 | CHAPTER XXII.
THE HOUSE OF MOURNING. The minister's wooing |  |
22. CHAPTER XXII.
THE HOUSE OF MOURNING.
Mary returned to the house with her basket of
warm, fresh eggs, which she set down mournfully
upon the table. In her heart there was one conscious
want and yearning, and that was to go to the
friends of him she had lost, — to go to his mother.
The first impulse of bereavement is to stretch out
the hands towards what was nearest and dearest
to the departed.
Her dove came fluttering down out of the tree,
and settled on her hand, and began asking in his
dumb way to be noticed. Mary stroked his white
feathers, and bent her head down over them, till
they were wet with tears. “Oh, birdie, you live,
but he is gone!” she said. Then suddenly putting
it gently from her, and going near and throwing her
arms around her mother's neck, — “Mother,” she
said, “I want to go up to Cousin Ellen's.” (This
was the familiar name by which she always called
Mrs. Marvyn.) “Can't you go with me, mother?”
“My daughter, I have thought of it. I hurried
Mr. Jenkyns that he needn't come to see about the
chimney, because I expected to go as soon as
breakfast should be out of the way. So, hurry,
now, boil some eggs, and get on the cold beef and
potatoes; for I see Solomon and Amaziah coming
in with the milk. They'll want their breakfast immediately.”
The breakfast for the hired men was soon arranged
on the table, and Mary sat down to preside
while her mother was going on with her baking,
— introducing various loaves of white and
brown bread into the capacious oven by means of
a long iron shovel, and discoursing at intervals
with Solomon, with regard to the different farming
operations which he had in hand for the
day.
Solomon was a tall, large-boned man, brawny
and angular; with a face tanned by the sun, and
graven with those considerate lines which New
England so early writes on the faces of her sons.
He was reputed an oracle in matters of agriculture
and cattle, and, like oracles generally, was
prudently sparing of his responses. Amaziah was
one of those uncouth overgrown boys of eighteen
whose physical bulk appears to have so suddenly
developed that the soul has more matter than she
has learned to recognize, so that the hapless individual
is always awkwardly conscious of too much
grew particularly distressing when Mary was in the
room. He liked to have her there, he said, — “but,
somehow, she was so white and pretty, she made
him feel sort o' awful-like.”
Of course, as such poor mortals always do, he
must, on this particular morning, blunder into precisely
the wrong subject.
“S'pose you've heerd the news that Jeduthun
Pettibone brought home in the `Flying Scud,'
'bout the wreck o' the `Monsoon'; it's an awful
providence, that 'ar' is, — a'n't it? Why, Jeduthun
says she jest crushed like an egg-shell”; — and with
that Amaziah illustrated the fact by crushing an
egg in his great brown hand.
Mary did not answer. She could not grow any
paler than she was before; a dreadful curiosity
came over her, but her lips could frame no question.
Amaziah went on: —
“Ye see, the cap'en he got killed with a spar
when the blow fust come on, and Jim Marvyn he
commanded; and Jeduthun says that he seemed
to have the spirit of ten men in him; he worked
and he watched, and he was everywhere at once,
and he kep' 'em all up for three days, till finally
they lost their rudder, and went drivin' right onto
the rocks. When they come in sight, he come
up on deck, and says he, `Well, my boys, we're
headin' right into eternity,' says he, `and our chances
us, but we'll all have one try for our lives. Boys,
I've tried to do my duty by you and the ship, —
but God's will be done! All I have to ask now
is, that, if any of you git to shore, you'll find my
mother and tell her I died thinkin' of her and
father and my dear friends.' That was the last
Jeduthun saw of him; for in a few minutes more
the ship struck, and then it was every man for
himself. Laws! Jeduthun says there couldn't nobody
have stood beatin' agin them rocks, unless
they was all leather and inger-rubber like him.
Why, he says the waves would take strong men
and jest crush 'em against the rocks like smashin'
a pie-plate!”
Here Mary's paleness became livid; she made a
hasty motion to rise from the table, and Solomon
trod on the foot of the narrator.
“You seem to forget that friends and relations
has feelin's,” he said, as Mary hastily went into
her own room.
