MISS ETHERIDGE.
While I was spending a summer in a pleasant town in Connecticut, I became very much interested in an invalid lady, who used to be drawn past my window in one of those small vehicles which seem both chair and carriage. The lady did not look ill by any means. She sat erect, and gazed about her with a lively air, betokening good health and spirits. She was always richly dressed, and wore her silks, velvets, and laces with the air of one well used to such raiment. Many of those meeting her bowed with deference, which she returned with courteous grace and a high-bred manner. Sometimes she would stop her little carriage while a friend chatted with her, and seemed always to make herself very agreeable, as I judged from the pleased faces of her listeners. Frequently I would see ladies and gentlemen walking by the side of her carriage as her maid slowly pushed it along. I met her very often in my walks, and sometimes I strolled a little way behind, observing this stately dame, so afflicted and yet so favored apparently by fortune and misfortune.
She was a very handsome woman of about fifty years of age. Her silver-gray hair was abundant and beautiful, crowning her with a dignity beyond the power of any artificial adornment to bestow. The carriage of her head was proud and erect. Her features were clear cut and handsome, and the delicate tint of her complexion seemed almost to belong to youth. She appeared to me like a fine picture of a court dame in some bygone time, because, with all the air of style investing her, she was not dressed in the fashion of the day. In this was shown a fine, nice taste; whatever was her infirmity, it seemed to place her so removed from the frivolity of her sex that an affectation of fashion in her attire would have been unbecoming.
Being so much interested in this lady, I made inquiries, and soon learned much of her former history. She was a Miss Etheridge, afflicted with incurable rheumatism, of that kind which renders the victim almost helpless. She could not stand on her feet or change her position without the help of others. She could only imperfectly use her hands, and yet her health was good and her intellect vigorous. She had been, only a few years before, an active, energetic woman, remarkably self-reliant and helpful to others. She had been a beauty and belle in her girlhood, and always a woman commanding the homage and respect of all who knew her.
But now, what a sad ending of a favored life! “Bound with chains,” she said to me, for, waving ceremony in view of her great affliction, I called upon her and cultivated an acquaintance which I never regretted. Debarred as she was from all occupation, she was very fond of society. Her hands, once very beautiful, as former portraits showed, were now so distorted and weakened as to be unable to hold any but the lightest books or pamphlets for reading, and that not very long at a time. So, in her luxurious apartments, surrounded by every alleviation that wealth could bestow, this lady passed many lonely hours and days—hours of intense weariness of both body and mind. Sitting in her massive, high-backed chair, she looked like a fine picture and showed no sign of her infirmity; yet how her poor limbs ached from the mere lack of change of posture, only those similarly affected can tell. An intimacy sprang up between us so easily that I was often present at times when her attendants moved and dressed her; and then it was that I became aware of the extent of torture to which she was subjected by the mere moving of a limb. Much of her time she passed lying in her bed, from an intense dread of the severe ordeal of being moved. I have passed hours sitting by her bedside, reading to her and in conversation with her, and by this means came to know much of her state of mind and religious feeling.
I admired the fortitude and patience with which she bore her burden, yet it did seem to me quite as much Spartan endurance as Christian meekness or acceptance of the will of God. Hers was a heroic nature, with some pious yearnings uncultivated. She chafed like a caged lioness, but was too proud to whine or repine in any cowardly fashion. She was an Episcopalian of the firm, old-fashioned type that eschews both Ritualism and Evangelicalism. To be as the bishops and clergymen of her family, who had supplied the church of her affections for generations with clerical stock, seemed to her just the right medium, and in clinging to this standard she simply starved her soul. She knew me to be a Catholic, a “Roman Catholic”—for she also claimed to be a Catholic, an “Anglican Catholic,” as I also had once done. I, being a recent convert, felt enthusiastic even while timid on this subject. I had passed through the ordeal of estrangement from friends, been exposed to misunderstanding of my motives and all the whips and stings to which those who take this step are subjected, too recently not to be very sensitive about laying myself open to the charge of endeavoring to proselyte another. I loved Miss Etheridge and her society too well to risk her displeasure, or by speaking overmuch of my own faith to give any handle for her relatives to turn against us. She, on her part, was too truly polite to ever make any unpleasant allusions to the subject. And yet how much I longed for her to know what a sure trust and support she could have if she only would! When I heard her involuntary moans, my prayers went up for the intercession of the Mother of Sorrows, again, and yet again. And I knew all the time that that intercession she rejected with scorn. Nothing I could have said to her would have been so unwelcome as a prayer to the Blessed Virgin in her behalf. Yet I did ask that tender intercession, and I believe the All-Pitying Woman above was touched with compassion for the proud, suffering woman who would not ask her aid.
On one occasion, when our conversation had drifted along to the subject of the next life, she remarked that to her the bliss to be desired was to be “unchained—‘delivered from the body of this death.’”
“My dear friend,” said I, “if you die before I do, my regrets will be tempered by the thought that your ‘earthly clogs’ are cast off.”
“Ah! if there is a purgatory,” she often said, “I am enduring mine here. What has been my sin more than another’s, that this should be thrust upon me!” And at these times the tone of her voice and the expression of her face showed the impatient, unchastened fire of the haughty, rebellious spirit.