Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXIV, May 1852, Vol. IV

"'You can not stoop to such vileness – to such wrong. You know that I am striving for a great end – that I will make restitution full and ample if I live to reach England.'

"This was the sense of what I said, but his answer was clearly prepared long before he knew what I should urge. It came gnashing through his closed teeth like the hiss of an adder.

"'I must do my duty. It is my place to overlook the accounts of all the clerks. You will show me your books to-morrow.'

"He turned away. I prayed he might not speak again, for his voice stirred up a feeling I had never known before; but my bad angel, I suppose, brought him back. I scarcely recollect what he said. I have a vague notion of hearing him mention Bertha's name with some cursed plan that was to give her up to him forever, and then he would, 'for the sake of old friendship, deal as gently as he possibly could with me.' Those words I remember well, and those were the last he ever spoke to me. I dread to think they were his last on earth. The feeling I had wrestled against mastered me now. I could restrain myself no longer, and struck at him with a knife. He clutched my left hand in his teeth like a tiger-cat. For a second we were grappling together for life or death, but he had no chance against me; and when I had breath to look at him next, he was lying on his back, the hands that he had tried to parry my blows with cut and bleeding, and red stains on the broad mimosa leaves around. Oh, God! what a reproach there was in all the calm and silence of the night! How the deep quiet of the sky spoke to my heart, so troubled, dark, and guilty! As on the first dread day by sin polluted, the voice of God in Eden drove Adam forth abashed, so spoke the still small voice of holy Nature with more than earthquake tones to me, and straight I fled away.

"My Bertha does not know the whole. She only knows that Brian had me in his power, owing to some money transactions. If she did know it, my conscience tells me she would not now be sleeping here. There – all will be well in England. Pray Heaven we get there safe. I will go up on deck a few minutes. Writing it down has brought the whole affair so fresh before me, that it is useless trying to sleep in this fever. But yet I am glad it is written.

"October 15th.– We entered the Channel this afternoon. It is my wife's birthday; she took it as a happy omen, and seemed so pleased with the glitter and joyance of the busy river, that for a whole hour – the first since I left Rio – the dreadful secret hidden 'mid those leaves was absent from my mind.

"October 16th.– The first news that meets me on entering London is, that my uncle has died suddenly, and left all his affairs frightfully embarrassed. My chief dependence was on him. This is a sad beginning; indeed, I feel that 'all these things are against me.'"

Several pages were here torn from the unfortunate Darke's manuscript; and in the succeeding ones the entries were scanty, and with long intervals between each other. They detailed the sufferings of the writer and his wife on their arrival in London; his repeated efforts to obtain employment, and the difficulties he met with, owing to his uncle's death, and his own inability to refer any one to the directors of the mine at Rio. For more than a year (judging from the dates, by no means regularly affixed) he appeared to have struggled on thus, until, when his hopes were fast sinking, and his health rapidly giving way under this succession of disappointments, he obtained a situation on a recently-opened line of railway in the north, through the interest of an old schoolfellow, whom he accidentally met, and who retained in manhood schoolboy heart enough to show gratitude for many kindnesses in olden days. The language was strangely impassioned and earnest in which he expressed his joy at this change of fortune; and the full-hearted thankfulness with which he described telling his wife the good news, seemed to prove that affliction had exerted a calming and blessed influence on his passion-tossed mind. But the clergyman could not help noticing that the spirit pervading the latter part of the diary was strangely different from that which animated the commencement, it being written apparently with the firm conviction of an inevitable destiny hanging over the writer; and this, like the shadow of an unseen cloud in a fair picture, gave a sombre meaning to his self-communings.

