REMORSE.
The evening was closing in when Manton made his way through a heavy,
drifting snow-storm, to the number of the new address, near the corner
of Broadway and Eighth Street, which had appeared upon the last notes
of his correspondent. He was only made aware, thereby, that she had
changed her residence from the rooms where he had visited her in Bond
Street, and had thought no more about the matter; for it would have
somewhat damped his enthusiasm, or rather have made him furiously
indignant, to have been told that the woman he was visiting, with such
sublimated sentiment, usually found means to adapt her rooms to the
purpose and business in hand.
He was too much excited and pre-occupied to notice the significant
appearance of the entry, further than to feel its dreariness, as he
rang the bell and waited an unreasonable time for admission. The door
was wide enough open to be sure, but he was not sufficiently initiated
into the mystery of such places to understand the meaning of this
exactly, even if it had been possible for it to have excited his
attention, in the then absorbed and abstracted condition of his whole
faculties.
A negro servant at length made his appearance, and approaching him
closely, answered his inquiries in a tone so insolently confidential
that under other circumstances he would surely have been in danger of
a flooring at the hands of Manton, who, however, only passed on up
the stairs with a feeling of annoyance, the cause of which he made no
attempt at apprehending. He ascended three steps at a bound, and in a
moment tapped lightly at the door.
A soft voice, “Come!” was the response. The door flew open.
“Yes! yes! I come! Ah, Marie, mother, it must be so!” And dropping his
cloak and hat upon the floor, he sprang forward to the woman, who, with
her pale face beaming with unnatural light, was seated upon a lounge,
where she seemed to have been awaiting him.
“My poor friend!” and she stretched forth her arms towards him. He laid
his head upon her bosom, while his whole frame shivered violently, and
he sobbed forth—
“Ah, blessed mother, let me rest here! My brain is bursting! I am
become as a little child again! Ah, I am so weak! A wisp of straw would
bind me! My own vaunted strength is gone—all gone! I have no pride,
no scorn, no defiance now! My lips are in the dust! Ah, I am humble,
humble, humble, now! Do thou, incarnation of that angel mother who
has passed from earth, adopt me for thine own! Thine own, poor, lost,
bewildered, panting child!”
“My poor friend, be calm!” and she caressed his wet cheek lightly with
her fingers. “Only be calm, and God will give you strength to pass
through this valley and shadow of trial.”
“God gave me strength!” said he, with a sharp and sudden change of
tone, raising his head slightly to look in her face. “Woman, he gave
me strength when he gave me life! I have strength enough, as men call
it, to move the world, aye, to wield Fate itself. It was not for such
strength I came to you. It was not for such strength I would condescend
to plead to mortal. It is for that soft and beautiful presence that
liveth in immortal freshness, the spring-flower of the heart, beneath
the moveless outstretched wing of Faith. Faith in our own kind. Faith
in what is true and chaste in the purposes and charities, which, widely
separate from the sensuous and the passionate, constitute all the blest
amenities of intercourse between the sexes. ’Tis not that I would ask
you to be _all_ my mother, for that could not be; but that you should
impersonate to me that calm joy, that serenity of repose in which I
lived so long, upon a troubled earth, through her. It was she to whom
I turned when the world buffeted and baffled me, to renew upon her
bosom my faith in my fellows, and it was upon that sacred resting-place
that I alone found soothing. She reconciled me to endure. She subdued
my rebellious heart. She saved me from actual madness; aye, from the
strait-waistcoat and the chain, when my brain was like to burst from
throbbings that sounded like a thousand wild steeds thundering frantic
over echoing plains; for the conflict was most fearful, when my young
soul first arose to grapple with the world and its huge evils. In
my impotent wrath I should have dashed myself to atoms against its
moveless battlements of wrong, but that a low, sweet voice would quell
and hold me back.
“I was the child of much travail, and years of weary and desponding
watchfulness. I alone, of all her children, bore her features—she loved
me unutterably, and shielded me always; it was not like the common
love of mother for her child. In all things concerning me she seemed
to be filled with a strange prescience—she read my inmost thought as
if it were her own—as if it were a scroll made legible by illuminated
letters. She seldom asked me questions, but simply told me what had
happened. It was useless to attempt disguises with her; ministering
in the flesh, she was my present angel, reconciling me to life; and
when she passed from me and the world, I first realised what darkness,
death, and separation meant.
