And Phædra and Fannie ventured once more to raise their drooping heads and look about them. Alas, for their feeble hopes! Valentine, still standing, and still agonized, waved his hand for silence and attention, and then spoke.
He told them he had already repented, if that were the word to express the horrible remorse of blood-guiltiness that had long preyed upon his heart, and consumed his flesh and blood, and left him what they saw him. But did they, he asked them, suppose that he had repented only since the fatal deed? No, no! but for years and years before that catastrophe he had suffered with that uncommitted crime. Did they think that the act was premeditated, then? Yes, in one sense it was premeditated, although entirely unintentional, and so abhorrent that he would have gladly died to escape committing it. The deed was premeditated, inasmuch as it had long loomed up before him, a black mountain[2] in his forward path of life, from which it was impossible to turn aside; to which every breath and every step drew him nearer and nearer. That the first time he caught a glimpse of this awful phantom of his future was while he and Oswald were still boys. He had been provoked and exasperated to frenzy by his playmate, and, in his utter madness, had struck and tried to kill him. The reaction from that fit of passion had been terrible. The next occasion upon which arose darkly before him this inevitable doom was when his master and himself were youths. One night he was driving Oswald home. Both were intoxicated; they quarreled; his master threatened him with the lash; he lost his reason and his very eyesight, and all his senses, in a dark tempest and whirlwind of mad and blind fury, and struck with all his strength to destroy. By Heaven's mercy, that blow was not fatal. But the recovery of his own senses from that frenzy of anger was more horrible than anything he had ever before experienced. From that time he had never been able to exorcise the haunting presence of that black phantom, standing waiting for him at the terminus of his earthly path, from which he could not escape; to which every breath and every step drew him nearer and nearer! From that time he had felt in some baleful moment of extreme exasperation, some irresponsible moment of mad and blind passion, he should strike a fatal blow. Yet he said he agonized in soul to escape that black crime; he struggled to conquer his angry passions; he sought the grace of God, and hoped that he had possessed it; he swore off from alcohol, that stimulus might not be added to his other excitements to anger—to the inevitable provocations arising from his temperament, position and circumstances—provocations that were constantly exasperating his soul to madness. For years, he said, no eye but the Lord's had seen the desperate war his spirit had waged with the powers of evil within and around him, and waged successfully, until one trying season, when, in the utter prostration of sorrow and despondency, he had been tempted to place again the maddening glass to his lips—tempted by the sophistry that prescribed the moral poison as a medicine; then he lost the habit, and at last the power of self-control, and one fatal day, when amazed and bewildered with exceeding sorrow, and stung to frenzy with the sense of wrong-suffering and cruelty, he had struck the blow that laid his master dead before him.
"Heaven knows I was not thinking of doing it; in my deep sorrow of the preceding days the phantom of my predestined crime was exorcised. I had not even that to warn me; the hour was entirely unguarded. I struck in self-defense. He had intercepted and knocked me down, to prevent me from going to see my sick wife. Blind and giddy, and furious, I struggled to my feet, and seized the first weapon that offered, a three-legged stool, and struck with all my strength; but when I saw the leg crush through his eye and brain, one lightning thought told me that he was killed, and thenceforth all the world was against me, and I against the world; and then waves of blood and clouds of fire seemed to roll up around me, and rage in a horrible tempest; reason fled utterly, and I knew nothing more until near midnight, when I came to myself upon the floor of Fannie's room; and even then, in my vague remorse and horror of half-conscious blood-guiltiness, I seemed to be some other thing than myself—perhaps some lost soul in perdition! Brother Elisha, Heaven bless him, was bending over me. It was to him I owed the preservation of my life. It was by his counsel and assistance that I disguised myself in poor Fannie's clothing, which fitted me well enough for the purpose. He even crimped my hair and tied up my head in a woman's turban. And he found and thrust Fannie's free papers in my bosom, and then led me off to his own home. Well, in this disguise, and by keeping very close, I contrived to elude the vigilance of the police, until a surer place of safety was provided for me near this cabin. For eighteen months I have eluded the police; but think you, my brothers and sisters, that, for one moment, I have escaped the avenger of blood? No! no! After the crime he found me even in the first moments of my waking consciousness; his clutch has never been relaxed from my heart; it compresses now, even to suffocation; the death that you would save me from I die every hour of my life; I can bear it no longer; I must die once for all, and have done with it; I should have resigned myself into the hands of the law, and, in the final expiation, long since found rest, but for Fannie's grief and terror. But now, even her tears and prayers must not hinder me; even for her peace it is better I should give myself up to die, and have it over, for now she lives in the midst of alarms; hereafter, when all is over, she will at least have quiet."
"Quiet! yes, the quiet of death, for I never can outlive you, Valley!" said Fannie, in a low tone of despair.
He laid his hand fondly on her bowed head, but without comment resumed his discourse.
"I was about to surrender myself to the public authorities, when I reflected that, by giving myself up to my brothers in the church, I might confer the blessing of freedom upon some one among you, since that was one of the rewards offered for my arrest. Here I am! Which of you will make himself a free man to-night?"
He paused a moment, looking around upon the little assembly; and then fixing his eyes upon a handsome, intelligent-looking, young man, to whom the gift of freedom might well seem the most desirable of goods, he said:
"Brother Joseph, will you take me into custody?"
"May the enemy of souls take me in custody, and never let me go, when I do!" promptly replied young Joe.
"That's you, my boy! And may the same fate befall any one else who would do the like!" exclaimed old Elisha, emphatically.