"I should think so! Dear Miss Harland, do you really believe in that
way of administering electricity?"
"Of course I do!" she answered--"You see, it's all a question of what
they call bacteriology nowadays. Medicine is no use unless it can kill
the microbes that are eating us up inside and out. And there's scarcely
any drug that can do that. Electricity is the only remedy. It gives the
little brutes a shock;"--and the poor lady laughed weakly--"and it
kills some, but not all. It's a dreadful scheme of creation, don't you
think, to make human beings no better than happy hunting grounds for
invisible creatures to feed upon?"
"It depends on what view you take of it,"--I said, laying down my work
and trying to fix her attention, a matter which was always
difficult--"We human beings are composed of good and evil particles. If
the good are encouraged, they drive out the evil,--if the evil, they
drive out the good. It's the same with the body as the soul,--if we
encourage the health-working 'microbes' as you call them, they will
drive out disease from the human organism altogether."
She sank back on her pillow wearily.
"We can't do it,"--she said--"All the chances are against us. What's
the use of our trying to encourage 'health-working microbes'? The
disease-working ones have got the upper hand. Just think!--our parents,
grandparents and great-grandparents are to blame for half our evils.
Their diseases become ours in various new forms. It's cruel,--horrible!
How anyone can believe that a God of Love created such a frightful
scheme passes my comprehension! The whole thing is a mere business of
eating to be eaten!"
She looked so wan and wild that I pitied her greatly.
"Surely that is not what you think at the bottom of your heart?" I
said, gently--"I should be very sorry for you if I thought you really
meant what you say."
"Well, you may be as sorry for me as you like"--and the poor lady
blinked away tears from her eyes--"I need someone to be sorry for me! I
tell you my life is a perfect torture. Every day I wonder how long I
can bear it! I have such dreadful thoughts! I picture the horrible
things that are happening to different people all over the world,
nobody helping them or caring for them, and I almost feel as if I must
scream for mercy. It wouldn't be any use screaming,--but the scream is
in my soul all the same. People in prisons, people in shipwrecks,
people dying by inches in hospitals, no good in their lives and no
hope--and not a sign of comfort from the God whom the Churches praise!
It's awful! I don't see how anybody can do anything or be ambitious for
anything--it's all mere waste of energy. One of the reasons that made
me so anxious to have you come on this trip with us is that you always
seem contented and happy,--and I want to know why? It's a question of
temperament, I suppose--but do tell me why!"
She stretched out her hand and touched mine appealingly. I took her
worn and wasted fingers in my own and pressed them sympathetically.
"My dear Miss Harland,"--I began.
"Oh, call me Catherine"--she interrupted--"I'm so tired of being Miss
Harland!"
"Well, Catherine, then,"--I said, smiling a little--"Surely you know
why I am contented and happy?"
"No, I do not,"--she said, with quick, almost querulous? eagerness--"I
don't understand it at all. You have none of the things that please
women. You don't seem to care about dress though you are always
well-gowned--you don't go to balls or theatres or race-meetings,--you
are a general favourite, yet you avoid society,--you've never troubled
yourself to take your chances of marriage,--and so far as I know or
have heard tell about you, you haven't even a lover!"
My cheeks grew suddenly warm. A curious resentment awoke in me at her
words--had I indeed no lover? Surely I had!--one that I knew well and
had known for a long time,--one for whom I had guarded my life sacredly
as belonging to another as well as to myself,--a lover who loved me
beyond all power of human expression,--here the rush of strange and
inexplicable emotion in me was hurled back on my mind with a shock of
mingled terror and surprise from a dead wall of stony fact,--it was
true, of course, and Catherine Harland was right--I had no lover. No
man had ever loved me well enough to be called by such a name. The
flush cooled off my face,--the hurry of my thoughts slackened,--I took
up my embroidery and began to work at it again.
"That is so, isn't it?" persisted Miss Harland--"Though you blush and
grow pale as if there was someone in the background."