It was not without powerful emotion that Walter found himself thus

within the apartment of his lost father. What a painful, what a

gloomy, yet sacred interest every thing around instantly assumed! The

old-fashioned and heavy chairs--the brown wainscot walls--the little

cupboard recessed as it were to the right of the fire-place, and piled

with morsels of Indian china and long taper wine glasses--the small

window-panes set deep in the wall, giving a dim view of a bleak and

melancholy-looking garden in the rear--yea, the very floor he trod--the

very table on which he leant--the very hearth, dull and fireless as

it was, opposite his gaze--all took a familiar meaning in his eye, and

breathed a household voice into his ear. And when he entered the inner

room, how, even to suffocation, were those strange, half sad, yet not

all bitter emotions increased. There was the bed on which his father had

rested on the night before--what? perhaps his murder! The bed, probably

a relic from the castle, when its antique furniture was set up to public

sale, was hung with faded tapestry, and above its dark and polished

summit were hearselike and heavy trappings. Old commodes of rudely

carved oak, a discoloured glass in a japan frame, a ponderous arm-chair

of Elizabethan fashion, and covered with the same tapestry as the bed,

altogether gave that uneasy and sepulchral impression to the mind so

commonly produced by the relics of a mouldering and forgotten antiquity.

“It looks cheerless, Sir,” said the owner, “but then we have not had any

regular lodger for years; it is just the same as when Mr. Clarke lived

here. But bless you, Sir, he made the dull rooms look gay enough. He

was a blithesome gentleman. He and his friends, Mr. Houseman especially,

used to make the walls ring again when they were over their cups!”

“It might have been better for Mr. Clarke,” said the Curate, “had he

chosen his comrades with more discretion. Houseman was not a creditable,

perhaps not a safe companion.”

“That was no business of mine then,” quoth the lodging-letter; “but it

might be now, since I have been a married man!”

The Curate smiled, “Perhaps you, Mr. Moor, bore a part in those revels?”

“Why, indeed, Mr. Clarke would occasionally make me take a glass or so,

Sir.”

“And you must then have heard the conversations that took place between

Houseman and him? Did Mr. Clarke, ever, in those conversations, intimate

an intention of leaving the town soon? and where, if so, did he talk of

going?”

“Oh! first to London. I have often heard him talk of going to London,

and then taking a trip to see some relations of his in a distant part of

the country. I remember his caressing a little boy of my brother’s; you

know Jack, Sir, not a little boy now, almost as tall as this gentleman.

‘Ah,’ said he with a sort of sigh, ‘ah! I have a boy at home about this

age,--when shall I see him again?’”

“When indeed!” thought Walter, turning away his face at this anecdote,

to him so naturally affecting.

“And the night that Clarke left you, were you aware of his absence?”

“No! he went to his room at his usual hour, which was late, and the

next morning I found his bed had not been slept in, and that he was

gone--gone with all his jewels, money, and valuables; heavy luggage he

had none. He was a cunning gentleman; he never loved paying a bill. He

was greatly in debt in different parts of the town, though he had not

been here long. He ordered everything and paid for nothing.”

Walter groaned. It was his father’s character exactly; partly it might

be from dishonest principles superadded to the earlier feelings of

his nature; but partly also from that temperament at once careless and

procrastinating, which, more often than vice, loses men the advantage of

reputation.

“Then in your own mind, and from your knowledge of him,” renewed the

Curate, “you would suppose that Clarke’s disappearance was intentional;

that though nothing has since been heard of him, none of the blacker

rumours afloat were well founded?”

“I confess, Sir, begging this gentleman’s pardon who you say is a

relation, I confess I see no reason to think otherwise.”

“Was Mr. Aram, Eugene Aram, ever a guest of Clarke’s? Did you ever see

them together?”

“Never at this house. I fancy Houseman once presented Mr. Aram to

Clarke; and that they may have met and conversed some two or three

times, not more, I believe; they were scarcely congenial spirits, Sir.”

Walter having now recovered his self-possession, entered into the

conversation; and endeavoured by as minute an examination as his

ingenuity could suggest, to obtain some additional light upon the

mysterious subject so deeply at his heart. Nothing, however, of any

effectual import was obtained from the good man of the house. He had

evidently persuaded himself that Clarke’s disappearance was easily

accounted for, and would scarcely lend attention to any other suggestion

than that of Clarke’s dishonesty. Nor did his recollection of the

meetings between Houseman and Clarke furnish him with any thing worthy

of narration. With a spirit somewhat damped and disappointed, Walter,

accompanied by the Curate, recommenced his expedition.

CHAPTER XI.

GRIEF IN A RUFFIAN.--THE CHAMBER OF EARLY DEATH.--A HOMELY YET MOMENTOUS

CONFESSION.--THE EARTH’S SECRETS.--THE CAVERN.--THE ACCUSATION.

ALL is not well;

I doubt some foul play.

............

Foul deeds will rise,

Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.

--Hamlet.

As they passed through the street, they perceived three or four persons

standing round the open door of a house of ordinary description, the

windows of which were partially closed.

“It is the house,” said the curate, “in which Houseman’s daughter

died,--poor, poor child! Yet why mourn for the young? Better that the

light cloud should fade away into heaven with the morning breath, than

travel through the weary day to gather in darkness and end in storm.”

“Ah, sir!” said an old man, leaning on his stick and lifting his hat, in

obeisance to the curate, “the father is within, and takes on bitterly.

He drives them all away from the room, and sits moaning by the bedside,

as if he was a going out of his mind. Won’t your reverence go in to him

a bit?”

The curate looked at Walter inquiringly. “Perhaps,” said the latter,

“you had better go in: I will wait without.” While the curate hesitated,

they heard a voice in the passage; and presently Houseman was seen at

the far end, driving some women before him with vehement gesticulations.

“I tell you, ye hell-hags,” shrieked his harsh and now straining

voice, “that ye suffered her to die! Why did ye not send to London for

physicians? Am I not rich enough to buy my child’s life at any price? By

the living ___, I would have turned your very bodies into gold to have

saved her! But she’s DEAD! and I ___ Out of my sight; out of my way!”

And with his hands clenched, his brows knit, and his head uncovered,

Houseman sallied forth from the door, and Walter recognized the

traveller of the preceding night. He stopped abruptly as he saw the

little knot without, and scowled round at each of them with a malignant

and ferocious aspect. “Very well, it’s very well, neighbors!” said he

at length, with a fierce laugh; “this is kind! You have come to

welcome Richard Houseman home, have ye? Good, good! Not to gloat at his

distress? Lord, no! Ye have no idle curiosity, no prying, searching,

gossiping devil within ye that makes ye love to flock and gape and

chatter when poor men suffer! This is all pure compassion; and Houseman,

the good, gentle, peaceful, honest Houseman, you feel for him,--I know

you do! Hark ye, begone! Away, march, tramp, or--Ha, ha! there they go,

there they go!” laughing wildly again as the frightened neighbors shrank

from the spot, leaving only Walter and the clergyman with the childless

man.

“Be comforted, Houseman!” said Summers, soothingly; “it is a dreadful

affliction that you have sustained. I knew your daughter well: you may

have heard her speak of me. Let us in, and try what heavenly comfort

there is in prayer.”

“Prayer! pooh! I am Richard Houseman!”

“Lives there one man for whom prayer is unavailing?”

“Out, canter, out! My pretty Jane! And she laid her head on my bosom,

and looked up in my face, and so--died!”

“Come,” said the curate, placing his hand on Houseman’s arm, “come.”

Before he could proceed, Houseman, who was muttering to himself, shook

him off roughly, and hurried away up the street; but after he had gone

a few paces, he turned back, and approaching the curate, said, in a more

collected tone: “I pray you, sir, since you are a clergyman (I recollect

your face, and I recollect Jane said you had been good to her),--I pray

you go and say a few words over her. But stay,--don’t bring in my name;

you understand. I don’t wish God to recollect that there lives such a

man as he who now addresses you. Halloo! [shouting to the women] my hat,

and stick too. Fal la! la! fal la!--why should these things make us play

the madman? It is a fine day, sir; we shall have a late winter.

“Curse the b____, how long she is! Yet the hat was left below. But when

a death is in the house, sir, it throws things into confusion: don’t you

find it so?”

Here one of the women, pale, trembling, and tearful, brought the ruffian

his hat; and placing it deliberately on his head, and bowing with a

dreadful and convulsive attempt to smile, he walked slowly away and

disappeared.

“What strange mummers grief makes!” said the curate. “It is an appalling

spectacle when it thus wrings out feeling from a man of that mould! But

pardon me, my young friend; let me tarry here for a moment.”

“I will enter the house with you,” said Walter. And the two men walked

in, and in a few moments they stood within the chamber of death.

The face of the deceased had not yet suffered the last withering change.

Her young countenance was hushed and serene, and but for the fixedness

of the smile, you might have thought the lips moved. So delicate, fair,

and gentle were the features that it was scarcely possible to believe

such a scion could spring from such a stock; and it seemed no longer

wonderful that a thing so young, so innocent, so lovely, and so early

blighted should have touched that reckless and dark nature which

rejected all other invasion of the softer emotions. The curate wiped his

eyes, and kneeling down prayed, if not for the dead (who, as our Church

teaches, are beyond human intercession), perhaps for the father she had

left on earth, more to be pitied of the two! Nor to Walter was the scene

without something more impressive and thrilling than its mere pathos

alone. He, now standing beside the corpse of Houseman’s child, was son

to the man of whose murder Houseman had been suspected. The childless

and the fatherless,--might there be no retribution here?

When the curate’s prayer was over, and he and Walter escaped from the

incoherent blessings and complaints of the women of the house, they,

with difficulty resisting the impression the scene had left upon their

minds, once more resumed their errand.

“This is no time,” said Walter, musingly, “for an examination of

Houseman; yet it must not be forgotten.”

The curate did not reply for some moments; and then, as an answer to

the remark, observed that the conversation they anticipated with Aram’s

former hostess might throw some light on their researches. They now

proceeded to another part of the town, and arrived at a lonely and

desolate-looking house, which seemed to wear in its very appearance

something strange, sad, and ominous. Some houses have an expression,

as it were, in their outward aspect that sinks unaccountably into the

heart,--a dim, oppressive eloquence which dispirits and affects. You say

some story must be attached to those walls; some legendary interest, of

a darker nature, ought to be associated with the mute stone and mortar;

you feel a mingled awe and curiosity creep over you as you gaze. Such

was the description of the house that the young adventurer now surveyed.

It was of antique architecture, not uncommon in old towns; gable ends

rose from the roof; dull, small, latticed panes were sunk deep in the

gray, discolored wall; the pale, in part, was broken and jagged; and

rank weeds sprang up in the neglected garden, through which they walked

towards the porch. The door was open; they entered, and found an old

woman of coarse appearance sitting by the fireside, and gazing on space

with that vacant stare which so often characterizes the repose and

relaxation of the uneducated poor. Walter felt an involuntary thrill

of dislike come over him as he looked at the solitary inmate of the

solitary house.

