THE CURSE OF EVE

By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Author of “Round the Red Lamp” and “The Tragedy of Korosko”


Robert Johnson was an essentially commonplace man, with no feature
to distinguish him from a million others. He was pale of face,
ordinary in looks, neutral in opinions, thirty years of age, and a
married man. By trade he was a gentleman’s outfitter in the New
North Road, and the competition of business squeezed out of him the
little character that was left. In his hope of conciliating
customers, he had become cringing and pliable, until working ever in
the same routine from day to day, he seemed to have sunk into a
soulless machine rather than a man. No great question had ever
stirred him. At the end of this snug century, self-contained in his
own narrow circle, it seemed impossible that any of the mighty,
primitive passions of mankind could ever reach him. Yet birth, and
lust, and illness, and death are changeless things, and when one of
these harsh facts springs out upon a man at some sudden turn of the
path of life, it dashes off for the moment his mask of civilization
and gives a glimpse of the stranger and stronger face below.

Johnson’s wife was a quiet little woman, with brown hair and gentle
ways. His affection for her was the one positive trait in his
character. Together they would lay out the shop window every Monday
morning, the spotless shirts in their green cardboard boxes below,
the neckties above hung in rows over the brass rails, the cheap
studs glistening from the white cards at either side, while in the
background were the rows of cloth caps and the bank of boxes in
which the more valuable hats were screened from the sunlight. She
kept the books and sent out the bills. No one but she knew the joys
and sorrows which crept into his small life. She had shared his
exultations when the gentleman who was going to India had bought ten
dozen shirts and an incredible number of collars, and she had been
as stricken as he when, after the goods had gone, the bill was
returned from the hotel address with the information that no such
person had lodged there. For five years they had worked, building up
the business, thrown together all the more closely because their
marriage had been a childless one. Now, however, there were signs
that a change was at hand, and that speedily. She was unable to come
downstairs, and her mother, Mrs. Peyton, came over from Camberwell
to nurse her and to welcome her grandchild.

Little qualms of anxiety came over Johnson as his wife’s time
approached. However, after all, it was a natural process. Other
men’s wives went through it unharmed, and why should not his? He was
himself one of a family of fourteen, and yet his mother was alive
and hearty. It was quite the exception for anything to go wrong. And
yet in spite of his reasonings the remembrance of his wife’s
condition was always like a somber background to all his other
thoughts.

Doctor Miles of Bridport Place, the best man in the neighborhood,
was retained five months in advance, and, as time stole on, many
little packages of absurdly small white garments with frill work and
ribbons began to arrive among the big consignments of male
necessities. And then one evening, as Johnson was ticketing the
scarfs in the shop, he heard a bustle upstairs, and Mrs. Peyton came
running down to say that Lucy was bad and that she thought the
doctor ought to be there without delay.

It was not Robert Johnson’s nature to hurry. He was prim and staid
and liked to do things in an orderly fashion. It was a quarter of a
mile from the corner of the New North Road where his shop stood to
the doctor’s house in Bridport Place. There were no cabs in sight so
he set off upon foot, leaving the lad to mind the shop. At Bridport
Place he was told that the doctor had just gone to Harman Street to
attend a man in a fit. Johnson started off for Harman Street, losing
a little of his primness as he became more anxious. Two full cabs
but no empty ones passed him on the way. At Harman Street he learned
that the doctor had gone on to a case of measles; fortunately he had
left the address—69 Dunstan Road, at the other side of the Regent’s
Canal. Robert’s primness had vanished now as he thought of the women
waiting at home, and he began to run as hard as he could down the
Kingsland Road. Some way along he sprang into a cab which stood by
the curb and drove to Dunstan Road. The doctor had just left, and
Robert Johnson felt inclined to sit down upon the steps in despair.

