Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 87, March, 1875

Helen did not appear on the deck next day till the sunset came again, for Lilian was ill, and she remained with her; nor did Reyburn see her. But as the heat of the day passed, and the sails, that had been hanging idle ever since the night-breeze fell, began to fill again, Helen ascended.

"You come with the stars," said Reyburn, giving her his hand at the last step; but she merely put out her own hand with the gesture of receiving aid, and passed on, her dark gauzy drapery floating behind her, and the lace of her Spanish mantilla falling round her from her Spanish comb. She went to her brother's side, and sat there and talked, or rose with him and walked: there was everything to say and hear after their two years' separation. As for Reyburn, perhaps her manner was courteous enough to him, but certainly she hardly seemed to see him. Nor could he claim acquaintanceship with her: the gaunt and big-eyed child whom he had known two years ago had a different individuality from this dark girl with the rosy stain on the oval cheek and the immense eyelashes. He heard her gay laugh as John complimented her—a laugh as sweet as her singing; he saw the smile that kindled all her beauty into vivid life; he saw the still face listening to what was said; but he scarcely learned anything further than was thus declared. When at length she sang one parting strain, he wondered if the singing and the beauty were all there was: it occurred to him to find out. He remembered that moment of the evening before when John had betrayed distrust. "I will mislead him," said Reyburn, "and Lilian will understand it all." He stood before Helen as she rose with her father to go down.

 
"Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters, and keeps warm her note!"
 

he said, and stepped aside.

"We've taken a mermaid aboard, sir," said the sailing-master. "Nothing else, they say, sings after that fashion, and the men are on the lookout for foul weather."

"Never mind what the men say," said Reyburn, "while your barometer says nothing."

When Mr. Reyburn went on deck at sunrise he found Helen standing there with Lilian—with Lilian, who, after her day's illness, looked strangely wan and worn, looked like the feeble shadow of the other with her rich carnations, her glowing eyes, her picturesque outlines. Reyburn went aft and took Lilian's hand. "You have been so ill!" he said; and then he looked up and saw again this splendid creature, loosely clad in white, her black hair, unbraided and unbound, flowing in wave and ripple far down her back, her sleeve falling from the uplifted arm and perfect hand, that held a fan of the rose-colored spoonbill's feathers above her head, so beautiful and brilliant that she seemed only a projection of that beautiful and brilliant hour, with all its radiant dyes, before the sun was up; and he forgot that Lilian had been ill, forgot for a moment that Lilian existed. "I will find out what she is made of," thought Reyburn. "Are you made of clay?" he said boldly.

"He shall find that there is fire in my clay," said Helen to herself as she appeared not to heed his look or his words.

And there it began. And swift and sudden it went on to the end. She had come on board the yacht that first night to startle it with her beauty and her voice; last night, silent and stately, she had slipped through the evening like a dream; now she stood before him a dazzling creature of the morning: yesterday she was Penseroso; to-day she was Allegro; what would she be to-morrow? How sparkling, as one day followed another, her gayety was! and yet with no shallow sparkle: there was always the shadow of still depths just beyond—seasons of silence, moments of half sadness, times when he had to wonder whither her thoughts had led her. She sang a little song of the muleteers on the mountains, that he admired; then she must teach it to him, she said; they sang the song together, their voices lingering on the same note, rising in the same breath, falling in the same cadence. He had a sonorous tenor of his own: more than once she caught herself pausing in her part to hear it. How soft, and yet how strong, was the language of the song! he said; he must learn Spanish, she replied; and they hung together over the same book, and he repeated the phrase that fell from her lips—an apt pupil, it may be, for more than once the phrase, as he uttered it, deepened the color on her cheek. More than once she was conscious of gazing at him to find the charm that Lilian had found; more than once he caught her glance and held it there suspended; more than once you might have thought, by the quick, impatient manner in which she tore her eyes away, that she had found the charm herself. Perhaps he made some ostentation of his attraction before the others; perhaps the simulation of warmth was close enough to melt a colder heart than hers; perhaps it was not wholly simulation. It may be that her hand lay in his a moment longer than need was, her glance fell before his a moment sooner: it may be that as she fled all her manner beckoned him to follow. She was confiding to him her thoughts, her aspirations, her emotions, as if she wished that he, and he alone, should know them: he was listening as though there were no other knowledge in the world. If presently he thought of her as a creature of romance, if presently she felt the need of that keen interest, what wonder? They were playing with fire, and those that play with fire must needs be burned. And meantime, whether he looked at her languid in the burning noon, gay with the reviving freshness of the dusk, leaning over the bulwarks in the night and gazing up into the great spaces of the stars, he was always fascinated to look again. There was the profile exquisite as sculpture, there was the color as velvet soft as rose-petals, there was the droop of the long silken lashes half belying with its melancholy the rapture of the smile. Whether she spoke or whether she sang, her voice was music's self, and he was longing for the next tone; and presently—presently Lilian had faded like a phantom before this aurora who was fresh and rosy and dewy, with song and color and light—a sad pale phantom wan in a mist of tears.

