Эдвард Бенсон
The House of Defence. Volume 2

CHAPTER IV

BERTIE COCHRANE had taken them straight across by ferry to their house in Long Island, near Port Washington, had seen them comfortably installed, and returned in the evening to his flat in town. As regards Thurso, the spiritual conflict of the Divine and Infinite against all that was mortal and mistaken had begun, and of the ultimate issue of that he had no doubts whatever. But there was another conflict before him, more difficult than that – a conflict of things that were all good, but yet seemed to be unreconcilable; and as he sat now, after eating the one dish of vegetables which was his dinner, he felt torn by these fine conflicting forces.

For to-morrow, at the joint request of Thurso and his sister, he was going down to stay with them. That arrangement he could not refuse. Since they were so kind as to ask him, it was better in every way, as regards the cure he was undertaking, to do so. Thus, all day and every day he would see and be with the girl whom he loved with all the intensity of his jubilant and vital soul. Yet, since he would be there only as a healer, and since, except as a healer, he would never have been there, he knew that he must entirely swamp and drown all his private concerns. He must say no word, make no sign. Even that was not enough, he feared. He must school himself to feel no longing. His love itself must be drowned – that strong and beautiful thing – while he was there; for he would be there only as one who could bring, and had promised to bring, light to this man who was obscured by error. That would be the sole reason for his presence there, and it was worth not a moment of further debate or argument. And as he sat here now, he wondered if he was strong enough to do what he knew he must do, or whether, even at the eleventh hour, it was better to refuse to go to Long Island at all, but send someone else. On the other hand, he had himself promised to cure Thurso. He and his sister had come from England on that express understanding and under promise. But would it not be better to break that rather than lead himself into the temptation of using for his own ends the opportunity that had been given to him, and accepted by him, of demonstrating the eternal truth which was more real than any human love?

He knew, too, the hourly difficulties that his position would entail. Lady Maud thirsted for more knowledge about the truth which she already believed, and it would be he, naturally, who would talk to her about it, sitting opposite her, and seeing the glowing light of the knowledge that was being unveiled in her eyes. And yet all the time he must keep his thoughts away from her – see nothing, know nothing, except what he taught her. Not a thought could be spared to anything else; he would be there to heal, and while he healed all that was his belonged to two persons only – his Master and his patient.

He fixed his mind on this till it all acquiesced, and not only all open revolt, but all covert rebellion and dissent ceased. And the moment that was done, even as, without apparent reason, a sudden surge of water in a calm sea sets the weeds waving and submerges rocks, so from the unplumbed abyss of Love a wave swept softly and hugely over his doubts and drynesses, covering them with the message from the infinite sea. What had all his doubt and rebellion been about? He did not know.

The cold outside was intense; it had come on to freeze more sharply than ever at sunset, but he got up and set his window open. The aid that gave him in the work that lay before him now was adventitious only, but he found it easier to detach himself from the myriad distractions of mortal mind if, instead of breathing the close atmosphere of a room that was full of human associations, the taintless air of out of doors, of night and of cold, came in upon him. Very possibly that feeling itself was a claim of mortal mind, but it was better to yield to such a claim when it was clearly innocent, if it told him that the realisation of truth was thereby made more complete to his sense, than to waste energy in fighting it. And then, as he had done before when he went to the bedside of Sandie Mackenzie, he called his thoughts home. Thoughts of the day and the sea, of the sunshine, and the windless frost and the virgin snow, came flocking back, and went to sleep. Other thoughts, a little more laggard, a little less willing to rest, had to obey also: he had to forget the book he had been reading during his dinner, the swift hour of skating he had enjoyed after he came back to town, the friend he had met and talked with in the street. And another thought more wide-awake yet had to be put to sleep (and, if possible, be strangled as it was sleeping) – namely, his strong physical disgust for a man who, through sheer weakness and self-indulgence, had allowed himself to get into the state in which he had found his patient: that slack lip, that sallow face, that dull, stale eye, the thinning, whitening hair, were like some voluntary and ghastly disfigurement, as if Thurso had striven with his own hands to deface and render hideous his own body, and had succeeded so well that to Cochrane this morning he had been scarcely recognisable. But all this had to sleep; all his disgust had to be done away with. You could not heal a leper by shuddering at his sores.

