|My dear Theodora,
I trust you may never read this letter, which, as a preventive
measure, I am about to write; I trust we may burn it together, and
that I may tell you its contents at accidental times, after the one
principal fact has been communicated.
I mean to communicate it face to face, by word of mouth. It will not
seem so awful then: and I shall see the expression of your countenance
on first hearing it. That will guide me as to my own conduct--and as
to the manner in which it had best be broken to your father. I have
hope, at times, that even after such a communication, his regard for
me will not altogether fail--and it may be that his present opinions
will not be invincible. He may suggest some atonement, some probation,
however long or painful I care not, so that it ends in his giving me
you.
But first I ought to furnish him with full information about things
into which I have never yet dared to inquire. I shall do so to-morrow.
Much, therefore, depends upon to-morrow. Such a crisis almost unnerves
me; add to that the very sight of this place--and I went by chance
to the same Inn, the White Hart, Salisbury. When you have read this
letter through, you will not wonder that this is a terrible night
for me. I never would have revisited this town--but in the hope of
learning every particular, so as to tell you and your father the truth
and the whole truth.
He will assuredly pity me. The thought of his own boy, your brother,
whom you once mentioned, and whom Mr. Johnston informed me “died
young” after some great dereliction--this thought may make him deal
gently with me. Whether he will ever forgive me, or receive me into
his family, remains doubtful. It is with the fear of this, or any
other possibility which I cannot now foresee, that I write this
letter; in order that whatever happens, my Theodora may be acquainted
with my whole history.
My Theodora! Some day, when she comes to read a few pages which I seal
up to-night, marking them with her name, and “To be delivered to her
after my death,” she will understand how I have loved her. Otherwise,
it never could have been found out, even by her--for I am not a
demonstrative man. Only my wife would have known it.
In case this letter and those other letters do reach you, they will
then be your last mementos of me. Read them and burn them; they are
solely meant for you.
Should all go well, so that they become needless, we will, as I said,
burn them together, read or unread, as you choose. You shall do it
with your own hand, sitting by me, at our own fireside. _Our_ fireside.
The thought of it--the terror of losing it, makes me almost powerless
to write on. Will you ever find out how I love you, my love--my love!
I begin by reminding you that I have been long aware your name is not
properly Johnston. You told me yourself that the _t_ had been inserted
of late years. That you are not an aristocratic, but a plebeian
family. My thankfulness at learning this, you will understand
afterwards.
That cathedral clock--how it has startled me! Striking twelve with the
same tongue as it did twenty years ago. Were I superstitious, I might
fancy I heard in the coffee-room below, the clink of glasses, the tune
of “Glorious Apollo,” and the “Bravo,” of that uproarious voice.
The town is hardly the least altered. Except that I came in by railway
instead of by coach, it might be the very same Salisbury on that
very same winter's night--the quaint, quiet English town that I stood
looking at from this same window--its streets shining with rain, and
its lights glimmering here and there through the general gloom. How
I stared, boy-like, till _he_ came behind and slapped me on the
shoulder. But I have a few things to tell you before I tell you the
history of that night. Let me delay it as long as I can.
You know about my father and mother, and how they both died when
Dallas and I were children. We had no near kindred; we had to take
care of ourselves--or rather he took care of me; he was almost as good
as a father to me, from the time he was twelve years old.
Let me say a word or two more about my brother Dallas. If ever there
was a perfect character on this earth, he was one. Every creature who
knew him thought the same. I doubt not the memory of him still lingers
in those old cloisters of St. Mary and St. Salvador, where he spent
eight years, studying for the ministry. I feel sure there is not a lad
who was at college with him--greyheaded lads they would be now, grave
professors, or sober ministers of the Kirk, with country manses,
wives, and families--not one of them but would say as I say, if you
spoke to him of Dallas Urquhart.
Being five years my elder, he had almost ended his curriculum when
I began mine; besides, we were at different colleges; but we went
through some sessions together a time on which I look back with
peculiar tenderness, as I think all boys do who have studied at St.
Andrew's. You English do not altogether know us Scotch. I have seen
hard-headed, possibly hard-hearted men, grim divines, stern military
officers, and selfish Anglo-Indian valetudinarians, melt to the
softness of a boy, as they talked of their boyish days at St Andrews.
