THE LETTER.
MARY returned to the quietude of her room. The red of twilight had
faded, and the silver moon, round and fair, was rising behind the thick
boughs of the apple-trees. She sat down in the window, thoughtful and
sad, and listened to the crickets, whose ignorant jollity often sounds
as mournfully to us mortals as ours may to superior beings. There the
little hoarse, black wretches were scraping and creaking, as if life
and death were invented solely for their pleasure, and the world were
created only to give them a good time in it. Now and then a little
wind shivered among the boughs, and brought down a shower of white
petals which shimmered in the slant beams of the moonlight; and now a
ray touched some tall head of grass, and forthwith it blossomed into
silver, and stirred itself with a quiet joy, like a new-born saint
just awaking in Paradise. And ever and anon came on the still air the
soft, eternal pulsations of the distant sea,—sound mournfullest, most
mysterious, of all the harpings of Nature. It was the sea,—the deep,
eternal sea,—the treacherous, soft, dreadful, inexplicable sea; and
he was perhaps at this moment being borne away on it,—away, away,—to
what sorrows, to what temptations, to what dangers, she knew not. She
looked along the old, familiar, beaten path by which he came, by which
he went, and thought, ‘What if he _never_ should come back?’ There
was a little path through the orchard out to a small elevation in the
pasture-lot behind, whence the sea was distinctly visible, and Mary
had often used her low-silled window as a door when she wanted to pass
out thither; so now she stepped out, and, gathering her skirts back
from the dewy grass, walked thoughtfully along the path and gained
the hill. Newport harbour lay stretched out in the distance, with the
rising moon casting a long, wavering track of silver upon it; and
vessels, like silver-winged moths, were turning and shifting slowly
to and fro upon it, and one stately ship in full sail passing fairly
out under her white canvas, graceful as some grand, snowy bird. Mary’s
beating heart told her that _there_ was passing away from her one
who carried a portion of her existence with him. She sat down under
a lonely tree that stood there, and, resting her elbow on her knee,
followed the ship with silent prayers, as it passed, like a graceful,
cloudy dream, out of her sight.
Then she thoughtfully retraced her way to her chamber; and as she was
entering, observed in the now clearer moonlight what she had not seen
before,—something white, like a letter, lying on the floor. Immediately
she struck a light, and there, sure enough, it was,—a letter in James’s
handsome, dashing hand; and the little puss, before she knew what she
was about, actually kissed it, with a fervour which would much have
astonished the writer, could he at that moment have been clairvoyant.
But Mary felt as one who finds, in the emptiness after a friend’s
death, an unexpected message or memento; and all alone in the white,
calm stillness of her little room her heart took sudden possession
of her. She opened the letter with trembling hands, and read what of
course we shall let you read. We got it out of a bundle of old, smoky,
yellow letters, years after all the parties concerned were gone on the
eternal journey beyond earth.
‘MY DEAR MARY,—
‘I cannot leave you so. I have about two hundred things to
say to you, and it’s a shame I could not have had longer
to see you; but blessed be ink and paper! I am writing and
seeing to fifty things besides; so you musn’t wonder if my
letter has rather a confused appearance.
‘I have been thinking that perhaps I gave you a wrong
impression of myself, this afternoon. I am going to speak to
you from my heart, as if I were confessing on my death-bed.
Well, then, I do not confess to being what is commonly
called a bad young man. I should be willing that men of
the world generally, even strict ones, should look my life
through and know all about it. It is only in your presence,
Mary, that I feel that I am bad and low and shallow and
mean, because you represent to me a sphere higher and
holier than any in which I have ever moved, and stir up a
sort of sighing and longing in my heart to come towards
it. In all countries, in all temptations, Mary, your image
has stood between me and low, gross vice. When I have been
with fellows roaring drunken, beastly songs,—suddenly I
have seemed to see you as you used to sit beside me in the
singing-school, and your voice has been like an angel’s in
my ear, and I have got up and gone out sick and disgusted.
