Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21

So she kissed us, Effie and me. Perhaps mine lingered the longer, for
the color in my cheek was deeper tinct than Scotch, it was the wild bit
of Southern blood that had run in her love's veins; when she looked
at me, I gave her back hot phases of her passionate youth again,--so
perhaps mine was the kiss that left the deeper dint.

Margray, and Mary Strathsay, had been back three years from school, and
the one was just married,--and if she left her heart out of the bargain,
what was that to me?--and the other was to reign at home awhile ere the
fated Prince should come, and Effie and myself were to go over seas and
take their old desks in the famous school at Edinboro'. The mother knew
that she must marry her girls well, and we two younglings were sadly in
Queen Mary Strathsay's way. Yes, Mrs. Strathsay lived for nought but the
making of great matches for her girls; the grandees of the Provinces
to-day sat down at her board and to-morrow were to pay her tribute, scot
and lot; four great weddings she meant should one by one light up her
hearth and leave it lonely with the ashes there. But of them all she
counted on the last, the best, the noblest for Alice,--that was I.

Old Johnny Graeme was the partner in what had been my father's house,
and for fifteen years it had gone prospering as never house did yet,
and making Mrs. Strathsay bitterer; and Johnny Graeme, a little wizened
warlock, had never once stopped work long enough to play at play and
reckon his untold gold.

Just for that summer, too, some ships of the royal fleet anchored there
off Campobello, and the Honorable Charles Seavern, third son of an Earl,
and professional at his cups, swung them at his will, and made holiday
meanwhile among the gay and willing folk of all the little towns around.

There was another yet, a youth growing up to fine estates away off
beyond Halifax. His father sat in the Queen's own Parliament for the
Colonies, had bent to the knightly accolade, and a change of ministry or
of residence might any day create Sir Brenton peer; his mother had been
Mrs. Strathsay's dearest friend:--this child who off and on for half his
life had made her house his home and Alice his companion, while in the
hearts of both children Mrs. Strathsay had cautiously planted and nursed
the seed,--a winning boy, a noble lad, a lordly man.

If Margray had not married old Johnny Graeme, it would have broken Mrs.
Strathsay's will; the will was strong; she did, she married him. If
Mary, with her white moonsheen of beauty, did not bewitch the senses of
Captain Seavern, it would break Mrs. Strathsay's pride; and few things
were stronger than Mrs. Strathsay's pride,--unless 't were Mary's own.
If Effie----but that's nothing to the purpose. If Alice did not become
the bride of Angus Ingestre, it would break Mrs. Strathsay's heart.
God forgive me! but I bethought me once that her heart was the weakest
member in all her body.

So she kissed us, as I say, and we slid down the ten miles of river, and
went sailing past the busy islands and over the broad deeps and out of
the day and into the night, and then two little orphans cried themselves
to sleep with their arms about each other's necks. After all, it was not
much like my picture of the great world, this lonely sea, this plunging
up from billow on to billow, this burrowing down in the heart of
green-gloomed hollows, this rocking and creaking and straining, this
buoyant bounding over the crests,--yet the freedom, the monotony, the
wild career of the winds fired me; it set my blood a-tingle; I liked it.
And then I thought of Angus, rocked to sleep each night, as he was now,
in his ocean-cradle. But once at school, and the world was round me; it
hummed up from the streets, it boomed down from the spires. I became a
part of it, and so forgot it. To Effie there were ever stealing rumors
of yet a world beyond, of courts and coronets, of satin shimmer and
glitter of gems, but they glanced off from me,--and other than thus I
have never yet found that great world that used to lie over the river.

We had been at school a happy while, and but for constant letters,
and for the brief visit of Mrs. Strathsay, who had journeyed over the
Atlantic for one last look at sweet home-things, and to see how all went
with us, and then had flitted back again,--but for that, home would have
seemed the veriest dream that ever buzzed in an idle brain: would so
have seemed to other maidens, not to us, for the fibres of the Strathsay
heart were threads that never wore thin or parted. Two twelvemonths
more, and we should cross the sea ourselves at last; and wearying now
of school a bit, all our visions centred in St. Anne's, and the merry
doings, the goings and comings, that we heard of there; and it seemed to
me as if home were to be the beginning of life, as erst it had seemed
that in school we should find the world.

