Page:Saturday Evening Gazette (June 7, 1856).pdf/3

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“and believe that, with all this, I still love you, and that nothing on earth should part us, except the entire unsuitableness of your education, to the station which as my wife you ought to be able to hold.”

The above sentence was part of a latter written by Walter Hamilton, a proud and rich Southerner, to his wife.

One year before, he had met Arabella Rowe at the Springs. She was beautiful, beyond what he had ever before seen, and the impossible Southern heart was touched and conquered at once. She was so different too from the dashing, showy, talkative belles, who frequent public resorts! While they were striving, by every act of coquetry, to attract Walter Hamilton’s attention to themselves, he was gazing with undisguised admiration on the small figure of Arabella, as it reclined on a pile of cushions, with the floating drapery of soft white muslin around it, and the pale golden hair lying in heavy masses on the white shoulders.

The little beauty did not stir under that long gaze, though the fringes of the blue eyes drooped a little. To the casual observer, she did not seem to notice his look; but one interested to learn her thoughts, might have seen that she lost not a single glance of the large, brown eyes that were fixed upon her; and yet that the consciousness did not make her lose the beautiful repose that characterized her countenance. It was repose only. There was neither brilliancy nor intellect very strongly marked in Arabella’s face; but there was perfect beauty of form and coloring. The languid grace of her figure did not borrow any thing from her dress, the material of which was only the softest and simplest drapery. Not a ribbon or ornament was added to its childlike simplicity. It lay about her in soft folds, guiltless of starch or whale-bone, and equally innocent of lace or embroidery. The white hands which were folded above it, were undecorated by a single ring; and altogether her appearance presented a grateful contrast to the over dressed and highly ornamented figures that were floating around the windows of the interminable drawing-room.

Now and then, men would pause, and look carelessly over to the spot where this strange figure was reposing, and remark to some upon her unusual appearance; and by and by, the novelty would attract them nearer. Walter Hamilton felt that he would have gladly screened her from the common gaze. He felt that she was a creature that should be taken away from the breath of the crowd, and placed in some pure shrine, where one alone could worship unseen.

In a moment, his thoughtful care had removed a small stand on which a large vase of the most exquisite flowers was placed, directly in front of her couch; thus hiding her from every gaze but his own. Her eyes thanked him by a quick, raised motion, and were cast down instantly.

Had there been no one in the room, Walter would have declared his admiration at once. He had seen enough of brilliant and richly attired women of the order called fascinating; and to his warm, impulsive nature, this quiet beauty came like the pure snows of the North, stealing with delicious coolness over his senses.

He felt that his declaration ought to be made to suck a being under the soft midnight on the silvery sands of the sea shore, or in the quiet woods from whence sunlight was excluded. But all this could not be waited for; so in that luxuriously decorated room, and under the blazing gaslight, Walter Hamilton asked her to become his wife, and with a scarcely perceptible rising of color into a faint flush of the pure cheek, and the slightest motion of the eyelids, she accepted him.

This was while the last lingering footstep of the gayer part of the company was heard in the upper end of the room, and ere that step was heard on the stairs, the lovers had left the room.

Full of a delicious consciousness of being beloved for the first time, Arabella retired to her room. She looked back upon the past, and could hardly believe that she was the same being then, who figured so differently in the present. In the quiet country town in which she had lived, not a sound of love or admiration ever met her ear. She had heard herself called quiet, languid, unimpressible and cold hearted; but never beautiful or interesting. The set with which she had sometimes mingled, admired the garish and showy style of dress, manners, and appearance; and Arabella’s plain white dresses were always subjects of mirth, as being an affectation of simplicity, which they were slow to appreciate.

Her mother had one trait not common to her situation in life, a perfect taste in adapting the costume to the individual figure. Arabella’s dress was always beautifully fitted by her mother’s own hands; and the undoubted cheapness of the material, and the absence of any decoration, rendered it possible, even under their limited resources, for her to be amply supplied with the freshest and whitest.