Amaziah, suddenly awakened to the fact that
he had been trespassing, sat with mouth half open
and a stupefied look of perplexity on his face for
a moment, and then, rising hastily, said, “Well,
Sol, I guess I'll go an' yoke up the steers.”
At eight o'clock all the morning toils were over,
the wide kitchen cool and still, and the one-horse
wagon standing at the door, into which climbed
invested with no spiritual authority, and charged
with no ritual or form for hours of affliction, the
religion of New England always expects her minister
as a first visitor in every house of mourning.
The ride was a sorrowful and silent one. The
Doctor, propped upon his cane, seemed to reflect
deeply.
“Have you been at all conversant with the exercises
of our young friend's mind on the subject
of religion?” he asked.
Mrs. Scudder did not at first reply. The remembrance
of James's last letter flashed over her
mind, and she felt the vibration of the frail child
beside her, in whom every nerve was quivering.
After a moment, she said, — “It does not become us
to judge the spiritual state of any one. James's
mind was in an unsettled way when he left;
but who can say what wonders may have been
effected by divine grace since then?”
This conversation fell on the soul of Mary like
the sound of clods falling on a coffin to the ear
of one buried alive; — she heard it with a dull,
smothering sense of suffocation. That question to
be raised? — and about one, too, for whom she
could have given her own soul? At this moment
she felt how idle is the mere hope or promise of
personal salvation made to one who has passed
of his existence in others. She did not utter a
word; — how could she? A doubt, — the faintest
shadow of a doubt, — in such a case, falls on the
soul with the weight of mountain certainty; and
in that short ride she felt what an infinite pain
may be locked in one small, silent breast.
The wagon drew up to the house of mourning.
Cato stood at the gate, and came forward, officiously,
to help them out. “Mass'r and Missis
will be glad to see you,” he said. “It's a drefful
stroke has come upon 'em.”
Candace appeared at the door. There was a
majesty of sorrow in her bearing, as she received
them. She said not a word, but pointed with her
finger towards the inner room; but as Mary lifted
up her faded, weary face to hers, her whole soul
seemed to heave towards her like a billow, and
she took her up in her arms and broke forth into
sobbing, and, carrying her in, as if she had been
a child, set her down in the inner room and sat
down beside her.
Mrs. Marvyn and her husband sat together, holding
each other's hands, the open Bible between
them. For a few moments nothing was to be
heard but sobs and unrestrained weeping, and
then all kneeled down to pray.
After they rose up, Mr. Zebedee Marvyn stood
for a moment thoughtfully, and then said, — “If
of my son's salvation, I could have given
him up with all my heart; but now, whatever
here may be, I have seen none.” He stood in
an attitude of hopeless, heart-smitten dejection,
which contrasted painfully with his usual upright
carriage and the firm lines of his face.
Mrs. Marvyn started as if a sword had pierced
her, passed her arm round Mary's waist, with a
strong, nervous clasp, unlike her usual calm self,
and said, — “Stay with me, daughter, to-day! —
stay with me!”
“Mary can stay as long as you wish, cousin,”
said Mrs. Scudder; “we have nothing to call her
home.”
“Come with me!” said Mrs. Marvyn to Mary
opening an adjoining door into her bedroom, and
drawing her in with a sort of suppressed vehemence,
— “I want you! — I must have you!”
“Mrs. Marvyn's state alarms me,” said her husband,
looking apprehensively after her when the
door was closed; “she has not shed any tears,
nor slept any, since she heard this news. You
know that her mind has been in a peculiar and
unhappy state with regard to religious things for
many years. I was in hopes she might feel free
to open her exercises of mind to the Doctor.”
“Perhaps she will feel more freedom with Mary,”
said the Doctor. “There is no healing for such
Wisdom and Goodness. The Lord reigneth,
and will at last bring infinite good out of
evil, whether our small portion of existence be
included or not.”
After a few moments more of conference, Mrs.
Scudder and the Doctor departed, leaving Mary
alone in the house of mourning.
| CHAPTER XXII.
THE HOUSE OF MOURNING. The minister's wooing | |