Instruments of Darkness (collection)/The Great City
THE GREAT CITY
Dr. Holland was amused to find that his guest really annoyed him. She had, as a matter of fact, done almost everything which from a New Yorker's point of view is undesirable. In the first place she had been an hour late—irritating to a busy practitioner obliged to take an afternoon train out of town. Then instead of apologizing she had scolded the Hollands for the condition of New York traffic.
“It took me,” she said, “almost half an hour to get here from Thirty-third Street.” The Hollands exchanged a glance, for it was obvious Lilian must have left her hotel already half an hour late. Then she had entered exclaiming, “I hope I haven't missed cocktails.” The Hollands never had cocktails, and certainly would not have had them for lunch. Jessie could not help saying, “You know, Lilian, you wouldn't dream of taking a cocktail at home.”
Their visitor was not a bit ashamed, and answered, “Oh, no, of course not, but in New York”
That was the keynote—New York, the prices, the crowds, the cabarets, the violation of law, the indecency of the theaters—Jessie and the doctor grew weary of saying, “I never go to such places—I haven't seen it—I never heard of her—I don't get my clothes at those notorious robbers”
Lilian evidently regarded them as entirely beneath her in luxury and fashion and in knowledge of the world. It was annoying to find that she regarded herself as their superior in all the domestic virtues as well.
She was leaving town soon after luncheon, and Jessie said to her, with a trace of irony in her tone, “I suppose you're crazy to get away from it all and go home.”
“Oh, yes,” said Lilian, looking at her new hat in the mirror with the intensity of a hunting-dog pointing game. “Oh, yes, indeed. Do you like this hat? Not expensive—only fifty-five dollars.”
“I never paid more than twenty-five for a hat in my life,” said Jessie.
“Oh, my dear, nonsense! Where can you get them for that price in New York?” But the question was purely rhetorical, for, like Pontius Pilate, she did not stay for an answer, but returned to the original thesis.
“Yes, indeed, I'm crazy to get back to Charlie and the children I did try to change my reservations until to-morrow and see that new show, 'Classic Crime'—they say it's almost certain to be raided, and that would be a story to take home, wouldn't it? but I couldn't change, and so Oh, yes, I long to get home. I see so much of my children—I'm not like you New York women who just have their children brought in to say good morning and good night. Mine lunch with me every day of their lives. I can't imagine bringing children up in New York—poor little pasty things! But then, of course my idea of a home is a big house and open fires”
It was a triumph of self-control that they allowed her to sink from their view in the elevator without telling her that the only reason why the three Holland children had not lunched with their parents that day was because the guest had been so late.
As soon as she had gone the exiled children came rushing in to say good-by to their father—handsome young creatures of the best pink-and-gold variety—two boys and a girl ranging from twelve to six.
“Good-by, sir,” said the elder boy, getting a certain sense of dignity out of this new form of address. He was off to the school football-field.
“By, Pops,” said the second boy, very easy and casual, because he was obliged to go back to school and do a task, and he hoped his father would get away without knowing it.
“Bring back lots of bread and butter,” said the girl, springing straight at his neck, and burying his nose in the dry, fluffy smell of her hair. She knew, of course, that he did not bring back bread and butter, and even in the long-ago days when she did believe it she had always considered bread and butter a paltry reward for his labors; but she used the expression as a friendly convention. She was about to go to the park for the afternoon, where she was exercising her will-to-power by gradually becoming the leader of a group of well-dressed ruffians of her own age who met daily in the mall.
When they had gone Jessie went and packed her husband's bag. They had been desperately poor when they were first married—he was just back from studying abroad—and in those days she had done everything for him—cooked and dusted and taken his notes and answered his telephone. Now she still packed his bag for no other reason than that she liked to do it.
He stood a moment at his window with some ties in his hand. He allowed himself to think that his native city was beautiful. The apartment was on the fifteenth floor, and it was four o'clock of a Winter afternoon. He looked south over the snow and the evergreens of Park Avenue, through blue shadows and the pink light, to the general murkiness obscuring the Grand Central Station at the end of the view. It was all very quiet and peaceful, except for Jessie, who, as she packed, was expressing her opinion of the conduct of out-of-town people in New York.
Usually Holland was more interested in observing the reactions of living organisms to the stimuli of their environment than in criticism of them; but Lilian having irritated him he approached the subject more as a human being and less as a scientist.
