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

"Well, then," he said, "give it me, tell it me, look it me!"

I rose from my seat and shifted the piece of music before me,—turned and gazed into his eyes one long breathing-space, then I let the lids fall,—waited a minute so,—and turned back ere my lip should be all in a quiver,—but not till his head bent once more, and a kiss had fallen on those lids and lain there cool and soft as a pearl,—a pearl that seemed to sink and penetrate and melt inwardly and dissolve and fill my brain with a white blinding light of joy. 'Twas but a brief bit of the great eternities;—and then I found my fingers playing I knew not how, and heard the dancers' feet falling to the tune of I knew not what.

While I played there, Margray sat beside me, for the merriment was without now, on the polished oak-floor of the hall, and they being few but familiars who had the freedom of the house, (and among whom I had had no need but to slip with a nod and smile ere gaining my seat,) she took out her needle and set a stitch or two, more, perhaps, to cover her being there at all than for any need of industry; for Margray loved company, and her year of widowhood being not yet doubled, and my mother unwilling that she should entertain or go out, she made the most of that at our house; for Mrs. Strathsay had due regard of decency,—forbye she deemed it but a bad lookout for her girls, if the one of them danced on her good-man's grave.

"I doubt will Sir Angus bide here," said Margray at length; for though all his boyhood she had called him by every diminutive his name could bear, the title was a sweet morsel in her unaccustomed mouth, and she kept rolling it now under her tongue. "Mrs. Strathsay besought him, but his traps and his man were at the inn. Sir Angus is not the lad he was,—a young man wants his freedom, my mother should remember."

And as her murmur continued, my thoughts came about me. They were like birds in the hall; and all their voices and laughter rising above the jingle of the keys, I doubted was he so sorry for me, after all. Then the dancing broke, I found, though I still played on, and it was some frolicsome game of forfeits, and Angus was chasing Effie, and with her light step and her flying laugh it was like the wind following a rose-flake. Anon he ceased, and stood silent and statelier than Mrs. Strathsay's self, looking on.

"See Sir Angus now," said Margray, bending forward at the pictures shifting through the door-way. "He'd do for the Colossus at what-you-may-call-it; and there's our Effie, she minds me of a yellow-bird, hanging on his arm and talking: I wonder if that's what my mother means,—I wonder will my mother compass it. See Mary Strathsay there! She's white and fine, I'll warrant; see her move like a swan on the waters! Ay, she's a lovesome lass,—and Helmar thought so, too."

"What are you saying of Mary Strathsay? Who don't think she's a lovesome lass?"

"Helmar don't now,—I'll dare be sworn."

"Helmar?"

"Hush, now! don't get that maggot agait again. My mother'd ban us both, should her ears side this way."

"What is it you mean, Margray dear?"

"Sure you've heard of Helmar, child?"

Yes, indeed, had I. The descendant of a bold Spanish buccaneer who came northwardly with his godless spoil, when all his raids upon West-Indian seas were done, and whose name had perhaps suffered a corruption at our Provincial lips. A man—this Helmar of to-day—about whom more strange tales were told than of the bloody buccaneer himself. That the walls of his house were ceiled with jewels, shedding their accumulated lustre of years so that never candle need shine in the place, was well known. That the spellbound souls of all those on his red-handed ancestor's roll were fain to keep watch and ward over their once treasures, by night and noon, white-sheeted and faint in the glare of the sun, wan in the moon, blacker shadows in the starless dark, found belief. And there were those who had seen his seraglio;—but few, indeed, had seen him,—a lonely man, in fact, who lived aloof and apart, shunned and shunning, tainted by the curse of his birth.

"Oh, yes," I said, "of Helmar away down the bay; but the mate of our brig was named Helmar, too."

Margray's ivory stiletto punched a red eyelet in her finger.

"Oh, belike it was the same!" she cried, so loud that I had half to drown it in the pedal. "He's taken to following the sea, they say."

"What had Helmar to do with our Mary, Margray?"

"What had he to do with her?" answered Margray in under-voice. "He fell in love with her!"

"That's not so strange."

"Then I'll tell you what's stranger, and open your eyes a wee. She fell in love with him."

"Our Mary? Then why didn't she marry him?"

"Marry Helmar?"

"Yes. If my mother wants gold, there it is for her."

