"I'm not trying to please anybody," I responded. "When a neighbor is
sick and needs help, of course anybody would come."
"Humph! Folks hain't been so awful anxious to help me."
"There is a good deal of sickness in town," I explained.
"'Tain't nobody's business to come, anyhow," commented Mrs. Bagley
dispassionately.
"There's precious few'd come if 'twas," the girl muttered.
"Has anybody been to see you?" I asked.
The Brownrig girl turned her fierce eyes up to me with a look which made
me think of some wild bird hurt and caged.
"One old woman that sat and chewed her veil and swung her foot at me.
She never come but once."
I had no difficulty in recognizing this portrait, even without Mrs.
Bagley's explanatory comment.
"That was Aunt Naomi Dexter," she remarked. "She's always poking round."
"Miss Dexter is one of the kindest women alive," I said, "though she is
a little odd in her manner sometimes."
"She said she hoped I'd found things bad enough to give me a hankerin'
for something better," went on Julia with increasing bitterness. "God!
How does she think I'd get anything better? What does she know about it,
anyway?"
"There, there, Jule," interposed Mrs. Bagley in a sort of professional
tone, "now don't go to gettin' excited and rampageous. You know she
brought you some rippin' flannel for the baby. Them pious folks has to
talk, but, Lord, nobody minds it, and you hadn't ought ter. They don't
really mean nothing much."
It seemed to be time to interpose, and I forbade Julia to talk, sent
Mrs. Bagley off to sleep in the one other bedroom, and settled down for
the night's watching. The patient fell asleep at last, and I was left to
care for the fire and the poor little pathetic, forlorn, dreadful baby.
The child was swathed in Aunt Naomi's "rippin' flannel," and I fell into
baffling reflections in regard to human life. After all, I had no right
to judge this poor broken girl lying there much more in danger than she
could dream. What do I know of the intolerable life that has not
self-respect, not even cleanliness of mind or body? Society and morality
have so fenced us about and so guarded us that we have rather to try to
get outside than to struggle to keep in; and what do we know of the poor
wretches fighting for life with wild beasts in the open? I am so glad I
do not believe that sin is what one actually does, but is the proportion
between deeds and opportunity. How carefully Father explained this to me
when I was not much more than a child, and how strange it is that so
many people cannot seem to understand it! If I thought the moral law an
inflexible thing like a human statute, for which one was held
responsible arbitrarily and whether he knows the law or not, I should
never be able to endure the sense of injustice. Of course men have to be
arbitrary, because they can see only tangible things and must judge by
outward acts; but if this were true of a deity he would cease to be a
deity at all, and be simply a man with unlimited power to do harm.
April 7. I found myself so running aground last night in metaphysics
that it seemed just as well to go to bed, diary or no diary. I was
besides too tired to write down my interview with Mrs. Webbe.
I was just about to go home for a bath and a nap after watching that
first night, when, without even knocking, Mrs. Deacon Webbe opened the
outside door. I was in the kitchen, and so met her before she got
further. Naturally I was surprised to see her at six o'clock in the day.
"Good-morning," I said.
"I knew you were here yesterday," she said by way of return for my
greeting, "but I thought I'd get here before you came back this
morning."
"I have been here all night," I answered.
She looked at me with her piercing black eyes, which always seem to go
into the very recesses of one's thoughts, and then, in a manner rather
less aggressive, remarked,--
"I've come to speak to this Brownrig girl. You know well enough why."
"I'm afraid you can't see her," I answered, ignoring the latter part of
her words. "She is not so well this morning, and Dr. Wentworth told us
to keep her as quiet as possible."
Mrs. Webbe leaned forward with an expression on her face which made me
look away.
"Is she going to die?" she demanded.
I turned away, and began to close the door. I could not bear her manner.
She has too much cause to hate the girl, but just then, with the poor
thing sick to the very point of death, I could never have felt as she
looked.
"I'm sure I hope not," I returned. "We expect to have a professional
nurse to-morrow, and then things will go better."
"A professional nurse?"
"Yes; we have sent to Boston for one."
"Sent to Boston for a nurse for that creature? She's a great deal better
dead! She only leads men"--
"If you will excuse me, Mrs. Webbe," interrupted I, pushing the door
still nearer to closing, "I ought to go back to my patient. It isn't my
business to decide who had better be dead."
She started forward suddenly, taking me unawares, and before I
understood what she intended, she had thrust herself through the door
into the house.
"If it isn't your business," she demanded sharply, "what are you here
for? What right have you to interfere? If Providence is willing to take
the creature out of the way, what are you trying to keep her alive for?"