CHAPTER II.

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

VOL. XXXV. December, 1849. No. 6.

Table of Contents

Fiction, Literature and Other Articles

The Conscript

Jasper St. Aubyn

Three Pictures: Sunrise—Noonday—Night

Major Anspach

Self-Devotion

A Case of Gold Fever

My First Love

The Death of Cleopatra

The Two Cousins: A Mas-Sa-Sanga Legend Of Western

Canada

Unfading Flowers

Wild-Birds of America

Editor’s Table

Review of New Books

Poetry, Music, and Fashion

To My Steed

Summer’s Night

The Death of the Year

The Cottage

The Misanthrope

Alice Vernon

Song. On the Wide World I Am Sailing.

The Broken Reed

The Old Wooden Church on the Green

The Fairies’ Song

Pleasant Words

Dirge. On the Death of a Young Lady.

Passing Away

The Undivided Heart

Le Follet

My Life is Like the Summer’s Rose

Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.

* * * * *

[Illustration: THE DEPARTURE.]

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

VOL. XXXV. PHILADELPHIA, December, 1849. NO. 6.

* * * * *

THE CONSCRIPT;

OR THE FOUNDATION OF MORALS.

BY JOSEPH R. CHANDLER.

[SEE ENGRAVING.]

The family of the Widow Berien had risen from their evening devotions,

and were preparing to hasten to bed that they might rest from the toils

of the day past, and to prepare for the fatigues of that which was to

come. One by one they had taken leave of the mistress of the house, and

had withdrawn, and Louise advanced to give her mother the evening kiss

and receive the evening benediction—when the mother pointed to a chair

and requested her daughter to sit down. The movements of the girl

evinced an understanding of the object of her mother, and her

countenance showed that she had drawn herself up to sustain the rebuke

which had been prepared for her, for when both were seated Louise turned

her face to her mother to discover, if possible, by the appearance of

severity there, how the storm was to commence.

“You have seen Adolph again, to-day,” said Madam Berien, in a mild tone,

and with a glance which conveyed nothing like anger.

“I met him returning from the field.”

“And what did he say?”

“It is scarcely necessary for me to repeat what he said or what I

replied—it was probably not much different from what others in similar

circumstances say. Not greatly different from what passed between you

and my father at our ages, and in our situation.”

“And that, Louise, shows me that you still persist in the resolution to

marry Adolph.”

“I have changed neither my inclinations nor my wishes so far as I may

resolve on such matters.”

“And my opinions are to go for nothing?”

“Can you say that, dear mother? Can you say that your opinion, your

command, and your wishes go for nothing, when for two years I have

postponed our union solely in deference to your _wishes_, and here renew

my promise, that while I will marry no one but Adolph, in my present

state of feeling, I will assuredly not marry him until you shall have

given your consent, or at least, withdrawn your opposition.”

“My consent will not easily be obtained under existing circumstances. I

do not object to the condition, appearance, or general conduct—”

“On what then, dear mother, have you founded your hostility to Adolph?”

“On nothing. I have no hostility to Adolph—I wish him well—I love him

as the son of my cousin, on his father’s side, and his mother was the

friend and companion of my childhood, and both of them were my long

continued neighbors—but—”

“But what, mother? Tell me, is there any secret reason for your dislike

to the connection with the family? Has he or have his parents committed

crimes which would bring disgrace upon us if known? Tell me; I would not

do aught that might be construed into discredit; nor would I have my

happiness destroyed by vague insinuations—speak to me, mother, plainly.

I can bear the truth. I have too much of your own character to shrink

from what I ought to know or ought to do, and I have also too much of

your firmness to relinquish a settled object on account of imaginary or

only great difficulties. I can bear disappointment if it is in the way

of duty, or I can meet and conquer obstacles. Let me know on what ground

I stand. If Adolph has committed aught against the laws, or if there is

aught against his condition which should operate with the most delicate

and fastidious, I can and will relinquish all association with him. I

know how necessary his presence is to my happiness, but I know also how

cherished is the good name of the family.”

“Louise, you know how amid all the tumults of the revolutions with which

the country has been visited; revolutions that shook the throne and

altar—revolutions that in attempting to purify the political condition

of the nation destroyed its religion; you know, how amid all these

tumults and disorganizations, when religion had been driven by the sword

from her temples, and by ridicule from our dwellings, I have sought to

cherish her in our domestic circle. Morning and evening have I gathered

you around our family altar, and sought to keep alive in you the faith

which has been the salvation of man, and which must be the guardian of

woman’s position and woman’s purity.”

“I know, dear mother,” said Louise, as she recalled all the cares and

labor which had been used to keep her feet in the ways of truth. “I

know, dear mother, how great has been your devotion; how constant your

vigilance in our behalf, and how your service has been that of the

priest at well as the mother.”

“And thus, my dear child, while the wickedness and folly of our people

have done more against religion than heresy itself would attempt, while

the services of the altar have been performed to such a meagre audience,

that the voice of the priest has been echoed along the vacant aisles of

the church, and no impressions of religion on the Sabbath have

sanctified a thought on the other days of the week; nay, when as in some

of the neighboring cities and villages, the priest himself has poured

ridicule on his office, and made the mysteries of religion a theme for

mirth and laughter, till children have done mockery to their God and his

service, by mimicking in their plays the solemnities of the sanctuary,

and have been encouraged and rewarded by the laughter and applause of

men and women; have I not sought to save you from the contamination, and

to keep alive in your heart the love of God and a conformity to the will

of his Church?”

“You have, you have, dear mother, and I sometimes have thought when I

have kneeled with you in morning and evening devotion, that you had

gathered up the fragments of the consecrated yet broken altar, to erect

a place of sacrifice in your own heart, and I have loved religion more

that you have pleaded its cause, strengthened its sentiment in my bosom,

and stood forward for all the duties and services which may be performed

by one of our sex. And I know, dear mother, that the will for the

sacraments, the pure intentions which you excite are better, more

profitable to us than the sacraments themselves without such intentions.

But why, dear mother, do you now with such solemnity recall these

things; why, when alluding to my relations with Adolph, do you refer to

your religious zeal and effective exertions? Poor as have been the

fruits from your cultivation of my religious sentiments, have I ever

denied or derided what you taught? has my conduct ever done injustice to

the lessons of love and purity you have imparted? or have I ever said

aught that intimated a doubt of, or disrelish for, the doctrine and

service of our holy church? I ask not in anger; I ask not, indeed, in

unsanctified confidence, but I ask in sincerity—if I have offended

against God and the church, let me know my errors; nay, while sensible

of my want of zeal and efforts toward perfection, I avow myself ready

and willing to improve by any advice or corrective which you may

impart.”

“I have not, my dear child, had reason to doubt of the exactness and

purity of your faith—no observation which I have been able to make, and

I have carefully watched—oh! how vigilant must a widowed mother be over

the purity of faith and conduct of her orphan daughter—I have, I repeat

to you, found nothing in your faith to reprove, nothing in your religion

and stated exercises unworthy of a Christian. But—”

“But, mother—but—what can you mean? You talk to me earnestly of my

association with, and my affection for Adolph—you allude to my faith

and my conduct, and say that you find nothing in my faith to censure,

and nothing in my _religious_ exercises unworthy a Christian, but you

omit to approve of my _conduct_. You avoid reference to that, unless you

were approaching it with the terrible—‘But.’”

“I was approaching it—and—”

“Does my mother mean that there is aught in my conduct, my conduct with

Adolph, because it is evident that the remarks all tend

thitherward—does my mother suspect impropriety of conduct in

me—mother, mother, for Heaven’s sake, spare me that imputation. For me

and my thoughts, my inmost thoughts, your chamber has been as much the

seat of the confessional as the place of the altar, and not a feeling of

my heart, not an impulse of passion, not a motive or a wish has been

withheld from you that would have been uttered in explanation or

confession to the priest. I know there is wrong, dear mother, in the

world. I am human, with human passions and human weaknesses, but not a

thought of impurity has ever been uttered to me by Adolph, or been

suggested by our relations with each other. Blessed queen of purity! in

this thing I am innocent, in word and thought. Dear mother, let me not

suffer—let not Adolph suffer in your estimation upon such a suspicion,

he is above such weakness and wickedness, and I should need no further

monition from Heaven to avoid his society, than the discovery that his

words, nay, that our meeting suggested thoughts unsanctioned by my

religion, unworthy of your approval.”

Louise paused in her vehement appeal. She had gone to the very verge of

propriety in her asseverations, and she saw nothing in her mother’s

countenance which indicated any change of sentiment. The girl felt for a

moment indignant. The language of her mother implied a charge of the

most painful character, and though it might not reach to the extent

which, at first, she seemed to suppose, yet she felt that maidenly

propriety is scarcely less outraged by an imputation of habitual

association with the dangerous and the impure, than by a charge of crime

committed—and she started at the bare hint of the wrong, and was stung

to the soul when her vehement disclaimer seemed to work no change in the

mind of her accusing mother.

The warmth of Louise’s feelings betrayed no disrespect to her mother,

and perhaps the good woman felt pleased at the sensitiveness of her

daughter on such a subject. Still there was no removal of the objection

which was felt against Adolph, and she replied:

“Your justification of your conduct, and your sensitiveness on the

subject to which you supposed I referred, show how important you and all

deem the fame of a young woman; how essential to her is not only a pure

mind, but an unsuspected character; and that to which I have referred is

so intimately connected with what you suspect, that I shall take your

virtuous indignation at what you imagined my allusion, as almost as

applicable to my meaning as to your suspicions.”

“What is it you mean, mother?”

“I mean, that with all the kindness of Adolph’s manners—with all the

respect he has shown for me, and his affection to you, he is tainted

with the infidelity of the times, and not merely neglects the offices of

the church, but ridicules the Christian religion.”

“Never, mother, never; depend on it, some one has slandered Adolph to

you.”

“Does Adolph frequent, I will not say the _sacraments_ of his church,

but the church itself?”

“I see him frequently there.”

“You see him there, my daughter, when he expects you are ready to

return—but never does he assist in the services of the church?”

“I am not able to assert how often he attends the church, mother; but I

think as frequently as most of the young men of this department, at

least, of our village.”

“That may be, my child, but it is of the general prevalence of

irreligion in which it seems that Adolph shares, that I complain—and

you know, my daughter, that following your father’s advice, on his

death-bed, I have said in the language of the King of Israel, ‘as for me

and my house, we will serve the Lord.’”

“And God forbid, my dear mother, that I should hinder the fulfillment of

your pious resolution, or be an exception in your religious family.”

“And yet you will be, if you yoke yourself unequally with one who, if

not a heretic, is only not _that_ from his indifference to any

religion.”

“I will not, of course, assume that yoke without your approval.”

“That is in a spirit of obedience; but, my daughter, it would be better

if instead of limiting yourself not to marry any one without my

approval, you would consent to advise with me as to some proper person

among your acquaintance whom you _would_ marry.”

“My dear mother, the only equality in such a yoke of convenience would

be the perfect indifference with which each would regard the other.”

Louise was not a little shocked at the remarks made by her mother. She

loved Adolph, and she knew well enough that he did not frequent the

church, though she had never heard him ridicule religion, his respect

for her and her religious habits would have prevented that outrage. But

she could not shut her eyes to the fact that Adolph lived _out_ of the

influences of her church, and she knew well that her mother would never

consent to her union with such a man. She mingled the subject in her

prayers before she sought her bed, and gave the whole night to the

anxiety which it caused.

Next day Louise opened her heart to Adolph, by expressing her fears that

he had neglected the duties of his religion.

Adolph sought to evade the matter by some playful remarks, but he

discovered that Louise was more than usually in earnest.

“Your mother is in this,” said he.

“She is—and she adds, that I shall never marry a man who neglects the

requirements of religion.”

“Why, is she going to make a priest of me?”

“I hope not,” said Louise; “for in that case we should be further from

our marriage than we now are.”

“What does she require?”

“She requires that you forbear, in the first place, any remarks against

religion; and secondly, that you frequent the church, at least.”

“I will do that to please her and you, at any rate,” said he.

“You will do it from a higher motive, I hope,” said she.

The result of the conference between Louise and Adolph was the promise

on his part to be constant at church on all holydays, and to forbear any

remarks which could be construed into a disrespect for religion and its

ministers.

Louise retired gratified at what she had gained, but not without some

sense of the unworthiness of the motives of her lover, and with many

doubts whether she ought to depend on such a shallow change.

Adolph loved Louise—he promised readily—but he smiled in his heart at

her seeming confidence. The truth was Adolph _had_ ridiculed religion;

not so much from any doubts of its truth, or any conclusions to which he

had been led by argument, as by the necessity of improper association,

the power of that state of mind that builds up skepticism as a sort of

retreat from the stings of conscience. The moral principal of Adolph had

suffered much from his associations.

It was a source of much gratification to Louise that Adolph kept his

word—and Madam Berien could not deny that he was punctual in his

attendance at the church, if not exceedingly edifying in his deportment.

This brought Adolph more within the influence of Madam Berien’s family,

and that influence could not fail of being beneficial; he certainly was

saved from much wrong if he was not influenced to do a great deal of

what was right.

Such however was the force of example, that Adolph’s habit of going to

church seemed to be growing into a principle. And influenced by the

delicate persuasion of Louise he even commenced a preparation for the

sacraments. The progress in the work of piety was most gratifying to his

betrothed, and even received some applause from her mother. The good

woman was at length persuaded to give her consent to the union of her

daughter with him, and the marriage was to take place immediately after

Easter.

We need not speak of the happiness, and the bustle which such a consent

produced in the family. With Louise it was a calm joy. It was to be the

fulfillment of her heart’s dearest wish. She had as she believed

prepared herself for it by humble prayer and careful watching, and she

had aided in fitting her lover to be her husband, by a gentle

forbearance with his peculiarities, and delicate suggestions as it

regarded his errors. He was a better man, more worthy of being the

son-in-law of her mother.

Adolph felt that he had enough in Louise to make him forget the follies

of his previous life, and though he had not the most entire confidence

in himself, yet he knew that with her vigilance and her delicacy he

should be in little danger of being less worthy of her than he then was.

It is due to truth to say, that while Louise put confidence in the

_resolution_ of her lover, she did not feel that he was out of danger

when out of her influence—danger not yet of open vice and profligacy,

but of a neglect of religious duties and a resumption of those habits

which had so nearly made shipwreck of him before. But he was not to be

out of her influence—he was not to be removed from beneath her watchful

eye. The marriage which was to take place in a few weeks would make him

an inmate of her mother’s house, where, indeed, already the sweetness of

his disposition and his manly bearing had made him a favorite. So that

Madam Berien, while she thanked God for the earnestness with which she

had dealt with her daughter and his regard, confessed that his conduct

now was irreproachable, and that even the religious sentiment seemed to

be fully re-established in him.

It was near the close of a day early in April, that the family of Madam

Berien was gathered around a table which seemed supplied with almost

every thing but eatables. It was the finishing up of the

wedding-dresses, and they had been about so long that there was no more

pretence at concealing their uses, or hesitancy in referring to the

ceremony and the time when they were to be used.

Madam Berien had just finished, for the twentieth time, a detail of the

arrangements, when the curé arrived. He was always a welcome visiter at

the house. His labors were lightened by the beautiful example of the

family, and his wants in some measure supplied by their charitable

piety. He was at home, for he felt that he might indulge there in any

little sallies of wit and pleasantry, without the danger of having his

language quoted to sustain irreverence; and he could speak of religion

and its offices, with a certainty that those with whom he conversed

sympathized with all his feelings.

