Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 87, March, 1875

Reyburn, to be sure, came every day, and no message could shut him out. If Lilian was not in the parlors, he ran up stairs into the little sitting-room: if he could not see Lilian, he would walk in and see her mother. Sometimes John took her out to drive—to give her a color, as he said—but he was unable to do it often, and then Reyburn took his place till she declared she would ride no more. It was not so easy to discover what ailed Lilian as it was to see she failed. One doctor said she had merely functional derangement of the heart; another talked about complicated depression of the nerves; and a third said she was whimsical, and nothing at all was the matter with her, and she had better marry and taste the hard realities of life, and she would soon be cured of her follies. But Lilian firmly and quietly refused to be married yet: possibly she knew that her emotions were not what they should be for marriage with the man to whom she was plighted; possibly hoped that time might make it right; possibly wanted nothing more definite than delay. Once John impressed Reyburn into his service in the matter: they were so thoroughly intimate, so like brothers of one family, that he appealed to him without a second thought. What Reyburn meant by urging her to fix the day for her wedding with John, Lilian might have marveled had he not kept his eyes on the floor while he spoke the few curt sentences, and held her hand with the grip of death. It was no marriage with John that Reyburn wanted for her, she knew too well: he also looked forward to delay. But she told John that when she was herself again it would be time enough to talk of marriage: she should not bind him to a dead woman. And somehow, though the relation between her and John remained the same, the usual evidences of it, one by one, had disappeared. If he took her in his arms, she slipped away; if he bent to kiss her lips, she held her cheek. Still, though caresses ceased, the tender word and the kindly glance remained. John fancied the rest to be but a part of the nervous whims of her illness, from which she was to recover in time; and he waited with all the old love in his soul. And as for Lilian, the old affection was with her too—the affection of childhood and girlhood, the deep and grateful feeling associated with all her life—but it struggled and wrestled with a novel power that while it promised pleasure gave only pain. It made her suffer to see John suffer: she hurt him as little as she could, but for the life of her she was able to do no differently. She thought it would be better for him if she should die; and when she found his great sad eyes fastened on her, with their longing for her return to him, she wished to disappear out of the world and his memory together. She grew whiter and thinner, more tired and sore at heart, all the time, till the two years that had been fixed as the period of their engagement had passed—grew so transparent and spiritual that sometimes, as John hung over her in despair, he felt as if, instead of being bound to a dead woman, he were already bound to an angel.

One evening, after an absence, Reyburn came in as John sat reading by Lilian's side: he brushed away the book and insisted on their playing an odd new game of cards, and Lilian unaccountably brightened and sparkled and laughed, as in the old time, for more than an hour; and as he left them at last he came back to declare his belief that a change was all Lilian needed—other climates, other scenes. "Come, Sterling," said he, "my little yacht, the Beachbird, sails on a cruise next week. I will have a cabin fitted up for Miss Lilian if you will take her and her mother and come along. The house can keep itself; your clerks can keep your books; we shall all escape the east winds. It will be a certain cure for her, and do you good yourself."

And talking of it lightly at first, presently it grew feasible—all the more so that Helen and her father were spending their second winter down there in one of those "summer isles of Eden," and word could be sent to them in advance to be in readiness to join the Beachbird. And the end of all the talk was that at the close of the next week John's business had been left in the hands of others, and John and Lilian and her mother were on the Beachbird's deck as she slipped down the harbor.

Mr. Reyburn's prophecy proved true: whether the sea-breeze fanned Lilian into fresh life, whether there were healing balms in the perpetual summer through which they sailed, or whether she abandoned herself to the pleasures of the flying hours, she began to regain strength and color, her languor disappeared, she spent the day in the soft blissful air with her books or work, her mother knitting and nodding near by; while John, if not sick himself, yet feeling very miserable, lay on a mattress on the deck, sometimes dozing, sometimes following with his eye the graceful lines and snowy dazzle of the perfect little yacht as mast and sheet and shroud made their relief upon the sky; sometimes listening to Lilian and Reyburn; sometimes watching them as they walked up and down in the twilight, her dress fluttering round her and her fair hair blowing in the wind. John wondered at her as he watched her: she seemed to be possessed with an unnatural life; a flickering, dancing sort of fire burned in her eye, on her cheek and lip, in her restless manner: she was like one who after long slumber felt herself alive and receiving happiness at every pore, but a strange, treacherous sort of happiness that might slip away and leave her at any moment, and which she was ever on the alert to keep.

