Harriet Beecher Stowe : Three Novels (126 page)

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Authors: Harriet Beecher Stowe

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Page 732
was laid suddenly low, who can say what silent anguish of loving hearts sounded the dread depths of eternity with the awful question,
Where?
In no other time or place of Christendom have so fearful issues been presented to the mind. Some church interposed its protecting shield; the Christian born and baptized child was supposed in some wise rescued from the curse of the fall, and related to the great redemption,to be a member of Christ's family, and, if ever so sinful, still infolded in some vague sphere of hope and protection. Augustine solaced the dread anxieties of trembling love by prayers offered for the dead, in times when the Church above and on earth presented itself to the eye of the mourner as a great assembly with one accord lifting interceding hands for the parted soul.
But the clear logic and intense individualism of New England deepened the problems of the Augustinian faith, while they swept away all those softening provisions so earnestly clasped to the throbbing heart of that great poet of theology. No rite, no form, no paternal relation, no faith or prayer of church, earthly or heavenly, interposed the slightest shield between the trembling spirit and Eternal Justice. The individual entered eternity alone, as if he had no interceding relation in the universe.
This, then, was the awful dread which was constantly underlying life. This it was which caused the tolling bell in green hollows and lonely dells to be a sound which shook the soul and searched the heart with fearful questions. And this it was that was lying with mountain weight on the soul of the mother, too keenly agonized to feel that doubt in such a case was any less a torture than the most dreadful certainty.
Hers was a nature more reasoning than creative and poetic; and whatever she believed bound her mind in strictest chains to its logical results. She delighted in the regions of mathematical knowledge, and walked them as a native home, but the commerce with abstract certainties fitted her mind still more to be stiffened and enchained by glacial reasonings, in regions where spiritual intuitions are as necessary as wings to birds.
Mary was by nature of the class who never reason abstractly, whose intellections all begin in the heart which sends

 

Page 733
them colored with its warm life-tint to the brain. Her perceptions of the same subjects were as different from Mrs. Marvyn's as his who revels only in color from his who is busy with the dry details of mere outline. The one mind was arranged like a map, and the other like a picture. In all the system which had been explained to her, her mind selected points on which it seized with intense sympathy, which it dwelt upon and expanded till all else fell away. The sublimity of disinterested benevolence,the harmony and order of a system tending in its final results to infinite happiness,the goodness of God,the love of a self-sacrificing Redeemer,were all so many glorious pictures, which she revolved in her mind with small care for their logical relations.
Mrs. Marvyn had never, in all the course of their intimacy, opened her mouth to Mary on the subject of religion. It was not an uncommon incident of those times for persons of great elevation and purity of character to be familiarly known and spoken of as living under a cloud of religious gloom; and it was simply regarded as one more mysterious instance of the workings of that infinite decree which denied to them the special illumination of the Spirit.
When Mrs. Marvyn had drawn Mary with her into her room, she seemed like a person almost in frenzy. She shut and bolted the door, drew her to the foot of the bed, and, throwing her arms round her, rested her hot and throbbing forehead on her shoulder. She pressed her thin hand over her eyes, and then, suddenly drawing back, looked her in the face as one resolved to speak something long suppressed. Her soft brown eyes had a flash of despairing wildness in them, like that of a hunted animal turning in its death-struggle on its pursuer.
''Mary," she said, "I can't help it,don't mind what I say, but I must speak or die! Mary, I cannot, will not, be resigned!it is all hard, unjust, cruel!to all eternity I will say so! To me there is no goodness, no justice, no mercy in anything! Life seems to me the most tremendous doom that can be inflicted on a helpless being!
What had we done,
that it should be sent upon us? Why were we made to love so, to hope so,our hearts so full of feeling, and all the laws of Nature marching over us,never stopping for our agony?