“Yes,” he said, “it's for the out-of-town people that most of these joints are run. We see a lot of them in the hospitals. Not only naughty boys and wayward girls, not only lonely business men, but respectable married women—they all use New York—they check their moral principles outside. If there were only New Yorkers in town it would be quiet enough. You don't know, Jessie” And he launched into those medical experiences of which every doctor's life is so rich.
Jessie drove to the station with him, gave him an unembarrassed hug at the gate of the train, and went home feeling forlorn, although he was to be back for breakfast in the morning.
He was attending a medical dinner that night in Alderney, reading a paper, and taking a midnight train home—not an attractive prospect. He always thought when he was asked to do such things that he must accept because it was a good mental discipline for a practicing physician to get his ideas clearly down on paper; but when the time came he always bitterly, regretted the loss of time. Besides, he hated to go away from his own home, in which he was able to spend so few hours as it was.
“I'll never do this again,” he said to himself as he got out of the train at Alderney. He went into the station and checked his bag, so that he could pick it up easily in a few hours when he came back to take the midnight train. “So futile,” he thought, “just to make a Roman holiday for a lot of old docs.”
Sometimes he enjoyed these evenings, sometimes he found something stimulating in the informal discussion, or in just seeing men who were doing a new piece of investigation; but this evening he had bad luck. The two men he sat between were interested in some matter of local medical politics, and all through dinner they talked about it across Holland. It seemed very trivial to Holland, as other people's political complications always do.
Then Dr. Eldon, who introduced him, did it badly, being both too laudatory and too long. Holland thought, “He must be unusually boring to bore even me while he's talking about me.” He had time to speculate as to what it was that made one man a bore and another, saying exactly the same words, interesting. Eldon was a worthy, good fellow and no fool in his profession, and yet one simply could not keep one's mind on what he said. Holland had known him years before when they were both studying in Munich. He had quite an affection for Eldon.
His own paper he hurried through as a sort of protest against Eldon's prolonged introduction, and sat down thinking it certainly had not been worth while to come so far and give up an evening at home with Jessie and the children. He felt almost homesick as he thought of them.
When it was all over, he saw, glancing at his watch, that it was not yet eleven o'clock. He decided to go straight to the station and get on board his train at once and go to sleep; but Dr. Eldon would not hear of it. He had the sort of hospitality which seems almost relentless to the dweller in a great city.
“No, no, my dear fellow,” he said, taking hold of Holland's arm. “It's all arranged. You must come home with me and meet my wife. She'll have a bite of supper for you, and I've kept the children up especially to see you.”
There was nothing to be done but to yield. “Yes,” Eldon went on, “I think you may be interested to see an old-fashioned home—I find the New York men usually are—Baker was up last month, and Edelstein—they had never seen anything like it. My house belonged to my wife's grandfather—old style, you know, open fires in every room, and mahogany doors, and Adam mantels—we've been offered great sums for some of the mantelpieces. Comfort, Holland, space—sunlight. I wouldn't exchange it. When I started practice I had an opportunity to go to New York. I've never regretted refusing it. You may say it's the desire to be a big frog in a small pond”
“No doubt about your being a big frog, Eldon, but I'm not sure the pond's so small,” said Holland civilly; but Eldon did not want to be interrupted even by compliments.
“I've brought my children up in a sane, healthy, simple atmosphere—not theaters and parties every night—no bootlegging—very few motors—no petting parties, I think you call them in New York—and this air, Holland, isn't this splendid, invigorating air after the damp smoke of New York?”
It was good air. Holland agreed to that, but it was bitterly cold. The two men stepped along briskly, with the collars of their overcoats turned up about their ears.
“How many children have you, Eldon?” Holland asked. Eldon had always bored him in that particular way that made it impossible for him to initiate any conversational ideas of his own. The only thing to do was just to keep Eldon going—not a difficult feat.
“Two—I have two,” said Eldon, “Richard, who goes to college next year, and Elizabeth, just seventeen. She is finishing school. You know, I suppose, that we have here one of the most remarkable girls' schools in the country.” A description of the school, its ideals, its distinguished graduates, its founding and its methods occupied him until they reached his house. “Here we are,” he said, throwing back his coat to get at his keys.
Holland could most sincerely admire the exterior. It was a low, wide city house, built of red brick, with white marble steps. The door was particularly beautiful, with delicate tracery on the side-lights and the fan above it.
Dr. Eldon rapped the silver-plated door-plate. “How long is it since you have seen a door-plate?” he said. “For, I suppose, like all New Yorkers, you live in an apartment.”