Slowly and with conscious effort that was done, but there was still one soaring thought abroad, stronger of wing, harder to recall than any. Maud, too, had to be called home (and the irony of the phrase struck him). Her beauty, her incomparable charm, her serene, splendid bravery with her brother, and his love for her, must now be all non-existent for him. She must cease – all thought of her must cease.

Then, like the force that turns the driving-wheel of some great engine that is just beginning to haul its ponderous freight out of the station, the power of the Divine Mind began to press within him. Once and again the wheel spun round, not biting the rail, for the load was very heavy; but soon the driving power began to move him, the engine, and the dead and heavy weight of the trucks weighted with the error and sickness he was to cure. Under the roof of the station it was dark and gloomy, but outside, he knew, was sunshine. There was only one force in the world that could bring him and his trucks out there, but that it should do that his mind had to strain and strive and grip the rail. Sometimes it seemed that the weight behind was immeasurable, sometimes that the force which drove him was so vast that he must burst and be broken under its pressure. But he knew, that little atom of agonised yet rapturous consciousness, which was all that he could refer to as himself, knew that he and his freight were in control of the one Power that cannot go wrong, that never yet made a mistake. The hands that held him were infinitely tender, even as they were infinitely strong.

*****

It was some four hours later when he got up from his chair. The fire had gone out, and the bitterness of the frost had frozen the surface of the glass of water he had poured out, and he broke the crust of ice on it and drank. Two minutes later he was undressed and asleep, having plunged into bed with a smile that had broadened into the sheer laughter of joy.

Thurso awoke next morning, feeling, so he told himself, the stimulus and exhilaration of this new climate and the bracing effect of this dry, sunny morning of frost. After the narrow berth of his cabin it was a luxury to sleep in a proper bed again, and a luxury when awake to lie at ease in it. What an excellent night he had had, too! He had slept from about half-past eleven the night before till he was called at half-past eight – slept uninterruptedly and dreamlessly, without those incessant wakings from agonised dreams of desire which had so obsessed him during the last week. No doubt this change from the sedentary and cramped life of the ship to the wider activities of the land accounted for that, and he felt that the place and the air both suited him. Yesterday had passed pleasantly, too. He, Maud, and Cochrane had been for a long sleigh-drive in the afternoon, and – there was no use in denying it, though he felt some curious latent hostility to him – Cochrane was a very attractive fellow. He had the tact, the experience, the manner of a cultured and agreeable man, and these gifts were somehow steeped in the effervescence and glow of youth. Never had Thurso seen the two so wonderfully combined. Youth’s enchantment was his still, the eager vitality of a boy.

When they returned he had had an hour’s talk with him alone, and at Cochrane’s request had told him the whole history of his slavery. And, somehow, that recital had been in no way difficult. Once again, as on the occasion of Maud’s poaching, Cochrane had made it easy not to be ashamed. Thurso felt as if he was telling it all to a man who understood him better than he understood himself, who did not in the least condone or seek to find excuses for this wretched story, but to whom these hideous happenings appeared only in the light of a nightmare, as if Thurso had had a terrible dream, and was speaking only of empty imaginings. At the end – the tale was a long one – Cochrane had still been genial.

“Well, now, that is a good start,” he said, “for I guess you haven’t kept anything back. Sometimes people have a sort of false shame, and won’t tell one what is, perhaps, the very worst of all. That must hinder the healer. It must help him, on the other hand, to know just exactly what the trouble is.”

“Quite so; that is only reasonable,” said Thurso.

But to himself he thought how odd it was that so straightforward and simple a fellow should be such a crank. Not that he was not perfectly willing to let the crank do what he could for him. He would have worn any amulet or charm if anyone seriously thought it could help him. But, again, he was conscious of his latent hostility, and this time he fancied he perceived the cause of it. For Cochrane was here to rob him of the most ecstatic moments of his life. It was the memory of them which made him feel that he was in the presence of a thief, an enemy.

“Well, now, before I go back to town for the night,” continued Cochrane, “I want to start you right away with one or two thoughts to keep in your mind. Remember, first of all, that all that you have been suffering from is unreal. It has no true existence, in the sense in which life and joy are true. Try to realise that, for thus you yourself will help in the accomplishment of your healing. A patient can help his medical man by determining to get well, can’t he? In the same way you can help me by trying to realise that you have never been ill. Real illness is a contradiction in terms.”

