The Diary of a Saint

"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 passes 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 passed 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" —

Another silence came here. The embers in the fire dropped softly, and the dull March twilight gathered more and more thickly. I felt as if I were being led into some sacred room, closed many years, but where the dead had once lain. Perhaps it was fanciful, but it seemed almost as if I were seeing the place where poor Miss Charlotte's youth had died.

"It wasn't proper that I should marry him, Ruth. I know now father was right, only sometimes – For myself I suppose I hadn't proper pride, and I shouldn't have minded; but father was right. A Kendall couldn't marry a Sprague, of course. I knew it all along; and I vowed to myself over and over that I wouldn't care for him. When a girl tells herself that she won't love a man, Ruth," she broke in with a bitter laugh, "the thing's done already. It was so with me. I needn't have promised not to love him if I hadn't given him my whole heart already, – what a girl calls her heart. I wouldn't own it; and over and over I told him that I didn't care for him; and then at last" —

It was terrible to hear the voice in which she spoke. She seemed to be choking, and it was all that I could do to keep control of myself. I could not have spoken, even if there had been anything to say. I wanted to take her in my arms and get her pitiful, tear-stained face hidden; but I only sat quiet.

"Well, we were engaged at last, and I knew father would never consent; but I hoped something would happen. When we are young enough we all hope the wildest things will happen and we shall get what we want. Then father found out; and then – and then – I don't blame father, Ruth. He was right. I see now that he was right. Of course it wouldn't have done; but then it almost killed me. If it hadn't been for your mother, dear, I think I should have died. I wanted to die; but I had to take care of father."

I put out my hand and got hold of hers, but I could not speak. The tears dropped down so that they sparkled in the firelight, but she did not wipe them away. I was crying myself, for her old sorrow and mine seemed all part of the one great pain of the race, somehow. I felt as if to be a woman meant something so sad that I dared not think of it.

"And the hardest was that he thought I was wrong to give him up. He could not see it as I did, Ruth; and of course it was natural that he couldn't understand how father would feel about the family. I could never explain it to him, and I couldn't have borne to hurt his feelings by telling him."

"Is he" —

"He is dead, my dear. He married over at Fremont, and I hope he was happy. I think probably he was. Men are happy sometimes when a woman wouldn't be. I hope he was happy."

That was the whole of it. We sat there silent until Rosa came to call us to supper. When we stood up I put my arms about her, and kissed her. Then she made a joke, and wiped her eyes, and through supper she was so gay that I could hardly keep back the tears. Poor, poor, lonely, brave Miss Charlotte!

March 21. Cousin Mehitable arrived yesterday according to her usual fashion, preceded by a telegram. I tell her that if she followed her real inclinations, she would dispatch her telegram from the station, and then race the messenger; but she is constrained by her breeding to be a little more deliberate, so I have the few hours of her journey in which to expect her. It is all part of her brisk way. She can never move fast enough, talk quickly enough, get through whatever she is doing with rapidity enough. I remember Father's telling her once that she would never have patience to lie and wait for the Day of Judgment, but would get up every century or two to hurry things along. It always seems as if she would wear herself to shreds in a week; yet here she is, more lively at sixty than I am at less than half that age.

She was very kind, and softened wonderfully when she spoke of Mother. I think that she loved her more than she does any creature now alive.

"Aunt Martha," she said last night, "wasn't human. She was far too angelic for that. But she was too sweet and human for an angel. For my part I think she was something far better than either, and far more sensible."

This was a speech so characteristic that it brought me to tears and smiles together.

To-night Cousin Mehitable came to the point of her errand with customary directness.

"I came down," she said, "to see how soon you expect to arrange to live with me."

"I hadn't expected anything about it," I returned.

"Of course you would keep the house," she went on, entirely disregarding my feeble protest. "You might want to come back summers sometimes. This summer I'm going to take you to Europe."

I am too much accustomed to her habit of planning things to be taken entirely by surprise; but it did rather take my breath away to find my future so completely disposed of. I felt almost as if I were not even to have a chance to protest.

"But I never thought of giving up the house," I managed to say.

"Of course not; why should you?" she returned briskly. "You have money enough to keep up the place and live where you please. Don't I know that for this ten years you and Aunt Martha haven't spent half your income? Keep it, of course; for, as I say, sometimes you may like to come back for old times' sake."

I could only stare at her, and laugh.

