BOOK II.
CHAPTER I.
THE MARRIAGE SETTLED.--LESTER'S HOPES AND SCHEMES.--GAIETY OF
TEMPER A GOOD SPECULATION.--THE TRUTH AND FERVOUR OF
ARAM'S LOVE.
Love is better than a pair of spectacles, to make
every thing seem greater which is seen through it.
--Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia.
Aram's affection to Madeline having now been formally announced to
Lester, and Madeline's consent having been somewhat less formally
obtained, it only remained to fix the time for their wedding. Though
Lester forbore to question Aram as to his circumstances, the Student
frankly confessed, that if not affording what the generality of persons
would consider even a competence, they enabled one of his moderate wants
and retired life to dispense, especially in the remote and cheap district
in which they lived, with all fortune in a wife, who, like Madeline, was
equally with himself enamoured of obscurity. The good Lester, however,
proposed to bestow upon his daughter such a portion as might allow for
the wants of an increased family, or the probable contingencies of Fate.
For though Fortune may often slacken her wheel, there is no spot in which
she suffers it to be wholly still.
It was now the middle of September, and by the end of the ensuing month
it was agreed that the spousals of the lovers should be held. It is
certain that Lester felt one pang for his nephew, as he subscribed to
this proposal; but he consoled himself with recurring to a hope he had
long cherished, viz. that Walter would return home not only cured of his
vain attachment to Madeline, but of the disposition to admit the
attractions of her sister. A marriage between these two cousins had for
years been his favourite project. The lively and ready temper of Ellinor,
her household turn, her merry laugh, a winning playfulness that
characterised even her defects, were all more after Lester's secret heart
than the graver and higher nature of his elder daughter. This might
mainly be, that they were traits of disposition that more reminded him of
his lost wife, and were therefore more accordant with his ideal standard
of perfection; but I incline also to believe that the more persons
advance in years, the more, even if of staid and sober temper themselves,
they love gaiety and elasticity in youth. I have often pleased myself by
observing in some happy family circle embracing all ages, that it is the
liveliest and wildest child that charms the grandsire the most. And after
all, it is perhaps with characters as with books, the grave and
thoughtful may be more admired than the light and cheerful, but they are
less liked; it is not only that the former, being of a more abstruse and
recondite nature, find fewer persons capable of judging of their merits,
but also that the great object of the majority of human beings is to be
amused, and that they naturally incline to love those the best who amuse
them most. And to so great a practical extent is this preference pushed,
that I think were a nice observer to make a census of all those who have
received legacies, or dropped unexpectedly into fortunes; he would find
that where one grave disposition had so benefited, there would be at
least twenty gay. Perhaps, however, it may be said that I am taking the
cause for the effect!
But to return from our speculative disquisitions; Lester then, who,
though he so slowly discovered his nephew's passion for Madeline, had
long since guessed the secret of Ellinor's affection for him, looked
forward with a hope rather sanguine than anxious to the ultimate
realization of his cherished domestic scheme. And he pleased himself with
thinking that when all soreness would, by this double wedding, be
banished from Walter's mind, it would be impossible to conceive a family
group more united or more happy.
And Ellinor herself, ever since the parting words of her cousin, had
seemed, so far from being inconsolable for his absence, more bright of
cheek and elastic of step than she had been for months before. What a
world of all feelings, which forbid despondence, lies hoarded in the
hearts of the young! As one fountain is filled by the channels that
exhaust another; we cherish wisdom at the expense of hope. It thus
happened from one cause or another, that Walter's absence created a less
cheerless blank in the family circle than might have been expected, and
the approaching bridals of Madeline and her lover, naturally diverted in
a great measure the thoughts of each, and engrossed their conversation.
Whatever might be Madeline's infatuation as to the merits of Aram, one
merit--the greatest of all in the eyes of a woman who loves, he at least
possessed. Never was mistress more burningly and deeply loved than she,
who, for the first time, awoke the long slumbering passions in the heart
of Eugene Aram. Every day the ardour of his affections seemed to
increase. With what anxiety he watched her footsteps!--with what idolatry
he hung upon her words!--with what unspeakable and yearning emotion he
gazed upon the changeful eloquence of her cheek. Now that Walter was
gone, he almost took up his abode at the manor-house. He came thither in
the early morning, and rarely returned home before the family retired for
the night; and even then, when all was hushed, and they believed him in
his solitary home, he lingered for hours around the house, to look up to
Madeline's window, charmed to the spot which held the intoxication of her
presence. Madeline discovered this habit, and chid it; but so tenderly,
that it was not cured. And still at times, by the autumnal moon, she
marked from her window his dark figure gliding among the shadows of the
trees, or pausing by the lowly tombs in the still churchyard--the
resting-place of hearts that once, perhaps, beat as wildly as his own.
It was impossible that a love of this order, and from one so richly
gifted as Aram; a love, which in substance was truth, and yet in language
poetry, could fail wholly to subdue and inthral a girl so young, so
romantic, so enthusiastic, as Madeline Lester. How intense and delicious
must have been her sense of happiness! In the pure heart of a girl loving
for the first time--love is far more ecstatic than in man, inasmuch as it
is unfevered by desire--love then and there makes the only state of human
existence which is at once capable of calmness and transport!
