The Minister's Wooing

CHAPTER XXXVIII

The next morning rose calm and fair. It was the Sabbath-day; the last Sabbath in Mary’s maiden life if her promises and plans were fulfilled.

Mary dressed herself in white – her hands trembling with unusual agitation, her sensitive nature divided between two opposing consciences and two opposing affections. Her devoted filial love towards the Doctor made her feel the keenest sensitiveness at the thought of giving him pain. At the same time, the questions which James had proposed to her had raised serious doubts in her mind whether it was altogether right to suffer him blindly to enter into this union. So after she was all prepared, she bolted the door of her chamber, and opening her Bible, read, ‘If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given;’ and then kneeling down by the bed, she asked that God would give her some immediate light in her present perplexity. So praying, her mind grew calm and steady, and she rose up at the sound of the bell which marked that it was time to set forward for church.

Everybody noticed, as she came into the church that morning, how beautiful Mary Scudder looked. It was no longer the beauty of the carved statue, the pale alabaster shrine, the sainted virgin, but a warm, bright, living light, that spoke of some summer breath breathing within her soul.

When she took her place in the singers’ seat she knew, without turning her head, that he was in his old place not far from her side, and those whose eyes followed her to the gallery marvelled at her face, where —

for a thousand delicate nerves were becoming vital once more, as the holy mystery of womanhood wrought within her.

When they rose to sing, the tune must needs be one which Mary and James had often sung together out of the same book at the singing school – one of those wild, pleading tunes dear to the heart of New England, born, if we may credit the report, in the rocky hollow of its mountains, and whose notes have a kind of grand and mournful triumph in their warbling wail. The different parts of the harmony, set contrary to all the canons of musical pharisaism, had still a singular and romantic effect, which a true musical genius would not have failed to recognize. The four parts, tenor, treble, bass, and counter, as they were then called, rose and swelled and wildly mingled with the fitful strangeness of an Æolian harp, or of winds in mountain hollows, or the vague moanings of the sea on lone, forsaken shores. And Mary, while her voice rose over the waves of the treble, and trembled with a pathetic richness, felt to her inmost heart the deep accord of that other voice which came to meet hers so wildly melancholy, as if the soul in that manly breast had come forth to meet her soul in the disembodied shadowy verity of eternity. That grand old tune, called by our fathers ‘China,’ never, with its dirge-like melody, drew two souls more out of themselves and entwined them more nearly with each other.

The last verse of the hymn spoke of the resurrection of the saints with Christ —

And as Mary sang she felt sublimely upborn with the idea that life is but a moment and love is immortal, and seemed in a shadowy trance to feel herself and him past this mortal pain far over on the shores of that other life, ascending with Christ all glorified, all tears wiped away, and with full permission to love and to be loved for ever. And as she sang, the Doctor looked upward and marvelled at the light in her eyes and the rich bloom on her cheek, for where she stood a sunbeam, streaming aslant through the dusty panes of the window, touched her head with a kind of glory, and the thought he then received outbreathed itself in the yet more fervent adoration of his prayer.

CHAPTER XXXIX

Our fathers believed in special answers to prayer. They were not stumbled by the objection about the inflexibility of the laws of nature, because they had the idea that when the Creator of the world promised to answer human prayers, He probably understood the laws of nature as well as they did; at any rate, the laws of nature were His affairs and not theirs. They were men very apt, as the Duke of Wellington said, to ‘look to their marching-orders;’ which, being found to read, ‘be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known unto God,’ they did it. ‘They looked unto Him, and were likened, and their faces were not ashamed.’ One reads in the memoirs of Dr. Hopkins how Newport Gardner, one of his African catechumens, a negro of singular genius and ability, being desirous of his freedom, that he might be a missionary to Africa, and having long worked without being able to raise the amount required, was counselled by Dr. Hopkins that it might be a shorter way to seek his freedom from the Lord by a day of solemn fasting and prayer. The historical fact is, that on the evening of a day so consecrated his master returned from church, called Newport to him, and presented him with his freedom. Is it not possible that He who made the world may have established laws for prayer, as invariable as those for the sowing of seed and raising of grain? Is it not as legitimate a subject of inquiry when petitions are not answered, which of these laws has been neglected?

But be that as it may, certain it is, that a train of events were set in operation this day which went directly towards answering Mary’s morning supplication for guidance. Candace, who on this particular morning had contrived to place herself where she could see Mary and James in the singers’ seat, had certain thoughts ‘borne in’ on her mind, which bore fruit afterwards in a solemn and select conversation held with Miss Prissy at the end of the horse-shed by the meeting-house, during the intermission between the morning and afternoon sermons.

