Carmen Ariza Part 145

"Referring to--that priest--Jose de Rincon?"

"Yes, doubtless. And time and again I have heard her say: 'G.o.d is light. Sight depends upon light. Therefore Anita's babe sees.' Old Rosendo's grandson, you know."

Hitt nodded. "Waite," he said earnestly, "she is simply ill.u.s.trating what would happen to any of us if we threw ourselves wholly upon G.o.d's protecting care, and took our thoughts only from Him. That's why she can lose her home, her family, her reputation, that mine--everything--and still stand. _She does what we don't dare to do!_"

"She is a living ill.u.s.tration," replied Father Waite, "of the mighty fact that there is nothing so practical as _real_ Christianity. I want you to tell Professor Cane that. He calls her 'the girl with the Utopian views,' because of her ingenuous replies in his sociological cla.s.s. But I want you to show him that she is very far from being impractical."

"I'll do it," said Hitt emphatically. "I'll prove to Cane that her religion is not a visionary scheme for regulating a world inhabited only by perfect beings, but is a working principle for the every-day sinner to use in the solution of his daily problems. Moreover, Waite, she is a vivid ill.u.s.tration of the fact that when the individual improves, the nation does likewise. Do you get me?"

"I not only get you, but I stand as a proof of your statement,"

returned Father Waite gently.

Carmen, her thoughts above, though her feet trod the earth, came and went, glad and happy. The change in her mode of living from the supreme luxury of the Hawley-Crowles mansion to the common comforts of the home where now she dwelt so simply with the Beaubien, seemed not to have caused even a ripple in the full current of her joy. Her life was a symphony of thanksgiving; an antiphony, in which all Nature voiced its responses to her in a diapason, full, rich, and harmonious.

Often that autumn she might have been seen standing among the tinted leaves on the college campus, and drinking in their silent message.

And then she might have been heard to exclaim, as she turned her rapt gaze beyond the venerable, vine-clad buildings: "Oh, I feel as if I just couldn't stand it, all this wealth of beauty, of love, of boundless good!" And yet she was alone, always alone. For her dark story had reared a hedge about her; the taboo rested upon her; and even in the crowded cla.s.srooms the schoolmates of her own s.e.x looked askance and drew their skirts about them.

But if the students avoided her, the faculty did not. And those like Professor Cane, who had the opportunity and the ability to peer into the depths of the girl's soul, took an immediate and increasing interest in her. Often her own nave manners broke down the bars of convention, and brought her enduring friends.h.i.+ps among the men of learning. This was especially the case with Doctor Morton, Dean of the School of Surgery. Yielding to a harmless impulse of curiosity, the girl one afternoon had set out on a trip of exploration, and had chosen the Anatomy building to begin with. Many odd sights greeted her eager gaze as she peered into cla.s.srooms and exhibit cases; but she met with no one until she chanced to open the door of Doctor Morton's private laboratory, and found that eminent man bending over a human brain, which he was dissecting.

Carmen stopped, and stood hesitant. The doctor looked up, surprise written large upon his features as he noted his fair caller. "Well!"

he said, laying down his work.

"Well!" returned Carmen. "That sounds like the Indian 'How?' doesn't it?" Then both laughed.

"You--are--Doctor Morton?" queried the girl, twisting around and looking at the name on the door to make certain.

"Yes," replied the genial doctor, with growing interest. He was a gray-haired, elderly man, slightly inclined to embonpoint, and with keen, twinkling eyes. "Will you come in?"

"Yes, indeed," returned the girl; "I'd love to. I am Carmen Ariza."

"Ah, yes. The young South American--lady. I have heard of you."

"Most everybody seems to have heard of me," sighed the girl. "Well, it doesn't make any difference about my coming in here, does it?" She looked up at him so wistfully that he felt a great tug at his heartstrings.

"Not a bit!" he replied cordially. "You're as welcome as the April sun."

She seized his hand and pressed it. "Now tell me," she said eagerly, looking about. "What are you doing? What's that thing?"