"Oh, you laugh, Ruth," Cousin Mehitable remarked, more forcibly than ever, "but you ought to understand that I've taken charge of you. We are all that are left of the family now, and I'm the head of it. You are a foolish thing anyway, and let everybody impose on your good-nature. You need somebody to look after you. If I'd had you in charge, you'd never have got tangled up in that foolish engagement. I'm glad you had the sense to break it."

I felt as if she had given me a blow in the face, but I could not answer.

"Don't blush like that," Cousin Mehitable commanded. "It's all over, and you know I always said you were a fool to marry a country lawyer."

"Father was a country lawyer," I retorted.

"Fudge! Cousin Horace was a judge and a man whose writings had given him a wide reputation. Don't outrage his memory by calling him a rustic. For my part I never had any patience with him for burying himself in the country like a clodhopper."

"You forget that Mother's health" – I began; but with Cousin Mehitable one is never sure of being allowed to complete a sentence.

"Oh, yes," she interrupted, "of course I forgot. Well, if there could be an excuse, Aunt Martha would serve for excusing anything. I beg your pardon, Ruth. But now all that is past and gone, and fortunately the family is still well enough remembered in Boston for you to take up life there with very little trouble. That's what I had in mind ten years ago, when I insisted on your coming out."

"People who saw me then will hardly remember me."

"The folks that knew your father and mother," she went on serenely, "are of course old people like me; but they will help you to know the younger generation. Besides, those you know will not have forgotten you. A Privet is not so easily forgotten, and you were an uncommonly pretty bud, Ruth. What a fool you were not to marry Hugh Colet! You always were a fool."

Cousin Mehitable generally tempers a compliment in this manner, and it prevents me from being too much elated by her praise.

She was interrupted here by the necessity of going to prepare for supper. Miss Charlotte did not come over to-day, so we were alone together. No sooner were we seated at the supper-table than she returned to the attack.

"When you live in Boston," she said, "I shall" —

"Suppose I should not live in Boston?" I interrupted.

"But you will. What else should you do?"

"I might go on living here."

"Living here!" she cried out explosively. "You don't call this living, do you? How long is it since you heard any music, or saw a picture, or went to the theatre, or had any society?"

I was forced to confess that music and painting and acting were all entirely lacking in Tuskamuck; but I remarked that I had all the books that attracted me, and I protested against her saying I hadn't any society.

"Oh, you see human beings now and then," Cousin Mehitable observed coolly; "and I dare say they are very worthy creatures. But you know yourself they are not society. You haven't forgotten the year I brought you out."

I have not forgotten it, of course; and I cannot deny that when I think of that winter in Boston, the year I was nineteen, I do feel a little mournful sometimes. It was all so delightful, and it is all so far away now. I hardly heard what Cousin Mehitable said next. I was thinking how enchanting a home in Boston would be, and how completely alone as for family I am. Cousin Mehitable is the only near relative I have in the world, and why should I not be with her? It would be delightful. Perhaps I may manage to get in a week or two in town now and then; but I cannot go away for long. There would be nobody to start the reading-room, or keep up the Shakespeare Club; and what would become of Kathie and Peggy Cole, or of all that dreadful Spearin tribe? I dare say I am too proud of my consequence, and that if I went away somebody would be found to look after things. Still I know I am useful here; and it seems to me I am really needed. Besides, I love the place and the people, and I think my friends love me.

March 23. Cousin Mehitable went home to-day. Easter is at hand, and she has a bonnet from Paris, – "a perfect dream of a bonnet," she said with the enthusiasm of a girl, "dove-colored velvet, and violets, and steel beads, and two or three white ostrich tips; a bonnet an angel couldn't resist, Ruth!" – and this bonnet must form part of the church service on Easter. The connection between Paris bonnets and the proper observance of the day is not clear in my mind; but when I said something of this sort to Cousin Mehitable she rebuked me with great gravity.

"Ruth, there is nothing in worse form than making jokes about sacred subjects."

"Your bonnet isn't sacred," I retorted, for I cannot resist sometimes the temptation to tease her; "or at least it can't be till it's been to church on Easter."

"You know what I mean," was her answer. "When you live with me I shall insist upon your speaking respectfully of the church."

"I wasn't speaking of the church," I persisted, laughing at the gravity with which she always takes up its defense; "I was speaking of your bonnet, your Paris bonnet, your Easter bonnet, your ecclesiastical, frivolous, giddy, girlish bonnet."

