At the end of three weeks, Roger wrote his first real letter. He was
going on to the Pennsylvania coal fields, then to New York, the West
Virginia mining country, the southern cotton mills and home. It would
take him fully a month longer. Anne read it several times, as if
committing the itinerary to memory, gathered no picture or quickening
of interest from it, and slowly tore the pages up. Roger might have
mapped a trip from star to star, so little did it seem to touch her
life. The only realities were this growing antagonism between herself
and Roger, and the helplessness of her father and Rogie. Between these
two points of advancing Death and Life, Anne stood, making mechanical
motions of getting up, going to bed, caring for Rogie, listening to
Hilda's chatter, and filling some of the empty hours for her father.
This was the most difficult of all. No book held him, although he
complained if none were provided for him. His fettered mind exhausted
itself in the effort to assimilate experience beyond his own. He would
put away the travels and biographies and fiction, for which Anne spent
hours searching the library, for the evening paper or the most trivial
bit of gossip. Sometimes this need to fill the emptiness about him with
little concrete facts oppressed Anne until her very jaws ached with the
unuttered words she could not summon, and her brain went dizzily round,
searching in the vacancy, conscious of its own motion.
Bound in a life of routine, James Mitchell complained if his useless
medicine was a moment late, his nourishment delayed. He was jealous of
Hilda's health and upbraided her cheerfulness as indifference; but when
she was over-zealous for his comfort he grew irritable and asked for
Anne.
Anne quieted him. The old friction between them was lost in the
profundity of Anne's indifference to all that happened. It was
cloaked under her gentle touch, her quiet movements, her quickness in
understanding his thickened speech, her anticipation of his needs. He
liked to hold her cool hand after she had straightened his pillows
for the night, or feel its sure grip guiding his dragging feet to
the window to investigate some trivial noise in the street below.
She read to him for hours, never putting the book aside at his first
lurching into sleep, and so drawing him back to realization of her own
preference.
She read on until his gray head dropped to his breast and his hands
relaxed in his lap. Then Anne would lay aside the book and look at
him impersonally; at the thin hair, the clothes spotted with dropped
food, the heavy canes propped against the chair arm. This man was her
father. From this now decaying body, she had drawn life. She had never
loved him, never been near him, and could never be quite separated
from him. From the beginning of Time to the end of Time, the chain
ran, a living link, a dead link, on and on; health no more permanent
than decay, life as accidental and meaningless as death. She would
grow old and rot; Rogie would grow old and rot; and his son's sons
until Time itself dropped in death. Or, somewhere along the line, Time
would snap suddenly, as purposeless in its ceasing as in its beginning.
Her longings for a permanent Beauty, Hilda's unconscious clutching
at happiness, Roger's childish faith in his power to create justice,
Black Tom's ferocious idealism, all meaningless words scratched on the
monument to Death. This overwhelming negation was Reality. Only people
like Charlotte Welles, blind and insensate before their own terror of
extermination, could juggle away this truth.
Charlotte Welles no longer annoyed Anne. Charlotte was no more deluded
than any one else. In the confusion of living, she had darted down a
blind alley, but no more of a blind alley than any other path opened to
the shufflings of humanity. At least this path hurt no one, as Roger
hurt her, as Black Tom hurt Merle, as her father and mother hurt each
other.
Anne had even grown to like Mrs. Welles and look for her coming.
With quiet cheerfulness she often led James Mitchell away from the
realization of his heavy canes and numbed feet back into the only
world he had ever known. Deep within him, the hope lingered that he
would again be able to go to the office, make endless rows of figures
and be commended for his faithfulness: that he would draw his salary,
place his small bets, make his luckless snatches at fortune, become
again "the head of the house." Without deliberately deceiving him, Mrs.
Welles deepened this faith, so that, after a visit from her he was
actually stronger and once managed, unaided except for his canes, to
stumble across the room.
Anne felt her always standing beside the sick man, throwing the thread
of her faith about him, trying to draw him back to health. When she did
not come for a few days, James fretted.
