"A whole year?"
"Yes, Eugene."
"I have nothing more to say, Mrs. Dale," he said, turning to her mother solemnly, a sombre, gloomy light in his eye, his heart hardening towards Suzanne for the moment. To think she should treat him so--throw him down, as he phrased it. Well, such was life. "You win," he added. "It has been a terrible experience for me. A terrible pa.s.sion. I love this girl. I love her with my whole heart. Sometimes I have vaguely suspected that she might not know."
He turned to Suzanne, and for the first time he thought that he did not see there that true understanding which he had fancied had been there all the time. Could fate have been lying to him also in this? Was he mistaken in this, and had he been following a phantom lure of beauty? Was Suzanne but another trap to drag him down to his old nothingness? G.o.d! The prediction of the Astrologer of a second period of defeat after seven or eight years came back.
"Oh, Suzanne!" he said, simply and unconsciously dramatic. "Do you really love me?"
"Yes, Eugene," she replied.
"Really?"
"Yes."
He held out his arms and she came, but for the life of him he could not dispel this terrible doubt. It took the joy out of his kiss--as if he had been dreaming a dream of something perfect in his arms and had awaked to find it nothing--as if life had sent him a Judas in the shape of a girl to betray him.
"Do let us end this, Mr. Witla," said Mrs. Dale coldly, "there is nothing to be gained by delaying. Let us end it for a year, and then talk."
"Oh, Suzanne," he continued, as mournful as a pa.s.sing bell, "come to the door with me."
"No, the servants are there," put in Mrs. Dale. "Please make your farewells here."
"Mama," said Suzanne angrily and defiantly, moved by the pity of it, "I won"t have you talk this way. Leave the room, or I shall go to the door with him and further. Leave us, please."
Mrs. Dale went out.
"Oh, Flower Face," said Eugene pathetically, "I can"t believe it. I can"t. I can"t! This has been managed wrong. I should have taken you long ago. So it is to end this way. A year, a whole year, and how much longer?"
"Only a year," she insisted. "Only a year, believe me, can"t you? I won"t change, I won"t!"
He shook his head, and Suzanne as before took his face in her hands. She kissed his cheeks, his lips, his hair.
"Believe me, Eugene. I seem cold. You don"t know what I have gone through. It is nothing but trouble everywhere. Let us wait a year. I promise you I will come to you. I swear. One year. Can"t we wait one year?"
"A year," he said. "A year. I can"t believe it. Where will we all be in a year? Oh, Flower Face, Myrtle Bloom, Divine Fire. I can"t stand this. I can"t. It"s too much. I"m the one who is paying now. Yes, I pay."
He took her face and looked at it, all its soft, enticing features, her eyes, her lips, her cheeks, her hair.
"I thought, I thought," he murmured.
Suzanne only stroked the back of his head with her hands.
"Well, if I must, I must," he said.
He turned away, turned back to embrace her, turned again and then, without looking back, walked out into the hall. Mrs. Dale was there waiting.
"Good night, Mrs. Dale," he said gloomily.
"Good night, Mr. Witla," she replied frigidly, but with a sense of something tragic in her victory at that.
He took his hat and walked out.
Outside the bright October stars were in evidence by millions. The Bay and Harbor of New York were as wonderfully lit as on that night when Suzanne came to him after the evening at Fort Wadsworth on her own porch. He recalled the spring odours, the wonderful feel of youth and love--the hope that was springing then. Now, it was five or six months later, and all that romance was gone. Suzanne, sweet voice, accomplished shape, light whisper, delicate touch. Gone. All gone-- "Faded the flower and all its budded charms, Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes, Faded the shape of beauty from my arms, Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise."
Gone were those bright days in which they had ridden together, dined together, walked in sylvan places beside their car. A little way from here he first played tennis with her. A little way from here he had come so often to meet her clandestinely. Now she was gone--gone.
He had come in his car, but he really did not want it. Life was accursed. His own was a failure. To think that all his fine dreams should crumble this way. Shortly he would have no car, no home on Riverside Drive, no position, no anything.
"G.o.d, I can"t stand this!" he exclaimed, and a little later--"By G.o.d, I can"t! I can"t!"
