Itis a hard condition of our existence here, that every exaltation must have its depression. God will not let us have heaven here below, but only such glimpses and faint showings as parents sometimes give to children when they show them beforehand the jewelry and pictures, and stores of rare and curious treasures, which they hold in store for the possession of their riper years. So it very often happens that the man who, entranced by some rapturous excitement, has gone to bed an angel, feeling as if all sin were for ever vanquished, and he himself immutably grounded in love, may wake the next morning with a sick headache; and if he be not careful may scold about his breakfast like a miserable sinner.
We will not say that our dear little Mary rose in this condition next morning; for although she had the headache, she had one of those natures in which somehow or other the combative element seems to be left out, so that no one ever knew her to speak a fretful word. But still, as we have observed, she had the headache and the depression, and then came the slow, creeping sense of a wakening-up through all her heart and soul, of a thousand thousand things that could be said only tooneperson, and that person one that it would be temptation and danger to say them to.
She came out of her room to her morning work with a face resolved and calm, but expressive of languor, with slight signs of some inward struggle.
Madame de Frontignac, who had already heard the intelligence, threw two or three of her bright glances upon her at breakfast, and at once divined how the matter stood. She was of a nature so delicately sensitive to the most refined shades ofhonour, that she apprehended at once that there must be a conflict; though, judging by her own impulsive nature, she made no doubt that all would at once go down before the mighty force of reawakened love.
After breakfast she would insist upon following Mary about through all her avocations. She possessed herself of a towel, and would wipe the teacups and saucers while Mary washed. She clinked the glasses and rattled the cups and spoons, and stepped about as briskly as if she had two or three breezes to carry her train; and chattered half-English and half-French, for the sake of bringing into Mary’s cheek the shy, slow dimples that she liked to watch. But still Mrs. Scudder was around, with an air as provident and forbidding as that of a setting hen who watches her nest; nor was it till after all things had been cleared away in the house, and Mary had gone up into her little attic to spin, that the opportunity long sought came, of diving to the bottom of this mystery.
‘Enfin, Marie, nous voilà!are you not going to tell me anything, when I have turned my heart out to you like a bag?Chère enfant!how happy you must be!’ she said, embracing her.
‘Yes, I am very happy,’ said Mary, with calm gravity.
‘Very happy!’ said Madame de Frontignac, mimicking her manner. ‘Is that the way you American girls show it when you are very happy? Come, come,ma belle, tell little Verginie something. Thou hast seen this hero, this wandering Ulysses. He has come back at last—the tapestry will not be quite as long as Penelope’s. Speak to me of him. Has he beautiful black eyes, and hair that curls like a grape-vine? Tell me,ma belle.’
‘I only saw him a little while,’ said Mary; ‘and Ifelta great deal more than I saw. He could not have been any clearer to me than he always has been in my mind.’
‘But I think,’ said Madame de Frontignac, seating Mary as was her wont, and sitting down at her feet, ‘I think you are a little “triste” about this! Very likely you pity the poor priest! It is sad for him, but a good priest has the church for his bride, you know.’
‘You do not think,’ said Mary, speaking seriously, ‘that I shall break my promise, given before God, to this good man?’
‘Mon Dieu, mon enfant!You do not mean to marry the priest after all!Quelle idée!’
‘But Ipromisedhim,’ said Mary.
Madame de Frontignac threw up her hands with an expression of vexation.
‘What a pity, my little one, you are not in the true Church! Any good priest could dispense you from that.’
‘I do not believe,’ said Mary, ‘in any earthly power that can dispense us from solemn obligations which we have assumed before God, and on which we have suffered others to build the most precious hopes. If James had won the affections of some girl, thinking as I do, I should not feel it right for him to leave her and come to me. The Bible says that the just man is he that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not.’
‘This is the sublime of duty!’ said Madame de Frontignac, who, with the airy facility of her race, never lost her appreciation of the fine points of anything that went on under her eyes. But nevertheless she was inwardly resolved, that picturesque as this ‘sublime of duty’ was, it must not be allowed to pass beyond the limits of a fine art, and so she recommenced.
‘Mais c’est absurde!This beautiful young man, with his black eyes and his curls—a real hero—aTheseus, Mary; just come home from killing a Minotaur—and loves you with his whole heart—and this dreadful promise! Why haven’t you any sort of people in your Church that can unbind you from promises? I should think the good priest himself would do it!’
‘Perhaps he would,’ said Mary, ‘if I would ask him; but that would be equivalent to a breach of it. Of course no man would marry a woman that asked to be dispensed.’
‘You are an angel of delicacy, my child;c’est admirable!but after all, Mary, this is not well! Listen now to me: you are a very sweet saint, and very strong in goodness. I think you must have a very strong angel that takes care of you; but think,chère enfant,thinkwhat it is to marry one man while you love another.’
‘But I love the Doctor,’ said Mary, evasively.
‘Love!’ said Madame de Frontignac. ‘Oh, Marie! you may love him well, but you and I both know that there is something deeper than that! What will youdowith this young man? Must he move away from this place, and not be with his poor mother any more? Or can you see him, and hear him, and be with him after your marriage, and not feel that you love him more than your husband?’
‘I should hope that God would help me to feel right,’ said Mary.
‘I am very much afraid He will not,ma chère’ said Madame. ‘I asked Him a great many times to helpmewhen I found how wrong it all was, and He did not. You remember what you toldmethe other day, “that if I would do right I must notseethat man any more.” You will have to ask him to go away from this place. You can never see him, for this love will never die tillyoudie! That you may be sure of. Is it wise? Is it right, dear little one?Musthe leave his home for ever for you? Or must you struggle always, and grow whiter and whiter and whiter, and fade away into heaven like the moon this morning, and nobody know what is the matter? People will say you have the liver-complaint, or the consumption, or something. Nobody ever knows what we women die of.’
Poor Mary’s conscience was fairly posed. This appeal struck upon her sense of right, as having its grounds. She felt inexpressibly confused and distressed.
‘Oh, I wish somebody would tell me exactly whatisright!’ she said.
‘Well,Iwill!’ said Madame de Frontignac. ‘Go down to the dear priest and tell him the whole truth. My dear child, do you think if he should ever find it out after your marriage, he would think you used him right?’
‘And yetmotherdoes not think so! Mother does not wish me to tell him!’
‘Pauvrette!Always the mother! Yes, it is always the mothers that stand in the way of the lovers. Why cannot she marry the priest herself?’ she said, between her teeth,and then looked up, startled and guilty, to see if Mary had heard her.
‘Icannot!’ said Mary. ‘I cannot go against my conscience, and my mother, and my best friend—’
At this moment the conference was cut short by Mrs. Scudder’s provident footstep on the garret stairs. A vague suspicion of somethingFrenchhad haunted her during her dairy-work, and she resolved to come and put a stop to the interview by telling Mary that Miss Prissy wanted her to come and be measured for the skirt of her dress.
Mrs. Scudder, by the use of that sixth sense peculiar to mothers, had divined that there had been some agitating conference, and had she been questioned about it, her guesses as to what it might be, would probably have given no badrésuméof the real state of the case. She was inwardly resolved that there should be no more such for the present, and kept Mary employed about various matters relating to the dresses so scrupulously, that there was no opportunity for anything more of the sort that day.
In the evening James Marvyn came down, and was welcomed with the greatest demonstrations of joy by all but Mary, who sat distant and embarrassed after the first salutations had passed.
The Doctor was innocently parental; but we fear there was small reciprocation of the sentiments he expressed on the part of the young man.
