Page images
PDF
EPUB

which had occurred in his time, and which, as it entailed no inter change of communication, Severn allowed to proceed without further interruption.

When they arrived upon the ground, they found their antagonists in readiness. The seconds made the necessary arrangements, and the principals took their places, exchanging at the time signs of haughty but calm recognition. They had entertained for each other, since the period of their first acquaintance, feelings of distaste, if not of ill-will; they had now met for the most hostile purpose that can bring human creatures together, yet they had probably never before experienced so little of mutual repugnance. Oranmore felt that he had been the most to blame in the original quarrel, and Severn condemned no one but himself for his present position.

A signal was given: Severn fired steadily, but without being observed, into the air; the shot of Oranmore did not take effect. It had been determined by the seconds that, after language of so little qualified a character, the honour of the parties required the purifying ordeal of a second fire, supposing the first to have been ineffectual. Fresh pistols were accordingly supplied, and a second signal given with great rapidity, which entirely precluded the combatants from taking either aim or thought. Oranmore missed again, but received in his breast the bullet of Severn.

He fell flat and heavy.-Where are the words to tell what the moment was when that sight crossed the eyes of his opponent?

The wounded man was put upon a plank and carried into an adjoining farm-house. The surgeon in attendance announced that he would not live above an hour. Oranmore who retained entire possession of all his faculties, heard the intelligence, and immediately asked for Severn.

"He is standing by your bed. We could not get him to leave you."

"Come near to me, Severn; take my hand-I refused yours last night. You must forgive me for having led you into this scene of horror. The blame is mine!—I am very weak, and you must take measures for escape."

"Live, live, if you would not make me miserable-mad! Live to rescue my soul from guilt and anguish-from blood and murder!-Live, that I may devote my life to serve, to appreciate you, to make atonement to you!-Live, to save and bless me!-I know not what I say or think -Live! but live! brave and gifted Oranmore!"

Here he was absolutely forced into the carriage by Sir Matthew; but he had at least the consolation of learning afterwards that his

victim died, it might be hoped, in sincere, because it appeared in abject, penitence.

He heard his companion arrange the whole plan of his flight, and even expressed his acquiescence; but when he perceived that, having absolved his mind upon this point, that exemplary politician was about to enter upon an enumeration of the probable divisions he would miss, and more especially to regret that he would not be able to bear any part in an important motion of Ham's which stood for the next Tuesday, there was something in his countenance which awed even Sir Matthew into silence.

Upon their arrival in town, while Sir Matthew, more pleased to be of active service, than in close contact with so unsociable a remorse, was occupied in hastening some necessary arrangements for the safe departure of his friend, he proceeded himself, regardless of the danger which he thus incurred, to the residence of Lady Alice, and requested to see her alone.

"I am come, Lady Alice, to take leave of you."

"Leave, Mr Severn!-You are not going away for long, I hope?"

"If it can give you pain, it even adds to the concern-the deep concern I now feel.-I am going away for ever."

"No, you would not have come here to tell me that !—but your looks!! for mercy's sake, what has happened?"

He told her: she appeared deeply shocked, and it was some time before she could say any thing.

"I am grieved, extremely grieved: it is most melancholy-dreadful!-Poor Lord Oranmore! Such youth and beauty!-I pity him sincerely."

"And I, in many, many respects, as sincerely envy him. "But you must not be too much borne down by it.

well see how it could have been avoided."

I do not

"I must beg of you, do not attempt to excuse me." "You must not really take it too deeply to heart. It is most unfortunate; but only consider how much worse it would have been if you had refused to fight.'

Does the reader remember that beautiful passage in Lord Byron, where Conrad, the man of combats, shudders at the stain upon the forehead of Gulnare?

That spot of blood, that light but guilty streak,

Had banished all the beauty from her cheek!

Blood he had viewed-could view unmoved-but then

It flowed in combat, or was shed by men!

What that spot was to the Corsair, were the last words of Lady

[ocr errors]

Q

Alice to Severn. She stood before him, after she had uttered them, beautiful, feminine, and patrician as ever; but he had ceased to worship, and the shrine had lost its idol. Perhaps it was good for him that it should be thus; and the few hasty syllables which dropped from the lips of her he most admired may have given what otherwise he might have wanted, strength and constancy in parting.

It was four or five years after these occurrences that I met Severn in a maritime town of the Levant. I had been well acquainted with him in London, had always felt a strong attraction towards him, and now, partially and by degrees, succeeded in obtaining his confidence. That sacred trust I do not here violate. " England," he once said to me, "I feel myself incapable of ever revisiting; memory is enough without memorials; but if in the detail of what I have done and suffered, any thing is to be found that might either teach or warn, I should look upon the disclosure as part of the reparation which it is now the object of my life to make."

