MAN'S EXTREMITY
Rosemary approached the bed wherein lay the wreck of the girl she had
often, when in the grasp of mortal mind, envied. A great wave of
sympathy, not pity, swept over her, as she noted the weary eyes and the
lines of dissatisfaction and despair around Carolina's mouth. With an
impulse of love, she knelt at the bedside and took Carolina's little
thin hand in both of hers.
"Oh, my dear Carol," she said, "I am so glad to see you. I heard of
your accident while I was in California. I only got back yesterday."
"Would you have come to see me if I had not sent for you?" asked
Carolina, childishly.
"I was coming to-day. Mother suggested it, and I was only too happy to
put off everything of less importance and come at once."
"Your mother!" said Carolina, involuntarily. Then, as she saw Rosemary's
face flush, she hastened to cover her awkward exclamation. "I did not
know your mother knew me well enough to--to care!"
"Mother is very much changed since you knew her," said Rosemary, gently.
"She has been healed."
Carolina did not know the nature of Mrs. Goddard's infirmity, so she
forbore to ask of what. She only knew, as all the smart world knew, that
Mrs. Goddard did something dreadful, and did it to excess. It was
whispered that it was a case of drugs, but there were those, less kind,
who hinted at a more vulgar excess, either of which would explain the
dreadful scenes Mrs. Goddard had occasioned in public. Her intimates
asserted that a terrible malady was at the bottom of her habits,
whatever they were. At any rate, a somewhat scandalous mystery hung
over Mrs. Goddard's name, although she had been at the forefront of
every mad scene of pleasure the fashionable world could invent to kill
time.
"You are changed, too," said Carolina, wonderingly, more and more
surprised to see Rosemary Goddard--of all girls!--kneeling at her
bedside, holding her hand in a warm grasp, pressing it now and then to
emphasize an affection she felt shy of expressing, and talking in a
gentle, altogether unknown tone of voice. In Carolina's uncompromising
vocabulary she had privately stigmatized Rosemary as a snob, and rather
ridiculed her exaggeration of aristocracy. But the coldness, the tired
expression, the aloofness, were all gone. The weary eyes shone. The
bored eyebrows were lowered. The curved lips smiled. The withdrawn
hands were reached out to help. The whole attitude was radiant of
sympathy and love.
Rosemary could not forbear to smile at Carolina's unconscious scrutiny.
"What has done it?" asked Carolina, abruptly.
"Christian Science," said Rosemary, frankly.
Carolina was disappointed that she did not rush on and explain. She had
heard that Scientists thrust their views upon you and were instant in
season, out of season. She was piqued that Rosemary did not give her
the opportunity to argue and refute. Carolina wanted to be coaxed.
"The change in you is wonderful," she said at last. "I think it is
always a little insulting to tell a woman how she has improved, so I
will not harp on it. But I don't think I care to investigate Christian
Science. It has always bored me when people have tried to explain it to
me."
"You have a perfect right to leave it alone, then," said Rosemary.
"Christian Science does not need you in the least."
Although her tone was perfectly sweet and kind, it was dignified, and
Carolina's quickness at once comprehended the almost unbearable
priggishness of her remark.
"I did not intend to be rude," she said, hurriedly. Then she hesitated
as another thought struck her, and in a more timid voice she said:
"Did you mean that Christian Science does not need me as much as I need
Christian Science?"
Rosemary pressed her hand as her only reply.
"Can it help me?" cried Carolina, with sudden fervour. "I am a wreck,
physically and mentally. I have lost parents, fortune, home, health, and
ambition. I long to die! I have even lost my God!"
"Christian Science will give you back your God," said Rosemary.
"I hate God!" said Carolina, calmly.
"I used to hate Him, too," said Rosemary. "In the old thought there was
nothing else to do, for a just mind, than to hate Him. We had made an
image of hate and vengeance and set it up to worship and called it God."
"We? Did we do it?"
"Of course! Who else?"
"Then it is all our fault?"
"It certainly is not God's fault," said Rosemary. "He has declared
Himself to be Love Incarnate. If we have been stupid enough to endow Him
with human attributes of our own distorted imagination, is He to blame?"
"He never answered a prayer of mine in all my life!" cried Carolina,
passionately, looking at the ceiling as if to make sure that God heard
her accusation, and as if she hoped to irritate Him into hearing future
prayers.
