He read on, discovering that Scientists believed in the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, which struck him as silly; also that they believed in the ultimate abolition of marriage as representing a mortal illusion of self-creation and perpetuation, and of course the having of children through the agency of the s.e.xes, also the dematerialization of the body--its chemicalization into its native spirituality, wherein there can be neither sin, sickness, disease, decay nor death, were a part of their belief or understanding. It seemed to him to be a wild claim, and yet at the time, because of his natural metaphysical turn, it accorded with his sense of the mystery of life.
It should be remembered as a factor in this reading that Eugene was particularly fitted by temperament--introspective, imaginative, psychical--and by a momentarily despairing att.i.tude, in which any straw was worth grasping at which promised relief from sorrow, despair and defeat, to make a study of this apparently radical theory of human existence. He had heard a great deal of Christian Science, seeing its churches built, its adherents multiplying, particularly in New York, and enthusiastically claiming freedom from every human ill. Idle, without entertainment or diversion and intensely introspective, it was natural that these curious statements should arrest him.
He was not unaware, also, from past reading and scientific speculation, that Carlyle had once said that "matter itself--the outer world of matter, was either nothing, or else a product due to man"s mind" (Carlyle"s Journal, from Froude"s Life of Carlyle), and that Kant had held the whole universe to be something in the eye or mind--neither more nor less than a thought. Marcus Aurelius, he recalled, had said somewhere in his meditations that the soul of the universe was kind and merciful; that it had no evil in it, and was not harmed by evil. This latter thought stuck in his mind as peculiar because it was so diametrically opposed to his own feelings that the universe, the spirit of it that is, was subtle, cruel, crafty, and malicious. He wondered how a man who could come to be Emperor of Rome could have thought otherwise. Christ"s Sermon on the Mount had always appealed to him as the lovely speculations of an idealist who had no real knowledge of life. Yet he had always wondered why "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal" had thrilled him as something so beautiful that it must be true "For where your treasure is there will your heart be also." Keats had said "beauty is truth--truth beauty," and still another "truth is what is."
"And what is?" he had asked himself in answer to that.
"Beauty," was his reply to himself, for life at bottom, in spite of all its teeming terrors, was beautiful.
Only those of a metaphysical or natural religious turn of mind would care to follow the slow process of attempted alteration, which took place during the series of months which followed Angela"s departure for Racine, her return to New York at Myrtle"s solicitation, the time she spent in the maternity hospital, whither she was escorted on her arrival by Eugene and after. These are the deeps of being which only the more able intellectually essay, but Eugene wandered in them far and wide. There were long talks with Myrtle and Bangs--arguments upon all phases of mortal thought, real and unreal, with which Angela"s situation had nothing to do. Eugene frankly confessed that he did not love her--that he did not want to live with her. He insisted that he could scarcely live without Suzanne. There was the taking up and reading or re-reading of odd philosophic and religious volumes, for he had nothing else to do. He did not care at first to go and sit with Angela, sorry as he was for her. He read or re-read Kent"s "History of the Hebrews"; Weiniger"s "s.e.x and Character"; Carl Snyder"s "The World Machine"; Muzzey"s "Spiritual Heroes"; Johnston"s translation of "Bhagavad Ghita"; Emerson"s essay on the Oversoul, and Huxley"s "Science and Hebrew Tradition" and "Science and Christian Tradition." He learned from these things some curious facts which relate to religion, which he had either not known before or forgotten, i.e., that the Jews were almost the only race or nation which developed a consecutive line of religious thinkers or prophets; that their ideal was first and last a single G.o.d or Divinity, tribal at first, but later on universal, whose scope and significance were widened until He embraced the whole universe--was, in fact, the Universe--a governing principle--one G.o.d, however, belief in whom, His power to heal, to build up and overthrow had never been relinquished.