It was the vacation of the long summer term; there was packing and
padlocking to go each on her way, and the long dormitories rang with
shrill clamor. They all had a nest to seek. Effie was already gone away
with her chief crony, whose lady-mother, a distant kinswoman of our own,
fancied the girl's fair countenance. I was to join them in a week or
two,--not yet, because I had wished to send home the screens painted on
white velvet, and they wanted yet a sennight's work, and I knew Mrs.
Strathsay would be proud of them before the crackle of the autumn fires.
The maids ran hither and yon, and the bells pealed, and the knocker
clashed, and the coaches rolled away over the stone pave of the
court-yard, and there was embracing and jesting and crying, when
suddenly all the pleasant hubbub stood still, for Miss Dunreddin was
in the hall, and her page behind her, and she beckoned me from my post
aloft on a foot-board, summoning the deserters before me and awarding
them future expiations, amidst all manner of jeering and jinking and
laughter.

A gentleman from the Provinces to see me in the little parlor: he had
brought us letters from home, and after Miss Dunreddin had broken the
seals she judged we might have them, and I was at liberty for an hour,
and meantime Angus Ingestre awaited me. Angus! I sprang down the stairs,
my cheeks aglow, my heart on my lips, and only paused, finger on lock,
wondering and hesitating and fearing, till the door was flung open, and
I drawn in with two hands shut fast on my own, and two eyes--great blue
Ingestre eyes--looking down on me from the face so far above: for he
towered like a Philistine.

"And is it Angus?" I cried. For how was I to know the boy I had left in
a midshipman's jacket, in this mainmast of a man, undress-uniform and
all?

"I've no need to ask, Is it Alice?" he answered. "The same little peach
of a chin!"

"Nay, but, Angus,--'t will never do,--and I all but grown up!"

"Not my little maid any longer, then?"

But so trembling and glad was I to see him, that I dared no more words,
for I saw the tears glistening in my eyelashes and blinding me with
their dazzling flashes.

So he took me to a seat, and sat beside me, and waited a minute; and
after that waiting it was harder to speak than it had been before, and
every thought went clean out of my head, and every word, and I stared
at my hands till I seemed to see clear through them the pattern of
my dress, and at the last I looked up, and there he had been bending
forward and scanning me all the while; and then Angus laughed, and
caught up my hand and pretended to search it narrowly.

"Ah, yes, indeed," said he, "she is reading the future in her palm,
reading it backward, and finding out what this Angus Ingestre has to do
with her fate!"

"Nay, but,"----said I, and then held fast again.

"Here's a young woman that's keen to hear of her home, of her sisters,
of Queen Mary Strathsay, and of Margray's little Graeme!"

"What do _I_ care for Johnny Graeme? the little old man!"

"What, indeed? And you'll not be home a day and night before you'll be
tossing and hushing him, and the moon'll not be too good for him to
have, should he cry for it!"

"Johnny Graeme?"

"No. Angus Graeme!"

"Oh!--Margray has a son? Why didn't you tell me before?"

"When you were so eager to know!"

"It's all in my letters, I suppose. But Margray has a son, and she's
named it for you, and her husband let her?"

"'Deed, he wasn't asked."

"Why not?"

"Come, child, read your letters."

"Nay, I've but a half-hour more with you; that was the second quarter
struck; I'll read them when you're gone.--_Why not_?"

"Johnny Graeme is dead."

That sobered me a thought.

"And Margray?" I asked.

"Poor Margray,--she feels very badly."

"You don't mean to say"----

"That she cared for him? But I do."

"Now, Angus Ingestre, I _heard_ Margray tell her mother she'd liefer
work on the roads with a chain and ball than marry him! It's all you men
know of women. Love Johnny Graeme! Oh, poor man, rest his soul! I'm sore
sorry for him. He's gone where there's no gold to make, unless they
smelt it there; and I'm not sure but they do,--sinsyne one can see all
the evil it's the root of, and all the woe it works,--and he bought
Margray, you know he did, Angus!"

"It's little Alice talking so of her dead brother!"

"He's no brother of mine; I never took him, if Margray did. Brother
indeed! there's none such,--unless it's you, Angus!" And there all the
blood flew into my cheeks, and they burned like two fires, and I was
fain to clap my palms upon them.

"No," said Angus. "I'm not your brother, Ailie darling, and never wish
to be,--but"----

"And Margray?" I questioned, quickly,--the good Lord alone knew why.
"Poor Margray! tell me of her. Perhaps she misses him; he was not, after
all, so curst as Willy Scott. Belike he spoke her kindly."

"Always," said Angus, gnawing in his lip a moment ere the word. "And
the child changed him, Mary Strathsay says. But perhaps you're right;
Margray makes little moan."

