Death is terrible, it seems to me, only when we think of ourselves who are left behind, not when we think of those who go. Life is a thing so beautiful that it may be sad to think of them as deprived of it; but the more beautiful it is, the more I am a.s.sured that whatever power made the earth must be able to make something better. If life is good, a higher step in evolution must be n.o.bler; and however we mourn, none of us would dare to say that our grief is caused by the belief that our friends have through death gone on to sorrow.
March 8. This morning--
March 11. Mother was buried to-day. I have taken out this book to try to set down--to set down what? Not what I have felt since the end came.
That is not possible, and if it were, I have not the courage. I suppose the mournful truth is that in the dreadful loneliness which death has left in the house, I got out my diary as a companion. One"s own thoughts are forlorn company when they are so sad, but if they are written out they may come to have more reality, and the journal to seem more like another personality. How strange and shameful the weakness is which makes it hard for us to be alone; the feeling that we cannot endure the brooding universe about us unless we have hold of some human hand! Yet we are so small,--the poor, naked, timorous soul, a single fleck of thistle-down tossed about by all the winds which fill the immensities of an infinite universe. Why should we not be afraid? Father would say, "Why should we?" He believed that the universe took care of everything in it, because everything is part of itself. "You"ve only to think of our own human instinct of self-preservation on a scale as great as you can conceive," he told me the day before he died, "and you get some idea of the way in which the universal must protect the particular." I am afraid that I am not able to grasp the idea as he did. I have thought of it many times, and of how calm and dignified he was in those last days.
I am a woman, and the universe is so great that it turns me cold to think of it. I am able to get comfort out of Father"s idea only by remembering how sure he was of it, and how completely real it was to him. Yet Mother was as sure as he. She told me once that not to be entirely at ease would be to dishonor Father"s belief, and she was no less serene in the face of death than he was. Yes; it would be to dishonor them both to doubt, and I do not in my heart of hearts; but it is lonely, lonely.
March 12. It is touching to see how human kindness, the great sympathy with what is real and lasting in the human heart, overcomes the narrowness of creeds in the face of the great tragedy of death. Hannah would be horrified at any hint that she wavered in her belief, yet she said to me to-day:--
"Don"t you worry about your mother, Miss Ruth. She was a good woman, if her eyes were not opened to the truth as it is in Jesus. Her Heavenly Father"ll look after her. I guess she sees things some different now she"s face to face with Him; and I believe she had the root of the matter in her somehow, though she hadn"t grace given her to let her light shine among men."
Dear old Hannah! She is too loving in her heart not to be obliged to widen her theology when she is brought to the actual application of the awful belief she professes, and she is too human not to feel that a life so patient and so upright as Mother"s must lead to eternal peace, no matter what the creed teaches.
March 13. The gray kitten is chasing its tail before the fire, and I have been looking at it and the blazing wood through my tears until I could bear it no longer. The moonlight is on the snow in the graveyard, and must show that great black patch where the grave is. She cannot be there; she cannot be conscious of the bleak chill of the earth; and the question whether she is anywhere and is conscious at all is in my mind constantly. She must be; she cannot have gone out like a candle-flame.
She said to Mr. Saychase, that day Hannah brought him and Mother was too gentle to refuse to see him, that she had always believed G.o.d must have far too much self-respect not to take care of creatures He had made, and that she was not in the least troubled, because she did not feel any responsibility about what was to happen after death. She was right, of course; but he was horrified. He began to stammer out something, but Mother stopped him.
"I didn"t mean to shock you," she said gently; "but don"t you think, Mr.
Saychase, I am near enough to the end to have the privilege of saying what I really believe?"
He wouldn"t have been human if he could have resisted the voice that said it or the smile that enforced the words. Now she knows. She has found the heart of truth somewhere out there in the sky, which to us looks so wide, so thick with stars which might be abiding-places. She may have met Father. How much he, at least, must have to tell her!
Whether he would know about us or not, I cannot decide. In any case I think he would like her to tell him. She is learning wonderful things.
Yes; she knows, and I am sure she is glad.
March 14. George has been to see me. In the absorption and grief of the last fortnight I have hardly remembered him, and he has brought his wife home without my giving the matter a thought. It is wonderful that anything could so hold me that I have not been moved, but they came back the day after the funeral, and I did not hear of it until a couple of days later. It gave me a great shock when I saw him coming up the walk, but by the time he was in the house, I had collected myself, and I had, I think, my usual manner.