He dismissed his car at the Battery, telling his chauffeur to take it to the garage, and walking gloomily through all the tall dark streets of lower New York. Here was Broadway where he had often been with Colfax and Winfield. Here was this great world of finance around Wall Street in which he had vaguely hoped to shine. Now these buildings were high and silent--receding from him in a way. Overhead were the clear bright stars, cool and refreshing, but without meaning to him now. How was he to settle it? How adjust it? A year! She would never come back--never! It was all gone. A bright cloud faded. A mirage dissolved into its native nothingness. Position, distinction, love, home--where were they? Yet a little while and all these things would be as though they had never been. h.e.l.l! d.a.m.n! Curse the brooding fates that could thus plot to destroy him!
Back in her room in Daleview Suzanne had locked herself in. She was not without a growing sense of the tragedy of it. She stared at the floor, recalled his face.
"Oh, oh," she said, and for the first time in her life felt as though she could cry from a great heartache--but she could not.
And in Riverside Drive was another woman brooding, lonely, despondently, desperately, over the nature of the tragedy that was upon her. How were things to be adjusted? How was she to be saved? Oh! oh! her life, her child! If Eugene could be made to understand! If he could only be made to see!
CHAPTER XXIII.
During the weeks which followed Colfax"s talk with him, and Suzanne"s decision, which amounted practically to a dismissal, Eugene tried to wind up his affairs at the United Magazines Corporation, as well as straighten out his relationship with Angela. It was no easy task. Colfax helped him considerably by suggesting that he should say he was going abroad for the company, for the time being, and should make it appear imperative that he go at once. Eugene called in his department heads, and told them what Colfax suggested, but added that his own interests elsewhere, of which they knew, or suspected, were now so involved that he might possibly not return, or only for a little while at best. He put forward an air of great sufficiency and self-satisfaction, considering the difficulties he was encountering, and the thing pa.s.sed off as a great wonder, but with no suspicion of any immediate misfortune attaching to him. As a matter of fact, it was a.s.sumed that he was destined to a much higher estate--the control of his private interests.
In his talk with Angela he made it perfectly plain that he was going to leave her. He would not make any pretence about this. She ought to know. He had lost his position; he was not going to Suzanne soon; he wanted her to leave him, or he would leave her. She should go to Wisconsin or Europe or anywhere, for the time being, and leave him to fight this thing out alone. He was not indispensable to her in her condition. There were nurses she could hire--maternity hospitals where she could stay. He would be willing to pay for that. He would never live with her any more, if he could help it--he did not want to. The sight of her in the face of his longing for Suzanne would be a wretched commentary--a reproach and a sore shame. No, he would leave her and perhaps, possibly, sometime when she obtained more real fighting courage, Suzanne might come to him. She ought to. Angela might die. Yes, brutal as it may seem, he thought this. She might die, and then--and then---- No thought of the child that might possibly live, even if she died, held him. He could not understand that, could not grasp it as yet. It was a mere abstraction.
Eugene took a room in an apartment house in Kingsbridge, where he was not known for the time being, and where he was not likely to be seen. Then there was witnessed that dreary spectacle of a man whose life has apparently come down in a heap, whose notions, emotions, tendencies and feelings are confused and disappointed by some untoward result. If Eugene had been ten or fifteen years older, the result might have been suicide. A shade of difference in temperament might have resulted in death, murder, anything. As it was, he sat blankly at times among the ruins of his dreams speculating on what Suzanne was doing, on what Angela was doing, on what people were saying and thinking, on how he could gather up the broken pieces of his life and make anything out of them at all.
The one saving element in it all was his natural desire to work, which, although it did not manifest itself at first, by degrees later on began to come back. He must do something, if it was not anything more than to try to paint again. He could not be running around looking for a position. There was nothing for him in connection with Blue Sea. He had to work to support Angela, of whom he was now free, if he did not want to be mean; and as he viewed it all in the light of what had happened, he realized that he had been bad enough. She had not been temperamentally suited to him, but she had tried to be. Fundamentally it was not her fault. How was he to work and live and be anything at all from now on?
There were long arguments over this situation between him and Angela--pleas, tears, a crashing downward of everything which was worth while in life to Angela, and then, in spite of her pathetic situation, separation. Because it was November and the landlord had heard of Eugene"s financial straits, or rather reverse of fortune, it was possible to relinquish the lease, which had several years to run, and the apartment was given up. Angela, distraught, scarcely knew which way to turn. It was one of those pitiless, scandalous situations in life which sicken us of humanity. She ran helplessly to Eugene"s sister, Myrtle, who first tried to conceal the scandal and tragedy from her husband, but afterward confessed and deliberated as to what should be done. Frank Bangs, who was a practical man, as well as firm believer in Christian Science because of his wife"s to him miraculous healing from a tumor several years before, endeavored to apply his understanding of the divine science--the omnipresence of good to this situation.
