It was Sally who opposed the doctor"s wish to send her to a hospital.
"If it"s only a question of getting back her health, she"d better die,"
she declared. "We"ve got but one chance with her, Dr. Giddings, to keep her here. When she finds out she"s been to a hospital, that will be the end of it with her kind. We"ll never get hold of her again. I"ll take care of Mrs. McQuillen."
Doctor Giddings was impressed by this wisdom.
"You think you have a chance, Miss Grower?" he asked. He had had a hospital experience.
Miss Grower was wont to express optimism in deeds rather than words.
"If I didn"t think so, I"d ask you to put a little more in your hypodermic next time," she replied.
And the doctor went away, wondering....
Drink! Convalescence brought little release for the watchers. The fiends would retire, pretending to have abandoned the field, only to swoop down again when least expected. There were periods of calm when it seemed as though a new and bewildered personality were emerging, amazed to find in life a kindly thing, gazing at the world as one new-born. And again, Mrs. McQuillen or Ella Finley might be seen running bareheaded across the street for Miss Grower. Physical force was needed, as the rector discovered on one occasion; physical force, and something more, a dauntlessness that kept Sally Grower in the room after the other women had fled in terror. Then remorse, despondency, another fear....
As the weeks went by, the relapses certainly became fewer. Something was at work, as real in its effects as the sunlight, but invisible. Hodder felt it, and watched in suspense while it fought the beasts in this woman, rending her frame in anguish. The frame might succ.u.mb, the breath might leave it to moulder, but the struggle, he knew, would go until the beasts were conquered. Whence this knowledge?--for it was knowledge.
On the quieter days of her convalescence she seemed, indeed, more Madonna than Magdalen as she sat against the pillows, her red-gold hair lying in two heavy plaits across her shoulders, her cheeks pale; the inner, consuming fires that smouldered in her eyes died down. At such times her newly awakened innocence (if it might be called such--pathetic innocence, in truth!) struck awe into Hodder; her wonder was matched by his own. Could there be another meaning in life than the pursuit of pleasure, than the weary effort to keep the body alive?
Such was her query, unformulated. What animated these persons who had struggled over her so desperately, Sally Grower, Mr. Bentley, and Hodder himself? Thus her opening mind. For she had a mind.
Mr. Bentley was the chief topic, and little by little he became exalted into a mystery of which she sought the explanation.
"I never knew anybody like him," she would exclaim.
"Why, I"d seen him on Dalton Street with the children following him, and I saw him again that day of the funeral. Some of the girls I knew used to laugh at him. We thought he was queer. And then, when you brought me to him that morning and he got up and treated me like a lady, I just couldn"t stand it. I never felt so terrible in my life. I just wanted to die, right then and there. Something inside of me kept pressing and pressing, until I thought I would die. I knew what it was to hate myself, but I never hated myself as I have since then.
"He never says anything about G.o.d, and you don"t, but when he comes in here he seems like G.o.d to me. He"s so peaceful,--he makes me peaceful.
I remember the minister in Madison,--he was a putty-faced man with indigestion,--and when he prayed he used to close his eyes and try to look pious, but he never fooled me. He never made me believe he knew anything about G.o.d. And don"t think for a minute he"d have done what you and Miss Grower and Mr. Bentley did! He used to cross the street to get out of the way of drunken men--he wouldn"t have one of them in his church. And I know of a girl he drove out of town because she had a baby and her sweetheart wouldn"t marry her. He sent her to h.e.l.l. h.e.l.l"s here--isn"t it?"
These sudden remarks of hers surprised and troubled him. But they had another effect, a constructive effect. He was astonished, in going over such conversations afterwards, to discover that her questions and his efforts to answer them in other than theological terms were both illuminating and stimulating. Sayings in the Gospels leaped out in his mind, fired with new meanings; so simple, once perceived, that he was amazed not to have seen them before. And then he was conscious of a palpitating joy which left in its wake a profound thankfulness. He made no attempt as yet to correlate these increments, these glimpses of truth into a system, but stored them preciously away.
He taxed his heart and intellect to answer her sensible and helpfully, and thus found himself avoiding the logic, the Greek philosophy, the outworn and meaningless phrases of speculation; found himself employing (with extraordinary effect upon them both) the simple words from which many of these theories had been derived. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." What she saw in Horace Bentley, he explained, was G.o.d. G.o.d wished us to know how to live, in order that we might find happiness, and therefore Christ taught us that the way to find happiness was to teach others how to live,--once we found out. Such was the meaning of Christ"s Incarnation, to teach us how to live in order that we might find G.o.d and happiness. And Hodder translated for her the word Incarnation.
Now, he asked, how were we to recognize G.o.d, how might we know how he wished us to live, unless we saw him in human beings, in the souls into which he had entered? In Mr. Bentley"s soul? Was this too deep?
She pondered, with flushed face.
"I never had it put to me like that," she said, presently. "I never could have known what you meant if I hadn"t seen Mr. Bentley."
Here was a return flash, for him. Thus, teaching he taught. From this germ he was to evolve for himself the sublime truth that the world grown better, not through automatic, soul-saving machinery, but by Personality.
