The next morning, while Stephen was
dressing, he slowly reviewed the events of the previous
day, and took several resolutions. If Mrs. White
could have had the faintest conception of what was
passing in her son’s mind, while he sat opposite
to her at breakfast, so unusually cheerful and talkative,
she would have been very unhappy. But she, too,
had had a season of reflection this morning, and was
much absorbed in her own plans. She heartily
regretted having shown so much ill-feeling in regard
to Mercy; and she had resolved to atone for it in
some way, if she could. Above all, she had resolved,
if possible, to banish from Stephen’s mind the
idea that she was jealous of Mercy or hostile towards
her. She had common sense enough to see that
to allow him to recognize this feeling on her part
was to drive him at once into a course of manoeuvring
and concealment. She flattered herself that it
was with a wholly natural and easy air that she began
her plan of operations by remarking,-
“Mrs. Philbrick seems to be
very fond of her mother, does she not, Stephen?”
“Yes, very,” answered Stephen, indifferently.
“Mrs. Carr is quite an old woman.
She must have been old when Mrs. Philbrick was born.
I don’t think Mrs. Philbrick can be more than
twenty, do you?”
“I am sure I don’t know.
I never thought anything about her age,” replied
Stephen, still more indifferently. “I’m
no judge of women’s ages.”
“Well, I’m sure she isn’t
more than twenty, if she is that,” said Mrs.
White; “and she really is a very pretty woman,
Steve. I’ll grant you that.”
“Grant me that, mother?”
laughed Stephen, lightly. “I never said
she was pretty, did I? The first time I saw her,
I thought she was uncommonly plain; but afterwards
I saw that I had done her injustice. I don’t
think, however, she would usually be thought pretty.”
Mrs. White was much gratified by his
careless tone and manner; so much so that she went
farther than she had intended, and said in an off-hand
way, “I’m real sorry, Steve, you thought
I didn’t treat her well yesterday. I didn’t
mean to be rude, but you know it always does vex me
to see a woman’s head turned by a man’s
taking a little notice of her; and I know very well,
Stephy, that women like you. It wouldn’t
take much to make Mrs. Philbrick fancy you were in
love with her.”
Stephen also was gratified by his
mother’s apparent softening of mood, and instinctively
met her more than half way, replying,-
“I didn’t mean to say
that you were rude to her, mother; only you showed
so plainly that you didn’t want them to stay.
Perhaps she didn’t notice it, only thought you
were tired. It isn’t any great matter, any
way. We’d better keep on good terms with
them, if they’re to live under the same roof
with us, that’s all.”
“Oh, yes,” replied Mrs.
White. “Much better to be on neighborly
terms. The old mother is a childish old thing,
though. She’d bore me to death, if she
came in often.”
“Yes, indeed, she is a bore,
sure enough,” said Stephen; “but she’s
so simple, and so much like a child you can’t
help pitying her.”
They fenced very well, these two,
with their respective secrets to keep; but the man
fenced best, his secret being the most momentous to
shield from discovery. When he shut the door,
having bade his mother good by, he fairly breathed
hard with the sense of having come out of a conflict.
One of the resolutions he had taken was that he would
wait for Mercy this morning on a street he knew she
must pass on her way to market. He did not define
to himself any motive for this act, except the simple
longing to see her face. He had not said to himself
what he would do, or what words he would speak, or
even that he would speak at all; but one look at her
face he must have, and he had though to himself distinctly
in making this plan, “Here is one way in which
I can see her every day, and my mother never know
any thing about it.”
When Mrs. White saw Mercy set off
for her usual morning walk, a half hour or more after
Stephen had left the house, she thought, as she had
often though before on similar occasions, “Well,
she won’t overtake Stephen this time. I
dare say she planned to.” Light-hearted
Mercy, meantime, was walking on with her own swift,
elastic tread, and thinking warmly and shyly of the
look with which Stephen had bade her good-by the day
before. She was walking, as was her habit, with
her eyes cast down, and did not observe that any one
approached her, until she suddenly heard Stephen’s
voice saying, “Good-morning, Mrs. Philbrick.”
It was the second time that he had surprised her in
a reverie of which he himself was the subject.
This time the surprise was a joyful one; and the quick
flush of rosy color which spread over her cheeks was
a flush of gladness,-undisguised and honest
gladness.
“Why, Mr. White,” she
exclaimed, “I never thought of seeing you.
