ART AND LITERATURE

Wellington Independent, Volume I, Issue 17, 28 May 1845, Page 4

ART AND LITERATURE

THE DU EL LI S T

'Thou takest a life away— A holy, human life —the life God gave!"

(Concluded from our last.)

'As the time drew nigh for the celebration of his nuptials, my vigor increased. I ate but little, yet I seemed to subsist and thrive on thought, A vague idea of some desperate deed beeet my soul. What it was destined to be, I knew not; but I felt, inly, as if nerving myself for some dark resolve.

'How little do we know of our own hearts! During all this period I could not recognise in myself any hatred- to Rivers. I thought him the happiest of men ; I would have given worlds to have filled place in the atiections of May Morton ;• arid because she did, I thought / too loved him. Fatal delusion !

j1 received"an invitation to be present at their nuptials. , I went, but with a feeling such as I never before experienced. It was the elateiiess of a desperate mind—the elevation' which precedes despair. 'It was a lovely evening. The guests were met, the feast was spread. I heard the voice of the priest: I saw the bands of the betrothed united in eternal fidelity. The room swain to my vision ; the smiles that met me were repaid by glances of v.acancy or of fire ; and the winecup passed my lips untasted. A dance ensued. The music breathed through the scented apartments, like a heavenly epithalamium. Graceful forms were moving in fairy circles; the viol uttered its harmonies; all was brightness; all delight. 'How it was, I know not, that I approached the happy pair as they stood at the head of a cotillion. "Pleasant time, this, Mr. Rivers," said I, with a bitter smile, and in a hollow voice; "very pleasant—don't you think so 1" ' " Indeed I do; the happiest of my life. My sweet May beside me, and my own ! It is like a dream."

. ' " Very likely," I replied. " What a pity it is that so sweet a dream should not be enjoyed by somebody who deserved it." ' "What do you mean, Sir," said Rivers, the generous meaning of his eyes changing to a look of stern inquiry. ' "I mean,"l responded, with the abruptness of instant falsehood, which could not be contradicted from the grave, " that you told young Everts, of our class, that my Oration a'r the Junior Exhibition was written by yeii. He is dead now, and cannot say to you; as I do. that you are boih a liar and a coward. I speak it aloud; I am heard by all around me; and 1 leave you to demand of me that satisfaction current among all honourable men, which you will not foil to receive."

' Rivers was thunderstruck. He gazed at me with a look of mingled pity and surprise. At last he said :

' " Charles, now I know you. This is an angry envious trick of yours, and I see the motive. But it shall not avail you. You shall bo met as you desire; but not to-night. To-night, at least," he added, addressing his terrified bride, with looks of unutterable tenderness, "shall be devoted to rapture and to love. Sir, you will hear from me in the morning."JWhat were my feelings? Like Itlmriel in Eden, I stood, hideous and single, in the midst of a scene of loveliness. From bitter envy and unrequited passion, I had wantonly falsified the truth, and poisoned, the happiness of a lovely being, by embroiling in mortal combat the choseii companion of her bosom. ' I know not how I reached home. I slept as on a bed of fire. In the morning I received a note from Rivers, which I accepted without delay.

lhat afternoon we met. The grey walls of the University, where we had spent so many happy hours, shone through the distant grove, as we measured our deadly paces. The word was waiting to be given ; the lengthened solemn tread was made. Rivers held his pistol as if willing to use it on an enemy, but not on a mend. I levelled my aim at his heart. I see him still as he stood before me then ; the sunshine playing on his chesnut locks and manly forehead: the look of blended pity and consternation that his features wore. He stood with the sublimity of a good conscience beaming from his eye. As I stretched my mortal weapon toward his bosom, he shrunk not. He seemed to feel the moral advantage that he possessed over me. A whirl of giddy thoughts rushed through my mind, but I had no time for reflection. Some fallen angel whispered vengeance in my ear. What had I to avenge? What, but an innocent and mutual love ?

'I held my elevated pistol a shade higher. The word was spoken by the seconds; I drew back my lock, and heard the click of Rivers' simultaneous with mine. I took deliberate aim; the burning flash warmed over my lingers, the report rang through the grove. Rivers stepped towards me with extended hand ; his pistol exploded as it dropped from his nerveless grasp; he brought his open palm convulsively to his breast; he reeled; he fell. 'I rushed to my fallen friend. The crimson blood was gushing from his heart, over his bosom; the leaden hue of death was beneath his closing eyes: its pallor was on his cheek; its foam on his lips. "'Oh, May!" he uttered, with an agonizing groan; and then, as if nerving himself to an act of dreadful energy, he raised himself partially lip, and reaching* forth his hand, exclaimed: Charles, I forgive you I You have killed me without a cause; you will break the fondest heart that ever beat for man ; but— lforgive you /" 1 The blood now gathered, clotty and smoking, on His purple lips; the gurgling sound of dissolution was in his throat; and in one short moment,.hisi life current staining the greensward where he fell, he was among the dead. • * .

' I Tell no more. It is for me to describe the funeral; the grief that brought the widowed and distant mother of a widowed bride to the grave; the distress that made May Rivers a maniac ? Can I paint the burden of remorse which at last, and for a long, dark period, dethroned my reason? Shall I revert to that hour to-day, when, an inmate of that dreary place, I saw her, whom I once loved as never did a thing on earth, before me ; her fair locks and graceful vesiments torn with the struggles of phrensy; an occupant of the same mad mansion! No the pictureistoo dreadful, even for a mind that has conceived the deeds and suffered the horrors of mine. At uncertain moments, my brain seems reeling as if a weight of lead were placed upon its cell; ghastly forms rise up around me ; hands that would incarnadine the ocean, beckon to me from the dark walls of Evening, and funeral murmers, like the wul-wullehs of the East, come booming from afar. Wo is me! lam smitten of God !"

Here the manuscript of the maniac ended. It was a melancholy heart, a few months after its perusal, that I saw, on a second visit to the Asylum, in the green cemetry of the institution, the graves of the duelist and his hapless victim. The verdant mantle of Spring decked the earth where they slept, with rich fertility. His monument was of dark gloomy marble; hut the white, simple stone, which shone above the tomb of fair May Rivers, stood like an emblem of her stainless life and her glorified soul. She had gone from earth, like the breath of the Springtime, or the bloom from its'fiowers. The memorial that rose above her slumbers was shaped like an urn. On one side was sculpured ' May' —on the other, ' Hope.' What fitter device could have been made? Lei the shaft of the cenotaph be lifted for the mind that has gone to its beautitude, not for the lost grace that is wasting, the lip that is dumb, or the brow that is dim ! In the pale dominions of the dead,' that have fallen asleep upon the bosom of the earth,' never again to rise on the mortal vision, to whom should we build? 'To Beauty 1 Ah, no! She forgets The charms that she weilded before: Nor knows the foul worm, that he frets The skin that but yesterday fools could adore, For the smoothness it held, or the tints which it wore. THE END.