University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.

The reader has already classed Norman Leslie
among those characters so frequent at the present
day, thoughtful, ardent, contemplative, and inactive

young men, viewing all things through the
medium of a strong imagination, much swayed by
impulse, and accustomed to exaggerate all that
befalls them. A vein of poetry and romance ran
through his character, which active and laborious
occupation had never broken up. Reared in the
lap of wealth and luxury, he lacked the stimulus
to action which forces most men, for the support
of life, amid the harsh realities and homely conflicts
of business. Full of musing melancholy,
sensitive to every passing impression, much of boyish
illusion yet lingered about his steps; and love,
when once kindled by a worthy object, became
immediately the absorbing principle of his nature
and of his existence. The shock which his young
confidence had received from Miss Romain had
both sharpened his observation and deepened his
character. For a time his soul recoiled, not only
from the giddy and frivolous girl who had so deceived
him, but from the very passion into which
he had been deceived. Then Flora Temple's
image rose before him with a new, a more delicious
and bewildering power. He repelled it; he
even attempted to deride and undervalue it. Unable
to banish it, he admitted it but only at first to
scrutinize and condemn. He would not acknowledge
to himself, that, after having bent before the
fascinations of one, he could so soon yield to those
of another. Hence his almost bitter delineation
of Flora's character at Mrs. Temple's to Moreland;
hence his frequent coldness of manner towards herself.
He struggled against the fetters which her
every action, look, and smile, wove around his soul.
He strove to force his mind into the conviction
that she was less perfect than she appeared.
There was a time when Rosalie Romain had just
so spell-bound him; so once, at the sound of her
step, at the tone of her voice, his pulse had leaped,
his heart had trembled. He would break away
from the enchantress—he would fly from the effeminate
allurements of all women. Broad and noble
paths were opened to his pride and his ambition.
Deep in his heart, although yet not fully awakened,
lay a thousand high aspirations. The yearning
after the world's applause, the quiet but never-ceasing
thirst for the scholar's lore, philanthropy,
and the hope of being one day useful to his race—
all these, without ostentation, mingled in the material
of Norman Leslie's character. And there
were moments when he resolved to turn away
even from love, even from the love of Flora Temple,
as from a selfish passion that would enervate
and entangle his mind. But these were only moments;
and from undervaluing her, he swept to
the other extreme. Nothing vacillates more widely
and frequently than the mind of a youthful lover.
The idea of her union with Clairmont clothed her
with new attractions, by that strange principle of
our nature which renders things more precious
when beyond our reach. He had already learned
to regard her as one too angelic to share his human
path.

These were his reflections, as, silent and alone,
on the evening designated in the preceding chapter,
he wended his way, by the uncertain light of
the stars, from a gay revel, where he had again lingered,
enchanted, by the side of Flora. All the
tenderness of his love descended upon him. The
hushed solitude around, the broad heavens above,
contributed to soften his mind into one of those
romantic reveries with which imaginative men
often repay themselves in their secret hours for
the harsh disappointments of the inexorable world.
Around rose a creation of his own fancy, peopled

with his fondest dreams—his most secret and tender
aspirations. Thus lost in meditation, and insensibly
charmed by the quiet beauty of the night,
he paced slowly onward, he scarcely knew whither,
but in a direction opposite to that of his own dwelling.

Oh, the dreams of a young lover in a solitary
night-ramble! Where else does the world brighten
into such an elysium?

“Then, indeed,” continued the musing youth,
as the current of his thoughts flowed silently and
sweetly on—thoughts which took their tinge of
happiness from the grace and innocent loveliness
of their beautiful subject—“then, indeed, what an
Eden would be the earth! what a blissful dream
would be existence! what sunny joy, what golden
radiance would steal across my path!—Flora
Temple should confess she loved me. To sit
alone by her side, steeped in the rapture of fully
requited affection—to thrill with the sense of her
bashful confidence, of her timid and yielding love
—to wind my arm unreproved around her graceful
form—to feel her breath on my cheek, to linger
beneath the touch of those young and loving lips,
to hear them pour out the breathings of that pure
and exalted soul, to sit hours and hours, looking
into the beauty which floats in her eyes—now murmuring
my impassioned worship—now listening to
her fond return; my hand clasped in hers as I noted
the rise and passing away of some wandering blush,
as a happy feeling stirred in her breast. With
such a being for my wife, existence would fleet
away like an exhalation. What joy to read to
her all that poetry has reared of golden enchantment!
to wander with her through the magnificent
realms built so superbly up by the hand of fiction
—to ride forth in the summer morning amid the

fragrant woods; or, in the mellow, deep sunsethour,
from the portico of some dear and sylvan
abode, to note the tinges fade from the clouds; to
bend and admire together the floweret by the road-side,
to trace the wanderings of the humming bee;
or to look together up to the hushed and holy heavens,
our characters and affections, as our thoughts,
purified and elevated!—thus, with that dear angel
ever by my side, to choose out our favourite stars
among those ever-burning myriads. Yon kindling
orb should be hers; and that faint spark close to
its side should teach her how dim and yet how
near my soul was to her own.

“Then, travel—I would take her over the world.
We would study together the history and languages
of the mighty Europe. We would wander, still
hand-in-hand, over its traces of dazzling splendour
and solemn desolation—the wrecks of time and
history, the sublime footmarks of the great of old.

“And wherefore should I doubt? Mystery hangs
around her, but it is not in her. Has not her
manner melted, has not her voice trembled to me?
And yet they tell me she is the affianced bride of
Clairmont!”

He had now rambled on unknowingly far out of
his way to a remote and solitary part of the town,
and was thridding a dark and narrow lane, where
only a distant lamp shed any beam of light. Perceiving
that he had lost his way, he paused; and
at that moment received a heavy blow, staggered
several paces back, and fell to the earth nearly
senseless. In an instant, however, recovering from
the shock, he felt a powerful hand, and trembling
with intense eagerness, busy at his throat, while the
murderer seemed feeling with the other in his bosom.
Something fell to the pavement, ringing like
the blade of a dagger, and was instantly grasped

up again. With the vehement fury of despair, the
prostrate victim suddenly clutched the throat of
his assailant, and a fierce, rapid, and tremendous
struggle ensued, such as swells the veins of men
striving for life and death. For a moment the profound
silence was disturbed only by the stamping
and trampling of heavy and desperate feet. Roused
to the full exertion of his athletic form, Leslie had
acquired a slight advantage over his opponent, and,
with an exclamation of deep triumph, was about to
dash him to the earth, when a cold and thrilling
sensation in his side for a moment checked his
breath, and shot through his soul the terrible sense
of death. His voice rose, and rang far and wide
on the air, startling the solemn silence with the
cry, so blood-curdling when heard through the
night, of “Murder! murder!”

“Ha!—hell!” cried a voice. With each exclamation
Leslie felt the desperate plunge of his assailant's
arm, and scarcely knew whether or not
the blade drank his life.

The cry, however, alarmed the neighbourhood.
A watchman awoke and struck his club upon the
pavement; windows were slammed open, and
nightcaps emerged into the air. But ere assistance
reached him, Leslie grew deadly sick. His
eyes swam, his brain reeled, unnatural figures,
ghastly faces, and lurid lights, glided and glared
around him. With an intensely clear conception
that he was floating into the realms of death, all
grew gradually dark, cold, and silent. Then sensation
passed utterly away.