And as for Lilian in this approaching trouble—in this trouble that was already here—was it to her mother that she turned as the good lady dozed and knitted there? Ah no, but to John himself; and perhaps John comprehended it, and, if he loved her all the more tenderly, suffered the more sharply. Possibly, as she saw Reyburn follow Helen as an entranced man follows a vision, as she saw Helen lead, Lilian knew that she deserved her punishment—knew that she had had her warning. Possibly she realized that the passion which had usurped the place of the love of years with her was but a selfish idealism—possibly saw at last, and with an agony, of what thin stuff the hero of her dream was made—possibly knew that it must be, and knew that it was best; but none the less she must have felt for a little while that there was no place left for her in the world, and she seemed to fade nearer and nearer the verge of it. Her old languor overcame her, her old pallor returned, her eyes were dull with their silent weeping: not yet twenty, she looked twice her years. Reyburn himself saw the change in her with trouble. "The voyage is doing you no good," he said.

"It is killing me!" she cried.

But he did not perceive the meaning of her unguarded cry: he did not know how it was with her, for he had not yet dreamed how it was with himself. But he was soon to discover.

Three weeks they had been wafted about from key to key, from bay to bay; they landed and explored the quaint old towns; they made trips into the tropical forests; great boatloads of juicy mangoes and guavas and bananas came off to them; they scattered coins on the clear bottom for the brown babies tumbling about the shores to dive after. Now at noon they lay anchored in still lagoons under the shadow of an overhanging orange-grove; now at night they were flying across the broad seas. But Lilian felt she could endure no more of it: her life was exhausted; she longed for the yacht's head to be turned northward, that she might die in peace on shore. John also was impatient to be gone. If he could have Lilian once more at home, he thought, he would marry her in spite of her protest, and take her where forgetfulness must needs soothe her, and strange faces make her cling to him in the old way. The way in which she clung to him now was too bitter to be borne. Her mother also began to think of home, and Mr. Sterling had wearied long ago; and at length, further pretences failing, they had been freshly provisioned and had started on their homeward way.

Reyburn had, indeed, been loath to make any change in their luxurious summering, but he was one of those who slide along with the days.

 
Take the goods the gods provide thee:
The lovely Thais sits beside thee—
 

was a couplet that he was fond of humming, and he always waited for some unnatural wrench to make the effort he should have made himself. But he had consented at last to the return, because while he was still floating in Southern waters, under Southern skies, with this delicious voice in his ears, this delicious beauty by his side, he could not think that a week's sailing must bring him under other conditions.

Perhaps, though, it would be more than a week's sailing, some one said, for the fair wind that had taken them hither and yon so long, and had waited on their fancies, was apparently on the point of deserting them at last, and the yacht was merely drifting before a fitful breeze that lightly moved a scud of low clouds which the sunset had kindled into a blaze of glory hanging just above them, and whose ragged shreds only now and then displayed a star.

"We are going to have nasty weather," the sailing-master said to his mate. "The barometer is going down with a rush."

"Yes, sir," had come the answer: "we shall catch it in the mid-watch."

