Bertie Cochrane had taken them straight across by ferry to their house
in Long Island, near Port Washington, had seen them comfortably
installed, and returned in the evening to his flat in town. As regards
Thurso, the spiritual conflict of the Divine and Infinite against all
that was mortal and mistaken had begun, and of the ultimate issue of
that he had no doubts whatever. But there was another conflict before
him, more difficult than that--a conflict of things that were all good,
but yet seemed to be unreconcilable; and as he sat now, after eating the
one dish of vegetables which was his dinner, he felt torn by these fine
conflicting forces.
For to-morrow, at the joint request of Thurso and his sister, he was
going down to stay with them. That arrangement he could not refuse.
Since they were so kind as to ask him, it was better in every way, as
regards the cure he was undertaking, to do so. Thus, all day and every
day he would see and be with the girl whom he loved with all the
intensity of his jubilant and vital soul. Yet, since he would be there
only as a healer, and since, except as a healer, he would never have
been there, he knew that he must entirely swamp and drown all his
private concerns. He must say no word, make no sign. Even that was not
enough, he feared. He must school himself to feel no longing. His love
itself must be drowned--that strong and beautiful thing--while he was
there; for he would be there _only_ as one who could bring, and had
promised to bring, light to this man who was obscured by error. That
would be the sole reason for his presence there, and it was worth not a
moment of further debate or argument. And as he sat here now, he
wondered if he was strong enough to do what he knew he must do, or
whether, even at the eleventh hour, it was better to refuse to go to
Long Island at all, but send someone else. On the other hand, he had
himself promised to cure Thurso. He and his sister had come from England
on that express understanding and under promise. But would it not be
better to break that rather than lead himself into the temptation of
using for his own ends the opportunity that had been given to him, and
accepted by him, of demonstrating the eternal truth which was more real
than any human love?
He knew, too, the hourly difficulties that his position would entail.
Lady Maud thirsted for more knowledge about the truth which she already
believed, and it would be he, naturally, who would talk to her about it,
sitting opposite her, and seeing the glowing light of the knowledge that
was being unveiled in her eyes. And yet all the time he must keep his
thoughts away from her--see nothing, know nothing, except what he
taught her. Not a thought could be spared to anything else; he would be
there to heal, and while he healed all that was his belonged to two
persons only--his Master and his patient.
He fixed his mind on this till it all acquiesced, and not only all open
revolt, but all covert rebellion and dissent ceased. And the moment that
was done, even as, without apparent reason, a sudden surge of water in a
calm sea sets the weeds waving and submerges rocks, so from the
unplumbed abyss of Love a wave swept softly and hugely over his doubts
and drynesses, covering them with the message from the infinite sea.
What had all his doubt and rebellion been about? He did not know.
The cold outside was intense; it had come on to freeze more sharply than
ever at sunset, but he got up and set his window open. The aid that gave
him in the work that lay before him now was adventitious only, but he
found it easier to detach himself from the myriad distractions of mortal
mind if, instead of breathing the close atmosphere of a room that was
full of human associations, the taintless air of out of doors, of night
and of cold, came in upon him. Very possibly that feeling itself was a
claim of mortal mind, but it was better to yield to such a claim when it
was clearly innocent, if it told him that the realisation of truth was
thereby made more complete to his sense, than to waste energy in
fighting it. And then, as he had done before when he went to the bedside
of Sandie Mackenzie, he called his thoughts home. Thoughts of the day
and the sea, of the sunshine, and the windless frost and the virgin
snow, came flocking back, and went to sleep. Other thoughts, a little
more laggard, a little less willing to rest, had to obey also: he had to
forget the book he had been reading during his dinner, the swift hour of
skating he had enjoyed after he came back to town, the friend he had
met and talked with in the street. And another thought more wide-awake
yet had to be put to sleep (and, if possible, be strangled as it was
sleeping)--namely, his strong physical disgust for a man who, through
sheer weakness and self-indulgence, had allowed himself to get into the
state in which he had found his patient: that slack lip, that sallow
face, that dull, stale eye, the thinning, whitening hair, were like some
voluntary and ghastly disfigurement, as if Thurso had striven with his
own hands to deface and render hideous his own body, and had succeeded
so well that to Cochrane this morning he had been scarcely recognisable.
But all this had to sleep; all his disgust had to be done away with. You
could not heal a leper by shuddering at his sores.
Slowly and with conscious effort that was done, but there was still one
soaring thought abroad, stronger of wing, harder to recall than any.
Maud, too, had to be called home (and the irony of the phrase struck
him). Her beauty, her incomparable charm, her serene, splendid bravery
with her brother, and his love for her, must now be all non-existent for
him. She must cease--all thought of her must cease.
* * * * *
Then, like the force that turns the driving-wheel of some great engine
that is just beginning to haul its ponderous freight out of the station,
the power of the Divine Mind began to press within him. Once and again
the wheel spun round, not biting the rail, for the load was very heavy;
but soon the driving power began to move him, the engine, and the dead
and heavy weight of the trucks weighted with the error and sickness he
was to cure. Under the roof of the station it was dark and gloomy, but
outside, he knew, was sunshine. There was only one force in the world
that could bring him and his trucks out there, but that it should do
that his mind had to strain and strive and grip the rail. Sometimes it
seemed that the weight behind was immeasurable, sometimes that the force
which drove him was so vast that he must burst and be broken under its
pressure. But he knew, that little atom of agonised yet rapturous
consciousness, which was all that he could refer to as himself, knew
that he and his freight were in control of the one Power that cannot go
wrong, that never yet made a mistake. The hands that held him were
infinitely tender, even as they were infinitely strong.
