Poor Things
Page 16
I said that no god could ever hate her—that she should think of my loving embraces, not imaginary owls23—that I would always remember her with love—but how much money had I earned? Surely enough for a third-class fare back to Scotland?
“You have earned less than nothing,” she said. “I gave the police doctor all you earned and a bit more, to help him forget how you insulted his profession. Frenchmen are very proud. If I had not done that he would have taken my licence away and we would all be out of work.”
I suddenly felt too cold and tired to say a word. I went to my room, dressed, packed my bags, went downstairs, kissed Toinette wordlessly too (she wept aloud at that) and left the Hôtel de Notre-Dame for ever.
I still had some francs left from the money which had brought Wedder and me to Paris. It covered the cost of a cab to the Salpêtrière, and I gave what was left to an attendant with a note to be given directly into the hands of Professor Charcot. The note said Bella Baxter, niece of Mr. Godwin Baxter of Glasgow, was in the vestibule and would like to see him at his earliest convenience. The attendant returned and said the professor’s duties would keep him fully occupied for an hour or more, but if I cared to wait in his office his secretary would provide me with coffee. So I was shown into this room which smells like your study in Park Circus.
When Charcot at last arrived he was very genial at first: “Bonjour, Mamselle Baxter—the one completely sane English! How is my friend the enormous Godwin? What event must I thank for the unexpected pleasure of your presence here?”
I told him. It took a long time because he asked questions which brought out everything and he looked more and more solemn the more I spoke. At last he said abruptly, “You need money.”
Enough to return to Glasgow, I told him, where my guardian would repay him by a money order. To this he said nothing at all, but sat frowning and drumming his fingers on the desk top until I stood up, thanked him for his attention and said good-bye.
“No no. Pardon my abstraction—you need money and shall have it—enough to return in comfort to Scotland whenever you wish after spending tonight in my home as my guest. And do not thank me. You prefer earning money to receiving gifts. I approve. The money will be payment for helping me in a way you have already experienced. Attend!
“This evening I am lecturing before a very small, very fashionable audience: the Duc de Germantes (a man of genuine culture) and two or three whose names would not interest you. They are politicians—sensation seekers who like to pose as intellectuals. The lecture will help science indirectly by ensuring my researches are appreciated by those whose hands are on the public purse-strings. Tonight I will question under hypnosis a female farm servant—a religious hysteric but not, alas, as interesting as Jeanne d’Arc or as you Mamselle Baxter. Please enliven the occasion by recounting this evening (under hypnosis, of course, and in response to my questioning) part of what you have just told me.”
“What part?” asks Bell.
“Tell them how you enjoyed life before you saw Alexandria, your rational pleasure in an existence untainted by guilt and the fear of death. Tell them, in your splendidly unpunctuated fashion, how the sight of the poor children affected you, and do not, in the name of God, hold back the tears. Say how you relieved your feelings toward your male companion, and how you were affected by the taste of his blood. Finally, describe your present sense of the human condition. Be as Socialistic, Communistic, Anarchistic as you please—denounce the bourgeoisie, the plutocrats, the aristocrats, even royalty! Do you know anything about royalty?”
“I have been told Queen Victoria is a selfish old woman.”
“Perfect. They will enjoy that. These speeches of yours will be punctuated by my addresses to the audience in rapid French; you need pay no attention. After all, you will be in a hypnotic trance.”
“I suppose you will tell them that my pity for poor people is caused by a displaced sense of motherhood.”
24
“You recognize that? Then you are a psychologist!” he cried laughing. “But do not say so tonight! Society is based upon division of labour. I am the lecturer, you are my subject. Our august audience will be disconcerted if anyone but the great Charcot passes opinions. By the way, I will guarantee your anonymity. And you need not mention the names of your friends. After all, you are British. Reserve is instinctive to you, and everyone knows hypnosis cannot influence people against their will. Well?”
So tonight I will perform with him again, and tomorrow set off home, but this letter must be posted today, for you must know that the Bell coming back to you is no longer the pleasure-seeking somnambulist who eloped with poor old Wedder. You must answer some difficult questions for me. You must tell me how to do good and not be a parasite. Tell Candle too, for since he and Bell will soon be lifelong partners we must work together. Tell my dear Candle that his wedding Bell no longer thinks he must do all she bids. Tell him also that Millie Cronquebil was wrong in one thing she said: I will not be a better wife because of the variety enjoyed in the Notre-Dame, unless it pleases him to see me lying flat murmuring “formidable!” in a variety of astonished tones.
Meanwhile, all the best, both of you,
From she you love most,
Ding Dong Bell.
P.S.
Stroke the pussies, pat the dogs, kiss Mopsy and Flopsy for me.
“Well, Candle?” said Baxter, laying down the letter and smiling at me, “are you not terrified by the prospect of the return of this truly formidable partner? Think of what she did to Duncan Wedderburn!”
