by Bram Stoker
‘Ye ken that for several seasons back our boat has had bad luck — we took less fish and lost mair nets than any of the boats; even on the land everything went wrong. Our coo died, and the shed was blawn doon, and then the blight touched the potatoes in our field. Father could dae naething, and had to borrow money on the boat to go on with his wark; and the debt grew and grew, till now he only owns her in name, and we never ken when we may be sold up. And the man that has the mortgage isn’t like to let us off or gie timel’
‘Who is he? His name?’ said Willie hoarsely.
‘Mendoza — the man frae Hamburg wha lends to the boats at Peterhead.’
Willy groaned. Before his eyes rose the vision of that hard, cruel, white face that he had seen only a few minutes ago, and again he saw him hand out the presents with which he had bought the man and woman to help in his wicked scheme. When Maggie heard the groan her courage and her hope arose. If her lover could take the matter so much to heart all might yet be well, and in the moment all the womanhood in her awoke to the call. Her fear had broken down the barriers that had kept back her passion, and now the passion came with all the force of a virgin nature. She drew Willy close to her — closer still — and whispered to him in a low sweet voice, that thrilled with emotion:
‘Willy, Willy, darlin’; ye wouldna see harm come to my father — my father, my father!’ and in a wave of tumultuous, voluptuous passion she kissed him full in the mouth. Willy felt for the moment half dazed. Love has its opiates that soothe and stun even in the midst of their activity. He clasped Maggie close in his arms, and for a moment their hearts beat together and their mouths breathed the same air. Then Willy drew back, but Maggie hung limp in his arms. The silence which hung in the midst of nature’s tumult broke its own spell. Willy realised what and where he was: with the waves dashing below his feet and the night wind laden with drifting mist wreathing around him in the darkness, and whistling amongst the rocks and screaming sadly through the ropes and stays of the flagstaff on the cliff. There was a wild fear in his heart and a burning desire to know all that was in his sweetheart’s mind.
‘Go on, Maggie! go on!’ he said. Maggie roused herself and again took up the thread of her story — this time in feverish haste. The moment of passion had disquieted and disturbed her. She seemed to herself to be two people, one of whom was new to her, and whom she feared, but woman-like, she felt that as she had begun so must she go on; and thus her woman’s courage sustained her.
‘Some weeks ago, father began to get letters frae Mr. Mendoza, and they aye upset him. He wrote answers and sent them away at once. Then Mr. Mendoza sent him a telegram frae Hamburg, and he sent a reply — and a month ago father got a telegram telling him to meet him at Peterhead. He was very angry at first and very low-spirited after; but he went to Peterhead, and when he cam back he was very still and quite pale. He would eat naething, and went to bed although it was only seven o’clock. Then there were more letters and telegrams, but father answered nane o’ them — sae far as I ken — and then Mr. Mendoza cam to our hoose. Father got as pale as a sheet when he saw him, and then he got red and angry, and I thocht he was going to strike him; but Mr. Mendoza said not to frichten his daughter, and father got quiet and sent me oot on a message to the Nether Mill. And when I cam back Mr. Mendoza had gone, and father was sitting with his face in his hands, and he didna hear me come in. When I spoke, he started up and he was as white as a sheet, and then he mumbled something and went into his room. And ever since then he hardly spoke to any one, and seemed to avoid me a’thegither. When he went away the last time he never even kissed me. And so, Willy — so, I fear that that awfu’ Mr Mendoza has made him dae something that he didna want to dae, and it’s all breaking my heart!’ and again she laid her head on her lover’s breast and sobbed. Willy breathed more freely; but he could not be content to remain in doubt, and his courage was never harder tried than when he asked his next question.
‘Then, Maggie, you don’t know anything for certain?’
‘Naething, Willy — but I fear.’
‘But there may be nothing, after all!’ Maggie’s hopes rose again, for there was something in her lover’s voice which told her that he was willing to cling to any straw, and once again her woman’s nature took advantage of her sense of right and wrong. ‘Please God, Willy, there may be naething! but I fear much that it may be so; but we must act as if we didna fear. It wadna dae to suspect poor father without some cause. You know, Willy, the Earl has promised to mak him the new harbourmaster. Old Forgie is bedridden now, and when winter comes he’ll no even be able to pretend to work, so the Earl is to pension him, and father will get the post and hae the hoose by the harbour, and you know that every one’s sae glad, for they a’ respect father.’
