‘You think,’ he said, ‘that you must take this course, because it is right; but is it right? Is it right to marry one man when you love another better? I don’t put this to your inclination, Mary; I know it would be of no use. I put it to your conscience.’
‘Oh, I never was so perplexed before!’ said Mary. ‘I don’t know what I do think. I must have time to reflect. And you, oh, James! you must let me do right. There will never be any happiness for me if I do wrong—nor for you either.’
All this while the sounds of running and hurrying in Madame de Frontignac’s room had been unintermitted, and Miss Prissy, not without some glimmerings of perception into the state of things, was holding tight on to Mrs. Scudder’s gown, detailing to her a most capital receipt for mending broken china, the history of which she traced regularly through all the families in which she had ever worked, varying the details with small items of family history, and little incidents as to the births, marriages, and deaths of different people for whom it had been employed, with all the particulars of how, where, and when, so that the time of James for conversation was by this means indefinitely extended.
‘Now,’ he said to Mary, ‘let me propose one thing. Let me go to the Doctor and tell him the truth.’
‘James, it does not seem to me that I can. A friend who has been so considerate, so kind, so self-sacrificing and disinterested, and whom I have allowed to go on with this implicit faith in me so long. Should you, James, think of yourself only?’
‘I do not, I trust, think of myself only,’ said James. ‘I hope that I am calm enough and have a heart to think for others. But I ask you, is it doing right to him to let him marry you in ignorance of the state of your feelings? Is it a kindness to a good and noble man to give yourself to him only seemingly, when the best and noblest part of your affection is gone wholly beyond your control. I am quite sure of that, Mary. I know you do love him very well, that you would make a most true, affectionate, constant wife to him, but what I know you feel for me is something wholly out of your power to give to him, is it not now?’
‘I think it is,’ said Mary, looking gravely and deeply thoughtful. ‘But then, James, I ask myself, what if all this had happened a week hence? My feelings would have been just the same, because they are feelings over which I have no more control than over my existence. I can only control the expression of them. But in that case you would not have asked me to break my marriage vow, and why now shall I break a solemn vow deliberately made before God? If what I can give him will content him, and he never knows that which would give him pain, what wrong is done him?’
‘I should think the deepest possible wrong done me,’ said James, ‘if, when I thought I had married a wife with a whole heart, I found that the greater part of it had been before that given to another. If you tell him, or if I tell him, or your mother, who is the more proper person, and he chooses to hold you to your promise, then, Mary, I have no more to say. I shall sail in a few weeks again, and carry your image for ever in my heart; nobody can take that away, and that dear shadow will be the only wife I shall ever know.’
At this moment Miss Prissy came rattling along towards the door, talking, we suspect designedly, in quite a high key. Mary hastily said,
‘Wait, James, let me think. To-morrow is the Sabbath-day. Monday I will send you word or see you.’