Eugene Aram — Complete

CHAPTER XI. CHAPTER XI. GRIEF IN A RUFFIAN.—THE CHAMBER OF EARLY DEATH.—A HOMELY YET MOMENTOUS CONFESSION.—THE EARTH’S SECRETS.—THE CAVERN.—THE ACCUSATION. ALL is not well; I doubt some foul play. ............ Foul deeds will rise, Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes. —Hamlet. As they passed through the street, they perceived three or four persons standing round the open door of a house of ordinary description, the windows of which were partially closed. “It is the house,” said the curate, “in which Houseman’s daughter died,—poor, poor child! Yet why mourn for the young? Better that the light cloud should fade away into heaven with the morning breath, than travel through the weary day to gather in darkness and end in storm.” “Ah, sir!” said an old man, leaning on his stick and lifting his hat, in obeisance to the curate, “the father is within, and takes on bitterly. He drives them all away from the room, and sits moaning by the bedside, as if he was a going out of his mind. Won’t your reverence go in to him a bit?” The curate looked at Walter inquiringly. “Perhaps,” said the latter, “you had better go in: I will wait without.” While the curate hesitated, they heard a voice in the passage; and presently Houseman was seen at the far end, driving some women before him with vehement gesticulations. “I tell you, ye hell-hags,” shrieked his harsh and now straining voice, “that ye suffered her to die! Why did ye not send to London for physicians? Am I not rich enough to buy my child’s life at any price? By the living ___, I would have turned your very bodies into gold to have saved her! But she’s DEAD! and I ___ Out of my sight; out of my way!” And with his hands clenched, his brows knit, and his head uncovered, Houseman sallied forth from the door, and Walter recognized the traveller of the preceding night. He stopped abruptly as he saw the little knot without, and scowled round at each of them with a malignant and ferocious aspect. “Very well, it’s very well, neighbors!” said he at length, with a fierce laugh; “this is kind! You have come to welcome Richard Houseman home, have ye? Good, good! Not to gloat at his distress? Lord, no! Ye have no idle curiosity, no prying, searching, gossiping devil within ye that makes ye love to flock and gape and chatter when poor men suffer! This is all pure compassion; and Houseman, the good, gentle, peaceful, honest Houseman, you feel for him,—I know you do! Hark ye, begone! Away, march, tramp, or—Ha, ha! there they go, there they go!” laughing wildly again as the frightened neighbors shrank from the spot, leaving only Walter and the clergyman with the childless man. “Be comforted, Houseman!” said Summers, soothingly; “it is a dreadful affliction that you have sustained. I knew your daughter well: you may have heard her speak of me. Let us in, and try what heavenly comfort there is in prayer.” “Prayer! pooh! I am Richard Houseman!” “Lives there one man for whom prayer is unavailing?” “Out, canter, out! My pretty Jane! And she laid her head on my bosom, and looked up in my face, and so—died!” “Come,” said the curate, placing his hand on Houseman’s arm, “come.” Before he could proceed, Houseman, who was muttering to himself, shook him off roughly, and hurried away up the street; but after he had gone a few paces, he turned back, and approaching the curate, said, in a more collected tone: “I pray you, sir, since you are a clergyman (I recollect your face, and I recollect Jane said you had been good to her),—I pray you go and say a few words over her. But stay,—don’t bring in my name; you understand. I don’t wish God to recollect that there lives such a man as he who now addresses you. Halloo! [shouting to the women] my hat, and stick too. Fal la! la! fal la!—why should these things make us play the madman? It is a fine day, sir; we shall have a late winter. “Curse the b____, how long she is! Yet the hat was left below. But when a death is in the house, sir, it throws things into confusion: don’t you find it so?” Here one of the women, pale, trembling, and tearful, brought the ruffian his hat; and placing it deliberately on his head, and bowing with a dreadful and convulsive attempt to smile, he walked slowly away and disappeared. “What strange mummers grief makes!” said the curate. “It is an appalling spectacle when it thus wrings out feeling from a man of that mould! But pardon me, my young friend; let me tarry here for a moment.” “I will enter the house with you,” said Walter. And the two men walked in, and in a few moments they stood within the chamber of death. The face of the deceased had not yet suffered the last withering change. Her young countenance was hushed and serene, and but for the fixedness of the smile, you might have thought the lips moved. So delicate, fair, and gentle were the features that it was scarcely possible to believe such a scion could spring from such a stock; and it seemed no longer wonderful that a thing so young, so innocent, so lovely, and so early blighted should have touched that reckless and dark nature which rejected all other invasion of the softer emotions. The curate wiped his eyes, and kneeling down prayed, if not for the dead (who, as our Church teaches, are beyond human intercession), perhaps for the father she had left on earth, more to be pitied of the two! Nor to Walter was the scene without something more impressive and thrilling than its mere pathos alone. He, now standing beside the corpse of Houseman’s child, was son to the man of whose murder Houseman had been suspected. The childless and the fatherless,—might there be no retribution here? When the curate’s prayer was over, and he and Walter escaped from the incoherent blessings and complaints of the women of the house, they, with difficulty resisting the impression the scene had left upon their minds, once more resumed their errand. “This is no time,” said Walter, musingly, “for an examination of Houseman; yet it must not be forgotten.” The curate did not reply for some moments; and then, as an answer to the remark, observed that the conversation they anticipated with Aram’s former hostess might throw some light on their researches. They now proceeded to another part of the town, and arrived at a lonely and desolate-looking house, which seemed to wear in its very appearance something strange, sad, and ominous. Some houses have an expression, as it were, in their outward aspect that sinks unaccountably into the heart,—a dim, oppressive eloquence which dispirits and affects. You say some story must be attached to those walls; some legendary interest, of a darker nature, ought to be associated with the mute stone and mortar; you feel a mingled awe and curiosity creep over you as you gaze. Such was the description of the house that the young adventurer now surveyed. It was of antique architecture, not uncommon in old towns; gable ends rose from the roof; dull, small, latticed panes were sunk deep in the gray, discolored wall; the pale, in part, was broken and jagged; and rank weeds sprang up in the neglected garden, through which they walked towards the porch. The door was open; they entered, and found an old woman of coarse appearance sitting by the fireside, and gazing on space with that vacant stare which so often characterizes the repose and relaxation of the uneducated poor. Walter felt an involuntary thrill of dislike come over him as he looked at the solitary inmate of the solitary house. “Hey day, sir!” said she, in a grating voice, “and what now? Oh! Mr. Summers, is it you? You’re welcome, sir! I wishes I could offer you a glass of summut, but the bottle’s dry—he! he!” pointing, with a revolting grin, to an empty bottle that stood on a niche within the hearth. “I don’t know how it is, sir, but I never wants to eat; but ah! ‘t is the liquor that does un good!” “You have lived a long time in this house?” said the curate. “A long time,—some thirty years an’ more.” “You remember your lodger, Mr. Aram?” “A—well—yes!” “An excellent man—” “Humph.” “A most admirable man!” “A-humph! he!