The Old Testament was full of that. Was that. The old prophets, he learned to his astonishment, were little more than whirling dervishes when they are first encountered historically, working themselves up into wild transports and frenzies, lying on the ground and writhing, cutting themselves as the Persian zealots do to this day in their feast of the tenth month and resorting to the most curious devices for nurturing their fanatic spirit, but always setting forth something that was astonishingly spiritual and great. They usually frequented the holy places and were to be distinguished by their wild looks and queer clothing. Isaiah eschewed clothing for three years (Is. 22, 21); Jeremiah appeared in the streets of the capital (according to Muzzey) with a wooden yoke on his neck, saying, "Thus shalt Juda"s neck be bent under bondage to the Babylonian" (Jer. 27; 2 ff); Zedekiah came to King Ahab, wearing horns of iron like a steer, and saying, "Thus shalt thou push the Syrians" (1 Kings 22, 11). The prophet was called mad because he acted like a madman. Elisha dashed in on the gruff captain, Jehu, in his camp and broke a vial of oil on his head, saying, "Thus saith the Lord G.o.d of Israel, I have made thee king over the people of the Lord"; then he opened the door and fled. Somehow, though these things seemed wild, yet they accorded with Eugene"s sense of prophecy. They were not cheap but great--wildly dramatic, like the word of a Lord G.o.d might be. Another thing that fascinated him was to find that the evolutionary hypothesis did not after all shut out a conception of a ruling, ordaining Divinity, as he had supposed, for he came across several things in the papers which, now that he was thinking about this so keenly, held him spellbound. One was quoted from a biological work by a man named George M. Gould, and read: "Life reaches control of physical forces by the cell-mechanism, and, so far as we know, by it solely." From reading Mrs. Eddy and arguing with Bangs, Eugene was not prepared to admit this, but he was fascinated to see how it led ultimately to an acknowledgment of an active Divinity which shapes our ends. "No organic molecule shows any evidence of intellect, design or purpose. It is the product solely of mathematically determinate and invariable physical forces. Life becomes conscious of itself through specialized cellular activity, and human personality, therefore, can only be a unity of greater differentiations of function, a higher and fuller incarnation than the single cell incarnation. Life, or G.o.d, is in the cell.... (And everywhere outside of it, quite as active and more so, perhaps, Eugene reserved mentally.) The cell"s intelligence is His. (From reading Mrs. Eddy, Eugene could not quite agree with this. According to her, it was an illusion.) The human personality is also at last Himself and only Himself.... If you wish to say "Biologos" or G.o.d instead of Life, I heartily agree, and we are face to face with the sublime fact of biology. The cell is G.o.d"s instrument and mediator in materiality; it is the mechanism of incarnation, the word made flesh and dwelling among us."
The other was a quotation in a Sunday newspaper from some man who appeared to be a working physicist of the time--Edgar Lucien Larkin: "With the discovery and recent perfection of the new ultra-violet light microscope and the companion apparatus, the microphotographic camera, with rapidly moving, sensitive films, it seems that the extreme limit of vision of the human eye has been reached. Inorganic and organic particles have been seen, and these so minute that (the smallest) objects visible in the most powerful old-style instruments are as huge chunks in comparison. An active microscopic universe as wonderful as the sidereal universe, the stellar structure, has been revealed. This complexity actually exists; but exploration has scarcely commenced. Within a hundred years, devoted to this research, the micro-universe may be partially understood. Laws of micro-movements may be detected and published in textbooks like those of the gigantic universe suns and their concentric planets and moons. I cannot look into these minute moving and living deeps without instantly believing that they are mental--every motion is controlled by mind. The longer I look at the amazing things, the deeper is this conviction. This micro-universe is rooted and grounded in a mental base. Positively and without hope of overthrow, this a.s.sertion is made--the flying particles know where to go. Coa.r.s.e particles, those visible in old-time microscopes, when suspended in liquids, were observed to be in rapid motion, darting to all geometrical directions with high speed. But the ultra-violet microscope reveals moving trillions of far smaller bodies, and these rush on geometric lines and cutout angles with the most incredible speed, specific for each kind and type."
What were the angles? Eugene asked himself. Who made them? Who or what arranged the geometric lines? The "Divine Mind" of Mrs. Eddy? Had this woman really found the truth? He pondered this, reading on, and then one day in a paper he came upon this reflection in regard to the universe and its government by Alfred Russel Wallace, which interested him as a proof that there might be, as Jesus said and as Mrs. Eddy contended, a Divine Mind or central thought in which there was no evil intent, but only good. The quotation was: "Life is that power which, from air and water and the substances dissolved therein, builds up organized and highly complex structures possessing definite forms and functions; these are presented in a continuous state of decay and repair by internal circulation of fluids and gases; they reproduce their like, go through various phases of youth, maturity and age, die and quickly decompose into their const.i.tuent elements. They thus form continuous series of similar individuals and so long as external conditions render their existence possible seem to possess a potential immortality.
"It is very necessary to presuppose some vast intelligence, some pervading spirit, to explain the guidance of the lower forces in accordance with the preordained system of evolution we see prevailing. Nothing less will do....
"If, however, we go as far as this, we must go further.... We have a perfect right, on logical and scientific grounds, to see in all the infinitely varied products of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, which we alone can make use of, a preparation for ourselves, to a.s.sist in our mental development, and to fit us for a progressively higher state of existence as spiritual beings.
" ... It seems only logical to a.s.sume that the vast, the infinite chasm between ourselves and the Deity, is to some extent occupied by an almost infinite series of grades of beings, each successive grade having higher and higher powers in regard to the origination, the development and the control of the universe.
" ... There may have been a vast system of co-operation of such grades of beings, from a very high grade of power and intelligence down to those unconscious or almost unconscious cell souls posited by Haeckel....
