The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle

Richard Washburn Child

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• Publié par: usti
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 31
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg eBook, The
Blue Wall, by Richard Washburn Child,
Illustrated by Harold J. Cue
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Title: The Blue Wall
A Story of Strangeness and Struggle
Author: Richard Washburn Child
Release Date: January 29, 2008 [eBook #24451]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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The Blue Wall
A PICTURE THERE AMONG THE LAW BOOKS
A PICTURE THERE AMONG THE LAW BOOKSTHE BLUE WALL
A STORY OF STRANGENESS
AND STRUGGLE
BY
RICHARD WASHBURN CHILD
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY RICHARD WASHBURN CHILD
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Contents
Book I — The Problem of MacMechem
I. The House Next Door 3
II. A Moving Figure 22
Book II — The Automatic Sheik
I. A Woman At Twenty-Two 39
II. A Pledge to the Judge 65
III. The Torn Scrap 80
IV. The Face 101
V. At Dawn 126
VI. The Moving Figure Again 137
Book III — The Doctor’s Limousine
I. A Shadow on the Curtain 157
II. Margaret 170
Book IV — A Pupil of the Great WelstokeI. Les Trois Folies 181
II. The House on the River 196
III. A Visitor At Night 219
IV. A Suppression of the Truth 240
V. Again the Moving Figure 261
Book V — The Man with the White Teeth
I. Blades of Grass 283
II. In the Painted Garden 292
Book VI — A Puppet of the Passions
I. The Vanished Dream 301
II. Mary Vance 312
III. The Ghost 323
Book VII — TThe Paneled Door
I. The Scratching Sound 337
Book VIII — From the Woman’s Hand
I. The Voice of the Blood 351
II. This New Thing 362
Book IX — Behind the Wall
I. An Answer to Macmechem 371
II. “Why Care?” 378
Illustrations
A Picture There Among the Law Books Frontispiece
Listen to Me, Estabrook! 120
It Must Be Julianna 238
She Did Not Speak. She Seemed in Doubt 372
From drawings by Harold J. Cue.
BOOK I
THE PROBLEM OF MACMECHEMThe Blue Wall
3
CHAPTER I
THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR
What’s behind this wall?
As I write, here in my surgeon’s study, I ask myself that question. What’s
behind it? My neighbors? Then what do I know—really know—of them? After
all, this wall which rises beyond my desk, the wall against which my glass
case of instruments rests, symbolizes the boundary of knowledge—seemingly
an opaque barrier. I am called a man of science, a man with a passion for
accuracies. I seek to define a part of the limitless and undefined mysteries of
the body. But what is behind the wall? Are we sensitive to it? You smile. Give
your attention then to a narrative of facts.
How little we know what influence the other side has upon us or we upon the
human beings beyond this boundary. We think it is opaque, impassable. I am
writing of the other wall. There was a puzzle! The wall of the Marburys!...
4Here I risk my reputation as a scientific observer. But that is all; I offer no
conclusions. I set down in cold blood the bare facts. They are fresh enough in
my memory. All seasons are swift when a man slips into age and it was only
four short years ago that this happened—so marvelous, so suggestive of the
things that we may do without knowing—mark me! the things we may
accomplish—beyond the wall!
You will see what I mean when I make a record of those strange events. They
began when poor MacMechem—an able practitioner he was, too—was thrown
from his saddle horse in the park and died in the ambulance before they could
get him to the Matthews Hospital. I inherited some of his cases, and Marbury
was one of those who begged me to come in at the emergency. It was
meningitis and it is out of my line. Perhaps the Marbury wealth influenced me;
perhaps it was because the banker—of course I am not using the real names
—went down on his knees on this very rug which is under my feet as I write.
There is such a thing as a financial face. You see it often enough among those
who deal with loans, percents, examiners, and the market. It’s the face of terror
peering through a heavy mask of smugness, and it was dreadful to see it
looking up at me.... I yielded.
