Nothingis more striking in the light and shadow of the human drama than to compare the inner life and thoughts of an elevated and silent nature, with the thoughts and plans which those by whom they are surrounded have of and for them. Little thought Mary of any of the speculations that busied the friendly head of Miss Prissy, or that lay in the provident forecastings of her prudent mother. When a life into which all our life nerves have run is cut suddenly away, there follows, after the first long bleeding is healed, an internal paralysis of certain portions of our nature. It was so with Mary: the thousand fibres that bind youth and womanhood to earthly love and life were all in her still as the grave, and only the spiritual and divine part of her being was active. Her hopes, desires, and aspirations were all such as she could have had in greater perfection, as a disembodied spirit than as a mortal woman. The small stake for self which she had invested in life was gone,—and henceforward all personal matters were to her so indifferent that she scarce was conscious of a wish in relation to her own individual happiness. She was through the sudden crush of a great affliction in that state of self-abnegation to which the mystics brought themselves by fastings and self-imposed penances,—a state not purely healthy, nor realizing the divine ideal of a perfect human being, made to exist in the relations of human life,—but one of those exceptional conditions, which, like the hours that often precede dissolution, seem to impart to the subject of them a peculiar aptitude for delicate and refined spiritual impressions. We could not afford to have it always night—and we must think that broad, gay morning light, whenmeadow-lark and robin and bobolink are singing in chorus with a thousand insects and the waving of a thousand breezes, is on the whole the most in accordance with the average wants of those who have a material life to live and material work to do. But then we reverence that clear-obscure of midnight, when everything is still and dewy—then sing the nightingales which cannot be heard by day—then shine the mysterious stars. So when all earthly voices are hushed in the soul, all earthly lights darkened, music and colour float in from a higher sphere.
No veiled nun, with her shrouded forehead and downcast eyes, ever moved about a convent with a spirit more utterly divided from the world, than Mary moved about her daily employments. Her care about the details of life seemed more than ever minute; she was always anticipating her mother in every direction, and striving by a thousand gentle preveniences, to spare her from fatigue and care; there was even a tenderness about her ministrations, as if the daughter had changed feelings and places with the mother.
The Doctor, too, felt a change in her manner towards him, which, always considerate and kind, was now invested with a tender thoughtfulness, and anxious solicitude to serve, which often brought tears to his eyes. All the neighbours who had been in the habit of visiting at the house, received from her almost daily, in one little form or another, some proof of her thoughtful remembrance.
She seemed in particular to attach herself to Mrs. Marvyn; throwing her cares around that fragile and wounded nature, as a generous vine will sometimes embrace with tender leaves and flowers a dying tree.
But her heart seemed to have yearnings beyond even the circle of home and friends. She longed for the sorrowful and the afflicted; she would go down to the forgotten and the oppressed, and made herself the companion of the Doctor’s secret walks and explorings among the poor victims of the slave-ships, and entered with zeal as teacher among his African catechumens.
Nothing but the limits of bodily strength could check herzeal to do and suffer for others,—a river of love had suddenly been checked in her heart, and it needed all these channels to drain off the waters that otherwise must have drowned her in the suffocating agonies of repression.
Sometimes, indeed, there would be a returning thrill of the old wound, one of those overpowering moments when some turn in life brings back anew a great anguish. She would find unexpectedly in a book a mark that he had placed there, or a turn in conversation would bring back a tone of his voice, or she would see on some thoughtless young head, curls just like those which were swaying to and fro down among the wavering seaweeds, and then her heart gave one great throb of pain, and turned for relief to some immediate act of love to some living being. They who saw her in one of these moments, felt a surging of her heart towards them, a moisture of the eye, a sense of some inexpressible yearning, and knew not from what pain that love was wrung, and what poor heart was seeking to still its own throbbings in blessing them.
By what name shall we call this beautiful twilight, this night of the soul, so starry with heavenly mysteries,nothappiness, but blessedness? They who have it, walk among men as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.
The Doctor, as we have seen, had always that reverential spirit towards women which accompanies a healthy and great nature; but in the constant converse which he now held with a beautiful being, from whom every particle of selfish feeling or mortal weakness seemed sublimed, he appeared to yield his soul up to her leading, with a wondering humility, as to some fair miraculous messenger of heaven. All questions of internal experience, all delicate shadings of the spiritual history, with which his pastoral communings in his flock made him conversant, he brought to her to be resolved with the purest simplicity of trust.
‘She is one of the Lord’s rarities,’ he said one day to Mrs. Scudder, ‘and I find it difficult to maintain the bonds of Christian faithfulness in talking with her. It is a charm of the Lord’s hidden ones that they know not their own beauty;and God forbid that I should tempt a creature made so perfect by divine grace, to self-exultation, or lay my hand, unadvisedly, as Uzzah did, upon the ark of God, by my inconsiderate praises.’
‘Well, Doctor,’ said Miss Prissy, who sat in the corner sewing on the dove-coloured silk, ‘I do wish you could come into one of our meetings and hear those blessed prayers. I don’t think you nor anybody else ever heard anything like ’em.’
‘I would, indeed, that I might with propriety enjoy the privilege,’ said the Doctor.
‘Well, I’ll tell you what’ said Miss Prissy, ‘next week they’re going to meet here, and I’ll leave the door just ajar, and you can hear every word, just by standing in the entry.’
‘Thank you, madam,’ said the Doctor, ‘it would certainly be a blessed privilege, but I cannot persuade myself that such an act would be consistent with Christian propriety.’
‘Ah, now do hear that good man,’ said Miss Prissy, after he had left the room; ‘if he ha’n’t got the making of a real gentleman in him as well as a real Christian, though I always did say, for my part, that a real Christian will be a gentleman. But I don’t believe all the temptations in the world could stir that blessed man one jot or grain to do the least thing that he thinks is wrong or out of the way. Well, I must say, I never saw such a good man; he is the only man I ever saw good enough for our Mary.’
Another spring came round, and brought its roses, and the apple-trees blossomed for the third time since the commencement of our story; and the robins had repaired the old nest, and began to lay their blue eggs in it; and Mary still walked her calm course, as a sanctified priestess of the great worship of sorrow. Many were the hearts now dependent on her, the spiritual histories, the thread of which were held in her loving hand,—many the souls burdened with sins, or oppressed with sorrow, who found in her bosom at once confessional and sanctuary.
So many sought her prayers, that her hours of intercessionwere full, and needed to be lengthened often to embrace all for whom she would plead. United to the good Doctor by a constant friendship and fellowship, she had gradually grown accustomed to the more and more intimate manner in which he regarded her, which had risen from a ‘simple dear child and dear Mary,’ to ‘dear friend,’ and at last ‘dearest of all friends,’ which he frequently called her, and encouraged by the calm, confiding sweetness of those still, blue eyes and that gentle smile which came without one varying flutter of the pulse or the rising of the slightest flush on the marble cheek.
