 | CHAPTER X.
THE WHITE STONE. Hedged in |  |
10. CHAPTER X.
THE WHITE STONE.
“BUT my dear Mrs. Purcell!”
My dear Mrs. Purcell smiled.
One well acquainted with Mrs. Purcell would
have inferred her visitor from her smile. I can
scarcely believe that any other than Mrs. Zerviah
Myrtle could receive from Margaret the benefit
of that particular smile.
That Mrs. Zerviah Myrtle should happen to be
a visitor in Gower on the summer month which
dates these notes of the fact (a date four years
older, I believe, than that of Margaret's letter)
was natural. That she should chance to be
making an afternoon call upon Mrs. Purcell
was not extraordinary. That, having been driven
by Boggs directly past the new grammar
school of Gower, to see the building, and this
at the hour of the grammar school's dismissal,
she should have met and recognized the new
than an accident.
That the first person with whom she should
consequently have conversed, after the occurrence
of these incidents, was Mrs. Purcell, may
have been, for the grammar teacher, not unfortunate.
So said Mrs. Myrtle, leaning back in a seriously
depressed though very graceful attitude, in
(what if she had known it!) — in Nixy's favorite
arm-chair by Nixy's favorite window, —
“My DEAR Mrs. Purcell!”
Mrs. Purcell, through her smile, called and
sent Christina to keep Nixy out of the way.
“I think,” said Mrs. Zerviah Myrtle, without
a smile, “that I was never quite so much taken
by surprise in the course of my life.”
“Very likely,” Margaret made quiet reply.
“I suppose that your surprise would not be unusual
in any one with your command of Nixy
Trent's past, and without my confidence in her
future.”
“I cannot understand how such a girl,” urged
Mrs. Myrtle, with a certain kind of gentle sadness
in her voice, such as Margaret had noticed
addressing “such girls” at the Home, — “I cannot
understand how you dared to receive such a
girl into your family, — and on such very peculiar,
though very Christian, terms, — and you the
mother of so innocent and lovely a child as your
Christina. I beg your pardon if I am impertinent,
Mrs. Purcell, but I am perplexed. I should
like to know, from the Christian point of view,
however beautiful and interesting a thing it was
to do, — and I envy you the opportunities, I assure
you, — how you dared.”
“I dared because Christina was `innocent and
lovely,' and because I was her mother. Perhaps,
too, partly because it was a `beautiful and Christian
thing to do!'” said Margaret, in a ringing
voice. It seemed to her like stepping from a
sanctuary into a battle-ground, to see her own
old long-dead doubts and struggles diluted in
Mrs. Zerviah Myrtle's “depressing” atmosphere.
It was so long then since poor little Nixy had
been anything other than Mrs. Purcell's trusted
friend, child, treasure, — whatever it was! She
never knew. She knew only that her visitor's
chatter struck very near a very quiet and long
pure woman, into its growing love and growing
need. Perhaps it was because she was becoming
“sick and old,” as people said, that she had
of late troubled herself so little about Nixy; had
feared so little for her or for herself; had so little
memory of her yesterday, so little of the old
fear for her to-morrow. Or it may have been
because Nixy had ceased to talk bad grammar;
never ate with her knife now; enticed Christina
through the “Excursion”; never wore pink
bows; had “joined the church,” and seldom,
if ever, mentioned Thicket Street. Margaret
was not stupid, but Margaret, as I said, was
sick. Little things had given her great quiet
for Nixy. A little thing — even Mrs. Zerviah
Myrtle — now alarmed and jarred upon her.
“But Christina was so very young,” urged Mrs.
Myrtle, “so near, I should fancy, the age of the
other girl, — I think she told me she was fifteen
when she was in my service, — and how could
you know —”
“I should not know much if I did not know
enough to trust my own influence over my own
daughter,” said Margaret, with compressed lips.
have lain awake two nights, trying to decide
whether Nixy would injure Christina. She
would as soon think now of Christina's injuring
Nixy. She was inclined for the moment — but
the moment only, as was the way with Margaret
— to feel as if Mrs. Myrtle had insulted her
common sense. So fast we throw away the
“stepping-stones” when we have climbed up and
over “our dead selves”!
