The last roses of summer were bursting their topmost buds into full bloom on the lawn of the Doctor's bungalow. The martins that built each year in the little boxes he had set on poles around his garden were circling and chattering far up in the sapphire skies of a late September day. Their leaders had sensed the coming frost and were drilling for their long march across the world to their winter home. The chestnut burrs were bursting in the woods. The silent sun-wrapped Indian Summer had begun. Not a cloud flecked the skies.
A quiet joy filled the soul of the woman who smiled and heard her summons.
“You are not afraid?” the Doctor asked.
She turned her grateful eyes to his.
“The peace of God fills the world—and I owe it all to you.”
“Nonsense. Your sturdy will and cultivated mind did the work. I merely made the suggestion.”
“You are not going to give me an anesthetic, are you?” she said evenly.
“Why did you ask that?”
“Because I wish to feel and know the pain and glory of it all.”
“You don't wish to take it?”
“Not unless you say I should.”
“What a wonderful patient you are, child! What a beautiful spirit!” He looked at her intently. “Well, I'm older and wiser in experience than you. I'm glad you added that clause `unless you say I should.' I'm going to say it. After all my talks to you on our return to the truths and simplicity of Nature you are perhaps surprised. You needn't be. I'm going to put you into a gentle sleep. Nature will then do her physical work automatically. I do this because our daughters are the inheritors of the sins of their mothers for centuries. The over-refinement of nerves, the hothouse methods of living, and the maiming of their bodies with the inventions of fashion have made the pains of this supreme hour beyond endurance. This should not be. It will not be so when our race has come into its own. But it will take many generations and perhaps many centuries before we reach the ideal. No physician who has a soul could permit a woman of your physique, your culture and refinement to walk barefoot and blindfolded into such a hell of physical torture. I will not permit it.”
He walked quietly into his laboratory, prepared the sleeping powders and gave them to her.
Six hours later she opened her eyes with eager wonder. Aunt Abbie was busy over a bundle of fluffy clothes. The Doctor was standing with his arms folded behind his back, his fine, clean-shaven face in profile looking thoughtfully over the sun-lit valley. There was just one moment of agonized fear. If they had failed! If her child were hideous—or deformed! Her lips moved in silent prayer.
“Doctor?” she whispered.
In a moment he was bending over her, a look of exaltation in his brown eyes.
“Tell me quick!”
“A wonderful boy, little mother! The most beautiful babe I have ever seen. He didn't even cry—just opened his big, wide eyes and grunted contentedly.”
“Give him to me.”
Aunt Abbie laid the warm bundle in her arms and she pressed it gently until the sweet, red flesh touched her own. She lay still for a moment, a smile on her lips.
“Lift him and let me look!”
“What a funny little pug nose,” she laughed.
“Yes—exactly like his mother's!” the Doctor replied.
She gazed with breathless reverence.
“He is beautiful, isn't he?” she sighed.
“And you have observed the chin and mouth?”
“Exactly like yours. It's wonderful!”
Eighteen months swiftly passed with the little mother and her boy still in Dr. Mulford's sanitarium. She had allowed herself to be persuaded that he had the right to be her guide and helper in the first year's training of the child.
The boy had steadily grown in strength and beauty of body and mind. The Doctor persuaded her to spend one more winter basking in his sun-parlor and finishing the final chapters of his book. Her mind was singularly clever and helpful in the interpretation of the experiences and emotions of motherhood.
She had stubbornly resisted every suggestion to see her husband or allow him to see the child. The Doctor had managed twice to give Jim an hour with the baby while she had gone to Asheville on shopping trips. He was rewarded for his trouble in the devotion with which the young father worshiped his son. The Doctor watched the slumbering fires kindle in the man's deep blue eyes with increasing wonder at the strength and tenderness of his newfound soul.
Jim had completed the furnishing of the bungalow with the advice and guidance of his friend, and every room stood ready and waiting for its mistress. He had insisted on making every piece of furniture for Mary's room and the nursery adjoining. The Doctor was amazed at the mechanical genius he displayed in its construction. He had taken a month's instruction at a cabinet maker's in Asheville and the bed, bureau, tables and chairs which he had turned out were astonishingly beautiful. Their lines were copied from old models and each piece was a work of art. The iron work was even more tastefully and beautifully wrought. He had toiled day and night with an enthusiasm and patience that gave the physician a new revelation in the possibility of the development of human character.
