Bacillus of Beauty: A Romance of To-day

by Harriet Stark

  CHAPTER IX.

  A BURST OF SUNLIGHT.

  June 8.

  They say the darkest hour comes just before the dawn. It was so withme. My troubles grew too great to bear, then vanished in an hour.

  Fate couldn't forever frown. I knew there must be help; some handoutstretched in a pitiless world.

  Really I am almost happy, for in the most unexpected and yet the mostnatural fashion, my perplexities have vanished; and I believe that mylife will not be, after all, a failure.

  The hour before the dawn was more than dark. It was dreary. In themorning I did not care to go out, and no one came except one strangeman who besieged the door--there have been many such here recently,dunning and dunning and dunning, until my patience was worn to shreds.This was a decent-looking fellow with a thin face, a mustache dyedblack and a carefully unkeen expression that noticed everything.

  "Miss Winship?" he said, and upon my acknowledging the name, he placeda paper in my hands and went away. I was so relieved because he saidnothing about wanting "a little money on account;" he wasn't evencoarsely insolent, like so many of them. He did look surprised at myappearance; so surprised that his explanation of his errand died awayinto an unintelligible murmur. But I wasn't curious about it.

  I tried to read a newspaper, only to gather from some headlines thatStrathay and his cousin were passengers by an out-going steamship. Iwonder if it was all money, money, that kept him from me--or was itmore than half the fear of beauty?

  I couldn't read anything else, not even a note from Mrs. Marmaduke; itwas dated from her country place; she hoped to see me--"in the autumn!"Peggy is in Europe; the General's going if she's not gone already. "Maysee you at the wedding of that odd Miss Bryant," ran her last brusquemessage. "I begged an invitation; really I like her. But the chancesare against my being here."

  All gone, I thought; my last hope, all my friends.

  There was a note from Mrs. Baker; I compelled myself to glance at that,and when I had done so, seized my hat and veil. She would call, itsaid, that afternoon!

  With no thought but of escape, I left the house; I cared not where Iwent, nor what I did. I knew the Judge had sent Aunt Frank to pry intomy troubles; I walked with feverish haste, I would have liked to fly toavoid her. My hands shook.

  Oh, I was wretched!

  As I passed the Park, I saw that spring had leaped to summer and thetrees waved fresh, green branches in the air--just such trees as Johnand I walked under, less than a year ago, making great plans for agolden future; and a golden future there must be, but I had then nohope of it, no joy in life, no happiness even in my beauty. One onlythought spurred me on, to forget past, present and future; to buyforgetfulness by any caprice; to win diversion by any adventure.

  After some time I saw that I was in a side street whose number seemedfamiliar; self-searching at last recalled to me that on this streetlived two rival faith healers, about whose lively competition forclients Cadge had once told us girls a funny story.

  Could there have come to my thought some hope of finding rest fromsorrow in the leading of another mind? Impossible to say. I was nearinsanity, I think. I chose the nearer practitioner and rang the bell.

  I can smile now at memory of the stuffy little parlour into which I wasushered, but I did not smile then at it, nor at the middle-aged womanwho received me with a set smile of stereotyped placidity. Her name, Ithink, was Mallard.

  "Have you a conviction of disease, my daughter?" she asked, in a lowvoice with a caressing overtone gurgling in its cadences. "You look asradiant as the morn. You should not think ill."

  "I am not ill," I replied; "but the world is harsh."

  "The world is the expression of our sense life to the spirit," shecooed. "We do not live or die, but we pass through the phenomena.Through the purifying of our thoughts we will gradually become more andmore ethereal until we are translated."

  I felt that momentary shiver that folk tales tells us is caused by someone walking over our graves.

  "I'm in no haste to be translated," I said.

  "No one need be translated until she is ready--unless she has enemies.Are you suffering from the errors of others? Has any one felt fear foryou? That would account for what the world calls unhappiness. Is someone trying to influence your subjective state?"

  "I am convinced of it," I said with wasted sarcasm. "But you can donothing for me; you can't--can you work on unbelievers?"

  "Most assuredly. We are channels through which truth must flow to ourpatients. I need not tell you what I myself have done."--Mrs. Mallardmodestly cast down her eyes.--"Mrs. Eddy has healed carous bones andcancers. I--some of our healers can dissuade the conviction of decayedteeth. The 'filling,' as the world calls it, is, in such cases, pinkand very durable. If these marvels can be wrought upon the body, whymay not the mind be led toward healing? Confide; confide."

