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

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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, reillume, 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.

IV.

THE 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."

This address, splendidly illuminated on vellum, was sent to our shores
at the head of twenty-six folio volumes, containing considerably more
than half a million of signatures of British women. It was forwarded
to me with a letter from a British nobleman now occupying one of the
highest official positions in England, with a request on behalf of these
ladies that it should be in any possible way presented to the attention
of my countrywomen.

This memorial, as it now stands in its solid oaken case, with its heavy
folios, each bearing on its back the imprint of the American eagle,
forms a most unique library, a singular monument of an international
expression of a moral idea.

No right-thinking person can find aught to be objected against the
substance or the form of this memorial. It is temperate, just, and
kindly, and on the high ground of Christian equality, where it places
itself, may be regarded as a perfectly proper expression of sentiment,
as between blood-relations and equals in two different nations.

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