Carolina Lee Part 14

In great thankfulness she took her Bible and read the fifth chapter of Luke, and, when she came to the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth verses, she read them three times, with a heart full of grat.i.tude.

Still she was not satisfied. She was groping after a sign, and she read on until she came to the words, "And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto the magistrates and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say. For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in that hour what ye ought to say."

"The Holy Ghost!" thought Carolina. "I wonder what that really is.

That is one of the things I never could understand in the old thought."

She turned to the Glossary in "Science and Health," and there the first definition of Holy Ghost was "Divine Science."

"I am answered," she said, with a sigh of complete satisfaction. "For the first time in my life I begin to understand the fourteenth chapter of John."

She leaned her head against the window-pane to watch the postman come down the street. Then she heard his whistle, and presently the maid brought her a letter. She asked the maid to turn on the electric light, and, when she had done so and left the room, Carolina read the following letter:

"LONDON, May 6, 19--

"MY DEAR MISS CAROLINA:--You have rejected my suit so often, when I had no inducement to offer you except a heart which beats for you alone, which seems to be no temptation to you, that I shall not pay you the poor compliment of offering myself to you again when, as you must have heard, I have become the owner of Guildford.

"But, having heard of your great misfortune and of your change of religion, and knowing that you love the old home so ardently that its atmosphere might effect a cure when all else failed, I beg you to accept Guildford as it stands, as a gift from your father's old friend,

"WAYNE YANCEY."

Carolina's first impulse, having read the letter twice, was one of the cold fury she used to feel when a child, and she turned pale with a rage which was unspeakable in its violence.

Too well she saw through the malice of the whole affair. Colonel Yancey knew that, after her first impact of anger had pa.s.sed, her next thought would be to wish she could buy the estate back, and these terms he intended to make prohibitive. Carolina wondered if he expected to wear out her patience, and so force her to marry him, or what? She could not hope to follow with accuracy the tortuous windings of a mind as intricate as Colonel Yancey's, and she despaired of ever realizing that the labyrinth could untwist into the straight and narrow way to which she was accustomed. But, so far from crus.h.i.+ng her, this letter simply roused in her the valiant spirit of the Lees. So far from feeling downhearted, she began to sing.

But it was not a worldly courage which was sustaining her. It was the spirit which had grown out of her afternoon of work.

She deliberately took her cane with her as she went down to dinner, although she felt that she could walk without it. She knew that Kate wanted the surprise to be complete.

With this end in view, she sat at the table until the footman announced Doctor Colfax, and then she allowed all the others to precede her.

"N-now wait until we have all had time to shake hands, and a-ask him how he enjoyed himself, and give him a chance to be disappointed or g-gloating, just as he feels, because y-you aren't down. Then y-you skate in and w-watch him drop! We'll have him a Christian Science pract.i.tioner b-before we are done with him!"

Carolina obeyed.

They were all there,--Mr. and Mrs. Howard, Kate, Cousin Lois, Doctor Colfax, and Noel St. Quentin, and all were under the impression that Carolina would never be able to walk without some slight support. So that, when she walked slowly through the door, taking her steps with great care, that she might more gloriously reflect the Light, a hush fell upon them all. They did not greet her. They rose to their feet and stood watching her in perfect silence, and it was not until Kate sobbed in her excitement that the spell was broken.

Noel St. Quentin bit his lips, and Doctor Colfax's face went from red to white in an emotion which no one could fathom. Was he chagrined to see the woman he loved cured? Did he grudge her healing at other hands than his?

They all began to speak at once. Only Mr. Howard, Kate's father, sat back and watched and listened.

Roscoe Howard was a remarkable man in many ways. He possessed a critical mind, large wealth, great depth of character, and a sureness and quickness of perception, which had all contributed to his success in life. He was a student, above all, of human nature, and he had insisted upon Kate's willing hospitality to her friend, partly from affection to the daughter of his old friend, Winchester Lee, and partly to see what effect such an avalanche of misfortunes would have upon the proud spirit and high-strung nature of Carolina. When he heard of her embrace of Christian Science, he became still more interested. He had once gone in to sit with her when her arm was bandaged from wounds from her own teeth in one of her fits of despairing rage.

