Bella Donna Part 3

"You must know that."

"Yes."

"I didn't really mind them--not enormously. Even when I was what I suppose nice people called 'ruined'--after my divorce--I was quite able to enjoy life and its pleasures, eating and drinking, travelling, yachting, riding, motoring, theatre-going, gambling, and all that sort of thing. People who are being universally condemned, or pitied, are often having a quite splendid time, you know."

"Just as people who are universally envied are often miserable."

"Exactly. But of late I have begun to--well, to feel different."

"In what way exactly?"

"To feel that my health is no longer perfect enough to defend me against--I might call it ennui."

"Yes?"

"Or I might call it depression, melancholy, in fact. Now I don't want--I simply will not be the victim of depression, as so many women are. Do you realise how frightfully women--many women--suffer secretly from depression when they--when they begin to find out that they are not going to remain eternally young?"

"I realize it, certainly."

"I will not be the victim of that depression, because it ruins one's appearance and destroys one's power. I am thirty-eight."

Her large blue eyes met the Doctor's eyes steadily.

"Yes?"

"In England nowadays that isn't considered anything. In England, if one has perfect health, one may pa.s.s for a charming and attractive woman till one is at least fifty, or even more. But to seem young when one is getting on, one must feel young. Now, I no longer feel young. I am positive feeling young is a question of physical health. I believe almost everything one feels is a question of physical health. Mystics, people who believe in metempsychosis, in the progress upward and immortality of the soul, idealists--they would cry out against me as a rank materialist. But you are a doctor, and know the empire of the body.

Am I not right? Isn't almost everything one feels an emanation from one's molecules, or whatever they are called? Isn't it an echo of the chorus of one's atoms?"

"No doubt the state of the body affects the state of the mind."

"How cautious you are!"

A rather contemptuous smile flickered over her too red lips.

"And really you must be in absolute antagonism with the priests, the Christian Scientists, with all the cranks and the self-deceivers who put soul above matter, who pretend that soul is independent of matter. Why, only the other day I was reading about the psychophysical investigations with the pneumograph and the galvanometer, and I'm certain that--"

Suddenly she checked herself. "But that's beside the question. I've told you what I mean, what I think, that health triumphs over nearly everything."

"You seem to be very convinced, a very sincere materialist."

"And you?"

"Despite the discoveries of science, I think there are still depths of mystery in man."

"Woman included?"

"Oh, dear, yes! But to return to your condition."

"Ah!"

She glanced at a watch on her wrist.

"Your day of work, ends--?"

"At six, as a rule."

"I mustn't keep you. The truth is this. I am losing my zest for life, and because I am losing my zest, I am losing my power over life. I am beginning to feel weary, melancholy, sometimes apprehensive."

"Of what?"

"Middle age, I suppose, and the ending of all things."

"And you want me to prescribe against melancholy?"

"Why not? What is a doctor for? I tell you I am certain these feelings in me come from a bodily condition."

"You think it quite impossible that they may proceed from a condition of the soul?"

"Quite. I believe it all ends here on the day one dies. I feel as certain of that as of my being a woman. And this being my conviction, I think it of paramount importance to have a good time while I am here."

"Naturally."

"Now, a woman's good time depends on a woman's power over others, and that power depends on her thorough-going belief in herself. So long as she is perfectly well, she feels young, and so long as she feels young, she can give the impression that she is young--with the slightest a.s.sistance from art. And so long as she can give that impression--of course I am speaking of a woman who is what is called 'attractive'--it is all right with her. She will believe in herself, and she will have a good time. Now, Doctor Isaacson--remember that I consider all confidences made to a physician of your eminence, all that I tell you to-day, as inviolably secret--"

"Of course," he said.

"Lately my belief in myself has been--well, shaken. I attribute this to some failure in my health. So I have come to you. Try to find out if anything in my bodily condition is wrong."

"Very well. But you must allow me to examine you, and I must put to you a number of purely medical questions which you must answer truthfully."

_"En avant, monsieur!"_

She put her parasol down on the floor beside her.

"I don't believe in subterfuge--with a doctor," she said.

III

Mrs. Chepstow came out of the house in Cleveland Square as the clocks were striking seven, stepped into a taximeter cab, and was hurried off into the busy whirl of St. James's Street, while Doctor Meyer Isaacson went upstairs to his bedroom to rest and dress for dinner. His clothes were already laid out, and he sent his valet away. As soon as the man was gone, the Doctor took off his coat and waistcoat, his collar and tie, sat down in an arm-chair by the open window, leaned his head against a cus.h.i.+on, shut his eyes, and deliberately relaxed all his muscles. Every day, sometimes at one time, sometimes at another, he did this for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour; and in these moments, as he relaxed his muscles, he also relaxed his mind, banis.h.i.+ng thoughts by an effort of the will. So often had he done this that generally he did it without difficulty; and though he never fell asleep in daylight, he came out of this short rest-cure refreshed as after two hours of slumber.

But to-day, though he could command his body, his mind was wilful. He could not clear it of the restless thoughts. Indeed, it seemed to him that he became all mind as he sat there, motionless, looking almost like a dead man, with his stretched-out legs, his hanging arms, his dropped jaw. His last patient was fighting against his desire for complete repose, was defying his will and conquering it.

After his examination of Mrs. Chepstow, his series of questions, he had said to her, "There is nothing the matter with you." A very ordinary phrase, but even as he spoke it, something within him cried to him, "You liar!" This woman suffered from no bodily disease. But to say to her, "There is nothing the matter with you," was, nevertheless, to tell her a lie. And he had added the qualifying statement, "that a doctor can do anything for." He could see her face before him now as it had looked for a moment after he had spoken.

Her exquisite hair was dyed a curious colour. Naturally a bright brown, it had been changed by art to a lighter, less warm hue, that was neither flaxen nor golden, but that held a strange pallor, distinctive, though scarcely beautiful. It had the merit of making her eyes look very vivid between the painted shadows and the painted brows, and this fact had been no doubt realized by the artist responsible for it. Apparently Mrs.