Those two great works could never have been combined.
And, indeed, no one with a disposition like S. J.-B.’s can go through life without losing friends. She might have said with St. Teresa,—“For one thing, the devil sometimes fills me with such a harsh and cruel temper; such a spirit of anger and hostility at some people, that I could eat them up and annihilate them.” But, as in the case of St. Teresa, the obverse side of the medal was a capacity for loving that can seldom have been surpassed in our human nature. “Went not my heart with thee...?” she used to say: and it did,—not only with those nearest to her, but with all who appealed to her mother-heart. The comforting letter was written, in spite of all fatigue and inconvenience, at the earliest possible moment: the box of flowers, the grapes, the wine, the cheque, the open hospitable doors,—all seemed messengers waiting for their turn, like the swift-heeled servants of the Fairy Queen.
No appeal ever came to her that she ignored. The Charity Organisation Society was familiar with her name; and great sometimes was her disappointment when those she wanted to help were pronounced hopeless or unworthy. Nothing that she loved ever grew old. Her friends, her horses,—even the purely material things to which she was attached—grew more beautiful in her eyes as their market value decreased. She always parted deliberately with the flowers that had stood by her hand. No one was ever allowed to throw them away as a matter of routine, and often she would raise them to her lips before putting them in the fire.
St. Teresa’s love no doubt was a more transcendent thing. It was her lot to live in an age of faith. S. J.-B. often quoted Whittier’s Autograph:
“If of the Law’s stone table,
To hold he scarce was able
The first great precept fast,
He kept for man the last.
Through mortal lapse and dulness
What lacks the Eternal Fulness,