“I forgive you, Walter! I do you justice, my cousin!” replied Madeline,

with energy; and raising herself on her arm. “It is long since I have

felt how unreasonable it was to throw any blame upon you--the mere and

passive instrument of fate. If I have forborne to see you, it was not

from an angry feeling, but from a reluctant weakness. God bless and

preserve you, my dear cousin! I know that your own heart has bled as

profusely as ours; and it was but this day that I told my father, if we

never met again, to express to you some kind message as a last memorial

from me. Don’t weep, Walter! It is a fearful thing to see men weep! It

is only once that I have seen him weep,--that was long, long ago! He has

no tears in the hour of dread and danger. But no matter, this is a bad

world, Walter, and I am tired of it. Are not you? Why do you look so

at me, Ellinor? I am not mad! Has she told you that I am, Walter? Don’t

believe her! Look at me! I am calm and collected! Yet to-morrow is--O

God! O God!--if--if!--”

Madeline covered her face with her hands, and became suddenly silent,

though only for a short time; when she again lifted up her eyes, they

encountered those of Walter; as through those blinding and agonised

tears, which are only wrung from the grief of manhood, he gazed upon

that face on which nothing of herself, save the divine and unearthly

expression which had always characterised her loveliness, was left.

“Yes, Walter, I am wearing fast away--fast beyond the power of chance!

Thank God, who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, if the worst happen,

we cannot be divided long. Ere another Sabbath has passed, I may be with

him in Paradise! What cause shall we then have for regret?”

Ellinor flung herself on her sister’s neck, sobbing violently.--“Yes, we

shall regret you are not with us, Ellinor; but you will also soon grow

tired of the world; it is a sad place--it is a wicked place--it is full

of snares and pitfalls. In our walk to-day lies our destruction for

to-morrow! You will find this soon, Ellinor! And you, and my father,

and Walter, too, shall join us! Hark! the clock strikes! By this time

to-morrow night, what triumph!--or to me at least (sinking her voice

into a whisper, that thrilled through the very bones of her listeners)

what peace!”

Happily for all parties, this distressing scene was here interrupted.

Lester entered the room with the heavy step into which his once elastic

and cheerful tread had subsided.

“Ha, Walter!” said he, irresolutely glancing over the group; but

Madeline had already sprang from her seat.

“You have seen him!--you have seen him! And how does he--how does he

look? But that I know; I know his brave heart does not sink. And what

message does he send to me? And--and--tell me all, my father: quick,

quick!”

“Dear, miserable child!--and miserable old man!” muttered Lester,

folding her in his arms; “but we ought to take courage and comfort

from him, Madeline. A hero, on the eve of battle, could not be more

firm--even more cheerful. He smiled often--his old smile; and he only

left tears and anxiety to us. But of you, Madeline, we spoke mostly:

he would scarcely let me say a word on any thing else. Oh, what a kind

heart!--what a noble spirit! And perhaps a chance tomorrow may quench

both. But, God! be just, and let the avenging lightning fall on the real

criminal, and not blast the innocent man!”

“Amen!” said Madeline deeply.

“Amen!” repeated Walter, laying his hand on his heart.

“Let us pray!” exclaimed Lester, animated by a sudden impulse, and

falling on his knees. The whole group followed his example; and Lester,

in a trembling and impassioned voice, poured forth an extempore prayer,

that Justice might fall only where it was due. Never did that majestic

and pausing Moon, which filled that lowly room as with the presence of

a spirit, witness a more impressive adjuration, or an audience more

absorbed and rapt. Full streamed its holy rays upon the now snowy locks

and upward countenance of Lester, making his venerable person more

striking from the contrast it afforded to the dark and sunburnt

cheek--the energetic features, and chivalric and earnest head of the

young man beside him. Just in the shadow, the raven locks of Ellinor

were bowed over her clasped hands,--nothing of her face visible;

the graceful neck and heaving breast alone distinguished from the

shadow;--and, hushed in a death-like and solemn repose, the parted lips

moving inaudibly; the eye fixed on vacancy; the wan transparent hands,

crossed upon her bosom; the light shone with a more softened and tender

ray upon the faded but all-angelic form and countenance of her, for

whom Heaven was already preparing its eternal recompense for the ills of

Earth!

CHAPTER V.

THE TRIAL.

“Equal to either fortune.”--Speech of Eugene Aram.

A thought comes over us, sometimes, in our career of pleasure, or the

troublous exultation of our ambitious pursuits; a thought come over us,

like a cloud, that around us and about us Death--Shame--Crime--Despair,

are busy at their work. I have read somewhere of an enchanted land,

where the inmates walked along voluptuous gardens, and built palaces,

and heard music, and made merry; while around, and within, the land,

were deep caverns, where the gnomes and the fiends dwelt: and ever and

anon their groans and laughter, and the sounds of their unutterable

toils, or ghastly revels, travelled to the upper air, mixing in an awful

strangeness with the summer festivity and buoyant occupation of those

above. And this is the picture of human life! These reflections of the

maddening disparities of the world are dark, but salutary:--

“They wrap our thoughts at banquets in the shroud;” [Young.]

but we are seldom sadder without being also wiser men!

The third of August 1759 rose bright, calm, and clear: it was the

morning of the trial; and when Ellinor stole into her sister’s room,

she found Madeline sitting before the glass, and braiding her rich locks

with an evident attention and care.

“I wish,” said she, “that you had pleased me by dressing as for a

holiday. See, I am going to wear the dress I was to have been married

in.”

Ellinor shuddered; for what is more appalling than to find the signs of

gaiety accompanying the reality of anguish!

“Yes,” continued Madeline, with a smile of inexpressible sweetness, “a

little reflection will convince you that this day ought not to be one of

mourning. It was the suspense that has so worn out our hearts. If he is

acquitted, as we all believe and trust, think how appropriate will be

the outward seeming of our joy! If not, why I shall go before him to our

marriage home, and in marriage garments. Ay,” she added after a moment’s

pause, and with a much more grave, settled, and intense expression of

voice and countenance--“ay; do you remember how Eugene once told us,

that if we went at noonday to the bottom of a deep pit, [Note: The

remark is in Aristotle. Buffon quotes it, with his usual adroit

felicity, in, I think, the first volume of his great work.] we should be

able to see the stars, which on the level ground are invisible. Even so,

from the depths of grief--worn, wretched, seared, and dying--the blessed

apparitions and tokens of Heaven make themselves visible to our eyes.

And I know--I have seen--I feel here,” pressing her hand on her heart,

“that my course is run; a few sands only are left in the glass. Let

us waste them bravely. Stay, Ellinor! You see these poor withered

rose-leaves: Eugene gave them to me the day before--before that fixed

for our marriage. I shall wear them to-day, as I would have worn them on

the wedding-day. When he gathered the poor flower, how fresh it was; and

I kissed off the dew: now see it! But, come, come; this is trifling: we

must not be late. Help me, Nell, help me: come, bustle, quick, quick!

Nay, be not so slovenly; I told you I would be dressed with care

to-day.”

And when Madeline was dressed, though the robe sat loose and in large

folds over her shrunken form, yet, as she stood erect, and looked with

a smile that saddened Ellinor more than tears at her image in the

glass, perhaps her beauty never seemed of a more striking and lofty

character,--she looked indeed, a bride, but the bride of no earthly

nuptials. Presently they heard an irresolute and trembling step at the

door, and Lester knocking, asked if they were prepared.

“Come in, father,” said Madeline, in a calm and even cheerful voice; and

the old man entered.

He cast a silent glance over Madeline’s white dress, and then at his

own, which was deep mourning: the glance said volumes, and its meaning

was not marred by words from any one of the three.

“Yes, father,” said Madeline, breaking the pause,--“We are all ready. Is

the carriage here?”

“It is at the door, my child.”

“Come then, Ellinor, come!”--and leaning on her arm, Madeline walked

towards the door. When she got to the threshold, she paused, and looked

round the room.

“What is it you want?” asked Ellinor.

“I was but bidding all here farewell,” replied Madeline, in a soft and

touching voice: “And now before we leave the house, Father,--Sister, one

word with you;--you have ever been very, very kind to me, and most

of all in this bitter trial, when I must have taxed your patience

sadly--for I know all is not right here, (touching her forehead)--I

cannot go forth this day without thanking you. Ellinor, my dearest

friend--my fondest sister--my playmate in gladness--my comforter in

grief--my nurse in sickness;--since we were little children, we have

talked together, and laughed together, and wept together, and though we

knew all the thoughts of each other, we have never known one thoughts

that we would have concealed from God;--and now we are going to

part?--do not stop me, it must be so, I know it. But, after a little

while may you be happy again, not so buoyant as you have been, that can

never be, but still happy!--You are formed for love and home, and for

those ties you once thought would be mine. God grant that I may have

suffered for us both, and that when we meet hereafter, you may tell me

you have been happy here!”

“But you, father,” added Madeline, tearing herself from the neck of

her weeping sister, and sinking on her knees before Lester, who leaned

against the wall convulsed with his emotions, and covering his face with

his hands--“but you,--what can I say to you?--You, who have never,--no,

not in my first childhood, said one harsh word to me--who have sunk all

a father’s authority in a father’s love,--how can I say all that I

feel for you?--the grateful overflowing, (paining, yet--oh, how sweet!)

remembrances which crowd around and suffocate me now?--The time will

come when Ellinor and Ellinor’s children must be all in all to you--when

of your poor Madeline nothing will be left but a memory; but they, they

will watch on you and tend you, and protect your grey hairs from sorrow,

as I might once have hoped I also was fated to do.”

“My child! my child! you break my heart!” faltered forth at last the

poor old man, who till now had in vain endeavoured to speak.

“Give me your blessing, dear father,” said Madeline, herself overcome by

her feelings;--“Put your hand on my head and bless me--and say, that if

I have ever unconsciously given you a moment’s pain--I am forgiven!”

“Forgiven!” repeated Lester, raising his daughter with weak and

trembling arms as his tears fell fast upon her cheek,--“Never did I feel

what an angel had sate beside my hearth till now!--But be comforted--be

cheered. What, if Heaven had reserved its crowning mercy till this day,

and Eugene be amongst us, free, acquitted, triumphant before the night!”

“Ha!” said Madeline, as if suddenly roused by the thought into new

life:--“Ha! let us hasten to find your words true. Yes! yes!--if it

should be so--if it should. And,” added she, in a hollow voice, (the

enthusiasm checked,) “if it were not for my dreams, I might believe it

would be so:--But--come--I am ready now!”

The carriage went slowly through the crowd that the fame of the

approaching trial had gathered along the streets, but the blinds were

drawn down, and the father and daughter escaped that worst of tortures,

the curious gaze of strangers on distress. Places had been kept for them

in court, and as they left the carriage and entered the fatal spot,

the venerable figure of Lester, and the trembling and veiled forms that

clung to him, arrested all eyes. They at length gained their seats, and

it was not long before a bustle in the court drew off attention from

them. A buzz, a murmur, a movement, a dread pause! Houseman was first

arraigned on his former indictment, acquitted, and admitted evidence

against Aram, who was thereupon arraigned. The prisoner stood at the

bar! Madeline gasped for breath, and clung, with a convulsive motion,

to her sister’s arm. But presently, with a long sigh she recovered her

self-possession, and sat quiet and silent, fixing her eyes upon Aram’s

countenance; and the aspect of that countenance was well calculated to

sustain her courage, and to mingle a sort of exulting pride, with all

the strained and fearful acuteness of her sympathy. Something, indeed,

of what he had suffered, was visible in the prisoner’s features; the

lines around the mouth in which mental anxiety generally the most deeply

writes its traces, were grown marked and furrowed; grey hairs were here

and there scattered amongst the rich and long luxuriance of the dark

brown locks, and as, before his imprisonment, he had seemed considerably

younger than he was, so now time had atoned for its past delay, and he

might have appeared to have told more years than had really gone over

his head; but the remarkable light and beauty of his eye was undimmed

as ever, and still the broad expanse of his forehead retained its

unwrinkled surface and striking expression of calmness and majesty.

High, self-collected, serene, and undaunted, he looked upon the crowd,

the scene, the judge, before and around him; and, even among those who

believed him guilty, that involuntary and irresistible respect which

moral firmness always produces on the mind, forced an unwilling interest

in his fate, and even a reluctant hope of his acquittal.

