CHAPTER XXVIII. REASON AND UNREASON

The next morning being Monday, Dr. Campbell dropped in to breakfast. Since he and Eva had met so often in Maggie's sick room, and he had discussed the direction of her physical well-being, he had rapidly grown in intimacy with the Hendersons, and the little house had come to be regarded by him as a sort of home. Consequently, when Eva sailed into her dining-room, she found him quietly arranging a handful of cut flowers which he had brought in for the center of her breakfast table.

"Good morning, Mrs. Henderson," he said, composedly. "I stepped into Allen's green-house on my way up, to bring in a few flowers. With the mercury at zero, flowers are worth something."

"How perfectly lovely of you, Doctor," said she. "You are too good."

"I don't say, however, that I had not my eye on a cup of your coffee," he replied. "You know I have no faith in disinterested benevolence."

"Well, sit down then, old fellow," said Harry, clapping him on the shoulder. "You're welcome, flowers or no flowers."

"How are you all getting on?" he said, seating himself.

"Charmingly, of course," said Eva, from behind the coffee-pot, "and as the song says, 'the better for seeing you.'"

"And how's my patient—Maggie?"

"Oh, she's doing well, if only people will let her alone; but her mother, and uncle, and relations will keep irritating her with reproaches. You see, I had got her in beautiful training, and she was sewing for me and making herself very useful, when, Sunday evening, when I was gone out, her uncle came to see her, and talked and bore down upon her so as to completely upset all I had done. I came home and found her just going out of the house, perfectly desperate."

"And ready to go to the devil straight off, I suppose?" said the Doctor. "His doors are always open."

"You see," said Harry, "things seem to be so arranged in this world that if man, woman or child does wrong or gets out of the way, all society is armed to the teeth to prevent their ever doing right again. Their own flesh and blood pitch into them with reproaches and expostulations, and everybody else looks on them with suspicion, and nobody wants them and nobody dares trust them."

"Just so," said Dr. Campbell, "the world is an army—it can't stop for anything. 'Wounded to the rear,' is the word, and the army must go on and leave the sick and wounded to die or be taken by the enemy. For my part, I never thought Napoleon was so much out of the way when he recommended poisoning the sick and wounded that could not be moved. I think I should prefer to be comfortably and decently poisoned myself in such a case. The world isn't ripe yet for the doctrine; but I think all people who get broken down, and don't keep step physically and morally, had better be killed at once. Then we could get on comfortably, and in a few generations should have a nice population."

"Come, now, Doctor; I'm not going to have that sort of talk," said Eva. "In short, you've got to keep on as you have been doing—working for the wounded in the rear. And now tell me if I could do a better thing for Maggie than keep her here in our house, under my own eye and influence, till she gets quite strong and well, and help her to live down the past?"

"Well, that's a sensible putting of the thing," said Dr. Campbell, "if you will be foolish enough to take the trouble; but I forewarn you that girls that have been through her experiences are troublesome to manage. Their nerves are all in a jangle; they are sore everywhere, and the very good that is in them is turned wrong side outward; and, as you say, the world will be against you, in a general way. Relations, as far as ever I have observed, are rather harder on sinners than anybody else—especially on a woman that goes astray; and next to them sensible, worldly-wise, respectable people—people who live to get rid of trouble, and feel that 'bother' is the sum and substance of evil. Now, taking up a girl like Maggie, you must count on that. Her relations will hinder all they can; and the more respectable they are, the harder they will bear down upon her. Your relations will think you a sentimental little fool, and do all they can to hinder you. The rank and file of comfortable, religious, church-going people will call you imprudent, and only fanatics, like Mr. St. John and Sibyl Selwyn, will understand you or stand by you; and, to crown all, the girl herself is as unreliable as the wind. The evil done to a woman in this kind of life is the derangement of her whole nervous system, so that she is swept by floods of morbid influences, and liable to wild, passionate gusts of feeling. The cessation from this free Bohemian life, with its strong excitements, leaves them in unnatural states of craving for stimulus; and when you have done all you can for them,—in a moment, off they go. That's the reason why most prudent people prefer to wash their hands of them, and stop before they begin."

"It's all very well to talk so, Doctor, if the case related to a stranger; but here is my poor, good Mary, who has been in our family ever since I was a little girl, and has always loved me and been devoted to me—shall I now give her the cold shoulder and not help her in this crisis of her life, because I am afraid of trouble? Isn't it worth trouble, and a great deal of trouble, and a great deal of patience, to save this daughter of hers from ruin? I think it is."

"I think you and your husband will do it," said the Doctor, "because you are just what you are; and I shall help you, because I'm what I am; but, nevertheless, I set the reasonable side before you. I think this Maggie is a fine creature. There are, in a confused way, the beginnings of a great deal that is right, and even noble, in her; but nobody ought to begin with her without taking account of risks."

"Well," said Eva, "you know I am a Christian, and I look in the New Testament for my principles, and there I find it plainly set down that the Lord values one sinner that is brought to repentance more than ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance; and that he would leave the ninety and nine sheep, and go into the wilderness to look up one lost lamb."

