CHAPTER XXII.
EVIL THOUGHTS—THE PANGS OF REMORSE.
All day I toiled hard on my farm to drown evil thoughts. If I relaxed the least from my labour, the tempter was ever at hand, urging me to commit fresh crimes; and night brought with it horrors that I dared not think of in the broad light of day. I no longer cared for wealth. The hope of distinguishing myself in the world had died out of my heart. But industry always brings a reward for toil, and in spite of my indifference, money accumulated, and I grew rich.
My household expenses were so moderate, (for I shunned all society,) that every year I put by a large sum, little caring hereafter by whom it might be spent. My mother sometimes urged me to marry; but I slighted her advice on that head. The history of her wedded life was enough to make me eschew the yoke of matrimony.
My old craze for leaving the country was still as strong as ever; but I had given a solemn promise to my mother to remain in England as long as she lived. Often as I sat opposite to her in the winter evenings, I wished it would please God to take her. It was very wicked; but I never could meet her eyes without fearing lest she should read my dreadful secret in the guilty gloom of mine. I had loved her so devotedly when a boy, that these sinful thoughts were little less than murder.
There was one other person whom I always dreaded to meet, and that was Mrs. Martin, the mother of my unfortunate victim. This woman never passed me on the road without looking me resolutely in the face. There was a something which I could scarcely define in her earnest regard; it was a mixture of contempt and defiance, of malignity, and a burning thirst for revenge. At any rate, I feared and hated her, and wished her either dead or out of my path.
Fortunately for me, she heard of a situation likely to suit her in a distant parish, but lacked the means to transport herself and her little daughter thither. I was so eager to get rid of her, that I sent her anonymously ten pounds to further that object. My mother and her gossips imagined the donation came from the Hall, and were loud in their praises of Sir Walter, and his generous present to the poor widow. But Sir Walter Carlos had no such motives as mine to stimulate his bounty.
It was just about this period that I fell sick of a dangerous and highly infectious fever. The house was of course deserted. The doctor and my mother were the only persons who approached my sick-bed; the latter had all the fatigue and anxiety of nursing me herself, and she did not shrink from the task.
The good, the happy, the fortunate, the lovely, and the beloved, those to whom life is very dear, and the world a paradise, die, and are consigned by their weeping friends and kindred to the dust. But a despairing, heaven-abandoned, miserable wretch like me, struggled through the horrors of that waking night-mare of agony, the typhus fever, and once more recovered to the consciousness of unutterable woe.
Delirium, like wine, lays bare the heart, and shows all its weakness and its guilt, revealing secrets which the possessor has for half a life carefully hid. This, I doubt not, was my case, although no human lip ever revealed to me the fact.