I thought you were always in your office at this time.”
“I waited to see you this morning,”
replied Stephen, in a tone as simply honest as her
own. “I wanted to speak to you.”
Mercy looked up inquiringly, but did
not speak. Stephen smiled.
“Oh, not for any particular
thing,” he said: “only for the pleasure
of it.”
Then Mercy smiled, and the two looked
into each other’s faces with a joy which neither
attempted to disguise. Stephen took Mercy’s
basket from her arm; and they walked along in silence,
not knowing that it was silence, so full was it of
sweet meanings to them in the simple fact that they
were walking by each other’s side. The
few words they did speak were of the purposeless and
irrelevant sort in which unacknowledged lovers do so
universally express themselves in their earlier moments
alone together,-a sort of speech more like
birds chirping than like ordinary language. When
they parted at the door of Stephen’s office,
he said,-
“I think you always come to
the village about this time in the morning, do you
not?”
“Yes, always,” replied Mercy.
“Then, if you are willing, I
would like sometimes to walk with you,” said
Stephen.
“I like it very much, Mr. White,”
answered Mercy, eagerly. “I used to walk
a great deal with Mr. Allen, and I miss it sadly.”
A jealous pang shot through Stephen’s
heart. He had been blind. This was the reason
Harley Allen had taken such interest in finding a home
for Mrs. Philbrick and her mother. He remembered
now that he had thought at the time some of the expressions
in his friend’s letter argued an unusual interest
in the young widow. Of course no man could know
Mercy without loving her. Stephen was wretched;
but no trace of it showed on the serene and smiling
face with which he bade Mercy “Good-by,”
and ran up his office-stairs three steps at a time.
All day Mercy went about her affairs
with a new sense of impulse and cheer. It was
not a conscious anticipation of the morrow: she
did not say to herself “To-morrow morning I
shall see him for half an hour.” Love knows
the secret of true joy better than that. Love
throws open wider doors,-lifts a great
veil from a measureless vista: all the rest of
life is transformed into one shining distance; every
present moment is but a round in a ladder whose top
disappears in the skies, from which angels are perpetually
descending to the dreamer below.
The next morning Mercy saw Stephen
leave the house even earlier than usual. Her
first thought was one of blank disappointment.
“Why, I thought he meant to walk down with me,”
she said to herself. Her second thought was a
perplexed instinct of the truth: “I wonder
if he can be afraid to have his mother see him with
me?” At this thought, Mercy’s face burned,
and she tried to banish it; but it would not be banished,
and by the time her morning duties were done, and
she had set out on her walk, the matter had become
quite clear in her mind.
“I shall see him at the corner
where he was yesterday,” she said.
But no Stephen was there. Spite
of herself, Mercy lingered and looked back. She
was grieved and she was vexed.
“Why did he say he wanted to
walk with me, and then the very first morning not
come?” she said, as she walked slowly into the
village.
It was a cloudy day, and the clouds
seemed to harmonize with Mercy’s mood.
She did her errands in a half-listless way; and more
than one of the tradespeople, who had come to know
her voice and smile, wondered what had gone wrong
with the cheery young lady. All the way home she
looked vainly for Stephen at every cross-street.
She fancied she heard his step behind her; she fancied
she saw his tall figure in the distance. After
she reached home and the expectation was over for
that day, she took herself angrily to task for her
folly. She reminded herself that Stephen had said
“sometimes,” not “always;”
and that nothing could have been more unlikely than
that he should have joined her the very next day.
Nevertheless, she was full of uneasy wonder how soon
he would come again; and, when the next morning dawned
clear and bright, her first thought as she sprang up
was,-
“This is such a lovely day for
a walk! He will surely come to-day.”
Again she was disappointed. Stephen
left the house at a very early hour, and walked briskly
away without looking back. Mercy forced herself
to go through her usual routine of morning work.
She was systematic almost to a fault in the arrangement
of her time, and any interference with her hours was
usually a severe trial of her patience. But to-day
it was only by a great effort of her will that she
refrained from setting out earlier than usual for
the village. She walked rapidly until she approached
the street where Stephen had joined her before.
Then she slackened her pace, and fixed her eyes on
the street. No person was to be seen in it.
She walked slower and slower: she could not believe
that he was not there. Then she began to fear
that she had come a little too early. She turned
to retrace her steps; but a sudden sense of shame
withheld her, and she turned back again almost immediately,
and continued her course towards the village, walking
very slowly, and now and then halting and looking back.