“Hey day, sir!” said she, in a grating voice, “and what now? Oh! Mr.

Summers, is it you? You’re welcome, sir! I wishes I could offer you

a glass of summut, but the bottle’s dry--he! he!” pointing, with a

revolting grin, to an empty bottle that stood on a niche within the

hearth. “I don’t know how it is, sir, but I never wants to eat; but ah!

‘t is the liquor that does un good!”

“You have lived a long time in this house?” said the curate.

“A long time,--some thirty years an’ more.”

“You remember your lodger, Mr. Aram?”

“A--well--yes!”

“An excellent man--”

“Humph.”

“A most admirable man!”

“A-humph! he!--humph! that’s neither here nor there.”

“Why, you don’t seem to think as all the rest of the world does with

regard to him?”

“I knows what I knows.”

“Ah! by the by, you have some cock-and-a-bull story about him, I fancy,

but you never could explain yourself,--it is merely for the love of

seeming wise that you invented it, eh, Goody?”

The old woman shook her head, and crossing her hands on her knee,

replied with peculiar emphasis, but in a very low and whispered voice,

“I could hang him!”

“Pooh!”

“Tell you I could!”

“Well, let’s have the story then!”

“No, no! I have not told it to ne’er a one yet, and I won’t for nothing.

What will you give me? Make it worth my while.”

“Tell us all, honestly, fairly, and fully, and you shall have five

golden guineas. There, Goody.”

Roused by this promise, the dame looked up with more of energy than she

had yet shown, and muttered to herself, rocking her chair to and fro:

“Aha! why not? No fear now, both gone; can’t now murder the poor old

cretur, as the wretch once threatened. Five golden guineas,--five, did

you say, sir, five?”

“Ah! and perhaps our bounty may not stop there,” said the curate.

Still the old woman hesitated, and still she muttered to herself; but

after some further prelude, and some further enticement from the curate,

the which we spare our reader, she came at length to the following

narration:--

“It was on the 7th of February, in the year ‘44,--yes, ‘44, about six

o’clock in the evening, for I was a-washing in the kitchen,--when Mr.

Aram called to me an’ desired of me to make a fire upstairs, which I

did; he then walked out. Some hours afterwards, it might be two in the

morning, I was lying awake, for I was mighty bad with the toothache,

when I heard a noise below, and two or three voices. On this I was

greatly afeard, and got out o’ bed, and opening the door, I saw Mr.

Houseman and Mr. Clarke coming upstairs to Mr. Aram’s room, and Mr.

Aram followed them. They shut the door, and stayed there, it might be

an hour. Well, I could not a think what could make so shy an’ resarved

a gentleman as Mr. Aram admit these ‘ere wild madcaps like at that hour;

an’ I lay awake a thinking an’ a thinking, till I heard the door open

agin, an’ I went to listen at the keyhole, an’ Mr. Clarke said: ‘It

will soon be morning, and we must get off.’ They then all three left the

house. But I could not sleep, an’ I got up afore five o’clock; and about

that hour Mr. Aram an’ Mr. Houseman returned, and they both glowered at

me as if they did not like to find me a stirring; an’ Mr. Aram went into

his room, and Houseman turned and frowned at me as black as night. Lord

have mercy on me, I see him now! An’ I was sadly feared, an’ I listened

at the keyhole, an’ I heard Houseman say: ‘If the woman comes in, she’ll

tell.’

“‘What can she tell?’ said Mr. Aram; ‘poor simple thing, she knows

nothing.’ With that, Houseman said, says he: ‘If she tells that I am

here, it will be enough; but however [with a shocking oath], we’ll take

an opportunity to shoot her.’

“On that I was so frighted that I went away back to my own room, and did

not stir till they had gone out, and then--”

“What time was that?”

“About seven o’clock. Well--You put me out! where was I? Well, I went

into Mr. Aram’s, an’ I seed they had been burning a fire, an’ that

all the ashes were taken out o’ the grate; so I went an’ looked at the

rubbish behind the house, and there sure enough I seed the ashes, and

among ‘em several bits o’ cloth and linen which seemed to belong to

wearing apparel; and there, too, was a handkerchief which I had obsarved

Houseman wear (for it was a very curious handkerchief, all spotted)

many’s the time, and there was blood on it, ‘bout the size of a

shilling. An’ afterwards I seed Houseman, an’ I showed him the

handkerchief; and I said to him, ‘What has come of Clarke?’ An’ he

frowned, and, looking at me, said, ‘Hark ye, I know not what you mean;

but as sure as the devil keeps watch for souls, I will shoot you through

the head if you ever let that d---d tongue of yours let slip a single

word about Clarke or me or Mr. Aram,--so look to yourself!

“An’ I was all scared, and trimbled from limb to limb; an’ for two whole

yearn afterwards (long arter Aram and Houseman were both gone) I never

could so much as open my lips on the matter; and afore he went, Mr. Aram

would sometimes look at me, not sternly-like, as the villain Houseman,

but as if he would read to the bottom of my heart. Oh! I was as if you

had taken a mountain off o’ me when he an’ Houseman left the town; for

sure as the sun shines I believes, from what I have now said, that they

two murdered Clarke on that same February night. An’ now, Mr. Summers,

I feels more easy than I has felt for many a long day; an’ if I have

not told it afore, it is because I thought of Houseman’s frown and his

horrid words; but summut of it would ooze out of my tongue now an’ then,

for it’s a hard thing, sir, to know a secret o’ that sort and be quiet

and still about it; and, indeed, I was not the same cretur when I knew

it as I was afore, for it made me take to anything rather than thinking;

and that’s the reason, sir, I lost the good crackter I used to have.”

Such, somewhat abridged from its “says he” and “says I,” its involutions

and its tautologies, was the story which Walter held his breath to hear.

But events thicken, and the maze is nearly thridden.

“Not a moment now should be lost,” said the curate, as they left the

house. “Let us at once proceed to a very able magistrate, to whom I can

introduce you, and who lives a little way out of the town.”

“As you will,” said Walter, in an altered and hollow voice. “I am as a

man standing on an eminence, who views the whole scene he is to travel

over, stretched before him, but is dizzy and bewildered by the height

which he has reached. I know, I feel, that I am on the brink of fearful

and dread discoveries; pray God that--But heed me not, sir, heed me not;

let us on, on!”

It was now approaching towards the evening; and as they walked on,

having left the town, the sun poured his last beams on a group of

persons that appeared hastily collecting and gathering round a spot,

well known in the neighborhood of Knaresborough, called Thistle Hill.

“Let us avoid the crowd,” said the curate. “Yet what, I wonder, can be

its cause?” While he spoke, two peasants hurried by towards the throng.

“What is the meaning of the crowd yonder?” asked the curate.

“I don’t know exactly, your honor, but I hears as how Jem Ninnings,

digging for stone for the limekiln, have dug out a big wooden chest.”

A shout from the group broke in on the peasant’s explanation,--a sudden

simultaneous shout, but not of joy; something of dismay and horror

seemed to breathe in the sound.

Walter looked at the curate. An impulse, a sudden instinct, seemed to

attract them involuntarily to the spot whence that sound arose; they

quickened their pace, they made their way through the throng. A deep

chest, that had been violently forced, stood before them; its contents

had been dragged to day, and now lay on the sward--a bleached and

mouldering skeleton! Several of the bones were loose, and detached from

the body. A general hubbub of voices from the spectators,--inquiry,

guess, fear, wonder,--rang confusedly around.

“Yes!” said one old man, with gray hair, leaning on a pickaxe, “it is

now about fourteen years since the Jew pedlar disappeared. These are

probably his bones,--he was supposed to have been murdered!”

“Nay!” screeched a woman, drawing back a child who, all unalarmed,

was about to touch the ghastly relics, “nay, the pedlar was heard

of afterwards. I’ll tell ye, ye may be sure these are the bones of

Clarke,--Daniel Clarke,--whom the country was so stirred about when we

were young!”

“Right, dame, right! It is Clarke’s skeleton,” was the simultaneous cry.

And Walter, pressing forward, stood over the bones, and waved his hand

as to guard them from further insult. His sudden appearance, his tall

stature, his wild gesture, the horror, the paleness, the grief of his

countenance, struck and appalled all present. He remained speechless,

and a sudden silence succeeded the late clamor.

“And what do you here, fools?” said a voice, abruptly. The spectators

turned: a new comer had been added to the throng,--it was Richard

Houseman. His dress loose and disarranged, his flushed cheeks and

rolling eyes, betrayed the source of consolation to which he had flown

from his domestic affliction. “What do ye here?” said he, reeling

forward. “Ha! human bones? And whose may they be, think ye?”

“They are Clarke’s!” said the woman, who had first given rise to that

supposition.

“Yes, we think they are Daniel Clarke’s,--he who disappeared some

years ago!” cried two or three voices in concert. “Clarke’s?” repeated

Houseman, stooping down and picking up a thigh-bone, which lay at a

little distance from the rest; “Clarke’s? Ha! ha! they are no more

Clarke’s than mine!”

“Behold!” shouted Walter, in a voice that rang from cliff to plain; and

springing forward, he seized Houseman with a giant’s grasp,--“behold the

murderer!”

As if the avenging voice of Heaven had spoken, a thrilling, an electric

conviction darted through the crowd. Each of the elder spectators

remembered at once the person of Houseman, and the suspicion that had

attached to his name.

“Seize him! seize him!” burst forth from twenty voices. “Houseman is the

murderer!”

“Murderer!” faltered Houseman, trembling in the iron hands of

Walter,--“murderer of whom? I tell ye these are not Clarke’s bones!”

“Where then do they lie?” cried his arrester.

Pale, confused, conscience-stricken, the bewilderment of intoxication

mingling with that of fear, Houseman turned a ghastly look around him,

and, shrinking from the eyes of all, reading in the eyes of all his

condemnation, he gasped out, “Search St. Robert’s Cave, in the turn at

the entrance!”

“Away!” rang the deep voice of Walter, on the instant; “away! To the

cave, to the cave!”

On the banks of the River Nid, whose waters keep an everlasting murmur

to the crags and trees that overhang them, is a wild and dreary cavern,

hollowed from a rock which, according to tradition, was formerly the

hermitage of one of those early enthusiasts who made their solitude in

the sternest recesses of earth, and from the austerest thoughts and the

bitterest penance wrought their joyless offerings to the great Spirit

of the lovely world. To this desolate spot, called, from the name of

its once celebrated eremite, St. Robert’s Cave, the crowd now swept,

increasing its numbers as it advanced.