After briefly mentioning the fact of his taking up his abode with Bertha and one little child at the cottage provided by the company, and that he had heard by chance that his enemy was still alive, he proceeded:

"I like this new home much. It is a tiny, sheltered cottage, with beehives in the garden, and honeysuckles peeping in at the lattice, nestling innocently among the pine-trees, like a fairy islet. The railway runs for about a mile parallel with the canal, and the two modes of traveling contrast curiously. The former with all its brightness, freshness, and precision; the latter a very sluggard. I often have long talks with Huntly, my assistant here, and try to make him see the change it will work; but he is not over shrewd; or, rather, fate did not give him a bookworm uncle like it did me, and so reasoning is hard work to him; it always is to the untaught. The canal is picturesque certainly. Let me try a description. The surface of the water is overlaid with weeds rank and luxuriant, save where the passage of a boat has preserved a trench, stagnant, and cold, and deep. There is not a human habitation near except ours. Scarcely any paths, the thickets are so tangled. This does not read an inviting account, I know, but there is a charm to me in the leaves of myriad shapes, in fern, and moss, and rush, in every silvan nook and glittering hedgerow – above all, in the dark slumberous pines, those giant sentinels round our dear home. Bertha smiled quite like her old self when she saw it. Oh, how, in all the wreck of this last year, has her love upheld me! always lightening, never adding to our weight of grief. She has, indeed, been faithful, true, and beautiful – like the Indian tree, that has its flower and fragrance best by night. I can not explain why it is that my love seems to grow each hour, but with a kind of tremble in its intensity, as though there were a separation coming. Perhaps it is only the result of the change in my fortunes.

"March 10th.– Two years ago I should have laughed had any one told me that a dream would give me a second thought, much less that I should sit down to write what I remember of one; but I must write down last night's, nevertheless. I thought that it was a clear moonlight night, and that I rose as usual to signal to the latest luggage train. I had got to the accustomed place, and stood waiting a long time. For days, for months; I knew this, because the trees were budding when I began my watch – were bare as winter when, with a roar and quaking all around, the night train came. At first I held a lantern in my hand, to signal all was well. Strange as it may appear, I felt no weariness, for I was fixed as by a wizard's rod. It passed at length; but not, thank God! as it has ever passed before; for from the carriage window, like a mask, glared Marcliffe's vengeful face. I said I held a light; but, as the smoke and iron hurtled by, the lamp was dashed to atoms, and in my outstretched hand I grasped a knife! There was a yell of demons in my ear, with Brian's jeering laugh above it all. I moaned awhile in horror, and woke to find my Bertha's eyes on mine. She has been soothing and kind as mercy to me all the day, and I, alas! wayward, almost cruel. I saw it pained her, but I could not help it. Oh, would that this world had no concealments, no divisions, no estrangement of hearts! I dread the night; there is something tells me it will come again, for when I took the Bible down to read, it opened at the words:

"'I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream.'

"A thrill went through me as I read. It sounded like a death-knell.

"The next day.– As I foresaw it came again last night; the same in every terrible particular, and with the same consolation on awaking. But what I have seen to-day gives it a meaning that I tremble at. Huntly returned from D – . He brought a birthday present for little Harry; it happened to be wrapped in an old newspaper. As it was opened, I saw his name, and a moment after read this:

"'Next of Kin. – If any child or children of the late Ehud Marcliffe, Gentleman, of Cranholm Manse, who died September 5, 18 – , be yet surviving, it is desired that he or they will forthwith put themselves in communication with Messrs. Faulk and Lockerby, Solicitors, D – .'

"This leaves me no hope; and knowing, as I do, the unfaltering steadfastness of his hate I feel the days of this security and peace are numbered…

"A whole month has gone since I opened this last. There is no fear now. He is dead. But how? The eye that reads this record alone will know. That fatal Thursday went by, a phantasm of dark thoughts; and then I lay down, as usual, for a couple of hours before going to watch. I did this, for there was a kind of instinct in me (the feeling deserves no higher name) which made me go about my avocations in the accustomed way, and seem as little disturbed as possible. I lay down, and in my dream, as distinct as ever it passed by day, for the third time that awful freight swept like a whirlwind by. I awoke. It wanted only three minutes to the hour when the night-train usually passed. I staggered to the door, but, instead of coming out into the light, an inky shadow lay across the road. It was a car left by Huntly's carelessness on the up-rail. I stood like one of stone, thinking of the tranquil happiness of the last months, of Bertha's smile, and Harry's baby laugh – of all the sun and pleasure of our home, and how this precious fabric, wove by love, was to be rent and torn; and how one word from him would ruin all, and send my wife and child to poverty again. And that man's life was in my hand. Well may we daily pray against temptation.

