Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 6, December 1852

“Lisette started, and looked fearfully at her; but, recovering herself, she proceeded to state her refusal more definitely.

“‘I will took upon thy son as a brother, but do not think I can ever do more. Why will he persist in asking what he has so often been told I cannot give? We are dissimilar, and I cannot love him – but I do not hate him. I repeat, I will continue to regard him as a brother, but in any other light I cannot – ay, I will not – look upon him!’

“Rising with the last words she would have passed from the room, but she was detained.

“‘Dost love another?’ queried the crone, looking her full in the face.

“The blood rushed to the young girl’s cheeks.

“‘Ah! I see! I heard Andrew tell of the young painter, who – ’

“Lisette’s face was scarlet.

“‘Let me go!’ she cried impatiently. ‘Have not I told thee that I will not marry thy son?’

“‘But you will! you shall! – you cannot escape me! I will summon every fiend in hell to my aid! I will torture thee to submission! – I will melt thee in the crucible of my wrath!’

“The last words were lost on the object of her anger, and the dame stood with her arms akimbo, and a peculiar exultation of expression, such as a fiend, conscious of his diabolical power might be supposed to wear.

“Lisette rushed to her room, and threw herself, half-fainting, into the arms of her sister.

“‘Strange things at the Burton house, Neighbor Guernsey,’ said Widow Hamersley, as she lighted her pipe, and, having taken an initiatory whiff, drew her chair toward the bright wood fire.

“It was now Autumn, and the winds were growing colder day by day, and the external aspect of Nature more dreary.

“‘Yes, yes,’ returned she who was addressed. ‘Since Mistress Alton lost her two little children in Marsden Forest, who were no doubt eaten of the wolves, there has not been the like of it. I pity poor Esther, who is left all alone with so ungracious a woman as Dame Burton.’

“‘Ay, ay, Neighbor Guernsey. Many a long year have I known this strange woman, and I have yet to discover if there be any good thing in her. And the dolt Andrew is no better man a stupid beast. It has been noised about, that the step-mother has been trying to force the younger girl to marry him. Heaven knows what might happen if the poor child would not yield!’

“Here the widow puffed forth a volume of smoke as large as a small thunder-cloud, and gazed knowingly among the embers.

“‘And the young painter in the village, they say, is going distracted at her loss,’ continued Mistress Guernsey, not observing the drift of the other’s remarks. ‘He has been painting a portrait of her, and now he has left all and gone off to search for her in the woods.’

“‘Small chance of his finding her, Neighbor Guernsey,’ answered the widow, drily; her remarks still tending in a direction which her companion did not perceive. ‘It is no wolf of the forest which will have the pleasure of picking her bones.’

“‘Heaven grant it may be as you say!’ was the reply, referring to the last clause of the sentence, whose ambiguity was unnoticed.

“‘Hast thou not heard tales about this dame?’ asked the widow, dropping her disguise and speaking more openly.

“‘Ay, ay, many a time and oft; tales smacking of mystery and mischief, which boded no good to Dame Burton. They say she has unholy company o’nights in the wood. But, after all, they were only tales about which I knew nothing certain.’

“‘Hast thou not,’ continued the widow, ‘noticed a strange twinkle in her eyes, a shrillness in her voice, and that her hair is becoming coarse and grizzled? What does this portend?’

“‘Alas! I cannot tell,’ replied Mistress Guernsey. ‘There were strange hints when her good man died, and now I bethink me that they might have been true, and the remorse of the inner conscience might thus have developed itself outwardly.’

“Here there ensued a pause, and the two sat awhile quietly listening to the hollow moaning of the wind among the trees of the old forest hard by. Superstition, which always attends ignorance, was a prominent point in the characters of both; but more especially in that of the widow. No doubt she heard demon voices in the wind wailing in the crannies, and fancied the air filled with evil spirits, hurrying like lightning upon their various errands of mischief. When she spoke again her voice quivered, and her frame shook as with an ague-fit.