* * * * *
It was some four hours later when he got up from his chair. The fire had
gone out, and the bitterness of the frost had frozen the surface of the
glass of water he had poured out, and he broke the crust of ice on it
and drank. Two minutes later he was undressed and asleep, having plunged
into bed with a smile that had broadened into the sheer laughter of
joy.
Thurso awoke next morning, feeling, so he told himself, the stimulus and
exhilaration of this new climate and the bracing effect of this dry,
sunny morning of frost. After the narrow berth of his cabin it was a
luxury to sleep in a proper bed again, and a luxury when awake to lie at
ease in it. What an excellent night he had had, too! He had slept from
about half-past eleven the night before till he was called at half-past
eight--slept uninterruptedly and dreamlessly, without those incessant
wakings from agonised dreams of desire which had so obsessed him during
the last week. No doubt this change from the sedentary and cramped life
of the ship to the wider activities of the land accounted for that, and
he felt that the place and the air both suited him. Yesterday had passed
pleasantly, too. He, Maud, and Cochrane had been for a long sleigh-drive
in the afternoon, and--there was no use in denying it, though he felt
some curious latent hostility to him--Cochrane was a very attractive
fellow. He had the tact, the experience, the manner of a cultured and
agreeable man, and these gifts were somehow steeped in the effervescence
and glow of youth. Never had Thurso seen the two so wonderfully
combined. Youth's enchantment was his still, the eager vitality of a
boy.
When they returned he had had an hour's talk with him alone, and at
Cochrane's request had told him the whole history of his slavery. And,
somehow, that recital had been in no way difficult. Once again, as on
the occasion of Maud's poaching, Cochrane had made it easy not to be
ashamed. Thurso felt as if he was telling it all to a man who understood
him better than he understood himself, who did not in the least condone
or seek to find excuses for this wretched story, but to whom these
hideous happenings appeared only in the light of a nightmare, as if
Thurso had had a terrible dream, and was speaking only of empty
imaginings. At the end--the tale was a long one--Cochrane had still
been genial.
"Well, now, that is a good start," he said, "for I guess you haven't
kept anything back. Sometimes people have a sort of false shame, and
won't tell one what is, perhaps, the very worst of all. That must hinder
the healer. It must help him, on the other hand, to know just exactly
what the trouble is."
"Quite so; that is only reasonable," said Thurso.
But to himself he thought how odd it was that so straightforward and
simple a fellow should be such a crank. Not that he was not perfectly
willing to let the crank do what he could for him. He would have worn
any amulet or charm if anyone seriously thought it could help him. But,
again, he was conscious of his latent hostility, and this time he
fancied he perceived the cause of it. For Cochrane was here to rob him
of the most ecstatic moments of his life. It was the memory of them
which made him feel that he was in the presence of a thief, an enemy.
"Well, now, before I go back to town for the night," continued Cochrane,
"I want to start you right away with one or two thoughts to keep in your
mind. Remember, first of all, that all that you have been suffering from
is unreal. It has no true existence, in the sense in which life and joy
are true. Try to realise that, for thus you yourself will help in the
accomplishment of your healing. A patient can help his medical man by
determining to get well, can't he? In the same way you can help me by
trying to realise that you have never been ill. Real illness is a
contradiction in terms."
"Do you mean that not only are the effects of the drug unreal, but the
cravings for it are unreal?" asked Thurso. "Surely one can only judge of
the truth of a thing by one's feelings. One's feelings are the ultimate
appeal, and I assure you I know of nothing so real as my craving. If it
had been less real I should not have come to America."
"Ah! that's where you make a mistake," said Cochrane. "There may not be
an atom of truth in the thing which is the cause of your feeling most
strongly. Suppose, for instance, a lot of your friends entered into a
conspiracy to play a practical joke on you, had you arrested, got you
convicted of murder, and condemned to be hung, with such realism and
completeness that you actually believed it was going to happen. You
would be terrified, agonised, and your terror and agony would be the
realest thing in the world to you. But it would be all founded on a
lie--on a thing that didn't exist. And your craving is founded on a
lie--such a stupid lie, too, believe me. As if evil has any power
compared with good!"
Thurso thought this illustration rather well-chosen, but he was a little
tired, a little impatient. Also, the mention of his craving seemed to
have stirred it into activity again. He began to wonder if there was any
chemist's shop near. They had passed one on their drive--"ride" Cochrane
called it--but that was a couple of miles off.... And the thought made
him the more impatient.
"Excuse me," he said, "but I am not a Christian Scientist, and the
method you employ doesn't interest me, since I do not believe in it. It
is right for me to tell you that; I only came here because I felt I owed
it to--to others to do anything that was suggested."
Cochrane laughed with serene good-humour, though Thurso's tone had not
been very courteous.
"Oh, we'll soon alter all that," he said, "and I am telling you a little
about the treatment, in order that you may work with me, give me the
help the ordinary patient gives his doctor."
"I suppose I'm pretty bad," he observed.
"I should just think you were. Why, you are all wrapped up in error!
Have you ever unwound a rubber-covered golf ball? There are yards and
yards of india-rubber string, and you think it's going on for ever. But
at the centre there is a core. And there is a core in you too. But we've
got to unwind the error in order to get at it."
Thurso got up; he was feeling every moment more fidgety and impatient.
He was beginning to want the drug most terribly; his craving was growing
with mushroom-like rapidity. Yet while Cochrane was there he felt that
his will to get well, his desire to be free, was keen also. And that
gave him an impulse of honesty.
