Page images
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

Hyde Park; I then spoke to you of the unfortu- | nate result of an early intrigue-of my child Laura, born in bitterness, reared in sorrow. It is of her that I would speak to-night. It is enough for my present purpose to tell you that £4,000 is now at my command-how obtained matters not it is my own-morcover, I expect to receive more in a short time as my share of the proceeds of a speculation"-I gazed into his eyes steadily as he said this; he could not meet my gaze; how changed in a few short years had the open-hearted ingenuous Aubrey become. Ile continued, “I have now no friend on earth save you-I wish to invest that money for the benefit of my poor child; life is uncertain; mine, I fancy, especially so, when I consider my ruined health, my blighted prospects, and my fearful daily existence. I ain unable to undertake the care of my child's education; will you relieve the anxiety of a wretched father, who, with all his faults and wordliness, has one pure corner left in his hopeless heart for her; will you watch over your old friend's child ?"

It was a strange request, a request I might with propriety have re-considered and refused; nevertheless, whether a power of saying "no" is sparingly granted to me, I know not, but I gave the required promise. The man was deeply affected. He had spoken truth; one sound corner was still left in his heart's core. "Thank God! I have still a friend," said he, as he wrung my hand hard, "my poor little child would, but for you, have led a dreary life were I suddenly taken from her and this cold world. Scandal has, of course, made your ears familiar with my name in connexion with that of Adele de St. Croix. Her bitter temper and exigeante jealousy have long ago taught me that the day whereon I first met her should for evermore be marked with a black stone' in the reckoning of my life. I could not bring up Laura under the same roof with Adele. It is my wish that you find out some clergyman's family, where she can reside and be well educated, Do you know any such family?" I mentioned the name of a clergyman known to Aubrey and myself when we were schoolboys, and who had recently married and settled down near me. If he would undertake the charge, I need not to tell him the real name or the circumstances attending the birth of little Laura. The proposal pleased Aubrey, and he agreed to give me a definite answer on his return to town. The old housekeeper's voice in the corridor reminded us that we had sat up all night, and, as Aubrey wished to preserve his incognito, and to reach a neighbouring town, where he said a man awaited him on urgent business, before noon, I went to the stable, brought his horse round, tied the bridle to a laurel bush, aud softly walked across the hall to the library. As I opened the door I saw he had risen from his chair, had unbarred the shutters, and was standing with his back half turned to me, gazing out on the clear, cold, bright morning, and his own old ancestral manor house, which is a few miles from here, and

visible from that window. I did not wish to disturb his reveries; so, holding the door half-open in my hand I awaited his return from dream-land, to the business of the day. As I entered, he was singing to himself, in a low, sweet voice, some snatches of an old, half-forgotten song. The words are poor Motherwell's; their mournful music, rendered more sad from association of idea, has haunted me long :

When I beneath the cold, cold earth am sleeping,
Life's fever o'er,

Will there for me be any bright eye weeping
That I'm no more?

Will there be any heart still memory keeping
Of heretofore?

When the great winds through leafless forests rushing
Sad music make,

When the swollen streams o'er crag and gully gushing
Like full hearts break,

Will any then, whom heart despair is crushing,
Mourn for my sake?

Aubrey had a fine voice-he sang at all times with taste and feeling; but I never heard anything sung with such pathos as these sad, simple lines; the whole sadness of the speaker's lost heart seemed reflected in the quiet sadness of the song. A strange moral anomaly was this man-now with feeling pure and refined as innocence itself, if I might judge from the mere evidence of words, and now, with the cold-blooded cynicism of sixty grafted on the heart of eight-and-twenty. Perchance I thought aloud then, for he started and confronted me with a forced smile, cold and cheerless as the sun on a wintry day.

"It is time that I should begone-my horse is but a sorry beast. I will never forget the promise of last night, nor the kind heart that gave it. Should we never meet again, think kindly of poor Aubrey, as of one, after all, more sinned against than sinning.'