"He's the child of pirates; there's blood on his gold; he poured it out before my mother, and she told him so. He's the making of a pirate himself. Oh, you've never heard, I see. Well, since I'm in for it,—but you'll never breathe it?—and it's not worth while darkening Effie with it, let alone she's so giddy my mother'd know I'd been giving it mouth,—perhaps I oughtn't,—but there!—poor Mary! He used to hang about the place, having seen her once when she came round from Windsor in a schooner, and it was a storm,—may-happen he saved her life in it. And Mary after, Mary'd meet him at church, and in the garden, and on the river; 't was by pure chance on her part, and he was forever in the way. Then my mother, innocent of it all, went to Edinboro', as you know, and I was married and out of the reach, and Mary kept the house those two months with Mrs. March of the Hill for dowager,—her husband was in the States that summer,—and Mrs. March is no more nor less than cracked,—and no wonder he should make bold to visit the house. My mother'd been home but a day and night, 's you may say, when in walks my gentleman,—who but he?—fine as a noble of the Court, and Mary presents him to Mrs. Strathsay as Mr. Helmar of the Bay. Oh, but Mrs. Strathsay was in a stound. And he began by requesting her daughter's hand. And that brake the bonds,—and she dashed out sconners of wrath. Helmar's eyes flashed only once, then he kept them on the ground, and he heard her through. 'T was the second summer Seavern's fleet was at the harbor's mouth there, and a ship of war lay anchored a mile downriver,—many's the dance we had on it's deck!—and Captain Seavern of late was in the house night and morn,—for when he found Mary offish, he fairly lay siege to her, and my mother behind him,—and there was Helmar sleeping out the nights in his dew-drenched boat at the garden's foot, or lying wakeful and rising and falling with the tide under her window, and my mother forever hearing the boat-chains clank and stir. She's had the staple wrenched out of the wall now,—'t was just below the big bower-window, you remember. And when Mary utterly refused Seavern, Seavern swore he'd wheel his ship round and raze the house to its foundations: he was—drunk—you see. And Mary laughed in his face. And my mother beset her,—I think she went on her knees to her,—she led her a dreadful life," said Margray, shivering; "and the end of it all was, that Mary promised to give up Helmar, would my mother drop the suit of Seavern. And at that, Helmar burst in: he was like one wild, and he conjured Mary,—but she sat there stone-still, looking through him with the eyes in her white, deadly face, as though she'd never seen him, and answering no word, as if she were deaf to sound of his voice henceforth; and he rose and glared down on my mother, who stood there with her white throat up, proud and defiant as a stag at bay,—and he vowed he'd darken her day, for she had taken the light out of his life. And Angus was by: he'd sided with Helmar till then; but at the threat, he took the other by the shoulder and led him to the door, with a blue blaze in those Ingestre eyes, and Helmar never resisted, but fell down on his face on the stones and shuddered with sobs, and we heard them into the night, but with morning he was gone."

"Oh! And Mary?"

"'Deed, I don't think she cares. She's never mentioned his name. D'you mind that ring of rubies she wears, like drops of blood all round the hoop? 'Twas his. She shifted it to the left hand, I saw. It was broken once,—and what do you think she did? She put a blow-pipe at the candle-flame, and, holding it up in tiny pincers, soldered the two ends together without taking it off her finger,—and it burning into the bone! Strathsay grit. It's on her white wedding-finger. The scar's there, too.—St! Where's your music? You've not played a note these five minutes. Whisht! here comes my mother!"

How was Helmar to darken my mother's day, I couldn't but think, as I began to toss off the tune again. And poor Mary,—there were more scars than I carried, in the house. But while I turned the thoughts over, Angus came for me to dance, and Margray, he said, should play, and my mother signed consent, and so I went.

But 'twas a heavy heart I carried to and fro, as I remembered what I'd heard, and perhaps it colored everything else with gloom. Why was Angus holding my hand as we glided? why was I by his side as we stood? and as he spoke, why was I so dazzled with delight at the sound that I could not gather the sense? Oh, why, but that I loved him, and that his noble compassion would make him the same to me at first as ever,—slowly, slowly, slowly lowering, while he turned to Effie or some other fair-faced lass? Ah, it seemed to me then in a rebellious heart that my lot was bitter. And fearful that my sorrow would abroad, I broke into a desperation of gayety till my mother's hand was on my arm. But all the while, Angus had been by, perplexed shadows creeping over his brow;—and in fresh terror lest my hidden woe should rise and look him in the face, all my mother's pride itself shivered through me, and I turned my shoulder on him with a haughty, pettish chill.