You never saw the place, my little lady? You would like it, I know.
To me, who have not seen it these twenty years, it still seems like a
city in a dream. I could lead you, hand-in-hand, through everyone of
its quiet old streets, where you so seldom hear the noise of either
carriage or cart: could point out the notable historical corners, and
tell you which professor lived in this house and which in that;
could take you along the Links, to the scene of our celebrated
golfing-match, calling over the names of the principal players,
including his who won it--a fine fellow he was, too! What became of
him, I wonder?
Also, I could show you the exact spot where you get the finest view
of the Abbey and St. Kegulus' Tower, and then away back to our
lodgings--Dallas's and mine--along the Scores, where, of moonlight
nights, the elder and more sentimental of the college lads would be
caught strolling with their sweethearts--bonnie lassies too they were
at St. Andrews--or we beheld them in all the glamour of our teens, and
fine havers we talked to them along those Scores, to the sound of the
sea below. I can hear it now. What a roar it used to come in with, on
stormy nights, against those rocks beyond the Castle, where a lad and
his tutor were once both drowned!
I am forgetting myself, and all I had to tell you. It is a long time
since I have spoken of those old days.
Theodora, I should like you some time to go and see St. Andrews. Go
there, in any case, and take a look at the old place. You will likely
find, in St. Mary's Cloisters, on the third arch to the right hand as
you enter, my initials and Dallas's; and if you ask, some old janitor
or librarian may still remember “the two Urquharts”--that is, if you
like to name us. But, go if you can. Faithful heart! I know you will
always care for anything that concerned me.
All the happy days of my life were spent at St. Andrews. They lasted
until Dallas fell ill, and had to go abroad at once. I was to follow,
and stay with him the winter, missing thereby one session, for he
did not like to part with me. Perhaps he foresaw his end, which I,
boy-like, never thought of, for I was accustomed to his being always
delicate; perhaps he knew what a lad of nineteen might turn out, left
to himself.
I was “left to myself,” in our Scotch interpretation of the phrase;
which, no doubt, originated in the stern Presbyterian belief of what
human nature is, abandoned by God. _Left to himself._ Many a poor
wretch's more wretched parents know what that means.
How it came about, I do not call to mind, but I found myself in
London, my own master, spending money like dross; and spending what
was worse, my time, my conscience, my innocence. How low I fell, God
knows, for I hardly know myself! Things which happened afterwards made
me oblivious even of this time. While it lasted, I never once wrote to
Dallas.
A letter from him, giving no special reason for my joining him, but
urging me to come, and quickly, made me recoil conscience-stricken
from the Gehenna into which I was falling. You will find the
letter--the last I had from him, in this packet: read it, and burn it
with mine. Of course, no one has ever seen it, or will ever see it,
except yourself.
I started from London immediately, in great restlessness and anguish of
mind; for though I had been no worse than my neighbours, or so bad as
many of them--I knew what Dallas was--and how his pure life,
sanctified, though I guessed it not, by the shadow of coming death,
would look beside this evil life of mine. I was very miserable; and a
lad not used to misery is then in the quicksands of temptation. He is
grateful to any one who will save him from himself--give him a narcotic
and let his torment sleep.
I mention this only as a fact, not an extenuation. Though, in some
degree, Max Urquhart the man has long since learned to pity Max
Urquhart the boy.
--Here I paused, to read this over, and see if I have said all I
wished therein. The narrative seems clear. You will perceive, I try as
much as I can to make it a mere history as if of another person, and
thus far I think I have done so. The rest I now proceed to tell you,
as circumstantially and calmly as I can.
But first, before you learn any more about me, let me bid you remember
how I loved you, how you permitted me to love you--how you have been
mine, heart, and eyes, and tender lips; you know you were mine. You
cannot alter that. If I were the veriest wretch alive, you once saw in
me something worth loving, and you did love me. Not after the fashion
of those lads and lassies who went courting along the Scores at St.
