CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
At the end of three weeks, Roger wrote his first real letter. He was going on to the Pennsylvania coal fields, then to New York, the West Virginia mining country, the southern cotton mills and home. It would take him fully a month longer. Anne read it several times, as if committing the itinerary to memory, gathered no picture or quickening of interest from it, and slowly tore the pages up. Roger might have mapped a trip from star to star, so little did it seem to touch her life. The only realities were this growing antagonism between herself and Roger, and the helplessness of her father and Rogie. Between these two points of advancing Death and Life, Anne stood, making mechanical motions of getting up, going to bed, caring for Rogie, listening to Hilda's chatter, and filling some of the empty hours for her father.
This was the most difficult of all. No book held him, although he complained if none were provided for him. His fettered mind exhausted itself in the effort to assimilate experience beyond his own. He would put away the travels and biographies and fiction, for which Anne spent hours searching the library, for the evening paper or the most trivial bit of gossip. Sometimes this need to fill the emptiness about him with little concrete facts oppressed Anne until her very jaws ached with the unuttered words she could not summon, and her brain went dizzily round, searching in the vacancy, conscious of its own motion.
Bound in a life of routine, James Mitchell complained if his useless medicine was a moment late, his nourishment delayed. He was jealous of Hilda's health and upbraided her cheerfulness as indifference; but when she was over-zealous for his comfort he grew irritable and asked for Anne.
Anne quieted him. The old friction between them was lost in the profundity of Anne's indifference to all that happened. It was cloaked under her gentle touch, her quiet movements, her quickness in understanding his thickened speech, her anticipation of his needs. He liked to hold her cool hand after she had straightened his pillows for the night, or feel its sure grip guiding his dragging feet to the window to investigate some trivial noise in the street below. She read to him for hours, never putting the book aside at his first lurching into sleep, and so drawing him back to realization of her own preference.
She read on until his gray head dropped to his breast and his hands relaxed in his lap. Then Anne would lay aside the book and look at him impersonally; at the thin hair, the clothes spotted with dropped food, the heavy canes propped against the chair arm. This man was her father. From this now decaying body, she had drawn life. She had never loved him, never been near him, and could never be quite separated from him. From the beginning of Time to the end of Time, the chain ran, a living link, a dead link, on and on; health no more permanent than decay, life as accidental and meaningless as death. She would grow old and rot; Rogie would grow old and rot; and his son's sons until Time itself dropped in death. Or, somewhere along the line, Time would snap suddenly, as purposeless in its ceasing as in its beginning. Her longings for a permanent Beauty, Hilda's unconscious clutching at happiness, Roger's childish faith in his power to create justice, Black Tom's ferocious idealism, all meaningless words scratched on the monument to Death. This overwhelming negation was Reality. Only people like Charlotte Welles, blind and insensate before their own terror of extermination, could juggle away this truth.
Charlotte Welles no longer annoyed Anne. Charlotte was no more deluded than any one else. In the confusion of living, she had darted down a blind alley, but no more of a blind alley than any other path opened to the shufflings of humanity. At least this path hurt no one, as Roger hurt her, as Black Tom hurt Merle, as her father and mother hurt each other.
Anne had even grown to like Mrs. Welles and look for her coming. With quiet cheerfulness she often led James Mitchell away from the realization of his heavy canes and numbed feet back into the only world he had ever known. Deep within him, the hope lingered that he would again be able to go to the office, make endless rows of figures and be commended for his faithfulness: that he would draw his salary, place his small bets, make his luckless snatches at fortune, become again "the head of the house." Without deliberately deceiving him, Mrs. Welles deepened this faith, so that, after a visit from her he was actually stronger and once managed, unaided except for his canes, to stumble across the room.
Anne felt her always standing beside the sick man, throwing the thread of her faith about him, trying to draw him back to health. When she did not come for a few days, James fretted.
"I really believe you do him good," Anne said to her at the end of an afternoon in which Charlotte had kept him cheerful for hours.
"Faith will move mountains. You can never tell." It was the first direct reference she had made to her belief since the night of Anne's rudeness. But now, the assurance did not anger Anne. She was too weary.
"Faith in what?"
"Faith—in the power of faith. Just believing."
"Believing that you will get what you want just because you want it?"
"Not exactly. Believing in the harmony of Life, knowing that what you must have, what your soul needs, must come."