Miss Prissy, indeed, had had her heart somewhat touched, as good little women’s hearts are apt to be by a true love story, and had hinted something of her feelings to Mrs. Scudder in a manner which brought such a severe rejoinder as quite humbled and abashed her, so that she coweringly took refuge under her former declaration, that ‘to be sure there couldn’t be any man in the world betterworthyof Mary than the Doctor.’ While still at her heart she was possessed with that troublesome preference for unworthy people which stands in the way of so many excellent things. But she went on vigorously sewing on the wedding-dress, and pursing up her small mouth into the most perfect and guarded expression ofnon-committal, though, she said afterwards ‘it went to her heart to see how that poor young man did look sitting there, just as noble and as handsome as a pictur’. She didn’t see forherpart how anybody’s heartcouldstand it. Then, to be sure, as Mrs. Scudder said, the poor Doctor ought to be thought about. Dear, blessed man! What a pity it was thingswouldturn out so! Not that it was a pity that Jim came home!Thatwas a great providence! But a pity they hadn’t known about it sooner. Well, for her part, she didn’t pretend to say; the path of duty did have a great many hard places in it,’ &c.
As for James, during his interview at the cottage, he waited and tried in vain for one moment’s solitary conversation. Mrs. Scudder was immovable in her motherly kindness, sitting there smiling and chatting with him, but never stirring from her place by Mary.
Madame de Frontignac was out of all patience, and determined in her small way to do something to discompose the fixed state of things. So, retreating to her room, she contrived, in very desperation, to upset and break a wash-pitcher, shrieking violently in French and English at the deluge which came upon the sanded floor and the little piece of carpet by the bedside.
What housekeeper’s instincts are proof against the crash of breaking china? Mrs. Scudder fled from her seat, followed by Miss Prissy—
‘Ah, then and there was hurrying to and fro’
—while Mary sat, quiet as a statue, bending over her sewing, and James, knowing that it must be now or never, was, like a flash, in the empty chair by her side, with his black moustache very near the bent, brown head.
‘Mary,’ he said, ‘youmustlet me see you once more. All is not said! is it? Just hear me—hear me once alone!’
‘Oh, James! I am too weak! I dare not! I am afraid of myself.’
‘You think,’ he said, ‘that youmusttake this course, because it is right; butisit right?Isit right to marryoneman when you love another better? I don’t put this to your inclination, Mary; I know it would be of no use. I put it to your conscience.’
‘Oh, I never was so perplexed before!’ said Mary. ‘I don’t know what Idothink. I must have time to reflect. And you, oh, James! youmustlet me do right. There will never be any happiness for me if I do wrong—nor for you either.’
All this while the sounds of running and hurrying in Madame de Frontignac’s room had been unintermitted, and Miss Prissy, not without some glimmerings of perception into the state of things, was holding tight on to Mrs. Scudder’s gown, detailing to her a most capital receipt for mending broken china, the history of which she traced regularly through all the families in which she had ever worked, varying the details with small items of family history, and little incidents as to the births, marriages, and deaths of different people for whom it had been employed, with all the particulars of how, where, and when, so that the time of James for conversation was by this means indefinitely extended.
‘Now,’ he said to Mary, ‘let me propose one thing. Letmego to the Doctor and tell him the truth.’
‘James, it does not seem to me that I can. A friend who has been so considerate, so kind, so self-sacrificing and disinterested, and whom I have allowed to go on with this implicit faith in me so long. Shouldyou, James, think ofyourselfonly?’
‘I do not, I trust, think of myself only,’ said James. ‘I hope that I am calm enough and have a heart to think for others. But I ask you, is it doing right tohimto let him marry you in ignorance of the state of your feelings? Is it a kindness to a good and noble man to give yourself to him only seemingly, when the best and noblest part of your affection is gone wholly beyond your control. I am quite sure ofthat, Mary. I know you do love him very well, that you would make a most true, affectionate, constant wife to him, but what Iknowyou feel for me is something wholly out of your power to give to him, is it not now?’
‘I think it is,’ said Mary, looking gravely and deeply thoughtful. ‘But then, James, I ask myself, what if all thishad happened a week hence? My feelings would have been just the same, because they are feelings over which I have no more control than over my existence. I can only control the expression of them. But inthatcase you would not have asked me to break my marriage vow, and why now shall I break a solemn vow deliberately made before God? If what I can give him will content him, and he never knows that which would give him pain, what wrong is done him?’
‘I should think the deepest possible wrong done me,’ said James, ‘if, when I thought I had married a wife with a whole heart, I found that the greater part of it had been before that given to another. If you tell him, or if I tell him, or your mother, who is the more proper person, and he chooses to hold you to your promise, then, Mary, I have no more to say. I shall sail in a few weeks again, and carry your image for ever in my heart; nobody can take that away, andthatdear shadow will be the only wife I shall ever know.’
At this moment Miss Prissy came rattling along towards the door, talking, we suspect designedly, in quite a high key. Mary hastily said,
‘Wait, James, let me think. To-morrow is the Sabbath-day. Monday I will send you word or see you.’
And when Miss Prissy returned into the best room, James was sitting at one window and Mary at another, he making remarks in a style of most admirable commonplace on a copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost, which he had picked up in the confusion of the moment, and which at the time Mrs. Katy Scudder entered, he was declaring to be a most excellent book, and a really truly valuable work.
Mrs. Scudder looked keenly from one to the other, and saw that Mary’s cheek was glowing like the deepest heart of a pink shell, while in all other respects she was as cold and calm. On the whole she felt satisfied that no mischief had been done.
We hope our readers will do Mrs. Scudder justice. It is true that she yet wore on her third finger the marriage ring of a sailor lover, and his memory was yet fresh in her heart; but even mothers who have married for love themselvessomehow so blend their daughter’s existence with their own as to conceive that she must marrytheirlove and not her own.
Beside this, Mrs. Scudder was an Old Testament woman, brought up with that scrupulous exactitude of fidelity in relation to promises which would naturally come from familiarity with a book where covenant-keeping is represented as one of the highest attributes of Deity, and covenant-breaking as one of the vilest sins of humanity. To break the word that had gone forth out of one’s mouth was to lose self-respect and all claim to the respect of others, and to sin against eternal rectitude.
As we have said before, it is almost impossible to make our light-minded modern times comprehend the earnestness with which these people lived. It was in the beginning no vulgar nor mercenary ambition that made Mrs. Scudder desire the Doctor as a husband for her daughter. He was poor, and she had had offers from richer men. He was often unpopular, but he was the man in the world she most revered, the man she believed in with the most implicit faith, the man who embodied her highest idea of the good; and therefore it was that she was willing to resign her child to him.
As to James, she had felt truly sympathetic with his mother and with Mary in the dreadful hour when they supposed him lost, and had it not been for the great perplexity occasioned by his return she would have received him as a relative with open arms. But now she felt it her duty to be on the defensive, an attitude not the most favourable for cherishing pleasing associations in regard to another. She had read the letter giving an account of his spiritual experience with very sincere pleasure as a good woman should, but not without an internal perception how very much it endangered her favourite plans. But when Mary had calmly reiterated her determination, she felt sure of her. For had she ever known her to say a thing she did not do?
The uneasiness she felt at present was not the doubt of her daughter’s steadiness, but the fear that she might have been unsuitably harassed or annoyed.
Thenext morning rose calm and fair. It was the Sabbath-day; thelastSabbath in Mary’s maiden life if her promises and plans were fulfilled.
