Part 6

Well—they met—once—twice—daily. It was a dream of bliss, but it could not last. Every time they saw each other their love grew stronger. Yet Ellen, although urged by her lover to elope, was unwilling to consent to it. Indeed on this point she was inflexible. With tears she said to herself in the solitude of her chamber, that if she had erred at first through her inexperience, and allowed her affections to be placed irrevocably on one whom her parent even unjustly disapproved of, she would not go farther on the path of disobedience. She was young, and she _hoped_. She trusted that time would make all right. But a bolt was about to fall upon her head, which, for the honor of human nature, we would gladly escape recording.

We have said little as yet directly of Mr. Howard, though a glimmering of his character must have been perceptible in the foregoing pages. Mean, crafty, purse-proud, haughty, and inflexible to obstinacy, he had nothing in common with his daughter, except the tie of relationship. Ellen was like her mother in every thing, but that mother had been long since dead,—and could the secrets of her grave have been unfolded, perhaps it might have been seen that she died of a broken heart. Yes! her husband was her destroyer. But he did nothing which made him amenable to the law. No. He was always outwardly respectful to his wife. It was only at home that his brutality broke forth; and Mrs. Howard was too meek and forgiving to publish her own sufferings. And thus like too many gentle beings in our midst she drooped, and sickened, and died; and when they laid her in her gorgeous coffin, and bore her to her tomb, amid all the splendor of wealth, how little did they think that she had been murdered—aye! murdered by her husband’s brutality. God help the thousands who thus die of a broken heart!

With such a father had Ellen now to do. He had forbidden her all communication with her lover as soon as he suspected that they met, threatening to disown her at once if she disobeyed, and Ellen was returning from a parting interview with Stanhope, in which she had told him of her father’s commands, and rejecting every proposal to elope, had signified, with a burst of tears, her determination to obey her parent, when on reaching the door-step she met Mr. Howard. He was in a towering passion, though he affected at first to conceal it.

“Very well, Miss, very well. You’ve seen fit to disobey my orders,” he commenced, “have you? I’ve watched you, you hussy, myself,” he continued, following his daughter into the hall, and closing the door, “what have you to say?”

Ellen made a vain attempt to speak, but her emotions overpowered her, and looking up imploringly into his face, she burst into tears.

“By G—, Miss, I’m not to be answered this way,” said Mr. Howard, not longer affecting to conceal his rage, and brutally seizing his daughter’s arm he shook it violently, “why don’t you speak? None of your whining: Answer me!” and again he shook her.

Never before had her parent used her thus. This personal indignity, added to his brutal language, cut her to the heart, and brought on a fresh flood of tears, which only increased her father’s rage. By this time, too, the servants had gathered in the hall, and were witnesses of the whole of this deplorable scene.

“D—n it,” he said, his face flushing with passion, as he again shook her violently, “I’ll bring an answer out of you—I will. Ain’t you going to speak? I told you I’d disown you for this,—and,” here he muttered an oath I dare not repeat, “I will. You and your beggarly, upstart paramour”—oh! had that father a heart?—“may go to the alms-house together. Out of my door this instant. You are no daughter of mine. Out, I say. Open the door, John.”

The man hesitated an instant. It only increased the rage of Mr. Howard.

“Open the door, I say. By G— am I to be disobeyed by all of you? I’ll remember you for this, you villain—you—”

“I’m sure I don’t care,” said the man, almost crying; for he had lived in the family since Ellen was a babe, and loved her as his own, “for if you are going to turn my poor dear mistress out of doors the sooner I follow the better. I’d not live with such a brute,” continued he, boldly, “for millions.”

“Out of the house, both of you, out, I say,” roared Mr. Howard, with a volley of curses, for he was now stung to an ungovernable rage, and cared not what he did, “begone!” and taking his daughter by the shoulders he pushed her violently toward the door.

Up to this period of the scene, the events of which had passed in less time than we take to describe them, Ellen, stupefied and astonished, had been unable to utter a word. Her father’s unparalleled barbarity called forth continued floods of tears. But she now spoke.

“Oh! father,” she said, “do not turn me from your doors. You are my only parent, and I will, I would have told you all. I only went to bid farewell to him—indeed, indeed I did—”

“You met him, you own to it,” said Mr. Howard, almost choked with rage, “before my face. This is too much—out I say.”

“Father! Father!” said Ellen, falling on her knees, “do not cast me off. For the love of heaven do not. I will be all you ask. I will never see him again; I have parted with him forever—oh! father! father—”

“Yes! you may father, father me now till you are tired; but it’s too late. Go, and see if your beggar of a clerk can help you. Go, and God’s and a father’s curse go with you!” and, with the fury of a madman the brutal parent seized his daughter by the arms, lifted her up, and pushing her so violently from the door that she went reeling down the steps, slammed it to after her. Ellen was alone—no! not alone, for the faithful John, who had sacrificed his place for her was at her side, and as the innocent outcast looking wildly up at the portal which was thus forever closed upon her, gave a faint cry, and fell insensible to the pavement, he caught her in his arms, and bearing her to a neighboring shop, gave her in charge to the females there, to restore her.

