It was a turning-point in Mercy's life when she met Parson Dorrance. Here at last was a man who had strength enough to influence her, culture enough to teach her, and the firm moral rectitude which her nature so inexorably demanded. During the first few weeks of their acquaintance, Mercy was conscious of an insatiable desire to be in his presence: it was an intellectual and a moral thirst. Nothing could be farther removed from the absorbing consciousness which passionate love feels of its object, than was this sentiment she felt toward Parson Dorrance. If he had been a being from another planet, it could not have been more so. In fact, it was very much as if another planet had been added to her world,--a planet which threw brilliant light into every dark corner of this one. She questioned him eagerly. Her old doubts and perplexities, which Mr. Allen's narrower mind had been unable to comprehend or to help, were now set at rest and cleared up by a spiritual vision far keener than her own. Her mind was fed and trained by an intellect so much stronger than her own that it compelled her assent and her allegiance. She came to him almost as a maiden, in the ancient days of Greece, would have gone to the oracle of the holiest shrine. Parson Dorrance in his turn was as much impressed by Mercy; but he was never able to see in her simply the pupil, the questioner. To him she was also a warm and glowing personality, a young and beautiful woman. Parson Dorrance's hair was white as snow; but his eyes were as keen and dark as in his youth, his step as firm, and his pulse as quick. Long before he dreamed of such a thing, he might have known, if he had taken counsel of his heart, that Mercy was becoming to him the one woman in the world. There was always this peculiarity in Mercy's influence upon all who came to love her. She was so unique and incalculable a person that she made all other women seem by comparison with her monotonous and wearying. Intimacy with her had a subtle flavor to it, by which other flavors were dulled. The very impersonality of her enthusiasms and interests, her capacity for looking on a person for the time being merely as a representative or mouth-piece, so to speak, of thoughts, of ideas, of narrations, was one of her strongest charms. By reason of this, the world was often unjust to her in its comments on her manner, on her relations with men. The world more than once accused her uncharitably of flirting. But the men with whom she had friendships knew better; and now and then a woman had the insight to be just to her, to see that she was quite capable of regarding a human being as objectively as she would a flower or a mountain or a star. The blending of this trait in her with the strong capacity she had for loving individuals was singular; not more so, perhaps, than the blending of the poetic temperament with the active, energetic, and practical side of her nature.

It was not long before her name began to be mentioned in connection with Parson Dorrance's, by the busy tongues which are always in motion in small villages. It was not long, moreover, before a thought and a hope, in which both these names were allied, crept into the heart of Lizzy Hunter.

"Oh," she thought, "if only Uncle Dorrance would marry Mercy, how happy I should be, she would be, every one would be."

No suspicion of the relation in which Mercy stood to Stephen White had ever crossed Mrs. Hunter's mind. She had never known Stephen until recently; and his manner towards her had been from the outset so chilled and constrained by his unconscious jealousy of every new friend Mercy made, that she had set him down in her own mind as a dull and surly man, and rarely thought of him. And, as one of poor Mercy's many devices for keeping up with her conscience a semblance of honesty in the matter of Stephen was the entire omission of all reference to him in her conversation, nothing occurred to remind her friends of him. Parson Dorrance, indeed, had said to her one day,--

"You never speak of Mr. White, Mercy. Is he an agreeable and kind landlord?"

Mercy started, looked bewilderedly in the Parson's face, and repeated his words mechanically,--

"Landlord?" Then recollecting herself, she exclaimed, "Oh, yes! we do pay rent to him; but it was paid for the whole year in advance, and I had forgotten all about it."

Parson Dorrance had had occasion to distrust Stephen's father, and he distrusted the son. "Advance? advance?" he exclaimed. "Why did you do that, child? That was all wrong."

"Oh, no!" said Mercy, eagerly. "I had the money, and it made no difference to me; and Mr. Allen told me that Mr. White was in a great strait for money, so I was very glad to give it to him. Such a mother is a terrible burden on a young man," and Mercy continued talking about Mrs. White, until she had effectually led the conversation away from Stephen.

