CHAPTER XL.
The Old House Again.—Ada’s Alarm.—Gray and His Gold.
Ada felt that after the experience of the recent interview with Gray, she had a power over him which, were she free from her promise not to escape, she might use for the purpose of restoring herself to liberty. That power was grounded on the superstition of his character—a weakness which had grown with his crimes, and been increased by the constant pangs of remorse, which even he could not stifle entirely. The solitude likewise, and the constant state of trembling anxiety in which he lived, had shattered his nervous system to that degree that he was indeed a melancholy and warning spectacle of the mental and bodily wreck to which crime is sure to reduce its unhallowed perpetrators.
His eyes were sunken and blood-shot, his lips never bore the hue of health, his step was stealthy and trembling, and his hands shook like an aspen leaf. He would lock himself in the room which contained his hoarded wealth, and recount the glittering mass for hours together; but still he could not think it enough. The demon of avarice had got a clutch of his heart, and the larger the amount of his gold became, the wider range his love of the bright temptation took, and constantly fixed a sum far beyond what he had as that which would content him and enable him to put in practice his scheme of departure from England, and vengeance upon Learmont and Britton.
“I must yet have more,” he would mutter. “’Tis but a short delay, and Learmont cannot refuse me the gold. Yes, two hundred more of those pieces shall satisfy me. That will make up a goodly sum; and then, in some other land, I shall get some sleep undisturbed by the awful visions that here crowd upon my trembling imagination;—but two hundred more. Perhaps I may get so much before this month is past, and then I shall be saved the trouble of extorting a renewal of the promise of this wilful girl. Yes, it shall be so. I will raise my demands upon Learmont. He cannot—dare not say me nay, unless I were to become outrageously unreasonable in my drafts upon his purse.—Two hundred.—Let me think;—five visits at twenty pounds each will be half the money. Pshaw! I will have forty each visit. Ay, forty; that will not alarm him: If I insist on more he might, in his cautious brain, think upon the scheme I mean to practise, and take some means of most effectually preventing such ruin to himself. I will lull his suspicions. Oh! What a day of triumph will it be to me when I sail from England with the conviction that, within four-and-twenty hours after I am gone, Learmont and Britton will each inhabit a prison. They will then confess that Jacob Gray is cunning. The sneer will turn with an awful fact to them. There is but one drawback.—I shall not see them hung. No;—I cannot—dare not—stay to see them hung. Ada will be rich and great; but she will know who I am. Will she use her wealth in hunting me through the world? Or will she forgive in the flush of her prosperity? If—if—I thought that the firm, untameable spirit which this girl evidently possesses, and which I may confess it here in secret, daunts me,—if I thought it would induce her to hunt me down, as she might, for her means would be ample for such an object, were I hidden even in the bowels of the earth, I’d—I’d—kill her ere I went. Yes, some night when she slept I could do it; but not till the hour before I meant to go; for I—I could not stay in this lone place without her. She scorns me,—treats me with a haughty contempt; will scarcely condescend to address me: but still she is here, and there is company in the thought that I know I am not quite alone in this gloomy place. She may load me with opprobrium,—she may heap scorn upon my head; but she is here, and I could not lie down for one night here, without the conviction that there was some one else within these walls. So, Ada, you are safe now—very safe; but ere I go I must seek some subtle means of knowing what will be your course of action when you know all, and the name of Jacob Gray is linked with a crime that will rouse your nature, and bring an angry flash to your eye. Ha!—What noise was that?”
Gray sprang to his feet, and he trembled violently, for some slight noise, such as old decayed houses are full of, came upon his ear in the stillness that reigned around.
“I—I thought I heard a noise,” he muttered; “but I have thought so often, when ’twas nothing. Ada is here; I am not quite alone; should I see anything, I—I could scream, and then she might come, perchance, to exult in my agony; but there would be protection in her presence—because—because she is—innocent.—Innocent!—Oh, God! Why am I not innocent? Is all this world and its enjoyments a gross delusion, for which I have bartered all the essence and foundation of all joy—peace!”
For many minutes he remained silent, and the nervous twitching of his countenance betrayed the disturbed condition of his mind. Then he spoke quickly and nervously.