"She was aye a quiet lass. Poor Johnny!--I'm getting curst myself. Well,
it's all in my letters. But you, Angus dear, how came you here?"

"I? My father came to London; and being off on leave from my three
years' cruise, I please myself in passing my holiday, and spend the last
month of it in Edinboro', before rejoining the ship."

All my moors and heather passed like a glamour. The green-wood shaws
would be there another year,--Angus was here to-day. I cast about me,
and knew that Miss Dunreddin would speed away to take her pleasure, and
there'd be none left but the governess and the painting-mistress, with
a boarder or two like myself,--and as for the twain, I could wind them
round my thumb.

"Oh, Angus," I said, breathlessly, "there's Arthur's Seat, and the
palaces, and the galleries and gardens,--it'll be quite as good as the
moors; there'll be no Miss Dunreddin, and you can stay here all the
leelang simmer's day!"

He smiled, as he answered,--

"And I suppose those scarlet signals at the fore signify"----

"Nothing!"

"Fast colors, I see."

"It's my father's own color, and I'm proud of it,--barring the telltale
trouble."

"You're proud," said he, absently, standing up to go, "that you are the
only one of them all that heirs him?"

"Not quite. It's the olive in my father's cheek that darkened his wife's
yellow curls into Mary Strathsay's chestnut ones. And she's like me in
more than that, gin she doesn't sell hersel' for siller and gowd."

"I'll tell you what. Mrs. Strathsay is over-particular in speech. She'll
have none of the broad Highland tongue about her. It's a daily struggle
that she has, not to strike Nurse Nannie dumb, since she has infected
you all with her dialect. A word in time. Now I must go. To-morrow night
I'll come and take you to the play, Miss Dunreddin or no Miss Dunreddin.
But sing to me first. It's a weary while since I used to hear that voice
crooning itself to sleep across the hall with little songs."

So I sang the song he chose, "My love, she's but a lassie yet"; and he
took the bunch of bluebells from my braids, and was gone.

The next night Angus was as good as his word. Miss Dunreddin was already
off on her pleasuring, he took the gray little governess for duenna,
and a blither three never sat out a tragedy, or laughed over wine
and oysters in the midst of a garden with its flowers and fountains
afterwards. 'T was a long day since the poor little woman had known such
merrymaking; and as for me, this playhouse, this mimicry of life, was a
new sphere. We went again and again,--sometimes the painting-mistress,
too; then she and the governess fell behind, and Angus and I walked at
our will. Other times we wandered through the gay streets, or we went
up on the hill and sat out the sunsets, and we strolled through the two
towns, high and low. The days sped, the long shine of the summer days,
and, oh, my soul was growing in them like a weed in the sun!

It never entered my happy little thoughts all this time that what was
my delight might yet be Angus's dole; for, surely, a school-girl is so
interesting to no one else as herself, while she continually comes upon
all the fresh problems in her nature. So, when a day passed that I heard
no step in the hall, no cheery voice rousing the sleepy echoes with my
name, I was restless enough. Monday, Tuesday,--no Angus. I ought to have
thought whether or no he had found some of his fine friends, and if they
had no right to a fragment of his time; yet I was but a child. The third
day dawned and passed, and at length, sitting there among the evening
shadows in the long class-room, a little glumly, the doors clanged as
of old, a loud, laughing sentence was tossed up to the little gray
governess at the stair-head, then, three steps at a time, he had
mounted, and was within,--and what with my heart in my throat and its
bewildered beating, I could not utter a word. I but sprang to the window
and made as if I had been amusing myself there: I would have no Angus
Ingestre be thinking that he was all the world to me, and I nought to
him.

"A little ruffled," said he, at the saucy shake of my head. "Well, I
sha'n't tell you where I've been. I've the right to go into the country
for a day, have I not? What is it to Alice Strathsay how often I go to
Loch Rea? There's something Effie begged me to get you!" And he set down
a big box on the table.

So, then, he had been to see Effie. It was fair enough, and yet I
couldn't help the jealous pang. I wouldn't turn my head, though I did
wonder what was in the big box, but, holding out my hand backward, I
said,--

"Well, it's no odds where you've been, so long's you're here now. Come
and lean out of the window by me,--it's old times,--and see the grand
ladies roll by in their coaches, some to the opera, some to the balls."

"Why should I watch the grand ladies roll by, when there's one so very
much grander beside me," he said, laughing, but coming. And so we stood
together there and gazed down on the pretty sight, the beautiful women
borne along below in the light of the lamps, with their velvets, their
plumes, and their jewels, and we made little histories for them all, as
they passed.