Still no Stephen. Street after street she passed:
no Stephen. A sort of indignant grief swelled
up in Mercy’s bosom; she was indignant with herself,
with him, with circumstances, with everybody; she
was unreasoning and unreasonable; she longed so to
see Stephen’s face that she could not think
clearly of any thing else. And yet she was ashamed
of this longing. All these struggling emotions
together were too much for her; tears came into her
eyes; then vexation at the tears made them come all
the faster; and, for the first time in her life, Mercy
Philbrick pulled her veil over her face to hide that
she was crying. Almost in the very moment that
she had done this, she heard a quick step behind her,
and Stephen’s voice calling,-
“Oh, Mrs. Philbrick! Mrs.
Philbrick! do not walk so fast. I am trying to
overtake you.”
Feeling as guilty as a child detected
in some forbidden spot, Mercy stood still, vainly
hoping her black veil was thick enough to hide her
red eyes; vainly trying to regain her composure enough
to speak in her natural voice, and smile her usual
smile. Vainly, indeed! What crape could blind
a lover’s eyes, or what forced tone deceive
a lover’s ears?
At his first sight of her face, Stephen
started; at the first sound of her voice, he stood
still, and exclaimed,-
“Mrs. Philbrick, you have been
crying!” There was no gainsaying it, even if
Mercy had not been too honest to make the attempt.
She looked up mischievously at him, and tried to say
lightly,-
“What then, Mr. White? Didn’t you
know all women cried?”
The voice was too tremulous.
Stephen could not bear it. Forgetting that they
were on a public street, forgetting every thing but
that Mercy was crying, he exclaimed,-
“Mercy, what is it? Do let me help you!
Can’t I?”
She did not even observe that he called
her “Mercy.” It seemed only natural.
Without realizing the full meaning of her words, she
said,-
“Oh, you have helped me now,”
and threw up her veil, showing a face where smiles
were already triumphant. Instinct told Stephen
in the same second what she had meant, and yet had
not meant to say. He dropped her hand, and said
in a low voice,-
“Mercy, did you really have
tears in your eyes because I did not come? Bless
you, darling! I don’t dare to speak to you
here. Oh, pray come down this little by-street
with me.”
It was a narrow little lane behind
the Brick Row into which Stephen and Mercy turned.
Although it was so near the centre of the town, it
had never been properly graded, but had been left
like a wild bit of uneven field. One side of
it was walled by the Brick Row; on the other side were
only a few poverty-stricken houses, in which colored
people lived. The snow lay piled in drifts here
all winter, and in spring it was an almost impassable
slough of mud. There was now no trodden path,
only the track made by sleighs in the middle of the
lane. Into this strode Stephen, in his excitement
walking so fast that Mercy could hardly keep up with
him. They were too much absorbed in their own
sensations and in each other to realize the oddity
of their appearance, floundering in the deep snow,
looking eagerly in each other’s faces, and talking
in a breathless and disjointed way.
“Mercy,” said Stephen,
“I have been walking up and down waiting for
you ever since I came out; but a man whom I could
not get away from stopped me, and I had to stand still
helpless and see you walk by the street, and I was
afraid I could not overtake you.”
“Oh, was that it?” said
Mercy, looking up timidly in his face. “I
felt sure you would be there this morning, because”-
“Because what?” said Stephen, gently.
“Because you said you would
come sometimes, and I knew very well that that need
not have meant this particular morning nor any particular
morning; and that was what vexed me so, that I should
have been silly and set my heart on it. That
was what made me cry, Mr. White, I was so vexed with
myself,” stoutly asserted Mercy, beginning to
feel braver and more like herself.
Stephen looked her full in the face
without speaking for a moment. Then,-
“May I call you Mercy?” he said.
“Yes,” she replied.
“May I say to you exactly what I am thinking?”
“Yes,” she replied again, a little more
hesitatingly.
“Then, Mercy, this is what I
want to say to you,” said Stephen, earnestly.
“There is no reason why you and I should try
to deceive each other or ourselves. I care very,
very much for you, and you care very much for me.
We have come very close to each other, and neither
of our lives can ever be the same again. What
is in store for us in all this we cannot now see;
but it is certain we are very much to each other.”