Candace sat on a fragment of a granite boulder which lay there, her black face relieved against a clump of yellow mulleins, then in majestic altitude. On her lap was spread a check pocket-handkerchief, containing rich slices of cheese and a store of her favourite brown dough-nuts.

‘Now, Miss Prissy,’ she said, ‘der’s reason in all things; and a good deal more in some things dan der is in others. Dere’s a good deal more reason in two young, handsome folks coming together dan der is in – ’

Candace finished the sentence by an emphatic flourish of her dough-nut.

‘Now as long as everybody thought Massa Jim was dead, dere wa’n’t nothin’ in de world else to be done but for Miss Mary to marry the Doctor. But, good Lord! I heard him a-talkin’ to Mrs. Marvyn last night; it kinder most broke my heart. Why dem two poor creeturs – dey’s just as onhappy’s dey can be; and she’s got too much feelin’ for the Doctor to say a word, and I say he orter be told on’t; dat’s what I say,’ said Candace, giving a decisive bite to her dough-nut.

‘I say so too,’ said Miss Prissy: ‘why I never had such feelings in my life as I did yesterday when that young man came down to our house; he was just as pale as a cloth. I tried to say a word to Mrs. Scudder, but she snapped me up so; she’s an awful decided woman when her mind’s made up. I was telling Cerinthy Ann Twitchel, she come round me this noon, that it didn’t exactly seem to me right that things should go on as they’re gone to; and says I, “Cerinthy Ann, I don’t know anything what to do.” And says she, “If I was you, Miss Prissy, I know what I’d do; I’d tell the Doctor.” Says she, “Nobody ever takes offence at anything you do, Miss Prissy.” To be sure,’ added Miss Prissy, ‘I have talked to people about a good many things that it’s rather strange I should, ’cause I ain’t one somehow that can let things go that seem to want doing. I always told folks that I should spoil a novel before it got half-way through the first volume, by blirting out some of those things that they let go trailing on till everybody gets so mixed up they don’t know what they’re doing.’

‘Well, now, honey,’ said Candace, authoritatively, ‘ef you’ve got any notion o’ that kind, I think it must a come from de good Lord; and I ’vise ye to be ’tendin’ to it right away. You just go ’long and tell de Doctor yo’self all you knows, and den let’s see what’ll come on’t. I tell you I b’lieves it’ll be one o’ the best day’s works you ever did in your life.’

‘Well,’ said Miss Prissy, ‘I guess to-night before I go to bed I’ll make a dive at him. When a thing’s once out it’s out, and can’t be got in again, even if people don’t like it, and that’s a mercy anyhow. It really makes me feel most wicked to think of it, for the Doctor is the blessedest man.’

‘That’s what he is,’ said Candace. ‘But den de blessedest men in the world ought fur to know de truth, that’s what I think.’

‘Yes, true enough,’ said Miss Prissy, ‘I’ll tell him anyway.’

Miss Prissy was as good as her word, for that evening when the Doctor had retired to his study, she took her light in her hand, and walking softly as a cat, tapped rather timidly at the study door, which the Doctor opening, said benignantly —

‘Ah! Miss Prissy!’

‘If you please, sir,’ said Miss Prissy, ‘I’d like a little conversation.’

The Doctor was well enough used to such requests from the female members of his church, which generally were the prelude to some disclosures of internal difficulties or spiritual experiences. He therefore graciously motioned her to a chair.

‘I thought I must come in,’ she began, busily twirling a bit of her Sunday gown. ‘I thought – that is I felt it my duty – I thought – perhaps – I ought to tell you – that perhaps you ought to know – ’

The Doctor looked civilly concerned. He did not know but Miss Prissy’s wits were taking leave of her. He replied, however, with his usual honest stateliness,

‘I trust, dear madam, that you will feel at perfect freedom to open to me any exercises of mind that you may have.’

‘It isn’t about myself,’ said Prissy. ‘If you please, it’s about you, sir, and Mary.’

The Doctor now looked awake in right earnest, and very much astonished besides; and he looked eagerly at Miss Prissy to have her go on.

‘I don’t know how you would view such a matter,’ said Miss Prissy; ‘but the fact is, that James Marvyn and Mary always did love each other ever since they were children.’

Still the Doctor was unawakened to the real meaning of the words, and he answered, simply, —

‘I should be far from wishing to interfere with so very natural and innocent a sentiment, which I make no doubt is all quite as it should be.’

