A Little Pilgrim: Stories of the Seen and the Unseen — John Shaqi
A Little Pilgrim: Stories of the Seen and the UnseenOliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Religion
A Little Pilgrim: Stories of the Seen and the Unseen
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Death -- Fiction
"It is your--fun," she said, "or just to frighten me. Perhaps you think
it will do me no harm as I am getting so well; you want to frighten me to
make me good. But I mean to be good without that--I do!--I do! When one
is so near dying as I have been and yet gets better,--for I am going to
get better! Yes! you know it as well as I."
The little Pilgrim made no reply, but stood by, looking at her charge,
not feeling that anything was given her to say,--and she was so new to
this work, that there was a little trembling in her, lest she should not
do everything as she ought. And the woman looked round with those anxious
eyes gazing all about. The light did not brighten as it had done when the
Pilgrim herself first came to this place. For one thing, they had
remained quite close to the gate, which no doubt threw a shadow. The
woman looked at that, and then turned and looked into the dim morning,
and did not know where she was, and her heart was confused and troubled.
"Where are we?" she said. "I do not know where it is; they must have
brought me here in my sleep,--where are we? How strange to bring a sick
woman away out of her room in her sleep! I suppose it was the new
doctor," she went on, looking very closely in the little Pilgrim's face;
then paused, and drawing a long breath, said softly, "It has done me
good. It is better air--it is--a new kind of cure!"
But though she spoke like this, she did not convince herself; her eyes
were wild with wondering and fear. She gripped the Pilgrim's arm more and
more closely, and trembled, leaning upon her.
"Why don't you speak to me?" she said; "why don't you tell me? Oh, I
don't know how to live in this place! What do you do?--how do you speak?
I am not fit for it. And what are you? I never saw you before, nor any
one like you. What do you want with me? Why are you so kind to me?
Why--why--"
And here she went off into a murmur of questions. Why? why? always
holding fast by the little Pilgrim, always gazing round her, groping as
it were in the dimness with her great eyes.
"I have come because our dear Lord who is our Brother sent me to meet
you, and because I love you," the little Pilgrim said.
"Love me!" the woman cried, throwing up her hands. "But no one loves me;
I have not deserved it." Here she grasped her close again with a sudden
clutch, and cried out, "If this is what you say, where is God?"
"Are you afraid of him?" the little Pilgrim said. Upon which the woman
trembled so, that the Pilgrim trembled too with the quivering of her
frame; then loosed her hold, and fell upon her face, and cried,--
"Hide me! hide me! I have been a great sinner. Hide me, that he may not
see me;" and with one hand she tried to draw the Pilgrim's dress as a
veil between her and something she feared.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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