THE REWARD.

Till the wretch had done the deed, he scarcely knew that it was doing. It was a horrid, mad excitement, where the soul had spread its wings upon the whirlwind, and heeded not whither it was hurried. A terrible necessity had seemed to spur him onwards all the while, and one thing so succeeded to another, that he scarce could stop at any but the first. From the moment he had hidden in the shower-bath (but for G.o.d's interposing mercy), his doom appeared to have been sealed--robbery, murder, false witness, and--d.a.m.nation!

Crime is the rushing rapid, which, but for some kind miracle, inevitably carries on through circling eddies, and a foamy swinging tide, to the cataract of death and wo: haste, poor fisherman of Erie, paddle hard back, stem the torrent, cling to the sh.o.r.e, hold on tight by this friendly bough; know you not whither the headlong current drives? hear you not the roar of many waters, the maddening rush as of an ocean disenthralled? feel you not the earth trembling at the thunder--see you not the heaven clouded o'er with spray? Helpless wretch--thy frail canoe has leapt that dizzy water-cliff, Niagara!

But if, in doing that fell deed, madness raged upon the minutes, now that it was done--all still, all calm, all quiet, Terror held the hour-gla.s.s of Time. There lay the corpse, motionless, though coiled and cramped in the att.i.tude of struggling agony; and the murderer gazed upon his victim with a horror most intense. Fly! fly!--he dared not stop to think: fly! fly! any whither--as you are--wait for nothing; fly! thou caitiff, for thy life! So he caught up the blood-bought spoils, and was fumbling with shaky fingers at the handle of the garden-door, when the unseen tempter whispered in his ear,

"I say, Simon, did not your aunt die of apoplexy?"

O, kind and wise suggestion! O, lightsome, tranquillizing thought!

Thanks! thanks! thanks!--And if the arch fiend had revealed himself in person at the moment, Simon would have worshipped at his feet.

"But," and as he communed with his own black heart, there needed now no devil for his prompter--"if this matter is to be believed, I must contrive a little that it may look likelier. Let me see:--yes, we must lay all tidy, and the old witch shall have died in her sleep; apoplexy!

capital indeed; no tell-tales either. Well, I must set to work."

Can mortal mind conceive that sickening office?--To face the strangled corpse, yet warm; to lift the fearful burden in his arms, and order out the heavily-yielding limbs in the ease of an innocent sleep? To arrange the bed, smooth down the tumbled coverlid, set every thing straight about the room, and erase all tokens of that dread encounter? It needed nerves of iron, a heart all stone, a cool, clear head, a strong arm, a mindful, self-protecting spirit; but all these requisites came to Simon's aid upon the instant; frozen up with fear, his heart-strings worked that puppet-man rigidly as wires; guilt supplied a reckless energy, a wild physical power, which actuates no human frame but one saturate with crime, or madness; and in the midst of those terrific details, the murderer's judgment was so calm and so collected, that nothing was forgotten, nothing unconsidered--unless, indeed, it were that he out-generalled himself by making all too tidy to be natural.

Hence, suspicion at the inquest; for the "apoplexy" thought was really such a good one, that, but for so exact a laying out, the fat old corpse might have easily been buried without one surmise of the way she met her end. Again and again, in the history of crimes, it is seen that a "Judas hangs himself;" and albeit, as we know, the murderer has. .h.i.therto escaped detection, still his own dark hour shall arrive in its due place.

The dreadful office done, he asked himself again, or maybe took counsel of the devil (for that evil master always cheats his servants), "What shall I do with my reward, this crock--these crocks of gold? It might be easy to hide one of them, but not all; and as to leaving any behind, that I won't do. About opening them to see which is which--"

"I tell you what," said the tempter, as the clock struck three, "whatever you do, make haste; by morning's dawn the house and garden will be searched, no doubt, and the crocks found in your possession.

Listen to me--I'm your friend, bless you! remember the apoplexy. Pike Island yonder is an unfrequented place; take the punt, hide all there now, and go at your best leisure to examine afterwards; but whatever you do, make haste, my man."