When, therefore, their richest neighbor, Mrs. Houston, pitying the lonely life of the young girl, and waking up to the scene of her marvellous beauty, invited Arabella to accompany her to the Springs, there was absolutely nothing for Mrs. Rowe’s ever active hands to perform, but to pack up the requisite quantity of her favorite muslins, the whitest and most delicate straw hat, braided by herself, and tied with snowy ribbon, and with the simple mantilla and a pair of bottines that Cinderella might have worn almost painfully, she dressed the languid beauty, and saw her depart, with such hopes as sometimes come unconsciously to the heart of an ambitious mother, even of Mrs. Rowe’s limited world-knowledge.

How well were those hopes realized when Mrs. Houston wrote her of her daughter’s engagement to the rich Southerner! “Only do not let him go to your home, my dear Mrs. Rowe,” wrote Mrs. Houston. “These Southern gentlemen are so fastidious, and live so luxuriously, that it will not do. I will arrange to keep Arabella at the Springs, and the wedding shall be performed here under my direction. As it will look better for you to come, you can do so, and as you are just my height and size, I wish you would do me the favor to take from the wardrobe in my chamber, of which my servants will give you the key, the dress which will best suit your excellent taste. You need not say that I want it for you, but let them think I need it here.”

Mrs. Houston’s intentions seemed so kind and neighborly, that Mrs. Rowe could not refuse them; and when she arrived, her perfectly lady-like appearance delighted her fastidious friends. Mrs. Houston, who loved her for her good qualities, dexterously covered all her deficiencies of speech and breaches of conventional manners; and everything seemed to be conducted with the utmost deference to the usages of etiquette.

The wedding took place, early in the Autumn, and, with the last warm breeze of the rich Indian summer, Walter Hamilton and his beautiful bride departed for his Southern home.

If Arabella could have been surprised out of her habitual quietude, it would have been at the rich magnificence of her new abode. Everything that art could devise was gathered in profusion that knew no bound. Alas! not one of the invaluable paintings—not the most rare or valuable of the costly and classic statuary were understood or appreciated by the bride for whom Walter had gathered this profusion. She stood amidst the noblest works of the pencil and the rarest creations of the chisel, passionless, expressiolesslessexpressionless [sic], and with an air that showed her perfect want of interest in their exhibition.

“Perhaps she likes books better,” thought her husband, as he led the way to the library. Not the perfect construction of this room, its deep windows, filled with delicious orange trees, and shaded still farther by magnificent green curtains, lined with white silk, and supported by cornices of the richest and most elaborate designs, each representing a separate history on its enamelled surface; not the Turkish carpet, on which the heaviest footfall gave back no sound; the sparkling fountain which showered over into a marble basin, where two exquisitely sculptured doves were seeming to drink, and, hardest of all to Walter, not the vast collection of rare books, which he had hoped would, most of all, charm her—none of these elicited a single expression of sympathy with his taste or intellect.

“Perhaps, after all,” he said to himself, “I might as well have married this statue,” turning to the beautiful figure of Egeria, that stood near him. “Can it be that this lovely bride of mine, can be so utterly soulless as she seems?”

In vain Walter tried to think that the poor child was fatigued or ill. True, she did fade a little from the fervid heat of the Southern air, which had not yet lost its summer temperature, and it was not often that he found her, except as she lay on a pile of the richest cushions, which his love had heaped beside the orange shaded window of the library, where he loved to read; but it was painful to him to read to her passages of exquisite beauty and have no response from her lips.

When they had been married about two months, Waltar’sWalter’s [sic] youngest sister made them a visit. She was a dark, and almost plain girl, with little of personal advantages of shape or feature to boast of; but with the most cultivated and diffusive intellect. In her own right, she was a poet, a painter and a sculptor, and in each of these she excelled. Among her brother’s most highly and justly valued treasures, were a volume of exquisite poetry, a few fine paintings, and a sculptural head of Miranda in “The Tempest.”

With her, Walter could sympathize strongly. Their natures were alike strong, appreciative, and enthusiastic; and, compared with Eulalie Hamilton, Arabella seemed tamer and less impressible than before. Walter had already begun to tire of the doll he had married; and Eulalie’s almost sarcastic remarks upon his choice, did not fail to deepen the new sensation which he experienced.

There were a great many artists and literary people gathered at Walter’s house, one evening, in compliment to Eulalie, whose associations were all centred in that class. Brightly the sparkles of wit and sentiment showered amidst the group that hovered around the plain but interesting girl, whose dark eyes absolutely flashed with the keen enjoyment of the hour. There was a rich glow mantling on her swarthy cheek, and on her lip there was a smile that told of the triumph of intellect above mere beauty. The interest with which she was regarded deepened the flush, and before the evening was over she was positively radiant!

