The Diary of a Saint Part 15

I see now that this was exactly the way in which the girl needed to be talked to. It was her own language, and she understood it. At the time it seemed to me brutal, and I interposed.

"There, Mrs. Bagley," I said as soothingly as I could, "you are rather hard on Julia. She is too sick to be talked to so."

Marm Bagley sniffed contemptuously, and after looking at us a moment, apparently decided that the emergency was not of enough importance to keep her from her rest, so she returned to her interrupted slumbers. I comforted my patient as well as I could, and fortunately she was not again violent. Still she moaned and cried, and kept urging me to pray for her.

"Pray for me! Pray for me!" she kept repeating. "Oh, can't you pray and keep me from h.e.l.l, Miss Ruth?"

There was but one thing to be done. If prayer was the thing which would comfort her, evidently I ought to pray with her.

"I will pray if you will be quiet," I said. "I cannot if you go on like this."

"I'll be still, I'll be still," she cried eagerly. "Only pray quick!"

I kneeled down by the bed and repeated the Lord's Prayer as slowly and as impressively as I could. The girl, who seemed to regard it as a sort of spell against invisible terrors, clutched my hand with a desperate grasp, but as I went on the pressure of her hot fingers relaxed. Before I had finished she had fallen asleep as abruptly as she had awakened.

I sat watching her, thinking what a strange thing is this belief in prayer. The words I had said are beautiful, but I do not suppose this made an impression on Julia. To her the prayer was a fetich, a spell to ward her soul from the dark terrors of Satan, a charm against the powers of the air. I wondered if I should be happier if I could share this belief in the power of men to move the unseen by supplication, but I reflected that this would imply the continual discomfort of believing in invisible beings who would do me harm unless properly placated, and I was glad to be as I am. The faith of some Christians is so n.o.ble, so sweet, so tender, that it is not always easy to realize how narrowing are the conditions of mind which make it possible. When one sees the crude superst.i.tion of a creature like Julia, it is not difficult to be glad to be above a feeling so ignorant and degrading; when I see the beautiful tenderness of religion in its best aspect I am glad it can be so fine and so comforting, but I am glad I am not limited in that way.

My prayer with Julia had one unexpected result. While I was at home in the morning Mr. Thurston came to see her. The visit was most kind, and I think it did her good.

"He did some real praying," Mrs. Bagley explained to me afterward.

"Course Jule'd rather have that."

My efforts in the devotional line had more effect, so far as I could judge, upon Mr. Thurston than upon Julia. I met him when I was going back to the house, and he stopped me with an expression of gladness and triumph in his face.

"My dear Miss Privet," he said, "I am so glad that at last you have come to realize the efficacy of prayer."

I was so astonished at the remark that for the moment I did not realize what he meant.

"I don't understand," I said, stupidly enough.

My look perhaps confused him a little, and his face lost something of its brightness.

"That poor girl told me of your praying with her last night, when she thought she was dying."

"Yes," I repeated, before I realized what I was saying, "she thought she was dying."

Then I reflected that it was useless to hurt his feelings, and I did not explain. I could not wound him by saying that if Julia had wanted me to repeat a gypsy charm and I had known one I should have done it in the same spirit. I wanted to make the poor demented thing comfortable, and if a prayer could soothe her there was no reason why I should not say one. People think because I do not believe in it I have a prejudice against prayer; but really I think there is something touching and n.o.ble in the att.i.tude of a mind that can in sincerity and in faith give itself up to an ideal, as one must in praying. It seems to me a pathetic mistake, but I can appreciate the good side of it; only to suppose that I believe because I said a prayer to please a frightened sick girl is absurd.

It is well that we are not read by others, for our thoughts would often be too disconcerting. Poor Mr. Thurston would have been dreadfully horrified if he had realized I was thinking as we stood there how like my saying this prayer for Julia was to my ministering to Rosa's chilblains. She believes that crosses cut out of a leaf of the Bible and stuck on her feet take away the soreness, but she regards it as wicked to cut up a Bible. I have an old one that I keep for the purpose, and she comes to me every winter for a supply. We began at the end, and are going backwards. Revelation is about used up now. She evidently thinks that as I am a heretic anyway, the extra condemnation which must come from my act will make no especial difference, and I am entirely willing to run the risk. Still, it is better Mr. Thurston did not read my thought.

"I wish you might be brought into the fold," the clergyman said after a moment of silence.

I could only thank him, and go on my way.

