"Whee!"
The long fingers pulled at the clerical collar as if they might tear it
away. The alert figure swung across the room to the one window not
wide open and the man pushed up the three inches possible. "Whee!" he
brought out again, boyishly, and thrust away the dusty vines that hung
against the opening from the stone walls of the parish house close by.
He gasped; looked about as if in desperate need of relief; struck back
the damp hair from his face. The heat was insufferable. In the west
black-gray clouds rolled up like blankets, shutting out heaven and air;
low thunder growled; at five o'clock of a midsummer afternoon it was
almost dark; a storm was coming fast, and coolness would come with it,
but in the meantime it was hard for a man who felt heat intensely just
to get breath. His eyes stared at the open door of the room, down the
corridor which led to the room, which turned and led by another open
door to the street.
"If they're coming, why don't they come and get it over?" he murmured
to himself; he was stifling--it was actual suffering.
He was troubled to-day, beyond this affliction of heat. He was the new
curate of St. Andrew's, Geoffrey McBirney, only two months in the
place--only two months, and here was the rector gone off for his summer
vacation and McBirney left at the helm of the great city parish.
Moreover, before the rector was gone a half-hour, here was the worst
business of the day upon him, the hour between four and five when the
rector was supposed to be found in the office, to receive any one who
chose to come, for advice, for godly counsel, for "any old reason," as
the man, only a few years out of college, put it to himself. He
dreaded it; he dreaded it more than he did getting up into the pulpit
of a Sunday and laying down the law--preaching. And he seriously
wished that if any one was coming they would come now, and let him do
his best, doggedly, as he meant to, and get them out of the way. Then
he might go to work at things he understood. There was a funeral at
seven; old Mrs. Harrow at the Home wanted to see him; and David
Sterling had half promised to help him with St. Agnes's Mission School,
and must be encouraged; a man in the worst tenement of the south city
had raided his wife with a knife and there was trouble, physical and
moral, and he must see to that; also Tommy Smith was dying at the
Tuberculosis Hospital and had clung to his hands yesterday, and would
not let him go--he must manage to get to little Tommy to-night. There
was plenty of real work doing, so it did seem a pity to waste Lime
waiting here for people who didn't come and who had, when they did
come, only emotional troubles to air. And the heat--the unspeakable
heat! "I can't stand it another second!" he burst out, aloud. "I'll
die--I shall die!" He flung himself across the window-sill, with his
head far out, trying to catch a breath of air that was alive.
As he stretched into the dim light, so, gasping, pulling again at the
stiff collar, he was aware of a sound; he came back into the room with
a spring; somebody was rapping at the open door. A young woman, in
white clothes, with roses in her hat, stood there--refreshing as a cool
breeze, he thought; with that, as if the thought, as if she, perhaps,
had brought it, all at once there was a breeze; a heavenly, light touch
on his forehead, a glorious, chilled current rushing about him.
"Thank Heaven!" he brought out involuntarily, and the girl, standing,
facing him, looked surprised and, hesitating, stared at him. By that
his dignity was on top.
"You wanted to see me?" he asked gravely. The girl flushed.
"No," she said, and stopped. He waited. "I didn't expect--" she
began, and then he saw that she was very nervous. "I didn't
expect--you."
He understood now. "You expected to find the rector. I'm sorry. He
went off to-day for his vacation. I'm left in his place. Can I help
you in any way?"
The girl stood uncertain, nervous, and said nothing. And looked at
him, frightened, not knowing what to do. Then: "I wanted to see
him--and now--it's you!" she stammered, and the man felt contrite that
it was indubitably just himself. Contrite, then amused. But his look
was steadily serious.
"I'm sorry," he said again. "If I would possibly do, I should be glad."
The girl burst into tears. That was bad. She dropped into a chair and
sobbed uncontrollably, and he stood before her, and waited, and was
uncomfortable. The sobbing stopped, and he had hopes, but the hat with
roses was still plunged into the two bare hands--it was too hot for
gloves. The thunder was nearer, muttering instant threatenings; the
room was black; the air was heavy and cool like a wet cloth; the man in
his black clothes stood before the white, collapsed figure in the chair
and the girl began sobbing softly, wearily again.
"Please try to tell me." The young clergyman spoke quietly, in the
detached voice which he had learned was best. "I can't do anything for
you unless you tell me."
The top of the hat with roses seemed to pay attention; the flowers
stopped bobbing; the sobs halted; in a minute a voice came. "I--know.
