"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 coa.r.s.e, 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 n.o.body 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 coa.r.s.eness 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 manner pitifully wheedling. "She was my gel before she was anybody else"s, and it ain"t goin" to hurt n.o.body for me to see her. I"d like to see that shroud."
How much natural grief, how much vanity, how much maudlin excitement was in her wish, I cannot tell; but manifestly there was nothing to do but to have the coffin opened. When the face of the dead woman had once more been uncovered to the light, the dreadful mother hung over it raving and chuckling. Now she shrieked for her handsome Jule, and wailed in a way that pierced to the marrow; then she would fall to imbecile laughter over the shroud, "just like a lady"s,--but then Jule was a lady after she was married." Miss Charlotte, Tom, and I stood apart, while Mr.
Thurston tried to get the excited creature away; and the grave-diggers looked on with open curiosity. I could not help thinking how they would tell the story, and of how Tom"s name would be bandied about in connection with it. Sometimes I feel as if it were harder to bear the vulgarities of life than actual sorrows. Father used to say that pain is personal, but vulgarity a violation of general principles. This is one of his sayings which I do not feel that I understand entirely, and yet I have some sense of what he meant. A thing which is vulgar seems to fly in the face of all that should be, and outrages our sense of the fitness of things.
Well, somehow we got through it all. It is over, and Julia is in her grave. I cannot but think that it is better if she does not remember; if she has gone out like an ill-burning candle. Nothing is left now but to consider what can be done for the lives that we can reach. I am afraid that the mother is beyond me, but for Tom I can, perhaps, do something.
For baby I should do much.
April 25. It is so strange to have a child in the house. I feel queer and disconcerted when I think of it, although things seem to go easily enough. The responsibility of taking charge of a helpless life overwhelms me, and I do not dare to let my thoughts go when they begin to picture possibilities in the future. I wonder that I ever dared to undertake to have baby; and yet her surroundings will be so much better here than with the dreadful Brownrig grandmother that she must surely be better for them. In any case I had to help Tom.
I proposed a permanent nurse for baby, but Hannah and Rosa took up arms at once, and all but upbraided me with having cast doubts on their ability and faithfulness. Surely we three women among us should be able to take care of one morsel, although none of us ever had babies of our own.
April 29. Nothing could be more absurd than the way in which the entire household now revolves about baby. All of us are completely slaves already, although the way in which we show it is naturally different.
Rosa has surrendered frankly and without reservations. She sniffed and pouted at the idea of having the child "of that Brownrig creature" in the house. She did not venture to say this to me directly, of course; but she relieved her mind by making remarks to Hannah when I could not help hearing. From the moment baby came, however, Rosa succ.u.mbed without a struggle. It is evident she is born with the full maternal instinct, and I see if she does not marry her Dennis, or some more eligible lover, and take herself away before baby is old enough to be much affected, the child will be spoiled to an unlimited extent. As for Hannah, her method of showing her affection is to exhibit the greatest solicitude for baby"s spiritual welfare, mingled with the keenest jealousy of Rosa"s claims on baby"s love. I foresee that I shall have pretty hard work to protect my little daughter from Hannah"s well-meant but not very wise theology; and how to do this without hurting the good old soul"s feelings may prove no easy problem.
As for myself--of course I love the little, helpless, pink thing; the waif from some outside unknown brought here into a world where everything is made so hard to her from the start. She woke this afternoon, and looked up at me with Tom Webbe"s eyes, lying there as sweet and happy as possible, so that I had to kiss and cuddle her, and love her all at once. It is wonderful how a baby comes out of the most dreadful surroundings as a seedling comes out of the mud, so clean and fresh. I said this to Aunt Naomi yesterday, and she sniffed cynically.
"Yes," she answered, "but a weed grows into a weed, no matter how it looks when it is little."
The thought is dreadful to me. I will not believe that because a human being is born out of weakness and wickedness there is no chance for it.
The difference, it seems to me, is that every human being has at least the germs of good as well as of bad, and one may be developed as well as the other. Baby must have much that is good and fine from her father, and the thing I have to do is to see to it that the best of her grows, and the worse part dies for want of nourishment. Surely we can do a great deal to aid nature. Perhaps my baby cannot help herself much, at least not for years and years; but if she is kept in an atmosphere which is completely wholesome, whatever is best in her nature must grow strong and crowd down everything less n.o.ble.
V
MAY
May 1. Baby is more bewitching every day. She is so wonderful and so lovely that I am never tired of watching her. The miracle of a baby"s growth makes one stand speechless in delight and awe. When this little morsel of life, hardly as many days in the world as I have been years, coos and smiles, and stretches out those tiny rosebud fingers only big enough for a fairy, I feel like going down on my knees to the mystery of life. I do not wonder that people pray. I understand entirely the impulse to cry out to something mighty, something higher than our own strength, some sentient heart of nature somewhere; the desire to find, by leaning on the invisible, a relief from the oppressiveness of the emotions we all must feel when a sense of the greatness of life takes hold on us. If it were but possible to believe in any of the many G.o.ds that have been offered to us, how glad I should be. Father used to say that every human being really makes a deity for himself, and that the difference between believers and unbelievers is whether they can allow the church to give a name to the G.o.d a man has himself created. I cannot accept any name from authority, but the sense of some brooding power is very strong in me when I see this being growing as if out of nothing in my very hands.
When I look at baby I have so great a consciousness of the life outside of us, the life of the universe as a whole, that I am ready to agree with any one who talks of G.o.d. The trouble is that one idea of deity seems to me as true and also as inadequate as all the rest; so that in the end I am left with only my overwhelming sense of the mightiness of the mystery of existence and of the unity of all the life in the universe.
May 2. To-day we named baby. I would not do it without consulting her father, so I sent for Tom, and he came over just after breakfast. The day has been warm, and the windows were open; a soft breath of wind came in with a feeling of spring in it, and a faint hint of a summer coming by and by. I was upstairs in the nursery when Tom came; for we have made a genuine, full-fledged nursery of the south chamber, and installed Rosa and the baby there. When they told me that he was here, I took baby, all pink and sweet from her bath, and went down with her.
Tom stood with his back to the parlor door, looking out of the window.
He did not hear me until I spoke, and said good-morning. Then he turned quickly. At sight of baby he changed color, and forgot to answer my greeting. He came across the room toward us, so that we met in the middle of the floor.
"Good G.o.d, Ruth!" he said. "To think of seeing you with her baby in your arms!"
The words hurt me for myself and for him.
"Tom," I cried out excitedly, "I will not hear you say anything against baby! It is neither hers nor yours now. It is mine, mine! You shall not speak of her as if she were anything but the sweetest, purest thing in the whole world!"