Twitchel will remember.’
‘That he was!’ said his helpmeet. ‘I ’member, when he came home, says I, “Father, you seem clean used up;” and I stirred ’round lively like, to get him his tea. But he jest went into the bedroom and laid down afore supper; and I says to Cerinthy Ann, “That’s a thing I ha’n’t seen your father do since he was took with the typhus.” And Cerinthy Ann, she said she knew ’twa’n’t anything but them old doctrines—that it was always so when Uncle Seth come down. And after tea father was kinder chirked up a little, and he and Seth set by the fire, and was a-beginnin’ it ag’in, and I jest spoke out and said—“Now, Seth, these ’ere things doesn’t hurt you; but the Deacon is weakly, and if he gets his mind riled after supper, he don’t sleep none all night. So,” says I, “you’d better jest let matters stop where they be; ’cause,” says I, “ ’twon’t make no difference, for to-night, which on ye’s got the right on’t;—reckon the Lord’ll go on his own way without you; and we shall find out, by’m-by, what that is.” ’
‘Mr. Scudder used to think a great deal on these points,’ said Mrs. Katy, ‘and the last time he was home he wrote out his views. I haven’t ever shown them to you, Doctor; but I should be pleased to know what you think of them.’
‘Mr. Scudder was a good man, with a clear head,’ said the Doctor; ‘and I should be much pleased to see anything that he wrote.’
A flush of gratified feeling passed over Mrs. Katy’s face;—for one flower laid on the shrine which we keep in our hearts for the dead is worth more than any gift to our living selves.
We will not now pursue our party further, lest you, Reader, get more theological tea than you can drink. We will not recount the numerous nice points raised by Mr. Simeon Brown and adjusted by the Doctor—and how Simeon invariably declared, that that was the way in which he disposed of them himself, and how he had thought it out ten years ago.
We will not relate, either, too minutely, how Mary changed colour and grew pale and red in quick succession, when Mr. Simeon Brown incidentally remarked that the ‘Monsoon’ was going to set sail that very afternoon for her three-years’ voyage. Nobody noticed—in the busy amenities—the sudden welling and ebbing of that one poor little heart-fountain.
So we go—so little knowing what we touch and what touches us as we talk! We drop out a common piece of news—‘Mr. So-and-so is dead—Miss Such-a-one is married—such a ship has sailed,’—and lo, on our right hand or our left, some heart has sunk under the news silently—gone down in the great ocean of Fate, without even a bubble rising to tell its drowning pang. And this—God help us!—is what we call living!
CHAPTER V.
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,
