Harriet Beecher Stowe : Three Novels (133 page)

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Authors: Harriet Beecher Stowe

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Page 771
"True, mother," said Mary, warmly; "he is the best, the noblest, and yet the humblest man in the world."
"You love him very much, do you not?" said her mother.
"Very dearly," said Mary.
"Mary, he has asked me, this evening, if you would be willing to be his wife."
"His
wife,
mother?" said Mary, in the tone of one confused with a new and strange thought.
"Yes, daughter; I have long seen that he was preparing to make you this proposal."
"You have, mother?"
"Yes, daughter; have you never thought of it?"
"Never, mother."
There was a long pause,Mary standing, just as she had been interrupted, in her night toilette, with her long, light hair streaming down over her white dress, and the comb held mechanically in her hand. She sat down after a moment, and, clasping her hands over her knees, fixed her eyes intently on the floor; and there fell between the two a silence so profound, that the tickings of the clock in the next room seemed to knock upon the door. Mrs. Scudder sat with anxious eyes watching that silent face, pale as sculptured marble.
"Well, Mary," she said at last.
A deep sigh was the only answer. The violent throbbings of her heart could be seen undulating the long hair as the moaning sea tosses the rock-weed.
"My daughter," again said Mrs. Scudder.
Mary gave a great sigh, like that of a sleeper awakening from a dream, and looking at her mother, said,"Do you suppose he really
loves
me, mother?"
"Indeed he does, Mary, as much as man ever loved woman!"
"Does he indeed?" said Mary, relapsing into thoughtfulness.
"And you love him, do you not?" said her mother.
"Oh, yes, I love him."
"You love him better than any man in the world, don't you?"
"Oh, mother, mother! yes!" said Mary, throwing herself

 

Page 772
passionately forward, and bursting into sobs; "yes, there is no one else now that I love better,no one!no one!"
"My darling! my daughter!" said Mrs. Scudder, coming and taking her in her arms.
"Oh, mother, mother!" she said, sobbing distressfully, "let me cry, just for a little,oh, mother, mother, mother!"
What was there hidden under that despairing wail?It was the parting of the last strand of the cord of youthful hope.
Mrs. Scudder soothed and caressed her daughter, but maintained still in her breast a tender pertinacity of purpose, such as mothers will, who think they are conducting a child through some natural sorrow into a happier state.
Mary was not one, either, to yield long to emotion of any kind. Her rigid education had taught her to look upon all such outbursts as a species of weakness, and she struggled for composure, and soon seemed entirely calm.
"If he really loves me, mother, it would give him great pain if I refused," said Mary thoughtfully.
"Certainly it would; and, Mary, you have allowed him to act as a very near friend for a long time; and it is quite natural that he should have hopes that you loved him."
"I do love him, mother,better than anybody in the world except you. Do you think that will do?"
"Will do?" said her mother; "I don't understand you."
"Why, is that loving enough to marry? I shall love him more, perhaps, after,shall I, mother?"
"Certainly you will; every one does."
"I wish he did not want to marry me, mother," said Mary, after a pause. "I liked it a great deal better as we were before."
"All girls feel so, Mary, at first; it is very natural."
"Is that the way you felt about father, mother?"
Mrs. Scudder's heart smote her when she thought of her own early love,that great love that asked no questions,that had no doubts, no fears, no hesitations,nothing but one great, outsweeping impulse, which swallowed her life in that of another. She was silent; and after a moment, she said,
"I was of a different disposition from you, Mary. I was of a strong, wilful, positive nature. I either liked or disliked with

 

Page 773
all my might. And besides, Mary, there never was a man like your father."
The matron uttered this first article in the great confession of woman's faith with the most unconscious simplicity.
"Well, mother, I will do whatever is my duty. I want to be guided. If I can make that good man happy, and help him to do some good in the world___After all, life is short, and the great thing is to do for others."
"I am sure, Mary, if you could have heard how he spoke, you would be sure you could make him happy. He had not spoken before, because he felt so worthy of such a blessing; he said I was to tell you that he should love and honor you all the same, whether you could be his wife or not,but that nothing this side of heaven would be so blessed a gift,that it would make up for every trial that could possibly come upon him. And you know, Mary, he has a great many discouragements and trials;people don't appreciate him; his efforts to do good are misunderstood and misconstrued; they look down on him, and despise him, and tell all sorts of evil things about him; and sometimes he gets quite discouraged."
"Yes, mother, I will marry him," said Mary;"yes, I will."
"My darling daughter!" said Mrs. Scudder,"this has been the hope of my life!"
"Has it, mother?" said Mary, with a faint smile; "I shall make you happier then?"
"Yes, dear, you will. And think what a prospect of usefulness opens before you! You can take a position, as his wife, which will enable you to do even more good than you do now; and you will have the happiness of seeing, every day, how much you comfort the hearts and encourage the hands of God's dear people."
"Mother, I ought to be very glad I can do it," said Mary; "and I trust I am. God orders all things for the best."
"Well, my child, sleep to-night, and to-morrow we will talk more about it."