When Lizzy Hunter first began to recognize the possibility of her Uncle Dorrance's loving her dear friend Mercy, she found it very hard to refrain, in her talks with Mercy, from all allusions to such a possibility. But she knew instinctively that any such suggestion would terrify Mercy, and make her withdraw herself altogether. So she contented herself with talking to her in what she thought were safe generalizations on the subject of marriage. Lizzy Hunter was one of the clinging, caressing, caressable women, who nestle into men's affections as kittens nestle into warm corners, and from very much the same motives,--love of warmth and shelter, and of being fondled. To all these instincts in Lizzy, however, were added a really beautiful motherliness and great loyalty of affection. If the world held more such women, there would be more happy children and contented husbands.

"Mercy," said she one afternoon, earnestly, "Mercy, it makes me perfectly wretched to have you say so confidently that you will never be married. You don't know what you are talking about: you don't realize in the least what it is for a woman to live alone and homeless to the end of her days."

"I never need be homeless, dear," said Mercy. "I shall always have a home, even after mother is no longer with me; and I am afraid that is very near, she has failed so much this past summer. But, even if I were all alone, I should still keep my home."

"A house isn't a home, Mercy!" exclaimed Lizzy. Of course you can always be comfortable, so far as a roof and food go towards comfort."

"And that's a great way, my Lizzy," interrupted Mercy, laughing,--"a great way. No husband could possibly take the place of them, could he?"

"Now, Mercy, don't talk so. You know very well what I mean," replied Lizzy. "It is so forlorn for a woman not to have anybody need her, not to have anybody to love her more than he loves all the rest of the world, and not to have anybody to love herself. Oh, Mercy, I don't see how any woman lives without it!"

The tears came into Mercy's eyes. There were depths of lovingness in her soul of which a woman like Lizzy could not even dream. But she spoke in a resolute tone, and she spoke very honestly, too, when she said,--

"Well, I don't see how any woman can help living very well without it, if it doesn't come to her. I don't see how any human being--man or woman, single or married--can help being glad to be alive under any conditions. It is such a glorious thing to have a soul and a body, and to get the most out of them. Just from the purely selfish point of view, it seems to me a delight to live; and when you look at it from a higher point, and think how much each human being can do for those around him, why, then it is sublime. Look at Parson Dorrance, Lizzy! Just think of the sum of the happiness that man has created in this world! He isn't lonely. He couldn't think of such a thing."

"Yes, he is, too,--I know he is," said Lizzy, impetuously. "The very way he takes up my children and hugs them and kisses them shows that he longs for a home and children of his own."

"I think not," replied Mercy. "It is all part of the perpetual overflow of his benevolence. He can't pass by a living creature, if it is only a dog, without a desire to give it a moment's happiness. Of happiness for himself he never thinks, because he is on a plane above happiness,--a plane of perpetual joy." Mercy hesitated, paused, and then went on, "I don't mean to be irreverent, but I could never think of his needing personal ministrations to his own happiness, any more than I could think of God's needing them. I think he is on a plane as absolutely above such needs as God is. Not so high above, but as absolutely."

"How are you so sure God is above it?" said Lizzy, timidly. "I can't conceive of God's being happy if nobody loved him."

Mercy was startled by these words from Lizzy, who rarely questioned and never philosophized. She opened her lips to reply with a hasty reiteration of her first sentiment, but the words died even before they were spoken, arrested by her sudden consciousness of the possibility of a grand truth underlying Lizzy's instinct. If that were so, did it not lie out far beyond every fact in life, include and control them all, as the great truth of gravitation outlies and embraces the physical universe? Did God so need as well as so love the world, that he gave his only begotten Son for it? Is this what it meant to be "one with God"? Then, if the great, illimitable heart of God thus yearns for the love of his creatures, the greater the heart of a human being, the more must he yearn for a fulness of love, a completion of the cycle of bonds and joys for which he was made. From these simple words of a loving woman's heart had flashed a great light into Mercy's comprehension of God. She was silent for some moments; then she said solemnly,--

"That was a great thought you had then, Lizzy. I never saw it in that light before. I shall never forget it. Perhaps you are right about the Parson, too. I wonder if there is any thing he does long for? If there is, I would die to give it to him,--I know that."

It was very near Lizzy's lips to say, "If you would live to give it to him, it would be more to the purpose, perhaps;" but she wisely forbore and they parted in silence, Mercy absorbed in thinking of this new view of God's relation to man, and Lizzy hoping that Mercy was thinking of Parson Dorrance's need of a greater happiness than he possessed.

