To those who have followed a routine or system of living in this
world—who have, by slow degrees and persistent effort, built up a
series of habits, tastes, refinements, emotions and methods of
conduct, and have, in addition, achieved a certain distinction and
position, so that they have said to one "Go!" and he goes, and to
another "Come!" and he comes, who have enjoyed without stint or
reserve, let or hindrance, those joys of perfect freedom of action,
and that ease and deliberation which comes with the presence of
comparative wealth, social position, and comforts, the narrowing
that comes with the lack of means, the fear of public opinion, or
the shame of public disclosure, is one of the most pathetic,
discouraging and terrifying things that can be imagined. These are
the hours that try men's souls. The man who sits in a seat of the
mighty and observes a world that is ruled by a superior power, a
superior force of which he by some miraculous generosity of fate
has been chosen apparently as a glittering instrument, has no
conception of the feelings of the man who, cast out of his
dignities and emoluments, sits in the dark places of the world
among the ashes of his splendor and meditates upon the glory of his
bygone days. There is a pathos here which passes the conception of
the average man. The prophets of the Old Testament discerned it
clearly enough, for they were forever pronouncing the fate of those
whose follies were in opposition to the course of righteousness and
who were made examples of by a beneficent and yet awful power.
"Thus saith the Lord: Because thou hast lifted thyself up against
the God of Heaven, and they have brought the vessels of His house
before thee, and thou and thy Lords, thy wives and concubines, have
drank wine in them, and thou hast praised the gods of silver and
gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone… God hath numbered thy
Kingdom and finished it. Thou art weighed in the balance and found
wanting; thy Kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and the
Persians."
Eugene was in a minor way an exemplification of this seeming
course of righteousness. His Kingdom, small as it was, was truly at
an end. Our social life is so organized, so closely knit upon a
warp of instinct, that we almost always instinctively flee that
which does not accord with custom, usage, preconceived notions and
tendencies—those various things which we in our littleness of
vision conceive to be dominant. Who does not run from the man who
may because of his deeds be condemned of that portion of the public
which we chance to respect? Walk he ever so proudly, carry himself
with what circumspectness he may, at the first breath of suspicion
all are off—friends, relations, business acquaintances, the whole
social fabric in toto. "Unclean!" is the cry. "Unclean! Unclean!"
And it does not matter how inwardly shabby we may be, what whited
sepulchres shining to the sun, we run quickly. It seems a tribute
to that providence which shapes our ends, which continues perfect
in tendency however vilely we may overlay its brightness with the
rust of our mortal corruption, however imitative we may be.
Angela had gone home by now to see her father, who was now quite
old and feeble, and also down to Alexandria to see Eugene's mother,
who was also badly deteriorated in health.
"I keep hoping against hope that your attitude will change
toward me," wrote Angela. "Let me hear from you if you will from
time to time. It can't make any difference in your course. A word
won't hurt, and I am so lonely. Oh, Eugene, if I could only die—if
I only could!" No word as to the true state of things was given at
either place. Angela pretended that Eugene had long been sick of
his commercial career and was, owing to untoward conditions in the
Colfax Company, glad to return to his art for a period. He might
come home, but he was very busy. So she lied. But she wrote Myrtle
fully of her hopes and, more particularly, her fears.
There were a number of conferences between Eugene and Myrtle,
for the latter, because of their early companionship, was very fond
of him. His traits, the innocent ones, were as sweet to her as when
they were boy and girl together. She sought him out in his lovely
room at Kingsbridge.
"Why don't you come and stay with us, Eugene?" she pleaded. "We
have a comfortable apartment. You can have that big room next to
ours. It has a nice view. Frank likes you. We have listened to
Angela, and I think you are wrong, but you are my brother, and I
want you to come. Everything is coming out right. God will
straighten it out. Frank and I are praying for you. There is no
evil, you know, according to the way we think. Now"—and she smiled
her old-time girlish smile—"don't stay up here alone. Wouldn't you
rather be with me?"
