Maryrevolved the affairs of her friend in her mind during the night. The intensity of the mental crisis through which she herself had just passed, had developed her in many inward respects, so that she looked upon life no longer as a timid girl, but as a strong, experienced woman. She had thought, and suffered, and held converse with eternal realities, until thousands of mere earthly hesitations and timidities, that often restrain a young and untried nature, had entirely lost their hold upon her. Besides, Mary had at heart the Puritan seed of heroism,—never absent from the souls of true New England women. Her essentially Hebrew education, trained in daily converse with the words of prophets and seers, and with the modes of thought of a grave and heroic people, predisposed her to a kind of exaltation which, in times of great trial, might rise to the heights of the religious sublime, in which the impulse of self-devotion and protection took a form essentially commanding. The very intensity of the repression under which her faculties developed seemed as it were to produce a surplus of hidden strength, which came out in exigencies. Her reading, though restricted to few volumes, had been of the kind that vitalized and stimulated a poetic nature, and laid up in its chambers vigorous words and trenchant phrases, for the use of an excited feeling—so that eloquence came to her as a native gift. She realized, in short, in her higher hours, the last touch with which Milton finishes his portrait of an ideal woman:—
‘Greatness of mind and nobleness, their seatBuild in her loftiest, and create an aweAbout her as a guard angelic placed.’
‘Greatness of mind and nobleness, their seatBuild in her loftiest, and create an aweAbout her as a guard angelic placed.’
‘Greatness of mind and nobleness, their seatBuild in her loftiest, and create an aweAbout her as a guard angelic placed.’
‘Greatness of mind and nobleness, their seat
Build in her loftiest, and create an awe
About her as a guard angelic placed.’
The next morning, Colonel Burr called at the cottage. Mary was spinning in the garret, and Madame de Frontignac was reeling yarn, when Mrs. Scudder brought this announcement.
‘Mother,’ said Mary, ‘I wish to see Mr. Burr alone; Madame de Frontignac will not go down.’
Mrs. Scudder looked surprised, but asked no questions. When she was gone down, Mary stood a moment reflecting; Madame de Frontignac looked eager and agitated. ‘Remember and notice all he says, and just how he looks, Mary, so as to tell me; and be sure and say that “I thank him for his kindness yesterday;” we must own he appeared very well there; did he not?’
‘Certainly,’ said Mary; ‘but no man could have done less.’
‘Ah! but Mary, not every man could have done it as he did; now don’t be too hard on him, Mary; I have said dreadful things to him; I am afraid I have been too severe. After all, these distinguished men are so tempted; we don’t know how much they are tempted; and who can wonder that they are a little spoiled; so, my angel, you must be merciful.’
‘Merciful!’ said Mary, kissing the pale cheek and feeling the cold little hands that trembled in hers.
‘So you will go down in your little spinning toilette, mamie;I fancy you look as Joan of Arc did when she was keeping her sheep at Doremi. Go, and God bless thee!’ and Madame de Frontignac pushed her playfully forward.
Mary entered the room where Burr was seated, and wished him good morning, in a serious and placid manner, in which there was not the slightest trace of embarrassment or discomposure.
‘Shall I have the pleasure of seeing your fair companion this morning?’ said Burr, after some moments of indifferent conversation.
‘No, sir; Madame de Frontignac desires me to excuse her to you.’
‘Is she ill?’ said Burr, with a look of concern.
‘No, Mr. Burr, she prefers not to see you.’ Burr gave a start of well-bred surprise; and Mary added:—
‘Madame de Frontignac has made me familiar with the history of your acquaintance with her; and you will therefore understand what I mean, Mr. Burr, when I say that, during the time of her stay with us, we would prefer not to receive calls from you.’
‘Your language, Miss Scudder, has certainly the merit of explicitness.’
‘I intend it shall have, sir,’ said Mary, tranquilly; ‘half the misery of the world comes of want of courage to speak and to hear the truth plainly, and in a spirit of love.’
‘I am gratified that you insert the last clause, Miss Scudder; I might not otherwise recognize the gentle being whom I have always regarded as the impersonation of all that is softest in woman. I have not the honour of understanding in the least the reason of this apparently capricious sentence, but I bow to it in submission.’
‘Mr. Burr,’ said Mary, walking up to him, and looking him full in the eyes with an energy that for the moment bore down his practised air of easy superiority, ‘I wish to speak to you for a moment, as one immortal soul should to another, without any of those false glosses and deceits which men call ceremony and good manners. You have done a very great injury to a lovely lady, whose weakness ought to have been sacred in your eyes. Precisely, because you are what you are,—strong, keen, penetrating, able to control and govern all who come near you; because you have the power to make yourself agreeable, interesting, fascinating, and to win esteem and love,—just for that reason you ought to hold yourself the guardian of every woman, and treat her as you would wish any man to treat your own daughter. I leave it to your own conscience whether this is the manner in which you have treated Madame de Frontignac.’
‘Upon my word, Miss Scudder,’ began Burr, ‘I cannot imagine what representations our mutual friend may have been making. I assure you, our intercourse has been as irreproachable as the most scrupulous could desire.’
‘Irreproachable! innocent! Mr. Burr, you know that youhave taken the very life out of her; you men can have everything, ambition, wealth, power; a thousand ways are open to you; and women have nothing but their hearts, and when that is gone, all is gone. Mr. Burr, you remember the rich man that had flocks and herds, but nothing would do for him but he must have the one little ewe lamb which was all his poor neighbour had. Thou art the man! You have stolen all the love she has to give, all that she had to make a happy home; and you can never give her anything in return without endangering her purity and her soul, and you knew you could not. I know you menthinkthis is a light matter; but it is death to us; what will this woman’s life be? one long struggle to forget; and when you have forgotten her, and are going on gay and happy, when you have thrown her very name away as a faded flower, she will be praying, hoping, fearing for you; though all men deny you, yet will not she. Yes, Mr. Burr, if ever your popularity and prosperity should leave you, and those who now flatter should despise and curse you, she will always be interceding with her own heart and with God for you, and making a thousand excuses when she cannot deny; and if you die, as I fear you have lived, unreconciled to the God of your fathers, it will be in her heart to offer up her very soul for you, and to pray that God will impute all your sins to her, and give you heaven. Oh, I know this because I have felt it in my own heart!’ and Mary threw herself passionately down into a chair, and broke into an agony of uncontrolled sobbing.