Houseman was called upon. No one could regard his face without a certain

mistrust and inward shudder. In men prone to cruelty, it has generally

been remarked, that there is an animal expression strongly prevalent in

the countenance. The murderer and the lustful man are often alike in

the physical structure. The bull-throat--the thick lips--the

receding forehead--the fierce restless eye--which some one

or other says reminds you of the buffalo in the instant before

he becomes dangerous, are the outward tokens of the natural animal

unsoftened--unenlightened--unredeemed--consulting only the immediate

desires of his nature, whatever be the passion (lust or revenge) to

which they prompt. And this animal expression, the witness of

his character, was especially wrought, if we may use the word, in

House-man’s rugged and harsh features; rendered, if possible, still more

remarkable at that time by a mixture of sullenness and timidity. The

conviction that his own life was saved, could not prevent remorse at his

treachery in accusing his comrade--a sort of confused principle of which

villains are the most susceptible, when every other honest sentiment has

deserted them.

With a low, choked, and sometimes a faltering tone, Houseman deposed,

that, in the night between the 7th and 8th of January 1744-5, sometime

before 11 o’clock, he went to Aram’s house--that they conversed on

different matters--that he stayed there about an hour--that some three

hours afterwards he passed, in company with Clarke, by Aram’s house, and

Aram was outside the door, as if he were about to return home--that

Aram invited them both to come in--that they did so--that Clarke,

who intended to leave the town before day-break, in order, it was

acknowledged, to make secretly away with certain property in his

possession, was about to quit the house, when Aram proposed to accompany

him out of the town--that he (Aram) and Houseman then went forth with

Clarke--that when they came into the field where St. Robert’s Cave is,

Aram and Clarke went into it, over the hedge, and when they came within

six or eight yards off the Cave, he saw them quarrelling--that he saw

Aram strike Clarke several times, upon which Clarke fell, and he never

saw him rise again--that he saw no instrument Aram had, and knew not

that he had any--that upon this, without any interposition or alarm,

he left them and returned home--that the next morning he went to Aram’s

house, and asked what business he had with Clarke last night, and what

he had done with him? Aram replied not to this question; but threatened

him, if he spoke of his being in Clarke’s company that night; vowing

revenge either by himself or some other person if he mentioned any thing

relating to the affair. This was the sum of Houseman’s evidence.

A Mr. Beckwith was next called, who deposed that Aram’s garden had

been searched, owing to a vague suspicion that he might have been an

accomplice in the frauds of Clarke--that some parts of clothing, and

also some pieces of cambric which he had sold to Clarke a little while

before, were found there.

The third witness was the watchman, Thomas Barnet, who deposed, that

before midnight (it might be a little after eleven) he saw a person come

out from Aram’s house, who had a wide coat on, with the cape about his

head, and seemed to shun him; whereupon he went up to him, and put by

the cape of his great coat, and perceived it to be Richard Houseman. He

contented himself with wishing him good night.

The officers who executed the warrant then gave their evidence as to the

arrest, and dwelt on some expressions dropped by Aram before he arrived

at Knaresbro’, which, however, were felt to be wholly unimportant.

After this evidence there was a short pause;--and then a shiver, that

recoil and tremor which men feel at any exposition of the relics of the

dead, ran through the court; for the next witness was mute--it was the

skull of the Deceased! On the left side there was a fracture, that from

the nature of it seemed as it could only have been made by the stroke of

some blunt instrument. The piece was broken, and could not be replaced

but from within.

The surgeon, Mr. Locock, who produced it, gave it as his opinion that no

such breach could proceed from natural decay--that it was not a recent

fracture by the instrument with which it was dug up, but seemed to be of

many years’ standing.

This made the chief part of the evidence against Aram; the minor points

we have omitted, and also such as, like that of Aram’s hostess, would

merely have repeated what the reader knew before.

And now closed the criminatory evidence--and now the prisoner was asked,

in that peculiarly thrilling and awful question--What he had to say

in his own behalf? Till now, Aram had not changed his posture or his

countenance--his dark and piercing eye had for one instant fixed on each

witness that appeared against him, and then dropped its gaze upon the

ground. But at this moment a faint hectic flushed his cheek, and he

seemed to gather and knit himself up for defence. He glanced round the

court, as if to see what had been the impression created against him.

His eye rested on the grey locks of Rowland Lester, who, looking down,

had covered his face with his hands. But beside that venerable form was

the still and marble face of Madeline; and even at that distance

from him, Aram perceived how intent was the hush and suspense of her

emotions. But when she caught his eye--that eye which even at such

a moment beamed unutterable love, pity, regret for her--a wild, a

convulsive smile of encouragement, of anticipated triumph, broke the

repose of her colourless features, and suddenly dying away, left her

lips apart, in that expression which the great masters of old, faithful

to Nature, give alike to the struggle of hope and the pause of terror.

“My Lord,” began Aram, in that remarkable defence still extant, and

still considered as wholly unequalled from the lips of one defending his

own, and such a, cause;--“My Lord, I know not whether it is of right, or

through some indulgence of your Lordship, that I am allowed the liberty

at this bar, and at this time, to attempt a defence; incapable and

uninstructed as I am to speak. Since, while I see so many eyes upon me,

so numerous and awful a concourse, fixed with attention, and filled with

I know not what expectancy, I labour, not with guilt, my Lord, but

with perplexity. For, having never seen a court but this, being wholly

unacquainted with law, the customs of the bar, and all judiciary

proceedings, I fear I shall be so little capable of speaking with

propriety, that it might reasonably be expected to exceed my hope,

should I be able to speak at all.

“I have heard, my Lord, the indictment read, wherein I find myself

charged with the highest of human crimes. You will grant me then

your patience, if I, single and unskilful, destitute of friends, and

unassisted by counsel, attempt something perhaps like argument in my

defence. What I have to say will be but short, and that brevity may be

the best part of it.

“My Lord, the tenor of my life contradicts this indictment. Who can

look back over what is known of my former years, and charge me with one

vice--one offence? No! I concerted not schemes of fraud--projected no

violence--injured no man’s property or person. My days were honestly

laborious--my nights intensely studious. This egotism is not

presumptuous--is not unreasonable. What man, after a temperate use of

life, a series of thinking and acting regularly, without one single

deviation from a sober and even tenor of conduct, ever plunged into

the depth of crime precipitately, and at once? Mankind are not

instantaneously corrupted. Villainy is always progressive. We decline

from right--not suddenly, but step after step.

“If my life in general contradicts the indictment, my health at that

time in particular contradicts it yet more. A little time before, I

had been confined to my bed, I had suffered under a long and severe

disorder. The distemper left me but slowly, and in part. So far from

being well at the time I am charged with this fact, I never, to this

day, perfectly recovered. Could a person in this condition execute

violence against another?--I, feeble and valetudinary, with no

inducement to engage--no ability to accomplish--no weapon wherewith

to perpetrate such a fact;--without interest, without power, without

motives, without means!

“My Lord, Clarke disappeared: true; but is that a proof of his

death? The fallibility of all conclusions of such a sort, from such

a circumstance, is too obvious to require instances. One instance is

before you: this very castle affords it.

“In June 1757, William Thompson, amidst all the vigilance of this place,

in open daylight, and double-ironed, made his escape; notwithstanding an

immediate inquiry set on foot, notwithstanding all advertisements, all

search, he was never seen or heard of since. If this man escaped

unseen through all these difficulties, how easy for Clarke, whom

no difficulties opposed. Yet what would be thought of a prosecution

commenced against any one seen last with Thompson?

“These bones are discovered! Where? Of all places in the world, can we

think of any one, except indeed the church-yard, where there is so great

a certainty of finding human bones, as a hermitage? In times past, the

hermitage was a place, not only of religious retirement, but of burial.

And it has scarce, or never been heard of, but that every cell

now known, contains, or contained these relics of humanity; some

mutilated--some entire! Give me leave to remind your Lordship, that here

sat SOLITARY SANCTITY, and here the hermit and the anchorite hoped

that repose for their bones when dead, they here enjoyed when living.

I glance over a few of the many evidences that these cells were used as

repositories of the dead, and enumerate a few of the many caves similar

in origin to St. Robert’s, in which human bones have been found.” Here

the prisoner instanced, with remarkable felicity, several places, in

which bones had been found, under circumstances, and in spots analogous

to those in point. [Note: See his published defence.] And the reader,

who will remember that it is the great principle of the law, that no man

can be condemned for murder unless the body of the deceased be found,

will perceive at once how important this point was to the prisoner’s

defence. After concluding his instances with two facts of skeletons

found in fields in the vicinity of Knaresbro’, he burst forth--“Is then

the invention of those bones forgotten or industriously concealed, that

the discovery of these in question may appear the more extraordinary?

Extraordinary--yet how common an event! Every place conceals such

remains. In fields--in hills--in high-way sides--on wastes--on commons,

lie frequent and unsuspected bones. And mark,--no example perhaps occurs

of more than one skeleton being found in one cell. Here you find but

one, agreeable to the peculiarity of every known cell in Britain. Had

two skeletons been discovered, then alone might the fact have seemed

suspicious and uncommon. What! Have we forgotten how difficult, as in

the case of Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Symnell, it has been sometimes to

identify the living; and shall we now assign personality to bones--bones

which may belong to either sex? How know you that this is even the

skeleton of a man? But another skeleton was discovered by some labourer!

Was not that skeleton averred to be Clarke’s full as confidently as

this?

“My Lord, my Lord--must some of the living be made answerable for all

the bones that earth has concealed and chance exposed? The skull that

has been produced, has been declared fractured. But who can surely tell

whether it was the cause or the consequence of death. In May, 1732 the

remains of William Lord Archbishop of this province were taken up by

permission in their cathedral, the bones of the skull were found broken

as these are. Yet he died by no violence! by no blow that could have

caused that fracture. Let it be considered how easily the fracture on

the skull produced is accounted for. At the dissolution of religious

houses, the ravages of the times affected both the living and the dead.

In search after imaginary treasures, coffins were broken, graves and

vaults dug open, monuments ransacked, shrines demolished, Parliament

itself was called in to restrain these violations. And now are the

depredations, the iniquities of those times, to be visited on this? But

here, above all, was a castle vigorously besieged; every spot around

was the scene of a sally, a conflict, a flight, a pursuit. Where the

slaughtered fell, there were they buried. What place is not burial earth

in war? How many bones must still remain in the vicinity of that

siege, for futurity to discover! Can you, then, with so many probable

circumstances, choose the one least probable? Can you impute to the

living what Zeal in its fury may have done; what Nature may have taken

off and Piety interred, or what War alone may have destroyed, alone

deposited?

“And now, glance over the circumstantial evidence, how weak, how frail!

I almost scorn to allude to it. I will not condescend to dwell upon it.

The witness of one man, arraigned himself! Is there no chance that to

save his own life he might conspire against mine?--no chance that he

might have committed this murder, if murder hath indeed been done? that

conscience betrayed to his first exclamation? that craft suggested his

throwing that guilt on me, to the knowledge of which he had unwittingly

confessed? He declares that he saw me strike Clarke, that he saw him

fall; yet he utters no cry, no reproof. He calls for no aid; he returns

quietly home; he declares that he knows not what became of the body, yet

he tells where the body is laid. He declares that he went straight home,

and alone; yet the woman with whom I lodged declares that Houseman and

I returned to my house in company together;--what evidence is this?

and from whom does it come?--ask yourselves. As for the rest of the

evidence, what does it amount to? The watchman sees Houseman leave my

house at night. What more probable, but what less connected with the

murder, real or supposed, of Clarke? Some pieces of clothing are found

buried in my garden. But how can it be shewn that they belonged to

Clarke? Who can swear to, who can prove any thing so vague? And if found

there, even if belonging to Clarke, what proof that they were there

deposited by me? How likely that the real criminal may in the dead of

night have preferred any spot, rather than that round his own home, to

conceal the evidence of his crime!

“How impotent such evidence as this! and how poor, how precarious, even

the strongest of mere circumstantial evidence invariably is! Let it

rise to probability, to the strongest degree of probability; it is but

probability still. Recollect the case of the two Harrisons, recorded by

Dr. Howell; both suffered on circumstantial evidence on account of the

disappearance of a man, who, like Clarke, contracted debts, borrowed

money, and went off unseen. And this man returned several years after

their execution. Why remind you of Jaques du Moulin, in the reign of

Charles the Second?--why of the unhappy Coleman, convicted, though

afterwards found innocent, and whose children perished for want, because

the world believed the father guilty? Why should I mention the perjury

of Smith, who, admitted king’s-evidence, screened himself by accusing

Fainloth and Loveday of the murder of Dunn? the first was executed, the

second was about to share the same fate, when the perjury of Smith was

incontrovertibly proved.

“And now, my Lord, having endeavoured to shew that the whole of this

charge is altogether repugnant to every part of my life; that it is

inconsistent with my condition of health about that time; that no

rational inference of the death of a person can be drawn from his

disappearance; that hermitages were the constant repositories of the

bones of the recluse; that the proofs of these are well authenticated;

that the revolutions in religion, or the fortune of war, have mangled

or buried the dead; that the strongest circumstantial evidence is often

lamentably fallacious, that in my case, that evidence, so far from

being strong, is weak, disconnected, contradictory; what remains? A

conclusion, perhaps, no less reasonably than impatiently wished for.

