Munsey's Magazine/The Room Beyond

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

 

THE ROOM BEYOND

BY MARY ROBERTS RINEHART
AUTHOR OF “HIS FATHER'S SON,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY T. VICTOR HALL

CAROTHERS had been sitting with his head on his hand. It was a habit that was growing on him. In the last few weeks he was more and more frequently to be found in that position, pulling himself together with a jerk at the banging of a door or the entrance of his clerk. He had grown thinner, and there were whispers of nightly dissipations that left their mark the next morning in congested eyes and nervous hands. But the men who knew Carothers knew better.

The clock in the square chimed two, and he came to himself with a start. His watch, lying on the desk in front of him, was open at the back. Carothers looked guiltily at the door and snapped the watch shut. Then he took his hat and went out.

“YOU HAVE SEEN HER LATELY, DOCTOR. IS—IS SHE MUCH CHANGED?”

When he reached the hospital the doctor had not arrived. Carothers remembered the proverbial tardiness of the profession and cursed his own punctuality. Everywhere around him were the hush, the bare cleanliness, the dreary gray, of the hospital corridors. There was something in the swept and ungarnished emptiness of the place that reminded him, as he waited in the little reception-room, of the bleakness of the last two months. The place was cool, too, after the glare of the street, and Carothers shivered.

When he was asked to go up-stairs he followed mechanically. It was not the first time he had been there. He remembered that corridor to the right, where he had taken the deposition of a dying murderer. The man had killed his wife for loving another man, and then had put a bullet through his own lungs. Carothers wondered dully if it were not rather the better way. It was over quickly, for one thing. One didn't keep on and on, with a dull ache that—

“Will you wait here?” the attendant asked, opening the door into another small, bare room, a replica of the one down-stairs. The doctor has telephoned that he will be here soon.”

Carothers did not sit down. A nurse in a white gown was writing at a desk, now and then consulting a brown note-book. She was as impassive as everything else, Carothers thought.

It was a warm day, and the window was closed. Carothers raised it an inch or two, then he turned to the nurse.

“Does it make any difference if I open the window?” he asked. “Germs—or anything of that kind?”

The nurse looked up.

“Not at all,” she said briskly. “Open it if you wish.”

“I was to meet Dr. Hilliard.” The silence had been oppressing Carothers, and he was glad of any excuse to talk. “It must be time for him.”

The nurse consulted the watch in the broad band of her apron.

“He will be here very soon,” she said, and went on with her writing.

Carothers paced the room, his hands in his pockets. Finally he stopped near the desk.

“I don't know how you women stand it here,” he said. “I haven't been here fifteen minutes, and I feel as if the walls were closing in on me. It seems like a huge piece of machinery, with about as much feeling. They feed people into the wheels and cogs, and grind off an arm or an appendix—I suppose I'm nervous. It's hot to-day, and this smell of drugs knocks me out.”

The nurse smiled a little, but she looked keenly at Carothers's haggard, handsome face.

“We are not all pieces of the machinery,” she said gently. “You'd better sit down, and I'll bring some ice-water.”

When she came back, with a rustling of starched skirts, Carothers was still standing by the desk, looking at the records on it.

“This is what I mean,” he said. “Here you say, 'Twenty-one slept badly; was very nervous, asking constantly for the baby; has not yet been told the baby is dead.' Let me see—not two dozen words, and—I suppose you're used to it, but there's the tragedy of a life right there.”

The nurse bunched her papers and locked them in a drawer.

“It is a sad case,” she said, “but visitors are not supposed to see those records.”

Carothers resumed his pacing of the room. It seemed to be a sort of ante-room. Now and then a nurse bustled through, or a smooth-faced young doctor. From the other side of the door came the muffled sound of conversation, and now and then a metallic jingle that set his frayed nerves on edge. The nurse was marking zigzag lines on a black-and-white chart.

“It couldn't do any harm to tell me a little about twenty-one,” he said finally, pausing beside the desk. “It—it haunts me, for some reason or other.”

The nurse looked faintly annoyed at his persistence.

“It isn't really as bad as you think,” she said. “It was a young baby, and she still has her husband.”

“I think you overrate the value of a husband as an asset.” Carothers could not keep the bitterness out of his voice. “It is only the woman who—ah, doctor, punctual as usual!”

