Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “I beg your pardon, my lady,” she said; “I thought Lord Thurso was here.”

  “He will be back soon,” said Maud. “Can I do anything?”

  “I think Dr. Symes ought to be sent for at once, my lady,” she said. “Sandie Mackenzie had very high fever an hour ago, but I didn’t like his looks, and I have just taken his temperature again. It is below normal, and that is the worst that can happen, suddenly like this. Dr. Symes told me to send for him if there was a change for the worse, and I thought I had better come and tell his lordship.”

  Maud got up.

  “You did quite right to come and tell us, nurse,” she said. “I will have him sent for at once. Is it very serious?”

  “Yes, my lady; it means perforation,” she said. “I don’t know that it is any good to send for the doctor, but one must do what one can.”

  Maud nodded.

  “Thank you,” she said; “I will see to it.”

  The nurse left the room, going back to her patients; but Maud stood there for a moment without moving, for all she had mused about by the river yesterday came back to her mind in spate, vividly, instantaneously. Only yesterday she had heard Mr. Cochrane tell Duncan that his wife was better, and though that morning she had been ill almost beyond hope of recovery, yet all that day, and all to-day, she had been mending swiftly and steadily. Thurso was upstairs, too; the opportunity she had desired was completely given her.

  She had started to go to ring the bell, and order someone to go down to Dr. Symes’s house and summon him, but half-way she stopped. It seemed almost as if Mr. Cochrane had expected this, for he had wheeled round in his chair, and when she stopped he was facing her, quiet, cheerful, looking at her with those strong, childlike eyes.

  “Mr. Cochrane,” she began.

  Their eyes met, and again she felt antagonistic to him. He had the element of certainty about him, which, it seemed to her, no one had the right to carry. But then, his simplicity made it easier to be simple with him. She moved a step nearer him, a step further from the bell.

  “I don’t know whether I am right to ask you this,” she said; “but, to begin with, if what the nurse thinks has happened, it is quite useless, as she said, to send for the doctor. I don’t ask it either in a spirit of derision or curiosity.”

  “Ask, then,” said he quietly.

  “Yes; a life is at stake. Can you go to poor Sandie, and make him live? And, if so, will you? I have known him all my life. He has landed a hundred fish for me. But if you say “No,” I shall quite understand that you feel — honestly, I am quite sure — that it is not right for you to do so. I shall be sorry, but I shall in no way question your decision. So I ask you: Will you go to Sandie?”

  Maud did not know that the human face could hold such happiness as she saw there. He answered at once.

  “Why, certainly I will,” he said. “But if I am to make him better, you mustn’t, while I am treating him, whether you think he is improving or not, send for the doctor. There must be none of that. I will go to him if you wish, but if I go the case is in my hands — no, not that, but under the direct care of Divine Love. I cannot tell how long it may take to cure him. You know some patients are healed sooner than others, and respond more quickly than others to the healing power. But if you ask me to make him well, believing that I can, I will do so. But you must trust me completely, otherwise you hinder. And you must be sure you are not asking it only to see if I can.”

  Maud went through a long moment of dreadful indecision. She knew she was taking a tremendous responsibility, for though, if the nurse was right, Sandie was beyond human power, yet it was a serious thing to refuse to send for the doctor. But it was impossible not to trust this strong, happy confidence. And as she hesitated he spoke again, still quite quietly, quite cheerfully.

  “Why hesitate?” he said. “Your choice is very simple. You choose the direct power of God to make Sandie well, or you reject it. Don’t think for a moment it is I who make him well. I can do no more than the doctor. Look on me only as the window through which the sun shines. So choose, Lady Maud.”

  She hesitated no longer.

  “Please go to him,” she said; “and oh, be quick!”

  The human cry sounded there. She was terrified at her choice. What if Sandie died, and she had not sent for the doctor, not done all that could have been done? Yet she did not revoke her decision. But she was frightened, and this stranger whom she had seen yesterday for the first time soothed her like a child.

