Stepping Heavenward Part 5

Oct. 10.-I have taken a dreadful cold. It is too bad. I dare say I shall be coughing all winter, and instead of going out with Charley, be shut up at home.

Oct. 12.-Charley says he did not know that I was subject to a cough, and that he hopes I am not consumptive, because his father and mother died of consumption, and it makes him nervous to hear people cough. I nearly strangled myself all the evening trying not to annoy him with mine.

Chapter 4

IV

Nov.2.

I really think I am sick and going to die. Last night I raised a little blood. I dare not tell mother, it would distress her so, but I am sure it came from my lungs. Charley said last week he really must stay away till I got better, for my cough sounded like his mother's.

I have been very lonely, and have shed some tears, but most of the time have been too sorrowful to cry. If we were married, and I had a cough, would he go and leave me, I wonder?

Sunday, Nov 18-Poor mother is dreadfully anxious about me. But I don't see how she can love me so, after the way I have behaved. I wonder if, after all, mothers are not the best friends there are! I keep her awake with my cough all night, and am mopy and cross all day, but she is just as kind and affectionate as she can be.

Nov. 25.-The day I wrote that was Sunday. I could not go to church, and I felt very forlorn and desolate. I tried to get some comfort by praying, but when I got on my knees I just burst out crying and could not say a word. For I have not seen Charley for ten days. As I knelt there I began to think myself a perfect monster of selfishness for wanting him to spend his evenings with me, now that I am so unwell and annoy him so with my cough, and I asked myself if I ought not to break off the engagement altogether, if I was really in consumption, the very disease Charley dreaded most of all. It seemed such a proper sacrifice to make of myself. Then I prayed-yes, I am sure I really prayed as I had not done for more than a year, the idea of self-sacrifice grew every moment more beautiful in my eyes, till at last I felt an almost joyful triumph in writing to poor Charley, and tell him what I had resolved to do. This is my letter:

My Dear, Dear Charley -I dare not tell you what it costs me to say what I am about to do; but I am sure you know me well enough by this time believe that it is only because your happiness is far more precious to me than my own, that I have decided to write you this letter. When you first told me that you loved me, you said, and you have often said so since then, that it was my "brightness and gayety"

that attracted you. I knew there was something underneath my gayety better worth your love, and was glad I could give you more than you asked for. I knew I was not a mere thoughtless, laughing girl, but that I had a heart as wide as the ocean to give you-as wide and as deep.

But now my "brightness and gayety" have gone; I am sick and perhaps am going to die. If this is so, it would be very sweet to have your love go with me to the very gates of death, and beautify and glorify my path thither. But what a weary task this would be to you, my poor Charley! And so, if you think it best, and it would relieve you of any care and pain, I will release you from our engagement and set you free. Your Little Katy.

I did not sleep at all that night. Early on Monday I sent off my letter; and my heart beat so hard all day that I was tired and faint.

Just at dark his answer came; I can copy it from memory.

Dear Kate: -What a generous, self-sacrificing little thing you are! I always thought so, but now you have given me a n.o.ble proof of it. I will own that I have been disappointed to find your const.i.tution so poor, and that it has been very dull sitting and hearing you cough, especially as I was reminded of the long and tedious illness through which poor Jenny and myself had to nurse our mother. I vowed then never to marry a consumptive woman, and I thank you for making it so easy for me to bring our engagement to an end. My bright hopes are blighted, and it will be long before I shall find another to fill your place. I need not say how much I sympathize with you in this disappointment. I hope the consolations of religion will now be yours. Your notes, the lock of your hair, etc., I return with this now. I will not reproach you for the pain you have cost me; I know it is not your fault that your health has become so frail. I remain your sincere friend,

Charles Underhill

Jan. I, 1834.-Let me finish this story If I can.

My first impulse after reading his letter was to fly to mother, and hide away forever in her dear, loving arms.

But I restrained myself, and with my heart beating so that I could hardly hold my pen, I wrote:

Mr.. Underhill Sir-The scales have fallen from my eyes, and I see you at last just as you are. Since my note to you on Sunday last, I have had a consultation of physicians, and they all agree that my disease is not of an alarming character, and that I shall soon recover. But I thank G.o.d that before it was too late, you have been revealed to me just as you are-a heartless, selfish, shallow creature, unworthy the love of a true-hearted woman, unworthy even of your own self-respect.

I gave you an opportunity to withdraw from our engagement in full faith, loving you so truly that I was ready to go trembling to my grave alone if you shrank from sustaining me to it. But I see now that I did not dream for one moment that you would take me at my word and leave me to my fate. I thought I loved a man, and could lean on him when strength failed me; I know now that I loved a mere creature of my imagination. Take back your letters; loathe the sight of them.

Take back the ring, and find, if you can, a woman who will never be sick, never out of spirits, and who never will die. Thank heaven it is not Katherine Mortimer.

