"Then, in the presence of the pure-minded girl whom I worshipped, he charged me with a horrid crime—the crime of forgery—asserting my guilt as recently discovered, but positive and undoubted. My spirit had raged before—now it was on fire. I lifted my hand and clenched my fist. What I would have done I know not. Whether I should have found words to assert my innocence, and refute a charge utterly false—or whether, my voice failing me from passion, I should have swept Mr. Graham from my path, perhaps felled him to the floor, while I strode away to rally my calmness in the open air—I cannot now conjecture; for a wild shriek from Emily recalled me to myself, and, turning, I saw her fall fainting upon the sofa.
"Forgetting everything but the apparently dying condition into which the horror of the scene had thrown her I sprang forward to her relief. There was a table beside her and some bottles upon it. I hastily snatched what I believed to be a simple restorative, and in my agitation emptied the contents of the phial in her face. I know not what the exact character of the mixture could have been; but its matters not—its effect was too awfully evident. The fatal deed was done—and mine was the hand that did it!
"Brought suddenly to consciousness by the intolerable torture that succeeded, the poor girl sprang screaming from the sofa, flung her arms wildly above her head, rushed in a frantic manner through the room, and crouched in a corner. I followed in an agony scarce less than her own; but she repelled me with her hands, uttering piercing shrieks. Mr. Graham, who for an instant had looked like one paralysed by the scene, now rushed forward like a madman. Instead of aiding me in my efforts to lift poor Emily from the floor, and so far from compassionating my situation, which was only less pitiable than hers, he, with a fierceness redoubled at my being the sole cause of the disaster, attacked me with a storm of cruel reproaches, declaring that I had killed his child. With words like these, which are still ringing in my ears, he drove me from the room and the house; a repulsion which I, overpowered by contrition and remorse, had neither the wish nor the strength to resist.
"Oh! the terrible night and day that succeeded! I wandered out into the country, spent the whole night walking beneath the open sky, endeavouring to collect my thoughts and compose my mind, and still morning found me with a fevered pulse and excited brain. With the returning light, however, I began to realise the necessity of forming some future plan of action.
"Emily's sad situation, and my intense anxiety to learn the worst effects of the fatal accident, urged me to hasten with the earliest morning, either openly or by stealth, to Mr. Graham's house. Everything also which I possessed—all my money, the residue of my last quarter's allowance, my clothing, and a few valuable gifts from my mother—were in the chamber which I had occupied. There seemed to be no other course left for me than to return thither, and I retracted my steps to the city, determined, if it were necessary in order to gain the desired particulars concerning Emily, to meet her father face to face. But as I drew near the house I hesitated and dared not proceed. Mr. Graham had exhausted upon me every angry word, had threatened even deeds of violence should I again cross his threshold; and I feared to trust my own fiery spirit to a collision in which I might be led on to an open resistance of the man whom I had already sufficiently injured. In the terrible work I had but yesterday done—a work of whose fatal effect I had even then a gloomy foreshadowing—I had blighted the existence of his worshipped child, and drawn a dark pall over his dearest hopes. It was enough. I would not for worlds be guilty of the sin of lifting my hand against the man who, unjust as he had been towards an innocent youth, had met a retaliation far too severe.
"Still, I knew his wrath to be unmitigated, was well aware of his power to excite my hot nature to frenzy, and resolved to beware how I crossed his path. Meet him I must, to refute the false charges he had brought against me; but not within the walls of his dwelling, the home of his suffering daughter. In the counting-house, where the crime of forgery was said to have been committed, and in the presence of my fellow-clerks, I would publicly deny the deed, and dare him to its proof. But first I must either see or hear from Emily before I met the father at all. I must learn the exact nature and extent of the wrong I had done him in the person of his child. For this, however, I must wait until, under cover of the next night's darkness, I could enter the house unperceived.
"So I wandered about all day in torment, without having food or rest, the thought of my poor, darling, tortured Emily ever present to my wretched thoughts. The hours seemed interminable. I remember that day of suspense as if it had been a whole year of misery. But night came at last, cloudy, and the air thickened with a heavy fog which, as I approached the street where Mr. Graham lived, concealed the house until I was opposite to it. I shuddered at the sight of the physician's chaise standing before the door; for I knew that Dr. Jeremy had closed his visits to Emily more than a week previously, and must have been summoned to attend her since the accident. Thinking it probable that Mr. Graham was in the house, I forbore to enter, but stood concealed by the mist, and watching my opportunity.
"Once or twice Mrs. Ellis, the housekeeper, passed up and down the staircase, as I could distinctly see through the sidelights of the door, and Dr. Jeremy descended, followed by Mr. Graham. The doctor would have passed hastily out, but Mr. Graham detained him, to question him regarding his patient, as I judged from the anxiety depicted on my step-father's countenance. The doctor's back was towards me, and I could only judge of his replies by the effect they produced on the questioner, whose haggard appearance became more distressed at every syllable that fell from the honest and truthful lips of the medical man, whose words were oracles to all who knew his skill.
"I needed, therefore, no further testimony to force the conviction that Emily's fate was sealed; and as I looked with pity upon the afflicted parent, and shudderingly thought of my agency in the work of destruction, I felt that the unhappy father could not curse me more bitterly than I cursed myself. Deeply, however, as I mourned, and have never ceased to repent, my share in the exciting of that storm wherein the poor girl had been so cruelly shipwrecked, I could not forget the part that Mr. Graham had borne in the transaction, or forgive the wicked injustice and insults which had so unmanned me as to render my hand a fit instrument only of ruin; and as, after the doctor's departure, I watched my step-father walk away, and saw by a street-lamp that the look of pain had passed from his face, giving place to his usual composed and arrogant expression, and, understood by the loud and measured manner in which he struck his cane upon the pavement, that he was far from sharing my humble, penitent mood, I ceased to waste upon him a compassion which he seemed so little to require or deserve; and, pitying myself only, I looked upon his stern face with a soul which cherished for him no other sentiment than that of unmitigated hatred. Do not shrink from me, Gertrude, as you read this frank confession of my passionate and deeply stirred nature. You know not, perhaps, what it is to hate; but have you ever been tried as I was?
"As Mr. Graham turned the corner of the street, I approached his house, drew forth a pass-key of my own, by means of which I opened the door, and went in. It was perfectly quiet, and no person was to be seen in any of the lower rooms. I passed noiselessly upstairs, and entered a little chamber at the head of the passage which communicated with Emily's room. I waited here a long time, hearing no sound and seeing no one. But fearing that Mr. Graham would shortly return, I determined to ascend to my own room, collect my money and a few articles of value, and then make my way to the kitchen, and gain what news I could of Emily from Mrs. Prime, the cook, a kind-hearted woman, who would, I felt sure, befriend me.