XI
THE CURSE OF EVE
Robert Johnson was an essentially commonplace man, with no feature todistinguish him from a million others. He was pale of face, ordinary inlooks, neutral in opinions, thirty years of age, and a married man. Bytrade he was a gentleman's outfitter in the New North Road, and thecompetition of business squeezed out of him the little character thatwas left. In his hope of conciliating customers he had become cringingand pliable, until working ever in the same routine from day to day heseemed to have sunk into a soulless machine rather than a man. No greatquestion had ever stirred him. At the end of this smug century,self-contained in his own narrow circle, it seemed impossible that anyof the mighty, primitive passions of mankind could ever reach him. Yetbirth, and lust, and illness, and death are changeless things, and whenone of these harsh facts springs out upon a man at some sudden turn ofthe path of life, it dashes off for the moment his mask of civilisationand gives a glimpse of the stranger and stronger face below.
Johnson's wife was a quiet little woman, with brown hair and gentleways. His affection for her was the one positive trait in his character.Together they would lay out the shop window every Monday morning, thespotless shirts in their green cardboard boxes below, the neckties abovehung in rows over the brass rails, the cheap studs glistening from thewhite cards at either side, while in the background were the rows ofcloth caps and the bank of boxes in which the more valuable hats werescreened from the sunlight. She kept the books and sent out the bills.No one but she knew the joys and sorrows which crept into his smalllife. She had shared his exultation when the gentleman who was going toIndia had bought ten dozen shirts and an incredible number of collars,and she had been stricken as he when, after the goods had gone, the billwas returned from the hotel address with the intimation that no suchperson had lodged there. For five years they had worked, building up thebusiness, thrown together all the more closely because their marriagehad been a childless one. Now, however, there were signs that a changewas at hand, and that speedily. She was unable to come downstairs, andher mother, Mrs. Peyton, came over from Camberwell to nurse her and towelcome her grandchild.
Little qualms of anxiety came over Johnson as his wife's timeapproached. However, after all, it was a natural process. Other men'swives went through it unharmed, and why should not his? He was himselfone of a family of fourteen, and yet his mother was alive and hearty. Itwas quite the exception for anything to go wrong. And yet in spite ofhis reasonings the remembrance of his wife's condition was always like asombre background to all his other thoughts.
Doctor Miles of Bridport Place, the best man in the neighbourhood, wasretained five months in advance, and, as time stole on, many littlepackets of absurdly small white garments with frill work and ribbonsbegan to arrive among the big consignments of male necessities. And thenone evening, as Johnson was ticketing the scarves in the shop, he hearda bustle upstairs, and Mrs. Peyton came running down to say that Lucywas bad and that she thought the doctor ought to be there without delay.
It was not Robert Johnson's nature to hurry. He was prim and staid andliked to do things in an orderly fashion. It was a quarter of a milefrom the corner of the New North Road where his shop stood to thedoctor's house in Bridport Place. There were no cabs in sight, so he setoff upon foot, leaving the lad to mind the shop. At Bridport Place hewas told that the doctor had just gone to Harman Street to attend a manin a fit. Johnson started off for Harman Street, losing a little of hisprimness as he became more anxious. Two full cabs but no empty onespassed him on the way. At Harman Street he learned that the doctor hadgone on to a case of measles, fortunately he had left the address--69Dunstan Road, at the other side of the Regent's Canal. Johnson'sprimness had vanished now as he thought of the women waiting at home,and he began to run as hard as he could down the Kingsland Road. Someway along he sprang into a cab which stood by the curb and drove toDunstan Road. The doctor had just left, and Robert Johnson felt inclinedto sit down upon the steps in despair.
