Tales from Blackwood Volume Vii Part 2

As we did so, three soldiers, who it afterwards appeared had witnessed, from their concealment amongst the trees, the whole of the proceedings, emerged from the shelter of the foliage, and walked across one end of the open s.p.a.ce where the duel had taken place, casting curious and astonished glances in our direction. They had not yet disappeared, when De Berg, whom we had raised into a sitting posture, caught sight of them. He started, and uttered an exclamation of vexation, then looked at Oakley, who had left his ground and stood near to the wounded man.

"Do you see that?" said De Berg, hurriedly, wincing as he spoke, under the hands of the surgeon, who by this time had cut off boot and trousers, and was manipulating the damaged limb.

The soldiers were now again lost to view in the thick wood. It occurred to me that two of them wore dragoon uniforms.

Oakley bowed his head a.s.sentingly.

"You had better be off, and instantly," said the lieutenant. "Go to England or Germany. You have leave for a week. I will procure you a prolongation; but be off at once, and get away from Paris. Those fellows have recognised us, and will not be prevented talking."

He spoke in broken sentences, and with visible effort, for the surgeon was all the while poking and probing at the leg in a most uncomfortable manner, and De Berg was pale from pain and loss of blood. Oakley looked on with an expression of regret, and showed no disposition to the hasty flight recommended him.

"Well, doctor," said the officer, with a painful smile, "my dancing is spoilt, eh?"

"_Bagatelle!_" replied the man of lancets. "Clean fracture, neat wound, well as ever in a month. Your blood's too hot, _mon lieutenant_; you'll be all the better for losing a little of it."

"There, there," said De Berg kindly to Oakley, "no harm done, you see--to me at least. I should be sorry that any ensued to you. Away with you at once. Take him away, sir," he added to me; "he risks his life by this delay."

I took Oakley's arm, and led him unresistingly away. He was deep in thought, and scarcely replied to one or two observations I addressed to him whilst walking out of the wood. Our cabriolet was waiting; we got in, and took the road to Paris. "I hope you intend following M. de Berg's advice," said I, "and leaving the country for a while, until you are certain this affair does not become known. He evidently fears its getting wind through those soldiers."

"And he is right," said Oakley. "Two of them are of my squadron, and of those two, one is a bad character whom I have frequently had to punish. He will a.s.suredly not lose this opportunity of revenge."

"Then you must be off at once to England. My pa.s.sport is already countersigned, and you can have it. There is not much similarity in our age and appearance, but that will never be noticed."

"A thousand thanks. But I think I shall remain in Paris."

"And be brought to a court-martial? To what punishment are you liable?"

"Death, according to the letter of the law. The French articles of war are none of the mildest. But, under the circ.u.mstances, I daresay I should get off with a few years' imprisonment, followed, perhaps, by serving in a condemned regiment."

"A pleasant alternative, indeed," said I.

"I am no way anxious to incur it," replied Oakley; "but, in fact, I am as safe in Paris as anywhere, at least for a day or two; and possibly M. de Berg may find means of securing the silence of the witnesses. At any rate, it will be time enough to-morrow or the next day to make a run of it. I cannot go upon the instant. There is one person I must see or communicate with before I leave."

I guessed whom he meant, and saw, from his manner, he was resolved to remain, so used no farther arguments to dissuade him. Before entering Paris, we dismissed our vehicle and separated; he betook himself to a small retired lodging, where he had taken up his quarters since the previous evening, and I went home to resume my preparations for departure. I remained in-doors till after dinner, and then repaired to a well-known coffee-house, frequented chiefly by military men. As I had feared, the strange duel between Victor de Berg and a sergeant of his regiment was already the talk of the town. It had been immediately reported by the soldiers who had seen it; M. de Berg was under close arrest, and the police were diligently seeking his antagonist. I left the cafe, jumped into a cabriolet, and made all speed to Oakley's lodging. He was out. I went again, as late as eleven o'clock, but still he was absent; and I was obliged to content myself with leaving a note, containing a word of caution and advice, which I prudently abstained from signing. I then went home and to bed, not a little uneasy about him. The next morning I breakfasted at the coffee-house, in order to get the news; and the first thing I heard was intelligence of Oakley's capture. He had been taken the previous evening, in the neighbourhood of the colonel's house, around which he doubtless hovered in hopes to obtain sight or speech of Bertha.

