University of Virginia Library

28. CHAPTER XXVIII.
REASON AND UNREASON.

THE next morning being Monday, Dr. Campbell
dropped in to breakfast. Since he and Eva had
met so often in Maggie's sick room, and he had discussed
the direction of her physical well-being, he had rapidly
grown in intimacy with the Hendersons, and the little
house had come to be regarded by him as a sort of home.
Consequently, when Eva sailed into her dining-room,
she found him quietly arranging a handful of cut flowers
which he had brought in for the center of her
breakfast table.

“Good morning, Mrs. Henderson,” he said, composedly.
“I stepped into Allen's green-house on my way
up, to bring in a few flowers. With the mercury at zero,
flowers are worth something.”

“How perfectly lovely of you, Doctor,” said she.
“You are too good.”

“I don't say, however, that I had not my eye on a
cup of your coffee,” he replied. “You know I have no
faith in disinterested benevolence.”

“Well, sit down then, old fellow,” said Harry, clapping
him on the shoulder. “You're welcome, flowers or
no flowers.”

“How are you all getting on?” he said, seating himself.

“Charmingly, of course,” said Eva, from behind the
coffee-pot, “and as the song says, `the better for seeing
you.'”

“And how's my patient—Maggie?”

“Oh, she's doing well, if only people will let her
alone; but her mother, and uncle, and relations will keep
irritating her with reproaches. You see, I had got her in
beautiful training, and she was sewing for me and making
herself very useful, when, Sunday evening, when I
was gone out, her uncle came to see her, and talked and
bore down upon her so as to completely upset all I had
done. I came home and found her just going out of the
house, perfectly desperate.”

“And ready to go to the devil straight off, I suppose?”
said the Doctor. “His doors are always open.”

“You see,” said Harry, “things seem to be so arranged
in this world that if man, woman or child does
wrong or gets out of the way, all society is armed to the
teeth to prevent their ever doing right again. Their own
flesh and blood pitch into them with reproaches and expostulations,
and everybody else looks on them with
suspicion, and nobody wants them and nobody dares
trust them.”

“Just so,” said Dr. Campbell, “the world is an army
—it can't stop for anything. `Wounded to the rear,' is
the word, and the army must go on and leave the sick
and wounded to die or be taken by the enemy. For my
part, I never thought Napoleon was so much out of the
way when he recommended poisoning the sick and
wounded that could not be moved. I think I should
prefer to be comfortably and decently poisoned myself
in such a case. The world isn't ripe yet for the doctrine;
but I think all people who get broken down, and
don't keep step physically and morally, had better be
killed at once. Then we could get on comfortably, and
in a few generations should have a nice population.”

“Come, now, Doctor; I'm not going to have that sort
of talk,” said Eva. “In short, you've got to keep on as
you have been doing—working for the wounded in the

rear. And now tell me if I could do a better thing for
Maggie than keep her here in our house, under my own
eye and influence, till she gets quite strong and well,
and help her to live down the past?”

“Well, that's a sensible putting of the thing,” said
Dr. Campbell, “if you will be foolish enough to take the
trouble; but I forewarn you that girls that have been
through her experiences are troublesome to manage.
Their nerves are all in a jangle; they are sore everywhere,
and the very good that is in them is turned
wrong side outward; and, as you say, the world will be
against you, in a general way. Relations, as far as ever I
have observed, are rather harder on sinners than anybody
else—especially on a woman that goes astray; and next to
them sensible, worldly-wise, respectable people—people
who live to get rid of trouble, and feel that `bother'
is the sum and substance of evil. Now, taking up a girl
like Maggie, you must count on that. Her relations
will hinder all they can; and the more respectable they
are, the harder they will bear down upon her. Your
relations will think you a sentimental little fool, and do
all they can to hinder you. The rank and file of comfortable,
religious, church-going people will call you imprudent,
and only fanatics, like Mr. St. John and Sibyl
Selwyn, will understand you or stand by you; and, to
crown all, the girl herself is as unreliable as the wind.
The evil done to a woman in this kind of life is the derangement
of her whole nervous system, so that she is
swept by floods of morbid influences, and liable to wild,
passionate gusts of feeling. The cessation from this free
Bohemian life, with its strong excitements, leaves them
in unnatural states of craving for stimulus; and when you
have done all you can for them,—in a moment, off they
go. That's the reason why most prudent people prefer
to wash their hands of them, and stop before they begin.”

“It's all very well to talk so, Doctor, if the case related
to a stranger; but here is my poor, good Mary,
who has been in our family ever since I was a little
girl, and has always loved me and been devoted to me—
shall I now give her the cold shoulder and not help
her in this crisis of her life, because I am afraid of
trouble? Isn't it worth trouble, and a great deal of
trouble, and a great deal of patience, to save this
daughter of hers from ruin? I think it is.”

“I think you and your husband will do it,” said the
Doctor, “because you are just what you are; and I
shall help you, because I'm what I am; but, nevertheless,
I set the reasonable side before you. I think this
Maggie is a fine creature. There are, in a confused
way, the beginnings of a great deal that is right, and
even noble, in her; but nobody ought to begin with her
without taking account of risks.”

“Well,” said Eva, “you know I am a Christian, and
I look in the New Testament for my principles, and
there I find it plainly set down that the Lord values one
sinner that is brought to repentance more than ninety
and nine just persons that need no repentance; and that
he would leave the ninety and nine sheep, and go into
the wilderness to look up one lost lamb.”

