gcls_courant_010 1

THE COURANT,
A Southern Literary Journal.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOWARD H. CALDWELL, EDITOR.] "Sic vos non vobis." [WM. W. WALKER, JR., & CO., PROPRIETORS.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VOLUME I. COLUMBIA, S. C., THURSDAY, JULY 7, 1859. NUMBER 10
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written for the Courant.
CARRIE.
------
I have a little cousin,
She's scarcely five years old,
Her eyes are blue as heaven,
And her locks are shining gold.
Her brow's a lily petal,
And her cheek a damask rose,
She's a winsome little cousin--
And this, she almost knows.

Her glad blue eyes are beaming
Like sunshine on the earth;
And she laughs away the shadows
With her effervescing mirth.
She dances like a fairy,
With footsteps light and free,
As bright as any angel
This Carrie is to me. Æ.
-----------------------------------------
Written expressly for the Courant.
MY COUSIN BLANCH.
------
BY THE AUTHOR OF "INEZ."
------
CHAPTER I.

"Faultily faultless; icily regular; splendidly null."--
Tennyson's Maud.

"Blanch, it is past midnight."
She did not hear me.
"Blanch it is one o'clock."
Without looking up, she raised her hand toward the
clock on the mantle, and answered coldly--
"You need not sit up to tell me the time of night; I
have a clock here. Go to sleep Edgar."
I rested one shoulder against the door, and leaning on
my crutch, watched her for a few moments.
It was not strange that men worshiped, and women hated
and feared my peerless Cousin Blanch Maxwell. There
she sat, as I had often seen her before, near a glowing
coal fire, with her arms resting on the marble table, and
an open book before her. She wore a loose wrapper or
robe de chambre, of black velvet, lined with pale blue
silk. The sleeves were very full, and fell away from
the arms, exposing them from the dimpled elbows, and
rendering their snowy whiteness more apparent, by con-
trat with the sable hue of the velvet. It was low in
the throat, revealing the faultless turn of the neck.--
Her hair had been unbound, and falling around her
shoulders, swept over the back of the chair and trailed
on the carpet. It was of an uncommon color, neither
auburn nor brown, but between gold and bronze; and
sometimes when the sun shone on it, the rippling waves
flashed until their burnished glory seemed a very
aureola. It was thick and curling, yet she never wore
it in ringlets. Now it was parted on her pale polished
forehead, and hung around her like a gilded veil. The
face was a perfect oval--you might measure it by all the
rules of art, and except the height of the brow, no im-
perfections could be found. The nose was straight,
clearly cut, and delicate, resembling that in the old
heads of Alympias the mother of Alexander. The
upper lip was short and curved like a bow; the lower,
thin, firm and straight. Her eyes were unlike any I
ever saw, they were larger than usual, and in color,
resembled the purplish blue which borders the petals of
the Clematis. Long lashes of the bronze hue of her
hair shaded them, and when the eyes were uplifted, the
curling fringes rested against the brow. I am no longer
a young man; I have travelled over the greater portion
of the globe. I have seen all types of beauty, from the
Andalusians whom Murillo immortalized, to the far-
famed Circassians of the Orient; I have seen many
women of wonderful loveliness, in courts and cottages,
but never yet have I found a head and face comparable
to my Cousin's. A miracle of statuesque beauty was
the queenly Blanch, yet I never looked at her without a
feeling of awe, of painful apprehension, of undefined
dread; and as I stood leaning on my crutches, watching
her motionless figure, in its grand, yet graceful pose, I
sighed involuntarily. She must have heard me, for she
rose instantly, shook back her magnificent hair, and
approached me. Her eloquent eyes were fixed on mine,
and her deep clear voice, calm yet haughty, echoed
through the vaulted room.
"Edgar, I have told you, that you should not watch
me. Once for all, go to your own room, go to bed.--
Come to my study no more, unless I invite you."
"Blanch, your father forbade your studying until this
hour. You will ruin your health."
"I am my own mistress! Good night Edgar."
She took up an astronomical book and map, and light-
ing a candle, passed by me, and mounted the spiral stair-
case leading to the observatory on the top of the house.
I watched her tall form, as she slowly ascended, and in
the dim light of the candle, her black dress and long
floating hair seemed to belong to a veritable Urania. I
heard her open the glass door of the observatory--then
the light vanished--I heard the click of the lock, as
she turned the key, and then I returned to my own
room, and lighting a cigar, sat down to ponder for the
thousandth time, the singular character of the woman I
had just left. I am an orphan, and from my infancy
have been crippled. Left with an ample fortune, I
spent some years in travelling, and finally came back to
my native land, and made my home in the house of my