Burr turned away, and stood looking through the window; tears were dropping silently, unchecked by the cold, hard pride which was the evil demon of his life.
It is due to our human nature to believe that no man could ever have been so passionately and enduringly loved and revered by both men and women as he was, without a beautiful and lovable nature; no man ever demonstrated more forcibly the truth, that it is not a man’s natural constitution, but theusehe makes of it which stamps him as good or evil.
The diviner part of him was weeping, and the cold, proud, demon was struggling to regain his lost ascendency. Every sob of the fair, inspired child who had been speaking to him seemed to shake his heart; he felt as if he could have fallen on his knees to her; and yet that stoical habit, which was the boast of his life, which was the highest wisdom he taught to his only and beautiful daughter, was slowly stealing back round his heart, and he pressed his lips together, resolved that no word should escape till he had fully mastered himself.
In a few moments Mary rose with renewed calmness and dignity, and approaching him, said, ‘Before I wish you a good morning, Mr. Burr, I must ask pardon for the liberty I have taken in speaking so very plainly.’
‘There is no pardon needed, my dear child,’ said Burr, turning and speaking very gently, and with a face expressive of a softened concern; ‘if you have told me harsh truths, it was with gentle intentions; I only hope that I may prove, at least by the future, that I am not altogether so bad as you imagine. As to the friend whose name has been passed between us, no man can go beyond me in a sense of her real nobleness; I am sensible how little I can ever deserve the sentiment with which she honours me. I am ready, in my future course, to obey any commands that you and she may think proper to lay upon me.’
‘The only kindness you can now do her,’ said Mary, ‘is to leave her. It is impossible that you can be merely friends,—it is impossible, without violating the holiest bonds, that you can be more. The injury done is irreparable, but you can avoid adding another and greater one to it.’
Burr looked thoughtful.
‘May I say one thing more?’ said Mary, the colour rising in her cheeks.
Burr looked at her with that smile that always drew out the confidence of every heart.
‘Mr. Burr,’ she said, ‘you will pardon me, but I cannot help saying this: You have, I am told, wholly renounced the Christian faith of your fathers, and build your whole life on quiteanother foundation. I cannot help feeling that this is a great and terrible mistake. I cannot help wishing that you would examine and reconsider.’
‘My dear child, I am extremely grateful to you for your remark, and appreciate fully the purity of the source from which it springs. Unfortunately, our intellectual beliefs are not subject to the control of our will. I have examined, and the examination has, I regret to say, not had the effect you would desire.’
Mary looked at him wistfully; he smiled and bowed, all himself again; and stopping at the door, he said, with a proud humility, ‘Do me the favour to present my devoted regard to your friend; believe me, that hereafter you shall have less reason to complain of me.’ He bowed and was gone.
An eye-witness of the scene has related that when Burr resigned his seat as president of his country’s senate, he was an object of peculiar political bitterness and obloquy. Almost all who listened to him had made up their minds that he was an utterly faithless, unprincipled man; and yet, such was his singular and peculiar personal power, that his short farewell address melted the whole assembly into tears; and his most embittered adversaries were charmed into a momentary enthusiasm of admiration.
It must not be wondered at, therefore, if our simple-hearted, loving Mary strangely found all her indignation against him gone, and herself little disposed to criticise the impassioned tenderness with which Madame de Frontignac still regarded him.
We have one thing more that we cannot avoid saying of two men so singularly in juxtaposition, as Aaron Burr and Dr. Hopkins.
Both had a perfectlogicof life, and guided themselves with an inflexible rigidity by it. Burr assumed individual pleasure to be the great object of human existence; and Dr. Hopkins placed it in a life altogether beyond self. Burr rejected all sacrifice, Hopkins considered sacrifice as the foundation of all existence. To live as far as possible without a disagreeablesensation was an object which Burr proposed to himself as thesummum bonum, for which he drilled down and subjugated a nature of singular richness. Hopkins, on the other hand, smoothed the asperities of a temperament naturally violent and fiery by a rigid discipline, which guided it entirely above the plane of self-indulgence; and, in the pursuance of their great end, the one watched against his better nature as the other did against his worse. It is but fair, then, to take their lives as the practical workings of their respective ethical creeds.
‘Enfin, chère Sibylle,’ said Madame de Frontignac when Mary came out of the room with her cheeks glowing and her eyes flashing with a still unsubdued light. ‘Te voilà encore!What did he say,mimi?did he ask for me?’
‘Yes,’ said Mary, ‘he asked for you.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘I told him that you wished me to excuse you.’
‘How did he look then? Did he look surprised?’
‘A good deal so, I thought,’ said Mary.
‘Allons, mimi, tell me all you said and all he said.’
‘Oh,’ said Mary, ‘I am the worst person in the world; in fact, I cannot remember anything that I have said; but I told him that he must leave you and never see you any more.’
‘Oh,mimi!never!’
Madame de Frontignac sat down on the side of the bed with such a look of utter despair as went to Mary’s heart.
‘You know that that is best, Verginie, do you not?’
‘Oh! yes, I know it; but it is like death to me! Ah, well, what shall Verginie do now?’
‘You have your husband,’ said Mary.
‘I do not love him,’ said Madame de Frontignac.
‘Yes; but he is a good and honourable man, and you should love him.’
‘Love is not in our power,’ said Madame de Frontignac.
‘Notevery kindof love,’ said Mary, ‘butsomekinds. If you have an indulgent friend who protects you, and cares for you, you can be grateful to him; you can try to make him happy, and in time you may come to love him very much. He is athousand times nobler man, if what you say is true, than the one who has injured you so.’
‘Oh, Mary,’ said Madame de Frontignac, ‘there are some cases where we find it too easy to love our enemies.’
‘More than that,’ said Mary; ‘I believe that if you were to go on patiently in the way of duty, and pray daily to God, that at last He will take out of your heart this painful love, and give you a true and healthy one. As you say, such feelings are very sweet and noble; but they are not the only ones we have to live by. We can find happiness in duty, in self-sacrifice, in calm, sincere, honest friendship. That is what you can feel for your husband.’
