Part 16

I had not thought to obtrude myself needlessly on you ever again. Oppressed with the remembrance that I have been a blight on a life that might otherwise have been happy, I thought my only expiation was silence. But it had not then occurred to me that possibly you could feel and be pained by that silence. But of late I have been very intimate with Mrs. Henderson, whose mind is like those crystalline lakes we read of--a pebble upon the bottom is evident. She loves you so warmly and feels for you so sympathetically that, almost unconsciously, when you pour your feelings into her heart, they are revealed to me through the transparent medium of her nature. I confess that I am still so selfish as to feel a pleasure in the thought that you cannot forget me. I cannot forget you. I never have forgotten you, I believe, for a waking conscious hour since that time when your father shut the door of his house between you and me. I have demonstrated in my own experience that there may be a double consciousness all the while going on, in which the presence of one person should seem to pervade every scene of life. You have been with me, even in those mad fatal seasons when I have been swept from reason and conscience and hope--it has added bitterness to my humiliation in my weak hours; but it has been motive and courage to rise up again and again and renew the fight--the fight that must last as long as life lasts; for, Caroline, this is so. In some constitutions, with some hereditary predispositions, the indiscretions and ignorances of youth leave a fatal irremediable injury. Though the sin be in the first place one of inexperience and ignorance, it is one that nature never forgives. The evil once done can never be undone; no prayers, no entreaties, no resolutions, can change the consequences of violated law. The brain and nerve force, once vitiated by poisonous stimulants, become thereafter subtle tempters and traitors, forever lying in wait to deceive and urging to ruin; and he who is saved, is saved so as by fire. Since it is your unhappy fate to care so much for me, I owe to you the utmost frankness. I must tell you plainly that I am an unsafe man. I am like a ship with powder on board and a smouldering fire in the hold. I must warn my friends off, lest at any moment I carry ruin to them, and they be drawn down in my vortex. We can be friends, dear friends; but let me beg you, think as little of me as you can. Be a friend in a certain degree, after the manner of the world, rationally, and with a wise regard to your own best interests--you who are worth five hundred times what I am--you who have beauty, talent, energy--who have a career opening before you, and a most noble and true friend in Miss Ida; do not let your sympathies for a very worthless individual lead you to defraud yourself of all that you should gain in the opportunities now open to you. Command my services for you in the literary line when ever they may be of the slightest use. Remember that nothing in the world makes me so happy as an opportunity to serve you. Treat me as you would a loyal serf, whose only thought is to live and die for you; as the princess of the middle ages treated the knight of low degree, who devoted himself to her service. There is nothing _you_ could ask me to do for you that would not be to me a pleasure; and all the more so, if it involved any labor or difficulty. In return, be assured, that merely by being the woman you are, merely by the love which you have given and still give to one so unworthy, you are a constant strength to me, an encouragement never to faint in a struggle which must last as long as this life lasts. For although we must not forget that life, in the _best_ sense of the word, lasts forever, yet this first mortal phase of it is, thank God, but short. There is another and a higher life for those whose life has been a failure here. Those who die fighting--even though they fall, many times trodden under the hoof of the enemy--will find themselves there made more than conquerors through One who hath loved them.

In this age, when so many are giving up religion, hearts like yours and mine, Caroline, that know the real strain and anguish of this present life, are the ones to appreciate the absolute necessity of faith in the great hereafter. Without this, how cruel is life! How bitter, how even unjust, the weakness and inexperience with which human beings are pushed forth amid the grinding and clashing of natural laws--laws of whose operation they are ignorant and yet whose penalties are inexorable! If there be not a Guiding Father, a redeeming future, how dark is the prospect of this life! and who can wonder that the ancients, many of the best of them, considered suicide as one of the reserved rights of human nature? Without religious faith, I certainly should. I am making this letter too long; the pleasure of speaking to you tempts me still to prolong it, but I forbear.

Ever yours, devotedly,

BOLTON.

* * * * *

CAROLINE TO BOLTON.

_My Dear Friend_: How can I thank you for the confidence you have shown me in your letter? You were not mistaken in thinking that this long silence has been cruel to me. It is more cruel to a woman than it can possibly be to a man, because if to him silence be a pain, he yet is conscious all the time that he has the power to break it; he has the right to speak at any time, but a woman must die silent. Every fiber of her being says this. She cannot speak, she must suffer as the dumb animals suffer.

I have, I confess, at times, been bitterly impatient of this long reserve, knowing, as I did, that you had not ceased to feel what you once felt. I saw, in our brief interviews in New York, that you loved me still. A woman is never blind to that fact, with whatever care it is sought to be hidden. I saw that you felt all you once professed, and yet were determined to conceal it, and treat with me on the calm basis of ordinary friendship, and sometimes I was indignant: forgive me the injustice.