"I tell you this, too," he said: "I'm longing for the drug most
frightfully now. Ah, help me!" he cried in a sudden wail of appeal, "for
I know what I shall do when you are gone."
"Yes, tell me that," said Cochrane; and the wail of the voice told him
that true impulse still existed, whatever Thurso's own forecast was.
"Well, I shall go and see where Maud is," he said, "and if she is
downstairs I shall tell her that I am going to my room to sleep till it
is time to dress, so that I can get away by myself. She trusts me, I
think, even after all that has happened. Good heavens! why am I telling
you this?" he said suddenly. "You will tell her now, damn you! and spoil
it all."
Cochrane interrupted quietly.
"Your damning me doesn't hurt," he said, "and I solemnly promise you not
to give your plan away. There's no chemist very near, I'm afraid, but
there's one in Port Washington; we passed the place this afternoon."
"Ah, you've warned him," said Thurso.
"I have done nothing of the kind, nor shall I. Pray get on."
The pleasure that the diseased imagination took in the projection of its
plans was suggestive of the joy of their realisation. Thurso gulped as
he spoke.
"I take it, then, that you won't interfere," he said. "Well, I shall go
to my room and forge--yes, forge a prescription. I'm getting a rare hand
at that."
He gave a little cackle of delight; the impulse that a couple of minutes
ago had prompted the cry for help was half smothered, and he was
conscious of one need only. He pointed a warning finger at Cochrane.
"It's understood that you do nothing to hinder me," he said, "nothing
tangible, practical, though you can treat me--don't you call it?--till
all's blue. Then I shall send to the stable, and tell a man and horse to
go down to the chemist's, wait for the prescription to be made up, and
bring it back. Lord Thurso, you know! Republicans think a lot of a lord,
and they'll hurry, because they've got a fine specimen of one now. And I
shall sit gnawing my nails till that bottle comes back. Then--two hours'
Paradise before dinner. God! I wonder the whole world doesn't take to
laudanum. Paradise made up while you wait. Cheap, too."
"Remarkably cheap," said Cochrane.
"Ah, you are laughing at me. But you don't know, you can't guess----"
Thurso came close up to him and pressed his arm. The latent hostility
was all gone; here was a friend who should be told what he was missing.
So easy was it to get out of hell into purgatory, and through purgatory
past the unbarred gates of a Paradise of rose and gold. No
flaming-sworded angel was there; a glass and a bottle were the pass-word
for admittance. You had but to draw a stopper, chink a glass, and drink,
and the whole world was changed. The thought invaded and encompassed
him. He could think of nothing but that.
"Suppose you try it one night," he said to Cochrane, "when you are
staying down here, as you will be to-morrow? You just see; there's no
need for any healing any more--the thing is health and life. I say,
wouldn't it be funny if, after I had come over here to be cured by you,
I succeeded in pulling you after me. Just try some night."
Bertie Cochrane nodded at him.
"Well, it may come to that," he said; "there's nothing which you can say
is impossible."
Thurso laughed again.
"Maud too, perhaps," he said. "What a good time we might have: 'up to
heaven all three,' as it says in that poem by--by--I never can remember
names now!"
Cochrane could barely restrain a little shudder of disgust at this, but
he checked it.
"Well, you're making an excellent start," he said, "because you're
telling me all your plans for the future, just as you have told me all
the history of the past. And as for the present, I can figure that up
pretty correctly now. Now, do you know what you've been doing for this
last ten minutes? You've been almost forcing yourself to do what you
say you are going to do by imagining it. Every action begins in the
brain. But just before that another action began. You said, 'Ah, help
me!' Do you remember that?"
"Yes, but it's useless," said Thurso. "You see for yourself."
"It isn't useless. I never spend my time over useless things. When you
said that your will was on the right side. And even now when you are
half-crazy for that drink, aren't you ashamed to think of what you have
just suggested--that Lady Maud, your sister, should be dragged down with
you? Aren't you ashamed? You have been very candid; I want your candid
opinion on that."
Thurso frowned.
"I didn't say that; I'm sure I didn't say that."
"But indeed you did. Now come back on the right side again. You've been
suggesting things to yourself, and imagining them with remarkable
vividness. So now, to make it fair, plan another evening for yourself.
Come, what would be pleasant? Don't make a long evening of it; I want
you to go to bed before eleven."
"Why?" asked Thurso.
"Just because it's a sensible hour. I shall be treating you by then."
"But Maud tried to treat me once on the steamer," said he, "and the
effect was that I couldn't get to sleep at all. I thought she was in the
room."
For the moment, anyhow, the edge of his desire was dulled. There was
something that compelled attention in this big, strong young man, who
was so cheerful and quiet, who looked so superlatively well, and seemed
to diffuse sanity and health.
"Why, that was real good of Lady Maud, wasn't it?" he said, "and that
feeling of yours that she was in the room was very likely to happen.
I'll tell you why: like everything else in science, it is so simple. The
healer ought quite to sink himself; he shouldn't be conscious of himself
at all. He mustn't think that he is controlling the working of the power
of Divine Love. But that unconsciousness of self only comes with
practice. At first the healer finds that his personality obtrudes
itself."
Quite unconsciously Thurso began to be more interested; consciously he
knew that he did not want the drug just this moment as devouringly as he
had thought. The simplicity of what Cochrane was saying struck him also;
it was so exceedingly unlike the torrential inconsequence of Alice
Yardly.
"Then why can't you heal me instantly?" he said. "If error cannot exist
in the presence of Divine Love, how is it that time is required for its
destruction?"
Cochrane laughed.