He was most kind and sympathetic, and yet he could not help showing how ill at ease he was. Perhaps he could not help reflecting that my duty to Mother had been the thing which kept us apart, and that it was strange for this to end just as there was no longer the possibility of our coming together.
I do not remember what George and I said to each other to-night, any more than I can recall what we said on that last time when he was here.
I might bring back that other talk out of the dull blur of pain, but where would be the good? Nothing could come of it but new suffering. We were both outwardly calm and self-possessed, I know, and talked less like lovers than like men of business. So a merchant might sell the remnants of a bankrupt fortune, I fancy; and when he was gone I went to prepare Mother"s night drink as calmly as if nothing had happened. I did not dare not to be calm.
To-night we met like the friends we promised to be. He was uncomfortable at first, but I managed to make him seem at ease, or at least not show that he felt strange. He looked at me rather curiously now and then. I think he was astonished that I showed no more feeling about our past. I cannot have him unhappy through me, and he must feel that at least I accept my fate serenely, or he will be troubled. I must not give myself the gratification of proving that I am constant. He may believe I am cold and perhaps heartless, but that is better than for him to feel responsible for my being miserable.
What did he tell me that night? It was in effect--though I think he hardly realized what he said or implied--how our long engagement had worn out the pa.s.sion of a lover, and he felt only the friendship of a brother; the coming of a new, real love had shown him the difference.
Does this mean that married love goes through such a change? Will he by and by have lived through his first love for his wife, and if so what will be left? That is not my concern; but would this same thing have come if I had been his wife, and should I now find myself, if we had been married when we hoped to be, only a friend who could not so fill his heart as to shut out a new love? Better a hundredfold that it should be as it is. At least he was not tied to me when the discovery came. But it is not always so. Certainly Father and Mother loved each other more after long years of living together.--But this is not a train of thought which it is well to follow. What is must be met and lived with; but I will not weaken my heart by dwelling on what might have been.
George was most kind to come, and it must have been hard for him; but I am afraid it was not a happy half-hour for either of us. I suppose that any woman brought face to face with a man she still loves when he has done with loving her must feel as if she were shamed. That is nonsense, however, and I fought against the feeling. Now I am happy in the thought that at least I have done one thing. I have made it possible for George to come to me if hereafter he need me. If he were in trouble and I could help, I know he would appeal to me as simply as ever. If I can help him, I am yet free to do it. I thank G.o.d for this!
March 16. I have asked Charlotte Kendall to stay with me for a while.
Dear old Miss Charlotte, she is so poor and so proud and so plucky! I know that she is half starving in that great, gaunt Kendall house, that looms up so among its Balm of Gilead trees, as if it were an asylum for the ghosts of all the bygone generations of the family. Somehow it seems to me that in America the "decayed gentlewomen," as they are unpleasantly called in England, have a harder time than anywhere else in the world. Miss Charlotte has to live up to her instincts and her traditions or be bitterly humiliated and miserable. People generally a.s.sume that the family pride behind this is weak if it is not wicked; but surely the ideal of an honorable race, cultivated and right-minded for generations, is a thing to be cherished. The growth of civilization must depend a good deal upon having these ideas of family preserved somehow. Father used to say the great weakness of modern times is that nowadays the best of the race, instead of saying to those below, "Climb up to us," say, "We will come down to you." I suppose this is hardly a fair summing up of modern views of social conditions, though of course I know very little about them; but I am sure that the way in which cla.s.s distinctions are laughed at is a mistake. I hope I hate false pride as much as anybody could; yet dear Miss Charlotte, trying hard not to disgrace her ancestors, and being true to her idea of what a gentlewoman should do, is to me pathetic and fine. She cares more for the traditions of her race than she does for her own situation; and anybody who did not admire this strong and unselfish spirit must look at life from a point of view that I cannot understand. I can have her here now on an excuse that she will not suspect, and she shall be fed and rested as she has not been for years.
March 17. I forgot Miss Charlotte"s plants when I asked her to come here. I went over this morning to invite her, and I found her tr.i.m.m.i.n.g her great oleander tree with tender little snips and with loving glances which were like those a mother gives her pet child in dressing it for a party. The sun came in at the bay window, and the geraniums which are the pride of Miss Charlotte"s heart were coming finely into blossom. If the poor old soul is ever really happy it is in the midst of her plants, and things grow for her as for n.o.body else.
