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EUGENE ARAM
A TALE
BY EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
TO SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART., ETC.
SIR,--It has long been my ambition to add some humble tribute to the
offerings laid upon the shrine of your genius. At each succeeding book
that I have given to the world, I have paused to consider if it were
worthy to be inscribed with your great name, and at each I have played
the procrastinator, and hoped for that morrow of better desert which
never came. But 'defluat amnis',--the time runs on; and I am tired of
waiting for the ford which the tides refuse. I seize, then, the present
opportunity, not as the best, but as the only one I can he sure of
commanding, to express that affectionate admiration with which you have
inspired me in common with all your contemporaries, and which a French
writer has not ungracefully termed "the happiest prerogative of genius."
As a Poet and as a Novelist your fame has attained to that height in
which praise has become superfluous; but in the character of the writer
there seems to me a yet higher claim to veneration than in that of the
writings. The example your genius sets us, who can emulate? The example
your moderation bequeaths to us, who shall forget? That nature must
indeed be gentle which has conciliated the envy that pursues intellectual
greatness, and left without an enemy a man who has no living equal in
renown.
You have gone for a while from the scenes you have immortalized, to
regain, we trust, the health which has been impaired by your noble labors
or by the manly struggles with adverse fortunes which have not found the
frame as indomitable as the mind. Take with you the prayers of all whom
your genius, with playful art, has soothed in sickness, or has
strengthened, with generous precepts, against the calamities of life.
[Written at the time of Sir W. Scott's visit to Italy, after the
great blow to his health and fortunes.]
"Navis quae, tibi creditum
Debes Virgilium . . .
Reddas incolumem!"
"O ship, thou owest to us Virgil! Restore in
safety him whom we intrusted to thee."
You, I feel assured, will not deem it presumptuous in one who, to that
bright and undying flame which now streams from the gray hills of
Scotland,--the last halo with which you have crowned her literary
glories,--has turned from his first childhood with a deep and unrelaxing
devotion; you, I feel assured, will not deem it presumptuous in him to
inscribe an idle work with your illustrious name,--a work which, however
worthless in itself, assumes something of value in his eyes when thus
rendered a tribute of respect to you.
THE AUTHOR OF "EUGENE ARAM."
LONDON, December 22, 1831.
PREFACE
TO THE EDITION OF 1831.
Since, dear Reader, I last addressed thee, in "Paul Clifford," nearly two
years have elapsed, and somewhat more than four years since, in "Pelham,"
our familiarity first began. The Tale which I now submit to thee differs
equally from the last as from the first of those works; for of the two
evils, perhaps it is even better to disappoint thee in a new style than
to weary thee with an old. With the facts on which the tale of "Eugene
Aram" is founded, I have exercised the common and fair license of writers
of fiction it is chiefly the more homely parts of the real story that
have been altered; and for what I have added, and what omitted, I have
the sanction of all established authorities, who have taken greater
liberties with characters yet more recent, and far more protected by
historical recollections. The book was, for the most part, written in the
early part of the year, when the interest which the task created in the
Author was undivided by other subjects of excitement, and he had leisure
enough not only to be 'nescio quid meditans nugarum,' but also to be
'totes in illis.'
["Not only to be meditating I know not what of trifles, but also to
be wholly engaged on them."]
I originally intended to adapt the story of Eugene Aram to the Stage.
That design was abandoned when more than half completed; but I wished to
impart to this Romance something of the nature of Tragedy,--something of
the more transferable of its qualities. Enough of this: it is not the
Author's wishes, but the Author's books that the world will judge him by.
Perhaps, then (with this I conclude), in the dull monotony of public
affairs, and in these long winter evenings, when we gather round the
fire, prepared for the gossip's tale, willing to indulge the fear and to
believe the legend, perhaps, dear Reader, thou mayest turn, not
reluctantly, even to these pages, for at least a newer excitement than
the Cholera, or for momentary relief from the everlasting discussion on
"the Bill." [The year of the Reform Bill.]
LONDON, December 22, 1831.
PREFACE
TO THE EDITION OF 1840.
The strange history of Eugene Aram had excited my interest and wonder
long before the present work was composed or conceived. It so happened
that during Aram's residence at Lynn his reputation for learning had
attracted the notice of my grandfather,--a country gentleman living in
the same county, and of more intelligence and accomplishments than, at
that day, usually characterized his class. Aram frequently visited at
Heydon (my grandfather's house), and gave lessons--probably in no very
elevated branches of erudition--to the younger members of the family.
This I chanced to hear when I was on a visit in Norfolk some two years
before this novel was published; and it tended to increase the interest
with which I had previously speculated on the phenomena of a trial which,
take it altogether, is perhaps the most remarkable in the register of
English crime. I endeavored to collect such anecdotes of Aram's life and
manners as tradition and hearsay still kept afloat. These anecdotes were
so far uniform that they all concurred in representing him as a person
who, till the detection of the crime for which he was sentenced, had
appeared of the mildest character and the most unexceptionable morals. An
invariable gentleness and patience in his mode of tuition--qualities then
very uncommon at school--had made him so beloved by his pupils at Lynn
that, in after life, there was scarcely one of them who did not persist
in the belief of his innocence.
His personal and moral peculiarities, as described in these pages, are
such as were related to me by persons who had heard him described by his
contemporaries, the calm, benign countenance; the delicate health; the
thoughtful stoop; the noiseless step; the custom, not uncommon with
scholars and absent men, of muttering to himself; a singular eloquence
in conversation, when once roused from silence; an active tenderness and
charity to the poor, with whom he was always ready to share his own
scanty means; an apparent disregard for money, except when employed in
the purchase of books; an utter indifference to the ambition usually
accompanying self-taught talent, whether to better the condition or to
increase the repute: these, and other traits of the character portrayed
in the novel, are, as far as I can rely on my information, faithful to
the features of the original.
That a man thus described--so benevolent that he would rob his own
necessities to administer to those of another, so humane that he would
turn aside from the worm in his path--should have been guilty of the
foulest of human crimes, namely, murder for the sake of gain; that a
crime thus committed should have been so episodical and apart from the
rest of his career that, however it might rankle in his conscience, it
should never have hardened his nature; that through a life of some
duration, none of the errors, none of the vices, which would seem
essentially to belong to a character capable of a deed so black, from
motives apparently so sordid, should have been discovered or suspected,--
all this presents all anomaly in human conduct so rare and surprising
that it would be difficult to find any subject more adapted for that
metaphysical speculation and analysis, in order to indulge which,
Fiction, whether in the drama or the higher class of romance, seeks its
materials and grounds its lessons in the chronicles of passion and crime.