"I haven't the slightest idea," he said; "but, then, I do not profess to
be able to explain everything. Sometimes healing is really
instantaneous, sometimes it takes time. But if you ask me why, I confess
I can't tell you. It is so, though."
He got up.
"Now I must go," he said, "for though there's no such thing as time
really, it is still possible to miss a train. Now keep on making other
pictures of this evening to yourself, and say you will go to bed at
eleven."
Thurso lay back in his big chair after Cochrane had gone, conscious that
something else besides laudanum had begun to interest him a little. He
felt no leaning or tendency whatever towards Christian Science, and he
wanted to find some weak spot in the central theory, some fatal
inconsistency, which must invalidate it altogether. There must be one
even in the little he had heard about it. At this moment Maud came in.
"I've had a long talk to Cochrane," he said, "and he left only ten
minutes ago. Maud, give me a Christian Science book; I'm going to prove
that it's all wrong."
She laughed.
"Do, dear; it is the business of everybody to expose error. Shall I read
it to you?"
"Yes, if you will."
Then suddenly his craving began to return, sharpening itself
instantaneously to hideous acuteness. His mind was like some light
vehicle, from which the driver had been spilled, being galloped away
with by the bolting, furious horses of habit. Never before had the
stroke fallen upon him with such suddenness. "A fine first-fruit of the
value of Christian Science," he said to himself. Yet though its
onslaught made him almost dizzy, he retained his presence of mind and
the cunning which seemed to have been developed in him since he took to
the drug. He mastered his voice completely; he mastered also that
watering of the mouth and the automatic swallowing movement of his
throat.
"Or shall we read after dinner?" he said. "That sleigh-drive made me so
sleepy. I think I should drop asleep at once if you began to read."
Maud looked at him for a moment with a pity that was instinctive; she
could not help it. Then she laughed again.
"Oh, Thurso, how transparent!" she said. "You want to go to your bedroom
and forge--yes, forge the prescription which you forged with such
brilliant success on the steamer, and send it down to the village to get
your horrid bottle. It's all very well to forge once or twice, but you
really mustn't get in the habit of it; it grows on one dreadfully, I am
told."
He came towards her white and shaking.
"That quack Cochrane has been talking to you, has he," he said. "He
promised not to interfere."
"He hasn't interfered. You are perfectly free to do what you like. And
he is not proved to be a quack yet."
He laid his hand on her arm.
"Maud, just this once," he said--"do let me have it this once. It shall
be the last time. You see, the treatment will soon put me right now."
"Why do you want my leave?" said she.
"I don't know. It would make me more comfortable; I should enjoy it
more."
"Well, I propose a slightly different plan," she said. "I promise you
that I will go and get it for you myself at twelve o'clock to-night if
you still really want it. Hold on for six hours--five hours--and then,
if you ask me, I will take down the forged prescription myself. Only in
the interval you must do your best--your best, mind, not to think about
it. And you must go to bed at eleven. That's not much to ask, is it?"
He weighed this in his mind, and soon decided, for there was something
rapturous in the waiting, provided he knew he would soon get it.
"Yes, of course I'll wait," he said, "though I can't guess what your
point is. You really promise it me at twelve? And you won't tell
Cochrane?" he added, with a little spurt of glee, thinking that for some
inexplicable reason Maud was going to help him.
"Oh no, I won't tell him; you probably will. Now, if the sleepiness of
the sleigh-drive has gone off, I will read to you. It will help to pass
the hours till twelve."
It had required all Maud's faith to get through with this, but she had
understood and agreed with what Mr. Cochrane had said before he left. He
wanted, above all things, that Thurso should make an effort of
abstention, though it was only for a few hours, of his own accord, and
believed that at present he could hardly do so unless he was bribed, so
to speak. He had, in fact, suggested this plan.
"And if he wants it at twelve?" she asked.
"Keep your promise. But he won't. He can't."
* * * * *
All this Thurso thought over as he lay in bed next morning watching his
valet put out his clothes. He had gone to bed, as he had promised,
before eleven, hugging to himself the thought that midnight was coming
closer every minute. And then he had simply fallen asleep, and when he
woke the pale winter sunlight was flooding the room.
Yet, mixed with the exhilaration of this cold, bracing air, the memory
of the pleasant day before, the sense of recuperation after his
excellent night, there came the feeling as he got up and dressed,
turning over these events in his head, that he had been tricked. He had
no idea how the trick was done, or how it was that he could have gone to
sleep when, if he had but kept awake so short a time, he would have
enjoyed, and that with no sense of concealment or surreptitious dealing,
the one sensation that turned life into paradise. Certainly it had been
extremely neatly done. As a conjurer, Cochrane's sleight of mind, so to
speak, was of the most finished sort, for, as has been said, Thurso had
had no sense of his presence or intimation of his influence. Cochrane,
however, would be here to-day, and perhaps he would explain. But the
feeling of having been tricked somehow piqued him, and the pique was not
lessened by the fact that he could not guess how the trick was done. Of
course, it must have been suggestion or hypnotism in some form; but the
odd thing was that neither Maud nor Cochrane had suggested to him at all
that he should go to sleep. He had gone to sleep by accident without
intending to do anything of the sort, and without any feeling that
others were intending it for him.
While he was dressing he heard the sound of sleigh-bells, which probably
betokened Cochrane's arrival, and when he got downstairs he found him
and Maud already breakfasting.
Cochrane nodded to him.
"Good morning," he said. "Now Lady Maud will tell you that neither she
nor I have spoken a word about you this morning. I know nothing of what
has happened here since I left last night. I told her, by the way, just
before I left, to promise to get your drink for you, if you wanted it,
at twelve o'clock midnight. Now let's hear what happened."
