"What is the matter? You are becoming like me."
Edith fled to her room, and sobbed and cried and tried to pray till her strength was gone. The sweet trust and peace she had once enjoyed seemed like a past dream. She was learning by bitter experience that it can never be right to do wrong; and that a first false step, like a false premise, leads to sad conclusions.
She had insisted that her mother should not speak of the matter till it became absolutely necessary, therefore Laura, Zell, and none of her friends could understand her.
Arden was the most puzzled and pained of all, for she shrank from him with increasing dread. He was now back at his farm work, though he said to Edith one day despondently that he had no heart to work, for the mortgage on their place would probably be foreclosed in the fall.
She longed to tell him how she was situated, but she saw he was unable to help her, and she dreaded to see the scorn come into his trusting, loving eyes; she could not endure his absolute confidence in her, and in his presence her heart ached as if it would break, so she shunned him till he grew very unhappy, and sighed:
"There"s something wrong. She finds I am not congenial. I shall lose her friendship," and his aching heart also admitted, as never before, how dear it was to him.
Nature was awakening with the rapture of another spring; birds were coming back to old haunts with ecstatic songs; flowers budding into their brief but exquisite life, and the trees aglow with fragrant prophecies of fruit; but a winter of fear and doubt was chilling these two hearts into something far worse than nature"s seeming death.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV
SAVED
Edith"s efforts still to help Zell to better things were very pathetic, considering how unhappy and tempted she was herself. She did try, even when her own heart was breaking, to bring peace and hope to the poor creature, but she was taught how vain her efforts were, in her present mood, by Zell"s saying, sharply:
"Physician, heal thyself."
Though Zell did not understand Edith, she saw that she was almost as unhappy as herself, and she had lost hope in everybody and everything.
Though she had not admitted it, Edith"s words and kindness at first had excited her wonder, and, perhaps, a faint glimmer of hope; but, as she saw her sister"s face cloud with care, and darken with pain and fear, she said, bitterly:
"Why did she talk with me so? It was all a delusion. What is G.o.d doing for her any more than for me?"
But, in order to give Zell occupation, and something to think about besides herself, Edith had induced her to take charge of the flowers in the garden.
"They won"t grow for me," Zell had said at first. "They will wither when I look at them, and white blossoms will turn black as I bend over them."
"Nonsense!" said Edith, with irritation; "won"t you do anything to help me?"
"Oh, certainly," wearily answered Zell. "I will do the work just as you tell me. If they do die, it don"t matter. We can eat or sell them." So Zell began to take care of the flowers, doing the work in a stealthy manner, and hiding when any one came.
The month of May was unusually warm, and Edith was glad, for it would hasten things forward. That upon which she now bent almost agonized effort and thought was the possibility of paying the interest on the mortgage by the middle of June, when it was due. All hope concentrated on her strawberries, as they would be the first crop worth mentioning that she could depend on from her place. She gave the plants the most careful attention. Not a weed was suffered to grow, and between the rows she placed carefully, with her own hands, leaves she raked up in the orchard, so that the ground might be kept moist and the fruit clean. Almost every hour of the day her eyes sought the strawberry-bed, as the source of her hope. If that failed her, no bleeding human sacrifice in all the cruel past could surpa.s.s in agony her fate.
The vines began to blossom with great promise, and at first she almost counted them in her eager expectation. Then the long rows looked like little banks of snow, and she exulted over the prospect. Laura was once about to pick one of the blossoms, but she stopped her almost fiercely. She would get up in the night, and stand gazing at the lines of white, as she could trace them in the darkness across the garden.
So the days pa.s.sed on till the last of May, and the blossoms grew scattering, but there were mult.i.tudes of little green berries, from the size of a pea to that of her thimble, and some of them began to have a white look. She so minutely watched them develop that she could have almost defined the progress day by day. Once Zell looked at her wonderingly, and said:
"Edith, you are crazy over that strawberry-bed. I believe you worship it."
For a time Edith"s hopes daily rose higher as the vines gave finer promise, but during the last week of May a new and terrible source of danger revealed itself, a danger that she knew not how to cope with--drought.
