"No, Mary; you"ve got to provide. He"s not going to set aside the laws of nature to cover our improvidence. That would be to break faith with all creation for the sake of one or two creatures."
"No; but still, Doctor, without breaking the laws of nature, he will provide. It"s in his word."
"Yes, and it ought to be in his word--not in ours. It"s for him to say to us, not for us to say to him. But there"s another thing, Mary."
"Yes, sir."
"It"s this. But first I"ll say plainly you"ve pa.s.sed through the fires of poverty, and they haven"t hurt you. You have one of those imperishable natures that fire can"t stain or warp."
"O Doctor, how absurd!" said Mary, with bright genuineness, and a tear in either eye. She drew Alice closer.
"Well, then, I do see two ill effects," replied the Doctor. "In the first place, as I"ve just tried to show you, you have caught a little of the _recklessness_ of the poor."
"I was born with it," exclaimed Mary, with amus.e.m.e.nt.
"Maybe so," replied her friend; "at any rate you show it." He was silent.
"But what is the other?" asked Mary.
"Why, as to that, I may mistake; but--you seem inclined to settle down and be satisfied with poverty."
"Having food and raiment," said Mary, smiling with some archness, "to be therewith content."
"Yes, but"--the physician shook his head--"that doesn"t mean to be satisfied. It"s one thing to be content with G.o.d"s providence, and it"s another to be satisfied with poverty. There"s not one in a thousand that I"d venture to say it to. He wouldn"t understand the fine difference.
But you will. I"m sure you do."
"Yes, I do."
"I know you do. You know poverty has its temptations, and warping influences, and debasing effects, just as truly as riches have. See how it narrows our usefulness. Not always, it is true. Sometimes our best usefulness keeps us poor. That"s poverty with a good excuse. But that"s not poverty satisfying, Mary"--
"No, of course not," said Mary, exhibiting a degree of distress that the Doctor somehow overlooked.
"It"s merely," said he, half-extending his open palm,--"it"s merely poverty accepted, as a good soldier accepts the dust and s.m.u.t that are a necessary part of the battle. Now, here"s this little girl."--As his open white hand pointed toward Alice she shrank back; but the Doctor seemed blind this afternoon and drove on.--"In a few years--it will not seem like any time at all--she"ll be half grown up; she"ll have wants that ought to be supplied."
"Oh! don"t," exclaimed Mary, and burst into a flood of tears; and the Doctor, while she hid them from her child, sat silently loathing his own stupidity.
"Please, don"t mind it," said Mary, stanching the flow. "You were not so badly mistaken. I wasn"t satisfied, but I was about to surrender." She smiled at herself and her warlike figure of speech.
He looked away, pa.s.sed his hand across his forehead and must have muttered audibly his self-reproach: for Mary looked up again with a faint gleam of the old radiance in her face, saying:--
"I"m glad you didn"t let me do it. I"ll not do it. I"ll take up the struggle again. Indeed, I had already thought of one thing I could do, but I--I--in fact, Doctor, I thought you might not like it."
"What was it?"
"It was teaching in the public schools. They"re in the hands of the military government, I am told. Are they not?"
"Yes."
"Still," said Mary, speaking rapidly, "I say I"ll keep up the"--
But the Doctor lifted his hand.
"No, no. There"s to be no more struggle."
"No?" Mary tried to look pleasantly incredulous.
"No; and you"re not going to be put upon anybody"s bounty, either. No.
What I was going to say about this little girl here was this,--her name is Alice, is it?"
"Yes."
The mother dropped an arm around the child, and both she and Alice looked timidly at the questioner.
"Well, by that name, Mary, I claim the care of her."
The color mounted to Mary"s brows, but the Doctor raised a finger.
"I mean, of course, Mary, only in so far as such care can go without molesting your perfect motherhood, and all its offices and pleasures."
Her eyes filled again, and her lips parted; but the Doctor was not going to let her reply.
"Don"t try to debate it, Mary. You must see you have no case. n.o.body"s going to take her from you, nor do any other of the foolish things, I hope, that are so often done in such cases. But you"ve called her Alice, and Alice she must be. I don"t propose to take care of her for you"--
"Oh, no; of course not," interjected Mary.
"No," said the Doctor; "you"ll take care of her for me. I intended it from the first. And that brings up another point. You mustn"t teach school. No. I have something else--something better--to suggest. Mary, you and John have been a kind of blessing to me"--
She would have interrupted with expressions of astonishment and dissent, but he would not hear them.
"I think I ought to know best about that," he said. "Your husband taught me a great deal, I think. I want to put some of it into practice. We had a--an understanding, you might say--one day toward the--end--that I should do for him some of the things he had so longed and hoped to do--for the poor and the unfortunate."
"I know," said Mary, the tears dropping down her face.
"He told you?" asked the Doctor.
She nodded.
"Well," resumed the Doctor, "those may not be his words precisely, but it"s what they meant to me. And I said I"d do it. But I shall need a.s.sistance. I"m a medical pract.i.tioner. I attend the sick. But I see a great deal of other sorts of sufferers; and I can"t stop for them."
"Certainly not," said Mary, softly.
"No," said he; "I can"t make the inquiries and investigations about them and study them, and all that kind of thing, as one should if one"s help is going to be help. I can"t turn aside for all that. A man must have one direction, you know. But you could look after those things"--
"I?"
"Certainly. You could do it just as I--just as John--would wish to see it done. You"re just the kind of person to do it right."
"O Doctor, don"t say so! I"m not fitted for it at all."