The Genius (84 page)

"… There may have been a vast system of co-operation of such
grades of beings, from a very high grade of power and intelligence
down to those unconscious or almost unconscious cell souls posited
by Haeckel… .

"I can imagine the … Infinite Being, foreseeing and
determining the broad outlines of a universe… .

"He might, for instance, impress a sufficient number of his
highest angels to create by their will power the primal universe of
ether, with all those inherent properties and forces necessary for
what was to follow. Using this as a vehicle, the next subordinate
association of angels would so act upon the ether as to develop
from it, in suitable masses and at suitable distances, the various
elements of matter, which, under the influence of such laws and
forces as gravitation, heat, and electricity, would thenceforth
begin to form those vast systems of nebulæ and suns which
constitute our stellar universe.

"Then we may imagine these hosts of angels, to whom a thousand
years are as one day, watching the development of this vast system
of suns and planets until some one or more of them combined in
itself all those conditions of size, of elementary constitution, of
atmosphere, of mass of water and requisite distance from its source
of heat as to insure a stability of constitution and uniformity of
temperature for a given minimum of millions of years, or of ages,
as would be required for the full development of a life world from
amœba to man, with a surplus of a few hundreds of millions for his
adequate development.

"We are led, therefore, to postulate a body of what we may term
organizing spirits, who would be charged with the duty of so
influencing the myriads of cell souls as to carry out their part of
the work with accuracy and certainty… .

"At successive stages of the development of the life world, more
and perhaps higher intelligences might be required to direct the
main lines of variation in definite directions, in accordance with
the general design to be worked out, and to guard against a break
in the particular line, which alone could lead ultimately to the
production of the human form.

"This speculative suggestion, I venture to hope, will appeal to
some of my readers as the very best approximation we are now able
to formulate as to the deeper, the most fundamental causes of
matter and force of life and consciousness, and of man himself, at
his best, already a little lower than the angels, and, like them,
destined to a permanent progressive existence in a world of
spirit."

This very peculiar and apparently progressive statement in
regard to the conclusion which naturalistic science had revealed in
regard to the universe struck Eugene as pretty fair confirmation of
Mrs. Eddy's contention that all was mind and its infinite variety
and that the only difference between her and the British scientific
naturalists was that they contended for an ordered hierarchy which
could only rule and manifest itself according to its own ordered or
self-imposed laws, which they could perceive or detect, whereas,
she contended for a governing spirit which was everywhere and would
act through ordered laws and powers of its own arrangement. God was
a principle like a rule in mathematics—two times two is four, for
instance—and was as manifest daily and hourly and momentarily in a
hall bedroom as in the circling motions of suns and systems. God
was a principle. He grasped that now. A principle could be and was
of course anywhere and everywhere at one and the same time. One
could not imagine a place for instance where two times two would
not be four, or where that rule would not be. So, likewise with the
omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent mind of God.

The most dangerous thing to possess a man to the extent of
dominating him is an idea. It can and does ride him to destruction.
Eugene's idea of the perfection of eighteen was one of the most
dangerous things in his nature. In a way, combined with the
inability of Angela to command his interest and loyalty, it had
been his undoing up to this date. A religious idea followed in a
narrow sense would have diverted this other, but it also might have
destroyed him, if he had been able to follow it. Fortunately the
theory he was now interesting himself in was not a narrow dogmatic
one in any sense, but religion in its large aspects, a
comprehensive resumé and spiritual co-ordination of the
metaphysical speculation of the time, which was worthy of anyone's
intelligent inquiry. Christian Science as a cult or religion was
shunned by current religions and religionists as something outré,
impossible, uncanny—as necromancy, imagination, hypnotism,
mesmerism, spiritism—everything, in short, that it was not, and
little, if anything, that it really was. Mrs. Eddy had formulated
or rather restated a fact that was to be found in the sacred
writings of India; in the Hebrew testaments, old and new; in
Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, Emerson, and Carlyle. The
one variation notable between her and the moderns was that her
ruling unity
was not malicious, as Eugene and many others
fancied, but helpful. Her
unity
was a
unity
of
love. God was everything but the father of evil, which according to
her was an illusion—neither fact nor substance—sound and fury,
signifying nothing.

It must be remembered that during all the time Eugene was doing
this painful and religious speculation he was living in the extreme
northern portion of the city, working desultorily at some paintings
which he thought he might sell, visiting Angela occasionally,
safely hidden away in the maternity hospital at One Hundred and
Tenth Street, thinking hourly and momentarily of Suzanne, and
wondering if, by any chance, he should ever see her any more. His
mind had been so inflamed by the beauty and the disposition of this
girl that he was really not normal any longer. He needed some
shock, some catastrophe greater than any he had previously
experienced to bring him to his senses. The loss of his position
had done something. The loss of Suzanne had only heightened his
affection for her. The condition of Angela had given him pause, for
it was an interesting question what would become of her. "If she
would only die!" he said to himself, for we have the happy faculty
of hating most joyously on this earth the thing we have wronged the
most. He could scarcely go and see her, so obsessed was he with the
idea that she was a handicap to his career. The idea of her
introducing a child into his life only made him savage. Now, if she
should die, he would have the child to care for and Suzanne,
because of it, might never come to him.

