The Curse of Clifton OR, THE WIDOWED BRIDE.

“The Curse of Clifton; or, The Widowed Bride” will be found, on perusal by all, to be equal, if not superior, to any of the previous works by the celebrated American authoress, Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, who is now conceded by critics to be the most popular female writer living, and her works to be among the greatest novels in the English language, as well as the most splendid pictures of American life ever written. “The Curse of Clifton” shows all the grace, vigor, and absorbing interest to be found in “Ishmael” and “Self-Raised,” her last two works, and places Mrs. Southworth in the front rank of living novelists. The same indescribable charm pervades all her works, which can only emanate from a female mind, and the excellences of “The Curse of Clifton” are many and great. It is a model book—graphic, brilliant and original. The romance is glowing and bold, possessing an absorbing interest that can attach only to real existences and life-like portraitures. The characters are

beautifully drawn, and the novel throughout is highly exciting and of unexceptionable moral tendency. It ought to be read by everybody in the cheap form in which it is now issued.

☞ Mrs. Southworth’s works are for sale by all Booksellers, or copies of any one, or more of them, will be sent to any one, postage prepaid, or free of freight, on remitting the price of the ones wanted, to the publishers,

CHAPTER I. THE MOUNTAIN HUT.

Upon a glorious morning, in the mid-summer of 18—, two equestrian travellers spurred their horses up the ascent of the Eagle’s Flight, the loftiest and most perilous pass of the Alleghanies.

Though the sun was near the meridian, and all the sky above was “darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,” and perfectly clear, yet all the earth beneath was covered by a thick, low-lying fog.

On reaching the highest point of the pass, both travellers drew rein and paused, looking—North, South, East, West—over the ocean of vapor rolling from horizon to horizon below them! And while they so pause, let us catch that nearly vertical ray of the sun that falls upon them, lighting up the group like fire above the fog, and daguerreotype them as they stand.

Both are young men of about the same age, probably twenty-five; both are well mounted upon fine bay horses, and both wear the undress uniform of the ———— Regiment of Cavalry; and here all resemblance between them ceases.

He on the right hand, who holds in his horse’s head with so tight a rein, causing the gallant steed to arch his beautiful neck so gracefully, while he lets fly a falcon-glance around 18the shrouded horizon, is Archer Clifton, of Clifton, now holding the rank of Captain in the —— Regiment of Cavalry. His form is of middle size, strongly built, yet elegantly proportioned. His complexion is dark and bronzed as by exposure; his features are Roman; his hair and whiskers trimly cut, are of the darkest chestnut, with what painters call cool lights, which is to say, that there is no warmth of coloring even where the sun lights. Indeed, there is no warmth about the looks of the whole man. His eyes are singularly beautiful and brilliant, combining all those dark, shifting, scintillating, prismatic hues, that would drive an artist mad, for want of colors to portray, or an author to despair, for lack of words to describe. He wears the dark blue uniform of his regiment, and manages his noble charger with the ease and grace only to be found in the accomplished cavalry officer.

He upon the left hand, who, with languid air and loosened rein, inclines his body forward, permitting his graceful horse to droop his head and scent the earth, as in quest of herbage, is Francis Fairfax, of Green Plains, a Lieutenant in the company under the command of Captain Clifton. He is of about the same height of Clifton, but his figure is slender almost to fragility. His features are delicate and piquant. His complexion is fair and transparent. His hair is also very fair, and waves off from a forehead so snowy, round and smooth, as to seem child-like, especially with those clear blue eyes, that now brood roguishly under their golden lashes, as in profound quest of mischief, and now light up and sparkle with fun and frolic. He missmanages his spoiled pet of a steed with the charming insouciance, only to be seen in the amateur poet, painter, player, musician, etc., etc., etc. And yet there is sometimes an earnest, thoughtful aspect about the youth, that surprises one into the suspicion that all his levity is superficial, and hides his deeper and better nature, as stubble

sometimes covers and conceals a mine of precious metal.