"Oh, I'd like to be there well enough, Myrtle, but I can't do it
now. I don't want to. I have to think. I want to be alone. I
haven't settled what I want to do. I think I will try my hand at
some pictures. I have a little money and all the time I want now. I
see there are some nice houses over there on the hill that might
have a room with a north window that would serve as a studio. I
want to think this thing out first. I don't know what I'll do."
He had now that new pain in his groin, which had come to him
first when her mother first carried Suzanne off to Canada and he
was afraid that he should never see her any more. It was a real
pain, sharp, physical, like a cut with a knife. He wondered how it
was that it could be physical and down there. His eyes hurt him and
his finger tips. Wasn't that queer, too?
"Why don't you go and see a Christian Science practitioner?"
asked Myrtle. "It won't do you any harm. You don't need to believe.
Let me get you the book and you can read it. See if you don't think
there is something in it. There you go smiling sarcastically, but,
Eugene, I can't tell you what it hasn't done for us. It's done
everything—that's just all. I'm a different person from what I was
five years ago, and so is Frank. You know how sick I was?"
"Yes, I know."
"Why don't you go and see Mrs. Johns? You needn't tell her
anything unless you want to. She has performed some perfectly
wonderful cures."
"What can Mrs. Johns do for me?" asked Eugene bitterly, his lip
set in an ironic mould. "Cure me of gloom? Make my heart cease to
ache? What's the use of talking? I ought to quit the whole thing."
He stared at the floor.
"She can't, but God can. Oh, Eugene, I know how you feel! Please
go. It can't do you any harm. I'll bring you the book tomorrow.
Will you read it if I bring it to you?"
"No."
"Oh, Eugene, please for my sake."
"What good will it do? I don't believe in it. I can't. I'm too
intelligent to take any stock in that rot."
"Eugene, how you talk! You'll change your mind some time. I know
how you think. But read it anyhow. Will you please? Promise me you
will. I shouldn't ask. It isn't the way, but I want you to look
into it. Go and see Mrs. Johns."
Eugene refused. Of asinine things this seemed the silliest.
Christian Science! Christian rot! He knew what to do. His
conscience was dictating that he give up Suzanne and return to
Angela in her hour of need—to his coming child, for the time being
anyhow, but this awful lure of beauty, of personality, of love—how
it tugged at his soul! Oh, those days with Suzanne in the pretty
watering and dining places about New York, those hours of bliss
when she looked so beautiful! How could he get over that? How give
up the memory? She was so sweet. Her beauty so rare. Every thought
of her hurt. It hurt so badly that most of the time he dared not
think—must, perforce, walk or work or stir restlessly about
agonized for fear he should think too much. Oh, life; oh, hell!
The intrusion of Christian Science into his purview just now was
due, of course, to the belief in and enthusiasm for that religious
idea on the part of Myrtle and her husband. As at Lourdes and St.
Anne de Beau Pré and other miracle-working centres, where hope and
desire and religious enthusiasm for the efficacious intervention of
a superior and non-malicious force intervenes, there had occurred
in her case an actual cure from a very difficult and complicated
physical ailment. She had been suffering from a tumor, nervous
insomnia, indigestion, constipation and a host of allied ills,
which had apparently refused to yield to ordinary medical
treatment. She was in a very bad way mentally and physically at the
time the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health, with Key
to the Scriptures," by Mrs. Eddy, was put into her hands. While
attempting to read it in a hopeless, helpless spirit, she was
instantly cured—that is, the idea that she was well took possession
of her, and not long after she really was so. She threw all her
medicines, of which there was quite a store, into the garbage pail,
eschewed doctors, began to read the Christian Science literature,
and attend the Christian Science church nearest her apartment, and
was soon involved in its subtle metaphysical interpretation of
mortal life. Into this faith, her husband, who loved her very much,
had followed, for what was good enough for her and would cure her
was good enough for him. He soon seized on its spiritual
significance with great vigor and became, if anything, a better
exponent and interpreter of the significant thought than was she
herself.