The old man who had discovered the unknown remains, which were gathered

up and made a part of the procession, led the way; Houseman, placed

between two strong and active men, went next; and Walter followed

behind, fixing his eyes mutely upon the ruffian. The curate had had the

precaution to send on before for torches, for the wintry evening now

darkened round them, and the light from the torch-bearers, who met them

at the cavern, cast forth its red and lurid flare at the mouth of the

chasm. One of these torches Walter himself seized, and his was the first

step that entered the gloomy passage. At this place and time, Houseman,

who till then, throughout their short journey, had seemed to have

recovered a sort of dogged self-possession, recoiled, and the big

drops of fear or agony fell fast from his brow. He was dragged forward

forcibly into the cavern; and now as the space filled, and the torches

flickered against the grim walls, glaring on faces which caught, from

the deep and thrilling contagion of a common sentiment, one common

expression, it was not well possible for the wildest imagination to

conceive a scene better fitted for the unhallowed burial-place of the

murdered dead.

The eyes of all now turned upon Houseman; and he, after twice vainly

endeavoring to speak, for the words died inarticulate and choked within

him, advancing a few steps, pointed towards a spot on which, the next

moment, fell the concentrated light of every torch. An indescribable

and universal murmur, and then a breathless silence, ensued. On the spot

which Houseman had indicated, with the head placed to the right, lay

what once had been a human body!

“Can you swear,” said the priest, solemnly, as he turned to Houseman,

“that these are the bones of Clarke?”

“Before God, I can swear it!” replied Houseman, at length finding his

voice.

“MY FATHER!” broke from Walter’s lips as he sank upon his knees; and

that exclamation completed the awe and horror which prevailed in the

breasts of all present. Stung by a sense of the danger he had drawn upon

himself, and despair and excitement restoring, in some measure, not

only his natural hardihood, but his natural astuteness, Houseman, here

mastering his emotions, and making that effort which he was afterwards

enabled to follow up with an advantage to himself of which he could not

then have dreamed,--Houseman, I say, cried aloud,

“But I did not do the deed; I am not the murderer.”

“Speak out! Whom do you accuse?” said the curate. Drawing his breath

hard, and setting his teeth as with some steeled determination, Houseman

replied,--

“The murderer is Eugene Aram!”

“Aram!” shouted Walter, starting to his feet: “O God, thy hand hath

directed me hither!” And suddenly and at once sense left him, and he

fell, as if a shot had pierced through his heart, beside the remains of

that father whom he had thus mysteriously discovered.

BOOK V.

Surely the man that plotteth ill against his

neighbor perpetrateth ill against himself,

and the evil design is most evil to him that

deviseth it.

--Hesiod

CHAPTER I.

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.

CHAPTER II.

THE STUDENT ALONE IN HIS CHAMBER.--THE INTERRUPTION.--FAITHFUL LOVE.

NEQUICQUAM thalamo graves

Hastas....

Vitabis strepitumque et celerem sequi

Ajacem.

--HORACE: Od. xv. lib. 1.

[“In vain within your nuptial chamber will you

shun the deadly spears,... the hostile shout,

and Ajax eager in pursuit.”]

Alone in his favorite chamber, the instruments of science around him,

and books, some of astronomical research, some of less lofty but yet

abstruser lore, scattered on the tables, Eugene Aram indulged the last

meditation he believed likely to absorb his thoughts before that great

change of life which was to bless solitude with a companion.

“Yes,” said he, pacing the apartment with folded arms, “yes, all is

safe! He will not again return; the dead sleeps now without a witness.

I may lay this working brain upon the bosom that loves me, and not start

at night and think that the soft hand around my neck is the hangman’s

gripe. Back to thyself, henceforth and forever, my busy heart! Let

not thy secret stir from its gloomy depth! The seal is on the tomb;

henceforth be the spectre laid. Yes, I must smooth my brow, and teach

my lip restraint, and smile and talk like other men. I have taken to my

hearth a watch, tender, faithful, anxious,--but a watch. Farewell the

unguarded hour! The soul’s relief in speech, the dark and broken, yet

how grateful, confidence with self, farewell! And come, thou veil!

subtle, close, unvarying, the everlasting curse of entire hypocrisy,

that under thee, as night, the vexed world within may sleep, and stir

not! and all, in truth concealment, may seem repose!”

As he uttered these thoughts, the student paused and looked on the

extended landscape that lay below. A heavy, chill, and comfortless mist

sat saddening over the earth. Not a leaf stirred on the autumnal trees,

but the moist damps fell slowly and with a mournful murmur upon the

unwaving grass. The outline of the morning sun was visible, but it gave

forth no lustre: a ring of watery and dark vapor girded the melancholy

orb. Far at the entrance of the valley the wild fern showed red and

faded, and the first march of the deadly winter was already heralded by

that drear and silent desolation which cradles the winds and storms. But

amidst this cheerless scene the distant note of the merry marriage-bell

floated by, like the good spirit of the wilderness, and the student

rather paused to hearken to the note than to survey the scene. “My

marriage-bell!” said he. “Could I, two short years back, have dreamed

of this? My marriage-bell! How fondly my poor mother, when first she

learned pride for her young scholar, would predict this day, and blend

its festivities with the honor and the wealth her son was to acquire!

Alas! can we have no science to count the stars and forebode the black

eclipse of the future? But peace! peace! peace! I am, I will, I shall be

happy now! Memory, I defy thee!”

He uttered the last words in a deep and intense tone; and turning away

as the joyful peal again broke distinctly on his ear,--

“My marriage-bell! Oh, Madeline, how wondrously beloved, how unspeakably

dear thou art to me! What hast thou conquered! How many reasons for

resolve, how vast an army in the Past, has thy bright and tender purity

overthrown! But thou--No, never shalt thou repent!” And for several

minutes the sole thought of the soliloquist was love. But scarce

consciously to himself, a spirit, not, to all seeming, befitted to that

bridal-day,--vague, restless, impressed with the dark and fluttering

shadow of coming change,--had taken possession of his breast, and did

not long yield the mastery to any brighter and more serene emotion.

“And why,” he said, as this spirit regained its empire over him, and he

paused before the “starred tubes” of his beloved science,--“and why this

chill, this shiver, in the midst of hope? Can the mere breath of the

seasons, the weight or lightness of the atmosphere, the outward gloom or

smile of the brute mass called Nature, affect us thus? Out on this empty

science, this vain knowledge, this little lore, if we are so fooled by

the vile clay and the common air from our one great empire, self! Great

God! hast thou made us in mercy, or in disdain? Placed in this narrow

world, darkness and cloud around us; no fixed rule for men; creeds,

morals, changing in every clime, and growing like herbs upon the mere

soil,--we struggle to dispel the shadows; we grope around; from our own

heart and our sharp and hard endurance we strike our only light. For

what? To show us what dupes we are,--creatures of accident, tools of

circumstance, blind instruments of the scorner Fate; the very mind, the

very reason, a bound slave to the desires, the weakness of the clay;

affected by a cloud, dulled by the damps of the foul marsh; stricken

from power to weakness, from sense to madness, to gaping idiocy, or

delirious raving, by a putrid exhalation! A rheum, a chill, and Caesar

trembles! The world’s gods, that slay or enlighten millions, poor

puppets to the same rank imp which calls up the fungus or breeds the

worm,--pah! How little worth is it in this life to be wise! Strange,

strange, how my heart sinks. Well, the better sign, the better sign! In

danger it never sank.”

Absorbed in these reflections, Aram had not for some minutes noticed

the sudden ceasing of the bell; but now, as he again paused from his

irregular and abrupt pacings along the chamber, the silence struck him,

and looking forth, and striving again to catch the note, he saw a little

group of men, among whom he marked the erect and comely form of Rowland

Lester, approaching towards the house.

“What!” he thought, “do they come for me? Is it so late? Have I played

the laggard? Nay, it yet wants near an hour to the time they expected

me. Well, some kindness, some attention from my good father-in-law; I

must thank him for it. What! my hand trembles. How weak are these poor

nerves; I must rest and recall my mind to itself!”

And indeed, whether or not from the novelty and importance of the event

he was about to celebrate, or from some presentiment, occasioned, as he

would fain believe, by the mournful and sudden change in the atmosphere,

an embarrassment, a wavering, a fear, very unwonted to the calm and

stately self-possession of Eugene Aram, made itself painfully felt

throughout his frame. He sank down in his chair and strove to re-collect

himself; it was an effort in which he had just succeeded, when a loud

knocking was heard at the outer door; it swung open; several voices were

heard. Aram sprang up, pale, breathless, his lips apart.

“Great God!” he exclaimed, clasping his hands. “‘Murderer!’--was that

the word I heard shouted forth? The voice, too, is Walter Lester’s. Has

he returned? Can he have learned--?”

To rush to the door, to throw across it a long, heavy iron bar, which

would resist assaults of no common strength, was his first impulse. Thus

enabled to gain time for reflection, his active and alarmed mind ran

over the whole field of expedient and conjecture. Again, “Murderer!”

“Stay me not,” cried Walter, from below; “my hand shall seize the

murderer!”

Guess was now over; danger and death were marching on him. Escape,--how?

whither? The height forbade the thought of flight from the casement!

The door?--he heard loud steps already hurrying up the stairs; his hands

clutched convulsively at his breast, where his fire-arms were generally

concealed,--they were left below. He glanced one lightning glance round

the room; no weapon of any kind was at hand. His brain reeled for a

moment, his breath gasped, a mortal sickness passed over his heart, and

then the MIND triumphed over all. He drew up to his full height, folded

his arms doggedly on his breast, and muttering, “The accuser comes,--I

have it still to refute the charge!” he stood prepared to meet, nor

despairing to evade, the worst.

As waters close over the object which divided them, all these thoughts,

these fears, and this resolution had been but the work, the agitation,

and the succeeding calm of the moment; that moment was past.

“Admit us!” cried the voice of Walter Lester, knocking fiercely at the

door.

“Not so fervently, boy,” said Lester, laying his hand on his nephew’s

shoulder; “your tale is yet to be proved,--I believe it not. Treat him

as innocent, I pray,--I command,--till you have shown him guilty.”

“Away, uncle!” said the fiery Walter; “he is my father’s murderer. God

hath given justice to my hands.” These words, uttered in a lower key

than before, were but indistinctly heard by Aram through the massy door.

“Open, or we force our entrance!” shouted Walter again; and Aram,

speaking for the first time, replied in a clear and sonorous voice, so

that an angel, had one spoken, could not have more deeply impressed the

heart of Rowland Lester with a conviction of the student’s innocence,

“Who knocks so rudely? What means this violence? I open my doors to my

friends. Is it a friend who asks it?”

“I ask it,” said Rowland Lester, in a trembling and agitated voice.

“There seems some dreadful mistake: come forth, Eugene, and rectify it

by a word.”

“Is it you, Rowland Lester? It is enough. I was but with my books, and

had secured myself from intrusion. Enter.” The bar was withdrawn,

the door was burst open, and even Walter Lester, even the officers of

justice with him, drew back for a moment as they beheld the lofty brow,

the majestic presence, the features so unutterably calm, of Eugene Aram.

“What want you, sirs?” said he, unmoved and unfaltering, though in the

officers of justice he recognized faces he had known before, and in that

distant town in which all that he dreaded in the past lay treasured up.