He spoke more and more slowly and
earnestly; his eyes fixed on the distant horizon instead
of on Mercy’s face. A deep sadness gradually
gathered on his countenance, and his last words were
spoken more in the tone of one who felt a new exaltation
of suffering than of one who felt the new ecstasy
of a lover. Looking down into Mercy’s face,
with a tenderness which made her very heart thrill,
he said,-
“Tell me, Mercy, is it not so? Are we not
very much to each other?”
The strange reticence of his tone,
even more reticent than his words, had affected Mercy
inexplicably: it was as if a chill wind had suddenly
blown at noonday, and made her shiver in spite of
full sunlight. Her tone was almost as reticent
and sad as his, as she said, without raising her eyes,-
“I think it is true.”
“Please look up at me, Mercy,”
said Stephen. “I want to feel sure that
you are not sorry I care so much for you.”
“How could I be sorry?”
exclaimed Mercy, lifting her eyes suddenly, and looking
into Stephen’s face with all the fulness of affection
of her glowing nature. “I shall never be
sorry.”
“Bless you for saying that,
dear!” said Stephen, solemnly,-“bless
you. You should never be sorry a moment in your
life, if I could help it; and now, dear, I must leave
you,” he said, looking uneasily about. “I
ought not to have brought you into this lane.
If people were to see us walking here, they would
think it strange.” And, as they reached
the entrance of the lane, his manner suddenly became
most ceremonious; and, extending his hand to assist
her over a drift of snow, he said in tones unnecessarily
loud and formal, “Good-morning, Mrs. Philbrick.
I am glad to have helped you through these drifts.
Good-morning,” and was gone.
Mercy stood still, and looked after
him for a moment with a blank sense of bewilderment.
His sudden change of tone and manner smote her like
a blow. She comprehended in a flash the subterfuge
in it, and her soul recoiled from it with incredulous
pain. “Why should he be afraid to have people
see us together? What does it mean? What
reason can he possibly have?” Scores of questions
like these crowded on her mind, and hurt her sorely.
Her conjecture even ran so wide as to suggest the
possibility of his being engaged to another woman,-some
old and mistaken promise by which he was hampered.
Her direct and honest nature could conceive of nothing
less than this which could explain his conduct.
Restlessly her imagination fastened on this solution
of the problem, and tortured her in vain efforts to
decide what would be right under such circumstances.
The day was a long, hard one for Mercy.
The more she thought, conjectured, remembered, and
anticipated, the deeper grew her perplexity. All
the joy which she had at first felt in the consciousness
that Stephen loved her died away in the strain of
these conflicting uncertainties: and it was a
grave and almost stern look with which she met him
that night, when, with an eager bearing, almost radiant,
he entered her door.
He felt the change at once, and, stretching
both his hands towards her, exclaimed,-
“Mercy, my dear, new, sweet
friend! are you not well to-night?”
“Oh, yes, thank you. I
am very well,” replied Mercy, in a tone very
gentle, but with a shade of reserve in it.
Stephen’s face fell. The
expression of patient endurance which was habitual
to it, and which Mercy knew so well, and found always
so irresistibly appealing, settled again on all his
features. Without speaking, he drew his chair
close to the hearth, and looked steadfastly into the
fire. Some minutes passed in silence. Mercy
felt the tears coming again into her eyes. What
was this intangible but inexorable thing which stood
between this man’s soul and hers? She could
not doubt that he loved her; she knew that her whole
soul went out towards him with a love of which she
had never before had even a conception. It seemed
to her that the words he had spoken and she had received
had already wrought a bond between them which nothing
could hinder or harm. Why should they sit thus
silent by each other’s side to-night, when so
few hours ago they were full of joy and gladness?
Was it the future or the past which laid this seal
on Stephen’s lips? Mercy was not wont to
be helpless or inert. She saw clearly, acted
quickly always; but here she was powerless, because
she was in the dark. She could not even grope
her way in this mystery. At last Stephen spoke.
“Mercy,” he said, “perhaps
you are already sorry that I care so much for you.
You said yesterday you never would be.”
“Oh, no, indeed! I am not,”
said Mercy. “I am very glad you care so
much for me.”
“Perhaps you have discovered
that you do not care so much for me as you yesterday
thought you did.”
“Oh, no, no!” replied poor Mercy, in a
low tone.
Again Stephen was silent for a long time. Then
he said,-
“Ever since I can remember,
I have longed for a perfect and absorbing friendship.
