THE LOVERS.--THE ENCOUNTER AND QUARREL OF THE RIVALS.
Two such I saw, what time the laboured ox
In his loose traces from the furrow came.
--Comus.
Pedro. Now do me noble right.
Rod. I’ll satisfy you;
But not by the sword.
--Beaumont and Fletcher.--The Pilgrim.
While Walter and the Corporal enjoyed the above conversation, Madeline
and Aram, whom Lester soon left to themselves, were pursuing their walk
along the solitary fields. Their love had passed from the eye to the
lip, and now found expression in words.
“Observe,” said he, as the light touch of one who he felt loved him
entirely rested on his arm,--“Observe, as the later summer now begins
to breathe a more various and mellow glory into the landscape, how
singularly pure and lucid the atmosphere becomes. When, two months ago,
in the full flush of June, I walked through these fields, a grey mist
hid yon distant hills and the far forest from my view. Now, with what a
transparent stillness the whole expanse of scenery spreads itself before
us. And such, Madeline, is the change that has come over myself since
that time. Then, if I looked beyond the limited present, all was dim
and indistinct. Now, the mist had faded away--the broad future extends
before me, calm and bright with the hope which is borrowed from your
love!”
We will not tax the patience of the reader, who seldom enters with keen
interest into the mere dialogue of love, with the blushing Madeline’s
reply, or with all the soft vows and tender confessions which the rich
poetry of Aram’s mind made yet more delicious to the ear of his dreaming
and devoted mistress.
“There is one circumstance,” said Aram, “which casts a momentary shade
on the happiness I enjoy--my Madeline probably guesses its nature. I
regret to see that the blessing of your love must be purchased by the
misery of another, and that other, the nephew of my kind friend. You
have doubtless observed the melancholy of Walter Lester, and have long
since known its origin.”
“Indeed, Eugene,” answered Madeline, “it has given me great pain to note
what you refer to, for it would be a false delicacy in me to deny that I
have observed it. But Walter is young and high-spirited; nor do I think
he is of a nature to love long where there is no return!”
“And what,” said Aram, sorrowfully,--“what deduction from reason can
ever apply to love? Love is a very contradiction of all the elements
of our ordinary nature,--it makes the proud man meek,--the cheerful,
sad,--the high-spirited, tame; our strongest resolutions, our hardiest
energy fail before it. Believe me, you cannot prophesy of its future
effect in a man from any knowledge of his past character. I grieve
to think that the blow falls upon one in early youth, ere the world’s
disappointments have blunted the heart, or the world’s numerous
interests have multiplied its resources. Men’s minds have been turned
when they have not well sifted the cause themselves, and their fortunes
marred, by one stroke on the affections of their youth. So at least have
I read, Madeline, and so marked in others. For myself, I knew nothing
of love in its reality till I knew you. But who can know you, and not
sympathise with him who has lost you?”
“Ah, Eugene! you at least overrate the influence which love produces on
men. A little resentment and a little absence will soon cure my cousin
of an ill-placed and ill-requited attachment. You do not think how easy
it is to forget.”
“Forget!” said Aram, stopping abruptly; “Ay, forget--it is a strange
truth! we do forget! the summer passes over the furrow, and the
corn springs up; the sod forgets the flower of the past year; the
battle-field forgets the blood that has been spilt upon its turf; the
sky forgets the storm; and the water the noon-day sun that slept upon
its bosom. All Nature preaches forgetfulness. Its very order is the
progress of oblivion. And I--I--give me your hand, Madeline,--I, ha! ha!
I forget too!”
As Aram spoke thus wildly, his countenance worked; but his voice was
slow, and scarcely audible; he seemed rather conferring with himself,
than addressing Madeline. But when his words ceased, and he felt the
soft hand of his betrothed, and turning, saw her anxious and wistful
eyes fixed in alarm, yet in all unsuspecting confidence, on his face;
his features relaxed into their usual serenity, and kissing the hand he
clasped, he continued, in a collected and steady tone,
“Forgive me, my sweetest Madeline. These fitful and strange moods
sometimes come upon me yet. I have been so long in the habit of pursuing
any train of thought, however wild, that presents itself to my mind,
that I cannot easily break it, even in your presence. All studious
men--the twilight Eremites of books and closets, contract this
ungraceful custom of soliloquy. You know our abstraction is a common
jest and proverb: you must laugh me out of it. But stay, dearest!--there
is a rare herb at your feet, let me gather it. So, do you note its
leaves--this bending and silver flower? Let us rest on this bank, and I
will tell you of its qualities. Beautiful as it is, it has a poison.”
