Men, Women, and Ghosts Part 22

"Don't touch that woman!"

Meg heard it.

Standing, a moment after, just at the edge of the aisle, a lady, clad in velvet, brushed against her, then gathered her costly garments with a hand ringed and dazzling with diamonds, shrinking as if she had touched some accursed thing, and sweeping by.

Meg's eyes froze at that. This was the sanctuary, these the wors.h.i.+ppers of Him who was bruised. His message could not be for her. It would be of no use to find out about him; of no use to tell him how she loathed herself and her life; that she wanted to know about that Rest, and about that heavy-laden one. His followers would not brook the very flutter of her dress against their pure garments. They were like him; he could have nothing to say to such as she.

She turned to go out. Through the open door she saw the night and the storm. Within was the silent dome, and the organ-hymn still swelling up to it.

It was still of the wounded that they sang. Meg listened, lingered, touched the preacher on the arm as he came by.

"I want to ask you a question."

He started at the sight of her, or more perhaps at the sharpness in her voice.

"Why, why, who are you?"

"I'm Meg. You don't know me. I ain't fit for your fine Christian people to touch; they won't let their little children speak to me."

"Well?" he said, nervously, for she paused.

"Well? You're a preacher. I want to know about Him they've been singing of, I came in to hear the singing. I like it."

"I--I don't quite understand you," began the minister. "You surely have heard of Jesus Christ."

"Yes," her eyes softened, "somebody used to tell me; it was mother; we lived in the country. I wasn't what I am now. I want to know if he can put me back again. What if I should tell him I was going to be different? Would he hear me, do you suppose?"

Somehow the preacher's scholarly self-possession failed him. He felt ill at ease, standing there with the woman's fixed black eyes upon him.

"Why, yes; he always forgives a repentant sinner."

"Repentant sinner." She repeated the words musingly. "I don't understand all these things. I've forgotten most all about it. I want to know.

Couldn't I come in some way with the children and be learnt 'em? I wouldn't make any trouble."

There was something almost like a child in her voice just then, almost as earnest and as pure. The preacher took out his handkerchief and wiped his face; then he changed his hat awkwardly from hand to hand.

"Why, why, really, we have no provision in our Sabbath school for cases like this: we have been meaning to establish an inst.i.tution of a missionary character, but the funds cannot be raised just yet. I am sorry; I don't know but--"

"It's no matter!"

Meg turned sharply away, her hands dropping lifelessly; she moved toward the door. They were alone now in the church, they two.

The minister's pale cheek flushed; he stepped after her.

"Young woman!"

She stopped, her face turned from him.

"I will send you to some of the city missionaries, or I will go with you to the Penitents' Retreat. I should like to help you. I--"

He would have exhorted her to reform as kindly as he knew how; he felt uncomfortable at letting her go so; he remembered just then who washed the feet of his Master with her tears. But she would not listen. She turned from him, and out into the storm, some cry on her lips,--it might have been:--

"There ain't n.o.body to help me. I _was_ going to be better!"

She sank down on the snow outside, exhausted by the racking cough which the air had again brought on.

The s.e.xton found her there in the shadow, when he locked the church doors.

"Meg! you here? What ails you?"

"_Dying_, I suppose!"

The sight of her touched the man, she lying there alone in the snow; he lingered, hesitated, thought of his own warm home, looked at her again.

If a friendly hand should save the creature,--he had heard of such things. Well? But how could he take her into his respectable home? What would people say?--the s.e.xton of the Temple! He had a little wife there too, pure as the snow upon the ground to-night. Could he bring them under the same roof?

"Meg!" he said, speaking in his nervous way, though kindly, "you _will_ die here. I'll call the police and let them take you where it's warmer."

But she crawled to her feet again.

"No you won't!"

She walked away as fast as she was able, till she found a still place down by the water, where no one could see her. There she stood a moment irresolute, looked up through the storm as if searching for the sky, then sank upon her knees down in the silent shade of some timber.

Perhaps she was half-frightened at the act, for she knelt so a moment without speaking. There she began to mutter: "Maybe He won't drive me off; if they did, maybe he won't. I should just like to tell him, anyway!"

So she folded her hands, as she had folded them once at her mother's knee.

"O Lord! I'm tired of being _Meg_. I should like to be something else!"

Then she rose, crossed the bridge, and on past the thinning houses, walking feebly through the snow that drifted against her feet.

She did not know why she was there, or where she was going. She repeated softly to herself now and then the words uttered down in the shade of the timber, her brain dulled by the cold, faint, floating dreams stealing into them.

Meg! tired of being Meg! She wasn't always that. It was another name, a pretty name she thought, with a childish smile,--Maggie. They always call her that. She used to play about among the clover-blossoms and b.u.t.tercups then; the pure little children used to kiss her; n.o.body hooted after her in the street, or drove her out of church, or left her all alone out in the snow,--_Maggie_!

Perhaps, too, some vague thought came to her of the mournful, unconscious prophecy of the name, as the touch of the sacred water upon her baby-brow had sealed it,--Magdalene.

She stopped a moment, weakened by her toiling against the wind, threw off her hood, the better to catch her laboring breath, and standing so, looked back at the city, its lights glimmering white and pale, through the falling snow.

Her face was a piteous sight just then. Do you think the haughtiest of the pure, fair women in yonder treasured homes could have loathed her as she loathed herself at that moment?

Yet it might have been a face as fair and pure as theirs; kisses of mother and husband might have warmed those drawn and hueless lips; they might have prayed their happy prayers, every night and morning, to G.o.d.

It _might have been_. You would almost have thought he had meant it should be so, if you had looked into her eyes sometimes,--perhaps when she was on her knees by the timber; or when she listened to the chant, crouching out of sight in the church.

Well, it was only that it might have been. Life could hold no possible blessed change for her, you know. Society had no place for it, though she sought it carefully with tears. Who of all G.o.d's happy children that he had kept from sin would have gone to her and said, "My sister, his love holds room for you and me"; have touched her with her woman's hand, held out to her her woman's help, and blessed her with her woman's prayers and tears?

Do you not think Meg knew the answer? Had she not learned it well, in seven wandering years? Had she not read it in every blast of this bitter night, out into which she had come to find a helper, when all the happy world pa.s.sed by her, on the other side?

She stood there, looking at the glittering of the city, then off into the gloom where the path lay through the snow. Some struggle was in her face.