"There is no use worrying about it, Myrtle," he said to his wife, who, in spite of her faith, was temporarily shaken and frightened by the calamities which seemingly had overtaken her brother. "It"s another evidence of the workings of mortal mind. It is real enough in its idea of itself, but nothing in G.o.d"s grace. It will come out all right, if we think right. Angela can go to a maternity hospital for the time being, or whenever she"s ready. We may be able to persuade Eugene to do the right thing."
Angela was persuaded to consult a Christian Science pract.i.tioner, and Myrtle went to the woman who had cured her and begged her to use her influence, or rather her knowledge of science to effect a rehabilitation for her brother. She was told that this could not be done without his wish, but that she would pray for him. If he could be persuaded to come of his own accord, seeking spiritual guidance or divine aid, it would be a different matter. In spite of his errors, and to her they seemed palpable and terrible enough at present, her faith would not allow her to reproach him, and besides she loved him. He was a strong man, she said, always strange. He and Angela might not have been well mated. But all could be righted in Science. There was a dreary period of packing and storing for Angela, in which she stood about amid the ruins of her previous comfort and distinction and cried over the things that had seemed so lovely to her. Here were all Eugene"s things, his paintings, his canes, his pipes, his clothes. She cried over a handsome silk dressing gown in which he had been wont to lounge about--it smacked so much, curiously, of older and happier days. There were hard, cold and determined conferences also in which some of Angela"s old fighting, ruling spirit would come back, but not for long. She was beaten now, and she knew it--wrecked. The roar of a cold and threatening sea was in her ears.
It should be said here that at one time Suzanne truly imagined she loved Eugene. It must be remembered, however, that she was moved to affection for him by the wonder of a personality that was hypnotic to her. There was something about the personality of Eugene that was subversive of conventionality. He approached, apparently a lamb of conventional feelings and appearances; whereas, inwardly, he was a ravening wolf of indifference to convention. All the organized modes and methods of life were a joke to him. He saw through to something that was not material life at all, but spiritual, or say immaterial, of which all material things were a shadow. What did the great forces of life care whether this system which was maintained here with so much show and fuss was really maintained at all or not? How could they care? He once stood in a morgue and saw human bodies apparently dissolving into a kind of chemical mush and he had said to himself then how ridiculous it was to a.s.sume that life meant anything much to the forces which were doing these things. Great chemical and physical forces were at work, which permitted, accidentally, perhaps, some little shadow-play, which would soon pa.s.s. But, oh, its presence--how sweet it was!
Naturally Suzanne was cast down for the time being, for she was capable of suffering just as Eugene was. But having given her word to wait, she decided to stick to that, although she had not stuck to her other. She was between nineteen and twenty now--Eugene was nearing forty. Life could still soothe her in spite of herself. In Eugene"s case it could only hurt the more. Mrs. Dale went abroad with Suzanne and the other children, visiting with people who could not possibly have heard, or ever would except in a vague, uncertain way for that matter. If it became evident, as she thought it might, that there was to be a scandal, Mrs. Dale proposed to say that Eugene had attempted to establish an insidious hold on her child in defiance of reason and honor, and that she had promptly broken it up, shielding Suzanne, almost without the latter"s knowledge. It was plausible enough.
What was he to do now? how live? was his constant thought. Go into a wee, small apartment in some back street with Angela, where he and she, if he decided to stay with her, could find a pretty outlook for a little money and live? Never. Admit that he had lost Suzanne for a year at least, if not permanently, in this suddenly brusque way? Impossible. Go and confess that he had made a mistake, which he still did not feel to be true? or that he was sorry and would like to patch things up as before? Never. He was not sorry. He did not propose to live with Angela in the old way any more. He was sick of her, or rather of that atmosphere of repression and convention in which he had spent so many years. He was sick of the idea of having a child thrust on him against his will. He would not do it. She had no business to put herself in this position. He would die first. His insurance was paid up to date. He had carried during the last five years a policy for something over eighteen thousand in her favor, and if he died she would get that. He wished he might. It would be some atonement for the hard knocks which fate had recently given her, but he did not wish to live with her any more. Never, never, child or no child. Go back to the apartment after this night--how could he? If he did, he must pretend that nothing had happened--at least, nothing untoward between him and Suzanne. She might come back. Might! Might! Ah, the mockery of it--to leave him in this way when she really could have come to him--should have--oh, the bitterness of this thrust of fate!