I, at last, after nearly a year’s confinement, equal to either fortune,

entrust myself to the candour, the justice, the humanity of your

Lordship, and to yours, my countrymen, gentlemen of the jury.”

The prisoner ceased: and the painful and choking sensations of sympathy,

compassion, regret, admiration, all uniting, all mellowing into one

fearful hope for his acquittal, made themselves felt through the crowded

court.

In two persons only, an uneasy sentiment remained--a sentiment that the

prisoner had not completed that which they would have asked from him.

The one was Lester;--he had expected a more warm, a more earnest,

though, perhaps, a less ingenious and artful defence. He had expected

Aram to dwell far more on the improbable and contradictory evidence of

Houseman, and above all, to have explained away, all that was still left

unaccounted for in his acquaintance with Clarke (as we will still call

the deceased), and the allegation that he had gone out with him on the

fatal night of the disappearance of the latter. At every word of the

prisoner’s defence, he had waited almost breathlessly, in the hope that

the next sentence would begin an explanation or a denial on this point:

and when Aram ceased, a chill, a depression, a disappointment, remained

vaguely on his mind. Yet so lightly and so haughtily had Aram approached

and glanced over the immediate evidence of the witnesses against

him, that his silence her might have been but the natural result of a

disdain, that belonged essentially to his calm and proud character. The

other person we referred to, and whom his defence had not impressed with

a belief in its truth, equal to an admiration for its skill, was one far

more important in deciding the prisoner’s fate--it was the Judge!

But Madeline--Great God! how sanguine is a woman’s heart, when the

innocence, the fate of the one she loves is concerned!--a radiant

flush broke over a face so colourless before; and with a joyous look,

a kindled eye, a lofty brow, she turned to Ellinor, pressed her hand in

silence, and once more gave up her whole soul to the dread procedure of

the court.

The Judge now began.--It is greatly to be regretted, that we have no

minute and detailed memorial of the trial, except only the prisoner’s

defence. The summing up of the Judge was considered at that time scarce

less remarkable than the speech of the prisoner. He stated the evidence

with peculiar care and at great length to the jury. He observed how the

testimony of the other deponents confirmed that of Houseman; and

then, touching on the contradictory parts of the latter, he made them

understand, how natural, how inevitable was some such contradiction in

a witness who had not only to give evidence against another, but to

refrain from criminating himself. There could be no doubt but that

Houseman was an accomplice in the crime; and all therefore that seemed

improbable in his giving no alarm when the deed was done, was easily

rendered natural, and reconcileable with the other parts of his

evidence. Commenting then on the defence of the prisoner (who, as if

disdaining to rely on aught save his own genius or his own innocence,

had called no witnesses, as he had employed no counsel), and eulogizing

its eloquence and art, till he destroyed their effect by guarding the

jury against that impression which eloquence and art produce in defiance

of simple fact, he contended that Aram had yet alleged nothing to

invalidate the positive evidence against him.

I have often heard, from men accustomed to courts of law, that nothing

is more marvellous, than the sudden change in a jury’s mind, which the

summing up of the Judge can produce; and in the present instance it

was like magic. That fatal look of a common intelligence, of a common

assent, was exchanged among the doomers of the prisoner’s life and death

as the Judge concluded.

They found the prisoner guilty.

The Judge drew on the black cap.

CHAPTER VI.

THE DEATH.--THE PRISON.--AN INTERVIEW.--ITS RESULT.

“Lay her i’ the earth,

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh

May violets spring.”

...........

“See in my heart there was a kind of fighting

That would not let me sleep.”

--Hamlet.

“Bear with me a little longer,” said Madeline. “I shall be well, quite

well presently.”

Ellinor let down the carriage window, to admit the air; and she took the

occasion to tell the coachman to drive faster. There was that change in

Madeline’s voice which alarmed her.

“How noble was his look! you saw him smile!” continued Madeline, talking

to herself: “And they will murder him after all. Let me see, this day

week, ay, ere this day week we shall meet again.”

“Faster; for God’s sake, Ellinor, tell them to drive faster!” cried

Lester, as he felt the form that leant on his bosom wax heavier and

heavier. They sped on; the house was in sight; that lonely and cheerless

house; not their sweet home at Grassdale, with the ivy round its porch,

and the quiet church behind. The sun was setting slowly, and Ellinor

drew the blind to shade the glare from her sister’s eyes.

Madeline felt the kindness, and smiled. Ellinor wiped her eyes, and

tried to smile again. The carriage stopped, and Madeline was lifted

out; she stood, supported by her father and Ellinor, for a moment on the

threshold. She looked on the golden sun, and the gentle earth, and the

little motes dancing in the western ray--all was steeped in quiet, and

full of the peace and tranquillity of the pastoral life! “No, no,” she

muttered, grasping her father’s hand. “How is this? this is not his

hand! Ah, no, no; I am not with him! Father,” she added in a louder and

deeper voice, rising from his breast, and standing alone and unaided.

“Father, bury this little packet with me, they are his letters; do

not break the seal, and--and tell him that I never felt how deeply

I--I--loved him--till all--the world--had--deserted him!”--

She uttered a faint cry of pain, and fell at once to the ground; she

lived a few hours longer, but never made speech or sign, or

evinced token of life but its breath, which died at last

gradually,--imperceptibly--away.

On the following evening Walter obtained entrance to Aram’s cell: that

morning the prisoner had seen Lester; that morning he had heard of

Madeline’s death. He had shed no tear; he had, in the affecting language

of Scripture, “turned his face to the wall;” none had seen his emotions;

yet Lester felt in that bitter interview, that his daughter was duly

mourned.

He did not lift his eyes, when Walter was admitted, and the young man

stood almost at his knee before he perceived him. He then looked up and

they gazed on each other for a moment, but without speaking, till Walter

said in a hollow voice: “Eugene Aram!”

“Ay!”

“Madeline Lester is no more.”

“I have heard it! I am reconciled. Better now than later.”

“Aram!” said Walter, in a tone trembling with emotion, and passionately

clasping his hands, “I entreat, I implore you, at this awful time, if it

be within your power, to lift from my heart a load that weighs it to

the dust, that if left there, will make me through life a crushed and

miserable man;--I implore you, in the name of common humanity, by your

hopes of Heaven, to remove it! The time now has irrevocably passed when

your denial or your confession could alter your doom; your days are

numbered, there is no hope of reprieve; I implore you then, if you were

led, I will not ask how or wherefore, to the execution of the crime for

the charge of which you die, to say, to whisper to me but one word of

confession, and I, the sole child of the murdered man, will forgive you

from the bottom of my soul.”

Walter paused, unable to proceed.

Aram’s brow worked; he turned aside; he made no answer; his head dropped

on his bosom, and his eyes were unmovedly fixed on the earth.

“Reflect,” continued Walter, recovering himself, “Reflect! I have been

the mute instrument in bringing you to this awful fate, in destroying

the happiness of my own house--in--in--in breaking the heart of the

woman whom I adored even as a boy. If you be innocent, what a dreadful

memory is left to me! Be merciful, Aram! be merciful. And if this deed

was done by your hand, say to me but one word to remove the terrible

uncertainty that now harrows up my being. What now is earth, is man, is

opinion, to you? God only now can judge you. The eye of God reads your

heart while I speak, and in the awful hour when Eternity opens to

you, if the guilt has been indeed committed, think, oh think, how much

lighter will be your offence, if, by vanquishing the stubborn heart,

you can relieve a human being from a doubt that otherwise will make the

curse--the horror of an existence. Aram, Aram, if the father’s death

came from you, shall the life of the son be made a burthen to him,

through you also?”

“What would you have of me? speak!” said Aram, but without lifting his

face from his breast.

“Much of your nature belies this crime.--You are wise, calm, beneficent

to the distressed. Revenge, passion,--nay, the sharp pangs of hunger,

may have urged to one deed; but your soul is not wholly hardened: nay, I

think I would so far trust you, that, if at this dread moment--the

clay of Madeline Lester scarce yet cold, woe busy and softening at your

breast, and the son of the murdered dead before you;--if at this moment

you can lay your hand on your heart, and say: ‘Before God, and at peril

of my soul, I am innocent of this deed,’ I will depart--I will believe

you, and bear, as bear I may, the reflection, that, in any way I have

been one of the unconscious agents of condemning to a fearful death an

innocent man! If innocent in this--how good! how perfect in all else!

But, if you cannot at so dark a crisis take that oath,--then! oh

then! be just--be generous, even in guilt, and let me not be haunted

throughout life by the spectre of a ghastly and restless doubt! Speak!

oh! speak!”

Well, well may we judge how crushing must have been that doubt in the

breast of one naturally bold and fiery, when it thus humbled the very

son of the murdered man to forget wrath and vengeance, and descend to

prayer! But Walter had heard the defence of Aram; he had marked his

mien: not once in that trial had he taken his eyes from the prisoner,

and he had felt, like a bolt of ice through his heart, that the sentence

passed on the accused, his judgment could not have passed! How dreadful

must then have been the state of his mind when, repairing to Lester’s

house he found it the house of death--the pure, the beautiful spirit

gone--the father mourning for his child, and not to be comforted--and

Ellinor!--No! scenes like these, thoughts like these, pluck the pride

from a man’s heart.

“Walter Lester!” said Aram, after a pause; but raising his head with

dignity, though on the features there was but one expression--woe,

unutterable woe. “Walter Lester! I had thought to quit life with my tale

untold: but you have not appealed to me in vain! I tear the self from my

heart!--I renounce the last haughty dream, in which I wrapt myself from

the ills around me. You shall learn all, and judge accordingly. But to

your ear the tale can scarce be told:--the son cannot hear in silence

that which, unless I too unjustly, too wholly condemn myself, I must say

of the dead! But Time,” continued Aram, mutteringly, and with his eyes

on vacancy, “Time does not press too fast. Better let the hand speak

than the tongue:--yes; the day of execution is--ay, ay--two days yet to

it--to-morrow? no! Young man,” he said abruptly, turning to Walter, “on

the day after to-morrow, about seven in the evening, the eve before that

morn fated to be my last--come to me. At that time I will place in your

hands a paper containing the whole history that connects myself with

your father. On the word of a man on the brink of another world, no

truth that imparts your interest therein shall be omitted. But read it

not till I am no more; and when read, confide the tale to none, till

Lester’s grey hairs have gone to the grave. This swear! ‘tis an oath

difficult perhaps to keep, but--” “As my Redeemer lives, I will swear to

both conditions!” cried Walter, with a solemn fervour.

“But tell me now at least”--“Ask me no more!” interrupted Aram, in his

turn. “The time is near, when you will know all! Tarry that time, and

leave me! Yes, leave me now--at once--leave me!”

To dwell lingeringly over those passages which excite pain without

satisfying curiosity, is scarcely the duty of the drama, or of

that province even nobler than the drama; for it requires minuter

care--indulges in more complete description--yields to more elaborate

investigation of motives--commands a greater variety of chords in the

human heart--to which, with poor and feeble power for so high, yet so

ill-appreciated a task we now, not irreverently if rashly, aspire!

We pass at once--we glance not around us at the chamber of death--at

the broken heart of Lester--at the two-fold agony of his surviving

child--the agony which mourns and yet seeks to console another--the

mixed emotions of Walter, in which, an unsleeping eagerness to learn the

fearful all formed the main part--the solitary cell and solitary heart

of the convicted--we glance not at these;--we pass at once to the

evening in which Aram again saw Walter Lester, and for the last time.

“You are come, punctual to the hour,” said he, in a low clear voice: “I

have not forgotten my word; the fulfilment of that promise has been a

victory over myself which no man can appreciate: but I owed it to you.

I have discharged the debt. Enough!--I have done more than I at first

purposed. I have extended my narration, but, superficially in some

parts, over my life: that prolixity, perhaps I owed to myself. Remember

your promise: this seal is not broken till the pulse is stilled in the

hand which now gives you these papers!”

Walter renewed his oath, and Aram, pausing for a moment, continued in an

altered and softening voice:

“Be kind to Lester: soothe, console him--never by a hint let him think

otherwise of me than he does. For his sake more than mine I ask this.

Venerable, kind old man! the warmth of human affection has rarely glowed

for me. To the few who loved me, how deeply I have repaid the love! But

these are not words to pass between you and me. Farewell! Yet, before

we part, say this much: whatever I have revealed in this

confession--whatever has been my wrong to you, or whatever (a less

offence) the language I have now, justifying myself, used to--to your

father--say, that you grant me that pardon which one man may grant

another.”

“Fully, cordially,” said Walter.

“In the day that for you brings the death that to-morrow awaits me,”

said Aram, in a deep tone, “be that forgiveness accorded to yourself!

