A to Z Classics - Bram Stoker - The Complete Novels

“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 the 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 aerial 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.