Chapter IV: One Woman in a Thousand

Mary Elton lay on the couch in her room, thinking of the last words the doctor had said. He had been perfectly honest with her, partly because she was morally strong and desired absolute frankness, partly because there was no one else to whom he could speak, except her self-absorbed uncle, and Mary had taken charge of her own case from the first, and sworn the doctor to secrecy.

The next day she was to be taken to the hospital, and there an operation was to be performed, which would be a matter of life or death,--probably of death. It was her only chance of life, but it was one chance out of a hundred. This she had made the doctor tell her, and this was the thought she faced alone, lying in the winter twilight, her mood well suited to the season and the hour that most suggest death.

Mary had prepared herself for the news that the chances were against her,--had expected and had almost hoped for it. Without being morbid in temperament, she had a deep strain of melancholy in her nature, and though she possessed rather a spasmodic fund of animal spirits and a keen power of enjoyment, she was no lover of life, in the deepest sense. She feared what she herself might become, and dread of her future too frequently poisoned her enjoyment of the present.

She lay silent in the dusk for an hour, thinking, thinking, screwing her courage to the sticking-place in a decision she had just formed. She rang the bell, which was close to the head of her couch, and, when the maid came, Mary asked to have the curtains drawn and the gas lighted. “And, Jennie,” she added, as the girl was about to leave the room, “if Mr. Morley comes to inquire after me to-night, I wish to see him. You may ask him to come up here.”

“Up to your room, Miss?” queried the girl, in dignified surprise.

“Yes,” responded Miss Elton, shortly, “and when my uncle comes in I should like to speak to him.”

That afternoon the uncle and niece had a long talk together; and after the interview was over, Mr. Elton’s voice was husky with unaccustomed emotion. Not all the wool in the market could soften the blow that his brother’s only child, and his own companion of so many years, might leave him forever.

Mary had said as little as she could about the probable failure of the operation, but a few plans had to be made, and her uncle had been astonished at the coolness and self-control with which she had spoken of her own death. He thought she seemed much older than twenty-five.

As Mr. Elton went out of the room, she called after him, “By the way, if Philip Morley comes to ask after me to-night, I am going to see him; so don’t be surprised if you find him making himself at home to the extent of coming upstairs.”

“Very well, my dear; I know you and Philip are great friends. It is quite natural that you should want to say good-by to him. I suppose you may be away from us a fortnight or more.”

“Probably more, the doctor thinks,” Mary replied, laughing; “but I want to see Philip in any case.”

That evening Mary looked more animated and stronger than she had for days. A faint color had brightened her sallow cheeks, and excitement burned in her eyes. When a knock came at her door, and Philip Morley tiptoed in, he uttered an exclamation of pleasure at seeing her look so well. He drew a chair up beside her sofa, and extended his long legs with a sigh of comfort.

“We’ll be having you about again in a week,” he said, with his sympathetic smile. “I’ve missed our friendly disputes awfully. Since you’ve been ill, I can’t get any one else to fight with me, and it kills all ambition when one isn’t opposed; so you must hurry and get well.”

Mary pulled with nervous fingers at the fringe of the shawl that covered her.

“Philip, it seems absurd, but I’m not going to get well. You’ll have to find some one else to fight with you.”

The young man started, and looked at her quickly. “What do you mean, Mary?” he cried. “Don’t joke about such things.”

“I’m not joking. I am going to the hospital to-morrow, where the surgeons will do what they can to save my life; but they say there is very little chance of my recovery. I _know_ that I shan’t live, and that is why I wanted to see you to-night. _Don’t, don’t_ look like that,--as if you cared,--or I shall cry; and I don’t want to be a baby.”

She looked at him piteously, but would not let him speak.

“There is something I want to tell you, Philip. No, I don’t _want_ to tell it to you, but I want you to know it before I die. Doesn’t it seem ridiculous for me to talk of dying! But I’m not going to try to harrow your feelings like that horrid little May Queen, though I confess the dramatic side of the situation does appeal to my imagination, and I am secretly longing for a band to strike up some dirge outside.”

“Ah, you’re just trying to frighten me,” said Philip. “If you really thought you were going to die, you wouldn’t joke about it like this.”

“Wouldn’t I? Well, I always said you didn’t know me. Never mind. It certainly would be just like me to live, as an anticlimax, after getting off my last speeches--but for once, I really think I shall do the right thing.”

“It wouldn’t be the right thing, Mary; don’t talk so. I _hate_ to hear you.”

“Yes, it is the right thing, Philip, I’m perfectly sure of it. Now don’t keep interrupting me. I want to talk, as usual, and you are just here as audience. Now listen. I am perfectly serious when I say that the best thing I can do is to die. If I lived, I should become more and more hard and snappish and unreconciled to my lot every year. Handsome people say it is easy for ugly ones to be good because they have no temptations, but I know that it is a thousand times harder to keep your temper sweet, and your spirit unruffled, with eyes and nose and mouth like mine, than--like yours, for instance. There is the first compliment I’ve ever paid you.”

