.s.sent.

"Now, Mrs. Abbot," began the little doctor, solemnly, "there is no longer a question of abstract ideas, but of an immediate emergency. We feel that we, as the physicians in charge of the case, have the right to take control of the matter. We do not see----"

"Dr. Perrin," I said, "let us come to the point. You want me to spin a new web of deception?"

"We are of the opinion, Mrs. Abbott, that in such matters the physicians in charge----"

"Excuse me," I said, quickly, "we have been over all this before, and we know that we disagree. Has Mr. van Tuiver told you of the proposition I have just made?"

"You mean for him to go to his wife----"

"Yes."

"He has told us of this, and has offered to do it. We are of the opinion that it would be a grave mistake."

"It has been three weeks since the birth of the baby," I said. "Surely all danger of fever is past. I will grant you that if it were a question of telling her deliberately, it might be better to put it off for a while. I would have been willing to wait for months, but for the fact that I dreaded something like the present situation. Now that it has happened, surely it is best to use our opportunity while all of us are here and can persuade her to take the kindest att.i.tude towards her husband."

"Madam!" broke in Dr. Gibson. (He was having difficulty in controlling his excitement.) "You are asking us to overstep the bounds of our professional duty. It is not for the physician to decide upon the att.i.tude a wife should take toward her husband."

"Dr. Gibson," I replied, "that is what you propose to do, only you wish to conceal the fact. You would force Mrs. van Tuiver to accept your opinion of what a wife's duty is."

Dr. Perrin took command once more. "Our patient has asked for you, and she looks to you for guidance. You must put aside your own convictions and think of her health. You are the only person who can calm her, and surely it is your duty to do so!"

"I know that I might go in and lie again to my friend, but she knows too much to be deceived for very long. You know what a mind she has--a lawyer's mind! How can I persuade her that the nurses--why, I do not even know what she heard the nurses say!"

"We have that all written down for you," put in Dr. Perrin, quickly.

"You have their recollection of it, no doubt--but suppose they have forgotten some of it? Sylvia has not forgotten, you may be sure--every word is burned with fire into her brain. She has put with this everything she ever heard on the subject--the experience of her friend, Harriet Atkinson-all that I've told her in the past about such things----"

"Ah!" growled Dr. Gibson. "That's it! If you had not meddled in the beginning----"

"Now, now!" said the other, soothingly. "You ask me to relieve you of the embarra.s.sment of this matter. I quite agree with Mrs. Abbott that there is too much ignorance about these things, but she must recognise, I am sure, that this is not the proper moment for enlightening Mrs. van Tuiver."

"I do not recognise it at all," I said. "If her husband will go to her and tell her humbly and truthfully----"

"You are talking madness!" cried the old man, breaking loose again. "She would be hysterical--she would regard him as something loathsome--some kind of criminal----"

"Of course she would be shocked," I said, "but she has the coolest head of anyone I know--I do not think of any man I would trust so fully to take a rational att.i.tude in the end. We can explain to her what extenuating circ.u.mstances there are, and she will have to recognise them. She will see that we are considering her rights----"

"Her _rights!_" The old man fairly snorted the words.

"Now, now, Dr. Gibson!" interposed the other. "You asked me----"

"I know! I know! But as the older of the physicians in charge of this case----"

Dr. Perrin managed to frown him down, and went on trying to placate me. But through the argument I could hear the old man muttering in his collar a kind of double ba.s.s _pizzicato_: "Suffragettes! Fanatics!

Hysteria! Woman's Rights!"

27. The breeze was feeble, and the sun was blazing hot, but nevertheless I made myself listen patiently for a while. They had said it all to me, over and over again; but it seemed that Dr. Perrin could not be satisfied until it had been said in Douglas van Tuiver's presence.

"Dr. Perrin," I exclaimed, "even supposing we make the attempt to deceive her, we have not one plausible statement to make----"

"You are mistaken, Mrs. Abbott," said he. "We have the perfectly well-known fact that this disease is often contracted in ways which involve no moral blame. And in this case I believe I am in position to state how the accident happened."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know whether you heard that just before Mrs. van Tuiver's confinement, I was called away to one of the other keys to attend a negro-woman. And since this calamity has befallen us, I have realized that I was possibly not as careful in sterilizing my instruments as I might have been. It is of course a dreadful thing for any physician to have to believe----"

He stopped, and there was a long silence. I gazed from one to another of the men. Two of them met my gaze; one did not. "He is going to let you say that?" I whispered, at last.

"Honour and fairness compel me to say it, Mrs. Abbott. I believe----"

But I interrupted him. "Listen to me, Dr. Perrin. You are a chivalrous gentleman, and you think you are helping a man in desperate need. But I say that anyone who would permit you to tell such a tale is a contemptible coward!"

"Madam," cried Dr. Gibson, furiously, "there is a limit even to a woman's rights!"

A silence followed. At last I resumed, in a low voice, "You gentlemen have your code: you protect the husband--you protect him at all hazards.

I could understand this, if he were innocent of the offence in question; I could understand it if there were any possibility of his being innocent. But how can you protect him, when you know that he is guilty?"

"There can be no question of such knowledge!" cried the old doctor.

"I have no idea," I said, "how much he has admitted to you; but let me remind you of one circ.u.mstance, which is known to Dr. Perrin--that I came to this place with the definite information that symptoms of the disease were to be antic.i.p.ated. Dr. Perrin knows that I told that to Dr.

Overton in New York. Has he informed you of it?"

There was an awkward interval. I glanced at van Tuiver, and I saw that he was leaning forward, staring at me. I thought he was about to speak, when Dr. Gibson broke in, excitedly, "All this is beside the mark! We have a serious emergency to face, and we are not getting anywhere. As the older of the physicians in charge of this case----"

And he went on to give me a lecture on the subject of authority. He talked for five minutes, ten minutes--I lost all track of the time. I had suddenly begun to picture how I would act and what I would say when I went into Sylvia's room. What a state must Sylvia be in, while we sat out here in the blazing mid-day sun, discussing her right to freedom and knowledge!

28. "I have always been positive," Dr. Gibson was saying, "but the present discussion has made me more positive than ever. As the older of the physicians in charge of this case, I say most emphatically that the patient shall not be told!"

I could not stand him any longer. "I am going to tell the patient," I said.

"You shall _not_ tell her!"

"But how will you prevent me?"

"You shall not _see_ her!"

"But she is determined to see _me!_"

"She will be told that you are not there."

"And how long do you imagine that that will satisfy her?"

There was a pause. They looked at van Tuiver, expecting him to speak.

And so I heard once more his cold, deliberate voice. "We have done all we can. There can no longer be any question as to the course to be taken. Mrs. Abbott will not return to my home."

"What?" I cried. I stared at him, aghast. "What do you mean?"