“Fool! fool!—damnable fool that I was” (and in his sudden rage he clenched his own flesh till the nails met in it); “had I but got to France one day sooner! Why don’t you save me, save me, you whom I have banqueted and feasted, and lent money to! one word from you might have saved me; I will not die! I don’t deserve it! I am innocent! I tell you, Not guilty, my lord,—not guilty! Have you no heart, no consciences? Murder! murder! murder!” and the wretched man sank upon the ground, and tried with his hands to grasp the stone floor, as if to cling to it from some imaginary violence.
Turn we from him to the cell in which another criminal awaits also the awful coming of his latest morrow.
Pale, motionless, silent, with his face bending over his bosom and hands clasped tightly upon his knees, Wolfe sat in his dungeon, and collected his spirit against the approaching consummation of his turbulent and stormy fate. His bitterest punishment had been already past; mysterious Chance, or rather the Power above chance, had denied to him the haughty triumph of self-applause. No sophistry, now, could compare his doom to that of Sidney, or his deed to the act of the avenging Brutus.
Murder—causeless, objectless, universally execrated—rested, and would rest (till oblivion wrapped it) upon his name. It had appeared, too, upon his trial, that he had, in the information he had received, been the mere tool of a spy in the ministers’ pay; and that, for weeks before his intended deed, his design had been known, and his conspiracy only not bared to the public eye because political craft awaited a riper opportunity for the disclosure. He had not then merely been the blind dupe of his own passions, but, more humbling still, an instrument in the hands of the very men whom his hatred was sworn to destroy. Not a wreck, not a straw, of the vain glory for which he had forfeited life and risked his soul, could he hug to a sinking heart, and say, “This is my support.”
The remorse of gratitude embittered his cup still further. On Mordaunt’s person had been discovered a memorandum of the money anonymously inclosed to Wolfe on the day of the murder; and it was couched in words of esteem which melted the fierce heart of the republican into the only tears he had shed since childhood. From that time, a sullen, silent spirit fell upon him. He spoke to none,—heeded none; he made no defence on trial, no complaint of severity, no appeal from judgment. The iron had entered into his soul; but it supported, while it tortured. Even now as we gaze upon his inflexible and dark countenance, no transitory emotion; no natural spasm of sudden fear for the catastrophe of the morrow; no intense and working passions, struggling into calm; no sign of internal hurricanes, rising as it were from the hidden depths, agitate the surface, or betray the secrets of the unfathomable world within. The mute lip; the rigid brow; the downcast eye; a heavy and dread stillness, brooding over every feature,—these are all we behold.
Is it that thought sleeps, locked in the torpor of a senseless and rayless dream; or that an evil incubus weighs upon it, crushing its risings, but deadening not its pangs? Does Memory fly to the green fields and happy home of his childhood, or the lonely studies of his daring and restless youth, or his earliest homage to that Spirit of Freedom which shone bright and still and pure upon the solitary chamber of him who sang of heaven [Milton]; or (dwelling on its last and most fearful object) rolls it only through one tumultuous and convulsive channel,—Despair? Whatever be within the silent and deep heart, pride, or courage, or callousness, or that stubborn firmness, which, once principle, has grown habit, cover all as with a pall; and the strung nerves and the hard endurance of the human flesh sustain what the immortal mind perhaps quails beneath, in its dark retreat, but once dreamed that it would exult to bear.
The fatal hour had come! and, through the long dim passages of the prison, four criminals were led forth to execution. The first was Crauford’s associate, Bradley. This man prayed fervently; and, though he was trembling and pale, his mien and aspect bore something of the calmness of resignation.
It has been said that there is no friendship among the wicked. I have examined this maxim closely, and believe it, like most popular proverbs,—false. In wickedness there is peril, and mutual terror is the strongest of ties. At all events, the wicked can, not unoften, excite an attachment in their followers denied to virtue. Habitually courteous, caressing, and familiar, Crauford had, despite his own suspicions of Bradley, really touched the heart of one whom weakness and want, not nature, had gained to vice; and it was not till Crauford’s guilt was by other witnesses undeniably proved that Bradley could be tempted to make any confession tending to implicate him.
He now crept close to his former partner, and frequently clasped his hand, and besought him to take courage and to pray. But Crauford’s eye was glassy and dim, and his veins seemed filled with water: so numbed and cold and white was his cheek. Fear, in him, had passed its paroxysms, and was now insensibility; it was only when they urged him to pray that a sort of benighted consciousness strayed over his countenance and his ashen lips muttered something which none heard.
After him came the Creole, who had been Wolfe’s accomplice. On the night of the murder, he had taken advantage of the general loneliness and the confusion of the few present, and fled. He was found, however, fast asleep in a garret, before morning, by the officers of justice; and, on trial, he had confessed all. This man was in a rapid consumption. The delay of another week would have given to Nature the termination of his life. He, like Bradley, seemed earnest and absorbed in prayer.