Her word just passed had in her eyes all the sacred force of the most solemnly-attested vow; and she felt as if that vow had shut some before open door between her and him; and she had a kind of shadowy sense of a throbbing and yearning nature that seemed to call on her,—that seemed surging towards her with an imperative, protesting force that shook her heart to its depths.
Perhaps it is so, that souls once intimately related have ever after this strange power of affecting each other,—a power that neither absence nor death can annul. How else can we interpret these mysterious hours, 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 the mortal band? Is it not deep calling unto deep? the free soul singing outside the cage to her mate, beating against the bars within?
Mary even for a moment fancied that a voice called her name, and started, shivering. Then the habits of her positive and sensible education returned at once, and she came out of her reverie as one breaks from a dream, and lifted all these sad thoughts with one heavy sigh from her breast; and opening her Bible, she read: ‘They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion that cannot be moved. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is about His people from this time henceforth and for evermore.’
Then she kneeled by her bedside, and offered her whole life a sacrifice to the loving God who had offered His life a sacrifice for her. She prayed for grace to be true to her promise—to be faithful to the new relation she had accepted. She prayed that all vain regrets for the past might be taken away, and that her soul might vibrate without discord in unison with the will of Eternal Love. So praying, she rose calm, and with that clearness of spirit which follows an act of uttermost self-sacrifice; and so calmly she lay down and slept, with her two hands crossed upon her breast, her head slightly turned on the pillow, her cheek pale as marble, and her long dark lashes lying drooping, with a sweet expression, as if under that mystic veil of sleep the soul were seeing things forbidden to the waking eye. Only the gentlest heaving of the quiet breast told that the heavenly spirit within had not gone where it was hourly aspiring to go.
Meanwhile Mrs. Scudder had left Mary’s room, and entered the Doctor’s study, holding a candle in her hand. The good man was sitting alone in the dark, with his head bowed upon his Bible. When Mrs. Scudder entered, he rose and regarded her wistfully, but did not speak. He had something just then in his heart for which he had no words; so he only looked as a man does who hopes and fears for the answer of a decided question.
Mrs. Scudder felt some of the natural reserve which becomes a matron coming charged with a gift in which lies the whole sacredness of her own existence, and which she puts from her hands with a jealous reverence.
She therefore measured the man with her woman’s and mother’s eye, and said, with a little stateliness,—
‘My dear sir, I come to tell you the result of my conversation with Mary.’
She made a little pause, and the Doctor stood before her as humbly as if he had not weighed and measured the universe; because he knew that though he might weigh the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance, yet it was a far subtler power which must possess him of one small woman’s heart. In fact, he felt to himself like a great awkward, clumsy, mountainous earthite asking of a white-robed angel to help him up a ladder of cloud. He was perfectly sure for the moment that he was going to be refused, and he looked humbly firm—he would take it like a man. His large blue eyes, generally so misty in their calm, had a resolute clearness, rather mournful than otherwise. Of course no such celestial experience was going to happen to him.
He cleared his throat and said,—