The Diary of a Saint

August 17. Baby was ill night before last, and we three women were smitten to the heart. Hannah went for Dr. Wentworth, and when he came he laughed at our panic, and assured me nothing serious was the matter. It was only a little indigestion caused by the excessive heat. I do not know how I should have behaved if it had not been that Rosa was in such a panic I had to give all my spare attention to keeping her in order. It came to me then what an advantage an officer must have in a battle; he cannot break down because he has to look to his men. Last night I wished greatly Tom were in reach; it would have been dreadful if anything really serious had happened to baby, and he not to know it until it was too late. Yet he could have done nothing if the worst had been true and he had been here. It would have been no comfort to poor little sick Tomine to have one person by her more than another, so long as her nurses were not strangers. A father is nothing to her yet. I wonder when he will be.

Yesterday Tomine was better, and to-night she seems as well as ever; but it will take time for me to be rid entirely of fear. I wonder if she had gone whether her little bunch of vitality would have been scattered through new lives. She can hardly have much personality or individuality yet. Sometimes the universe, the power that keeps going on and on, and which is so unmoved by human pain, strikes me as too terrible for thought; but I cling desperately to Father's idea that nature is too great to be unkind, and that what looks to us like cruelty is only the size of things too big for us to grasp. It is a riddle, and the way I put it is neither so clear nor wise, I suppose, as the theories of countless religious teachers, they and I alike guessing at things human insight is not equal to. I doubt much if it is profitable to speculate in this vein. "Think all you can about life as a good and glorious thing," Father wrote to me once when I had expressed in a school-letter some trouble or other about what comes after death, "but keep in mind that of what came before we were born or will happen after we are dead we shall never in this life know anything, no matter how much we speculate, so dreaming about it or fretting about it is simply building air-castles." I have said over to myself ever since I began to be perplexed that to speculate about another life is to build air-castles.

Baby is well again and I will not fret or dream of what it would mean if she had slipped away from us.

August 20. I must settle myself a little by writing, or I shall be like old Mrs. Tuell, who said that for years she never slept a wink because her nerves wiggled like angleworms all over her inside. I have certainly been through an experience which might make anybody's nerves wiggle.

About half past two o'clock Rosa brought me a note, and said: —

"That Thurston girl left it, and told me not to give it to you till three o'clock; but if I don't give it to you now, I know I'd forget it."

I opened the note without thinking anything about the time. It was written in Kathie's uneven hand, and blotched as if it had been cried over. This is what it said: —

Dear Miss Ruth, – This letter is to bid you good-by. You are the only one in the world I love, and nobody loves me. I cant stand you to love that baby better than me, and God is so angry it dont make any difference what I do now. When you read this I shall be in torment forever, because I am going down to Davis Cove to drownd myself because I am so wicked and nobody loves me. Dont tell on me, because it would make you feel bad and father wouldnt like it to get round a child of his had drownd herself and mother would cry. Yours truly and with a sad and loving good-by forever,

Kathie Thurston.

P. S. If they get me to bury will you please put some flowers on my coffin. No more from yours truly

K. T.

My first impulse was to laugh at this absurd note, but it came over me suddenly that there was no knowing what that child will do. Even now I am bewildered. I cannot get it out of my mind that there is a good deal of the theatrical in Kathie, but I may be all wrong. At any rate I reflected how she has a way of acting so that apparently she can herself take it for real.

I thought it over a while; then I got my hat and started down the street, with the notion that at least it would do no harm to go down to Davis Cove, and see if Kathie were there. As I walked on, recalling her incomprehensible actions, a dreadful feeling grew in my mind that she might have meant what she said, and she would be more likely to try to drown herself because she had told me. A sort of panic seized me; and just then the town clock struck three.

I had got down just opposite the Foot-bridge, and when I remembered that three was the time when I was to have the note, I feared I should be too late, and I began to run. Fortunately, there was nobody in sight, and as I came to the bend in the street I saw George coming, leading Kathie by the arm. She was dripping wet, and half staggering, although she kept her feet. I hurried up to them, too much out of breath with haste and excitement to be able to speak.

