That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
direct manner was putting things before her in a way that dashed and
damped. Hear him now:
"Yes, there is generally a baby--when it is necessary there should be
one. Though the patients who are treated in the free wards of German
and Austrian _Kliniks_ may not always be scrupulous upon this point.
Still, if the treatment can be carried out without undue peril for the
mother--and I do not allow this for a single moment--have you not
considered the risk for the child?"
Margot had pulled off one long glove. Now she murmured, setting the tip
of a little bare, jewelled finger near the corner of a distracting
little mouth:
"You consider that it's handicapping the start for--the kiddie?"
The avalanche fell; shocking and freezing and stunning her.
"Ask yourself, Lady Norwater, and do not forget to ask your husband:
Will a healthy or a degenerate type of man or woman be eventually reared
from an infant in whom the springs of Life have been deliberately
poisoned with henbane and morphia--before its entrance into the world?"
She gasped:
"Then it's all U.P.?" She was slangy even in her tragic misery. She
sought in her gold vanity-bag and produced the envelope that held the
cheque, but Saxham waved it away.
"Pray put that back.... Neither from rich nor poor do I accept unearned
money. You have not really consulted me. You have asked my opinion
upon a course of treatment. And I have given it, for what it is worth.
You will go home, and tell your husband that I have talked tosh, and
consult another physician."
"No, I won't!" She said it bravely. "I want you to prescribe!"
"If I prescribe," Saxham told her, "you shall certainly fee me. But you
do not need treatment." His eyes smiled though his mouth did not relax
its grimness, as he added: "You strike me as being in excellent health."
She owned to feeling "top-hole," first-class, and simply awfully beany!
Though, and her dimple faded as she owned it, the thought of what must
happen in November took "the gilt off the gingerbread."
"Do not think of what is going to happen in November," Saxham advised
her. "Or teach yourself to think of it in the right way." The sense of
her childishness and inexperience went home to the sensitive quick
beneath the man's hard exterior, as she said to him with an
unconsciously appealing accent:
"But how am I to find out what is the right way?"
He had gained upon her confidence. The admission proved it. With
infinite tact he began to win yet another woman to drain out her chalice
of Motherhood, untinctured with the druggist's nepenthe,--to gain for
the race yet another babe unmarred before its birth. For this end no
labour was too great for Saxham. A crank you may call him, but that
cranks of this type are the leaven of the world, you know.
It is typical of the human butterfly Saxham dealt with, that his clothes
pleased Margot. She liked their characteristic mingling of elegance
with simplicity. Some fashionable doctors got themselves up like
elderly bloods, others affected garments dating from the year One.
There was neither perfume upon Saxham's handkerchief nor flue upon his
coat-sleeve. His shirt of soft white cashmere, his slightly starched
linen cuffs and narrow double collar were fastened with plain buttons of
mother o' pearl, the black silk necktie was blameless of pin or ring.
The handsome gold chronometer he carried because it had been presented
to him by the Staff and patients of St. Teresa and St. Stanislaus. The
chain attached to it--rather worn and shabby now--was of woven red-brown
hair.
The hair of his wife. A creamy-pale Niphetos rose stood where her hands
had placed it near his writing-pad, in a tall, slender beaker of
green-and-gold Venetian glass. His eyes drank at the beauty of the
lovely scarce-unfolded blossom. Perhaps the resemblance of the fair
flower to the beloved giver softened the lines of the stern square face
into the smile that Margot liked, as he found her eyes again, saying:
"Perhaps I could better answer your question by telling you how another
patient bore herself in--circumstances akin to yours. Will it tire you?
I promise not to be unduly prolix. And to listen commits you to no
course of action. Now, shall I go on?"
"I'd love you to go on!"
Always in extremes, the little wayward creature. She flushed and
sparkled at the Doctor as he took from its place on his writing-table a
triptych photograph-frame in gold-mounted mother-o'-pearl, folded the
leaves so as to reveal but one of the portraits, and held under Margot's
eyes the delicately-tinted photograph of a girl of twenty. The portrait
had been taken the year following Saxham's return from South Africa with
his young wife.
"How beautiful!" Margot exclaimed.
"Beautiful, as you say, but does she look happy?"
Margot wrinkled her dainty eyebrows, puzzling out the question. Did she
look happy, the girl of the portrait, whose face and figure might have
served one of the old Greek masters as model for an Artemis to be carved
upon a gem? Well, perhaps not quite happy, now one came to look again.
The black-lashed eyes of golden hazel were full of wistful sadness,
there was a faintly indicated fold between the fine arched eyebrows,
much darker than the rippling red-brown hair, whose luxuriance seemed to
weigh down the little Greek head. The closely-folded, deeply-cut lips
spoke dumbly of sorrow, the nymph-like bosom seemed rising on a breath
of weariness. Something was lacking to complete her beauty. So much
was plain even to Margot. But not until the Doctor showed by the side
of the first, the second portrait, did she realise what that Something
was.
