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

“To you, my own sweet wife, I owe this change which has come upon me. Your gentle pleadings, your fond prayers have opened this stubborn heart, and prepared the way for the reception of those better things which were hereafter to be his.”

“Not unto me, dearest Henry, not unto me, but unto God above be the praise. Too happy, indeed, am I, if I have been the feeble instrument in His hands of your enlightenment.”

Close we the scene. It would indeed be a privilege, had we the ability, to follow our heroine further. Never had she looked so lovely. A heavenly radiance and serenity shone from her young brow. Her eyes wore a subdued and softened expression which rendered them even more attractive than of old. And how was her care for her children heightened – not for their bodies only, as formerly, but now for their souls. Never afterward did either she or Dawson cast a regretful glance backward, for they felt that, if they had lost the world, they had gained Heaven.

T. R. N.

FATHER BROMLEY’S TALE

—BY WILLIAM ALBERT SUTLIFFE—

“I will tell you a tale,” said Father Bromley.

Father Bromley sat on the piazza of his cottage, looking over the green breadth of lawn which stretched down to Willow Brook. The sun had just gone down, and the western sky, still a-glow, seemed – seen through the willows – like a splendid tissue – gold and green; and the stream, as it rolled, might have been supposed to have its rise in that strange El Dorado which filled our country’s ancestral dreams. On his right sat his daughter Alice, needing to be but a shade paler to be wrapped in a shroud, and laid to her dreamless sleep with a white rose-bud pressed between her slender fingers, and on his left his other daughter, Margaret, fresh as a June rose at sunrise. The father sat between them; the very pattern of paternal grace and quiet benignity. His worldly cares had been slight, so his face had been left smooth, full, and sunny; so sunny, in fact, that it appeared to have taken and retained the quintessence of every sunbeam which had fallen upon it. But now, like external nature, it had a sort of twilight expression, approaching to spirituality, which would awaken in the beholder an abiding interest, and lead him to pause and study ere he passed. Various circumstances conspired to this – the time, the place, and the proximity of his pale child, propt up with pillows, and almost as ethereal as a moonbeam. For a long time they had been sitting in a deepening silence, which neither wished to disturb; and so absorbed were the two daughters with their own thoughts, that the first words of the gray father fell upon unheeding ears.

“I will tell you a story,” he repeated, after a little pause, and in a firmer tone.

Slowly, and with a sigh, like one awakening from a pleasant dream to an unpleasant reality, Alice lifted the lids, and upturned her eyes, filled with a gathering dreaminess, to the dawning love-look of her only parent. Those deep, dark eyes, they must have known many tears.

“Do let us hear it, papa,” she murmured, “but let it be in harmony with gathering stars and slanting moonbeams, and let it have a true golden tinge from the sunset which lights up the gloaming.”

“And do let us hear it!” echoed Margaret, turning quite away from the moon, which was just rising.

“And of what shall it be?” asked Father Bromley, as he looked inquiringly from one to the other.

“O, something that will please Alice!” returned the sweet girl. “For who knows how many times we shall have it in our power to please her,” she thought but did not say, for all of that household knew that sooner or later death would knock at their door.

There was a long pause, and then Alice said —

“Let it be of the picture, with the angel-face, which hangs in the green parlor?” There must have been strange thoughts suggested by it, for her face in the white moonshine grew a shade paler, and her hands trembled a little, as if nervously affected, but no one noticed it.

There was another pause, and then she continued, as if to explain the reason of her wish —

“I have been reading to-day a beautiful poem, in which a lovely lady died of a broken heart, and her spirit nightly haunted her old home. Thinking on the sad tale, I paused to weep, and sat for a few moments with shut eyes. When I opened them, the first thing that I saw was the portrait, and – will you believe it? – it had acquired a new sadness, such as I never saw on a mortal face. It seemed to be looking at me with an incomprehensible intensity of earnestness; and, as I still gazed, a tear – I saw it as plainly as I see the moon – started in the eyes, and rolled down the face. And then another, and another,” she went on in higher tones, as if trying to impress a burning truth on incredulous listeners, “and all the while it looked at me so sadly – but not with pity, and seemed so to invite me, that I fancied that I heard the lips say – ‘Come!’ That was only fancy, but, as I live, I saw it weep.”

Father Bromley looked with deep and tender anxiety upon the pale face at his side. He well knew of a report, formerly current in the house, to the effect that this same picture was seen to shed tears just before the death of any member of the family. But this piece of information he restrained, justly deeming it not pertinent for the occasion. Margaret looked anxious and perplexed, but said nothing; and the father, after a little pause, began – in a low voice – his tale. Let us listen, dear reader, seated attentively on the sward, at the corner of the dim old mansion. We may be as sceptical as we please, since neither of us ever saw a strip of painted canvas, in a gilt frame, weep.