Shall we pursue the details of this melancholy story? Oh! let us rather hurry to its close. It terminated as might have been expected. Thrust from her father’s doors, dreading his brutality even if she could return, and knowing not where to seek protection in this sudden emergency, Ellen yielded to the solicitations of her lover, and was married. Poor girl! though she never looked lovelier than on her wedding-day, in her pale, sweet face might be seen the traces of that sorrow which had already begun to darken her life.

From the hour when Mr. Howard so inhumanly turned his daughter from his doors, he never was heard to make the slightest enquiry respecting her. He seemed to have discarded her forever from his mind. He never even mentioned her name; he appeared to feel no remorse for the deed into which his passion had hurried him. Not that his conscience never smote him. God knows that would have displayed a malignity of heart worthy of a fiend. But no one ever saw these visitings of remorse,—for his pride forbade him to betray them, as much as it hindered him from re-opening his doors to his daughter. Yet day by day he grew more irascible. The worm was at his heart: he felt, though he would not own its sting.

And for awhile the young pair was supremely happy, or if a care did cloud the young wife’s brow when she thought of her father’s curse, it was kissed away by her adoring husband. They had enough to provide them the necessaries, and they cared little for the superfluities of life. The birth of a charming boy only served to knit their hearts closer to each other.

The first spring after their marriage Stanhope embarked in business, for he found his salary insufficient for the wants of a family. And for three years he seemed to prosper. But then came reverses. The times were critical; even heavy capitalists could scarcely weather the storm; and, in a word, Stanhope was compelled to fail, after having sunk all he had embarked by heavy losses. Had he been a large trader, and becoming bankrupt, dragged scores into ruin with him, he would have been universally pitied, and perhaps his creditors would have yielded up to him from the wreck of millions a sufficiency for the rest of his life; but as he was only a poor man his case met no commiseration. He determined, however, to pay every debt. The endeavor exhausted almost literally his last dollar. He had barely a sufficiency left to transport his family to the village of ——, having been offered a situation as a clerk in a store in that obscure hamlet. Before leaving the city, however, his sweet wife, believing that under such circumstances her father must relent, had, without informing her husband of her intention, sought admittance at her parent’s mansion, determining to fling herself at his feet, and solicit his forgiveness and aid. But she was repulsed—my pen shakes as I record it—she was repulsed like a common beggar from her own father’s door.

Let us hurry on. Have we not often seen how misfortune when it once begins to lower on a man, will sometimes continue its pitiless shower without intermission, until it has laid its victim in his grave? Well! every day beheld Stanhope, in despite of his utmost exertions, sinking lower and lower into distress. His scanty salary barely afforded his family the coarsest food, and even this was lost within a year, and directly after the birth of a daughter, by an illness which incapacitated him from labor, for so long a period that his employer was forced to discharge him, and procure a substitute. At length he recovered; but how fearfully was he in debt! A year’s labor at his late scanty pittance would scarcely discharge his liabilities. Ellen had foreseen this, and ventured to write to her father, but the letter was returned unopened. To add to Stanhope’s distress, after various efforts to procure steady employment, which only resulted in constant disappointment, his furniture was sold under a distress, and his now alarmed creditors falling like vultures on what remained, left him with nothing but the bedding on which they slept, and the clothes which they wore, with the few other articles protected by the law from an execution. These, however, he was soon, forced to dispose of to gain sustenance for his family. In this strait they had found shelter in the crumbling garret, where they now were,—and though a month had elapsed, and every thing they had to part with was sold, Stanhope was still without employment. His wife, after bearing up till nature could endure no longer, had for several days been lying on a bed of sickness; and that night they had—oh! God can it be true?—gone dinnerless and supperless to bed.

