The Undercurrent

by Robert Grant

XVIII

When Constance came to herself she was in her own bed. It appeared that she had been carried insensible into a drug store, and thence to Lincoln Chambers, which were close at hand. A doctor presently restored her to consciousness, but he gave imperative instructions that she was to be kept absolutely quiet or he would not answer for the consequences of the nervous shock. It was the second day before her countenance expressed recognition of Mrs. Harrity, the pensioner who looked after the children, and who sat sewing at her bedside. Even then her senses shrank from every effort, and having learned by a question or two that she had fallen, and that the children were well, she lapsed into a comatose state. When she emerged from this she was very weak, but her mind was clear. She could not bear the light, however. Her eyes burned with a stinging pain whenever they encountered it, and she was forced to submit to the physician's orders that she remain in a dark room for a week.

Her first inquiry after her mind was able to focus itself was whether word had been sent to the office. She was told that Loretta had done this by telephone; that Mr. Perry had called promptly, and that the roses on the table were from him. Mrs. Harrity seemed proud of the visit and the gift.

"He told me to say you weren't to worry, and to take all the time you need to get well. He's a pleasant-spoken gentleman, Mrs. Stuart, and wanted to know everything the doctor had said."

Mrs. Harrity was proud also of the fact that Loretta had been summoned to attend a new patient. She was proudest of all of a piece of intelligence, or rather prophecy, which Loretta had let fall the day after the accident, which she hastened to impart to Constance the first moment the latter appeared able to take it in.

"She says as how you ought to get big damages from the railroad."

"But I'm not much hurt, am I?" asked Constance.

The dame perceived that she had not lived up to the doctor's orders. Yet now she could conscientiously relieve her patient's natural solicitude.

"Mercy, no. You've broken nothing. You're only shook up. And it hasn't hurt your good looks a mite. But," she added, still conscientious, "the doctor says it's your nerves, and nerves are most as good as bones before a jury, especially if one has a smart lawyer handy as you have."

Constance sat up in bed. Instead of being a comfort, as was intended, the broad hint distressed her.

"I don't wish any damages. It was my own fault. I jumped before the car stopped. It was very silly. I only want to get well."

The dread of a tedious convalescence was already haunting her reviving faculties. Her absence from the office would be very inconvenient to Mr. Perry, and confinement at home for more than a few days would prove a disastrous inroad on her resources. She must hasten to recover.

Meantime Mrs. Harrity was looking blank at the reception accorded to what she had supposed would be a nerve tonic to the sufferer. She replied stanchly:

"She says different. She's ready to go on the stand and swear against the company. You're all right, darling. Smell them flowers, and lie down like a good girl. The doctor says you must keep still and not talk." So saying, she pushed a little nearer the vase of roses, one of which Constance had reached with her outstretched hand in the dark. Constance's impulse had been to detach it from its fellows so as to enjoy its fragrance at close range. But the larger opportunity afforded her, or else the jogging of her purpose, changed her mind. She bent forward and burying her face in the cool rose leaves inhaled their rich perfume.

"It was very kind of him to send them," she murmured, as though in monologue. Then appreciating for the first time her weakness she sank back upon her pillow. She said to herself that he was such a friend that he would make the best of her absence for a week and by the end of that time she would be herself again. But what a fool she had been to jump; to take such a risk, she a grown woman with children! She ought to have known better; she was getting middle-aged, and she must be more staid. Still it was some consolation to know she had not broken her nose.

A note received from Mr. Perry twenty-four hours later and read to her by her little daughter reassured her as to his indulgence in respect to her absence. All her interest now became centred on a rapid recovery, and she made sundry attempts to bring the doctor to book as to the date when she would be able to resume work again, which he smilingly evaded. She was conscious, however, of increasing bodily vigor, which was comforting. The inability of her eyes to endure the light was her chief discomfort, a condition which her physician appeared to her to ignore, until he arrived one morning with a brother practitioner, who proved to be an oculist, and who had brought with him some of the apparatus of his specialty for the purpose of a diagnosis. Constance could not bear the sphinx-like urbanities which followed the examination. She felt possessed by a desire to have the exact condition of affairs revealed to her. She lifted her head, and addressing her own doctor, said:

"I should like to know the truth, please. Do not conceal anything. It will be much worse for me to find out later that something has been kept back."