[For I put wholly out of question the excuse of jealousy, as
unsupported by any evidence, never hinted at by Aram himself
(at least on any sufficient authority), and at variance with the
only fact which the trial establishes; namely, that the robbery was
the crime planned, and the cause, whether accidental or otherwise,
of the murder.]
The guilt of Eugene Aram is not that of a vulgar ruffian; it leads to
views and considerations vitally and wholly distinct from those with
which profligate knavery and brutal cruelty revolt and displease us in
the literature of Newgate and the hulks. His crime does, in fact, belong
to those startling paradoxes which the poetry of all countries, and
especially of our own, has always delighted to contemplate and examine.
Whenever crime appears the aberration and monstrous product of a great
intellect or of a nature ordinarily virtuous, it becomes not only the
subject for genius, which deals with passions, to describe, but a problem
for philosophy, which deals with actions, to investigate and solve; hence
the Macbeths and Richards, the Iagos and Othellos. My regret, therefore,
is not that I chose a subject unworthy of elevated fiction, but that such
a subject did not occur to some one capable of treating it as it
deserves; and I never felt this more strongly than when the late Mr.
Godwin (in conversing with me after the publication of this romance)
observed that he had always thought the story of Eugene Aram peculiarly
adapted for fiction, and that he had more than once entertained the
notion of making it the foundation of a novel. I can well conceive what
depth and power that gloomy record would have taken from the dark and
inquiring genius of the author of "Caleb Williams." In fact, the crime
and trial of Eugene Aram arrested the attention and engaged the
conjectures of many of the most eminent men of his own time. His guilt or
innocence was the matter of strong contest; and so keen and so enduring
was the sensation created by an event thus completely distinct from the
ordinary annals of human crime that even History turned aside from the
sonorous narrative of the struggles of parties and the feuds of kings to
commemorate the learning and the guilt of the humble schoolmaster of
Lynn. Did I want any other answer to the animadversions of commonplace
criticism, it might be sufficient to say that what the historian relates
the novelist has little right to disdain.
Before entering on this romance, I examined with some care the
probabilities of Aram's guilt; for I need scarcely perhaps observe that
the legal evidence against him is extremely deficient,--furnished almost
entirely by one (Houseman) confessedly an accomplice of the crime and a
partner in the booty, and that in the present day a man tried upon
evidence so scanty and suspicious would unquestionably escape conviction.
Nevertheless, I must frankly own that the moral evidence appeared to me
more convincing than the legal; and though not without some doubt, which,
in common with many, I still entertain of the real facts of the murder, I
adopted that view which, at all events, was the best suited to the higher
purposes of fiction. On the whole, I still think that if the crime were
committed by Aram, the motive was not very far removed from one which led
recently to a remarkable murder in Spain. A priest in that country,
wholly absorbed in learned pursuits, and apparently of spotless life,
confessed that, being debarred by extreme poverty from prosecuting a
study which had become the sole passion of his existence, he had reasoned
himself into the belief that it would be admissible to rob a very
dissolute, worthless man if he applied the money so obtained to the
acquisition of a knowledge which he could not otherwise acquire, and
which he held to be profitable to mankind. Unfortunately, the dissolute
rich man was not willing to be robbed for so excellent a purpose; he was
armed and he resisted. A struggle ensued, and the crime of homicide was
added to that of robbery. The robbery was premeditated; the murder was
accidental. But he who would accept some similar interpretation of Aram's
crime must, to comprehend fully the lessons which belong to so terrible a
picture of frenzy and guilt, consider also the physical circumstances and
condition of the criminal at the time,--severe illness, intense labor of
the brain, poverty bordering upon famine, the mind preternaturally at
work devising schemes and excuses to arrive at the means for ends
ardently desired. And all this duly considered, the reader may see the
crime bodying itself out from the shades and chimeras of a horrible
hallucination,--the awful dream of a brief but delirious and convulsed
disease. It is thus only that we can account for the contradiction of one
deed at war with a whole life,--blasting, indeed, forever the happiness,
but making little revolution in the pursuits and disposition of the
character. No one who has examined with care and thoughtfulness the
aspects of Life and Nature but must allow that in the contemplation of
such a spectacle, great and most moral truths must force themselves on
the notice and sink deep into the heart. The entanglements of human
reasoning; the influence of circumstance upon deeds; the perversion that
may be made, by one self-palter with the Fiend, of elements the most
glorious; the secret effect of conscience in frustrating all for which
the crime was done, leaving genius without hope, knowledge without fruit,
deadening benevolence into mechanism, tainting love itself with terror
and suspicion,--such reflections (leading, with subtler minds, to many
more vast and complicated theorems in the consideration of our nature,
social and individual) arise out of the tragic moral which the story of
Eugene Aram (were it but adequately treated) could not fail to convey.
BRUSSELS, August, 1840.
PREFACE
TO THE PRESENT EDITION.
If none of my prose works have been so attacked as "Eugene Aram," none
have so completely triumphed over attack. It is true that, whether from
real or affected inorance of the true morality of fiction, a few critics
may still reiterate the old commonplace charges of "selecting heroes from
Newgate," or "investing murderers with interest;" but the firm hold which
the work has established in the opinion of the general public, and the
favor it has received in every country where English literature is known,
suffice to prove that, whatever its faults, it belongs to that legitimate
class of fiction which illustrates life and truth, and only deals with
crime as the recognized agency of pity and terror in the conduct of
tragic narrative. All that I would say further on this score has been
said in the general defence of my writings which I put forth two years
ago; and I ask the indulgence of the reader if I repeat myself:--
"Here, unlike the milder guilt of Paul Clifford, the author was not
to imply reform to society, nor open in this world atonement and
pardon to the criminal. As it would have been wholly in vain to
disguise, by mean tamperings with art and truth, the ordinary habits
of life and attributes of character which all record and remembrance
ascribed to Eugene Aram; as it would have defeated every end of the
moral inculcated by his guilt, to portray, in the caricature of the
murderer of melodrama, a man immersed in study, of whom it was noted
that he turned aside from the worm in his path,--so I have allowed
to him whatever contrasts with his inexpiable crime have been
recorded on sufficient authority. But I have invariably taken care
that the crime itself should stand stripped of every sophistry, and
hideous to the perpetrator as well as to the world. Allowing all by
which attention to his biography may explain the tremendous paradox
of fearful guilt in a man aspiring after knowledge, and not
generally inhumane; allowing that the crime came upon him in the
partial insanity produced by the combining circumstances of a brain
overwrought by intense study, disturbed by an excited imagination
and the fumes of a momentary disease of the reasoning faculty,
consumed by the desire of knowledge, unwholesome and morbid, because
coveted as an end, not a means, added to the other physical causes
of mental aberration to be found in loneliness, and want verging
upon famine,--all these, which a biographer may suppose to have
conspired to his crime, have never been used by the novelist as
excuses for its enormity, nor indeed, lest they should seem as
excuses, have they ever been clearly presented to the view. The
moral consisted in showing more than the mere legal punishment at
the close. It was to show how the consciousness of the deed was to
exclude whatever humanity of character preceded and belied it from
all active exercise, all social confidence; how the knowledge of the
bar between the minds of others and his own deprived the criminal of
all motive to ambition, and blighted knowledge of all fruit.
