CHAPTER XVII.

IN MOTHER'S ROOM.

THE village was six miles off, so that even Van Alstine & Overbeck's best trotter, with his master driving him, could not bring the doctor immediately.

Meantime, Marion was undressed and laid in her mother's bed. She was much bruised and lacerated, one great scratch just missing her left eye, and suffered acutely from every movement, and her father pronounced at once that her collar-bone was broken. She was very patient, keeping herself as quiet as possible, and only anxious that nobody should blame Bram.

Mrs. Van Alstine was quiet and collected, doing everything in the best manner, and assisted as well as possible by Mrs. Andrews and Amity. Mr. Van Alstine's strong and gentle arms held Marion while her bed was arranged, and his deep, grave voice reassured and soothed her. He had just laid her down, when Frank put in his head and called him out into the parlour.

Bram lay on the sofa with his head buried in his arms, and Gerty was talking to him. She had been dismissed from Marion's room at a very early stage of the proceedings, ostensibly that she need not injure herself or bring on one of her bad attacks, and by way of making things pleasant was expressing her opinion of the whole transaction.

"Anybody might have known how it would turn out, sending such a party of young people off on such an expedition with no older person along. Pray where was Henry?"

"He stayed behind to sit up at Clarke's," answered Frank, in the measured tones which showed that his temper was near the boiling-point.

"What did he do that for?" asked Gerty, in the same judicial tone as if she were examining a witness.

"Because he chose to, I suppose."

"Well, really, Frank, I think you might at least answer civilly. I don't see what call you have to be so angry, when I only asked for information."

"Do please be quiet, Gerty," whispered Stanley, imploringly.

"I shall be quiet when I see fit, Miss Stanley; and I will thank you to call me by my right name. But that is always the way. Nobody must hint that the boys are to blame, whatever happens. I don't want to hurt Bram's feelings, but I do think nobody has a right to be so giddy, frolicking and romping in the woods on Sunday evening."

"I was not frolicking and romping," said Bram, in a half-choked voice; "anything but that."

"Oh, of course you were not doing anything wrong, you never are."

"Gerty," said Mr. Van Alstine, "be quiet instantly."

Gerty looked up in amazement, and met her father-in-law's eye. The red spark was dangerously bright.

She sailed with dignity out of the room, and was heard to slam three successive doors in her progress to her own apartment.

"Indeed, father, we were not romping or frolicking at all," said Bram, raising his head from the pillow once more. "Marie leaned over to see if she could get a glimpse of the fall, and she was not a bit careless either. She was holding on by the tree, and I never knew the bank would crumble."

"Nor I, my son. I don't think any one was to blame. It was just an unlucky accident."

"How is Marie?"

"She has broken her collar-bone and is considerably bruised, but I think that is the worst. Here comes the doctor at last."

Doctor Fenn was an old army-surgeon who had seen hard service in field and hospital. He was a thorough New Englander, in birth and breeding, and his greeting of "W—a—ll, my girl?" sounded homelike and natural to Marion's Green Mountain ear. Somewhat rough-looking at the first glance, no woman could be gentler or more delicate in a sickroom, and his steady, firm hand was reassuring in itself.

"Wall," said Doctor Fenn after he had concluded his examination, "it isn't as bad as it might be, considering. The right collar-bone is the only one broken, but there are a good many sprains and bruises, and it is possible there may be some internal injury. You must be a pretty good hand at falling down, Marion, to get off with so little damage."

"You don't think I shall die, then?" said Marion.

"Not this time, I think. But I can tell better how you are in a day or two; and unless there is more the matter than I see now, I think six weeks or so in bed will probably be the worst of it. Now, Mr. Van Alstine, we will put this bone to rights, and then we must keep all quiet about our patient, and perhaps she may get some sleep."

But Marion got very little sleep for that or several succeeding nights. The scratches on her face and arms inflamed and were very painful. She was bruised and strained all over, and the constrained position was almost intolerably irksome to one who had never been confined to her bed a day in her life. Even if her right arm had not been bound close to her side, her wrists had been so stretched and sprained in her desperate grasp of the old hemlock, that she had almost no use of her hands, and was dependent on others for all sorts of personal offices.

It was a hard trial; nor was her illness the only trouble which befel the family at this time. Everybody knows that, as the old negro said, "single misfortunes never come alone." The day after Marion's accident, Mr. Van Alstine scalded his hand with steam in the tannery, and, to crown all, Harry was taken with a low, obstinate intermittent fever which seemed to defy all Doctor Fenn's skill, and kept the poor boy utterly miserable—too sick to leave his bed every other day, and just able to crawl down-stairs and lie on the sofa on what were called by courtesy his "well days."