"I really believe you do him good," Anne said to her at the end of an
afternoon in which Charlotte had kept him cheerful for hours.
"Faith will move mountains. You can never tell." It was the first
direct reference she had made to her belief since the night of Anne's
rudeness. But now, the assurance did not anger Anne. She was too weary.
"Faith in what?"
"Faith--in the power of faith. Just believing."
"Believing that you will get what you want just because you want it?"
"Not exactly. Believing in the harmony of Life, knowing that what you
must have, what your soul needs, must come."
"How do you know what your soul needs?"
The other paused, thoughtful. "By listening," she said at last. "By
escaping from the noise of material life. Material life is not Real."
"It's the only reality we have, our brains and bodies and senses to
measure by."
Mrs. Welles shook her head. "No. Our brains and bodies and senses
are not the ultimate reality. It is something else, something almost
impossible to put into words, something you must feel."
"But how can you feel without your body?"
"By leaving your body behind and going into Silence. Then you Know. You
Feel it, you See it, you Touch it."
On the last words, Hilda came in, fresh and gay from a walk with Rogie.
"Touch what?"
"Peace and reality," Anne said with a faint smile.
Hilda looked puzzled.
"We were talking of faith," Charlotte explained, "and the absolute
certainty you get in Silence."
"Oh, yes," Hilda nodded. "Just getting away from a racket does help.
Why, I used to feel sometimes when the children were small, and it
rained so they had to play in the house, that I'd go frantic with them
tearing round getting in my way, when I had a lot to do. I broke down
once and the doctor told me to take things easier, so after that I used
to go into my own room with a novel every day for an hour and lock the
door. It helped a lot."
Anne caught the twinkle in Charlotte's eyes and returned it.
"I'd forgotten all about it," Hilda went on. "But I shouldn't wonder if
that wouldn't be a good thing to keep up. Do you do it?"
"I don't take the novel, but I try to get quiet some part of every day."
"I don't know that I could do it without a book. There doesn't seem to
be anything to think about when you just sit down and try to think."
"Don't try to think. Don't try to do anything. Just relax."
"Good gracious, I'd have to crochet or something. I'd feel wicked
sitting like that wasting the time."
"It's the one thing that isn't wasting time. It's getting at the only
thing in Life worth getting at."
"Is it? Well, I must say if you can keep your house looking the way it
does and find time to sit round doing nothing, nothing at all, I guess
there's something in it. I don't know but what I'll try it sometime."
"Perhaps you'd understand better if you didn't 'try it' alone."
"But I'd feel so silly relaxing with other people looking at me."
"Other people wouldn't be looking at you. They'd be quiet too. There's
a terrific force in many people being quiet together."
"'Many-people-being-quiet-together,'" Anne whispered.
"Well--if I were sure they weren't paying any attention," Hilda spoke
with mounting excitement, as if about to venture an intoxicating drink,
not quite certain of its after-effects.
"You know that any time you care to come with me," Charlotte suggested,
"I shall be glad. Our meetings always close with a few moments of utter
stillness."
"Maybe I will. I'd like to see it."
"Next Sunday we're going to have one of the Boston Board of Lecturers
out. If you like, I'll call up for you. About half past three?"
"That's just the time I never know what to do with myself. I'd like to."
But the following Sunday when Charlotte came, Hilda had not returned
from an outing with Rogie.
"She must have forgotten all about it," Anne explained. "She did say
something about taking Rogie to the Park, but I thought she would be
back in time. She's been talking about Silence all the week."
Mrs. Welles laughed and turned to go. She was a little late already.
"Perhaps the outing will do her just as much good. Besides she can come
some other time. It makes no difference."
In a moment Charlotte would be gone and there would be nothing for Anne
to do but sit as she had sat for the last hour, staring out into the
deserted street, listening to the wind and the heavy breathing of her
father asleep.
"Perhaps you would take me, instead," Anne said in a sudden need to
escape from this stillness that had no force or peace in it. "Papa will
be all right and mamma won't be long now."
