Saint Peter's Parish was fifteen miles and a consequent half-hour of
time from the nearest fount of Christian Science teaching. Hence it
resulted that only rarely had Katharine been used to refresh herself in
the tenets of her new theology. In part, this came from her natural
self-reliance, coupled with an indolence which made her shrink from the
needful effort to catch an early train. In part, it came out of
Brenton's heedful planning. Regretting, as he could not fail to do, his
wife's allegiance to a creed so alien to the shreds of his own belief,
not daring to oppose her absolutely in its observance, he contrived to
strew her path with the accumulated petty obstacles which are so much
more insurmountable than any single great one. He never set back the
hands of the clock to make her miss her train; neither did he lock her
in her room. He merely found out at the last minute that he needed one
of the small personal services which only a wife can give.
And Katharine, by the very nature of her new and optimistic creed, was
powerless to stand out against him. Earlier, fathoming his purposes,
she would have raged, have burst into a passion. Now she could only
minister to him with an impassive calm, while, in her secret heart, she
was piously commending him to the attention of the Universal Mind for
discipline. Unhappily for Katharine, however, the Universal Mind
appeared to be engaged in some other direction, and Brenton, for the
present, was left to go scot free.
This had been the state of the case, ever since the early spring, and
Katharine felt the private and personal fount of sanctity within her to
be running dry. She was just making up her mind to break away at any
cost, when a new complication arose in the person of the baby. Not that
Katharine's devotion to her child would have led her to any especial
sacrifice, however. Indeed, there was no need for that. The nurse had
proved herself an efficient substitute in any normal crisis; and any
abnormal one, Katharine believed, could be controlled as well by absent
treatment as by present. Unhappily, Katharine had reckoned without
taking into account either Brenton's wilful allegiance to the
old-fashioned notions of disease, or the nurse's abject allegiance to
the father of her puny charge.
For, as the time ran on, no one could deny that the child was puny,
that his birthright of health was dwindling fast. And, while it
dwindled, the heat came on, and then the stifling dog days. It was a
season when the lustiest of children wilted with the damp, depressing
heat; and the Brenton baby, never lusty, wilted with them. Katharine
treated him with conscientious regularity; but dog days and consequent
dysentery proved too strenuous a claim for her to fight alone, and more
and more eagerly she longed for the succour of the nearest local
representative of the Mother Church.
Nevertheless, the more she longed, the more she shrank from carrying
into effect her longing. Three days before this time, Brenton had come
in upon her, sitting beside the weazen child, her eyes on space, her
lips moving in silent self-communion. Across the room, the nurse was
sobbing into her handkerchief. Now and then, between her sobs, she
lifted up her irate eyes to glare upon the placid face beside the
little crib.
Brenton had asked a question. Before Katharine could answer, the nurse
had cut in and given him a few facts: hours and amounts and consequent
symptoms which she deemed disturbing. And then, in a voice which made a
curious contrast to the agitation of the nurse, Katharine had urged
them to wait, quiet, until she had put the little human creature,
suffering from some hidden sin or lack of faith, into a more total
communion with the Infinite, the Healer; had even begged them not to
allow their ill-concealed doubts to delay the perfect cure.
The nurse, heedless of the Infinite, the Healer, had interposed with a
few more facts; had pointed out that physical mal-nutrition can not be
made good by a diet of compressed air, however theological that air may
be. The baby needed, not the Infinite, but finite stimulants and
predigested foods. It needed to be left in peace and quiet, not be
stirred up to listen to what, in her increasing ire, the nurse termed
mummery and flummery. As for sin, the poor baby wasn't the sinner. It
hadn't gone and neglected its only son--
In mercy, less for the logic of the nurse and the consequent feelings
of his wife, than for his own nerves, Brenton interrupted. Like most
men between two women, he only made the matter infinitely worse. There
was a discussion; then there were words. Then Brenton lost his temper
and departed on his heels, leaving his wife, the nurse, and the fretful
baby wailing aloud in a discordant trio. As a natural result, Katharine
forgot the needs of the child and sought the healing contact of the
All-Mind upon her own account, while the nurse, drying her tears in
haste, seized the child in one arm, the opportunity in the other, and
administered the simple remedies she always kept on hand. Brenton,
meanwhile, sought Doctor Keltridge. Half an hour later, he was back
again, the doctor by his side.
