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What Can She Do?

E >> Edward Pason Roe >> What Can She Do?







CHAPTER XXIV

SCORN AND KINDNESS



Though her strength hardly seemed equal to it, she determined to go
and see Malcom, for she felt very grateful to him. And yet the little
time she had been in the village made her fear to speak to him or any
one again, and she almost felt that she would like to shrink into some
hidden place and die.

Quiet, respectable Pushton had been dreadfully scandalized by Zell's
elopement with a man who by one brief visit had gained such bad
notoriety. Those who had stood aloof, surmised, and doubted about the
Allens before, now said, triumphantly, "I told you so." Good, kind,
Christian people were deeply pained that such a thing could have
happened; and it came to be the general opinion that the Allens were
anything but an acquisition to the neighborhood.

"If they are going to bring that style of men here, the sooner they
move away the better," was a frequent remark. All save the "baser
sort" shrank from having much to do with them, and again Edith was
insulted by the bold advances of some brazen clerks and shop-boys as
she passed along. She also saw significant glances and whisperings,
and once or twice detected a pointing finger.

With cheeks burning with shame and knees trembling with weakness, she
reached Malcom's gate, to which she clung panting for a moment, and
then passed in. The little man had his coat off, and, stooping in his
strawberry-bed, he did look very small indeed. Edith approached quite
near before he noticed her. He suddenly straightened himself up almost
as a jumping-jack might, and gave her a sharp, surprised look. He had
heard the gossip in several distorted forms, but what hurt him most
was that she did not come or send to him. But when he saw her standing
before him with her head bent down like a moss-rosebud wilting in the
sun, when he met her timid, deprecating glance, his soft heart
relented instantly, and coming toward her he said:

"An' ha' ye coom to see ould Malcom at last? What ha' I dune that I
suld be sae forgotten?"

"You were not forgotten, Mr. McTrump. God knows that I have too few
friends to forget the best of them," answered Edith, in a voice of
tremulous pathos.

After that Malcom was wax in her hands, and with moistened eyes he
stood gazing at her in undisguised admiration.

"I have been through deep trouble, Mr. McTrump," continued she, "and
perhaps you, like so many others, may think me not fit to speak to you
any more. Besides, I have been very sick, and really ought not to be
out to-day. Indeed I feel very weak. Isn't there some place where I
could sit down?"

"Now God forgie me for an uncoo Highlander," cried Malcom, springing
forward, "to think that I suld let ye ston there, like a tall, white,
swayin' calla lily, in the rough wind. Take me arm till I support ye
to the best room o' me house."

Edith did take and cling to it with the feeling of one ready to fall.

"Oh, Mr. McTrump, you are too kind," she murmured.

"Why suld I not be kind?" he said, heartily, "when I see ye nipt by
the wourld's unkindness? Why suld I not be kind? Is the rose there to
blame because a weed has grown alongside? Ye could na help it that the
wild bird flitted, and I heerd how ye roon like a brave lassie to stop
her. But the evil wourld is quick to see the bad and slow to see the
gude." And Malcom escorted her like a "leddy o' high degree" to his
little parlor, and there she told him and his wife all her trouble,
and Malcom seemed afflicted with a sudden cold in his head. Then Mrs.
McTrump bustled in and out in a breezy eagerness to make her
comfortable.

"Ye're a stranger in our toon," she said, "and sae I was once mysel,
an' I ken how ye feel."

"An' the Gude Book, which I hope ye read," added the gallant Malcom,
"says hoo in entertainin' a stranger ye may ha' an angel aroond."

"Oh, Mr. McTrump," said Edith, with peony-like face, "Hannibal is the
only one who calls me that, and he doesn't know any better."

"Why suld he know ony better?" responded Malcom quickly. "I ha' never
seen an angel, na mair than I ha' seen a goolden harp, but I'm a
thinkin' a modest bonny lassie like yoursel cooms as near to ane as
anything can in this world."

"But, Mr. McTrump," said Edith, with a half-pathetic, half-comic face,
"I am in such deep trouble that I shall soon grow old and wrinkled, so
I shall not be an angel long."

"Na, na, dinna say that," said Malcom earnestly. "An ye will, ye may
keepit the angel a-growin' within ye alway, though ye live as old as
Methuselah. D'ye see this wee brown seed? There's a mornin'-glory vine
hidden in it, as would daze your een at the peep o' day wi' its gay
blossoms. An' ye see my ould gudewife there? Ah, she will daze the een
o' the greatest o' the earth in the bright springtime o' the
Resurrection; and though I'm a little mon here, it may be I'll see
o'er the heads of soom up there."

