The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 63, January, 1863

"Ay, were that all!"

"Ah," said Mary, "but I'll take the next one that asks me, if it's only to save myself the taunts at home! You thought you were winning to a soft nest, children, where there were nought but larks and thrushes and maybe nightingales,—and we're all cuckoos.

"'Cuckoo! cuckoo! sweet voice of Spring,
Without you sad the year had been,
The vocal heavens your welcome ring,
The hedge-rows ope and take you in,
Cuckoo! cuckoo!

"'Cuckoo! cuckoo! O viewless sprite,
Your song enchants the sighing South,
It wooes the wild-flower to the light,
And curls the smile round my love's mouth,
Cuckoo! cuckoo!'"

"Have done your claver, Mary!" cried Margray. "One cannot hear herself think, for the din of your twittering!—I'll cut the sleeve over crosswise, I think,"—and, heedless, she herself commenced humming, in an undertone, '"Cuckoo! cuckoo!'—There! you've driven mother out!"

Mary laughed.

"When I'm married, Ailie," she whispered, "I'll sing from morn till night, and you shall sit and hear me, without Margray's glowering at us, or my mother so much as saying, 'Why do you so?'"

For all the time the song had been purling from her smiling lips, Mrs. Strathsay's eyes were laid, a weight like lead, on me, and then she had risen as if it hurt her, and walked to the door.

"Or when you've a house of your own," added Mary, "we will sing together there."

"Oh, Mary!" said I, like the child I was, forgetting the rest, "when I'm married, you will come and live with me?"

"You!" said my mother, stepping through the door and throwing the words over her shoulder as she went, not exactly for my ears, but as if the bubbling in her heart must have some vent. "And who is it would take such a fright?"

"My mother's fair daft," said Margray, looking after her with a perplexed gaze, and dropping her scissors. "Surely, Mary, you shouldn't tease her as you do. She's worn more in these four weeks than in as many years. You're a fickle changeling!"

But Mary rose and sped after my mother, with her tripping foot; and in a minute she came back laughing and breathless.

"You put my heart in my mouth, Mistress Graeme," she said. "And all for nothing. My mother's just ordering the cream to be whipped. Well, little one, what now?"

"It's just this dress of Margray's,—mother's right,—'t will never do for me; I'll wear shadows. But 't will not need the altering of a hair for you, Mary, and you shall take it."

"I think I see myself," said Mary Strathsay, "wearing the dress Margray married Graeme in!" For Margray had gone out to my mother in her turn.

"Then it's yours, Effie. I'll none of it!"

"I'm finely fitted out, then, with the robe here and the veil there! bridal or burial, toss up a copper and which shall it be?" said Effie, looking upward, and playing with her spools like a juggler's oranges. And here Margray came back.

She sat in silence a minute or two, turning her work this way and that, and then burst forth,—

"I'd not stand in your shoes for much, Alice Strathsay!" she cried, "that's certain. My mother's in a rare passion, and here's Sir Angus home!"

"Sir Who?" said Effie puzzled; "it was just Mr. Ingestre two years ago."

"Well, it's been Sir Angus a twelvemonth now and more,—ever since old Sir Brenton went, and he went with a stroke."

"Yes," said Mary, "it was when Angus arrived in London from Edinboro', the day before joining his ship."

"And why didn't we ever hear of it?"

"I don't just remember, Effie dear," replied Margray, meditatively, "unless 't were—it must have been—that those were the letters lost when the Atlantis went down."

"Poor gentleman!" said Mary. "It was one night when there was a division in the House, and it divided his soul from his body,—for they found him sitting mute as marble, and looking at their follies and strifes with eyes whose vision reached over and saw God."

"For shame, Mary Strathsay, to speak lightly of what gave Angus such grief!"

"Is that lightly?" she said, smoothing my hair with her pretty pink palms till it caught in the ring she wore. "Never mind what I say, girlie; it's as like to be one word as the other. But I grieved for him. He's deep and quiet; a sorrow sinks and underlies all that's over, in the lad."

"Hear her!" said Margray; "one would fancy the six feet of the Ingestre stature were but a pocket-piece! The lad! Well, he'll put no pieces in our pockets, I doubt," (Margray had ever an eye to the main chance,) "and it's that angers my mother."

