Eugene Aram, Book 5.

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EUGENE ARAM

By Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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.

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