"I can imagine the ... Infinite Being, foreseeing and determining the broad outlines of a universe....
"He might, for instance, impress a sufficient number of his highest angels to create by their will power the primal universe of ether, with all those inherent properties and forces necessary for what was to follow. Using this as a vehicle, the next subordinate a.s.sociation of angels would so act upon the ether as to develop from it, in suitable ma.s.ses and at suitable distances, the various elements of matter, which, under the influence of such laws and forces as gravitation, heat, and electricity, would thenceforth begin to form those vast systems of nebulae and suns which const.i.tute our stellar universe.
"Then we may imagine these hosts of angels, to whom a thousand years are as one day, watching the development of this vast system of suns and planets until some one or more of them combined in itself all those conditions of size, of elementary const.i.tution, of atmosphere, of ma.s.s of water and requisite distance from its source of heat as to insure a stability of const.i.tution and uniformity of temperature for a given minimum of millions of years, or of ages, as would be required for the full development of a life world from amoeba to man, with a surplus of a few hundreds of millions for his adequate development.
"We are led, therefore, to postulate a body of what we may term organizing spirits, who would be charged with the duty of so influencing the myriads of cell souls as to carry out their part of the work with accuracy and certainty....
"At successive stages of the development of the life world, more and perhaps higher intelligences might be required to direct the main lines of variation in definite directions, in accordance with the general design to be worked out, and to guard against a break in the particular line, which alone could lead ultimately to the production of the human form.
"This speculative suggestion, I venture to hope, will appeal to some of my readers as the very best approximation we are now able to formulate as to the deeper, the most fundamental causes of matter and force of life and consciousness, and of man himself, at his best, already a little lower than the angels, and, like them, destined to a permanent progressive existence in a world of spirit."
This very peculiar and apparently progressive statement in regard to the conclusion which naturalistic science had revealed in regard to the universe struck Eugene as pretty fair confirmation of Mrs. Eddy"s contention that all was mind and its infinite variety and that the only difference between her and the British scientific naturalists was that they contended for an ordered hierarchy which could only rule and manifest itself according to its own ordered or self-imposed laws, which they could perceive or detect, whereas, she contended for a governing spirit which was everywhere and would act through ordered laws and powers of its own arrangement. G.o.d was a principle like a rule in mathematics--two times two is four, for instance--and was as manifest daily and hourly and momentarily in a hall bedroom as in the circling motions of suns and systems. G.o.d was a principle. He grasped that now. A principle could be and was of course anywhere and everywhere at one and the same time. One could not imagine a place for instance where two times two would not be four, or where that rule would not be. So, likewise with the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent mind of G.o.d.
CHAPTER XXVI.
The most dangerous thing to possess a man to the extent of dominating him is an idea. It can and does ride him to destruction. Eugene"s idea of the perfection of eighteen was one of the most dangerous things in his nature. In a way, combined with the inability of Angela to command his interest and loyalty, it had been his undoing up to this date. A religious idea followed in a narrow sense would have diverted this other, but it also might have destroyed him, if he had been able to follow it. Fortunately the theory he was now interesting himself in was not a narrow dogmatic one in any sense, but religion in its large aspects, a comprehensive resume and spiritual co-ordination of the metaphysical speculation of the time, which was worthy of anyone"s intelligent inquiry. Christian Science as a cult or religion was shunned by current religions and religionists as something outre, impossible, uncanny--as necromancy, imagination, hypnotism, mesmerism, spiritism--everything, in short, that it was not, and little, if anything, that it really was. Mrs. Eddy had formulated or rather restated a fact that was to be found in the sacred writings of India; in the Hebrew testaments, old and new; in Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, Emerson, and Carlyle. The one variation notable between her and the moderns was that her ruling unity was not malicious, as Eugene and many others fancied, but helpful. Her unity was a unity of love. G.o.d was everything but the father of evil, which according to her was an illusion--neither fact nor substance--sound and fury, signifying nothing.
It must be remembered that during all the time Eugene was doing this painful and religious speculation he was living in the extreme northern portion of the city, working desultorily at some paintings which he thought he might sell, visiting Angela occasionally, safely hidden away in the maternity hospital at One Hundred and Tenth Street, thinking hourly and momentarily of Suzanne, and wondering if, by any chance, he should ever see her any more. His mind had been so inflamed by the beauty and the disposition of this girl that he was really not normal any longer. He needed some shock, some catastrophe greater than any he had previously experienced to bring him to his senses. The loss of his position had done something. The loss of Suzanne had only heightened his affection for her. The condition of Angela had given him pause, for it was an interesting question what would become of her. "If she would only die!" he said to himself, for we have the happy faculty of hating most joyously on this earth the thing we have wronged the most. He could scarcely go and see her, so obsessed was he with the idea that she was a handicap to his career. The idea of her introducing a child into his life only made him savage. Now, if she should die, he would have the child to care for and Suzanne, because of it, might never come to him.
