Is it possible?
Is’t so? I can no longer what I would
No longer draw back at my liking! I
Must do the deed because I thought of it.
......
What is thy enterprise,--thy aim, thy object?
Hast honestly confessed it to thyself?
O bloody, frightful deed!
......
Was that my purpose when we parted?
O God of Justice!--COLERIDGE: Wallenstein.
We need scarcely say that one of the persons overheard by Mr. Brown was
Wolfe, and the peculiar tone of oratorical exaggeration, characteristic
of the man, has already informed the reader with which of the two he is
identified.
On the evening after the conversation--the evening fixed for the
desperate design on which he had set the last hazard of his life--the
republican, parting from the companions with whom he had passed the day,
returned home to compose the fever of his excited thoughts, and have a
brief hour of solitary meditation, previous to the committal of that act
which he knew must be his immediate passport to the jail and the gibbet.
On entering his squalid and miserable home, the woman of the house, a
blear-eyed and filthy hag, who was holding to her withered breast an
infant, which, even in sucking the stream that nourished its tainted
existence, betrayed upon its haggard countenance the polluted nature of
the mother’s milk, from which it drew at once the support of life and
the seeds of death,--this woman, meeting him in the narrow passage,
arrested his steps to acquaint him that a gentleman had that day called
upon him and left a letter in his room with strict charge of care and
speed in its delivery. The visitor had not, however, communicated his
name, though the curiosity excited by his mien and dress had prompted
the crone particularly to demand it.
Little affected by this incident, which to the hostess seemed no
unimportant event, Wolfe pushed the woman aside with an impatient
gesture, and, scarcely conscious of the abuse which followed this
motion, hastened up the sordid stairs to his apartment. He sat himself
down upon the foot of his bed, and, covering his face with his hands,
surrendered his mind to the tide of contending emotions which rushed
upon it.
What was he about to commit? Murder!--murder in its coldest and most
premeditated guise! “No!” cried he aloud, starting from the bed, and
dashing his clenched hand violently against his brow, “no! no! no! it
is not murder: it is justice! Did not they, the hirelings of Oppression,
ride over their crushed and shrieking countrymen, with drawn blades and
murderous hands? Was I not among them at the hour? Did I not with these
eyes see the sword uplifted and the smiter strike? Were not my ears
filled with the groans of their victims and the savage yells of the
trampling dastards?--yells which rang in triumph over women and babes
and weaponless men! And shall there be no vengeance? Yes, it shall fall,
not upon the tools, but the master; not upon the slaves, but the despot.
Yet,” said he, suddenly pausing, as his voice sank into a whisper,
“assassination!--in another hour perhaps; a deed irrevocable; a seal set
upon two souls,--the victim’s and the judge’s! Fetters and the felon’s
cord before me! the shouting mob! the stigma!--no, no, it will not be
the stigma; the gratitude, rather, of future times, when motives will
be appreciated and party hushed! Have I not wrestled with wrong from my
birth? have I not rejected all offers from the men of an impious power?
have I made a moment’s truce with the poor man’s foe? have I not thrice
purchased free principles with an imprisoned frame? have I not bartered
my substance, and my hopes, and the pleasures of this world for my
unmoving, unswerving faith in the Great Cause? am I not about to crown
all by one blow,--one lightning blow, destroying at once myself and a
criminal too mighty for the law? and shall not history do justice to
this devotedness,--this absence from all self, hereafter--and admire,
even if it condemn?”
Buoying himself with these reflections, and exciting the jaded current
of his designs once more into an unnatural impetus, the unhappy man
ceased and paced with rapid steps the narrow limits of his chamber; his
eye fell upon something bright, which glittered amidst the darkening
shadows of the evening. At that sight his heart stood still for a
moment: it was the weapon of intended death; he took it up, and as he
surveyed the shining barrel, and felt the lock, a more settled sternness
gathered at once over his fierce features and stubborn heart. The pistol
had been bought and prepared for the purpose with the utmost nicety, not
only for use but show; nor is it unfrequent to find in such instances
of premeditated ferocity in design a fearful kind of coxcombry lavished
upon the means.