"Then stow the light sails, Mr. Mason," the captain said, "and get everything secure for a heavy blow. Keep a sharp lookout, and call me as soon as the weather changes."

"All right, sir."

"I am going down for forty winks," said the captain. Then as he passed Mr. Reyburn: "I don't much like the appearance of things, sir."

"Appearance?" said Reyburn. "Why the sea is as smooth as glass!"

"Too smooth by half, sir, with the barometer falling. I've sailed with that glass a long time, and she's never told me a lie yet. We've already shortened sail."

"So I see. But why in the world did you do it, when you want every stitch of it out to catch what wind there is? However, I am in no hurry," said Reyburn laughing. "Do as you please, skipper: you're sailing the ship."

"I am sailing her, sir," said the captain, a little nettled, "and sailing her on the edge of a hurricane. You had better take the lady below, sir: when it comes it will come with a crack." But Reyburn laughed at him again, and passed over to Helen's side.

They sat together on the deck, Helen and Reyburn, long after all the others had gone to rest; for Mr. Sterling left the arrangement of etiquette and decorum to Lilian's mother; and whether she were a purblind soul, looking delightedly at a new love-match, or whether, with any surmise of the state of things, she felt pleased that Reyburn, led by whatever inducement, should step aside from Lilian's path, she gave no other sign than that when her early withdrawal from the scene left the deck clear for action. As each in turn they fell away into their dreams, those below could still hear Helen singing; and if one there lay sleepless in the pauses of the singing, no one guessed it. All the ship was in shadow save where a lantern shone, but Helen lingered, still irresolute. Now and then she touched the Spanish guitar in the measure of some tune that flitted across her thoughts, now and then she sang the tune, now and then was silent. She was half aware of what the approaching moments held—was half afraid. Was she to avenge herself upon the man who had destroyed her brother's peace? Faithful to Lilian should she go, or faithless stay? He took the guitar himself and fingered the strings, making fewer chords than discords; her own fingers wandered to correct him; their hands met; the guitar slipped down unheeded; the grasp grew closer, grew warmer—ah, Helen, was it Lilian of whom you thought, whom you would save?—and then an arm was around her; shining eyes, only half guessed in the glimmer that the phosphorescent swells sent through the darkness, hung over her rosy upturned beauty; she was drawn forward unresisting, her head was on his breast, she, heard the heavy throbbing of his heart, and his lips lay on hers and seemed to draw her soul away. And so they sat there in the deepening shadow, whispering in faint low whispers, thrilling with a great rapture, their lips meeting in long kisses. Why should he think of Lilian? Never once had he touched her mouth like this, had his arms closed round her so, had he felt the sighing of her breath. As a pale white rushlight burns in the sun, that love seemed now, compared with this great sweet flame. He bowed his face over Helen's as she sat trembling in his embrace, and neither of them remembered past or future in the passion of the present; neither of them felt the yacht swing idly up and down with scarcely a movement forward; neither of them heard the listless flapping of the sails against the masts, or noticed that no dew lay on the rail, or once looked up to see how black and close the air had gathered round them, how deadly hot and sulphurous—till suddenly, and as if by one accord, men were running and voices were crying all about them. They sprang to their feet to hear the sailing-master's shout as one beholds lightning fall out of a blue sky: "See your halyards all clear for running."

"Ay, ay, sir!" came the ringing answer.

"Stand by your halyards and down-hauls."

"Ay, ay, sir!"

"Haul down the flying jib: take the bonnet off the jib, and put a reef in her," came the strong swift sentences. "Brail up the foresail, and double reef the mainsail."

There was a sound far, far off, like a mighty rush of waters, coming nearer and swelling to a roar—an awful roar of winds and waves. And Helen was wildly clasping Reyburn, who was plunging with her down the companion-way.

"Here she comes!" cried the captain. "Hold on all!" And then there was a shock that threw them prostrate, a writhing and twisting of every plank beneath them, and the tornado had struck the yacht and knocked her on her beam-ends.

