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

The days slipped into weeks, and they were busy, one and all, ordering Effie's wardrobe; for, however much I took the lead, she was the elder and was to be brought out. My mother never meant to bring me out, I think,—she could not endure the making of parade, and the hearing the Thomsons and Lindsays laugh at it all, when 't was but for such a flecked face,—she meant I should slip into life as I could. We had had the seamstresses, and when they were gone sometimes Mrs. Strathsay came and sat among us with her work;—she never pricked finger with fell or hem, but the heaviest task she took was the weaving of the white leaf-wreaths in and out the lace-web before her there,—and as we stitched, we talked, and she lent a word how best an old breadth could be turned, another gown refitted,—for we had to consider such things, with all our outside show of establishment.

Margray came running through the garden that afternoon, and up where we sat, and over her arm was fluttering no end of gay skirts and ribbons.

"I saved this pink muslin—it's real Indian, lascar lawn, fine as cobweb—for you, Alice," she said. "It's not right to leave it to the moths,—but you'll never need it now. It shall be Effie's, and she'll look like a rose-bud in it,—with her yellow locks floating."

"Yes," said I.

"You'll not be wanting such bright things now, child; you'll best wear grays, and white, and black."

"Indeed, then, I sha'n't," I said. "If I'm no longer lovely myself, I'll be decked out in braw clothes, that I may please the eye one way or another."

"No use, child," sighed my mother 'twixt her teeth, and not meaning for me to hear.

"So would I, Ailie," said Mary Strathsay, quickly. "There's much in fine fibres and soft shades that gives one the womanly idea. You're the best shape among us all, my light lissomeness, and your gowns shall fit it rarely. Nay, Margray, let Alice have the pink."

"Be still, Mary Strathsay!" said my mother. "Alice will wear white this summer; 'tis most suitable. She has white slips and to spare."

"But in the winter?" urged the other. "'Twill be sad for the child, and we all so bright. There's my pearl silk,—I'm fairly tired of it,—and with a cherry waist-piece"–

"You lose breath," said my mother, coldly and half vexed.

So Mary Strathsay bit her lip and kept the peace.

"Whisht now, child, your turn will come," said Margray, unfolding a little bodice of purple velvet, with its droop of snowy Mechlin. "One must cut the coat according to the cloth. That's for Effie,—gayly my heart's beat under you," laying it down and patting it on one side, lovingly. "There, if white's the order of the day, white let it be,—and let Mrs. Strathsay say her most, she cannot make other color of this, and she shall not say me nay. That's for Alice." And she flung all the silvery silk and blonde lace about me.

"Child, you'll sparkle!" whispered Mary Strathsay in my ear, hastening to get the glittering apparel aside, lest my mother should gainsay us.

But Mrs. Strathsay did not throw us a glance.

"You're ill-pleased, Effie," said Margray; for our little beauty, finding herself so suddenly the pet, had learned to toss her head in pretty saucy ways.

"Not a speck!" Effie answered up. "'Twas high time,—I was thinking."

Margray laughed, and took her chin 'twixt thumb and finger, and tried to look under the wilful lids that drooped above the blue light in her eyes.

"You're aye a faithful pet, and I like you clannish. Stand by them that stands by you, my poor man used to say. You shall put on as fine a gown, and finer, of my providing, the day you're wedded."

  "I'll gie ye veil o' siller lace,    And troth ye wi' a ring;  Sae bid the blushes to your face,    My ain wee thing!"

sang Mary.

"I want none of your silver lace," said Effie, laughing lightly, and we little dreamed of the girl's thought. "I'll have that web my mother has wrought with myrtle-leaf and blossom."

"And 'twas begun for me," said Mary, arching her brows, and before she thought.

"You,—graceless girl!" said my mother. "It's no bridal veil will ever cross your curls!"

"Surely, mother, we've said too much,—you'll overlook old scores."

"'T is hard forgetting, when a perverse child puts the hand to her own hurt."

"No hurt to me. You would not have had me take a man at his word when he recked not what he said."

"Tsh! Tsh! Charles Seavern would have married you. And with the two brothers gone, he's an earl now,—and you flung him off. Tsh!"

"I never saw the time, mother, solemnly as I've told you, when his right hand knew what his left hand did,—what with his champagne-suppers, your Burgundy, and Johnny Graeme's Jamaica. He'd have been sorely shocked to wake up sober in his earldom some fine morning and find a countess beside him ready-made to his hand."

