As He Comes Up the Stair (Gentleman's Magazine serial)/Part 1

by Helen Mathers

 

PART I.—CHAPTER I.—NINON.

“BAH!” said Rose Nichol, “he is besotted,—mad, the winds would pause to hearken better than he; and all,” she added bitterly, “for a foolish, flighty, waxen white doll!”

“Nevertheless, it is a fine thing to be made of wax when it gives you the handsomest man, the best cottage, and the longest purse in Lynaway!”

Rose did not reply. She was thinking that not the best cottage or the longest purse aroused her envy, but the man Michael, who would have been beautiful in her eyes though he had been a houseless, homeless beggar.

“It was a great pity Michael's going away to foreign lands,” continued Martha, wisely; “he went away just one of ourselves, and he came back with his head all filled with learning and thoughts, though they didn't prevent his going down before Ninon like a lad of twenty!”

“Ye see,” said Enoch, speaking for the first time, “he was niver in love afore, an' so”——

He did not finish his sentence, but looked out at the sea beyond, that seemed in the stillness of the June evening to mirror back the faint blue green of the sky overhead. A boat was putting off from the shore, a lugger was coming slowly in, from the beach below floated up a snatch of children's laughter; over all was the peace and repose of the evening hours, when work is accomplished and laid aside, and the only rest worth the taking—the rest that lies between the cessation of one duty and the commencement of another—begins.

“T' will be a gran' day for the weddin' to-morrow,” he said, as Martha went back into the cottage. “Eh! but 'tis you an' I as should be climbin' the church stairs to-morrow, for we've been courtin', my dear, a matter o'”——

“Two years,” she broke in abruptly, “and we're not able to be married yet, while that Ninon girl, who only came here six months ago, and has had more lovers than one, is to be married in a real silk gown—to-morrow!”

“Tut!” he said, laying his brown hand on her shoulder, “our turn will come in good time, an' 'tisn't always the married sweethearts as is the happiest, my dear!”

The girl's frowning face softened. Although this man's love could not content her, it was nevertheless sweet; and his unfailing trustful tenderness always came to her like a solace, hiding for a moment from her own regard the restless, passionate, bitter-hearted self that she knew so well, and bringing forward the one, not beautiful or noble in any way, but lovable and bright, that Enoch thought he knew and loved.

“Thou wast never giddy, dear heart,” he said, drawing her nearer to him; “an' I shall have no cause to fear for thee, as Michael may for yon pretty heedless Ninon; an' when I am away far from thee I shall always have a sure heart of findin' thee faithfu' an' luvin' on my return.”

The girl looked down for a moment, ashamed, then, and as though the words escaped her lips involuntarily, exclaimed,

“And will not Michael have that same faith in Ninon? Do you think so badly of her as that, Enoch?”

“I don't think ill o' the lass,” he said slowly; “maybe her faults 're more o' head than o' heart; an' you mind, my dear, she is not one o' us, an' she came from a heathenish place—they wer'n't so particular about things over there, p'raps.”

“But the strangest part of it all is,” said Rose (who spoke very differently from her companion, having received a good education at the town of Marmot, up yonder), “that Michael, so strict and stern as he always was, so keen to see a woman's ways, if they were ever so little light,—it is strange, I say, that he never noticed anything, only seemed to think her too good to go to and fro among us!”

“P'ra'ps he understood her better 'n we did,” said Enoch, simply, “for ye mind he loves her, an' love gives a wonderfu' knowledge o' the heart; an' I don't think the lad 'ud ha' gone on lovin' her if he hadn't found a wurld o' good in her.”

“He is not a man to doubt without good reason,” said Rose, looking down. “He was away all the time she was carrying on with Martin Strange; and then, when he came back and the lads saw how he fell in love with her, not one of them dared to warn him, and so——”

“Peter tried to speak,” said Enoch, slowly, “but afore he'd got ten words out o' his mouth Michael stopped him, and bade him look to 't that he niver did such a thing again; and nobody iver did, they was all afeard.”

“If Martin only chose to open his lips—do you think he ever will choose, Enoch?”

“No, he luv'd her too well for that. 'Tis a pale face the lad carries always; an' have you noticed it, my dear, a kinder desprit look upon it sometimes. I'm thinkin' the morn 'll be a black day to him.”

“And she,” said Rose eagerly, “is in constant fear and pain,—any one can see that, as if she expected something bad to rush out upon her at any moment; and when she meets Martin, hark you, Enoch, she trembles and turns aside. Yestereven I was coming along the sands with father, and we met Ninon. While we were speaking to her Martin passed. For once she stood quite still, but oh! the look she gave him, as though she were begging hard for something he would not grant—I don't know which went the palest, and then we all separated and went different ways.”

