“Morning had broken over the apartment when I awoke, and I was some moments in recovering recollection of my state and circumstances; slowly the truth came before me. I was lying extended on the bare ground, the lights had burned out, and there was no trace of visitors having been near me in my sleep. I arose and listened for some sound that might direct my first movements, for now I knew not what to think nor to do. A low sobbing from the chamber of Agatha riveted my attention; I sprung towards the door, and, to my astonishment, it yielded to the slightest touch: I entered; Agatha was there, seated upon the bed, and gazing around her with a look of agonising affright; she saw me on the instant, and rushed into my arms. ‘Thou art here! thou art safe!’ she cried in delirious transport; ‘and for this I am at least grateful; I deemed he had destroyed thee. But thou didst leave me, Eustace. O quit me not, I beseech thee! save me from him, Eustace, for thou alone canst!’ I endeavoured to soothe her anguish, and, after some time, succeeded in restoring her to tranquillity and composure enough to be made acquainted with the real state of our circumstances; and I implored her to inform me whither the ghastly phantom had led her, on their retiring from the chamber. She shuddered at the question, and a wild and strange expression passed over her countenance ere she spoke. ‘I will tell thee,’ she said; ‘yet it is but little that I have to say. To this room we came, and our footsteps wandered no further. Without a word he gave his commands to me, and without a word I obeyed him. I ascended my bridal bed, he had willed it so, and he continued to gaze upon me till my head sunk upon the pillow; then the ghastly thing sat down by my side, and though I closed mine eyes hard that I might not behold him, yet I felt that the shadow of his unearthly face was upon me. Once I looked up in the hope that he was gone; beholding him I shrunk, and would have called upon thee, but the stony eye of the spectre grew larger, and a fiendish pang passed over the immoveable face; then I hid mine in my mantle that I might look upon him no more: insensibility succeeded, and I slept; in the morning I awoke, and he was gone!’
“This was the tale of Agatha; thou wilt doubt its truth, nor can I wonder at thy most natural incredulity: yet I would now give my few short hours of life, precious as they may be, that thou hadst been present and seen her tell this story; I can give thee her words, her form of expression, but what language of mine can portray her looks as she spoke, or describe the harrowing tones of her voice as she cried to me for protection? I doubted not; for these powerful witnesses would have carried conviction to my mind, had I not already beheld the shadowy thing she spoke of.
“What could I offer in consolation? We wept bitter tears together, and mingled our tender grief. If we indulged a momentary hope that it was but an illusion of the brain, and would return no more, we were quickly undeceived at the approach of night. Again came the ghastly shadow, and again was the spirit of Agatha chained by the sleep of death in his presence. Nor were his visitations confined to the dark and silent hour of night; when we met in the morning, to lament our fate and weep from our stuffed bosoms the weight that pressed upon our hearts, then, with a hideous familiarity, he would stand between us, mocking, with his menacing grin and uplifted finger, the agony his presence created.
“Another night came; we sat alone, solitary, speechless, motionless; hour after hour passed, and we moved not, except to cast stern regards towards the door, or listen with repressed impatience to every sound in the castle. Slowly, at last, came the step of the dead, heavily ascending the stairs;—he entered—I rushed to meet him, and the long pent up agony of my soul burst forth in madness uncontrolled. ‘Monster!—murderer!—destroyer of thy father and thy brother! why comest thou thus to torture and not kill? why is thy bloody hand for ever raised, and yet forbearing to fall? If thine aim be vengeance, strike—strike—strike—thou blood-bespotted horror! and rend from hope and from life those who dared to make thee what thou art!—Strike, thou silent, sullen thing! that we may be as thou art, and learn to fear thee not!’
“I darted towards him, but was arrested by some invisible barrier ere I had traversed half the distance between us; I could not reach him, but sunk, as if felled by an unseen blow, helpless and almost senseless, to the ground: he did not even look upon me, but again sternly summoned Agatha from the chamber, as nightly he had done before. I—but wherefore dwell upon these agonies? Suffice it to say, that these accumulated horrors at length drove me from the side of Agatha to solitude and reflection: sorrow came upon my soul—a sorrow less for my crime than for its fatal consequences. ‘Alas!’ I said, ‘perhaps the tormentor is himself more keenly punished by these hauntings than either of his shrinking victims: said he not, in the hour of death, that he too was a murderer? and did he not pray for time in which to expiate the sin? Surely, surely, these visitations must be the hell of the parricide.’
