Part 6

"Ah! Mr Moir," cried Mary, coming forward to welcome me in her usual way, the moment she heard my voice, "you have been long a stranger. I fancied that, somehow or other, I was the cause of it, for you went away last time without bidding me good-bye." I held her hand in mine, I saw her eyes sparkle, and the blush suffuse her cheek, and I muttered a confused apology. "Well! I am so glad to see you," she continued. "It was but yesterday I spoke of you to the captain."

"The captain," I repeated, while the pangs of jealousy, which had, during the last five minutes, been gradually lulled over to sleep, suddenly roused themselves. "Who is the captain, Mary?"

"Oh? I'm sure you will like him when you become acquainted with him," said she, blushing. "There is something so prepossessing about him, that really I defy any one not to like him." The animation with which she gave utterance to these words made me miserable, and I cursed the captain in my heart.

The next day passed over without my being able to obtain a sight of my rival; and, when I walked out in the afternoon, he had not yet risen. Mary's assigned reason for this was, that he was an invalid; but his was more the disease of the mind than of the body. In his memory there was implanted a deep sorrow, which time could never root out. In my walk, the churchyard and the venerable ruins of the church were visited--I stood again beside the grave of the hapless Clara Douglas, and her melancholy story afforded me a theme for sad reflection, which, for a while, banished Mary and all jealous fears from my mind.

It was evening when I reached "mine inn." On passing the parlour window, a sight met my eye which brought the colour to my cheeks. A tall, noble-looking man lay extended upon the sofa, while Mary leant over him in kindly solicitude, and, with marked assiduity, placed cushions for his head, and arranged his military cloak. This, then, must be the captain, and he and my mysterious friend were not the same. That was some consolation, however.

Thus as he lay, he held Mary's hand in his. My breast was racked with agony intense; for

Oh! what a host of killing doubts and fears, Of melancholy musings, deep perplexities, Must the fond heart that yields itself to love Struggle with and endure."

Once I determined on flying from the scene, and leaving my rival in undisputed possession of the village beauty; but, having been resolved that no woman should ever have it in her power to say she made me wretched, I screwed my courage to the sticking place, and, on seeing Mary leave the parlour, I shortly afterwards entered it.

The stranger scarcely noticed my entrance, so intently was his attention fixed upon the perusal of a newspaper which he held in his hand. I sat down at the window, and, for want of something better to do, gazed with a scrutinising eye upon the gambols of the ducks and geese outside.

After some time, Mary came in to ask the captain what he would have for supper.

"This is the gentleman I spoke of," she said, directing her expressive glance towards me.

"Mr Moir must pardon my inattention!" said the stranger, laying down the paper; "I was not aware that my pretty Mary's friend was in the room."

His urbane manner, his soft winning voice, made me feel an irresistible impulse to meet his advances. He proposed that we should sup together, and I sat down at the table with very different feelings from those which had been mine on entering the parlour that evening. I felt inclined to encourage an intimacy with the man whom, but a short while before, I had looked upon with aversion.

As the night wore on, I became more and more captivated with the stranger. His conversation was brilliant and intellectual; and, when we parted for the night, I began to find fault with myself for having for a moment harboured dislike towards so perfect a gentleman. I resolved to stay a few days longer at Altonby, for the purpose of improving our acquaintance. The stranger--or, as he was called at the inn, "the captain," expressed delight when he was informed of my resolution; and, although he seldom rose before the afternoon, we spent many pleasant hours together.

On the evening of the third day of my sojourn, he expressed a wish that I would accompany him in a short walk. Notwithstanding his erect and easy carriage, there was a feebleness in his gait, which he strove in vain to contend against; and it was but too evident that a broken spirit, added to a shattered constitution, would speedily bring him to his grave.

Leading the way into the churchyard, to my surprise he stopped at the resting-place of the ill-starred lady, the story of whose untimely end I had so patiently listened to the last time I visited Altonby.

"I am exceedingly fortunate," said the captain, "in having met with one so kind as you, to cheer the last moments of my earthly pilgrimage. You smile--nay, I can assure you that I feel I am not long for this world. The object of my visit to this spot to-night, is to ask you to do me the favour, when I am dead, of seeing my remains laid here--here, beside this grave, o'er which the grass grows longer than on those around;" and he pointed to the grave of Clara Douglas. After a moment, he continued:--"Unlike other men, you have never annoyed me by seeking to inquire of me who or what I am; and, believe me, I feel grateful for it. I would not wish that you should ever know the history of the being who stands before you. When the earth closes over my coffin, think of him no more."