There was a day when the furniture was sent away and Angela went to live with Myrtle for the time being. There was another tearful hour when she left New York to visit her sister Marietta at Racine, where they now were, intending to tell her before she came away, as a profound secret, the terrible tragedy which had overtaken her. Eugene went to the train with her, but with no desire to be there. Angela"s one thought, in all this, was that somehow time would effect a reconciliation. If she could just wait long enough; if she could keep her peace and live and not die, and not give him a divorce, he might eventually recover his sanity and come to think of her as at least worth living with. The child might do it, its coming would be something that would affect him surely. He was bound to see her through it. She told herself she was willing and delighted to go through this ordeal, if only it brought him back to her. This child--what a reception it was to receive, unwanted, dishonored before its arrival, ignored; if by any chance she should die, what would he do about it? Surely he would not desert it. Already in her nervous, melancholy way, she was yearning toward it.
"Tell me," she said to Eugene one day, when they were alternately quarreling and planning, "if the baby comes, and I--and I--die, you won"t absolutely desert it? You"ll take it, won"t you?"
"I"ll take it," he replied. "Don"t worry. I"m not an absolute dog. I didn"t want it. It"s a trick on your part, but I"ll take it. I don"t want you to die. You know that."
Angela thought if she lived that she would be willing to go through a period of poverty and depression with him again, if only she could live to see him sane and moral and even semi-successful. The baby might do it. He had never had a child. And much as he disliked the idea now, still, when it was here, he might change his mind. If only she could get through that ordeal. She was so old--her muscles so set. Meanwhile she consulted a lawyer, a doctor, a fortune teller, an astrologer and the Christian Science pract.i.tioner to whom Myrtle had recommended her. It was an aimless, ridiculous combination, but she was badly torn up, and any port seemed worth while in this storm.
The doctor told her that her muscles were rather set, but with the regimen he prescribed, he was satisfied she would be all right. The astrologer told her that she and Eugene were fated for this storm by the stars--Eugene, particularly, and that he might recover, in which case, he would be successful again in a measure. As for herself, he shook his head. Yes, she would be all right. He was lying. The fortune teller laid the cards to see if Eugene would ever marry Suzanne, and Angela was momentarily gratified to learn that she would never enter his life--this from a semi-cadaverous, but richly dressed and bejeweled lady whose ante-room was filled with women whose troubles were of the heart, the loss of money, the enmity of rivals, or the dangers of childbirth. The Christian Science pract.i.tioner declared all to be divine mind--omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient good, and that evil could not exist in it--only the illusion of it. "It is real enough to those who give it their faith and believe," said the counselor, "but without substance or meaning to those who know themselves to be a perfect, indestructible reflection of an idea in G.o.d. G.o.d is a principle. When the nature of that principle is realized and yourself as a part of it, evil falls away as the troublesome dream that it is. It has no reality." She a.s.sured her that no evil could befall her in the true understanding of Science. G.o.d is love.
The lawyer told her, after listening to a heated story of Eugene"s misconduct, that under the laws of the State of New York, in which these misdeeds were committed, she was not ent.i.tled to anything more than a very small fraction of her husband"s estate, if he had any. Two years was the shortest time in which a divorce could be secured. He would advise her to sue if she could establish a suitable condition of affluence on Eugene"s part, not otherwise. Then he charged her twenty-five dollars for this advice.
CHAPTER XXIV.
To those who have followed a routine or system of living in this world--who have, by slow degrees and persistent effort, built up a series of habits, tastes, refinements, emotions and methods of conduct, and have, in addition, achieved a certain distinction and position, so that they have said to one "Go!" and he goes, and to another "Come!" and he comes, who have enjoyed without stint or reserve, let or hindrance, those joys of perfect freedom of action, and that ease and deliberation which comes with the presence of comparative wealth, social position, and comforts, the narrowing that comes with the lack of means, the fear of public opinion, or the shame of public disclosure, is one of the most pathetic, discouraging and terrifying things that can be imagined. These are the hours that try men"s souls. The man who sits in a seat of the mighty and observes a world that is ruled by a superior power, a superior force of which he by some miraculous generosity of fate has been chosen apparently as a glittering instrument, has no conception of the feelings of the man who, cast out of his dignities and emoluments, sits in the dark places of the world among the ashes of his splendor and meditates upon the glory of his bygone days. There is a pathos here which pa.s.ses the conception of the average man. The prophets of the Old Testament discerned it clearly enough, for they were forever p.r.o.nouncing the fate of those whose follies were in opposition to the course of righteousness and who were made examples of by a beneficent and yet awful power. "Thus saith the Lord: Because thou hast lifted thyself up against the G.o.d of Heaven, and they have brought the vessels of His house before thee, and thou and thy Lords, thy wives and concubines, have drank wine in them, and thou hast praised the G.o.ds of silver and gold, of bra.s.s, iron, wood, and stone ... G.o.d hath numbered thy Kingdom and finished it. Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting; thy Kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and the Persians."