“Do you mean that not only are the effects of the drug unreal, but the cravings for it are unreal?” asked Thurso. “Surely one can only judge of the truth of a thing by one’s feelings. One’s feelings are the ultimate appeal, and I assure you I know of nothing so real as my craving. If it had been less real I should not have come to America.”

“Ah! that’s where you make a mistake,” said Cochrane. “There may not be an atom of truth in the thing which is the cause of your feeling most strongly. Suppose, for instance, a lot of your friends entered into a conspiracy to play a practical joke on you, had you arrested, got you convicted of murder, and condemned to be hung, with such realism and completeness that you actually believed it was going to happen. You would be terrified, agonised, and your terror and agony would be the realest thing in the world to you. But it would be all founded on a lie – on a thing that didn’t exist. And your craving is founded on a lie – such a stupid lie, too, believe me. As if evil has any power compared with good!”

Thurso thought this illustration rather well-chosen, but he was a little tired, a little impatient. Also, the mention of his craving seemed to have stirred it into activity again. He began to wonder if there was any chemist’s shop near. They had passed one on their drive – “ride” Cochrane called it – but that was a couple of miles off… And the thought made him the more impatient.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but I am not a Christian Scientist, and the method you employ doesn’t interest me, since I do not believe in it. It is right for me to tell you that; I only came here because I felt I owed it to – to others to do anything that was suggested.”

Cochrane laughed with serene good-humour, though Thurso’s tone had not been very courteous.

“Oh, we’ll soon alter all that,” he said, “and I am telling you a little about the treatment, in order that you may work with me, give me the help the ordinary patient gives his doctor.”

“I suppose I’m pretty bad,” he observed.

“I should just think you were. Why, you are all wrapped up in error! Have you ever unwound a rubber-covered golf ball? There are yards and yards of india-rubber string, and you think it’s going on for ever. But at the centre there is a core. And there is a core in you too. But we’ve got to unwind the error in order to get at it.”

Thurso got up; he was feeling every moment more fidgety and impatient. He was beginning to want the drug most terribly; his craving was growing with mushroom-like rapidity. Yet while Cochrane was there he felt that his will to get well, his desire to be free, was keen also. And that gave him an impulse of honesty.

“I tell you this, too,” he said: “I’m longing for the drug most frightfully now. Ah, help me!” he cried in a sudden wail of appeal, “for I know what I shall do when you are gone.”

“Yes, tell me that,” said Cochrane; and the wail of the voice told him that true impulse still existed, whatever Thurso’s own forecast was.

“Well, I shall go and see where Maud is,” he said, “and if she is downstairs I shall tell her that I am going to my room to sleep till it is time to dress, so that I can get away by myself. She trusts me, I think, even after all that has happened. Good heavens! why am I telling you this?” he said suddenly. “You will tell her now, damn you! and spoil it all.”

Cochrane interrupted quietly.

“Your damning me doesn’t hurt,” he said, “and I solemnly promise you not to give your plan away. There’s no chemist very near, I’m afraid, but there’s one in Port Washington; we passed the place this afternoon.”

“Ah, you’ve warned him,” said Thurso.

“I have done nothing of the kind, nor shall I. Pray get on.”

The pleasure that the diseased imagination took in the projection of its plans was suggestive of the joy of their realisation. Thurso gulped as he spoke.

“I take it, then, that you won’t interfere,” he said. “Well, I shall go to my room and forge – yes, forge a prescription. I’m getting a rare hand at that.”

He gave a little cackle of delight; the impulse that a couple of minutes ago had prompted the cry for help was half smothered, and he was conscious of one need only. He pointed a warning finger at Cochrane.

“It’s understood that you do nothing to hinder me,” he said, “nothing tangible, practical, though you can treat me – don’t you call it? – till all’s blue. Then I shall send to the stable, and tell a man and horse to go down to the chemist’s, wait for the prescription to be made up, and bring it back. Lord Thurso, you know! Republicans think a lot of a lord, and they’ll hurry, because they’ve got a fine specimen of one now. And I shall sit gnawing my nails till that bottle comes back. Then – two hours’ Paradise before dinner. God! I wonder the whole world doesn’t take to laudanum. Paradise made up while you wait. Cheap, too.”