"Oh, you may think it too young for me," she said eagerly, forgetting the church in her excitement, "but it isn't really. It's as modest and appropriate as anything you ever saw; and so becoming and chic!"

"Oh, I can always trust your taste, Cousin Mehitable," I told her, "but you know you're a worldly old thing. You'd insist upon having your angelic robes fitted by a fashionable tailor."

Again she looked grave and shocked in a flash.

"How can you, Ruth! You are a worse heathen than ever. But then there is no church in Tuskamuck, so I suppose it is not to be wondered at. That's another reason for taking you away from this wilderness."

"There are two churches, as you know very well," I said.

"Nonsense! They're only meeting-houses, – conventicles. However, when you come to Boston to live, we will see."

"I told you last night that I shouldn't give up Tuskamuck."

"I know you did, but I didn't mind that. You must give it up."

She went away insisting upon this, and refusing to accept any other decision. I did so far yield as to promise provisionally that I would go abroad with her this summer. I need to see the world with a broader view again, and I shall enjoy it. To think of the picture galleries fills me with joy already. I should be willing to cross the Atlantic just to see once more the enchanting tailor of Moroni's in the National Gallery. It is odd, it comes into my mind at this moment that he looks something like Tom Webbe, or Tom looks something like him. Very likely it is all nonsense. Yes; I will go for the summer – to leave here altogether – no, that is not to be thought of.

March 24. The whole town is excited over an accident up at the lake this morning. A man and his son were drowned by breaking through the ice. They had been up to some of the logging camps, and it is said they were not sober. They were Brownrigs, and part of the family in the little red house. The mother and the daughter are left. I hope it is not heartless to hate to think of them. I have no doubt that they suffer like others; only it is not likely folk of this sort are as sensitive as we are. It is a mercy that they are not.

March 25. The Brownrig family seems just now to be forced upon my attention, and that in no pleasant way.

Aunt Naomi came in this forenoon, and seated herself with an air of mysterious importance. She looked at me with her keen eyes, penetrating and humorous even when she is most serious, and seemed to be examining me to discover what I was thinking. It was evident at once that she had news. This is generally true, for she seems always to have something to tell. Her mind gathers news as salt gathers moisture, and her greatest pleasure is to impart what she has heard. She has generally with me the air of being a little uncertain how I may receive her tidings. Like all persons of strong mind and a sense of humor, she is by nature in sympathy with the habit of looking at life frankly and dispassionately, and I believe that secretly and only half consciously she envies me my mental freedom. Sometimes I have suspected her of leading me on to say things which she would have felt it wrong to say herself because they are unorthodox, but which she has too much common sense not to sympathize with. She is convinced, though, that such freedom of thought as mine is wrong, and she nobly deprives herself of the pleasure of being frank in her thoughts when this would involve any reflection upon the theological conventions which are her rule of life. She gratifies a lively mind by feeding it on scraps of gossip and commenting on them in her pungent way; she is never unkind in her thought, I am sure, but she does sometimes say sharp things. Like Lady Teazle, however, she abuses people out of pure good nature. I looked at her this morning as she sat swinging her foot and munching – there is no other word for it! – her green barège veil, and I wondered, as I have often wondered before, how a woman really so clever could be content to pass so much of her time in the gathering and circulating of mere trivialities. I suppose that it is because there is so little in the village to appeal to the intellectual side of her, and her mind must be occupied. She might be a brilliant woman in a wider sphere. Now she seems something like a beaver in captivity, building dams of hairbrushes and boots on a carpeted floor.

I confess, too, that I wondered, as I looked at her, if she represented my future. I thought of Cousin Mehitable's doleful predictions of what I should come to if I stay in Tuskamuck, and I tried to decide whether I should come in time to be like Aunt Naomi, a general carrier of news from house to house, an old maid aunt to the whole village, with no real kindred, and with no interests wider than those of village gossip. I cannot believe it, but I suppose at my age she would not have believed it of herself.

"We're really getting to be quite like a city," Aunt Naomi said, with a grimness which showed me there was something important behind this enigmatic remark.

"Are we?" I responded. "I confess I don't see how."

"Humph!" she sniffed. "There's wickedness here that isn't generally looked for outside of the city."

"Oh, wickedness!" I said. "There is plenty of that everywhere, I suppose; but I never have thought we have more than our share of it."