His one idea at this time was not to be observed too much, or rather not at all, for he considered himself to be in great disfavor, and only likely to do himself injury by a public appearance--a fact which was more in his own mind than anywhere else. If he had not believed it, it would not have been true. For this reason he had selected this quiet neighborhood where the line of current city traffic was as nothing, for here he could brood in peace. The family that he lived with knew nothing about him. Winter was setting in. Because of the cold and snow and high winds, he was not likely to see many people hereabouts--particularly those celebrities who had known him in the past. There was a great deal of correspondence that followed him from his old address, for his name had been used on many committees, he was in "Who"s Who," and he had many friends less distinguished than those whose companionship would have required the expenditure of much money who would have been glad to look him up. He ignored all invitations, however; refused to indicate by return mail where he was for the present; walked largely at night; read, painted, or sat and brooded during the day. He was thinking all the time of Suzanne and how disastrously fate had trapped him apparently through her. He was thinking that she might come back, that she ought. Lovely, hurtful pictures came to him of re-encounters with her in which she would rush into his arms, never to part, from him any more. Angela, in her room at the hospital, received little thought from him. She was there. She was receiving expert medical attention. He was paying all the bills. Her serious time had not yet really come. Myrtle was seeing her. He caught glimpses of himself at times as a cruel, hard intellect driving the most serviceable thing his life had known from him with blows, but somehow it seemed justifiable. Angela was not suited to him. Why could she not live away from him? Christian Science set aside marriage entirely as a human illusion, conflicting with the indestructible unity of the individual with G.o.d. Why shouldn"t she let him go?
He wrote poems to Suzanne, and read much poetry that he found in an old trunkful of books in the house where he was living. He would read again and again the sonnet beginning, "When in disgrace with fortune and men"s eyes"--that cry out of a darkness that seemed to be like his own. He bought a book of verse by Yeats, and seemed to hear his own voice saying of Suzanne, "Why should I blame her that she filled my days With misery ...
He was not quite as bad as he was when he had broken down eight years before, but he was very bad. His mind was once more riveted upon the uncertainty of life, its changes, its follies. He was studying those things only which deal with the abstrusities of nature, and this began to breed again a morbid fear of life itself. Myrtle was greatly distressed about him. She worried lest he might lose his mind.
"Why don"t you go to see a pract.i.tioner, Eugene?" she begged of him one day. "You will get help--really you will. You think you won"t, but you will. There is something about them--I don"t know what. They are spiritually at rest. You will feel better. Do go."
"Oh, why do you bother me, Myrtle? Please don"t. I don"t want to go. I think there is something in the idea metaphysically speaking, but why should I go to a pract.i.tioner? G.o.d is as near me as He is anyone, if there is a G.o.d."
Myrtle wrung her hands, and because she felt so badly more than anything else, he finally decided to go. There might be something hypnotic or physically contagious about these people--some old alchemy of the mortal body, which could reach and soothe him. He believed in hypnotism, hypnotic suggestion, etc. He finally called up one pract.i.tioner, an old lady highly recommended by Myrtle and others, who lived farther south on Broadway, somewhere in the neighborhood of Myrtle"s home. Mrs. Althea Johns was her name--a woman who had performed wonderful cures. Why should he, Eugene Witla, he asked himself as he took up the receiver, why should he, Eugene Witla, ex-managing publisher of the United Magazines Corporation, ex-artist (in a way, he felt that he was no longer an artist in the best sense) be going to a woman in Christian Science to be healed of what? Gloom? Yes. Failure? Yes. Heartache? Yes. His evil tendencies in regard to women, such as the stranger who had sat beside him had testified to? Yes. How strange! And yet he was curious. It interested him a little to speculate as to whether this could really be done. Could he be healed of failure? Could this pain of longing be made to cease? Did he want it to cease? No; certainly not! He wanted Suzanne. Myrtle"s idea, he knew, was that somehow this treatment would reunite him and Angela and make him forget Suzanne, but he knew that could not be. He was going, but he was going because he was unhappy and idle and aimless. He was going because he really did not know what else to do.