One night Lilian's mother had gone below, John had followed, and they were long since folded in their quiet dreams; and Lilian, unable to sleep, had at last arisen and thrown on some garments, and wrapping a great cloak about her, had stolen on deck. The person still pacing the deck, who saw her ascend and flit along with her fair hair streaming over her white cloak and her face shining white in the starlight, might have taken her for a spirit. But he was not the kind of man that believes in spirits. He went and leaned with her as she leaned over the vessel's edge, and watched the glittering rent they made in the water. They were side by side: now and then the wind blew the silken ends of her hair across his cheek, and his hand lay over hers as it rested on the rail; now and then they looked at one another; now and then they spoke.

"Are you happy, Lilian?" he said.

"Oh, perfectly!" she answered him.

As she said it there was an outcry, a sudden lurch of the vessel, a flapping of the sails and ropes, and a vast shadow swept by them, the hull of a huge steamer, so near that they could almost have touched it with an outstretched hand. But as it ploughed its way on and left them unharmed and rocking on its great waves, Reyburn released her from the arm he had flung about her in the moment's dismay—the arm that had never folded her before, that never did again.

"Oh no! no!" sighed Lilian with a shiver as she quickly drew away—"not perfectly, oh not perfectly! That is impossible here, where that black death can at any moment extinguish all our light."

"Be still! be still!" said Reyburn. "Why do you speak of it?" he cried roughly. "Isn't it enough to know that some day it must come?—

"The iron hand that breaks our band,It breaks my bliss—it breaks my heart!"

He left her side in a sudden agitation a moment, and walked the deck again; and before he turned about Lilian had slipped below.

The next afternoon the Beachbird anchored within sight of shore and outside a long low reef where they saw a palm-plume tossing, and a boat came off, bringing Helen and her father.

John, who had begun at last to find his sea-legs, stood as eager and impatient to welcome the new-comers, while every dip of the shining oars lessened the distance between them, as if the cruise were just beginning; but Lilian, in the evening shadow behind him, knew that her share in the cruise was over.

"Is it the fierce and farouche duenna who wanted to annihilate me so when I bade you adieu one night?" asked Reyburn, taking Lilian upon his arm for a promenade upon the deck while they waited. "Let me see: she was very young, was she not, and tall, and ugly? Is it her destiny to watch over you? If she proves herself disagreeable, I will rig a buoy and drop her overboard. After all, she is only a child. Ah no," he said, half under his breath, "the end is not yet."

"She is no longer a child," said Lilian, "Her father writes that he hardly dares call her the same name, she is so changed. While I have been withering up in the North, two equatorial years down here have wrought upon her as they do upon the flowers. He says no Spanish woman rivals her. Well, it will please—"

Just then Reyburn handed her the glass he had been using, and pointed it for her.

"Can it be possible?" said Lilian. "Has Helen been transfigured to that?" and something, she knew not what, sent a quiver through her and made the image in the glass tremble—the image of a tall and shapely girl whose round and perfect figure swayed to the boat's motion, lithe as a reed to the wind, while she stood erect looking at something that had been pointed out, and the boatmen paused with their oars in the air; the image of a face on whose dark cheek the rose was burning, in whose dark eye a veiled lustre was shining, around whose creamy brow the raven hair escaped in countless tendril-like ringlets, and whose smile, as she seemed to speak to some one while she stood in the low sunset light, had a radiance of its own. As Lilian looked upon this dazzling picture, backed by the golden and rosy sky, the golden and rosy waters, the palm-plumes tossing in the purpling distance, the silver flashing of the oars, the quiver came again, and she gave the glass to Reyburn, who held it steadily till the boat was within hailing distance, and who himself at last handed the shining creature on board and led her to Lilian and her mother. And then the Beachbird slowly spread her wings, and with her new burden softly floated away into the dusk, and the great colors faded, and the stars one after another seemed to drop low and hang from the heavens like lamps, and rich odors floated off from the receding land, and they moved along folded in the dark splendor of the tropical night. But in some vague way every soul on board the little yacht felt the presence of another influence, and that, though they sailed in the same waters as yesterday, it was in another atmosphere; for an element had come among them that should produce a transformation as powerful as though it wrought a chemic change of their atoms.

