Part 54

"Hold him with his back to the north, Mrs. Martin," she said; "there, in a somewhat reclining posture; that will increase his susceptibility to psychic influence. There is no doubt that the magnetism of the earth has a polar distribution. It is quite probable also that the odylic emanation of the terrestrial magnet has also a polar arrangement. Does the little fellow ever turn round in his bed at night?"

"Yes."

"That shows that he is sensitive to magnetic influences. He is trying to get himself north and south, so as to bring the body into harmony with the magnetic poles of the earth. You see the brain is normally positive. We wish to invert the poles of the body, and send the magnetism of the brain to the feet."

Miss Bowyer now took out a small silver cross and held it up before the child a little above the natural range of vision.

"Will you look at this, little boy?" she said.

She did her best to make her naturally unsympathetic voice persuasive, even to pronouncing the last word of her entreaty "baw-ee." But the "little baw-ee" was faint with sickness, and he only lifted his eyes a moment to the trinket, and then closed the eyelids and turned his face toward his mother's bosom.

"Come, little baw-ee. Look at this, my child. Isn't it pretty? Little baw-ee, see here!"

But the little baw-ee wanted rest, and he showed no signs of having heard Miss Bowyer's appeal, except that he fretted with annoyance after each sentence she addressed to him.

"That is bad," said Miss Bowyer, seeing that Tommy would not look. "If I could get him to strain the eyes upward for five minutes, while I gazed at him and concentrated my mind on the act of gazing, I should be able to produce what is known in psychopathic science as the conscious impressible state--something resembling hypnotism, but stopping short of the unconscious state. I could make him forget his disease by willing forgetfulness. I must try another plan."

Miss Bowyer now sat and gazed on the child, who was half-slumbering. For five minutes she sat there like a cat ready to jump at the first movement of a moribund mouse. Apparently she was engaged in concentrating her mind on the act of gazing.

"Now," she said to Mrs. Martin in a whisper--for explication was a necessity of Miss Bowyer's nature, or perhaps essential to the potency of her measures--"now I will gently place the right hand on the fore brain and the left over the cerebellum, willing the vital force of the cerebrum to retreat backward to the cerebellum. This is the condition of the brain in the somnambulic state and in ordinary sleep. The right hand, you must know, acts from without inward, while the left acts from within outward." She suited the action to the words; but Tommy did not take kindly to the action of her right hand from without inward, or else he was annoyed by the action of the left hand from within outward. Evidently Miss Bowyer's positive and negative poles failed to harmonize with his. He put up his hands to push away her positive and negative poles; but finding that impossible, he kicked and cried in a way which showed him to be utterly out of harmony with the odylic emanations of the terrestrial magnet.

With these and other mummeries Miss Bowyer proceeded during all the long hour and a quarter that intervened between Phillida's departure and the arrival of the reinforcement. Miss Bowyer was wondering meanwhile what could have been the nature of Phillida's conference outside the door with Mrs. Martin, and whether Mrs. Martin were sufficiently convinced of her skill by this time for her to venture to leave the place presently to meet certain office patients whom she expected. But she concluded to run no risks of defeat; she had left word at her office that she had been called to see a patient dangerously ill, and such a report would do her reputation no harm.

Mrs. Martin was driven to the very verge of distraction by the sense of Tommy's danger and the necessity she was under of suppressing her feelings while this woman, crank or impostor, held possession of the child and of her house. Not to disturb Tommy, she affected a peaceful attitude toward the professor of Christian sorcery, whom, in the anguish of her spirit, she would have liked to project out of a window into the dizzy space occupied by pulleys and clothes-lines. Footsteps came and went past her door, but there was as yet no interruption to Miss Bowyer's pow-wow. At length there came a step on the stairs, and a rap. Mrs. Martin laid Tommy on the bed and opened the door. Charley beckoned her to be silent and to come out.

"What is the name of the faith-healer, Aunt Hannah?" he whispered.

"Miss Bowyer."

"Does she still refuse to leave?"

"Oh, yes! She declares she will not leave."

"You want her out?"

"Yes; I want a doctor," said Mrs. Martin, giving her hands a little wring.

"Tell Miss Bowyer that there is a gentleman outside the door who wishes to see her. Whenever the door is shut, do you fasten it inside."

"Miss Bowyer, there's a gentleman inquiring for you outside," said Mrs. Martin when she returned.

Miss Bowyer opened the door suspiciously, standing in the doorway as she spoke.

"Did you wish to see me?"

"Are you Miss Bowyer?"

"Yes,"--with a wave inflection, as though half inquiring.

"Are you the Christian Scientist?"

"Yes," said Miss Bowyer, "I am."

"This is a case of diphtheria, isn't it?"