Christian life -- Fiction; Conduct of life -- Fiction
I wonder if mother knew it when she opposed our engagement so
strenuously.
Jan. 31.-I have asked her, and she said she did. Mr. Underhill told
her his intentions when he urged her consent to the engagement. Dear
mother! How unworldly, how unselfish she is!
Feb. 4.-The name of Charley Underhill appears on these pages for the
last time. He is engaged to Amelia! From this moment she is lost to
me forever. How desolate, how mortified, how miserable I am! Who
could have thought this of Amelia! She came to see me, radiant with
joy. I concealed my disgust until she said that Charley felt now that
he had never really loved me, but had preferred her all along. Then I
burst out. What I said I do not know, and do not care. The whole
thing is so disgraceful that I should be a stock or a stone not to
resent it.
Feb. 5.-After yesterday's passion of grief, shame, and anger, I feel
perfectly stupid and languid. Oh, that I was prepared for a better
world, and could fly to it and be at rest!
Feb. 6.-Now that it is all over, how ashamed I am of the fury I have
been in, and which has given Amelia such advantage over me! I was
beginning to believe that I was really living a feeble and
fluttering, but real Christian life, and finding some satisfaction in
it. But that is all over now. I am doomed to be a victim of my own
unstable, passionate, wayward nature, and the sooner I settle down
into that conviction, the better. And yet how my very soul craves the
highest happiness, and refuses to be comforted while that is wanting.
Feb. 7.-After writing that, I do not know what made me go to see Dr.
Cabot. He received me in that cheerful way of his that seems to
promise the taking one's burden right off one's back.
"I am very glad to see you, my dear child," he said.
I intended to be very dignified and cold. As if I was going to have
any Dr. Cabot's undertaking to sympathize with me! But those few kind
words just upset me, and I began to cry.
"You would not speak so kindly," I got out at last, "if you knew what
a dreadful creature I am. I am angry with myself, and angry with
everybody, and angry with God. I can't be good two minutes at a time.
I do everything I do not want to do, and do nothing I try and pray to
do. Everybody plagues me and tempts me. And God does not answer any
of my prayers, and I am just desperate."
"Poor child!" he said, in a low voice, as if to himself. "Poor,
heart-sick, tired child, that cannot see what I can see, that its
Father's loving arms are all about it?"
I stopped crying, to strain my ears and listen. He went on.
"Katy, all that you say may be true. I dare say it is. But God loves
you. He loves you."
"He loves me," I repeated to myself. "He loves me! Oh, Dr. Cabot, if
I could believe that! If I could believe that, after all the promises
I have broken, all the foolish, wrong things I have done and shall
always be doing, God perhaps still loves me!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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