Saturday Evening Gazette/June 7, 1856/A Fearful Night
A Fearful Night.
“Come down at once—Ellen is dying!” That was all they said,—seven short words!
I read the telegraph paper again and again, before I could comprehend the full force of the message it bore. My eyes wandered over the regulations of the company, the tariff of prices, the conditions under which they undertook their functions, and at last reverting to the pencilled lines, I roused myself from the stupor into which their receipt had thrown me, and understood their purport. Ellen Luttrell was dying. She was my cousin, my earliest playmate, my embodiment of all that was lovely, pure and womanly. I have no sister, but had I been so blessed, I could not have loved her with a deeper affection than I bestowed on Ellen. My regard for her was utterly passionless, utterly indescribable. Love, in the common acceptation of the word, had never been mentioned between us; we confided to each other all our flirtations, all the caprices, annoyances, and jealousies which are the lot of young people. When I was first engaged to Lucy, I was not happy until Ellen could share my joy, could see the object of my choice, and in sweet sisterly tones could congratulate me upon it. It was my delight to see the affection springing up between my cousin and her whom I now call my wife,—to hear their mutual praises of each other, and to think that, until some favored suitor should come to claim her for his own, Ellen would share our new home. This was not to be. Just before my marriage, my cousin went to Burgandy, on a visit to an old schoolfellow, whose husband, a sickly and consumptive man, was compelled to reside there for the benefit of his health. Her stay in France, which was to have occupied but a few weeks, extended over six months. I heard from her but twice during the interval, but upon the occasion of my marriage, she wrote a long and affectionate letter to Lucy, telling her that she was perfectly happy, and speaking in those mysterious terms which girls love to use, of a certain Vicomte de Bodé, who was paying her great attention. Two months after, Ellen suddenly returned to England, accompanied by her brother, who had been dispatched to bring her back. There was a mystery connected with her return which I could never fathom; her mother, indeed, wrote me a plaintive letter lamenting the folly with which young girls usually throw away their affections, and hinting that even Ellen’s good sense was not proof against womanly weakness, and that had she not been recalled when she was, she would have been drawn into a marriage which for reasons hereafter to be verbally explained to me, must have been an everlasting source of misery to her. At the receipt of this letter from my aunt, I was, it is needless to say, very much pained, but being forbidden to answer it (for Ellen was unaware that I had been written to, and the sight of a letter in my well-known handwriting would doubtless arouse her suspicions,) I was compelled to wait until further information was afforded me. That information never came, and until her brother telegraphed to me in the words with which I have commenced my story, I heard nothing of the Luttrell family.
Within ten minutes after I received the telegraph message, I had thrown a few things into a carpet-bag, had a card stitched on to it with my name, and Boltons, Tamworth, for the address (for I am oldfashioned enough always to direct my luggage in case of loss), and was rattling in a Hansom to Euston Square. I arrived just in time to catch the night mail-train; the platform was thronged, there were Oxford men going back to the university, barristers starting on circuit, sporting men going down for the Leamington steeple-chase, and invalids off to Malvern in search of health. Porters were pushing, rushing against stolid old gentlemen, crushing their feet with enormous heavily laden barrows, and crying “by your leave,” while the sufferers were clasping their mangled limbs in anguish. The post-office van, with its trim arrangement of sorting boxes, and its travelling capped clerks, stood gaping to receive the flood of bags pouring into it from the shoulders of the red-coated guards; non-passengers were bidding adieu to their friends at the doors of the carriages; the policemen were busily unhooking the various labels from neighboring Bletchley to distant Perth, with which the vehicles were bedizzened; commercial gents, those knowing travellers, were settling themselves comfortably on the back seats of the second class; the old gentleman who is always late, was being rapidly hurried to his place; and the black-faced stoker was leaning forward, looking out for the signal of the station-master to go-ahead, when I sprang into a first class compartment and took the only vacant seat I found there.