His one idea at this time was not to be observed too much, or
rather not at all, for he considered himself to be in great
disfavor, and only likely to do himself injury by a public
appearance—a fact which was more in his own mind than anywhere
else. If he had not believed it, it would not have been true. For
this reason he had selected this quiet neighborhood where the line
of current city traffic was as nothing, for here he could brood in
peace. The family that he lived with knew nothing about him. Winter
was setting in. Because of the cold and snow and high winds, he was
not likely to see many people hereabouts—particularly those
celebrities who had known him in the past. There was a great deal
of correspondence that followed him from his old address, for his
name had been used on many committees, he was in "Who's Who," and
he had many friends less distinguished than those whose
companionship would have required the expenditure of much money who
would have been glad to look him up. He ignored all invitations,
however; refused to indicate by return mail where he was for the
present; walked largely at night; read, painted, or sat and brooded
during the day. He was thinking all the time of Suzanne and how
disastrously fate had trapped him apparently through her. He was
thinking that she might come back, that she ought. Lovely, hurtful
pictures came to him of re-encounters with her in which she would
rush into his arms, never to part, from him any more. Angela, in
her room at the hospital, received little thought from him. She was
there. She was receiving expert medical attention. He was paying
all the bills. Her serious time had not yet really come. Myrtle was
seeing her. He caught glimpses of himself at times as a cruel, hard
intellect driving the most serviceable thing his life had known
from him with blows, but somehow it seemed justifiable. Angela was
not suited to him. Why could she not live away from him? Christian
Science set aside marriage entirely as a human illusion,
conflicting with the indestructible unity of the individual with
God. Why shouldn't she let him go?

He wrote poems to Suzanne, and read much poetry that he found in
an old trunkful of books in the house where he was living. He would
read again and again the sonnet beginning, "When in disgrace with
fortune and men's eyes"—that cry out of a darkness that seemed to
be like his own. He bought a book of verse by Yeats, and seemed to
hear his own voice saying of Suzanne,

"Why should I blame her that
she filled my days
    With
misery …

He was not quite as bad as he was when he had broken down eight
years before, but he was very bad. His mind was once more riveted
upon the uncertainty of life, its changes, its follies. He was
studying those things only which deal with the abstrusities of
nature, and this began to breed again a morbid fear of life itself.
Myrtle was greatly distressed about him. She worried lest he might
lose his mind.

"Why don't you go to see a practitioner, Eugene?" she begged of
him one day. "You will get help—really you will. You think you
won't, but you will. There is something about them—I don't know
what. They are spiritually at rest. You will feel better. Do
go."

"Oh, why do you bother me, Myrtle? Please don't. I don't want to
go. I think there is something in the idea metaphysically speaking,
but why should I go to a practitioner? God is as near me as He is
anyone, if there is a God."

Myrtle wrung her hands, and because she felt so badly more than
anything else, he finally decided to go. There might be something
hypnotic or physically contagious about these people—some old
alchemy of the mortal body, which could reach and soothe him. He
believed in hypnotism, hypnotic suggestion, etc. He finally called
up one practitioner, an old lady highly recommended by Myrtle and
others, who lived farther south on Broadway, somewhere in the
neighborhood of Myrtle's home. Mrs. Althea Johns was her name—a
woman who had performed wonderful cures. Why should he, Eugene
Witla, he asked himself as he took up the receiver, why should he,
Eugene Witla, ex-managing publisher of the United Magazines
Corporation, ex-artist (in a way, he felt that he was no longer an
artist in the best sense) be going to a woman in Christian Science
to be healed of what? Gloom? Yes. Failure? Yes. Heartache? Yes. His
evil tendencies in regard to women, such as the stranger who had
sat beside him had testified to? Yes. How strange! And yet he was
curious. It interested him a little to speculate as to whether this
could really be done. Could he be healed of failure? Could this
pain of longing be made to cease? Did he want it to cease? No;
certainly not! He wanted Suzanne. Myrtle's idea, he knew, was that
somehow this treatment would reunite him and Angela and make him
forget Suzanne, but he knew that could not be. He was going, but he
was going because he was unhappy and idle and aimless. He was going
because he really did not know what else to do.

