CHAPTER VI

DEALING WITH A PHYSICIAN OF THE BODY AND A PHYSICIAN OF THE SOUL

History repeats itself, and to Katherine just now came most unwelcome

example of such repetition. She had foreseen that some such crisis must

arise as had arisen. Yet when it arose, the crisis proved none the less

agonising because of that foreknowledge. Two strains of feeling

struggled within her. A blinding sorrow for her child, a fear of and

shame at her own violence of anger. Katherine's mind was of an

uncompromising honesty. She knew that her instinct had, for a space at

least, been murderous. She knew that, given equal provocation, it would

be murderous again.

And this was, after all, but the active, objective aspect of the

matter. The passive and subjective aspect showed danger also. In her

extremity Katherine's soul cried out for God--for the sure

resting-place only to be found by conscious union of the individual

with the eternal will. But such repose was denied her. For her anger

against God, even while thus earnestly desiring Him, was even more

profound than her anger against man. The passion of those terrible

early days when her child's evil fortune first became known to

her--held in abeyance all these years by constant employment and the

many duties incident to her position--returned upon her in its first

force. To believe God is not, leaves the poor human soul homeless,

sadly desolate, barren in labour as is a slave. But the sorrow of such

belief is as a trifle beside the hideous fear that God is careless and

unjust, that virtue is but a fond imagination of all-too-noble human

hearts, that the everlasting purpose is not good but evil continually.

And, haunted by such fears, Katherine once again sat in outer darkness.

All gracious things appeared to her as illusions; all gentle delights

but as passing anodynes with which, in his misery, man weakly tries to

deaden the pain of existence for a little space. She suffered a

profound discouragement.

And so it seemed to her but as part of the cruel whole when history

repeated itself yet further, and Dr. Knott, pausing at the door of

Richard's bedroom, turned and said to her:--

"It will be better, you know, Lady Calmady, to let him face it alone.

He'll feel it less without you. Winter can give me all the assistance I

want." Then he added, a queer smile playing about his loose

lips:--"Don't be afraid. I'll handle him very gently. Probably I shan't

hurt him at all--certainly not much."

"Ah!" Katherine said, under her breath.

"You see it is done by his own wish," John Knott went on.

"I know," she answered.

She respected and trusted this man, entertained for him,

notwithstanding his harsh speech and uncouth exterior, something akin

to affection. Yet remembering the part he had played in the fate of the

father, it was very dreadful to her that he should touch the child. And

Dr. Knott read her thought. He did not resent it. It was all natural

enough! From his heart he was sorry for her, and would have spared her

had that been possible. But he discriminated very clearly between

primary and secondary issues, never sacrificing, as do feeble and

sentimental persons, the former to the latter. In this case the boy had

a right to the stage, and so the mother must stand in the wings. John

Knott possessed a keen sense of values in the human drama which the

exigencies of his profession so perpetually presented to him. He waited

quietly, his hand on the door-handle, looking at Katherine from under

his rough eyebrows, silently opposing his will to hers.

Suddenly she turned away with an impatient gesture.

"I will not come with you," she said.

"You are right."

"But--but--do you think you can really do anything to help him, to make

him happier?" Katherine asked, a desperation in the tones of her voice.

"Happier? Yes, in the long run, because certainty of whatever kind,

even certainty of failure, makes eventually for peace of mind."

"That is a hard saying."

"This is a hard world." Dr. Knott looked down at the floor, shrugging

his unwieldy shoulders. "The sooner we learn to accept that fact the

better, Lady Calmady. I know it is sharp discipline, but it saves time

and money, let alone disappointment.--Now as to all these elaborate

contrivances I've brought down from London, they're the very best of

their kind. But I am bound to own the most ingenious of such

arrangements are but clumsy remedies for natural deficiency. Man hasn't

discovered how to make over his own body yet, and never will. The

Almighty will always have the whip-hand of us when it comes to dealing

with flesh and blood. All the same we've got to try these legs and

things----"

Katherine winced, pressing her lips together. It was brutal, surely, to

speak so plainly? But John Knott went on quietly, commiserating her

inwardly, yet unswerving in common sense.