‘No! but,’ said Miss Prissy, ‘you don’t understand what I mean. I mean that James Marvyn wanted to marry Mary, and that she was – well! she wasn’t engaged to him – but – ’

‘Madam!!’ said the Doctor, in a voice that frightened Miss Prissy out of her chair, while a blaze like sheet-lightning shot from his eyes and his face flushed crimson.

‘Mercy on us! Doctor, I hope you’ll excuse me, but there, the fact is out! I’ve said it out; the fact is they wa’n’t engaged, but that Mary loved him ever since he was a boy, as she never will and never can love any man again in this world, is what I’m just as sure of as that I’m standing here; and I’ve felt you ought to know it, ’cause I’m quite sure that if he’d been alive, she’d never given the promise she has – the promise that she means to keep if her heart breaks and his too; there wouldn’t anybody tell you, and I thought I must tell you, ’cause I thought you’d know what was right to do about it.’

During all this latter speech the Doctor was standing with his back to Miss Prissy and his face to the window, just as he did some time before when Mrs. Scudder came to tell him of Mary’s consent. He made a gesture backward, without speaking, that she should leave the apartment; and Miss Prissy left with a guilty kind of feeling, as if she had been plunging a knife in her pastor; and rushing distractedly across the entry into Mary’s little bedroom, she bolted the door, threw herself on the bed, and began to cry.

‘Well! I’ve done it,’ she said to herself. ‘He’s a very strong, hearty man,’ she soliloquized, ‘so I hope it won’t put him in a consumption. Men do go in a consumption about such things sometimes. I remember Abner Seaforth did – but then he was always narrow-chested, and had the liver complaint, or something. I don’t know what Mrs. Scudder will say, but I’ve done it. Poor man! such a good man too! I declare I feel just like Herod taking off John the Baptist’s head. Well! well! it’s done, and can’t be helped.’

Just at this moment Miss Prissy heard a gentle tap at the door, and started as if it had been a ghost – not being able to rid herself of the impression that somehow she had committed a great crime, for which retribution was knocking at the door.

It was Mary, who said, in her sweetest and most natural tones, ‘Miss Prissy, the Doctor would like to see you.’ Mary was much astonished at the frightened, discomposed manner with which Miss Prissy received this announcement, and said, ‘I’m afraid I’ve waked you up out of sleep. I don’t think there’s the least hurry.’

Miss Prissy didn’t either; but she reflected afterwards that she might as well get through with it at once, and therefore, smoothing her tumbled cap-border, she went to the Doctor’s study. This time he was quite composed, and received her with a mournful gravity, and requested her to be seated.

‘I beg, madam,’ he said, ‘you will excuse the abruptness of my manner in our late interview. I was so little prepared for the communication you had to make that I was perhaps unsuitably discomposed. Will you allow me to ask whether you were requested by any of the parties to communicate to me what you did?’

‘No, sir,’ said Miss Prissy.

‘Have any of the parties ever communicated with you on the subject at all?’ said the Doctor.

‘No, sir,’ said Miss Prissy.

‘That is all,’ said the Doctor. ‘I will not detain you. I am very much obliged to you, madam.’

He rose and opened the door for her to pass out, and Miss Prissy, overawed by the stately gravity of his manner, went out in silence.

CHAPTER XL

When Miss Prissy left the room the Doctor sat down by the table, and covered his face with his hands. He had a large, passionate, determined nature; and he had just come to one of those cruel crises in life, in the which it is apt to seem to us that the whole force of our being – all that we can hope, or wish, or feel – has been suffered to gather itself into one great wave, only to break upon some cold rock of inevitable fate, and go back moaning into emptiness.

In such hours men and women have cursed God and life, and thrown violently down and trampled under their feet what yet was left of life’s blessings in the fierce bitterness of despair. This or nothing! the soul shrieks in her frenzy.

At just such points as these men have plunged into intemperance and wild excess; they have gone to be shot down in battle; they have broken life, and thrown it away like an empty goblet; and gone like wailing ghosts out into the dread unknown.

The possibility of all this lay in that heart which had just received that stunning blow. Exercised and disciplined as he had been by years of sacrifice, by constant, unsleeping self-vigilance, there was rising there in that great heart an ocean-tempest of passion; and for a while his cries unto God seemed as empty and as vague as the screams of birds tossed and buffeted in the clouds of mighty tempests.

