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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.body"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?"