"Try 'em every one, and so convince Sir Richard one way or the other.

This is a turning-point. So far his general health has been remarkably

good, and we've just got to set our minds to keeping it good. He must

not fret if we can help it. If he frets, instead of developing into the

sane, manly fellow he should, he may turn peevish, Lady Calmady, and

grow up a morbid, neurotic lad, the victim of all manner of brain-sick

fancies--become envious, spiteful, a misery to others and to himself."

"It is necessary to say all this?" Katherine asked loftily.

Dr. Knott's eyes looked very straight into hers, and there were tears

in them.

"Indeed, I believe it is," he replied, "or, trust me, I wouldn't say

it. I take no pleasure in giving pain at this time of day, whether

mental or physical. All I want is to spare pain. But one must sacrifice

the present to the future, at times, you know--use the knife to save

the limb. Now I must go to my patient. It isn't fair to keep him

waiting any longer. I'll be as quick as I can. I suppose I shall find

you here when I've finished?"

As he opened the door Dr. Knott's heavy person showed in all its

ungainliness against the brightness of sunlight flooding Dickie's room.

And to Katherine he seemed hideous just then--inexorable in his great

common sense, in the dead weight of his personality and of his will, as

some power of nature. He was to her the incarnation of things as they

are,--not things as they should be, not things as she so passionately

desired they might be. He represented rationalism as against miracle,

intellect as against imagination, the bitter philosophy of experience

as against that for which all mortals so persistently cry out--namely,

the all-consoling promise of extravagant hope. As with chains he bound

her down to fact. Right home on her he pressed the utter futility of

juggling with the actual. From the harsh truth that, neither in matters

practical nor spiritual is any redemption without shedding of blood he

permitted her no escape.

And all this Katherine's clear brain recognised and admitted, even

while her poor heart only rebelled the more madly. To be convinced is

not to be reconciled. And so she turned away from that closed door in a

veritable tempest of feeling, and went out into the Chapel-Room. It was

safer, her mind and heart thus working, to put a space between herself

and that closed door.

Just then Julius March crossed the room, coming in from the stair-head.

The austere lines of his cassock emphasised the height and emaciation

of his figure. His appearance offered a marked contrast to that of the

man with whom Katherine had just parted. His occupation offered a

marked contrast also. He carried a gold chalice and paten, and his head

was bowed reverentially above the sacred vessels. His eyes were

downcast, and the dull pallor of his face and his long thin hands was

very noticeable. He did not look round, but passed silently, still as a

dream, into the chapel. Katherine paced the width of the great room,

turned and paced back and forth again some half-dozen times, before he

emerged from the chapel door. In her present humour she did not want

him, yet she resented his abstraction. The physician of the soul, like

the physician of the body, appeared to her lamentably devoid of power

to sustain and give comfort at the present juncture.

This, it so happened, was one of those days when the mystic joy of his

priestly office held Julius March forcibly. He had ministered to

others, and his own soul was satisfied. His expression was exalted, his

short-sighted eyes were alive with inward light. Tired and worn, there

was still a remarkable suavity in his bearing. He had come forth from

the holy of holies, and the vision beheld there dwelt with him yet.

Meanwhile, brooding storm sat on Katherine's brow, on her lips, dwelt

in her every movement. And something of this Julius perceived, for his

devotion to her was intact, as was his self-abnegation. Throughout all

these years he had never sought to approach her more closely. His

attitude had remained as delicately scrupulous, untouched by

worldliness, or by the baser part of passion, as in the first hour of

the discovery of his love. Her near presence gave him exquisite

pleasure; but, save when she needed his assistance in some practical

matter, he refused to indulge himself by passing much time in her

society. Abstinence still remained his rule of life. But just now,

strong with the mystic strength of his late ministrations, and

perceiving her troubled state, he permitted himself to remain and pace

beside her.