—humph! that’s neither here nor there.” “Why, you don’t seem to think as all the rest of the world does with regard to him?” “I knows what I knows.” “Ah! by the by, you have some cock-and-a-bull story about him, I fancy, but you never could explain yourself,—it is merely for the love of seeming wise that you invented it, eh, Goody?” The old woman shook her head, and crossing her hands on her knee, replied with peculiar emphasis, but in a very low and whispered voice, “I could hang him!” “Pooh!” “Tell you I could!” “Well, let’s have the story then!” “No, no! I have not told it to ne’er a one yet, and I won’t for nothing. What will you give me? Make it worth my while.” “Tell us all, honestly, fairly, and fully, and you shall have five golden guineas. There, Goody.” Roused by this promise, the dame looked up with more of energy than she had yet shown, and muttered to herself, rocking her chair to and fro: “Aha! why not? No fear now, both gone; can’t now murder the poor old cretur, as the wretch once threatened. Five golden guineas,—five, did you say, sir, five?” “Ah! and perhaps our bounty may not stop there,” said the curate. Still the old woman hesitated, and still she muttered to herself; but after some further prelude, and some further enticement from the curate, the which we spare our reader, she came at length to the following narration:— “It was on the 7th of February, in the year ‘44,—yes, ‘44, about six o’clock in the evening, for I was a-washing in the kitchen,—when Mr. Aram called to me an’ desired of me to make a fire upstairs, which I did; he then walked out. Some hours afterwards, it might be two in the morning, I was lying awake, for I was mighty bad with the toothache, when I heard a noise below, and two or three voices. On this I was greatly afeard, and got out o’ bed, and opening the door, I saw Mr. Houseman and Mr. Clarke coming upstairs to Mr. Aram’s room, and Mr. Aram followed them. They shut the door, and stayed there, it might be an hour. Well, I could not a think what could make so shy an’ resarved a gentleman as Mr. Aram admit these ‘ere wild madcaps like at that hour; an’ I lay awake a thinking an’ a thinking, till I heard the door open agin, an’ I went to listen at the keyhole, an’ Mr. Clarke said: ‘It will soon be morning, and we must get off.’ They then all three left the house. But I could not sleep, an’ I got up afore five o’clock; and about that hour Mr. Aram an’ Mr. Houseman returned, and they both glowered at me as if they did not like to find me a stirring; an’ Mr. Aram went into his room, and Houseman turned and frowned at me as black as night. Lord have mercy on me, I see him now! An’ I was sadly feared, an’ I listened at the keyhole, an’ I heard Houseman say: ‘If the woman comes in, she’ll tell.’ “‘What can she tell?’ said Mr. Aram; ‘poor simple thing, she knows nothing.’ With that, Houseman said, says he: ‘If she tells that I am here, it will be enough; but however [with a shocking oath], we’ll take an opportunity to shoot her.’ “On that I was so frighted that I went away back to my own room, and did not stir till they had gone out, and then—” “What time was that?” “About seven o’clock. Well—You put me out! where was I? Well, I went into Mr. Aram’s, an’ I seed they had been burning a fire, an’ that all the ashes were taken out o’ the grate; so I went an’ looked at the rubbish behind the house, and there sure enough I seed the ashes, and among ‘em several bits o’ cloth and linen which seemed to belong to wearing apparel; and there, too, was a handkerchief which I had obsarved Houseman wear (for it was a very curious handkerchief, all spotted) many’s the time, and there was blood on it, ‘bout the size of a shilling. An’ afterwards I seed Houseman, an’ I showed him the handkerchief; and I said to him, ‘What has come of Clarke?’ An’ he frowned, and, looking at me, said, ‘Hark ye, I know not what you mean; but as sure as the devil keeps watch for souls, I will shoot you through the head if you ever let that d—-d tongue of yours let slip a single word about Clarke or me or Mr. Aram,—so look to yourself! “An’ I was all scared, and trimbled from limb to limb; an’ for two whole yearn afterwards (long arter Aram and Houseman were both gone) I never could so much as open my lips on the matter; and afore he went, Mr. Aram would sometimes look at me, not sternly-like, as the villain Houseman, but as if he would read to the bottom of my heart. Oh! I was as if you had taken a mountain off o’ me when he an’ Houseman left the town; for sure as the sun shines I believes, from what I have now said, that they two murdered Clarke on that same February night. An’ now, Mr. Summers, I feels more easy than I has felt for many a long day; an’ if I have not told it afore, it is because I thought of Houseman’s frown and his horrid words; but summut of it would ooze out of my tongue now an’ then, for it’s a hard thing, sir, to know a secret o’ that sort and be quiet and still about it; and, indeed, I was not the same cretur when I knew it as I was afore, for it made me take to anything rather than thinking; and that’s the reason, sir, I lost the good crackter I used to have.” Such, somewhat abridged from its “says he” and “says I,” its involutions and its tautologies, was the story which Walter held his breath to hear. But events thicken, and the maze is nearly thridden. “Not a moment now should be lost,” said the curate, as they left the house. “Let us at once proceed to a very able magistrate, to whom I can introduce you, and who lives a little way out of the town.” “As you will,” said Walter, in an altered and hollow voice. “I am as a man standing on an eminence, who views the whole scene he is to travel over, stretched before him, but is dizzy and bewildered by the height which he has reached. I know, I feel, that I am on the brink of fearful and dread discoveries; pray God that—But heed me not, sir, heed me not; let us on, on!” It was now approaching towards the evening; and as they walked on, having left the town, the sun poured his last beams on a group of persons that appeared hastily collecting and gathering round a spot, well known in the neighborhood of Knaresborough, called Thistle Hill. “Let us avoid the crowd,” said the curate. “Yet what, I wonder, can be its cause?” While he spoke, two peasants hurried by towards the