What Can She Do? Part 42

"She is very different from what people are imagining her. Perhaps Arden, poor boy, is nearer right than all of us. Oh, I hope she is good, whether he ever marries her or not, for this love will be the saving or ruining of him."

When Edith awoke it was dark, and she started up in dismay, for she had meant to sleep but an hour or two. Having hastily smoothed her hair, she went to the sick-room, and found Laura reclining on the sofa, and talking in the most friendly manner to Mrs. Lacey. Her mother's delirium continued, though it was more quiet, with s.n.a.t.c.hes of sleep intervening, but she noticed no one as yet. Mrs. Lacey sat calmly in her chair, her sad, patient face making the very ideal of a watcher, and yet in spite of her plain exterior there was a refinement, an air of self-respect, that would impress the most casual observer. As soon as Laura saw Edith she rose as quickly as her feebleness permitted, and threw her arms around her sister, and there was an embrace whose warmth and meaning none but themselves, and the pitying eye of Him who saved, could understand. Then Edith turned and said, earnestly:

"Truly, Mrs. Lacey, I did not intend to trespa.s.s on your kindness in this manner. I hope you will forgive me."

"Nature knew what was best for you, Miss Allen, and have not incommoded me at all. I made my plans to stay till nine o'clock, and then Arden will come for me."

"Miss Edie," said Hannibal, in his loud whisper, "I'se got some supper for you down here."

Why did Edith go to her room and make a little better toilet before going down? She hardly thought herself. It was probably a feminine instinct. As she took her last sip of tea there was a timid knock at the door. "I will see him a moment," she decided.

Hannibal, with a gravity that made poor Edith smile in her thoughts, admitted Arden Lacey. He was diffident but not awkward, and the color deepened in his face, then left it very pale, as he saw Edith was present. Her pale cheek also took the faintest tinge of pink, but she rose quietly, and said:

"Please be seated, Mr. Lacey. I will tell your mother you are here."

Then, as Hannibal disappeared, she added earnestly, "I do appreciate your mother's kindness, and--yours also. At the same time, too deep a sense of obligation is painful; you must not do so much for us. Please do not misunderstand me."

Arden had something of his mother's quiet dignity, as he rose and held out to Edith a letter, saying:

"Will you please read that--you need not answer it--and then perhaps you will understand me better."

Edith hesitated, and was reluctant.

"I may be doing wrong," continued he, earnestly and with rising color.

"I am not versed in the world's ways; but is it not my right to explain the rash words I uttered this morning? My good name is dear to me also. Few care for it, but I would not have it utterly blurred in your eyes. We may be strangers after you have read it, if you choose, but I entreat you to read it."

"You will not feel hurt if I afterward return it to you?" asked Edith, timidly.

"You may do with it what you please."

She then took the letter, and a moment later Mrs. Lacey appeared, and said:

"I will sit up to-morrow night, with your permission."

Edith took her hand, and replied, "Mrs. Lacey, you burden me with kindness."

"It is not my wish to burden, but to relieve you, Miss Allen. I think I can safely say, from our slight acquaintance, that in the case of sickness or trouble at a neighbor's, you would not spare yourself. We cease to be human when we leave the too heavily burdened to struggle alone."

Edith's eyes grew moist, and she said, simply, "I cannot refuse kindness offered in that spirit, and may G.o.d bless you for it. Good-night."

Arden's only parting was a grave, silent bow.

Edith was soon alone again, watching by her mother. With some natural curiosity, she opened the letter that was written by one so different from any man that she had ever known before. Its opening, at least, was rea.s.suring.

"MISS EDITH ALLEN--You need not fear that I shall offend again by either writing or speaking such rash words as those which so deeply pained you this morning. They would not have been spoken then, perhaps never, had I not been startled out of my self-control--had I not seen that you suspected me of evil. I was very unwise, and I sincerely ask your pardon. But I meant no wrong, and as you referred to my sister, I can say, before G.o.d, that I would s.h.i.+eld you as I would s.h.i.+eld her.

"I know little of the conventionalities of the world. I live but a hermit's life in it, and my letter may seem to you very foolish and romantic, still I know that my motives are not ign.o.ble, and with this consciousness I venture.

"Reverencing and honoring you as I do, I cannot bear that you should think too meanly of me. The world regards me as a sullen, stolid, bearish creature, but I have almost ceased to care for its opinion. I have received from it nothing but coldness and scorn, and I pay my debt in like coin. But perhaps you can imagine why I cannot endure that you should regard me in like manner. I would not have you think my nature a stony, sterile place, when something tells me that it is like a garden that needs only sunlight of some kind. My life has been blighted by the wrong of another, who should have been my best helper.

The knowledge and university culture for which I thirsted were denied me. And yet, believe me, only my mother's need--only the absolute necessity that she and my sister should have a daily protector--kept me from pus.h.i.+ng out into the word, and trying to work my way unaided to better things. Sacred duty has chained me down to a life that was outwardly most sordid and unhappy. My best solace has been my mother's love. But from varied, somewhat extensive, though perhaps not the wisest kind of reading, I came to dwell in a brave, beautiful, but shadowy world that I created out of books. I was becoming satisfied with it, not knowing any other. The real world mocked and hurt me on every side. It is so harsh and unjust that I hate it. I hate it infinitely more as I see its disposition to wound you, who have been so n.o.ble and heroic. In this dream of the past--in this unreal world of my own fancy--I was living when you came that rainy night. As I learned to know you somewhat, you seemed a beautiful revelation to me.

I did not think there was such a woman in existence. My shadows vanished before you. With you living in the present, my dreams of the past ceased. I could not prevent your image from entering my lonely, empty heart, and taking its vacant throne, as if by divine right. How could I? How can I drive you forth now, when my whole being is enslaved?