“And a feeling of remorse arose in my mind, as I deemed it possible that these unnatural hauntings might be involuntary. I had stabbed at the life of my brother, and plunged his unprepared spirit into the hell which awaited it; and surely a more bitter one than looking again upon the secret deeds of the survivors, could not well be imagined. Agatha, too, no longer wept over her separation from me, but hourly called upon Heaven for pity and for pardon; madness and anguish passed away from her heart, and sorrow and repentance entered it.
“I could not repent; at least I could not feel self-condemnation to that degree which I had been early taught was so necessary—that perfect sorrow which abhorred the crime and the criminal, and which, they say, is alone the gift of Heaven—that I did not feel: still, still did my inmost soul worship the thought of Agatha, and abhor the treachery of John de la Pole. I could not regret that I had avenged my wrong—I could not repent that I had attempted to make her mine; I knew that were the deed again to do—again should I dare, and perform it.
“Repentance then was not mine; but I despaired of peace, and knew how to punish crime: I was not yet weary of life; and though tears of remorse did not fill my eyes for my brother’s early doom, yet his unnatural tortures now, and Agatha’s suffering, seemed to call for something like justice from my hand. ‘Perhaps, in the stern mood in which I am,’ I said, ‘the sacrifice will be greater than if repentance struck; and, believing myself sure of forgiveness, I hastened to make my peace with Heaven. Yes; I will die—I will inflict death upon myself as I would upon another, and expiate crime with blood!’
“But I hesitated still; death, contemplated so near, in any shape, was horrible; but, dealt by the hand of the executioner—I shrunk from the thought, and could not bear the shadow of a stain upon the honour of my house; so I went on from day to day, dreaming of justice but rendering none, till the birth of Agatha’s son. Thou wast surprised, I believe, at the little emotion I betrayed at its sight: alas! I had long been prepared for some object of horror, and now it was before me. Thou didst behold the action of the ghastly child; thou sawest the menacing finger upraised towards my head, and the calm determination with which I met this image: its presence had banished my indecision. I believed now that Agatha was lost to me for ever,—that Eternal Justice by this sign spoke against me, and, in punishment of my hardness of heart, had thus perpetuated the remembrance of my crime. Now, then, I resolved to die: I communicated my purpose to Agatha, and earthly feelings once more gained the mastery over my subdued spirit, and burst forth in words of grief and reproach, on observing that she evinced no horror at my approaching fate, and scarcely attempted to dissuade me from my purpose! Agatha, for whom I had dared and suffered so much—even she had become indifferent to my destiny: it was indeed time to die! But I did her wrong; sorrow had broken her heart, and repeated scenes of horror had subdued and weakened her spirit. With the feeling common to her sex, she sought consolation only in religion, and thought that to reconcile herself with Heaven was all that was left her now: love had fled with every other human passion, and far from regarding death as an evil, she looked upon it as a passport to bliss, and was more ready to rejoice at than deprecate my fate. Her conduct assisted my resolution. Now, then, the first step was to be made—the most difficult and appalling—the rest would be consequential and easy. It was necessary to begin, and I knew of no better mode than that of rendering justice to the living. Hugh de Broke had been ruined by me, and it was now incumbent upon me to restore him to honour and to happiness: I set out for the distant and humble dwelling in which, since his escape, he had been obliged to conceal his name and dignity: he was stretched upon a sick-bed—a heart-broken and a dying man: it was no physical disease of which he was expiring,—but disgrace had poisoned the fountain of his blood, and shame had eaten its way like a canker-worm to his heart. When he saw me, he shook off his dying listlessness, and sprung upright in his bed. ‘What more wouldst thou have, thou blaster of mine honour!’ he said, ‘of a ruined and dying man? To thy pernicious counsel I owe the shame no after-conduct can efface: cursed, cursed coward that I was! why did I heed or believe thy murderous mercy? Begone, wretch! and let me die. I cannot shake off this load of shame; but I shall sink under its burthen, and bequeath its remorse to thee; go, wretch! and let me die.’
“He was submissively attended by his wife and son, who were earnest with me to relieve him of my presence. Sorrow, and the near approach of death, had softened his heart and chastised the natural brutality of his manners; he looked and spoke more mildly to them, though, with all his failing strength, he continued to heap maledictions upon me. My humiliations were now to begin; I kneeled down by his side, detailed my crime without any palliation, asked his forgiveness for the injury I had done him, and finished by avowing my resolution to deliver myself into the hands of justice, and restore his fame and happiness.