CHAPTER XXVII.
MRS. SCUDDER kissed her daughter, and left her. After a moment’sthought, Mary gathered the long silky folds of hair around herhead, and knotted them for the night. Then leaning forward on hertoilet-table, she folded her hands together, and stood regarding thereflection of herself in the mirror.
Nothing is capable of more ghostly effect than such a silent, lonelycontemplation of that mysterious image of ourselves which seems to lookout of an infinite depth in the mirror, as if it were our own soulbeckoning to us visibly from unknown regions. Those eyes look into ourown with an expression sometimes vaguely sad and inquiring. The facewears weird and tremulous lights and shadows; it asks us mysteriousquestions, and troubles us with the suggestions of our relations tosome dim unknown. The sad, blue eyes that gazed into Mary’s had thatlook of calm initiation, of melancholy comprehension, peculiar to eyesmade clairvoyant by ‘great and critical’ sorrow. They seemed to say toher, ‘Fulfil thy mission; life is made for sacrifice; the flower mustfall before fruit can perfect itself.’ A vague shuddering of mysterygave intensity to her reverie. It seemed as if those mirror depthswere another world; she heard the far-off dashing of sea-green waves;she felt a yearning impulse towards that dear soul gone out into theinfinite unknown.
Her word just passed had in her eyes all the sacred force of the mostsolemnly-attested vow; and she felt as if that vow had shut some beforeopen door between her and him; and she had a kind of shadowy sense of athrobbing and yearning nature that seemed to call on her,—that seemedsurging towards her with an imperative, protesting force that shook herheart to its depths.
Perhaps it is so, that souls once intimately related have ever afterthis strange power of affecting each other,—a power that neitherabsence nor death can annul. How else can we interpret these mysterioushours, 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 themortal band? Is it not deep calling unto deep? the free soul singingoutside the cage to her mate, beating against the bars within?
Mary even for a moment fancied that a voice called her name, andstarted, shivering. Then the habits of her positive and sensibleeducation returned at once, and she came out of her reverie as onebreaks from a dream, and lifted all these sad thoughts with one heavysigh from her breast; and opening her Bible, she read: ‘They thattrust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion that cannot be moved. As themountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is about His peoplefrom this time henceforth and for evermore.’
Then she kneeled by her bedside, and offered her whole life a sacrificeto the loving God who had offered His life a sacrifice for her. Sheprayed for grace to be true to her promise—to be faithful to the newrelation she had accepted. She prayed that all vain regrets for thepast might be taken away, and that her soul might vibrate withoutdiscord in unison with the will of Eternal Love. So praying, sherose calm, and with that clearness of spirit which follows an act ofuttermost self-sacrifice; and so calmly she lay down and slept, withher two hands crossed upon her breast, her head slightly turned onthe pillow, her cheek pale as marble, and her long dark lashes lyingdrooping, with a sweet expression, as if under that mystic veil ofsleep the soul were seeing things forbidden to the waking eye. Onlythe gentlest heaving of the quiet breast told that the heavenly spiritwithin had not gone where it was hourly aspiring to go.
Meanwhile Mrs. Scudder had left Mary’s room, and entered the Doctor’sstudy, holding a candle in her hand. The good man was sitting alonein the dark, with his head bowed upon his Bible. When Mrs. Scudderentered, he rose and regarded her wistfully, but did not speak. He hadsomething just then in his heart for which he had no words; so he onlylooked as a man does who hopes and fears for the answer of a decidedquestion.
Mrs. Scudder felt some of the natural reserve which becomes a matroncoming charged with a gift in which lies the whole sacredness ofher own existence, and which she puts from her hands with a jealousreverence.
She therefore measured the man with her woman’s and mother’s eye, andsaid, with a little stateliness,—
‘My dear sir, I come to tell you the result of my conversation withMary.’
She made a little pause, and the Doctor stood before her as humblyas if he had not weighed and measured the universe; because he knewthat though he might weigh the mountains in scales, and the hills in abalance, yet it was a far subtler power which must possess him of onesmall woman’s heart. In fact, he felt to himself like a great awkward,clumsy, mountainous earthite asking of a white-robed angel to help himup a ladder of cloud. He was perfectly sure for the moment that he wasgoing to be refused, and he looked humbly firm—he would take it likea man. His large blue eyes, generally so misty in their calm, had aresolute clearness, rather mournful than otherwise. Of course no suchcelestial 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 handcheerfully, and said,—
‘_She has accepted._’
The Doctor drew his hand suddenly away, turned quickly round, andwalked to the window, although, as it was ten o’clock at night andquite dark, there was evidently nothing to be seen there. He stoodthere quietly, swallowing very hard, and raising his handkerchiefseveral times to his eyes. There was enough went on under the blackcoat just then to make quite a little figure in a romance if it hadbeen uttered; but he belonged to a class who _lived_ romance, but neverspoke it. In a few moments he returned to Mrs. Scudder and said,—
‘I trust, dear madam, that this very dear friend may never have reasonto think me ungrateful for her wonderful goodness; and whatever sinsmy evil heart may lead me into, I _hope_ I may never fall so low as toforget the undeserved mercy of this hour. If ever I shrink from dutyor murmur at trials, while so sweet a friend is mine, I shall be vileindeed.’