"I went to Thurso's room at twelve and knocked," said Maud. "There was
no answer, so I went in. I called him several times, I even touched him,
but he didn't wake."
Cochrane laughed.
"I call that pretty good," he said.
"Oh, this is childish!" broke in Thurso. "Maud, do you swear that that
is true?"
"Of course."
"Well, you or Mr. Cochrane must have hypnotised me or drugged me," he
said.
"I know less about hypnotism than I know of the inhabitants of Mars,"
said Cochrane. "Or what do you think we drugged you with?"
"Well, how did you do it, then?" he asked. "I congratulate you, anyhow.
It was very neat."
"I didn't do it. I had no idea, at least, whether you were asleep or
awake at midnight. I only knew that Divine Love was looking after you."
Something rather like a sneer came into Thurso's voice.
"Did--ah! did Divine Love tell you so?" he asked.
"Yes, most emphatically. He has promised to look after us all, you know,
and do everything that is good for us. My word! you've never seen such
a beauty of a morning outside. Cold, though."
Thurso was undeniably in a very bad humour by this time. He felt
convinced in his own mind that there had been some hypnotic force or
suggestive influence used on him last night; but when a man denies it,
and simply attributes all that has happened to the working of Divine
Love, you cannot contradict him. Maud, however, had read to him last
night out of some Christian Science book, and he had found, he thought,
a hundred inconsistencies in it. Cochrane's last words, too, were
utterly inconsistent, simple as they sounded.
"How can you say it is cold," he asked, "when your whole Gospel is
rooted, so I understand, in the unreality of all such things--cold,
heat, pain, and so on? Or did I misunderstand, do you think, what Maud
read to me last night? I certainly gathered that neither cold nor heat
had any real existence."
"No; but we think it has," said Cochrane, with his mouth full.
"Then, is it not what the Reverend Mrs. Eddy calls 'voicing error' to
allude to the temperature of the morning?"
Cochrane laughed, a great big genial laugh.
"Oh, we don't--at least, I don't--make any claim to be beyond feeling
cold or heat when there is no reason for not feeling it."
"I beg your pardon."
Cochrane still looked amused and quite patient.
"Well, if for any cause it was necessary that I, in healing you, should
have to stand in a tub of ice-cold water, I don't imagine it would
affect me much. There would be a reason for my doing it. But in the
ordinary way we say, 'This is cold, this is hot.' They don't hurt. My
time is taken up in denying things that do hurt."
"Though nothing hurts."
"False belief hurts, and its consequences."
Maud joined in. Thurso was being tiresome and irritable.
"Dear Thurso, pass the marmalade, please. I have a false claim of
wanting some, so don't tell me there isn't any. I propose to indulge my
false claim. Oh, don't be severe with us; it is such a pity, and spoils
my pleasure."
"I was merely inquiring into these matters," said Thurso rather acidly,
for his mind still chafed at the trick, or so he called it, that had
made him go to sleep last night.
Maud's false claim of wanting marmalade was soon satisfied, and she got
up.
"Now, Mr. Cochrane has promised to give me instruction for half an hour,
Thurso," she said, "and after that I vote we go out. There's a lake, he
says, not far off. We might skate."
"And what is to happen to me?" he asked. "Am I to have treatment or
laudanum, or to be put to sleep again?"
Bertie Cochrane looked up at him suddenly. For half a second he allowed
himself to be stung, affronted, by Thurso's tone. But he recovered
immediately.
"Now, honestly, which would you like best?" he asked.
Then, though the moment was, as measured by time, an infinitesimal one,
in eternity his soul had thrown itself at the foot of Infinite Love,
reminding Him of His promise, like a child, calling Him to help.
The acidity and sneering criticism suddenly died out of Thurso's mind.
His moods altered quickly enough and violently; it may have been that
only.
"You know I want to be cured," he said.
Cochrane made a little sign to Maud, who left the room, leaving the two
men alone.
"Yes, I know you do," he said gently, "and you're going to be cured. But
you can help or hinder. All breakfast, you know, you've been hindering.
'Tis such a pity. You've been asking questions, which I love to be
asked, and love answering too, when I can answer them, not because you
wanted to know, but because you wanted to catch me out. Why, of course,
you can catch me out, because often and often I am bound by error and
claims of mortal mind. Also, I don't know absolutely everything--I don't
indeed. But when you want to catch me out like that, it means you are
adopting a hostile attitude to me and to that which I hope to bring you.
That hinders me. It isn't fair."
Cochrane shook his head at him, like some nice boy remonstrating kindly
with a friend whom he likes for not "playing the game." Then he went on
more seriously.
"Now, what's the trouble?" he said. "Why are you hostile? Is it just
because Infinite Love came to your help last night, and sent you to
sleep, instead of letting you drink that poisonous stuff? I guess it's
that. But to think or suggest that I hypnotised you or drugged you is
childish. To doubt that it all happened in any other way than the way it
did is error on your part. Why not accept a perfectly simple
explanation. Can you seriously offer any other? How often before, when
you've been wanting the stuff badly, and have known you would get it in
an hour, have you dropped off to sleep instead? Why, never. And what is
the first occasion of it happening? When I was treating you, bringing
you into the presence of Divine Love--not suggesting things either to
Him or you, but just leaving you together. I treated you for some four
hours last night, beginning soon after dinner."
"But it's all impos----" began Thurso. "I don't understand it, anyhow."
"That's a different matter," said Cochrane.