Miserable in his affections, barren in his intellect; clinging to
solitude, yet accursed in it; dreading as a danger the fame he had
once coveted; obscure in spite of learning, hopeless in spite of
love, fruitless and joyless in his life, calamitous and shameful in
his end,--surely such is no palliative of crime, no dalliance and
toying with the grimness of evil! And surely to any ordinary
comprehension and candid mind such is the moral conveyed by the
fiction of 'Eugene Aram.'"--[A word to the Public, 1847]
In point of composition "Eugene Aram" is, I think, entitled to rank
amongst the best of my fictions. It somewhat humiliates me to acknowledge
that neither practice nor study has enabled me to surpass a work written
at a very early age, in the skilful construction and patient development
of plot; and though I have since sought to call forth higher and more
subtle passions, I doubt if I have ever excited the two elementary
passions of tragedy,--namely, pity and terror,--to the same degree. In
mere style, too, "Eugene Aram," in spite of certain verbal oversights,
and defects in youthful taste (some of which I have endeavored to remove
from the present edition), appears to me unexcelled by any of my later
writings,--at least in what I have always studied as the main essential
of style in narrative; namely, its harmony with the subject selected and
the passions to be moved,--while it exceeds them all in the minuteness
and fidelity of its descriptions of external nature. This indeed it ought
to do, since the study of external nature is made a peculiar attribute of
the prin cipal character, whose fate colors the narrative. I do not know
whether it has been observed that the time occupied by the events of the
story is conveyed through the medium of such descriptions. Each
description is introduced, not for its own sake, but to serve as a
calendar marking the gradual changes of the seasons as they bear on to
his doom the guilty worshipper of Nature. And in this conception, and in
the care with which it has been followed out, I recognize one of my
earliest but most successful attempts at the subtler principles of
narrative art.
In this edition I have made one alteration somewhat more important than
mere verbal correction. On going, with maturer judgment, over all the
evidences on which Aram was condemned, I have convinced myself that
though an accomplice in the robbery of Clarke, he was free both from the
premeditated design and the actual deed of murder. The crime, indeed,
would still rest on his conscience and insure his punishment, as
necessarily incidental to the robbery in which he was an accomplice, with
Houseman; but finding my convictions, that in the murder itself he had no
share, borne out by the opinion of many eminent lawyers by whom I have
heard the subject discussed, I have accordingly so shaped his confession
to Walter.
Perhaps it will not be without interest to the reader if I append to this
preface an authentic specimen of Eugene Aram's composition, for which I
am indebted to the courtesy of a gentleman by whose grandfather it was
received, with other papers (especially a remarkable "Outline of a New
Lexicon"), during Aram's confinement in York prison. The essay I select
is, indeed, not without value in itself as a very curious and learned
illustration of Popular Antiquities, and it serves also to show not only
the comprehensive nature of Aram's studies and the inquisitive eagerness
of his mind, but also the fact that he was completely self-taught; for in
contrast to much philological erudition, and to passages that evince
considerable mastery in the higher resources of language, we may
occasionally notice those lesser inaccuracies from which the writings of
men solely self-educated are rarely free,--indeed Aram himself, in
sending to a gentleman an elegy on Sir John Armitage, which shows much,
but undisciplined, power of versification, says, "I send this elegy,
which, indeed, if you had not had the curiosity to desire, I could not
have had the assurance to offer, scarce believing I, who was hardly
taught to read, have any abilities to write."
THE MELSUPPER AND SHOUTING THE CHURN.
These rural entertainments and usages were formerly more general all
over England than they are at present, being become by time, necessity,
or avarice, complex, confined, and altered. They are commonly insisted
upon by the reapers as customary things, and a part of their due for the
toils of the harvest, and complied with by their masters perhaps more
through regards of interest than inclination; for should they refuse them
the pleasures of this much-expected time, this festal night, the youth
especially, of both sexes would decline serving them for the future, and
employ their labors for others, who would promise them the rustic joys of
the harvest-supper, mirth and music, dance and song. These feasts appear
to be the relics of Pagan ceremonies or of Judaism, it is hard to say
which, and carry in them more meaning and are of far higher antiquity
than is generally apprehended. It is true the subject is more curious
than important, and I believe altogether untouched; and as it seems to
be little understood, has been as little adverted to. I do not remember
it to have been so much as the subject of a conversation. Let us make,
then, a little excursion into this field, for the same reason men
sometimes take a walk. Its traces are discoverable at a very great
distance of time from ours,--nay, seem as old as a sense of joy for the
benefit of plentiful harvests and human gratitude to the eternal Creator
for His munificence to men. We hear it under various names in different
counties, and often in the same county; as, "melsupper," "churn-supper,"
"harvest-supper," "harvesthome," "feast of in-gathering," etc. And
perhaps this feast had been long observed, and by different tribes of
people, before it became preceptive with the Jews. However, let that be
as it will, the custom very lucidly appears from the following passages
of S. S., Exod. xxiii. 16, "And the feast of harvest, the first-fruits of
thy labors, which thou hast sown in the field." And its institution as a
sacred rite is commanded in Levit. xxiii. 39: "When ye have gathered in
the fruit of the land ye shall keep a feast to the Lord."
The Jews then, as is evident from hence, celebrated the feast of harvest,
and that by precept; and though no vestiges of any such feast either are
or can be produced before these, yet the oblation of the Primitae, of
which this feast was a consequence, is met with prior to this, for we
find that "Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering to the
Lord" (Gen. iv. 3).
Yet this offering of the first-fruits, it may well be supposed was not
peculiar to the Jews either at the time of, or after, its establishment
by their legislator; neither the feast in consequence of it. Many other
nations, either in imitation of the Jews, or rather by tradition from
their several patriarchs, observed the rite of offering their Primitiae,
and of solemnizing a festival after it, in religious acknowledgment for
the blessing of harvest, though that acknowledgment was ignorantly
misapplied in being directed to a secondary, not the primary, fountain of
this benefit,--namely to Apollo, or the Sun.
For Callimachus affirms that these Primitiae were sent by the people of
every nation to the temple of Apollo in Delos, the most distant that
enjoyed the happiness of corn and harvest, even by the Hyperboreans in
particular,--Hymn to Apol., "Bring the sacred sheafs and the mystic
offerings."