In the midst of the appropriate merriment, in which real happiness

rather than boisterous mirth seemed to predominate, a knocking at the

door announced the approach of a stranger. He was ushered into the

humble apartment, and presented the appearance of a veteran soldier of

some consideration in the service.

“I have been directed,” said the military visiter, “by persons in the

village, to call at this house for citizen Adolph Lefevre. As my

business is of an important kind, madam will, I hope, excuse my

intrusion upon her domestic privacy.”

Adolph rose, and announced himself as the person inquired for.

“In that case,” said the visiter, “I have reason to be gratified with my

call; the nation cannot fail to derive service from so finely

proportioned a soldier. I bear, sir, to you a notice that you have been

honored with a call to be mustered immediately into the service—as a

conscript.”

“A conscript! I am, sir, a conscript for 18—, but not of the present,

nor even of the next year.”

“I am aware, citizen conscript,” said the military gentleman, growing

more and more civil as he meant to be more and more imperative, “I am

aware of the year of your conscription, but the necessities of the grand

army have compelled the emperor to anticipate a year or two; and you,

who would otherwise have been no candidate for the cross of the legion

of honor for two years at least, are now presented with the opportunity,

which, of course, every Frenchman desires, of serving your country,

without any such delay.”

The officer presented Adolph with a paper which contained the order for

his departure, fixed the day, and named the place of rendezvous; and

then, with military grace, took leave of the family.

It is not possible to describe the misery which this order had brought

into the family. Six months before, Adolph would have thought less of

the dangers of the camp, and Madam Berien would have felt relieved by

his departure; now, the thought of separation was terrible. The

certainty seemed for a time to have paralyzed the family. The marriage

was, of course, to be postponed.

“I could,” said Louise, to the curé, “I could have sustained the blow

better, had I perfect confidence in the strength of Adolph’s power of

resistance. It is not my disappointment that makes me weep; if I know my

heart, dear father, it is the apprehension for Adolph’s moral safety. He

must be exposed to all the debasing influences of a great army, and to

all the dangers of association with men who make a mockery of all that

is holy in religion, and all that is decent in morals; and he must stand

the taunts and jibes of some of those from whom he has recently been

attracted. He will fall, assuredly.”

“Let us pray for his endurance of the trial,” said the curé.

“Let us find some one,” said Louise, “that will assist to sustain his

resolution of good, that will watch over him, and admonish him of his

dangers.”

“Who shall do that,” said Father Rudolph, “but who e’er it may be, he

turneth a sinner from his ways, and hideth a multitude of sins. It is a

blessed office.”

“Father,” said Madam Berien, “are there now no chaplains in the army?”

“Alas, my child!” said the venerable curé, “war is not carried on now

with that formality and parade which once distinguished it. The rapid

movements of the troops give but little chance for religious

impressions, and the morals of a camp seem to preclude the hope of any

demand for clerical aid.”

“How few of our army escape death or incurable wounds!” said madam.

“Alas!” said Louise, “it is the camp more than the field that I dread;

death or wounds are less injurious than the decayed morals.”

There was trouble in the family of Madam Berien, trouble in the heart of

Adolph. He was too young, too much a Frenchman of the time, to express

an open regret at joining the army, and so he mourned his separation

from Louise, and the disappointment of his marriage hopes, secretly. He

dreaded the dangers of the association. He had really improved; he had

begun to love virtue as he loved Louise; and he feared the consequence

of the want of her influence in the cause of his improvement.

The night before the departure of the few conscripts which were to leave

the village, was spent by Adolph at Madam Berien’s; the curé was present

most of the time.

In the morning the busy movement in the place denoted that all were

ready.

Louise had only one word of farewell, one kiss to give, and her part was

accomplished—and her heart sunk within her as she placed upon Adolph’s

neck a little medal, which she carefully hid beneath his dress.

The ferry-boat that crosses the river some distance above the village,

received the conscripts, and many of their friends, who would accompany

them to the rendezvous beyond the river.

The neat uniform of the regiment sat well upon Adolph’s manly form; and

as he stood on the boat and took his parting glass with one of the

principal dignitaries of the village, he looked as if he deserved golden

instead of worsted epaulets. One friend only accompanied the youth—it

was his faithful dog, Ponto, who shared in

THE CONSCRIPT’S DEPARTURE.

The regiment was mustered—it joined others—and in a few days was on

its march to be united with an attachment of the grand army.

The army of the French, in those days to which we refer, was not of a

kind to be overlooked, whereever it encamped, or whithersoever it

marched; but just in proportion to the obtrusiveness of the whole was

the indistinctness of its parts; and though each man in the ranks was

made to feel something of personal identity, yet few out of the ranks

looked upon the marshaled host as any thing less than one vast machine

which a master-mind had formed, and a master-hand was directing; and to

have supposed that a single soldier could have found distinction, or

acquired note, unless by some excessive crime, or excessive courage,

would be like identifying a drop in the ocean, or expecting some

particle of matter to assert and confirm its indisputable right to

distinction.

All heard of the progress and the victories of the army, but none knew

exactly who were included in that little sentence, “one thousand killed

and wounded;” and the heart of Louise sunk within her as occasional

bulletins of battles reached the village, with statements of daring

courage, of admirable conduct, and of numerous deaths. Letters were then

not common from the army, at least from private soldiers.

Time passed, and Louise obtained permission of her mother to visit a

relative at a distance; it was deemed a good opportunity to repair her

health and spirits by a change of scenery and of company; and so she

left her mother with more than usual evidence of grief at departure, for

Louise, though affectionate, was not timid, and she rarely anticipated

danger in any undertaking of her own; and such was her self-possession,

that she never suffered from any of those incidents of travel which so

often disturb the nerves of more delicate persons.

A battle had been fought, and a German city yielded to the arms of the

French. The wounded were disposed of in the hospitals, churches, and

hotels of the conquered city.

Adolph lay stretched out upon a well prepared bed in a small chamber,

quite apart from some of his wounded brethren. A musket-ball had passed

through his body, escaping the vital parts, but producing a wound which

it was feared would, from the lack of regular attendants, and the warmth

of the weather, prove mortal. He had suffered much, and his system was

not in a condition to aid nature; still he rather improved. One morning,

while he lay ruminating on the change in his affairs, he saw the surgeon

of the regiment entering the room, followed by a young, slightly-built

person, who seemed to have very little of the military in his movements

or his dress; his face, for a moment, sent back the thoughts of Adolph

to the home of his boyhood and youth; he started, as if some sudden pain

had seized him, but looking again, he heard the name of the stranger

announced. It was Klemm; he was the secretary to the general commanding

the city.

“I have come,” said Klemm, sitting down beside the bed of Adolph, “to

assist in taking care of some of our wounded.”

“Of _our_ wounded,” said Adolph.

“Yes, _our_ wounded; for, though my pronunciation is rather German than

French, I am a native and a citizen of France, educated in Germany, and

bearing in my speech pretty strong proofs of my master’s powers of

instruction, and my own of imitation. I have left some of the volunteer

nurses with others, and have come to do my best by you. I have some

acquaintance with the art. Is this your dog?”

“Yes, this is Ponto the second; his predecessor, whom I brought from the

village with me, perished in the same action in which his master

received his present wound; and long used to the company of a faithful

dog, I procured this, the nearest resemblance to old Ponto that I could

find, and have christened him after his predecessor.”

“And transferred your affections from the old to the new companion?”

“Not entirely yet, but nearly, I think; he is likely to inherit the love

as well as the name of the deceased.”

“Love is a quality easily transferred, then?” said Klemm.

“Why, yes; we soldiers, who are quartered in favorable positions, do

certainly find it a convertible commodity.”

“I will dress your wound,” said Klemm.

When the office had been performed, and Adolph was settled quietly down

upon his well beaten pillow, Klemm said, “It is now time for me to

repair to my duties at head-quarters, and you would better compose

yourself to sleep. Do you need the assistance of a chaplain as well as a

nurse?”

“To confess the truth,” said Adolph, “I believe I could about as well

dress my wound myself, as to go over some of those troublesome prayers

with which my boyhood was unutterably bored. I think, however, that a

little sleep would be about as refreshing as prayers.”

Just as Klemm was withdrawing, Adolph called to him.

“Do I understand that you are to act as assistant surgeon or nurse in

this building?”

“Yes.”

“Then I think I shall recover, for I have felt no dressing like this

since I was shot; and probably in a few weeks we may have a frolic

together, for I perceived as they brought me hither that the place is

not wholly destitute of females.”

Considerable familiarity grew up between the wounded man and his nurse.

The exceeding delicacy of the attentions of Klemm, his soothing care,

his skillful application of all the prescriptions of the surgeon,

created in Adolph a spirit of gratitude which then found expression in

words, but which he hoped would have other exponents at a future time.

“I see you wear a token,” said Klemm, as he took hold of the medal which

had been placed round the neck of the soldier. “I should think that one

who wore this would not fail in his daily devotions. Or is this a love

token?”

“Well, rather more of love than religion, I imagine.”

“Oh, then your heart has suffered as much as your body?”

“Why that might be the token of another’s love for me, rather than of

mine for her.”

“That is true, indeed; the medal itself might have been bestowed as a

token of love for you; but surely, if worn by you, it was worn as a

token of love for another.”

“Why, to say the truth, it has been worn without much thought any way;

but if you will look at it, you will see that it has saved my life by

breaking the force of a ball.”

“It has certainly suffered considerably,” said Klemm, as he gazed at the

crushed medal.

“It is strange,” said Klemm, some days afterward, when dressing the

wounds of Adolph, “that you should wear a religious medal on your neck,

and appear to be inattentive to services for which such things are worn,

and even indifferent to the motives for which this particular one was

given.”

“Do you know the motive?” said Adolph.

“You told me some days since, that it was rather a token of love than

religion.”

“In which I think it proper to say I was wrong.”

“You awaken in me a curiosity by your remarks which I certainly have no

right to expect will be gratified.”

Adolph, whose fault of character it was to yield to immediate

influences, professed himself willing to explain, desiring it to be

understood, however, that the names he should use with regard to the

absent, should be fictitious. “My own follies are justly visited on me,

but I have no right to connect respectable names with mine in this

situation.”

Adolph, changing the name of the village and that of Madam Berien’s

family, related to Klemm the circumstances of his life—his love for

Louise, his irreligious habits, his restoration to propriety, his call

to the army, and added that the evil associations of the camp had

obliterated not only the sense of respect which he had begun to feel for

religion, but it had really led him back to skepticism; and his life in

the army had of late been in accordance with his want of belief.

“Of course,” said Klemm, “you retain your affection for things and

persons of this world, notwithstanding your loss of belief in the

doctrines that relate to that which is to come?”

“Not entirely.”

“Have you ceased to love Louise—do you love another?”

“Neither; but I confess to you that as I released myself from the

trammels which the religious opinions of Louise placed upon my mind and

conduct, I felt less respect, and consequently less love for her.”

“Does your respect and love go together?”

“My love for her was almost entirely dependent on respect. She was my

superior in education, my teacher in religion.”

“And so she put on airs, did she—played the school-mistress?”

“I should certainly do injustice to her were I to admit the force of

your query. She led me back into religious observances less by any thing

masculine in her character than by the evident disinterestedness of her

conduct, and the conviction that however little I might respect the

requirements of religion, I certainly found the results of the outward

observances of the rules the best for myself.”

“Do you still love Louise?”

“Can I love her, and live as I have lived for these last six months? I

ask seriously.”

“I will answer _that_ when I can ascertain how intimately your

self-respect is connected with that respect which you say was the fount

of your love for Louise.”

“It is certain that for some months after I entered the army, my

resolutions for good were well maintained, and I thought that my

affections for Louise were augmented by absence. But I fell into the

habits of those with whom I associated, and I soon found that they

shared the opinions which my earlier companions professed; and I confess

to you that my old skepticism returned, and though my sufferings here

have certainly prevented me from the indulgence of dissipation into

which I had fallen, yet I do not find that my religious belief has

returned with my change of conduct.”

“Probably not, your change of conduct, as you call it, is only the

necessity of your position, and you have perhaps sinned as heartily

here, within sight of death, as when you were in the full flush of

health.”

“And, by the way, Mr. Klemm, that is the unkindest remark you have made

to me yet, and smacking the least of German accent of any sentence you

have uttered. How much your voice resembles Louise’s!”

“Do I resemble her much in other respects?”

“You are not as tall, and you are darker; beside, your shock of hair

resembles her splendid head about as much as your guttural German does

her pure French.”

“Adolph,” said Klemm, in accents far more _Germanic_ than those recently

used, “would you seek to renew your relations with Louise if you were

now permitted to return?”

“The only weakness which I ever knew in Louise was her love for me, and

that, I have occasion to know, would not allow her to marry me with my

present vices.”

“Could you not conform to the customs of her family without a change of

opinion?”

“Would you advise me to do it?”

“Would you do it?”

“Klemm, you have seen too much of my character for me to affect to

conceal much from you. I repeat it, I do not find myself disposed to any

sanctimonious display of piety; I cannot and will not submit myself to

the mortifying sacraments of the church. But if I could play the

hypocrite, I would not deceive Louise if I could; and I suppose it is an

evidence of my want of love for her now, that I will not do this to

secure her as my wife. What say you?”

“I will answer you to-morrow,” said Klemm, as he hastily left the room.

“All gone! all impressions of piety erased, all holy resolutions

abandoned, all faith shipwrecked, all progress given up, all religion

relinquished; yet what is that last sentiment he utters, ‘I would not

deceive her even to make her my wife.’ Surely while the sentiments of

religion are clouded, while their effect is denied, they are lying deep

in the heart, buried, but not lost—silent, unseen, but surely not

dead.”

Adolph was recovering slowly, and his nurse sought to comfort him with

the assurance that he would soon be allowed to return home upon a

furlough.

“Why should I desire to return home,” said Adolph, “a wreck of what I

have been—a wreck in mind and body, my health ruined and my faith

destroyed? I take back nothing which caused my departure to be

regretted.”

“You have heard, then, that Louise, apprised of your situation, has

resolved to discard you?”

“No, I have not heard it, but I feel it; and, moreover, I cannot and

will not impose upon her faith in me.”

“I think if you could resolve to resume your religious duties there,

notwithstanding all that has passed here, though she should know it all,

she would receive you. But shall I invite a priest into your room?”

“To have me laughed at by the whole regiment. I have little to confess

that I have not told you—nothing, indeed, that you may not fully

understand by what I have said.”

“But I have no functions to grant absolution, whatever you may confess.”

“Has any one more than you have? Is not the whole system one of

priestcraft? What do priests know more than I do, and for what are they

seeking to bring me under their care, unless to augment their power, and

increase their comforts?”

“Perhaps you have an inclination to listen to teachers of another creed?

They are in the next town.”

“Oh no, they are all alike in one thing, however they may differ in

other matters, to rule others and help themselves.”

“Was Father Rudolph of that class?”

“No, apparently not—but how do _you_ know Father Rudolph? Or how did

you know that I was acquainted with him?”

Klemm bit his lip—“It is not difficult to ascertain who have been your

friends, as in your delirium you were very free with their names.”

“Did I repeat _her_ name.”

“Only as Louise. But you are apparently set against the clergy.”

“Yes.”

“Have you thought really of their influence on your life? Have you

considered that much of all that you call morals is indeed the effect of

their religious teaching?”

“That is _religion_ not the _priest_.”