Mary dressed herself in white—her hands trembling with unusual agitation, her sensitive nature divided between two opposing consciences and two opposing affections. Her devoted filial love towards the Doctor made her feel the keenest sensitiveness at the thought of giving him pain. At the same time, the questions which James had proposed to her had raised serious doubts in her mind whether it was altogether right to suffer him blindly to enter into this union. So after she was all prepared, she bolted the door of her chamber, and opening her Bible, read, ‘If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given;’ and then kneeling down by the bed, she asked that God would give her some immediate light in her present perplexity. So praying, her mind grew calm and steady, and she rose up at the sound of the bell which marked that it was time to set forward for church.
Everybody noticed, as she came into the church that morning, how beautiful Mary Scudder looked. It was no longer the beauty of the carved statue, the pale alabaster shrine, the sainted virgin, but a warm, bright, living light, that spoke of some summer breath breathing within her soul.
When she took her place in the singers’ seat she knew, without turning her head, thathewas in his old place not farfrom her side, and those whose eyes followed her to the gallery marvelled at her face, where—
‘The pure and eloquent bloodSpoke in her cheeks, and so divinely wroughtThat you might almost say her body thought;’
‘The pure and eloquent bloodSpoke in her cheeks, and so divinely wroughtThat you might almost say her body thought;’
‘The pure and eloquent bloodSpoke in her cheeks, and so divinely wroughtThat you might almost say her body thought;’
‘The pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks, and so divinely wrought
That you might almost say her body thought;’
for a thousand delicate nerves were becoming vital once more, as the holy mystery of womanhood wrought within her.
When they rose to sing, the tune must needs be one which Mary and James had often sung together out of the same book at the singing school—one of those wild, pleading tunes dear to the heart of New England, born, if we may credit the report, in the rocky hollow of its mountains, and whose notes have a kind of grand and mournful triumph in their warbling wail. The different parts of the harmony, set contrary to all the canons of musical pharisaism, had still a singular and romantic effect, which a true musical genius would not have failed to recognize. The four parts, tenor, treble, bass, and counter, as they were then called, rose and swelled and wildly mingled with the fitful strangeness of an Æolian harp, or of winds in mountain hollows, or the vague moanings of the sea on lone, forsaken shores. And Mary, while her voice rose over the waves of the treble, and trembled with a pathetic richness, felt to her inmost heart the deep accord of that other voice which came to meet hers so wildly melancholy, as if the soul in that manly breast had come forth to meet her soul in the disembodied shadowy verity of eternity. That grand old tune, called by our fathers ‘China,’ never, with its dirge-like melody, drew two souls more out of themselves and entwined them more nearly with each other.
The last verse of the hymn spoke of the resurrection of the saints with Christ—
‘Then let the last dread trumpet sound,And bid the dead arise;Awake, ye nations underground,Ye saints, ascend the skies.’
‘Then let the last dread trumpet sound,And bid the dead arise;Awake, ye nations underground,Ye saints, ascend the skies.’
‘Then let the last dread trumpet sound,And bid the dead arise;Awake, ye nations underground,Ye saints, ascend the skies.’
‘Then let the last dread trumpet sound,
And bid the dead arise;
Awake, ye nations underground,
Ye saints, ascend the skies.’
And as Mary sang she felt sublimely upborn with the idea that life is but a moment and love is immortal, and seemed in a shadowy trance to feel herself and him past this mortal pain far over on the shores of that other life, ascendingwith Christ all glorified, all tears wiped away, and with full permission to love and to be loved for ever. And as she sang, the Doctor looked upward and marvelled at the light in her eyes and the rich bloom on her cheek, for where she stood a sunbeam, streaming aslant through the dusty panes of the window, touched her head with a kind of glory, and the thought he then received outbreathed itself in the yet more fervent adoration of his prayer.
Ourfathers believed in special answers to prayer. They were not stumbled by the objection about the inflexibility of the laws of nature, because they had the idea that when the Creator of the world promised to answer human prayers, He probably understood the laws of nature as well as they did; at any rate, the laws of nature were His affairs and not theirs. They were men very apt, as the Duke of Wellington said, to ‘look to their marching-orders;’ which, being found to read, ‘be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known unto God,’ they did it. ‘They looked unto Him, and were likened, and their faces were not ashamed.’ One reads in the memoirs of Dr. Hopkins how Newport Gardner, one of his African catechumens, a negro of singular genius and ability, being desirous of his freedom, that he might be a missionary to Africa, and having long worked without being able to raise the amount required, was counselled by Dr. Hopkins that it might be a shorter way to seek his freedom from the Lord by a day of solemn fasting and prayer. The historical fact is, that on the evening of a day so consecrated his master returned from church, called Newport to him, and presented him with his freedom. Is it not possible that He who made the world may have established laws for prayer, as invariable as those for the sowing of seed and raising of grain? Is it not as legitimate a subject of inquiry when petitions are not answered,whichof these laws has been neglected?
But be that as it may, certain it is, that a train of events were set in operation this day which went directly towards answering Mary’s morning supplication for guidance. Candace,who on this particular morning had contrived to place herself where she could see Mary and James in the singers’ seat, had certain thoughts ‘borne in’ on her mind, which bore fruit afterwards in a solemn and select conversation held with Miss Prissy at the end of the horse-shed by the meeting-house, during the intermission between the morning and afternoon sermons.
Candace sat on a fragment of a granite boulder which lay there, her black face relieved against a clump of yellow mulleins, then in majestic altitude. On her lap was spread a check pocket-handkerchief, containing rich slices of cheese and a store of her favourite brown dough-nuts.
‘Now, Miss Prissy,’ she said, ‘der’sreasonin all things; and a good dealmorein some things dan der is in others. Dere’s a good deal more reason in two young, handsome folks coming together dan der is in——’
Candace finished the sentence by an emphatic flourish of her dough-nut.
‘Now as long as everybody thought Massa Jim was dead, dere wa’n’t nothin’ in de world elseto bedonebutfor Miss Mary to marry the Doctor. But, good Lord! I heard him a-talkin’ to Mrs. Marvyn last night; it kinder most broke my heart. Why dem two poor creeturs—dey’s just as onhappy’s dey can be; and she’s got too much feelin’ for the Doctor to say a word, andIsayhe orter be told on’t;dat’s what I say,’ said Candace, giving a decisive bite to her dough-nut.
‘I say so too,’ said Miss Prissy: ‘why I never had such feelings in my life as I did yesterday when that young man came down to our house; he was just as pale as a cloth. I tried to say a word to Mrs. Scudder, but she snapped me up so; she’s an awful decided woman when her mind’s made up. I was telling Cerinthy Ann Twitchel, she come round me this noon, that it didn’t exactly seem to me right that things should go on as they’re gone to; and says I, “Cerinthy Ann, I don’t know anything what to do.” And says she, “If I was you, Miss Prissy, I know what I’d do; I’d tell the Doctor.” Says she, “Nobody ever takes offence at anythingyoudo, Miss Prissy.” To be sure,’ added Miss Prissy, ‘Ihavetalked to people about a good many things that it’s rather strange I should, ’cause I ain’t one somehow that can let things go that seem to want doing. I always told folks that I should spoil a novel before it got half-way through the first volume, by blirting out some of those things that they let go trailing on till everybody gets so mixed up they don’t know what they’re doing.’
‘Well, now, honey,’ said Candace, authoritatively, ‘ef you’ve got any notion o’ that kind, I think it must a come from de good Lord; and I ’vise ye to be ’tendin’ to it right away. You just go ’long and tell de Doctor yo’self all you knows, and den let’s see what’ll come on’t. I tell you I b’lieves it’ll be one o’ the best day’s worksyouever did in your life.’