"Do look, Ruth," she said with the greatest eagerness; "that slip of heather that came from the wreath is really sprouting. I do think it will live."
She brought me a vial full of greenish water into which was stuck a bit of heather from the wreath that Cousin Mehitable sent for Mother. Miss Charlotte had asked me if she might go to the graveyard for the slip.
She was so pathetic when she spoke of it!
"It isn"t just to have a new plant," she said. "It is partly that it would always remind me of your mother, and I should love it for that."
To-day she was wonderful. Her eyes shone as she looked at the twig, and showed me the tiny white point, like a little mouse"s tooth, that had begun to come through the bark under the green water. It was as if she had herself somehow accomplished the miracle of creation. I could have taken her into my arms and cried over her as she stood there so happy with just this slip and her plants for family and riches.
I told her my errand, and she began to look troubled. Unconsciously, I am sure, she glanced around at the flowers, and in an instant I understood.
"Oh, I beg your pardon," I said before she had time to speak, "I forgot that you cannot leave the plants."
"I was thinking how I could manage," she answered, evidently troubled between the wish to oblige me and the thought that her precious plants could not be left.
"You need not manage," I said. "I was foolish enough not to think of them. Of course you can"t leave them."
"I might come over in the daytime," she proposed hesitatingly. "I could make up the fire in the morning, and at this time of the year the room would be warm enough for them till I came back at night. I know you must be most lonely at night, and I would stay as late as I could."
"You are a dear thing," I said, and her tone brought tears to my eyes.
"If you will come over after breakfast and stay until after supper that will do nicely,--if you think you can spare the time."
"There"s nothing I can spare better," she said, laughing. "I"m like the man that was on his way to jail and was met by a beggar. "I"ve nothing to give you but time," he said, "and that his Honor just gave me, so I don"t like to give it away." That"s one of your father"s stories, Ruth."
I stayed talking with her for an hour, and it was touching to see how she was trying to be entertaining and to make me cheerful. I did come away with my thoughts entirely taken off of myself and my affairs, and that is something.
March 20. It has done me good to have Miss Charlotte here. She makes her forlorn little jests and tells her stories in her big voice, and somehow all the time is thinking, I can see, of brightening the days for me.
Peter was completely scornful for two days, but now he pa.s.ses most of his time in her lap, condescending, of course, but gracious.
Miss Charlotte has been as dear and kindly as possible, and to-night in the twilight she told me the romance of her life. I do not know how it came about. I suppose that she was thinking of Mother and wanted me to know what Mother had been to her. Perhaps, too, she may have had a feeling that it would comfort me to know that she understood out of her own suffering the pain that had come to me through George"s marriage.
I do not remember her father and mother. They both died when I was very young. I have heard that Mr. Kendall was a very handsome man, who scandalized the village greatly by his love of horses and wine, but Father used to tell me he was a scholar and a cultivated man. I am afraid he did not care very much for the comfort of others; and Aunt Naomi always speaks of him as a rake who broke his wife"s heart.
Charlotte took care of him after Mrs. Kendall died, and was devoted to him, they say. She was a middle-aged woman before she was left alone with that big house, and she sold the Kendall silver to pay his debts.
To-night she spoke of him with a sort of pitiful pride, yet with an air as if she had to defend him, perhaps even to herself.
"I"m an old woman, Ruth," she said, "and my own life seems to me like an old book that I read so long ago that I only half remember it. It is forty years since I was engaged."
It is strange I had never known of this before; but I suppose it pa.s.sed out of people"s minds before I was old enough to notice.
"I never knew you had been engaged, Miss Charlotte," I said.
"Then your mother never told you what she did for me," she answered, looking into the fire. "That was like her. She was more than a mother to me at the time"--She broke off, and then repeated, "It was like her not to speak of it. There are few women like your mother, Ruth."
We were both silent for a time, and I had to struggle not to break down.
Miss Charlotte sat looking into the fire with the tears running unchecked down her wrinkled cheeks. She did not seem conscious of them, and the thought came to me that there had been so much sadness in her life that she was too accustomed to tears to notice them.
"It is forty years," she said again. "I was called a beauty then, though you"d find that hard to believe now, Ruth, when I"m like an old scarecrow in a cornfield. I suppose no young person ever really believes that an old woman can have been beautiful unless there"s a picture to prove it. I"ll show you a daguerreotype some time; though, after all, what difference does it make? At least he thought"--