You see that such a course is of no use, as a means of making one forget. To know one's self passionately beloved by another who never avows it, is something dangerous to the imagination. It gives rise to a thousand restless conjectures, and is fatal to peace. We can reconcile ourselves in time to any _certainty_; it is only when we are called upon to accommodate ourselves to possibilities, uncertain as vaporous clouds, that we weary ourselves in fruitless efforts.

Your letter avows what I knew before; what you often told me in our happy days: and I now say in return that I, like you, have _never forgotten_; that your image and presence have been to me as mine to you, ever a part of my consciousness through all these years of separation. And now you ask me to change all this into a cool and prudent friendship, after the manner of the world; that is to say, to take _all_ from you, to accept the entire devotion of your heart and life, but be careful to risk nothing in return, to keep at a safe distance from your possible troubles, lest I be involved.

Do you think me capable of this? Is it like me? and what would you think and say to a friend who should make the same proposition to you? Put it to yourself: what would you think of yourself, if you could be so coldly wary and prudent with regard to a friend who was giving to you the whole devotion of heart and life?

No, dear friend, this is all idle talk. Away with it! I feel that I am capable of as entire devotion to you as I know you are to me; never doubt it. The sad fatality which clouds your life makes this feeling only the more intense; as we feel for those who are a part of our own hearts, when in suffering and danger. In one respect, my medical studies are an advantage to me. They have placed me at a stand-point where my judgment on these questions and subjects is different from those of ordinary women. An understanding of the laws of physical being, of the conditions of brain and nerve forces, may possibly at some future day bring a remedy for such sufferings as yours. I look for this among the possible triumphs of science,--it adds interest to the studies and lectures I am pursuing. I shall not be to you what many women are to the men whom they love, an added weight to fall upon you if you fall, to crush you under the burden of my disappointments and anxieties and distresses. Knowing that your heart is resolute and your nature noble, a failure, supposing such a possibility, would be to me only like a fever or a paralysis,--a subject for new care and watchfulness and devotion, not one for tears or reproaches or exhortations.

There are lesions of the will that are no more to be considered subject to moral condemnation than a strain of the spinal column or a sudden fall, from paralysis. It is a misfortune; and to real true affection, a misfortune only renders the sufferer more dear and redoubles devotion.

Your letter gives me courage to live--courage to pursue the course set before me here. I will make the most of myself that I can for your sake, since all I am or can be is yours. Already I hope that I am of use to you in opening the doors of confidence. Believe me, dear, nothing is so bad for the health of the mind or the body as to have a constant source of anxiety and apprehension that cannot be spoken of to anybody. The mind thus shut within itself becomes a cave of morbid horrors. I believe these unshared fears, these broodings, and dreads unspoken, often fulfill their own prediction by the unhealthy states of mind that they bring.

The chambers of the soul ought to be daily opened and aired; the sunshine of a friend's presence ought to shine through them, to dispel sickly damps and the malaria of fears and horrors. If I could be with you and see you daily, my presence should cheer you, my faith in you should strengthen your faith in yourself.

For my part, I can see how the very sensitiveness of your moral temperament which makes you so dread a failure, exposes you to fail. I think the near friends of persons who have your danger often hinder instead of helping them by the manifestation of their fears and anxieties. They think there is no way but to "pile up the agony," to intensify the sense of danger and responsibility, when the fact is, the subject of it is feeling now all the strain that human nerves can feel without cracking.

We all know that we can walk with a cool head across a narrow plank only one foot from the ground. But put the plank across a chasm a thousand feet in depth, and the head swims. We have the same capacity in both cases; but, in the latter, the awfulness of the risk induces a nervous anxiety that amounts to a paralysis of the will.

Don't, therefore, let this dread grow on you by the horror of lonely brooding. Treat it as you would the liability to any other disease, openly, rationally and hopefully; and keep yourself in the daily light and warmth of sympathetic intercourse with friends who understand you and can help you. There are Eva and Harry--noble, true friends, indebted to you for many favors, and devoted to you with a loyal faithfulness. Let their faith and mine in you strengthen your belief in yourself. And don't, above all things, take any load of responsibility about _my_ happiness, and talk about being the blight and shadow on my life. I trust I am learning that we were sent into this world, not to clamor for happiness, but to do our part in a life-work. What matter is it whether I am happy or not, if I do my part? I know all the risks and all the dangers that come from being identified, heart and soul, with the life of another as I am with yours. I know the risks, and am ready to face them. I am ready to live for you and die for you, and count it all joy to the last.