Striking a light, Wolfe reseated himself deliberately, and began with
the utmost care to load the pistol; that scene would not have been an
unworthy sketch for those painters who possess the power of giving to
the low a force almost approaching to grandeur, and of augmenting the
terrible by a mixture of the ludicrous. The sordid chamber, the damp
walls, the high window, in which a handful of discoloured paper
supplied the absence of many a pane; the single table of rough oak, the
rush-bottomed and broken chair, the hearth unconscious of a fire, over
which a mean bust of Milton held its tutelary sway; while the dull
rushlight streamed dimly upon the swarthy and strong countenance of
Wolfe, intent upon his work,--a countenance in which the deliberate
calmness that had succeeded the late struggle of feeling had in it a
mingled power of energy and haggardness of languor,--the one of the
desperate design, the other of the exhausted body; while in the
knit brow, and the iron lines, and even in the settled ferocity of
expression, there was yet something above the stamp of the vulgar
ruffian,--something eloquent of the motive no less than the deed, and
significant of that not ignoble perversity of mind which diminished the
guilt, yet increased the dreadness of the meditated crime, by mocking it
with the name of virtue.
As he had finished his task, and hiding the pistol on his person waited
for the hour in which his accomplice was to summon him to the fatal
deed, he perceived, close by him on the table, the letter which the
woman had spoken of, and which till then, he had, in the excitement of
his mind, utterly forgotten. He opened it mechanically; an enclosure
fell to the ground. He picked it up; it was a bank-note of considerable
amount. The lines in the letter were few, anonymous, and written in a
hand evidently disguised. They were calculated peculiarly to touch the
republican, and reconcile him to the gift. In them the writer professed
to be actuated by no other feeling than admiration for the unbending
integrity which had characterized Wolfe’s life, and the desire that
sincerity in any principles, however they might differ from his own,
should not be rewarded only with indigence and ruin.
It is impossible to tell how far, in Wolfe’s mind, his own desperate
fortunes might insensibly have mingled with the motives which led him to
his present design: certain it is that wherever the future is hopeless
the mind is easily converted from the rugged to the criminal; and
equally certain it is that we are apt to justify to ourselves many
offences in a cause where we have made great sacrifices; and, perhaps,
if this unexpected assistance had come to Wolfe a short time before,
it might, by softening his heart and reconciling him in some measure
to fortune, have rendered him less susceptible to the fierce voice of
political hatred and the instigation of his associates. Nor can we, who
are removed from the temptations of the poor,--temptations to which ours
are as breezes which woo to storms which “tumble towers,”--nor can we
tell how far the acerbity of want, and the absence of wholesome
sleep, and the contempt of the rich, and the rankling memory of better
fortunes, or even the mere fierceness which absolute hunger produces in
the humours and veins of all that hold nature’s life, nor can we tell
how far these madden the temper, which is but a minion of the body,
and plead in irresistible excuse for the crimes which our wondering
virtue--haughty because unsolicited--stamps with its loftiest
reprobation!
The cloud fell from Wolfe’s brow, and his eye gazed, musingly and rapt,
upon vacancy. Steps were heard ascending; the voice of a distant clock
tolled with a distinctness which seemed like strokes palpable as well
as audible to the senses; and, as the door opened and his accomplice
entered, Wolfe muttered, “Too late! too late!”--and first crushing
the note in his hands, then tore it into atoms, with a vehemence which
astonished his companion, who, however, knew not its value.
“Come,” said he, stamping his foot violently upon the floor, as if to
conquer by passion all internal relenting, “come, my friend, not another
moment is to be lost; let us hasten to our holy deed!”
“I trust,” said Wolfe’s companion, when they were in the open street,
“that we shall not have our trouble in vain; it is a brave night for it!
Davidson wanted us to throw grenades into the ministers’ carriages, as
the best plan; and, faith, we can try that if all else fails!”
Wolfe remained silent: indeed he scarcely heard his companion; for
a sullen indifference to all things around him had wrapped his
spirit,--that singular feeling, or rather absence from feeling, common
to all men, when bound on some exciting action, upon which their minds
are already and wholly bent; which renders them utterly without thought,
when the superficial would imagine they were the most full of it, and
leads them to the threshold of that event which had before engrossed all
their most waking and fervid contemplation with a blind and mechanical
unconsciousness, resembling the influence of a dream.
They arrived at the place they had selected for their station; sometimes
walking to and fro in order to escape observation, sometimes hiding
behind the pillars of a neighbouring house, they awaited the coming of
their victims. The time passed on; the streets grew more and more empty;
and, at last, only the visitation of the watchman or the occasional
steps of some homeward wanderer disturbed the solitude of their station.
