"Do, pray!" said Mary. "Go, hurry to your mother! Don't be too sudden, either, for she's very weak; she is almost worn out with sorrow. Go, my dear brother! Dear you always will be to me."
James helped her into the house, and they parted. All the house was yet still. The open kitchen-door let in a sober square of moonlight on the floor. The very stir of the leaves on the trees could be heard. Mary went into her little room, and threw herself upon the bed, weak, weary, yet happy,—for deep and high above all other feelings was the great relief that he was living still. After a little while she heard the rattling of the wagon, and then the quick patter of Miss Prissy's feet, and her mother's considerate tones, and the Doctor's grave voice,—and quite unexpectedly to herself, she was shocked to find herself turning with an inward shudder from the idea of meeting him. "How very wicked!" she thought,—"how ungrateful!"—and she prayed that God would give her strength to check the first rising of such feelings.
Then there was her mother, so ignorant and innocent, busy putting away baskets of things that she had bought in provision for the wedding-ceremony.
Mary almost felt as if she had a guilty secret. But when she reflected upon the last two hours, she felt no wish to take them back again. Two little hours of joy and rest they had been,—so pure, so perfect! she thought God must have given them to her as a keepsake to remind her of His love, and to strengthen her in the way of duty.
Some will, perhaps, think it an unnatural thing that Mary should have regarded her pledge to the Doctor as of so absolute and binding force; but they must remember the rigidity of her education. Self-denial and self-sacrifice had been the daily bread of her life. Every prayer, hymn, and sermon, from her childhood, had warned her to distrust her inclinations and regard her feelings as traitors. In particular had she been brought up to regard the sacredness of a promise with a superstitious tenacity; and in this case the promise involved so deeply the happiness of a friend whom she had loved and revered all her life, that she never thought of any way of escape from it. She had been taught that there was no feeling so strong but that it might be immediately repressed at the call of duty; and if the thought arose to her of this great love to another, she immediately answered it by saying, "How would it have been, if I had been married? As I could have overcome then, so I can now."
Mrs. Scudder came into her room with a candle in her hand, and Mary, accustomed to read the expression of her mother's countenance, saw at a glance a visible discomposure there. She held the light so that it shone upon Mary's face.
"Are you asleep?" she said.
"No, mother."
"Are you unwell?"
"No, mother,—only a little tired."