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
God's interposing mercy), his doom appeared to have been
sealed--robbery, murder, false witness, and--damnation!
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 shore, 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-glass of Time. There lay the corpse, motionless, though coiled and
cramped in the attitude 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 hitherto
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 God-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 God, 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.