‘Ay, lass,’ interrupted Willy, ‘that’s true; and why, then, should we — you and me, Maggie — think he would do ill to please that damned scoundrel, Mendoza?’
‘Indeed, I’m thinkin’ that it’s just because that he is respeckit that Mendoza wants him to help him. He kens weel that nane would suspeck father, and — ’ here she clipped her lover close in her arms once again, and her breath came hot in his face till it made him half drunk with a voluptuous intoxication — ’he kens that father, my father, would never be harmt by my lover!’
Even then, at the moment when the tragedy of his life seemed to be accomplished, when the woman he loved and honoured seemed to be urging him to some breach of duty, Willy Barrow could not but feel that some responsibility for her action rested on him. That first passionate kiss, which had seemed to unlock the very gates of her soul — in which she had yielded herself to him — had some mysterious bond or virtue like that which abides in the wedding ring. The Maggie who thus acted was his Maggie, and in all that came of it he had a part. But his mind was made up; nothing — not Maggie’s kisses or Maggie’s fears — would turn him from his path of duty, and strong in this resolution he could afford to be silent to the woman in his arms. Maggie instinctively knew that silence could now be her best weapon, and said no word as they walked towards the guard-house, Willy casting keen looks sea-wards, and up and down the coast as they went. When they were so close that in its shelter the roar of the surge seemed muffled, Maggie again nestled close to her lover, and whispered in his ear as he looked out over Cruden Bay:
‘The Sea Gull comes hame the nicht!’ Willy quivered, but said nothing for a time that seemed to be endless. Then he answered — ‘They’ll find it hard to make the Port tonight. Look! the waves are rolling high, and the wind is getting up. It would be madness to try it.’ Again she whispered to him:
‘Couldna she rin in somewhere else — there are other openings besides Port Erroll in Buchan!’ Willy laughed the laugh of a strong man who knew well what he said:
‘Other openings! Ay, lass, there are other openings; but the coble isn’t built that can run them this night. With a south-east gale, who would dare to try? The Bullers, or Robies Haven, or Dunbuy, or Twa Havens, or Lang Haven, or The Watter’s Mou’ — why, lass, they’d be in matches on the rocks before they could turn their tiller or slack a sail.’
She interrupted him, speaking with a despairing voice:
‘Then ye’ll no hae to watch nane o’ them the nicht?’
‘Nay, Maggie. Port Erroll is my watch tonight; and from it I won’t budge.’
‘And the Watter’s Mou’?’ she asked, ‘is that no safe wi’oot watch? it’s no far frae the Port.’ Again Willy laughed his arrogant, masculine laugh, which made Maggie, despite her trouble, admire him more than ever, and he answered:
‘The Watter’s Mou’? To try to get in there in this wind would be to court sudden death. Why, lass, it would take a man all he knew to get out from there, let alone get in, in this weather! And then the chances would be ten to one that he’d be dashed to pieces on the rocks beyond,’ and he pointed to where a line of sharp rocks rose between the billows on the south side of the inlet. Truly it was a fearful-looking place to be dashed on, for th
e great waves broke on the rocks with a loud roaring, and even in the semi-darkness they could see the white lines as the waters poured down to leeward in the wake of the heaving wave. The white cluster of rocks looked like a ghostly mouth opened to swallow whatever might come in touch. Maggie shuddered; but some sudden idea seemed to strike her, and she drew away from her lover for a moment, and looked towards the black cleft in the rocks of which they could just see the top from where they stood — the entrance to the Watter’s Mou’.