"A white cloud curled up above the pines.

"There was no delay. I caught up the lantern, and ran down the line. A throbbing, like the workings of a giant's pulse, smote my ear. I reached the signal-post, and laid my hand upon the bell. But there was no time for thought.

"The murmur deepened to a roar. The clouds of steam rose high above the pines, and, girt about with wreathing vapor, the iron outline, with its blood-red lamps and Hecla glow beneath, came on.

"My eyes were strangely keen, for at that distance I could discern a man leaning out of the nearest window. I knew who it must be, and almost expecting to see the last dreadful particular fulfilled, held out my hand —the sign that all was safe. The driver signaled that he understood, and quickened pace. I shut my eyes when it drew near, but, as it passed, distinctly heard my name called thrice.

"There was a moment that seemed never-ending. Then a clatter as of a hundred anvil strokes, a rush of snow-white steam, a shower of red-hot ashes scattered far, the hum of voices, and the clanging of the bell. Then, and not till then, I ventured to look up and hurry to the spot. The train, a series of shapeless wrecks, luggage-vans, trucks, carriages in wild confusion, lay across the road; live coals from the engine-fire were hissing in the black canal stream; the guard was bleeding and crushed beneath a wheel; twining wreaths of white steam, like spirits, melted into air above. Huntly was stooping over a begrimed corpse. The glare of the lantern, as it flashed upon the face, showed every omen true. It was Marcliffe.

"I can bear to chronicle my own temptations, yielding, guilt, but not to write down the separation that I dreaded most, and tried to avert, alas! so fatally. It is indeed a lesson of the nothingness of man's subtlest plans to avoid the penalty his crimes call down. How vain have all my efforts been to preserve our hearth inviolate, to keep our home in blessed security. Indeed, that night God's peace and favor 'departed from the threshold of the house' forever."

The misfortune alluded to was thus briefly mentioned at the end of the newspaper report of the accident, inclosed with the other papers of the dead man:

"We are sorry to say that the wife of the station-keeper, Darke, whose dangerous state we noticed a week ago, expired last night, after giving birth to a child, still-born."

With the sentence given above Darke's diary closed. Here and there the curate read a verse of a psalm, or a heart-broken ejaculation, but no continued narrative of his after-sufferings. From what he could glean, it appeared that he was put on his trial on the charge of manslaughter, and acquitted, but that he had lost his situation in consequence of the want of presence of mind he had evinced; after, it seemed, that he had led a miserable vagrant life, earning just enough by chance-work to support himself and his little Harry, the constant attendant of his wanderings. The boy was at the inn on the night of the father's wretched death, though the landlady's kindness removed him from the sight of the troublous parting. An asylum was soon found for him by my friend's kindness, and when I was at the parsonage last Christmas, as I read the history of his father's fitful life, the unconscious son sat by with little Faith, gazing with his large melancholy eyes at the strange faces in the fire.

STORY OF A BEAR

Thirty leagues from Carlstad, and not far from the borders of the Klar, upon the shores of the lake Rada, rises a little hamlet named St. John, the most smiling village of Scandinavia. Its wooden houses, mirrored in the translucent waters, stand in bold relief against a background of extensive forests. For a space of twenty leagues round, Nature has blessed the generous soil with abundant harvests, filled the lake with fish, and the woods with game. The inhabitants of St. John are rich, without exception; each year they make a profit of their harvests, and bury beneath their hearthstones an addition to their little fortunes.

