 | The amber gods, and other stories |  |
II.
When Miss Kent, the maternal great-aunt of Mr. Raleigh,
devised her property, the will might possibly have
been set aside as that of a monomaniac, but for the fact
that he cared too little about anything to go to law for it,
and for the still more important fact that the heirs-at-law
were sufficiently numerous to ingulf the whole property
and leave no ripple to attest its submerged existence, had
he done so; and on deserting it, he was better pleased to
enrich the playfellow of his childhood than a host of unknown
and unloved individuals. I cannot say that he did
not more than once regret what he had lost: he was not
of a self-denying nature, as we know; on the contrary,
luxurious and accustomed to all those delights of life generally
to be procured only through wealth. But, for all
that, there had been intervals, ere his thirteen years' exile
ended, in which, so far from regret, he experienced a certain
joy at remembrance of this rough and rugged point
of time where he had escaped from the chrysalid state to
one of action and freedom and real life. He had been
happy in reaching India before his uncle's death, in applaying
his own clear understanding to the intricate entanglements
of the affairs before him, in rescuing his uncle's
commercial good name, and in securing thus for himself a
foothold on the ladder of life, although that step had not
For the rest, I am not sure that Mr. Raleigh
did not find his path suiting him well enough. There was
no longer any charm in home; he was forbidden to think
of it. That strange summer, that had flashed into his life
like the gleam of a carnival-torch into quiet rooms, must
be forgotten; the forms that had peopled it, in his determination,
should become shadows. Valiant vows! Yet
there must have come moments, in that long lapse of days
and years, when the whole season gathered up its garments
and swept imperiously through his memory: nights,
when under the shadow of the Himmaleh, the old passion
rose at spring-tide and flooded his heart and drowned out
forgetfulness, and a longing asserted itself, that, if checked
as instantly by honor as despair, was none the less insufferable
and full of pain, — warm, wide, Southern nights,
when all the stars, great and golden, leaned out of heaven
to meet him, and all ripe perfumes, wafted by their own
principle of motion, floated in the rich dusk and laden air
about him, and the phantom of snow on topmost heights
sought vainly to lend him its calm. Days also must have
showered their fervid sunshine on him, as he journeyed
through plains of rice, where all the broad reaches whitening
to harvest filled him with intense and bitterest loneliness.
What region of spice did not recall the noons when
they two had trampled the sweet-fern on wide, high New
England pastures, and breathed its intoxicating fragrance?
and what forest of the tropics, what palms, what blooms,
what gorgeous affluence of color and of growth, equalled
the wood on the lake-shores, with its stately hemlocks, its
joyous birches, its pale-blue, shadow-blanched violets?
Nor was this regret, that had at last become a part of
the man's identity, entirely a selfish one. He had no authority
firmly and tenderly as he loved, he was loved, and of the
two fates his was not the harder. But a man, a man, too,
in the stir of the world, has not the time for brooding over
the untoward events of his destiny that a woman has; his
tender memories are forever jostled by cent per cent; he
meets too many faces to keep the one in constant and unchanging
perpetuity sacredly before his thought. And so
it happened that Mr. Raleigh became at last a silent, keen-eyed
man, with the shadow of old and enduring melancholy
on his life, but with no certain sorrow there.
In the course of time his business connections extended
themselves; he was associated with other men more intent
than he upon their aim; although not wealthy, years
might make him so; his name commanded respect. Something
of his old indifference lingered about him; it was seldom
that he was in earnest; he drifted with the tide, and
except to maintain a clear integrity before God and men
and his own soul, exerted scarcely an effort. It was not
an easy thing for him to break up any manner of life;
and when it became necessary for one of the firm to visit
America, and he as the most suitable was selected, he assented
to the proposition with not a heart-beat. America
was as flat a wilderness to him as the Desert of Sahara.
On landing in India, he had felt like a semi-conscious
sleeper in his dream, the country seemed one of phantasms;
the Lascars swarming in the port, — the merchants
wrapped in snowy muslins, who moved like white-robed
bronzes faintly animate, — the strange faces, modes,
and manners, — the stranger beasts, immense, and alien
to his remembrance; all objects that crossed his vision
had seemed like a series of fantastic shows; he could
have imagined them to be the creations of a heated
magic. But now they had become more his life than
the scenes which he had left; this land with its heats
and its languors had slowly and passively endeared itself
to him; these perpetual summers, the balms and
blisses of the South, had unconsciously become a need
of his nature. One day all was ready for his departure;
and in the clipper ship Osprey, with a cargo for
Day, Knight, and Company, Mr. Raleigh bade farewell
to India.
The Osprey was a swift sailer and handled with consummate
skill, so that I shall not venture to say in how
few days she had weathered the Cape, and, ploughing up
the Atlantic, had passed the Windward Islands, and off
the latter had encountered one of the severest gales in
Captain Tarbell's remembrance, although he was not new
to shipwreck. If Mr. Raleigh had found no time for reflection
in the busy current of affairs, when, ceasing to
stand aside, he had mingled in the turmoil and become a
part of the generations of men, he could not fail to find it
in this voyage, not brief at best, and of which every day's
progress must assure him anew toward what land and
what people he was hastening. Moreover, Fate had
woven his lot, it seemed, inextricably among those whom
he would shun; for Mr. Laudersdale himself was deeply
interested in the Osprey's freight, and it would be incumbent
upon him to extend his civilities to Mr. Raleigh.
But Mr. Raleigh was not one to be cozened by circumstances
more than by men.
The severity of the gale, which they had met some
three days since, had entirely abated; the ship was laid
to while the slight damage sustained was undergoing repair,
and rocked heavily beneath the gray sky on the long,
had just come upon deck at dawn, where he found every
one in unaccountable commotion. “Ship to leeward in
distress,” was all the answer his inquiries could obtain,
while the man on the topmast was making his observations.
Mr. Raleigh could see nothing, but every now and
then the boom of a gun came faintly over the distance.
The report having been made, it was judged expedient to
lower a boat and render her such assistance as was possible.
Mr. Raleigh never could tell how it came to pass
that he found himself one of the volunteers in this dangerous
service.
The disabled vessel proved to be a schooner from the
West Indies in a sinking condition. A few moments sufficed
to relieve a portion of her passengers, sad wretches
who for two days had stared death in the face, and they
pulled back toward the Osprey. A second and third
journey across the waste, and the remaining men prepared
to lower the last woman into the boat, when a
stout, but extremely pale individual, who could no longer
contain his frenzy of fear, clambered down the chains and
dropped in her place. There was no time to be lost, and
nothing to do but submit; the woman was withdrawn to
wait her turn with the captain and crew, and the laden
boat again labored back to the ship. Each trip in the
heavy sea and the blinding rain occupied no less than a
couple of hours, and it was past noon when, uncertain just
before if she might yet be there, they again came within
sight of the little schooner, slowly and less slowly settling
to her doom. As they approached her at last, Mr. Raleigh
could plainly detect the young woman standing at a
little distance from the anxious group, leaning against the
broken mast with crossed arms, and looking out over the
the motion of the captain, she stepped forward, bound the
ropes about herself, and was swung over the side to await
the motion of the boat, as it slid within reach on the top
of the long wave, or receded down its shining, slippery
hollow. At length one swell brought it nearer, Mr. Raleigh's
arms snatched the slight form and drew her half-fainting
into the boat, a cloak was tossed after, and one by
one the remainder followed; they were all safe, and some
beggared. The bows of the schooner already plunged
deep down in the gaping gulfs, they pulled bravely
away, and were tossed along from billow to billow.