"But explain. If you've brought me there, is it all over? Am I cured?"
"No; because you have made a habit of error, and that habit has to be
broken. You've got to form a new habit of non-error. You will have to
put yourself in the hands of Love often and often before you get rid of
this. At least, I expect that, though we can't tell in what manner He
will choose to heal you. But I expect that: from what we know a habit
takes longer to cure than an occasional lapse. It is hard to forget a
thing we have got by heart. And we've got to ask, to keep on asking."
Again the hostile attitude was smothered, and interest took its place.
"But why?" asked Thurso. "Why, if error is all a mistake, without real
existence, does it bind us? How can it?"
"Gracious! I can't tell you," said Cochrane. "But there's no doubt it is
so."
"And you can heal people who don't believe?" he asked.
"Why not? But a man who didn't believe couldn't heal. And by the time
the cure is complete, as far as I know, the patient nearly always
believes."
Thurso was asking questions now in a different spirit to that which had
prompted them before. He knew the difference himself.
"You spoke of laudanum as poisonous stuff just now," he said. "But if
God made everything, including poppies, how can it be poisonous?"
Cochrane laughed.
"Well, we had better ask Lady Maud to come back," he said. "It was about
that very point that I was going to talk to her to-day. Now, if you care
to listen to that, since you have asked the question, pray do. But if it
bores you, why, if you'll read the paper or occupy yourself for half an
hour, we can then all start out skating, or what you please."
"But aren't you going to treat me?" asked Thurso.
"Oh, I was at it this morning for some time," he said. "I've paid you
the morning visit, so to speak."
Then again some spirit of antagonism entered into Thurso, and when Maud
came back he crossed over to the fire with the paper. But the news was
of no importance or interest, since it chiefly concerned American
affairs, which meant nothing to him, and by degrees he found himself
attending less to the printed page and more to the voice that sounded so
cheerful and serene. Sometimes he found himself mentally ridiculing what
was said, but yet he listened. It was arresting, somehow, and whether it
was only the personality of the speaker that arrested him, or what he
said, he found himself, whether approving or disapproving, more and more
absorbed in it.
Cochrane spoke first, as he said he was going to do, about the
apparently poisonous or sanative effects of drugs. These effects, he
maintained, were not inherent in the drugs themselves, but in the
belief of those who used them. It was quite certain, for instance, from
the purely medical point of view, that an injection of plain water could
be made, and that the patient, believing it to be morphia, would sleep
under the influence of what had no influence at all. He slept because he
believed he had been given something which would make him sleep. But,
from the Christian Science point of view, to use drugs for curative
purposes was merely to encourage the false belief that they could in
themselves cure, while, on the other hand, anyone who knew and fully
believed that they could neither be health-giving nor destructive of
health might, if he chose, eat deadly poison, and be none the worse for
it. But no one who held this belief would do so merely as a
demonstration to satisfy the idle curiosity of those who did not
believe.
Up till now he had been speaking quietly, as if all that was mere
commonplace and superficial. But now intenser conviction vibrated in
his voice.
"All this," he said, "though, of course, it is perfectly true, is only a
detail, a little inference that follows from the real and vital
proposition. How error originally came in I don't pretend to say. What
we have got to deal with to-day is that error is here in embarrassing
quantities, and that one of the commonest forms of it is to attribute
real existence--real, that is to say, in comparison with the reality of
Love--to material things. What is truly worth our concern is not to know
what does not exist, but to know what does. And one thing only exists,
and that is God, in all His manifestations. Originally, as we all know,
He made the world, and pronounced what He made to be good; but that
seems to have been before error entered. But the Infinite Mind, which is
Divine Love, is all that has any real being. And as light, pure white
light, can be split up, so that different beams of it appear as of all
the colours of the rainbow, so that when you say, "This is blue, this is
red," you are only speaking of aspects of light, so when you say, "This
is unselfish, this is courageous, this is pure," you are only speaking
of one of the colours of God. It is good that we should contemplate any
one of these, for each of them is lovely; but we must continually be
fusing them all together in our thought, so that they are mingled and
made one again. And when that is done, when by the power of the little
we know of the Infinite Mind we bring together all we can conceive of
love and purity and unselfishness, then it is God we are contemplating.
And whenever we contemplate Him like that, there is no existence
possible for sin or error or imperfection. They pass into nothingness,
not because we will them to do so, or make any longer an assertion of
their nothingness, but because their existence is inconceivable."
Thurso had dropped his paper, and was listening, still with occasional
antagonism and mental ridicule, but with interest; it was not so dull as
the paper. Besides, what if it was true? Then, indeed, his antagonism
would be that of some feeble soft-bodied moth fluttering against an
express train, and thinking to stop it. And there was something serenely
authoritative about these words. It was not as when scribes and
Pharisees spoke.
Somehow, also--it was impossible not to feel this--there was the same
authority not only in Cochrane's words, but in his life. The things
which he said were borne out by what he did, and it seemed as if it was
not his temperament that inspired his words, but the belief on which his
words were based that produced a completely happy temperament. Big
troubles, big anxieties, he had said, never came near him, but, what to
Maud was as remarkable, it appeared that the little frets and
inconveniences which she would have said were inseparable from the
ordinary life of every day were unable to touch or settle on him. Round
him there seemed to be some atmosphere, as of high mountain places, in
which the bacilli of worry and anxiety could not live; nothing could
fleck or dim the happiness of those childlike eyes. A child's faith, as
she had recognised last summer, shone there, and it was supported and
proved by the knowledge and experience of a man. Like all faith, it was
instinctive, but every hour of his life endorsed the truth of his
instinct.
