University of Virginia Library

26. CHAPTER XXVI.
SHE STOOD OUTSIDE THE GATE.

THE trial of human life would be a much simpler and
easier thing to meet, if the lines of right and wrong
were always perfectly definite. We are happy so far to
believe in our kind as to think that there are vast multitudes
who, if they only knew exactly what was right and
proper to be done, would do it at all hazards.

But what is right for me, in these particular circumstances?—in
that question, as it constantly rises, lies the
great stress of the trial of life.

We have, for our guidance, a Book of most high and
unworldly maxims and directions, and the life of a
Leader so exalted above all the ordinary conceptions and
maxims of this world that a genuine effort to be a Christian,
after the pattern and directions of Christ, at once
brings us face to face with daily practical inquiries of the
most perplexing nature.

Our friend, Mrs. Maria Wouvermans, was the very
type and impersonation of this world's wisdom of the
ordinary level. The great object of life being to insure
ease, comfort, and freedom from annoyance to one's self
and one's family, her views of duty were all conveniently
arranged along this line. In her view, it was the first
duty of every good housekeeper to look ahead and avoid
every occasion whence might arise a possible inconvenience
or embarrassment. It was nobody's duty, in her
opinion, to have any trouble, if it could be avoided, or
to risk having any. There were, of course, duties to the
poor, which she settled for by a regular annual subscription
to some well-recommended board of charity in her

most respectable church. That done, she regarded herself
as clear for action, and bound to shake off in detail
any troublesome or embarrassing person that threatened
to be a burden to her, or to those of her family that she
felt responsible for.

On the other hand, Eva was possessed by an earnest
desire to make her religious profession mean something
adequate to those startling and constantly recurring
phrases in the Bible and the church service which spoke
of the Christian as a being of a higher order, led by another
Spirit, and living a higher life than that of the
world in general. Nothing is more trying to an ingenuous
mind than the conviction of anything like a sham
and a pretense in its daily life.

Mr. St. John had lately been preaching a series of
sermons on the history and customs of the primitive
church, in hearing which the conviction often forced
itself on her mind that it was the unworldly life of the
first Christians which gave victorious power to the faith.
She was intimately associated with people who seemed
to her to live practically on the same plan. Here was
Sibyl Selwyn, whose whole life was an exalted mission
of religious devotion; there was her neighbor Ruth Baxter,
associated as a lay sister with the work of her more
gifted friend. Here were the Sisters of St. Barnabas,
lovely, cultivated women who had renounced all selfish
ends and occupations in life, to give themselves to the
work of comforting the sorrowful and saving the lost.
Such people, she thought, fully answered to the terms in
which Christians were spoken of in the Bible. But
could she, if she lived only to brighten one little spot of
her own, if she shut out of its charmed circle all sight
or feeling of the suffering and sorrow of the world around
her, and made her own home a little paradise of ease and
forgetfulness, could she be living a Christian life?

When, therefore, she heard from the poor mother
under her roof the tale of her secretly-kept shames,
sorrows, and struggles for the daughter whose fate had
filled her with misery, she accepted with a large-hearted
inconsiderateness a mission of love towards the wanderer.

She carried it to her husband; and, like two kind-hearted,
generous-minded young people, they resolved at
once to make their home sacred by bringing into it this
work of charity.

Now, this work would be far easier in most cases, if
the sinner sought to be saved would step forthwith right
across the line, and behave henceforth like a saint.
But unhappily that is not to be expected. Certain it
was, that Maggie, with her great, black eyes and her
wavy black hair, was no saint. A petted, indulged
child, with a strong, ungovernable nature, she had been
whirled hither and thither in the tides of passion, and
now felt less repentance for sin than indignation at her
own wrongs. It might have been held a hopeful symptom
that Maggie had, at least, so much real truthfulness
in her as not to profess what she did not feel.

It was a fact that the constant hymns and prayers
and services of the pious Sisters wearied her. They
were too high for her. The calm, refined spirituality of
these exalted natures was too far above her, and she
joined their services at best with a patient acquiescence,
feeling the while how sinful she must be to be so bored
by them.

