Book: Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861




"Except yourself, Mr. Raleigh. The Indian jugglers are practising upon
us, I suspect. You are no more like the same person who played sparkling
comedy and sang passionate tragedy than this bamboo stick is like that
willow wand."

"I wish I could retort, Miss Helen," he replied. "I beg your pardon!"

She was silent, and her eye fell and rested on the sheeny damask
beneath. He glanced at her keenly an instant, then handed her his cup,
saying,--

"May I trouble you?"

She looked up again, a smile breaking over the face wanner than
youth, but which the hour's gayety had flushed to a forgetfulness of
intervening years, extended her left hand for the cup, still gazing and
smiling.

Various resolves had flitted through Marguerite's mind since her
entrance. One, that she would yet make Mr. Raleigh feel her power,
yielded to shame and self-contempt, and she despised herself for a woman
won unwooed. But she was not sure that she was won. Perhaps, after all,
she did not care particularly for Mr. Raleigh. He was much older than
she; he was quite grave, sometimes satirical; she knew nothing about
him; she was slightly afraid of him. On the whole, if she consulted her
taste, she would have preferred a younger hero; she would rather be the
Fornarina for a Raffaello; she had fancied her name sweetening the songs
of Giraud Riquier, the last of the Troubadours; and she did not believe
Beatrice Portinari to be so excellent among women, so different from
other girls, that her name should have soared so far aloft with that
escutcheon of the golden wing on a field azure. "But they say that there
cannot be two epic periods in a nation's literature," thought Marguerite
hurriedly; "so that a man who might have been Homer once will be nothing
but a gentleman now." And at this point, having decided that Mr. Raleigh
was fully worth unlimited love, she added to her resolves a desire for
content with whatever amount of friendly affection he chose to bestow
upon her. And all this, while sifting the sugar over her raspberries.
Nevertheless, she felt, in the midst of her heroic content, a strange
jealousy at hearing the two thus discuss days in which she had no share,
and she watched them furtively, with a sharp, hateful suspicion dawning
in her mind. Now, as Mrs. Purcell's eyes met Mr. Raleigh's, and her hand
was still extended for the cup, Marguerite fastened her glance on its
glittering ring, and said abruptly,--

"Mrs. Purcell, have you a husband?"

Mrs. Purcell started and withdrew her hand, as if it had received a
blow, just as Mr. Raleigh relinquished the cup, so that between them the
bits of pictured porcelain fell and splintered over the equipage.

"Naughty child!" said Mrs. Purcell. "See now what you've done!"

"What have I to do with it?"

"Then you haven't any bad news for me? Has any one heard from the
Colonel? Is he ill?"

"Pshaw!" said Marguerite, rising and throwing down her napkin.

She went to the window and looked out.

"It is time you were gone, little lady," said Mr. Raleigh.

She approached Mrs. Purcell and passed her hand down her hair.

"What pretty soft hair you have!" said she. "These braids are like
carved gold-stone. May I dress it with sweet-brier to-night? I brought
home a spray."

"Rite!" said Mrs. Laudersdale sweetly, at the door; and Rite obeyed the
summons.

In a half-hour she came slowly down the stairs, untwisting a long string
of her mother's abandoned pearls, great pear-shaped things full of the
pale lustre of gibbous moons. She wore a dress of white samarcand, with
a lavish ornament like threads and purfiles of gold upon the bodice, and
Ursule followed with a cloak. As she entered the drawing-room, the great
bunches of white azalea, which her mother had brought from the swamps,
caught her eye; she threw down the pearls, and broke off rapid dusters
of the queenly flowers, touching the backward-curling hyacinthine
petals, and caressingly passing her finger down the pale purple shadow
of the snowy folds. Directly afterward she hung them in her breezy hair,
from which, by natural tenure, they were not likely to fall, bound them
over her shoulders and in her waist.

"See! I stand like Summer," she said, "wrapped in perfume; it is
intoxicating."

Just then two hands touched her, and her father bent his face over her.
She flung her arms round him, careless of their fragile array, kissed
him on both cheeks, laughed, and kissed him again. She did not speak,
for he disliked French, and English sometimes failed her.

"Here is Mr. Heath," her father said.

She partly turned, touched that gentleman's hand with the ends of her
fingers, and nodded. Her father whispered a brief sentence in her ear.

"_Jamais, Monsieur, jamais!_" she exclaimed; then, with a quick gesture
of deprecation, moved again toward him; but Mr. Laudersdale had coldly
passed to make his compliments to Mrs. Heath.

"You are not in toilet?" said Marguerite, following him, but speaking
with Mr. Raleigh.

