The War Terror Page 31

  CHAPTER XXXI

  THE EUGENIC BRIDE

  Scandal, such as that which Kennedy unearthed in this Pearcy case, wasnever much to his liking, yet he seemed destined, about this period ofhis career, to have a good deal of it.

  We had scarcely finished with the indictment that followed the arrestof young Pearcy, when we were confronted by a situation which was asunique as it was intensely modern.

  "There's absolutely no insanity in Eugenia's family," I heard a youngman remark to Kennedy, as my key turned in the lock of the laboratorydoor.

  For a moment I hesitated about breaking in on a confidentialconference, then reflected that, as they had probably already heard meat the lock, I had better go in and excuse myself.

  As I swung the door open, I saw a young man pacing up and down thelaboratory nervously, too preoccupied even to notice the slight noise Ihad made.

  He paused in his nervous walk and faced Kennedy, his back to me.

  "Kennedy," he said huskily, "I wouldn't care if there was insanity inher family--for, my God!--the tragedy of it all now--I love her!"

  He turned, following Kennedy's eyes in my direction, and I saw on hisface the most haggard, haunting look of anxiety that I had ever seen ona young person.

  Instantly I recognized from the pictures I had seen in the newspapersyoung Quincy Atherton, the last of this famous line of the family, whohad attracted a great deal of attention several months previously bywhat the newspapers had called his search through society for a"eugenics bride," to infuse new blood into the Atherton stock.

  "You need have no fear that Mr. Jameson will be like the othernewspaper men," reassured Craig, as he introduced us, mindful of theprejudice which the unpleasant notoriety of Atherton's marriage hadalready engendered in his mind.

  I recalled that when I had first heard of Atherton's "eugenicmarriage," I had instinctively felt a prejudice against the very ideaof such cold, calculating, materialistic, scientific mating, as if oneof the last fixed points were disappearing in the chaos of the socialand sex upheaval.

  Now, I saw that one great fact of life must always remain. We mightride in hydroaeroplanes, delve into the very soul by psychanalysis,perhaps even run our machines by the internal forces of radium--evenmarry according to Galton or Mendel. But there would always be love,deep passionate love of the man for the woman, love which all thediscoveries of science might perhaps direct a little less blindly, butthe consuming flame of which not all the coldness of science could everquench. No tampering with the roots of human nature could ever changethe roots.

  I must say that I rather liked young Atherton. He had a frank, openface, the most prominent feature of which was his somewhat aristocraticnose. Otherwise he impressed one as being the victim of heredity infaults, if at all serious, against which he was struggling heroically.

  It was a most pathetic story which he told, a story of how his familyhad degenerated from the strong stock of his ancestors until he was thelast of the line. He told of his education, how he had fallen, a ratherwild youth bent in the footsteps of his father who had been anotoriously good clubfellow, under the influence of a collegeprofessor, Dr. Crafts, a classmate of his father's, of how theprofessor had carefully and persistently fostered in him an idea thathad completely changed him.

  "Crafts always said it was a case of eugenics against euthenics,"remarked Atherton, "of birth against environment. He would tell me overand over that birth gave me the clay, and it wasn't such bad clay afterall, but that environment would shape the vessel."

  Then Atherton launched into a description of how he had striven to finda girl who had the strong qualities his family germ plasm seemed tohave lost, mainly, I gathered, resistance to a taint much like manicdepressive insanity. And as he talked, it was borne in on me that,after all, contrary to my first prejudice, there was nothing veryromantic indeed about disregarding the plain teachings of science onthe subject of marriage and one's children.

  In his search for a bride, Dr. Crafts, who had founded a sort ofEugenics Bureau, had come to advise him. Others may have looked uptheir brides in Bradstreet's, or at least the Social Register. Athertonhad gone higher, had been overjoyed to find that a girl he had met inthe West, Eugenia Gilman, measured up to what his friend told him werethe latest teachings of science. He had been overjoyed because, longbefore Crafts had told him, he had found out that he loved her deeply.

  "And now," he went on, half choking with emotion, "she is apparentlysuffering from just the same sort of depression as I myself mightsuffer from if the recessive trait became active."

  "What do you mean, for instance?" asked Craig.

  "Well, for one thing, she has the delusion that my relatives arepersecuting her."