The family physician looked at the specialist as much as to say that he proposed to throw the burden on him, but he answered, "So far as your general physical condition is concerned, you are practically well, Mrs. Stuart. All the brain symptoms have disappeared, and there are no lesions of any kind. It is now simply a question of nerves—and your eyes. Dr. Dale can speak more authoritatively about the latter."

Dr. Dale, the oculist, a man in the prime of life, with precise methods and a closely cut Van Dyke beard, hesitated briefly, as though he were analyzing his patient, then said with courteous incisiveness—"It is a question of nerves, as Dr. Baldwin has explained. The nerves affected in your case are those of the eyes. Since you have expressed a wish to know the exact state of affairs, I take you at your word, Mrs. Stuart. I agree with you that it is more satisfactory to know the truth, and I am glad to be able to assure you that by the end of six months, if you give your eyes entire rest, their weakness will be cured, and you will be able to use them as freely as before."

He had rather the air of conferring a benefit than of pronouncing a sentence, and Constance received his statement in that spirit.

"Thank you," she said. "I will be as careful as I can."

"The condition of your cure," the specialist continued with polite relentlessness, "is that you abstain from using them altogether."

Constance experienced a thrill of concern. "Which means?"

"It means, Mrs. Stuart, that you must not sew, read, write, or undertake any form of application where the eyes are a factor."

She could not believe her ears. "I am a clerk in a law-office. My employment is stenography and type-writing," she said, tentatively.

He nodded. Evidently he had been informed. "It will be impossible for you to continue it."

"But I must. I must do my work. My children are dependent on it." Her tone suggested that there could be no answer to such a plea.

"You cannot. If you do, you will become blind. I am very sorry for you."

The truth was out. She lay dumfounded. "Blind? Blind?" she echoed.

"But there is not the least danger of your becoming blind if you obey my instructions. You will be entirely cured, as I have said."

There was a painful silence. Her sentence was too appalling to grasp. There must be some escape from it. "Six months? Half a year?"

"Knowing your necessities, I have given you the shortest period that I dared consistent with perfect recovery. You will have to wear colored glasses at first," he continued, seeking a business-like basis, "and accustom yourself to do without them by degrees. I will bring them to-morrow."

She leaned back on her pillow bewildered. The trickling of a tear into her mouth reminded her that she could not afford to cry, though but for the presence of the doctors she knew that she would have burst into sobs. Her plight demanded thought, not sorrow. But what could she do? What, indeed? Yet, even as she asked herself the dreadful question, she began to nerve herself not only against breaking down at the moment, but against the threat of the future. She would keep a stiff upper lip in the teeth of all the odds, and be able to manage somehow. As thus she reasoned, swallowing the salt of her single moment of weakness, she heard Dr. Baldwin saying:

"You have had a very fortunate escape, all things considered. It might have been much worse. You might have disfigured yourself permanently, which for you," he added with a gallant bow, "would have been a serious matter, indeed. As it is, you will be able to do everything as formerly in another week, except use your eyes. Your friends will look after you, Mrs. Stuart, and six months will pass much more quickly than you expect."

"I don't suppose they'll let me starve," she found herself saying, though the notion of a return to alms almost strangled her effort at buoyancy, so that the sprightliness of her tone competed with the water in her eyes, as the sun struggles with the rain-pour just before it clears up. But she remembered that the room was dark, and that they could not see her tears. "Wasn't I a fool to jump off that car?"

"You were unlucky, that's all. You mustn't be too hard on yourself. It is the privilege of the young to jump, and you will jump again." It was Dr. Dale who spoke. His enunciation imparted a cleansing value to his note of sympathy, just as it had ruthlessly epitomized her tragedy a few minutes before.