Andrews--but solemnly--deeply--as those love who expect one day to be
husband and wife. Remember, we were to have been married, Theodora.--
I found my quickest route to Pau was by Southampton to Havre. But in
the dusk of the morning I mistook the coach; my luggage went direct,
and I found myself, having travelled some hours, on the road--not to
Southampton, but to Salisbury. This was told me after some jocularity,
at what he thought a vastly amusing piece of “greenness” on my part,
by the coachman. That is, the gentleman who drove the coach.
He soon took care to let me know he was a gentleman--and that, like
many young men of rank and fashion at that time, he was acting Jehu
only “for a spree.” He talked so large, I should have taken him for
a nobleman, or a baronet at least--had he not accidently told me his
name; though he explained that it was not as humble as it seemed,
and expatiated much upon the antiquity, wealth, and aristocratic
connections of his “family.”
His conversation, though loud and coarse, was amusing; and he
patronised me extremely.
I would rather not say a word more than is necessary concerning this
person--he is dead. As before stated, I never knew anything of him
excepting his name, which you shall have by-and-by; but I guessed that
his life had not been a creditable one. He looked about thirty, or a
little older.
When the coach stopped--at the very inn where I am now writing, the
White Hart, Salisbury, he insisted on my stopping too, as it was
a bitter cold night and the moon would not rise till two in the
morning--he said that, I mind well.
Finally, he let the coach go on without us, and I heard him laying a
bet to drive across Salisbury Plain, in a gig, or dog-cart, and meet
it again on the road to Devizes by daybreak next morning. The landlord
laughed, and advised him to give up such a mad, “neck-or-nothing”
freak; but he swore, and said he always went at everything
“neck-or-nothing.”
I can remember to this day nearly every word he uttered, and his
manner of saying it. Under any circumstances this might have been the
case, for he attracted me, bad as I felt him to be, with his bold,
devil-may-care jollity, mixed with a certain English frankness, not
unpleasant. He was a small, dark man, hollow-eyed and dissipated
looking. His face--no, better not call up his face.
I was persuaded to stay and drink with this man and one or two
others--regular topers, as I soon found he was. He appeared poor too;
the drinking was to be at my expense. I was very proud to have the
honor of entertaining such a clever and agreeable gentleman.
Once, watching him, and listening to his conversation, sudden doubt
seized me of what Dallas would think of my new acquaintance, and what
he would say, or look--he seldom reproved aloud--were he to walk in,
and find me in this present company. And, supper being done, I tried
to get away, but this man held me by the shoulders, mocking me, and
setting the rest on to mock me as a “milksop.” The good angel fled.
From that moment, I believe, the devil entered both into him and me.
I got drunk. It was for the first time in my life, though more than
once lately I had been “merry,” but stopped at that stage. This time I
stopped at nothing. My blood was at boiling heat, with just enough of
conscience left to make me snatch at any means to deaden it.
Of the details of that orgie, or of those who joined in it, except
this one person--I have, as was likely, no distinct recollection. They
were habitual drinkers; none of them had any pity for me, and I--I was
utterly “left to myself,” as I have said. A raw, shy, Scotch lad, I
soon became the butt of the company.
The last thing I remember is their trying to force me to tell my name,
which, hitherto, I had not done; first, from natural reserve among
strangers, and then from an instinctive feeling that I was not in the
most creditable of society, and therefore the less I said about myself
the better. All I had told, was that I was on my way to France, to
join my brother, who was ill. They could not get any more out of me
than that: a few taunts--which some English people are rather too
ready to use against us Scotch--made me savage, as well as sullen. I
might have deserved it, or not--I cannot tell; but the end was,
they turned me out--the obstinate, drunken, infuriated lad--into the
street.
I staggered through the dark, silent town, into a lane, and fell
asleep on the road-side.
The next thing I call to mind is being awakened by the cut of a whip
across my shoulders, and seeing a man standing over me. I flew at his
throat like a wild creature; for it was he--the “gentleman” who had
made me drunk, and mocked me; and whom I seemed then and there to hate
with a fury of hatred that would last to my dying day. Through it all,
came the thought of Dallas, sick and solitary, half way towards whom I
ought to have travelled by now.
How he--the man--soothed me, I do not know, but I think it was by
offering to take me towards Dallas; he had a horse and gig standing
by, and said if I would mount, he would drive me to the coast, whence
I could take boat to France. At least, that is the vague impression
my mind retains of what passed between us. He helped me up beside him,
and I dozed off to sleep again.
