"I couldn"t. She ran away as soon as I called to her. She"ll end in a lunatic asylum if you don"t get hold of her."
I could only shake my head.
"What can I do, Miss Charlotte?" I asked her. "The trouble is she is half crazy about sin and judgment, and things of that sort that I don"t even believe in at all. What can I say? You don"t want me to tell her her father"s religion is a mistake, I suppose."
Miss Charlotte smiled serenely, and regarded me with a look of much sweet kindliness.
"You"re a fearful heathen, Ruth," was her response, "but you have a fine wheedling way with you. Couldn"t you persuade her she"s too young to think about such things?"
"I"ve tried something of the kind, but she says she is not too young to die. She is like a child out of an old memoir. She isn"t of our time at all. We read of that sort of a girl, but I supposed they all died a hundred years ago."
"I doubt if there ever were such girls," Miss Charlotte returned with candor; "except once in a very great while. I think the girls of the memoirs were very much like the rest of us most of the time. They probably had spells of being like Kathie. The difference is that she is at boiling point all the time."
"Of course it"s her father," I said thoughtfully.
"Yes," she a.s.sented. "He"s such a rampant Methodist."
I could not help the shadow of a smile, and when she saw it Miss Charlotte could no more help smiling in her turn.
"Of course you think it"s a case of the pot"s calling the kettle black,"
she said, "but the Methodists do make such a business of frightening folks out of their wits. We don"t do that."
I let this pa.s.s, and asked if she couldn"t make some practical suggestion for the treatment of Kathie.
"I can"t tell you how to dilute her Methodism," she returned with a shrewd twinkle in her eye. "You must know the way better than I do."
I am troubled and perplexed. I have so many times wondered what I ought to do about talking to Kathie. I have always felt that the fact her father trusted her with me put me on my honor not to say things to her of which he would not approve. It seemed unwise, too, for the child to have any more turmoil in her brain than is there already; and I know that to make her doubt would be to drive her half distracted. The question is whether she has not really begun to doubt already, and needs to be helped to think fearlessly. She is a strange survival from another century. Our grandmothers used to agonize over sin, it is claimed, although I think Miss Charlotte is probably right when she says they were after all a good deal like us. At any rate they were brought up to dread eternal punishment, but it is astonishing to find anybody now who receives this as anything but a theory. Belief in the old creeds would seem impossible in these days except in a conventional and remote fashion; and yet Kathie takes it all with the desperation of two hundred years ago. If she were to listen to a suggestion of using her creed less like a hair-shirt, she would feel she had committed an appalling transgression. She is only a baby after all, and heaven knows what business she has with creeds anyway. I would as soon think of giving Tomine dynamite bombs to play with.
I said something of this sort to Miss Charlotte, and she agreed with me that Kathie ought not to brood over theologic questions, but she thought even a child ought, as she put it, instinctively falling into the conventional phraseology of the church, to make her peace with G.o.d. I am so glad that n.o.body ever put it into my childish head that I could ever be at war with G.o.d.
Peter has made a leap to the table, and set his foot on my wet writing.
Evidently he thinks it foolish to waste time in this sort of scribbling; but I do wish I knew what I can do and what I ought to do.
July 15. Deacon Daniel Webbe came this afternoon to see his granddaughter. Mrs. Webbe--had forbidden him, I was about to write, but perhaps that is not fair. He only said she thought he had better not come, and he tried clumsily to hint that he hoped I would not betray him. It was touching to see him, he was so much moved by the beauty and the daintiness of baby, and by all the thoughts he must have had about Tom. He said little, only that he spoke with a good deal of feeling of how good it is in Tom to stay at home and take charge of the farm; but tears were in his patient eyes, and he looked at Tomine with a glance so pathetic that I had to go away to wipe my own.
I find that having baby here naturally keeps my thoughts a good deal on Tom and his possible future. I can"t help the feeling that I owe him some sort of reparation for the devotion he has given me all these years. Surely a woman owes a man something for his caring for her so, even if she cannot feel in the same way toward him. Tom has always been a part of my life. We were boy and girl together long before I knew George. When the Westons moved here, I must have been ten or twelve years old; and I never knew George until Father took him into the office. It was the winter Father had first been ill, and he had to have an a.s.sistant at once. I remember perfectly the excellent reports Father got from some office in Boston where George had been, and these decided him. He had been inclined not to like George at the beginning. I think I first became interested in George through defending him.
George always seemed rather to prefer that I should not know his people, and this struck me as strange. The less admirable they were the more Tom would have insisted upon my knowing them. Dear old Tom! How many times he has told me of his own faults, and never of his good deeds. He is certainly one of the most stubbornly honest creatures alive.