Walter turned his look of gratified pride in his sister to the half recumbent form of Arabella. There was a wearied look in her eyes, that fully betrayed her want of interest in the scene; and he could not but notice the forced and constrained politeness of those around, which they felt compelled to pay to the wife of their host, nor how eagerly they turned away to catch the sparkle of genius from the lips of Eulalie.

Not the discontented expression on her husband’s countenance, not the sarcasm of Eulalie’s look, roused the beauty from her inaneness, when the party was over. She drooped the white eyelid over the soft orbs that turned wearily, to their repose and Walter, ashamed of her, before the flash of his sister’s eyes, gave a deep and almost hopeless sigh to the memory of the being, of which Arabella, he once thought, was the realization of his brightest ideal.

Had Arabella possessed a loving nature, he could have found some solace for the deep pain which came upon him. But she was cold as an icicle, and seemed wrapt solely in the thought of her own ease and repose. That she was merely amiable, was no praise; for her wishes were anticipated, and every attention heaped upon her in unmeasured profusion. To Eulalie, who, sustained by a force of character, and a vigor of frame, unusual to the Southern ladies, her lassitude and want of energy seemed almost contemptible; and yet she treated her with a softness and consideration, which nothing but her situation as her brother’s wife could have demanded from the intellectually haughty Eulalie.

Still, the sister could not always command, even before Walter, her contempt at Arabella’s deficiencies of education, feeling as she did, that any woman of common talent could overcome any natural defect of that sort, in those days of easy appliances for educational progress; and once or twice, she had hinted to her the expediency of her learning, at least the alphabet of some science or other, or of perfecting herself, at any rate in her own language.

Arabella did not know how absolutely ignorant she really was. She looked upon her husband and his sister as intellectual monsters; and the idea of following them, even at a distance, never entered her head. Her common language, was strangely defective, although the best of it was, that she did not often speak at all. When she did, her words grated harshly on Walter’s fine ear, more especially since Eulalie had come with her “wells of purest English, undefiled.”

Yes, Walter Hamilton had been tired of his doll-wife, and almost wished that he had been a wiser man than to make mere beauty the object of his worship.

Will he, can he, be pardoned if, in some moments of unutterable weariness, he thought seriously, of separation? Not to abandon her to the poverty from which he had taken her;—for Walter was a man of generous feelings, and he would have gladly parted with half his fortune, nay more, to give her the only happiness she seemed to covet—ease and repose.

Again and again, the idea occurred to him; but how to broach the subject to his unconscious wife? He put the thought from him, but it returned and each time with fuller force.


 * At last, after she had committed some glaring breach of etiquette, in presence of one of his most discriminating friends, and had shown a most vexatious disregard of language, in the presence of a lady who was correct even to preciseness in her own speech, he asked her one day, if she would like to go for a few months to a beautiful country seat which he owned on the Susquehanna river.

She raised her eyes, for a moment, to his face, and seeing an expression there for which she could not account, she hesitated to answer.

“Alone, Walter?”

“Not alone, if you desire company, Arabella. For myself, I must stay here—but I believe that your habits will be better suited to Bellevue than to Charleston. You till be well attended there, and all your wants will be supplied as long as you wish to stay. Should you ever feel inclined to study, that will be the best place. It would be my wish that you should do so: still, I would have you consult your own pleasure. When you are tired of staying there, I will change your abode at once.”

“Certainly, if you wish it, Mr. Hamilton. I shall be ready whenever you choose.”

If there was a touch of wounded pride in her answer, Walter did not or would not perceive it—and the conversation ended.

That night when Arabella retired, a letter lay on the table in her dressing room, addressed to herself. It contained a number of plausible reasons for the separation, and ended with the words we have already quoted.

We have abundant testimony to the idea that when cold people are roused, it is to a much greater pitch of excitement than is ever betrayed by those who are habitually hasty and quick tempered. The fire which has lain dormant so long, blazes up suddenly into volcanic fury, and he who has watched for the calm inactivity and inertness of former days, would do well to fly from the burning sparks, that have smouldered for years.