“You are very uncomfortable, Mademoiselle Le Blanc?”
asked the rescued captain at once of the young woman, as
she sat beside him in the stern-sheets.
“Moi?” she replied. “Mais non, Monsieur.”
Mr. Raleigh wrapped the cloak about her, as she spoke.
They were equidistant from the two vessels, neither of
which was to be seen, the rain fell fast into the hissing
brine, their fate still uncertain. There was something
strangely captivating and reassuring in this young girl's
equanimity, and he did not cease speculating thereon till
they had again reached the Osprey, and she had disappeared
below.
By degrees the weather lightened; the Osprey was on
the wing again, and a week's continuance of this fair wind
would bring them into port. The next day, toward sunset,
as Mr. Raleigh turned about in his regular pacing
of the deck, he saw, at its opposite extremity, the same
slight figure dangerously perched upon the taffrail, leaning
over, now watching the closing water, and now
eagerly shading her eyes with her hand to observe the
ship which they spoke, as they lay head to the wind, and
It was not Mr. Raleigh's custom to interfere; if
people chose to drown themselves, he was not the man to
gainsay them; but now, as his walk drew him toward
her, it was the most natural thing in the world to pause
and say, —
“Il serait fâcheux, Mademoiselle, lorsqu'on a failli faire
naufrage, de se noyer” — and, in want of a word, Mr.
Raleigh ignominiously descended to his vernacular, —
“with a lee-lurch.”
The girl, resting on the palm of one hand, and unsupported
otherwise, bestowed upon him no reply, and did
not turn her head. Mr. Raleigh looked at her a moment,
and then continued his walk. Returning, the thing happened
as he had predicted, and, with a little quick cry,
Mademoiselle Le Blanc was hanging by her hands among
the ropes. Reaching her with a spring, “Viens, petite!”
he said, and with an effort placed her on her feet again
before an alarm could have been given.
“Ah! mais j'ai cru que c'en était fait de moi!” she
exclaimed, drawing in her breath like a sob. In an instant,
however, surveying Mr. Raleigh, the slight emotion
seemed to yield to one of irritation, that she had been
rescued by him; for she murmured quickly, in English,
head haughtily thrown back and eyes downcast, — “Monsieur
thinks that I owe him much for having saved my
life!”
“Mademoiselle best knows its worth,” said he, rather
amused, and turning away.
The girl was still looking down; now, however, she
threw after him a quick glance.
“Tenez!” said she, imperiously, and stepping toward
him. “You fancy me very ungrateful,” she continued,
away the floating hair at her temples. “Well, I am not,
and at some time it may be that I prove it. I do not like
to owe debts; but, since I must, I will not try to cancel
them with thanks.”
Mr. Raleigh bowed, but said nothing. She seemed
to think it necessary to efface any unpleasant impression,
and, with a little more animation and a smile,
added, —
“The Captain Tarbell told me your name, Mr. Raleigh,
and that you had not been at home for thirteen years. Ni
moi non plus, — at least, I suppose it is home where I
am going; yet I remember no other than the island and
my —”
And here the girl opened her eyes wide, as if determined
that they should not fill with tears, and looked out
over the blue and sparkling fields around them. There
was a piquancy in her accent that made the hearer wish
to hear further, and a certain artlessness in her manner
not met with recently by him. He moved forward, keeping
her beside him.
“Then you are not French,” he said.
“I? Oh, no, — nor Creole. I was born in America;
but I have always lived with mamma on the plantation;
et maintenant, il y a six mois qu'elle est morte!”
Here she looked away again. Mr. Raleigh's glance
followed hers, and, returning, she met it bent kindly and
with a certain grave interest upon her. She appeared to
feel reassured, somewhat protected by one so much her
elder.
“I am going now to my father,” she said, “and to my
other mother.”
“A second marriage,” thought Mr. Raleigh, “and before
should read his thought, he added, — “And how do you
speak such perfect English?”
“Oh, my father came to see us every other year, and I
have written home twice a week since I was a little child.
Mamma, too, spoke as much English as French.”
“I have not been in America for a long time,” said Mr.
Raleigh, after a few steps. “But I do not doubt that you
will find enjoyment there. It will be new: womanhood
will have little like youth for you; but, in every event, it
is well to add to our experience, you know.”
“What is it like, sir? But I know! Rows of houses,
very counterparts of rows of houses, and they of rows of
houses yet beyond. Just the toy-villages in boxes, uniform
as graves and ugly as bricks — ”
“Brick houses are not such ugly things. I remember
one, low and wide, possessed of countless gables, covered
with vines and shaded with sycamores; it could not have
been so picturesque, if built of the marble of Paros, and
gleaming temple-white through masks of verdure.”
“It seems to me that I, too, remember such a one,”
said she, dreamily. “Mais non, je m'y perds. Yet, for
all that, I shall not find the New York avenues lined with
them.”
“No; the houses there are palaces.”
“I suppose, then, I am to live in a palace,” she answered,
with a light tinkling laugh. “That is fine; but
one may miss the verandas, all the whiteness and coolness.
How one must feel the roof!”
“Roofs should be screens, and not prisons, not shells,
you think?” said Mr. Raleigh.
“At home,” she replied, “our houses are, so to say,
parasols; in those cities they must be iron shrouds.
like a little fatalist.
“You must not take it with such desperation; perhaps
you will not be obliged to wear the shroud.”
“Not long, to be sure, at first. We go to freeze in the
country, a place with distant hills of blue ice, my old
nurse told me, — old Ursule. Oh, sir, she was drowned!
I saw the very wave that swept her off!”
“That was your servant?”
“Yes.”
“Then, perhaps, I have some good news for you. She
was tall and large?”
“Oui.”
“Her name was Ursule?”
“Oui! je dis que oui!”
Mr. Raleigh laughed at her eagerness.
“She is below, then,” he said, — “not drowned. There
is Reynolds. Mr. Reynolds, will you take this young
lady to her servant, Ursule, the woman you rescued?”
And Mademoiselle Le Blanc disappeared under that
gentleman's escort.
The ordinary restraints of social life not obtaining so
much on board ship as elsewhere, Mr. Raleigh saw his
acquaintance with the pale young stranger fast ripening
into friendliness. It was an agreeable variation from the
monotonous routine of his voyage, and he felt that it was
not unpleasant to her. Indeed, with that childlike simplicity
that was her first characteristic, she never saw him
without seeking him, and every morning and every evening
it became their habit to pace the deck together. Sunrise
and twilight began to be the hours with which he
associated her; and it was strange, that, coming, as she
did, out of the full blaze of tropical suns, she yet seemed
hours, and that must fairly dissolve beneath the sky of noon.
She puzzled him, besides, and he found singular contradictions
in her: to-night, sweetness itself, — to-morrow, petulant
as a spoiled child. She had all a child's curiosity,
too; and he amused himself by seeing, at one time, with
what novelty his adventures struck her, when, at another,
he would have fancied she had always held Taj and Himmaleh
in her garden. Now and then, excited, perhaps,
by emulation and wonder, her natural joyousness broke
through the usually sad and quiet demeanor; and she
related to him, with dramatic abandon, scenes of her gay
and innocent island-life, so that he fancied there was not
an emotion in her experience hidden from his knowledge,
till, all-unaware, he tripped over one reserve and another,
that made her, for the moment, as mysterious a being as
any of those court-ladies of ancient régimes, in whose lives
there were strange lacunæ and spaces of shadow. And a
peculiarity of their intercourse was, that, let her depart in
what freak or perversity she pleased, she seemed always
to have a certainty of finding him in the same mood in
which she had left him, — as some bright wayward vine
of Southern forests puts out a tendril to this or that enticing
point, yet, winding back, will find its first support
unchanged. Shut out, as Mr. Raleigh had been, from
any but the most casual female society, he found a great
charm in this familiarity, and, without thinking how lately
it had begun or how soon it must cease, he yielded himself
to its presence. At one hour she seemed to him an
impetuous and capricious thing, for whose better protection
the accident of his companionship was extremely fortunate,
— at another hour, a woman too strangely sweet to
part with; and then Mr. Raleigh remembered that in all
of these had not spent a week in his memory.
