Master Shedlock, on fastening the lower door of the hall behind
him, in the manner set forth heretofore, resumed his progress,
and passed on to the kitchen. There, as was already made
manifest, he found Abigail and Zedekiah, whom his appearance
quite diverted from their design of ejecting the cut onion.
Abigail was the first to recover herself.
“What ails thee, master?” she cried.
“She’s dead!” answered Shedlock. “I have seen her spirit.”
“Mean’st thou mistress?” demanded Abigail, earnestly.
“She’s dead!” repeated Shedlock.
“Go to! she was a good mistress!” cried Abigail, bursting into
tears. “I will go see her.”
Shedlock seized her by the arm. “Woman, she’s dead, I tell thee!”
he cried. “Go get some neighbours to lay her out.”
Abigail made no reply, but, as he dropped his hold of her arm,
stepped towards the rearward door, and proceeded on the errand
he had charged her with. He remained stationary himself, with
his eyes fixed on the open door, in evident abstraction and
bewilderment, for upwards of half an hour. After that interval,
Abigail returned, accompanied by two other women, tenants of
a neighbouring cottage, whom she had brought to assist her in
laying out her mistress.
“Shall we go see her now?” she asked of Shedlock.
“Ay,” replied the Puritan. “And let some one stay with her till
her burying.”
Zedekiah, who had hitherto stood perfectly still, as if he had
not understood what was passing, here gave a slight start.
“Look you this be minded,” continued Shedlock: “so shall my heart
be at rest.”
Rest? his heart was never to be at rest again! The fearful
visitation which he believed himself to have been subject to, in
the last farewell of his deceased wife, was impressed too vividly
on his mind, and had given too violent a shock to his long-sealed
conscience, to suffer him to rest a moment. What a terrible
retribution had one brief instant brought upon him! In the midst
of his pride, in the height of health, with every pleasure and
enjoyment that riches could purchase within his reach, and with
all the pomp and allurements of the seductive world open to him,
the man who believed himself to be only a creature of the time,
and entirely free from all responsibility, was a prey to the
liveliest pangs and terrors of remorse.
The tremendous mystery of nature was unveiled in his bosom, at
last. In vain did he strive to turn from it; in vain did he
strive to stifle, with the specious sophistries of atheism,
that ever-living and irradicable conviction of responsibility,
which it stamped in the very life-blood of his heart. He might
persuade himself that he believed it to be false; he might say,
as he had often said before, that it was the mere effect of early
impressions; but the awful inspiration rose up still, and, in
spite of all he could think, say, or do, would win and fasten on
his attention.
Whoever has looked close into his own heart, in the silence of
midnight, when its admirable machinery may be best observed,
will have noted how hard it is to fix it on any one thought, and
what a variety of ideas assail us at once. Can he see in this
distraction no trace of supernatural influences? When, in spite
of his very utmost exertion, the thought that he would pursue
is suddenly invaded by another--when the good intention he would
dwell upon becomes associated with corruption--when his virtuous
resolution is overtaken by an allurement to vice, his best and
most generous sympathies, as they are on the very eve of ripening
into effect, stifled by an egregious vanity--does he not, in this
situation, feel that he is of himself like a mariner without a
compass, and that his heart needs a higher and greater Power at
its helm? If he be a reasonable being, such must, beyond all
dispute, be his natural conclusion; and he will feel no less
assured, that that Power is at his hand, and only awaits his
invocation to lend him effectual succour.
Even Shedlock was not abandoned. Nature, bursting the trammels he
had imposed upon her, unfolded herself to his eye in her native
perfectness; conscience sought to arouse him to the truth; but
now, when a last hope was extended to him, he wished to believe
it false; and what should have prostrated him in adoration,
overwhelmed him with horror.
The awful adventure of the morning had unnerved him, and, in the
superstitious spirit already ascribed to him, he thought that the
apparition of his wife, which he believed it to have revealed,
was a warning that his own end was approaching. How could he
die?--he, whose whole life, as far as his memory could carry him
back, had been one course of guilt? Yet why could he not die,
if to die, as he persuaded himself he believed, were to end--to
dissolve into the elements, and be no more? There was a doubt--a
craven doubt,--and that withheld him.
When Abigail and her two helpmates proceeded to his deceased
wife’s chamber, and he was thus, as he believed, protected from a
repetition of his recent ghostly adventure, he ventured to return
to his dormitory. A bible was lying on his toilet-table, and,
on his entry, was the first object that, in his survey of the
chamber, seemed to interest him. It was open, and, after musing a
moment, something whispered him, in pursuance of the thoughts he
had been following, that it was a book of lies, and he determined
to shut it up. He approached it with that view; but, as he caught
up the cover, his eye involuntarily turned on the open page, and
there read these words--“Thou fool! this night thy soul shall be
required of thee!”
Shedlock drew back appalled. In the mood he was in, the passage
appeared to him like “the handwriting on the wall;” and yet, by a
singular and unaccountable infatuation, he rejected the authority
of the volume by which it was furnished. He tried to ponder on
other things, but, the more he sought to divert his thoughts,
the more did the one terrible fear of death, which had taken
possession of his heart, grow and twine round them, and taint
each individual reflection with its harrowing horror.
He became even more unnerved on the approach of night. Afraid to
remain alone, he directed Zedekiah, in a tone that admitted of
no question, to make up another bed in his chamber, and there
watch him during the night. His injunction was fulfilled, but the
precaution suggested by his fears, and from which he had hoped to
have derived a degree of assurance, had no effect on his mind,
and, however he might strive to compose it, it still would offer
no thought but the one racking anticipation of approaching death.
He was quite without hope: even life itself, if it should be
extended to him, had lost its charm--it could no more present to
him the image of reality. As this reflection occurred to him, his
heart burned again, and he asked himself why, if it were to bear
on him like a burden, he should continue to endure life. Only the
fear of what might succeed it could make it any way tolerable.
Did he believe, then, that it was but the prelude to another
existence? No! certainly not! For what reason, then, should he
cling to it?
Such were the speculations that, almost in spite of his own
will, shot through his fevered mind, over and over again, as he
tossed restlessly on his pillow. He tried to shake them off, but
they held to him, notwithstanding, with the grasp of giants.
Thus, sweating with horror, he continued till near midnight: the
burden then surpassed all endurance; and, muttering a blasphemous
execration, he sprang from the bed, and staggered out on the
floor.
As he came to a stand, he fell back against the toilet-table. He
was about to raise himself, when his hand, in moving round the
table, knocked against some extraneous substance, and he caught
it up. It was a razor.
“’Twere a good thing, now, to end all,” he said.
Thus speaking, he drew the razor open, and raised it to his
throat. He paused a moment, and then, with a perfectly steady
hand, dashed the deadly blade into his flesh, and cut his throat
right across. A loud yell rang in his ear, and he fell back a
corpse.