The bride of Fort Edward founded on an incident of the Revolution |
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| 4:3. | DIALOGUE III. |
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 | The bride of Fort Edward |  |
DIALOGUE III.
Scene. A Chamber partly darkened, the morning air
steals faintly through the half-open shutters. Helen
before the mirror, leaning upon the toilette, her face
buried in her hands, her long hair unbound, and
flowing on her shoulders.
(Annie enters.)
Annie.
Helen! Why, Helen, are you asleep there?
Come, we are going now. After keeping us on tiptoe
is hardly time for you to dress. Shall I help you?
Helen.
(Rising slowly.)
God help me. Bid my
mother come here, Annie.
Annie.
What ails you, Helen?—there is no time,—
you do not understand me,—there is not one moment to
be lost. Let me wind up this hair for you.
Helen.
Let go!—Oh God—
Annie.
Helen Grey!
Helen.
It was a dream,—it was but a foolish dream.
It must not be thought of now,—it will never do. Bid
my mother come here, I am ready now.
Annie.
Ready, Helen!—ready?—in that dressing-gown,
and your hair—see here,—are you ready, Helen?
Helen.
Yes,—bid her come;
Annie.
Heaven only knows what you mean with this
wild talk of yours, but if you are not mad indeed, I intreat
you, sister, waste no more of this precious time.
Helen.
No, no,—we must not indeed. It was wrong,
but I could not—go,—make haste, bid her come.
Annie.
She is crazed, certainly!
[Goes out.
(Helen stands with her arms folded, and her eye fixed
on the door.)
(Mrs. Grey enters.)
My child! Helen, Helen! Why do you
stand there thus?
Helen.
Mother—
Mrs. G.
Nay, do not stay to speak. There—throw
this mantle around you. Where is your hat?—not here!
—Bridal gear!
(George enters.)
George.
On my word! Well, well, stand there a
little longer, to dress those pretty curls of yours, and
—humph—there's a style in vogue in yonder camp
for rebels just now; we'll all stand a chance to try,
I think.
Helen.
George!—George Grey!—Be still,—be still.—
We must not think of that. It was a dream.
George.
Is my sister mad?
Helen.
Mother—
Mrs. G.
Speak, my child.
Helen.
Mother—my blessed mother,—(aside.) 'Tis
but a brief word,—it will be over soon.
Mrs. G.
Speak, Helen.
Helen.
I cannot go with you, mother.
Mrs. G.
Helen?
George.
Not go with us?
Mrs. G.
Helen, do you know what you are saying?
George.
You are in jest, Helen; or else you are mad,
—before another sunset the British army will be encamping
here.
Helen.
Hear me, mother. A message from the British
camp came to me last night,—
Mrs. G.
The British camp?—Ha!—ha! Everard
Maitland! God forgive him.
Helen.
Do not speak thus. It was but a few cold
and careless lines he sent me,—my purpose is my own.
Mrs. G.
And—what, and he does not know?—Helen
Grey, this passes patience.
Helen.
He does. Here is the answer that has just
now come; for I have promised to meet him to-day at
the hut of the missionary in yonder woods.—I can
hardly spell these hasty words; but this I know, he will
surely come for me,—though he bids me wait until I
hear his signal,—so I cannot go with you, mother.
Mrs. G.
Where will you go, Helen?
Helen.
Everard is in yonder camp;—where should the
wife's home be?
Mrs. G.
The wife's?
Helen.
These two years I have been his bride;—his
wedded wife I shall be to-day. Yonder dawns my bridal
day.
George.
What does she say? What does Helen say?
I do not understand one word of it.
Mrs. G.
She says she will go to the British camp.
Desertions thicken upon us. Hark!—they are calling
us.
George.
To the British camp?
Mrs. G.
Go down, George, go down. Your sister
talks wildly and foolishly, what you should not have
heard, what she will be sorry for anon; go down, and
tell them they must wait for us a little,—we will be there
presently.
George.
Hark! (going to the door.)
—another message.
Do you hear?—Helen may be ready yet, if she
will.
Mrs. G.
Blessed delay! Go down, George; say
nothing of this. There is time yet. Tell them we will
be there presently.
(George goes out.)
Mrs. G.
Did you think I should leave you here to accomplish
this frantic scheme?—Did you dream of it, and
you call me mother?—but what do you know of that
name's meaning? Do not turn away from me thus, my
child; do not stand with that fixed eye as though some
phantom divinity were there. I shall not leave you here,
Helen, never.