"Nor of mine, either, until I learned how to pray."
"Who discovered the new way? That Eddy woman?"
"Mrs. Eddy did."
"How, I should like to know? Why was all this given to her to know and
not to some man?"
"By the way," said Rosemary, as if changing the subject, "I hear that
you speak both Japanese and Russian and that you did some important
interpreting at a banquet on board the Kaiser's yacht at Cowes, last
spring. Did you?"
"I believe so," said Carolina, wearily.
"However did you manage to master two such awfully difficult languages?"
"I studied years to do it."
"How strange that my brother was not called upon to do that
interpreting," said Rosemary, in a musing tone. "He was at that
banquet, and he is a man."
Carolina opened her lips to make an incautious reply, but caught herself
just in time. A gleam in Rosemary's eyes warned her.
"I see," she said, reddening. "But I must say you baited the hook
skilfully."
"I had to, in order to catch you," said Rosemary.
Carolina turned her head on her pillow restlessly.
"Tell me about how you came to accept it," she said, pleadingly.
"Well, I was so abnormally miserable! I had everything in the world I
wanted--apparently, yet my home was full of discord. I had only a big,
beautiful house. I wanted the love of a certain man. He held aloof
while all the others were at my feet. I prayed wildly to my God for
help, and He mocked me. Then I grew bitter and vengeful. I vowed that I
would have all that life held without God, for it seemed to me, in my
vicious interpretation of Him, that every time He saw me poke my head
out of my hole, He hit it--"
"Just to show that He could!" cried Carolina, almost with a scream of
comprehension.
"Exactly--just to show that He could. Well, then I plunged into a
madness I called gaiety, and grew more and more unhappy because I saw
that each day I was putting myself further and further from the man I
loved. Then, as if to fill my already full cup to overflowing, mamma
grew very much worse, so much so that I wanted her to die. I really felt
that she had exhausted all that _materia medica_ could do for her, and
that death was the only way to end it, both for her and for us. Then I
heard of a Christian Science practitioner, named Mrs. Seixas. I went to
see her, and, impossible as it may sound, in the first fifteen minutes,
I had told her the whole truth, mortifying as it was. But she seemed
not only to inspire confidence, but to radiate help. I felt that,
although I was a perfect stranger to her, yet she wanted to help
me--that she would go out of her way to do it, and that the reason she
would do it was because she loved much. I took her to mamma that same
day, and mamma's complete healing is so great a marvel that we never can
get used to it. Our happiness is almost too much to bear."
Rosemary's eyes filled with tears which rolled down her cheeks.
Carolina viewed her with an astonishment that she could ill conceal.
Rosemary Goddard to be talking, nay, more, feeling like that! A question
was so unmistakably in Carolina's eyes, which her tongue could not gain
permission to utter, that Rosemary found herself answering it.
"Then, when God had made me worthy of a good man's love, the desire of
my heart came to me, in so sweet and natural a way that it broke down
the last barrier of pride and left me humbly at the foot of the cross,
marvelling at God's goodness!"
Carolina drew Rosemary's face down to hers and laid her cheek against
it.
There was a long silence between them. Then Carolina said, fearfully:
"My hip is broken. Can that be cured?"
"God can do anything."
"So that I needn't use crutches?"
"Most certainly. You won't even limp. You will be made perfectly
whole!"
"Just as I was before?"
"Just as you were before--except these bonds."
Carolina thought a moment.
"But what do I want to get well for? I have lost Guildford!"
"Nothing can be lost in Truth!"
Rosemary felt her two hands grasped firmly, and without thinking
Carolina raised herself to a sitting posture in bed without pain.
"Do you mean to tell me that there is the--that Christian Science
teaches that there is any remote possibility of my getting Guildford
back?"
"Guildford belongs to you, and has never been lost. It is only error
which makes such a law for you. Truth emancipates everybody and
everything."
"I don't believe it!" said Carolina. "I can't! It's too good to be
true! I don't understand it!"
"You do understand it!" said Rosemary.
"What makes you think so?"
"Because you are sitting up in bed, and you raised yourself without
pain. That is because, for a moment, your soul accepted God as Love and
the source of all supply. Unconsciously your mind looked into His mind,
and you saw the truth."