Although the captain had done me the honour of calling me unlike other men--a distinction most folks are so exceedingly desirous of obtaining--I must own that I had hitherto felt no common degree of curiosity concerning him; and now that there was no prospect of it being gratified, its desire increased tenfold, and I would now have given worlds, if I had had them, to have learned something of the birth, parentage, and education of the captain.

"And now," he added, "I beseech you, leave me for a short time--I would be alone."

In silence I complied, sauntering outside the ruins, and seeking to find, in my old avocation of perusing the tombstones, the wherewithal to kill the time during which the captain held communion with the dead; for I could not help thinking that it was for such a cause he had desired to be left to himself.

Ten--twenty minutes passed, and the captain did not appear. I retraced my steps, and again entered the ruins, by the farther end. The gloom which prevailed around--the monuments which intervened--and, above all, the distance at which I then was from the grave of Clara Douglas--prevented me from descrying the captain. I had advanced a few paces when I heard voices in high altercation. I stopped; and, as I did so, one of the speakers, in whose clear intonation I could recognise the captain, said--"On my word, I returned here the instant my wounds were healed--I returned to marry her--and my grief could not be equalled by yours when I heard of her melancholy fate."

"Liar!" exclaimed the other; "you ne'er intended such. My sister's wrongs call out aloud for vengeance; and here--here, between her grave and that of our sainted mother--your blood shall be offered up in atonement."

This was instantly followed by the report of a pistol. I rushed forward, and beheld, O horror! the captain stretched upon the ground, and the blood streaming from a wound in his breast. I caught a glimpse of his assassin, as he fled from the church; it was the stranger whom I had seen, on a former visit, at the grave of Clara Douglas, and beside the fir-tree where her remains had been found. I made a motion to follow him, but the captain waved me back--"Let him go," said he; "I forgive him. I have no wish that he should die upon the scaffold." So saying, he fell back exhausted; and, in my haste to procure assistance for him, I quite forgot the assassin, until it was too late.

The captain was conveyed to the Black Swan, where, with Mary to attend to his every want, he was, no doubt, as comfortable as if he had had a home to go to, and a beloved wife to smooth his dying pillow. Mary bestowed more than ordinary care and attention upon him, which, although she had declared to me that she could never love the captain so well as to marry him, should he ever condescend to make the offer, brought back occasionally a pang of jealousy to my heart. I could not exactly understand the extent of her regard for him.

Having business to transact at a neighbouring town, I left Altonby the next day, with a determination to return, ere the lapse of a week, to see the captain, I feared, for the last time. I had been but two days gone, when I received a note from Mary, informing me that he was daily becoming worse, and that it was the fear of his medical attendant that he could not live four-and-twenty hours. With the utmost speed, I therefore hastened back to the Black Swan, where, indeed, I saw that the surgeon had had quite sufficient reason for his prediction--the captain was greatly altered since I last saw him. Wan and emaciated, he lay in resignation upon his couch, calmly waiting the approach of death. He seemed quite composed.

Taking my hand in his, he reminded me of his wish regarding his burial-place. I assured him that it should strictly be complied with. A smile lighted up his pale countenance for an instant, as I pledged myself to this. He then drew from under his pillow a parcel of letters, tied together with a faded ribbon, and desired me to consign them one by one to the flames. With an eager eye, and a countenance full of excitement, did he watch them as they consumed away. I did not dare to examine minutely the address on the letters, but, from the glance I had of them, I could see they were all written in an elegant female hand. When all were gone--"And this," said he, "is like to human life--a blaze but for an instant, and then all is ashes." He paused, and then continued, as he held a small packet in his hand, more in soliloquy than if he were addressing me--"Here is the last sad relic I possess--shall I?--Yes! yes! it shall go as the others have gone. How soon may I follow it?" He stretched forth his hand towards me. I took the packet. Instantly, as if the last tie which bound him to the earth had been hastily snapped asunder, the captain fell backwards upon his couch. I thrust the packet into my bosom, and ran to afford him assistance. He was beyond human help--he was dead!

The grief of Mary knew no bounds when the dismal tidings were conveyed to her; she was like one distracted. Mine was more chastened and subdued.

The remains of the captain were duly consigned to that spot of earth he had pointed out to me. After his death, there was found a conveyance of all his property, which was pretty considerable, to Mary, accompanied with a wish that I would marry her. To this arrangement Mary was quite agreeable; and, accordingly, our nuptials were solemnised in about six months after the death of the captain. It was then that Mary confided to me that she was the sister of Clara Douglas; but when I made inquiry at her concerning the nature of her attachment to the captain, she always avoided answering, and seemed not to wish that his name should be mentioned in her hearing.