Few courts-martial ever excited a stronger interest in the French military world than those held upon Lieutenant Victor de Berg and the _marechal des logis_ Francis Oakley. The case was one almost unparalleled in the annals of military offences. A duel between an officer and a sergeant was a thing previously unheard of; and the mystery in which its causes were enveloped aggravated the universal curiosity and excitement. The offenders resolutely refused to throw light upon the subject; it had been vainly endeavoured to ascertain their seconds; the surgeon who attended on the ground had been sought for equally in vain; after placing the first dressings he had disappeared, and another had been summoned to the sufferer's bedside.

The wound proved of little importance, and, with the a.s.sistance of crutches, De Berg was soon able to get out. Upon their trials, he and Oakley persisted in the same system of defence. When off duty, they said, they had met in society, and had had a dispute on a subject unconnected with the service; the result had been an agreement to settle their difference with pistols. Oakley refused to state from whom the challenge proceeded; but Lieutenant de Berg proclaimed himself the aggressor, and, aware that the sentence would weigh far more heavily on Oakley than on himself, generously a.s.sumed a large share of blame. As to the cause of quarrel, names of the seconds, and all other particulars, both culprits maintained a determined silence, which no endeavours of friends or judges could induce them to break.

Colonel de Bellecha.s.se and various other officers visited Oakley in his prison, and did their utmost to penetrate the mystery. Their high opinion both of him and De Berg, convinced them there was something very extraordinary and unusual at the bottom of the business, and that its disclosure would tell favourably for the prisoners. But nothing could be got out of the obstinate duellists, who called no witnesses, except to character. Of these a host attended, for both Oakley and De Berg; and nothing could be stronger than the laudatory testimonials given them by their superiors and comrades. These, doubtless, had weighed with the court, for its sentence was considered very lenient.

Oakley was condemned to five years' imprisonment, for attempting the life of his officer; De Berg was reprimanded for his forgetfulness of discipline, in provoking or consenting to a personal encounter with a subordinate, was removed from his regiment and placed in non-activity, which, under the circ.u.mstances, was equivalent to dismissal from the service, less the disgrace.

I remained in Paris till the sentence of the court was known. Although by no means desirous to be brought forward in the business, I was willing to waive my repugnance, if by so doing I could benefit Oakley.

With some difficulty I obtained access to him, begged him to prescribe a course for my adoption, and frankly to tell me if my evidence could be of service. He a.s.sured me it could not; there was no question of the fairness of the duel, and the sole crime was in the breach of military discipline. This crime my testimony could in no way palliate.

He requested me to see M. de Berg, and to tell him that, to avoid the possibility of the cause of the duel becoming known, he should refuse to answer questions, plead guilty to the charge, and state, as sole extenuation, that the quarrel occurred off duty, and had no connection with military matters. This commission I duly executed. Another which he intrusted to me I found greater difficulty in performing. It was to procure information concerning Bertha de Bellecha.s.se. After some unsuccessful attempts, I at last ascertained that she had been for some days confined to her bed by indisposition. This was sad news for Oakley, and I was loth to convey them to him, but I had promised him the exact truth. Fortunately I was able to tell him at the same time that the young lady's illness was not of a dangerous character, although the species of nervous languor which had suddenly and unaccountably seized her, caused great alarm to her parents, and especially to the colonel, who idolised his only child. Oakley was sadly depressed on learning the effect upon Bertha of his imprisonment and dangerous position, and made me promise to keep him informed of the variations in her state of health. This I did, but the bulletins were not of a very satisfactory nature, and in Oakley's pale and haggard countenance upon the day of trial, attributed by the spectators to uneasiness about his own fate, I read the painful and wearing anxiety the illness of his mistress occasioned him.

The sentence was no sooner published, than every effort was made to procure Oakley's pardon, or, failing that, a commutation of his punishment. Colonel de Bellecha.s.se used all the interest he could command; Monsieur de Berg set his friends to work; and I, on my part, did everything in my power to obtain mercy for the unfortunate young man. All our endeavours were fruitless. The minister of war refused to listen to the applications by which he was besieged. In a military view, the crime was flagrant, subversive of discipline, and especially dangerous as a precedent in an army where promotion from the ranks continually placed between men, originally from the same cla.s.s of society and long comrades and equals, the purely conventional barrier of the epaulet. The court-martial, taking into consideration the peculiar character of the offence, had avoided the infliction of an ignominious punishment. Oakley was not sentenced to the _boulet_, or to be herded with common malefactors; his doom was to simple imprisonment. And that doom the authorities refused to mitigate.

