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Stepping Heavenward

<h3 id="id00244" style="margin-top: 3em">Chapter 4</h3> <h5 id="id00245">IV</h5> Nov. 2. I really think I am sick and going to die. Last night I raised a little blood. I dare not tell mother, it would distress her so, but I am sure it came from my lungs. Charley said last week he really must stay away till I got better, for my cough sounded like his mother's. I have been very lonely, and have shed some tears, but most of the time have been too sorrowful to cry. If we were married, and I had a cough, would he go and leave me, I wonder? Sunday, Nov 18-Poor mother is dreadfully anxious about me. But I don't see how she can love me so, after the way I have behaved. I wonder if, after all, mothers are not the best friends there are! I keep her awake with my cough all night, and am mopy and cross all day, but she is just as kind and affectionate as she can be. Nov. 25.-The day I wrote that was Sunday. I could not go to church, and I felt very forlorn and desolate. I tried to get some comfort by praying, but when I got on my knees I just burst out crying and could not say a word. For I have not seen Charley for ten days. As I knelt there I began to think myself a perfect monster of selfishness for wanting him to spend his evenings with me, now that I am so unwell and annoy him so with my cough, and I asked myself if I ought not to break off the engagement altogether, if I was really in consumption, the very disease Charley dreaded most of all. It seemed such a proper sacrifice to make of myself. Then I prayed-yes, I am sure I really prayed as I had not done for more than a year, the idea of self-sacrifice grew every moment more beautiful in my eyes, till at last I felt an almost joyful triumph in writing to poor Charley, and tell him what I had resolved to do. This is my letter: My Dear, Dear Charley—I dare not tell you what it costs me to say what I am about to do; but I am sure you know me well enough by this time believe that it is only because your happiness is far more precious to me than my own, that I have decided to write you this letter. When you first told me that you loved me, you said, and you have often said so since then, that it was my "brightness and gayety" that attracted you. I knew there was something underneath my gayety better worth your love, and was glad I could give you more than you asked for. I knew I was not a mere thoughtless, laughing girl, but that I had a heart as wide as the ocean to give you-as wide and as deep. But now my "brightness and gayety" have gone; I am sick and perhaps am going to die. If this is so, it would be very sweet to have your love go with me to the very gates of death, and beautify and glorify my path thither. But what a weary task this would be to you, my poor Charley! And so, if you think it best, and it would relieve you of any care and pain, I will release you from our engagement and set you free. Your Little Katy. I did not sleep at all that night. Early on Monday I sent off my letter; and my heart beat so hard all day that I was tired and faint. Just at dark his answer came; I can copy it from memory. Dear Kate:—What a generous, self-sacrificing little thing you are! I always thought so, but now you have given me a noble proof of it. I will own that I have been disappointed to find your constitution so poor, and that it has been very dull sitting and hearing you cough, especially as I was reminded of the long and tedious illness through which poor Jenny and myself had to nurse our mother. I vowed then never to marry a consumptive woman, and I thank you for making it so easy for me to bring our engagement to an end. My bright hopes are blighted, and it will be long before I shall find another to fill your place. I need not say how much I sympathize with you in this disappointment. I hope the consolations of religion will now be yours. Your notes, the lock of your hair, etc., I return with this now. I will not reproach you for the pain you have cost me; I know it is not your fault that your health has become so frail. I remain your sincere friend, Charles Underhill Jan. 1, 1834.