The three last named stood by the bed; the aunts austere, the
transgressor softly sobbing. The mother turned her head on the pillow;
her tired eyes flamed up instantly with sympathy and passionate
mother-love when they fell upon her child, and she opened the refuge and
shelter of her arms.
“Wait!” said Aunt Hannah, and put out her hand and stayed the girl from
leaping into them.
“Helen,” said the other aunt, impressively, “tell your mother all. Purge
your soul; leave nothing unconfessed.”
Standing stricken and forlorn before her judges, the young girl mourned
her sorrowful tale through the end, then in a passion of appeal cried
out:
“Oh, mother, can't you forgive me? won't you forgive me?--I am so
desolate!”
“Forgive you, my darling? Oh, come to my arms!--there, lay your head
upon my breast, and be at peace. If you had told a thousand lies--”
There was a sound--a warning--the clearing of a throat. The aunts
glanced up, and withered in their clothes--there stood the doctor, his
face a thunder-cloud. Mother and child knew nothing of his presence;
they lay locked together, heart to heart, steeped in immeasurable
content, dead to all things else. The physician stood many moments
glaring and glooming upon the scene before him; studying it, analyzing
it, searching out its genesis; then he put up his hand and beckoned to
the aunts. They came trembling to him, and stood humbly before him and
waited. He bent down and whispered:
“Didn't I tell you this patient must be protected from all excitement?
What the hell have you been doing? Clear out of the place!”
They obeyed. Half an hour later he appeared in the parlor, serene,
cheery, clothed in sunshine, conducting Helen, with his arm about her
waist, petting her, and saying gentle and playful things to her; and she
also was her sunny and happy self again.
“Now, then;” he said, “good-by, dear. Go to your room, and keep away
from your mother, and behave yourself. But wait--put out your tongue.
There, that will do--you're as sound as a nut!” He patted her cheek and
added, “Run along now; I want to talk to these aunts.”
She went from the presence. His face clouded over again at once; and as
he sat down he said:
“You too have been doing a lot of damage--and maybe some good. Some
good, yes--such as it is. That woman's disease is typhoid! You've
brought it to a show-up, I think, with your insanities, and that's a
service--such as it is. I hadn't been able to determine what it was
before.”
With one impulse the old ladies sprang to their feet, quaking with
terror.
“Sit down! What are you proposing to do?”
“Do? We must fly to her. We--”
“You'll do nothing of the kind; you've done enough harm for one day. Do
you want to squander all your capital of crimes and follies on a single
deal? Sit down, I tell you. I have arranged for her to sleep; she needs
it; if you disturb her without my orders, I'll brain you--if you've got
the materials for it.”
They sat down, distressed and indignant, but obedient, under compulsion.
He proceeded:
“Now, then, I want this case explained. _They _wanted to explain it to
me--as if there hadn't been emotion or excitement enough already. You
knew my orders; how did you dare to go in there and get up that riot?”
Hester looked appealing at Hannah; Hannah returned a beseeching look
at Hester--neither wanted to dance to this unsympathetic orchestra. The
doctor came to their help. He said:
“Begin, Hester.”
Fingering at the fringes of her shawl, and with lowered eyes, Hester
said, timidly:
“We should not have disobeyed for any ordinary cause, but this was
vital. This was a duty. With a duty one has no choice; one must put all
lighter considerations aside and perform it. We were obliged to arraign
her before her mother. She had told a lie.”
The doctor glowered upon the woman a moment, and seemed to be trying
to work up in his mind an understanding of a wholly incomprehensible
proposition; then he stormed out:
“She told a lie! _did _she? God bless my soul! I tell a million a day!
And so does every doctor. And so does everybody--including you--for
that matter. And _that _was the important thing that authorized you to
venture to disobey my orders and imperil that woman's life! Look here,
Hester Gray, this is pure lunacy; that girl _couldn't_ tell a lie that
was intended to injure a person. The thing is impossible--absolutely
impossible. You know it yourselves--both of you; you know it perfectly
well.”
