the charm of her society. It was impossible for a nature at once so
sympathetic and so transparent as hers to mingle intimately with
another without learning and betraying much. The woman's tact at once
divined that his love for Caroline had only grown with time, and the
scarce suppressed eagerness with which he listened to any tidings from
her led on from step to step in mutual confidence, till there was
nothing more to be told, and Bolton felt that the only woman he had
ever loved, loved him in return with a tenacity and intensity which
would be controlling forces in her life.
It was with a bitter pleasure nearly akin to pain that this conviction
entered his soul. To a delicate moral organization, the increase of
responsibility, with distrust of ability to meet it, is a species
of torture. He feared himself destined once more to wreck the life
and ruin the hopes of one dearer than his own soul, who was devoting
herself to him with a woman's uncalculating fidelity.
This agony of self-distrust, this conscious weakness in his most
earnest resolutions and most fervent struggles, led Bolton to wish
with all his heart that the beautiful illusion of an all-powerful
church in which still resided the visible presence of Almighty God
might be a reality. His whole soul sometimes cried out for such a
_visible_ Helper--for a church with power to bind and loose, with
sacraments which should supplement human weakness by supernatural
grace, with a priesthood competent to forgive sin and to guide the
penitent. It was simply and only because his clear, well-trained
intelligence could see no evidence of what he longed to believe, that
the absolute faith was wanting.
He was not the only one in this perplexed and hopeless struggle with
life and self and the world who has cried out for a visible temple,
such as had the ancient Jew; for a visible High-Priest, who should
consult the oracle for him and bring him back some sure message from a
living God.
When he looked back on the seasons of his failures, he remembered
that it was with vows and tears and prayers of agony in his mouth
that he had been swept away by the burning temptation; that he had
been wrenched, cold and despairing, from the very horns of the altar.
Sometimes he looked with envy at those refuges which the Romish Church
provides for those who are too weak to fight the battle of life alone,
and thought, with a sense of rest and relief, of entering some of
those religious retreats where a man surrenders his whole being to the
direction of another, and ends the strife by laying down personal free
agency at the feet of absolute authority. Nothing but an unconvinced
intellect--an inability to believe--stood in the way of this entire
self-surrender. This morning, he had sought Mr. St. John's study,
to direct his attention to the case of the young woman whom he had
rescued from the streets, the night before.
Bolton's own personal experience of human weakness and the tyranny
of passion had made him intensely pitiful. He looked on the vicious
and the abandoned as a man shipwrecked and swimming for his life looks
on the drowning who are floating in the waves around him; and where a
hand was wanting, he was prompt to stretch it out.
There was something in that young, haggard face, those sad, appealing
eyes, that had interested him more powerfully than usual, and he
related the case with much feeling to Mr. St. John, who readily
promised to call and ascertain if possible some further particulars
about her.
"You did the very best possible thing for her," said he, "when you put
her into the care of the Church. The Church alone is competent to deal
with such cases."
Bolton ruminated within himself on the wild, diseased impulses, the
morbid cravings and disorders, the complete wreck of body and soul
that comes of such a life as the woman had led, and then admired the
serene repose with which St. John pronounced that indefinite power,
the CHURCH, as competent to cast out the seven devils of the
Magdalen.
"I shall be very glad to hear good news of her," he said; "and if the
Church is strong enough to save such as she, I shall be glad to know
that too."
"You speak in a skeptical tone," said St. John.
"Pardon me: I know something of the difficulties, physical and moral,
which lie in the way," said Bolton.
"To them that believe, nothing shall be impossible," said St. John,
his face kindling with ardor.
"And by the Church do you mean all persons who have the spirit of
Jesus Christ, or simply that portion of them who worship in the form
that you do?"
"Come, now," said St. John, "the very form of your question invites to
a long historic argument; and I am sure you did not mean to draw that
on your head."
"Some other time, though," said Bolton, "if you will undertake to
convince me of the existence in this world of such a power as you
believe in, you will find me certainly not unwilling to believe. But,
this morning, I have but a brief time to spend. Farewell, for the
present."
And with a hearty hand-shake the two parted.
