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The Web of Life, a novel by Robert Herrick |
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Part 1 - Chapter 14 |
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_ Part I Chapter XIV When Sommers reached his rooms that evening, he found Mrs. Ducharme waiting for him. She held in her hand his card. "I thought you'd give me the go-by," she exclaimed, as he entered. "Your kind is smooth enough, but they don't want to be bothered. But I came all the same--on the chance." "What have you been doing?" the doctor inquired, without noticing her surliness. "Walking about in the streets all day and making your inflammation worse?" "Well, you see I must find _him_, and I don't know where to look for him." "Well, you won't find your husband walking about the streets, especially if he's gone off with another woman; but you will get blind and have to go to the hospital!" "Well, I'll kill _her first_." "You will do nothing of the sort," said the doctor, wearily. "You'll make a fuss, and your husband will hit you again, and go away." "He was all right, as nice a man as you could find before _she_ came to Peory. You see she is married to another man, a baker, and they lived in Decatur. Ducharme--he's a Frenchman--knew her in Decatur where he worked in a restaurant, and he came to Peory to get rid of her. And he got a job and was real steady and quiet. Then we got married, and Ducharme was as nice a man as you ever knew. But we wasn't married a week--we had a kafe together--before _she_ got wind o' his being married and come to town. He told me she was trying to get him to go away, and he said how he didn't want to; but she had influence with him and was worrying around. Well, the third day he sent me a note by a little boy. 'Caroline,' it said, 'you'se a good woman and an honest woman and we could get on first rate together; but, Caroline, I don't love you when she is about. She calls me, and I go.'" "Well, that's all there is to it, isn't it?" Sommers asked, half amused. "You can't keep him away from the other woman. Now you are a sensible, capable woman. Just give him up and find a place to work." Mrs. Ducharme shook her head sorrowfully. "That won't do. I just think and think, and I can't work. He was such a nice man, so gentlemanlike and quiet, so long as she stayed away. But I didn't tell you: I found 'em in Peory in a place not fit for hogs to live in, and I watched my chance and gave it to the woman. But Ducharme came in and he pushed me out, and I fell, and guess I cracked my head. That's when my eye began to hurt. The kafe business ran out, and I followed them to Chicago. And here I been for three months, doing most anything, housework generally. But I can't keep a place. Just so often I have to up and out on the road and try to find him. I'll brain that woman yet!" She uttered this last assertion tranquilly. "She don't amount to much,--a measly, sandy-haired, cheap thing. _I_ come of respectable folks, who had a farm outer Gales City, and never worked out 'fore this happened. But now I can't settle down to nothin'; it's always that Frenchman before my eyes, and _her_." "Well, and after you have found her and disposed of her?" asked Sommers. "Oh, Ducharme will be all right then! He'll follow me like a lamb. He doesn't want to mess around with such. But she's got some power over him." "Simply he wants to live with her and not with you." The woman nodded her head sadly. "I guess that's about it; but you see if she weren't around, he wouldn't know that he didn't love me." Mrs. Ducharme wiped away her tears, and looked at the doctor in hopes that he might suggest some plan by which she could accomplish her end. To him she was but another case of a badly working mechanism. Either from the blow on her head or from hereditary influences she had a predisposition to a fixed idea. That tendency had cultivated this aberration about the woman her husband preferred to her. Should she happen on this woman in her wanderings about Chicago, there would be one of those blind newspaper tragedies,--a trial, and a term of years in prison. As he meditated on this an idea seized the doctor; there was a way to distract her. "The best thing for you to do," he said severely, "is to go to work." "Can't get no place," she replied despondently. "Have no references and can't keep a place. See a feller going up the street that looks like Ducharme, and I must go after him." "I have a place in mind where you won't be likely to see many men that look like Ducharme!" He explained to her the situation of the Ninety-first Street cottage, and what Mrs. Preston needed. "You take this note there to-morrow morning, and tell her that you are willing to work for a home. Then I'll attend to the wages. If you do what I want,--keep that