The apartment of Mrs. Johns--Mrs. Althea Johns--was in an apartment house of conventional design, of which there were in New York hundreds upon hundreds at the time. There was a s.p.a.cious areaway between two wings of cream-colored pressed brick leading back to an entrance way which was protected by a handsome wrought-iron door on either side of which was placed an electric lamp support of handsome design, holding lovely cream-colored globes, shedding a soft l.u.s.tre. Inside was the usual lobby, elevator, uniformed negro elevator man, indifferent and impertinent, and the telephone switchboard. The building was seven storeys high. Eugene went one snowy, bl.u.s.tery January night. The great wet flakes were spinning in huge whirls and the streets were covered with a soft, slushy carpet of snow. He was interested, as usual, in spite of his gloom, in the picture of beauty the world presented--the city wrapped in a handsome mantle of white. Here were cars rumbling, people hunched in great coats facing the driving wind. He liked the snow, the flakes, this wonder of material living. It eased his mind of his misery and made him think of painting again. Mrs. Johns was on the seventh floor. Eugene knocked and was admitted by a maid. He was shown to a waiting room, for he was a little ahead of his time, and there were others--healthy-looking men and women, who did not appear to have an ache or pain--ahead of him. Was not this a sign, he thought as he sat down, that this was something which dealt with imaginary ills? Then why had the man he had heard in the church beside him testified so forcibly and sincerely to his healing? Well, he would wait and see. He did not see what it could do for him now. He had to work. He sat there in one corner, his hands folded and braced under his chin, thinking. The room was not artistic but rather nondescript, the furniture cheap or rather tasteless in design. Didn"t Divine Mind know any better than to present its representatives in such a guise as this? Could a person called to a.s.sist in representing the majesty of G.o.d on earth be left so unintelligent artistically as to live in a house like this? Surely this was a poor manifestation of Divinity, but---- Mrs. Johns came--a short, stout, homely woman, gray, wrinkled, dowdy in her clothing, a small wen on one side of her mouth, a nose slightly too big to be pleasing--all mortal deficiencies as to appearance highly emphasized, and looking like an old print of Mrs. Micawber that he had seen somewhere. She had on a black skirt good as to material, but shapeless, commonplace, and a dark blue-gray waist. Her eye was clear and gray though, he noticed, and she had a pleasing smile.
"This is Mr. Witla, I believe," she said, coming across the room to him, for he had got into a corner near the window, and speaking with an accent which sounded a little Scotch. "I"m so glad to see you. Won"t you come in?" she said, giving him precedence over some others because of his appointment, and re-crossed the room preceding him down the hall to her practice room. She stood to one side to take his hand as he pa.s.sed.
He touched it gingerly.
So this was Mrs. Johns, he thought, as he entered, looking about him. Bangs and Myrtle had insisted that she had performed wonderful cures--or rather that Divine Mind had, through her. Her hands were wrinkled, her face old. Why didn"t she make herself young if she could perform these wonderful cures? Why was this room so mussy? It was actually stuffy with chromos and etchings of the Christ and Bible scenes on the walls, a cheap red carpet or rug on the floor, inartistic leather-covered chairs, a table or desk too full of books, a pale picture of Mrs. Eddy and silly mottoes of which he was sick and tired hung here and there. People were such hacks when it came to the art of living. How could they pretend to a sense of Divinity who knew nothing of life? He was weary and the room here offended him. Mrs. Johns did. Besides, her voice was slightly falsetto. Could she cure cancer? and consumption? and all other horrible human ills, as Myrtle insisted she had? He didn"t believe it.
He sat down wearily and yet contentiously in the chair she pointed out to him and stared at her while she quietly seated herself opposite him looking at him with kindly, smiling eyes.
"And now," she said easily, "what does G.o.d"s child think is the matter with him?"
Eugene stirred irritably.
"G.o.d"s child," he thought; "what cant!" What right had he to claim to be a child of G.o.d? What was the use of beginning that way? It was silly, so asinine. Why not ask plainly what was the matter with him? Still he answered: "Oh, a number of things. So many that I am pretty sure they can never be remedied."
"As bad as that? Surely not. It is good to know, anyhow, that nothing is impossible to G.o.d. We can believe that, anyhow, can"t we?" she replied, smiling. "You believe in G.o.d, or a ruling power, don"t you?"
"I don"t know whether I do or not. In the main, I guess I do. I"m sure I ought to. Yes, I guess I do."
"Is He a malicious G.o.d to you?"
"I have always thought so," he replied, thinking of Angela.
"Mortal mind! Mortal mind!" she a.s.severated to herself. "What delusions will it not harbor!"
And then to him: "One has to be cured almost against one"s will to know that G.o.d is a G.o.d of love. So you believe you are sinful, do you, and that He is malicious? It is not necessary that you should tell me how. We are all alike in the mortal state. I would like to call your attention to Isaiah"s words, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.""
Eugene had not heard this quotation for years. It was only a dim thing in his memory. It flashed out simply now and appealed, as had all these Hebraic bursts of prophetic imagery in the past. Mrs. Johns, for all her wen and her big nose and dowdy clothes, was a little better for having been able to quote this so aptly. It raised her in his estimation. It showed a vigorous mind, at least a tactful mind.
