The Unknown.

Clutha Leader, Volume XVI, Issue 832, 27 June 1890, Page 7

The Unknown.

/. By Professor. Wilson.

-„ • : (Concluded.) > There resided in the neighborhood - in which Christopher had been brought ; up one George Wilkinson, who had a - -daughter named Jessie. Christopher and Jessie were schoolmates together ; and when the other children ran halooing from the school, they walked together, whispering, smiling at each other. It was strange that affection should have sprung up in such young hearts. But it was so. Christopher became the one absorbing, thought upon which the mind of Jessie dwelt ; and she became the day- ~ dream of his being. She was compar- . l atively a child when he left the house of his foster-father — so was he ; yet, „ though they became thus early parted, ', they forgot not each other. Young as she was, Jessie Wilkinson lay on her , bed and wept for the sake of poor Christopher. They indeed might be ; said to be but the tears of a child ; yet they were tears which we can shed but once. Young as Jessie was, Christopher became the dream of her [' future existence. She remembered the ; happy days that they had passed together, when the hawthorn was in ; blossom or the bean was in the bloom, when they loitered together, side by I side, and the air was pregnant with I fragrance, while his hand would touch hers, and he would say. ' Jessie !' and iook in her face and wonder what he meant to havo said ; and she would ■; answer him. ' Christopher !' Still did those days haunt the recollection of the simple girl ; and as she grew in years Tand stature, his remembrance became \- the more entwined around her heart k When she had reached the age of ', "womanhood, other wooers offered her ; their hand ; but she thought of the boy that had first loved her ; and to him her memory clung, as the evening ,-dawn falleth on the hills. Her father was but a poor man ; and when many perceived the liking which Christopher May, the adopted son and supposed heir of the rich Peter Thornton, enter- . tamed for her, they said that nothing, ■ or at least no good, would proceed from their acquaintance. But they who so said did not truly judge of tho heart of Jessie. She was one of those who can love but once, and that once must be for ever. In their early childhood, Christopher had become a part of her earliest affection, and she now found it impossible to forget him, or shake his remembrance from her bosom. It was certainly a girl's love, and elderly 'people will laugh at it; but why should they langh 1 They were the feelings which they once cherished — the feelings without which they believed they could not exist — and wherefore could they blame poor Jessie for remembering what they had forgot 1 Many years passed, and no one heard of Christopher. Even Peter Thornton knew nothing of where he was, or what had become of him — the child of his adoption was lost to him. He heard his neighbors upbraid him with having treated the boy with cruelty ; and Peter's heart was troubled. He reflected upon his wife for her conduct towards che orphan, and it gave rise to bickerings between them. Hitherto we have spoken of the unknown orphan — we must now speak of an unknown soldier. At the battle of Salamanca, amongst the men who there distinguished themselves, there was a young serjeant whose feats of valor attracted the notice of his superiors. Where the battle raged fiercest, there were the effects of his arm made visible; his impetuosity over all his enemies had attracted the notice of his superior officers. But, in the moment of victory, when the streets were lined with dead, the young hero fell, covered with bayonet wounds. A field-officer, who had been an observer of his conduct, ordered a party of his men to attempt his rescue. The life of the young hero was long despaired of; and when he recovered, several \ officers, in admiration of his courage, : agreed to present him with a sword. It ! was beautifully ornamented, and bore I the inscription — I c Presented to Christopher May, aerie jeant in the — — regiment of infantry, I "by several officers who were witnesses ! of the heroism he displayed at the I battle of Salamanca.' ; The sword was presented to him at j the head of his regiment, and the • officer who placed it in his hand addressed him, saying, ' Young soldier, f the gallant hearing which you exhibited at Salamanca has excited the admiration of all who beheld it. The officers of yourown regiment, therefore, and others, have deemed it their duty to present '■ : you with this sword, as a reward of ; merit, and a testimony of the admiration, with which your heroism has inspired them. I have now the gratitica- : tiori of placing it in the hands of a brave man. Take it, and if yourparents : yetv live, : it will be a trophy of which they will be proud, and which your posterity will exhibit with admiration.' ' My, parents,' said the young soldier \ withasigh:; 'alas, sir, I never knew \ one whom- 1 could call by the endearing name of father or mother. I am an orphan— an unknown one. I believe I a^ not even an Englishman, but a native of the land for the freedom of which we now fight/

