Part 46 (2/2)

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 pa.s.sage. 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 s.p.a.ce 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 G.o.d, 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 G.o.d, 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.

GRa.s.sDALE.--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 la.s.s of eighteen had been transplanted from Lester's household to meet the additional cares that the change of circ.u.mstances brought to Aram's) had invited to a.s.sist 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.”

”Tus.h.!.+ 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'

gra.s.s 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!”

<script>