throng. “What is the meaning of the crowd yonder?” asked the curate. “I don’t know exactly, your honor, but I hears as how Jem Ninnings, digging for stone for the limekiln, have dug out a big wooden chest.” A shout from the group broke in on the peasant’s explanation,—a sudden simultaneous shout, but not of joy; something of dismay and horror seemed to breathe in the sound. Walter looked at the curate. An impulse, a sudden instinct, seemed to attract them involuntarily to the spot whence that sound arose; they quickened their pace, they made their way through the throng. A deep chest, that had been violently forced, stood before them; its contents had been dragged to day, and now lay on the sward—a bleached and mouldering skeleton! Several of the bones were loose, and detached from the body. A general hubbub of voices from the spectators,—inquiry, guess, fear, wonder,—rang confusedly around. “Yes!” said one old man, with gray hair, leaning on a pickaxe, “it is now about fourteen years since the Jew pedlar disappeared. These are probably his bones,—he was supposed to have been murdered!” “Nay!” screeched a woman, drawing back a child who, all unalarmed, was about to touch the ghastly relics, “nay, the pedlar was heard of afterwards. I’ll tell ye, ye may be sure these are the bones of Clarke,—Daniel Clarke,—whom the country was so stirred about when we were young!” “Right, dame, right! It is Clarke’s skeleton,” was the simultaneous cry. And Walter, pressing forward, stood over the bones, and waved his hand as to guard them from further insult. His sudden appearance, his tall stature, his wild gesture, the horror, the paleness, the grief of his countenance, struck and appalled all present. He remained speechless, and a sudden silence succeeded the late clamor. “And what do you here, fools?” said a voice, abruptly. The spectators turned: a new comer had been added to the throng,—it was Richard Houseman. His dress loose and disarranged, his flushed cheeks and rolling eyes, betrayed the source of consolation to which he had flown from his domestic affliction. “What do ye here?” said he, reeling forward. “Ha! human bones? And whose may they be, think ye?” “They are Clarke’s!” said the woman, who had first given rise to that supposition. “Yes, we think they are Daniel Clarke’s,—he who disappeared some years ago!” cried two or three voices in concert. “Clarke’s?” repeated Houseman, stooping down and picking up a thigh-bone, which lay at a little distance from the rest; “Clarke’s? Ha! ha! they are no more Clarke’s than mine!” “Behold!” shouted Walter, in a voice that rang from cliff to plain; and springing forward, he seized Houseman with a giant’s grasp,—“behold the murderer!” As if the avenging voice of Heaven had spoken, a thrilling, an electric conviction darted through the crowd. Each of the elder spectators remembered at once the person of Houseman, and the suspicion that had attached to his name. “Seize him! seize him!” burst forth from twenty voices. “Houseman is the murderer!” “Murderer!” faltered Houseman, trembling in the iron hands of Walter,—“murderer of whom? I tell ye these are not Clarke’s bones!” “Where then do they lie?” cried his arrester. Pale, confused, conscience-stricken, the bewilderment of intoxication mingling with that of fear, Houseman turned a ghastly look around him, and, shrinking from the eyes of all, reading in the eyes of all his condemnation, he gasped out, “Search St. Robert’s Cave, in the turn at the entrance!” “Away!” rang the deep voice of Walter, on the instant; “away! To the cave, to the cave!” On the banks of the River Nid, whose waters keep an everlasting murmur to the crags and trees that overhang them, is a wild and dreary cavern, hollowed from a rock which, according to tradition, was formerly the hermitage of one of those early enthusiasts who made their solitude in the sternest recesses of earth, and from the austerest thoughts and the bitterest penance wrought their joyless offerings to the great Spirit of the lovely world. To this desolate spot, called, from the name of its once celebrated eremite, St. Robert’s Cave, the crowd now swept, increasing its numbers as it advanced. The old man who had discovered the unknown remains, which were gathered up and made a part of the procession, led the way; Houseman, placed between two strong and active men, went next; and Walter followed behind, fixing his eyes mutely upon the ruffian. The curate had had the precaution to send on before for torches, for the wintry evening now darkened round them, and the light from the torch-bearers, who met them at the cavern, cast forth its red and lurid flare at the mouth of the chasm. One of these torches Walter himself seized, and his was the first step that entered the gloomy passage. At this place and time, Houseman, who till then, throughout their short journey, had seemed to have recovered a sort of dogged self-possession, recoiled, and the big drops of fear or agony fell fast from his brow. He was dragged forward forcibly into the cavern; and now as the space filled, and the torches flickered against the grim walls, glaring on faces which caught, from the deep and thrilling contagion of a common sentiment, one common expression, it was not well possible for the wildest imagination to conceive a scene better fitted for the unhallowed burial-place of the murdered dead. The eyes of all now turned upon Houseman; and he, after twice vainly endeavoring to speak, for the words died inarticulate and choked within him, advancing a few steps, pointed towards a spot on which, the next moment, fell the concentrated light of every torch. An indescribable and universal murmur, and then a breathless silence, ensued. On the spot which Houseman had indicated, with the head placed to the right, lay what once had been a human body! “Can you swear,” said the priest, solemnly, as he turned to Houseman, “that these are the bones of Clarke?” “Before God, I can swear it!” replied Houseman, at length finding his voice. “MY FATHER!” broke from Walter’s lips as he sank upon his knees; and that exclamation completed the awe and horror which prevailed in the breasts of all present. Stung by a sense of the danger he had drawn upon himself, and despair and excitement restoring, in some measure, not only his natural hardihood, but his natural astuteness, Houseman, here mastering his emotions, and making that effort which he was afterwards enabled to follow up with an advantage to himself of which he could not then have dreamed,—Houseman, I say, cried aloud, “But I did not do the deed; I am not the murderer.” “Speak out! Whom do you accuse?” said the curate. Drawing his breath hard, and setting his teeth as with some steeled determination, Houseman replied,— “The murderer is Eugene Aram!” “Aram!” shouted Walter, starting to his feet: “O God, thy hand hath directed me hither!” And suddenly and at once sense left him, and he fell, as if a shot had pierced through his heart, beside the remains of that father whom he had thus mysteriously discovered. BOOK V. Surely the man that plotteth ill against his neighbor perpetrateth ill against himself, and the evil design is most evil to him that deviseth it. —Hesiod CHAPTER I. GRASSDALE.