Their meeting was tenderly sorrowful: Agatha said little in explanation until she had conducted her guest into an adjoining chamber, and pointed out one object for his observation. Stretched upon a couch, grown to boyhood, covered with wounds, and unchanged in person, save that his deformities had now grown more manifest, lay extended the ghastly boy, the only child of Agatha and the hapless Eustace. Courtenay trembled as he gazed; but the mother’s looks were calm. “He is dead,” she said, on observing the emotion of her guest; “what Heaven and Nature with so much difficulty spared, the brutality of man has destroyed; he was my joy and sorrow, and many a weary hour have I watched to snatch him from the yawning grave: for ten years he has been my sole care; and for the insults and scorn heaped upon his deformed and idiotic existence, he found compensation in the tenderness of his mother. The small pittance which I derived from my father was sufficient for our wants: and never should I have called upon any former friend, but for the cruel deed of yesterday; robbers from the waters broke into my poor dwelling, and pillaged thence my property. I knew not how it was; I had gone to a distance to buy food, and on my return found the poor idiot thus. My only attendant, an old woman, had been wounded in his defence; and from her I with difficulty learned, that the convulsive movements of the boy, and his pointing hand, as his menacing eye followed their actions, had drawn upon him their wrath and its brutal consequences. I am averse from again appearing in the scenes which I have once and for ever abandoned, and therefore I sent for thee, Courtenay, to spare myself the sad task of interring the pale corpse of my boy, and drawing wondering and inquisitive eyes upon my person and history.”
Courtenay was pleased with the confidence reposed in his friendship. A brother’s love might have done less for Agatha; it could not have effected more. Her wishes were immediately performed; and he was preparing, with unintrusive delicacy, to return to his home, when Agatha for a few moments detained him; “You have deserved unlimited confidence at my hands;” said she, “and you shall obtain it: he who is now numbered with the ignominious dead desired it should be so, and I withhold it no longer. You, in common with all the world, were ignorant of the motives which impelled the unhappy Eustace to the deed which he perpetrated; but you did not, in common with all the world, forsake him in his utmost need: for you he drew up the story of his sorrows, and placed it in my hands to be given to you only when I saw the fitting time; that time hath arrived. The child of sorrow is dead, and I shall still more completely retire from a world where insignificance and poverty are no protection from cruelty and avarice; a convent will shortly receive me, and, if I continue to live, a newer and better existence will be mine: if not, I shall have done wisely in thus obeying the last command of Eustace.”
Courtenay received the packet and retired; he lingered not a moment to relieve the recluse of his presence, but returned to Winchester, after receiving her commands to see her again in three days; he then hastened to his apartment, and, with trembling avidity, read, in the confessions of Eustace, the secret story of the fortunes of De la Pole.
“I know that thou despisest me, Courtenay; I know that thou deemest me no less a fool than a coward; thou didst bring me the means of an honourable death, gavest into mine hands the dagger and the drug, and I have rejected both: we disputed, differed, parted, met again, and again renewed the subject: thou didst even deign to persuade the coward (so thou thoughtest him) to act like a man; but thy entreaties were unheeded and thy counsel rejected; he will die like a thief and a criminal—he will be hooted out of life; and curses will be the torches to give light to his memory, that it sink not into darkness and oblivion.
“Said I not that I was a sacrifice? that my punishment was a propitiatory offering? Now again I say to thee the same thing. Death would have few horrors for me (for it is a thing I covet) without the ignominy of a public execution; to offer my life for my wrong would be nothing, but to offer it up thus!—This alone can satisfy immortal justice; this alone can satisfy the spirit of the murdered man. Read and behold my meaning.
“Thou knowest how fondly, contrary to his father’s hope, John de la Pole loved the beautiful daughter of Philip Forester, thy kinsman; but thou knowest not how much more fervently she was adored by the wretched Eustace, and how tenderly the gentle Agatha returned that love. Hope there was none; for what had I to bribe the greedy father of my love, when John de la Pole could hereafter lay the fortunes of his house at her feet? Philip suspected the state of his daughter’s heart, and had looked deeper than I imagined into mine: he determined that a younger brother was not deserving of his Agatha’s beauty, and, by cold civilities and hints of my father’s and brother’s disapprobation, banished me from his house. One thing alone gave consolation to my blighted heart, the steadiness with which my father resolved against the marriage of John with the object of our mutual passion. In one of the sad conferences which I occasionally, though now but seldom, held with my beloved Agatha, it occurred to my imagination, that though my father had resolved to dispose differently of the heir of his house, he might not object to my union with the object of my choice; and I received permission of my beloved to make the attempt upon his feelings. I did so immediately, and, with a rapture which I dare not now dwell upon, received his permission, and his solemn promise to purchase the approbation of the selfish Forester, by bestowing upon me one-fourth of his more than princely fortune. He arranged to see Forester upon the following day: the same evening I flew to Agatha. O Courtenay! didst thou ever love? Those few blessed hours were the most happy of my life, and the last that were so. We parted; Agatha radiant with happiness; I, to think, to hope, to anticipate, to wish all things could share my transports, to love creation, to love God. In the morning my father was found dead on his couch; and the following month Agatha became the wife of my brother! Courtenay! didst thou ever love?