_CHAPTER XXII._
BOLTON TO CAROLINE.
I had not thought to obtrude myself needlessly on you ever again.
Oppressed with the remembrance that I have been a blight on a life
that might otherwise have been happy, I thought my only expiation was
silence. But it had not then occurred to me that possibly you could
feel and be pained by that silence. But of late I have been very
intimate with Mrs. Henderson, whose mind is like those crystalline
lakes we read of--a pebble upon the bottom is evident. She loves
you so warmly and feels for you so sympathetically that, almost
unconsciously, when you pour your feelings into her heart, they
are revealed to me through the transparent medium of her nature.
I confess that I am still so selfish as to feel a pleasure in the
thought that you cannot forget me. I cannot forget you. I never have
forgotten you, I believe, for a waking conscious hour since that
time when your father shut the door of his house between you and me.
I have demonstrated in my own experience that there may be a double
consciousness all the while going on, in which the presence of one
person should seem to pervade every scene of life. You have been with
me, even in those mad fatal seasons when I have been swept from reason
and conscience and hope--it has added bitterness to my humiliation in
my weak hours; but it has been motive and courage to rise up again
and again and renew the fight--the fight that must last as long as
life lasts; for, Caroline, this is so. In some constitutions, with
some hereditary predispositions, the indiscretions and ignorances of
youth leave a fatal irremediable injury. Though the sin be in the
first place one of inexperience and ignorance, it is one that nature
never forgives. The evil once done can never be undone; no prayers, no
entreaties, no resolutions, can change the consequences of violated
law. The brain and nerve force, once vitiated by poisonous stimulants,
become thereafter subtle tempters and traitors, forever lying in wait
to deceive and urging to ruin; and he who is saved, is saved so as by
fire. Since it is your unhappy fate to care so much for me, I owe to
you the utmost frankness. I must tell you plainly that I am an unsafe
man. I am like a ship with powder on board and a smouldering fire in
the hold. I must warn my friends off, lest at any moment I carry ruin
to them, and they be drawn down in my vortex. We can be friends, dear
friends; but let me beg you, think as little of me as you can. Be a
friend in a certain degree, after the manner of the world, rationally,
and with a wise regard to your own best interests--you who are worth
five hundred times what I am--you who have beauty, talent, energy--who
have a career opening before you, and a most noble and true friend in
Miss Ida; do not let your sympathies for a very worthless individual
lead you to defraud yourself of all that you should gain in the
opportunities now open to you. Command my services for you in the
literary line when ever they may be of the slightest use. Remember
that nothing in the world makes me so happy as an opportunity to serve
you. Treat me as you would a loyal serf, whose only thought is to
live and die for you; as the princess of the middle ages treated the
knight of low degree, who devoted himself to her service. There is
nothing _you_ could ask me to do for you that would not be to me a
pleasure; and all the more so, if it involved any labor or difficulty.
In return, be assured, that merely by being the woman you are, merely
by the love which you have given and still give to one so unworthy,
you are a constant strength to me, an encouragement never to faint in
a struggle which must last as long as this life lasts. For although
we must not forget that life, in the _best_ sense of the word, lasts
forever, yet this first mortal phase of it is, thank God, but short.
There is another and a higher life for those whose life has been a
failure here. Those who die fighting--even though they fall, many
times trodden under the hoof of the enemy--will find themselves there
made more than conquerors through One who hath loved them.
In this age, when so many are giving up religion, hearts like yours
and mine, Caroline, that know the real strain and anguish of this
present life, are the ones to appreciate the absolute necessity of
faith in the great hereafter. Without this, how cruel is life! How
bitter, how even unjust, the weakness and inexperience with which
human beings are pushed forth amid the grinding and clashing of
natural laws--laws of whose operation they are ignorant and yet
whose penalties are inexorable! If there be not a Guiding Father, a
redeeming future, how dark is the prospect of this life! and who can
wonder that the ancients, many of the best of them, considered suicide
as one of the reserved rights of human nature? Without religious
faith, I certainly should. I am making this letter too long; the
pleasure of speaking to you tempts me still to prolong it, but I
forbear.