So was it with Arabella. Walter’s letter opened up a new vein of feeling, and a corresponding energy. To resolve and to act, were the work of the same hour, and before the hour expired, she was on her way to the North. She scrupled not to take the money and valuables of which she was possessed. Walter had given her jewels of great value, which she had never worn. She had clung pertinaciously to her unornamented white muslins, which so well became the peculiar style of her beauty;—but she believed his gifts to be her own.

Taking with her a favorite servant, a black woman whom Walter had placed about her at her first coming home, she directed her to find means for travelling. The women, who was uncommonly intelligent and active, obeyed her, and at Philadelphia, she took lodgings, in order to give her mistress a breathing time, and enable her to pursue her plans. “The unsuitableness of her education.” This then was the bar between her and Walter Hamilton! She sat down, and for the first time in her life, she attempted to calculate her position, her resources, and the positive object which she had in view.

While she sat, absorbed in thought, now making and now rejecting her plan, her hostess, a mild, benevolent looking Quaker lady, entered her room.

Her friendliness of appearance won Arabella’s confidence; and before she had sat with her an hour, she had told her all, and wept her tears on the good lady’s shoulder.

“What is thy plan, my dear?” said her new friend, as she finished her narration.

“To put myself immediately to the severest study, and through that, to regain my husband’s heart.”

“That is right. I know several highly educated ladies who will be glad to become thy teachers.”

“Let me see them immediately,” said Arabella, and it was not long before they were introduced.

From that hour, she studied, scarcely giving herself time for necessary food and exercise. Her progress, at first slow and toilsome, was at length by judicious training, changed into rapidity.

In the severer studies, the difficulties seemed to give her a positive sense of enjoyment. In lighter walks of learning, she was less at home, but still progressed respectably. A course of reading was marked out for her, and she received every advantage from very extended acquaintance of her teachers with all branches of elegant literature.

She had never dreamed of possessing a talent for music;—she had been too indolent to sing even the simplest melodies, which she had lain for hours to hear Eulalie play; but Mrs. Withering and her sister suggested it to her, and whatever they thought best for her to pursue, she eagerly caught at the idea.

Still beautifully neat and simple in her dress, she charmed the Quaker ladies by her costume, so gracefully approaching their own, and indicating such purity of taste. Black Maria had plenty of work on her hands, however, in supplying her with the fresh dresses, which her new habits of writing were continually soiling; and she took pride and pleasure in renewing them.

As her education progressed, she altered in the new intelligence that diffused itself over her face. Eyes that were once drooping and languid, assumed a new expression, and lighted up with a beautiful radiance. Her color had deepened, and her form dilated; and one who knew her, in her less active days would not have recognized Arabella Rowe or Arabella Hamilton, in the strong and perfectly developed woman, who bore so little resemblance to the spoiled beauty of other years.

We cannot follow Arabella through the various stages of her new life. It is enough to say that she came out from the ordeal she had prescribed for herself, nobly and well.

It was the end of her year of probation, and the second from her marriage. With weeping and sorrow, she took leave of her beloved teachers. Strong and beautiful were the ties that bound her to them, and when she tore herself from their arms, she could not help wondering if her life would ever again show so bright a side as the last year had shown.

And how had it passed with Walter Hamilton? Struck with horror at her sudden disappearance, he had never ceased to reproach himself with the cruel letter which had driven her from her rightful home. Nothing but the fact that she had taken Maria with her, could reconcile him to the idea of her leaving him. Had it been otherwise, he would at once, have entertained the belief that she had destroyed herself; but this fact had a cheering influence upon his mind. He began to think that she had returned home to her mother, and he made a journey to the East, for the purpose of finding out if she had done so. He returned disconsolate, for his former love had returned, when she was not longer near to annoy him by her mistakes and misapprehensions. The year passed in vain self-tormentings, and frequently in agony of mind that was perfectly intolerable. He abandoned all society, for the purpose of concealing his wife’s absence. Eulalie did not leave him, and together, they gave some plausible coloring to her continued “dislike of paying visits.”

One morning, after one of those wretched nights of sleeplessness, which Walter Hamilton so frequently endured, he mounted his horse at early dawn, and rode out to a solitary place in the suburbs of Charleston.

In a quiet, grassy spot, wet with the night dews of Autumn, he dismounted, and throwing the reins over Selim’s neck, he walked silently and sadly by his side. A small house, the only one in sight, was before him. The windows were open, and from within came the sound of a harp and the “voice of singing.”