So after that first evening the days and nights went by, went by on leaden wings; for I wanted the thing over, it seemed I couldn't wait, I desired my destiny to be accomplished and done with. Angus was ever there when occasion granted,—for there were drives and sails and rambles to lead him off; and though he'd urge, I would not join them, not even at my mother's bidding,—she had taught me to have a strange shrinking from all careless eyes;—and then, moreover, there were dinners and balls, and them he must needs attend, seeing they were given for him,—and I fancy here that my mother half repented her decree concerning the time when I should enter society, or, rather, should not,—yet she never knew how to take step in recedure.

But what made it hardest of all was a word of Margray's one day as I sat over at her house hushing the little Graeme, who was sore vexed with the rash, and his mother was busy plaiting ribbons and muslins for Effie,—Effie, who seemed all at once to be blossoming out of her slight girlhood into the perfect rose of the woman that Mary Strathsay was already, and about her nothing lingering rathe or raw, but everywhere a sweet and ripe maturity. And Margray said,—

"Now, Alice, tell me, why are you so curt with Angus? Did he start when he saw you first?"

"Nay, I scarcely think so, Margray; he knew about it, you know. 'Sleep, baby, sleep, in slumber deep, and smite across thy dreaming'"–

"'Deed, he didn't! He told me so himself. He said he'd been ever fancying you fresh and fair as the day he left you,—and his heart cracked when you turned upon him."

"Poor Angus, then,—he never showed it. 'Hush, baby, hush'"–

"He said he'd have died first!"

"Then perhaps he never meant for you to tell me, Margray."

"Oh, what odds? He said,—I'll tell you what else he said,—you're a kind, patient heart, and there's no need for you to fret,—he said, as he'd done you such injury, were there even no other consideration, he should deem it his duty to repair it, so far as possible, both by the offer of his hand, and, should it be accepted, by tender faithfulness for life."

"Oh, Margray! did Angus say that? Oh, how chanced he to? Oh, how dared he?"

"They're not his very words, belike; but that's the way I sensed them. How came he? Why,—you see,—I'm not content with my mother's slow way of things,—that's just the truth!—it's like the season's adding grain on grain of sunshine or of rain in ripening her fruit,—it's oftenest the quick blow strikes home; and so I just went picking out what I wanted to know for myself."

"Oh, Margray,—I suppose,—what did he think?"

"Think? He didn't stop to think; he was mighty glad to meet somebody to speak to. You may just thank your stars that you have such a lover, child!"

"I've got no lover!" I wailed, breaking out in crying above the babe. "Oh, why was I born? I'm like to die! I wish I were under the sods this day!"

"Oh, goodness me!" exclaimed Margray, in a terror. "What's possessed the girl? And I thinking to please her so! Whisht now, Ailie girl,—there, dear, be still,—there, now, wipe away the tears; you're weak and nervous, I believe,—you'd best take a blue-pill to-night. There's the boy awake, and none but you can hush him off. It's odd, though, what a liking he's taken to his Aunt Ailie!"

And so she kept on, diverting me, for Margray had some vague idea that my crying would bring my mother; and she'd not have her know of her talk with Angus, for the world;—marriage after marriage would not lighten the rod of iron that Mrs. Strathsay held over her girls' lives, I ween.

And now, having no need to be gay, I indulged my fancy and was sad; and the more Angus made as if he would draw near, the more I turned him off, as scale-armor turns a glancing blade. Yet there had been times when, seeming as if he would let things go my own gate, he had come and sat beside me in the house, or joined his horse's bridle to mine in the woods, and syllables slipped into sentences, and the hours flew winged as we talked; and warmed into forgetfulness, all the sweet side of me—if such there be—came out and sunned itself. And then I would remember me and needs must wear the ice again, as some dancing, glancing, limpid brook should sheathe itself in impenetrable crystals. And all those hours—for seldom were the moments when, against my will I was compelled to gladness—I became more and more alone; for Effie being the soul of the festivities,—since Mary Strathsay oftenest stood cold and proudly by, wax-white and like a statue on the wall,—and all the world looking on at what they deemed to be no less than Angus's courtship, I saw little of her except I rose on my arm to watch her smiling sleep deep in the night. And she was heartsome as the lark's song up the blue lift, and of late was never to be found in those two hours when my mother kept her room at mid-day, and was over-fond of long afternoon strolls down the river-bank or away in the woods by herself. Once I fancied to see another walking with her there out in the hay-fields beyond, walking with her in the sunshine, bending above her, perhaps an arm about her, but the leafy shadows trembled between us and darkened them out of sight. And something possessed me to think that the dear girl cared for my Angus. Had I been ever so ready to believe my own heart's desire, how could I but stifle it at that? It seemed as if the iron spikes of trouble were thrust from solid bars of fate woven this way and that across me, till with the last and newest complication I grew to knowing no more where to turn than the toad beneath the harrow.

