THE TRIAL OF FAITH
To understand Carolina's complete and instant acceptance of the
doctrines of Christian Science in addition to her healing, it is
necessary to take a more intimate view of her character.
A person of little or no understanding, or of little or no depth, would
naturally have accepted the boon of restored health, whether she ever
went any further in the doctrine or not. But Carolina was different.
To her the blessing was in a change of thought. Marvellous as she felt
her healing to be, her greatest gain was in the peace and happiness
which descended upon her like a garment.
To be sure she had been in a desperate plight, both physically and
spiritually, when this wonderful hand was stretched out to her in her
darkness and despair, yet many to whom it reaches out refuse its grasp
simply from a blind prejudice. Having ears, they hear not, nor will they
when they might. It argues a particularly lovely spirit to be able to
accept so freely and gladly. Carolina was not free from prejudice. Far
from it. But she was not stupid. Aside from a clear, spiritual
understanding, to be able to accept Christian Science demonstrates no
small degree of mentality, clearness of perception, and a capacity for
higher education. The Science of Metaphysics does not appeal to fools,
and only wise men pursue it. Christian Science is the only religion
which calls in any dignified way upon a man's brain. All the others
stuff one's intelligence with cotton wool, bidding the questioner not to
question but believe. Believe what his ordinary human intelligence
repudiates. "If you don't understand all of me," says popular religion,
"skip what you don't understand and go on to the next. If you keep on
long enough you will find something that you can believe without any
trouble. Let that satisfy you. Forget the rest."
But when a metaphysical interpretation of the Scriptures comes along
saying: "Ask any question you will and I will give you an answer that
will satisfy the best brains and highest order of intelligence among
you, for the day of blind belief is past, and the day of understanding
is at hand," then the highest compliment which can be paid to the
mentality of the most brilliant man and woman, is to say: "They are
Christian Scientists."
There may be--there are, many erratic minds attracted by Christian
Science, but there are no complete and utter fools among its followers,
for the mere fact that a man has sense enough to grope after the very
best, instead of being satisfied with that which never completely
satisfied the mentality of any man or woman of real intelligence, is an
evidence that some degree of wit must be entangled in the meshes of his
foolishness. While on the other hand it is doubtful if there ever was a
forty-year old sect in the knowledge of man which numbered the multitude
of brilliant minds which are within the annals of Christian Science.
Carolina, all her life, had been, not only surrounded by, but familiar
with the best. Her father's and mother's brilliance and good taste had
drawn around them many of the finest minds in Europe, so that the girl's
mentality was as ripe for the highest form of religion as it was of
literature or art.
She plunged into the study of it with all the ardour of an enthusiastic
intelligence, and heaved a sigh of relief when she realized that at last
she had found a dignified religion, free from every form of
superstition, from all material symbols, and, above all, one which made
it possible intelligently to obey the command, "Be ready always to give
an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in
you" (1 Peter iii. 15).
Her greatest fear was that she would be unable to curb the hot temper
which mortal mind had made into the law that it was a Lee inheritance.
She particularly dreaded her first interview with Noel St. Quentin,
Kate, and Cousin Lois. She had yet, also, to face Doctor Colfax. She
had not seen him since, by Mrs. Goddard's advice, she wrote him a frank
little note, saying that her healing had been marvellously hastened by
Christian Science, and that she had so much faith in it that she felt
compelled to relinquish all claim on materia medica, but that, in doing
so, she wished to acknowledge most gratefully all that his skill had
accomplished in her case.
It was a hard note to write, for Kate's assertion, which at first
Carolina had indignantly repudiated, that Doctor Colfax was falling in
love with her, had proved true, and Carolina knew that this dismissal of
him as her physician would indicate that he need expect nothing more of
her in any other capacity, either.
He wrote her a polite but stiff letter of acknowledgment, and soon
afterward went away for a brief vacation.
Carolina realized how much antagonism she had aroused among her own
immediate friends, and she spent many hours consulting Mrs. Goddard how
to conduct herself with tact.