One day a letter was brought in, post-marked ‘Philadelphia.’ It was from Madame de Frontignac; it was in French, and ran as follows:—
‘My dear little white Rose:—‘I am longing to see you once more, and before long I shall be in Newport. Dear little Mary, I am sad, very sad; the days seem all of them too long; and every morning I look out of my window and wonder why I was born. I am not so happy as I used to be, when I cared for nothing but to sing and smooth my feathers like the birds. That is the best kind of life for us women; if we love anything better than our clothes, it is sure to bring us great sorrow. For all that, I can’t help thinking it is very noble and beautiful to love,—love is very beautiful, but very, very sad. My poor dear little white cat, I should like to hold you a little while to my heart,—it is so cold all the time, and aches so, I wish I were dead; but then I am not good enough to die. The Abbé says, we must offer up our sorrow to God, as a satisfaction for our sins. I have a good deal to offer, because my nature is strong and I can feel a great deal. But I am very selfish, dear little Mary, to think only of myself, when I know how you must suffer. Ah, but you knew he loved you truly, the poor dear boy, that is something. I pray daily for his soul; don’t think it wrong of me, you know it is our religion, we should all do our best for each other.‘Remember me tenderly to Mrs. Marvyn. Poor mother!the bleeding heart of the Mother of God alone can understand such sorrows.‘I am coming in a week or two, and then I have many things to say toma belle rose blanche;till then I kiss her little hands.‘Verginie de Frontignac.’
‘My dear little white Rose:—
‘I am longing to see you once more, and before long I shall be in Newport. Dear little Mary, I am sad, very sad; the days seem all of them too long; and every morning I look out of my window and wonder why I was born. I am not so happy as I used to be, when I cared for nothing but to sing and smooth my feathers like the birds. That is the best kind of life for us women; if we love anything better than our clothes, it is sure to bring us great sorrow. For all that, I can’t help thinking it is very noble and beautiful to love,—love is very beautiful, but very, very sad. My poor dear little white cat, I should like to hold you a little while to my heart,—it is so cold all the time, and aches so, I wish I were dead; but then I am not good enough to die. The Abbé says, we must offer up our sorrow to God, as a satisfaction for our sins. I have a good deal to offer, because my nature is strong and I can feel a great deal. But I am very selfish, dear little Mary, to think only of myself, when I know how you must suffer. Ah, but you knew he loved you truly, the poor dear boy, that is something. I pray daily for his soul; don’t think it wrong of me, you know it is our religion, we should all do our best for each other.
‘Remember me tenderly to Mrs. Marvyn. Poor mother!the bleeding heart of the Mother of God alone can understand such sorrows.
‘I am coming in a week or two, and then I have many things to say toma belle rose blanche;till then I kiss her little hands.
‘Verginie de Frontignac.’
One beautiful afternoon, not long after, a carriage stopped at the cottage, and Madame de Frontignac alighted. Mary was spinning in her garret boudoir, and Mrs. Scudder was at that moment at a little distance from the house, sprinkling some linen, which was laid out to bleach on the green turf of the clothes yard.
Should read Mary and Verginie Page 238. Sampson, Low, Son & Co. Septr. 20th, 1859.Mary & Eugenie
Mary & Eugenie
Madame de Frontignac sent away the carriage, and ran up the stairway, pursuing the sound of Mary’s spinning wheel, mingled with her song; and in a moment, throwing aside the curtain, she seized Mary in her arms, and kissed her on either cheek, laughing and crying both at once.
‘I knew where I should find you,ma blanche;I heard the wheel of my poor little princess, it’s a good while since we spun together,mimi. Ah, Mary darling, little do we know what we spin; life is hard and bitter, isn’t it? Ah, how white your cheeks are, poor child!’
Madame de Frontignac spoke with tears in her own eyes, passing her hand caressingly over the fair cheeks.
‘And you have grown pale, too, dear Madame,’ said Mary, looking up, and struck with the change in the once brilliant face.
‘Have I,petite?I don’t know why not. We women have secret places where our life runs out. At home I wearrouge;that makes all right; but I don’t put it on for you, Mary; you see me just as I am.’
Mary could not but notice the want of that brilliant colour and roundness in the cheek, that made so glowing a picture; the eyes seemed larger and tremulous with a pathetic depth, and around them those bluish circles that speak of languor and pain; yet still, changed as she was, Madame de Frontignac seemed only more strikingly interesting and fascinating than ever. Still she had those thousand pretty movements, thosenameless graces of manner, those wavering shades of expression, that irresistibly enchained the eye and the imagination; true Frenchwoman as she was, always in one rainbow shimmer of fancy, and feeling like one of those cloud-spotted April days, which give you flowers and rain, sun and shadow, and snatches of bird-singing all at once.
‘I have sent away my carriage, Mary, and come to stay with you. You want me,n’est-ce pas?’ she said, coaxingly, with her arms round Mary’s neck; ‘if you don’t,tant pis;for I am the bad penny you English speak of, you cannot get me off.’
‘I am sure, dear friend,’ said Mary, earnestly, ‘we don’t want to put you off.’
‘I know it; you are true, youmeanwhat you say; you are all good real gold, down to your hearts; that is why I love you; but you, my poor Mary, your cheeks are very white; poor little heart, you suffer.’
‘No,’ said Mary; ‘I do not suffer now. Christ has given me the victory over sorrow.’
There was something sadly sublime in the manner in which this was said, and something so sacred in the expression of Mary’s face, that Madame de Frontignac crossed herself, as she had been wont before a shrine; and then said, ‘Sweet Mary, pray for me; I am not at peace; I cannot get the victory over sorrow.’
‘What sorrow can you have?’ said Mary; ‘you, so beautiful, so rich, so admired; whom everybody must love.’
‘That is what I came to tell you; I came to confess to you. But you must sit downthere,’ she said, placing Mary on a low seat in the garret window, ‘and Verginie will sit here,’ she said, drawing a bundle of uncarded wool towards her, and sitting down at Mary’s feet.
‘Dear Madame,’ said Mary, ‘let me get you a better seat.’
‘No, no,mignonne, this is best. I want to lay my head in your lap;’ and she took off her riding-hat with its streaming plume, and tossed it carelessly from her, and laid her head down on Mary’s lap. ‘Now don’t call me Madame any more. Do you know,’ she said, raising her head with a sudden brightening of cheek and eye, ‘do you know that there aretwome’sto this person?—one is Verginie, and the other is Madame de Frontignac. Everybody in Philadelphia knows Madame de Frontignac; she is very gay, very careless, very happy; she never has any serious hours, or any sad thoughts; she wears powder and diamonds, and dances all night, and never prays—that is Madame. But Verginie is quite another thing. She is tired of all this; tired of the balls and the dancing, and the diamonds, and the beaux; and she likes true people, and would like to live very quiet with somebody that she loved. She is very unhappy, and she prays too, sometimes, in a poor little way, like the birds in your nest out there, who don’t know much, but chipper and cry because they are hungry—this is your Verginie—Madame never comes here; never call me Madame.’