“I must not give way to thoughts like these,” he said; “they will drive me mad. Yes, murder lies that way. I must go on now;—the path I have chosen is one which there is no retracing. ’Tis as if a wall of adamant followed close behind, to prevent one backward step. I am committed to the course I have taken;—to pause is madness. I must go on—I must go on! But I will spare you, Ada, if I can.”
The sound of a distant clock, sounding the hour of twelve, now came upon the night air, and Jacob Gray listened to the faint moaning tones of the bell until all was still again, and no sound broke the solemn stillness but the agitated beating of his own heart.
“Midnight!” he said. “’Tis midnight! I will now endeavour to snatch a few hours’ repose; I have fatigued myself now for many hours, with the hope that the body’s weariness might lull the mind’s agony. Agony! I—do I call it agony! Is that all I have purchased by—crimes?”
He lifted the light, as he spoke, and its feeble rays fell upon the glittering heap of gold that lay before him. A ghastly smile played across the pale countenance of Jacob Gray.
“I have gained something,” he said, as he laid his thin, cold hand upon the gold. “Yes, I have gained these—these pieces of bright metal, that will exchange for honours—service—gay attire—enchanting music—nay, they will buy what men affect not to sell—opinion. There may be some pure state of society, in which, when speaking of a man, the question may be, ‘What is he?’ But here—here, in civilized, moral, intellectual England, the question is, ‘What has he?’ These,” he continued, running his hand among the guineas; “these even will purchase prayers to Heaven; petitions to God from the good, the saintly, and the pious. Gold, I love thee—but now to bed—to bed!”
He carefully placed his treasure in its recent receptacle at the back of the cupboard, and then with a faltering step, and a shifting glance of fear, he repaired to his own chamber, which was near to Ada’s room.
In his progress he passed the door of the dormitory of his victim—he paused a moment, and listened attentively. Then in a voice of deep anguish he said,—
“She can sleep—she can sleep—no ghostly vision scares slumber from her eyes—while—”
He shuddered, and passed a step or two on, then pausing again, he said,—
“Oh, if she, the young and innocent—the loved of Heaven—if she would but bid me a ‘good night,’ I think I could sleep—I asked her once, and she would not—no, she would not give me so much peace; she would not say good night to me!”
These words were spoken by Gray in a tone of great mental anguish, and he passed on silently to his own chamber.
A silence, as of the grave, reigned over the old house, and an uneasy slumber crept over Jacob Gray.
Well might the man of crime dread to sleep; for, although exhausted nature sunk into repose, the busy fancy slept not; but, ever wakeful, conjured up strange ghastly shapes to scare the sleeper.
The imagination, unchecked by reason, began its reign—a reign sometimes so full of beauty and joy, that we sigh to awaken to a perception of that which is, instead of remaining in the world of dreams.
Jacob Gray’s visions, however, took the shuddering ghastly complexion of his waking thoughts and recollections.
From memory’s deepest cells would these creep forth one by one in hideous distinctness—remembrances that were maddening, and scenes would be enacted over and over again within the busy chambers of the brain, that in his waking moments he would shun the faintest reminiscence of, as he would the terrors of a pestilence.
The smithy at Learmont rose up before him, black and heavy as it appeared among the drifting snow. Then he would hear the howling of the wind even as it howled on that eventful night, when the storm was just commencing—momentarily it increased in fury, and Jacob Gray felt that all the awful events of that night were to do again; why or wherefore he knew not.
Then the smith, he thought, took him by the throat and threw him down upon a ghastly rotting corpse, and the long bony arms closed over him, while he felt his own warm living face in hideous contact with the slimy rottenness of the grave, he heard then, as he had heard it on that dreadful night, the cry of fire! And he strove with frantic efforts to free himself from the embrace of death—but ’twas all in vain.
* * * * *
The flames then waved around him like a sea, and the skeleton arms grew to a white heat, and burnt into his flesh, and a hot pestilential breath seemed to come from the grinning jaws of the dead—still he could not move. His struggles were as those of an infant in that awful clutch, and he prayed for death to terminate his agony.
Then a voice said, “No! You will remain thus till time is no more.”
With a scream Jacob Gray awoke, and starting wildly from his couch, he sunk on his knees, shrieking—
“Mercy—mercy! Spare me, Heaven!”