-Let me finish this story If I can. My first impulse after reading his letter was to fly to mother, and hide away forever in her dear, loving arms. But I restrained myself, and with my heart beating so that I could hardly hold my pen, I wrote: Mr. Underhill Sir—The scales have fallen from my eyes, and I see you at last just as you are. Since my note to you on Sunday last, I have had a consultation of physicians, and they all agree that my disease is not of an alarming character, and that I shall soon recover. But I thank God that before it was too late, you have been revealed to me just as you are-a heartless, selfish, shallow creature, unworthy the love of a true-hearted woman, unworthy even of your own self-respect. I gave you an opportunity to withdraw from our engagement in full faith, loving you so truly that I was ready to go trembling to my grave alone if you shrank from sustaining me to it. But I see now that I did not dream for one moment that you would take me at my word and leave me to my fate. I thought I loved a man, and could lean on him when strength failed me; I know now that I loved a mere creature of my imagination. Take back your letters; loathe the sight of them. Take back the ring, and find, if you can, a woman who will never be sick, never out of spirits, and who never will die. Thank heaven it is not Katherine Mortimer. These lines came to me in reply: "Thank God it is not Kate Mortimer. I want an angel for my wife, not a vixen. C. U." Jan. 15-What a tempest-tossed creature this birthday finds me. But let me finish this wretched, disgraceful story, if I can, before I quite lose my senses. I showed my mother the letters. She burst into tears and opened her arms, and I ran into them as a wounded bird flies into the ark. We cried together. Mother never said, never looked, "I told you so." All she did say was this, "God has heard my prayers! He is reserving better things for my child!" Dear mother's are not the only arms I have flown to. But it does not seem as if God ought to take me in because I am in trouble, when I would not go to him when I was happy in something else. But even in the midst of my greatest felicity I had many and many a misgiving; many a season when my conscience upbraided me for my willfulness towards my dear mother, and my whole soul yearned for something higher and better even than Charley's love, precious as it was. Jan. 26.-I have shut myself up in my room to-day to think over things. The end of it is that I am full of mortification and confusion of face. If I had only had confidence in mother's judgment I should never have get entangled in this silly engagement. I see now that Charley never could have made me happy, and I know there is a good deal in my heart he never called out. I wish, however, I had not written him when I was in passion. No wonder he is thankful that he free from such a vixen. But, oh the provocation was terrible! I have made up my mind never to tell a human soul about this affair. It will be so high-minded and honorable to shield him thus from the contempt he deserves. With all my faults I am glad that there is nothing mean or little about me! Jan. 27.-I can't bear to write it down, but I will. The ink was hardly dry yesterday on the above self-laudation when Amelia came. She had been out of town, and had only just learned what had happened. Of course she was curious to know the whole story. And I told it to her, every word of it! Oh, Kate Mortimer, how "high-minded" you are! How free from all that is "mean and little"! I could tear my hair if it would do any good? Amelia defended Charley, and I was thus led on to say every harsh thing of him I could think of. She said he was of so sensitive a nature, had so much sensibility, and such a constitutional aversion to seeing suffering, that for her part she could not blame him. "It is such a pity you had not had your lungs examined before you wrote that first letter," she went on. "But you are so impulsive! If you had only waited you would be engaged to Charley still!" "I am thankful I did not wait," I cried, angrily. "Do, Amelia, drop the subject forever. You and I shall never agree upon it. The truth is, you are two-thirds in love with him, and have been, all along." She colored, and laughed, and actually looked pleased. If anyone had made such an outrageous speech to me I should have been furious. "I suppose you know," said she, "that old Mr. Underhill has taken such a fancy to him that he has made him his heir; and he is as rich as a Jew." "Indeed!" I said, dryly. I wonder if mother knew it when she opposed our engagement so strenuously. Jan. 31.-I have asked her, and she said she did. Mr. Underhill told her his intentions when he urged her consent to the engagement. Dear mother! How unworldly, how unselfish she is! Feb. 4.-The name of Charley Underhill appears on these pages for the last time. He is engaged to Amelia! From this moment she is lost to me forever. How desolate, how mortified, how miserable I am! Who could have thought this of Amelia! She came to see me, radiant with joy. I concealed my disgust until she said that Charley felt now that he had never really loved me, but had preferred her all along. Then I burst out. What I said I do not know, and do not care. The whole thing is so disgraceful that I should be a stock or a stone not to resent it. Feb. 5.-After yesterday's passion of grief, shame, and anger, I feel perfectly stupid and languid. Oh, that I was prepared for a better world, and could fly to it and be at rest! Feb. 6.