Eugene Aram Part 15

"Well, when will you look up?"

"Come and take a dish of tay with you in half an hour;--you want a new tay-chest; something new and genteel."

"I think we do," said Peter, rising and gently depositing the cat on the ground.

"Aha! we'll see to it!--we'll see! Good b'ye for the present--in half an hour be with you!"

The Corporal left alone with Jacobina, eyed her intently, and burst into the following pathetic address.

"Well, Jacobina! you little know the pains I takes to serve you--the lies I tells for you--endangered my precious soul for your sake, you jade! Ah! may well rub your sides against me. Jacobina! Jacobina! you be the only thing in the world that cares a b.u.t.ton for me. I have neither kith nor kin. You are daughter--friend--wife to me: if any thing happened to you, I should not have the heart to love any thing else. Any body o' me, but you be as kind as any mistress, and much more tractable than any wife; but the world gives you a bad name, Jacobina. Why? Is it that you do worse than the world do? You has no morality in you, Jacobina; well, but has the world?--no! But it has humbug--you have no humbug, Jacobina. On the faith of a man, Jacobina, you be better than the world!--baugh! You takes care of your own interest, but you takes care of your master's too!--You loves me as well as yourself. Few cats can say the same, Jacobina! and no gossip that flings a stone at your pretty brindled skin, can say half as much. We must not forget your kittens, Jacobina;--you have four left--they must be provided for.

Why not a cat's children as well as a courtier's? I have got you a comfortable home, Jacobina--take care of yourself, and don't fall in love with every Tomcat in the place. Be sober, and lead a single life till my return. Come, Jacobina, we will lock up the house, and go and see the quarters I have provided for you.--Heigho!"

As he finished his harangue, the Corporal locked the door of his cottage, and Jacobina trotting by his side, he stalked with his usual stateliness to the Spotted Dog.

Dame Dorothy Dealtry received him with a clouded brow, but the man of the world knew whom he had to deal with. On Wednesday morning Jacobina was inducted into the comforts of the hearth of mine host;--and her four little kittens mewed hard by, from the sinecure of a basket lined with flannel.

Reader. Here is wisdom in this chapter: it is not every man who knows how to dispose of his cat!

CHAPTER XII.

A STRANGE HABIT.--WALTER'S INTERVIEW WITH MADELINE.--HER GENEROUS AND CONFIDING DISPOSITION.--WALTER'S ANGER.--THE PARTING MEAL.--CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE UNCLE AND NEPHEW.-- WALTER ALONE.--SLEEP THE BLESSING OF THE YOUNG.

Fall. Out, out, unworthy to speak where he breatheth....

Punt. Well now, my whole venture is forth, I will resolve to depart.

--Ben Jonson.--Every Man out of his Humour.

It was now the eve before Walter's departure, and on returning home from a farewell walk among his favourite haunts, he found Aram, whose visit had been made during Walter's absence, now standing on the threshold of the door, and taking leave of Madeline and her father. Aram and Walter had only met twice before since the interview we recorded, and each time Walter had taken care that the meeting should be but of short duration.

In these brief encounters, Aram's manner had been even more gentle than heretofore; that of Walter's, more cold and distant. And now, as they thus unexpectedly met at the door, Aram, looking at him earnestly, said:

"Farewell, Sir! You are to leave us for some time, I hear. Heaven speed you!" Then he added in a lower tone, "Will you take my hand, now, in parting?"

As he said, he put forth his hand,--it was the left.

"Let it be the right hand," observed the elder Lester, smiling: "it is a luckier omen."

"I think not," said Aram, drily. And Walter noted that he had never remembered him to give his right hand to any one, even to Madeline; the peculiarity of this habit might, however, arise from an awkward early habit, it was certainly scarce worth observing, and Walter had already coldly touched the hand extended to him: when Lester carelessly renewed the subject.

"Is there any superst.i.tion," said he gaily, "that makes you think, as some of the ancients did, the left hand luckier than the right?"

"Yes," replied Aram; "a superst.i.tion. Adieu."

The Student departed; Madeline slowly walked up one of the garden alleys, and thither Walter, after whispering to his uncle, followed her.

There is something in those bitter feelings, which are the offspring of disappointed love; something in the intolerable anguish of well-founded jealousy, that when the first shock is over, often hardens, and perhaps elevates the character. The sterner powers that we arouse within us to combat a pa.s.sion that can no longer be worthily indulged, are never afterwards wholly allayed. Like the allies which a nation summons to its bosom to defend it from its foes, they expel the enemy only to find a settlement for themselves. The mind of every man who conquers an unfortunate attachment, becomes stronger than before; it may be for evil, it may be for good, but the capacities for either are more vigorous and collected.

The last few weeks had done more for Walter's character than years of ordinary, even of happy emotion, might have effected. He had pa.s.sed from youth to manhood, and with the sadness, had acquired also something of the dignity, of experience. Not that we would say that he had subdued his love, but he had made the first step towards it; he had resolved that at all hazards it should be subdued.

As he now joined Madeline, and she perceived him by her side, her embarra.s.sment was more evident than his. She feared some avowal, and from his temper, perhaps some violence on his part. However, she was the first to speak: women, in such cases, always are.

"It is a beautiful evening," said she, "and the sun set in promise of a fine day for your journey to-morrow."

