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

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.

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

IVTHE 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,  With hands that cannot idle,    And brows that will not frown,         Pity her!  Ye saints, whose thoughts are folded    As graciously to rest  As a dove's stainless pinions    Upon her guileless breast,         Pity her!  But most, ye helpful angels    That send distress and work,  Hot task and sweating forehead,    To heal man's idle irk,         Pity her!

A REPLY

TO "THE AFFECTIONATE AND CHRISTIAN ADDRESS OF MANY THOUSANDS OF WOMEN OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND TO THEIR SISTERS THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA."

Signed by

ANNA MARIA BEDFORD (Duchess of Bedford).

OLIVIA CECILIA COWLEY (Countess Cowley).

CONSTANCE GROSVENOR (Countess Grosvenor).

HARRIET SUTHERLAND (Duchess of Sutherland).

ELIZABETH ARGYLL (Duchess of Argyll).

ELIZABETH FORTESCUE (Countess Fortescue).

EMILY SHAFTESBURY (Countess of Shaftesbury).

MARY RUTHVEN (Baroness Ruthven).

M.A. MILMAN (Wife of Dean of St. Paul's).

R. BUXTON (Daughter of Sir Thomas Powell Buxton).

CAROLINE AMELIA OWEN (Wife of Professor Owen).

MRS. CHARLES WINDHAM.

C.A. HATHERTON (Baroness Hatherton).

ELIZABETH DUCIE (Countess Dowager of Ducie).

CECILIA PARKE (Wife of Baron Parke).

MARY ANN CHALLIS (Wife of the Lord Mayor of London).

E. GORDON (Duchess Dowager of Gordon).

ANNA M.L. MELVILLE (Daughter of Earl of Leven and Melville).

GEORGIANA EBRINGTON (Lady Ebrington).

A. HILL (Viscountess Hill).

MRS. GOBAT (Wife of Bishop Gobat of Jerusalem).

E. PALMERSTON (Viscountess Palmerston).

and others.

Sisters,—More than eight years ago you sent to us in America a document with the above heading. It is as follows:—

"A common origin, a common faith, and, we sincerely believe, a common cause, urge us, at the present moment, to address you on the subject of that system of negro slavery which still prevails so extensively, and, even under kindly disposed masters, with such frightful results, in many of the vast regions of the Western world.

"We will not dwell on the ordinary topics,—on the progress of civilization, on the advance of freedom everywhere, on the rights and requirements of the nineteenth century; but we appeal to you very seriously to reflect and to ask counsel of God how far such a state of things is in accordance with His Holy Word, the inalienable rights of immortal souls, and the pure and merciful spirit of the Christian religion. We do not shut our eyes to the difficulties, nay, the dangers, that might beset the immediate abolition of that long-established system. We see and admit the necessity of preparation for so great an event; but, in speaking of indispensable preliminaries, we cannot be silent on those laws of your country which, in direct contravention of God's own law, 'instituted in the time of man's innocency,' deny in effect to the slave the sanctity of marriage, with all its joys, rights, and obligations; which separate, at the will of the master, the wife from the husband and the children from the parents. Nor can we be silent on that awful system which either by statute or by custom interdicts to any race of man or any portion of the human family education in the truths of the gospel and the ordinances of Christianity. A remedy applied to these two evils alone would commence the amelioration of their sad condition. We appeal to you, then, as sisters, as wives, and as mothers, to raise your voices to your fellow-citizens and your prayers to God for the removal of this affliction and disgrace from the Christian world.

"We do not say these things in a spirit of self-complacency, as though our nation were free from the guilt it perceives in others.

"We acknowledge with grief and shame our heavy share in this great sin. We acknowledge that our forefathers introduced, nay, compelled the adoption of slavery in those mighty colonies. We humbly confess it before Almighty God; and it is because we so deeply feel and so unfeignedly avow our own complicity, that we now venture to implore your aid to wipe away our common crime and our common dishonor."