“We are going to meet this, Sidney, you and I,” she whispered, bending over the shaking form.
The suffering lad shook his head and buried his face in his hands. “You can’t,” he moaned; “you can’t––I’m gone!” His voice died into a tremble of hopeless despair, of utter surrender.
Carmen bit her lip. She had faced many trying situations in her brief life-experience; but, though she met it with dauntless courage and knew its source, the insidious suggestion now persisted that the eyes of her people were upon her, and that by this would stand or fall their faith. Aye, the world was watching her now, keen-eyed and critical. Would she give it cause to say she could not prove her faith by her works?
And then came the divine message that bade her “Know that I am God!”––that bade her know that responsibility lay not upon her shoulders, but upon the Christ for whom she was 116 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 God! 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 hoarsely; “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––God! 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 God!”