According to the Pattern (19 page)

I was tired yesterday, but not to-day,

I could run and not be weary,

This blessed way;

For I have His strength to stay me,
With His might my feet are shod.

I can find my resting-places

In the promises of God.

—A. C. S.

THE slow minutes dragged themselves into hours. The watchers never knew when the dark fell outside and the lights were turned on.

The doctor had taken off his overcoat and did not
look as if he intended to go away again. In the next room
his brother waited in the dark, for it might be there
would be need for him, at least so the doctor thought. The family had not been told that he was there. Some
how the doctor always felt more hope of any desperate case when he knew his brother was nearby praying, for that his brother would pray he felt sure. Though Doctor
Carter did not pray himself, he sometimes took comfort
in the fact that his brother did.

No one had told Claude Winthrop that the moment
of the crisis was near at hand, but he seemed to know it,
and his quivering heart waited for the blow hour after
hour and shrank at every sound or change in the patient.

Yes, she was slipping away from him into the shadows
with that awful cloud of estrangement between them
and no opportunity to make it right before she went. He
hardly looked for any recognition from her. It was more
than he dared hope. And if it came, what could he say?
Could he call, “Forgive me!” down into the shadows of
the valley and hope to get even an answering gleam of
forgiveness from her eyes, the dear eyes that had spoken
so eloquently to him in days that were gone?

Then suddenly the doctor, who with finger on the
pulse had been hovering near the bed, warned them all
to silence with cautioning hand, the eyes oldie sick one
opened and looked upon them intelligently and her own
clear voice said:

“I have seen Jesus and he is going to help me make it
all over according to the pattern.”

Then she smiled upon them and slept once more.

Claude remained as he had been, looking at her face.
It had come then and gone, the moment which he had
waited for, half hoping, yet with fear. And now it was
over and the blackness was shutting about him once
more. What she had said, though in so natural a tone,
was something he could never understand. It showed
that she had already entered a world where he did not
belong. He did not doubt that the end was in sight and
that this was the last word she would ever speak in the world.

He noted not the swift departure from the room of all
but the doctor and nurse nor the silent preparations for
the night. Dazed and heavy-hearted, he followed the
doctor as he drew him away. He scarcely took in the
meaning of the words, spoken low and with a ring of
triumph out in the hall, “Mr. Winthrop, she will live.”
The words did not seem to convey their ordinary mean
ing to his brain. He had it firmly fixed in his mind that
she would die, and he answered the kind doctor with a
patient smile that showed he did not take the joyful news for truth.

“She will live, I tell you, man! The crisis is past! I
hardly dared hope it would turn out so, but now I feel
sure. If all goes well to-night we shall begin to go uphill
instead of down. Now the next thing is for you to get a
good sleep.”

He made Claude lie down and tucked him up as he
might have done with a baby and then slipped away, sighing to himself, “Poor fellow. He hardly understands
yet. The strain has been hard on him. I wouldn’t have imagined he was that sort of man.”

Claude Winthrop had been passive in the hands of the
doctor, but he had no idea of going to sleep. Sleep,
thought he, was a thing that would never visit his weary brain again. But nature was stronger than his intentions. Placed in a relaxed position, it was not many minutes before he sank into unconsciousness, and it was not until
morning was high in the world that he woke once more
to the heavy burden that he carried.

For the first moment he could not remember how he
came in that room nor anything that had happened.
Then he concluded that his wife must be gone, else they
would not have brought him away. But he saw beside
him the doctor, smiling, and he knew that he would not
look like that if all were over. Gradually there came to
his memory the doctor’s words of the night before, and
a light broke over his face. He looked into Doctor
Carter’s eyes anxiously to read if the hope was still there.

“Doing well,” he nodded reassuringly. “All she needs now is perfect quiet and perfect nursing. She will not
need you for a while. She must stay, if possible, in a
quiescent state. There must be no talking, no excite
ment. Nothing to remind her of life, or in her weak state she may have a relapse. You’d better rest yourself completely for a few days. You have been through a heavy
strain. I’m going to take you in charge or we’ll have a
case of nervous prostration before we know it.”

The doctor might have talked in a foreign tongue for
all that Claude heard of what he said. His mind could take in but one thing and that was that Miriam would
live. He must adjust himself to that before there was
room for anything else.

His impulse was to go at once to his wife and make
his full confession, for he shrank from the burden of it
no longer, but gradually his common sense and the
doctor’s words asserted themselves. There was then
hope, but he must be patient and wait for the burden to be removed, days, perhaps weeks.

After the doctor went out he lay still and listened to
the distant hum of the city outside, the sound of the
world to which they had come back, he and Miriam, to
live over again the life they had failed to live aright. No,
not they, but he. Miriam had been all right. Miriam had
been true through all. To him now came the picture
sharp and clear of the way she had struck the senator in
the conservatory. He had not heard all he said, but he
had seen the kiss. He gloried in Miriam’s righteous
wrath. He had not been true to her, but she had been
absolutely true to him, and that in spite of knowing of
his weakness.