"No,--Mrs. Purcell has been playing for me a little thing I always
liked,--that sweet, tuneful afternoon chiding of the Miller and the
Torrent."

She glanced at Mrs. Purcell, saw that her dress remained unaltered, and
commenced pulling out the azaleas from her own.

"I do not want to go," she murmured. "I need not! Mamma and Mrs. McLean
have already gone in the other carriage."

"Come, Marguerite," said Mr. Laudersdale, approaching her, as Mr. Heath
and his mother disappeared.

"I am not going," she replied, quickly.

"Not going? I beg your pardon, my dear, but you are!" and he took her
hand.

She half endeavored to withdraw it, threw a backward glance over her
shoulder at the remaining pair, and, led by her father, went out.

Marguerite did her best to forget the vexation, was very affable with
her father, and took no notice of any of Mr. Heath's prolonged remarks.
The drive was at best a tiresome one, and she was already half-asleep
when the carriage stopped. The noise and light, and the little vanities
of the dressing-room, awakened her, and she descended prepared for
conquest. But, after a few moments, it all became weariness, the air
was close, the flowers faded, the music piercing. The toilets did
not attract nor the faces interest her. She danced along absent and
spiritless, when her eye, raised dreamily, fell on an object among the
curtains and lay fascinated there. It was certainly Mr. Raleigh: but so
little likely did that seem, that she again circled the room, with her
eyes bent upon that point, expecting it to vanish. He must have come in
the saddle, unless a coach had returned for him and Mrs. Purcell,--yes,
there was Mrs. Purcell,--and she wore that sweet-brier fresh-blossoming
in the light. With what ease she moved!--it must always have been the
same grace;--how brilliant she was! There,--she was going to dance with
Mr. Raleigh. No? Where, then? Into the music-room!

The music-room lay beyond an anteroom of flowers and prints, and
was closed against the murmur of the parlors by great glass doors.
Marguerite, from her position, could see Mr. Raleigh seated at the
piano, and Mrs. Purcell standing by his side; now she turned a leaf, now
she stooped, and their hands touched upon the keys. Marguerite slipped
alone through the dancers, and drew nearer. There were others in the
music-room, but they were at a distance from the piano. She entered
the anteroom and sat shadowed among the great fragrant shrubs. A group
already stood there, eating ices and gayly gossiping. Mr. Laudersdale
and Mr. Manton sauntered in, their heads together, and muttering occult
matters of business, whose tally was kept with forefinger on palm.

"Where is Raleigh?" asked Mr. Manton, looking up. "He can tell us."

"At his old occupation," answered a gentleman from beside Mrs.
Laudersdale, "flirting with forbidden fruit."

"An alliterative amusement," said Mrs. Laudersdale.

"You did not know the original Raleigh?" continued the gentleman. "But
he always took pleasure in female society; yet, singularly enough,
though fastidious in choice, it was only upon the married ladies that he
bestowed his platonisms. I observe the old Adam still clings to him."

"He probably found more liberty with them," remarked Mrs. Laudersdale,
when no one else replied.

"Without doubt he took it."

"I mean, that, where attentions are known to intend nothing, one is not
obliged to measure them, or to calculate upon effects."

"Of the latter no one can accuse Mr. Raleigh!" said Mr. Laudersdale,
hotly, forgetting himself for once.

Mrs. Laudersdale lifted her large eyes and laid them on her husband's
face.

"Excuse me! excuse me!" said the gentleman, with natural misconception.
"I was not aware that he was a friend of yours." And taking a lady on
his arm, he withdrew.

"Nor is he!" said Mr. Laudersdale, in lowest tones, replying to his
wife's gaze, and for the first time intimating his feeling. "Never,
never, can I repair the ruin he has made me!"

Mrs. Laudersdale rose and stretched out her arm, blindly.

"The room is quite dark," she murmured; "the flowers must soil the air.
Will you take me up-stairs?"

Meanwhile, the unconscious object of their remark was turning over a
pile of pages with one hand, while the other trifled along the gleaming
keys.

"Here it is," said he, drawing one from the others, and arranging it
before him,--a _gondel-lied_.

There stole from his fingers the soft, slow sound of lapsing waters, the
rocking on the tide, the long sway of some idle weed. Here a jet of tune
was flung out from a distant bark, here a high octave flashed like a
passing torch through night-shadows, and lofty arching darkness told in
clustering chords. Now the boat fled through melancholy narrow ways of
pillared pomp and stately beauty, now floated off on the wide lagoons
alone with the stars and sea. Into this broke the passion of the gliding
lovers, deep and strong, giving a soul to the whole, and fading away
again, behind its wild beating,--with the silence of lapping ripple and
dipping oar.