April 10. Yesterday the new nurse, Miss Dyer, arrived, and great is the comfort of having her here. She is a plain, simple body, in her neat uniform, rather colorless except for her snapping black eyes. Her eyes are interestingly at variance with the calmness of her demeanor, and give one the impression that there is a volcano somewhere within. She interests me much,--largely, I fancy, from the suggestion about her of having had a history. She is swift and yet silent in her motions, and understands what she has to do so well that I felt like an awkward novice beside her. She disposed of Mrs. Bagley with a turn of the hand, as it were, somehow managing that the frowzy old woman was out of the house within an hour, with her belongings, pipe and all, yet without any fuss or any contention. Mrs. Bagley had the appearance of being too dazed to be angry, although I fancy when she has had time to think matters over she will be indignantly wrathful at having been so summarily expelled.

"I pity you more for having that sort of a woman in the house than for having to take care of the patient, Miss Privet," Miss Dyer said. "I don't see what the Lord permits such folks in the world for, without it is to sharpen up our Christian charity."

"She would sharpen mine into vinegar, I'm afraid," I answered, laughing.

"I confess it has been about all I could do to stay in the house with her."

To-night I can sleep peacefully in my own bed, secure that Julia is well taken care of. The girl seems to me to be worse instead of better, and Dr. Wentworth does not give much encouragement. I suppose it is better for her to die, but it is cruel that she wants so to live. She is horribly afraid of death, and she wants so much to live that it is pitiful to reflect it is possible she may not. What is there she can hope for? She does not seem to care for the child. This is because she is so ill, I think, for anybody must be touched by the helplessness of the little blinking, pink thing. It is like a little mouse I saw in my childhood, and which made a great impression on me. That was naked of hair, just so wrinkled, so pink, so blinking. It was not in the least pretty, any more than the baby is; but somehow it touched all the tenderness there was in me, and I cried for days because Hannah gave it to the cat. I feel much in the same way about this baby. I have not the least feeling toward it as a human being, I am afraid. To me it is just embodied babyhood, just a little pink, helpless, palpitating bunch of pitifulness.

April 11. Miss Dyer came just in time. I could not have gone through to-night without her, I think. I could not have stayed quiet by Julia's beside, although I am as far as possible from being able to sleep.

To-night, just as the evening was falling, and I was almost ready to come home, I heard a knock at the door. Miss Dyer was in the room with Julia, so I answered the knock myself. I opened the door to find myself face to face with Tom Webbe.

The shock of seeing his white face staring at me out of the dusk was so great that I had to steady myself against the door-post. He did not put out his hand, but greeted me only by taking off his hat.

"Father said you were here," he began, in a strained voice.

"Yes," I answered, feeling my throat contract; "I am here now, but I am going home soon."

I was so moved and so confused that I could not think. I had longed for him to come; I could not have borne that he should have been so base as not to come; and yet now that he was here I would have given anything to have him away. He had to come; he had to bear his part of the consequences of wrong, but it was horrible to me for him to be so near that dreadful girl, and it was worse because I pitied her, because she was so helpless, so pathetic, so near even to death.

We stood in the dusk for what seemed to me a long time without further speech. Tom must have found it hard to know what to say at such a time.

He looked at me with a sort of wild desperation. Then he cleared his throat, and moistened his lips.

"I have come," he said. "What do you want me to do?"

I could not bear to have him seem to put the responsibility on me.

"I did not send for you," I answered quickly.

He gave me the wan ghost of a smile.

"Do you suppose that I should have come of myself?" he returned. "What shall I do?"

I would not take the burden. The decision must be his.

"You must do what you think right," I said. Then I added, with a queer feeling as if I were thinking aloud, "What you think right to her and to--to the baby."

His face darkened, and I was glad that I had not said "your baby." I understood it was natural for him to look angry at the thought of the child, the unwelcome and unwitting betrayer of what he would have kept hidden; and yet somehow I resented his look.

"The baby is not to blame, Tom," I said. "It has every right to blame you."

"To blame me?" he repeated.

"If it has to bear a shame all its life, whose fault is it, its own or yours? If it has been born to a life like that of its mother, it certainly has no occasion to thank you."

He turned his flushed and shamed face away from me, and looked out into the darkening sky. I could see how he was holding himself in check, and that it was hard for him. I hated to be there, to be seeing him, to be talking over a matter that it was intolerable even to think about; but since I was there, I wanted to help him,--only I did not know how. I wanted to give him my hand, but I somehow shrank from touching his. I felt as if it was wicked and cruel to hold back, but between us came continually the consciousness of Julia and that little red baby sleeping in the clothes-basket. I am humiliated now to think of it, but the truth is that I was a brute to Tom.

Suddenly Tom turned for a moment toward the west, so that the little lingering light of the dying day fell on his face, and I saw by his set lips and the look in his eyes that he had come to some determination.

Then he faced me slowly.

"Ruth," he said, "I would go down into h.e.l.l for you, and I'm going to do something that is worse. What's past, it's no use to make excuses for, and you're too good to understand if I told you how I got into this foul mess. Now"--