Fortunately he had not sent the cab away, and he was soon back atBridport Place. Doctor Miles had not returned yet, but they wereexpecting him every instant. Johnson waited, drumming his fingers on hisknees, in a high, dim-lit room, the air of which was charged with afaint, sickly smell of ether. The furniture was massive, and the booksin the shelves were sombre, and a squat black clock ticked mournfully onthe mantelpiece. It told him that it was half-past seven, and that hehad been gone an hour and a quarter. Whatever would the women think ofhim! Every time that a distant door slammed he sprang from his chair ina quiver of eagerness. His ears strained to catch the deep notes of thedoctor's voice. And then, suddenly, with a gush of joy he heard a quickstep outside, and the sharp click of the key in the lock. In an instanthe was out in the hall, before the doctor's foot was over the threshold.
"If you please, doctor, I've come for you," he cried; "the wife wastaken bad at six o'clock."
He hardly knew what he expected the doctor to do. Something veryenergetic, certainly--to seize some drugs, perhaps, and rush excitedlywith him through the gaslit streets. Instead of that Doctor Miles threwhis umbrella into the rack, jerked off his hat with a somewhat peevishgesture, and pushed Johnson back into the room.
"Let's see! You _did_ engage me, didn't you?" he asked in no verycordial voice.
"Oh yes, doctor, last November. Johnson, the outfitter, you know, in theNew North Road."
"Yes, yes. It's a bit overdue," said the doctor, glancing at a list ofnames in a note-book with a very shiny cover. "Well, how is she?"
"I don't----"
"Ah, of course, it's your first. You'll know more about it next time."
"Mrs. Peyton said it was time you were there, sir."
"My dear sir, there can be no very pressing hurry in a first case. Weshall have an all-night affair, I fancy. You can't get an engine to gowithout coals, Mr. Johnson, and I have had nothing but a light lunch."
"We could have something cooked for you--something hot and a cup oftea."
"Thank you, but I fancy my dinner is actually on the table. I can do nogood in the earlier stages. Go home and say that I am coming, and I willbe round immediately afterwards."
A sort of horror filled Robert Johnson as he gazed at this man who couldthink about his dinner at such a moment. He had not imagination enoughto realise that the experience which seemed so appallingly important tohim, was the merest everyday matter of business to the medical man whocould not have lived for a year had he not, amid the rush of work,remembered what was due to his own health. To Johnson he seemed littlebetter than a monster. His thoughts were bitter as he sped back to hisshop.
"You've taken your time," said his mother-in-law reproachfully, lookingdown the stairs as he entered.
"I couldn't help it!" he gasped. "Is it over?"
"Over! She's got to be worse, poor dear, before she can be better.Where's Doctor Miles?"
"He's coming after he's had dinner."
The old woman was about to make some reply, when, from the half-openeddoor behind, a high, whinnying voice cried out for her. She ran back andclosed the door, while Johnson, sick at heart, turned into the shop.There he sent the lad home and busied himself frantically in putting upshutters and turning out boxes. When all was closed and finished heseated himself in the parlour behind the shop. But he could not sitstill. He rose incessantly to walk a few paces and then fall back into achair once more. Suddenly the clatter of china fell upon his ear, and hesaw the maid pass the door with a cup on a tray and a smoking teapot.
"Who is that for, Jane?" he asked.
"For the mistress, Mr. Johnson. She says she would fancy it."
There was immeasurable consolation to him in that homely cup of tea. Itwasn't so very bad after all if his wife could think of such things. Solighthearted was he that he asked for a cup also. He had just finishedit when the doctor arrived, with a small black-leather bag in his hand.
"Well, how is she?" he asked genially.
"Oh, she's very much better," sa
id Johnson, with enthusiasm.
"Dear me, that's bad!" said the doctor. "Perhaps it will do if I look inon my morning round?"
"No, no," cried Johnson, clutching at his thick frieze overcoat. "We areso glad that you have come. And, doctor, please come down soon and letme know what you think about it."
The doctor passed upstairs, his firm, heavy steps resounding through thehouse. Johnson could hear his boots creaking as he walked about thefloor above him, and the sound was a consolation to him. It was crispand decided, the tread of a man who had plenty of self-confidence.Presently, still straining his ears to catch what was going on, he heardthe scraping of a chair as it was drawn along the floor, and a momentlater he heard the door fly open, and some one came rushing downstairs.Johnson sprang up with his hair bristling, thinking that some dreadfulthing had occurred, but it was only his mother-in-law, incoherent withexcitement and searching for scissors and some tape. She vanished againand Jane passed up the stairs with a pile of newly-aired linen. Then,after an interval of silence, Johnson heard the heavy, creaking treadand the doctor came down into the parlour.