 

Page 774
XXVII.
Surprises
Mrs. Scudder kissed her daughter, and left her. After a moment's thought, Mary gathered the long silky folds of hair around her head, and knotted them for the night. Then leaning forward on her toilet-table, she folded her hands together, and stood regarding the reflection of herself in the mirror.
Nothing is capable of more ghostly effect than such a silent, lonely contemplation of that mysterious image of ourselves which seems to look out of an infinite depth in the mirror, as if it were our own soul beckoning to us visibly from unknown regions. Those eyes look into our own with an expression sometimes vaguely sad and inquiring. The face wears weird and tremulous lights and shadows; it asks us mysterious questions, and troubles us with the suggestions of our relations to some dim unknown. The sad, blue eyes that gazed into Mary's had that look of calm initiation, of melancholy comprehension, peculiar to eyes made clairvoyant by "great and critical" sorrow. They seemed to say to her, "Fulfil thy mission; life is made for sacrifice; the flower must fall before fruit can perfect itself." A vague shuddering of mystery gave intensity to her reverie. It seemed as if those mirror-depths were another world; she heard the far-off dashing of sea-green waves; she felt a yearning impulse towards that dear soul gone out into the infinite unknown.
Her word just passed had in her eyes all the sacred force of the most solemnly attested vow; and she felt as if that vow had shut some till then open door between her and him; she had a kind of shadowy sense of a throbbing and yearning nature that seemed to call on her,that seemed surging towards her with an imperative, protesting force that shook her heart to its depths.
Perhaps it is so, that souls, once intimately related, have ever after
this a strange power of affecting each other,a

 

Page 775
power that neither absence nor death can annul. How else can we interpret those mysterious hours in which the power of departed love seems to overshadow us, making our souls vital with such longings, with such wild throbbings, with such unutterable sighings, that a little more might burst the mortal bond? Is it not deep calling unto deep? the free soul singing outside the cage to her mate beating against the bars within?
Mary even, for a moment, fancied that a voice called her name, and started, shivering. Then the habits of her positive and sensible education returned at once, and she came out of her reverie as one breaks from a dream, and lifted all these sad thoughts with one heavy sigh from her breast; and opening her Bible, she read: "They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth forever. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people from henceforth, even forever."
Then she kneeled by her bedside, and offered her whole life a sacrifice to the loving God who had offered his life a sacrifice for her. She prayed for grace to be true to her promise,to be faithful to the new relation she had accepted. She prayed that all vain regrets for the past might be taken away, and that her soul might vibrate without discord in unison with the will of Eternal Love. So praying, she rose calm, and with that clearness of spirit which follows an act of uttermost self-sacrifice; and so calmly she laid down and slept, with her two hands crossed upon her breast, her head slightly turned on the pillow, her cheek pale as marble, and her long dark lashes lying drooping, with a sweet expression, as if under that mystic veil of sleep the soul were seeing things forbidden to the waking eye. Only the gentlest heaving of the quiet breast told that the heavenly spirit within had not gone whither it was hourly aspiring to go.
Meanwhile Mrs. Scudder had left Mary's room, and entered the Doctor's study, holding a candle in her hand. The good man was sitting alone in the dark, with his head bowed upon his Bible. When Mrs. Scudder entered, he rose, and regarded her wistfully, but did not speak. He had something just then in his heart for which he had no words; so he only

 

Page 776
looked as a man does who hopes and fears for the answer of a decisive question.
Mrs. Scudder felt some of the natural reserve which becomes a matron coming charged with a gift in which lies the whole sacredness of her own existence, and which she puts from her hands with a jealous reverence. She therefore measured the man with her woman's and mother's eye, and said, with a little stateliness,
"My dear Sir, I come to tell you the result of my conversation with Mary."
She made a little pause,and the Doctor stood before her as humbly as if he had not weighed and measured the universe; because he knew, that, though he might weigh the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance, yet it was a far subtiler power which must possess him of one small woman's heart. In fact, he felt to himself like a great, awkward, clumsy mountainous earthite asking of a white-robed angel to help him up a ladder of cloud. He was perfectly sure, for the moment, that he was going to be refused; and he looked humbly firm,he would take it like a man. His large blue eyes, generally so misty in their calm, had a resolute clearness, rather mournful than otherwise. Of course, no such celestial experience was going to happen to him.
He cleared his throat, and said,
"Well, Madam?"
Mrs. Scudder's womanly dignity was appeased; she reached out her hand, cheerfully, and said,
"She has accepted."
The Doctor drew his hand suddenly away, turned quickly round, and walked to the window,although, as it was ten o'clock at night and quite dark, there was evidently nothing to be seen there. He stood there, quietly, swallowing very hard, and raising his handkerchief several times to his eyes. There was enough going on under the black coat just then to make quite a little figure in a romance, if it had been uttered; but he belonged to a class who
lived
romance, but never spoke it. In a few moments he returned to Mrs. Scudder, and said,
"I trust, dear Madam, that this very dear friend may never have reason to think me ungrateful for her wonderful good-

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