"You have been out all day?" Katherine said.

"Yes, I stayed on to the end with Rebecca Light. They sent for me early

this morning. She passed away very peacefully in that little attic at

the new lodge looking out into the green heart of the woods."

"Ah! It's simple enough to die," Katherine said, "being old. The

difficult thing is to live, being still young."

"Has my absence been inconvenient? Have you wanted me?" Julius

asked.--Those quiet hours spent in the humble death-chamber suddenly

appeared to him as an act of possible selfishness.

"Oh no!" she answered bitterly. "Why should I want you? Have I not sent

Roger and Mary away? Am I not secretly glad dear Marie de Mirancourt is

just sufficiently poorly to remain in her room? When the real need

comes--one learns that among all the other merciless lessons--one is

best by oneself."

For a while, only the whisper of Lady Calmady's skirts, the soft, even

tread of feet upon the thick carpet. Then she said, almost sharply:--

"Dr. Knott is with Richard."

"Ah! I understand," Julius murmured.

But Lady Calmady took up his words with a certain heat.

"No, you do not understand. You none of you understand, and that is why

I am better by myself. Mary and Roger in their happiness, dear Marie in

her saintly resignation, and you"--Katherine turned her head, smiled at

him in lovely scorn--"you, my dear Julius, of all men, what should you

know of the bitter pains of motherhood, you who are too good to be

quite human, you who regard this world merely as the antichamber of

paradise, you, whose whole affection is set on your Church--your

God--how should you understand? Between my experience and yours there

is a very wide interval. How can you know what I suffer--you who have

never loved."

Under the stress of her excitement Katherine's pace quickened. The

whisper of her skirts grew to a soft rush. Julius kept beside her. His

head was bent reverently, even as over the sacred vessels he had so

lately carried.

"I too have loved," he said at last.

Katherine stopped short, and looked at him incredulously.

"Really, Julius?" she said.

Raising his head, he looked back at her. This avowal gave him a strange

sense of completeness and mastery. So he allowed his eyes to meet

Katherine's, he allowed himself to reckon with her grace and beauty.

"Very really," he answered.

"But when?"

"Long ago--and always."

"Ah!" she said. Her expression had changed. Brooding storm no longer

sat on her brow and lips. She was touched. For the moment the weight of

her personal distress was lifted. Dickie and Dr. Knott together in that

bedchamber, experimenting with unlovely, mechanical devices for aiding

locomotion and concealing the humiliation of deformity, were almost

forgotten. To those who have once loved, love must always supremely

appeal. Julius appeared to her in a new aspect. She felt she had done

him injustice. She placed her hand on his arm with a movement of

apology and tenderness. And the man grew faint, trembled, feeling her

hand; seeing it lie white and fair on the sleeve of his black cassock.

Since childhood it was the first, the solitary caress he had received.

"Pardon me, dear Julius," she said. "I must have pained you at times,

but I did not know this. I always supposed you coldly indifferent to

those histories of the heart which mean so much to some of us; supposed

your religion held you wholly, and that you pitied us as the wise pity

the foolish, standing above them, looking down. Richard told me many

things about you, before he brought me home here, but he never told me

this."

"Richard never knew it," he answered, smiling. Her perfect

unconsciousness at once calmed and pained him. He had kept his secret,

all these years, only too well.

Katherine turned and began to pace again, her hands clasped behind her

back.

"But, tell me--tell me," she said. "You can trust me, you know. I will

never speak of this unless you speak. But if I knew, it would bring us

nearer together, and that would be comforting, perhaps, to us both.

Tell me, what happened? Did she know, and did she love you? She must

have loved you, I think. Then what separated you? Did she die?"

"No, thank God, she did not die," Julius said. He paused. He longed to

gain the relief of fuller confession, yet feared to betray himself. "I

believe she loved me truly as a friend--and that was sufficient."

"Oh no, no!" Katherine cried. "Do not decline upon sophistries. That is

never sufficient."