Herodotus also mentions this annual custom of the Hyperboreans, remarking
that those of Delos talk of "Holy things tied up in sheaf of wheat
conveyed from the Hyperboreans." And the Jews, by the command of their
law, offered also a sheaf: "And shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye
shall bring a sheaf of the first-fruits of the harvest unto the priest."
This is not introduced in proof of any feast observed by the people who
had harvests, but to show the universality of the custom of offering the
Primitiae, which preceded this feast. But yet it maybe looked upon as
equivalent to a proof; for as the offering and the feast appear to have
been always and intimately connected in countries affording records, so
it is more than probable they were connected too in countries which had
none, or none that ever survived to our times. An entertainment and
gayety were still the concomitants of these rites, which with the vulgar,
one may pretty truly suppose, were esteemed the most acceptable and
material part of them, and a great reason of their having subsisted
through such a length of ages, when both the populace and many of the
learned too have lost sight of the object to which they had been
originally directed. This, among many other ceremonies of the heathen
worship, became disused in some places and retained in others, but still
continued declining after the promulgation of the Gospel. In short, there
seems great reason to conclude that this feast, which was once sacred to
Apollo, was constantly maintained, when a far less valuable
circumstance,--i.e., "shouting the churn,"--is observed to this day by
the reapers, and from so old an era; for we read of this exclamation,
Isa. xvi. 9: "For the shouting for thy summer fruits and for thy harvest
is fallen;" and again, ver. 10: "And in the vineyards there shall be no
singing, their shouting shall be no shouting." Hence then, or from some
of the Phoenician colonies, is our traditionary "shouting the churn."
But it seems these Orientals shouted both for joy of their harvest of
grapes and of corn. We have no quantity of the first to occasion so much
joy as does our plenty of the last; and I do not remember to have heard
whether their vintages abroad are attended with this custom. Bread or
cakes compose part of the Hebrew offering (Levit. xxiii. 13), and a cake
thrown upon the head of the victim was also part of the Greek offering to
Apollo (see Hom., Il., a), whose worship was formerly celebrated in
Britain, where the May-pole yet continues one remain of it. This they
adorned with garlands on May-day, to welcome the approach of Apollo, or
the Sun, towards the North, and to signify that those flowers were the
product of his presence and influence. But upon the progress of
Christianity, as was observed above, Apollo lost his divinity again, and
the adoration of his deity subsided by degrees. Yet so permanent is
custom that this rite of the harvest-supper, together with that of the
May-pole (of which last see Voss. de Orig. and Prag. Idolatr., 1, 2),
have been preserved in Britain; and what had been anciently offered to
the god, the reapers as prudently ate up themselves.
At last the use of the meal of the new corn was neglected, and the
supper, so far as meal was concerned, was made indifferently of old or
new corn, as was most agreeable to the founder. And here the usage itself
accounts for the name of "Melsupper" (where mel signifies meal, or else
the instrument called with us a "Mell," wherewith antiquity reduced their
corn to meal in a mortar, which still amounts to the same thing); for
provisions of meal, or of corn in furmety, etc., composed by far the
greatest part in these elder and country entertainments, perfectly
conformable to the simplicity of those times, places, and persons,
however meanly they may now be looked upon. And as the harvest was last
concluded with several preparations of meal, or brought to be ready for
the "mell," this term became, in a translated signification, to mean the
last of other things; as, when a horse comes last in the race, they often
say in the North, "He has got the mell."
All the other names of this country festivity sufficiently explain
themselves, except "Churn-supper;" and this is entirely different from
"Melsupper:" but they generally happen so near together that they are
frequently confounded. The "Churn-supper" was always provided when all
was shorn, but the "Melsupper" after all was got in. And it was called
the "Churn-supper" because, from immemorial times, it was customary to
produce in a churn a great quantity of cream, and to circulate it by
dishfuls to each of the rustic company, to be eaten with bread. And here
sometimes very extraordinary execution has been done upon cream. And
though this custom has been disused in many places, and agreeably
commuted for by ale, yet it survives still, and that about Whitby and
Scarborough in the East, and round about Gisburn, etc., in Craven, in the
West. But perhaps a century or two more will put an end to it, and both
the thing and name shall die. Vicarious ale is now more approved, and the
tankard almost everywhere politely preferred to the Churn.
This Churn (in our provincial pronunciation Kern) is the Hebrew Kern,
or Keren, from its being circular, like most horns; and it is the Latin
'corona',--named so either from 'radii', resembling horns, as on some
very ancient coins, or from its encircling the head: so a ring of people
is called corona. Also the Celtic Koren, Keren, or corn, which continues
according to its old pronunciation in Cornwall, etc., and our modern word
horn is no more than this; the ancient hard sound of k in corn being
softened into the aspirate h, as has been done in numberless instances.
The Irish Celtae also called a round stone 'clogh crene', where the
variation is merely dialectic. Hence, too, our crane-berries,--i.e.,
round berries,--from this Celtic adjective 'crene', round.
The quotations from Scripture in Aram's original MS. were both in the
Hebrew character, and their value in English sounds.
CONTENTS.
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
THE VILLAGE.--ITS INHABITANTS.--AN OLD MANORHOUSE: AND AN ENGLISH FAMILY;
THEIR HISTORY, INVOLVING A MYSTERIOUS EVENT.
CHAPTER II.
A PUBLICAN, A SINNER, AND A STRANGER
CHAPTER III.
A DIALOGUE AND AN ALARM.--A STUDENT'S HOUSE.
CHAPTER IV.
THE SOLILOQUY, AND THE CHARACTER, OF A RECLUSE.--THE INTERRUPTION.
CHAPTER V.
A DINNER AT THE SQUIRE'S HALL.--A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO RETIRED MEN
WITH DIFFERENT OBJECTS IN RETIREMENT.--DISTURBANCE FIRST INTRODUCED INTO
A PEACEFUL FAMILY.
CHAPTER VI.
THE BEHAVIOUR OF THE STUDENT.--A SUMMER SCENE--ARAM'S CONVERSATION WITH
WALTER, AND SUBSEQUENT COLLOQUY WITH HIMSELF.
CHAPTER VII.
THE POWER OF LOVE OVER THE RESOLUTION OF THE STUDENT.--ARAM BECOMES A
FREQUENT GUEST AT THE MANOR-HOUSE.--A WALK.--CONVERSATION WITH DAME
DARKMANS.--HER HISTORY.--POVERTY AND ITS EFFECTS.
CHAPTER VII.
THE PRIVILEGE OF GENIUS.--LESTER'S SATISFACTION AT THE ASPECT OF EVENTS.
--HIS CONVERSATION WITH WALTER.--A DISCOVERY.
CHAPTER IX.
THE STATE OF WALTER'S MIND.--AN ANGLER AND A MAN OF THE WORLD.--A
COMPANION FOUND FOR WALTER.
