University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.
THE INTERVIEW.

A quiet, maiden-like place was Mary's little
room. The window looked out under the overarching
boughs of a thick apple-orchard, now all
in a blush with blossoms and pink-tipped buds, and
the light came golden-green, strained through flickering
leaves, — and an ever-gentle rustle and whirr of
branches and blossoms, a chitter of birds, and an
indefinite whispering motion, as the long heads of
orchard-grass nodded and bowed to each other under
the trees, seemed to give the room the quiet hush of
some little side-chapel in a cathedral, where green
and golden glass softens the sunlight, and only the
sigh and rustle of kneeling worshippers break the stillness
of the aisles. It was small enough for a nun's
apartment, and dainty in its neatness as the waxen
cell of a bee. The bed and low window were
draped in spotless white, with fringes of Mary's own
knotting. A small table under the looking-glass
bore the library of a well-taught young woman of
those times. “The Spectator,” “Paradise Lost,”
Shakspeare, and “Robinson Crusoe,” stood for the

admitted secular literature, and beside them the
Bible and the works then published of Mr. Jonathan
Edwards. Laid a little to one side as if of
doubtful reputation, was the only novel which the
stricter people in those days allowed for the reading
of their daughters: that seven-volumed, trailing,
tedious, delightful old bore, “Sir Charles Grandison,”
— a book whose influence in those times was
so universal, that it may be traced in the epistolary
style even of the gravest divines. Our little heroine
was mortal, with all her divinity, and had an imagination
which sometimes wandered to the things of
earth; and this glorious hero in lace and embroidery,
who blended rank, gallantry, spirit, knowledge of the
world, disinterestedness, constancy, and piety, sometimes
stepped before her, while she sat spinning at
her wheel, till she sighed, she hardly knew why, that
no such men walked the earth now. Yet it is to be
confessed, this occasional raid of the romantic into
Mary's balanced and well-ordered mind was soon
energetically put to rout, and the book, as we have
said, remained on her table under protest, — protected
by being her father's gift to her mother during
their days of courtship. The small looking-glass
was curiously wreathed with corals and foreign
shells, so disposed as to indicate an artistic eye and
skilful hand; and some curious Chinese paintings
of birds and flowers gave rather a piquant and foreign
air to the otherwise homely neatness of the
apartment.

Here in this little retreat Mary spent those few
hours which her exacting conscience would allow
her to spare from her busy-fingered household-life
here she read and wrote and thought and prayed:
— and here she stands now, arraying herself for the
tea company that afternoon. Dress, which in our
day is becoming in some cases the whole of woman,
was in those times a remarkably simple affair.
True, every person of a certain degree of respectability
had state and festival robes; and a certain
camphor-wood brass-bound trunk, which was always
kept solemnly locked in Mrs. Katy Scudder's apartment,
if it could have spoken, might have given off
quite a catalogue of brocade satin and laces. The
wedding-suit there slumbered in all the unsullied
whiteness of its stiff ground broidered with heavy
knots of flowers; and there were scarfs of wrought
India muslin and embroidered crape, each of which
had its history, — for each had been brought into
the door with beating heart on some return voyage
of one who, alas, should return no more! The old
trunk stood with its histories, its imprisoned remembrances,
— and a thousand tender thoughts seemed
to be shaken out of every rustling fold of silk and
embroidery, on the few yearly occasions when all
were brought out to be aired, their history related,
and then solemnly locked up again. Nevertheless,
the possession of these things gave to the women
of an establishment a certain innate dignity, like

a good conscience; so that in that larger portion
of existence commonly denominated among them
“every day,” they were content with plain stuff
and homespun. Mary's toilette, therefore, was
sooner made than those of Newport belles of the
present day; it simply consisted in changing her
ordinary “short gown and petticoat” for another
of somewhat nicer materials, — a skirt of India
chintz and a striped jacconet short-gown. Her
hair was of the kind which always lies like satin;
but, nevertheless, girls never think their toilette
complete unless the smoothest hair has been shaken
down and rearranged. A few moments, however,
served to braid its shining folds and dispose them
in their simple knot on the back of the head; and
having given a final stroke to each side with her
little dimpled hands, she sat down a moment at
the window, thoughtfully watching where the afternoon
sun was creeping through the slats of the
fence in long lines of gold among the tall, tremulous
orchard-grass, and unconsciously she began
warbling, in a low, gurgling voice, the words of a
familiar hymn, whose grave earnestness accorded
well with the general tone of her life and education:
—

There was a swish and rustle in the orchard-grass,
and a tramp of elastic steps; then the branches

were brushed aside, and a young man suddenly
emerged from the trees a little behind Mary. He
was apparently about twenty-five, dressed in the
holiday rig of a sailor on shore, which well set off
his fine athletic figure, and accorded with a sort
of easy, dashing, and confident air which sat not
unhandsomely on him. For the rest, a high forehead
shaded by rings of the blackest hair, a keen,
dark eye, a firm and determined mouth, gave the
impression of one who had engaged to do battle
with life, not only with a will, but with shrewdness
and ability.