‘Your words cool me,’ said Madame de Frontignac. ‘Thou art a sweet snow-maiden, and my heart is hot and tired. I like to feel thee in my arms,’ she said, putting her arms around Mary, and resting her head upon her shoulder. ‘Talk to me so every day, and read me good, cool verses out of that beautiful book, and perhaps by-and-by I shall grow still and quiet like you.’
Thus Mary soothed her friend; but every few days this soothing had to be done over, as long as Burr remained in Newport. When he was finally gone, she grew more calm. The simple, homely ways of the cottage, the healthful routine of daily domestic toils, into which she delighted to enter, brought refreshment to her spirits. That fine tact and exquisite social sympathy which distinguishes the French above other nations, caused her at once to enter into the spirit of the life in which she moved; so that she no longer shocked any one’s religious feelings by acts forbidden to the Puritan idea of the sabbath, or failed in any of the exterior proprieties of religious life.
She also read and studied with avidity the English Bible, which came to her with the novelty of a wholly new book, and in a new language; nor was she without a certain artistic valuation of the austere precision and gravity of the religious life by which she was surrounded.
‘It is sublime, but a little “glaciale,” like the Alps,’ she sometimes said to Mary and Mrs. Marvyn, when speaking ofit; ‘but then,’ she added, playfully, ‘there are the flowers—les roses des Alpes;and the air is very strengthening, and it is near to heaven—il faut avouer.’
We have shown how she appeared to the eye of New England life; it may not be uninteresting to give a letter to one of her friends, which showed how the same appeared to her.
It was not a friend with whom she felt on such terms that her intimacy with Burr would furnish any allusions to her correspondence.
‘You behold me, my charming Gabrielle, quite pastoral; recruiting from the dissipations of my Philadelphia life in a lovely, quiet cottage, with most worthy, excellent people, whom I have learnt to love very much. They are good and true, as pious as the saints themselves, although they do not belong to the true Church, a thing which I am sorry for; but then let us hope that if the world is wide, heaven is wider, and that all worthy and religious people will find room at last. This is Verginie’s own little pet private heresy, and when I tell it to the Abbé, he only smiles; and so I think, somehow, that it is not so very bad as it might be.
‘We have had a very gay life in Philadelphia, and now I am growing tired of the world, and think I shall retire to my cheese, like La Fontaine’s rat. These people in the country here in America have a character quite their own; very different from the life of cities, where one sees, for the most part, only a continuation of the forms of good society which exist in the old world.
‘In the country these people seem simple, grave, severe; always industrious; cold and reserved in their manners towards each other, but with great warmth of heart. They are all obedient to the word of their priest, whom they call a minister, and who lives among them just like any other man, and marries and has children. Everything in their worship is plain and austere. Their churches are perfectly desolate; they have no chants, no pictures, no carvings; only a most disconsolate, bare building, where they meet together and sing one or two hymns, and the minister makes one or two prayers all out of his own thoughts; and then gives them along, long discourse about things which I cannot understand English enough to comprehend.
‘There is a very beautiful, charming young girl here, the daughter of my hostess, who is as lovely and as saintly as St. Catharine, and has such a genius for religion that if she had been in our Church she would certainly have made a saint. Her mother is a respectable and worthy matron, and the good priest lives in the family. I think he is a man of very sublime religion, as much above this world as a great mountain; but he has the true sense of liberty and fraternity, for he has dared to oppose with all his might this detestable and cruel trade in poor negroes; which makes us, who are so proud of the example of America in asserting the rights of man, so ashamed for her inconsistencies.
‘Well, now, there is a little romance getting up in the cottage; for the good priest has fixed his eyes on the pretty saint, and has discovered, what he must be blind not to see, that she is very lovely. And so, as he can marry, he wants to make her his wife; and her mamma, who adores him as if he were God, is quite set upon it. The sweet Marie, however, has had a lover of her own in her little heart, a beautiful young man who went to sea, as heroes always do, to seek his fortune. And the cruel sea has drowned him, and the poor little saint has wept and prayed her very life out on his grave; till she is so thin, and sweet, and mournful, that it makes one’s heart ache to see her smile. In our Church, Gabrielle, she would have gone into a convent; but she makes a vocation of her daily life, and goes round the house so sweetly, doing all the little work that is to be done, as sacredly as the nuns pray at the altar. For you must know, here in New England the people for the most part keep no servants, but perform all the household work themselves, with no end of spinning and sewing besides. It is the true Arcadia, where you find refined and cultivated natures busying themselves with the simplest toils. For these people are well-read and well-bred, and truly ladies in all things. And so, my little Marie and I, we feed the hens and chickens together, and we search for eggs in the hay in the barn; and they have taught me to spin at theirgreat wheel, and a little one, too, which makes a noise like the humming of a bee. But where am I? Oh, I was telling about the romance. Well, so the good priest has proposed for my Marie, and the dear soul has accepted him, as the nun accepts the veil; for she only loves him filially and religiously. And now they are going on, in their way, with preparations for the wedding. They had what they call “a quilting” here the other night, to prepare the bride’s quilt, and all the friends in the neighbourhood came—it was very amusing to see. The morals of this people are so austere that young men and girls are allowed the greatest freedom. They associate and talk freely together, and the young men walk home alone with the girls after evening parties. And most generally the young people, I am told, arrange their marriages among themselves before the consent of the parents is asked. This is very strange to us. I must not weary you, however, with the details. I watch my little romance daily, and will let you hear further as it progresses.
‘With a thousand kisses, I am ever your loving
‘Verginie.’
Meanwhilewedding proceedings were going on at the cottage with that consistent vigour with which Yankee people always drive operations when they know precisely what they are about. The wedding-day was definitively fixed for the 1st of August, and every one of the two weeks between had its particular significance and value precisely marked out and arranged in Mrs. Katy Scudder’s comprehensive and systematic schemes. It was settled that the newly-wedded pair were, for a while at least, to reside at the cottage. It might have been imagined, therefore, that no great external changes were in contemplation; but it is astonishing to see the amount of grave discussion, the amount of consulting, advising, and running abstractedly to and fro, which can be made to result out of an apparently slight change in the relative position of two people in the same house.