The Doctor, in general, viewed himself on the discouraging side, andhad berated and snubbed himself all his life as a most flagitiousand evil-disposed individual—a person to be narrowly watched, andcapable of breaking at any moment into the most flagrant iniquity; andtherefore it was that he received his good fortune in so different aspirit from many of the Lords of Creation in similar circumstances.
‘I am sensible,’ he added, ‘that a poor minister, without much powerof eloquence, and commissioned of the Lord to speak unpopular truths,and whose worldly condition, in consequence, is never likely to be veryprosperous, that such a one could scarcely be deemed a suitable partnerfor so very beautiful a young woman, who might expect proposals, in atemporal point of view, of a much more advantageous nature; and I amtherefore the more struck and overpowered with this blessed result.’
These last words caught in the Doctor’s throat, as if he wereoverpowered in very deed.
‘In regard to _her_ happiness,’ said the Doctor, with a touch of awein his voice, ‘I would not have presumed to become the guardian of it,were it not that I am persuaded it is assured by a Higher Power; forwhen He giveth peace, who then can make trouble? (Job xxxv. 29.) But Itrust I may say no effort on my part shall be wanting to secure it.’
Mrs. Scudder was a mother, and come to that spot in life where mothersalways feel tears rising behind their smiles. She pressed the Doctor’shand, silently, and they parted for the night.
We know not how we can acquit ourselves to our friends of the greatworld for the details of such an unfashionable courtship, so well as bygiving them, before they retire for the night, a dip into a more modishview of things.
The Doctor was evidently green; green in his faith, green in hissimplicity, green in his general belief of the divine in woman, greenin his particular, humble faith in one small Puritan maiden, whom aknowing fellow might at least have manœuvred so skilfully as to breakup her saintly superiority, discompose her, rout her ideas, and leadher up and down a swamp of hopes and fears and conjectures, till shewas whol
ly bewildered and ready to take him at last—if he made up hismind to have her at all—as a great bargain for which she was to besensibly grateful.
Yes, the Doctor was green, _immortally_ green, as a cedar of Lebanonwhich, waving its broad archangel wings over some fast-rooted eternalold solitude, and seeing from its sublime height the vastness of theuniverse, veils its kingly head with humility before God’s infinitemajesty.
He has gone to bed now, simple old soul, first apologizing to Mrs.Scudder for having kept her up to so dissipated and unparalleled anhour as ten o’clock on his personal matters.
Meanwhile our Asmodeus will transport us to an easily furnishedapartment in one of the most fashionable hotels of Philadelphia, whereCol. Aaron Burr, just returned from his trip to the then aboriginalwilds of Ohio, is seated before a table covered with maps, letters,books, and papers. His keen eye runs over the addresses of the letters,and he eagerly seizes one from Madame de Frontignac, and reads it;and as no one but ourselves is looking at him now his face has noneed to wear its habitual mask. First comes an expression of profoundastonishment; then of chagrin and mortification; then of deepeningconcern; there were stops where the dark eyelashes flashed togetheras if to brush a tear out of the view of the keen-sighted eyes; andthen a red flush rose even to his forehead, and his delicate lips worea sarcastic smile. He laid down the letter and made one or two turnsthrough the room.
The man had felt the dashing against his own of a strong, generous,indignant woman’s heart fully awakened, and speaking with thatimpassioned vigour with which a French regiment charges in battle.There were those picturesque, winged words, those condensedexpressions, those subtle piercings of meaning, and above all, thatsimple pathos for which the French tongue has no superior; and forthe moment the woman had the victory; she shook his heart. But Burrresembled the marvel with which chemists amuse themselves. His heartwas a vase filled with boiling passions, while his _will_, a still,cold, unmelted lump of ice, lay at the bottom.
Self-denial is not peculiar to Christians. They who go downward oftenput forth as much force to kill a noble nature as another does toannihilate a sinful one. There was something in this letter so keen, sosearching, so self-revealing, that it brought on one of those interiorcrises in which a man is convulsed with the struggle of two natures—thegodlike and the demoniac, and from which he must pass out more whollyto the dominion of the one or the other.
Nobody knew the true better than Burr. He _knew_ the god-like and thepure, he had _felt_ its beauty and its force to the very depths of hisbeing, as the demoniac knew at once the fair man of Nazareth; and evennow he felt the voice within that said, ‘What have I to do with thee?’and the rending of a struggle of heavenly life with fast-coming eternaldeath.