Holland confessed that he did. He thought that if any more of these out-of-towners mentioned open fires to him he would let them see how he felt, although he knew it was unjust to be cross to Eldon—a most worthy and domestic man—on account of the follies of that flibbertigibbet Lilian—still it was silly to talk as if New Yorkers were all like nomads and had never seen a home.
The hall was very broad, so that a wide staircase, mounting in a leisurely way to one landing and then to another, left plenty of room for large pieces of furniture, a marble-topped console, and a long sofa on which Eldon flung down his hat and coat, in order to usher his guest into the drawing-room.
Even Holland, in no mood to admire if he could possibly refrain, gave a hasty exclamation. A great fire of cannel coal and logs was blazing on the hearth, under a beautiful gray marble mantelpiece. The room was lit by lamps with dripping crystal lusters, and all the furniture was good—eighteenth-century English and American pieces. The doors were of mahogany inlaid with curled maple, and framed in white pilasters, decorated with acanthus capitals.
“There's something in it, after all,” Holland said to himself. He thought of Jessie and himself in such surroundings. For the first time in his life he saw why it was that people live somewhere else than in New York. He thought of the approach to his own place of residence—the jam of cars and trucks, the New York Central trains shaking the foundations, the doorman, the elevators
Eldon's son and daughter were already in the room when the two doctors entered, and though they rose civilly, and turned welcoming faces to the door, Holland saw that they were still continuing a discussion which must have been fairly acrimonious, for he caught a phrase or two—“other girls have”—“well, you know what I think.” Their father was utterly unconscious of any tenseness—unconscious, Holland thought, as he always had been that people had been living a moment before or would be living a moment after he happened to touch their lives—that was Eldon.
“Where's your mother, children?” he said. “Is supper ready?”
“Yes, I think so,” said the girl. “Mother was a little tired and has gone to bed.”
“Gone to bed?” exclaimed Eldon. “She can't have gone to bed”
“Please don't disturb her,” put in Holland, who perfectly sympathized with her action. He longed to go quietly down to his train and go to bed himself.
“No, no, no,” said Eldon. “She hasn't gone to bed. It's ridiculous. She particularly wanted to meet you—she knew I wanted her to. She hasn't” He left the room still talking.
“My father,” said the son with a faint smile, “never having been tired in all his life, is incapable of understanding that any one else can be. My mother had a headache.”
“Dr. Holland,” said the girl, “will you tell me how I can get into the”
“Oh, good Heavens!” exclaimed Richard with some violence. “After all I've said to you!”
“It made no effect on me—what you said,” retorted the girl. “As if you weren't going away to college in the Autumn yourself.”
“I have to go away to college.”
“Not if you didn't want to.”
They fell to arguing this point—he did not have to go away—he was not obliged to be an engineer—if he were a doctor he could study there and become father's assistant and spend the rest of his life in Alderney. Ah, there it was, he didn't want to live and die in Alderney—well, neither did she.
As they talked Holland observed the girl—she was very lovely, with a fierce, firm chin, a pale, smooth, oval face, and beautiful bronze-colored hair. She reminded him of some one. Who? Some one whose recollection stirred him a little—touched some emotional moment—and yet he could not remember who it was. The boy interested him much less—hardly at all—a solid, good, young Eldon, but the girl
She turned to him with her extraordinary vitality. “Dr. Holland, how do I get into the medical school in New York? I want to be a doctor.”
“You want to go to New York,” said her brother.
“I want to work. Of course I know if I leave home I must support myself.”
The boy now appealed to Holland. “It's my mother I think of,” he said. “She hates being alone—to have Liz go off and leave her by herself—why, it will almost kill her.”
“She'll have father,” said Elizabeth, but her tone admitted this wasn't much.
“I can't understand your wanting to leave her. If I were a girl and didn't have my way to make” the boy began, but she cut in:
“Oh, Dr. Holland, you can't imagine what Alderney's like—nothing to do—always the same old people—all the boys are just like Richard—they all go away—from the highest motives, of course, but they go. It isn't being young—it's like being dead.”
“Well, mother's stood it for a great many years—stood it—she loves it. Mother loves Alderney.”
Holland had both the professional man's repugnance to the idea of women entering his profession, and every man's belief that this repugnance was based on his consideration for woman's own best interests. He thought of the desperate competition, the physical strain of a doctor's life; he felt the spacious calm and safety of the house in which he found himself. He resolved to tell the girl that she was wrong—that her obvious young brother had the right of it, but as he began to speak the door opened, and Eldon came in with his wife.