"You spared him!" said my mother. And in a minute she added, softwise,

"Ay, were that all!"

"Ah," said Mary, "but I'll take the next one that asks me, if it's only to save myself the taunts at home! You thought you were winning to a soft nest, children, where there were nought but larks and thrushes and maybe nightingales,—and we're all cuckoos.

  "'Cuckoo! cuckoo! sweet voice of Spring,    Without you sad the year had been,  The vocal heavens your welcome ring,    The hedge-rows ope and take you in,      Cuckoo! cuckoo!  "'Cuckoo! cuckoo! O viewless sprite,    Your song enchants the sighing South,  It wooes the wild-flower to the light,    And curls the smile round my love's mouth,      Cuckoo! cuckoo!'"

"Have done your claver, Mary!" cried Margray. "One cannot hear herself think, for the din of your twittering!—I'll cut the sleeve over crosswise, I think,"—and, heedless, she herself commenced humming, in an undertone, '"Cuckoo! cuckoo!'—There! you've driven mother out!"

Mary laughed.

"When I'm married, Ailie," she whispered, "I'll sing from morn till night, and you shall sit and hear me, without Margray's glowering at us, or my mother so much as saying, 'Why do you so?'"

For all the time the song had been purling from her smiling lips, Mrs. Strathsay's eyes were laid, a weight like lead, on me, and then she had risen as if it hurt her, and walked to the door.

"Or when you've a house of your own," added Mary, "we will sing together there."

"Oh, Mary!" said I, like the child I was, forgetting the rest, "when I'm married, you will come and live with me?"

"You!" said my mother, stepping through the door and throwing the words over her shoulder as she went, not exactly for my ears, but as if the bubbling in her heart must have some vent. "And who is it would take such a fright?"

"My mother's fair daft," said Margray, looking after her with a perplexed gaze, and dropping her scissors. "Surely, Mary, you shouldn't tease her as you do. She's worn more in these four weeks than in as many years. You're a fickle changeling!"

But Mary rose and sped after my mother, with her tripping foot; and in a minute she came back laughing and breathless.

"You put my heart in my mouth, Mistress Graeme," she said. "And all for nothing. My mother's just ordering the cream to be whipped. Well, little one, what now?"

"It's just this dress of Margray's,—mother's right,—'t will never do for me; I'll wear shadows. But 't will not need the altering of a hair for you, Mary, and you shall take it."

"I think I see myself," said Mary Strathsay, "wearing the dress Margray married Graeme in!" For Margray had gone out to my mother in her turn.

"Then it's yours, Effie. I'll none of it!"

"I'm finely fitted out, then, with the robe here and the veil there! bridal or burial, toss up a copper and which shall it be?" said Effie, looking upward, and playing with her spools like a juggler's oranges. And here Margray came back.

She sat in silence a minute or two, turning her work this way and that, and then burst forth,—

"I'd not stand in your shoes for much, Alice Strathsay!" she cried, "that's certain. My mother's in a rare passion, and here's Sir Angus home!"

"Sir Who?" said Effie puzzled; "it was just Mr. Ingestre two years ago."

"Well, it's been Sir Angus a twelvemonth now and more,—ever since old Sir Brenton went, and he went with a stroke."

"Yes," said Mary, "it was when Angus arrived in London from Edinboro', the day before joining his ship."

"And why didn't we ever hear of it?"

"I don't just remember, Effie dear," replied Margray, meditatively, "unless 't were—it must have been—that those were the letters lost when the Atlantis went down."

"Poor gentleman!" said Mary. "It was one night when there was a division in the House, and it divided his soul from his body,—for they found him sitting mute as marble, and looking at their follies and strifes with eyes whose vision reached over and saw God."

"For shame, Mary Strathsay, to speak lightly of what gave Angus such grief!"

"Is that lightly?" she said, smoothing my hair with her pretty pink palms till it caught in the ring she wore. "Never mind what I say, girlie; it's as like to be one word as the other. But I grieved for him. He's deep and quiet; a sorrow sinks and underlies all that's over, in the lad."

"Hear her!" said Margray; "one would fancy the six feet of the Ingestre stature were but a pocket-piece! The lad! Well, he'll put no pieces in our pockets, I doubt," (Margray had ever an eye to the main chance,) "and it's that angers my mother."