Hannah came to her sister's rescue:
“Hester didn't mean that it was that kind of a lie, and it wasn't. But
it was a lie.”
“Well, upon my word, I never heard such nonsense! Haven't you got sense
enough to discriminate between lies! Don't you know the difference
between a lie that helps and a lie that hurts?”
“_All _lies are sinful,” said Hannah, setting her lips together like a
vise; “all lies are forbidden.”
The Only Christian fidgeted impatiently in his chair. He went to attack
this proposition, but he did not quite know how or where to begin.
Finally he made a venture:
“Hester, wouldn't you tell a lie to shield a person from an undeserved
injury or shame?”
“No.”
“Not even a friend?”
“No.”
“Not even your dearest friend?”
“No. I would not.”
The doctor struggled in silence awhile with this situation; then he
asked:
“Not even to save him from bitter pain and misery and grief?”
“No. Not even to save his life.”
Another pause. Then:
“Nor his soul?”
There was a hush--a silence which endured a measurable interval--then
Hester answered, in a low voice, but with decision:
“Nor his soul?”
No one spoke for a while; then the doctor said:
“Is it with you the same, Hannah?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“I ask you both--why?”
“Because to tell such a lie, or any lie, is a sin, and could cost us
the loss of our own souls--_would_, indeed, if we died without time to
repent.”
“Strange... strange... it is past belief.” Then he asked, roughly: “Is
such a soul as that _worth _saving?” He rose up, mumbling and grumbling,
and started for the door, stumping vigorously along. At the threshold he
turned and rasped out an admonition: “Reform! Drop this mean and sordid
and selfish devotion to the saving of your shabby little souls, and hunt
up something to do that's got some dignity to it! _Risk _your souls!
risk them in good causes; then if you lose them, why should you care?
Reform!”
The good old gentlewomen sat paralyzed, pulverized, outraged, insulted,
and brooded in bitterness and indignation over these blasphemies. They
were hurt to the heart, poor old ladies, and said they could never
forgive these injuries.
“Reform!”
They kept repeating that word resentfully. “Reform--and learn to tell
lies!”
Time slipped along, and in due course a change came over their spirits.
They had completed the human being's first duty--which is to think about
himself until he has exhausted the subject, then he is in a condition
to take up minor interests and think of other people. This changes the
complexion of his spirits--generally wholesomely. The minds of the two
old ladies reverted to their beloved niece and the fearful disease which
had smitten her; instantly they forgot the hurts their self-love had
received, and a passionate desire rose in their hearts to go to the help
of the sufferer and comfort her with their love, and minister to
her, and labor for her the best they could with their weak hands, and
joyfully and affectionately wear out their poor old bodies in her dear
service if only they might have the privilege.
“And we shall have it!” said Hester, with the tears running down her
face. “There are no nurses comparable to us, for there are no others
that will stand their watch by that bed till they drop and die, and God
knows we would do that.”
“Amen,” said Hannah, smiling approval and endorsement through the mist
of moisture that blurred her glasses. “The doctor knows us, and knows we
will not disobey again; and he will call no others. He will not dare!”
“Dare?” said Hester, with temper, and dashing the water from her eyes;
“he will dare anything--that Christian devil! But it will do no good for
him to try it this time--but, laws! Hannah! after all's said and
done, he is gifted and wise and good, and he would not think of such a
thing.... It is surely time for one of us to go to that room. What is
keeping him? Why doesn't he come and say so?”
They caught the sound of his approaching step. He entered, sat down, and
began to talk.
“Margaret is a sick woman,” he said. “She is still sleeping, but she
will wake presently; then one of you must go to her. She will be worse
before she is better. Pretty soon a night-and-day watch must be set. How
much of it can you two undertake?”
“All of it!” burst from both ladies at once.
