XXVII. — MOHUN TERMINATES HIS NARRATIVE.
Mohun had spoken throughout the earlier portions of his narrative in a tone of cynical bitterness. His last words were mingled, however, with weary sighs, and his face wore an expression of the profoundest melancholy.
The burnt-out cigar had fallen from his fingers to the floor; he leaned back languidly in his great arm-chair: with eyes fixed upon the dying fire, he seemed to go back in memory to the terrible scenes just described, living over again all those harsh and conflicting emotions.
“So it ended, Surry,” he said, after a long pause. “Such was the frightful gulf into which the devil and my own passions pushed me, in that month of December, 1856. A hand as irresistible and inexorable as the Greek Necessity had led me step by step to murder—in intent if not in fact—and for years the shadow of the crime which I believed I had committed, made my life wretched. I wandered over Europe, plunged into a thousand scenes of turmoil and excitement—it was all useless—still the shadow went with me. Crime is a terrible companion to have ever at your elbow. The Atra cura of the poet is nothing to it, friend! It is a fiend which will not be driven away. It grins, and gibbers, and utters its gibes, day and night. Believe me, Surry,—I speak from experience—it is better for this world, as well as the next, to be a boor, a peasant, a clodhopper with a clear conscience, than to hold in your hand the means of all luxury, and so-called enjoyment, and, with it, the consciousness that you are blood guilty under almost any circumstances.
“Some men might have derived comfort from the circumstances of that crime. I could not. They might have said, ‘I was goaded, stung, driven, outraged, tempted beyond my strength, caught in a net of fire, from which there was but one method of exit—to burst out, trampling down every thing.’ Four words silenced all that sophistry—‘She was a woman!’ It was the face of that woman, as I saw it last on that stormy night by the lightning flashes, which drove me to despair. I, the son of the pure gentleman whose portrait is yonder—I, the representative of the Mohuns, a family which had acted in all generations according to the dictates of the loftiest honor—I, had put to death a woman, and that thought spurred me to madness!
“Of his death I did not think in the same manner. I had slain him in fair combat, body to body—and, however the law of God may stigmatize homicide, there was still that enormous difference. I had played my life against his, as it were—he had lost, and he paid the forfeit. But the other was murdered! That fact stared me in the face. She had dishonored me; tricked me; attempted to poison, and then shoot me. She had designed to murder me, and had set about her design deliberately, coolly, without provocation, impelled by the lust of gold only. She deserved punishment, but—she was a woman! I had not said ‘Go!’ either, in pointing to the gloomy path to death. I had said ‘Come!’—had meant to die too. I had not shrunk from the torrent in which I had resolved she should be borne away. I had gone into the boat with her; accompanied her on her way; devoted myself, too, to death, at the same moment. But all was useless. I said to myself a thousand times—‘at least they can not say that I was a coward, as well as a murderer. The last of the Mohuns may have blackened his escutcheon with the crime of murder—but at least he did not spare himself; he faced death with his victim.’ Useless, Surry—all useless! The inexorable Voice with which I fenced, had only one reply—one lunge—‘She was a woman!’ and the words pierced me like a sword-blade!
“Let me end this, but not before I say that the dreadful Voice was right. As to the combat with Mortimer, I shall express no opinion. You know the facts, and will judge me. But the other act was a deadly crime. Gloss it over as you may, you can never justify murder. Use all the special pleading possible, and the frightful deed is still as black in the eyes of God and man as before. I saw that soon; saw it always; see it to-day; and pray God in his infinite mercy to blot out that crime from his book—to pardon the poor weak creature who was driven to madness, and attempted to commit that deadly sin.
“Well, to end my long history. I remained in Europe until the news from America indicated the approach of war—Nighthawk managing my estate, and remitting me the proceeds at Paris. When I saw that an armed collision was going to take place, I hastened back, reaching Virginia in the winter of 1860. But I did not come to Fonthill. I had a horror of the place. From New York, where I landed, I proceeded to Montgomery, without stopping upon the route; found there a prominent friend of my father who was raising a brigade in the Southwest; was invited by him to aid him; and soon afterward was elected to the command of a company of cavalry by his recommendation. I need only add, that I rose gradually from captain to colonel, which rank I held in 1863, when we first met on the Rappahannock—my regiment having been transferred to a brigade of General Lee’s cavalry.