"But I am not young; that is the folly of it," she protested.

The oculist smiled. "Excuse me if I differ with you," said he. "You have the best years of your life before you."

They left her under the spell of this assertion, which lingered in her mind on account of its absurdity, until in sheer self-defence she said to herself under her breath that she was only thirty-one. The best years of her life! And yet he knew that she was to be deprived during half of one of them of the joy of seeing and the source of her livelihood. What could he mean?

In taking his departure, Dr. Baldwin, by way of showing his friendliness, had volunteered to write to her employer. "I know Mr. Perry," he said, "and I will explain to him the situation. Perhaps he will be able to keep your place for you."

Constance had interposed no objection. It would obviate the necessity of an elaborate explanation on her part, and would, moreover, be a guaranty of her later usefulness. The future would take care of itself; it was the present which stared her in the face and demanded an immediate answer.

One solution of her quandary was offered to her a few days later. Dr. Baldwin had given her permission to get up and resume her ordinary household duties as soon as her glasses arrived, which proved to be the next morning, as the oculist had promised. Consequently, she dressed herself and sat with her children in the parlor that afternoon, and on the following day rose, bent on facing the new problem of existence with a clear brain and resigned spirit. If Mr. Perry would save her place for her, so much the better. But obviously there was nothing for her to do in the office until she was cured. She must, either through her own energies or the advice of others, discover some employment compatible with her infirmity. She might have to accept help at first, for the money she had on hand would be needed to pay the bills of the two physicians, which would necessarily be considerable; but with the aid of her friends she would surely be able to find some handiwork which would yield her enough to keep her treasures well fed and decently clothed. Humiliating as it would be to have recourse to others, it was clearly her duty to inform her friends of her predicament, and invite their counsel. They would only thank her, she knew, and she certainly was fortunate in having three persons, to whom she felt at liberty to apply, so pleasantly interested in her welfare as her employer, Mrs. Wilson, and the Reverend George Prentiss. Mr. Perry was to be made aware of what had befallen her, without further action on her part; but she would write to the two others, and soon, for the thought was harassing her that her employer, in a spirit of benevolence, might try to invent duties for her at the office, and give her some sinecure in order that she might retain her salary. This would be galling to her self-respect, and was not to be entertained for a moment. As the possibility of it grew upon her she became quite agitated; so much so that in the hope of heading off any such attempt by him, she dictated to her daughter, that afternoon, letters to Mrs. Wilson and the clergyman, informing them briefly what had occurred.

Just after the little girl had returned from putting these in the letter-box, and Constance was musing over a cup of tea, a messenger with a note arrived. It was from Gordon Perry, and read by Henrietta it ran as follows: Might he not call that evening? He had the doctor's permission to do so; and she was to send a simple "Yes" or "No" by the bearer. Now for it, she thought; he was coming to overwhelm her with his cunning schemes for continuing her salary. Her first impulse was to protect herself by delay; to ask him to wait a day or two until she felt stronger. But this would be a subterfuge, and, excepting that she dreaded his philanthropy, she yearned to see him. He would put her in touch with the world again, from which she had been shut off too long. "No" trembled on her lips, but the fear of hurting his feelings occurred to her in the nick of time as a counterbalance to her dread of being pauperized by him, and her natural inclinations found utterance. "Tell Mr. Perry, yes," she answered, and her spirits rose from that moment, though she resolved to be as firm as a rock on the threatened issue. She ascribed his coming in the evening rather than the afternoon to his being busy at the office, and as she put the children to bed she reflected that it would be pleasant to have an uninterrupted visit. She made her toilette as best she could with Mrs. Harrity's aid, and she inwardly rejoiced again that she had not broken her nose.