But for Eva she had a sort of wondering, passionate
admiration. When she fluttered into her sick room,
with all her usual little graceful array of ribbons and
fanciful ornament, Maggie's dull eye would brighten,
and she looked after her with delighted wonder. When
she spoke to her tenderly, smoothed her pillow, put

cologne on her laced handkerchief and laid it on her
brow, poor Maggie felt awed and flattered by the attention,
far more, it is to be feared, than if somebody more
resembling the traditional angel had done it. This
lively, sprightly little lady, so graceful, so pretty in all
her motions and in all her belongings, seemed to poor
worldly Maggie much more nearly what she would like
an angel to be, in any world where she would have to
live with them.

The Sisters, with their black robes, their white caps,
and their solemn prayers, seemed to her so awfully good
that their presence chilled her. She felt more subdued,
but more sinful and more hopeless with them than ever.

In short, poor Maggie was yet a creature of this
world, and of sense, and the spiritual world to her was
only one dark, confused blurr, rather more appalling
than attractive. A life like that of the Sisters, given to
prayer and meditation and good works, was too high a
rest for a soul growing so near the ground and with so
few tendrils to climb by. Maggie could conceive of
nothing more dreary. To her, it seemed like being always
thinking of her sins; and that topic was no more
agreeable a subject of meditation to Maggie than it is to
any of us. Many people seem to feel that the only way
of return for those who have wandered from the paths of
virtue is the most immediate and utter self-abasement.
There must be no effort at self-justification, no excusing
one's self, no plea for abatement of condemnation. But
let us Christians who have never fallen, in the grosser
sense, ask ourselves if, with regard to our own particular
sins and failings, we hold the same strict line of reckoning.
Do we come down upon ourselves for our ill temper,
for our selfishness, for our pride, and other respectable
sins, as we ask the poor girl to do who has been led
astray from virtue?

Let us look back and remember how the Master once
coupled an immaculate Pharisee and a fallen woman in
one sentence as two debtors, both owing a sum to a
creditor, and both having nothing to pay,—both freely
forgiven by infinite clemency. It is a summing up of the
case that is too often forgotten.

Eva's natural tact and delicacy stood her in stead in
her dealings with Maggie, and made her touch upon the
wounds of the latter more endurable than any other.
Without reproof for the past, she expressed hope for the
future.

“You shall come and stay with your mother at my
house, Maggie,” she said, cheerfully, “and we will make
you useful. The fact is. your mother needs you; she is
not so strong as she was, and you could save her a great
many steps.”

Now, Maggie still had skillful hands and a good many
available worldly capacities. The very love of finery and
of fine living which had once helped to entrap her, now
came in play for her salvation. Something definite to
do, is, in some crises, a far better medicine for a sick soul
than any amount of meditation and prayer. One step
fairly taken in a right direction, goes farther than any
amount of agonized back-looking.

In a few days, Maggie made for herself in Eva's
family a place in which she could feel herself to be of
service. She took charge of Eva's wardrobe, and was
zealous and efficient in ripping, altering and adapting
articles for the adornment of her pretty mistress; and Eva
never failed to praise and encourage her for every right
thing she did, and never by word or look reminded her
of the past.

Eva did not preach to Maggie; but sometimes, sitting
at her piano while she sat sewing in an adjoining room,
she played and sung some of those little melodies which

Sunday-schools have scattered as a sort of popular ballad
literature. Words of piety, allied to a catching tune, are
like seeds with wings—they float out in the air and drop
in odd corners of the heart, to spring up in good purposes.

One of these little ballads reminded Eva of the
night she first saw Maggie lingering in the street by
her house:

After a few days, Eva heard Maggie humming this
tune over her work. “There,” she said to herself,
“the good angels are near her! I don't know what to
say to her, but they do.”

In fact, Eva had that delicacy and self-distrust in

regard to any direct and personal appeal to Maggie which
is the natural attendant of personal refinement. She
was little versed in any ordinary religious phraseology,
such as very well-meaning persons often so freely deal
in. Her own religious experiences, fervent and sincere
though they were, never came out in any accredited set
of phrases; nor had she any store of cut-and-dried pious
talk laid by, to be used for inferiors whom she was called
to admonish. But she had stores of kind artifices to keep
Maggie usefully employed, to give her a sense that she
was trusted in the family, to encourage hope that there
was a better future before her.

Maggie's mother, fond and loving as she was, seconded
these tactics of her mistress but indifferently.
Mary had the stern pride of chastity which distinguishes
the women of the old country, and which keeps most of
the Irish girls who are thrown unprotected on our
shores superior to temptation.

