Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “No, of course not,” she said. “It was not Mr. Cochrane: it was the belief and trust in Immortal Mind that had reached Sandie. It is not the healer who does it: it is Divine Love shining through the healer that disperses false claims. God is good and is All, and matter is nothing, because Life, God, Immortal Mind — —”

  Maud sat up in her long chair and clapped her hands close to Alice’s face, so that she absolutely could not go on, in spite of the omnipotence of Immortal Mind.

  “I will finish one sentence — just one,” she said, “whatever you say. You don’t understand a single thing. It was the subsidence of high temperature that was the dangerous symptom. Mr. Cochrane came in after Sandie’s temperature had suddenly gone down. He had nothing to do with bringing it down. I took him up to Sandie, because Sandie’s temperature had gone down. I am sure it is very difficult to understand, especially if you don’t believe in temperature; but do draw a long breath and try to grasp that. It wasn’t Immortal Good, God, Mind, that brought Sandie’s temperature below normal: it was all, as you would say, a frightfully false claim. It was a symptom of dangerous illness, not a symptom of health. I wish you would attend more. You make me feel feverish in explaining like this, darling.”

  Alice’s smile suffered no diminution. She was still quite ready to explain anything.

  “As I said, fever cannot be sent by Divine Love,” she remarked, “and therefore, since there is nothing really existent in the world except Divine Love, it follows that fever cannot be real, and that the belief in it is a function of mortal mind. No evil or pain or disease can happen to anybody who has uprooted the false claim of mortal mind, and no drug can have any effect, either harmful or beneficial, on anyone who knows the truth. The drug only acts on mortal mind, which is — —”

  Thurso entered the arena.

  “I want to understand, Alice,” he said. “Supposing I choose to drink large quantities of prussic acid for breakfast, under the conviction that no poison exists for Immortal Mind, shall I live to take pints more of it at lunch? Doesn’t poison exist for mortal body?”

  “‘If you drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt you,’” quoted Alice.

  “Soufflé of nightshade for Alice this evening,” said Maud cheerfully.

  Theodosia had been keeping up a general chattering noise, to which no one listened. Now she had her chance.

  “My!” she said. “You’d better become a Christian Scientist at once, Silas. Silas adores — he just adores — English beer, but he has a false claim that it disagrees with him. Now Mrs. Yardly tells us that there’s no such thing as poison. So, Silas, just take tight hold of that, and get a barrel. I may be left a widow, but try — just swill it.”

  “Theodosia,” began Silas; but he was not permitted to get further.

  “But intoxicant drinks are in themselves evil things,” said Alice, “just as tobacco, which is only fed upon by a loathsome worm, is evil, as you will find in Mrs. Eddy’s miscellaneous writings. She has pronounced against them.”

  “But I thought there was no evil except in the false belief of mortal mind?” said Maud.

  “That is just what I have been saying,” said Alice profusely. “The only real existence is God, who is cause, source, origin, overlies and underlies and encompasses.”

  Rudolf Villars joined in.

  “And if Mrs. Eddy said that cream-cheese was evil, would that make it so?” he asked politely. “Cannot she have attacks of error and mortal mind? Is it not just possible, as Oliver Cromwell said, that she is occasionally? I should have thought that instances might be found where intoxicants had even saved life in cases of exhaustion or exposure.”

  Maud broke in again.

  “You are all very flippant,” she said. “It really does not matter what Mrs. Eddy thinks about tobacco, or whether darling Alice will not answer our questions. But I did see — and I stick to it — a man who was past human power pulled back into life by Mr. Cochrane. How it was done I don’t know, but his own explanation was a perfectly simple one. He said it was the direct healing power of God. After all, if we and doctors say that there are healing powers in certain herbs which God made, why shouldn’t He heal direct?”

  The throb of a motor and the sound of its wheels crunching the gravel was heard, and Thurso got up.

  “Well, we must settle something else just now,” he said. “Who wants to drive over to Windsor, and who wants to go on the river, and who wants to do nothing?”