I was now too joyful to resent his kindly condescension. My pulse was accelerated. The ductless glands released such vital secretions into my blood-stream (I felt them doing it!) that my muscles expanded and I had the strength of several men.
“No, Baxter! I fear nothing from my Bella. She is a kind woman and a perfect judge of character. She knows a man’s inmost soul as soon as she shakes his hand. In Wedderburn she sensed the selfish sexual male rampant and served him exactly as he wished. He was fool enough to want a life of unending ecstasy. It was not her fault that no organism can survive through that. I am a virgin. My ecstasies with her will be varied by milder, more comfortable modes of affection. The main strain will fall on you, Baxter. If you do not show her how Mr. and Mrs. McCandless can improve the world you will hideously disappoint her—our marriage may not happen. Are you not terrified?”
“No. I will tell you to improve the world along lines clearly indicated by your characters and talents. . . . What is that sound?”
The hour was a little after midnight. As on the night Bella had left us the curtains were wide and I saw the moon through the window, though drifts of hurrying cloud sometimes hid it. The sound was a key turning in a lock downstairs, the front door opening and closing, a light rapid step ascending the stairs. I rose to face her as the study door opened—Baxter stayed seated. She stood before me, her face more gaunt and lined than it had been but her smile as delighted and delightful as ever. She had unfastened her travelling-coat so that I saw both the darned lining and my tiny pearl gleaming in the lapel. She laughed as she saw my eye fix on that, then said, “I am glad you are both still up and the old place is exactly the same—except for this. This is new.”
She strode to the fireplace and examined a lidded crystal vase on the overmantel. It contained our gobstoppers.
“The covenant of our plighted troth!” she cried. Removing the lid she took one out, ground it to powder beneath her firm white teeth, swallowed it then, opening her arms to us, cried, “O my God and my Candle, how wonderful to be home but what is there to eat downstairs? Sweets are not enough for a hungry woman. Duncan Wedderburn taught me that, besides what the scar on my stomach meant.”
This reminded her of something else. Suddenly she stared hard at Baxter, her face growing thinner, the pupils of her eyes expanding to completely blacken the irises. “Where is my child, God?” she asked.
19
My Shortest Chapter
“THE. EVENTS. WHICH. LED. TO. YOUR. CRACKED. HEAD. ALSO. DEPRIVED. YOU. OF. . YOUR. . . YOUR. . . . YOUR. . . . . YOUR . . . . . .” Silence. His lips were wrestling to say a word for which he could find no breath. I watched the tongue flicker against the back of his upper teeth, saw the word began with L so must be life. Half his brain was trying to tell Bella the truth about her origin, the other half was appalled by the attempt and so was I.
“Your child, Bella!” I shouted. “The shock that destroyed your memory killed the child in you!”
Baxter grew perfectly still, staring at her with aghast eyes and mouth wide open. So did I. She sighed and said softly, “I feared that,” then smiled at Baxter as kindly as if no tears were flowing down her cheeks. Then she sat on his knee, embraced him as far round the waist as her arms could reach, rested her head upon his chest and seemed to fall asleep. He too closed his eyes and his normal colour slowly returned.
Feeling relieved but jealous I watched them a while. Eventually I sat by Bella, embraced her waist and rested my head on her shoulder. She was not completely asleep, for she moved her body to let mine fit it more easily. The three of us lay a long time like that.
20
God Answers
Maybe an hour passed. She roused us by yawning and sitting up. The following conversation began in the study. It ended round the kitchen table where Bella demolished most of a cold boiled ham with bread, cheese, pickles and two or three pints of sweet milky tea. Though used to her quick recovery from emotional shocks I had never before seen it happen so physically. Her face lost the thin haggard look, her cheeks grew rounder, her brow smoother and softer, the tiny lines and wrinkles faded from her freshening skin. From looking any age between twenty-five and forty she became any age between twenty-five and fifteen. Was my strictly scientific eye dazzled by the loving glance she gave me? Surely not, yet more than ham and tea were erasing her marks of weariness and strain. Her eyes fed on our faces, her ears and brain digested our words into the substance of her thought, strengthening it as swiftly as her teeth and stomach used the eatables to renew her body. Between chewing and swallowing she spoke very wisely, provoking a debate which decided her future career, and mine too, and a date for our marriage. But perhaps her radiance did daze me slightly. I talked as much as Baxter and she put together but I remember hardly anything I said. However, I very distinctly recall exactly how the debate began.
Bell said, “Why did you sweat and stammer and tremble when I asked about my child, God? Were you afraid your answer would drive me mad?”
Baxter nodded with a force which made us fear for his neck.
She said, “I suppose that is not surprising. I was a child when I ran away from you—how could you have told childish Bell Baxter that she had lost a child of her own? Especially when you did not know who the dad was. You made me strong and sure of myself, God, by teaching me about the fine and mighty things in the world and showing I was one of them. You were too sane to teach a child about craziness and cruelty. I had to learn about those from people who were crazy and cruel themselves. I knew there was something wrong with the world as soon as Wedder told me I had been a mother. I knew my daughter could have been terribly hurt as soon as Dr. Hooker pointed smugly at the little poor girl and blind baby. When Mr. Astley explained how rich nations depend on infant mortalities I knew she might be dead, and I almost wished she were dead when I learned at Millie Cronquebil’s how weak and lonely women are used. You are to blame for nothing, God, nothing at all where I am concerned. But you know and hate (do you not?) how the weak are made to suffer?”
