“And is this all!” See now; you laugh at this deception because a foolish boy was its instrument, and an honest clerk its victim. Have you not often pored, with romantic interest, upon tales of impostures equally gross? Have you not read with horror the celebrated warning of Dion? Have you not shuddered at, “I am thine evil spirit, Brutus; thou shalt see me again at Philippi?” and yet
What’s in a name?
“Nicholas” will raise a spirit as well as “Brutus.”
The dictator’s seat was soon after vacated. Ellen, the Vicar’s daughter, had died some years before; and her father, finding himself unable to reconcile himself to the residence which she had so long endeared to him, prepared to quit the village. It was supposed that poor Nicholas was overpowered by the misfortune of his patron: certain it is that he[Pg 173] died very quietly one fine summer’s evening, quite prepared for his end, and in the fullest possession of his faculties. He was followed to his grave by as sincere a crowd of mourners as ever wept at a poor man’s obsequies. There is no urn, no column, no monumental splendour where he sleeps! But what of this? Nicholas is dust—and so is Cheops.
One more name lives in my recollection. The old clerk bequeathed his library and his authority to his favourite, Arthur. Arthur!—he had no other name. That of his father was unknown to him, and he was taken from life before his merits had earned one. He was a foundling. He had been left at the old clerk’s door some years before I was born; and Nicholas had relieved the parish of the expense, and had educated him with all the attention of a father. I will not relate the whisper which went about at the time, nor the whispers which succeeded afterwards. Arthur grew in health and beauty, and was quite the pet of the neighbourhood; he had talents too, which seemed designed for brighter days; and patience, which made even his bitter lot endurable. He used to write verses which were the admiration of the synod; and sang his hearers to sleep occasionally with all the good-nature imaginable. At last a critic of distinguished note, who was spending a few months near the hamlet, happened to get a sight of the boy’s poetry, and took a fancy to him. He taught him to read and recite with feeling; pointed out to him the beauties and the errors of the models which he put into his hands; and, on his departure, gave him the works of several of our modern worthies, and promised that he would not forget him. However he did forget him, or gave no symptoms of his remembrance.
The old clerk died, and Arthur felt alone in the world. Still he had many friends; and when the first burst of his regret was over, comfortable prospects again began to dawn upon him. He again mingled in the society of the village; and the dictator’s chair in the chimney-corner, which had been vacated during this short interregnum, was given up to him cheerfully. He was beloved, esteemed, looked up to, by every one. Another circumstance, too, seemed likely to add to his happiness: he fixed his affections on a young woman, the daughter of an inhabitant of the place; his[Pg 174] passion was returned with interest, and the latter opposed no obstacle to its gratification.
On a sudden his whole appearance and behaviour was altered. He seemed as if awaking from a delightful dream; nothing which he had loved or pursued appeared to have charms for him any longer. When he was questioned as to the cause of his depression, he hinted obscurely that “it was no matter; the infamy which his parents had heaped upon him he would bear alone; he would entangle no one else in the misery which was and must be his own portion.” This was all the explanation he gave; but it was enough to show that he had given himself up to the dominion of a morbid sensibility, which must finally be his destruction.
He ceased to lead, as he formerly was wont to do, the opinions and pursuits of his neighbours. They had always bowed to his criticisms, his logic, his lectures; but criticism, logic, and lectures were now silent. He would sit in the chair of dignity hour after hour, and utter no word: sometimes, however, he would appear to shake off, with a painful struggle, the feelings which oppressed him, and would break out suddenly into flashes of a broad but irresistible humour, which Burns, in his brightest moments, could not have surpassed; and then he would relapse again into gloom and taciturnity. But his mind, thus kept in a state of continual agitation and excitement, was sinking fast beneath it. The girl, too, whom he loved, was wretched through his refinement of passion. She believed herself slighted, and her coldness aggravated his torments. This could not last! It did not.
One day he did not make his appearance in the village. One of his friends, going to his cottage, found the door fastened; and, upon calling, received no answer. The neighbourhood became alarmed; and several of his acquaintance searched in vain for him. He was not by the stream, where he often sat in solitude till the noxious dew fell round him; nor in the grove, where he used to listen to the nightingales till fancy filled up the pauses in their songs; nor by the window, where he would stand and gaze unconsciously till the sight of that dear face drove him from the scene of enchantment. At last they forced open his door; I entered with them. The poor youth was[Pg 175] sitting at his writing-table, in his old patron’s armchair; the pen seemed to have just fallen from his hand; the ink on its nib was hardly dry; but he was quite still, quite silent, quite cold.
His last thoughts seemed to have been spent upon the stanzas which were on the table before him. I will transcribe them, rather as an illustration of his story than as a specimen of his talents. Some of the lines gave rise to a conjecture that he had been the author of his own death, but nothing appeared to warrant the suspicion.
I have a devil in my brain!—
He haunts me when I sleep,
And points his finger at my ρain,
And will not let me weep:
And ever, as he hears me groan,
He says the cause is all my own.