Meanwhile, in following the adventures of Walter Lester, we have greatly outstript the progress of events of Gra.s.sdale, and thither we now return.

CHAPTER IV.

ARAM'S DEPARTURE.--MADELINE.--EXAGGERATION OF SENTIMENT NATURAL IN LOVE.--MADELINE'S LETTER.--WALTER'S.--THE WALK.-- TWO VERY DIFFERENT PERSONS, YET BOTH INMATES OF THE SAME COUNTRY VILLAGE.--THE HUMOURS OF LIFE, AND ITS DARK Pa.s.sIONS, ARE FOUND IN JUXTA-POSITION EVERYWHERE.

Her thoughts as pure as the chaste morning's breath, When from the Night's cold arms it creeps away, Were clothed in words.

--Sir J. Suckling--Detraction Execrated

"You positively leave us then to-day, Eugene?" said the Squire.

"Indeed," answered Aram, "I hear from my creditor, (now no longer so, thanks to you,) that my relation is so dangerously ill, that if I have any wish to see her alive, I have not an hour to lose. It is the last surviving relative I have in the world."

"I can say no more, then," rejoined the Squire shrugging his shoulders: "When do you expect to return?"

"At least, ere the day fixed for the wedding," answered Aram, with a grave and melancholy smile.

"Well, can you find time, think you, to call at the lodging in which my nephew proposed to take up his abode,--my old lodging;--I will give you the address,--and inquire if Walter has been heard of there: I confess that I feel considerable alarm on his account. Since that short and hurried letter which I read to you, I have heard nothing of him."

"You may rely on my seeing him if in London, and faithfully reporting to you all that I can learn towards removing your anxiety."

"I do not doubt it; no heart is so kind as yours, Eugene. You will not depart without receiving the additional sum you are ent.i.tled to claim from me, since you think it may be useful to you in London, should you find a favourable opportunity of increasing your annuity. And now I will no longer detain you from taking your leave of Madeline."

The plausible story which Aram had invented of the illness and approaching death of his last living relation, was readily believed by the simple family to whom it was told; and Madeline herself checked her tears that she might not, for his sake, sadden a departure that seemed inevitable. Aram accordingly repaired to London that day,--the one that followed the night which witnessed his fearful visit to the "Devil's Crag."

It is precisely at this part of my history that I love to pause for a moment; a sort of breathing interval between the cloud that has been long gathering, and the storm that is about to burst. And this interval is not without its fleeting gleam of quiet and holy sunshine.

It was Madeline's first absence from her lover since their vows had plighted them to each other; and that first absence, when softened by so many hopes as smiled upon her, is perhaps one of the most touching pa.s.sages in the history of a woman's love. It is marvellous how many things, unheeded before, suddenly become dear. She then feels what a power of consecration there was in the mere presence of the one beloved; the spot he touched, the book he read, have become a part of him--are no longer inanimate--are inspired, and have a being and a voice. And the heart, too, soothed in discovering so many new treasures, and opening so delightful a world of memory, is not yet acquainted with that weariness--that sense of exhaustion and solitude which are the true pains of absence, and belong to the absence not of hope but regret.

"You are cheerful, dear Madeline," said Ellinor, "though you did not think it possible, and he not here!"

"I am occupied," replied Madeline, "in discovering how much I loved him."

We do wrong when we censure a certain exaggeration in the sentiments of those who love. True pa.s.sion is necessarily heightened by its very ardour to an elevation that seems extravagant only to those who cannot feel it. The lofty language of a hero is a part of his character; without that largeness of idea he had not been a hero. With love, it is the same as with glory: what common minds would call natural in sentiment, merely because it is homely, is not natural, except to tamed affections. That is a very poor, nay, a very coa.r.s.e, love, in which the imagination makes not the greater part. And the Frenchman, who censured the love of his mistress because it was so mixed with the imagination, quarrelled with the body, for the soul which inspired and preserved it.

Yet we do not say that Madeline was so possessed by the confidence of her love, that she did not admit the intrusion of a single doubt or fear; when she recalled the frequent gloom and moody fitfulness of her lover--his strange and mysterious communings with self--the sorrow which, at times, as on that Sabbath eve when he wept upon her bosom, appeared suddenly to come upon a nature so calm and stately, and without a visible cause; when she recalled all these symptoms of a heart not now at rest, it was not possible for her to reject altogether a certain vague and dreary apprehension. Nor did she herself, although to Ellinor she so affected, ascribe this cloudiness and caprice of mood merely to the result of a solitary and meditative life; she attributed them to the influence of an early grief, perhaps linked with the affections, and did not doubt but that one day or another she should learn its secret.