“Was it just after sundown?” said Enoch, and something in his voice arrested Rose's attention; “was it anywhere near the old Chapel Stairs, my dear?”

“Yes,” she said, her hand tightening on his arm; “at least, she went towards the ruins, he towards the village.”

“Then 'twas Ninon,” he exclaimed, in a half-awakened, wholly perturbed voice.”

“You saw them together,” cried Rose, breathlessly, “they met up there—Ninon and Martin alone?”

He did not immediately reply; he was recalling with a certain amazed sense of misfortune the woman's figure that he had seen in extremest abandonment of entreaty, kneeling at Martin's feet, as he passed with rapid steps a few paces away from them, in the darkening twilight. It had in no way occurred to him then that the suppliant was Michael's promised wife; the old gossip concerning her and Martin Strange was rarely whispered now, but Rose's words sent a sudden sharp conviction through him that it was Nino's very self that he had seen. Nevertheless, being an honest man and a true; moreover possessing that sense of honour that would make the secret of another absolutely safe in his keeping, he never dreamt of telling Rose what he had seen, and to all her entreaties and cajolings turned a deaf ear.

“Good evening, Rose Nichol,” said a familiar voice behind them, and turning, she saw old Peter standing close by.

“Good even,” she said, crossly, and wishing the old gossip at the bottom of the sea yonder, for in another minute would she not have extracted from Enoch the information that she so ardently desired?

“It should be a grate weddin' to-morrow,” said the new-comer, looking up at the sky, and making the remark that every soul in the village had made at some period or other of the day.

“One would think that no one had ever been married in Lynaway before, nor ever would be again,” said Rose, angrily, “to judge by the fuss that is being made over the affair!”

Old Peter, regarding her for a moment, turned his head slowly away, and, looking at the sea, deliberately winked. No one knew better than he the reason Mistress Rose hated to hear of this wedding, and in his feeble inconsequential way he thought Enoch a fool for not having found out the state of his sweetheart's feelings; whereby he hurt nobody, least of all Enoch, for, since the world began, Has there lived a single man who has not been dubbed at some period or other of his existence a fool? It is a pleasant, opprobrious, non-compromising way of vilifying one's neighbour that commends itself to human nature, that fancies it displays its own wisdom in discovering the folly of others.

“Not but what 'twill be all show and no joy, or I'm much mistaken,” said Peter, turning his head round, “an' Michael 'ud ha' done better to choose an honest God-fearin' lass as was born an' bred in Lynaway. 'Handsome is as handsome does,' an' Ninon might well be plainer in her face an' handsomer in her ways.”

What could there be in this poor Ninon to set even the men, those sworn friends to beauty, against her? Was it that in this old-world, primitive fishing-place men must either condemn utterly the merest suspicion of lightness in a woman, or by accepting and making excuses for it that are creditable neither to her nor themselves, stand on a lower platform altogether with her and their own consciences? To the honour of these men be it said that they were free of one of the worst vices of our great cities, that consists in the ignoble pleasure men take in amusing themselves at the expense of women; in the pains they are at to draw out and encourage their frivolity, their lightness, and their vanity; beckoning them onward in their downward course, when a few words of earnest warning, a steady attitude of scorn and reprobation, and entire withdrawal from companionship that can only be continued without the semblance of respect and honest liking, might warn the poor heedless butterfly from the path along which she flutters. They knew nothing, these homely fellows, of the zest bestowed on a woman's smile or caress because it had been one man's yesterday and might be another's to-morrow; they could no more have condoned her levity for the sake of the amusement that it might yield to them in the future than they could have slain a comrade in cold blood. Out yonder, in the great town of Marmot, many a gay young fellow would have taken up the cudgels gladly enough for beautiful Ninon; but here, where hearts were true and the mind had not been obscured and defaced by the world's casuistry, there were found but two men who had any belief in her.

“He is content,” said Rose. “What would you have more? Some day——”

She paused abruptly.

Two people were coming along the path that lay between the shingle and the irregular line of cottages and houses that formed the village of Lynaway—a girl and a man.

“Ninon,” muttered Rose below her breath, lifting her hand to her brow to ward off the rays of the setting sun, and marking with jealous unwilling admiration the delicate peach-blossom face of Michael's sweetheart, the gracious curves of the youthful, lovely figure, the very poise of the pretty slender feet, and the love, sincere and warm, that lit the blue eyes turned full upon Michael's.