"How do you know what your soul needs?"
The other paused, thoughtful. "By listening," she said at last. "By escaping from the noise of material life. Material life is not Real."
"It's the only reality we have, our brains and bodies and senses to measure by."
Mrs. Welles shook her head. "No. Our brains and bodies and senses are not the ultimate reality. It is something else, something almost impossible to put into words, something you must feel."
"But how can you feel without your body?"
"By leaving your body behind and going into Silence. Then you Know. You Feel it, you See it, you Touch it."
On the last words, Hilda came in, fresh and gay from a walk with Rogie.
"Touch what?"
"Peace and reality," Anne said with a faint smile.
Hilda looked puzzled.
"We were talking of faith," Charlotte explained, "and the absolute certainty you get in Silence."
"Oh, yes," Hilda nodded. "Just getting away from a racket does help. Why, I used to feel sometimes when the children were small, and it rained so they had to play in the house, that I'd go frantic with them tearing round getting in my way, when I had a lot to do. I broke down once and the doctor told me to take things easier, so after that I used to go into my own room with a novel every day for an hour and lock the door. It helped a lot."
Anne caught the twinkle in Charlotte's eyes and returned it.
"I'd forgotten all about it," Hilda went on. "But I shouldn't wonder if that wouldn't be a good thing to keep up. Do you do it?"
"I don't take the novel, but I try to get quiet some part of every day."
"I don't know that I could do it without a book. There doesn't seem to be anything to think about when you just sit down and try to think."
"Don't try to think. Don't try to do anything. Just relax."
"Good gracious, I'd have to crochet or something. I'd feel wicked sitting like that wasting the time."
"It's the one thing that isn't wasting time. It's getting at the only thing in Life worth getting at."
"Is it? Well, I must say if you can keep your house looking the way it does and find time to sit round doing nothing, nothing at all, I guess there's something in it. I don't know but what I'll try it sometime."
"Perhaps you'd understand better if you didn't 'try it' alone."
"But I'd feel so silly relaxing with other people looking at me."
"Other people wouldn't be looking at you. They'd be quiet too. There's a terrific force in many people being quiet together."
"'Many-people-being-quiet-together,'" Anne whispered.
"Well—if I were sure they weren't paying any attention," Hilda spoke with mounting excitement, as if about to venture an intoxicating drink, not quite certain of its after-effects.
"You know that any time you care to come with me," Charlotte suggested, "I shall be glad. Our meetings always close with a few moments of utter stillness."
"Maybe I will. I'd like to see it."
"Next Sunday we're going to have one of the Boston Board of Lecturers out. If you like, I'll call up for you. About half past three?"
"That's just the time I never know what to do with myself. I'd like to."
But the following Sunday when Charlotte came, Hilda had not returned from an outing with Rogie.
"She must have forgotten all about it," Anne explained. "She did say something about taking Rogie to the Park, but I thought she would be back in time. She's been talking about Silence all the week."
Mrs. Welles laughed and turned to go. She was a little late already. "Perhaps the outing will do her just as much good. Besides she can come some other time. It makes no difference."
In a moment Charlotte would be gone and there would be nothing for Anne to do but sit as she had sat for the last hour, staring out into the deserted street, listening to the wind and the heavy breathing of her father asleep.
"Perhaps you would take me, instead," Anne said in a sudden need to escape from this stillness that had no force or peace in it. "Papa will be all right and mamma won't be long now."
"Certainly. Could you be ready in ten minutes? There's sure to be a crowd and I like to walk. It gets me in the mood more than riding in a crowded car."
Anne went quickly from the room and was back again in five minutes. "I'll just leave a note for moms or she'll wonder what's happened."
She scribbled, "Gone with Mrs. Welles," and pinned the paper on the wall.
They walked quickly in a silence that rested, so that, by the time they reached the church, Anne no longer felt the need of this escape and wished she had not come. But as she had herself suggested it, she did not know how to retreat now and followed Charlotte through the iron gate and up the wide graveled path, with reluctant curiosity and a hope that the service would not be long.
