University of Virginia Library

23. CHAPTER XXIII.

Morning came to both, and it was morning in a new
world. They had been translated in their relations, and
everything had a new value and a new significance. With
Mary, life had resolved itself into an invincible purpose.
She knew that she should have opposition from her best
friends to the accomplishment of her wishes, but she determined
to burst through it all. She knew that she should be
met with jeers on every hand from her acquaintances, for
choosing so insignificant a husband. She knew also that
Hugh would be pitied as if he were a boy in the claws of a
tigress; and yet these facts were no more than straws
beneath the feet of her determination.

Hugh was possessed by a very different spirit—a spirit
of helplessness—of fear of Mary's power over him—of sorrow
that so many thought and spoke evil of her—and yet a
spirit smitten through by a fascination that exalted its
author to the pinnacle of feminine power, grace, and glory.

All day long, Hugh walked about his business as if in a
dream, and when night came on, he found himself moving
in the direction of Holyoke's house. The longing to see
her face, to listen to her voice, and to feel the influence of
her magnetic eyes was irresistible. As he approached the
house, he saw a dark object, closely wrapped, leaning upon
the garden gate; and when he had arrived sufficiently near,
a low, firm voice said, “I knew you would come—I knew
you would come.” These words were uttered in such a
tone of conscious power, that Hugh felt that self-control
was not possible in her presence.

“You will take a short walk with me to-night, will you
not?” said Mary, in the same confident tone.

“Certainly,” responded Hugh.

“Oh! I knew you would,” said Mary, as she passed out
of the gate.

Hugh did not offer her his arm—he did not even think he
had an arm to offer, but she moved to his side, and took it
within both her own, and drawing it to her, carried her
face so near his that he could feel her breath, and exclaimed,
“You cannot tell how glad I am to see you this
evening.” But Hugh could say nothing. He walked along
as if he were a culprit, oppressed with a sense of his worthlessness,
his awkwardness, and ignorance, wondering what
Mary could find in him to admire; and, for the moment,
feeling that he had neither part nor lot in the strange intimacy
she had assumed.

“Hugh,” said Mary, and the word thrilled him as if it
were a breath of music, “Hugh, I have long had something
to tell you, and you must let me tell it to you to-night.
We will walk out to the old cabin, and there we can be out
of the way, and say what we choose.”

Hugh understood what was meant by the old cabin.
It was the building formerly owned by John Woodcock,
which had occasionally been repaired and temporarily occupied
by immigrants, while providing themselves with a shelter
upon their own lots. The mention of it filled him with
fear, for there were stories told concerning that lonely old
shelter—of lights having been seen in it at midnight—of
ashes upon the hearth left by fires which no one had kindled,
and of confused voices heard by distant watchers—and the
association of Mary, in her tainted reputation, with the
building was such as, for a moment, almost to impel him to
break from her side and flee. But he could not have done
it if he would, and the impulse soon subsided.

They passed several houses in silence, and at last approached

the cabin. The door of the old structure was
closed, and knowing that it was quite as cold and cheerless
within as it was outside, they took a seat upon a rough
bench at the door. Mary hardly knew how to broach the
subject of her thoughts, and the object of the interview.
At last, summoning her resolution, she said, “Hugh—I
want to ask you a question, and you must answer it. I
want to know whether, if you loved such a girl as I am,
you would dare to go independently to her and tell her
of it.”

Hugh shook his head, but uttered not a word.

“I thought so,” responded Mary, “and now if you should
love such a girl as I am, and such a girl as I am should love
you, how would the two find it out unless the girl should
tell you?”

Hugh felt that his proper answer to both these questions
involved his shame, and so, still speechless, he shook his
head again.

“I know that the people would not think it right for a
girl like me to tell a man like you that she loved him, but I
don't care anything about that, and I've come out here to-night
with you, Hugh, to tell you that I love you better
than anybody and everybody else in all the world. Nobody
living can love you as I do—I know it—I know it just as
well as I know that I live.”