Hour after hour he reviewed the story, taking up
details he had not remembered before, and always com
ing up against the blank wall of his own defenseless
weakness—no,
sin,
for that was the name by which he
had learned to call his own conduct.

By and by he slept again, but now came dark dreams
to trouble him, and always the face of his wife, cold, sad,
averted from him. He woke with the sweat of agony on his brow.

They let him into the sick-room but seldom now, and
only when she was asleep. He must not come near her
or touch her or do anything to take her out of that restful
world into which she had slipped. It was their only hope
for her recovery that she might remain untroubled by anything, not even the joy of seeing her loved ones, until her heart had grown a little stronger and she was able to bear emotion of any kind.

The husband hovered about the door of the sick
room, haunting the halls like a gaunt spectre and asking anxiously for any news of the nurses or the doctor as they passed. He seemed to feel it a part of his just punishment that at this time, when his place should have been close beside his dear wife, he should be thus shut away from her, more shut away than he had ever been in his life
before. He grew almost to hate the nurses whose pres
ence kept her he loved so secluded from his view.

Doctor Carter pitied him from the depths of his heart,
but he dared not let him come into the presence of his
wife yet, lest his haggard face should startle her and she become aware of her own serious condition. She was
entirely herself now when awake, and seemed to be
perfectly content to lie still and do as she was bid. She
had not asked for any one, and did not seem to care for
anything but just to lie and rest. The time had not come
to rouse her from this state. Until then her husband must
wait and be patient.

But Doctor Carter spoke to his brother about it.

“I wish, George, you would see what you can do at
doctoring the soul of that man if you know anything
about the business,” he said, one afternoon as he came
out from the house to the carriage where his brother was waiting for him; “he needs something to soothe him a
little. If religion is worth anything at all it ought to be
able to do that. Sometime when you’re in there just see
if you can’t get him to talk with you. He is taking life as
hard as he did last week when there was practically no
hope. If he keeps on he’ll break down before she gets to
the point where he will be needed.”

And the brother pondered in his heart what he might
be able to say to this older man who seemed to be locked so firmly within his sorrow.

With Miriam the world had receded so far, and all
things grown so dim, that she was a long time in coming
back to the things that had been hers once more. Her
memory of her illness was like some horrible journey
over stormy seas, over rapids and dangerous rocks, with
thunder and lightning all about, until suddenly a voice
had said, “Peace, be still,” and her little bark which was
about to sink amid the tempest had drifted into quiet
waters, where the sunlight glinted through leafy shad
ows, and a great peace arched over all. There was rest,
deep, sweet rest. And in that haven she was content to
stay.

She swallowed what they gave her obediently, and she
lay and rested and forgot.

Gradually there came order out of the chaos of her
mind. She did not remember the song nor the words that
had been spoken to her when she was under the power of the fever, but she knew that a new influence had taken hold of her life that would make all wrongs right. To this thought she fixed her heart. She had left the problems of
her life all unsolved, but they did not trouble her any
more. They were in hands that knew well how to
control them. Where she got this faith she did not know,
did not question. That it was in her heart gave her
comfort. She would not let herself think about the old
troubles, as her mind grew stronger and memory, always
a poor nurse, rushed in with pictures filled with old
troubles. She did not question about anything. She tried
as much as possible to keep from wondering how she
came here and where her husband and children were.

But there came a time at last when she could no longer
put by memory. She awoke one morning to find the
walls of her mind all hung with pictures, fresh and vivid,
of the weary way she had trod before she had found this
haven. They pierced her with their darts of evil. And
about three portraits her gaze lingered longest. One
beautiful, scornful face crowned with golden hair, another old and wicked, topped with silver white, and a
third, the face averted with indifferent aspect, with soft
sweep of dark hair, and handsome, manly outlines. Ah!
here was her world all back again, and whither was her
peace flown?

She looked up and seemed to see a light and to hear a
voice speaking to her soul: “Come unto me, and I will
give you rest.”

Why had that rest not meant death for her? What
other rest could there be but that? And yet it had not
been, and still the voice insisted, “I
will
give you rest.”
And gladly, gladly she took hold once more upon a faith
that had come to her out of the dark of her forgotten
childhood when her mother’s teachings had fallen on
unheeding childish ears.

There is much perplexity and sadness about whether a soul taken from this earth out of the midst of life not
lived for God, and spending its last moments in delirium, can be saved. But why does not comfort come to such
questioners from the thought of the power of the God
who made that soul, to speak to it even in delirium? It is not strange that God should speak to one of his creatures now any more than that he spoke to Adam or to Moses.