Mademoiselle Le Blanc came on deck one evening,
and, wrapping a soft, thick mantle round her, looked
about for a minute, shaded her eyes from the sunset,
meantime, with a slender, transparent hand, bowed to one,
spoke to another, slipped forward and joined Mr. Raleigh,
where he leaned over the ship's side.
“Voici ma capote!” said she, before he was aware of
her approach. “Ciel! qu'il fait frais!”
“We have changed our skies,” said Mr. Raleigh,
looking up.
“It is not necessary that you should tell me that!” she
replied. “I shiver all the time. I shall become a little
iceberg, for the sake of floating down to melt off Martinique!”
“Warm yourself now in the sunset; such a blaze was
kindled for the purpose.”
“Whenever I see a sunset, I find it to be a splendid
fact, une jouissance vraie, Monsieur, to think that men can
paint, — that these shades, which are spontaneous in the
heavens, and fleeting, can be rivalled by us and made
permanent, — that man is more potent than light.”
“But you are all wrong in your jouissance.”
She pouted her lip, and hung over the side in an
attitude that it seemed he had seen a hundred times
before.
“That sunset, with all its breadth and splendor, is
contained in every pencil of light.”
She glanced up and laughed.
“Oh, yes! a part of its possibilities. Which proves —?”
“That color is an attribute of light and an achievement
of man.”
Toute la journée,
Le vent vain va
En sa tournée,”
hummed the girl, with a careless dismissal of the subject.
Mr. Raleigh shut up the note-book in which he had
been writing, and restored it to his pocket. She turned
about and broke off her song.
“There is the moon on the other side,” she said, “floating
up like a great bubble of light. She and the sun are
the scales of a balance, I think; as one ascends, the other
sinks.”
“There is a richness in the atmosphere, when sunset
melts into moonrise, that makes one fancy it enveloping
the earth like the bloom on a plum.”
“And see how it has powdered the sea! The waters
look like the wings of the papillon bleu.”
“It seems that you love the sea.”
“Oh, certainly. I have thought that we islanders were
like those Chinese who live in great tanka-boats on the
rivers; only our boat rides at anchor. To climb the
highest land, and see yourself girt with fields of azure
enamelled in sheets of sunshine and fleets of sails, and
lifted against the horizon, deep, crystalline, and translucent
as a gem, — that makes one feel strong in isolation,
and produces keen races. Don't you think so?”
“I think that isolation causes either vivid characteristics
or idiocy, seldom strong or healthy ones; and I do
not value race.”
“Because you came from America!” — with an air of
disgust, — “where there is yet no race, and the population
is still too fluctuating for the mould of one.”
“I come from India, where, if anywhere, there is race.”
“But, pshaw! that was not what we were talking
about.”
“No, Mademoiselle, we were speaking of an element
even more fluctuating than American population.”
“Of course I love the sea; but if the sea loves me, it
is the way a cat loves the mouse.”
“It is always putting up a hand to snatch you?”
“I suppose I am sent to Nineveh and persist in shipping
for Tarshish. I never enter a boat without an accident.
The Belle Voyageuse met shipwreck, and I on
board. That was anticipated, though, by all the world;
for the night before we set sail, — it was a very murk,
hot night, — we were all called out to see the likeness of
a large merchantman transfigured in flames upon the sky,
— spars and ropes and hull one net and glare of fire.”
“A mirage, probably, from some burning ship at
sea.”
“No, I would rather think it supernatural. Oh, it was
frightful! Rather superb, though, to think of such a
spectral craft rising to warn us with ghostly flames that
the old Belle Voyageuse was riddled with rats!”
“Did it burn blue?” asked Mr. Raleigh.
“Oh, if you 're going to make fun of me, I 'll tell you
nothing more!”
As she spoke, Capua, who had considered himself, during
the many years of wandering, both guiding and folding
star to his master, came up, with his eyes rolling fearfully
in a lively expansion of countenance, and muttered a few
words in Mr. Raleigh's ear, lifting both hands in comical
consternation the while.
“Excuse me a moment,” said Mr. Raleigh, following
him, and, meeting Captain Tarbell at the companion-way,
the three descended together.
Mr. Raleigh was absent some fifteen minutes, at the
end of that time rejoining Mademoiselle Le Blanc.
“I did not mean to make fun of you,” said he, resuming
the conversation as if there had been no interruption. “I
was watching the foam the Osprey makes in her speed,
which certainly burns blue. See the flashing sparks!
now that all the red fades from the west, they glow in
the moon like broken amethysts.”
“What did you mean, then?” she asked, pettishly.
“Oh, I wished to see if the idea of a burning ship was
so terrifying.”
“Terrifying? No; I have no fear; I never was
afraid. But it must, in reality, be dreadful. I cannot
think of anything else so appalling.”
“Not at all timid?”
“Mamma used to say, those that know nothing fear
nothing.”
“Eminently your case. Then you cannot imagine a
situation in which you would lose self-possession?”
“Scarcely. Is n't it people of the finest organization,
comprehensive, large-souled, that are capable of the extremes
either of courage or fear? Now I am limited, so
that, without rash daring or pale panic, I can generally
preserve equilibrium.”
“How do you know all this of yourself?” he asked,
with an amused air.
“Certaines occasions me l'ont appris,” she replied,
briefly.
“So I presumed,” said he. “Ah? They have thrown
out the log. See, we make progress. If this breeze
holds!”
“You are impatient, Mr. Raleigh. You have dear
friends at home, whom you wish to see, who wish to
see you?”
“No,” he replied, with a certain bitterness in his tone.
“There is no one to whom I hasten, no one who waits to
receive me.”
“No one? But that is terrible! Then why should
you wish to hasten? For me, I would always be willing
to loiter along, to postpone home indefinitely.”
“That is very generous, Mademoiselle.”
“Mr. Raleigh —”
“Well?”
“I wish — please — you must not say Mademoiselle.
Nobody will address me so, shortly. Give me my name,
— call me Marguerite. Je vous en prie.”
And she looked up with a blush deepening the applebloom
of her cheek.
“Marguerite? Does it answer for pearl or for daisy
with you?”
“Oh, they called me so because I was such a little
round white baby. I could n't have been very precious,
though, or she never would have parted with me. Yes, I
wish we might drift on some lazy current for years. I
hate to shorten the distance. I stand in awe of my father,
and I do not remember my mother.”
“Do not remember?”
“She is so perfect, so superb, so different from me!
But she ought to love her own child!”
“Her own child?”
“And then I do not know the customs of this strange
land. Shall I be obliged to keep an establishment?”
“Keep an establishment?”
“It is very rude to repeat my words so! You ought n't!
Yes, keep an establishment!”
“I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle.”
“No, it is I who am rude.”
“Not at all, — but mysterious. I am quite in the dark
concerning you.”
“Concerning me?”
“Ah, Miss Marguerite, it is my turn now.”