Lilian and Reyburn still paced the deck, after their custom, when the first greetings were over, leaving Helen and her father with John for the present. But as the conversation dropped more personal subjects, and John and his father were discussing political matters, Helen began to look about, and chiefly she surveyed Lilian. And as she saw the transparent skin, the vivid flush, the restless air—saw the way Reyburn had, as he walked with her, as he bent to her, as he folded her shawl about her—the way he had of absorbing her, a hasty remembrance of the night when he stooped over Lilian's hand came to her, and she remembered also how she herself had hated him. "The man has bewitched her," said Helen an hour afterward—an hour of watching and puzzling. "She is fond of John still: she cannot bear to break his heart—she would rather break her own—and she is dying of her attraction to the other." As she sat there, still observing them, wondering what could be done, she turned and laid her arm on her brother's shoulder, and rested her head beside it with her eyes full of tears. And at the movement John bent and kissed her forehead, and she saw that he himself was at last awake; and Reyburn, looking at them, saw it too. Perhaps the tears dimmed her sight a little, and gave Lilian a sort of glorified look to her, standing still a moment with the light of the late rising moon on her face; but then as her gaze fell again on Reyburn, on his lofty form and kingly manner, his proud face, his bold bright eye, it seemed to her as if it were Lucifer tempting an angel; and all at once she had resolved what she would do to save Lilian, to save her brother. She could do it well, she said, well and safely—she who already hated the man. Courage came with the resolution, courage and strength: she began to laugh and scatter jests across the grave conversation of John and her father; presently she was humming a gay Spanish air.

"That is right, Helen," said her brother. "Sing something to us. My father says your voice would fill the Tacon theatre."

And at that she sang—not the air of the little bolero again, but a low, melancholy song that began with a sigh, but swelled ever clearer and higher, till, like the bursting of a flower, it opened and deepened into one breath of passionate sweetness and triumph. The rich voice rose to all the meaning of the music, and, though they could not understand the words, they thrilled before the singer, Late into the midnight she sang—the bunch of blossoms that was in her hand as she came on board still shedding its pungent odors round her as the blossoms died—strange wild songs that she had learned in the two years of her tropic life; ancient and plaintive Spanish airs; Moorish songs whose savage tunes were sweet as the honey of the rocks; wild and mournful Indian airs that the Spaniards might have heard in those Caribbean islands when first they burst upon their peaceful seas; and by and by a sleepy nocturne that seemed to lull the wind, to charm the ship, and hold the great moon hovering overhead; and as they rocked from wave to wave of the glimmering water, and that pure voice rose and poured out its melody, the soft vast southern night itself seemed to pause and listen.

Helen did not appear on the deck next day till the sunset came again, for Lilian was ill, and she remained with her; nor did Reyburn see her. But as the heat of the day passed, and the sails, that had been hanging idle ever since the night-breeze fell, began to fill again, Helen ascended.

