A Circuit Rider's Wife

by Corra Harris

"William," I cried, "it's going to be an awful night; don't go—she is not a member of your church."

"It's Going To Be an Awful Night; Don't Go—She Is Not a Member of Your Church."

"Nor of any other; but she is all the more in need of help," he replied, putting his foot in the stirrup to mount his horse.

Mrs. Martin was a vague little woman, superstitious about dreams, a widow, who lived with her two small children in a thickly-populated neighborhood about a stone quarry. The day before, the community had been shocked to learn from some one who happened in just in time to prevent the tragedy that Mrs. Martin had gone suddenly insane and had tried to murder both of her children. She must go to the asylum, of course; but pending the preliminary trial for lunacy she lay silent on her bed with staring, horrified eyes, surrounded by watchful neighbors. Suddenly toward night she had grown restless and had implored them to send for the Methodist preacher. To quiet her the messenger had come, and William made haste to go to her.

He found her sitting the very figure of desolation in the midst of her bed, with her face thinned and whitened to the little white hull of a prayer. The moment she was alone with him she poured forth such a tale of degradation as rarely passes the lips of a woman. Since a year after her husband's death she had been the mistress of the manager of the quarry. She had lived in the most atrocious debauchery for years; no one had suspected, and she had not suffered a qualm. But two nights since she had gone to the bed where her two little girls lay asleep, and suddenly it had come upon her that she was to be discovered, now very soon, not by strangers, but by her own children growing old enough to observe and understand. Moreover, that her degradation would become theirs. And then it came—the horror that had convinced her the only way out was to kill them and afterward herself. Now, what was to be done? She was not insane. She was just a sinner who felt obliged to be damned!

God had at least a dozen ways of inspiring William, and not all of them orthodox. Instead of harrowing this woman with a prayer he took on a competent executive air.

"You are to do nothing," he told her, "and be sure you do not confess your sin to anyone else. Leave everything to me. We will see about the forgiveness later; now you are to rest and not think till I get the way clear for your feet." He went out, told the attendants that Mrs. Martin was not insane, but had suffered a shock and would now be all right. They thought he had achieved a miracle when they had returned to the room and found her weeping like any other sane woman.

Before daylight he had escorted the manager of the quarry to the nearest railway station with instructions never to return, so emphatically given that he never did. He prayed earnestly for the unfortunate woman himself, but he forbade her to pray for herself until long afterward, when she had resumed existence upon the simple basis of being the innocent mother of her innocent children.