The will that he thought wholly subdued seemed to rise under him as a rebellious giant. A few hours before he thought himself established in an invincible submission to God that nothing could shake. Now, he looked into himself as into a seething vortex of rebellion; and against all the passionate cries of his lower nature, he could only (in the language of an old saint) ‘cling to God by the naked force of his will.’ That will was as determined and firm as that of Aaron Burr. It rested unmelted amid the boiling sea of passion, waiting its hour of renewed sway. He walked the room for hours; and then sat down to his Bible, and wakened once or twice to find his head leaning on its pages, and his mind far gone in thoughts from which he woke with a bitter throb. Then he determined to set himself to some definite work; and taking his Concordance, began busily tracing out and numbering all the proof-texts for one of the chapters of his theological system; till at last he worked himself down to such calmness that he could pray; and then he schooled and reasoned with himself in a style not unlike, in its spirit, to what a great modern author has addressed to suffering humanity, – ‘What is it that thou art fretting and self-tormenting about? Is it because thou art not happy? Who told thee that thou wast to be happy? Is there any ordinance of the universe that thou shouldst be happy? Art thou nothing but a vulture screaming for prey? Canst thou not do without happiness? Yea, thou canst do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness.’

The Doctor came lastly to the conclusion that ‘blessedness,’ which was all the portion his Master had on earth, might do for him also. And therefore he kissed and blessed that silver dove of happiness, which he saw was weary of sailing in his clumsy old ark, and let it go out of his hand without a tear.

He slept little that night, but when he came to breakfast all noticed an unusual gentleness and benignity of manner; and Mary, she knew not why, saw tears rising in his eyes when he looked at her.

After breakfast he requested Mrs. Scudder to step with him into his study; and Miss Prissy shook in her little shoes as she saw the matron entering. The door was shut for a long time, and two voices could be heard in earnest conversation.

Meanwhile James Marvyn entered the cottage, prompt to remind Mary of her promise, that she would talk with him again this morning.

They had talked with each other but a few moments, by the sweetbriar-shaded window in the best room, when Mrs. Scudder appeared at the door of the apartment, with traces of tears upon her cheeks. ‘Good morning, James,’ she said. ‘The Doctor wishes to see you and Mary a moment together.’ Both looked sufficiently astounded, knowing from Mrs. Scudder’s looks that something was impending. They followed Mrs. Scudder, scarcely feeling the ground they trod on.

The Doctor was sitting at his table with his favourite large-print Bible open before him. He rose to receive them with a manner at once gentle and grave. There was a pause of some minutes, during which he sat with his head leaning upon his hand. ‘You all know,’ he said, turning towards Mary who sat very near him, ‘the near and dear relation in which I have been expected to stand towards this friend; I should not have been worthy of that relation if I had not felt in my heart the true love of a husband as set forth in the New Testament; who should “love his wife even as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it;” and if in case any peril or danger threatened this dear soul, and I could not give myself for her, I had never been worthy the honour she has done me. For I take it, wherever there is a cross or burden to be borne by one or the other, that the man who is made in the image of God, as to strength and endurance, should take it upon himself, and not lay it upon her that is weaker; for he is therefore strong, not that he may tyrannize over the weak, but bear their burdens for them, even as Christ for His church. I have just discovered,’ he added, looking kindly upon Mary, ‘that there is a great cross and burden which must come, either on this dear child or on myself, through no fault of either of us, but through God’s good providence; and, therefore, let me bear it.

‘Mary, my dear child,’ he said, ‘I will be to thee as a father; but I will not force thy heart.’

At this moment, Mary, by a sudden, impulsive movement, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, and lay sobbing on his shoulder. ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘I will marry you as I said.’

‘Not if I will not, dear,’ he said, with a benign smile. ‘Come here, young man,’ he said, with some authority, to James, ‘I give thee this maiden to wife,’ and he lifted her from his shoulder and placed her gently in the arms of the young man, who, overawed and overcome, pressed her silently to his heart. ‘There, children, it is over,’ he said. ‘God bless you!’

‘Take her away,’ he added, ‘she will be more composed soon.’

Before James left, he grasped the Doctor’s hand in his and said, ‘Sir, this tells on my heart more than any sermon you ever preached, I shall never forget it. God bless you, sir!’

The Doctor saw them slowly quit the apartment, and following them, closed the door, and thus ended

CHAPTER XLI

Of the events which followed this scene, we are happy to give our readers more minute and graphic details than we ourselves could furnish, by transcribing for their edification an autograph letter of Miss Prissy’s, still preserved in a black oaken cabinet of our great-grandmother’s, and with which we take no further liberties than the correction of a somewhat peculiar orthography.