Upon quitting England he had inlisted himself in one of those bands that were then first raising the standard of Grecian independence in the Morea; a cause for which individual Englishmen had felt keenly, and fought bravely, but upon which I fear that, as a nation, we have looked but coldly. Severn was one of those who could be liberal abroad as well as at home; but after an engagement in which he had greatly distinguished himself, he felt that from human blood he now recoiled with horror; he fancied that he had traced, in the distorted features of an expiring Mussulman, the last look of Oranmore; and he resolved that a hand, red, as he termed it, with the murder of a countryman, was not worthy of joining in the struggle of patriots against a foreign enemy. He withdrew to a commercial town on the Asiatic side of the Archipelago, where, having changed his name and diverted to charitable uses his remittances from England, he earned his bread by teaching English and Latin to a motley collection of Frank and Greek scholars, occasionally including some high-born scion of consular descent.

I took more than one occasion, after having seen him plodding the same weary round of minute employment, wrestling patiently and perseveringly with dulness, idleness, and insolence, ringing the changes of ignoble praise and common-place rebuke, to remonstrate with him-him, the high-bred-the energetic-the refined, thus wasting qualities and dispositions so eminent upon an employment so inadequate, cramping, and humiliating. "Take not away from me," he replied, "what you call my humiliations; they are the only things, on earth at least, that reconcile me to myself."

Two little traits connected with his present mode of life are all

that it occurs to me further to record. One day, one single day, exhibited an exception to his ordinary behaviour. He was observed in the discharge of his usual labours to be irritable, capricious, and morose. Tidings had happened to reach him that morning, announcing the intended marriage of Lady Alice Bohun to Lord George Glenearn.

Upon another occasion a young Greek, who had been his pupil, and who retained for him that deference, amounting to veneration, which, under his present chastened yet loftier character, it would have been almost a miracle not to feel, asked his opinion respecting the lawfulness of private combat. I quote his answer.

"Whether the future laws of your restored country will permit, or connive at, such a practice, I cannot pretend to anticipate. Persuaded I am, that the whole spirit of the higher law, to which we both profess allegiance, unequivocally forbids it. You may attempt to assure yourself that your own hand at least shall be free from blood-guiltiness—I will go on in a moment.

"How can you answer to yourself for permitting, enabling, assisting your fellow creature to incur that charge?, I do not tell you to despise or to defy the world; deserve and enjoy its fair opinion while you may; but if the alternative should present itself, if the preference must be given, you may believe one who has a right to speak upon the subject, that it is a better and a happier thing to be its outcast than its slave."

THE SCHOOL BANK.

UPON this bank we met, my friend and I-
A lapse of years had intervening pass'd
Since I had heard his voice or seen him last:
The starting tear-drop trembled in his eye.
Silent we thought upon the school-boy days
Of mirth and happiness for ever flown;
When rushing out the careless crowd did raise
Their thoughtless voices-now, we were alone,
Alone, amid the landscape-'twas the same:
Where were our loved companions? some, alas!
Silent reposed among the church-yard grass,
And some were known, and most unknown, to Fame,
And some were wanderers on the homeless deep;
And where they all were happy-we did weep!

DELTA.

THE FURLOUGH-AN IRISH ANECDOTE. *

"Time was called."-Boxiana.

In the autumn of 1825, some private affairs called me into the sister kingdom; and as I did not travel, like Polyphemus, with my eye out, I gathered a few samples of Irish character, amongst which was the following incident.

I was standing one morning at the window of "mine inn,” when my attention was attracted by a scene that took place beneath. The Belfast coach was standing at the door, and on the roof, in front, sat a solitary passenger, a fine young fellow in the uniform of the Connaught Rangers. Below, by the front wheel, stood an old woman, seemingly his mother, a young man, and a younger woman, sister or sweatheart; and they were all earnestly entreating the young soldier to descend from his seat on the coach. "Come down wid ye, Thady,"-the speaker was the old woman. -"Come down now to your ould mother. Sure it's flog ye they will, and strip the flesh off the bones I giv ye. Come down, Thady, darlin!"

"It's honour, mother," was the short reply of the soldier; and with clenched hands and set teeth he took a stiffer posture on the coach.

"Thady, come down-come down, ye fool of the world-come along down wid ye!" The tone of the present appeal was more impatient and peremptory than the last; and the answer was more promptly and sternly pronounced: "It's honour, brother!" and the body of the speaker rose more rigidly erect than ever on the roof.

"O Thady, come down! sure it's me, your own Kathleen, that bids ye. Come down, or ye'll break the heart of me, Thady, jewel; come down then!" The poor girl wrung her hands as she said it, and cast a look upward, that had a visible effect on the muscles of the soldier's countenance. There was more tenderness in his tone, but it conveyed the same resolution as before.

"It's honour, honour bright, Kathleen !" and, as if to defend himself from another glance, he fixed his look steadfastly in front, while the renewed entreaties burst from all three in chorus, with the same answer.

"Come down, Thady, honey!-Thady, ye fool, come down!O Thady, come down to me!"

* From Hood's "Comic Annual."

« PreviousContinue »