Part 52 (1/2)
A thought comes over us, sometimes, in our career of pleasure, or the troublous exultation of our ambitious pursuits; a thought come over us, like a cloud, that around us and about us Death--Shame--Crime--Despair, are busy at their work. I have read somewhere of an enchanted land, where the inmates walked along voluptuous gardens, and built palaces, and heard music, and made merry; while around, and within, the land, were deep caverns, where the gnomes and the fiends dwelt: and ever and anon their groans and laughter, and the sounds of their unutterable toils, or ghastly revels, travelled to the upper air, mixing in an awful strangeness with the summer festivity and buoyant occupation of those above. And this is the picture of human life! These reflections of the maddening disparities of the world are dark, but salutary:--
”They wrap our thoughts at banquets in the shroud;” [Young.]
but we are seldom sadder without being also wiser men!
The third of August 1759 rose bright, calm, and clear: it was the morning of the trial; and when Ellinor stole into her sister's room, she found Madeline sitting before the gla.s.s, and braiding her rich locks with an evident attention and care.
”I wish,” said she, ”that you had pleased me by dressing as for a holiday. See, I am going to wear the dress I was to have been married in.”
Ellinor shuddered; for what is more appalling than to find the signs of gaiety accompanying the reality of anguis.h.!.+
”Yes,” continued Madeline, with a smile of inexpressible sweetness, ”a little reflection will convince you that this day ought not to be one of mourning. It was the suspense that has so worn out our hearts. If he is acquitted, as we all believe and trust, think how appropriate will be the outward seeming of our joy! If not, why I shall go before him to our marriage home, and in marriage garments. Ay,” she added after a moment's pause, and with a much more grave, settled, and intense expression of voice and countenance--”ay; do you remember how Eugene once told us, that if we went at noonday to the bottom of a deep pit, [Note: The remark is in Aristotle. Buffon quotes it, with his usual adroit felicity, in, I think, the first volume of his great work.] we should be able to see the stars, which on the level ground are invisible. Even so, from the depths of grief--worn, wretched, seared, and dying--the blessed apparitions and tokens of Heaven make themselves visible to our eyes.
And I know--I have seen--I feel here,” pressing her hand on her heart, ”that my course is run; a few sands only are left in the gla.s.s. Let us waste them bravely. Stay, Ellinor! You see these poor withered rose-leaves: Eugene gave them to me the day before--before that fixed for our marriage. I shall wear them to-day, as I would have worn them on the wedding-day. When he gathered the poor flower, how fresh it was; and I kissed off the dew: now see it! But, come, come; this is trifling: we must not be late. Help me, Nell, help me: come, bustle, quick, quick!
Nay, be not so slovenly; I told you I would be dressed with care to-day.”
And when Madeline was dressed, though the robe sat loose and in large folds over her shrunken form, yet, as she stood erect, and looked with a smile that saddened Ellinor more than tears at her image in the gla.s.s, perhaps her beauty never seemed of a more striking and lofty character,--she looked indeed, a bride, but the bride of no earthly nuptials. Presently they heard an irresolute and trembling step at the door, and Lester knocking, asked if they were prepared.
”Come in, father,” said Madeline, in a calm and even cheerful voice; and the old man entered.
He cast a silent glance over Madeline's white dress, and then at his own, which was deep mourning: the glance said volumes, and its meaning was not marred by words from any one of the three.
”Yes, father,” said Madeline, breaking the pause,--”We are all ready. Is the carriage here?”
”It is at the door, my child.”
”Come then, Ellinor, come!”--and leaning on her arm, Madeline walked towards the door. When she got to the threshold, she paused, and looked round the room.
”What is it you want?” asked Ellinor.
”I was but bidding all here farewell,” replied Madeline, in a soft and touching voice: ”And now before we leave the house, Father,--Sister, one word with you;--you have ever been very, very kind to me, and most of all in this bitter trial, when I must have taxed your patience sadly--for I know all is not right here, (touching her forehead)--I cannot go forth this day without thanking you. Ellinor, my dearest friend--my fondest sister--my playmate in gladness--my comforter in grief--my nurse in sickness;--since we were little children, we have talked together, and laughed together, and wept together, and though we knew all the thoughts of each other, we have never known one thoughts that we would have concealed from G.o.d;--and now we are going to part?--do not stop me, it must be so, I know it. But, after a little while may you be happy again, not so buoyant as you have been, that can never be, but still happy!--You are formed for love and home, and for those ties you once thought would be mine. G.o.d grant that I may have suffered for us both, and that when we meet hereafter, you may tell me you have been happy here!”
”But you, father,” added Madeline, tearing herself from the neck of her weeping sister, and sinking on her knees before Lester, who leaned against the wall convulsed with his emotions, and covering his face with his hands--”but you,--what can I say to you?--You, who have never,--no, not in my first childhood, said one harsh word to me--who have sunk all a father's authority in a father's love,--how can I say all that I feel for you?--the grateful overflowing, (paining, yet--oh, how sweet!) remembrances which crowd around and suffocate me now?--The time will come when Ellinor and Ellinor's children must be all in all to you--when of your poor Madeline nothing will be left but a memory; but they, they will watch on you and tend you, and protect your grey hairs from sorrow, as I might once have hoped I also was fated to do.”
”My child! my child! you break my heart!” faltered forth at last the poor old man, who till now had in vain endeavoured to speak.
”Give me your blessing, dear father,” said Madeline, herself overcome by her feelings;--”Put your hand on my head and bless me--and say, that if I have ever unconsciously given you a moment's pain--I am forgiven!”