"Hush, Margray!" I heard Mary say, for I had risen and stolen forth. "Thou'lt make the child hate us all. Were we savages, we had said less. You know, girl, that our mother loved our father's face in her, and counted the days ere seeing it once more; and having lost it, she is like one bewildered. 'T will all come right. Let the poor body alone,—and do not hurt the child's heart so. We're right careless."

I had hung on tiptoe, accounting it no meanness, and I saw Margray stare.

"Well," she murmured, "something may be done yet. 'T will go hard, if by hook or crook Mrs. Strathsay do not have that title stick among us"; and then, to make an end of words, she began chattering anent biases and gores, the lace on Mary Campbell's frill, the feather on Mary Dalhousie's bonnet,—and I left them.

I ran over to Margray's, and finding the boy awake, I dismissed his nurses the place, and stayed and played with him and took the charge till long past the dinner-hour, and Margray came home at length, and then, when I had sung the child asleep again, for the night, and Margray had shown me all the contents of her presses, the bells were ringing nine from across the river, and I ran back as I came, and up and into my little bed, and my heart was fit to break, and I cried till the sound of the sobs checked me into silence. Suddenly I felt a hand fumbling down the coverlid, and 't was Nannie, my old nurse, and her arm was laid heavily across me.

"Dinna greet," she whispered, "dinna greet and dull your een that are brighter noo than a' the jauds can show,—the bonny blink o' them! They sha' na flout and fleer, the feckless queans, the hissies wha'll threep to stan' i' your auld shoon ae day! Dinna greet, lass, dinna!"

But I rose on my arm, and stared about me in all the white moonlight of the vacant place, and hearkened to the voices and laughter rippling up the great staircase,—for there were gallants in belike,—and made as if I had been crying out in my sleep.

"Oh, Nurse Nannie, is it you?" I said.

"Ay, me, Miss Ailie darling!"

"Sure I dream so deeply. I'm all as oppressed with nightmare."

But with that she brushed my hair, and tenderly bathed my face in the bay-water, and fastened on my cap, and, sighing, tucked the coverlid round my shoulder, and away down without a word.

The next day was my mother's dinner-party. She was in a quandary about me, I saw, and to save words I offered to go over again and stay with the little Graeme. So it came to pass, one time being precedent of another, that in all the merrymakings I had small share, and spent the greater part of those bright days in Margray's nursery with, the boy, or out-doors in the lone hay-fields or among the shrubberies; for he waxed large and glad, and clung to me as my own. And to all kind Mary Strathsay's pleas and words I but begged off as favors done to me, and I was liker to grow sullen than smiling with all the stour.

"Why, I wonder, do the servants of a house know so much better than the house itself the nearest concerns of shadowy futures? One night the nurse paused above my bed and guarded the light with her hand.

"Let your heart lap," she said. "Sir Angus rides this way the morrow."

Ah, what was that to me? I just doubled the pillow over eyes and ears to shut out sight and hearing. And so on the morrow I kept well out of the way, till all at once Mrs. Strathsay stumbled over me and bade me, as there would be dancing in the evening, to don my ruffled frock and be ready to play the measures. I mind me how, when I stood before the glass and secured the knot in my sash, and saw by the faint light my loosened hair falling in a shadow round me and the quillings of the jaconet, that I thought to myself how it was like a white moss-rose, till of a sudden Nannie held the candle higher and let my face on me,—and I bade her bind up my hair again in the close plaits best befitting me. And I crept down and sat in the shade of the window-curtains, whiles looking out at the soft moony night, whiles in at the flowery lighted room. I'd heard Angus's coming, early in the afternoon, and had heard him, too, or e'er half the cordial compliments were said, demand little Alice; and they told him I was over and away at Margray's, and in a thought the hall-doors clashed behind him and his heels were ringing up the street, and directly he hastened home again, through the gardens this time, and saw no sign of me;—but now my heart beat so thickly, when I thought of him passing me in the dance, that, could I sit there still, I feared 'twould of itself betray me, and that warned me to question if the hour were not ready for the dances, and I rose and stole to the piano and sat awaiting my mother's word. But scarcely was I there when one came quietly behind me, and a head bent and almost swept my shoulder; then he stood with folded arms.

"And how long shall I wait for your greeting? Have you no welcome for me, Ailie?"

"Yes, indeed, Sir Angus," I replied; but I did not turn my head, for as yet he saw only the back of me, fair and graceful perchance, as when he liked it.

He checked himself in some word.

"Well, then," he said, "give it me, tell it me, look it me!"

