Part 23 (2/2)
Learn from me to place the same confidence in G.o.d which you place in his guilty creatures, and you will not lean on a broken reed. Father O'Rourke, you, too, witness my disgrace, but not my punishment. It is pleasant, no doubt, to have a topic for conversation at your Conferences; enjoy it. As for you, Margaret, if society lessen misery, we may be less miserable. But the band of your order, and the remembrance of your vow is on your forehead, like the mark of Cain--tear it off, and let it not blast a man who is the victim of prejudice still,--nay of superst.i.tion, as well as of guilt; tear it from my sight.” His eyes kindled fearfully, as he attempted to pull it away by force.
She calmly took it off, and he immediately tore it into pieces, and stamped upon the fragments as he flung them on the ground.
”Come,” said the despairing man--”come--there is a shelter for you, but no peace!--food, and drink, and raiment, but no peace!--no peace!” As he uttered these words, in a voice that sank to its deepest pitch, he took her hand, and they both departed to his own residence.
The amazement and horror of those who were a.s.sembled in Bartley's house cannot be described. Our readers may be a.s.sured that they deepened in character as they spread through the parish. An undefined, fear of this mysterious pair seized upon the people, for their images were a.s.sociated in their minds with darkness and crime, and supernatural communion. The departing words of Father Philip rang in their ears: they trembled, and devoutly crossed themselves, as fancy again repeated the awful exclamation of the priest--”No peace! no peace!”
When Father Philip and his unhappy a.s.sociate went home, he instantly made her a surrender of his small property; but with difficulty did he command sufficient calmness to accomplish even this. He was distracted--his blood seemed to have been turned to fire--he clenched his hands, and he gnashed his teeth, and exhibited the wildest symptoms of madness. About ten o'clock he desired fuel for a large fire to be brought into the kitchen, and got a strong cord, which he coiled and threw carelessly on the table. The family were then ordered to bed.
About eleven they were all asleep; and at the solemn hour of twelve he heaped additional fuel upon the living turf, until the blaze shone with scorching light upon everything around. Dark and desolating was the tempest within him, as he paced, with agitated steps, before the crackling fire.
”She is risen!” he exclaimed--”the spectre of all my crimes is risen to haunt me through life! I am a murderer--yet she lives, and my guilt is not the less! The stamp of eternal infamy is upon me--the finger of scorn will mark me out--the tongue of reproach will sting me like that of a serpent--the deadly touch of shame will cover me like a leper--the laws of society will crush the murderer, not the less that his wickedness in blood has miscarried: after that comes the black and terrible tribunal of the Almighty's vengeance--of his fiery indignation!
Hus.h.!.+--What sounds are those? They deepen--they deepen! Is it thunder?
It cannot be the crackling of the blaze! It is thunder!--but it speaks only to my ear! Hus.h.!.+--Great G.o.d, there is a change in my voice! It is hollow and supernatural! Could a change have come over me? Am I living?
Could I have----Hah!--Could I have departed? and am I now at length given over to the worm that never dies? If it be at my heart, I may feel it. G.o.d!--I am d.a.m.ned! Here is a viper twined about my limbs trying to dart its fangs into my heart! Hah!--there are feet pacing in the room, too, and I hear voices! I am surrounded by evil spirits! Who's there?--What are you?--Speak!--They are silent!--There is no answer!
Again comes the thunder! But perchance this is not my place of punishment, and I will try to leave these horrible spirits!”
[Ill.u.s.tration: PAGE 975-- Who's there?--What are you?--Speak!]
He opened the door, and pa.s.sed out into a small green field that lay behind the house. The night was calm, and the silence profound as death.
