It was the evening before the trial. Lester and his daughters lodged at a retired and solitary house in the suburbs of the town of York; and thither, from the village some miles distant, in which he had chosen his own retreat, Walter now proceeded across fields laden with the ripening corn. The last and the richest month of summer had commenced, but the harvest was not yet begun, and deep and golden showed the vegetation of life, bedded among the dark verdure of the hedge-rows, and “the merrie woods!” The evening was serene and lulled; at a distance arose the spires and chimneys of the town, but no sound from the busy hum of men reached the ear. Nothing perhaps gives a more entire idea of stillness than the sight of those abodes where “noise dwelleth,” but where you cannot now hear even its murmurs. The stillness of a city is far more impressive than that of Nature; for the mind instantly compares the present silence with the wonted uproar. The harvest-moon rose slowly from a copse of gloomy firs, and diffused its own unspeakable magic into the hush and transparency of the night. As Walter walked slowly on, the sound of voices from some rustic party going homeward, broke jocundly on the silence, and when he paused for a moment at the stile, from which he first caught a glimpse of Lester’s house, he saw, winding along the green hedgerow, some village pair, the “lover and the maid,” who could meet only at such hours, and to whom such hours were therefore especially dear. It was altogether a scene of pure and true pastoral character, and there was all around a semblance of tranquillity, of happiness, which suits with the poetical and the scriptural paintings of a pastoral life; and which perhaps, in a new and fertile country, may still find a realization. From this scene, from these thoughts, the young loiterer turned with a sigh towards the solitary house in which this night could awaken none but the most anxious feelings, and that moon could beam only on the most troubled hearts.
“Terra salutiferas herbas, eademque nocentes
Nutrit; et urticae proxima saepe rosa est.”
He now walked more quickly on, as if stung by his reflections, and avoiding the path which led to the front of the house, gained a little garden at the rear, and opening a gate that admitted to a narrow and shaded walk, over which the linden and nut trees made a sort of continuous and natural arbour, the moon, piercing at broken intervals through the boughs, rested on the form of Ellinor Lester.
“This is most kind, most like my own sweet cousin,” said Walter approaching; “I cannot say how fearful I was, lest you should not meet me after all.”
“Indeed, Walter,” replied Ellinor, “I found some difficulty in concealing your note, which was given me in Madeline’s presence; and still more, in stealing out unobserved by her, for she has been, as you may well conceive, unusually restless the whole of this agonizing day. Ah, Walter, would to God you had never left us!”
“Rather say,” rejoined Walter—“that this unhappy man, against whom my father’s ashes still seem to me to cry aloud, had never come into our peaceful and happy valley! Then you would not have reproached me, that I have sought justice on a suspected murderer; nor I have longed for death rather than, in that justice, have inflicted such distress and horror on those whom I love the best!”
“What! Walter, you yet believe—you are yet convinced that Eugene Aram is the real criminal?”
“Let to-morrow shew,” answered Walter. “But poor, poor Madeline! How does she bear up against this long suspense? You know I have not seen her for months.”
“Oh! Walter,” said Ellinor, weeping bitterly, “you would not know her, so dreadfully is she altered. I fear—” (here sobs choaked the sister’s voice, so as to leave it scarcely audible)—“that she is not many weeks for this world!”
“Great God! is it so?” exclaimed Walter, so shocked, that the tree against which he leant scarcely preserved him from falling to the ground, as the thousand remembrances of his first love rushed upon his heart. “And Providence singled me out of the whole world, to strike this blow!”