Mary paused in her passionate utterance, and, slowly
passing her arm around Hugh, continued: “It seems to me
that if you were mine, and I could live with you always, I
should be perfectly—perfectly happy. I don't care what
people say—I don't care what they do. If I could live here,
away from them, in this cabin, where we could be all by
ourselves, and where I could work out-doors and in-doors, I
shouldn't care whether you worked or not—I should rather
you wouldn't work, for you ain't made for this rough country.
I could take care of you—I could nurse you when you

are sick, and do everything for you when you are well, and
I should rather work for you than for myself any time and
all the time. Oh, Hugh!” (and Mary's voice sank to a low,
tender tone) “how happy—happy—happy I should be!
How happy I should be!”

As she closed her impassioned declaration, she drew
Hugh to her heart, and there, his sensitive frame wrought
into the most painful nervous frenzy, he shook and shivered
as if a subtle poison were creeping through his veins, or a
miasmatic blast had smitten him with a fever. He could
say nothing. He could only sigh convulsively. He knew
that Mary's eyes were upon him, and he felt that, if he
should lift his own to them, he should fall to weak and
womanish tears, or be guilty of some drivelling silliness
that would disgrace him in her eyes for ever.

“Can you not love me?” said Mary, tenderly kissing his
forehead as it lay upon her shoulder. “Can you not love
me? Can you not be mine—all mine—always mine?”

Hugh pressed her hand, and there, in the cold night air,
for a good half hour, the lovers sat, wrapped in a feverish
sense of happiness, so wild, and vague, and nebulous, that
one proper word uttered in the midst of it might have crystallized
the whole into something definitely and permanently
good, while an improper one might have broken it into
eddies that would have drowned heart and brain in forgetfulness
and madness. But no word was spoken, and the
spell was broken at last by a slight noise within the cabin,
followed by a half whispered exclamation, which, in the ears
of both the lovers, shaped itself to the words “O God!”

Hugh was nearly overcome with fright, while Mary, for
the first time in her brief love history, was stricken with a
sense of guilt. She could pour out her soul to Hugh, she
could woo him and win him, without the sense of shame. In
his presence, alone, she felt that she was sacrificing none of
the proprieties of her sex by telling him her love and suing

for his hand, but the thought that other ears had heard her
seemed to inform her action with new qualities; and, as
both started hurriedly away from the spot, she drew her
arms under her shawl, and hung her head in silence. Half
the distance of return had been accomplished, when Mary
burst forth with, “I don't care anything about it. It is no
one's business but yours and mine, Hugh. Do not walk so
fast.”

The remainder of the walk home was occupied in a low
and busy conversation on the subject of the future. Mary
told Hugh of the land left to her by her father, of the
money she had received from the same source (though she
did not tell him by what agency the latter came), of the
difficulty she should have of carrying out her plan to marry
him, and explained to him the origin of the stories which
he had heard about her. And Hugh, as he became convinced
that she had been wronged, and that she was really
honest-hearted and guiltless, felt himself attached to her by
a new and nobler sympathy, that did much to fix his determination,
assure his judgment, and give body, form, and
spirit to his affection. When they parted, each was calm,
and each felt assured of the strength of the mutual tie.

Only a few weeks passed away before it was known that
Hugh and Mary were betrothed to each other, and such a
commotion as it produced in the settlement had never previously
been experienced. The first declaration made by
each man and woman, as the news was told, was that
“Mary did all the courting.” It was singular that so just
a suspicion should have been so universal, but none were
found to dispute it. It was a natural deduction from their
relative constitutions and characters. Everybody felt it to
be a bad match.

Mary had anticipated all the opposition to her plans
which she actually experienced, and all the abuse of which
she was the subject. Against all this she had steeled herself,

and carried a calm, brave, and determined face
wherever she went, or in whatsoever company she found
herself. Only in Mary Holyoke's kind presence had she
melted, and confessed the means she had taken to gain
Hugh's affection and his promise of marriage. But there
she received no reproaches. She heard fears expressed—
fears springing from genuine Christian love—and she drank
in gentle counsels that were dictated by a heart that realized
the full preciousness of human affection; and she found
one who looked upon the match more than charitably—
pleasantly—even hopefully.

On the day when the intentions of marriage between the
two were published, Peter Trimble took occasion, as the
audience was dismissed, to tell Hugh that he had done a
neat thing. “I tell you,” said Peter, “it was just exactly
as I should have done if I'd been in your place. Yes, sir—
if you'd sent me, as I did you, I should 'a nabbed her as
true as guns, and you might have whistled. Yes, sir, you
did that well.”