I beg--your pardon. It was--such a shock to see--you." And then, most
unexpectedly, she laughed. A wavering laugh that ended with a
gasp--but laughter. "I'm not very civil. I meant just that--it wasn't
you I expected. I was in church--ten days ago. And the rector
said--people might come--here--and--he'd try to help them. It seemed
to me I could talk to him. He was--fatherly. But you're"--the voice
trailed into a sob--"young." A laugh was due here, he thought, but
none came. "I mean--it's harder."
"I understand," he spoke quietly. "You would feel that way. And
there's no one like the rector--one could tell him anything. I know
that. But if I can help you--I'm here for that, you know. That's all
there is to consider." The impersonal, gentle interest had instant
effect.
"Thank you," she said, and with a visible effort pulled herself
together, and rose and stood a moment, swaying, as it an inward
indecision blew her this way and that. With that a great thunder-clap
close by shook heaven and earth and drowned small human voices, and the
two in the dark office faced each other waiting Nature's good time. As
the rolling echoes died away, "I think I had better wait to see the
rector," she said, and held out her hand. "Thank you for your
kindness--and patience. I am--I am--in a good deal of trouble--" and
her voice shook, in spite of her effort. Suddenly--"I'm going to tell
you," she said. "I'm going to ask you to help me, if you will be so
good. You are here for the rector, aren't you?"
"I am here for the rector," McBirney answered gravely. "I wish to do
all I can for--any one."
She drew a long sigh of comfort. "That's good--that's what I want,"
she considered aloud, and sat down once more. And the man lifted a
chair to the window where the breeze reached him. Rain was falling now
in sheets and the steely light played on his dark face and sombre dress
and the sharp white note of his collar. Through the constant rush and
patter of the rain the girl's voice went on--a low voice with a note of
pleasure and laughter in it which muted with the tragedy of what she
said.
"I'm thinking of killing myself," she began, and the eyes of the man
widened, but he did not speak. "But I'm afraid of what comes after.
They tell you that it's everlasting torment--but I don't believe it.
Parsons mostly tell you that. The fear has kept me from doing it. So
when I heard the rector in church two weeks ago, I felt as if he'd be
honest--and as if he might know--as much as any one can know. He
seemed real to me, and clever--I thought it would help if I could talk
to him--and I thought maybe I could trust him to tell me honestly--in
confidence, you know--if he really and truly thought it was wrong for a
person to kill herself. I can't see why." She glanced at the
attentive, quiet figure at the window. "Do you think so?" she asked.
He looked at her, but did not speak. She went on. "Why is it wrong?
They say God gives life and only God should take it away. Why? It's
given--we don't ask for it, and no conditions come with it. Why should
one, if it gets unendurable, keep an unasked, unwanted gift? If
somebody put a ball of bright metal into your hands and it was pretty
at first and nice to play with, and then turned red-hot, and hurt,
wouldn't it be silly to go on holding it? I don't know much about God,
anyway," she went on a bit forlornly; not irreverently, but as if pain
had burned off the shell of conventions and reserves of every day, and
actual facts lay bare. "I don't feel as if He were especially
real--and the case I'm in is awfully real. I don't know if He would
mind my killing myself--and if He would, wouldn't He understand I just
have to? If He's really good? But then, if He was angry, might He
punish me forever, afterward?" She drew her shoulders together with a
frightened, childish movement. "I'm afraid of forever," she said.
The rain beat in noisily against the parish house wall; the wet vines
flung about wildly; a floating end blew in at the window and the young
man lifted it carefully and put it outside again. Then, "Can you tell
me why you want to kill yourself?" he asked, and his manner, free from
criticism or disapproval, seemed to quiet her.
"Yes. I want to tell you. I came here to tell the rector." The grave
eyes of the man, eyes whose clearness and youth seemed to be such an
age-old youth and clearness as one sees in the eyes of the sibyls in
the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel--eyes empty of a thought of self,
impersonal, serene with the serenity of a large atmosphere--the
unflinching eyes of the man gazed at the girl as she talked.
She talked rapidly, eagerly, as if each word lifted pressure. "It's
this way--I'm ill--hopelessly ill. Yes--it's absolutely so. I've got
to die. Two doctors said so. But I'll live--maybe five
years--possibly ten. I'm twenty-three now--and I may live ten years.
But if I do that--if I live five years even--most of it will be as a
helpless invalid--I'll have to get stiff, you know." There was a
rather dreadful levity in the way she put it. "Stiffer and
stiffer--till I harden into one position, sitting or lying down,
immovable. I'll have to go on living that way--years, you see. I'll
have to choose which way. Isn't it hideous? And I'll go on living
that way, you see. Me. You don't know, of course, but it seems
particularly hideous, because I'm not a bit an immovable sort. I ride
and play tennis and dance, all those things, more than most people. I
care about them--a lot." One could see it in the vivid pose of the
figure. "And, you know, it's really too much to expect. I _won't_
stiffen gently into a live corpse. No!" The sliding, clear voice was
low, but the "no" meant itself.