  This broke up the conference, as it was designed to do, for Thurso felt literally unable to stand much more: he was nervous, irritable, scarcely in his own control. He had slept badly — indeed, he had hardly slept at all — and this stream of balderdash that spouted from Alice was quite intolerable. She, however, with undiminished cheerfulness, expressed a preference for the river, and made it impossible for Villars not to offer his companionship. Ruby and Jim had not been seen since lunch. Theodosia and her husband went with Thurso to Windsor, and Mr. Yardly murmured something about letters, which, rightly interpreted, meant slumber, and hastily betook himself to the house. In consequence, Maud and her sister-in-law, both of whom announced their intention of doing nothing of any description, were before long left in possession of the garden. There had been a certain design about this, though successfully veiled, on Catherine’s part. She wanted to have a talk with Maud, and the gentlest promptings had been sufficient to make other people choose other things.

  The rest of the party dispersed in their various directions, and it was not till the motor had hooted at the entrance to the main road and the steam launch puffed its way past the opening in the yew-hedge that Catherine spoke again.

  “Tell me more about this Mr. Cochrane,” she said.

  Maud was already half immersed in her book, and had been quite unconscious of Catherine’s diplomacy. She started a little when the question was put to her, and closed her book.

  “There is really no more to tell,” she said. “I think I have told you all. Ah! no; there was one more thing, but they would all have howled so if I had said it. It was this: he told me that he was demonstrating over the whole outbreak of typhoid. Well, it stopped quite suddenly. The cases had been coming in hour after hour till it ceased like a tap being turned off. And after that there were no more deaths. Of course, it sounds incredible, and if you ask me whether I really believe that it was through him that it came to an end like that, I shouldn’t say ‘Yes.’ I don’t know.”

  “I should like to see Mr. Cochrane,” remarked Catherine.

  “You can if you like. He is coming to town, he told me, some day this month. Oh, Catherine, it is interesting, anyhow! He did cure Sandie; also, he cured Duncan Fraser’s wife. I am convinced of that. And then the other fact of the typhoid ceasing like that! Of course, you may say it was a pure coincidence; you may say that those other cures were coincidences too. But when you get a set of coincidences all together like that, you wonder if there is not — well, some law which lies behind them, and accounts for them all.”

  She paused a moment.

  “A lot of apples and other things fell to the ground,” she said, “and Newton deduced the law of gravity. It accounted for them all.”

  Catherine lit a cigarette, and threw the match away with great vigour.

  “What a fool darling Alice is!” she observed. “I love Alice just as you do — you can’t help loving her — but, oh, what a fool! Somehow, if a person talks such abject nonsense as that about anything, one concludes that the subject is nonsense too. But it doesn’t really follow. And Mr. Cochrane doesn’t talk nonsense?” she asked.

  “No; he isn’t the least nonsensical. As I have told you, he goes and cures people when they are ill, instead of gassing about it. He’s a very good fisherman, too.”

  Catherine could not help laughing. Maud mentioned this in a voice of such high approval.

  “But isn’t that inconsistent?” she said. “I don’t think a man whose whole belief was in health and life should go and kill thin
gs.”

  “Oh yes; I think it’s inconsistent,” said Maud, “and so does he. But did you ever see anybody who wasn’t inconsistent? I never did, and I never want to. He would be so extremely dull: you would know all about him at once.”

  “And you don’t know all about Mr. Cochrane?” she asked.

  “No; I should like to know more. I think I never met anyone so arresting. You are forced to attend, whether you like it or not.”

  “And I gather you like it?” asked Catherine.

  “Yes, certainly. I like vigour and certainty, and — oh, well, that sort of cleanness. He is like a nice boy at Cambridge, with all this extraordinary strength behind.”

  Catherine could not help making mental comments on this.

  “Ah, that attracts you?” she said. “It attracts me also. I like people to be strong and efficient; but, oh, Maud, how one’s heart goes out to them when they are helpless and enmeshed in what is stronger than they!”

  This was a clear change of subject. Mr. Cochrane was put aside for a little, and Catherine could not help noticing that Maud seemed relieved.

  “Ah, you mean Thurso?” she said quickly, letting her book slide to the ground.

