Norman Leslie :: :: University of Virginia Library

The young man walked on; there was a fever
on his cheek and in his heart. There is a singular
power in the calmness of night, and in the holy silence
and order of nature, upon the imagination of
one suddenly freed from the giddy throng and glare
of a revel. How it hushes the ordinary passions!
The mind, which has been like a stream disturbed,
settles into wonderful clearness; and you see defined
thoughts and minute feelings far down in its
transparent depths. But night is nowhere so impressive
and solemn as in the worn haunts of a
mighty city. You behold the abandoned paths
with something of the feeling with which you
pause among the ruins of an ancient town. True,
in the one case, ages have rolled away since the solitude
was broken by eager and thoughtless steps;

and in the other, only hours: yet the effect upon
the observer is strangely alike. The human sea
has washed from its shores, and left the marked
and naked channels exposed to the eye. The clash
and roar of worldly interests have died away. You
tread the solemn aisles, half disengaged from earthly
anxieties and excitations, with the cold and passionless
loneliness of a spectre. Are there those
sleeping around who have awakened your hatred?
how its secret fires seem dimmed and burnt out!
Can you look upon the heavens, strown with mysterious
and eternal worlds, lying in their same bright
places for ever!—on which all the great of history,
Homer, Socrates, and Alexander, Sylla, Cæsar,
and Pompey, Mahomet and Jesus, have fixed their
eyes—upon which, the startled imagination cannot
conjecture for how many thousand years to come,
other immortal heroes and poets may gaze,—can
you look upon them, and hate one of the myriads
who are floating away with you, beneath their calm
faces, like the specks that hang in their beams?
Can you—exalted, purified as your mind then is—
hate any less object than those evil principles, those
tremendous passions and vices, which have clouded
the paths of human beings with darkness and wo?

But if you have been guilty of a rash action, if
you have been the yielding victim of some momentary
impulse or local interest, how wondering
and abashed are you in those holy moments! How
noble, then, does virtue appear! How vast and
high seems love! How unutterably insignificant
and mean those motives and influences which tempt
the energies and guide the destinies of the human
race!

The waning moon was high in heaven; and her
faint light yet touched the surrounding objects
with edges of silver. The long vistas of densely-built

streets, with their silent and deserted pavements
and closed shutters, stretched away from
Leslie's eyes. No one was to be seen, but a dog
that stole up timidly crouching, and placed his
head under the hand of the night-wanderer, as if
with a human weariness of the deathlike solitude;
and here and there a watchman leaning in the
shadow, and ever and anon striking his club sharply
against the stones—a signal answered by others in
a similar way, and faintly heard through the distance
of the echoing streets. Above, the stars had
faded in the opening light, all but a few large and
lustrous orbs, which lay scattered about the pearly
void, kindling and burning like lumps of soft fire.
Norman paused, and bent his eyes upward; one
bright planet, the largest in heaven, hung before
him.

“How apt the emblem is!” he thought. “And
the great poet in this, as in all things, how wonderfully
he has written! Yon `bright particular star'
—in one exquisite phrase, what eloquence! what
power! How it images the beauty, and fervour,
and worship of love! Thus she glides on—ever
calm, bright, and pure—above the earth, though
shining on it. Who will reach her! Who will win
confiding looks from those laughing eyes, and veil
their young mirth in the tenderness of love! Whose
hand will put back, unreproved, the hair from that
brow! Whose bosom will beat beneath that graceful
head! Whose rich blessed lips will print on
that sweet mouth the kiss of an adored, a happy
husband! What! Clairmont! Can her dreams
be of him? Can he comprehend her angelic nature?
What if she love him? What have I done?
Rather my hand should wither than injure one
sanctified by her affections. My worship for her
cannot pause upon her own matchless person. It

would protect all she loves. Yet what must I now
do? A duel! I—who have pretended to think—
who have professed principle and morality; I—
who have thought myself the independent master
and controller of my own actions; I am now
plunged into a duel! I have chosen murder, or
self-murder, for a companion. Reason, religion,
bid me withdraw; but yet I cannot; I have gone
too far; I must proceed. My father—my sister—
should I fall, what will be their feelings? Should
I triumph, what will be my own? In death all will
despise, and in life all will execrate me: she, perhaps,
of all, the most. This Clairmont—why do I
hate him? Why should I seek his blood? Why
should I blacken and sear my soul for ever with a
deed inhuman, abhorrent, ghastly, against man,
against nature, against God? What goads me to
this?—the finger of the scorner! the laugh of the
fool! Clairmont falls beneath my aim; and with
Clairmont, how many others fall? If Flora loves
him, her young heart is crushed. How many others
are connected with him by human sympathies?
—perhaps a mother, a sister, a friend. My own
hand will be smeared with human blood—vast classes
of society mark me for a murderer—the domestic
circle, now so happy, of my own bright home
overshadowed with the gloom of death! But what
do I say? My blood must flow. He is a sure and
deadly enemy. The grave is then for me—a sudden,
a gory, a youthful grave! Startling—tremendous—sublime
thought! Earth, ever burning sky,
light, sound, morning, the realm of the human race
—beings that I have known and loved—farewell!
I quit you—I quit myself. This breathing form
struck to nothing! this ranging and mysterious soul
hurled into the dim realm of spectres! Broad and
magnificent nature! high and fairy dream of existence!