"I believe that I could get up!" said Carolina, in a sort of ecstasy.
"I know that you can! Give me your hand."
Rosemary helped Carolina to dress, and in half an hour Carolina was
sitting, for the first time in months, in a chair by the window, with
Rosemary reading and marking for her the passages in "Science and
Health" which bore immediately upon her case. Carolina's mind opened
under it like a flower.
"Oh, I need so much teaching!" cried Carolina. "Who will help me?"
"Did you know that my mother is a practitioner and holds classes?" asked
Rosemary.
Carolina almost felt her new-found rock melting beneath her feet at this
intelligence.
"No, I did not. Will she take me? And will you help?"
"We will both do all we can for you with the greatest joy."
When Rosemary left, Kate came in and Carolina explained everything to
her.
Kate called Noel St. Quentin by telephone and told him that Carolina had
gone insane.
The next morning Carolina awakened with the happy consciousness that
something pleasant had happened. Hitherto she had gone to sleep, glad
of the respite of a few hours of unconsciousness. Simply not to
know--simply not to be awake and to realize her load of pain and
disappointment, had been her prayer. With her definite aim in life
swept away, she felt rudderless, forlorn, despairing.
But suddenly everything was changed. Her weakness vanished as if by
magic. Instead of dreading to open her eyes and clarify her brain for
thought her mind leaped to a lucid clearness without effort. The glow
of happiness which pervaded her she could liken to nothing so much as
the awakening in her hated school-days to the knowledge that to-day was
Saturday!
And what had brought her healing? Only a few hours' talk from Rosemary
Goddard which seemed to untangle all the knots of her existence and to
wipe the mists from the window-panes, out of which she had been vainly
trying to get a clear view of her life, its reason for being, and its
duties. Always the question with Carolina had been "To what end?" And
all the answers had been vague and unsatisfactory, until suddenly she
had stumbled by reason of her infirmity upon one who could answer her
vehement questions clearly and lucidly.
Emerson must have been largely of the thought when he wrote: "Put fear
under thy feet!" Carolina, with her sensitive, mystic nature had been,
in common with all imaginative persons, literally a slave to her fear.
What could it mean, this sudden freedom, except that she had found the
only true way out of bondage?
With a little assistance, she was able to dress herself and sit in a
chair to wait for the promised visit of Rosemary's mother.
She had known of Mrs. Goddard for years, although she seldom appeared in
public. No one spoke the name of her malady, but everyone knew of her
intense suffering and of the days she spent unconscious from the effects
of quieting drugs. Secretly every one expected to hear at any time of
Mrs. Goddard's madness or death, and Carolina had heard no news of her
except what Rosemary had said until Mrs. Goddard was announced and found
her, dressed and sitting up to meet her guest, with outstretched hand
and happy, smiling face. As usual Carolina's expressive countenance
betrayed her.
"No wonder you look surprised, my dear," said Mrs. Goddard, kissing the
girl on the cheek with warmth. "Rosemary evidently did not have time
yesterday to tell you what brought us both into Science. I was cured of
cancer in its worst form. Did you never know?"
"I knew you were very, very ill and suffered horribly," said Carolina,
"but--"
"I know. My friends were very kind. They never gave it a name. But
that was it."
"Oh, how wonderful!" cried Carolina, with shining eyes.
"Not half as wonderful as what it did for me mentally," said Mrs.
Goddard. "I used to feel that I had brought my malady on myself by my
way of life. I was the gayest of the gay in my youth, and in middle
life I found that stimulants had such a hold on me that I was not myself
unless I was drugged. I ran the gauntlet of those until I came to
morphine. There I stayed, and whether the morphine came of the cancer
or the cancer of the morphine I never knew. But the horror of my life I
can readily recall. It came to a point when the best physicians and
surgeons in New York said that there must be an operation and frankly
added that no one could tell whether I would come out of it or not.
Pleasant, wasn't it?"
Carolina only clasped her hands together, and Mrs. Goddard proceeded:
"Then Rosemary heard of Christian Science, and without saying a word to
me, she looked up the names of one or two practitioners and called. The
first one she did not care for and came away discouraged. But something
told her to try again, and her second attempt led her to the door of the
angel of healing who, under God, worked this cure, Mrs. Seixas.
