CHAPTER XXXVIII. TORTURE AND CONFESSION.
For some minutes he remained kneeling, his strong frame shaken by deep sobs, his lips murmuring some incoherent prayer. Then he felt a touch upon the shoulder. He looked up, shuddering. “Come!” said Haldane, looking darkly down upon him.
“No, no!” he cried, in the extremity of his agitation. “Let me stay here! Let me pray by her side a little while!”
“Come away!” answered Haldane, more sternly. “This is no place for you.”
Santley rose trembling to his feet, and gazed again upon the cold sleeping face and form.
“Leave me! leave me!” he exclaimed, turning wildly towards his torturer. “Leave me alone with her!”
The face of the master of the house became terrible in its sternness, as he responded—
“Command yourself, man, and follow me! You forget yourself. This place is sacred.’
“My office is sacred. I desire you to leave me alone with the dead.”
“And I refuse. I do not want your prayers, nor does she need them. Come!”
With a low moan, Santley turned again towards the bed, stretching out his arms; but this time Haldane interposed, with angry determination—
“Are you mad? I command you to come away.”
“O God! God!”
“Do not blaspheme. She who sleeps there is nothing, or should be nothing, to you. Leave the room, or, by Heaven, I shall have to make you!”
Beside himself with excitement, Santley glared at Haldane, and clenched his hands, as if he would have struck him; but, remembering the place in which he stood, and the solemnity of the occasion, he conquered his insane impulse, and tottered to the door. Haldane followed, and as he turned on the threshold, put out his hand and pushed him into the lobby; then followed, and turned the key in the lock.
“Come with me,” he said, in a voice of command.
Santley obeyed, and the two descended the stairs. On the way down they met Baptisto ascending, with whom Haldane whispered hurriedly for a moment. Then they made their way through the dark lobbies, and again entered the gloomy drawing-room. With a groan Santley threw himself on a chair, and hid his face in his hands.
“You are strangely moved,” said Haldane, coldly. “What was my wife to you, that you should exhibit this unseemly grief?”
Santley drew his hands from his face and looked up wildly.
“What was she to me?” he cried. “More than life—the light of all the world. Now that light is gone, and I am desolate.”
“Strange, words,” said Haldane quietly, “to come from so holy a man! You are not in your sane mind.”
“God knows I am not,” returned the clergyman, “and yet... I am sane enough to know what I am saying. Yes, you may stare! I am sick of disguise. I’ll wear the mask no more. I loved your wife.”
Still perfectly retaining his composure, and almost smiling, Haldane said, with a dark sneer—
“Most reverend sir, I knew it.”
“You know it now!”
“Pardon me, I have known it all along.”
“You may have guessed something, but not all. I loved your wife. You were unworthy of her. I sought to win her from you, and I succeeded—yes, for she hated you, and loved me. God was on my side, for you were an unbeliever, a blasphemer. I tried to make her leave the shelter of your roof for mine. She was my first love. I tried, do you hear, day and night, to make her my own—my own in this world, and in the next.” Again that calm reply—
“Most sainted sir, I knew it.”
“And I tell you, I succeeded. She loved me. She would have followed me to the world’s end. This house was hell to her, because you had no religion. Her soul was mine.”
“And now?” said the other coldly. “And now, most holy and reverend sir?”
“And now, though she has passed away in her beauty and her holiness, I love her still. She is dead, and I shall die. In heaven, at least, we shall be together!”
“Are you so sure that she is there?” said Haldane, still very calmly. “Are you so sure that you will follow her? I am not so sure. If there be the heaven you speak of, it was never made for the guilty. The door of your paradise is wide, but it is too narrow, I have heard, for the sinner who dies without repentance.”
“The sinner? Who is the sinner?”
“She who sleeps upstairs?”
“It is a falsehood,” said Santley, rising to his feet. “She was an angel, without a stain, and you—you made her wretched. Yes, wretched! She was too good for you—too holy and spiritual. A saint! a martyr! God will cherish and justify her!”
“Saints have fallen; and she fell.”
“Fell? You dare not accuse her!”