As Mercy's circle of friends widened, and her interests enlarged and deepened, her relation to Stephen became at once easier and harder: easier, because she no longer spent so many hours alone in perplexed meditation as to the possible wrong in it; harder, because he was frequently unreasonable, jealous of the pleasure that he saw she found in others, jealous of the pleasure she gave to others,--jealous, in short, of every thing in which he was not her centre. Mercy was very patient with him. She loved him unutterably. She never forgot for an instant the quiet heroism with which he bore his hard life. As the months had gone on, she had gradually established a certain kindly familiarity with his mother; going in often to see her, taking her little gifts of flowers or fruit, and telling her of all little incidents which might amuse her. She seemed to herself in this way to be doing a little towards sharing Stephen's burden; and she also felt a certain bond to the woman who, being Stephen's mother, ought to have been hers by adoption. The more she saw of Mrs. White's tyrannical, exacting nature, the more she yearned over Stephen. Her first feeling of impatience with him, of resentment at the seeming want of manliness in such subjection, had long ago worn away. She saw that there were but two courses for him,--either to leave the house, or to buy a semblance of peace at any cost.

"Flesh and blood can't stand up agin Mis' White," said Marty one day, in an irrepressible confidence to Mercy. "An' the queerest thing is, that she'll never let go on you. There ain't nothin' to hender my goin' away any day, an' there hain't been for twenty year; but she sez I'm to stay till she dies, an' I don't make no doubt I shall. It's Mister Stephen I stay for, though, after all, more 'n 't is her. I don't believe the Lord ever made such a man."

Mercy's cheeks would burn after such a talk as this; and she would lavish upon Stephen every device of love and cheer which she could invent, to atone to him by hours, if possible, for the misery of days.

But the hours were few and far between. Stephen's days were filled with work, and his evenings were his mother's. Only after she slept did he have freedom. Just as soon as it was safe for him to leave the house, he flew to Mercy; but, oh, how meagre and pitiful did the few moments seem!

"Hardly long enough to realize that I am with you, my darling," he often said.

"But then it is every day, Stephen,--think of that," Mercy would reply, bent always on making all things easier instead of harder for him. Even the concealment, which was at times well-nigh insupportable to her, she never complained of now. She had accepted it. "And, after accepting it, I have no right to reproach him with it: it would be base," she thought.

Nevertheless, it was slowly wearing away the very foundations of her peace. The morning walks had long been given up. Mercy had been resolute about this. When she found Stephen insisting upon going in by-ways and lanes, lest some one should see them who might mention it to his mother, when he told her that she must not speak of it to her own mother, she said firmly,--

"This must end, Stephen. How hard it is to me to give it up you know very well. It is like the sunrise to my day, always, these moments with you. But I will not multiply concealments. It makes me guilty and ashamed all the time. Don't urge me to any such thing; for I am not sure that too much of it would not kill my love for you. Let us be patient. Chance will do a good deal for us; but I will not plan to meet clandestinely. Whenever you can come to our house, that is different. It distresses me to have you do that and never tell of it; but that is yours and not mine, if any thing can be yours and not mine," she added sadly. Stephen had not heard the last words.

"Kill your love for me, Mercy!" he exclaimed. "Are you really afraid of that?"

"No, not kill my love for you," replied Mercy, "I think nothing could do that, but kill all my joy in my love for you; and that would be as terrible to you as if the love were killed. You would not know the difference, and I should not be able to make you see it."

It was a strange thing that with all Stephen's jealousy of Mercy's enlarged and enlarging life, of her ever-widening circle of friends, he had no especial jealousy of Parson Dorrance. The Parson was Mercy's only frequent visitor; and Stephen knew very well that he had become her teacher and her guide, that she referred every question to his decision, and was guided implicitly by his taste and wish in her writing and in her studies. But, when Stephen was a boy in college, Parson Dorranee had seemed to him an old man; and he now seemed venerable. Stephen could not have been freer from a lover's jealousy of him, if he had been Mercy's own father. Perhaps, if his instinct had been truer, it might have quickened Mercy's. She was equally unaware of the real nature of the Parson's regard for her. He did for her the same things he did for Lizzy, whom he called his child. He came to see her no oftener, spoke to her no more affectionately: she believed that she and Lizzy were sisters together in his fatherly heart.