Ever yours, devotedly,
BOLTON.
* * * * *
CAROLINE TO BOLTON.
_My Dear Friend_: How can I thank you for the confidence you have
shown me in your letter? You were not mistaken in thinking that this
long silence has been cruel to me. It is more cruel to a woman than
it can possibly be to a man, because if to him silence be a pain, he
yet is conscious all the time that he has the power to break it; he
has the right to speak at any time, but a woman must die silent. Every
fiber of her being says this. She cannot speak, she must suffer as the
dumb animals suffer.
I have, I confess, at times, been bitterly impatient of this long
reserve, knowing, as I did, that you had not ceased to feel what you
once felt. I saw, in our brief interviews in New York, that you loved
me still. A woman is never blind to that fact, with whatever care it
is sought to be hidden. I saw that you felt all you once professed,
and yet were determined to conceal it, and treat with me on the calm
basis of ordinary friendship, and sometimes I was indignant: forgive
me the injustice.
You see that such a course is of no use, as a means of making one
forget. To know one's self passionately beloved by another who never
avows it, is something dangerous to the imagination. It gives rise
to a thousand restless conjectures, and is fatal to peace. We can
reconcile ourselves in time to any _certainty_; it is only when we are
called upon to accommodate ourselves to possibilities, uncertain as
vaporous clouds, that we weary ourselves in fruitless efforts.
Your letter avows what I knew before; what you often told me in our
happy days: and I now say in return that I, like you, have _never
forgotten_; that your image and presence have been to me as mine
to you, ever a part of my consciousness through all these years of
separation. And now you ask me to change all this into a cool and
prudent friendship, after the manner of the world; that is to say,
to take _all_ from you, to accept the entire devotion of your heart
and life, but be careful to risk nothing in return, to keep at a safe
distance from your possible troubles, lest I be involved.
Do you think me capable of this? Is it like me? and what would you
think and say to a friend who should make the same proposition to you?
Put it to yourself: what would you think of yourself, if you could be
so coldly wary and prudent with regard to a friend who was giving to
you the whole devotion of heart and life?
No, dear friend, this is all idle talk. Away with it! I feel that I am
capable of as entire devotion to you as I know you are to me; never
doubt it. The sad fatality which clouds your life makes this feeling
only the more intense; as we feel for those who are a part of our
own hearts, when in suffering and danger. In one respect, my medical
studies are an advantage to me. They have placed me at a stand-point
where my judgment on these questions and subjects is different from
those of ordinary women. An understanding of the laws of physical
being, of the conditions of brain and nerve forces, may possibly at
some future day bring a remedy for such sufferings as yours. I look
for this among the possible triumphs of science,--it adds interest to
the studies and lectures I am pursuing. I shall not be to you what
many women are to the men whom they love, an added weight to fall upon
you if you fall, to crush you under the burden of my disappointments
and anxieties and distresses. Knowing that your heart is resolute and
your nature noble, a failure, supposing such a possibility, would
be to me only like a fever or a paralysis,--a subject for new care
and watchfulness and devotion, not one for tears or reproaches or
exhortations.
There are lesions of the will that are no more to be considered
subject to moral condemnation than a strain of the spinal column
or a sudden fall, from paralysis. It is a misfortune; and to real
true affection, a misfortune only renders the sufferer more dear and
redoubles devotion.
Your letter gives me courage to live--courage to pursue the course set
before me here. I will make the most of myself that I can for your
sake, since all I am or can be is yours. Already I hope that I am
of use to you in opening the doors of confidence. Believe me, dear,
nothing is so bad for the health of the mind or the body as to have a
constant source of anxiety and apprehension that cannot be spoken of
to anybody. The mind thus shut within itself becomes a cave of morbid
horrors. I believe these unshared fears, these broodings, and dreads
unspoken, often fulfill their own prediction by the unhealthy states
of mind that they bring.
The chambers of the soul ought to be daily opened and aired; the
sunshine of a friend's presence ought to shine through them, to dispel
sickly damps and the malaria of fears and horrors. If I could be with
you and see you daily, my presence should cheer you, my faith in you
should strengthen your faith in yourself.
