Esther Part 24

"YOU WERE RIGHT, ESTHER."

For many, many long weeks, I might say months, my daily life was lived in Carrie's sick room.

What a mercy it is that we are not permitted to see the course of events--that we take moment by moment from the Father's hand, not knowing what lies before us!

It was September when I had that little altercation with Deborah on the threshold, and when she drew aside for me to pa.s.s into that dimly-lighted sickroom; it was Christmas now, and I was there still.

Could I have foreseen those months, with their record of suffering, their hours of changeless monotony, well might my courage have failed.

As it was, I watched the slow progression of nights and days almost indifferently; the walls of the sickroom closed round me, shutting me out from the actual world, and concentrating my thoughts on the frail girl who was fighting against disease and death.

So terrible an illness I pray to Heaven I may never see again; sad complications producing unheard-of tortures, and bringing the sufferer again and again to the very brink of death.

"If I could only die: if I were only good enough to be allowed to die!" that was the prayer she breathed; and there were times when I could have echoed it, when I would rather have parted with her, dearly as I loved her, than have seen her so racked with agony; but it was not to be. The lesson was not completed. There are some who must be taught to live, who have to take back "the turned lesson," as one has beautifully said, and learn it more perfectly.

If I had ever doubted her goodness in my secret soul, I could doubt no longer, when I daily witnessed her weakness and her exceeding patience. She bore her suffering almost without complaint, and would often hide from us how much she had to endure.

"'It is good to be still.' Do you remember that, Esther?" she said once; and I knew she was quoting the words of one who had suffered.

After the first day I had no further difficulty with Deborah; she soon recognized my usefulness, and gave me my share of nursing without grudging. I took my turn at the night-watching, and served my first painful apprenticeship in sick nursing. Mother could do little for us; she could only relieve me for a couple of hours in the afternoon, during which Uncle Geoffrey insisted that I should have rest and exercise.

Allan did not come home when we expected him; he had to postpone his intention for a couple of months. This was a sad disappointment, as he would have helped us so much, and mother's constant anxiety that my health should not suffer by my close confinement was a little trying at times. I was quite well, but it was no wonder that my fresh color faded a little, and that I grew a little quiet and subdued. The absence of life and change must be pernicious to young people; they want air, movement, a certain stirring of activity and bustle to keep time with their warm natures.

Every one was very kind to me. Uncle Geoffrey would take me on his rounds, and often Miss Ruth and Flurry would call for me, and drive me into the country, and they brought me books and fruit and lovely flowers for Carrie's room; and though I never saw Mr. Lucas during his few brief visits he never failed to send me a kind message or to ask if there was anything he could do for us.

Miss Ruth, or Ruth, as I always called her now, would sometimes come up into the sickroom and sit for a few minutes. Carrie liked to see her, and always greeted her with a smile; but when Mrs. Smedley heard of it, and rather peremptorily demanded admittance, she turned very pale, and calling me to her, charged me, in an agitated voice, never to let her in. "I could not see her, I could not," she went on, excitedly. "I like Miss Ruth; she is so gentle and quiet. But I want no one but you and mother."

Mother once--very injudiciously, as Uncle Geoffrey and I thought --tried to shake this resolution of Carrie's.

"Poor Mrs. Smedley seems so very grieved and disappointed that you will not see her, my dear. This is the third time she has called this week, and she has been so kind to you."

"Oh, mother, don't make me see her!" pleaded Carrie, even her lips turning white; and of course mother kissed her and promised that she should not be troubled. But when she had left the room Carrie became very much agitated.

"She is the last I ought to see, for she helped to bring me to this; she taught me to disobey my mother--yes, Esther, she did indeed!" as I expostulated in a shocked manner. "She was always telling me that my standard was not high enough--that I ought to look above even the wisest earthly parents. She said my mother had old-fashioned notions of duty; that things were different in her young days; that, in spite of her goodness, she had narrow views; that it was impossible for her even to comprehend me."

"Dear Carrie, surely you could not have agreed with her?" I asked, gently; but her only answer was a sigh as she sank back upon her pillows.

It was the evening Allan was expected, I remember. It was December now, and for nine weeks I had been shut up in that room, with the exception of my daily walk or drive.

Deborah had gone back to her usual work; it was impossible to spare her longer. But she still helped in the heaviest part of the nursing, and came from time to time to look after us both.

Dot had remained for six weeks at the Cedars; but mother missed him so much that Uncle Geoffrey decided to bring him home; and how glad and thankful I was to get my darling back!

I saw very little of him, however, for, strange to say, Carrie did not care for him and Jack to stay long in the room. I was not surprised that Jack fidgeted her, for she was restless and noisy, and her loud voice and awkward manners would jar sadly on an invalid; but Dot was different.

In a sick room he was as quiet as a little mouse, and he had such nice ways. It grieved me to see Carrie shade her eyes in that pained manner when he hobbled in softly on his crutches.

"Carrie always cries when she sees me!" Dot said once, with a little quiver of his lips. Alas! we neither of us understood the strange misery that even the sight of her afflicted little brother caused her.