Dr. Hopkins really opened his eyes with calm amazement—good modest soul! he had never imagined himself the hero of so much preparation. He heard his name constantly from morning to night occurring in busy consultations that seemed to be going on between Miss Prissy, and Mrs. Deacon Twitchel, and Mrs. Scudder, and Mrs. Jones, and quietly wondered what they could have so much more than usual to say about him. For a while it seemed to him that the whole house was about to be torn to pieces. He was even requested to step out of his study one day, into which immediately entered, in his absence, two of the most vigorous women of the parish, who proceeded to uttermost measures, first pitching everything into pie, so that the Doctor, who returned disconsolatelyto look for a book, at once gave up himself and his system of divinity as entirely lost, until assured by one of the ladies in a condescending manner that he knew nothing about the matter, and that if he would return after half a day he would find everything right again: a declaration in which he tried to have unlimited faith, and where he found the advantage of a mind accustomed to believe in mysteries. And it is to be remarked, that on his return he actually found his table in most perfect order, with not a single one of his papers missing; in fact, to his ignorant eye, the room looked exactly as it did before; and when Miss Prissy eloquently demonstrated to him that every inch of that paint had been scrubbed, and the windows taken out and washed inside and out, and rinsed through three waters, and that the curtains had been taken down and washed and put through a blue water, and starched and ironed, and put up again, he only innocently wondered in his ignorance what there was in a man’s being married that made all these ceremonies necessary; but the Doctor was a wise man, and in cases of difficulty kept his mind much to himself, and therefore he only informed those energetic practitioners that ‘he was extremely obliged to them,’ accepting the matter by simple faith, an example which we recommend to all good men in similar circumstances.
The house throughout was subjected to similar renovations. Everything in every chest, or trunk, or box, was vigorously pulled out and hung out on lines in the clothes-yard to air, for when once the spirit of enterprise has fairly possessed a group of women, it assumes the form of a ‘prophetic fury,’ and carries them beyond themselves. Let not any ignorant mortal of the masculine gender, at such hours, rashly dare to question the promptings of the genius that inspires them! Spite of all the treatises that have lately appeared to demonstrate that there is no particular inherent diversity between men and women, we hold to the opinion that one thorough season of house-cleansing is sufficient to demonstrate the existence of awful and mysterious differences between the sexes, and of subtle and reserved forces in the female line, beforewhich the lords of creation can only veil their faces with a discreet reverence as our Doctor has done.
In fact, his whole deportment on the occasion was characterized by humility so edifying as really to touch the hearts of the whole synod of matrons; and Miss Prissy rewarded him by declaring impressively her opinion that he was worthy to have a voice in the choosing the wedding-dress, and she actually swooped him up, just in a very critical part of a distinction between natural and moral ability, and conveyed him bodily (as fairy sprites know how to convey the most ponderous of mortals) into the best room, where three specimens of brocade lay spread out upon a table for inspection.
Mary stood by the side of the table, her pretty head bent reflectively downward, her cheek just resting upon the tip of one of her fingers, as she stood looking thoughtfullythroughthe brocades at something deeper that seemed to lie under them; and when the Doctor was required to give judgment on the articles, it was observed by the matrons that his large blue eyes were resting upon Mary with an expression that almost glorified his face; and it was not until his elbow was repeatedly shaken by Miss Prissy that he gave a sudden start and fixed his attention as was requested upon the silks. It had been one of Miss Prissy’s favourite theories, that ‘that dear blessed manhad taste enough if he would only give his mind to things;’ and in fact the Doctor rather verified the remark on the present occasion, for he looked very conscientiously and soberly at the silks, and even handled them cautiously and respectfully with his fingers, and listened with grave attention to all that Miss Prissy told him of their price and properties, and then laid his finger down on one whose snow-white ground was embellished with a pattern representing lilies of the valley on a background of green leaves. ‘This is the one,’ he said, with an air of decision, and then he looked at Mary and smiled, and a murmur of universal approbation broke out. A chorus of loud acclamations, in which Miss Prissy’s voice took the lead, conveyed to the innocent-minded Doctor the idea that in some mysterious way he had distinguished himself in the eyes of his feminine friends, whereathe retired to his study, slightly marvelling, but on the whole well pleased, as men generally are when they do better than they expect; and Miss Prissy, turning out all profaner persons from the apartment, held a solemn consultation, to which only Mary, Mrs. Scudder, and Madame de Frontignac were admitted; for it is to be observed that the latter had risen daily and hourly in Miss Prissy’s esteem since her entrance into the cottage, and she declared that if she only would give her a few hints, she didn’t believe but that she could make that dress look just like a Paris one, and rather intimated that in such a case she might almost be ready to resign all mortal ambitions.
The afternoon of this day, just at that cool hour when the clock ticks so quietly in a New England kitchen, and everything is so clean and put away that there seems to be nothing to do in the house, Mary sat quietly down in her room to hem a ruffle. Everybody had gone out of the house on various errands. The Doctor, with implicit faith, had surrendered himself to Mrs. Scudder and Miss Prissy, to be conveyed up to Newport, and attend to various appointments in relation to his outer man, which he was informed would be indispensable in the forthcoming solemnities.
Madame de Frontignac had also gone to spend the day with some of her Newport friends; and Mary, quite well pleased with the placid and orderly stillness which reigned through the house, sat pleasantly murmuring a little tune to her sewing, when suddenly the trip of a merry, brisk foot was heard in the kitchen, and Miss Cerinthy Ann Twitchel made her appearance at the door, her healthy, glowing cheek wearing a still brighter colour, from the exercise of a three-mile walk in a July day.
‘Why, Cerinthy,’ said Mary, ‘how glad I am to see you!’
‘Well!’ said Cerinthy; ‘I have been meaning to come down all this week, but there is so much to do in haying-time; but to-day I told mother Imustcome. I brought these down,’ she said, unfolding a dozen of snowy damask napkins, ‘that I spun myself, and was thinking of you almost all the while Ispun them; so I suppose they ain’t quite so wicked as they might be.’
