The reader will doubtless have observed the consummate art with which
the poisoner had hitherto advanced upon her prey. The design conceived
from afar, and executed with elaborate stealth, defied every chance of
detection against which the ingenuity of practised villany could guard.
Grant even that the deadly drugs should betray the nature of the death
they inflicted, that by some unconjectured secret in the science of
chemistry the presence of those vegetable compounds which had hitherto
baffled every known and positive test in the posthumous examination of
the most experienced surgeons, should be clearly ascertained, not
one suspicion seemed likely to fall upon the ministrant of death. The
medicines were never brought to Madame Dalibard, were never given by her
hand; nothing ever tasted by the victim could be tracked to her aunt.
The helpless condition of the cripple, which Lucretia had assumed,
forbade all notion even of her power of movement. Only in the dead of
night when, as she believed, every human eye that could watch her was
sealed in sleep, and then in those dark habiliments which (even as might
sometimes happen, if the victim herself were awake) a chance ray of
light struggling through chink or shutter could scarcely distinguish
from the general gloom, did she steal to the chamber and infuse the
colourless and tasteless liquid [The celebrated acqua di Tufania
(Tufania water) was wholly without taste or colour] in the morning
draught, meant to bring strength and healing. Grant that the draught was
untouched, that it was examined by the surgeon, that the fell admixture
could be detected, suspicion would wander anywhere rather than to that
crippled and helpless kinswoman who could not rise from her bed without
aid.
But now this patience was to be abandoned, the folds of the serpent were
to coil in one fell clasp upon its prey.
Fiend as Lucretia had become, and hardened as were all her resolves
by the discovery of her son, and her impatience to endow him with her
forfeited inheritance, she yet shrank from the face of Helen that day;
on the excuse of illness, she kept her room, and admitted only
Varney, who stole in from time to time, with creeping step and haggard
countenance, to sustain her courage or his own. And every time he
entered, he found Lucretia sitting with Walter Ardworth’s open letter in
her hand, and turning with a preternatural excitement that seemed
almost like aberration of mind, from the grim and horrid topic which
he invited, to thoughts of wealth and power and triumph and exulting
prophecies of the fame her son should achieve. He looked but on the
blackness of the gulf, and shuddered; her vision overleaped it, and
smiled on the misty palaces her fancy built beyond.
Late in the evening, before she retired to rest, Helen knocked gently at
her aunt’s door. A voice, quick and startled, bade her enter; she came
in, with her sweet, caressing look, and took Lucretia’s hand, which
struggled from the clasp. Bending over that haggard brow, she said
simply, yet to Lucretia’s ear the voice seemed that of command, “Let
me kiss you this night!” and her lips pressed that brow. The murderess
shuddered, and closed her eyes; when she opened them, the angel visitor
was gone.
Night deepened and deepened into those hours from the first of which
we number the morn, though night still is at her full. Moonbeam and
starbeam came through the casements shyly and fairylike as on that
night when the murderess was young and crimeless, in deed, if not in
thought,--that night when, in the book of Leechcraft, she meted out the
hours in which the life of her benefactor might still interpose between
her passion and its end. Along the stairs, through the hall, marched the
armies of light, noiseless and still and clear as the judgments of
God amidst the darkness and shadow of mortal destinies. In one chamber
alone, the folds, curtained close, forbade all but a single ray; that
ray came direct as the stream from a lantern; as the beam reflected back
from an eye,--as an eye it seemed watchful and steadfast through the
dark; it shot along the floor,--it fell at the foot of the bed.
Suddenly, in the exceeding hush, there was a strange and ghastly
sound,--it was the howl of a dog! Helen started from her sleep.
Percival’s dog had followed her into her room; it had coiled itself,
grateful for the kindness, at the foot of the bed. Now it was on the
pillow, she felt its heart beat against her hand,--it was trembling; its
hairs bristled up, and the howl changed into a shrill bark of terror and
wrath. Alarmed, she looked round; quickly between her and that ray
from the crevice a shapeless darkness passed, and was gone, so
undistinguishable, so without outline, that it had no likeness of any
living form; like a cloud, like a thought, like an omen, it came in
gloom, and it vanished.
Helen was seized with a superstitious terror; the dog continued to
tremble and growl low. All once more was still; the dog sighed itself
to rest. The stillness, the solitude, the glimmer of the moon,--all
contributed yet more to appall the enfeebled nerves of the listening,
shrinking girl. At length she buried her face under the clothes, and
towards daybreak fell into a broken, feverish sleep, haunted with
threatening dreams.