At the sound of his voice the spell that for an instant had arrested the

step of the avenging son melted away.

“Seize him!” he cried to the officers; “you see your prisoner.”

“Hold!” cried Aram, drawing back. “By what authority is this

outrage,--for what am I arrested?”

“Behold,” said Walter, speaking through his teeth, “behold our

warrant! You are accused of murder! Know you the name of Richard

Houseman,--pause, consider,--or that of Daniel Clarke?”

Slowly Aram lifted his eyes from the warrant, and it might be seen that

his face was a shade more pale, though his look did not quail, or his

nerves tremble. Slowly he turned his gaze upon Walter; and then, after

one moment’s survey, dropped it once more on the paper.

“The name of Houseman is not unfamiliar to me,” said he calmly, but with

effort.

“And knew you Daniel Clarke

“What mean these questions?” said Aram, losing temper, and stamping

violently on the ground. “Is it thus that a man, free and guiltless, is

to be questioned at the behest, or rather outrage, of every lawless boy?

Lead me to some authority meet for me to answer; for you, boy, my answer

is contempt.”

“Big words shall not save thee, murderer!” cried Walter, breaking from

his uncle, who in vain endeavored to hold him, and laying his powerful

grasp upon Aram’s shoulder. Livid was the glare that shot from the

student’s eye upon his assailer; and so fearfully did his features work

and change with the passions within him that even Walter felt a strange

shudder thrill through his frame.

“Gentlemen,” said Aram at last, mastering his emotions, and resuming

some portion of the remarkable dignity that characterized his usual

bearing, as he turned towards the officers of justice, “I call upon

you to discharge your duty. If this be a rightful warrant, I am your

prisoner, but I am not this man’s. I command your protection from him!”

Walter had already released his gripe, and said, in a muttered voice,

“My passion misled me; violence is unworthy my solemn cause. God and

Justice--not these hands--are my avengers.”

“Your avengers!” said Aram. “What dark words are these? This warrant

accuses me of the murder of one Daniel Clarke. What is he to thee?”

“Mark me, man!” said Walter, fixing his eyes on Aram’s countenance. “The

name of Daniel Clarke was a feigned name; the real name was Geoffrey

Lester: that murdered Lester was my father, and the brother of him whose

daughter, had I not come to-day, you would have called your wife!”

Aram felt, while these words were uttered, that the eyes of all in the

room were on him; and perhaps that knowledge enabled him not to reveal

by outward sign what must have passed within during the awful trial of

that moment.

“It is a dreadful tale,” he said, “if true,--dreadful to me, so nearly

allied to that family. But as yet I grapple with shadows.”

“What! does not your conscience now convict you?” cried Walter,

staggered by the calmness of the prisoner. But here Lester, who could no

longer contain himself, interposed; he put by his nephew, and rushing to

Aram, fell, weeping, upon his neck.

“I do not accuse thee, Eugene, my son, my son! I feel, I know thou art

innocent of this monstrous crime; some horrid delusion darkens that poor

boy’s sight. You, you, who would walk aside to save a worm!” and the

poor old man, overcome with his emotions, could literally say no more.

Aram looked down on Lester with a compassionate expression; and soothing

him with kind words, and promises that all would be explained, gently

moved from his hold, and, anxious to terminate the scene, silently

motioned the officers to proceed. Struck with the calmness and dignity

of his manner, and fully impressed by it with the notion of his

innocence, the officers treated him with a marked respect; they did not

even walk by his side, but suffered him to follow their steps. As they

descended the stairs, Aram turned round to Walter, with a bitter and

reproachful countenance,

“And so, young man, your malice against me has reached even to this!

Will nothing but my life content you?”

“Is the desire of execution on my father’s murderer but the wish of

malice?” retorted Walter; though his heart yet well-nigh misgave him as

to the grounds on which his suspicion rested.

Aram smiled, as half in scorn, half through incredulity; and, shaking

his head gently, moved on without further words.

The three old women, who had remained in listening astonishment at the

foot of the stairs, gave way as the men descended; but the one who so

long had been Aram’s solitary domestic, and who, from her deafness, was

still benighted and uncomprehending as to the causes of his seizure,

though from that very reason her alarm was the greater and more

acute, she, impatiently thrusting away the officers, and mumbling some

unintelligible anathema as she did so, flung herself at the feet of a

master whose quiet habits and constant kindness had endeared him to her

humble and faithful heart, and exclaimed,--

“What are they doing? Have they the heart to ill-use you? O master,

God bless you! God shield you! I shall never see you, who was my only

friend--who was every one’s friend--any more!”

Aram drew himself from her, and said, with a quivering lip to Rowland

Lester,--

“If her fears are true--if--if I never more return hither, see that

her old age does not starve--does not want.” Lester could not speak for

sobbing, but the request was remembered. And now Aram, turning aside his

proud head to conceal his emotion, beheld open the door of the room so

trimly prepared for Madeline’s reception: the flowers smiled upon him

from their stands. “Lead on, gentlemen,” he said quickly. And so Eugene

Aram passed his threshold!

“Ho, ho!” muttered the old hag whose predictions in the morning had

been so ominous,--“ho, ho! you’ll believe Goody Darkmans another time!

Providence respects the sayings of the ould. ‘T was not for nothing the

rats grinned at me last night. But let’s in and have a warm glass.

He, he! there will be all the strong liquors for us now; the Lord is

merciful to the poor!”

As the little group proceeded through the valley, the officers first,

Aram and Lester side by side, Walter, with his hand on his pistol and

his eye on the prisoner, a little behind, Lester endeavored to cheer the

prisoner’s spirits and his own by insisting on the madness of the charge

and the certainty of instant acquittal from the magistrate to whom they

were bound, and who was esteemed the one both most acute and most just

in the county. Aram interrupted him somewhat abruptly,

“My friend, enough of this presently. But Madeline, what knows she as

yet?”

“Nothing; of course, we kept--”

“Exactly, exactly; you have done wisely. Why need she learn anything as

yet? Say an arrest for debt, a mistake, an absence but of a day or so at

most,--you understand?”

“Yes. Will you not see her, Eugene, before you go, and say this

yourself?”

“I!--O God!--I! to whom this day was--No, no; save me, I implore

you, from the agony of such a contrast,--an interview so mournful and

unavailing. No, we must not meet! But whither go we now? Not, not,

surely, through all the idle gossips of the village,--the crowd already

excited to gape and stare and speculate on the--”

“No,” interrupted Lester; “the carriages await us at the farther end of

the valley. I thought of that,--for the rash boy behind seems to have

changed his nature. I loved--Heaven knows how I loved my brother! But

before I would let suspicion thus blind reason, I would suffer inquiry

to sleep forever on his fate.”

“Your nephew,” said Aram, “has ever wronged me. But waste not words

on him; let us think only of Madeline. Will you go back at once to

her,--tell her a tale to lull her apprehensions, and then follow us with

haste? I am alone among enemies till you come.”

Lester was about to answer, when, at a turn in the road which brought

the carriage within view, they perceived two figures in white hastening

towards them; and ere Aram was prepared for the surprise, Madeline had

sunk pale, trembling, and all breathless on his breast.

“I could not keep her back,” said Ellinor, apologetically, to her

father.

“Back! and why? Am I not in my proper place?” cried Madeline, lifting

her face from Aram’s breast; and then, as her eyes circled the group,

and rested on Aram’s countenance, now no longer calm, but full of woe,

of passion, of disappointed love, of anticipated despair, she rose,

and gradually recoiling with a fear which struck dumb her voice, thrice

attempted to speak, and thrice failed.

“But what--what is--what means this?” exclaimed Ellinor. “Why do you

weep, father? Why does Eugene turn away his face? You answer not.

Speak, for God’s sake! These strangers,--what are they? And you, Walter,

you,--why are you so pale? Why do you thus knit your brows and fold your

arms! You, you will tell me the meaning of this dreadful silence,--this

scene. Speak, cousin, dear cousin, speak!”

“Speak!” cried Madeline, finding voice at length, but in the sharp and

straining tone of wild terror, in which they recognized no note of

the natural music. The single word sounded rather as a shriek than an

adjuration; and so piercingly it ran through the hearts of all present

that the very officers, hardened as their trade had made them, felt as

if they would rather have faced death than answered that command.

A dead, long, dreary pause, and Aram broke it. “Madeline Lester,” said

he, “prove yourself worthy of the hour of trial. Exert yourself; arouse

your heart; be prepared! You are the betrothed of one whose soul never

quailed before man’s angry word. Remember that, and fear not!”

“I will not, I will not, Eugene! Speak, only speak!”

“You have loved me in good report; trust me now in ill. They accuse me

of a crime,--a heinous crime! At first I would not have told you the

real charge. Pardon me, I wronged you,--now, know all! They accuse me,

I say, of crime. Of what crime? you ask. Ay, I scarce know, so vague

is the charge, so fierce the accuser; but prepare, Madeline,--it is of

murder!”

Raised as her spirits had been by the haughty and earnest tone of Aram’s

exhortation, Madeline now, though she turned deadly pale, though the

earth swam round and round, yet repressed the shriek upon her lips as

those horrid words shot into her soul.

“You!--murder!--you! And who dares accuse you?”

“Behold him,--your cousin!”

Ellinor heard, turned, fixed her eyes on Walter’s sullen brow and

motionless attitude, and fell senseless to the earth. Not thus Madeline.

As there is an exhaustion that forbids, not invites repose, so when

the mind is thoroughly on the rack, the common relief to anguish is not

allowed; the senses are too sharply strung, thus happily to collapse

into forgetfulness; the dreadful inspiration that agony kindles,

supports nature while it consumes it. Madeline passed, without a

downward glance, by the lifeless body of her sister; and walking with a

steady step to Walter, she laid her hand upon his arm, and fixing on his

countenance that soft clear eye, which was now lit with a searching and

preternatural glare, and seemed to pierce into his soul, she said,

“Walter, do I hear aright? Am I awake? Is it you who accuse Eugene

Aram,--your Madeline’s betrothed husband,--Madeline, whom you once

loved? Of what? Of crimes which death alone can punish. Away! It is not

you,--I know it is not. Say that I am mistaken,--that I am mad, if

you will. Come, Walter, relieve me; let me not abhor the very air you

breathe!”

“Will no one have mercy on me?” cried Walter, rent to the heart, and

covering his face with his hands. In the fire and heat of vengeance

he had not reeked of this. He had only thought of justice to a father,

punishment to a villain, rescue for a credulous girl. The woe, the

horror he was about to inflict on all he most loved: this had not struck

upon him with a due force till now!