In 1816, there lived at St. John a young man of twenty years of age, named Daniel Tissjoebergist. A fortunate youth he thought himself, for he possessed two farms; and was affianced to a pretty young girl, named Raghilda, celebrated through all the province of Wermeland for her shapely figure, her little feet, her blue eyes, and fair skin, besides a certain caprice of character that her beauty rendered excusable.

The daughter of a forester, and completely spoiled by her father, who yielded to all her whims, Raghilda was at the same time the torment and the happiness of her affianced lover. If he climbed the heights, and gathered the most beautiful mountain flowers as a tribute to her charms, that very day the fantastic beauty would be seized with a severe headache, and have quite a horror of perfumes. Did he bring her game from the forest, she "could not comprehend," she would say, "how any man could leave a pretty young girl to go and kill the poor hares." One day he procured, at great expense, an assortment of necklaces and gold rings from Europe. He expected this time, at any rate, to be recompensed for his pains; but Raghilda merely declared that she much preferred to these rich presents the heavy silver ornaments that decorate Norwegian females. But she, nevertheless, took care to adorn herself with the despised gifts, to the intense envy of the other young girls her companions.

According to universal Wermeland usage, Raghilda kept bees. From morning to evening she tended her hives, and the insects knew her so well, that her presence did not scare them in the least, but they hummed and buzzed around her without testifying either fright or anger.

Daniel, as our readers may imagine, never visited his mistress without busying himself among her bees. One day he took it into his head that a high wall, standing just before the hives, deprived them in part of the heat of the sun, and compelled the insects to fly too high to gain the plain, and collect their store of perfumed honey. He proposed to Raghilda to diminish the height of the offending wall by some feet. At first the young girl would not entertain the idea, merely because it came from her lover; but she at length ceded to his reasonings, and the wall was diminished in height.

For several weeks Daniel and Raghilda congratulated themselves on the steps they had taken. The full heat of the sun marvelously quickened the eggs of the queen-bee, without reckoning that the journey of the little workers was shortened by one-half. But, alas! one fatal morning, when the young girl placed herself at her window to say good-day to her dear hives, she beheld them overturned, crushed, deserted. The honeycombs were broken all to pieces, and the ground was strewed with the bodies of the unfortunate insects. Upon Daniel's arrival, he found his lovely Raghilda weeping despairingly in the midst of the melancholy ruins.

The latter had thought of nothing beyond the loss of her bees, her own sorrow, and, above all, of her discontent with Daniel, and his pernicious advice concerning the wall. Her lover, on the contrary, vowed vengeance against the spoiler.

"I am," said he, "the involuntary cause of your unhappiness, Raghilda, and to me it belongs to avenge you. These traces of steps are no human footmarks, but the impressions of a bear's paw. I shall take my gun, fasten on my skidars, and never return until I have killed the brigand."

Raghilda was too sorrowful for the loss of her bees, and too furious against Daniel for his imprudent advice about taking down the wall, to make any reply, or even turn her head for a parting glance. Her lover left her thus, and hastened, his heart full of rage, to take his wooden skates, called skidars in Norway, and set forth in quest of the bear.

Tissjoebergist could not have proceeded far without this singular chaussure. These skidars are of unequal size; that which is fastened by the leathern straps to the left leg is from nine to twelve feet long, while to the right they do not give more than six or seven. This inequality procures ease to the hunter when he wishes to turn round on broken ground; permitting him to lean with all his weight upon the shorter skate, fabricated of solid materials. The skidars are about two inches in width, weigh from ten to fifteen pounds, and terminate in highly raised points, in order to avoid the obstacles that they might encounter. The wearer slides with one, and sustains himself with the other. The sole is covered with a sea-calf's skin, with the hair outside; this precaution hinders retrograde movements. When the hunter is compelled to surmount difficult heights, he does not lift his foot, but proceeds nearly as we do upon the skates of our country. He holds a stick in each hand, to expedite or retard his course, and carries his weapons in a shoulder-belt. Upon even ground, it is easy to progress with the skidars, and a man can accomplish forty leagues in twelve hours. But, in the midst of a country like Wermeland, alternately wooded, flat, mountainous, and marshy, strewed with rocks and fallen trees, the use of these skates requires much courage, address, and, above all, presence of mind. Daniel, habituated to their use from infancy, skated with prodigious hardihood and celerity. Quick as thought, he would now descend the almost perpendicular face of a mountain, then surmount a precipice, or clamber the steep sides of a ravine. A slight movement of his body sufficed to avoid the branches of trees, and a zigzag to steer clear of the rocks strewn upon his path. His ardent eye sought in the distance for the enemy he pursued, or searched the soil for traces of the brute's paws. But all his researches were fruitless.