When Mrs. Winchester returned from Boston, Carolina experienced her
first battle with error. She possessed a high spirit, and to see Cousin
Lois sit and look at her in silent despair, with tears rolling unchecked
down her cheeks, irritated Carolina almost to the verge of madness, so
that instead of waving aloft the glorious banner of a new religion,
Carolina found herself longing to box Cousin Lois's ears. Anything,
anything to stop those maddening tears!
She could only control herself by a violent effort. Mrs. Winchester,
like Kate Howard, was an ardent churchwoman, and to both these women
Carolina's acceptance of Christian Science was the greatest blow which
could have fallen on them, short of her eloping with the coachman. They
felt ashamed, and in no small degree degraded.
"Whatever can you see in it?" demanded Mrs. Winchester, plaintively, one
Sunday morning just after she returned from church. "Why need you go to
their church? Why can't you continue in the church you were baptized
into as a baby? I don't care what you believe, just so you go to the
Episcopal church! It is so respectable to be an Episcopalian! Oh,
Carolina, as I sat there listening to that sermon to-morrow--oh,
Carolina, how can you laugh when I am so serious!"
"Do forgive me, Cousin Lois, but you couldn't be any funnier if you said
you had seen something week after next!"
"I am glad to know that a Christian Scientist can laugh," sighed Mrs.
Winchester, whose mild persistency in investing the new thought with
every attribute that she particularly disliked was, to say the least,
diverting.
"Am I improved or not since I began to study with Mrs. Goddard?"
demanded Carolina, with recaptured good humour.
"I don't see any improvement, my dear. To me you were always as nearly
perfect as a mortal could be!"
"Dear loyal Cousin Lois!" said Carolina.
She seldom kissed any one, but she kissed Mrs. Winchester, who blushed
with pleasure under the unusual caress.
"Perhaps," she added, cautiously, "you are a trifle more demonstrative,
but I always thought your apparent coldness was aristocratic."
"It wasn't," said Carolina, decidedly. "It was because I didn't care."
"And now?" questioned Mrs. Winchester, wistfully.
"Now," cried Carolina, "I care vitally for everything good!"
"You always did, I think," said Mrs. Winchester. "Even as a child you
always gravitated toward the highest of everything. You are too
remarkable a girl, Carolina, to throw yourself away at this late day on
a fad which will die a natural death of its own accord."
"May I be there to see when Christian Science dies!" cried Carolina,
brightly. She felt ashamed that she had ever lost patience with any one
who loved her as idolatrously as Cousin Lois.
"Doctor Colfax--I forgot to tell you that I met him on the train, and
that he asked fifty questions about you that I couldn't answer--Doctor
Colfax will certainly be nonplussed when he sees you walking with only
that cane. He told me he never expected to see you walk without two
crutches."
"Then you do give Christian Science credit for that much, do you?" asked
Carolina.
"Oh, yes. It must have some wonderful power. I simply don't understand
it, that's all. And Carolina, it seems so--excuse me, but so
disreputable!"
"Does it? I hadn't thought of it in that light."
"And so unsexing! Don't you have women in the pulpit?"
"Yes. Christian Science recognizes woman as the spiritual equal, if not
the spiritual superior, of man."
"There!" said Mrs. Winchester, triumphantly, as if having scored a point
against the new religion. "Yet woman caused man's fall!"
"No, she didn't, Cousin Lois. Christian Science doesn't take that
allegory as history."
"Oh, Carolina! Carolina! You are indeed in a sad way when you forsake
the faith of your ancestors! Such disloyalty cannot fail to have a
depressing effect upon your character!"
"On the contrary," said Carolina, "it is as exhilarating to kick down
all one's old, stale beliefs as a game of football."
At this Mrs. Winchester's asthma returned. There was nothing left for
her to do, in her state of mind, but to choke or to swoon.
A few evenings later Doctor Colfax telephoned to Kate that he would drop
in for a few minutes after dinner.
"H-he can't stand it for another minute, Carolina!" cried Kate. "I am
crazy to see his face when you walk in without your crutches! C-Carol,
couldn't you take an extra treatment or so, and come in without even
your c-cane?"
Carolina's eyes blazed with joy at this unconscious admission on Kate's
part that she believed even that little in the new faith.
For reply Carolina rose by means of the arms of her chair, and without
any material aid whatsoever took half a dozen steps.