  "Persecuting her?" repeated Craig, stifling the remark that that wasnot in itself a new thing in this or any other family. "How?"

  "Oh, making her feel that, after all, it is Atherton family rather thanGilman health that counts--little remarks that when our baby is born,they hope it will resemble Quincy rather than Eugenia, and all thatsort of thing, only worse and more cutting, until the thing has begunto prey on her mind."

  "I see," remarked Kennedy thoughtfully. "But don't you think this is acase for a--a doctor, rather than a detective?"

  Atherton glanced up quickly. "Kennedy," he answered slowly, "wheremillions of dollars are involved, no one can guess to what lengths thehuman mind will go--no one, except you."

  "Then you have suspicions of something worse?"

  "Y-yes--but nothing definite. Now, take this case. If I should diechildless, after my wife, the Atherton estate would descend to mynearest relative, Burroughs Atherton, a cousin."

  "Unless you willed it to--"

  "I have already drawn a will," he interrupted, "and in case I surviveEugenia and die childless, the money goes to the founding of a largerEugenics Bureau, to prevent in the future, as much as possible,tragedies such as this of which I find myself a part. If the case isreversed, Eugenia will get her third and the remainder will go to theBureau or the Foundation, as I call the new venture. But," and hereyoung Atherton leaned forward and fixed his large eyes keenly on us,"Burroughs might break the will. He might show that I was of unsoundmind, or that Eugenia was, too."

  "Are there no other relatives?"

  "Burroughs is the nearest," he replied, then added frankly, "I have asecond cousin, a young lady named Edith Atherton, with whom bothBurroughs and I used to be very friendly."

  It was evident from the way he spoke that he had thought a great dealabout Edith Atherton, and still thought well of her.

  "Your wife thinks it is Burroughs who is persecuting her?" askedKennedy.

  Atherton shrugged his shoulders.

  "Does she get along badly with Edith? She knows her I presume?"

  "Of course. The fact is that since the death of her mother, Edith hasbeen living with us. She is a splendid girl, and all alone in the worldnow, and I had hopes that in New York she might meet some one and marrywell."

  Kennedy was looking squarely at Atherton, wondering whether he mightask a question without seeming impertinent. Atherton caught the look,read it, and answered quite frankly, "To tell the truth, I suppose Imight have married Edith, before I met Eugenia, if Professor Crafts hadnot dissuaded me. But it wouldn't have been real love--nor wise. Youknow," he went on more frankly, now that the first hesitation was overand he realized that if he were to gain anything at all by Kennedy'sservices, there must be the utmost candor between them, "you knowcousins may marry if the stocks are known to be strong. But if there isa defect, it is almost sure to be intensified. And so I--I gave up theidea--never had it, in fact, so strongly as to propose to her. And whenI met Eugenia all the Athertons on the family tree couldn't have buckedup against the combination."

  He was deadly in earnest as he arose from the chair into which he haddropped after I came in.

  "Oh, it's terrible--this haunting fear, this obsession that I have had,that, in spite of all I have tried to do, some one, somehow, wi
lldefeat me. Then comes the situation, just at a time when Eugenia and Ifeel that we have won against Fate, and she in particular needs all theconsideration and care in the world--and--and I am defeated."

  Atherton was again pacing the laboratory.

  "I have my car waiting outside," he pleaded. "I wish you would go withme to see Eugenia--now."

  It was impossible to resist him. Kennedy rose and I followed, notwithout a trace of misgiving.

  The Atherton mansion was one of the old houses of the city, a somberstone dwelling with a garden about it on a downtown square, on whichbusiness was already encroaching. We were admitted by a servant whoseemed to walk over the polished floors with stealthy step as if therewas something sacred about even the Atherton silence. As we waited in ahigh-ceilinged drawing-room with exquisite old tapestries on the walls,I could not help feeling myself the influence of wealth and birth thatseemed to cry out from every object of art in the house.

  On the longer wall of the room, I saw a group of paintings. One, Inoted especially, must have been Atherton's ancestor, the founder ofthe line. There was the same nose in Atherton, for instance, a strikinginstance of heredity. I studied the face carefully. There was everyelement of strength in it, and I thought instinctively that, whatevermight have been the effects of in-breeding and bad alliances, theremust still be some of that strength left in the present descendant ofthe house of Atherton. The more I thought about the house, theportrait, the whole case, the more unable was I to get out of my head afeeling that though I had not been in such a position before, I had atleast read or heard something of which it vaguely reminded me.