Once started, I looked around upon my travelling companions, who were apparently of the usual stamp. There was a stout, red-faced, elderly, gentleman-farmer looking man, rather flushed with the last pint of port at Simpson’s and the exertion of cramming a fat little portmanteau (the corner of which still obstinately protruded) under the seat; there was a thin pale-faced curate, with no whiskers and no shirt-collar, but with a long black coat, and a silk waistcoat buttoning round the throat, a mild, washed-out, limp, afternoon-service style of a man, engaged in reading a little book with a brass cross on the back, and “Ye Lyffe of St. Crucifidge,” emblazoned on it in red letters. There was a fidgety, pinched-up old lady, with a face so wrinkled as to make one thankful she was a female, as by no earthly means could she have shaved it, who kept perpetually peering into a mottled-looking basket suggestive of sandwiches and sherry-flasks, under apprehension of having lost her ticket; and there was a young man apparently devoted to the stock-broking interest, stiff as to his all-rounder, checked as to his trousers, natty as to his boots, who kept alternately paring his nails, stroking his chin, whistling popular melodies in a subdued tone, and attempting to go to sleep. Finally, on the opposite side to me, and in the further corner, there was a large bundle, the only visible component parts of which were a large poncho cloak, a black beard, and a slouched, foreign-looking hat; but these parts were all so blended and huddled together, that after five minutes sharp scrutiny it would have been difficult to tell what the bundle really was.
I had arrived so late at the station, that I had not had time to provide myself with a book, or even, to render the journey more tedious, by the purchase of an evening paper; so that after settling down in my seat, I had to content myself with a perusal of Bradshaw, with wondering whether anybody ever went to Ambergate, Flotten Episcopi, or Bolton-le-Moors, and what they did when they got there, and with musing upon Heal’s bedsteads, which, according to the advertisement, could be sent free by post, and upon the dismayed gentleman who, in the woodcut, cannot put up his umbrella, and is envious of the syphonia’d individual who finds “comfort in a storm.” But this species of amusement, though undeniably exciting at first, palls on repetition, and I soon found myself letting the Bradshaw drop, and endeavoring to seek solace in sleep. To seek but not to find. To me, sleep in a railway carriage is next to impossible. First the lamp glares in my eyes, and when I try to cover them with my hat, the stiff rim grates over my nose, and scrubs me to desperation; then the cloth-covered sides of the carriage are rough to my face; my legs are cramped, and my feet, in opposition to the rest of my body, go to sleep, and are troubled with pins and needles; and so, after much tossing, and tumbling, and changing from side to side, I sit bolt upright, gazing at the lamp, and thinking over Ellen and the object of my journey, until we arrive at our first halting-place, Bletchley. Here we lose the curate and the stockbroker, the flashing lamps of the latter’s dog-cart being seen outside the station yard. The old lady gets out too, under the impression that we are at Crewe, and is only induced to return after much assurance, and, in fact, bodily force on the part of a porter. She, I, the farmer, and the bundle, are left together again, and the train proceeds. And now, worn out and utterly wearied, I fall asleep in good earnest, and sleep so soundly that I do not rouse till a prolonged “Hoi!” reverberates in my ears, and starting up, I find the lights of Crewe station flashing in my eyes, the farmer and the old lady gone, and a porter holding up my carpet-bag and talking through the carriage window. “A old lady as has just left this carriage,” says he, “have tuke a carpet-bag in mistake for her own, she thinks. Does any gent own this here, di-rected to Boltons, Tamworth?”
At these words, the bundle roused, picked itself up, and showed itself to be a young man with a bearded face, and a remarkably bright eye. He seemed about to speak; but I, half-asleep, reclaimed my property, handed out the old lady’s luggage, and as the whistle announced our departure, sank back again in slumber.
I had slept, I suppose, for about three minutes, when I was aroused by a choking, suffocating sensation in my throat, and on opening my eyes, I saw the bearded countenance of the stranger within an inch of my face, his eyes flashing, his nostrils dilated, and his whole frame quivering with emotion; so that his hand, although twised tightly in my neckcloth, trembled violently. Surprise for a second numbed my energies, but I soon recollected the practical teaching of my old instructor, the Worcestershire Nobbler, and finding I could free myself in no other means, dealt him a blow with my left hand which sent him staggering to the other end of the carriage. He recovered himself in an instant, and rushed at me again; but this time I was on my guard, and as he advanced I seized his hands by the wrists, and being much the more powerful man, forced him into a seat, and kept him there, never for an instant relaxing my grip. “Let me go!” he hissed between his teeth, speaking in a foreign accent, “Let me go! Scoundrel! coward!—release me!”