From the quiet figure by the window came no response; the girl could
see the man's face only indistinctly in the dim, storm-washed light;
receding thunder growled now and again and the noise of the rain came
in soft, fierce waves; at times, lightning flashed a weird clearness
over the details of the room and left them vaguer.
"Why don't you say something?" the girl threw at him. "What do you
think? Say it."
"Are you going to tell me the rest?" the man asked quietly.
"The rest? Isn't that enough? What makes you think there's more?" she
gasped.
"I don't know what makes me. I do. Something in your manner, I
suppose. You mustn't tell me if you wish not, but I'd be able to help
you better if I knew everything. As long as you've told me so much."
There was a long stillness in the dim room; the dashing rain and the
muttering thunder were the only sounds in the world. The white dress
was motionless in the chair, vague, impersonal--he could see only the
blurred suggestion of a face above it; it got to be fantastic, a dream,
a condensation of the summer lightning and the storm-clouds;
unrealities seized the quick imagination of the man; into his fancy
came the low, buoyant voice out of key with the words.
"Yes, there's more. A love story, of course--there's always that.
Only this is more an un-love story, as far as I'm in it." She stopped
again. "I don't know why I should tell you this part."
"Don't, if you don't want to," the man answered promptly, a bit coldly.
He felt a clear distaste for this emotional business; he would much
prefer to "cut it out," as he would have expressed it to himself.
"I _do_ want to--now. I didn't mean to. But it's a relief." And it
came to him sharply that if he was to be a surgeon of souls, what
business had he to shrink from blood?
"I am here to relieve you if I can. It's what I most wish to do--for
any one," he said gently then. And the girl suddenly laughed again.
"For any one," she repeated. "I like it that way." Her eyes,
wandering a moment about the dim, bare office, rested on a calendar in
huge lettering hanging on the wall, rested on the figures of the date
of the day. "I want to be just a number, a date--August first--I'm
that, and that's all. I'll never see you again, I hope. But you are
good and I'll be grateful. Here's the way things are. Three years ago
I got engaged to a man. I suppose I thought I cared about him. I'm a
fool. I get--fads." A short, soft laugh cut the words. "I got about
that over the man. He fascinated me. I thought it was--more. So I
got engaged to him. He was a lot of things he oughtn't to be; my
people objected. Then, later, my father was ill--dying. He asked me
to break it off, and I did--he'd been father and mother both to me, you
see. But I still thought I cared. I hadn't seen the man much. My
father died, and then I heard about the man, that he had lost money and
been ill and that everybody was down on him; he drank, you know, and
got into trouble. So I just felt desperate; I felt it was my fault,
and that there was nobody to stand by him. I felt as if I could pull
him up and make his life over--pretty conceited of me, I expect--but I
felt that. So I wrote him a letter, six months ago, out of a blue sky,
and told him that if he wanted me still he could have me. And he did.
And then I went out to live with my uncle, and this man lives in that
town too, and I've seen him ever since, all the time. I know him now.
And--" Out of the dimness the clergyman felt, rather than saw, a smile
widen--child-like, sardonic--a curious, contagious smile, which
bewildered him, almost made him smile back. "You'll think me a pitiful
person," she went on, "and I am. But I--almost--hate him. I've
promised to marry him and I can't bear to have his fingers touch me."
In Geoffrey McBirney's short experience there had been nothing which
threw a light on what he should do with a situation of this sort. He
was keenly uncomfortable; he wished the rector had stayed at home. At
all events, silence was safe, so he was silent with all his might.
"When the doctors told me about my malady a month ago, the one light in
the blackness was that now I might break my engagement, and I hurried
to do it. But he wouldn't. He--" A sound came, half laugh, half sob.
"He's certainly faithful. But--I've got a lot of money. It's
frightful," she burst forth. "It's the crowning touch, to doubt even
his sincerity. And I may be wrong--he may care for me. He says so. I
think my heart has ossified first, and is finished, for it is quite
cold when he says so. I _can't_ marry him! So I might as well kill
myself," she concluded, in a casual tone, like a splash of cold water
on the hot intensity of the sentences before. And the man, listening,
realized that now he must say something. But what to say? His mind
seemed blank, or at best a muddle of protest. And the light-hearted
voice spoke again. "I think I'll do it to-night, unless you tell me
I'd certainly go to hell forever."