Those who know anything of Christian Science know that its main
tenet is that God is a principle, not a personality understandable
or conceivable from the mortal or sensory side of life (which
latter is an illusion), and that man (spiritually speaking) in His
image and likeness. Man is not God or any part of Him. He is an
idea in God, and, as such, as perfect and indestructible and
undisturbably harmonious as an idea in God or principle must be. To
those not metaphysically inclined, this is usually dark and without
significance, but to those spiritually or metaphysically minded it
comes as a great light. Matter becomes a built-up set or
combination of illusions, which may have evolved or not as one
chooses, but which unquestionably have been built up from nothing
or an invisible, intangible idea, and have no significance beyond
the faith or credence, which those who are at base spiritual give
them. Deny them—know them to be what they are—and they are
gone.
To Eugene, who at this time was in a great state of mental
doldrums—blue, dispirited, disheartened, inclined to see only evil
and destructive forces—this might well come with peculiar
significance, if it came at all. He was one of those men who from
their birth are metaphysically inclined. All his life he had been
speculating on the subtleties of mortal existence, reading Spencer,
Kant, Spinoza, at odd moments, and particularly such men as Darwin,
Huxley, Tyndall, Lord Avebury, Alfred Russel Wallace, and latterly
Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir William Crookes, trying to find out by the
inductive, naturalistic method just what life was. He had secured
inklings at times, he thought, by reading such things as Emerson's
"Oversoul," "The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius," and Plato. God
was a spirit, he thought, as Christ had said to the woman at the
well in Samaria, but whether this spirit concerned itself with
mortal affairs, where was so much suffering and contention, was
another matter. Personally he had never believed so—or been at all
sure. He had always been moved by the Sermon on the Mount; the
beauty of Christ's attitude toward the troubles of the world, the
wonder of the faith of the old prophets in insisting that God is
God, that there are no other Gods before him, and that he would
repay iniquity with disfavor. Whether he did or not was an open
question with him. This question of sin had always puzzled
him—original sin. Were there laws which ante-dated human
experience, which were in God—The Word—before it was made flesh? If
so, what were these laws? Did they concern matrimony—some spiritual
union which was older than life itself? Did they concern stealing?
What was stealing outside of life? Where was it before man began?
Or did it only begin with man? Ridiculous! It must relate to
something in chemistry and physics, which had worked out in life. A
sociologist—a great professor in one of the colleges had once told
him that he did not believe in success or failure, sin, or a sense
of self-righteousness except as they were related to built-up
instincts in the race—instincts related solely to the
self-preservation and the evolution of the race. Beyond that was
nothing. Spiritual morality? Bah! He knew nothing about it.
Such rank agnosticism could not but have had its weight with
Eugene. He was a doubter ever. All life, as I have said before,
went to pieces under his scalpel, and he could not put it together
again logically, once he had it cut up. People talked about the
sanctity of marriage, but, heavens, marriage was an evolution! He
knew that. Someone had written a two-volume treatise on it—"The
History of Human Marriage," or something like that and in it
animals were shown to have mated only for so long as it took to
rear the young, to get them to the point at which they could take
care of themselves. And wasn't this really what was at the basis of
modern marriage? He had read in this history, if he recalled
aright, that the only reason marriage had come to be looked upon as
sacred, and for life, was the length of time it took to rear the
human young. It took so long that the parents were old, safely so,
before the children were launched into the world. Then why
separate?
But it was the duty of everybody to raise children.
Ah! there had been the trouble. He had been bothered by that.
The home centered around that. Children! Race reproduction! Pulling
this wagon of evolution! Was every man who did not inevitably
damned? Was the race spirit against him? Look at the men and women
who didn't—who couldn't. Thousands and thousands. And those who did
always thought those who didn't were wrong. The whole American
spirit he had always felt to be intensely set in this direction—the
idea of having children and rearing them, a conservative work-a-day
spirit. Look at his father. And yet other men were so shrewd that
they preyed on this spirit, moving factories to where this race
spirit was the most active, so that they could hire the children
cheaply, and nothing happened to them, or did something happen?