“Mercy--you talk of mercy! I knew it could not be true!” said Madeline,

trying to pluck her cousin’s hand from his face; “you could not have

dreamed of wrong to Eugene and--and upon this day. Say we have erred, or

that you have erred, and we will forgive and bless you even now!” Aram

had not interfered in this scene; he kept his eyes fixed on the cousins,

not uninterested to see what effect Madeline’s touching words might

produce on his accuser. Meanwhile she continued: “Speak to me, Walter,

dear Walter, speak to me’. Are you, my cousin, my playfellow,--are you

the one to blight our hopes, to dash our joys, to bring dread and

terror into a home so lately all peace and sunshine, your own home, your

childhood’s home? What have you done? What have you dared to do? Accuse

him! Of what? Murder! Speak, speak. Murder, ha! ha!--murder! nay, not

so! You would not venture to come here, you would not let me take your

hand, you would not look us, your uncle, your more than sisters, in

the face if you could nurse in your heart this lie,--this black, horrid

lie!”

Walter withdrew his hands, and as he turned his face said,--

“Let him prove his innocence. Pray God he do! I am not his accuser,

Madeline. His accusers are the bones of my dead father! Save these,

Heaven alone and the revealing earth are witness against him!”

“Your father!” said Madeline, staggering back,--“my lost uncle! Nay, now

I know indeed what a shadow has appalled us all! Did you know my uncle,

Eugene? Did you ever see Geoffrey Lester?”

“Never, as I believe, so help me God!” said Aram, laying his hand on his

heart. “But this is idle now,” as, recollecting himself, he felt that

the case had gone forth from Walter’s hands, and that appeal to him had

become vain. “Leave us now, dearest Madeline, my beloved wife that shall

be, that is! I go to disprove these charges. Perhaps I shall return

to-night. Delay not my acquittal, even from doubt,--a boy’s doubt. Come,

sirs.”

“O Eugene! Eugene!” cried Madeline, throwing herself on her knees before

hint, “do not order me to leave you now, now in the hour of dread! I

will not. Nay, look not so! I swear I will not! Father, dear father,

come and plead for me,--say I shall go with you. I ask nothing more. Do

not fear for my nerves,--cowardice is gone. I will not shame you, I will

not play the woman. I know what is due to one who loves him. Try

me, only try me. You weep, father, you shake your head. But you,

Eugene,--you have not the heart to deny me? Think--think if I stayed

here to count the moments till you return, my very senses would leave

me. What do I ask? But to go with you, to be the first to hail your

triumph! Had this happened two hours hence, you could not have said me

nay,--I should have claimed the right to be with you; I now but implore

the blessing. You relent, you relent; I see it!”

“O Heaven!” exclaimed Aram, rising, and clasping her to his breast,

and wildly kissing her face, but with cold and trembling lips, “this

is indeed a bitter hour; let me not sink beneath it. Yes, Madeline, ask

your father if he consents; I hail your strengthening presence as that

of an angel. I will not be the one to sever you from my side.”

“You are right, Eugene,” said Lester, who was supporting Ellinor, not

yet recovered,--“let her go with us; it is but common kindness and

common mercy.”

Madeline uttered a cry of joy (joy even at such a moment!), and clung

fast to Eugene’s arm, as if for assurance that they were not indeed to

be separated.

By this time some of Lester’s servants, who had from a distance followed

their young mistresses, reached the spot. To their care Lester gave the

still scarce reviving Ellinor; and then, turning round with a severe

countenance to Walter, said, “Come, sir, your rashness has done

sufficient wrong for the present; come now, and see how soon your

suspicions will end in shame.”

“Justice, and blood for blood!” said Walter, sternly; but his heart felt

as if it were broken. His venerable uncle’s tears, Madeline’s look of

horror as she turned from him, Ellinor all lifeless, and he not daring

to approach her,--this was HIS work! He pulled his hat over his eyes,

and hastened into the carriage alone. Lester, Madeline, and Aram

followed in the other vehicle; and the two officers contented themselves

with mounting the box, certain the prisoner would attempt no escape.

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.

Bear me to prison, where I am committed.

--Measure for Measure.

On arriving at Sir--‘s, a disappointment, for which, had they previously

conversed with the officers they might have been prepared, awaited them.

The fact was, that the justice had only endorsed the warrant sent from

Yorkshire; and after a very short colloquy, in which he expressed his

regret at the circumstance, his conviction that the charge would be

disproved, and a few other courteous common-places, he gave Aram to

understand that the matter now did not rest with him, but that it was

to Yorkshire that the officers were bound, and before Mr. Thornton, a

magistrate of that country, that the examination was to take place. “All

I can do,” said the magistrate, “I have already done; but I wished for

an opportunity of informing you of it. I have written to my brother

justice at full length respecting your high character, and treating the

habits and rectitude of your life alone as a sufficient refutation of so

monstrous a charge.”

For the first time a visible embarrassment came over the firm nerves of

the prisoner: he seemed to look with great uneasiness at the prospect

of this long and dreary journey, and for such an end. Perhaps, the very

notion of returning as a suspected criminal to that part of the country

where a portion of his youth had been passed, was sufficient to disquiet

and deject him. All this while his poor Madeline seemed actuated by a

spirit beyond herself; she would not be separated from his side--she

held his hand in hers--she whispered comfort and courage at the very

moment when her own heart most sank. The magistrate wiped his eyes when

he saw a creature so young, so beautiful, in circumstances so fearful,

and bearing up with an energy so little to be expected from her years

and delicate appearance. Aram said but little; he covered his face with

his right hand for a few moments, as if to hide a passing emotion, a

sudden weakness. When he removed it, all vestige of colour had died

away; his face was pale as that of one who has risen from the grave; but

it was settled and composed.

“It is a hard pang, Sir,” said he, with a faint smile; “so many

miles--so many days--so long a deferment of knowing the best, or

preparing to meet the worst. But, be it so! I thank you, Sir,--I thank

you all,--Lester, Madeline, for your kindness; you two must now leave

me; the brand is on my name--the suspected man is no fit object for love

or friendship! Farewell!”

“We go with you!” said Madeline firmly, and in a very low voice.

Aram’s eye sparkled, but he waved his hand impatiently.

“We go with you, my friend!” repeated Lester.

And so, indeed, not to dwell long on a painful scene, it was finally

settled. Lester and his two daughters that evening followed Aram to the

dark and fatal bourne to which he was bound.

It was in vain that Walter, seizing his uncle’s hands, whispered,

“For Heaven’s sake, do not be rash in your friendship! You have not

yet learnt all. I tell you, that there can be no doubt of his guilt!

Remember, it is a brother for whom you mourn! will you countenance his

murderer?”

Lester, despite himself, was struck by the earnestness with which his

nephew spoke, but the impression died away as the words ceased: so

strong and deep had been the fascination which Eugene Aram had exercised

over the hearts of all once drawn within the near circle of his

attraction, that had the charge of murder been made against himself,

Lester could not have repelled it with a more entire conviction of the

innocence of the accused. Still, however, the deep sincerity of his

nephew’s manner in some measure served to soften his resentment towards

him.

“No, no, boy!” said he, drawing away his hand, “Rowland Lester is not

the one to desert a friend in the day of darkness and the hour of need.

Be silent I say!--My brother, my poor brother, you tell me, has been

murdered. I will see justice done to him: but, Aram! Fie! fie! it is a

name that would whisper falsehood to the loudest accusation. Go, Walter!

go! I do not blame you!--you may be right--a murdered father is a dread

and awful memory to a son! What wonder that the thought warps your

judgment? But go! Eugene was to me both a guide and a blessing; a father

in wisdom, a son in love. I cannot look on his accuser’s face without

anguish. Go! we shall meet again.--How! Go!”

“Enough, Sir!” said Walter, partly in anger, partly in sorrow--“Time be

the judge between us all!”

With those words he turned from the house, and proceeded on foot towards

a cottage half way between Grassdale and the Magistrate’s house, at

which, previous to his return to the former place, he had prudently left

the Corporal--not willing to trust to that person’s discretion, as to

the tales and scandal that he might propagate throughout the village on

a matter so painful and so dark.

Let the world wag as it will, there are some tempers which its

vicissitudes never reach. Nothing makes a picture of distress more sad

than the portrait of some individual sitting indifferently looking on in

the back-ground. This was a secret Hogarth knew well. Mark his deathbed

scenes:--Poverty and Vice worked up into horror--and the Physicians

in the corner wrangling for the fee!--or the child playing with the

coffin--or the nurse filching what fortune, harsh, yet less harsh than

humanity, might have left. In the melancholy depth of humour that steeps

both our fancy and our heart in the immortal Romance of Cervantes (for,

how profoundly melancholy is it to be compelled by one gallant folly to

laugh at all that is gentle, and brave, and wise, and generous!) nothing

grates on us more than when--last scene of all, the poor Knight lies

dead--his exploits for ever over--for ever dumb his eloquent discourses:

than when, I say, we are told that, despite of his grief, even little

Sancho did not eat or drink the less:--these touches open to us the real

world, it is true; but it is not the best part of it. What a pensive

thing is true humour! Certain it was, that when Walter, full of

contending emotions at all he had witnessed,--harassed, tortured, yet

also elevated, by his feelings, stopped opposite the cottage door,

and saw there the Corporal sitting comfortably in the porch,--his vile

modicum Sabini before him--his pipe in his mouth, and a complacent

expression of satisfaction diffusing itself over features which

shrewdness and selfishness had marked for their own;--certain it was,

that, at this sight Walter experienced a more displeasing revulsion of

feeling--a more entire conviction of sadness--a more consummate disgust

of this weary world and the motley masquers that walk thereon, than all

the tragic scenes he had just witnessed had excited within him.

“And well, Sir,” said the Corporal, slowly rising, “how did it go

off?--Wasn’t the villain bash’d to the dust?--You’ve nabbed him safe, I

hope?”

“Silence,” said Walter, sternly, “prepare for our departure. The chaise

will be here forthwith; we return to Yorkshire this day. Ask me no more

now.”

“A--well--baugh!” said the Corporal.

There was a long silence. Walter walked to and fro the road before the

cottage. The chaise arrived; the luggage was put in. Walter’s foot was

on the step; but before the Corporal mounted the rumbling dickey, that

invaluable domestic hemmed thrice.

“And had you time, Sir, to think of poor Jacob, and look at the cottage,

and slip in a word to your uncle about the bit tato ground?”

We pass over the space of time, short in fact, long in suffering, that

elapsed, till the prisoner and his companions reached Knaresbro’. Aram’s

conduct during this time was not only calm but cheerful. The stoical

doctrines he had affected through life, he on this trying interval

called into remarkable exertion. He it was who now supported the spirits

of his mistress and his friend; and though he no longer pretended to

be sanguine of acquittal--though again and again he urged upon them

the gloomy fact--first, how improbable it was that this course had

been entered into against him without strong presumption of guilt; and

secondly, how little less improbable it was, that at that distance of

time he should be able to procure evidence, or remember circumstances,

sufficient on the instant to set aside such presumption,--he yet dwelt

partly on the hope of ultimate proof of his innocence, and still more

strongly on the firmness of his own mind to bear, without shrinking,

even the hardest fate.

