Eugene Aram — Complete

    —Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The Corporal had not taken his measures so badly in this stroke of artilleryship.

    —Tristram Shandy.

It was late that evening when Walter returned home, the little family were assembled at the last and lightest meal of the day; Ellinor silently made room for her cousin beside herself, and that little kindness touched Walter. “Why did I not love her?” thought he, and he spoke to her in a tone so affectionate, that it made her heart thrill with delight. Lester was, on the whole, the most pensive of the group, but the old and young man exchanged looks of restored confidence, which, on the part of the former, were softened by a pitying tenderness.

When the cloth was removed, and the servants gone, Lester took it on himself to break to the sisters the intended departure of their cousin. Madeline received the news with painful blushes, and a certain self-reproach; for even where a woman has no cause to blame herself, she, in these cases, feels a sort of remorse at the unhappiness she occasions. But Ellinor rose suddenly and left the room.

“And now,” said Lester, “London will, I suppose, be your first destination. I can furnish you with letters to some of my old friends there: merry fellows they were once: you must take care of the prodigality of their wine. There’s John Courtland—ah! a seductive dog to drink with. Be sure and let me know how honest John looks, and what he says of me. I recollect him as if it were yesterday; a roguish eye, with a moisture in it; full cheeks; a straight nose; black curled hair; and teeth as even as dies:—honest John shewed his teeth pretty often, too: ha, ha! how the dog loved a laugh. Well, and Peter Hales—Sir Peter now, has his uncle’s baronetcy—a generous, open-hearted fellow as ever lived—will ask you very often to dinner—nay, offer you money if you want it: but take care he does not lead you into extravagances: out of debt, out of danger, Walter. It would have been well for poor Peter Hales, had he remembered that maxim. Often and often have I been to see him in the Marshalsea; but he was the heir to good fortunes, though his relations kept him close; so I suppose he is well off now. His estates lie in—shire, on your road to London; so, if he is at his country-seat, you can beat up his quarters, and spend a month or so with him: a most hospitable fellow.”

With these little sketches of his cotemporaries, the good Squire endeavoured to while the time; taking, it is true, some pleasure in the youthful reminiscences they excited, but chiefly designing to enliven the melancholy of his nephew. When, however, Madeline had retired, and they were alone, he drew his chair closer to Walter’s, and changed the conversation into a more serious and anxious strain. The guardian and the ward sate up late that night; and when Walter retired to rest, it was with a heart more touched by his uncle’s kindness, than his own sorrows.

But we are not about to close the day without a glance at the chamber which the two sisters held in common. The night was serene and starlit, and Madeline sate by the open window, leaning her face upon her hand, and gazing on the lone house of her lover, which might be seen afar across the landscape, the trees sleeping around it, and one pale and steady light gleaming from its lofty casement like a star.

“He has broken faith,” said Madeline: “I shall chide him for this to-morrow. He promised me the light should be ever quenched before this hour.”

“Nay,” said Ellinor in a tone somewhat sharpened from its native sweetness, and who now sate up in the bed, the curtain of which was half-drawn aside, and the soft light of the skies rested full upon her rounded neck and youthful countenance—“nay, Madeline, do not loiter there any longer; the air grows sharp and cold, and the clock struck one several minutes since. Come, sister, come!”

“I cannot sleep,” replied Madeline, sighing, “and think that yon light streams upon those studies which steal the healthful hues from his cheek, and the very life from his heart.”

“You are infatuated—you are bewitched by that man,” said Ellinor, peevishly.

“And have I not cause—ample cause?” returned Madeline, with all a girl’s beautiful enthusiasm, as the colour mantled her cheek, and gave it the only additional loveliness it could receive. “When he speaks, is it not like music?—or rather, what music so arrests and touches the heart? Methinks it is Heaven only to gaze upon him—to note the changes of that majestic countenance—to set down as food for memory every look and every movement. But when the look turns to me—when the voice utters my name, ah! Ellinor, then it is not a wonder that I love him thus much: but that any others should think they have known love, and yet not loved him! And, indeed, I feel assured that what the world calls love is not my love. Are there more Eugenes in the world than one? Who but Eugene could be loved as I love?”

“What! are there none as worthy?” said Ellinor, half smiling.

“Can you ask it?” answered Madeline, with a simple wonder in her voice; “Whom would you compare—compare! nay, place within a hundred grades of the height which Eugene Aram holds in this little world?”

“This is folly—dotage;” said Ellinor, indignantly: “Surely there are others, as brave, as gentle, as kind, and if not so wise, yet more fitted for the world.”

“You mock me,” replied Madeline, incredulously; “whom could you select?”

Ellinor blushed deeply—blushed from her snowy temples to her yet whiter bosom, as she answered,

“If I said Walter Lester, could you deny it?”

“Walter!” repeated Madeline, “the equal to Eugene Aram!”