“But there are so many sacred and superior
claims,” argued Mrs. Myrtle, “that I could not
feel it to be my duty to run the risk, which you,
my dear Mrs. Purcell, ran, with this unfortunate
girl. My field of usefulness, as the mother of
my Fanny, is necessarily so very much in the —
what might be called the domestic affections. It
was a depressing circumstance that I was obliged
to dismiss the girl from my service as I did. I
took pains to keep my servants in ignorance of
the details of the affair, and, with the exception
of Mr. Myrtle and a few very particular friends,
I have been careful not to mention it. But I
little thought ever to see Nixy Trent teaching a
grammar school!”
From which one might have inferred that if
Mrs. Myrtle had ever thought to see Nixy Trent
teaching a grammar school, she would have made
a particular effort to mention it.
“Nixy is considered, in my family and this
town, to be an unspotted woman —” began Margaret.
Mrs. Myrtle interrupted softly: —
“Does that never strike you as at all deceitful?”
“Nixy's character here,” repeated Mrs. Purcell,
with unusual brusqueness, “is as high as yours
or mine, Mrs. Myrtle!”
“You shock me, Mrs. Purcell!” said Mrs.
Myrtle. Mrs. Myrtle looked, in fact, shocked.
“Perhaps I am rude,” said Margaret, with
heightened color and quivering voice, “but I
have shielded Nixy like my own child so far, —
and gossip —”
“Mrs. Purcell,” said Mrs. Zerviah Myrtle, politely,
— very politely, — “I think you have quite
misunderstood and misappreciated me. I never
gossip. I have no wish to injure the girl. What
do you take me for? Do you suppose that my
Christian sympathies with that erring class are
into your way chances of usefulness never granted
to me in my confined sphere of action.”
Mrs. Myrtle put her handkerchief to her eyes.
Her polite voice ruffled. She looked sincerely
distressed. Her bonnet-strings glittered with two
sincere tears.
“You depress me so, Mrs. Purcell!” she exclaimed,
in a broken, honest fashion, as Margaret,
silent, sat and wondered what she was expected
to say. “I cannot understand why it is. Aspirations
— I have my aspirations, Mrs. Purcell,
though it is seldom that I touch upon them in
this confidential manner — aspirations after activity
and sacrifice, and all that is Christian and
beautiful, which I find impossible to realize, you
make no more fuss over than you would over
a tea-party. You impress me as a kind — of —
military spirit, Mrs. Purcell; really quite a romantic
kind of military character. There is such
a nonchalance — esprit — daring way to you.
Now I was n't made to dare. It never would
work with Mr. Myrtle and the children. It
never would work in society. And there are
claims — I do not know how it happens, but I
find you the most depressing person I know!”
“Then call again — do!” urged Margaret. She
did not mean to be sarcastic; intended to be
hospitable only; feeling wellnigh as uncomfortable
as her visitor. I think she was thenceforward
rather inclined to thank Heaven that Mrs.
Zerviah Myrtle had not made a protégé of Nixy,
than to consider Mrs. Myrtle as accountable to
Heaven for turning Nixy from her doors.
“I do not mean to be uncharitable,” she said,
in parting from her visitor upon the piazza.
Whether she meant it or not, Margaret felt
that she had not “borne all things, hoped all
things, suffered long,” with Mrs. Zerviah Myrtle.
It is far easier for a woman like Margaret
Purcell to apply the thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians
to the Nixy rather than to the Mrs.
Myrtle of society. The only difference in that
respect between Margaret and other people is,
that Margaret was keenly conscious of a failing,
where most of us would be blindly elevated by
a sense of particular virtue. Christian liberality
falls so much more gracefully than it irrigates
or climbs. It is so much less difficult to condescend
to an inferior than to be generous to an
equal or a superior. The ideal charity is that
work up and down and around itself. It is, in
fact, an atmosphere rather than an avenue.
“I should not wish,” said Mrs. Purcell, thoughtfully,
“to judge narrowly in this matter. Everybody
could not pick a girl up from the streets and
put her into the parlor, — if every girl could go.
It may be that you, Mrs. Myrtle, in keeping Nixy
in your kitchen, would have made more of a
Christian sacrifice than have I in dealing as I
have seen fit to deal with her. It is more likely
to be, as you observe, `best for Fanny' that
you dismissed her entirely from your house. I
pray you to understand that I climb the Judgment
Seat for nobody. I do claim, however, that
if I chose to make a crowned princess out of Nixy
Trent, it would be nobody's business but my Master's.
