The desire to do good to others usually brings its own opportunity, and Catharine had found that the wish is in itself one of the brightest and safest steps toward happiness when the soul is troubled.
It had been the destiny of this young creature to mingle with strange scenes before her character had acquired its natural strength, and through this fiery furnace her spirit came forth pure and strong as gold.
From her first entrance into the Asylum a singular fascination drew Catharine toward this woman, whose madness was full of child-like trust and poetical refinement. In moments of excitement, Elsie’s mind seemed burning with thoughts, that in a sane person, capable of conversation and contiguity, would have produced thrilling poetry.
Her grief had a depth of wild pathos in it that won conviction of its reality; her sadness was plaintive in its expression as the notes of a night-bird, when it has no listeners but the quiet stars and motionless leaves. Her joy was that of a child, wayward and mischievous sometimes, at others full of graceful wit. But these moods seldom came to brighten her monotonous existence.
Elsie Ford’s insane life had been, of late, mournfully poetic, helpless, and gentle. She was possessed by broken fancies and yearning desires for some far-off object, which she mentioned vaguely and with a confused strain of affection, always speaking of HIM, but without name. She would shrink back with a sort of terror when any one inquired directly who this being was, who wove his memory with her thoughts forever, and yet seemed a myth even to her.
This gentle frame of mind had come upon Elsie after Catharine had given up so much of her own life in her behalf. It is not remarkable that a young creature who had been herself friendless, came to love this woman, almost as if she had been the child in years that she had become in mind. Elsie returned this affection in her own wild way, giving through her heart the love and obedience which her brain could neither understand nor control.
This change in the condition of Elsie Ford led to a yearning desire in her aged parents to have her once more under their own roof. It was admitted by the physician that a residence at home might prove beneficial to a patient who seemed to be gradually collecting her stray thoughts into form under the loving guidance of her nurse.
This decision with regard to Elsie Ford had been made about the time of Mrs. Barr’s death, and the old people, by message and letter, made a pathetic appeal to Catharine, beseeching her to take up her abode with them, and still act as a guardian angel to their daughter.
Catharine remembered the dying counsel of her friend, and gladly accepted the position. Indeed, Elsie Ford was now the only human being who seemed to connect her with the world. So she followed this one object of her love, not as a nurse,—that was unnecessary now,—but with the devotion of a child, or a younger sister, kindly giving up her own life to another.
Thus, from her long residence in the Insane Asylum, Catharine came with her patient to make a new home on the Island.