“Oh! It must be — This is your mystery, n'est ce
pas? Mamma was my grandmamma. My own mother
was far too young when mamma gave her in marriage;
and, to make amends, mamma adopted me and left me
her name and her fortune. So that I am very wealthy.
And now shall I keep an establishment?”
“I should think not,” said Mr. Raleigh, with a smile.
“Do you know, you constantly reassure me? Home
grows less and less a bugbear when you speak of it.
How strange! It seems as if I had known you a year,
instead of a week.”
“It would probably take that period of time to make
us as well acquainted under other circumstances.”
“I wish you were going to be with us always. Shall
you stay in America, Mr. Raleigh?”
“Only till the fall. But I will leave you at your
father's door —”
And then Mr. Raleigh ceased suddenly, as if he had
promised an impossibility.
“How long before we reach New York?” she asked.
“In about nine hours,” he replied, — adding, in unconscious
undertone, “if ever.”
“What was that you said to yourself?” she demanded,
in a light and gayly inquisitive voice, as she looked around
and over the ship. “Why, how many there are on deck!
It is such a beautiful night, I suppose. Eh, Mr. Raleigh?”
“Are you not tired of your position?” he asked. “Sit
down beside me here.” And he took a seat.
“No, I would rather stand. Tell me what you said.”
“Sit, then, to please me, Marguerite, and I will tell
you what I said.”
She hesitated a moment, standing before him, the hood
of her capote, with its rich purple, dropping from the fluttering
yellow hair that the moonlight deepened into gold,
and the fire-opal clasp rising and falling with her breath,
like an imprisoned flame. He touched her hand, still
warm and soft, with his own, which was icy. She withdrew
it, turned her eyes, whose fair, faint lustre, the pale
forget-me-not blue, was darkened by the antagonistic light
to an amethystine shadow, inquiringly upon him.
“There is some danger,” she murmured.
“Yes. When you are not a mark for general observation,
you shall hear it.”
“I would rather hear it standing.”
“I told you the condition.”
“Then I shall go and ask Captain Tarbell.”
“And come sobbing back to me for `reassurance.'”
“No,” she said, quickly, “I should go down to Ursule.”
“Ursule has a mattress on deck; I assisted her up.”
“There is the captain! Now —”
He seized her hand and drew her down beside him.
For an instant she would have resisted, as the sparkling
eyes and flushed cheeks attested, — and then, with the instinctive
feminine baseness that compels every woman,
when once she has met her master, she submitted.
“I am sorry, if you are offended,” said he. “But the
captain cannot attend to you now, and it is necessary to
be guarded in movement; for a slight thing on such
occasions may produce a panic.”
“You should not have forced me to sit,” said she, in a
smothered voice, without heeding him: “you had no
right.”
“This right, that I assume the care of you.”
“Monsieur, you see that I am quite competent to the
care of myself.”
“Marguerite, I see that you are determined to
quarrel.”
She paused a moment, ere replying; then drew a little
nearer and turned her face toward him, though without
looking up.
“Forgive me, then!” said she. “But I would rather
be naughty and froward, it lets me stay a child, and so
you can take me in keeping, and I need not think for
myself at all. But if I act like a woman grown, then
comes all the responsibility, and I must rely on myself,
which is such trouble now, though I never felt it so
before, — I don't know why. Don't you see?” And she
glanced at him with her head on one side, and laughing
archly.
“You were right,” he replied, after surveying her a
moment; “my proffered protection is entirely superfluous.”
She thought he was about to go, and placed her hand
on his, as it lay along the side. “Don't leave me,” she
murmured.
“I have no intention of leaving you,” he said.
“You are very good. I have never seen one like you.
I love you well.” And, bathed in moonlight, she raised
her face and her glowing lips toward him.
Mr. Raleigh gazed in the innocent eyes a moment, to
seek the extent of her meaning, and felt, that, should he
take advantage of her childlike forgetfulness, he would be
only re-enacting the part he had so much condemned in
one man years before. So he merely bent low over the
hand that lay in his, raised it, and touched his lips to that.
hand away, half rose trembling from her seat, and sank
into it again.
“Soit, Monsieur!” she exclaimed, abruptly. “But
you have not told me the danger.”
“It will not alarm you now?” he replied, laughing.
“I have said that I am not a coward.”
“I wonder what you would think of me when I say
that without doubt I am.”
“You, Mr. Raleigh?” she cried, astonishment banishing
anger.
“Not that I betray myself. But that I have felt the
true heart-sinking. Once, surprised in the centre of an
insurrection, I expected to find my hair white as snow, if
I escaped.”
“Your hair is very black. And you escaped?”
“So it would appear.”
“They suffered you to go on account of your terror?
You feigned death? You took flight?”
“Hardly, — neither.”
“Tell me about it,” she said, imperiously.
Though Mr. Raleigh had exchanged the singular reserve
of his youth for a well-bred reticence, he scarcely
cared to be his own hero.
“Tell me,” said she. “It will shorten the time; and
that is what you are trying to do, you know.”
He laughed.
“It was once when I was obliged to make an unpleasant
journey into the interior, and a detachment was placed
at my service. We were in a suspected district quite
favorable to their designs, and the commanding officer
was attacked with illness in the night. Being called to
his assistance, I looked abroad and fancied things wore an
down a covered path and see if anything were wrong.
Never at fault, he discovered a revolt with intent to murder
my companion and myself, and retreat to the mountains.
Of course there was but one thing to do. I put a
pistol in my belt and walked down and in among them,
singled out the ringleader, fixed him with my eye, and
bade him approach. My appearance was so sudden and
unsuspected that they forgot defiance.”
“Bien, but I thought you were afraid.”
“So I was. I could not have spoken a second word.
I experienced intense terror, and that, probably, gave my
glance a concentration of which I was unaware and by
myself incapable; but I did not suffer it to waver; I
could not have moved it, indeed; I kept it on the man
while he crept slowly toward me. I shall never forget
the horrible sensation. I did not dare permit myself to
doubt his conquest; but if I had failed, as I then thought,
his approach was like the slow coil of a serpent about me,
and it was his glittering eyes that had fixed mine, and not
mine his. At my feet, I commanded him, with a gesture,
to disarm. He obeyed, and I breathed; and one by one
they followed his example. Capua, who was behind me,
I sent back with the weapons, and in the morning gave
them their choice of returning to town with their hands
tied behind their backs, or of going on with me and
remaining faithful. They chose the latter, did me good
service, and I said nothing about the affair.”
“That was well. But were you really frightened?”
“So I said. I cannot think of it yet without a slight
shudder.”
“Yes, and a rehearsal. Your eyes charge bayonets
now. I am not a Sepoy.”
“Well, you are still angry with me?”
“How can I be angry with you?”
“How, indeed? So much your senior that you owe
me respect, Miss Marguerite. I am quite old enough to
be your father.”
“You are, sir?” she replied, with surprise. “Why,
are you fifty-five years old?”
“Is that Mr. Laudersdale's age?”
“How did you know Mr. Laudersdale was my father?”
“By an arithmetical process. That is his age?”
“Yes; and yours?”
“Not exactly. I was thirty-seven last August.”
“And will be thirty-eight next?”
“That is the logical deduction.”
“I shall give you a birthday-gift when you are just
twice my age.”
“By what courier will you make it reach me?”
“Oh, I forgot. But — Mr. Raleigh?”
“What is it?” he replied, turning to look at her, — for
his eyes had been wandering over the deck.
“I thought you would ask me to write to you.”
“No, that would not be worth while.”
His face was too grave for her to feel indignation.
“Why?” she demanded.