The old doctor, dragged helter-skelter from his laboratory, was in
wildest disarray, and his eyes were still a little vague, as he
followed Brenton up the stairs to the nursery. Across the threshold of
the nursery, however, the vagueness vanished; the eyes grew keen as
sharp-pointed bits of steel, yet strangely gentle, while he sat down
beside the crib and laid one mammoth brown hand above the scrawny
little claw. Then, for just a minute, the keen eyes narrowed to a line.
A minute afterward, he looked up and smiled across at Brenton.
"Yes, the little chap is sick, this time; it is about as well you
called me in. It's been a bad summer for the children; he's had to take
his turn with the rest of them, and it has pulled him down. Poor little
youngster!" And one huge forefinger gently hooked itself into the neck
of the little gown, drew it away and disclosed the piteous leanness of
the throat and chest beneath, the fragile leanness of the baby bird
just fallen from the nest. "Poor little youngster!" he repeated. "He
has had a hard time of it in this world. Sometimes it does seem as if
they didn't start with quite a fair chance."
"Doctor," the word came with something that was very like a groan; "I
have done my best."
The doctor stopped him instantly.
"Brenton, I know that. You've had a bad time, too. Don't think for a
minute I am forgetting that, even if I don't say too much about it.
It's extra hard, in this case, for the boy was perfectly strong, when
he was born."
"You mean--" Brenton's mouth had suddenly gone so dry that he could not
finish out the phrase.
The doctor did not falter.
"Brenton, if I am to help you keep the boy, I shall have to talk to you
brutally. The baby was born all right, healthy as a child could be,
tough and strong enough for a dozen children. However, every baby needs
a little nursing, needs a little dosing now and then, even if he is
healthy. That is what your baby hasn't had. Mrs. Brenton, with the best
will in the world, has fed him any sort of milk from any sort of cows,
and she has counted on the Infinite to sterilize the milkman's fingers.
And, in all probability, the Infinite didn't do it. Too busy, likely,
in sterilizing the youngster's mind. Then, when a dose of honest castor
oil would have made good the trouble, she gave him a dose of _Science
and Health_, instead. It may be all right in theory; in this practical
case, she might just as well have rolled up the inspired pages into
pills and have poked them down the baby's throat." And then the doctor
pulled himself up. "However, that's done with. Now, if you'll stand by
me and see that my orders are carried out, I'll fall to work and try my
best to undo the harm. You'll see me through, Brenton? It will keep you
on duty steadily; but it is the one thing that will save your child."
"Of course. Go on." Then Brenton shut his teeth.
"Nurse, have you been able to give--" And the doctor put her through a
searching catechism. Then, "So far, so good. I am glad you kept your
head; it was the one chance. Now, suppose we look a little closer."
To Brenton, watching intently, it seemed almost impossible that those
great, acid-stained hands could stir, then lift, the little form so
tenderly. Indeed, once on the doctor's knee, the baby nestled weakly to
the curve of his rough coat sleeve, the heavy lids lifted and the
weazen face lighted with the ghost of a tired little smile. Then the
lids fell heavily once more; but once more, also, there was the faintly
nestling motion of the wee, weary body against the strong, kind arm.
And, above the little body, the doctor's face, intently bent over the
child, was lighted with a swift reflection from the greater light of
the All-Father, yet above.
"Poor little kiddie!" he said slowly. "It's a close shave for him,
Brenton; but, if you'll stand by and help, please God, we'll save him
yet."
And Brenton did stand by, all evening long and all the night. The nurse
was with him, watching. Katharine, furious beneath her scientific calm,
came and went at intervals; but the doctor's bottle and spoon were in
the breast pocket of Brenton's clerical coat, the doctor's written
schedule was set down in duplicate on Brenton's cuff. And Brenton, too
tired to be really weary, never once left his chair beside the frilly
crib.
Later on, he never could remember what were his thoughts, that night.