“Well!” at last spoke Mr. Fairfax, “it is now about twelve hours since we were emptied out of that atrocious old stage coach, which, for a week past, has been beating us about in its interior, from side to side, and from seat to ceiling, as if we were a lump of butter in an old woman’s churn, and whose kindest turn of all to us was, when it turned over 19and shook us out down the precipice, and into the trough of the Wolf’s Lick, as if we had been apples fed to the pigs. Oh! by the lost baronetcy of the house of Fairfax, my self-esteem will never recover the effects of it! Perdition seize the picturesque at this price! And ever since long before daybreak this morning, have we been wandering about over those mountain tops, with the earth below us hidden in mist and only the highest peaks looming through the sea of vapor like islands in the ocean! And we plunging wildly about in the fog, like death on the pale horse riding the waves! And to the momentarily recurring risk of riding over some hidden precipice of a thousand feet perpendicular. If this be

your glorious mountain scenery, to the demon with it! For I had as lief be on the open sea with the ‘Ancient Mariner!’”

To this half petulant, half laughing philippic Captain Clifton, while his glance still roved over the shrouded hemisphere, replied, with an indulgent smile—

“You cannot see the face of the country for the morning veil she chooses to wear. But wait till high noon, when the sun, her royal lover, in the meridian of his glory, shall raise that gauzy covering, and she, like a right royal bride, shall smile and blush in light and glory.”

“By my soul, I could fancy the lady earth wore this veil to conceal fast gathering tears, rather than smiles or blushes! Anglicé, I think we shall have rain soon—though blistered be my tongue for saying it!—not about the rain but about the veil! For, look you! Fret as I may at this journey through the mist—yet this fine scenery, under a cloud as it literally is, gives me a feeling of breadth, grandeur! I expand, spread out over the vast area of its shrouded solitudes. Oh! it is only on the boundless sea or on the mountain top, with a hemisphere below me, that I feel as if I had room enough to live in! And you give me a feeling of suffocation by drawing in this awful shrouded world to the simile of a lady’s veiled face! But it is not to be wondered at! No, by the shade of Marc Antony, and all other great men, who held the whole world light in the balance with a woman’s evanescent smile or tear! everything is apropos du femmes with you now. Could the music of the spheres suddenly burst upon your astonished ears, as soon as you had recovered

20your senses, your highest note of admiration would be to compare that universal diapason of divine harmony to Lady Carolyn’s silver laugh!”

“I do not recollect ever to have heard ‘Lady’ Carolyn laugh.”

“Ten thousand pardons! A Clifton of Clifton never laughs. But tell me, Captain, whereabouts in the world—I mean in the clouds, are we? And when shall we see this pure pearl of beauty and the rich casket that enshrines her, this stately lily of the mountains and the parterre where she blooms;—when shall we behold Paradise and the Peri—Clifton and Lady Carolyn?”

Without replying to this mock-poetic strain, Captain Clifton remained with his eyes still wandering from East to West, and back again over the rolling vapor. And Fairfax continued—

“I suspect now, by your abstracted air and wandering eye, that you have lost your way in the clouds—not the first time such a thing has happened to a lover, nor would it be strange in a place like this, where the only land-marks are mountain tops sticking out of the fog with a day’s journey between each!”

At this instant a distant group of peaks broke suddenly through the mist like new isles thrown up by the sea, and glittered whitely in the sunlight against the deep blue horizon.

“See!” exclaimed Clifton, roused from his apathy by the sudden apparition. “Look, Fairfax! I will show you White Cliffs! Look straight before you to the Western horizon—a little North of West. You see a crescent of seven peaks rising through the mist against the sky. That is White Cliffs.”

“Looking white enough at this distance—quite like snow-capped mountains, in fact.”

“Yes. They are of white quartz, and their peaks rising from the girdle of dark evergreens around their base and sides, have quite a cooling effect in hot weather.”

“Ah! just so. Now how far off are those same blessed refrigerators?”

“About twenty-five miles in a bee-line. But the mountain road is very circuitous, and makes the distance nearly 21forty. However, if we ride well, we shall be able to reach Clifton in time to surprise Mrs. Clifton at tea.”

“Heaven be praised for that possibility!” ejaculated Fairfax, as they prepared to descend the mountain side.

As they rode down, Captain Clifton, warming slightly from his cool reserve, said—

“I think, Fairfax, that you, poet and artist as you claim to be, will rather like Clifton. Tourists, who have visited our part of the country, think the scenery there very fine. It impresses me merely as being unique. There is something formal—but, to myself, not therefore unpleasing in that crescent of seven peaks—the tallest being in the centre and gradually declining thence to the lowest, which may be called the horns of the crescent, and point Southward. Those peaks rise from a forest of—first elms and oaks around their base; then pines farther up their sides; and last of cedars, above which rise the pinnacle of white quartz. This crescent of mountains surrounds and shelters from the North winds the family mansion, which is situated in the woods at its foot. North of the peaks, the country is wild and rugged, but partly covered with thick forest, and affording the best hunting grounds in the world. There you may course the hare; track the deer; or if your tastes aspire to a fiercer conflict, hunt the wolf, the wild cat, or the bear—!”

