GRASSDALE.--THE MORNING OF THE MARRIAGE.--THE CRONES GOSSIP.--THE BRIDE
AT HER TOILET.--THE ARRIVAL.
JAM veniet virgo, jam dicetur Hymenaeus,
Hymen, O Hymenae! Hymen ades, O Hymenae!
CATULLUS: Carmen Nuptiale.
It was now the morning in which Eugene Aram was to be married to Madeline
Lester. The student's house had been set in order for the arrival of the
bride; and though it was yet early morn, two old women, whom his domestic
(now not the only one, for a buxom lass of eighteen had been transplanted
from Lester's household to meet the additional cares that the change of
circumstances brought to Aram's) had invited to assist her in arranging
what was already arranged, were bustling about the lower apartments and
making matters, as they call it, "tidy."
"Them flowers look but poor things, after all," muttered an old crone,
whom our readers will recognize as Dame Darkmans, placing a bowl of
exotics on the table. "They does not look nigh so cheerful as them as
grows in the open air."
"Tush! Goody Darkmans," said the second gossip. "They be much prettier
and finer, to my mind; and so said Miss Nelly when she plucked them last
night and sent me down with them. They says there is not a blade o' grass
that the master does not know. He must be a good man to love the things
of the field so."
"Ho!" said Dame Darkmans, "ho! When Joe Wrench was hanged for shooting
the lord's keeper, and he mounted the scaffold wid a nosegay in his hand,
he said, in a peevish voice, says he: 'Why does not they give me a
tarnation? I always loved them sort o' flowers,--I wore them when I
went a courting Bess Lucas,--an' I would like to die with one in my
hand!' So a man may like flowers, and be but a hempen dog after all!"
"Now don't you, Goody; be still, can't you? What a tale for a marriage
day!"
"Tally vally!" returned the grim hag, "many a blessing carries a curse
in its arms, as the new moon carries the old. This won't be one of your
happy weddings, I tell ye."
"And why d' ye say that?"
"Did you ever see a man with a look like that make a happy husband? No,
no! Can ye fancy the merry laugh o' childer in this house, or a babe on
the father's knee, or the happy, still smile on the mother's winsome
face, some few years hence? No, Madge! the devil has set his black claw
on the man's brow."
"Hush, hush, Goody Darkmans; he may hear o' ye!" said the second gossip,
who, having now done all that remained to do, had seated herself down by
the window, while the more ominous crone, leaning over Aram's oak chair,
uttered from thence her sibyl bodings.
"No," replied Mother Darkmans, "I seed him go out an hour agone, when the
sun was just on the rise; and I said, when I seed him stroam into the
wood yonder, and the ould leaves splashed in the damp under his feet, and
his hat was aboon his brows, and his lips went so,--I said, says I, 't is
not the man that will make a hearth bright that would walk thus on his
marriage day. But I knows what I knows, and I minds what I seed last
night."
"Why, what did you see last night?" asked the listener, with a trembling
voice; for Plother Darkmans was a great teller of ghost and witch tales,
and a certain ineffable awe of her dark gypsy features and malignant
words had circulated pretty largely throughout the village.
"Why, I sat up here with the ould deaf woman, and we were a drinking the
health of the man and his wife that is to be, and it was nigh twelve o'
the clock ere I minded it was time to go home. Well, so I puts on my
cloak, and the moon was up, an' I goes along by the wood, and up by
Fairlegh Field, an' I was singing the ballad on Joe Wrench's hanging, for
the spirats had made me gamesome, when I sees somemut dark creep, creep,
but iver so fast, arter me over the field, and making right ahead to the
village. And I stands still, an' I was not a bit afeared; but sure I
thought it was no living cretur, at the first sight. And so it comes up
faster and faster, and then I sees it was not one thing, but a many, many
things, and they darkened the whole field afore me. And what d' ye think
they was? A whole body o' gray rats, thousands and thousands on 'em; and
they were making away from the outbuildings here. For sure they knew, the
witch things, that an ill luck sat on the spot. And so I stood aside by
the tree, an' I laughed to look on the ugsome creturs as they swept close
by me, tramp, tramp! and they never heeded me a jot; but some on 'em
looked aslant at me with their glittering eyes, and showed their white
teeth, as if they grinned, and were saying to me, 'Ha, ha! Goody
Darkmans, the house that we leave is a falling house, for the devil will
have his own.'"
In some parts of the country, and especially in that where our scene is
laid, no omen is more superstitiously believed evil than the departure of
these loathsome animals from their accustomed habitation; the instinct
which is supposed to make them desert an unsafe tenement is supposed also
to make them predict, in desertion, ill fortune to the possessor. But
while the ears of the listening gossip were still tingling with this
narration, the dark figure of the student passed the window, and the old
women, starting up, appeared in all the bustle of preparation, as Aram
now entered the apartment.