“My great grandfather’s second wife – for so far back his story was to date – was a strange, bad woman. There was no peace in her vicinity. The estate had become involved, and my great-grandfather, knowing her to be possessed of some money, married her. But he always had cause to bitterly rue that day and hour which made her his. He had two daughters – both sweet girls, and she one son, who had inherited all her bad qualities, with an additional coarseness and ugliness of manner, which she – if she possessed it – from superiority of education, seldom showed. Her son, whose name was Andrew, had that sensual perception of beauty which always marks vulgar natures, and he had been but a short time in the family before he gave evidence of the impression which the beauty of the younger sister made upon him. Lisette, from the first, rejected his overtures, and withdrew from his society to that of her elder sister as much as possible; but Andrew, not heeding her contempt, and abetted moreover by his mother, still pressed his suit with all the pertinacity and regardlessness of feeling, which characterize such semi-barbarous beings. The persecuted girl sought her father’s protection, and he, in giving it, alienated from himself the spark of affection which the bosom of the step-mother might have known. From that time she ‘hated him with the hate of hell;’ but, with all the cunning of her perfidious heart, she covered it with a smile. She softened toward her step-daughters, and, by her open advice, Andrew discontinued the attentions which had made him so odious in their sight. All was, seemingly, about to be harmonious and well again, when the father suddenly sickened and died. There were strange circumstances attending his death, which made it to be as much talked of as an eighth wonder. Sturdy men put their bushy heads together, and whispered mysteriously in corners, and old dames – stooping over the few last embers on the hearth, as the hours drew on toward the ghostly midnight – muttered to each other in underbreath, starting ever and anon if the wind but wailed a little louder, or flapped a clapboard which chanced to hang loose. Children whimpered if they were put to bed alone in the dark; and young women, in broad daylight, would not go ten rods unattended over an unfrequented road. Dame Burton had had, for a long time before this, an unfavorable reputation with a few, and the assertions of this few were latterly gaining believers. It was now currently reported that she was in the habit of going, nightly, to the Devil’s Crag, under which was a cave, whose black recesses had never been seen by mortal eye. It was furthermore reported, that whenever any one approached it, a dark vapor issued from its mouth, in the midst of which were sometimes seen two fiery eyes, and ominous voices also added to the fright of whomsoever might chance to be lost or stray in this vicinity.

“The foundation for all this was the testimony of two superstitious woodmen; who, in plying their trade, occasionally ventured into the vicinity, and, besides what has been here told, one of them gave out – as a piece of definite information – that, being one night belated in the neighborhood of the cave, and coming toward home in great terror, he suddenly heard the sound of rapid footsteps, and pausing, he saw Dame Burton come into an open spot not twelve feet from him. Suddenly there appeared a man as black as ebony at her side. Whence he came he could not tell, but his identity was not to be mistaken.

“‘Why are you so late?’ asked the dark personage.

“‘Mercy, mercy!’ cried the cringing dame, piteously.

“But mercy did not seem to be one of his component parts; for, seizing her roughly by the arm, and rushing off with her like lightning through the dense underbrush, he made directly for the cave, leaving nothing but an overpowering smell of brimstone, and a line of blue light, pointing like a guide-board toward the place of rendezvous.

“How the man ever got home he could not tell: but it was not at all uncertain that he did get home, and tell the tale here given to a thousand incredulous hearers.

“Father Burton died and was laid with his fathers, and Esther and Lisette wept together in their sorrow, and arrayed themselves sadly in mourning weeds. The suspicions of their neighbors never troubled them. The thought that their step-mother could be to utterly depraved would have killed them at once, had it entered their minds. The father had not, however, been long gone to rest when they perceived a change in the mother and son. The mother’s face assumed a crafty and hag-like expression, and the son’s face seemed to have gotten a look of stupid cunning quite foreign to it. Except this, for some time, nothing was to be seen; but soon matters took a more overt and decided turn, Andrew again renewed his odious attentions, but with a confidence which he formerly lacked. He was met with the same coldness as before, to which was added an entreaty – coached in the most conciliatory language, to the effect – that he would desist. But coldness and entreaty were alike vain. He still persisted, and Dame Burton, at last, seconded his suit by commanding Lisette, in unequivocal terms, to marry him.

“‘I cannot! I will not!’ said Lisette, with a passionate burst of tears, at the close of an interview in which the matter had been pressed upon her with more than ordinary vehemence and fiendish show of malignity.

“‘Cannot? will not?’ muttered the dame, half to herself and half to her auditor, accompanying the same with an impatient gesture, and a laugh hissed through her closed teeth – ‘we will see! we will see!’

“‘I beg to hear no more of this,’ continued the persecuted girl, ‘or I shall expect our poor dead father to come in his shroud to defend me from such cruelty.’

“‘Thy poor dead father in his shroud!’ echoed the step-mother. ‘Ah, ha! it was a good drug – a friendly drug,’ she muttered on in an undertone, ‘a pleasant potion, for a peevish child!’ and then she laughed at her devilish wit. ‘Thy father sleeps well, child. Did thy keen wit ever take exception at the friendly nursing which waited on him to the grave?’

“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 —