And I demand, for myself and for Nixy,
the respect and the assistance — I will not have
the tolerance and suspicion — of the Christian
society in which I move. I may fail to obtain
it, but I require it in the name of the Lord
Christ, — to whom, Mrs. Myrtle, the girl would
have gone from Thicket Street far more trustfully
than ever she came to you or me, — and
fellow-sinners, Heaven forgive us!”
Margaret, with feverish color and disturbed
eyes, sat in one of the piazza chairs as Mrs.
Zerviah Myrtle rode out of the yard; and the
grammar teacher — so little like Mrs. Myrtle's
quondam nursery-maid that afternoon, that
Boggs, duller than his mistress, was seen to tip
his hat as he yielded her the road — the grammar
teacher, a little pale, a little startled, perhaps,
came in.
Two or three of her scholars had been clinging
about her. The children were fond of her,
— very. She had been with them now a year,
“growing,” as Margaret had written me, “into
the idea of self-support as she grew into that
of self-respect; and since she is quite competent
for the undertaking, I should have considered it
a great mistake to discourage it; not because
she sprung from what, with a stupid sarcasm of
ourselves, we are fond of terming `the laboring
classes,' but precisely as I should encourage it
in Jane Briggs, Christina, Fanny Myrtle.”
Miss Trent, as I was saying, hurriedly dispersed
these children on meeting with Mrs.
the walk, and, without any remarks whatsoever,
sat down on the piazza at Mrs. Purcell's
feet.
Four years of purity and Margaret Purcell had
done something for little Nixy Trent.
A little of her old fancy about dropping Christina
“like a cloud” into Thicket Street might
have struck one of the Thicket Street girls herself,
sitting there that afternoon at Margaret's
feet. One would have liked, just for the artistic
experiment of it, to try the effect of her in No.
19, at Jeb's, at Monsieur Jacques's, in the sharp
shadow where the chickweed grew, and Moll
from the dark looked out at her.
Now, these had been four very quiet, ordinary
years, not of the kind which work wonders upon
people, not of a kind to have worked wonders
upon Nixy; and she had consequently developed
in those respects to which the culture of quiet is
especially adapted; had rested, dreamed, refined;
fused the elements of a character rather about
ready for casting than ready for finish. Poor
Nixy's life was one of those which bud so late
that a hot-house pressure may be needed to save
pretty thing is sadder than a frosty flower?
In other words, Nixy had rather grown than
matured, had not become apt in analyzing herself
or other people; had not, as we say, “put
this and that together.” Life in Thicket Street
was a hideous dream. Life in Gower was a slow,
sweet waking. If ever she reasoned far about
either, — perhaps she had, — it was in a very
sleepy or a very secret way. Margaret felt oppressed
sometimes with her, as if by electricity
in the air; it seemed as if something in her must
snap before long; as if, in some manner, the girl's
life had got upon the wrong tension. This uncertain
development was the more noticeable in
contrast with Christina, — a creature so healthy,
happy, fitted, and fine! — symmetrical as the
moon, and as conscious of being where she belonged.
“Things have always come at you,” said Nixy,
one day, vaguely feeling after this idea; “I have
always had to come at things.”
It seemed to Nixy natural enough, for Margaret
had taken pains that it should so seem,
that Mrs. Purcell should have admitted her into
Mrs. Purcell's heart; human nature into Christina's;
the love of God into “religion,” and Mr.
Hobbs (for it was Mr. Hobbs) into the grammar
school. Yet the growing woman was really in a
very unnatural niche in life, and Margaret scarce
knew whether she would most wish that she
should or should not find this out.
For instance, Margaret, just because she loved
Nixy, and just because she trusted her, regretted
at times that the girl seemed — as she did — so
unconscious or regardless of the fact that she
had not always been worthy of love and trust.
In anybody else, she would have said that this
argued callousness or dulness. At other times
she doubted if Nixy were either unconscious or
regardless.
She doubted somewhat when Nixy sat down
at her feet upon the piazza. She scrutinized her
keenly.