The nurse got up as Dr. Hilliard came in. He was talking to her as he shook hands with Carothers and glanced over the brown note-book.

“Has Dr. Stevenson arrived?” he asked briskly.

“About ten minutes ago, doctor.”

“Tell them to start, please, Miss Lyons. I'll be there in a few minutes.”

II

As the nurse went out, Hilliard looked sharply at Carothers.

“Pretty well used up, aren't you, Billy? Heat, and all that?”

“Especially 'all that,'” Carothers said. “But I'm not sick. If you brought me here to talk about my condition—”

“I didn't,” the doctor interposed. “To tell you the truth, I'm not much interested in your condition.”

Carothers did not resent the tone or the implication.

“You brought me here for something,” he said wearily. “What is it? Some poor devil's will, or what?”

The doctor had been looking over the charts with practised eyes. Now he put them down with almost unnecessary deliberation.

“Billy,” he said gravely, “how long is it since you forced Alice to leave you?”

“DR. STEVENSON WANTS YOU AT ONCE. THE PATIENT IS SINKING UNDER THE ANESTHETIC”

Carothers stopped his nervous pacing; he was very white, and his nostrils dilated nervously.

“Why?” he asked, after a minute.

“It's over a month, isn't it?”

“Two months,” Carothers said sullenly. “Two months of hell!”

“I'm glad of that.” The doctor was polishing his glasses and holding them to the light critically. “I'm glad it has been a bad time.” Then his indignation suddenly mastered him. “My God, boy, if it has been that to you, what has it been to Alice? If you lived a thousand years, do you think you could ever atone to your wife for one week of that time?”

“We needn't go over it,” Carothers said dully. “If you wish to tell me what you think of me, why not some other place than this?”

The doctor was plainly struggling to be cool.

“If it had been only your wife,” he said, “the injustice would not have been so terrible; but if you couldn't think of Alice, why couldn't you think of little Marjorie?”

Carothers turned on him fiercely. “Think of her!” he snarled. “Do I ever think of anything else? Don't I sit like a blatant ass in the office staring at this and letting my business go to the devil?” He had taken his watch out, and with unsteady fingers was opening the back of the case. He looked lingeringly at the miniature inside—the miniature of a baby girl, with wide, candid brown eyes. Then he held out the watch to the other man. “You have seen her lately, doctor,” he said hoarsely. “Is—is she much changed? They grow so fast at that age, you know.”

He was watching the doctor with wistful eyes. Hilliard looked critically at the picture.

“Yes, she's like that,” he said. “She's like her mother.”

Carothers groaned under his breath and went to the window. All the beaten-down, fought-out emotion of the last two months was coming back, smothering and choking him. If he could only have shrieked or stormed! But here, in this quiet place—

“SHE ISN'T DYING, IS SHE? YOU CAN TELL ME THAT, ANYHOW!”

“You never understood, doctor,” he said at last, still looking with unseeing eyes through the window. “If you had had to go home, night after night, to that quiet house—why, the very sight of the empty nursery at the head of the stairs, with the toys all standing around in stiff rows!” He stopped and choked. “I've been stopping at the club lately.”

The nurse came in and said something in a low tone. Carothers was not listening; he was back in the empty house, with the rows of toys and the stillness. As the nurse went out, Carothers turned slowly.

“What's Stevenson doing here?” he said suspiciously. “This isn't any plan of yours, is it, to—”

The doctor held up a warning hand.

“Any interest I may take in your affairs is not on your account,” he said. “When I see a young and innocent woman turned out of her home, or practically so”—as Carothers made a gesture of dissent—“by the man who has sworn to care for her—thrust out to the tender mercies of people who are always glad to see a beautiful woman in the dust, in the mud—by the Lord, Billy Carothers, I can't help hoping that there's something coming to you some day in the way of punishment!”

Carothers had flushed. Now he came and stood before the doctor, his chin low, his eyes a somber fire.

“What did you bring me here for? To tell me that my wife is—all that she should be? I tell you, I know better. Stevenson always loved her; he was crazy about her, poor fool! If he had married her, who knows? Perhaps he'd be where I am now!”

“That will do!” The doctor was losing control of his temper.