If Marion had been as impatient under real troubles as she had often been under fancied grievances, she would have been a troublesome patient to manage. But either there had been a great change, or else suffering had developed the real force of character which lay concealed under a mask of weak self-indulgence. She never fretted and hardly ever complained, and made no trouble that she could help. Both Mrs. Andrews, who had seen a great deal of severe sickness, and Doctor Fenn declared they never had a more reasonable patient, and Maggy drew the most dismal auguries from the change in Marion.

"But she doesn't get on quite as well as I could wish, or as I think she ought to," said the doctor in a conference with her mother. "There's a want of elasticity that I don't like to see in one so young. I can't help thinking that she has got something on her mind."

"The same thing has occurred to me," said Mrs. Andrews. "She seems so entirely changed. You must have observed it, Eileen."

Mrs. Van Alstine shook her head, and her eyes filled with tears.

"I can't help thinking what father would say," she answered.

"What, that such a change of disposition was a forerunner of death? I believe that is the Scotch notion," said Mrs. Andrews. "What do you think of it, doctor?"

"I won't deny that I have seen something like that myself," remarked the doctor. "It isn't always so much a change, however, as that sickness brings out the real man or woman free from all disguise. I don't see anything like dying about our girl, however. The bone is uniting kindly, and all the other troubles are doing as well as we can expect. I dare say the confinement tells on her spirits. Do you think she may perhaps be under some religious depression?"

"I don't know," replied her mother. "She likes to hear the Bible read and to have her father or Henry pray with her, but she does not incline to talk much on the subject, and I don't like to drag her into it."

"No, that is never best. The older I grow, the more careful I feel about touching the religious experience of another with so much as my little finger. Sometimes, however, it happens that the patient would like very much to talk, but does not know how to begin, and such cases it is a comfort to have the ice broken. Well, you are the best judge, Mrs. Van Alstine, and I can safely leave her to you. Now let us see the rest of the hospital."

After all, it was to the doctor that Marion opened her heart at last. She was alone in her room. Mr. Van Alstine had sent for a reclining-chair of the newest and best construction for Marion, and she was half sitting, half lying in it before the window in her mother's room looking across the field to the beautiful wooded hills beyond.

This particular field was known as the colt-pasture. Owning some square miles of territory, Van Alstine Overbeck were not only tanners, but stock farmers on a great scale, and their horses were famous throughout the country. A dozen or more of the youthful four-legged aristocrats were amusing themselves with a private race round the great field.

It was one of the most beautiful of November Indian summer days. Frank had tempted his mother out for a drive, Mrs. Andrews had one of her rare but severe sick headaches, and Bram, who was Marion's most constant attendant, had been called out.

Marion was lying back in her chair watching the colts at their play. Her right arm was released from its bandage, but her wrists continued very lame, so that she was debarred the invalid's usual amusement of light fancy-work.

"Well, Marie, how goes it?" asked Doctor Fenn. He had come in at the long window on the verandah, which the warm afternoon allowed to be open, and sat down beside Marion.

"Pretty well, I believe," said Marion, rather wearily. "How are they at Amity's? I suppose you have come from there?"

For Bessy had distinguished herself and added to the family hospital by catching the measles, and of course the other children had followed her example.

"Oh, they are doing well. Nobody is sick enough to stay in bed but Betsy, and she will be out in a day or two. How are the hands?"

"I think they are better. I can hold a book a little while now," answered Marion.

"Better not try them too much," pronounced the doctor. "Slow and sure is the best cure for a sprain."

There was a little silence, and then the doctor asked rather abruptly, as his fashion was,—

"Sissy, what's the matter?"

Marion was silent.

"I don't want to pry into your secrets, my dear," said the doctor, gently, "but it does seem to me as if you had something on your mind that troubles you. Perhaps, if you can make up your mind to tell me what it is, I can lighten or help you to bear it. Can't you?"

"It was that meeting began it," said Marion, beginning as suddenly as the doctor had done. "I have never been happy one minute since then."

"And how did that begin it? You had been a Christian before that."

"I thought so," said Marion. "I even thought I was better than most, though I knew in my own soul that I was indulging myself in wrong tempers and ways. Oh, I was too silly for anything," cried Marion, covering her face with her hands. "I used to have all sorts of dreams about teaching and influencing others and leading a higher and more spiritual life than my good aunt and uncle and my old grandfather, and all the while I was idling away my time in school, missing my lessons, and making false excuses, despising better people than myself, and allowing myself to be in all sorts of bad tempers all the time. There never was one so foolish, I am sure."

"I am not," said the doctor. "I have heard more than one person talk loudly and abundantly about 'holiness' and 'the higher life' who did not seem to me to have learned the very A, B, C of Christian morals. Well?"

"That was the way with me when I came here," continued Marion. "It seems almost too bad to tell, but, Doctor Fenn, I was really vexed and disappointed when I found that father had family prayers and maintained a chapel. I thought I was going to be a kind of family missionary, like a girl I had read of in a book."