"An ye had true humeelity ye'd be a-hopin' to get there, instead of
expectin' to speir o'er the heads o' yer betters," said his wife in a
rebuking tone.

"'A-hopin' to get there'!" said Malcom with some warmth. "Why suld I
hope when 'I _know_ that my Redeemer liveth'?"

Edith's eyes filled with wistful tears, for the quaint talk of these
old people suggested a hope and faith that she knew nothing of. But,
in a low voice, she said, "Why does God let his creatures suffer so
much?"

"Bless your heart, puir child, He suffered mair than ony on us," said
Malcom tenderly. "But ye'll learn it a' soon. He who fed the famishin'
would bid ye eat noo. But wait a bit till ye see what I'll bring ye."

In a moment he was back with a dainty basket of Triomphe de Gand
strawberries, and Edith uttered an exclamation of delight as she
inhaled their delicious aroma.

"They are the first ripe the season, an' noo see what the gudewife
will do with them."

Soon their hulls were off, and, swimming in a saucer of cream, they
were added to the dainty little lunch that Mrs. McTrump had prepared.

"Oh!" exclaimed Edith, drawing a long breath, "you can't know how you
ease my poor sore heart. I began to think all the world was against
me."

At this Malcom beat such a precipitate retreat that he half stumbled
over a chair, but outside the door he ventured to say:

"An ye coom out I'll cut ye a posy before ye go." But Edith saw him
rub his rough sleeve across his eyes as he passed the window. His wife
said, in a grave gentle tone:

"Would ye might learn to know Him who said, 'Be of good cheer, I have
overcome the wourld.'"

Edith shook her head sadly, and said, "I don't understand Him, and He
seems far off."

"It's only seemin', me dear," said the old woman kindly, "but, as
Malcom says, ye'll learn it a' by and by."

Mrs. McTrump was one of those simple souls who never presume to "talk
religion" to any one. "I can ony venture what I hope'll be a 'word in
season' noo and then, as the Maister gies me a chance," she would say
to her husband.

Though she did not know it, she had spread before Edith a Gospel
feast, and her genuine, hearty sympathy was teaching more than
eloquent sermons could have done, and already the grateful girl was
questioning:

"What makes these people differ so from others?"

With some dismay she saw how late it was growing, and hastened out to
Malcom, who had cut an exquisite little bouquet for her, and had
another basket of berries for her to take to her mother.

"Mr. McTrump," said Edith, "it's time we had a settlement; your
kindness I never can repay, but I am able now to carry out my
agreement."

"Don't bother me wi' that noo," said Malcom, rather testily. "I ha' no
time to make oot your account in the height o' the season. Let it ston
till I ha' time. An' ye might help me soomtimes make up posies far the
grand folk at the hotel. But how does your garden sin ye dismissed
ould Malcom?"

"Oh, Mr. McTrump," said Edith, slyly, "do you know you almost scared
old Hannibal out of his wits by the wonders you wrought last night or
this morning in that same garden you inquire about so innocently. How
can you work so fast and hard?"

"The woonders I wrought! Indeed I've not been near the garden sin ye
told me not to coom. Ye could hardly expect otherwise of a Scotchman."

"Who, then, could it be?" said Edith, a little startled herself now,
and she explained the mystery of the garden.

He was as nonplussed as herself, but, scratching his bushy head, he
said, with a canny look, "I wud be glad if Hannibal's 'spook,' as he
ca's it, would eoom doon and hoe a bit for me," and Edith was so
cheered and refreshed that she could even join him in the laugh.

They sent her away enveloped in the fragrance of strawberries and
roses from the little basket she carried. But the more grateful aroma
of human sympathy seemed to create a buoyant atmosphere around her;
and she passed back through the village strengthened and armed against
the cold or scornful looks of those who, knowing her to be "wounded,"
had not even the grace to pass by indifferently "on the other side."




CHAPTER XXV

A HORROR OF GREAT DARKNESS



By the time Edith reached home the transient strength and transient
brightening of the skies seemed to pass away. Her mother was no better
and the poor girl saw too plainly the grisly spectres, care, want, and
shame upon her hearth, to fear any good fairy that left such traces as
she saw in her garden. But the mystery troubled her; she longed to
know who it was. As she mused upon it on her way home, Arden Lacey
suddenly occurred to her, and there was a glimmer of a smile and a
faint increase of color on her pale face. But she did not suggest her
suspicion to Hannibal, when he eagerly asked if it were Malcom.