Nixy sat remarkably still. Shadows from hop-vines
on the trellis — the prettiest shadows in
the world are made by hop-vines, and Margaret
runs her doors over with them — fell upon her
hands, and her hands moved as the shadows
Mrs. Purcell thought, as she watched her face,
turned a little, and with the hair dropped, how
fair and fine a face it was; how womanly and
worthy; how rich in possibilities that life would
never bring to it; how unmarred by the dark
certainties that life had brought.
What is sin? she thought. For the wind passeth
over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof
shall know it no more.
Now this was not theology, but thankfulness;
and, to prove to Margaret that it will never do to
be even thankful untheologically, Nixy at that instant
lifted her eyes, — her eyes for a year past had
been like breaking clouds; sun, moon, and stars
were darkened in them just then, — and said, —
“I suppose I shall never get away from it.”
“Away from what?”
“The — sin.”
Nixy spoke very slowly and solemnly.
Margaret could not have been taken more
thoroughly off her guard if a new-born baby had
opened its mouth before her and talked of total
depravity and confessed original sin. But all
the reply that she made was, —
“You met Christina?” — this to give herself
time.
“I went to walk with her — yes; but I had
the children, and the doctor overtook us, so I
hurried on.”
“The doctor agrees with you about the examination
business?”
“Fortunately, considering he is chairman of
the committee; but I had got through all I had
to say about that. I was not rude to him, I
believe.”
Nixy never was exactly rude to Dr. Burtis, but
she was always ill at ease with him, — always had
been since, being summoned for the first time
professionally to Mrs. Purcell's house, to manage
some slight indisposition of Christina's, he had
come suddenly upon her sitting by Christina's
sofa, with Christina's head — such a moulded,
fine young head — on the little outcast's shoulder.
They had looked each other in the face, but
neither had spoken.
“My friend, Miss Trent,” said Mrs. Purcell,
coming in.
Dr. Dyke Burtis gravely bowed to Miss Trent.
Of how near he had been to sending Miss
Peters, he gave from that hour, in Mrs. Purcell's
family, no sign. Most men would have felt it,
perhaps, to be “a duty.” For what did Mrs.
Purcell know — how much, and how little — of
Thicket Street Nix? And what of the starry-eyed
girl with her head upon Nixy's shoulder?
Dyke Burtis, after a keen look at the faces of the
three women, had concluded that all this was
none of his business, and had kept his own
counsel.
Nixy, to spare Mrs. Purcell the pain of dwelling
upon a painful matter, kept hers.
So the physician, in and out, as Margaret and
her growing invalidism fell under his frequent
care, came and went, and gravely smiled or spoke
or referred or deferred to the little castaway of
Thicket Street; and Nixy, shrinking through her
silence, suffered many things because of him.
This was not for her own, but for Christina's sake.
It cut her with a hurt that was slow in healing
to be reminded of Thicket Street with Christina
by.
Long after, when, both for her own and another's
sake, the fulness of time had come, she
Dyke Burtis had kept an outcast's confidence
was treasured among those “ways” which commanded
for the little doctor with the streaked
beard a somewhat singularly tenacious affection
or repugnance.
“Mrs. Myrtle —” began Margaret, abruptly,
when Nixy, after her allusion to the physician,
paused.
But Christina came in, flushed and lovely,
bounding up the walk; the doctor at the gate
touched his hat, and walked with ringing steps
away.
“It sounds like a march to battle!” said Christina,
pausing with bent head to listen to the doctor's
tread. She so liked healthy, happy, resolute
things! And she had such a healthy,
happy, resolute way of owning it!
Margaret, so thinking, glanced from her daughter's
pretty, pleased, expectant attitude to Nixy,
who was still extremely pale, and who had moved,
at Christina's coming, slowly and lifelessly away
into the garden-walk.
“Nixy cross?” pouted Christina, and, springing
after her, — into a shimmer of tall white lilies, —
Margaret observed that Nixy stood still, and did
not return the caress, and that Christina, puzzled
and pained, walked back, and left her standing
alone among the bruised white flowers.
The interruption perhaps did no harm. Margaret
was prepared, when she and Nixy were at
last alone and undisturbed together, which was
not till after supper, to come at once to the point
from which she should have started. She did
this abruptly enough.