"In one sense, yes--in another sense, no," Julius said. "It was thus. I

loved her exactly as she was. Had she loved me as I loved her she would

have become other than she was."

"Ah! but surely you are too ingenious, too fastidious." Katherine's

voice took tones of delicate remonstrance and pleading. "That would be

your danger, in such a case. _Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien_, and you

would always risk sacrificing the real to the ideal. I am sorry. I

would like you to have tasted the fulness of life. Even though the days

of perfect joy are very few, it is well to have had them----"

She threw back her head, her eyebrows drew together, and her face

darkened somewhat.

"Yes, it is well to have had them, though the memory of them cuts one

to the very quick."--Then her manner changed again, gaining a touch of

gaiety. "Really I am very unselfish in wishing all this otherwise," she

said, "for it would have been a sore trial to part with you. I cannot

imagine Brockhurst without you. I should have been in great straits

deprived of my friend and counselor. And yet, I would like you to have

been very happy, dear Julius."

Their pacing had just brought them to the arched doorway of the chapel.

Katherine stopped, and raising her arm leaned her hand against the

stone jamb of it above her head.

"See," she went on, "I want to be truly unselfish. I know how generous

you are. Perhaps you remain here out of all too great kindness towards

my poor Dick and me. You mustn't do that, Julius. You say she is still

living. Consider--is it too late?"

Was it indeed too late? All the frustrated manhood cried aloud in

Julius March. He covered his face with his hands. His carefully

restrained imagination ran riot, presenting enchantments.

And Katherine, watching him, found herself strangely moved. For it was

very startling to see this so familiar figure under so unfamiliar an

aspect--to see Julius March, her everyday companion and assistant, his

reticence, his priestly aloofness, his mild and courtly calm, swept

under by a tide of personal emotion. Lady Calmady was drawn to him by

deepened sympathy. Yet regret arose in her that this man proved to be,

after all, but as other men. She was vaguely disappointed, having

derived more security than she had quite realised from his apparent

detachment and impassibility. And, as an indirect consequence, her

revolt against God suffered access of bitterness. For not only was

He--to her seeing--callous regarding the fate of the many, but He

failed to support those few most devoted to His cause. In the hour of

their trial He was careless even of His own elect.

"Ah! I think it is indeed by no means too late!" she exclaimed.

Julius March let his hands drop at his sides. He gazed at her and her

expression was of wistful mockery--compassionate rather than ironical.

Then he looked away down the length of the chapel. In the warm

afternoon light, the solid and rich brown of the arcaded stalls on

either hand, emphasised the harmonious radiance of the great east

window, a radiance as of clear jewels.--Ranks of kneeling saints, the

gold of whose orioles rose in an upward curve to the majestic image of

the Christ in the central light--a Christ risen and glorified,

enthroned, His feet shining forever upon heaven's sapphire floor.

Before the altar hung three silver-gilt lamps of Italian workmanship,

in the crimson cup of each of which it had so long been Julius's

pleasure to keep the tongue of flame constantly alive. The habits of a

lifetime are not hastily set aside. Gazing on these things, his normal

attitude returned to him. Not that which he essentially was but that

which, by long and careful training of every thought, every faculty, he

had become, authoritatively claimed him. His eyes fell from

contemplation of the glories of the window to that of the long,

straight folds of the cassock which clothed him. It was hardly the garb

in which a man goes forth to woo! Then he looked at Lady Calmady--she

altogether seductive in her innocence and in her wistful mockery as she

leaned against the jamb of the door.

"You are mistaken, dear Katherine," he said. "It has always been too

late."

"But why--why--if she is free to listen?"

"Because I am not free to speak."

Julius smiled at her. His suavity had returned, and along with it a

dignity of bearing not observable before.

