Page:Ladys Book-V05.djvu/135
Th' unpeopled passages, he fiercely cries,
"The Plague!—The Plague!" and onward flies again.
Truing upon its creaking hinge, a door
Opens with cautious hand-and from within
A few forms slowly glide—with pond'rous weight
O'erburdened. The madman cast one glance,
And bounding forward, quickly disappeared.
Within the gloomy mansion's silent walls,
The hand of heav'n on every soul was lald,
Heavy and grievous—if the awful groans,
Th' unhallowed curses, and the raving mind,
The cries, the supplications, and the threats.
That burst from ev'ry parched and fevered lip.
Can tell of anguish whose acutest pangs,
Imagination, in her wildest hour,
Has disbelieving mocked at as unreal.
On a low couch there lay a feeble man;
Time had not played a loser's game with him,
But at his touch, the tail and vig'rous form
Had bowed and tottered; palsled were his limbs,
And his white locks in wild confusion hung
Shading his brow, that throbbed as if to burst.
The sightless balls in agony upturned,
Livid and bloodshot, in their sockets rolled—
His wasted fingers dug his aching flesh,
That writhed a loathsome, and corrupted mass;
His lips were covered with a whitish foam,
And his uncensing cry was for a drop.
A single drop, to cool his burning tongue.
He called upon his child, a beauteous boy,
That far off stood, his agony to see,
And prayed a cup of water to assunge
The fire that ever on his vitals preyed.
The trembling, weeping child dared not come near
But shrieking hurried from the scene of death.
Then rang a peal of laughter through the halls,
The frantic maniac stood beside the bed,
Intently watching each convulsive throe,
Or starting quiver of the aged limbs,
As one by one the Icy tides of death,
Advancing sluggishly along each vein,
Congealed the warmer and impetuous flow
That circled round the heart, and vainly strove
To stem the frozen torrent; and his laugh
Burst wildly forth to mock the solemn scene.
Too late to wound the spirit's parting sigh,
For the last lingering breath had gently passed
The opened portals—and the roving eye,
Rayless and glassy, stood forever fixed.
The piercing cry, the shout of deep despair,
Fell on a senseless and unconscious ear.
He bent him o'er a form of beauteous mould,
Whose horrid wailings rent the tainted air;
Ile ghostly smiled upon the pallid face
Of her who plighted once her sacred faith,
'Neath the o'erarching grove at the dead of night,
To him her heart's belov'd-her bosom's lord.
On him heav'n's vengeance fearfully she called—
On his perfidious head—whose coward soul
Recolled in terror from his stricken bride—
Dared not her wants to tend, her head support,
With her to die—or still with honour live.
A voice was whispering in her sickened ear,
"This is the end of love—and this reward
All mortals bear—'tis thine to share it too."
She heard, and looked upon the hideous face,
That smiled in cool derision of her woe;
She thought the fiends of hell were even now
Profanely paltering with her loosened soul;
One shriek—one quivering groan-her spirit winged
Y. P.Its unknown way to worlds beyond the tomb.
RACHAEL PARFETT.
About a year after Hosea Parfett,—once a flourishing farmer, and the last of a renowned race of wrestlers and cudgel-players, had, on ac- count of his confirmed lameness, produced by a terrific in-lock from a Wiltshire giant, who had dared the whole village to a bout, in which Ho- sea, at the expense of a dislocated hip, threw him three complete pancakes—but more especially in consideration of his recent ruin by mildew, fly, murrain, and other disasters, been elected parish mole-catcher, Rachael, his seventh child, was born. Her eyes, when she first opened them to weep, were, as Brodie Bagster, the village song-maker, says, like little violets, filled with dew, peeping out of a spring snow. The same worthy, in a doggerel composition, which fits in- differently to the tune of Ally Croker, recording the story of her early life, observes that her hair was "silky soft and silvery bright" as the down of a nestling dove; her first tooth, a pearl pluck- ed by a mermaid from some coral nook, in which its maker, the hermit-oyster—so he called the fish—had hid it; and her check a mark which the fairies had set up to pelt all day with rose- buds. Brodie said half a hundred other flowery things of Rachael, which it would have broken his heart to know had been better said, before he was born, of half a thousand others. Not- withstanding the hyperbolic compliments of her rustic laureate, which, unsupported, would per- haps have rendered the fact doubtful,—Rachael, from the testimony of all who saw her in the ear- ly part of her babyhood, appears to have been eminently beautiful. She was, it is said, a living similitude of some fine old picture of a wingless angel, in the antique library at Scroby Hall, which her mother had had frequent occasion to visit, while pregnant, for the purpose of receiving from Sir Ralph, who was churchwarden, the pit- tance per dozen allowed by the parish for the moles caught by Hosea, whose pride would not permit him to appear in person as a claimant of the parochial fees to which his industry, absurd- ly misdirected as it was, by custom and promise entitled him.
Rachael was scarcely able to run alone when some mysterious malady wrought an appalling change in her appearance, and she became appaling a nursling—hideous from her extreme haggard- ness. It was said, and steadfastly believed in the village, that Hosea Parfett's child had been sto- len by the fairies, and that the creature which nestled in its place was an accursed changeling. Rachael's mother began to loathe the baby of which she had before most passionately doted and after pining for a few weeks, as Brodie Bag-