When she was undeceived, the shock was very great: it was twofold,--a shock to her sense of loyalty to Stephen, a shock to her tender love for Parson Dorrance. It was true, as she had said to Lizzy, that she would have died to give him a pleasure; and yet she was forced to inflict on him the hardest of all pains. Every circumstance attending it made it harder; made it seem to Mercy always in after life, as she looked back upon it, needlessly hard,--cruelly, malignantly hard.

It was in the early autumn. The bright colors which had thrilled Mercy with such surprise and pleasure on her first arrival in Penfield were glowing again on the trees, it seemed to her brighter than before. Purple asters and golden-rod waved on the roadsides and in the fields; and blue gentians, for which Penfield was famous, were blooming everywhere. Parson Dorrance came one day to take Lizzy and Mercy over to his "Parish," as he called "The Cedars." They had often been with him there; and Mercy had been for a long time secretly hoping that he would ask her to help him in teaching the negroes. The day was one of those radiant and crystalline days peculiar to the New England autumn. On such days, joy becomes inevitable even to inert and lifeless natures: to enthusiastic and spontaneous ones, the exhilaration of the air and the sun is as intoxicating as wine. Mercy was in one of her most mirthful moods. She frolicked with the negro children, and decked their little woolly heads with wreaths of golden-rod, till they looked as fantastic as dancing monkeys. She gathered great sheaves of ferns and blue gentians and asters, until the Parson implored her to "leave a few just for the poor sun to shine on." The paths winding among "The Cedars" were in some places thick-set with white eupatoriums, which were now in full, feathery flower, some of them so old that, as you brushed past them, a cloud of the fine thread-like petals flew in all directions. Mercy gathered branch after branch of these, but threw them away impatiently, as the flowers fell off, leaving the stems bare.

"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed. "Nature wants some seeds, I suppose; but I want flowers. What becomes of the poor flower, any way? it lives such a short while; all its beauty and grace sacrificed to the making of a seed for next year."

"That's the way with every thing in life, dear child," said Parson Dorrance. "The thing that shall be is the thing for which all the powers of nature are at work. We, you and Lizzy and I, will drop off our stems presently,--I, a good deal the first, for you and Lizzy have the blessing of youth, but I am old."

"You are not old! You are the youngest person I know," exclaimed Mercy, impetuously. "You will never be old, Mr. Dorrance, not if you should live to be as old as--as old as the Wandering Jew!"

Mercy's eyes were fixed intently on the Parson's face; but she did not note the deep flush which rose to his very hair, as she said these words. She was thinking only of the glorious soul, and seeing only its shining through the outer tabernacle. Lizzy Hunter, however, saw the flush, and knew what it meant, and her heart gave a leap of joy. "Now he can see that Mercy never thinks of him as an old man, and never would," she thought to herself; and while her hands were idly playing with her flowers and mosses, and her face looked as innocent and care-free as a baby's, her brain was weaving plots of the most complicated devices for hastening on the future which began to look to her so assured for these two.

They were sitting on a mossy mound in the shadow of great cedar-trees. The fields around "The Cedars" were filled with low mounds, like velvet cushions: some of them were merely a mat of moss over great rocks; some of them were soft yielding masses of moss, low cornel, blueberry-bushes, wintergreen, blackberry-vines, and sweet ferns; dainty, fragrant, crowded ovals, lovelier than any florist could ever make; white and green in the spring, when the cornels were in flower; scarlet and green and blue in the autumn, when the cornels and the blueberries were in fruit.

Mercy was sitting on a mound which was thick-grown with the shining wintergreen. She picked a stem which had a cluster of red berries on it, and below the berries one tiny pink blossom. As she held it up, the blossom fell, leaving a tiny satin disk behind it on its stem. She took the bell and tried to fit it again on its place; then she turned it over and over, held it up to the light and looked through it. "It makes me sad," she said: "I wish I knew if the flower knows any thing about the fruit. If it were working to that end all the while, and so were content to pass on and make room, it would seem all right. But I don't want to pass on and make room! I do so like to be here!"