Then the protest was no longer muddled, but defined. "You mustn't do
that," he said, with authority. "Suppose a man is riding a runaway
horse and he loses his nerve and throws himself off and is killed--is
that as good a way as if he sat tight and fought hard until the horse
ran into a wall and killed him? I think not. And besides, any second,
his pull on the reins may tell, and the horse may slow down, and his
life may be saved. It's better riding and it's better living not to
give in till you're thrown. Your case looks hopeless to you, but
doctors have been wrong plenty of times; diseases take unexpected
turns; you may get well."
"Then I'd have to marry _him_," she interrupted swiftly.
"You ought not to marry him if you dislike him"--and the young parson
felt himself flush hotly, and was thankful for the darkness; what a
fool a fellow felt, giving advice about a love-affair!
"I _have_ to. You see--he's pathetic. He'd go back into the depths if
I let go, and--and I'm fond of him, in a way."
"Oh!"--the masculine mind was bewildered. "I understood that
you--disliked him."
"Why, I do. But I'm just fond of him." Then she laughed again. "Any
woman would know how I mean it. I mean--I am fond of him--I'd do
anything for him. But I don't believe in him, and the thought of--of
marrying him makes me desperate."
"Then you should not."
"I have to, if I live. So I'm going to kill myself to-night. You have
nothing to say against it. You've said nothing--that counts. If you
said I'd certainly go to hell, I might not--but you don't say that. I
think you can't say it." She stood up. "Thank you for listening
patiently. At least you have helped me to come to my decision. I'm
going to. To-night."
This was too awful. He had helped her to decide to kill herself. He
could not let her go that way. He stood before her and talked with all
his might. "You cannot do that. You must not. You are overstrained
and excited, and it is no time to do an irrevocable thing. You must
wait till you see things calmly, at least. Taking your own life is not
a thing to decide on as you might decide on going to a ball. How do
you know that you will not be bitterly sorry to-morrow if you do that
to-night? It's throwing away the one chance a person has to make the
world better and happier. That's what you're here for--not to enjoy
yourself."
She put a quiet sentence, in that oddly buoyant voice, into the stream
of his words. "Still, you don't say I'd go to hell forever," she
commented.
"Is that your only thought?" he demanded indignantly. "Can't you think
of what's brave and worth while--of what's decent for a big thing like
a soul? A soul that's going on living to eternity--do you want to
blacken that at the start? Can't you forget your little moods and your
despair of the moment?"
"No, I can't." The roses bobbed as she shook her head. The man, in
his heart, knew how it was, and did not wonder. But he must somehow
stop this determination which he had--she said--helped to form. A
thought came to him; he hesitated a moment, and then broke out
impetuously: "Let me do this--let me write to you; I'm not saying
things straight. It's hard. I think I could write more clearly. And
it's unfair not to give me a hearing. Will you promise only this, not
to do it till you've read my letter?"
Slowly the youth, the indomitable brightness in the girl forged to the
front. She looked at him with the dawn of a smile in her eyes, and he
saw all at once, with a passing vision, that her eyes were very blue
and that her hair was bright and light--a face vivid and responsive.
"Why, yes. There's no particular reason for to-night. I can wait.
But I'm going home to-morrow, to my uncle's place at Forest Gate. I'll
never be here again. The people I'm with are going away to live next
month. I'll never see you again. You don't know my name." She
considered a moment. "I'd rather not have you know it. You may write
to--" She laughed. "I said I was just a date--you may write to August
First, Forest Gate, Illinois. Say care of, care of--" Again she
laughed. "Oh, well, care of Robert Halarkenden. That will reach me."
Quite gravely the man wrote down the fantastic address. "Thank you. I
will write at once. You promised?"
"Yes." She put out her hand. "You've been very good to me. I shall
never see you again. Good-by."
"Good-by," he said, and the room was suddenly so still, so empty, so
dark that it oppressed him.
WARCHESTER,
St. Andrew's Parish House,
August 5th.
This is to redeem my promise. When we talked that afternoon, it seemed
to me that I should be able to write the words I could not say. Every
day since then I have said "Tomorrow I shall be able to tell her
clearly." The clearness has not come--that's why I have put it off.
It hasn't yet come. Sometimes--twice, I think--I have seen it all
plainly. Just for a second--in a sort of flash. And then it dropped
back into this confusion.
I won't insult you by attempting to discount your difficulties. You
have worked out for yourself a calculation made, at one time or
another, by many more people than you would imagine. And your answer
is wrong. I know that. You know it too. When you say that you are
afraid of what may come after, you admit that what you intend to do is
impossible. If you were not convinced of something after, you would go
on and do what you propose. Which shows that there is an error in your
mathematics. Do you at all know what I mean?