ere to-morrow night I plunge from you,
headlong, into the presence of God. Surely, it is
a horrid vision!”

Bitterly, bitterly did the youth lament his dilemma
at that still and lonely hour. The crisis in
which he stood, and its possible consequences, rose
upon him in all their vast and naked horror; for the
fumes of passion had vanished from his mind, and
left it intensely alive to the reaction of reason.

The stars paled, the moon dissolved in a flood of
new light, and the fiery beams of morning darted
up the sky as he reached his home.

With the elasticity of youth, however, as the
day broadened, his mind recovered a more cheerful
tone, and he began to take brighter views of his situation.
Unable to sleep, he found the refreshment
of a warm bath a tolerable substitute; and after a
substantial breakfast, and renewing his toilet with
even more than ordinary care, he awaited in a more
agreeable mood the expected message. Singular
inconsistency of human nature, which permits trifles
so unimportant to share our minds with events
of such fearful interest! A man carefully arranging
his cravat-knot upon the brink of eternity!

At twelve, Captain Forbes of the army inquired
for Mr. Leslie. He was shown into a private apartment.

“You are Mr. Norman Leslie?”

“I am, sir.”

“You are aware—”

“I am.”

“You understand that—”

“I do.”

“This note my friend Count Clairmont begged
me to deliver, with express injunctions to receive
no apologies.”

“Your friend's injunctions were as insolent, sir,

as they were unnecessary,” said Leslie, sternly and
loftily.

“He apprehends—”

“His apprehensions are groundless.”

“My friend Count Clairmont requests me to see
this little matter brought immediately to a close.”

“To-night, if you please. This morning—this
instant!”

“No, no,” said the captain; “that is `immediately'
with a vengeance. I am engaged to-night at
the theatre; but to-morrow morning, at daybreak,
if you can conveniently; for just now I am overwhelmed
with occupations.”

“Any accommodation of that kind which I can
offer, either to Count Clairmont or to Count Clairmont's
friend, will afford me infinite satisfaction.”

“You will send me then a friend?”

“With the necessary instructions.”

“Mr. Leslie, I have the honour—”

“Captain Forbes, your most obedient.”

They exchanged the parting salutations stiffly,
but courteously. As the officer withdrew, his retreating
bow brought his body into contact with that
of a new-comer, whose precipitate haste rendered
his momentum considerable.

“I do declare,” cried Morton; “my dearest sir,
I beg ten thousand million pardons.”

“Not in the least,” cried the captain, with military
brevity, and made his exit.

“So-ho!” said Morton, regarding the note; “it
has come then.”

“My dear Morton,” exclaimed Norman, “at
present you must excuse me—”

“ `Not in the least,' Leslie, as the captain says;
not for the world,” answered Morton. “You must
not, you shall not fight that Clairmont. I have
made some inquiries respecting his skill at pistol-firing.

I thought you were joking last night all
the while. I declare I had no idea. I took it all
for one of your solemn jests—”

“My good Morton—this afternoon—to-morrow
morning—”

“But it is true. It is more than true. There
are no two ways about it. Whew! Why, he is a
devil incarnate! You are a dead man! He can
snuff a candle! Remember the Veronese lady,
hey?—the duel at the South—shoot a bullet out of
the muzzle of—”

“Morton, let go my button, my good fellow—”

“But, seriously, Leslie, I have something to say
to you. Here, help me wheel around this big
chair; and I'll tell you what you must let me do.
You see, I, being—”

But he was alone; Leslie having vanished the
instant his back was turned.

“Well, I declare!” said the surprised young
gentleman, after a full examination of the room,
from the ceiling to the floor, the interior of the
bookcases, and under the tables—“well, I declare
—I never—that's polite, anyhow! If he meet that
infernal French count, there's an end of Norman
Leslie!”