I was delirious I know not how long—for they seemed slowly tearing
my heart out by the roots, chord by chord, with a heavy drag, until
the last one snapped, and then I went into deep oblivion, from which
I awoke a man of stone, so far as sensation went; and if stone could
walk, with no more heart than it—or rather if you can imagine this
walking statue moulded of the red lava, and only cooled upon the
surface, you can better conceive the smouldering, heart-devouring chaos
in which my life now moved among my fellows. I did not stop to curse
and battle with my old foes, I only hated them with a liquid flame
of scorn that found its level in me and was still. I would not harm
them—no, not I—I wanted them to live for companionship in suffering. I
gloried in their perversions—they filled me with ecstasy. I could not
but add to them, and in ferocious delight threw myself into all the
excesses and extremes that demonise the world.
“But ambition came to rescue my dignity at last, and of its iron
despotism you have seen the worst. From its hard and meagre thraldom
you have released me for the time, but it remains with you to hold me
free. The wings that have borne me thus far on this bold upward flight
must feel the soft freshening of the breeze and the glad welcoming of
sunlight, to the purer realm they try, or flagging soon of the unwonted
effort, they will sink again to seek the old accustomed sullen perch.
The strength I need now is a subtler thing than any power of will
within myself—purer than the breath of angels, it is chaste and mild as
star-beams.
“It is you who have filled me with these yearnings—’tis to you that I
look for their realisation, and yet you have not accepted that pure and
holy relation conveyed in the ‘Marie, mother,’ I have named you, and
plead with you to recognise.”
During all this time the face of the woman had been bowed so close to
that of Manton that she seemed almost to touch with her lips, first
his temples and then his cheek. A close observer would have perceived,
in her long and deep inspirations, her slightly parted lips and the
slow creeping movement of the head, that she was steadily breathing
upon certain well-known and highly sensitive nerves. The brain of
Manton was too full to notice this strange manœuvre; but while he
talked, that hot breath had been sending soft thrillings through his
frame, which, at first unobserved, had gradually grown more palpably
delicious, until, as he ceased to speak, he found his whole frame
literally quivering with passion.
He was silent for a moment, that he might fully realise the sensation,
and then, with a shudder of horror, sprang away from contact with the
woman, exclaiming—
“My God! what is this? What an unnatural monster am I! or”—as a sudden
gleam of suspicion shot through his brain—“Woman, is it you who have
done this?” His face darkened in an expression of rage and ferocity
which was absolutely hideous, as his eye glanced coldly on her.
“I ask you, woman, was it some infernal art of yours? Answer me!—for,
by the Eternal God, you shall never thus tamper with the sacrednesses
of a true man’s heart again!” and, grinding his teeth, he approached
her menacingly, as if, in his blind rage, he would rend her to atoms.
The woman had taken but one glimpse of the terrible face before her,
and then shrunk bowed and crouching into the corner of the lounge. Her
neck and forehead flushed crimson, spasmodic retchings of the throat
commenced, and when Manton stretched forth his hands, as if to clutch
her, there was a deep suffocating cough, and the red, warm blood gushed
in an appalling current from her mouth, bedabbling his fingers and her
clothing.
The man was startled from his rage into immeasurable terror, as he
shrank back with upraised hands—
“My God! I have killed—I have killed her by my brutal violence! I am
accursed! I am accursed for ever! I have slain the white dove of peace
they sent to me from Heaven!” Snatching a towel, he was on his knees by
her side in an instant; and placing it within her bloody hands, which
were clutched upon her mouth, as if to stay the fatal tide, he burst
into an agony of tears, praying in frantic accents to be forgiven; for
he could see nothing but immediate death in a hemorrhage so violent
as this seemed, and he remembered now, but too vividly, how often she
had told him of her melancholy predisposition to such attacks from the
lungs, by which she was kept constantly in expectation of being carried
off.