 

Page 734
Why, we can suffer so in this life that we had better never have been born!
"But, Mary, think what a moment life is! think of those awful ages of eternity! and then think of all God's power and knowledge used on the lost to make them suffer! think that all but the merest fragment of mankind have gone into this,are in it now! The number of the elect is so small we can scarce count them for anything! Think what noble minds, what warm, generous hearts, what splendid natures are wrecked and thrown away by thousands and tens of thousands! How we love each other! how our hearts weave into each other! how more than glad we should be to die for each other! And all this endsO God, how must it end?Mary! it isn't
my
sorrow only! What right have I to mourn? Is
my
son any better than any other mother's son? Thousands of thousands, whose mothers loved them as I love mine, are gone there!Oh, my wedding-day! Why did they rejoice? Brides should wear mourning,the bells should toll for every wedding; every new family is built over this awful pit of despair, and only one in a thousand escapes!"
Pale, aghast, horror-stricken, Mary stood dumb, as one who in the dark and storm sees by the sudden glare of lightning a chasm yawning under foot. It was amazement and dimness of anguish;the dreadful words struck on the very centre where her soul rested. She felt as if the point of a wedge were being driven between her life and her life's life,between her and her God. She clasped her hands instinctively on her bosom, as if to hold there some cherished image, and said, in a piercing voice of supplication,
"My
God!
my
God! oh, where art Thou?"
Mrs. Marvyn walked up and down the room with a vivid spot of red in each cheek, and a baleful fire in her eyes, talking in rapid soliloquy, scarcely regarding her listener, absorbed in her own enkindled thoughts.
"Dr. Hopkins says that this is all best,better than it would have been in any other possible way,that God
chose
it because it was for a greater final good,that He not only chose it, but took means to make it certain,that He ordains every sin, and does all that is necessary to make it certain,that He creates the vessels of wrath and fits them for destruc-

 

Page 735
tion, and that He has an infinite knowledge by which He can do it without violating their free agency.So much the worse! What a use of infinite knowledge! What if men should do so? What if a father should take means to make it certain that his poor little child should be an abandoned wretch, without violating his free agency? So much the worse, I say!They say He does this so that He may show to all eternity, by their example, the evil nature of sin and its consequences! This is all that the greater part of the human race have been used for yet; and it is all right, because an overplus of infinite happiness is yet to be wrought out by it!It is
not
right! No possible amount of good to ever so many can make it right to deprave ever so few;happiness and misery cannot be measured so! I never can think it right,never!Yet they say our salvation depends on our loving God,loving Him better than ourselves,loving Him better than our dearest friends.It is impossible!it is contrary to the laws of my nature! I can never love God! I can never praise Him!I am lost! lost! lost! And what is worse, I cannot redeem my friends! Oh, I
could
suffer forever,how willingly!if I could save
him!
But oh, eternity, eternity! Frightful, unspeakable woe! No end!no bottom!no shore!no hope!O God! O God!"
Mrs. Marvyn's eyes grew wilder,she walked the floor, wringing her hands,and her words, mingled with shrieks and moans, became whirling and confused, as when in autumn a storm drives the leaves in dizzy mazes.
Mary was alarmed,the ecstacy of despair was just verging on insanity. She rushed out and called Mr. Marvyn.
"Oh! come in! do! quick!I'm afraid her mind is going!" she said.
"It is what I feared," he said, rising from where he sat reading his great Bible, with an air of heartbroken dejection. "Since she heard this news, she has not slept nor shed a tear. The Lord hath covered us with a cloud in the day of his fierce anger."
He came into the room, and tried to take his wife into his arms. She pushed him violently back, her eyes glistening with a fierce light. "Leave me alone!" she said,"I am a lost spirit!"