"That is the Christian religion, undoubtedly," said Dr. Campbell; "but there is exactly where the Christian religion parts company with worldly prudence. The world and all its institutions are organized and arranged for the strong, the wise, the prudent, and the successful. The weak, the sick, the sinners, and all that sort of thing, are to have as much care as they can without interfering with the healthy and strong. Now, in the good old times of English law, they used to hang summarily anybody that made trouble in society in any way—the woman who stole a loaf of bread, and the man who stole a horse, and the vagrant who picked a pocket; then there was no discussion and no bother about reformation, such as is coming down upon our consciences now-a-days. Good old times those were, when there wasn't any of this gush over the fallen and lost; the slate was wiped clean of all the puzzling sums at the yearly assizes and the account started clear. Now-a-days, there is such a bother about taking care of criminals that an honest man has no decent chance of comfort."

"Well, Doctor," said Eva, "if the essence of Christianity is restoration and salvation, I don't see but your profession is essentially a Christian one. You seek and save the lost. It is your business by your toil and labor to help people who have sinned against the laws of nature, to get them back again to health; isn't it so?"

"Well, yes, it is," said the doctor, "though I find everything going against me in this direction, as much as you do."

"But you find mercy in nature," said Harry. "In the language of the Psalms: 'There is forgiveness with her that she may be feared.' The first thing, after one of her laws has been broken, comes in her effort to restore and save; it may be blind and awkward, but still it points toward life and not death, and you doctors are her ministers and priests. You bear the physical gospel; and we Christians take the same process to the spiritual realm that lies just above yours, and that has to work through yours. Our business in both realms seems to be, by our own labor, self-denial and suffering, to save those who have sinned against the laws of their being."

"Well," said the doctor; "even so, I go in for saving in my line by an instinct apart from my reason, an instinct as blind as nature's when she sets out to heal a broken bone in the right arm of a scalawag, who never used his arm for anything but thrashing his wife and children, and making himself a general nuisance; yet I have been amazed sometimes to see how kindly and patiently old Mother Nature will work for such a man. Well, I am something like her. I have the blind instinct of healing in my profession, and I confess to sitting up all night, watching to keep the breath of life in sick babies that I know ought to be dead, and had better be dead, inasmuch as there's no chance for them to be even decent and respectable, if they live; but I can't let 'em die, any more than nature can, without a struggle. The fact is, reason is one thing and the human heart another; and, as St. Paul says, 'these two are contrary one to the other, so that ye cannot do the thing ye would.' You and your husband, Mrs. Henderson, have got a good deal of this troublesome human heart in you, so that you cannot act reasonably, any more than I can."

"That's it, Doctor," said Eva, with a bright, sudden movement towards him and laying her hand on his arm, "let's not act reasonably—let's act by something higher. I know there is something higher—something we dare to do and feel able to do in our best moments. You are a Christian in heart, Doctor, if not in faith."

"Me? I'm the most terrible heretic in all the continent."

"But when you sit up all night with a sick baby from mere love of saving, you are a Christian; for, doesn't Christ say, 'inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these, ye did it unto me'? Christians are those who have Christ's spirit, as I think, and sacrifice themselves to save others."

"May the angels be of your opinion when I try the gate hereafter," said the Doctor. "But now, seriously, about this Maggie. I apprehend that you will have trouble from the fact that, having been kept on stimulants in a rambling, loose, disorderly life, she will not be able long to accommodate herself to any regular habits. I don't know how much of a craving for drink there may be in her case, but it is a usual complication of such cases. Such people may go for weeks without yielding, and then the furor comes upon them, and away they go. Perhaps she may not be one of those worst cases; but, in any event, the sudden cessation of all the tumultuous excitement she has been accustomed to, may lead to a running down of the nervous system that will make her act unreasonably. Her mother, and people of her class, may be relied on for doing the very worst thing that the case admits of, with the very best intentions. And now if these complications get you into any trouble, rely upon me so far as I can do anything to help. Don't hesitate to command me at any hour and to any extent, because I mean to see the thing through with you. When spring comes on, if you get her through the winter, we must try and find her a place in some decent, quiet farmer's family in the country, where she may feed chickens and ducks, and make butter, and live a natural, healthful, out-door life; and, in my opinion, that will be the best and safest way for her."

"Come, Doctor," said Harry, "will you walk up town with me? It's time I was off."

"Now, Harry, please remember; don't forget to match that worsted," said Eva. "Oh! and that tea must be changed. You just call in and tell Haskins that."

"Anything else?" said Harry, buttoning on his overcoat.

"No; only be sure you come back early, for mamma says Aunt Maria is coming down here upon me, and I shall want you to strengthen me. The Doctor appreciates Aunt Maria."

"Certainly I do," said the Doctor; "a devoted relation who carries you all in her heart hourly, and therefore has an undoubted right to make you as uncomfortable as she pleases. That's the beauty of relations. If you have them you are bothered with them, and if you haven't you are bothered for want of 'em. So it goes. Now I would give all the world if I had a good aunt or grandmother to haul me over the coals, and fight me, out of pure love—a fellow feels lonesome when he knows nobody would care if he went to the devil."

"Oh, as to that," said Eva, "come here whenever you're lonesome, and we'll fight and abuse you to your heart's content; and you sha'n't go to that improper person without our making a fuss about it. We'll abuse you as if you were one of the family."

"Good," said the Doctor, as he stepped towards the front window; "but here, to be sure, is your aunt, bright and early."