Parson Dorrance looked from one woman's face to the other, both young, both lovely: Lizzy's so full of placid content, unquestioning affection, and acceptance; Mercy's so full of mysterious earnestness, far-seeing vision, and interpretation.

"What a lot lies before that gifted creature," he said to himself, "if life should go wrong with her! If only I might dare to take her fate into my hands! I do not believe any one else can do for her what I could, if I were only younger." And the Parson sighed.

That night he stayed in Penfield at Lizzy's house. The next morning, on his way to Danby, he stopped to see Mercy for a moment. When he entered her door, he had no knowledge of what lay before him; he had not yet said to himself, had not yet dared to say to himself, that he would ask Mercy to be his wife. He knew that the thought of it was more and more present with him, grew sweeter and sweeter; yet he had never ceased resisting it, saying that it was impossible. That is, he had never ceased saying so in words; but his heart had ceased resisting long ago. Only that traitor which we call judgment had been keeping up a false show of resolute opinion, just to lure the beguiled heart farther and farther on in a mistaken security.

But love is like the plants. It has its appointed days for flowers and for the falling of the flowers. The vague, sweetness of the early hours and days together, the bright happiness of the first close intimacy and interchange,--these reach their destined moment, to pass on and make room for the harvest. Blessed are the lives in which all these sweet early petals float off gently and in season for the perfect setting of the holy fruit!

On this morning, when Parson Dorrance entered Mercy's room, it was already decorated as if for a festival. Every blooming thing she had brought from "The Cedars" the day before had taken its own place in the room, and looked as at home as it had looked in the fields. One of Mercy's great gifts was the gift of creating in rooms a certain look which it is hard to define. The phrase "vitalized individuality," perhaps, would come as near describing it as is possible; for it was not merely that the rooms looked unlike other rooms. Every article in them seemed to stand in the place where it must needs stand by virtue of its use and its quality. Every thing had a certain sort of dramatic fitness, without in the least trenching on the theatrical. Her effects were always produced with simple things, in simple ways; but they resulted in an impression of abundance and luxury. As Parson Dorrance glanced around at all the wild-wood beauty, and the wild-wood fragrance stole upon his senses, a great mastering wave of love for the woman whose hand had planned it all swept over him. He recalled Mercy's face the day before, when she had said,--

"You are the youngest person I know;" and, as she crossed the threshold of the door at that instant, he went swiftly towards her with outstretched hands, and a look on his face which, if she had seen, she could not have failed to interpret aright.

But she was used to the outstretched hands; she always put both her own in them, as simply as a child; and she was bringing to her teacher now a little poem, of which her thoughts were full. She did not look fully in his face, therefore; for it was still a hard thing for her to show him her verses.

Holding out the paper, she said shyly,--

"It had to get itself said or sung, you know,--that thought that haunted me so yesterday at 'The Cedars.' I daresay it is very bad poetry, though."

Parson Dorrance unfolded the paper, and read the following poem:--

Where?

My snowy eupatorium has dropped
Its silver threads of petals in the night;
No sound told me its blossoming had stopped;
Its seed-films flutter, silent, ghostly white:
No answer stirs the shining air,
As I ask, "Where?"

Beneath the glossy leaves of wintergreen
Dead lily-bells lie low, and in their place
A rounded disk of pearly pink is seen,
Which tells not of the lily's fragrant grace:
No answer stirs the shining air,
As I ask "Where?"

This morning's sunrise does not show to me
Seed-film or fruit of my sweet yesterday;
Like falling flowers, to realms I cannot see
Its moments floated silently away:
No answer stirs the shining air,
As I ask, "Where?"

As he read the last verse, his face altered. Mercy was watching him.

"I thought you wouldn't like the last verse," she said eagerly. "But, indeed, it doesn't mean doubt. I know very well no day dies; but we can't see the especial good of each single day by itself. That is all I meant."

Parson Dorrance came closer to Mercy: they were both standing. He laid one hand on her' head, and said,--

"Child, it was a 'sweet yesterday' wasn't it?"

"Oh, yes," said Mercy, still absorbed in the thought of the poem. "The day was as sweet as the flowers. But all days are heavenly sweet out of doors with you and Lizzy," she continued, lifting one hand, and laying it caressingly on the hand which was stroking her hair.