Eugene was in a minor way an exemplification of this seeming course of righteousness. His Kingdom, small as it was, was truly at an end. Our social life is so organized, so closely knit upon a warp of instinct, that we almost always instinctively flee that which does not accord with custom, usage, preconceived notions and tendencies--those various things which we in our littleness of vision conceive to be dominant. Who does not run from the man who may because of his deeds be condemned of that portion of the public which we chance to respect? Walk he ever so proudly, carry himself with what circ.u.mspectness he may, at the first breath of suspicion all are off--friends, relations, business acquaintances, the whole social fabric in toto. "Unclean!" is the cry. "Unclean! Unclean!" And it does not matter how inwardly shabby we may be, what whited sepulchres shining to the sun, we run quickly. It seems a tribute to that providence which shapes our ends, which continues perfect in tendency however vilely we may overlay its brightness with the rust of our mortal corruption, however imitative we may be.
Angela had gone home by now to see her father, who was now quite old and feeble, and also down to Alexandria to see Eugene"s mother, who was also badly deteriorated in health.
"I keep hoping against hope that your att.i.tude will change toward me," wrote Angela. "Let me hear from you if you will from time to time. It can"t make any difference in your course. A word won"t hurt, and I am so lonely. Oh, Eugene, if I could only die--if I only could!" No word as to the true state of things was given at either place. Angela pretended that Eugene had long been sick of his commercial career and was, owing to untoward conditions in the Colfax Company, glad to return to his art for a period. He might come home, but he was very busy. So she lied. But she wrote Myrtle fully of her hopes and, more particularly, her fears.
There were a number of conferences between Eugene and Myrtle, for the latter, because of their early companionship, was very fond of him. His traits, the innocent ones, were as sweet to her as when they were boy and girl together. She sought him out in his lovely room at Kingsbridge.
"Why don"t you come and stay with us, Eugene?" she pleaded. "We have a comfortable apartment. You can have that big room next to ours. It has a nice view. Frank likes you. We have listened to Angela, and I think you are wrong, but you are my brother, and I want you to come. Everything is coming out right. G.o.d will straighten it out. Frank and I are praying for you. There is no evil, you know, according to the way we think. Now"--and she smiled her old-time girlish smile--"don"t stay up here alone. Wouldn"t you rather be with me?"
"Oh, I"d like to be there well enough, Myrtle, but I can"t do it now. I don"t want to. I have to think. I want to be alone. I haven"t settled what I want to do. I think I will try my hand at some pictures. I have a little money and all the time I want now. I see there are some nice houses over there on the hill that might have a room with a north window that would serve as a studio. I want to think this thing out first. I don"t know what I"ll do."
He had now that new pain in his groin, which had come to him first when her mother first carried Suzanne off to Canada and he was afraid that he should never see her any more. It was a real pain, sharp, physical, like a cut with a knife. He wondered how it was that it could be physical and down there. His eyes hurt him and his finger tips. Wasn"t that queer, too?
"Why don"t you go and see a Christian Science pract.i.tioner?" asked Myrtle. "It won"t do you any harm. You don"t need to believe. Let me get you the book and you can read it. See if you don"t think there is something in it. There you go smiling sarcastically, but, Eugene, I can"t tell you what it hasn"t done for us. It"s done everything--that"s just all. I"m a different person from what I was five years ago, and so is Frank. You know how sick I was?"
"Yes, I know."
"Why don"t you go and see Mrs. Johns? You needn"t tell her anything unless you want to. She has performed some perfectly wonderful cures."