I rose from my seat and shifted the piece of music before me,—turned and gazed into his eyes one long breathing-space, then I let the lids fall,—waited a minute so,—and turned back ere my lip should be all in a quiver,—but not till his head bent once more, and a kiss had fallen on those lids and lain there cool and soft as a pearl,—a pearl that seemed to sink and penetrate and melt inwardly and dissolve and fill my brain with a white blinding light of joy. 'Twas but a brief bit of the great eternities;—and then I found my fingers playing I knew not how, and heard the dancers' feet falling to the tune of I knew not what.

While I played there, Margray sat beside me, for the merriment was without now, on the polished oak-floor of the hall, and they being few but familiars who had the freedom of the house, (and among whom I had had no need but to slip with a nod and smile ere gaining my seat,) she took out her needle and set a stitch or two, more, perhaps, to cover her being there at all than for any need of industry; for Margray loved company, and her year of widowhood being not yet doubled, and my mother unwilling that she should entertain or go out, she made the most of that at our house; for Mrs. Strathsay had due regard of decency,—forbye she deemed it but a bad lookout for her girls, if the one of them danced on her good-man's grave.

"I doubt will Sir Angus bide here," said Margray at length; for though all his boyhood she had called him by every diminutive his name could bear, the title was a sweet morsel in her unaccustomed mouth, and she kept rolling it now under her tongue. "Mrs. Strathsay besought him, but his traps and his man were at the inn. Sir Angus is not the lad he was,—a young man wants his freedom, my mother should remember."

And as her murmur continued, my thoughts came about me. They were like birds in the hall; and all their voices and laughter rising above the jingle of the keys, I doubted was he so sorry for me, after all. Then the dancing broke, I found, though I still played on, and it was some frolicsome game of forfeits, and Angus was chasing Effie, and with her light step and her flying laugh it was like the wind following a rose-flake. Anon he ceased, and stood silent and statelier than Mrs. Strathsay's self, looking on.

"See Sir Angus now," said Margray, bending forward at the pictures shifting through the door-way. "He'd do for the Colossus at what-you-may-call-it; and there's our Effie, she minds me of a yellow-bird, hanging on his arm and talking: I wonder if that's what my mother means,—I wonder will my mother compass it. See Mary Strathsay there! She's white and fine, I'll warrant; see her move like a swan on the waters! Ay, she's a lovesome lass,—and Helmar thought so, too."

"What are you saying of Mary Strathsay? Who don't think she's a lovesome lass?"

"Helmar don't now,—I'll dare be sworn."

"Helmar?"

"Hush, now! don't get that maggot agait again. My mother'd ban us both, should her ears side this way."

"What is it you mean, Margray dear?"

"Sure you've heard of Helmar, child?"

Yes, indeed, had I. The descendant of a bold Spanish buccaneer who came northwardly with his godless spoil, when all his raids upon West-Indian seas were done, and whose name had perhaps suffered a corruption at our Provincial lips. A man—this Helmar of to-day—about whom more strange tales were told than of the bloody buccaneer himself. That the walls of his house were ceiled with jewels, shedding their accumulated lustre of years so that never candle need shine in the place, was well known. That the spellbound souls of all those on his red-handed ancestor's roll were fain to keep watch and ward over their once treasures, by night and noon, white-sheeted and faint in the glare of the sun, wan in the moon, blacker shadows in the starless dark, found belief. And there were those who had seen his seraglio;—but few, indeed, had seen him,—a lonely man, in fact, who lived aloof and apart, shunned and shunning, tainted by the curse of his birth.

"Oh, yes," I said, "of Helmar away down the bay; but the mate of our brig was named Helmar, too."

Margray's ivory stiletto punched a red eyelet in her finger.

"Oh, belike it was the same!" she cried, so loud that I had half to drown it in the pedal. "He's taken to following the sea, they say."

"What had Helmar to do with our Mary, Margray?"

"What had he to do with her?" answered Margray in under-voice. "He fell in love with her!"

"That's not so strange."

"Then I'll tell you what's stranger, and open your eyes a wee. She fell in love with him."

"Our Mary? Then why didn't she marry him?"

"Marry Helmar?"

"Yes. If my mother wants gold, there it is for her."