"That's better," said he, pausing with his hand upon the door. "You lookpale, Mr. Johnson."
"Oh no, sir, not at all," he answered deprecatingly, mopping his browwith his handkerchief.
"There is no immediate cause for alarm," said Doctor Miles. "The case isnot all that we could wish it. Still we will hope for the best."
"Is there danger, sir?" gasped Johnson.
"Well, there is always danger, of course. It is not altogether afavourable case, but still it might be much worse. I have given her adraught. I saw as I passed that they have been doing a little buildingopposite to you. It's an improving quarter. The rents go higher andhigher. You have a lease of your own little place, eh?"
"Yes, sir, yes!" cried Johnson, whose ears were straining for everysound from above, and who felt none the less that it was very soothingthat the doctor should be able to chat so easily at such a time. "That'sto say no, sir, I am a yearly tenant."
"Ah, I should get a lease if I were you. There's Marshall, thewatchmaker, down the street, I attended his wife twice and saw himthrough the typhoid when they took up the drains in Prince Street. Iassure you his landlord sprung his rent nearly forty a year and he hadto pay or clear out."
"Did his wife get through it, doctor?"
"Oh yes, she did very well. Hullo! Hullo!"
He slanted his ear to the ceiling with a questioning face, and thendarted swiftly from the room.
It was March and the evenings were chill, so Jane had lit the fire, butthe wind drove the smoke downwards and the air was full of its acridtaint. Johnson felt chilled to the bone, though rather by hisapprehensions than by the weather. He crouched over the fire with histhin white hands held out to the blaze. At ten o'clock Jane brought inthe joint of cold meat and laid his place for supper, but he could notbring himself to touch it. He drank a glass of the beer, however, andfelt the better for it. The tension of his nerves seemed to have reactedupon his hearing, and he was able to follow the most trivial things inthe room above. Once, when the beer was still heartening him, he nervedhimself to creep on tiptoe up the stair and to listen to what was goingon. The bedroom door was half an inch open, and through the slit hecould catch a glimpse of the clean-shaven face of the doctor, lookingwearier and more anxious than before. Then he rushed downstairs like alunatic, and running to the door he tried to distract his thoughts bywatching what was going on in the street. The shops were all shut, andsome rollicking boon companions came shouting along from thepublic-house. He stayed at the door until the stragglers had thinneddown, and then came back to his seat by the fire. In his dim brain hewas asking himself questions which had never intruded themselves before.Where was the justice of it? What had his sweet, innocent little wifedone that she should be used so? Why was Nature so cruel? He wasfrightened at his own thoughts, and yet wondered that they had neveroccurred to him before.
As the early morning drew in, Johnson, sick at heart and shivering inevery limb, sat with his great-coat huddled round him, staring at thegrey ashes and waiting hopelessly for some relief. His face was whiteand clammy, and his nerves had been numbed into a half-conscious stateby the long monotony of misery. But suddenly all his feelings leapt intokeen life again as he heard the bedroom door open and the doctor's stepsupon the stair. Robert Johnson was precise and unemotional in everydaylife, but he almost shrieked now as he rushed forward to know if it wereover.
One glance at the stern, drawn face which met him showed that it was nopleasant news which had sent the doctor downstairs. His appearance hadaltered as much as Johnson's during the last few hours. His hair was onend, his face flushed, his forehead dotted with beads of perspiration.There was a peculiar fierceness in his eye, and about the lines of hismouth, a fighting look as befitted a man who for hours on end had beenstriving with the hungriest of foes for the most precious of prizes. Butthere was a sadness too, as though his grim opponent had beenovermastering him. He sat down and leaned his head upon his hand like aman who is fagged out.