“I speak for the _instrument_, I confess; but a clergyman is to religion

what an army is to a _war_—and you might as well think of conducting a

national contest without officer and soldier, as a moral, religious

contest without a clergy. And I doubt whether you have any idea of

religion, unless it be a sort of restraint upon certain actions and

passions. You mean morals when you say religion, and as you have seen

morals exist where there was no profession of religion or observance of

prescribed devotion, you think that such a morality is an independent

system. Let me correct that idea. I agree that we find morals without

religion, but I do not agree that morals would exist without it, and

thousands of our young officers (I heard some of them last evening,)

assert with philosophic gravity, that they are moral (they mean good)

without religion. How vain—how short-sighted. They overlook the great

fact that their morals are good habits founded on the religious

teachings and practice of their mothers or priests, and that all the

credit which they claim for their philosophy is due to Christianity, and

that less settled in habits, or less reflective than they now are, they

would fall with the first temptation that presented. What do you say to

that Adolph?”

“I say nothing now—proceed.”

“I will proceed to make a personal application. To whom was the virtue

of your childhood and youth due? Certainly to your virtuous, religious

mother.”

“Did you know my mother?”

“What a question!”

“If not, how did you know that she was religious?”

“Because you said that in your childhood you were religious and had a

mother. You gave me a knowledge of the cause when you stated the

effect.”

“But my mother was neither a _priest_ nor a _religeuse_.”

“No, but she frequented the sacrament of the church, and attended to the

instruction of a priest, and thus became _religious_. But you admit that

falling into bad company your morals became, if not depraved, at least

vitiated, and that you began to despise religion when you neglected

morals.”

“But when I began to reform, certainly I did not owe my change of

purpose to a priest, and I only intended the reformation in my morals.”

“To whom then were you indebted for moral improvement?”

“To Louise.”

“And did not Louise owe her instruction to the same priest whom you had

neglected? Nay, is it not probable that she applied to Father Rudolph

for advice in the very matter of your reformation, and that he

prescribed the condition on which she was to indulge her affections and

encourage yours?”

“I cannot say that it was not so. But Louise was pretty independent in

her manners, and would scarcely have asked the priest’s advice with

regard to a lover.”

“Do you know any thing temporal of greater consequence than matrimonial

engagements, or any relation more likely to have effect upon what you

seem to think the priest has a legitimate right to meddle with?”

“I do not believe the priest interfered.”

“I know he did.”

“You _know_?”

“It is most natural that he should have done it. And now permit me to

suggest still further, that while you owe the lessons which Louise gave

you to the good father, you owe the reformation which you commenced to

the remains of religious instruction in your heart. Undoubtedly it was

your love to Louise that gave her influence over you, but it was

religion that made her efforts successful.”

“You confuse me—I do not assent, but I cannot now contend.”

“I will leave you—leave you with this single remark, that not only did

you owe your former reformation to religion, but there is religion now

dealing with your heart, and your affection for Louise will return with

the ready admission of religious instruction and the performance of

religious duties.”

“I think I love her now as well as ever.”

“Then I shall hear more to-morrow of your experience.”

The night was one of nervous irritability, and poor Adolph presented to

the surgeon the next morning, one of the worst cases of relapse in the

hospital, and Klemm was early summoned to the room of his patient. The

day was passed in painful aberration of mind, and short unrefreshing

sleep.

The evening found the sufferer somewhat relieved.

“What can I do for you more?” said Klemm, as he smoothed down the pillow

after assisting Adolph to acquire a comfortable position.

“That voice again!” said Adolph, “and no German.”

“I have got clear of my German accent by conversing with you.”

“Only at times,” said Adolph.

“Can I do nothing more for you?”

“Nothing, I believe.—Did you prepare for the priesthood?”

“No. I had neither inclination nor vocation.”

“I am sorry.”

“Adolph you are very sick—sick, less from the pain of your wound than

from the tumult of your mind. I am unable to assist you. Let me invite

in a clergyman, who is in the hospital.”

“Are there any here?”

“One. The terrible state of the wounded in some of the wards has

compelled the officer to admit a priest.”

“Is there contagious disease?”

“Yes.”

“Do you not fear for yourself?”

“_Die vollige Liebe treibet die Furcht aus._”

“What’s that?”

“Remember the words. I will call in the clergyman.”

And before Adolph could either consent or refuse Klemm had left the

room.

In a short time a priest entered the chamber of Adolph, and proceeded to

make himself acquainted with the state of his penitent’s mind, and then

to attend to the duties of his sick call.

Adolph was calm and settled when Klemm returned, but not communicative.

Klemm then announced his departure a duty, and the fact that Adolph

would, as soon as his strength would permit, be allowed to return home.

The parting of the friends that evening was truly affecting. Klemm was

made to promise a visit to the village—“Though,” said he, “I may make

an impression on Louise unfavorably to you.”

“I do not fear that,” said Adolph.

“_Die vollige Liebe treibet die Furcht aus_,” said Klemm. “A German

quotation which I will show you in the original, or at least explain to

you when we meet in your village.”

Klemm took leave of Adolph and Ponto, the faithful dog, and proceeded on

his journey.

Men gather to see a regiment, a single company, or even a little squad

depart for the camp—but few look out for the returning wounded—they

come back singly and sorrowful. The wagon that was passing the ferry

house nearly opposite the village in which resided Madam Berien, stopped

for a moment, and a soldier, war-worn and wounded, stepped slowly from

the vehicle, followed by his dog. He entered the house, and as he closed

the door upon a small parlor, he found himself confronted by a female.

“Adolph!”

“Louise!”

“And your mother?”

“Well—all well.”

“And Ponto,” too, said Louise, as the affectionate dog, after

reconnoitering round her, sprang up to receive his share of the

caresses—“Ponto, too, come back.”

“Yes. But this is not Ponto that left the village with me. How comes he

to be so familiar with you?”

“Your wounds are better?”

“I am well nearly. I need only rest—only your kindness, and I shall be

ready for another campaign,” said he with a melancholy smile.

The boat awaited the passengers, and a few on the opposite shore were

waiting for the

CONSCRIPT’S RETURN.

Adolph was received by the villagers on the shore with hearty welcome,

and was conducted toward his former residence. As he entered the little

hamlet, he turned slowly into the church, and at the foot of the humble

altar poured out to Heaven the thanks which swelled up in his heart for

his return. And near him one heart gushing with love and gratitude was

breathing out its thanksgiving that the wanderer had first sought the

house of God.

[Illustration: THE RETURN.]

The post-office the next day supplied a letter, without post-mark,

giving Adolph an officer’s commission for the gallantry that saved his

colonel’s life at the imminent risk of his own, and extending his

furlough for a year.

“But Louise,” said Adolph, “how your complexion has suffered since I saw

you.”

“I have been absent for some weeks.”

“Yes, and these mountain relatives of yours always look of about the

same color as one of their ripe grapes.”

Adolph having now some position, and a source of reliance upon his good

resolution, presented himself before Madam Berien to solicit formally

the hand of her daughter.

The matter _had_ evidently occupied the worthy lady’s attention, as she

consented at once, referred to an early day for the marriage, and

desired that her own house might be the residence of her son-in-law and

his wife.

“Surely, Providence is too good to me,” said Adolph, when he announced

to Louise the result of his negotiation.

“Has it ever failed you when you really relied upon it?”

“Did it not allow me to be sent to the army, and to suffer horribly? I

do believe I should have died without Klemm.”

“Has not your campaign resulted in the adoption of a sounder code of

morals, a restoration to religious exercises, and the acquisition of

rank, and in our almost immediate marriage? And will not Klemm be here

at our wedding?”

“I hope so, but faith Klemm is such a well-made handsome little fellow,

that I might wish him to tarry until after our marriage. I should not

like to find him and you chatting German sentiment together in the

German language.”

“And why not, Adolph?”

“I might _fear_ that the sleek little secretary would outshine the

wounded lieutenant.”

“Fear, Adolph! You would not _fear_.”

“Why not?” asked he, with a smile.

“_Die vollige Liebe treibet die Furcht aus_,” said Louise, with a strong

German accent.

“Good Heaven, Louise! where did you find that quotation, and where that

accent and look?”

“Why, the quotation is from the Bible, and the accent is as true German

as my grape-raising relatives know how to give.”

No Klemm arrived as Adolph hoped, and so the bridal party set forward to

the church where Father Rudolph was awaiting their arrival. The simple

but interesting ceremony was concluded, and as the party rose from their

last genuflection toward the altar, Louise whispered into her husband’s

ear:

“Klemm has come!”

“Where—where is he? Oh! how I long to have him share in the happiness

which I enjoy, and he _will_ share in it, for it is of his own

producing. Oh! Louise, could you but know—but I have told you all I can

tell; yet I cannot express what I feel for that young man’s beautiful

devotion to my good—to him alone, next to God, am I indebted for this

day’s unspeakable delight.”

“I thought you owed it to _me_,” said Louise.

“To you—to you indeed, that you are mine—but to him that I was made

worthy of your acceptance. Dear Louise, I am _afraid_ you must share—”

“Afraid, Adolph—‘_Die vollige Liebe treibet die Furcht aus._’”

“Louise, you confound me—whose is that tone of voice—whose that arch

look? Surely you are not yourself now?”

“Not this moment, Adolph. Just _now_ I am Klemm!”

The sacrifices of Louise had been accepted in Heaven—of course they

were appreciated on earth, and “perfect love which casteth out fear,”

had lured the wanderer back to religion, and had been rewarded in its

good performed and the power of doing good.

* * * * *

TO MY STEED.

BY S. D. ANDERSON.

Come forth, my brave steed, for the dew’s on the flowers,

And we will away with the speed of the hours;

The breath of the summer-time rides on the gale,

And health is abroad on each mountain and dale.

Come forth, for the lark is alive with his song,

And the bound of my pulses is life-like and strong;

It is gladness to see the wild fire of thine eye,

And feel thy light tread as the breeze rushes by.

Come forth, my own Arab, the Sun is asleep,

And the tears of the morning thy dark mane shall steep;

Thou shalt drink from the gushes of Summer’s cool streams,

E’er the flow of the fountain is tipt with morn’s beams.

Come forth to the greenwood whilst perfume is there,

And we’ll start the wild deer from his slumbering lair;

The leap of the cascade, and dash of the spray,

Shall echo more faint as we hurry away.

Come forth, my brave steed—far truer art thou

Than the smile on the lip, or the light on the brow;

More faithful than promises lovers may breathe,

Or the garlands of fame that a nation may wreath.

Come forth—I am ready—hurrah for the hills,

Whilst the harp-string of pleasure with ecstasy thrills;

No hour like the morning—no scene like to this

In all the wide world, for a moment of bliss.

* * * * *

JASPER ST. AUBYN;

OR THE COURSE OF PASSION.

BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT.

(_Concluded from page 262._)

CHAPTER II.

_The Sacrifice._

Ask any thing but that.

An hour had not quite passed, when, as she sat alone in her little

gayly-decorated study, with its walls hung with water-color drawings of

her own execution, its tables strewn with poetry and music of her own

composition, and her favorite books, and her own lute—her little study

in which the happiest hours of her life had been spent, the first hours

of her married life, while Jasper was all that her fancy painted

him—his step came along the corridor, but with a slow and hesitating

sound, most unlike to the quick, firm, decided tread, for which he was

remarkable.

She noticed the difference, it is true, at the moment, but forgot it

again instantly. It was enough! It was he! and he was coming once again

to seek her in her own apartment; he had a boon to ask of her—he had

promised to love her—he had called her “his dear Theresa.”

And now she sprung up, with her soul beaming from her eyes, and ran to

meet him. The door was opened ere he reached it, and as he entered, she

fell upon his neck, and wound her snowy arms about his waist, and kissed

him fifty times, and wept silent tears in the fullness of her joy.

And did not his heart respond in the least to her innocent and girlish

rapture; did he not bend at all from his bad purpose; was there no

melting, no relenting in that callous, selfish nature; was, indeed, all

within him hard as the nether millstone?

He clasped her, he caressed her, he spoke to her fondly, lovingly, he

kissed, like Judas, to betray. He suffered her to lead him to his

favorite seat of old, the deep, softly-cushioned, low arm-chair, and to

place her footstool by his side, and nestle herself down upon it as she

used to do, with her arms folded negligently across his knee, and her

beautiful rounded chin propped upon them, with her great earnest eyes

looking up in his face, like unfathomable wells of tenderness.

And he returned her gaze of fondness, unabashed, unembarrassed; and yet

it was sometime before he spoke; and when he did speak at length, his

voice was altered and almost husky. But it was from doubt how best he

might play his part, not that he shrunk from the task he had imposed

upon himself, either for shame or for pity.

“Well, my Theresa,” he said, at last, “have you thought whether you will

make this sacrifice?”

“No, Jasper, I have not thought about it; but if you wish me to make it,

I will make it, and it will be no sacrifice.”

“But I tell you, Theresa, that it is a sacrifice, a mighty and most

painful sacrifice; a sacrifice so great and so terrible, that I almost

fear, almost feel that it would be selfish in me to ask it of you.”

“Ask it, then; ask it quickly, that you may see how readily it shall be

granted.”

“Can you conceive no sacrifice that you would not make to please me?”

“None, that you would ask of me.”

“Theresa, no one can say what another _might_ ask of them. Husbands,

lovers, brothers, have asked strange sacrifices—fearful sacrifices, at

woman’s hands; and—they have been made.”

“Ask me, then, ask me,” she repeated, smiling, although her face had

grown somewhat pale as she listened to his words, and marked his

strangely excited manner. “I repeat, there is _no_ sacrifice which you

would ask of me, which I will not make. Nay more, there is none which I

should think a sacrifice if it is to preserve your love to me, when I

feared that I had lost it forever, though how, indeed, I knew not.”

“We shall see,” he said, affecting to muse with himself, and ponder

deeply. “We shall see; you are a great historian, and have read of all

the celebrated women of times past and present. You have heard of the

beautiful Mademoiselle Desvieux, she who—”

“She who was the promised wife of the great, the immortal Bossuet; and

who sacrificed her own happiness, freeing her lover from the claims she

held on him, lest a wife should be a clog upon his pure yet soaring

ambition, lest an earthly affection should wean him from a higher love,

and weaken the cords that were drawing him toward heaven! I have—I have

heard of her! Who has not—who does not revere her name—who does not

love her?”

“And what think you of her sacrifice, Theresa?”

“That it was her duty. A difficult duty to perform, you will say, but

still her duty. Her praise is, that she performed it gloriously. And yet

I doubt not that her sacrifice bore her its own exceeding great reward.

Loving as she loved, all her sorrows must have been changed into

exultation, when she saw him in after days the saint he became, the

saint she helped to make him.”

“And could you have made such a sacrifice, Theresa?”

“I hope so, and I think so,” she replied, with a little hesitation. “But

it avails not now to think of that, seeing that I cannot make such. She

was a maiden, I am a wedded wife.”

“True, dearest, true. I only named her, to judge by your opinion, of

what I wish to learn, ere I will ask you. There was another sacrifice,

Theresa, a very terrible sacrifice, made of late, and made to no

purpose, too, as it fell out—a sacrifice of far more doubtful nature;

yet there be some who have not failed to praise it.”

“What was it—do you praise it?”

“At least I pity it, Theresa.”

“What was it—tell me?”

“After the late rebellion at Sedgemoor. Have you not heard, Theresa?”

“No, I think not—go on, I want to hear it; go on, Jasper.”