“It is no wonder,” said Rose to herself, and hating passionately her own dark face, almost as swarthy, every whit as handsome in its way as Michael's own.

“There is Rose,” said Ninon, stopping short, her hand still thrust through her lover's arm, his left hand holding it there as closely as though it were a bird that he feared to see flutter away out of his reach.

The girls had been no ill friends in the early days of Ninon's coming to Lynaway, and before the man Rose loved so desperately had grown to covet the sunny-haired half French, half English girl, and they were friends after a one-sided fashion still.

Ninon crossed over to Rose's side, Martha came out to the door; their young voices should have made a pleasant enough music to the ears of the men who listened, but Enoch seemed ill at ease, Michael impatient, and the exchange of words between the two men, the fastest friends, the most sworn comrades in all Lynaway, was forced and dull. Enoch was considering Ninon from a new point of view, trying to read her heart by her face, asking himself if he did rightly in holding his peace concerning her, and whether or no it was unfaithful on his part to suffer his friend to walk blindfolded into future sorrow.

All at once Michael caught Ninon's hand, and with a gay good night to all, hurried her away.

“Good-bye,” she said, looking back; then, moved by some unaccountable impulse, she escaped from his side and fled back to the group that looked after them. “Will you not wish me a good luck?” she said, her broken English sounding quaint and pretty from her tender, childish lips. “You shall see me never no more as Ninon Levesque; to-morrow I will be Ninon Winter!”

And that young and winsome face, so imploring, so sweet, touched every heart there save one; and they wished her all good-bye and God speed, and no one observed that, though Rose Nichol's lips moved with the rest, there came from them never a word.

CHAPTER II.

Ninon.

“Why did you do that, Ninon?” said Michael, as the girl came back to his side; “why should it matter to you whether Martha, and Rose, and old Peter wish you good or evil? You need care for no one's words or wishes now but mine.”

The jealousy in his voice, nay the very impatience of it, announced him emphatically to be under the delirious influence of that folly yclept love. Probably no healthily-constituted man ever dreams or thinks of love until he is brought under the direct influence of women, and thereby is made to experience emotion; and of Michael it might truly be said that upon love he had never wasted a thought, much less a desire, until he had met Ninon. When a man who is always more or less under the dominion of illness is taken with a fever or any other dangerous disease, he oftener than not gets over it; but when one who has never been ill in his life, and is sound and strong in every part, is attacked, it is more than probable that he will die. The disease but takes the firmer hold upon him from the very strength of the resistance it meets, and the old fable of the oak and the ash recurs to the memory, where the comparatively worthless tree, by bowing to the mischievous blast, escapes unhurt, while the sturdy oak, refusing to yield, is uprooted, and hurled broken to the earth.

“I know that it is not for me to care,” said Ninon; “but they are good to me—all,—and I desire to have their kind thoughts always.”

He took her hand,—such a fragile, fair little hand, so different from his big, weather-beaten one—and kissed it. Was she not better than he in every way, and did not gentle blood run in her veins, while he differed in no whit, save in his clear head and speech, from the other fishermen here? It was now nineteen years since Ninon's mother, forsaking her people for the fair-faced, soft-spoken Frenchman, who came one day to Lynaway, had departed with him for his own land, returning thence a widow just six months ago, also bringing with her a daughter of eighteen, and a heart soured and embittered by the sufferings and misfortunes of her life.

The sky and sea were melting each into the other in that exquisite, indescribable grey that ever heralds the advent of starlight in the heavens, when Michael and the girl paused before a cottage that was surely very homely to be the best in the village; yet it had a summer beauty of its own in the golden mantle of lush honeysuckle by which it was covered, and in the great bushes of roses, white and red, that stood one on either side of the door. Like all common things, they were prodigal in their abundance, and the snowy and scarlet clusters seemed positively countless. The white bush was on Ninon's side, the red one on Michael's, as they entered, and it passed through his mind how like she was in her purity and innocence to those spotless flowers; and so thinking, he drew her over the threshold, and gave her sweetest welcome by word and lip to the home of which she would be mistress ere twenty-four hours had passed, and all unwedded though she was, this, I think, was her real home-coming; on this night she entered radiant and joyous into her kingdom; to-night, and not to-morrow, she felt the careless days of her maidenhood fallen away from her, and a new sensation of wifely happiness and peace stirring at her heart. They went hand-in-hand, like two happy children, into the sitting-room, orderly and neat, all brightened with the flowers that Michael's darling loved, where his old mother sat in her high-backed chair fast asleep, spectacles on nose and knitting in hand, ready to take up the stitch where it had dropped when she should awake. Treading on tiptoe they left her there, and wandered up and down, in and about their little domain, loving all things that they saw, since they were to belong equally to both.