"I thought it my duty to see you, Mr. Johnson, and to tell you that itis a very nasty case. Your wife's heart is not strong, and she has somesymptoms which I do not like. What I wanted to say is that if you wouldlike to have a second opinion I shall be very glad to meet any one whomyou might suggest."
Johnson was so dazed by his want of sleep and the evil news that hecould hardly grasp the doctor's meaning. The other, seeing him hesitate,thought that he was considering the expense.
"Smith or Hawley would come for two guineas," said he. "But I thinkPritchard of the City Road is the best man."
"Oh yes, bring the best man," cried Johnson.
"Pritchard would want three guineas. He is a senior man, you see."
"I'd give him all I have if he would pull her through. Shall I run forhim?"
"Yes. Go to my house first and ask for the green baize bag. Theassistant will give it to you. Tell him I want the A.C.E. mixture. Herheart is too weak for chloroform. Then go for Pritchard and bring himback with you."
It was heavenly for Johnson to have something to do and to feel that hewas of some use to his wife. He ran swiftly to Bridport Place, hisfootfalls clattering through the silent streets, and the big darkpolicemen turning their yellow funnels of light on him as he passed. Twotugs at the night-bell brought down a sleepy, half-clad assistant, whohanded him a stoppered glass bottle and a cloth bag which containedsomething which clinked when you moved it. Johnson thrust the bottleinto his pocket, seized the green bag, and pressing his hat firmly downran as hard as he could set foot to ground until he was in the City Roadand saw the name of Pritchard engraved in white upon a red ground. Hebounded in triumph up the three steps which led to the door, and as hedid so there was a crash behind him. His precious bottle was infragments upon the pavement.
For a moment he felt as if it were his wife's body that was lying there.But the run had freshened his wits and he saw that the mischief might berepaired. He pulled vigorously at the night-bell.
"Well, what's the matter?" asked a gruff voice at his elbow. He startedback and looked up at the windows, but there was no sign of life. He wasapproaching the bell again with the intention of pulling it, when aperfect roar burst from the wall.
"I can't stand shivering here all night," cried the voice. "Say who youare and what you want or I shut the tube."
Then for the first time Johnson saw that the end of a speaking tube hungout of the wall just above the bell. He shouted up it--
"I want you to come with me to meet Doctor Miles at a confinement atonce."
"How far?" shrieked the irascible voice.
"The New North Road, Hoxton."
"My consultation fee is three guineas, payable at the time."
"All right," shouted Johnson. "You are to bring a bottle of A.C.E.mixture with you."
"All right! Wait a bit!"
Five minutes later an elderly, hard-faced man with grizzled hair flungopen the doo
r. As he emerged a voice from somewhere in the shadowscried--
"Mind you take your cravat, John," and he impatiently growled somethingover his shoulder in reply.
The consultant was a man who had been hardened by a life of ceaselesslabour, and who had been driven, as so many others have been, by theneeds of his own increasing family to set the commercial before thephilanthropic side of his profession. Yet beneath his rough crust he wasa man with a kindly heart.
"We don't want to break a record," said he, pulling up and panting afterattempting to keep up with Johnson for five minutes. "I would go quickerif I could, my dear sir, and I quite sympathise with your anxiety, butreally I can't manage it."
So Johnson, on fire with impatience, had to slow down until they reachedthe New North Road, when he ran ahead and had the door open for thedoctor when he came. He heard the two meet outside the bedroom, andcaught scraps of their conversation. "Sorry to knock you up--nastycase--decent people." Then it sank into a mumble and the door closedbehind them.
Johnson sat up in his chair now, listening keenly, for he knew that acrisis must be at hand. He heard the two doctors moving about, and wasable to distinguish the step of Pritchard, which had a drag in it, fromthe clean, crisp sound of the other's footfall. There was silence for afew minutes and then a curious drunken, mumbling sing-song voice camequavering up, very unlike anything which he had heard hitherto. At thesame time a sweetish, insidious scent, imperceptible perhaps to anynerves less strained than his, crept down the stairs and penetrated intothe room. The voice dwindled into a mere drone and finally sank awayinto silence, and Johnson gave a long sigh of relief for he knew thatthe drug had done its work and that, come what might, there should be nomore pain for the sufferer.
