“Yes.”
“And broke the boulders?”
“Yes.”
“That accounts for it; she is thinking of the
boulders. Why didn’t you tell her I got
hurt, too?”
“I did. I told her what you told me to
tell her: that you were now but an incoherent
series of compound fractures extending from your scalp-lock
to your heels, and that the comminuted projections
caused you to look like a hat-rack.”
“And it was after this that she wished me to
remember that there was nothing the matter with me?”
“Those were her words.”
“I do not understand it. I believe she
has not diagnosed the case with sufficient care.
Did she look like a person who was theorizing, or
did she look like one who has fallen off precipices
herself and brings to the aid of abstract science
the confirmations of personal experience?”
“Bitte?”
It was too large a contract for the Stubenmadchen’s
vocabulary; she couldn’t call the hand.
I allowed the subject to rest there, and asked for
something to eat and smoke, and something hot to drink,
and a basket to pile my legs in; but I could not have
any of these things.
“Why?”
“She said you would need nothing at all.”
“But I am hungry and thirsty, and in desperate
pain.”
“She said you would have these delusions, but
must pay no attention to them. She wants you
to particularly remember that there are no such things
as hunger and thirst and pain.’’
“She does does she?”
“It is what she said.”
Does she seem to be in full and functionable possession
of her intellectual plant, such as it is?”
“Bitte?”
“Do they let her run at large, or do they tie
her up?”
“Tie her up?”
“There, good-night, run along, you are a good
girl, but your mental Geschirr is not arranged for
light and airy conversation. Leave me to my
delusions.”
It was a night of anguish, of course—at
least, I supposed it was, for it had all the symptoms
of it—but it passed at last, and the Christian
Scientist came, and I was glad She was middle-aged,
and large and bony, and erect, and had an austere
face and a resolute jaw and a Roman beak and was a
widow in the third degree, and her name was Fuller.
I was eager to get to business and find relief, but
she was distressingly deliberate. She unpinned
and unhooked and uncoupled her upholsteries one by
one, abolished the wrinkles with a flirt of her hand,
and hung the articles up; peeled off her gloves and
disposed of them, got a book out of her hand-bag,
then drew a chair to the bedside, descended into it
without hurry, and I hung out my tongue. She
said, with pity but without passion:
“Return it to its receptacle. We deal
with the mind only, not with its dumb servants.”