They sat down at last in the arbour at the end of the old-fashioned garden, in which clove-pinks, sweet-williams, and other sweet-scented, homely flowers flourished; and Michael, taking his sweetheart in those strong and faithful arms that had never yet hungered for burden of any other woman, bade her tell him from her heart if she were content—if she would have aught re-fashioned or otherwise planned—if there lingered with her one doubt of the new life that would begin on the morrow—if she harboured one regret for the innocent, happy days of her girlhood that she was leaving behind her; and she clasped those tender, soft arms of hers about his neck, and for all answer only prayed him to love her always, never to care for her less because she was his foolish little wife, not his sweetheart, whose faults he could never see—cried to him as one in fear to tell her whether she would be his wife, safely his wife, by to-morrow at that hour. And there came not even the night-cry of a wandering bird to break the harmony of those soft, passionate love-whispers, and, they two, hovering as they believed on the brink of a happier and more perfect existence than either had ever yet experienced, knew not that the promise had in its sweetness outsped the fulfilment, the dream outstripped the reality—that never again in spring or summer, autumn or winter, should come to them the unalloyed unbroken trust and happiness of this one hour, stolen out of the silent, dusky, midsummer night.

CHAPTER III.

Wedding Bells.

The bride came stepping through the dark and frowning door of the old village church, the bridegroom by her side, and at her heels half-a-dozen smiling, red-cheeked lasses, dressed in whatsoever seemed most goodly in their eyes, and each attended by a sweetheart every whit as rosy and cheerful as herself.

Until the moment of the bride's appearance, it had been a matter of doubt whether the crowd assembled would give as ringing a cheer as so good a fellow as the bridegroom, so fair a maiden as the bride deserved on their wedding-day; but no sooner was that dainty little apparition in white visible than a hearty and simultaneous shout burst from the throat of every man present, bringing a blush to the cheek of Ninon, and a smile to the lip of her husband. Such a beautiful little bride as she made, with such shining, twinkling little feet, and such a happy light on the blushing delicate little face, as surely could not fail to warm all hearts to her, whether they would or no!

And yet in two breasts lay stones, not hearts—but a little away apart, too, in the eager excited crowd, and two faces alone were pale and cold and set—the faces of Rose Nichol and Martin Strange. His looks might surely have drawn Ninon's; his eyes might surely have compelled some answering glance to his intense and steady gaze; but as though some talisman in her heart turned aside the evil that had until now been potent to molest her, she did not lock once towards him, did not even notice that her gown—nay her very hand, on which the plain gold wedding-ring shone, brushed against his garments as she passed him slowly by.

They took their way along the familiar path, and the motley procession followed after, man and matron, youth and maid, and came ere long to the house where Ninon's mother dwelt, and where the wedding-feast, abundant and simple, was set. Of how all Lynaway was bidden to it, and how, when the house overflowed, the remainder fed, happily enough, in the open air; of how the healths of the bride and bridegroom were drunk again and again, while all seemed to have forgotten their suspicions of her, now that she was an honest man's wife, with an honest wedding-ring upon her finger, I will not pause to tell; only relate how poor Ninon, who had been growing paler and paler through the long hours of the burning summer afternoon and evening, slipped away with her mother, and being despoiled of all her wedding finery, donned her daily dress and set out with her husband on the homeward walk.

Now they met not a soul by the way; the very maid being junketing up yonder with the rest, and the mother having gone away to her own home; so that they found an empty house when they arrived. Of how he left her presently to despatch the wassailers up yonder, and bid them all good-night, leaving her with a willingness that he had never known, had not the thought lain close at his heart that he would be returning to her immediately. O! that we could call him back as he goes away, away to the cottage up yonder! O! that the twelve hours' wife, who leans out of the upper window to catch an uncertain glimpse of him as he goes, to hear the echo of his steps on the footpath, could cry to him, with the voice that he has never learned to disobey, to remain with her, and let the revellers linger as they will .... but she only turns back to the lamp-lit room, thanking God aloud for making her so blessed a woman, so happy a wife .... You do well poor hapless child to praise God while you may!