“Mrs. Myrtle will tell nothing, Nixy. She is
not bad-hearted.”
“That does n't so much matter,” said Nixy,
slowly.
“What does matter then?”
Margaret spoke more quickly than gently.
She was perplexed, and her head ached.
“I don't think I — can exactly — tell,” said
Nixy, in a low voice.
“Mrs. Myrtle has frightened you, Nixy!”
“I suppose so.”
“Not because you thought she would gossip
about you?”
“I think not.”
“I don't understand, then, what the trouble
is.”
But she did, undoubtedly.
Nixy made no reply. Mrs. Purcell got up and
paced the room a little, after her old fashion. It
was long since she had exhibited so much disturbance
over Nixy. Nixy sat, as she had sat
upon the piazza, uncommonly still.
Margaret, pacing the room, was undecided
whether to cry over her or shake her. In the
darkening air, Nixy's dawning sense of shame
rose like a mist between the two, and chilled
her to the heart. With a curious inconsistency,
Mrs. Purcell — perhaps because her head ached
— felt now like checking the very germ for the
growth of which she had with anxiety watched.
Nixy had been wicked; Nixy ought to feel that
she had been wicked. But Nixy was good, and
— and, as nearly as she could come at it, Nixy
ought to feel too good to feel wicked. Why rake
over dead ashes for the sake of making a little
dust? There was pure fire upon the altar now,
and the steps thereto were swept and garnished.
Mrs. Purcell would have liked to send Nixy
she had been a naughty girl.
This was partly, perhaps, cowardice, for she
was fond of Nixy; partly headache, as I observed;
wholly, whether of headache or of fondness,
conquered before she had crossed the room
half a dozen times, and had sat down in the
gathering dusk, and had bidden Nixy, by a silent
gesture, to the cricket at her feet.
Nixy was not a child. She could not be sent
to play. There was work before her. Margaret
thought how terrible was the work of escaping
even a forgiven sin. Were there never to be
play-days again for Nixy? When she looked,
through that rising mist that had chilled all
the air between them, at the young girl's contracted
face, her heart sank within her. Poor
Nixy!
She must have said “Poor Nixy!” aloud, for
Nixy turned.
“It was for you that I minded,” she drearily
said. “It came over me — all in a minute —
when I saw her — when I saw Mrs. Myrtle —
that people would know — and Christina; and
that —”
“Tell me,” said Margaret, “what came over
you?”
“That I was n't like — you; like — Christina.
That there was something forever and forever
that people must not know! That I was forever
and forever to be — ashamed. All at
once!” said Nixy, hoarsely. “All before I had
time to bear it, — and then I did n't care for
Mrs. Myrtle or for all the world; but I understood
what I had never understood before. I
understood that I was ashamed — ashamed!”
The young girl stretched her hands out into
the dark, and wrung them bitterly.
“How can you know?” she cried out. “I
was a child. You took me and loved me. I
was good. I was happy. I forgot. Sometimes
I thought. Sometimes, when Christina kissed
me, I was cold, and I was afraid. Sometimes,
since I have taught the little children, I have
thought of — of — I have remembered that —”
She bowed her head and dryly sobbed.
“All the year I suppose it has been growing,
— coming. But all in a minute I understood!
How can you understand? You made me so
happy! You made me so safe, so good! I was
I tell you that they do not understand in Thicket
Street how to be ashamed!”
God forgot me — and I fell,”
face. She put her arm around her; she stooped
and kissed her, she felt that she had no other
speech nor language for her.
But Nixy looked up as one who stood afar off,
and said, —
“I am ashamed — ashamed!”
“I am not ashamed of you!” cried Margaret,
impetuously; but Nixy shook her head.
“I sinned,” she said, — “and I am ashamed!”
Margaret felt as if some one had stricken down
her strong right arm. Nixy seemed in an hour
to have grown away, out of, beyond her tenderest
touch.
“God help her!” she said, and fell, by an instinct,
upon her knees.
I have been told that she broke at once into
vehement prayer. This was remarkable, not as a
fact, but because Margaret did it. She was not
one of those Christians to whom prayer in the
thing. She never prayed with the sick, the
dying, the poor. Tracts, jelly, Bibles, flannels,
were distributed prayerless from her comforting
hand. Her own child had scarcely, since
she was a child, heard her lift up her voice
before the Lord. This may have been unfortunate,
— Margaret, like others of the “voiceless,”
had mourned much in secret over it, —
but so it had been.
