“Her health was shattered. In all probability she would have broken out again. She and you have been spared some years of certain misery.”
“Then I have done a good action from a philosophical point of view?” said Goddard, with a harsh laugh.
“If you put it that way, you have,” replied he doctor, somewhat stiffly.
“Look here, Carson,” cried Goddard excitedly. “I can’t tell you that I am grieved she had gone. Don’t expect me to play the hypocrite.”
“I expect nothing but the misfortune of having you upon my hands in a short time,” said the other.
“Then let me speak to you once and for all—as a medical man: I must speak to somebody. These last few weeks I have been in hell fire. I hated her. I wanted her to die. I used to wake up at nights wet through with sweat, through the terror of it. I have been to blame throughout from the first cursed day I married her. I didn’t love her; she didn’t care much for me. I had to go my way: she couldn’t follow me. How could she? She was left alone here all by herself—no company, no occupations—nothing. You know her history—her father. The drink was in her blood. I tried to save her—after my fashion. You, who have attended her for the last eight years, can bear me out. But we were strangers—not an impulse in common. Latterly—listen: I must tell some one once, or I shall go mad. I knew what a woman could be—what it was to want a woman passionately, madly. She came here one night, discovered I was married—saw my wife drunk in this room. Since then my wife has been like an incubus throttling me, dragging me down to damnation. And I wanted her to die. In that room upstairs, an hour ago, when I kissed her and forgave her, I wanted her to die. When the moment came it was as though I had murdered her. Tell me, what am I to think? What am I to do?”
His features were working strangely, his brow damp with the black hair straggling across it. He looked at Carson with a searching appeal in his eyes. The latter took his hand, felt his pulse.
“What you are to do,” he said, “is to go to bed at once and sleep. I’ll send you round a draught. What you are to think, when you wake up, is that you are not responsible for her death—that she might have died at any moment, that it is better to die than to live a life of misery; that you are a free man, young, with all that makes life worth living in front of you. And lastly, if you like, that I have forgotten all you have told me. Now, go to bed and stay there.”
“Impossible,” cried Goddard. “The election.”
“Damn the election!” said the doctor.