Some days had elapsed since Oakley's condemnation. Returning weary and dispirited from a final attempt to interest an influential personage in his behalf, I was startled by a smart tap upon the shoulder, and looking round, beheld the shrewd, good-humoured countenance of Mr Anthony Scrivington, a worthy man and excellent lawyer, who had long had entire charge of my temporal affairs. Upon this occasion, however, I felt small gratification at sight of him, for I had a lawsuit pending, on account of which I well knew I ought to have been in England a month previously, and should have been but for this affair of Oakley's, which had interested and occupied me to the exclusion of my personal concerns. My solicitor's unexpected appearance made me apprehend serious detriment from my neglect. He read my alarm, upon my countenance.

"Ah!" said he, "conscience p.r.i.c.ks you, I see. You know I have been expecting you these six weeks. No harm done, however; we shall win the day, not a doubt of it."

"Then you are not come about my business?"

"Not the least, although I shall take you back with me, now I have found you. A very different affair brings me over. By the by, you may perhaps help me. You know all Paris. I am come to look for an Englishman."

"You need not look long," said I, glancing at a party of unmistakable Britons, who stood talking broad c.o.c.kney on the Boulevard.

"Ay, but not _any_ Englishman. I want one in particular, the heir to a pretty estate of eight or ten thousand a-year. He was last heard of in Paris three years ago, and since then all trace of him is lost. 'Tis an odd affair enough. No one could have expected his coming to the estate. A couple of years since, there were two young healthy men in his way. Both have died off,--and he is the owner of Oakley Manor."

"Of what?" I exclaimed, in a tone of voice that made Scrivington stagger back, and for a moment drew the eyes of the whole street upon us. "What did you say?"

"Oakley Manor," stammered the alarmed attorney, settling his well-brushed hat, which had almost fallen from his head with the start he had given. "Old Valentine Oakley died the other day, and his nephew Francis comes into the estate. But what on earth is the matter with you?"

For sole reply I grasped his arm, and dragged him into my house, close to which we had arrived. There, five minutes cleared up everything, and convinced Scrivington and myself that the man he sought now languished, a condemned criminal, in a French military prison.

It is unnecessary to dwell upon what all will conjecture; superfluous to detail the active steps that were at once taken in Oakley's behalf, with very different success, now that the unknown sergeant had suddenly a.s.sumed the character of an English gentleman of honourable name and ample fortune. Persons of great influence and diplomatic weight, who before had refused to espouse the cause of an obscure adventurer in a foreign service, suffered themselves to be prevailed upon, and interceded efficaciously for the master of Oakley Manor. It was even said that a letter was written on the subject by an English general of high distinction to an old opponent in arms. Be that as it may, all difficulties were at length overcome, and Oakley received his free pardon and discharge from the French service. And that equal measure of clemency might be shown, De Berg, upon the same day, was allowed to resume his place in his regiment.

I would tell how the news of her lover's pardon proved more potent than all the efforts of the faculty to bring back joy to Bertha's heart and the roses to her cheek; how Colonel Count de Bellecha.s.se, on being informed of the attachment between his daughter and Oakley, and of the real cause of the duel, at first stormed and was furious, but gradually allowed himself to be mollified, and finally gave his consent to their union; how De Berg exchanged into a regiment serving in Africa, and has since gained laurels and high rank. But I have no time to expatiate upon any of these interesting matters, for I leave town to-morrow morning for Oakley Manor, to pay my annual visit to MY ENGLISH ACQUAINTANCE.

THE MURDERER'S LAST NIGHT

BY THOMAS DOUBLEDAY, ESQ.

[_MAGA._ JUNE 1829.]

"Let him, to whom experience hath been allotted, think it a duty to impart it. We know not of how long a growth goodness is; nor how slow an approach even a protracted culture makes towards perfection. A life of holiness may end in an apostle. As the tree, that hath felt all the winds of heaven, strikes root in that direction whence they oftenest blow, so goodness must have known vicissitude, to know when to resist and when to bend. To know ourselves is to have endured much and long.

We must trace and limn out the map of our whole nature to be sure where it is desert, and where it is fruitful--to know the 'stony ground,'--to discover which needeth the plough, and which doth not.