Farewell. In that untried variety of Being which spreads beyond us,

who knows, but progressing from grade to grade, and world to world, our

souls, though in far distant ages, may meet again!--one dim and shadowy

memory of this hour the link between us, farewell--farewell!”

For the reader’s interest we think it better (and certainly it is more

immediately in the due course of narrative, if not of actual events)

to lay at once before him the Confession that Aram placed in Walter’s

hands, without waiting till that time when Walter himself broke the

seal of a confession, not of deeds alone, but of thoughts how wild and

entangled--of feelings how strange and dark--of a starred soul that had

wandered from, how proud an orbit, to what perturbed and unholy regions

of night and chaos! For me, I have not sought to derive the reader’s

interest from the vulgar sources, that such a tale might have afforded;

I have suffered him, almost from the beginning, to pierce into Aram’s

secret; and I have prepared him for that guilt, with which other

narrators of this story might have only sought to surprise.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CONFESSION.--AND THE FATE.

“In winter’s tedious nights, sit by the fire

With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales

Of woful ages long ago betid:

And ere thou bid good night, to quit their grief,

Tell them the lamentable fall of me.”

--Richard II.

“I was born at Ramsgill, a little village in Netherdale. My family had

originally been of some rank; they were formerly lords of the town of

Aram, on the southern banks of the Tees. But time had humbled these

pretensions to consideration; though they were still fondly cherished by

the heritors of an ancient name, and idle but haughty recollections.

My father resided on a small farm, and was especially skilful in

horticulture, a taste I derived from him. When I was about thirteen,

the deep and intense Passion that has made the Demon of my life, first

stirred palpably within me. I had always been, from my cradle, of a

solitary disposition, and inclined to reverie and musing; these

traits of character heralded the love that now seized me--the love of

knowledge. Opportunity or accident first directed my attention to the

abstruser sciences. I poured my soul over that noble study, which is the

best foundation of all true discovery; and the success I met with soon

turned my pursuits into more alluring channels. History, poetry, the

mastery of the past, the spell that admits us into the visionary

world, took the place which lines and numbers had done before. I became

gradually more and more rapt and solitary in my habits; knowledge

assumed a yet more lovely and bewitching character, and every day the

passion to attain it increased upon me; I do not, I have not now the

heart to do it--enlarge upon what I acquired without assistance, and

with labour sweet in proportion to its intensity.

[We learn from a letter of Eugene Aram’s, now extant, that his

method of acquiring the learned languages, was, to linger over five

lines at a time, and never to quit a passage till he thought he had

comprehended its meaning.]

The world, the creation, all things that lived, moved, and were, became

to me objects contributing to one passionate, and, I fancied, one

exalted end. I suffered the lowlier pleasures of life, and the charms of

its more common ties, to glide away from me untasted and unfelt. As you

read, in the East, of men remaining motionless for days together,

with their eyes fixed upon the heavens, my mind, absorbed in the

contemplation of the things above its reach, had no sight of what passed

around. My parents died, and I was an orphan. I had no home, and no

wealth; but wherever the field contained a flower, or the heavens a

star, there was matter of thought and food for delight to me. I wandered

alone for months together, seldom sleeping but in the open air, and

shunning the human form as that part of God’s works from which I could

learn the least. I came to Knaresbro’: the beauty of the country, a

facility in acquiring books from a neighbouring library that was open to

me, made me resolve to settle there. And now, new desires opened upon me

with new stores: I became seized, possessed, haunted with the ambition

of enlightening my race. At first, I had loved knowledge solely for

itself: I now saw afar an object grander than knowledge. To what end,

said I, are these labours? Why do I feed a lamp which consumes itself in

a desert place? Why do I heap up riches, without asking who shall

gather them? I was restless and discontented. What could I do? I was

friendless; I was strange to my kind; I was shut out from all uses by

the wall of my own poverty. I saw my desires checked when their aim

was at the highest: all that was proud, and aspiring, and ardent in

my nature, was cramped and chilled. I exhausted the learning within my

reach. Where, with my appetite excited not slaked, was I, destitute

and penniless, to search for more? My abilities, by bowing them to the

lowliest tasks, but kept me from famine:--was this to be my lot for

ever? And all the while, I was thus grinding down my soul in order

to satisfy the vile physical wants, what golden hours, what glorious

advantages, what openings into new heavens of science, what chances of

illumining mankind were for ever lost to me! Sometimes when the young,

whom I taught some elementary, all-unheeded, initiations into knowledge,

came around me; when they looked me in the face with their laughing

eyes; when, for they all loved me, they told me their little pleasures

and their petty sorrows, I have wished that I could have gone back again

into childhood, and becoming as one of them, enter into that heaven of

quiet which was denied me now. Yet more often it was with an indignant

and chafed rather than a sorrowful spirit that I looked upon my lot; and

if I looked beyond it, what could I see of hope? Dig I could; but was

all that thirsted and swelled within to be dried up and stifled, in

order that I might gain the sustenance of life? Was I to turn menial to

the soil, and forget that knowledge was abroad? Was I to starve my mind,

that I might keep alive my body? Beg I could not. Where ever lived the

real student, the true minister and priest of knowledge, who was not

filled with the lofty sense of the dignity of his calling? Was I to shew

the sores of my pride, and strip my heart from its clothing, and ask

the dull fools of wealth not to let a scholar starve? Pah!--He whom the

vilest poverty ever stooped to this, may be the quack, but never the

true disciple, of Learning. Steal, rob--worse--ay, all those I or any

of my brethren might do:--beg? never! What did I then? I devoted the

lowliest part of my knowledge to the procuring the bare means of life,

and the grandest,--the knowledge that pierced to the depths of earth,

and numbered the stars of heaven--why, that was valueless, save to the

possessor.

“In Knaresbro’, at this time, I met a distant relation, Richard

Houseman. Sometimes in our walks we encountered each other; for he

sought me, and I could not always avoid him. He was a man like myself,

born to poverty, yet he had always enjoyed what to him was wealth. This

seemed a mystery to me; and when we met, we sometimes conversed upon it.

‘You are poor, with all your wisdom,’ said he. ‘I know nothing; but I

am never poor. Why is this? The world is my treasury.--I live upon

my kind.--Society is my foe.--Laws order me to starve; but

self-preservation is an instinct more sacred than society, and more

imperious then laws.’

“The undisguised and bold manner of his discourse impressed while it

revolted me. I looked upon him as a study, and I combated, in order

to learn, him. He had been a soldier--he had seen the greatest part

of Europe--he possessed a strong shrewd sense--he was a villain--but

a villain bold--adroit--and not then thoroughly unredeemed. His

conversation created dark and perturbed reflections. What was that

state of society--was it not at war with its own elements--in which vice

prospered more than virtue? Knowledge was my dream, that dream I might

realize, not by patient suffering, but by active daring. I might wrest

from society, to which I owed nothing, the means to be wise and great.

Was it not better and nobler to do this, even at my life’s hazard, than

lie down in a ditch and die the dog’s death? Was it not better than such

a doom--ay better for mankind--that I should commit one bold wrong, and

by that wrong purchase the power of good? I asked myself that question.

It is a fearful question; it opens a labyrinth of reasonings, in which

the soul may walk and lose itself for ever.

“One day Houseman met me, accompanied by a stranger who had just

visited our town, for what purpose you know already. His name--supposed

name--was Clarke. Man, I am about to speak plainly of that stranger--his

character and his fate. And yet--yet you are his son! I would fain

soften the colouring; but I speak truth of myself, and I must not,

unless I would blacken my name yet deeper than it deserves, varnish

truth when I speak of others. Houseman joined, and presented to me

this person. From the first I felt a dislike creep through me at the

stranger, which indeed it was easy to account for. He was of a careless

and somewhat insolent manner. His countenance was impressed with the

lines and character of a thousand vices: you read in the brow and

eye the history of a sordid yet reckless life. His conversation was

repellent to me beyond expression. He uttered the meanest sentiments,

and he chuckled over them as the maxims of a superior sagacity; he

avowed himself a knave upon system, and upon the lowest scale. To

overreach, to deceive, to elude, to shuffle, to fawn, and to lie, were

the arts that he confessed to with so naked and cold a grossness, that

one perceived that in the long habits of debasement he was unconscious

of what was not debased. Houseman seemed to draw him out: he told us

anecdotes of his rascality, and the distresses to which it had brought

him; and he finished by saying: ‘Yet you see me now almost rich, and

wholly contented. I have always been the luckiest of human beings; no

matter what ill-chances to-day, good turns up to-morrow. I confess that

I bring on myself the ill, and Providence sends me the good.’ We met

accidentally more than once, and his conversation was always of the same

strain--his luck and his rascality: he had no other theme, and no other

boast. And did not this stir into gloomy speculation the depths of my

mind? Was it not an ordination that called upon men to take fortune in

their own hands, when Fate lavished her rewards on this low and creeping

thing, that could only enter even Vice by its sewers and alleys? Was it

worth while to be virtuous, and look on, while the bad seized upon

the feast of life? This man was instinct with the basest passions, the

pettiest desires: he gratified them, and Fate smiled upon his daring. I,

who had shut out from my heart the poor temptations of sense--I, who

fed only the most glorious visions, the most august desires--I, denied

myself their fruition, trembling and spell-bound in the cerements of

human laws, without hope, without reward,--losing the very powers of

virtue because I would not stray into crime.

“These thoughts fell on me darkly and rapidly; but they led to no

result. I saw nothing beyond them. I suffered my indignation to gnaw my

heart; and preserved the same calm and serene demeanour which had grown

with my growth of mind. Nay, while I upbraided Fate, I did not cease to

love mankind. I envied--what? the power to serve them! I had been kind

and loving to all things from a boy; there was not a dumb animal that

would not single me from a crowd as its protector, [Note: All the

authentic anecdotes of Aram corroborate the fact of his natural

gentleness to all things. A clergyman (the Rev. Mr. Hinton) said that he

used frequently to observe Aram, when walking in the garden, stoop down

to remove a snail or worm from the path, to prevent its being destroyed.

Mr. Hinton ingeniously conjectured that Aram wished to atone for his

crime by shewing mercy to every animal and insect: but the fact is, that

there are several anecdotes to shew that he was equally humane before

the crime was committed. Such are the strange contradictions of the

human heart!] and yet I was doomed--but I must not premeditate my tale.

In returning, at night, to my own home, from my long and solitary walks,

I often passed the house in which Clarke lodged; and sometimes I met him

reeling by the door, insulting all who passed; and yet their resentment

was absorbed in their disgust. ‘And this loathsome, and grovelling

thing,’ said I, inly, ‘squanders on low excesses, wastes upon outrages

to society, that with which I could make my soul as a burning lamp, that

should shed a light over the world!”

“There was that in this man’s vices which revolted me far more than

the villainy of Houseman. The latter had possessed no advantages of

education; he descended to no minutiae of sin, he was a plain, blunt,

coarse wretch, and his sense threw something respectable around his

vices. But in Clarke you saw the traces of happier opportunities of

better education; it was in him not the coarseness of manner so much as

the sickening, universal canker of vulgarity of mind. Had Houseman money

in his purse, he would have paid a debt and relieved a friend from mere

indifference; not so the other. Had he been overflowing with wealth,

he would have slipped from a creditor, and duped a friend; there was a

pitiful and debasing weakness in his nature, which made him regard the

lowest meanness as the subtlest wit. His mind too was not only degraded,

but broken by his habits of life; a strange, idiotic folly, that made

him love laughing at his own littleness, ran through his character.

Houseman was young; he might amend; but Clarke had grey hairs and dim

eyes; was old in constitution, if not years; and every thing in him was

hopeless and confirmed; the leprosy was in the system. Time, in this,

has made Houseman what Clarke was then.

“One day, in passing through the street, though it was broad noon, I

encountered Clarke in a state of intoxication, and talking to a crowd he

had collected around him. I sought to pass in an opposite direction; he

would not suffer me; he, whom I sickened to touch, to see, threw himself

in my way, and affected gibe and insult, nay even threat. But when he

came near, he shrank before the mere glance of my eye, and I passed on

unheeding him. The insult galled me; he had taunted my poverty, poverty

was a favourite jest with him; it galled me; anger, revenge, no! those

passions I had never felt for any man. I could not rouse them for the

first time for such a cause; yet I was lowered in my own eyes, I was

stung. Poverty! he taunt me! He dream himself, on account of a little

yellow dust, my superior! I wandered from the town, and paused by the

winding and shagged banks of the river. It was a gloomy winter’s day,

the waters rolled on black and sullen, and the dry leaves rustled

desolately beneath my feet. Who shall tell us that outward nature has no

effect upon our mood? All around seemed to frown upon my lot. I read in

the face of heaven and earth a confirmation of the curse which man hath

set upon poverty. I leant against a tree that overhung the waters, and

suffered my thoughts to glide on in the bitter silence of their course.