The place in which the lovers rested, is one which the villagers to
this day call “The Lady’s-seat;” for Madeline, whose history is fondly
preserved in that district, was afterwards wont constantly to repair to
that bank (during a short absence of her lover, hereafter to be noted),
and subsequent events stamped with interest every spot she was known to
have favoured with resort. And when the flower had been duly conned,
and the study dismissed, Aram, to whom all the signs of the seasons were
familiar, pointed to her the thousand symptoms of the month which are
unheeded by less observant eyes; not forgetting, as they thus reclined,
their hands clasped together, to couple each remark with some allusion
to his love or some deduction which heightened compliment into poetry.
He bade her mark the light gossamer as it floated on the air; now
soaring high--high into the translucent atmosphere; now suddenly
stooping, and sailing away beneath the boughs, which ever and anon it
hung with a silken web, that by the next morn, would glitter with a
thousand dew drops. “And, so,” said he fancifully, “does Love lead forth
its numberless creations, making the air its path and empire; ascending
aloof at its wild will, hanging its meshes on every bough, and bidding
the common grass break into a fairy lustre at the beam of the daily
sun!”
He pointed to her the spot, where, in the silent brake, the harebells,
now waxing rare and few, yet lingered--or where the mystic ring on the
soft turf conjured up the associations of Oberon and his train. That
superstition gave licence and play to his full memory and glowing fancy;
and Shakspeare--Spenser--Ariosto--the magic of each mighty master of
Fairy Realm--he evoked, and poured into her transported ear. It was
precisely such arts, which to a gayer and more worldly nature than
Madeline’s might have seemed but wearisome, that arrested and won her
imaginative and high-wrought mind. And thus he, who to another might
have proved but the retired and moody Student, became to her the very
being of whom her “Maiden meditation” had dreamed--the master and
magician of her fate.
Aram did not return to the house with Madeline; he accompanied her to
the garden gate, and then taking leave of her, bent his way homeward. He
had gained the entrance of the little valley that led to his abode, when
he saw Walter cross his path at a short distance. His heart, naturally
susceptible to kindly emotion, smote him as he remarked the moody
listlessness of the young man’s step, and recalled the buoyant lightness
it was once wont habitually to wear. He quickened his pace, and joined
Walter before the latter was aware of his presence.
“Good evening,” said he, mildly; “if you are going my way, give me the
benefit of your company.”
“My path lies yonder,” replied Walter, somewhat sullenly; “I regret that
it is different from yours.”
“In that case,” said Aram, “I can delay my return home, and will, with
your leave, intrude my society upon you for some few minutes.”
Walter bowed his head in reluctant assent. They walked on for some
moments without speaking, the one unwilling, the other seeking an
occasion, to break the silence.
“This to my mind,” said Aram at length, “is the most pleasing landscape
in the whole country; observe the bashful water stealing away among the
woodlands. Methinks the wave is endowed with an instinctive wisdom, that
it thus shuns the world.”
“Rather,” said Walter, “with the love for change which exists everywhere
in nature, it does not seek the shade until it has passed by ‘towered
cities, and ‘the busy hum of men.’”
“I admire the shrewdness of your reply,” rejoined Aram; “but note how
far more pure and lovely are its waters in these retreats, than when
washing the walls of the reeking town, receiving into its breast the
taint of a thousand pollutions, vexed by the sound, and stench, and
unholy perturbation of men’s dwelling-place. Now it glasses only what is
high or beautiful in nature--the stars or the leafy banks. The wind
that ruffles it, is clothed with perfumes; the rivulet that swells it,
descends from the everlasting mountains, or is formed by the rains of
Heaven. Believe me, it is the type of a life that glides into solitude,
from the weariness and fretful turmoil of the world.
‘No flattery, hate, or envy lodgeth there, There no suspicion walled in
proved steel, Yet fearful of the arms herself doth wear, Pride is not
there; no tyrant there we feel!’”
[Phineas Fletcher.]
“I will not cope with you in simile, or in poetry,” said Walter, as his
lip curved; “it is enough for me to think that life should be spent in
action. I hasten to prove if my judgment be erroneous.”
“Are you, then, about to leave us?” inquired Aram.
“Yes, within a few days.”
“Indeed, I regret to hear it.”
The answer sounded jarringly on the irritated nerves of the disappointed
rival.