Then Jennings crept out by the lawn-door, thereby rousing the house-dog; but he skirted the laurels in their shadow, and it was dark and mizzling, so he reached the punt both quickly and easily.

The quiet, and the gloom, and the dropping rain, strangely affected him now, as he plied his punt-pole; once he could have wept in his remorse, and another time he almost shrieked in fear. How lonesome it seemed! how dreadful! and that death-dyed face behind him--ha! woman, away I say!

But he neared the island, and, all shoeless as he was, crept up its muddy bank.

"Hallo! nybor, who be you a-poaching on my manor, eh? that bean't good manners, any how."

Ben Burke has told us all the rest.

But, when Burke had got his spoils--when the biter had been bitten--the robber robbed--the murderer stripped of his murdered victim's money--when the bereaved miscreant, sullenly returning in the dark, damp night, tracked again the way he came upon that lonely lake--no one yet has told us, none can rightly tell, the feelings which oppressed that G.o.d-forsaken man. He seemed to feel himself even a sponge which, the evil one had bloated with his breath, had soaked it then in blood, had squeezed it dry again, and flung away! He was Satan's broken tool--a weed pulled up by the roots, and tossed upon the fire; alone--alone in all the universe, without countenance or sympathy from G.o.d, or man, or devil; he yearned to find, were it but a fiend to back him, but in vain; they held aloof, he could see them vaguely through the gloom--he could hear them mocking him aloud among the patter of the rain-drops--ha! ha!

ha--the pilfered fool!

Bitterly did he rue his crime--fearfully he thought upon its near discovery--madly did he beat his miserable breast, to find that he had been baulked of his reward, yet spent his soul to earn it.

Oh--when the house-dog bayed at him returning, how he wished he was that dog! he went to him, speaking kindly to him, for he envied that dog--"Good dog--good dog!"

But more than envy kept him lingering there: the wretched man did it for delay--yes, though morn was breaking on the hills--one more--one more moment of most precious time.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

SECOND THOUGHTS.

For--again he must go through that room!

No other entrance is open--not a window, not a door: all close as a prison: and only by the way he went, by the same must he return.

He trembled all over, as a palsied man, when he touched the lock: with stiffening hair, and staring eyes, he peeped in at that well-remembered chamber: he entered--and crept close up to the corpse, stealthily and dreadingly--horror! what if she be alive still?

SHE WAS.

Not quite dead--not quite dead yet! a gurgling in the bruised throat--a shadowy gleam of light and life in those protruded eyes--an irregular convulsive heaving at the chest: she might recover! what a fearful hope: and, if she did, would hang him--ha! he went nearer; she was muttering something in a moanful way--it was, "Simon did it--Simon did it--Simon did it--Si--Si--Simon did--" he should be found out!

Yet once again, for the last time, the long-suffering Mercy of the Lord stood like Balaam's angel in the way, pleading with that miserable man at the bed-side of her whom he had strangled. And even then, that Guardian Spirit came not with chiding on his tongue, but He uttered words of hope, while his eyes were streaming with sorrow and with pity.

"Most wretched of the sinful sons of men, even now there may be mercy for thee, even now plenteous forgiveness. True, thou must die, and pay the earthly penalty of crimes like thine: but do my righteous bidding, and thy soul shall live. Go to that poor, suffocating creature--cherish the spark of life--bind up the wounds which thou hast rent, pouring in oil and wine: rouse the house--seek a.s.sistance--save her life--confess thy sin--repent--and though thou diest for this before the tribunal of thy fellows, G.o.d will yet be gracious--he will raise again her whom thou hadst slain--and will cleanse thy blood-stained soul."

Thus in Simon's ear spake that better conscience.

But the reprobate had cast off Faith; he could not pledge the Present for the Future; he shuddered at the sword of Justice, and would not touch the ivory sceptre of Forgiveness. No: he meditated horrid iteration--and again the fiend possessed him! What! not only lose the crock of gold, but all his own bright store? and give up every thing of this world's good for some imaginary other, and meekly confess, and meanly repent--and--and all this to resuscitate that hated old aunt of his, who would hang him, and divorce him from his gold?