He introduced the colloquy by stepping deliberately
behind Mary, putting his arms round her
neck, and kissing her.

“Why, James!” said Mary, starting up, and
blushing. “Come, now!”

“I have come, haven't I?” said the young man,
leaning his elbow on the window-seat and looking
at her with an air of comic determined frankness,
which yet had in it such wholesome honesty that
it was scarcely possible to be angry. “The fact is,
Mary,” he added, with a sudden earnest darkening
of the face, “I won't stand this nonsense any
longer. Aunt Katy has been holding me at arm's
length ever since I got home; and what have I
done? Haven't I been to every prayer-meeting
and lecture and sermon, since I got into port, just
as regular as a psalm-book? and not a bit of a word

could I get with you, and no chance even so much
as to give you my arm. Aunt Kate always comes
between us and says, `Here, Mary, you take my
arm.' What does she think I go to meeting for,
and almost break my jaws keeping down the gapes?
I never even go to sleep, and yet I'm treated in
this way! It's too bad! What's the row? What's
anybody been saying about me? I always have
waited on you ever since you were that high.
Didn't I always draw you to school on my sled?
didn't we always use to do our sums together?
didn't I always wait on you to singing-school?
and I've been made free to run in and out as if I
were your brother; — and now she is as glum and
stiff, and always stays in the room every minute
of the time that I am there, as if she was afraid
I should be in some mischief. It's too bad!”

“Oh, James, I am sorry that you only go to
meeting for the sake of seeing me; you feel no
real interest in religious things; and besides, mother
thinks now I'm grown so old, that — Why,
you know things are different now, — at least, we
mustn't, you know, always do as we did when we
were children. But I wish you did feel more interested
in good things.”

“I am interested in one or two good things,
Mary, — principally in you, who are the best I
know of. Besides,” he said quickly, and scanning
her face attentively to see the effect of his words,

“don't you think there is more merit in my sitting
out all these meetings, when they bore me
so confoundedly, than there is in your and Aunt
Katy's doing it, who really seem to find something
to like in them? I believe you have a sixth
sense, quite unknown to me; for it's all a maze,
— I can't find top, nor bottom, nor side, nor up,
nor down to it, — it's you can and you can't, you
shall and you sha'n't, you will and you won't,” —

“James!”

“You needn't look at me so. I'm not going to
say the rest of it. But, seriously, it's all anywhere
and nowhere to me; it don't touch me, it don't
help me, and I think it rather makes me worse;
and then they tell me it's because I'm a natural
man, and the natural man understandeth not the
things of the Spirit. Well, I am a natural man,
— how's a fellow to help it?”

“Well, James, why need you talk everywhere
as you do? You joke, and jest, and trifle, till it
seems to everybody that you don't believe in anything.
I'm afraid mother thinks you are an infidel.
but I know that can't be; yet we hear of all sorts
of things that you say.”

“I suppose you mean my telling Deacon Twitchel
that I had seen as good Christians among the
Mahometans as any in Newport. Didn't I make
him open his eyes? It's true, too!”

“In every nation, he that feareth God and worketh

righteousness is accepted of Him,” said Mary;
“and if there are better Christians than we are
among the Mahometans, I am sure I'm glad of it.
But, after all, the great question is, `Are we Christians
ourselves?' Oh, James, if you only were a
real, true, noble Christian!”

“Well, Mary, you have got into that harbor,
through all the sandbars and rocks and crooked
channels; and now do you think it right to leave
a fellow beating about outside, and not go out to
help him in? This way of drawing up, among you
good people, and leaving us sinners to ourselves,
isn't generous. You might care a little for the
soul of an old friend, anyhow!”

“And don't I care, James? How many days
and nights have been one prayer for you! If I
could take my hopes of heaven out of my own
heart and give them to you, I would. Dr. Hopkins
preached last Sunday on the text, `I could
wish myself accursed from Christ for my brethren,
my kinsmen'; and he went on to show how we
must be willing to give up even our own salvation,
if necessary, for the good of others. People
said it was hard doctrine, but I could feel my
way through it very well. Yes, I would give my
soul for yours; I wish I could.”

There was a solemnity and pathos in Mary's
manner which checked the conversation. James
was the more touched because he felt it all so real,

from one whose words were always yea and nay
so true, so inflexibly simple. Her eyes filled with
tears, her face kindled with a sad earnestness, and
James thought, as he looked, of a picture he
had once seen in a European cathedral, where
the youthful Mother of Sorrows is represented,

James had thought he loved Mary; he had admired
her remarkable beauty, he had been proud
of a certain right in her before that of other young
men, her associates; he had thought of her as the
keeper of his home; he had wished to appropriate
her wholly to himself; — but in all this there had
been, after all, only the thought of what she was
to be to him; and, for this poor measure of what
he called love, she was ready to offer, an infinite
sacrifice.