*******

It was wholly dark now, save for the pale uncertain light of the stars and the moon that

Put forth a little diamond peak,

No bigger than an unobserved star,
Or tiny point of fairy scimitar,
Bright signal that she only stoop'd to tie
Her silver sandals, e'er deliciously
She bowed into the heavens her timid head.

Ninon sees not how below her window, half-hidden, half-revealed, stands a man whose face, livid, frightful even, by reason of the intense emotion that convulses it, gleams out from the partial screen of leaves afforded by the young beech-tree by which he stands. Though her eyes fell upon it, she would scarcely know the face for that of Martin Strange, the man who might have worked such deadly mischief between her and Michael, and who has forborne, as she had once with sick fear believed he would not forbear. She guesses not how out yonder one watches her shadow pass and repass the blind, as she lays aside the silken 'kerchief and chain and cross from her neck, Michael's gifts all .... who can even see the deft movement of her fingers as she unlaces the blue bodice, marks the uplifted arms as they unbind the rippling heavy masses of the glorious hair he had once deemed his own .... all this, I say, he sees and notes, neither stirring one hair'sbreadth nor moving one step towards the house, although she is there absolutely alone and at his mercy. So he can have no thought of harming her, and, after all, it may be but the fitful light that makes his face appear so ghastly, his air so wild! Thus he stands, immovable, his eyes uplifted, his hands clenched, and sees not how a woman's form flits far behind him and vanishes, nor hears later a man's footsteps approach, slacken, and pause by his side.

CHAPTER IV.

Martin Strange's Reply.

“It is you, Martin Strange?” said a voice beside the watcher that made him turn, starting violently. He had taken up his position here since Michael left his house, and believed him to be at that moment in yonder room with his wife. Albeit no coward, he was thoroughly thrown off his centre by Michael's unlooked-for appearance, and stood the very image of detected shame and guilt, incapable of articulating one word.

“I would have speech with you,” said Michael, in the voice of a man who is divided between a mad desire to slay the thing before him, and an equally violent and imperative need that compels him to stay his hand. In that impotence of desire, that urgency of inaction, he unconsciously tore off a bough of the tree by which they stood, his hand strengthening upon it like a vice, as though thus and thus only could he restrain it from fastening with murderous intent upon the man before him.

“I have a question to ask of you,” said Michael slowly, and his voice was strangled and as the voice of a stranger. “A quarter of an hour ago I discovered for the first time that you are a former lover of my—wife's.”

He made a slight gesture with his empty hand towards the cottage.

“What I have to ask you is this: Do you know anything, great or small, to her discredit? Is there any reason (and I charge you as before your God, to answer me the whole truth) why I should not have made Ninon Levesque my wife to-day?”

No reply. Only the far-away sound of what might be a far-away footfall, or the patter of a leaf falling to the ground, or the stirring of a sleepy bird in his warm brown nest.

“A quarter of an hour ago,” said Michael, still in that slow, painful way, as though he had learned a lesson by rote, and feared to forget some important words of it, “as I was coming towards my—home, I overheard certain words between Stephen Prentice and William Marly, honest men both, as I have found them, therefore to be believed even in their cups, beyond the belief that I should have given to Peter the gossip, or Seth the scandalmonger. They spoke of my wife—of me, lastly of you. Enough that I listened and understood. I said to myself, 'There is Rose Nichol passing by, she was always my wife's friend—my wife loved her' (it was strange to hear how he said 'my wife' at every opportunity, as though the mere name heartened him), and I said to her, 'They have been speaking ill of her .... you know my dear's spotless heart, and mind, and ways; you know that this thing is impossible, that it cannot be; tell me of it, assure me of it, that I may go back to her without one doubt in my mind, without my being forced to insult her purity—by one question, or look, or word' .... but she only fell away from me like water, saying over and over again, 'I know nothing—nothing, go to Enoch, may be he knows.' .... I left her there, and finding her lover, said, 'Rose has sent me to you that you may tell me that my Ninon is the pure innocent maiden that I loved—and that Stephen Prentice and William Marly are liars' .... and I told him, as I could not tell his girl, the words that they had said.”

He paused, and looked upwards at the lamp that shone like a beacon in Ninon's room. “The man I honour most on earth,” he went on, still in that unnaturally, stony way, “the truest, the most upright, the best, faltered and turned aside; only in his face I seemed to read that which should have blinded my eyes in the reading, so I turned and left him, saying to myself, 'There is only one man on earth whose words can heal or kill me now,' and while I sought for you, Rose crossed my path once more, and bade me come here, where I should find you, she said.”