Come, come; sit down with me in this pleasant window,
scheme of yours a little. Would you stay here in this
deserted citadel, alone? My child, our army are already
on their march. In an hour more you would be the only
living thing in all this solitude. Would you stay here
alone, to meet your lover too?—Bethink yourself, Helen.
Helen.
This Canadian girl will stay with me, and—
Mrs. G.
A girl!—Helen, yesterday an army's
strength, the armies of the nation, the love of mother,
and brothers, and sisters, all seemed nothing for protection
to your timid and foreboding thought; and now,
when the enemy are all around us,—do you talk of a
single girl? Why, the spirit of some strange destiny is
struggling with your nature, and speaks within you, but
we will not yield to it.
Helen.
You have spoken truly, mother. There is one
tie in these hearts of ours, whose strength makes destiny,
and where that leads, there lie those iron ways that are
of old from everlasting. This is Heaven's decree, not
mine.
Mrs. G.
Do not charge the madness of this frantic
scheme on Heaven, my child.
Helen.
Everard!—no, no. I cannot show to another
the lightning flash, that with that name reveals my destiny,—yet
the falling stone might as soon question of its
way. Renounce him?—you know not what you ask!
Mother, hear me. There is no danger in my staying
here,—none real. The guard still keep their station on
yonder hill, and the fort itself will not be wholly abandoned
to-day. Everard will come for me at noon.—It is
impossible that the enemy should be here ere then; nay,
the news of this unlooked-for movement will scarce have
reached their camp.—Real danger there is none, and—
Do not urge me. I know what you would say; the bitter
cost I have counted all, already, all—all. That Maitland
is in yonder camp, that—is it not a strange blessedness
which can sweeten anguish such as this?—that he
loves me still, that he will come here to-day to make me
his forever,—this is all that I can say, my mother.
Mrs. G.
Will you go over to the British side, Helen?
Will you go over to the side of wrong and oppression?
Would you link yourself with our cruel and pursuing
enemy? Oh no, no no,—that could not be—never.
Amid the world of fearful thoughts that name brings, how
could we place your image? Oh God, I did not count
on this. I knew that this war was to bring us toil, and
want, and fear, and haply bloody death; and I could have
borne it unmurmuringly; but—God forgive me,—that the
child I nursed in these arms should forsake me, and join
with our deadly foes against us—I did not count on
this.
Helen.
Yes—that's the look,—the very look—all night
I saw it;—it does not move me now, as it did then. It is
shadows of these things that are so fearful, for with the real
comes the unreckoned power of suffering.
Mother, this dark coil hath Heaven wound, not we.
The tie which makes his path the way of God to me,
was linked ere this war was,—and war cannot undo it
now. It is a bitter fate, I know,—a bitter and a fearful
one.
Mrs. G.
Ay, ay,—thank God! You had forgotten,
Helen, that in that army's pay, nay, all around us even now
are hordes and legions.
Helen.
I know it,—I know it all. I do indeed.
Mrs. G.
Helen, will you place yourself defenceless
amidst that savage race, whose very name from your
childhood upwards, has filled you with such strange fear?
Yesterday I chid you for those fancies,—I was wrong,—
they were warnings, heaven-sent, to save you from this
doom. What was that dream you talked of then?
Helen.
Dreams are nothing. Will you unsay a life's
lessons now when most I need them?
Mrs. G.
Yesterday, all day, a shadow as of coming
evil lay upon me, but now I remember the forgotten vision
whence it fell. Yesternight I had a dream, Helen,
such as yours might be; for in my broken and fevered
slumbers, wherever I turned, one vision awaited me.
There was a savage arm, and over it fell a shower of
my dream, a knife glittered and waved before me. We
were safe, but over one,—some young and innocent and
tender one it was—there hung a hopeless and inexorable
fate. Once methought it seemed the young English girl
that was wedded here last winter, and once she turned
her eye upon me—Ha!—I had forgotten that glance of
agony—surely, Helen, it was yours.
Mrs. G.
Helen! my child—(Aside(.)
There it is,
that same curdling glance,—'twas but a dream, Helen.
Why do you stand there so white and motionless—why
do you look on me with that fixed and darkening eye?—
'twas but a dream!
Helen.