"Oh, Carol! Carol!" shrieked Kate, bursting into tears. "Y-you never
even limped! Oh, it's l-like the d-days when Christ was on earth to
s-see a m-miracle like that!"
She seized her friend in her arms and almost lifted her from her feet.
"D-do it to-night, Carolina, and we'll knock their eye out! I'll get
the whole family together, a-a-and you j-just walk in like that! Will
you?"
"Yes, if you will go away and let me work over it this afternoon. And
don't tell anybody!"
"Oh, certainly not! That would spoil the surprise."
"I don't mean for that reason. I mean that outsiders' adverse thought
would hinder my work. Mortal mind makes false laws."
"C-could you just as well t-talk United States when you are heaving your
ideas at me?" pleaded Kate. "Y-you know I'm not on to the new jargon,
and I fail to connect more than half the time."
As Carolina laughed, Kate nodded her head with great satisfaction.
"I am glad to see that Christian Science has not destroyed your royal
sense of humour," she said. "Now I'm off to let you w-work!"
But when the door closed behind Kate, a prolonged sense of
discouragement seized Carolina. She looked forward to the evening with
dread. Kate made fun of it, Doctor Colfax was coming purposely to scoff,
and she knew that she was to be made conspicuous because of her
religion.
She tried to walk without her cane, but her knee bent under her and she
fell to the floor. Her first impulse was to burst into tears, but, as
she lay there alone, too far from the bell to summon help, apparently
without human aid, she fancied she heard the voice of Mrs. Goddard
repeating: "For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee
in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash
thy foot against a stone."
She said this over and over to herself, and it comforted her. Then the
face of Mrs. Goddard came before her mental vision, and the lovely
earnestness of her voice sounded in Carolina's ear. She remembered her
last words, which now came back to her with strange and timely
significance:
"The way will not always be smooth beneath your feet. Error in the
guise of fear, selfish or vainglorious thoughts, revenge, self-pity, or
desire to shine before others will sometimes cause you to stumble and
fall. But at such times, remember to blame, not circumstances nor
others, but your own faulty thought. Be severe with yourself. Then
turn your thought instantly to the Source of your supply. No one can
help you, Carolina, but God, your Father, Divine Love, the All in All of
your existence, your very Reason for being. Realize that God is all
there is. Beyond Him there is nothing and nothingness. Breathe His
spirit. Drink in His divine power. Make yourself one with Him, and you
will instantly find that the mists which covered the surface of your
spiritual reflection of His image will disappear, and you will begin to
reflect His government clearly. At that same moment, you will be healed
of your infirmity."
As she repeated these last few words aloud, a feeling of complete
security took possession of her, and she rose, first to her knees, then
to her feet, and walked confidently to her chair by the window.
In great thankfulness she took her Bible and read the fifth chapter of
Luke, and, when she came to the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth verses,
she read them three times, with a heart full of gratitude.
Still she was not satisfied. She was groping after a sign, and she read
on until she came to the words, "And when they bring you unto the
synagogues, and unto the magistrates and powers, take ye no thought how
or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say. For the Holy Ghost
shall teach you in that hour what ye ought to say."
"The Holy Ghost!" thought Carolina. "I wonder what that really is.
That is one of the things I never could understand in the old thought."
She turned to the Glossary in "Science and Health," and there the first
definition of Holy Ghost was "Divine Science."
"I am answered," she said, with a sigh of complete satisfaction. "For
the first time in my life I begin to understand the fourteenth chapter
of John."
She leaned her head against the window-pane to watch the postman come
down the street. Then she heard his whistle, and presently the maid
brought her a letter. She asked the maid to turn on the electric light,
and, when she had done so and left the room, Carolina read the following
letter:
"LONDON, May 6, 19--
"MY DEAR MISS CAROLINA:--You have rejected my suit so often, when I had
no inducement to offer you except a heart which beats for you alone,
which seems to be no temptation to you, that I shall not pay you the
poor compliment of offering myself to you again when, as you must have
heard, I have become the owner of Guildford.
"But, having heard of your great misfortune and of your change of
religion, and knowing that you love the old home so ardently that its
atmosphere might effect a cure when all else failed, I beg you to accept
Guildford as it stands, as a gift from your father's old friend,
"WAYNE YANCEY."