-Now that it is all over, how ashamed I am of the fury I have been in, and which has given Amelia such advantage over me! I was beginning to believe that I was really living a feeble and fluttering, but real Christian life, and finding some satisfaction in it. But that is all over now. I am doomed to be a victim of my own unstable, passionate, wayward nature, and the sooner I settle down into that conviction, the better. And yet how my very soul craves the highest happiness, and refuses to be comforted while that is wanting. Feb. 7.-After writing that, I do not know what made me go to see Dr. Cabot. He received me in that cheerful way of his that seems to promise the taking one's burden right off one's back. "I am very glad to see you, my dear child," he said. I intended to be very dignified and cold. As if I was going to have any Dr. Cabot's undertaking to sympathize with me! But those few kind words just upset me, and I began to cry. "You would not speak so kindly," I got out at last, "if you knew what a dreadful creature I am. I am angry with myself, and angry with everybody, and angry with God. I can't be good two minutes at a time. I do everything I do not want to do, and do nothing I try and pray to do. Everybody plagues me and tempts me. And God does not answer any of my prayers, and I am just desperate." "Poor child!" he said, in a low voice, as if to himself. "Poor, heart-sick, tired child, that cannot see what I can see, that its Father's loving arms are all about it?" I stopped crying, to strain my ears and listen. He went on. "Katy, all that you say may be true. I dare say it is. But God loves you. He loves you." "He loves me," I repeated to myself. "He loves me! Oh, Dr. Cabot, if I could believe that! If I could believe that, after all the promises I have broken, all the foolish, wrong things I have done and shall always be doing, God perhaps still loves me!" "You may be sure of it," he said, solemnly. "I, minister, bring the gospel to you to-day. Go home and say over and over to yourself, 'I am a wayward, foolish child. But He loves me! I have disobeyed and grieved Him ten thousand times. But He loves me! I have lost faith in some of my dearest friends and am very desolate. But He loves me! I do not love Him, I am even angry with Him! But He loves me! '" I came away, and all the way home I fought this battle with myself, saying, "He loves me!" I knelt down to pray, and all my wasted, childish, wicked life came and stared me in the face. I looked at it, and said with tears of joy, "But He loves me!" Never in my life did I feel so rested, so quieted, so sorrowful, and yet so satisfied. Feb 10.-What a beautiful world this is, and how full it is of truly kind, good people! Mrs. Morris was here this morning, and just one squeeze of that long, yellow old hand of hers seemed to speak a bookful! I wonder why I have always disliked her so, for she is really an excellent woman. I gave her a good kiss to pay her for the sympathy she had sense enough not to put into canting words, and if you will believe it, dear old Journal, the tears came into her eyes, and she said: "You are one of the Lord's beloved ones, though perhaps you do not know it." I repeated again to myself those sweet, mysterious words, and then I tried to think what I could do for Him. But I could not think of anything great or good enough. I went into mother's room and put my arms round her and told her how I loved her. She looked surprised and pleased. "Ah, I knew it would come!" she said, laying her hand on her Bible. "Knew what would come, mother?" "Peace," she said. I came back here and wrote a little note to Amelia, telling her how ashamed and sorry I was that I could not control myself the other day. Then I wrote a long letter to James. I have been very careless about writing to him. Then I began to hem those handkerchiefs mother asked me to finish a month ago. But I could not think of anything to do for God. I wish I could. It makes me so happy to think that all this time, while I was caring for nobody but myself, and fancying He must almost hate me, He was loving and pitying me. Feb. 15.-I went to see Dr. Cabot again to-day. He came down from his study with his pen in his hand. "How dare you come and spoil my sermon on Saturday?" he asked, good-humoredly. Though he seemed full of loving kindness, I was ashamed of my thoughtlessness. Though I did not know he was particularly busy on Saturdays. If I were a minister I am sure I would get my sermons done early in the week. "I only wanted to ask one thing," I said. "I want to do something for God. And I cannot think of anything unless it is to go on a mission. And mother would never let me do that. She thinks girls with delicate health are not fit for such work." "At all events I would not go to-day," he replied. "Meanwhile do everything you do for Him who has loved you and given Himself for you." I did not dare to stay any longer, and so came away quite puzzled. Dinner was ready, and as I sat down to the table, I said to myself: "I eat this dinner for myself, not for God. What can Dr. Cabot mean?" Then I remembered the text about doing all for the glory of God, even in eating and drinking; but I do not understand it at all. Feb. 19.