CHAPTER XIII.

THE MEETING.

"My husband! my dear husband! and it was my imprudence that brought you to this!" cried Sophy, as she fell weeping upon the neck of the felon, clasping him in her arms, and kissing with pa.s.sionate grief the tears from his haggard unshaven face.

"Hush! my precious lamb," he replied, folding her in his embrace. "It was not you who betrayed me, it was the voice of G.o.d speaking through a guilty conscience. I am thankful!--oh, so thankful that it has taken place--that the dreadful secret is known at last! I enjoyed last night the first quiet sleep I have known for years--slept without being haunted by him!"

"And with death staring you in the face, Noah?"

"What is death, Sophy, to the agonies I have endured?--the fear of detection by day--the eyes of the dead glaring upon me all night? No; I feel happy, in comparison, now. I have humbled myself to the dust--have wept and prayed for pardon, and oh, my sweet wife, I trust I am forgiven--have found peace!"

"When was this?" whispered Sophy.

"The night before last."

"How strange!" murmured Sophy. "We were together in spirit that night. I never knew how dear you were to me, Noah, until that night. How painful it would be to me to part with you for ever!"

"It was cruel and selfish in me, Sophy, to join your fate to mine,--a monster, stained with the blackest crimes. But I thought myself secure from detection; thought that my sin would never find me out, that I had managed matters with such incomparable skill that discovery was impossible, that the wide earth did not contain a witness of my guilt.

Fool that I was! The voice of blood never sleeps; from out the silent dust it calls night and day in its ceaseless appeals for vengeance at the throne of G.o.d. I have heard it in the still dark night, and above the roar of the crowd in the swarming streets of London at noon-day; and ever felt a shadowy hand upon my throat, and a cry in my ear--_Thou art the man_!

"There were moments when, goaded to madness by that voice, I felt inclined to give myself up to justice, but pride withheld me, and the dismal fear of those haunting fiends chasing me through eternity, was a h.e.l.l I dared not encounter. My soul was parched with an unquenchable fire; I was too hardened to pray."

"Noah," said Sophy, looking earnestly into his hollow eyes, "you are not a cruel man; you were kind to your old mother--have been very kind to me. How came _you_ to commit such a dreadful crime?"

The man groaned heavily, as he replied--

"It was pride,--a foolish, false shame of low birth and honest poverty, that led me to the desperate act."

"I have felt something of this," said Sophy, and her tears flowed afresh. "I now see that sinful thoughts are but the seeds of sinful deeds, ripened and matured by bad pa.s.sions. Perhaps I only needed a stronger temptation to be guilty of crimes as great as that of which you stand charged."

"Sophy," said her husband, solemnly, "I wish my fate to serve as a warning to others. Listen to me. In the long winter evenings after my mother died, I wrote a history of my life. I did this in fear and trembling, lest any human eye should catch me at my task, and learn my secret. But now that I am called upon to answer for my crime, I wish to make this sad history beneficial to my fellow-creatures.

"After I am gone, dear Sophy, and you return to F----, lose no time in taking to your home, and making comfortable, your poor afflicted mother and sister for the remainder of their days. This key" (and he drew one from his pocket) "opens the old-fashioned bureau in our sleeping-room.

In the drawer nearest to the window you will find my will, in which I have settled upon you all that I possess. I have no relations who can dispute with you the legal right to this property. There is a slight indenture in the wood that forms the bottom of this drawer; press it hard with your thumb, and draw it back at the same time, and it will disclose an inner place of concealment, in which you will find a roll of Bank of England notes, to the amount of 500_l._ This was the money stolen from Mr. Carlos, the night I murdered him. It is stained with his blood, and I have never looked at it or touched it since I placed it there--upwards of twenty years ago. I never had the heart to use it, and I wish it to be returned to the family.

"In this drawer you will likewise find the papers containing an account of the circ.u.mstances which led to the commission of the crime. You and Mary can read them together; and oh! as you read, pity and pray for the unhappy murderer."

He stopped, and wiped the drops of perspiration from his brow; and the distress of his young wife almost equalled his own, as she kissed away the tears that streamed down his pale face. His breath came in quick, convulsive sobs, and he trembled in every limb.

"I feel ill," he said, in a faint voice; "these recollections make me so. There is a strange fluttering at my heart, as if a bird beat its wings within my breast. Sophy, my wife--my blessed wife! can this be death?"

Sophy screamed with terror, as he reeled suddenly forward, and fell to the ground at her feet. Her cries brought the gaoler to her a.s.sistance.

They raised the felon, and laid him on his bed; but life was extinct.

The agitation of his mind had been too great for his exhausted frame.

The criminal had died self-condemned, under the arrows of remorse!

CHAPTER XIV.

THE MURDERER'S Ma.n.u.sCRIPT.

Who am I, that I should write a book?--a nameless, miserable and guilty man. It is because these facts stare me in the face, and the recollection of my past deeds goads me to madness, that I would fain unburthen my conscience by writing this record of myself.

I do not know what parish in England had the discredit of being my native place. I can just remember, in the far-off days of my early childhood, coming with my mother to live at F----, a pretty rural village in the fine agricultural county of S----. My mother was called Mrs. Cotton, and was reputed to be a widow, and I was her only child.