"A good many kinds of girls that one reads of in books are fortunately not often found in real life," said the doctor, dryly. "Life would hardly be bearable else."

"Well, I couldn't be here a great while without seeing how much better they all were than I," continued Marion. "I saw how kind they were to each other and to auntie and me, though I was always bothering and making mistakes, and how they all bore with poor Gerty, and you know she is trying sometimes."

"I think I do—sometimes."

"I had begun to see a little of all this, but somehow that night when we went to the meeting it was all displayed to me at once. It was just as I told Bram—as if the rest saw some one whom I was trying to see and hear, but couldn't for my life. Then Bram and I got talking coming home. I do think he is the very dearest boy that I ever heard of. I never thought it would be half so nice to have brothers, and he seemed to show me to myself. He said the Pharisees couldn't come into the kingdom of heaven because 'they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.' Then I saw that had been the way with me. I had not wished really to be a Christian, but only to be thought so. I thought it must be all right with me because I wanted to do so much work and have so much influence, and I used to spend hours in dreaming about it. But now I see there was no reality in it at all."

She stopped and sat silent.

"Well, and what are you going to do now?" asked the doctor. "Are you going to give the matter up in despair?"

"I don't want to give up, but I don't know what to do. I try to come to Christ and believe on him as the Bible says, but it seems all unreal, as if it were dreaming the same old dreams over again. I shall never have faith enough to be saved."

"My dear girl, I think you are under a mistake," said the doctor. "Faith is not a kind of currency wherewith people can buy salvation if only they have enough of it. It is rather the hand whereby one lays hold of salvation. If you had all faith, so that you could remove mountains, you would not thereby merit anything. If you have faith enough to come to Christ, you have enough to be saved by him.

"'If thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us and help us,' cried the poor father.

"We should call that a very weak faith, but our Lord helped instead of condemned it."

"But, doctor, how can I know that I am saved—that I have come?" asked Marion, eagerly. "How can I know for certain? Now it all seems dreamlike and vague, as if it might be one of my day-dreams."

"Do you believe in the Bible?"

"Certainly I do."

"Well, then, there is the ground of your assurance:

"'Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.'

"'That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.'

"You know whether you believe or not, don't you?"

"I know I do."

"Then what more assurance do you want?"

"But, Doctor Fenn, I want to feel it; I want to feel assured in my own heart as I have heard of other people. I can't make it seem real to me. I come back to the same place all the time," said Marion, smiling sadly.

"Don't you think that is a little bit like wanting a sign?" asked the doctor.

"I don't quite understand what you mean."

"Why, you won't believe the Lord on his simple assurance. You say, like the Jews,—

"'What sign shewest thou unto us?'

"You want him to give you more than his word. Is that using him well? Would you like it yourself?"

"But, Doctor Fenn, don't you think he does sometimes give that inward assurance, the consciousness that our sins are forgiven?"

"No doubt he does, and he will give it to you; but, after all, that is not the main ground of your dependence. He will have you believe his word first, and then he will work the miracle.

"'Believe ye that I am able to do this?' he said to the blind man.

"And no sooner had he answered than the response came,—

"'According to your faith be it unto you.'"

"I see," said Marion. "Then I am to believe my sins are forgiven though I don't feel it?"

"Undoubtedly, if you really repent."

"And how shall I know I really repent?"

"You really repent if you are ready to give up every sin of which you are conscious and pray for help never to commit it again. That is the true, and I believe the only, test. And now I think that you have talked enough and have enough to think about."

"Doctor, there is one thing more I should like to ask you," said Marion, detaining him. "Do you think that—Well, suppose you were conscious that something was wrong, and yet could not feel willing to give it up, what is one to do?"

"The question is whether you want to be willing?"

"Yes, indeed, I do," said Marion, with tears in her eyes.

"Then pray that your heart and will may be so sanctified that you shall hate sin because it is sinful," answered the doctor; "but, my dear girl, remember this—that you cannot take a single wilful sin into the kingdom with you. Remember that. Good-bye, my dear; I must not stay another minute."

Marion sat looking out of the window a while longer. Her face was dark and disturbed. She was going through a hard struggle, trying to say "good-bye" to a lifelong companion, to withdraw from the scenes where most of her life had hitherto been spent and shut the door behind her. She knew that the day-dreams in which she had indulged, though not sinful in themselves, perhaps, had become, like every amusement which is made an object, a temptation and snare to her. She knew that she had wasted precious time and opportunities never to be recalled while following the fortunes of the heiress of the McGregors. She felt, too, that, like one who has been a hard drinker, her only safety lay in total abstinence.

At last, as her mother returned from her drive and came in, Marion drew a long breath and turned away from the window. She had said a long farewell to the heiress of the McGregors.