  “There is nothing to be frightened at,” he said. “You have chosen right, and your faith knows that, but the flesh is weak. Or, rather, our faith is weak, while our flesh is strong. It binds and controls us sometimes, so that our true will is almost powerless. Let me be silent a minute.”

  He moved his chair round again to the table where they had dined, made a backward sweep of his hand, overturning and breaking a glass, so as to clear a little space, and leaned his head on his hands, clasping his fingers over his eyes to shut out the sight of all material things, and brought his whole mind home to the one great fact from which sprang his own life, his health, his happiness — namely, his belief in the presence, omnipotence, and love of God. From fishing, from all the preoccupations of life, from Thurso, from Maud, from false beliefs in illness and pain, he called his winged thoughts home, and they settled in his soul like homing doves. With all his power of soul and mind he had to realise the central fact, this root from which the whole world sprang. Every nerve and fibre, material though they were, had to be instinct with it. As he had said to Maud, he was but the window through which the sun shone. This window, then, had to be polished and cleaned, to be made speckless of dust, or of anything which could cast a shadow and hinder the rays from penetrating. For a minute or two he remained motionless, and then got up from his chair.

  “Come up with me, Lady Maud,” he said, “since you have asked this in sincerity. I should like you to see it, since you are ready to believe, for, like the Israelites, you shall stand still and see the salvation of God.”

  Maud did not hesitate now. Something of that which he had realised reached her; the sun streamed in through the window.

  “Yes, I will come,” she said.

  Nurse Miles, who had come down to tell Maud, was busy with patients in another room, and the two, having gone upstairs to the first-floor, inquired of another nurse where Sandie was. She knew Maud, of course, by sight, and supposing that Cochrane was the new doctor expected to-day from Inverness, asked no questions, but merely took them through the billiard-room, where were some twenty beds, into a smaller room beyond, where Sandie had been placed alone. At the door Mr. Cochrane turned to her.

  “Thanks,” he said; “I shall not need you.”

  Then the two entered, and Cochrane closed the door gently behind them.

  Maud had never yet in her life seen any to whom the great White Presence has drawn near, but now, when she looked at the bed and the face of the man who lay there, she knew that the supreme moment must nearly have come, so unlike life was what she saw. Sandie, the gillie whom she had known so well, with whom year after year she had passed so many pleasant and windy days on the moor or by the brown sparkling river, was barely recognisable. The grey, pallid mask, with skin drawn tight over the protruding bones of the face, was scarcely human. Both upper and lower lips, already growing bluish in tinge, were drawn back, so that in both jaws the teeth were exposed even to the gums, and his eyes, wide open and bright and dry, looked piteously this way and that, with pupils dilated with terror, and the soul, frightened at this dark and lonely journey on which none could be its companion, sought for comfort and reassurement, but sought in vain. It was no delirium of fever that caused that active scrutiny: it was fear and dumb appeal. His hands, thin and white, lay outside the blanket, and they, too, were active, picking at it.

  Cochrane had seen that before, and knew what it meant, and he quickly pulled a chair to the bedside, leaving Maud standing.

  “Sandie,
” he said, “just listen here a minute. You think you are ill, maybe you think you are dying — at least, your mortal mind tells you that — and you’ve let yourself believe it. Now, there’s not an atom of truth in it. Why, man, God is looking after you, and He has sent me here this evening to remind you of that. Your forgetting that has made your poor body sick. That’s all the trouble.”

  Maud looked from that mask on the pillow to the man who sat by the bed, and if the one face was dark with the shadow of death that lay over it, the other was so lit and illumined with life that it seemed possible even now that death, for all his grimness and nearness, might have to retreat. Some force, irresistible and radiant, seemed to be challenging him. But as yet she did not dare hope. She could only wait and watch.

  Then there was silence. Cochrane took his mind off all else, off poor Sandie even, to abandon himself to the knowledge, the belief in the only Power that healed and lived. Though the evening was cool, the beads of perspiration stood thick on his forehead as he concentrated all his strength, all his power of belief, into the realisation of this. Then, again, after some quarter of an hour, he raised his head, and looked on the glassy, dying face on the pillow, and spoke more eagerly, more insistently than ever.