“—Or the rattle-snake, copper-head, or moccasin! Thank you, I have no inclination for crusade against those mountaineers,” laughed Fairfax.

“Perhaps you like angling? There is a trout stream at the foot of the wooded lawn, in front of the house. I must tell you about that, for it is the head waters of a fine river.

“From the Western cliff there springs a torrent that with many a leap, and fall, and rebound, tumbles tumultuously down the side of the mountain, and falling into a channel at the foot of the lawn flows calmly on, until it meets a second fall, from whence it goes hurrying on, through forests, fields and rocks, taking tribute from many a mountain torrent, and many a meadow-stream, and widening as it goes, until it becomes a mighty river, rushing on, to pour its floods into the majestic James. After which, they both go on, breaking 22through range after range of mountains, and so conquer their passage to the sea—even as in the feudal days of the olden country, some mountain chieftain, gathering his vassals together, came rushing down from his highland home, and laying all the country under tribute in his course, hurried on to throw all his treasures at the feet of his sovereign, and go with him to the wars.”

“Clifton!” said Fairfax, more seriously than he had yet spoken, “all your illustrations—all your metaphors—all your thoughts, fancies and imaginings are—not ‘of the earth, earthy,’ but worse—far worse—of the world, worldly! Of the world, its castes, customs and conventions—its pomps, vanities and falsities! You speak of the grandest, the most imposing—oh! let me call it at once, the most magnificent area of mountain scenery in the hemisphere, with all the earth, below and around, covered with a sea of vapor that rises and falls, rolling from horizon to horizon, like the waves of the ocean, and you compare it to a veiled royal bride! You describe a mighty mountain-river, rending its passage through the everlasting rocks, overleaping, uprooting, bearing down and bearing on all obstacles to its resistless rush towards the sea, and you liken it to a chieftain going to pay tribute to a King! Ah, Clifton of Clifton, the beauty, the glory, and the majesty of the earth pleases you, but the ‘pomp, pride, and circumstance’ of the world inspires you!

But when was it otherwise with a Clifton, of Clifton? ‘The spirit of intense worldliness has ever been their bane and curse—their sin and its punishment!’” he concluded, relapsing into his mock-tragic air.

“Ah! so you are familiar with the popular legend that you have just quoted,” said Captain Clifton. “But,” he added, with a sarcastic smile, “were Georgia here, I think she could refute the charge, and prove one Clifton, at least, has been guided by any spirit rather than that of ‘intense worldliness.’”

“Georgia?”

“I beg her pardon! Mrs. Clifton, of Clifton.”

“Oh! your aunt! but by my soul, Captain, that was a very irreverent way of introducing the old lady! Do young men in your patriarchal part of the country call old gentlewomen by their Christian names?”

23“Old gentlewomen!” repeated Clifton slowly, with a musing smile, adding—“Georgia is about seventeen years of age, and the most beautiful woman in the world!”

“Whe-e-e-ew! I’m amazed! I’m confounded! I’m stunned! Then—the present Mrs. Clifton is the second wife?”

“No, sir—Georgia is my uncle’s fourth wife.”

“Overwhelmed!—annihilated!” exclaimed the young man. “The—the—old Blue-beard! the old Henry VIII.! Four wives! Are they all living?—if not, where does he bury his dead?”

“Fairfax!” exclaimed Captain Clifton, in a tone, and with a look, that speedily recalled the young man to himself—then he added, rather haughtily—“My Uncle Clifton is a simple, gentle-hearted old man, excessively fond of women, but mark you, sir!—it is the affection of the patriarch, not of the pacha.”

“Hang me if ever I saw any difference between Solomon the king, and Solimaun the caliph; Abraham the patriarch, and Aroun the pacha, in that respect,” laughed the young man, until, stealing a furtive glance at the cold and haughty face of Clifton, he held out his hand, and suddenly exclaimed—“Pardon me, Clifton! or call me out! I—can’t help a jest, to save my soul! but I’ll fight or apologize, or render any other sort of satisfaction afterwards!”