"You come with the stars," said Reyburn, giving her his hand at the last step; but she merely put out her own hand with the gesture of receiving aid, and passed on, her dark gauzy drapery floating behind her, and the lace of her Spanish mantilla falling round her from her Spanish comb. She went to her brother's side, and sat there and talked, or rose with him and walked: there was everything to say and hear after their two years' separation. As for Reyburn, perhaps her manner was courteous enough to him, but certainly she hardly seemed to see him. Nor could he claim acquaintanceship with her: the gaunt and big-eyed child whom he had known two years ago had a different individuality from this dark girl with the rosy stain on the oval cheek and the immense eyelashes. He heard her gay laugh as John complimented her—a laugh as sweet as her singing; he saw the smile that kindled all her beauty into vivid life; he saw the still face listening to what was said; but he scarcely learned anything further than was thus declared. When at length she sang one parting strain, he wondered if the singing and the beauty were all there was: it occurred to him to find out. He remembered that moment of the evening before when John had betrayed distrust. "I will mislead him," said Reyburn, "and Lilian will understand it all." He stood before Helen as she rose with her father to go down.

"Ask me no more whither doth hasteThe nightingale when May is past;For in your sweet dividing throatShe winters, and keeps warm her note!"

he said, and stepped aside.

"We've taken a mermaid aboard, sir," said the sailing-master. "Nothing else, they say, sings after that fashion, and the men are on the lookout for foul weather."

"Never mind what the men say," said Reyburn, "while your barometer says nothing."

When Mr. Reyburn went on deck at sunrise he found Helen standing there with Lilian—with Lilian, who, after her day's illness, looked strangely wan and worn, looked like the feeble shadow of the other with her rich carnations, her glowing eyes, her picturesque outlines. Reyburn went aft and took Lilian's hand. "You have been so ill!" he said; and then he looked up and saw again this splendid creature, loosely clad in white, her black hair, unbraided and unbound, flowing in wave and ripple far down her back, her sleeve falling from the uplifted arm and perfect hand, that held a fan of the rose-colored spoonbill's feathers above her head, so beautiful and brilliant that she seemed only a projection of that beautiful and brilliant hour, with all its radiant dyes, before the sun was up; and he forgot that Lilian had been ill, forgot for a moment that Lilian existed. "I will find out what she is made of," thought Reyburn. "Are you made of clay?" he said boldly.

"He shall find that there is fire in my clay," said Helen to herself as she appeared not to heed his look or his words.

And there it began. And swift and sudden it went on to the end. She had come on board the yacht that first night to startle it with her beauty and her voice; last night, silent and stately, she had slipped through the evening like a dream; now she stood before him a dazzling creature of the morning: yesterday she was Penseroso; to-day she was Allegro; what would she be to-morrow? How sparkling, as one day followed another, her gayety was! and yet with no shallow sparkle: there was always the shadow of still depths just beyond—seasons of silence, moments of half sadness, times when he had to wonder whither her thoughts had led her. She sang a little song of the muleteers on the mountains, that he admired; then she must teach it to him, she said; they sang the song together, their voices lingering on the same note, rising in the same breath, falling in the same cadence. He had a sonorous tenor of his own: more than once she caught herself pausing in her part to hear it. How soft, and yet how strong, was the language of the song! he said; he must learn Spanish, she replied; and they hung together over the same book, and he repeated the phrase that fell from her lips—an apt pupil, it may be, for more than once the phrase, as he uttered it, deepened the color on her cheek. More than once she was conscious of gazing at him to find the charm that Lilian had found; more than once he caught her glance and held it there suspended; more than once you might have thought, by the quick, impatient manner in which she tore her eyes away, that she had found the charm herself. Perhaps he made some ostentation of his attraction before the others; perhaps the simulation of warmth was close enough to melt a colder heart than hers; perhaps it was not wholly simulation. It may be that her hand lay in his a moment longer than need was, her glance fell before his a moment sooner: it may be that as she fled all her manner beckoned him to follow. She was confiding to him her thoughts, her aspirations, her emotions, as if she wished that he, and he alone, should know them: he was listening as though there were no other knowledge in the world. If presently he thought of her as a creature of romance, if presently she felt the need of that keen interest, what wonder? They were playing with fire, and those that play with fire must needs be burned. And meantime, whether he looked at her languid in the burning noon, gay with the reviving freshness of the dusk, leaning over the bulwarks in the night and gazing up into the great spaces of the stars, he was always fascinated to look again. There was the profile exquisite as sculpture, there was the color as velvet soft as rose-petals, there was the droop of the long silken lashes half belying with its melancholy the rapture of the smile. Whether she spoke or whether she sang, her voice was music's self, and he was longing for the next tone; and presently—presently Lilian had faded like a phantom before this aurora who was fresh and rosy and dewy, with song and color and light—a sad pale phantom wan in a mist of tears.