Tom and George are about as different as two mortals could be. George has very little of Tom"s frankness, and he has not much of Tom"s independence. Father used to declare that George would always be led by a woman, but would never own it to himself. I wonder if this is true. He is being led now by his wife. I fancy, though, he has no idea of such a thing. Tom would lead wherever he was.
I have rambled far enough away from Deacon Daniel and the baby. I do hope Tomine will have her father"s honesty. If she have that, other things may be got over. Deacon Daniel spoke of her having her father"s eyes, and she could hardly have Tom"s eyes and not be straightforward.
July 20. Mr. Saychase has taken to frequent pastoral visitations of late. He probably feels now that the moral welfare of baby is involved he must be especially active. I wish he did not bore me so, for he comes often, and I do wish to be friendly.
To-night he seemed rather oddly interested in my plans for the future.
"I hope that you mean to remain in Tuskamuck," he said. "Some folks think you are likely to move to Boston."
I told him that I had no such intention, and reminded him that baby made a new bond between me and the place.
"Oh, the baby," he responded, it seemed to me rather blankly. "You mean, I presume, that you contemplate keeping the infant."
"Keeping her?" I responded. "Why, I have adopted her."
"I heard so," Mr. Saychase admitted; "but I did not credit the report. I suppose you will place her in some sort of a home."
"Yes," I answered; "in my home."
He flushed a little, and as he was my guest I set myself to put him at his ease. But I should like to understand why everybody is so determined that Tomine shall be sent to a "Home."
July 21. I went to see old lady Andrews to-day. She was as sweet and dear as ever, and as immaculate as if she had just been taken out of rose-leaves and lavender. She never has a hair of her white curls out of place, and her cheeks are at seventy-five pinker than mine. I like to see her in her own house, for she seems to belong to the time of the antique furniture, so entirely is she in harmony with it. I get a fresh sense of virtue every time I look at her beautiful old laces. I wonder if the old masters ever painted angels in thread laces; if not it was a great oversight. Dear old lady Andrews, she has had enough sorrow in her life to embitter any common mortal; her husband, her two sons, and her near kin are all dead before her; but she is too sweet and fine to degenerate. When sorrow does not sour, how it softens and enn.o.bles.
Old lady Andrews was greatly interested about baby, and we gossiped of her in a delightful way for half an hour.
"It pleases me very much, Ruth," she said at last, "to see how motherly you are. I never had any doubt about you at all except that I wondered whether you could really mother a baby. I knew you would love it, and be kind, of course; but babies ought to have motherliness if they are really to thrive."
I flushed with pleasure, and asked if she meant that she had thought me cut out for an old maid.
"If I did," she answered, with that smile of hers which always makes me want to kiss her on the spot, "I shall never think so again. You"ve the genuine mother-instinct."
She looked at me a moment as if questioning with herself.
"The truth is," she went on, as if she had made up her mind to say the whole, "you have been for years making an intellectual interest do instead of real love, and of course your manner showed it."
I could not ask her what she meant, though I only half understood, and I wished to hear more. She grew suddenly more serious, and spoke in a lower tone.
"Ruth," she asked, "I am an old woman, and I am fond of you. May I say something that may sound impertinent?"
Of course I told her she might say anything, and that I knew she could not be impertinent. I could not think what was coming. She leaned forward, and put her thin hand on mine, the little Tennant hand with its old-fashioned rings.
"It is just this, Ruth. Be careful whom you marry. I"m so afraid you"ll marry somebody out of charity. At least don"t think of being a parson"s wife."
"A parson"s wife?" I echoed stupidly, not in the least seeing what she meant.
"That would be worse than to take up with the prodigal son," she added, not heeding my interrogation; "though it does seem to me, my dear, that you are too good to be just served up like a fatted calf in honor of his return."
I stared at her with bewilderment so complete that she burst into a soft laugh, as mellow as her old laces.
"I am speaking parables, of course, and it"s no matter now about the prodigal. I only wanted to suggest that you are not just the wife for Mr. Saychase, and"--
"Mr. Saychase!" I burst out, interrupting her, I think, for the first time in my life. "Why, who ever thought of anything so preposterous?"
"Oh, you innocent!" she laughed. "I knew you"d be the last one to see it, and I wanted to warn you so that he need not take you entirely by surprise. He is my pastor, and a very good man in his way; but he isn"t our kind, my dear."
I sat staring at her in a sort of daze, while I suddenly remembered how much Mr. Saychase has been to see me lately, and how self-conscious he has seemed sometimes. I had not a word to say, even in protest, and old lady Andrews having, I suppose, accomplished all she wished in warning me, dropped the subject entirely, and turned back to Thomasine"s doings and welfare.