Philip made a futile attempt to interrupt her flow of words, but she frowned him into silence and continued, “The trouble is, I am not good enough to be ugly. If I lived, I should have to turn into a woman with a mission,--a temperance lecturer or an anti-vivisectionist or something; and though I should look the part, I couldn’t act it. But if I die comparatively young, my bad qualities won’t have time to mature (or rather to decay), and perhaps half a dozen people will be able to squeeze out a few perfunctory tears at my funeral.”

Through the veil of her levity, Philip could detect grim Truth looking him in the face, and his eyes fell before hers.

“You’re only joking, of course,” he maintained insincerely.

“No, no. I am altogether serious now, Philip. I can’t joke about it any more. Promise to feel badly about me for a little while,” Mary cried, with sudden wistfulness.

“It wouldn’t be for a little while only, Mary,” the young man said, laying his hand on hers. “It would make a difference to me all through my life. But, Mary, this won’t happen. You’re morbid and unnatural to-night. You have the making of one of the finest women in the world. You know I’ve always said so, and you must live to acknowledge that I was right. Besides, I can’t possibly get on without you.”

“Oh yes, you can; yes, you can!” she moaned, dropping the mock-heroic tone she had assumed at first. “Listen, Philip, I am going to tell you something which proves me to be unfeminine, unwomanly, and altogether shameless, but when I’m dead perhaps you’ll be glad to remember. Now don’t look at me, Philip, or I can’t say what I want to. Let me look at your nice straight profile, and then perhaps I can talk.”

She laughed in her old way, and made him turn his face toward the fire.

“Now don’t move, don’t speak,” she said, “till I have finished, and then I can tell whether you think me altogether contemptible. Philip,” she continued, with a queer catch in her voice, “I have loved you for two years! There, I’ve said it, I’ve said it,” she exclaimed, wildly. “No, don’t try to speak, don’t look at me. Now you know whether I am going to die or not. Do you think wild horses would drag such a confession from me if I didn’t _know_ I was speaking from the edge of the grave?”

Philip had instinctively turned to look at her with bewilderment in his eyes, but if he felt doubts of her seriousness or of her sanity, they were driven away by the sight of her earnest and intense face. He gave a short, sudden groan, and dropped his forehead into his hand.

“You mustn’t feel too badly about this,” she went on with calmness. “I know that you are as much in love with Edith Dudley as you can be with any one. It is because I know of your love for her, that I am able to talk to you like this. She may have refused you once; I suspect that she has, but that’s only because that wretched Dr. Fell came along and hypnotized her. If you love her enough, she will care for you in time, and you will be happy, but--oh, Philip, she will not love you as _I_ have loved you; she will not make you happier than _I_ could have made you, if I had been beautiful and graceful and gentle and sweet as she is!”

There was a ring of something that had never been heard in Mary’s voice before, as she gave herself up to the bitterness of longing and regret that filled her heart.

“People talk of the power of affection to work changes in character,” she continued more quietly, “and that is another reason why I have chosen to tell you of my love. Philip, I don’t know whether I love you because I believe in you, or believe in you because I love you. My love and my belief are all tangled up together, so that I can’t tell which is cause and which is effect. You could be anything you want to be,--but I am so afraid you won’t want! Oh, I do wish that my love could be some little incentive to make you do and be all that you might if you only would! It seems as if it ought to be of _some_ value,--a love like mine. There ought to be _some_ result from such a strong emotion. It would be so ridiculously easy for me to die, or live, or anything, if only your happiness, and success in the highest sense, could result from it! Of course it isn’t easy for me to say all this, though I seem to have got wound up to it somehow. I suppose I am fearfully lacking in a proper modesty of sex,--but this is my death-bed (figuratively speaking), and after all we are just two human souls, aren’t we?”

“You are the sincerest, truest woman in the world!” cried Philip, turning towards her and seizing both her hands. “What does the purely conventional modesty you feel you have offended against matter, in comparison with a courage like yours?”