I heard my name uttered--I felt a hand on my arm, I turned, and Houseman

was by my side.

“‘What, moralizing?’ said he, with his rude smile.

“I did not answer him.

“‘Look,’ said he, pointing to the waters, ‘where yonder fish lies

waiting his prey, that prey his kind. Come, you have read Nature, is it

not so universally?’

“I did not answer him.

“‘They who do not as the rest,’ he renewed, ‘fulfil not the object of

their existence; they seek to be wiser than their tribe, and are fools

for their pains. Is it not so? I am a plain man, and would learn.’

“Still I did not answer.

“‘You are silent,’ said he; ‘do I offend you?’

“‘No!’

“‘Now, then,’ he continued, ‘strange as it may seem, we, so different in

mind, are at this moment alike in fortunes. I have not a guinea in

the wide world; you, perhaps, are equally destitute. But mark the

difference, I, the ignorant man, ere three days have passed, will have

filled my purse; you, the wise man, will be still as poor. Come, cast

away your wisdom, and do as I do.’

“‘How?’

“‘Take from the superfluities of others what your necessities crave.

My horse, my pistol, a ready hand, a stout heart, these are to me, what

coffers are to others. There is the chance of detection and of death; I

allow it. But is not this chance better than some certainties?’

“I turned away my face. In the silence of my chamber, and in the

solitude of my heart, I had thought, as the robber spoke--there was a

strife within me.

“‘Will you share the danger and the booty?’ renewed Houseman, in a low

voice.

“I turned my eyes upon him. ‘Speak out,’ said I; ‘explain your purpose!’

“Houseman’s looks brightened.

“‘Listen!’ said he; ‘Clarke, despite his present wealth lawfully gained,

is about to purloin more; he has converted his legacy into jewels; he

has borrowed other jewels on false pretences; he purposes to make

these also his own, and to leave the town in the dead of night; he has

confided to me his intention, and asked my aid. He and I, be it known

to you, were friends of old; we have shared together other dangers, and

other spoils; he has asked my assistance in his flight. Now do you learn

my purpose? Let us ease him of his burthen! I offer to you the half;

share the enterprise and its fruits.’

“I rose, I walked away, I pressed my hands on my heart; I wished to

silence the voice that whispered me within. Houseman saw the conflict;

he followed me; he named the value of the prize he proposed to gain;

that which he called my share placed all my wished within my reach!--the

means of gratifying the one passion of my soul, the food for knowledge,

the power of a lone blessed independence upon myself,--and all were in

my grasp; no repeated acts of fraud; no continuation of sin, one single

act sufficed! I breathed heavily, but I threw not off the emotion that

seized my soul; I shut my eyes and shuddered, but the vision still rose

before me.

“‘Give me your hand,’ said Houseman. [Note: Though, in the above part of

Aram’s confession, it would seem as if Houseman did not allude to more

than the robbery of Clarke; it is evident from what follows, that the

more heinous crime also was then at least hinted at by Houseman.]

“‘No, no,’ I said, breaking away from him. ‘I must pause--I must

consider--I do not yet refuse, but I will not now decide.’--

“Houseman pressed, but I persevered in my determination;--he would have

threatened me, but my nature was haughtier than his, and I subdued him.

It was agreed that he should seek me that night and learn my choice--the

next night was the one on which the deed was to be done. We parted--I

returned an altered man to my home. Fate had woven her mesh around me--a

new incident had occurred which strengthened the web: there was a poor

girl whom I had been accustomed to see in my walks. She supported her

family by her dexterity in making lace,--a quiet, patient-looking,

gentle creature. Clarke had, a few days since, under pretence of

purchasing lace, decoyed her to his house (when all but himself were

from home), where he used the most brutal violence towards her. The

extreme poverty of the parents had enabled him easily to persuade them

to hush up the matter, but something of the story got abroad; the poor

girl was marked out for that gossip and scandal, which among the very

lowest classes are as coarse in the expression as malignant in the

sentiment; and in the paroxysm of shame and despair, the unfortunate

girl had that day destroyed herself. This melancholy event wrung forth

from the parents the real story: the event and the story reached my

ears in the very hour in which my mind was wavering to and fro. Can you

wonder that they fixed it at once, and to a dread end? What was this

wretch? aged with vice--forestalling time--tottering on to a dishonoured

grave--soiling all that he touched on his way--with grey hairs and

filthy lewdness, the rottenness of the heart, not its passion, a

nuisance and a curse to the world. What was the deed--that I should rid

the earth of a thing at once base and venomous? Was it crime? Was it

justice? Within myself I felt the will--the spirit that might bless

mankind. I lacked the means to accomplish the will and wing the spirit.

One deed supplied me with the means. Had the victim of that deed been

a man moderately good--pursuing with even steps the narrow line between

vice and virtue--blessing none but offending none,--it might have been

yet a question whether mankind would not gain more by the deed than

lose. But here was one whose steps stumbled on no good act--whose

heart beat to no generous emotion;--there was a blot--a foulness on

creation,--nothing but death could wash it out and leave the world fair.

The soldier receives his pay, and murthers, and sleeps sound, and men

applaud. But you say he smites not for pay, but glory. Granted--though a

sophism. But was there no glory to be gained in fields more magnificent

than those of war--no glory to be gained in the knowledge which saves

and not destroys? Was I not about to strike for that glory, for the

means of earning it? Nay, suppose the soldier struck for patriotism,

a better feeling than glory, would not my motive be yet larger than

patriotism? Did it not body forth a broader circle? Could the world stop

the bound of its utilities? Was there a corner of the earth--was there a

period in time, which an ardent soul, freed from, not chained as now, by

the cares of the body, and given wholly up to wisdom, might not pierce,

vivify, illumine? Such were the questions which I asked:--time only

answered them.

“Houseman came, punctual to our dark appointment. I gave him my hand in

silence. We understood each other. We said no more of the deed itself,

but of the manner in which it should be done. The melancholy incident

I have described made Clarke yet more eager to leave the town. He had

settled with Houseman that he would abscond that very night, not wait

for the next, as at first he had intended. His jewels and property were

put in a small compass. He had arranged that he would, towards midnight

or later, quit his lodging; and about a mile from the town, Houseman

had engaged to have a chaise in readiness. For this service Clarke had

promised Houseman a reward, with which the latter appeared contented. It

was arranged that I should meet Houseman and Clarke at a certain spot

in their way from the town, and there--! Houseman appeared at first

fearful, lest I should relent and waver in my purpose. It is never so

with men whose thoughts are deep and strong. To resolve was the arduous

step--once resolved, and I cast not a look behind. Houseman left me for

the present. I could not rest in my chamber. I went forth and walked

about the town; the night deepened--I saw the lights in each house

withdrawn, one by one, and at length all was hushed--Silence and Sleep

kept court over the abodes of men. That stillness--that quiet--that

sabbath from care and toil--how deeply it sank into my heart! Nature

never seemed to me to make so dread a pause. I felt as if I and my

intended victim had been left alone in the world. I had wrapped myself

above fear into a high and preternatural madness of mind. I looked

on the deed I was about to commit as a great and solemn sacrifice to

Knowledge, whose Priest I was. The very silence breathed to me of a

stern and awful sanctity--the repose, not of the charnel-house, but the

altar. I heard the clock strike hour after hour, but I neither faltered

nor grew impatient. My mind lay hushed in its design.

“The Moon came out, but with a pale and sickly countenance. Winter was

around the earth; the snow, which had been falling towards eve, lay deep

upon the ground; and the Frost seemed to lock the Universal Nature into

the same calm and deadness which had taken possession of my soul.

“Houseman was to have come to me at midnight, just before Clarke left

his house, but it was nearly two hours after that time ere he arrived.

I was then walking to and fro before my own door; I saw that he was not

alone, but with Clarke. ‘Ha!’ said he, ‘this is fortunate, I see you are

just going home. You were engaged, I recollect, at some distance from

the town, and have, I suppose, just returned. Will you admit Mr. Clarke

and myself for a short time--for to tell you the truth,’ said he, in a

lower voice--‘The watchman is about, and we must not be seen by him! I

have told Clarke that he may trust you, we are relatives!’

“Clarke, who seemed strangely credulous and indifferent, considering

the character of his associate,--but those whom fate destroys she first

blinds, made the same request in a careless tone, assigning the same

cause. Unwillingly, I opened the door and admitted them. We went up

to my chamber. Clarke spoke with the utmost unconcern of the fraud he

purposed, and with a heartlessness that made my veins boil, of the poor

victim his brutality had destroyed. All this was as iron bands round my

purpose. They stayed for nearly an hour, for the watchman remained some

time in that beat--and then Houseman asked me to accompany them a little

way out of the town. Clarke seconded the request. We walked forth; the

rest--why need I repeat? Houseman lied in the court; my hand struck--but

not the death-blow: yet, from that hour, I have never given that right

hand in pledge of love or friendship--the curse of memory has clung to

it.

“We shared our booty; mine I buried, for the present. Houseman had

dealings with a gipsy hag, and through her aid removed his share,

at once, to London. And now, mark what poor strugglers we are in the

eternal web of destiny! Three days after that deed, a relation who

neglected me in life, died, and left me wealth!--wealth at least to

me!--Wealth, greater than that for which I had...! The news fell on me

as a thunderbolt. Had I waited but three little days! Great God! when

they told me,--I thought I heard the devils laugh out at the fool who

had boasted wisdom! Tell me not now of our free will--we are but the

things of a never-swerving, an everlasting Necessity!--pre-ordered to

our doom--bound to a wheel that whirls us on till it touches the point

at which we are crushed! Had I waited but three days, three little

days!--Had but a dream been sent me, had but my heart cried within

me,--‘Thou hast suffered long, tarry yet!’ [Note: Aram has hitherto been

suffered to tell his own tale without comment or interruption. The chain

of reasonings, the metaphysical labyrinth of defence and motive, which

he wrought around his act, it was, in justice to him, necessary to

give at length, in order to throw a clearer light on his character--and

lighten, perhaps, in some measure the heinousness of his crime. No moral

can be more impressive than that which teaches how man can entangle

himself in his own sophisms--that moral is better, viewed aright, than

volumes of homilies. But here I must pause for one moment, to bid the

reader mark, that that event which confirmed Aram in the bewildering

doctrines of his fatalism, ought rather to inculcate the Divine

virtue--the foundation of all virtues, Heathen or Christian--that which

Epictetus made clear, and Christ sacred--FORTITUDE. The reader will

note, that the answer to the reasonings that probably convinced the mind

of Aram, and blinded him to his crime, may be found in the change of

feelings by which the crime was followed. I must apologize for this

interruption--it seemed to me advisable in this place;--though, in

general, the moment we begin to inculcate morality as a science, we

ought to discard moralizing as a method.] No, it was for this, for the

guilt and its penance, for the wasted life and the shameful death--with

all my thirst for good, my dreams of glory--that I was born, that I was

marked from my first sleep in the cradle!

“The disappearance of Clarke of course created great excitement;--those

whom he had over-reached had naturally an interest in discovering

him. Some vague surmises that he might have been made away with,

were rumoured abroad. Houseman and I, owing to some concurrence of

circumstance, were examined,--not that suspicion attached to me before

or after the examination. That ceremony ended in nothing. Houseman did

not betray himself; and I, who from a boy had mastered my passions,

could master also the nerves, which are the passions’ puppets: but I

read in the face of the woman with whom I lodged, that I was suspected.

Houseman told me that she had openly expressed her suspicion to him;

nay, he entertained some design against her life, which he naturally

abandoned on quitting the town. This he did soon afterwards. I did not

linger long behind him. I dug up my jewels,--I concealed them about me,

and departed on foot to Scotland. There I converted my booty into money.

And now I was above want--was I at rest? Not yet. I felt urged on to

wander--Cain’s curse descends to Cain’s children. I travelled for some

considerable time,--I saw men and cities, and I opened a new volume in

my kind. It was strange; but before the deed, I was as a child in the

ways of the world, and a child, despite my knowledge, might have duped

me. The moment after it, a light broke upon me,--it seemed as if my eyes

were touched with a charm, and rendered capable of piercing the hearts

of men! Yes, it was a charm--a new charm--it was Suspicion! I now

practised myself in the use of arms,--they made my sole companions.

Peaceful, as I seemed to the world, I felt there was that eternally

within me with which the world was at war.