-It has seemed to me for several days that it must be that I really do love God, though ever so little. But it shot through my mind to-day like a knife, that it is a miserable, selfish love at the best, not worth my giving, not worth God's accepting. All my old misery has come back with seven other miseries more miserable than itself. I wish I had never been born! I wish I were thoughtless and careless, like so many other girls of my age, who seem to get along very well, and to enjoy themselves far more than I do. Feb. 21.-Dr. Cabot came to see me to-day. I told him all about it. He could not help smiling as he said: "When I see a little infant caressing its mother, would you have me say to it, 'You selfish child, how dare you pretend to caress your mother in that way? You are quite unable to appreciate her character; you love her merely because she loves you, treats you kindly?'" It was my turn to smile now, at my own folly. "You are as yet but a babe in Christ," Dr. Cabot continued. "You love your God and Saviour because He first loved you. The time will come when the character of your love will become changed into one which sees and feels the beauty and the perfection of its object, and if you could be assured that He no longer looked on you with favor, you would still cling to Him with devoted affection." "There is one thing more that troubles me," I said. "Most persons know the exact moment when they begin real Christian lives. But I do not know of any such time in my history. This causes me many uneasy moments." "You are wrong in thinking that most persons have this advantage over you. I believe that the children of Christian parents, who have been judiciously trained, rarely can point to any day or hour when they began to live this new life. The question is not, do you remember, my child, when you entered this world, and how! It is simply this, are you now alive and an inhabitant thereof? And now it is my turn to ask you a question. How happens it that you, who have a mother of rich and varied experience, allow yourself to be tormented with these petty anxieties which she is as capable of dispelling as I am?" "I do not know," I answered. "But we girls can't talk to our mothers about any of our sacred feelings, and we hate to have them talk to us." Dr. Cabot shook his head. "There is something wrong somewhere," he said, "A young girl's mother is her natural refuge in every perplexity. I hoped that you, who have rather more sense than most girls of your age, could give me some idea what the difficulty is." After he had gone, I am ashamed to own that I was in a perfect flutter of delight at what he had said about my having more sense than most girls. Meeting poor mother on the stairs while in this exalted state of mind, I gave her a very short answer to a kind question, and made her unhappy, as I have made myself. It is just a year ago to-day that I got frightened at my novel-reading propensities, and resolved not to look into one for twelve months. I was getting to dislike all other books, and night after night sat up late, devouring everything exciting I could get hold of. One Saturday night I sat up till the clock struck twelve to finish one, and the next morning I was so sleepy that I had to stay at home from church. Now I hope and believe the back of this taste is broken, and that I shall never be a slave to it again. Indeed it does not seem to me now that I shall ever care for such books again. Feb. 24.-Mother spoke to me this morning for the fiftieth time, I really believe, about my disorderly habits. I don't think I am careless because I like confusion, but the trouble is I am always in a hurry and a ferment about something. If I want anything, I want it very much, and right away. So if I am looking for a book, or a piece of music, or a pattern, I tumble everything around, and can't stop to put them to rights. I wish I were not so-eager and impatient. But I mean to try to keep my room and my drawers in order, to please mother. She says, too, that I am growing careless about my hair and my dress. But that is because my mind is so full of graver, more important things. I thought I ought to be wholly occupied with my duty to God. But mother says duty to God includes duty to one's neighbor, and that untidy hair, put up in all sorts of rough bunches, rumpled cuffs and collars, and all that sort of thing, make one offensive to all one meets. I am sorry she thinks so, for I find it very convenient to twist up my hair almost any how, and it takes a good deal of time to look after collars and cuffs. March 14.