"What can Mrs. Johns do for me?" asked Eugene bitterly, his lip set in an ironic mould. "Cure me of gloom? Make my heart cease to ache? What"s the use of talking? I ought to quit the whole thing." He stared at the floor.
"She can"t, but G.o.d can. Oh, Eugene, I know how you feel! Please go. It can"t do you any harm. I"ll bring you the book tomorrow. Will you read it if I bring it to you?"
"No."
"Oh, Eugene, please for my sake."
"What good will it do? I don"t believe in it. I can"t. I"m too intelligent to take any stock in that rot."
"Eugene, how you talk! You"ll change your mind some time. I know how you think. But read it anyhow. Will you please? Promise me you will. I shouldn"t ask. It isn"t the way, but I want you to look into it. Go and see Mrs. Johns."
Eugene refused. Of asinine things this seemed the silliest. Christian Science! Christian rot! He knew what to do. His conscience was dictating that he give up Suzanne and return to Angela in her hour of need--to his coming child, for the time being anyhow, but this awful lure of beauty, of personality, of love--how it tugged at his soul! Oh, those days with Suzanne in the pretty watering and dining places about New York, those hours of bliss when she looked so beautiful! How could he get over that? How give up the memory? She was so sweet. Her beauty so rare. Every thought of her hurt. It hurt so badly that most of the time he dared not think--must, perforce, walk or work or stir restlessly about agonized for fear he should think too much. Oh, life; oh, h.e.l.l!
The intrusion of Christian Science into his purview just now was due, of course, to the belief in and enthusiasm for that religious idea on the part of Myrtle and her husband. As at Lourdes and St. Anne de Beau Pre and other miracle-working centres, where hope and desire and religious enthusiasm for the efficacious intervention of a superior and non-malicious force intervenes, there had occurred in her case an actual cure from a very difficult and complicated physical ailment. She had been suffering from a tumor, nervous insomnia, indigestion, constipation and a host of allied ills, which had apparently refused to yield to ordinary medical treatment. She was in a very bad way mentally and physically at the time the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures," by Mrs. Eddy, was put into her hands. While attempting to read it in a hopeless, helpless spirit, she was instantly cured--that is, the idea that she was well took possession of her, and not long after she really was so. She threw all her medicines, of which there was quite a store, into the garbage pail, eschewed doctors, began to read the Christian Science literature, and attend the Christian Science church nearest her apartment, and was soon involved in its subtle metaphysical interpretation of mortal life. Into this faith, her husband, who loved her very much, had followed, for what was good enough for her and would cure her was good enough for him. He soon seized on its spiritual significance with great vigor and became, if anything, a better exponent and interpreter of the significant thought than was she herself.
Those who know anything of Christian Science know that its main tenet is that G.o.d is a principle, not a personality understandable or conceivable from the mortal or sensory side of life (which latter is an illusion), and that man (spiritually speaking) in His image and likeness. Man is not G.o.d or any part of Him. He is an idea in G.o.d, and, as such, as perfect and indestructible and undisturbably harmonious as an idea in G.o.d or principle must be. To those not metaphysically inclined, this is usually dark and without significance, but to those spiritually or metaphysically minded it comes as a great light. Matter becomes a built-up set or combination of illusions, which may have evolved or not as one chooses, but which unquestionably have been built up from nothing or an invisible, intangible idea, and have no significance beyond the faith or credence, which those who are at base spiritual give them. Deny them--know them to be what they are--and they are gone.
To Eugene, who at this time was in a great state of mental doldrums--blue, dispirited, disheartened, inclined to see only evil and destructive forces--this might well come with peculiar significance, if it came at all. He was one of those men who from their birth are metaphysically inclined. All his life he had been speculating on the subtleties of mortal existence, reading Spencer, Kant, Spinoza, at odd moments, and particularly such men as Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Lord Avebury, Alfred Russel Wallace, and latterly Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir William Crookes, trying to find out by the inductive, naturalistic method just what life was. He had secured inklings at times, he thought, by reading such things as Emerson"s "Oversoul," "The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius," and Plato. G.o.d was a spirit, he thought, as Christ had said to the woman at the well in Samaria, but whether this spirit concerned itself with mortal affairs, where was so much suffering and contention, was another matter. Personally he had never believed so--or been at all sure. He had always been moved by the Sermon on the Mount; the beauty of Christ"s att.i.tude toward the troubles of the world, the wonder of the faith of the old prophets in insisting that G.o.d is G.o.d, that there are no other G.o.ds before him, and that he would repay iniquity with disfavor. Whether he did or not was an open question with him. This question of sin had always puzzled him--original sin. Were there laws which ante-dated human experience, which were in G.o.d--The Word--before it was made flesh? If so, what were these laws? Did they concern matrimony--some spiritual union which was older than life itself? Did they concern stealing? What was stealing outside of life? Where was it before man began? Or did it only begin with man? Ridiculous! It must relate to something in chemistry and physics, which had worked out in life. A sociologist--a great professor in one of the colleges had once told him that he did not believe in success or failure, sin, or a sense of self-righteousness except as they were related to built-up instincts in the race--instincts related solely to the self-preservation and the evolution of the race. Beyond that was nothing. Spiritual morality? Bah! He knew nothing about it.