“I do accuse her; I accuse you both!... Ah! my man of God, there was no need to throw aside the mask at all; I knew the face behind it from the first. She is punished as she deserves. Now it is your turn.”
His manner had changed, from one of cold self-control to one of concentrated passion. With voice raised and hand pointing, he advanced towards the clergyman. They stood close together, face to face.
But Santley fell back, horrified.
“Whatever I am, she was pure—too pure and good for this black world. Speak reverently of her! Although I loved her—and I tell you my love is justified—she was not guilty of any sin. She was only too faithful to her wifely vow—faithful in thought and deed. Again I tell you, speak reverently of her!”
“No hypocrisy can save her now,” said Haldane, sternly. “You have thrown aside the mask, as you say; it is useless to assume it again. I know everything—her guilt, and yours!”
“She was not guilty. You cannot believe it!”
“Why should I doubt it? The thing was a thousand times stronger than your proofs of Holy Writ. Now, if I said to you that she had confessed her guilt, what would you say?”
“I should say that it was not true!”
“Not true!”
“A lie—the wickedest of lies.”
“Then, if she was innocent, your guilt is trebled, and you are her murderer.”
“Her murderer? her murderer?”
“Yes. You have been liberal in confession; I will follow your example. You saw her lying yonder? Calm, cold, and beautiful, was she not?—yes, as a sleeping infant. Shall I tell you how she died? By poison. By the deadliest of all poisons.”
“Poisoned?” cried the clergyman, raising his voice to a scream.
“Precisely. A painless death, though sure and sudden. You see, although I kept within my right, I was merciful. Death was better than disgrace, and so—I killed her!”
Santley clutched at Haldane—then, with a moan, sank swooning upon the floor.
When he recovered, he staggered to his feet, and looked around him. He was still there, in the room, which was now quite dark, but he was alone. He awoke as from death, with the cold sweat upon his forehead, his form shaking like a leaf. What a change the experience of the last hour had made in him! He felt as if he had been mad for years. As the sick horror of his position spread over his bewildered senses, he groaned aloud.
Then remembering where he was, and fearing the surrounding darkness, he groped towards the door.
Suddenly it opened, and Haldane himself, holding a lamp in his hand, appeared upon the threshold. As the light flashed upon the minister’s form, it showed a face horrible in its anguish and despair. With his hair wild and dishevelled, his neckcloth disarranged, his black frock suit disordered, Santley seemed transformed. His beauty was turned into ugliness, his elegance into coarseness; his head, no longer erect and proud, drooped between his shoulders like an old man’s.
“Where are you going?” said Haldane, interposing, and placing down the lamp he carried.
“Up yonder, to see if it is true. It is surely a frightful dream! Let me pass!”
“Stay where you are! Your presence shall not outrage the dead again.”
“She is dead, then?”
“What you have seen, you have seen.”
“And—you—you killed her? Is it true?”
“Perfectly.”
With a wild cry, Santley clutched Haldane; but his hold was so weak, so tremulous, that the other’s strong frame scarcely shook.
“You shall not escape,” cried the minister. “Coward! murderer! I will deliver you up to justice!”
“Pshaw!”
With a powerful movement, Haldane disengaged himself, and his opponent fell back into the room. Santley was not a strong man, and just then he seemed positively helpless; nor would he at any time have been a match for the square-built, broad-shouldered master of Foxglove Manor.
“Hands off, if you please,” said Haldane. “If it comes to a trial of strength, I shall crush your reverend carcase like an egg. Another man, in my position, would have wrung your neck long ago. Do you know why I have been so gentle with you?”
Santley gazed at him vacantly, and did not speak.
“Because I prefer to prolong your agony as long as possible, and to let the world know of what stuff its priests are made.”
“You are a murderer,” gasped Santley again, clutching at him, but with the feeble grasp of a sick child. “You are a murderer, on your own confession. I tell you, I will give you up.”
“Après?” said Haldane, coolly.
“You have destroyed your wife—the purest and best woman God ever made. She was innocent of all wrong. She was an angel married to a devil, that was all.”
“Will you swear to me, before the God you worship, that there was nothing between you?”
