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?”