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

It was question of passing the time, that went round; for, though all their words fell dead on my ear at the moment, it was in charactery that afterward I could recall, reïllume, and read; and one was for games, and one for charades, and one for another thing;—and I sat silent and dazed through it all. Finally they fell to travestying scenes from history, each assuming a name and supporting it by his own wits, but it all passed before my dulled senses like the phantasmagoria of a troubled dream; and that tiring, there was a kind of dissolving views managed by artful ebb and flow of light, pictures at whose ending the Rose of May was lost in Francesca, who, waxing and waning in her turn, faded into Astarte, and went out In a shudder of darkness,—and the three were Effie. But ere the views were done, ere those three visions, when Effie ran away to dress her part, I after her and up into our room, vaguely, but as if needs must.

"I've good news for you," said she, without looking, and twisting her long, bright hair. "I was with Angus but now in the garden. He can bear it no longer, and he touched my brow with his lips that I promised to urge his cause; for he loves you, he loves you, Alice! Am I not kind to think of it now? Ah, if you knew all!"

She had already donned the gown of silvery silk and blonde, and was winding round her head the long web of lace loosened from my mother's broidery-frame. She turned and took me by the two shoulders, and looked into my face with eyes of azure flame.

"I am wild with gladness!" she said. "Kiss me, girl, quick! there's no time to spare. Kiss me on the cheek,—not the lip, not the lip,—he kissed me there! Kiss me the cheek,—one, and the other! So, brow, cheeks, mouth, and your kisses all have signed me with the sign of the cross. Oh, girl, I am wild with joy!"

She spoke swift and high, held me by the two shoulders with a clasp like steel, suddenly shook me loose, and was down and away.

I followed her again, as by habit,—but more slowly: I was trying to distil her words. I stood then in the door of a little ante-room opening into the drawing-room and looking on the courtyard, and gazed thence at those three pictures, as if it were all a delirament, till out of them Effie stepped in person, and danced, trilling to herself, through the groups, flashing, sparkling, flickering, and disappeared. Oh, but Mrs. Strathsay's eyes gleamed in a proud pleasure after her!

Hoofs were clattering again below in the yard, for Angus was to ride back with Mr. March. Some one came my way,—I shrank through the door-way, shivering from top to toe,—it was Angus searching for his cap; and it was so long since I had suffered him to exchange a word with me! I know not what change was wrought in my bewildered lineaments, what light was in my glance; but, seeing me, all that sedate sadness that weighed upon his manner fell aside, he hastily strode toward me, took my hands as he was wont, and drew me in, gazing the while down my dazzled, happy eyes till they fell.

"Ay, lass," said he then, laughing gleefully as any boy, and catching both of my hands again that I had drawn away. "I've a puzzle of my own to show thee,—a charade of two syllables,—a tiny thing, and yet it holds my world! See, the first!"

He had led me to the mirror and stationed me there alone. I liked not to look, but I did.

"Why, Angus," I said, "it's I."

"Well done! and go to the head. It's you indeed. But what else, Ailie darling? Nay, I'll tell you, then. The first syllable—just to suit my fancy—shall be bride, shall it not?"

"Bride," I murmured.

"And there behold the last syllable!" taking a step aside to the window, and throwing wide the blind.

I looked down the dark, but there was nought except the servant in the light of the hanging lamp, holding the curbs of the two horses that leaped and reared with nervous limbs and fiery eyes behind him.

"Is it horses?—steeds?—oh, bridles!"

"But thou'rt a very dunce! The last syllable is groom."

"Oh!"

"Now you shall see the embodiment of the whole word"; and with the step he was before the glass again. "Look!" he said; "look from under my arm,—you are just as high as my heart!"

"Why, that's you, Angus,"—and a gleam was dawning on me.

"Of course it is, little stupid! No less. And it's bridegroom too, and never bridegroom but with this bride!" And he had turned upon me and was taking me into his arms.

"Oh, Angus!" I cried,—"can you love me with no place on my face to kiss?"

But he found a place.

"Can I help loving you?" he said,—"Oh, Ailie, I do! I do—when all my years you have been my dream, my hope, my delight, when my life is yours, when you are my very self!"

And I clung to him for answer, hiding all my troubled joy in his breast.

Then, while he still held me so, silent and tender, close-folding,—there rose a great murmur through the rooms, and all the people surged up to one end, and Margray burst in upon us, calling him. He drew me forth among them all, his arm around my waist, and they opened a lane for us to the window giving into the garden, and every eye was bent there on a ghastly forehead, a grim white face, a terrible face, pressed against the glass, and glaring in with awful eyes!

