 | CHAPTER V.
THE LETTER. The minister's wooing |  |
5. CHAPTER V.
THE LETTER.
Mary returned to the quietude of her room.
The red of twilight had faded, and the silver moon,
round and fair, was rising behind the thick boughs
of the apple-trees. She sat down in the window,
thoughtful and sad, and listened to the crickets.
whose ignorant jollity often sounds as mournfully
to us mortals as ours may to superior beings.
There the little hoarse, black wretches were scraping
and creaking, as if life and death were invented
solely for their pleasure, and the world were
created only to give them a good time in it. Now
and then a little wind shivered among the boughs
and brought down a shower of white petals which
shimmered in the slant beams of the moonlight;
and now a ray touched some tall head of grass,
and forthwith it blossomed into silver, and stirred
itself with a quiet joy, like a new-born saint just
awakening in paradise. And ever and anon came
on the still air the soft eternal pulsations of the
distant sea, — sound mournfulest, most mysterious
the deep, eternal sea, — the treacherous, soft, dreadful,
inexplicable sea; and he was perhaps at this
moment being borne away on it, — away, away, —
to what sorrows, to what temptations, to what
dangers, she knew not. She looked along the old,
familiar, beaten path by which he came, by which
he went, and thought, “What if he never should
come back?” There was a little path through
the orchard out to a small elevation in the pasture
lot behind, whence the sea was distinctly visible,
and Mary had often used her low-silled window
as a door when she wanted to pass out
thither; so now she stepped out, and, gathering
her skirts back from the dewy grass, walked thoughtfully
along the path and gained the hill. Newport
harbor lay stretched out in the distance, with the
rising moon casting a long, wavering track of silver
upon it; and vessels, like silver-winged moths,
were turning and shifting slowly to and fro upon
it, and one stately ship in full sail passing fairly
out under her white canvas, graceful as some
grand, snowy bird. Mary's beating heart told her
that there was passing away from her one who
carried a portion of her existence with him. She
sat down under a lonely tree that stood there, and,
resting her elbow on her knee, followed the ship
with silent prayers, as it passed, like a graceful
cloudy dream, out of her sight.
Then she thoughtfully retraced her way to her
chamber; and as she was entering, observed in
the now clearer moonlight what she had not seen
before, — something white, like a letter, lying on
the floor. Immediately she struck a light, and there,
sure enough, it was, — a letter in James's handsome,
dashing hand; and the little puss, before
she knew what she was about, actually kissed it,
with a fervor which would much have astonished
the writer, could he at that moment have been
clairvoyant. But Mary felt as one who finds, in
the emptiness after a friend's death, an unexpected
message or memento; and all alone in the white,
calm stillness of her little room her heart took
sudden possession of her. She opened the letter
with trembling hands, and read what of course we
shall let you read. We got it out of a bundle of
old, smoky, yellow letters, years after all the parties
concerned were gone on the eternal journey beyond
earth.
“I cannot leave you so. I have about two hundred
things to say to you, and it's a shame I could
not have had longer to see you; but blessed be ink
and paper! I am writing and seeing to fifty things
besides; so you mustn't wonder if my letter has
rather a confused appearance.
“I have been thinking that perhaps I gave you
am going to speak to you from my heart, as if I
were confessing on my death-bed. Well, then, I
do not confess to being what is commonly called a
bad young man. I should be willing that men of
the world generally, even strict ones, should look
my life through and know all about it. It is only
in your presence, Mary, that I feel that I am bad
and low and shallow and mean, because you represent
to me a sphere higher and holier than any
in which I have ever moved, and stir up a sort of
sighing and longing in my heart to come towards
it. In all countries, in all temptations, Mary, your
image has stood between me and low, gross vice.
When I have been with fellows roaring drunken,
beastly songs, — suddenly I have seemed to see you
as you used to sit beside me in the singing-school,
and your voice has been like an angel's in my ear,
and I have got up and gone out sick and disgusted.
Your face has risen up calm and white and still,
between the faces of poor lost creatures who know
no better way of life than to tempt us to sin. And
sometimes, Mary, when I have seen girls that, had
they been cared for by good pious mothers, might
have been like you, I have felt as if I could cry
for them. Poor women are abused all the world
over; and it's no wonder they turn round and revenge
themselves on us.
“No, I have not been bad, Mary, as the world
you remember you told me once, that, when the
snow first fell and lay so dazzling and pure and
soft, all about, you always felt as if the spreads
and window-curtains that seemed white before were
not clean? Well, it's just like that with me. Your
presence makes me feel that I am not pure, — that
I am low and unworthy, — not worthy to touch the
hem of your garment. Your good Dr. Hopkins
spent a whole half-day, the other Sunday, trying
to tell us about the beauty of holiness; and he
cut, and pared, and peeled, and sliced, and told us
what it wasn't, and what was like it, and wasn't;
and then he built up an exact definition, and fortified
and bricked it up all round; and I thought to
myself that he'd better tell 'em to look at Mary
Scudder, and they'd understand all about it. That
was what I was thinking when you talked to me
for looking at you in church instead of looking
towards the pulpit. It really made me laugh in
myself to see what a good little ignorant, unconscious
way you had of looking up at the Doctor,
as if he knew more about that than you did.