And where were you?—tell me truly. Was it
not by a gurgling fountain among the pine trees there?
and was it not noon-day in your dream, a hot, bright, sultry
noon, and a few clouds swelling in the western sky,
and nothing but the trilling locusts astir?
Mrs. G.
How wildly you talk; how should I remember
any thing like this?
Helen.
I will not yield to it; tempt me not. 'Tis folly
all, I know it is. Danger there is none. Long ere yonder
hill is abandoned, Everard will be here; and who
knows that I am left here alone, and who would come
here to seek me out but he? Oh no, I cannot break
this solemn faith for a dream. What would he give to
dream? I must stay here, mother.
Mrs. G.
No, my child. Hear me. If this must be indeed,
if all my holy right in you is nothing, if you will indeed
go over to our cruel enemy, and rejoice in our sorrows
and triumph in our overthrow—
Helen.
Hear her—
Mrs. G.
Be it so, Helen,—be it so; but for all that, do
not stay here to-day. Bear but a little longer with our
wearisome tenderness, and wait for some safer chance
of forsaking us. Come.
Helen.
If I could—Ah, if I could—
Mrs. G.
You can—you will. Here, let me help you.
we shall be ready yet. No one knows of this wild
scheme but your brother and myself, no one else shall
ever know it. Come.
Helen.
If I could. 'Tis true, I did not know when I
sent him this promise you would leave me alone ere the
hour should come. Perhaps—no, it would never do.
When he comes and finds that, after all, I have deserted
him, once with a word I angered him, and for years it
was the last between us;—and what safer chance will
there be in these fearful times of meeting him? No, no.
If we do not meet now, we are parted for ever;—if I do
not keep my promise now, I shall see him no more.
Mrs. G.
See him no more then. What is he to us—
this stranger, this haughty, all-requiring one? Think of
the blessed days ere he had crossed our threshold. You
have counted all, Helen? The anguish that will bring
tears into your proud brother's eyes, your sister's comfortless
sorrow?—did you think of her lonely and saddened
youth? You counted the wild suffering of this
bitter moment,—did you think of the weary years, the
long sleepless nights of grief, the days of tears; did you
count the anguish of a mother's broken heart, Helen?
God only can count that.
You did not—there come the blessed tears at last.
Here's my own gentle daughter, once again. Come,
Helen, see, they are waiting for us. There stands the
old chaise under the locust tree. You and I will ride
together. Come, 'tis but a few steps down that shady
path, and we are safe—a few steps and quickly trod.
Hark! the respite is past even now. Do you stand
there marble still? Helen, if you stay here, we shall
see you no more. This lover of yours hates us all. He
will take you to England when the war is over if you
outlive its bloody hazards, and we are parted for ever.
I shall see you no more, Helen, my child; my child, I shall
see you no more. (She sinks upon the chair, and
weeps aloud.)
Helen.
Has it come to this? Will you break my
heart? If it were continents and oceans that you bade
me cross, but those few steps—Ah, they would sever me
them,—there is no motion so impossible. Yes, they are
calling us. Do not stay.
(Annie enters).
Annie.
Mother, will you tell me what this means?
Mrs. G.
Yes, come in. We will waste no more time
about it. She will stay here to meet her lover, she will
forsake us for a traitor. We have nursed an enemy
among us. The babe I cherished in this bosom, whose
sleeping face I watched with a young mother's love,
hath become my enemy. Oh my God—is it from thee?
Annie.
Helen! my sister! Helen!
Mrs. G.
Ay, look at her. Would you think that the
spirit which heaves in that light frame, and glances in
those soft eyes, held such cruel power? Yesterday I
would have counted it a breath in the way of my lightest
purpose, and now—come away, Annie—it is vain, you
cannot move her.
(George enters.)
George.
Mother, if Helen will not go now, we must
leave her to her fate or share it with her. Every wagon
is on the roád but ours. A little more, and we shall be
too late for the protection of the army. Shall I stay with
her?
Mrs. G.
No, never. That were a sure and idle
waste of life. Helen, perhaps, may be safe with them.
out of fashion soon.
Annie.
Refugees! Refugee! Helen!
Mrs. G.
It sounds strange for one of us I know. You
will grow used to it soon. Helen belongs to the British
side, she will go over to them to-day, but she must go
alone, for none of us would be safe in British hands, at
least I trust so—this morning's experience might make
me doubtful, but I trust we are all true here yet beside.
Annie.
Have I heard aright, Helen?—or is this all
some fearful dream? You and I, who have lived together
all the years of our lives, to be parted this moment,
and for ever,—no, no!