“There was a young man, a cavalier, very young, very brave, very nobly

born, and, it is said, very handsome. He was taken after the route of

that coward, Gray of Werk’s horse—cast into prison, and, when his turn

came, tried by the butcher, Kirke—you know what that means, Theresa?”

“Condemned,” she said, sadly. “Of course he was condemned—what next?”

“To be hung by the neck upon the shameful gibbet, and then cut down,

while yet alive, and subjected to all the barbarous tortures which are

inflicted as the penalty of high treason.”

“Horrible! horrible! and—what more, Jasper?”

“Have you not, indeed, heard the tale?”

“Indeed, no. I pray you tell me, for you have moved me very deeply.”

“It is very moving. The boy had a sister—the loveliest creature, it is

said, that trod the soil of England, scarce seventeen years of age, a

very paragon of grace and purity and beauty. They two were alone in the

world—parents, kinsfolk, friends, they had none. They had none to love

but one another, even as we, my Theresa; and they did love—how, you may

judge. The girl threw herself at the butcher’s feet, and implored her

brother’s pardon.”

“Go on, go on, Jasper!” cried the young wife, excited almost beyond the

power of restraining her emotions by the dreadful interest of his tale,

“and, for once, he granted it?”

“And, for once, as you say, he granted it. But upon one condition.”

“And that was—?”

“And that was, that the young girl should make a sacrifice—an awful

sacrifice—should submit, in a word, to be a martyr for her brother’s

sake.”

“To die for him—and she died! Of course, she died to save him; that

were _no_ sacrifice, none, Jasper—I say none! Why _any_ woman would

have done that!”

“It was not to die for him—it was to sacrifice herself—herself—for

she was lovely, as I told you—to the butcher.”

“Ah!” sighed Theresa, with a terrible sensation at her heart, which she

could not explain, even to herself; “and what—what did she?”

“She asked permission to consult her brother.”

“And he told her that he had rather die ten thousand deaths than that

she should lose one hair’s breadth of her honor!” cried Theresa,

enthusiastically clasping her hands together.

“And he told her that life was very sweet, and death on a gallows very

shameful!”

“The catiff! the miserable, loathsome slave! the filthy dastard! I trust

that Kirke drew him with wild horses! The gallows were too good for such

a slave.”

“Then _you_ would not have made such a sacrifice?”

“_I_—I!” she exclaimed, her soft blue eyes actually flashing fire; “I

sacrifice my honor! but lo!” she interrupted herself, smiling at her own

vehemence, “am not I a little fool, to fancy that you are in earnest.

No, dearest Jasper, I would no more make _that_ sacrifice, than you

would suffer me to do so. Did not I make that reservation, did I not say

any sacrifice, which you would ask of me?”

“Ay, dearest!” he replied gently, laying his hand on her head, “you do

me no more than justice there. I would die as many deaths as I have

hairs on my head, before you should so save me.” And for the first time

that night Jasper St. Aubyn spoke in earnest.

“I know you would, Jasper. But go on, I pray you, with this fearful

tale. I would you had not begun it; but now you have, I must hear it to

the end. What did she?”

“She did, Theresa, as her brother bade her. She sacrificed herself to

the butcher.”

“Poor wretch! poor wretch! and so her brother lived with the world’s

scorn and curses on his head—and she—did she _die_, Jasper?”

“No, my Theresa. She is alive yet. It was the brother died.”

“How so? how could that be? Did Kirke then relent?”

“Kirke never relented! When the girl awoke in the butcher’s chamber,

with fame and honor—all that she loved in life—lost to her for

ever—he bade her look out of the window—what think you she saw there,

Theresa?”

“What?”

“The thing, that an hour before was her brother, dangling in the

accursed noose from the gibbet.”

“And God did not speak in thunder.”

“To the girl’s mind, He spoke—for that went astray at once, jangled and

jarred, and out of tune forever! _There_ was a sacrifice, Theresa.”

“A wicked one, and so it ended, wickedly. We’ll none of such sacrifices,

Jasper. If we should ever have to die, which God avert in his mercy, any

death of violence or horror, we will die tranquilly and together. Will

we not, dearest?”

“As you said but now, may the good God guard us from such a fate,

Theresa; and yet,” he added, looking at her fixedly, and with a strange

expression, “we may be nearer to it than we think for, even now.”

“Nearer to what, Jasper? speak,” she cried, eagerly, as if she had

missed the meaning of the words he last uttered.

“Nearer to the perils of the law, for high treason,” answered her

husband, in a low, dejected voice. “It is of that I have been anxious to

speak with you all the time.”

“Then speak at once, for God’s sake, dearest Jasper! speak at once, and

fully, that we may know the worst;” and she showed more composure now,

in what she naturally deemed the extremity of peril, than he had looked

for, judging from the excitement she had manifested at the mere

listening to the story of another’s perils. “Say on,” she added, seeing

that he hesitated, “let me know the worst.”

“It must be so, though it is hard to tell, Theresa; we—myself, I mean,

and a band of the first and noblest youths of England—have been engaged

for these three months past in a conspiracy to banish from the throne of

England this last and basest son of a weak, bigoted, unlucky race of

kings—this cowardly, blood-thirsty, persecuting bigot—this Papist

monarch of a Protestant land, this James the Second, as men call him;

and to set in his place the brave, wise, virtuous William of Nassau, now

Stadtholder of the United Provinces. It is this business which has

obliged me to be absent so often of late, in London. It is the failure

of this business which has rendered me morose, unkind, irritable—need I

say more, you have pardoned me, Theresa.”

“The failure of this business!” she exclaimed, gazing at him with a face

from which dismay had banished every hue of color—“the failure!”

“Ay, Theresa, it is even so. Had we succeeded in liberating England from

the cold tyrant’s bloody yoke, we had been patriots, saviors, fathers of

our country—Brutuses, for what I know, and Timoleons! We have

failed—therefore, we are rebels, traitors and, I suppose, ere long

shall be victims.”

“The plot, then, is discovered?”

“Even so, Theresa.”

“And how long, Jasper, have you known this dreadful termination?”

“I have foreseen it these six weeks or more. I knew it, for the first

time, to-day.”

“And is it absolutely known, divulged, proclaimed? Have arrests been

made?” she asked, with a degree of coolness that amazed him, while he

felt that it augured ill for the success of his iniquitous scheme; but

he had, in some sort, foreseen her questions, and his answers were

prepared already. He answered, therefore, as unhesitatingly as if there

had been one word of truth in all that he was uttering.

“It is _all_ known to one of the leading ministers of the government; it

is not divulged; and no arrests have been made yet. But the breathing

space will be brief.”

“All, then, is easy! Let us fly! Let us take horse at once—this very

night! By noon to-morrow, we shall be in Plymouth, and thence we can

gain France, and be safe there until this tyranny shall be o’erpast.”

“Brave girl!” he replied, with the affectation of a melancholy smile.

“Brave Theresa, you would bear exile, ruin, poverty with the outlawed

traitor; and we might still be happy. But, alas, girl! it is too late to

fly. The ports are all closed throughout England. It is too late to fly,

and to fight is impossible.”

“Then it remains only that we die!” she exclaimed, casting herself into

his arms, “and that is not so difficult, now that I know you love me,

Jasper.” But, even as she uttered the words, his previous conversation

recurred to her mind, and she started from his arms, crying out, “but

you spoke of a sacrifice!—a sacrifice which I could make! Is it

possible that I can save you?”

“Not me alone, Theresa, but all the band of brothers who are sworn to

this emprise; nor them alone, but England, which may, by your deed,

still be liberated from the tyrant.”

She turned her beautiful eyes upward, and her lips moved rapidly,

although she spoke not. She was praying for aid from on high—for

strength to do her duty.

He watched her with calm, expectant, unmoved eyes, and muttered to

himself, “I have gained. She will yield.”

“Now,” she said, “now,” as her prayer was ended, “I am strong now to

bear. Tell me, Jasper, what must I do to save you?”

“I cannot tell you, dearest. I cannot—it is too much—you could not

make it; nor if _you_ would, could I. Let it pass. We will die—all die

together.”

“And England!” exclaimed the girl, with her face kindling gloriously;

“and our mother England, must she perish by inches in the tyrant’s

clutch, because we are cowards? No, Jasper, no. Be of more constant

mind. Tell me, what is it I must do? and, though it wring my heart and

rack my brain, if I _can_ save you and your gallant friends, and our

dear native land, I will save them, though it kill me.”

“Could you endure to part from me, Theresa—to part from me forever?”

“To part from you, Jasper!” No written phrase can express the agony, the

anguish, the despair, which were made manifest in every sound of those

few simple words. A breaking heart spoke out in every accent.

“Ay, to part from me, never to see me more—never to hear my voice; only

to know that I exist, and that I love you—love you beyond my own soul!

Could you do this, Theresa, in the hope of a meeting hereafter, where no

tyranny should ever part us any more?”

“I know not—I know not!” she exclaimed, in a shrill, piercing tone,

most unlike her usual soft, slow utterance. “Is this the sacrifice you

spoke of? Would this be called for at my hands?”

“To part from me so utterly that it should not be known or suspected

that we had ever met—ever been wedded?”

“Why, Jasper,” she cried, starting, and gazing at him wildly, “_that_

were impossible; all the world knows that we have met—that we have

lived together here—that I _am_ your wife. What do you mean? Are you

jesting with me? No, no! God help me! that resolute, stern, dark

expression! No, no, no, no! Do not frown on me, Jasper; but keep me not

in this suspense—only tell me, Jasper.”

“The whole world—that is to say, the whole world of villagers and

peasants here, do know that we have met—that we have lived together;

but they do not _know_—nay, more, they do not _believe_, that you _are_

my wife, Theresa.”

“Not your wife—not your wife! What, in God’s name, then, do they

believe me to be? But I _am_—I _am_—yes, before God and man, I _am_

your wife, Jasper St. Aubyn! That shame will I never bear. The parish

register will prove it.”

“Before God, dearest, most assuredly you _are_ my wife; but before man,

I grieve to say, it is not so; nor will the register, to which you

appeal—as I did, when I first heard the scandal—prove any thing, but

against you. It seems the rascal sexton cut out the record of our

marriage from the register, so soon as the old rector died. He is gone,

so that he can witness nothing. Alderly and the sexton will not speak,

for to do so would implicate themselves in the guilt of having mutilated

the church-register. Alderly’s mother is an idiot. We can _prove_

nothing.”

“And when did you learn all this, Jasper?” she asked, calmly; for a

light, a fearful yet most clear illumination began to dawn upon her

mind.

“Last night. And I rode down this morning to the church, to inspect the

register. It is as I was told; there is no trace of the record which we

signed, and saw witnessed, on its pages.”

“And to what end should Verity and Alderly have done this great crime

needlessly?”

“Villains themselves, they fancied that I too was a villain; and that,

if not then, at some after time, I should desire to profit by their

villainy, and should then be in their power.”

“Ha!” she said, still maintaining perfect self-possession. “It seems, at

least, that their villainy was wise, was prophetical.”

“Theresa!” his voice was stern, and harsh, and threatening—his brow as

black as midnight.

“Pardon me!” she said. “Pardon me, Jasper; but you should make allowance

for some feeling in a woman. I am, then, looked upon as a lost, fallen

wretch, as a disgrace to my name and my sex, a concubine, a harlot—is

it not so, Jasper?”

“Alas! alas! Theresa!”

“And you would have me?—speak!”

“I would not have you do it; God knows! it goes nigh to break my heart

to think of it—I only tell you what alone can save us—”

“I understand—it needs not to mince the matter; what is it, then, that

can save us—save _you_, I should say rather, and _your_ friends?”

“That you should leave me, Theresa, and go where you would, so it were

not within a hundred miles of this place—but better to France or Italy;

all that wealth could procure you, you should have; and my love would be

yours above all things, even although we never meet, until we meet in

heaven.”

“Heaven, sir, is for the innocent and faithful, not for the liar and the

traitor! But how shall this avail any thing to save you, if I consent to

do it? I must know all; I must see all clearly, before I act.”

“Are you strong enough to bear what I shall say to you, my poor

Theresa?”

“Else had I not borne to hear what you _have_ said to me.”

“It is the secretary of state, then, who has discovered our plot. He is

himself half inclined to join us; but he is a weak, interested, selfish

being, although of vast wealth, great influence, and birth most noble.

Now, he has a daughter—”

“Ah!” the wretched girl started as if an ice-bolt had shot to her very

heart, “and you—you would wed her!”

“That is to say, _he_ would have me wed her; and on that condition joins

our party. And so our lives, and England’s liberties, should be

preserved by your glorious sacrifice.”

“I must think, then—I must think,” she answered, burying her head in

her hands, in truth, to conceal the agony of her emotions, and to gain

time, not for deliberation, but to compose her mind and clear her voice

for speech.

And he stood gazing on her, with the cold, cutting eye, the calm,

sarcastic sneer, of a very Mephistopheles, believing that she was about

to yield, and inwardly mocking the very weakness, on which he had

played, to his own base and cruel purposes.

But in a moment she arose and confronted him, pale, calm, majestical,

most lovely in her extremity of sorrow, but firm as a hero or a martyr.

“And so,” she said, in a clear, cold, ringing voice, “this is the

sacrifice you ask of me?—to sever myself from you forever—to go forth

into the great, cruel, cold world alone, with a bleeding, broken heart,

a blighted reputation, and a blasted name? All this I might endure,

perhaps I would—but you have asked _more_ of me, Jasper. You have asked

me to confess myself a thing infamous and vile—a polluted wretch—not a

wife, but a wanton! You have asked _me_, your own wedded wife, to write

myself down, with my own hand, a harlot, and to stand by and look on at

your marriage with another—as if I were the filthy thing you would name

me. Than be that thing, Jasper, I would rather die a hundred fold; than

call myself that thing, being innocent of deed or thought of shame, I

had rather _be it_! Now, sir, are you answered? What, heap the name of

harlot on my mother’s ashes! What, blacken my dead father’s stainless

’scutcheon! What—_lie_, before my God, to brand myself, the first of an

honest line, with the strumpet’s stain of blackness! Never! never!

though thou and I, and all the youth of England, were to die in tortures

inconceivable; never! though England were to perish unredeemed! Now,

sir, I ask you, are you answered?”

“I am,” he replied, perfectly unmoved, “I am answered, Theresa, as I

hoped, as I expected to be.”

“What do you mean?—did you not ask me to do this thing?”

“I did _not_, Theresa. I told you what sacrifice might save us all. I

did _not_ ask you to make it. Nay, did I not tell you that I would not

even suffer you to make it?”

“But you told me—you told me—God help me, for I think I shall go mad!

Oh! tempt me no further, Jasper; try me no further. Is—is this true,

that you have told me?”

“Every word—every word of it, my own best love,” answered the arch

deceiver, “save only that I would not for my life, nay, for my soul,

have suffered you to make the sacrifice I spoke of. Perish myself, my

friends! perish England! nay, perish the whole earth, rather!”

“Then why so tempt me? Why so sorely, so cruelly try this poor heart,

Jasper?”

“To learn if you were strong enough to share in my secrets—and you

shall share them. We must fly, Theresa; not from Plymouth; not from any

seaport, but from the wildest gorge in the wild coast of Devon. I have

hired a fishing-boat to await us. We must ride forth alone, as if for a

pleasure party, across the hills, to-morrow, and so make our way to the

place appointed. If we escape, all shall be well—come the worst, as you

said, my own Theresa, at least we shall die together.”