The peculiar relations of my life have prevented my
even hoping for it. My father’s and my
mother’s friends never could be my friends.
I have lived the loneliest life a mortal man ever lived.
Until I saw you, Mercy, I had never even looked on
the face of a woman whom it seemed possible to me
that any man could love. Perhaps, when I tell
you that, you can imagine what it was to me to look
on the face of a woman whom it seems to me no man
could help loving. I suppose many men have loved
you, Mercy, and many more men will. I do not think
any man has ever felt for you, or ever will feel for
you, as I feel. My love for you includes every
love the heart can know,-the love of father,
brother, friend, lover. Young as I am, you seem
to me like my child, to be taken care of; and you
seem like my sister, to be trusted and loved; and like
my friend, to be leaned upon. You see what my
life is. You see the burden which I must carry,
and which none can share. Do you think that the
friendship I can give you can be worth what it would
ask? I feel withheld and ashamed as I speak to
you. I know how little I can do, how little I
can offer. To fetter you by a word would be base
and selfish; but, oh, Mercy, till life brings you
something better than my love, let me love you, if
it is only till to-morrow!”
Mercy listened to each syllable Stephen
spoke, as one in a wilderness, flying for his life
from pursuers, would listen to every sound which could
give the faintest indications which way safety might
lie. If she had listened dispassionately to such
words, spoken to any other woman, her native honesty
of soul would have repelled them as unfair. But
every instinct of her nature except the one tender
instinct of loving was disarmed and blinded,-disarmed
by her affection for Stephen, and blinded by her profound
sympathy for his suffering.
She fixed her eyes on him as intently
as if she would read the very thoughts of his heart.
“Do you understand me, Mercy?” he said.
“I think I do,” she replied in a whisper.
“If you do not now, you will
as time goes on,” he continued. “I
have not a thought I am unwilling for you to know;
but there are thoughts which it would be wrong for
me to put into words. I stand where I stand; and
no mortal can help me, except you. You can help
me infinitely. Already the joy of seeing you,
hearing you, knowing that you are near, makes all my
life seem changed. It is not very much for you
to give me, Mercy, after all, out of the illimitable
riches of your beauty, your brightness, your spirit,
your strength,-just a few words, just a
few smiles, just a little love,-for the
few days, or it may be years, that fate sets us by
each other’s side? And you, too, need a
friend, Mercy. Your duty to another has brought
you where you are singularly alone, for the time being,
just as my duty to another has placed me where I must
be singularly alone. Is it not a strange chance
which has thus brought us together?”
“I do not believe any thing
is chance,” murmured Mercy. “I must
have been sent here for something.”
“I believe you were, dear,”
said Stephen, “sent here for my salvation.
I was thinking last night that, no matter if my life
should end without my ever knowing what other men
call happiness, if I must live lonely and alone to
the end, I should still have the memory of you,-of
your face, of your hand, and the voice in which you
said you cared for me. O Mercy, Mercy! you have
not the least conception of what you are to me!”
And Stephen stretched out both his arms to her, with
unspeakable love in the gesture.
So swiftly that he had not the least
warning of her intention, Mercy threw herself into
them, and laid her head on his shoulder, sobbing.
Shame filled her soul, and burned in her cheeks, when
Stephen, lifting her as he would a child, and kissing
her forehead gently, placed her again in her chair,
and said,-
“My darling, I cannot let you
do that. I will never ask from you any thing
that you can by any possibility come to regret at some
future time. I ought perhaps to be unselfish
enough not to ask from you any thing at all.
I did not mean to; but I could not help it, and it
is too late now.”
“Yes, it is too late now,”
said Mercy,-“too late now.”
And she buried her face in her hands.
“Mercy,” exclaimed Stephen,
in a voice of anguish, “you will break my heart:
you will make me wish myself dead, if you show such
suffering as this. I thought that you, too, could
find joy, and perhaps help, in my love, as I could
in yours. If it is to give you pain and not happiness,
it were better for you never to see me again.
I will never voluntarily look on your face after to-night,
if you wish it,-if you would be happier
so.”
“Oh, no, no!” cried Mercy.
