CHAPTER LXII.
One day, Mary burst into Alice’s room. “Read that,” said she; and she threw herself upon the lounge, with her face to the wall.
Alice was a brave little soul; but Mary’s pale face and tear-stained cheeks upset her, and her hands shook a little as she unfolded the letter. She read the first page with eager haste and contracted brows; then turned nervously to the last (the sixteenth), and read the concluding sentence and signature.
“Why, what can the matter be, Mary? It begins well, it ends well?”
“It is the same all through.”
“The same all through! And you crying! Upon my word, Mary, you—”
“Read it.”
Those satirists who claim that nothing can stop a woman’s tongue have never tried the experiment of handing her a love-letter. Over Alice there now came a sudden stillness, chequered only by exclamations of delight,—
“So nice!—beautiful!—too lovely!—A-a-a-a-h, M-a-r-y! Mary, let me read this aloud? A-a-a-h! No? You goose! A-a-a-h, too beautiful,—too sweet for anything!—I declare I shall be heels over head in love with him myself before— Gracious, what a torrent! What vehemence! Do you know, Mary, he almost frightens me? Well, I have read the letter; and now, miss, be so good as to explain what you mean by scaring people so with your white face and red eyes?”
“It is hard,” said Mary, after a pause, and trying to control her voice,—“it is hard to give—up—all—that—love. And such love!”
“Give it up! Are you crazy?”
“Much nearer than you think. I have scarcely closed my eyes for two nights. I feel that I cannot stand this state of things much longer.”
“What dreadful things does he believe, Mary?”
“I have no idea.”
“Then write and ask him. I feel sure that you could bring him over, you who are so brilliant and all that, you know. I wouldn’t say so to your face, but I don’t care what compliments I pay the back of your head.”
Mary turned and laughed.
“I am glad,” continued Alice, “I am not a genius with a bee in my bonnet; and let me tell you, there is a gigantic one, of the bumble variety, buzzing, at this very moment, just here.” And she rapped Mary’s head with the rosy knuckle of her forefinger.
Mary adopted Alice’s suggestion; and there sprang up, between herself and the Don, a correspondence which lasted for two months. Eight or nine weeks of theological discussion between two lovers! Think of it!
Ole Virginny nebber tire!
Think of it, but tremble not, my reader. Not one line of it all shall you be called on to read. Were I an adherent of the Analytical and Intellectual School, as it is called, of American Novelists, you should have every word of it. Then you would be able to trace the most minute processes of our Mary’s soul, and realize, step by step, how she reached the state of mind to which this correspondence ultimately brought her. But I will spare you; for I am a kind, good Bushwhacker, if ever there was one.
Assume, therefore, a hundred pages, or so, of keenest Insight and most Intellectual Dissection, and that we have reached the end of it. Here is where we find ourselves. (No thanks; it would have bored me as much to write it as you to read it.)
During these two months Mary has been in a perpetual ferment. She has read all the books of evidential polemics that she could lay her hands on, and her mind has become a very magazine of crushing syllogisms. She has been pouring these out with all that eloquence that love is so sure to lend a woman’s pen. Day by day she has become more thoroughly convinced of the impregnability of her position (just as lawyers’ convictions bloom ever stronger under the irrigation of repeated fees,—retainer, reminder, refresher, convincer). From a trembling doubter she has grown into a valiant knight-errant of the faith, ready to measure lances with all comers.
And what has he had to say on the other side? Nothing. Or next to nothing. Has patted her on the head, rather, and praised her eloquence. Has promised that if ever she turn preacher, he will be there, every Sunday, to hear. And, instead of answering her letters, has told her that every one made him love her a thousand times more than before. Not an argument any more than a cliff argues with the waves that break against it.
And, like the waves, her enthusiasm had its ebb-tides. Days of profound discouragement came over her, when arrows she thought sure to pierce his armor glanced harmless away and left him smiling.
Left him smiling. So she thought. But it was not so. Our little heroine stood upon a volcano.
When she was with the Don, there was something about him which told her what she could say to him, what not. But the paper on which he wrote was like other paper, and gave no warning. How could she, so far away, see the dark look that came into his face as he read this in one of her letters:
“How can you,” she had said, at the close of an impassioned burst on the beneficence of the Creator, as evinced in the beauties of nature,—“how can you, as you look upon that beautiful, shining river, and the rosy clouds that float above it, and breathe this balmy air of spring,—how can you lift your eyes from such a scene of loveliness and bounteous plenty as surrounds you,—how dare you raise your eyes to heaven and say, there is no God!”
She could not see his look when he read that. All she saw was something like this:
“I cannot pretend to argue with such a wonderful little theologian as you,—I who know nothing of theology. But where did you get the notion that I was an atheist? I could almost wish I were one, for the mere happiness of being converted by you. In point of fact, I am nothing of the kind. How could I be? I need not look at the rosy sunset, or the smiling fields about me, to learn that there is a God. I have but to gaze into my own heart, and upon your image imprinted there. A fool might say that land and sea came by chance; but my Mary! Her arguments are not needed. She herself is all-sufficient proof, to me at least, that there exists, somewhere, a Divine Artificer. So don’t call names. It isn’t fair. Atheist, deist, infidel, old Nick,—what arrow can I send back in retort? Arrows I have,—a quiver full to bursting,—but all are labelled angel!”
How was she to know that she stood upon a precipice? But Charley saw that all was not well. Looking up from a letter he was reading (his face was red from a sudden stoop to snatch, unobserved, some violets that had fluttered out as he unfolded it). Looking up from this letter—
But Charley had his troubles, too, of which I must tell you before we go an inch further.
Between him and Alice, as well, a controversy raged. But in the case of this couple it was Charley that did all the arguing.