"He's the child of pirates; there's blood on his gold; he poured it out before my mother, and she told him so. He's the making of a pirate himself. Oh, you've never heard, I see. Well, since I'm in for it,—but you'll never breathe it?—and it's not worth while darkening Effie with it, let alone she's so giddy my mother'd know I'd been giving it mouth,—perhaps I oughtn't,—but there!—poor Mary! He used to hang about the place, having seen her once when she came round from Windsor in a schooner, and it was a storm,—may-happen he saved her life in it. And Mary after, Mary'd meet him at church, and in the garden, and on the river; 't was by pure chance on her part, and he was forever in the way. Then my mother, innocent of it all, went to Edinboro', as you know, and I was married and out of the reach, and Mary kept the house those two months with Mrs. March of the Hill for dowager,—her husband was in the States that summer,—and Mrs. March is no more nor less than cracked,—and no wonder he should make bold to visit the house. My mother'd been home but a day and night, 's you may say, when in walks my gentleman,—who but he?—fine as a noble of the Court, and Mary presents him to Mrs. Strathsay as Mr. Helmar of the Bay. Oh, but Mrs. Strathsay was in a stound. And he began by requesting her daughter's hand. And that brake the bonds,—and she dashed out sconners of wrath. Helmar's eyes flashed only once, then he kept them on the ground, and he heard her through. 'T was the second summer Seavern's fleet was at the harbor's mouth there, and a ship of war lay anchored a mile downriver,—many's the dance we had on it's deck!—and Captain Seavern of late was in the house night and morn,—for when he found Mary offish, he fairly lay siege to her, and my mother behind him,—and there was Helmar sleeping out the nights in his dew-drenched boat at the garden's foot, or lying wakeful and rising and falling with the tide under her window, and my mother forever hearing the boat-chains clank and stir. She's had the staple wrenched out of the wall now,—'t was just below the big bower-window, you remember. And when Mary utterly refused Seavern, Seavern swore he'd wheel his ship round and raze the house to its foundations: he was—drunk—you see. And Mary laughed in his face. And my mother beset her,—I think she went on her knees to her,—she led her a dreadful life," said Margray, shivering; "and the end of it all was, that Mary promised to give up Helmar, would my mother drop the suit of Seavern. And at that, Helmar burst in: he was like one wild, and he conjured Mary,—but she sat there stone-still, looking through him with the eyes in her white, deadly face, as though she'd never seen him, and answering no word, as if she were deaf to sound of his voice henceforth; and he rose and glared down on my mother, who stood there with her white throat up, proud and defiant as a stag at bay,—and he vowed he'd darken her day, for she had taken the light out of his life. And Angus was by: he'd sided with Helmar till then; but at the threat, he took the other by the shoulder and led him to the door, with a blue blaze in those Ingestre eyes, and Helmar never resisted, but fell down on his face on the stones and shuddered with sobs, and we heard them into the night, but with morning he was gone."

"Oh! And Mary?"

"'Deed, I don't think she cares. She's never mentioned his name. D'you mind that ring of rubies she wears, like drops of blood all round the hoop? 'Twas his. She shifted it to the left hand, I saw. It was broken once,—and what do you think she did? She put a blow-pipe at the candle-flame, and, holding it up in tiny pincers, soldered the two ends together without taking it off her finger,—and it burning into the bone! Strathsay grit. It's on her white wedding-finger. The scar's there, too.—St! Where's your music? You've not played a note these five minutes. Whisht! here comes my mother!"

How was Helmar to darken my mother's day, I couldn't but think, as I began to toss off the tune again. And poor Mary,—there were more scars than I carried, in the house. But while I turned the thoughts over, Angus came for me to dance, and Margray, he said, should play, and my mother signed consent, and so I went.

But 'twas a heavy heart I carried to and fro, as I remembered what I'd heard, and perhaps it colored everything else with gloom. Why was Angus holding my hand as we glided? why was I by his side as we stood? and as he spoke, why was I so dazzled with delight at the sound that I could not gather the sense? Oh, why, but that I loved him, and that his noble compassion would make him the same to me at first as ever,—slowly, slowly, slowly lowering, while he turned to Effie or some other fair-faced lass? Ah, it seemed to me then in a rebellious heart that my lot was bitter. And fearful that my sorrow would abroad, I broke into a desperation of gayety till my mother's hand was on my arm. But all the while, Angus had been by, perplexed shadows creeping over his brow;—and in fresh terror lest my hidden woe should rise and look him in the face, all my mother's pride itself shivered through me, and I turned my shoulder on him with a haughty, pettish chill.