“Ay, and more than equal,” said Ellinor, with spirit, and a warm and angry tone. “And indeed, Madeline,” she continued, after a pause, “I lose something of that respect, which, passing a sister’s love, I have always borne towards you, when I see the unthinking and lavish idolatry you manifest to one, who, but for a silver tongue and florid words, would rather want attractions than be the wonder you esteem him. Fie, Madeline! I blush for you when you speak, it is unmaidenly so to love any one!”

Madeline rose from the window, but the angry word died on her lips when she saw that Ellinor, who had worked her mind beyond her self-control, had thrown herself back on the pillow, and now sobbed aloud.

The natural temper of the elder sister had always been much more calm and even than that of the younger, who united with her vivacity something of the passionate caprice and fitfulness of her sex. And Madeline’s affection for her had been tinged by that character of forbearance and soothing, which a superior nature often manifests to one more imperfect, and which in this instance did not desert her. She gently closed the window, and, gliding to the bed, threw her arms round her sister’s neck, and kissed away her tears with a caressing fondness, that, if Ellinor resisted for one moment, she returned with equal tenderness the next.

“Indeed, dearest,” said Madeline, gently, “I cannot guess how I hurt you, and still less, how Eugene has offended you?”

“He has offended me in nothing,” replied Ellinor, still weeping, “if he has not stolen away all your affection from me. But I was a foolish girl, forgive me, as you always do; and at this time I need your kindness, for I am very—very unhappy.”

“Unhappy, dearest Nell, and why?”

Ellinor wept on without answering.

Madeline persisted in pressing for a reply; and at length her sister sobbed out:

“I know that—that—Walter only has eyes for you, and a heart for you, who neglect, who despise his love; and I—I—but no matter, he is going to leave us, and of me—poor me, he will think no more!”

Ellinor’s attachment to their cousin, Madeline had long half suspected, and she had often rallied her sister upon it; indeed it might have been this suspicion which made her at the first steel her breast against Walter’s evident preference to herself. But Ellinor had never till now seriously confessed how much her heart was affected; and Madeline, in the natural engrossment of her own ardent and devoted love, had not of late spared much observation to the tokens of her sister’s. She was therefore dismayed, if not surprised, as she now perceived the cause of the peevishness Ellinor had just manifested, and by the nature of the love she felt herself, she judged, and perhaps somewhat overrated, the anguish that Ellinor endured.

She strove to comfort her by all the arguments which the fertile ingenuity of kindness could invent; she prophesied Walter’s speedy return, with his boyish disappointment forgotten, and with eyes no longer blinded to the attractions of one sister, by a bootless fancy for another. And though Ellinor interrupted her from time to time with assertions, now of Walter’s eternal constancy to his present idol; now, with yet more vehement declarations of the certainty of his finding new objects for his affections in new scenes; she yet admitted, by little and little, the persuasive power of Madeline to creep into her heart, and brighten away its griefs with hope, till at last, with the tears yet wet on her cheek, she fell asleep in her sister’s arms.

And Madeline, though she would not stir from her post lest the movement should awaken her sister, was yet prevented from closing her eyes in a similar repose; ever and anon she breathlessly and gently raised herself to steal a glimpse of that solitary light afar; and ever, as she looked, the ray greeted her eyes with an unswerving and melancholy stillness, till the dawn crept greyly over the heavens, and that speck of light, holier to her than the stars, faded also with them beneath the broader lustre of the day.

The next week was passed in preparations for Walter’s departure. At that time, and in that distant part of the country, it was greatly the fashion among the younger travellers to perform their excursions on horseback, and it was this method of conveyance that Walter preferred. The best steed in the squire’s stables was therefore appropriated to his service, and a strong black horse with a Roman nose and a long tail, was consigned to the mastery of Corporal Bunting. The Squire was delighted that his nephew had secured such an attendant. For the soldier, though odd and selfish, was a man of some sense and experience, and Lester thought such qualities might not be without their use to a young master, new to the common frauds and daily usages of the world he was about to enter.

As for Bunting himself, he covered his secret exultation at the prospect of change, and board-wages, with the cool semblance of a man sacrificing his wishes to his affections. He made it his peculiar study to impress upon the Squire’s mind the extent of the sacrifice he was about to make. The bit cot had been just white-washed, the pet cat just lain in; then too, who would dig, and gather seeds, in the garden, defend the plants, (plants! the Corporal could scarce count a dozen, and nine out of them were cabbages!) from the impending frosts? It was exactly, too, the time of year when the rheumatism paid flying visits to the bones and loins of the worthy Corporal; and to think of his “galavanting about the country,” when he ought to be guarding against that sly foe the lumbago, in the fortress of his chimney corner!

To all these murmurs and insinuations the good Lester seriously inclined, not with the less sympathy, in that they invariably ended in the Corporal’s slapping his manly thigh, and swearing that he loved Master Walter like gunpowder, and that were it twenty times as much, he would cheerfully do it for the sake of his handsome young honour. Ever at this peroration, the eyes of the Squire began to twinkle, and new thanks were given to the veteran for his disinterested affection, and new promises pledged him in inadequate return.