Rosemary had not talked with her ten minutes before she knew that she
had been led aright. She wanted Mrs. Seixas to get into the brougham
and come at once, but according to Science practice she insisted upon
Rosemary's coming home and getting my consent.
"You can imagine that I was not slow to accept the hope it offered, and
that same afternoon I had my first treatment. Carolina, inside of an
hour the pain all left me! Child, you have suffered, so you know, you
can fathom as many cannot, what that means! I promised when the pain
returned to call her by telephone, instead of taking the morphine, but
it never did come back! She gave me treatments from her office every
hour for the rest of the day and came back after dinner that night and
gave me another. That was three years ago. To-day I am a well woman.
I eat whatever I please and not once has the old craving for stimulants
attacked me. I am a free woman and a very happy one!"
"Oh, Mrs. Goddard," cried Carolina, "thank you so much for telling me.
It helps me to know that I am being cured!"
"That you are cured."
"Yes, I must believe that."
"Pardon me--not so much believe it, as you must understand it and
understand why it is so. Every orthodox Christian is ready to state
glibly that God is All, but they never act as if they believed it and
that is the chief difference between members of churches and Christian
Scientists."
"Why does every one hate Christian Science so before they understand
it?"
"Christian Science is like a large crystal bowl full of the pure water
of life. Left alone it simply sparkles in the sunlight of God's smile.
But if you bring to it the alkali of ignorance and the acid of
prejudice, this clear water becomes the vehicle of a most energetic
boiling and fizzing. But when it has assimilated the two foreign
ingredients the residue sinks to the bottom harmlessly, the water
clarifies itself by its reflected power, and the crystal bowl resumes
its placid, sparkling aspect."
"I understand," said Carolina, "that I must have caused that commotion
rather often, for I used to hate Christian Science so vigorously and I
hated Mrs. Eddy so intensely that I used to rejoice at every adverse
criticism of her or her work, and I used to go to the trouble (when I
never would have bothered to make a scrap-book) of cutting things out of
the papers, and mailing them to my friends. I deliberately put myself
out in order to hate it more adequately!"
"I know," said Mrs. Goddard. "Isn't it strange, when you look back on
it in the light of your new understanding and your healing?"
"Ye-es," said Carolina, dubiously, "but to be quite truthful, I am
afraid I am not cured of all my prejudice yet!"
"Let it go," said Mrs. Goddard. "It will pass of itself. Don't fret
about it. Now tell me about yourself. You know we do not dwell upon
our ailments, mental or physical, but if you state them to me, as your
physician I can work more intelligently."
"Oh," sighed Carolina, "what is there not the matter with me! Where
shall I begin?"
"Let it console you to know in advance that there is a remedy in Divine
Science for everything. 'Not a sparrow falleth'--you remember! The
table of comfort for every woe is spread before you in the presence of
your enemies. Fear neither them nor to partake freely of God's gifts.
The more eagerly you come and the more you partake of the feast Divine
Love spreads, the more generously God will pour out His blessings upon
you."
Thus encouraged Carolina told her suspicions of the fate of Guildford
and of Colonel Yancey, without, however, mentioning him by name, until,
led on by Mrs. Goddard's sympathetic manner, she threw her whole soul
into the recital of her own and Mrs. Winchester's loss, and of how she
had hoped to restore Guildford.
Occasionally Mrs. Goddard interrupted her to ask a pertinent question.
It gave Carolina a feeling of comfort to realize her new friend's
mentality. Carolina, was so accustomed to knowing people of capacity and
brilliant intelligence that her mind reached after such naturally.
"Guildford is not lost to you," said Mrs. Goddard, just as Rosemary had.
"It will be restored to you, and you will be able to make good Mrs.
Winchester's loss. You must have harmony in your life. That is your
right--your God-bestowed right. You are an heir of God's boundless
affluence. It is a crime for one of God's little ones to be poor, or
neglected, or sick, or forsaken. Not to believe this is to doubt His
promises, which are sure, and to limit His power, which is limitless.
"We do not know the way, nor must we make laws nor dictate means. But
God is even now preparing the broad highway which shall lead your feet
straight to the gates of Guildford. Let Him find you humble, grateful,
and ready for the blessing. Don't fret. Don't worry. Don't be
anxious. 'Be still, and know that I am God!'"
For her only reply Carolina bowed her face upon her hands, and burst
into an uncontrollable fit of weeping.