The proposition that young Frobisher maintained, in letter after letter, was this: that when a girl had promised to marry a fellow, she should never thereafter write to him without telling him somewhere—he did not care a fig (not he!) whether it was in the beginning, or the end, or the middle of the letter—that she loved him; just for the sake of cheering a fellow up, you know, away down here in the country, and all that. He would be satisfied even with a postscript of three words (he would), if you would but let him name the words, etc., etc. After this she had never written a letter without a postscript; but whether from the love of teasing, which is innate in cats and young women, when they have a mouse or a man in their power, or from genuine maidenly modesty, she never said, in plain English, exactly what Charley wished to hear; as, P.S.—Unreasonable old goose, or, How could I? or, I wonder if I do? or, What do you think? But they were the merriest letters that ever were seen, and made Charley so happy (for all his grumbling) that at this period of his life he used to wake up a dozen times a night, smiling to himself, all in the dark; then float off again into a dreamland populous with postscripts of the most maudlin description. “Do you know,” said he, in one of his letters, “that never once in my whole life has a woman said to me, I love you?”
Opening the reply hastily (to read the postscript first), the violets had dropped out, covering the poor boy with blissful confusion. I don’t hate you a bit, said the postscript.
Some metaphysical notion must have come into Charley’s head, as he read those words don’t hate. Did he, perhaps, think, that somewhere between the negative don’t and the positive hate there must lurk, though invisible, the longed-for word love? At any rate, selecting a spot midway, he kissed it with accuracy and fervor.
“Umgh—umgh!” grunted Uncle Dick, who had happened to step up on the threshold just at this critical and romantic juncture.
“I did nothing of the kind!” said Charley.
“What?” asked the Don, looking up from his letter.
“Nothing,” said Charley.
“Uncle Dick!” called Charley, at the door whence the venerable butler had vanished, “come here! I say, if ever you tell Uncle Tom—”
“Tell him what, Marse Charley?”
“You old villain! There,—go to the sideboard and help yourself!”
“Much obleeged, mahrster; my mouf is a leetle tetched wid de drought, dat’s a fac’. And here’s many happy returns to you, likewise all enquirin’ friends; and here’s hopin’ dat de peach may tase as sweet in you mouf as it look to you a-hangin’ on de tree!” And he vanished, backing out of the room, smiling and bowing—
As though a courtier quitted the presence-chamber of Louis Quatorze!
It was looking up from this very same violet-scented letter that Charley saw the Don gazing out of the window with a troubled look. “What has Mary been writing to the Don?” he asked Alice. “He and I don’t compare notes, as I suppose you do. For some time past his face has been clouded after reading one of her letters. What does it mean?”
Alice acquainted him, in her next, with the nature of the correspondence, and was surprised at the earnestness of Charley’s protest against the course Mary was pursuing. “If you have any influence over Mary, stop this thing; stop it instantly. She is treading on a mine. You and Mary are deceived by the gentleness and courtesy of his replies. You don’t know the man. I do; and, as Uncle Dick says about a certain mule on the place here, he isn’t the kind of man to projick ’long o’. ‘She am a sleepy-lookin’ animil, Marse Charley, and she look like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouf; no mor’n ’twouldn’t, eff you leff her ’lone; but I rickommen’ dat you don’t tetch her nowhar of a suddent, leastwise whar she don’t want to be tetched. De man what tickle dat muil in de flank, to wake her up, sort o’, will find hisself waked up powerful, hisself. Lightnin’ ain’t a suckumstance to dat d’yar self-same Sally-muil when she are tetched onproper to her notion. Don’t you projick ’long o’ Sally, I tell you, mun. Rrrrup! Umgh—umgh! Good-by, chile; for you’re a-gwine to kingdom come.’”
Alice laughed so at this comical illustration that, most likely, she would have forgotten the injunction it enforced, but for a postscript in these words: “It is a habit with me—an affectation, if you will—always to say less than I mean. C. F.”
Startled by this ominous hint, Alice fluttered across the street and into Mary’s room; and there was a field-day between them.
The conflict lasted for hours, and seemed likely to end in a drawn battle,—a defeat, that is, for the attacking party. Alice’s old weapons, with which she had so often gained the victory over her less ready adversary, seemed to have lost their edge. In vain did she coruscate with wit, bubble with humor, caper about the room in a hundred little droll dramatic impromptus. Mary was unmoved, and sat with her eyes bent upon the floor. At last, with a flushed face, Alice rose to go; and it was then that she shot a Parthian arrow.
“Very well, Mary.” And her eyes looked so dark that you would never have said that they were hazel. “Very well; have your way; but I should not have thought it of you!”
“You are not angry with me?” said she, seizing her hand.
“No, not angry; but disappointed. I never pretended to have anything heroic about me, Mary. I am only an every-day sort of a girl; but I can tell you this. If I loved a man—”
“Don’t you?”
“If I loved a man, I should stand by him to the last, no matter what he might think of the—the—Pentateuch—or even Deuteronomy.” And a twinkle danced, for a moment, in her flashing eyes. “What he thought of Alice,” added she, with a parenthetical smile, “that would be the main point with me. And if he loved me as the Don loves you, I would follow him to the ends of the earth. Yes, and to the end of the world. To the end of the world—and—and—beyond!”
A noble devotion illumined her face as she uttered these words, and Mary’s eyes kindled in sympathy.
“Then you would marry an unbeliever?”
“Mary, if you were to fall into a river, the Don would leap in to save you. You see him battling with waves of another kind—and—you hesitate! Plunge boldly in,—throw your loving arms around—”
“Oh!”
“Metaphorically speaking!”
“Ah!”
“Of course!”