And he again relapsed into a fit of dejection, his head leaning on his breast, and his eyes fixed on the bed.
I could, I found, make no more of him that day, and my other avocations required my departure. I told him I would call again, and bring or send him some medicine.
"It is an unnecessary waste o' your valuable time," he said, lifting up his head, "to call again upon a wretch like me. I am much obliged to you for advice; but the only medicine for me is—death."
He pronounced the fearful word with an emphatic guttural tone, which gave it a terrific effect. I opened the door to depart, and was surprised to find that it would not go back sufficiently to allow me to pass freely. The probable cause of the interruption flashed upon my mind in an instant. Without speaking a word, I edged myself through, and saw, lying at the back of the door, the body of the unfortunate young woman, in a state of insensibility. I had presence of mind enough not to carry her into the room where her father lay; but, seeing the light of the kitchen at the further end of the long gloomy passage, I snatched her up in my arms, and hastened with her thither. Having laid her on a small truckle bed, whereon, I presume, she usually slept, I found she was in a deep swoon; and, notwithstanding that it was getting dark, and my time was expired, I waited her recovery. As she lay before me, pale as a corpse, and as I thought of the cause of her illness, and looked round in vain for any one to give her assistance or consolation (the groans of her father, which I indistinctly heard, being the only answer that would have been given to a call for aid in a house more like a haunt for ghosts and spectres than a residence for human beings), I felt the impression of her peculiar misery pass over me, making me shudder as if I had been seized with a fit of the ague. The frail, brittle creature lying there, a victim of hysterics, fit only to be cherished and guarded by a doting mother—placed in a large, empty, gousty mansion—doomed to guard alone a suicide and a father, and, perhaps, to wrestle with him through blood—her parent's blood!—for the preservation of a remaining spark of a self-taken life! She at length recovered, exhibiting the ordinary precursors of returning consciousness—convulsive shiverings, rolling of the eyes, and beating about with the hands. On perceiving me indistinctly, she articulated—
"Death! death!—that was the word he spoke sae wildly.—Ah! I know it now!—James H—— has lang tried to conceal it frae me; but I hae discovered it at last. Can you save him, sir?—can you save the faither o' her wha has scarcely anither freend on earth?"
A flood of tears followed this ejaculation. She tore her hair like a maniac. I tried everything in my power to pacify her; but terror had completely mastered her weak nerves, and she shook as the successive frightful images suggested by her situation passed through her excited and still confused mind.
"Is there no one in those parts," said I, "that can attend your father, and assist you? Who is the James H—— you just now mentioned?"
"He is my cousin," replied she. "He lived with us for some time; but my father and he quarrelled about a razor, which he said James wanted to steal from him. But I see it now. There was nae theft. James, poor James, was innocent, and wanted to save him; but they concealed it frae me, and my cousin was turned away."
The mention of the word razor made me start. I had left the instrument on the head of the drawers, and I had even now heard the wretched man's groans. I hurried to the room, and entered softly. He was in a fit of dejection, groaning, at intervals, deeply, like a man in bodily pain. I took up the instrument without being noticed, and returned to the kitchen. It was now almost dark. I had three miles to ride through wild hill paths, and I heard some threatening indications of a night-storm. The young woman was still lying on the couch, with her terrors undiminished; but I could do nothing more for her, and to have impressed her with the necessity of watching her parent would have created additional alarm, without increasing her zeal in a cause that concerned too nearly her own heart. I told her, therefore, that I required to depart, and was in the act of leaving to go to the door, when, in a paroxysm of terror, she started up, and seized me, clutching me firmly, and crying loudly—
"Will you leave me alone wi' him in this house, and throughout the dark night! He will do it when you are gone. Heaven preserve me frae the sight o' a father's blood!"