A HEART.
If people were both observant and memorious, they would cease, I fancy, to be astonished at coincidences. Rightly regarded, the universe is but one coincidence—only where will has to be developed, there is need for human play, and room for that must be provided in its spaces. The works of God being from the beginning, and all his beginnings invisible either from greatness or smallness or nearness or remoteness, numberless coincidences may pass in every man's history, before he becomes capable of knowing either the need or the good of them, or even of noting them.
The same morning there was another awake and up early. When Juliet was about half-way across the park, hurrying to the water, Dorothy was opening the door of the empty house, seeking solitude that she might find the one Dweller therein. She went straight to one of the upper rooms looking out upon the garden, and kneeling prayed to her Unknown God. As she kneeled, the first rays of the sunrise visited her face. That face was in itself such an embodied prayer, that had any one seen it, he might, when the beams fell upon it, have imagined he saw prayer and answer meet. It was another sunrise Dorothy was looking for, but she started and smiled when the warm rays touched her; they too came from the home of answers. As the daisy mimics the sun, so is the central fire of our system but a flower that blossoms in the eternal effulgence of the unapproachable light.
The God to whom we pray is nearer to us than the very prayer itself ere it leaves the heart; hence His answers may well come to us through the channel of our own thoughts. But the world too being itself one of His thoughts, He may also well make the least likely of His creatures an angel of His own will to us. Even the blind, if God be with him, that is, if he knows he is blind and does not think he sees, may become a leader of the blind up to the narrow gate. It is the blind who says I see, that leads his fellow into the ditch.
The window near which Dorothy kneeled, and toward which in the instinct for light she had turned her face, looked straight down the garden, at the foot of which the greater part of the circumference of the pond was visible. But Dorothy, busy with her prayers, or rather with a weight of hunger and thirst, from which like a burst of lightning skyward from the overcharged earth, a prayer would now and then break and rush heavenward, saw nothing of the outer world: between her and a sister soul in mortal agony, hung the curtains of her eyelids. But there were no shutters to her ears, and in at their portals all of a sudden darted a great and bitter cry, as from a heart in the gripe of a fierce terror. She had been so absorbed, and it so startled and shook her, that she never could feel certain whether the cry she heard was of this world or not. Half-asleep one hears such a cry, and can not tell whether it entered his consciousness by the ear, or through some hidden channel of the soul. Assured that waking ears heard nothing, he remains, it may be, in equal doubt, whether it came from the other side of life or was the mere cry of a dream. Before Dorothy was aware of a movement of her will, she was on her feet, and staring from the window. Something was lying on the grass beyond the garden wall, close to the pond: it looked like a woman. She darted from the house, out of the garden, and down the other side of the wall. When she came nearer she saw it was indeed a woman, evidently insensible. She was bare-headed. Her bonnet was floating in the pond; the wind had blown it almost to the middle of it. Her face was turned toward the water. One hand was in it. The bank overhung the pond, and with a single movement more she would probably have been beyond help from Dorothy. She caught her by the arm, and dragged her from the brink, before ever she looked in her face. Then to her amazement she saw it was Juliet. She opened her eyes, and it was as if a lost soul looked out of them upon Dorothy—a being to whom the world was nothing, so occupied was it with some torment, which alone measured its existence—far away, although it hung attached to the world by a single hook of brain and nerve.
"Juliet, my darling!" said Dorothy, her voice trembling with the love which only souls that know trouble can feel for the troubled, "come with me. I will take care of you."
At the sound of her voice, Juliet shuddered. Then a better light came into her eyes, and feebly she endeavored to get up. With Dorothy's help she succeeded, but stood as if ready to sink again to the earth. She drew her cloak about her, turned and stared at the water, turned again and stared at Dorothy, at last threw herself into her arms, and sobbed and wailed. For a few moments Dorothy held her in a close embrace. Then she sought to lead her to the house, and Juliet yielded at once. She took her into one of the lower rooms, and got her some water—it was all she could get for her, and made her sit down on the window-seat. It seemed a measureless time before she made the least attempt to speak; and again and again when she began to try, she failed. She opened her mouth, but no sounds would come. At length, interrupted with choking gasps, low cries of despair, and long intervals of sobbing, she said something like this:
"I was going to drown myself. When I came in sight of the water, I fell down in a half kind of faint. All the time I lay, I felt as if some one was dragging me nearer and nearer to the pool. Then something came and drew me back—and it was you, Dorothy. But you ought to have left me. I am a wretch. There is no room for me in this world any more." She stopped a moment, then fixing wide eyes on Dorothy's, said, "Oh Dorothy, dear! there are awful things in the world! as awful as any you ever read in a book!"
"I know that, dear. But oh! I am sorry if any of them have come your way. Tell me what is the matter. I will help you if I can."
"I dare not; I dare not! I should go raving mad if I said a word about it."