(A young American Officer enters hastily.)
Capt. Grey.
Softly, softly! What is this? Are you in
this conspiracy to disgrace me, mother? Oh, very well;
if you have all decided to stay here, I'll take my leave.
Annie.
Oh, Henry, stay. You can persuade her it may
be.
Capt. G.
Persuade! What's all this! A goodly
time for rhetoric forsooth! Who's this that's risking all
our lives, waiting to be persuaded now?
Mrs. G.
That Tory, Henry! We should have thought
of this. Ah, if we had gone yesterday,—that haughty
Maitland,—she will stay here to meet him! She will
marry him, my son.
Capt. G.
Maitland!—and stay here!
Helen.
Dear Henry, let us part in kindness. Do not
look on me with that angry eye. It was I that played
with you in the woods and meadows, it was I that
roamed with you in those autumn twilights,—you loved
me then, and we are parting for ever it may be.
Capt. G.
(To the children at the door.)
Get you
down, young ones, get you down. Pray, mother, lead
the way, will you?—break up this ring. Come, Helen,
you and I will talk of this as we go on, only in passing
give me leave to say, of all the mad pranks of your novel
ladies, this caps the chief. You have outdone them,
Helen; I'll give you credit for it, you have outdone them
all.
Why you'll be chronicled,—there's nothing on record
like it, that ever I heard of; I am well-read in romances
too. We'll have a new love-ballad made and set to tune,
under the head of “Love and Murder,” it will come
though, if you don't make haste a little. Come, come.
Helen.
Henry!
Capt. G.
Are you in earnest, Helen? Did you suppose
that we were mad enough to leave you here?
You'll not go with us? But you will, by Heaven!
Helen.
Henry! Mother!—Nay, Henry, this is vain. I
shall stay here, I shall—I shall stay here,—so help me
Heaven.
Capt. G.
Helen Grey! Is that young lioness there
my sometime sister?—my delicate sister?—with her foot
planted like iron, and the strength of twenty men nerving
her arm?
Helen.
Let go.—I shall stay here.
Capt. G.
Well, have your way, young lady, have your
way; but—Mother, if you choose to leave that mad girl
here, you can,—but as for this same Everard Maitland,
look you, my lady, if I don't stab him to his heart's core,
never trust me.
(He goes out—Mrs. Grey follows him to the door.)
Mrs. G.
Stay, Henry,—stay. What shall we do?
Capt. G.
Do!—Indeed, a straight waistcoat is the
only remedy I know of, Madam, for such freaks as these.
If you say so, she shall go with us yet.
Mrs. G.
Hear me. This is no time for passion now
Hear me, Henry. This Maitland, Tory as he is, is her betrothed
husband, and she has chosen her fate with him;
we cannot keep her with us; nay, with what we have
now seen, it would be vain to think of it, to wish it even.
She must go to him,—it but remains to see that she meets
him safely. Noon is the hour appointed for his coming.
Could we not stay till then?
Capt. G.
Impossible. Noon?—well.—Oh, if its all
fixed upon;—if you have settled it between yourselves
that Helen is to abandon us and our protection, for
better, She's quite right,—she's like to find no safer
chance for it than this. Noon,—there is a picket left on
yonder hill till after that time, certainly, and a hundred
men or so in the fort. I might give Van Vechten a hint
of it—nay, I can return myself this afternoon, and if she
is not gone then, I will take it upon me she is not left a
second time. Of course Maitland would be likely to
care for her safety. At all events there's nothing else
for us to do, at least there's but one alternative, and
that I have named to you.
[They go out together.
Helen.
(She has stood silently watching them.)
He
has gone, without one parting look—he has gone! So
break the myriad-tied loves, it hath taken a life to weave.
This is a weary world.
(She turns to her sister, who leans weeping on the window-seat.)
Come, Annie, you and I will part in kindness, will we
not? No cruel words shall there be here. Pleasant hath
your love been unto me, my precious sister. Farewell,
Annie.
Annie.
Shall I never hear your voice again, that
hath been the music of my whole life? Is your face
henceforth to be to me only a remembered thing? Helen,
you must not stay here. The Indians,—it was no idle
fear, the half of their bloody outrages you have not heard;
they will murder you, yes, you. The innocence and loveliness
would as soon sever that beautiful hair from your brow—
Helen.