It is written to that sister ‘Martha’ in Boston, of whom she made such frequent mention, and who, it appears, it was her custom to keep posted up in all the gossip of her immediate sphere.

‘My Dear Sister,

‘You wonder, I s’pose, why I haven’t written you; but the fact is, I’ve been run just off my feet and worked till the flesh aches so, it seems as if it would drop off my bones with this wedding of Mary Scudder’s. And, after all, you’ll be astonished to hear that she ha’n’t married the Doctor, but that Jim Marvyn that I told you about, who had such a wonderful escape from shipwreck. You see, he came home a week before the wedding was to be, and Mary, she was so conscientious, she thought ’twa’n’t right to break off with the Doctor, and so she was for going right on with it; and Mrs. Scudder, she was for going on more yet; and the poor young man, he couldn’t get a word in edgeways; and there wouldn’t anybody tell the Doctor a word about it, and there ’twas drifting along, and both on ’em feeling dreadfully; and so I thought to myself I’ll just take my life in my hand like Queen Esther, and go in and tell the Doctor all about it. And so I did. I’m scared to death always when I think of it. But that dear, blessed man! he took it like a saint. He just gave her up as serene and calm as a psalm-book, and called James in and told him to take her. Jim was fairly over-crowed – it really made him feel small, and he says he’ll agree that there is more in the Doctor’s religion than most men’s, which shows how important it is for professing Christians to bear testimony in their works – as I was telling Cerinthy Ann Twitchel, and she said there wa’n’t anything made her want to be a Christian so much, if that was what religion would do for people. Well, you see, when this came out, it wanted just three days of the wedding, which was to be Thursday; and that wedding-dress I told you about, that had lilies of the valley on a white ground, was pretty much made, except puffing the gauze round the neck, which I do with white satin piping cord, and it looks beautiful too. And so Mrs. Scudder and I, we were thinking ’twould do just as well, when in came Jim Marvyn bringing the sweetest thing you ever saw, that he had got in China, and I think I never did see anything lovelier. It was a white silk, as thick as a board, and so stiff that it would stand alone, and overshot with little fine dots of silver, so that it shone when you moved it just like frost-work. And when I saw it I just clapped my hands and jumped up from the floor; and says I, “If I have to sit up all night that dress shall be made, and made well too.” For, you know, I thought I could get Miss Ollodine Hocum to run the breadth and do such parts, so that I could devote myself to the fine work; and that French woman I told you about, she said she’d help, and she’s a master-hand for touching things up. There seems to be work provided for all kinds of people, and French people seem to have a gift in all sorts of dressy things, and ’tisn’t a bad gift either. Well, as I was saying, we agreed that this was to be cut open with a train, and a petticoat of just the palest, sweetest, loveliest, blue that ever you saw, and gauze puffings down the edgings each side, fastened in, every once in a while, with lilies of the valley; and ’twas cut square in the neck, with puffing and flowers to match; and then, tight sleeves with full ruffles of that old Mechlin lace that you remember Mrs. Katy Scudder showed you once in that great camphor-wood trunk. Well, you see, come to get all things together that were to be done, we concluded to put off the wedding till Tuesday; and Madame de Frontignac she would dress the best room for it herself, and she spent nobody knows what time in going round and getting evergreens, and making wreaths, and putting up green boughs over the pictures, so that the room looked just like the Episcopal Church at Christmas. In fact, Mrs. Scudder said if it had been Christmas she wouldn’t have felt it right, because it would be like encouraging prelacy; but as it was, she didn’t think anybody would think it any harm. Well, Tuesday night I and Madame de Frontignac we dressed Mary ourselves, and I tell you the dress fitted as if ’twas grown on her; and Madame de Frontignac she dressed her hair, and she had on a wreath of lilies of the valley, and a gauze veil that came a’most down to her feet and came all around her like a cloud, and you could see her white shining dress through it every time she moved. And she looked just as white as a snowberry; but there were two little pink spots that came coming and going in her cheeks, that kind o’ lightened up when she smiled, and then faded down again. And the French lady put a string of real pearls round her neck, with a cross of pearls, which went down and lay hid in her bosom. She was mighty calm-like while she was being dressed; but just as I was putting in the last pin, she started, for she heard the rumbling of a coach down stairs, for Jim Marvyn had got a real elegant carriage to carry her over to his father’s in, and so she knew he was come; and pretty soon Mrs. Marvyn came in the room, and when she saw Mary, her brown eyes kind o’ danced, and she lifted up both hands to see how beautiful she looked; and Jim Marvyn he was standing at the door, and they told him it wasn’t proper that he should see till the time come.