“And now as to your Doctor that you think so
much of, I like him for certain things, in certain
ways. He is a great, grand, large pattern of a
man, — a man who isn't afraid to think, and to
speak anything he does think; but then I do believe,
if he would take a voyage round the world
about what to say to people than he does now;
it would certainly give him several new points to
be considered. Much of his preaching about men
is as like live men as Chinese pictures of trees
and rocks and gardens, — no nearer the reality than
that. All I can say is, `It isn't so; and you'd
know it, Sir, if you knew men.' He has got what
they call a system, — just so many bricks put together
just so; but it is too narrow to take in all
I see in my wanderings round this world of ours.
Nobody that has a soul, and goes round the world
as I do, can help feeling it at times, and thinking,
as he sees all the races of men and their ways,
who made them, and what they were made for.
To doubt the existence of a God seems to me
like a want of common sense. There is a Maker
and a Ruler, doubtless; but then, Mary, all this
invisible world of religion is unreal to me. I can
see we must be good, somehow, — that if we are
not, we shall not be happy here or hereafter. As
to all the metaphysics of your good Doctor, you
can't tell how they tire me. I'm not the sort of
person that they can touch. I must have real
things, — real people; abstractions are nothing to
me. Then I think that he systematically contradicts
on one Sunday what he preaches on another
One Sunday he tells us that God is the immediate
efficient Author of every act of will; the next
no sense in it, and can't take the trouble to put
it together. But then he and you have something
in you that I call religion, — something that makes
you good. When I see a man working away on
an entirely honest, unworldly, disinterested pattern,
as he does, and when I see you, Mary, as I said
before, I should like at least to be as you are,
whether I can believe as you do or not.
“How could you so care for me, and waste on
one so unworthy of you such love? Oh, Mary,
some better man must win you; I never shall and
never can; but then you must not quite forget
me; you must be my friend, my saint. If, through
your prayers, your Bible, your friendship, you can
bring me to your state, I am willing to be brought
there, — nay, desirous. God has put the key of my
soul into your hands.
“So, dear Mary, good-by! Pray still for your
naughty, loving
Mary read this letter and re-read it, with more
pain than pleasure. To feel the immortality of a
beloved soul hanging upon us, to feel that its only
communications with Heaven must be through us,
is the most solemn and touching thought that can
pervade a mind. It was without one particle of
gratified vanity, with even a throb of pain, that
blind to the glories of a far higher loveliness.
Yet was she at that moment, unknown to herself,
one of the great company scattered through
earth who are priests unto God, — ministering between
the Divine One, who has unveiled himself
unto them, and those who as yet stand in the
outer courts of the great sanctuary of truth and
holiness. Many a heart, wrung, pierced, bleeding
with the sins and sorrows of earth, longing to depart,
stands in this mournful and beautiful ministry,
but stands unconscious of the glory of the
work in which it waits and suffers. God's kings
and priests are crowned with thorns, walking the
earth with bleeding feet, and comprehending not
the work they are performing.
Mary took from a drawer a small pocket-book,
from which dropped a lock of black hair, — a glossy
curl, which seemed to have a sort of wicked, wilful
life in every shining ring, just as she had often
seen it shake naughtily on the owner's head. She
felt a strange tenderness towards the little wilful
thing, and, as she leaned over it, made in her
heart a thousand fond apologies for every fault and
error.
She was standing thus when Mrs. Scudder entered
the room to see if her daughter had yet retired.
“What are you doing there, Mary?” she said,
reading?”
Mary felt herself grow pale; it was the first time
in her whole life that her mother had asked her a
question that she was not from the heart ready to
answer. Her loyalty to her only parent had gone
on even-handed with that she gave to her God;
she felt, somehow, that the revelations of that afternoon
had opened a gulf between them, and the
consciousness overpowered her.
Mrs. Scudder was astonished at her evident embarrassment,
her trembling, and paleness. She was
a woman of prompt, imperative temperament, and
the slightest hesitation in rendering to her a full,
outspoken confidence had never before occurred in
their intercourse. Her child was the core of her
heart, the apple of her eye; and intense love is
always near neighbor to anger; there was, therefore,
an involuntary flash from her eye and a
heightening of her color, as she said, — “Mary,
are you concealing anything from your mother?”
In that moment, Mary had grown calm again.
