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