The Minister's Wooing

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

‘Mr. Burr,’ said Mary, walking up to him, and looking him full in the eyes with an energy that for the moment bore down his practised air of easy superiority, ‘I wish to speak to you for a moment, as one immortal soul should to another, without any of those false glosses and deceits which men call ceremony and good manners. You have done a very great injury to a lovely lady, whose weakness ought to have been sacred in your eyes. Precisely, because you are what you are,—strong, keen, penetrating, able to control and govern all who come near you; because you have the power to make yourself agreeable, interesting, fascinating, and to win esteem and love,—just for that reason you ought to hold yourself the guardian of every woman, and treat her as you would wish any man to treat your own daughter. I leave it to your own conscience whether this is the manner in which you have treated Madame de Frontignac.’

‘Upon my word, Miss Scudder,’ began Burr, ‘I cannot imagine what representations our mutual friend may have been making. I assure you, our intercourse has been as irreproachable as the most scrupulous could desire.’

‘Irreproachable! innocent! Mr. Burr, you know that you have taken the very life out of her; you men can have everything, ambition, wealth, power; a thousand ways are open to you; and women have nothing but their hearts, and when that is gone, all is gone. Mr. Burr, you remember the rich man that had flocks and herds, but nothing would do for him but he must have the one little ewe lamb which was all his poor neighbour had. Thou art the man! You have stolen all the love she has to give, all that she had to make a happy home; and you can never give her anything in return without endangering her purity and her soul, and you knew you could not. I know you men think this is a light matter; but it is death to us; what will this woman’s life be? one long struggle to forget; and when you have forgotten her, and are going on gay and happy, when you have thrown her very name away as a faded flower, she will be praying, hoping, fearing for you; though all men deny you, yet will not she. Yes, Mr. Burr, if ever your popularity and prosperity should leave you, and those who now flatter should despise and curse you, she will always be interceding with her own heart and with God for you, and making a thousand excuses when she cannot deny; and if you die, as I fear you have lived, unreconciled to the God of your fathers, it will be in her heart to offer up her very soul for you, and to pray that God will impute all your sins to her, and give you heaven. Oh, I know this because I have felt it in my own heart!’ and Mary threw herself passionately down into a chair, and broke into an agony of uncontrolled sobbing.

Burr turned away, and stood looking through the window; tears were dropping silently, unchecked by the cold, hard pride which was the evil demon of his life.

It is due to our human nature to believe that no man could ever have been so passionately and enduringly loved and revered by both men and women as he was, without a beautiful and lovable nature; no man ever demonstrated more forcibly the truth, that it is not a man’s natural constitution, but the use he makes of it which stamps him as good or evil.

The diviner part of him was weeping, and the cold, proud, demon was struggling to regain his lost ascendency. Every sob of the fair, inspired child who had been speaking to him seemed to shake his heart; he felt as if he could have fallen on his knees to her; and yet that stoical habit, which was the boast of his life, which was the highest wisdom he taught to his only and beautiful daughter, was slowly stealing back round his heart, and he pressed his lips together, resolved that no word should escape till he had fully mastered himself.

In a few moments Mary rose with renewed calmness and dignity, and approaching him, said, ‘Before I wish you a good morning, Mr. Burr, I must ask pardon for the liberty I have taken in speaking so very plainly.’

‘There is no pardon needed, my dear child,’ said Burr, turning and speaking very gently, and with a face expressive of a softened concern; ‘if you have told me harsh truths, it was with gentle intentions; I only hope that I may prove, at least by the future, that I am not altogether so bad as you imagine. As to the friend whose name has been passed between us, no man can go beyond me in a sense of her real nobleness; I am sensible how little I can ever deserve the sentiment with which she honours me. I am ready, in my future course, to obey any commands that you and she may think proper to lay upon me.’

‘The only kindness you can now do her,’ said Mary, ‘is to leave her. It is impossible that you can be merely friends,—it is impossible, without violating the holiest bonds, that you can be more. The injury done is irreparable, but you can avoid adding another and greater one to it.’