Had any third person been present they could not have failed to be amused at the matter of fact tone of my remarks in contrast to the high flown speech of the stranger.
“What the deuce do you mean, sir, by attacking an inoffensive man in this way?” said I, “what’s your motive? You don’t look like a thief.”
“No,” he screamed, “ ’tis you who are the thief, you who would steal from me all that I cherish in the world!”
“Why, I never set eyes on you before!” I exclaimed, getting bewildered and not feeling quite certain whether I was awake or asleep.
“No, but I have heard of you,” he replied, “heard of you too often. Tiens! did you just acknowledge you were going to Boltens!”
“Well, what if I am?” I asked. “You shall never reach your destination,” and with a sudden twist he shook my hand from his neck, sprang at my face and struck me with such force that I fell on my back on the floor of the carriage. In falling I dragged my adversary with me, but he was nimbler than I, and succeeded in planting his knee on my throat while he pinned my hands to my sides. Seeing me at his mercy he gave a cry of triumph, then stooping over me scanned my face with such a wild and scaring glance that a glimmering of the truth for the first time flashed across me—the man was made. I turned faint sick at the idea, and closed my eyes. “Ah, ha!” shrieked the lunatic, “you pale, you tremble! You, an Englishman, change color like a girl! You shall be yet another color before I leave you, your cheeks shall be blue, your eyes red, Entends du, misérable?” And as he spoke he knelt with such force on my throat that I felt my eyes were starting from their sockets; I struggled convulsively, but the more I writhed the more tightly did he press with his knee, until at length the anguish grew insupportable, and I fainted.
How long I remained insensible, I know not; it can have been but for a very few minutes, however, and when I came to myself I found the fresh night air blowing over my face, I saw the door of the carriage open, and felt the madman endeavouring to drag me to the aperture with the evident intention of throwing me out upon the line.
And now I felt that the crisis was at hand, and that it was but a question of time whether I could hold out until we arrived at the station, or whether I should be murdered by the lunatic. We were both young men, and though, perhaps, I was naturally the more powerful, yet his position gave him great advantages, as I was still extended on my back, while he was stooping over me, and while my limbs were cramped he had free play for all his energies. On seeing me recovering from the swoon, he uttered a short, sharp cry, and, bending lower, twined his hands in my cravat. Now was my opportunity; his back was towards the door, his face so close to mine, that I could feel his breath upon my cheek. Gathering all my remaining strength together, I seized him by the ancles, and literally hurled him over my head on to his face. He fell heavily, striking his head against the opposite door, and lay stunned and bleeding. In a second I was on my feet ready to grapple him, but as I rose the engine shrieked our approaching advent to the station, and almost before I could raise my fallen foe we ran into Tamworth. The first person I saw on the platform was Ellen’s brother, to whom, after hearing that she was out of danger, I, in a few words, narrated my adventure, and pointed out the stranger, who, still insensible, was supported by some of the porters.
“Let’s have a look at the fellow!” said Fred Luttrell—an unsophisticated youth—but he no sooner had set his eyes on the pallid face than he drew flack, exclaiming, “By Jove, it’s Bodé!”
And so it was; and by the aid of explanation, I received afterwards from Fred Luttrell, I was, in some measure, enabled to account for the attack made upon me. It appears that the Vicomte de Bodé had seen Ellen while in Burgundy, and fell desperately in love with her; but his addresses were utterly discouraged by her friends, for one reason alone—but that a most powerful one. His family were afflicted with hereditary insanity, and he himself had already on two occasions shown the taint. Of course it was impossible to declare to him the real reason of his rejection, and he was accordingly informed that Ellen’s parents had long since pledged her hand to a connexion of her own.
After her departure he grew moody and irratable, and it was judged advisable to have him watched; but he managed to elude the observation of his keepers, and to escape to England. Ellen’s address was well known to him; he was proceeding thither, and when he heard the very house mentioned by the porter at Crewe as the direction of my luggage, he doubtless, in his wandering mind, pictured me as his rival and supplanter.
My dear Ellen recovered, and so did the Vicomte—that is to say from my assault. As to his madness, it stood by him, poor creature, until he died.
