Oddest, she thought, was Bertha’s fixity of diet (again the temperamental quirk) which leaned almost exclusively toward eggs, boiled, and served at the table in their shells. These Bertha ate with bread; and as for liquids, the girl drank nothing at all during meals, but would refresh herself afterward (Madam Tuffman had determined this from observation) with plain water from a tap.
Finally, when not involved with one of her fits of melancholia, Bertha would swing to an extreme of hectic gayety, or would disclose her devotion for Ernest with depths that were embarrassingly uncomfortable both for Ernest and for Madam Tuffman. As for what a baby would do — well, what would it do? Would it bind Ernest to his wife, to his home? To any sort of normal regularity? Or would it gall as a second chain?
Starr did, on this occasion, meet Bertha. She was standing on the porch as he left the house, with her attractive small face very clear in the light of a declining sun. He was shocked at her appearance. It had a subtly unhealthy look which was significant to his practiced eye. Bertha brightened as she saw him.
“It’s good to see you again, Doctor.”
“Thank you. I’ve missed you, too.”
“We’ve been involved. In full swing. I know now what the tail of a comet must feel like.”
“I’m told that a sloop is the very latest.”
“It was — but always, Doctor, something new; now it is dancing. Ernest never danced in Honolulu.”
“What changed his mind?”
“The ties of his youth changed it for him, I suspect. All blondes.”
“All blondes?”
Bertha brightly ran through a brief roster, all of whom Starr knew, and all of whom were definitely blondes. She shook her russet hair and said: “It has made me thoughtful on the subject of peroxide.”
“Too permanent, I’d say. I’d favor a wig. Remember that you’re dealing with a highly changeable substance.”
“Yes, I do remember, Doctor.”
“You’re coming to my office tomorrow?”
He had rarely, he reflected, seen such a swift, evanescent flash of fear.
“Ernest’s mother knows about the baby, Doctor?”
“She suspects. Does Ernest?”
“No. And please — I shall ask his mother to say nothing, and let me ask it of you, Doctor — to say nothing to him.”
“Of course.”
“Thank you, Doctor...”
Starr assured Bertha gravely as to the baby, while he thought: “There is a horror in this that strikes more deeply than I can see. I think she knows. That is the truly damnable part about it — I think she knows.” He felt Madam Tuffman’s lively old eyes turned on him watchfully from her armchair beside a window in the office. They were as deliberate in their fixity as Bertha’s eyes were evasive.
He said to Bertha: “Concerning your diet—”
“Yes, Doctor?”
“I understand you lean somewhat exclusively toward eggs?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
He studied her averted face for a while.
“Served, I believe, in their shells?”
“A habit of childhood, Doctor.”
“You eat just eggs?”
“No — plain bread — no butter, Doctor.”
Starr smiled at Madam Tuffman and said: “You have kept your house so much in period that I suppose even the butter is still molded with wooden presses into individual pats?”
Madam Tuffman’s eyes grew impersonal.
“Rosettes, a clover, and one rather rare one, Doctor, of a little cow.”
Starr turned again to Bertha.
“How long have you been restricting yourself to this diet?”
“I think since I’ve known about the baby.”
Madam Tuffman said sharply: “No, longer — much longer.”
“Perhaps. Yes, Doctor, for a while longer.”
“Hasn’t the monotony of it affected your appetite?”
“I’m never really hungry.”
(Faint fever, lassitude, small appetite, a failure of the general health, a slight wasting of the body — it could be any one of a number of known diseases, any of the impressionable eccentricities precedent on having a child. And still he knew, and she knew — Starr felt it imperative to talk with her alone. It was well within the bounds of reason that his intuition should be entirely wrong, although he did not believe so for a minute. There had been Ernest’s interest in photography — the inclusion of chemistry among his earlier hobbies.)
“I’m going to suggest that you go to the hospital for observation, Mrs. Tuffman.”
“But Doctor — I mean, surely it won’t be for many months?”
“No, but I am dissatisfied with your general condition.”
Bertha looked at Starr suddenly with a strange hostility.
“I think that I prefer not to. You mustn’t think me rude. I think I would prefer to stay at home, Doctor.”
He observed her thoughtfully for quite a while.
“Naturally, the decision rests with you.”
Her hostility faded slowly. Relief took its place. Then fright...
Starr’s chance came later in the afternoon of the same day. The Bucklands were giving a garden party for their dahlias, or rather Nina Buckland was (Jock thought them an overblown bore), and the occasion was one of the town’s inescapable yearly events.
The garden was charming and filled with dahlias and people. Starr found Bertha in a distant corner, sitting alone in a yew niche on a marble bench beneath the perpetual smirk of a cast bronze faun.
He said: “I’m glad I found you.”
For an instant he thought that she was going to leave him; but her smile came shortly, more artificial than he had ever noticed it to be, and she said: “Sit down, Doctor.”
“Thank you. I’ve just left Ernest looking speculatively at the dahlias. Do you suppose they’ll supplant the dancing as his newest life’s work?”
“Possibly. Although I’m afraid they’re not instantaneous enough.”
“Results must spring full-blown?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“You’re twenty years old, Mrs. Tuffman. I’m forty-three. That gives me the edge on you, not only as a physician, for I can exert the paternal touch. I do it rather well.”
“I’m sure you do.”
Starr could feel her hardening against him swiftly, and hostility again setting in beneath her pleasant outer manner.
“There is this about life, Mrs. Tuffman: We so frequently defeat our own ends by the very methods which we use to attain them. You cannot be a constant mirror, and remain yourself. And men tire rapidly of their own reflections.”
“Echoes at last become hollow?”
“Yes. We’re putting it in fancy language, but I know that you know what I mean. I’d like to be frank. I am your physician. I want to help you.”
Bertha’s voice grew older:
“It is true that I have tried to be all things to Ernest, in the way that he is all things to himself. There are some things you cannot cage. Birds and wild beasts, yes, if you wish. Bars will hold them. But not Ernest. He’s the wind. You must ride with the wind, Doctor.” She reached her hand out suddenly, and he was surprised at its strength as she closed it over his. “Ride for as long as, and wherever, it may blow. I’ve no longer any foothold on the ground. From the moment when Ernest asked me to be his wife, I’ve had none. I want none, Doctor. Believe that, please — I want none.”