[ocr errors]

He vaulted into the saddle, grasped my hand, struck his spurs into the wretched hack he bestrode, and in a few minutes the click-clack-clack of his horse's heels told me that he had gained the high road, and that I was once more alone. After he was gone, I had ample time for reflection on the character of the man, and the promise I had somewhat incautiously made him. I trace the ills of Aubrey's life to selfishness, and also to self-ignorance. To selfishness he sacrificed the virtue of Laura's mother, and to selfishness he sacrificed Adele de St. Croix, persuading himself all the while that love had wrought their sin. “We may complain of Providence, and we may complain of men," says Mason, in his "Treatise on SelfKnowledge,' ""but the fault, if we examine it, will be commonly found to be our own. prudence, which arises from self-ignorance, either brings our troubles upon us or increases them." That these observations are true we must all own to our hearts. As to the promise I had made him; I had undertaken the charge of his child till I could resign her and the money mentioned to

Our im

[ocr errors]

BROKEN MEMORIES.

the trust of the clergyman I had thought of as a fit person to be little Laura's guardian. A short time after Aubrey left me, I received a letter from him, saying that he was utterly weary of his London life, that he had more than once heard me mention a friend of mine who had emigrated to California, and was then doing well-that, as for himself, he thought he could do nothing better than emigrate with his little capital, if I would give him an introduction to my friend, who had settled down as a merchant in San Francisco, and then he saw no reason why he might not become eventually a better and a happier man. In the same letter he expressed a hope that I would come up to London the following day, and meet him at half-past ten o'clock the following night at the Duke of York's column, as he wished to arrange something definite touching Laura, and some little money he intended to settle on Madame de St. Croix. I kept the appointment as wished. Halfpast ten o'clock found me pacing up and down the pavement at the foot of the column raised to the memory of a man eminent only because of Royal blood. Eleven came, but no Aubrey;-as the night was fine and I had nothing better to do than stroll up and down with a cigar in my month, I did not much care. The neighbouring clocks struck twelve, when I saw a cab stop opposite the Athenæum Club, and a lady leap lightly there from. She walked straight to the place where I stood-stopped short within a few yards of the column, approached me, and seeing I gave no sign of recognition, her veil being closely down, walked slowly back to the cab. Thinking that she was one of that unfortunate class "who only smile beneath the gas," as Mrs. Browning says, I walked briskly past her, and, in so doing, the glare of a lamp fell full upon my face, and the nnknown said in a low voice

"Mr. S."

"Madame de St. Croix ?"

The recognition was complete; she had come to keep the appointment in lieu of Aubrey. Hav. ing explained to me that he was detained by urgent business, but that I was to proceed with her to him, and having apologised for her tardy arrival at our rendezvous, she entered the cab. I followed, and, in reply to the cabman's query "Where to, sir ?" she said, "St. John's Wood, and quickly!" My curiosity was piqued. What could this strange midnight meeting mean? Why had not Aubrey kept the appointment, and why had he sent Madame de St. Croix, to whom the meeting must have been painful, in his stead? I found that lady in no way inclined to solve my doubts. During the whole drive she spoke not a word; but I could see through her veil, as ever and anon the lamps flashed in upon us, that her features were working almost convulsively. At last she pulled the check-string violently, and the cab stopped at South Bank. We alighted, and walked briskly on till she stopped at a small villa standing in its own grounds. She gave a low tap at a barred wicket.

[ocr errors]

143

It opened, and Aubrey peered through at us-the bolts were withdrawn, and we entered. After apologising for his absence from the place appointed and expressing no little surprise that Adele ad been so much behind her time, he usheredh into a room wherein, pipe in mouth, sat one of the most repulsive specimens of humanity I have ever yet encountered. Addressing the said ill-favoured individual as "Jack," Aubrey requested his absence

and that worthy gentleman, having knocked out the ashes of a short black pipe upon the Turkey carpet and drained a steaming glass of strong waters, grunted forth a surly "All right," and made his exit. My host, seeing I had evinced no small surprise and disgust at the presence of Jack

I forget the ruffian's patronymic-explained that "Jack" was a man with whom he had business -" a money-lender-a low fellow-but, after all, harmless enough," &c. I did not believe him—it only needed the evidence of Jack's hang-dog phy. siognomy to warrant a hastily-formed theory that this worthy was a person, in the expressive vernacular of Whitechapel, "ready for anything from pitch and toss' to manslaughter."