His friend came at last with a cheering message. He began smilingly:
“I'm going to make the big fight today, boy, to get her to see you.”
“You think she will?”
“There's a good chance. Her savings have all been used up from her bank account in New York. She is determined to go to her father in Kentucky. I'll have a talk with her, bring her over to the bungalow, show her through it on the pretext of its model construction and then you can tell her that you built it with your own hands for her and the baby. You might be loafing around the place about that time.”
Jim's hand was suddenly lifted.
“I got ye, Doc, I got ye! I'll be there—all day.”
“Don't let her see you until I give the signal.”
“Caution's my name.”
“We'll see what happens.”
Jim pressed close.
“Say, Doc, if you know how to pray, I wish you'd send up a little word for me while you're talkin' to her. Could ye now?”
“I'll do my best for you, boy—and I think you've got a chance. She's been watching the blue eyes of that baby lately with a rather curious look of unrest.”
“They're just like mine, ain't they?” Jim broke in with pride.
“Time has softened the old hurt,” the Doctor went on. “The boy may win for you——”
The square jaw came together with a smash.
“Gee—I hope so. I'll wait there all day for you and I'm goin' to try my own hand at a little prayer or two on the side while I'm waiting. Maybe God'll think He's hit me hard enough by this time to give me another trial.”
With a friendly wave of his hand the Doctor hurried home.
He found Mary seated under the rose trellis beside the drive, watching for his coming. The day was still and warm for the end of April. Birds were singing and chattering in every branch and tree. A quail on the top fence-rail of the wheat field called loudly to his mate.
The boy was screaming his joy over a new wagon to which Aunt Abbie had hitched his goat. He drove by in style, lifted his chubby hand to his mother and shouted:
“Dood-by, Doc-ter!”
The Doctor waved a smiling answer, and lapsed into a long silence.
He waked at last from his absorption to notice that Mary was day-dreaming. The fair brow was drawn into deep lines of brooding.
“Why shadows in your eyes a day like this, little mother?” he asked softly.
“Just thinking——”
“About a past that you should forget?”
“Yes and no,” she answered thoughtfully. “I was just thinking in this flood of spring sunlight of the mystery of my love for such a man as the one I married. How could it have been possible to really love him?”
“You are sure that you loved him?”
“Sure.”
“How did you know?”
“By all the signs. I trembled at his footstep. The touch of his hand, the sound of his voice thrilled me. I was drawn by a power that was resistless. I was mad with happiness those wonderful days that preceded our marriage. I was madder still during our honeymoon—until the shadows began to fall that fatal Christmas Eve.” She paused and her lips trembled. “Oh, Doctor, what is love?”
The drooping shoulders of the man bent lower. He picked up a pebble from the ground and flicked it carelessly across the drive, lifted his head at last and asked earnestly:
“Shall I tell you the truth?”
“Yes—your own particular brand, please—the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
“I'll try,” he began soberly. “If I were a poet, naturally I would use different language. As I'm only a prosaic doctor and physiologist I may shock your ideals a little.”
“No matter,” she interrupted. “They couldn't well get a harder jolt than they have had already.”
He nodded and went on:
“There are two elemental human forces that maintain life—hunger and love. They are both utterly simple, otherwise they could not be universal. Hunger compels the race to live. Love compels it to reproduce itself. There has never been anything mysterious about either of these forces and there never will be—except in the imagination of sentimentalists.
“Nature begins with hunger. For about thirteen years she first applies this force to the development of the body before she begins to lay the foundation of the second. Until this second development is complete the passion known as love cannot be experienced.
“What is this second development? Very simple again. At the base of the brain of every child there is a vacant space during the first twelve or fifteen years. During the age of twelve to fourteen in girls, thirteen to fifteen in boys, this vacant space is slowly filled by a new lobe of the brain and with its growth comes the consciousness of sex and the development of sex powers.
“This new nerve center becomes on maturity a powerful physical magnet. The moment this magnet comes into contact with an organization which answers its needs, as certain kinds of food answer the needs of hunger, violent desire is excited. If both these magnets should be equally powerful, the disturbance to both will be great. The longer the personal association is continued the more violent becomes this disturbance, until in highly sensitive natures it develops into an obsession which obscures reason and crushes the will.