* You a Spaniardl' said the officer, with surprise ; 4it is impossible — neither your name nor your features bespeak you to belong to this nation. But you say that you never knew your parents — what know you of your history f * Little, indeed, 5 he replied ; and as he spoke the officers gathered around him and he continued — ' I have been told that in the month of May, four-and-tweuty y^ears ago, the dead body of a woman was found in a farm yard, about 15 miles north of Newcastle. She was dressed in Spanish costume, and a child of about three years of age hung weeping on her bosom. I was that child ; and I have been told that the few words I could then lisp were Spanish. The kind-hearted wife of the honest Northumbrian who found me brought me up as her own child ; and, while she lived, I might almost have said I had a mother. But at her death I found, indeed, that I had neither parent, kindred, nor country, but that I. was in truth what some called me in derision, 'The Unknown.' I entered the army, and have fought in defence of the land to which I believe I belong. This only do I know of my history, or of who or what I am.' While the young sergeant spoke, every eye was bent upon him interestedly ; but there was one who was moved even to tears. He was an officer of middle age, named Major Ferguson. He approached the gallant youth, he gazed earnestly in his face. ' You say that you wei'e about three years old,' he said, ' when you were found clinging to the breast of your mother ; have you no remembrance of her — no recollection of the name by which you were then called V 1 None, none !' answered the other. ' I sometimes fancy that, as the vague remembrance of a dream, I recollect clinging around mother's neck, and kissing her cold lips ; but whether it indeed be remembrance, or merely tho tale that has been often told me, I am uncertain. I often imagine that her beautiful features yet live in my memory, though with the indistinctness of an ethereal being — like a vapor that is dying" away on the far horizon ; and I am "uncertain, also, whether the fair vision that haunts me be indeed a dim remembrance of what my mother was, or a creation of my brain.' • The interest of the scene was heightened by the resemblance which Major Ferguson and the young serjeant bore to each other. All observed it — ■ all expressed their surprise- — and the major, in his turn, began his tale. ' Your features young man,' said he, 'and your story, have drawn tears to Hie eyes of an old soldier. Thirty years ago I was in this counti'y, and became an inmate in the house of a rich merchant in. Madrid. His name was Valdez, and he had an only daughter called Maria. When I first beheld her she was about 19, and a being more beautiful I had never seen — I have not seen. Affection sprang up between us ; for it was impossible to look on her and not love. Her father, though heat first expi'essed some opposition to our wishes on the ground of my being a Protestant, at length gave his consent, and Maria became my wife. For several months our happiness was as a dream — as a summer sky where there is no cloud. But our days of felicity were of short continuance. We have all heard of the revengeful disposition of the Spanish people, and it was our lot to be its victims. I have said that it was impossible to look upon the face of Maria and not love ; and many of the grandees and wealthiest citizens of Madrid sought her hand. Amongst the former was a nephew of an Inquisitor. He vowed to have his revenge — and he has had it. In the dead of night a band of ruffians burst into the bedchamber of Maria's father, and dragged him to the dungeons of the Inquisition. For several weeks and we could learn nothing of what had become of him ; but his property was seized and confiscated as though, he had been a common felon. My wife was then the mother of an infant son, and I endeavored to effect our concealment until an opportunity of escaping to England might be found. We had approached within a hundred yards of the vessel, when a band of armed men rushed upon us; They overpowered me ; and while one party bore away my wife and child, others dragged mo into a carriage, one holding a pistol to my breast, while another tied a bandage over my eyes. They continued to drive with furious rapidity for about six hours, when I was torn from the carriage and dragged between the ruffians through numerous winding , passages. I heard the grating of locks and the creaking of bolts as they proceeded. Door succeeded door, groaning on their unwilling hinges, as they ascended stairs, and descended others, in an interminable labyrinth. Still the men who hurried me onward maintained a sullen silence ; and no sound was heard save the clashing of prison doors and the sepulchral echo of their footsteps ringing through the surrounding dungeons. They at length stopped. A cord suspended from a block in the roof was fastened round my waist ; and, when one, turning a sort of windlass, which communicated -with the other end of the cord, raised me several feet from the ground, his companion drew a knife and cut asunder the fastenings that bound my arms. While one, holding the handle of the machine, kept me hanging in the air 3 other two applied a