"Hullo!" George called out, as I came up to them, "see what a fish I've caught."

"Why, Kathie," gasped I, with a stupidity that was lucky, for it kept George from suspecting, "you've been in the water."

She gave me a queer look, but she said nothing.

"A little more and she'd have stayed there," George put in.

"You are wet too," I said, looking at him for the first time.

"Yes," he returned; "luckily I got off my coat and vest as I ran, so I saved my watch, but everything else is wet fast enough."

"How did it happen?" I asked.

"She was trying to get sugar-pears from those trees by the water," George answered; "and I suppose she lost her balance. I was going along the road and heard her scream."

"Along the road?" I echoed; for I knew Davis Cove is too far from the road for him to have heard a cry.

"She fell in just by the old shipyard on the point," he said.

"The boys were in swimming in the cove," Kathie explained, in a way which was of course unintelligible to George.

"Well," George commented, after a moment in which he seemed to clear up her meaning, "the next time you want sugar-pears you'd better get them when the boys are out of the way, so you needn't go in swimming yourself."

We had been walking along the road as we talked, and by this time had reached the Foot-bridge. I told George he must go home and get on dry clothing, and I would see to Kathie. He demurred at first, but I insisted, so he left us to cross the bridge alone. We walked in silence almost across the bridge, and then I asked her what kept bumping against me as I held her up.

"It's rocks in my pocket," she answered, quite in a matter-of-fact way. "I put 'em there to sink me."

I could have shaken her on the spot, so uncharitable was my mood, but I managed to answer her in a perfectly cool tone.

"Then you had better take them out," I said.

She got her hand into her pocket and fished out three or four pebbles, which all together wouldn't have sunk a three-days-old-kitten; and when these had been thrown over the bridge we proceeded on our drabbled way. My doubts of the genuineness of the whole performance grew in spite of me. I do not know exactly why I am coming so strongly to feel that Kathie is not wholly ingenuous, but I cannot get rid of the idea.

"Kathie," I asked, "did you see Mr. Weston coming when you jumped in?"

She looked up at me with eyes so honest I was ashamed of myself, but when she answered unhesitatingly that she had seen him, I went on ruthlessly to ask if she did not know he would save her.

"I thought if he was coming I'd got to hurry," she returned, as simply as possible.

I was more puzzled than ever, and I am puzzled still. Whether she really meant to take her life, or whether she only thought she meant it, does not, I suppose, make any great difference; but I confess I have been trying to make out ever since I left her. I would like to discover whether she is consciously trying to fool me or endeavoring as much to cheat herself, or is honest in it all; but I see no way in which I am ever likely to be satisfied.

I asked her to say nothing at home about how her ducking happened, and I satisfied her mother by repeating what George had said. To-morrow I must have it out with Mr. Thurston somehow or other; although I am still completely in the dark what I shall say to him. I hope the old fairy-tales are right when they say "the morning is wiser than the evening."

August 21. The morning is wiser than the evening, for I got up to-day with a clear idea in my mind what I had better do about Kathie. It is always a great comfort to have a definite plan of action mapped out, and I ate my breakfast in a cheerful frame of mind, intending to go directly to see Mr. Thurston while I should be fairly sure of finding him. I reckoned without Kathie, however, who presented herself at the dining-room window before I had finished my coffee, and begged me to come out.

"I can't come in without breaking my word," she said.

I could not argue with the absurd chit in that situation, so I went out into the garden with her and sat down on the bench by the sun-dial. The big red roses Father was so fond of are all in blossom, and in the morning air were wonderfully sweet. It was an enchanting day, and the dew was not entirely dried, so the garden had not lost the freshness it has when it first wakes up. I was exhilarated by the smell of the roses and the beauty of everything, and the clearness of the air. Rosa held baby up to us at the nursery window above, and I waved my hand to her, smiling from pure delight in everything. Kathie watched me with her great eyes, and when I sat down on the bench she threw herself at full length on the grass, and burst out sobbing.

