XI.
The next morning Chonita, clad in a long gown of white wool, a silvercross at her throat, her hair arranged like a coronet, sat in a largechair in the dispensary. Her father stood beside a table, parcellingdrugs. The sick-poor of Santa Barbara passed them in a long line.
The Doomswoman exercised her power to heal, the birthright of thetwin.
"I wonder if I can," she said to me, laying her white fingers on aknotted arm, "or if it is my father's medicines. I have no right toquestion this beautiful faith of my country, but I really don't seehow I do it. Still, I suppose it is like many things in our religion,not for mere human beings to understand. This pleases my vanity, atleast. I wonder if I shall have cause to exercise my other endowment."
"To curse?"
"Yes: I think I might do that with something more of sincerity."
The men, women, and children, native Californians and Indians,scrubbed for the occasion, filed slowly past her, and she touched allkindly and bade them be well. They regarded her with adoring eyes andbent almost to the ground.
"Perhaps they will help me out of purgatory," she said; "and it issomething to be on a pedestal; I should not like to come down. It isa cheap victory, but so are most of the victories that the world knowsof."
When she had touched nearly a hundred, they gathered about her, andshe spoke a few words to them.
"My friends, go, and say, 'I shall be well.' Does not the Bible saythat faith shall make ye whole? Cling to your faith! Believe! Believe!Else will you feel as if the world crumbled beneath your feet!And there is nothing, nothing to take its place. What folly, whatpresumption, to suggest that anything can--a mortal passion--" Shestopped suddenly, and continued coldly, "Go, my friends; words do notcome easily to me to-day. Go, and God grant that you may be well andhappy."