look. That, of course, never deterred him in any way from continuing but he told it much more vividly to-night, for this bright smiling Mrs. Bliss was full of attention and eager interest. She seemed intensely sympathetic, and, at the conclusion, when he had fully recounted the complete stiffening of that once mobile joint, she closed her eyes for a moment as if in prayer, and her mouth grew grave. Then her bright smile returned to it in full radiance, after this short eclipse.
"I can't tell you how sorry I am for you, dear Mr. Kemp," she said. "So sorry, truly sorry."
"Very kind of you, I'm sure," said he. "I feel that you are one of the few who realise what a martyrdom I have to go through. Most people have so little imagination. It has been a real pleasure talking to you, and to go back for a moment to that morning when first I found--"
She leaned forward, smiling more than ever.
"And shall I--may I tell you, why I am so sorry for you?" she asked.
"Please do," said Mr. Kemp. An explanation seemed rather unnecessary for it was clear that her kind and sympathetic nature accounted for that. But he was a little hoarse with talking so much, and he did not mind the interruption.
The radiance of her smile was marvellous.
"It will surprise you," she said. "But the reason I'm so sorry for you is that you think your left hip is stiffened, and that you think you suffer all these agonies. It's a huge mistake: there's nothing whatever the matter with you, and you never have any pain at all. There isn't such a thing as pain. All is harmony and you're perfectly well."
Mr. Kemp could hardly believe his ears. This declaration sounded merely like a coarse and unmerited insult. And yet when he looked at that radiant smile and those sympathetic eyes, it was hard to believe that Mrs. Bliss intended it as such. He curbed the indignant exclamation that rose to his lips.
"What do you mean?" he said. "I've just been telling you how I got worse and worse especially after that miscreant at Aix had been handling the joint."
"I know, and now I tell you that it's all Error. Sin and illness and pain and death are all Error. Omnipotent Mind couldn't have made them and therefore they don't exist. Nothing has any real existence except love, health, harmony and happiness."
"But when I feel a sharp pain like a red-hot knitting-needle being thrust into my hip"--began Mr. Kemp.
"Error. Omnipotent Mind governs all. All is mind, and there can be no sensation in matter."
"But, God bless my soul," said Mr. Kemp.
"He does," said this astonishing lady. "Hold on to that thought and the body will utter no complaints. Dear Mr. Kemp, all belief in pain and sickness comes from Error. Therefore there is neither pain nor sickness: it is unreal and vanishes as soon as we realise its unreality. Hence all healing comes from Mind, and not from materia medica."
There was something challenging about so remarkable a statement. Mr. Kemp's head was whirling slightly (but not aching) for Mrs. Bliss seemed to skip about so, but he pulled himself together, and tried, figuratively, to catch hold of her.
"But you yourself," he said. "Aren't you limping very badly, and leaning on a stick? Indeed, I was going to ask you as soon as I had finished telling you about my hip, what form of rheumatism you are suffering from."
Again that radiant smile brightened.
"I'm not suffering from any at all," she said. "Error. It is only a false claim, which I am getting rid of by right thought."
"But why did you come to Bolton then," he asked. "Can't you think rightly at home? Haven't you come here for treatment?"
This question did not disconcert her in the slightest.
"Yes, I'm going to have a course of baths," she said, "but entirely for my dear husband's sake, who is still in blindness. I have, out of love for him, consented to do that--bear ye one another's burdens, you know--but what is curing me, oh, so rapidly, of this false claim of rheumatoid arthritis, as I think they call it, is my own demonstrating over it. All the way down in the train, I treated myself for it, and a friend in London is going to give me absent treatment for it from ten to-night till half-past."
"Absent treatment?" asked Mr. Kemp. "What's that?"
"She will just sit and realise that there is nothing the matter with me, because there can't be anything the matter, since all is health and harmony."
"And will that make it any better?" asked Mr. Kemp.
"It cannot possibly fail to do so. It is the only true healing."
"Then perhaps you won't need your bath to-morrow," said he.
She gave the gayest of laughs.
"Of course I shan't need it, dear Mr. Kemp," she said. "As I told you I am only taking the treatment for my dear husband's sake. That is not really inconsistent. It is only like telling a fairy story to amuse some dear sweet child. Though such a story is not true, it does not mean one is telling lies. What is curing me is the absolute knowledge that Omnipotent Mind never made suffering and never meant us to suffer. Hence, if we think we suffer, it is all a delusion or Error. It can't be real since Mind never made it."
"Dear me, it all sounds most interesting," said Mr. Kemp. "I wonder if it would do me any good."
Mrs. Bliss got up rather too briskly, and the smile completely faded for a moment as a pang of imaginary pain shot through her knee. But almost instantly it reasserted itself.
"There, do you see?" she said. "Surely that will convince you. Just for a moment, I allowed myself to entertain Error, but at once I denied Error, and what I thought was pain has gone. Of course there wasn't any pain really. To-morrow I will lend you my precious, precious book, The Manual of Mental Science, which will prove to you that you can't have pain. What a delicious refreshing talk we've had! Now I must be off, for my friend will be giving me absent treatment, and I must be with her in spirit."
Mrs. Bliss limped slowly but smilingly away and clinging on to the banisters which creaked beneath her solid grasp, and leaning heavily on her stick hauled herself upstairs. She paused at the top, panting a little.
"Not a single touch of pain," she said exultantly.
Mr. Kemp was delighted to hear it, for she seemed barely able to get upstairs at all, but she must know best.
Very serious and exciting bridge meantime had been proceeding in the smoking-room. The points could not be ruinous to anybody, for as usual, they were threepence a hundred, and thus anyone who lost as much as a shilling, was heartily condoled with by the resulting capitalist. The game itself, with its subtleties and intricacies, furnished the excitement, and Colonel Chase, of course, was the final authority on all points of play, and instructed partner and adversaries alike with unstinted criticism.
"A golden rule: to draw out trumps is a golden rule," he was asserting. "They always used to say of me at the mess that I never left a trump in my opponent's hands. You lost a trick or two in the last game, partner, by neglecting that, but then our opponents were indulgent to your fault, and let us off. If Mrs. Holders had led a club after you had played your king, she and Mrs. Oxney would have got a couple more tricks, and penalised us soundly."
Mrs. Holders was still feeling Bolshevistic.
"But I hadn't got a club,