"That," said he, taking up the pulpy gray object, "is the brain of my erstwhile friend and collaborator, Doctor Bolton. He willed it to the University."

"Alas, poor Yorick!" murmured Carmen, a facetious twinkle coming into her eyes as she looked at it. "And why are you cutting it up?"

"In the interests of science," returned the man, studying her. "That we may increase our knowledge of this marvelous mechanism of thought, and the laws by which it operates in mental processes."

"Then you still blindly seek the living among the dead, don't you?"

she murmured. "You think that this poor thing held life, and you search now among its ashes for the living principle. But, G.o.d is life; and 'Canst thou by searching find out G.o.d?'"

The man regarded her intently without replying. She bent for a while over the half-dissected brain in deep thought. Then she looked up.

"Doctor," she said, "life is not structural. G.o.d is life; and to know Him is to reflect life. Reflecting Him, we are immortal. Doctor, don't you think it is about time to do away with this business of dying?"

The man of science started visibly, and his eyes opened wider. The abrupt question quite swept him off his feet.

"You didn't really expect to find anything in this brain, did you?"

she went on. "The brain is composed of--what?"

"Why, mostly water, with a few commonplace salts," he answered, wondering what the next question would be.

"And can a compound of water and a few commonplace salts _think_?" she asked, looking intently at him.

"N--no," he answered tentatively.

"The brain is not the cause of thought, then, but an effect, is it not?" she pursued.

"Why, really, my dear Miss Carmen, we don't know. We call it the organ of thought, because in some way thought seems to be a.s.sociated with it, rather than with--well, with the liver, or muscles, for example.

And we learn that certain cla.s.ses of mental disturbances are intimately a.s.sociated with lesions or clots in the brain. That's about all."

The girl reflected for a few moments. Then:

"Doctor, you wouldn't cut up a machine to discover the motive power, would you? But that is just what you are doing there with that brain.

You are hoping by dissecting it to find the power that made it go, aren't you? And the power that made it go was mind--life."

"But the life is not in the brain now," hazarded the doctor.

"And never was," returned Carmen promptly. "You see," she went on, "if the brain was ever alive, it could never cease to be so. If it ever lived, it could never die. That brain never manifested real life. It manifested only a false sense of life. And that false sense died. Who or what says that the man who owned that brain is dead? Why, the human mind--human belief. It is the human mind, expressing its belief in death, and in a real opposite to life, or G.o.d. Don't you see?"

"H'm!" The doctor regarded the girl queerly. She returned his look with a confident smile.

"You believe in evolution, don't you?" she at length continued.

"Oh, surely," he replied unhesitatingly. "There is overwhelming evidence of it."

"Well, then, in the process of evolution, which was evolved first, the brain, or the mind which operates it and through it?" she asked.

"Why," he replied meditatively, "it is quite likely that they evolved simultaneously, the brain being the mind's organ of expression."

"But don't you see, Doctor, that you are now making the mind really come first? For that which expresses a thing is always secondary to the thing expressed."

"Well, perhaps so," he said. "At any rate, it is quite immaterial to a practical knowledge of how to meet the brain's ills. I am a practical man, you know."

"I'm sorry to hear that," she said simply. "Practical men are so stupid and ignorant."

"Well, I declare!" he exclaimed, putting his hands on his hips and staring down at the smiling face.

"And you are so nice and friendly, I wouldn't want to think you stupid and ignorant," she went on blandly.

"H'm! Well, that kind o' takes the edge off your former cla.s.sification of me," he said, greatly amused, yet wondering just what appraisal to place upon this frank girl.

"And evolution," she continued, "is an unfolding, isn't it? You see, the great fact of creation is the creator, infinite mind. Well, that mind expresses itself in its ideas. And these it is unfolding all the time. Now a fact always gives rise to a suppositional opposite. The opposite of a fact is an error. And that is why error has been called 'negative truth.' Of course, there isn't any such thing as negative truth! And so all error is simply falsity, supposition, without real existence. Do you see?"