Until within a few days Stanhope had breasted the storm with unshrinking firmness, although, at times, when he looked upon his angelic wife and little ones, suffering the full horrors of poverty, his resolution had almost given way. But even he could not withstand the accumulated miseries which now beat so bitterly upon his unsheltered head. Let it not be thought that we exaggerate his misfortunes. God forbid! Even in our boasted city, and at this day, too, when _charity has become fashionable_, more than a dozen die annually from sheer starvation. Stanhope saw nothing but this before them. He could not seek employment in other places, for how would his family subsist in his absence?—nor could he take them with him, for alas! he had not the money to transport them. Broken in spirits and maddened with despair, the thoughts which rushed through his mind as he gazed around the room can be easier imagined than described. In that moment his whole life passed before him as in a panorama. He thought of his happy boyhood; of the bright hopes of his youth; of his first sanguine love for Ellen; of the bitter disappointment which followed; of the hopes, and fears of their separation, and the joy of their first meeting afterward; of the tumult of feelings, all, however extatic, with which he welcomed the houseless wanderer to his own humble home; of the three bright and happy years which, like a dream of heaven, followed their union; and finally of the series of misfortunes, heaped one upon another, and growing daily more and more intense, which had closed the whole, and brought him down to abject poverty. Had he been alone in the world he could have borne it all without a murmur. But to see his darling uncomplaining Ellen, his little Henry, his innocent babe, starving before his eyes! Oh! it was too much. Frenzied with agony he started from his seat, placed his hand to his brow, and gazing a moment wildly around the room, rushed from the house.

Hour after hour passed, and still he returned not. His wife grew alarmed. She had noticed his wild air as he left the room; she had seen that his soul was tortured almost to madness; and she now trembled lest he might in his despair have made away with himself. But no!—it could not be. Her Stanhope would never do that. Yet it was almost dawn and he was still absent. She rose painfully from her bed, and staggered to the door to look out. A light snow covered the ground to the depth of an inch; and the whole landscape was as silent as death, except when the wind moaned out a moment in the neighboring forest. For some moments she gazed vainly through the twilight, but could perceive no one. At length her straining eyes detected the outlines of a form, and—could it be?—yes! it was her husband. She rushed into his arms, almost fainting with joy, as soon as he reached the threshold, murmuring,—

“Thank God, dear James! you are returned—oh! how glad, how glad I am,” and then burst into tears.

“Thank God! too, Ellen for I have brought you money—I begged it—we shall not starve, no matter at what cost it was gained,” said her husband wildly, as he flung a small purse upon the floor. Ellen scarcely noticed the manner or the tone of the speaker in her joy at his return.

The night passed away rapidly: indeed the day was breaking when Stanhope returned. She still wept on her husband’s bosom. At length they returned up stairs, when the contents of the purse were examined. They were not very valuable; yet they sufficed to ensure that family from starvation, mind, only _from starvation_, for at least a fortnight. Such a timely relief seemed indeed providential, and once more they suffered themselves to hope.

“Did I not tell you God would not utterly forsake us?” said the sweet wife. “Oh! let us thank him, dear James,” and falling upon her knees, while her agitated husband followed her example, that angelic being poured out her gratitude before her maker. Stanhope was deeply affected, and he sobbed aloud. When, at length they arose, they saw that their sweet boy, who had awoke in the interval, had also fallen on his little knees beside them. They clasped him to their arms, and wept afresh. But they were tears of joy—the first they had shed for weeks. Alas! they were destined to be but too short lived.

That morning the whole village was thrown into consternation, by the intelligence that the mail had been robbed, and a passenger murdered, just before daybreak, and within a mile of the hamlet. After the first burst of horror had passed, measures were taken to ferret out the perpetrators of this awful deed. The nearest magistrate entered promptly upon this duty; witnesses of all kinds were examined; and after a laborious, though secret investigation of several hours, a warrant was issued for the apprehension of James Stanhope charged with the double crime of mail-robbery and murder. Do not start reader! When you shall have heard the evidence which led to this fearful accusation you will yourself have painful doubts. And yet _could_ the generous, the noble, the high-minded Stanhope be a _murderer_? Listen.

It appears that the mail-coach, on that calamitous night, had but three passengers besides the driver. The snow was falling fast, but evidently subsiding, when, about a mile from the village, and in sight of the turnpike-gate light at its hither extremity, three men, emerging from a hedge by the road side, had stopped the horses, cut the traces, knocked down the driver, and after rifling the mail-bags, had proceeded to rob the passengers, who, all this while, guarded by one of the robbers with a pistol in either hand, had been forced to look upon the perpetration of this enormous felony in silence. At this point, however, when each robber was occupied with his man, one of the passengers, thinking he could overpower his antagonist, attempted to escape. In the scuffle he was thrown down; oaths ensued; and the robber exclaiming suddenly, “Is that you, then by G— take this!” was seen at the word to shoot him through the brain. All this had passed so rapidly that the other robbers had not even time to interfere; but no sooner was the deed done, than apparently alarmed lest the report of the pistol should bring up succor, they sprang into the hedge and disappeared. The two passengers were so paralysed by the murder of their comrade, that they stood for some minutes, without making an effort to follow the robbers—and even when they recovered their presence of mind, they were afraid to make any pursuit until they had first obtained aid from the village. One of them therefore mounted a leader, and aroused the inmates at the turnpike gate, and in the neighboring houses. Before a sufficient force could be collected, day had broken; but as the snow had ceased falling immediately after the flight of the robbers, it was not difficult to trace their retreat. This was done for nearly half a mile to a bye-road, back of the village, where the footsteps divided—two of the robbers appearing to have turned off to a stream down which they continued their way, while the other one struck across to the village. This latter trail was followed in mute horror; and though at intervals it was almost obliterated by the drifts, yet its course could still be distinctly traced, up to the very door of the building in whose garret James Stanhope lodged.