“The meaning of this impulse is again very simple—the unconscious desire of the male to be a father, of the female to become a mother.”
“And there is but one man on earth who could thus affect me?” Mary asked excitedly.
“Rubbish! There are thousands.”
“Thousands?”
“Literally thousands. The reason you never happen to meet them is purely an accident of our poor social organization. Every woman has thousands of true physical mates if she could only meet them. Every man has thousands of true physical mates if he could only meet them. And in every such meeting, if mind and body are in normal condition, the same violent disturbance would result—whether married or single, free or bound.
“Marriage therefore is not based merely on the passion of love. It is a crime for any man or woman to marry without love. It is the sheerest insanity to believe that this passion within itself is sufficient to justify marriage. All who marry should love. Many love who should not marry.
“The institution of marriage is the great SOCIAL ordinance of the race. Its sanctity and perpetuity are not based on the violence of the passion of love, but something else.”
He paused and listened to the call of the quail again from the field.
“You hear that bob white calling his mate?”
“Yes—and she's answering him now very softly. I can hear them both.”
“They have mated this spring to build a home and rear a brood of young. Within six months their babies will all be full grown and next spring a new alignment of lovers will be made. Their marriage lasts during the period of infancy of their offspring. This is Nature's law.
“It happens in the case of man that the period of infancy of a human being is about twenty-four years. This is the most wonderful fact in nature. It means that the capacity of man for the improvement of his breed is practically limitless. A quail has a few months in which to rear her young. God gives to woman a quarter of a century in which to mold her immortal offspring. Because the period of infancy of one child covers the entire period of motherhood capacity, marriage binds for life, and the sanctity of marriage rests squarely on this law of Nature.”
He paused again and looked over the sunlit valley.
“I wish our boys and girls could all know these simple truths of their being. It would save much unhappiness and many tragic blunders.
“You were swept completely off your feet by the rush of the first emotion caused by meeting a man who was your physical mate. You imagined this emotion to be a mysterious revelation which can come but once. Your imagination in its excited condition, of course, gave to your first-found mate all sorts of divine attributes which he did not possess. You were `in love' with a puppet of your own creation, and hypnotized yourself into the delusion that James Anthony was your one and only mate, your knight, your hero.
“In a very important sense this was true. Your intuitions could not make a mistake on so vital an issue. But you immediately rushed into marriage and your union has been perfected by the birth of a child. Whether you are happy or unhappy in marriage does not depend on the reality of love. Happiness in marriage is based on something else.”
“On what?”
“The joy and peace that comes from oneness of spirit, tastes, culture and character. I know this from the deepest experiences of life and the widest observation.”
“You have loved?” she asked softly.
“Twice——”
A silence fell between them.
“Shall I tell you, little mother?” he finally asked quietly.
“Please.”
He seated himself and looked into the skies beyond the peaks across the valley.
“Ten years ago I met my first mate. The meeting was fortunate for both. She was a woman of gentle birth, of beautiful spirit. Our courtship was ideal. We thought alike, we felt alike, she loved my profession even—an unusual trait in a woman. She thought it so noble in its aims that the petty jealousy that sometimes wrecks a doctor's life was to her an unthinkable crime. The first year was the nearest to heaven that I had ever gotten down here.
“And then, little mother, by one of those inexplicable mysteries of nature she died when our baby was born. For a while the light of the world went out. I quit New York, gave up my profession and came here just to lie in the sun on this mountainside and try to pull myself together. I didn't think life could ever be worth living again. But it was. I found about me so much of human need—so much ignorance and helplessness—so much to pity and love, I forgot the ache in my own heart in bringing joy to others.
“I had money enough. I gave up the ambitions of greed and strife and set my soul to higher tasks. For nine years I've devoted my leisure hours to the study of Motherhood as the hope of a nobler humanity. But for the great personal sorrow that came to me in the death of my wife and baby I should never have realized the truths I now see so clearly.
“And then the other woman suddenly came into my life. I never expected to love again—not because I thought it impossible, but because I thought it improbable in my little world here that I could ever again meet a woman I would ask to be my wife. But she dropped one day out of the sky.”
He paused and took a deep breath.
