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The Diary of a Saint

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Title: The Diary of a Saint

Author: Arlo Bates


        
Release date: January 7, 2013 [eBook #41801]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DIARY OF A SAINT ***

=Books by Arlo Bates.=


  THE DIARY OF A SAINT. Crown 8vo, $1.50.
  LOVE IN A CLOUD. A Novel. Crown 8vo, $1.50.
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  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
  Boston and New York.




  THE DIARY OF A
  SAINT

  BY
  ARLO BATES


  For many saints have lived and died, be sure,
  Yet known no name for God.

                          Faith's Tragedy.


  [Illustration]


  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
  The Riverside Press, Cambridge
  1902




  COPYRIGHT 1902 BY ARLO BATES
  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  _Published September, 1902_




CONTENTS


  CHAP.                        PAGE

      I. January                  1

     II. February                39

    III. March                   55

     IV. April                   85

      V. May                    133

     VI. June                   163

    VII. July                   186

   VIII. August                 214

     IX. September              244

      X. October                263

     XI. November               284

    XII. December               302




THE DIARY OF A SAINT




I

JANUARY


January 1. How beautiful the world is! I might go on to say, and how
commonplace this seems written down in a diary; but it is the thing I
have been thinking. I have been standing ever so long at the window, and
now that the curtains are shut I can see everything still. The moon is
shining over the wide white sheets of snow, and the low meadows look far
off and enchanted. The outline of the hills is clear against the sky,
and the cedars on the lawn are almost green against the whiteness of the
ground and the deep, blue-black sky. It is all so lovely that it somehow
makes one feel happy and humble both at once.

It is a beautiful world, indeed, and yet last night--

But last night was another year, and the new begins in a better mood. I
have shaken off the idiotic mawkishness of last night, and am more like
what Father used to tell me to be when I was a mite of a girl: "A
cheerful Ruth Privet, as right as a trivet." Though to be sure I do not
know what being as right as a trivet is, any more than I did then. Last
night, it is true, there were alleviating circumstances that might have
been urged. For a week it had been drizzly, unseasonable weather that
took all the snap out of a body's mental fibre; Mother had had one of
her bad days, when the pain seemed too dreadful to bear, patient angel
that she is; Kathie Thurston had been in one of her most despairing
fits; and the Old Year looked so dreary behind, the New Year loomed so
hopeless before, that there was some excuse for a girl who was tired to
the bone with watching and worry if she did not feel exactly cheerful. I
cannot allow, though, that it justified her in crying like a
watering-pot, and smudging the pages of her diary until the whole thing
was blurred like a composition written with tears in a primary school. I
certainly cannot let this sort of thing happen again, and I am
thoroughly ashamed that it happened once. I will remember that the last
day Father lived he said he could trust me to be brave both for Mother
and myself; and that I promised,--I promised.

So last night may go, and be forgotten as soon as I can manage to forget
it. To-night things are different. There has been a beautiful snow-fall,
and the air is so crisp that when I went for a walk at sunset it seemed
impossible ever to be sentimentally weak-kneed again; Mother is
wonderfully comfortable; and the New Year began with a letter to say
that George will be at home to-morrow. Mother is asleep like a child,
the fire is in the best of spirits, and does the purring for itself and
for Peter, who is napping with content expressed by every hair to the
tip of his fluffy white tail. Even Hannah is singing in the kitchen a
hymn that she thinks is cheerful, about

    "Sa-a-a-acred, high, e-ter-er-er-nal noon."

It is evident that there is every opportunity to take a fresh start,
and to conduct myself in the coming year with more self-respect.

So much for New Year resolutions. I do not remember that I ever made one
before; and very likely I shall never make one again. Now I must decide
something about Kathie. I tried to talk with Mother about her, but
Mother got so excited that I saw it would not do, and felt I must work
the problem out with pen and paper as if it were a sum in arithmetic. It
is not my business to attend to the theological education of the
minister's daughter, especially as it is the Methodist minister's
daughter, and he, with his whole congregation, thinks it rather doubtful
whether it is not sinful for Kathie even to know so dangerous an
unbeliever. I sometimes doubt whether my good neighbors in Tuskamuck
would regard Tom Paine himself, who, Father used to say, lingers as the
arch-heretic for all rural New England, with greater theological horror
than they do me. It is fortunate that they do not dislike me personally,
and they all loved Father in spite of his heresies. In this case I am
not clear, on the other hand, that it is my duty to stand passive and
see, without at least protesting, a sensitive, imaginative, delicate
child driven to despair by the misery and terror of a creed. If Kathie
had not come to me it would be different; but she has come. Time after
time this poor little, precocious, morbid creature has run to me in such
terror of hell-fire that I verily feared she would end by going frantic.
Ten years old, and desperate with conviction of original sin; and this
so near the end of the nineteenth century, so-called of grace! Thus far
I have contented myself with taking her into my arms, and just loving
her into calmness; but she is getting beyond that. She is finding being
petted so delightful that she is sure it must be a sin. She is like what
I can fancy the most imaginative of the Puritan grandmothers to have
been in their passionate childhood, in the days when the only recognized
office of the imagination was to picture the terrors of hell. I so long
for Father. If he were alive to talk to her, he could say the right
word, and settle things. The Bible is very touching in its phrase, "as
one whom his mother comforteth," but to me "whom his father comforteth"
would have seemed to go even deeper; but then, there is Kathie's father,
whose tenderness is killing her. I don't in the least doubt that he
suffers as much as she does; but he loves her too much to risk damage to
what he calls "her immortal soul." There is always a ring of triumph in
his voice when he pronounces the phrase, as if he already were a
disembodied spirit dilating in eternal and infinite glory. There is
something finely noble in such a superstition.

All this, however, does not bring me nearer to the end of my sum, for
the answer of that ought to be what I shall do with Kathie. It would
never do to push her into a struggle with the creeds, or to set her to
arguing out the impossibility of her theology. She is too young and too
morbid, and would end by supposing that in reasoning at all on the
matter she had committed the unpardonable sin. Her father would not let
her read stories unless they were Sunday-school books. Perhaps she might
be allowed some of the more entertaining volumes of history; but she is
too young for most of them. She should be reading about Red Riding-hood,
and the White Cat, and the whole company of dear creatures immortal in
fairy stories. I will look in the library, and see what there may be
that would pass the conscientiously searching ordeal of her father's
eye. If she can be given anything which will take her mind off of her
spiritual condition for a while, that is all that may be done at
present. I'll hunt up my old skates for her, too. A little more exercise
in the open air will do a good deal for her humanly, and perhaps blow
away some of the theology.

       *       *       *       *       *

Later. Hannah has been in to make her annual attack on my soul. I had
almost forgotten her yearly missionary effort, so that when she appeared
I said with the utmost cheerfulness and unconcern, "What is it, Hannah?"
supposing that she wanted to know something about breakfast. I could see
by the instant change in her expression that she regarded this as
deliberate levity. She was so full of what she had come to say that it
could not occur to her that I did not perceive it too.

Dear old Hannah! her face has always so droll an expression of mingled
shyness and determination when, as she once said, she clears her skirts
of blood-guiltiness concerning me. She stands in the doorway twisting
her apron, and her formula is always the same:--

"Miss Ruth, I thought I'd take the liberty to say a word to you on this
New Year's day."

"Yes, Hannah," I always respond, as if we had rehearsed the dialogue.
"What is it?"

"It's another year, Miss Ruth, and your peace not made with God."

To me there is something touching in the fidelity with which she clings
to the self-imposed performance of this evidently painful duty. She is
distressfully shy about it,--she who is never shy about anything else
in the world, so far as I can see. She feels that it is a "cross for her
to bear," as she told me once, and I honor her for not shirking it. She
thinks I regard it far more than I do. She judges my discomfort by her
own, whereas in truth I am only uncomfortable for her. I never could
understand why people are generally so afraid to speak of religious
things, or why they dislike so to be spoken to about them. I mind
Hannah's talking about my soul no more than I should mind her talking
about my nose or my fingers; indeed, the little flavor of personality
which would make that unpleasant is lacking when it comes to discussion
about intangible things like the spirit, and so on the whole I mind the
soul-talk less. I suppose really the shyness is part of the general
reticence all we New Englanders have that makes it so hard to speak of
anything which is deeply felt. Father used to say, I remember, that it
was because folk usually have a great deal of sentiment about religion
and very few ideas, and thus the difficulty of bringing their expression
up to their feelings necessarily embarrasses them.

I assured Hannah I appreciated all her interest in my welfare, and that
I would try to live as good a life during the coming year as I could;
and then she withdrew with the audible sigh of relief that the heavy
duty was done with for another twelvemonth. She assured me she should
still pray for me, and if I do not suppose that there is any great
efficacy in her petition, I am at least glad that she should feel like
doing her best in my behalf. Mother declares that she is always offended
when a person offers to pray for her. She looks at it as dreadfully
condescending and patronizing, as if the petitioner had an intimate
personal hold upon the Almighty, and was willing to exert his influence
in your behalf. But I hardly think she means it. She never fails to see
when a thing is kindly meant, even if she has a keen sense of the
ludicrous. At any rate, it does us no harm that kindly petitions are
offered for us, even if they may go out into an unregarding void; and I
am not sure that they do.


January 2. Kathie is delighted with the skates, and she does not think
that her father will object to her having them; so there is at least one
point gained.

We have had such a lovely sunset! I do not see how there can be a
doubter in a world where there are so many beautiful things. The whole
west, through the leafless branches of the elms on the south lawn, was
one gorgeous mass of splendid color. I hope George saw it. It is almost
time for him to be here, and I have caught myself humming over and over
his favorite tunes as I waited. Mother has had a day of uneasiness, so
that I could not leave her much, but rubbing her side for an hour or two
relieved her. It has cramped my fingers a little, so that I write a
funny, stiff hand. Poor Mother! It made me ashamed to be so glad in my
heart as I saw how brave and quiet she was, with the lines of pain round
her dear mouth.

       *       *       *       *       *

Later. "How long is it that we have been engaged?"

That is what George asked me, and out of all the long talk we had this
evening this is the one thing which I keep hearing over and over. Why
should it tease me so? It is certainly a simple question, and when two
persons have been engaged six years there need no longer be any false
sensitiveness about things of this sort. About what sort? Do I mean that
the time has come when George would not mind hurting my feelings? It may
as well come out. As Father used to say: "You cannot balance the books
until the account is set down in full." Well, then, I mean that there is
a frankness about a long engagement which may not be in a short one, so
that when George and I meet after a separation it is natural that almost
the first question should be,--

"How long is it that we have been engaged?"

The question is certainly an innocent one,--although one would think
George might have answered it himself. How much did the fact that he
talked afterward so eagerly about the Miss West he met while at his
aunt's, and of how pretty she is, have to do with the pain which the
question gave me? At my age one might think that I was beyond the
jealousies of a school-girl.

We have been engaged six years and four months and five days. It is not
half the time that Jacob served for Rachel, although it is almost the
time he bowed his neck to the yoke for Leah, and I am afraid lest I am
nearer to being like the latter than the former. I always pitied Leah,
for she must have understood she had not her husband's love; any woman
would perceive that. Six years--and life is so short! Poor George, it
has not been easy for him! He has not even been able to wish that the
obstacle between us was removed, since that obstacle is Mother. Surely
she is my first duty; and since she needs me day and night, I cannot
divide my life; but I do pity George. He is wearing out his youth with
that old frump of a housekeeper, who makes him uncomfortable with an
ingenuity that seems to show intellectual force not to be suspected from
anything else. But she is a faithful old soul, and it is not kind to
abuse her.

"How long is it that we have been engaged?"

I have a tendency to keep on writing that over and over all down the
page as if this were the copy-book of a child at school. How Tom used to
admire my writing-books in our school-days! His were always smudged and
blotted. He is too big-souled and manly to niggle over little things;
and he laughed at the pains I took, turning every corner with absurd
care. He was so strong and splendid on the ice when we went skating over
on Getchell's Pond; and how often and often he has drawn me all the way
home on my sled!

But all that was ages and ages ago, and long before I even knew George.
It never occurred to me until to-night, but I am really growing old. The
birthdays that Tom remembered, and on which he sent me little bunches of
Mayflowers, have not in the least troubled me or seemed too many. I have
not thought much of birthdays of late years, but to-night I realize that
I am twenty-nine, and that George has asked me,--

"How long is it that we have been engaged?"


January 7. Sackcloth and ashes have been my portion for days, and if I
could by tearing from my diary the last leaves blot out of remembrance
the foolish things I have written, it would be quickly done. My New
Year's resolutions were even less lasting than are those in the jokes
of the comic papers; and I am ashamed all through and through. I have
tried to reason myself into something resembling common sense, but I am
much afraid I have not yet entirely accomplished it. I have said to
myself over and over that it would be the best thing for George if he
did fall in love with that girl he saw at Franklin, and go his way
without wasting more time waiting for me. He has wasted years enough,
and it is time for him to be happy. But then--has he not been happy? Or
is it that I have been so happy myself I have not realized how the long
engagement was wearying him? He must have wearied, or he could never
have asked me--

No, I will not write it!


January 8. George came over last night, and was so loving and tender
that I was thoroughly ashamed of all the wicked suspicions I have had.
After all, what was there to suspect? I almost confessed to him what a
miserable little doubter I had been; but I knew that confession would
only be relieving my soul at the expense of making him uncomfortable. I
hated to have him think me better than I am; but this, I suppose, is
part of the penalty I ought to pay for having been so weak.

Besides,--probably it was only my weakness in another form, the petty
jealousy of a small soul and a morbid fancy,--he seemed somehow more
remote than I have ever known him, and I could not have told him if I
would. We did not seem to be entirely frank with each other, but as if
each were trying to make the other feel at ease when it was not really
possible. Of course I was only attributing my own feelings to him, for
he was dearly good.

He told me more about his visit to Franklin, and he seems to have seen
Miss West a good deal. She is a sort of cousin of the Watsons, he says,
and so they had a common ground. When she found that he lived so near to
the Watsons she asked him all kinds of questions. She has never seen
them, having lived in the West most of her life, and was naturally much
interested in hearing about her relatives. I found myself leading him on
to talk of her. I cannot see why I should care about this stranger.
Generally I deal very little in gossip. Father trained me to be
interested in real things, and meaningless details about people never
attracted me. Yet this girl sticks in my mind, and I am tormented to
know all about her. It cannot be anything he said; though he did say
that she is very pretty. Perhaps it was the way in which he said it. He
seemed to my sick fancy to like to talk of her. She must be a charming
creature.


January 9. Why should he not like to talk of a pretty girl? I hope I am
not of the women who cannot bear to have a man use his eyes except to
see their graces. It is pitiful to be so small and mean. I certainly
want George to admire goodness and beauty, and to be by his very
affection for me the more sensitive to whatever is admirable in others.
If I am to be worthy of being his wife, I must be noble enough to be
glad at whatever there is for him to rejoice in because of its
loveliness: and yet as I write down all these fine sentiments I feel my
heart like lead! Oh, I am so ashamed of myself!


January 10. Miss Charlotte came in this afternoon, looking so thin, and
cold, and tall, that I have been rather sober ever since.

"I wish I had on shoes with higher heels," I said to her as we shook
hands; "then perhaps I shouldn't feel so insignificant down here."

She looked down at me, laughing that rich, throaty laugh of hers.

"Mother always used to say she knew the Kendalls couldn't have been
drowned in the Flood," she answered, "for they must all have been tall
enough to wade to Mt. Ararat."

"You know the genealogy so far back that you must be able to tell
whether she was right."

"I don't go quite so far as that," she said, sitting down by the fire,
"but I know that my great-great-grandfather married a Privet, so that I
always considered Judge Privet a cousin."

"If Father was a cousin, I must be one too," said I.

"You are the same relation to me on one side," Miss Charlotte went on,
"that Deacon Webbe is on the other. It's about fortieth cousin, you see,
so that I can count it or not, as I please."

"I am flattered that you choose to count us in," I told her, smiling;
"and I am sure also you must be willing to count in anybody so good as
Deacon Webbe."

"Yes, Deacon Webbe is worth holding on to, though he's so weak that he'd
let the shadow of a mosquito bully him. The answer to the question in
the New England Primer, 'Who is the meekest man?' ought to be 'Deacon
Webbe.' He used up all the meekness there was in the whole family,
though."

"I confess that I never heard Mrs. Webbe called meek," I assented.

"Meek!" sniffed Miss Charlotte; "I should think not. A wasp is a
Sunday-school picnic beside her. While as for Tom"--

She pursed up her lips with an expression of disapproval so very marked
I was afraid at once that Tom Webbe must have been doing something
dreadful again, and my heart sank for his father.

"But Tom has been doing better," I said. "This winter he"--

"This winter!" she exclaimed. "Why, just now he is worse than ever."

"Oh, dear," I asked, "what is it now? His father has been so unhappy
about him."

"If he'd made Tom unhappy it would have been more to the purpose. Tom's
making himself the town talk with that Brownrig girl."

"What Brownrig girl?"

"Don't you know about the Brownrigs that live in that little red house
on the Rim Road?"

"I know the red house, and now that you say the name, I remember I have
heard that such a family have moved in there. Where did they come from?"

"Oh, where do such trash come from ever?" demanded Miss Charlotte. "I'm
afraid nobody but the Old Nick could tell you. They're a set of drunken,
disreputable vagabonds, that turned up here last year. They were
probably driven out of some town or other. Tom's been"--

But I did not wish to hear of Tom's misdeeds, and I said so. Miss
Charlotte laughed, as usual.

"You never take any interest in wickedness, Ruth," she said
good-naturedly. "That's about the only fault I have to find with you."

Poor Deacon Webbe! Tom has made him miserable indeed in these years
since he came from college. The bitterness of seeing one we love go
wrong must be unbearable, and when we believe that the consequences of
wrong are to be eternal--I should go mad if I believed in such a creed.
I would try to train myself to hate instead of to love; or, if I could
not do this--But I could not believe anything so horrible, so that I
need not speculate. Deacon Daniel is a saint, though of course he does
not dream of such a thing. A saint would not be a saint, I suppose, who
was aware of his beatitude, and the deacon's meekness is one of his most
marked attributes of sanctity. I wonder whether, in the development of
the race, saintliness will ever come to be compatible with a sense of
humor. A saint with that persuasively human quality would be a
wonderfully compelling power for good. Deacon Daniel is a fine influence
by his goodness, but he somehow enhances the desirability of virtue in
the abstract rather than brings home personally the idea that his
example is to be followed; and all because he is so hopelessly without a
perception of the humorous side of existence. But why do I go on writing
this, when the thought uppermost in my mind is the grief he will have if
Tom has started again on one of his wild times. I do hope that Miss
Charlotte is mistaken! So small a thing will sometimes set folk to
talking, especially about Tom, who is at heart so good, though he has
been wild enough to get a bad name.


January 11. Things work out strangely in this world; so that it is no
wonder all sorts of fanciful beliefs are made out of them. There could
hardly be a web more closely woven than human life. To-day, when I had
not seen Tom for months, and when the gossip of last night made me want
to talk with him, chance brought us face to face.