“They thought he'd shoot himself when Alice married me. Not he, the—oh, well, what's the use? Stevenson—it was always Stevenson, even after we were married. He came almost every day. When Marjorie was old enough, it was his toys she played with; it was his candy she sickened on. It was Uncle Stevie this, Uncle Stevie that. I fell over Uncle Stevie's dolls on the stairs. Alice read his books and brightened her rooms with his flowers. It was always Stevenson!”

“Did it ever occur to you that he came professionally?”

“Bah! I got no bills for professional visits!”

“That was a mistake, certainly,” the doctor said dryly.

An orderly in a pink-striped coat came hurriedly from the room beyond and said something in a low tone. The doctor questioned him anxiously.

“I'll go in,” he said, and the man hurried away.

“And then,” Carothers went on, as the door closed softly, “she went to the theater one afternoon. I thought she was depressed, and it might cheer her. Poor fool that I was! I stopped at a corner to get some violets.” He laughed a little, an ugly, ominous laugh. “Violets! And she went past, in a cab, with her head on Stevenson's shoulder!”

There were sounds from the other room now—a scraping of chairs and slightly raised voices. The doctor watched the door. When no one came, however, he turned to Carothers.

“You're a queer family,” he said, “you Carotherses. You are money-getters, all of you. Your only intelligence is your financial intelligence. You are all the same. Your mother died before your father would believe she was ill. Your intentions are good, I think, but you lack the finer instincts.”

Carothers picked up his hat.

“Dr. Hilliard, I don't intend to allow you to quarrel with me,” he said. “If you have finished this interesting dissection of myself and my family history, I will go.”

“Don't! I have not finished.” The doctor ran his fingers nervously through his thick gray hair. “Billy, you have never been ill, that I can remember.” Carothers looked at him silently. “You have never been ill, and you have a morbid shrinking from illness in others. You needn't deny it; I know. It's a family characteristic. Did it never occur to you, that night when you refused to allow Alice to explain—did it never occur to you to imagine—the truth?”

“The truth?”

“The truth. Billy, if your stupidity was not an excuse, I think I'd shoot you. Do you think you can believe me when I tell you that for years Alice has been a sick woman? That there have been times when she could scarcely move, and yet she got up and dressed to be bright for you when you came home, tired? She knew you, you see.”

“Good Lord!”

“I couldn't help her, and I turned her over to Stevenson. It's too late to be sorry for that. He did his best for her; your persistent blindness was the greatest handicap. That afternoon when you saw her with him in a cab she had fainted at the theater.”

Carothers's hat had dropped from his hand and lay unnoticed on the floor. His world seemed to have slipped from under his feet suddenly, without warning. There was nothing left but a suffering woman, and the injustice of those last bitter months.

“Where is she?” He had groped for the back of a chair and was holding to it. “If she is—is ill—” Then the old doubts came back. “You are absolutely sure?” he asked. “She might tell you that, and—”

“Will you never understand?” the doctor said impatiently. “Isn't there a grain of humanity in you? I tell you—”

The door into the room beyond opened suddenly, and Miss Lyons came in. She was startled out of her impassiveness, and her face was rather white.

“Dr. Stevenson wants you at once,” she said nervously. “The patient is sinking under the anesthetic.”

The doctor was at the door in an instant. Then, with his hand on the knob, he turned.

“I brought you here,” he said, “because I thought you might be needed. Stevenson is operating—making his last stand to save Alice's life. If you have a prayer to say, say it now!”

III

As the door snapped shut behind Hilliard, Carothers stood gazing at it with stupefied eyes. She was in there, then! She was failing, even now her life might be going, going, and he had shut himself out! He was on the other side of the door!

All the awful possibilities of that room beyond came to him, overwhelmed him, buried him. She was there, beyond his reach; he had always failed her, and now he was failing her again. He staggered to the door and fell against it, hiding his face in his shaking arms. Out of the blackness came the little homely things he had tried to forget—her little gaieties, the way she slept with her hand under her cheek. He remembered the night she taught Marjorie her baby-prayer. God, what kind of a fool, what kind of a beast, had he been?

After a while some one touched him on the shoulder. It was a strange nurse, with a hypodermic-tray in her arms.

“Let me pass,” she said. “Hurry, please;” but still Carothers barred the door.