What passed between my host and myself can have little interest for my reader. Our private conversation, till a sumptuous supper was brought in, turned solely on the disposal of some money which had recently come into his possession, part of which he wished to invest in the joint behalf of his child Laura and Adele de St. Croix. Adele entered the room quietly, and took her seat at the supper-table. I observed that, while Aubrey drank more wine than I had ever seen him drink before at a sitting, she touched nothing, and seemed impatient for the removal of the cloth.

Hot water, spirits, and tumblers were brought in by Aubrey's sole servant, the valet I remembered to have seen in the Albany Chambers, and once more, over our cigars, we talked over old times. Aubrey, to my surprise, imbibed far more alcohol than was prudent, and the effects thereof were soon manifest in his glazing eye and husky voice. I was disgusted and shocked, and was about to take my leave when he rang the bell and directed the valet to prepare a bed for me, as I should sleep there. I expressed dissent from the arrangement, when he, reminding me of my promise touching his child, said it was necessary for the right fulfilment of that promise that we should have the next morning to ourselves. I offered no further objection, and he went on talking in a wild strain of his past life.

Adele said nothing-sat still with statue like tranquillity; but I could see her thin lips quiver, and her cheek grew more pale as bitter words fell on her ear, as he went on in the old strain, complaining of his wasted life and the weakness of his past love for a woman like Adele-instituting, at the same time, a comparison between her and a certain fair frailty of the Opera House, by no means favourable to the former. I know not if I had exceeded my usual allowance of wine, but I

[blocks in formation]

felt a fierce impulse urging me to rise from my chair and fell the reprobate to the ground. But he had roused the fiery blood of the Frenchwoman to fury; her dark eyes glowed like live coals-her fine form seemed to dilate, as, in her broken English, she hissed through her clenched teeth-

"Scoundrel! liar! Give me back my past! Give me back the peace which now seems strange to me! Recompense me, if you can, for the lonely nights here spent by me in this accursed house in watching for your return from your evil hauntsfor the bitter days spent in pacing up and down yonder wretched slip of a garden in maddening thoughts of what I might have been but for my hapless union with St. Croix-what I still might be but for you-and what I am now-an abject, dreary-hearted thing, that men scorn and women point at. And all this for you, Edmund Aubrey -for you, forger, swindler, liar, and utter villain that you are!"

Had the roof fallen in I could not have been more shocked. The man I had called my friend -the old schoolfellow I had once loved-was then nothing better than a felon and a companion of felons, of whom the ruffian "Jack" was doubtless one. I expected to see Aubrey start to his feet, deny the accusation with trembling lips, or strike his paramour to the dust. No such thing. Aubrey was not at any time given to such exhibitions. A hateful sneer curled his lip for a moment as he calmly watched the smoke rising from the end of his cigar ere he said—

"Re

right-handed hit from the shoulder full on the face of the other, calling to my mind Aubrey's schoolboy contests with the townsmen; the man dropped as though he had been shot, and Aubrey, thrusting the other from his path, laid his hands on the wall, and was in an instant on the other side. member your promise, S,” shouted he, and soon the sound of retreating footsteps told me that my quondam friend, the felon, the forger, had escaped the hands of tardy justice. I re-entered the supper room, where Jack lay bound hand and foot upon the floor with two policemen and Adele at his side. The ruffian said not a word till, seeing that the policemen's attention was somewhat drawn off by my re-appearance on the scene of action, he contrived, by a desperate effort, to release one of his hands, and, drawing from a side pocket a pistol (which had been incautiously suffered to remain there) he presented it at Adele, took deliberate aim, and fired, exclaiming, "Edmund Aubrey, you are well revenged." As the smoke cleared away I saw the two policemen gazing on poor Adele in stupid astonishment; she had fallen with a low moan upon the floor; but, fortunately, the bullet had only grazed her right temple, so that she was simply stunned. To throw myself upon the assassin Jack and secure his arm, was the work of an instant. I then volunteered to go for a surgeon, but the policemen would in nowise hear of any such thing. I should not stir from the house, said they. I called for Aubrey's valet, but he too had fled. The policeman Aubrey had knocked down in the garden went for a surgeon, who pronounced Adele's wound a mere contusion, and left instructions that she should go to bed and remain there till he returned. By this time Adele had recovered her senses, and in a short time was able to proceed upstairs to bed, but not before she had re-explained that I was in nowise implicated in Aubrey's guilt, and that I had only the day before come up from shire, to see him by his request. Reader, you can easily imagine my position was by no means enviable; the companion a few hours before of a felon, I was, in spite of Adele's assertion, looked upon as little better myself. I must go before a magistrate. I did; and the result was that I was instantly discharged, but bound over as a witness for the prosecution of Jack at the Central Criminal Court. That worthy was indicted for forgery and attempted murder, was found guilty, and after a long harangue from the Judge who tried the case, to which the hardened ruffian vouchsafed the sole remark that he wished he had taken better aim, was sentenced to transportation beyond the seas for the term of his natural life.