key to a large square stone in the floor, which, aided by a spring, they, with some difficulty, raised, and revealed a yawning opening to a dungeon, yet deeper and more dismal than that which formed its entrance. The moment my hands were at liberty, I tore the bandage from my eyes, and perceiving, through the aid of a dim lamp that flickered in a corner of the vault, the horror of my situation, I struggled in desperation. But my threatenings and my groans were answered only by their hollow echoes, or the more dismal laughter of my assassins. ' Down — down !' vociferated both voices to their companion as the stone was raised ; and in a moment I was plunged into the dark mouth of the dungeon. I uttered a cry of agony louder and longer than the rest ; and, as my body sunk into the abyss, I clutched its edge in despair. One of the ruffians sprang forward, and, blaspheming as he raised his 'foot, dashed his iron heels upon my fingers. Mine was the grasp jaf a dying man ; and, thrusting forward my right hand, I seized the ankle of the monster, who attempted to kick: me in the face. With my left I strengthened my hold, and my body plunging downward with the movement, dragged after me the wretch, who, uttering a piercing shriek as his head dashed on the brink of the^ fearful dungeon, escaped instantly from my grasp, and with an imprecation on his tongue, he was plunged headlong into darkness many fathoms deep. Startled by the cry of his comrade, the other sprang from the machine by which he was lowering me into the vault, and T in consequence descended with the violence of a stone driven from a strong arm. But before I reached the bottom the cord by which I hung was expended, and I swung in torture between the sides of the dungeon. In this state of agony I remained for several minutes, till one of the miscreants cutting the rope, I fell with my face upon the bloody and mangled body of their accomplice ; and the huge stone was i placed over us, enveloping both in darkness, solid and substantial as the pit of wrath itself.

' A paralysing feeling of horror and surprise, and the violence with which I fell upon the mangled body of my victim, for a time deprived me of all consciousness of my situation ; nor was it until the convulsive groans of the bleeding wretch beneath me recalled me in some measure to a sense of other miseries than my own, that a remembrance of the past, and a feeling of the' present, opened upon my mind like the confused te 'ror of a dismal dream. 1 rose slowly to my feet, and, disengaging myself from the rope by which I was suspended into the vault, endeavored to look around the walls of my prisonhouse — but all was dark as the grave. Recollecting the part sustained in seizing me by the wounded man, who still groaned and writhed at my feet, I darted fiercely upon him, and hurling him from the ground, exclaimed, " Villain ! — tell me or die ! — where am 1 1 or by whom am I brought Here V A loud, long yell of terror, accompanied by violent and despairing struggle?, like a wild beast tearing from the paws of a lion, was the only answer returned by the miserable being. And as the piteous and heart-piercing yell rang round the cavern, and its echoes, multiplying in darkness, at length died away, leaving silence more dolorous than ourselves, I felt as a man from the midst of a marriage-feast suddenly thrust into the cells of Bedlam ; where, instead of the music of the harp and the lute, was the shriek and the clanking chains of insanity ; for bridal ornaments,' the madman's straw ; and for the gay dance, the convulsions of the maniac, and the sorrowful gestures of idiocy. Every feeling of indignation passed away — my blood grew cold — the skin moved upon my flesh — I again laid the wretched man on the damp earth, and fearfully groped to the opposite side of the dungeon.