“Are you in earnest, Jasper?”

“On my soul! by the God who hears me!”

“And you _will_ take me with you; you will not cast me from you; you

will uphold me ever to be your own, your wedded wife?”

“I will—I will. Not for the universe! not for my own soul! would I lose

you, my own, own Theresa!”

And he clasped her to his bosom, in the fondest, closest embrace, and

kissed her beautiful lips eagerly, passionately. And she, half fainting

in his arms, could only murmur, in the revulsion of her feelings, “Oh,

happy! happy! too, too happy!”

Then he released her from his arms, and bade her go to bed, for it was

waxing late, and she would need a good night’s rest to strengthen her

for the toils of to-morrow’s journey.

And she smiled on him, and prayed him not to tarry long ere he joined

her; and retired, still agitated and nervous from the long continuance

of the dreadful mental conflict to which he had subjected her.

But he, when she had left the room, turned almost instantly as pale as

ashes—brow, cheeks, nay, his very lips were white and cold. The actor

was exhausted by his own exertions. The man shrunk from the task which

was before him.

“The worse for her!” he muttered, through his hard-set teeth, “the worse

for her! the obstinate, vain, willful fool! I would, by heaven! I would

have saved her!”

Then he clasped his burning brow with the fingers of his left hand, as

if to compress its fierce, rapid beating, and strode to and fro, through

the narrow room, working the muscles of his clinched right hand, as if

he grasped the hilt of sword or dagger.

“There is no other way,” he said at length; “there is no other way, and

I _must_ do it—must do it with my own hand. But—can I—can I—?—” he

paused a moment, and resumed his troubled walk. Then halted, and

muttered in a deep voice, “By hell! there is naught that a man cannot

do; and I—am I not a man, and a right resolute, and stout one? It shall

be so—it is her fate! her fate! Did not her father speak of it that

night, as I lay weak and wounded on the bed? did I not dream it thrice

thereafter, in that same bed? though then I understood it not. It shall

be there—even there—where I saw it happen; so shall it pass for

accident. It is fate!—who can strive against their fate?”

Again he was silent, and during that momentary pause, a deep, low,

muttering roar was heard in the far distance—a breathless hush—and

again, that long, hollow, crashing roll, that tells of elemental

warfare.

Jasper’s eye flashed, and his whole face glared with a fearful and half

frenzied illumination.

“It _is_,” he cried, “it _is_ thunder! From point to point it is true!

It is her fate—her fate!”

And with the words, he rushed from the room; and within ten minutes, was

folded in the rapturous embrace of the snowy arms of her, whose doom of

death he had decreed already in the secrets of his guilty soul.

CHAPTER III.

_The Deed of Blood._

It rose again, but indistinct to view,

And left the waters of a purple hue.

BYRON.

Throughout that livelong night, the thunder roared and rolled

incessantly, and from moment to moment the whole firmament seemed to

yawn asunder, showing its inner vaults, sheeted with living and

coruscant fire, while ever and anon long, arrowy, forked tongues, of

incandescent brightness, darted down from the zenith, cleaving the

massive storm-clouds with a crash that made the whole earth reel and

shudder.

Never, within the memory of man, had such a storm been known at that

season of the year. Huge branches, larger than trees of ordinary size,

were rent from the gigantic oaks by the mere force of the hurricane, and

whirled away like straws before its fury. The rain fell not in drops or

showers, but in vast sheeted columns. The rills were swollen into

rivers, the rivers covered the lowland meadows, expanded into very seas.

Houses were unroofed, steeples and chimneys hurled in ruin to the earth,

cattle were killed in the open fields, unscathed by lightning, by the

mere weight of the storm.

Yet through that awful turmoil of the elements, which kept men waking,

and bold hearts trembling from the Land’s End to Cape Wrath, Jasper St.

Aubyn slept as calmly as an infant, with his head pillowed on the soft

bosom of his innocent and lovely wife. And she, though the tempest

roared around, and the thunder crashed above her, so that she could not

close an eye in sleep; though she believed that to-morrow she was about

to fly from her native land, her home, never, perhaps, to see them more;

though she looked forward to a life of toil and wandering, of hardship,

and of peril as an exile’s wife, perhaps to a death of horror, as a

traitor’s confederate, she blessed God with a grateful heart, that he

had restored to her her husband’s love, and watched that dear sleeper,

dreaming a waking dream of perfect happiness.

But him no dreams, either sleeping or waking, disturbed from his heavy

stupor, or diverted from his hellish purpose. So resolute, so iron-like

in its unbending pertinacity was that young, boyish mind, that having

once resolved upon his action, not all the terrors of heaven or of hell

could have turned him from it.

There lay beneath one roof, on one marriage bed, ay, clasped in one

embrace, the resolved murderer, and his unconscious victim. And he had

tasted the honey of her lips, had fondled, had caressed her to the last,

had sunk to sleep, lulled by the sweet, low voice of her who, if his

power should mate his will, would never look upon a second morrow.

And here, let no one say such things cannot be, save in the fancy of the

rhapsodist or the romancer; such things are impossible—for not only is

there nothing under the sun impossible to human power, or beyond the aim

of human wickedness, but such things _are_ and have been, and will be

again, so long as human passion exists uncontrolled by principle.

Such things have been among ourselves, and in our own day, as he who

writes has seen, and many of those who read must needs remember—and

such things were that night at Widecomb.

With the first dappling of the dawn, the rage of the elements sunk into

rest, the winds sighed themselves to sleep, the pelting torrents melted

into a soft, gray mist; only the roar of the distant waters, mellowed

into a strange fitful murmur, was heard in the general tranquillity

which followed the loud uproar.

Wearied with her involuntary watching, Theresa fell asleep also, still

clasping in her fond arms the miserable, guilty thing which she had

sworn so fatally, and kept her vow so faithfully, to love, honor, and

obey.

When the sun rose, the wretched man awoke from his deep and dreamless

deep; and as his eye fell on that innocent, sweet face, calm as an

infant’s, and serene, though full of deep thoughts and pure affections,

he _did_ start, he _did_ shudder, for one second’s space—perhaps for

that fleeting point of time, he doubted. But if it were so, he nerved

himself again almost without an effort, disengaged himself gently from

the embrace of her entwined arms, with something that sounded like a

smothered curse, and stalked away in sullen gloom, leaving her buried in

her last natural slumber.

Two hours had, perhaps, gone over, and the morning had come out bright

and glorious after the midnight storm, the atmosphere was clear and

breezy, the skies pure as crystal, and the glad sunshine glanced and

twinkled with ten thousand gay reflections in the diamond rain-drops

which still gemmed every blade of grass, and glistened in every

flowret’s cup, when Theresa’s light step was heard coming down the

stairs, and her sweet voice inquiring where she should find Master St.

Aubyn.

“I am here,” answered his deep voice, which for the moment he made an

effort to inflect graciously, and with the word he made his appearance

from the door of his study, booted to the mid-thigh, and spurred; with a

long, heavy rapier at his side, and a stout dagger counterbalancing it

in the other side of his girdle. He was dressed in a full suit of plain

black velvet, without any ornament or embroidery; and whether it was

that the contrast made him look paler, or that the horror of what he was

about to do, though insufficient to turn his hard heart, had sufficed to

blanch his cheek and lips, I know not, but, as she saw his face, Theresa

started as if she had seen a ghost.

“How pale you look, Jasper,” she said earnestly; “are you ill at ease,

dearest, or anxious about me? If it be the last, vex not yourself, I

pray you; for I am not in the least afraid, either of the fatigue or of

the voyage. For the rest,” she added, with a bright smile, intended to

reassure him, “I have long wished to see _la belle France_, as they call

it; and to me the change of scene, so long as you are with me, dearest

Jasper, will be but a change of pleasure. I hope I have not kept you

waiting. But I could not sleep during the night for the thunder, and

about daybreak I was overpowered by a heavy slumber. I did not even hear

you leave me.”

“I saw that you slept heavily, my own love,” he made answer, “and was

careful not to wake you, knowing what you would have to undergo to-day,

and wishing to let you get all the rest you could before starting. But

come, let us go to breakfast. We have little time to lose, the horses

will be at the door in half an hour.”

“Come, then,” she answered, “I am ready;” and she took his arm as she

spoke, and passed, leaning on him, through the long suit of rooms, which

now, for above a year had been her home in mingled happiness and sorrow.

“Heigho!” she murmured, with a half sigh, “dear Widecomb! dear, dear

Widecomb, many a happy hour have I spent within your walls, and it goes

hard with me to leave you. I wonder, shall I ever see you more.”

“Never,” replied the deep voice of her husband, in so strange a tone,

that it made her turn her head and look at him quickly. A strange, dark

spasm had convulsed his face, and was not yet passed from it, when her

eye met his. She thought it was the effect of natural grief at leaving

his fine place—the place of his birth—as an outlaw and an exile; and

half repenting that she had so spoken as to excite his feelings, she

hastened to soothe them, as she thought, by a gayer and more hopeful

word.

“Never heed, dearest Jasper,” she said, pressing his arm, on which she

hung, “if we do love old Widecomb, there are as fair places elsewhere,

on the world’s green face, and if there were not, happy minds will aye

find, or make happy places. And we, why spite of time and tide, wind and

weather, we _will_ be happy, Jasper. And I doubt not a moment, that we

shall yet live to spend happy days once more in Widecomb.”

“I fear, never,” replied the young man, solemnly. It was a singular

feeling—he did not repent, he did not falter or shrink in the least

from his murderous purpose; but, for his life, he could not give her a

hope, he could not say a word to cheer her, or deceive her, further than

he was compelled to do in order to carry out his end.

The morning meal passed silently and sadly; for, in spite of all her

efforts to be gay, and to make him lighter-hearted, his brow was

clouded, and he would not converse; and she, fearing to vex him, or to

trespass on what she believed to be his deep regret at leaving home,

ceased to intrude upon his sorrow.

At length he asked her, “Are you ready?” and as he spoke, arose from the

table.

“Oh yes,” she answered, “I am always ready when you want me. And see,

Jasper,” she added, “here are my jewels,” handing him a small ebony

casket “I thought they might be of use to us, in case of our wanting

money; and yet I should grieve to part with them, for they are the

diamonds _you_ gave me that night we were wedded.”

He took it with a steady hand, and thrust it into the bosom of his

dress, saying, with a forced smile, “You are ever careful, Theresa. But

you have said nothing, I trust, to your maidens, of our going.”

“Surely not, Jasper, they believe I am going but for a morning’s ride.

Do you not see that I have got on my new habit? You have not paid me one

compliment on it, sir. I think you might at least have told me that I

looked pretty in it. I know the day when you would have done so, without

my begging it.”

“Is that meant for a reproach, Theresa?” he said, gloomily, “because—”

“A reproach, Jasper,” she interrupted him quickly, “how little you

understand poor me! I hoped, by my silly prattle, to win you from your

sorrow at leaving all that you love so dearly. But I will be silent—”

“Do so, I pray you, for the moment.”

And without further words, he led her down the steps of the terrace, and

helped her to mount her palfrey, a beautiful, slight, high-bred thing,

admirably fitted to carry a lady round the trim rides of a park, but so

entirely deficient in bone, strength, and sinew, that no animal could

have been conceived less capable of enduring any continuous fatigue, or

even of making any one strong and sustained exertion. Then he sprung to

the back of his own noble horse, a tall, powerful, thorough-bred hunter,

of about sixteen hands in height, with bone and muscle to match,

capable, as it would appear, of carrying a man-at-arms in full harness

through a long march or a pitched battle.

Just as he was on the point of starting, he observed that one of his

dogs, a favorite greyhound, was loose, and about to follow him, when he

commanded him to be taken up instantly, rating the man who had held the

horses very harshly, and cursing him soundly for disobeying his orders.

Then, when he saw that he was secure against the animal’s following him,

he turned his horse’s head to the right hand, toward the great hills to

the westward, saying aloud, so that all the bystanders could hear him,

“Well, lady fair, since we are only going for a pleasure ride, suppose

we go up toward the great deer-park in the forest. By the way,” he

added, turning in his saddle to the old steward, who was standing on the

terrace, “I desired Haggerston, the horse-dealer, to meet me here at

noon, about a hunter he wants to sell me. If I should not be back, give

him some dinner, and detain him till I return. I shall not be late, for

I fancy my lady will not care to ride very far.”

“Don’t be too sure of that, Jasper,” she replied, with an arch smile,

thinking to aid him in his project. “It is so long since I have ridden

out with you, that I may wish to make a day of it. Come, let us start.”

And she gave her jennet its head, and cantered lightly away over the

green, her husband following at a trot of his powerful hunter; and in a

few minutes they were both hidden from the eyes of the servants, among

the clumps of forest-trees and the dense thickets of the chase.

At something more than three miles’ distance from Widecomb House, to the

westward, there is a pass in the hills, where a bridle-road crosses the

channel of the large brook, which I have named so often, and which, at a

point far lower down, was the scene of Jasper’s ill-omened introduction

to Theresa Allan.

This bridle-road, leading from the sparse settlements on Dartmoor to the

nearest point of the seacoast, was a rough, dangerous track, little

frequented except by the smugglers and poachers of that region, and lay

for the most part considerably below the level of the surrounding

country, between wooded hills, or walk of dark gray rock.

The point at which it crosses the stream is singularly wild and

romantic, for the road and the river both are walled by sheer precipices

of gray, shattered, limestone rock, nearly two hundred feet in height,

perfectly barren, bare, and treeless, except on the summits, which are

covered with heather and low, stunted shrubbery.

The river itself, immediately above the ford, by which the road passes

it, descends by a flight of rocky steps, or irregular shelvy rapids,

above a hundred feet within three times as many yards, and then spreads

out into a broad, open pool, where its waters, not ordinarily above

three feet deep, glance rapidly, but still and unbroken, over a level

pavement of smooth stone, almost as slippery as ice. Scarce twenty yards

below this, there is an abrupt pitch of sixty feet in perpendicular

height, over which the river rushes at all times in a loud foaming

waterfall, but after storms among the hills, in a tremendous roaring

cataract.

The ford is never a safe one, owing to the insecure foothold afforded by

the slippery limestone, but when the river is in flood, no one in his

senses would dream of crossing it.

Yet it was by this road that Jasper had persuaded his young wife that

they could alone hope to escape with any chance of safety, and to this

point he was leading her. And she, though she knew the pass, and all its

perils, resolute to accompany him through life, and, if need should be,

to death itself, rode onward with him, cheerful and apparently fearless.

They reached its brink, and the spectacle it afforded was, indeed,

fearful. The river swollen by the rains of the past night, though, like

all mountain torrents, rising and falling rapidly, it was already

subsiding, came down from the moors with an arrowy rush, clear and

transparent as glass, yet deep in color as the rich brown cairn-gorm.

The shelvy rapids above the ford were one sheet of snow-white foam, and

in the ford itself the foam-flakes wheeled round and round, as in a huge

boiling caldron, while below it the roar of the cataract was louder than

the loudest thunder, and the spray rolling upward from the whirlpool

beneath, clung to the crags above in mist-wreaths so dense that their

summits were invisible.

“Good God!” cried Theresa, turning deadly pale, as she looked on the

fearful pool. “We are lost. It is impossible.”

“By heaven!” he answered, impetuously, “I must pass it, or stay and be

hanged. _You_ can do as you will, Theresa.”

“But is it possible?”

“Certainly it is. Do you think I would lead you into certain death? But

see, I will ride across and return, that you may see how easy it is, to

a brave heart and a cool hand.”