For my part, I can see how the very sensitiveness of your moral
temperament which makes you so dread a failure, exposes you to fail.
I think the near friends of persons who have your danger often hinder
instead of helping them by the manifestation of their fears and
anxieties. They think there is no way but to "pile up the agony," to
intensify the sense of danger and responsibility, when the fact is,
the subject of it is feeling now all the strain that human nerves can
feel without cracking.
We all know that we can walk with a cool head across a narrow plank
only one foot from the ground. But put the plank across a chasm a
thousand feet in depth, and the head swims. We have the same capacity
in both cases; but, in the latter, the awfulness of the risk induces a
nervous anxiety that amounts to a paralysis of the will.
Don't, therefore, let this dread grow on you by the horror of
lonely brooding. Treat it as you would the liability to any other
disease, openly, rationally and hopefully; and keep yourself in the
daily light and warmth of sympathetic intercourse with friends who
understand you and can help you. There are Eva and Harry--noble, true
friends, indebted to you for many favors, and devoted to you with a
loyal faithfulness. Let their faith and mine in you strengthen your
belief in yourself. And don't, above all things, take any load of
responsibility about _my_ happiness, and talk about being the blight
and shadow on my life. I trust I am learning that we were sent into
this world, not to clamor for happiness, but to do our part in a
life-work. What matter is it whether I am happy or not, if I do my
part? I know all the risks and all the dangers that come from being
identified, heart and soul, with the life of another as I am with
yours. I know the risks, and am ready to face them. I am ready to live
for you and die for you, and count it all joy to the last.
I was much touched by what you said of those who have died defeated
yet fighting. Yes, it is my belief that many a poor soul who has
again and again failed in the conflict has yet put forth more effort,
practiced more self-denial, than hundreds of average Christians; and
He who knows what the trial is, will judge them tenderly--that is to
say, justly.
But for you there must be a future, even in this life. I am assured of
it, and you must believe it: you must believe with my faith, and hope
in my hope. Come what will, I am, heart and soul and forever,
Yours,
CAROLINE.
_CHAPTER XXIII._
THE SISTERS OF ST. BARNABAS.
Who was St. Barnabas? We are told in the book of the Acts of
the Apostles that he was a man whose name signified a "son of
consolation." It must at once occur that such a saint is very much
needed in this weary world of ours, and most worthy to be the patron
of an "order."
To comfort human sorrow, to heal and help the desolate and afflicted,
irrespective either of their moral worth or of any personal reward, is
certainly a noble and praiseworthy object.
Nor can any reasonable objection be made to the custom of good women
combining for this purpose into a class or order, to be known by the
name of such a primitive saint, and wearing a peculiar livery to
mark their service, and having rites and ceremonials such as to them
seem helpful for this end. Surely the work is hard enough, and weary
enough, to entitle the doers thereof to do it in their own way, as
they feel they best can, and to have any sort of innocent helps in the
way of signs and symbols that may seem to them desirable.
Yet the Sisters of St. Barnabas had been exposed to a sort of modern
form of persecution from certain vigorous-minded Protestants, as
tending to Romanism. A clamor had been raised about them for wearing
large crosses, for bowing before altars, and, in short, for a hundred
little points of Ritualism; and it was held that a proper zeal for
Protestantism required their ejection from a children's refuge,
where, with much patience and Christian mildness, they were taking
care of sick babies and teaching neglected street children. Mrs.
Maria Wouvermans, with a committee of ladies equally zealous for the
order of the church and excited about the dangers of Popery, had
visited the refuge and pursued the inquisition even to the private
sleeping apartments of the Sisters, unearthing every symptom of
principle or practice that savored of approach to the customs of the
Scarlet Woman; and, as the result of relentless inquisition and much
vigorous catechising, she and her associates made such reports as
induced the Committee of Supervision to withdraw the charity from the
Sisters of St. Barnabas, and place it in other hands. The Sisters,
thus ejected, had sought work in other quarters of the great field of
human suffering and sorrow. A portion of them had been enabled by the
charity of friends to rent a house to be devoted to the purposes of
nursing destitute sick children, with dormitories also where homeless
women could find temporary shelter.