And now he cried, his voice (monotonous and slow no longer) leaping forth like the sword from the scabbard, “answer me this—are these words that I have heard to-night but tipsy rumours, false as the hearts and tongues that bred them, or is there any reason why she should have been your wife, not mine, to-day?”

Martin's eyes, straying upwards, rested on the window-blind, across which was flung at that moment the grotesque and exaggerated shadow of her exquisite form, then, summoning the whole forces of his nature to meet the stupendous tax imposed upon them, he uttered the one damning syllable, “Yes!”

Ninon now came to the window, and lifting one corner of the blind, looked abroad into the night.

“He is long away,” they heard her soft voice say, then, without one glance towards the two faces that glared upon each other below, she dropped the blind and vanished.

With a low sound, that in its intensity reached not so high as a cry, Michael hurled himself upon the man before him, and snatching him by the throat dashed him head downwards against the earth, as one may destroy some hurtful noisome thing that, to a certain extent, expiates the hatefulness of its existence by the violence of its end.

It seemed but a moment later, when, the paroxysm passed, he found himself kneeling by the side of the prone man, seeking some sign of life, nay, that a thrill passed through him as Martin at last stirred, sat up, and unsteadily rose to his feet.

“And now,” said Michael, “come with me into her very presence, and repeat this lie if you dare.”

He suddenly broke off. Remembering the straightforward, honest traditions of the Lynaway men, it flashed through his brain that Martin dared not so belie his name and calling, any more than he possessed the wit to conceive so frightful a falsehood as the one of which he now stood accused.

“It is true?” said Michael, and in these three words was an appeal to the honour, good faith, and to that nameless esprit de corps that subsisted between Lynaway men, and that would outlive injury, treachery, and even the foulest wrong, that the man addressed understood to the inmost fibre of his nature.

For a few seconds there was silence, then the answer came, “Ay! it is true.”

Michael broke into sudden, almost voiceless laughter, as he lifted his hand, and pointed upwards to Ninon's window.

“Why do you not go to her?” he said. “She was your light o' love once; let her be your light o' love again. A marriage ceremony can count for little between such as you and she. Do you hear me,” he cried, with the echo of that unnatural laughter still in his voice, “go to her, and tell her that I sent you, hark you—that I sent you, and how I have found out, before it is yet too late, that she stood at the altar with the wrong man to-day! Tell her, that if but now I could have killed you, and gloried in the deed, that I now thank God that I have not stained my soul with murder for such as she—that what you were to her once you can now be again, that I thank you for being the means by which I have discovered her vileness, now instead of hereafter. For if she could come to me what she is, she would have betrayed me again afterwards, and it is better now than then. Who was it said that I loved her? A lie—a lie—the woman I loved was pure as Heaven .... she is dead, the thing that remains, Martin Strange, is yours and yours alone.”

Then he turned on his heel, and went away with rapid footsteps through the night.

CHAPTER V.

The Midnight Sally.

The bride, listening in vain for the sound of Michael's foot on the stair, passed from surprise to doubt, from doubt to fear, from fear to a chill and deadly foreboding of evil, that swept like a dimming, destroying mist between her and the restful perfect happiness she had known since Michael had placed the wedding-ring upon her hand. “Martin could not have the heart to do it,” she moaned, her hands clasped, her blue eyes wild with terror, the veil of her rippling hair half hiding, half revealing the beauty of her snowy neck and arms. “Michael would not believe him,” she said again; “he would be sure; O yes, he would be sure to come to me and say, 'Ninon, will it be true'”?

A thought seemed to strike her, and hastily gathering up her hair, she proceeded to put on her bodice and petticoat, kerchief and shoes, and creeping softly past the room where the servant soundly and audibly slept, she gained the hall door, that was still set open against the return of the master

As she stood there, hesitating whether she should take the path along which Michael so strangely tarried, she heard voices on the beach below, and straining her eyes, made out the indistinct outlines of figures moving to and fro—could even catch the occasional gleam of the weapons they carried as they busied themselves about the boat in their midst. One voice, rising suddenly above the rest with startling clearness, made her heart bound in her breast—it was the voice of her bridegroom, Michael Winter.

“What will he be doing there?” she thought, her presentiments in no way lessened, for did she not know that the Custom House officers were bent that night on one of those dangerous, nay, desperate errands that had already cost more than one Lynaway man his life? And Michael's being in their midst argued his intention of going with them. It had come to be understood in the village that no man with others dependent on him, or who was not reckless and overbold, ought to take his life in his hand and risk it in these midnight sallies, and not often did one volunteer his services. After all it was no affair of the village folks; and if the bold smugglers were resolved to struggle so long and successfully against the law, it did not hurt them, and it was not worth while to be made a dead man of for nothing.