Being human and very wide awake, he must have thought something; but,
ransack his mind as he would, nothing coherent ever came back to him
out of the half-forgotten chaos. Indeed, it was as if his whole nature,
body, mind, and spirit, were focussing itself upon one passionate
desire that his child might live. Not that he consciously prayed. What
was there that he could pray to, or for? Laws did not stop their
working, to prolong one baby life. Useless to ask for mere futilities.
Useless and totally irreverent to insult the Deity by suggesting to
Him, however prayerfully, that He had made a bad mistake; that, were
His attention only called to the mistake, doubtless He would be glad to
set it right while time still remained to Him. And, if the mistake were
not set right? If--well--if the child did--die, what then? Did that
weazen little body, that mind as yet unopened to any but the simplest
of sensations: did these hold within themselves the germs of conscious
immortality? Or would the tiny flake of snow upon the desert's dusty
waste vanish within its hour or two, be gone? The bud, cut from the
rose, may open a bit, when placed in water; then it fades, and dies,
and leaves no seed behind. In the same way, the budding life, cut from
the parent stem--Who had cut it, though: God, or Katharine, or merely
inexorable law? Brenton smothered a groan. Then, because law was
inexorable, he cast aside his wonderings, looked at his cuff, at his
watch, and shut his fingers upon the bottle and the spoon.
As for Katharine, it would have been well-nigh impossible for any one
outside the influence of the mysterious tenets of her scientific creed,
to analyze all she felt, that night. Moreover, her insulted creed, had
the truth been told, seemed to herself scarcely more to be considered
than her insulted self. The child was her own property. She had given
it birth; it was for her alone to dictate its experiences. It was her
child; not in any actual sense the child of Brenton. And Brenton, too,
was hers. Little as she might have come to love him--for by now
Katharine had passed the epoch where she reckoned him as anything
beyond a subject for critical analysis and consequent deploring--little
as she might have come to love him, he was yet her husband and so, in a
sense, her chattel. It was for her to rule them both, her husband and
her child; she should be dominant, they humbly subject. And now, all of
a sudden, they both of them had thrown off her dominance, the child
unconsciously, Brenton of his full volition. Apart from any question of
the theologic controversy, the household had cast aside her sway, had,
in a sense and temporarily, deposed her from her domestic throne, she
the strong one of them all. Only her stoically optimistic creed kept
Katharine, alone in her own room, from biting at her carefully-groomed
finger tips.
And, besides, there was the question of the theologic controversy. What
right had Brenton, or the nurse, or the meddlesome old doctor with his
hair on end and without his cuffs, to come inside her house and overset
her religion? To elevate their own, instead? It was her religion, just
as it was her house, her child. And her religion was good. Else, she
never would have adopted it. What matter if their cruder minds must
have the crass physical details of bottles and spoons with which to
fight sin-born disease? What if their narrow blindness destroyed their
vision of the all-embracing, all-compelling Mind, source of Holiness,
and of Knowledge, and, by consequence, of Health? Should she, by reason
of their ignoble interferences and persecutions, yield her own
allegiance to the Higher Light? Not she! Rather would she fling
herself, heart and soul, into the freshening tide of her own visible
church. Out of its ritual only, could she gain new fervour to bear and
endure and then, if need be, fight for her spiritual freedom. It was
only what the martyrs of old had done; only the work which fell upon
the upholders of any new religion.
Katharine, walking the floor of her own room, that night, forgot the
holy calm born of the Universal Mind and its optimistic tenets, and by
slow degrees lashed herself into a scientific replica of a nervous
tantrum. Described in unscientific language, she was a mere shaking
bundle of injured and angry egotism. In the language of her creed, she
was a suffering, striving martyr. Her martyrdom, moreover, led her to
order breakfast served to her in her own room. It also led her to eat
hungrily, in the intervals of making her toilet for the train.
She was already hatted and gloved, when Brenton discovered her
intention.
"You are not going out, Katharine?" he asked, with the curious lack of
tact which all men show at times.
"I am."
"But--the baby?"
"Baby is better. I have just been in to see him," she replied, as she
buttoned her coat, and then flicked a grain of dust from its sleeve.