Several years passed, and I had forgotten all about the packet which the captain on his death-bed had placed in my hand, till one day, in looking for something else, which, of course, I could not find--(no one ever finds what he wants)--I accidentally stumbled upon the packet. Curiosity induced me to open it. A lock of black hair, tied with a piece of light-blue ribbon, and a letter, were its contents. Part of the letter ran thus:--"Enclosed is some of my hair--I don't expect you to keep it, for I have heard you say you did not like to have any such thing in your possession. I will not _ask_ you, lest I might be refused; but if you give me some, I'll get it put into one of my rings, and shall never, never part with it." This letter bore the signature of Clara Douglas!

Here, then, was a solution of all the mystery. The captain was the lover of Clara, and this had been the cause of Mary's intimacy with him.

Of the fate of the brother I afterwards heard. He was killed in a street brawl one night in Paris, and Mary never knew that he was the assassin of the captain.

BON GUALTIER'S TALES.

BY THEODORE MARTIN.

COUNTRY QUARTERS.

A pleasanter little town than Potterwell does not exist in that part of her Majesty's dominions called Scotland. On one side, the hand of cultivation has covered a genial soil with richness and fertility. The stately mansion, "bosomed high in tufted trees," occasionally invites the eye, as it wanders over the landscape; while here and there the river Wimpledown may be seen peeping out amid the luxuriant verdure of wood and plain, and seeming to concentrate on itself all the radiance of any little sunshine that may be going. On the other side, again, are nothing but impracticable mountains--fine bluff old fellows--that evidently have an extensive and invincible contempt for Time, and, like other great ones of the earth, never carry any change about them. Look beyond these, and the prospect is indeed a fine one--a little monotonous, perhaps, but still a fine one--peak receding behind peak in endless series, a multitudinous sea of mountain tops, with noses as blue as a disappointed man's face, or Miss Harriet Martineau's stockings.

With a situation presenting such allurements for the devotees of the picturesque, is it wonderful that Potterwell became a favourite resort? By the best of good fortune, too, a spring close by, of a peculiarly nauseous character, had, a few years before the period we write of, attracted attention by throwing into violent convulsions sundry cows that had been so far left to themselves as to drink of it, besides carrying off an occasional little boy or so, as a sort of just retribution for so far suppressing his natural tastes as to admit it within his lips. Dr Scammony, however, had taken the mineral water under his patronage; and his celebrated pamphlet upon the medicinal properties of the Potterwell Mephitic Assafœtida Waters at once fixed their reputation, while it materially augmented his own. A general subscription was projected, with a view to the erection of a pump-room. The plan took amazingly; and, from being left to work its way out, as best it might, through the diseased and miserable weeds with which it was overgrown, the spring all at once found itself established in a handsome apartment, fitted up with a most benevolent attention to the wants of such persons as might repair thither with the probable chance--however little they might be conscious of the fact--of dying by a watery death.

It was a bright sparkling morning in August, and there was an exhilarating freshness in the air, that caused the heart to leap up, and make the spirit as unclouded as the blue sky overhead. The pump-room was thronged, and every one congratulated his neighbour on the beauty of the morning.

"At your post as usual, Stukely!" said a smartly dressed young man stepping up to Mr Stukeley--a well-known frequenter of the wells since their first celebrity--and shaking him warmly by the hand. "I do believe you are retained as a check upon the pump woman, that you keep such a strict look-out after her customers. How many doses has she administered to-day? Come now, out with your notebook, and let me see."

"Oh, my dear Frank, if you really want to know, I am the man for you--Old Cotton of Dundee, four and a half and his daughter, took off the balance of the six. What do you think I heard him whisper to her?--'Hoot, lassie, tak it aff, it's a' paid for;' and she, poor soul, was forced to gulp it down, that he might have the satisfaction of knowing that full value had been given for his penny. Then there was Runrig the farmer from Mid-Lothian, half-a-dozen. The man has a frame of iron, and a cheek as fresh as new-mown hay; but somebody had told him the water would do him good, and he has accordingly taken enough to make him ill for a fortnight. Then there was Deacon Dobie's rich widow--fat, fair, and forty--she got pretty well through the seventh tumbler; but, it's a way with her, when she begins drinking, not to know when to stop; which, by the way, may account for her having been, for some time, as she elegantly expresses it, 'gey an nervish ways, whiles.' After her came"---- And Stukeley was going on to enumerate the different visitors of the morning, checking them off upon his fingers as he proceeded, when his friend, Frank Preston, stopped him.

