She said not another word, not even of leave-taking, but strode away with something of the air of a brisk little prophetess who has pronounced the doom of heaven on the unrighteous. It is a pity such people will make of religion an excuse for taking themselves so seriously. All the teachings of theology Mrs. Webbe turns into justifications of her prejudices and her hardness. The very thought of Thomasine under her rigorous rule makes me shiver. I wonder how her husband has endured it all these years. Saintship used to be won by making life as disagreeable as possible for one's self; but nowadays life is made sufficiently hard by others. If living with his wife peacefully, forbearingly, decorously, does not entitle Deacon Webbe to be considered a saint, it is time that new principles of canonization were adopted.
Heavens! What uncharitableness I am running into myself!
May 4. I told Aunt Naomi of Mrs. Webbe's visit, and her comments were pungent enough. It is wicked, perhaps, to set them down, but I have a vicious joy in doing it.
"Of course she'd hate to have the baby," Aunt Naomi declared, "but she'd more than get even by the amount of satisfaction she'd get nagging at it. She's worn Deacon Daniel till he's callous, so there can't be much fun rasping him, and Tom won't listen to her. She wants somebody to bully, and that baby'd just suit her. She could make it miserable and get in side digs at its father at the same time."
"You are pretty severe, Aunt Naomi," I said; "but I know you don't mean it. As for troubling Tom, he says he doesn't care for baby."
"Pooh! He's soft-hearted like his father; and even if he didn't care for his own child, which is nonsense anyway, he'd be miserable to see any child go through what he's been through himself with that woman."
It is useless to attempt to stay Aunt Naomi when once she begins to talk about Mrs. Webbe, and she has so much truth in her favor I am never able successfully to urge the other side of the case so as to get for Mrs. Webbe any just measure of fair play. To-night I almost thought that Aunt Naomi would devour her green veil in the energy with which she freed her mind. The thing which she cannot see is that Mrs. Webbe is entirely blind to her own faults. Mrs. Webbe would doubtless be amazed if she could really appreciate that she is unkind to Deacon Daniel and to Tom. She acts her nature, and simply does not think. I dare say most of us might be as bad if we had her disposition.—Which tags on at the end of the nasty things I have been writing like a piece of pure cant!
May 6. It certainly would seem on the face of it that a woman alone in the world as I am, of an age when I ought to have the power of managing my own affairs, and with the means of getting on without asking financial aid, might take into her house a poor, helpless, little baby if she wished. Apparently there is a conspiracy to prevent my doing anything of the sort. Cousin Mehitable has now entered her protest, and declares that if I do not give up what she calls my mad scheme she shall feel it her duty to have me taken in charge as a lunatic. She wants to know whether I have no decency about having a bachelor's baby in the house, although she is perfectly well aware that Tom was married. She reminds me that she expects me to go to Europe with her in about a month, and asks whether I propose to leave Thomasine in a foundling hospital or a day nursery while I am gone. Her letter is one breathless rush of indignation from beginning to end, so funnily like her that with all my indignation I could hardly read it for laughing.
I confess it is hard to give up the trip abroad. I was only half aware how I have been counting on it until now I am brought face to face with the impossibility of carrying out the plan. I have almost unconsciously been piecing together in my mind memories of the old days in Europe, with delight in thinking of seeing again places which enchanted me. Any one, I suppose, who has been abroad enough to taste the charm of travel, but who has not worn off the pleasure by traveling too much, must have moments of longing to get back. I have had the oddest, sudden pangs of homesickness when I have picked up a photograph or opened a magazine to a picture of some beautiful place across the ocean. The smallest things can bring up the feeling,—the sound of the wind in the trees as I heard it once when driving through the Black Forest, the sun on a stone wall as it lay in Capri, the sky as it looked at one place, or the grass as I saw it at another. I remember how once a white feather lying on the turf of the lawn brought up the courtyard of Warwick Castle as if a curtain had lifted suddenly; and always these flashing reminders of the other side of the world have made me feel as if I must at once hurry across the ocean again. Now I have let myself believe I was really going, and to give it up is very hard.