"Certainly. Could you be ready in ten minutes? There's sure to be a
crowd and I like to walk. It gets me in the mood more than riding in a
crowded car."
Anne went quickly from the room and was back again in five minutes.
"I'll just leave a note for moms or she'll wonder what's happened."
She scribbled, "Gone with Mrs. Welles," and pinned the paper on the
wall.
They walked quickly in a silence that rested, so that, by the time they
reached the church, Anne no longer felt the need of this escape and
wished she had not come. But as she had herself suggested it, she did
not know how to retreat now and followed Charlotte through the iron
gate and up the wide graveled path, with reluctant curiosity and a hope
that the service would not be long.
The church was a low, gray stone building, covered with ivy, standing
back from the street on a lawn, undisturbed by shrubs or flowers. Its
leaded casement windows and outer door of heavy oak studded with nails,
gave a feeling of age and great strength. Silently swinging doors
led from the wide vestibule into the body of the building, which was
covered with thick soft carpet that deadened all sound. Across the foot
of the platform, stretching the width of the room, great branches of
oak and huckleberry broke the hardness of line and filled the room with
a faint odor of living greenness. Half-way down the aisle, they stopped
and then, with no rustle of disturbance, Anne found herself seated in
the center of the row. Mrs. Welles took a leaflet from the rack before
her and Anne looked about.
She had had no clear idea of what such a gathering would be like, but
now, as she studied the faces of those within her range, she marveled
at their likeness. There were old and young, men and women, but they
all looked to have gone through a process that had dissolved their
personal differences. They all sat quietly, their bodies in repose,
their faces calm. They were neither eager nor indifferent. No doubt
or uncertainty disturbed them. Anne could conceive of no opposition
that would sweep them to anger. No power could force from these
well-dressed, cultured bodies the cry of rage that lashed the audiences
of Black Tom O'Connell.
Here there were no slovenly clothes, no stunted bodies, no stormy,
foreign eyes. They had found their Peace and held it with well-bred
restraint. They were sure, not waiting; positive, not patient. Before
this sureness, Katya's was the certainty of an elemental force striving
through obstacles to prove itself in creation. This surety was the
after-calm, when God, having labored to create a world, stood back
satisfied and said: "It is good." It was restful in a way but had
something of the same supreme aloofness.
The side doors of the platform opened. Two men and a woman, dressed in
white, took the three vacant chairs behind the hedge of green. A hymn
was announced and the audience rose. Verse after verse they sang of
gloating peace and furious good-will. Protected by the music, their
calm at last broke through restraint, and flung itself aloft in an
abandon their composed bodies never would have allowed. Anne felt the
peace about her crack like thin ice and disappear.
When the Reader advanced to the rostrum and the reading of the day's
selections from the Scriptures and from Science and Health began, Anne
held her patience by an effort. Before the colossal discovery of Mary
Baker Eddy, the old Hebrew Prophets were little children searching in
the dark. Again and again, the name of Mary Baker Eddy, uttered in
unctuous pride of possession, struck at Anne's resolve to give tolerant
attention, until she felt her own lips forming the words in the
respectful pause which invariably preceded them. The old woman herself
might have been peeping from a door, counting these ordered references,
tabbing them against a possible omission. But the trained Reader never
forgot, at the appointed places he gave her due, in perfection of
delivery that set him aside from others, made him the special messenger
of the exaggerated optimism of Mary Baker Eddy. When he had finished he
sat down, in quiet withdrawal, and the Boston Lecturer took his place.
With bowed head, the Boston Lecturer stood for a moment, in silence
receiving the silent applause, spirit greeting spirit. He was a
middle-aged man, his slim alertness padded to suave courtesy by
prosperity; not the obtrusive prosperity of Mr. Benjamin Wilson, but an
unobtrusive prosperity, like a bank-book bound in morocco to stimulate
a book of poems. He made sweeping statements of incredible facts, in
a slow careful way that claimed a long process of logical analysis to
which they had never been subjected. He spoke fluently, as if he had
said the same things many times, but inserted unexpected pauses, direct
demands that gave the impression of deep concern for this special
audience; a willingness to give them personally of his great abundance.