“Here she is,” he said in a tone not boastful, yet the tone of a man who is convinced you will think more of him when you have seen his wife. “Here she is. This is my old friend Holland, dear.” He pushed her forward. She stood perfectly still and looked at Holland. Not a muscle of her face or of his changed. They had met before.
Holland thought, “How incredible that she should be Lewis Eldon's wife!” He could see that tall, lovely figure kneeling beside the hotel bed.
He tried to think—it must have been five, six, perhaps seven years ago, a Summer evening. He had been detained in town by a case and had been dining at a quiet little hotel. He had finished dinner and was drinking his coffee. Suddenly the manager came running in. Would Dr. Holland come to a guest—a gentleman taken suddenly ill—he and his wife had just arrived.
Holland sprang to his feet.
They had taken the sick man to the nearest bedroom. It was dark, airless, and noisy. It was all thick red carpets, gilt furniture, striped silk on the walls. Holland knew it well. The bed was still covered by a crimson-silk coverlet, against which the ashen face of the dying man stood out with terrible gray sharpness.
A glance told Holland the trouble was cardiac—a brief examination that there was nothing to be done. Five minutes after the doctor came into the room the man was dead.
Holland could now turn his attention to the woman who had sunk on her knees beside the bed. Taking her slim, firm hand, he suggested to her that she should rise. He spoke in a tone deliberately matter-of-fact. “Has your husband ever had an attack like this before?”
She rose very slowly to her feet. “Yes, I think so,” she answered. “Two or three years ago—before I knew him.”
“Ah,” said Holland, thinking suddenly of Jessie, “you have only been married a short time.”
She stared at him, then she said quietly, “We are not married.”
Holland, like every one who is deeply in love with a wedded mate, was aware of a shock. He looked at her carefully. He saw a woman in the early thirties, not fashionably dressed, hardly elegant, but essentially a lady. He had not thought her handsome then, for her face was white and ravaged. He remembered, however, her splendid eyes, and her extraordinary dignity.
As he looked at her she walked to a great gilded chair and sat down.
“Is there any one you would like me to send for?” he asked. She shook her head.
He had the art, which doctors are obliged to acquire, of appearing to be possessed of infinite leisure. If this woman was to be saved all the scandal of a newspaper story, she must be sent home at once. Her simplicity interested him, but most of all she moved his heart by not making any appeal for pity.
She had no wish either to conceal or to confide, but after a few minutes Holland knew the main points of her story—two young children, ten years of married life—youth supposedly over, and then the entrance of romance. A great engineer sent to her little city in consultation—emotions neither of them had ever experienced.
“But we would not have done this,” she said, “if only we might have been friends. But they wouldn't let us. You see, in a small town every one knows everything. Every time he came up the steps of our house, he was seen and talked about, and we were as much punished for being friends as if we had been lovers.” She shivered a little.
Holland waited and then asked, “And your children?”
“They loved him, too,” she answered. “He was so brilliant—he radiated a sort of life and vitality—my little boy wanted to be with him all the time”
“But now what will happen to your children?” Holland insisted.
“They will be safe,” she returned, “my husband is a very good man and kind—but so wearisome—so wearisome.”
Holland thought now as he recollected that hopeless tone that he might have guessed she could be speaking only of his old friend Eldon.
He had not asked her name, though she had heard his from the manager and called him by it. He did not even know the town she was describing to him. He discovered that, fortunately, she had not registered. He found her bags, saw that she had plenty of money, called a taxi for her, and sent her off home on the first train.
He had never known until the present moment where she had gone. He had often thought of her. He had never mentioned her—not even to Jessie.
Now seeing her against the background of this handsome old house, the wife of his old friend, it seemed to him that he had an understanding of her that probably no one had ever had.
He made a hasty diagnosis that her emotional deadness must have continued through all these years—or, knowing who was downstairs, she would not have allowed herself to be coerced into coming down. He could almost see her shrug her shoulders and say, “Well, what does it matter?” He stared at her, wondering whether or not she was grateful to him for having sent her home.
“How about supper, my dear?” Eldon was saying. “These New Yorkers, you know—always in a hurry.”
“I think there's something laid out in the dining-room,” she answered. “You might go and see.” Eldon and Richard both left the room, and Elizabeth, who had been waiting for her chance, burst out: “Mother, I want to ask Dr. Holland about Medical College—how much it would cost.”