And then with one long, wild, appealing glance skyward, as though looking a prayer which she dared not utter even in her heart, Maggie turned towards her lover once more. Again she drew close to him, and hung around his neck, and said with many gasps and pauses between her words:
‘If the Sea Gull should come in to the Port the nicht, and if ony attempt that ye feared should tak you away to Whinnyfold or to Dunbuy so that you might be a bit — only a wee bit — late to search when the boat cam in — ’
She stopped affrighted, for Willy put her from him to arm’s length, not too gently either, and said to her so sternly that each word seemed to smite her like the lash of a whip, till she shrunk and quivered and cowered away from him:
‘Maggie, lass! What’s this you’re saying to me? It isn’t fit for you to speak or me to hear! It’s bad enough to be a smuggler, but what is it that you would make of me? Not only a smuggler, but a perjurer and a traitor too. God! am I mistaken? Is it you, Maggie, that would make this of me? Of me! Maggie MacWhirter, if this be your counsel, then God help us both! you are no fit wife for me!’ In an instant the whole truth dawned on Maggie of what a thing she would make of the man she loved, whom she had loved at the first because he was strong and brave and true. In the sudden revulsion of her feelings she flung herself on her knees beside him, and took his hand and held it hard, and despite his efforts to withdraw it, kissed it wildly in the humility of her self-abasement, and poured out to him a passionate outburst of pleading for his forgiveness, of justification of herself, and of appeals to his mercy for her father.
‘O Willy, Willy! dinna turn frae me this nicht! My heart is sae fu’ o’ trouble that I am nigh mad! I dinna ken what to dae nor where to look for help! I think, and think, and think, and everywhere there is nought but dark before me, just as there is blackness oot ower the sea, when I look for my father. And noo when I want ye to help me — ye that are all I hae, and the only ane on earth that I can look tae in my wae and trouble — I can dae nae mair than turn ye frae me! Ye that I love! oh, love more than my life or my soul! I must dishonour and mak ye hate me! Oh, what shall I dae? What shall I dae? What shall I dae?’ and again she beat the palms of her hands together in a paroxysm of wild despair, whilst Willy looked on with his heart full of pain and pity, though his resolution never flinched. And then through the completeness of her self-abasement came the pleading of her soul from a depth of her nature even deeper than despair. Despair has its own bravery, but hope can sap the strongest resolution. And the pleadings of love came from the depths of that Pandora’s box which we call human nature.
‘O Willy, Willy! forgie me — forgie me! I was daft to say what I did! I was daft to think that ye would be so base! — daft to think that I would like you to so betray yoursel! Forgie me, Willy, forgie me, and tak my wild words as spoken not to ye but to the storm that maks me fear sae for my father! Let me tak it a’ back, Willy darlin’ — Willy, my Willy; and dinna leave me desolate here with this new shadow ower me!’ Here, as she kissed his hand again, her lover stooped and raised her in his strong arms and held her to him. And then, when she felt herself in a position of security, the same hysterical emotion came sweeping up in her brain and her blood — the same self-abandonment to her lover overcame her — and the current of her thought once again turned to win from him something by the force of her woman’s wile and her woman’s contact with the man.
‘Willy,’ she whispered, as she kissed him on the mouth and then kissed his head on the side of his neck, ‘Willy, ye have forgien me, I ken — and I ken that ye’ll harm father nae mair than ye can help — but if — ’
What more she was going to say she hardly knew herself. As for Willy, he felt that something better left unsaid was coming, and unconsciously his muscles stiffened till he held her from him rather than to him. She, too, felt the change, and held him closer — closer still, with the tenacity induced by a sense of coming danger. Their difficulty was solved for them, for just on the instant when the suggestion of treachery to his duty was hanging on her lips, there came from the village below, in a pause between the gusts of wind, the fierce roar of a flying rocket. Up and up and up, as though it would never stop — up it rose with its prolonged screech, increasing in sound at the first till it began to die away in the aërial heights above, so that when the explosion came it seemed to startle a quietude around it. Up in the air a thousand feet over their heads the fierce glitter of the falling fires of red and blue made a blaze of light which lit up the coast-line from the Scaurs to Dunbuy, and with an instinctive intelligence Willy Barrow took in all he saw, including the many men at the little port below, sheltering under the sea-wall from the sweeping of the waves as they looked out seawards. Instinctively also he counted the seconds till the next rocket should be fired — one, two, three; and then