“Oh, dear! If only my friends could have heard me making an unprovoked declaration of love!” cried Mary, laughing, with a sudden instinct of incongruous amusement. “They all think I’m a perfect old cynic, with no germ of romance or sentiment about me. Well, that’s what I should have grown to be, if I had lived. You see I already speak of myself in the past tense. Be thankful, Philip, that I have escaped the fate of becoming an unloved, unloving old woman, with bitterness and regret in her heart. You have shown me what life must be to people who have love. It’s the only permanent possession. But if I had to choose between the two, I would rather feel love than inspire it,--and this isn’t sour grapes either. Of course the perfect thing has to be reciprocal. And now about you, Philip. I am sure that Edith will come to care about you some day; but when you’re happy and prosperous, don’t forget that you must be something more, that you are worth something better, that you owe it to yourself, and to Edith,--and to me. And now there is just one more thing that I want to say. If I _should_ live,--I _can’t_ and I _shan’t_, but if I _should_,--you must let the memory of all that I have said be absolutely blotted out. I shall have killed our friendship to-night. However, all this is nothing, because I know that I shan’t live, and on the whole I’m not sorry. Please tell me honestly whether you despise me for my weakness, or whether”--

“Despise you, Mary!” cried Philip. “I can’t possibly tell you what your brave, true words have meant to me.” His voice was choked with mingled emotion and embarrassment. “What you have said has meant more to me than anything else ever can. I feel somehow full of humility, and yet full of pride. What have I been or done, to win the love of a woman like you? Where have my senses been, not to give you some better return than my best friendship for a love like yours!”

“Ah, my dear Philip,” said Mary, half laughing and half crying, “you _couldn’t_ have loved me, no matter how hard you tried. No man could. You see I am so dreadfully ugly. I should hate myself if I were a man,--in fact, I do as it is.”

“You’re perfectly absurd about your looks, Mary. Why do you persist in exaggerating the importance of beauty? You have been a constant delight and refreshment to every one you know. As for me, I don’t believe I amount to much anyway; but if I ever turn out anything at all, it will be because of what you have been brave and honest enough to tell me to-night.”

“Oh, no, it won’t,” said Mary, smiling and shaking her head. “If you do turn out to be anything more than a successful business man (which I sometimes doubt), it will be because of the love of a much sweeter and better woman than I. You see this humility on my part is really my most alarming symptom, and must mean approaching death.”

She was her old self again for the moment, half mocking and half sad.

“Mary,” said Philip suddenly, “I don’t believe I shall ever _like_ any one half so much as I do you. Love is different; it is outside our control, I suppose, but liking is somehow founded on fact,--it’s more deliberate.”

“Are you trying to make out that friendship is more flattering than love?” Mary interrupted. “Perhaps you’re right. I dare say it’s more natural that you should like me than that I should love you,--however, go on.”

“It isn’t altogether easy to go on, in the midst of your interruptions,” said Philip, laughing nervously, “and everything I say sounds artificial, when I only mean to be straightforward. What I want you to understand is that whether you die or whether you live, or whatever happens to either of us, our friendship is something permanent. Even if we have to meet as strangers after to-night, the real You and the real I will be friends just the same. I wish I could make you realize all that it means to me to be told what you have told me to-night. It will give me new courage and new self-respect, and I thank you with all my heart.”

In answer to the look in his face, Mary’s eyes filled with sudden tears.

“Now don’t let’s be theatrical, Philip,” Mary laughed in order not to cry. “I’m afraid I’ve made things horrid for you. It’s my fault. I ought to have been contented with playing the rôle I am suited for. The trouble is I have been cast for low comedy, and I insist on playing high tragedy. With my make-up I ought to be content with playing the fool, yet here I am striving to blend pathos and tragedy behind the mask of Harlequin. Now Edith Dudley can play _any_ part well. Her life is a series of wonderful impersonations, and her face adapts itself to the part she plays. Don’t make the mistake, Philip, of thinking you can walk through your part of innocuous-young-man-about-town without exerting yourself to _act_. I am enough of a fatalist to believe that we can’t alter the text of the drama of life; but I do believe that the seriousness of our impersonation is as important in result as the words we are set down to speak, and our acting is within our own control, even if our actions are not.”

“If life is a play it’s a mighty badly written one, and I’ve made an awful botch of my part. I don’t know the text, Mary, and I need your promptings.” Philip looked at her with the look she used to call his “dumb animal expression.”

“Life is just a tragi-comedy, that’s all. When we’re not shrieking with pain, we’re shrieking with laughter. Now go, dear,” she said brokenly. “I don’t think I can stand it another minute. This has not been easy for either of us. I won’t try to say anything else except good-by. Don’t ever forget that I am thankful to have known and to have loved you.”

“Oh, Mary, Mary!” he cried, impotently. Then, realizing the futility of language to express all that he felt, he quietly stooped and kissed her. “Good-by,” he said very softly. Then he went out and closed the door. She held her breath till the sound of his footsteps had died away; then she burst into hysterical sobs.

* * * * *

A week later Edith Dudley was admitted to a room in the hospital, where a white form lay in a white bed. She went softly up to the figure, and kissed its pale face.

“Dear Mary! So the operation was a success,” she whispered.

“No!” replied the figure, opening its eyes with sudden energy. “It was a failure. I am going to get well.”