It was then after midnight. All at once I became aware of the compromising situation should he be seen leaving my office at that time of night. I was disturbed, too, as to what Mrs. Richards would think of his staying so late, yet was afraid to have him go. I was afraid to be alone, afraid of my own thoughts. I clung to him, my fear of him all gone—the danger now all gone—for my weakness appealed to his strength, and his one thought then seemed to be to restore and help me. He urged me to come home with him; he would carry me, if necessary; we would together tell Jane; she would understand; or, should he rush home and get her, and have her come and stay the night with me? he did not dare to leave me there alone. But all this time I was getting where I could think and plan for the future. When, previously, in helplessness, I had clung to him, it was as though I must make him take it all back, wipe it out; yet I was acutely conscious of the irrevocableness of it all, I had only clung in desperation—like two drowning persons must cling—no longer blaming him, but in utter wretchedness that together we had brought this on ourselves.
Now I was clearer. I began to talk. I told him he must never come there again alone. Then, as I thought of Mrs. Richards and the boys, and how they loved and trusted me, I broke down completely. I felt I could never again look into their faces; never enter their home, nor again have the happy times we had enjoyed. This he opposed vigorously. He asked nothing for himself, he said, but for her and the boys he pleaded that I would not be so cruel: they needed me; I had brightened their lives; he was more patient and kind when I was there, even when he knew I was coming; I helped him to control his temper, they all knew it—if I deserted them now, it would add to their misery. I suppose I then promised to go to their home as usual. I, having completely rallied by that time, he left me, himself looking worn and penitent, and showing unfeigned concern at my wretchedness.
As I opened the door to let him out, every sound in the quiet building, every fall of his foot down the stairs, struck me with dread; and when I found myself alone in the room, my terror increased. I did not dare to move; every sound I made increased this feeling; I was afraid to undress; afraid to open out the operating-chair and make my bed; so, wrapping a blanket around me, I reclined on the half-opened chair and slept from sheer exhaustion.
When I awoke, the terrible consciousness was there that it was all true; that it was not an ugly dream. Then I drank my first bitter draught of the cup of life. I had thought I had known sorrow before; thought I had suffered; but then, then, I knew that never until then had I realized what suffering is. “It isn’t true”—“It is true,”—fast upon the one thought, said as though the very force with which I uttered it would undo the truth, would follow the other inexorable sentence, “It is true.”
The events of the next few days, even my first meeting with Mrs. Richards, are gone from my recollection. I remember one thing, though: The next day, at my boarding-place, at dinner, a little Chatterbox of a woman spoke of how pale and wretched I looked, then, babbling on, told me that, having dropped into Mrs. Richards’s that morning, she had found her suffering from a severe sick headache. It seemed as if I must cry out in remorse and despair. In my hypersensitive condition I felt directly responsible for her suffering, though she had suffered similarly for years. I seemed made up of two entities, the one being stabbed by this chatter, and by my own self-reproaches, and the other calmly and indifferently replying to my table-mate, discussing the most commonplace affairs. I marvelled at my own unmoved exterior, marvelled at everything going on the same in the street, at the office, everywhere—the same as the day before—when all was so changed in me!
The first time I saw Mr. Richards after that was in his home, the family having sent for me to come to the house for supper. Already there, and dreading to meet him, I heard him run up the steps briskly, whistling as he came! He called out cheerily, “Are you in there, Doctor?” It was a shock to me. I had so dreaded to meet him; had thought of him as suffering from remorse as I had suffered (had he not said with contrition that he would ask God to forgive him?); and here he was whistling, and a love song! Again I recoiled from him, and with it came a sickening sense of being alone in my misery, and of having wasted more pity on him than he deserved. I was pretty severe when we spoke of it later, but think he succeeded in mollifying me somewhat, though I began then to think that his religious talk was largely cant, and so ceased to have much patience with his asking God to forgive him.
My friendliness with the family continued, but I never received him in the office after that, unless Mrs. Richards, or the boys, came with him. Later I learned a great deal of their home life which I had only divined before—learned that he was a very different man when I was there from his ordinary self; that the boys’ fondness for me, though genuine, was only a part of the reason why they were always so eager for me to come there, the other part being that Dad was always so jolly and good then, and things went so smoothly.
One evening while he and his wife and I were sitting on the veranda, the boys came home, greeted us, and passed on into the house, after which their father followed them, and we heard them in earnest conversation. Soon they were talking angrily. Mrs. Richards hurried in, and shortly after, I heard a cry of distress, and then her voice calling, “Doctor, come—come!”
Rushing in, there in the dining room I saw what nearly paralyzed me—the father, looking more like a fiend than a human being, had his younger son by the throat, while the elder boy, white with terror, stood on one side of the table, as far from his father as he could get. The mother was closing windows and doors, so that the neighbours could not hear, and was all the time beseeching the boy in jeopardy to say he did it: “Say it, Tommy, or he’ll kill you!”
With no clue as to what it all meant, I only knew that here was an enraged man, beside himself, and that his son, though in danger of being choked to death, was defying him, standing out about something he had been accused of. I took no time for thought, but, feeling exultantly, “Here, I have some power over him—now I can expiate my wrong,” rushed between the struggling father and son, tearing at the man’s fingers as they clasped the boy’s neck. He tried to push me away, looking as though he only half realized who I was; but, pulling at him, I interfered with all my strength, calling to him. Presently he warned me: “Doctor, get away if you don’t want me to hurt you, too—I warn you—I will not be thwarted—he shall confess.”