Such rank agnosticism could not but have had its weight with Eugene. He was a doubter ever. All life, as I have said before, went to pieces under his scalpel, and he could not put it together again logically, once he had it cut up. People talked about the sanct.i.ty of marriage, but, heavens, marriage was an evolution! He knew that. Someone had written a two-volume treatise on it--"The History of Human Marriage," or something like that and in it animals were shown to have mated only for so long as it took to rear the young, to get them to the point at which they could take care of themselves. And wasn"t this really what was at the basis of modern marriage? He had read in this history, if he recalled aright, that the only reason marriage had come to be looked upon as sacred, and for life, was the length of time it took to rear the human young. It took so long that the parents were old, safely so, before the children were launched into the world. Then why separate?
But it was the duty of everybody to raise children.
Ah! there had been the trouble. He had been bothered by that. The home centered around that. Children! Race reproduction! Pulling this wagon of evolution! Was every man who did not inevitably d.a.m.ned? Was the race spirit against him? Look at the men and women who didn"t--who couldn"t. Thousands and thousands. And those who did always thought those who didn"t were wrong. The whole American spirit he had always felt to be intensely set in this direction--the idea of having children and rearing them, a conservative work-a-day spirit. Look at his father. And yet other men were so shrewd that they preyed on this spirit, moving factories to where this race spirit was the most active, so that they could hire the children cheaply, and nothing happened to them, or did something happen?
However, Myrtle continued to plead with him to look into this new interpretation of the Scriptures, claiming that it was true, that it would bring him into an understanding of spirit which would drive away all these mortal ills, that it was above all mortal conception--spiritual over all, and so he thought about that. She told him that if it was right that he should cease to live with Angela, it would come to pa.s.s, and that if it was not, it would not; but anyhow and in any event in this truth there would be peace and happiness to him. He should do what was right ("seek ye first the Kingdom of G.o.d"), and then all these things would be added unto him.
And it seemed terribly silly at first to Eugene for him to be listening at all to any such talk, but later it was not so much so. There were long arguments and appeals, breakfast and dinner, or Sunday dinners at Myrtle"s apartment, arguments with Bangs and Myrtle concerning every phase of the Science teaching, some visits to the Wednesday experience and testimony meetings of their church, at which Eugene heard statements concerning marvelous cures which he could scarcely believe, and so on. So long as the testimonies confined themselves to complaints which might be due to nervous imagination, he was satisfied that their cures were possibly due to religious enthusiasm, which dispelled their belief in something which they did not have, but when they were cured of cancer, consumption, locomotor-ataxia, goitres, shortened limbs, hernia--he did not wish to say they were liars, they seemed too sincere to do that, but he fancied they were simply mistaken. How could they, or this belief, or whatever it was, cure cancer? Good Lord! He went on disbelieving in this way, and refusing also to read the book until one Wednesday evening when he happened to be at the Fourth Church of Christ Scientist in New York that a man stood up beside him in his own pew and said: "I wish to testify to the love and mercy of G.o.d in my case, for I was hopelessly afflicted not so very long ago and one of the vilest men I think it is possible to be. I was raised in a family where the Bible was read night and morning--my father was a hidebound Presbyterian--and I was so sickened by the manner in which it was forced down my throat and the inconsistencies which I thought I saw existing between Christian principle and practice, even in my own home, that I said to myself I would conform as long as I was in my father"s house and eating his bread, but when I got out I would do as I pleased. I was in my father"s house after that a number of years, until I was seventeen, and then I went to a large city, Cincinnati, but the moment I was away and free I threw aside all my so-called religious training and set out to do what I thought was the most pleasant and gratifying thing for me to do. I wanted to drink, and I did, though I was really never a very successful drinker." Eugene smiled. "I wanted to gamble, and I did, but I was never a very clever gambler. Still I did gamble a bit. My great weakness was women, and here I hope none will be offended, I know they will not be, for there may be others who need my testimony badly. I pursued women as I would any other lure. They were really all that I desired--their bodies. My l.u.s.t was terrible. It was such a dominant thought with me that I could not look at any good-looking woman except, as the Bible says, to l.u.s.t after her. I was vile. I became diseased. I was carried into the First Church of Christ Scientist in Chicago, after I had spent all my money and five years of my time on physicians and specialists, suffering from locomotor ataxia, dropsy and kidney disease. I had previously been healed of some other things by ordinary medicine.
