This eBook was produced by David Widger
By Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Surely the man that plotteth ill against his
neighbor perpetrateth ill against himself,
and the evil design is most evil to him that
deviseth it.
—Hesiod
JAM veniet virgo, jam dicetur Hymenaeus,
Hymen, O Hymenae! Hymen ades, O Hymenae!
CATULLUS: Carmen Nuptiale.
It was now the morning in which Eugene Aram was to be married to MadelineLester. The student's house had been set in order for the arrival of thebride; and though it was yet early morn, two old women, whom his domestic(now not the only one, for a buxom lass of eighteen had been transplantedfrom Lester's household to meet the additional cares that the change ofcircumstances brought to Aram's) had invited to assist her in arrangingwhat was already arranged, were bustling about the lower apartments andmaking matters, as they call it, "tidy."
"Them flowers look but poor things, after all," muttered an old crone,whom our readers will recognize as Dame Darkmans, placing a bowl ofexotics on the table. "They does not look nigh so cheerful as them asgrows in the open air."
"Tush! Goody Darkmans," said the second gossip. "They be much prettierand finer, to my mind; and so said Miss Nelly when she plucked them lastnight and sent me down with them. They says there is not a blade o' grassthat the master does not know. He must be a good man to love the thingsof the field so."
"Ho!" said Dame Darkmans, "ho! When Joe Wrench was hanged for shootingthe lord's keeper, and he mounted the scaffold wid a nosegay in his hand,he said, in a peevish voice, says he: 'Why does not they give me atarnation? I always loved them sort o' flowers,—I wore them when Iwent a courting Bess Lucas,—an' I would like to die with one in myhand!' So a man may like flowers, and be but a hempen dog after all!"
"Now don't you, Goody; be still, can't you? What a tale for a marriageday!"
"Tally vally!" returned the grim hag, "many a blessing carries a cursein its arms, as the new moon carries the old. This won't be one of yourhappy weddings, I tell ye."
"And why d' ye say that?"
"Did you ever see a man with a look like that make a happy husband? No,no! Can ye fancy the merry laugh o' childer in this house, or a babe onthe father's knee, or the happy, still smile on the mother's winsomeface, some few years hence? No, Madge! the devil has set his black clawon the man's brow."
"Hush, hush, Goody Darkmans; he may hear o' ye!" said the second gossip,who, having now done all that remained to do, had seated herself down bythe window, while the more ominous crone, leaning over Aram's oak chair,uttered from thence her sibyl bodings.
"No," replied Mother Darkmans, "I seed him go out an hour agone, when thesun was just on the rise; and I said, when I seed him stroam into thewood yonder, and the ould leaves splashed in the damp under his feet, andhis hat was aboon his brows, and his lips went so,—I said, says I, 't isnot the man that will make a hearth bright th