Fortunately he had not sent the cab away, and he was soon back at
Bridport Place. Doctor Miles had not returned yet, but they were
expecting him every instant. Johnson waited, drumming his fingers on
his knees, in a high, dim-lit room, the air of which was charged
with a faint, sickly smell of ether. The furniture was massive, and
the books in the shelves were somber, and a squat, black clock
ticked mournfully on the mantelpiece. It told him that it was
half-past seven, and that he had been gone an hour and a quarter.
Whatever would the women think of him! Every time that a distant
door slammed he sprang from his chair in a quiver of eagerness. His
ears strained to catch the deep notes of the doctor’s voice. And
then, suddenly, with a gush of joy he heard a quick step outside,
and the sharp click of the key in the lock. In an instant he was out
in the hall, before the doctor’s foot was over the threshold.

“If you please, doctor, I’ve come for you,” he cried; “the wife was
taken bad at six o’clock.”

He hardly knew what he expected the doctor to do. Something very
energetic, certainly—to seize some drugs, perhaps, and rush
excitedly with him through the gaslit streets. Instead of that
Doctor Miles threw his umbrella into the rack, jerked off his hat
with a somewhat peevish gesture, and pushed Johnson back into the
room.

“Let’s see! You _did_ engage me, didn’t you?” he asked in no very
cordial voice.

“Oh, yes, doctor, last November. Johnson the outfitter, you know, in
the New North Road.”

“Yes, yes. It’s a bit overdue,” said the doctor, glancing at a list
of names in a note book with a very shiny cover. “Well, how is she?”

“I don’t——”

“Ah, of course, it’s your first. You’ll know more about it next
time.”

“Mrs. Peyton said it was time you were there, sir.”

“My dear sir, there can be no very pressing hurry in a first case.
We shall have an all-night affair, I fancy. You can’t get an engine
to go without coals, Mr. Johnson, and I have had nothing but a light
lunch.”

“We could have something cooked for you—something hot and a cup of
tea.”

“Thank you, but I fancy my dinner is actually on the table. I can do
no good in the earlier stages. Go home and say that you have seen me
and that I am coming, and I will be round immediately afterwards.”

A sort of horror filled Robert Johnson as he gazed at this man who
could think about his dinner at such a moment. He had not
imagination enough to realize that the experience which seemed so
appallingly important to him, was the merest everyday matter of
business to the medical nun who could not have lived for a year had
he not, amid the rush of work, remembered what was due to his own
health. To Johnson he seemed little better than a monster. His
thoughts were bitter as he sped back to his shop.

“You’ve taken your time,” said his mother-in-law reproachfully,
looking down the stairs as he entered.

“I couldn’t help it!” he gasped. “Is it over?”

“Over! She’s got to be worse, poor dear, before she can be better.
Where’s Doctor Miles?”

“He’s coming after he’s had dinner.”

The old woman was about to make some reply, when, from the
half-opened door behind, a high, whinnying voice cried out for her.
She ran back and closed the door, while Johnson, sick at heart,
turned into the shop. There he sent the lad home and busied himself
frantically in putting up shutters and turning out boxes. When all
was closed and finished he seated himself in the parlor behind the
shop. But he could not sit still. He rose incessantly to walk a few
paces and then fell back into a chair once more. Suddenly the
clatter of china fell upon his ear, and he saw the maid pass the
door with a cup on a tray and a smoking teapot.

“Who is that for, Jane?” he asked.

“For the mistress, Mr. Johnson. She says she would fancy it.”

There was immeasurable consolation to him in that homely cup of tea.
It wasn’t so very bad after all if his wife could think of such
things. So lighthearted was he that he asked for a cup also. He had
just finished it when the doctor arrived, with a small black leather
bag in his hand.

“Well, how is she?” he asked genially.

“Oh, she’s very much better,” said Johnson, with enthusiasm.

“Dear me, that’s bad!” said the doctor. “Perhaps it will do if I
look in on my morning round?”

“No, no,” cried Johnson, clutching at his thick frieze overcoat. “We
are so glad that you have come. And, doctor, please come down soon
and let me know what you think about it.”

