"Then it was that I betrayed myself. I let my mad pa.s.sion peep forth for an instant, and in that instant I was undone.
I saw I had terrified and shocked her. I would have given worlds to recall that volcanic outburst, but it was too late. Her feelings, mild hitherto, were soured by the lightning of my intense love. From that hour she turned from me with deeper and deeper aversion, and from that hour my pa.s.sion grew and grew upon me with the force of mania, till it usurped the functions of reason, morality, prudence, and every motive that guides and controls the life of man, and left me with but one dominating, desperate idea, that I must possess Eleanor Owen, or perish.
"I need not dwell on what happened during the next year.
How I saw her turning from me, with a sickening heart; how I hungered for the tokens of even that mild friendship she had shown me of old, and how even that was denied; how I brooded upon my wrongs till I scarce knew whether I loved or hated her, whether it was pa.s.sion or revenge that inspired my mad resolve to kill her rather than forfeit my right to her.
"You, yes, you, came between us again. G.o.d help me, I sometimes think she must have loved you all along, unconsciously. She asked me for your portrait; I refused.
She persisted. Then my wrath broke out in an ungovernable transport of jealousy, and I showed--I must have shown--something of the black stuff that was working in my heart. I saw her lose colour. I saw her tremble, and I rushed away to calm myself if I could.
"From that moment I could see that all friendly feeling was at an end between us. She hated me and I hated her. But I would not give her up. The very animosity between us seemed only to feed my fierce desire to have her and make her my slave. Am I writing wildly? Do you start back and shudder at all this? Go on; you have not yet come to a glimmering of the worst!
"I began to grow impatient for a final end to this state of things, and I pressed her to name a day for the marriage.
She replied, putting me off. I went down by the next train to have it out with her. And then at last we spoke freely.
"I accused her of having ceased to love me. She said she had never really felt love for me, but only affection, and that I had extinguished that by my own behaviour.
"I asked her what behaviour. She was silent. Then the flood-gates of my wrath broke loose, and I put all her weakness and wickedness before her. Ah, how I spoke! You may think you have heard me eloquent. But you never have. I was that afternoon as one inspired. I stood there on the bare sands, alone with her, with the wind rushing past us, and the sea roaring in front, and the wild seabirds wheeling and screaming far away. Oh, it was a grand hour for me! The frenzy mounted to my brain. I felt like a destroying angel.
I took her miserable girl"s heart in my hands and rent it in twain, and cast its miserable pretences to the earth. I showed her myself, my manhood, my ardour, my pa.s.sion, my devotion. I terrified her, awed her, fascinated her. For a time I think I had almost won upon her to yield.
"But my power forsook me. No sooner did I see the first symptom of returning tenderness in her, or what I mistook for it, than my hatred and rage departed; I was melted in a moment; I flung myself in front of her on my face, and implored her with sobs and tears to give me one little spark of love. Fool that I was! Fool! Fool!
"She took advantage of my weakness. Doubtless she despised me for it. She made me one of those mincing, lying answers that women know how to make to us in our madness, and she took courage at last to rise and leave me lying there--lying there with my face upon the wet sand, and the wet rain beating down upon my head, and the moaning tempest rising over me in the heavens, like the awful eruption of maniacal hatred that was working its way into my being within.
"I got up at night and came away. I suppose I still looked and acted as if I were sane. At all events, the people I pa.s.sed said nothing to me. I packed up and left for Abertaff that night.
"With me I took an object which I had picked up on the sands where Eleanor had sat. It was the key of the house where she lived. When I caught sight of it it seemed like an inspiration. In an instant I resolved to make use of it to execute my vengeance. Since I could not marry Eleanor, I would kill her.
"But in the train a more subtle scheme presented itself. If I killed her, she would be lost to me for ever, and I still longed for her as madly as at any time. The new idea which I had got was this. I would kill, not Eleanor, but her friend and benefactress, and I would do it in such a way as to cast the stain of guilt on Eleanor herself. You see the plot. Her life was to be in no real danger. The body was to disappear, and hence she was to escape a trial. But the horror and condemnation of the whole world were to be turned upon her, and then, in her hour of blackest misery, I was to come forward and say: "I love you still. I believe in your innocence. Come with me to a foreign land as my wife, and I will make you happy."
"I need not tell you much more. I came back by road for greater secrecy, and did not arrive in Porthstone till eleven at night. I was not tired. Some superhuman power had taken possession of me, and in all I did I felt as if I were but a pa.s.sive instrument in its hands.
"I approached the house at twelve, expecting all its inmates to be asleep. Just as I was about to enter it the door opened, and to my astonishment Eleanor herself emerged. I gazed at her retreating figure with a sort of stupid fascination for some time, and then recovered myself, and went in. I had taken off my boots outside, and hence, I suppose my footsteps sounded light as I went upstairs.
"Well, do you want more? Do you care to hear how I killed her; how I stabbed her in her sleep, lowered her through the window, and came down with the jewel-chest in my arms? I had to mutilate the corpse; the weight would have been too great for me at once. As it was, I made three journeys before I had disposed of all, and thrown everything, including the latchkey, into the sea.
"Then I walked back to Abertaff--twenty miles it was, and I got there before ten the next morning. I had breakfast, and was still walking the streets when the news came that the murder was discovered.
"It overwhelmed me. I a.s.sure you, Charles Prescott, on the oath of a dying man, that I knew not what I did, till that moment. I was possessed as surely as any of the Galilean sufferers of old. Madness, your modern science calls it. It is all the same. I pa.s.sed out of it into my ordinary state with a terrible shock, and then I set about playing the part I had looked forward to, of delivering Eleanor, and carrying her off.
"But it was not to be. I had forgotten that she was not mad, too; I had made no allowance for her, and now I found that my protection, my confidence, was of no value to her, when she had lost the good opinion of the world.
"Of the world, do I say? Verily, I believe it was you; I believe you unconsciously thwarted me then, as before.
"I gave way to my frenzy again in secret. Again the demon came back and resumed his sway. He has held me ever since.
He holds me now.
"Yet I can act my part. I deceive all. I just rang for my clerk, and told him I should want him to carry this to your chambers. Fool! He had no suspicion that he was never going to hear me speak again.
"Good-bye. "Twere folly to ask you to forgive. I do not wish it. Yet, Eleanor--Eleanor----"
The letter ended abruptly at this point. The reader put on his hat and rushed round to Tressamer"s chambers. It was too late. He found him sitting in a chair, stark and dead, with a dagger driven through his heart.
When a year had elapsed, a quiet wedding took place, in an out-of-the-way city church, between Charles Prescott and Eleanor Owen.
The only dowry brought by the bride was her restored beauty, and a parchment under the Great Seal of England, pardoning her from all accusations that had been or might be raised against her on account of the tragedy which had so nearly involved her in a felon"s doom.
THE END.