“It would give me great pleasure, without doubt. But
in a week you will have too many other cares and duties
to care for such a burden.”
“That shows that you do not know me at all. Vous
avez mal agi avec moi!”
Though Mr. Raleigh still looked at her, he did not
reply. She rose and walked away a few steps, coming
back.
“You are always in the right, and I consequently in
pardon? I will not put up with it?”
“We shall part in a few hours,” he replied; “when
you lose your temper, I lose my time.”
“In a few hours? Then is the danger which you
mentioned past?”
“I scarcely think so.”
“Now I am not going to be diverted again. What is
this dreadful danger?”
“Let me tell you, in the first place, that we shall probably
make the port before our situation becomes apparently
worse, — that we do not take to the boats, because
we are twice too many to fill them, owing to the Belle
Voyageuse, and because it might excite mutiny, and for
several other becauses, — that every one is on deck,
Capua consoling Ursule, the captain having told to each,
personally, the possibility of escape —”
“Achevez!”
“That the lights are closed, the hatches battened down,
and by dint of excluding the air we can keep the flames
in a smouldering state and sail into harbor a shell of safety
over this core of burning coal.”
“Reducing the equation, the ship is on fire?”
“Yes.”
She did not speak for a moment or two, and he saw
that she was quite faint. Soon recovering herself, —
“And what do you think of the mirage now?” she
asked. “Where is Ursule? I must go to her,” she
added suddenly, after a brief silence, starting to her
feet.
“Shall I accompany you?”
“Oh, no.”
“She lies on a mattress there, behind that group,” —
if you could lie beside her and get an hour's rest.”
“Me? I could n't sleep. I shall come back to you, —
may I?” And she was gone.
Mr. Raleigh still sat in the position in which she had
left him, when, a half-hour afterward, she returned.
“Where is your cloak?” he asked, rising to receive
her.
“I spread it over Ursule, she was so chilly.”
“You will not take cold?”
“I? I am on fire myself.”
“Ah, I see; you have the Saturnalian spirit in you.”
“It is like the Revolution, the French, is it not? —
drifting on before the wind of Fate, this ship full of fire
and all red-hot raging turbulence. Just look up the long
sparkling length of these white, full shrouds, swelling and
curving like proud swans, in the gale, — and then imagine
the devouring monster below in his den!”
“Don't imagine it. Be quiet and sit beside me. Half
the night is gone.”
“I remember reading of some pirates once, who, driving
forward to destruction on fearful breakers, drank and
sang and died madly. I wish the whole ship's company
would burst out in one mighty chorus now, or that we
might rush together with tumultuous impulse and dance,
— dance wildly into death and daylight.
“We have nothing to do with death,” said Mr. Raleigh.
“Our foe is simply time. You dance, then?”
“Oh, yes. I dance well, — like those white fluttering
butterflies, — as if I were au gré du vent.”
“That would not be dancing well.”
“It would not be dancing well to be at the will of the
wind, but it is perfection to appear so.”
“The dance needs the expression of the dancer's will.
It is breathing sculpture. It is mimic life beyond all
other arts.”
“Then well I love to dance. And I do dance well.
Wait, — you shall see.”
He detained her.
“Be still, little maid!” he said, and again drew her
beside him, though she still continued standing.
At this moment the captain approached.
“What cheer?” asked Mr. Raleigh.
“No cheer,” he answered, gloomily, dinting his finger-nails
into his palm. “The planks forward are already
hot to the hand. I tremble at every creak of cordage,
lest the deck crash in and bury us all.”
“You have made the Sandy Hook light?”
“Yes; too late to run her ashore.”
“You cannot try that at the —”
“Certain death.”
“The wind scarcely —”
“Veered a point. I am carrying all sail. But if this
tooth of fire gnaws below, you will soon see the masts go
by the board. And then we are lost, indeed!”
“Courage! she will certainly hold together till you can
hail the pilots.”
“I think no one need tremble when he has such an instance
of fearlessness before him,” replied the captain,
bowing to Marguerite; and turning away, he hid his suspense
and pain again under a calm countenance.
Standing all this while beside Mr. Raleigh, she had
heard the whole of the conversation, and he felt the hand
in his growing colder as it continued. He wondered if it
were still the same excitement that sent the alternate flush
and pallor up her cheek. She sat down, leaning her head
suffering the light, fine hair to blow about her temples
before the steady breeze. He bent over to look into her
eyes, and found them fixed and lustreless.
“Marguerite!” he exclaimed.
She tried to speak, but the teeth seemed to hinder the
escape of her words, and to break them into bits of sound;
a shiver shook her from head to foot.
“I wonder if this is fear,” she succeeded in saying.
“Oh, if there were somewhere to go, something to hide
me! A great horror is upon me! I am afraid! Seigneur
Dieu! Mourir par le feu! Périssons alors au plus vite!”
And she shuddered, audibly.
Mr. Raleigh passed his arm about her and gathered her
closer to himself. He saw at once, that, sensitive as she
was to every impression, this fear was a contagious one, a
mere gregarian affinity, and that she needed the preponderating
warmth and strength of a protecting presence,
the influence of a fuller vitality. He did not speak, but
his touch must in some measure have counteracted the
dread that oppressed her. She ceased trembling, but did
not move.
The westering moon went to bury herself in banks of
cloud; the wind increasing piped and whistled in strident
threatening through the rigging; the ship vibrated to the
concussive voice of the minute-gun. No murmurs but
those of wind and water were heard among the throng;
they drove forward in awful, pallid silence. Suddenly
the shriek of one voice, but from fourscore throats, rent
the agonized quiet. A red light was running along the
deck, a tongue of flame lapping round the forecastle, a
spire shooting aloft. Marguerite hid her face in Mr.
Raleigh's arm; a great sob seemed to go up from all the
and instantly the mates sprang forward and the jib
went crashing overboard. Mr. Raleigh tore his eyes
away from the fascination of this terror, and fixed them
by chance on two black specks that danced on the watery
horizon. He gazed with intense vision a moment. “The
tugs!” he cried. The words thrilled with hope in every
dying heart; they no longer saw themselves the waiting
prey of pain and death, of flames and sea. Some few
leaped into the boat at the stern, lowered and cut it
away; others dropped spontaneously into file, and passed
the dripping buckets of sea-water, to keep, if possible, the
flames in check. Mr. Raleigh and Marguerite crossed
over to Ursule.
The sight of her nurse, passive in despair, restored to
the girl a portion of her previous spirit. She knelt beside
her, talking low and rapidly, now and then laughing, and
all the time communicating nerve with her light, firm
finger-touches. Except their quick and unintelligible
murmurs, and the plash and hiss of water, nothing else
broke the torturing hush of expectation. There was a
half-hour of breathless watch ere the steam-tugs were
alongside. Already the place was full of fervid torment,
and they had climbed upon every point to leave, below,
the stings of the blistering deck. None waited on the
order of their going, but thronged and sprang precipitately.
Ursule was at once deposited in safety. The captain
moved to conduct Marguerite across, but she drew back
and clung to Mr. Raleigh.
“J'ai honte,” she said; “je ne bougerai pas plus tôt
que vous.”
The breath of the fierce flames scorched her cheek as
she spoke, the wind of their roaring progress swept her
and still kept her in his care.
There was a strange atmosphere on board the little
vessels, as they labored about and parted from the
doomed Osprey. Many were subdued with awe and joy
at their deliverance; others broke the tense strain of the
last hours in suffocating sobs. Every throb of the panting
engines they answered with waiting heart-beats, as it
sent them farther from the fearful wonder, now blazing
in multiplex lines of fire against the gray horizon. Mr.