Mother was so comfortable that I went out for an hour. The day was
delightful, cold enough so that the walking was dry and the snow firm,
but the air not sharp to the cheek. The sun was warm and cheery, and the
shadows on the white fields had a lovely softness. I went on in a sort
of dream, it was so good to be alive and out of doors in such wonderful
weather. I turned to go down the Rim Road, and it was not until I came
in sight of the red house that I remembered what Miss Charlotte said
last night. Then I began to think about Tom. Tom and I have always been
such good friends. I used to understand Tom better in the old
school-days than the others did, and he was always ready to tell me what
he thought and felt. Nowadays I hardly ever see him. Since I became
engaged he has almost never come to the house, though he used to be here
so much. I meet him only once or twice a year, and then I think he tries
to avoid me. I am so sorry to have an old friendship broken off like
that. The red house made me think of Tom with a sore heart, of all the
talk his wild ways have caused, the sorrow of his father, and the good
that is being lost when a fellow with a heart so big as Tom's goes
wrong.

Suddenly Tom himself appeared before my very eyes, as if my thought had
conjured him up. He came so unexpectedly that at first I could hardly
realize how he came. Then it flashed across me that he must have walked
round the red house. I suppose he must have come out of a back door
somewhere, like one of the family; such folk never use their front
doors. He walked along the road toward me, at first so preoccupied that
he did not recognize me. When he saw my face, he half hesitated, as if
he had almost a mind to turn back, and his whole face turned red. He
came on, however, and was going past me with a scant salutation, when I
stopped him. I stood still and put out my hand, so that he could not go
by without speaking.

"Good-afternoon, Tom," I said. "Isn't it a glorious day?"

He looked about him with a strange air as if he had not noticed, and I
saw how heavy and weary his eyes were.

"Yes," he answered, "it is a fine day."

"Where do you keep yourself, Tom?" I went on, hardly knowing what I
said, but trying to think what it was best to say. "I never see you, and
we used to be such good friends."

He looked away, and moved his lips as if he muttered something; but when
I asked what he said, he turned to me defiantly.

"Look here, Ruth, what's the good of pretending? You know I don't go to
see you because you're engaged to George Weston. You chose between us,
and there's the end of that. What's more, you know that nowadays I'm not
fit to go to see anybody that's decent."

"Then it is time that you were," was my answer. "Let me walk along with
you. I want to say something."

I turned, and we walked together toward the village. I could see that
his face hardened.

"It's no sort of use to preach to me, Ruth," he said, "though your
preaching powers are pretty good. I've had so much preaching in my life
that I'm not to be rounded up by piety."

I smiled as well as I could, though it made me want to cry to hear the
hard bravado of his tone.

"I'm not generally credited with overmuch piety, Tom. The whole town
thinks all the Privets heathen, you know."

"Humph! It's a pity there weren't a few more of 'em."

I laughed, and thanked him for the compliment, and then we went on in
silence for a little way. I had to ignore what he said about George, but
it did not make it easier to begin. I was puzzled what to say, but the
time was short that we should be walking together, and I had to do
something.

"Tom," I began, "you may not be very sensitive about old friendships,
but I am loyal; and it hurts me that those I care for should be talked
against."

"Oh, in a place like Tuskamuck," he returned, at once, I could see, on
the defensive, "they'll talk about anybody."

"Will they? Then I suppose they talk about me. I'm sorry, Tom, for it
must make you uncomfortable to hear it; unless, that is, you don't count
me for a friend any longer."

He threw back his head in the way he has always had. I used to tell him
it was like a colt's shaking back its mane.

"What nonsense! Of course they don't talk about you. You don't give
folks any chance."

"And you do," I added as quietly as I could.

He looked angry for just the briefest instant, and then he burst into a
hard laugh.

"Caught, by Jupiter! Ruth, you were always too clever for me to deal
with. Well, then, I do give the gossips plenty to talk about. They would
talk just the same if I didn't, so I may as well have the game as the
name."

"Does that mean that your life is regulated by the gossips? I supposed
that you had more independence, Tom."

He flushed, and stooped down to pick up a stick. With this he began
viciously to strike the bushes by the roadside and the dry stalks of
yarrow sticking up through the snow. He set his lips together with a
grim determination which brought out in his face the look I like least,
the resemblance to his mother when she means to carry a point.

"Look here, Ruth," he said after a moment; "I'm not going to talk to you
about myself or my doings. I'm a blackguard fast enough; but there's no
good talking about it. If you'd cared enough about me to keep me
straight, you could have done it; but now I'm on my way to the Devil,
and no great way to travel before I get there either."

We had come to the turn of the Rim Road where the trees shut off the
view of the houses of the village. I stopped and put my hand on his arm.

"Tom," I begged him, "don't talk like that. You don't know how it hurts.
You don't mean it; you can't mean it. Nobody but yourself can send you
on the wrong road; and I know you're too plucky to hide behind any such
excuse. For the sake of your father, Tom, do stop and think what you are
doing."

"Oh, father'll console himself very well with prayers; and anyway he'll
thank God for sending me to perdition, because if God does it, it must
be all right."

"Don't, Tom! You know how he suffers at the way you go on. It must be
terrible to have an only son, and to see him flinging his life away."

"It isn't my fault that I'm his son, is it?" he demanded. "I've been
dragged into this infernal life without being asked whether I wanted to
come or not; and now I'm here, I can't have what I want, and I'm
promised eternal damnation hereafter. Well, then, I'll show God or the
Devil, or whoever bosses things, that I can't be bullied into a
molly-coddle!"

The sound of wheels interrupted us, and we instinctively began to walk
onward in the most commonplace fashion. A farmer's wagon came along, and
by the time it had passed we had come to the head of the Rim Road, in
full sight of the houses. Tom waited until I turned to the right, toward
home, and then he said,--

"I'm going the other way. It's no use, Ruth, to talk to me; but I'm
obliged to you for caring."

I cannot see that I did any good, and very likely I have simply made him
more on his guard to avoid giving me a chance; but then, even if I had
all the chance in the world, what could I say to him? And yet, Tom is so
noble a fellow underneath it all. He is honest and kind, and strong in
his way; only between his father's meekness and his mother's
sharpness--for she is sharp--he has somehow come to grief. They have
tried to make him religious so that he would be good; and he is of the
sort that must be good or he will not be religious. He cannot be pressed
into a mould of orthodoxy, and so in the end--But it cannot be the end.
Tom must somehow come out of it.


January 13. When George came in to-night I was struck at once with the
look of pleasant excitement in his face.

"What pleases you?" I asked him.

"Pleases me?" he echoed, evidently surprised. "Isn't it a pleasure to
see you?"

"But that's not the whole of it," I said. "You've something pleasant to
tell me. Oh, I can read you like a book, my dear; so it is quite idle
trying to keep a secret from me."

He seemed confused, and I was puzzled to know what was the matter.

"You are too wise entirely," was his reply. "I really hadn't anything to
tell."

"Then something good has happened," I persisted; "or you have heard good
news."

"What a fanciful girl you are, Ruth," George returned. "Nothing has
happened."

He walked away from me, and went to the fire. He was strangely
embarrassed, and I could only wonder what I had said to confuse him. I
reflected that perhaps he was planning some sort of a surprise, and felt
I ought not to pry into his thoughts in this fashion whatever the matter
was that interested him. I sat down on the other side of the hearth, and
took up some sewing.

"George," I asked, entirely at random, "didn't you say that the Miss
West you met at Franklin is a cousin of the Watsons?"

I flushed as soon as I had spoken, for I thought how it betrayed me that
in my desire to hit on a new subject I had found the thought of her so
near the surface of my mind. I had not consciously been thinking of her
at all, and certainly I did not connect her with George's strangeness of
manner. There was something almost weird, it seems to me now, in my
putting such a question just then. Perhaps it was telepathy, for she
must have been vividly in his thoughts at that moment. He started,
flushed as I have never seen him, and turned quickly toward me.

"What makes you think that it was Miss West?"

"Think what was Miss West?" I cried.

I was completely astonished; then I saw how it was.

"Never mind, George," I went on, laughing and putting out my hand to
him. "I didn't mean to read your thoughts, and I didn't realize that I
was doing it."

"But what made you"--

"I'm sure I don't know," I broke in; and I managed to laugh again. "Only
I see now that you know something pleasant about Miss West, and you may
as well tell it."

He looked doubtful a minute, studying my face. The hesitation he had in
speaking hurt me.

"It's only that she's coming to visit the Watsons," he said, rather
unwillingly. "Olivia Watson told me just now."

"Why, that will be pleasant," I answered, as brightly as if I were
really delighted. "Now I shall see if she is really as pretty as you
say."

I felt so humiliated to be playing a part,--so insincere. Somebody has
said the real test of love is to be unwilling to deceive the loved one,
even in the smallest thing. That may be the test of a man's love, but a
woman will bear the pain of that very deception to save the man she
cares for from disquiet. I am sure it has hurt me as much not to be
entirely frank with George as it could have hurt a man; but I could not
make him uncomfortable by letting him see that I was disturbed. Yet that
he should have been afraid or unwilling to tell me did trouble me. He
knows that I am not jealous or apt to take offense. He is always saying
that I am too cold to be really in love. It made me feel that the coming
of this girl must mean much to him when he feared to speak of it. If he
had not thought it a matter of consequence, he would have realized that
I should take it lightly.

I am not taking it lightly; but what troubles me is not that she is
coming, but that he hesitated to tell me. Something is wrong when George
fears to trust me.


January 17. I have seen her. I went to church this morning for that
especial reason. Mother was a little astonished at me when I said that I
was going.

"Well, Ruth," she said, "you don't have much dissipation, but I didn't
suppose that you were so dull you would take to church-going."

"You can never tell," I answered, making a jest of a thing which to me
was far from funny. "Mr. Saychase will be sure to conclude I'm under
conviction of sin, and come in to finish the conversion."

She looked at me keenly.

"What is the matter, Ruth?" she asked in that soft voice of hers which
goes straight to my heart.

"It isn't anything very serious, Mother," I said. "Since you will have
the truth, I am going to church to see that Miss West who's visiting the
Watsons. George thinks her so pretty that my curiosity is roused to a
perfect bonfire."

She did not say more, but I saw the sudden light in her eye. Mother has
never felt about George as I have wished. She has never done him
justice, and she thinks I idealize him. That is her favorite way of
putting it; but this is because she is my mother, and doesn't see how
much idealizing there must have been on his side before he could fall in
love with me.

Miss West is very pretty. All the time I watched in church I tried to
persuade myself that she was not. I meanly and contemptibly sat there
finding fault with her face, saying to myself that her nose was too
long, her eyes too small, her mouth too big; inventing flaws as if my
invention would change the fact. It was humiliating business; and
utterly and odiously idiotic. Miss West is pretty; she is more than
this, she is wonderfully pretty. There is an appealing, baby look about
her big blue eyes which goes straight to one's heart. She looks like a
darling child one would want to kiss and shelter from all the hard
things of life. I own it all; I realize all that it means; and if in my
inmost soul I am afraid, I will not deny what is a fact or try to shut
my eyes to the littleness of my feeling about her. Of course George
found her adorable. She is. The young men in the congregation all
watched her, and even grim Deacon Richards could not keep his eyes off
of her.

She does not have the look of a girl of any especial mind. Her
prettiness is after all that of a doll. Her large eyes are of the sort
to please a man because of their appealing helplessness; not because
they inspire him with new meanings. Her little rosebud lips will never
speak wisdom, I am afraid; but in my jealousy I wonder whether most men
do not care more for lips which invite kisses than for lips which speak
wisdom. I am frankly and weakly miserable. George walked home with me,
but he had not two words to say.

I must try to meet this. If George should come to care for her more than
for me! If he should,--if by a pretty face he forgets all the years that
we have belonged to each other, what is there to do? I cannot yet
believe that it is best for him; but if it will make him happy, even if
he thinks that it will, what is there for me but to make it as easy for
him as I may? He certainly would not be happy to marry me and love
somebody else. He cannot leave me without pain; that I am sure. I shall
show my love for him more truly if I spare him the knowledge of what it
must cost me.

But what mawkish nonsense all this is! A man may admire a pretty face,
and yet not be ready for it to leave behind all that has been dear to
him. Oh, if he had not asked me that question when he came back from
Franklin! I cannot get it out of my mind that even if he was not
conscious of it, it meant he still was secretly tired of his long
engagement; that he was at least dreaming of what he would do if he were
free. He shall not be bound by any will of mine; and if his heart has
gone out to this beautiful creature, I must bear it as nobly as I can.
Father used to say,--and every day I go back more and more to what he
said to me,--"What you cannot at need sacrifice nobly you are not worthy
to possess."


January 18. I have had a note which puzzles me completely. Tom Webbe
writes to say that he is going away; that I am to forgive him for the
shame of having known him, and that his address is inclosed in a sealed
envelope. I am not to open it unless there is real need. Why should he
give his address to me?


January 19. The disconcerting way Aunt Naomi has of coming in without
knocking, stealing in on feet made noiseless by rubbers, brought her
into the sitting-room last night while I was mooning in the twilight,
and meditating on nothing in particular. I knew her slow fashion of
opening the door, "like a burglar at a cupboard," as Hannah says,--so
that I was able to compose my face into an appropriate smile of welcome
before she was fairly in.

"Sitting here alone?" was her greeting.

"Mother is asleep," I answered, "and I was waiting for her to wake."

Aunt Naomi seated herself in the stiffest chair in the room, and began
to swing her foot as usual.

"Deacon Daniel's at it again," she observed dispassionately.

I smiled a little. It always amuses me that the troubles of the church
should be so often brought to me who am an outsider. Aunt Naomi arrives
about once a month on the average, with complaints about something. They
are seldom of any especial weight, but it seems to relieve her to tell
her grievances.

"Which Deacon Daniel?" I asked, to tease her a little.

"Deacon Richards, of course. You know that well enough."

"What is it now?"

"He won't have any fire in the vestry," she answered.

"Why not let somebody else take care of the vestry then, if you want a
fire?"

"You don't suppose," was her response, with a chuckle, "that he'd give
up the key to anybody else, do you?"

"I should think he'd be glad to."

"He'll hold on to that key till he dies," retorted Aunt Naomi with a
sniff; "and I shouldn't be surprised if he had it buried with him. He
wouldn't lose the chance of making folks uncomfortable."

"Oh, come, Aunt Naomi, you are always so hard on Deacon Richards," I
protested. "He is always good-natured with me."

"I wish you'd join the church, then, and see if you can't keep him in
order. Last night it was so cold at prayer-meeting that we were all half
frozen, and Mr. Saychase had to dismiss the meeting. Old lady Andrews
spoke up in the coldest part of it, when we were all so chilled that we
couldn't speak, and she said in that little, high voice of hers: 'The
vestry is very cold to-night, but I trust that our hearts are warm with
the love of Christ.'"

I laughed at the picture of the half-frozen prayer-meeting, and dear old
lady Andrews coming to the rescue with a pious jest; it was so
characteristic.

"But has anybody spoken to Deacon Richards?" I asked.

"You can't speak to him," she responded, wagging her foot with a
violence that seemed to speak celestial anger within. "I try to after
every prayer-meeting; but he has the lights out before I can say two
words. I can't stay there in the dark with him; and the minute he gets
me outside he locks the door, and posts off like a streak."

"Why not go down to his mill in broad daylight?" I suggested.

"Oh, he'd stick close to the grinding-thing just so he couldn't hear,
and I'm afraid of being pitched into the hopper," she said, laughing.
"You must speak to him. He pays some attention to what you say."

"But it's none of my business. I don't go to prayer-meeting."

"But it's your duty to go," she answered, with a shrewd smile that
showed that she appreciated her response; "and if you neglect one duty
it's no excuse for neglecting another. Besides, you can't be willing to
have the whole congregation die of cold."

So in the end it was somehow fixed that I am to remonstrate with Deacon
Daniel because the faithful are cold at their devotions. It would seem
much simpler for them to stay at home and be warm. They do not, as far
as I can see, enjoy going; but they are miserable if they do not go.
Their consciences trouble them worse than the cold, poor things. I
suppose that I can never be half thankful enough to Father for bringing
me up without a theological conscience. Prayer-meetings seem to be a
good deal like salt in the boy's definition of something that makes food
taste bad if you don't put it on; prayer-meetings make church-goers
uneasy if they do not go. If they will go, however, and if they are
better for going, or believe they are better, or if they are only worse
for staying away, or suppose they are worse, they should not be expected
to sit in a cold vestry in January. Why Deacon Daniel will not have a
fire is not at all clear. It may be economy, or it may be a lack of
sensitiveness; it may be for some recondite reason too deep to be
discovered. I refuse to accept Aunt Naomi's theory that it is sheer
obstinacy; and I will beard the deacon in his mill, regardless of the
danger of the hopper. At least he generally listens to me.


January 20. Hannah came up for me this evening while I was reading to
Mother.

"Deacon Webbe's down in the parlor," she announced. "Says he wants to
see you if you're not busy. 'Ll come again if you ain't able to see
him."

"Go down, Ruth dear," Mother said at once. "It may be another church
quarrel, and I wouldn't hinder you from settling it for worlds."

"But don't you want me to finish the chapter?" I asked. "Church quarrels
will generally keep."

"No, dear. I'm tired, and we'll stop where we are. I'll try to go to
sleep, if you'll turn the light down."

As I bent over to kiss her, she put up her feeble thin fingers, and
touched my cheek lovingly.

"You're a dear girl," she said. "Be gentle with the deacon."

There was a twinkle in her eye, for the idea of anybody's being anything
but gentle with Deacon Daniel Webbe is certainly droll enough. Miss
Charlotte said the other night that a baby could twist him round its
finger and never even know there was anything there; and certainly he
must call out the gentle feelings of anybody. Only Tom seemed always
somehow to get exasperated with his father's meekness. Poor Tom, I do
wonder why he went away!

The deacon dries up by way of growing old. I have not seen him this
winter except the other day at church, and then I did not look at him.
To-night he seemed worn and sad, and somehow his face was like ashes, it
was so lifeless. The flesh has dried to the bones of his face till he
looks like a pathetic skull. His voice is not changed, though. It has
the same strange note in it that used to affect me as a child; a weird,
reedy quality which suggests some vague melancholy flavor not in the
least fretful or whining,--a quality that I have never been able to
define. I never hear him speak without a sense of mysterious
suggestiveness; and I remember confiding to Father once, when I was
about a dozen years old, that Deacon Webbe had the right voice to read
fairy stories with. Father, I remember, laughed, and said he doubted
much if Deacon Daniel knew what a fairy story was, unless he thought it
was something wickedly false. Tom's voice has something of the same
quality, but only enough to give a little thrill to his tone when he is
really in earnest. There is an amusing incongruity between that odd
wind-harp strain in Deacon Webbe's voice and his gaunt New England
figure.

"Ruth," the deacon asked, almost before we had shaken hands, "did you
know Tom had gone away?"

I was impressed and rather startled by the intensity of his manner, and
surprised by the question.

"Yes," I said. "He sent me word he was going."

"Do you know where he has gone?"

"No."

I wondered whether I ought to tell him about the sealed address, but it
seemed like a breach of confidence to say anything yet.

"Did he say why he was going?" the deacon asked.

"No," I said again.

The deacon turned his hat over and over helplessly in his knotted hands
in silence for a moment. He was so pathetic that I wanted to cry.

"Then you don't know," he said after a moment.

"I only know he has gone."