"You do love her better than me!" she wailed. "I came to say how sorry I was, but I'm sorry now that I didn't stay in the water."

I took her by the shoulder, and spoke to her so sternly that I startled her.

"You are not to talk in that way anymore, Kathie," I said. "I am fond of you and I am fond of baby; but if baby were big enough and talked this silly way about you, do you suppose I would allow it? Sit up and stop crying."

I have always been careful not to hurt her feelings; perhaps I have been too careful. She sat up now, and then rose to her feet in a dazed sort of way. I determined to see if anything was to be made out of her mood.

"Kathie," said I, "how much of that performance yesterday was real, and how much was humbug? Tell me the truth."

She grew a little paler and her eyes dilated. I looked her straight in the face, half minded to force her if need be to give me some guidance in what I should do.

"I really meant to drown myself," she answered solemnly, "only when I saw the water and thought of hell I was afraid."

She stopped, and I encouraged her to go on.

"I saw Mr. Weston, and I was scared of him and – and everything, and so I jumped in."

I reflected that very likely the child was more of a puzzle to herself than she was to me, and in any case I had more important ends to gain than the satisfying of my curiosity, so I asked her as gently as I could if she really believed she would be eternally lost if she killed herself.

"Oh, yes, Miss Ruth!" she cried with feverish eagerness.

"Then why do you do it?" I went on. "How do you dare to do it?"

She looked at me with a growing wildness in her face that was certainly genuine.

"I'm lost, anyway," she burst out. "I know I have been too wicked for God to forgive me. I have committed murder in my heart, and I know I was never meant to be saved."

"Stop!" I commanded her. "You are a little, foolish girl, too young even to know what you are talking about. How dare you decide what God will do?"

She regarded me with a look of stupefaction as if I were a stranger whom she had never seen; and indeed I can well believe I seemed one. Then the perversity of her mind came back to the constant idea.

"That's just it," she declared. "That's just my wickedness."

After this I refused to go into the subject any further. I got up and asked her if I should find her father at home. She begged me not to go to see him, and then said with an air of relief that he had gone out to Connecticut Mills to visit a sick woman. I did not stay with her longer. I said I must go into the house, and as she refused to come, I left her, a forlorn little figure, there among the roses, and went in. It seemed hard to do it, but I had made up my mind she had better not indulge in any more talk this morning.

August 22. Cousin Mehitable, in a letter which came this morning, pities me because of my colorless existence; but I begin to feel that life is becoming too lurid. I have to-day bearded – no, Mr. Thurston hasn't any beard; but I have had my interview with him, and I feel as if I had been leading a cavalry charge up a hill in the face of a battery of whatever kind of guns are most disconcertingly destructive.

I am somewhat confused about the beginning of our talk. I got so excited later that the tame beginnings have slipped away; but I know I said I had come to make a proposition about Kathie, and somehow I led up to the child's mad performance the other day. I showed him the note and told him the story, but not until I had made him promise not to mention the matter to the child. When he had finished he was as pale as my handkerchief, his thin, bloodless face positively withered with pain.

"I cannot keep silence about this," he said when I had finished. "I must withdraw my promise, Miss Privet. My Kathie's soul is in danger."

I am sure that I am not ill-tempered, but over Kathie and her father I find myself in a state of exasperation which threatens to destroy all my claims to be considered a sane and temperate body. I had to struggle mightily to keep myself in hand this morning, but at first, at least, I succeeded.

"Mr. Thurston," I said, "I cannot release you. I should never have told you except on your promise, and you cannot honestly break it. Now listen to me. I have no right to dictate, but I cannot stand by and see dear little Kathie going to ruin. I am sure I know what is good for her just now better than you do. She is a good child, only she has gone nearly wild brooding over theologic questions she should never have heard of until she was old enough to judge them more reasonably."

He tried to interrupt me, but I put up my hand to stop him, and went on.

"You know how nervous and high-strung she is, and you cannot think her capable of looking fairly at the awful mysteries with which a creed deals."