another roar and another blaze of coloured lights. And then another pause, of six seconds this time! and then the third rocket sped aloft with its fiery message. And then the darkness seemed blacker than ever, and the mysterious booming of the sea to grow louder and louder as though it came through silence. By this time the man and the woman were apart no less in spirit than physically. Willy, intent on his work, was standing outside the window of the guard-house, whence he could see all around the Bay and up and down the coast, and at the same time command the whole of the harbour. His feet were planted wide apart, for on the exposed rock the sweep of the wind was strong, and as he raised his arm with his field-glass to search the horizon the wind drove back his jacket and showed the butt of his revolver and the hilt of his cutlass. Maggie stood a little behind him, gazing seawards, with no less eager eyes, for she too expected what would follow. Her heart seemed to stand still though her breath came in quick gasps, and she did not dare to make a sound or to encroach on the business-like earnestness of the man. For full a minute they waited thus, and then far off at sea, away to the south, they saw a faint blue light, and then another and another, till at the last three lights were burning in a row. Instantly from the town a single rocket went up — not this time a great Board of Trade rocket, laden with coloured fire, but one which left a plain white track of light behind it. Willy gazed seawards, but there was no more sign from the far-off ship at sea; the signal, whatever it was, was complete. The coastguard was uncertain as to the meaning, but to Maggie no explanation was necessary. There, away at sea, tossed on the stormy waters, was her father. There was danger round him, but a greater danger on the shore — every way of entrance was barred by the storm — save the one where, through his fatal cargo, dishonour lay in wait for him. She seemed to see her duty clear before her, and come what might she meant to do it: her father must be warned. It was with a faint voice indeed that she now spoke to her lover:
‘Willy!’
His heart was melted at the faltering voice, but he feared she was trying some new temptation, so, coldly and hardly enough, he answered:
‘What is it, lass?’
‘Willy, ye wadna see poor father injured?’
‘No, Maggie, not if I could help it. But I’d have to do my duty all the same.’
‘And we should a’ dae oor duty — whatever it might be — at a’ costs?’
‘Ay, lass — at all costs!’ His voice was firm enough now, and there was no mistaking the truth of its ring. Maggie’s hope died away. From the stern task which seemed to rise before her over the waste of the black sea she must not shrink. There was but one more yielding to the weakness of her fear, and she said, so timidly that Willy was startled, the voice
and manner were so different from those he had ever known:
‘And if — mind I say “if”, Willy — I had a duty to dae and it was fu’ o’ fear and danger, and ye could save me frae it, wad ye?’ As she waited for his reply, her heart beat so fast and so heavily that Willy could hear it; her very life, she felt, lay in his answer. He did not quite understand the full import of her words and all that they implied, but he knew that she was in deadly earnest, and he felt that some vague terror lay in his answer; but the manhood in him rose to the occasion — Willy Barrow was of the stuff of which heroes are made — and he replied:
‘Maggie, as God is above us, I have no other answer to give! I don’t know what you mean, but I have a shadow of a fear! I must do my duty whatever comes of it!’ There was a long pause, and then Maggie spoke again, but this time in so different a voice that her lover’s heart went out to her in tenfold love and passion, with never a shadow of doubt or fear.
‘Willy, tak me in your arms — I am not unworthy, dear, though for a moment I did falter!’ He clasped her close to him, and whispered when their lips had met:
‘Maggie, my darling, I never loved you like now. I would die for you if I could do you good.’
‘Hush, dear, I ken it weel. But your duty is not only for yoursel, and it must be done! I too hae a duty to dae — a grave and stern ane!’
‘What is it? Tell me, Maggie dear!’
‘Ye maunna ask me! Ye maun never ken! Kiss me once again, Willy, before I go — for oh, my love, my love! it may be the last!’
Her words were lost in the passionate embrace which followed. Then, when he least expected it, she suddenly tore herself away and fled through the darkness across the field which lay between them and her home, whilst he stood doggedly at his watch looking out for another signal between sea and shore.
CHAPTER III
When she got to the far side of the field, Maggie, instead of turning to the left, which would have brought her home, went down the sloping track to the right, which led to the rustic bridge crossing the Back Burn near the Pigeon Tower. Thence turning to the right she scrambled down the bank beside the ruined barley-mill, so as to reach the little plots of sea-grass — islands, except at low tide — between which the tide rises to meet the waters of the stream.