‘Well,’ said Miss Prissy, ‘I guess to-night before I go to bed I’ll make a dive at him. When a thing’s once out it’s out, and can’t be got in again, even if people don’t like it, and that’s a mercy anyhow. It really makes me feel most wicked to think of it, for the Doctor is the blessedest man.’
‘That’s what heis,’ said Candace. ‘But den de blessedest men in the world ought fur to know de truth, that’s whatIthink.’
‘Yes, true enough,’ said Miss Prissy, ‘I’ll tell him anyway.’
Miss Prissy was as good as her word, for that evening when the Doctor had retired to his study, she took her light in her hand, and walking softly as a cat, tapped rather timidly at the study door, which the Doctor opening, said benignantly—
‘Ah! Miss Prissy!’
‘If you please, sir,’ said Miss Prissy, ‘I’d like a little conversation.’
The Doctor was well enough used to such requests from the female members of his church, which generally were the prelude to some disclosures of internal difficulties or spiritual experiences. He therefore graciously motioned her to a chair.
‘I thought I must come in,’ she began, busily twirling a bit of her Sunday gown. ‘I thought—that is I felt it my duty—Ithought—perhaps—I ought to tell you—that perhaps you ought to know—’
The Doctor looked civilly concerned. He did not know but Miss Prissy’s wits were taking leave of her. He replied, however, with his usual honest stateliness,
‘I trust, dear madam, that you will feel at perfect freedom to open to me any exercises of mind that you may have.’
‘It isn’t about myself,’ said Prissy. ‘If you please, it’s aboutyou, sir, and Mary.’
The Doctornowlooked awake in right earnest, and very much astonished besides; and he looked eagerly at Miss Prissy to have her go on.
‘I don’t know how you would view such a matter,’ said Miss Prissy; ‘but the fact is, that James Marvyn and Mary always did love each other ever since they were children.’
Still the Doctor was unawakened to the real meaning of the words, and he answered, simply,—
‘I should be far from wishing to interfere with so very natural and innocent a sentiment, which I make no doubt is all quite as it should be.’
‘No! but,’ said Miss Prissy, ‘you don’t understand what I mean. I mean that James Marvyn wanted to marry Mary, and that she was—well! she wasn’t engaged to him—but—’
‘Madam!!’ said the Doctor, in a voice that frightened Miss Prissy out of her chair, while a blaze like sheet-lightning shot from his eyes and his face flushed crimson.
‘Mercy on us! Doctor, I hope you’ll excuse me, but there, the fact is out! I’ve said it out; the fact is they wa’n’t engaged, but that Mary loved him ever since he was a boy, as she never will and never can love any man again in this world, is what I’m just as sure of as that I’m standing here; and I’ve felt you ought to know it, ’cause I’m quite sure that if he’d been alive, she’d never given the promise she has—the promise that she means to keep if her heart breaks and his too; there wouldn’t anybody tell you, and I thought I must tell you, ’cause I thought you’d know what was right to do about it.’
During all this latter speech the Doctor was standing with his back to Miss Prissy and his face to the window, just as hedid some time before when Mrs. Scudder came to tell him of Mary’s consent. He made a gesture backward, without speaking, that she should leave the apartment; and Miss Prissy left with a guilty kind of feeling, as if she had been plunging a knife in her pastor; and rushing distractedly across the entry into Mary’s little bedroom, she bolted the door, threw herself on the bed, and began to cry.
‘Well! I’ve done it,’ she said to herself. ‘He’s a very strong, hearty man,’ she soliloquized, ‘so I hope it won’t put him in a consumption. Men do go in a consumption about such things sometimes. I remember Abner Seaforth did—but then he was always narrow-chested, and had the liver complaint, or something. I don’t know what Mrs. Scudderwillsay, but I’ve done it. Poor man! such a good man too! I declare I feel just like Herod taking off John the Baptist’s head. Well! well! it’s done, and can’t be helped.’
Just at this moment Miss Prissy heard a gentle tap at the door, and started as if it had been a ghost—not being able to rid herself of the impression that somehow she had committed a great crime, for which retribution was knocking at the door.
It was Mary, who said, in her sweetest and most natural tones, ‘Miss Prissy, the Doctor would like to see you.’ Mary was much astonished at the frightened, discomposed manner with which Miss Prissy received this announcement, and said, ‘I’m afraid I’ve waked you up out of sleep. I don’t think there’s the least hurry.’
Miss Prissy didn’t either; but she reflected afterwards that she might as well get through with it at once, and therefore, smoothing her tumbled cap-border, she went to the Doctor’s study. This time he was quite composed, and received her with a mournful gravity, and requested her to be seated.
‘I beg, madam,’ he said, ‘you will excuse the abruptness of my manner in our late interview. I was so little prepared for the communication you had to make that I was perhaps unsuitably discomposed. Will you allow me to ask whether you were requested by any of the parties to communicate to me what you did?’
‘No, sir,’ said Miss Prissy.
‘Have any of the parties ever communicated with you on the subject at all?’ said the Doctor.
‘No, sir,’ said Miss Prissy.
‘That is all,’ said the Doctor. ‘I will not detain you. I am very much obliged to you, madam.’
He rose and opened the door for her to pass out, and Miss Prissy, overawed by the stately gravity of his manner, went out in silence.
WhenMiss Prissy left the room the Doctor sat down by the table, and covered his face with his hands. He had a large, passionate, determined nature; and he had just come to one of those cruel crises in life, in the which it is apt to seem to us that the whole force of our being—all that we can hope, or wish, or feel—has been suffered to gather itself into one great wave, only to break upon some cold rock of inevitable fate, and go back moaning into emptiness.
In such hours men and women have cursed God and life, and thrown violently down and trampled under their feet what yet was left of life’s blessings in the fierce bitterness of despair. This or nothing! the soul shrieks in her frenzy.
At just such points as these men have plunged into intemperance and wild excess; they have gone to be shot down in battle; they have broken life, and thrown it away like an empty goblet; and gone like wailing ghosts out into the dread unknown.
The possibility of all this lay in that heart which had just received that stunning blow. Exercised and disciplined as he had been by years of sacrifice, by constant, unsleeping self-vigilance, there was rising there in that great heart an ocean-tempest of passion; and for a while his cries unto God seemed as empty and as vague as the screams of birds tossed and buffeted in the clouds of mighty tempests.
The will that he thought wholly subdued seemed to rise under him as a rebellious giant. A few hours before he thought himself established in an invincible submission to God that nothing could shake. Now, he looked into himself as into a seething vortex of rebellion; and against all the passionatecries of his lower nature, he could only (in the language of an old saint) ‘cling to God by the naked force of his will.’ That will was as determined and firm as that of Aaron Burr. It rested unmelted amid the boiling sea of passion, waiting its hour of renewed sway. He walked the room for hours; and then sat down to his Bible, and wakened once or twice to find his head leaning on its pages, and his mind far gone in thoughts from which he woke with a bitter throb. Then he determined to set himself to some definite work; and taking his Concordance, began busily tracing out and numbering all the proof-texts for one of the chapters of his theological system; till at last he worked himself down to such calmness that he could pray; and then he schooled and reasoned with himself in a style not unlike, in its spirit, to what a great modern author has addressed to suffering humanity,—‘What is it that thou art fretting and self-tormenting about? Is it becausethouart not happy? Who told thee that thou wast to be happy? Is there any ordinance of the universe thatthoushouldst be happy? Art thou nothing but a vulture screaming for prey? Canst thou not do without happiness? Yea, thou canst do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness.’