Carolina's first impulse, having read the letter twice, was one of the
cold fury she used to feel when a child, and she turned pale with a rage
which was unspeakable in its violence.
Too well she saw through the malice of the whole affair. Colonel Yancey
knew that, after her first impact of anger had passed, her next thought
would be to wish she could buy the estate back, and these terms he
intended to make prohibitive. Carolina wondered if he expected to wear
out her patience, and so force her to marry him, or what? She could not
hope to follow with accuracy the tortuous windings of a mind as
intricate as Colonel Yancey's, and she despaired of ever realizing that
the labyrinth could untwist into the straight and narrow way to which
she was accustomed. But, so far from crushing her, this letter simply
roused in her the valiant spirit of the Lees. So far from feeling
downhearted, she began to sing.
But it was not a worldly courage which was sustaining her. It was the
spirit which had grown out of her afternoon of work.
She deliberately took her cane with her as she went down to dinner,
although she felt that she could walk without it. She knew that Kate
wanted the surprise to be complete.
With this end in view, she sat at the table until the footman announced
Doctor Colfax, and then she allowed all the others to precede her.
"N-now wait until we have all had time to shake hands, and a-ask him how
he enjoyed himself, and give him a chance to be disappointed or
g-gloating, just as he feels, because y-you aren't down. Then y-you
skate in and w-watch him drop! We'll have him a Christian Science
practitioner b-before we are done with him!"
Carolina obeyed.
They were all there,--Mr. and Mrs. Howard, Kate, Cousin Lois, Doctor
Colfax, and Noel St. Quentin, and all were under the impression that
Carolina would never be able to walk without some slight support. So
that, when she walked slowly through the door, taking her steps with
great care, that she might more gloriously reflect the Light, a hush
fell upon them all. They did not greet her. They rose to their feet and
stood watching her in perfect silence, and it was not until Kate sobbed
in her excitement that the spell was broken.
Noel St. Quentin bit his lips, and Doctor Colfax's face went from red to
white in an emotion which no one could fathom. Was he chagrined to see
the woman he loved cured? Did he grudge her healing at other hands than
his?
They all began to speak at once. Only Mr. Howard, Kate's father, sat
back and watched and listened.
Roscoe Howard was a remarkable man in many ways. He possessed a
critical mind, large wealth, great depth of character, and a sureness
and quickness of perception, which had all contributed to his success in
life. He was a student, above all, of human nature, and he had insisted
upon Kate's willing hospitality to her friend, partly from affection to
the daughter of his old friend, Winchester Lee, and partly to see what
effect such an avalanche of misfortunes would have upon the proud spirit
and high-strung nature of Carolina. When he heard of her embrace of
Christian Science, he became still more interested. He had once gone in
to sit with her when her arm was bandaged from wounds from her own teeth
in one of her fits of despairing rage.
Therefore, when he learned from his daughter that this was to be the
girl's first appearance before her old friends, he could imagine the
ordeal it would prove to her, and in his own mind he said: "Carolina
will show us to-night whether she is The Lady or The Tiger!"
At first they all tried to be polite and remember that they were
civilized, but soon that curious unable-to-let-it-alone spirit which
Christian Science invariably stirs in mortal mind began to manifest
itself in hints and covert remarks and side glances and meaning
silences, until Carolina calmly looked them in the eyes and said, in her
gentlest manner: "I am perfectly willing to talk about it."
Kate clutched her mother's arm.
"I-isn't Carolina a d-dandy?" she whispered. "Takes every hurdle without
even stopping to measure it with her eye!"
"Well, doctor, since Carolina has given us permission to discuss it,
what have you to say about it?" asked Mrs. Howard.
"I can simply say this," said Doctor Colfax. "I don't understand it.
But, then," he added frankly, "I don't understand the Bible, either."
"Then that is why you don't understand my cure, doctor," said Carolina,
quietly, "for it is founded on the promises which Christ explicitly made
to His disciples."
"To His disciples,--yes," replied Doctor Colfax, quickly, "but not to
us. We are not His disciples."
"If you are a thorough Bible student," said Carolina, "please tell me
the exact words of His promise."