5The Marburys’ house faces the group of trees which shade the very spot
where MacMechem’s horse went insane. It is one of a block where each
residence represents a different architect—a sort of display of individuality and
affluence squeezed together like fancy crackers packed in a box. My machine
used to wait for me by the hour in front of the pretentious show of flowers, tub-
evergreens, glass and bronze vestibules, and the other conventional
paraphernalia of our rich city successes.
It was their little girl. She was eight, I think, and her beauty was not of the
ordinary kind. Sometimes there rises out of the coarse, undeveloped blood of
peasants, or the thin and chilly tissue of families going to seed, some
extraordinary example like my little friend Virginia. The spirit that looks out ofeyes of profound depth, the length of the black lashes lying upon a cheek of
marvelous whiteness, the delicate lines of the little body which delight the true
artist, the curve of the sensitive lips, the patient calm of personality suggesting
a familiarity with other worlds and with eternity, makes a strong impression
upon a medical man or surgeon who deals with the thousands of human
bodies, all wearing somewhere the repulsive distortions of civilization. The
ordinary personality stripped of the pretense which cannot fool the doctor,
6appears so hysterical, so distorted by the heats of self-interest, so monkey-like!
Oh, well,—she was extraordinary! I was impressed from the moment when,
having reread MacMechem’s notes on the case under the lamp, and then
having crossed the blue-and-gold room to the other wall, I drew aside the
corners of an ice pack and gazed for the first time upon little Virginia.
When I raised my glance I noticed the mother for the first time. I might have
stopped then to wonder that this child was her daughter, for the woman was
one of those who with a fairly refined skill endeavor to retain the appearance
of youth. I knew her history. I knew how her feet had moved—it always seems
to me so futilely—through miles and miles and miles of dance on polished
floors and her mouth in millions of false smiles. She had been débutante,
belle, coquette, old maid. Marbury had married her when wrinkles already
were at her chin and her hands had taken on the dried look which no fight
against age can truly conceal; then after six years of longing for new hopes in
life she had had a single child.
Just as she turned to go out, I saw her eyes upon me, dry, unwinking. But I
know the look that means that death is unthinkable, that a woman has
7concentrated all her love on one being. It is not the appeal of a man or woman
—that look. Her eyes were not human. I tell you, they were the praying eyes of
a thoroughbred dog!
I knew I must fight with that case—put strength into it—call upon my own
vitality....
The bed on which Virginia lay was placed sideways along the wall—as I have
said—the Marburys’ wall. I drew a chair close to it, and before I looked again
at the child I glanced up at the nurse to be sure of her character. Perhaps I
should say that I found her to be a thin-lipped person not over thirty, with long,
square-tipped fingers, eyes as cold as metal, and colorless skin of that
peculiar texture which always denotes to me an unbreakable vitality and
endurance, and perhaps a mind of hard sense. Her name was Peters.
MacMechem’s notes on the case, which I still held in my hand, set forth the
usual symptoms—headache, inequality of the eye pupils, vertigo, convulsions.
He had determined that the variety was not the cerebro-spinal or epidemic
form. He had tapped the spinal canal with moderate results. According to his
observations and those of the nurse there was an intermittent coma. For hours
little Virginia would lie unconscious, and restless, suffering failing strength and
8a slow retraction of the head and neck, or on other occasions she would rest in
absolute peace, so that the disease, which depends so much upon strength,
would later show improvement. The cause of this case, he believed, was
either an abscess of the ear which had not received sufficient treatment—
probably owing to the fact that the child, though abnormally sensitive, had
always masked her sufferings under her quiet and patience, or a blow on her
head not thought of consequence at the time it had happened.
Well, I happened to turn the notes over and, by George!—there was the first
signal to me. It was scrawled hastily in the characteristic nervous hand,—a
communication from poor Mac, a question but also a sort of command,—like a