Raleigh gazed after it as one watches the conflagration
of a home. Marguerite left her quiet weeping to gaze
with him. An hour silently passed, and as the fiery
phantom faded into dawn and distance she sang sweetly
the first few lines of an old French hymn. Another voice
took up the measure, stronger and clearer; those who
knew nothing of the words caught the spirit of the tune;
and no choral service ever pealed up temple-vaults with
more earnest accord than that in which this chant of
grateful, exultant devotion now rose from rough-throated
men and weary women in the crisp air and yellowing
spring-morning.
The stray sails had thickened into the flickering forest
of shipping at last, and as the moment of parting approached,
Marguerite stood with folded hands before Mr.
Raleigh, looking sadly down the harbor.
“I regret all that,” she said, — “these days that seem
years.”
“An equivocal phrase,” he replied, with a smile.
“But you know what I mean. I am going to strangers;
I have been with you. I shall find no one so kind
to me as you have been, Monsieur.”
“Your strangers can be much kinder to you than I
have been.”
“Never! I wish they did not exist! What do I care
for them? What do they care for me? They do not
know me; I shall shock them. I miss you, I hate them,
already. Non! Personne ne m'aime, et je n'aime personne!”
she exclaimed, with low-toned vehemence.
“Rite,” began Mr. Raleigh.
“Rite! No one but my mother ever called me that.
How did you know it?”
“I have met your mother, and I knew you a great
many years ago.”
“Mr. Raleigh!” And there was the least possible
shade of unconscious regret in the voice before it added,
“And what was I?”
“You were some little wood-spirit, the imp of a fallen
cone, mayhap, or the embodiment of birch-tree shadows.
You were a soiled and naughty little beauty, not so
different from your present self, and who kissed me on
the lips.”
“And did you refuse to take the kiss?”
He laughed.
“You were a child then,” he said. “And I was
not —”
“Was not? —”
Here the boat swung round at her moorings, and the
shock prevented Mr. Raleigh's finishing his sentence.
“Ursule is with us, or on the other one?” she asked.
“With us.”
“That is fortunate. She is all I have remaining, by
which to prove my identity.”
“As if there could be two such maidens in the
world!”
Marguerite left him, a moment, to give Captain Tarbell
her address, and returning, they were shortly afterward
following in another. As they stopped at the destined
door, Mr. Raleigh alighted and extended his hand. She
lingered a moment ere taking it, — not to say adieu, nor
to offer him cheek or lip again.
“Que je vous remercie!” she murmured, lifting her
eyes to his. “Que je vous trouve bon!” and sprang
before him up the steps.
He heard her father meet her in the hall; Ursule had
already joined them; he re-entered the coach and rolled
rapidly beyond recall.
The burning of the Osprey did not concern Mr. Raleigh's
business relations. Carrying his papers about
him, he had personally lost thereby nothing of consequence.
He refreshed himself, and proceeded at once to
the transactions awaiting him. In a brief time he found
that affairs wore a different aspect from that for which he
had been instructed, and letters from the house had
already arrived, by the overland route, which required
mutual reply and delay before he could take further
steps; so that Mr. Raleigh found himself with some
months of idleness upon his hands, in a land with not a
friend. There lay a little scented billet, among the documents
on his table, that had at first escaped his attention;
he took it up wonderingly, and broke the seal. It was
from his Cousin Kate, and had been a few days before
him. Mrs. McLean had heard of his expected arrival, it
said, and begged him, if he had any time to spare, to
spend it with her in his old home by the lake, whither
every summer they had resorted to meditate on the virtues
of the departed. There was added, in a different
hand, whose delicate and pointed characters seemed
singularly familiar, —
Come o'er the stream, Charlie, and dine wi' McLean!”
Mr. Raleigh looked at the matter a few moments; he
did not think it best to remain long in the city; he would
be glad to know if sight of the old scenes could renew a
throb. He answered his letters, replenished his wardrobe,
and took, that same day, the last train for the North.
At noon of the second day thereafter he found Mr.
McLean's coach, with that worthy gentleman in person,
awaiting him, and he stepped out, when it paused at the
foot of his own former garden, with a strange sense of the
world as an old story, a twice-told tale, a maze of error.
Mrs. McLean came running down to meet him, — a
face less round and rosy than once, as the need of pink
cap-ribbons testified, but smiling and bright as youth.
“The same little Kate,” said Mr. Raleigh, after the
first greeting, putting his hands on her shoulders and
smiling down at her benevolently.
“Not quite the same Roger, though,” said she, shaking
her head. “I expected this stain on your skin; but,
dear me! your eyes look as if you had not a friend in the
world.”
“How can they look so, when you give me such a
welcome?”
“Dear old Roger, you are just the same,” said she,
bestowing a little caress upon his sleeve. “And if you
remember the summer before you went away, you will
not find that pleasant company so very much changed
either.”
“I do not expect to find them at all.”
“Oh, then they will find you; because they are all
here, — at least the principals; some with different
names, and some, like myself, with duplicates,” — as a
and sister by the hand, and shaking chestnut curls over
rosy blushes.
After making acquaintance with the new cousins, Mr.
Raleigh turned again to Mrs. McLean.
“And who are there here?” he asked.
“There is Mrs. Purcell, — you remember Helen
Heath? Poor Mrs. Purcell, whom you knew, died, and
her slippers fitted Helen. She chaperons Mary, who is
single and speechless yet; and Captain, now Colonel,
Purcell makes a very good silent partner. He is hunting
in the West, on furlough; she is here alone. There
is Mrs. Heath, — you never have forgotten her?”
“Not I.”
“There is —”
“And how came you all in the country so early in the
season, — anybody with your devotion to company?”
“To be made April fools, John says.”
“Why, the willows are not yet so yellow as they will
be.”
“I know it. But we had the most fatiguing winter;
and Mrs. Laudersdale and I agreed, that, the moment the
snow was off the ground up here, we would fly away and
be at rest.”
“Mrs. Laudersdale? Can she come here?”
“Goodness! Why not? The last few summers we
have always spent together.”
“She is with you now, then?”
“Oh, yes. She is the least changed of all. I did n't
mean to tell, but keep her as a surprise. Of course, you
will be a surprise to everybody. — There, run along, children;
we 'll follow. — Yes, won't it be delightful, Roger?
We can all play at youth again.”
“Like skeletons in some Dance of Death!” he exclaimed.
“We shall be hideous in each other's sight.”
“McLean, I am a bride,” said his wife, not heeding
the late misanthropy; “Helen is a girl; the ghost of the
prior Mrs. Purcell shall be rediviva; and Katy there —”
“Wait a bit, Kate,” said her cousin. “Before you
have shuffled off mortality for the whole party, sit down
under this hedge, — here is an opportune bench, — and
give me accounts from the day of my departure.”
“Dear me, Roger, as if that were possible! The
ocean in a tea-cup? Let me see, — you had a flirtation
with Helen that summer, did n't you? Well, she
spent the next winter at the Fort with the Purcells. It
was odd to miss both her and Mrs. Laudersdale from society
at once. Mrs. Laudersdale was ill; I don't know
exactly what the trouble was. You know she had been
in such an unusual state of exhilaration all that summer;
and as soon as she left New Hampshire and began the old
city-life, she became oppressed with a speechless melancholy,
I believe, so that the doctors foreboded insanity.