The apartment of Mrs. Johns—Mrs. Althea Johns—was in an
apartment house of conventional design, of which there were in New
York hundreds upon hundreds at the time. There was a spacious
areaway between two wings of cream-colored pressed brick leading
back to an entrance way which was protected by a handsome
wrought-iron door on either side of which was placed an electric
lamp support of handsome design, holding lovely cream-colored
globes, shedding a soft lustre. Inside was the usual lobby,
elevator, uniformed negro elevator man, indifferent and
impertinent, and the telephone switchboard. The building was seven
storeys high. Eugene went one snowy, blustery January night. The
great wet flakes were spinning in huge whirls and the streets were
covered with a soft, slushy carpet of snow. He was interested, as
usual, in spite of his gloom, in the picture of beauty the world
presented—the city wrapped in a handsome mantle of white. Here were
cars rumbling, people hunched in great coats facing the driving
wind. He liked the snow, the flakes, this wonder of material
living. It eased his mind of his misery and made him think of
painting again. Mrs. Johns was on the seventh floor. Eugene knocked
and was admitted by a maid. He was shown to a waiting room, for he
was a little ahead of his time, and there were
others—healthy-looking men and women, who did not appear to have an
ache or pain—ahead of him. Was not this a sign, he thought as he
sat down, that this was something which dealt with imaginary ills?
Then why had the man he had heard in the church beside him
testified so forcibly and sincerely to his healing? Well, he would
wait and see. He did not see what it could do for him now. He had
to work. He sat there in one corner, his hands folded and braced
under his chin, thinking. The room was not artistic but rather
nondescript, the furniture cheap or rather tasteless in design.
Didn't Divine Mind know any better than to present its
representatives in such a guise as this? Could a person called to
assist in representing the majesty of God on earth be left so
unintelligent artistically as to live in a house like this? Surely
this was a poor manifestation of Divinity, but——

Mrs. Johns came—a short, stout, homely woman, gray, wrinkled,
dowdy in her clothing, a small wen on one side of her mouth, a nose
slightly too big to be pleasing—all mortal deficiencies as to
appearance highly emphasized, and looking like an old print of Mrs.
Micawber that he had seen somewhere. She had on a black skirt good
as to material, but shapeless, commonplace, and a dark blue-gray
waist. Her eye was clear and gray though, he noticed, and she had a
pleasing smile.

"This is Mr. Witla, I believe," she said, coming across the room
to him, for he had got into a corner near the window, and speaking
with an accent which sounded a little Scotch. "I'm so glad to see
you. Won't you come in?" she said, giving him precedence over some
others because of his appointment, and re-crossed the room
preceding him down the hall to her practice room. She stood to one
side to take his hand as he passed.

He touched it gingerly.

So this was Mrs. Johns, he thought, as he entered, looking about
him. Bangs and Myrtle had insisted that she had performed wonderful
cures—or rather that Divine Mind had, through her. Her hands were
wrinkled, her face old. Why didn't she make herself young if she
could perform these wonderful cures? Why was this room so mussy? It
was actually stuffy with chromos and etchings of the Christ and
Bible scenes on the walls, a cheap red carpet or rug on the floor,
inartistic leather-covered chairs, a table or desk too full of
books, a pale picture of Mrs. Eddy and silly mottoes of which he
was sick and tired hung here and there. People were such hacks when
it came to the art of living. How could they pretend to a sense of
Divinity who knew nothing of life? He was weary and the room here
offended him. Mrs. Johns did. Besides, her voice was slightly
falsetto. Could
she
cure cancer? and consumption? and all
other horrible human ills, as Myrtle insisted she had? He didn't
believe it.

He sat down wearily and yet contentiously in the chair she
pointed out to him and stared at her while she quietly seated
herself opposite him looking at him with kindly, smiling eyes.

"And now," she said easily, "what does God's child think is the
matter with him?"

Eugene stirred irritably.

"God's child," he thought; "what cant!" What right had he to
claim to be a child of God? What was the use of beginning that way?
It was silly, so asinine. Why not ask plainly what was the matter
with him? Still he answered:

"Oh, a number of things. So many that I am pretty sure they can
never be remedied."

"As bad as that? Surely not. It is good to know, anyhow, that
nothing is impossible to God. We can believe that, anyhow, can't
we?" she replied, smiling. "You believe in God, or a ruling power,
don't you?"

"I don't know whether I do or not. In the main, I guess I do.
I'm sure I ought to. Yes, I guess I do."

"Is He a malicious God to you?"

"I have always thought so," he replied, thinking of Angela.

"Mortal mind! Mortal mind!" she asseverated to herself. "What
delusions will it not harbor!"

And then to him:

"One has to be cured almost against one's will to know that God
is a God of love. So you believe you are sinful, do you, and that
He is malicious? It is not necessary that you should tell me how.
We are all alike in the mortal state. I would like to call your
attention to Isaiah's words, 'Though your sins be as scarlet, they
shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they
shall be as wool.'"

Eugene had not heard this quotation for years. It was only a dim
thing in his memory. It flashed out simply now and appealed, as had
all these Hebraic bursts of prophetic imagery in the past. Mrs.
Johns, for all her wen and her big nose and dowdy clothes, was a
little better for having been able to quote this so aptly. It
raised her in his estimation. It showed a vigorous mind, at least a
tactful mind.