The doctor passed upstairs, his firm, heavy steps resounding through
the house. Johnson could hear his boots creaking as he walked about
the floor above him, and the sound was a consolation to him. It was
crisp and decided, the tread of a man who had plenty of
self-confidence. Presently, still straining his ears to catch what
was going on, he heard the scraping of a chair as it was drawn along
the floor, and a moment later he heard the door fly open and some
one come rushing downstairs. Johnson sprang up with his hair
bristling, thinking that some dreadful thing had occurred, but it
was only his mother-in-law, incoherent with excitement and searching
for scissors and some tape. She vanished again and Jane passed up
the stairs with a pile of newly aired linen. Then, after an interval
of silence, Johnson heard the heavy, creaking tread and the doctor
came down into the parlor.

“That’s better,” said he, pausing with his hand upon the door. “You
look pale, Mr. Johnson.”

“Oh, no, sir, not at all,” he answered deprecatingly, mopping his
brow with his handkerchief.

“There is no immediate cause for alarm,” said Doctor Miles. “The
case is not all that we could wish it. Still we will hope for the
best.”

“Is there danger, sir?” gasped Johnson.

“Well, there is always danger, of course. It is not altogether a
favorable case, but still it might be much worse. I have given her a
draught. I saw as I passed that they have been doing a little
building opposite to you. It’s an improving quarter. The rents go
higher and higher. You have a lease of your own little place, eh?”

“Yes, sir, yes!” cried Johnson, whose ears were straining for every
sound from above, and who felt none the less that it was very
soothing that the doctor should be able to chat so easily at such a
time. “That’s to say, no, sir, I am a yearly tenant.”

“Ah, I should get a lease if I were you. There’s Marshall, the
watchmaker, down the street. I attended his wife twice and saw him
through the typhoid when they took up the drains in Prince Street. I
assure you his landlord sprung his rent nearly forty a year and he
had to pay or clear out.”

“Did his wife get through it, doctor?”

“Oh, yes, she did very well. Hullo! Hullo!”

He slanted his ear to the ceiling with a questioning face, and then
darted swiftly from the room.

It was March and the evenings were chill, so Jane had lit the fire,
but the wind drove the smoke downwards and the air was full of its
acrid taint. Johnson felt chilled to the bone, though rather by his
apprehensions than by the weather. He crouched over the fire with
his thin, white hands held out to the blaze. At ten o’clock Jane
brought in the joint of cold meat and laid his place for supper, but
he could not bring himself to touch it. He drank a glass of the
beer, however, and felt the better for it. The tension of his nerves
seemed to have reacted upon his hearing, and he was able to follow
the most trivial things in the room above. Once, when the beer was
still heartening him, he nerved himself to creep on tiptoe up the
stair and to listen to what was going on. The bedroom door was half
an inch open, and through the slit he could catch a glimpse of the
clean-shaven face of the doctor, looking wearier and more anxious
than before. Then he rushed downstairs like a lunatic, and running
to the door he tried to distract his thoughts by watching what was
going on in the street. The shops were all shut, and some rollicking
boon companions came shouting along from the public house. He stayed
at the door until the stragglers had thinned down, and then came
back to his seat by the fire. In his dim brain he was asking himself
questions which had never intruded themselves before. Where was the
justice of it? What had his sweet, innocent little wife done that
she should be used so? Why was nature so cruel? He was frightened at
his own thoughts, and yet wondered that they had never occurred to
him before.

As the early morning drew in, Johnson, sick at heart and shivering
in every limb, sat with his great coat huddled round him, staring at
the gray ashes and waiting hopelessly for some relief. His face was
white and clammy, and his nerves had been numbed into a
half-conscious state by the long monotony of misery. But suddenly
all his feelings leaped into keen life again as he heard the bedroom
door open and the doctor’s steps upon the stair. Robert Johnson was
precise and unemotional in everyday life, but he almost shrieked now
as he rushed forward to know if it were over.

One glance at the stern, drawn face which met him showed that it was
no pleasant news which had sent the doctor downstairs. His
appearance had altered as much as Johnson’s during the last few
hours. His hair was on end, his face flushed, his forehead dotted
with beads of perspiration. There was a peculiar fierceness in his
eye, and about the lines of his mouth, a fighting look as befitted a
man who for hours on end had been striving with the hungriest of
foes for the most precious of prizes. But there was a sadness, too,
as though his grim opponent had been overmastering him. He sat down
and leaned his head upon his hand like a man who is fagged out.