* As I moved around, feeling through the dense darkness of my prison, I found it a vast square, its sides composed merely of the rude strata of earth or rock ; and measuring nearly six times the length of my extended arms. As often as I moved bones seemed to crackle beneath my feet ; and a noise, like the falling of armor and the sounding of steel, accompanied the crumbling fragments. Once I stooped to ascertain the cause, and raising a heavy body, a part of it fell with a loud, hollow crash among my feet, leaving the lighter portion in my hands. It was a round bony substance, covered, and partly filled, with damp, cold dust. I was neither superstitious nor a coward ; but, as I drew my hand around it, my body quivered, the hair upon my head moved, and my heart felt heavy. It was the form of a human skull. The damp dust had once been the temple of a living soul. My fingers entered the sockets of the eyes — the teeth fell in my hands— and the still fresh and dewy hair twined around it. I shuddered— it fell from my grasp— the chill of death passed over me. The horrid conviction that I was- immured in a living grave absorbed every other feeling ; and smiting my brow in horror I threw myself with a groan amidst the dead of other years. ' I again sprang to my feet with the undetermined and confused wildness of despair. The mournful howlings of the assassin continued to render the horrid sepulchre still more horrible,

and gave to its darkness a deeper ghostliness. Dead to every emotion of sympathy, stricken with dismal realities, and more . terrible imaginations, yet burning for revenge, directed, by the bowlings of the miserable man, and hesitating to distinguish between them and their incessant echoes, stretching my hands before me, I again approached him, to extort a confession of

the "cause and" place of my imprisonment, or rather living burial. Vainly I raised hipi from the ground —

threatening, soothing, and expostulation were alike unavailing. On hearing

my voice, the miserable being shrieked with redoubled bitterness, plunged furiously, and gnashed his teeth, fastening them;, in the extremity of his frenzy, in his own flesh. His fierce agony recalled to my bosom an emotion of pity ; and, for a moment, forgetful of my own injuries and condition, I thought only of relieving his suffering ; but my,presence seemed to add new madness to his tortures ; and- he tore himself from my hold with the' lamentable yells of a tormented mastiff, ■ and the strength of a giant who in the last throe of expiring nature, grapples wich his eonquerer. He reeled wildly a few paces, and fell, with a crash, upon the earth.

'Slowly and dismally the hours moved on, with no sound to measure their progress, save the audible beating of my own heart, and the death-like howling moan of my companion. As I leaned against the wall, counting these dismal divisions of time, which appeared thus fearfully to mete out the duration of my existence, through the dark blackness, whose weight had become oppressivs to my eyeballs, 1 beheld, far above me, on the opposite wall, a faint shadow, like the ghost of light, streaking its side, but so indistinct and imperfect, I knew not whether it was fancy or reality. With the earnestness of death, my eyes remained fixed on the 'gloomy light;' and it throw upon my bosom a 'hope dim as itself. Again I doubted its existence — deemed it a creation of my brain ; and groping along the damp floor, where my hand seemed passing over the ribs of a skeleton, I threw a loose fragment in the air, towards the point from whence the doubted glimmering proceeded ; and pei'ceived, for a moment as it fell, the shadow of a substance. Then, springing forward to the spot I gasped to en halo, with its feeble ray, one breath that was not agony.