We will remark here that Cerinthy Ann, in virtue of having a high stock of animal spirits, and great fulness of physical vigour, had very small proclivities towards the unseen and spiritual; but still always indulged a secret resentment at being classed as a sinner above many others, who as church-members made such professions, and were, as she remarked, ‘not a bit better than she was.’
She always, however, had cherished an unbounded veneration for Mary, and had made her the confidante of most of her important secrets; and it soon became very evident that she had come with one on her mind now.
‘Don’t you want to come and sit out in the lot?’ she said to her, after sitting awhile, twirling her bonnet-strings with the air of one who has something to say and does not know exactly how to begin upon it.
Mary cheerfully gathered up her thread, scissors, and ruffling, and the two stepped over the window-sill, and soon found themselves seated cozily under the boughs of a large apple-tree, whose descending branches, meeting the tops of the high grass all around, formed a perfect seclusion, as private as heart could desire.
They sat down, pushing away a place in the grass; and Cerinthy Ann took off her bonnet, and threw it among the clover, exhibiting to view her glossy black hair, always trimly arranged in shining braids, except where some curls fell over the rich, high colour of her cheeks. Something appeared to discompose her this afternoon; there were those evident signs of a consultation impending, which to an experienced eye are as unmistakeable as the coming up of a shower in summer.
Cerinthy began by passionately demolishing several heads of clover, remarking as she did so that ‘she didn’t see, for her part, how Mary could keep so calm when things were coming so near;’ and as Mary answered to this only with a quiet smile, she broke out again:—
‘I don’t see, for my part, how a young girlcouldmarry aminister anyhow; but then I thinkyouare just cut out for it. But what would anybody say ifIshould do such a thing?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mary, innocently.
‘Well, I suppose everybody would hold up their hands; and yet if Idosay it myself,’ she added, colouring, ‘there are not many girls who could make a better minister’s wife than I could if I had a mind to try.’
‘That I am sure of,’ said Mary, warmly.
‘I guess you are the only one that ever thought so,’ said Cerinthy, giving an impatient toss; ‘there’s father all the while mourning over me, and mother too, and yet I don’t see but that I do pretty much all that is done in the house. And they say I am a great comfort in a temporal point of view; but oh! the groanings and the sighings that there are over me!
‘I don’t think it is pleasant to think that your best friends are thinking such awful things about you when you are working your fingers off to help them; it is kind o’ discouraging, but I don’t know what to do about it;’ and for a few moments Cerinthy sat demolishing buttercups and throwing them up in the air, till her shiny black head was covered with golden flakes, while her cheek grew redder with something that she was going to say next.
‘Now, Mary, there isthat creature;well—you know—he won’t take “no” for an answer. What shall I do?’
‘Suppose then you try “yes,”’ said Mary, rather archly.
‘Oh, pshaw, Mary Scudder! You know better than that now. I look like it, don’t I?’
‘Why, yes,’ said Mary, looking at Cerinthy deliberately, ‘on the whole I think you do.’
‘Well, one thing I must say,’ said Cerinthy, ‘I can’t see whathefinds in me. I think he is a thousand times too good for me. Why, you have no idea, Mary, how Ihaveplagued him. I believe that manreally is a Christian,’ she added, while something like a penitent tear actually glistened in those sharp, saucy, black eyes; ‘besides,’ she added, ‘I have told him everything I could think of to discourage him. I told him that I had a bad temper, and didn’t believe the doctrines,and couldn’t promise that I ever should. And after all, that creature keeps right on, and I don’t know what to tell him.’
‘Well,’ said Mary, mildly; ‘do you think you really love him?’
‘Love him,’ said Cerinthy, giving a great flounce, ‘to be sure I don’t—catch me lovinganyman. I told him last night I didn’t, but it didn’t do a bit of good. I used to think that man was bashful, but I declare I have altered my mind. He will talk and talk, ’till I don’t know what to do. I tell you, Mary, he talks beautifully too, sometimes.’ Here Cerinthy turned quickly away, and began reaching passionately after clover heads. After a few moments she resumed. ‘The fact is, Mary, that manneedssomebody to take care of him, for he never thinks of himself. They say he has got the consumption, but he hasn’t any more than I have. It is just the way he neglects himself!—preaching, talking, and visiting—nobody to take care of him, and see to his clothes, and nurse him up when he gets a little hoarse and run down. Well, I suppose if Iamunregenerate, I do know how to keep things in order; and if I should keepsucha man’s soul in his body, I suppose I should be doing some good in the world; because if a minister don’tlive, of course he can’t convert anybody. Just think of his saying that I could be a comfort tohim!I told him that it was perfectly ridiculous, “and besides,” says I, “what will everybody think?” I thought that I had really talked him out of the notion of it last night; but there he was in again this morning; and told me he had derived great encouragement from what I said. Well, the poor man really is lonesome, his mother’s dead, and he hasn’t any sisters. I asked him why he didn’t go and take Miss Olladine Hocum. Everybody says she would make a first-rate minister’s wife.’
‘Well; and what did he say to that?’ said Mary.
‘Well, something really silly about my looks,’ said Cerinthy, looking down.
Mary looked up and remarked the shining black hair, the long dark lashes, lying down over the glowing cheek, where two arch dimples were nestling, and said quietly, ‘Probablyhe is a man of taste, Cerinthy. I advise you to leave the matter entirely to his judgment.’
‘You don’t really, Mary,’ said the damsel, looking up; ‘don’t you think it would injurehimif I should?’
‘I think not materially,’ said Mary.
‘Well,’ said Cerinthy, rising, ‘the men will be coming home from mowing before I get home, and want their supper. Mother has one of her headaches on this afternoon, so I can’t stop any longer: there isn’t a soul in the house knows where anything is when I am gone. If I should ever take it into my head to go off, I don’t know what would become of father and mother. I was telling mother the other day that I thought unregenerate folks were of some use inthisworld any way.’
‘Does your mother know anything about it?’ said Mary.
‘Oh, as to mother, I believe she has been hoping and praying about it these three months. She thinks that I am such a desperate case, it is the only way I am to be brought in, as she calls it. That’s what set me against him at first; but the fact is, if girls will let a man argue with them, he always contrives to get the best of it. I am provoked about it too; but dear me! he is so meek there is no use of getting provoked at him. Well, I guess I will go home and think about it.’