"They are only the ugly sisters," said Angus, at length. "But here is
the true Cinderella waiting for her godmother. Throw your cape over your
hair, Ailie dear; the dew falls, and you'll be taking cold. There, it's
the godmother herself, and you'll confess it, on seeing what miracles
can be worked with this little magic-lantern of yours. Come!" and he
proceeded to open the box.

But I waited a minute still; it was seldom the sumptuous coaches
rolled through this by-way which they had taken to-night in their gay
procession, since the pavers had left the broad street beyond blocked up
for the nonce, and I liked to glimpse this little opening into a life
just beyond my sphere.

"You are shivering in your thin frock at the window, Miss Strathsay,"
said the little gray governess.

"Come here, Ailie, and hold the candle," said Angus. "Effie has great
schemes of terror with this in the dormitories, o' nights. There!" and
he whirled the lighted match out of the window.

Just then I turned, the little flame fell on my muslin sleeve,--a cloud
of smoke, a flash, a flare, the cape round my face soared in blaze, it
seemed that I was wrapt in fire!

Angus caught me on the instant, crushed the burning things with his
fingers, had his coat round me, had all drenched in the water that the
governess had raced after, and then I knew no more.

So the women put me to bed, while Angus brought the surgeon; then they
forbade him the room, and attended to my wants; but all night long he
paced the halls and heard my moans, and by daybreak I was stupefied. He
waited a week, but they would not suffer him to see me, and then his
leave of absence had expired.

One night I woke; I felt that the room was darkly rich with the
star-lighted gloom, but I could see nothing, for all the soft, cool
linen folds; and lying there half-conscious for a time, I seemed to feel
some presence in the door-way there.

"Angus, is that you?" I asked.

"Oh, Ailie darling!" he cried, and came forward and fell on his knees by
my side, and covered my hands with his tears.

"Poor Angus!" I said, in my muffled way, and I tried half to rise, and I
was drawing away a hand that I might dash the tears off his face.

Then of a sudden it came over me in one great torrid flush, and I fell
back without a word.

But at the moment, the little gray governess came in again from her
errand, and he went. 'T was no use his waiting, though he lingered still
a day or two in hopes to see me; but my head was still on my pillow.
His time was more than up, he must to the ship, so he left me store of
messages and flowers and glass-bred grapes, and was off.

Time wore away, I got about again, and all was as before, long ere the
girls came back, or Miss Dunreddin. I went near no moors, I looked no
more out of my window, I only sat on the stool by my bedside and kept my
face hid in the valances; and the little gray governess would sit beside
me and cheer me, and tell me it was not so bad when all was said, and
beauty was but little worth, and years would efface much, that my hair
was still as dark and soft, my eyes as shining, my----But all to what
use? Where had flown the old Strathsay red from my cheek, where that
smooth polish of brow, where----I, who had aye been the flower of the
race, the pride of the name, could not now bide to brook my own glance
in the glass.

But the worst of it all would be, I thought,--not recking the worse to
come,--when the girls flocked back. How I dreaded it, how I sought to
escape their mock and go home, poor fool! but the little gray governess
saw them all first, I must believe, for there was not a quip or a look
askance, and they treated me as bairns treat a lamb that has tint its
mother. And so seeing I had lost my fair skin, I put myself to gain
other things in its place, and worked hard at my stents, at my music, my
books. I grew accustomed to things, and would forget there had been a
change, and, being young, failed to miss the being bonny; and if I did
not miss it, who should? and they all were so kind, that the last year
of school was the happiest of the whole. Thus the time drew near my
eighteenth summer, and Miss Dunreddin had heard of a ship bound our
way from Glasgow, and we were to leave the town with all its rare old
histories, and speed through nights and days of seafaring to St. Anne's
by the water-side, to the old stone house with its windows overhanging
the River of the Cross.