There was another silence, as if the deacon were pondering on what he
could possibly do or say next. Peter, who was pleased for the moment to
be condescendingly kind to the visitor, came and rubbed persuasively
against his legs, waving a great white plume of tail. Deacon Daniel bent
down absently and stroked the cat, but the troubled look in his face
showed how completely his mind was occupied.

"I'm afraid there's something wrong," he broke out at length, with an
energy unusual with him; an energy which was suffering rather than
power. "I don't know what it is, but I'm afraid it's worse than ever.
Oh, Miss Ruth, if you could only have cared for Tom, you'd have kept him
straight."

I could only murmur that I had always liked Tom, and that we had been
friends all our lives; but the deacon was too much moved to pay
attention.

"Of course," he went on, "I hadn't any right to suppose Judge Privet's
daughter would marry into our family; but if you had cared for him, Miss
Ruth"--

"Deacon Webbe," I broke in, for I could not hear any more, "please don't
say such things! You know you mustn't say such things!"

As I think of it, I am afraid I was a little more hysterical than would
have been allowed by Cousin Mehitable, but I could not help it. At least
I stopped him from going on. He apologized so much that I set to work to
convince him I was not offended, which I found was not very easy. Poor
Deacon Daniel, he is really heart-broken about Tom, but he has never
known how to manage him, or even to make the boy understand how much he
loves him. Meekness may be a Christian virtue; but over-meekness is a
poor quality for one who has the bringing up of a real, wide-awake,
head-strong boy. A little less virtue and a little more common sense
would have made Deacon Webbe a good deal more useful in this world if it
did lessen his value to heaven. He is the very salt of the earth, yet he
has so let himself be trampled upon that to Tom his humility has seemed
weakness. I know, too, Tom has never appreciated his father, and has
failed to understand that goodness need not always be in arms to be
manly. And so here in a couple of sentences I have come round to the
side of the deacon after all. Perhaps in the long run the effect of his
goodness, with all its seeming lack of strength, may effect more than
sterner qualities.


January 21. I was interrupted last night in my writing to go to Mother;
but I have had Deacon Webbe and Tom in my mind ever since. I could not
help remembering the gossip about Tom, and the fact that I saw him
coming from the red house. I wonder if he has not gone to break away
from temptation. In new surroundings he may turn over a new leaf. Oh, I
would so like to write to him, and to tell him how much I hope for this
fresh start, but I hardly like to open the envelope.

I have been this afternoon to call on Miss West. The Watsons are not
exactly of my world, but it seemed kind to go. If you were really
honest, Ruth Privet, you would add that you wanted to see what Miss West
is like. It is all very well to put on airs of disinterested virtue; but
if George had not spoken of this girl it is rather doubtful whether you
would have taken the trouble to go to her in your very best bib and
tucker,--and you did put on your very best, and wondered while you were
doing it whether she would appreciate the lace scarf you bought at
Malta. I understand you wanted to impress her a little, though you did
try to make yourself believe that you were only wearing your finest
clothes to do honor to her. What a humbug you are!

Olivia Watson came to the door, and asked me into the parlor, where I
was left to wait some time before Miss West appeared. I confessed then
to myself how I had really half hoped that she would not be in; but now
the call is over I am glad to have seen her. I am a little confused, but
I know what she is.

She is the most beautiful creature I ever saw. She has a clear color,
when she flushes, like a red clover in September, the last and the
richest of all the clovers of the year. Then her hair curls about her
forehead in such dear little ringlets that it is enough to make one want
to kiss her. She speaks with a funny little Western burr to her r's
which might not please me in another, but is charming from her lips, the
mouth that speaks is so pretty. Yes, George was right.

Of her mind one cannot say quite as much. She is not entirely well bred,
it seemed to me; but then we are a little old-fashioned in Tuskamuck.
She did notice the scarf, and asked me where I got it.

"Oh," she said, when I had told her, "then you have been abroad."

"Yes," I said, "I went with my father."

"Judge Privet took you abroad several times, didn't he?" Olivia put in.

"Yes; I went with him three times."

"Oh, my!" commented Miss West. "How set up you must feel!"

"I don't think I do," I answered, laughing. "Do you feel set up because
you have seen the West that so few of us have visited?"

"Why, I never thought of that," she responded. "You haven't any of you
traveled in the West, have you?"

"I haven't, at least."

"But that ain't anything to compare with going abroad," she continued,
her face falling; "and going abroad three times, too. I should put on
airs all the rest of my life if I'd done that."

It is not fair to go on putting down in black and white things that she
said without thinking. I am ashamed of the satisfaction I found myself
taking in her commonness. I was even so unfair to her that I could not
help thinking that she somehow did not ring true. I wonder if a woman
can ever be entirely just to another woman who has been praised by the
man she cares for? If not I will be an exception to my sex! I will not
be small and mean, just because Miss West is so lovely that no man could
see her without--well, without admiring her greatly.


January 22. I went down to the grist-mill this afternoon to see Deacon
Daniel, and to represent to him the sufferings of the faithful at frozen
prayer-meetings. He was standing in the door of the mill, which was open
to the brisk air, and his mealy frock gave a picturesque air to his
great figure. He greeted me pleasantly, as he always does.

"I've come on business," I said.

"Your own or somebody's else?" he asked, with a grin.

"Not exactly mine," I admitted.

"What has Aunt Naomi sent you for now?" he demanded.

I laughed at his penetration.

"You are too sharp to be deceived," I said. "Aunt Naomi did send me.
They tell me you are trying to destroy the church by freezing them all
to death at the prayer-meetings."

"Aunt Naomi can't be frozen. She's too dry."

"That isn't at all a nice thing to say, Deacon Richards," I said,
smiling. "You can't cover your iniquities by abusing her."

He showed his teeth, and settled himself against the door-post more
comfortably.

"Why didn't she come herself?" he inquired.

"She said that she was afraid you'd pop her into the hopper. You see
what a monster you are considered."

"I wouldn't be willing to spoil my meal."

Deacon Daniel likes to play at badinage, and if he had ever had a
chance, might have some skill at it. As it is, I like to see how he
enjoys it, if I am not always impressed by the wit of what he says.

"Deacon Richards," I said, "why do you freeze the people so in the
vestry?"

"I haven't known of anybody's being frozen."

"But why don't you have a fire?" I persisted. "If you don't want to
build it, there are boys enough that can be hired."

"How is your mother to-day?" was the only answer the deacon vouchsafed.

"She's very comfortable, thank you. Why don't you have a fire?"

"Makes folks sleepy," he declared; and once more switched off abruptly
to another subject. "Did you know Tom Webbe's gone off?"

"Yes."

"Where's he gone?"

"I don't know. Why should I?"

"If you don't know," Deacon Daniel commented, "I suppose nobody does."

"Why don't you have a fire in the vestry?" I demanded, determined to
tire him out.

"You asked me that before," he responded, with a grin of delight.

I gave it up then, for I saw that there was nothing to be got out of him
in that mood. I looked up at the sky, and saw how the afternoon was
waning.

"I must go home," I said. "Mother may want me; but I do wish you would
be reasonable about the vestry. I'll give you a load of wood if you'll
use it."

"Send the wood, and we'll see," was all the promise I could extract from
the dear old tease.

Deacon Daniel was evidently not to be cornered, and I came away without
any assurance of amendment on his part. The faithful will have still to
endure the cold, I suppose; but I have made an effort.

What I said to Deacon Richards and what Deacon Richards said to me is
not what I sat down to write. I have been lingering over it because I
hated to put down what happened to me after I left the mill. Why should
I write it? This diary is not a confessional, and nothing forces me to
set these things down. I really write it as a penance for the
uncharitable mood I have been in ever since. I may as well have my
thoughts on paper as to keep turning them over and over in my mind.

I crossed the foot-bridge and turned up Water Street. I went on, pleased
by the brown water showing through the broken ice in the mill-flume, and
the fantastic bunches of snow in the willows beyond, like queer, white
birds. I smiled to myself at the remembrance of Deacon Daniel, and
somehow felt warmed toward him, as I always do, despite all his
crotchety ways. He radiates kindness of heart through all his
gruffness.

Suddenly I saw George coming toward me with Miss West. They did not
notice me at first, they were so engaged in talking and laughing
together. My mood sobered instantly, but I said to myself that I
certainly ought to be glad to see George enjoying himself; and, in any
case, a lady does not show her foolish feelings. So I went toward them,
trying to look as I had before I caught sight of them. They saw me in a
moment, and instantly their laughter stopped. If they had come forward
simply and at ease, I should have thought no more about it, I think; but
no one could see their confusion without feeling that they expected me
to disapprove. And if they expected me to disapprove, it seems to me
they must have been saying things--But probably this is all my
imagination and mean jealousy.

"You see I've captured him," Miss West called out in rather a high
voice, as we came near each other.

"I have no doubt he was a very willing captive," I answered, smiling,
and holding out my hand.

I realize now how I hated to give her my hand, and most certainly her
manner was not entirely that of a lady.

"We've been for a long walk," she went on, "and now I suppose I ought to
let you have him."

"I couldn't think of taking him. I am only going home."

"But it seems real mean to keep him, after I've had him all the
afternoon. I must give him to you."

"I hope he wouldn't be so ungallant as to be given, and leave you to go
home alone," I said. "That is not the way we treat strangers in
Tuskamuck."

"Oh, you mustn't call me a stranger," Miss West responded, twisting her
head to look up into George's face. "I'm really in love with the place,
and I should admire to live here all the rest of my life."

To this I had nothing to say. George had not spoken a word. I could not
look at him, but I moved on now. I felt that I must get away from this
girl, with her strange Western speech, and her familiar manner.

"Good-by," I said. "Mother will want me, and I mustn't linger any
longer."

I managed to smile until I had left them, but the tears would come as I
hurried up the hill toward home. Oh, how can I bear it!


January 23. The happiness of George is the thing which should be
considered. In any case I am helpless. I can only wait, in woman's
fashion. Even if I were convinced he would be happier and better with
me,--and how can I tell that?--what is there I could do? My duty is by
mother's sick-bed, and even if my pride would let me struggle for the
possession of any man, I am not free to try even that degrading
conflict. I should know, moreover, that any man saved in spite of
himself would be apt to look back with regret to the woman he was saved
from. Jean Ingelow's "Letter L" is not often repeated in life, I am
afraid. Still, if one could be sure that it is a danger and he were
saved, this might be borne. If it were surely for his good to think less
of me, I might bear it somehow, hard as it would be. But my hands are
tied. There is nothing for me but waiting.


January 24. George met Kathie last night as she was coming here, and
sent word that he had to drive over to Canton. I thought it odd for him
to send me such a message instead of coming himself, for he had not seen
me since I met him in the street with Miss West. To-day Aunt Naomi came
in, and the moment I saw her I knew that she had something to say that
it would not be pleasant to hear.

"What's George Weston taking that West girl over to Canton for?" she
asked.

It was like a stab in the back, but I tried not to flinch.

"Why shouldn't he take her?" I responded.

Aunt Naomi gave a characteristic sniff, and wagged her foot violently.

"If he wants to, perhaps he should," she answered enigmatically.

The subject dropped there, but I wonder a little why she put it that
way.


January 26. Our engagement is broken. George is gone, and the memory of
six years, he says, had better be wiped out.


January 27. I could not tell Mother to-day. By the time I got my courage
up it was afternoon, and I feared lest she should be too excited to
sleep to-night. To-morrow morning she must know.




II

FEBRUARY


February 1. I wonder sometimes if human pride is not stronger than human
affection. Certainly it seems sometimes that we feel the wound to vanity
more than the blow to love. I suppose that the truth is that the little
prick stings where the blow numbs. For the moment it seemed to me
to-night as if I felt more the sudden knowledge that the village knows
of my broken engagement than I did the suffering of the fact; but I
shall have forgotten this to-morrow, and the real grief will be left.

Miss Charlotte, tall and gaunt, came in just at twilight. She brought a
lovely moss-rose bud.

"Why, Miss Charlotte," I said, "you have never cut the one bud off your
moss-rose! I thought that was as dear to you as the apple of your eye."

"It was," she answered with her gayest air. "That's why I brought it."

"Mother will be delighted," I said; "that is, if she can forgive you for
picking it."

"It isn't for your mother," Miss Charlotte said, with a sudden softening
of her voice; "it is for you. I'm an old woman, you know, and I've
whims. It's my whim for you to have the bud because I've watched it
growing, and loved it almost as if it were my own baby."

Then I knew that she had heard of the broken engagement. The sense of
the village gossip, the idea of being talked over at the sewing-circle,
came to me so vividly and so dreadfully that for a moment I could hardly
get my breath. Then I remembered the sweetness of Miss Charlotte's act,
and I went to her and kissed her. The poor old dear had tears in her
eyes, but she said nothing. She understood, I am sure, that I could not
talk, but that I had seen what she meant me to see, her sympathy and her
love. We sat down before the fire in the gathering dusk, and talked of
indifferent things. She praised Peter's beauty, although the ungrateful
Peter refused to stay in her lap, and would not be gracious under her
caresses. She did not remain long, and she was gay after her fashion.
Miss Charlotte is apt to cover real feeling with a decent veil of
facetiousness.

"Now I must go home and get my party ready," she said, rising with
characteristic suddenness.

"Are you going to have a party?" I asked in some surprise.

"I have one every night, my dear," she returned, with her explosive
laugh. "All the Kendall ghosts come. It isn't very gay, but it's very
select."

She hurried away, and left me more touched than I should have wished her
to see.


February 2. It was well for me that Miss Charlotte's visit prepared me
last night, for to-day Kathie broke in upon me with the most childish
frankness.

"Miss Ruth," she burst out, "ain't you going to marry George Weston?"

"No, my dear," I answered; "but you mustn't say 'ain't.'"

"'Aren't,' then. But I thought you promised years and years ago."

"Kathie, dear," said I, "this isn't a thing that you may talk about. You
are too young to understand, and it is vulgar to talk to people about
their private affairs unless they begin."

"But it's no wronger than"--

"There's no such word as 'wronger,' Kathie."

"No worse than to break one's word, is it?"

"When two persons make an agreement they have a right to unmake it if
they change their minds; and that is not breaking their word. How do the
skates work?"

"All right," Kathie answered; "but father said that you and George
Weston"--

"Kathie," I said as firmly as I could, "I have told you before that you
must not repeat what your father says."

"It isn't wrong," she returned rather defiantly.

I was surprised at her manner, but I suppose that she is always fighting
with her conscience about right and wrong, so the mere idea makes her
aggressive.

"I am not so sure," I told her, trying to turn the whole matter off with
a laugh. "I don't think it's very moral to be ill bred. Do you?"

"Why, Father says manners don't matter if the heart is right."

"This is only another way of saying that if the heart is right the
manners will be right. If you in your heart consider whether your father
would wish you to tell me what he did not say for my ears, you will not
be likely to say it."

That sounds rather priggish now it is written down, but I had to stop
the child, and I could not be harsh with her. She evidently wanted much
to go on with the subject, but I would not hear another word. How the
town must be discussing my affairs!


February 5. Mother is certainly growing weaker, and although Dr.
Wentworth will not admit to me that she is failing, I am convinced that
he thinks so. She has been telling me this afternoon of things which she
wishes given to this and that relative or friend.

"It will not make me any more likely to die, Ruth," she said, "and I
shall feel more comfortable if I have these things off my mind. I've
thought them out, and if you'll put them on paper, then I shall feel
perfectly at liberty to forget them if I find it too much trouble to
remember."

I put down the things which she told me, trying hard not to let her see
how the tears hindered my writing. When I had finished she lay quiet for
some time, and then she said,--

"May I say one thing, Ruth, about George?"

She has said nothing to me before except comforting words to show me
that she felt for me, and that she knew I could not bear to talk about
it.

"You know you may," I told her, though I confess I shrank at the
thought.

"I know how it hurts you now," she said, "and for that I am grieved to
the heart; but Ruth, dear, I can't help feeling that it is best after
all. You are too much his superior to be happy with him. You would try
to make him what you think he ought to be, and you couldn't do it. The
stuff isn't in him. He'd get tired of trying, and you would be so
humiliated for him that in the end I'm afraid neither of you would be
happy."

She stopped, and rested a little, and then went on.

"I am afraid I don't comfort you much," she said, with a sigh. "I
suppose that that must be left to time. But I want you to remember it is
much less hard for me to leave you alone than it would have been to go
with the feeling that you were to make a mistake that would hamper and
sadden your whole life."

The tears came into her eyes, and she put out her dear, shadowy hand so
feebly that I could not bear it. I dropped on my knees by the bed, and
fell to sobbing in the most childish way. Mother patted my head as if I
were the baby I was acting.

"There, there, Ruth," she said; "the Privets, as your father would have
said, do not cry over misfortunes; they live them down."

She is right; and I must not break down again.


February 7. There are times when I seem like a stranger visiting myself,
and I most inhospitably wish that this guest would go. I must determine
not to think about my feelings; or, rather, without bothering to make
resolutions, I must stop thinking about myself. The way to do it, I
suppose, is to think about others; and that would be all very well if it
were not that the others I inevitably think about are George and Miss
West. I cannot help knowing that he is with her a great deal. Somehow it
is in the air, and comes to me against my will. If I go out, I cannot
avoid seeing them walking or driving together. I am afraid that George's
law business must suffer. I should never have let him neglect it so for
me. Perhaps I am cold-blooded.

What Mother said to me the other day has been much in my thoughts. I
wonder how it was ever possible for me to be engaged to a man of whom
neither Father nor Mother entirely approved. To care for him was
something I could not help; I am sure of that. But the engagement is
another matter. It came about very naturally after his being here so
much in Father's last illness. George was so kind and helpful about the
business that we were all full of gratitude, and in my blindness I did
not perceive how Mother really felt. I realize now it was his kindness
to Father, and the relief his help brought to Mother, which made it hard
for her to say then that she did not approve of the engagement; and so
soon after she became a helpless invalid that things went on naturally
in their own course.

I am sure that if Mother could have known George as I have known him,
she would have cared for him. She has hardly seen him in all these
years. She hopes that I will forget, but I should be poorer if I could.
One does not leave off loving just because circumstances alter. He is
free to go his way, but that does not make me any the less his if there
is any virtue in my being so.


February 8. I met Mrs. Webbe in the street to-day, her black eyes
brighter, more piercing, more snapping than ever. She came up to me in
her quick, jerky way, stopped suddenly, tall and strong, and looked at
me as if she were trying to read some profound secret, hid in the very
bottom of my soul. I could never by any possibility be half so
mysterious as Mrs. Webbe's looks seemed to make me.

"Do you write to Tom?" she demanded.

"I don't even know where he is," I answered.

"Then you don't write to him?"

"No."

"That's a pity," Mrs. Webbe went on, her eyes piercing me so that they
almost gave me a sensation of physical discomfort. "He ought to know."

I looked at her a moment in silence, thinking she might explain her
enigmatic words.

"To know what?" I asked at length.

"About you and George Weston," she responded, nodding her head
emphatically; "but if you don't know where he is, that's the whole of
it. Good-day."

She was gone before I could gather my wits to tell her that the news
could make no difference to Tom. In discussing my separation from George
I suppose the village gossips--But I will not be unkind because I am
unhappy. I know, and know with sincere pain, that Deacon and Mrs. Webbe
believe that I could have saved Tom if I had been willing to marry him.
I have cared for Tom from girlhood, and I am fond of him now, in spite
of all that has happened to show how weak he is; but it would be wicked
for him to be allowed to suppose the breaking of my engagement makes any
difference in our relations. He cannot be written to, however, so I need
not trouble.