Her mother gave a little smothered moan.
“You don't want her to go?” said Holland.
“A child of seventeen—alone in New York?”
“Mother, I'm almost as old as you were when you married—well, anyhow, when you got engaged to father.”
Mrs. Eldon looked straight at Holland. “I was too young,” she said.
At that moment the double doors leading into the dining-room rolled back, Dr. Eldon on one side and his son on the other. Another beautiful room appeared.
“Here we are,” cried Eldon, “just a bite—just a little supper,” and he hurried back to his chafing dish, talking as he went: “Do you know, my dear, what that precious daughter of yours had been saying to Dr. Holland? Richard says she has been asking him to get her into the Medical College. My daughter a doc!—I don't understand this generation. We struggle to make a home for these children. We work—we have no other thoughts but them”
“Yes, we have other thoughts,” interrupted his wife gently.
He turned. “No, I have no other thoughts but my children—and you.”
“You think of your profession.”
“Of course I think of my profession. I wouldn't be a very good doctor if I didn't think a little about my profession—but only on their account. What else am I working for?”
“Perhaps because it is so terrible to be idle,” said his wife.
Elizabeth gave an exhalation expressing joy. “There—I didn't know you'd understand that, Mother. I know you like this sort of life—seeing no one—doing nothing—but I'm different, Mother; do try and realize it!”
“Nonsense!” said her father. 'You're just exactly what your mother was at your age.”
“No, I'm not,” cried Elizabeth. “I have a terrible capacity for being bored”
“Bored, bored,” exclaimed Eldon, “you ought not to know the meaning of the word at your age.”
“Mother,” Elizabeth went on, “it isn't that I think becoming a doctor will make me happy, but this makes me unhappy. I must do something. It is so terrible to wake up in the morning and not care what you do. If I stayed here in Alderney I might make some idiotic mistake—marry the first tiresome man who asked me”
“Well, well,” said her father, “not necessarily so idiotic—to marry, you know—not always a disaster.”
His wife looked at him, and then shut her eyes.
“It would be a disaster for me to marry just for the sake of doing something,” said the girl, and then her brother broke out:
“Oh, you, you, you—you think of nothing but yourself. Suppose mother had dashed off and left us because she found Alderney a little dull?”
“I should have had the greatest sympathy with her,” returned Elizabeth.
Her mother laid her hand on the girl's. “I believe you would,” she said.
“Liz only wants to be a doctor,” her brother went on, “because the medical school here isn't open to women—she wants to get away to New York.”
“And that's why you want to be an engineer,” retorted the girl. “You could study medicine here—so you decided to be an engineer, and go to Boston.”
“I've always wanted to be an engineer. It's a great profession. Mother has always said that she never knew an engineer who wasn't a man.”
“I hope she can say the same of doctors,” said Eldon sharply.
A flicker, a tremor passed over Mrs. Eldon's immobile mask. She turned. “Dr. Holland,” she said, “I think you know all the facts of this case. What do you advise us to do?”
He felt the responsibility that she was thrusting upon him, but he did not hesitate. “I should let her do it,” he said.
“Oh, you lamb!” cried the future doctor.
“Go to New York without any one to look after her?” exclaimed Eldon.
“Oh, get over the idea that New York is so dangerous, Eldon,” said Holland. “In some ways it's a good deal safer place to live in than a small town—at least you're not always plotting to get away from it.” He stood up. “And I must be getting back there.”
He took his hostess's hand. “Thank you, Mrs. Eldon. It has been a great pleasure to see you. My wife and I will look out for your daughter—if you decide to send her. I should like you to know my wife and my children.”
“Oh, Holland, have you children?” said Eldon patronizingly.
“Three,” answered Holland. 'Come and see them.”
“Yes, yes,” said Eldon. “I will. My wife doesn't often get to New York—pretty rackety sort of place. You have my sympathy for living there. Good night, my dear fellow. Look us up whenever you're in this part of the world.”
Holland hadn't much time. He stepped on the train just as the conductor was waving an autocratic arm to start it.
“Close shave,” said Holland.
The conductor shook his head. “I'm a minute late starting her,” he said. “The clock at my place stopped without my knowing it.”
“You live here?” asked Holland.
The conductor nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “My wife would prefer New York, but Alderney is cheaper living, and then,” he added, “I get a good deal of New York—I spend every other night there.”
“And do you like it?” said Holland.
“Yes,” said the conductor. “But not for a home.”