“I do not deceive you. I did not feel what men call remorse! Having once

convinced myself that I had removed from the earth a thing that injured

and soiled its tribes,--that I had in crushing one worthless life, but

without crushing one virtue--one feeling--one thought that could benefit

others, strode to a glorious end;--having once convinced myself of this,

I was not weak enough to feel a vague remorse for a deed I would not

allow, in my case, to be a crime. I did not feel remorse, but I felt

regret. The thought that had I waited three days I might have been

saved, not from guilt, but from the chance of shame,--from the

degradation of sinking to Houseman’s equal--of feeling that man had the

power to hurt me--that I was no longer above the reach of human malice,

or human curiosity--that I was made a slave to my own secret--that I was

no longer lord of my heart, to shew or to conceal it--that at any hour,

in the possession of honours, by the hearth of love, I might be dragged

forth and proclaimed a murderer--that I held my life, my reputation, at

the breath of accident--that in the moment I least dreamed of, the earth

might yield its dead, and the gibbet demand its victim;--this could

I feel--all this--and not make a spectre of the past:--a spectre that

walked by my side--that slept at my bed--that rose from my books--that

glided between me and the stars of heaven, that stole along the flowers,

and withered their sweet breath--that whispered in my ear, ‘Toil,

fool, and be wise; the gift of wisdom is to place us above the reach of

fortune, but thou art her veriest minion!’ Yes; I paused at last from my

wanderings, and surrounded myself with books, and knowledge became

once more to me what it had been, a thirst; but not what it had been, a

reward. I occupied my thoughts--I laid up new hoards within my mind--I

looked around, and I saw few whose stores were like my own,--but where,

with the passion for wisdom still alive within me--where was that once

more ardent desire which had cheated me across so dark a chasm between

youth and manhood--between past and present life--the desire of applying

that wisdom to the service of mankind? Gone--dead--buried for ever in

my bosom, with the thousand dreams that had perished before it! When the

deed was done, mankind seemed suddenly to have grown my foes. I looked

upon them with other eyes. I knew that I carried within, that secret

which, if bared to-day, would make them loath and hate me,--yea, though

I coined my future life into one series of benefits on them and their

posterity! Was not this thought enough to quell my ardour--to chill

activity into rest? The more I might toil, the brighter honours I might

win--the greater services I might bestow on the world, the more dread

and fearful might be my fall at last! I might be but piling up the

scaffold from which I was to be hurled! Possessed by these thoughts, a

new view of human affairs succeeded to my old aspirings;--the moment a

man feels that an object has ceased to charm, he reconciles himself by

reasonings to his loss. ‘Why,’ said I; ‘why flatter myself that I can

serve--that I can enlighten mankind? Are we fully sure that individual

wisdom has ever, in reality, done so? Are we really better because

Newton lived, and happier because Bacon thought?’ This dampening and

frozen line of reflection pleased the present state of my mind more than

the warm and yearning enthusiasm it had formerly nourished. Mere worldly

ambition from a boy I had disdained;--the true worth of sceptres and

crowns--the inquietude of power--the humiliations of vanity--had never

been disguised from my sight. Intellectual ambition had inspired me. I

now regarded it equally as a delusion. I coveted light solely for my

own soul to bathe in. I would have drawn down the Promethean fire; but

I would no longer have given to man what it was in the power of

circumstance alone (which I could control not) to make his enlightener

or his ruin--his blessing or his curse. Yes, I loved--I love

still;--could I live for ever, I should for ever love knowledge! It is

a companion--a solace--a pursuit--a Lethe. But, no more!--oh! never more

for me was the bright ambition that makes knowledge a means, not end.

As, contrary to the vulgar notion, the bee is said to gather her honey

unprescient of the winter, labouring without a motive, save the labour,

I went on, year after year, hiving all that the earth presented to my

toils, and asking not to what use. I had rushed into a dread world, that

I might indulge a dream. Lo! the dream was fled; but I could not retrace

my steps.

“Rest now became to me the sole to kalon--the sole charm of existence.

I grew enamoured of the doctrine of those old mystics, who have placed

happiness only in an even and balanced quietude. And where but in utter

loneliness was that quietude to be enjoyed? I no longer wondered that

men in former times, when consumed by the recollection of some haunting

guilt, fled to the desert and became hermits. Tranquillity and Solitude

are the only soothers of a memory deeply troubled--light griefs fly to

the crowd--fierce thoughts must battle themselves to rest. Many

years had flown, and I had made my home in many places. All that was

turbulent, if not all that was unquiet, in my recollections, had died

away. Time had lulled me into a sense of security. I breathed more

freely. I sometimes stole from the past. Since I had quitted Knaresbro’

chance had thrown it in my power frequently to serve my brethren--not by

wisdom, but by charity or courage--by individual acts that it soothed me

to remember. If the grand aim of enlightening a world was gone--if to so

enlarged a benevolence had succeeded apathy or despair, still the man,

the human man, clung to my heart--still was I as prone to pity--as

prompt to defend--as glad to cheer, whenever the vicissitudes of life

afforded me the occasion; and to poverty, most of all, my hand never

closed. For oh! what a terrible devil creeps into that man’s soul, who

sees famine at his door! One tender act and how many black designs,

struggling into life within, you may crush for ever! He who deems the

world his foe, convince him that he has one friend, and it is like

snatching a dagger from his hand!

“I came to a beautiful and remote part of the country. Walter Lester, I

came to Grassdale!--the enchanting scenery around--the sequestered

and deep retirement of the place arrested me at once. ‘And among these

valleys,’ I said, ‘will I linger out the rest of my life, and among

these quiet graves shall mine be dug, and my secret shall die with me!’

“I rented the lonely house in which I dwelt when you first knew

me--thither I transported my books and instruments of science. I formed

new projects in the vast empire of wisdom, and a deep quiet, almost

amounting to content, fell like a sweet sleep upon my soul!

“In this state of mind, the most free from memory and from the desire

to pierce the future that I had known for twelve years, I first saw

Madeline Lester. Even with that first time a sudden and heavenly light

seemed to dawn upon me. Her face--its still--its serene--its touching

beauty, shone upon me like a vision. My heart warmed as I saw it--my

pulse seemed to wake from its even slowness. I was young once more.

Young! the youth, the freshness, the ardour--not of the frame only, but

of the soul. But I then only saw, or spoke to her--scarce knew her--not

loved her--nor was it often that we met. When we did so, I felt haunted,

as by a holy spirit, for the rest of the day--an unquiet yet delicious

emotion agitated all within--the south wind stirred the dark waters of

my mind, but it passed, and all became hushed again. It was not for two

years from the time we first saw each other, that accident brought us

closely together. I pass over the rest. We loved! Yet oh what struggles

were mine during the progress of that love! How unnatural did it seem to

me to yield to a passion that united me with my kind; and as I loved

her more, how far more urgent grew my fear of the future! That which had

almost slept before awoke again to terrible life. The soil that covered

the past might be riven, the dead awake, and that ghastly chasm separate

me for ever from HER! What a doom, too, might I bring upon that breast

which had begun so confidingly to love me! Often--often I resolved to

fly--to forsake her--to seek some desert spot in the distant parts of

the world, and never to be betrayed again into human emotions! But as

the bird flutters in the net, as the hare doubles from its pursuers, I

did but wrestle--I did but trifle--with an irresistible doom. Mark how

strange are the coincidences of fate--fate that gives us warnings and

takes away the power to obey them--the idle prophetess--the juggling

fiend! On the same evening that brought me acquainted with Madeline

Lester, Houseman, led by schemes of fraud and violence into that part of

the country, discovered and sought me! Imagine my feelings, when in the

hush of night I opened the door of my lonely home to his summons, and

by the light of that moon which had witnessed so never-to-be-forgotten a

companionship between us, beheld my accomplice in murder after the lapse

of so many years. Time and a course of vice had changed and hardened,

and lowered his nature; and in the power, at the will of that nature,

I beheld myself abruptly placed. He passed that night under my roof.

He was poor. I gave him what was in my hands. He promised to leave that

part of England--to seek me no more.

“The next day I could not bear my own thoughts, the revulsion was too

sudden, too full of turbulent, fierce, torturing emotions; I fled for a

short relief to the house to which Madeline’s father had invited me. But

in vain I sought, by wine, by converse, by human voices, human kindness,

to fly the ghost that had been raised from the grave of time. I soon

returned to my own thoughts. I resolved to wrap myself once more in the

solitude of my heart. But let me not repeat what I have said before,

somewhat prematurely, in my narrative. I resolved--I struggled in vain,

Fate had ordained, that the sweet life of Madeline Lester should wither

beneath the poison tree of mine. Houseman sought me again, and now came

on the humbling part of crime, its low calculations, its poor defence,

its paltry trickery, its mean hypocrisy! They made my chiefest penance!

I was to evade, to beguile, to buy into silence, this rude and despised

ruffian. No matter now to repeat how this task was fulfilled; I

surrendered nearly my all, on the condition of his leaving England for

ever: not till I thought that condition already fulfilled, till the day

had passed on which he should have left England, did I consent to allow

Madeline’s fate to be irrevocably woven with mine. Fool that I was, as

if laws could bind us closer than love had done already.

“How often, when the soul sins, are her loftiest feelings punished

through her lowest! To me, lone, rapt, for ever on the wing to unearthly

speculation, galling and humbling was it indeed, to be suddenly called

from the eminence of thought, to barter, in pounds and pence, for life,

and with one like Houseman. These are the curses that deepen the tragedy

of life, by grinding down our pride. But I wander back to what I have

before said. I was to marry Madeline,--I was once more poor, but want

did not rise before me; I had succeeded in obtaining the promise of a

competence from one whom you know. For that I had once forced from my

kind, I asked now, but not with the spirit of the beggar, but of the

just claimant, and in that spirit it was granted. And now I was really

happy; Houseman I believed removed for ever from my path; Madeline was

about to be mine: I surrendered myself to love, and blind and deluded,

I wandered on, and awoke on the brink of that precipice into which I am

about to plunge. You know the rest. But oh! what now was my horror!

It had not been a mere worthless, isolated unit in creation that I had

blotted out of the sum of life. I had shed the blood of his brother

whose child was my betrothed! Mysterious avenger--weird and relentless

fate! How, when I deemed myself the farthest from her, had I been

sinking into her grasp! Mark, young man, there is a moral here that few

preachers can teach thee! Mark. Men rarely violate the individual rule

in comparison to their violation of general rules. It is in the latter

that we deceive by sophisms which seem truths. In the individual

instance it was easy for me to deem that I had committed no crime. I

had destroyed a man, noxious to the world; with the wealth by which

he afflicted society I had been the means of blessing many; in the

individual consequences mankind had really gained by my deed; the

general consequence I had overlooked till now, and now it flashed upon

me. The scales fell from my eyes, and I knew myself for what I was! All

my calculations were dashed to the ground at once, for what had been

all the good I had proposed to do--the good I had done--compared to the

anguish I now inflicted on your house? Was your father my only victim?

Madeline, have I not murdered her also? Lester, have I not shaken the

sands in his glass? You, too, have I not blasted the prime and glory

of your years? How incalculable--how measureless--how viewless the

consequences of one crime, even when we think we have weighed them all

with scales that would have turned with a hair’s weight! Yes; before I

had felt no remorse. I felt it now. I had acknowledged no crime, and now

crime seemed the essence itself of my soul. The Theban’s fate, which had

seemed to the men of old the most terrible of human destinies, was mine.

The crime--the discovery--the irremediable despair--hear me, as the

voice of a man who is on the brink of a world, the awful nature of which

Reason cannot pierce--hear me! when your heart tempts to some wandering

from the line allotted to the rest of men, and whispers ‘This may be

crime in others, but is not so in thee’--tremble; cling fast, fast to

the path you are lured to leave. Remember me!

“But in this state of mind I was yet forced to play the hypocrite. Had

I been alone in the world--had Madeline and Lester not been to me what

they were, I might have avowed my deed and my motives--I might have

spoken out to the hearts of men--I might have poured forth the gloomy

tale of reasonings and of temptings, in which we lose sense, and become

the archfiend’s tools! But while their eyes were on me; while their

lives and hearts were set on my acquittal, my struggle against truth

was less for myself than them. For them I girded up my soul, a villain

I was; and for them, a bold, a crafty, a dexterous, villain I became!

My defence fulfilled its end: Madeline died without distrusting the

innocence of him she loved. Lester, unless you betray me, will die

in the same belief. In truth, since the arts of hypocrisy have been

commenced, the pride of consistency would have made it sweet to me to

leave the world in a like error, or at least in doubt. For you I conquer

that desire, the proud man’s last frailty. And now my tale is done.

From what passes at this instant within my heart, I lift not the veil!