“Remarkably cheap,” said Cochrane.

“Ah, you are laughing at me. But you don’t know, you can’t guess – ”

Thurso came close up to him and pressed his arm. The latent hostility was all gone; here was a friend who should be told what he was missing. So easy was it to get out of hell into purgatory, and through purgatory past the unbarred gates of a Paradise of rose and gold. No flaming-sworded angel was there; a glass and a bottle were the pass-word for admittance. You had but to draw a stopper, chink a glass, and drink, and the whole world was changed. The thought invaded and encompassed him. He could think of nothing but that.

“Suppose you try it one night,” he said to Cochrane, “when you are staying down here, as you will be to-morrow? You just see; there’s no need for any healing any more – the thing is health and life. I say, wouldn’t it be funny if, after I had come over here to be cured by you, I succeeded in pulling you after me. Just try some night.”

Bertie Cochrane nodded at him.

“Well, it may come to that,” he said; “there’s nothing which you can say is impossible.”

Thurso laughed again.

“Maud too, perhaps,” he said. “What a good time we might have: ‘up to heaven all three,’ as it says in that poem by – by – I never can remember names now!”

Cochrane could barely restrain a little shudder of disgust at this, but he checked it.

“Well, you’re making an excellent start,” he said, “because you’re telling me all your plans for the future, just as you have told me all the history of the past. And as for the present, I can figure that up pretty correctly now. Now, do you know what you’ve been doing for this last ten minutes? You’ve been almost forcing yourself to do what you say you are going to do by imagining it. Every action begins in the brain. But just before that another action began. You said, ‘Ah, help me!’ Do you remember that?”

“Yes, but it’s useless,” said Thurso. “You see for yourself.”

“It isn’t useless. I never spend my time over useless things. When you said that your will was on the right side. And even now when you are half-crazy for that drink, aren’t you ashamed to think of what you have just suggested – that Lady Maud, your sister, should be dragged down with you? Aren’t you ashamed? You have been very candid; I want your candid opinion on that.”

Thurso frowned.

“I didn’t say that; I’m sure I didn’t say that.”

“But indeed you did. Now come back on the right side again. You’ve been suggesting things to yourself, and imagining them with remarkable vividness. So now, to make it fair, plan another evening for yourself. Come, what would be pleasant? Don’t make a long evening of it; I want you to go to bed before eleven.”

“Why?” asked Thurso.

“Just because it’s a sensible hour. I shall be treating you by then.”

“But Maud tried to treat me once on the steamer,” said he, “and the effect was that I couldn’t get to sleep at all. I thought she was in the room.”

For the moment, anyhow, the edge of his desire was dulled. There was something that compelled attention in this big, strong young man, who was so cheerful and quiet, who looked so superlatively well, and seemed to diffuse sanity and health.

“Why, that was real good of Lady Maud, wasn’t it?” he said, “and that feeling of yours that she was in the room was very likely to happen. I’ll tell you why: like everything else in science, it is so simple. The healer ought quite to sink himself; he shouldn’t be conscious of himself at all. He mustn’t think that he is controlling the working of the power of Divine Love. But that unconsciousness of self only comes with practice. At first the healer finds that his personality obtrudes itself.”

Quite unconsciously Thurso began to be more interested; consciously he knew that he did not want the drug just this moment as devouringly as he had thought. The simplicity of what Cochrane was saying struck him also; it was so exceedingly unlike the torrential inconsequence of Alice Yardly.

“Then why can’t you heal me instantly?” he said. “If error cannot exist in the presence of Divine Love, how is it that time is required for its destruction?”

Cochrane laughed.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” he said; “but, then, I do not profess to be able to explain everything. Sometimes healing is really instantaneous, sometimes it takes time. But if you ask me why, I confess I can’t tell you. It is so, though.”

He got up.

“Now I must go,” he said, “for though there’s no such thing as time really, it is still possible to miss a train. Now keep on making other pictures of this evening to yourself, and say you will go to bed at eleven.”