February 10. Miss West has gone back to Franklin, but I do not see that
this makes any especial difference to me. Aunt Naomi told me this
afternoon, evidently thinking that I should wish to hear it, and
evidently, too, trying not to let me see that she regarded it as more
than an ordinary bit of news. I only wonder how long it will be before
George will follow her. Oh, I do hope she will make him happy!


February 12. The consequence of my being of no religion seems to be
that I am regarded as a sort of neutral ground by persons of all
religions, where they may air their theological troubles. Now it is a
Catholic who asks advice. Perhaps I had better set up as a consulting
something or other. Mediums are the only sort of female consulting
things that I think of, and they are so far from respectable that I
could not be a medium; but I shall have to invent a name to call myself
by, if this goes much further.

This time it is Rosa. Rosa is as devout a little superstitious body as I
ever saw. She firmly believes all that her church teaches her, and she
believes all sorts of queer things besides. I wonder sometimes that her
small mind, which never can remember to lay the table properly, can hold
in remembrance all the droll superstitions she shiveringly accepts.
Perhaps the reason why she is so inefficient a servant, and is so
constantly under the severe blight of Hannah's awful disapproval, is
that her mental faculties are exhausted in remembering signs and omens.
I've no right to make fun of her, however, for I don't like to spill
salt myself!

The conundrum which Rosa brings to me is not one which it is easy to
handle. She believes that her church has the power of eternal life and
death over her, and she wishes, in defiance of her church's prohibition,
to marry a divorced man. She declares that unless she can marry Ran
Gargan her heart will be broken into the most numerous fragments, and
she implores me to devise a method by which she can accomplish the
difficult feat of getting the better of the church.

"Sure, Miss Privet," she said in the most naïve way in the world,
"you're that clever that ye could invint a way what would get round
Father O'Rafferty; he's no that quick at seein' things."

I suspect, from something the child let fall, that Hannah, with genuine
righteous hatred of the Scarlet Woman, had urged Rosa to fly in the face
of her church, and marry Ran. Hannah would regard it as a signal triumph
of grace if Rosa could be so far persuaded to disobey the tenets of
Catholicism. I can understand perfectly Hannah's way of looking at the
matter; but I have no more against Rosa's church than I have against
Hannah's, so this view does not appeal to me.

"Rosa," I said, "don't you believe in your church?"

She broke into voluble protestations of her entire faithfulness, and
seemed inclined to feel that harm might come to her from some unseen
malevolence if such charges were made so as to be heard by spying
spirits.

"Then I don't see why you come to me," I said. "If you are a good
Catholic, I should think that that settled the matter."

"But I thought you'd think of some way of gettin' round it," she
responded, beginning to cry. "Me heart is broke for Ran, an' it is
himsilf that'll go to the bad if I don't have him."

Poor little ignorant soul! How could one reason with her, or what was
there to say? I could only try to show her that she could not be happy
if she did the thing that she knew to be wrong.

"But what for is ye tellin' me that, when ye don't belave it's wrong?"
she demanded, evidently aggrieved.

"I do think it is wrong to act against a church in which you believe," I
said.

I am afraid I did not in the least comfort her, for she went away with
an air in which indignation was mingled with disappointment.


February 15. Rosa is all right. She told me to-day, fingering her apron
and blushing very prettily, that she saw Dennis Maloney last night, and
was engaged to him already. He has, it seems, personal attractions
superior to those of Ran, and Rosa added that on the whole she prefers a
first-hand husband.

"So I'm obliged to ye for yer advisin' me to give Ran the go-by," she
concluded. "I thought yer would."

I do not know whether the swiftness of the change of sweethearts or the
amazing conclusion of her remarks moved me more.


February 16. Father used to say that Peggy Cole was the proudest thing
on the face of the earth, and he would certainly be amused if he could
know how her pride has increased. I could not leave Mother this
afternoon, and so I sent Rosa down with a pail of soup to the poor old
goody. Peggy refused to have it because I did not bring it myself. She
wasn't a pauper to have me send her soup, she informed Rosa. I am afraid
that Rosa was indiscreet enough to make some remark upon the fact that I
carry her food pretty often, for old Peggy said,--I can see her wrinkled
old nose turned up in supreme scorn as she brought it out,--"That's
different. When Miss Ruth brings me a little thing now and then,--and it
ain't often she'll take that trouble, either!--that's just a friend
dropping in with something to make her sure of her welcome!" I shall
have to leave everything to-morrow to go and make my peace with Peggy,
for the old goose would starve to death before she would take anything
from the Overseers of the Poor, and I do not see how she keeps alive,
anyway.


February 17. I had a note from George this morning about the Burgess
mortgage, and in it he said that he is to be away for a week or two.
That means--

But I have no longer any right to speculate about him. It is not my
business what it means. Henceforth he must come and go, and I must not
even wonder about it.


February 19. I must face the fact that Mother will not be with me much
longer. I can see how she grows weaker, and I can only be thankful that
she does not suffer. She speaks of death now and then as calmly as if it
were a matter of every-day routine.

"Mrs. Privet," Dr. Wentworth said this morning, "you seem to be no more
afraid of death than you are of a sunrise."

"I'm not orthodox enough to be afraid," she answered, with her little
quizzical smile.

Dear little Mother, she is so serene, so sweet, so quiet; nothing could
be more dignified, and yet nothing more entirely simple. She is dying
like a gentlewoman. She lies there as gracious as if she had invited
death as a dear friend, and awaited him with the kindliest welcome. The
naturalness of it all is what impresses me most. When I am with her it
is impossible for me to feel that anything terrible is at hand. She
might be going away to pass a pleasant summer visit somewhere; but there
is no suspicion of anything dreadful or painful.

It is not that she is indifferent, either,--she has always found life a
thing to be glad of.

"I should have liked well enough to stay a while longer to bother you,
Ruth," she said, after Dr. Wentworth had gone, "but we must take things
as they come. It's better, perhaps; you need a rest."

Dear Mother! She is always so lovely and so wonderful!


February 21. Mother has been brighter to-day, and really seems better.
If it will only last! I asked her last night if she expected to see
Father. She lay quiet a moment, and then she turned her face to smile on
me before she answered.

"I don't know, Ruth," she said. "I have wondered about that a good deal,
and I cannot be sure. If he is alive and knows, then I shall see him. I
am sure of that. It is only life that has been keeping us apart. If he
is not any more, why, then I shall not be either, and so of course I
can't be unhappy. I feel just as he used to when he had you read that
translation from something to him the week before he died; the thing
that said death could not be an evil, for if we kept on existing we
would be no longer bothered by the body, and that if we didn't, it was
no matter, for we shouldn't know."

She was still a moment, looking into some great distance with her
patient, sunken eyes. Then she smiled again, and said as if to herself,
"But I think I shall see him."


February 25. George is married. Aunt Naomi has been in to tell me. She
mentioned it as if it were a thing in which I should have no more
interest than in any bit of village news. She did not watch me, I
remember now, or ask my opinion as she generally does. She was
wonderfully tactful and kind; only I can see she thought I ought to know
about it, and that the best way was to put the matter bluntly and
simply, as if it had no possible sentiment connected with it. When she
had done her errand, she went on to make remarks about Deacon Richards
and the vestry fires; just what, I do not know, for I could not listen.
Then she mercifully went away.

I did not expect it so soon! I knew that it must come, but I was not
prepared for this suddenness. I supposed that I should hear of the
engagement, and get used to it; and then come to know the wedding was to
be, and so come gradually to the thing itself that shuts George forever
out of my life. It is better, it is a thousand times better to have it
all over at once. I might have brooded morbidly through the days as they
brought nearer and nearer the time when George was to be her husband
instead of mine. Now it is done without my knowing. For three days he
has been married; and I have only to think of him as the husband of
another woman, and try to take it as a matter of course. Whether George
has done this because he cares so much for her or not, he has done what
is kindest for me. It is like waking from the ether to find that the
tooth is out. We may be sick and sore, but the worst is past, and we may
begin, slowly perhaps, but really, to recover.

Yet it is so soon! How completely he must be carried away to be so
forgetful of all that is past! We were engaged six years; and he marries
Miss West after an acquaintance of hardly as many weeks. I wonder if
all men are like this. It seems sometimes as if they were not capable of
the long, brooding devotion of women. But it is better so, and I would
not have him thinking about me. He must be wrapped up in her. I do care
most for his happiness, and his happiness now lies in his thinking of
her and forgetting all the six years when he was--when I thought he was
mine.

I will not moon, and I will not fret. That George has changed does not,
of course, alter my feeling. I am sore and hurt; I see life now
restricted in its uses. He has cut me off from the happiness of serving
him and helping him as a wife; but as a friend there is still much that
I may do. Very likely I can help his wife,--she seems so far short of
what his wife should be. For service in all loyalty I belong to him
still; and that is the thought which must help me.


February 28. I have already had a chance to do something for George. I
hope that I have not been unfair to my friends; but I do not see how I
could decide any other way.

Old lady Andrews came in this afternoon, with her snowy curls and cheeks
pink from the wind. Almost as soon as she was seated she began with
characteristic directness.

"I know you won't mind my coming straight to the point, my dear," she
said. "I came to ask you about George Weston's new wife. Do you think we
had better call on her?"

The question had come to me before, but I confess I had selfishly
thought of it only as a personal matter.

"Mr. Weston's people were hardly of our sort, you know," she continued
in her gentle voice, "though of course after your father took him into
his office as a student we all felt like receiving him. I never knew him
until after that."

"I have seen a good deal of him," I said, wondering if my voice sounded
queer; "you know he helped settle the estate."

"It did seem providential," Mrs. Andrews went on, "that his mother did
not live, for of course we could hardly have known her. She was a Hardy,
you know, from Canton. But I have always found Mr. Weston a very
presentable young man, especially for one of his class. He is really
very intelligent."

"As we have received him," I said, "I don't see how we can refuse to
receive his wife."

"That's the way I thought you would feel about it," old lady Andrews
answered; "but I wished to be sure. As he has been received entirely on
account of his connection with your family, I told Aunt Naomi that it
ought to be for you to say whether the favor should be extended to his
wife. I am informed that she is very pretty, but she is not, I believe,
exactly one of our sort."

"She is exceedingly pretty," I assured her. "I have seen her. She is
not--Well, I am afraid that she is rather Western, but I shall call."

"Then that settles it. Of course we shall do whatever you decide. I
suppose he will bring her to our church. I say 'our,' Ruth, because you
really belong to it. You are just a lamb that has found a place with a
picket off, and got outside the fold. We shall have you back some time."

"I am afraid," I said laughing, "that I should only disgrace you and
injure the fold by pulling a fresh picket off somewhere to get out
again."

She laughed in turn, and fluttered her small hands in her delightful,
birdlike way.

"I am not afraid of that," she responded. "When the Lord leads you in,
He is able to make you want to stay. I hope your mother is comfortable."

So that is settled, and Miss West--Why am I such a coward about writing
it?--Mrs. Weston is to be one of us. George will be glad that she is not
left out of society.




III

MARCH


March 2. Mother's calmness keeps me ashamed of the hot ache in my heart
and the restlessness which makes it so hard for me to keep an outward
composure. Hannah is rather shocked that she should be so entirely
unmoved in the face of death, and the dear, foolish old soul, steeped in
theological asperities from her cradle, must needs believe that Mother
is somehow endangering her future welfare by this very serenity.

"Don't you think, Miss Ruth," she said to me yesterday, "that you could
persuade your mother to see Mr. Saychase? She'd do it to oblige you."

"But it wouldn't oblige me, Hannah."

"Oh, Miss Ruth, think of her immortal soul!"

"Hannah," I said as gently as I could, she was so distressed, "you know
how Mother always felt about those things. It certainly couldn't do any
good now to try to alter her opinions, and it would only tire her."

I left Hannah as quickly as I could without hurting her feelings, but I
might have known that her conscience would force her to speak to Mother.

"Bless me, Hannah," Mother said to her, "I'm no more wicked because I'm
going to die than if I were going to live. I can't help dying, you know,
so I don't feel responsible."

When Hannah tried to go on, and broke down with tears, Mother put out
her thin hand, like a sweet shadow.

"Hannah," she said, "I know how you feel, and I thank you for speaking;
but don't be troubled. Where there are 'many mansions,' don't you think
there may be one even for those who did not see the truth, if they were
honest in their blindness?"


March 4. How far away everything else seems when the foot of death is
almost at the door! As I sit by the bedside in the long nights,
wondering whether he will come before morning, I think of the nights in
which I may sometime be waiting for death myself. I wonder whether I
shall be as serene and absolutely unterrified as Mother is. It is after
all only the terror of the unknown. Why should we be more ready to think
of the unknown as dreadful than as delightful? We certainly hail the
thought of new experiences in the body; why not out of it? Novelty in
itself must give a wonderful charm to that new life, at least for a long
time. Think of the pleasure of having youth all over again, for we shall
at least be young to any new existence into which we go, just as babies
are young to this.

Death is terrible, it seems to me, only when we think of ourselves who
are left behind, not when we think of those who go. Life is a thing so
beautiful that it may be sad to think of them as deprived of it; but the
more beautiful it is, the more I am assured that whatever power made the
earth must be able to make something better. If life is good, a higher
step in evolution must be nobler; and however we mourn, none of us would
dare to say that our grief is caused by the belief that our friends
have through death gone on to sorrow.


March 8. This morning--


March 11. Mother was buried to-day. I have taken out this book to try to
set down--to set down what? Not what I have felt since the end came.
That is not possible, and if it were, I have not the courage. I suppose
the mournful truth is that in the dreadful loneliness which death has
left in the house, I got out my diary as a companion. One's own thoughts
are forlorn company when they are so sad, but if they are written out
they may come to have more reality, and the journal to seem more like
another personality. How strange and shameful the weakness is which
makes it hard for us to be alone; the feeling that we cannot endure the
brooding universe about us unless we have hold of some human hand! Yet
we are so small,--the poor, naked, timorous soul, a single fleck of
thistle-down tossed about by all the winds which fill the immensities of
an infinite universe. Why should we not be afraid? Father would say,
"Why should we?" He believed that the universe took care of everything
in it, because everything is part of itself. "You've only to think of
our own human instinct of self-preservation on a scale as great as you
can conceive," he told me the day before he died, "and you get some idea
of the way in which the universal must protect the particular." I am
afraid that I am not able to grasp the idea as he did. I have thought of
it many times, and of how calm and dignified he was in those last days.
I am a woman, and the universe is so great that it turns me cold to
think of it. I am able to get comfort out of Father's idea only by
remembering how sure he was of it, and how completely real it was to
him. Yet Mother was as sure as he. She told me once that not to be
entirely at ease would be to dishonor Father's belief, and she was no
less serene in the face of death than he was. Yes; it would be to
dishonor them both to doubt, and I do not in my heart of hearts; but it
is lonely, lonely.


March 12. It is touching to see how human kindness, the great sympathy
with what is real and lasting in the human heart, overcomes the
narrowness of creeds in the face of the great tragedy of death. Hannah
would be horrified at any hint that she wavered in her belief, yet she
said to me to-day:--

"Don't you worry about your mother, Miss Ruth. She was a good woman, if
her eyes were not opened to the truth as it is in Jesus. Her Heavenly
Father'll look after her. I guess she sees things some different now
she's face to face with Him; and I believe she had the root of the
matter in her somehow, though she hadn't grace given her to let her
light shine among men."

Dear old Hannah! She is too loving in her heart not to be obliged to
widen her theology when she is brought to the actual application of the
awful belief she professes, and she is too human not to feel that a life
so patient and so upright as Mother's must lead to eternal peace, no
matter what the creed teaches.


March 13. The gray kitten is chasing its tail before the fire, and I
have been looking at it and the blazing wood through my tears until I
could bear it no longer. The moonlight is on the snow in the graveyard,
and must show that great black patch where the grave is. She cannot be
there; she cannot be conscious of the bleak chill of the earth; and the
question whether she is anywhere and is conscious at all is in my mind
constantly. She must be; she cannot have gone out like a candle-flame.
She said to Mr. Saychase, that day Hannah brought him and Mother was too
gentle to refuse to see him, that she had always believed God must have
far too much self-respect not to take care of creatures He had made, and
that she was not in the least troubled, because she did not feel any
responsibility about what was to happen after death. She was right, of
course; but he was horrified. He began to stammer out something, but
Mother stopped him.

"I didn't mean to shock you," she said gently; "but don't you think, Mr.
Saychase, I am near enough to the end to have the privilege of saying
what I really believe?"

He wouldn't have been human if he could have resisted the voice that
said it or the smile that enforced the words. Now she knows. She has
found the heart of truth somewhere out there in the sky, which to us
looks so wide, so thick with stars which might be abiding-places. She
may have met Father. How much he, at least, must have to tell her!
Whether he would know about us or not, I cannot decide. In any case I
think he would like her to tell him. She is learning wonderful things.
Yes; she knows, and I am sure she is glad.


March 14. George has been to see me. In the absorption and grief of the
last fortnight I have hardly remembered him, and he has brought his
wife home without my giving the matter a thought. It is wonderful that
anything could so hold me that I have not been moved, but they came back
the day after the funeral, and I did not hear of it until a couple of
days later. It gave me a great shock when I saw him coming up the walk,
but by the time he was in the house, I had collected myself, and I had,
I think, my usual manner.

He was most kind and sympathetic, and yet he could not help showing how
ill at ease he was. Perhaps he could not help reflecting that my duty to
Mother had been the thing which kept us apart, and that it was strange
for this to end just as there was no longer the possibility of our
coming together.

I do not remember what George and I said to each other to-night, any
more than I can recall what we said on that last time when he was here.
I might bring back that other talk out of the dull blur of pain, but
where would be the good? Nothing could come of it but new suffering. We
were both outwardly calm and self-possessed, I know, and talked less
like lovers than like men of business. So a merchant might sell the
remnants of a bankrupt fortune, I fancy; and when he was gone I went to
prepare Mother's night drink as calmly as if nothing had happened. I did
not dare not to be calm.

To-night we met like the friends we promised to be. He was uncomfortable
at first, but I managed to make him seem at ease, or at least not show
that he felt strange. He looked at me rather curiously now and then. I
think he was astonished that I showed no more feeling about our past. I
cannot have him unhappy through me, and he must feel that at least I
accept my fate serenely, or he will be troubled. I must not give myself
the gratification of proving that I am constant. He may believe I am
cold and perhaps heartless, but that is better than for him to feel
responsible for my being miserable.

What did he tell me that night? It was in effect--though I think he
hardly realized what he said or implied--how our long engagement had
worn out the passion of a lover, and he felt only the friendship of a
brother; the coming of a new, real love had shown him the difference.
Does this mean that married love goes through such a change? Will he by
and by have lived through his first love for his wife, and if so what
will be left? That is not my concern; but would this same thing have
come if I had been his wife, and should I now find myself, if we had
been married when we hoped to be, only a friend who could not so fill
his heart as to shut out a new love? Better a hundredfold that it should
be as it is. At least he was not tied to me when the discovery came. But
it is not always so. Certainly Father and Mother loved each other more
after long years of living together.--But this is not a train of thought
which it is well to follow. What is must be met and lived with; but I
will not weaken my heart by dwelling on what might have been.