The Doctor came lastly to the conclusion that ‘blessedness,’ which was all the portion his Master had on earth, might do for him also. And therefore he kissed and blessed that silver dove of happiness, which he saw was weary of sailing in his clumsy old ark, and let it go out of his hand without a tear.
He slept little that night, but when he came to breakfast all noticed an unusual gentleness and benignity of manner; and Mary, she knew not why, saw tears rising in his eyes when he looked at her.
After breakfast he requested Mrs. Scudder to step with him into his study; and Miss Prissy shook in her little shoes as she saw the matron entering. The door was shut for a long time, and two voices could be heard in earnest conversation.
Meanwhile James Marvyn entered the cottage, prompt to remind Mary of her promise, that she would talk with him again this morning.
They had talked with each other but a few moments, bythe sweetbriar-shaded window in the best room, when Mrs. Scudder appeared at the door of the apartment, with traces of tears upon her cheeks. ‘Good morning, James,’ she said. ‘The Doctor wishes to see you and Mary a moment together.’ Both looked sufficiently astounded, knowing from Mrs. Scudder’s looks that something was impending. They followed Mrs. Scudder, scarcely feeling the ground they trod on.
Page, 347. Sampson, Low, Son & Co. Sept. 20th, 1859.The Sacrifice
The Sacrifice
The Doctor was sitting at his table with his favourite large-print Bible open before him. He rose to receive them with a manner at once gentle and grave. There was a pause of some minutes, during which he sat with his head leaning upon his hand. ‘You all know,’ he said, turning towards Mary who sat very near him, ‘the near and dear relation in which I have been expected to stand towards this friend; I should not have been worthy of that relation if I had not felt in my heart the true love of a husband as set forth in the New Testament; who should “love his wife even as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it;” and if in case any peril or danger threatened this dear soul, and I could not give myself for her, I had never been worthy the honour she has done me. For I take it, wherever there is a cross or burden to be borne by one or the other, that the man who is made in the image of God, as to strength and endurance, should take it upon himself, and not lay it upon her that is weaker; for he is therefore strong, not that he may tyrannize over the weak, but bear their burdens for them, even as Christ for His church. I have just discovered,’ he added, looking kindly upon Mary, ‘that there is a great cross and burden which must come, either on this dear child or on myself, through no fault of either of us, but through God’s good providence; and, therefore, letmebear it.
‘Mary, my dear child,’ he said, ‘I will be to thee as a father; but I will not force thy heart.’
At this moment, Mary, by a sudden, impulsive movement, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, and lay sobbing on his shoulder. ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘I will marry you as I said.’
‘Not if I will not, dear,’ he said, with a benign smile.‘Come here, young man,’ he said, with some authority, to James, ‘I give thee this maiden to wife,’ and he lifted her from his shoulder and placed her gently in the arms of the young man, who, overawed and overcome, pressed her silently to his heart. ‘There, children, it is over,’ he said. ‘God bless you!’
‘Take her away,’ he added, ‘she will be more composed soon.’
Before James left, he grasped the Doctor’s hand in his and said, ‘Sir, this tells on my heart more than any sermon you ever preached, I shall never forget it. God bless you, sir!’
The Doctor saw them slowly quit the apartment, and following them, closed the door, and thus ended
THE MINISTER’S WOOING.
Ofthe events which followed this scene, we are happy to give our readers more minute and graphic details than we ourselves could furnish, by transcribing for their edification an autograph letter of Miss Prissy’s, still preserved in a black oaken cabinet of our great-grandmother’s, and with which we take no further liberties than the correction of a somewhat peculiar orthography.
It is written to that sister ‘Martha’ in Boston, of whom she made such frequent mention, and who, it appears, it was her custom to keep posted up in all the gossip of her immediate sphere.
‘My Dear Sister,‘You wonder, I s’pose, why I haven’t written you; but the fact is, I’ve been run just off my feet and worked till the flesh aches so, it seems as if it would drop off my bones with this wedding of Mary Scudder’s. And, after all, you’ll be astonished to hear that she ha’n’t married the Doctor, but that Jim Marvyn that I told you about, who had such a wonderful escape from shipwreck. You see, he came home a week before the wedding was to be, and Mary, she was so conscientious, she thought ’twa’n’t right to break off with the Doctor, and so she was for going right on with it; and Mrs. Scudder, she was for going on more yet; and the poor young man, he couldn’t get a word in edgeways; and there wouldn’t anybody tell the Doctor a word about it, and there ’twas drifting along, and both on ’em feeling dreadfully; and so I thought to myself I’ll just take my life in my hand like Queen Esther, and go in and tell the Doctor all about it.And so I did. I’m scared to death always when I think of it. But that dear, blessed man! he took it like a saint. He just gave her up as serene and calm as a psalm-book, and called James in and told him to take her. Jim was fairly over-crowed—it really made him feel small, and he says he’ll agree that there is more in the Doctor’s religion than most men’s, which shows how important it is for professing Christians to bear testimony in their works—as I was telling Cerinthy Ann Twitchel, and she said there wa’n’t anything made her want to be a Christian so much, if that was what religion would do for people. Well, you see, when this came out, it wanted just three days of the wedding, which was to be Thursday; and that wedding-dress I told you about, that had lilies of the valley on a white ground, was pretty much made, except puffing the gauze round the neck, which I do with white satin piping cord, and it looks beautiful too. And so Mrs. Scudder and I, we were thinking ’twould do just as well, when in came Jim Marvyn bringing the sweetest thing you ever saw, that he had got in China, and I think I never did see anything lovelier. It was a white silk, as thick as a board, and so stiff that it would stand alone, and overshot with little fine dots of silver, so that it shone when you moved it just like frost-work. And when I saw it I just clapped my hands and jumped up from the floor; and says I, “If I have to sit up all night that dress shall be made, and made well too.” For, you know, I thought I could get Miss Ollodine Hocum to run the breadth and do such parts, so that I could devote myself to the fine work; and that French woman I told you about, she said she’d help, and she’s a master-hand for touching things up. There seems to be work provided for all kinds of people, and French people seem to have a gift in all sorts of dressy things, and ’tisn’t a bad gift either. Well, as I was saying, we agreed that this was to be cut open with a train, and a petticoat of just the palest, sweetest, loveliest, blue that ever you saw, and gauze puffings down the edgings each side, fastened in, every once in a while, with lilies of the valley; and ’twas cut square in the neck, with puffing and flowers to match; and then, tightsleeves with full ruffles of that old Mechlin lace that you remember Mrs. Katy Scudder showed you once in that great camphor-wood trunk. Well, you see, come to get all things together that were to be done, we concluded to put off the wedding till Tuesday; and Madame de Frontignac she would dress the best room for it herself, and she spent nobody knows what time in going round and getting evergreens, and making wreaths, and putting up green boughs over the pictures, so that the room looked just like the Episcopal Church at Christmas. In fact, Mrs. Scudder said if it had been Christmas she wouldn’t have felt it right, because it would be like encouraging prelacy; but as it was, she didn’t think anybody would think it any harm. Well, Tuesday night I and Madame de Frontignac we dressed Mary ourselves, and I tell you the dress fitted as if ’twas grown on her; and Madame de Frontignac she dressed her hair, and she had on a wreath of lilies of the valley, and a gauze veil that came a’most down to her feet and came all around her like a cloud, and you could see her white shining dress through it every time she moved. And she looked just as white as a snowberry; but there were two little pink spots that came coming and going in her cheeks, that kind o’ lightened up when she smiled, and then faded down again. And the French lady put a string of real pearls round her neck, with a cross of pearls, which went down and lay hid in her bosom. She was mighty calm-like while she was being dressed; but just as I was putting in the last pin, she started, for she heard the rumbling of a coach down stairs, for Jim Marvyn had got a real elegant carriage to carry her over to his father’s in, and so she knew he was come; and pretty soon Mrs. Marvyn came in the room, and when she saw Mary, her brown eyes kind o’ danced, and she lifted up both hands to see how beautiful she looked; and Jim Marvyn he was standing at the door, and they told him it wasn’t proper that he should see till the time come.