Thurso lay back in his big chair after Cochrane had gone, conscious that something else besides laudanum had begun to interest him a little. He felt no leaning or tendency whatever towards Christian Science, and he wanted to find some weak spot in the central theory, some fatal inconsistency, which must invalidate it altogether. There must be one even in the little he had heard about it. At this moment Maud came in.

“I’ve had a long talk to Cochrane,” he said, “and he left only ten minutes ago. Maud, give me a Christian Science book; I’m going to prove that it’s all wrong.”

She laughed.

“Do, dear; it is the business of everybody to expose error. Shall I read it to you?”

“Yes, if you will.”

Then suddenly his craving began to return, sharpening itself instantaneously to hideous acuteness. His mind was like some light vehicle, from which the driver had been spilled, being galloped away with by the bolting, furious horses of habit. Never before had the stroke fallen upon him with such suddenness. “A fine first-fruit of the value of Christian Science,” he said to himself. Yet though its onslaught made him almost dizzy, he retained his presence of mind and the cunning which seemed to have been developed in him since he took to the drug. He mastered his voice completely; he mastered also that watering of the mouth and the automatic swallowing movement of his throat.

“Or shall we read after dinner?” he said. “That sleigh-drive made me so sleepy. I think I should drop asleep at once if you began to read.”

Maud looked at him for a moment with a pity that was instinctive; she could not help it. Then she laughed again.

“Oh, Thurso, how transparent!” she said. “You want to go to your bedroom and forge – yes, forge the prescription which you forged with such brilliant success on the steamer, and send it down to the village to get your horrid bottle. It’s all very well to forge once or twice, but you really mustn’t get in the habit of it; it grows on one dreadfully, I am told.”

He came towards her white and shaking.

“That quack Cochrane has been talking to you, has he,” he said. “He promised not to interfere.”

“He hasn’t interfered. You are perfectly free to do what you like. And he is not proved to be a quack yet.”

He laid his hand on her arm.

“Maud, just this once,” he said – “do let me have it this once. It shall be the last time. You see, the treatment will soon put me right now.”

“Why do you want my leave?” said she.

“I don’t know. It would make me more comfortable; I should enjoy it more.”

“Well, I propose a slightly different plan,” she said. “I promise you that I will go and get it for you myself at twelve o’clock to-night if you still really want it. Hold on for six hours – five hours – and then, if you ask me, I will take down the forged prescription myself. Only in the interval you must do your best – your best, mind, not to think about it. And you must go to bed at eleven. That’s not much to ask, is it?”

He weighed this in his mind, and soon decided, for there was something rapturous in the waiting, provided he knew he would soon get it.

“Yes, of course I’ll wait,” he said, “though I can’t guess what your point is. You really promise it me at twelve? And you won’t tell Cochrane?” he added, with a little spurt of glee, thinking that for some inexplicable reason Maud was going to help him.

“Oh no, I won’t tell him; you probably will. Now, if the sleepiness of the sleigh-drive has gone off, I will read to you. It will help to pass the hours till twelve.”

It had required all Maud’s faith to get through with this, but she had understood and agreed with what Mr. Cochrane had said before he left. He wanted, above all things, that Thurso should make an effort of abstention, though it was only for a few hours, of his own accord, and believed that at present he could hardly do so unless he was bribed, so to speak. He had, in fact, suggested this plan.

“And if he wants it at twelve?” she asked.

“Keep your promise. But he won’t. He can’t.”

All this Thurso thought over as he lay in bed next morning watching his valet put out his clothes. He had gone to bed, as he had promised, before eleven, hugging to himself the thought that midnight was coming closer every minute. And then he had simply fallen asleep, and when he woke the pale winter sunlight was flooding the room.

Yet, mixed with the exhilaration of this cold, bracing air, the memory of the pleasant day before, the sense of recuperation after his excellent night, there came the feeling as he got up and dressed, turning over these events in his head, that he had been tricked. He had no idea how the trick was done, or how it was that he could have gone to sleep when, if he had but kept awake so short a time, he would have enjoyed, and that with no sense of concealment or surreptitious dealing, the one sensation that turned life into paradise. Certainly it had been extremely neatly done. As a conjurer, Cochrane’s sleight of mind, so to speak, was of the most finished sort, for, as has been said, Thurso had had no sense of his presence or intimation of his influence. Cochrane, however, would be here to-day, and perhaps he would explain. But the feeling of having been tricked somehow piqued him, and the pique was not lessened by the fact that he could not guess how the trick was done. Of course, it must have been suggestion or hypnotism in some form; but the odd thing was that neither Maud nor Cochrane had suggested to him at all that he should go to sleep. He had gone to sleep by accident without intending to do anything of the sort, and without any feeling that others were intending it for him.

