Elephant Man - Christine Sparks [75]
“Then have my lips the sin that they have took.” She continued the lines of the play.
After a moment’s confusion he managed to go on, “Sin from my lips? Oh, trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again.”
Very slowly she leaned forward so that her face was close to his, aware that he had frozen in startled fear. But she had made up her mind that he should have the only gift it was in her power to give—the knowledge that he was not so different from other men that it was impossible for a woman to kiss him. He would never know what it cost her.
She put all the gentleness and tenderness of her woman’s soul in the effort to lay her lips against the corner of his distorted mouth. When she drew away his eyes were closed, but he opened them immediately and they looked at each other for a long, silent moment.
“Why, Mr. Merrick,” she said in a soft voice so that only he could hear, “you’re not an Elephant Man at all …”
“Oh—no?”
“Oh no, no—you are Romeo.”
His eyes filled with tears. Treves, who had forgotten everything except what was happening in front of him, pulled himself together abruptly, and remembered his patient. The plan had succeeded beyond his hopes, but now he began to fear that Merrick had been subjected to more emotion than he could stand. Belatedly it occurred to him to wonder what the interview had done to Mrs. Kendal.
“Mrs. Kendal has to leave, John. She is due at the theater …”
She rose thankfully and said her good-byes, extending them as much as possible to cover the fact that he could hardly reply.
“I’ll come and see you again, John,” she said from the doorway.
In the corridor she took Treves’ arm, almost collapsing.
“Mrs. Kendal?” he said, alarmed.
“I’m fine, Mr. Treves. Would you mind if I were alone for a minute?”
“Of course. I’ll see to your carriage.”
When he had left her she went to the wall and stood staring at a large portrait of one of the hospital’s founders. She had no interest in the man and his features made no impression on her. But if she stood like this, no one could see the tears that were coursing down her face.
Chapter 14
Prompted by Carr-Gomm, the editor of the Times was doing everything in his power to light the spark of public interest in the Elephant Man, but his efforts produced no more than a thin stream of offerings. Some well wishers, moved to deep compassion, sent repeated offerings, but these, though steady, were usually small in size, indicating that those whose generosity was the truest had the least to give. From wealthy homes the donations were meager. And the next meeting of the Committee was drawing inexorably nearer.
It would never have occurred to Treves or Carr-Gomm to appeal for help to the Ladies’ Gazette, chiefly because they were unaware of its existence. But when, a few days after Mrs. Kendal’s visit, a representative of that little magazine knocked on Treves’ door, the doctor spoke to him courteously enough. He was willing to talk to anyone about Merrick if it would help.
The Ladies’ Gazette was a publication that lived on the doings of famous and glamorous people; society, royalty, the stage—these were the breath of life to its pages. It was often read by the very people it wrote about, but the greater part of its readership lay in those middle-class homes for whom it provided a window onto the glittering world they aspired to, yearned for, and knew in their hearts they could never enter.
Its frivolous pages were scanned in the virtuous home of Mrs. Annabel Jameson, a well-to-do merchant’s wife of unimpeachable respectability and dullness. For a week, until the next issue came out, it would be her bible and