“‘I tell thee, Mistress Guernsey, I have seen – ’ said she, at last, her gaze fixed intently on vacancy.

“‘Seen what?’ asked the other, drawing closer, and looking distrustfully into every corner of the room.

“‘Seen – ’ repeated the widow, still looking into vacancy.

“‘Seen what?’ repeated her auditor, drawing still nearer, and looking with still greater scrutiny into all the dark nooks of the apartment.

“But the expected speech still hung half-way between conception and utterance, as if some impalpable auditor were present, who might convey the tale to the ears of the object of both her aversion and fear.

“The sad moaning of the wind filled up the chasm in the conversation, and the subtle influences of the place, and their loneliness, seemed to be rapidly gathering about the two lonely women. The speech was still unspoken, when the thread of the proceedings was broken short by the abrupt entrance of Mistress Hamersley’s son. Whether or not the embryo disclosure might have embodied new and startling developments, or only old statements re-hashed, we cannot tell; but, certain it is that, the vein of mystery was explored no further that night. The son piled new fagots on the fire – the widow refilled and relighted her pipe, and the conversation took a more cheerful turn, and the place took again that air of rude pleasantness which belongs particularly to a farm-house-kitchen, while the weird lady was, for the moment, forgotten.

“As may have been gathered from the remarks in the preceding conversation, Lisette had disappeared, lost, it was supposed, in the forest, into which she sometimes strayed alone; for, as to superstition, she had none of it, and wild animals had mostly retired to a safe distance before the advance of civilization. Every possible means had been tried for her recovery, seconded by apparently every effort of Dame Burton and her son. They seemed inconsolable, and some of those who looked upon her as a slandered person affirmed that she spent the nights for a week in weeping. Esther was now alone and friendless, thrown entirely into the power of these protectors. Surmises and ill-boding opinions passed occasionally from mouth to mouth, but never reached her ears. She wept in silent sorrow away from all intercourse. Thus matters went on for some weeks, until one night, at dusk, Andrew was brought to his mother a corpse. He had been accidentally shot in a hunting excursion. Her sorrow at this occurrence was real. Every other tie had been to her nothing, while this had absorbed all her soul’s capability of affection. She had indulged him in every thing, and had attempted to gratify his every wish. Now that he was gone, all that she possessed was gone, and all her thoughts and deeds glared upon her in all their malignity. She had nothing now to take from herself those hell-hound thoughts which bred in her a bitter remorse. One night she lay by his coffin – another by his grave, and a third she would have spent thus, but they led her away. She yielded as pliantly as a child. Thenceforth, she was completely broken down. She could do nothing more, and all day she sat like a fixture in the chimney-corner, while all the house-affairs fell into Esther’s hands. But, at dusk, the dame would be gone mysteriously for an hour. Esther never questioned concerning it, nor cared; but the ignorant neighbors whispered, wondered, surmised, and told of strange things that happened at these times, until it became so much a matter of course, that nothing more could be said. At the end of a year she married my grandfather Bromley. The portrait of the lost sister was taken from the painter’s studio, and hung in her room. Each succeeding year added a new balm to her wounds, until they seemed so far back in the past, that sometimes she would almost question with herself whether or not they had had actual existence.

“Thus twenty years of married life passed calmly and pleasantly. Sons and daughters were growing up around her in full bloom, and all promised that the afternoon of her life should be peace. Dame Burton had grown old and decrepit, and bent nearly double. Her hair was white as snow, and her face had a sort of blank, passive expression, except at times, when her eyes would glow like half-extinguished coals, and she would start as if some frightful object looked in upon her visions. Through all the long day she sat in the chimney-corner, and never stirred until the bats wheeled in the dusk, and the rude noises of day were displaced by a stillness, so still that the bark of life might be said to move down the noiseless river of time with muffled oars.