My next wakening was in the middle of a desolate plain. I rubbed my
eyes, but saw nothing except stars and sky, and this black, black
plain, which seemed to have no end.
He pulled up, and told me to “tumble out,” which I did mechanically.
On the other side of the gig was something tall and dark, which I took
at first for a half-way inn; but perceived it was only a huge stone--a
circle of stones.
“Hollo! what's this?”
“Stonehenge! comfortable lodging for man and beast; so you're all
right. Good-bye, young fellow. You're such dull company, that I mean
to leave you here till morning.”
This was what he said to me, laughing uproariously. At first, I
thought he was in jest, and laughed too; then, being sleepy and
maudlin, I remonstrated. Lastly, I got half frightened, for when
I tried to mount, he pushed me down. I was so helpless, and he so
strong; from this solitary place, miles and miles from any human
dwelling--how should I get on to Dallas?--Dallas, who, stupefied as I
was, still remained my prominent thought.
I begged, as if I had been begging for my life, that he would keep his
promise, and take me on my way towards my brother.
“To the devil with your brother!” and he whipped his horse on.
The devil was in me, as I said. I sprang at him, my strength doubled
and trebled with rage, and, catching him unawares, dragged him from
the gig, and threw him violently on the ground; his head struck
against one of the great stones--and--and--
Now, you see how it was. I murdered him. He must have died
easily--instantaneously; he never moaned nor stirred once; but, for
all that, it was murder.
Not with intent, God knows. So little idea had I he was dead, that
I shook him as he lay, told him to “get up and fight it out:” oh, my
God!--my God!
Thus I have told it, the secret, which until now has never been
written or spoken to any human being. I was then nineteen--I am now
nine-and-thirty; twenty years. Theodora, have pity: only think of
carrying such a secret--the blood of a man, on one's conscience for
twenty years!
If, instead of my telling you all this, as I may do in a few days, you
should have to read it here, it will by then have become an old tale.
Still, pity me.
To continue, for it is getting far on into the night.
On the first few minutes after I discovered what I had done, you will
not expect me to dilate.
I was perfectly sober, now. I had tried every means in my power to
revive him; and then to ascertain for certain that he was dead; I
forgot to tell you I had already begun my classes in medicine, so I
knew a good deal. I sat with his head on my knee, fully aware that I
had killed him; that I had taken the life of a man, and that his blood
would be upon me for ever and ever.
Nothing, short of the great condemnation of the last judgment-day,
could parallel that horror of despair; under it my reason seemed to
give way. I was seized with the delusion that, bad and cruel man as he
was, he was only shamming to terrify me. I held him up in my arms, so
that the light of the gig-lamps fell full on his face.
It was a dead face--not frightful to look at, beautiful rather, as the
muscles slowly settled--but dead, quite dead. I laid him down again,
still resting his head against my knee, till he gradually stiffened
and grew cold.
This was just at moon-rise; he had said the moon would rise at two
o'clock, and so she did, and struck her first arrowy ray across the
plain upon his face--that still face with its half-open mouth and
eyes.
I had not been afraid of him hitherto; now I was. It was no longer a
man, but a corpse, and I was the murderer.
The sight of the moon rising, is my last recollection of this night.
Probably, the fit of insanity which lasted for many months after,
at that instant came on, and under its influence, I must have fled,
leaving him where he lay, with the gig standing by, and the horse
quietly feeding beside the great stones; but I do not recollect
anything. Doubtless, I had all the cunning of madness, for I contrived
to gain the coast and get over to France; but how, or when, I have not
the slightest remembrance to this day.
As I have told you, I never saw Dallas again. When I reached Pau, he
was dead and buried. The particulars of his death were explained to
me months afterwards by the good curé, who, Catholic as he was, had
learned to love Dallas like a son, and who watched over me for his
sake, during the long melancholy mania which, as he thought, resulted
from the shock of my brother's death.