"Cut away the weather rigging!" they heard the captain thunder through all the rout before they had once tried to regain themselves. The quick, sharp blows resounded across the beating of the billow and the shrieking of the wind and cloud. "Stand clear, all!" and with a crash as if the heavens were coming together the masts had gone by the board, and what there was left of the Beachbird had righted and now rolled a wreck in the trough of the sea.

A half hour's work, but it had done more than wreck a ship: it had wrecked a passion. For as Helen still clung round Reyburn, sobbing and screaming, he had seen the opposite door open, and Lilian landing there, white-robed, white-shawled, with her bright hair about her face as white as a spirit's. "John," she said, "we are in a hurricane."

"Yes, Lilian," he had answered from where he was stationed close beside her door. "But the worst must be over. The wind already abates, and as soon as the sea goes down—"

As he spoke there came the terrible cry, loud above all other clamor, "A leak! a leak!" and then followed the renewed trampling of feet overhead, and the hoarse wheeze of the pumps.

"We are going down," Lilian said, and turned that white face away. "Oh, John!, before we go forgive me," she cried; and John held his outstretched arms toward her and folded her within them.

Reyburn saw it, and even in that supreme moment, when life and death swung in the balance, an awful revulsion seized him. He beheld now with a sickening shudder the woman cowering at his feet whose beauty an hour ago had melted his soul: she was flesh to him only—her beauty was of the earth, and flesh and the earth were passing, and it was other things on which such moments as these were opening—things such as shone in the transfigured face of Lilian—of Lilian whom, if this marsh-light had not dazzled him from his way, he might now be holding to his heart triumphant; for here disguises would have fallen and he could have claimed his own. For, whether it were the terror of the time, or the trancelike and spiritual look of Lilian, or whether it were the jealous pang of seeing her in another's arms, the love on which he had been waiting for two years and more, to which he had sacrificed time and endeavor, which had brought him here to this danger and this death, returned now and overwhelmed him, and the passion of a day and night fell apart and left him in its ruins. This woman at his feet filled him with a strange disgust: that other woman—If this were the last hour of time, he would have risked his chances in eternity to have held her as John did. He threw himself, face down, on the divan, and he cursed God and called upon the drowning wave to come.

The captain leaped down the companion-way, and caught his pistols from a drawer. "Mr. Reyburn, we need you and the other gentlemen," he cried. "We are throwing out our ballast. All hands must take spells at the pumps, for the leak gains, and I shall have all I can do to keep the men at work and the yacht afloat."

"Let her sink!" yelled Reyburn into the cushions where he lay. "Damn her! let her sink!" And he did not stir. But John had gently released Lilian and placed her in a chair near the sofa where her mother lay gasping, and had sprung on deck with his father and the captain.

A horrid hour crept by—a bitter blank below, hard and fierce work above—and then the pumps were choked. Lilian and her mother had crept on deck, holding by whatever they could find, and surveying the amazing scene around them. For the great black storm-cloud was flying up and away, flying into the north-east, and through the torn vapors that followed in its rack a waning moon arose. A tremendous sea was running, monstrous wave breaking on monstrous wave in a mad white frolic far as the eye could see; as one billow bounded along, curling and feathering and swelling on its path, a score leaped round it to powder themselves in a common cloud of spray; and every cloud of spray as it shot upward caught the long ray of the half-risen moon, that but darkly lighted and revealed an immensity of heaven, till all the weltering tumult of gloom and foam was sown with a myriad lunar rainbows.

The beauty of it almost overcame the terror with Lilian as she grasped her mother's hand.

"It is a fit gate to enter heaven by," said John, coming to her side. "We have done all we can," he added.

At the moment the bows dipped with a prodigious sea. Somebody forward sang out, "She's settling, sir! she's settling, sir!" The cry ran along the deck like fire: there was one panicstricken shriek that followed, and the men had jumped for the boats, into which water and provision had been already thrown. Reyburn came staggering up the companion-way with Helen. The dingy and one of the quarter-boats were already swamped in the wild haste: the men were crowding into the other, which had been safely lowered.

"You brutes!" the captain shouted, "are you going to leave the women?"