That piety, which is built on ignorance, holds up the s.h.i.+eld where the arrow comes not; and sleeps unmailed when the enemy is at the gate. It dismounts to pursue the Parthian; and would dig a deep trench around the tents of the Nomades. It is long ere we root out the weaknesses of our nature, or know the art to preserve the virtue we have attained. For goodness, by over earnestness, may unwittingly be changed from its own essence, as he who knoweth not the vintage shall make vinegar of wine. When we have stubbed up and consumed the first growth of our sinfulness, there ariseth a second crop from the ashes of that which was destroyed. Even as 'the flax and the barley were smitten; for the barley was in the ear, and the flax was bolled: but the wheat and the rye were not smitten, _for they were not grown up_;'

so will SELF-SATISFACTION arise, after worldly pride and vanity have been withered up. Let him who has found inward peace content himself that he is arrived at the Pillars of Hercules, beyond which there is no safe way. That self-integrity which deems itself immaculate is dangerous. Well hath it been said, 'Make no suppletories to thyself when thou art disgraced or slighted, by pleasing thyself with the supposition that thou didst deserve praise--neither do thou get thyself a private theatre and flatterers, in whose vain noises and fantastic praises thou mayst keep up thy good opinion of thyself.' Be the act never so good, yet if it be performed rather with reference to him who does than to that which is done, there is a taint in it for which Eve is hardly answerable. It is but as a fair tower which the builder has set on an unknown quicksand, and which the floods shall damage or carry away. Oh! whosoever thou art that readest this, forget not these words, but grave them as on marble, and in golden letters.

'While the altar sends up a holy flame, have a care thou dost not suffer the birds to come and carry away the sacrifice--and let not that which began well end in thine own praise or temporal satisfaction, or a sin!'"

Until my twenty-seventh year I resided in the small cathedral town of C----r in which I was born. My parents--especially my mother--were of a serious cast. She had been educated as a Quaker, but following her own notions as to religion, she in the latter part of her life became attached to the tenets of that sect known by the name of Moravians, and last of all to those which, when held in connection with the ritual of the Church of England, are termed "Evangelical;" or, in dissent from it, "Methodistical."

She was warm and fanciful in her devotional practice; for which the belief as to the palpable and plenary influence of the Holy Spirit upon the human mind, in which she was bred, may help to account. Of these aspirations I, an ardent and sensitive boy, soon learned to partake. My mind was never naturally _p.r.o.ne_ to vice; and my imagination, though forward, was pure. I was brought up by my excellent parents in the practice of virtue; and I loved it. With an outward conduct thus guaranteeing inward persuasions--with professions borne out by an unquestioned and pure, if not altogether unostentatious piety of behaviour, what wonder that I soon became a distinguished votary of the peculiar principles to which I had attached myself. It is difficult for a young man to know himself looked up to--be the cause what it may--without his feelings and his conduct being affected by such homage. Nature had endowed me, if not with eloquence, at least with considerable fluency of speech; and as my natural diffidence--which at first was great--wore away, whether by extempore prayer or seasonable exhortation, the effects I produced exceeded those, the fruits of zeal, of those about me. I became admired as one more than usually gifted, and was gradually exalted into a leader. The occasional tendency to gloom and nervous irritability to which my temperament inclined me, was yet only marked enough to throw no unbecoming seriousness and gravity into the features of so young an apostle. It was strange to see persons of all ages and both s.e.xes admiring at the innate seriousness of so early a preacher, and owning the sometimes really fervid earnestness of my appeals, my warnings, or my denunciations. I began more and more to feel myself in a station above that of my fellows, and that I had now a character to sustain before the eyes of men. Young as I was, could it well have been otherwise? Let me, however, speak the truth.

Spiritual pride at last crept upon me. Devotion by insensible degrees became tainted with self, and the image of G.o.d was, I fear, sometimes forgotten for that of His frail and unworthy creature. True it was, I still, without slackening, spoke comfort to the ear of suffering or repentant sin--I still exhorted the weak and strengthened the strong.

I still warned the besotted in corruption that the fruits of vice, blossom as she will, are but like those of the sh.o.r.es of the Dead Sea, seeming gay, but only emptiness and bitter ashes. But alas! the bearer of the blessed message spoke as if the worm that bore, could add grace to the tidings he conveyed to his fellow-worm. I was got upon a precipice, but knew it not--that of self-wors.h.i.+p and conceit--the worst creature-idolatry. It was bitterly revealed to me at last.