As a subtile flash of lightning will show in a
moment a whole landscape, tower, town, winding
stream, and distant sea, so that one subtile ray of
feeling seemed in a moment to reveal to James
the whole of his past life; and it seemed to him
so poor, so meagre, so shallow, by the side of that
childlike woman, to whom the noblest of feelings

were unconscious matters of course, that a sort of
awe awoke in him; like the Apostles of old, he
“feared as he entered into the cloud”; it seemed
as if the deepest string of some eternal sorrow had
vibrated between them.

After a moment's pause, he spoke in a low and
altered voice: —

“Mary, I am a sinner. No psalm or sermon
ever taught it to me, but I see it now. Your
mother is quite right, Mary; you are too good for
me; I am no mate for you. Oh, what would you
think of me, if you knew me wholly? I have
lived a mean, miserable, shallow, unworthy life.
You are worthy, you are a saint, and walk in
white! Oh, what upon earth could ever make you
care so much for me?”

“Well, then, James, you will be good? Won't
you talk with Dr. Hopkins?”

“Hang Dr. Hopkins!” said James. “Now, Mary,
I beg your pardon, but I can't make head or tail
of a word Dr. Hopkins says. I don't get hold of it,
or know what he would be at. You girls and women
don't know your power. Why, Mary, you are
a living gospel. You have always had a strange
power over us boys. You never talked religion
much, but I have seen high fellows come away
from being with you as still and quiet as one feels
when one goes into a church. I can't understand
all the hang of predestination, and moral ability

and natural ability, and God's efficiency, and man's
agency, which Dr. Hopkins is so engaged about; but
I can understand you, — you can do me good!”

“Oh, James, can I?”

“Mary, I'm going to confess my sins. I saw,
that, somehow or other, the wind was against me
in Aunt Katy's quarter, and you know we fellows
who take up the world in both fists don't like to
be beat. If there's opposition, it sets us on. Now
I confess I never did care much about religion,
but I thought, without being really a hypocrite,
I'd just let you try to save my soul for the sake
of getting you; for there's nothing surer to hook
a woman than trying to save a fellow's soul. It's
a dead-shot, generally, that. Now our ship sails
to-night, and I thought I'd just come across this
path in the orchard to speak to you. You know
I used always to bring you peaches and juneatings
across this way, and once I brought you a ribbon.”

“Yes, I've got it yet, James.”

“Well, now, Mary, all this seems mean to me,
— mean, to try and trick and snare you, who are
so much too good for me. I felt very proud this
morning that I was to go out first mate this time,
and that I should command a ship next voyage.
I meant to have asked you for a promise, but I
don't. Only, Mary, just give me your little Bible,
and I'll promise to read it all through soberly, and

see what it all comes to. And pray for me; and
if, while I'm gone, a good man comes who loves
you, and is worthy of you, why, take him, Mary,
— that's my advice.”

“James, I am not thinking of any such things;
I don't ever mean to be married. And I'm glad
you don't ask me for any promise, — because it
would be wrong to give it; mother doesn't even
like me to be much with you. But I'm sure all
I have said to you to-day is right; I shall tell her
exactly all I have said.”

“If Aunt Katy knew what things we fellows are
pitched into, who take the world headforemost, she
wouldn't be so selfish. Mary, you girls and women
don't know the world you live in; you ought to be
pure and good; you are not tempted as we are. You
don't know what men, what women, — no, they're
not women! — what creatures, beset us in every
foreign port, and boarding-houses that are gates
of hell; and then, if a fellow comes back from all
this and don't walk exactly straight, you just draw
up the hems of your garments and stand close to
the wall, for fear he should touch you when he
passes. I don't mean you, Mary, for you are different
from most; but if you would do what you
could, you might save us. — But it's no use talking,
Mary. Give me the Bible; and please be kind
to my dove, — for I had a hard time getting him
across the water, and I don't want him to die.”

If Mary had spoken all that welled up in her
little heart at that moment, she might have said
too much; but duty had its habitual seal upon her
lips. She took the little Bible from her table and
gave it with a trembling hand, and James turned
to go. In a moment he turned back, and stood
irresolute.

“Mary,” he said, “we are cousins; I may never
come back; you might kiss me this once.”

The kiss was given and received in silence, and
James disappeared among the thick trees.

“Come, child,” said Aunt Katy, looking in, “there
is Deacon Twitchel's chaise in sight, — are you
ready?”

“Yes, mother.”