It had not rained since the middle of May. She saw that many of her young and tender vegetables were wilting, but the strawberries, mulched with leaves, did not appear to mind it at first. Still she knew they would suffer soon, unless there was rain. Most anxiously she watched the skies. Their serenity mocked her when she was so clouded with care. Wild storms would be better than these balmy, sunny days.
The first of June came, the second, third, and fourth, and here and there a berry was turning red, but the vines were beginning to wilt.
The suspense became so great she could hardly endure it. Her faith in G.o.d began to waver. Every breath almost was a prayer for rain, but the sunny days pa.s.sed like mocking smiles.
"Is there a G.o.d?" she queried desperately. "Can I have been deceived in all my past happy experience?" She shuddered at the answer that the tempter suggested, and yet, like a drowning man, she still clung to her faith.
During the long evening, she and Hannibal sought to save the bed by carrying water from the well, but they could do so little, it only seemed to show them how utterly dependent they were on the natural rain from heaven; but the skies seemed laughing at her pain and fear.
Moreover, she noticed that those they watered appeared injured rather than helped, as is ever the case where it is insufficiently done, and she saw that she must helplessly wait.
Arden Lacey had been away for a week, and, returning in the dusk of the evening, saw her at work watering, before she had come to this conclusion. His heart was hungry, even for the sight of her, and he longed for her to let him stop for a little chat as of old. So he said, timidly:
"Good-evening, Miss Allen, haven"t you a word to welcome me back with?"
"Oh!" cried Edith, not heeding his salutation, "why don"t it rain! I shall lose all my strawberries."
His voice jarred upon her heart, now too full, and she ran into the house to hide her feelings, and left him. Even the thought of him now, in her morbid state, began to pierce her like a sword.
"She thinks more of her paltry strawberry-bed than of me," muttered Arden, and he stalked angrily homeward. "What is the matter with Miss Allen?" he asked his mother abruptly. "I don"t understand her."
"Nor I either," said Mrs. Lacey with a sigh.
The next morning was very warm, and Edith saw that the day would be hotter than any that preceded. A dry wind sprang up and it seemed worse than the sun. The vines began to wither early after the coolness of the night, and those she had watered suffered the most, and seemed to say to her mockingly:
"You can"t do anything."
"Oh, heaven!" cried Edith, almost in despair, "there is a black hand pushing me down."
In an excited, feverish manner she roamed restlessly around and could settle down to nothing. She scanned the horizon for a cloud, as the shipwrecked might for a sail.
"Edie, what is the matter?" said Laura, putting her arms about her sister.
"It won"t rain," said Edith, bursting into tears. "My home, my happiness, everything depends on rain, and look at these skies."
"But won"t He send it?" asked Laura, gently.
"Why don"t He, then?" said Edith, almost in irritation. Then, in a sudden pa.s.sion of grief, she hid her face in her sister"s lap, and sobbed, "Oh, Laura, Laura, I feel I am losing my faith in Him. Why does He treat me so?"
Here Laura"s face grew troubled and fearful also. Her faith in Christ was so blended with her faith in Edith that she could not separate them in a moment. "I don"t understand it, Edie," she faltered. "He seems to have taken care of me, and has been very kind since that--that night But I don"t understand your feeling so."
"Oh, oh, oh!" sobbed Edith, "I don"t know what to think--what to believe; and I fear I shall hurt your faith," and she shut herself up in her room, and looked despairingly out to where the vines were drooping in the fierce heat.
"If they don"t get help to-day, my hopes will wither like their leaves," she said, with pallid lips. As the sun declined in the west, she went out and stood beside them, as one might by a dying friend.
Her fresh young face seemed almost growing aged and wrinkled under the ordeal. She had prayed that afternoon, as never before in her life, for help, and now, with a despairing gesture upward, she said:
"Look at that brazen sky!"
But the noise of the opening gate caused her to look thither, and there was Arden entering, with a great barrel on wheels, which was drawn by a horse. His heart, so weak toward her, had relented during the day. "I vowed to serve her, and I will," he thought. "I will be her slave, if she will permit."
Edith did not understand at first, and he came toward her so humbly, as if to ask a great favor, that it would have been comic, had not his sincerity made it pathetic.
"Miss Allen," he said, "I saw you trying to water your berries.