THE AVENGER;
OR,
THE LEGEND OF MARY LEE.
An old legend describeth to us “The Castle,” a large residence, which, some centuries ago, graced, with its high towers, the banks of the river Annan, perhaps one of the finest of the Scotch rivers if all the elements of beauty are taken into account. “The Castle” stood towards the Solway, and was the seat of a family that had risen to some distinction as commoners, from the possession of considerable wealth, acquired by an ancestor, who had got possession of some lucrative monopolies from the first of the Jameses. The family name was Ashley, of English origin, but the more early members having intermarried with daughters of Scotland, and their fortunes having flourished, for the first time, on her then poor uncultivated soil, they gradually came to lose every quality and mark of the country from which they originated except the name.
Robert Ashley, the proprietor of this residence at the time our story commences, was a widower, having an only son alive, the heir-expectant of his father, and the proprietor, in anticipation, of all the rights of the property. The young man, whose name was also Robert, was possessed of high feelings of love and poetry; but, as is often the case, he allowed these to outstep the bounds of morals—living a luxurious life of pleasure, suited to his strong susceptibilities, but altogether unsanctified by a single restraint, which the greatest libertines often offer, as a sacrifice to offended virtue. He had been a follower of gipsies, and got from them the gipsy name of Robin Ary, pronounced Robin-a-Ree. The only palliation his most partial friend could offer for his extravagant conduct, was, that his amours, of which he had many, were not the result of a grovelling propensity of lust, cultivated for its own sake, and unredeemed by any concomitant affections of the heart. His intrigues, though all ending in gratifications of gross passion, began in the excitement of love; not that love, the influence of which tends to elevate and refine the other sentiments; but still a love which, in the world, very often passes for its more pure ally—using the same language, exhibiting the same external marks, and, unfortunately, so completely personating it, as to deceive the confiding hearts of the objects to whom it is directed. The easily lighted, fickle, heartless, and seducing passion, was the bane of the young man—springing up, with sudden violence, on the first contemplation of beauty—rendering him uneasy till it was communicated and miserable till it was gratified—too often by the ruin of his victim. A fine form and expressive countenance, a command of the language of the heart, and riches, rendered him one of the most dangerous companions of the fair sex of his time; yet paradoxical as it may be, his character for success in rendering miserable that sex whose happiness ought to be the pride and satisfaction of him who has arrogated to himself the title of lord of the creation, instead of keeping victims out of his way, seemed to lure them into his power; at least, there could be no doubt that the gentleman gipsy Robin-a-Ree had always more admirers than any other young man on the north of the Solway. So it seems to be, that vice is sometimes ordained to be fed to repletion, producing in the end the ruin of its powers and properties, which, otherwise, might be exercised for greater evil.
On the lands pertaining to “The Castle,” there was the little port, which we must disguise under the name of Fairhaven, where resided Gilbert Lee, a fisherman, whose boat was often required by Robin for pleasure excursions on the Solway. Gilbert had a daughter, Mary, whose youth, being eight years younger than Ashley, had, for a time, protected her from the dangerous attention of the young laird. This Mary Lee was a peculiar girl; she was accounted the handsomest in Fairhaven; and her father had only one fault to impute to her—a most unforgiving spirit. Kind and affectionate to all who exhibited those qualities to her, Mary seldom forgot or forgave an injury or an insult; and so strongly marked was her character in this respect, that her school antipathies remained with her, and increased as she grew up—no kindness or conciliation having the effect of modifying or mollifying the determination and bitterness of her hatreds. So says our chronicle, and so is it often in the world, that the most opposite feelings and passions—like the nerves of the human system, which, operating equally on the gall-bladder and the heart, are bound up in the same sheath—may be found in the same individual, acting with equal and antagonist forces, and realizing a species of manichæism which has perplexed optimist moralists from the beginning of the world. As the good is strong, so often is the evil, in the same individual; and it would have been hard to say whether Mary Lee’s loves were stronger or weaker than her hatreds.
“O Mary,” her father would say, “he will be a happy or a miserable man wha gets ye for his lot on earth; he will get either the sweet honey o’ yer young and loving heart, or the sting which, as in the bee, receives its poison from that very honey itsel’: so do we see a’ sweet things mair productive o’ sourness than the bitters which we avoid, and darkness is ne’er so visible as when licht is its nearest neibor, and hauds the candle to its ill favoured face.”
Now, Mary understood, perhaps, but little of her father’s quaint remarks, and little did she know of the possession of qualities which were destined to stand out in such prominent and startling relief from the mellowed hues of our Christian faith. Has God, for his own purposes, hid us from ourselves, that our sense of free agency should remain unimpaired by the knowledge of the connate bent of our apparently fated inclinations? Poor Mary Lee acted from her impulses; nor did she see danger. There is the “mid-deep,” which the sailors of the Solway point out to the passenger who looks on the fallacious calm, as it hovers o’er the graves of many a drowned mariner. There is a moral mid-deep in the paths of most of us, but which we never see till we are engulphed.
As Mary Lee grew up, she came necessarily under the view of young Ashley, who, as he called for the boat, noticed the young maiden sitting on the beach, throwing the glances of her blue eye on the mirror of the silvery Solway; a fair type of her own nature, though she was unconscious of the similitude—beautiful in its soft and playful undulations, but terrible in its rage.
“Have we got a mermaid sitting here?” said Robin, on a day, to a companion. “How like she is to the pictured fancy of that creature of imagination! She has only to let her hair fall over her shoulders, and send forth one of those plaintive; seductive cries which, like the singing of the Sicilian virgins mentioned by Ovid, tempt poor passengers ashore to their destruction, to realize the type in its greatest perfection. Well, by the way, I think I would have risked myself in the arms of those famous sirens, who are represented to have been so cruel as to kill their lovers—at least I would trust myself with that fair one. What thinkest thou of my courage?”