“You saw me then, and remember my bitterness and melancholy. But you had no opportunity to descry the depth and intensity of those sentiments in me. Suddenly the load was lifted. That woman made her appearance, as if from the grave, and you must have witnessed my wonder, as my eyes fell upon her. Then, she was not dead after all! I was not a murderer! And to complete the wonder, he was also alive. A man passing along the bank of the river, as I discovered afterward from Nighthawk, who ferreted out the whole affair—a man named Swartz, a sort of poor farmer and huckster, passing along the Nottoway, on the morning after the storm, had found the woman cast ashore, with the boat overturned near her; and a mile farther, had found Mortimer, not yet dead, in the grave. Succored by Swartz, they had both recovered—had then disappeared. I was to meet them again, and know of their existence only when the chance of war threw us face to face on the field.
“You know the scenes which followed. Mortimer, or Darke, as he now calls himself, confronted me everywhere, and she seemed to have no object in life but my destruction. You heard her boast in the house near Buckland that she had thrice attempted to assassinate me by means of her tool, the man Swartz. Again, at Warrenton, in the hospital, she came near poniarding me with her own hand. Nighthawk, who had followed me to the field, and become a secret agent of General Stuart, warned me of all this—and one day, gave me information more startling still. And this brings me, my dear Surry, to the last point in my narrative, I now enter upon matter with which you have been personally ‘mixed up.’
“On that night when I attacked Darke in his house in Pennsylvania, Swartz stole a paper from madam—the certificate of her marriage with Mr. Mortimer-Darke, or Darke-Mortimer. The object of Swartz was, to sell the paper to me for a large sum, as he had gotten an inkling of the state of affairs, and my relation with madam. Well, Nighthawk reported this immediately, made an appointment to meet Swartz in the Wilderness, and many times afterward attempted to gain possession of the paper, which Swartz swore was a bona fide certificate of the marriage of these two persons before the year 1856, when I first met them.
“You, doubtless, understand now, my dear Surry, my great anxiety to gain possession of that paper. Or, if you do not, I have only to state one fact—that will explain all. I am engaged to be married to Miss Conway, and am naturally anxious to have the proof in my possession that I have not one wife yet living! I know that woman well. She will stop at nothing. The rumor that I am about to become the happy husband of a young lady whom I love, has driven madam nearly frantic, and she has already shown her willingness to stop at nothing, by imprisoning Swartz, and starving him until he produced the stolen paper. Swartz is dead, however; the paper is lost; I and madam are both in hot pursuit of the document. Which will find it, I know not. She, of course, wishes to suppress it—I wish to possess it. Where is it? If you will tell me, friend, I will make you a deed for half my estate! You have been with me to visit that strange woman, Amanda, as a forlorn hope. What will come I know not; but I trust that an all-merciful Providence will not withdraw its hand from me, and now dash all my hopes, at the very moment when the cup is raised to my lips! If so, I will accept all, submissively, as the just punishment of my great crime—a crime, I pray God to pardon me, as the result of mad desperation, and not as a wanton and wilful defiance of His Almighty authority! I have wept tears of blood for that act. I have turned and tossed on my bed, in the dark hours of night, groaning and pleading for pardon. I have bitterly expiated throughout long years, that brief tragedy. I have humbled myself in the dust before the Lord of all worlds, and, falling at the feet of the all-merciful Saviour, besought His divine compassion. I am proud—no man was ever prouder—but I have bowed my forehead to the dust, and if the Almighty now denies me the supreme consolation of this pure girl’s affection,—if loving her as I do, and beloved by her, as I may venture to tell you, friend, I am to see myself thrust back from this future—then, Surry, I will give the last proof of my submission: I will bow down my head, and say ‘Thy will, not mine, Lord, be done!’”
Mohun’s head sank as he uttered the words. To the proud face came an expression of deep solemnity and touching sweetness. The firm lips were relaxed—the piercing eyes had become soft. Mohun was greater in his weakness than he had ever been in his strength.
When an hour afterward we had mounted our horses, and were riding back slowly through the night, I said, looking at him by the dim starlight:—
“This is no longer a gay young cavalryman—a mere thoughtless youth—but a patriot, fit to live or die with Lee!”