' Thirst burned my lips, and r to cool them, they were pressed against the damp walls of the prison ; but my tongue was still dry — my throat parched — and hunger began to prey upon me. While thus suffering, a faint light streamed from a narrow opening in the root' of the vault. Slowly a feeble lamp was lowered through the aperture, and descended within two or three feet of my head. A small basket containing a portion of bread and a pitcher of water, suspended by a cord, was let down into the vault. I seized the pitcher as I would have rushed upon liberty ; and raising it to my lips, as the pure grateful beverage allayed the fever of my thirst, I shed a 'solitary tear, and, in the midst of my misery, that tear was a tear of joy — like the morning star gilding the horizon, when the surrounding heavens are wrapped in tempest. With it the feelings of a Christian and a man met in my bosom ; and bending over my fellow sufferer, I applied the water to his lips. The poor wretch devoured the draught to its lost drop with greediness. ' The presence and the unceasing groans of my companion — yea, the dungeon and darkness themselves — were forgotten in the one deadening and bitter idea, that my wife and child were also captives, and in the power of ruffians. If any other thought was indulged in for a moment, it was longing for liberty, that I might fly to their rescue — and it was then only that I became again sensible of captivity ; and my eyes once more sought the dubious gleam that stretched fitfully across the wall, becoming more evident to perception as I became inured to the surrounding blackness. Plope bui'ned and brightened, as 1 traced the source of its dreamy shadows, and from thence weaved plans of escape, which, in the calculation of fancy, were already as performed, though, before reason and common possibilities, they would have perished as the dewy nets that, with the damps of an autumnal morning, overspread the hawthorn with their spangled lacework, and, before the rising sunbeam, shrink into nothing.

' But gradually my grief and despair subsided, and gave place to the cheering influence of hope, and the resolution o£ attempting my escape ; and I rose to eat the bread and drink the water of captivity, to strengthen me for the task. For many hours the presence of my companion had been forgotten ; he still continued to howl, as one whom the horrors of an accusing conscience were withholding from the grasp of death ; and. I, roused from the reverie of my feelings and projects;at the sound of his sufferings, hastened' to apply water and morsels of bread to the lips of my perishing fellow-prisoner, for bread and water had been lowered into the vault.

' In order to carry ray plan of escape into effect, for the first time, aided by the "lamp that was suspended over me, I gazed inquisitively, and with a feel-

ing of dismay, around the Golgotha in which I was immured. There lay my hideous companion, the foam of pain and insanity gurgling from his mouth ; beside him the skeleton of a mailed warrior, and around, the uncoffined bones of four others^ partly covered with their armour, and

' The brands yet rusted in their bony hauds.'

4 Although prepared- for such a scone I placed my hands before my eyes, shuddering at the thought of becoming as one of those — of being their companion while I lived — of lying down by the side of a skeleton to die ! The horror of the idea fired anew my resolution, and added more than human strength to my arm. I again, eagerly sought the direction of the doubtful gleam, which formerly filled me with hope ; and was convinced that from thence an opening might be effected, if not to perfect liberty, to a sight of the blessed light of heaven, where freedom, T dreaded not,' would easily be found. Filled with determination, which ho obstacle could impede, I took one of the swords, which had lam-b y; the side of its owner untouched for ages, and with this instrument commenced the laborious and seemingly impossible task of cutting out a flight of steps in the rude wall, and thereby gaining the invisible aperture from which something like light was seen to emanate. The ray proceeded from an extreme angle of the dungeon, and apparently at its utmost height. The materials on which I had to work were chiefly a hard granite rock, and other lighter but scarce more manageable strata.

' Several anxious and miserable weeks thus passed in sluggish succession. Half of my task was accomplished ; and hope, with impatience, looked forward to its completion. I still divided my scanty meals with my companion, who, although recovered from the bruises occasioned by his fall, was become more horrible and fiendlike than before. As his body resumed its functions, his mind became the terrible imaginings of a guilty conscience. He had either lost, or forgotten, the power of walking upright, and prowled, howling round the dungeon, on his hands and feet ; while his dark bushy board and revolting aspect gave him more the manner and appearance of a wild beast than a human being.

'Our portion of food being barely sufficient fcr the sustenance of one, hunger had long been added to the list of our sufferings ; but particularly to those of the maniac. And, with the cunning peculiar to such unfortunates, he watched the return of the basket, which was daily lowered with provisions, and frequently before I — who, absorbed in the completion of my task, forgot or heeded not my jailer's being within hearing — could descend to the ground, he would grasp the basket, swallow off the water at a draught, and hurry with the broad to a corner of a dungeon ; thus leaving me without food for the next 24 hours.