Mrs. Purcell, standing beside the player, laid a careless arm across the
instrument, and bent her face above him like a flower languid with
the sun's rays. Suddenly the former smile suffused it, and, as the
gondel-lied fell into a slow floating accompaniment, she sang with a
swift, impetuous grace, and in a sweet, yet thrilling voice, the Moth
Song. The shrill music and murmur from the parlors burst all at once in
muffled volume upon the melody, and, turning, they both saw Marguerite
standing in the doorway, like an angry wraith, and flitting back again.
Mrs. Purcell laughed, but took up the thread of her song again where it
was broken, and carried it through to the end. Then Mr. Raleigh tossed
the gondel-lied aside, and rising, they continued their stroll.

"You have more than your share of the good things of life, Raleigh,"
said Mr. McLean, as the person addressed poured out wine for Mrs.
Purcell. "Two affairs on hand at once? You drink deep. Light and
sparkling,--thin and tart,--isn't it Solomon who forbids mixed drink?"

"I was never the worse for claret," replied Mr. Raleigh, bearing away
the glittering glass.

The party from the Lake had not arrived at an early hour, and it was
quite late when Mr. Raleigh made his way through ranks of tireless
dancers, toward Marguerite. She had been dancing with a spirit that
would have resembled joyousness but for its reckless _abandon_. She
seemed to him then like a flame, as full of wilful sinuous caprice. At
the first he scarcely liked it, but directly the artistic side of his
nature recognized the extreme grace and beauty that flowed through every
curve of movement. Standing now, the corn-silk hair slightly disordered
and still blown about by the fan of some one near her, her eyes
sparkling like stars in the dewdrops of wild wood-violets, warm, yet
weary, and a flush deepening her cheek with color, while the flowers
hung dead around her, she held a glass of wine and watched the bead swim
to the brim. Mr. Raleigh approached unaware, and startled her as he
spoke.

"It is _au gre du vent_, indeed," he said,--"just the white fluttering
butterfly,--and now that the wings are clasped above this crimson
blossom, I have a chance of capture." And smiling, he gently withdrew
the splendid draught.

"_Buvez, Monsieur_," she said; "_c'est le vin de la vie!_"

"Do you know how near daylight it is?" he replied. "Mrs. Laudersdale
fainted in the heat, and your father took her home long ago. The Heaths
went also; and the carriage has just returned for the only ones of us
that are left, you and me."

"Is it ready now?"

"Yes."

"So am I."

And in a few moments she sat opposite him in the coach, on their way
home.

"It wouldn't be possible for me to sit on the box and drive?" she asked.

"I should like it, in this wild starlight, these flying clouds, this
breath of dawn."

Meeting no response, she sank into silence. No emotion can keep one
awake forever, and, after all her late fatigue, the roll of the easy
vehicle upon the springs soon soothed her into a dreamy state. Through
the efforts at wakefulness, she watched the gleams that fell within from
the carriage-lamps, the strange shadows on the roadside, the boughs
tossing to the wind and flickering all their leaves in the speeding
light; she watched, also, Mr. Raleigh's face, on which, in the fitful
flashes, she detected a look of utter weariness.

"_Monsieur_," she exclaimed, "_il faut que je vous gene!_"

"Immensely," said Mr. Raleigh with a smile; "but, fortunately, for no
great time."

"We shall be soon at home? Then I must have slept."

"Very like. What did you dream?"

"Oh, one must not tell dreams before breakfast, or they come to pass,
you know."

"No,--I am uninitiated in dream-craft. Mr. Heath"----

"_Monsieur_," she cried, with sudden heat, "_il me semble que je
comprends les Laocoons! J'en suis de meme!_"

As she spoke, she fell, struck forward by a sudden shock, the coach was
rocking like a boat, and plunging down unknown gulfs. Mr. Raleigh seized
her, broke through the door, and sprang out.

"_Qu'avez vous?_" she exclaimed.

"The old willow is fallen in the wind," he replied.

"_Quel dommage_ that we did not see it fall!"

"It has killed one of the horses, I fear," he continued, measuring, as
formerly, her terror by her levity. "Capua! is all right? Are you safe?"

"Yah, massa!" responded a voice from the depths, as Capua floundered
with the remaining horse in the thicket at the lake-edge below. "Yah,
massa,--nuffin harm Ol' Cap in water; spec he born to die in galluses;
had nuff chance to be in glory, ef 'twasn't. I's done beat wid dis yer
pony, anyhow, Mass'r Raleigh. Seems, ef he was a 'sect to fly in de face
of all creation an' pay no 'tention to his centre o' gravity, he might
walk up dis yer hill!"