Gordon arrived about half-past eight. The cheer which his manner expressed did not detract from its sympathy. It seemed to say that he recognized and deplored her misfortune, but took for granted her preference to face it smilingly, and not to waste time in superfluous lamentation. At the same time, she could not but notice his eager solicitude and the ardor of his bearing, which was slightly disconcerting. Yet he made her tell him the details of the accident, listening with the ear of a lawyer. At the close his brow clouded slightly as though her story failed to coincide with his prepossessions.

"You see I haven't any case, have I?" she said, divining what was passing in his mind. She cherished a half hope that his cleverness might still extract a just cause of action from her delinquency.

"Not on your evidence."

"So I supposed. Those are the real facts. I jumped before the car stopped, though the conductor warned me, and I heard the bell."

"That settles it; contributory negligence. But the trained nurse who was with you tells a different story."

"Loretta has been to see you?"

"Yes. She came ostensibly for her pay night before last. But she seemed very anxious to testify in court in your favor. She says the conductor wasn't looking at first, and that he pushed you off the car just as you were jumping."

Constance shook her head. "She is entirely mistaken as to the last part."

"There is nothing to be said. It struck me that Miss Davis, unlike most women, enjoyed the prospect of being a witness. It was a great event to her, and she would be able to do you a good turn." He sat for a moment pondering this diagnosis, then with a start, as though he had been surprised in a trivial occupation, exclaimed:

"But what does it matter whether you can get paltry damages or not? I did not come here to consider that. I came to talk with you about your future."

He spoke the last words with a tender cadence which was partly lost on Constance, for she sprang to the conclusion that the moment for her to display firmness had arrived, and that he was about to broach a scheme for retaining her in his employment.

"I must find some other occupation for the next six months, of course. I am forbidden to use my eyes for any purpose. I have written to Mrs. Wilson and my rector, thinking they may know of some opening or vacancy where I could work with my hands or do errands until my eyes are well." Then noticing the curious smile with which he received this rather impetuous announcement, and apprehensive lest he might be hurt by her avowed reliance on others, she added: "And you, too, must be on the lookout for me. You may hear of something which would suit me."

"As for that, do you suppose that because your service to me is interrupted I would not stand in the breach? That I would not insist on continuing your salary until you were able to return to your post?"

"I knew it would be just like you to wish to," she said, quickly, "but I could not possibly allow it. That's why I wrote to Mrs. Wilson and Mr. Prentiss," she added, not averse to having him know the real reason now that it could serve her as a shield.

Her naïve admission was evidently an agreeable piece of intelligence. "I took for granted that your salary would continue. That was a matter I did not have in mind in the least."

"It can't, I assure you."

He appeared entertained by her adamantine air. "Why not?"

"It isn't an absence of a week or two," she said, trying to show herself reasonable. "It will be six months before I am able to work again."

"A whole six months?"

She met the mockery in his tone with quiet determination. "I could not allow anyone to support me for that period. Do you not see that I must find something to do in order to remain happy?"

"Happy? You do not consider my side. Do you not see that a haggling calendar account of weeks and months is not applicable to such service as you render me? How would the satisfaction of saving the modest sum I pay you compare with that I should derive from enabling you to get well as rapidly as possible, untormented by painful necessities?"

There was a strange gleam in his eyes. She looked at him wonderingly. His rhetoric troubled her, and by dint of it he had managed to make her scruples seem ungenerous. But she was unconvinced.

"You would be obliged to pay someone else," she replied with cruel practicality.

"Enough of this," he said, impetuously. "It is absurd. I have something very different at heart. When I spoke of your future just now, Constance, it was to tell you that I have come here, to-night, to ask you to be my wife—to say to you that I love you devotedly and cannot live without you. This is my errand. It is not friendship I offer, it is not pity, it is not esteem for your gentle, strong soul, it is passionate human love."

He paused and there was profound silence in the darkened room where they could scarcely see each other's faces. Constance trembled like a leaf. In a moment the whole card-board house of sisterly affection fell about her ears, and she knew the truth. These were the sweetest words she had ever listened to, though they stabbed her like a knife. "Oh!" she whispered, "Oh!"