"I cry you mercy, ma chere, you are not your self to-night. This scene is fit only for penny theatres and injured innocence at a salary of ten shillings a-week. Let us have no more of this."

She looked at him for a moment with hate in her eye, and left the room. In a few minutes she returned, and, apologising to me for the scene cently enacted, remarked that the room was overheated, and that she would open the window (which opened down to the lawn). She threw up the sash, clapped her hands, and there stood on the lawn, preparing to enter the room, two men.

"What means this ?" asked Aubrey, now completely sobered, as Adele, pointing at him with outstretched finger, yelled rather than said

"Aye-there stands Edmund Aubrey, Arthur Marshall, Edmund Stanley, and a hundred aliases beside take him, if ye be men!"

[ocr errors]

:

Woman," said Aubrey, as he stood with arms folded, gazing in stern defiance on the policemen, 'you have betrayed me, but my time has not yet come." Then rushing with a bound to the door, he gained the hall, and was then confronted by a policeman, who was struggling with the amiable "Jack." Striking the officer one heavy blow on the face, he shouted, "Jack, save yourself!" and leaped down the door steps into the garden, when he met two more policemen. I ran to the door, and there saw Aubrey, by the light of the moon shining through the trees, make a feint at the head of one of his assailants, and then follow it up by a

Little more remains to be told of Adele de St. Croix. The second sum of money that Aubrey placed in my hands for her and Laura's benefit proving to be the proceeds of a forgery, was by me handed to the police. The first sum which he mentioned to me, during his brief nocturnal visit in —shire, I could not trace to his original

BROKEN MEMORIES.

possession thereof. I therefore executed his original intention of settling it on Laura, with a small portion reserved in favour of Adele. The latter, however, strenuously refused to touch one penny of the money of the man she had betrayed; so I handed over the entire sum to the clergyman who is Laura's guardian for her maintenance. Adele returned to France, and there, accidentally meeting the Lady Superior of the convent within whose walls she had spent her early girlhood as a novice, took the black veil, and for ever renounced the world for the silence of the cell, where she now wears out the remainder of her life.

I received a letter from Aubrey two years after this, telling me that he had availed himself of my introduction to my Californian friend, and was living in San Francisco-how, he never mentioned. He thanked me for all I had promised to do, and all I had done he doubted not; expressed little or no regret for his crimes, save their result, and ended the letter as usual-"Your affectionate friend, Edmund Aubrey." Of course I could never again communicate with such a man; nevertheless, I heard of him from my Californian friend, who said that Aubrey was sinking lower in the social scale day by day. I heard once more of him, and for the last time, from the same source. As I have not my friend's letter near me just now, I will give you the purport of it in my own words. I gathered from that letter that Aubrey, who had been living by gambling and all kinds of rascality in San Francisco, had made the acquaintance of some man as clever and as worthless as himself; that those two worthy colleagues had started a gambling-house on their own account; that his friend had cheated Aubrey of every shilling he possessed, and that Aubrey had deliberately, but unsuccessfully, attempted to assassinate his cidevant partner in the streets of San Francisco. A mob seized Aubrey, and soon "Judge Lynch! Judge Lynch!" was passed from mouth to mouth. California was more lawless, if possible, then than now; in those days "the wild justice of revenge" was manifested by frequent exhibitions of writhing malefactors, taken flagrante delicto, tried, and executed in a space of time inconceivably small to our old-fashioned English notions. In the midst of a mob clamouring for his blood stood Aubrey, undaunted to the last- as my friend told meglaring at his captors, like a tiger at bay. The san was slowly sinking behind the horizon-he was to die at sun-down, and he was now standing under a hastily erected gibbet, wasting his last

|

145

few precious moments in watching the clouds float overhead. Who knows what may have been that stern, defiant culprit's thoughts in that last terrible hour?

