Bella Donna. Robert Hichens
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feelings in me come from a bodily condition."
"You think it quite impossible that they may proceed from a condition of the soul?"
"Quite. I believe it all ends here on the day one dies. I feel as certain of that as of my being a woman. And this being my conviction, I think it of paramount importance to have a good time while I am here."
"Naturally."
"Now, a woman's good time depends on a woman's power over others, and that power depends on her thorough-going belief in herself. So long as she is perfectly well, she feels young, and so long as she feels young, she can give the impression that she is young—with the slightest assistance from art. And so long as she can give that impression—of course I am speaking of a woman who is what is called 'attractive'—it is all right with her. She will believe in herself, and she will have a good time. Now, Doctor Isaacson—remember that I consider all confidences made to a physician of your eminence, all that I tell you to-day, as inviolably secret—"
"Of course," he said.
"Lately my belief in myself has been—well, shaken. I attribute this to some failure in my health. So I have come to you. Try to find out if anything in my bodily condition is wrong."
"Very well. But you must allow me to examine you, and I must put to you a number of purely medical questions which you must answer truthfully."
"En avant, monsieur!"
She put her parasol down on the floor beside her.
"I don't believe in subterfuge—with a doctor," she said.
III
Mrs. Chepstow came out of the house in Cleveland Square as the clocks were striking seven, stepped into a taximeter cab, and was hurried off into the busy whirl of St. James's Street, while Doctor Meyer Isaacson went upstairs to his bedroom to rest and dress for dinner. His clothes were already laid out, and he sent his valet away. As soon as the man was gone, the Doctor took off his coat and waistcoat, his collar and tie, sat down in an arm-chair by the open window, leaned his head against a cushion, shut his eyes, and deliberately relaxed all his muscles. Every day, sometimes at one time, sometimes at another, he did this for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour; and in these moments, as he relaxed his muscles, he also relaxed his mind, banishing thoughts by an effort of the will. So often had he done this that generally he did it without difficulty; and though he never fell asleep in daylight, he came out of this short rest-cure refreshed as after two hours of slumber.
But to-day, though he could command his body, his mind was wilful. He could not clear it of the restless thoughts. Indeed, it seemed to him that he became all mind as he sat there, motionless, looking almost like a dead man, with his stretched-out legs, his hanging arms, his dropped jaw. His last patient was fighting against his desire for complete repose, was defying his will and conquering it.
After his examination of Mrs. Chepstow, his series of questions, he had said to her, "There is nothing the matter with you." A very ordinary phrase, but even as he spoke it, something within him cried to him, "You liar!" This woman suffered from no bodily disease. But to say to her, "There is nothing the matter with you," was, nevertheless, to tell her a lie. And he had added the qualifying statement, "that a doctor can do anything for." He could see her face before him now as it had looked for a moment after he had spoken.
Her exquisite hair was dyed a curious colour. Naturally a bright brown, it had been changed by art to a lighter, less warm hue, that was neither flaxen nor golden, but that held a strange pallor, distinctive, though scarcely beautiful. It had the merit of making her eyes look very vivid between the painted shadows and the painted brows, and this fact had been no doubt realized by the artist responsible for it. Apparently Mrs. Chepstow relied upon the fascination of a peculiar, almost anæmic fairness, in the midst of which eyes, lips, and brows stood forcibly out to seize the attention and engross it. There was in this fairness, this blanched delicacy, something almost pathetic, which assisted the completion, in the mind of a not too astute beholder, of the impression already begun to be made by the beautiful shape of the face.
When Doctor Meyer Isaacson had finished speaking, that face had been a still but searching question; and almost immediately a question had come from the red lips.
"Is there absolutely no unhealthy condition of body such as might be expected to produce low spirits? You see how medically I speak!"
"None whatever. You are not even gouty, and three-quarters, at least, of my patients are gouty in some form or other."
Mrs. Chepstow frowned.
"Then what would you advise me to do?" she asked. "Shall I go to a priest? Shall I go to a philosopher? Shall I go to a Christian Science temple? Or do you think a good dose of the 'New Theology' would benefit me?"
She spoke satirically, yet Doctor Isaacson felt as if he heard, far off, faintly behind the satire, the despair of the materialist, against whom, in certain moments, all avenues of hope seem inexorably closed. He looked at Mrs. Chepstow, and there was a dawning of pity in his eyes as he answered:
"How can I advise you?"
"How indeed? And yet—and that's a curious thing—you look as if you could."
"If you are really a convinced materialist, an honest atheist—"
"I am."
"Well, then it would be useless to advise you to seek priests or to go to Christian Science temples. I can only tell you that your complaint is not a complaint of the body."
"Then is it a complaint of the soul? That's a bore, because I don't happen to believe in the soul, and I do believe very much in the body."
"I wonder what exactly you mean when you say you don't believe in the soul."
"I mean that I don't believe there is in human beings anything mysterious which can live unless the body is living, anything that doesn't die simultaneously with the body. Of course there is something that we call mental, that likes and dislikes, loves and hates, and so on."
"And cannot that something be depressed by misfortune?"
"I did not say I had had any misfortune."
"Nor did I say so. Let us put it this way then—cannot that something be depressed?"
"To a certain degree, of course. But keep your body in perfect health, and you ought to be immune from extreme depression. And I believe you are immune. Frankly, Doctor Meyer Isaacson, I don't think you are right. I am sure something is out of order in my body. There must be some pressure somewhere, some obscure derangement of the nerves, something radically wrong."
"Try another doctor. Try a nerve specialist—a hypnotist, if you like: Hinton Morris, Scalinger, or Powell Burnham; I fear I cannot help you."
"So it seems."
She got up slowly. And still her movements were careless, but always full of a grace that was very individual.
"Remember," she said, "that I have spoken to you so frankly in your capacity as a physician."
"All I hear in this room I forget when I am out of it."
"Truly?" she said.
"At any rate, I forget to speak of it," he said, rather curtly.
"Good-bye," she rejoined.
She left him with a strange sensation, of the hopelessness that comes from greed and acute worldliness, uncombined with any, even subconscious, conception of other possibilities than purely material ones.
What could such a woman have to look forward to at this period of her life?
Doctor Isaacson was thinking about this now. He remained always perfectly motionless in his arm-chair, but he had abandoned the attempt to discipline his mind.