Ninon, passing almost as rapidly as a shadow chased from the hill-side by the sun, fled across the garden and shingle; but as she drew nearer, saw to her dismay that the boat was already upon the water, that the last man was in the act of leaping in; nay, that as she approached, it receded rapidly, although it was as yet so near that she could make out Michael's face among those that filled it.

“Michael!” she cried, stretching out her arms towards him, and never heeding how the sea was flowing over her feet and ankles, “are you going away? will you not then speak to me?”

She saw that the rowers shipped their oars and paused, and heard one man say to another, “Is he mad to leave her like this on his wedding night?”

But Michael sat there like a stone, and said never a word.

“Do you go back?” said the one in authority among them; “we are late as it is, and there is no time for parleying. Will you be put out and return with your wife yonder?”

“I have no wife,” said Michael Winter.

The officer shrugged his shoulders and gave the word of command. He pitied the girl for her beauty's sake, but business was business, and there was no time to trouble himself about the affair, and in another moment the long, swift strokes of the rowers had carried the boat out of earshot.

Ninon stood immovable, heeding nothing but the faint splash of the muffled oars, that almost immediately died away in the distance, gazing as though her life hung upon it, on the shadowy receding outline that stood to her for Michael, her poor pale lips repeating over and over again, “I have no wife.” What did it all mean?

 

“Mistress Winter, Mistress Winter,” cried old Peter, “what are you doing here, and where is Michael? Oh, fie! have you run away from him to catch your death of cold on your wedding night, and stare yourself mad at the sea?”

“Michael is gone away,” she said, slowly and painfully, like a child repeating a lesson it fears to forget, “and he said, before he set out, that I was not his wife.”

“Hey!” said Peter, scenting a scandal, and opening his eyes and ears greedily for the same, “are ye joking? Did he tell ye to yer face that ye was not married to him?”

“Yes,” said Ninon, “he did say that, just that.”

Peter, misled by the calmness of a manner that might well have misled wiser men than he, cried in high glee, “Is the lad mad? Did we not all see him put the ring upon your finger to-day? He's teasin' you, Mistress Winter.”

“Will it be but a dream, Peter,” said poor Ninon, pale and cold, “that he did leave me, saying he would immediately return to me, but I did seek and find him here?”

“O' course you didn't dream it?” said Peter, deeply interested, and overjoyed at getting the story in its integrity—instead of having to pick up a bit here and a bit there, with all the trouble afterwards of dovetailing them into a respectable whole. “An' so you came to look for him, my dear?” he said, pressing a little nearer to her, looking into the widely-opened, fixed blue eyes that seemed to be looking far, far beyond him.

“Yes,” she said, in that slow, monotonous voice, as though she were under some mesmeric influence that compelled her to utter her thoughts and secrets aloud. “Do you not know—can you not think to tell me,” she said, laying her slender hand upon the old man's arm, “why he did go? Will it be that he did meet and have speech with any of the men—with Martin Strange—after he did take me home?”

Peter, looking down on that lovely, imploring young face, felt that out of her own lips was she condemned, and sighed; for his heart was not a bad one, and he thought he would even forego the repetition of this highly-spiced story to know that Michael had no good cause to leave her in this fashion; to know that, imprudent as she may have been, there was no real harm or disgrace in her past history.

“I dunno',” he said, drawing his arm away from her touch; and his voice, all worthless and disreputable though the man was, carried a weight of reprobation that would have fallen heavily enough upon any woman less ignorant of the penalties of evil than Ninon. She did not even observe his manner any more than she had ever noted the questioning looks of the other men and women of the village. There was a curious simplicity and singleness of heart about the girl that blinded her to many things clear as daylight to every one else.

“Ye had better go home with ye, Mistress Winter,” said Peter, not unkindly; “the boat will not be back till break o'day, an' when 'tis in Michael 'ull go up to ye yonder, an' if there's aught amiss between you, may be 'twill all be set right the morn.”

But in his heart he thought nothing of the kind.

“At break of day,” she repeated to herself, “and may be 'twill all come right.”

“It cannot be that he will fail to come, Peter?”

“He's sure to come,” said Peter, adding to himself, “if so be as he's not killed as Jack Spiller an' Tom Masters was last fall.”

