Back Aa

Stepping Heavenward

<h3 id="id01512" style="margin-top: 3em">Chapter 21</h3> <h5 id="id01513">XXI.</h5> <h5 id="id01514">MAY 30.</h5> ERNEST asked me to go with him to see one of his patients, as he often does when there is a lull in the tempest at home. We both feel that as we have so little money of our own to give away, it is a privilege to give what services and what cheering words we can. As I took it for granted that we were going to see some poor old woman, I put up several little packages of tea and sugar, with which Susan Green always keeps me supplied, and added a bottle of my own raspberry vinegar, which never comes amiss, I find, to old people. Ernest drove to the door of an aristocratic-looking house, and helped me to alight in his usual silence. "It is probably one of the servants we are going to visit," I thought, within myself; "but I am surprised at his bringing me. The family may not approve it." The next thing I knew I found myself being introduced to a beautiful, brilliant young lady, who sat in a wheel-chair like a queen on a throne in a room full of tasteful ornaments, flowers and birds. Now, I had come away just as I was, when Ernest called me, and that "was" means a very plain gingham dress wherein I had been darning stockings all the morning. I suppose a saint wouldn't have cared for that, but I did, and for a moment stood the picture of confusion, my hands full of oddly shaped parcels and my face all in a flame. "My wife, Miss Clifford," I heard Ernest say, and then I caught the curious, puzzled look in her eyes, which said as plainly as words could do: "What has the creature brought me?" "I ask your pardon, Miss Clifford," I said, thinking it best to speak out just the honest truth, "but I supposed the doctor was taking me to see some of his old women, and so I have brought you a little tea, and a little sugar, and a bottle of raspberry vinegar!" "How delicious!" cried she. "It really rests me to meet with a genuine human being at last! Why didn't you make some stiff, prim speech, instead of telling the truth out and out? I declare I mean to keep all you have brought me, just for the fun of the thing." This put me at ease, and I forgot all about my dress in a moment. "I see you are just what the doctor boasted you were," she went on. "But he never would bring you to see me before. I suppose he has told you why I could not go to see you?" "To tell the truth, he never speaks to me of his patients unless he thinks I can be of use to them." "I dare say I do not look much like an invalid," said she; "but here I am, tied to this chair. It is six months since I could bear my own weight upon my feet." I saw then that though her face was so bright and full of color, her hand was thin and transparent. But what a picture she made as she sat there in magnificent beauty, relieved by such a back-ground of foliage, flowers, and artistic objects! "I told the doctor the other day that life was nothing but a humbug, and he said he should bring me a remedy against that false notion the next time he came, and you, I suppose, are that remedy," she continued. "Come, begin; I am ready to take any number of doses." I could only laugh and try to look daggers at Ernest, who sat looking over a magazine, apparently absorbed in its contents. "Ah!" she cried, nodding her head sagaciously, "I knew you would agree with me." "Agree with you in calling life a humbug!" I cried, now fairly aroused. "Death itself is not more a reality!" "I have not tried death yet," she said, more seriously; "but I have tried life twenty-five years and I know all about it. It is eat, drink, sleep yawn and be bored. It is what shall I wear, where shall I go, how shall I get rid of the time; it says, 'How do you do? how is your husband? How are your children? '-it means, 'Now I have asked all the conventional questions, and I don't care a fig what their answer may be.'" "This may be its meaning to some persons," I replied, "for instance, to mere pleasure-seekers. But of course it is interpreted quite differently by others. To some it means nothing but a dull, hopeless struggle with poverty and hardship—and its whole aspect might be changed to them, should those who do not know what to do to get rid of the time, spend their surplus leisure in making this struggle less brutalizing." "Yes, I have heard such doctrine, and at one time I tried charity myself. I picked up a dozen or so of dirty little wretches out of the streets, and undertook to clothe and teach them. I might as well have tried to instruct the chairs in my room. Besides the whole house had to be aired after they had gone, and mamma missed two teaspoons and a fork and was perfectly disgusted with the whole thing. Then I fell to knitting socks for babies, but they only occupied my hands, and my head felt as empty as ever. Mamma took me off on a journey, as she always did when I took to moping, and that diverted me for a while. But after that everything went on in the old way. I got rid of part of the day by changing my dress, and putting on my pretty things-it is a great thing to have a habit of wearing one's ornaments, for instance; and then in the evening one could go to the opera or the theater, or some other place of amusement, after which one could sleep all through the next morning, and so get rid of that. But I had been used to such things all my life, and they had got to be about as flat as flat can be. If I had been born a little earlier in the history of the world, I would have gone into a convent; but that sort of thing is out of fashion now." "The best convent," I said, "for a woman is the seclusion of her own home. There she may find vocation and fight her battles, and there she may learn the reality and the earnestness of life." "Pshaw!" cried she. "Excuse me, however, saying that; but some of the most brilliant girls I know have settled down into mere married women and spend their whole time in nursing babies! Think how belittling!" "Is it more so than spending it in dressing, driving, dancing, and the like?" "Of course it is. I had a friend once who shone like a star in society. She married, and children as fast as she could. Well! what consequence? She lost her beauty, lost her spirit and animation, lost her youth, and lost her health. The only earthly things she can talk about are teething, dieting, and the measles!" I laughed at this exaggeration, and looked round to see what Ernest thought of such talk. But he had disappeared. "As you have spoken plainly to me, knowing, me, to be a wife and a mother, you must allow me to 'speak plainly in return," I began. "Oh, speak plainly, by all means! I am quite sick and tired of having truth served up in pink cotton, and scented with lavender." "Then you