For the little castaway, bowed to the ground
before her with shame and sorrow, the sealed
fountain broke, and Nixy — for the first time and
the last — sat hushed, in the presence of her supplicating
voice, —
“Friend of sinners!” said Margaret, weeping
much, “we are in the dark, and bewildered and
sick at heart. Sin hunts us out and chases us
about, and stares at us, and we are ashamed and
sorry; but there is no help in shame and no relief
in being sorry. We are guilty before thee,
and stained. Wherever we turn our faces or lift
our hands, we are hedged about. There is no
breath left in us, and we stifle! Be thou breath,
freedom, walking-space before us! Take the
hold it up! It drops from mine; strength is
gone out of me. Hold it, and lead her. Surely
thou wilt not keep her sorry overmuch? She
was so young, dear Lord, and no man cared for
her soul. Dost thou not feel her young tears
upon thy bruised feet? Is there nothing in all
thy love — for thou art rich, and we are bold in
begging — to bid her smile again? Hast thou
no promise — for thy promises are many, and
we cannot afford to overlook even a little
one — for a sinner who is ashamed? Wilt
thou give her everything else and forbid her self-respect?....
“Lord! thou art here before us; and thine
answer comes. Gather the poor little girl in
thine arms and tell her — for I cannot tell her —
that she shall not be ashamed of herself, for thou
art not ashamed of her; that she shall respect
herself, for thou hast had respect unto her; that
she shall honor herself, for the Lord God Almighty
honors her, — for the sake of Christ our
Saviour.”
“I wonder,” said Margaret, as they sat in the
meant to ask you, about your name. Nixy must
be a corruption of something.”
She spoke idly enough, thinking only to divert
Nixy a little from the effects of a very painful
evening; but the words struck Nixy with a sharp
significance. “A corruption of something.”
Had not her whole life been a corruption of
something?
“I believe the name was Eunice,” she sadly
said.
“Eunice! A pretty name. It has a soft,
fine strain in it, like some of Mendelssohn's
songs, — Eunice. Why did I never call you
Eunice?”
“Because I was not soft and fine,” said poor
Nixy.
“`As a prince hast thou had power with God
and hast prevailed. Thy name shall be no more
Jacob, but Israel,'” Margaret made answer.
“Kiss me, Eunice!”
She smiled and patted her soft hair. Nixy
tried to smile, but the face which she lifted for
Eunice's first kiss was solemn. It seemed like a
baptismal blessing to her.
“Soft and fine — like Mendelssohn's songs.
Eunice — Eunice!”
The poor girl said it over — and choked.
“You 'll remember — everything, and call me
— that?”
“I can remember everything, and call you all
of that,” said Margaret, grown very solemn too.
For she thought, What is one flaw on Carrara?
The hand of the artist can mend what accident
marred. There is a statue in the master's curtained
studio. There is another at the street
corner. But a block of marble will make the
two, — and there 's the marble, after all. Something
of this she said or looked.
Perhaps Eunice did not quite understand it;
but she crept away like a hushed child into the
gray room to think it over.
It was late; Christina had gone to bed, the
house was still; a tardy moon rose as it had risen
on the first night that she had spent within the
delicate gray walls. There fell, as there had
fallen before, a bath of pearly mist into the middle
of the quiet room.
The young girl, after a little hesitation, undressed,
crept into her night-clothes — fine and
the shining bath. She folded her hands and
her face dropped. She spoke aloud to herself,
—
“Eunice — Eunice!”
She forgot, for the moment, and in the sparkle
of the silver bath, that she was ashamed.
She thought of a thing which she had read
about “a white stone, and in the stone a new
name written. Which no man knoweth” — so it
was said — “saving he that receiveth it.”
She felt for the book and the page in the half-light,
opened at the opulent, reticent words.
Commentators and theologians have peered
vaguely at their “metaphorical construction.”
Sophists and mystics have dreamed vain dreams
across them. To this young girl they shone like
the moonlight in which she knelt, and rang like
the voice which said, Go, but go in peace.
| CHAPTER X.
THE WHITE STONE. Hedged in | |