The wonted serene, balanced nature had found its
habitual poise, and she looked up innocently, though
with tears in her large, blue eyes, and said, —
“No, mother, — I have nothing that I do not
mean to tell you fully. This letter came from
James Marvyn he came here to see me this afternoon.”
“Here? — when? I did not see him”
“After dinner. I was sitting here in the window,
and suddenly he came up behind me through
the orchard-path.”
Mrs. Katy sat down with a flushed cheek and a
discomposed air; but Mary seemed actually to bear
her down by the candid clearness of the large, blue
eye which she turned on her, as she stood perfectly
collected, with her deadly pale face and a brilliant
spot burning on each cheek.
“James came to say good-by. He complained
that he had not had a chance to see me alone
since he came home.”
“And what should he want to see you alone
for?” said Mrs. Scudder, in a dry, disturbed tone.
“Mother, — everybody has things at times which
they would like to say to some one person alone,”
said Mary.
“Well, tell me what he said.”
“I will try. In the first place, he said that he
always had been free, all his life, to run in and
out of our house, and to wait on me like a
brother.”
“Hum!” said Mrs. Scudder; “but he isn't your
brother, for all that.”
“Well, then, he wanted to know why you were
so cold to him, and why you never let him walk
with me from meetings or see me alone, as he often
used to. And I told him why, — that we were
best; and then I talked with him about religion,
and tried to persuade him to attend to the concerns
of his soul, and I never felt so much hope
for him as I do now.”
Aunt Katy looked skeptical, and remarked, — “If
he really felt a disposition for religious instruction,
Dr. Hopkins could guide him much better than
you could.”
“Yes, — so I told him, and I tried to persuade
him to talk with Dr. Hopkins; but he was very
unwilling. He said, I could have more influence
over him than anybody else, — that nobody could
do him any good but me.”
“Yes, yes, — I understand all that,” said Aunt
Katy, — “I have heard young men say that before,
and I know just what it amounts to.”
“But, mother, I do think James was moved very
much, this afternoon. I never heard him speak so
seriously; he seemed really in earnest, and he
asked me to give him my Bible.”
“Couldn't he read any Bible but yours?”
“Why, naturally, you know, mother, he would
like my Bible better, because it would put him in
mind of me. He promised faithfully to read it all
through.”
“And then, it seems, he wrote you a letter.”
“Yes, mother.”
Mary shrank from showing this letter, from the
to expose to an unsympathizing eye the
confidential outpourings of another heart; and then
she felt quite sure that there was no such intercessor
for James in her mother's heart as in her
own. But over all this reluctance rose the determined
force of duty; and she handed the letter in
silence to her mother.
Mrs. Scudder took it, laid it deliberately in her
lap, and then began searching in the pocket of her
chintz petticoat for her spectacles. These being
found, she wiped them, accurately adjusted them,
opened the letter and spread it on her lap, brushing
out its folds and straightening it, that she
might read with the greater ease. After this she
read it carefully and deliberately; and all this while
there was such a stillness, that the sound of the
tall varnished clock in the best room could be
heard through the half-opened door.
After reading it with the most tiresome, torturing
slowness, she rose, and laying it on the table
under Mary's eye, and pressing down her finger on
two lines in the letter, said, “Mary, have you told
James that you loved him?”
“Yes, mother, always. I always loved him, and
he always knew it.”
“But, Mary, this that he speaks of is something
different. What has passed between —”
“Why, mother, he was saying that we who were
the salvation of our friends; and then I told him
how I had always prayed for him, and how I
should be willing even to give up my hopes in
heaven, if he might be saved.”
“Child, — what do you mean?”
“I mean, if only one of us two could go to
heaven, I had rather it should be him than me,”
said Mary.
“Oh, child! child!” said Mrs. Scudder, with a
sort of groan, — “has it gone with you so far as
this? Poor child! — after all my care, you are in
love with this boy, — your heart is set on him.”
“Mother, I am not. I never expect to see him
much, — never expect to marry him or anybody
else; — only he seems to me to have so much more
life and soul and spirit than most people, — I think
him so noble and grand, — that is, that he could be
if he were all he ought to be, — that, somehow,
I never think of myself in thinking of him, and
his salvation seems worth more than mine; — men
can do so much more! — they can live such splendid
lives! — oh, a real noble man is so glorious!”
“And you would like to see him well married,
would you not?” said Mrs. Scudder, sending, with
a true woman's aim, this keen arrow into the midst
of the cloud of enthusiasm which enveloped her
daughter. “I think,” she added, “that Jane Spencer
would make him an excellent wife”
Mary was astonished at a strange, new pain that
shot through her at these words. She drew in her
breath and turned herself uneasily, as one who had
literally felt a keen dividing blade piercing between
soul and spirit. Till this moment, she had never
been conscious of herself; but the shaft had torn
the veil. She covered her face with her hands;
the hot blood flushed scarlet over neck and brow;
at last, with a beseeching look, she threw herself
into her mother's arms.
