"No more of this! What then I did may, I now conceive, appear more shocking to my countrymen than all that went before. But I knew little of English customs. I had gone out an inexperienced stripling to India, and my modes of action were formed there. I now know that when one dies in England, they keep the lifeless corpse, weeping and watching beside it, for many days, and then, with lingering ceremonies and the attendance of relations and friends, lay it solemnly in the dismal tomb. But I had seen whole armies mown down by the sword and disease; I was accustomed to the soldier's hastily-dug grave in a climate where corruption follows fast upon death. To hide the dead with speed from every eye was the Indian custom.
"And then, should I take the corpse of Alithea, wet with the ocean tide, ghastly from the throes of recent death, and bear her to her home, and say, here she is—she enjoyed life and happiness yester-evening; I bore her away, behold my work! Should I present myself to her husband, answer his questions, detail the various stages of my crime, and tamely await his vengeance or his pardon! Never!
"Or should I destroy myself at her side, and leave our bodies to tell a frightful tale of mystery and horror? The miserable terrors of my associate would of itself have prevented this catastrophe. I had to reassure and protect him.
"My resolution was quickly made not to outlive my victim—and, making atonement by my death, what other penalty could I be called upon to pay? But my death should not be a tale to appal or amuse the vulgar, or to swell with triumph the heart of Alithea's tyrant husband. Secrecy and oblivion should cover all. My plan was laid, and I acted accordingly.
"Osborne entered into the design with alacrity. He was moved by other feelings, he was possessed by an agony of fear; he did not doubt but that we should be accused of murdering the hapless lady, and the image of the gallows flitted before his eyes.
"Understanding each other without many words, Osborne said that in the shed where we had placed the horses he had remarked a spade; it was so early that no one was about to observe him, and he went to fetch it. He returned in about half an hour; I sat keeping watch the while by the dead, and feasted my eyes with the sight of my pale victim as she lay at my feet. Of what tough materials is man formed, that my heart-strings did not break, and that I outlived that hour!
"Osborne returned, and we went to work. Some ten yards above high-water mark there was a single leafless, moss-grown, skeleton tree, with something like soil about its roots, and sheltered from the spray and breeze by the vicinity of a sand-hill; close to it we dug a deep grave. I placed the cushions in it on which her fair form, all warm and soft, had reposed, during the preceding night. Then I composed her stark limbs, banding the long wet tresses of her abundant hair across her eyes, for ever closed, crossing her hands upon her pure, death-cold bosom; I touched her reverently—I did not even profane her hand by a kiss; I wrapped her in her cloak, and laid her in the open grave. I tore down some of the decaying boughs of the withered tree, and, arching them above her body, threw my own cloak above, so with vain care to protect her lifeless form from immediate contact with the soil. Then we filled up the grave, and, scattering dry sand above, removed every sign of recent opening. This was performed in silence, or with whispered words—the roaring waves were her knell, the rising sun her funeral torch; I was satisfied with the solemnity of the scene around, and I was composed, for I was resolved on death. Osborne trembled in every limb, and his face rivalled in hue her wan, bloodless countenance.
"We carefully removed every article from the hut, and put all in the same state as when we found it. I did not, indeed, fear discovery; who would imagine that my course would be to the desolate seabeach? and if they did, and found all, I should be far, I should be dead. But Osborne was eager to obliterate every mark of the hut having been visited. When he was satisfied that he had accomplished this, without looking behind, I got into the carriage, we drove with what speed we could to Lancaster, and thence to Liverpool. Osborne was in a transport of fear till he got on board an American vessel: fortunately, the wind having veered towards the north, there was one about to weigh anchor. I placed a considerable sum of money in my accomplice's hands, and recommended discretion. He would have questioned me as to my own designs, but he respected my stern silence, and we parted never to meet again. A small coasting vessel, bound for Plymouth, was at that moment making her way out of harbour; I hailed a man on board, and threw myself on to the deck.
"Elizabeth can tell the rest. She knows how I landed in a secluded village of Cornwall, with the intent there to make due sacrifice to the outraged manes of Alithea. Still I grieve for the unaccomplished purpose; still I repine that I did not there die. She stopped my hand. An angel, in likeness of a human child, arrested my arm; and winning my wonder by her extraordinary loveliness, and my interest by her orphan and desolate position, I seemed called upon to live for her sake. The struggle was violent, for I longed to make atonement by my death; and I longed to forget my crimes and their consequences in the oblivious grave. At first I thought that the respite I granted myself would be short; but it lasted for years; and I dragged out a living death, having survived love and hope: remorse my follower; ghastly images of crime and death my comrades. I travelled from place to place, pursued by Alithea's upbraiding ghost and my own torturing thoughts. By frequent change of place, I sought to assuage my pangs; I believe that I increased them. They might perhaps have been mitigated by the monotony of a stationary life. But a traveller's existence is all sensation, and every emotion is rendered active and penetrating by the perpetual variation of the appearances of natural objects. Thought and feeling awaken with the sun, and dewy eve and the radiant stars cause the eyes to turn towards the backward path; while darkness, felt palpably, as one proceeds onward in an unknown land, awakens the snakes of conscience. The storm and expected wreck are images of retribution; while yet the destruction I pined for receded from before my thirsting lips.
"Yet still I dragged on life, most unworthily and unworthy, till on a day I saw the son of my victim at Baden. I witnessed misery, widely spread, through my means; and felt that her disimbodied spirit must curse me for the evil I had brought on her beloved child. I remembered all she had fondly said of him: and the cloudless beauty of his face, his joyous laugh, and free step when last I saw him at her side. He was blighted and destroyed by me; gloomy, savage, and wild, eternal sorrow was written on his brow, fear and hatred gleamed in his eyes. Such by my means had the son of Alithea become; such had his base-minded father rendered him; but mine the guilt—mine be the punishment! What a wretch was I, to live in peace and security, ministered to by an angel—while this dearest part of herself was doomed to anguish, and to the unmitigated influence of the demon for ever at his side, through my accursed means.