—THE MORNING OF THE MARRIAGE.—THE CRONES GOSSIP.—THE BRIDE AT HER TOILET.—THE ARRIVAL. JAM veniet virgo, jam dicetur Hymenaeus, Hymen, O Hymenae! Hymen ades, O Hymenae! CATULLUS: Carmen Nuptiale. It was now the morning in which Eugene Aram was to be married to Madeline Lester. The student’s house had been set in order for the arrival of the bride; and though it was yet early morn, two old women, whom his domestic (now not the only one, for a buxom lass of eighteen had been transplanted from Lester’s household to meet the additional cares that the change of circumstances brought to Aram’s) had invited to assist her in arranging what was already arranged, were bustling about the lower apartments and making matters, as they call it, “tidy.” “Them flowers look but poor things, after all,” muttered an old crone, whom our readers will recognize as Dame Darkmans, placing a bowl of exotics on the table. “They does not look nigh so cheerful as them as grows in the open air.” “Tush! Goody Darkmans,” said the second gossip. “They be much prettier and finer, to my mind; and so said Miss Nelly when she plucked them last night and sent me down with them. They says there is not a blade o’ grass that the master does not know. He must be a good man to love the things of the field so.” “Ho!” said Dame Darkmans, “ho! When Joe Wrench was hanged for shooting the lord’s keeper, and he mounted the scaffold wid a nosegay in his hand, he said, in a peevish voice, says he: ‘Why does not they give me a tarnation? I always loved them sort o’ flowers,—I wore them when I went a courting Bess Lucas,—an’ I would like to die with one in my hand!’ So a man may like flowers, and be but a hempen dog after all!” “Now don’t you, Goody; be still, can’t you? What a tale for a marriage day!” “Tally vally!” returned the grim hag, “many a blessing carries a curse in its arms, as the new moon carries the old. This won’t be one of your happy weddings, I tell ye.” “And why d’ ye say that?” “Did you ever see a man with a look like that make a happy husband? No, no! Can ye fancy the merry laugh o’ childer in this house, or a babe on the father’s knee, or the happy, still smile on the mother’s winsome face, some few years hence? No, Madge! the devil has set his black claw on the man’s brow.” “Hush, hush, Goody Darkmans; he may hear o’ ye!” said the second gossip, who, having now done all that remained to do, had seated herself down by the window, while the more ominous crone, leaning over Aram’s oak chair, uttered from thence her sibyl bodings. “No,” replied Mother Darkmans, “I seed him go out an hour agone, when the sun was just on the rise; and I said, when I seed him stroam into the wood yonder, and the ould leaves splashed in the damp under his feet, and his hat was aboon his brows, and his lips went so,—I said, says I, ‘t is not the man that will make a hearth bright that would walk thus on his marriage day. But I knows what I knows, and I minds what I seed last night.” “Why, what did you see last night?” asked the listener, with a trembling voice; for Plother Darkmans was a great teller of ghost and witch tales, and a certain ineffable awe of her dark gypsy features and malignant words had circulated pretty largely throughout the village. “Why, I sat up here with the ould deaf woman, and we were a drinking the health of the man and his wife that is to be, and it was nigh twelve o’ the clock ere I minded it was time to go home. Well, so I puts on my cloak, and the moon was up, an’ I goes along by the wood, and up by Fairlegh Field, an’ I was singing the ballad on Joe Wrench’s hanging, for the spirats had made me gamesome, when I sees somemut dark creep, creep, but iver so fast, arter me over the field, and making right ahead to the village. And I stands still, an’ I was not a bit afeared; but sure I thought it was no living cretur, at the first sight. And so it comes up faster and faster, and then I sees it was not one thing, but a many, many things, and they darkened the whole field afore me. And what d’ ye think they was? A whole body o’ gray rats, thousands and thousands on ‘em; and they were making away from the outbuildings here. For sure they knew, the witch things, that an ill luck sat on the spot. And so I stood aside by the tree, an’ I laughed to look on the ugsome creturs as they swept close by me, tramp, tramp! and they never heeded me a jot; but some on ‘em looked aslant at me with their glittering eyes, and showed their white teeth, as if they grinned, and were saying to me, ‘Ha, ha! Goody Darkmans, the house that we leave is a falling house, for the devil will have his own.’” In some parts of the country, and especially in that where our scene is laid, no omen is more superstitiously believed evil than the departure of these loathsome animals from their accustomed habitation; the instinct which is supposed to make them desert an unsafe tenement is supposed also to make them predict, in desertion, ill fortune to the possessor. But while the ears of the listening gossip were still tingling with this narration, the dark figure of the student passed the window, and the old women, starting up, appeared in all the bustle of preparation, as Aram now entered the apartment. “A happy day, your honor; a happy good morning,” said both the crones in a breath; but the blessing of the worse-natured was vented in so harsh a croak that Arum turned round as if struck by the sound, and still more disliking the well-remembered aspect of the person from whom it came, waved his hand impatiently, and bade them begone. “A-whish, a-whish!” muttered Dame Darkmans,—“to spake so to the poor; but the rats never lie, the bonny things!” Aram threw himself into his chair, and remained for some moments absorbed in a revery, which did not bear the aspect of gloom. Then, walking once or twice to and fro the apartment, he stopped opposite the chimney-piece, over which were slung the firearms, which he never omitted to keep charged and primed. “Humph!” he said, half aloud, “ye have been but idle servants; and now ye are but little likely ever to requite the care I have bestowed upon you.” With that a faint smile crossed his features; and turning away, he ascended the stairs that led to the lofty chamber in which he had been so often wont to outwatch the stars,— “The souls of systems, and the lords of life, Through their wide empires.” Before we follow him to his high and lonely retreat we will bring the reader to the manor-house, where all was already gladness and quiet but deep joy. It wanted about three hours to that fixed for the marriage; and Aram was not expected at the manor-house till an hour before the celebration of the event. Nevertheless, the bells were already ringing loudly and blithely; and the near vicinity of the church to the house brought that sound, so inexpressibly buoyant and cheering, to the ears of the bride with a noisy merriment that seemed like the hearty voice of an old-fashioned friend who seeks in his greeting rather cordiality than discretion. Before her glass stood the beautiful, the virgin, the glorious form of Madeline Lester; and Ellinor, with trembling hands (and a voice between a laugh and a cry), was braiding up