After three fatiguing days, passed without repose or slumber, and almost without food, he returned to St. John, in a state more easy to comprehend than describe. Raghilda, during these three days, had caused the wall to be built up again, and was now occupied in arranging the new hives with which Aulic-Finn, Daniel's rival, had presented her, after having filled them with bees by a process equally hardy and ingenious. There was, in consequence of this, so violent a quarrel between the engaged lovers, that Tissjoebergist returned to Raghilda the ring which she had given him one evening during a solitary promenade on the umbrageous banks of the lake Rada. The young girl took the ring, and threw it with a gesture of contempt among the bee-hives.

"There!" said she, "the bear may have it. He will not fail to come, for he knows that he may ravage my hives with impunity."

Tissjoebergist assembled his friends, and informed them of the affront that he had received. Though a few were secretly pleased with the humiliation of one whose manly beauty, address, courage, and good fortune had often been the subject of envy, they all declared that they would, the very next day, undertake a general skali, that is to say, a grande battue.

Eight days from the time of this declaration, more than a thousand hunters formed themselves into an immense semicircle, inclosing a space of from five to six leagues. The other half-circle was represented by a wide and deep pond, over which it was impossible for their prey to escape by swimming. Daniel directed the skali with remarkable intelligence. By his orders, signals, repeated from mouth to mouth, caused the hunters to close up little by little, while a select band beat the bushes.

They continued to advance in this way for several hours, without discovering any thing save troops of hares and other small game, that escaped between the legs of the hunters. These they did not attempt to molest, for they looked only for the animal whose death Daniel had sworn to compass. Suddenly they heard a low cry, and a gigantic bear, that had been hidden behind a rock, abruptly rose, and stalked toward Tissjoebergist. The youth took aim at the terrible beast, and pulled the trigger of his musket. It missed fire. The bear seized his weapon with his powerful paws, twisted it like a wand, broke it, and overturned Daniel in the mud. All this passed with the rapidity of lightning. The monster then took to flight, being hit in the shoulder by a ball from Aulic-Finn; and the hunters saw him climb the hill, after which he disappeared in the forest. Daniel, foaming with rage, pursued him thither at the head of his friends, but in vain. Again the young man returned to St. John without the vengeance he desired; well-nigh heartbroken with shame and disappointment.

Raghilda welcomed Aulic-Finn most cordially, and there was a report current in the village, that she had picked up the discarded ring from among the hives, to place it on the finger of Tissjoebergist's rival. This the young girls whispered among each other so loud, that Daniel could not avoid overhearing them, though he did not comprehend the full purport of their words. Nor were the young men behind-hand in their comments. There are never wanting unkind hands to strike deeper the thorns that rankle in our hearts.

In place of consoling himself by drinking and feasting among his companions, as is the custom in those parts after a hunt, successful or otherwise, the unfortunate lover now resolved to have recourse to the gall. This is a stratagem which will be best explained by an account of Daniel's preparations on the occasion.

He took a cow from his stables, tied a rope to her horns, and dragged her along with so much violence, that her lowings resounded through the forest. Toward nightfall he arrived with the poor beast near a sort of scaffolding constructed in the thickest part of the wood, between three or four trees, and about thirty feet from the ground. Having tied the cow firmly by the rope to the roots of an old and strong stump, he mounted the scaffolding and awaited the issue.