“That is the Christian religion, undoubtedly,” said
Dr. Campbell; “but there is exactly where the Christian
religion parts company with worldly prudence. The
world and all its institutions are organized and arranged
for the strong, the wise, the prudent, and the successful.
The weak, the sick, the sinners, and all that sort of thing,
are to have as much care as they can without interfering
with the healthy and strong. Now, in the good old
times of English law, they used to hang summarily anybody
that made trouble in society in any way—the
woman who stole a loaf of bread, and the man who stole

a horse, and the vagrant who picked a pocket; then
there was no discussion and no bother about reformation,
such as is coming down upon our consciences now-a-days.
Good old times those were, when there wasn't
any of this gush over the fallen and lost; the slate was
wiped clean of all the puzzling sums at the yearly assizes
and the account started clear. Now-a-days, there is
such a bother about taking care of criminals that an
honest man has no decent chance of comfort.”

“Well, Doctor,” said Eva, “if the essence of Christianity
is restoration and salvation, I don't see but your
profession is essentially a Christian one. You seek and
save the lost. It is your business by your toil and labor
to help people who have sinned against the laws of nature,
to get them back again to health; isn 't it so?”

“Well, yes, it is,” said the doctor, “though I find
everything going against me in this direction, as much as
you do.”

“But you find mercy in nature,” said Harry. “In
the language of the Psalms: `There is forgiveness with
her that she may be feared.' The first thing, after one
of her laws has been broken, comes in her effort to
restore and save; it may be blind and awkward, but still
it points toward life and not death, and you doctors are
her ministers and priests. You bear the physical gospel;
and we Christians take the same process to the spiritual
realm that lies just above yours, and that has to work
through yours. Our business in both realms seems to be,
by our own labor, self-denial and suffering, to save those
who have sinned against the laws of their being.”

“Well,” said the doctor; “even so, I go in for saving
in my line by an instinct apart from my reason, an instinct
as blind as nature's when she sets out to heal a
broken bone in the right arm of a scalawag, who never
used his arm for anything but thrashing his wife and

children, and making himself a general nuisance; yet I
have been amazed sometimes to see how kindly and
patiently old Mother Nature will work for such a man.
Well, I am something like her. I have the blind instinct
of healing in my profession, and I confess to sitting up
all night, watching to keep the breath of life in sick
babies that I know ought to be dead, and had better be
dead, inasmuch as there's no chance for them to be even
decent and respectable, if they live; but I can't let 'em
die, any more than nature can, without a struggle. The
fact is, reason is one thing and the human heart
another; and, as St. Paul says, `these two are contrary
one to the other, so that ye cannot do the thing ye
would.' You and your husband, Mrs. Henderson, have
got a good deal of this troublesome human heart in you,
so that you cannot act reasonably, any more than I can.”

“That's it, Doctor,” said Eva, with a bright, sudden
movement towards him and laying her hand on his
arm, “let's not act reasonably—let's act by something
higher. I know there is something higher—something
we dare to do and feel able to do in our best moments.
You are a Christian in heart, Doctor, if not in faith.”

“Me? I'm the most terrible heretic in all the continent.”

“But when you sit up all night with a sick baby
from mere love of saving, you are a Christian; for,
doesn't Christ say, `inasmuch as ye did it unto the least
of these, ye did it unto me'? Christians are those who
have Christ's spirit, as I think, and sacrifice themselves
to save others.”

“May the angels be of your opinion when I try the
gate hereafter,” said the Doctor. “But now, seriously,
about this Maggie. I apprehend that you will have
trouble from the fact that, having been kept on stimulants
in a rambling, loose, disorderly life, she will not be

able long to accommodate herself to any regular habits.
I don't know how much of a craving for drink there may
be in her case, but it is a usual complication of such
cases. Such people may go for weeks without yielding,
and then the furor comes upon them, and away they go.
Perhaps she may not be one of those worst cases; but,
in any event, the sudden cessation of all the tumultuous
excitement she has been accustomed to, may lead to a
running down of the nervous system that will make her
act unreasonably. Her mother, and people of her class,
may be relied on for doing the very worst thing that the
case admits of, with the very best intentions. And now
if these complications get you into any trouble, rely
upon me so far as I can do anything to help. Don't
hesitate to command me at any hour and to any extent,
because I mean to see the thing through with you.
When spring comes on, if you get her through the winter,
we must try and find her a place in some decent,
quiet farmer's family in the country, where she may feed
chickens and ducks, and make butter, and live a natural,
healthful, out-door life; and, in my opinion, that will
be the best and safest way for her.”

“Come, Doctor,” said Harry, “will you walk up town
with me? It's time I was off.”

“Now, Harry, please remember; don't forget to match
that worsted,” said Eva. “Oh! and that tea must be
changed. You just call in and tell Haskins that.”

“Anything else?” said Harry, buttoning on his overcoat.

“No; only be sure you come back early, for mamma
says Aunt Maria is coming down here upon me, and I
shall want you to strengthen me. The Doctor appreciates
Aunt Maria.”

“Certainly I do,” said the Doctor; “a devoted relation
who carries you all in her heart hourly, and therefore

has an undoubted right to make you as uncomfortable
as she pleases. That's the beauty of relations.
If you have them you are bothered with them, and if
you haven't you are bothered for want of 'em. So it
goes. Now I would give all the world if I had a good
aunt or grandmother to haul me over the coals, and
fight me, out of pure love—a fellow feels lonesome when
he knows nobody would care if he went to the devil.”

“Oh, as to that,” said Eva, “come here whenever
you're lonesome, and we'll fight and abuse you to your
heart's content; and you sha'n't go to that improper person
without our making a fuss about it. We'll abuse
you as if you were one of the family.”

“Good,” said the Doctor, as he stepped towards the
front window; “but here, to be sure, is your aunt, bright
and early.”