Mr. Raleigh left Marguerite a moment, to relieve Capua's perplexity.
Through the remaining darkness, the sparkle of stars, and wild fling of
shadows in the wind, she could but dimly discern the struggling figures,
and the great creature trampling and snorting below. She remembered
strange tales out of the "Arabian Nights," "Bellerophon and the
Chimaera," "St. George and the Dragon"; she waited, half-expectant, to
see the great talon-stretched wings flap up against the slow edge of
dawn, where Orion lay, a pallid monster, watching the planet that
flashed like some great gem low in a crystalline west, and she stepped
nearer, with a kind of eager and martial spirit, to do battle in turn.

"Stand aside, Una!" cried Mr. Raleigh, who had worked in a determined
characteristic silence, and the horse's head, sharp ear, and starting
eye were brought to sight, and then his heaving bulk.

"All right, massa!" cried Capua, after a moment's survey, as he patted
the trembling flanks. "Pretty tough ex'cise dat! Spect Massam Clean be
mighty high,--his best cretur done about killed wid dat tree;--feared he
show dis nigger a stick worf two o' dat!"

"We had like to have finished our dance on nothing," said Mr. Raleigh
now, looking back on the splintered wheels and panels. "Will you mount?
I can secure you from falling."

"Oh, no,--I can walk; it is only a little way."

"Reach home like Cinderella? If you had but one glass slipper, that
might be; but in satin ones it is impossible." And she found herself
seated aloft before quite aware what had happened.

Pacing along, they talked lightly, with the gayety natural upon
excitement,--Capua once in a while adding a cogent word. As they opened
the door, Mr. Raleigh paused a moment.

"I am glad," he said, "that my last day with you has been crowned by
such adventures. I leave the Lake at noon."

She hung, listening, with a backward swerve of figure, and regarding
him in the dim light of the swinging hall-lamp, for the moment
half-petrified. Suddenly she turned and seized his hand in hers,--then
threw it off.

"_Cher ami_," she murmured hastily, in a piercing whisper, like some
articulate sigh, "_si tu m'aimes, dis moi!_"

The door closed in the draught, the drawing-room door opened, and Mr.
Laudersdale stepped out, having been awaiting their return. Mr. Raleigh
caught the flash of Marguerite's eye and the crimson of her cheek, as
she sprang forward up the stairs and out of sight.

The family did not breakfast together the next day, as politeness
chooses to call the first hour after a ball, and Mr. Raleigh was making
some arrangements preliminary to his departure, in his own apartments,
at about the hour of noon. The rooms which he had formerly occupied Mrs.
McLean had always kept closed, in a possibility of his return, and he
had found himself installed in them upon his arrival. The library was
today rather a melancholy room: the great book-cases did not enliven it;
the grand-piano, with its old dark polish, seemed like a coffin, the
sarcophagus of unrisen music; the oak panelling had absorbed a richer
hue with the years than once it wore; the portrait of his mother seemed
farther withdrawn from sight and air; Antinoues took a tawnier tint in
his long reverie. The Summer, past her height, sent a sad beam, the
signal of decay, through the half-open shutters, and it lay wearily on
the man who sat by the long table, and made more sombre yet the faded
carpet and cumbrous chair.

There was a tap on the door. Mr. Raleigh rose and opened it, and invited
Mr. Laudersdale in. The latter gentleman complied, took the chair
resigned by the other, but after a few words became quiet. Mr. Raleigh
made one or two attempts at conversation, then, seeing silence to be his
visitor's whim, suffered him to indulge it, and himself continued his
writing. Indeed, the peculiar relations existing between these men made
much conversation difficult. Mr. Laudersdale sat with his eyes upon
the floor for several minutes, and his countenance wrapped in thought.
Rising, with his hands behind him, he walked up and down the long room,
still without speaking.

"Can I be of service to you, Sir?" asked the other, after observing him.

"Yes, Mr. Raleigh, I am led to think you can,"--still pacing up and
down, and vouchsafing no further information.

At last, the monotonous movement ended, Mr. Laudersdale stood at the
window, intercepting the sunshine, and examined some memoranda.

"Yes, Mr. Raleigh," he resumed, with all his courtly manner, upon close
of the examination, "I am in hopes that you may assist me in a singular
dilemma."

"I shall be very glad to do so."