Then, overwhelmed with the sudden realization of the
pain she was giving to a man whom she so loved that
at that moment she would have died to shield him from
pain, she lifted her face, shook back the hair from
her forehead, and, looking bravely into his eyes,
repeated,-
“No, no! I am very selfish
to feel like this. I do understand you. I
understand it all; and I will help you, and comfort
you all I can. And I do love you very dearly,”
she added in a lower voice, with a tone of such incomparable
sweetness that it took almost superhuman control on
Stephen’s part to refrain from clasping her
to his heart. But he did not betray the impulse,
even by a gesture. Looking at her with an expression
of great thankfulness, he said,-
“I believe that peace will come
to us, Mercy. I believe I can do something to
make you happy. To know that I love you as I do
will be a great deal to you, I think.”
He paused.
“Yes,” answered Mercy, “a great
deal.” He went on,-
“And to know that you are perpetually
helping and cheering me will be still more to you,
I think. We shall know some joys, Mercy, which
joyous lovers never know. Happy people do not
need each other as sad people do. O Mercy, do
try and remember all the time that you are the one
bright thing in my life,-in my whole life.”
“I will, Stephen, I will,”
said Mercy, resolutely, her whole face glowing with
the new purposes forming in her heart. It was
marvellous how clear the relation between herself
and Stephen began to seem to her. It was rather
by her magnetic consciousness of all that he was thinking
and feeling than by the literal acceptance of any
thing or all things which he said. She seemed
to herself to be already one with him in all his trials,
burdens, perplexities; in his renunciation; in his
self-sacrifice; in his loyalty of reticence; in his
humility of uncomplainingness.
When she bade him “good-night,”
her face was not only serene: it was serene with
a certain exaltation added, as the face of one who
had entered into a great steadfastness of joy.
Stephen wondered greatly at this transition from the
excitement and grief she had at first shown. He
had yet to learn what wellsprings of strength lie
in the poetic temperament.
As he stood lingering on the threshold,
finding it almost impossible to turn away while the
sweet face held him by the honest gaze of the loving
eyes, he said,
“There will be many times, dear,
when things will have to be very hard, when I shall
not be able to do as you would like to have me, when
you may even be pained by my conduct. Shall you
trust me through it all?”
“I shall trust you till the
day of my death,” said Mercy, impetuously.
“One can’t take trust back. It isn’t
a gift: it is a necessity.”
Stephen smiled,-a smile of sorrow rather
than gladness.
“But if you thought me other than you had believed?”
he said.
“I could never think you other
than you are,” replied Mercy, proudly. “It
is not that I ‘believe’ you. I know
you. I shall trust you to the day of my death.”
Perhaps nothing could illustrate better
the difference between Mercy Philbrick’s nature
and Stephen White’s, between her love for him
and his for her, than the fact that, after this conversation,
she lay awake far into the early hours of the morning,
living over every word that he had spoken, looking
resolutely and even joyously into the strange future
which was opening before her, and scanning with loving
intentness every chance that it could possibly hold
for her ministrations to him. He, on the other
hand, laid his head on his pillow with a sense of dreamy
happiness, and sank at once into sleep, murmuring,-
“The darling! how she does love
me! She shall never regret it,-never.
We can have a great deal of happiness together as
it is; and if the time ever should come,” ...
Here his thoughts halted, and refused
to be clothed in explicit phrase. Never once
had Stephen White permitted himself to think in words,
even in his most secret meditations, “When my
mother dies, I shall be free.” His fine
fastidiousness would shrink from it, as from the particular
kind of brutality and bad taste involved in a murder.
If the whole truth could have been known of Stephen’s
feeling about all crimes and sins, it would have been
found to be far more a matter of taste than of principle,
of instinct than of conviction.
Surely never in this world did love
link together two souls more diametrically opposite
than Mercy Philbrick’s and Stephen White’s.
It needed no long study or especial insight into character
to know which of the two would receive the more and
suffer the less, in the abnormal and unfortunate relation
on which they had entered. But no presentiment
warned Mercy of what lay before her. She was
like a traveller going into a country whose language
he has never heard, and whose currency he does not
understand. However eloquent he may be in his
own land, he is dumb and helpless here; and of the
fortune with which he was rich at home he is robbed
at every turn by false exchanges which impose on his
ignorance. Poor Mercy! Vaguely she felt
that life was cruel to Stephen and to her; but she
accepted its cruelty to her as an inevitable part of
her oneness with him. Whatever he had to bear
she must bear too, especially if he were helped by
her sharing the burden. And her heart glowed with
happiness, recalling the expression with which he
had said,-
“Remember, Mercy, you are the
one bright thing in my life.”