‘Dear Verginie,’ said Mary, ‘how I love you!’
‘Do you, Mary—bien sur?you are my good angel. I felt a good impulse from you when I first saw you, and have always been stronger to do right when I got one of your pretty little letters. Oh, Mary, darling! I have been very foolish and very miserable, and sometimes tempted to be very, very bad. Oh, sometimes I thought I would not care for God or anything else—it was very bad of me—but I was like a foolish little fly, caught in a spider’s net before he knows it.’
Mary’s eyes questioned her companion with an expression of eager sympathy, somewhat blended with curiosity.
‘I can’t make you understand me quite,’ said Madame de Frontignac, ‘unless I go back a good many years. You see, dear Mary, my dear angel mamma died when I was very little, and I was sent to be educated at the Sacré Cœur, in Paris. I was very happy and very good in those days—the sisters loved me, and I loved them, and I used to be so pious, and loved God dearly. When I took my first communion, Sister Agatha prepared me. She was a true saint, and is in heaven now; and I remember when I came to her, all dressed like a bride, with my white crown and white veil, that she looked at me so sadly, and said she hoped I would never love anybody better than God, and then I should be happy. I didn’t think much of those words then, but oh, I have since,many times. They used to tell me always that I had a husband who was away in the army, and who would come to marry me when I was seventeen, and that he would give me all sorts of beautiful things, and show me everything I wanted to see in the world, and that I must love and honour him.
‘Well, I was married at last, and Monsieur de Frontignac is a good, brave man, although he seemed to me very old and sober; but he was always kind to me, and gave me nobody knows how many sets of jewelry, and let me do everything I wanted to, and so I liked him very much; but I thought there was no danger I should love him, or anybody else better than God. I didn’tloveanybody in those days, I only liked people, and some people more than others. All the men I saw professed to be lovers, and I liked to lead them about and see what foolish things I could make them do, because it pleased my vanity; but I laughed at the very idea of love.
‘Well, Mary, when we came to Philadelphia I heard everybody speaking of Colonel Burr—and what a fascinating man he was, and I thought it would be a pretty thing to have him in my train—and so I did all I could to charm him. I tried all my little arts—and if it is a sin for us women to do such things, I am sure I have been punished for it. Mary, he was stronger than I was. These men, they are not satisfied with having the whole earth under their feet, and having all the strength and all the glory, but they must even take away our poor little reign—it’s too bad.
‘I can’t tell you how it was. I didn’t know myself, but it seemed to me that he took my very life away from me; and it was all done before I knew it. He called himself my friend—my brother—he offered to teach me English—he read with me, and by-and-by he controlled my whole life. I that used to be so haughty, so proud—I that used to laugh to think how independent I was of everybody. I was entirely under his control, though I tried not to show it. I didn’t well know where I was, for he talked friendship, and I talked friendship; he talked about sympathetic natures that are made for each other, and I thought how beautiful it all was; it was living ina new world. Monsieur de Frontignac was as much charmed with him as I was; he often told me that he was his best friend; that he was his hero—his model man; and I thought, oh Mary, you would wonder to hear me say what I thought! I thought he was a Bayard, a Sully, a Montmorenci; everything grand and noble and good. I loved him with a religion. I would have died for him; I sometimes thought how I might lay down my life to save his, like women I read of in history. I did not know myself. I was astonished I could feel so; and I did not dream that this could be wrong. How could I, when it made me feel more religious than anything in my whole life? Everything in the world seemed to grow sacred. I thought if men could be so good and admirable, life was a holy thing, and not to be trifled with. But our good Abbé is a faithful shepherd, and when I told him these things in confession, he told me I was in great danger—danger of falling into mortal sin. Oh, Mary! it was as if the earth opened under me. He told me, too, that this noble man, this man so dear, was a heretic, and that if he died he would go to dreadful pains. Oh, Mary! I dare not tell you half what he told me; dreadful things that make me shiver when I think of them; and then he said that I must offer myself a sacrifice for him; that if I would put down all this love, and overcome it, that God would perhaps accept it as a satisfaction, and bring him into the true church at last.
‘Then I began to try. Oh, Mary! we never know how we love till we try to unlove; it seemed like taking my heart out of my breast, and separating life from life. How can one do it? I wish any one would tell me. The Abbé said I must do it by prayer; but it seemed to me prayer only made me think the more of him.
‘But at last I had a great shock; everything broke up like a great, grand, noble dream; and I waked out of it just as weak and wretched as one feels when one has overslept. Oh, Mary! I found I was mistaken in him—all, all, wholly!’
Madame de Frontignac laid her forehead on Mary’s knee, and her long chestnut hair drooped down over her face.
‘He was going somewhere with my husband, to explore outin the regions of the Ohio, where he had some splendid schemes of founding a state; and I was all interest; and one day, as they were preparing, Monsieur de Frontignac gave me a quantity of papers to read and arrange, and among them was a part of a letter; I never could imagine how it got there; it was to one of his confidential friends; I read it at first, wondering what it meant, till I came to two or three sentences about me.’ Madame de Frontignac paused a moment; and then said, rising with sudden energy, ‘Mary, that man never loved me; he cannot love; he does not know what love is; what I felt he cannot know; he cannot even dream of it, because he never felt anything like it; such men never know us women; we are as high as heaven above them; it is true enough that my heart was wholly in his power, but why? Because I adored him as something divine, incapable of dishonour, incapable of selfishness, incapable of even a thought that was not perfectly noble and heroic. If he had been all that, I would have been proud to have been even a poor little flower that should exhale away, to give him an hour’s pleasure; I would have offered my whole life to God as a sacrifice for such a glorious soul; and all this time, what was he thinking of me?
‘He wasusingmy feelings to carry his plans; he was admiring me like a picture; he was considering what he should do with me; and were it not for his interests with my husband,hewould have tried his power to make me sacrifice this world and the next to his pleasure. But he does not know me. My mother was a Montmorenci, and I have the blood of her house in my veins; we are princesses; we can give all; but he must be a god that we give it for.’
Mary’s enchanted eye followed the beautiful narrator, as she enacted before her this poetry and tragedy of real life, so much beyond what dramatic art can ever furnish. Her eyes grew splendid in their depths and brilliancy; sometimes they were full of tears, and sometimes they flashed out like lightnings; her whole form seemed to be a plastic vehicle which translated every emotion of her soul; and Mary sat and looked at her with the intense absorption that one gives to the highest and deepest in art or nature.
