CHAPTER IX
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?"