He lingered, for the notes were singularly sweet and melodious. The music changed, and he recognized his favorite “Twilight Dews,” sung with a mournful sweetness, that penetrated his inmost soul. The strong man bowed his head and wept!

At the closing stanza,

Walter Hamilton approached the window. It was shaded by orange trees, on which lingered a few late blossoms, and the harp stood between him and the singer. So slowly had he advanced that she did not perceive him, until he entered the room. At the first look, she fell prostrate. A woman, whom he had not before seen, in the dimness of the early morning, ran to her, and raised her from the floor, sprinkling her at the same time with a branch of the laurel which stood in a vase of water on the music stand. As the pale golden tresses swept back from her face, which lay, upturned in the faint morning light, he was reminded slightly of his lost wife. But he quickly rejected the idea; nor did he think of it again, until he looked up, and recognized Maria.

With a revulsion of feeling never before experienced by him, he assisted to restore her. A look of intelligence between him and the black woman, told him that it was indeed Arabella; and she revived to find herself in the arms of her husband.

There were smiles and tears over the little breakfast table in the cottage that morning, and Walter received his pardon with a rapture that almost made amends for the long days of absence. An hour after, she was clasped in the arms of Eulalie, while Walter gazed on her startling beauty, with an admiration beyond that of their first meeting.

It was not until many weeks had passed by, that the brother and sister discovered the full value of the treasure thus lost and won. As the three sat together, they were often struck with the deep thought and quick perception which characterized the conversation of Arabella. It showed them, that the spark had always existed with her, and only needed to be waked into being. Now it burned with something of that “divine afflatus” that they could so well share and appreciate.

One day, when Walter was going out, he went into the library to bid Arabella good morning. He found her coiled up in his great library chair, with her white muslin robe floating around it, and her golden ringlets lying over the volume in her lap.

“I was going to ride, Bella,” said her husband, “but you look so beautiful sitting there, that I have half a mind to stay and look at you.”

“You shall do no such thing, Walter. If you are going to ride, you shall let me have Selim, and I will go with you.”

“You ride, pretty one! Why how would you look, riding in that everlasting muslin? No, no, stay there, and let me read to you.”

She rose and left the room. When she returned, she was dressed in a beautiful cloth riding habit, with hat and plumes, and a slender stick in her hand. Never had she looked more gloriously lovely. Her tresses were looped up carefully, and there was a brilliant color on her cheek, as she gave him her hand to go down.

Her riding was exquisite. Not a gate nor a fence impeded her. Selim was sure footed, and she did not slack rein, until she had fairly distanced the slower pace of Walter’s brown cob.

“Is there any other accomplishment, my lady,” said Walter, when he joined her, “that you have acquired since I lost you? I am quite overwhelmed with the multitude of your perfections.” And as he lifted her from the saddle to the door step, where Eulalie stood admiringly, Walter whispered fondly, “My own sweet wife! my lost and won!”

For the protection of their property against fire the excellent Boston forefathers of a hundred years ago associated themselves together, in the absence of tubs and hose, before Mose and Sikesy were born, and a kind friend has furnished us with an old document, which we publish, giving the constitution of an association of this sort, which is unique in view of modern usage. Appended to the constitution are the members’ names, which include among its members those of the Governor, Lieut. Governor, Judges of the Supreme Court, mechanics, barristers, and gentlemen—their vocations as described in the records of that time. The aristocratic governor, Hancock, and the brass founder, Cutler, there met “for the encouragement of good fellowship,” [sic] and each bore his proportion of the reckoning.” The paper is a very curious one:

“Come down at once—Ellen is dying!” That was all they said,—seven short words!