Therefore, when he learned from his daughter that this was to be the girl's first appearance before her old friends, he could imagine the ordeal it would prove to her, and in his own mind he said: "Carolina will show us to-night whether she is The Lady or The Tiger!"

At first they all tried to be polite and remember that they were civilized, but soon that curious unable-to-let-it-alone spirit which Christian Science invariably stirs in mortal mind began to manifest itself in hints and covert remarks and side glances and meaning silences, until Carolina calmly looked them in the eyes and said, in her gentlest manner: "I am perfectly willing to talk about it."

Kate clutched her mother's arm.

"I-isn't Carolina a d-dandy?" she whispered. "Takes every hurdle without even stopping to measure it with her eye!"

"Well, doctor, since Carolina has given us permission to discuss it, what have you to say about it?" asked Mrs. Howard.

"I can simply say this," said Doctor Colfax. "I don't understand it.

But, then," he added frankly, "I don't understand the Bible, either."

"Then that is why you don't understand my cure, doctor," said Carolina, quietly, "for it is founded on the promises which Christ explicitly made to His disciples."

"To His disciples,--yes," replied Doctor Colfax, quickly, "but not to us. We are not His disciples."

"If you are a thorough Bible student," said Carolina, "please tell me the exact words of His promise."

"I am not. You have me there, Miss Lee."

"Well," persisted Carolina, "where did He limit the power He gave, and which you admit existed at one time, to His disciples? Did He ever say, 'I will give it to you and to no other?' or 'I will give it to you during my lifetime, but after my ascension it will return unto me, because you will no longer have need of it?'"

"No, I can't remember any such pa.s.sages," admitted Doctor Colfax.

"W-well, He never s-said anything of the kind," put in Kate. "I don't know much, but I know that!"

"What did He say, Carolina?" asked St. Quentin. "Do you remember the exact words?"

"Yes, I do. In one place He said: 'He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also. And greater works than these shall he do because I go unto my father.' And at another time He said: 'Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils. Freely ye have received. Freely give.' Now when did the time limit to those commands end?"

"Oh, nonsense, Carolina!" said Mrs. Howard, with the amused toleration of the already saved. "How can you bring up such absurd speculations?

All those questions have been settled for us by the heads of the Churches years and years before we were born."

"They were settled, dear Mrs. Howard, for all who choose to accept such decisions, but how about those of us who have questioned all our lives and never found an answer which satisfied? I can remember, as a little girl in Paris, I used to come home from the convent and ply my father with this very question: 'Why can't priests and preachers heal in these days the way Jesus commanded?'"

"Well, does Mrs. Eddy have the nerve to a.s.sert that she rediscovered the way to perform Christ's miracles?" asked Doctor Colfax.

"Mrs. Eddy a.s.serts that in 1866 she discovered the Christ Science, or the power of healing disease as Jesus healed it, by a mental process which is so simple that to all Christian Scientists Christ's so-called miracles are not miracles at all, but as simple and natural as any other mental phenomenon which has become common by reason of its frequency."

"That sounds like sacrilege," said St. Quentin.

"It sounds like tommy-rot!" said Kate.

"And yet," put in Mr. Howard, "we must all admit that Carolina has been miraculously healed. Do you not admit that, doctor?"

Doctor Colfax's face became suffused. He bit his lip, then said, with quiet distinctness:

"If I had cut off a man's leg with my own hands, and Mrs. Eddy, under my very eyes, caused a new leg to grow in the place of the old one, I would not believe in her or in anything she taught!"

Expressions of varying emotions swept over the faces of his listeners at this sincere statement of unbelief,--some were triumphant, some incredulous, some surprised, and one contemptuous.

"But, doctor, when you see Christian Science enrolling the names of the most brilliant minds; when you see the loveliest women forsaking a life of ease and pleasure and becoming pract.i.tioners,--Christian Science doctors just as selfless and single-minded as you--"