"But I have only instructed her in those things on which her eternal salvation depends," he broke in.

"Her eternal salvation does not depend on her being driven into a madhouse or made to drown herself," I retorted, feeling as if I were brutal, but that it couldn't be helped. "The truth is, Mr. Thurston, you have been offering up Kathie as a sacrifice to your creed just as the fathers and mothers of old made their children pass through the fires to Moloch." He gasped, and some thin blood rushed to his face, but I did not stop. "I have no doubt they were conscientious, just as you are; but that didn't make it any better for the children. You have been entirely conscientious in torturing Kathie, but you have been torturing her."

His face was positively gray, and there was a look of anguish in his eyes which made me weak. It would have been so much easier to go on if he had been angry.

"You don't understand," he said brokenly. "You think all religion is a delusion, so of course you can't see. You think I don't love my child, and that I am so wrapped up in my creed I can't see she suffers. You won't believe it hurts me more than it does her."

"Do you think then," I asked him, doing my best to keep back the tears, "that it can give any pleasure to a kind Heavenly Father? I do understand. You have been so afraid of not doing your duty to Kathie you have brought her almost to madness, almost" —

"Don't! Don't!" he interrupted, putting out his hand as if I had struck him. "Oh, Miss Privet, if she had" —

I saw the real affection and feeling of the man as I have never realized them. I had been hard, and perhaps cruel, but it was necessary to save Kathie. I spoke now as gently as I could.

"No matter for the things that didn't happen, Mr. Thurston. She is safe and sound."

"But she meant to do it," he returned in a tone so low I could hardly catch the words.

"Meant?" I repeated. "She isn't in a condition to mean anything. She was distraught by brooding over things that at her age she should never even have heard of. I beg your pardon, Mr. Thurston, but doesn't what has happened prove she is too high-strung to be troubled with theology yet? I am not of your creed, but I respect your feeling about it. Only you must see that to thrust these things on Kathie means madness and despair" —

"But she might die," he broke in. "She might die without having made her peace with her Maker, and be lost forever."

There was anguish in his face, and I know he meant it from the bottom of his heart; but in his voice was the trace of conventional repetition of phrases which made it possible for me to be overcome by exasperation. I looked at him in that mingled fury of impatience and passionate conviction of my ground which must have been the state of the prophets of old when the spirit of prophecy descended upon them. I realize now that to have the spirit of prophecy it is necessary to lose the temper to a degree not altogether commendable in ordinary circumstances. I blazed out on that poor, thin-blooded, dejected, weak-minded, loving Methodist minister, and told him he insulted the God he worshiped; I said he had better consider the text "I will have mercy and not sacrifice;" I flung two or three other texts at him while he stood dazed with astonishment; I flamed at him like a burning-bush become feminine flesh; and fortunately he did not remember that even the Old Nick is credited with being able to cite Scripture for his purposes. I think the texts subdued him, so that it is well Father brought me up to know the Bible. At least I reduced Mr. Thurston to a state where he was as clay in the hands of the potter.

Then I presented to his consideration my scheme to send Kathie away to boarding-school for a year. I told him he was at liberty to select the school, if only it was one where she would not be too much troubled about theology. Of course I knew it would be hopeless to think of her going to a school entirely unsectarian, but I have already begun to make inquiries about the relative reasonableness of Methodist schools, and I think we may find something that will do. To put the child into surroundings entirely new, where her mind will be taken away from herself, and where a consciousness of the keenly discerning eyes of girls of her own age will keep her theatrical tendencies in check, should work wonders. I made Mr. Thurston give his consent, and before I left the house I saw Mrs. Thurston. I told her not to trouble about Kathie's outfit, and so I hope that bother is pretty well straightened out for the present.

August 24. George has taken a violent cold from his ducking, and is confined to the house. I hope that it is nothing serious. It is especially awkward now, for Mr. Longworthy is coming over from Franklin in a day or two to go over his accounts as trustee.

Kathie came over this morning while I was at breakfast, and tapped on the dining-room window. She was positively shining with happiness. I never saw a child so transformed.

