THE COLLECTED WORKS OF CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN: Short Stories, Novels, Poems & Essays. Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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gonorrhea or not; it takes a long microscopic analysis to be sure; but there is every practical assurance that he's had it, and I know he's had syphilis."
If Vivian could have turned paler she would have, then.
"I've heard of—that," she said, shuddering.
"Yes, the other is newer to our knowledge, far commoner, and really more dangerous. They are two of the most terrible diseases known to us; highly contagious, and in the case of syphilis, hereditary. Nearly three-quarters of the men have one or the other, or both."
But Vivian was not listening. Her face was buried in her hands. She crouched low in agonized weeping.
"Oh, come, come, my dear. Don't take it so hard. There's no harm done you see, it's not too late."
"Oh, it is too late! It is!" wailed the girl. "I have promised to marry him."
"I don't care if you were at the altar, child; you haven't married him, and you mustn't."
"I have given my word!" said the girl dully. She was thinking of Morton now. Of his handsome face, with it's new expression of respectful tenderness; of all the hopes they had built together; of his life, so dependent upon hers for its higher interests.
She turned to the doctor, her lips quivering. "He loves me!" she said. "I—we—he says I am all that holds him up, that helps him to make a newer better life. And he has changed so—I can see it! He says he has loved me, really, since he was seventeen!"
The older sterner face did not relax.
"He told me he had—done wrong. He was honest about it. He said he wasn't—worthy."
"He isn't," said Dr. Bellair.
"But surely I owe some duty to him. He depends on me. And I have promised—"
The doctor grew grimmer. "Marriage is for motherhood," she said. "That is its initial purpose. I suppose you might deliberately forego motherhood, and undertake a sort of missionary relation to a man, but that is not marriage."
"He loves me," said the girl with gentle stubbornness. She saw Morton's eyes, as she had so often seen them lately; full of adoration and manly patience. She felt his hand, as she had felt it so often lately, holding hers, stealing about her waist, sometimes bringing her fingers to his lips for a strong slow kiss which she could not forget for hours.
She raised her head. A new wave of feeling swept over her. She saw a vista of self-sacrificing devotion, foregoing much, forgiving much, but rejoicing in the companionship of a noble life, a soul rebuilt, a love that was passionately grateful. Her eyes met those of her friend fairly. "And I love him!" she said.
"Will you tell that to your crippled children?" asked Dr. Bellair. "Will they understand it if they are idiots? Will they see it if they are blind? Will it satisfy you when they are dead?"
The girl shrank before her.
"You shall understand," said the doctor. "This is no case for idealism and exalted emotion. Do you want a son like Theophile?"
"I thought you said—they didn't have any."
"Some don't—that is one result. Another result—of gonorrhea—is to have children born blind. Their eyes may be saved, with care. But it is not a motherly gift for one's babies—blindness. You may have years and years of suffering yourself—any or all of those diseases 'peculiar to women' as we used to call them! And we pitied the men who 'were so good to their invalid wives'! You may have any number of still-born children, year after year. And every little marred dead face would remind you that you allowed it! And they may be deformed and twisted, have all manner of terrible and loathsome afflictions, they and their children after them, if they have any. And many do! dear girl, don't you see that's wicked?"
Vivian was silent, her two hands wrung together; her whole form shivering with emotion.
"Don't think that you are 'ruining his life,'" said the doctor kindly. "He ruined it long ago—poor boy!"
The girl turned quickly at the note of sympathy.
"They don't know either," her friend went on. "What could Miss Orella do, poor little saint, to protect a lively young fellow like that! All they have in their scatter-brained heads is 'it's naughty but it's nice!' And so they rush off and ruin their whole lives—and their wives'—and their children's. A man don't have to be so very wicked, either, understand. Just one mis-step may be enough for infection."
"Even if it did break his heart, and yours—even if you both lived single, he because it is the only decent thing he can do now, you because of a misguided sense of devotion; that would be better than to commit this plain sin. Beware of a biological sin, my dear; for it there is no forgiveness."
She waited a moment and went on, as firmly and steadily as she would have held the walls of a wound while she placed the stitches.
"If you two love each other so nobly and devotedly that it is higher and truer and more lasting than the ordinary love of men and women, you might be 'true' to one another for a lifetime, you see. And all that friendship can do, exalted influence, noble inspiration—that is open to you."
Vivian's eyes were wide and shining. She saw a possible future, not wholly unbearable.
"Has he kissed you yet?" asked the doctor suddenly.
"No," she said. "That is—except——"
"Don't let him. You might catch it. Your friendship must be distant. Well, shall we be going back? I'm sorry, my dear. I did hate awfully to do it. But I hated worse to see you go down those awful steps from which there is no returning."
"Yes," said Vivian. "Thank you. Won't you go on, please? I'll come later."
An hour the girl sat there, with the clear blue sky above her, the soft steady wind rustling the leaves, the little birds that hopped and pecked and flirted their tails so near her motionless figure.
She thought and thought, and through all the tumult of ideas it grew clearer to her that the doctor was right. She might sacrifice herself. She had no right to sacrifice her children.
A feeling of unreasoning horror at this sudden outlook into a field of unknown evil was met by her clear perception that if she was old enough to marry, to be a mother, she was surely old enough to know these things; and not only so, but ought to know them.
Shy, sensitive, delicate in feeling as the girl was, she had a fair and reasoning mind.
CHAPTER X. DETERMINATION.
You may shut your eyes with a bandage,
The while world vanishes soon;
You may open your eyes at a knothole
And see the sun and moon.
It must have grieved anyone who cared for Andrew Dykeman, to see Mrs. St. Cloud's manner toward him change with his changed circumstances—she had been so much with him, had been so kind to him; kinder than Carston comment "knew for a fact," but not kinder than it surmised.
Then, though his dress remained as quietly correct, his face assumed a worn and anxious look, and he no longer offered her long auto rides or other expensive entertainment. She saw men on the piazza stop talking as he came by, and shake their heads as they looked after him; but no one would tell her anything definite till she questioned Mr. Skee.
"I am worried about Mr. Dykeman," she said to this ever-willing confidant, beckoning him to a chair beside her.
A chair, to the mind of Mr. Skee, seemed to be for pictorial uses, only valuable as part of the composition. He liked one to stand beside, to put a foot on, to lean over from behind, arms on the back; to tip up in front of him as if he needed a barricade; and when he was persuaded to sit in one,