"By Heaven, it is Helmar!" cried Angus, fire leaping up his brow;—but Mary Strathsay touched him to stone with a fling of her white finger, and went like a ghost herself and opened the casement, as the other signed for her to do. He never gave her glance or word, but stepped past her straight to my mother, and laid the white, shining, dripping bundle that he bore—the trilling hushed, the sparkle quenched, so flaccid, so limp, so awfully still—at her feet.

"I never loved the girl," he said, hoarsely. "Yet to-night she would have fled with me. It was my revenge, Mrs. Strathsay! She found her own death from a careless foot, the eager haste of an arm, the breaking branch of your willow-tree. Woman! woman!" he cried, shaking his long white hand before her face, "you took the light out of my life, and I swore to darken your days!"

Mrs. Strathsay fell forward on the body with a long, low moan. He faced about and slid through us all, ere Angus could lay hand on him,—his eye on Mary Strathsay. There was no love on her face, no expectancy, no passion, but she flung herself between the two,—between Angus following and Helmar going, for he distained to fly,—then shut and clasped the window, guarded it beneath one hand, and held Angus with her eye, white, silent, deathly, no joy, no woe, only a kind of bitter triumph in achieving that escape. And it was as if Satan had stalked among us there.

'Twas no use pursuit;—the ship that I had heard weighing anchor was reached ere then and winging down the river. And from that hour to this we have never set eyes on Helmar.

Well, at midsummer of the next year Angus married me. We were very quiet, and I wore the white slip in which he showed me myself in the glass as a a bride,—for we would not cast aside our crapes so soon, and Mary wears hers to this day. From morn till night my poor mother used only to sit and moan, and all her yellow hair was white as driving snow. I could not leave her, so Angus rented his estates and came and lived with us. 'Tis different now;—Mrs. Strathsay goes about as of old, and sees there be no speck on the buttery-shelves, that the sirup of her lucent plums be clear as the light strained through carbuncles, her honeycombs unbroken, her bread like manna, and no followers about her maids. And Mrs. Strathsay has her wish at length;—there's a son in the house, a son of her own choosing, (for she had ever small regard for the poor little Graeme,)—none knew how she had wished it, save by the warmth with which she hailed it,—and she is bringing him up in the way he should go. She's aye softer than she was, she does not lay her moulding finger on him too heavily;—if she did, I doubt but we should have to win away to our home. Dear body! all her sunshine has come out! He has my father's name, and when sleep's white finger has veiled his bonnie eyes, and she sits by him, grand and stately still, but humming low ditties that I never heard her sing before, I verily believe that she fancies him to be my father's child.

And still in the nights of clear dark we lean from the broad bower-window and watch the river flowing by, the rafts swimming down with breath of wood-scents and wild life, the small boats rocking on the tide, revivifying our childhood with the strength of our richer years, heart so locked in heart that we have no need of words,—Angus and I. And often, as we lean so, over the beautiful silence of lapping ripple and dipping oar there floats a voice rising and falling in slow throbs of tune;—it is Mary Strathsay singing some old sanctified chant, and her soul seems to soar with her voice, and both would be lost in heaven but for the tender human sympathies that draw her back to our side again. For we have grown to be a glad and peaceful family at length; 'tis only on rare seasons that the old wound rankles. We none of us speak of Effie, lest it involve the mention of Helmar; we none of us speak of Helmar, lest, with the word, a shining, desolate, woful phantom flit like the wraith of Effie before us. But I think that Mary Strathsay lives now in the dream of hereafter, in the dream that some day, perchance when all her white beauty is gone and her hair folded in silver, a dark, sad man will come off the seas, worn with the weather and with weight of sorrow and pain, and lay himself down at her feet to die. And shrived by sorrow and pain, and by prayer, he shall be lifted in her arms, shall rest on her bosom, and her soul shall forth with his into the great unknown.

LYRICS OF THE STREET

IV

THE FINE LADY

Her heart is set on folly,
An amber gathering straws;
She courts each poor occurrence,
Heeds not the heavenly laws.
Pity her!

She has a little beauty,
And she flaunts it in the day,
While the selfish wrinkles, spreading,
Steal all its charm away.
Pity her!

She has a little money,
And she flings it everywhere;
'T is a gewgaw on her bosom,
'T is a tinsel in her hair.
Pity her!

She has a little feeling,
She spreads a foolish net
That snares her own weak footsteps,
Not his for whom 't is set.
Pity her!

Ye harmless household drudges,
Y our draggled daily wear
And horny palms of labor
A softer heart may bear.
Pity her!

Ye steadfast ones, whose burthens
Weigh valorous shoulders down,