MARY returned to the house with her basket of warm, fresh eggs, which
she set down mournfully upon the table. In her heart there was one
conscious want and yearning, and that was to go to the friends of him
she had lost—to go to his mother. The first impulse of bereavement is
to stretch out the hands towards what was nearest and dearest to the
departed.
Her dove came fluttering down out of the tree and settled on her hand,
and began asking in his dumb way to be noticed. Mary stroked his white
feathers, and bent her head down over them till they were wet with
tears. ‘Oh, birdie, you live, but he is gone!’ she said. Then suddenly
putting it gently from her, and going near and throwing her arms around
her mother’s neck,—‘Mother,’ she said, ‘I want to go up to Cousin
Ellen’s.’ (This was the familiar name by which she always called Mrs.
Marvyn.) ‘Can’t you go with me, mother?’
‘My daughter, I have thought of it. I hurried about my baking this
morning, and sent word to Mr. Jenkyns that he needn’t come to see about
the chimney, because I expected to go as soon as breakfast should be
out of the way. So hurry, now, boil some eggs, and get on the cold beef
and potatoes, for I see Solomon and Amaziah coming in with the milk.
They’ll want their breakfast immediately.’
The breakfast for the hired men was soon arranged on the table, and
Mary sat down to preside while her mother was going on with her baking,
introducing various loaves of white and brown bread into the capacious
oven by means of a long iron shovel, and discoursing at intervals with
Solomon with regard to the different farming operations which he had in
hand for the day.
Solomon was a tall, large-boned man, brawny and angular, with a face
tanned by the sun, and graven with those considerate lines which New
England so early writes on the faces of her sons. He was reputed
an oracle in matters of agriculture and cattle, and, like oracles
generally, was prudently sparing of his responses. Amaziah was one
of those uncouth over-grown boys of eighteen, whose physical bulk
appears to have so suddenly developed that the soul has more matter
than she has learned to recognize, so that the hapless individual is
always awkwardly conscious of too much limb; and in Amaziah’s case this
consciousness grew particularly distressing when Mary was in the room.
He liked to have her there, he said, ‘but somehow she was so white and
pretty, she made him feel sort o’ awful-like.’
Of course, as such poor mortals always do, he must, on this particular
morning, blunder into precisely the wrong subject.
‘S’pose you’ve heerd the news that Jeduthan Pettibone brought home in
the “Flying Scud,” ’bout the wreck o’ the “Monsoon;” it’s an awful
providence, that ’ar’ is—a’n’t it? Why Jeduthan says she jest crushed
like an egg-shell’—and with that Amaziah illustrated the fact by
crushing an egg-shell in his great brown hand.
Mary did not answer. She could not grow any paler than she was before;
a dreadful curiosity came over her, but her lips could frame no
question. Amaziah went on:
‘Ye see, the cap’en he got killed with a spar when the blow fust come
on, and Jim Marvyn he commanded; and Jeduthan says that he seemed to
have the spirit of ten men in him. He worked, and he watched, and he
was everywhere at once, and he kep’ ’em all up for three days, till
finally they lost their rudder, and went drivin’ right onto the rocks.
When they come in sight, he come up on deck, and says he, “Well, my
boys, we’re headin’ right into eternity,” says he, “and our chances
for this world a’n’t worth mentionin’, any on us; but we’ll all have
one try for our lives. Boys, I’ve tried to do my duty by you and the
ship—but God’s will be done! All I have to ask now is, that if any of
you git to shore, you’ll find my mother and tell her I died thinkin’ of
her and father and my dear friends.” That was the last Jeduthan saw of
him, for in a few minutes more the ship struck, and then it was every
man for himself. Laws! Jeduthan says there couldn’t nobody have stood
beatin’ agin them rocks unless they was all leather and inger-rubber
like him. Why, he says the waves would take strong men and jest crush
’em against the rocks like smashin’ a pie-plate!’
Here Mary’s paleness became livid; she made a hasty motion to rise from
the table, and Solomon trod on the foot of the narrator.
‘You seem to forget that friends and relations has feelin’s,’ he said,
as Mary hastily went into her own room.