CHAPTER X.
THE LOVERS.--THE ENCOUNTER AND QUARREL OF THE RIVALS.
CHAPTER XI.
THE FAMILY SUPPER.--THE TWO SISTERS IN THEIR CHAMBER.--A MISUNDERSTANDING
FOLLOWED BY A CONFESSION.--WALTER'S APPROACHING DEPARTURE AND THE
CORPORAL'S BEHAVIOUR THEREON.--THE CORPORAL'S FAVOURITE INTRODUCED TO THE
READER.--THE CORPORAL PROVES HIMSELF A SUBTLE DIPLOMATIST.
CHAPTER XII.
A STRANGE HABIT.--WALTER'S INTERVIEW WITH MADELINE.--HER GENEROUS AND
CONFIDING DISPOSITION.--WALTER'S ANGER.--THE PARTING MEAL.--CONVERSATION
BETWEEN THE UNCLE AND NEPHEW.--WALTER ALONE.--SLEEP THE BLESSING OF THE
YOUNG.
BOOK II.
CHAPTER I.
THE MARRIAGE SETTLED.--LESTER'S HOPES AND SCHEMES.--GAIETY OF TEMPER A
GOOD SPECULATION.--THE TRUTH AND FERVOUR OF ARAM'S LOVE.
CHAPTER II.
A FAVOURABLE SPECIMEN OF A NOBLEMAN AND A COURTIER.--A MAN OF SOME FAULTS
AND MANY ACCOMPLISHMENTS.
CHAPTER III.
WHEREIN THE EARL AND THE STUDENT CONVERSE ON GRAVE BUT DELIGHTFUL
MATTERS.--THE STUDENT'S NOTION OF THE ONLY EARTHLY HAPPINESS.
CHAPTER IV.
A DEEPER EXAMINATION INTO THE STUDENT'S HEART.--THE VISIT TO THE CASTLE.-
-PHILOSOPHY PUT TO THE TRIAL.
CHAPTER V.
IN WHICH THE STORY RETURNS TO WALTER AND THE CORPORAL.--THE RENCONTRE
WITH A STRANGER, AND HOW THE STRANGER PROVES TO BE NOT ALTOGETHER A
STRANGER.
CHAPTER VI.
SIR PETER DISPLAYED.--ONE MAN OF THE WORLD SUFFERS FROM ANOTHER.--THE
INCIDENT OF THE BRIDLE BEGETS THE INCIDENT OF THE SADDLE; THE INCIDENT OF
THE SADDLE BEGETS THE INCIDENT OF THE WHIP; THE INCIDENT OF THE WHIP
BEGETS WHAT THE READER MUST READ TO SEE.
CHAPTER VII.
WALTER VISITS ANOTHER OF HIS UNCLE'S FRIENDS.--MR. COURTLAND'S STRANGE
COMPLAINT.--WALTER LEARNS NEWS OF HIS FATHER, WHICH SURPRISES HIM.--THE
CHANGE IN HIS DESTINATION.
CHAPTER VIII.
WALTER'S MEDITATIONS.--THE CORPORAL'S GRIEF AND ANGER.--THE CORPORAL
PERSONALLY DESCRIBED.--AN EXPLANATION WITH HIS MASTER.--THE CORPORAL
OPENS HIMSELF TO THE YOUNG TRAVELLER.--HIS OPINIONS ON LOVE;--ON THE
WORLD;--ON THE PLEASURE AND RESPECTABILITY OF CHEATING;--ON LADIES--AND A
PARTICULAR CLASS OF LADIES;--ON AUTHORS;--ON THE VALUE OF WORDS;--ON
FIGHTING;--WITH SUNDRY OTHER MATTERS OF EQUAL DELECTATION AND
IMPROVEMENT.--AN UNEXPECTED EVENT.
BOOK III.
CHAPTER I.
FRAUD AND VIOLENCE ENTER EVEN GRASSDALE.--PETER'S NEWS.--THE LOVERS'
WALK.--THE REAPPEARANCE.
CHAPTER II.
THE INTERVIEW BETWEEN ARAM AND THE STRANGER.
CHAPTER III.
FRESH ALARM IN THE VILLAGE.--LESTER'S VISIT TO ARAM.--A TRAIT OF DELICATE
KINDNESS IN THE STUDENT.--MADELINE.--HER PRONENESS TO CONFIDE.--THE
CONVERSATION BETWEEN LESTER AND ARAM.--THE PERSONS BY WHOM IT IS
INTERRUPTED.
CHAPTER IV.
MILITARY PREPARATIONS.--THE COMMANDER AND HIS MAN.--ARAM IS PERSUADED TO
PASS THE NIGHT AT THE MANOR-HOUSE.
CHAPTER V.
THE SISTERS ALONE.--THE GOSSIP OF LOVE.--AN ALARM--AND AN EVENT.
CHAPTER VI.
ARAM ALONE AMONG THE MOUNTAINS.--HIS SOLILOQUY AND PROJECT.--SCENE
BETWEEN HIMSELF AND MADELINE.
CHAPTER VII.
ARAM'S SECRET EXPEDITION.--A SCENE WORTHY THE ACTORS.--ARAM'S ADDRESS AND
POWERS OF PERSUASION OR HYPOCRISY.--THEIR RESULT.--A FEARFUL NIGHT.--
ARAM'S SOLITARY RIDE HOMEWARD.--WHOM HE MEETS BY THE WAY, AND WHAT HE
SEES.
BOOK IV.
CHAPTER I.
IN WHICH WE RETURN TO WALTER.--HIS DEBT OF GRATITUDE TO MR. PERTINAX
FILLGRAVE.--THE CORPORAL'S ADVICE, AND THE CORPORAL'S VICTORY.
CHAPTER II.
NEW TRACES OF THE FATE OF GEOFFREY LESTER.--WALTER AND THE CORPORAL
PROCEED ON A FRESH EXPEDITION.--THE CORPORAL IS ESPECIALLY SAGACIOUS ON
THE OLD TOPIC OF THE WORLD.--HIS OPINIONS ON THE MEN WHO CLAIM 'KNOWLEDGE
THEREOF.--ON THE ADVANTAGES ENJOYED BY A VALET.--ON THE SCIENCE OF
SUCCESSFUL LOVE.--ON VIRTUE AND THE CONSTITUTION.--ON QUALITIES TO BE
DESIRED IN A MISTRESS, ETC.--A LANDSCAPE.
CHAPTER III.
A SCHOLAR, BUT OF A DIFFERENT MOULD FROM THE STUDENT OF GRASSDALE.--NEW
PARTICULARS CONCERNING GEOFFREY LESTER.--THE JOURNEY RECOMMENCED.
CHAPTER IV.