But soon the silence became even more trying to him than the cries hadbeen. He had no clue now as to what was going on, and his mind swarmedwith horrible possibilities. He rose and went to the bottom of thestairs again. He heard the clink of metal against metal, and the subduedmurmur of the doctors' voices. Then he heard Mrs. Peyton say something,in a tone as of fear or expostulation, and again the doctors murmuredtogether. For twenty minutes he stood there leaning against the wall,listening to the occasional rumbles of talk without being able to catcha word of it. And then of a sudden there rose out of the silence thestrangest little piping cry, and Mrs. Peyton screamed out in her delightand the man ran into the parlour and flung himself down upon thehorse-hair sofa, drumming his heels on it in his ecstasy.
But often the great cat Fate lets us go, only to clutch us again in afiercer grip. As minute after minute passed and still no sound came fromabove save those thin, glutinous cries, Johnson cooled from his frenzyof joy, and lay breathless with his ears straining. They were movingslowly about. They were talking in subdued tones. Still minute afterminute passing, and no word from the voice for which he listened. Hisnerves were dulled by his night of trouble, and he waited in limpwretchedness upon his sofa. There he still sat when the doctors camedown to him--a bedraggled, miserable figure with his face grimy and hishair unkempt from his long vigil. He rose as they entered, bracinghimself against the mantelpiece.
"Is she dead?" he asked.
"Doing well," answered the doctor.
And at the words that little conventional spirit which had never knownuntil that night the capacity for fierce agony which lay within it,learned for the second time that there were springs of joy also which ithad never tapped before. His impulse was to fall upon his knees, but hewas shy before the doctors.
"Can I go up?"
"In a few minutes."
"I'm sure, doctor. I'm very--I'm very----" he grew inarticulate. "Hereare your three guineas, Doctor Pritchard. I wish they were threehundred."
"So do I," said the senior man, and they laughed as they shook hands.
Johnson opened the shop door for them and heard their talk as they stoodfor an instant outside.
"Looked nasty at one time."
"Very glad to have your help."
"Delighted, I'm sure. Won't you step round and have a cup of coffee?"
"No, thanks. I'm expecting another case."
The firm step and the dragging one passed away to the right and theleft. Johnson turned from the door still with that turmoil of joy in hisheart. He seemed to be making a new start in life. He felt that he was astronger and a deeper man. Perhaps all this suffering had an objectthen. It might prove to be a blessing both to his wife and to him. Thevery thought was one which he would have been incapable of conceivingtwelve hours before. He was full of new emotions. If there had been aharrowing, there had been a planting too.
"Can I come up?" he cried, and then, without waiting for an answer, hetook the steps three at a time.
Mrs. Peyton was standing by a soapy bath with a bundle in her hands.From under the curve of a brown shawl there looked out at him thestrangest little red face with crumpled features, moist, loose lips, andeyelids which quivered like a rabbit's nostrils. The weak neck had letthe head topple over, and it rested upon the shoulder.
"Kiss it, Robert!" cried the grandmother. "Kiss your son!"
But he felt a resentment to the little, red, blinking creature. He couldnot forgive it yet for that long night of misery. He caught sight of awhite face in the bed and he ran towards it with such love and pity ashis speech could find no words for.
"Thank God it is over! Lucy, dear, it was dreadful!"
"But I'm so happy now. I never was so happy in my life."
Her eyes were fixed upon the brown bundle.
"You mustn't talk," said Mrs. Peyton.
"But don't leave me," whispered his wife.
So he sat in silence with his hand in hers. The lamp was burning dim andthe first cold light of dawn was breaking through the window. The nighthad been long and dark but the day was the sweeter and the purer inconsequence. London was waking up. The roar began to rise from thestreet. Lives had come and lives had gone, but the great machine wasstill working out its dim and tragic destiny.
The Man from Archangel, and Other Tales of Adventure Page 11