her sister’s rich hair, and uttering her hopes, her wishes, her congratulations. The small lattice was open, and the air came rather chillingly to the bride’s bosom. “It is a gloomy morning, dearest Nell,” said she, shivering; “the winter seems about to begin at last.” “Stay, I will shut the window. The sun is struggling with the clouds at present, but I am sure it will clear up by and by. You don’t, you don’t leave us—the word must out—till evening.” “Don’t cry!” said Madeline, half weeping herself, and sitting down, she drew Ellinor to her; and the two sisters, who had never been parted since birth, exchanged tears that were natural, though scarcely the unmixed tears of grief. “And what pleasant evenings we shall have,” said Madeline, holding her sister’s hands, “in the Christmas time! You will be staying with us, you know; and that pretty old room in the north of the house Eugene has already ordered to be fitted up for you. Well, and my dear father, and dear Walter, who will be returned long ere then, will walk over to see us, and praise my housekeeping, and so forth. And then, after dinner, we will draw near the fire,—I next to Eugene, and my father, our guest, on the other side of me, with his long gray hair and his good fine face, with a tear of kind feeling in his eye,—you know that look he has whenever he is affected. And at a little distance on the other side of the hearth will be you—and Walter; I suppose we must make room for him. And Eugene, who will be then the liveliest of you all, shall read to us with his soft, clear voice, or tell us all about the birds and flowers and strange things in other countries. And then after supper we will walk half-way home across that beautiful valley—beautiful even in winter—with my father and Walter, and count the stars, and take new lessons in astronomy, and hear tales about the astrologers and the alchemists, with their fine old dreams. Ah! it will be such a happy Christmas! And then, when spring comes, some fine morning—finer than this—when the birds are about, and the leaves getting green, and the flowers springing up every day, I shall be called in to help your toilet, as you have helped mine, and to go with you to church, though not, alas! as your bridesmaid. Ah! whom shall we have for that duty?” “Pshaw!” said Ellinor, smiling through her tears. While the sisters were thus engaged, and Madeline was trying, with her innocent kindness of heart, to exhilarate the spirits, so naturally depressed, of her doting sister, the sound of carriage-wheels was heard in the distance,—nearer, nearer; now the sound stopped, as at the gate; now fast, faster,—fast as the postilions could ply whip and the horses tear along. While the groups in the church-yard ran forth to gaze, and the bells rang merrily all the while, two chaises whirled by Madeline’s window and stopped at the porch of the house. The sisters had flown in surprise to the casement. “It is, it is—good God! it is Walter,” cried Ellinor; “but how pale he looks!” “And who are those strange men with him?” faltered Madeline, alarmed, though she knew not why. CHAPTER II. THE STUDENT ALONE IN HIS CHAMBER.—THE INTERRUPTION.—FAITHFUL LOVE. NEQUICQUAM thalamo graves Hastas.... Vitabis strepitumque et celerem sequi Ajacem. —HORACE: Od. xv. lib. 1. [“In vain within your nuptial chamber will you shun the deadly spears,... the hostile shout, and Ajax eager in pursuit.”] Alone in his favorite chamber, the instruments of science around him, and books, some of astronomical research, some of less lofty but yet abstruser lore, scattered on the tables, Eugene Aram indulged the last meditation he believed likely to absorb his thoughts before that great change of life which was to bless solitude with a companion. “Yes,” said he, pacing the apartment with folded arms, “yes, all is safe! He will not again return; the dead sleeps now without a witness. I may lay this working brain upon the bosom that loves me, and not start at night and think that the soft hand around my neck is the hangman’s gripe. Back to thyself, henceforth and forever, my busy heart! Let not thy secret stir from its gloomy depth! The seal is on the tomb; henceforth be the spectre laid. Yes, I must smooth my brow, and teach my lip restraint, and smile and talk like other men. I have taken to my hearth a watch, tender, faithful, anxious,—but a watch. Farewell the unguarded hour! The soul’s relief in speech, the dark and broken, yet how grateful, confidence with self, farewell! And come, thou veil! subtle, close, unvarying, the everlasting curse of entire hypocrisy, that under thee, as night, the vexed world within may sleep, and stir not! and all, in truth concealment, may seem repose!” As he uttered these thoughts, the student paused and looked on the extended landscape that lay below. A heavy, chill, and comfortless mist sat saddening over the earth. Not a leaf stirred on the autumnal trees, but the moist damps fell slowly and with a mournful murmur upon the unwaving grass. The outline of the morning sun was visible, but it gave forth no lustre: a ring of watery and dark vapor girded the melancholy orb. Far at the entrance of the valley the wild fern showed red and faded, and the first march of the deadly winter was already heralded by that drear and silent desolation which cradles the winds and storms. But amidst this cheerless scene the distant note of the merry marriage-bell floated by, like the good spirit of the wilderness, and the student rather paused to hearken to the note than to survey the scene. “My marriage-bell!” said he. “Could I, two short years back, have dreamed of this? My marriage-bell! How fondly my poor mother, when first she learned pride for her young scholar, would predict this day, and blend its festivities with the honor and the wealth her son was to acquire! Alas! can we have no science to count the stars and forebode the black eclipse of the future? But peace! peace! peace! I am, I will, I shall be happy now! Memory, I defy thee!” He uttered the last words in a deep and intense tone; and turning away as the joyful peal again broke distinctly on his ear,— “My marriage-bell! Oh, Madeline, how wondrously beloved, how unspeakably dear thou art to me! What hast thou conquered! How many reasons for resolve, how vast an army in the Past, has thy bright and tender purity overthrown! But thou—No, never shalt thou repent!” And for several minutes the sole thought of the soliloquist was love. But scarce consciously to himself, a spirit, not, to all seeming, befitted to that bridal-day,—vague, restless, impressed with the dark and fluttering shadow of coming change,—had taken possession of his breast, and did not long yield the mastery to any brighter and more serene emotion. “And why,” he said, as this spirit regained its empire over him, and he paused before the “starred tubes” of his beloved science,—“and why this chill, this shiver, in the midst of hope? Can the mere breath of the seasons, the weight or lightness of the atmosphere, the outward gloom or smile of the brute mass called Nature, affect us thus? Out on this empty science, this vain knowledge, this little lore, if we are so fooled by the vile clay and the common air from our