The Puritans | Page 7

"Ill!" echoed Miss Morison; "she has been wholly given up by the
physicians. She has some horrible internal trouble; and a consultation
of the best doctors in town decided that she could not live a week. That
was two months ago."
"But I don't understand," he said in surprise. "What happened?"
"A miracle," the other replied smiling. "You believe in miracles, of
course."
"But what sort of a miracle?"
"Faith-cure."
"Faith-cure!" repeated he in astonishment. "Do you mean that Mrs.
Frostwinch has been raised from a death-bed by that sort of jugglery?"

His companion shrugged her shoulders.
"I don't think it would raise you in her estimation if she heard you. The
facts are as I tell you. She dismissed her doctors when they said they
could do nothing for her, and took into her house a mind-cure woman,
a Mrs. Crapps. Some power has put her on her feet. Wouldn't you do
the same thing in her place?"
Wynne looked bewildered at Mrs. Frostwinch walking before him in a
shimmer of Boston respectability. He had an uneasy feeling that he was
passing from one pitfall to another. He was keenly conscious of the
richness of the voice of the girl by his side, so that he felt that it was not
easy for him to disagree with anything which she said. He let her
remark pass without reply.
"For my part," she went on frankly, "I don't in the least believe in the
thing as a matter of theory; but practically I have a superstition about it,
because I've seen Cousin Anna. She was helpless, in agony, dying; and
now she is as well as I am. If I were ill"--
She broke off with a pretty little gesture as they came within hearing of
the others, who had halted at Mrs. Frostwinch's gate. Wynne said
good-by absently, and went on his way down the hill like a man in a
dream.
"Well," Mrs. Staggchase said, "you have seen one of Boston's ethical
debauches; what do you think of it?"
"It was confusing," he returned. "I couldn't make out what it was for."
"For? To amuse us. We are the children of the Puritans, you know, and
have inherited a twist toward the ethical and the supernatural so strong
that we have to have these things served up even in our amusements."
"Then I think that it is wicked," Maurice said.
"Oh, no; we must not be narrow. It isn't wrong to amuse one's self; and
if we play with the religion of the Persians, why is it worse than to play

with the mythologies of the Greeks or Romans? You wouldn't think it
any harm to jest about classical theology."
Wynne turned toward her with a smile on his strong, handsome face.
"Why do you try to tangle me up in words?" he asked.
Mrs. Staggchase did not turn toward him, but looked before with face
entirely unchanged as she replied:--
"I am not trying to entangle you in words, but if I were it would be all
part of the play. You are undergoing your period of temptation. I am
the tempter in default of a better. In the old fashion of temptations it
wouldn't do to have the tempter old and plain. Then you were expected
to fall in love; now we deal in snares more subtle."
Maurice laughed, but somewhat unmirthfully. There was to him
something bewildering and worldly about his cousin; and he had come
to feel that he could never be at all sure where in the end the most
harmless beginning of talk might lead him.
"What then is the modern way of temptation?" he inquired.
"It shows how much faith we have in its power," she replied, as they
waited on the corner of Charles Street for a carriage to pass, "that I
don't in the least mind giving you full warning. Did you know the lady
in that carriage, by the way?"
"It was Mrs. Wilson, wasn't it?"
"Yes; Mrs. Chauncy Wilson. You have seen her at the Church of the
Nativity, I suppose. She is one phase of the temptation."
"I don't in the least understand."
"I didn't in the least suppose that you would. You will in time. My part
of the temptation is to show you all sorts of ethical jugglery, the
spiritual and intellectual gymnastics such as the Bostonians love; to
persuade you that all religion is only a sort of pastime, and that the

particular high-church sort which you especially affect is but one of a
great many entertaining ways of killing time."
"Cousin Diana!" he exclaimed, genuinely shocked.
"I hope that you understand," she continued unmoved. "I shall exhibit a
very pretty collection of fads to you if we see them all."
"But suppose," he said slowly,