Mary keenly felt that Maggie had disgraced her, and
as health returned and she no longer trembled for her
life, she seemed called upon to keep her daughter's sin
ever before her. Her past bad conduct and the lenity
of her young mistress, her treating her so much better
than she had any reason to expect, were topics on which
Mary took every occasion to enlarge in private, leading
to passionate altercations between herself and her
daughter, in which the child broke over all bounds of
goodness and showed the very worst aspects of her
nature. Nothing can be more miserable, more pitiable,
than these stormy passages between wayward children
and honest, good-hearted mothers, who love them to the
death, and yet do not know how to handle them, sensitive
and sore with moral wounds. Many a time poor Mary
went to sleep with a wet pillow, while Maggie, sullen
and hard-hearted, lay with her great black eyes wide

open, obdurate and silent, yet in her secret heart longing
to make it right with her mother. Often, after such
a passage she would revolve the line of the hymn—
It seemed to her that that gate was her mother's heart,
and that she stood outside of it; and yet all the while
the poor mother would have died for her. Eva could
not at first account for the sullen and gloomy moods
which came upon Maggie, when she would go about the
house with lowering brows, and all her bright, cheerful
ways and devices could bring no smile upon her face.

“What is the matter with Maggie?” she would say to
Mary.

“Oh, nothing, ma'am, only she's bad; she's got to
be brought under, and brought down,—that's what she
has.”

“Mary, I think you had better not talk to Maggie
about her past faults. She knows she has been wrong,
and the best way is to let her get quietly into the right
way. We mustn't keep throwing up the past to her.
When we do wrong, we don't like to have people keep
putting us in mind of it.”

“You're jest an angel, Miss Eva, and it isn't many
ladies that would do as you do. You're too good to her
entirely. She ought to be made sensible of it.”

“Well, Mary, the best way to make her sensible and
bring her to repentance is to treat her kindly and never
bring up the past. Don't you see it does no good, Mary?
It only makes her sullen, and gloomy, and unhappy, so
that I can't get anything out of her. Now please, Mary,
just keep quiet, and let me manage Maggie.”

And then Mary would promise, and Eva would
smooth matters over, and affairs would go on for a day
or two harmoniously. But there was another authority

in Mary's family, as in almost every Irish household,—a
man who felt called to have a say and give a sentence.

Mary had an elder brother, Mike McArtney, who had
established himself in a grocery business a little out of
the city, and who felt himself to stand in position of head
of the family to Mary and her children.

The absolute and entire reverence and deference with
which Irish women look up to the men of their kindred
is something in direct contrast to the demeanor of
American women. The male sex, if repulsed in other
directions, certainly are fully justified and glorified by
the submissive daughters of Erin. Mike was the elder
brother, under whose care Mary came to this country.
He was the adviser and director of all her affairs. He
found her places; he guided her in every emergency.
Mike, of course, had felt and bitterly resented the dishonor
brought on their family by Maggie's fall. In his
view, there was danger that the path of repentance was
being made altogether too easy for her, and he had resolved
on the first leisure Sunday evening to come to
the house and execute a thorough work of judgment on
Maggie, setting her sin in order before her, and, in general,
bearing down on her in such a way as to bring her
to the dust and make her feel it the greatest possible
mercy and favor that any of her relations should speak
to her.

So, after Eva had hushed the mother and tranquilized
the girl, and there had been two or three days of
serenity, came Sunday evening and Uncle Mike.

The result was, as might have been expected, a loud
and noisy altercation. Maggie was perfectly infuriated,
and talked like one possessed of a demon; using, alas!
language with which her sinful life had made her only
too familiar, and which went far to justify the rebukes
which were heaped upon her.

In his anger at such contumacious conduct, Uncle
Mike took full advantage of the situation, and told Maggie
that she was a disgrace to her mother and her relations—a
disgrace to any honest house—and that he wondered
that decent gentle-folks would have her under
their roof.

In short, in one hour, two of Maggie's best friends—
the mother that loved her as her life and the uncle that
had been as a father to her—contrived utterly to sweep
away and destroy all those delicate cords and filaments
which the hands of good angels had been fastening to
her heart, to draw her heavenward.

When a young tree is put in new ground, its roots
put forth fibres delicate as hairs, but in which is all the
vitality of a new phase of existence. To tear up those
roots and wrench off those fibres is too often the destructive
work of well-intending friends; it is done too often
by those who would, if need be, give their very heart's
blood for the welfare they imperil. Such is life as we
find it.