And, confident in the strength of his horse and in his own splendid

horsemanship, he plunged in dauntlessly, and keeping up stream near to

the foot of the upper rapids, struggled through it, and returned to her

without much difficulty, though the water rose above the belly of his

horse.

He heard, however, that a fresh storm was rattling and roaring, even

now, among the hills above, and he knew by that sign that a fresh

torrent was even now speeding its way down the chasm.

There was no time to be lost—it was now or never. He cast an eager

glance around—a glance that read and marked every thing—as he came to

land; save only Theresa, there was not a human being within sight.

“You see,” he said, with a smile, “there is no danger.”

“I see,” she answered, merrily. “Forgive me for being such a little

coward. But you will lead Rosabella, wont you, Jasper?”

“Surely,” he answered. “Come.”

And catching the curb-rein of the pony with his left hand, and guiding

his own horse with his right, holding his heavy loaded hunting-whip

between his teeth, he led her down into the foaming waters, so that her

palfrey was between himself and the cataract.

It was hard work, and a fearful struggle for that slender, light-limbed

palfrey to stem that swollen river; and the long skirt of Theresa’s

dress, holding the water, dragged the struggling animal down toward the

waterfall. Still, despite every disadvantage, it would have battled to

the other side, had fair play been given it.

But when they reached the very deepest and most turbulent part of the

pool, under pretence of aiding it, Jasper lifted the jennet’s fore-legs,

by dint of the strong, sharp curb, clear off the bottom. The swollen

stream came down with a heavier swirl, its hind legs were swept from

under it, in an instant, and with a piercing scream of agony and terror,

the palfrey was whirled over the brink of the fall.

But, as it fell, unsuspicious of her husband’s horrible intent, the

wretched girl freed her foot from the stirrup, and throwing herself over

to the right hand, with a wild cry, “Save me! save me, my God! save me,

Jasper!” caught hold of his velvet doublet with both hands, and clung to

him with the tenacious grasp of the death-struggle.

Even then—even then, had he relented, one touch of the spur would have

carried his noble horse clear through the peril.

But no! the instant her horse fell, he shifted his reins to the left

hand, and grasped his whip firmly in the right; and now, with a face of

more than fiendish horror, pale, comprest, ghastly, yet grim and

resolute as death, he reared his hand on high, and poised the deadly

weapon.

Then, even then, her soft blue eyes met his, full, in that moment of

unutterable terror, of hope and love, even then overpowering agony. She

met his eyes, glaring with wolfish fury; she saw his lifted hand, and

even then would have saved his soul that guilt.

“Oh no!” she cried, “oh no! I will let go—I will drown, if you wish it;

I will—I will, indeed! Oh God! do not _you_—do not _you_—kill me,

Jasper.”

And even as she spoke, she relaxed her hold, and suffered herself to

glide down into the torrent; but it was all too late—the furious blow

was dealt—with that appalling sound, that soft, dead, crushing plash,

it smote her full between those lovely eyes.

“Oh God!—my God!—forgive—Jasper! Jasper!”—and she plunged deep into

the pool; but as the waters swept her over the cataract’s verge, they

raised her corpse erect; and its dead face met his, with the eyes

glaring on his own yet wide open, and the dread, gory spot between them,

as he had seen it in his vision years before.

He stood, motionless, reigning his charger in the middle of the raging

current, unmindful of his peril, gazing, horror-stricken, on the spot

where he had seen her last—his brain reeled, he was sick at heart.

A wild, piercing shout, almost too shrill to be human, aroused him from

his trance of terror. He looked upward almost unconsciously, and it

seemed to him that the mist had been drawn up like a curtain, and that a

man in dark garb stood gazing on him from the summit of the rocks.

If it were so, it was but for a second’s space. The fog closed in

thicker again than before, the torrent came roaring down in fiercer,

madder flood, and wheeling his horse round, and spurring him furiously,

it was all that Jasper St. Aubyn could do, by dint of hand and foot, and

as iron a heart as ever man possessed, to avoid following his victim to

her watery grave.

Once safe, he cast one last glance to the rocks, to the river, but he

saw, heard nothing. He whirled the bloody whip over the falls, plunged

his spurs, rowel-deep, into the horse’s sides, and with hell in his

heart, he galloped, like one pursued by the furies of the slain, back,

alone, to Widecomb.

CHAPTER IV.

_The Vengeance._

A change came o’er the spirit of my dream,

The wanderer was returned.

BYRON.

It was not yet high noon, when, wet from spur to shoulder with mud and

spray, bloody with spurring, spotted from head to heel with gory

foam-flakes from his jaded horse’s wide-distended jaws, and quivering

nostrils, bareheaded, pale as death, and hoarse with shouting, Jasper

St. Aubyn galloped frantically up to the terrace-steps of Widecomb

House; and springing to the ground, reeled, and would have fallen

headlong had he not been caught in the arms of one of the serving men,

who came running down the stone stairs to assist him.

As soon as he could collect breath to speak, “Call all!” he cried, “call

all! Ring the great bell, call all—get ladders, ropes—run—ride—she

is gone—she is lost—swept over the black falls at Hawkshurt! Oh God!

oh God!” and he fell, as it seemed, senseless to the earth.

Acting—sheer acting, all!

They raised him and carried him up stairs, and laid him on the bed—on

_her_ bed—the bed whereon he had kissed her lips last night, and

clasped her lovely form which was now haply entwined in the loathsome

coils of the slimy mud-eels.

He shuddered. He could not endure it. He opened his eyes again, and

feigning to recover his senses, chid the men from his presence, and

again commanded, so peremptorily, that none dare disobey him, that every

servant—man, woman, maid or boy—should begone to the place he had

named, nor return till they brought back his lost angel’s body.

They believed that he was mad; but mad or sane, his anger was so

terrible at all times, and now so fierce, so frantic and appalling, that

none dared to gainsay him.

Within half an hour after his return, save himself, there was not a

human being left within the walls of Widecomb Manor.

Then he arose and descended slowly, but with a firm foot and unchanged

brow, into the great library of the Hall. It was a vast, gloomy, oblong

chamber, nearly a hundred feet in length, wainscoted and shelved with

old black-oak, and dimly lighted by a range of narrow windows, with

dark-stained glass and heavily wrought stone mullions.

There was a dull wood-fire smouldering under the yawning arch of the

chimney-piece, and in front of the fire stood an old oaken table, and a

huge leathern arm-chair.

Into this Jasper cast himself, with his back to the door, which he had

left open, in the absence of his mind. For nearly an hour he sat there

without moving hand or foot, gazing gloomily at the fire. But, at the

end of that time, he started, and seemed to recollect himself, opened

the drawer of the writing-table, and took out of it the record of his

wretched victim’s marriage.

He read it carefully, over and over again, and then crushed it in his

hand, saying, “Well, all is safe now, THANK GOD!” Yes, he _thanked God_

for the success of the murder he had done! “But here goes to make

assurance doubly sure.”

And with the word he was about to cast the paper which he held into the

ashes, when the hand of a man, who had entered the room and walked up to

him with no very silent or stealthy step, while he was engrossed too

deeply by his own guilty thoughts to mark very certainly any thing that

might occur without, was laid with a grip like that of an iron vice upon

his shoulder.

He started and turned round; but as he did so, the other hand of the

stranger seized his right hand which held the marriage record, grasping

it right across the knuckles, and crushed it together by an action so

powerful and irresistible, that the fingers involuntarily opened, and

the fatal document fell to the ground.

Instantly the man cast Jasper off with a violent jerk which sent him to

a distance of three or four yards, stooped, gathered up the paper,

thrust it into his bosom, and then folding his arms across his stalwort

breast, stood quietly confronting the murderer, but with the quietude of

the expectant gladiator.

Jasper stared at the swarthy, sun-burned face, the coal-black hair

clipped short upon the brow, the flashing eyes, that pierced him like a

sword. He knew the face—he almost shuddered at the knowledge—yet, for

his life, he could not call to mind where or when he met him.

But he stared only for an instant; insulted—outraged—he, in his own

house! His ready sword was in his hand forthwith—the stranger was armed

likewise with a long broadsword and a two-edged dagger, and heavy

pistols at his girdle; yet he moved not, nor made the slightest movement

to put himself on the defensive.

“Draw, dog!” cried Jasper, furiously. “Draw and defend yourself, or I

will slay you where you stand.”

“Hold!” replied the other steadily. “There is time enough—I will not

baulk you. Look at me!—do you not know me?”

“Know you?—not I; by heaven! some rascal smuggler, I trow—come to rob

while the house is in confusion! but you have reckoned without your host

this time. You leave not this room alive.”

“That as it may be,” said the other, coolly. “I have looked death in the

face too often to dread much the meeting; but ere I die, I have some

work to do. So you do not know me?”

“Not a whit I, I tell you.”

“Then is the luck mine, for I know you right well, young sir!”

“And for whom do you know me?”

“For a d—d villain always!” the man answered, “two hours since, for

Theresa Allan’s murderer! and now, thanks to this paper, which, please

God, I shall keep, for Theresa Allan’s—husband!”

He spoke the last words in a voice of thunder, and at the same time drew

and cocked, at a single motion, a pistol with each hand.

“You know too much—you know too much!” cried Jasper, furious but

undaunted. “One of us two must die, ere either leaves this room.”

“It was for that end I came hither! Look at me now, and know Durzil

Bras-de-fer—Theresa Allan’s cousin! your wife’s rejected lover once,

and now—your wife’s avenger!”

“Away! I will not fight you!”

“Then, coward, with my own hands will I hang you on the oak tree before

your own door; and on your breast I will pin this paper, and under it

will write, ‘HER MURDERER, taken in the fact, tried, condemned, executed

by me,

“‘DURZIL BRAS-DE-FER.’”

“Never!”

“Take up your pistols, then—they lie there on the table. We will turn,

back to back, and walk each to his own end of the room, then turn and

fire—if that do not the work, let the sword finish it.”

“Amen!” said St. Aubyn, “and the Lord have mercy on your soul, for I

will send it to your cousin in five minutes.”

“And may the Fiend of Hell have yours—as he will, if there be either

Fiend or God. Are you ready?”

“Ay.”

“Then off with you, and when you reach the wall, turn and fire.”

And as he spoke, he turned away, and walked slowly and deliberately with

measured strides toward the door by which he had entered.

Before he had taken six steps, however, a bullet whistled past his ear,

cutting a lock off his hair in its passage, and rebounded from the wall,

flattened at his feet. Jasper had turned at once, and fired at him with

deliberate aim.

“Ha! double murderer! die in your treason!” and the sailor leveled his

pistol in turn, and pulled the trigger; had it gone off, Jasper St.

Aubyn’s days were ended then and there; but no flash followed the sparks

from the flint—and he cast the useless weapon from him.

At once they both raised their second pistol, and again Jasper’s was

discharged with a quick, sharp report; and almost simultaneously with

the crack, a dull sound, as of a blow, followed it; and he knew that his

ball had taken effect on his enemy.

Again Durzil’s pistol failed him; and then, for the first time, Jasper

observed that the seaman’s clothes were soaked with water. He had swam

that rapid stream, and followed his beloved Theresa’s murderer, almost

with the speed of the stout horse that bore _him_ home.

Not a muscle of Durzil’s face moved, not a sinew of his frame quivered,

yet he was shot through the body, mortally—and he knew it.

“Swords!” he cried, “swords!”

And bounding forward, he met the youth midway, and at the first

collision, sparks flew from the well-tempered blades.

It was no even conflict, no trial of skill—three deadly passes of the

sailor, as straight and almost as swift as lightning, with a blade so

strong, and a wrist so adamantine, that no slight of Jasper’s could

divert them, were sent home in tierce—one in his throat, “That for your

lie!” shouted Durzil; a second in the sword arm, “That for your coward

blow!” a third, which clove the very cavity of his heart asunder, “That

for your life!”

Ten seconds did not pass, from the first crossing of their blades until

Jasper lay dead upon the floor, flooding his own hearth-stone with his

life-blood.

Durzil leaned on his avenging blade, and looked down upon the dead.

“It is done! it is done just in time! But just! for I am sped likewise.

May the Great God have mercy on me, and pardon me my sins, as I did this

thing not in hatred, but in justice and in honor! Ah—I am sick—sick!”

And he dropped down into the arm-chair in which Jasper was sitting as he

entered; and though he could hardly hold his head up for the deadly

faintness, and the reeling of his eyes and brain, by a great effort he

drew out the marriage record from his breast—Jasper’s ball had pierced

it, and it was dappled with his own life-blood—and smoothed it out

fairly, and spread it on the board before him.

Then he fell back, and closed his eyes, and lay for a long time

motionless; but the slow, sick throbbing of his heart showed that he was

yet alive, though passing rapidly away.

Once he raised his dim eyes, and murmured, “They tarry—they tarry very

long. I fear me, they will come too late.”

But within ten minutes after he had spoken, the sound of a multitude

might be heard approaching, and a quick, strong, decided step of one man

coming on before all the rest.

Within the last few minutes, Durzil had seemed to lose all consciousness

and power. He was, indeed, all but dead.

But at these sounds he roused like a dying war-horse to the trumpet; and

as the quick step crossed the threshold, he staggered to his feet, drew

his hand across his eyes, and cried, with his old sonorous voice,—it

was his last effort—

“Is that you, lieutenant?”

“Ay, ay, captain.”

“Have you found her?”

“She is here,” said the young seaman, pointing with his hand to the

corpse, which they were just bearing into the room.

“And he—ha! ha! ha! ha!—he is—there!” and he pointed, with a

triumphant wafture of his gory sword, toward Jasper’s carcass, and then,

with the blood spouting from his mouth and nostrils, fell headlong.

His officer raised him instantly, and as the flow of blood ceased, he

recovered his speech for a moment. He pointed to the gaping crowd,

“Have—have you—told them—lieu—lieutenant?”

“No, sir.”

“Tell—tell them—l-let me hear you.”

“You see that wound in her forehead—you saw it all, from the first,” he

said, to the crowd, who were gazing in mute horror at the scene. “I told

you, when I took you to the body, that I saw her die, and would tell you

how she died, when the time should come. The time has come. He—that

man, whose body lies there bleeding, and whose soul is now burning in

Tophet, murdered her in cold blood—beat her brains out with his loaded

hunting-whip. I—I, Hubert Manvers, saw him do it.”

There was a low, dull murmur in the crowd, not of dissent or disbelief,

but of doubt.

“And who slew master?” exclaimed black Jem Alderly, coming doggedly

forward; “this has got to be answered for.”

“It is answered for, Alderly,” said Durzil, in a faint but audible

voice. “I did it—I slew him, as he has slain me. I am Durzil Olifaunt,

whom men call Bras-de-fer. Do any of you chance to know me?”

“Ay, ay, all on us! all on us!” shouted half the room; for the frank,

gallant, bold young seaman had ever been a general favorite. “Huzza! for

Master Durzil!”

And in spite of the horrors of the scene, in spite of the presence of

the dead, a loud cheer followed.

“Hush!” he cried, “hush! this is no time for that, and no place. I am a

dying man. There is not five minutes’ life in me. Listen to me. Did any

of you ever hear me tell a lie?”

“Never! never!”

“I should scarce, therefore, begin to do so now, with heaven and hell

close before my eyes. Hubert Manvers spoke truly. I also saw him murder

her—murder his own wife—for such she was; therefore I killed him!” He

gasped for a moment, gathered his breath again, and pointing to the

table, “that paper, Hubert—quick—that paper—read it—I—am

going—quick!”