I read the telegraph paper again and again, before I could comprehend the full force of the message it bore. My eyes wandered over the regulations of the company, the tariff of prices, the conditions under which they undertook their functions, and at last reverting to the pencilled lines, I roused myself from the stupor into which their receipt had thrown me, and understood their purport. Ellen Luttrell was dying. She was my cousin, my earliest playmate, my embodiment of all that was lovely, pure and womanly. I have no sister, but had I been so blessed, I could not have loved her with a deeper affection than I bestowed on Ellen. My regard for her was utterly passionless, utterly indescribable. Love, in the common acceptation of the word, had never been mentioned between us; we confided to each other all our flirtations, all the caprices, annoyances, and jealousies which are the lot of young people. When I was first engaged to Lucy, I was not happy until Ellen could share my joy, could see the object of my choice, and in sweet sisterly tones could congratulate me upon it. It was my delight to see the affection springing up between my cousin and her whom I now call my wife,—to hear their mutual praises of each other, and to think that, until some favored suitor should come to claim her for his own, Ellen would share our new home. This was not to be. Just before my marriage, my cousin went to Burgandy, on a visit to an old schoolfellow, whose husband, a sickly and consumptive man, was compelled to reside there for the benefit of his health. Her stay in France, which was to have occupied but a few weeks, extended over six months. I heard from her but twice during the interval, but upon the occasion of my marriage, she wrote a long and affectionate letter to Lucy, telling her that she was perfectly happy, and speaking in those mysterious terms which girls love to use, of a certain Vicomte de Bodé, who was paying her great attention. Two months after, Ellen suddenly returned to England, accompanied by her brother, who had been dispatched to bring her back. There was a mystery connected with her return which I could never fathom; her mother, indeed, wrote me a plaintive letter lamenting the folly with which young girls usually throw away their affections, and hinting that even Ellen’s good sense was not proof against womanly weakness, and that had she not been recalled when she was, she would have been drawn into a marriage which for reasons hereafter to be verbally explained to me, must have been an everlasting source of misery to her. At the receipt of this letter from my aunt, I was, it is needless to say, very much pained, but being forbidden to answer it (for Ellen was unaware that I had been written to, and the sight of a letter in my well-known handwriting would doubtless arouse her suspicions,) I was compelled to wait until further information was afforded me. That information never came, and until her brother telegraphed to me in the words with which I have commenced my story, I heard nothing of the Luttrell family.

Within ten minutes after I received the telegraph message, I had thrown a few things into a carpet-bag, had a card stitched on to it with my name, and Boltons, Tamworth, for the address (for I am oldfashioned enough always to direct my luggage in case of loss), and was rattling in a Hansom to Euston Square. I arrived just in time to catch the night mail-train; the platform was thronged, there were Oxford men going back to the university, barristers starting on circuit, sporting men going down for the Leamington steeple-chase, and invalids off to Malvern in search of health. Porters were pushing, rushing against stolid old gentlemen, crushing their feet with enormous heavily laden barrows, and crying “by your leave,” while the sufferers were clasping their mangled limbs in anguish. The post-office van, with its trim arrangement of sorting boxes, and its travelling capped clerks, stood gaping to receive the flood of bags pouring into it from the shoulders of the red-coated guards; non-passengers were bidding adieu to their friends at the doors of the carriages; the policemen were busily unhooking the various labels from neighboring Bletchley to distant Perth, with which the vehicles were bedizzened; commercial gents, those knowing travellers, were settling themselves comfortably on the back seats of the second class; the old gentleman who is always late, was being rapidly hurried to his place; and the black-faced stoker was leaning forward, looking out for the signal of the station-master to go-ahead, when I sprang into a first class compartment and took the only vacant seat I found there.

Once started, I looked around upon my travelling companions, who were apparently of the usual stamp. There was a stout, red-faced, elderly, gentleman-farmer looking man, rather flushed with the last pint of port at Simpson’s and the exertion of cramming a fat little portmanteau (the corner of which still obstinately protruded) under the seat; there was a thin pale-faced curate, with no whiskers and no shirt-collar, but with a long black coat, and a silk waistcoat buttoning round the throat, a mild, washed-out, limp, afternoon-service style of a man, engaged in reading a little book with a brass cross on the back, and “Ye Lyffe of St. Crucifidge,” emblazoned on it in red letters. There was a fidgety, pinched-up old lady, with a face so wrinkled as to make one thankful she was a female, as by no earthly means could she have shaved it, who kept perpetually peering into a mottled-looking basket suggestive of sandwiches and sherry-flasks, under apprehension of having lost her ticket; and there was a young man apparently devoted to the stock-broking interest, stiff as to his all-rounder, checked as to his trousers, natty as to his boots, who kept alternately paring his nails, stroking his chin, whistling popular melodies in a subdued tone, and attempting to go to sleep. Finally, on the opposite side to me, and in the further corner, there was a large bundle, the only visible component parts of which were a large poncho cloak, a black beard, and a slouched, foreign-looking hat; but these parts were all so blended and huddled together, that after five minutes sharp scrutiny it would have been difficult to tell what the bundle really was.

