The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 26, December, 1859. Various
great many hard places in it."
As for James, during his interview at the cottage, he waited and tried in vain for one moment's private conversation. Mrs. Scudder was immovable in her motherly kindness, sitting there, smiling and chatting with him, but never stirring from her place by Mary.
Madame de Frontignac was out of all patience, and determined, in her small way, to do something to discompose the fixed state of things. So, retreating to her room, she contrived, in very desperation, to upset and break a water-pitcher, shrieking violently in French and English at the deluge which came upon the sanded floor and the little piece of carpet by the bedside.
What housekeeper's instincts are proof against the crash of breaking china?
Mrs. Scudder fled from her seat, followed by Miss Prissy.
"Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro," while Mary sat quiet as a statue, bending over her sewing, and James, knowing that it must be now or never, was, like a flash, in the empty chair by her side, with his black moustache very near to the bent brown head.
"Mary," he said, "you must let me see you once more. All is not said, is it? Just hear me,—hear me once alone!"
"Oh, James, I am too weak!—I dare not!—I am afraid of myself!"
"You think," he said, "that you must take this course, because it is right. But is it right? Is it right to marry one man, when you love another better? I don't put this to your inclination, Mary,—I know it would be of no use,—I put it to your conscience."
"Oh, I was never so perplexed before!" said Mary. "I don't know what I do think. I must have time to reflect. And you,—oh, James!—you must let me do right! There will never be any happiness for me, if I do wrong,—nor for you, either."
All this while the sounds of running and hurrying in Madame de Frontignac's room had been unintermitted; and Miss Prissy, not without some glimmerings of perception, was holding tight on to Mrs. Scudder's gown, detailing to her a most capital receipt for mending broken china, the history of which she traced regularly through all the families in which she had ever worked, varying the details with small items of family history, and little incidents as to the births, marriages, and deaths of different people for whom it had been employed, with all the particulars of how, where, and when, so that James's time for conversation was by this means indefinitely extended.
"Now," he said to Mary, "let me propose one thing. Let me go to the
Doctor, and tell him the truth."
"James, it does not seem to me that I can. A friend who has been so considerate, so kind, so self-sacrificing and disinterested, and whom I have allowed to go on with this implicit faith in me so long. Should you, James, think of yourself only?"
"I do nor, I trust, think of myself only," said James; "I hope that I am calm enough, and have a heart to think for others. But, I ask you, is it doing right to him to let him marry you in ignorance of the state of your feelings? Is it a kindness to a good and noble man to give yourself to him only seemingly, when the best and noblest part of your affections is gone wholly beyond your control? I am quite sure of that, Mary. I know you do love him very well,—that you would make a most true, affectionate, constant wife to him; but what I know you feel for me is something wholly out of your power to give to him,—is it not, now?"
"I think it is," said Mary, looking gravely and deeply thoughtful "But then, James, I ask myself, 'What if this had happened a week hence?' My feelings would have been just the same, because they are feelings over which I have no more control than over my existence. I can only control the expression of them. But in that case you would not have asked me to break my marriage-vow; and why now shall I break a solemn vow deliberately made before God? If what I can give him will content him, and he never knows that which would give him pain, what wrong is done him?"
"I should think the deepest possible wrong done me," said James, "if, when I thought I had married a wife with a whole heart, I found that the greater part of it had been before that given to another. If you tell him, or if I tell him, or your mother,—who is the proper person, and he chooses to hold you to your promise, then, Mary, I have no more to say. I shall sail in a few weeks again, and carry your image forever in my heart;—nobody can take that away; that dear shadow will be the only wife I shall ever know."
At this moment Miss Prissy came rattling along towards the door, talking—we suspect designedly—on quite a high key. Mary hastily said,—
"Wait, James,—let me think,—tomorrow is the Sabbath-day. Monday I will send you word, or see you."
And when Miss Prissy returned into the best room, James was sitting at one window and Mary at another,—he making remarks, in a style of most admirable commonplace, on a copy of Milton's "Paradise Lost," which he had picked up in the confusion of the moment, and which, at the time Mrs. Katy Scudder entered, he was declaring to be a most excellent book,—a really, truly, valuable work.
Mrs. Scudder looked keenly from one to the other, and saw that Mary's cheek was glowing like the deepest heart of a pink shell, while, in all other respects, she was as cold and calm. On the whole, she felt satisfied that no mischief had been done.
We hope our readers will do Mrs. Scudder justice. It is true that she yet wore on her third finger the marriage-ring of a sailor lover, and his memory was yet fresh in her heart; but even mothers who have married for love themselves somehow so blend a daughter's existence with their own as to conceive that she must marry their love, and not her own. Besides this, Mrs. Scudder was an Old Testament woman, brought up with that scrupulous exactitude of fidelity in relation to promises which would naturally come from familiarity with a book in which covenant-keeping is represented as one of the highest attributes of Deity, and covenant-breaking as one of the vilest sins of humanity. To break the word that had gone forth out of one's mouth was to lose self-respect, and all claim to the respect of others, and to sin against eternal rectitude.
As we have said before, it is almost impossible to make our light-minded times comprehend the earnestness with which those people lived. It was, in the beginning, no vulgar nor mercenary ambition that made her seek the Doctor as a husband for her daughter. He was poor, and she had had offers from richer men. He was often unpopular; but he of all the world was the man she most revered, the man she believed in with the most implicit faith, the man who embodied her highest ideas of the good; and therefore it was that she was willing to resign her child to him.
As to James, she had felt truly sympathetic with his mother, and with Mary, in the dreadful hour when they supposed him lost; and had it not been for the great perplexity occasioned by his return, she would have received him, as a relative, with open arms. But now she felt it her duty to be on the defensive,—an attitude not the most favorable for cherishing pleasing associations in regard to another. She had read the letter giving an account of his spiritual experience with very sincere pleasure, as a good woman should, but not without an internal perception how very much it endangered her favorite plans. When Mary, however, had calmly reiterated her determination, she felt sure of her; for had she ever known her to say a thing she did not do?
The uneasiness she felt at present, was not the doubt of her daughter's steadiness, but the fear that she might have been unsuitably harassed or annoyed.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE TRANSFIGURED
The next morning rose calm and fair. It was the Sabbath-day,—the last Sabbath in Mary's maiden life, if her promises and plans were fulfilled.
Mary dressed herself in white,—her hands trembling with unusual agitation, her sensitive nature divided between two opposing consciences and two opposing affections. Her devoted filial love toward the Doctor made her feel the keenest sensitiveness at the thought of giving him pain. At the same time, the questions which James had proposed to her had raised serious doubts in her mind whether it was altogether right to suffer him blindly to enter into this union. So, after she was all prepared, she bolted the door of her chamber, and, opening her Bible, read, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him"; and then, kneeling down by the bedside, she asked that God would give her some immediate