The Toll of Mammon

Summary

In a chiaroscuro of gas-lamp and velvet, young Dr. John Wright—scalpel-bright, idealism still un-dulled—steps onto the social chessboard of a city that trades souls by carat weight. His wife, a porcelain figurine raised under gilded cloches, winces at the smell of middling soap; she craves the staccato sparkle of diamonds to out-dazzle whispers of downward mobility. One invitation card, scalloped and arrogant, becomes the apple of discord: she begs, he borrows, the ballroom swallows a necklace whole. A promissory note—ink still wet with panic—anchors him to Mammon for five thousand shimmering reasons. Fame arrives like a midnight telegram: a surgical coup that paints his name across every tongue. Four jackals in silk cravats proffer fifty grand for the sanctity of his signature on their bottled lie—an “Alligator Serum” that promises to cauterize the white plague. He balks; they conjure the note, brandish foreclosure, caress his wife’s itching ear with promises of restored grandeur. The pen descends, the sanatorium rises, and the crocodile-god of Profit opens its steel jaw. While Wright pores over mortality ledgers that read like war poetry, his own daughter inhales the bacillus; while he denounces the serum, they brandish pistols and shackles. Escape, reunion, a chokehold on the chief fraud—each heartbeat is a cathedral bell tolling calamity. The child is dosed with death; warrants bloom like nightshade; a police bullet kisses gasoline—an apotheosis of fire and splinters. Thirty penal years calcify around the doctor’s wrists; his wife, now seamstress to ghosts, stitches shrouds for their consumptive darling. Pardon arrives only when his lungs are frescoed with lesions. Together, skeletal and chastened, they limp toward the Adirondack crucible of frost-pure air, where love—stripped of every carat—learns to breathe anew.

Synopsis

Dr. John Wright is a young, rising physician. His wife, who was raised in luxury, rebels at their present poverty. Having received an invitation to a great social event, she pleads with her husband to devise some means for obtaining finery, so as to be able to accept the invitation. He borrows two sets of jewels, one of which she loses at the ball. Both are panic stricken. He gives his note for $5,000 to cover the loss. Later he makes a great surgical discovery and becomes famous. Four crooked promoters seek his endorsement to lend legitimacy to their fake tuberculosis cure and promise him $50,000. He refuses. Later the conspirators secure the promissory note and threaten foreclosure. This, and his wife's entreaties to accept the money, influence him to do so. The promoters build a sanatorium and use their dangerous "Alligator Serum." Dr. Wright's little daughter contracts tuberculosis while her father is away at the sanatorium looking over the records. The number of deaths here astound him. Realizing the "Cure" to be a fake, he demands the elimination of his name. They refuse and a struggle ensues. The doctor is wounded and they, fearing exposure, imprison him in the sanatorium. Meanwhile the chief promoter makes advances to the shallow wife and claims the doctor has deserted her, but she repulses him and rushes into another room into the arms of her husband, who has escaped. After hearing her story, the doctor throttles the promoter and ejects him from their home. He then finds his child has been given the fatal serum. Dr. Wright hears that a warrant is out for his arrest, on account of his connection with the sanatorium. Grieving over his threatened arrest, the possible death of his only child and his future ruin, he seizes his revolver, contemplating suicide. The three promoters rush in to buy his silence, but all are filled with fear as the police approach. The doctor, followed by the fear-crazed promoters, rushes out and jumps into a launch. They are pursued by another boat containing the police, who open fire. One of the police bullets strikes the gasoline on board the doctor's boat, which explodes, blowing boat and occupants high in the air. Dr. Wright, the survivor, is only slightly injured, and being caught, he is sentenced to "Thirty Years at Hard Labor," for manslaughter. Broken and dejected from the fate which has followed her foolish vanity and her insistence upon her husband accepting the $50,000, and remorse over her fast-failing child, the doctor's wife sits and watches her baby die of tuberculosis. She earns her living by sewing, and meets him after some years of privation at the prison gate, when he has been pardoned after contracting the dread disease. She accompanies him to the famous Adirondack Sanatorium, where he is cured within one year amidst characteristic scenes in and about the sanatorium. The two, now thoroughly restored to health and sanity through their terrible experiences, find much to live for in their mutual, understanding love, though without riches.