Eugene Aram Part 56

"No, Bunting, I fear not," said Walter, spurring through the gates of the yard; "Good day."

"Augh, then," cried the Corporal, hobbling breathlessly after him, "if so be as I shan't see your honour agin, at which I am extramely consarned, will your honour recollect your promise, touching the 'tato ground? The steward, Master Bailey, 'od rot him, has clean forgot it--augh!"

"The same old man, Bunting, eh? Well, make your mind easy, it shall be done."

"Lord bless your honour's good heart; thankye; and--and"--laying his hand on the bridle--"your honour did say, the bit cot should be rent-free. You see, your honour," quoth the Corporal, drawing up with a grave smile, "I may marry some day or other, and have a large family; and the rent won't sit so easy then--augh!"

"Let go the rein, Bunting--and consider your house rent-free."

"And, your honour--and--"

But Walter was already in a brisk trot; and the remaining pet.i.tions of the Corporal died in empty air.

"A good day's work, too," muttered Jacob, hobbling homeward. "What a green un 'tis still! Never be a man of the world--augh!"

For two hours Walter did not relax the rapidity of his pace; and when he did so at the descent of a steep hill, a small country town lay before him, the sun glittering on its single spire, and lighting up the long, clean, centre street, with the good old-fas.h.i.+oned garden stretching behind each house, and detached cottages around, peeping forth here and there from the blossoms and verdure of the young may. He rode into the yard of the princ.i.p.al inn, and putting up his horse, inquired in a tone that he persuaded himself was the tone of indifference, for Miss Lester's house.

"John," said the landlady, (landlord there was none,) summoning a little boy of about ten years old--"run on, and shew this gentleman the good lady's house: and--stay--his honour will excuse you a moment--just take up the nosegay you cut for her this morning: she loves flowers. Ah! Sir, an excellent young lady is Miss Lester," continued the hostess, as the boy ran back for the nosegay; "so charitable, so kind, so meek to all.

Adversity, they say, softens some characters; but she must always have been good. And so religious, Sir, though so young! Well, G.o.d bless her!

and that every one must say. My boy John, Sir, he is not eleven yet, come next August--a 'cute boy, calls her the good lady: we now always call her so here. Come, John, that's right. You stay to dine here, Sir?

Shall I put down a chicken?"

At the farther extremity of the town stood Miss Lester's dwelling. It was the house in which her father had spent his last days; and there she had continued to reside, when left by his death to a small competence, which Walter, then abroad, had persuaded her, (for her pride was of the right kind,) to suffer him, though but slightly, to increase. It was a detached and small building, standing a little from the road; and Walter paused for some moments at the garden-gate, and gazed round him before he followed his young guide, who, tripping lightly up the gravel-walk to the door, rang the bell, and inquired if Miss Lester was within?

Walter was left for some moments alone in a little parlour:--he required those moments to recover himself from the past that rushed sweepingly over him. And was it--yes, it was Ellinor that now stood before him!

Changed she was, indeed; the slight girl had budded into woman; changed she was, indeed; the bound had for ever left that step, once so elastic with hope; the vivacity of the quick, dark eye was soft and quiet; the rich colour had given place to a hue fainter, though not less lovely.

But to repeat in verse what is poorly bodied forth in prose--

"And years had past, and thus they met again; The wind had swept along the flower since then, O'er her fair cheek a paler l.u.s.tre spread, As if the white rose triumphed o'er the red.

No more she walk'd exulting on the air; Light though her step, there was a languour there; No more--her spirit bursting from its bound,-- She stood, like Hebe, scattering smiles around."

"Ellinor!" said Walter mournfully, "thank G.o.d! we meet at last."

"That voice--that face--my cousin--my dear, dear Walter!"

All reserve--all consciousness fled in the delight of that moment; and Ellinor leant her head upon his shoulder, and scarcely felt the kiss that he pressed upon her lips.

"And so long absent!" said Ellinor, reproachfully.

"But did you not tell me that the blow that had fallen on our house had stricken from you all thoughts of love--had divided us for ever? And what, Ellinor, was England or home with out you?"

"Ah!" said Ellinor, recovering herself, and a deep paleness succeeding to the warm and delighted flush that had been conjured to her cheek, "Do not revive the past--I have sought for years--long, solitary, desolate years, to escape from its dark recollections!"

"You speak wisely, dearest Ellinor; let us a.s.sist each other in doing so. We are alone in the world--let us unite our lot. Never, through all I have seen and felt,--in the starry night.w.a.tch of camps--in the blaze of courts--by the sunny groves of Italy--in the deep forests of the Hartz--never have I forgotten you, my sweet and dear cousin. Your image has linked itself indissolubly with all I conceived of home and happiness, and a tranquil and peaceful future; and now I return, and see you, and find you changed, but, oh, how lovely! Ah, let us not part again! A consoler, a guide, a soother, father, brother, husband,--all this my heart whispers I could be to you!"

Ellinor turned away her face, but her heart was very full. The solitary years that had pa.s.sed over her since they last met, rose up before her.

The only living image that had mingled through those years with the dreams of the departed, was his who now knelt at her feet;--her sole friend--her sole relative--her first--her last love! Of all the world, he was the only one with whom she could recur to the past; on whom she might repose her bruised, but still unconquered affections.

And Walter knew by that blush--that sigh--that tear, that he was remembered--that he was beloved--that his cousin was his own at last!