"A happy day, your honor; a happy good morning," said both the crones in
a breath; but the blessing of the worse-natured was vented in so harsh a
croak that Arum turned round as if struck by the sound, and still more
disliking the well-remembered aspect of the person from whom it came,
waved his hand impatiently, and bade them begone.
"A-whish, a-whish!" muttered Dame Darkmans,--"to spake so to the poor;
but the rats never lie, the bonny things!"
Aram threw himself into his chair, and remained for some moments absorbed
in a revery, which did not bear the aspect of gloom. Then, walking once
or twice to and fro the apartment, he stopped opposite the chimney-piece,
over which were slung the firearms, which he never omitted to keep
charged and primed.
"Humph!" he said, half aloud, "ye have been but idle servants; and now ye
are but little likely ever to requite the care I have bestowed upon you."
With that a faint smile crossed his features; and turning away, he
ascended the stairs that led to the lofty chamber in which he had been so
often wont to outwatch the stars,--
"The souls of systems, and the lords of life,
Through their wide empires."
Before we follow him to his high and lonely retreat we will bring the
reader to the manor-house, where all was already gladness and quiet but
deep joy.
It wanted about three hours to that fixed for the marriage; and Aram was
not expected at the manor-house till an hour before the celebration of
the event. Nevertheless, the bells were already ringing loudly and
blithely; and the near vicinity of the church to the house brought that
sound, so inexpressibly buoyant and cheering, to the ears of the bride
with a noisy merriment that seemed like the hearty voice of an old-
fashioned friend who seeks in his greeting rather cordiality than
discretion. Before her glass stood the beautiful, the virgin, the
glorious form of Madeline Lester; and Ellinor, with trembling hands
(and a voice between a laugh and a cry), was braiding up her sister's
rich hair, and uttering her hopes, her wishes, her congratulations. The
small lattice was open, and the air came rather chillingly to the bride's
bosom.
"It is a gloomy morning, dearest Nell," said she, shivering; "the winter
seems about to begin at last."
"Stay, I will shut the window. The sun is struggling with the clouds at
present, but I am sure it will clear up by and by. You don't, you don't
leave us--the word must out--till evening."
"Don't cry!" said Madeline, half weeping herself, and sitting down, she
drew Ellinor to her; and the two sisters, who had never been parted since
birth, exchanged tears that were natural, though scarcely the unmixed
tears of grief.
"And what pleasant evenings we shall have," said Madeline, holding her
sister's hands, "in the Christmas time! You will be staying with us, you
know; and that pretty old room in the north of the house Eugene has
already ordered to be fitted up for you. Well, and my dear father, and
dear Walter, who will be returned long ere then, will walk over to see
us, and praise my housekeeping, and so forth. And then, after dinner,
we will draw near the fire,--I next to Eugene, and my father, our guest,
on the other side of me, with his long gray hair and his good fine face,
with a tear of kind feeling in his eye,--you know that look he has
whenever he is affected. And at a little distance on the other side of
the hearth will be you--and Walter; I suppose we must make room for him.
And Eugene, who will be then the liveliest of you all, shall read to us
with his soft, clear voice, or tell us all about the birds and flowers
and strange things in other countries. And then after supper we will walk
half-way home across that beautiful valley--beautiful even in winter--
with my father and Walter, and count the stars, and take new lessons in
astronomy, and hear tales about the astrologers and the alchemists, with
their fine old dreams. Ah! it will be such a happy Christmas! And then,
when spring comes, some fine morning--finer than this--when the birds are
about, and the leaves getting green, and the flowers springing up every
day, I shall be called in to help your toilet, as you have helped mine,
and to go with you to church, though not, alas! as your bridesmaid. Ah!
whom shall we have for that duty?"
"Pshaw!" said Ellinor, smiling through her tears.
While the sisters were thus engaged, and Madeline was trying, with her
innocent kindness of heart, to exhilarate the spirits, so naturally
depressed, of her doting sister, the sound of carriage-wheels was heard
in the distance,--nearer, nearer; now the sound stopped, as at the gate;
now fast, faster,--fast as the postilions could ply whip and the horses
tear along. While the groups in the church-yard ran forth to gaze, and
the bells rang merrily all the while, two chaises whirled by Madeline's
window and stopped at the porch of the house. The sisters had flown in
surprise to the casement.
"It is, it is--good God! it is Walter," cried Ellinor; "but how pale he
looks!"
"And who are those strange men with him?" faltered Madeline, alarmed,
though she knew not why.