  “How can you be ill if you only realise that there is nothing real in the world except God’s Infinite Love? Fix yourself on that. It’s only sin that makes us able to be afraid, or sick, or in pain. But that isn’t God’s will for you, Sandie, and He won’t have it. It’s that old cheat, the devil, who makes us sin, and who makes us think we are sick. He tells you, too, that you are a poor sinful body. So you are, but you’ve forgotten a big thing about that. God has wiped it all away. Jesus took it, the dear Master took all that, and all sickness, too, on His shoulders. It nearly staggered even Him for a moment.”

  He paused again, and for some minutes more was silent, absorbed in the realisation of that which he believed. All the time he seemed absolutely unconscious of Maud’s presence, and in the silence she looked back from him to that which had been but a death’s-head on the pillow, and saw, not exactly to her amazement, but to her intense awe, that a certain change had come over it. It was possible, of course, that her first terrified glance at it had exaggerated the deathliness of it, and that she might in a way have now got used to it. But, in any case, it seemed different. Or, again, the intensity of Mr. Cochrane’s belief in the power to heal those on whom the very shadow of death lay might have infected her, and made her see through the medium of his conviction. Yet it seemed to her that a change was there. She faintly recognised Sandie again — the living Sandie whom she knew, not the dead Sandie whom she had seen when she first entered the room. That gaping, mirthless grin had vanished; his lips were no longer drawn back to the base of the teeth. And surely, half an hour ago, his lips had been nearly blue; now a blood-tinge invaded them again. Also, those poor hands, which had picked and plucked at the blanket, were still. They lay there weak and nerveless, but they no longer picked and clawed. His eyes sought comfort still, but it seemed that they had begun to find it. And was the eclipse, the shadow of death, beginning to pass away from his face? Was the power of Infinite Love, which must be so much stronger than sickness and death, being here and now openly manifested? Or was she but imagining these things in obedience to the suggestion made by that strong, virile mind of the man who sat by the bedside?

  From Sandie she looked back to Mr. Cochrane. Soon he raised his eyes again, for through this long silence he had sat with his face buried in his hands; and again he looked at Sandie, and there shone from him a beam so tender and triumphant that his face was transfigured.

  “You are better already, my dear man,” he said, “and you are coming back so quickly, retracing your way along the road of error and untruth and unreality. Don’t you feel it? Don’t you know it?”

  There could be no mistake now: Sandie’s face had changed. Life, feeble and fluttering, made its impress there; death but flickered where it had dwelt so firmly. A tide had turned. It was low-water still, but the water no longer ebbed; it had begun to flow. And, after a moment, Sandie smiled at those brown, childlike eyes, and the smile was not that fixed and terrified grin which Maud had seen there before.

  Cochrane caught, so to speak, and held that look, the first conscious effort of the man who had been dying.

  “That’s right,” he went on; “all that false belief which has made you ill is coming out of your mind. It must come out, all of it. You can’t do it of yourself, and I can’t do it for you, but Divine Love can. The door of your heart is opening. Oh, let it swing wide, and let the great sun shine in and chase the shadows away. There, wider yet! Sin is gone, illness is gone; all is gone except the great light. If anyone has told you you were sick, forget it. He was mistaken; he didn’t stop to think that there can’t be any sickness where God is, and He is everywhere, wherever He is asked to be. We have asked Him to come here, and here He is. Put your hand in His, and let Divine Love lead you, and your sin and your fear and your sickness will just roll away as the mists roll away from the moor, as you have so often seen, when the sun rises. You feel that, Sandie — you know it. Your fear has ceased, for there is nothing to be afraid of. Your sickness and weakness are leaving you, because they were born only from night mists which the sun has scattered. You are tired and weak still — yes, yes — because you have been wading through the slime and choking mud of fear and false belief; but you are coming out of that, and already God is setting your feet on the rock. You will not be afraid for any terror by night, nor for the pestilence that walks in darkness, and all day you are safe, for the arrow that flieth by day cannot touch you, nor the sickness that destroys in the noonday of ignorance and unbelief. God and His salvation are come to you, and you will dwell in His house of defence, set very high. So tell me with your own voice, are you not getting well? Do you not know you are better? Are not the false things vanishing?”