"If there is anyone within the sound of my voice who is afflicted as I was, I want him to listen to me.
"I want to say to you tonight that I am a well man--not well physically only, but well mentally, and, what is better yet, in so far as I can see the truth, spiritually. I was healed after six months" treatment by a Christian Science pract.i.tioner in Chicago, who took my case on my appealing to her, and I stand before you absolutely sound and whole. G.o.d is good."
He sat down.
While he had been talking Eugene had been studying him closely, observing every line of his features. He was tall, lean, sandy-haired and sandy-bearded. He was not bad-looking, with long straight nose, clear blue eyes, a light pinkish color to his complexion, and a sense of vigor and health about him. The thing that Eugene noted most was that he was calm, cool, serene, vital. He said exactly what he wanted to say, and he said it vigorously. His voice was clear and with good carrying power. His clothes were shapely, new, well made. He was no beggar or tramp, but a man of some profession--an engineer, very likely. Eugene wished that he might talk to him, and yet he felt ashamed. Somehow this man"s case paralleled his own; not exactly, but closely. He personally was never diseased, but how often he had looked after a perfectly charming woman to l.u.s.t after her! Was the thing that this man was saying really true? Could he be lying? How ridiculous! Could he be mistaken? This man? Impossible! He was too strong, too keen, too sincere, too earnest, to be either of these things. Still--But this testimony might have been given for his benefit, some strange helpful power--that kindly fate that had always pursued him might be trying to reach him here. Could it be? He felt a little strange about it, as he had when he saw the black-bearded man entering the train that took him to Three Rivers, the time he went at the call of Suzanne, as he did when horseshoes were laid before him by supernatural forces to warn him of coming prosperity. He went home thinking, and that night he seriously tried to read "Science and Health" for the first time.
CHAPTER XXV.
Those who have ever tried to read that very peculiar and, to many, very significant doc.u.ment know what an apparent jumble of contradictions and metaphysical balderdash it appears to be. The statement concerning the rapid multiplication and increased violence of diseases since the flood, which appears in the introduction is enough to shock any believer in definite, material, established natural science, and when Eugene came upon this in the outset, it irritated him, of course, greatly. Why should anybody make such a silly statement as this? Everybody knew that there had never been a flood. Why quote a myth as a fact? It irritated and from a critical point of view amused him. Then he came upon what he deemed to be a jumble of confusion in regard to matter and spirit. The author talked of the evidences of the five physical senses as being worthless, and yet was constantly referring to and using similes based upon those evidences to ill.u.s.trate her spiritual meanings. He threw the book down a number of times, for the Biblical references irritated him. He did not believe in the Bible. The very word Christianity was a sickening jest, as sickening as it had been to the man in the church. To say that the miracles of Christ could be repeated today could not be serious. Still the man had testified. Wasn"t that so? A certain vein of sincerity running through it all--that profound evidence of faith and sympathy which are the characteristics of all sincere reformers--appealed to him. Some little thoughts here and there--a profound acceptance of the spiritual understanding of Jesus, which he himself accepted, stayed with him. One sentence or paragraph somehow stuck in his mind, because he himself was of a metaphysical turn---- "Become conscious for a single moment that life and intelligence are purely spiritual, neither in nor of matter, and the body will then utter no complaints. If suffering from a belief in sickness, you will find yourself suddenly well. Sorrow is turned into joy when the body is controlled by spiritual life and love."
"G.o.d is a spirit," he recalled Jesus as saying. "They that worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth."
"You will find yourself suddenly well," thought Eugene. "Sorrow is turned into joy."
"Sorrow. What kind of sorrow? Love sorrow? This probably meant the end of earthly love; that that too was mortal."