George was most kind to come, and it must have been hard for him; but I
am afraid it was not a happy half-hour for either of us. I suppose that
any woman brought face to face with a man she still loves when he has
done with loving her must feel as if she were shamed. That is nonsense,
however, and I fought against the feeling. Now I am happy in the thought
that at least I have done one thing. I have made it possible for George
to come to me if hereafter he need me. If he were in trouble and I could
help, I know he would appeal to me as simply as ever. If I can help him,
I am yet free to do it. I thank God for this!


March 16. I have asked Charlotte Kendall to stay with me for a while.
Dear old Miss Charlotte, she is so poor and so proud and so plucky! I
know that she is half starving in that great, gaunt Kendall house, that
looms up so among its Balm of Gilead trees, as if it were an asylum for
the ghosts of all the bygone generations of the family. Somehow it seems
to me that in America the "decayed gentlewomen," as they are
unpleasantly called in England, have a harder time than anywhere else in
the world. Miss Charlotte has to live up to her instincts and her
traditions or be bitterly humiliated and miserable. People generally
assume that the family pride behind this is weak if it is not wicked;
but surely the ideal of an honorable race, cultivated and right-minded
for generations, is a thing to be cherished. The growth of civilization
must depend a good deal upon having these ideas of family preserved
somehow. Father used to say the great weakness of modern times is that
nowadays the best of the race, instead of saying to those below, "Climb
up to us," say, "We will come down to you." I suppose this is hardly a
fair summing up of modern views of social conditions, though of course I
know very little about them; but I am sure that the way in which class
distinctions are laughed at is a mistake. I hope I hate false pride as
much as anybody could; yet dear Miss Charlotte, trying hard not to
disgrace her ancestors, and being true to her idea of what a
gentlewoman should do, is to me pathetic and fine. She cares more for
the traditions of her race than she does for her own situation; and
anybody who did not admire this strong and unselfish spirit must look at
life from a point of view that I cannot understand. I can have her here
now on an excuse that she will not suspect, and she shall be fed and
rested as she has not been for years.


March 17. I forgot Miss Charlotte's plants when I asked her to come
here. I went over this morning to invite her, and I found her trimming
her great oleander tree with tender little snips and with loving glances
which were like those a mother gives her pet child in dressing it for a
party. The sun came in at the bay window, and the geraniums which are
the pride of Miss Charlotte's heart were coming finely into blossom. If
the poor old soul is ever really happy it is in the midst of her plants,
and things grow for her as for nobody else.

"Do look, Ruth," she said with the greatest eagerness; "that slip of
heather that came from the wreath is really sprouting. I do think it
will live."

She brought me a vial full of greenish water into which was stuck a bit
of heather from the wreath that Cousin Mehitable sent for Mother. Miss
Charlotte had asked me if she might go to the graveyard for the slip.
She was so pathetic when she spoke of it!

"It isn't just to have a new plant," she said. "It is partly that it
would always remind me of your mother, and I should love it for that."

To-day she was wonderful. Her eyes shone as she looked at the twig, and
showed me the tiny white point, like a little mouse's tooth, that had
begun to come through the bark under the green water. It was as if she
had herself somehow accomplished the miracle of creation. I could have
taken her into my arms and cried over her as she stood there so happy
with just this slip and her plants for family and riches.

I told her my errand, and she began to look troubled. Unconsciously, I
am sure, she glanced around at the flowers, and in an instant I
understood.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," I said before she had time to speak, "I forgot
that you cannot leave the plants."

"I was thinking how I could manage," she answered, evidently troubled
between the wish to oblige me and the thought that her precious plants
could not be left.

"You need not manage," I said. "I was foolish enough not to think of
them. Of course you can't leave them."

"I might come over in the daytime," she proposed hesitatingly. "I could
make up the fire in the morning, and at this time of the year the room
would be warm enough for them till I came back at night. I know you must
be most lonely at night, and I would stay as late as I could."

"You are a dear thing," I said, and her tone brought tears to my eyes.
"If you will come over after breakfast and stay until after supper that
will do nicely,--if you think you can spare the time."

"There's nothing I can spare better," she said, laughing. "I'm like the
man that was on his way to jail and was met by a beggar. 'I've nothing
to give you but time,' he said, 'and that his Honor just gave me, so I
don't like to give it away.' That's one of your father's stories,
Ruth."

I stayed talking with her for an hour, and it was touching to see how
she was trying to be entertaining and to make me cheerful. I did come
away with my thoughts entirely taken off of myself and my affairs, and
that is something.


March 20. It has done me good to have Miss Charlotte here. She makes her
forlorn little jests and tells her stories in her big voice, and somehow
all the time is thinking, I can see, of brightening the days for me.
Peter was completely scornful for two days, but now he passes most of
his time in her lap, condescending, of course, but gracious.

Miss Charlotte has been as dear and kindly as possible, and to-night in
the twilight she told me the romance of her life. I do not know how it
came about. I suppose that she was thinking of Mother and wanted me to
know what Mother had been to her. Perhaps, too, she may have had a
feeling that it would comfort me to know that she understood out of her
own suffering the pain that had come to me through George's marriage.

I do not remember her father and mother. They both died when I was very
young. I have heard that Mr. Kendall was a very handsome man, who
scandalized the village greatly by his love of horses and wine, but
Father used to tell me he was a scholar and a cultivated man. I am
afraid he did not care very much for the comfort of others; and Aunt
Naomi always speaks of him as a rake who broke his wife's heart.
Charlotte took care of him after Mrs. Kendall died, and was devoted to
him, they say. She was a middle-aged woman before she was left alone
with that big house, and she sold the Kendall silver to pay his debts.
To-night she spoke of him with a sort of pitiful pride, yet with an air
as if she had to defend him, perhaps even to herself.

"I'm an old woman, Ruth," she said, "and my own life seems to me like an
old book that I read so long ago that I only half remember it. It is
forty years since I was engaged."

It is strange I had never known of this before; but I suppose it passed
out of people's minds before I was old enough to notice.

"I never knew you had been engaged, Miss Charlotte," I said.

"Then your mother never told you what she did for me," she answered,
looking into the fire. "That was like her. She was more than a mother to
me at the time"--She broke off, and then repeated, "It was like her not
to speak of it. There are few women like your mother, Ruth."

We were both silent for a time, and I had to struggle not to break down.
Miss Charlotte sat looking into the fire with the tears running
unchecked down her wrinkled cheeks. She did not seem conscious of them,
and the thought came to me that there had been so much sadness in her
life that she was too accustomed to tears to notice them.

"It is forty years," she said again. "I was called a beauty then, though
you'd find that hard to believe now, Ruth, when I'm like an old
scarecrow in a cornfield. I suppose no young person ever really believes
that an old woman can have been beautiful unless there's a picture to
prove it. I'll show you a daguerreotype some time; though, after all,
what difference does it make? At least he thought"--

Another silence came here. The embers in the fire dropped softly, and
the dull March twilight gathered more and more thickly. I felt as if I
were being led into some sacred room, closed many years, but where the
dead had once lain. Perhaps it was fanciful, but it seemed almost as if
I were seeing the place where poor Miss Charlotte's youth had died.

"It wasn't proper that I should marry him, Ruth. I know now father was
right, only sometimes--For myself I suppose I hadn't proper pride, and I
shouldn't have minded; but father was right. A Kendall couldn't marry a
Sprague, of course. I knew it all along; and I vowed to myself over and
over that I wouldn't care for him. When a girl tells herself that she
won't love a man, Ruth," she broke in with a bitter laugh, "the thing's
done already. It was so with me. I needn't have promised not to love him
if I hadn't given him my whole heart already,--what a girl calls her
heart. I wouldn't own it; and over and over I told him that I didn't
care for him; and then at last"--

It was terrible to hear the voice in which she spoke. She seemed to be
choking, and it was all that I could do to keep control of myself. I
could not have spoken, even if there had been anything to say. I wanted
to take her in my arms and get her pitiful, tear-stained face hidden;
but I only sat quiet.

"Well, we were engaged at last, and I knew father would never consent;
but I hoped something would happen. When we are young enough we all hope
the wildest things will happen and we shall get what we want. Then
father found out; and then--and then--I don't blame father, Ruth. He was
right. I see now that he was right. Of course it wouldn't have done; but
then it almost killed me. If it hadn't been for your mother, dear, I
think I should have died. I wanted to die; but I had to take care of
father."

I put out my hand and got hold of hers, but I could not speak. The tears
dropped down so that they sparkled in the firelight, but she did not
wipe them away. I was crying myself, for her old sorrow and mine seemed
all part of the one great pain of the race, somehow. I felt as if to be
a woman meant something so sad that I dared not think of it.

"And the hardest was that he thought I was wrong to give him up. He
could not see it as I did, Ruth; and of course it was natural that he
couldn't understand how father would feel about the family. I could
never explain it to him, and I couldn't have borne to hurt his feelings
by telling him."

"Is he"--

"He is dead, my dear. He married over at Fremont, and I hope he was
happy. I think probably he was. Men are happy sometimes when a woman
wouldn't be. I hope he was happy."

That was the whole of it. We sat there silent until Rosa came to call us
to supper. When we stood up I put my arms about her, and kissed her.
Then she made a joke, and wiped her eyes, and through supper she was so
gay that I could hardly keep back the tears. Poor, poor, lonely, brave
Miss Charlotte!


March 21. Cousin Mehitable arrived yesterday according to her usual
fashion, preceded by a telegram. I tell her that if she followed her
real inclinations, she would dispatch her telegram from the station, and
then race the messenger; but she is constrained by her breeding to be a
little more deliberate, so I have the few hours of her journey in which
to expect her. It is all part of her brisk way. She can never move fast
enough, talk quickly enough, get through whatever she is doing with
rapidity enough. I remember Father's telling her once that she would
never have patience to lie and wait for the Day of Judgment, but would
get up every century or two to hurry things along. It always seems as if
she would wear herself to shreds in a week; yet here she is, more lively
at sixty than I am at less than half that age.

She was very kind, and softened wonderfully when she spoke of Mother. I
think that she loved her more than she does any creature now alive.

"Aunt Martha," she said last night, "wasn't human. She was far too
angelic for that. But she was too sweet and human for an angel. For my
part I think she was something far better than either, and far more
sensible."

This was a speech so characteristic that it brought me to tears and
smiles together.

To-night Cousin Mehitable came to the point of her errand with customary
directness.

"I came down," she said, "to see how soon you expect to arrange to live
with me."

"I hadn't expected anything about it," I returned.

"Of course you would keep the house," she went on, entirely disregarding
my feeble protest. "You might want to come back summers sometimes. This
summer I'm going to take you to Europe."

I am too much accustomed to her habit of planning things to be taken
entirely by surprise; but it did rather take my breath away to find my
future so completely disposed of. I felt almost as if I were not even to
have a chance to protest.

"But I never thought of giving up the house," I managed to say.

"Of course not; why should you?" she returned briskly. "You have money
enough to keep up the place and live where you please. Don't I know that
for this ten years you and Aunt Martha haven't spent half your income?
Keep it, of course; for, as I say, sometimes you may like to come back
for old times' sake."

I could only stare at her, and laugh.

"Oh, you laugh, Ruth," Cousin Mehitable remarked, more forcibly than
ever, "but you ought to understand that I've taken charge of you. We are
all that are left of the family now, and I'm the head of it. You are a
foolish thing anyway, and let everybody impose on your good-nature. You
need somebody to look after you. If I'd had you in charge, you'd never
have got tangled up in that foolish engagement. I'm glad you had the
sense to break it."

I felt as if she had given me a blow in the face, but I could not
answer.

"Don't blush like that," Cousin Mehitable commanded. "It's all over, and
you know I always said you were a fool to marry a country lawyer."

"Father was a country lawyer," I retorted.

"Fudge! Cousin Horace was a judge and a man whose writings had given him
a wide reputation. Don't outrage his memory by calling him a rustic. For
my part I never had any patience with him for burying himself in the
country like a clodhopper."

"You forget that Mother's health"--I began; but with Cousin Mehitable
one is never sure of being allowed to complete a sentence.

"Oh, yes," she interrupted, "of course I forgot. Well, if there could be
an excuse, Aunt Martha would serve for excusing anything. I beg your
pardon, Ruth. But now all that is past and gone, and fortunately the
family is still well enough remembered in Boston for you to take up life
there with very little trouble. That's what I had in mind ten years ago,
when I insisted on your coming out."

"People who saw me then will hardly remember me."

"The folks that knew your father and mother," she went on serenely, "are
of course old people like me; but they will help you to know the younger
generation. Besides, those you know will not have forgotten you. A
Privet is not so easily forgotten, and you were an uncommonly pretty
bud, Ruth. What a fool you were not to marry Hugh Colet! You always were
a fool."

Cousin Mehitable generally tempers a compliment in this manner, and it
prevents me from being too much elated by her praise.

She was interrupted here by the necessity of going to prepare for
supper. Miss Charlotte did not come over to-day, so we were alone
together. No sooner were we seated at the supper-table than she returned
to the attack.

"When you live in Boston," she said, "I shall"--

"Suppose I should not live in Boston?" I interrupted.

"But you will. What else should you do?"

"I might go on living here."

"Living here!" she cried out explosively. "You don't call this living,
do you? How long is it since you heard any music, or saw a picture, or
went to the theatre, or had any society?"

I was forced to confess that music and painting and acting were all
entirely lacking in Tuskamuck; but I remarked that I had all the books
that attracted me, and I protested against her saying I hadn't any
society.

"Oh, you see human beings now and then," Cousin Mehitable observed
coolly; "and I dare say they are very worthy creatures. But you know
yourself they are not society. You haven't forgotten the year I brought
you out."

I have not forgotten it, of course; and I cannot deny that when I think
of that winter in Boston, the year I was nineteen, I do feel a little
mournful sometimes. It was all so delightful, and it is all so far away
now. I hardly heard what Cousin Mehitable said next. I was thinking how
enchanting a home in Boston would be, and how completely alone as for
family I am. Cousin Mehitable is the only near relative I have in the
world, and why should I not be with her? It would be delightful. Perhaps
I may manage to get in a week or two in town now and then; but I cannot
go away for long. There would be nobody to start the reading-room, or
keep up the Shakespeare Club; and what would become of Kathie and Peggy
Cole, or of all that dreadful Spearin tribe? I dare say I am too proud
of my consequence, and that if I went away somebody would be found to
look after things. Still I know I am useful here; and it seems to me I
am really needed. Besides, I love the place and the people, and I think
my friends love me.


March 23. Cousin Mehitable went home to-day. Easter is at hand, and she
has a bonnet from Paris,--"a perfect dream of a bonnet," she said with
the enthusiasm of a girl, "dove-colored velvet, and violets, and steel
beads, and two or three white ostrich tips; a bonnet an angel couldn't
resist, Ruth!"--and this bonnet must form part of the church service on
Easter. The connection between Paris bonnets and the proper observance
of the day is not clear in my mind; but when I said something of this
sort to Cousin Mehitable she rebuked me with great gravity.

"Ruth, there is nothing in worse form than making jokes about sacred
subjects."

"Your bonnet isn't sacred," I retorted, for I cannot resist sometimes
the temptation to tease her; "or at least it can't be till it's been to
church on Easter."

"You know what I mean," was her answer. "When you live with me I shall
insist upon your speaking respectfully of the church."

"I wasn't speaking of the church," I persisted, laughing at the gravity
with which she always takes up its defense; "I was speaking of your
bonnet, your Paris bonnet, your Easter bonnet, your ecclesiastical,
frivolous, giddy, girlish bonnet."

"Oh, you may think it too young for me," she said eagerly, forgetting
the church in her excitement, "but it isn't really. It's as modest and
appropriate as anything you ever saw; and so becoming and _chic_!"

"Oh, I can always trust your taste, Cousin Mehitable," I told her, "but
you know you're a worldly old thing. You'd insist upon having your
angelic robes fitted by a fashionable tailor."

Again she looked grave and shocked in a flash.

"How can you, Ruth! You are a worse heathen than ever. But then there is
no church in Tuskamuck, so I suppose it is not to be wondered at. That's
another reason for taking you away from this wilderness."

"There are two churches, as you know very well," I said.

"Nonsense! They're only meeting-houses,--conventicles. However, when you
come to Boston to live, we will see."

"I told you last night that I shouldn't give up Tuskamuck."

"I know you did, but I didn't mind that. You must give it up."

She went away insisting upon this, and refusing to accept any other
decision. I did so far yield as to promise provisionally that I would go
abroad with her this summer. I need to see the world with a broader view
again, and I shall enjoy it. To think of the picture galleries fills me
with joy already. I should be willing to cross the Atlantic just to see
once more the enchanting tailor of Moroni's in the National Gallery. It
is odd, it comes into my mind at this moment that he looks something
like Tom Webbe, or Tom looks something like him. Very likely it is all
nonsense. Yes; I will go for the summer--to leave here altogether--no,
that is not to be thought of.


March 24. The whole town is excited over an accident up at the lake this
morning. A man and his son were drowned by breaking through the ice.
They had been up to some of the logging camps, and it is said they were
not sober. They were Brownrigs, and part of the family in the little red
house. The mother and the daughter are left. I hope it is not heartless
to hate to think of them. I have no doubt that they suffer like others;
only it is not likely folk of this sort are as sensitive as we are. It
is a mercy that they are not.


March 25. The Brownrig family seems just now to be forced upon my
attention, and that in no pleasant way.

Aunt Naomi came in this forenoon, and seated herself with an air of
mysterious importance. She looked at me with her keen eyes, penetrating
and humorous even when she is most serious, and seemed to be examining
me to discover what I was thinking. It was evident at once that she had
news. This is generally true, for she seems always to have something to
tell. Her mind gathers news as salt gathers moisture, and her greatest
pleasure is to impart what she has heard. She has generally with me the
air of being a little uncertain how I may receive her tidings. Like all
persons of strong mind and a sense of humor, she is by nature in
sympathy with the habit of looking at life frankly and dispassionately,
and I believe that secretly and only half consciously she envies me my
mental freedom. Sometimes I have suspected her of leading me on to say
things which she would have felt it wrong to say herself because they
are unorthodox, but which she has too much common sense not to
sympathize with. She is convinced, though, that such freedom of thought
as mine is wrong, and she nobly deprives herself of the pleasure of
being frank in her thoughts when this would involve any reflection upon
the theological conventions which are her rule of life. She gratifies a
lively mind by feeding it on scraps of gossip and commenting on them in
her pungent way; she is never unkind in her thought, I am sure, but she
does sometimes say sharp things. Like Lady Teazle, however, she abuses
people out of pure good nature. I looked at her this morning as she sat
swinging her foot and munching--there is no other word for it!--her
green barège veil, and I wondered, as I have often wondered before, how
a woman really so clever could be content to pass so much of her time in
the gathering and circulating of mere trivialities. I suppose that it is
because there is so little in the village to appeal to the intellectual
side of her, and her mind must be occupied. She might be a brilliant
woman in a wider sphere. Now she seems something like a beaver in
captivity, building dams of hairbrushes and boots on a carpeted floor.

I confess, too, that I wondered, as I looked at her, if she represented
my future. I thought of Cousin Mehitable's doleful predictions of what I
should come to if I stay in Tuskamuck, and I tried to decide whether I
should come in time to be like Aunt Naomi, a general carrier of news
from house to house, an old maid aunt to the whole village, with no real
kindred, and with no interests wider than those of village gossip. I
cannot believe it, but I suppose at my age she would not have believed
it of herself.