The young man understood his superior’s meaning in an instant, caught

the paper from the table, beckoned two or three of the older men about

him, among others, Geoffrey, the old steward, and read aloud the record

of the unhappy girl’s marriage.

At this moment the young vicar of Widecomb entered the room, and his

eyes falling on the paper, “That is my father’s hand-writing,” he cried;

“this is the missing leaf of my church register!”

“Was she not—was she not—his—wife?” cried Bras-de-fer, raising

himself feebly on his elbow, and gazing with his whole soul in his dying

eyes at the youthful vicar, and at the horror-stricken circle.

“She was—she was assuredly, his lawful wife, and such I will uphold

her,” said the young man, solemnly. “Her fame shall suffer no wrong any

longer—her soul, I trust, is with her God already—for she was

innocent, and good, and humble, as she was lovely and loving. Peace be

with her.”

“Poor, poor lady!” cried several of the girls who were present,

heart-stricken, at the thought of their own past conduct, and of her

unvarying sweetness. “Poor, poor lady!”

“Hubert—Hubert—I—I have cleared her—char—her character, I have

avenged her death; lay me beside her. In ten—ten minutes I shall

be—God—bless—bless you, Hubert—with Theresa! A—amen!”

He was dead. He had died in his duty—which was

justice—truth—vengeance!

* * * * *

SUMMER’S NIGHT.

BY SAM. C. REID, JR. AUTHOR OF “SCOUTING EXPEDITIONS OF THE TEXAS

RANGERS,” ETC.

The busy hum of day has passed,

And countless millions with the sun

Have set, for wo or weal the cast—

What’s said is said—what’s done is done.

And with the purple and the gold

There sinks many a soul to rest;

Hopes are wrecked—all fates are told—

The rich made poor, the poor made blessed.

Twilight’s beauteous mantle now

The earth enwraps, near and afar—

Casts her influence o’er each brow,

While peeps from heaven a single star!

That star to some is life and hope,

To others though, despair and gloom—

Each twinkle reads the horoscope

Of life, from cradle to the tomb!

Night now takes Twilight by the hand

And leads her to her own blue sphere,

Then calls forth her sentinel band—

At once ten thousand stars appear!

Hail, Queen Goddess! then shout the band

As, rising in her silvery car,

The Moon, with sceptre in her hand,

Bids Night her veil aside to draw!

Now blessed are they who can enjoy

An hour of such a summer’s night—

Speak, ye dungeons, life’s alloy,

Ye sick, diseased, ye barred of sight!

Oh! for a crevice in the wall,

To let one ray of moonlight in,

’Twould ease their hearts, and hope recall,

While they repented of their sin.

And restless, turning on his bed

The wasted form cries out with pain,

As raising up his fevered head,

Oh, God! that I were well again.

And oh, the blind! _none_ feel for ye,

Shut out from scenes so lovely bright,

Most painful thought—they cannot see—

Their night is day—their day is night!

The streets are crowded with the gay,

The voice and laugh of girls are heard,

Mellowed by the silver ray

Of happy thought or witty word.

Speak! ye millions, who joy and gaze

Upon the silvery charms of night,

Can ye a tear of sorrow raise

For those deprived of scenes so bright?

But why ask ye? no themes like these

Your thoughts make sad—of other things

Ye think, while onward wafts the breeze

And the night bird sweetly sings.

And yet, there is many a heart

To whom the moonbeams give no light,

Those strings with wo do almost part,

Swept rudely by the cold world’s blight.

No soothing ray melts o’er their souls,

No breeze lulls sweetly o’er those chords,

That beat and sigh, like sea o’er shoals,

For sympathy’s kind, loving words.

A blue spot in a stormy sky,

From which a star gleams purely bright,

Is like the smile or tearful eye

To those whose hearts are dark with night.

Then feel for th’ pris’ner, sick and blind—

E’en the forest-rose, the desert-tree,

The sprig of grass, kissed by the wind,

Receive its kindest sympathy.

Oh, Summer’s night—man’s Eden hours!

All Nature thrills with thy delight,

Th’ greenwood, rocky streams and flowers,

Th’ murm’ring sea, th’ beach, the mountain height.

Then give thy soul’s gratitude to Him

Who made the orb “to rule the night,”

And with the prayer of Cherubim

Pour forth thy heart’s inmost delight.

And learn to feel for another’s wo,

While to Heaven thou breath’st thy prayer—

Foul _prejudice_ from thy breast forego,

And let _sympathy_ reign ever there.

* * * * *

[Illustration: THE DEATH OF THE YEAR.

Engraved expressly for Graham’s Magazine by W. E. Tucker]

* * * * *

THE DEATH OF THE YEAR.

BY HENRY B. HIRST.

[SEE ENGRAVING.]

It was a dreary night

In the latter years of time,

When a man, with shrunken limbs

And a forehead white with rime—

With the rime of weary hours

Whose paths were not of flowers—

And a beard of snowy white,

Walked slowly through the night.

Pale Hecate, overhead,

Shone coldly on his brow;

His eye was sunken and dim,

His cheek had lost its glow,

But his step, so full of pride,—

The manhood of his stride,

Gave this antiquated thing

The appearance of a king.

The moon went sadly down

To a level with his way,

And the heavens became opprest

With vapors dark and gray

As Saturn, with his beard,

And glass, and scythe, appeared:

The old man journeyed on,

Growing weaker and more wan.

Like a shadow, on his path

With a silence, such as dwells

In the desolate dell of death

Where we hear not even our knells,

Did Saturn slowly pass

With his fatal scythe and glass:

The traveler looked not back,

But kept steadily on his track.

From the earth which lay below,

Until then so black and dumb,

Came the roar of many a gun,

With the roll of many a drum,

And the mingling strains of lute,

Clarion, cymbal, fife and flute;

And among them, like a knell,

Rose the clamor of a bell!

The wanderer heard the sound,

And with patient, suffering eyes

Gazed reproachfully on high,

Through the dark, unpitying skies;

But Saturn raised his steel

And the old man ceased to feel;

And they laid along his bier

The cadaverous Old Year.

* * * * *

THE COTTAGE.

BY J. HUNT, JR.

How pleasing it is, in this world of digression,

To pause, and to ponder some period fled;

The home of my infancy made an impression

Which only will perish when mem’ry is dead.

That rough, rugged farm, how dear did I love it,—

The barn by the orchard, and spring by the rill;

No spot upon earth which I so much covet,

As that where our Cottage once stood on the hill.

The rudely built Cottage, the old-fashioned Cottage,

The one-story Cottage, that stood on the hill.

Beside its broad hearth-stone, at evening, I’ve listened

The tale that my grandfather told of the wars;

He’d speak of his battles, while tears his eyes glistened,

And prove what he stated, by showing his scars!

’Twas then that my young heart beat high for the glory

Of aiding some measure, Fame’s parchment to fill,—

By giving in song, or relating in story,

My love for that Cottage, which stood on the hill.

The rudely built Cottage, the old-fashioned Cottage,

The time-honored Cottage, that stood on the hill.

That time-honored Cottage—no dream or delusion—

For ’neath its old roof dwelt affection and friends;

The seat of contentment and quiet seclusion,

Where goodness found favor, and evil amends.

What would I give could I once more regain it,

And have the same feelings my bosom to fill?

Alas! it’s in ruins—love cannot retain it—

Tears gush for that Cottage which stood on the hill.

The rudely built Cottage, the old-fashioned Cottage,

The one-story Cottage, that stood on the hill.

Though parted by distance, those scenes of my childhood

Rise fresh in my mind, when to them I recur—

I fancy I visit the vale and the wildwood,

Where flowers yield perfume, like India’s myrrh;—

And then, in the warmth of the deepest emotion,

I stand as in youth on the banks of that rill,

And hear in its gurgle a song of devotion.

With mine, for the Cottage that stood on the hill.

The rudely built Cottage, the old-fashioned Cottage,

The one-story Cottage, that stood on the hill.

* * * * *

THREE PICTURES:

SUNRISE—NOONDAY—NIGHT.

BY CAROLINE C——.

“Like a clear fountain, his desire

Exults, and leaps toward the light,

In every drop it says ‘Aspire!’

Striving for more ideal height.”

—

“Looking within myself, I note how thin

A plank of station, chance, or prosperous fate,

Doth fence me from the clutching waves of sin;

_In my own heart I find the worst man’s mate!_”

J. R. LOWELL.

An artist was passing slowly through the thorough-fare of a great city,

where for a few days he was sojourning.

He was a young man, and the few years of his life, if they had proved

heavy and sorrowful in experience, had at least left no dark impress on

his forehead. His figure was strikingly elegant, and the face manly, and

very beautiful; it might well have been taken to represent the Genius of

Thought, so calm, elevated, and ennobled by spiritual excellence was it.

The artist was a poor man; you could guess that by the worn garments in

which he was attired, for from the figure, bearing, and whole appearance

of the youth, it was evident that he was not of that class of geniuses

who affect shabbiness in personal appearance, in the name of

eccentricity.

And he was an ambitious young man, too. A glance into his studio, where

constantly and diligently he toiled in his vocation, had told you that.

It would seem by the constant emendations he would make, and by the

finished style he labored to impart to all he did, that nothing short of

superior excellence or perfection in his art, would satisfy him.

He has come into the open air this morning, not because he is wearied

with his work, for it is a source of continual delight to him—neither

in search of amusement, but to ponder on a thought which has long

harbored in his mind—three pictures should be his fame. From his quiet

studio he would send into the world a moral lesson that should delight

and instruct, and leave in the world an abiding moral influence. Not

only did Martin Gray long to win for himself a proud name on the earth,

but with the poets and the preachers he would fain lift up his voice and

teach—he also would be a priest and a reformer, and by his works he

would testify to the infinite beauty of holiness and virtue.

The artist’s heart beat joyfully as he revolved this idea in his

mind—his hope was high—his hand was skillful.

“If my name only ranks with the masters’ some day—if I can do some real

and substantial good in my generation! I cannot labor too hard to secure

these ends,” he said to himself as he passed, unconscious of the noise

and confusion about him, along the street.

Mechanically turning at the first corner, Martin moved on to quarters of

the city where the strife and confusion of life were more subdued.

At once he stood silent, as though changed suddenly to marble, then a

heart-cheering cry of joy and surprise burst from him, and “I have found

it! I have found it!” he cried—“here is sunrise at last!”

There were children playing in the street, poor little children, boys

and girls, whose only play-ground was that hot and dusty place. But in

the person of one, the quick eye of the artist detected extraordinary

beauty, though decked in rags almost as extraordinary.

The unconscious child was a girl, six or seven years of age, faultless

in form and feature, the very embodiment of one of Martin Gray’s ideals.

It was not solely the exquisite loveliness of the child’s face, though

the shape and coloring were perfect—but beside the dark rich hair,

which fell in such unheeded profusion on the shoulders of its little

mistress—and beside the deep, sapphire-blue of the large languid eyes,

and the classic regularity of every feature, there was an expression, a

_soul look_, which intensified her natural beauty, and stamped her as

the owner of an intellect whose range was far higher than that reached

by any of her playmates.

“Tell me your name, little angel,” said the artist, in the excitement of

his delighted surprise.

“My name is Alice Flynn,” was the prompt answer, accompanied by a smile

and frank look of inquiry, which read very plainly “what is _your_

name—and what do you want of me?”

“Have you a mother? Where does she live? Go with me to your home—I must

speak with her.”

The child answered these queries by at once leaving her playmates—the

artist followed her quickly, and in a few moments they entered a narrow

byway. Passing a short distance through it, little Alice paused before a

shabby old frame house, which seemed every day on the point of bidding

an eternal farewell to all things terrestrial.

“This is the place where we live, sir,” she said, with the sweetest

voice in the world; “will you come in?”

“The little girl is yours, ma’am, I believe,” said Martin, as he stood

in the presence of what seemed to him an ogress—a gigantic woman who

certainly could lay but little claim to beauty, when compared with the

“child-angel” who called her mother.

“Yes—she wasn’t lost was she? Or was she up to mischief in the street,

just tell me that?”

“No, no—nothing of the kind,” said the artist quickly—but not in the

least daunted by the washer-woman’s unamiable greeting—“I was struck

with her appearance—and now that I have at last an opportunity of

accomplishing an object I have long contemplated, I trust you will not

object.”

“Lord, sir, what is it ye want—speak it out quick can’t ye—my work is

waiting for me, don’t ye see? Do you want the child’s front teeth, or

her hair? I’ve sold her hair twice to a barber, but her teeth—”

“You mistake me,” exclaimed Martin Gray, sharply, for he was disgusted

with the cruel words of the old beldam. “I am an artist—I would like to

take her likeness—will you permit me to do so?”

“No! what would you do with it? The girl’s about spoiled now with

people’s telling her how beautiful she is. To be sure the child _is_

well enough”—this with a sort of brutish pride—“in looks, but beauty

don’t give us bread, and her good looks only spiles her—she’s getting

proud and hateful since people have told her so much about it, the

little fool!”

“If that is so, I fear it is not the wisest course to let her play so

much in the street with other little folks,” said Martin.

This approach to advice aroused the woman’s ire. “Where’s she to be

kept, I’d like to know that? A poor woman like me as _arns_ her bread by

the sweat of her face has little time to be looking about after the

young ones. People like me can’t keep their children to home like other

folks, who have plenty of room indoor and out. So you see, young man,

your advice aint worth much any how.”

“Of course, madam, you know your own business best; but, seriously, you

cannot mean to refuse my earnest request. I assure you it will be the

greatest favor to me if you will suffer me to take the child’s picture.

I am willing to pay you for the privilege.”

“Then it shall be done,” said the woman, brightening up. “How much will

you offer?”

“Two dollars,” answered the young man, “and I will pay you more at some

future day—but I also am poor.”

Poor fellow, he spoke the truth indeed, for the two dollars were just

half the contents of his old faded purse at that moment.

“Well, she may go for that. Here Alice, you’re gwine to have your face

painted—let me brush you up a little.”

“No—no, I pray madam, leave her to me. I will take her to my studio as

she is; I would not have her appearance changed in the least—the

drapery of the child does not need any alteration, I will bring her to

you again in an hour.”

“Well, she’ll be safe enough, I ’spose, go on.”

“Are you going to paint my face, sir? What for? Will it hurt me?” asked

Alice Flynn as she, with Martin, passed along the streets hand in hand.

“Not your _face_, child,” answered the artist, “I’m going to paint a

face _like_ yours—that is all.”

“What for?”

“To hang up in my room, and then perhaps to sell it some day for a great

deal of money.”

“Sell me! sell my face!” and the little innocent laughed, and wondered

why any body should want to buy a face like hers!

Martin, too busy with his own thoughts, made no answer to her many

exclamations of astonishment and wonder. Two steps at a time, with the

girl in his arms, did the delighted youth ascend the three steep and

narrow flights of stairs which led to the poor little attic room he

dignified with the “name, style, and title” of studio.

A barren place it seemed to little Alice Flynn, for such a nice

gentleman to live in—indeed scarce a whit better than her own poor home

was it.

“Are you poor, too?” she asked, with childlike confidence—and a most

unchildish and unnatural sadness was in her voice as she spoke.

“Yes, I am poor—I paint pictures for a living, Alice. I shall not grow

rich in a day,” said the artist, and his words were uttered with not

quite the usual, light-hearted happy tone.