About the year 1790, at the a.s.sizes for the county of which the town of C----r is the county town, was tried and convicted a wretch guilty of one of the most horrible murders upon record. He was a young man, probably (for he knew not his own years) of about twenty-two years of age--one of those wandering and unsettled creatures, who seem to be driven from place to place, they know not why. Without home, without name, without companion, without sympathy, without sense,--heartless, friendless, idealess, almost soulless! and so ignorant, as not even to seem to know whether he had ever heard of a Redeemer, or seen His written Word. It was on a stormy Christmas eve when he begged shelter in the hut of an old man, whose office it was to regulate the transit of conveyances upon the road of a great mining establishment in the neighbourhood. The old man had received him, and shared with him his humble cheer and his humble bed; for on that night the wind blew, and the sleet drove, after a manner that would have made it a crime to have turned a stranger dog to the door. The next day the poor old creature was found dead in his hut--his brains beaten out with an old iron implement which he used, and his little furniture rifled and in confusion. The wretch had murdered him for the supposed h.o.a.rd of a few s.h.i.+llings. The snow, from which he afforded his murderer shelter, had drifted in at the door, which the miscreant, when he fled, had left open, and was frozen red with the blood of his victim. But it betrayed a footstep hard frozen in the snow and blood; and the nails of the murderer's shoe were counted, even as his days were soon to be. He was taken a few days after with a handkerchief of the old man's upon his neck. So blind is blood-guiltiness.

Up to the hour of condemnation he remained reckless as the wind--unrepenting as the flint--venomous as the blind worm. With that deep and horrible cunning which is so often united to unprincipled ignorance, he had almost involved in his fate another vagrant with whom he had chanced to consort, and to whom he had disposed of some of the blood-bought spoils. The circ.u.mstantial evidence was so involved and interwoven, that the jury, after long and obvious hesitation as to the latter, found both guilty; and the terrible sentence of death, within forty-eight hours, was pa.s.sed upon both. The culprit bore it without much outward emotion; but when taken from the dock, his companion, infuriated by despair and grief, found means to level a violent blow at the head of his miserable and selfish betrayer, which long deprived the wretch of sense and motion, and, for some time, was thought to have antic.i.p.ated the executioner. Would it had done so! But let me do my duty as I ought--let me repress the horror which one scene of this dreadful drama never fails to throw over my spirit--that I may tell my story as a man--and my confession at least be clear.

When the felon awoke out of the death-like trance into which this a.s.sault had thrown him, his hardihood was gone; and he was reconveyed to the cell, in which he was destined agonisingly to struggle out his last hideous and distorted hours, in a state of abject horror which cannot be described. He who felt nothing, knew nothing, had now his eyes opened with terrible clearness to one object--the livid phantasma of a strangling death. All the rest was convulsive despair and darkness. Thought shudders at it--but let me go on.

The worthy clergyman, whose particular duty it was to smooth and soften, and, if possible, illuminate the last dark hours of the dying wretch, was not unwilling to admit the voluntary aid of those whom religious predispositions and natural commiseration excited to share with him in the work of piety. The task was in truth a hard one. The poor wretch, for the sake of the excitement which such intercourse naturally afforded him, and which momentarily relieved his sick and fainting spirit, groaned out half-articulate expressions of acquiescence in the appeals that were made to him; but the relief was physical merely. The grasp of the friendly hand made waver for a moment the heavy shadow of death which hung upon him--and he grasped it. The voice breathing mercy and comfort in his ear, stilled for a second the horrid echo of doom--and he listened to it. It was as the drowning man gasps at the bubble of air which he draws down with him in sinking--or as a few drops of rain to him at the stake, around whom the fire is kindled and hot. This, alas! we saw not as we ought to have done; but when the sinking wretch, at the word "mercy," laid his head upon our shoulder and groaned, we, sanguine in enthusiasm, deemed it deep repentance. When his brow seemed smooth for a s.p.a.ce at the sound of eternal life, we thought him as "a brand s.n.a.t.c.hed from the burning." In the forward pride (for pride it was) of human perfectibility, we took him--him the murderer--as it were under our tutelage and protection. We prayed with him, we read to him, we watched with him, we blessed his miserable sleeps, and met his more wretched awakings. In the presumption of our pity, we would cleanse that white, in the world's eye, which G.o.d had, for inscrutable purposes, ordained should seem to the last murky as h.e.l.l. We would paint visibly upon him the outward and visible sign of sin washed away, and mercy found. That that intended triumph may not have helped to add or to retain one feather's weight in the balance against him, let me humbly hope and trust. That I was a cause, and a great one, of this unhappy delusion, let me not deny. G.o.d forgive me, if I thought sometimes less of the soul to be saved than of him who deemed he might be one of the humble instruments of grace. It is but too true that I fain would have danced, like David, before the ark. Within and without was I a.s.sailed by those snares which, made of pride, are seen in the disguise of charity. The aspirations of my friends, the eyes of mine enemies, the wishes of the good, and the sneers of the mistrustful, were about me, and upon me; and I undertook to pa.s.s with the murderer--HIS LAST NIGHT--_such_ a last!--but let me compose myself.