And as for Lilian in this approaching trouble—in this trouble that was already here—was it to her mother that she turned as the good lady dozed and knitted there? Ah no, but to John himself; and perhaps John comprehended it, and, if he loved her all the more tenderly, suffered the more sharply. Possibly, as she saw Reyburn follow Helen as an entranced man follows a vision, as she saw Helen lead, Lilian knew that she deserved her punishment—knew that she had had her warning. Possibly she realized that the passion which had usurped the place of the love of years with her was but a selfish idealism—possibly saw at last, and with an agony, of what thin stuff the hero of her dream was made—possibly knew that it must be, and knew that it was best; but none the less she must have felt for a little while that there was no place left for her in the world, and she seemed to fade nearer and nearer the verge of it. Her old languor overcame her, her old pallor returned, her eyes were dull with their silent weeping: not yet twenty, she looked twice her years. Reyburn himself saw the change in her with trouble. "The voyage is doing you no good," he said.

"It is killing me!" she cried.

But he did not perceive the meaning of her unguarded cry: he did not know how it was with her, for he had not yet dreamed how it was with himself. But he was soon to discover.

Three weeks they had been wafted about from key to key, from bay to bay; they landed and explored the quaint old towns; they made trips into the tropical forests; great boatloads of juicy mangoes and guavas and bananas came off to them; they scattered coins on the clear bottom for the brown babies tumbling about the shores to dive after. Now at noon they lay anchored in still lagoons under the shadow of an overhanging orange-grove; now at night they were flying across the broad seas. But Lilian felt she could endure no more of it: her life was exhausted; she longed for the yacht's head to be turned northward, that she might die in peace on shore. John also was impatient to be gone. If he could have Lilian once more at home, he thought, he would marry her in spite of her protest, and take her where forgetfulness must needs soothe her, and strange faces make her cling to him in the old way. The way in which she clung to him now was too bitter to be borne. Her mother also began to think of home, and Mr. Sterling had wearied long ago; and at length, further pretences failing, they had been freshly provisioned and had started on their homeward way.

Reyburn had, indeed, been loath to make any change in their luxurious summering, but he was one of those who slide along with the days.

Take the goods the gods provide thee:The lovely Thais sits beside thee—

was a couplet that he was fond of humming, and he always waited for some unnatural wrench to make the effort he should have made himself. But he had consented at last to the return, because while he was still floating in Southern waters, under Southern skies, with this delicious voice in his ears, this delicious beauty by his side, he could not think that a week's sailing must bring him under other conditions.

Perhaps, though, it would be more than a week's sailing, some one said, for the fair wind that had taken them hither and yon so long, and had waited on their fancies, was apparently on the point of deserting them at last, and the yacht was merely drifting before a fitful breeze that lightly moved a scud of low clouds which the sunset had kindled into a blaze of glory hanging just above them, and whose ragged shreds only now and then displayed a star.

"We are going to have nasty weather," the sailing-master said to his mate. "The barometer is going down with a rush."

"Yes, sir," had come the answer: "we shall catch it in the mid-watch."

"Then stow the light sails, Mr. Mason," the captain said, "and get everything secure for a heavy blow. Keep a sharp lookout, and call me as soon as the weather changes."

"All right, sir."

"I am going down for forty winks," said the captain. Then as he passed Mr. Reyburn: "I don't much like the appearance of things, sir."

"Appearance?" said Reyburn. "Why the sea is as smooth as glass!"

"Too smooth by half, sir, with the barometer falling. I've sailed with that glass a long time, and she's never told me a lie yet. We've already shortened sail."

"So I see. But why in the world did you do it, when you want every stitch of it out to catch what wind there is? However, I am in no hurry," said Reyburn laughing. "Do as you please, skipper: you're sailing the ship."