"But forgive me. Though thought and feeling are beyond control, outward action is not. I hope never to lose a mastering grasp on the rein of deeds and words; and though I cannot understand how the feeling I have frankly avowed can ever change, I will try never, by look or sign, to pain you with it again.

"And yet, with a diffidence and fear equalled only by my sincerity and earnestness, I would venture to ask one great favor. You said this morning that you already had too much to struggle against. The future has its possibilities of further trouble and danger.

"Will you not let me be your humble, faithful friend, serving you loyally, devotedly, yet un.o.btrusively, and with all the delicate regard for your position which I am capable of showing, a.s.sured that I will gratefully accept any hints when I am wrong or presumptuous?

I would gladly serve you with your knowledge and consent. But serve you I must. I vowed it the night I lifted your unconscious form from the wharf, and gave you into Mrs. Groody's care. There need be no reply. You have only to treat me not as an utter stranger when we next meet. You have only to give me the joy of doing something for you when opportunity offers.

"ARDEN LACEY."

Edith's eyes filled with tears before she finished this most unexpected epistle. Though rather quaint and stately in its diction, the pa.s.sion of a true, strong nature so permeated it all, that the coldest and shallowest would have been moved. And yet a half-smile played upon her face at the same time, like sunlight on drops of rain.

"Thank heaven!" she said, "I know of one more true man in the world, if he is a strange one. How different he is from what I thought! I don't believe there's another in this place who could have written such a letter. What would a New York society man, whose compliments are as extravagant as meaningless, think of it? Truly he doesn't know the world, and isn't like it. I supposed him an awkward, eccentric young countryman, that, from his very verdancy, would be difficult to manage, and he writes to me like a knight of olden time, only such language seems Quixotic in our day. The foolish fellow, to idealize poor, despised, faulty Edith Allen into one of the grand heroines of his interminable romances, and that after seeing me hoe my garden like a Dutch woman. If I wasn't so sad and he so earnest, I could laugh till my sides ached. There never was a more matter-of-fact creature than I am, and yet here am I enveloped in a halo of impossible virtues and graces. If I were what he thinks me, I shouldn't know myself.

Well, well, I must treat him somewhat like a boy, for such he really is, ignorant of himself and all the world. When he comes to know me better, the Edith of his imagination will vanish like his other shadows, and he will have another revelation that I am an ordinary, flesh-and-blood girl."

With deepening color she continued: "So it was he who lifted me up that night. Well, I am glad it was one who pitied me, and not some coa.r.s.e, unfeeling man. It seems strange how circ.u.mstances have brought him who shuns and is shunned by all, into such a queer relations.h.i.+p to me. But heaven forbid that I should give him lessons as to the selfish, matter-of-fact world. He will outgrow his morbidness and romantic chivalry with the certainty of years, and seeing more of me will banish his absurd delusions in regard to me. I need his friends.h.i.+p and help--indeed it seems as if they were sent to me. It can do him no harm, and it may give me a chance to do him good. If any man ever needed a sensible friend, he does."

Therefore Edith wrote him--

"It is very kind of you to offer friends.h.i.+p and help to one situated like myself, and I gratefully grant what you rather oddly call 'a favor.' At the same time, if you ever find such friendliness a pain or trouble to you in any way, I shall in no degree blame you for withdrawing it."

The "friends.h.i.+p" and "friendliness" were underscored, thus delicately hinting that this must be the only relation.

"There," she said, "all his chains will now be of his own forging, and I shall soon demolish the paragon he is dreaming over."

She laid both letters aside, and took down her Bible with a little sigh of satisfaction.

"His lonely, empty heart," she murmured; "ah, that is the trouble with all. He thinks to fill his with a vain dream of me, as others do with as vain a dream of something else. I trust I have learned of One here who can fill and satisfy mine;" and soon she was again deep in the wondrous story, so old, so new, so all-absorbing to those from whose spiritual eyes the scales of doubt and indifference have fallen. As she read she saw, not truths about Jesus, but _Him_, and at His feet her heart bowed in stronger faith and deeper love every moment.

She had not even thought whether she was a Christian or not. She had not even once put her finger on her spiritual pulse, to gauge the evidences of her faith. A system of theology would have been unintelligible to her. She could not have defined one doctrine so as to have satisfied a sound divine. She had not even read the greater part of the Bible, but, in her bitter extremity, the Spirit of G.o.d, employing the inspired guide, had brought her to Jesus, as the troubled and sinful were brought to Him of old. He had given her rest.

He had helped her save her sister, and with childlike confidence she was just looking, lovingly and trustingly, into His divine face, and He was smiling away all her fear and pain. She seemed to feel sure that her mother would get well, that Laura would grow stronger, that they would all learn to know Him, and would be taken care of.

As she read this evening she came to that pa.s.sage of exquisite pathos, where the purest, holiest manhood said to "a woman of the city, which was a sinner."

"Thy sins are forgiven. Go in peace."

Instantly her thoughts reverted to Zell, and she was deeply moved.

Could she be forgiven? Could she be saved? Was the G.o.d of the Bible--stern, afar off, as she had once imagined--more tender toward the erring than even their own human kindred? Could it be possible that, while she had been condemning, and almost hating Zell, Jesus had been loving her?

The feeling overpowered her. Closing the book, she leaned her head upon it, and, for the first time, sobbed and mourned for Zell with a great, yearning pity.

Every such pitiful tear, the world over, is a prayer to G.o.d. It mingles with those that flowed from His eyes as He wept over the doomed city that would not receive Him. It mingles with that crimson tide which flowed from His hands and feet when He prayed--

"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

CHAPTER XXVIII