So the weeks went by. Angus had gone home on his affairs,—for he had long left the navy,—but was presently to return to us. It was the sweet September weather: mild the mellow sunshine,—but dour the days to me!

There was company in the house that evening, and I went down another way; for the sound of their lilting and laughing was but din in my ears. I passed Mary Strathsay, as I left my room; she had escaped a moment from below, had set the casement wide in the upper hall, and was walking feverishly to and fro, her arms folded, her dress blowing about her: she'll often do the same in her white wrapper now, at dead of dark in any stormy night: she could not find sufficient air to breathe, and something set her heart on fire, some influence oppressed her with unrest and longing, some instinct, some unconscious prescience, made her all astir. I passed her and went down, and I hid myself in the arbor, quite overgrown with wild, rank vines of late summer, and listened to a little night-bird pouring out his complaining heart.

While I sat, I heard the muffled sound of horses' feet prancing in the flagged court-yard,—for the house fronted on the street, one end overhanging the river, the back and the north side lost in the gardens that stretched up to Margray's grounds one way and down to the water's brink the other, so the stroke of their impatient hoofs reached me but faintly; yet I knew 'twas Angus and Mr. March of the Hill, whom Angus had written us he was to visit. And then the voices within shook into a chorus of happy welcome, the strain of one who sang came fuller on the breeze, the lights seemed to burn clearer, the very flowers of the garden blew a sweeter breath about me.

'Twas nought but my own perversity that hindered me from joining the glee, that severed me from all the happiness; but I chose rather to be miserable in my solitude, and I turned my back upon it, and went along and climbed the steps and sat on the broad garden-wall, and looked down into the clear, dark water ever slipping by, and took the fragrance of the night, and heard the chime of the chordant sailors as they heaved the anchor of some ship a furlong down the stream,—voices breathing out of the dusky distance, rich and deep. And looking at the little boat tethered there beneath, I mind that I bethought me then how likely 'twould be for one in too great haste to unlock the water-gate of the garden, climbing these very steps, and letting herself down by the branch of this old dipping willow here, how likely 'twould be for one, should the boat but slip from under, how likely 'twould be for one to sink in the two fathom of tide,—dress or scarf but tangling in the roots of the great tree reaching out hungrily through the dark, transparent depth below,—how likely to drown or e'er a hand could raise her! And I mind, when thinking of the cool, embracing flow, the drawing, desiring, tender current, the swift, soft, rushing death, I placed my own hand on the willow-branch, and drew back, stung as if by conscience that I trifled thus with a gift so sacred as life.

Then I went stealing up the alleys again, beginning to be half afraid, for they seemed to me full of something strange, unusual sound, rustling motion,—whether it were a waving bough, a dropping o'er-ripe pear, a footstep on adjacent walks. Nay, indeed, I saw now! I leaned against the beach-bole there, all wrapt in shade, and looked at them where they inadvertently stood in the full gleam of the lighted windows: 'twas Angus, and 'twas Effie. He spoke,—a low, earnest pleading,—I could not hear a word, or I had fled,—then he stooped, and his lips had touched her brow. Oh, had he but struck me! less had been the blow, less the smart!—the blow, though all along I had awaited it. Ah, I remembered another kiss, one that had sunk into my brain as a pearl would sink in the sea, that when my heart had been saddest I had but just to shut my eyes and feel again falling soft and warm on my lids, lingering, loving, interpenetrating my soul with its glow;—and this, oh, 't was like a blade cleaving that same brain with swift, sharp flash! I flew into the house, but Effie was almost there before me,—and on my way, falling, gliffered in the gloom, against something, I snatched me back with a dim feeling that 't was Angus, and yet Angus had followed Effie in. I slipped among the folk and sat down somewhere at length like as if stunned.