Unto the Third and Fourth Generation/Chapter9
IX.
I stayed a fortnight longer in Cumberland. It was a tender, pathetic time. Lucy's health grew better every day, yet her spirits did not improve. There was a look of trouble in her face, and sometimes her eyes would fill when the talk was cheerful and I was doing my best to be merry. I noticed that the visits of the Scots minister were frequent. Lucy and McPherson were much in each other's company. I did not intrude upon their conversation, thinking it might refer to the good works on which they were engaged together. But one day I saw them part with undisguised anger on his side and some confusion upon hers, and then I knew that his visits had involved a more serious and personal issue.
Lucy told me what it was. It concerned myself closely. With eyes on the needle work that was in her trembling fingers she let slip the truth.
“Robert,” she said, “don't think too hard of me——”
“What is it?” I said.
“Try to forgive me if I have given you so much trouble, so much pain———”
I saw it coming. “Tell me—what is it, Lucy?”
“I want to go into a convent.”
“Good God!” I cried, “can you mean it?”
“I have thought it over very carefully,” she said. “There is nothing else left for me to do. It is my only hope, my only refuge. If I am ever to conquer this curse it can only be there. And if I am not to conquer it, where else can I hide myself so well? Besides, I feel that it is right and just. I know all about my grandfather and how he made our money. That needs an expiation, and we know what is written about the third and fourth generation. But I am very sorry for your sake, Robert. It was very sweet and beautiful—all we hoped and expected; but then—but then——”
Her cheeks were becoming red, her eyes moist, and her voice husky.
“Lucy, my darling,” I said, “you are not very well yet. By and by you will be better, and then everything will seem different. All the world will be changed, and you will wonder how you could ever have made this resolution. Let us not think of it any more.”
My reason was more selfish than I had allowed. It was impossible for me to discuss with this sweet and tender creature an infirmity so ugly and so abject.
I was asking myself what it was that had led to her determination, and telling myself that imagination was the most potent factor in life. Lucy wanted to go into a convent because the idea of a hereditary curse had taken possession of her imagination. What was the drink crave in her case? What must it be in nearly all cases? It was the idea that drink controlled the will. The drunkard drinks because he thinks he cannot help it. Drink is the hypnotist, and every time the victim yields to his sway his influence becomes more powerful. The beginning of his attempts upon Lucy was at the moment when she first tasted, for then the bulwark of her will was broken down. Imagination may bring to pass the thing it fears, and Lucy's imagination, dominated by the thought of a curse inherited from her grandfather, was working out the results which the curse predicted.
On the other hand, was there no poison in her blood? No organic mischief set up by two generations of alcoholism? The eagerness with which she had clutched at the brandy immediately before her trance, and the repulsion she had shown at sight of it when she awoke, seemed to point to some absolute bodily ferment quite independent of imagination.
But the only standing ground I could find anywhere was the hope that if an imaginative idea had been the beginning of Lucy's disease, another and healthier imaginative idea might perhaps be her medicine. What was therapeutic suggestion but imagination working on imagination? The sleep was no part of the primary thing, but only necessary for that subjugation of the opposing will wherein the imagination of the operator might have free play with the imagination of the subject. Why not the imagination without the sleep? Why not my imagination against that of Lucy? And where was the imaginative idea with which I could overcome her belief in the curse? There lay her salvation, if I could only find it.