"No, strange to say, it was not," said Edith. "Who could it have
been?"

Hannibal's face fell, and he looked very solemn. "Sumpen awful's gwine
to happen, Miss Edie," he said, in a sepulchral tone.

Edith broke into a sudden reckless laugh, and said, "I think something
awful is happening about as fast as it can. But never mind, Hannibal,
we'll watch to-night, and perhaps he will come again."

"Oh, Miss Edie, I'se hope you'll 'scuse me. I couldn't watch for a
spook to save my life. I'se gwine to bed as soon as it's dark, and
cover up my head till mornin'."

"Very well," said Edith, quietly. "I'm going to sit up with mother to-
night, and if it comes again, I'll see it."

"De good Lord keep you safe, Miss Edie," said Hannibal, tremblingly.
"You'se know I'd die for you in a minit; but I'se couldn't wateh for a
spook nohow," and Hannibal crept away, looking as if the very worst
had now befallen them.

Edith was too weary and sad even to smile at the absurd superstition
of her old servant, for with her practical, positive nature she could
scarcely understand how even the most ignorant could harbor such
delusions. She said to Laura, "Let me sleep till nine o'clock, and
then I will watch till morning."

Laura did not waken her till ten.

After Edith had shaken off her lethargy, she said, "Why, Laura, you
look ready to faint!"

With a despairing little cry, Laura threw herself on the floor, and
buried her face in her sister's lap, sobbing:

"I am ready to faint--body and soul. Oh, Edie, Edie, what shall we do?
Oh, that I were sure death was an eternal sleep, as some say! How
gladly I would close my eyes to-night and never wish to open them
again! My heart is ashes, and my hope is dead. And yet I am afraid to
die, and more afraid to live. Ever since--Zell--went--the future has
been--a terror to me. Edith," she continued, after a moment, in a low
voice, that trembled and was full of dread, "Zell has not written--the
silence of the grave seems to have swallowed her. _He has not married
her!_" and an agony of grief convulsed Laura's slight frame.

Edith's eyes grew hard and tearless, and she said sternly, "It were
better the grave had swallowed her than such a gulf of infamy."

Laura suddenly became still, her sobs ceasing. Slowly she raised such
a white, terror-stricken face, that Edith was startled. She had never
seen her elder sister, once so stately and proud, then so apathetic,
moved like this.

"Edith," she said, in an awed whisper, "what is there before us?
Zell's, flight, like a flash of lightning, has revealed to me where we
stand, and ever since I have brooded over our situation, till it seems
as if I shall go mad. There's an awful gulf before us, and every day
we are being pushed nearer to it;" and Laura's large blue eyes were
dilated with horror, as if she saw it.

"Mother is going to die," she continued, in a tone that chilled
Edith's soul. "Our money will soon be gone; we then shall be driven
away even from this poor shelter, out upon the streets--to New York,
or somewhere. Edith, Oh, Edith, don't you see the gulf? What else is
before us?"

"Honest work is before me," said Edith, almost fiercely. "I will
compel the world to give me a place entitled at least to respect."

Laura shook her head despairingly. "You may struggle back and up to
where you are safe. You are good and strong. But there are so many
poor girls in the world like me, who are not good and strong!
Everything seems to combine to push a helpless, friendless woman
toward that gulf. Poor rash, impulsive Zell saw it, and could not
endure the slow, remorseless pressure, as one might be driven over a
precipice, and one she loved seemed to stand ready to break the fall.
I understand her stony, reckless face now."

"Oh, Laura, hush!" said Edith, desperately.

"I must speak," she went on, in the same low voice, so full of dread,
"or my brain will burst. I have thought and thought, and seen that
awful gulf grow nearer and nearer, till at times it seemed as if I
should shriek with terror. For two nights I have not slept. Oh! why
were we not taught something better than dressing and dancing, and
those hollow, superficial accomplishments that only mock us now? Why
were not my mind and body developed into something like strength? I
would gladly turn to the coarsest drudgery, if I could only be safe.
But after what has happened no good people will have anything to do
with us, and I am a feeble, helpless creature, that can only shrink
and tremble as I am pushed nearer and nearer."

Edith seemed turning into stone, herself paralyzed by Laura's despair.
After a moment Laura continued, with a perceptible shudder in her
voice:

"There is no one to break my fall. Oh, that I was not afraid to die!
That seems the only resource to such as I, If I could just end it all
by becoming nothing--"

"Laura, Laura," cried Edith, starting up, "cease your wild mad words.
You are sick and morbid. You are more delirious than mother is. We can
get work; there are good people who will take care of us."