  Eugenia Atherton was reclining listlessly in her room in a deep leathereasy chair, when Atherton took us up at last. She did not rise to greetus, but I noted that she was attired in what Kennedy once called, as westrolled up the Avenue, "the expensive sloppiness of the presentstyles." In her case the looseness with which her clothes hung wasexaggerated by the lack of energy with which she wore them.

  She had been a beautiful girl, I knew. In fact, one could see that shemust have been. Now, however, she showed marks of change. Her eyes werelarge, and protruding, not with the fire of passion which is oftenassociated with large eyes, but dully, set in a puffy face, a trifleflorid. Her hands seemed, when she moved them, to shake with aninvoluntary tremor, and in spite of the fact that one almost could feelthat her heart and lungs were speeding with energy, she had lost weightand no longer had the full, rounded figure of health. Her manner showedsevere mental disturbance, indifference, depression, a distressingdeterioration. All her attractive Western breeziness was gone. One feltthe tragedy of it only too keenly.

  "I have asked Professor Kennedy, a specialist, to call, my dear," saidAtherton gently, without mentioning what the specialty was.

  "Another one?" she queried languorously.

  There was a colorless indifference in the tone which was almost tragic.She said the words slowly and deliberately, as though even her mindworked that way.

  From the first, I saw that Kennedy had been observing Eugenia Athertonkeenly. And in the role of specialist in nervous diseases he wasenabled to do what otherwise would have been difficult to accomplish.

  Gradually, from observing her mental condition of indifference whichmade conversation extremely difficult as well as profitless, he beganto consider her physical condition. I knew him well enough to gatherfrom his manner alone as he went on that what had seemed at the startto be merely a curious case, because it concerned the Athertons, waslooming up in his mind as unusual in itself, and was interesting himbecause it baffled him.

  Craig had just discovered that her pulse was abnormally high, and thatconsequently she had a high temperature, and was sweating profusely.

  "Would you mind turning your head, Mrs. Atherton?" he asked.

  She turned slowly, half way, her eyes fixed vacantly on the floor untilwe could see the once striking profile.

  "No, all the way around, if you please," added Kennedy.

  She offered no objection, not the slightest resistance. As she turnedher head as far as she could, Kennedy quickly placed his forefinger andthumb gently on her throat, the once beautiful throat, now with skinharsh and rough. Softly he moved his fingers just a fraction of an inchover the so-called "Adam's apple" and around it for a little distance.

  "Thank you," he said. "Now around to the other side."

  He made no other remark as he repeated the process, but I fancied Icould tell that he had had an instant suspicion of something the momenthe touched her throat.

  He rose abstractedly, bowed, and we started to leave the room,uncertain whether she knew or cared. Quincy had fixed his eyes silentlyon Craig, as if imploring him to speak, but I knew how unlikely thatwas until he had confirmed his suspicion to the last slightest detail.

  We were passing through a dressing room in the suite when we met a tallyoung woman, whose face I instantly recognized, not because I had everseen it before, but because she had the Atherton nose so prominentlydeveloped.

  "My cousin, Edith," introduced Quincy.

  We bowed and stood for a moment chatting. There seemed to be no reasonwhy we should leave the suite, since Mrs. Atherton paid so littleattention to us even when we had been in the same room. Yet a slightmovement in her room told me that in spite of her lethargy she seemedto know that we were there and to recognize who had joined us.

  Edith Atherton was a noticeable woman, a woman of temperament, notbeautiful exactly, but with a stateliness about her, an aloofness. Themore I studied her face, with its thin sensitive lips and commanding,almost imperious eyes, the more there seemed to be something peculiarabout her. She was dressed very simply in black, but it was thesimplicity that costs. One thing was quite evident--her pride in thefamily of Atherton.

  And as we talked, it seemed to be that she, much more than Eugenia inher former blooming health, was a part of the somber house. There cameover me again the impression I had received before that I had read orheard something like this case before.

  She did not linger long, but continued her stately way into the roomwhere Eugenia sat. And at once it flashed over me what my impression,indefinable, half formed, was. I could not help thinking, as I saw herpass, of the lady Madeline in "The Fall of the House of Usher."