University of Virginia Library

32. CHAPTER XXXII.

Moses walked slowly home from his interview with Sally
in a sort of maze of confused thought. In general, men understand
women only from the outside, and judge them with
about as much real comprehension as an eagle might judge
a canary-bird. The difficulty of real understanding intensifies
in proportion as the man is distinctively manly, and the
woman womanly. There are men with a large infusion of
the feminine element in their composition, who read the
female nature with more understanding than commonly falls
to the lot of men; but in general, when a man passes beyond
the mere outside artifices and unrealities which lie
between the two sexes, and really touches his finger to any
vital chord in the heart of a fair neighbor, he is astonished
at the quality of the vibration.

“I could not have dreamed there was so much in her,”
thought Moses, as he turned away from Sally Kittridge. He
felt humbled as well as astonished by the moral lecture
which this frisky elf with whom he had all summer been
amusing himself, preached to him from the depths of a real
woman's heart. What she said of Mara's loving him filled
his eyes with remorseful tears, — and for the moment he
asked himself whether this restless, jealous, exacting desire
which he felt to appropriate her whole life and heart to himself,
were as really worthy of the name of love as the generous
self-devotion with which she had, all her life, made all
his interests her own.

Was he to go to her now and tell her that he loved her,
and therefore he had teased and vexed her, — therefore he
had seemed to prefer another before her, — therefore he
had practised and experimented upon her nature? A suspicion
rather stole upon him that love which expresses itself
principally in making exactions and giving pain is not exactly
worthy of the name. And yet he had been secretly
angry with her all summer for being the very reverse of
this; for her apparent cheerful willingness to see him happy
with another; for the absence of all signs of jealousy, — all
desire of exclusive appropriation. It showed, he said to
himself, that there was no love; and now when it dawned
on him that this might be the very heroism of self-devotion,
he asked himself which was best worthy to be called love.

“She did love him, then!” The thought blazed up
through the smouldering embers of thought in his heart like
a tongue of flame. She loved him! He felt a sort of triumph
in it, for he was sure Sally must know, they were so
intimate. Well, he would go to her, and tell her all, confess
all his sins, and be forgiven.

When he came back to the house all was still evening.
The moon, which was playing brightly on the distant sea,
left one side of the brown house in shadow. Moses saw a
light gleaming behind the curtain in the little room on the
lower floor, which had been his peculiar sanctum during the
summer past. He had made a sort of library of it, keeping
there his books and papers. Upon the white curtain flitted,
from time to time, a delicate, busy shadow; now it rose and
now it stooped, and then it rose again — grew dim and vanished,
and then came out again. His heart beat quick.

Mara was in his room, busy, as she always had been before
his departures, in cares for him. How many things had

she made for him, and done and arranged for him all his life
long! — things which he had taken as much as a matter of
course as the shining of that moon. His thoughts went
back to the times of his first going to sea, — he a rough,
chaotic boy, sensitive and surly, and she the ever thoughtful
good angel of a little girl, whose loving-kindness he had felt
free to use and to abuse. He remembered that he made her
cry there when he should have spoken lovingly and gratefully
to her, and that the words of acknowledgment that
ought to have been spoken, never had been said, — remained
unsaid to that hour. He stooped low, and came quite close
to the muslin curtain. All was bright in the room, and
shadowy without; he could see her movements as through a
thin white haze. She was packing his sea-chest; his things
were lying about her, folded or rolled nicely. Now he saw
her on her knees writing something with a pencil in a book,
and then she enveloped it very carefully in silk paper, and
tied it trimly, and hid it away at the bottom of the chest.
Then she remained a moment kneeling at the chest, her head
resting in her hands. A sort of strange sacred feeling came
over him as he heard a low murmur, and knew that she
felt a Presence that he never felt or acknowledged. He
felt somehow that he was doing her a wrong thus to be prying
upon moments when she thought herself alone with God;
a sort of vague remorse filled him; he felt as if she were
too good for him. He turned away, and entering the front-door
of the house, stepped noiselessly along and lifted the
latch of the door. He heard a rustle as of one rising hastily
as he opened it and stood before Mara. He had made up
his mind what to say; but when she stood there before him,
with her surprised, inquiring eyes, he felt confused.