I had arrived so late at the station, that I had not had time to provide myself with a book, or even, to render the journey more tedious, by the purchase of an evening paper; so that after settling down in my seat, I had to content myself with a perusal of Bradshaw, with wondering whether anybody ever went to Ambergate, Flotten Episcopi, or Bolton-le-Moors, and what they did when they got there, and with musing upon Heal’s bedsteads, which, according to the advertisement, could be sent free by post, and upon the dismayed gentleman who, in the woodcut, cannot put up his umbrella, and is envious of the syphonia’d individual who finds “comfort in a storm.” But this species of amusement, though undeniably exciting at first, palls on repetition, and I soon found myself letting the Bradshaw drop, and endeavoring to seek solace in sleep. To seek but not to find. To me, sleep in a railway carriage is next to impossible. First the lamp glares in my eyes, and when I try to cover them with my hat, the stiff rim grates over my nose, and scrubs me to desperation; then the cloth-covered sides of the carriage are rough to my face; my legs are cramped, and my feet, in opposition to the rest of my body, go to sleep, and are troubled with pins and needles; and so, after much tossing, and tumbling, and changing from side to side, I sit bolt upright, gazing at the lamp, and thinking over Ellen and the object of my journey, until we arrive at our first halting-place, Bletchley. Here we lose the curate and the stockbroker, the flashing lamps of the latter’s dog-cart being seen outside the station yard. The old lady gets out too, under the impression that we are at Crewe, and is only induced to return after much assurance, and, in fact, bodily force on the part of a porter. She, I, the farmer, and the bundle, are left together again, and the train proceeds. And now, worn out and utterly wearied, I fall asleep in good earnest, and sleep so soundly that I do not rouse till a prolonged “Hoi!” reverberates in my ears, and starting up, I find the lights of Crewe station flashing in my eyes, the farmer and the old lady gone, and a porter holding up my carpet-bag and talking through the carriage window. “A old lady as has just left this carriage,” says he, “have tuke a carpet-bag in mistake for her own, she thinks. Does any gent own this here, di-rected to Boltons, Tamworth?”

At these words, the bundle roused, picked itself up, and showed itself to be a young man with a bearded face, and a remarkably bright eye. He seemed about to speak; but I, half-asleep, reclaimed my property, handed out the old lady’s luggage, and as the whistle announced our departure, sank back again in slumber.

I had slept, I suppose, for about three minutes, when I was aroused by a choking, suffocating sensation in my throat, and on opening my eyes, I saw the bearded countenance of the stranger within an inch of my face, his eyes flashing, his nostrils dilated, and his whole frame quivering with emotion; so that his hand, although twisedtwisted [sic] tightly in my neckcloth, trembled violently. Surprise for a second numbed my energies, but I soon recollected the practical teaching of my old instructor, the Worcestershire Nobbler, and finding I could free myself in no other means, dealt him a blow with my left hand which sent him staggering to the other end of the carriage. He recovered himself in an instant, and rushed at me again; but this time I was on my guard, and as he advanced I seized his hands by the wrists, and being much the more powerful man, forced him into a seat, and kept him there, never for an instant relaxing my grip. “Let me go!” he hissed between his teeth, speaking in a foreign accent, “Let me go! Scoundrel! coward!—release me!”

Had any third person been present they could not have failed to be amused at the matter of fact tone of my remarks in contrast to the high flown speech of the stranger.

“What the deuce do you mean, sir, by attacking an inoffensive man in this way?” said I, “what’s your motive? You don’t look like a thief.”

“No,” he screamed, “ ’tis you who are the thief, you who would steal from me all that I cherish in the world!”

“Why, I never set eyes on you before!” I exclaimed, getting bewildered and not feeling quite certain whether I was awake or asleep.

“No, but I have heard of you,” he replied, “heard of you too often. Tiens! did you just acknowledge you were going to Boltens!”