The first night the lowings of the cow were the only sounds that broke the melancholy silence of the forest. It was the same the next day, and the next. The fourth night, after a long struggle with the drowsiness occasioned by the intense cold, for the young hunter's provision of eau-de-vie had long been exhausted, nature overcame him, and he slept.

Then a huge bear raised his head from behind the scaffolding, and having cautiously peered around him, crept toward the cow, seized her between his paws, and broke the rope that held her. He turned his big pointed face toward the slumbering hunter, and giving him an ironical glance, disappeared with his shuddering prey into the depths of the forest.

An hour afterward, Daniel awoke. The sun had risen, and even in that shady place there was light enough to distinguish the objects around. He looked over the edge of the scaffolding, and beheld the rope severed, and the cow gone. Sliding down, he marked the humid earth covered with the impressions of the bear's claws. At this sight he thought he should have gone mad.

He waited until nightfall before he re-entered the village, and then, creeping to his house without detection, he took a large knife, which he placed in his belt, unfastened a dog that was chained in the yard, and retook the road to the forest. The season was the beginning of November, the snow had fallen in abundance, and it froze hard. Tissjoebergist skated along on the sparkling ice, preceded by his dog, who, from time to time halted, and smelt around him. But these investigations led to no result, and the animal continued his way. Cold tears fell down Daniel's cheeks, and were quickly congealed into icicles. For one moment he paused, took his musket from the shoulder-belt in which he carried it, pressed the cold barrel against his forehead, and asked himself, whether it would not be better to put an end to his disappointment and his shame together. As he cast a last despairing glance behind him, he perceived that his dog had stopped, and was gazing immovably at a small opening in some underwood, which was discovered to him by the lurid rays of the aurora borealis. A feeble hope dawned in Daniel's sick heart; he advanced, and plainly saw a slight hollow in the snow, undisturbed every where else.

The young man's heart beat violently. There, doubtless, lay his enemy, gorged with the abundant meal furnished by the cow. The hunter strode on. The hole was not more than two feet in diameter, and the bear might be distinctly perceived squatting in the niche at about five feet of depth. The noise of the hunter's approach disturbed the animal. He stirred, opened his heavy eyelids, and saw Daniel. He was about to rush out, but a blow with the butt-end of the musket drove him back to his hole with a large wound in his eye, that streamed with blood. Another bound, and the bear was free. He stood erect, face to face with the young hunter, looked upon him for a few seconds with the horrible smile peculiar to these animals when in anger, and precipitated himself upon his enemy. The dog did not allow his master to be attacked with impunity, and a mélée ensued that covered the snow with blood. Daniel, seized by the shoulders, and retained in the monster's clutches, had the presence of mind to throw away his musket and have recourse to his knife, with which he made three large wounds in his adversary's side. Then he seized him by the ears, and, ably seconded by his dog, forced him to let go his hold. The bear, enfeebled by loss of blood, yielded the victory, and flew with so much swiftness, that the dog, who immediately put himself upon his track, was obliged to renounce the hope of overtaking him. The faithful animal returned to his master, whom he found insensible, his face torn to ribbons, his breast lacerated, and his shoulders covered with large wounds. Some peasants happening to pass that way raised the unhappy young man in their arms, and brought him to St. John, where he long lay between life and death. He would rather have been left to die, for life was become insupportable. Bears could not be mentioned before him without his detecting lurking smiles in the faces of his associates. To crown all, the approaching marriage of Raghilda and Aulic-Finn was no longer a mystery. Daniel had partly lost the use of his right arm, and a bite inflicted by the bear upon his nose had ruined the noble and regular features of the poor youth, and given him a countenance nearly as frightful as that of his adversary. He fell into a profound melancholy, sold his two farms and all his land, quitted Wermeland, sojourned about two months at Carlstad, and finally disappeared altogether from Scandinavia.