"I have seen nothing that looks like it," said Laura, in the same
despairing tone. "I have read of just such things, and I see how it
all must end."

"Yes, that's just it," said Edith, impatiently. "You have read so many
wild, unnatural stories of life that you are ready to believe anything
that is horrible. Listen: I have over four hundred dollars in the
bank."

"How did you get it?" asked Laura, quickly.

"I have followed mother's suggestion, and mortgaged the place."

Laura sank into a chair, and became so deathly white that Edith
thought she would faint. At last she gasped:

"Don't you see? Even you in your strength can't help yourself. You are
being pushed on, too. You said you would not follow mother's advice
again, because it always led to trouble. You said, again and again,
you would not mortgage the place, and yet you have done it. Now it's
all clear. That mortgage will be foreclosed, and then we shall be
turned out, and then--" and she covered her face with her hands.
"Don't you see," she said, in a muffled tone, "the great black hand
reaching out of the darkness and pushing us down and nearer? Oh, that
I wasn't afraid to die!"

Edith was startled. Even her positive, healthful nature began to yield
to the contagion of Laura's morbid despair. She felt that she must
break the spell and be alone. By a strong effort she tried to speak in
her natural tone and with confidence. She tried to comfort the
desperate woman by endearing epithets, as if she were a child. She
spoke of those simple restoratives which are so often and vainly
prescribed for mortal wounds, sleep and rest.

"Go to bed, poor child," she urged. "All will look differently in the
sunlight to-morrow."

But Laura scarcely seemed to heed her. With weak, uncertain steps she
drew near the bed, and turned the light on her mother's thin, flushed
face, and stood, with clasped hands, looking wistfully at her.

"Yes, my dear," muttered Mrs. Allen in her delirium, "both your father
and myself would give our full approval to your marriage with Mr.
Goulden." The poor woman made watching doubly hard to her daughters,
since she kept recalling to them the happy past in all its minutiae.

Laura turned to Edith with a smile that was inexpressibly sad, and
said, "What a mockery it all is! There seems nothing real in this
world but pain and danger. Oh, that I was not afraid to die!"

"Laura, Laura! go to your rest," exclaimed Edith, "or you will lose
your reason. Come;" and she half carried the poor creature to her
room. "Now, leave the door ajar," she said, "for if mother is worse I
will call you."

Edith sat down to her weary task as a watcher, and never before, in
all the sad preceding weeks, had her heart been so heavy, and so
prophetic of evil, Laura's words kept repeating themselves to her, and
mingling with those of her mother's delirium, thus strangely blending
the past and the present. Could it be true that they were helpless in
the hands of a cruel, remorseless fate, that was pushing them down?
Could it be true that all her struggles and courage would be in vain,
and that each day was only bringing them nearer to the desperation of
utter want? She could not disguise from herself that Laura's dreadful
words had a show of reason, and that, perhaps, the mortgage she had
given that day meant that they would soon be without home or shelter
in the great, pitiless world. But, with set teeth and white face, she
muttered:

"Death first."

Then, with a startled expression, she anxiously asked herself: "Was
that what Laura meant when she kept saying, 'Oh, if I wasn't afraid to
die!'" She went to her sister's door and listened. Laura's movements
within seemed to satisfy her, and she returned to the sick-room and
sat down again. Putting her hand upon her heart, she murmured:

"I am completely unnerved to-night. I don't understand myself;" and
she looked almost as pale and despairing as Laura.

She was, in truth, in the midst of that "horror of great darkness"
that comes to so many struggling souls in a world upon which the
shadow of sin rests so heavily.




CHAPTER XXYI

FRIEND AND SAVIOUR



Knowing of no other source of help than an earthly one, her thoughts
reverted to the old Scotch people whom she had recently visited. Their
sunlighted garden, and happy, homely life, their simple faith, seemed
the best antidote for her present morbid tendencies.