“Do not,” he said to Lester, “do not look on these trials of life only

with the eyes of the world. Reflect how poor and minute a segment in

the vast circle of eternity existence is at the best. Its sorrow and its

shame are but moments. Always in my brightest and youngest hours I have

wrapt my heart in the contemplation of an august futurity.

“‘The soul, secure in its existence, smiles

At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.’

“If I die even the death of the felon, it is beyond the power of fate

to separate us for long. It is but a pang, and we are united again for

ever; for ever in that far and shadowy clime, where the wicked cease

from troubling, and the weary are at rest.’ Were it not for Madeline’s

dear sake, I should long since have been over weary of the world. As

it is, the sooner, even by a violent and unjust fate, we leave a path

begirt with snares below and tempests above, the happier for that soul

which looks to its lot in this earth as the least part of its appointed

doom.”

In discourses like this, which the nature of his eloquence was

peculiarly calculated to render solemn and impressive, Aram strove to

prepare his friends for the worst, and perhaps to cheat, or to steel,

himself. Ever as he spoke thus, Lester or Ellinor broke on him with

impatient remonstrance; but Madeline, as if imbued with a deeper and

more mournful penetration into the future, listened in tearless and

breathless attention. She gazed upon him with a look that shared the

thought he expressed, though it read not (yet she dreamed so) the heart

from which it came. In the words of that beautiful poet, to whose

true nature, so full of unuttered tenderness--so fraught with the rich

nobility of love--we have begun slowly to awaken,

“Her lip was silent, scarcely beat her heart.

Her eye alone proclaimed ‘we will not part!’

Thy ‘hope’ may perish, or thy friends may flee.

Farewell to life--but not adieu to thee!”

--[Lara]

They arrived at noon at the house of Mr. Thornton, and Aram underwent

his examination. Though he denied most of the particulars in Houseman’s

evidence, and expressly the charge of murder, his commitment was made

out; and that day he was removed by the officers, (Barker and Moor, who

had arrested him at Grassdale,) to York Castle, to await his trial at

the assizes.

The sensation which this extraordinary event created throughout the

country, was wholly unequalled. Not only in Yorkshire, and the county in

which he had of late resided, where his personal habits were known, but

even in the Metropolis, and amongst men of all classes in England, it

appears to have caused one mingled feeling of astonishment, horror,

and incredulity, which in our times has had no parallel in any criminal

prosecution. The peculiar turn of the prisoner--his genius--his

learning--his moral life--the interest that by students had been for

years attached to his name--his approaching marriage--the length of time

that had elapsed since the crime had been committed--the singular and

abrupt manner, the wild and legendary spot, in which the skeleton of

the lost man had been discovered--the imperfect rumours--the dark and

suspicious evidence--all combined to make a tale of such marvellous

incident, and breeding such endless conjecture, that we cannot wonder

to find it afterwards received a place, not only in the temporary

chronicles, but even the most important and permanent histories of the

period.

Previous to Walter’s departure from Knaresbro’ to Grassdale, and

immediately subsequent to the discovery at St. Robert’s Cave, the

coroner’s inquest had been held upon the bones so mysteriously and

suddenly brought to light. Upon the witness of the old woman at

whose house Aram had lodged, and upon that of Houseman, aided by some

circumstantial and less weighty evidence, had been issued that warrant

on which we have seen the prisoner apprehended.

With most men there was an intimate and indignant persuasion of Aram’s

innocence; and at this day, in the county where he last resided, there

still lingers the same belief. Firm as his gospel faith, that conviction

rested in the mind of the worthy Lester; and he sought, by every means

he could devise, to soothe and cheer the confinement of his friend.

In prison, however (indeed after his examination--after Aram had made

himself thoroughly acquainted with all the circumstantial evidence which

identified Clarke with Geoffrey Lester, a story that till then he had

persuaded himself wholly to disbelieve) a change which, in the presence

of Madeline or her father, he vainly attempted wholly to conceal, and

to which, when alone, he surrendered himself with a gloomy

abstraction--came over his mood, and dashed him from the lofty height

of Philosophy, from which he had before looked down on the peril and the

ills below.

Sometimes he would gaze on Lester with a strange and glassy eye, and

mutter inaudibly to himself, as if unaware of the old man’s presence; at

others, he would shrink from Lester’s proffered hand, and start abruptly

from his professions of unaltered, unalterable regard; sometimes he

would sit silently, and, with a changeless and stony countenance, look

upon Madeline as she now spoke in that exalted tone of consolation which

had passed away from himself; and when she had done, instead of replying

to her speech, he would say abruptly, “Ay, at the worst you love me,

then--love me better than any one on earth--say that, Madeline, again

say that!”

And Madeline’s trembling lips obeyed the demand.

“Yes,” he would renew, “this man, whom they accuse me of murdering,

this,--your uncle,--him you never saw since you were an infant, a mere

infant; him you could not love! What was he to you?--yet it is dreadful

to think of--dreadful, dreadful;” and then again his voice ceased; but

his lips moved convulsively, and his eyes seemed to speak meanings that

defied words. These alterations in his bearing, which belied his steady

and resolute character, astonished and dejected both Madeline and her

father. Sometimes they thought that his situation had shaken his reason,

or that the horrible suspicion of having murdered the uncle of his

intended wife, made him look upon themselves with a secret shudder, and

that they were mingled up in his mind by no unnatural, though unjust

confusion, with the causes of his present awful and uncertain state.

With the generality of the world, these two tender friends believed

Houseman the sole and real murderer, and fancied his charge against Aram

was but the last expedient of a villain to ward punishment from himself,

by imputing crime to another. Naturally, then, they frequently sought to

turn the conversation upon Houseman, and on the different circumstances

that had brought him acquainted with Aram; but on this ground the

prisoner seemed morbidly sensitive, and averse to detailed discussion.

His narration, however, such as it was, threw much light upon

certain matters on which Madeline and Lester were before anxious and

inquisitive.

“Houseman is, in all ways,” said he, with great and bitter vehemence,

“unredeemed, and beyond the calculations of an ordinary wickedness; we

knew each other from our relationship, but seldom met, and still more

rarely held long intercourse together. After we separated, when I left

Knaresbro’, we did not meet for years. He sought me at Grassdale; he was

poor, and implored assistance; I gave him all within my power; he sought

me again, nay, more than once again, and finding me justly averse to

yielding to his extortionate demands, he then broached the purpose

he has now effected; he threatened--you hear me--you understand--he

threatened me with this charge--the murder of Daniel Clarke, by that

name alone I knew the deceased. The menace, and the known villainy of

the man, agitated me beyond expression. What was I? a being who lived

without the world--who knew not its ways--who desired only rest! The

menace haunted me--almost maddened! Your nephew has told you, you say,

of broken words, of escaping emotions, which he has noted, even to

suspicion, in me; you now behold the cause! Was it not sufficient? My

life, nay more, my fame, my marriage, Madeline’s peace of mind, all

depended on the uncertain fury or craft of a wretch like this! The idea

was with me night and day; to avoid it, I resolved on a sacrifice; you

may blame me, I was weak, yet I thought then not unwise; to avoid it, I

say I offered to bribe this man to leave the country. I sold my pittance

to oblige him to it. I bound him thereto by the strongest ties. Nay,

so disinterestedly, so truly did I love Madeline, that I would not wed

while I thought this danger could burst upon me. I believed that, before

my marriage day, Houseman had left the country. It was not so, Fate

ordered otherwise. It seems that Houseman came to Knaresbro’ to see

his daughter; that suspicion, by a sudden train of events, fell on him,

perhaps justly; to skreen himself he has sacrificed me. The tale seems

plausible; perhaps the accuser may triumph. But, Madeline, you now

may account for much that may have perplexed you before. Let me

remember--ay--ay--I have dropped mysterious words--have I not? have I

not?--owning that danger was around me--owning that a wild and terrific

secret was heavy at my breast; nay, once, walking with you the evening

before, before the fatal day, I said that we must prepare to seek

some yet more secluded spot, some deeper retirement; for, despite my

precautions, despite the supposed absence of Houseman from the country

itself, a fevered and restless presentiment would at some times intrude

itself on me. All this is now accounted for, is it not, Madeline? Speak,

speak!”

“All, love all! Why do you look on me with that searching eye, that

frowning brow?”

“Did I? no, no, I have no frown for you; but peace, I am not what I

ought to be through this ordeal.”

The above narration of Aram’s did indeed account to Madeline for much

that had till then remained unexplained; the appearance of Houseman at

Grassdale,--the meeting between him and Aram on the evening she walked

with the latter, and questioned him of his ill-boding visitor; the

frequent abstraction and muttered hints of her lover; and as he

had said, his last declaration of the possible necessity of leaving

Grassdale. Nor was there any thing improbable, though it was rather in

accordance with the unworldly habits, than with the haughty character of

Aram, that he should seek, circumstanced as he was, to silence even the

false accuser of a plausible tale, that might well strike horror and

bewilderment into a man much more, to all seeming, fitted to grapple

with the hard and coarse realities of life, than the moody and secluded

scholar. Be that as it may, though Lester deplored, he did not blame

this circumstance, which after all had not transpired, nor seemed likely

to transpire; and he attributed the prisoner’s aversion to enter farther

on the matter, to the natural dislike of so proud a man to refer to his

own weakness, and to dwell upon the manner in which, despite of that

weakness, he had been duped. This story Lester retailed to Walter, and

it contributed to throw a damp and uncertainty over those mixed and

unquiet feelings with which the latter waited for the coming trial.

There were many moments when the young man was tempted to regret that

Aram had not escaped a trial which, if he were proved guilty, would for

ever blast the happiness of his family; and which might, notwithstanding

such a verdict, leave on Walter’s own mind an impression of the

prisoner’s innocence; and an uneasy consciousness that he, through his

investigations, had brought him to that doom.

Walter remained in Yorkshire, seeing little of his family, of none

indeed but Lester; it was not to be expected that Madeline would

see him, and once only he caught the tearful eyes of Ellinor as she

retreated from the room he entered, and those eyes beamed kindness and

pity, but something also of reproach.

Time passed slowly and witheringly on: a man of the name of Terry having

been included in the suspicion, and indeed committed, it appeared that

the prosecutor could not procure witnesses by the customary time, and

the trial was postponed till the next assizes. As this man was however,

never brought up to trial, and appears no more, we have said nothing of

him in our narrative, until he thus became the instrument of a delay in

the fate of Eugene Aram. Time passed on, Winter, Spring, were gone, and

the glory and gloss of Summer were now lavished over the happy earth. In

some measure the usual calmness of his demeanour had returned to Aram;

he had mastered those moody fits we have referred to, which had so

afflicted his affectionate visitors; and he now seemed to prepare and

buoy himself up against that awful ordeal of life and death, which he

was about so soon to pass. Yet he,--the hermit of Nature, who--

“Each little herb

That grows on mountain bleak, or tangled forest,

Had learnt to name;”

--Remorse, by S. T. Coleridge

he could not feel, even through the bars and checks of a prison, the

soft summer air, ‘the witchery of the soft blue sky;’ he could not see

the leaves bud forth, and mellow into their darker verdure; he could not

hear the songs of the many-voiced birds; or listen to the dancing rain,

calling up beauty where it fell; or mark at night, through his high

and narrow casement, the stars aloof, and the sweet moon pouring in

her light, like God’s pardon, even through the dungeon-gloom and the

desolate scenes where Mortality struggles with Despair; he could not

catch, obstructed as they were, these, the benigner influences of

earth, and not sicken and pant for his old and full communion with their

ministry and presence. Sometimes all around him was forgotten, the harsh

cell, the cheerless solitude, the approaching trial, the boding

fear, the darkened hope, even the spectre of a troubled and fierce

remembrance,--all was forgotten, and his spirit was abroad, and his step

upon the mountain-top once more.