"Let us walk," he said. And then:--"After all I have given you a very

mutilated account of this matter. Soon after I took orders, before I

had ever seen the very noble, to me perfect, woman who unconsciously

revealed to me the glory of human love, I had dedicated my life, and

all my powers--poor enough, I fear--of mind and body to the service of

the Church. I was ambitious in those days. Ambition is dead, killed by

the knowledge of my own shortcomings. I have proved an unprofitable

servant--for which may God in His great mercy forgive me. But, while my

faith in myself has withered, my faith in Him has come to maturity. I

have learned to think very differently on many subjects, and to

perceive that our Heavenly Father's purposes regarding us are more

generous, more far-reaching, more august, than in my youthful ignorance

I had ever dreamed. All things are lawful in His sight. Nothing is

common or unclean--if we have once rightly apprehended Him, and He

dwells in us. And yet--yet, a vow once made is binding. We may not do

evil to gain however great a good."

Katherine listened in silence. The words came with the power of

immutable conviction. She could not believe, yet she was glad to have

him believe.

"And that vow precludes marriage?" she said at last.

"It does," Julius answered.

For a time they paced again in silence. Then Lady Calmady spoke, a

delicate intimacy and affection in her manner, while once more, for a

moment, she let her hand rest on his arm.

"So Brockhurst keeps you--I keep you, dear Julius, to the last?"

"Yes, if you will, to the very last."

"I am thankful for that," she said. "You must forgive me if in the past

I have been inconsiderate at times. I am afraid the constant struggle,

which certain circumstances of necessity create, tends to make me harsh

and imperious. I carry a trouble, which calls aloud for redress,

forever in my arms. They ache with the burden of it. And there is no

redress. And the trouble grows stronger alas. Its voice--so dear, yet

so dreaded--grows louder, till it deafens me to all other sounds. The

music of this once beautiful world becomes faint. Only angry discord

remains. And I become selfish. I am the victim of a fixed idea. I

become heedless of the suffering of those about me. And you, my poor

Julius, must have suffered very much!"

"Now, less than ever before," he answered. But even as he spoke,

Katherine was struck by his pallor, by the drawn look of his features

and languor of his bearing.

"Ah, you have fasted all day!" she cried.

"What matter?" he said, smiling. "The body surely can sustain a trifle

of hunger, if the soul and spirit are fed. I have feasted royally

to-day in that respect. I am strangely at ease. As to baser sort of

food, what wonder if I forgot?"

The door of Dickie's bedchamber opened, letting in long shafts of

sunlight, and Dr. Knott came slowly forward. His aspect was savage.

Even his philosophy had been not wholly proof against the pathos of his

patient's case. It irritated him to fall from his usual relentlessness

of common sense into a melting mood. He took refuge in sarcasm,

desirous to detect weakness in others, since he was, unwillingly, so

disagreeably conscious of it in himself.

"Well, we're through with our business, Lady Calmady," he said. "Eh!

Mr. March, what's wrong with you? Putty-coloured skin and shortness of

breath. A little less prayer and a little more physical exercise is

what you want. Successful, Lady Calmady?--Umph--I'm afraid the less

said about that the better. Sir Richard will talk it out with you

himself. Upset? Yes, I don't deny he is a little upset--and, like a

fool, I'm upset too. You can go to him now, Lady Calmady. Keep him

cheerful, please, and give him his head as much as you can."

John Knott watched her as she moved away. He shrugged his shoulders and

thrust his hands into his breeches' pockets.

"She's going to hear what she won't much relish, poor thing," he said.

"But I can't help that. One man's meat is another man's poison; and my

affair is with the boy's meat, even if it should be of a kind to turn

his mother's stomach. He shall have just all the chance I can get him,

poor little chap. And now, Mr. March, I propose to prescribe for you,

for you look uncommonly like taking a short-cut to heaven, and, if I

know anything about this house, you've got your work cut out for you

here below for a long time to come. Through with this business? Pooh!

we've only taken a preliminary canter as yet. That boy's out of the

common in more ways than one, and, cripple or no cripple, he's bound to

lead you all a pretty lively dance before he's done."