”Forgiven!” repeated Lester, raising his daughter with weak and trembling arms as his tears fell fast upon her cheek,--”Never did I feel what an angel had sate beside my hearth till now!--But be comforted--be cheered. What, if Heaven had reserved its crowning mercy till this day, and Eugene be amongst us, free, acquitted, triumphant before the night!”
”Ha!” said Madeline, as if suddenly roused by the thought into new life:--”Ha! let us hasten to find your words true. Yes! yes!--if it should be so--if it should. And,” added she, in a hollow voice, (the enthusiasm checked,) ”if it were not for my dreams, I might believe it would be so:--But--come--I am ready now!”
The carriage went slowly through the crowd that the fame of the approaching trial had gathered along the streets, but the blinds were drawn down, and the father and daughter escaped that worst of tortures, the curious gaze of strangers on distress. Places had been kept for them in court, and as they left the carriage and entered the fatal spot, the venerable figure of Lester, and the trembling and veiled forms that clung to him, arrested all eyes. They at length gained their seats, and it was not long before a bustle in the court drew off attention from them. A buzz, a murmur, a movement, a dread pause! Houseman was first arraigned on his former indictment, acquitted, and admitted evidence against Aram, who was thereupon arraigned. The prisoner stood at the bar! Madeline gasped for breath, and clung, with a convulsive motion, to her sister's arm. But presently, with a long sigh she recovered her self-possession, and sat quiet and silent, fixing her eyes upon Aram's countenance; and the aspect of that countenance was well calculated to sustain her courage, and to mingle a sort of exulting pride, with all the strained and fearful acuteness of her sympathy. Something, indeed, of what he had suffered, was visible in the prisoner's features; the lines around the mouth in which mental anxiety generally the most deeply writes its traces, were grown marked and furrowed; grey hairs were here and there scattered amongst the rich and long luxuriance of the dark brown locks, and as, before his imprisonment, he had seemed considerably younger than he was, so now time had atoned for its past delay, and he might have appeared to have told more years than had really gone over his head; but the remarkable light and beauty of his eye was undimmed as ever, and still the broad expanse of his forehead retained its unwrinkled surface and striking expression of calmness and majesty.
High, self-collected, serene, and undaunted, he looked upon the crowd, the scene, the judge, before and around him; and, even among those who believed him guilty, that involuntary and irresistible respect which moral firmness always produces on the mind, forced an unwilling interest in his fate, and even a reluctant hope of his acquittal.
Houseman was called upon. No one could regard his face without a certain mistrust and inward shudder. In men p.r.o.ne to cruelty, it has generally been remarked, that there is an animal expression strongly prevalent in the countenance. The murderer and the l.u.s.tful man are often alike in the physical structure. The bull-throat--the thick lips--the receding forehead--the fierce restless eye--which some one or other says reminds you of the buffalo in the instant before he becomes dangerous, are the outward tokens of the natural animal unsoftened--unenlightened--unredeemed--consulting only the immediate desires of his nature, whatever be the pa.s.sion (l.u.s.t or revenge) to which they prompt. And this animal expression, the witness of his character, was especially wrought, if we may use the word, in House-man's rugged and harsh features; rendered, if possible, still more remarkable at that time by a mixture of sullenness and timidity. The conviction that his own life was saved, could not prevent remorse at his treachery in accusing his comrade--a sort of confused principle of which villains are the most susceptible, when every other honest sentiment has deserted them.
With a low, choked, and sometimes a faltering tone, Houseman deposed, that, in the night between the 7th and 8th of January 1744-5, sometime before 11 o'clock, he went to Aram's house--that they conversed on different matters--that he stayed there about an hour--that some three hours afterwards he pa.s.sed, in company with Clarke, by Aram's house, and Aram was outside the door, as if he were about to return home--that Aram invited them both to come in--that they did so--that Clarke, who intended to leave the town before day-break, in order, it was acknowledged, to make secretly away with certain property in his possession, was about to quit the house, when Aram proposed to accompany him out of the town--that he (Aram) and Houseman then went forth with Clarke--that when they came into the field where St. Robert's Cave is, Aram and Clarke went into it, over the hedge, and when they came within six or eight yards off the Cave, he saw them quarrelling--that he saw Aram strike Clarke several times, upon which Clarke fell, and he never saw him rise again--that he saw no instrument Aram had, and knew not that he had any--that upon this, without any interposition or alarm, he left them and returned home--that the next morning he went to Aram's house, and asked what business he had with Clarke last night, and what he had done with him? Aram replied not to this question; but threatened him, if he spoke of his being in Clarke's company that night; vowing revenge either by himself or some other person if he mentioned any thing relating to the affair. This was the sum of Houseman's evidence.
A Mr. Beckwith was next called, who deposed that Aram's garden had been searched, owing to a vague suspicion that he might have been an accomplice in the frauds of Clarke--that some parts of clothing, and also some pieces of cambric which he had sold to Clarke a little while before, were found there.
The third witness was the watchman, Thomas Barnet, who deposed, that before midnight (it might be a little after eleven) he saw a person come out from Aram's house, who had a wide coat on, with the cape about his head, and seemed to shun him; whereupon he went up to him, and put by the cape of his great coat, and perceived it to be Richard Houseman. He contented himself with wis.h.i.+ng him good night.
The officers who executed the warrant then gave their evidence as to the arrest, and dwelt on some expressions dropped by Aram before he arrived at Knaresbro', which, however, were felt to be wholly unimportant.