“You do me more honour than I desire,” said he, “in interesting
yourself, however lightly, in my schemes or fortune!”
“Young man,” replied Aram, coldly, “I never see the impetuous and
yearning spirit of youth without a certain, and it may be, a painful
interest. How feeble is the chance, that its hopes will be fulfilled!
Enough, if it lose not all its loftier aspirings, as well as its
brighter expectations.”
Nothing more aroused the proud and fiery temper of Walter Lester than
the tone of superior wisdom and superior age, which his rival assumed
towards him. More and more displeased with his present companion, he
answered, in no conciliatory tone, “I cannot but consider the warning
and the fears of one, neither my relation nor my friend, in the light of
a gratuitous affront.”
Aram smiled as he answered,
“There is no occasion for resentment. Preserve this hot spirit, and high
self-confidence, till you return again to these scenes, and I shall be
at once satisfied and corrected.”
“Sir,” said Walter, colouring, and irritated more by the smile than the
words of his rival, “I am not aware by what right or on what ground you
assume towards me the superiority, not only of admonition but reproof.
My uncle’s preference towards you gives you no authority over me. That
preference I do not pretend to share.”--He paused for a moment, thinking
Aram might hasten to reply; but as the Student walked on with his usual
calmness of demeanour, he added, stung by the indifference which he
attributed, not altogether without truth, to disdain, “And since you
have taken upon yourself to caution me, and to forebode my inability
to resist the contamination, as you would term it, of the world, I tell
you, that it may be happy for you to bear so clear a conscience, so
untouched a spirit as that which I now boast, and with which I trust in
God and my own soul I shall return to my birth-place. It is not the holy
only that love solitude; and men may shun the world from another motive
than that of philosophy.”
It was now Aram’s turn to feel resentment, and this was indeed an
insinuation not only unwarrantable in itself, but one which a man of
so peaceable and guileless a life, affecting even an extreme and rigid
austerity of morals, might well be tempted to repel with scorn and
indignation; and Aram, however meek and forbearing in general, testified
in this instance that his wonted gentleness arose from no lack of
man’s natural spirit. He laid his hand commandingly on young Lester’s
shoulder, and surveyed his countenance with a dark and menacing frown.
“Boy!” said he, “were there meaning in your words, I should (mark me!)
avenge the insult;--as it is, I despise it. Go!”
So high and lofty was Aram’s manner--so majestic was the sternness of
his rebuke, and the dignity of his bearing, as he now waving his hand
turned away, that Walter lost his self-possession and stood fixed to the
spot, absorbed, and humbled from his late anger. It was not till Aram
had moved with a slow step several paces backward towards his home,
that the bold and haughty temper of the young man returned to his aid.
Ashamed of himself for the momentary weakness he had betrayed, and
burning to redeem it, he hastened after the stately form of his rival,
and planting himself full in his path, said, in a voice half choked with
contending emotions,
“Hold!--you have given me the opportunity I have long desired; you
yourself have now broken that peace which existed between us, and which
to me was more bitter than wormwood. You have dared,--yes, dared to use
threatening language towards me. I call on you to fulfil your threat. I
tell you that I meant, I designed, I thirsted to affront you. Now resent
my purposed--premeditated affront as you will and can!”
There was something remarkable in the contrasted figures of the rivals,
as they now stood fronting each other. The elastic and vigorous form of
Walter Lester, his sparkling eyes, his sunburnt and glowing cheek, his
clenched hands, and his whole frame, alive and eloquent with the energy,
the heat, the hasty courage, and fiery spirit of youth; on the other
hand,--the bending frame of the student, gradually rising into the
dignity of its full height--his pale cheek, in which the wan hues
neither deepened nor waned, his large eye raised to meet Walter’s
bright, steady, and yet how calm! Nothing weak, nothing irresolute could
be traced in that form--or that lofty countenance; yet all resentment
had vanished from his aspect. He seemed at once tranquil and prepared.
“You designed to affront me!” said he; “it is well--it is a noble
confession;--and wherefore? What do you propose to gain by it?--a man
whose whole life is peace, you would provoke to outrage? Would there be
triumph in this, or disgrace?--A man whom your uncle honours and loves,
you would insult without cause--you would waylay--you would, after
watching and creating your opportunity, entrap into defending himself.
