Carmen Ariza Part 163

And then came the divine message that bade her "Know that I am G.o.d!"--that bade her know that responsibility lay not upon her shoulders, but upon the Christ for whom she was now called to witness. To see, or permit the world to see, this mountainous error, this heaped-up evil, as real and having power, meant a denial of the Christ and utter defeat. It meant a weary retracing of her own steps, and a long night of spiritual darkness to those whose eyes had been upon her.

"Sidney," she said, turning to the sunken boy at her side, "you are right, the old man _is_ gone. And now we are going to create 'new heavens and a new earth, and the former shall not be remembered nor come into mind'--as thought. Underneath are the everlasting arms, and you have sunk down, down, down, until at last you rest upon them, and you find that you haven't sunk at all, and that you couldn't possibly get away from that infinite Love that is always drawing you to itself!"

She put her arm again about the lad, and drew him toward her. "Listen, Sidney dear, I am standing with you--and with me is omnipotent G.o.d!

His arm is not shortened, that it can not save you from the pit of spiritual oblivion into which human thought would seem to make you think you had fallen, engulfed by the senses."

The boy raised his head and looked at her through his bloodshot eyes.

"You don't know!" he whispered hoa.r.s.ely; "you don't understand--"

"It is just because I _do_ understand, Sidney, that I am able to help you," she interrupted quickly. "I understand it all."

"It--it isn't only whiskey--it's--" his head sank again--"it's--morphine!

And--G.o.d! it's got me!"

"It's got the false thought that seems to call itself 'you,'" she said. "Well, let it have it! They belong together. Let them go. We'll cling to them no longer, but shake them off for good. For good, I said, Sidney--and that means, for _G.o.d_!"

"G.o.d?" he echoed. "I know no G.o.d! If there were a G.o.d, I shouldn't be where I am now."

"Then I will know it for you," she softly answered. "And you are now right where you belong, in Him. And His love is about you."

"Love!" He laughed bitterly. "Love! I never knew what it meant. My parents didn't teach it to their children. And when I tried to learn, my father kicked me into the street!"

"Then, Sidney, I'll teach you. For I am in the world just to show what love will do."

"My father--it's his fault--all his fault!" cried the boy, flaring up and struggling to rise. "G.o.d! I hate him--hate him! It's his fault that I'm a sot and a drug fiend!"

"It is hate, Sidney, that manifests in slavery, in sodden brains, and shaking nerves. You don't hate your father; the hate is against your thought of him; and that thought is all wrong. We're going to correct it."

"I used to drink--some, when I lived at home," the boy went on, still dwelling on the thoughts that held him chained. "But he could have saved me. And then I fell in love--I thought it was love, but it wasn't. The woman was--she was years older than I. When she left the city, I followed her. And when I found out what she was, and came back home, my father threw me out--cut me off--G.o.d!"

"Never mind, Sidney," the girl whispered. "It isn't true anyway." But she realized that the boy must voice the thoughts that were tearing his very soul, and she suffered him, for it uncovered to her the hidden sources of his awful malady.

"And then I drank, drank, drank!" he moaned. "And I lay in the gutters, and in brothels, and--then, one day, Carlson told me to come and work for him. He thought I could straighten up. And so I went to a doctor, and he--G.o.d curse him!--he injected morphine into my arm to sober me. And that taught me that I could drink all I wanted to, and sober up on morphine. But then I learned--I found--"

He stopped, and began to fumble in his pockets. His eyes became wilder as he searched.

"Where is it?" he cried, turning fiercely upon the girl. "Did you take it from me? Give it to me--_quick_!" He caught her wrist and twisted it painfully. His voice became a scream.

_"G.o.d is everywhere!"_ flashed through the girl's thought. "I am not afraid to see evil seem to have power!" Then aloud: "I know what you are searching for, Sidney. Yes, I have it. Listen, and I will give it to you. You are searching for help. No, it isn't in morphine tablets.

It is in love--right here--the Christ-principle, that is bigger far than the demons that seem to tear you! I have _all_ power from G.o.d, and you, evil, _can not touch me_!"

