"Coward!" he exclaimed, and his form rose to its fullest height, and his eye flashed out the fires of a manhood, which of late he had not often shown.
"Coward! No! Do I not tell you shoot? I do not fear death. Nay, let me say to you, Clifford, I long for it. Life has been a long torture to me--is still a torture. It can not now be otherwise. Take it--you will see me smile in the death agony."
"Hear me William Edgerton, and submit to my will. You know not half your wrong. You drove me from my home--my birthplace. When I was about to sacrifice you for your previous invasion of my peace in C--, I looked on your old father, I heard the story of his disappointment--his sorrows--and you were the cause. I determined to spare you--to banish myself rather, in order to avoid the necessity of taking your life. You were not satisfied with having wrought this result. You have pursued me to the woods, where my cottage once more began to blossom with the fruits of peace and love. You trample upon its peace--you renew your indignities and perfidies here. You drive me to desperation and fill my habitation with disgrace. Will you deny me then what I ask? Will you refuse me the atonement--any atonement--which I may demand?"
"No, Clifford!" he replied, after a pause in which he seemed subdued with shame and remorse. "You shall have it as you wish. I will fight you. I am all that you declare. I am guilty of the wrong you urge against me. I knew not, till now, that I had been the cause of your flight from C--. Had I known that!"
Kingsley offered him the pistol.
"No!" he said, putting it aside. "Not now! I will give you this atonement this afternoon. At this moment I can not. I must write. I must make another atonement. Your claim for justice, Clifford, must not preclude my settlement of the claims of others."
"Mine must have preference!"
"It shall! The atonement which I propose to make shall be, one of repentance. You would not deny me the melancholy privilege of saying a few last words to my wretched parents?"
"No! no! no!"
"I thank you, Clifford. Come for me at four to my lodgings--bring Mr.
Kingsley with you. You will find me ready to atone, and to save you every unnecessary pang in doing so."
This ended our conference. Kingsley rode home with him, while, throwing myself upon the ground, I surrendered myself to such meditations as were natural to the moods which governed me. They were dark and dismal enough. Edgerton had avowed his guilt. Could there be any doubt on the subject of my wife"s? He had made no sort of qualification in his avowal of guilt, which might acquit her. He had evidently made his confession with the belief that I was already in possession of the whole truth. One hope alone remained--that my wife"s voluntary declaration would still be forthcoming. To that I clung as the drowning man to his last plank. When Kingsley and Edgerton first left me, I had resolved to waste the hours in the woods and not to return home until after my final meeting in the afternoon with the latter. It might be that I should not return home then, and in such an event I was not unwilling that my wife should still live, the miserable thing which she had made herself. But, with the still fond hope that she might speak, and speak in season, I now resolved to return at the usual dinner hour; and, timing myself accordingly, I prolonged my wanderings through the woods until noon.
I then set forward, and reached the cottage a little sooner than I had expected.
I found Julia in bed. She complained of headache and fever. She had already taken medicine--I sat beside her. I spoke to her in the tenderest language. I felt, at the moment when I feared to lose her for ever, that I could love nothing half so well. I spoke to her with as much freedom as fondness; and, momently expecting her to make the necessary revelation, I hung upon her slightest words, and hung upon them only to be disappointed.
The dinner hour came. The meal was finished. I returned to the chamber, and once more resumed my place beside her on the couch. I strove to inspire her with confidence--to awaken her sensibilities--to beguile her to the desired utterance, but in vain. Of course I could give no hint whatsoever of the knowledge which I had obtained. After that, her confession would have been no longer voluntary, and could no longer have been credited.
Time sped--too rapidly as I thought. Though anxious for vengeance, I loved her too fondly not to desire to delay the minutes in the earnest expectation that she would speak at last. She did not. The hour approached of my meeting with Edgerton; and then I felt that Edgerton was not the only criminal.
Mrs. Porterfield just then brought in some warm tea and placed it on the table at the bed head. After a few moments delay, she left us alone together. The eyes of my wife were averted. The vial of prussic acid stood on the same table with the tea. I rose from the couch, interposed my person between it and the table--and, taking up the poison, deliberately poured three drops into the beverage. I never did anything more firmly. Yet I was not the less miserable, because I was most firm.
My nerve was that of the executioner who carries out a just judgment.
This done, I put the vial into my pocket. Julia then spoke to me. I turned to her with eagerness. I was prepared to cast the vessel of tea from the window. It was my hope that she was about to speak, though late, the necessary truths. But she only called to me to know if I had been to my office during the morning.
"Not since nine o"clock," was my answer. "Why?"
"Nothing. But are you going to your office now, dear husband?"
"Not directly. I shall possibly be there in the course of the afternoon.
What do you wish? Why do you ask?"
"Oh, nothing," she replied; "but I will tell you to-morrow why I ask."