-To-day I feel discouraged and disappointed. I certainly thought that if God really loved me, and I really loved Him, I should find myself growing better day by day. But I am not improved in the least. Most of the time I spend on my knees I am either stupid; feeling nothing at all, or else my head is full of what I was doing before I began to pray, or what I am going to do as soon as I get through. I do not believe anybody else in the world is like me in this respect. Then when I feel differently, and can make a nice, glib prayer, with floods of tears running down my cheeks, I get all puffed up, and think how much pleased God must be to see me so fervent in spirit. I go down-stairs in this frame, and begin to scold Susan for misplacing my music, till all of a sudden I catch myself doing it, and stop short, crestfallen and confounded. I have so many such experiences that I feel like a baby just learning to walk, who is so afraid of falling that it has half a mind to sit down once for all. Then there is another thing. Seeing mother so fond of Thomas A Kempis, I have been reading it, now and then, and am not fond of it at all. From beginning to end it exhorts to self-denial in every form and shape. Must I then give up all hope of happiness in this world, and modify all my natural tastes and desires? Oh, I do love so to be happy! I do so hate to suffer! The very thought of being sick, or of being forced to nurse sick people, with all their cross ways, and of losing my friends, or of having to live with disagreeable people, makes me shudder. I want to please God, and to be like Him. I certainly do. But I am so young, and it is so natural to want to have a good time! And now I am in for it I may as well tell the whole story. When I read the lives of good men and women who have died and gone to heaven, I find they all liked to sit and think about God and about Christ. Now I don't. I often try, but my mind flies off in a tangent. The truth is I am perfectly discouraged. March 17.-I went to see Dr. Cabot to-day, but he was out, so I thought I would ask for Mrs. Cabot, though I was determined not to tell her any of my troubles. But somehow she got the whole story out of me, and instead of being shocked, as I expected she would be, she actually burst out laughing! She recovered herself immediately, however. "Do excuse me for laughing at you, you dear child you!" she said. "But I remember so well how I use to flounder through just such needless anxieties, and life looks so different, so very different, to me now from what it did then! What should you think of a man who, having just sowed his field, was astonished not to see it at once ripe for the harvest, because his neighbor's, after long months of waiting, was just being gathered in?" "Do you mean," I asked, "that by and by I shall naturally come to feel and think as other good people do?" "Yes, I do. You must make the most of what little Christian life you have; be thankful God has given you so much, cherish it, pray over it, and guard it like the apple of your eye. Imperceptibly, but surely, it will grow, and keep on growing, for this is its nature." "But I don't want to wait," I said, despondently. "I have just been reading a delightful book, full of stories of heroic deeds-not fables, but histories of real events and real people. It has quite stirred me up, and made me wish to possess such beautiful heroism, and that I were a man, that I might have a chance to perform some truly noble, self-sacrificing acts." "I dare say your chance will come," she replied, "though you are not a man. I fancy we all get, more or less, what we want." "Do you really think so? Let me see, then, what I want most. But I am staying too long. Were you particularly busy?" "No," she returned smilingly, "I am learning that the man who wants me is the man I want." "You are very good to say so. Well, in the first place, I do really and truly want to be good. Not with common goodness, you know, but-" "But uncommon goodness," she put in. "I mean that I want to be very, very good. I should like next best to be learned and accomplished. Then I should want to be perfectly well and perfectly happy. And a pleasant home, of course, I must have, with friends to love me, and like me, too. And I can't get along without some pretty, tasteful things about me. But you are laughing at me! Have I said anything foolish?" "If I laughed it was not at you, but at poor human nature that would fain grasp everything at once. Allowing that you should possess all you have just described, where is the heroism you so much admire for exercise?" "That is just what I was saying. That is just what troubles me." "To be sure, while perfectly well and happy, in a pleasant home; with friends to love and admire you—" "Oh, I did not say admire," I interrupted. "That was