Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers

by William Hale White

"Matter!" she cried. "I don't believe you understand or care any more than the bedstead on which you lie," and she rose and flung herself out of the house. In those days there was, perhaps there is now, a path—it could not be called a road—from the southern end of London Bridge to Bankside. It went past St. Saviour's Church, and then trending towards the river, dived, scarcely four feet wide, underneath some mill or mill offices, skirting a little dock which, ran up between the mill walls. Barges sometimes lay moored in this dock, and discharged into the warehouses which towered above it. The path then emerged into a dark trench between lofty buildings connected overhead with bridges, and finally appeared in Bankside amidst heaps of old iron and broken glass, the two principal articles of merchandise in those parts. A dismal, most depressing region, one on which the sun never shone, gloomy on the brightest day. It was impossible to enter it without feeling an instantaneous check to all lightness of heart. The spirits were smitten as if with paralysis directly St. Saviour's was passed. Thither went Miriam aimlessly that night; and when she reached the dock, the temptation presented itself to her with fearful force to throw herself in it and be at rest. Usually in our troubles there is a prospect of an untried resource which may afford relief, or a glimmer of a distance which we may possibly reach, and where we may find peace, but for Miriam there was no distance, no reserve: this was her first acquaintance with an experience not rare, alas! but below it humanity cannot go, when all life ebbs from us, when we stretch out our arms in vain, when there is no God—nothing but a brazen Moloch, worse than the Satan of theology ten thousand times, because it is dead. A Satan we might conquer, or at least we should feel the delight of combat in resisting him; but what can we do against this leaden "order of things" which makes our nerves ministers of madness? Miriam did not know that her misery was partly a London misery, due to the change from fresh air and wholesome living to foul air and unnatural living. If she had known it, it would not have helped her. She could not have believed it, for it is the peculiarity of certain physical disorders that their physical character does not appear, and that they disguise themselves under purely mental shapes. Montgomery, her brother, the desperate outlook in the future, it is true, were real; but her lack of health was the lens which magnified her suffering into hideous dimensions. The desire to get rid of it by one sudden plunge was strong upon her, and the friendly hand which at the nick of time intervenes in romances did not rescue her. Nevertheless, she held back and passed on. Afterwards the thought that she had been close to suicide was for months a new terror. She was unaware that the distance between us and dreadful crimes is much greater often than it appears to be. The man who looks on a woman with adulterous desire has already committed adultery in his heart if he be restrained only by force or fear of detection; but if the restraint, although he may not be conscious of it, is self-imposed, he is not guilty. Nay, even the dread of consequences is a motive of sufficient respectability to make a large difference between the sinfulness of mere lust and that of its fulfilment. No friendly hand, we say, interrupted her purpose, but she went on her way. Hardly had she reached the open quay, when there came a peal of thunder. In London the gradual approach of a thunderstorm working up from a long distance is not perceived, and the suddenness of the roar for a moment startled her. But from her childhood she had always shown a strange liking to watch a thunderstorm, and, if possible, to be in it. It was her habit, when others were alarmed and covered their eyes, to go close to the window in order to see the lightning, and once she had been caught actually outside the door peering round the corner, because the strength of the tempest lay in that direction. The rain in an instant came down in torrents, the flashes were incessant, and flamed round the golden cross of St. Paul's nearly opposite to her. She took off her bonnet and prayed that she might be struck, and so released with no sin and no pain. She was not heard; a bolt descended within a few feet of her, blinding her, but it fell upon a crane, passed harmlessly down the chain into a lot of rusty old scrap, and so spent itself. She remained standing there alone and unnoticed, for the street was swept clear as if by grapeshot of the very few persons who might otherwise have been in it at that hour. Gradually the tumult ceased, and was succeeded by a steady, dull downpour; Miriam then put on her bonnet and walked home.