On another occasion she inquired about "original sin;"--a phrase which had stuck in her memory since the stormings of the Madison preacher.
Here was a demand to try his mettle.
"It means," he replied after a moment, "that we are all apt to follow the selfish, animal instincts of our matures, to get all we can for ourselves without thinking of others, to seek animal pleasures. And we always suffer for it."
"Sure," she agreed. "That"s what happened to me."
"And unless we see and know some one like Mr. Bentley," he went on, choosing his words, "or discover for ourselves what Christ was, and what he tried to tell us, we go on "suffering, because we don"t see any way out. We suffer because we feel that we are useless, that other persons are doing our work."
"That"s what h.e.l.l is!" She was very keen. "h.e.l.l"s here," she repeated.
"h.e.l.l may begin here, and so may heaven," he answered.
"Why, he"s in heaven now!" she exclaimed, "it"s funny I never thought of it before." Of course she referred to Mr. Bentley.
Thus; by no accountable process of reasoning, he stumbled into the path which was to lead him to one of the widest and brightest of his vistas, the secret of eternity hidden in the Parable of the Talents! But it will not do to antic.i.p.ate this matter....
The divine in this woman of the streets regenerated by the divine in her fellow-creatures, was gasping like a new-born babe for breath. And with what anxiety they watched her! She grew strong again, went with Sally Drover and the other girls on Sunday excursions to the country, applied herself to her embroidery with restless zeal for days, only to have it drop from her nerveless fingers. But her thoughts were uncontrollable, she was drawn continually to the edge of that precipice which hung over the waters whence they had dragged her, never knowing when the vertigo would seize her. And once Sally Drover, on the alert for just such an occurrence, pursued her down Dalton Street and forced her back...
Justice to Miss Drover cannot be done in these pages. It was she who bore the brunt of the fierce resentment of the reincarnated fiends when the other women shrank back in fear, and said nothing to Mr. Bentley or Hodder until the incident was past. It was terrible indeed to behold this woman revert--almost in the twinkling of an eye--to a vicious wretch crazed for drink, to feel that the struggle had to be fought all over again. Unable to awe Sally Drover"s spirit, she would grow piteous.
"For G.o.d"s sake let me go--I can"t stand it. Let me go to h.e.l.l--that"s where I belong. What do you bother with me for? I"ve got a right."
Once the doctor had to be called. He shook his head but his eye met Miss Grower"s, and he said nothing.
"I"ll never be able to pull out, I haven"t got the strength," she told Hodder, between sobs. "You ought to have left me be, that was where I belonged. I can"t stand it, I tell you. If it wasn"t for that woman watching me downstairs, and Sally Grower, I"d have had a drink before this. It ain"t any use, I"ve got so I can"t live without it--I don"t want to live."
And then remorse, self-reproach, despair,--almost as terrible to contemplate. She swore she would never see Mr. Bentley again, she couldn"t face him.
Yet they persisted, and gained ground. She did see Mr. Bentley, but what he said to her, or she to him, will never be known. She didn"t speak of it....
Little by little her interest was aroused, her pride in her work stimulated. None was more surprised than Hodder when Sally Grower informed him that the embroidery was really good; but it was thought best, for psychological reasons, to discard the old table-cover with its a.s.sociations and begin a new one. On occasional evenings she brought her sewing over to Mr. Bentley"s, while Sally read aloud to him and the young women in the library. Miss Grower"s taste in fiction was romantic; her voice (save in the love pa.s.sages, when she forgot herself ) sing-song, but new and unsuspected realms were opened up for Kate Marcy, who would drop her work and gaze wide-eyed out of the window, into the darkness.
And it was Sally who must be given credit for the great experiment, although she took Mr. Bentley and Hodder into her confidence. On it they staked all. The day came, at last, when the new table-cover was finished. Miss Grower took it to the Woman"s Exchange, actually sold it, and brought back the money and handed it to her with a smile, and left her alone.
An hour pa.s.sed. At the end of it Kate Marcy came out of her room, crossed the street, and knocked at the door of Mr. Bentley"s library.
Hodder happened to be there.
"Come in," Mr. Bentley said.
She entered, breathless, pale. Her eyes, which had already lost much of the dissipated look, were alight with exaltation. Her face bore evidence of the severity of the hour of conflict, and she was perilously near to tears. She handed Mr. Bentley the money.
"What"s this, Kate?" he asked, in his kindly way.
"It"s what I earned, sir," she faltered. "Miss Grower sold the table-cover. I thought maybe you"d put it aside for me, like you do for the others.
"I"ll take good care of it," he said.
"Oh, sir, I don"t ever expect to repay you, and Miss Grower and Mr.
Hodder!
"Why, you are repaying us," he replied, cutting her short, "you are making us all very happy. And Sally tells me at the Exchange they like your work so well they are asking for more. I shouldn"t have suspected,"
he added, with a humorous glance at the rector, "that Mr. Hodder knew so much about embroidery."
He rose, and put the money in his desk,--such was his genius for avoiding situations which threatened to become emotional.