“I recognized her instantly as my mate, gentle and pure and capable of infinite joy or infinite pain. She did not realize the secret of my interest in her. I didn't expect it. I knew that under the conditions she could not. But I waited.”
He paused and searched for Mary's eyes.
“And you married her?” she asked in even tones.
“I have never allowed her to know that I love her.”
“Why?”
“She was married.”
Mary threw him a startled look and he went on evenly:
“I could have used my power over mind and body to separate her from her husband. I confess that I was tempted. But there was a child. Their union had been sealed with the strongest tie that can bind two human beings. I have never allowed her to realize that she might love me. Had I chosen to break the silence between us I could have revealed this to her, taken her and torn her from the man to whom she had borne a babe. I had no right to commit that crime, no matter how deep the love that cried for its own. Marriage is based on the period of infancy of the child which spans the maternal life of woman. God had joined these two people together and no man had the right to put them asunder!”
“And you gave her up?”
“I had to, little mother. On the recognition of this eternal law the whole structure of our civilization rests.”
Mary bent her gaze steadily on his face for a moment in silence.
“And you are telling me that I should be reconciled to the man who choked me into insensibility?”
“I am telling you that he is the father of your son—that he has rights which you cannot deny; that when you gave yourself to him in the first impulse of love a deed was done which Almighty God can never undo. Your tragic blunder was the rush into marriage with a man about whose character you knew so little. It's the timid, shrinking, home-loving girl that makes this mistake. You must face it now. You are responsible as deeply and truly as the man who married you. That he happened at that moment to be a brute and a criminal is no more his fault than yours. It was YOUR business to KNOW before you made him the father of your child.”
“I tried to appeal to his better nature that awful night,” Mary interrupted, “but he only laughed at me!”
“You owe him another trial, little mother—you owe it to his boy, too.”
Mary shook her head bitterly.
“I can't—I just can't!”
“You won't see him once?”
She sprang to her feet trembling.
“No—no!”
“I don't think it's fair.”
“I'm afraid of him! You can't understand his power over my will.”
“Come, come, this is sheer cowardice—give the devil his dues. Face him and fight it out. Tell him you're done forever with him and his life, if you will—but don't hedge and trim and run away like this. I'm ashamed of you.”
“I won't see him—I've made up my mind.”
The Doctor threw up both hands.
“All right. If you won't, you won't. We'll let it go at that.”
He paused and changed his tones to friendly personal interest.
“And you're determined to leave me and take my kid away tomorrow?”
“We must go. I've no money to pay my board. I can't impose on you——”
“It's going to be awfully lonely.”
He looked at her with a strange, deep gaze, lifted his stooping shoulders with sudden resolution and changed his manner to light banter.
“I suppose I couldn't persuade you to give me that boy?”
She smiled tenderly.
“You know his father did leave his mark on him after all! The eyes are all his. Of course, I will admit that those drooping lids have often been the mark of genius—perhaps a genius for evil in this case. If you don't want to take the risk—now's your chance. I will——”
Mary shook her head in reproachful protest.
“Don't tease me, dear doctor man. I've just this one day more with you. I'm counting each precious hour.”
“Forgive me!” he cried gayly. “I won't tease you any more. Come, we'll run over now and see our neighbor's new bungalow before you go. You admire this one and threaten to duplicate it. He has built a better one.”
“I don't believe it.”
“You'll go?”
“If you wish it——”
“Good. We'll take the boy, too. He can drive his new wagon the whole way. It's only half a mile.”
The door of the bungalow stood wide open. Mary paused in rapture over the rich beds of wood violets that carpeted the spaces between the drive and the log walls.
“Aren't they beautiful!” she cried. “A perfect carpet of dazzling green and purple!”
“Come right in,” the Doctor urged from the steps. “My neighbor's a patient of mine. He hasn't moved in yet but he told me always to make myself at home.”
Mary lifted the boy from his wagon, tied the goat and led the child into the house. The Doctor showed her through without comment. None was needed. The woman's keen eye saw at a glance the perfection of care with which the master builder had wrought the slightest detail of every room. The floors were immaculate native hard-wood—its grain brought out through shining mirrors of clean varnish. There was not one shoddy piece of work from the kitchen sink to the big open fireplace in the spacious hall and living-room.