ARAM'S DEPARTURE.--MADELINE.--EXAGGERATION OF SENTIMENT NATURAL IN LOVE.-
-MADELINE'S LETTER.--WALTER'S.--THE WALK.--TWO VERY DIFFERENT PERSONS,
YET BOTH INMATES OF THE SAME COUNTRY VILLAGE.--THE HUMOURS OF LIFE, AND
ITS DARK PASSIONS, ARE FOUND IN JUXTA-POSITION EVERYWHERE.
CHAPTER V.
A REFLECTION NEW AND STRANGE.--THE STREETS OF LONDON.--A GREAT MAN'S
LIBRARY.--A CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE STUDENT AND AN ACQUAINTANCE OF THE
READER'S.--ITS RESULT.
CHAPTER VI.
THE THAMES AT NIGHT.--A THOUGHT.--THE STUDENT RE-SEEKS THE RUFFIAN.--A
HUMAN FEELING EVEN IN THE WORST SOIL.
CHAPTER VII.
MADELINE, HER HOPES.--A MILD AUTUMN CHARACTERISED.--A LANDSCAPE.
--A RETURN.
CHAPTER VIII.
AFFECTION: ITS GODLIKE NATURE.--THE CONVERSATION BETWEEN ARAM AND
MADELINE.--THE FATALIST FORGETS FATE.
CHAPTER IX.
WALTER AND THE CORPORAL ON THE ROAD.--THE EVENING SETS IN.--THE GIPSEY
TENTS.--ADVENTURE WITH THE HORSEMAN.--THE CORPORAL DISCOMFITED, AND THE
ARRIVAL AT KNARESBOROUGH.
CHAPTER X.
WALTER'S REFLECTIONS.--MINE HOST.--A GENTLE CHARACTER AND A GREEN OLD
AGE.--THE GARDEN, AND THAT WHICH IT TEACHETH.--A DIALOGUE, WHEREIN NEW
HINTS TOWARDS THE WISHED FOR DISCOVERY ARE SUGGESTED.--THE CURATE.--A
VISIT TO A SPOT OF DEEP INTEREST TO THE ADVENTURER.
CHAPTER XI.
GRIEF IN A RUFFIAN.--THE CHAMBER OF EARLY DEATH.--A HOMELY YET MOMENTOUS
CONFESSION.--THE EARTH'S SECRETS.--THE CAVERN.--THE ACCUSATION.
BOOK V.
CHAPTER I.
GRASSDALE.--THE MORNING OF THE MARRIAGE.--THE CRONES' GOSSIP.
THE BRIDE AT HER TOILET.--THE ARRIVAL.
CHAPTER II.
THE STUDENT ALONE IN HIS CHAMBER.--THE INTERRUPTION.--FAITHFUL
LOVE.
CHAPTER III.
THE JUSTICE.--THE DEPARTURE.--THE EQUANIMITY OF THE CORPORAL IN BEARING
THE MISFORTUNES OF OTHER PEOPLE.--THE EXAMINATION; ITS RESULT.--ARAM'S
CONDUCT IN PRISON.--THE ELASTICITY OF OUR HUMAN NATURE.--A VISIT FROM THE
EARL.--WALTER'S DETERMINATION.--MADELINE.
CHAPTER IV.
THE EVENING BEFORE THE TRIAL.--THE COUSINS.--THE CHANGE IN MADELINE.
--THE FAMILY OF GRASSDALE MEET ONCE MORE BENEATH ONE ROOF.
CHAPTER V.
THE TRIAL
CHAPTER VI.
THE DEATH.--THE PRISON.--AN INTERVIEW.--ITS RESULT
CHAPTER VII.
THE CONFESSION; AND THE FATE
CHAPTER VIII AND LAST.
THE TRAVELLER'S RETURN.--THE COUNTRY VILLAGE ONCE MORE VISITED.
--ITS INHABITANTS.--THE REMEMBERED BROOK.--THE DESERTED MANOR-HOUSE.
--THE CHURCH-YARD.--THE TRAVELLER RESUMES HIS JOURNEY.--THE COUNTRY TOWN.
--A MEETING OF TWO LOVERS AFTER LONG ABSENCE AND MUCH SORROW.
--CONCLUSION.
EUGENE ARAM
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
THE VILLAGE.--ITS INHABITANTS.--AN OLD MANORHOUSE: AND AN ENGLISH FAMILY;
THEIR HISTORY, INVOLVING A MYSTERIOUS EVENT.
"Protected by the divinity they adored, supported by the earth which they
cultivated, and at peace with themselves, they enjoyed the sweets of
life, without dreading or desiring dissolution." Numa Pompilius.
In the country of--there is a sequestered hamlet, which I have often
sought occasion to pass, and which I have never left without a certain
reluctance and regret. It is not only (though this has a remarkable spell
over my imagination) that it is the sanctuary, as it were, of a story
which appears to me of a singular and fearful interest; but the scene
itself is one which requires no legend to arrest the traveller's
attention. I know not in any part of the world, which it has been my lot
to visit, a landscape so entirely lovely and picturesque, as that which
on every side of the village I speak of, you may survey. The hamlet to
which I shall here give the name of Grassdale, is situated in a valley,
which for about the length of a mile winds among gardens and orchards,
laden with fruit, between two chains of gentle and fertile hills.
Here, singly or in pairs, are scattered cottages, which bespeak a comfort
and a rural luxury, less often than our poets have described the
characteristics of the English peasantry. It has been observed, and there
is a world of homely, ay, and of legislative knowledge in the
observation, that wherever you see a flower in a cottage garden, or a
bird-cage at the window, you may feel sure that the cottagers are better
and wiser than their neighbours; and such humble tokens of attention to
something beyond the sterile labour of life, were (we must now revert to
the past,) to be remarked in almost every one of the lowly abodes at
Grassdale. The jasmine here, there the vine clustered over the threshold,
not so wildly as to testify negligence; but rather to sweeten the air
than to exclude it from the inmates. Each of the cottages possessed at
its rear its plot of ground, apportioned to the more useful and
nutritious product of nature; while the greater part of them fenced also
from the unfrequented road a little spot for the lupin, the sweet pea, or
the many tribes of the English rose. And it is not unworthy of remark,
that the bees came in greater clusters to Grassdale than to any other
part of that rich and cultivated district. A small piece of waste land,
which was intersected by a brook, fringed with ozier and dwarf and
fantastic pollards, afforded pasture for a few cows, and the only
carrier's solitary horse. The stream itself was of no ignoble repute
among the gentle craft of the Angle, the brotherhood whom our
associations defend in the spite of our mercy; and this repute drew
welcome and periodical itinerants to the village, who furnished it with
its scanty news of the great world without, and maintained in a decorous
custom the little and single hostelry of the place. Not that Peter
Dealtry, the proprietor of the "Spotted Dog," was altogether contented to
subsist upon the gains of his hospitable profession; he joined thereto
the light cares of a small farm, held under a wealthy and an easy
landlord; and being moreover honoured with the dignity of clerk to the
parish, he was deemed by his neighbours a person of no small
accomplishment, and no insignificant distinction. He was a little, dry,
thin man, of a turn rather sentimental than jocose; a memory well stored
with fag-ends of psalms, and hymns which, being less familiar than the
psalms to the ears of the villagers, were more than suspected to be his
own composition; often gave a poetic and semi-religious colouring to his
conversation, which accorded rather with his dignity in the church, than
his post at the Spotted Dog. Yet he disliked not his joke, though it was
subtle and delicate of nature; nor did he disdain to bear companionship
over his own liquor, with guests less gifted and refined.