"Thank you. This is the affair. About a year ago, being unable to make
my usual visit to my daughter and her grandmother, I sent there in my
place our head clerk, young Heath, to effect the few transactions, and
also to take a month's recreation,--for we were all overworked and
exhausted by the crisis. The first thing he proceeded to do was to fall
in love with my daughter. Of course he did not mention this occurrence
to me, on his return. When my daughter arrived at New York, I was again
detained, myself, and sent her to this place under his care. He lingered
rather longer than he should have done, knowing the state of things; but
I suspected nothing, for the idea of a clerk's marriage with the heiress
of the great Martinique estate never entered my mind; moreover, I have
regarded her as a child; and I sent him back with various commissions at
several times,--once on business with McLean, once to obtain my wife's
signature to some sacrifice of property, and so on. I really beg your
pardon, Mr. Raleigh; it is painful to another, I am aware, to be thrust
upon family confidences"----

"Pray, Sir, proceed," said Mr. Raleigh, wheeling his chair about.

"But since you are in a manner connected with the affair, yourself"----

"You must be aware, Mr. Laudersdale, that my chief desire is the
opportunity you afford me."

"I believe so. I am happy to afford it. On the occasion of Mr. Heath's
last visit to this place, Marguerite drew attention to a coin whose
history you heard, and the other half of which Mrs. Purcell wore. Mr.
Heath obtained the fragment he possessed through my wife's aunt, Susanne
Le Blanc; Mrs. Purcell obtained hers through her grandmother, Susan
White. Of course, these good people were not slow to put the coin and
the names together; Mr. Heath, moreover, had heard portions of the
history of Susanne Le Blanc, when in Martinique.

"On resuming his duties in the counting-house, after this little
incident, one day, at the close of business-hours, he demanded from me
the remnants of this history with which he might be unacquainted. When
I paused, he took up the story and finished it with ease, and--and
poetical justice, I may say, Mr. Raleigh. Susanne was the sister of
Mrs. Laudersdale's father, though far younger than he. She met a young
American gentleman, and they became interested in each other. Her
brother designed her for a different fate,--the governor of the island,
indeed, was her suitor,--and forbade their intercourse. There were
rumors of a private marriage; her apartments were searched for any
record, note, or proof, unsuccessfully. If there were such, they had
been left in the gentleman's hands for better concealment. It being
supposed that they continued to meet, M. Le Blanc prevailed upon the
governor to arrest the lover on some trifling pretence and send him out
of the island. Shortly afterward, as he once confessed to his wife, he
caused a circumstantial account of the death and funeral obsequies of
each to reach the other. Immediately he urged the governor's suit again,
and when she continued to resist, he fixed the wedding-day, himself, and
ordered the _trousseau_. Upon this, one evening, she buried the box of
trinkets at the foot of the oleanders, and disappeared the next, and no
trace of her was found.

"When I reached this point, young Heath turned to me with that
impudently nonchalant drawl of his, saying,--

"'And her property, Sir?'

"'That,' I replied innocently, 'which comprised half the estate, and
which she would have received, on attaining the requisite age, was
inherited by her brother, upon her suicide.'

"'Apparent suicide, you mean,' said he; and thereupon took up the story,
as I have said, matched date to date and person to person, and informed
me that exactly a fortnight from the day of Mademoiselle Susanne Le
Blanc's disappearance, a young lady took rooms at a hotel in a Southern
city, and advertised for a situation as governess, under the name of
Susan White. She gave no references, spoke English imperfectly, and had
difficulty in obtaining one; finally, however, she was successful, and
after a few years married into the family of her employer, and became
the mother of Mrs. Heath. The likeness of Mrs. Purcell, the grandchild
of Susan White, to Susanne Le Blanc, was so extraordinary, a number of
years ago, that, when Ursule, my daughter's nurse, first saw her, she
fainted with terror. My wife, you are aware, was born long after these
events. This governess never communicated to her husband any more
specific circumstance of her youth than that she had lived in the West
Indies, and had left her family because they had resolved to marry
her,--as she might have done, had she not died shortly after her
daughter's birth. Among her few valuables were found this half-coin of
Heath's, and a miniature, which his mother recently gave your cousin,
but which, on account of its new interest, she has demanded again; for
it is probably that of the ancient lover, and bearing, as it does, a
very striking resemblance to yourself, you have pronounced it to be
undoubtedly that of your uncle, Reuben Raleigh, and wondered how it came
into the possession of Mrs. Heath's mother. Now, as you may be aware,
Reuben Raleigh was the name of Susanne Le Blanc's lover."

"No,--I was not aware."

Mr. Laudersdale's countenance, which had been animated in narration,
suddenly fell.

"I was in hopes," he resumed,--"I thought,--my relation of these
occurrences may have been very confused; but it is as plain as daylight
to me, that Susanne Le Blanc and Susan White are one, and that the
property of the first is due to the heirs of the last."

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