'It was at the period when I had half completed my object, that my companion, springing, aa was his wont, upon the basket, before I could approach to withhold him, succeeded hi draining off the contents of a goblet, in which a few drops of a dark-colored liquid still remained ; and the pitcher of water was untouched! The wretched maniac had swallowed the draught but a few minutes, when, rolling himself together, his screams and contortions became more frightful than before, and increased in virulence for an hour. He lay motionless a few seconds, gasping for breath ; then, springing suddenly to his feet, he gazed wistfully above and around him, with a look of extreme agony, and exclaiming, " Heaven help me 1" he rushed fiercely towards the wall in the opposite direction to where I was attempting to effect my escape, gave one furious pull at what appeared the solid rock, and, with a groan, fell back, and expired.

'.When the horror occasioned by his death in some degree abated, the singularity of the manner in which he tore at the, wall of the dungeon, fixed my and, with almost frantic joy,' I perceived that a portion of the hitherto, thought, impenetrable rock, had yielded several inches to his dying grasp. I hastily removod the body, and pulling eagerly at the unloosed fragment, it fell upon the ground, a rough unhewn lump of granite, leaving an opening of about two feet square in the rude rocky wall, from which it was so cut, as to seem to feeling and almost appearance a solid part of it.

*My task was now abandoned. The gleam of light, which for weeks was to me an object of such intense interest, proceeded from a mere hairbreadth cleft in the rock. Taking up a sword which lay upon the ground, I drew my body into the aperture formed by the removal of the piece of rock ; and creeping slowly on my hands and knees, groping with the weapon before me, I at length found the windiug and dismal passage sufficiently lofty to permit me to stand erect. I seemed enveloped in an interminable cavern,

aapw opening into spacious chambers, clothed with crystal ; again losing itself in low passages, or narrow chinks of the rock, and suddenly terminating in a slippery precipice,, beneath which gurgling waters were heard to run. Hours and hours passed; still I was groping onward ; when I suddenly found my hopes cutoff, by. the interposition of a precipice. I probed fear-

fully forward with the sword, but all was an unsubstantial void ; I drew it on each side, and then it mot but the solid walls. I knelt, and reached down the sword to the length of my arm, but . it touched nothing.. In agony, I dropped the weapon, by its sound to ascertain the depth ; and, delighted, found it did not- exceed eight or ten feet. I cautiously slid down, and groping around, again placed ray hand upou the sword. Though my heart occasionally sank within me, yet the overcoming of each difficulty lent its inspiring aid to overcome its successor. Often every hope appeared extinct. Now I ascended, or again descended the dropping and crystalled rocks ; now crept into openings, which suddenly terminated, and turning again, anxiously listened to the sound of the rippling water as my only guide. Often, in spite of every precaution, I was stunned with a blow from the abrupt lowness of the roof, or suddenly plunged to the arms in the numerous pools, whose waters had been dark from their birth. ' Language cannot convey an idea of the accumulating horrors of my situa tion. Struggling with suffocation, with a feeling more awful than terror, and with despair, the agony of darkness must be experienced to be imagined. 4 Still I moved on ; and suddenly, when ready to sink, wearied, fainting, hopeless, the glorious light of day streamed upon my sight. I bounded forward with a wild shout; but the magnificent sun, bursting from the eastern heavens, blinded my unaccustomed gaze. 1 I again found that T was free ; but my wife, my child, where were they ? It was many years before I learned that the nephew of the inquisitor, who had sought her hand, having died, she regained her liberty, and fled with our infant son to Scotland, to seek the home of her lost husband, Since then I have never heard of thorn again.' When the major had thus concluded his narrative, ' Here,' said Christopher, ' are two rings which were taken from the fingers of my mother — both bear inscriptions.' The old officer gazed upon them. ' They were her's — my Maria's !' he exclaimed ; ' I myself placed them upon her fingers. Son of my Maria, thou art mine !' The major purchased a commission for his long-lost son ; and when peace was proclaimed throughout Europe, they returned to Northumberland together, where Christopher gave his sword as a memorial to his fosterfather, Peter Thornton, and his hand to Jessie Wilkinson. The End.