So the old brig slid lazily up the river, beneath the high and beauteous
banks, and as between the puffs of wind we lay there in the mid-channel,
the mate,--a dark, hawk-eyed man, at whom Effie liked well to toss a
merry mock, and with whom, sometimes stealing up, she would pace the
deck in hours of fair weather,--a man whose face was like a rock that
once was smitten with sunshine, never since,--a sad man, with a wrathful
lip even when he spoke us fair,--the mate handed me his glass and bade
me look, while he went to the side and bent over there with Effie,
gazing down into the sun-brown, idle current. And I pointed it,--and
surely that was the old stone gable in its woodbines,--and surely, as
we crept nearer, the broad bower-window opened before me,--and surely a
lady sat there, a haughty woman with the clustered curls on her temple,
her needle poised above the lace-work in the frame, and she gazing
dreamily out, out at the water, the woods, the one ship wafting slowly
up,--shrouds that had been filled with the airs of half a hemisphere,
hull that had ere now been soaked in spicy suns and summers,--and all
the glad tears gushed over my eyes and darkened me from seeing. So, as
I said, Mrs. Strathsay sat in her broad bower-window looking down the
harbor, and a ship was coming up, and Effie and I stood on its deck, our
hearts full of yearning. Mine was, at least, I know. And I could but
snatch the glass up, every breathing, as we went, and look, and drop it,
for it seemed as if I must fly to what it brought so near, must fly to
fling my arms about the fair neck bending there, to feel the caressing
finger, to have that kiss imprint my cheek once more,--so seldom her
lips touched us!

They lowered us down in boats at last, the captain going ashore with us,
the porters following with our luggage. The great hall-door below stood
open, and the familiar servants were there to give us greeting, and
we stayed but for a hand's-shake, except that my old nurse, where she
caught it, wet my shawl with her sudden weeping, so that Effie had run
up the stairs before me, and was in the drawing-room and was folded in
the tender grasp, and had first received the welcome. A moment after,
and I was among them. Mrs. Strathsay stood there under the chandelier
in the sunshine, with all its showering rainbow-drops,--so straight and
stately she, so superb and splendid,--her arms held out,--and I ran
forward, and paused, for my veil had blown over my face, to throw it
back and away,--and, with the breath, her shining blue eyes opened and
filled with fire, her proud lips twisted themselves in pain, she struck
her two hands together, crying out, "My God! how horrible!" and fainted.

Mrs. Strathsay was my mother. I might have fallen, too,--I might have
died, it seems to me, with the sudden snap my heart gave,--but all in a
word I felt Mary Strathsay's soft curls brushing about my face, and
she drew it upon her white bosom, and covered the poor thing with, her
kisses. Margray was bending over my mother, with the hartshorn in her
hands, and I think--the Lord forgive her!--she allowed her the whole
benefit of its battery, for in a minute or two Mrs. Strathsay rose, a
little feeble, wavered an instant, then warned us all away and walked
slowly and heavily from the place, up the stairs, and the door of her
own room banged behind her and hasped like the bolt of a dungeon.

I drank the glass of wine Mary brought me, and tried hard not to sadden
them, and to be a woman.

"Poor thing!" said Margray, when she'd taken off my bonnet and looked at
the fashion of my frock, "but you're sorely altered. Never fret,--it's
worth no tear; she counted much on your likely looks, though,--you never
told us the accident took them."

"I thought you'd know, Margray."

"Oh, for sure, there's many escapes.--And this is grenadine? I'd rather
have the old mohair.--Well, well, give a man luck and throw him into the
sea; happen you'll do better than us all. If my mother cannot marry you
as she'd choose, you'll come to less grief, I doubt." And Margray heaved
a little sigh, and ran to tumble up her two-year-old from his rose-lined
basket.

I went home with Margray that night; I couldn't bear to sleep in the
little white bed that was mine when a happy child, and with every star
that rose I felt a year the older; and on the morrow, when I came home,
my mother was still in the same taking, so I went back again and whiled
the day off as I could; and it was not so hard, for Mary Strathsay came
over, and Effie, and there was so much to tell, and so much to ask, and
Effie had all along been so full of some grand company she had met that
last year in Edinboro', that the dinner-bells rang ere we thought of
lunch; but still a weight lay on me like a crime on conscience. But by
the next dawning I judged 't was best that I should gather courage and
settle things as they were to be. Margray's grounds joined our own, and
I snatched up the babe, a great white Scotch bairn, and went along with
him in my arms under the dripping orchard-boughs, where still the soft
glooms lingered in the early morn. And just ere I reached the wicket, a
heavy step on the garden-walk beyond made my heart plunge, and I came
face to face with my mother. My tongue clove to the roof of my mouth, I
did not dare glance up, yet I felt her eyes upon me as if she searched
some spot fit for her fine lips, and presently her hand was on my head,
and the kiss had fallen on my hair, and then she gathered me into her
arms, and her tears rained down and anointed my face like chrism. And I
just let the wondering wean slip to the grass, and I threw my arms about
her and cried, "Oh, mother, mother, forgive me, and love me just a
little!" It was but a breathing; then I remembered the child at my feet,
and raised him, and smiled back on Mrs. Strathsay, and went on with a
lighter heart to set my chests and drawers straight.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21