Not a cloud obscured the heavens; the light of the moon fell upon the stillness of the scene around him, with all the touching beauty of a moonlit midnight in summer. Here he paused a moment, felt his brow, then his heart, the palpitations of which fell audibly upon his ear. He became somewhat cooler; the images of madness which had swept through his stormy brain disappeared, and were succeeded by a lethargic vacancy of thought, which almost deprived him of the consciousness of his own ident.i.ty. From the green field he descended mechanically to a little glen which opened beside it. It was one of those delightful spots to which the heart clingeth. Its sloping sides were clothed with patches of wood, on the leaves of which the moonlight glanced with a soft l.u.s.tre, rendered more beautiful by their stillness. That side on which the light could not fall, lay in deep shadow, which occasionally gave to the rocks and small projecting precipices an appearance of monstrous and unnatural life. Having pa.s.sed through the tangled mazes of the glen, he at length reached its bottom, along which ran a brook, such as in the description of the poet,--
----In the leafy month of June, Unto the sleeping woods all night, Singeth a quiet tune.”
Here he stood, and looked upon the green winding margin of the streamlet--but its song he heard not. With the workings of a guilty conscience, the beautiful in nature can have no a.s.sociation. He looked up the glen, but its picturesque windings, soft vistas, and wild underwood mingling with gray rocks and taller trees, all mellowed by the moonbeams, had no charms for him. He maintained a profound silence--but it was not the silence of peace or reflection. He endeavored to recall the scenes of the past day, but could not bring them back to his memory.
Even the fiery tide of thought, which, like burning lava, seared his brain a few moments before, was now cold and hardened.
He could remember nothing. The convulsion of his mind was over, and his faculties were impotent and collapsed.
In this state he unconsciously retraced his steps, and had again reached the paddock adjoining his house, where, as he thought, the figure of his paramour stood before him. In a moment his former paroxysm returned, and with it the gloomy images of a guilty mind, charged with the extravagant horrors of brain-stricken madness.
”What!” he exclaimed, ”the band still on your forehead! Tear it off!”
He caught at the form as he spoke, but there was no resistance to his grasp. On looking again towards the spot it had ceased to be visible.
The storm within him arose once more; he rushed into the kitchen, where the fire blazed out with fiercer heat; again he imagined that the thunder came to his ears, but the thunderings which he heard were only the voice of conscience. Again his own footsteps and his voice sounded in his fancy as the footsteps and voices of fiends, with which his imagination peopled the room. His state and his existence seemed to him a confused and troubled dream; he tore his hair--threw it on the table--and immediately started back with a hollow groan; for his locks, which but a few hours before had been as black as a raven's wing, were now white as snow!
On discovering this, he gave a low but frantic laugh. ”Ha, ha, ha!” he exclaimed; ”here is another mark--here is food for despair. Silently, but surely, did the hand of G.o.d work this, as proof that I am hopeless!
But I will bear it; I will bear the sight! I now feel myself a man blasted by the eye of G.o.d Himself! Ha, ha, ha! Food for despair! Food for despair!”
Immediately he pa.s.sed into his own room, and approaching the looking-gla.s.s beheld a sight calculated to move a statue. His hair had become literally white, but the shades of his dark complexion, now distorted by terror and madness, flitted, as his features worked under the influence of his tremendous pa.s.sions, into an expression so frightful, that deep fear came over himself. He s.n.a.t.c.hed one of his razors, and fled from the gla.s.s to the kitchen. He looked upon the fire, and saw the white ashes lying around its edge.
”Ha!” said he, ”the light is come! I see the sign. I am directed, and I will follow it. There is yet one hope. The immolation! I shall be saved, yet so as by fire. It is for this my hair has become white;--the sublime warning for my self-sacrifice! The color of ashes!--white--white! It is so! I will sacrifice my body in material fire, to save my soul from that which is eternal! But I had antic.i.p.ated the sign. The self-sacrifice is accepted!”*
* As the reader may be disposed to consider the nature of the priest's death an unjustifiable stretch of fiction, I have only to say in reply, that it is no fiction at all. It is not, I believe, more than forty, or perhaps fifty, years since a priest committed his body to the flames, for the purpose of saving his soul by an incrematory sacrifice. The object of the suicide being founded on the superst.i.tious belief, that a priest guilty of great crimes possesses the privilege of securing salvation by self-sacrifice. We have heard two or three legends among the people in which this principle predominated. The outline of one of these, called ”The Young Priest and Brian Braar,” was as follows:--
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