‘Enfin—que faire?’ she said at last, suddenly stopping, and drooping in every limb. ‘Mary, I have lived on this dream so long—never thought of anything else—now all is gone, and what shall I do? I think,’ she added, pointing to the nest in the tree, ‘Mary, I see my life in many things. My heart was once still and quiet, like the round little eggs that were in your nest,—now it has broken out of its shell, and cries with cold and hunger: I want my dream again,—I wish it all back,—or that my heart could go back into its shell. If I only could drop this year out of my life, and care for nothing, as I used to,—I have tried to do that—I can’t—I cannot get back where I was before.’
‘Wouldyou do it, dear Verginie,’ said Mary; ‘would you if you could?’
‘It was very noble and sweet, all that,’ said Verginie; ‘it gave me higher thoughts than ever I had before. I think my feelings were beautiful,—but now they are like little birds that have no mother—they kill me with their crying.’
‘Dear Verginie, there is a real friend in heaven, who is all you can ask or think,—nobler, better, purer, who cannot change, and cannot die, and who loved you and gave himself for you.’
‘You mean Jesus,’ said Verginie. ‘Ah, I know it; and I say the offices to him daily, but my heart is very wild and starts away from my words. I say, “My God, I give myself to you,”—and after all, I don’t give myself, and I don’t feel comforted. Dear Mary, you must have suffered too—for you loved really—I saw it,—when we feel a thing ourselves we can see very quick the same in others,—and it was a dreadful blow to come so all at once.’
‘Yes it was,’ said Mary; ‘I thought I must die; but Christ has given me peace.’
These words were spoken with that long-breathed sigh with which we always speak of peace,—a sigh that told of storms and sorrows past,—the sighing of the wave that falls spent and broken on the shores of eternal rest. There was a little pause in the conversation, and then Verginie raised her head and spoke in a sprightlier tone.
‘Well, my little fairy cat,—my white doe,—I have come to you. Poor Verginie wants something to hold to her heart; let me have you,’ she said, throwing her arms round Mary.
‘Dear, dear Verginie, indeed you shall,’ said Mary; ‘I will love you dearly, and pray for you. I always have prayed for you ever since the first day I knew you.’
‘I knew it,—I felt your prayers in my heart. Mary, I have many thoughts that I dare not tell to any one, lately,—but I cannot help feeling that some are real Christians who are not in the true Church. You are as true a saint as Saint Catharine; indeed, I always think of you when I think of our dear lady; and yet they say there is no salvation out of the Church.’
This was a new view of the subject to Mary, who had grown up with the familiar idea that the Romish Church was Babylon and anti-Christ, and who had during the conversation been revolving the same surmises with regard to her friend. She turned her grave, blue eyes on Madame de Frontignac, with a somewhat surprised look, which melted into a half-smile. But the latter still went on with a puzzled air, as if trying to talk herself out of some mental perplexity. ‘Now, Burr is a heretic,—and more than that, he is an infidel,—he has no religion in his heart, I saw that often,—it made me tremble for him. It ought to have put me on my guard,—but you, dear Mary, you love Jesus as your life. I think you love Him just as much as sister Agatha, who was a saint. The Abbé says that there is nothing so dangerous as to begin to use our reason in religion,—that if we once begin we never know where it may carry us; but I can’t help using mine a very little. I must think there are some saints that are not in the true Church.’
‘All are one who love Christ,’ said Mary; ‘we are one in Him.’
‘I should not dare to tell the Abbé,’ said Madame de Frontignac; and Mary queried in her heart whether Dr. Hopkins would feel satisfied that she could bring this wanderer to the fold of Christ, without undertaking to batter down the walls of her creed; and yet, there they were, the Catholicand the Puritan, each strong in her respective faith, yet melting together in that embrace of love and sorrow, joined in the great communion of suffering. Mary took up her Testament, and read the fourteenth of John:—
‘Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me; in my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you; I go to prepare a place for you; and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there you may be also.’
Mary read on through the chapter, through the next wonderful prayer; her face grew solemnly transparent, as of an angel; for her soul was lifted from earth by the words, and walked with Christ far above all things, over that starry pavement where each footstep is on a world.
The greatest moral effects are like those of music, not wrought out by sharp-sided intellectual propositions, but melted in by a divine fusion, by words that have mysterious indefinite fulness of meaning, made living by sweet voices, which seem to be the out-throbbings of angelic hearts; so one verse in the Bible read by a mother in some hour of tender prayer has a significance deeper and higher than the most elaborate of sermons, the most acute of arguments.
Verginie Frontignac sat as one divinely enchanted, while that sweet voice read on; and when the silence fell between them she gave a long sigh as we do when sweet music stops. They heard between them the soft stir of summer leaves, the distant songs of birds, the breezy hum when some afternoon wind shivered through many branches, and the silver sea chimed in; Verginie rose at last, and kissed Mary on the forehead. ‘That is a beautiful book,’ she said, ‘and to read it all by one’s self must be lovely; I cannot understand why it should be dangerous; it has not injured you.
‘Sweet saint,’ she added, ‘let me stay with you; you shall read to me every day; do you know I came here to get you to take me; I want you to show me how to find peace where you do; will you let me be your sister?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Mary, with a cheek brighter than it hadbeen for many a day; her heart feeling a throb of more real human pleasure than for long months.
‘Will you get your mamma to let me stay?’ said Verginie, with the bashfulness of a child; ‘haven’t you a little place like yours, with white curtains, and sanded floor, to give to poor little Verginie to learn to be good in?’
‘Why, do you really want to stay here with us,’ said Mary, ‘in this little house?’
‘Do I really?’ said Virginie, mimicking her voice with a start of her old playfulness; ‘don’tI really? Come now,mimi, coax the good mamma for me, tell her I shall try to be very good. I shall help you with the spinning; you know I spin beautifully,—and I shall make butter, and milk the cow, and set the tables. Oh, I will be so useful, you can’t spare me!’
‘I should love to have you dearly,’ said Mary, warmly; ‘but you would soon be dull for want of society here.’
‘Quelle idée! ma petite drole,’ said the lady, who with the mobility of her nation had already recovered some of the saucy mocking grace that was habitual to her, as she began teasing Mary with a thousand little childish motions. ‘Indeed,mimi, you must keep me hid up here, or may be the wolf will find me and eat me up; who knows?’ Mary looked at her with inquiring eyes.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, Mary,—I mean that whenhecomes back to Philadelphia he thinks he will find me there; he thought I should stay while my husband was gone; and when he finds I am gone he may come to Newport; and I never want to see him again without you; you must let me stay with you.’
‘Have you told him,’ said Mary, ‘what you think?’
‘I wrote to him, Mary, but oh, I can’t trust my heart! I want so much to believe him; it kills me so to think evil of him that it will never do for me to see him. If he looks at me with those eyes of his I am all gone; I shall believe anything he tells me; he will draw me to him as a great magnet draws a poor little grain of steel.’