She expressed great disinclination to follow their advice,
and her husband finally banished them all. It was a
great care to him; he altered much. McLean surmised
that she did n't like to see him, while she was in this
state; for, though he used to surround her with every
luxury, and was always hunting out new appliances, and
raising the heavens for a trifle, he kept himself carefully
out of her sight during the greater part of the winter. I
don't know whether she became insufferably lonely, or
whether the melancholy wore off, or she conquered it, and
decided that it was not right to go crazy for nothing, or
what happened. But one cold March evening he set out
for his home, dreary, as usual, he thought; and he found
the room all aglow with rich shadows, and his wife awaiting
him, in full toilet, just as superb as you will see her
to-night, just as sweet and cold and impassible and impenetrable.
At least,” continued Mrs. McLean, taking breath,
“I have manufactured this little romance out of odds and
ends that McLean has now and then reported from his
conversation. I dare say there is n't a bit of it true, for
Mr. Laudersdale is n't a man to publish his affairs; but I
believe it. One thing is certain: Mrs. Laudersdale withdrew
from society one autumn and returned one spring,
and has queened it ever since.”
“Is Mr. Laudersdale with you?”
“No. But he will come with their daughter shortly.”
“And with what do you all occupy yourselves, pray?”
“Oh, with trifles and tea, as you would suppose us to
do. Mrs. Purcell gossips and lounges, as if she were
playing with the world for spectator. Mrs. Laudersdale
lounges, and attacks the things of the world with her
finger-ends, as if she were longing to remould them.
Mrs. McLean gossips and scolds, as if it depended on
her to keep the world in order.”
“Are you going to keep me under the hedge all
night?”
“This is pretty well! Hush! Who is that?”
As Mrs. McLean spoke, a figure issued from the great
larches on the left, and crossed the grass in front of them,
— a woman, something less tall than a gypsy queen might
be, the round outlines of her form rich and regular, with a
certain firm luxuriance, still wrapped in a morning-robe
of palm-spread cashmere. In her hand she carried various
vines and lichens that had maintained their orange-tawny
stains under the winter's snow, and the black hair
crowned with bent sprays of the scarlet maple-blossom.
As vivid a hue dyed her cheek through warm walking,
and with a smile of unconscious content she passed quickly
up the slope and disappeared within the doorway. She
impressed the senses of the beholder like some ripe and
luscious fruit, a growth of sunshine and summer.
“Well,” said Mrs. McLean, drawing breath again, “who
is it?”
“Really I cannot tell,” replied Mr. Raleigh.
“Nor guess?”
“And that I dare not.”
“Must I tell you?”
“Was it Mrs. Laudersdale?”
“And should n't you have known her?”
“Scarcely.”
“Mercy! Then how did you know me? She is unaltered.”
“If that is Mrs. Purcell, at the window, — she does not
recognize me, you see; — neither did — both she and yourself
are nearly the same; one could not fail to know either
of you; but of the Mrs. Laudersdale of thirteen years ago
there remains hardly a vestige.”
If Mrs. McLean, at this testimony, indulged in that
little inward satisfaction which the most generous woman
may feel, when told that her color wears better than the
color of her dearest friend, it must have been quickly
quenched by the succeeding sentence.
“Yes, she is certainly more beautiful than I ever
dreamed of a woman's being. If she continues, I do
not know what perfect thing she will become. She is
too exquisite for common use. I wonder her husband is
not jealous of every mote in the air, of rain and wind, of
now bear some charm from her in its flight.”
Mr. Raleigh was talking to Mrs. McLean as one frequently
reposes confidence in a person when quite sure
that he will not understand a word you say.
An hour afterward, Mrs. Purcell joined Mrs. McLean.
“So that is Mr. Raleigh, is it?” she said. “He looks
as if he had made the acquaintance of Siva the Destroyer.
There 's nothing left of him. Is he taller, or thinner, or
graver, or darker, or what? My dear Kate, your cousin,
that promised to be such a hero, has become a mere man-of-business.
Did you ever burn fire-crackers? You
have probably found some that just fizzed out, then.”
And Mrs. Purcell took an attitude.
“Roger is a much finer man than he was, I think, —
so far as I could judge in the short time we have seen
each other,” replied Mrs. McLean with spirit.
“Do you know,” continued Mrs. Purcell, “what makes
the Laudersdale so gay? No? She has a letter from
her lord, and he brings you that little Rite next week. I
must send for the Colonel to see such patterns of conjugal
felicity as you and she. Ah, there is the tea-bell!”
Mr. Raleigh was standing with one hand on the back
of his chair, when Mrs. Laudersdale entered. The cheek
had resumed its usual pallor, and she was in her customary
colors of black and gold. She carried a curiously cut
crystal glass, which she placed on the sideboard, and then
moved toward her chair. Her eye rested casually for a
moment on Mr. Raleigh, as she crossed the threshold, and
then returned with a species of calm curiosity.
“Mrs. Laudersdale has forgotten me?” he asked, with
a bow. His voice, not susceptible of change in its tone
of Southern sweetness, identified him.
“Not at all,” she replied, moving toward him, and offering
him her hand quietly. “I am happy at meeting Mr.
Raleigh again.” And she took her seat.
There was something in her grasp that relieved him.
It was neither studiedly cold, nor absurdly brief, nor traitorously
tremulous. It was simply and forgetfully indifferent.
Mr. Raleigh surveyed her with interest during
the light table-talk. He had been possessed with a restless
wish to see her once more, to ascertain if she had yet
any fraction of her old power over him; he had all the
more determinedly banished himself from the city, — to
find her in the country. Now he sought for some trace
of what had formerly aroused his heart. He rose from
table convinced that the woman whom he once loved with
the whole fervor of youth and strength and buoyant life
was no more, that she did not exist, and that Mr. Raleigh
might experience a new passion, but his old one was as
dead as the ashes that cover the Five Cities of the Plain.
He wondered how it might be with her. For a moment
he cursed his inconstancy; then he feared lest she were
of larger heart and firmer resolve than he, — lest her love
had been less light than his; he could scarcely feel himself
secure of freedom, — he must watch. And then stole
in a deeper sense of loneliness than exile and foreign
tongues had taught him, — the knowledge of being single
and solitary in the world, not only for life, but for eternity.
The evening was passed in the recitation of affairs by
himself and his cousins alone together, and until a week
completed its tale of dawns and sunsets there was the
same diurnal recurrence of question and answer. One
day, as the afternoon was paling, Rite came.
Mr. Raleigh had fallen asleep on the vine-hidden seat
outside the bay window, and was awakened, certainly not
carpet. She was just entering, slow-paced, though
in haste. She held out both of her beautiful arms. A
little form of airy lightness, a very snow-wreath, blew
into them.
“O maman! Est ce toi?” it cried. “O comme tu es
douce! Si belle, si chère!” And the fair head was lying
beneath the dark one, the face hidden in the bent and
stately neck.
Mr. Raleigh left his seat, unseen, and betook himself
to another abode. As he passed the drawing-room door,
on his return, he saw the mother lying on a lounge, with
the slight form nestled beside her, playing with it as some
tame leopardess might play with her silky whelp. It was
almost the only portion of the maternal nature developed
within her.
It seemed as if the tea-hour were a fated one. Mr.
Raleigh had been out on the water and was late. As he
entered, Rite sprang up, half-overturning her chair, and
ran to clasp his hand.
“I did not know that you and Mr. Raleigh were acquainted,”
said Mrs. McLean.
“Oh, Madam, Mr. Raleigh and I had the pleasure of
being shipwrecked together,” was the reply; and except
that Mrs. Laudersdale required another napkin where her
cup had spilled, all went on smoothly.