No! he must do the deed again--see, she is moving--she will recover! her chest heaves visibly--she breathes--she speaks--she knows me--ha!

down--down, I say!

Then, with deliberate and d.a.m.ning resolution--to screen off temporal danger, and count his golden h.o.a.rds a little longer--that awful criminal touched the throat again: and he turned his head away not to see that horrid face, clutched the swollen gullet with his icy hands, and strangled her once more!

"This time all is safe," said Simon. And having set all smooth as before, he stole up to his own chamber.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

MAMMON, AND CONTENTMENT.

Ay, safe enough: and the murderer went to bed. To bed? No.

He tumbled about the clothes, to make it seem that he had lain there: but he dared neither lie down, nor shut his eyes. Then, the darkness terrified him: the out-door darkness he could have borne, and Mrs.

Quarles's chamber always had a night-lamp burning: but the darkness of his own room, of his own thoughts, pressed him all around, as with a thick, murky, suffocating vapour. So, he stood close by the window, watching the day-break.

As for sleep, never more did wholesome sleep revisit that atrocious mind: laudanum, an ever-increasing dose of merciless laudanum, that was the only power which ever seemed to soothe him. For a horrid vision always accompanied him now: go where he might, do what he would, from that black morning to eternity, he went a haunted man--a scared, sleepless, horror-stricken wretch. That livid face with goggling eyes, stuck to him like a shadow; he always felt its presence, and sometimes, also, could perceive it as if bodily peeping over his shoulder, next his cheek; it dogged him by day, and was his incubus by night; and often he would start and wrestle, for the desperate grasp of the dying appeared to be clutching at his throat: so, in his ghostly fears, and b.l.o.o.d.y conscience, he had girded round his neck a piece of thin sheet-iron in his cravat, which he wore continually as armour against those clammy fingers: no wonder that he held his head so stiff.

O Gold--accursed Mammon! is this the state of those who love thee deepest? is this their joy, who desire thee with all their heart and soul--who serve thee with all their might--who toil for thee--plot for thee--live for thee--dare for thee--die for thee? Hast thou no better bliss to give thy martyrs--no choicer comfort for thy most consistent worshippers, no fairer fate for those, whose waking thoughts, and dreaming hopes, and intricate schemes, and desperate deeds, were only aimed at gold, more gold? G.o.d of this world, if such be thy rewards, let me ever escape them! idol of the knave, false deity of the fool, if this be thy blessing on thy votaries--come, curse me, Mammon, curse thou me!

For, "The love of money is the root of all evil." It groweth up a little plant of coveting; presently the leaves get rank, the branches spread, and feed on petty thefts; then in their early season come the blossoms, black designs, plots, involved and undeveloped yet, of foul conspiracies, extortions on the weak, rich robbings of the wealthy, the threatened slander, the rewarded lie, malice, perjury, sacrilege; then speedily cometh on the climax, the consummate flower, dark-red murder: and the fruit bearing in itself the seeds that never die, is righteous, wrathful condemnation.

Dyed with all manner of iniquity, tinged with many colours like the Mohawk in his woods, goeth forth in a morning the covetous soul. His cheek is white with envy, his brow black with jealous rage, his livid lips are full of l.u.s.t, his thievish hands spotted over with the crimson drops of murder. "The poison of asps is under his lips; and his feet are swift to shed blood: destruction and misery are in his ways; and there is no fear of G.o.d before his eyes."

O, ye thousands--the covetous of this world's good--behold at what a fire ye do warm yourselves! dread it: even now, ye have imagined many deaths, whereby your gains may be the greater; ye have caught, in wishful fancy, many a parting sigh; ye have closed, in a heartless revery, many a glazing eye--yea, of those your very nearest, whom your hopes have done to death: and are ye guiltless? G.o.d and conscience be your judges!