  What was happening? Maud asked herself that with thrilled and bewildered wonder. She had to believe the evidence of her own ears, when she heard Sandie saying — faintly, indeed, but audibly, and in his natural voice — that he was better. She had to believe the evidence of her own eyes, which showed her the pallid mask exchanged for the face of a living being. He had been pulled back from the gate of death, even as the door was being opened for him to pass through. The colour was coming back to that ghastly clay-hued face; terror and suffering were being expunged from his eyes; the short, panting breath, whistling from between clenched teeth and backdrawn lips, became natural respiration. And from under the bed-clothes there came no longer jumping movements; the limbs lay still.

  Yet it was impossible; she could not yet believe the evidence of her own senses. It must be some trick, some illusion. And even as the thought entered her mind, Cochrane, for the first time, turned to her.

  “You mustn’t doubt either, dear lady,” he said, “for you know that all I have been saying is quite true; it is the only thing that is completely true. Come, take all other thought out of your mind. If you have been questioning the truth of what you see here, reverse that doubt. Tell Sandie that you know God is making him well, just because he is beginning to know that neither illness nor sin nor fear can exist in the presence of Infinite Love. Tell him that.”

  Maud took a step forward, and stood at the foot of the bed. She had to believe what her eyes showed her, and they showed her no longer that unrecognisable death-mask, but the face of Sandie — thin and pale and tired, it is true, but his living face.

  “It is quite true, Sandie,” she said. “You are getting well. It is your faith in the Infinite Love that makes you well.”

  Cochrane turned to the bed again, and spoke in a voice so tender and strong that Maud felt a sudden lump rise in her throat.

  “Why, Sandie,” he said, “your faith is spreading round you like calm waters, and Infinite Love shines through it like the sun at noonday. Faith is streaming from you, and the same knowledge streams from us all — Lady Maud a
nd me. And the streams are joining, and rushing in spate together over what was a dry and barren hillside. Listen to the voice of them, shouting their praise to the Lord. By Jove! He is being good to you, isn’t He?”

  Again he paused a moment.

  “And now, since that old cheat, the devil, has been tiring your poor body out, poking it and pinching it and roasting it, you will have a good sleep. Sleep the clock round, Sandie; but before you drop off just be sure you’ve got tight hold of God’s hand, and, like Jacob, say you won’t let Him go before He blesses you. And don’t let Him go afterwards, either. And when you wake to-morrow squeeze His hand again, and say, ‘Divine Love, you’re going to lead me now and always.’ He will, too. He never said ‘No’ to anybody, and the biggest trouble He has is that we won’t keep on asking Him for what we want. And now get to sleep, my dear man. Just say to yourself, ‘Thou, Lord, art my hope; Thou hast set Thy house of defence very high. There shall no evil happen unto thee....’”

  And then, gently as a child’s, Sandie’s eyelids flickered once and shut down. Cochrane got up without another word, and in silence he and Maud left the room. At the door Maud looked back. Sandie was lying quite still, drawing in the long, full respirations of natural sleep.

  Nurse Miles had returned during the last hour to the billiard-room, where she was settling her patients for the night, and as they went through Maud stopped to speak to her.

  “Sandie is ever so much better, nurse,” she said, “and he has gone to sleep, I think. You won’t disturb him again to-night, will you?”

  Nurse Miles shook her head.

  “It’s exhaustion, I’m afraid,” she said, “not sleep. He will not be disturbed till Dr. Symes comes. And I daresay not even then, poor fellow!”

  Cochrane was standing by, and it seemed to Maud as if it was her duty to bear witness here and now to what she had seen, to what she incredulously believed.

  “There is no need for Dr. Symes to come at all,” she said. “I have not sent for him, and shall not. Go and look for yourself, so that I may know you are satisfied.”