The Supply at Saint Agatha's

by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

"A man is always fit to do his duty," said the old clergyman, rising. "I will go at once. Did she send—any—conveyance?"

"Catch her!" retorted the landlady. "Why, she hain't had the town water let in yet—and she wuth her fifteen thousand dollars; nor she won't have no hired girl to do for her, not that none of 'em will stay along of her a week, and Dobson's boy 's at the door, a drippin' and cussin' to get you, for he 's nigh snowed under. She 's a wuthless old heathen miser, the widder Peek."

"Then there is every reason why I should not neglect her," replied the clergyman, in his authoritative, clerical voice. "Pray call the lad in from the weather, and tell him I will accompany him at once."

He did look about his study sadly while he was making ready to leave it. The fire in the base-burner was quite warm, now, and his wet, much-darned stockings were beginning to dry. The room looked sheltered and pleasant; his books ran to the ceiling, though his floor was covered with straw matting, with odd pieces of woolen carpet for rugs; his carpet-covered lounge was wheeled out of the draft; his lamp with the green shade made a little circle of light and coziness; his Bible and prayer-book lay open within it, beside the pile of sermons. He had meant to devote the evening to the agreeable duty of selecting his discourse for Saint Agatha's. His mind and his heart were brimming over with the excitement of that great event. He would have liked to concentrate and consecrate his thoughts upon it that evening. As he went, coughing, into the cold entry, it occurred to him that the spot in his lung was more painful than he had supposed; but he pulled his old cap over his ears, and his thin overcoat up to meet it, and tramped out cheerfully into the storm.

"Well, well, my lad!" he said in his warm-hearted way to Dobson's boy; "I 'm sorry for you that you have to be out a night like this."

The boy spoke of this afterwards, and remembered it long—for a boy. But at the time he did but stare. He stopped grumbling, however, and plunged on into the drifts, ahead of the old rector, kicking a path for him to right and left in the wet, packed snow; for the widow Peek lived at least a mile away, and the storm was now become a virulent thing.

What passed between the unloved, neglected, dying parishoner and her pastor was not known to any but themselves, nor is there witness now to testify thereof. Neither does it in any way concern the record of this narrative, except as the least may concern the largest circumstance in human story. For, in view of what came to pass, it is impossible not to put the old, judicial question: Did it pay? Was it worth while? When the miser's soul went out, at midnight, on the wings and the rage of that blind, black storm, did it pass gently, a subdued, forgiven spirit, humble to learn how to live again, for Christ's sake and his who gave himself—as his Master had before him—to comfort and to save? Did it pay? Do such things pay? God knows. But as long as men do not know, there will always be found a few among them who will elect to disregard the doubt, to wear the divinity of uncalculating sacrifice, and to pay its price.

For the soul of the widow Peek the price was large, looked at in our mathematical way; for, when the old clergyman, having shrived her soul and closed her eyes, started to come home at one o'clock of the morning, the storm had become a malignant force. Already wet through and through his thin coats and worn flannels, weak from the exposure, the watching, and the scene of death, every breath a sword athwart his inflamed lungs, with fire in his brain, and ice at his heart, he staggered against the blizzard.

Dobson's boy had long since sought the shelter of his own home, and the old man was quite unattended. True, the neighbor who watched with the dead woman suggested that he remain till morning; but the widow Peek's house was cold (she was always especially "near" about fuel), and he thought it more prudent to get back to his own stove and his bed.

Whether he lost his way; whether he crossed and recrossed it, wandering from it in the dark and drift; whether he fell and lay in the snow for a time, and rose again, and staggered on, and fell again, and so pushed on again, cannot be known. It is only known that at half-past two on Saturday morning his landlady put her wrinkled face out of the window, for the twentieth time, in search of him (for she had a thought for him in her own hard-featured way), and saw him fallen, and feebly trying to crawl on his hands and knees up the drifted steps.