"Let them come, then," answered a voice, "and make haste about it;" and Lilian found herself drawn forward and looking over the side into the shadow below.

"Are you going, John?" she said hurriedly.

"No, darling: it is impossible, you see, but—"

"Nor I, either," she answered quickly.

"Lilian!"

"No," she said, "no! We were to be together in life, and we shall be in death. Oh, John, do you think I can leave you now?"

"Make haste about it," was repeated harshly from the boat.

"I am going to stay," repeated Lilian firmly.

"Here," cried Reyburn, as he drew up the ropes to bind them round Helen's waist. "Take her." But the boat was already clear of the ship and away; and he flung the ropes down again with a motion of abhorrence, and stood leaning against the stump of the mast, where he could hear the murmurs of John and Lilian, straining his ears to listen, as if he must needs torment himself—to listen to those few low, fervent whispers, with one eager to pour out the love so long restrained, the other to receive it—both in the face of death making the life so lately found too sweet a thing to leave.

Soon the little company remaining on the wreck had clustered around that portion of it; the captain and Mr. Mason were near by, and Lilian's mother sat beside her and kept her hand; Mr. Sterling, not far off, held Helen, who lay faint with fright—faint too with many a pang, snatched as she had been from a dream of warmth and joy to a nightmare of horror; one moment ruling in a heart that in the next moment had cast her forth to be trampled on; bewildered by the repugnance she had too plainly seen in the face of her passionate lover of two hours ago; half heartbroken with the remembrance of the tone in which he had called to the crew of the quarter-boat to take her, and cold with the awful expectancy of the moment. The moon swam slowly up, and the sky cleared about her; the sea rose and fell less violently, its dark expanse everywhere running fire; but the broken yacht still rolled like a log, and they clung to each other as she rolled. She settled slowly, and another hour had passed and left her still afloat.

"We are safe," cried the captain, coming back to their side after a brief absence with the mate. "Mr. Reyburn, do you see?" But Mr. Reyburn did not even hear. A soft lustre began to blanch the violet depths of the lofty sky; a rosy flare welled up from the horizon and half drowned the shriveled moon; a star that was steady in the east was shaking a countless host of stars in the shaking waters round them. And then the rosy flare was a yellow flame that filled the heavens; the long swells that ran up to break against them were like sheets of molten jewels—rubies and beryls and sapphires and chrysolites, changing and flashing as they broke into a thousand splendors; strange mild-eyed birds were hovering about them and alighting on the wreck; the moon was gone; the vaporous gold that overflowed the east was burned away in the increasing glory, and the sunshine fell about them.

"We are not going down," cried Lilian, her face aglow and lovely in the light. "That smoke in the horizon is a steamer's, and she will take us off. Oh, John, we have our lives before us yet!"

The captain and Mr. Mason had already signaled the steamer, and before very long the wreck was quite abandoned, and those whom it had carried were on their northward way again.

It was a singular wedding that I saw one day about two months after the wreck of the Beachbird. I was going by the church of St. Saviour, and being of an inquiring mind in the matter of weddings, I went in. There were two brides there: the husband of the first, the fair one, was just turning away with her. So calm, so pure, so peaceful, so content, were the faces of that new husband and wife, that I could long have looked upon them, as on some picture of strong spirits in the presence of God, had not the beauty of the second bride arrested me. But that was a beauty one hardly sees twice in a lifetime—so perfect in outline, under snowy veils and blossoms, the dark eyes so softly, dewily dark, the white brow whiter for its tendril-like rings of raven hair; and where had I ever seen groom so stately, so lofty, so proud? But what did the pantomime mean? a stranger might well have asked. Was that the man's natural demeanor? or had he brought his mind to the task of taking her by an effort that had destroyed every sentiment of his soul but scorn? And for her? Had the rose forsaken her cheek and the smile her lip because she looked on life as on a desert? Was that utter sadness and dejection a thing that should one day fade away and leave a sparkle of hope behind it? Or was it the scar of one who had played with fire, who had not the strength to release a pledge, and was marrying a man who she knew loathed her and her beauty together?

HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.