Ah, with what fierce remorse, what agonised penitence, all these things
came up to him now, as gush after gush of crimson saturated the towel!
In answer to his prayers for forgiveness, she at last reached one cold,
bloody hand to his, pressing it gently.
And now his self-possession was immediately restored. His only thought,
at first, had been forgiveness before she died; now he thought alone
how to save her. Strange, he did not once think of giving the alarm,
and sending for medical aid; for he instantly felt the case was one
beyond the reach of ordinary remedies, and one in which the most
perfect restoration of both the moral and physical natures to absolute
repose could alone avail.
He reached another towel from the toilet-table, on which he found,
by the way, abundant supply, which, innocently enough, seemed to him
remarkably _apropos_; then, seating himself by her side, he endeavored,
by the use of all tender epithets which could be applied, to soothe and
calm her. She suddenly seized his right hand and placed it upon the top
of her head, and from that moment he thought he could faintly perceive
an increase of his control over the more violent symptoms of the case.
More than half an hour of harrowing suspense had passed, before the
paroxysm of bleeding had so far subsided as to enable him to breathe
more freely; but even when the bleeding had at length entirely ceased,
a long period of coma, or deathlike sleep, induced by exhaustion, and
suspended sensation, supervened, during which he continued to watch her
with the most painful anxiety, still holding his right hand upon her
head, while, with the other, he clasped the fingers of her left hand as
she had requested. As she immediately showed signs of restlessness on
his attempting to remove either hand, he felt himself compelled to sit
thus, without change of position, for several hours, awaiting whatever
might occur.
And, finally, after a slight stirring of the limbs, she suddenly opened
her eyes upon his, and smiled with a clear, sweet smile, rather of
pity and affection than of forgiveness or reproach. He felt his heart
bound within him, and he could only utter, in a low tone, “The good God
be blessed! I have not killed you! Oh, I will never be ugly and cruel
again! I will be your good boy now, always!”
“Yes, yes,” she said in a clear, firm voice, “you were very naughty;
but I am strong again now. You will never speak harshly to me again,
will you? Lean here, my beautiful tiger; let me feel that fierce cheek
upon my bosom once more. You have suffered, too; I must soothe you.”
Manton, who, by this time, had become thoroughly exhausted, bowed his
head lightly towards her, in obedience; but he leaned it rather upon
the cushion than her person.
It was now near twelve o’clock, and the man was literally worn out by
the long and violent excitements which we have traced. Body, soul, and
sense, utterly collapsed, the moment his head found a resting-place,
into a deep sleep.
The lamp burnt low; there was not another sound to disturb the dimmed
silence of that room, but the heavy breathings of Manton. But even
that murky light was sufficient to disclose the figure of the woman
stooping, as before, close to the face of the sleeper. Slowly her lips
crept over, without touching it, lingering here and there, while her
chest heaved with deep inspirations. You could not see, had you been a
looker-on, the slight parting of the lips, nor could you have felt the
heated furnace of her breath play along the helpless surface of those
prostrate nerves; but you might have seen an eager, oblique glitter in
her eye, that grew the stronger while the darkness thickened, as ghouls
look sharper out of graves they have uncovered. But then, had you been
patient, you would have seen, as the hours went by, a gradual twitching
of the nerves possess that deathlike frame—a restless motion, a moan,
an all-unconscious smile of ecstatic delight; and then, if your sense
was not frightened and appalled by the fierce, swift blaze from those
still eyes above, a fiend’s triumph would be all familiar to you.
Alas! alas! will that young man wake sane? The owner of those
glittering eyes seems to know; for hark! in her exceeding joy she
whispers aloud, “He is mine now! See how his nerves vibrate. I was
right in choosing this time of great prostration. I am scudding along
those nerves like a sea-bird on currents of the sea; all that is animal
in him is mine now. He is mine at last—the insolent tyro! I shall drag
him down from his vaulting self-esteem; I shall humble him; I shall
degrade him. Ah, ha! I shall feed upon him!”
There may be retribution on earth or in heaven. We will let that dark
night’s history rest!