The next day she was ill, unaccountably feverish and in great pain. Hers was one of those natures—happy natures, it may perhaps be said—which hasten always to a crisis. She had nothing of that miserable temperament which is never either better or worse, and remains clouded with slow disease for months or years. She managed to do her work, but on the following morning she was delirious. She remembered nothing more till one afternoon when she seemed to wake. She looked up, and whose face was that which bent over her? It was Miss Tippit's. Miss Tippit had learned through the doctor what was the state of affairs, and had managed, notwithstanding the demand which the lodgings made upon her, to take her share in watching over the sufferer. Her stepmother had been summoned from Cowfold, and these two, with the landlady, had tended her and had brought her back to life. In an instant the scene in Miss Tippit's room when she was sick passed through Miriam's brain, and she sobbed piteously, lifted up her arms as if to clasp her heroic benefactor, but the thought was too great for her, and she fainted. Nevertheless she was recovering, and when she came to herself again, Miss Tippit was ready with the intervention of some trifle to distract her attention. As her strength returned she was able to talk a little, and her first question was—

"Miss Tippit, why did you come here? Oh, if you but knew! What claim have I on you?"

"Hush, my dear; those days are past. You did not love me then perhaps; but what of that? I am sure, you will not mind my saying it: 'If ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?' But I know you did love me really."

"Where is Andrew?"

"Quite well, at home in Cowfold."

That was as much as Miriam could stand then. For weeks to come she was well-nigh drained of all vitality, and it flowed into her gradually and with many relapses. The doctor thought she ought to be moved into the country. Mrs. Tacchi had some friends in one of the villages lying by the side of the Avon in Wiltshire, just where that part of Salisbury Plain on which stands Stonehenge slopes down to the river. Miriam knew nothing of the history of the Amesbury valley, but she was sensible—as who must not be?—to its exquisite beauty and the delicacy of the contrasts between the downs and the richly-foliaged fields through which the Avon winds. It is a chalk river, clear as a chalk river always is if unpolluted; the downs are chalk, and though they are wide-sweeping and treeless, save for clusters of beech here and there on the heights, the dale with its water, meadows, cattle, and dense woods, so different from the uplands above them, is in peculiar and lovely harmony with them.

One day she contrived to reach Stonehenge. She was driven there by the farmer with whom she was staying, and she asked to be left there while he went forward. He was to fetch her when he returned. It was a clear but grey day, and she sat outside the outer circle on the turf looking northwards over the almost illimitable expanse. She had been told as much as is known about that mysterious monument,—that it had been built ages before any record, and that not only were the names of the builders forgotten, but their purpose in building it was forgotten too. She was oppressed with a sense of her own, nothingness and the nothingness of man. If those who raised that temple had so utterly passed away, for how long would the memory of her existence last? Stonehenge itself too would pass. The wind and the rain had already worn perhaps half of it; and the place that now knows it will know it no more save by vague tradition, which also will be extinguished.

Suddenly, and without any apparent connection with what had gone before, and indeed in contrast with it, it came into Miriam's mind that she must do something for her fellow-creatures. How came it there? Who can tell? Anyhow, there was this idea in the soul of Miriam Tacchi that morning.

The next question was, What could she do? There was one thing she could do, and she could not go astray in doing it. Whatever may be wrong or mistaken, it cannot be wrong or a mistake to wait upon the sick and ease their misery. She knew, however, that she could not take up the task without training, and she belonged to no church or association which could assist her. Perhaps one of the best recommendations of the Catholic Church was that it held out a hand to men who, having for some reason or other, learned to hold their lives lightly, were candidates for the service of humanity—men for whom death had no terrors—by whom it was even courted, and who were willing therefore to wait upon the plague-smitten, or to carry the Cross amongst wild and savage tribes. Those who are skilled in quibbling may say that neither in the case of the Catholic missionary nor in that of the Sister of Mercy is there any particular merit. What they do is done not from any pure desire for man's welfare, but because there is no healthy passion for enjoyment. Nothing is idler than disputes about the motives to virtuous deeds, or the proportion of praise to be assigned to the doers of them. It is a common criticism that a sweet temper deserves no commendation, because the blessed possessor of it is naturally sweet-tempered, and undergoes no terrible struggle in order to say the sweet word which he who is cursed with spite only just manages to force himself to utter. What we are bound to praise or blame, however, is the result, and the result only—just as we praise or blame perfect or imperfect flowers. If it comes to a remorseless probing of motives, there are none of us who can escape a charge of selfishness; and, in fact, a perfectly abstract disinterestedness is a mere logical and impossible figment.