In our estimate of the ills of life, we never sufficiently take into our

consideration the wonderful elasticity of our moral frame, the unlooked

for, the startling facility with which the human mind accommodates

itself to all change of circumstance, making an object and even a joy

from the hardest and seemingly the least redeemed conditions of fate.

The man who watched the spider in his cell, may have taken, at least,

as much interest in the watch, as when engaged in the most ardent and

ambitious objects of his former life; and he was but a type of his

brethren; all in similar circumstances would have found some similar

occupation. Let any man look over his past life, let him recall not

moments, not hours of agony, for to them Custom lends not her blessed

magic; but let him single out some lengthened period of physical or

moral endurance; in hastily reverting to it, it may seem at first,

I grant, altogether wretched; a series of days marked with the black

stone,--the clouds without a star;--but let him look more closely, it

was not so during the time of suffering; a thousand little things, in

the bustle of life dormant and unheeded, then started froth into notice,

and became to him objects of interest or diversion; the dreary present,

once made familiar, glided away from him, not less than if it had

been all happiness; his mind dwelt not on the dull intervals, but the

stepping-stone it had created and placed at each; and, by that moral

dreaming which for ever goes on within man’s secret heart, he lived as

little in the immediate world before him, as in the most sanguine period

of his youth, or the most scheming of his maturity.

So wonderful in equalizing all states and all times in the varying tide

of life, are these two rulers yet levellers of mankind, Hope and Custom,

that the very idea of an eternal punishment includes that of an utter

alteration of the whole mechanism of the soul in its human state, and

no effort of an imagination, assisted by past experience, can conceive

a state of torture which custom can never blunt, and from which the

chainless and immaterial spirit can never be beguiled into even a

momentary escape.

Among the very few persons admitted to Aram’s solitude, was Lord--That

nobleman was staying, on a visit, with a relation of his in the

neighbourhood, and he seized with an excited and mournful avidity, the

opportunity thus afforded him of seeing, once more, a character that had

so often forced itself on his speculation and surprise. He came to offer

not condolence, but respect; services, at such a moment, no individual

could render,--he gave however, what was within his power--advice,--and

pointed out to Aram the best counsel to engage, and the best method of

previous inquiry into particulars yet unexplored. He was astonished to

find Aram indifferent on these points, so important. The prisoner,

it would seem, had even then resolved on being his own counsel, and

conducting his own cause; the event proved that he did not rely in vain

on the power of his own eloquence and sagacity, though he might on their

result. As to the rest, he spoke with impatience, and the petulance of

a wronged man. “For the idle rumours of the world, I do not care,” said

he, “let them condemn or acquit me as they will;--for my life, I might

be willing indeed, that it were spared,--I trust it may be, if not, I

can stand face to face with Death. I have now looked on him within these

walls long enough to have grown familiar with his terrors. But enough of

me; tell me, my Lord, something of the world without, I have grown eager

about it at last. I have been now so condemned to feed upon myself,

that I have become surfeited with the diet;”--and it was with great

difficulty that the Earl drew Aram back to speak of himself: he did so,

even when compelled to it, with so much qualification and reserve,

mixed with some evident anger at the thought of being sifted and

examined--that his visitor was forced finally to drop the subject,

and not liking, nor indeed able, at such a time, to converse on more

indifferent themes, the last interview he ever had with Aram terminated

much more abruptly than he had meant it. His opinion of the prisoner

was not, however, shaken in the least. I have seen a letter of his to a

celebrated personage of the day, in which, mentioning this interview, he

concludes with saying,--“In short, there is so much real dignity

about the man, that adverse circumstances increase it tenfold. Of his

innocence I have not the remotest doubt; but if he persist in being his

own counsel, I tremble for the result,--you know in such cases how much

more valuable is practice than genius. But the judge you will say is, in

criminal causes, the prisoner’s counsel,--God grant he may here prove a

successful one! I repeat, were Aram condemned by five hundred juries,

I could not believe him guilty. No, the very essence of all human

probabilities is against it.”

The Earl afterwards saw and conversed with Walter. He was much struck

with the conduct of the young Lester, and much impressed with a feeling

for a situation, so harassing and unhappy.

“Whatever be the result of the trial,” said Walter, “I shall leave the

country the moment it is finally over. If the prisoner be condemned,

there is no hearth for me in my uncle’s home; if not, my suspicions

may still remain, and the sight of each other be an equal bane to the

accused and to myself. A voluntary exile, and a life that may lead to

forgetfulness, are all that I covet.--I now find in my own person,” he

added, with a faint smile, “how deeply Shakspeare had read the mysteries

of men’s conduct. Hamlet, we are told, was naturally full of fire and

action. One dark discovery quells his spirit, unstrings his heart,

and stales to him for ever the uses of the world. I now comprehend the

change. It is bodied forth even in the humblest individual, who is met

by a similar fate--even in myself.”

“Ay,” said the Earl, “I do indeed remember you a wild, impetuous,

headstrong youth. I scarcely recognize your very appearance. The elastic

spring has left your step--there seems a fixed furrow in your brow.

These clouds of life are indeed no summer vapour, darkening one moment

and gone the next. But my young friend, let us hope the best. I firmly

believe in Aram’s innocence--firmly!--more rootedly than I can express.

The real criminal will appear on the trial. All bitterness between you

and Aram must cease at his acquittal; you will be anxious to repair to

him the injustice of a natural suspicion: and he seems not one who could

long retain malice. All will be well, believe me.”

“God send it!” said Walter, sighing deeply.

“But at the worst,” continued the Earl, pressing his hand in parting,

“if you should persist in your resolution to leave the country, write to

me, and I can furnish you with an honourable and stirring occasion for

doing so.--Farewell.”

While Time was thus advancing towards the fatal day, it was graving deep

ravages within the pure breast of Madeline Lester. She had borne up, as

we have seen, for some time, against the sudden blow that had shivered

her young hopes, and separated her by so awful a chasm from the side of

Aram; but as week after week, month after month rolled on, and he still

lay in prison, and the horrible suspense of ignominy and death still

hung over her, then gradually her courage began to fail, and her heart

to sink. Of all the conditions to which the heart is subject, suspense

is the one that most gnaws, and cankers into, the frame. One little

month of that suspense, when it involves death, we are told, in a very

remarkable work lately published by an eye-witness. [Note: See Mr.

Wakefield’s work on ‘The Punishment of Death.’] is sufficient to

plough fixed lines and furrows in the face of a convict of

five-and-twenty--sufficient to dash the brown hair with grey, and to

bleach the grey to white. And this suspense--suspense of this nature,

for more than eight whole months, had Madeline to endure!

About the end of the second month the effect upon her health grew

visible. Her colour, naturally delicate as the hues of the pink shell or

the youngest rose, faded into one marble whiteness, which again, as time

proceeded, flushed into that red and preternatural hectic, which once

settled, rarely yields its place but to the colours of the grave. Her

flesh shrank from its rounded and noble proportions. Deep hollows traced

themselves beneath eyes which yet grew even more lovely as they grew

less serenely bright. The blessed Sleep sunk not upon her brain with its

wonted and healing dews. Perturbed dreams, that towards dawn succeeded

the long and weary vigil of the night, shook her frame even more than

the anguish of the day in these dreams one frightful vision--a

crowd--a scaffold--and the pale majestic face of her lover, darkened by

unutterable pangs of pride and sorrow, were for ever present before her.

Till now, she and Ellinor had always shared the same bed: this Madeline

would not now suffer. In vain Ellinor wept and pleaded. “No,” said

Madeline, with a hollow voice; “at night I see him. My soul is alone

with his; but--but,”--and she burst into an agony of tears--“the most

dreadful thought is this, I cannot master my dreams. And sometimes I

start and wake, and find that in sleep I have believed him guilty. Nay,

O God! that his lips have proclaimed the guilt! And shall any living

being--shall any but God, who reads not words but hearts, hear this

hideous falsehood--this ghastly mockery of the lying sleep? No, I must

be alone! The very stars should not hear what is forced from me in the

madness of my dreams.”

But not in vain, or not excluded from her, was that elastic and

consoling spirit of which I have before spoken. As Aram recovered the

tenor of his self-possession, a more quiet and peaceful calm diffused

itself over the mind of Madeline. Her high and starry nature could

comprehend those sublime inspirations of comfort, which lift us from the

lowest abyss of this world to the contemplation of all that the yearning

visions of mankind have painted in another. She would sit, rapt and

absorbed for hours together, till these contemplations assumed the

colour of a gentle and soft insanity. “Come, dearest Madeline,” Ellinor

would say,--“Come, you have thought enough; my poor father asks to see

you.”

“Hush!” Madeline answered. “Hush, I have been walking with Eugene in

heaven; and oh! there are green woods, and lulling waters above, as

there are on earth, and we see the stars quite near, and I cannot tell

you how happy their smile makes those who look upon them. And Eugene

never starts there, nor frowns, nor walks aside, nor looks on me with an

estranged and chilling look; but his face is as calm and bright as the

face of an angel;--and his voice!--it thrills amidst all the music which

plays there night and day--softer than their softest note. And we are

married, Ellinor, at last. We were married in heaven, and all the angels

came to the marriage! I am now so happy that we were not wed before!

What! are you weeping, Ellinor? Ah, we never weep in heaven! but we will

all go there again--all of us, hand in hand!”

These affecting hallucinations terrified them, lest they should settle

into a confirmed loss of reason; but perhaps without cause. They never

lasted long, and never occurred but after moods of abstraction of

unusual duration. To her they probably supplied what sleep does to

others--a relaxation and refreshment--an escape from the consciousness

of life. And indeed it might always be noted, that after such harmless

aberrations of the mind, Madeline seemed more collected and patient in

thought, and for the moment, even stronger in frame than before. Yet the

body evidently pined and languished, and each week made palpable decay

in her vital powers.

Every time Aram saw her, he was startled at the alteration; and kissing

her cheek, her lips, her temples, in an agony of grief, wondered that

to him alone it was forbidden to weep. Yet after all, when she was gone,

and he again alone, he could not but think death likely to prove to her

the most happy of earthly boons. He was not sanguine of acquittal, and

even in acquittal, a voice at his heart suggested insuperable barriers

to their union, which had not existed when it was first anticipated.