"O Mercy! Mercy! couldn't I make all days sweet for you? Come to me, darling, and let me try!" came from Parson Dorrance's lips in hurried and husky tones.

Mercy looked at him for one second in undisguised terror and bewilderment. Then she uttered a sharp cry, as of one who had suddenly got a wound, and, burying her face in her hands, sank into a chair and began to cry convulsively.

Parson Dorrance walked up and down the room. He dared not speak. He was not quite sure what Mercy's weeping meant; so hard is it, for a single moment, to wrench a great hope out of a man's heart. But, as she continued sobbing, he understood. Unselfish to the core, his first thought was, even now, "Alas! now she will never let me do any thing more for her. Oh, how shall I win her back to trust me as a father again?"

"Mercy!" he said. Mercy did not answer nor look up.

"Mercy!" he repeated in a firmer tone. "Mercy, my child, look up at me!"

Docile from her long habit and from her great love, Mercy looked up, with the tears streaming. As soon as she saw Parson Dorrance's face, she burst again into more violent crying, and sobbed out incoherently,--

"Oh! I never knew it. It wouldn't be right."

"Hush, dear! Hush!" said the Parson, in a voice of tender authority. "I have done wrong; and you must forgive me, and forget it. You are not in the least to blame. It is I who ought to have known that you could never think of me as any thing but a father."

"Oh! it is not that," sobbed Mercy, vehemently,--"it is not that at all! But it wouldn't be right."

Parson Dorrance would not have been human if Mercy's vehement "It is not that,--it is not that!" had not fallen on his ear gratefully, and made hope stir in his heart again. But her evident grief was too great for the hope to last a moment.

"You may not know why it seems so wrong to you, dear child," he continued; "but that is the real reason. There could be no other." He paused. Mercy shuddered, and opened her lips to speak again; but the words refused to be uttered. This was the supreme moment of pain. If she could but have said,--

"I loved some one else long before I saw you. I was not my own. If it had not been for that, I should have loved you, I know I should!" Even in her tumult of suffering, she was distinctly conscious of all this. The words "I could have loved him, I know I could! I can't bear to have him think it is because he is so old," went clamoring in her heart, pleading to be said; but she dared not say them.

Tenderly and patiently Parson Dorrance endeavored to soothe her, to convince her that his words sprung from a hasty impulse which he would be able wholly to put aside and forget. The one thing that he longed now to do, the only reparation that he felt was left for him to make to her, was to enable her, if possible, to look on him as she had done before. But Mercy herself made this more difficult. Suddenly wiping her tears, she looked very steadily into his face, and said slowly,--"It is not of the least use, Mr. Dorrance, for you to say this sort of thing to me. You can't deceive me. I know exactly how you love me, and how you always will love me. And, oh, I wish I were dead! It can never be any thing but pain to you to see me,--never," and she wept more bitterly than before.

"You do not know me, Mercy," replied the Parson, speaking as slowly as she had done. "All my life has been one long sacrifice of my own chief preferences. It is not hard for me to do it."

Mercy clasped her hands tighter, and groaned,--

"Oh, I know it! I know it! and I said you were on a plane above all thought of personal happiness."

The Parson looked bewildered, but went on,--

"You do love me, my child, very dearly, do you not?"

"Oh, you know I do!" cried Mercy. "You know I do!"

"Yes, I know you do, or I should not have said that. You know I am all alone in the world, do you not?"

"Yes," moaned Mercy.

"Very well. Now remember that you and Lizzy are my two children, and that the greatest happiness I can have, the greatest help in my loneliness, is the love of my two daughters. You will not refuse me this help, will you? You will let me be just as I was before, will you not?"

Mercy did not answer.

"Will you try, Mercy?" he said in a tone almost of the old affectionate authority; and Mercy again moaned rather than said,--

"Yes."

Then Parson Dorrance kissed her hair where his hand had lain a few moments before, and said,--

"Now I must go. Good-by, my child."

But Mercy did not look up; and he closed the door gently, leaving her sitting there bowed and heart-stricken, in the little room so gay with the bright flowers she had gathered on her "sweet yesterday."