"Can you cure sorrow?" he asked grimly and with a touch of sarcasm in his voice. "Can you cure heartache or fear?"
"I can do nothing of myself," she said, perceiving his mood. "All things are possible to G.o.d, however. If you believe in a Supreme Intelligence, He will cure you. St. Paul says "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." Have you read Mrs. Eddy"s book?"
"Most of it. I"m still reading it."
"Do you understand it?"
"No, not quite. It seems a bundle of contradictions to me."
"To those who are first coming into Science it nearly always seems so. But don"t let that worry you. You would like to be cured of your troubles. St. Paul says, "For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with G.o.d." "The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise--that they are vain." Do not think of me as a woman, or as having had anything to do with this. I would rather have you think of me as St. Paul describes anyone who works for truth--"Now then we are amba.s.sadors for Christ, as though G.o.d did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ"s stead, be ye reconciled to G.o.d.""
"You know your Bible, don"t you?" said Eugene.
"It is the only knowledge I have," she replied.
There followed one of those peculiar religious demonstrations so common in Christian Science--so peculiar to the uninitiated--in which she asked Eugene to fix his mind in meditation on the Lord"s prayer. "Never mind if it seems pointless to you now. You have come here seeking aid. You are G.o.d"s perfect image and likeness. He will not send you away empty-handed. Let me read you first, though, this one psalm, which I think is always so helpful to the beginner." She opened her Bible, which was on the table near her, and began: "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
"I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress; my G.o.d; in him will I trust.
"Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.
"He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and thy buckler.
"Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day. Nor for the pestilence that walketh in the darkness; nor for destruction that wasteth at noonday.
"A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.
"Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.
"Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.
"For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.
"They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.
"Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder, the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under foot.
"Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him. I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.
"He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him and honor him.
"With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation."
During this most exquisite p.r.o.nunciamento of Divine favor Eugene was sitting with his eyes closed, his thoughts wandering over all his recent ills. For the first time in years, he was trying to fix his mind upon an all-wise, omnipresent, omnipotent generosity. It was hard and he could not reconcile the beauty of this expression of Divine favor with the nature of the world as he knew it. What was the use of saying, "They shall bear thee up in their hands lest thou dash thy foot against a stone," when he had seen Angela and himself suffering so much recently? Wasn"t he dwelling in the secret place of the Most High when he was alive? How could one get out of it? Still---- "Because he hath set his love on me--therefore will I deliver him." Was that the answer? Was Angela"s love set on him? Was his own? Might not all their woes have sprung from that?
"He shall call upon me and I shall answer. I will deliver him in trouble. I will deliver him and honor him."
Had he ever really called on Him? Had Angela? Hadn"t they been left in the slough of their own despond? Still Angela was not suited to him. Why did not G.o.d straighten that out? He didn"t want to live with her.
He wandered through this philosophically, critically, until Mrs. Johns stopped. What, he asked himself, if, in spite of all his doubts, this seeming clamor and reality and pain and care were an illusion? Angela was suffering. So were many other people. How could this thing be true? Did not these facts exclude the possibility of illusion? Could they possibly be a part of it?
"Now we are going to try to realize that we are G.o.d"s perfect children," she said, stopping and looking at him. "We think we are so big and strong and real. We are real enough, but only as a thought in G.o.d--that is all. No harm can happen to us there--no evil can come nigh us. For G.o.d is infinite, all power, all life. Truth, Love, over all, and all."
She closed her eyes and began, as she said, to try to realize for him the perfectness of his spirit in G.o.d. Eugene sat there trying to think of the Lord"s prayer, but in reality thinking of the room, the cheap prints, the homely furniture, her ugliness, the curiousness of his being there. He, Eugene Witla, being prayed for! What would Angela think? Why was this woman old, if spirit could do all these other things? Why didn"t she make herself beautiful? What was it she was doing now? Was this hypnotism, mesmerism, she was practicing? He remembered where Mrs. Eddy had especially said that these were not to be practiced--could not be in Science. No, she was no doubt sincere. She looked it--talked it. She believed in this beneficent spirit. Would it aid as the psalm said? Would it heal this ache? Would it make him not want Suzanne ever any more? Perhaps that was evil? Yes, no doubt it was. Still---- Perhaps he had better fix his mind on the Lord"s Prayer. Divinity could aid him if it would. Certainly it could. No doubt of it. There was nothing impossible to this vast force ruling the universe. Look at the telephone, wireless telegraphy. How about the stars and sun? "He shall give his angels charge over thee."
"Now," said Mrs. Johns, after some fifteen minutes of silent meditation had pa.s.sed and she opened her eyes smilingly--"we are going to see whether we are not going to be better. We are going to feel better, because we are going to do better, and because we are going to realize that nothing can hurt an idea in G.o.d. All the rest is illusions. It cannot hold us, for it is not real. Think good--G.o.d--and you are good. Think evil and you are evil, but it has no reality outside your own thought. Remember that." She talked to him as though he was a little child.
