Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 15

by Unknown

"Where are my jewels? I have been robbed. Wretches, tell me where are those jewels which I have guarded for twenty years?"

The excitement was fatal—she fell back, and expired. The confusion which followed this sudden and as yet unexpected event drowned for a time the effect resulting from the extraordinary exclamation. The women were busy in various ways, and Augustus ran to support me, who at first, staggered by the exclamations, was rendered senseless by what so immediately followed. I swooned in his arms, and, when I recovered, found myself in my own parlour, with Mrs Ball leaning over me. Augustus, alarmed by the length of time I remained insensible, had hastened away for the doctor, and left me to the tender mercies of the mother of my rival. When I looked up, the first object that met my eyes was my trunk, where were deposited the jewels I had got gifted to me by my aunt; and, by the power of association, I heard ringing in my ears the words, "I have been robbed." The air seemed thick, from the impediment which my swelling heart offered to my powers of respiration, and, holding out my hand, I pushed away her who held me. The resistance offered to my hands directed my attention to the face of Mrs Ball, who, smiling, with a cutting satire, which spoke her suspicions—

"Who robbed your aunt, Miss Martha?" inquired she. "Why did you faint when she mentioned the loss of her jewels?"

"Ha!" answered I, with an exclamation, rubbing my forehead, and still searching in my mind for a full recollection of all that had taken place; "I wish my aunt to explain, in presence of Mrs Merling, and you, and Augustus, her extraordinary words. Come, come—let us go to her—she must explain, she must free me of the imputation."

"Your aunt is dead, young woman; you saw her die," she replied, with more bitter irony. "You have not yet recovered yourself. It was her death-bed confession. Why did it shake you so? You never can be suspected."

In an instant the full truth flashed upon me, and I saw that the death of my aunt precluded all hope of getting her statement recalled. I felt a horrible load upon my heart, and gasped for breath. The thought that I had already allowed to pass the proper opportunity of stating the truth burned my brain with the pain of a seething iron. The force of truth was strong in me, and I struggled at this late period to tell all that had occurred; but, when I looked up in the face of my malicious tormentor, I could not speak, and I now felt that those sensibilities which made me so exquisitely alive to the sense of virtue had become my enemies. The thought of being suspected—and my confession that the jewels were in my trunk would amount almost to a conviction—seemed worse than death in its direst form; yet I essayed again and again to tell the truth, and still I failed to pronounce one intelligible word of explanation. Mrs Ball, finding me recovered, left me, as she said, with her accustomed satire, to the attentions of Augustus Merling, who at that moment entered the room with the surgeon. He was delighted to see me recovered, and asked me, in tones that sounded in my ears more grating than risped iron, how I felt. I answered, with difficulty, that I was better. The doctor gave me some stimulant, and he and Augustus sat down by my side, talking on the subject of the sudden change that had taken place in my aunt's disease, which no one had thought fatal. I sat silent, and expected every moment that Augustus would have mentioned something regarding the statement made by my aunt in reference to her jewels; but he never approached the subject—a circumstance which seemed to me extraordinary; for it was impossible, I thought, that so striking an incident could have escaped his memory; and as the presence of the doctor could form no reason (but rather the opposite) against a recurrence to the subject in his presence, I thought I had grounds for supposing that my presence formed the cause. The moment this thought entered my mind, I shook throughout my whole system. The question rose incessantly upon me, Why does my presence prevent him from disclosing so startling and important a circumstance? The answer appeared plain and simple—Because he suspects me. At the time these thoughts were passing through my mind, my eye caught again my trunk, and I now saw very plainly, from the position of the key, which, having been handled carelessly, was hanging from the keyhole, that some one had been there. I recollected that, when my aunt grew worse, I ran to her, and left the key in the lock, and now suspected that Mrs Ball had opened it while I was in a state of insensibility. As I fixed my eye on the trunk, I heard Augustus stop in the middle of a sentence; and, turning upon him a timid, furtive glance, I thought I saw him look at me earnestly, with a different expression of countenance from any I had ever yet seen him assume. The doctor seemed to notice the break in the conversation, and to take it as a hint to retire, which he did almost immediately, to the great increase of my misery. I was now left alone with Augustus, and my whole mind became, as it were, concentrated in my ear, to hear him break the subject which had become so awfully interesting to me. I was silent, and he, too, apparently, was inclined to be gloomy—a state of mind so inconsistent with the usual habitudes of a spirit ever in the contemplation of the fair side of human nature, that I looked upon it as inauspicious. I had forgotten entirely—so completely was my mind absorbed by the frightful subject before me—that he might respect the sorrow incident to my situation, and hold it too sacred for an abrupt and officious condolence. At length the soft accents of sympathy stole from his lips; and had they been as "the ointment of spikenard," they would have aggravated my pain; for he avoided—it appeared to me studiously—all reference to the conduct of my aunt. I knew not what words to use in my inane replies; and the more studiously he seemed to avoid the subject, the more difficult, the more certainly impossible, I felt the task of approaching it myself. I felt now, more heavily than when in the presence of Mrs Ball, the weight of the time that had already been allowed to elapse without an explanation; and every minute that passed added to it immeasurably. My aunt's statement, standing alone, was powerful, almost insuperable; but, joined to the lapse of time between the charge and the denial—for what could it be now but a denial?—it would appear to be proof strong as holy writ. All this I felt with such soul-prostrating effect, that every effort I made to broach the subject was strangled in my throat, by the sympathetic power of a heart loaded with the shame of a suspicion that never could be disproved. In addition to all this, what I had already suffered had produced indications of a coming accession of my nervous affections; and thus overcome by shame, terror, and physical debility, I sat beside my comforter as one in whose ears are knelling the strokes of the hour of execution.