She understood, or thought she understood,
precisely the position in which he was placed.
“Very possibly he has even promised
his mother,” she said to herself, “even
promised her he would never be married. It would
be just like her to exact such a promise from him,
and never think any thing of it. And, even if
he has not, it is all the same. He knows very
well no human being could live in the house with her,
to say nothing of his being so terribly poor.
Poor, dear Stephen! to think of our little rent being
more than half his income! Oh, if there were
only some way in which I could contrive to give him
money without his knowing it.”
If any one had said to Mercy at this
time: “It was not honorable in this man,
knowing or feeling that he could not marry you, to
tell you of his love, and to allow you to show him
yours for him. He is putting you in a false position,
and may be blighting your whole life,” Mercy
would have repelled the accusation most indignantly.
She would have said: “He has never asked
me for any such love as that. He told me most
honestly in the very beginning just how it was.
He always said he would never fetter me by a word;
and, once when I forgot myself for a moment, and threw
myself into his very arms, he only kissed my forehead
as if I were his sister, and put me away from him
almost with a reproof. No, indeed! he is the very
soul of honor. It is I who choose to love him
with all my soul and all my strength. Why should
not a woman devote her life to a man without being
his wife, if she chooses, and if he so needs her?
It is just as sacred and just as holy a bond as the
other, and holier, too; for it is more unselfish.
If he can give up the happiness of being a husband
and father, for the sake of his duty to his mother,
cannot I give up the happiness of being a wife and
mother, for the sake of my affection and duty towards
him?”
It looked very plain to Mercy in these
first days. It looked right, and it seemed very
full of joy. Her life seemed now rounded and complete.
It had a ruling motive, without which no life is satisfying;
and that motive was the highest motive known to the
heart,-the desire to make another human
being perfectly happy. All hindrances and difficulties,
all drawbacks and sacrifices, seemed less than nothing
to her. When she saw Stephen, she was happy because
she saw him; and when she did not see him, she was
happy because she had seen him, and would soon see
him again. Past, present, and future all melt
into one great harmonious whole under the spell of
love in a nature like Mercy’s. They are
like so many rooms in one great house; and in one
or the other the loved being is always to be found,
always at home, can never depart! Could one be
lonely for a moment in such a house?
Mercy’s perpetual and abiding
joy at times terrified Stephen. It was a thing
so foreign to his own nature that it seemed to him
hardly natural. Calm acquiescence he could understand,-serene
endurance: he himself never chafed at the barriers,
little or great, which kept him from Mercy. But
there were many days when his sense of deprivation
made him sad, subdued, and quiet. When, in these
moods, he came into Mercy’s presence, and found
her radiant, buoyant, mirthful even, he wondered; and
sometimes he questioned. He strove to find out
the secret of her joy. There seemed to him no
legitimate reason for it.
“Why, to see that I make you
glad, Stephen,” she would say. “Is
not that enough? Or even, when I cannot make
you glad, just to love you is enough.”
“Mercy, how did you ever come
to love me?” he said once, stung by a sense
of his own unworthiness. “How do you know
you love me, after all?”
“How do I know I love you!”
she exclaimed. “Can any one ever tell that,
I wonder? I know it by this: that every
thing in the whole world, even down to the smallest
grass-blade, seems to me different because you are
alive.” She said these words with a passionate
vehemence, and tears in her eyes. Then, changing
in a second to a mischievous, laughing mood, she said,-
“Yes: you make all that
odds to me. But let us not talk about loving each
other, Stephen. That’s the way children
do with their flower-seeds,-keep pulling
them up, to see how they grow.”
That night, Mercy gave Stephen this
sonnet,-the first words she had written
out of the great wellspring of her love:-
“How was it?”
Why ask, dear one? I think I
cannot tell,
More than I know how clouds so sudden lift
From mountains, or how snowflakes float and drift,
Or springs leave hills. One secret and one
spell
All true things have. No sunlight ever fell
With sound to bid flowers open. Still and swift
Come sweetest things on earth.
So comes true
gift
Of Love, and so we know that it is well.
Sure tokens also, like the cloud, the snow,
And silent flowing of the mountain-springs,
The new gift of true loving always brings.
In clearer light, in purer paths, we go:
New currents of deep joy in common things
We find. These are the tokens, dear, we know!