‘But now you know his unworthiness, his baseness,’ said Mary, ‘I should think it would break all his power.’
‘Shouldyou think so? Ah, Mary, we cannot unlove in a minute; love is a great while dying. I do not worship him now as I did. I know what he is. I know he is bad, and I am sorry for it. I would like to cover it from all the world, even from you, Mary, since I see it makes you dislike him; it hurts me to hear any one else blame him; but sometimes I do so long to think I am mistaken, that I know if I should see him I should catch at anything he might tell me, as a drowning man at straws; I should shut my eyes and think after all that it was all my fault, and ask a thousand pardons for all the evil he has done. No. Mary, you must keep your blue eyes upon me, or I shall be gone.’
At this moment Mrs. Scudder’s voice was heard, calling Mary below.
‘Go down now, darling, and tell mamma; make a good little talk to her,ma reine;ah, you are queen here; all do as you say, even the good priest there; you have a little hand, but it leads all; so go,petite.’
Mrs. Scudder was somewhat flurried and discomposed at the proposition; there were theprosand theconsin her nature, such as we all have.
In the first place, Madame de Frontignac belonged to high society, and that waspro;for Mrs. Scudder prayed daily against worldly vanities, because she felt a little traitor in her heart that was ready to open its door to them if not constantly talked down. In the second place, Madame de Frontignac was French, there was acon;for Mrs. Scudder had enough of her father John Bull in her heart to have a very wary look-out on anything French. But then, in the third place, she was out of health and unhappy, and there was aproagain; for Mrs. Scudder was as kind and motherly a soul as ever breathed. But then she was a Catholic,con. But the Doctor and Mary might convert her,pro. And then Mary wanted her,pro. And she was a pretty, bewitching, loveable creature,pro. Theproshad it; and it was agreed that Madame de Frontignac should be installed as proprietress of the spare chamber, and she sat down to the tea-table that evening in the great kitchen.
Thedomesticating of Madame de Frontignac as an inmate of the cottage, added a new element of vivacity to that still and unvaried life. One of the most beautiful traits of French nature is that fine gift of appreciation, which seizes at once the picturesque side of every condition of life, and finds in its own varied storehouse something to assort with it. As compared with the Anglo-Saxon, the French appear to be gifted with anaïvechildhood of nature, and to have the power that children have of gilding every scene of life with some of their own poetic fancies.
Madame de Frontignac was in raptures with the sanded floor of her little room, which commanded, through the apple-boughs, a little morsel of a sea-view. She could fancy it was a nymph’s cave, she said.
‘Yes,maMarie, I will play Calypso, and you shall play Telemachus, and Dr. Hopkins shall be Mentor. Mentor was so very, very good, only a little bit—dull,’ she said, pronouncing the last word with a wicked accent, and lifting her hands with a whimsical gesture like a naughty child who expects a correction.
Mary could not but laugh; and as she laughed more colour rose in her waxen cheeks than for many days before.
Madame de Frontignac looked triumphant as a child who has made its mother laugh, and went on laying things out of her trunk into her drawers with a zeal that was quite amusing to see.
‘You see,ma blanche, I have left allMadame’sclothes at Philadelphia, and brought only those that belong to Verginie,—notromperie, no feathers, no gauzes, no diamonds, only whitedresses and my straw haten bergère. I brought one string of pearls that was my mother’s; but pearls, you know, belong to the sea-nymphs. I will trim my hat with sea-weed and buttercups together, and we will go out on the beach to-night and get some gold and silver shells to dressma miroir.’
‘Oh, I have ever so many now,’ said Mary, running into her room, and coming back with a little bag. They both sat on the bed together, and began pouring them out, Madame de Frontignac showering childish exclamations of delight.
Suddenly Mary put her hand to her heart as if she had been struck with something; and Madame de Frontignac heard her say, in a low voice of sudden pain, ‘Oh, dear!’
‘What is it, mimi?’ she said, looking up quickly.
‘Nothing,’ said Mary, turning her head. Madame de Frontignac looked down, and saw among the sea-treasures a necklace of Venetian shells that she knew never grew on the shores of Newport. She held it up.
‘Ah, I see,’ she said. ‘He gave you this. Ah,ma pauvrette,’ she said, clasping Mary in her arms, ‘thy sorrow meets thee everywhere. May I be a comfort to thee, just a little one.’
‘Dear, dear friend,’ said Mary, weeping. ‘I know not how it is. Sometimes I think this sorrow is all gone; but then, for a moment, it comes back again. But I am at peace; it is all right, all right; I would not have it otherwise. But oh, if he could have spoken one word to me before! He gave me this,’ she added, ‘when he came home from his first voyage to the Mediterranean. I did not know it was in this bag. I had looked for it everywhere.’
‘Sister Agatha would have told you to make a rosary of it,’ said Madame de Frontignac; ‘but you pray without a rosary. It is all one,’ she added; ‘there will be a prayer for every shell, though you do not count them. But come,ma chère, get your bonnet, and let us go out on the beach.’
That evening, before retiring, Mrs. Scudder came into Mary’s room. Her manner was grave and tender, her eyes had tears in them; and although her usual habits were notcaressing, she came to Mary and put her arms around and kissed her. It was an unusual manner, and Mary’s gentle eyes seemed to ask the reason of it.
‘My daughter,’ said her mother, ‘I have just had a long and very interesting talk with our dear good friend, the Doctor; ah, Mary, very few people know how good he is.’
‘True, mother,’ said Mary, warmly; ‘he is the best, the noblest, and yet the humblest man in the world.’
‘You love him very much, do you not?’ said her mother.
‘Very dearly,’ said Mary.
‘Mary, he has asked me this evening if you would be willing to be his wife.’
‘Hiswife, mother?’ said Mary in the tone of one confused with a new and strange thought.
‘Yes, daughter; I have long seen that he was preparing to make you this proposal.’
‘You have, mother?’
‘Yes, daughter; have you never thought of it?’
‘Never, mother.’
There was a long pause, Mary standing just as she had been interrupted in her night toilette, with her long, light hair streaming down over her white dress, and the comb held mechanically in her hand. She sat down after a moment, and clasping both hands over her knees, fixed her eyes intently on the floor; and there fell between the two a silence so intense, that the tickings of the clock in the next room seemed to knock upon the door. Mrs. Scudder sat with anxious eyes watching that silent face, pale as sculptured marble.
‘Well, Mary,’ she said at last.
A deep sigh was the only answer. The violent throbbings of her heart could be seen undulating the long hair as the moaning sea tosses the rockweed.
‘My daughter!’ again said Mrs. Scudder.
Mary gave a great sigh, like that of a sleeper awakening from a dream, and looking on her mother, said: ‘Do you suppose he reallylovesme, mother?’
‘Indeed he does, Mary, as much as man ever loved woman.’