“Now, gentlemen,” said the magistrate, “if any one left that house last night, or if any one entered it near daybreak, he is the man.”

This was soon settled. The landlord of poor Stanhope, who occupied the lower stories, deposed, that being kept awake nearly all night, by a violent tooth-ache, he had heard some one descend the stairs after midnight, and, from the heavy step, supposed it to be Mr. Stanhope. Just before daylight he heard another person come down stairs, when his curiosity being excited, he arose and peeped through the bowed shutters. He saw Mrs. Stanhope standing at the front door, as if looking for some one. In a few minutes her husband returned. He thought even then that there was something wild in his tenant’s appearance; and his attention was particularly called to it by seeing Stanhope place, or rather fling, a small purse into his wife’s hands, exclaiming, “Here is money, we shall not starve, no matter how it was got,” or words to that effect. They then went up stairs, and he retired, wondering, to bed. As soon as he heard of the catastrophe of the night, he determined on acquainting the magistrate with his suspicions.

“It does seem, gentlemen,” said the justice, taking his spectacles from his eyes, and looking around at the astonished listeners, when the witness had concluded his testimony “as if the finger of God had pointed us directly to the perpetrator of this enormous felony and murder. James Stanhope was always a beggar, and no honest man need be so in this highly-favored country.”—The magistrate forgot that but a week before he had refused to engage his victim as a common day-laborer, because he said Stanhope’s late sickness had left him too weak to work with any profit to his employer.—“Let three or four of you get ready to accompany me, for the murderer may prove desperate. I’ll take my father’s pistols he wore at Princeton.”

Meanwhile, the coroner, having been sent for by express, had arrived and impanelled a jury, in the language of the law, “_super visum corporis_.” The murdered man was identified as a passenger, and his name, on searching his pockets, discovered to be _Mr. Howard_. A verdict, that the deceased came to his death by the hands of a person or persons unknown, was given in, and the jury adjourned. Could it be that the deceased was Ellen’s parent? Alas! subsequent investigations proved it to be too true, and the village was in a few days thunder-struck with the intelligence that Stanhope had murdered his own father-in-law. But we anticipate.

Meanwhile, the victim of these investigations, exhausted by his last night’s watching, was lying in his crazy garret, in a calm deep sleep. His wife sat beside him, leaning her head on her hands, and gazing into her husband’s face, as his features smiled in slumber; while now and then, as her little boy would steal up to her for a kiss or a caress, she would drop a tear of mingled happiness and love upon his face. Sweet, noble woman! As she looked upon that calm, chiselled face, and thought of all her husband had suffered for her sake, how her heart swelled with emotions of tenderness toward him. His pale, high brow was partly shaded by the dark locks which curled around it. On every line of its broad surface could be seen the traces of care. Ellen stooped and kissed it. At that moment the door was suddenly opened, and a crowd of men broke rudely into the apartment. The noise awakened the sleeper, and he started half up and gazed around him, while the frightened little fellow ran and clung to his mother’s side, peeping tremblingly at the strangers. Ellen sprang to her feet equally alarmed, gazing with an ashy cheek on the intruders.

“There he is—seize him, seize him,” said the magistrate.

Three of the officers rushed forward, but Ellen instinctively interposed between them and her husband. One of the men attempted to thrust her aside. Quick as lightning the indignant husband felled the wretch to the floor.

“He resists the law,” shouted the magistrate, “down with him—shoot him if he don’t instantly surrender.”

“The law!—what authority have you produced for this insulting entrance on my privacy?” said Stanhope, placing himself before his wife and child, and frowning sternly on the intruders.

“_I_ have authority,” said the magistrate, advancing, “you are my prisoner!”

“Your prisoner!—for what?” said the astonished husband.

“For the robbery of the mail, and the murder of a passenger.”

One long piercing shriek rang through that apartment as the wife of his bosom fell fainting to the floor. The next moment, despite his entreaties, despite his struggles when he found his prayers unsuccessful, despite even the petitions of his little son which might have moved a heart of stone, he was torn from his senseless wife, and borne in triumph to the village jail. When, through the humane attentions of a poor neighbor, Ellen revived, it was only to learn that her husband had been rent from her to await—perhaps the scaffold.