“Come to bed. What would you do there, lying like a dog? How silly to refuse comforts when you can have them!”
“No, no, leave me to myself.”
“Well, remember it is your own fault; if you wish to come to bed, you can—I have left room enough for you; remember I have asked you very often.” Thus saying, she drew the clothes over her, and soon all was profound silence.
Lucy remained motionless, with her face buried in her hands, which rested on her knees; she was neither awake nor asleep, but in a dreamy state of the imagination, painful, vague, and changeful. At first, she recalled with something of self-possession the minutest circumstances of this horrible day; then her reason for a moment forsook its throne, vainly struggling against the phantoms conjured by uncertainty and terror; at last, weary and exhausted, she sunk on the floor, in a state approaching to, and resembling, sleep. But suddenly she awoke, as at an internal call, and strove to recall her scattered senses, to know where she was, and why she had been brought thither. She heard a noise, and listened; it was the heavy breathing of the old woman, in a deep slumber; she opened her eyes on the objects around her, which the flickering of the lamp, now dying in its socket, rendered confused and indistinct. But soon her recent impressions returned distinctly to her mind, and the unfortunate girl recognised her prison; and with the knowledge came associated all the terrors of this horrible day; and, overcome anew by anxiety and terror, she wished earnestly for death. She could only pray, and as the words fell from her trembling lips, she felt her confidence revive. Suddenly a thought presented itself to her mind; that her prayer would be more acceptable if united with an offering of something dear to her; she remembered the object to which she had clung for her happiness, and resolved to sacrifice it; then clasping her hands over her chaplet, which hung upon her neck, and raising her tearful eyes to heaven, she cried, “O most holy Virgin! thou to whom I have so often prayed, and who hast so often consoled me—thou who hast suffered so much sorrow, and art now so glorious—thou who hast performed so many miracles for the afflicted—holy Virgin! succour me, take me from this peril, mother of God! return me safely to my mother, and I pledge myself to remain devoted to thy service; I renounce for ever the unfortunate youth, and from this time devote myself to thee!” After this consecration of herself, she felt her confidence and faith increase; she remembered the “to-morrow morning” uttered by the Unknown, and took it as a promise of safety. Her wearied senses yielded to this new sentiment, and she slept profoundly and peacefully with the name of her protectress on her lips.
But in this same castle was one who could not sleep: after having quitted Lucy, and given orders for her supper, he had visited the posts of his fortress; but her image remained stamped on his mind, her words still resounded in his ears. He retired to his chamber, and threw himself on his bed; but in the stillness around this same image of Lucy in her desolation and anguish took possession still more absolutely of his thoughts, and rendered sleep hopeless. “What new feelings are these?” thought he. “Nibbio was right; but what is there in a woman’s tears to unman me thus? Did I never see a woman weep before? Ay, and how often have I beheld their deepest agonies unmoved? But now——”
And here he recalled, without much difficulty, many an instance when neither prayers nor tears were able to make him swerve from his atrocious purposes; but instead of deriving augmented resolution, as he had hoped, from the recollection, he experienced an emotion of alarm, of consternation; so that even, as a relief from the torment of retrospection, he thought of Lucy. “She lives still,” said he, “she is here; there is yet time. I have it in my power to say to her, Go in peace! I can also ask her forgiveness. Forgiveness! I ask forgiveness of a woman! Ah, if in that word existed the power to drive this demon from my soul, I would say it; yes, I feel that I would say it. To what am I reduced? I am no longer myself! Well, well! many a time have such follies passed through my head; this will take its flight also.”
And to procure the desired forgetfulness, he endeavoured to busy himself with some new project; but in vain: all appeared changed! that which at another time would have been a stimulus to action, had now lost its charm; his imagination was overwhelmed with the insupportable weight of remembered crimes. Even the idea of continuing to associate with those whom he had employed as the instruments of his daring and licentious will was revolting to his soul; and, disgusted and weary, he found relief only in the thought that by the dawn of morning he would set at liberty the unfortunate Lucy.
“I will save her; yes, I will save her. As soon as the day breaks, I will fly to her, and say, Go, go in peace. But my promise! Ay, who is Don Roderick that I should hold sacred a promise made to him?” With the perplexity of a man to whom a superior addresses unexpectedly an embarrassing question, the Unknown endeavoured to reply to this his own, or, rather, that was whispered by this new principle, that had of a sudden sprung up so awfully in his soul, to pass judgment upon him. He wondered how he could have resolved to engage himself to inflict suffering, without any motive of hatred or fear, on an unfortunate being whom he did not know, only to render a service to this man. He could not find any excuse for it; he could not even imagine how he had been led to do it. The hasty determination had been the impulse of a mind obedient to its habitual feelings, the consequence of a thousand previous deeds; and from an examination of the motives which had led him to commit a single deed, he was led to the retrospection of his whole life.
In looking back from year to year, from enterprise to enterprise, from crime to crime, from blood to blood, each one of his actions appeared abstracted from the feelings which had induced their perpetration, and therefore exposed in all their horrible deformity, but which those feelings had hitherto veiled from his view. They were all his own, he was responsible for all; they comprised his life; the horror of this thought filled him with despair; he grasped his pistol, and raised it to his head—but at the moment in which he would have terminated his miserable existence, his thoughts rushed onwards to the time that must continue to flow on after his end. He thought of his disfigured corpse, without sense or motion, in the power of the vilest men; the astonishment and confusion which would take place in the castle, the conversation it would excite in the neighbourhood and afar off, and, more than all, the rejoicing of his enemies. The darkness and silence of the night inspired him with other apprehensions still; it appeared to him that he would not have hesitated to perform the deed in open day, in the presence of others. “And, after all, what was it? but a moment, and all would be over.” And now another thought rose to his mind: “If that other life, of which they tell, is an invention of priests, is a mere fabrication, why should I die? Of what consequence is all that I have done? It is a trifle—but if there should be another life!”
At such a doubt, he was filled with deeper despair, a despair from which death appeared no refuge. The pistol dropped from his grasp—both hands were applied to his aching head—and he trembled in every limb. Suddenly the words he had heard a few hours before came to his memory, “God pardons so many deeds for one act of mercy.” They did not come to him clothed in the humble tone of supplication, with which he had heard them pronounced, but in one of authority which offered some gleam of hope. It was a moment of relief: he brought to mind the figure of Lucy, when she uttered them; and he regarded her, not as a suppliant, but as an angel of consolation. He waited with anxiety the approach of day, that he might hear from her mouth other words of hope and life. He imagined himself conducting her to her mother, “And then, what shall I do to-morrow? what shall I do for the rest of the day? what shall I do the day after, and the next day? and the night? the night which will so soon return? Oh, the night! let me not think of the night!” And, plunged in the frightful void of the future, he sought in vain for some employment of time, some method of living through the days and nights. Now he thought of abandoning his castle, and flying to some distant country, where he had never been heard of; but, could he fly from himself? Then he felt a confused hope of recovering his former courage and habits; and that he should regard these terrors of his soul but as a transient delirium: now, he dreaded the approach of day, which should exhibit him so miserably changed to his followers; then he longed for its light, as if it would bring light also to his troubled thoughts. As the day broke, a confused sound of merriment broke upon his ear. He listened; it was a distant chiming of bells, and he could hear the echo of the mountains repeat the harmony, and mingle itself with it. From another quarter, still nearer, and then from another, similar sounds were heard. “What means this?” said he. “For what are these rejoicings? What joyful event has taken place?” He rose from his bed of thorns, and opened the window.