‘Does he indeed?’ said Mary, relapsing into thoughtfulness.
‘And you love him, do you not?’ said her mother.
‘Oh yes, I love him!’
‘You love him better than any man in the world, don’t you?’
‘Oh, mother, mother! yes!’ said Mary, throwing herself passionately forward, and bursting into sobs; ‘yes, there is no one else now that I love better,—no one,—no one!’
‘My darling, my daughter!’ said Mrs. Scudder, coming and taking her in her arms.
‘Oh, mother, mother!’ she said, sobbing distressfully, ‘let me cry, just for a little,—oh, mother, mother, mother!’
What was there hidden under that despairing wail?—it was the parting of the last strand of the cord of youthful hope.
Mrs. Scudder soothed and caressed her daughter, but maintained still in her breast a tender pertinacity of purpose, such as mothers will, who think they are conducting a child through some natural sorrow into a happier state.
Mary was not one either to yield long to emotion of any kind. Her rigid education had taught her to look upon all such outbursts as a species of weakness, and she struggled for composure, and soon seemed entirely calm.
‘If he really loves me, mother, it would give him great pain if I refuse,’ said Mary, thoughtfully.
‘Certainly it would; and, Mary, you have allowed him to act as a very near friend for a long time; and it is quite natural that he should have hopes that you loved him.’
‘I do love him, mother,—better than anybody in the world except you. Do you think that will do?’
‘Will do?’ said her mother; ‘I don’t understand you.’
‘Why, is that loving enough to marry? I shall love him more perhaps after, shall I, mother?’
‘Certainly you will; every one does.’
‘I wish he did not want to marry me, mother,’ said Mary, after a pause. ‘I liked it a great deal better as we were before.’
‘All girls feel so, Mary, at first; it is very natural.’
‘Is that the way you felt about father, mother?’
Mrs. Scudder’s heart smote her when she thought of her own early love,—that great love that asked no questions; that had no doubts, no fears, no hesitations; nothing but one great, outsweeping impulse, which swallowed her life in that of another. She was silent; and after a moment, she said, ‘I was of a different disposition from you, Mary. I was of a strong, wilful, positive nature. I either liked or disliked with all my might; and besides, Mary, there never was a man like your father.’
The matron uttered this first article in the great confession of woman’s faith with the most unconscious simplicity.
‘Well, mother, I will do whatever is my duty. I want to be guided. If I can make that good man happy, and help him to do some good in the world,—After all, life is short, and the great thing is to do for others.’
‘I am sure, Mary, if you could have heard how he spoke, you would be sure you could make him happy. He had not spoken before, because he felt so unworthy of such a blessing: he said I was to tell you that he should love and honour you all the same, whether you could feel to be his wife or not; but that nothing this side of heaven would be so blessed a gift; that it would make up for every trial that could possibly come upon him,—and you know, Mary, he has a great many discouragements and trials;—people don’t appreciate him; his efforts to do good are misunderstood, and misconstrued; they look down on him, and despise him, and tell all sorts of evil things about him; and sometimes he gets quite discouraged.’
‘Yes, mother, I will marry him,’ said Mary. ‘Yes, I will.’
‘My darling daughter,’ said Mrs. Scudder, ‘this has been the hope of my life.’
‘Has it, mother?’ said Mary, with a faint smile; ‘I shall make you happier then?’
‘Yes, dear, you will; and think what a prospect of usefulnessopens before you; you can take a position as his wife which will enable you to do even more good than you do now; and you will have the happiness of seeing every day how much you comfort the hearts and encourage the hands of God’s dear people.’
‘Mother, I ought to be very glad I can do it,’ said Mary; ‘and I trust I am. God orders all things for the best.’
‘Well, my child, sleep to-night, and to-morrow we will talk more about it.’
Mrs. Scudderkissed her daughter, and left her. After a moment’s thought, Mary gathered the long silky folds of hair around her head, and knotted them for the night. Then leaning forward on her toilet-table, she folded her hands together, and stood regarding the reflection of herself in the mirror.
Nothing is capable of more ghostly effect than such a silent, lonely contemplation of that mysterious image of ourselves which seems to look out of an infinite depth in the mirror, as if it were our own soul beckoning to us visibly from unknown regions. Those eyes look into our own with an expression sometimes vaguely sad and inquiring. The face wears weird and tremulous lights and shadows; it asks us mysterious questions, and troubles us with the suggestions of our relations to some dim unknown. The sad, blue eyes that gazed into Mary’s had that look of calm initiation, of melancholy comprehension, peculiar to eyes made clairvoyant by ‘great and critical’ sorrow. They seemed to say to her, ‘Fulfil thy mission; life is made for sacrifice; the flower must fall before fruit can perfect itself.’ A vague shuddering of mystery gave intensity to her reverie. It seemed as if those mirror depths were another world; she heard the far-off dashing of sea-green waves; she felt a yearning impulse towards that dear soul gone out into the infinite unknown.
Her word just passed had in her eyes all the sacred force of the most solemnly-attested vow; and she felt as if that vow had shut some before open door between her and him; and she had a kind of shadowy sense of a throbbing and yearning nature that seemed to call on her,—that seemedsurging towards her with an imperative, protesting force that shook her heart to its depths.
Perhaps it is so, that souls once intimately related have ever after this strange power of affecting each other,—a power that neither absence nor death can annul. How else can we interpret these mysterious hours, in which the power of departed love seems to overshadow us, making our souls vital with such longings, with such wild throbbings, with such unutterable sighings, that a little more might burst the mortal band? Is it not deep calling unto deep? the free soul singing outside the cage to her mate, beating against the bars within?
Mary even for a moment fancied that a voice called her name, and started, shivering. Then the habits of her positive and sensible education returned at once, and she came out of her reverie as one breaks from a dream, and lifted all these sad thoughts with one heavy sigh from her breast; and opening her Bible, she read: ‘They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion that cannot be moved. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is about His people from this time henceforth and for evermore.’
Then she kneeled by her bedside, and offered her whole life a sacrifice to the loving God who had offered His life a sacrifice for her. She prayed for grace to be true to her promise—to be faithful to the new relation she had accepted. She prayed that all vain regrets for the past might be taken away, and that her soul might vibrate without discord in unison with the will of Eternal Love. So praying, she rose calm, and with that clearness of spirit which follows an act of uttermost self-sacrifice; and so calmly she lay down and slept, with her two hands crossed upon her breast, her head slightly turned on the pillow, her cheek pale as marble, and her long dark lashes lying drooping, with a sweet expression, as if under that mystic veil of sleep the soul were seeing things forbidden to the waking eye. Only the gentlest heaving of the quiet breast told that the heavenly spirit within had not gone where it was hourly aspiring to go.