"But before you end," said my friend, to whom I shewed the above pages, originally concluding my tale with the last sentence, "you must, it is a comfortable and orthodox old fas.h.i.+on, tell us a little about the fate of the other persons, to whom you have introduced us;--the wretch Houseman?"--

"True; in the mysterious course of mortal affairs, the greater villain had escaped, the more generous and redeemed one fallen. But though Houseman died without violence, died in his bed, as honest men die, we can scarcely believe that his life was not punishment enough. He lived in strict seclusion--the seclusion of poverty, and maintained himself by dressing flax. His life was several times attempted by the mob, for he was an object of universal execration and horror; and even ten years afterwards, when he died, his body was buried in secret at the dead of night, for the hatred of the world survived him!"

"And the Corporal, did he marry in his old age?"

"History telleth of one Jacob Bunting, whose wife, several years younger than himself, played him certain sorry pranks with the young curate of the parish: the said Jacob, knowing nothing thereof, but furnis.h.i.+ng great objectation unto his neighbours, by boasting that he turned an excellent penny by selling poultry to his reverence above market prices,--'For Bessy, my girl, I'm a man of the world--augh!'"

"Contented! a suitable fate for the old dog--But Peter Dealtry?"

"Of Peter Dealtry know we nothing more, save that we have seen at Gra.s.sdale church-yard, a small tombstone inscribed to his memory, with the following sacred poesy thereto appended,--

"'We flourish, saith the holy text One hour, and are cut down the next: I was like gra.s.s but yesterday, But Death has mowed me into hay.'"

"And his namesake, Sir Peter Grindlescrew Hales?"

"Went through a long life, honoured and respected, but met with domestic misfortunes in old age. His eldest son married a maid servant, and his youngest daughter--"

"Eloped with the groom?"

"By no means,--with a young spendthrift;--the very picture of what Sir Peter was in his youth: they were both disinherited, and Sir Peter died in the arms of his eight remaining children, seven of whom never forgave his memory for not being the eighth, viz. chief heir."

"And his cotemporary, John Courtland, the non-hypochondriac?"

"Died of sudden suffocation, as he was crossing Hounslow Heath."

"But Lord--?"

"Lived to a great age; his last days, owing to growing infirmities, were spent out of the world; every one pitied him,--it was the happiest time of his life!"

"Dame Darkmans?"

"Was found dead in her bed, from over fatigue, it was supposed, in making merry at the funeral of a young girl on the previous day."

"Well!--hem,--and so Walter and his cousin were really married; and did they never return to the old Manor-house?"

"No; the memory that is allied only to melancholy, grows sweet with years, and hallows the spot which it haunts; not so the memory allied to dread, terror, and something too of shame. Walter sold the property with some pangs of natural regret; after his marriage with Ellinor he returned abroad for some time, but finally settling in England, engaged in active life, and left to his posterity a name they still honour; and to his country, the memory of some services that will not lightly pa.s.s away."

But one dread and gloomy remembrance never forsook his mind, and exercised the most powerful influence over the actions and motives of his life. In every emergency, in every temptation, there rose to his eyes the fate of him so gifted, so n.o.ble in much, so formed for greatness in all things, blasted by one crime--self-sought, but self-denied; a crime, the offspring of bewildered reasonings--all the while speculating upon virtue. And that fate revealing the darker secrets of our kind, in which the true science of morals in chiefly found, taught him the twofold lesson, caution for himself, and charity for others. He knew henceforth that even the criminal is not all evil; the angel within us is not easily expelled; it survives sin, ay, and many sins, and leaves us sometimes in amaze and marvel, at the good that lingers round the heart even of the hardiest offender.

And Ellinor clung with more than revived affection to one with whose lot she was now allied. Walter was her last tie upon earth, and in him she learnt, day by day, more lavishly to treasure up her heart. Adversity and trial had enn.o.bled the character of both; and she who had so long seen in her cousin all she could love, beheld now in her husband that greater and more enduring spell--all that she could venerate and admire.

A certain religious fervour, in which, after the calamities of her family, she had indulged, continued with her to the last; but, (softened by human ties, and the reciprocation of earthly duties and affections,) it was fortunately preserved either from the undue enthusiasm or the undue austerity into which it would otherwise, in all likelihood, have merged. What remained, however, uniting her most cheerful thoughts with something serious, and the happiest moments of the present with the dim and solemn forecast of the future, elevated her nature, not depressed, and made itself visible rather in tender than in sombre, hues. And it was sweet when the thought of Madeline and her father came across her, to recur at once for consolation to that Heaven in which she believed their tears were dried, and their past sorrows but a forgotten dream!

There is, indeed, a time of life when these reflections make our chief, though a melancholy, pleasure. As we grow older, and sometimes a hope, sometimes a friend, is s.h.i.+vered from our path, the thought of an immortality will press itself forcibly upon us! and there, by little and little, as the ant piles grain after grain, the garners of a future sustenance, we learn to carry our hopes, and harvest, as it were, our wishes.

Our cousins then were happy. Happy, for they loved one another entirely; and on those who do so love, I sometimes think, that, barring physical pain and extreme poverty, the ills of life fall with but idle malice.

Yes, they were happy in spite of the past, and in defiance of the future.

"I am satisfied then," said my friend,--"and your tale is fairly done!"