While he was dressing he heard the sound of sleigh-bells, which probably betokened Cochrane’s arrival, and when he got downstairs he found him and Maud already breakfasting.

Cochrane nodded to him.

“Good morning,” he said. “Now Lady Maud will tell you that neither she nor I have spoken a word about you this morning. I know nothing of what has happened here since I left last night. I told her, by the way, just before I left, to promise to get your drink for you, if you wanted it, at twelve o’clock midnight. Now let’s hear what happened.”

“I went to Thurso’s room at twelve and knocked,” said Maud. “There was no answer, so I went in. I called him several times, I even touched him, but he didn’t wake.”

Cochrane laughed.

“I call that pretty good,” he said.

“Oh, this is childish!” broke in Thurso. “Maud, do you swear that that is true?”

“Of course.”

“Well, you or Mr. Cochrane must have hypnotised me or drugged me,” he said.

“I know less about hypnotism than I know of the inhabitants of Mars,” said Cochrane. “Or what do you think we drugged you with?”

“Well, how did you do it, then?” he asked. “I congratulate you, anyhow. It was very neat.”

“I didn’t do it. I had no idea, at least, whether you were asleep or awake at midnight. I only knew that Divine Love was looking after you.”

Something rather like a sneer came into Thurso’s voice.

“Did – ah! did Divine Love tell you so?” he asked.

“Yes, most emphatically. He has promised to look after us all, you know, and do everything that is good for us. My word! you’ve never seen such a beauty of a morning outside. Cold, though.”

Thurso was undeniably in a very bad humour by this time. He felt convinced in his own mind that there had been some hypnotic force or suggestive influence used on him last night; but when a man denies it, and simply attributes all that has happened to the working of Divine Love, you cannot contradict him. Maud, however, had read to him last night out of some Christian Science book, and he had found, he thought, a hundred inconsistencies in it. Cochrane’s last words, too, were utterly inconsistent, simple as they sounded.

“How can you say it is cold,” he asked, “when your whole Gospel is rooted, so I understand, in the unreality of all such things – cold, heat, pain, and so on? Or did I misunderstand, do you think, what Maud read to me last night? I certainly gathered that neither cold nor heat had any real existence.”

“No; but we think it has,” said Cochrane, with his mouth full.

“Then, is it not what the Reverend Mrs. Eddy calls ‘voicing error’ to allude to the temperature of the morning?”

Cochrane laughed, a great big genial laugh.

“Oh, we don’t – at least, I don’t – make any claim to be beyond feeling cold or heat when there is no reason for not feeling it.”

“I beg your pardon.”

Cochrane still looked amused and quite patient.

“Well, if for any cause it was necessary that I, in healing you, should have to stand in a tub of ice-cold water, I don’t imagine it would affect me much. There would be a reason for my doing it. But in the ordinary way we say, ‘This is cold, this is hot.’ They don’t hurt. My time is taken up in denying things that do hurt.”

“Though nothing hurts.”

“False belief hurts, and its consequences.”

Maud joined in. Thurso was being tiresome and irritable.

“Dear Thurso, pass the marmalade, please. I have a false claim of wanting some, so don’t tell me there isn’t any. I propose to indulge my false claim. Oh, don’t be severe with us; it is such a pity, and spoils my pleasure.”

“I was merely inquiring into these matters,” said Thurso rather acidly, for his mind still chafed at the trick, or so he called it, that had made him go to sleep last night.

Maud’s false claim of wanting marmalade was soon satisfied, and she got up.

“Now, Mr. Cochrane has promised to give me instruction for half an hour, Thurso,” she said, “and after that I vote we go out. There’s a lake, he says, not far off. We might skate.”

“And what is to happen to me?” he asked. “Am I to have treatment or laudanum, or to be put to sleep again?”

Bertie Cochrane looked up at him suddenly. For half a second he allowed himself to be stung, affronted, by Thurso’s tone. But he recovered immediately.