“What, then, is Willy’s mumps,” I said, “if not an affection of the
fleshy tissue of his cheeks and neck? Why should he cry with pain, and
why should he look so horrid?”
She frowned, as if reflecting hard.
“When you came in,” she said, “I’d just been holding the thought that
he has no body, and I don’t--I really don’t feel any longer that he has
mumps. So I don’t worry. And that’s splendid both for him and me.”
I saw that it was splendid for her; but how was it splendid for him? I
did not ask, however, because she looked so earnest and uplifted, and I
was afraid of seeming unkind.
The next day I came back again, and said:
“I’ve been thinking over your faith, Minna. Candidly, I’ve never seen
any one improve so amazingly in health and looks since you’ve had
it. But what I’ve been wondering is, whether it’s in the nature of
fresh air, hard work, and plain living, or in the nature of a drug or
anodyne. Whether it’s prevention, or cure. In fact, whether you could
hold it, or ever have held it, unless you had been sick _before_ you
held it?”
She evidently did not grasp my meaning. I could, of course, have made
it plain enough by saying: “Suppose you had not been a self-conscious,
self-absorbed, high-strung, anæmic girl, like so many nowadays,
quivering at life and Quakers with strong physique and principles;
suppose you had been an Italian peasant woman or an English cottage
lass, obliged to work and think of others all her time; suppose, in a
word, you had not had the chance to be so desperately sensitive and
conscious of your body--do you think you would ever have felt the
necessity for becoming unconscious of it?” But she looked so serene and
puzzled, so corporeally charming on her sofa, that I hadn’t the heart
to put it thus brutally; and I merely said:
“Do tell me how the idea first came to you?”
“It was put there. It could never have come of its own accord.”
“No doubt; but what exactly?”
She grew rather pink.
“It was one evening when Willy--he was only four then--had been very
naughty, and Tom” (this was the Quaker) “insisted on my whipping him.
I was obliged to, you see, for fear he would do it himself. Poor Willy
cried so that I was simply in despair. It hurt me awfully; I remember
thinking: ‘Ah! but it’s not really me; not me--not my arm.’ It seemed
to me that there was a dreadful unreality about myself; that I was not
really doing it, and so I surely could not be hurting him. It was such
a comfort--and I wanted comfort.”
I felt the sacredness and the pathos of that; I felt, too, that her
despair, before that comfort came, had been her farewell to truth; but
I would not for the world have said that, nor asked what Willy’s tears
had really been, if not real tears.
“Yes,” I murmured; “and after that?”
“After that--I tried every day, and gradually the whole beauty of it
came to me--because, you know, there are so many things to fret one,
and it’s so splendid to feel uplifted above it all.”
They tell me the morphia habit is wonderful! But I only said:
“And so you really never suffer now?”
“Oh!” she answered, “I often have the beginnings; but I just hold that
thought and--it goes. I do wish--I _do_ wish you would try!”
“Yes, yes,” I murmured; “yes, yes!” She looked so pathetically earnest
and as if she would be so disappointed. “But just one thing: Don’t
you ever feel that the knowledge that people have no bodies and don’t
really suffer----” and there I stopped. I had meant to add--“blunts
sympathy and dries up the springs of fellow-feeling from which all
kindly action comes?” But I hadn’t the heart.
“Oh! do put any questions to me!” she said. “You can’t shake my faith!
It’s religion with me, you know.”
“You certainly seem fitter and stronger every day. I quite understand
that you’re being saved by it. And that’s the essence of religion,
isn’t it?”
She drew herself up and smiled. “Tom says I’m getting fat!”
I looked at her. I must say that, for one who had no body, she was
superb.
After that I again left London and did not see her for two years.
A few days after my return I asked after her at my sister’s.
“Oh! haven’t you heard? The most dreadful tragedy happened there six
weeks ago. Kitty and Willy” (they were the two eldest children) “were
run over by a motor; poor little Kitty was killed on the spot, and
Willy will be lame for life, they say.”
Thinking of Kitty blotted out like that--a little thing all shyness,
sensibility, and pranks, just as Minna had been at her age--I could
scarcely ask: “How does poor Minna take it?”
My sister wrinkled her brows.
“I was there,” she said, “when they brought the children in. It was
awful to see Tom--he broke down utterly. He’s been quite changed ever
since.”
“But Minna?”
“Minna--yes. I shall never forget the expression of her face that first
minute. It reminded me of--I don’t know what--like nerves moving under
the skin. Dreadful! And then, ten minutes later, it was quite calm;
you’d have thought nothing had happened. She’s very wonderful. I’ve
watched her since, and I don’t--I really don’t believe she feels it!”
“How is she looking?”
“Oh! just the same--very well and handsome. Rather too fat.”
It was with very curious feelings that I went next day to see Minna.
Truly she looked magnificent in her black clothes. Her curves had
become ampler, her complexion deeper, perhaps a little coarse, and her
drawl was more pronounced. Her husband came in while I was there. The
poor man was indeed a changed Quaker. He seemed to have shrivelled.
When she put her hand on his shoulder, I noticed with surprise that he
jibbed away and seemed to avoid the gaze of her rather short-sighted,
beautiful brown eyes that had grown appreciably warmer. It was strange
indeed--his body had become so meagre and hers had so splendidly
increased! We made no mention of the tragedy while he was there, but
when he had left us I hazarded the question:
“How is poor little Willy?”
Her eyes shone, and she said, with a sort of beautiful earnestness:
“You mustn’t call him that. He’s not a bit unhappy. We hold the thought
together. It’s coming wonderfully!”
In a sudden outburst of sympathy I said:
“I’m so sorry. It must be terrible for you all.”
Her brow contracted just a little.
“Yes! I can’t get Tom--if only he would see that it’s nothing,
really--that there’s no such thing as the body. He’s simply wearing
himself away; he’s grown quite thin; he’s----” She stopped. And there
rose up in me a kind of venom, as if I felt that she was about to say
‘--no longer fit to be my mate.’ And, trying to keep that feeling out
of my eyes, I looked at the magnificent creature. How marvellously she
had flourished under the spell of her creed! How beautifully preserved
and encased against the feelings of this life she had become! How
grandly she had cured her sensitive and neurasthenic girlhood! How
nobly, against the disease of self-consciousness and self-absorption,
she had put on the armour of a subtler and deeper self-absorption!
And suddenly I pitied or I envied her--Ah! which? For, to achieve
immunity from her own suffering, I perceived that for the suffering of
others she had become incapable of caring two brass buttons.