Meanwhile Mrs. Scudder had left Mary’s room, and enteredthe Doctor’s study, holding a candle in her hand. The good man was sitting alone in the dark, with his head bowed upon his Bible. When Mrs. Scudder entered, he rose and regarded her wistfully, but did not speak. He had something just then in his heart for which he had no words; so he only looked as a man does who hopes and fears for the answer of a decided question.
Mrs. Scudder felt some of the natural reserve which becomes a matron coming charged with a gift in which lies the whole sacredness of her own existence, and which she puts from her hands with a jealous reverence.
She therefore measured the man with her woman’s and mother’s eye, and said, with a little stateliness,—
‘My dear sir, I come to tell you the result of my conversation with Mary.’
She made a little pause, and the Doctor stood before her as humbly as if he had not weighed and measured the universe; because he knew that though he might weigh the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance, yet it was a far subtler power which must possess him of one small woman’s heart. In fact, he felt to himself like a great awkward, clumsy, mountainous earthite asking of a white-robed angel to help him up a ladder of cloud. He was perfectly sure for the moment that he was going to be refused, and he looked humbly firm—he would take it like a man. His large blue eyes, generally so misty in their calm, had a resolute clearness, rather mournful than otherwise. Of course no such celestial experience was going to happen to him.
He cleared his throat and said,—
‘Well, Madam?’
Mrs. Scudder’s womanly dignity was appeased; she reached out her hand cheerfully, and said,—
‘She has accepted.’
The Doctor drew his hand suddenly away, turned quickly round, and walked to the window, although, as it was ten o’clock at night and quite dark, there was evidently nothing to be seen there. He stood there quietly, swallowing very hard, and raising his handkerchief several times to his eyes.There was enough went on under the black coat just then to make quite a little figure in a romance if it had been uttered; but he belonged to a class wholivedromance, but never spoke it. In a few moments he returned to Mrs. Scudder and said,—
‘I trust, dear madam, that this very dear friend may never have reason to think me ungrateful for her wonderful goodness; and whatever sins my evil heart may lead me into, IhopeI may never fall so low as to forget the undeserved mercy of this hour. If ever I shrink from duty or murmur at trials, while so sweet a friend is mine, I shall be vile indeed.’
The Doctor, in general, viewed himself on the discouraging side, and had berated and snubbed himself all his life as a most flagitious and evil-disposed individual—a person to be narrowly watched, and capable of breaking at any moment into the most flagrant iniquity; and therefore it was that he received his good fortune in so different a spirit from many of the Lords of Creation in similar circumstances.
‘I am sensible,’ he added, ‘that a poor minister, without much power of eloquence, and commissioned of the Lord to speak unpopular truths, and whose worldly condition, in consequence, is never likely to be very prosperous, that such a one could scarcely be deemed a suitable partner for so very beautiful a young woman, who might expect proposals, in a temporal point of view, of a much more advantageous nature; and I am therefore the more struck and overpowered with this blessed result.’
These last words caught in the Doctor’s throat, as if he were overpowered in very deed.
‘In regard toherhappiness,’ said the Doctor, with a touch of awe in his voice, ‘I would not have presumed to become the guardian of it, were it not that I am persuaded it is assured by a Higher Power; for when He giveth peace, who then can make trouble? (Job xxxv. 29.) But I trust I may say no effort on my part shall be wanting to secure it.’
Mrs. Scudder was a mother, and come to that spot in life where mothers always feel tears rising behind their smiles. She pressed the Doctor’s hand, silently, and they parted for the night.
We know not how we can acquit ourselves to our friends of the great world for the details of such an unfashionable courtship, so well as by giving them, before they retire for the night, a dip into a more modish view of things.
The Doctor was evidently green; green in his faith, green in his simplicity, green in his general belief of the divine in woman, green in his particular, humble faith in one small Puritan maiden, whom a knowing fellow might at least have manœuvred so skilfully as to break up her saintly superiority, discompose her, rout her ideas, and lead her up and down a swamp of hopes and fears and conjectures, till she was wholly bewildered and ready to take him at last—if he made up his mind to have her at all—as a great bargain for which she was to be sensibly grateful.
Yes, the Doctor was green,immortallygreen, as a cedar of Lebanon which, waving its broad archangel wings over some fast-rooted eternal old solitude, and seeing from its sublime height the vastness of the universe, veils its kingly head with humility before God’s infinite majesty.
He has gone to bed now, simple old soul, first apologizing to Mrs. Scudder for having kept her up to so dissipated and unparalleled an hour as ten o’clock on his personal matters.
Meanwhile our Asmodeus will transport us to an easily furnished apartment in one of the most fashionable hotels of Philadelphia, where Col. Aaron Burr, just returned from his trip to the then aboriginal wilds of Ohio, is seated before a table covered with maps, letters, books, and papers. His keen eye runs over the addresses of the letters, and he eagerly seizes one from Madame de Frontignac, and reads it; and as no one but ourselves is looking at him now his face has no need to wear its habitual mask. First comes an expression of profound astonishment; then of chagrin and mortification; then of deepening concern; there were stops where the dark eyelashes flashed together as if to brush a tear out of the view of the keen-sighted eyes; and then a red flush rose even to his forehead, and his delicate lips wore a sarcastic smile. He laid down the letter and made one or two turns through the room.
The man had felt the dashing against his own of a strong,generous, indignant woman’s heart fully awakened, and speaking with that impassioned vigour with which a French regiment charges in battle. There were those picturesque, winged words, those condensed expressions, those subtle piercings of meaning, and above all, that simple pathos for which the French tongue has no superior; and for the moment the woman had the victory; she shook his heart. But Burr resembled the marvel with which chemists amuse themselves. His heart was a vase filled with boiling passions, while hiswill, a still, cold, unmelted lump of ice, lay at the bottom.
Self-denial is not peculiar to Christians. They who go downward often put forth as much force to kill a noble nature as another does to annihilate a sinful one. There was something in this letter so keen, so searching, so self-revealing, that it brought on one of those interior crises in which a man is convulsed with the struggle of two natures—the godlike and the demoniac, and from which he must pass out more wholly to the dominion of the one or the other.
Nobody knew the true better than Burr. Heknewthe god-like and the pure, he hadfeltits beauty and its force to the very depths of his being, as the demoniac knew at once the fair man of Nazareth; and even now he felt the voice within that said, ‘What have I to do with thee?’ and the rending of a struggle of heavenly life with fast-coming eternal death.
That letter had told him what he might be, and what he was. It was as if his dead mother’s hand had held up before him a glass in which he saw himself, white robed and crowned, and so dazzling in purity that he loathed his present self.