"I am not. You have me there, Miss Lee."
"Well," persisted Carolina, "where did He limit the power He gave, and
which you admit existed at one time, to His disciples? Did He ever say,
'I will give it to you and to no other?' or 'I will give it to you
during my lifetime, but after my ascension it will return unto me,
because you will no longer have need of it?'"
"No, I can't remember any such passages," admitted Doctor Colfax.
"W-well, He never s-said anything of the kind," put in Kate. "I don't
know much, but I know that!"
"What did He say, Carolina?" asked St. Quentin. "Do you remember the
exact words?"
"Yes, I do. In one place He said: 'He that believeth on me, the works
that I do shall he do also. And greater works than these shall he do
because I go unto my father.' And at another time He said: 'Heal the
sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils. Freely ye
have received. Freely give.' Now when did the time limit to those
commands end?"
"Oh, nonsense, Carolina!" said Mrs. Howard, with the amused toleration
of the already saved. "How can you bring up such absurd speculations?
All those questions have been settled for us by the heads of the
Churches years and years before we were born."
"They were settled, dear Mrs. Howard, for all who choose to accept such
decisions, but how about those of us who have questioned all our lives
and never found an answer which satisfied? I can remember, as a little
girl in Paris, I used to come home from the convent and ply my father
with this very question: 'Why can't priests and preachers heal in these
days the way Jesus commanded?'"
"Well, does Mrs. Eddy have the nerve to assert that she rediscovered the
way to perform Christ's miracles?" asked Doctor Colfax.
"Mrs. Eddy asserts that in 1866 she discovered the Christ Science, or
the power of healing disease as Jesus healed it, by a mental process
which is so simple that to all Christian Scientists Christ's so-called
miracles are not miracles at all, but as simple and natural as any other
mental phenomenon which has become common by reason of its frequency."
"That sounds like sacrilege," said St. Quentin.
"It sounds like tommy-rot!" said Kate.
"And yet," put in Mr. Howard, "we must all admit that Carolina has been
miraculously healed. Do you not admit that, doctor?"
Doctor Colfax's face became suffused. He bit his lip, then said, with
quiet distinctness:
"If I had cut off a man's leg with my own hands, and Mrs. Eddy, under my
very eyes, caused a new leg to grow in the place of the old one, I would
not believe in her or in anything she taught!"
Expressions of varying emotions swept over the faces of his listeners at
this sincere statement of unbelief,--some were triumphant, some
incredulous, some surprised, and one contemptuous.
"But, doctor, when you see Christian Science enrolling the names of the
most brilliant minds; when you see the loveliest women forsaking a life
of ease and pleasure and becoming practitioners,--Christian Science
doctors just as selfless and single-minded as you--"
"If you are referring to that depraved woman who claims to have cured
you, Miss Lee, that morphine fiend, that drunkard, that reformed
character, I beg that you will not name her as a physician in any sense
of the word. The medical profession is too noble to be degraded in such
a manner!"
"Oh, doctor," cried Carolina, reproachfully, "if you could only hear the
beautiful way in which she speaks of you!"
"Oh, doctor, aren't you a little severe?" asked Mrs. Winchester.
Noel St. Quentin smothered an amused laugh.
"Pooh!" cried Kate. "Why pay any attention to him? He's o-only a man,
and men are always wrong! H-he's talking through his h-hat, that's
w-what he's doing. He's jealous."
She was sitting near St. Quentin, and, turning to him under cover of the
conversation, she murmured:
"What are you laughing at behind your hand?"
"I was simply remarking a phenomenon that I have often remarked before,
and that is, that Christian Science seems to possess a peculiar power--"
"Oh, oh! are you going over to the enemy?" asked Kate.
"You didn't let me finish. I was going to say that it possesses a
peculiar power of making well-bred people forget what is due a civilized
community. I have never, I think, heard so much rudeness, such rank
inelegance, such brutal prejudice expressed on any subject which polite
society discusses. It takes Christian Science every time to make people
absolutely insulting to their best friends."
"Funny, isn't it? I don't mind it so much since Carolina got into it;
she is so honest and so brave about answering it, b-but I used to hate
it so it c-cankered the roof of my mouth j-just to speak the name of
it."