Captain Clifton remembered that Francis Fairfax was his guest, going to spend a long mid-summer furlough at his mother’s house, and so he cleared his brow and answered—

“Nonsense!”

“Now tell me about Henry VIII.’s fourth Queen—how long has she been married—I mean the present Mrs. Clifton?”

“About two years. My uncle wedded her when she was fifteen—she is now seventeen—and, as I said, the most beautiful creature that you, or I, or any one else, ever did, or ever shall see, anywhere.”

“Allons—stop there! False knight and recreant! whose colors do you wear while you uphold the peerless beauty of Georgia? What would Miss Clifton of Clifton say to your admiration?”

“Ridiculous, sir! Miss Clifton is herself very beautiful but not the most beautiful. Miss Clifton has other and rarer distinctions, I am proud to say?”

24“Oh, I understand—her family name!—nevertheless, be hanged if I don’t believe you have been in love with Georgia!”

“Impossible, sir! The perfect beauty of the young girl struck me forcibly, as it strikes all others—nay, more—impressed my imagination deeply perhaps. I confess to a penchant for female beauty—and—observe—it is the artist’s taste, sir, not the sultan’s. But in love with Georgia! Impossible, sir! She was a girl of humble parentage!”

“Ah! then you think it quite ‘impossible’ that a gentleman born, should be in love with a girl of ‘humble parentage?’”

“Preposterous, sir!—utterly preposterous! Pray, let us hear no more about it!”

“Yet your uncle—”

“My uncle married such an one, you would say. Old gentlemen, living on their own estates, will do such things. And the world charitably ascribes it to dotage, smiles and forgives them. You will oblige me by changing the subject, Frank.”

Fairfax fell into reverie, and Clifton dropped into thought, and they rode on for some time in silence, and in—joy—until—

“Floods and furies! Fire and flames!! Lightning and tempests, and sudden death!!!” exclaimed Fairfax, rearing and backing his horse with a terrible jerk, and throwing himself from the saddle, bathed in perspiration, and shaking with terror. “Look! Look there! There at your feet! Back! Back your horse, unless you wish to ride straight to the kingdom of Heaven, or—to the other place! Oh, blessed Lord! I shall never survive the shock!”

Captain Clifton backed his horse, dismounted, and following the index of Fairfax, approached the brink of the awful abyss, and looked down a perpendicular precipice of more than a thousand feet, with the remaining distance lost in shadows and dim vapors, while faintly to the ear came a low and hollow murmur, as of the roaring of many waters at a vast depth!

“This is the head of the Devil’s Staircase! We have lost our way!” said Captain Clifton.

“Devil’s Staircase! I should think it was! Ugh! Oooo-oo-ooh! 25I shall never survive it! Where does it lead to? Tell me that! To the infernal regions, I suppose, of course. Ur-r-r-r-r!” exclaimed Fairfax, with his teeth chattering.

“We have indeed made a very narrow escape,” said Captain Clifton, gazing thoughtfully down the horrible pit.

“Narrow escape! Ur-r-r-r-r!” exclaimed Frank, shaking, shuddering, and streaming with cold perspiration. “I tell you, when I was providentially led to look down, and saw the fog roll away from beneath my horse’s feet, and reveal that ghastly—Ur-r-r-r-r! Ur-r-r-r-r! I believe I shall chatter my teeth to powder!”

“Come, come, Fairfax! this is really unmanly. Thank an ever-watchful Providence, that has preserved you from a sudden and horrible death, and calm yourself. Be a man!”

“Be a man! You might as well say to my shuddering horse, there—be a horse! This is unhorsely! Ur-r-r-r-r. I tell you it has given me the tertian ague!”

“Why, Frank! Really!”

“Look at my horse—look even at that dumb beast! Yes, look at that gallant steed, who would charge upon a phalanx of fixed bayonets, and impale himself upon their points, if spurred to it—look at him! Positively frozen with terror!”

“Fairfax, you astonish me—certainly you are not really so much overcome.”

“Overcome! My nerves are shattered to atoms, I tell you! Ur-r-r-r-r! It has given me the tertian ague, and the St. Vitus’ dance! both together! Ur-r-r-r-r!”

“Now who would have supposed you to be a—of such a nervous temperament! Come, let me assist you to mount, and then away.”