  “Yes; and I want to talk to you about him, for I believe you are wise, and I feel helpless. I don’t know what to do. Last night, I must tell you, I went straight to his room after leaving you dressing. He had just taken laudanum, not because he had any headache, but because he longed for it.”

  Maud clasped her hands together and gave a little pitiful sound, half sigh, half moan.

  “Ah, the poor fellow!” she said. “Yes?”

  “And — and he lied to me,” said Catherine, “and said he had not been taking it, and there was the glass smelling of it by his side. Then he was very angry with me for a little, and said I had spoiled everything, but eventually he gave me the bottle and let me pour it away. I did, and I threw the bottle into the shrubbery.”

  Maud’s eye brightened.

  “Ah! that’s better,” she said. “He can still fight it.”

  Catherine shook her head.

  “That’s not all,” she said, “and the rest is so dreadful, and so pathetic. I couldn’t sleep last night, and it must have been about two in the morning when I got out of bed and went to the window and sat there a little. And I saw Thurso come along the path, and he lit a match and found the bottle. Then he took it — it was bright moonlight; I could see quite clearly — and literally sucked it, to see if there was not a drop or two left.”

  Maud had no reply to this. If it was despicable, it was, as Catherine had said, dreadfully pathetic.

  “Advise me, dear Maud,” she said at length. “I am horribly troubled about it. The sight of him turning that damned little bottle — no, I’m not sorry: I meant it — upside down in his mouth showed me how awfully he wanted it. I feel one shouldn’t lose a day or a minute. The desire grows like an aloe-flower. But if he won’t see a doctor, what is to be done? I shall send for Sir James as soon as I get back to town, and tell him all about it; but I can’t force Thurso to see him. Besides — —” and she stopped.

  “Yes?”

  “There is nothing in the world so hard to cure,” she said. “It is deadlier than a cancer.”

  “But he still wants to free himself,” said Maud.

  “Yes; so does a prisoner.”

  There was a pause.

  “Or do you think I am taking too pessimistic a view?” asked Catherine.

  Maud could not help seeing the bright side of things. Sunshine appealed to her more strongly than shadow. It was more real to her.

  “Yes; I think you are,” she said. “He let you pour the — well, the damned stuff away. You influenced him more strongly than his desire.”

  “Yes, than his satisfied desire,” said Catherine with terrible commonsense. “He had just taken it. Do you suppose he would have let me pour it away if he was just going to take it?”

  “I don’t know. You are stronger than he, I think.”

  Maud gave a great sigh, picking up her book.

  “I remember Mr. Cochrane practically offered to cure his neuralgia,” she said, “but I knew it was perfectly useless to suggest it to Thurso; nor at the time did I believe in Mr. Cochrane. But since then — —”

  Catherine looked up, and saw in Maud’s face what she had suspected.

  “Oh, Maud!” she said. “Are you in love with him?”

  Maud leaned forward, and her book again dropped face downwards on the gravel. She did not notice it.

  “Oh, I haven’t the slightest idea,” she said. “Catherine, I do like him awfully — I like him most awfully. No one has ever attracted me like that. Good gracious! how indelicate I am! But I don’t care one straw. I should like to put all my affairs and all poor Thurso’s into his hands. I should do it with the utmost confidence, and I should then just curl round as one does in bed, and feel everything is all right. Is that being in love? I don’t know or care. He is so strong, and so windy and so sunny. He is surrounded by sun, and — and it is as if he had just had a cold bath and stepped into the sun. I love that strength and wind. Don’t you like it? I want somebody who would go on playing undoubled spades at bridge in the middle of an earthquake. He would — for a shilling a hundred. Am I in love with him? I tell you I don’t know. Certainly this sort of thing has never happened to me before, and, again, I certainly have never been in love. So perhaps ‘these are the ones.’ Oh, do tell me! When Thurso proposed to you, was it like that? Did you feel there wasn’t anybody else who really mattered? Oh dear! poor Mr. Cochrane, to have all this put upon him! He hasn’t shown the slightest sign of doing more than admire my fishing. Lots of people have done that. But about you and Thurso, did you feel that? Is that the one?”

  There was a fine irony about this, and Catherine, in spite of the previous discussion on Christian Science, which laid down that all that had any real existence was good, felt disposed to believe in the malice that lurked in chance questions. She evaded the direct answer.