He went out into the snowy night where the wind was whirling the snow in picturesque whirls, b.u.t.toning his coat about him. The cars were running up Broadway as usual. Taxicabs were scuttling by. There were people forging their way through the snow, that ever-present company of a great city. There were arc lights burning clearly blue through the flying flakes. He wondered as he walked whether this would do him any good. Mrs. Eddy insisted that all these were unreal, he thought--that mortal mind had evolved something which was not in accord with spirit--mortal mind "a liar and the father of it," he recalled that quotation. Could it be so? Was evil unreal? Was misery only a belief? Could he come out of his sense of fear and shame and once more face the world? He boarded a car to go north. At Kingsbridge he made his way thoughtfully to his room. How could life ever be restored to him as it had been? He was really forty years of age. He sat down in his chair near his lamp and took up his book, "Science and Health," and opened it aimlessly. Then he thought for curiosity"s sake he would see where he had opened it--what the particular page or paragraph his eye fell on had to say to him. He was still intensely superst.i.tious. He looked, and here was this paragraph growing under his eyes: "When mortal man blends his thoughts of existence with the spiritual, and works only as G.o.d works, he will no longer grope in the dark and cling to earth because he has not tasted heaven. Carnal beliefs defraud us. They make man an involuntary hypocrite--producing evil when he would create good, forming deformity when he would outline grace and beauty, injuring those whom he would bless. He becomes a general mis-creator, who believes he is a semi-G.o.d. His touch turns hope to dust, the dust we all have trod. He might say in Bible language, "The good that I would, I do not, but evil, which I would not, I do.""
He closed the book and meditated. He wished he might realize this thing if this were so. Still he did not want to become a religionist--a religious enthusiast. How silly they were. He picked up his daily paper--the Evening Post--and there on an inside page quoted in an obscure corner was a pa.s.sage from a poem by the late Francis Thompson, ent.i.tled "The Hound of Heaven." It began: "I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years ...
The ending moved him strangely: Still with unhurrying chase, And unperturbed face Deliberate speed, majestic instancy Came on the following Feet, And a voice above their beat-- "Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me."
Did this man really believe this? Was it so?
He turned back to his book and read on, and by degrees he came half to believe that sin and evil and sickness might possibly be illusions--that they could be cured by aligning one"s self intellectually and spiritually with this Divine Principle. He wasn"t sure. This terrible sense of wrong. Could he give up Suzanne? Did he want to? No!
He got up and went to the window and looked out. The snow was still blowing.
"Give her up! Give her up!" And Angela in such a precarious condition. What a devil of a hole he was in, anyway! Well, he would go and see her in the morning. He would at least be kind. He would see her through this thing. He lay down and tried to sleep, but somehow sleep never came to him right any more. He was too wearied, too distressed, too wrought up. [S]till he slept a little, and that was all he could hope for in these days.
CHAPTER XXVII.
It was while he was in this state, some two months later, that the great event, so far as Angela was concerned, came about, and in it, of necessity, he was compelled to take part. Angela was in her room, cosily and hygienically furnished, overlooking the cathedral grounds at Morningside Heights, and speculating hourly what her fate was to be. She had never wholly recovered from the severe attack of rheumatism which she had endured the preceding summer and, because of her worries since, in her present condition was pale and weak though she was not ill. The head visiting obstetrical surgeon, Dr. Lambert, a lean, gray man of sixty-five years of age, with grizzled cheeks, whose curly gray hair, wide, humped nose and keen gray eyes told of the energy and insight and ability that had placed him where he was, took a slight pa.s.sing fancy to her, for she seemed to him one of those plain, patient little women whose lives are laid in sacrificial lines. He liked her brisk, practical, cheery disposition in the face of her condition, which was serious, and which was so noticeable to strangers. Angela had naturally a bright, cheery face, when she was not depressed or quarrelsome. It was the outward sign of her ability to say witty and clever things, and she had never lost the desire to have things done efficiently and intelligently about her wherever she was. The nurse, Miss De Sale, a solid, phlegmatic person of thirty-five, admired her s.p.u.n.k and courage and took a great fancy to her also because she was lightsome, buoyant and hopeful in the face of what was really a very serious situation. The general impression of the head operating surgeon, the house surgeon and the nurse was that her heart was weak and that her kidneys might be affected by her condition. Angela had somehow concluded after talks with Myrtle that Christian Science, as demonstrated by its pract.i.tioners, might help her through this crisis, though she had no real faith in it. Eugene would come round, she thought, also, for Myrtle was having him treated absently, and he was trying to read the book, she said. There would be a reconciliation between them when the baby came--because--because---- Well, because children were so winning! Eugene was really not hard-hearted--he was just infatuated. He had been ensnared by a siren. He would get over it.