“Thou wilt ask, where was Eustace when his beloved was thus sacrificed? Alas! sent to a distance, to execute some commands of that brother upon whom I was now so utterly dependent. He had discovered my love, and thus, without my suspecting his intentions, prevented its consequences: he hastened to Agatha, represented the ruin she would bring upon me, and his determination to abandon me for ever, unless she became his wife; Forester, who was his ally, threatened her with his curse; I know not all the artifices used,—I never could listen to the detail. She became the wife of the man she could not love, and I was suffered to wither beneath his roof, while, with calm hypocrisy, he told his own tale, ostentatiously enriched his younger brother, and declared he could not live happy without him. Fool that he was!—stupid, uncalculating idiot! He had torn asunder two burning hearts, and expected to smother their fires; he had separated two devoted beings, compelled them to live in each other’s presence, and yet expected them to forget. Agatha abhorred his sight—his very aspect was loathsome to her. I saw her agonies,—I saw her daily shudderings at every demonstration of his love; and cold dews of death spread over my own heart when I beheld her submitting to his fondness. I implored to be banished from the castle; I entreated to be allowed the sad privilege of beholding Agatha no more: he could not trust me from him, he said; and I was obliged to remain. Merciless idiot! blind looker into the human heart! Had he consented, all might then have been well; but how did he dare thus selfishly sport with torture? He went on a journey for a few weeks; he commanded me to a distant part of the country on business of importance to his interests: I went, but returned ere half the allotted time for his absence had expired—to be alone with Agatha—to see her unrestrained—to mingle my tears with hers: I could not resist this one sad bliss, and I hastened back to enjoy it.
“We met, the lover and the beloved, in grief—in madness—in despair! Oh, wonder not, that when we parted guilt should be added to the burthen of our sorrows; but the terrible consciousness of crime changed at once our natures and our deeds. Agatha’s horror of her husband increased: and, now that she was mine, I determined she should no more be his—to fly, and rob the castle for the means of sustenance. Alas! I feared to expose her to scorn, should we be unable to evade the pursuit of justice; and, even if in this we should succeed, what means had I of subsistence when that slender source should fail, proscribed, as we should be, in every part of our native land? To live on, as I had lately done, was still more impossible; since Agatha herself had armed her bosom with a knife to be turned against her heart rather than again endure the horrors of her husband’s love. Again and again we met in passionate, though gloomy conference; and thus continued to waste the time in fruitless debate until his messenger announced his approaching return. Despair gave wings to my thought; Agatha’s eye glanced on mine; she drew the dagger from her breast, and I snatched it from her hand. Our thoughts had spoken—there was no need of words—we had understood each other without them.
“I hastened to conceal myself in the New Forest, near the road through which he must pass on his return. He had taken his confidential servant with him, and, rather than expose myself to observation, I had determined to fire at him through the trees, calculating and believing that the servant would mistake the attack for that of concealed robbers, and fly, leaving his master to his fate. But I had scarcely arranged my mode of attack ere I heard a footstep in the road; I looked out, and beheld him slowly advancing, with his eyes steadfastly directed towards the towers of his castle, as if he sought out the apartment of his wife. At the sight of him all prudence vanished—all recollection of the calm attack which I had meditated passed away from my mind; I did not even observe that he was alone: hatred and rage filled my heart, and I rushed upon him like a wild beast, tearing him to the earth by the bare strength of sinew, and inflicting many mortal stabs upon his breast: he grappled fiercely with me, struggled hard to rise, and even drew his dagger, which I broke in his grasp before he could strike one blow. He tore a lock of hair from my head, but, during the terrible contest he had not uttered a single word, till a deep and home-directed stroke upon his brow threw him powerless on the sod, then he spoke gaspingly to his brother: ‘Have mercy upon me,’ he said, ‘have mercy; I have wronged thee, but that is not the heaviest of my crimes; I would live to repent: to expiate one, the deepest, darkest, let me live; I dare not die. My father!—I overheard his arrangements with thee—I could not bear to lose her—he was found dead on his couch—I smothered him in the night. Mercy, mercy! O Eustace! let me live,—I am not fit to die!’ But his words raised a wilder fiend in my soul, that scared away the spirit of mercy. He then had been the monster—he!—I raved aloud, ‘Murderer! thou art not fit to live—hell gapes for thee—begone!’ I drew my dagger across his throat; the blood gushed upon my face, upon my hands; he grinned, scowled, gibbered as he sunk, but he spoke and struggled no more.
“I hastened home,—but I saw not Agatha, neither did I seek her during the long and terrible night that followed the sunset crime: I dared not tell her what I had done; I could not have borne to hear her speak of the sin which I had committed. Towards the morning I grew calm; my fears and horror subsided; I thought of the atrocious act of the guilty dead, and, by degrees, persuaded myself that I had done an act of justice; I began to calculate upon the consequences, and seriously consider whether, by this deed, I had really achieved the consummation of my wishes—the possession of my adored Agatha; she was my sister, the widow of my brother; could I legally become her husband? And, allowing the possibility, was it probable that I should be permitted to do so? These considerations gave birth to the action which followed; I forged the extraordinary will which gave the succession to me, but only with the hand of Agatha; and it appeared the more natural, as, during the period of her wedlock, she had borne no child to her husband. That night and succeeding day was thus intently occupied. On the following morning the corpse was discovered by you. I had not seen Agatha, but, on hearing of her meeting the body, hastened to calm her mind, and prepare her for the will, which was opened after the interment. I made use of the pretext of another love, to appear repugnant to the wishes of my brother, and quitted the castle to appease the inquietudes of Agatha, who entreated me not to see her again until I could make her my wife.