“What, home so soon?” she said.

“You did not expect me, then?”

“Of course not, — not for these two hours; so,” she said,
looking about, “I found some mischief to do among your
things. If you had waited as long as I expected, they
would all have been quite right again, and you would never
have known.”

Moses sat down and drew her toward him, as if he were
going to say something, and then stopped and began confusedly
playing with her work-box.

“Now, please don't,” said she, archly. “You know what
a little old maid I am about my things!”

“Mara,” said Moses, “people have asked you to marry
them, have there not?”

“People asked me to marry them!” said Mara. “I hope
not. What an odd question!”

“You know what I mean,” said Moses; “you have had
offers of marriage — from Mr. Adams, for example.”

“And what if I have?”

“You did not accept him, Mara?” said Moses.

“No, I did not.”

“And yet he was a fine man, I am told, and well fitted to
make you happy.”

“I believe he was,” said Mara, quietly.

“And why were you so foolish?”

Mara was fretted at this question. She supposed Moses
had come to tell her of his engagement to Sally, and that
this was a kind of preface, and she answered, —

“I don't know why you call it foolish. I was a true friend
to Mr. Adams. I saw intellectually that he might have the
power of making any reasonable woman happy. I think
now that the woman will be fortunate who becomes his wife;
but I did not wish to marry him.”

“Is there anybody you prefer to him, Mara?” said Moses.

She started up with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes.

“You have no right to ask me that, though you are my
brother.”

“I am not your brother, Mara,” said Moses, rising and
going toward her, “and that is why I ask you. I feel I
have a right to ask you.”

“I do not understand you,” she said, faintly.

“I can speak plainer, then. I wish to put in my poor
venture. I love you, Mara — not as a brother. I wish
you to be my wife, if you will.”

While Moses was saying these words, Mara felt a sort of
whirling in her head, and it grew dark before her eyes; but
she had a strong, firm will, and she mastered herself and
answered, after a moment, in a quiet, sorrowful tone, “How
can I believe this, Moses? If it is true, why have you
done as you have this summer?”

“Because I was a fool, Mara, — because I was jealous of
Mr. Adams, — because I somehow hoped, after all, that you
either loved me or that I might make you think more of me
through jealousy of another. They say that love always is
shown by jealousy.”

“Not true love, I should think,” said Mara. “How could
you do so? — it was cruel to her, — cruel to me.”

“I admit it, — anything, everything you can say. I have
acted like a fool and a knave, if you will; but after all,
Mara, I do love you. I know I am not worthy of you —
never was — never can be; you are in all things a true
noble woman, and I have been unmanly.”

It is not to be supposed that all this was spoken without
accompaniments of looks, movements, and expressions of
face such as we cannot give, but such as doubled their power

to the parties concerned; and the “I love you” had its usual
conclusive force as argument, apology, promise, — covering,
like charity, a multitude of sins.

Half an hour after, you might have seen a youth and a
maiden coming together out of the door of the brown house,
and walking arm in arm toward the sea-beach.

It was one of those wonderfully clear moonlight evenings,
when the ocean, like a great reflecting mirror, seems to
double the brightness of the sky, — and its vast expanse
lay all around them in its stillness, like an eternity of waveless
peace. Mara remembered that time in her girlhood
when she had followed Moses into the woods on just such a
night, — how she had sat there under the shadows of the
trees, and looked over to Harpswell and noticed the white
houses and the meeting-house, all so bright and clear in the
moonlight, and then off again on the other side of the island
where silent ships were coming and going in the mysterious
stillness. They were talking together now with that outflowing
fulness which comes when the seal of some great reserve
has just been broken, — going back over their lives
from day to day, bringing up incidents of childhood, and
turning them gleefully like two children.

And then Moses had all the story of his life to relate, and
to tell Mara all he had learned of his mother, — going over
with all the narrative contained in Mr. Sewell's letter.