"Another curious thing I have noticed," said St. Quentin, speaking for
Kate's ear only, "is that those who hate it most violently at first
generally end by adopting it, so look out!"
"You don't mean it!" cried Kate, in such a horror-stricken voice that
every one heard her. "D-don't ask me what we are t-talking about,
because it is not f-fit for you to hear," she cried.
"Carolina," said Mr. Howard, tactfully, "please tell us what you have
found in Christian Science. I have always had a great respect for your
intelligence, and I am not prepared to find it befogged in this
instance, or that you have been deceived."
He never forgot the luminous gratitude of her look.
"Thank you, dear Mr. Howard. Let me see if I can tell you what it is
and what it has done for me. It is the theory of mind over matter, put
in practice and lived up to. It teaches us to understand before we are
called upon to believe. It is the study of Christian metaphysics, or
metaphysics spiritualized. It takes all the impossible out of the
Scriptures, and makes them understandable, not to a fool, but to the
wise man,--the man capable of understanding a great matter. Having done
this for the brain, it teaches so absolutely a God of Love, a God who is
both father and mother in the love and yearning tenderness of His
thought toward us, that it eliminates all fear from our lives. All
fear! Can you take that in at once? It makes the ninety-first psalm a
personal talk between a father and his dearly loved child. To me it
sounds just as if daddy were talking to me from the Beyond. That would
be just his attitude toward me if he possessed God's power. And if you
believe it,--if you can once let yourself believe it, it makes this
earth instantly into heaven."
"Yes, yes, I can see that it would," said Mr. Howard. "But do not
Scientists believe that it also prospers you in a worldly sense?"
"Are you giving Kate everything that heart could wish now, and are you
going to leave her all your money when you die?" asked Carolina.
"That knocked his eye out," murmured Kate, in an aside to St. Quentin,
but he observed that she looked singularly pleased when Carolina scored
a point.
Mr. Howard waved his hand in a slightly deprecatory way.
"Ah, that is just it!" cried Carolina. "You are thinking, 'Oh, but,
Carolina, I am Kate's own father, and God is just God!' Heavenly Father
doesn't mean a thing to most Christians. Christian Scientists can't
shirk their beliefs. If they do, they are just as they were
before,--pretending or rather trying to believe what they feel that they
ought to believe, but getting no satisfaction and no comfort from it. A
Scientist who does not put his belief into practice can neither heal his
own body nor others. So he is literally forced to be honest."
"Well," said St. Quentin, "I can easily see where the supreme and
slightly irritating happiness of Christian Scientists comes in. I could
be supremely happy myself if I could believe in it."
"So could I," declared Kate. "A-and I suppose it is sheer envy on my
part, when I see their Cheshire-cat grins, to want to slap their faces
for being happier than I am!"
"But what makes them so happy?" asked Mrs. Winchester, plaintively.
"Why should they be any happier than we are? We both have the same
Bible, and I flatter myself that I am just as capable of understanding
it as any self-styled priestess of a new religion."
"But _do_ you understand it, Cousin Lois?" asked Carolina, gently.
"I understand all that is good for me, dear child. I understand all that
our Lord wants me to, or He would have made me Mrs. Eddy and made Mrs.
Eddy, Mrs. Winchester. We are fulfilling God's will."
"I d-don't believe that, either," whispered Kate to St. Quentin. "I--I
have to admit that Carolina's God is a more consistent Being than Mrs.
Winchester's."
"But you have not answered my question, Carolina," said Cousin Lois.
"What makes us so happy? Well, I wonder if I can tell you. In the
first place, it is the relief of dropping all anxiety. We don't have to
worry about a single solitary thing. We put all responsibility off on
God. You know it says 'Cast thy burdens on the Lord!'"
"But how can you?" cried Kate. "I--I'm sure I'd like to, but I c-can't
get my own consent."