Some day I should like you, if possible, to see the spot where Dallas
is buried--the church-yard of Bilhéres, near Pau; but his grave is
not within the churchyard, as he, being a Protestant, the authorities
would not allow it. You will find it just outside the hedge--the
head-stone placed in the hedge--though the little mound is by this
time level with the meadow outside. You know, we Presbyterians have
not your English feeling about “consecrated” ground; we believe that
“the whole earth is the Lord's,” and no human consecration can make
it holier than it is, both for the worship of the living, and the
interment of the dead. Therefore, it does not shock me that the cattle
feed, and the grass grows tall, over Dallas's body. But I should like
the headstone preserved--as it is; for yearly, in different quarters
of the globe, I have received letters from the old curé and his
successor, concerning it. You are much younger than I, Theodora; after
my death I leave this charge to you. You will fulfil it for my sake, I
know.
Must I tell you any more? Yes, for now comes what some might say was
a crime as heavy as the first one. I do not attempt to extenuate it.
I can only say that it has been expiated--such as it was, by twenty
miserable years, and that the last expiation is even yet not come.
Your father once said, and his words dashed from me the first hope
which ever entered my mind concerning you, that he never would clasp
the hand of a man who had taken the life of another. What would he
say to a man who had taken a life, and _concealed the fact_ for twenty
years? I am that man.
How it came about, I will tell you.
For a twelvemonth after that night, I was, you will remember, not
myself: in truth, a maniac, though a quiet and harmless one. My
insanity was of the sullen and taciturn kind, so that I betrayed
nothing; if indeed I had any remembrance of what had happened, which I
believe I had not. The first dawn of recollection came through reading
in an English newspaper, which the old curé brought to amuse me,
an account of a man who was hanged for murder. I read it line by
line--the trial--the verdict--the latter days of the criminal--who was
a young lad like me--and the last day of all, when he was hanged.
By degrees, first misty as a dream, then ghastly clear, impressed on
my mind with a tenacity and minuteness all but miraculous, considering
the long blank which followed,--returned the events of that night. I
became conscious that I too had killed a man, that if any eye had seen
the act, I should have been taken, tried, and hanged, for murder.
Young as I was, and ignorant of English criminal law, I had sufficient
common sense to arrive at the conclusion, that, as things stood, there
was not a fragment of evidence against me individually, nor, indeed,
any clear evidence to shew that the man was murdered at all. It
was now a year ago--he must have long since been found and
buried--probably, with little inquiry; they would conclude he had been
killed accidentally through his own careless, drunken driving. But
if I once confessed and delivered myself up to justice, I myself only
knew, and no evidence could ever prove, that it was not a case of
wilful murder. I should be hanged--hanged by the neck till I was
dead--and my name--our name, Dallas's and mine, blasted for evermore.
The weeks that elapsed after my first recovery of reason, were such,
that when I hear preachers thunder about the literal “worm that
dieth not, and fire that is never quenched,” I could almost smile.
Sufficient are the torments of a spiritual hell.
Sometimes, out of its depths, I felt as if
Satan himself had entered my soul, to rouse me into atheistic
rebellion. I, a boy not twenty yet, with all my future before me,
to lose it through a moment's fury against a man who must have been
depraved to the core, a man against whom I had no personal grudge--of
whom I knew nothing but his name. Yet I must surrender my life for
his--be tried, condemned--publicly disgraced--finally die the death of
a dog. I had never been a coward--yet night after night I woke, bathed
in a cold sweat of terror, feeling the rope round my neck, and seeing
the forty thousand upturned faces--as in the newspaper account of the
poor wretch who was hanged.
Remember; I plead nothing. I know there are those who would say that
the most dishonourable wretch alive, was this same man of honour--this
Max Urquhart, who carries such a fair reputation; that the only thing
I should have done was to go back to England, surrender myself to
justice, and take all the consequences of this one act of drunkenness
and ungovernable passion. However, I did it not. But my sin--as every
sin must,--be sure has found me out.
Theodora, it is hardly eight hours since your innocent arms were round
my neck, and your kisses on my mouth--and now! Well, it will be over
soon. However I have lived, I shall not die a hypocrite.
I do not attempt to retrace the course of reasoning by which I
persuaded myself to act as I did. I was only a boy; this long sleep
of the mind had re-established my bodily health;--life and youth were
strong within me--also the hope of honour--the dread of shame. Yet
sometimes conscience struggled so fiercely with all these, that I was
half tempted to a medium course, the coward's last escape--suicide.