"For mercy's sake, have done; and tell me, if you can, who those two fops of fellows are at the foot of the room? They only came a week ago; and, though nobody knows who they are, they have made the acquaintance of half the people here."

"I see nothing very odd in that. I know nothing of the men; but they dress well, and are moderately good-looking, and have just sufficient assurance to pass off upon the uninitiated for ease of manner and fashionable breeding. A pair of parvenus, no doubt; but what is your motive for asking so particularly about them?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing! Only I am to meet them at the Cheeshams to-night, and I wished to know something of them."

"So, so! sets the wind in that quarter? A rival, Master Frank? It is there the shoe pinches, is it?"

"A rival--nonsense! What should I care whether the puppies are attentive to Emily Cheesham or not?"

"Why more to her than to her sister Fanny? I mentioned no names. Ha! Master Frank, you see I have caught you. Come, come, tell me what it is annoys you?"

"Well," stammered out Frank Preston,--"well, the fact is--the fact is, one of them has been rather particular in his attentions to Emily, and I am half-inclined to think she gives him encouragement."

"And, suppose she does, I see nothing in that but the harmless vanity of a girl, pleased to have another dangler under her spell."

"That is all very well, but I don't like it a bit. It may be so, and it may not. Her encouragement to him is very marked, and I don't feel easy under it at all, I don't."

"Why, Frank, you must both have a very poor opinion of Miss Emily, and be especially soft yourself, to give yourself any concern in the matter. If you have deemed her worthy of your regards, and she has given you warrant for thinking you have a claim upon them, and yet she now throws you off to make way for this newer lover, your course is a clear one. Turn from her at once, and fortify yourself with old Wither's lines--

'If she be not made for me, What care I for whom she be?'"

"Excellent philosophy, if one could but act upon it. But what annoys me about the business is, that I am sure these fellows are a pair of snobs, and are playing themselves off for something greater than they are."

"Very possibly; but that is just a stronger reason for taking my advice. If Miss Emily can be gratified with the attentions of such persons, leave her to the full enjoyment of them. Don't make yourself miserable for her folly."

"Oh, I don't make myself miserable at all, not in the least; only, I should like to find out who the fellows are."

The young men of whom Preston and Stukeley had been speaking, and who now lounged up the room, describing semicircles with their legs at every step they took, were certainly never meant for the ordinary tear and wear of the hard-working every-day world. Their dress had too fine a gloss upon it for that, their hair much too gracefully disposed. They were both rather below the middle size, both dark in the complexion, but one of them much more so than the other. The darker slip of humanity had cultivated the growth of his hair with singular success. It fell away in masses from his forehead and temples, and curled, like the rings of the young vine, over the velvet collar that capped a coat of symmetrical proportions. Circling round the cheeks and below the chin, it somewhat obtruded upon the space which is generally occupied by the face, so that his head might truly be said to be a mass of hair, slightly interspersed with features. His friend, again, to avoid monotony, had varied the style of his upper works, and his locks were allowed to droop in long, lanky, melancholy tangles down his sallow cheeks; while, perched upon either lip, might be seen a feathery looking object, not to be accounted for, but on the supposition that it was intended to seduce the public into a belief of its being a moustache. Both were showily dressed. Both had stocks terminating in a cataract of satin that emptied itself into tartan velvet waistcoats, worn probably in honour of the country; both had gold chains innumerable, twisting in a multiplicity of convolutions across these waistcoats; both had on yellow kid gloves of unimpeachable purity, and both carried minute canes of imitation ebony, with which, at intervals, they flogged, one the right and the other the left leg, with the most painful ferocity. They were a noble pair; alike, yet, oh, how different!

"Eugene, my boy," said the darker of the two, in a tone of voice loud enough to let half the room hear the interesting communication, "we must see what sort of stuff this here water is--we must, positively."

"Roost eggs, Adolph, whisked in bilge-water, with a rusty tenpenny nail. Faugh! I'm smashed if I taste it."

"Not so bad that for you," returned Adolph, smiling faintly; "but you must really pay your respects to the waters."

"'Pon my soul, I shawn't. I had enough of that so't of thing in Jummany, the time I was ova with Ned Hoxham."

"That was the time, wasn't it, that you brought me over that choice lot of cigaws?"

"I believe it was," responded Eugene, with the most impressive indifference, as if he wished it to be understood that he had been so often there that he could not recall the particulars of any one visit.

"I know something of Seidlitz and Seltzer myself," resumed the darker Adonis, "and soda water too, by Jove! for that matter, and they're not bad things either, when one's been making a night of it; so I'll have a try at this Potterwell fluid, and see how it does for a change."