These lines came to me in reply:

"Thank G.o.d it is not Kate Mortimer. I want an angel for my wife, not a vixen. C. U."

Jan. 15-What a tempest-tossed creature this birthday finds me. But let me finish this wretched, disgraceful story, if I can, before I quite lose my senses.

I showed my mother the letters. She burst into tears and opened her arms, and I ran into them as a wounded bird flies into the ark. We cried together. Mother never said, never looked, "I told you so."

All she did say was this,

"G.o.d has heard my prayers! He is reserving better things for my child!"

Dear mother's are not the only arms I have flown to. But it does not seem as if G.o.d ought to take me in because I am in trouble, when I would not go to him when I was happy in something else. But even in the midst of my greatest felicity I had many and many a misgiving; many a season when my conscience upbraided me for my willfulness towards my dear mother, and my whole soul yearned for something higher and better even than Charley's love, precious as it was.

Jan. 26.-I have shut myself up in my room to-day to think over things. The end of it is that I am full of mortification and confusion of face. If I had only had confidence in mother's judgment I should never have get entangled in this silly engagement. I see now that Charley never could have made me happy, and I know there is a good deal in my heart he never called out. I wish, however, I had not written him when I was in pa.s.sion. No wonder he is thankful that he free from such a vixen. But, oh the provocation was terrible!

I have made up my mind never to tell a human soul about this affair.

It will be so high- minded and honorable to s.h.i.+eld him thus from the contempt he deserves. With all my faults I am glad that there is nothing mean or little about me!

Jan. 27.-I can't bear to write it down, but I will. The ink was hardly dry yesterday on the above self-laudation when Amelia came.

She had been out of town, and had only just learned what had happened. Of course she was curious to know the whole story.

And I told it to her, every word of it! Oh, Kate Mortimer, how "high-minded" you are! How free from all that is "mean and little"! I could tear my hair if it would do any good?

Amelia defended Charley, and I was thus led on to say every harsh thing of him I could think of. She said he was of so sensitive a nature, had so much sensibility, and such a const.i.tutional aversion to seeing suffering, that for her part she could not blame him.

"It is such a pity you had not had your lungs examined before you wrote that first letter, she went on. "But you are so impulsive! If you had only waited you would be engaged to Charley still!"

"I am thankful I did not wait," I cried, angrily. "Do, Amelia, drop the subject forever. You and I shall never agree upon it. The truth is, you are two-thirds in love with him, and have been, all along."

She colored, and laughed, and actually looked pleased. If anyone had made such an outrageous speech to me I should have been furious.

"I suppose you know," said she, "that old Mr. Underhill has taken such a fancy to him that he has made him his heir; and he is as rich as a Jew."

"Indeed!" I said, dryly.

I wonder if mother knew it when she opposed our engagement so strenuously.

Jan. 31.-1 have asked her, and she said she did. Mr. Underhill told her his intentions when he urged her consent to the engagement. Dear mother! How unworldly, how unselfish she is!

Feb. 4.-The name of Charley Underhill appears on these pages for the last time. He is engaged to Amelia! From this moment she is lost to me forever. How desolate, how mortified, how miserable I am! Who could have thought this of Amelia! She came to see me, radiant with joy. I concealed my disgust until she said that Charley felt now that he had never really loved me, but had preferred her all along. Then I burst out. What I said I do not know, and do not care. The whole thing is so disgraceful that I should be a stock or a stone not to resent it.

Feb. 5.-After yesterday's pa.s.sion of grief, shame, and anger, I feel perfectly stupid and .languid. Oh, that I was prepared for a better world, and could fly to it and be at rest!

Feb. 6.-Now that it is all over, how ashamed I am of the fury I have been in, and which has given Amelia such advantage over me! I was beginning to believe that I was really living a feeble and fluttering, but real Christian life, and finding some satisfaction in it. But that is all over now. I am doomed to be a victim of my own unstable, pa.s.sionate, wayward nature, and the sooner I settle down into that conviction, the better. And yet how my very soul craves the highest happiness, and refuses to be comforted while that is wanting.

Feb. 7.-After writing that, I do not know what made me go to see Dr.

Cabot. He received me in that cheerful way of his that seems to promise the taking one's burden right off one's back.

"I am very glad to see you, my dear child," he said.

I intended to be very dignified and cold. As if I was going to have any Dr. Cabot's undertaking to sympathize with me! But those few kind words just upset me, and I began to cry.

"You would not speak so kindly," I got out at last, "if you knew what a dreadful creature I am. I am angry with myself, and angry with everybody, and angry with G.o.d. I can't be good two minutes at a time.

I do everything I do not want to do, and do nothing I try and pray to do. Everybody plagues me and tempts me. And G.o.d does not answer any of my prayers, and I am just desperate."

"Poor child!" he said, in a low voice, as if to himself. "Poor, heart-sick, tired child, that cannot see what I can see, that its Father's loving arms are all about it?"

I stopped crying, to strain my ears and listen. He went on.