"We're really getting to be quite like a city," Aunt Naomi said, with a
grimness which showed me there was something important behind this
enigmatic remark.

"Are we?" I responded. "I confess I don't see how."

"Humph!" she sniffed. "There's wickedness here that isn't generally
looked for outside of the city."

"Oh, wickedness!" I said. "There is plenty of that everywhere, I
suppose; but I never have thought we have more than our share of it."

She wagged her foot more violently, and had what might have seemed a
considerable lunch on her green veil before she spoke again--though it
is wicked for me to make fun of her. Then she took a fresh start.

"What are you knitting?" she asked.

"What started in January to be some mittens for the Turner boy. He
brings our milk, and he never seems to have mittens enough."

"I don't wonder much," was her comment. "His mother has so many babies
that she can't be expected to take care of them."

"Poor Mrs. Turner," I said. "I should think the poor thing would be
discouraged. I am ashamed that I don't do more for her."

"I don't see that you are called upon to take care of all the poor in
the town; but if you could stop her increasing her family it'd be the
best thing you could do."

When Aunt Naomi makes a remark like this, I feel it is discreet to
change the subject.

"I hope that now the weather is getting milder," I observed, "you are
not so cold in prayer-meetings."

She was not diverted, even by this chance to dwell on her pet grievance,
but went her own way.

"I suppose you'll feel now you've got to look out for that Brownrig
girl, too," she said.

"That Brownrig girl?" I repeated.

I tried not to show it, but the blood rushed to my heart and made me
faint. I realized something terrible was coming, though I had nothing to
go upon but the old gossip about Tom and the fact that I had seen him
come from the red house.

"Her sin has found her out," returned Aunt Naomi with indignant
emphasis. "For my part, I don't see what such creatures are allowed to
live for. Think what kind of a mother she will make. They'd better take
her and her baby and drown 'em along with her father and brother."

"Aunt Naomi!" was all I could say.

"Well, I suppose you think I'm not very charitable, but it does make me
mad to see that sort of trash"--

"I don't know what you are talking about," I interrupted. "Has the
Brownrig girl a child?"

"No; but she's going to have. Her mother's gone off and left her, and
she's down sick with pneumonia besides."

"Her mother has gone off?"

"Yes; and it'd be good riddance, if there was anybody to take care of
the girl."

It is useless to ask Aunt Naomi how she knows all that goes on in the
town. She collects news from the air, I believe. I reflected that she is
not always right, and I hoped now she might be mistaken.

"But somebody must be with her if she's down with pneumonia," I said.

"Yes; that old Bagley woman's there. The Overseers of the Poor sent her,
but she's about twice as bad as nobody, I should think. If I was sick,
and she came round, I know I'd ask her to go away, and let me die in
peace."

It was evident enough that Aunt Naomi was a good deal stirred up, but I
did not dare to ask her why. If there is anything worse behind this
scandal, I had rather not know it. We were fortunately interrupted, and
Aunt Naomi went soon, so I heard no more. I was sick with the
loathsomeness of having Tom Webbe connected in my thought with that
wretched girl, and I do hope that it is only my foolishness. He cannot
have fallen to such depths.


March 27. I have heard no more from the Brownrigs, and I must hope
things were somehow not as Aunt Naomi thought. To-day I learned that she
is shut up with a cold. I must go in to-morrow and see her. Miss
Charlotte is a great comfort. The dear old soul begins really to look
better, and the thinness about her lips is yielding to good feeding. She
tells me stories of the old people of the town whom I can just remember,
and she is full of reverence for both Father and Mother. Of course I
never talk theology with her, but I am surprised sometimes to find that
under the shell of her orthodoxy is a good deal of liberalism. I suppose
any kindly mortal who accepted the old creeds made allowances for those
nearest and dearest, and human nature will always make allowances for
itself. I should think that an imaginative belief in a creed, a belief
that realized the cruelty of theology, must either drive one mad or make
one disbelieve from simple horror. Nobody but a savage could worship a
relentless god and not become insane from the horror of being in the
clutch of an implacable power.


March 28. I have had a most painful visit from Deacon Webbe. He came in
looking so gray and old that it shocked me to see him. He shook hands as
if he did not know what he was doing, and then sat down in a dazed way,
slowly twirling his hat and fixing his eyes on it as if he were blind. I
tried to say something, but only stumbled on in little commonplaces
about the weather, to which he paid so little attention that it was
evident he had no idea what I was saying. In a minute or two I was
reduced to silence. One cannot go on saying mechanical nothings in the
face of suffering, and it was impossible not to see that Deacon Webbe
was in grievous pain.

"Deacon Webbe," I said at last, when I could not bear the silence any
longer, "what is the matter?"

He raised his eyes to mine with a look of pitiful helplessness.

"I've no right to come to you, Miss Ruth," he said in his slow way, "but
there's nobody else, and you always were Tom's friend."

"Tom?" I repeated. "What has happened?"

"It isn't a thing to talk to a woman about," he went on, "and you'll
have to excuse me, Miss Ruth. I'm sure you will. It's that Brownrig
girl."

I sat silent, and I felt my hands growing cold.

"She's had a baby," he said after a moment.

The simple bald fact was horrible as he said it. I could not speak, and
after a little hesitation he continued in a tone so low I could scarcely
hear him.

"It's his. Think of the shame of it and the sin of it. It seems to me,
if it could only have been the Lord's will, I would have been glad to
die rather than to have this happen. My son!"

The wail of his voice went to my heart and made me shiver. I would have
given anything I possessed to comfort him, but what could I say? Shame
is worse than death. When one dies you can at least speak of the
happiness that has been and the consolation of the memory of this. In
disgrace whatever has been good before makes the shame only the harder
to bear. What could I say to a father mourning the sin and the disgrace
of his only son?

It seemed to me a long time that we sat there silent. At last he said:--

"I didn't come just to make you feel bad, Miss Ruth. I want you to tell
me what I ought to do, what I can do. I ought to do something to help
the girl. Bad as she is, she's sick, and she's a woman. I don't know
where Tom is, and I'm that baby's grandfather." His voice choked, but he
went on. "Of course I ought not to trouble you, but I don't know what to
do, I don't know what to do. My wife"--

The poor old man stopped. He is not polished, but he has the instinct of
a good man to screen his wife, and plainly was afraid he might say
something which would seem to reflect on her.

"My wife," he said, evidently changing the form of his words, "is
dreadfully put out, as she naturally would be, and of course I don't
like to talk much with her about it. I thought you might help me, Miss
Ruth."

Never in my life have I felt more helpless. I tried to think clearly,
but the only thing I could do was to try to comfort him. I have no
remembrance of what I said, and I believe it made very little
difference. What he wanted was sympathy. I had no counsel to give, but I
think I sent Deacon Daniel away somewhat comforted. I could only advise
him to wait and see what was needed. He of course must have thought of
this himself, but he liked to have me agree with him and be good to him.
He will do his duty, and what is more he will do his best, but he will
do it with very little help from Mrs. Webbe, I am afraid. Poor Deacon
Daniel! I could have put my arms round his neck and kissed his
weather-beaten cheek, but he would not have understood. I suppose he
would have been frightened half out of his wits, and very likely would
have thought that I had suddenly gone mad. It is so hard to comfort a
slow-minded person; he cannot see what you mean by a caress. Yet I hope
that Deacon Daniel went away somewhat heartened. Oh, if Tom could only
realize the sorrow I saw in his father's eyes, I think he would have his
punishment.


March 29. When Deacon Webbe said last night that he did not know where
Tom was, I thought for just a moment of the sealed address Tom left me.
I was so taken up with pity, however, that the thought passed from my
mind. After the Deacon was gone I wondered whether I should have spoken
of the letter; but it seemed to me that it was better to have said
nothing. I thought I should open it before saying anything; and I needed
to consider whether the time had come when I was justified in reading
it. Tom trusted me, and I was bound by that; yet surely he ought to be
told the state of things. It was imperative that he should know about
the poor girl. I have never been able to be sure why he did not let his
family know where he was, but I fear he may have quarreled with them.
Now he must be told. Oh, it is such wretched business, so sad and
dreadful!

I went upstairs after thinking by the fire until it had burned to
embers, and indeed until the very ashes were cold. I took out Tom's
letter, and for a moment I was half sick at the thought that he had
degraded himself so. It seemed almost as if in holding his letter I was
touching her, and I would gladly have thrown it in the fire unopened.
Then I was ashamed to be so squeamish and so uncharitable, and realized
how foolish I was. The sealed envelope had in it a card with Tom's
address in New York, and this note:--

"If you open this it must mean that you know. I have nothing to say in
my own defense that you could understand; only this is true, Ruth: I
have never really cared for any woman in the world but you. You will not
believe it, and you will not be likely to find it very easy to forgive
me for saying it now, but it is true. I never knew better how completely
you have possession of me than I do just at this moment, when I know I
am writing what you will read hating me. No, I suppose you can't really
hate anybody; but you must despise me, and it is an insult for me to say
I love you. But I have loved you all my life, and I cannot help it. I
shall go on till I die, even if you do not speak to me again in my whole
life. Do not make me come home unless I must. Forgive me, if you can."

The note had neither end nor beginning. I was so overcome by it all, by
the pity of it, that I could not trust myself to think. I sat down and
wrote to Tom just this message, without salutation or signature:--

"Your father has been here to see me. The Brownrig girl is ill of
pneumonia. Her baby was born night before last, and is alive."

I sent this off to-day. What he will do I cannot tell. I cannot even be
sure what he ought to do, and I had no right to urge him to come or to
stay away. Certainly for him to marry that outcast creature seems
impossible; but if he does not the baby must go through life with a
brand of shame on her. The world is so cruel to illegitimate children!
Perhaps it has to be; at least Father believed that the only
preservation of society lay in this severity; but I am a woman, and I
think of the children, who are not to blame. Things are so tangled up in
human relations that one thread cannot be drawn taut without bringing
about tragedies on other lines.

Yet to marry this girl--Oh, it is not possible! To think of Tom Webbe's
living in the same house with that dreadful creature, of his having it
known that he had married such a woman--

It is horrible, whichever way I look at it. I cannot be kind in my
thoughts to one of them without being cruel to the other. I am so
thankful that I have not to decide. I know I should be too weak to be
just, and then I should be always unhappy at the wrong I had done. Now,
whatever I was called upon to take the responsibility of was done when I
had written to Tom.




IV

APRIL


April 1. When a new month comes in it always seems as if something
should happen. The divisions of time do not appeal to the feelings as
simple arbitrary conveniences, but as real endings and beginnings; so
the fancy demands that the old order shall end and some better, new
fashion begin. I suppose everybody has had the vague sense of
disappointment that the new month or the new year is so like the one
before. I used to feel this very strongly as a child, though never
unhappily. It was a disappointment, but as all times were happy times,
the disappointment was not bitter. The thought is in my mind to-night
because I am troubled, and because I would so gladly leave the fret and
worry behind, to begin afresh with the new month.

The thought of Tom and his trouble weighs on me so that I have been
miserable all day. Miss Charlotte has not been here this week. Her
beloved plants need attention, and she is doing mysterious things with
clippers and trowels, selecting bulbs, sorting out seeds, making plans
for her garden beds, and working herself into a delightful fever of
excitement over the coming glories of her garden. It is really rather
early, I think, but in her impatience she cannot wait. Her flowers are
her children, and all her affection for family and kin, having nothing
nearer to cling to, is lavished on them. It is so fortunate that she
has this taste. I cannot help to-day feeling so old and lonely that I
could almost envy her her fondness for gardening. I must cultivate a
taste for something, if it is only for cats. I wonder how Peter would
like to have me set up an asylum for crippled and impoverished tabbies!

Over and over again I have asked myself what I can do to help Deacon
Webbe, but I have found no answer. One of the hardest things in life is
to see our friends bear the consequences of their mistakes. Deacon
Daniel is suffering for the way he brought Tom up, and yet he has done
as well as he was able. Father used to say what I declared was a hard
saying, and which was the harder because in my heart of hearts I could
never with any success dispute it. "You cannot wisely help anybody until
you are willing not to interfere with the discipline that life and
nature give," he said. "You would not offer to take a child's medicine
for it; why should you try to bear the brunt of a friend's suffering
when it comes from his own fault? That is nature's medicine." I remember
that once I answered I would very gladly take a child's medicine for it
if I could, and Father laughed and pinched my ear. "Don't try to be
Providence," he said. I would like to be Providence for Deacon Webbe and
Tom now,--and for the girl, too. It makes me shiver to think of her, and
if I had to see or to touch her, it would be more than I could endure.

This moralizing shows that I am low in my mind. I have been so out of
sorts that I was completely out of key to-day with George. I have had to
see him often about the estate, but he has seemed always anxious to get
away as quickly as possible. To-day he lingered almost in the old
fashion; and I somehow found him altered. He is--I cannot tell how he is
changed, but he is. He has a manner less--

It is time to stop writing when I own the trouble to be my own
wrong-headedness and then go on to set down imaginary faults in my
neighbors.


April 3. I am beset with deacons lately. Deacon Richards has been here
for an hour, and he has left me so restless that I may as well try to
write myself into calmness.

Deacon Richards never seems so big as when he stands talking with me,
looking down on the top of my head, with his great bald forehead looming
above his keen eyes like a mountain-top. I always get him seated as soon
as I can, and he likes to sit in Father's wide arm-chair. One of the
things that I like best about him is that, brusque and queer as he is,
he never takes that seat until he has been especially asked. Then as he
sits down he says always, with a little softening of his great voice,--

"This was your father's chair."

He has never been out of Tuskamuck a fortnight, I dare say; but there is
something about this simple speech, ready for it as I of course always
am, that almost brings the tears to my eyes. He is country born and
country bred, but the delicacy of the courtesy underlying his
brusqueness is pure gold. What nonsense it is for Cousin Mehitable to
insist that we are too countrified to have any gentlemen! She does not
appreciate the old New England stock.

What Deacon Daniel wanted I could not imagine, but while we were talking
of the weather and the common things of the day I could see that he was
preparing to say something. He has a wonderful smile when he chooses to
show it. It always reminds me of the picture one sees sometimes of a
genial face peering from behind a glum mask. When I teased him about the
vestry fires, he only grinned; but his grin is to his smile as the smell
of peppermint to that of a rose. He amused me by his comments of Aunt
Naomi.

"She runs after gossip," he said, "just as a kitten runs after its tail.
It doesn't mean anything, but it must do something."

"She is a shrewd creature," I answered. "It is absurd enough to compare
anybody so decorous to a kitten."

"Aunt Naomi's nobody's fool," was his response. "She sent me here
to-night."

"Sent you here?" I echoed.

His face grew suddenly grave.

"I don't know how this thing will strike you, Miss Ruth," he said
explosively. "It seems to me all wrong. The fact is," he added more
calmly, but with the air of meaning to have a disagreeable thing over,
"it's about the Brownrig girl. You know about her, and that she is very
sick."

"Yes," I said.

He stretched out his large hand toward the fire in a way that showed he
was not at ease. I could not help noticing the difference between the
hand of this Deacon Daniel and that of the other. Deacon Webbe is a
farmer, and has a farmer's hand. Deacon Richards has the white hand of a
miller.

"I don't see myself," he said grimly, looking into the coals, "that
there is likely to be anything contagious in her wickedness, but none
of the women are willing to go near her. I should think she'd serve
pretty well as a warning. The Overseers of the Poor 've sent old Marm
Bagley to nurse her, and that seems to be their part; but who's to look
out that Marm Bagley doesn't keep drunk all the time's more than I can
see."

He sniffed scornfully, as if his opinion of women was far from
flattering.

"How did you know about it?" I asked.

"Job Pearson--he's one of the Overseers--came to see if there wasn't
somebody the church could send down. I went to Aunt Naomi, but she
couldn't think of anybody. She's housed with a cold, and she wouldn't be
the one to go into a sick-room anyway."

"And she sent you here?"

He turned to me with the smile which I can never resist.

"The truth is," he answered, "that when there's nothing else to do we
all come to you, Miss Ruth."

"But what can I do?"

"That is what I came to see."

"Did you expect me to go down and nurse the girl?"

He looked at me with a shrewd twinkle in his eye, and for a moment said
nothing.

"I just expected if there was anything possible to be done you'd think
of it," he replied.

I thought for a moment, and then I told him I would write to Cousin
Mehitable to send down a trained nurse from Boston.

"The Overseers won't pay her," he commented with a grin.

"Perhaps you will," I returned, knowing perfectly that he was trying to
tease.

"It will take several days at least to get her here."

We considered for a little in silence. I do not know what passed through
his mind, but I thought with a positive sickening of soul of being under
the same roof with that girl. I knew that it must be done, though; and,
simply to be rid of the dread of it, I said as steadily as I could,--

"I will go down in the morning."

And so it has come about that I am to be nurse to the Brownrig girl and
to Tom Webbe's baby.


April 6. The last four days have been so full and so exhausting that
there has been no time for scribbling in diaries. Like Pepys I have now
to write up the interval, although I cannot bring myself to his way of
dating things as if he always wrote on the very day on which they
happened. Father used to laugh at me because I always insisted that it
was not honest of Pepys to put down one date when he really wrote on
another.

Tuesday forenoon I went down to the Brownrig house. I had promised
myself not to let the sick girl see how I shrank from her, but I had a
sensation of sickening repugnance almost physical. When I got to the red
house I was so ashamed of myself that I forgot everything else. The girl
was so sick, the place so cheerless, so dirty, so poverty-stricken; she
was so dreadful to look at, with her tangled black hair, her hot cheeks,
her fierce eyes; everything was so miserable and dreadful, that I could
have cried with pity. Julia was in a bed so dirty that it would have
driven me to distraction; the pillow-slip was ragged, and the comforter
torn in great places, as if a wild cat had clawed it. Marm Bagley was
swaying back and forth in an old broken rocking-chair, smoking a black
pipe, which perhaps she thought fumigated the foul air of the sick-room.
She had the appearance of paying very little attention to the patient
and none at all to the baby, which wailed incessantly from a shabby
clothes-basket in a corner. The whole scene was so sordid, so pitiful,
so hopeless, that I could think only of the misery, and so forget my
shrinking and dread.

A Munson boy, that the Overseers of the Poor had sent down, was chopping
wood in the yard, and I dispatched him to the house for Hannah and clean
linen, while I tried to get Marm Bagley to attend to the baby and to
help me to put things to rights a little. She smelled of spirits like
another Sairey Gamp, and her wits did not appear to be entirely steady.
After I found her holding the baby under her arm literally upside down,
while she prepared its food, I decided that unless I wished to run the
risk of being held as accessory to the murder of the infant, I had
better look after it myself.

"Can't you pick up the room a little while I feed the baby?" I asked.

"Don't see no use of clearing up none," she said. "'Tain't time for the
funeral yet."

This, I suppose, was some sort of an attempt at a rudimentary joke, but
it was a most ghastly one. I looked at the sick girl to see if she heard
and understood. It was evident that she had, but it seemed to me that
she did not care. I went to the bedside.

"I ought to have spoken to you when I came in," I said, "but your eyes
were shut, and I thought you might be asleep. I am Miss Privet, and I
have come to help Mrs. Bagley take care of you till a regular nurse can
get here from Boston."

