"I am not satisfied that it was my Agnes," he exclaimed, in broken accents, while the tears flowed over his cheeks. "There was a waiting-maid along with us—describe her more particularly. I can listen."
As he uttered these words, I could perceive that he contracted his nerves, his hands were clenched, and over his frame there passed a shiver that seemed to mock the resolution to confirm the mind by a mere physical action. I proceeded to give a fuller account of her dress and ear-ring, the character of her face and figure, so far as I could discover them. Every word seemed to enter his very soul. He turned round again. There was something he wished to say, but he hesitated, trembled, and stammered.
"Was that fair form mutilated?" he asked, at length, "O God! I picture my Agnes torn by monsters of the deep, and hideous urchins resting on her bosom. Yet, why do I ask knowledge that must sit for ever on my heart, and engender visions that in the hours of night must torture my soul, to the end of my pilgrimage in this dark world?"
I hesitated to say more; the orbless socket—the torn stump of the arm—the limpets that clung to her skin—the bosom pierced by Vanderhoek's mattock, were all before me, and shook my soul. But why should I have added an artificial misery to wretchedness like his? I would not dwell on the subject. The stranger imputed my disinclination to satisfy his morbid desire for information to its true cause. A paroxysm of sorrow seized him. He rose suddenly, took his hat, and, covering his pallid face with his handkerchief, rushed out of the room. How often have I thought of that individual! I never saw him again; but his image is for ever associated with the vision of that corpse, shining in the sickly green hue of the medium in which it lay. The body was never found; he never saw it. And was it not well for him? What would have been his agony, to have seen the beloved of his bosom as I saw her, to have treasured up in his mind the lineaments of that face, the harrowing minutiæ of her mutilated form?
I got an account from Mr. W—— of what took place on board of the lighter while the bell was down. It was a long time, he said, before anything was suspected to be wrong, as the men often remain down for an hour without a single signal coming from them. The difficulty of working the air-pumps first roused their suspicions; and when they found that the bell would not respond to the action of the crane, they knew at once that it had got fixed among some part of the wreck. I need not detail their efforts to relieve us; they are possessed of no interest; the result is known; but who shall know, as I experienced, the horrors of that period?
My patient, when he had finished his narrative, put his hand over his eyes, and shuddered. I could do little for an individual thus situated; but I visited him often, more with a view to the benefit of science, than from any hope of rescuing him from the dominion of the power he had, like Frankenstein, created, to satisfy a diseased craving of the mind, and trembled at after it was formed, as he found himself helpless and weak in his energies to exorcise it. The continued brooding of his sick fancy over all the strange forms he had seen, produced, in a still greater degree, a weakness of the mind itself, that is, a weakness as regards the sane condition of the mind; for his imagination, drawing a morbid pabulum from his disease, grew stronger and stronger in its capacity to invest the images he gloated over with more fearful characteristics, till often, as I was informed, he started up in the middle of the night and screamed out that he was in the present act of suffering again all he had already experienced. But what struck me as still more remarkable in this victim, was, that any change that took place upon him for the better, in respect of his physical economy, was, while accompanied by a partial release from the domination of his old fancies, generally attended by a kind of new-born desire for another and a new supply of his stimulant visions. This discovery I made one day, when, as I felicitated myself on having effected a confirmation of his nerves, by the application of a course of tonics, I told him that I myself was on the eve of encountering all the unpleasant feelings attendant upon the performance of a painful operation on a very beautiful patient, whose life might too likely fall a sacrifice to her desire to get quit of a mortal disease. His eye brightened, he held out his hands, and supplicated me to allow him to be present, under the assumed character of a surgeon. My refusal produced disappointment and chagrin; and he often afterwards harped on the cruelty of my resolution to discomfit him. He afterwards went to another part of the country to reside with his relations; and the last notice I had of him was, that he was seen bending his skeleton body over the blackened corpses of several individuals who had been burnt to death in the conflagration of a large dwelling-house in the town where he resided.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WILLIE SMITH.
If I thocht the world would tak the least interest in the matter, I wad tell it the where an' the when o' my birth, in conformity wi' auld use an' wont in the case o' biographical sketches; but, takin it for granted that the world cares as little about me as I care about it—an', Gude kens, that's little aneuch, thanks to the industry o' my faither, that made me independent o't!—I shall merely say, wi' regard to the particulars above alluded to, that I was born in a certain thrivin, populous bit touny in the south, an' that I am, at this present writin, somewhat aulder than I was yesterday. I dinna choose to be mair particular on the point, because I dinna see that my age has onything mair to do wi' my story, than the ages o' witnesses hae wi' their evidence. Bein born in the usual way, in the usual way was I christened—(Anglice, baptised); but hereon hangs a tale, or rather a dizzen o' them. My faither's name was Willie Smith, my paternal grandfather's name was Willie Smith, I had an uncle whase name was Willie Smith, an' twa cousins whase names were Willie Smith; an' it was determined that I should be a Willie Smith too, in order, I suppose, to mak sure o' perpetuatin that very rare an' euphonious family name. But, oh, that they had ca'ed me Nebuchadnezzar, or Fynmackowl, or Chrononhotonthologos, or ony name in the sma'est degree distinctive, an' no that confounded ane, that seems to me to belang to every third man I meet. It wad hae saved me a world o' misery, an' disappointment, an' suffering o' a' sorts. It's just incredible the mischief that simple circumstance has wrought me—I mean, the ca'in me Willie Smith. It may appear, I dare say, a harmless aneuch thing to you, guid reader, but, my feth, ca' ye yersel Willie Smith just for ae twelvemonth, an' ye'll find it's nae such joke as ye may think, especially if there be half-a-dizzen o' Willie Smiths leevin in the same street wi' ye; whilk is a' but certain to be the case, gang to where ye like. I ken I could never get oot o' their neighbourhood, an' mony a shift an' change I hae made for that express purpose. I maun confess, however, that the name's no a'thegither without its advantages. Mony a scrape I hae got skaithless oot o', when I was a boy, in consequence o' its frequency. In the first schule I was at, there war three Willie Smiths, besides me, an' it was thus almost impossible, in many cases, to ascertain which was the real delinquent when mischief had been perpetrated; an' the result was, that the wrang Willie Smith was as often punished as the right ane; but as I, of course, was frequently in the former predicament, I am no sure that, if the account were fairly balanced, I wad be found to hae been a great gainer after a'. Latterly, however, I certainly was not; for the maister, finding the difficulty o' distinguishing between the Smiths, an' that the course o' justice was thus interrupted, at last adopted the sure plan o' whippin a' the Willie Smiths thegither, whenever any one o' the unfortunate name was charged wi' ony transgression. We were thus incorporated, as it were, rolled into one, and dealt wi' accordingly, in a' cases o' punishment.