And if either Thurso or Maud could have guessed how passionate and
furious was the struggle going on within him, during this first day or
two, between the desire of his human love and the absolutely convinced
knowledge that he had no right to use this intimacy into which he was
thrown with Maud by the call to cure her brother for his own ends, they
would have said that a miracle was going on before their eyes. The
tempest of desire, the storm of his longing for her, and, more potent
than either, the knowledge that he loved her with all the best that was
in him, continually beat upon him; but the abiding-place of his soul was
absolutely unmoved by the surrounding tumult, and not for a moment was
his essential serenity troubled.
It was the third day after his arrival at the house in Long Island, and
he and Maud were sitting together by the fire before evening closed in.
The weather this morning had suddenly broken, and instead of the
windless, sunny frost a south-easterly gale from the sea had set
chimneys smoking and ice melting, and drove torrents of volleying rain
against the windows of the shuddering house. Maud at this moment was
wiping her eyes, which the pungency of the wood-smoke had caused to
overflow.
"You were quite right," she said, "when you warned me not to have the
fire lit in this easterly room. And what makes it more annoying is that
you don't weep also. Is that Christian Science or strong eyes? Perhaps
they are the same thing. But I think we had better move into the other
room. I can't stand it."
The other room was the billiard-room, in which they did not often sit.
It was free from smoke, however, and the fire prospered. Thurso had gone
upstairs half an hour ago to write letters, and had not yet come back.
"He is so much better," she said, as she settled herself into a
comfortable chair. "His recovery has been quite steady, too. Do you any
longer fear a relapse?"
"Oh, I never feared it," he said, "in the sense that I ever imagined it
would baffle me. How could it? Nothing can possibly interfere with
truth. But sometimes--sometimes when error has gone very deep, and has
been allowed to rest there, you tap a sort of fresh reservoir of it just
when you think you are getting to the end of it. In one sense, I
suppose, I have feared that. It may not happen, I have no reason to
believe that it will, but I have seen very sudden attacks and onslaughts
of the most violent kind, even when one thought the cure was practically
complete."
"But surely he has made marvellous progress," said Maud. "Think; it is
only four days since you began to treat him."
"Yes; no one progress is more marvellous than any other, since all
progress is right, but it has been very smooth sailing so far. And--I
don't care whether I am being heretical or not, but I think I
am--conditions have been very favourable. Weather, climate, all external
influences, have a great effect. They have no real power to help or
hinder, but when a soul is bound by a material habit material conditions
do come in. It is no use to say otherwise. The depression caused by a
wet, windy day, such as to-day, is certainly a false claim, but it goes
and hobnobs with other false claims, and they sit round the fire and
talk.... But, take it as a whole, those who believe are less affected by
such things than those who do not. Mental worry is less felt by the
Scientist, because he knows it does not really exist. So he will
discount the depressing influences of weather; he won't so much mind a
windy or an oppressive day."
"And doesn't weather ever upset you?" asked Maud.
He laughed.
"Oh dear, yes," he said. "I've been having false claims all over me all
day, like--like a shower-bath, and all day I've been reversing them till
I'm dizzy."
"You have looked serene enough," she said. "I shouldn't have guessed
it."
"Well, I hope not, since it is by the serenity that comes from complete
conviction of the one Omnipotence that you fight them. If you abandon
that, what are you to fight them with?"
He looked at her, smiling; but then his smile faded, for he felt for a
moment that, in spite of himself, his love must betray itself by word or
gesture. And surely there was some answering struggle going on in her,
or was it only sympathy, only gratitude for what he had done, that made
that beacon in her eyes? Whatever it was she had it in control also.
"Won't you tell me of them?" she asked. "Sometimes telling a thing, the
very putting of it into definite words, shows us how shadowy and
indefinite it really is. I--I don't ask from inquisitiveness."
"I am sure of that," he said, "but the thing that has been worrying me
most to-day is--at present--absolutely a private affair. Then there is
another--I have been letting myself be anxious about your brother, and
that is very bad for him as well as me. When I was treating him this
morning all sorts of doubts kept coming into my mind. Half the time I
was fighting them, instead of giving myself entirely to him."
"Ah, but you never really doubted," she said. "I am sure that you denied
them."
"Yes, but I was feeble. I was a muddy, choked channel for the flowing of
Divine Love. And I am now. I have to be continually dusting and
cleansing myself. I have been having fears."
"Specific ones? Fear of some definite event?"
"Yes; I'm afraid I have gone as far as that. I have had fears of some
violent access of error coming upon him, and I have no reason for
fearing. Because if it did occur I should know quite well what to do.
There couldn't be anything to fear really. I guess he's been getting
well so quickly and smoothly that I have allowed myself to wonder
whether it could be true, though, of course, I knew it was. But that's
so like feeble mortal mind! The very fact that our needs are answered so
abundantly and immediately makes us wonder if it is real!"
Maud got up.
"What would you do if he had a relapse?" she asked.
"I couldn't say now, and I certainly mustn't allow myself to contemplate
it. But if it came, it would surely be made quite clear to me how to
demonstrate over it. We are never left in the lurch like that; it's only
the devil who plays his disciples false, and lets them have fits of
remorse just when they want to amuse themselves."
The flames on the hearth leaped up or died down in response to the great
blasts outside which squalled and trumpeted over the house, or paused as
if to listen in glee to the riot that they caused. The wind was like a
wild creature that, with frightened hands, rattled at the fastenings of
the windows as if seeking admittance, till a tattoo of sleet silenced it
or drove it away. Then a low, long-drawn whistle of alto note would
sound in the chimney, and suddenly rise siren-like to a screech of
demoniacal fury, or, like a passage for drums, the rattle of the
leafless branches of the tortured trees mixed with the sound of the surf
a mile away seemed to portend some deadly disaster. All hell seemed
loose in this infernal din of the elements.
