This eBook was produced by David Widger EUGENE ARAM By Edward Bulwer-Lytton BOOK V. Surely the man that plotteth ill against his neighbor perpetrateth ill against himself, and the evil design is most evil to him that deviseth it. --Hesiod CHAPTER I. GRASSDALE.--THE MORNING OF THE MARRIAGE.--THE CRONES GOSSIP.--THE BRIDE AT HER TOILET.--THE ARRIVAL. JAM veniet virgo, jam dicetur Hymenaeus, Hymen, O Hymenae! Hymen ades, O Hymenae! CATULLUS: Carmen Nuptiale. It was now the morning in which Eugene Aram was to be married to Madeline Lester. The student's house had been set in order for the arrival of the bride; and though it was yet early morn, two old women, whom his domestic (now not the only one, for a buxom lass of eighteen had been transplanted from Lester's household to meet the additional cares that the change of circumstances brought to Aram's) had invited to assist her in arranging what was already arranged, were bustling about the lower apartments and making matters, as they call it, "tidy." "Them flowers look but poor things, after all," muttered an old crone, whom our readers will recognize as Dame Darkmans, placing a bowl of exotics on the table. "They does not look nigh so cheerful as them as grows in the open air." "Tush! Goody Darkmans," said the second gossip. "They be much prettier and finer, to my mind; and so said Miss Nelly when she plucked them last night and sent me down with them. They says there is not a blade o' grass that the master does not know. He must be a good man to love the things of the field so." "Ho!" said Dame Darkmans, "ho! When Joe Wrench was hanged for shooting the lord's keeper, and he mounted the scaffold wid a nosegay in his hand, he said, in a peevish voice, says he: 'Why does not they give me a tarnation? I always loved them sort o' flowers,--I wore them when I went a courting Bess Lucas,--an' I would like to die with one in my hand!' So a man may like flowers, and be but a hempen dog after all!" "Now don't you, Goody; be still, can't you? What a tale for a marriage day!" "Tally vally!" returned the grim hag, "many a blessing carries a curse in its arms, as the new moon carries the old. This won't be one of your happy weddings, I tell ye." "And why d' ye say that?" "Did you ever see a man with a look like that make a happy husband? No, no! Can ye fancy the merry laugh o' childer in this house, or a babe on the father's knee, or the happy, still smile on the mother's winsome face, some few years hence? No, Madge! the devil has set his black claw on the man's brow."