Hush, hush. There is no danger, Annie. The
dark things of destiny are God's; the heart, the heart
only, is ours.
(Mrs. Grey re-enters.)
Mrs. G.
(to Annie)
Come, come, my child. This is
foolish now. All is ready. Janette will stay with you,
Helen.
(Laughing voices are heard without, and the children's
faces are seen peeping in the door.)
Willy.
Dear mother, are you not ready yet? We have
been in the wagon and out a hundred times. Oh, Helen,
make haste. The sun is above the trees, and the grass
on the roadside is all full of diamonds. The last soldiers
are winding down the hollow now. Is not Helen
going, Mother?
Mrs. G.
Your sister Helen is going from us forever.
Come in and kiss her once, and then make haste—you
must not all be lost.
(They enter.)
Willy.
Ah, why don't you go with us, sister?—Such
a beautiful ride we shall have. You never heard such a
bird-singing in all your life.
Frank.
We shall go by the Chesnut Hollow, George
stay here? Hark, Willy, there's the drum. Good-bye.
How sorry I am you will not go with us.
Willy.
So am I. What makes you stand so still and
look at us so? Why don't you kiss me? Good-bye, Helen.
Helen.
(Embracing them silently.)
Annie.
Will you leave her here alone, mother? Will
you?
Mrs. G.
No. There is a guard left on yonder hill,
and the fort is not yet abandoned wholly. Besides, the
army encamp at the creek, and Henry himself will
return this afternoon. She will be gone ere then,
though.
Helen.
Those merry steps and voices, those little, soft
clinging hands and rosy lips, have vanished forever. For
all my love I shall be to them but as the faint trace of
some faded dream. This is a weary world.
Come, George, farewell. How I have loved to look on
that young brow. Be what my dreams have made you.
Fare you well.
George.
Farewell, Helen.
[He goes out hastily.
Helen.
Will he forget me?
Mrs. G.
And farewell, Helen. Fare ye well.
Helen.
Will she leave me thus?
Mrs. G.
Do not go to the hut—do not leave this door
until you are sure of the signal you spoke of, Helen.
Helen.
She will not look at me.—Mother!
Mrs. G.
Farewell, Helen; may the hour never come
when you need the love you have cast from you now so
freely.
Helen.
Will you leave me thus? Is not our life together
ending here? In that great and solemn Hereafter
our ways may meet again; but by the light of sun, or
moon, or candle, or underneath these Heavens, no more.
Oh! lovely, lovely have you been unto me, a spirit of
holiness and beauty, building all my way.—Part we
thus?
Mrs. G.
Farewell, Helen.
Helen.
Part we thus?
Mrs. G.
Fare ye well, Helen Grey, my own sweet
and precious child, my own lovely, lovely daughter, fare
ye well, and the Lord be with you. The Lord keep you,
for I can keep you now no more. The Lord watch over
you, my helpless one, mine, mine, mine, all mine, though
I leave you thus; my world of untold wealth, unto another.
Nay, do not sorrow, my blessed child,—you will
be happy yet. Fear nothing,—if this must be, I say, fear
nothing. You think that you are doing right in forsaking
us thus;—it may be that you are. If in the strength
of a pure conscience you stay here to-day,—be not afraid.
When you lay here of old, a lisping babe, I told you of
One whose love was better than a mother's. Now farewell,
and trust in Him. Farewell, mine eye shall see thee
yet again. Farewell.
Helen.
No, no; leave me not.
Mrs. G.
Unclasp these hands, I cannot stay.
Helen.
Never—never.
Mrs G.
Untwine this wild embrace, or, even now,—
even now—
Helen.
Farewell, mother. Annie Grey, farewell.
[They go.
Helen.
This is a weary world. Take me home. To
the land where there is no crying or bitterness, take me
home.
(The noise of retreating steps is heard, and the sound
of the outer door closing heavily.)
Helen.
They are gone,—not to church,—not for the
summer's ride. I shall see them no more.—In heaven
it may be; but by the twilight hearth, or merry table, at
morn, or noon, or evening, in mirth or earthly tenderness,
no more.
Hark! There it is!—that voice,—I hear it now, I do.
A dark eternity had rolled between us, and I hear it yet
again. They are going now. Those rolling wheels, oh
that that sound would last. There is no music half so
the hollow.—Hark—
Now they are gone, indeed. So breaks the sense's last
link between me and that world.
| The bride of Fort Edward | |