"Is it such a surprise, Constance?" he murmured, ascribing her accents of dismay to that source. "You must have known you were very dear to me."

The dimness gave her time to consider how she should deal with this startling certainty, the music of which was dancing in her brain. The meaning of his devotion was now so clear. Yet she had never guessed either his purpose or the secret of her own disconcerting heart-beats.

"I knew you were fond of me, but it never occurred to me that you could think of me as a wife."

"Why not? You are beautiful and charming as well as sweet and wise, and I adore you."

"I liked to feel that we should go on being dear friends for the rest of our lives," she answered, tingling with the thrill which this avowal caused her.

From the tremor of her speech he was emboldened to regard the sigh which followed this simple voicing of the exact truth as an ellipsis hiding a precious secret.

"Then you love me, Constance?"

Whatever happened, why should he not know? Why should she deny herself that ecstasy?

"Oh, yes, Gordon, I love you dearly."

"And you will be my wife?"

"How can I, Gordon? You know I must not." There was gentle pleading in her tone and a tinge of renunciating sadness.

"I mean presently. As soon as you obtain a divorce?"

The ugly word brought back reality. "Oh, no, we must put it from us. It is a delightful vision, but we must dismiss it forever."

"Why?" he asked, with the resonance of vigorous manhood.

"Because it would be an offence."

"Against what?"

"The eternal fitness of things." This phrase of Mrs. Wilson's rose to her lips again as a shibboleth. "I have made my mistake," she murmured. "I must suffer the penalty of it."

"Never!" he ejaculated. "It would be monstrous—monstrous."

There was a momentary silence. While he gazed at her ardently he was seeking command of himself so as to plead his cause with discriminating lucidity. To her darkened sight imagination pictured a swift river of fire flowing between them, across which they could touch their finger-tips, but no more.

"Do not think," he said, "that I have not considered this question from your side. It has been in my thoughts night and day for months. The idea of divorce is repugnant to you—though you have ceased to love the husband who deeply wronged you. You shrink even more from marrying again because your children's father is still alive. If he were dead, the bar would be removed, and you would not hesitate. I appeal to your common sense, Constance. What sound reason is there why you should sacrifice your happiness—the happiness of us both?"

"It is not a question of common sense—is it?"

It was a faltering query which followed the assertion. "The question is, what is right?"

"Amen to that!" he cried. "Yes, right, right. And who says it is not right?"

She had been so sure she would never marry again that she had never sought exact knowledge of her church's attitude in this regard, and yet now she had her fears. She knew that no Roman Catholic could marry again during the life of a divorced husband or wife, except by special dispensation, and she was aware of the increasing reluctance of the officials of her own church in this country to give the sanction of the marriage service to the remarriage of divorced persons; but she had never examined the church canon on the subject, for she had flattered herself that she would never need to. Discussions of the topic which she had listened to or read had played like lightnings around her oblivious head, but had served merely to intensify her repugnance to the blatant divorces and double-quick marriages, which she had seen heralded from time to time in the daily press, and which had recently been brought home to her with peculiar force by the events in Mrs. Wilson's family circle. Now the flare of the lightning was in her own eyes, and her brain was numb with the emotion of the personal shock.

"Would Mr. Prentiss marry me to you?" she asked, seeking as usual the vital issue.

"Your clergyman?" His query was merely to gain time. But he loved directness, too. "Suppose that he would not, there are plenty of clergymen who would."

"But he is my clergyman."

Gordon moved his chair nearer, and bending forward, took her hand in both of his.

"Dearest, this question is for you and me to settle, not for any outsider. It must bear the test of right and wrong, as you say, but I ask you to look at it as an intelligent human being, as the sane, noble-hearted American woman you are. The State—the considered law of the community in which we live—gives you the right to a divorce and freedom to marry again. Who stands in the way? Your clergyman—the representative of your church. The church erects a standard of conduct of its own and asks you to sacrifice your life to it. It is the church against the State—against the people. It is superstition and privilege against common sense and justice. I should like to prove to you by arguments how truly this is so."