As for remorse--the memory of any former sin--a life so austerely blameless, a disposition so prompt to the activity of good, and so enamoured of its beauty--a mind so cultivated, a temper so gentle, and a heart so easily moved--all would have forbidden, to natures far more suspicious than Madeline's, the conception of such a thought. And so, with a patient gladness, though not without some mixture of anxiety, she suffered herself to glide onward to a future, which, come cloud, come shine, was, she believed at least, to be shared with him.

On looking over the various papers from which I have woven this tale, I find a letter from Madeline to Aram, dated at this time. The characters, traced in the delicate and fair Italian hand coveted at that period, are fading, and, in one part, wholly obliterated by time; but there seems to me so much of what is genuine in the heart's beautiful romance in this effusion, that I will lay it before the reader without adding or altering a word.

"Thank you, thank you, dearest Eugene! I have received, then, the first letter you ever wrote me. I cannot tell you how strange it seemed to me, and how agitated I felt on seeing it, more so, I think, than if it had been yourself who had returned. However, when the first delight of reading it faded away, I found that it had not made me so happy as it ought to have done--as I thought at first it had done. You seem sad and melancholy; a certain nameless gloom appears to me to hang over your whole letter. It affects my spirits--why I know not--and my tears fall even while I read the a.s.surances of your unaltered, unalterable love--and yet this a.s.surance your Madeline--vain girl!--never for a moment disbelieves. I have often read and often heard of the distrust and jealousy that accompany love; but I think that such a love must be a vulgar and low sentiment. To me there seems a religion in love, and its very foundation is in faith. You say, dearest, that the noise and stir of the great city oppress and weary you even more than you had expected.

You say those harsh faces, in which business, and care, and avarice, and ambition write their lineaments, are wholly unfamiliar to you;--you turn aside to avoid them,--you wrap yourself up in your solitary feelings of aversion to those you see, and you call upon those not present--upon your Madeline! and would that your Madeline were with you! It seems to me--perhaps you will smile when I say this--that I alone can understand you--I alone can read your heart and your emotions;--and oh! dearest Eugene, that I could read also enough of your past history to know all that has cast so habitual a shadow over that lofty heart and that calm and profound nature! You smile when I ask you--but sometimes you sigh,--and the sigh pleases and soothes me better than the smile.

"We have heard nothing more of Walter, and my father begins at times to be seriously alarmed about him. Your account, too, corroborates that alarm. It is strange that he has not yet visited London, and that you can obtain no clue of him. He is evidently still in search of his lost parent, and following some obscure and uncertain track. Poor Walter!

G.o.d speed him! The singular fate of his father, and the many conjectures respecting him, have, I believe, preyed on Walter's mind more than he acknowledged. Ellinor found a paper in his closet, where we had occasion to search the other day for something belonging to my father, which was scribbled with all the various fragments of guess or information concerning my uncle, obtained from time to time, and interspersed with some remarks by Walter himself, that affected me strangely. It seems to have been from early childhood the one desire of my cousin to discover his father's fate. Perhaps the discovery may be already made;--perhaps my long-lost uncle may yet be present at our wedding.

"You ask me, Eugene, if I still pursue my botanical researches.

Sometimes I do; but the flower now has no fragrance--and the herb no secret, that I care for; and astronomy, which you had just begun to teach me, pleases me more;--the flowers charm me when you are present; but the stars speak to me of you in absence. Perhaps it would not be so, had I loved a being less exalted than you. Every one, even my father, even Ellinor, smile when they observe how incessantly I think of you--how utterly you have become all in all to me. I could not tell this to you, though I write it: is it not strange that letters should be more faithful than the tongue? And even your letter, mournful as it is, seems to me kinder, and dearer, and more full of yourself, than with all the magic of your language, and the silver sweetness of your voice, your spoken words are. I walked by your house yesterday; the windows were closed--there was a strange air of lifelessness and dejection about it. Do you remember the evening in which I first entered that house? Do you--or rather is there one hour in which it is not present to you? For me, I live in the past,--it is the present--(which is without you,) in which I have no life. I pa.s.sed into the little garden, that with your own hands you have planted for me, and filled with flowers. Ellinor was with me, and she saw my lips move. She asked me what I was saying to myself. I would not tell her--I was praying for you, my kind, my beloved Eugene. I was praying for the happiness of your future years--praying that I might requite your love. Whenever I feel the most, I am the most inclined to prayer. Sorrow, joy, tenderness, all emotion, lift up my heart to G.o.d. And what a delicious overflow of the heart is prayer!

