A WOUNDED SPIRIT
Grace's chief symptom when she awoke on the following morning was an
extreme lassitude. She was almost as weak as a violent fever would have
left her, but her former unnatural and fitful manner was gone. Mrs.
Mayburn told Graham that she had had long moods of deep abstraction,
during which her eyes would be fixed on vacancy, with a stare terrible
to witness, and then would follow uncontrollable paroxysms of grief.
"This morning," said her anxious nurse, "she is more like a broken lily
that has not strength to raise its head. But the weakness will pass;
she'll rally. Not many die of grief, especially when young."
"Save her life, aunty, and I can still do a man's part in the world."
"Well, Alford, you must help me. She has been committed to your care;
and it's a sacred trust."
Graham was now installed in his old quarters, and placed under Aunt
Sheba's care. His energetic aunt, however, promised to look in upon him
often, and kept her word. The doctor predicted a tedious time with his
wound, and insisted on absolute quiet for a few days. He was mistaken,
however. Time would not be tedious, with frequent tidings of Grace's
convalescence and her many proofs of deep solicitude about his wound.
Grace did rally faster than had been expected. Her system had received
a terrible shock, but it had not been enfeebled by disease. With
returning strength came an insatiate craving for action--an almost
desperate effort to occupy her hands and mind. Before it was prudent
for Graham to go out or exert himself--for his wound had developed some
bad symptoms--she came to see him, bringing delicacies made with her
own hands.
Never had her appearance so appealed to his heart. Her face had grown
thin, but its lovely outlines remained; and her dark eyes seemed
tenfold more lustrous in contrast with her white hair. She had now a
presence that the most stolid would turn and look after with a
wondering pity and admiration, while those gifted with a fine
perception could scarcely see her without tears. Graham often thought
that if she could be turned into marble she would make the ideal statue
representing the women of both the contending sections whose hearts the
war had broken.
As she came and went, and as he eventually spent long hours with her
and her father, she became to him a study of absorbing interest, in
which his old analytical bent was not wholly wanting. "What," he asked
himself every hour in the day, "will be the effect of an experience
like this on such a woman? what the final outcome?" There was in this
interest no curiosity, in the vulgar sense of the word. It was rather
the almost sleepless suspense of a man who has everything at stake, and
who, in watching the struggle of another mind to cope with misfortune,
must learn at the same time his own fate. It was far more than this--it
was the vigilance of one who would offer help at all times and at any
cost, Still, so strong are natural or acquired characteristics that he
could not do this without manifesting some of the traits of the Alford
Graham who years before had studied the mirthful Grace St. John with
the hope of analyzing her power and influence. And had he been wholly
indifferent to her, and as philosophical and cynical as once it was his
pride to think he was, she would still have remained an absorbing
study. Her sudden and awful bereavement had struck her strong and
exceptional spiritual nature with the shattering force of the ball that
crashes through muscle, bone, and nerves. In the latter case the wound
may be mortal, or it may cause weakness and deformity. The wounded
spirit must survive, although the effects of the wound may be even more
serious and far-reaching--changing, developing, or warping character to
a degree that even the most experienced cannot predict. Next to God,
time is the great healer; and human love, guided by tact, can often
achieve signal success.
But for Graham there was no God; and it must be said that this was
becoming true of Grace also. As Hilland had feared, the influence of
those she loved and trusted most had gradually sapped her faith, which
in her case had been more a cherished tradition, received from her
mother, than a vital experience.
Hilland's longings for a life hereafter, and his words of regret that
she had lost the faith of her girlhood, were neutralized by the bitter
revolt of her spirit against her immeasurable misfortune. Her own
experience was to her a type of all the desolating evil and sorrow of
the world; and in her agony she could not turn to a God who permitted
such evil and suffering. It seemed to her that there could be no
merciful, overruling Providence--that her husband's view, when his mind
was in its most vigorous and normal state, was more rational than a
religion which taught that a God who loved good left evil to make such
general havoc.
"It's the same blind contention of forces in men as in nature," she
said to herself; "and only the strong or the fortunate survive."
One day she asked Graham abruptly, "Do you believe that the human
spirit lives on after death?"
He was sorely troubled to know how to answer her, but after a little
hesitation said, "I feel, as your husband did, that I should be glad if
you had the faith of your girlhood. I think it would be a comfort to
you."
"That's truly the continental view, that superstition is useful to
women. Will you not honestly treat me as your equal, and tell me what
you, as an educated man, believe?"
"No," he replied, gravely and sadly, "I will only recall with emphasis
your husband's last words."
"You are loyal to him, at least; and I respect you for it. But I know
what you believe, and what Warren believed when his faculties were
normal and unbiased by the intense longing of his heart. I am only a
woman, Alford, but I must use such little reason as I have; and no
being except one created by man's ruthless imagination could permit the
suffering which this war daily entails. It's all of the earth, earthy.
Alford," she added, in low, passionate utterance, "I could believe in a
devil more easily than in a God; and yet my unbelief sinks me into the
very depths of a hopeless desolation. What am I? A mere little atom
among these mighty forces and passions which rock the world with their
violence. Oh, I was so happy! and now I am crushed by some haphazard
bullet shot in the darkness."
He looked at her wonderingly, and was silent.
"Alford," she continued, her eyes glowing in the excitement of her
strong, passionate spirit, "I will not succumb to all this monstrous
evil. If I am but a transient emanation of the earth, and must soon
return to my kindred dust, still I can do a little to diminish the
awful aggregate of suffering. My nature, earth-born as it is, revolts
at a selfish indifference to it all. Oh, if there is a God, why does He
not rend the heavens in His haste to stay the black torrents of evil?
Why does He not send the angels of whom my mother told me when a child,
and bid them stand between the armies that are desolating thousands of
hearts like mine? Or if He chooses to work by silent, gentle influences
like those of spring, why does He not bring human hearts together that
are akin, and enhance the content and happiness which our brief life
permits? But no. Unhappy mistakes are made. Alas, my friend, we both
know it to our sorrow! Why should I feign ignorance of that which your
unbounded and unselfish devotion has proved so often? Why should you
not know that before this deadly stroke fell my one grief was that you
suffered; and that as long as I could pray I prayed for your happiness?
Now I can see only merciless force or blind chance, that in nature
smites with the tornado the lonely forest or the thriving village, the
desolate waves or some ship upon them. Men, with all their boasted
reason, are even worse. What could be more mad and useless than this
war? Alford, I alone have suffered enough to make the thing accursed;
and I must suffer to the end: and I am only one of countless women.
What is there for me, what for them, but to grow lonelier and sadder
every day? But I won't submit to the evil. I won't be a mere bit of
helpless drift. While I live there shall be a little less suffering in
the world. Ah, Alford! you see how far removed I am from the sportive
girl you saw on that May evening years ago. I am an old, white-haired,
broken-hearted woman; and yet," with a grand look in her eyes, she
concluded, "I have spirit enough left to take up arms against all the
evil and suffering within my reach. I know how puny my efforts will be;
but I would rather try to push back an avalanche than cower before it."
Thus she revealed to him the workings of her mind; and he worshipped
her anew as one of the gentlest and most loving of women, and yet
possessed of a nature so strong that under the guidance of reason it
could throw off the shackles of superstition and defy even fate. Under
the spell of her words the evil of the world did seem an avalanche, not
of snow, but of black molten lava; while she, too brave and noble to
cower and cringe, stood before it, her little hand outstretched to stay
its deadly onset.