As she turned to go she looked really pretty. Her long lashes were wet with a twinkling moisture, like meadow-grass after a shower; and there was a softened, child-like expression stealing over the careless gaiety of her face. Mary put her arms round her with a gentle caressing movement, which the other returned with a hearty embrace. They stood locked in each other’s arms; the bright, vigorous, strong-hearted girl, with that pale, spiritual face resting on her breast, as when the morning, songful and radiant, clasps the pale silver moon to her glowing bosom.
‘Look here now, Mary,’ said Cerinthy; ‘your folks are all gone, you may as well walk with me. It’s pleasant now.’
‘Yes, I will,’ said Mary; ‘wait a moment till I get my bonnet.’
In a few moments the two girls were walking together in oneof those little pasture foot-tracks which run cosily among huckleberry and juniper bushes, while Cerinthy eagerly pursued the subject she could not leave thinking of.
Their path now wound over high ground that overlooked the distant sea, now lost itself in little copses of cedar and pitch-pine; and now there came on the air the pleasant breath of new hay, which mowers were harvesting in adjoining meadows.
They walked on and on as girls will; because when a young lady has once fairly launched on the enterprise of telling another all thathesaid, and just howhelooked for the last three months, walks are apt to be indefinitely extended.
Mary was besides one of the most seductive little confidantes in the world. She was so pure from allselfism, so heartily and innocently interested in what another was telling her, that people in talking with her found the subject constantly increasing in interest; although if they had really been called upon afterwards to state the exact portion inwordswhich she added to the conversation, they would have been surprised to find it so small.
In fact, before Cerinthy Ann had quite finished her confessions, they were more than a mile from the cottage, and Mary began to think of returning, saying that her mother would wonder where she was when she came home.
Thesun was just setting, and the whole air and sea seemed flooded with rosy rays. Even the crags and rocks of the sea-shore took purple and lilac tints, and savins and junipers, had a painter been required to represent them, would have been found not without a suffusion of the same tints. Through the tremulous rosy sea of the upper air, the silver full moon looked out like some calm superior presence which waits only for the flush of a temporary excitement to die away, to make its tranquillizing influence felt.
Mary, as she walked homeward with this dreamy light about her, moved with a slower step than when borne along by the vigorous arm and determined motion of her young friend.
It is said that a musical sound, uttered with decision by one instrument, always makes vibrate the corresponding chord of another, and Mary felt, as she left her positive but warm-hearted friend, a plaintive vibration of something in her own self of which she was conscious her calm friendship for her future husband had no part. She fell into one of those reveries which she thought she had for ever forbidden to herself, and there arose before her mind, like a picture, the idea of a marriage ceremony; but the eyes of the bridegroom were dark, and his curls were clustering in raven ringlets, and her hand throbbed in his as it had never throbbed in any other.
It was just as she was coming out of a little grove of cedars, where the high land overlooks the sea, and the dream which came to her overcame her with a vague and yearning sense of pain. Suddenly she heard footsteps behind her, and some one said ‘Mary!’ It was spoken in a choked voice, as one speaks in the crisis of a great emotion, and she turnedand saw those very eyes!—that very hair!—yes, and the cold little hand throbbed with that very throb in that strong, living, manly hand, and ‘whether in the body or out of the body’ she knew not; she felt herself borne in those arms, and words that spoke themselves in her inner heart—words profaned by being repeated, were on her ear.
‘Oh, is this a dream!—is it a dream! James, are we in heaven? Oh, I have lived through such an agony—I have been so worn out! Oh, I thought you never would come!’ And then the eyes closed, and heaven and earth faded away together in a trance of blissful rest.
But it was no dream, for an hour later you might have seen a manly form sitting in that self-same place, bearing in his arms a pale girl, whom he cherished as tenderly as a mother her babe. And they were talking together—talking in low tones; and in all this wide universe neither of them knew or felt anything but the great joy of being thus side by side. They spoke of love, mightier than death, which many waters cannot quench. They spoke of yearnings, each for the other—of longing prayers—of hopes deferred—and then of this great joy: forshehad hardly yet returned to the visible world. Scarce wakened from deadly faintness, she had not come back fully to the realm of life,onlyto that of love. And therefore it was, that without knowing that she spoke, she had said all, and compressed the history of those three years into one hour.
But at last, thoughtful for her health and provident of her weakness, he rose up and passed his arm around her to convey her home. And as he did so, he spokeoneword that broke the whole charm.
‘You will allow me, Mary, the right of a future husband, to watch over your life and health?’
Then came back the visible world—recollection, consciousness, and the great battle of duty; and Mary drew away a little and said—
‘Oh, James! you are too late!thatcan never be!’
He drew back from her.
‘Mary, are you married?’
‘Before God I am!’ she said. ‘My word is pledged. I cannot retract it. I have suffered a good man to place his whole faith upon it—a man who loves me with his whole soul!’
‘But, Mary! you do not lovehim!Thatis impossible!’ said James, holding her off from him, and looking at her with an agonized eagerness. ‘After what you have just said, it is not possible.’
‘Oh! James, I’m sure I don’t know what I have said. It was all so sudden, and I didn’t know what I was saying—but things that I must never say again. The day is fixed for next week. It is all the same as if you had found me his wife!’
‘Not quite,’ said James, his voice cutting the air with a decided, manly ring. ‘Ihave some words to say to that yet.’
‘Oh, James, will you be selfish? Willyoutempt me to do a mean, dishonourable thing—to be false to my word deliberately given?’
‘But,’ said James, eagerly, ‘you know, Mary, youneverwould have given it if you had known that I was living.’
‘That is true, James; but Ididgive it. I have suffered him to build all his hopes of life upon it. Ibegyou not to tempt me. Help me to do right.’
‘But, Mary, did you not get my letter?’
‘Your letter!’
‘Yes! that long letter that I wrote you.’
‘I never got any letter, James.’
‘Strange,’ he said; ‘no wonder it seems sudden to you.’
‘Have you seen your mother?’ said Mary, who was conscious this moment only of a dizzy instinct to turn the conversation from the spot where she felt too weak to bear it.
