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 she read such exalted praises of herself from one 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, as her eye fell on the letter. “What is it you are 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 not children now, and that you thought it was not 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 natural sense of honor which makes us feel it indelicate 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 Christians drew to ourselves and did not care for 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 James; — he was as much better than I was as 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 will bless you. Don’t believe too much in your 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 intensity, their depth, their unworldly gravity and 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.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 136