Miss De Sale let her hair down in braids, Gretchen style, and fastened great pink bows of ribbon in them. As her condition became more involved, only the lightest morning gowns were given her--soft, comfortable things in which she sat about speculating practically about the future. She had changed from a lean shapeliness to a swollen, somewhat uncomely object, but she made the best of a bad situation. Eugene saw her and felt sorry. It was the end of winter now, with snow blowing gaily or fiercely about the windows, and the park grounds opposite were snow-white. She could see the leafless line of sentinel poplars that bordered the upper edges of Morningside. She was calm, patient, hopeful, while the old obstetrician shook his head gravely to the house surgeon.
"We shall have to be very careful. I shall take charge of the actual birth myself. See if you can"t build up her strength. We can only hope that the head is small."
Angela"s littleness and courage appealed to him. For once in a great many cases he really felt sorry.
The house surgeon did as directed. Angela was given specially prepared food and drink. She was fed frequently. She was made to keep perfectly quiet.
"Her heart," the house surgeon reported to his superior, "I don"t like that. It"s weak and irregular. I think there"s a slight lesion."
"We can only hope for the best," said the other solemnly. "We"ll try and do without ether."
Eugene in his peculiar mental state was not capable of realizing the pathos of all this. He was alienated temperamentally and emotionally. Thinking that he cared for his wife dearly, the nurse and the house surgeon were for not warning him. They did not want to frighten him. He asked several times whether he could be present during the delivery, but they stated that it would be dangerous and trying. The nurse asked Angela if she had not better advise him to stay away. Angela did, but Eugene felt that in spite of his alienation, she needed him. Besides, he was curious. He thought Angela would stand it better if he were near, and now that the ordeal was drawing nigh, he was beginning to understand how desperate it might be and to think it was only fair that he should a.s.sist her. Some of the old pathetic charm of her littleness was coming back to him. She might not live. She would have to suffer much. She had meant no real evil to him--only to hold him. Oh, the bitterness and the pathos of this welter of earthly emotions. Why should they be so tangled?
The time drew very near, and Angela was beginning to suffer severe pains. Those wonderful processes of the all-mother, which bind the coming life in a cradle of muscles and ligaments were practically completed and were now relaxing their tendencies in one direction to enforce them in another. Angela suffered at times severely from straining ligaments. Her hands were clenched desperately, her face would become deathly pale. She would cry. Eugene was with her on a number of these occasions and it drove home to his consciousness the subtlety and terror of this great scheme of reproduction, which took all women to the door of the grave, in order that this mortal scheme of things might be continued. He began to think that there might be something in the a.s.sertion of the Christian Science leaders that it was a lie and an illusion, a terrible fitful fever outside the rational consciousness of G.o.d. He went to the library one day and got down a book on obstetrics, which covered the principles and practice of surgical delivery. He saw there scores of pictures drawn very carefully of the child in various positions in the womb--all the strange, peculiar, flower-like positions it could take, folded in upon itself like a little half-formed petal. The pictures were attractive, some of them beautiful, practical as they were. They appealed to his fancy. They showed the coming baby perfect, but so small, its head now in one position, now in another, its little arms twisted about in odd places, but always delightfully, suggestively appealing. From reading here and there in the volume, he learned that the great difficulty was the head--the delivery of that. It appeared that no other difficulty really confronted the obstetrician. How was that to be got out? If the head were large, the mother old, the walls of the peritoneal cavity tight or hard, a natural delivery might be impossible. There were whole chapters on Craniotomy, Cephalotripsy, which in plain English means crushing the head with an instrument....
One chapter was devoted to the Caesarian operation, with a description of its tremendous difficulties and a long disquisition on the ethics of killing the child to save the mother, or the mother to save the child with their relative values to society indicated. Think of it--a surgeon sitting in the seat of judge and executioner at the critical moment! Ah, life with its petty laws did not extend here. Here we came back to the conscience of man which Mrs. Eddy maintained was a reflection of immanent mind. If G.o.d were good, He would speak through that--He was speaking through it. This surgeon referred to that inmost consciousness of supreme moral law, which alone could guide the pract.i.tioner in this dreadful hour.
Then he told of what implements were necessary, how many a.s.sistants (two), how many nurses (four), the kinds of bandages, needles, silk and catgut thread, knives, clamp dilators, rubber gloves. He showed how the cut was to be made--when, where. Eugene closed the book, frightened. He got up and walked out in the air, a desire to hurry up to Angela impelling him. She was weak, he knew that. She had complained of her heart. Her muscles were probably set. Supposing these problems, any one of them, should come in connection with her. He did not wish her to die.