Whether beneath, be despair, or hope, or fiery emotions, or one settled

and ominous calm, matters not. My last hours shall not belie my life: on

the verge of death I will not play the dastard, and tremble at the Dim

Unknown. The thirst, the dream, the passion of my youth, yet lives;

and burns to learn the sublime and shaded mysteries that are banned

Mortality. Perhaps I am not without a hope that the Great and Unseen

Spirit, whose emanation within me I have nursed and worshipped, though

erringly and in vain, may see in his fallen creature one bewildered by

his reason rather than yielding to his vices. The guide I received from

Heaven betrayed me, and I was lost; but I have not plunged wittingly

from crime to crime. Against one guilty deed, some good, and much

suffering may be set: and, dim and afar off from my allotted bourne, I

may behold in her glorious home the starred face of her who taught me to

love, and who, even there, could scarce be blessed without shedding

the light of her divine forgiveness upon me. Enough! ere you break this

seal, my doom rests not with man nor earth. The burning desires I have

known--the resplendent visions I have nursed--the sublime aspirings

that have lifted me so often from sense and clay--these tell me, that,

whether for good or ill--I am the thing of an Immortality, and the

creature of a God! As men of the old wisdom drew their garments around

their face, and sat down collectedly to die, I wrap myself in the

settled resignation of a soul firm to the last, and taking not from

man’s vengeance even the method of its dismissal. The courses of my life

I swayed with my own hand: from my own hand shall come the manner and

moment of my death!

“Eugene Aram.”

On the day after that evening in which Aram had given the above

confession to Walter Lester;--on the day of execution, when they entered

the condemned cell, they found the prisoner lying on the bed; and when

they approached to take off the irons, they found, that he neither

stirred nor answered to their call. They attempted to raise him, and

he then uttered some words in a faint voice. They perceived that he was

covered with blood. He had opened his veins in two places in the arm

with a sharp instrument he had some time since concealed. A surgeon was

instantly sent for, and by the customary applications the prisoner in

some measure was brought to himself. Resolved not to defraud the law of

its victim, they bore him, though he appeared unconscious of all around,

to the fatal spot. But when he arrived at that dread place, his sense

suddenly seemed to return. He looked hastily round the throng that

swayed and murmured below, and a faint flush rose to his cheek: he cast

his eyes impatiently above, and breathed hard and convulsively. The dire

preparations were made, completed; but the prisoner drew back for

an instant--was it from mortal fear? He motioned to the Clergyman to

approach, as if about to whisper some last request in his ear. The

clergyman bowed his head,--there was a minute’s awful pause--Aram seemed

to struggle as for words, when, suddenly throwing himself back, a bright

triumphant smile flashed over his whole face. With that smile, the

haughty Spirit passed away, and the law’s last indignity was wreaked

upon a breathless corpse!

CHAPTER VIII.

AND LAST. THE TRAVELLER’S RETURN.--THE COUNTRY VILLAGE ONCE

MORE VISITED;--ITS INHABITANTS.--THE REMEMBERED BROOK.--THE

DESERTED MANOR-HOUSE.--THE CHURCHYARD.--THE TRAVELLER RESUMES

HIS JOURNEY.--THE COUNTRY TOWN.--A MEETING OF TWO LOVERS AFTER

LONG ABSENCE AND MUCH SORROW.--CONCLUSION.

“The lopped tree in time may grow again,

Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower;

The sorriest wight may find release from pain,

The driest soil suck in some moistening shower:

Time goes by turns, and chances change by course

From foul to fair.”

--Robert Southwell, the Jesuit.

Sometimes towards the end of a gloomy day, the sun before but dimly

visible, breaks suddenly out, and clothes the landscape with a smile;

then beneath your eye, which during the clouds and sadness of day, had

sought only the chief features of the prospect around, (some grey hill,

or rising spire, or sweeping wood,) the less prominent, yet not less

lovely features of the scene, mellow forth into view; over them,

perhaps, the sun sets with a happier and richer glow than over the

rest of Nature; and thus they leave upon your mind its last grateful

impression, and console you for the gloom and sadness which the parting

light they catch and reflect, dispels.

Just so in our tale; it continues not in cloud and sorrow to the last;

some little ray breaks forth at the close; in that ray, characters which

before received but a slight portion of the interest that prouder and

darker ones engrossed, are thrown into light, and cheer from the mind of

him who hath watched and tarried with us till now,--we will not say all

the sadness that may perhaps linger on his memory,--and yet something of

the gloom.

It was some years after the date of the last event we have recorded, and

it was a fine warm noon in the happy month of May, when a horseman was

slowly riding through the long--straggling--village of Grassdale. He

was a man, though in the prime of youth, (for he might yet want some two

years of thirty,) that bore the steady and earnest air of one who has

seen not sparingly of the world; his eye keen but tranquil, his sunburnt

though handsome features, which either exertion or thought, or care,

had despoiled of the roundness of their early contour, leaving the cheek

somewhat sunken, and the lines somewhat marked, were impressed with a

grave, and at that moment with a melancholy and soft expression; and

now, as his horse proceeded slowly through the green lane, which in

every vista gave glimpses of rich verdant valleys, the sparkling river,

or the orchard ripe with the fragrant blossoms of spring; his gaze

lost the calm expression it habitually wore, and betrayed how busily

Remembrance was at work. The dress of the horseman was of foreign

fashion, and at that day, when the garb still denoted the calling,

sufficiently military to show the profession he had belonged to. And

well did the garb become the short dark moustache, the sinewy chest and

length of limb of the young horseman: recommendations, the two latter,

not despised in the court of the great Frederic of Prussia, in whose

service he had borne arms. He had commenced his career in that battle

terminating in the signal defeat of the bold Daun, when the fortunes of

that gallant general paled at last before the star of the greatest of

modern kings. The peace of 1763 had left Prussia in the quiet enjoyment

of the glory she had obtained, and the young Englishman took the

advantage it afforded him of seeing as a traveller, not despoiler, the

rest of Europe.

The adventure and the excitement of travel pleased and left him even

now uncertain whether or not his present return to England would be for

long. He had not been a week returned, and to this part of his native

country he had hastened at once.

He checked his horse as he now past the memorable sign, that yet swung

before the door of Peter Dealtry; and there, under the shade of the

broad tree, now budding into all its tenderest verdure, a pedestrian

wayfarer sate enjoying the rest and coolness of his shelter. Our

horseman cast a look at the open door, across which, in the bustle

of housewifery, female forms now and then glanced and vanished, and

presently he saw Peter himself saunter forth to chat with the traveller

beneath his tree. And Peter Dealtry was the same as ever, only he seemed

perhaps shorter and thinner than of old, as if Time did not so much

break as wear mine host’s slender person gradually away.

The horseman gazed for a moment, but observing Peter return the gaze, he

turned aside his head, and putting his horse into a canter, soon passed

out of cognizance of the Spotted Dog.

He now came in sight of the neat white cottage of the old Corporal, and

there, leaning over the pale, a crutch under one arm, and his friendly

pipe in one corner of his shrewd mouth, was the Corporal himself.

Perched upon the railing in a semi-doze, the ears down, the eyes closed,

sat a large brown cat: poor Jacobina, it was not thyself! death spares

neither cat nor king; but thy virtues lived in thy grandchild; and thy

grandchild, (as age brings dotage,) was loved even more than thee by the

worthy Corporal. Long may thy race flourish, for at this day it is not

extinct. Nature rarely inflicts barrenness on the feline tribe; they are

essentially made for love, and love’s soft cares, and a cat’s lineage

outlives the lineage of kaisars.

At the sound of hoofs the Corporal turned his head, and he looked long

and wistfully at the horseman, as, relaxing his horse’s pace into a

walk, our traveller rode slowly on.

“‘Fore George,” muttered the Corporal, “a fine man--a very fine man;

‘bout my inches--augh!”

A smile, but a very faint smile, crossed the lip of the horseman, as he

gazed on the figure of the stalwart Corporal.

“He eyes me hard,” thought he; “yet he does not seem to remember me.

I must be greatly changed. ‘Tis fortunate, however, that I am not

recognised: fain, indeed, at this time, would I come and go unnoticed

and alone.”

The horseman fell into a reverie, which was broken by the murmur of the

sunny rivulet, fretting over each little obstacle it met, the happy and

spoiled child of Nature! That murmur rang on the horseman’s ear like

a voice from his boyhood, how familiar was it, how dear! No tone of

music--no haunting air, ever recalled so rushing a host of memories

and associations as that simple, restless, everlasting sound!

Everlasting!--all had changed,--the trees had sprung up or

decayed,--some cottages around were ruins,--some new and unfamiliar ones

supplied their place, and on the stranger himself--on all those whom the

sound recalled to his heart, Time had been, indeed, at work, but with

the same exulting bound and happy voice that little brook leaped along

its way. Ages hence, may the course be as glad, and the murmur as

full of mirth! They are blessed things, those remote and unchanging

streams!--they fill us with the same love as if they were living

creatures!--and in a green corner of the world there is one that, for my

part, I never see without forgetting myself to tears--tears that I would

not lose for a king’s ransom; tears that no other sight or sound could

call from their source; tears of what affection, what soft regret; tears

that leave me for days afterwards, a better and a kinder man!

The traveller, after a brief pause, continued his road; and now he came

full upon the old Manorhouse. The weeds were grown up in the garden, the

mossed paling was broken in many places, the house itself was shut up,

and the sun glanced on the deep-sunk casements without finding its way

into the desolate interior. High above the old hospitable gate hung

a board, announcing that the house was for sale, and referring the

curious, or the speculating, to the attorney of the neighbouring town.

The horseman sighed heavily, and muttered to himself; then turning up

the road that led to the back entrance, he came into the court-yard, and

leading his horse into an empty stable, he proceeded on foot through the

dismantled premises, pausing with every moment, and holding a sad and

ever-changing commune with himself. An old woman, a stranger to him, was

the sole inmate of the house, and imagining he came to buy, or at

least, examine, she conducted him through the house, pointing out its

advantages, and lamenting its dilapidated state. Our traveller scarcely

heard her,--but when he came to one room which he would not enter till

the last, (it was the little parlour in which the once happy family

had been wont to sit,) he sank down in the chair that had been Lester’s

honoured seat, and covering his face with his hands, did not move

or look up for several moments. The old woman gazed at him with

surprise.--“Perhaps, Sir, you knew the family, they were greatly

beloved.”

The traveller did not answer; but when he rose, he muttered to

himself,--“No, the experiment is made in vain! Never, never could I

live here again--it must be so--my forefathers’ house must pass into a

stranger’s hands.” With this reflection he hurried from the house, and

re-entering the garden, turned through a little gate that swung

half open on its shattered hinges, and led into the green and quiet

sanctuaries of the dead. The same touching character of deep and

undisturbed repose that hallows the country church-yard,--and that more

than most--yet brooded there as when, years ago, it woke his young mind

to reflection then unmingled with regret.

He passed over the rude mounds of earth that covered the deceased poor,

and paused at a tomb of higher, though but of simple pretensions; it was

not yet discoloured by the dews and seasons, and the short inscription

traced upon it was strikingly legible, in comparison with those around.

Rowland Lester,

Obiit 1760, aet. 64.

Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.

By that tomb the traveller remained in undisturbed contemplation for

some time, and when he turned, all the swarthy colour had died from his

cheek, his eyes were dim, and the wonted pride of a young man’s step and

a soldier’s bearing, was gone from his mien.

As he looked up, his eye caught afar, embedded among the soft verdure

of the spring, one lone and grey house, from whose chimney there rose

no smoke--sad, inhospitable, dismantled as that beside which he now

stood;--as if the curse which had fallen on the inmates of either

mansion, still clung to either roof. One hasty glance only, the

traveller gave to the solitary and distant abode,--and then started and

quickened his pace.

On re-entering the stables, the traveller found the Corporal examining

his horse from head to foot with great care and scrupulosity.

“Good hoofs too, humph!” quoth the Corporal, as he released the front

leg; and, turning round, saw, with some little confusion, the owner of

the steed he had been honouring with so minute a survey. “Oh,--augh!

looking at the beastie, Sir, lest it might have cast a shoe. Thought

your honour might want some intelligent person to shew you the premises,

if so be you have come to buy; nothing but an old ‘oman there; dare say

your honour does not like old ‘omen--augh!”

“The owner is not in these parts?” said the horseman.

“No, over seas, Sir; a fine young gentleman, but hasty; and--and--but

Lord bless me! sure--no, it can’t be--yes, now you turn--it is--it is

my young master!” So saying, the old Corporal, roused into affection,

hobbled up to the wanderer, and seized and kissed his hand. “Ah, Sir,

we shall be glad, indeed, to see you back after such doings. But’s all

forgotten now, and gone by--augh! Poor Miss Ellinor, how happy she’ll be

to see your honour. Ah! how she be changed, surely!”

“Changed; ay, I make no doubt! What! does she look in weak health?”

“No; as to that, your honour, she be winsome enough still,” quoth the

Corporal, smacking his lips; “I seed her the week afore last, when I

went over to--, for I suppose you knows as she lives there, all alone

like, in a small house, with a green rail afore it, and a brass knocker

on the door, at top of the town, with a fine view of the--hills in

front? Well, Sir, I seed her, and mighty handsome she looked, though a

little thinner than she was; but, for all that, she be greatly changed.”