Walter walked on silently; his heart was full. "Madeline," he said at length, "dear Madeline, give me your hand. Nay, do not fear me; I know what you think, and you are right; I loved--I still love you! but I know well that I can have no hope in making this confession; and when I ask you for your hand, Madeline, it is only to convince you that I have no suit to press; had I, I would not dare to touch that hand."

Madeline, wondering and embarra.s.sed, gave him her hand; he held it for a moment with a trembling clasp, pressed it to his lips, and then resigned it.

"Yes, Madeline, my cousin, my sweet cousin; I have loved you deeply, but silently, long before my heart could unravel the mystery of the feelings with which it glowed. But this--all this--it were now idle to repeat.

I know that I have no hope of return; that the heart whose possession would have made my whole life a dream, a transport, is given to another.

I have not sought you now, Madeline, to repine at this, or to vex you by the tale of any suffering I may endure: I am come only to give you the parting wishes, the parting blessing, of one, who, wherever he goes, or whatever befall him, will always think of you as the brightest and loveliest of human beings. May you be happy, yes even with another!"

"Oh, Walter!" said Madeline, affected to tears, "if I ever encouraged--if I ever led you to hope for more than the warm, the sisterly affection I bear you, how bitterly I should reproach myself!"

"You never did, dear Madeline; I asked for no inducement to love you,--I never dreamed of seeking a motive, or inquiring if I had cause to hope.

But as I am now about to quit you, and as you confess you feel for me a sister's affection, will you give me leave to speak to you as a brother might?"

Madeline held her hand to him in frank cordiality: "Yes!" said she, "speak!"

"Then," said Walter, turning away his head in a spirit of delicacy that did him honour, "is it yet all too late for me to say one word of caution as relates to--Eugene Aram?"

"Of caution! you alarm me, Walter; speak, has aught happened to him? I saw him as lately as yourself. Does aught threaten him? Speak, I implore you,--quick?"

"I know of no danger to him!" replied Walter, stung to perceive the breathless anxiety with which Madeline spoke; "but pause, my cousin, may there be no danger to you from this man?"

"Walter!"

"I grant him wise, learned, gentle,--nay, more than all, bearing about him a spell, a fascination, by which he softens, or awes at will, and which even I cannot resist. But yet his abstracted mood, his gloomy life, certain words that have broken from him unawares,--certain tell-tale emotions, which words of mine, heedlessly said, have fiercely aroused, all united, inspire me,--shall I say it,--with fear and distrust. I cannot think him altogether the calm and pure being he appears. Madeline, I have asked myself again and again, is this suspicion the effect of jealousy? do I scan his bearing with the jaundiced eye of disappointed rivalship? And I have satisfied my conscience that my judgment is not thus bia.s.sed. Stay! listen yet a little while! You have a high--a thoughtful mind. Exert it now. Consider your whole happiness rests on one step! Pause, examine, compare!

Remember, you have not of Aram, as of those whom you have hitherto mixed with, the eye-witness of a life! You can know but little of his real temper, his secret qualities; still less of the tenor of his former life. I only ask of you, for your own sake, for my sake, your sister's sake, and your good father's, not to judge too rashly! Love him, if you will; but observe him!"

"Have you done?" said Madeline, who had hitherto with difficulty contained herself; "then hear me. Was it I? was it Madeline Lester whom you asked to play the watch, to enact the spy upon the man whom she exults in loving? Was it not enough that you should descend to mark down each incautious look--to chronicle every heedless word--to draw dark deductions from the unsuspecting confidence of my father's friend--to lie in wait--to hang with a foe's malignity upon the unbendings of familiar intercourse--to extort anger from gentleness itself, that you might wrest the anger into crime! Shame, shame upon you, for the meanness! And must you also suppose that I, to whose trust he has given his n.o.ble heart, will receive it only to play the eavesdropper to its secrets? Away!"

The generous blood crimsoned the cheek and brow of this high-spirited girl as she uttered her galling reproof; her eyes sparkled, her lip quivered, her whole frame seemed to have grown larger with the majesty of indignant love.

"Cruel, unjust, ungrateful!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Walter, pale with rage, and trembling under the conflict of his roused and wounded feelings. "Is it thus you answer the warning of too disinterested and self-forgetful a love?"

"Love!" exclaimed Madeline. "Grant me patience!--Love! It was but now I thought myself honoured by the affection you said you bore me. At this instant, I blush to have called forth a single sentiment in one who knows so little what love is! Love!--methought that word denoted all that was high and n.o.ble in human nature--confidence, hope, devotion, sacrifice of all thought of self! but you would make it the type and concentration of all that lowers and debases!--suspicion--cavil--fear--selfishness in all its shapes!

Out on you--love!"

"Enough, enough! Say no more, Madeline, say no more. We part not as I had hoped; but be it so. You are changed indeed, if your conscience smite you not hereafter for this injustice. Farewell, and may you never regret, not only the heart you have rejected, but the friendship you have belied." With these words, and choked by his emotions, Walter hastily strode away.

He hurried into the house, and into a little room adjoining the chamber in which he slept, and which had been also appropriated solely to his use. It was now spread with boxes and trunks, some half packed, some corded, and inscribed with the address to which they were to be sent in London. All these mute tokens of his approaching departure struck upon his excited feelings with a suddenness that overpowered him.

"And it is thus--thus," said he aloud, "that I am to leave, for the first time, my childhood's home."

He threw himself on his chair, and covering his face with his hands, burst, fairly subdued and unmanned, into a paroxysm of tears.