The church was a low, gray stone building, covered with ivy, standing back from the street on a lawn, undisturbed by shrubs or flowers. Its leaded casement windows and outer door of heavy oak studded with nails, gave a feeling of age and great strength. Silently swinging doors led from the wide vestibule into the body of the building, which was covered with thick soft carpet that deadened all sound. Across the foot of the platform, stretching the width of the room, great branches of oak and huckleberry broke the hardness of line and filled the room with a faint odor of living greenness. Half-way down the aisle, they stopped and then, with no rustle of disturbance, Anne found herself seated in the center of the row. Mrs. Welles took a leaflet from the rack before her and Anne looked about.
She had had no clear idea of what such a gathering would be like, but now, as she studied the faces of those within her range, she marveled at their likeness. There were old and young, men and women, but they all looked to have gone through a process that had dissolved their personal differences. They all sat quietly, their bodies in repose, their faces calm. They were neither eager nor indifferent. No doubt or uncertainty disturbed them. Anne could conceive of no opposition that would sweep them to anger. No power could force from these well-dressed, cultured bodies the cry of rage that lashed the audiences of Black Tom O'Connell.
Here there were no slovenly clothes, no stunted bodies, no stormy, foreign eyes. They had found their Peace and held it with well-bred restraint. They were sure, not waiting; positive, not patient. Before this sureness, Katya's was the certainty of an elemental force striving through obstacles to prove itself in creation. This surety was the after-calm, when God, having labored to create a world, stood back satisfied and said: "It is good." It was restful in a way but had something of the same supreme aloofness.
The side doors of the platform opened. Two men and a woman, dressed in white, took the three vacant chairs behind the hedge of green. A hymn was announced and the audience rose. Verse after verse they sang of gloating peace and furious good-will. Protected by the music, their calm at last broke through restraint, and flung itself aloft in an abandon their composed bodies never would have allowed. Anne felt the peace about her crack like thin ice and disappear.
When the Reader advanced to the rostrum and the reading of the day's selections from the Scriptures and from Science and Health began, Anne held her patience by an effort. Before the colossal discovery of Mary Baker Eddy, the old Hebrew Prophets were little children searching in the dark. Again and again, the name of Mary Baker Eddy, uttered in unctuous pride of possession, struck at Anne's resolve to give tolerant attention, until she felt her own lips forming the words in the respectful pause which invariably preceded them. The old woman herself might have been peeping from a door, counting these ordered references, tabbing them against a possible omission. But the trained Reader never forgot, at the appointed places he gave her due, in perfection of delivery that set him aside from others, made him the special messenger of the exaggerated optimism of Mary Baker Eddy. When he had finished he sat down, in quiet withdrawal, and the Boston Lecturer took his place.
With bowed head, the Boston Lecturer stood for a moment, in silence receiving the silent applause, spirit greeting spirit. He was a middle-aged man, his slim alertness padded to suave courtesy by prosperity; not the obtrusive prosperity of Mr. Benjamin Wilson, but an unobtrusive prosperity, like a bank-book bound in morocco to stimulate a book of poems. He made sweeping statements of incredible facts, in a slow careful way that claimed a long process of logical analysis to which they had never been subjected. He spoke fluently, as if he had said the same things many times, but inserted unexpected pauses, direct demands that gave the impression of deep concern for this special audience; a willingness to give them personally of his great abundance.
At the end of twenty minutes, he, too, sat down. A faint motion marked the loosened tension of his hearers. The meeting was thrown open to testimony. Men and women rose to relate, in nauseating detail, illnesses from which they had been cured by Divine Truth. Tumors, cancers and wasting weaknesses had been alleviated, instantly in some cases, by a reading of Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. The listeners radiated affirmation. If they had ever possessed the power to doubt, it had long ago been buried under the weight of Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures, by Our Revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy.
At last those eager to testify grew fewer. The Reader looked over the hall to find no one standing. The Boston Lecturer rose again and named the solo to be sung by the woman in white. She came forward in her turn to the edge of green and Anne sat back, disappointed to the point of tears. The woman sang well, but Anne did not hear. After the solo would follow the five minutes of Utter Silence. Anne wished that she could get up and slip away. Why had she come?