fellow well locked up and relieve Mrs. Preston of care,--I'll give you good wages. Not a word to her, mind, about that. And when you want to hunt Ducharme, just notify Mrs. Preston and go ahead. Only see that you hunt him in the daytime. Don't leave her alone nights. Now, let's see your eye." The woman took the brief note which he scribbled after examining her, and said dejectedly: "She won't want me long--no one does, least of all Ducharme." Sommers laughed. "Guess I better go straight down," she remarked more hopefully as she left. He should have taken the woman to the cottage, he reflected after she had gone, instead of sending her in this brusque manner. He had not seen Mrs. Preston since his return, and he did not know what had happened to her in the meantime. To-morrow he would find time to ride down there and see how things were going with the sick man. There was much mail lying on his table. Nothing had been forwarded by Dresser, in accordance with the directions he had telegraphed him. And he had seen nothing of Dresser yesterday or to-day. The rooms looked as if the man had been gone some time. Dresser owed him money,--more than he could spare conveniently,--but that troubled him less than the thought of Dresser's folly. It was likely that he had thrown up his position--he had chafed against it from the first--and had taken to the precarious career of professional agitator. Dresser had been speaking at meetings in Pullman, with apparent success, and his mind had been full of "the industrial war," as he called it. Sommers recalled that the man had been allowed to leave Exonia College, where he had taught for a year on his return from Germany, because (as he put it) "he held doctrines subversive of the holy state of wealth and a high tariff." That he was of the stuff that martyrs of speech are made, Sommers knew well enough, and such men return to their haven sooner or later. Sommers sorted his letters listlessly. The Ducharme affair troubled him. He could see that a split with Lindsay was coming; but it must not be brought about by any act of professional discourtesy on his part. Although he was the most efficient surgeon Lindsay had, it would not take much to bring about his discharge. Probably the suggestion about Porter was merely a polite means of getting him out of the office. Lindsay had said some pointed things about "the critical attitude." The "critical attitude" to Lindsay's kind was the last crime. Ordinarily he would not have cared. The sacrifice of the three thousand dollars which Lindsay paid him would have its own consolation. He could get back his freedom. But the matter was not so simple as it had been. It was mixed now with another affair: if he should leave Lindsay, especially after any disagreement with the popular specialist, he would put himself farther from Miss Hitchcock than ever. As it was, he was quite penniless enough; but thrown on his own resources--he remembered the heavy, sad young man at the Carsons', and Miss Hitchcock's remark about him. Yet this reflection that in some way it was complicated, that he could not act impulsively and naturally, angered him. He was shrewd enough to know that Lindsay's patronage was due, not to the fact that he was the cleverest surgeon he had, but to the fact that, well--the daughter of Alexander Hitchcock thought kindly of him. These rich and successful! They formed a kind of secret society, pledged to advance any member, to keep the others out by indifference. When the others managed to get in, for any reason, they lent them aid to the exclusion of those left outside. So long as it looked as if he were to have a berth in their cabin, they would be amiable, but not otherwise. Among the letters on the desk was one from Miss Hitchcock, asking him to spend the coming Saturday and Sunday at Lake Forest. There was to be a small house party, and the new club was to be open. Sommers prepared to answer it at once--to regret. He had promised himself to see Mrs. Preston instead. In writing the letter it seemed to him that he was taking a position, was definitely deciding something, and at the close he tore it in two and took a fresh sheet. Now was the time, if he cared for the girl, to come nearer to her. He had told himself all the way back from New York that he did care--too much. She was not like the rest. He laughed at himself. A few years hence she would be like the rest and, what is more, he should not find her so absorbing now, if she were not like the rest, essentially. He wrote a conventional note of acceptance, and went out to mail it. Possibly all these people were right in reading the world, and the aim of life was to show one's power to get on. He was worried over that elementary aspect of things rather late in life. _ |
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