“Yes, I will swear it. I loved her, but she was pure. If there was any sin, it was on my shoulders, for I tempted her. Yet you destroyed the innocent, and let the guilty live.”
Overcome by his emotion, Santley sank into a chair, sobbing. Haldane watched him for a short space in silence; then approached him and placed a hand on his shoulder. He tried to shake off the touch, with a shiver of loathing.
“I am glad that you perceive your own guilt; that is something. Under the mask of friendship—worse, under cover of your holy calling, you came to this house. I welcomed you, entertained you. I gave you my hand freely, as man to man; trusted you, even respected you, despite your superstitions. How did you reward this hospitality? By seducing, or seeking to seduce, the wife of the man who welcomed you without suspicion. This was your religion—this was your sense of Christian brotherhood. My man of God was a hypocrite—an adulterer. I tell you, a dog would have more honour, more purity. You made my house a hell. In return, I have put hell into your heart. You hear? Into your heart, if you have a heart, which would seem doubtful. Another would have killed you; I preferred to let you live.”
The clergyman looked up piteously. His force seemed broken, his eyes streamed with tears.
“You should have killed me,” he returned. “I was to blame, not she. You may kill me now. I shall then be at rest with her?”
Haldane s face blackened.
“Do not couple your names together. The guilt of her death is yours, not mine.”
“Mine?”
“Yes. I was only the instrument, you were the cause. The seed of all this sorrow was sown in your black heart. Had you never tempted her, had you never filled her mind with the poison bred in your own, she would be living-now, a happy, honoured wife. You see, my man of God, that you are the murderer; you have killed her, not I.”
“O God! God!” moaned Santley, hiding his face in horror.
“It is too late to call on God. If that is true,” pursued the other, “this; also is true—that you have lost her eternally. Your God is a God of justice. He does not, either in hell or heaven, bring the murderer and his victim together. You murdered her soul first; then, since you made it inevitable, I destroyed its mortal dwelling. Since you believe in hell, surely this is enough to damn you. Say she is innocent. The better for her; the worse for you. She is among the angels your place is elsewhere, eternally; there you may wail and gnash your teeth in vain. You see, reverend sir, I am comforting you with your own beautiful creed. Your faith in it was great; through your faith in it, you are lost for ever.”
With a cry, almost an imprecation, Santley staggered to his feet, unable to listen any longer. Sorrow, shame, terror, horror, contended within him. Already it seemed as if the earth was opened to swallow him, the forked tongues of fire-shooting up to envelop and consume him.
He rushed towards the door. This time the other did not interpose.
“Where are you going, pray?” he demanded quietly.
Santley turned round upon him, livid, glaring like a madman.
“To fetch the police,” he answered.
“I shall denounce you. Whatever becomes of me, you shall die, upon the gallows.”
“Permit me to light you to the door,” answered the philosopher, smiling. “You could not go upon a better errand.. Sound the alarm, fetch the police hither; the sooner the better. When they come, they shall be acquainted with the truth. They shall know, all the world shall know, that I killed my wife; and why? Because a clergyman, a man of God, honoured by many, respected by all, had come to my house like a satyr, and made it a nest of pollution. I shall stand in the dock, and the chief witness, against me will be yourself—the Rev.. Charles Santley, Vicar of Omberley, a living light, a pillar of the Church, self-convicted as hypocrite, liar, adulterer, seducer, satyr—filthy from the soul to the finger-tips. How the sweet maids of your congregation will stare! It will be a cause célébré—a nine-days’ wonder. And on the next Sabbath, perhaps, you will preach the gospel of love and purity, as usual!”
Santley clung to the doorway, limp and crushed, a picture of mingled fury and desolation.
“By the way, I shall call witnesses in my own defence. First, Miss Dove,—you see, I know her—one of the many who have ornamented slippers for the holy man’s feet, and cloths for his altar. She will tell them of meetings by night, of holy trysts, of Eden, and—of the fall. Oh, it will be a famous affair, and greatly to the honour of the Church. But why are you lingering so long? Go at once, reverend sir, and proclaim the murder. You see, I am quite ready.”
He pointed to the hall door. With a wild cry, Santley passed along the lobby, opened the door, and rushed out into the air.