 

Page 736
These words were uttered in a shriek that went through Mary's heart like an arrow.
At this moment, Candace, who had been anxiously listening at the door for an hour past, suddenly burst into the room.
"Lor' bress ye, Squire Marvyn, we won't hab her goin' on dis yer way," she said. "Do talk
gospel
to her, can't ye?ef you can't, I will.
"Come, ye poor little lamb," she said, walking straight up to Mrs. Marvyn, "come to ole Candace!"and with that she gathered the pale form to her bosom, and sat down and began rocking her, as if she had been a babe. "Honey, darlin', ye a'n't right,dar's a drefful mistake somewhar," she said. "Why, de Lord a'n't like what ye tink,He
loves
ye, honey! Why, jes' feel how
I
loves ye,poor ole black Candace,an' I a'n't better'n Him as made me! Who was it wore de crown o' thorns, lamb?who was it sweat great drops o' blood?who was it said, 'Father, forgive dem'? Say, honey!wasn't it de Lord dat made ye?Dar, dar, now ye'r' cryin'!cry away, and ease yer poor little heart! He died for Mass'r Jim,loved him and
died
for him,jes' give up his sweet, precious body and soul for him on de cross! Laws, jes'
leave
him in Jesus's hands! Why, honey, dar's de very print o' de nails in his hands now!''
The flood-gates were rent; and healing sobs and tears shook the frail form, as a faded lily shakes under the soft rains of summer. All in the room wept together.
"Now, honey," said Candace, after a pause of some minutes, "I knows our Doctor's a mighty good man, an' larned,an' in fair weather I ha'n't no 'bjection to yer hearin' all about dese yer great an' mighty tings he's got to say. But, honey, dey won't do for you now; sick folks mus'n't hab strong meat; an' times like dese, dar jest a'n't but one ting to come to, an' dat ar's
Jesus.
Jes' come right down to whar poor ole black Candace has to stay allers,it's a good place, darlin'!
Look right at Jesus.
Tell ye, honey, ye can't live no other way now. Don't ye 'member how He looked on His mother, when she stood faintin' an' tremblin' under de cross, jes' like you? He knows all about mothers' hearts; He won't break

 

Page 737
yours. It was jes' 'cause He know'd we'd come into straits like dis yer, dat he went through all dese tings,Him, de Lord o' Glory! Is dis Him you was a-talkin' about?Him you can't love? Look at Him, an' see ef you can't. Look an' see what He is!don't ask no questions, and don't go to no reasonin's,jes' look at
Him,
hangin' dar, so sweet and patient, on de cross! All dey could do couldn't stop his lovin' 'em; he prayed for 'em wid all de breath he had. Dar's a God you can love, a'n't dar? Candace loves Him,poor, ole, foolish, black, wicked Candace,and she knows He loves her,"and here Candace broke down into torrents of weeping.
They laid the mother, faint and weary, on her bed, and beneath the shadow of that suffering cross came down a healing sleep on those weary eyelids.
"Honey," said Candace, mysteriously, after she had drawn Mary out of the room, "don't ye go for to troublin' yer mind wid dis yer. I'm clar Mass'r James is one o' de 'lect; and I'm clar dar's consid'able more o' de 'lect dan people tink. Why, Jesus didn't die for nothin',all dat love a'n't gwine to be wasted. De 'lect is more'n you or I knows, honey! Dar's de
Spirit,
He'll give it to 'em; and ef Mass'r James
is
called an' took, depend upon it de Lord has got him ready,course He has,so don't ye go to layin' on your poor heart what no mortal creetur can live under; 'cause, as we's got to live in dis yer world, it's quite clar de Lord must ha' fixed it so we
can;
and ef tings was as some folks suppose, why, we
couldn't
live, and dar wouldn't be no sense in anyting dat goes on."
The sudden shock of these scenes was followed, in Mrs. Marvyn's case, by a low, lingering fever. Her room was darkened, and she lay on her bed, a pale, suffering form, with scarcely the ability to raise her hand. The shimmering twilight of the sick-room fell on white napkins, spread over stands, where constantly appeared new vials, big and little, as the physician made his daily visit, and prescribed now this drug and now that, for a wound that had struck through the soul.
Mary remained many days at the white house, because, to the invalid, no step, no voice, no hand was like hers. We see her there now, as she sits in the glimmering by the bed-curtains,her head a little drooped, as droops a snowdrop over

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