"If the worst comes to the worst, I think they would take us in for a
little while, till some way opened," she thought. "Oh that I had their
belief in a better life! Then it wouldn't seem so dreadful to suffer
in this one. Why have I never read the 'Gude Book,' as they call it?
But I never seemed to understand it; still, I must say, that I never
really tried to. Perhaps God is angry with us, and is punishing us for
so forgetting Him. I would rather think that than to feel so forgotten
and lost sight of. It seems as if God didn't see or care. It seems as
if I could cling to the harshest father in the world, if he would only
protect and help me. A God of wrath, that I have heard clergymen
preach of, is not so dreadful to me as a God who forgets, and leaves
His creatures to struggle alone. Our minister was so cold and
philosophical, and presented a God that seemed so far off, that I felt
there could never be anything between Him and me. He talked about a
holy, infinite Being, who dwelt alone in unapproachable majesty; and I
want some one to stoop down and love and help poor little me. He
talked about a religion of purity and good works, and love to our
fellow-men. I don't know how to work for myself, much less for others,
and it seems as if nearly all my fellow-creatures hated and scorned
me, and I am afraid of them; so I don't see what chance there is for
such as we. If we had only remained rich, and lived on the avenue,
such a religion wouldn't be so hard. It seems strange that the Bible
should teach him and old Malcom so differently. But I suppose he is
wiser, and understands it better. Perhaps it's the flowers that teach
Malcom, for he always seems drawing lessons from them."

Then came the impulse to get the Bible and read it for herself. "The
impulse!" whence did it come?

When Edith felt so orphaned and alone, forgotten even of God, then the
Divine Father was nearest his child. When, in her bitter extremity, at
this lonely midnight hour she realized her need and helplessness as
never before, her great Elder Brother was waiting beside her.

The impulse was divine. The Spirit of God was leading her as He is
seeking to lead so many. It only remained for her to follow these
gentle impulses, not to be pushed into the black gulf that despairing
Laura dreaded, but to be led into the deep peace of a loving faith.

She went down into the parlor to get the Bible that in her hands had
revealed the falseness and baseness of Gus Elliot, and the thought
flashed through her mind like a good omen, "This book stood between me
and evil once before." She took it to the light and rapidly turned its
pages, trying to find some clew, some place of hope, for she was sadly
unfamiliar with it.

Was it her trembling fingers alone that turned the pages? No; He who
inspired the guide she consulted guided her, for soon her eyes fell
upon the sentence--

"Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest."

The words came with such vivid power and meaning that she was
startled, and looked around as if some one had spoken to her. They so
perfectly met her need that it seemed they must be addressed directly
to her.

"Who was it that said these words, and what right had he to say them?"
she queried eagerly, and keeping her finger on the passage as if it
might be a clew out of some fatal labyrinth, she turned the leaves
backward and read more of Him with the breathless interest that some
poor burdened soul might have felt eighteen centuries ago in listening
to a rumor of the great Prophet who had suddenly appeared with signs
and wonders in Palestine. Then she turned and read again and again the
sweet words that first arrested her attention. They seemed more
luminous and hope-inspiring every moment, as their significance dawned
upon her like the coming of day after night.

Her clear, positive mind could never take a vague, dubious impression
of anything, and with a long-drawn breath she said, with the emphasis
of perfect conviction:

"If He were a mere man, as I have been taught to believe, He had no
right to say these words. It would be a bitter, wicked mockery for man
or angel to speak them. Oh, can it be that it was God Himself in human
guise? I could trust such a God."

With glowing cheeks and parted lips, she resumed her reading, and in
her eyes was the growing light of a great hope.

The upper room of that poor little cottage was becoming a grand and
sacred place. Heaven, that honors the deathless soul above all
localities, was near. The God who was not in the vast and gold-
incrusted temple on Mount Moriah sat in humble guise at "Jacob's
well," and said to one of His poor guilty creatures: "I that speak
unto thee am He." Cathedral domes and cross-tipped spires indicated
the Divine presence on every hand in superstitious Rome, but it would
seem that He was near only to a poor monk creeping up Pilate's
staircase. Though the wealth of the world should combine to build a
colossal church, filling it with every sacred emblem and symbol, and
causing its fretted roof to resound with unceasing choral service, it
would not be such a claim upon the great Father's heart as a weak,
pitiful cry to Him from the least of His children. Though Edith knew
it not, that Presence without which all temples are vain had come to
her as freely, as closely, as truly as when it entered the cottage at
Bethany, and Mary "sat at Jesus' feet and heard His word." Even to
her, in this night of trouble, in this stony wilderness of care and
fear, as to God's trembling servant of old, a ladder of light was let
down from heaven, and on it her faith would climb up to the peace and
rest that are above, and therefore undisturbed by the storms that rage
on earth.

But it is God's way to make us free through truth. Christ, when on
earth, did not deal with men's souls as with their bodies. The latter
He touched into instantaneous cure; to the former He appealed with
patient instruction and entreaty, revealing Himself by word and deed,
and saying: In view of what I prove myself to be will you trust me?
Will you follow me?

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