Then I put on my hat and prepared to go out, and friend Afton said it was a relief to have one so obliging in the house.
"Farewell to thee," I said to friend Jordan.
She stood inside my doorway and looked at me. "'Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest,'" she said, and moved like a spirit toward me, placed her lips upon my cheek, and went in and closed the door. It was the first time any woman save my mother had ever kissed me.
Those words made me feel that they applied to me, youth is so vain and exacting even of the Lord's words. Nevertheless, as I went along the dark streets I heard them ringing in my ears with such a benign meaning as I never had understood in them before.
Long I walked the streets, lost in much thought and contemplation, and I felt what was weakness leaving me, and I deemed how heavy were some yokes compared to mine—friend Barbara's, for instance, she who must be surrounded and held in by unsympathizing moods. I fain would have helped her more than I did, but any further succor only meant a further offering of my feeling for her, and that she was as powerless to accept as I was to make her accept it. Long I walked the streets, and had the hopeful, helping words around and within me. And late in the night I turned my wearied steps toward friend Afton's, and once more was entering the house, when, as though an angel—as though the Lord above—had spoken to me from high overhead, in grave, solemn, holy voice came the words, "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." And I turned my eyes above as I hope to turn them on the last Vast Day, when methinks those words may again be spoken and call forth a mighty response. But what was that white form so far above, even upon the sill of my window, three stories from the ground? With a great terror grown upon me I rushed into the street, and saw far up there, far in the night, friend Jordan standing out in the darkness with hands supplicating the stars, saying those words. This was why she had desired to rest in my room: with the cunning of insanity, she had known that the windows of her own room were nailed down, and so on the instant had thought of mine as a possible means of reaching to her stars. With every limb frozen, it seemed, by sudden petrification, I had no power to unclose my lips, but I made a sound like a groan, I know, and then I saw her reach up high, high toward the sky and give a leap into the air. There came a crash of breaking glass, and I saw a whirl of white garments far above me that came fluttering down in a spiral motion. I rushed toward it ere it fell: there came a sickening thud on the ground beside me, and a lifeless mass lay there.
I can scarcely narrate this calmly or well, but thee sees I have tried my best.
Then when friend Afton came to me, and in pardonable and much agitation asked me to write to the friends of the dead woman, I complied, and directed the letter to the Reverend Richard Jordan; and his address was the place where friend Hicks sojourned, as likely thee has guessed.
"What was this man to the deceased? does thee know?" I asked friend Afton.
"No, sir. He placed her with me a year ago, and asked me to take the best of care of her, and has always sent me money for her wants, and paid me well besides. And, strange to say, I never could get her to mention him. He seemed to be a good man, but poor in his dress—too young in the profession to get a wealthy 'call.'"
So the Reverend Richard Jordan, who had cared for this woman, was the man whom friend Barbara thought well of! This was what the money had been wanted for—this was the secret which was "neither sinful nor shameful, but the most holy that a man can have"!