Finding that his remonstrances had no effect upon her, and that nothing would move her from where she stood; being moreover resolved not to so misuse his advantages as to depart before he had seen the end of this exciting little story, he retired to the shelter of a boat and fell fast asleep, making night hideous with the resounding echoes of his snores. Ninon sat down on the pebbles, crossed her hands on her knees, and waited.

Who shall succeed in pourtraying the state of a human soul in the moments that immediately follow after its being stricken by a great calamity? To say that in the first minutes or even hours after the blow has fallen intense agony is experienced would be false; these come afterwards, and are the result of a certain and absolute recognition of the knowledge that it has at first refused to accept; rather is the soul in this early stage in a state of confusion, excitement, and horror, fearing all things while accepting none; therefore, not yet within the grasp of that iron and remorseless hand that will by-and-bye dash out the uncertainty and fear, substituting a calm and dispassionate certainty in its place.

Thus Ninon could scarcely be said to suffer; she was as yet borne up by an intensity of forward look-out that in happier circumstances would have gone by the name of hope. After all, she could have had but little pride, this poor Ninon, to wait here thus humbly and patiently for the man who had but now treated her with such bitter scorn; and, in truth, with her, perfect love had cast out pride, as it does in all purely, faithful, gentle, women.

The love that can suspend itself, or wax cooler by reason of the neglect or cruelty of the thing it loves, is not worthy of the name of love at all, but may be termed a bastard imitation of the divine passion, being compounded by love of admiration, satisfaction at being adored, and a cold and practical adjustment of the scales on the give-and-take principle, that accords but ill with the whole- heartedness, the lavish abundance of the essence and soul of real love.

“At break of day,” so her lips murmured over and over again, as the receding tide whispered and moaned itself further and further away from her feet.

The coolness of the midsummer night deepened for the space of an hour or so into cold. About the same time the lamps faded out of the sky, the uncertain moonlight died away, out yonder in the East the dull-coloured sky took on a clearer, lighter hue, as though the sun which yet a long, long way off sent forth some pale and chilly message of his coming.

It was in this hour, grey and unbeautiful in sky and land and sea, that there came over the water six or seven echoes very faint and indistinct, yet Ninon instantly recognised them for what they really were, the firing of shots.

These sounds, with their suggestion of violence and danger, gave an altogether new turn to Ninon's thoughts, and for the first time the image of Michael wounded, even killed, passed like lightning before her eyes. All the time that she had been dreaming of his anger and his despair, his life was perhaps in actual danger; and now, in the swift transition from one overmastering idea to another, it seemed to her that she cared nothing for his wrath, his scorn, his hatred, even so she could see him return to her, O God, alive! It was the old triumph of matter over mind, of things actual over things spiritual, of the danger that menaces the breathing body over the impalpable ills that threaten the mind; and Ninon, as with all of us who fret and chafe and weary ourselves over trifles until some great catastrophe comes that scatters our puny worries to the winds, found in her healthy, engrossing fears an antidote against those by which she had been so lately possessed.

How long she stood by the edge of the freshening waves she never knew—time was not for her, nor had she any actual existence, until by the light of the now struggling daybreak she discerned a black and distant speck that her leaping heart told her was the home-returning boat.... Footsteps came across the shingle, but she heeded them not; a voice sounded in her ears, the voice of Martin Strange—but it went past her like the foolish cry of a bird at even. She saw not his haggard, shamed face,—shamed through all its new-found honour of a strong and good resolve,—her life, her soul, her eyes were concentrated on one object—the advancing boat, straining to discover whether among the men who filled it was her husband, alive and unhurt.

The boat came slowly in. It appeared to be heavily laden, and assuredly there was not one man less in it than set out four hours ago; nay, there even seemed to be more! And now it is near enough to see their faces, to mark that all are haggard and weary, most of them wounded and splashed with blood, and that at the bottom of the boat lie three or four smugglers bound hand and foot.

As the keel of the boat grates against the shore, and Peter and Martin catch the ropes flung to them, Ninon, still seeking, seeking among the crowd of faces before her, steps forward, and utters two words: “Michael Winter?”

There is a moment's silence, since it is known to nearly all of those present that it is Michael's new-made wife who asks the question; then one of the captured men, his face gashed and bleeding, his right arm broken and hanging by his side, cries out with a terrible oath from the place where he lies:

“Shot through the breast, woman, an hour ago, fell overboard and sank like a lump of lead. Serve him well right [an oath], for not staying at home and minding his own business!”

END OF PART I.

(To be concluded next month.)