And when Miss Prissy returned into the best room, James was sitting at one window and Mary at another, he making remarks in a style of most admirable commonplace on a copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost, which he had picked up in the confusion of the moment, and which at the time Mrs. Katy Scudder entered, he was declaring to be a most excellent book, and a really truly valuable work.
Mrs. Scudder looked keenly from one to the other, and saw that Mary’s cheek was glowing like the deepest heart of a pink shell, while in all other respects she was as cold and calm. On the whole she felt satisfied that no mischief had been done.
We hope our readers will do Mrs. Scudder justice. It is true that she yet wore on her third finger the marriage ring of a sailor lover, and his memory was yet fresh in her heart; but even mothers who have married for love themselves somehow so blend their daughter’s existence with their own as to conceive that she must marry their love and not her own.
Beside this, Mrs. Scudder was an Old Testament woman, brought up with that scrupulous exactitude of fidelity in relation to promises which would naturally come from familiarity with a book where covenant-keeping is represented as one of the highest attributes of Deity, and covenant-breaking as one of the vilest sins of humanity. To break the word that had gone forth out of one’s mouth was to lose self-respect and all claim to the respect of others, and to sin against eternal rectitude.
As we have said before, it is almost impossible to make our light-minded modern times comprehend the earnestness with which these people lived. It was in the beginning no vulgar nor mercenary ambition that made Mrs. Scudder desire the Doctor as a husband for her daughter. He was poor, and she had had offers from richer men. He was often unpopular, but he was the man in the world she most revered, the man she believed in with the most implicit faith, the man who embodied her highest idea of the good; and therefore it was that she was willing to resign her child to him.
As to James, she had felt truly sympathetic with his mother and with Mary in the dreadful hour when they supposed him lost, and had it not been for the great perplexity occasioned by his return she would have received him as a relative with open arms. But now she felt it her duty to be on the defensive, an attitude not the most favourable for cherishing pleasing associations in regard to another. She had read the letter giving an account of his spiritual experience with very sincere pleasure as a good woman should, but not without an internal perception how very much it endangered her favourite plans. But when Mary had calmly reiterated her determination, she felt sure of her. For had she ever known her to say a thing she did not do?
The uneasiness she felt at present was not the doubt of her daughter’s steadiness, but the fear that she might have been unsuitably harassed or annoyed.