Allegheny Episodes / Folk Lore and Legends Collected in Northern and Western Pennsylvania

by Henry W. Shoemaker

Forbes revealed his love by holding her very tight, and covering her wet, hot eyelids with kisses. “Oh, foolish, darling Amethyst,” he said, “I love you just as much as you care for me. I have from the first moment I saw you, and hoped that the transport would never come, but I am twice your age, and battered by many hard campaigns, and while I think I could make you happy now, ten years hence I would be an old man, and you would despise me.”

Amethyst looked up into his sad, steady eyes, saying, “I don’t care what happens ten years from now; we might both be dead. I love you, and I want you. I will give you a week to decide; if you do not, I will jump off the highest parapet into the sea, and you can have yourself all to yourself, and prosper if you will with your stern Covenanter’s principles.”

The Colonel, though moved, was too prudent a Scot to capitulate. He took the case under advisement, and every night for a week, though chivalrous and charming, neglected to set the beautiful girl’s mind at rest. Yet when he retired to his room, he paced the floor all night, for he knew that the exquisite girl could revive his youth.

The fatal night arrived. Perhaps the result might have been different if Amethyst had reminded her lover of her threat. She was too proud to do so, and the Colonel, thinking that she had forgotten her rash words–to some extent at least–was mum, and they parted gaily, Amethyst darting out of the hall humming the old love song of Barbara Livingston as light on foot, and apparently as light-hearted as any carefree child.

She was never seen again–at least not until Forbes saw her come out of the embers at the fireplace on Rea’s Hill, more than thirteen years later.

When the word came that her room in one of the turrets was empty, a general search was made, revealing the trap-door to the parapet open. In her haste she had omitted dropping it. From that Forbes knew that the worst had happened. When MacCochran told it to him, standing pale and frigid by the ancient hearth, he tried to stroke his small military mustache, to show his sang-froid, but fell in a swoon on the stone floor, lying unconscious for a week.

That was the beginning of the fainting fits that plagued him for the rest of his life, and the commencement of his distaste of life, which caused him to ask for active service in America, in a new and wild environment, far from scenes similar to the terrible tragedy of his love and pride. And yet, out of the fire, in distant Pennsylvania, had appeared the long lost Amethyst Violet, perhaps as a “warning” of his fast approaching end, to open the portals to that better world where they would be together, and all things be as they should.

MacCochran, philosophic and superstitious Scot that he was, had many reasons for lingering in the little stone house. Often he said, when he sat smoking late at night, the shadows from the dying fire would cast dark shapes, much like General Forbes’ bold features, on the walls, and he felt the magnetic spell of his old Master’s presence. Perhaps out of the ashes would emerge Amethyst Violet, or her spirit self, and the lovers could be re-united before his eyes in a shadowland.

But nothing ever happened so fortuitous, and the engraved likenesses of “Bonnie Prince Charlie” and Madame d’Albany, unhappy lovers also, which hung on either side of his Revolutionary rifle, above the mantel, looked down on him as if in sympathy, for his fidelity which had survived the grave. The long looked for visitations never came; perhaps among the vaults and cornices and lofts of Old Christ Church, where the General is resting, the reunion of the lovers has taken place, but wherever it has, the place is known only to the spirits of Forbes and the fair Amethyst Violet; there are no witnesses.

And now the present owner of “General Forbes’ Fireplace,” as he calls it, is waiting to set it up in some study or hunting lodge, beneath the skull and antlers of the extinct Irish elk, from Ballybetag Bog, where amid forest surroundings, in the dead of night, he can keep vigil like MacCochran, after reading “Volumes of Quaint and Forgotten Lore,” and maybe be rewarded by a sight of the true lovers from out of the ashes.