‘But he begged so hard that he might just have one peep, that I let him come in, and he looked at her as if she was something he wouldn’t dare to touch, and he said to me softly,says he, “I’m ’most afraid she has got wings somewhere that will fly away from me, or that I shall wake up and find it is a dream.”‘Well, Cerinthy Ann Twitchel was the bridesmaid, and she came next with that young man she is engaged to. It is all out now that she is engaged, and she don’t deny it.‘And Cerinthy, she looked handsomer than I ever saw her, in a white brocade with rosebuds on it, which I guess she got in reference to the future, for they say she is going to be married next month.‘Well, we all filled up the room pretty well, till Mrs. Scudder came in to tell us that the company were all together, and then they took hold of arms, and they had a little time practising how they must stand; and Cerinthy Ann’s beau would always get her on the wrong side, ’cause he’s rather bashful, and don’t know very well what he’s about; and Cerinthy Ann declared she was afraid that she should laugh out in prayer-time, ’cause she always did laugh when she knew she mus’n’t.‘But, finally, Mrs. Scudder told us we must go in, and looked so reprovingly at Cerinthy that she had to hold her mouth with her pocket-handkerchief.‘Well, the old Doctor was standing there in the very silk gown that the ladies gave him to be married in himself, poor, dear man! and he smiled kind o’ peaceful on ’em when they came in and walked up to a kind o’ bower of evergreens and flowers that Madame de Frontignac had fixed for them to stand in. Mary grew rather white as if she was going to faint; but Jim Marvyn stood up just as firm and looked as proud and handsome as a prince, and he kind o’ looked down at her, ’cause you know he is a great deal taller, kind o’ wondering as if he wanted to know if it was really so. Well, when they got all placed, they let the doors stand open, and Cato and Candace came and stood in the door. And Candace had on her great splendid Mogadore turban, and a crimson and yellow shawl that she seemed to take comfort in wearing, although it was pretty hot.‘Well, so when they were all fixed, the Doctor he began his prayer; and as most all of us knew what a great sacrifice hehad made, I don’t believe there was a dry eye in the room; and when he had done there was a great time—people blowing their noses and wiping their eyes as if it had been a funeral.‘Then Cerinthy Ann she pulled off Mary’s glove pretty quick; but that poor beau of hers, he made such work of James’s that he had to pull it off himself after all, and Cerinthy Ann she like to have laughed out loud.‘And so, when the Doctor told them to join hands, Jim took hold of Mary’s hand as if he didn’t mean to let go very soon; and so they were married, and I was the first one that kissed the bride after Mrs. Scudder. I got that promise out of Mary when I was making the dress. And Jim Marvyn he insisted upon kissing me, ’cause, says he, Miss Prissy, you are as young and handsome as any of them. And I told him he was a saucy fellow, and I’d box his ears if I could reach them.‘That French lady looked lovely, dressed in pale pink silk, with long pink wreaths of flowers in her hair; and she came up and kissed Mary, and said something to her in French.‘And, after a while, old Candace came up, and Mary kissed her; and then Candace put her arms round Jim’s neck and gave him a real hearty smack, so that everybody laughed.‘And then the cake and the wine was passed round, and everybody had good times till we heard the nine-o’clock bell ring. And then the coach came up to the door, and Mrs. Scudder she wrapped Mary up, kissing her and crying over her; while Mrs. Marvyn stood stretching her arms out of the coach after her.‘And then Cato and Candace went after in the waggon behind, and so they all went off together, and that was the end of the wedding. And ever since then we ha’n’t any of us done much but rest, for we were pretty much tired out. So no more at present from your affectionate sister‘Prissy.‘P.S. (to Miss Prissy’s letter).—I forgot to tell you that Jim Marvyn has come home quite rich. He fell in with a man in China who was at the head of one of their great merchant-houses, whom he nursed through a long fever, and took careof his business, and so when he got well nothing would do but he must have him for a partner, and now he is going to live in this country and attend to the business of the house here. They say he is going to build a house as grand as the Vernons’; and we hope he has experienced religion, and he means to join our church, which is a providence, for he is twice as rich and generous as that old Simon Brown that snapped me up so about my wages. I never believed in him for all his talk. I was down to Miss Scudder’s when the Doctor examined Jim about his evidences. At first the Doctor seemed a little anxious ’cause he didn’t talk in the regular way, for you know Jim always did have his own way of talking, and never could say things in other people’s words; and sometimes he makes folks laugh when he himself don’t know what they laugh at, because he hits the nail on the head in some strange way they ar’n’t expecting. If I was to have died I couldn’t help laughing at some things he said, and yet I don’t think I ever felt more solemnized. He sat up there in a sort o’ grand, straightforward, noble way, and told us all the way the Lord had been leading of him, and all the exercises of his mind; and all about the dreadful shipwreck, and how he was saved, and the loving-kindness of the Lord, till the Doctor’s spectacles got all blinded with tears, and he couldn’t see the notes he made to examine him by; and we all cried, Miss Scudder, and Mary, and I; and as to Miss Marvyn, she just sat with her hands clasped, looking into her son’s eyes, like a picture of the Virgin Mary; and when Jim got through there wa’n’t nothing to be heard for some minutes, and the Doctor he wiped his eyes and wiped his glasses, and he looked over his papers, but he couldn’t bring out a word, and at last, says he, “Let us pray,” for that was all there was to be said, for I think sometimes things so kind o’ fills folks up that there a’n’t nothin’ to be done but pray, which the Lord be praised we are privileged to do always. Between you and I, Martha, I never could understand all the distinctions our dear, blessed Doctor sets up; and when he publishes his system, if I work my fingers to the bone, I mean to buy one and study it out, because he is such a blessed man; though after all’s said I haveto come back to my old place, and trust in the loving-kindness of the Lord, who takes care of the sparrow on the house-top and all small, lone creatures like me; though I can’t say I’m lone either, because nobody need say that so long as there’s folks to be done for; so if Idon’tunderstand the Doctor’s theology, or don’t get eyes to read it on account of the fine stitching on his shirt ruffles I’ve been trying to do, still I hope I may be accepted on account of the Lord’s great goodness; for if we can’t trust that, it’s all over with us all.’