At the end of twenty minutes, he, too, sat down. A faint motion marked
the loosened tension of his hearers. The meeting was thrown open
to testimony. Men and women rose to relate, in nauseating detail,
illnesses from which they had been cured by Divine Truth. Tumors,
cancers and wasting weaknesses had been alleviated, instantly in some
cases, by a reading of Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy. The listeners radiated affirmation. If they had
ever possessed the power to doubt, it had long ago been buried under
the weight of Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures, by Our
Revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy.
At last those eager to testify grew fewer. The Reader looked over the
hall to find no one standing. The Boston Lecturer rose again and named
the solo to be sung by the woman in white. She came forward in her
turn to the edge of green and Anne sat back, disappointed to the point
of tears. The woman sang well, but Anne did not hear. After the solo
would follow the five minutes of Utter Silence. Anne wished that she
could get up and slip away. Why had she come?
And then, so silently, so swiftly that she long afterwards recalled
this moment as one in which she must have lost consciousness, Anne
felt herself swept out upon a Silence, so deep, so profound that
there was no room within it for doubt or antagonistic withholding.
Without a break, as if a great curtain had suddenly and noiselessly
been rolled back, the whole hall moved into stillness. It was not a
thing that descended upon them. It was a state into which they passed.
The terrific wave of silence carried Anne with it; caught her on the
pinnacle of its huge curve and dropped her gently into a peace so
profound and so real that Anne felt it laving the whole surface of
her body. Something within slipped beyond the tight hold of her will,
escaped from the encasing body in which she had gripped it, claimed its
own and fled into Peace.
The rustle of others brought Anne back. She got up and followed
Charlotte Welles through the groups smiling and shaking hands and
agreeing on the wonders of the Boston Lecturer. She was glad that Mrs.
Welles did not stop but went directly out, and hoped Charlotte would
not ask her about the meeting. She could not talk of it. And yet these
unmagnetic, unvital, bewildered people had within themselves this
tremendous power. Close to Charlotte Welles she walked in silence,
angry at their possession of it.
Gradually Anne's mood dulled. Exhausted by her own emotion, she felt
spiritually weak and drained. In her reaction, she could have dropped
to sleep. She stifled a yawn and knew that Charlotte had seen. But it
didn't matter. Without mention of the meeting, Anne left Mrs. Welles at
the door and went upstairs.
At her step, Hilda looked up from the cake she was slicing and laughed.
"I never did a thing like that before, but do you know, it never
entered my head. I took Rogie to the Park and was giving him a ride in
the goat carriage when it struck me, all of a sudden, that I'd promised
her. It was four then, but I came, right straight back home, although
I knew it was too late."
"You might just as well have stayed."
"I suppose I might. Oh, well, we had a lovely time. Rogie was as good
as gold. How did you like it? Is there anything in it?"
"Not for me," Anne said wearily.
"I thought as much. Still, I wish I could believe it. I'd like to get
rid of that sciatica and no liniment touches it."
"But if you are a scientist, momsy, you don't have sciatica; and if you
have sciatica you're not a scientist. So they get you coming and going."
"I suppose they do," Hilda agreed placidly. "Besides, I haven't tried
that salt and bacon grease the delicatessen woman told me of. I'll do
that to-night."
But the sciatica was miraculously cured without the bacon grease
or Science. It disappeared that very evening with a cablegram from
Belle. She sent a hundred dollars and said she was starting for home.
At intervals all evening Hilda read the message. By nine o'clock the
hundred dollars had been stretched to include a dozen things.
"And a wheel-chair for papa," she concluded.
"Not if you buy those other things," Anne warned, struggling to keep
Hilda's imagination within some kind of bounds.
"Are chairs very expensive?"
"They're sure to be. Perhaps you could get a second-hand one."
"Perhaps we could."
There was a long pause and then Hilda asked: "Annie, do you suppose
that papa--do you think he will be able--it would be silly to----"