At last, just after midnight, two men were seen approaching towards
them, linked arm in arm, and walking very slowly.
“Hist! hist!” whispered Wolfe’s comrade, “there they are at last; is
your pistol cocked?”
“Ay,” answered Wolfe, “and yours: man, collect yourself your hand
shakes.”
“It is with the cold then,” said the ruffian, using, unconsciously, a
celebrated reply; “let us withdraw behind the pillar.”
They did so: the figures approached them; the night, though star-lit,
was not sufficiently clear to give the assassins more than the outline
of their shapes and the characters of their height and air.
“Which,” said Wolfe, in a whisper,--for, as he had said, he had never
seen either of his intended victims,--“which is my prey?”
“Oh, the nearest to you,” said the other, with trembling accents; “you
know his d--d proud walk, and erect head that is the way he answers
the people’s petitions, I’ll be sworn. The taller and farther one, who
stoops more in his gait, is mine.”
The strangers were now at hand.
“You know you are to fire first, Wolfe,” whispered the nearer ruffian,
whose heart had long failed him, and who was already meditating escape.
“But are you sure, quite sure, of the identity of our prey?” said Wolfe,
grasping his pistol.
“Yes, yes,” said the other; and, indeed, the air of the nearest person
approaching them bore, in the distance, a strong resemblance to that of
the minister it was supposed to designate. His companion, who appeared
much younger and of a mien equally patrician, but far less proud, seemed
listening to the supposed minister with the most earnest attention.
Apparently occupied with their conversation, when about twenty yards
from the assassins they stood still for a few moments.
“Stop, Wolfe, stop,” said the republican’s accomplice, whose Indian
complexion, by fear, and the wan light of the lamps and skies, faded
into a jaundiced and yellow hue, while the bony whiteness of his teeth
made a grim contrast with the glare of his small, black, sparkling
eyes. “Stop, Wolfe, hold your hand. I see, now, that I was mistaken; the
farther one is a stranger to me, and the nearer one is much thinner than
the minister: pocket your pistol,--quick! quick!--and let us withdraw.”
Wolfe dropped his hand, as if dissuaded from his design but as he
looked upon the trembling frame and chattering teeth of his terrified
accomplice, a sudden, and not unnatural, idea darted across his mind
that he was wilfully deceived by the fears of his companion; and that
the strangers, who had now resumed their way, were indeed what his
accomplice had first reported them to be. Filled with this impression,
and acting upon the momentary spur which it gave, the infatuated
and fated man pushed aside his comrade, with a muttered oath at his
cowardice and treachery, and taking a sure and steady, though quick, aim
at the person, who was now just within the certain destruction of his
hand, he fired the pistol. The stranger reeled and fell into the arms of
his companion.
“Hurrah!” cried the murderer, leaping from his hiding place, and
walking with rapid strides towards his victim, “hurrah! for liberty and
England!”
Scarce had he uttered those prostituted names, before the triumph of
misguided zeal faded suddenly and forever from his brow and soul.
The wounded man leaned back in the supporting arms of his chilled and
horror-stricken friend; who, kneeling on one knee to support him, fixed
his eager eyes upon the pale and changing countenance of his burden,
unconscious of the presence of the assassin.
“Speak, Mordaunt; speak! how is it with you?” he said. Recalled from his
torpor by the voice, Mordaunt opened his eyes, and muttering, “My child,
my child,” sank back again; and Lord Ulswater (for it was he) felt, by
his increased weight, that death was hastening rapidly on its victim.
“Oh!” said he, bitterly, and recalling their last conversation--“oh!
where, where, when this man--the wise, the kind, the innocent, almost
the perfect--falls thus in the very prime of existence, by a sudden blow
from an obscure hand, unblest in life, inglorious in death,--oh! where,
where is this boasted triumph of Virtue, or where is its reward?”
True to his idol at the last, as these words fell upon his dizzy and
receding senses, Mordaunt raised himself by a sudden though momentary
exertion, and, fixing his eyes full upon Lord Ulswater, his moving lips
(for his voice was already gone) seemed to shape out the answer, “It is
here!”
With this last effort, and with an expression upon his aspect which
seemed at once to soften and to hallow the haughty and calm character
which in life it was wont to bear, Algernon Mordaunt fell once more back
into the arms of his companion and immediately expired.