This has suggested a thought: I will wait here till midnight and sleep have lulled her apprehensions. It will be better than facing her in the glare of day. Her eye, Fairfax, is terrible in her anger. It is too steady, too strong in conscious innocence to encounter. Darkness will give me courage, and her terror and despair. For it must come to that! It cannot otherwise be; and be it must! In the blaze of noon, when fortitude is awake and the heart beating high perhaps with resentment, nothing but the goadings of despair could make me face her. The words she would use would be terrible, but her looks would petrify!—By this stratagem I shall avoid them.
Nor do I blush to own my cowardice, in the presence of Anna St. Ives: she being armed with innocence and self-approbation; and I abashed by conscious guilt, violence, and intentional destruction.
Why aye!—Let the thick swarth of night cover us! I feel, with a kind of horrid satisfaction, the deep damnation of the deed! It is the very colour and kind of sin that becomes me; sinning as I do against Anna St. Ives! With any other it would be boy's sport; a thing to make a jest of after dinner; but with her it is rape, in all its wildest contortions, shrieks, and expiring groans!
I lie stretched on burning embers, and I have hours yet to wait. Oh that I were an idiot!—The night is one dead, dun gloom! It looks as if murrain, mildew, and contagion were abroad, hovering over earth and brooding plagues. I will walk out awhile, among them—Will try to meet them—Would that my disturbed imagination could but conjure up goblins, sheeted ghosts, heads wanting bodies, and hands dropping blood, and realize the legends of ignorance and infancy, so that I could freeze memory and forget the horrors by which I am haunted!
It draws near midnight—I am now in her apartment, the room next to her bed-chamber.
My orders have been obeyed: the old woman, pretending to lock up her prisoner, shot back the bolts, put down the chain, and left the door ready for me to enter unheard.
Laura has her instructions. She is to pretend only, but not really, to undress herself; and I bade her not lie down, lest she should drop asleep. When she thinks it time, she is to glide round, steal the key, and open the door.
I am fully prepared; am undressed, and ready for the combat. I have made a mighty sacrifice! Youth, fortune, fame, all blasted; life renounced, and infamy ascertained! It is but just then that I should have full enjoyment of the fleeting bliss.
Surely this hussy sleeps? No!—I hear her stir!—She is at the door!
And now—!
Heaven and hell are leagued against me, to frustrate my success! Yet succeed I will in their despite—'Tis now broad day, and here I am, in the same chamber, encountered, reproved, scorned, frantic, and defeated!