In the first portrait both face and figure were shown in profile. In
the second, bearing a date of two years later, the beautiful, sensitive
face of the young woman was turned towards you. Still rather grave than
smiling, she held in her arms a sturdy baby boy of some twelve months,
upon whose downy head her chin lightly rested. The clasp of her slender
arms about her child, the poise of her still nymph-like figure,
expressed fulness of life, buoyant energy, and happiness in fullest
measure. What was previously lacking was now made clear.
"Lovely, quite lovely!" trilled the sweet little voice. "And what an
exquie kiddy!"
"Then you do not dislike children?" Saxham asked, as his visitor's
husband had done not long ago.
"On the contrary," the little lady assured him, "I rather cotton to
them. But"--she shrugged her little shoulders prettily and quoted
boldly from another woman--"but the fag of having them doesn't--appeal!"
The Doctor replaced the threefold frame and turned his regard back upon
his visitor.
"These photographs speak for themselves ..." he said quietly. "She--the
mother of the boy you see, was, when she first knew that she was to be a
mother, fragile and delicate in body, and in mind highly-strung and
sensitive. As a child she had known neglect and unkind usage. Twice
she had sustained an overwhelming shock, physical and mental; she had
rallied, passed through a crisis and regained lost ground. But the
possibility of a relapse was not to be blinked at. It was a lion in the
path!"
The slight form of the listener was convulsed by a shudder. The pretty
face lost its wild-rose tint. The lion in the path ... Margot saw him
crouching, his tawny eyes aflame, his great jaws slavering, his tail
lashing the dust, his great muscles tightening for the fearful spring.
And Saxham went on:
"She maintained from the first a sweet, sane mental standpoint. She
tamed her lion by sheer force of will. Her courage was her own: she did
not owe it to the physician and surgeon. But he advised as he knew
best, and she followed his advice implicitly, as to wholesome diet and
regular exercise, thus keeping her body in health. She surrounded
herself with objects that were beautiful in form and colour. She made a
point of hearing great music and of re-reading the works of great poets,
essayists, and novelists. She wished her child to owe much to pre-natal
influences. For that these----"
The speaker faltered for a moment, before he resumed the thread of his
discourse.
"--That these form character for good or evil no physiologist can deny.
Therefore while she did not flee from, she avoided the sight of
deformity or ugliness, as she shunned active infection, or tainted air.
It was desirable that her child should be healthy, strong, and
beautiful. But the love of loveliness, though one of the dominants of
her character, scales lowest of the triad. Human love, the love of
mother, husband, and friend rank above it, and first of all stands the
love of God."
"How awfully good she must be!"
"She took the child, first and last, as a gift from God to her. If she
lived or died, and she longed inexpressibly to live--Death, like Life,
would be the fulfilment of the Divine Will. Fortified by the Sacraments
of her Church she lay down upon her bed of pain as though it were an
altar. She suffered intensely----"
His voice broke.
"She suffered inexpressibly. Not until the actual crisis did I have
recourse to chloroform. When I was about to use it she said to me:
'_Not yet! ... I will wear it a little longer... this mother's crown of
thorns._' To-day the crown is one of roses. Does not this appeal to
you?"
The Doctor's supple hand displayed the third portrait in the triptych,
and Margot saw the same assured joy, rounded with a richer and more deep
content. The exquisite face was fuller, the outlines of the form
displayed the ripeness of early maturity, the slender palm was now a
stately tree. The girl of twenty was merged in the woman of thirty, rich
in all feminine graces, beautiful exceedingly, with the beauty that is
not only of line and proportion, form and colour, but shines from
within, irradiating the perishable living clay with the immortal
radiance of the soul. Her boy stood at her side, a manly square-headed
young British twelve-year-old, wearing a simple, distinctive dress;
familiar to us all.
"Y-yes. But I'm afraid you have forgotten: I told you at the beginning,
or I meant to.... My--my own mother died when I was born!"
"And that sad fact increases your natural fear and repugnance.
Naturally. It will strike you as a curious point of resemblance between
your case and that of the--patient whose portrait I have shown you, when
I tell you that her mother did not survive the birth of a later child.
May I tell you further that the possibility of some inherited weakness
does not render you more promising--regarded as a subject for the
treatment of Wolfenbuchel and Krauss."
Margot was beginning to hate this stern-faced man who set forth things
so clearly. He had bored her almost to weeping. Why on earth had she
come? The fact that Franky's sister Trix's boy Ronald had been helped
into the world by Saxham thirteen years ago and recently operated on for
the removal of the appendix, was no reason that Franky's wife should
regard him as infallible. She glanced at her tiny jewelled wrist-watch.
Ten whole minutes had gone. She rose.
"You have been so kind, and I have been so much interested. But I must
go now!" she said, like a weary child pleading to be let out of school.
"Franky--my husband--will be waiting. I have promised to lunch with him
at the Club."
"If he is here, perhaps Lord Norwater would like to speak to me," Saxham
suggested.
Margot lied badly. She reddened as she answered:
"Oh, what a pity that he did not come!"
*CHAPTER XXII*
*MARGOT IS SQUARE*
She was in what she would have termed "a blue funk" for fear that Saxham
would accompany her to the threshold. But he merely bowed her out of the