Probably my reader will not soon, if ever, see the original painting

executed on that day which ever after remained a date so memorable in

the recollections of Martin Gray. Let me, therefore, here state that the

Sunrise was a portrait quite dissimilar to those we usually see of young

children.

“Now lie quietly, Alice, for a moment,” said Martin. He had placed her

on the ancient lounge, the only reasonable piece of furniture in the

room. “Now close your eyes—ah! not _so_ close, let them be half open,

as though you were just waking up—now I will paint a picture the world

shall wonder at! Yes, I also will make a Sunrise!”

Quietly and motionless, as though bereft of life, the child lay and

watched the artist’s movements; in him she forgot herself, consequently

had none of that intense consciousness of expression so often

perceivable in the portraits of people who become immortalized, and

perpetuated on—canvas!

What a sight to see! the lonely desolate places where the impoverished

children of Genius, the painters, sculptors, and poets, have with

patient but almost hopeless toil wrought out their wonder-works!

Oh! eyes whose range of vision was circumscribed by four contracted

walls, have looked on scenes of rarer and richer beauty than travelers

in many climes have seen; and voices, husky, tuneless with want and

grief, have breathed, even when tortured with the death-agony, songs,

that the world has hushed its mighty voice, and its tumultuous heart to

hear; warriors have conquered on battle-fields, whose inspiration was

the song that burst from the dying son of poverty, while pain and fever

prostrated him, who kept back by force of mind the advance of death,

until the strain of glory should be fully and perfectly conceived!

An hour passed, and not for one moment had the hand of the artist

paused—it is enough to say that even he was satisfied with the progress

he had made in those swift-winged sixty minutes.

Upon the easy couch Alice had fallen asleep, unperceived by the young

painter—he awakened her with some regret, but the time he had promised

to keep her with him was passed, and Martin had little inclination to

brave the wrath of the mother’s tongue. Thoughtfully he led the child to

her home, and when he parted with her there, it was with a heart full of

sorrow, for he knew that a life of hardship, and want, and temptation,

was in store for the beautiful girl.

“Poor and handsome,” thought he—“God protect her! To be sure it would

be a sad sight were the innumerable host of poor people all hideously

ugly—and as to the _necessity_ of the thing, such folks would seem to

require the simple pleasure of being admired, inasmuch as they are

debarred from participating in all amusements and enjoyments that cost

money, and beauty costs nothing. And yet Heaven have mercy on the poor

family that boasts of a beauty! as surely as the sunshine, pride will

creep in under the door-sill or by the window, and certainly in a covert

manner. The pretty daughter must be prettily dressed, even at the

expense, and by the self-denial of the more plainly gifted remainder of

the family. Then come struggles, heart-bitterness and envy—God be

thanked if hatred and malice do not also come! Now there’s that little

Alice Flynn—if she were only my sister, or one over whom I had the

shadow of control! Oh! that I were only rich! She ought to be educated!

Heavens! what a smile—and what a mind she has—she thinks! God defend

her!”

Indulging in such thoughts as these Martin had passed again through the

crowded streets, quite unmindful of all things save that one high

project he had conceived, which now, he for the first time felt

convinced might be really performed. Once more we find him before his

easel, and how he labored there! Six days, morning and evening, he

worked on his creation, and Saturday night saw him looking upon it with

such intensity of satisfaction, as betokened a very happy heart—for it

was finished, and his heart and his mind had declared it “very good!”

The following week there was to be an exhibition of the paintings of

native artists in New York, and to the rooms prepared for this purpose

Martin conveyed his work, and it was not perhaps without a thrill of

pride that he placed it among the multitudinous proofs of genius there.

The Sunrise was unframed, and having been among the last brought in, it

occupied an obscure and unfavorable position. But Martin surveyed it

with the eyes of a lover—he knew its superior merit, and he fancied

that others would behold it in just such a light. But Martin was

destined to be disappointed not a little; during the first days of the

exhibition, while the rooms were filled to overflowing, but little

attention was attracted toward his portrait. Sometimes it was so

fortunate as to attract an exclamation of surprise, and a momentary

glance of admiration—and once or twice a group of young people stopped

a moment to honor it with examination, but there were works of well

known artists which must be criticised and applauded—there were “first

attempts” of rich and fashionable men which must be praised—and

besides, it was on the whole taken for granted by universal consent,

that the best pictures occupied the most prominent stations, and that

those condemned to the back-ground must necessarily be only passably

good or mediocre.

By degrees Martin began to take these facts into consideration—and then

it was only by great effort he managed to keep his hopes alive, that

some good fate was yet in store for his darling.

An early hour on the morning of the fifth day found him once more

attracted to the rooms, he would endeavor to secure for his child a

position more prominent, for some of the paintings had been already

removed by their masters.

But two persons were there when he entered. They were a lady and

gentleman in deep mourning, and they were standing before _his_ Sunrise!

Passing up the long hall slowly, with his eyes directed to the thickly

covered wall, where he saw what only an artist could, the outwritten,

burning hopes of a multitude of men, he contrived to keep watch of the

two who remained so long motionless and speechless before the pictured

child.

“Do you know the author of this work, sir; and if it is for sale?” asked

the stranger as Martin drew near.

“I have an acquaintance with the artist,” answered he, “but the

painting, I think, is not for sale.”

“Why should it be placed here then?” asked the gentleman quickly, and

with great evident disappointment.

“Because, sir, there is something dear to the heart of the author of a

work, beside the money which the sale of it would bring. I feel at

liberty to answer you frankly as you have asked—the artist hoped that

by this work attention might be attracted to his skill, for he is a

young man necessitated to labor, and, as yet, altogether unknown in his

profession.”

“I admire the genius of the young man, he will succeed in making himself

known beyond all doubt. But perhaps I might offer for this picture a sum

great enough to satisfy even him.”

There was a silence, and there was in the lady’s eyes such a beseeching

look as she glanced from the picture toward Martin, that his

determination was almost vanquished, but he looked down and said:

“The painting is my work—I cannot part with it at any price.”

“It is yours! and you will not sell it! Mr. Artist, you do not, cannot

know how much you refuse us! We had a child, a darling little girl, she

was an angel to us—she is lost to us, is dead, young man!—and this

portrait! it is so like her, at any cost I would secure it. Name your

price, high as you value your beautiful work, consider that to us it is

infinitely more valuable! the hours of labor you have spent upon it have

endeared it to you—it is more to us though than even that, it is life

to us, for it brings _her_ back again!”

The lady trembled as her companion pleaded with the artist so earnestly.

It was not in Martin Gray to deny a plea so sad and so heartfelt. “It

shall be yours,” he exclaimed, “permit me to retain the work but a few

days, and it shall then be returned to you.”

A thankful glance of the tearful eyes of the bereaved mother was what

Martin thought at that moment a full reward.

“God bless you, sir! you have made us happy! If five thousand dollars is

any compensation, they are yours!”

That was another kind of reward! The young artist thought both

invaluable; and it was with a light heart that with the picture in its

case, he carried it once more to the attic studio.

CHAPTER II.

Martin Gray’s fortune was made, and ever after was he a firm believer in

presentiments, for the Sunrise had in very truth been the making of him.

In the midst of his good fortune, the generous heart did not forget the

poor child whose beauty had so materially aided his genius. Previous to

his departure for the old world, he placed a well-filled purse in the

hands of the mother, saying, “Your child is an extraordinary girl. This

money will be sufficient to secure her a good education—pray do not

neglect it, for she will be an honor and a great help to you some day.

Promise me that you will keep her out of the street as much as is

possible, and that you will send her to school. I am going abroad, when

I come home again she will be many years older than now, nearly a woman.

Give me your promise she shall be sent to school.”

“Yes, she shall go, and as to keeping her out of the street, I s’pose I

might as well undertake to—Well, yes, I’ll try my hand at it.”

“Be kind to her!”

Martin traveled abroad; he studied in Italy—he studied in Germany—he

journeyed through nearly all Europe. Among artists, and

artist-patronizers, the success of his first exhibited picture was

well-known, the Sunrise was every where commented upon, and the papers

liked to talk of the young artist Martin Gray, of his skillful hand, and

generous heart!

But during the years of labor and study spent abroad, his one great idea

remained unaccomplished. The second picture which he had designed as a

continuation of the Sunrise, was untouched. The imagination was not to

be suffered to do the work in this instance either—but the second work,

even as the first had been, should be a portrait.

Still his hands had not been idle. In Paris his studio (it was not there

an attic!) became a point of interest and fashionable attraction, and in

Hamburg the American artist dwelt neither in poverty nor obscurity. The

walls of his rooms were adorned with evidences of his capabilities, and

beside the honors heaped upon him, in a pecuniary point of view, his

labors had made his fortune.

Years passed on, and Martin was at home again; at home and among a

multitude of friends, though when seven years ago he sailed from the

great city he might easily have counted the voices that came to bid

adieu and God-speed. But fame and fortune wonderfully enhance the feeble

interest felt in the once poor son of Genius—so Martin Gray proved it.

His friendship was sought for as most honorable, his words were quoted,

his dress and style imitated—fair ladies trilled his songs, (for he was

something of a poet, too,) and as a “lion” the young exquisite was

pronounced by fathers, mothers, and daughters, as perfect, charming, and

altogether unexceptionable.

“Well, what in the way of amusements, Frank?” asked the artist, as

arm-in-arm with a city gallant, he strolled along Broadway a few days

after his arrival in New York.

“What! not heard yet that _Alice_ gives a musical entertainment

to-night? My good fellow you ‘argue yourself unknown’ by such unseemly

ignorance,” gayly said his companion, the Hon. Francis Dundas.

“Indeed, I must confess to ignorance; who is this great singer,

Alice—some newly risen star, is she not?”

“Yes—but the few who have heard, say a star that bids fair to prove on

closer examination of the first magnitude, and that even an artist’s

eyes can detect no defect in her matchless beauty.”

“And which point of the compass does she hail from?”

“Oh! she is a native of our city. Her rare beauty some time since

attracted the attention of old H——, the millionaire—he does something

toward educating her; she turns out a woman, or girl of uncommon

talents, and has determined to become a public singer. I am told her

history is a complete romance, wanting nothing of tragedy or comedy to

make it irresistibly interesting.”

“A singer—a genius—and a beauty! we will hear her by all means!”

exclaimed Martin enthusiastically.

And they did hear her.

It was not a “grand entertainment.” The singer Alice was the sole

performer. She had preferred that it should be so, that her merits and

powers, whatever they were, might be estimated at their worth.

Small and select was the audience before which she appeared; it was

composed of people of refined taste, who could fully appreciate all the

excellencies of style and manner, and whose approbation a young

debutante might rejoice to win. How young she was! how truly and

perfectly beautiful! There was a slight flush on her cheek which was

else pale as marble, that told how strongly the chords of her brave

heart were struck. She sang—oh! the voice whose tones filled the high

hall was like that we hear in dreams, when angels come to keep watch

over us, chanting through the long hours of the night! During the whole

first part of the concert there was intense silence, for there was an

intense gratification felt by the audience that was deeper than could be

uttered, and the smiles, and tears, and breathless interest evinced,

were to the maiden tributes more acceptable than tumultuous applause had

been.

“She is a wonder!” “a miracle!” “what a voice!” “what a style!” “and

then to think she is only seventeen or eighteen!” Such and like

exclamations escaped from every heart as “Alice” withdrew at the close

of the first part from the saloon.

Frank Dundas turned to his companion—

“Well, Gray, what do _you_ think of her? Your wits seem wandering.”

“I am lost! it is divine! I have never seen or heard her equal. Tell me,

what did you say is her name; the face haunts me; I could swear I have

seen it before.”

“Tut! swear not at all. It’s not likely you have ever seen her before

to-night. Perhaps she corresponds with some fairy-queen or lady-love

born of your own prolific fancy. Is it not so? I can well conceive such

a thing possible, though I’m neither poet nor artist.”

Martin bowed to save himself from the necessity of a reply, for he was

deep in thought, and through the obscurity of the distant Past his

memory was striving to grope her way.

After a few moments the singer appeared again in the saloon.

“Did you say her name is Alice?” asked Martin Gray, as his eyes for the

second time rested upon her. “Alice—Alice what?”

“I have never heard—she is only known by that name. She does not need

so many cognomens as we less gifted individuals, and I suppose intends

that the world shall know without being told further, who is meant when

the singer _Alice_ is spoken of.”

“Dundas, I have seen that face before, you may depend upon it—will you

believe it? during all my residence in Europe I have sought with

desperate earnestness, but in vain, for a face just such as hers.”

“Pray wherefore? Are you not the sworn foe of all lady-loves save the

sweet goddess of painting?”

“Hush! love has had nothing to do with my search—pretty faces are to be

found every where; and though an artist, I am free to say the man who

marries a woman for her beauty is a poor fool. Did you ever see my

picture called Sunrise, painted seven or eight years ago?”

“Remember it? Why, my dear fellow, to be sure I do, and what a grand

lift it gave you before the ‘darling public;’ I would be stupid indeed

to forget that picture or its author. A copy of it has been the best

ornament of my room for years!”

“Well, perhaps you know—though of course you could not, for I never

spoke of my intention to another—but ever since that picture was

finished, I have determined to make it one of a series, by painting two

others, one of such innocent loveliness arrived at womanly perfection,

and the third was to be the image of crime, or beauty ruined; and the

three I hoped to offer a moral lesson to the world. Never till to-night

have I seen one worthy to take the second place in the series. I see her

now, and I have an impression that amounts almost to a conviction, that

this woman is that child.”

“She lives on Tenth street. If it is your wish we will visit her

to-night when the concert is finished, or to-morrow—perhaps, however,

you would prefer calling upon her alone?” said Frank Dundas with a

hearty co-operating look of voice and manner.

“By all means accompany me—we will go in the morning, and I will lay my

life on it, that singer’s name, when a child, was Alice Flynn!”

* * * * *

At eleven the following morning the lady was alone in her simply

furnished apartment, in a boarding-house on Tenth street. The beauty

which had dazzled all who beheld her on the previous night, did not owe

any thing to dress or to lamp-light, it bore the inquisitive glance of

the sunshine well.

Alice received her guests, the Hon. Frank Dundas, and the artist Martin

Gray, with a grace and ease of manner which delighted them. She spoke

with the enthusiasm of youth of the art in which she was so great a

proficient, and every word she uttered revealed a mind well cultivated,

refined, and innately noble.

A half hour passed speedily by, but the Honorable gave no sign of an

intention to depart. The artist, who had surveyed her as he would an

exquisite production of art, first rising to take his leave, said—“I

have a favor to urge, madam, it is a very great one; I am painting a

series of portraits, will you permit me to take yours as a

representation of Noonday?”

“It would be a very poor representative of the glory and majesty of the

theme you have chosen. Pardon me, I must decline an honor so unmerited.”

“Permit _me_ to judge that,” said Martin Gray earnestly. “It is an idea

I have long desired to carry out; I wished to make the picture an exact

likeness, and therefore sought a beauty that was perfect, so there

should be no work left for my imagination—now that the object of my

long search is found, do not deny me this great privilege. If you will

only accompany some of your friends to my studio, by showing to you the

Sunrise, I can better explain what it is I wish; or perhaps you will

suffer me either now or to-morrow to escort you thither.”

“To-morrow,” she answered, “I will come. Ere then you may, I trust, find

one elsewhere to represent your ideal.”

“That is utterly impossible. To-morrow, then, before the rooms are

filled with visiters, I shall look for you,” said Martin, with a

decidedly grateful accent and look, and the young men walked slowly

away.