“Ah, no,” she replied; “it is but fear.”
“Well then,” replied the commissary, “have courage; and now, William, fire!”
William fired, and, in the same moment, Catherine sunk, with a loud scream, to the earth. “Silly girl,” exclaimed the commissary, lifting her up: but a stream of blood flowed over her face, her forehead was shattered, for the ball of the rifle was lodged in the wound. William turned on hearing loud shrieks behind him, and beheld his Catherine pale, weltering in her own blood, and by her side the soldier of the forest, who, with a fiendish laugh of scorn, pointed to his dying victim, and cried aloud to William, “Sixty hit, three miss!”
“Accursed fiend!” shrieked the wretched youth, striking at the detested form with his sword, “hast thou thus deceived me?” His agony permitted no further expression, for he sunk senseless to the earth by the side of the victim bride. The commissary and priest in vain endeavoured to console the childless, heart-broken parents. The mother had scarcely laid the prophetic garland of death upon the bosom of the bridal corpse, when her sorrow and life expired with her last-shed tear: the solitary father soon followed her, and the miserable William closed his life in the mad-house.
THE FORTUNES OF DE LA POLE.
In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men;
Fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake.
Then a spirit passed before my face, the hair of my head stood up.Job chap. iv.
Early in the seventeenth century, on a very cold November morning, a gentleman of Winchester was returning to his home, by a road which then led by the borders of the New Forest. He was conversing gaily with his attendants, when his dogs arrested the mirth of the party, by darting suddenly into the mazes of the forest, and signifying their discovery of some unusual object by loud and continued howls. Sir Bernard Courtenay instantly followed their track, and was startled by discovering, amid the tangled bushes, the corpse of a man, frightfully mangled, and which appeared to have lain some time in its concealment. Little observation was necessary to point out the identity of the sufferer,—Sir Bernard Courtenay almost instantly recognized an intimate friend; and, with deep and painful commiseration, prepared to assist his attendants to convey the body to its home.
Many conjectures were immediately afloat, as to the cause and perpetrator of this dreadful act, and, as is ever usual in such cases, many more absurd and irrational than just:—there was no apparent possibility of tracing the fact; it appeared to mock all the art and all the power of justice. He had not been robbed—murder alone had been intended, and had alone been perpetrated; so that one fact at least was clear, that this deed had been the work of an enemy: no common one, it was presumed, if the appearance of the corpse might weigh any thing in evidence; it was mangled fearfully, and the frightful distension of the muscles, the grim and rigid expression of the features, the many deep and bloody wounds upon the body, and the firm and powerful grasp with which the strained fingers of one hand clenched a dark lock of human hair, while those of the other as firmly closed over the hilt of a broken dagger, gave tokens that a fierce and terrible struggle had preceded his unexpected destruction. It was hoped, that some corresponding token of wounds and fierce exertion might lead to a discovery of the murderer; for none deemed, after beholding the body, and calling to mind the noble courage of the victim when in life, that the destroyer could pass from that gripe unharmed.
He who had thus fallen, was one for whom every eye had a tear and every heart a genuine sigh; he had been the friend of all, the enemy of none; he was young, beautiful, and brave; and his native town had looked up to him as one who was to add new glory to her venerable name, and new lustre to his own princely blood; and cut off in the beginning of his career, the very high day of his happiness and beauty, and so cut off—who was there that did not lament for John de la Pole? But, though all Winchester, and the county in whose bosom it lies, sorrowed over the corpse of John de la Pole, the agony borne from his death was to be found in his family alone; there he had been adored, and there most truly and deeply was his sad destiny accused. His young and lovely wife, scarce past her bridal year,—she who had, long before his marriage, been the secret object of his ardent love, and who, upon the death of his father, became the object of his choice—of her grief it was scarcely possible to think without affright; for, in that convulsion of soul into which, in the first horror of eternal separation from all we love, we invariably fall, she had withdrawn herself from all consolation of her friends—all succour of her attendants; and report whispered that she was using means, though quietly, (in order to avoid public shame,) to shorten a life which was now become odious and burthensome. To this cruel resolution she had been driven by a terrible incident; on the morning of the discovery of the body, she had, believing him to be on his road towards his home, ascended her carriage in order to meet him, and was driving cheerfully through the town, when her progress was arrested by the appearance of the crowd bearing the corpse of her husband. She recognized it at a glance, and, before they were aware of their imprudence, a piercing shriek announced to the people that she did so. She took another searching, distracted look at the body, and shrunk into the arms of her attendants, insensible and silent. They thought she was dead—it would not have been wonderful if she had been; the husband of her soul was lying before her, a deep gash across his throat, another had disfigured his snowy brow, and almost divided his once lofty head, while the bosom upon which she had been accustomed to repose was mangled and rent by stabs and blows too many to number—what an object for a young and loving wife! Remembrance was terrible to her, and the inability of justice to discover the murderer added despair to her grief, and thus compelled her to seek for consolation only in the prospect of death.
As bitter a grief, though perhaps not so deep or desperate, had fastened upon the heart of the only survivor of his family, a youth of twenty, of a beauty and virtue equal to his lamented brother, and who had indeed ample reason for his regrets. John de la Pole had been as a father to his youth, and loved him with a warmth far surpassing the kindness of ordinary brotherhood. Eustace had never been taught to remember that he was the younger, for the fortunes of his house were open to him, and the purse of the elder was common to both. On the marriage of the latter with his beloved Agatha, the younger had timidly hinted at his fears of an interruption to their friendship; but John had remedied this, by generously providing for his brother, and entreating his Agatha to allow him still a home at the castle: which being granted, Eustace, though still fearful of the influence of his lovely sister, continued to reside at home.