And then, so silently, so swiftly that she long afterwards recalled this moment as one in which she must have lost consciousness, Anne felt herself swept out upon a Silence, so deep, so profound that there was no room within it for doubt or antagonistic withholding. Without a break, as if a great curtain had suddenly and noiselessly been rolled back, the whole hall moved into stillness. It was not a thing that descended upon them. It was a state into which they passed. The terrific wave of silence carried Anne with it; caught her on the pinnacle of its huge curve and dropped her gently into a peace so profound and so real that Anne felt it laving the whole surface of her body. Something within slipped beyond the tight hold of her will, escaped from the encasing body in which she had gripped it, claimed its own and fled into Peace.
The rustle of others brought Anne back. She got up and followed Charlotte Welles through the groups smiling and shaking hands and agreeing on the wonders of the Boston Lecturer. She was glad that Mrs. Welles did not stop but went directly out, and hoped Charlotte would not ask her about the meeting. She could not talk of it. And yet these unmagnetic, unvital, bewildered people had within themselves this tremendous power. Close to Charlotte Welles she walked in silence, angry at their possession of it.
Gradually Anne's mood dulled. Exhausted by her own emotion, she felt spiritually weak and drained. In her reaction, she could have dropped to sleep. She stifled a yawn and knew that Charlotte had seen. But it didn't matter. Without mention of the meeting, Anne left Mrs. Welles at the door and went upstairs.
At her step, Hilda looked up from the cake she was slicing and laughed.
"I never did a thing like that before, but do you know, it never entered my head. I took Rogie to the Park and was giving him a ride in the goat carriage when it struck me, all of a sudden, that I'd promised her. It was four then, but I came, right straight back home, although I knew it was too late."
"You might just as well have stayed."
"I suppose I might. Oh, well, we had a lovely time. Rogie was as good as gold. How did you like it? Is there anything in it?"
"Not for me," Anne said wearily.
"I thought as much. Still, I wish I could believe it. I'd like to get rid of that sciatica and no liniment touches it."
"But if you are a scientist, momsy, you don't have sciatica; and if you have sciatica you're not a scientist. So they get you coming and going."
"I suppose they do," Hilda agreed placidly. "Besides, I haven't tried that salt and bacon grease the delicatessen woman told me of. I'll do that to-night."
But the sciatica was miraculously cured without the bacon grease or Science. It disappeared that very evening with a cablegram from Belle. She sent a hundred dollars and said she was starting for home. At intervals all evening Hilda read the message. By nine o'clock the hundred dollars had been stretched to include a dozen things.
"And a wheel-chair for papa," she concluded.
"Not if you buy those other things," Anne warned, struggling to keep Hilda's imagination within some kind of bounds.
"Are chairs very expensive?"
"They're sure to be. Perhaps you could get a second-hand one."
"Perhaps we could."
There was a long pause and then Hilda asked: "Annie, do you suppose that papa—do you think he will be able—it would be silly to——"
Anne looked quickly away. "I don't know, mamma, let's ask the doctor."
"I don't know just how to do it," Hilda whispered. "But really, Annie, if he couldn't use it, it would be——"
"A waste," Anne finished.
But it was another week before the doctor found time to include this useless visit in his busy round. He came in mid-afternoon, as James Mitchell waked from his after-luncheon nap. He stayed chatting for a quarter of an hour and wrote a new prescription to make the sick man feel that everything possible was being done. As he left, Hilda drew him into the kitchen.
"He seems brighter, doctor, don't you think so?"
"Yes. You're good nurses. His general health is wonderfully good."
Hilda looked at Anne, the unasked question in her eyes, but Anne refused to put it. Not until the doctor was drawing on his gloves, did Hilda face it.
"How long, doctor—is there—always a second stroke—how——?"
"My dear Mrs. Mitchell," he said with his professional smile, "please ask me something I can tell you. After all, you know, we doctors are not prophets. I have known the strokes to follow each other within a very short time and sometimes they are years apart. In fact, sometimes the patient never has another and dies of some quite other—complication. The only thing to do is rest, quiet and diversion."
After he had gone, Hilda said thoughtfully:
"I wonder, if I went straight down town now, whether they could get a chair here to-night."
"You might try."
"I believe I will."
Just at dusk, they brought it, a comfortable chair on wheels, with a little rack for books, a tiny adjustable side tray, and a footrest. Hilda lit both gas jets in the bedroom and Anne wheeled herself gayly in. This unusual game covered over the presentation long enough to get James settled, and then the added comfort and independence hid, for the moment, his terrible need.
No one knew that James Mitchell cried that night when the excitement was over.