“How is she?” he gasped, his throat dry and rasping.

“I don't know,” the nurse said evasively. “Let me pass, please.”

“Not until you answer my question. Has she—has she a chance? She isn't dying, is she? You can tell me that much, anyhow!”

He had caught her by the shoulder, and she wrenched herself free angrily.

“If you don't stand aside—” she began, but Carothers was beyond reason.

“You can tell me something,” he said, his face livid. “Can't you see I'm going crazy? Oh, you're not a woman; you're a machine!”

“Every instant you keep me, you are lessening her chances,” the nurse said coldly.

Carothers reeled aside, and the door shut in his face. From the room beyond there came a confusion of muffled voices, of hurried steps on a tiled floor. Now and then, too, there was a metallic jingling—Carothers knew what it meant, and with his head on the little mahogany desk he sobbed tearlessly.

After a wait that seemed ages long, a doctor came out and hurried to the telephone beside the desk.

“Where's that oxygen?” he called excitedly. “This is the worst pharmacy I ever saw! I sent for oxygen five minutes ago. Yes, for Heaven's sake, hurry!”

Carothers gripped his arm as he turned.

“How is she?” he said, struggling for composure. “She isn't—she isn't dead, is she?”

The doctor looked away. He was young, and things were bad in that next room.

“Try to think of something else,” he said. “There has been a sinking spell, but she's living, and we never give up while there's life.”

The relentless door closed behind him. Carothers could have beaten at it with his hands. Perhaps there was something that could be done, and they would forget to do it. Or the knife might slip—those things happened sometimes; but not with Stevenson, and Stevenson loved her. It was only another draft from the cup of despair to know how much better, more unselfishly, Stevenson had loved her.

The door into the hallway opened, but Carothers did not look up.

“Now just wait here and sit still,” a woman's voice said, not very steadily. “That's a sweetheart. I'll come back.”

As the door closed, Carothers glanced up. A little girl, a slender little girl with wide, candid brown eyes stood just inside the door. In her hand, clutched tight, was a tiny bunch of withered nasturtiums. Carothers looked and choked.

“Marjorie! Little Marjorie!” he said, and caught her in his empty arms.

“Muvver's sick,” she said, when his first emotion had spent itself. He had put her in a chair, and dropped on his knees in front of her, his head in the little white lap. “Muvver's sick. I brought her these flowers.”

Carothers swallowed hard to find his voice.

“Yes, muvver's sick—very sick, baby girl, Maybe—maybe she's—oh, baby, baby girl, what shall we do without muvver?”

“When the lady comes back, I'm going in, and I'll put the flowers in her hand and go out without talking. Uncle Stevie said if I wouldn't talk, I could go in. I was sick once, and Uncle Stevie gave me bad medicine. I was mad at him. I wouldn't say 'God bless Uncle Stevie' when I said my prayers.”

“If you have a prayer to say, say it now,” Dr. Hilliard had said.

“Listen, baby girl,” Carothers went on. “Muvver is sick, there in that next room. And perhaps, if you would say your little prayer, it would help to make her better. Say it, will you, honey?”

Marjorie slipped out of the chair and dropped on her little bare knees.

“'Now I lay me,'” she chanted. “Hold my flowers, will you? I don't want to spoil them. 'Now I lay me down to sleep—'”

“IF YOU WILL BE QUIET, YOU MAY GO IN—FOR ONE MINUTE”

As the little prayer went on, the last of the old bitterness slipped away. With the Amen he was on his feet, catching the child up.

“We're going in, Marjorie,” he panted. “We don't care for them, you and I. She belongs to us, and we're going to her. We're going to see muvver.”

With the child in his arms he took two or three uncertain steps toward the closed door. Then it quietly opened, and Stevenson came out. He was very pale, and his steady eyes looked sunken. Marjorie wriggled gleefully.

“Uncle Stevie!” she cried.

But the two men faced each other in silence. Then Stevenson stood aside and motioned to the door.

“It is over, Billy,” he said steadily, “and I think she will live. If you will be very quiet, you may go in there—for one minute.”

“Uncle Stevie!” Marjorie gurgled, twisting to reach out her baby arms to him; but Stevenson made no sign in response.

With the child in his arms, Carothers staggered through the doorway into the Room Beyond.