Amaziah, suddenly awakened to the fact that he had been trespassing,
sat with mouth half open and a stupefied look of perplexity on his face
for a moment, and then, rising hastily, said: ‘Well, Sol, I guess I’ll
go an’ yoke up the steers.’
At eight o’clock all the morning toils were over, the wide kitchen cool
and still, and the one-horse waggon standing at the door, into which
climbed Mary, her mother, and the Doctor, for, though invested with no
spiritual authority, and charged with no ritual or form for hours of
affliction, the religion of New England always expects her minister as
a first visitor in every house of mourning.
The ride was a sorrowful and silent one. The Doctor, propped upon his
cane, seemed to reflect deeply.
‘Have you been at all conversant with the exercises of our young
friend’s mind on the subject of religion?’ he asked.
Mrs. Scudder did not at first reply. The remembrance of James’s last
letter flashed over her mind, and she felt the vibration of the frail
child beside her, in whom every nerve was quivering. After a moment she
said: ‘It does not become us to judge the spiritual state of any one.
James’s mind was in an unsettled way when he left; but who can say what
wonders may have been effected by Divine grace since then?’
This conversation fell on the soul of Mary like the sound of clods
falling on a coffin to the ear of one buried alive; she heard it
with a dull, smothering sense of suffocation. _That_ question to be
raised!—and about one, too, for whom she could have given her own
soul! At this moment she felt how idle is the mere hope or promise of
personal salvation made to one who has passed beyond the life of self,
and struck deep the roots of his existence in others. She did not utter
a word—how could she? A doubt—the faintest shadow of a doubt—in such
a case, falls on the soul with the weight of mountain certainty, and
in that short ride she felt what an infinite pain may be locked in one
small, silent breast.
The waggon drew up to the house of mourning. Cato stood at the gate,
and came forward, officiously, to help them out. ‘Mass’r and Missis
will be glad to see you,’ he said. ‘It’s a drefful stroke has come upon
’em.’
Candace appeared at the door. There was a majesty of sorrow in her
bearing as she received them. She said not a word, but pointed with her
finger towards the inner room; but as Mary lifted up her faded, weary
face to hers, her whole soul seemed to heave towards her like a billow,
and she took her up in her arms and broke forth into sobbing, and,
carrying her in, as if she had been a child, set her down in the inner
room and sat down beside her.
Mrs. Marvyn and her husband sat together, holding each other’s hands,
the open Bible between them. For a few moments nothing was to be heard
but sobs and unrestrained weeping, and then all kneeled down while the
Doctor prayed.
After they rose up, Mr. Zebedee Marvyn stood for a moment thoughtfully,
and then said: ‘If it had pleased the Lord to give me a sure evidence
of my son’s salvation, I could have given him up with all my heart; but
now, whatever there may be, I have seen none.’ He stood in an attitude
of hopeless, heart-smitten dejection, which contrasted painfully with
his usual upright carriage and the firm lines of his face.
Mrs. Marvyn started as if a sword had pierced her, passed her arm round
Mary’s waist, with a strong, nervous clasp, unlike her usual calm
self, and said, ‘Stay with me, daughter, to-day!—stay with me!’
‘Mary can stay as long as you wish, cousin,’ said Mrs. Scudder; ‘we
have nothing to call her home.’
‘_Come_ with me!’ said Mrs. Marvyn to Mary, opening an adjoining
door into her bedroom, and drawing her in with a sort of suppressed
vehemence, ‘I want you!—I must have you!’
‘Mrs. Marvyn’s state alarms me,’ said her husband, looking
apprehensively after her when the door was closed; ‘she has not shed
any tears nor slept any since she heard this news. You know that her
mind has been in a peculiar and unhappy state with regard to religious
things for many years. I was in hopes she might feel free to open her
exercises of mind to the Doctor.’
‘Perhaps she will feel more freedom with Mary,’ said the Doctor. ‘There
is no healing for such troubles except in unconditional submission to
Infinite Wisdom and Goodness. The Lord reigneth, and will at last bring
infinite good out of evil, whether _our_ small portion of existence be
included or not.’
After a few moments more of conference, Mrs. Scudder and the Doctor
departed, leaving Mary alone in the house of mourning.