In the centre of the village you chanced upon a cottage which had been
lately white-washed, where a certain preciseness in the owner might be
detected in the clipped hedge, and the exact and newly mended style by
which you approached the habitation; herein dwelt the beau and bachelor
of the village, somewhat antiquated it is true, but still an object of
great attention and some hope to the elder damsels in the vicinity, and
of a respectful popularity, that did not however prohibit a joke, to the
younger part of the sisterhood. Jacob Bunting, so was this gentleman
called, had been for many years in the king's service, in which he had
risen to the rank of corporal, and had saved and pinched together a
certain small independence upon which he now rented his cottage and
enjoyed his leisure. He had seen a good deal of the world, and profited
in shrewdness by his experience; he had rubbed off, however, all
superfluous devotion as he rubbed off his prejudices, and though he drank
more often than any one else with the landlord of the Spotted Dog, he
also quarrelled with him the oftenest, and testified the least
forbearance at the publican's segments of psalmody. Jacob was a tall,
comely, and perpendicular personage; his threadbare coat was scrupulously
brushed, and his hair punctiliously plastered at the sides into two stiff
obstinate-looking curls, and at the top into what he was pleased to call
a feather, though it was much more like a tile. His conversation had in
it something peculiar; generally it assumed a quick, short, abrupt turn,
that, retrenching all superfluities of pronoun and conjunction, and
marching at once upon the meaning of the sentence, had in it a military
and Spartan significance, which betrayed how difficult it often is for a
man to forget that he has been a corporal. Occasionally indeed, for where
but in farces is the phraseology of the humorist always the same? he
escaped into a more enlarged and christianlike method of dealing with the
king's English, but that was chiefly noticeable, when from conversation
he launched himself into lecture, a luxury the worthy soldier loved
greatly to indulge, for much had he seen and somewhat had he reflected;
and valuing himself, which was odd in a corporal, more on his knowledge
of the world than his knowledge even of war, he rarely missed any
occasion of edifying a patient listener with the result of his
observations.
After you had sauntered by the veteran's door, beside which you
generally, if the evening were fine, or he was not drinking with
neighbour Dealtry--or taking his tea with gossip this or master that--or
teaching some emulous urchins the broadsword exercise--or snaring trout
in the stream--or, in short, otherwise engaged; beside which, I say, you
not unfrequently beheld him sitting on a rude bench, and enjoying with
half-shut eyes, crossed legs, but still unindulgently erect posture, the
luxury of his pipe; you ventured over a little wooden bridge; beneath
which, clear and shallow, ran the rivulet we have before honorably
mentioned; and a walk of a few minutes brought you to a moderately sized
and old-fashioned mansion--the manor-house of the parish. It stood at the
very foot of the hill; behind, a rich, ancient, and hanging wood, brought
into relief--the exceeding freshness and verdure of the patch of green
meadow immediately in front. On one side, the garden was bounded by the
village churchyard, with its simple mounds, and its few scattered and
humble tombs. The church was of great antiquity; and it was only in one
point of view that you caught more than a glimpse of its grey tower and
graceful spire, so thickly and so darkly grouped the yew tree and the
larch around the edifice. Opposite the gate by which you gained the
house, the view was not extended, but rich with wood and pasture, backed
by a hill, which; less verdant than its fellows, was covered with sheep:
while you saw hard by the rivulet darkening and stealing away; till your
sight, though not your ear, lost it among the woodland.
Trained up the embrowned paling on either side of the gate, were bushes
of rustic fruit, and fruit and flowers (through plots of which green and
winding alleys had been cut with no untasteful hand) testified by their
thriving and healthful looks, the care bestowed upon them. The main
boasts of the garden were, on one side, a huge horse-chesnut tree--the
largest in the village; and on the other, an arbour covered without with
honeysuckles, and tapestried within by moss. The house, a grey and quaint
building of the time of James I. with stone copings and gable roof, could
scarcely in these days have been deemed a fitting residence for the lord
of the manor. Nearly the whole of the centre was occupied by the hall, in
which the meals of the family were commonly held--only two other
sitting-rooms of very moderate dimensions had been reserved by the
architect for the convenience or ostentation of the proprietor. An ample
porch jutted from the main building, and this was covered with ivy, as
the windows were with jasmine and honeysuckle; while seats were ranged
inside the porch covered with many a rude initial and long-past date.
The owner of this mansion bore the name of Rowland Lester. His
forefathers, without pretending to high antiquity of family, had held the
dignity of squires of Grassdale for some two centuries; and Rowland
Lester was perhaps the first of the race who had stirred above fifty
miles from the house in which each successive lord had received his
birth, or the green churchyard in which was yet chronicled his death. The
present proprietor was a man of cultivated tastes; and abilities,
naturally not much above mediocrity, had been improved by travel as well
as study. Himself and one younger brother had been early left masters of
their fate and their several portions. The younger, Geoffrey, testified a
roving and dissipated turn. Bold, licentious, extravagant, unprincipled,
--his career soon outstripped the slender fortunes of a cadet in the
family of a country squire. He was early thrown into difficulties, but,
by some means or other they never seemed to overwhelm him; an unexpected
turn--a lucky adventure--presented itself at the very moment when Fortune
appeared the most utterly to have deserted him.
Among these more propitious fluctuations in the tide of affairs, was, at
about the age of forty, a sudden marriage with a young lady of what might
be termed (for Geoffrey Lester's rank of life, and the rational expenses
of that day) a very competent and respectable fortune. Unhappily,
however, the lady was neither handsome in feature nor gentle in temper;
and, after a few years of quarrel and contest, the faithless husband, one
bright morning, having collected in his proper person whatever remained
of their fortune, absconded from the conjugal hearth without either
warning or farewell. He left nothing to his wife but his house, his
debts, and his only child, a son. From that time to the present little
had been known, though much had been conjectured, concerning the
deserter. For the first few years they traced, however, so far of his
fate as to learn that he had been seen once in India; and that previously
he had been met in England by a relation, under the disguise of assumed
names: a proof that whatever his occupations, they could scarcely be very
respectable. But, of late, nothing whatsoever relating to the wanderer
had transpired. By some he was imagined dead; by most he was forgotten.