"Oh, Miss Ruth," she cried out, as soon as I turned, "oh, won't you come out here? I do so want to kiss you!"

I asked her to come inside, but she said she had promised not to, and rather than to get into a discussion I went out to her. She ran dancing up to me, fairly quivering with excitement.

"Oh, Miss Ruth," she said, "it is too good to be true! You are the most loveliest lady that ever lived! Oh, I am so happy!"

I had to laugh at her demonstrativeness, but it was touching to see her. She was no more like the morbid, hollow-eyed girl she had been than if she had never had a trouble. It is wonderful that out of the family of a Methodist parson should come a nature so exotic, but after all, the spiritual raptures and excesses which have worn Mr. Thurston as thin as a leaf in December must have their root in a temperament of keenly emotional extremes.

"I always wanted to go to boarding-school," Kathie went on, possessing herself of my hand, and covering it with kisses; "but Mother always said we couldn't afford it. Now I am going. Oh, I shall have such a beautiful time!"

I laughed at her enthusiasm, but I tried to moderate her extravagance a little by telling her that at boarding-school she would have to work, and to live by rule, so that she must give up her wild ways.

"Oh, I'll work," she responded, her ardor undampened. "I'll be the best girl you ever heard of. I beg your pardon for everything I've done, and I'll never do anything bad again."

This penitence seemed to me rather too general to amount to much, but that she was so much pleased was after all the chief thing, so I made no allusion to particular shortcomings, I did not even urge her to come into the house, for I felt this was a point for her to work out in her own mind. We walked in the dewy garden, discussing the preparations for her leaving home, and it was droll and pathetic to find how poverty had bred in her fantastic little pate a certain sort of shrewdness. She said in the most matter-of-fact way that it would be nice for her father to have one less mouth to fill, and that she supposed her smaller sisters could have her old clothes. I confess she did not in talking exhibit any great generosity of mind, but perhaps it was not to be expected of a child dazzled by the prospect of having a dream come true, and of actually being blessed with more than one new frock at a time. I am not clear what the result of sending her among strangers will be, and I see that a good deal of care will be necessary in choosing the school. I do believe good must come of it, however; and at least we are doing the best we can.

August 25. I went over to George's this morning to find out whether he is able to see Mr. Longworthy. He was in bed, but insisted upon seeing me. I have had a terrible day. I left him completely broken down with his confession. O Mother! Mother!

August 26. Childishly I cried myself to sleep last night. It is so terrible to feel that a friend has done wrong and proved himself unworthy. I could not help shivering to think of George, and of how he has had night after night to go to sleep with the knowledge of his dishonesty. I settled in my own mind what I could do to cover his defalcation, which fortunately is small enough for me to provide for by going to Boston and selling some of the bonds Aunt Leah left me, and which Mr. Longworthy has nothing to do with. Then I lay there in the dark and sopped my pillow, until somehow, I found myself in the middle of a comforting dream.

I dreamed that I was a little girl, and that I was broken-hearted about some indefinite thing that had happened. I had in my dream, so far as I can recall, no idea what the trouble was, but the grief was keen, and my tears most copious. I was in the very thickest of my childish woe when Father came behind me, picked me up like a feather, and set me down in his lap. I had that ineffable sense of companionship which can be named but never described, and I clung to him with a frantic clasp. He kissed me, and wiped away my tears with soothing words, and then at last he whispered in my ear as a precious secret something so infinitely comforting that my sorrow vanished utterly. I broke into smiles, and kissed him again and again, crying out that it was too good to be true, and he had made me happy for my whole life. So keen was my joy that I awoke, and lay in bed half dreaming still, saying over and over to myself his enchanting words as if they would forever be a safeguard against any pain which life might bring. Gradually I became sufficiently wide awake to realize what this wonderful message of joy was, and found myself ecstatically repeating: "Pigs have four feet and one tail!" Of course I laughed at the absurdity, but the comfort stayed with me all the same, and all day I have gone about with a peaceful mind, cheered by the effect of this supernaturally precious fact of natural history.