The driver and horse both seemed to sympathise with my impatience: for
each appeared to exert himself to the utmost.
I reached the street; but, before arriving at the house, I could see a
crowd of people collected about the door.
Their movements betokened great agitation. Something very unusual had
certainly happened. It was not like the excitement caused by a wedding:
for--
"Then and there was hurrying to and fro,
And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress;
And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago
Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness."
My arrival was not noticed by any member of the family. They were
up-stairs, and I saw none of them; but from one of their guests, I
obtained the details of the sad story. I was indeed, as Jessie had said
in her letter, _too late_!
A few minutes before my arrival, she had been found dead in her
dressing-room--with a bottle of prussic acid by her side!
I rushed back into the cab; and ordered the driver to take me home
again. I was too much unmanned, to remain a minute longer in that house
of woe.
I had suffered great mental agony on many previous occasions. When
alone, with the body of my companion Hiram--whom I had neglected when on
the "prospecting" expedition in California--my thoughts had been far
from pleasant. They were not agreeable when I saw my friend, Richard
Guinane, by his own act fall a corpse before my face. Great was the
pain I felt, when standing by the side of poor Stormy Jack, and looking
upon his last agonies. So was it, when my mother left me; but all
these--even the grief I felt when told that Lenore was married, were
nothing to the anguish I experienced, while riding home through the
crowded streets of London, and trying to realise the awful reality that
Jessie H--had committed suicide. A heart that but an hour ago had been
throbbing with warm love--and that love for me--was now cold and still.
A pure spirit, altogether devoted to me, had passed suddenly away--
passed into eternity with a prayer upon her righteous lips; and that
prayer for myself!
My anguish at her untimely end, was mingled with the fires of regret. I
submitted my conscience to a strict self-examination. Had I ever
deceived her, by pretending a love I did not feel? Was I, in any way,
to blame for the sin she had committed? Did I, in any way, lead her to
that act of self-destruction? Could her parents, in the agony of their
grief, reproach me for anything?
These questions haunted me all that night; and I slept not. I even
endeavoured to remember something in my conduct, which had been wrong.
But I could not: for I had never talked to _her_ of love. In all, that
had passed between us, I had been true to Lenore.
In the voyage of her life, her hopes, as well as her existence, had been
wrecked upon me; but I was no more to blame than the rock, unmarked on
map or chart, against which some noble ship has been dashed to pieces.
In that sad letter, Jessie had expressed a hope that I would think of
her, and believe her only guilty of the crime of having loved me too
well.
That wish died with her; but obedience to it, still lives with me.
When I returned home, on the day of her death, I locked myself in my
chamber; and read that letter over and over again. No thoughts--not
even of Lenore--could keep the rain of sorrow from dimming my eyes, and
drowning my cheeks.
My life may be long; faith, hope, and even love for Lenore, may become
weak within me; but never shall be effaced from my heart, the deep
feeling of sorrow for the sad fate of Jessie H--.
May her spirit be ever blessed of God!
Her last act was not that of self-murder. It was simply that of dying;
and if in the manner she acted wrong, it was a wrong of which we may all
be guilty. Let her not be condemned then, among those whose souls are
tainted and distorted by the vanities and hypocrisies of so-called
civilised society!
To her family and friends, there was a mystery about the cause of her
death, that they could not unravel. Her letter to me would have
explained all; but that letter I did not produce. It would only have
added fuel to the fire of their grief--causing it to burn with greater
fierceness, and perhaps to endure longer. I did not wish to add to
their unhappiness. I had too much respect for her memory to exhibit
that epistle to any one, and see it printed, with the usual vulgar
commentary, in the papers of the day.
The unfortunate ending of her life is now an event of the past; and her
parents have gone to rejoin her in another and happier world, else that
letter would still have remained in the secret drawer--from which it has
now been taken.
Volume Three, Chapter XXXIV.