‘My Dear Sister,
‘You wonder, I s’pose, why I haven’t written you; but the fact is, I’ve been run just off my feet and worked till the flesh aches so, it seems as if it would drop off my bones with this wedding of Mary Scudder’s. And, after all, you’ll be astonished to hear that she ha’n’t married the Doctor, but that Jim Marvyn that I told you about, who had such a wonderful escape from shipwreck. You see, he came home a week before the wedding was to be, and Mary, she was so conscientious, she thought ’twa’n’t right to break off with the Doctor, and so she was for going right on with it; and Mrs. Scudder, she was for going on more yet; and the poor young man, he couldn’t get a word in edgeways; and there wouldn’t anybody tell the Doctor a word about it, and there ’twas drifting along, and both on ’em feeling dreadfully; and so I thought to myself I’ll just take my life in my hand like Queen Esther, and go in and tell the Doctor all about it.And so I did. I’m scared to death always when I think of it. But that dear, blessed man! he took it like a saint. He just gave her up as serene and calm as a psalm-book, and called James in and told him to take her. Jim was fairly over-crowed—it really made him feel small, and he says he’ll agree that there is more in the Doctor’s religion than most men’s, which shows how important it is for professing Christians to bear testimony in their works—as I was telling Cerinthy Ann Twitchel, and she said there wa’n’t anything made her want to be a Christian so much, if that was what religion would do for people. Well, you see, when this came out, it wanted just three days of the wedding, which was to be Thursday; and that wedding-dress I told you about, that had lilies of the valley on a white ground, was pretty much made, except puffing the gauze round the neck, which I do with white satin piping cord, and it looks beautiful too. And so Mrs. Scudder and I, we were thinking ’twould do just as well, when in came Jim Marvyn bringing the sweetest thing you ever saw, that he had got in China, and I think I never did see anything lovelier. It was a white silk, as thick as a board, and so stiff that it would stand alone, and overshot with little fine dots of silver, so that it shone when you moved it just like frost-work. And when I saw it I just clapped my hands and jumped up from the floor; and says I, “If I have to sit up all night that dress shall be made, and made well too.” For, you know, I thought I could get Miss Ollodine Hocum to run the breadth and do such parts, so that I could devote myself to the fine work; and that French woman I told you about, she said she’d help, and she’s a master-hand for touching things up. There seems to be work provided for all kinds of people, and French people seem to have a gift in all sorts of dressy things, and ’tisn’t a bad gift either. Well, as I was saying, we agreed that this was to be cut open with a train, and a petticoat of just the palest, sweetest, loveliest, blue that ever you saw, and gauze puffings down the edgings each side, fastened in, every once in a while, with lilies of the valley; and ’twas cut square in the neck, with puffing and flowers to match; and then, tightsleeves with full ruffles of that old Mechlin lace that you remember Mrs. Katy Scudder showed you once in that great camphor-wood trunk. Well, you see, come to get all things together that were to be done, we concluded to put off the wedding till Tuesday; and Madame de Frontignac she would dress the best room for it herself, and she spent nobody knows what time in going round and getting evergreens, and making wreaths, and putting up green boughs over the pictures, so that the room looked just like the Episcopal Church at Christmas. In fact, Mrs. Scudder said if it had been Christmas she wouldn’t have felt it right, because it would be like encouraging prelacy; but as it was, she didn’t think anybody would think it any harm. Well, Tuesday night I and Madame de Frontignac we dressed Mary ourselves, and I tell you the dress fitted as if ’twas grown on her; and Madame de Frontignac she dressed her hair, and she had on a wreath of lilies of the valley, and a gauze veil that came a’most down to her feet and came all around her like a cloud, and you could see her white shining dress through it every time she moved. And she looked just as white as a snowberry; but there were two little pink spots that came coming and going in her cheeks, that kind o’ lightened up when she smiled, and then faded down again. And the French lady put a string of real pearls round her neck, with a cross of pearls, which went down and lay hid in her bosom. She was mighty calm-like while she was being dressed; but just as I was putting in the last pin, she started, for she heard the rumbling of a coach down stairs, for Jim Marvyn had got a real elegant carriage to carry her over to his father’s in, and so she knew he was come; and pretty soon Mrs. Marvyn came in the room, and when she saw Mary, her brown eyes kind o’ danced, and she lifted up both hands to see how beautiful she looked; and Jim Marvyn he was standing at the door, and they told him it wasn’t proper that he should see till the time come.
‘But he begged so hard that he might just have one peep, that I let him come in, and he looked at her as if she was something he wouldn’t dare to touch, and he said to me softly,says he, “I’m ’most afraid she has got wings somewhere that will fly away from me, or that I shall wake up and find it is a dream.”
‘Well, Cerinthy Ann Twitchel was the bridesmaid, and she came next with that young man she is engaged to. It is all out now that she is engaged, and she don’t deny it.
‘And Cerinthy, she looked handsomer than I ever saw her, in a white brocade with rosebuds on it, which I guess she got in reference to the future, for they say she is going to be married next month.
‘Well, we all filled up the room pretty well, till Mrs. Scudder came in to tell us that the company were all together, and then they took hold of arms, and they had a little time practising how they must stand; and Cerinthy Ann’s beau would always get her on the wrong side, ’cause he’s rather bashful, and don’t know very well what he’s about; and Cerinthy Ann declared she was afraid that she should laugh out in prayer-time, ’cause she always did laugh when she knew she mus’n’t.
‘But, finally, Mrs. Scudder told us we must go in, and looked so reprovingly at Cerinthy that she had to hold her mouth with her pocket-handkerchief.
‘Well, the old Doctor was standing there in the very silk gown that the ladies gave him to be married in himself, poor, dear man! and he smiled kind o’ peaceful on ’em when they came in and walked up to a kind o’ bower of evergreens and flowers that Madame de Frontignac had fixed for them to stand in. Mary grew rather white as if she was going to faint; but Jim Marvyn stood up just as firm and looked as proud and handsome as a prince, and he kind o’ looked down at her, ’cause you know he is a great deal taller, kind o’ wondering as if he wanted to know if it was really so. Well, when they got all placed, they let the doors stand open, and Cato and Candace came and stood in the door. And Candace had on her great splendid Mogadore turban, and a crimson and yellow shawl that she seemed to take comfort in wearing, although it was pretty hot.
‘Well, so when they were all fixed, the Doctor he began his prayer; and as most all of us knew what a great sacrifice hehad made, I don’t believe there was a dry eye in the room; and when he had done there was a great time—people blowing their noses and wiping their eyes as if it had been a funeral.
‘Then Cerinthy Ann she pulled off Mary’s glove pretty quick; but that poor beau of hers, he made such work of James’s that he had to pull it off himself after all, and Cerinthy Ann she like to have laughed out loud.
‘And so, when the Doctor told them to join hands, Jim took hold of Mary’s hand as if he didn’t mean to let go very soon; and so they were married, and I was the first one that kissed the bride after Mrs. Scudder. I got that promise out of Mary when I was making the dress. And Jim Marvyn he insisted upon kissing me, ’cause, says he, Miss Prissy, you are as young and handsome as any of them. And I told him he was a saucy fellow, and I’d box his ears if I could reach them.
‘That French lady looked lovely, dressed in pale pink silk, with long pink wreaths of flowers in her hair; and she came up and kissed Mary, and said something to her in French.
‘And, after a while, old Candace came up, and Mary kissed her; and then Candace put her arms round Jim’s neck and gave him a real hearty smack, so that everybody laughed.
‘And then the cake and the wine was passed round, and everybody had good times till we heard the nine-o’clock bell ring. And then the coach came up to the door, and Mrs. Scudder she wrapped Mary up, kissing her and crying over her; while Mrs. Marvyn stood stretching her arms out of the coach after her.
‘And then Cato and Candace went after in the waggon behind, and so they all went off together, and that was the end of the wedding. And ever since then we ha’n’t any of us done much but rest, for we were pretty much tired out. So no more at present from your affectionate sister
‘Prissy.