You must remember, religion was wanting in me--and Dallas was dead.
Nay, I had for the time already forgotten him.
One day,--when, driven distracted with my doubts, I had almost made up
my mind to end them in the one sharp easy way I have spoken of,--while
putting my brother's papers in order, I found his Bible.--Underneath
his name he had written--and the date was that of the last day of
his life--my name. I looked at it, as we look at a handwriting long
familiar, till of a sudden we remember that the hand is bold, that no
earthly power can ever reproduce of this known writing a single line.
Child, did you ever know--no, you never could have known--that total
desolation, that helpless craving for the dead who return no more?
After I grew calmer, I did the only thing which seemed to bring me a
little nearer to Dallas:--I read in his Bible. The chapter I opened
at was so remarkable that at first I recoiled as if it had been my
brother--he who being now a spirit, might, for all I could tell,
have a spirit's knowledge of all things--speaking to me out of the
invisible world. The chapter was Exekiel xvii.; and among other verses
were these:--
“When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath
committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his
soul alive.
“Because he considereth and turneth away from all his transgressions
that he hath committed, he shall surely live; he shall not die....
“For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord
God: wherefore turn yourselves and live ye.”
I turned and lived. I resolved to give a life--my own--for the
life which I had taken; to devote it wholly to the saving of other
lives;--and at its close, when I had built up a good name, and shown
openly that after _any_ crime a man might recover himself, repent
and atone, I meant to pay the full price of the sin of my youth, and
openly to acknowledge it before the world.--How far I was right or
wrong in this decision, I cannot tell--perhaps no human judgment ever
can tell: I simply state what I then resolved, and have never swerved
from--till I saw you.
Of necessity, with this ultimate confession ever before me, all
the pleasures of life, and all its closest ties, friendship, love,
marriage--were not to be thought of. I set them aside as impossible.
To me, life could never be enjoyment, but simply atonement.
My subsequent history you are acquainted with --how, after the needful
term of medical study-in Britain, (I chose Dublin as being the place
where I was utterly a stranger, and remained there till my four years
ended), I went as an army surgeon half over the world. The first time I
ever set foot in England again, was not many weeks before I saw, in the
ballroom of the Cedars, that little sweet face of yours. The same face
in which, two days ago, I read the look of love which stirs a
man's heart to the very core. In a moment it obliterated the
resolutions--conflicts--sufferings of twenty years, and restored me to
a man's right and privilege of loving, wooing, marrying.--Shall we ever
be married?
By the time you read this, if ever you do read it, that question will
have been answered. It can do you no harm if for one little minute I
think of you as my wife; no longer friend, child, mistress, but _my
wife_.
Think of all that would have been implied by that name. Think of
coming home, and of all that home would have been--however humble--to
me who never had a home in my whole life. Think of all I would have
tried to make it to you. Think of sitting by my fireside, knowing that
you were the only one required to make it happy and bright; that,
good and pleasant, and dear as many others might be--the only absolute
necessity to each of us was one another.
Then, the years that would have followed, in which we never had to
say good-bye, in which our two hearts would daily lie open, clear and
plain, never to have a doubt or a secret any more.
Then--if we should not always be only two!--I think of you as my
wife--the mother of my children--
* * * * *
I was unable to conclude this last night. Now I only add a line before
going into the town to gain information about--about this person: by
whom his body was found, and where buried; with that intent I have
already been searching the cathedral burying-ground; but there is no
sign of graves there, all is smooth green turf, with the dew upon it
glittering like a sheet of diamonds in the bright spring morning.
It reminded me of you--this being your hour for rising, you early
bird, you little methodical girl. You may at this moment be out on the
terrace, looking up to the hill-top, or down towards your favourite
cedar-trees, with that sunshiny spring morning face of yours.
Pray for me, my love, my wife, my Theodora.
*****
I have found his grave at last.
“_In memory of Henry Johnston, only son of the Reverend William Henry
Johnston, of Rockmount Surrey: who met his death by an accident near
this town, and was buried here. Born May 19, 1806. Died November_ 19,
1836.”
Farewell, Theodora.