“I thought it my duty to see you, Mr. Johnson, and to tell you that
it is a very nasty case. Your wife’s heart is not strong, and she
has some symptoms which I do not like. What I wanted to say is that
if you would like to have a second opinion I shall be very glad to
meet any one whom you might suggest.”

Johnson was so dazed by his want of sleep and the evil news that he
could hardly grasp the doctor’s meaning. The other, seeing him
hesitate, thought that he was considering the expense.

“Smith or Hawley would come for two guineas,” said he. “But I think
Pritchard of the City Road is the best man.”

“Oh, yes, bring the best man,” cried Johnson.

“Pritchard would want three guineas. He is a senior man, you see.”

“I’d give him all I have if he would pull her through. Shall I run
for him?”

“Yes. Go to my house first and ask for the green baize bag. The
assistant will give it to you. Tell him I want the A. C. E. mixture.
Her heart is too weak for chloroform. Then go for Pritchard and
bring him back with you.”

It was heavenly for Johnson to have something to do and to feel that
he was of some use to his wife. He ran swiftly to Bridport Place,
his footfalls clattering through the silent streets and the big,
dark policemen turning their yellow funnels of light on him as he
passed. Two tugs at the night bell brought down a sleepy, half-clad
assistant, who handed him a stoppered glass bottle and a cloth hag
which contained something which clinked when you moved it. Johnson
thrust the bottle into his pocket, seized the green bag, and
pressing his hat firmly down ran as hard as he could set foot to
ground until he was in the City Road and saw the name of Pritchard
engraved in white upon a red ground. He bounded in triumph up the
three steps which led to the door, and as he did so there was a
crash behind him. His precious bottle was in fragments upon the
pavement.

For a moment he felt as if it were his wife’s body that was lying
there. But the run had freshened his wits and he saw that the
mischief might be repaired. He pulled vigorously at the night bell.

“Well, what’s the matter?” asked a gruff voice at his elbow. He
started back and looked up at the windows, but there was no sign of
life. He was approaching the bell again with the intention of
pulling it, when a perfect roar burst from the wall.

“I can’t stand shivering here all night,” cried the voice. “Say who
you are and what you want or I shut the tube.”

Then for the first time Johnson saw that the end of a speaking tube
hung out of the wall just above the bell. He shouted up it:

“I want you to come with me to meet Doctor Miles at a confinement at
once.”

“How far?” shrieked the irascible voice.

“The New North Road, Hoxton.”

“My consultation fee is three guineas, payable at the time.”

“All right,” shouted Johnson. “You are to bring a bottle of A. C. E.
mixture with you.”

“All right! Wait a bit!”

Five minutes later an elderly, hard-faced man, with grizzled hair,
flung open the door. As he emerged a voice from somewhere in the
shadows cried:

“Mind you take your cravat, John,” and he impatiently growled
something over his shoulder in reply.

The consultant was a man who had been hardened by a life of
ceaseless labor, and who had been driven, as so many others have
been, by the needs of his own increasing family to set the
commercial before the philanthropic side of his profession. Yet
beneath his rough crust he was a man with a kindly heart.

“We don’t want to break a record,” said he, pulling up and panting
after attempting to keep up with Johnson for five minutes. “I would
go quicker if I could, my dear sir, and I quite sympathize with your
anxiety, but really I can’t manage it.”

So Johnson, on fire with impatience, had to slow down until they
reached the New North Road, when he ran ahead and had the door open
for the doctor when he came. He heard the two meet outside the
bedroom, and caught scraps of their conversation. “Sorry to knock
you up—nasty case—decent people.” Then it sank into a mumble and
the door closed behind them.

Johnson sat up in his chair now, listening keenly, for he knew that
a crisis must be at hand. He heard the two doctors moving about, and
was able to distinguish the step of Pritchard, which had a drag in
it, from the clean, crisp sound of the other’s footfall. There was
silence for a few minutes and then a curious, drunken, mumbling,
sing-song voice came quavering up, very unlike anything which he had
heard hitherto. At the same time a sweetish, insidious scent,
imperceptible perhaps to any nerves less strained than his, crept
down the stairs and penetrated into the room. The voice dwindled
into a mere drone and finally sank away into silence, and Johnson
gave a long sigh of relief, for he knew that the drug had done its
work and that, come what might, there should be no more pain for the
sufferer.