one great empire, self! Great God! hast thou made us in mercy, or in disdain? Placed in this narrow world, darkness and cloud around us; no fixed rule for men; creeds, morals, changing in every clime, and growing like herbs upon the mere soil,—we struggle to dispel the shadows; we grope around; from our own heart and our sharp and hard endurance we strike our only light. For what? To show us what dupes we are,—creatures of accident, tools of circumstance, blind instruments of the scorner Fate; the very mind, the very reason, a bound slave to the desires, the weakness of the clay; affected by a cloud, dulled by the damps of the foul marsh; stricken from power to weakness, from sense to madness, to gaping idiocy, or delirious raving, by a putrid exhalation! A rheum, a chill, and Caesar trembles! The world’s gods, that slay or enlighten millions, poor puppets to the same rank imp which calls up the fungus or breeds the worm,—pah! How little worth is it in this life to be wise! Strange, strange, how my heart sinks. Well, the better sign, the better sign! In danger it never sank.” Absorbed in these reflections, Aram had not for some minutes noticed the sudden ceasing of the bell; but now, as he again paused from his irregular and abrupt pacings along the chamber, the silence struck him, and looking forth, and striving again to catch the note, he saw a little group of men, among whom he marked the erect and comely form of Rowland Lester, approaching towards the house. “What!” he thought, “do they come for me? Is it so late? Have I played the laggard? Nay, it yet wants near an hour to the time they expected me. Well, some kindness, some attention from my good father-in-law; I must thank him for it. What! my hand trembles. How weak are these poor nerves; I must rest and recall my mind to itself!” And indeed, whether or not from the novelty and importance of the event he was about to celebrate, or from some presentiment, occasioned, as he would fain believe, by the mournful and sudden change in the atmosphere, an embarrassment, a wavering, a fear, very unwonted to the calm and stately self-possession of Eugene Aram, made itself painfully felt throughout his frame. He sank down in his chair and strove to re-collect himself; it was an effort in which he had just succeeded, when a loud knocking was heard at the outer door; it swung open; several voices were heard. Aram sprang up, pale, breathless, his lips apart. “Great God!” he exclaimed, clasping his hands. “‘Murderer!’—was that the word I heard shouted forth? The voice, too, is Walter Lester’s. Has he returned? Can he have learned—?” To rush to the door, to throw across it a long, heavy iron bar, which would resist assaults of no common strength, was his first impulse. Thus enabled to gain time for reflection, his active and alarmed mind ran over the whole field of expedient and conjecture. Again, “Murderer!” “Stay me not,” cried Walter, from below; “my hand shall seize the murderer!” Guess was now over; danger and death were marching on him. Escape,—how? whither? The height forbade the thought of flight from the casement! The door?—he heard loud steps already hurrying up the stairs; his hands clutched convulsively at his breast, where his fire-arms were generally concealed,—they were left below. He glanced one lightning glance round the room; no weapon of any kind was at hand. His brain reeled for a moment, his breath gasped, a mortal sickness passed over his heart, and then the MIND triumphed over all. He drew up to his full height, folded his arms doggedly on his breast, and muttering, “The accuser comes,—I have it still to refute the charge!” he stood prepared to meet, nor despairing to evade, the worst. As waters close over the object which divided them, all these thoughts, these fears, and this resolution had been but the work, the agitation, and the succeeding calm of the moment; that moment was past. “Admit us!” cried the voice of Walter Lester, knocking fiercely at the door. “Not so fervently, boy,” said Lester, laying his hand on his nephew’s shoulder; “your tale is yet to be proved,—I believe it not. Treat him as innocent, I pray,—I command,—till you have shown him guilty.” “Away, uncle!” said the fiery Walter; “he is my father’s murderer. God hath given justice to my hands.” These words, uttered in a lower key than before, were but indistinctly heard by Aram through the massy door. “Open, or we force our entrance!” shouted Walter again; and Aram, speaking for the first time, replied in a clear and sonorous voice, so that an angel, had one spoken, could not have more deeply impressed the heart of Rowland Lester with a conviction of the student’s innocence, “Who knocks so rudely? What means this violence? I open my doors to my friends. Is it a friend who asks it?” “I ask it,” said Rowland Lester, in a trembling and agitated voice. “There seems some dreadful mistake: come forth, Eugene, and rectify it by a word.” “Is it you, Rowland Lester? It is enough. I was but with my books, and had secured myself from intrusion. Enter.” The bar was withdrawn, the door was burst open, and even Walter Lester, even the officers of justice with him, drew back for a moment as they beheld the lofty brow, the majestic presence, the features so unutterably calm, of Eugene Aram. “What want you, sirs?” said he, unmoved and unfaltering, though in the officers of justice he recognized faces he had known before, and in that distant town in which all that he dreaded in the past lay treasured up. At the sound of his voice the spell that for an instant had arrested the step of the avenging son melted away. “Seize him!” he cried to the officers; “you see your prisoner.” “Hold!” cried Aram, drawing back. “By what authority is this outrage,—for what am I arrested?” “Behold,” said Walter, speaking through his teeth, “behold our warrant! You are accused of murder! Know you the name of Richard Houseman,—pause, consider,—or that of Daniel Clarke?” Slowly Aram lifted his eyes from the warrant, and it might be seen that his face was a shade more pale, though his look did not quail, or his nerves tremble. Slowly he turned his gaze upon Walter; and then, after one moment’s survey, dropped it once more on the paper. “The name of Houseman is not unfamiliar to me,” said he calmly, but with effort. “And knew you Daniel Clarke “What mean these questions?” said Aram, losing temper, and stamping violently on the ground. “Is it thus that a man, free and guiltless, is to be questioned at the behest, or rather outrage, of every lawless boy? Lead me to some authority meet for me to answer; for you, boy, my answer is contempt.” “Big words shall not save thee, murderer!” cried Walter, breaking from his uncle, who in vain endeavored to hold him, and laying his powerful grasp upon Aram’s shoulder. Livid was the glare that shot from the student’s eye upon his assailer; and so fearfully did his features work and change with the passions within him that even Walter felt a strange shudder thrill through his frame. “Gentlemen,” said Aram at last, mastering his emotions, and resuming some portion of the remarkable dignity that characterized his usual bearing, as he turned towards the officers of justice, “I