Those more immediately connected with him--his brother in especial,
cherished a secret belief, that wherever Geoffrey Lester should chance to
alight, the manner of alighting would (to use the significant and homely
metaphor) be always on his legs; and coupling the wonted luck of the
scapegrace with the fact of his having been seen in India, Rowland, in
his heart, not only hoped, but fully expected, that the lost one would,
some day or other, return home laden with the spoils of the East, and
eager to shower upon his relatives, in recompense of long desertion,
"With richest hand ... barbaric pearl and gold."
But we must return to the forsaken spouse.--Left in this abrupt
destitution and distress, Mrs. Lester had only the resource of applying
to her brother-in-law, whom indeed the fugitive had before seized many
opportunities of not leaving wholly unprepared for such an application.
Rowland promptly and generously obeyed the summons: he took the child and
the wife to his own home,--he freed the latter from the persecution of
all legal claimants,--and, after selling such effects as remained, he
devoted the whole proceeds to the forsaken family, without regarding his
own expenses on their behalf, ill as he was able to afford the luxury of
that self-neglect. The wife did not long need the asylum of his hearth,--
she, poor lady, died of a slow fever produced by irritation and
disappointment, a few months after Geoffrey's desertion. She had no need
to recommend her children to their kindhearted uncle's care. And now we
must glance over the elder brother's domestic fortunes.
In Rowland, the wild dispositions of his brother were so far tamed, that
they assumed only the character of a buoyant temper and a gay spirit. He
had strong principles as well as warm feelings, and a fine and resolute
sense of honour utterly impervious to attack. It was impossible to be in
his company an hour and not see that he was a man to be respected. It was
equally impossible to live with him a week and not see that he was a man
to be beloved. He also had married, and about a year after that era in
the life of his brother, but not for the same advantage of fortune. He
had formed an attachment to the portionlesss daughter of a man in his own
neighbourhood and of his own rank. He wooed and won her, and for a few
years he enjoyed that greatest happiness which the world is capable of
bestowing--the society and the love of one in whom we could wish for no
change, and beyond whom we have no desire. But what Evil cannot corrupt
Fate seldom spares. A few months after the birth of a second daughter the
young wife of Rowland Lester died. It was to a widowed hearth that the
wife and child of his brother came for shelter. Rowland was a man of an
affectionate and warm heart: if the blow did not crush, at least it
changed him. Naturally of a cheerful and ardent disposition, his mood now
became soberized and sedate. He shrunk from the rural gaieties and
companionship he had before courted and enlivened, and, for the first
time in his life, the mourner felt the holiness of solitude. As his
nephew and his motherless daughters grew up, they gave an object to his
seclusion and a relief to his reflections. He found a pure and unfailing
delight in watching the growth of their young minds, and guiding their
differing dispositions; and, as time at length enabled the to return his
affection, and appreciate his cares, he became once more sensible that he
had a HOME.
The elder of his daughters, Madeline, at the time our story opens, had
attained the age of eighteen. She was the beauty and the boast of the
whole country. Above the ordinary height, her figure was richly and
exquisitely formed. So translucently pure and soft was her complexion,
that it might have seemed the token of delicate health, but for the dewy
and exceeding redness of her lips, and the freshness of teeth whiter than
pearls. Her eyes of a deep blue, wore a thoughtful and serene expression,
and her forehead, higher and broader than it usually is in women, gave
promise of a certain nobleness of intellect, and added dignity, but a
feminine dignity, to the more tender characteristics of her beauty. And
indeed, the peculiar tone of Madeline's mind fulfilled the indication of
her features, and was eminently thoughtful and high-wrought. She had
early testified a remarkable love for study, and not only a desire for
knowledge, but a veneration for those who possessed it. The remote corner
of the county in which they lived, and the rarely broken seclusion which
Lester habitually preserved from the intercourse of their few and
scattered neighbours, had naturally cast each member of the little circle
upon his or her own resources. An accident, some five years ago, had
confined Madeline for several weeks or rather months to the house; and as
the old hall possessed a very respectable share of books, she had then
matured and confirmed that love to reading and reflection, which she had
at a yet earlier period prematurely evinced. The woman's tendency to
romance naturally tinctured her meditations, and thus, while they
dignified, they also softened her mind. Her sister Ellinor, younger by
two years, was of a character equally gentle, but less elevated. She
looked up to her sister as a superior being. She felt pride without a
shadow of envy, at her superior and surpassing beauty; and was
unconsciously guided in her pursuits and predilections, by a mind she
cheerfully acknowledged to be loftier than her own. And yet Ellinor had
also her pretensions to personal loveliness, and pretensions perhaps that
would be less reluctantly acknowledged by her own sex than those of her
sister. The sunlight of a happy and innocent heart sparkled on her face,
and gave a beam it gladdened you to behold, to her quick hazel eye, and a
smile that broke out from a thousand dimples. She did not possess the
height of Madeline, and though not so slender as to be curtailed of the
roundness and feminine luxuriance of beauty, her shape was slighter,
feebler, and less rich in its symmetry than her sister's. And this the
tendency of the physical frame to require elsewhere support, nor to feel
secure of strength, influenced perhaps her mind, and made love, and the
dependence of love, more necessary to her than to the thoughtful and
lofty Madeline. The latter might pass through life, and never see the one
to whom her heart could give itself away. But every village might possess
a hero whom the imagination of Ellinor could clothe with unreal graces,
and to whom the lovingness of her disposition might bias her affections.
Both, however, eminently possessed that earnestness and purity of heart,
which would have made them, perhaps in an equal degree, constant and
devoted to the object of an attachment, once formed, in defiance of
change and to the brink of death.
Their cousin Walter, Geoffrey Lester's son, was now in his twenty-first
year; tall and strong of person, and with a face, if not regularly
handsome, striking enough to be generally deemed so. High-spirited, bold,
fiery, impatient; jealous of the affections of those he loved; cheerful
to outward seeming, but restless, fond of change, and subject to the
melancholy and pining mood common to young and ardent minds: such was the
character of Walter Lester. The estates of Lester were settled in the
male line, and devolved therefore upon him. Yet there were moments when
he keenly felt his orphan and deserted situation; and sighed to think,
that while his father perhaps yet lived, he was a dependent for
affection, if not for maintenance, on the kindness of others. This
reflection sometimes gave an air of sullenness or petulance to his
character, that did not really belong to it. For what in the world makes
a man of just pride appear so unamiable as the sense of dependence?