I must make you understand. I can see why you find the prospect
unendurable. You don't look far enough, that is all. Why do people
shut themselves up in the air-tight box of a possible three score years
and ten, and call it life? How can you, who are so alive, do so? It
seems that you have fallen into the strangely popular error of thinking
that clocks measure life. That is not what they are for. A clock is
the contrivance of springs and wheels whereby the ambitious, early of a
summer's day when sane people are asleep or hunting flowers on the
hill-side, keep tally of the sun. Those early on the hill-side see the
gray lighten and watch it flush to rose--the advent of the
day-spring--and go on picking flowers. They of the clocks are one day
older--these have seen a sunrise. There is the difference.
If you really thought that all there is to life is that part of it we
have here in this world--if you believed that--then what you
contemplate doing would be nothing worse than unsportsmanlike. But you
do not believe that. You are afraid of what might come--after. You
came to me--or you came to the rector--in the hope of being assured
that your fear was groundless. You had a human desire for the advice
of a "professional." You still wish that assurance--that is why you
promised to wait for this letter. You told me your case; you wanted
expert testimony. Here it is: You need not be afraid. God will not be
angry--God will not punish you. You said that you did not know much
about God. Surely you know this much--anger can never be one of His
attributes. God is never angry. Men would be angry if they were
treated as they treat Him--that is all. In mathematics, certain
letters represent certain unknown quantities. So words are only the
symbols for imperfectly realized ideas. If by "hell" you understand
what that word means to me--the endlessness of life with nothing in it
that makes life worth while--then, if you still want my opinion, I
think that you will most certainly go there. God will not be angry.
God will not send you there, you will have sent yourself--it will not
be God's punishment laid on you, it will be your punishment laid by you
on yourself. But it is not in you to let that come to pass.
All of the "philosophies of life," as they are called, are, I think,
varieties of two. I suppose Materialism and Idealism cover them.
Those who hold with the first are in the air-tight box of years and
call it life. The others are in the box, too, but they call it time.
And they know that, after all, the box is really not air-tight; each of
them remembers the day when he first discovered that there were cracks
in the box, and the day he learned that one could best see through
those narrow openings by coming up resolutely to the hard necessary
walls that hold one in. Then came the astounding enlightenment that
only a shred of reality was within the cramped prison of the box--just
a darkened, dusty bit--that all the beautiful rest of it lay outside.
These are the ones who, pressing up against the rough walls of the box,
see, through their chinks, the splendor of what lies outside--see it
and know that, one day, they shall have it.
The others, the Materialists, never come near the walls of the box,
except to bang their heads. Their reality is inside. These call life
a thing. The Idealists know that it is a process, and there is not a
tree or a flower or a blade of grass or a road-side weed but proves
them right. It is a process, and the end of it is perfection--nothing
less. The perfection of the physical is approximated to here in this
world, and, after that, the tired hands are folded, and the worn-out
body laid away. But even the very saints of God barely touch, here,
the edges of the possible perfection of the soul. Why, it is that that
lifts us--that possibility of going on and on--out of imaginable
bounds, into glory after glory--until the wisdom of the ages is
foolishness and time has no meaning where, in the reaches of eternity,
the climbing soul thinks with the mind of God.
You were going to cut yourself off from that! At the very start, you
were going to fling away your single glorious chance--you, who told me
that in less than ten of these littlenesses called "years" you might be
allowed to go out into a larger place. Remember, you can't kill your
soul. But, because you have been trusted with personality you can, if
you wish, show an unforgiveable contempt for your beginning life. But,
if you do that--if you treat your single opportunity like that--can you
believe that another will be given you?
You cannot do this thing. I say to you that there are openings in the
box. Find a fissure in the rough wall. Then, look! This isn't
life--only the smallest bit of it. The rest is outside. It is not a
question of God--it is not a question of punishment. It is this--what
are _you_ going to do with your soul?
I wonder if you have read as far as this. I wonder if I have been at
all intelligible?
Will Robert Halarkenden see that you get this thick letter? There is
only one way by which I can know that it found you.
I know that I have been hopelessly inadequate--perhaps grotesque. To
see it and be unable to tell you--imagine the awfulness! Give me
another chance. I was not going to ask that, but I must. Can't you
see I've got to show you? I mean--about another chance--will you not
renew that promise? Will you not send a word in answer to this letter,
and promise once more not to do anything decisive until you have heard
from me again? I am
Sincerely yours,
GEOFFREY McBIRNEY.
FOREST GATE, August 8th.