E. F. Benson

“ There was nothing in the world that could be compared with the reality of Infinite Love; she had known that so well to-day, and already she was letting error obscure it. Vehemently, vigorously, she fought that error, and then suddenly she wondered what she had been fighting. For there was nothing there; her blows were rained upon emptiness. It was as if she had dreamed she was fighting. And she spoke to Thurso as she might have spoken to a child who was afraid of the dark, while in her hands she carried the Great Light. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A moment’s doubt and fear swept over Maud like some huge combing breaker.
“Thurso, Thurso!” she cried. “Mr. Cochrane!”
He still held the bottle in his hand.
“Ah, reverse your fear quickly,” he said.
But Thurso seemed not to hear her. The sugar was nearly dissolved now, and he was stabbing at the few remaining crystals.
“What a nice fire!” he said. “I shall sit by it all the evening, and not come to dinner, and enjoy four or five hours of Paradise. Time goes so slowly, too, in Paradise; it seems an eternity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In that great upspringing of hope and courage which had come to her that afternoon at Thurso’s words the confined walls of the dining-saloon could not hold her long; her instinct urged her to be up on deck again with the huge sea and the huge sky to be her only companions, so as to let her soul go forth, without the distraction of near objects and the proximity of other human beings, that seemed to impede and clog the immortal sense, into the limitless presence of Divine Love. ”

“ Maud got up.
“What would you do if he had a relapse?” she asked.
“I couldn’t say now, and I certainly mustn’t allow myself to contemplate it. But if it came, it would surely be made quite clear to me how to demonstrate over it. We are never left in the lurch like that; it’s only the devil who plays his disciples false, and lets them have fits of remorse just when they want to amuse themselves.”
The flames on the hearth leaped up or died down in response to the great blasts outside which squalled and trumpeted over the house, or paused as if to listen in glee to the riot that they caused. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Catherine’s courage had sunk for a moment, like the mercury in a thermometer exposed to zero, but in that pause she recalled it again. It was that he had been waiting for.
“Lord Thurso has lived through twenty-four hours,” he said, “and immediate danger is really over. The attack he had was enough to kill most people. It has not killed him, and he will not now die of this attack. He may have others, but I don’t see why he should, unless he provokes them himself.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was the third day after his arrival at the house in Long Island, and he and Maud were sitting together by the fire before evening closed in. The weather this morning had suddenly broken, and instead of the windless, sunny frost a south-easterly gale from the sea had set chimneys smoking and ice melting, and drove torrents of volleying rain against the windows of the shuddering house. Maud at this moment was wiping her eyes, which the pungency of the wood-smoke had caused to overflow. ”

“ All this autumn she had been realising slowly and haltingly—for when evil and ruin were so close about her it was hard not to believe in the reality of them—that only one power, that of God, had any true existence, and that all else was false. But now that realisation was being poured into her like a flood, the dawn was growing dazzlingly bright, for already the miracle had begun, and hope and the will-power had begun to spring from what the doctors had declared was soil utterly barren, incapable of bearing fruit. ”

“ Suspicion and hate were awaking in Thurso’s brain. He felt so much better and stronger to-day, and his brain was working again after weeks of torpidity. He told himself he was becoming wonderfully acute and far-sighted.
“I don’t think I quite believe that,” he said. “I believe Catherine had a hand in it. Surely it is clear. She wanted to be left alone with Villars.”
Maud made a gesture of despair.
“Oh, you are mad,” she said. “It isn’t you who speak when you say dreadful false things like that: it’s the demon that possesses you, Thurso—that horrible drug. ”

“ Maud was splendid, too: she felt she could not have got through the days without her; but Maud was a woman, and she was a woman, and Villars was a man. Therefore he could help her in a way that Maud could not. For humankind is created male and female, and those of different sex can and must help each other in a manner impossible for those of the same sex. That is the glory of the world and its shame.
Villars had known about this drug habit on the Sunday he had spent with them in June, for he had seen Thurso by chance when the ecstasy of the dose was on him ”

“ I know that you believe in the Infinite and Omnipotent Mind, which is the sole and only cause and origin of all the world; and though you are not a member of our Church at present, yet, since you believe the Gospel on which every cure that Christian Science has ever made is based, begin treating him at once yourself. Combat in your mind every sign of error that you see in him, and never allow yourself to be discouraged, because to be discouraged means that for the moment you doubt. Of course, good must triumph, but when error is so firmly rooted in a man it wants some pulling up. ”

“ It was hard work—none knew that better than she—for the thing clung as tenaciously as a limpet; but failure was impossible, and well she knew that, when at last they got it to the door of his soul, and got that door open so that the sunshine of Infinite Love poured in, with what cry of joyful amazement would he see that the dreadful figure that in the dark seemed so real was nothing, had no existence apart from his belief in it. ”

“ She was close to him, and as if actual words had been spoken by her in bodily presence, he knew what filled her brain, what she wanted. It was all about him; she was saying to him again and again: “You are not only feeling better and stronger, but you are better. God is making you better. You are in His presence now, and no evil, drug, or suspicion, or hate can exist there.” ”

“ Thurso sat quivering there a moment longer, then he suddenly got up, dashed through the curtained doorway, and a moment afterwards the curtain again bellied inwards, rising free of the ground, and showing that the gale had got into the house again. Then the front-door banged to, and the wind subsided.
“He has gone out again,” said Maud. “Is it safe to leave him?”
“Oh yes. I think he has gone for a doctor, or he may have gone just to despair by himself. Then he will come back and see. He will not harm himself; he won’t even catch cold,” he added, smiling. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ He had been there ever since they came down from Scotland, alone with his valet and a couple of maidservants, one to cook and one to clean, having excused himself from the various houses where he had told her he should be staying, in order to live here in the hell-paradise of opium. Catherine had at once telegraphed for Maud, who was of more use than anybody with her brother, and the two had been here now for ten days. It was just better that they should be with him than that he should be alone; he still occasionally felt ashamed of himself if they were there. ”

“ As ever, its work was kind and compassionate, bringing healing with it, and deliverance from error, and nothing could prevail against it. She believed now, in spite of her moment’s panic terror when she saw Cochrane toss off that deadly draught, that he had done right. God could not play him false without playing Himself false, while, as for Thurso, poor, trembling, sobbing Thurso, at last he was broken. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An appalling blast swept by the house, full of shrieks and cries, as if the souls of the lost were being driven along in the pitiless storm, and it seemed as if some window must have burst open, or some door communicating with the night and the tempest have come unlatched, for the thick double curtain which served instead of door between the billiard-room where they sat and the hall outside was lifted a clear foot from the ground, and a flood of cold air, strong as a wind, poured in, making the candles flicker and stream, and stirring the carpet as if a ground swell had passed beneath it. ”

“ You will have to put yourself in the hands of Love often and often before you get rid of this. At least, I expect that, though we can’t tell in what manner He will choose to heal you. But I expect that: from what we know a habit takes longer to cure than an occasional lapse. It is hard to forget a thing we have got by heart. And we’ve got to ask, to keep on asking.”
Again the hostile attitude was smothered, and interest took its place.
“But why?” asked Thurso. “Why, if error is all a mistake, without real existence, does it bind us? How can it?”
“Gracious! I can’t tell you,” said Cochrane. ”