She looked at me with a strange sparkle in her eyes.

"From Boston?" she repeated.

"Yes," I said. "I have sent to my cousin to get a regular trained
nurse."

She stared at me with her piercing eyes opened to their fullest extent.

"Do they train 'em?" she asked.

"Yes," I told her. "A trained nurse is almost as good as a doctor."

"Then I shall get well?" she demanded eagerly. "She'll get me well?"

"I hope so," I said, with as much of a smile as I could muster when I
wanted to cry. "And before she comes we must clear up a little."

I began to do what I could about the room without making too much
bustle. The girl watched me with eager eyes, and at last, as I came near
the bed, she asked suddenly,--

"Did he send you?"

I felt myself growing flushed, though there was no reason for it.

"Deacon Richards asked me to come," I answered.

"I don't know him," she commented, evidently confused. "Is he Overseer?"

I hushed her, and went on with my work, for I wanted to think what I had
better tell her. Of course Marm Bagley was of no use, but when Hannah
came things went better. Hannah was scandalized at my being there at
all, and of course would not hear of my doing the rough work. She took
possession of Mrs. Bagley, and ordered her about with a vigor which
completely dazed that unsatisfactory person, and amused me so much that
my disturbed spirits rose once more. This was all very well as long as
it lasted, but Hannah had to go home for dinner, and when the restraint
of her presence was removed Marm Bagley reasserted herself. She tied a
frowzy bonnet over a still more frowzy head, lighted her pipe, and
departed for the woods behind the house.

"When that impudent old hired girl o' yours's got all through and got
out," she remarked, "you can hang a towel out the shed winder, and I'll
come back. I ain't got no occasion to stay here and git ordered round by
no hired girl of anybody's."

My remonstrances were of no avail, since I would not promise not to let
Hannah come into the house, and the fat old woman waddled away into the
seclusion of the woods. I suppose she slept somewhere, though the woods
must be so damp that the indulgence seems rather a dangerous one; but at
nightfall she returned more odorous, and more like Sairey Gamp than
ever.

Hannah came back, and we did what we could. When Dr. Wentworth came in
the afternoon he allowed us to get Julia into clean linen, and she did
seem grateful for the comfort of fresh sheets and pillow-slips. It
amused me that Hannah had not only taken the servants' bedding, but had
picked out the oldest.

"I took the wornest ones," she explained. "Of course we wouldn't any of
us ever want to sleep in them again."

She was really shocked at my proposing to remain for the night.

"It ain't for you, Miss Ruth, to be taking care of such folks," she
declared; "and as for that Bagley woman, I'd as soon have a bushel
basket of cockroaches in the house as her, any time."

Even this lively image did not do away with the necessity of my
remaining. I could not propose to Hannah to take my place. The mere fact
of being mistress often forces one to do things which servants would
feel insulted if asked to undertake. Father used to say, "Remember that
_noblesse oblige_ does not exist in the kitchen;" though of course this
is true only in a sense. Servants have their own ideas of what is due to
position, I am sure; only that their ideas are so different, and often
so funnily different, from ours. I could not leave the sick girl to the
mercies of Mrs. Bagley, and so I had no choice but to stay.

All day long Julia watched me with a closeness most strangely
disconcerting. She evidently could not make out why I was there. In the
evening, as I sat by her, she said suddenly,--

"I dunno what you think yer'll get by it."

"Get by what?"

"Bein' here."

I smiled at her manner, and told her that at least I had already got the
satisfaction of seeing her more comfortable. She made no reply for a
time, but evidently was considering the matter. I did not think it well
for her to talk, so I sat knitting quietly, while Mrs. Bagley loomed in
the background, rocking creakingly.

"'Twon't please him none," she said at last. "He don't care a damn for
me."

I tried to take this without showing that I understood it.

"I'm not trying to please anybody," I responded. "When a neighbor is
sick and needs help, of course anybody would come."

"Humph! Folks hain't been so awful anxious to help me."

"There is a good deal of sickness in town," I explained.

"'Tain't nobody's business to come, anyhow," commented Mrs. Bagley
dispassionately.

"There's precious few'd come if 'twas," the girl muttered.

"Has anybody been to see you?" I asked.

The Brownrig girl turned her fierce eyes up to me with a look which made
me think of some wild bird hurt and caged.

"One old woman that sat and chewed her veil and swung her foot at me.
She never come but once."

I had no difficulty in recognizing this portrait, even without Mrs.
Bagley's explanatory comment.

"That was Aunt Naomi Dexter," she remarked. "She's always poking round."

"Miss Dexter is one of the kindest women alive," I said, "though she is
a little odd in her manner sometimes."

"She said she hoped I'd found things bad enough to give me a hankerin'
for something better," went on Julia with increasing bitterness. "God!
How does she think I'd get anything better? What does she know about it,
anyway?"

"There, there, Jule," interposed Mrs. Bagley in a sort of professional
tone, "now don't go to gettin' excited and rampageous. You know she
brought you some rippin' flannel for the baby. Them pious folks has to
talk, but, Lord, nobody minds it, and you hadn't ought ter. They don't
really mean nothing much."

It seemed to be time to interpose, and I forbade Julia to talk, sent
Mrs. Bagley off to sleep in the one other bedroom, and settled down for
the night's watching. The patient fell asleep at last, and I was left to
care for the fire and the poor little pathetic, forlorn, dreadful baby.
The child was swathed in Aunt Naomi's "rippin' flannel," and I fell into
baffling reflections in regard to human life. After all, I had no right
to judge this poor broken girl lying there much more in danger than she
could dream. What do I know of the intolerable life that has not
self-respect, not even cleanliness of mind or body? Society and morality
have so fenced us about and so guarded us that we have rather to try to
get outside than to struggle to keep in; and what do we know of the poor
wretches fighting for life with wild beasts in the open? I am so glad I
do not believe that sin is what one actually does, but is the proportion
between deeds and opportunity. How carefully Father explained this to me
when I was not much more than a child, and how strange it is that so
many people cannot seem to understand it! If I thought the moral law an
inflexible thing like a human statute, for which one was held
responsible arbitrarily and whether he knows the law or not, I should
never be able to endure the sense of injustice. Of course men have to be
arbitrary, because they can see only tangible things and must judge by
outward acts; but if this were true of a deity he would cease to be a
deity at all, and be simply a man with unlimited power to do harm.


April 7. I found myself so running aground last night in metaphysics
that it seemed just as well to go to bed, diary or no diary. I was
besides too tired to write down my interview with Mrs. Webbe.

I was just about to go home for a bath and a nap after watching that
first night, when, without even knocking, Mrs. Deacon Webbe opened the
outside door. I was in the kitchen, and so met her before she got
further. Naturally I was surprised to see her at six o'clock in the day.

"Good-morning," I said.

"I knew you were here yesterday," she said by way of return for my
greeting, "but I thought I'd get here before you came back this
morning."

"I have been here all night," I answered.

She looked at me with her piercing black eyes, which always seem to go
into the very recesses of one's thoughts, and then, in a manner rather
less aggressive, remarked,--

"I've come to speak to this Brownrig girl. You know well enough why."

"I'm afraid you can't see her," I answered, ignoring the latter part of
her words. "She is not so well this morning, and Dr. Wentworth told us
to keep her as quiet as possible."

Mrs. Webbe leaned forward with an expression on her face which made me
look away.

"Is she going to die?" she demanded.

I turned away, and began to close the door. I could not bear her manner.
She has too much cause to hate the girl, but just then, with the poor
thing sick to the very point of death, I could never have felt as she
looked.

"I'm sure I hope not," I returned. "We expect to have a professional
nurse to-morrow, and then things will go better."

"A professional nurse?"

"Yes; we have sent to Boston for one."

"Sent to Boston for a nurse for that creature? She's a great deal better
dead! She only leads men"--

"If you will excuse me, Mrs. Webbe," interrupted I, pushing the door
still nearer to closing, "I ought to go back to my patient. It isn't my
business to decide who had better be dead."

She started forward suddenly, taking me unawares, and before I
understood what she intended, she had thrust herself through the door
into the house.

"If it isn't your business," she demanded sharply, "what are you here
for? What right have you to interfere? If Providence is willing to take
the creature out of the way, what are you trying to keep her alive for?"

I put up my hand and stopped her.

"Will you be quiet?" I said. "I cannot have her disturbed."

"You cannot!" she repeated, raising her voice. "Who gave you a right to
order me round, Ruth Privet? Is this your house?"

I knew that her shrill voice would easily penetrate to Julia's bedroom,
and indeed there was only a thin door between the sick girl and the
kitchen where we were. I took Mrs. Webbe by the wrist as strongly as I
could, and before she could collect her wits, I led her out of the
house, and down to the gate.

"What are you doing?" she demanded. "How dare you drag me about?"

"I beg your pardon," I said, dropping my hold. "I think you did not
understand, Mrs. Webbe, that as nurse I cannot have my patient excited."

She looked at me in a blaze of anger. I have never seen a woman so
carried away by rage, and it is frightful. Yet she seemed to be making
an effort to control herself. I was anxious to help her if I could, so I
forced a smile, although I am afraid it was not a very warm one, and I
assumed as conciliatory a manner as I could muster.

"You must think I was rather abrupt," I said, "but I did not mean to be.
I couldn't explain to you in the kitchen, the partition is so thin. You
see she's in the room that opens out of it."

Mrs. Webbe softened somewhat.

"It is very noble of you to be here," she said in a new tone, and one
which I must confess did not to me have a genuine ring; "it's splendid
of you, but what's the use of it? What affair of yours is it, anyway?"

I was tempted to serve her up a quotation about a certain man who went
down to Jericho and fell among thieves, but I resisted.

"I could come, Mrs. Webbe, and apparently nobody else could."

"They wouldn't," she rejoined frankly. "Don't you see everybody else
knew it was a case to be let alone?"

I asked her why.

"Everybody felt as if it was," responded she quickly. "I hope you don't
set up to be wiser than everybody else put together."

"I don't set up for anything," I declared, "but I may as well confess
that I see no sense in what you say. Here's a human creature that needs
help, and it seems to be my place to help her."

"It's a nice occupation for the daughter of Judge Privet to be nursing a
disreputable thing like a Brownrig."

"A Privet," I answered, "is likely to be able to stand it. You wouldn't
let the girl die alone, would you?"

"She wasn't alone. Mrs. Bagley was here."

"You wouldn't let her die with Mrs. Bagley, then?"

Mrs. Webbe looked me straight in the eye for a moment, with a look as
hard as polished steel.

"Yes," she said, "I would."

I could only stare at her in silence.

"There," she went on, "make the best of that. I'm not going to be
mealy-mouthed. I would let her die, and be glad of it. Why should I want
her alive? Do you think I've no human feelings? Do you think I'd ever
forgive her for dragging Tom into the mud? I've been on my knees half
the night praying she and her brat might both die and leave us in peace!
If there's any justice in heaven, a man like Deacon Webbe won't be
loaded down with the disgrace of a grandchild like that."

There was a sort of fascination in her growing wildness. Everybody knows
how she sneers at the meekness of her husband, and that she is
continually saying he hasn't any force, but here she was catching at his
goodness as a sort of bribe to Heaven to let her have the life of mother
and child. I could not answer her, but could only be thankful no houses
were near. Mrs. Bagley would hear, I supposed, but that could not be
helped.

"What do you know about how I feel?" she demanded, swooping down upon me
so that I involuntarily shrank back against the fence. "It is all very
pretty for you to have ideas of charity, and play at taking care of the
sick. I dare say you mean well enough, Miss Privet, but this isn't a
case for you. Go home, and let Providence take care of that girl.
God'll look after her!"

I stood up straight, and faced her in my turn.

"Stop!" I cried. "I'm not a believer in half the things you are, but I
do have some respect for the name of God. If you mean to kill this girl,
don't try to lay the blame on Providence!"

She shrank as if I had struck her; then she rallied again with a sneer.

"I think I know better than an atheist what it is right to say about my
own religion," was her retort.

Somehow the words appealed to my sense of humor, and unconsciously I
smiled.

"Well," I said, "we will not dispute about words. Only I think you had
better go now."

Perhaps my slight smile vexed her; perhaps it was only that she saw I
was off my guard. She turned quickly, and before I had any notion of
what she intended, she had run swiftly up the path to the house. I
followed instantly. The idea of having a personal encounter with Mrs.
Webbe was shocking, but I could not let her go to trouble Julia without
making an effort to stop her. I thought I might reach the door first,
but she was too quick for me. Before I could prevent her, she had
crossed the kitchen and opened the door of the sick-room. I followed,
and we came almost together into the room, although she was a few steps
in advance. She went hastily to the bed. Julia had been awakened by the
noise, and stared at Mrs. Webbe in a fright.

"Oh, here you are, are you?" Mrs. Webbe began. "How did you dare to say
that my son was the father of your brat? I'd like to have you whipped,
you nasty slut!"

"Mrs. Webbe," I said resolutely, "if you do not leave the house
instantly, I will have you arrested before the sun goes down."

She was diverted from her attack upon Julia, and wheeled round to me.

"Arrested!" she echoed. "You can't do it."

"I can do it, and you know me well enough to know that if I say it, I
mean it. I'm not a lawyer's daughter for nothing. Go out of the house
this instant, and leave that sick girl alone. Do you want to kill her?"

She blazed at me with eyes that might have put me to flight if I had had
only myself to defend.

"Do you think I want her to live? I told you once she ought to be out of
the way. Do you think you are doing a favor to Tom by keeping this
disreputable thing alive?"

I took her by the wrist again.

"You had better go," I said. "You heard what I said. I mean it."

I confess that now I consider it all, the threat to have her arrested
seems rather silly, and I do not see how I could well have carried it
out. At the moment it appeared to me the simplest thing in the world,
and at least it effected my purpose to frighten Mrs. Webbe with the law.
She turned slowly toward the door, but as she went she looked over her
shoulder at Julia.

"You are a nice thing to try to keep alive," she sneered. "The doctor
says you haven't a chance, and you'd better be making your peace with
God. I wouldn't have your heap of sins on my head for anything."

I put my hand over her lips.

"Mrs. Bagley," I said, "take her other arm."

Mrs. Bagley, who had apparently been too confused to understand what
was going on, and had stood with her mouth wide open in blear-eyed
astonishment, did as I commanded, and we led Mrs. Webbe out of the room.
I motioned Mrs. Bagley back into the bedroom to look after Julia, and
shut the door behind her. Then I took Mrs. Webbe by the shoulders and
looked her in the face.

"I had rather have that girl's sins on my head than yours," I said. "You
came here with murder in your heart, and you would be glad to kill her
outright, if you dared. If you have not murdered her as it is, you may
be thankful."

I felt as if I was as much of a shrew as she, but something had to be
done. She looked as if she were as much astonished as impressed, but she
went. Only at the door she turned back to say,--

"I'll come again to see my grandchild."

After that I hardly dared to leave the house, but I got Hannah to stand
guard while I was at home. She has a deep-seated dislike for Mrs. Webbe,
and I fear would greatly have enjoyed an encounter with her; but Mrs.
Webbe did not return.

Now that I go over it all, I seem to have been engaged in a disreputable
squabble, but I do not see what else there was for me to do. Julia was
so terrified and excited that I had to send for Dr. Wentworth as soon as
I could find anybody to go. I set Mrs. Bagley to watch for a passer, and
she took her pipe and went placidly to sleep before the door. I had to
be with Julia, yet keep running out to spy for a messenger, and it was
an hour before I caught one. By the time the doctor got to us the girl
was in hysterics, declaring she did not want to die, she did not dare to
die, could not, would not die. All that day she was constantly starting
out of her sleep with a cry; and by the time night had come, I began to
feel that Mrs. Webbe would have her wish.


April 8. That night was a dreadful one to me. The nurse from Boston had
not come, and I could not leave the girl alone with Mrs. Bagley. Indeed
Marm Bagley seemed more and more inefficient. I think she took advantage
of the fact that she no longer felt any responsibility. The smell of
spirits and tobacco about her grew continually stronger, and I was kept
from sending her away altogether only by the fact that it did not seem
right for me to be alone with Julia. No house is near, and if anything
happened in the night I should have been without help. Julia was
evidently worse. The excitement of Mrs. Webbe's visit had told on her,
and whenever she went to sleep she began to cry out in a way that was
most painful.

About the middle of the night, that dreadfully forlorn time when the day
that is past has utterly died out and nothing shows the hope of another
to come, Julia woke moaning and crying. She started up in bed, her eyes
really terrible to see, her cheeks crimson with fever, and her black
hair tangled all about her face.

"Oh, I am dying!" she shrieked.

For the instant I thought that she was right, and it was dreadful to
hear her.

"I shall die and go to hell!" she cried. "Oh, pray! Pray!"

I caught at my scattered wits and tried to soothe her. She clung to me
as if she were in the greatest physical terror.

"I am dying!" she kept repeating. "Oh, can't you do something for me?
Can't you save me? Oh, I can't die! I can't die!"

She was so wild that her screams awakened Mrs. Bagley, who came running
in half dressed, as she had lain down for the night.

"Lawk-a-marcy, child," she said, coming up to the bed, "if you was dying
do you think you'd have strength to holler like that?"

The rough question had more effect than my efforts to calm the girl. She
sank back on the pillow, sobbing, and staring at Mrs. Bagley.

"I ain't got no strength," she insisted. "I know I'm goin' to die right
away."

"Nonsense, Jule," was Mrs. Bagley's response. "I know when folks is
dyin', I guess. I've seen enough of 'um. You're all right if you'll stop
actin' like a blame fool."

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 hell, 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 noble, 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 superstition 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 noble
in the attitude 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 hell 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"--

He stopped, with a catch in his voice, and I wanted more than I can tell
to say something to help him, but no words came. I could not think; I
wanted to comfort him as I comfort Kathie when she is desperate. The
evident difficulty he had in keeping his self-control moved me more than
anything he could have said.

"I'll marry the girl," he burst out in a moment. "You are right about
the baby. It's no matter about Jule. She isn't of any account anyway,
and she never expected me to marry her. I'll never see her after
she's--after I've done it. It makes me sick to think of her, but I'll do
what I can for the baby." He stopped, and caught his breath. I could
feel in the dusk, rather than see, that he looked up, as if he were
trying to read my face in the darkness. "I will marry her," he went on,
"on one condition."

"What is that?" I asked, with my throat so dry that it ached.

"That you will take the child."

I think now that we must both have spoken like puppets talking by
machinery. I hardly seemed to myself to be alive and real, but this
proposition awoke me like a blow. I could at first only gasp, too much
overcome to bring out a word.

"But its mother?" I managed to stammer at last.

"If I'm to marry her for the sake of the child," he answered in a voice
I hardly recognized, "it would be perfect tomfoolery to leave it to grow
up with the Brownrigs. If that's to be the plan, I'll save myself. Jule
doesn't mind not being married. You don't know what a tribe the
Brownrigs are. It's an insult for me to be talking to you about them,
only it can't be helped. Is it a boy or a girl?"

I told him.

"And you think a girl ought to be left to follow the noble example of
the mother!"

"Oh no, no!" I cried out. "Anything is better than that."

"That is what must happen unless you take the poor thing," he said in a
voice which, though it was hard, seemed somehow to have a quiver in it.

"But would she give the baby up?" I asked. "She's its mother."

"Jule? She'll be only too glad to get rid of it. Anyway she'd do what I
told her to."