“It's exquisite!” she exclaimed at last. “It seems all hand-made—doesn't it?”
“It is, too. The owner literally built it with his own hands—a work of love.”
“For himself?” Mary asked with a smile.
“For the woman he loves, of course! My neighbor's a sort of crank and insisted on expressing himself in this way. Come, I want you to see two rooms upstairs.”
He led her into the room Jim had built for his wife.
“Observe this furniture, if you please.”
“Don't tell me that he built that too?” she laughed.
“That's exactly what I'm going to tell you.”
“Impossible!” she protested. “Why, the line and finish would do credit to the finest artisan in America.”
“So I say. Look at the perfect polish of that table! It's like the finish of a rosewood piano.” He touched the smooth surface.
“Of course you're joking?” Mary answered. “No amateur could have done such work.”
“So I'd have said if I had not seen him do it.”
“What on earth possessed him to undertake such a task?”
“The love of a beautiful woman—what else?”
“He learned a trade—just to furnish this room with his own hand?”
“Yes.”
“His love must be the real thing,” she mused.
“That's what I've said. Look at this iron work, too—the stately andirons in that big fireplace, the shovel, the tongs, and the massive strop-hinges on the doors.”
“He did that, too?” she asked in amazement.
“Every piece of iron on the place he beat out with his own hand at his forge.”
“And all for the love of a woman? The age of romance hasn't passed after all, has it?”
“No.”
Mary paused before the window looking south.
“What a glorious view!” she cried. “It's even grander than yours, Doctor.”
“Yes. I claim some of the credit, though, for that. I helped him lay out the grounds.”
“Who is this remarkable man?” she asked at last.
“A friend of mine. I'll introduce him directly. He should be here at any moment now.”
“We're intruding,” Mary whispered. “We must go. I mustn't look any more. I'll be coveting my neighbor's house.”
The doctor turned to the window and signaled to someone on the lawn, as Mary hurried down the stairs.
She fairly ran into Jim, who was being pulled into the house by the boy.
“'Ook, Mamma! 'Ook! I found a Daddy! He says he be my Daddy if you let him. Please let him. I want a Daddy, an' I like him. Please!”
Jim blushed and trembled and lifted his eyes appealingly, while Mary stood white and still watching him in a sort of helpless terror.
The child moved on to his wagon.
“Say, little girl,” Jim began in low tones, “it's been a thousand years since I saw you. Don't drive me away—just give me one chance for God's sake and this baby's that He sent us! I've gone straight. I've sent back every dishonest dollar. I'm earning a clean living down here and a good one. I've practiced for two years cutting out the slang, too.”
He paused for breath and she turned her head away.
“Just listen a minute! I know I was a beast that night. I'm not the same now. I've been through the fires of hell and I've come out a cleaner man. Let me show you how much I love you! Life's too short, but just give me a chance. If I could undo that awful hour when I hurt you so, I'd crawl 'round the world on my hands and knees—and I'll show you that I mean it! I built this house for you and the baby.”
Mary turned suddenly with wide dilated eyes.
“You—YOU built this house?” she gasped.
“I've worked on it every hour, day and night, the past two years when I wasn't earning a living in the mine. I made every stick of that furniture in the rooms up there—for you and my boy. The house is yours—whether you let me stay or not.”
“I—I can't take it, Jim,” she faltered.
“You've got to, girlie. You can't throw a gift like this back in a fellow's face—it cost too much! Your money's all gone. You've got to bring up that kid. He's mine, too. I'm man enough to support my wife and baby and I'm going to do it. I don't care what you say. You've got to let me. I'm going to work for you, live for you and die for you—whether you stay with me or not. I've got the right to do that, you know.”
She lifted her head and faced him squarely for the first time, amazed at the new dignity and strength of his quiet bearing.
“You HAVE changed, Jim——”
Her eyes sought the depths of his soul in a moment's silence, and she slowly extended her hand:
“We'll try again!”
He bent and kissed the tips of her fingers reverently.
They stood for a moment hand in hand and looked over the sunlit valley of the Swannanoa shimmering in peace and beauty between its sheltering walls of blue mountains. The bees were humming spring music among the flowers at their feet and the faint odor of fruit trees in blossom came from the orchard Jim had planted two years before.
“I'll show you, little girl—I'll show you!” he whispered tensely.