“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.
“I was astonished, that during this confession no word had been uttered by him whom it so deeply concerned. I looked up to behold its effect; he was staring wildly at me, the strong energies of his spirit struggling with the grasp of death to gain time to hear its termination; he strove hard to articulate something; and finally whether he conquered for some few moments the mighty power that was wrestling with him, or that that power had now incorporated itself with his victim, and given him of its potency, I knew not, but he suddenly grew calm and passionless, pain and convulsion left him, his features assumed a pale rigidity, and his voice the solemn earnestness of the grave, as he spoke. ‘I have no time for question,’ he said; ‘but I pray that the truth may be upon thy lips: soon, very soon, shall we meet again; and my pardon shall be truly thine when thou shalt tell me that my boy sits with honour in the halls of his fathers.’ He paused, placed the hand of his son in mine, and expired without a groan.
“What followed, I need not tell thee; the son of Hugh was restored, and Eustace consigned to a dungeon. The attempts of the people to force from me my secret, you know how I resisted; calmly and even proudly I went to my prison and prepared myself to die. I had humbled myself to De Broke, for to him I had done deep and particular injury; but to these men I owed no other reparation than what my life would pay: what right had they to demand further humiliation of me, or attempt to rend from my bosom the mystery of its secret purpose? I would die unaccusing, save myself; I would die, shrouded in gloomy dignity,—a man to be wondered at and feared, rather than pitied and scorned. I will willingly furnish their greedy eyes with the awful feast of death, but not their vulgar souls with the struggles and humiliations of mine; my body is the law’s—is theirs; my spirit is beyond their judgment. John de la Pole shall sleep on, embalmed in good opinions; I will not raise up his pall to show them what corruption festers beneath it; I would not tell them what he was, though it should even lessen in their thought the horror of what I am. Grand and silent death—majestic in thy obscurity—I wait to bid thee welcome!
“Thus far had I written, and thought that my story in the book of life had come to its close, but other events have crowded upon me; and before my death, (which will be on the morrow,) I would tell thee the incidents of the last few days. Thou knowest how calmly I beheld thee depart from my prison, and how little emotion I manifested at my fate; but when thou wert gone, when I was alone, in chains, degraded, the enthusiasm of the moment past, and my spirit inactive, I wept bitter tears at the waywardness of my early fate; yet I relaxed not in my determination; I came hither to die, and nothing was left me but to finish my purpose nobly. It is my will to doom a murderer, and I am he so doomed. I wept, yet persisted; cursed the cruelty which had destroyed me, and yet prayed to my brother for pardon. Of the future I had as yet scarcely thought; hitherto I had been solely employed about the method of quitting this world, without much considering the terms of my admission to another; now I pondered long, with anxiety, but not with fear. Creeds puzzled me—I made not my own heart—I cannot be answerable for its opinions. I have committed a deadly sin—I am about to expiate it with my blood—I cannot do more; and is not this sacrifice greater than the cant of sorrow and the whinings of prayer from one who never prayed before? The one is from myself, the child of my resolution—the other the offspring of fear—But I was distracted still, and bewildered. It was in this disturbed state that I was startled by a light sound in my prison—I listened—a soft voice, for the second time, pronounced in kindly accents, ‘My brother!’ I started up and gazed around me; on the opposite side of my dungeon stood the form of John de la Pole, but not as I had seen him last, pale, menacing, and bloody, but with that mild aspect and gentle look that had distinguished his early brotherhood, ere Agatha’s fatal beauty cut asunder the knot that bound our souls together. ‘Thou hast done well,’ said the gentle spirit, ‘thus to render up thy life for thy crime; thy severe justice hath merited and obtained thy pardon; my sufferings, too, the punishment for unrepented sin, thy firmness hath terminated; and the day of Agatha shall henceforth flow more peaceful. Soon shalt thou be with me, O brother! and the kiss of immortality shall be given to thee by my lips: weep not—doubt not—but bear all things steadfastly; in thine hour of agony I will stand by thy side.’
“A tender grief overpowered my spirit as he spoke, and tears fell from my eyes. I extended my arms as if I would have embraced him, but the barrier between the living and the dead could not as yet be passed, and the shadow receded from my touch. But this visitation had brought joy to my heart and tranquillity to my spirit, and the arrival of Agatha at the prison still further reconciled me to my doom. ‘Thy sacrifice is hallowed,’ she said; ‘thou wilt die, but I must live to expiate my crime, as the slave of thy ghastly son, till Heaven shall call him to itself. He stood by my couch last night; smilingly he looked upon me, as in the days of his early love, and bade me live and hope: in this world I shall behold him no more! but thou, my beloved! thou art for the distant land, and the abode whither he is gone before thee. Oh that I might share thy doom, as I have already partaken thy guilt!’
“We parted—let me not dwell upon that—we parted for ever; for me there remained a mighty duty to fulfil, and from which I did not shrink—no, not even when those who had been my friends sought to wring my secret from my heart by the infliction of the torture: I pitied them, but not myself.