“Oh, mother, mother, I am selfish, after all!”
Mrs. Scudder folded her silently to her heart, and
said, “My daughter, this is not at all what I wished
it to be; I see how it is; — but then you have been
a good child; I don't blame you. We can't always
help ourselves. We don't always really know how
we do feel. I didn't know, for a long while, that
I loved your father. I thought I was only curious
about him, because he had a strange way of treating
me, different from other men; but, one day, I
remember, Julian Simons told me that it was reported
that his mother was making a match for
him with Susan Emery, and I was astonished to
find how I felt. I saw him that evening, and the
moment he looked at me I saw it wasn't true; all
at once I knew something I never knew before, —
and that was, that I should be very unhappy if
he loved any one else better than me. But then,
my child, your father was a different man from
you are than James. I was a foolish, thoughtless
young thing then. I never should have been any
thing at all, but for him. Somehow, when I loved
him, I grew more serious, and then he always
guided and led me. Mary, your father was a wonderful
man; he was one of the sort that the world
knows not of; — sometime I must show you his
letters. I always hoped, my daughter, that you
would marry such a man.”
“Don't speak of marrying, mother. I never shall
marry.”
“You certainly should not, unless you can marry
in the Lord. Remember the words, `Be ye not
unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For
what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?
and what communion hath light with
darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial?
or what part hath he that believeth with an
infidel?'”
“Mother, James is not an infidel.”
“He certainly is an unbeliever, Mary, by his own
confession; — but then God is a Sovereign and hath
mercy on whom he will. You do right to pray for
him; but if he does not come out on the Lord's
side, you must not let your heart mislead you. He
is going to be gone three years, and you must try
to think as little of him as possible; — put your
mind upon your duties, like a good girl, and God
power over him; — young men, when they are in
love, will promise anything, and really think they
mean it; but nothing is a saving change, except
what is wrought in them by sovereign grace.”
“But, mother, does not God use the love we
have to each other as a means of doing us good?
Did you not say that it was by your love to father
that you first were led to think seriously?”
“That is true, my child,” said Mrs. Scudder,
who, like many of the rest of the world, was surprised
to meet her own words walking out on a
track where she had not expected them, but was
yet too true of soul to cut their acquaintance because
they were not going the way of her wishes.
“Yes, all that is true; but yet, Mary, when one
has but one little ewe lamb in the world, one is
jealous of it. I would give all the world, if you
had never seen James. It is dreadful enough for a
woman to love anybody as you can, but it is more
to love a man of unsettled character and no religion.
But then the Lord appoints all our goings;
it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps; —
I leave you, my child, in His hands.” And, with
one solemn and long embrace, the mother and
daughter parted for the night.
It is impossible to write a story of New England
life and manners for a thoughtless, shallow-minded
person If we represent things as they are, their
earnestness, must inevitably repel lighter spirits, as
the reverse pole of the magnet drives off sticks and
straws.
In no other country were the soul and the spiritual
life ever such intense realities, and everything
contemplated so much (to use a current New England
phrase) “in reference to eternity.” Mrs. Scudder
was a strong, clear-headed, practical woman.
No one had a clearer estimate of the material and
outward life, or could more minutely manage its
smallest item; but then a tremendous, eternal future
had so weighed down and compacted the
fibres of her very soul, that all earthly things were
but as dust in comparison to it. That her child
should be one elected to walk in white, to reign
with Christ when earth was a forgotten dream, was
her one absorbing wish; and she looked on all the
events of life only with reference to this. The way
of life was narrow, the chances in favor of any
child of Adam infinitely small; the best, the most
seemingly pure and fair, was by nature a child of
wrath, and could be saved only by a sovereign decree,
by which it should be plucked as a brand
from the burning. Therefore it was, that, weighing
all things in one balance, there was the sincerity of
her whole being in the dread which she felt at the
thought of her daughter's marriage with an unbeliever.
Mrs. Scudder, after retiring to her room, took her
Bible, in preparation for her habitual nightly exercise
of devotion, before going to rest. She read
and re-read a chapter, scarce thinking what she was
reading, — aroused herself, — and then sat with the
book in her hand in deep thought. James Marvyn
was her cousin's son, and she had a strong feeling
of respect and family attachment for his father.
She had, too, a real kindness for the young man,
whom she regarded as a well-meaning, wilful youngster;
but that he should touch her saint, her Mary,
that he should take from her the daughter who was
her all, really embittered her heart towards him.
“After all,” she said to herself, “there are three
years, — three years in which there will be no letters,
or perhaps only one or two, — and a great deal
may be done in three years, if one is wise”; — and
she felt within herself an arousing of all the shrewd
womanly and motherly tact of her nature to meet
this new emergency.
| CHAPTER V.
THE LETTER. The minister's wooing | |