The house was not a bit more conventual or mediæval than the most
common-place of New York houses. It is true, one of the parlors had
been converted into a chapel, dressed out and arranged according to
the preferences of these good women. It had an altar, with a gilded
cross flanked by candles, which there is no denying were sometimes
lighted in the day-time. The altar was duly dressed with white, red,
green, violet or black, according as the traditional fasts or feasts
of the Church came round. There is no doubt that this simple chapel,
with its flowers, and candles, and cross, and its little ceremonial,
was an immense comfort and help to these good women in the work that
they were doing. But the most rigid Protestant, who might be stumbled
by this little attempt at a chapel, would have been melted into
accord when he went into the long bright room full of little cribs
and cradles, where child invalids of different ages and in different
stages of convalescence were made happy amid flowers, and toys, and
playthings, by the ministration of the good women who wore the white
caps and the large crosses. It might occur to a thoughtful mind, that
devotion to a work so sweetly unselfish might well entitle them to
wear any kind of dress and pursue any kind of method, unchallenged by
criticism.
In a neat white bed of one of the small dormitories in the upper part
of this house, was lying in a delirious fever the young woman whom
Bolton had carried there on the night of our story. The long black
hair had become loosened by the restless tossing of her head from side
to side; her brow was bent in a heavy frown, made more intense by the
blackness of her eyebrows; her large, dark eyes were wandering wildly
to and fro over every object in the room, and occasionally fixing
themselves with a strange look of inquiry on the Sister who, in white
cap and black robe, sat by her bedside, changing the wet cloths on her
burning head, and moistening her parched lips from time to time with a
spoonful of water.
"I can't think who you are," she muttered, as the Sister with a gentle
movement put a fresh, cool cloth on her forehead.
"Never mind, poor child," said the sweet voice in reply; "try to be
quiet."
"Quiet! _me_ be quiet!--that's pretty well! Me!" and she burst into
weak, hysteric laughter.
"Hush, hush!" said the Sister, making soothing motions with her hands.
The wandering eyes closed a few moments in a feverish drowse. In a
moment more, she started with a wild look.
"Mother! mother! where are you? I can't find you. I've looked and
looked till I'm so tired, and I can't find you. Mother, come to
me,--I'm sick!"--and the girl rose and threw out her arms wildly.
The Sister passed her arm round her tenderly and spoke with a gentle
authority, making her lie down again.
Then, in a sweet low voice, she began singing a hymn:
"Jesus, lover of my soul,
Let me to thy bosom fly,
While the billows near me roll,
While the tempest still is high."
As she sung, the dark sad eyes fixed themselves upon her with a vague,
troubled questioning. The Sister went on:
"Hide me, O my Saviour, hide,
Till the storm of life is past,
Safe into the haven guide,
Oh, receive my soul at last."
It was just day-dawn, and the patient had waked from a temporary
stupor produced by a narcotic which had been given a few hours before
to compose her.
The purple-and-rose color of dawn was just touching faintly everything
in the room. Another Sister entered softly, to take the place of the
one who had watched for the last four hours.
"How is she?" she said.
"Quite out of her head, poor thing. Her fever is very high."
"We must have the doctor," said the other. "She looks like a very sick
girl."
"That she certainly is. She slept, under the opiate, but kept
starting, and frowning, and muttering in her sleep; and this morning
she waked quite wild."
"She must have got dreadfully chilled, walking so late in the
street--so poorly clad, too!"
With this brief conversation, the second sister assumed her place by
the bedside, and the first went to get some rest in her own room.
As day grew brighter, the singing of the matins in the chapel came
floating up in snatches; and the sick girl listened to it with the
same dazed and confused air of inquiry with which she looked on all
around.
"Who is singing," she said to herself. "It's pretty, and good. But how
came I here? I was so cold, so cold--out there!--and now it's so hot.
Oh, my head! my head!"
A few hours later, Mr. St. John called at the Refuge to inquire after
the new inmate.
Mr. St. John was one of the patrons of the Sisters. He had contributed
liberally to the expenses of the present establishment, and stood at
all times ready to assist with influence and advice.