The pious Dealtry felt a little jealousy at the trust imparted to his friend. He halted, on his return from his farm, by the spruce stile which led to the demesne of the Corporal, and eyed the warrior somewhat sourly, as he now, in the cool of the evening, sate without his door, arranging his fishing-tackle and flies, in various little papers, which he carefully labelled by the help of a stunted pen which had seen at least as much service as himself.

“Well, neighbour Bunting,” said the little landlord, leaning over the stile, but not passing its boundary, “and when do you go?—you will have wet weather of it (looking up to the skies)—you must take care of the rumatiz. At your age it’s no trifle, eh—hem.”

“My age! should like to know—what mean by that! my age indeed!—augh!—bother!” grunted Bunting, looking up from his occupation. Peter chuckled inly at the Corporal’s displeasure, and continued, as in an apologetic tone,

“Oh, I ax your pardon, neighbour. I don’t mean to say you are too old to travel. Why there was Hal Whittol, eighty-two come next Michaelmas, took a trip to Lunnun last year—

“For young and old, the stout—the poorly,—The eye of God be on them surely.”

“Bother!” said the Corporal, turning round on his seat.

“And what do you intend doing with the brindled cat? put’un up in the saddle-bags? You won’t surely have the heart to leave’un.”

“As to that,” quoth the Corporal, sighing, “the poor dumb animal makes me sad to think on’t.” And putting down his fish-hooks, he stroked the sides of an enormous cat, who now, with tail on end, and back bowed up, and uttering her lenes susurros—anglicae, purr;—rubbed herself to and fro, athwart the Corporal’s legs.

“What staring there for? won’t ye step in, man? Can climb the stile I suppose?—augh!”

“No thank’ye, neighbour. I do very well here, that is, if you can hear me; your deafness is not so troublesome as it was last win—”

“Bother!” interrupted the Corporal, in a voice that made the little landlord start bolt upright from the easy confidence of his position. Nothing on earth so offended the perpendicular Jacob Bunting, as any insinuation of increasing years or growing infirmities; but at this moment, as he meditated putting Dealtry to some use, he prudently conquered the gathering anger, and added, like the man of the world he justly plumed himself on being—in a voice gentle as a dying howl, “What ‘fraid on? come in, there’s good fellow, want to speak to ye. Come do—a-u-g-h!” the last sound being prolonged into one of unutterable coaxingness, and accompanied with a beck of the hand and a wheedling wink.

These allurements the good Peter could not resist—he clambered the stile, and seated himself on the bench beside the Corporal.

“There now, fine fellow, fit for the forty-second;” said Bunting, clapping him on the back. “Well, and—a—nd—a beautiful cat, isn’t her?”

“Ah!” said Peter very shortly—for though a remarkably mild man, Peter did not love cats: moreover, we must now inform the reader, that the cat of Jacob Bunting was one more feared than respected throughout the village. The Corporal was a cunning teacher of all animals: he could learn goldfinches the use of the musket; dogs, the art of the broadsword; horses, to dance hornpipes and pick pockets; and he had relieved the ennui of his solitary moments by imparting sundry accomplishments to the ductile genius of his cat. Under his tuition, Puss had learned to fetch and carry; to turn over head and tail, like a tumbler; to run up your shoulder when you least expected it; to fly, as if she were mad, at any one upon whom the Corporal thought fit to set her; and, above all, to rob larders, shelves, and tables, and bring the produce to the Corporal, who never failed to consider such stray waifs lawful manorial acquisitions. These little feline cultivations of talent, however delightful to the Corporal, and creditable to his powers of teaching the young idea how to shoot, had nevertheless, since the truth must be told, rendered the Corporal’s cat a proverb and byeword throughout the neighbourhood. Never was cat in such bad odour: and the dislike in which it was held was wonderfully increased by terror; for the creature was singularly large and robust, and withal of so courageous a temper, that if you attempted to resist its invasion of your property, it forthwith set up its back, put down its ears, opened its mouth, and bade you fully comprehend that what it feloniously seized it could gallantly defend. More than one gossip in the village had this notable cat hurried into premature parturition, as, on descending at day-break into her kitchen, the dame would descry the animal perched on the dresser, having entered, God knows how, and gleaming upon her with its great green eyes, and a malignant, brownie expression of countenance.

Various deputations had indeed, from time to time, arrived at the Corporal’s cottage, requesting the death, expulsion, or perpetual imprisonment of the favourite. But the stout Corporal received them grimly, and dismissed them gruffly; and the cat still went on waxing in size and wickedness, and baffling, as if inspired by the devil, the various gins and traps set for its destruction. But never, perhaps, was there a greater disturbance and perturbation in the little hamlet, than when, some three weeks since, the Corporal’s cat was known to be brought to bed, and safely delivered of a numerous offspring. The village saw itself overrun with a race and a perpetuity of Corporal’s cats! Perhaps, too, their teacher growing more expert by practice, the descendants might attain to even greater accomplishment than their nefarious progenitor. No longer did the faint hope of being delivered from their tormentor by an untimely or even natural death, occur to the harassed Grassdalians. Death was an incident natural to one cat, however vivacious, but here was a dynasty of cats! Principes mortales, respublica eterna!