Perchance his mind wandered back over his wasted past, his golden opportunities, and perverted talents; the death of the girl he had wiled from home to be a mother and not a wife; of Adele St. Croix, of her murdered husband, of her love wasted on a life like his, of her bitter revenge; of his child, little Laura, who would in a few brief moments be fatherless.

tr

My friend pressed through the throng, and obtained permission to speak to the culprit from his self-constituted judges and executioners. Aubrey started when he saw the friend of his 'only friend" (as he once called me), and asked why he had come to him at such a time. "I wish," said he, "to know if I can fulfil any last request." "I have nothing," said Aubrey, "to request, but that you will take from my neck a miniature, and send it, when I am dead, to S. It is the picture of the mother of my child; the light hair at its back is hers, and the dark the child's-you will do this?" said he, as calmly as though he were talking on any indifferent subject. "I will," said my friend. Aubrey moved his fettered hands in his direction. He grasped them, saying in a low tone, "The Lord have mercy upon your soul !"

The sun sank down behind the horizon; the mob grew impatient; the signal was given, and a living soul fled from its tenement of clay, convulsed in the last fierce death-agony, swaying to and fro from a blackened beam projecting from a reeking tavern window. So Edmund Aubrey went to his great account, and was soon forgotten by the restless world-long ere the miniature entrusted to H's care reached me. But never can I forget the sad story of that poor cast-away; for there lie the letters of my "affectionate friend," the brilliant, bright-eyed schoolboy, the dissipated, witty youth, the lost man, the reckless rouè, the seducer, the duellist, the forger, the escaped felon, the banned emigrant, the keenwitted chevalier d'industrie, the would-be murderer of his partner in guilt, the defiant prisoner; and, lastly, the writhing corpse dangling in the wind from a gibbet, amidst the roar of the offscourings of the earth, assembled to mock his death agony in that alien land.

I sent the miniature to Laura, who wears it attached to a chain of her dead mother's hair round her neck, and we have told her that her father died abroad.

Ballads by Bon Gaultier's Grandsons

I.

A SONG OF LIFE.-No. I.

WHAT THE HEART OF THE TICKET-OF-LEAVE MAN SAID TO BARON MARTIN.

BY HENRY WANDSWORTH ODDFELLOW.

Worthy judge! thou wert mistaken,

Rascals oft escape the crank; Rascals oft preserve their bacon-

Nota bene, British Bank.

Money earn! So that thou earnest,

Baron Martin's words are fudge; Thief thou art-to "quod" returnestWas but spoken by a judge!

Trust no warning—if unpleasant;

Man has mouth, and mouth wants bread; Now's thy time-the thieving presentAgar's hand and Pierce's head. Lives like Redpath's but remind me

I might make my life sublime;
Bolt, and leave my dupes behind me,
Sign-posts on the sands of time;
Sign-posts that perchance another,

Bre he cross th' Australian main,
Some hard-up, ingenious brother,
Seeing may take heart again.
In life's field of social battle,

Grasp thy pen and not thy knife;
Fear not then bold X's rattle,
But-settle thousands on thy wife.
Agar-like, be always "doing,"
Reckless of thy after-fate,

Careless on thy road to ruin,

Though it lead to prison-gate.

II.

A SONG OF LIFE.-No. II.

WHAT THE HEART OF THE WORLDLING SAID TO THE YANKEE.

For as long as thou doest well unto thyself men shall speak well of thee.

We've heard of "Hiawatha" and fair" Evangeline,"
"The Psalm of Life" of Longfellow too long admired hath
been;

[blocks in formation]

Be honest to the letter-whate'er thy spirit be;
Make not a loan 'neath six per cent., with good security.
Be courteous in refusing-for then the world will own
Politeness in refusal-though a friend should ask the loan.

Eat, drink the best, and, should'st thou wed, bring up thy children well;

Send them to school-but, ere they go, thine own experience tell;

So, 'midst the tumult of Cockaigne, this town with poets Teach them the great life-lesson thy cold heart deemeth rife,

Hath sent a bard to sing to thee this earnest "Psalm of

Life."

true:

"Learn thou to do' thy neighbour, as thy neighbour thee will do !'"

« PreviousContinue »