I was much touched by what you said of those who have died defeated yet fighting. Yes, it is my belief that many a poor soul who has again and again failed in the conflict has yet put forth more effort, practiced more self-denial, than hundreds of average Christians; and He who knows what the trial is, will judge them tenderly--that is to say, justly.

But for you there must be a future, even in this life. I am assured of it, and you must believe it: you must believe with my faith, and hope in my hope. Come what will, I am, heart and soul and forever,

Yours,

CAROLINE.

_CHAPTER XXIII._

THE SISTERS OF ST. BARNABAS.

Who was St. Barnabas? We are told in the book of the Acts of the Apostles that he was a man whose name signified a "son of consolation." It must at once occur that such a saint is very much needed in this weary world of ours, and most worthy to be the patron of an "order."

To comfort human sorrow, to heal and help the desolate and afflicted, irrespective either of their moral worth or of any personal reward, is certainly a noble and praiseworthy object.

Nor can any reasonable objection be made to the custom of good women combining for this purpose into a class or order, to be known by the name of such a primitive saint, and wearing a peculiar livery to mark their service, and having rites and ceremonials such as to them seem helpful for this end. Surely the work is hard enough, and weary enough, to entitle the doers thereof to do it in their own way, as they feel they best can, and to have any sort of innocent helps in the way of signs and symbols that may seem to them desirable.

Yet the Sisters of St. Barnabas had been exposed to a sort of modern form of persecution from certain vigorous-minded Protestants, as tending to Romanism. A clamor had been raised about them for wearing large crosses, for bowing before altars, and, in short, for a hundred little points of Ritualism; and it was held that a proper zeal for Protestantism required their ejection from a children's refuge, where, with much patience and Christian mildness, they were taking care of sick babies and teaching neglected street children. Mrs. Maria Wouvermans, with a committee of ladies equally zealous for the order of the church and excited about the dangers of Popery, had visited the refuge and pursued the inquisition even to the private sleeping apartments of the Sisters, unearthing every symptom of principle or practice that savored of approach to the customs of the Scarlet Woman; and, as the result of relentless inquisition and much vigorous catechising, she and her associates made such reports as induced the Committee of Supervision to withdraw the charity from the Sisters of St. Barnabas, and place it in other hands. The Sisters, thus ejected, had sought work in other quarters of the great field of human suffering and sorrow. A portion of them had been enabled by the charity of friends to rent a house to be devoted to the purposes of nursing destitute sick children, with dormitories also where homeless women could find temporary shelter.

The house was not a bit more conventual or mediæval than the most common-place of New York houses. It is true, one of the parlors had been converted into a chapel, dressed out and arranged according to the preferences of these good women. It had an altar, with a gilded cross flanked by candles, which there is no denying were sometimes lighted in the day-time. The altar was duly dressed with white, red, green, violet or black, according as the traditional fasts or feasts of the Church came round. There is no doubt that this simple chapel, with its flowers, and candles, and cross, and its little ceremonial, was an immense comfort and help to these good women in the work that they were doing. But the most rigid Protestant, who might be stumbled by this little attempt at a chapel, would have been melted into accord when he went into the long bright room full of little cribs and cradles, where child invalids of different ages and in different stages of convalescence were made happy amid flowers, and toys, and playthings, by the ministration of the good women who wore the white caps and the large crosses. It might occur to a thoughtful mind, that devotion to a work so sweetly unselfish might well entitle them to wear any kind of dress and pursue any kind of method, unchallenged by criticism.

In a neat white bed of one of the small dormitories in the upper part of this house, was lying in a delirious fever the young woman whom Bolton had carried there on the night of our story. The long black hair had become loosened by the restless tossing of her head from side to side; her brow was bent in a heavy frown, made more intense by the blackness of her eyebrows; her large, dark eyes were wandering wildly to and fro over every object in the room, and occasionally fixing themselves with a strange look of inquiry on the Sister who, in white cap and black robe, sat by her bedside, changing the wet cloths on her burning head, and moistening her parched lips from time to time with a spoonful of water.

"I can't think who you are," she muttered, as the Sister with a gentle movement put a fresh, cool cloth on her forehead.

"Never mind, poor child," said the sweet voice in reply; "try to be quiet."

"Quiet! _me_ be quiet!--that's pretty well! Me!" and she burst into weak, hysteric laughter.

"Hush, hush!" said the Sister, making soothing motions with her hands.

The wandering eyes closed a few moments in a feverish drowse. In a moment more, she started with a wild look.

"Mother! mother! where are you? I can't find you. I've looked and looked till I'm so tired, and I can't find you. Mother, come to me,--I'm sick!"--and the girl rose and threw out her arms wildly.

The Sister passed her arm round her tenderly and spoke with a gentle authority, making her lie down again.