call upon you to discharge your duty. If this be a rightful warrant, I am your prisoner, but I am not this man’s. I command your protection from him!” Walter had already released his gripe, and said, in a muttered voice, “My passion misled me; violence is unworthy my solemn cause. God and Justice—not these hands—are my avengers.” “Your avengers!” said Aram. “What dark words are these? This warrant accuses me of the murder of one Daniel Clarke. What is he to thee?” “Mark me, man!” said Walter, fixing his eyes on Aram’s countenance. “The name of Daniel Clarke was a feigned name; the real name was Geoffrey Lester: that murdered Lester was my father, and the brother of him whose daughter, had I not come to-day, you would have called your wife!” Aram felt, while these words were uttered, that the eyes of all in the room were on him; and perhaps that knowledge enabled him not to reveal by outward sign what must have passed within during the awful trial of that moment. “It is a dreadful tale,” he said, “if true,—dreadful to me, so nearly allied to that family. But as yet I grapple with shadows.” “What! does not your conscience now convict you?” cried Walter, staggered by the calmness of the prisoner. But here Lester, who could no longer contain himself, interposed; he put by his nephew, and rushing to Aram, fell, weeping, upon his neck. “I do not accuse thee, Eugene, my son, my son! I feel, I know thou art innocent of this monstrous crime; some horrid delusion darkens that poor boy’s sight. You, you, who would walk aside to save a worm!” and the poor old man, overcome with his emotions, could literally say no more. Aram looked down on Lester with a compassionate expression; and soothing him with kind words, and promises that all would be explained, gently moved from his hold, and, anxious to terminate the scene, silently motioned the officers to proceed. Struck with the calmness and dignity of his manner, and fully impressed by it with the notion of his innocence, the officers treated him with a marked respect; they did not even walk by his side, but suffered him to follow their steps. As they descended the stairs, Aram turned round to Walter, with a bitter and reproachful countenance, “And so, young man, your malice against me has reached even to this! Will nothing but my life content you?” “Is the desire of execution on my father’s murderer but the wish of malice?” retorted Walter; though his heart yet well-nigh misgave him as to the grounds on which his suspicion rested. Aram smiled, as half in scorn, half through incredulity; and, shaking his head gently, moved on without further words. The three old women, who had remained in listening astonishment at the foot of the stairs, gave way as the men descended; but the one who so long had been Aram’s solitary domestic, and who, from her deafness, was still benighted and uncomprehending as to the causes of his seizure, though from that very reason her alarm was the greater and more acute, she, impatiently thrusting away the officers, and mumbling some unintelligible anathema as she did so, flung herself at the feet of a master whose quiet habits and constant kindness had endeared him to her humble and faithful heart, and exclaimed,— “What are they doing? Have they the heart to ill-use you? O master, God bless you! God shield you! I shall never see you, who was my only friend—who was every one’s friend—any more!” Aram drew himself from her, and said, with a quivering lip to Rowland Lester,— “If her fears are true—if—if I never more return hither, see that her old age does not starve—does not want.” Lester could not speak for sobbing, but the request was remembered. And now Aram, turning aside his proud head to conceal his emotion, beheld open the door of the room so trimly prepared for Madeline’s reception: the flowers smiled upon him from their stands. “Lead on, gentlemen,” he said quickly. And so Eugene Aram passed his threshold! “Ho, ho!” muttered the old hag whose predictions in the morning had been so ominous,—“ho, ho! you’ll believe Goody Darkmans another time! Providence respects the sayings of the ould. ‘T was not for nothing the rats grinned at me last night. But let’s in and have a warm glass. He, he! there will be all the strong liquors for us now; the Lord is merciful to the poor!” As the little group proceeded through the valley, the officers first, Aram and Lester side by side, Walter, with his hand on his pistol and his eye on the prisoner, a little behind, Lester endeavored to cheer the prisoner’s spirits and his own by insisting on the madness of the charge and the certainty of instant acquittal from the magistrate to whom they were bound, and who was esteemed the one both most acute and most just in the county. Aram interrupted him somewhat abruptly, “My friend, enough of this presently. But Madeline, what knows she as yet?” “Nothing; of course, we kept—” “Exactly, exactly; you have done wisely. Why need she learn anything as yet? Say an arrest for debt, a mistake, an absence but of a day or so at most,—you understand?” “Yes. Will you not see her, Eugene, before you go, and say this yourself?” “I!—O God!—I! to whom this day was—No, no; save me, I implore you, from the agony of such a contrast,—an interview so mournful and unavailing. No, we must not meet! But whither go we now? Not, not, surely, through all the idle gossips of the village,—the crowd already excited to gape and stare and speculate on the—” “No,” interrupted Lester; “the carriages await us at the farther end of the valley. I thought of that,—for the rash boy behind seems to have changed his nature. I loved—Heaven knows how I loved my brother! But before I would let suspicion thus blind reason, I would suffer inquiry to sleep forever on his fate.” “Your nephew,” said Aram, “has ever wronged me. But waste not words on him; let us think only of Madeline. Will you go back at once to her,—tell her a tale to lull her apprehensions, and then follow us with haste? I am alone among enemies till you come.” Lester was about to answer, when, at a turn in the road which brought the carriage within view, they perceived two figures in white hastening towards them; and ere Aram was prepared for the surprise, Madeline had sunk pale, trembling, and all breathless on his breast. “I could not keep her back,” said Ellinor, apologetically, to her father. “Back! and why? Am I not in my proper place?” cried Madeline, lifting her face from Aram’s breast; and then, as her eyes circled the group, and rested on Aram’s countenance, now no longer calm, but full of woe, of passion, of disappointed love, of anticipated despair, she rose, and gradually recoiling with a fear which struck dumb her voice, thrice attempted to speak, and thrice failed. “But what—what is—what means this?” exclaimed Ellinor. “Why do you weep, father? Why does Eugene turn away his face? You answer not. Speak, for God’s sake! These strangers,—what are they? And you, Walter, you,—why are you so pale? Why do you thus knit your brows and fold your arms! You, you will tell me the meaning of this dreadful silence,—this scene. Speak, cousin, dear cousin, speak!” “Speak!” cried Madeline, finding voice at length, but in the sharp and straining