The boy started at the ringing voice, and loosened his grasp. Then he sank back into his chair, shaking as with palsy.

"Sidney!" she cried, seizing his hand. "Rise, and stand with me! We don't have to struggle--we don't have to fight--we only have to _know_. All that you are wrestling with is the world-wide belief that there is a power apart from G.o.d! _There is none!_ Any claim that there is such a power is a lie! I have proved it! You and I will prove it again! There is no power or intelligence in whiskey or morphine! I have been sent to help you! The Christ-principle will save you! There is nothing beyond its reach, not even your problem!

"It is a problem, that's all, Sidney," she went on, as he became calmer. "And I have the solution. Will you put yourself in my charge, in my care, and let me meet it for you?" She bent over him and looked eagerly into his drawn face.

"We are not going to fight," she continued. "We are not going to resist evil as the world does, and so make it real. I know, dear, just how pressing your need is. I know, and I understand. I know how awfully real it seems to you. But trust me, as I trust the Christ. For _victory is inevitable_!"

For a few moments they sat together, hand in hand. The boy seemed to have been stunned. Then Carmen rose. "Come," she said. "I am going to take you home with me. I am going to keep you right with me, right under my thought. I'm going to be the mirror, constantly with you, that reflects infinite love to you every moment. Come; your problem is mine now. The burden of proof rests upon me. Don't think of anything else now, excepting that G.o.d has your hand and is leading you."

She took his arm and drew him, unresisting, yet uncomprehending, to the door. As she opened it, she looked up into his face and smiled.

The boy choked, and turned back.

"No!" she cried, s.h.i.+fting her grasp to his hand. "No; you are mine now! And I shall not turn you over to yourself again until the problem is solved!"

Hitt met them as they came out of the room. "Well," he said, "I've kept Madam Beaubien informed as well as I could. But she's been worried. Where are you going?"

"Home," she said simply. "We'll be back at three--perhaps."

But at three that afternoon the Beaubien telephoned to Hitt that Carmen would not be down.

"She will not leave the boy," the woman said. "She holds him--I don't know how. And I know he is trying desperately to help her. But--I never saw any one stand as she does! Lewis is here, but he doesn't interfere. We're going to put a bed in his room, and Sidney will sleep there. Yes, I'll keep you informed. Tell Ned, won't you?"

Haynerd stormed; but the tempest was all on the surface. "I know, I know," he said, in reply to Hitt's explanation. "That boy's life is more to her than a million newspapers, or anything else in the universe just at present. She'll win! The devil can't look her in the face! I--I wish I were--What are you standing there for? Go 'long and get to work!"

In the little Beaubien cottage that afternoon the angry waves of human fear, of human craving, of hatred, wrath, and utter misery mounted heaven-high, and fell again. Upon them walked the Christ. As the night-shadows gathered, Sidney Ames, racked and exhausted, fell into a deep sleep. Then Carmen left his bedside and went into the little parlor, where sat the Beaubien and Father Waite.

"Here," she said, handing a hypodermic needle and a vial of tablets to the latter. "He didn't use them. And now," she continued, "you must work with me, and stand--firm! Sidney's enemies are those of his own mental household. It is our task to drive them out. We have got to uproot from his consciousness the thought that alcohol and drugs are a power. Hatred and self-condemnation, as well as self-love, voiced in a sense of injury, are other mental enemies that have got to be driven out, too. There is absolutely _no_ human help! It is all mental, every bit of it! You have got to know that, and stand with me. We are going to prove the Christ-principle omnipotent with respect to these seeming things.

"But," she added, after a moment's pause, "you must not watch this error so closely that it can't get away. Don't watch it at all! For if you do, you make a reality of it--and then, well--"

"The case is in your hands, Carmen," said Father Waite gently. "We know that Jesus would cure this boy instantly, if he were here--"

"Well--the Christ _is_ here!" cried the girl, turning upon him. "Put away your 'ifs' and 'buts.' Stand, and _know_!"

The man bowed before the rebuke. "And these," he said, holding out the needle and vial, "shall we have further use for them?"