As he walked up and down the room perturbed, he sometimes wiped tears from his eyes, and then set his teeth, and compressed his lips. At last his face grew calm and settled in its expression, his mouth wore a sardonic smile; he came and took the letter, and folding it leisurely, laid it on the table, and put a heavy paper weight over it, as if to hold it down and bury it. Then drawing to himself some maps of new territories, he set himself vigorously to some columns of arithmetical calculations on the margin; and thus he worked for an hour or two till his mind was as dry, and his pulse ascalm as a machine; then he drew the inkstand towards him, and scribbled hastily the following letter to his most confidential associate—a letter which told no more of the conflict that preceded it, than do the dry sands and civil gossip of the sea-waves to-day of the storm and wreck of last week.
‘Dear——.Nous voilàonce more in Philadelphia. Our schemes in Ohio prosper. Frontignac remains there to superintend. He answers our purposepassablement. On the whole I don’t see as we could do better than retain him; he is, beside, a gentlemanly, agreeable person, and wholly devoted to me—a point certainly not to be overlooked.‘As to your railleries about the fair Madame, I must say, in justice both to her and myself, that any grace with which she has been pleased to honour me is not to be misconstrued. You are not to imagine any but the most Platonic of “liaisons.” She is as high strung as an Arabian steed; proud,—heroic, romantic, andFrench!and such must be permitted to take their own time and way, which we in ourgaucheriecan only humbly wonder at. I have ever professed myself her abject slave, ready to follow any whim, and obeying the slightest signal of the jewelled hand. As that is her sacred pleasure, I have been inhabiting the most abstract realms of heroic sentiment, living on the most diluted moonshine, and spinning out elaborately all those charming and seraphic distinctions between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee with which these ecstatic creatures delight themselves in certain stages of “affaires du cœur.”‘The last development on the part of my goddess is a fit of celestial anger, of the cause of which I am in the most innocent ignorance. She writes me three pages of French sublimities, writing as only a French woman can, bids me an eternal adieu, and informs me she is going to Newport.‘Of course the affair becomes stimulating. I am not to presume to dispute her sentence, or doubt a lady’s perfect sincerity in wishing never to see me again; but yet I think I shall try to pacify the“tantas in animis celestibus iras.”If a woman hates you it is only her love turned wrong side out, and you may turn it back with due care. The pretty creatures know how becoming agrandepassion is, and take care to keep themselves in mind; a quarrel serves their turn when all else fails.‘To another point. I wish you to advertise S——, that his insinuations in regard to me, in the Aurora, have been observed, and that I require that they be promptly retracted. He knows me well enough to attend to this hint. I am in earnest when I speak; if the word does nothing, the blow will come, and if I strike once no second blow will be needed; yet I do not wish to get him on my hands needlessly; a duel and a love affair and hot weather, coming on together, might prove too much even for me. N.B. Thermometer stands at 85. I am resolved on Newport next week.‘Yours ever,‘Burr.‘P.S. I forgot to say that, oddly enough, my goddess has gone and placed herself under the wing of the pretty Puritan I saw in Newport. Fancy themelange;could anything be more piquant?—that cart-load of goodness, the old Doctor,—that sweet little saint and Madame Faubourg St. Germain shaken up together!—fancy her listening with well-bred astonishment to a critique on the doings of the unregenerate, or flirting that little jewelled fan of hers in Mrs. Scudder’s square pew of a Sunday. Probably they will carry her to the weekly prayer-meeting, which of course she will find some fine French subtlety for admiring, and “trouve ravissante.” I fancy I see it.’
‘Dear——.Nous voilàonce more in Philadelphia. Our schemes in Ohio prosper. Frontignac remains there to superintend. He answers our purposepassablement. On the whole I don’t see as we could do better than retain him; he is, beside, a gentlemanly, agreeable person, and wholly devoted to me—a point certainly not to be overlooked.
‘As to your railleries about the fair Madame, I must say, in justice both to her and myself, that any grace with which she has been pleased to honour me is not to be misconstrued. You are not to imagine any but the most Platonic of “liaisons.” She is as high strung as an Arabian steed; proud,—heroic, romantic, andFrench!and such must be permitted to take their own time and way, which we in ourgaucheriecan only humbly wonder at. I have ever professed myself her abject slave, ready to follow any whim, and obeying the slightest signal of the jewelled hand. As that is her sacred pleasure, I have been inhabiting the most abstract realms of heroic sentiment, living on the most diluted moonshine, and spinning out elaborately all those charming and seraphic distinctions between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee with which these ecstatic creatures delight themselves in certain stages of “affaires du cœur.”
‘The last development on the part of my goddess is a fit of celestial anger, of the cause of which I am in the most innocent ignorance. She writes me three pages of French sublimities, writing as only a French woman can, bids me an eternal adieu, and informs me she is going to Newport.
‘Of course the affair becomes stimulating. I am not to presume to dispute her sentence, or doubt a lady’s perfect sincerity in wishing never to see me again; but yet I think I shall try to pacify the
“tantas in animis celestibus iras.”
If a woman hates you it is only her love turned wrong side out, and you may turn it back with due care. The pretty creatures know how becoming agrandepassion is, and take care to keep themselves in mind; a quarrel serves their turn when all else fails.
‘To another point. I wish you to advertise S——, that his insinuations in regard to me, in the Aurora, have been observed, and that I require that they be promptly retracted. He knows me well enough to attend to this hint. I am in earnest when I speak; if the word does nothing, the blow will come, and if I strike once no second blow will be needed; yet I do not wish to get him on my hands needlessly; a duel and a love affair and hot weather, coming on together, might prove too much even for me. N.B. Thermometer stands at 85. I am resolved on Newport next week.
‘Yours ever,‘Burr.
‘P.S. I forgot to say that, oddly enough, my goddess has gone and placed herself under the wing of the pretty Puritan I saw in Newport. Fancy themelange;could anything be more piquant?—that cart-load of goodness, the old Doctor,—that sweet little saint and Madame Faubourg St. Germain shaken up together!—fancy her listening with well-bred astonishment to a critique on the doings of the unregenerate, or flirting that little jewelled fan of hers in Mrs. Scudder’s square pew of a Sunday. Probably they will carry her to the weekly prayer-meeting, which of course she will find some fine French subtlety for admiring, and “trouve ravissante.” I fancy I see it.’
When Burr had finished this letter, he had actually written himself into a sort of persuasion of its truth. When a finely-constituted nature wishes to go into baseness, it has first to bribe itself. Evil is never embraced undisguised as evil, but under some fiction which the mind accepts, and with which it has the singular power of blinding itself in the face of daylight. The power of imposing on one’s self is an essential preliminary to imposing on others. The man first argues himself down,and then he is ready to put the whole weight of his nature to deceiving others. This letter ran so smoothly, so plausibly, that it produced on the writer of it the effect of a work of fiction, which weknowto be unreal, butfeelto be true. Long habits of this kind of self-delusion in time produce a paralysis in the vital nerves of truth, so that one becomes habitually unable to see things in their verity, and realizes the awful words of scripture, ‘He feedeth on ashes; a deceived heart hath turned him aside, so that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, is there not a lie in my right hand?’