“Well, what if I am?” I asked. “You shall never reach your destination,” and with a sudden twist he shook my hand from his neck, sprang at my face and struck me with such force that I fell on my back on the floor of the carriage. In falling I dragged my adversary with me, but he was nimbler than I, and succeeded in planting his knee on my throat while he pinned my hands to my sides. Seeing me at his mercy he gave a cry of triumph, then stooping over me scanned my face with such a wild and scaring glance that a glimmering of the truth for the first time flashed across me—the man was made. I turned faint sick at the idea, and closed my eyes. “Ah, ha!” shrieked the lunatic, “you pale, you tremble! You, an Englishman, change color like a girl! You shall be yet another color before I leave you, your cheeks shall be blue, your eyes red, Entends du, misérable?” And as he spoke he knelt with such force on my throat that I felt my eyes were starting from their sockets; I struggled convulsively, but the more I writhed the more tightly did he press with his knee, until at length the anguish grew insupportable, and I fainted.

How long I remained insensible, I know not; it can have been but for a very few minutes, however, and when I came to myself I found the fresh night air blowing over my face, I saw the door of the carriage open, and felt the madman endeavouring to drag me to the aperture with the evident intention of throwing me out upon the line.

And now I felt that the crisis was at hand, and that it was but a question of time whether I could hold out until we arrived at the station, or whether I should be murdered by the lunatic. We were both young men, and though, perhaps, I was naturally the more powerful, yet his position gave him great advantages, as I was still extended on my back, while he was stooping over me, and while my limbs were cramped he had free play for all his energies. On seeing me recovering from the swoon, he uttered a short, sharp cry, and, bending lower, twined his hands in my cravat. Now was my opportunity; his back was towards the door, his face so close to mine, that I could feel his breath upon my cheek. Gathering all my remaining strength together, I seized him by the ancles, and literally hurled him over my head on to his face. He fell heavily, striking his head against the opposite door, and lay stunned and bleeding. In a second I was on my feet ready to grapple him, but as I rose the engine shrieked our approaching advent to the station, and almost before I could raise my fallen foe we ran into Tamworth. The first person I saw on the platform was Ellen’s brother, to whom, after hearing that she was out of danger, I, in a few words, narrated my adventure, and pointed out the stranger, who, still insensible, was supported by some of the porters.

“Let’s have a look at the fellow!” said Fred Luttrell—an unsophisticated youth—but he no sooner had set his eyes on the pallid face than he drew flack, exclaiming, “By Jove, it’s Bodé!”

And so it was; and by the aid of explanation, I received afterwards from Fred Luttrell, I was, in some measure, enabled to account for the attack made upon me. It appears that the Vicomte de Bodé had seen Ellen while in Burgundy, and fell desperately in love with her; but his addresses were utterly discouraged by her friends, for one reason alone—but that a most powerful one. His family were afflicted with hereditary insanity, and he himself had already on two occasions shown the taint. Of course it was impossible to declare to him the real reason of his rejection, and he was accordingly informed that Ellen’s parents had long since pledged her hand to a connexion of her own.

After her departure he grew moody and irratable, and it was judged advisable to have him watched; but he managed to elude the observation of his keepers, and to escape to England. Ellen’s address was well known to him; he was proceeding thither, and when he heard the very house mentioned by the porter at Crewe as the direction of my luggage, he doubtless, in his wandering mind, pictured me as his rival and supplanter.

My dear Ellen recovered, and so did the Vicomte—that is to say from my assault. As to his madness, it stood by him, poor creature, until he died.

—Some years ago, one of this class took passage for New Orleans, and for several days seemed quite desponding for want of excitement. At last the boat put into Napoleon, in the state of Arkansas, for supplies. Just at that moment there was a general fight, extending all along in front of the town, which, at that time, consisted of a single grocery. The unhappy passenger, fidgetting about, jerking his feet up and down as if they were touching upon hot bricks, inquired of a spectator: “Stranger, ar this a free fight?” The reply was prompt: “Well, it ar. If you want to go in, you needn’t stand on ceremony.” The passenger went in and soon after came out again, appearing to be reasonably satisfied. Groping his way on board, his hair half torn out, his coat in tatters, one eye closed up, and several of his teeth knocked into his throat, he sat down on a hen-cop, and soliquized: “So, this is Napoleon, is it? It’s jeest the most refreshing place I’ve seen in many a day.”