Your face has risen up calm and white and still, between
the faces of poor lost creatures who know no better way of
life than to tempt us to sin. And sometimes, Mary, when I
have seen girls that, had they been cared for by good, pious
mothers, might have been like you, I have felt as if I could
cry for them. Poor women are abused all the world over; and
it’s no wonder they turn round and revenge themselves on us.
‘No, I have not been bad, Mary, as the world calls badness.
I have been kept by you. But do you remember you told me
once, that, when the snow first fell and lay so dazzling and
pure and soft, all about, you always felt as if the spreads
and window-curtains that seemed white before were dirty?
Well, it’s just like that with me. Your presence makes me
feel that I am not pure,—that I am low and unworthy,—not
worthy to touch the hem of your garment. Your good Dr. H.
spent a whole half-day, the other Sunday, trying to tell us
about the beauty of holiness; and he cut, and pared, and
peeled, and sliced, and told us what it wasn’t, and what
was _like_ it, and wasn’t; and then he built up an exact
definition, and fortified and bricked it up all round; and
I thought to myself that he’d better tell ’em to look at
Mary Scudder, and they’d understand all about it. That was
what I was thinking when you talked to me for looking at you
in church instead of looking towards the pulpit. It really
made me laugh in myself to see what a good little ignorant,
unconscious way you had of looking up at the Doctor, as if
he knew more about that than you did.
‘And now as to your Doctor that you think so much of, I like
him for certain things, in certain ways. He is a great,
grand, large pattern of a man,—a man who isn’t afraid to
think, and to speak anything he does think; but then I do
believe, if he would take a voyage round the world in the
forecastle of a whaler, he would know more about what to
say to people than he does now; it would certainly give him
several new points to be considered. Much of his preaching
about men is as like live men as Chinese pictures of trees
and rocks and gardens,—no nearer the reality than that.
All I can say is, “It isn’t so; and you’d know it, Sir, if
you knew men.” He has got what they call a _system_,—just
so many bricks put together just so; but it is too narrow
to take in all I see in my wanderings round this world of
ours. Nobody that has a soul, and goes round the world as I
do, can help feeling it at times, and thinking, as he sees
all the races of men and their ways, who made them, and
what they were made for. To doubt the existence of a God
seems to me like a want of common sense. There is a Maker
and a Ruler, doubtless; but then, Mary, all this invisible
world of religion is unreal to me. I can see we must be
good, somehow,—that if we are not, we shall not be happy
here or hereafter. As to all the metaphysics of your good
Doctor, you can’t tell how they tire me. I’m not the sort of
person that they can touch. I must have real things,—real
people; abstractions are nothing to me. Then I think that he
systematically contradicts on one Sunday what he preaches on
another. One Sunday he tells us that God is the immediate
efficient Author of every act of will; the next he tells us
that we are entire free agents. I see no sense in it, and
can’t take the trouble to put it together. But then he and
you have something in you that I call religion,—something
that makes you _good_. When I see a man working away on an
entirely honest, unworldly, disinterested pattern, as he
does, and when I see you, Mary, as I said before, I should
like at least to _be_ as you are, whether I could believe as
you do or not.
‘How could you so care for me, and waste on one so unworthy
of you such love? Oh, Mary, some better man must win you;
I never shall and never can;—but then you must not quite
forget me; you must be my friend, my saint. If, through your
prayers, your Bible, your friendship, you can bring me to
your state, I am willing to be brought there,—nay, desirous.
God has put the key of my soul into your hands.
‘So, dear Mary, good-bye! Pray still for your naughty, loving
‘COUSIN JAMES.’
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 neighbour to anger; there was therefore an
involuntary flash from her eye and a heightening of her colour, 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-bye. 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 we 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 sceptical, and remarked,—‘If he really felt a
disposition for religious instruction, Dr. H. could guide him much
better than you could.’
‘Yes,—so I told him, and I tried to persuade him to talk with Dr. H.;
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 honour
which makes us feel it indelicate to expose to an unsympathising 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,
that 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 anything 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 favour 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.