  “Oh, there are as many ways of love as there are people in the world,” she said. “But, dear, I regard you with suspicion. There are certain symptoms — —”

  “Oh, don’t,” said Maud.

  “Very well. But I feel with you about strength. It is an adorable quality to women. And it is that which so troubles me about Thurso. I know — the throwing away of the bottle proves it — that he is fighting; but is he strong enough? He was weak when he allowed himself to form a habit that he knew was harmful.”

  She threw her hands wide.

  “Oh, it is so awful!” she said. “One begins by saying, ‘I shall do this when I choose,’ and so soon. This says, ‘You shall do it when I choose.’ Personally, I always make it a rule to give anything up before I begin to want it very badly.”

  There was an irony in this, too. The remembrance of what chiefly kept her awake last night made her know that her rule was not always quite easy to follow. But this was secret from Maud.

  “You, who get all you want!” she said, speaking from outside.

  Catherine got up, and began walking up and down the small angle of lawn where they sat, bordering the deep flower-bed. All June was in flower there, just as in herself, to the outside view, all June seemed to be flowering. It was no wonder that Maud thought that. But all the emotional baggage which she had consistently thrown away all her life seemed to her to be coming back now in bales, returned to her by some dreadful dead-letter office — at least, she had hoped it was dead — and a sudden bitterness, born of perplexity, invaded her.

  “Oh yes; everybody always thinks one is happy,” she said, “if one has good digestion and a passable appearance, and heaps of things to do, and the enjoyment in doing them which I have, and as much money as one wants. But all these things only give one pleasure. Do you think I am happy? Do you really think so?”

  Maud dropped her eyes. When talk deepens it is well to talk in the dark, or to talk without the distraction of sight.<
br />
  “No, I don’t think you are,” she said, “if I look deep down.”

  “Then you are two people,” said Catherine rather fiercely— “the superficial Maud who just now said I had all I wanted, implying happiness, and another Maud, who has to be fished for.”

  That was less personal, less intricate, and Maud looked up again, smiling.

  “Quite true,” she said. “But so are you two Catherines; so is everybody who is worth anything. I used to think you an ideally happy person, because, as far as one could see, you got all you wanted. I imagine it was what you call the superficial Maud who thought that; I don’t think the deep-down ‘you’ is happy.”

  Maud paused a moment, feeling that her sister-in-law was hanging on her words. It did not seem to her that in this claim for unhappiness, so to speak, that Catherine had made she had in her mind the drug-taking: it was something different to that. Only lately, too, had she herself been conscious of this “deeper Maud,” which yet did not in the least affect the workings of the more superficial self. The joy of morning and evening, the depression and irritation of east wind, the rapture of catching sea-trout, went on, on the surface, just as keenly as ever, but an interior life had awoke.

  “I used to envy you so, Cathy,” she said— “at least, I used to envy lots of things about you, when I thought that the ‘you’ which all the world knew and admired so was all there was. But now I believe that there is a greater ‘you’ than that, and that a realer ‘me’ than the ordinary thing perceives it. And since you ask me, I don’t think that essential part of you is happy, any more than Thurso is happy.”

  Catherine sat down again, and thought over this before she answered.

  “I would give, or give up, a great deal to make Thurso happy,” she said with absolute sincerity. “But I get on his nerves.”

  Maud looked up, waiting for more — waiting for the completion of the sentence which she had heard not so long ago on Thurso’s lips. It came.

  “And he bores me,” said Catherine.

  There was a long silence. Bees buzzed in the flowers, making them bend and sway and nod to their weight; a grasshopper clicked and whirred on the lawn; swifts swooped and chided together in sliding companies; while the splash of oars or churn of a steamer sounded from the river. Then — such is the habit of the world — it struck them both how unlike themselves, unlike the ordinary presentment of themselves, that is to say, they were being, and simultaneously they swam out of the depths that were in reality the much more essential abode of them both. But the return to normal levels was short; they soon went down again; since those who have met or seen each other below always go back there. It is only those who have talked insincerely on deep matters who prefer to splash about on the surface. But a few surface remarks followed.