tone of wild terror, in which they recognized no note of the natural music. The single word sounded rather as a shriek than an adjuration; and so piercingly it ran through the hearts of all present that the very officers, hardened as their trade had made them, felt as if they would rather have faced death than answered that command. A dead, long, dreary pause, and Aram broke it. “Madeline Lester,” said he, “prove yourself worthy of the hour of trial. Exert yourself; arouse your heart; be prepared! You are the betrothed of one whose soul never quailed before man’s angry word. Remember that, and fear not!” “I will not, I will not, Eugene! Speak, only speak!” “You have loved me in good report; trust me now in ill. They accuse me of a crime,—a heinous crime! At first I would not have told you the real charge. Pardon me, I wronged you,—now, know all! They accuse me, I say, of crime. Of what crime? you ask. Ay, I scarce know, so vague is the charge, so fierce the accuser; but prepare, Madeline,—it is of murder!” Raised as her spirits had been by the haughty and earnest tone of Aram’s exhortation, Madeline now, though she turned deadly pale, though the earth swam round and round, yet repressed the shriek upon her lips as those horrid words shot into her soul. “You!—murder!—you! And who dares accuse you?” “Behold him,—your cousin!” Ellinor heard, turned, fixed her eyes on Walter’s sullen brow and motionless attitude, and fell senseless to the earth. Not thus Madeline. As there is an exhaustion that forbids, not invites repose, so when the mind is thoroughly on the rack, the common relief to anguish is not allowed; the senses are too sharply strung, thus happily to collapse into forgetfulness; the dreadful inspiration that agony kindles, supports nature while it consumes it. Madeline passed, without a downward glance, by the lifeless body of her sister; and walking with a steady step to Walter, she laid her hand upon his arm, and fixing on his countenance that soft clear eye, which was now lit with a searching and preternatural glare, and seemed to pierce into his soul, she said, “Walter, do I hear aright? Am I awake? Is it you who accuse Eugene Aram,—your Madeline’s betrothed husband,—Madeline, whom you once loved? Of what? Of crimes which death alone can punish. Away! It is not you,—I know it is not. Say that I am mistaken,—that I am mad, if you will. Come, Walter, relieve me; let me not abhor the very air you breathe!” “Will no one have mercy on me?” cried Walter, rent to the heart, and covering his face with his hands. In the fire and heat of vengeance he had not reeked of this. He had only thought of justice to a father, punishment to a villain, rescue for a credulous girl. The woe, the horror he was about to inflict on all he most loved: this had not struck upon him with a due force till now! “Mercy—you talk of mercy! I knew it could not be true!” said Madeline, trying to pluck her cousin’s hand from his face; “you could not have dreamed of wrong to Eugene and—and upon this day. Say we have erred, or that you have erred, and we will forgive and bless you even now!” Aram had not interfered in this scene; he kept his eyes fixed on the cousins, not uninterested to see what effect Madeline’s touching words might produce on his accuser. Meanwhile she continued: “Speak to me, Walter, dear Walter, speak to me’. Are you, my cousin, my playfellow,—are you the one to blight our hopes, to dash our joys, to bring dread and terror into a home so lately all peace and sunshine, your own home, your childhood’s home? What have you done? What have you dared to do? Accuse him! Of what? Murder! Speak, speak. Murder, ha! ha!—murder! nay, not so! You would not venture to come here, you would not let me take your hand, you would not look us, your uncle, your more than sisters, in the face if you could nurse in your heart this lie,—this black, horrid lie!” Walter withdrew his hands, and as he turned his face said,— “Let him prove his innocence. Pray God he do! I am not his accuser, Madeline. His accusers are the bones of my dead father! Save these, Heaven alone and the revealing earth are witness against him!” “Your father!” said Madeline, staggering back,—“my lost uncle! Nay, now I know indeed what a shadow has appalled us all! Did you know my uncle, Eugene? Did you ever see Geoffrey Lester?” “Never, as I believe, so help me God!” said Aram, laying his hand on his heart. “But this is idle now,” as, recollecting himself, he felt that the case had gone forth from Walter’s hands, and that appeal to him had become vain. “Leave us now, dearest Madeline, my beloved wife that shall be, that is! I go to disprove these charges. Perhaps I shall return to-night. Delay not my acquittal, even from doubt,—a boy’s doubt. Come, sirs.” “O Eugene! Eugene!” cried Madeline, throwing herself on her knees before hint, “do not order me to leave you now, now in the hour of dread! I will not. Nay, look not so! I swear I will not! Father, dear father, come and plead for me,—say I shall go with you. I ask nothing more. Do not fear for my nerves,—cowardice is gone. I will not shame you, I will not play the woman. I know what is due to one who loves him. Try me, only try me. You weep, father, you shake your head. But you, Eugene,—you have not the heart to deny me? Think—think if I stayed here to count the moments till you return, my very senses would leave me. What do I ask? But to go with you, to be the first to hail your triumph! Had this happened two hours hence, you could not have said me nay,—I should have claimed the right to be with you; I now but implore the blessing. You relent, you relent; I see it!” “O Heaven!” exclaimed Aram, rising, and clasping her to his breast, and wildly kissing her face, but with cold and trembling lips, “this is indeed a bitter hour; let me not sink beneath it. Yes, Madeline, ask your father if he consents; I hail your strengthening presence as that of an angel. I will not be the one to sever you from my side.” “You are right, Eugene,” said Lester, who was supporting Ellinor, not yet recovered,—“let her go with us; it is but common kindness and common mercy.” Madeline uttered a cry of joy (joy even at such a moment!), and clung fast to Eugene’s arm, as if for assurance that they were not indeed to be separated. By this time some of Lester’s servants, who had from a distance followed their young mistresses, reached the spot. To their care Lester gave the still scarce reviving Ellinor; and then, turning round with a severe countenance to Walter, said, “Come, sir, your rashness has done sufficient wrong for the present; come now, and see how soon your suspicions will end in shame.” “Justice, and blood for blood!” said Walter, sternly; but his heart felt as if it were broken. His venerable uncle’s tears, Madeline’s look of horror as she turned from him, Ellinor all lifeless, and he not daring to approach her,—this was HIS work! He pulled his hat over his eyes, and hastened into the carriage alone. Lester, Madeline, and Aram followed in the other vehicle; and the two officers contented themselves with mounting the box, certain the prisoner would attempt no escape.

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