Augustus rose to depart; and, at this moment, his mother, who had been occupied dressing the dead body, came in to ascertain how I was. She looked wistfully at me as I sat pale and trembling, and I thought I saw her motion to Augustus to leave us together. He went out, and shortly after, my fit came upon me, and retained me in its ruthless grasp for a considerable period. I never had recovered from an attack to a perception of such realities as were now before me; and the more conscious I became, the more dreadful seemed my condition. My first thoughts were directed to the speech of Mrs Merling; and I soon found that she too avoided making the slightest allusion to my aunt's death-bed declaration. If the circumstance was strange in Augustus, it was more so in his mother, a female, not so apt to be forgetful of a matter where curiosity might have been expected to be roused to the highest pitch. I was now more and more convinced that both acted from a sense of delicacy towards me, on whom the whole weight of the suspicion of my aunt's declaration doubtless rested. I felt the same load on my breast as before—the same difficulty to approach the fearful subject; but now my energies were overcome by another cause, for the moment I began to struggle with myself, with a view to overcome the choking impediment presented to a declaration, I was attacked by my nervous ailment, and laid senseless in the arms of my friend. This occurred several times within an hour, at the end of which period—with the fatal secret still in my bosom—I was so overcome with misery and pain, that I was obliged to be consigned to my night-couch.

I lay for several days in a state of weakness, which was continued by occasional attacks of my complaint, by the weight of the peculiar misery with which I was affected, and, by the disturbing effects of horrid dreams, the consequence of the states of both my mind and body. These last assumed often the character of nightmare, in which the form of my aunt was always (though dreadfully distorted) apparent among others; but, dreadful as these were, I would have borne all their weight, and endured all their agony, rather than have suffered what always awaited me when I succeeded in wrenching my consciousness out of the grasp of the nocturnal fiend. Mrs Merling attended me, and Augustus was incessant in his requests to know how I was. My aunt was, in the meantime, buried; and Mrs Merling, who communicated to me the intelligence, seated herself by my bedside, with the view, apparently, of opening to me some subject that lay near her heart. I looked at her and trembled.

"Martha," said she, "I am going to speak to you on a subject of great delicacy; and it is because I know you are possessed of as much good sense as generous feeling, that I will take the liberty of doing it after the manner of a friend."

She paused, and looked at me, as if her heart had been overpowered with pity. I expected now the long-dreaded announcement, and lay motionless, almost senseless, to hear the pronunciation of my doom.