"That's exactly it. Well, we do it. Then, having put all fear out of
our lives, what is there left to make one unhappy? If you are no longer
afraid of losing your health or your money or of dying or of being
maimed or injured in accidents by land or sea, or of old age or any
misfortune coming to any of your dear ones, so that it leaves you
perfectly free to come and go as you please, to eat at all hours things
which used to produce indigestion, to eat lobster and ice-cream
together, drink strong coffee late at night and drop off to sleep like a
baby, and, if it eliminates all dread of the unseen and the unknowable,
what more is there left to fret about, I'd like to know?"
"How about waking up in the middle of the night to worry about your
debts?" asked St. Quentin.
"The answer to that is that, at first you begin by remembering that as
God is the Source of all supply, if you are consistent, the way will be
opened to pay your debts. And, after you once master that comforting
fact, it is easy to see that the next thing will be that you won't wake
up in the night to worry or even to think."
"Carolina!" exclaimed Mrs. Winchester, "do you mean to tell me that you,
who used to lie awake hours and hours every night of your life, can
sleep through till morning?"
"I do, Cousin Lois. Often actually without turning over. And with no
bad dreams. Can you believe me?"
Doctor Colfax rose abruptly, as if he could bear no more, and when, with
a little more leave-taking, St. Quentin had offered to drive Mrs.
Winchester back to Sherman's in his new motor-car, and the Howards and
Carolina were left alone, Mr. Howard turned to Carolina and said:
"Carol, I have heard a great deal, here and there, about your interest
in Guildford and your wish to restore the place. Would you mind telling
me your plans?"
"Not in the least, Mr. Howard. The place has been sold under its
mortgage, as you doubtless know, but it is of no more value to its
present owner than any of the land surrounding it, which is equally
arable. Its only value to us was because it was our ancestral estate.
It has a water-front, and, having been left intact for over two hundred
years, its timber is enormously valuable. If I owned it, and had a
little working capital, I could pay off the mortgage and restore the
house with the timber alone."
"Why, how is that, Carolina? Is it so extensive as all that?"
"It is only about two thousand acres,--a mere handful of land to a
Northern millionaire, who buys land along the Hudson and in the
Catskills and Adirondacks of ten times that amount, but that is a very
decent size for a Southern plantation. But the value is in the kind of
timber. It is long-leaf yellow pine, which produces turpentine and
rosin first, by the orchard process, then what is left is suitable for
the lumber men, and the fallen trees and stumps for the new process of
making turpentine. My plan was to sell the turpentine rights to the
orchard people for, say, three years, then sell the timber, and
afterward sell the stumpage and refuse to the patent people, or perhaps
erect a plant myself. There is a tremendous profit in turpentine and a
constant and ready market."
Mr. Howard sat in a large armchair, with his finger-tips together and
his head bent forward, looking at the girl from under his heavy
eyebrows. He was amazed at her statement of Guildford's possibilities.
Hitherto he had regarded her unknown plan as probably only a woman's
sentimental idea, and doubtless wild and impracticable.
"You say that the timber has been untouched for two hundred years?"
"Practically untouched. We had it examined four years ago, and I have
heard of nothing since."
"Is any of this land suitable for cotton?"
"Yes, for both cotton and rice, and I should raise both. There is no
reason to my mind why a Southerner should not be as thrifty with every
acre of ground as the Northerner is, nor why every inch should not be
made to yield in America as it does in France."
"Right! right! And the Southerners will accept such incendiary
sentiments from you, because you are one of them, but, when I ventured
something on the same order, but much more mild, I was called 'a damned
Yankee,' who wanted to 'make truck-farmers out of gentlemen.'"
"Oh, oh!" laughed Carolina, merrily. "How like them that sounds! You
know, dear Mr. Howard, they think we have no gentlemen in the North."
"T-they aren't far from it," cried Kate. "There are f-few gentlemen
anywhere in the world, according to m-my definition of one."
"You say Guildford is sold?" said Mr. Howard.
"Yes, Sherman was obliged to mortgage it, but he did so without knowing
how dearly I loved it. Then some one bought the mortgage and foreclosed
it."
"Why, who could have done such a thing? There must have been a motive.
Has coal been discovered on any of the surrounding property?"
"Not that I know of," said Carolina, in a guarded tone.
"Then there must have been some motive in the mind of the purchaser,"
said Mr. Howard, decisively.
Carolina was silent.