“Yes, let her die,” he would say, “let her die; she at least is

certain of Heaven!” But the human infirmity clung around him, and

notwithstanding this seeming resolution in her absence, he did not mourn

the less, he was not stung the less, when he saw her again, and beheld

a new character from the hand of death graven upon her form. No; we may

triumph over all weakness, but that of the affections. Perhaps in this

dreary and haggard interval of time, these two persons loved each other

more purely, more strongly, more enthusiastically, than they had ever

done at any former period of their eventful history. Over the hardest

stone, as over the softest turf, the green moss will force its verdure

and sustain its life!

CHAPTER IV.

THE EVENING BEFORE THE TRIAL.--THE COUSINS.--THE CHANGE IN

MADELINE.--THE FAMILY OF GRASSDALE MEET ONCE MORE BENEATH ONE

ROOF.

Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows,

For Sorrow’s eye, glazed with blinding tears,

Divides one thing entire to many objects.

.............

[Hope] is a flatterer,

A parasite, a keeper back of death;

Who gently would dissolve the bands of death

Which false Hope lingers in extremity?

--Richard II.

It was the evening before the trial. Lester and his daughters lodged

at a retired and solitary house in the suburbs of the town of York; and

thither, from the village some miles distant, in which he had chosen his

own retreat, Walter now proceeded across fields laden with the ripening

corn. The last and the richest month of summer had commenced, but the

harvest was not yet begun, and deep and golden showed the vegetation of

life, bedded among the dark verdure of the hedge-rows, and “the merrie

woods!” The evening was serene and lulled; at a distance arose the

spires and chimneys of the town, but no sound from the busy hum of men

reached the ear. Nothing perhaps gives a more entire idea of stillness

than the sight of those abodes where “noise dwelleth,” but where you

cannot now hear even its murmurs. The stillness of a city is far more

impressive than that of Nature; for the mind instantly compares the

present silence with the wonted uproar. The harvest-moon rose slowly

from a copse of gloomy firs, and diffused its own unspeakable magic into

the hush and transparency of the night. As Walter walked slowly on, the

sound of voices from some rustic party going homeward, broke jocundly on

the silence, and when he paused for a moment at the stile, from which

he first caught a glimpse of Lester’s house, he saw, winding along the

green hedgerow, some village pair, the “lover and the maid,” who

could meet only at such hours, and to whom such hours were therefore

especially dear. It was altogether a scene of pure and true pastoral

character, and there was all around a semblance of tranquillity, of

happiness, which suits with the poetical and the scriptural paintings

of a pastoral life; and which perhaps, in a new and fertile country,

may still find a realization. From this scene, from these thoughts, the

young loiterer turned with a sigh towards the solitary house in which

this night could awaken none but the most anxious feelings, and that

moon could beam only on the most troubled hearts.

“Terra salutiferas herbas, eademque nocentes

Nutrit; et urticae proxima saepe rosa est.”

He now walked more quickly on, as if stung by his reflections, and

avoiding the path which led to the front of the house, gained a little

garden at the rear, and opening a gate that admitted to a narrow

and shaded walk, over which the linden and nut trees made a sort of

continuous and natural arbour, the moon, piercing at broken intervals

through the boughs, rested on the form of Ellinor Lester.

“This is most kind, most like my own sweet cousin,” said Walter

approaching; “I cannot say how fearful I was, lest you should not meet

me after all.”

“Indeed, Walter,” replied Ellinor, “I found some difficulty in

concealing your note, which was given me in Madeline’s presence; and

still more, in stealing out unobserved by her, for she has been, as you

may well conceive, unusually restless the whole of this agonizing day.

Ah, Walter, would to God you had never left us!”

“Rather say,” rejoined Walter--“that this unhappy man, against whom my

father’s ashes still seem to me to cry aloud, had never come into our

peaceful and happy valley! Then you would not have reproached me, that I

have sought justice on a suspected murderer; nor I have longed for death

rather than, in that justice, have inflicted such distress and horror on

those whom I love the best!”

“What! Walter, you yet believe--you are yet convinced that Eugene Aram

is the real criminal?”

“Let to-morrow shew,” answered Walter. “But poor, poor Madeline! How

does she bear up against this long suspense? You know I have not seen

her for months.”

“Oh! Walter,” said Ellinor, weeping bitterly, “you would not know her,

so dreadfully is she altered. I fear--” (here sobs choaked the sister’s

voice, so as to leave it scarcely audible)--“that she is not many weeks

for this world!”

“Great God! is it so?” exclaimed Walter, so shocked, that the tree

against which he leant scarcely preserved him from falling to the

ground, as the thousand remembrances of his first love rushed upon his

heart. “And Providence singled me out of the whole world, to strike this

blow!”

Despite her own grief, Ellinor was touched and smitten by the violent

emotion of her cousin; and the two young persons, lovers--though love

was at this time the least perceptible feeling of their breasts--mingled

their emotions, and sought, at least to console and cheer each other.

“It may yet be better than our fears,” said Ellinor, soothingly. “Eugene

may be found guiltless, and in that joy we may forget all the past.”

Walter shook his head despondingly. “Your heart, Ellinor, was always

kind to me. You now are the only one to do me justice, and to see

how utterly reproachless I am for all the misery the crime of another

occasions. But my uncle--him, too, I have not seen for some time: is he

well?”

“Yes, Walter, yes,” said Ellinor, kindly disguising the real truth, how

much her father’s vigorous frame had been bowed by his state of mind.

“And I, you see,” added she, with a faint attempt to smile,--“I am,

in health at least, the same as when, this time last year, we were all

happy and full of hope.”

Walter looked hard upon that face, once so vivid with the rich colour

and the buoyant and arch expression of liveliness and youth, now pale,

subdued, and worn by the traces of constant tears; and, pressing his

hand convulsively on his heart, turned away.

“But can I not see my uncle?” said he, after a pause.

“He is not at home: he has gone to the Castle,” replied Ellinor.

“I shall meet him, then, on his way home,” returned Walter. “But,

Ellinor, there is surely no truth in a vague rumour which I heard in the

town, that Madeline intends to be present at the trial to-morrow.”

“Indeed, I fear that she will. Both my father and myself have sought

strongly and urgently to dissuade her; but in vain. You know, with all

that gentleness, how resolute she is when her mind is once determined on

any object.”

“But if the verdict should be against the prisoner, in her state of

health consider how terrible would be the shock!--Nay, even the joy of

acquittal might be equally dangerous--for Heaven’s sake! do not suffer

her.”

“What is to be done, Walter?” said Ellinor, wringing her hands. “We

cannot help it. My father has, at last, forbid me to contradict the

wish. Contradiction, the physician himself says, might be as fatal as

concession can be. And my father adds, in a stern, calm voice, which

it breaks my heart to hear, ‘Be still, Ellinor. If the innocent is to

perish, the sooner she joins him the better: I would then have all my

ties on the other side the grave!’”

“How that strange man seems to have fascinated you all!” said Walter,

bitterly.

Ellinor did not answer: over her the fascination had never been to an

equal degree with the rest of her family.

“Ellinor!” said Walter, who had been walking for the last few moments to

and fro with the rapid strides of a man debating with himself, and who

now suddenly paused, and laid his hand on his cousin’s arm--“Ellinor! I

am resolved. I must, for the quiet of my soul, I must see Madeline

this night, and win her forgiveness for all I have been made the

unintentional agent of Providence to bring upon her. The peace of

my future life may depend on this single interview. What if Aram be

condemned--and--and--in short, it is no matter--I must see her.”

“She would not hear of it, I fear,” said Ellinor, in alarm. “Indeed, you

cannot--you do not know her state of mind.”

“Ellinor!” said Walter, doggedly, “I am resolved.” And so saying, he

moved towards the house.

“Well, then,” said Ellinor, whose nerves had been greatly shattered by

the scenes and sorrow of the last several months, “if it must be so,

wait at least till I have gone in, and consulted or prepared her.”

“As you will, my gentlest, kindest cousin; I know your prudence and

affection. I leave you to obtain me this interview; you can, and will, I

am convinced.”

“Do not be sanguine, Walter. I can only promise to use my best

endeavours,” answered Ellinor, blushing as he kissed her hand; and,

hurrying up the walk, she disappeared within the house.

Walter walked for some moments about the alley in which Ellinor had left

him, but growing impatient, he at length wound through the overhanging

trees, and the house stood immediately before him,--the moonlight

shining full on the window-panes, and sleeping in quiet shadow over the

green turf in front. He approached yet nearer, and through one of the

windows, by a single light in the room, he saw Ellinor leaning over a

couch, on which a form reclined, that his heart, rather than his sight,

told him was his once-adored Madeline. He stopped, and his breath

heaved thick;--he thought of their common home at Grassdale--of the old

Manor-house--of the little parlour with the woodbine at its casement--of

the group within, once so happy and light-hearted, of which he had

formerly made the one most buoyant, and not least-loved. And now this

strange--this desolate house--himself estranged from all once

regarding him,--(and those broken-hearted,)--this night ushering what

a morrow!--he groaned almost aloud, and retreated once more into the

shadow of the trees. In a few minutes the door at the right of the

building opened, and Ellinor came forth with a quick step.

“Come in, dear Walter,” said she; “Madeline has consented to see

you--nay, when I told her you were here, and desired an interview, she

paused but for one instant, and then begged me to admit you.”

“God bless her!” said poor Walter, drawing his hand across his eyes, and

following Ellinor to the door.

“You will find her greatly changed!” whispered Ellinor, as they gained

the outer hall; “be prepared!”

Walter did not reply, save by an expressive gesture; and Ellinor led him

into a room, which communicated, by one of those glass doors often to be

seen in the old-fashioned houses of country towns, with the one in

which he had previously seen Madeline. With a noiseless step, and almost

holding his breath, he followed his fair guide through this apartment,

and he now stood by the couch on which Madeline still reclined. She held

out her hand to him--he pressed it to his lips, without daring to look

her in the face; and after a moment’s pause, she said--

“So, you wished to see me, Walter! It is an anxious night this for all

of us!”

“For all!” repeated Walter, emphatically; “and for me not the least!”

“We have known some sad days since we last met!” renewed Madeline; and

there was another, and an embarrassed pause.

“Madeline--dearest Madeline!” said Walter, at length dropping on his

knee; “you, whom while I was yet a boy, I so fondly, passionately

loved;--you, who yet are--who, while I live, ever will be, so

inexpressibly dear to me--say but one word to me on this uncertain and

dreadful epoch of our fate--say but one word to me--say you feel you

are conscious that throughout these terrible events I have not been

to blame--I have not willingly brought this affliction upon our

house--least of all upon that heart which my own would have forfeited

its best blood to preserve from the slightest evil;--or, if you will not

do me this justice, say at least that you forgive me!”