“One night, in the early autumn, my grandfather was gone, and my grandmother was left alone with the family. All were quietly at rest before she retired. That day she had been laboring hard and was overwearied, and now a strange restlessness and loneliness of feeling came across her. It was just at the moonrise. The moon came up looking red and angrily over the ripening fields, glistening with dew, near at hand, the mill-pond still and large further off, and the black and massive woods in the distance. Those weird influences were at work, which incline every mind at times to retrospection. And now, as over a dim sea, from a dim seen island, came the memories of the past. She saw, as in a dream, the mother of her childhood, who pressed her childish hand in hers. A few years past, and she saw her die, and felt the intense agony of that moment. A few years more were gone, and she saw the deathbed of her other parent, and felt the keener and more enduring pain which maturer minds must feel. Still farther, and she saw the sister-branch, which had grown side by side with her upon the parental tree, torn rudely away. And now she could think no more. It was too much pain. Turning from the window, she hastily disrobed herself, and dropped wearily upon the bed. It was some time before slumber came, and when it did come it brought a dream. Memory, in the guise of a headless figure with a lantern, seemed to lead her through all the past, which was nothing more than a field covered with brambles and underbrush, and filled with pitfalls into which she continually fell. Her flesh was torn and bloody; but still she went on, and on, and on, and still there was no end.

“She might have slept thus nearly an hour, when she became conscious that there was another presence in the room. She stirred a little, and the village-clock drowsily clanged to tell the midnight. She opened her eyes. The moon was far up, and poured a flood of white light through the casement. A tall, attenuated figure, in a long, loose, and tattered gown, which showed ghostly white, stooped over her.

“The shape stood between the bed and the window, and yet so ethereal was it, that she seemed to see the casement, the climbing moon, and the white church spire, as though nothing intervened. But the face, so ghastly white, so thin with want and woe – cross-lined and interlined – and the eyes – so faded and expressionless, she had never seen any thing like it.

(Here Margaret pressed her father’s arm, and pointed to Alice, whose fingers were quivering like aspen-leaves – but he did not pause.)

“Like two pictures on a wall, her imagination placed the image of her lost sister beside this form, so unlike in every particular. The conclusion was irresistible. It was her sister, or – as her disturbed fancy would rather indicate – her ghostly representative. Overcome by her emotions she fainted, and when she recovered, the visitor was gone. She lay quite still, in her terror, until the approach of dawn, and then arising, she dressed herself all in a tremor, and prepared to descend. All was still as death, for it lacked a half-hour yet of sunrise. She heard Chanticleer’s shrill cry without, just as he emerged from his dormitory, and she noticed a cricket’s sharp voice within, and even the tick of a death-watch in the wall fell distinctly on her ears. A chill crept over her, like the forerunner of some frightful calamity.

(Here Margaret pressed the narrator’s arm again, but with the same success as before.)

“She crept, rather than walked down the stairs, and peeped through the kitchen door, which stood ajar. The eastern shutter was swung partially back, and admitted a streak of the cold, gray light of dawn, which fell upon the features of the midnight visitor, who sat erect at one side of the room. She did not stir, though Esther, staggering in her terror, thrust the door back with considerable noise. Perfectly still she sat, gazing, as if in fright, at the hideous face of old Dame Burton, who sat a little more in the dusk, regarding her attentively. The old crone was inclined a little forward, her shriveled lips separated in a grin, and one lean finger threateningly raised in a gesture which said more than words. Neither spoke; but, cold, still, and pale, they gazed at one another, and then was felt around —

‘A smell of clay, a pale and icy glare

And silence – ’”

“See, see!” exclaimed Margaret.

Alice sat motionless, with her head thrown slightly back, and her face whiter than the moonbeams which fell upon it.

“What is this?” asked Father Bromley.

“It is Death!” shrieked Margaret.

HOURS IN AUGUST

—

BY MRS. J. H. THOMAS

—

Softly as the star-beam slideth
From its halls of blue;