"To-morrow!--tell me now, if it be anything of moment. Now! now is the appointed time!" The serious language of Scripture, became natural to me in the agonizing situation in which I stood.
"No! no! to-morrow will do. I will not gratify your curiosity. You are too curious, husband" and she turned from me, smiling, upon the couch.
I felt that what she might tell me to-morrow could have nothing to do with the affair between herself and Edgerton. THAT could be no object for jest and merriment. I turned from her slowly, with a feeling at my heart which was not exactly madness--for I knew then what I was doing--but it was just the feeling to make me doubtful how long I should be secure from madness.
"To-morrow will not do" I muttered to myself as I descended the stairs.
"Too late!--too late!"
CHAPTER XLIX.
SUICIDE.
From the cottage I proceeded to Kingsley"s. He was in readiness, and waiting me. We drove directly to Edgerton"s lodging-house, the appointed hour of four being at hand. Kingsley only alighted from the carriage, and entered the dwelling. He was absent several minutes. When he returned, he returned alone.
"Edgerton is either asleep or has gone out. His room-door is locked. The landlord called and knocked, but received no answer. He lacks manliness, and I suspect has fled. The steamboat went at two."
"Impossible!" I exclaimed, leaping from the carriage. "I know Edgerton better. I can not think he would fly, after the solemn pledge he gave me."
"You have only thought too well of him always," said the other, as we entered the house.
"Let us go to the room together," I said to the landlord. "I fear something wrong."
"Well, so do I," responded the publican. "The poor gentleman has been looking very badly, and sometimes gets into a strange wild taking, and then he goes along seeing n.o.body. Only last Sat.u.r.day I said to my old woman, as how I thought everything warn"t altogether right HERE,"--and the licensed sinner touched his head with his fore-finger, himself looking the very picture of well-satisfied sagacity. We said nothing, but leaving the eloquence to him, followed him up to Edgerton"s chamber.
I struck the door thrice with the b.u.t.t end of my whip, then called his name, but without receiving any answer. Endeavoring to look through the key-hole, I discovered the key on the inside, and within the lock. I then immediately conjectured the truth. William Edgerton had committed suicide.
And so it was. We burst the door, and found him suspended by a silk handkerchief to a beam that traversed the apartment. He had raised himself upon a chair, which he had kicked over after the knot had been adjusted. Such a proceeding evinced the most determined resolution.
We took him down with all despatch, but life had already been long extinct. He must have been hanging two hours. His face was perfectly livid--his eyeb.a.l.l.s dilated--his mouth distorted--but the neck remained unbroken. He had died by suffocation. I pa.s.s over the ordinary proceedings--the consternation, the clamor, the attendance of the grave-looking gentlemen with lancet and lotion. They did a great deal, of course, in doing nothing. Nothing could be done. Then followed the "crowner"s" inquest. A paper, addressed to the landlord, was submitted to them, and formed the burden of their report.
"I die by my own hands," said this doc.u.ment, "that I may lose the sense of pain, bodily and mental. I die at peace with the world. It has never wronged me. I am the source of my own sorrows, as I am the cause of my own death. I will not say that I die sane. I am doubtful on that head. I am sure that I have been the victim of a sort of madness for a very long time. This has led me to do wrong, and to meditate wrong--has made me guilty of many things, which, in my better moments of mind and body, I should have shrunk from in horror. I write this that n.o.body may be suspected of sharing in a deed the blame of which must rest on my head only."
Then followed certain apologies to the landlord for having made his house the scene of an event so shocking. The same paper also conveyed certain presents of personal stuff to the same person, with thanks for his courtesy and attention. An adequate sum of money, paying his bill, and the expenses of his funeral, was left in his purse, upon the paper.
Kingsley a.s.sumed the final direction of these affairs; and having seen everything in a fair way for the funeral, which was appointed to take place the next morning, he hurried me away to his lodging-house.
CHAPTER L.
CONFESSION OF EDGERTON.
When within his chamber, he carefully fastened the door and placed a packet in my hands.
"This is addressed to you," he said. "I found it on the table with other papers, and seeing the address, and fearing that if the jury laid eyes on it, they might insist on knowing its contents, I thrust it into my pocket and said nothing about it there. Read it at your leisure, while I smoke a cigar below."
He left me, and I opened the seal with a sense of misgiving and apprehension for which I could not easily account. The outer packet was addressed to myself. But the envelope contained several other papers, one of which was addressed to his father; another--a small billet, unsealed--bore the name of my wife upon it.
"That," I inly (sic) muttered, "she shall never read!"
An instant after, I trembled with a convulsive horror, as the demon who had whispered in my ears so long, seemed to say, in mocking accents:--
"Shall not! Ha! ha! She can not! can not!" and then the fiend seemed to chuckle, and I remembered the insuppressible anguish of Oth.e.l.lo"s apostrophe, to make all its eloquence my own. I murmured audibly:--