“Yes.”
“Did you never try to stop it?”
“Never,” said Baxter drearily, “though I once tried to lessen their pain by treating injured employees of the Blochairn iron foundry and St. Rollox locomotive works.”
“Why did you stop?”
“Because I was selfish,” said Baxter, starting to sweat and vibrate again, “and had found you. I wanted to win your love far more than I cared for the scorched and broken victims of heavy industry.”
Bella calmed him with a smile of tender amused dismay which was also in the tone of her voice.
“Dear God, what a lot of good I have prevented, just by existing! Harry Astley must be right—there are too many people in the world, especially pampered pets like me. We must start using your money properly, God. Let us take ship to Alexandria, find the little girl and her baby brother, adopt them and bring them back here.”
“No need to go so far Bell,” said Baxter, sighing. “Tomorrow I can walk with you up the High Street from Glasgow Cross. To our right you will see railway yards and warehouses on the ground of the old university: the university where Adam Smith devised his world-famous treatise on the Wealth of Nations and his universally neglected one on Social Sympathy. On the other side is a row of ordinary tenements with shops on the ground floor and behind that lie lands of stinking, overcrowded rooms where you will find as much huddled misery as you saw in the sunlight of Alexandria. There are closes where over a hundred people get all their drinking- and washing-water from one communal tap, rooms where a whole family squats in each corner. The commonest diseases are dysentery, rickets and tuberculosis. Here you may pick up any number of wretched little girls. Tell the parents you will train them to be domestic servants and they will bless you for removing them. Bring six of them here. With Mrs. Dinwiddie’s help you probably can, in three or four years, train most of them to clean a room and launder clothes. You are too ignorant to teach them anything better.”
Bella clutched the hair of her head in both hands and cried, “You sound like Harry Astley! Do you want to make me a cynical parasite too, God? Do you too think my hatred of suffering is nothing but displaced motherhood?”
“I will certainly think that if you start mothering children you cannot teach to be independent.”
“How can I teach that?”
“By learning to be independent yourself—independent of me and Candle too, whether you marry him or not. Are you willing to work hard?—outside a brothel, I mean.”
“You have seen me work hard for hours with the sick animals in our little hospital.”
“But now you want to help poor sick people.”
“You know I do.”
“Would you exhaust your brain and body by toiling in grim places where courage as well as strong judgement is needed?”
“I am ignorant and confused but not a fool or a coward. Give me work which uses me utterly!”
“Then you know what you should become.”
“No—tell me!”
“If the answer is not already in your mind,” said Baxter gloomily, “nothing I can say is any good.”
“Please give me a clue.”
“Your work will need hard study as well as practice, but your best friends can help with both.”
“I will be a doctor.”
Her face was wet with tears and his with sweat, yet they smiled and nodded to each other with such perfect understanding that I nearly envied them, though throughout this talk I had been holding Bell’s hand. Perhaps she sensed the envy for she kissed me and said, “Think of all the lectures you will be able to give me, Candle, and how hard I will have to listen!”
“Baxter knows a lot more than I do,” I told her.
“Yes,” said Baxter, “but I will never tell peop
le all of it.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The stars above divide reported speech from a fast summary.
Baxter told us there were only four women doctors in Britain just now, all with degrees from foreign universities, but the Enabling Bill of 1876 and the work of Sophia Jex-Blake had resulted in Dublin University opening its doors to women medical students and Scottish universities must soon do the same. Meanwhile he would return to work in the charity wards of an east Glasgow infirmary if Bella would enrol as a trainee nurse there. If she did well under the discipline he would contrive to get her assisting him as a theatre nurse. Thus, when she at last went to medical college (whether in Dublin or Glasgow) the lectures would mean more to her than the memory exercises most first-year students found them. He said all doctors and surgeons should be recruited from the nursing profession or begin by working in it. He then argued so fiercely that manual work be the primary training for every British profession that we took a while getting him back to the point.
He then asked Bella if she wished to be a general practitioner or to help particular kinds of people. She said she wanted to help little girls, mothers and prostitutes. He said this was a good idea because at present almost all who worked with these people had different sexual organs from their patients. Bella said she was determined to teach all the women who came to her the most modern and effective contraceptive methods. Baxter and I advised her to keep this intention secret until she was able to practise it. What she then told her patients in the privacy of a consulting-room would be unlikely to cause a public scandal. If she wished to argue publicly for birth control she would do so most effectively after working as a fully qualified clinician for at least five years. She only agreed with us when we admitted that the length of the waiting-period must be her choice and no one else’s.