Mrs. Goddard made no effort to check or comfort her, except by thought.
When she had finished, Mrs. Goddard nodded her head, saying:
"That did you good. Now for your physical self! Was the hip broken?"
"Yes, and set by six of the best surgeons in New York. Doctor Colfax is
the most hopeful, but even he says that if ever I grow strong enough to
leave off crutches, I shall limp all my life."
Mrs. Goddard smiled.
"Doctor Colfax is one of the best men I ever knew. His left hand knows
not what his right hand does in the way of charity, and his whole life,
instead of being devoted to amassing a fortune, is given up to the
healing of mankind."
"Why, I thought Scientists did not like doctors!" cried Carolina.
"We admire their intentions. Who could fail to? Among them are some of
the noblest characters I have ever known in any walk of life."
"But," cried Carolina, alarmed by this praise, "you don't believe that
what he says is true? Why, Rosemary assured me--"
"And I assure you no less than Rosemary," said Mrs. Goddard, "that God
is able and willing to heal all such as repent of their sins and come to
Him with an humble and contrite heart. You are the best judge of
whether your heart is right toward your enemies. Can you bring yourself
to love this man who has defrauded you of your inheritance? If not, you
have no right to expect God to restore it to you. Now think this over
while I give you a treatment."
Carolina watched her in so great a surprise that she forgot to think
over her grievance against Colonel Yancey. Mrs. Goddard leaned her
elbow on the arm of her chair, and pressed the tips of her fingers
lightly against her closed eyes as if in silent prayer. Her lovely face
framed in large ripples of iron-gray hair, her gown of silvery gray, her
figure still youthful in its curves, her slender, spiritual hands, her
earnest voice, and tender, helpful manner, formed so beautiful an image
in Carolina's mind, and she longed so ardently to model herself upon the
spirit she represented, that tears welled to her eyes when she
contrasted her own attitude with Mrs. Goddard's, and when she recalled
herself with a start, to the subject of Colonel Yancey, she found to her
surprise that his importance had so diminished that he had receded into
the background of her thought, and the thing she most ardently desired
was not Guildford, but to put herself right with God, her Father!
At the moment that this thought formulated in her mind, a flood of
divine peace poured over her whole spirit, and for the first time the
pain of her bereavement lessened, and then gently passed into
nothingness.
God her Father! A God of infinite tenderness and love! One who loved
her even as her own dear father had loved! One who was not responsible
for all the evil which had descended upon her! One who owed her only
love and protection, and a tenderness such as she had received in its
highest earthly form from her father.
In vain Carolina struggled to deify God above her earthly father. She
had loved him in so large and deep and broad a manner that she could
only realize her new God by comparing Him to her father. And Divine
Science had sent this new interpretation of God to her to take the place
in her sore heart of the ever-present aching sense of her great loss.
When Mrs. Goddard ended her treatment and opened her eyes, she sat for a
moment in silent contemplation of the transfigured face before her.
Carolina's beauty, as she thus, for the first time, beheld the face of
her Father, was almost unearthly. It was as that of the angels in
heaven.
A wave of generous thanksgiving and rejoicing swept over the soul of her
practitioner, for she knew that she had been permitted to be the
instrument in God's hands of healing a soul which had been sick unto
death. Carolina's bodily healing took second place in her thought, yet
her confidence was sound that that was even now being accomplished.
When Carolina met her eyes, she smiled. She had found peace.
"Now, dear child, I want to leave with you the ninety-first Psalm. Read
it with your new thought in mind, and you will realize that you never
have even apprehended it before. Remember, too, that you are not alone
any more. You are cradled in Divine Love, for God is both Mother and
Father to His children. 'The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath
are the everlasting arms!'"
Mrs. Goddard bent and kissed the girl, and Carolina, usually so
reserved, laid her flowerlike face against the older woman's cheek in a
silence too deep for words.
"Remember, dear, to call on me by day or night exactly as if I were
Doctor Colfax, for I am your physician now. But deny your error as soon
as it makes its appearance and you won't need to send for me. I will
come of my own accord every day and help you in your studies. Now I
must go. Rosemary and I love you already. Both Divine and human love
are pouring in upon you in such a manner that you shall not be able to
receive it. Good-bye and God bless you, my dear!"