"It will be given us what we are to do and say," she returned. "The case rests now with G.o.d."

CHAPTER 9

Four weeks from that crisp morning when Carmen led the bewildered, stupified lad to her home, she and Sidney sat out upon the little porch of the cottage, drinking in the glories of the winter sun.

January was but half spent, and the lad and girl were making the most of the sudden thaw before the colder weather which had been predicted might be upon them.

What these intervening weeks had been to Carmen, none might have guessed as she sat there with the sunlight filtering in streamlets of gold through her brown hair. But their meaning to the boy might have been read with ease in the thin, white face, turned so constantly toward his fair companion. They were deeply, legibly written there, those black nights, when he would dash out into the hall, determined to break through the windows of the nearest dram shop and drink, drink, drink, until the red liquor burst from his eyes, his mouth, his nostrils! Those ghastly nights, when Carmen would stand before him, her arms outspread across the door, and beat back the roaring devils within him! Those long days of agonized desire for the vicious drug which had sapped his manhood! Those fell hours, when low curses poured from his burning lips upon her and upon all mankind! Those cold, freezing sweats, and the dry, cracking fever! Those hours when, with Carmen always by his side, he tramped mile after mile through drifts and ice, until he dropped at length from sheer exhaustion, only to awake, hours later, to find that the girl had brought him home, safe, unharmed!--

And then, oh, the "Peace, be still!" which he began to hear, faint at first, but growing in volume, until, at last, it became a mighty, thunderous command, before which the demons paled and slunk away, never to return! Oh, the tears of agony that had given way to tears of joy, of thanksgiving! Oh, the weakness that had been his strength!

And, oh, the devotion of this fair girl--aye, and of her a.s.sociates, too--but all through her! Had she proved her G.o.d before the eyes of the world? That she had! Day after day, clad in the impenetrable armor of her love, she had stood at this struggling lad's side, meeting the arrows of death with her s.h.i.+eld of truth! Night after night she had sat by his couch, her hand crushed in his desperate grasp, flouting the terror that stalked before his delirious gaze! What work she had done in those long weeks, none would ever know; but the boy himself knew that he had emerged from the valley of the shadow of death with a new mind, and that she had walked with him all the dark, cloud-hung way.

As they sat there in the bright sunlight that morning, their thought was busy with the boy's future. Old plans, old ambitions, had seemed to lift with the lifting of the mortal curse which had rested upon him, and upward through the ashes of the past a tender flower of hope was pus.h.i.+ng its way. He was now in a new world. The last tie which bound him to his family had been severed by his own father two weeks before, when the shadow of death fell athwart his mother's brilliant path. Mrs. J. Wilton Ames, delicate in health when recalled from abroad, and still suffering from the fatigue of the deadly social warfare which had preceded her sudden flight from her husband's consuming wrath, had failed to rally from the indisposition which seized her on the night of the grand Ames reception. For days she slowly faded, and then went quickly down under a sharp, withering attack of pneumonia. A few brief weeks after the formal opening of the Ames palace its mistress had sighed away her blasted hopes, her vain desires, her petty schemes of human conquest and revenge, and had gone to face anew her problems on another plane of mortal thought. It was rumored by the servants that, in her last hours, when she heard the rustle of the death angel's wings beside her, a great terror had stricken her, and she had called wildly for that son whom she had never cared to know. It was whispered that she had begged of her husband to seek the lad and lead him home; that she had pleaded with him to strive, with the boy, to find the better things of life; that she had begged him to warn and be warned of her present sufferings, as she lay there, stripped of every earthly aid, impoverished in heart, in soul, in mind, with her hands dusty and begrimed with the ashes of this life's mocking spoils. How true these rumors, none might say.

What truth lay hidden in her mad ravings about the parentage of Carmen, and her confused, muttered references to Monsignor Lafelle, no one knew. But of those who stood about her bedside there was none who could gainsay the awed whisperings of the servants that this haughty leader of the great city's aristocracy had pa.s.sed from this life into the darkness beyond in pitiable misery and terror.