This had been the experience of the sister of the German officer, as of the wife of the brother of the American lady. The same thing happening to thousands everywhere. The philanthropic Wolfenbuchel and the benevolent Krauss had made of the stony Via Dolorosa by which Womanhood attains maternity--a path of soft green turf bordered with fragrant lilies and bestrewn with the perfumed petals of the rose.
She ended. Saxham had kept his keen blue eyes steadily upon her during the eloquent recital. Not a hair of his black brows had twitched, not a muscle of his pale face had moved--betraying his urgent inclination to smile. His fine hand, lying upon the blotter near the small black case-book, might have been carved out of ancient Spanish ivory, or yellow-white lava. Now he said:
"There is nothing new nor marvellous about the 'Dreams' method. It is--persistent narcosis obtained from the subcutaneous injections of morphine with the hydrobromide of hyoscine, another alkaloid obtained from henbane. I have visited not only the Institute at Berlin, but the Rottburg Fraueenklinik--and an establishment of the same type in Paris, and another in Brussels. It is a fact that when a patient awakens from the anaesthesia there is no recollection of anything that has taken place subsequently to the injection of the drug."
"There has been no pain. Absolutely--none whatever!" She spoke with a little, joyful catch in her breath.
"Pardon me," said Saxham. "You labour under a delusion which the rose-coloured pamphlet was not written to dispel. There must have been pain--if there has been childbirth. Perhaps there has been overwhelming pain. Pain manifested by outcries and convulsions--violent struggles--subdued by the attendants and nurses--for the friends and relatives of the patient are rigidly excluded--the patient enters and leaves the Home alone. Two or three days may have vanished in that vacuum which has been created in her memory. Days in which she has been lying--it may be--strapped to the bed in the private ward of the nursing home--her purple, congested face and staring eyes concealed by a mask of wetted linen--her agonies only witnessed by paid attendants whose interests are best served by denial or concealment--supposing anything to have gone wrong?"
The relentless surgeon's hand had torn away the painted curtain. Margot contemplated the grim truth in silence for a moment. Then she found words:
"But nothing ever _does_ go wrong. The pink pamphlet says so. My American friend's sister-in-law says so.... Thousands of women have had children under scopolo--what's its name? And none of them felt pain--not the slightest. And in every case--in _every_ case--there was the baby when they woke up!"
The sweet bird-voice quivered. She had entered the room so full of hope and enthusiasm, and this man with the piercing eyes and the brusque, direct manner was putting things before her in a way that dashed and damped. Hear him now:
"Yes, there is generally a baby--when it is necessary there should be one. Though the patients who are treated in the free wards of German and Austrian _Kliniks_ may not always be scrupulous upon this point. Still, if the treatment can be carried out without undue peril for the mother--and I do not allow this for a single moment--have you not considered the risk for the child?"
Margot had pulled off one long glove. Now she murmured, setting the tip of a little bare, jewelled finger near the corner of a distracting little mouth:
"You consider that it's handicapping the start for--the kiddie?"
The avalanche fell; shocking and freezing and stunning her.
"Ask yourself, Lady Norwater, and do not forget to ask your husband: Will a healthy or a degenerate type of man or woman be eventually reared from an infant in whom the springs of Life have been deliberately poisoned with henbane and morphia--before its entrance into the world?"
She gasped:
"Then it's all U.P.?" She was slangy even in her tragic misery. She sought in her gold vanity-bag and produced the envelope that held the cheque, but Saxham waved it away.
"Pray put that back.... Neither from rich nor poor do I accept unearned money. You have not really consulted me. You have asked my opinion upon a course of treatment. And I have given it, for what it is worth. You will go home, and tell your husband that I have talked tosh, and consult another physician."
"No, I won't!" She said it bravely. "I want you to prescribe!"
"If I prescribe," Saxham told her, "you shall certainly fee me. But you do not need treatment." His eyes smiled though his mouth did not relax its grimness, as he added: "You strike me as being in excellent health."
She owned to feeling "top-hole," first-class, and simply awfully beany! Though, and her dimple faded as she owned it, the thought of what must happen in November took "the gilt off the gingerbread."
"Do not think of what is going to happen in November," Saxham advised her. "Or teach yourself to think of it in the right way." The sense of her childishness and inexperience went home to the sensitive quick beneath the man's hard exterior, as she said to him with an unconsciously appealing accent:
"But how am I to find out what is the right way?"
He had gained upon her confidence. The admission proved it. With infinite tact he began to win yet another woman to drain out her chalice of Motherhood, untinctured with the druggist's nepenthe,--to gain for the race yet another babe unmarred before its birth. For this end no labour was too great for Saxham. A crank you may call him, but that cranks of this type are the leaven of the world, you know.
It is typical of the human butterfly Saxham dealt with, that his clothes pleased Margot. She liked their characteristic mingling of elegance with simplicity. Some fashionable doctors got themselves up like elderly bloods, others affected garments dating from the year One. There was neither perfume upon Saxham's handkerchief nor flue upon his coat-sleeve. His shirt of soft white cashmere, his slightly starched linen cuffs and narrow double collar were fastened with plain buttons of mother o' pearl, the black silk necktie was blameless of pin or ring. The handsome gold chronometer he carried because it had been presented to him by the Staff and patients of St. Teresa and St. Stanislaus. The chain attached to it--rather worn and shabby now--was of woven red-brown hair.
The hair of his wife. A creamy-pale Niphetos rose stood where her hands had placed it near his writing-pad, in a tall, slender beaker of green-and-gold Venetian glass. His eyes drank at the beauty of the lovely scarce-unfolded blossom. Perhaps the resemblance of the fair flower to the beloved giver softened the lines of the stern square face into the smile that Margot liked, as he found her eyes again, saying:
"Perhaps I could better answer your question by telling you how another patient bore herself in--circumstances akin to yours. Will it tire you? I promise not to be unduly prolix. And to listen commits you to no course of action. Now, shall I go on?"
"I'd love you to go on!"
Always in extremes, the little wayward creature. She flushed and sparkled at the Doctor as he took from its place on his writing-table a triptych photograph-frame in gold-mounted mother-o'-pearl, folded the leaves so as to reveal but one of the portraits, and held under Margot's eyes the delicately-tinted photograph of a girl of twenty. The portrait had been taken the year following Saxham's return from South Africa with his young wife.
"How beautiful!" Margot exclaimed.
"Beautiful, as you say, but does she look happy?"
Margot wrinkled her dainty eyebrows, puzzling out the question. Did she look happy, the girl of the portrait, whose face and figure might have served one of the old Greek masters as model for an Artemis to be carved upon a gem? Well, perhaps not quite happy, now one came to look again.
The black-lashed eyes of golden hazel were full of wistful sadness, there was a faintly indicated fold between the fine arched eyebrows, much darker than the rippling red-brown hair, whose luxuriance seemed to weigh down the little Greek head. The closely-folded, deeply-cut lips spoke dumbly of sorrow, the nymph-like bosom seemed rising on a breath of weariness. Something was lacking to complete her beauty. So much was plain even to Margot. But not until the Doctor showed by the side of the first, the second portrait, did she realise what that Something was.
In the first portrait both face and figure were shown in profile. In the second, bearing a date of two years later, the beautiful, sensitive face of the young woman was turned towards you. Still rather grave than smiling, she held in her arms a sturdy baby boy of some twelve months, upon whose downy head her chin lightly rested. The clasp of her slender arms about her child, the poise of her still nymph-like figure, expressed fulness of life, buoyant energy, and happiness in fullest measure. What was previously lacking was now made clear.