‘P.S. (to Miss Prissy’s letter).—I forgot to tell you that Jim Marvyn has come home quite rich. He fell in with a man in China who was at the head of one of their great merchant-houses, whom he nursed through a long fever, and took careof his business, and so when he got well nothing would do but he must have him for a partner, and now he is going to live in this country and attend to the business of the house here. They say he is going to build a house as grand as the Vernons’; and we hope he has experienced religion, and he means to join our church, which is a providence, for he is twice as rich and generous as that old Simon Brown that snapped me up so about my wages. I never believed in him for all his talk. I was down to Miss Scudder’s when the Doctor examined Jim about his evidences. At first the Doctor seemed a little anxious ’cause he didn’t talk in the regular way, for you know Jim always did have his own way of talking, and never could say things in other people’s words; and sometimes he makes folks laugh when he himself don’t know what they laugh at, because he hits the nail on the head in some strange way they ar’n’t expecting. If I was to have died I couldn’t help laughing at some things he said, and yet I don’t think I ever felt more solemnized. He sat up there in a sort o’ grand, straightforward, noble way, and told us all the way the Lord had been leading of him, and all the exercises of his mind; and all about the dreadful shipwreck, and how he was saved, and the loving-kindness of the Lord, till the Doctor’s spectacles got all blinded with tears, and he couldn’t see the notes he made to examine him by; and we all cried, Miss Scudder, and Mary, and I; and as to Miss Marvyn, she just sat with her hands clasped, looking into her son’s eyes, like a picture of the Virgin Mary; and when Jim got through there wa’n’t nothing to be heard for some minutes, and the Doctor he wiped his eyes and wiped his glasses, and he looked over his papers, but he couldn’t bring out a word, and at last, says he, “Let us pray,” for that was all there was to be said, for I think sometimes things so kind o’ fills folks up that there a’n’t nothin’ to be done but pray, which the Lord be praised we are privileged to do always. Between you and I, Martha, I never could understand all the distinctions our dear, blessed Doctor sets up; and when he publishes his system, if I work my fingers to the bone, I mean to buy one and study it out, because he is such a blessed man; though after all’s said I haveto come back to my old place, and trust in the loving-kindness of the Lord, who takes care of the sparrow on the house-top and all small, lone creatures like me; though I can’t say I’m lone either, because nobody need say that so long as there’s folks to be done for; so if Idon’tunderstand the Doctor’s theology, or don’t get eyes to read it on account of the fine stitching on his shirt ruffles I’ve been trying to do, still I hope I may be accepted on account of the Lord’s great goodness; for if we can’t trust that, it’s all over with us all.’
Weknow it is fashionable to drop the curtain over a new-married pair as they recede from the altar, but we cannot but hope our readers may have by this time enough of interest in our little history to wish for a few words on the lot of the personages whose acquaintance they have thereby made.
The conjectures of Miss Prissy in regard to the house which was to be built for the new-married pair were as speedily as possible realized. On a beautiful elevation, a little out of the town of Newport, rose a fair and stately mansion, whose windows overlooked the harbour, and whose wide cool rooms were adorned by the constant presence of the sweet face and form which has been the guiding-star of our story. The fair poetic maiden, the seeress, the saint, has passed into that appointed shrine for woman, more holy than cloister, more saintly and pure than church or altar—a Christian home. Priestess, wife, and mother, there she ministers daily in holy works of household peace, and by faith and prayer and love redeems from grossness and earthliness the common toils and wants of life.
The gentle guiding force that led James Marvyn from the maxims and habits and ways of this world to the higher conception of an heroic and Christ-like manhood was still ever present with him, gently touching the springs of life, brooding peacefully with dove-like wings over his soul, and he grew up under it noble in purpose and strong in spirit. He was one of the most energetic and fearless supporters of the Doctor in his life-long warfare against an inhumanity which was entrenched in all the mercantile interest of the day, andwhich at last fell before the force of conscience and moral appeal.
Candace, in time, transferred her allegiance to the growing family of her young master and mistress; and predominated proudly, in gorgeous raiment and butterfly turban, over a rising race of young Marvyns. All the cares not needed by them were bestowed on the somewhat garrulous old age of Cato, whose never-failing cough furnished occupation for all her spare hours and thought.
As for our friend the Doctor, we trust our readers will appreciate the magnanimity with which he proved a real and disinterested love, in a point where so many men experience only the graspings of a selfish one. A mind so severely trained as his had been brings to a great crisis, involving severe self-denial, an amount of reserved moral force quite inexplicable to those less habituated to self-control. He was like a warrior whose sleep even was in armour, always ready to be roused to the conflict.
In regard to his feelings for Mary, he made the sacrifice of himself to her happiness so wholly and thoroughly that there was not a moment of weak hesitation—no going back over the past—no vain regret. Generous and brave souls find a support in such actions, because the very exertion raises them to a higher and purer plane of existence.
His diary records the event only in these very calm and temperate words:—‘It was a trial to me—avery greattrial; but as she did not deceive me, I shall never lose my friendship for her.’
The Doctor was always a welcome inmate in the house of Mary and James, as a friend revered and dear. Nor did he want in time a hearthstone of his own, where a bright and loving face made him daily welcome; for we find that he married at last a woman of a fair countenance, and that sons and daughters grew up around him.
In time, also, his theological system was published. In that day it was customary to dedicate new or important works to the patronage of some distinguished or powerful individual. The Doctor had no earthly patron. Four or five simple lines are found in the commencement of his work, in which, in aspirit reverential and affectionate, he dedicates it to our Lord Jesus Christ, praying Him to accept the good, and to overrule the errors to His glory.
Quite unexpectedly to himself the work proved a success, not only in public acceptance and esteem, but even in a temporal view, bringing to him at last a modest competence, which he accepted with surprise and gratitude. To the last of a very long life he was the same steady undiscouraged worker, the same calm witness against popular sins and proclaimer of unpopular truths, ever saying and doing what he saw to be eternally true and right, without the slightest consultation with worldly expediency or earthly gain, nor did his words cease to work in New England till the evils he opposed were finally done away.
Colonel Burr leaves the scene of our story to pursue those brilliant and unscrupulous political intrigues so well known to the historian of those times, and whose results were so disastrous to himself. His duel with the ill-fated Hamilton, and the awful retribution of public opinion that followed—the slow downward course of a doomed life, are all on record. Chased from society, pointed at everywhere by the finger of hatred, so accursed in common esteem that even the publican who lodged him for a night refused to accept his money when he knew his name, heart-stricken in his domestic relation, his only daughter taken by pirates, and dying in untold horrors,—one seems to see in a doom so much above that of other men the power of an avenging Nemesis for sins beyond those of ordinary humanity.
But we who have learned of Christ may humbly hope that these crushing miseries in this life came not because he was a sinner above others, not in wrath alone, but that the prayers of the sweet saint who gave him to God even before his birth brought to him those friendly adversities that thus might be slain in his soul the evil demon of pride, which had been the opposing force to all that was noble within him. Nothing is more affecting than the account of the last hours of this man, whom a woman took in and cherished in his poverty and weakness with that same heroic enthusiasm with which it was his lot to inspire so many women. This humble keeper of lodgings wastold that if she retained Aaron Burr all her other lodgers would leave—‘Let them do it then,’ she said, ‘but he shall remain.’ In the same uncomplaining and inscrutable silence in which he had borne the reverses and miseries of his life did this singular being pass through the shades of the dark valley. The New Testament was always under his pillow, and when alone he was often found reading it attentively, but of the result of that communion with higher powers he said nothing. Patient, gentle, and grateful he was, as to all his inner history, entirely silent and impenetrable. He died with the request, which has a touching significance, that he might be buried at the feet of those parents whose sainted lives had finished so differently from his own.