When I am with you--and I feel that you love me--my happiness would be painful, if there were no G.o.d whom I might bless for its excess. Do those, who believe not, love?--have they deep emotions?--can they feel truly--devotedly? Why, when I talk thus to you--do you always answer me with that chilling and mournful smile? You would make religion only the creation of reason--as well might you make love the same--what is either, unless you let it spring also from the feelings?

"When--when--when will you return? I think I love you now more than ever. I think I have more courage to tell you so. So many things I have to say--so many events to relate. For what is not an event to US? the least incident that has happened to either--the very fading of a flower, if you have worn it, is a whole history to me.

"Adieu, G.o.d bless you--G.o.d reward you--G.o.d keep your heart with Him, dearest, dearest Eugene. And may you every day know better and better how utterly you are loved by your

"Madeline."

The epistle to which Lester referred as received from Walter, was one written on the day of his escape from Mr. Pertinax Fillgrave, a short note, rather than letter, which ran as follows.

"My dear Uncle, I have met with an accident which confined me to my bed;--a rencontre, indeed, with the Knights of the Road--nothing serious, (so do not be alarmed!) though the Doctor would fain have made it so. I am just about to recommence my journey, but not towards London; on the contrary, northward.

"I have, partly through the information of your old friend Mr.

Courtland, partly by accident, found what I hope may prove a clue to the fate of my father. I am now departing to put this hope to the issue.

More I would fain say; but lest the expectation should prove fallacious, I will not dwell on circ.u.mstances which would in that case only create in you a disappointment similar to my own. Only this take with you, that my father's proverbial good luck seems to have visited him since your latest news of his fate; a legacy, though not a large one, awaited his return to England from India; but see if I am not growing prolix already--I must break off in order to reserve you the pleasure (may it be so!) of a full surprise!

"G.o.d bless you, my dear Uncle! I write in spirits and hope; kindest love to all at home.

"Walter Lester.

"P. S. Tell Ellinor that my bitterest misfortune in the adventure I have referred to, was to be robbed of her purse. Will she knit me another? By the way, I encountered Sir Peter Hales; such an open-hearted, generous fellow as you said! 'thereby hangs a tale.'"

This letter, which provoked all the curiosity of our little circle, made them anxiously look forward to every post for additional explanation, but that explanation came not. And they were forced to console themselves with the evident exhilaration under which Walter wrote, and the probable supposition that he delayed farther information until it could be ample and satisfactory.--"Knights of the Road," quoth Lester one day, "I wonder if they were any of the gang that have just visited us. Well, but poor boy! he does not say whether he has any money left; yet if he were short of the gold, he would be very unlike his father, (or his uncle for that matter,) had he forgotten to enlarge on that subject, however brief upon others."

"Probably," said Ellinor, "the Corporal carried the main sum about him in those well-stuffed saddle-bags, and it was only the purse that Walter had about his person that was stolen; and it is probable that the Corporal might have escaped, as he mentions nothing about that excellent personage."

"A shrewd guess, Nell: but pray, why should Walter carry the purse about him so carefully? Ah, you blush: well, will you knit him another?"

"Pshaw, Papa! Good b'ye, I am going to gather you a nosegay."

But Ellinor was seized with a sudden fit of industry, and somehow or other she grew fonder of knitting than ever.

The neighbourhood was now tranquil and at peace; the nightly depredators that had infested the green valleys of Gra.s.sdale were heard of no more; it seemed a sudden incursion of fraud and crime, which was too unnatural to the character of the spot invaded to do more than to terrify and to disappear. The truditur dies die; the serene steps of one calm day chasing another returned, and the past alarm was only remembered as a tempting subject of gossip to the villagers, and (at the Hall) a theme of eulogium on the courage of Eugene Aram.

"It is a lovely day," said Lester to his daughters, as they sate at the window; "come, girls, get your bonnets, and let us take a walk into the village."

"And meet the postman," said Ellinor, archly.

"Yes," rejoined Madeline in the same vein, but in a whisper that Lester might not hear, "for who knows but that we may have a letter from Walter?"

How prettily sounds such raillery on virgin lips. No, no; nothing on earth is so lovely as the confidence between two happy sisters, who have no secrets but those of a guileless love to reveal!

As they strolled into the village, they were met by Peter Dealtry, who was slowly riding home on a large a.s.s which carried himself and his panniers to the neighbouring market in a more quiet and luxurious indolence of action than would the harsher motions of the equine species.

"A fine day, Peter: and what news at market?" said Lester.

"Corn high,--hay dear, your honour," replied the clerk.