Mother had gone downstairs when she had made her little protest about Mrs. Smedley, and we were left alone together. I was resting in the low cushioned chair Ruth had sent me in the early days of Carrie's illness, and was watching the fire in a quiet fashion that had become habitual to me. The room looked snug and pleasant in the twilight; the little bed on which I slept was in the farthest corner; a bouquet of hothouse flowers stood on the little round table, with some books Mr. Lucas had sent up for me. It must have looked cheerful to Carrie as she lay among the pillows; but to my dismay there were tears on her cheeks--I could see them glistening in the firelight.

"Do you feel less well to-night, dear?" I asked, anxiously, as I took a seat beside her; but she shook her head.

"I am better, much better," was her reply, "thanks to you and Deborah and Uncle Geoffrey," but her smile was very sad as she spoke.

"How good you have been to me, Esther--how kind and patient!

Sometimes I have looked at you when you were asleep over there, and I have cried to see how thin and weary you looked in your sleep, and all through me."

"Nonsense," I returned, kissing her; but my voice was not quite clear.

"Allan will say so to-night when he sees you--you are not the same, Esther. Your eyes are graver, and you seem to have forgotten how to laugh, and it is all my fault."

"Dear Carrie, I wish you would not talk so."

"Let me talk a little to-night," she pleaded. "I feel better and stronger, and it will be such a relief to tell you some of my thoughts. I have been silent for nine weeks, and sometimes the pent-up pain has been more than I could bear."

"My poor Carrie," stroking the thin white hand on the coverlid.

"Yes, I am that," she sighed. "Do you remember our old talks together? Oh, how wise you were, Esther, but I would not listen to you; you were all for present duties. I can recollect some of your words now. You told me our work lay before us, close to us, at our very feet, and yet I would stretch out my arms for more, till my own burdens crushed me, and I fell beneath them."

"You attempted too much," I returned; "your intention was good, but you overstrained your powers."

"You are putting it too mildly," she returned, with a great sadness in her voice. "Esther, I have had time to think since I have lain here, and I have been reviewing your life and mine. I wanted to see where the fault lay, and how I had missed my path. G.o.d was taking away my work from me; the sacrifice I offered was not acceptable."

"Oh, my dear, hush!" But she lifted her hand feebly and laid on my lips.

"It was weeks before I found it out, but I think I see it clearly now. We were both in earnest about our duty, we both wanted to do the best we could for others; but, Esther, after all it was you who were right; you did not turn against the work that was brought to you-- your teaching, and house, and mother, and Dot, and even Jack--all that came first, and you knew it; you have worked in the corner of the vineyard that was appointed to you, and never murmured over its barrenness and narrow s.p.a.ce, and so you are ripe and ready for any great work that may be waiting for you in the future. 'Faithful in little, faithful in much'--how often have I applied those words to you!"

I tried to stem the torrent of retrospection, but nothing would silence her; as she said herself, the pent up feelings must have their course. But why did she judge herself so bitterly? It pained me inexpressibly to hear her.

"If I had only listened to you!" she went on; "but my spiritual self-will blinded me. I despised my work. Oh, Esther! you cannot contradict me; you know how bitterly I spoke of the little Thornes; how I refused to take them into my heart; how scornfully I spoke of my ornamental brickmaking."

I could not gainsay her words on that point; I knew her to be wrong.

"I wanted to choose my work; that was the fatal error. I spurned the little duties at my feet, and looked out for some great work that I must do. Teaching the little Thornes was hateful to me; yet I could teach ragged children in the Sunday-school for hours. Mending Jack's things and talking to mother were wearisome details; yet I could toil through fog and rain in Nightingale lane, and feel no fatigue. My work was impure, my motives tainted by self-will. Could it be accepted by Him who was subject to His parents for thirty years, who worked at the carpenter's bench, when He could have preached to thousands?" And here she broke down, and wept bitterly.

What could I answer? How could I apply comfort to one so sorely wounded? And yet through it all who could doubt her goodness?

"Dear Carrie," I whispered, "if this be all true, if there be no exaggeration, no morbid conscientiousness in all you say, still you have repented, and your punishment has been severe."

"My punishment!" she returned, in a voice almost of despair. "Why do you speak of it as past, when you know I shall bear the consequences of my own imprudence all my life long? This is what is secretly fretting me. I try to bow myself to His will; but, oh! it is so hard not to be allowed to make amends, not to be allowed to have a chance of doing better for the future, not to be allowed to make up for all my deficiencies in the past; but just to suffer and be a burden."

I looked at her with frightened eyes. What could she mean, when she was getting better every day, and Uncle Geoffrey hoped she might be downstairs by Christmas Day?

"Is it possible you do not know, Esther?" she said incredulously; but two red spots came into her thin cheeks. "Have not mother and Uncle Geoffrey told you?"

"They have told me nothing," I repeated. "Oh, Carrie, what do you mean? You are not going to die?"

"To die? Oh, no!" in a tone of unutterable regret. "Should I be so sorry for myself if I thought that? I am getting well--well," with a slight catching of her breath--"but when I come downstairs I shall be like Dot."

I do not know what I said in answer to this terrible revelation.