Is this worthy of that high spirit of which you boasted?--is this worthy
a generous anger, or a noble hatred? Away! you malign yourself. I shrink
from no quarrel--why should I? I have nothing to fear: my nerves are
firm--my heart is faithful to my will; my habits may have diminished my
strength, but it is yet equal to that of most men. As to the weapons
of the world--they fall not to my use. I might be excused by the most
punctilious, for rejecting what becomes neither my station nor my habits
of life; but I learnt this much from books long since, ‘hold thyself
prepared for all things:’--I am so prepared. And as I can command the
spirit, I lack not the skill, to defend myself, or return the hostility
of another.” As Aram thus said, he drew a pistol from his bosom; and
pointed it leisurely towards a tree, at the distance of some paces.
“Look,” said he, “you note that small discoloured and white stain in
the bark--you can but just observe it;--he who can send a bullet through
that spot, need not fear to meet the quarrel which he seeks to avoid.”
Walter turned mechanically, and indignant, though silent, towards the
tree. Aram fired, and the ball penetrated the centre of the stain. He
then replaced the pistol in his bosom, and said:--
“Early in life I had many enemies, and I taught myself these arts. From
habit, I still bear about me the weapons I trust and pray I may never
have occasion to use. But to return.--I have offended you--I have
incurred your hatred--why? What are my sins?”
“Do you ask the cause?” said Walter, speaking between his ground teeth.
“Have you not traversed my views--blighted my hopes--charmed away from
me the affections which were more to me than the world, and driven me
to wander from my home with a crushed spirit, and a cheerless heart. Are
these no cause for hate?”
“Have I done this?” said Aram, recoiling, and evidently and powerfully
affected. “Have I so injured you?--It is true! I know it--I perceive
it--I read your heart; and--bear witness Heaven!--I felt for the wound
that I, but with no guilty hand, inflict upon you. Yet be just:--ask
yourself, have I done aught that you, in my case, would have left
undone? Have I been insolent in triumph, or haughty in success? if so,
hate me, nay, spurn me now.”
Walter turned his head irresolutely away.
“If it please you, that I accuse myself, in that I, a man seared
and lone at heart, presumed to come within the pale of human
affections;--that I exposed myself to cross another’s better and
brighter hopes, or dared to soften my fate with the tender and endearing
ties that are meet alone for a more genial and youthful nature;--if it
please you that I accuse and curse myself for this--that I yielded to it
with pain and with self-reproach--that I shall think hereafter of what I
unconsciously cost you with remorse--then be consoled!”
“It is enough,” said Walter; “let us part. I leave you with more
soreness at my late haste than I will acknowledge, let that content you;
for myself, I ask for no apology or--.”
“But you shall have it amply,” interrupted Aram, advancing with a
cordial openness of mien not usual to him. “I was all to blame; I should
have remembered you were an injured man, and suffered you to have said
all you would. Words at best are but a poor vent for a wronged and
burning heart. It shall be so in future, speak your will, attack,
upbraid, taunt me, I will bear it all. And indeed, even to myself
there seems some witchcraft, some glamoury in what has chanced. What! I
favoured where you love? Is it possible? It might teach the vainest
to forswear vanity. You, the young, the buoyant, the fresh, the
beautiful?--And I, who have passed the glory and zest of life between
dusty walls; I who--well, well, fate laughs at probabilities!”
Aram now seemed relapsing into one of his more abstracted moods; he
ceased to speak aloud, but his lips moved, and his eyes grew fixed in
reverie on the ground. Walter gazed at him for some moments with mixed
and contending sensations. Once more, resentment and the bitter wrath
of jealousy had faded back into the remoter depths of his mind, and a
certain interest for his singular rival, despite of himself, crept into
his breast. But this mysterious and fitful nature, was it one in which
the devoted Madeline would certainly find happiness and repose?--would
she never regret her choice? This question obtruded itself upon him,
and while he sought to answer it, Aram, regaining his composure, turned
abruptly and offered him his hand. Walter did not accept it, he bowed
with a cold respect. “I cannot give my hand without my heart,” said he;
“we were foes just now; we are not friends yet. I am unreasonable in
this, I know, but--”
“Be it so,” interrupted Aram; “I understand you. I press my good will on
you no more. When this pang is forgotten, when this wound is healed,
and when you will have learned more of him who is now your rival, we may
meet again with other feelings on your side.”
Thus they parted, and the solitary lamp which for weeks past had been
quenched at the wholesome hour in the Student’s home, streamed from the
casement throughout the whole of that night; was it a witness of the
calm and learned vigil, or of the unresting heart?