"Can you throw any light on the subject, Carol?" he persisted, but his
manner was so kindly that Carolina could not take offence.
Her reticence arose from two causes. One, her natural wish not to bruit
her private affairs abroad, and the other that Mrs. Goddard had enjoined
strict silence on her. "Nothing can be lost in Truth," Mrs. Goddard had
said, "nor are the channels of God's affluence ever clogged, but mortal
mind makes laws which we are obliged to overcome. Therefore, the fewer
people who know about it, the easier our work will be."
However, something in Mr. Howard's manner led Carolina to suspect that
he was not seeking to be informed out of idle curiosity, and her heart
gave a bound at the thought that perhaps Divine Love might be using him
as a channel.
Noticing her momentary hesitation, he said:
"You need not fear to confide in me, Carol. Perhaps I can be of some
help to you."
Again she hesitated. She knew that the Howard family knew of Colonel
Yancey's attentions to her. Still she felt that she must venture.
"The present owner of Guildford is Colonel Yancey," she said, in a low
voice.
"Colonel Yancey!"
"Colonel Yancey!"
"Colonel Yancey!"
And so occupied was each listener with his own thoughts and mental
processes that each regarded that exclamation as an original remark.
Carolina looked from one to the other of them anxiously, in the short
silence which followed.
"I understand," said Mr. Howard, slowly. "I think--I--understand!"
"And this afternoon," Carolina went on, "I received a most extraordinary
letter from him, dated at London, making me a present of Guildford."
"Making you a p-present of it!" cried Kate. "What g-gigantic impudence!"
"He did it to irritate her into taking some notice of him!" declared
Mrs. Howard.
"H-he did it to show her how h-helpless she is!" cried Kate. "He knows
she has n-no money. But I think I see him hanging around until he wears
Carolina out. That is his g-game! A n-nice step-m-mother you w-would
make to those two children of his,--and the l-little one a cripple!"
"Children!" cried Carolina, turning white. "I never knew that there
were any! He never mentioned them."
"Oh, h-he didn't want to d-discourage you t-too much," cried Kate.
"And one of them--the little one--a cripple, did you say?"
The eager pity in Carolina's voice frightened Kate. She looked at
Carolina in wonder. The girl was leaning forward in her chair, her lips
parted, her eyes shining, her cheeks blazing. Kate felt physically sick
as the thought flashed through her mind that perhaps this altruistic
pity might rush her friend into the marriage with Colonel Yancey, which
even Guildford had been unable to do.
"Where is the child?" asked Carolina.
"She is at the Exmoor Hospital. Her aunt, Sue Yancey, brought here
there last week for an examination. They are trying to gain Colonel
Yancey's consent to an operation."
"How do you know all this?" asked Kate's mother.
"I went there to take some flowers to-day, and I saw this child,--she is
a little beauty,--and I asked Doctor Shourds who she was and he told me.
The trouble is with her ankles. Her feet are perfectly formed, but they
turn in and she can't bear her weight upon them, nor walk a step."
"She _can_ walk!" said Carolina, in a low, earnest voice. "God, in His
Divine Love, never made a crippled baby!"
Something smarted in Mr. Howard's eyes. He, was no believer in
Christian Science, but he loved little children, and Carolina's tone of
deep and quiet conviction wrenched his heart.
"Carol, Carol!" wailed Kate, wringing her nose and mopping her eyes,
with utter disregard of their redness, "you do make me howl so!"
"Carolina," said Mr. Howard, suddenly, "you know that I do not
personally subscribe to the teachings of your new religion, but I am an
observer of human nature, and I know the hall-marks of real
Christianity. I have seen you to-night keep your temper under trying
circumstances, defend your faith with spirit, and exemplify the command
to love your enemies, and I want to tell you that if there is anything I
can do toward financing a plan to buy Guildford from Colonel Yancey, and
installing you there to pursue your life-work, you can count on me."
Carolina made an attempt to speak, but her eyes swam in tears, and she
buried her face in her arm.
"Oh, daddy! daddy! D-dear old daddy!" cried Kate, dancing up and down
in her excitement. "I knew y-you were up to something! Y-you may not
care for C-Christian Science, b-but, when you s-see a good thing, you
know enough to p-push it along!"