Then, in a sweet low voice, she began singing a hymn:

"Jesus, lover of my soul, Let me to thy bosom fly, While the billows near me roll, While the tempest still is high."

As she sung, the dark sad eyes fixed themselves upon her with a vague, troubled questioning. The Sister went on:

"Hide me, O my Saviour, hide, Till the storm of life is past, Safe into the haven guide, Oh, receive my soul at last."

It was just day-dawn, and the patient had waked from a temporary stupor produced by a narcotic which had been given a few hours before to compose her.

The purple-and-rose color of dawn was just touching faintly everything in the room. Another Sister entered softly, to take the place of the one who had watched for the last four hours.

"How is she?" she said.

"Quite out of her head, poor thing. Her fever is very high."

"We must have the doctor," said the other. "She looks like a very sick girl."

"That she certainly is. She slept, under the opiate, but kept starting, and frowning, and muttering in her sleep; and this morning she waked quite wild."

"She must have got dreadfully chilled, walking so late in the street--so poorly clad, too!"

With this brief conversation, the second sister assumed her place by the bedside, and the first went to get some rest in her own room.

As day grew brighter, the singing of the matins in the chapel came floating up in snatches; and the sick girl listened to it with the same dazed and confused air of inquiry with which she looked on all around.

"Who is singing," she said to herself. "It's pretty, and good. But how came I here? I was so cold, so cold--out there!--and now it's so hot. Oh, my head! my head!"

A few hours later, Mr. St. John called at the Refuge to inquire after the new inmate.

Mr. St. John was one of the patrons of the Sisters. He had contributed liberally to the expenses of the present establishment, and stood at all times ready to assist with influence and advice.

The Refuge was, in fact, by the use of its dormitories, a sort of receiving station for homeless and desolate people, where they might find temporary shelter, where their wants might be inquired into, and help found for them according to their need.

After the interview with Bolton had made him acquainted with the state of the case, Mr. St. John went immediately to the Refuge. He was received in the parlor by a sweet-faced, motherly woman, with her white cap and black robe, and with a large black cross depending from her girdle. There was about her an air of innocent sanctity and seclusion from the out-door bustle of modern life that was refreshing.

She readily gave him an account of the new inmate, whose sad condition had excited the sympathy of all the Sisters.

She had come to them, she said, in a state of most woeful agitation and distress, having walked the streets on a freezing night till a late hour, in very insufficient clothing. Immediately on being received, she began to have violent chills, followed by burning fever, and had been all night tossing restlessly and talking wildly.

This morning, they had sent for the doctor, who pronounced her in a brain fever, and in a condition of great danger. She was still out of her mind, and could give no rational account of herself.

"It is piteous to hear her call upon her mother," said the Sister. "Poor child! perhaps her mother is distressing herself about her."

Mr. St. John promised to secure the assistance and sympathy of some benevolent women to aid the Sisters in their charge, and took his leave, promising to call daily.

_CHAPTER XXIV._

EVA TO HARRY'S MOTHER

MY DEAR MOTHER: When I wrote you last we were quite prosperous, having just come through with our first evening as a great success; and everybody since has been saying most agreeable things to us about it. Last Thursday, we had our second, and it was even pleasanter than the last, because people had got acquainted, so that they really wanted to see each other again. There was a most charming atmosphere of ease and sociability. Bolton and Mr. St. John are getting quite intimate. Mr. St. John, too, develops quite a fine social talent, and has come out wonderfully. The side of a man that one sees in the church and the pulpit is after all only one side, as we have discovered. I find that he has quite a gift in conversation, when you fairly get him at it. Then, his voice for singing comes into play, and he and Angie and Dr. Campbell and Alice make up a quartette quite magnificent for non-professionals. Angie has a fine soprano, and Alice takes the contralto, and the Doctor, with his great broad shoulders and deep chest, makes a splendid bass. Mr. St. John's tenor is really very beautiful. It is one of those penetrating, sympathetic voices that indicate both feeling and refinement, and they are all of them surprised and delighted to find how well they go together. Thursday evening they went on from thing to thing, and found that they could sing this and that and the other, till the evening took a good deal the form of a musical. But never mind, it brought them acquainted with each other and made them look forward to the next reunion as something agreeable. Ever since, the doctor goes round humming tunes, and says he wants St. John to try the tenor of this and that, and really has quite lost sight of his being anything else but a musical brother. So here is the common ground I wanted to find between them.

The doctor has told Mr. St. John to call on him whenever he can make him useful in his visits among the poor. Our doctor loves to _talk_ as if he were a hard-hearted, unbelieving pirate, who didn't care a straw for his fellow-creatures, while he loses no opportunity to do anybody or anything a kindness.