"Hush, Margray!" I heard Mary say, for I had risen and stolen forth. "Thou'lt make the child hate us all. Were we savages, we had said less. You know, girl, that our mother loved our father's face in her, and counted the days ere seeing it once more; and having lost it, she is like one bewildered. 'T will all come right. Let the poor body alone,—and do not hurt the child's heart so. We're right careless."

I had hung on tiptoe, accounting it no meanness, and I saw Margray stare.

"Well," she murmured, "something may be done yet. 'T will go hard, if by hook or crook Mrs. Strathsay do not have that title stick among us"; and then, to make an end of words, she began chattering anent biases and gores, the lace on Mary Campbell's frill, the feather on Mary Dalhousie's bonnet,—and I left them.

I ran over to Margray's, and finding the boy awake, I dismissed his nurses the place, and stayed and played with him and took the charge till long past the dinner-hour, and Margray came home at length, and then, when I had sung the child asleep again, for the night, and Margray had shown me all the contents of her presses, the bells were ringing nine from across the river, and I ran back as I came, and up and into my little bed, and my heart was fit to break, and I cried till the sound of the sobs checked me into silence. Suddenly I felt a hand fumbling down the coverlid, and 't was Nannie, my old nurse, and her arm was laid heavily across me.

"Dinna greet," she whispered, "dinna greet and dull your een that are brighter noo than a' the jauds can show,—the bonny blink o' them! They sha' na flout and fleer, the feckless queans, the hissies wha'll threep to stan' i' your auld shoon ae day! Dinna greet, lass, dinna!"

But I rose on my arm, and stared about me in all the white moonlight of the vacant place, and hearkened to the voices and laughter rippling up the great staircase,—for there were gallants in belike,—and made as if I had been crying out in my sleep.

"Oh, Nurse Nannie, is it you?" I said.

"Ay, me, Miss Ailie darling!"

"Sure I dream so deeply. I'm all as oppressed with nightmare."

But with that she brushed my hair, and tenderly bathed my face in the bay-water, and fastened on my cap, and, sighing, tucked the coverlid round my shoulder, and away down without a word.

The next day was my mother's dinner-party. She was in a quandary about me, I saw, and to save words I offered to go over again and stay with the little Graeme. So it came to pass, one time being precedent of another, that in all the merrymakings I had small share, and spent the greater part of those bright days in Margray's nursery with, the boy, or out-doors in the lone hay-fields or among the shrubberies; for he waxed large and glad, and clung to me as my own. And to all kind Mary Strathsay's pleas and words I but begged off as favors done to me, and I was liker to grow sullen than smiling with all the stour.

"Why, I wonder, do the servants of a house know so much better than the house itself the nearest concerns of shadowy futures? One night the nurse paused above my bed and guarded the light with her hand.

"Let your heart lap," she said. "Sir Angus rides this way the morrow."

Ah, what was that to me? I just doubled the pillow over eyes and ears to shut out sight and hearing. And so on the morrow I kept well out of the way, till all at once Mrs. Strathsay stumbled over me and bade me, as there would be dancing in the evening, to don my ruffled frock and be ready to play the measures. I mind me how, when I stood before the glass and secured the knot in my sash, and saw by the faint light my loosened hair falling in a shadow round me and the quillings of the jaconet, that I thought to myself how it was like a white moss-rose, till of a sudden Nannie held the candle higher and let my face on me,—and I bade her bind up my hair again in the close plaits best befitting me. And I crept down and sat in the shade of the window-curtains, whiles looking out at the soft moony night, whiles in at the flowery lighted room. I'd heard Angus's coming, early in the afternoon, and had heard him, too, or e'er half the cordial compliments were said, demand little Alice; and they told him I was over and away at Margray's, and in a thought the hall-doors clashed behind him and his heels were ringing up the street, and directly he hastened home again, through the gardens this time, and saw no sign of me;—but now my heart beat so thickly, when I thought of him passing me in the dance, that, could I sit there still, I feared 'twould of itself betray me, and that warned me to question if the hour were not ready for the dances, and I rose and stole to the piano and sat awaiting my mother's word. But scarcely was I there when one came quietly behind me, and a head bent and almost swept my shoulder; then he stood with folded arms.

"And how long shall I wait for your greeting? Have you no welcome for me, Ailie?"

"Yes, indeed, Sir Angus," I replied; but I did not turn my head, for as yet he saw only the back of me, fair and graceful perchance, as when he liked it.

He checked himself in some word.