Whether she had ever been married, the gossips of the place considered very doubtful. At that period of my life this important fact was a matter to me of perfect indifference.

I was a strong, active, healthy boy, quite able to take my own part, and defend my own rights, against any lad of my own age who dared to ask impertinent questions.

The great man of the village--Squire Carlos, as he was called--lived in a grand hall, surrounded by a stately park, about a mile from F----, on the main road leading to London. His plantations and game preserves extended for many miles along the public thoroughfare, and my mother kept the first porter's-lodge nearest the village.

The Squire had been married, but his wife had been dead for some years.

He was a tall, handsome man in middle life, and bore the character of having been a very gay man in his youth. It was whispered among the aforesaid village gossips, that these indiscretions had shortened the days of his lady, who loved him pa.s.sionately; at any rate, she died in consumption before she had completed her twenty-fourth year, without leaving an heir to the estate, and the Squire never married again.

Mr. Carlos often came to the lodge,--so often, that he seldom pa.s.sed through the gate on his way to and from the Hall without stepping in to chat with my mother. This was when he was alone; accompanied by strangers he took no notice of us at all. My mother generally sent me to open the gate. The gentlemen used to call me a pretty curly-headed boy, and I got a great deal of small change from them on hunting-days. I remember one afternoon, when opening the gate for a large party of gentlemen, with the Squire at their head, that one of them tapped my cheek with his riding whip, and exclaimed--

"By Jove! Carlos, that's a handsome boy."

"Oh, yes," said another; "the very picture of his father."

And the Squire laughed, and they all laughed; and when I went back into the lodge I showed my mother a handful of silver I had been given, and said--

"Mother, who was my father?"

"Mr. Cotton, of course," she answered gravely. "But why, Noah, do you ask?"

"Because I want to know something about him."

But my mother did not choose to answer impertinent questions; and, though greatly addicted to telling long stories, she seemed to know very little about the private memoirs of Mr. Cotton. She informed me, however, that he had been a fellow-servant with her in the Squire's employ; that he quarrelled with her shortly after I was born, and left her, and she did not know what had become of him, but she believed he went to America, and from his long silence, she concluded that he had been dead for some years. That out of respect for his services, Mr.

Carlos had placed her in her present comfortable situation, and that I must show my grat.i.tude to Mr. Carlos for all he had done for us, by the most dutiful and obliging behaviour. I likewise learned from her, that I was called Noah after my father.

This brief sketch of our family history was perfectly satisfactory to me at that time. I remember feeling a strong interest in my unknown progenitor, and used to build castles and speculate about his fate.

In the meanwhile, I found it good policy strictly to obey my mother's injunctions, and the alacrity which I displayed in waiting upon the Squire and his guests, never failed to secure a harvest of small coin, which gave me no small importance in the eyes of the lads in the village, who waited upon me with the same diligence that I did upon the Squire, in order no doubt to come in for a share of the spoil. Thus a love of acquiring without labour, and of obtaining admirers without any merit of my own, was early fostered in my heart, which led to a taste for fine dress and a boastful display of superiority, by no means consistent with my low birth and humble means.

In due time I was placed by Mr. Carlos at the village school, and the wish to be thought the first scholar in the school, and excel all my companions, stimulated me to learn with a diligence and determination of purpose, which soon placed me at the top of my cla.s.s.

There was only one boy in the school who dared to dispute my supremacy, and he had by nature what I acquired with great toil and difficulty, a most retentive memory, which enabled him to repeat after once reading, a task which took me several days of hard study to learn. How I envied him this faculty, which I justly considered possessed no real merit in itself, but was a natural gift! It was not learning with him, it was mere reading. He would just throw a glance over the book, after idling half his time in play; and then walk up to the master, and say it off without making a single blunder. He was the most careless, reckless boy in the school, and certainly the cleverest. I hated him. I could not bear that he should equal, and even surpa.s.s me, when he took no pains to learn.

If the master had done him common justice, I should never have stood above him. But for some reason, best known to himself, he always favoured me, and snubbed Bill Martin, who in return played him a thousand impish tricks, and taught the other boys to rebel against his authority. Bill called me the _obsneakious_ young gentleman, and Mr.

Bullen, the master, the Squire's Toady.

There was constant war between this lad and me. We were pretty equally matched in strength; for the victor of to-day, was sure to be beaten on the morrow. The boys generally took part with Martin. Such characters are always popular, and he had many admirers in the school. My aversion to this boy made me restless and unhappy. I really longed to do him some injury. Once, after I had given him a sound drubbing, he called me "a base-born puppy! a beggar, eating the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table."

Foaming with rage, for a wound to my pride was far worse in my estimation, than any personal injury, I demanded what he meant by such insulting language, and he sneered in my face, and told me to go home and ask my _virtuous_ mother, as she doubtless was better qualified to give me the information I desired. And I did ask my mother, and she told me "I was a foolish boy to heed such nonsense, spoken in anger by a lad I had just thrashed; that Bill Martin was a bad fellow, and envious of my being better off than himself; that if I listened to such senseless lies about her, it would make her miserable, and I should never know a happy hour myself."