She wagged her foot more violently, and had what might have seemed a considerable lunch on her green veil before she spoke again – though it is wicked for me to make fun of her. Then she took a fresh start.

"What are you knitting?" she asked.

"What started in January to be some mittens for the Turner boy. He brings our milk, and he never seems to have mittens enough."

"I don't wonder much," was her comment. "His mother has so many babies that she can't be expected to take care of them."

"Poor Mrs. Turner," I said. "I should think the poor thing would be discouraged. I am ashamed that I don't do more for her."

"I don't see that you are called upon to take care of all the poor in the town; but if you could stop her increasing her family it'd be the best thing you could do."

When Aunt Naomi makes a remark like this, I feel it is discreet to change the subject.

"I hope that now the weather is getting milder," I observed, "you are not so cold in prayer-meetings."

She was not diverted, even by this chance to dwell on her pet grievance, but went her own way.

"I suppose you'll feel now you've got to look out for that Brownrig girl, too," she said.

"That Brownrig girl?" I repeated.

I tried not to show it, but the blood rushed to my heart and made me faint. I realized something terrible was coming, though I had nothing to go upon but the old gossip about Tom and the fact that I had seen him come from the red house.

"Her sin has found her out," returned Aunt Naomi with indignant emphasis. "For my part, I don't see what such creatures are allowed to live for. Think what kind of a mother she will make. They'd better take her and her baby and drown 'em along with her father and brother."

"Aunt Naomi!" was all I could say.

"Well, I suppose you think I'm not very charitable, but it does make me mad to see that sort of trash" —

"I don't know what you are talking about," I interrupted. "Has the Brownrig girl a child?"

"No; but she's going to have. Her mother's gone off and left her, and she's down sick with pneumonia besides."

"Her mother has gone off?"

"Yes; and it'd be good riddance, if there was anybody to take care of the girl."

It is useless to ask Aunt Naomi how she knows all that goes on in the town. She collects news from the air, I believe. I reflected that she is not always right, and I hoped now she might be mistaken.

"But somebody must be with her if she's down with pneumonia," I said.

"Yes; that old Bagley woman's there. The Overseers of the Poor sent her, but she's about twice as bad as nobody, I should think. If I was sick, and she came round, I know I'd ask her to go away, and let me die in peace."

It was evident enough that Aunt Naomi was a good deal stirred up, but I did not dare to ask her why. If there is anything worse behind this scandal, I had rather not know it. We were fortunately interrupted, and Aunt Naomi went soon, so I heard no more. I was sick with the loathsomeness of having Tom Webbe connected in my thought with that wretched girl, and I do hope that it is only my foolishness. He cannot have fallen to such depths.

March 27. I have heard no more from the Brownrigs, and I must hope things were somehow not as Aunt Naomi thought. To-day I learned that she is shut up with a cold. I must go in to-morrow and see her. Miss Charlotte is a great comfort. The dear old soul begins really to look better, and the thinness about her lips is yielding to good feeding. She tells me stories of the old people of the town whom I can just remember, and she is full of reverence for both Father and Mother. Of course I never talk theology with her, but I am surprised sometimes to find that under the shell of her orthodoxy is a good deal of liberalism. I suppose any kindly mortal who accepted the old creeds made allowances for those nearest and dearest, and human nature will always make allowances for itself. I should think that an imaginative belief in a creed, a belief that realized the cruelty of theology, must either drive one mad or make one disbelieve from simple horror. Nobody but a savage could worship a relentless god and not become insane from the horror of being in the clutch of an implacable power.

March 28. I have had a most painful visit from Deacon Webbe. He came in looking so gray and old that it shocked me to see him. He shook hands as if he did not know what he was doing, and then sat down in a dazed way, slowly twirling his hat and fixing his eyes on it as if he were blind. I tried to say something, but only stumbled on in little commonplaces about the weather, to which he paid so little attention that it was evident he had no idea what I was saying. In a minute or two I was reduced to silence. One cannot go on saying mechanical nothings in the face of suffering, and it was impossible not to see that Deacon Webbe was in grievous pain.

"Deacon Webbe," I said at last, when I could not bear the silence any longer, "what is the matter?"

He raised his eyes to mine with a look of pitiful helplessness.

"I've no right to come to you, Miss Ruth," he said in his slow way, "but there's nobody else, and you always were Tom's friend."

"Tom?" I repeated. "What has happened?"