“You see, Mara, that it was intended that you should be
my fate,” he ended; “so the winds and waves took me up
and carried me to the lonely island where the magic princess
dwelt.”

“You are Prince Ferdinand,” said Mara.

“And you are Miranda,” said he.

“Ah!” she said with fervor, “how plainly we can see

that our heavenly Father has been guiding our way! How
good he is, — and how we must try to live for Him, — both
of us.”

A sort of cloud passed over Moses' brow. He looked
embarrassed, and there was a pause between them, and then
he turned the conversation.

Mara felt pained; it was like a sudden discord; such
thoughts and feelings were the very breath of her life; she
could not speak in perfect confidence and unreserve, as she
then spoke, without uttering them; and her finely organized
nature felt a sort of electric consciousness of repulsion and
dissent.

She grew abstracted, and they walked on in silence.

“I see now, Mara, I have pained you,” said Moses, “but
there are a class of feelings that you have that I have not
and cannot have. No, I cannot feign anything. I can understand
what religion is in you, — I can admire its results.
I can be happy, if it gives you any comfort; but people are
differently constituted. I never can feel as you do.”

“Oh, don't say never,” said Mara, with an intensity that
nearly startled him; “it has been the one prayer, the one
hope, of my life, that you might have these comforts, — this
peace.”

“I need no comfort or peace except what I shall find in
you,” said Moses, drawing her to himself, and looking admiringly
at her; “but pray for me still. I always thought that
my wife must be one of the sort of women who pray.”

“And why?” said Mara, in surprise.

“Because I need to be loved a great deal, and it is only
that kind who pray who know how to love really. If you
had not prayed for me all this time, you never would have
loved me in spite of all my faults, as you did, and do, and

will, as I know you will,” he said, folding her in his arms;
and in his secret heart he said, “Some of this intensity, this
devotion, which went upward to heaven, will be mine one
day. She will worship me.”

“The fact is, Mara,” he said, “I am a child of this world.
I have no sympathy with things not seen. You are a half-spiritual
creature, — a child of air; and but for the great
woman's heart in you, I should feel that you were something
uncanny and unnatural. I am selfish, I know; I frankly
admit, I never disguised it; but I love your religion because
it makes you love me. It is an incident to that loving, trusting
nature which makes you all and wholly mine, as I want
you to be. I want you all and wholly; every thought,
every feeling, — the whole strength of your being. I don't
care if I say it: I would not wish to be second in your
heart even to God himself!”

“Oh, Moses!” said Mara, almost starting away from him,
“such words are dreadful; they will surely bring evil upon
us.”

“I only breathed out my nature as you did yours. Why
should you love an unseen and distant Being more than you
do one whom you can feel and see, who holds you in his
arms, whose heart beats like your own?”

“Moses,” said Mara, stopping and looking at him in the
clear moonlight, “God has always been to me not so much
like a father as like a dear and tender mother. Perhaps it
was because I was a poor orphan, and my father and mother
died at my birth, that He has been so loving to me. I never
remember the time when I did not feel his presence in my
joys and my sorrows. I never had a thought of joy and
sorrow that I could not say to Him. I never woke in the
night that I did not feel that He was loving and watching

me, and that I loved Him in return. Oh, how many, many
things I have said to Him about you! My heart would have
broken years ago, had it not been for Him; because, though
you did not know it, you often seemed unkind; you hurt me
very often when you did not mean to. His love is so much
a part of my life that I cannot conceive of life without it.
It is the very air I breathe.”

Moses stood still a moment, for Mara spoke with a fervor
that affected him; then he drew her to his heart, and
said, —

“Oh, what could ever make you love me?”

“He sent you and gave you to me,” she answered, “to be
mine in time and eternity.”

The words were spoken in a kind of enthusiasm so different
from the usual reserve of Mara, that they seemed like a
prophecy. That night, for the first time in her life, had she
broken the reserve which was her very nature, and spoken
of that which was the intimate and hidden history of her
soul.