“I can only think of my baby,” said Bertha, hoarsely.
“Why don’t you pray to God, dear—shall I offer a short prayer now, Bertha?”
“No, I don’t want to pray to God—He’s either impotent or cruel.”
“Bertha,” cried Miss Glover. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Oh, pray to God to melt your stubbornness; pray to God to forgive you.”
“I don’t want to be forgiven. I’ve done nothing that needs it. It’s God who needs my forgiveness—not I His.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying, Bertha,” replied Miss Glover, very gravely and sorrowfully.
Bertha was still so ill that Miss Glover dared not press the subject, but she was grievously troubled. She asked herself whether she should consult her brother, to whom an absurd shyness prevented her from mentioning spiritual matters, unless necessity compelled. But she had immense faith in him, and to her he was a type of all that a Christian clergyman should be. Although her character was so much stronger than his, Mr. Glover always seemed to his sister a pillar of strength; and often in past times, when the flesh was more stubborn, had she found help and consolation in his very mediocre sermons. Finally, however, Miss Glover decided to speak to him, with the result that, for a week she avoided spiritual topics in her daily conversation with the invalid; then, Bertha having grown a little stronger, without previously mentioning the fact, she brought her brother to Court Leys.
Miss Glover went alone to Bertha’s room, in her ardent sense of propriety fearing that Bertha, in bed, might not be costumed decorously enough for the visit of a clerical gentleman.
“Oh,” she said, “Charles is downstairs and would like to see you so much. I thought I’d better come up first to see if you were—er—presentable.”
Bertha was sitting up in bed, with a mass of cushions and pillows behind her—a bright red jacket contrasted with her dark hair and the pallor of her skin. She drew her lips together when she heard that the Vicar was below, and a slight frown darkened her forehead. Miss Glover caught sight of it.
“I don’t think she likes your coming,” said Miss Glover—to encourage him—when she fetched her brother, “but I think it’s your duty.”
“Yes, I think it’s my duty,” replied Mr. Glover, who liked the approaching interview as little as Bertha.
He was an honest man, oppressed by the inroads of dissent; but his ministrations were confined to the services in church, the collecting of subscriptions, and the visiting of the church-going poor. It was something new to be brought before a rebellious gentlewoman, and he did not quite know how to treat her.
Miss Glover opened the bedroom door for her brother and he entered, a cold wind laden with carbolic acid. She solemnly put a chair for him by the bedside and another for herself at a little distance.
“Ring for the tea before you sit down, Fanny,” said Bertha.
“I think, if you don’t mind, Charles would like to speak to you first,” said Miss Glover. “Am I not right, Charles?”
“Yes, dear.”
“I took the liberty of telling him what you said to me the other day, Bertha.”
Mrs. Craddock pursed her lips, but made no reply.
“I hope you’re not angry with me for doing so, but I thought it my duty.... Now, Charles.”
The Vicar of Leanham coughed.
“I can quite understand,” he said, “that you must be most distressed at your affliction. It’s a most unfortunate occurrence. I need not say that Fanny and I sympathise with you from the bottom of our hearts.”
“We do indeed,” said his sister.
Still Bertha did not answer and Miss Glover looked at her uneasily. The Vicar coughed again.
“But I always think that we should be thankful for the cross we have to bear. It is, as it were, a measure of the confidence that God places in us.”
Bertha remained quite silent and Miss Glover saw that no good would come by beating about the bush.
“The fact is, Bertha,” she said, breaking the awkward silence, “that Charles and I are very anxious that you should be churched. You don’t mind our saying so, but we’re both a great deal older than you are, and we think it will do you good. We do hope you’ll consent to it; but, more than that, Charles is here as the clergyman of your parish, to tell you that it is your duty.”
“I hope it won’t be necessary for me to put it in that way, Mrs. Craddock.”
Bertha paused a moment longer, and then asked for a prayer-book. Miss Glover gave a smile which for her was quite radiant.
“I’ve been wanting for a long time to make you a little present, Bertha,” she said, “and it occurred to me that you might like a prayer-book with good large print. I’ve noticed in church that the book you generally use is so small that it must try your eyes, and be a temptation to you not to follow the service. So I’ve brought you one to-day, which it will give me very much pleasure if you will accept.”
She produced a large volume, bound in gloomy black cloth, and redolent of the antiseptic odours which pervaded the Vicarage. The print was indeed large, but, since the society which arranged the publication insisted on the combination of cheapness with utility, the paper was abominable.
“Thank you very much,” said Bertha, holding out her hand for the gift. “It’s awfully kind of you.”
“Shall I find you the Churching of Women?”
Bertha nodded, and presently the Vicar’s sister handed her the book, open. She read a few lines and dropped it.
“I have no wish to ‘give hearty thanks unto God,’” she said, looking almost fiercely at the worthy pair. “I’m very sorry to offend your prejudices, but it seems to me absurd that I should prostrate myself in gratitude to God.”
“Oh, Mrs. Craddock, I trust you don’t mean what you say,” said the Vicar.
“This is what I told you, Charles,” said Miss Glover. “I don’t think Bertha is well, but still this seems to me dreadfully wicked.”
Bertha frowned, finding it difficult to repress the sarcasm which rose to her lips; her forbearance was sorely tried. But Mr. Glover was a little undecided.
“We must be as thankful to God for the afflictions He sends as for the benefits,” he said at last.
“I am not a worm to crawl upon the ground and give thanks to the foot that crushes me.”
“I think that is blasphemous, Bertha,” said Miss Glover.
“Oh, I have no patience with you, Fanny,” said Bertha, raising herself, a flush lighting up her face. “Can you realise what I’ve gone through, the terrible pain of it? Oh, it was too awful. Even now when I think of it I almost scream.”
“It is by suffering that we rise to our higher self,” said Miss Glover. “Suffering is a fire that burns away the grossness of our material natures.”
“What rubbish you talk,” cried Bertha, passionately. “You can say that when you’ve never suffered. People say that suffering ennobles one; it’s a lie, it only makes one brutal.... But I would have borne it—for the sake of my child. It was all useless—utterly useless. Dr. Ramsay told me the child had been dead the whole time. Oh, if God made me suffer like that, it’s infamous. I wonder you’re not ashamed to put it down to God. How can you imagine Him to be so stupid, so cruel! Why, even the vilest beast in the slums wouldn’t cause a woman such frightful and useless agony for the mere pleasure of it.”
Miss Glover sprang to her feet. “Bertha,