Bertie Cochrane drew his chair close to the fire with a little shudder
of goose-flesh.
"I was awfully frightened by a storm once when I was a little chap," he
said, "and it has left a sort of scar on my mind which is still tender.
I always have to demonstrate to myself when there's a gale like this; I
don't seem to be able to get used to them. My father died in the middle
of that awful storm ten years ago, too. What a confession of feebleness,
isn't it? But I don't think you would have guessed how I hated storms if
I hadn't told you."
"No, I don't think I should," she said. "But I am so sorry. I am just
the opposite. There is nothing I love so much as a gale like this--a
maniac. There, listen to that!"
An appalling blast swept by the house, full of shrieks and cries, as if
the souls of the lost were being driven along in the pitiless storm, and
it seemed as if some window must have burst open, or some door
communicating with the night and the tempest have come unlatched, for
the thick double curtain which served instead of door between the
billiard-room where they sat and the hall outside was lifted a clear
foot from the ground, and a flood of cold air, strong as a wind, poured
in, making the candles flicker and stream, and stirring the carpet as if
a ground swell had passed beneath it. Cochrane jumped up.
"Something must be open," he said. "The wind has come right into the
house."
Maud got up with him, but before he had pulled the curtain aside for her
to pass, the strange wind ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and the
heavy folds fell to the ground again. But by the front-door, with the
latch still in his hand, stood Thurso. The rain dripped from his coat;
he was deluged, a waterspout. And Maud's heart sank when she saw him.
"Why, Thurso," she said, "what have you been doing? Have you been out in
this gale? I thought you were upstairs writing letters."
He looked from one to the other as he took off his dripping overcoat,
and spoke in a voice that both knew, a stammering, stuttering voice.
"I--I finished my letters," he said, "and then I went out to--to post
them--yes, post them. You couldn't expect a servant to go out in this.
Not--not reasonable. And besides, I--I had not been out all day. I--I
wanted a breath of fresh air. Sir James told me to be out as much as I
could. How did you hear me come in? I thought you were in the
drawing-room."
Maud's heart sank--sank.
"We were in the billiard-room," she said.
She looked at Cochrane. All thought of the gale, all trouble of nerves,
and whatever else it was that had been obsessing him all day, had
passed from him. His eyes were vivid and alight; his face alert again,
and full of that huge vitality that was so characteristic of it.
"Why, that was thoughtful of you," he said. "And perhaps a little errand
on your own account? Why, man, there's a packet in your coat--no, your
breast-pocket. It's bulging. I can see it from here."
Thurso's hand tightened on it.
"Yes; I can't help it," he said. "Besides, I am much better, am I not? I
must break myself of it by degrees, you know."
Outside the gale yelled defiance; here inside there was tense silence,
but it seemed to Maud as if some conflict mightier than that of the
elements was going on.
"Ah, do let me have it just this once!" cried Thurso. "I've been without
it for a week, and I swear to you by all I hold sacred----"
"By laudanum?" said Cochrane.
"Yes, by laudanum, that it shall be a fort-night before I take it again.
And don't send me to sleep this time. I--I think I should die if I
didn't have it."
"Let's have a look at the bottle," said Cochrane.
A look of futile, childish cunning came into Thurso's face.
"Oh, I think not," he said. "You--you might forget to give it me back;
one always may forget things. Look here, I--I'm going to take it. That's
all about it. I'm awfully grateful to you for all you have done, and
to-morrow I will beg your forgiveness, and ask you to go on curing me.
But this once you sha'n't stop me. Besides, there's no power either for
evil or good in drugs."
"That is blasphemous on your lips," said Cochrane quickly. "I beg your
pardon; I shouldn't have said that."
For that moment the light of anger had sprung into his eyes, but it only
dulled them, and he stood there in silence a space, while they
brightened again with that brilliant serenity and confidence which had
been there before. Then he looked at Maud, smiled encouragement to her,
and spoke.
"I never stopped you before," he said. "And I'm not going to stop you
now. But you laudanum-drinkers are such selfish fellows. You get away by
yourselves, and drink by yourselves, and never treat anybody else. I
want some of that too. Do you remember saying that perhaps it would end
in your converting me? Well, let's make a beginning to-night. Let's have
a jolly good drink together. You've got enough for us both, I expect, in
that big bottle."
Thurso still looked suspicious, and he kept his hand on his package. But
Cochrane's manner was perfectly sincere, and soon he gave a little
cackle of delight. His eyes, too, like Cochrane's, were very bright, but
they were bright with thirst and desire. His mouth, too, so watered that
he could hardly swallow quick enough to keep the saliva down.
"I don't know what you mean," he said, "but I'll do anything if you'll
let me take it, and not stop me. There's enough for me for to-night and
for you for a week. And may I get some more to-morrow?"
"You may do what you choose to-morrow," said Cochrane, "if you will give
me some to-night. I've often wanted an opportunity, a proper
opportunity, to take it. Why, you might say I had quite a craving for
it."
Maud was looking from one to the other, utterly puzzled. She came close
to Cochrane.
"Mr. Cochrane, what are you going to do?" she said. "What are you about?
I am frightened."
He looked at her quickly and radiantly.
"Ah, don't be frightened," he said. "You must help and not hinder. I
know I am right. Don't be afraid, and don't doubt."