"But I would rather not listen to your arguments now," she interposed. "I am on your side already. My heart is, and—I think my common sense."

His pulses gave a bound. "Then nothing can keep us apart!" he cried, pressing his lips upon her hands and kissing them again and again. "You are mine, we belong to one another. Why should a young and beautiful woman starve her being on such a plea, and reject such happiness as this?"

She drew her hands gently away, and herself beyond his reach. "Ah, you mustn't. If my church objects, it must have a reason, and I must hear that reason, Gordon. I must consult with Mr. Prentiss—with him and others. He is not an outsider. He was my friend and helper in the bitterest hours of my life."

"He will do his best to take you from me."

She shivered. "How do you know?"

"He cannot help himself. The canon of the Episcopal Church forbids a clergyman to marry one who has been divorced for any cause except adultery. The Catholic Church goes one step further and forbids altogether the remarriage of divorced persons. It does not recognize divorce. A large number of the clergy of your church are fiercely agitating the adoption of a similar absolute restriction. The two churches—and their attitude has stirred up other denominations—are seeking to fasten upon the American conscience an ideal inconsistent with the free development of human society."

She caught at the phrase. "Yet it is an ideal."

Gordon took a long breath. In the ardor of his mental independence he seemed to be seeking some fit word to epitomize his deduction.

"It is a fetish!" he said, earnestly. "It represents the past—privilege—superstition—injustice, as I have already told you."

"Oh, no," she murmured, "it cannot be simply that. You forget that I am a woman. You do not realize what the church means to me."

"I remember that you are an American woman."

The remark evidently impressed her. She pondered it briefly before she said, "I am, and I know how much that ought to mean. I wish to be worthy of it." She appeared troubled; then putting her hand to her head she rose, seeking instinctively an end of the interview. "I must think it over. You must not talk to me any more to-night. I did not realize how weak I am." Suddenly she exclaimed, "Ah, Gordon, you do not understand all! I forsook the church once in the pride of my heart. I wandered among false gods, and it took me back without a word of rebuke for my independence. I must do what is right this time—what is really right—at any cost."

As she stood in the shadow, erect and piteous, but with the aspect of spiritual aspiration in her voice and figure, stalwart as he was in his sense of righteousness, he thought of Marguerite in the prison scene when Faust implores her to fly with him.

"Forgive me," he said, "for having tired and harassed you. It was my love for you that led me on." He spoke with tenderness, and under the spell of his mood dropped on one knee beside her and looked up in her face.

"You may tell me about that before you go," she whispered, like one spellbound.

"It is not much to tell—except that it means everything to me. It has grown from a tiny seed, little by little, until it has become the harvest and the glory of my manhood. Ah, Constance, we love each other. How much that means. It sets the seal of beauty on this commonplace world. It will transfigure life for both of us."

She started. "The seal of beauty?" she murmured, as to herself. "If I were but sure of that! What I fear is lest I mar the beauty of the world, and so sin."

"It was my mother's hope that we should marry," he said, reverting to concrete ground.

"I think so," she answered, faintly, pressing his hand.

"And her idea was to do right."

"I know."

She sighed, then whispered, "You must go now."

Rising from his posture beside her he prepared to obey. They stood for an instant, irresolute, then, as by a common impulse, his arms opened and she suffered herself to be clasped in his strong embrace. It seemed to him as he felt her head upon his breast and her nervous, wistful face looked up into his that his happiness was assured. But she was thinking that come what might—and she was conscious of a dreadful uncertainty in her heart—she would not deny herself this single draught of the cup of happiness. It was a precious, sentient joy to be thought beautiful, and to feel that she was desired for herself alone by this hero of her ripe womanhood. So she let herself go as one who snatches at escaping joy, and their lips met in the full rapture of a lover's kiss.