only relative, my uncle, Judge Maxwell. Once in her
early childhood I had seen Blanch, when I returned
she was a woman. She was an only child, her mother
had lost her reason while Blanch was yet an infant, and
died in a lunatic asylum, before her daughter was two
years old. My uncle was a lawyer of great talent, and
popularity; had held the office of Judge, and was indis-
putably one of the first men of the city in which he
resided. He was stern, ambitious, and thoroughly sel-
fish, occupied solely by his schemes for distinction and
renown. If he loved any human being, it was Blanch;
he was proud of her, and looked forward to a distin-
guished alliance, with some prominent member of his
own profession. She grew up strangely like him, in
some elements of character, but in others, totally antago-
nistic. Her nature was reserved and silent, and until
her nineteenth year, she spent her life in study. When
I returned from Europe, and came to reside in the house,
she was twenty-one, and from the moment I met her,
she was a fascinating mystery. Her intellect was rarely
acute; I have never known but one other equal to it;
her analytical powers were astonishing, and she pored
continually over books which are generally considered
unintelligible to her sex. Her favorite authors were the
mystical writers of the middle ages, and of modern
Germany. Novalis and Boehme were often in her
hands, and Swedenborg was an oracle of which she
never wearied. Of Geometry, Astonomy and Chemistry,
she was passionately fond; and I have marveled at the
patience and perseverance she evinced in some of her
experiments and astronomical calculations. Into meta-
physics she had dived deeply, and yet, with all this love
of abstract speculation, hers was the most intensely
æsthetic soul I have ever known. She was habitually
taciturn; but sometimes the contemplation of beauty
seemed to inspire her with unearthly eloquence, and on
such occasions her bursts of enthusiasm thrilled me, as
nothing else had power to do. Yet while she uttered
words of irresistible pathos, her voice preserved its calm,
even tone, her lip never quivered, nor did the faintest
hue of rose tinge her marble cheek. I have watched
for a glow of pleasure, or anger, or confusion, but was
never gratified. Her face was of that clear colorless-
ness, which can be likened only to ivory, but the lips
were marked with lines of scarlet. She went into
society very frequently--my uncle's entertainments
were numerous, and often splendid--and wherever seen,
Blanch was the only attraction, the supreme and idolized
beauty. It was not at all remarkable that she had no female
friends, few were capable of appreciating her extraordi-
nary intellect, and many envied her loveliness. Her
manner was cold, haughty and abstracted. I doubt
whether, of all her admirers, she suffered half a dozen
to avow their love; and I have pitied the victims who
followed her, fascinated by her beauty, yet kept at a
distance by her repellant coldness. I never saw any
one (not even her father,) attempt to caress her, she
treated him with marked respect, but perfect indiffer-
ence. I think it probable she never put her arms
around his neck and kissed him in her life; I am very
sure I never saw her do so. There was only one person
whom she ever evinced the slightest interest in, or affec-
tion for, and this evidently resulted from pity for physi-
cal suffering and deformity. In speaking to me, her
voice would sometimes soften, and three or four times
she voluntarily approached the sofa where I rested, and
put her beautiful cold pearly hand on my forehead.--
Once, too, she took away my crutch, and drawing my
arm to her shoulder, made me lean upon her, while she
pointed out the beauty of a pet plant at her feet. Some-
times I thought her utterly heartless, and incapable of
loving anything, at others I seemed to obtain glimpses
of a passionate nature, restless, beacuse it needed com-
panionship and sympathy. One idiosyncrasy impressed
me particularly--I never heard her laugh. No matter
how witty the circumstances which surrounded her,
she never laughed. She smiled a peculiarly quiet, fleet-
ing smile; and while you watched the momentary
change of the mouth, the lines returned to their accus-
tomed composure. The expression of her face was not
misanthropic, or troubled or stern, but calm, inflexible,
fixed, like that of a marble image. My Cousin was a
mystic. She had strange theories about the soul and its
future, and occasionally, when more than usually ab-
stracted, she spoke aloud concerning her "preexisten-
ces." I feared very much that she had inherited her
mother's fatal tendency to insanity; and some of her
pet doctrines, certainly bordered on lunacy. But when
I examined her mathematical calculations, I was amazed
at the clearness, and latent strength of her intellect. I
believe she loved me, as well as if I had been her
brother, and in her intercourse with me, laid aside her
reserve far more than with any one else. Yet she puz-
zled me, and I threw away my cigar, and fell asleep in
my chair.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------