But soon the silence became even more trying to him than the cries
had been. He had no clew now as to what was going on, and his mind
swarmed with horrible possibilities. He rose and went to the bottom
of the stairs again. He heard the clink of metal against metal, and
the subdued murmur of the doctors’ voices. Then he heard Mrs. Peyton
say something, in a tone as of fear or expostulation, and again the
doctors murmured together. For twenty minutes he stood there leaning
against the wall, listening to the occasional rumbles of talk
without being able to catch a word of it. And then of a sudden there
rose out of the silence the strangest little piping cry, and Mrs.
Peyton screamed out in her delight and the man ran into the parlor
and flung himself down upon the horsehair sofa, drumming his heels
on it in his ecstasy.

But often the great cat Fate lets us go only to clutch us again in a
fiercer grip. As minute after minute passed and still no sound came
from above save those thin, glutinous cries, Johnson cooled from his
frenzy of joy, and lay breathless with his ears straining. They were
moving slowly about. They were talking in subdued tones. Still
minute after minute passed, and no word from the voice for which he
listened. His nerves were dulled by his night of trouble, and he
waited in limp wretchedness upon his sofa. There he still sat when
the doctors came down to him—a bedraggled, miserable figure with
his face grimy and his hair unkempt from his long vigil. He rose as
they entered, bracing himself against the mantelpiece.

“Is she dead?” he asked.

“Doing well,” answered the doctor.

And at the words that little conventional spirit which had never
known until that night the capacity for fierce agony which lay
within it, learned for the second time that there were springs of
joy also which it had never tapped before. His impulse was to fall
upon his knees, but he was shy before the doctors.

“Can I go up?”

“In a few minutes.”

“I’m sure, doctor, I’m very—I’m very——” He grew inarticulate.

“Here are your three guineas, Doctor Pritchard. I wish they were
three hundred.”

“So do I,” said the senior man, and they laughed as they shook
hands.

Johnson opened the shop door for them and heard their talk as they
stood for an instant outside.

“Looked nasty at one time.”

“Very glad to have your help.”

“Delighted, I’m sure. Won’t you step round and have a cup of
coffee?”

“No, thanks. I’m expecting another case.”

The firm step and the dragging one passed away to the right and the
left. Johnson turned from the door still with that turmoil of joy in
his heart. He seemed to be making a new start in life. He felt that
he was a stronger and a deeper man. Perhaps all this suffering had
an object, then. It might prove to be a blessing both to his wife
and to him. The very thought was one which he would have been
incapable of conceiving twelve hours before. He was full of new
emotions. If there had been a harrowing, there had been a planting,
too.

“Can I come up?” he cried, and then, without waiting for an answer,
he took the steps three at a time.

Mrs. Peyton was standing by a soapy bath with a bundle in her hands.
From under the curve of a brown shawl there looked out at him the
strangest little red face with crumpled features, moist loose lips,
and eyelids which quivered like a rabbit’s nostrils. The weak neck
had let the head topple over, and it rested upon the shoulder.

“Kiss it, Robert!” cried the grandmother. “Kiss your son!”

But he felt a resentment to the little, red, blinking creature. He
could not forgive it yet for that long night of misery. He caught
sight of a white face in the bed and he ran toward it with such love
and pity as his speech could find no words for.

“Thank God it is over! Lucy, dear, it was dreadful!”

“But I’m so happy now. I never was so happy in my life.”

Her eyes were fixed upon the brown bundle.

“You mustn’t talk,” said Mrs. Peyton.

“But don’t leave me,” whispered his wife.

So he sat in silence with his hand in hers. The lamp was burning dim
and the first cold light of dawn was breaking through the window.
The night had been long and dark but the day was the sweeter and the
purer in consequence. London was waking up. The roar began to rise
from the street. Lives had come and lives had gone, but the great
machine was still working out its dim and tragic destiny.


[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the May 1926 issue of
_Ainslee’s_ magazine.]