That letter had told him what he might be, and what he was. It was asif his dead mother’s hand had held up before him a glass in which hesaw himself, white robed and crowned, and so dazzling in purity that heloathed his present self.
As he walked up and down the room perturbed, he sometimes wiped tearsfrom his eyes, and then set his teeth, and compressed his lips. At lasthis face grew calm and settled in its expression, his mouth wore asardonic smile; he came and took the letter, and folding it leisurely,laid it on the table, and put a heavy paper weight over it, as if tohold it down and bury it. Then drawing to himself some maps of newterritories, he set himself vigorously to some columns of arithmeticalcalculations on the margin; and thus he worked for an hour or two tillhis mind was as dry, and his pulse as calm as a machine; then he drewthe inkstand towards him, and scribbled hastily the following letterto his most confidential associate—a letter which told no more of theconflict that preceded it, than do the dry sands and civil gossip ofthe sea-waves to-day of the storm and wreck of last week.
‘Dear——. _Nous voilà_ once more in Philadelphia. Our schemes in Ohio prosper. Frontignac remains there to superintend. He answers our purpose _passablement_. On the whole I don’t see as we could do better than retain him; he is, beside, a gentlemanly, agreeable person, and wholly devoted to me—a point certainly not to be overlooked.
‘As to your railleries about the fair Madame, I must say, in justice both to her and myself, that any grace with which she has been pleased to honour me is not to be misconstrued. You are not to imagine any but the most Platonic of “_liaisons_.” She is as high strung as an Arabian steed; proud,—heroic, romantic, and _French_! and such must be permitted to take their own time and way, which we in our _gaucherie_ can only humbly wonder at. I have ever professed myself her abject slave, ready to follow any whim, and obeying the slightest signal of the jewelled hand. As that is her sacred pleasure, I have been inhabiting the most abstract realms of heroic sentiment, living on the most diluted moonshine, and spinning out elaborately all those charming and seraphic distinctions between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee with which these ecstatic creatures delight themselves in certain stages of “_affaires du cœur_.”
‘The last development on the part of my goddess is a fit of celestial anger, of the cause of which I am in the most innocent ignorance. She writes me three pages of French sublimities, writing as only a French woman can, bids me an eternal adieu, and informs me she is going to Newport.
‘Of course the affair becomes stimulating. I am not to presume to dispute her sentence, or doubt a lady’s perfect sincerity in wishing never to see me again; but yet I think I shall try to pacify the
“tantas in animis celestibus iras.”
If a woman hates you it is only her love turned wrong side out, and you may turn it back with due care. The pretty creatures know how becoming a _grande_ passion is, and take care to keep themselves in mind; a quarrel serves their turn when all else fails.
‘To another point. I wish you to advertise S——, that his insinuations in regard to me, in the Aurora, have been observed, and that I require that they be promptly retracted. He knows me well enough to attend to this hint. I am in earnest when I speak; if the word does nothing, the blow will come, and if I strike once no second blow will be needed; yet I do not wish to get him on my hands needlessly; a duel and a love affair and hot weather, coming on together, might prove too much even for me. N.B. Thermometer stands at 85. I am resolved on Newport next week.
‘Yours ever, ‘BURR.
‘P.S. I forgot to say that, oddly enough, my goddess has gone and placed herself under the wing of the pretty Puritan I saw in Newport. Fancy the _melange_; could anything be more piquant?—that cart-load of goodness, the old Doctor,—that sweet little saint and Madame Faubourg St. Germain shaken up together!—fancy her listening with well-bred astonishment to a critique on the doings of the unregenerate, or flirting that little jewelled fan of hers in Mrs. Scudder’s square pew of a Sunday. Probably they will carry her to the weekly prayer-meeting, which of course she will find some fine French subtlety for admiring, and “_trouve ravissante_.” I fancy I see it.’
When Burr had finished this letter, he had actually written himselfinto a sort of persuasion of its truth. When a finely-constitutednature wishes to go into baseness, it has first to bribe itself. Evilis never embraced undisguised as evil, but under some fiction whichthe mind accepts, and with which it has the singular power of blindingitself in the face of daylight. The power of imposing on one’s self isan essential preliminary to imposing on others. The man first argueshimself down, and then he is ready to put the whole weight of hisnature to deceiving others. This letter ran so smoothly, so plausibly,that it produced on the writer of it the effect of a work of fiction,which we _know_ to be unreal, but _feel_ to be true. Long habits ofthis kind of self-delusion in time produce a paralysis in the vitalnerves of truth, so that one becomes habitually unable to see things intheir verity, and realizes the awful words of scri
pture, ‘He feedethon ashes; a deceived heart hath turned him aside, so that he cannotdeliver his soul, nor say, is there not a lie in my right hand?’