‘No! Do you suppose I should see anybody before you?’
‘Oh, then you must go to her!’ said Mary. ‘Oh, James, you don’t know how she has suffered!’
They were drawing near to the cottage gate.
‘Do, pray,’ said Mary. ‘Go—hurry to your mother—don’t be too sudden either, for she’s very weak; she is almost worn out with sorrow. Go, my dear brother.Dearyou always will be to me!’
James helped her into the house, and they parted. All the house was yet still. The open kitchen door let in a sober square of moonlight on the floor; the very stir of the leaves in the trees could be heard. Mary went into her little room, and threw herself upon the bed, weak, weary, yet happy; for deeper and higher above all other feelings was the great relief thathewas living still. After a little while she heard the rattling of the waggon, and then the quick patter of Miss Prissy’s feet, and her mother’s considerate tones, and the Doctor’s grave voice, and quite unexpectedly to herself she was shocked to find herself turning with an inward shudder from the idea of meeting him.
How very wicked! she thought; how ungrateful! and she prayed that God would give her strength to check the first rising of such feelings.
Then there was her mother, so ignorant and innocent, busy putting away baskets of things that she had bought in provision for the wedding-day. Mary almost felt as if she had a guilty secret. But when she looked back upon the last two hours, she felt no wish to take them back. Two little hours of joy and rest they had been, so pure, so perfect, she thought God must have given them to her as a keepsake, to remind her of His love, and to strengthen her in the way of duty.
Some will perhaps think it an unnatural thing that Mary should have regarded her pledge to the Doctor as of so absolute and binding a force, but they must remember the rigidity of her education. Self-denial and self-sacrifice had been the daily bread of her life. Every prayer, hymn, and sermon from her childhood had warned her to distrust her inclinations and regard her feelings as traitors. In particular had she been brought up within a superstitious tenacity in regard to the sacredness of a promise, and in this case the promise involved so deeply the happiness of a friend whom she had loved and revered all her life, that she never thought of any way of escape from it. She had been taught that there was no feeling so strong but that it might be immediately repressed at the call of duty, and if the idea arose to her of this great love to another as standing in her way, she immediatelyanswered it by saying—‘How would it have been if I had been married? As I could have overcome then, so I can now.’
Mrs. Scudder came into her room with a candle in her hand, and Mary, accustomed to read the expressions of her mother’s face, saw at a glance a visible discomposure there. She held the light so that it shone upon Mary’s face.
‘Are you asleep?’ she said.
‘No, mother.’
‘Are you unwell?’
‘No, mother; only a little tired.’
Mrs. Scudder set down the candle and shut the door, and after a moment’s hesitation, said,
‘My daughter, I have some news to tell you, which I want you to prepare your mind for. Keep yourself quite quiet.
‘Oh, mother,’ said Mary, stretching out her hands towards her, ‘I know it, James has come home.’
‘How did you hear?’ said her mother with astonishment.
‘I have seen him, mother.’
Mrs. Scudder’s countenance fell.
‘Where?’
‘I went to walk home with Cerinthy Twitchel, and as I was coming back he came up behind me just at Savin Rock.’
Mrs. Scudder sat down on the bed, and took her daughter’s hand.
‘I trust, my dear child,’ she said—and stopped.
‘I think I know what you are going to say, mother. It is a great joy and a great relief, but of course I shall be true to my engagement with the Doctor.’
Mrs. Scudder’s face brightened.
‘That is my own daughter! I might have known that you would do so. You would not, certainly, so cruelly disappoint a noble man that has set his whole faith on you.’
‘No, mother, I shallnotdisappoint him. I told James that I should be true to my word.’
‘He will probably see the justice of it,’ said Mrs. Scudder, in that easy tone with which elderly people are apt to dispose of the feelings of young persons.
‘Perhaps it may be something of a trial at first.’
Mary looked at her mother with incredulous blue eyes. The idea that feelings which made her hold her breath when she thought of them could be so summarily disposed of, struck her as almost an absurdity. She turned her face weariedly to the wall with a deep sigh, and said,
‘After all, mother, it is mercy enough and comfort enough to think that he is living. Poor cousin Ellen, too, what a relief to her! it is like life from the dead. Oh! I shall be happy enough, no fear of that.’
‘And you know,’ said Mrs. Scudder, ‘that there hasneverexistedany engagement of any kindbetween you and James. He had no right to found any expectations on anything you ever told him.’
‘That is true also, mother,’ said Mary; ‘I had never thought of such a thing as marriage in relation to James.’
‘Of course,’ pursued Mrs. Scudder, ‘he will always be to you as a near friend.’
Mary assented wearily.
‘There is but a week now before your wedding,’ continued Mrs. Scudder, ‘and I think cousin James, if he is reasonable, will see the propriety of your mind being kept as quiet as possible. I heard the news this afternoon in town,’ pursued Mrs. Scudder, ‘from Captain Staunton, and, by a curious coincidence, I received this letter from him from James, which came from New York by post. The brig that brought it must have been delayed out of the harbour.’
‘Oh,pleasemother, give it to me!’ said Mary, rising up with animation; ‘he mentioned having sent me one.’
‘Perhaps you had better wait till morning,’ said Mrs. Scudder; ‘you are tired and excited.’
‘Oh, mother, I think I shall be more composed when I know all that is in it,’ said Mary, still stretching out her hand.
‘Well, my daughter, you are the best judge,’ said Mrs. Scudder; and she set down the candle on the table, and left Mary alone. It was a very thick letter, of many pages, dated in Canton, and ran as follows:
‘My Dearest Mary,—I have lived through many wonderful scenes since I saw you last; my life has been so adventurous that I scarcely know myself when I think of it. But it is not ofthatI am going now to write; I have written all that to mother, and she will show it to you: but since I parted from you there has been another history going on within me, andthatis what I wish to make you understand if I can.
‘It seems to me that I have been a changed man from that afternoon when I came to your window where we parted. I have never forgotten how you looked then, nor what you said; nothing in my life ever had such an effect on me. I thought that I loved you before; but I went away feeling thatlovewas something so deep, and high, and sacred, thatIwas not worthy to name it to you; I cannot think of the man in the world thatisworthy of what you said you felt for me. Fromthathour there was a new purpose in my soul—a purpose which has led me upward ever since.