  "Heal the world of its hate of me," I cried out. "What you say is allso vague. Does the mind exist?"

  "It Is the only thing that does exist. Without mind man and theuniverse would collapse; the winds would weary and the world standstill. Sin-tossed humanity, expressed in tempest and flood, the divinemind calms and limits with a word."

  I rose hastily to go. Chance alone and weariness of life had led me toenter the woman's parlor, but there was no forgetfulness in it.Impatience spurred me to be moving, and I turned to the door, with thepolite fiction that I was leaving town but might soon consult thehealer.

  "That makes no difference," she persisted, getting between me and thedoor. "We treat many cases, of belief in unhappiness by the absentmethod. From 9 to 10 A. M. we go into the Silence for our Easternpatients. Our ten o'clock is nine o'clock for those living in thecentral time belt. At 11 A. M. it is nine for those in Denver or RockyMountain time region. Thus we are in the Silence during the entireforenoon, but it is always nine for the patient. Will you not arrangefor treatment; you really look very badly?"

  "Not today." I pushed past her.

  To my astonishment the woman followed me to the outer door, abruptlychanging her tone.

  "I know very well why you don't get healed," she said. "You fill yourmind with antagonistic thoughts by reading papers that are fightingsome one on every page. You want to get into some kind of society whereyou can pay $15 or $20 a week and get free healing, and you aredisappointed because I won't give you my time and strength for nothing,so that you can have the money to go somewhere and have a good time.Oh, I know you society people!"

  By degrees her voice had lost its cooing tone and had risen to ashriek. I was amazed--until I remembered the rival across the street,who was probably watching me from behind closed blinds.

  As I walked away with the woman's angry words ringing after me from thedoorstep, I was divided between amusement and despair; I cannot expressit by any other phrase. And that cynical mingling of feelings was thenearest approach to contentment that I had known for days.

  The feeling died away; reaction came. It was the worst hour of my life.The thought of suicide--the respite I had always held in reserveagainst a day too evil to be borne--pressed upon my mind.

  I wandered to a ferry and crossed the East River to some unfamiliarsuburb where saloons were thicker than I had ever before seen them; andall the way over I looked at the turbid water and knew in my heart thatI should never have the courage to throw my beautiful body into thatfoul tide.

  From the ferry I presently reached a vast, forbidding cemetery, and asI went among the crowded graves there came floating out from a littlechapel the sound of prayers intoned for the dead. I almost envied them;almost wished that I, too, might be laid to rest in the littlechurchyard at home.

  Then I lay down flat upon the turf in a lonely place, and tried tothink of myself as dead. Never had the pulse beat stronger in my veinsthen at that moment. There were little living things all around me,joying in the warm sun; tiny insects that crawled, unrebuked, over mygown, so busy, so happy in their way, with their petty affairs allprospering, that I wondered why I
should be so out of tune with theworld. And then a rain of tears gushed from my eyes. I do not thinkthat any one who should have seen me there could have guessed that theprone and weeping woman was the most beautiful of created things; I donot think I have an enemy so bitter that she would not have pitied me.

  I tried to think, but I was too tired. I had a vision of myselfreturning to the narrow round of farm life, to Ma's reproaches, todreary, grinding toil that I might win back dollar by dollar the moneyI had squandered--my back bent, my face seamed, my hands marred, likeAunt Emily's; and I shuddered and wept and grovelled before fate.

  Then I saw myself remaining in the city, seeking work and findingnothing. Teach I could not; every door was barred except--I saw myselfbefore the footlights, coarsened, swallowing greedily the applause of amusic hall audience, taking a husband from that audience perhaps--abrute like Bellmer! Better die!

  But as the vision passed, a great desire of life grew upon me. Itseemed monstrous, hideous, that I should ever die or be unhappy; thefighting instinct sent the blood galloping. I sat erect.

  Then I noticed that the sun was gone, and the evening cool was rapidlyfalling. The little people of the grass whose affairs I had idlywatched I could no longer see--gone to their homes maybe; and I turnedto mine, desolate as it was, hungry and chilled and alone.

  And that evening John Burke brought the sunshine.