just what you meant, my dear." I am afraid it was, now I come to think it over. "Well, with plenty of friends, good in an uncommon way, accomplished, learned, and surrounded with pretty and tasteful objects, your life will certainly be in danger of not proving very sublime." "It is a great pity," I said, musingly. "Suppose then you content yourself for the present with doing in a faithful, quiet, persistent way all the little, homely tasks that return with each returning day, each one as unto God, and perhaps by and by you will thus have gained strength for a more heroic life." "But I don't know how." "You have some little home duties, I suppose?" "Yes; I have the care of my own room, and mother wants me to have a general oversight of the parlor; you know we have but one parlor now." "Is that all you have to do?" "Why, my music and drawing take up a good deal of my time, and I read and study more or less, and go out some, and we have a good many visitors." "I suppose, then, you keep your room in nice lady-like order, and that the parlor is dusted every morning, loose music put out of the way, books restored to their places-" "Now I know mother has been telling you." "Your mother has told me nothing at all." "Well, then," I said, laughing, but a little ashamed, "I don't keep my room in nice order, and mother really sees to the parlor herself, though I pretend to do it." "And is she never annoyed by this neglect?" "Oh, yes, very much annoyed." "Then, dear Katy, suppose your first act of heroism to-morrow should be the gratifying your mother in these little things, little though they are. Surely your first duty, next to pleasing God, is to please your mother, and in every possible way to sweeten and beautify her life. You may depend upon it that a life of real heroism and self-sacrifice must begin and lay its foundation in this little world, wherein it learns its first lesson and takes its first steps." "And do you really think that God notices such little things?" "My dear child, what a question! If there is any one truth I would gladly impress on the mind of a you Christian, it is just this, that God notices the most trivial act, accepts the poorest, most threadbare little service, listens to the coldest, feeblest petition, and gathers up with parental fondness all our fragmentary desires and attempts at good works. Oh, if we could only begin to conceive how He loves us, what different creatures we should be!" I felt inspired by her enthusiasm, though I don't think I quite understand what she means. I did not dare to stay any longer, for, with her great host of children, she must have her hands full. March 25.-Mother is very much astonished to see how nicely I am keeping things in order. I was flying about this morning, singing, and dusting the furniture, when she came in and began, "He that is faithful in that which is least"-but I ran at her my brush, and would not let her finish. I really, really don't deserve to be praised. For I have been thinking that, if it is true that God notices every little thing we do to please Him, He must also notice every cross word we speak, every shrug of the shoulders, every ungracious look, and that they displease Him. And my list of such offences is as long as my life. March 29-Yesterday, for the first time since that dreadful blow, I felt some return of my natural gayety and cheerfulness. It seemed to come hand in hand with my first real effort to go so far out of myself as to try to do exactly what would gratify dear mother. But to-day I am all down again. I miss Amelia's friendship, for one thing. To be sure I wonder how I ever came to love such a superficial character so devotedly, but I must have somebody to love, and perhaps I invented a lovely creature, and called it by her name, and bowed down to it and worshiped it. I certainly did so in regard to him whose heart less cruelty has left me so sad, so desolate. Evening.-Mother has been very patient and forbearing with me all day. To-night, after tea, she said, in her gentlest, tenderest way, "Dear Katy, I feel very sorry for you. But I see one path which you have not yet tried, which can lead you out of these sore straits. You have tried living for yourself a good many years, and the result is great weariness and heaviness of soul. Try now to live for others. Take a class in the Sunday-school. Go with me to visit my poor people. You will be astonished to find how much suffering and sickness there is in this world, and how delightful it is to sympathize with and try to relieve it." This advice was very repugnant to me. My time is pretty fully occupied with my books, my music and my drawing. And of all places in the world I hate a sick-room. But, on the whole, I will take a class in the Sunday-school. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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