The doctor's eyes flashed, and he said, with energy:
“You _do_ ring true, you brave old relics! And you _shall _do all of the
nursing you can, for there's none to match you in that divine office in
this town; but you can't do all of it, and it would be a crime to let
you.” It was grand praise, golden praise, coming from such a source, and
it took nearly all the resentment out of the aged twin's hearts. “Your
Tilly and my old Nancy shall do the rest--good nurses both, white souls
with black skins, watchful, loving, tender--just perfect nurses!--and
competent liars from the cradle.... Look you! keep a little watch on
Helen; she is sick, and is going to be sicker.”
The ladies looked a little surprised, and not credulous; and Hester
said:
“How is that? It isn't an hour since you said she was as sound as a
nut.”
The doctor answered, tranquilly:
“It was a lie.”
The ladies turned upon him indignantly, and Hannah said:
“How can you make an odious confession like that, in so indifferent a
tone, when you know how we feel about all forms of--”
“Hush! You are as ignorant as cats, both of you, and you don't know what
you are talking about. You are like all the rest of the moral moles;
you lie from morning till night, but because you don't do it with your
mouths, but only with your lying eyes, your lying inflections, your
deceptively misplaced emphasis, and your misleading gestures, you turn
up your complacent noses and parade before God and the world as saintly
and unsmirched Truth-Speakers, in whose cold-storage souls a lie would
freeze to death if it got there! Why will you humbug yourselves with
that foolish notion that no lie is a lie except a spoken one? What is
the difference between lying with your eyes and lying with your mouth?
There is none; and if you would reflect a moment you would see that it
is so. There isn't a human being that doesn't tell a gross of lies every
day of his life; and you--why, between you, you tell thirty thousand;
yet you flare up here in a lurid hypocritical horror because I tell that
child a benevolent and sinless lie to protect her from her imagination,
which would get to work and warm up her blood to a fever in an hour, if
I were disloyal enough to my duty to let it. Which I should probably do
if I were interested in saving my soul by such disreputable means.
“Come, let us reason together. Let us examine details. When you two were
in the sick-room raising that riot, what would you have done if you had
known I was coming?”
“Well, what?”
“You would have slipped out and carried Helen with you--wouldn't you?”
The ladies were silent.
“What would be your object and intention?”
“Well, what?”
“To keep me from finding out your guilt; to beguile me to infer that
Margaret's excitement proceeded from some cause not known to you. In a
word, to tell me a lie--a silent lie. Moreover, a possibly harmful one.”
The twins colored, but did not speak.
“You not only tell myriads of silent lies, but you tell lies with your
mouths--you two.”
“_That _is not so!”
“It is so. But only harmless ones. You never dream of uttering a harmful
one. Do you know that that is a concession--and a confession?”
“How do you mean?”
“It is an unconscious concession that harmless lies are not criminal;
it is a confession that you constantly _make _that discrimination. For
instance, you declined old Mrs. Foster's invitation last week to meet
those odious Higbies at supper--in a polite note in which you expressed
regret and said you were very sorry you could not go. It was a lie.
It was as unmitigated a lie as was ever uttered. Deny it, Hester--with
another lie.”
Hester replied with a toss of her head.
“That will not do. Answer. Was it a lie, or wasn't it?”
The color stole into the cheeks of both women, and with a struggle and
an effort they got out their confession:
“It was a lie.”
“Good--the reform is beginning; there is hope for you yet; you will not
tell a lie to save your dearest friend's soul, but you will spew out
one without a scruple to save yourself the discomfort of telling an
unpleasant truth.”
He rose. Hester, speaking for both, said; coldly:
“We have lied; we perceive it; it will occur no more. To lie is a sin.
We shall never tell another one of any kind whatsoever, even lies of
courtesy or benevolence, to save any one a pang or a sorrow decreed for
him by God.”
“Ah, how soon you will fall! In fact, you have fallen already; for what
you have just uttered is a lie. Good-by. Reform! One of you go to the
sick-room now.”