will permit me to say that when you speak contemptuously of the vocation of maternity, you dishonor, not only the mother who bore you, but the Lord Jesus Himself, who chose to be born of woman, and to be ministered unto by her through a helpless infancy." Miss Clifford was a little startled. "How terribly in earnest you are!" she said. "It is plain that to you, at any rate, life is indeed no humbug." I thought of my dear ones, of Ernest, of my children, of mother, and of James, and I thought of my love to them and of theirs to me. And I thought of Him who alone gives reality to even such joys as these. My face must have been illuminated by the thought, for she dropped the bantering tone she had used hitherto, and asked, with real earnestness: "What is it you know, and that I do not know, that makes you so satisfied, while I am so dissatisfied?" I hesitated before I answered, feeling as I never felt before how ignorant, how unfit to lead others, I really am. Then I said: "Perhaps you need to know God, to know Christ?" She looked disappointed and tired. So I came away, first promising, at her request, to go to see her again. I found Ernest just driving up, and told him what had passed. He listened in his usual silence, and I longed to have him say whether I had spoken wisely and well. JUNE 1.-I have been to see Miss Clifford again and made mother go with me. Miss Clifford took a fancy to her at once. "Ah!" she said, after one glance at the dear, loving face, "nobody need tell me that you are good and kind. But I am a little afraid of good people. I fancy they are always criticising me and expecting me to imitate their perfection." "Perfection does not exact perfection," was mother's answer. "I would rather be judged by an angel than by a man." And then mother led her on, little by little, and most adroitly, to talk of herself and of her state of health. She is an orphan and lives in this great, stately house alone with her servants. Until she was laid aside by the state pf her health, she lived in the world and of it. Now she is a prisoner, and prisoners have time to think. "Here I sit," she said, "all day long. I never was fond of staying at home, or of reading, and needlework I absolutely hate. In fact, I do not know how to sew." "Some such pretty, feminine work might beguile you of a few of the long hours of these long days," said mother. "One can't be always reading." "But a lady came to see me, a Mrs. Goodhue, one of your good sort, I suppose, and she preached me quite a sermon on the employment of time. She said I had a solemn admonition of Providence, and ought to devote myself entirely to religion. I had just begun to be interested in a bit of embroidery, but she frightened me out of it. But I can't bear such dreadfully good people, with faces a mile long." Mother made her produce the collar, or whatever it was, showed her how to hold her needle and arrange her pattern, and they both got so absorbed in it that I had leisure to look at some of the beautiful things with which the room was full. "Make the object of your life right," I heard mother say, at last, "and these little details will take care of themselves." "But I haven't any object," Miss Clifford objected, "unless it is to get through these tedious days somehow. Before I was taken ill my chief object was to make myself attractive to the people I met. And the easiest way to do that was to dress becomingly and make myself look as well as I could." "I suppose," said mother, "that most girls could say the same. They have an instinctive desire to please, and they take what they conceive to be the shortest and easiest road to that end. It requires no talent, no education, no thought to dress tastefully; the most empty-hearted frivolous young person can do it, provided she has money enough. Those who can't get the money make up for it by fearful expenditure of precious time. They plan, they cut, they fit, they rip, they trim till they can appear in society looking exactly like everybody else. They think of nothing, talk of nothing but how this shall be fashioned and that be trimmed; and as to their hair, Satan uses it as his favorite net, and catches them in it every day of their lives." "But I never cut or trimmed," said Miss Clifford. "No, because you could afford to have it done for you. But you acknowledge that you spent a great deal of time in dressing because you thought that the easiest way of making yourself attractive. But it does not follow that the easiest way is the best way, and sometimes the longest way round is the shortest way home." "For instance?" "Well, let us imagine a young lady, living in the world as you say you lived. She has never seriously reflected on any subject one half hour in her life. She has been borne on by the current and let it take her where it would. But at last some influence is brought to bear upon her which leads her to stop to look about her and to think. She finds herself in a world of serious, momentous events. She see she cannot live in it, was not meant to live in it forever, and that her whole unknown future depends on what she is, not on how she looks. She begins to cast about for some plan of life, and this leads—-" "A plan of life?" Miss Clifford interrupted. "I never heard of such a thing." "Yet you would smile at an architect, who having a noble structure to build, should begin to work on it in a haphazard way, putting in a brick here and a stone there, weaving in straws and sticks if they come to hand, and when asked on what work he was engaged, and what manner of building he intended to erect, should reply he had no plan, but thought something would come of it." Miss Clifford made no reply. She sat with her head resting on her band, looking dreamily before her, a truly beautiful, but unconscious picture. I too, began to reflect, that while I had really aimed to make the most out of life, I had not done it methodically or intelligently. We are going to try to stay in town this summer. Hitherto Ernest would not listen to my suggestion of what an economy this would be. He always said this would turn out anything but an economy in the end. But now we have no teething baby; little Raymond is a strong, healthy child, and Una remarkably well for her, and money is so slow to come in and so fast to go out. What discomforts we suffer in the country it would take a book to write down, and here we shall have our own home, as usual. I shall not have to be separated from Ernest, and shall have leisure to devote to two very interesting people who must stay in town all the year round, no matter who goes out of it. I mean dear Mrs. Campbell and Miss Clifford, who both attract me, though in such different ways. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.