Mrs. Laudersdale took Marguerite entirely to herself
for a while. She seemed, at first, to be like some one
suddenly possessed of a new sense, and who did not
know in the least what to do with it; but custom and
familiarity destroyed this sentiment. She did not appear
to entertain a doubt of her child's natural affection, but
she had care to fortify it by the exertion of every charm
the house, an element of determination blended with her
manner, and she moved with a certain conscious power,
as if wonderful energies were but half-latent with her, as
if there were kingdoms to conquer and crowns to win, and
she the destined instrument. You would have selected
her, at this time of her lavish devotion to Marguerite, as
the one woman of complete capability, of practical effective
force, and have declared that there was nothing beyond
her strength. The relation between herself and her
child was certainly as peculiar as anything else about
them; the disparity of age seemed so slight that they
appeared like sisters, full of mutual trust, the younger
leaning on the elder for support in the most trivial affairs.
They walked through the woods together, learned again
its glades and coverts, searched its early treasure of blossoms;
they went out on the lake and spent long April
afternoons together, floating about cove and inlet of island-shores;
they returned with innocent gayety to that house
which once the mother, in her moment of passion, had
fancied to be a possible heaven of delight, and which,
since, she had found to be a very indifferent limbo. For,
after all, we derive as much happiness from human beings
as from Nature, and it was a tie of placid affection that
bound her to the McLeans, not of sympathetic union, and
her husband was careful never to oppress her with too
much of his society. Whether this woman, who had lived
a life of such wordless emotion, who had never bestowed
a confidence, suddenly blossomed like a rose and took the
little new-comer into the gold-dust and fragrance of her
heart, or whether there was always between them the thin
impalpable division that estranged the past from the present,
there was nothing to tell; it seemed, nevertheless, as
other's thoughts from birth.
That this assumption of Marguerite could not continue
exclusive Mr. Raleigh found, when now and then joined
in his walks by an airy figure flitting forward at his side:
now and then; since Mrs. Laudersdale, without knowing
how to prevent, had manifested an uneasiness at every
such rencontre; — and that it could not endure forever,
another gentleman, without so much reason, congratulated
himself, — Mr. Frederic Heath, the confidential clerk of
Day, Knight, & Co., — a rather supercilious specimen,
quite faultlessly got up, who had accompanied her from
New York at her father's request, and who already betrayed
every symptom of the suitor. Meanwhile, Mrs.
McLean's little women clamorously demanded and obtained
a share of her attention, — although Capua and
Ursule, with their dark skins, brilliant dyes, and equivocal
dialects, were creatures of a more absorbing interest.
One afternoon, Marguerite, came into the drawing-room
by one door, as Mr. Raleigh entered by another;
her mother was sitting near the window, and other members
of the family were in the vicinity, having clustered
preparatory to the tea-bell.
Marguerite had twisted tassels of the willow-catkins in
her hair, drooping things, in character with her wavy
grace and fresh youth, sprinkling her with their fragrant
yellow powder, the very breath of spring; and in one
hand she had imprisoned a premature lace-winged fly, a
fairy little savage, in its sheaths of cobweb and emerald,
and with its jewel eyes.
“Dear!” said Mrs. Purcell, gathering her array more
closely about her. “How do you dare touch such a
venomous sprite?”
“As if you had an insect at the North with a sting!”
replied Marguerite, suffering it, a little maliciously, to escape
in the lady's face, and following the flight with a
laugh of childlike glee.
“Here are your snowflakes on stems, mamma,” she
continued, dropping anemones over her mother's hands,
one by one; — that is what Mr. Raleigh calls them.
When may I see the snow? You shall wrap me in
eider, that I may be like all the boughs and branches.
How buoyant the earth must be, when every twig becomes
a feather!” And she moved toward Mr. Raleigh,
singing, “Oh, would I had wings like a dove!”
“And here are those which, if not daffodils, yet
The winds of March with beauty,'”
Marguerite danced away with the purple trophy, and,
emptying a carafe into a dish of moss that stood near,
took them to Mrs. Laudersdale, and, sitting on the footstool,
began to rearrange them. It was curious to see,
that, while Mrs. Laudersdale lifted each blossom and let
the stem lie across her hand, she suffered it to fall into
the place designated for it by Marguerite's fingers, that
sparkled in the mosaic till double wreaths of gold-threaded
purple rose from the bed of vivid moss and melted into a
fringe of the starry spires of winter-green.
“Is it not sweet?” said she then, bending over it.
“They have no scent,” said her mother.
“Oh, yes, indeed! the very finest, the most delicate, a
kind of aerial perfume; they must of course alchemize
the air into which they waste their fibres, with some
sweetness.”
“A smell of earth fresh from `wholesome drench of
porcelain between his brown, slender hands. “An immature
scent, just such an innocent breath as should precede
the epigea, that spicy, exhaustive wealth of savor,
that complete maturity of odor, marriage of daphne and
linnæa. The charm of these first bidders for the year's
favor is neither in the ethereal texture, the depth or delicacy
of tint, nor the large-lobed, blood-stained, ancient
leaves. This imponderable soul gives them such a helpless
air of babyhood.”
“Is fragrance the flower's soul?” asked Marguerite.
“Then anemones are not divinely gifted. And yet you
said, the other day, that to paint me would be to paint an
anemone.”
“A satisfactory specimen in the family-gallery,” said
Mrs. Purcell.
“A flaw in the indictment!” replied Mr. Raleigh. “I
am not one of those who paint the lily.”
“Though you 've certainly added a perfume to the violet,”
remarked Mr. Frederic Heath, with that sweetly lingering
accent familiarly called the drawl, as he looked at
the hepaticas.
“I don't think it very complimentary, at any rate,” continued
Marguerite. “They are not lovely after bloom, —
only the little pink-streaked, budded bells, that hang so
demurely. Oui! I have exchanged great queen magnolias
for rues; what will you give me for pomegranates
and oleanders?”
“Are the old oleanders in the garden yet?” asked Mrs.
Laudersdale.
“Not the very same. The hurricane destroyed those,
years ago; these are others, grand and rosy as sunrise
sometimes.”
“It was my Aunt Susanne who planted those, I have
heard.”
“And it was your daughter Rite who planted these.”
“She buried a little box of old keepsakes at its foot,
after her brother had examined them, — a ring or two, a
coin from which she broke and kept one half —”
“Oh, yes! we found the little box, — found it when
Mr. Heath was in Martinique, — all rusted and moulded
and falling apart, and he wears that half of the coin on
his watch-chain. See!”
Mrs. Laudersdale glanced up indifferently, but Mrs.
Purcell sprang from her elegant lounging and bent to
look at her brother's chain.
“How odd that I never noticed it, Fred!” she exclaimed.
“And how odd that I should wear the same!”
And, shaking her châtelaine, she detached a similar
affair.
They were placed side by side in Mr. Raleigh's hand;
they matched entirely, and, so united, they formed a singular
French coin of value and antiquity, the missing
figures on one segment supplied by the other, the embossed
profile continued and lost on each, the scroll begun
by this and ended by that; they were plainly severed
portions of the same piece.
“And this was buried by your Aunt Susanne Le
Blanc?” asked Mrs. Purcell, turning to Mrs. Laudersdale
again, with a flush on her cheek.
“So I presume.”
“Strange! And this was given to mamma by her
mother, whose maiden name was Susan White. There 's
some diablerie about it.”
“Oh, that is a part of the ceremony of money-hiding,”
said Mr. Raleigh. “Kidd always buried a little imp with
the finder.”
“Did he?” said Marguerite, earnestly.
They all laughed thereat, and went in to tea.
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