I tried to think clearly and quickly. To have the baby left to follow in
the steps of its mother was a thing too terrible to be endured, and yet
I shrank selfishly from taking upon my shoulders the responsibility of
training the child. Whatever Tom decided about the marriage, however, I
felt that he should not have to resolve under pressure. If he were doing
it for the sake of the baby's future, I could clear his way of that
complication. I could not bear the thought of having Tom marry Julia.
This would be a bond on his whole life; and yet I could not feel that he
had a right to shirk it now. If I agreed to take the child, that would
leave him free to decide without being pushed on by fear about the baby.
My mind seemed to me wonderfully clear. I see now it was all in a whirl,
and that the only thing I was sure of was that if it would help him for
me to take the baby there was nothing else for me to do.

"Tom," I said, "I do not, and I will not, decide for you; and I will not
have anything to do with conditions. If she will give me the baby, I
will take it, and you may decide the rest without any reference to that
at all."

He took a step forward so quickly and so fiercely that he startled me,
and put out his hand as if he meant to take me by the arm. Then he
dropped it.

"Do you think," he said, "that I would have an illegitimate brat near
you? It is bad enough as it is, but you shall not have the reproach of
that."

My cheeks grew hot, but the whole talk was so strange and so painful
that I let this pass with the rest. I cannot tell how I felt, but I know
the remembrance of it makes my eyes swim so that I cannot write without
stopping continually; and I am writing here half the night because I
cannot sleep. I could not answer Tom; I only stood dully silent until he
spoke again.

"I know I can't have you, Ruth," he said, "and I know you were right.
I'm not good enough for you."

"I never said that," I interrupted. "I never thought that."

"Never mind. It's true; but I'd have been a man if you'd have given me a
chance."

"Oh, Tom," I broke in, "don't! It is not fair to make me responsible!"

"No," he acknowledged, with the shake of his shoulders I have known ever
since we were children; "you are not to blame. It's only my infernal,
sneaking self!"

I could not bear this, either. Everything that was said hurt me; and it
seemed to me that I had borne all that I could endure.

"Will you go away now, Tom," I begged him. "I--I can't talk any more
to-night. Shall I tell Julia you have come?"

He gave a start at the name, and swore under his breath.

"It is damnable for you to be here with that girl," he burst out
bitterly; "and I brought it on you! It isn't your place, though. Where
are all the Christians and church members? I suppose all the pious are
too good to come. They might get their righteousness smudged. Oh, how I
hate hypocrisy!"

"Don't, Tom," I interrupted. "Go away, please."

My voice was shaky; and indeed I was fast getting to the place where I
should have broken down in hysterical weeping.

"I'll go," he responded quickly. "I'll come in the morning with a
minister. Will eight o'clock do? I'd like to get it over with."

The bitterness of his tone was too much for me. I caught one of his
hands in both of mine.

"Oh, Tom," I said, "are you quite sure this is what you ought to do?"

"Do you tell me not to marry her?" he demanded fiercely.

I was completely unnerved; I could only drop his hand and press my own
on my bosom, as if this would help me to breathe easier.

"Oh no, no," I cried, half sobbing. "I can't, I can't. I haven't the
right to say anything; but I do think it is the thing you ought to do.
Only you are so noble to do it!"

He made a sound as if he would answer, and then he turned away suddenly,
and dashed off with great strides. I could not go back into the house,
but came home without saying good-night, or letting Miss Dyer know. I
must be ready to go back as soon as it is light.


April 12. It seems so far back to this morning that I might have had
time to change into a different person; and yet most of the day I have
simply been longing to get home and think quietly. I wanted to adjust
myself to the new condition of things. Last night the idea that Tom
should marry the girl was so strange and unreal that it could make very
little impression on me. Now it is done it is more appallingly real than
anything else in the world.

I went down to the red house almost before light, but even as early as I
came I found Tom already there. The nurse had objected to letting him
in, and even when I came she was evidently uncertain whether she had
done right in admitting him; but Tom has generally a way of getting what
he is determined on, and before I reached the house everything had been
arranged with Julia.

"I wanted to come before folks were about to see me," Tom said to me.
"There'll be talk enough later, and I'd rather be out of the way. I've
arranged it with her."

"Does she understand"--I began; but he interrupted.

"She understands all there is to understand; all that she could
understand, anyway. She knows I'm marrying her for the sake of the
child, and that you're to have it."

The Munson boy that I have hired to sleep in the house now Mrs. Bagley
is gone, in order that Miss Dyer may have somebody within call, appeared
at this minute with a pail of water, and we were interrupted. The boy
stared with all his eyes, and I was half tempted to ask him not to speak
of Tom's being here; but I reflected with a sick feeling that it was of
no use to try to hide what was to be done. If Tom's act was to have any
significance it must be known. I turned away with tears in my eyes, and
went to Julia.

Julia I found with her eyes shining with excitement, and I could see
that despite Tom's idea that she did not care about the marriage, she
was greatly moved by it.

"Oh, Miss Privet," she cried out at once, "ain't he good! He's truly
goin' to marry me after all! I never 'sposed he'd do that."

"You must have thought"--I began; and then, with a sinking consciousness
of the difference between her world and mine, I stopped.

"And he says you want the baby," she went on, not noticing; "though I
dunno what you want of it. It'll be a pesky bother for yer."

"Mr. Webbe wanted me to take it and bring it up."

"Well," Julia remarked with feeble dispassionateness, "I wouldn't 'f I
was you."

"Are you willing I should have it?" I asked.

"Oh, I'm willing anything he wants," was her answer. "He's awful good to
marry me. He never said he would. He's real white, he is."

She was quiet a moment, and then she broke out in a burst of joy.

"I never 'sposed I'd marry a real gentleman!" she cried.

Her shallow delight in marrying above her station was too pathetic to be
offensive. I was somehow so moved by it that I turned away to hide my
face from her; but she caught my hand and drew me back. Then she peered
at me closely.

"You don't like it," she said excitedly. "You won't try to stop him?"

"No," I answered. "I think he ought to do it for the sake of his child."

She dropped her hold, and a curious look came into her face.

"That's what he said. Yer don't either of yer seem to count me for
much."

I was silent, convicted to the soul that I had not counted her for
much. I had accepted Tom's decision as right, not for the sake of this
broken girl-mother, this castaway doomed to shame from her cradle, but
for the sake purely of the baby that I was to take. It came over me how
I might have been influenced too much by the selfish thought that it
would be intolerable for me to have the child unless it had been as far
as might be legitimatized by this marriage. I flushed with shame, and
without knowing exactly what I was doing I bent over and kissed her.

"It is you he marries," I said.

Her tears sprang instantly, tears, I believe, of pure happiness.

"You're real good," she murmured, and then closed her eyes, whether from
weakness or to conceal her emotion I could not be sure.

It was nearly eight before Mr. Thurston came. Tom has never been on good
terms with Mr. Saychase, and it must have been easier for him to have a
clergyman with whom he had never, I suppose, exchanged a word, than one
who knew him and his people. I took the precaution to say at once to Mr.
Thurston that Julia was too ill to bear much, and that he must not say a
word more than was necessary.

"I will only offer prayer," he returned.

I know Mr. Thurston's prayers. I have heard them at funerals when I have
been wickedly tempted to wonder whether he were not attempting to fill
the interval between us and the return of the lost at the Resurrection.

"I am afraid it will not do," I told him. "You do not realize how feeble
she is."

"Then I will only give them the blessing. Perhaps I might talk with Mr.
Webbe afterward, or pray with him."

I knew that if this proposition were made to Tom he would say something
which would wound the clergyman's feelings.

"Mr. Thurston," I urged, "if you'll pardon me, I wouldn't try to say
anything to him just now. He is doing a plucky thing, and a thing that's
noble, but it must be terribly hard. I don't think he could endure to
have anybody talk to him. He'll have to be left to fight it out for
himself."

It was not easy to convince Mr. Thurston, for when once a narrow man
gets an idea of duty he can see nothing else; but I managed in the end
to save Tom at least the irritation of having to fight off religious
appeals. The ceremony was as brief as possible. It was touching to see
how humble and yet how proud Julia was. She seemed to feel that Tom was
a sort of god in his goodness in marrying her,--and after all perhaps
she was partly right. His coldness only made her deprecatory. I wondered
how far she was conscious of his evident shrinking from her. He seemed
to hate even to touch her fingers. I cannot understand--


April 15. I have had many things to do in the last two days, and I find
myself so tired with the stress of it all that I have not felt like
writing. It is perhaps as much from a sort of feverish uneasiness as
from anything else I have got out my diary to-night. The truth is, that
I suffer from the almost intolerable suspense of waiting for Julia to
die. Dr. Wentworth and Miss Dyer both are sure there is no chance
whatever of her getting well, and I cannot think that it would be
better for her, or for Tom, or for her baby--who is to be my baby!--if
she should live. We are all a little afraid to say, or even to think,
that it is better for a life of this sort to end, and I seem to myself
inhuman in putting it down in plain words; but we cannot be rational
without knowing that it is better certain persons should be out of the
way, for their own sakes as well as for the good of the community, and
the more quickly the better. Julia is a weed, poor thing, and the sooner
she is pulled up the better for the garden. And yet I pity her so! I can
understand religion easily when I think of lives like hers. It is so
hard to see the justice of having the weed destroyed for the good of the
flowers that men have to invent excuses for the Eternal. Somebody has
defined theology as man's justification of a deity found wanting by
human standards, and now I realize what this means. Human mercy could
not bear to make a Julia, and a power which allows the possibility of
such beings has to be excused to human reason. The gods that men invent
always turn to Frankensteins on their hands. If there is a conscious
power that directs, He must pity the gropings of our race, although I
suppose seeing what it is all for and what it all leads to must make it
possible to bear the sight of human weakness.

The baby is growing wonderfully attractive now she is so well fed and
attended to. I am ashamed to think how little the poor wee morsel
attracted me at first. She was so associated with dreadful thoughts, and
with things which I hated to know and did not wish to remember, that I
shrank from her. Perhaps now the fact that she is to be mine inclines me
to look at her with different eyes, but she is really a dear little
thing, pretty and sweet. Oh, I will try hard to make her life lovely!


April 16. Aunt Naomi came in last night almost as soon as I was at home.
She should not have been out in the night air, I think, for her cold is
really severe, and has kept her shut up in the house for a fortnight.
She was so eager for news, however, that she could not rest until she
had seen me, and I am away all day.

"Well," was her greeting, "I am glad to see you at home once more. I've
begun to feel as if you lived down in that little red house."

I said I had pretty nearly lived there for the last two weeks, but that
since Miss Dyer came I had been able to get home at night most of the
time.

"How do you like going out nursing?" she asked, thrusting her tongue
into her cheek in that queer way she has.

I told her I certainly shouldn't think of choosing it as a profession,
at least unless I could go to cleaner places.

"I hear you had Hannah clean up," she remarked with a chuckle.

"How did you hear that?" I asked her. "I thought you had been housed
with a cold."

Aunt Naomi's smile was broad, and she swung her foot joyously.

"I've had all my faculties," she answered.

"So I should think. You must keep a troop of paid spies."

"I don't need spies. I just keep my eyes and ears open."

I wondered in my heart whether she had heard of the marriage, and as if
she read the question in my mind, she answered it.

"I thought I'd like to know one thing, though," she observed with the
air of one who candidly concedes that he is not infallible. "I'd like to
know how the new Mrs. Webbe takes his marrying her."

"Aunt Naomi," I burst out in astonishment, "you are a witch, and ought
to be looked after by the witch-finders."

Aunt Naomi laughed, and her eyes twinkled at the agreeable compliment I
paid to her cleverness. Then she suddenly became grave.

"I am not sure, Ruth," she said, "that I should be willing to have your
responsibility in making him marry such a girl."

I disclaimed the responsibility entirely, and declared I had not even
suggested the marriage. I told her he had done it for the sake of the
child, and that the proposition was his, and his only.

She sniffed contemptuously, with an air which seemed to cast doubts on
my sanity.

"Very likely he did, and I don't suppose you did suggest it in words;
but it's your doing all the same."

"I will not have the responsibility put on me," I protested. "It isn't
for me to determine what Tom Webbe shall do."

"You can't help it," was her uncompromising answer. "You can make him do
anything you want to."

"Then I wish I were wise enough to know what he ought to do," I could
not help crying out. "Oh, Aunt Naomi, I do so want to help him!"

She looked at me with her keen old eyes, to which age has only imparted
more sharpness. I should hate to be a criminal brought before her as my
judge; her eyes would bring out my guilty secret from the cunningest
hiding-place in my soul, and she would sentence me with the utmost rigor
of the law. After the sentence had been executed, though, she would come
with sharp tongue and gentle hands, and bind up my wounds. Now she did
not answer my remark directly, but went on to question me about the
Brownrig girl and the details of her illness; only when she went away
she stopped to turn at the door and say,--

"The best thing you can do for Tom Webbe is to believe in him. He isn't
worth your pity, but your caring what happens to him will do him more
good than anything else."

I have been wondering ever since she went how much truth there is in
what she said. Tom cannot care so much for me as that, although placed
as he is the faith of any woman ought to help him. I know, of course, he
is fond of me, and that he was always desperate over my engagement; but
I cannot believe the motive power of his life is so closely connected
with my opinions as Aunt Naomi seems to think. If it were he would never
have been involved at all in this dreadful business. But I do so pity
him, and I so wish I might really help him!


April 18. Julia is very low. I have been sitting alone with her this
afternoon, almost seeing life fade away from her. Only once was she at
all like her old self. I had given her some wine, and she lay for a
moment with her great black eyes gleaming out from the hollows into
which they have sunk. She seemed to have something on her mind, and at
last she put it feebly into words.

"Don't tell her any bad of me," she said.

For an instant I did not understand, and I suppose that my face showed
this. She half turned her heavy head on her pillow, so that her glance
might go toward the place where the baby slept in the broken
clothes-basket. The sadness of it came over me so suddenly and so
strongly that tears blinded me. It was the most womanly touch that I
have ever known in Julia; and for the moment I was so moved that I could
not speak. I leaned over and kissed her, and promised that from me her
child should never know harm of its mother.

"She'd be more likely to go to the devil if she knew," Julia explained
gaspingly. "Now she'll have some sort of a chance."

The words were coarse, but as they were said they were so pathetic that
they pierced me. Poor little baby, born to a tainted heritage! I must
save her clean little soul somehow. Poor Julia, she certainly never had
any sort of a chance.


April 24. She is in her grave at last, poor girl, and it is sad to think
that nobody alive regrets her. Tom cannot, and even her dreadful mother
showed no sorrow to-day. Somehow the vulgarity of the mother and her
behavior took away half the sadness of the tragedy. When I think about
it the very coarseness of it all makes the situation more pathetic, but
this is an afterthought that can be felt only when I have beaten down my
disgust. When one considers how Julia grew up with this woman, and how
she had no way of learning the decencies of life except from a mother
who had no conception of them, it makes the heart ache; and yet when
Mrs. Brownrig broke in upon us at the graveyard this morning, disgust
was the strongest feeling of which I was conscious. The violation of
conventionalities always shocks a woman, I suppose, and when it comes to
anything so solemn as services over the dead, the lack of decency is
shocking and exasperating together, with a little suggestion besides of
sacrilege.

Miss Charlotte surprised me by coming over just after breakfast to go to
the funeral with me.

"I don't like to have you go alone," she said, "and I knew you would
go."

I asked her in some surprise how in the world she knew when the funeral
was to be, for we thought that we had kept it entirely quiet.

"Aunt Naomi told me last night," she answered. "I suppose she heard it
from some familiar spirit or other,--a black cat, or a toad, or
something of the kind."

I could only say that I was completely puzzled to see how Aunt Naomi had
discovered the hour in any other way, and I thanked Miss Charlotte for
coming, though I told the dear she should not have taken so much
trouble.

"I wanted to do it, my dear," she returned cheerfully. "I am getting to
be an old thing, and I find funerals rather lively and amusing. Don't
you remember Maria Harmon used to say that to a pious soul a funeral was
a heavenly picnic?"

Whatever a "heavenly picnic" may be, the funeral this morning was one of
the most ghastly things imaginable. Tom and Mr. Thurston were in one
carriage and Miss Charlotte and I in another. We went to the graveyard
at the Rim, where Julia's father and brother were buried, a place half
overgrown with wild-rose and alder bushes. In summer it must be a
picturesque tangle of wild shrubs and blossoms, but now it is only
chill, and barren, and neglected. The spring has reddened and yellowed
the tips of the twigs, but not enough to make the bushes look really
alive yet. The heap of clay by the grave, too, was of a hideous ochre
tint, and horribly sodden and oozy.

Just as the coffin was being lowered a wild figure suddenly appeared
from somewhere behind the thickets of alders and low spruces which skirt
the fence on one side. It proved to be old Mrs. Brownrig, who with rags
and tags, and even her disheveled gray hair fluttering as she moved,
half ran down the path toward us. She must have been hiding in the woods
waiting, and I found afterward that she had been seen lurking about
yesterday, though for some reason she had not been to her house. Now she
had evidently been drinking, and she was a dreadful thing to look at.

I wonder why it is that nature, which makes almost any other ruin
picturesque, never succeeds in making the wreck of humanity anything but
hideous? An old tower, an old tree, even an old house, has somehow a
quality that is prepossessing; but an old man is apt to look
unattractive, and an old woman who has given up taking care of herself
is repulsive. Perhaps we cannot see humanity with the impartial eyes
with which we regard nature, but I do not think this is the whole of it.
Somehow and for some reason an inanimate ruin is generally attractive,
while a human ruin is ugly.

Mrs. Brownrig seemed to me an incarnation of the repulsive. She made me
shudder with some sort of a feeling that she was wicked through and
through. Even the pity she made me feel could not prevent my sense that
she was vicious. I wanted to wash my hands just for having seen her. I
was ashamed to be so uncharitable, and of course it was because she was
so hideous to look at; but I do not think I could have borne to have her
touch me.

"Stop!" she called out. "I'm the mother of the corpse. Don't you dare to
bury her till I get there!"

I glanced at Tom in spite of myself. He had been stern and pale all the
morning, not saying a word more than was necessary, but now the color
came into his face all at once. I could not bear to see him, and tried
to look at the mother, but repulsion and pity made me choke. She was
panting with haste and intoxication by the time she reached us, and
stumbled over something in the path. She caught at Tom's arm to save
herself, and there she hung, leering up into his face.

"You didn't mean for me to come, did you?" she broke out, half
whimpering and half chuckling. "She was mine before she was yours. You
killed her, too."

Tom kept himself still, though it must have been terribly hard. He must
have been in agony, and I could have sobbed to think how he suffered. He
grew white as I have never seen him, but he did not look at the old
woman. She was perhaps too distracted with drink and I hope with grief
to know what she was doing. She turned suddenly, and looked at the
coffin, which rested on the edge of the grave.

"My handsome Jule!" she wailed. "Oh, my handsome Jule! They're all dead
now! What did you put on her? Did you make a shroud or put on a dress?"

"She has a white shroud," I said quickly. "I saw to everything myself."

She turned to me with a fawning air, and let go her clasp on Tom's arm.

"I'm grateful, Miss Privet," she said. "We Brownrigs ain't much, but
we're grateful. I hope you won't let 'em bury my handsome gel till I've
seen her," she went on, with a ma

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