‘I thought to myself in this way, “There is some secret source from whence this inner life springs;” and I knew that it was connected with the Bible which you gave me, and so I thought I would read it carefully and deliberately, to see what I could make of it. I began with the beginning; it impressed me with a sense of something quaint and strange—something rather fragmentary; and yet there were spots all along that went right to the heart of a man who has to deal with life and things as I did.
‘Now I must say that the Doctor’s preaching, as I told you, never impressed me much in any way. I could not make any connection between it and the men I had to manage, andthe things I had to do in my daily life. But there were things in the Bible that struck me otherwise; there wasonepassage in particular, and that was where Jacob started off from all his friends, to go off and seek his fortune in a strange country, and lay down to sleep all alone in the field, with only a stone for his pillow. It seemed to me exactly the image of what every young man is like when he leaves his home, and goes out to shift for himself in this hard world. I tell you, Mary, thatone man aloneon the great ocean of life feels himself a very weak thing: we are held up by each other more than we know, till we go off by ourselves into this great experiment. Well, there he was, as lonesome asIupon the deck of my ship; and so lying with this stone under his head, he saw a ladder in his sleep between him and heaven, and angels going up and down. That was a sight which came to the very point of his necessities; he saw that there was a way between him and God, and that there were those above who did care for him, and who could come to him to help him.
‘Well, so the next morning he got up, and set up the stone to mark the place; and it says “Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace,thenshall the Lord be my God.” Now there was something that looked to me like a tangible foundation to begin on.
‘If I understand Dr. Hopkins, I believe he would have called that all selfishness. At first sight it does look a little so, but then I thought of it in this way. Here he was, all alone; God was entirely invisible to him, and how could he feel certain that He really existed unless he could come into some kind of connection with Him? The point that he wanted to be sure of was more than merely to know that there was a God who made the world; he wanted to know whether He cared anything about men, and would do anything to help them. And so, in fact, it was saying “If there is a God who interests himself at all in me, and will be my friend and protector, I will obey Him so far as I can find out His will.”
‘I thought to myself, “This is the great experiment, and Iwill try it.” I made in my heart exactly the same resolution, and just quietly resolved to assume for a while, as a fact, that therewassuch a God, and whenever I came to a place where I could not help myself, just to ask His help honestly in so many words, and see what would come of it.
‘Well, as I went on reading through the Old Testament, I was more and more convinced that all the men of those times had tried this experiment, and found that it would bear them; and, in fact, I did begin to find in my own experience a great many things happening so remarkably that I could not but think that somebody did attend even to my prayers: I began to feel a trembling faith thatsomebodywas guiding me, and that the events of my life were not happening by accident, but working themselves out by His will.
‘Well, as I went on in this way there were other and higher thoughts kept rising in my mind. I wanted to be better than I was; I had a sense of a life much nobler and purer than anything I had ever lived, that I wanted to come up to. But in the world of men, as I found it, such feelings are always laughed down as romantic and impracticable and impossible. But about this time I began to read the New Testament, and then the idea came to me that the same Power that helped me in the lower sphere of life would help me carry out these higher aspirations. Perhaps the Gospels would not have interested me so much if I had begun with them first; but my Old Testament life seemed to have schooled me, and brought me to a place where I wanted, something higher, and I began to notice that my prayers now were more that I might be noble, and patient, and self-denying, and constant in my duty, than for any other kind of help. And then I understood what met me in the very first of Matthew, “He shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.”
‘I began now to live a new life, a life in which I felt myself coming into sympathy with you; for, Mary, when I began to read the gospels I took knowledge of you, that you had been with Jesus.
‘The crisis of my life was that dreadful night of the shipwreck.It was as dreadful as the day of judgment. No words of mine can describe to you what I felt when I knew that our rudder was gone, and saw those hopeless rocks before us—what I felt for our poor men!—but in the midst of it all the words came into my mind, “And Jesus was in the hinder part of the vessel asleep on a pillow,” and at once I felt Hewasthere; and when the ship struck, I was only conscious of an intense going out of my soul to Him, like Peter’s when he threw himself from the ship to meet Him in the waters.
‘I will not recapitulate what I have already written—the wonderful manner in which I was saved, and in which friends, and help, and prosperity, and worldly success came to me again after life had seemed all lost, but now I am ready to return to my country, and I feel as Jacob did when he said, “With my staff I passed over this Jordan, but now am I become two bands.” I do not need any arguments now to convince me that the Bible is from above. There is a great deal in it that I cannot understand—a great deal that seems to me inexplicable; but all I can say is, that I have tried its directions, and find that in my case they do work; that it is a book that I canliveby, and that is enough for me.
‘And now, Mary, I am coming home again quite another man from what I went out; with a whole new world of thought and feeling in my heart, and a new purpose, by which, please God, I mean to shape my life. All this, under God, I owe to you; and if you will let me devote my whole life to you, it will be a small return for what you have done for me.
‘You know I left you wholly free: others must have seen your loveliness and felt your worth, and you may have learnt to love some better man than I; but I know not what hope tells me that this will not be, and I shall find true what the Bible says of love, that “many waters cannot quench it, nor floods drown.” In any case I shall be always from my very heart yours, and yours only, till death.
‘James Marvyn.’
Mary rose after reading this letter wrapped into a divinestate of exaltation,—the pure joy in contemplating an infinite good to another, in which the question of self was utterly forgotten. He was then what she had always hoped and prayed he would be, and she pressed the thought triumphantly to her heart. He was that true and victorious man; that Christian able to subdue life, and to show in a perfect and healthy manly nature a reflection of the image of the superhuman excellence. Her prayers that night were aspirations and praises; and she felt how possible it might be so to appropriate the good, and the joy, and the nobleness of others, so as to have in them an eternal and satisfying pleasure. And with this came the dearer thought that she in her weakness and solitude had been permitted to put her hand to the beginning of a work so noble. The consciousness of good done to an immortal spirit is wealth that neither life nor death can take away.
And so, having prayed, she lay down with that sleep which God giveth to His beloved.