“How! for the worse?”

“For the worse, indeed,” answered the Corporal, assuming an air of

melancholy and grave significance; “she be grown religious, Sir, think

of that--augh--bother--whaugh!”

“Is that all?” said Walter, relieved, and with a slight smile. “And she

lives alone?”

“Quite, poor young lady, as if she had made up her mind to be an old

maid; though I know as how she refused Squire Knyvett of the Grange

waiting for your honour’s return, mayhap!”

“Lead out the horse, Bunting; but stay, I am sorry to see you with a

crutch; what’s the cause? no accident, I trust?”

“Merely rheumatics--will attack the youngest of us; never been quite

myself since I went a travelling with your honour--augh!--without

going to Lunnon arter all. But I shall be stronger next year, I dare to

say--!”

“I hope you will, Bunting. And Miss Lester lives alone, you say?”

“Ay; and for all she be so religious, the poor about do bless her very

footsteps. She does a power of good; she gave me half-a-guinea, your

honour; an excellent young lady, so sensible like!”

“Thank you; I can tighten the girths!--so!--there, Bunting, there’s

something for old companion’s sake.”

“Thank your honour; you be too good, always was--baugh! But I hopes your

honour be a coming to live here now; ‘twill make things smile agin!”

“No, Bunting, I fear not,” said Walter, spurring through the gates of

the yard; “Good day.”

“Augh, then,” cried the Corporal, hobbling breathlessly after him,

“if so be as I shan’t see your honour agin, at which I am extramely

consarned, will your honour recollect your promise, touching the ‘tato

ground? The steward, Master Bailey, ‘od rot him, has clean forgot

it--augh!”

“The same old man, Bunting, eh? Well, make your mind easy, it shall be

done.”

“Lord bless your honour’s good heart; thankye; and--and”--laying

his hand on the bridle--“your honour did say, the bit cot should be

rent-free. You see, your honour,” quoth the Corporal, drawing up with

a grave smile, “I may marry some day or other, and have a large family;

and the rent won’t sit so easy then--augh!”

“Let go the rein, Bunting--and consider your house rent-free.”

“And, your honour--and--”

But Walter was already in a brisk trot; and the remaining petitions of

the Corporal died in empty air.

“A good day’s work, too,” muttered Jacob, hobbling homeward. “What a

green un ‘tis still! Never be a man of the world--augh!”

For two hours Walter did not relax the rapidity of his pace; and when he

did so at the descent of a steep hill, a small country town lay before

him, the sun glittering on its single spire, and lighting up the long,

clean, centre street, with the good old-fashioned garden stretching

behind each house, and detached cottages around, peeping forth here and

there from the blossoms and verdure of the young may. He rode into the

yard of the principal inn, and putting up his horse, inquired in a

tone that he persuaded himself was the tone of indifference, for Miss

Lester’s house.

“John,” said the landlady, (landlord there was none,) summoning a little

boy of about ten years old--“run on, and shew this gentleman the good

lady’s house: and--stay--his honour will excuse you a moment--just take

up the nosegay you cut for her this morning: she loves flowers. Ah! Sir,

an excellent young lady is Miss Lester,” continued the hostess, as the

boy ran back for the nosegay; “so charitable, so kind, so meek to all.

Adversity, they say, softens some characters; but she must always have

been good. And so religious, Sir, though so young! Well, God bless her!

and that every one must say. My boy John, Sir, he is not eleven yet,

come next August--a ‘cute boy, calls her the good lady: we now always

call her so here. Come, John, that’s right. You stay to dine here, Sir?

Shall I put down a chicken?”

At the farther extremity of the town stood Miss Lester’s dwelling. It

was the house in which her father had spent his last days; and there she

had continued to reside, when left by his death to a small competence,

which Walter, then abroad, had persuaded her, (for her pride was of the

right kind,) to suffer him, though but slightly, to increase. It was a

detached and small building, standing a little from the road; and Walter

paused for some moments at the garden-gate, and gazed round him before

he followed his young guide, who, tripping lightly up the gravel-walk to

the door, rang the bell, and inquired if Miss Lester was within?

Walter was left for some moments alone in a little parlour:--he required

those moments to recover himself from the past that rushed sweepingly

over him. And was it--yes, it was Ellinor that now stood before him!

Changed she was, indeed; the slight girl had budded into woman; changed

she was, indeed; the bound had for ever left that step, once so elastic

with hope; the vivacity of the quick, dark eye was soft and quiet; the

rich colour had given place to a hue fainter, though not less lovely.

But to repeat in verse what is poorly bodied forth in prose--

“And years had past, and thus they met again;

The wind had swept along the flower since then,

O’er her fair cheek a paler lustre spread,

As if the white rose triumphed o’er the red.

No more she walk’d exulting on the air;

Light though her step, there was a languour there;

No more--her spirit bursting from its bound,--

She stood, like Hebe, scattering smiles around.”

“Ellinor!” said Walter mournfully, “thank God! we meet at last.”

“That voice--that face--my cousin--my dear, dear Walter!”

All reserve--all consciousness fled in the delight of that moment; and

Ellinor leant her head upon his shoulder, and scarcely felt the kiss

that he pressed upon her lips.

“And so long absent!” said Ellinor, reproachfully.

“But did you not tell me that the blow that had fallen on our house had

stricken from you all thoughts of love--had divided us for ever? And

what, Ellinor, was England or home with out you?”

“Ah!” said Ellinor, recovering herself, and a deep paleness succeeding

to the warm and delighted flush that had been conjured to her cheek, “Do

not revive the past--I have sought for years--long, solitary, desolate

years, to escape from its dark recollections!”

“You speak wisely, dearest Ellinor; let us assist each other in doing

so. We are alone in the world--let us unite our lot. Never, through all

I have seen and felt,--in the starry nightwatch of camps--in the blaze

of courts--by the sunny groves of Italy--in the deep forests of the

Hartz--never have I forgotten you, my sweet and dear cousin. Your

image has linked itself indissolubly with all I conceived of home and

happiness, and a tranquil and peaceful future; and now I return, and

see you, and find you changed, but, oh, how lovely! Ah, let us not part

again! A consoler, a guide, a soother, father, brother, husband,--all

this my heart whispers I could be to you!”

Ellinor turned away her face, but her heart was very full. The solitary

years that had passed over her since they last met, rose up before her.

The only living image that had mingled through those years with the

dreams of the departed, was his who now knelt at her feet;--her sole

friend--her sole relative--her first--her last love! Of all the world,

he was the only one with whom she could recur to the past; on whom she

might repose her bruised, but still unconquered affections.

And Walter knew by that blush--that sigh--that tear, that he was

remembered--that he was beloved--that his cousin was his own at last!

“But before you end,” said my friend, to whom I shewed the above pages,

originally concluding my tale with the last sentence, “you must, it is a

comfortable and orthodox old fashion, tell us a little about the fate

of the other persons, to whom you have introduced us;--the wretch

Houseman?”--

“True; in the mysterious course of mortal affairs, the greater villain

had escaped, the more generous and redeemed one fallen. But though

Houseman died without violence, died in his bed, as honest men die, we

can scarcely believe that his life was not punishment enough. He lived

in strict seclusion--the seclusion of poverty, and maintained himself by

dressing flax. His life was several times attempted by the mob, for he

was an object of universal execration and horror; and even ten years

afterwards, when he died, his body was buried in secret at the dead of

night, for the hatred of the world survived him!”

“And the Corporal, did he marry in his old age?”

“History telleth of one Jacob Bunting, whose wife, several years younger

than himself, played him certain sorry pranks with the young curate

of the parish: the said Jacob, knowing nothing thereof, but furnishing

great objectation unto his neighbours, by boasting that he turned

an excellent penny by selling poultry to his reverence above market

prices,--‘For Bessy, my girl, I’m a man of the world--augh!’”

“Contented! a suitable fate for the old dog--But Peter Dealtry?”

“Of Peter Dealtry know we nothing more, save that we have seen at

Grassdale church-yard, a small tombstone inscribed to his memory, with

the following sacred poesy thereto appended,--

“‘We flourish, saith the holy text

One hour, and are cut down the next:

I was like grass but yesterday,

But Death has mowed me into hay.’”

“And his namesake, Sir Peter Grindlescrew Hales?”

“Went through a long life, honoured and respected, but met with domestic

misfortunes in old age. His eldest son married a maid servant, and his

youngest daughter--”

“Eloped with the groom?”

“By no means,--with a young spendthrift;--the very picture of what Sir

Peter was in his youth: they were both disinherited, and Sir Peter died

in the arms of his eight remaining children, seven of whom never forgave

his memory for not being the eighth, viz. chief heir.”

“And his cotemporary, John Courtland, the non-hypochondriac?”

“Died of sudden suffocation, as he was crossing Hounslow Heath.”

“But Lord--?”

“Lived to a great age; his last days, owing to growing infirmities, were

spent out of the world; every one pitied him,--it was the happiest time

of his life!”

“Dame Darkmans?”

“Was found dead in her bed, from over fatigue, it was supposed, in

making merry at the funeral of a young girl on the previous day.”

“Well!--hem,--and so Walter and his cousin were really married; and did

they never return to the old Manor-house?”

“No; the memory that is allied only to melancholy, grows sweet with

years, and hallows the spot which it haunts; not so the memory allied to

dread, terror, and something too of shame. Walter sold the property

with some pangs of natural regret; after his marriage with Ellinor he

returned abroad for some time, but finally settling in England, engaged

in active life, and left to his posterity a name they still honour; and

to his country, the memory of some services that will not lightly pass

away.”

But one dread and gloomy remembrance never forsook his mind, and

exercised the most powerful influence over the actions and motives of

his life. In every emergency, in every temptation, there rose to

his eyes the fate of him so gifted, so noble in much, so formed

for greatness in all things, blasted by one crime--self-sought, but

self-denied; a crime, the offspring of bewildered reasonings--all

the while speculating upon virtue. And that fate revealing the darker

secrets of our kind, in which the true science of morals in chiefly

found, taught him the twofold lesson, caution for himself, and charity

for others. He knew henceforth that even the criminal is not all evil;

the angel within us is not easily expelled; it survives sin, ay, and

many sins, and leaves us sometimes in amaze and marvel, at the good that

lingers round the heart even of the hardiest offender.

And Ellinor clung with more than revived affection to one with whose lot

she was now allied. Walter was her last tie upon earth, and in him she

learnt, day by day, more lavishly to treasure up her heart. Adversity

and trial had ennobled the character of both; and she who had so long

seen in her cousin all she could love, beheld now in her husband that

greater and more enduring spell--all that she could venerate and admire.

A certain religious fervour, in which, after the calamities of her

family, she had indulged, continued with her to the last; but, (softened

by human ties, and the reciprocation of earthly duties and affections,)

it was fortunately preserved either from the undue enthusiasm or the

undue austerity into which it would otherwise, in all likelihood, have

merged. What remained, however, uniting her most cheerful thoughts with

something serious, and the happiest moments of the present with the dim

and solemn forecast of the future, elevated her nature, not depressed,

and made itself visible rather in tender than in sombre, hues. And it

was sweet when the thought of Madeline and her father came across her,

to recur at once for consolation to that Heaven in which she believed

their tears were dried, and their past sorrows but a forgotten dream!

There is, indeed, a time of life when these reflections make our chief,

though a melancholy, pleasure. As we grow older, and sometimes a

hope, sometimes a friend, is shivered from our path, the thought of an

immortality will press itself forcibly upon us! and there, by little

and little, as the ant piles grain after grain, the garners of a future

sustenance, we learn to carry our hopes, and harvest, as it were, our

wishes.

Our cousins then were happy. Happy, for they loved one another entirely;

and on those who do so love, I sometimes think, that, barring physical

pain and extreme poverty, the ills of life fall with but idle malice.

Yes, they were happy in spite of the past, and in defiance of the

future.

“I am satisfied then,” said my friend,--“and your tale is fairly done!”

And now, Reader, farewell! If, sometimes as thou hast gone with me

to this our parting spot, thou hast suffered thy companion to win the

mastery over thine interest, to flash now on thy convictions, to touch

now thy heart, to guide thy hope, to excite thy anxiety, to gain even

almost to the sources of thy tears--then is there a tie between thee and

me which cannot readily be broken! And when thou hearest the malice that

wrongs affect the candour which should judge, thou wilt be surprised to

feel how unconsciously He who has, even in a tale, once wound himself

around those feelings not daily excited, can find in thy sympathies the

defence, or, in thy charity the indulgence,--of a friend!

End of Project Gutenberg’s Eugene Aram, Complete, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton