Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848

"What the deuce is that?" exclaimed he, starling up from his kneeling posture, and turning anxiously in the direction whence the disturbance had proceeded, at the same time thoughtlessly relinquishing his grasp of the lid, which fell with a heavy crash upon the arm still resting beneath.

"Furies!" shouted he, writhing in agony, and releasing the bruised member from its painful position.

At these words a faint scream of terror issued from the bed which stood only a few feet distant. Mary White had been awakened by his outcry, and starting up in alarm, beheld a man standing by the window, which occasioned the involuntary exclamation that had just burst from her lips. She had sat up until quite late, every moment expecting the young lady who was to have been her companion for the night; and then the convulsions of the tempest had kept her wakeful, and prevented her retiring. The tedium of the hours becoming irksome, she had sauntered into her mother's chamber, and opened the window to gaze out upon the lulling war of the elements; but growing wearied of this employment, and a drowsiness stealing over her, she had flung herself upon the bed, and almost immediately sunk into a refreshing slumber, from which the late disturbances in the apartment had just awakened her. The first impulse that entered her mind was to gain the door and escape, but her nature was one on which fear acts as a sudden paralysis. All power of volition deserted her; and she stood motionless as carved marble, with her eyes glaring, and her finger pointed toward the spot where was the object of her terrors.

"Who's there? stand back!" burst from his lips in nervous agitation as the shriek rung out upon the air, and turning round, he rushed to the bedside, but started back; and there was the confusion of cowardice in his manner as he exclaimed, "You here, Mary! what in the world brought you into this room at such a time of night as this?"

"David White!" exclaimed she, shrinking back, when the moonlight fell upon his features, and she recognized the intruder.

"No one else, my pretty lass," replied the vile man, becoming emboldened by the time and situation; and with a graceful bend of his fine form, he threw his arm around her waist, and attempted to press his lips to her cheek; but fear gave her an almost preternatural strength, and she thrust him forcibly from her.

"What! are you determined to fight shy?" said he, with a dark sneer, again advancing toward her.

"Off! off! – do you dare to lay that vile hand on me again?" and as he caught her arm, she struck him forcibly in the face with her clenched fist, and releasing his grasp, darted toward the door with the swiftness of the deer.

He sprung after her with arms outstretched, and his eyes on fire with fierce rage. His hand clutched the folds of her dress as she reached the door, and he jerked her toward himself with a violence that was almost stunning.

"Ha!" shouted he, inebriate with passion, as her pallid face turned to his, "is this your game? Take that, then!" and he plunged a glittering knife deeply into her bosom.

She clasped her hands convulsively, turned her eyes heavenward, and with a single groan, the utterance of the last mortal agony swelling in her soul, sunk, pale and quivering, slowly to the floor. Then a deep stillness reigned around, broken only by the gurgling sound of the blood as it gushed from the deep wound near her heart, and gathered in a dark, clotted pool by her side.

"'Twas quickly done!" muttered he, in stifled tones of still unsubdued ferocity. "Let this finish it well!" and he made a random stab, which was followed by a spasmodic movement of the body; and drawing the blade from its fleshy sheath, he composedly wiped off the warm blood against the bed-clothes, and thrust it back into his bosom with a low, savage laugh.

He then crossed over to the chest, and cursing his carelessness, abstracted the money from its careful hiding-place, and quitted the scene of his exploit with hurried steps, passing out the front way, and flinging the door wide open as he departed. Within an hour and a half more he was at home. There all was silent and dreary, but he had no observation to fear. Striking a light, he carefully washed the blood from his hands, and disarraying himself of the cast-off clothing which he had assumed for the occasion, thrust them into the fire, and watched until the whole was entirely consumed. Having thus guarded against direct evidence, he made some artful dispositions of negative disproof, that he might be provided with full armor against all suspicions; and then retiring to his homely bed with a feelingless heart, and unmurmuring conscience, he slept soon and deeply.

PART III

"Alas! for earthly joy, and hope, and love,Thus stricken down, e'en in their holiest hour!What deep, heart-wringing anguish must they prove,Who live to weep the blasted tree or flower.Oh, wo! deep wo to earthly love's fond trust,When all it once has worshiped lies in dust!"

Time glided on – days dawned and waned – weeks came and went – soon months were numbered with the ruins of the past, and when the old year, with sober meekness, took up his bright inheritance of luscious fruits, a pomp and pageant filled the splendid scene. The yellow maize and golden sheaves stood up in the fields, and the fading meadow, like a crushed flower, gave out a dying fragrance to the fresh, cool winds, that, sporting playfully amongst the tree-tops, swept downward from their high communion, and stooped to dally with its sweet decay. Then the apple-boughs were heavily laden with crimson fruit, peeping like roses from their garniture of woven foliage; the purple grape-clusters dotted the creeping vine, half transparent in their tempting lusciousness; the red cherries seemed, in the distance, like the burning brilliancy of a summer sunset struggling through the branches and tangled leaves that intervened; and the downy peach peered provokingly from amongst the sheltering green, where, all the summer long, it had stolen the first blush of saffron-vested Aurora, when seraph hands unbar the gates of morning, and the last ray of golden light that paused at the flame-wrought portals of expiring day to look reluctant back. Another change came over the face of nature, and delicate-footed spring seemed to have come again with her lap full of leaves and blossoms. The trees cast aside their long-worn garniture of green, and flaunted proudly in gorgeous robes of gold and crimson. The blushing rose once more sought the thorny stem that had slept so long desolate; and the changeful-hued touch-me-not looked up smilingly from the pallid grass, where nestled thousands of purple violets peeping out timidly from their shady nooks; and the waning year smiled – smiled as smiles the dying man, when the life-blood quickens in his veins, for almost the last time to linger on the cheek and lip, brighten in the eye, and give a joyous swell to the heart that lies in ruins. The gorgeous pageant went by, and the trees put on their robes of mourning – anon, tossed their huge branches to the sky, leafless and desolate, save where the ivy, creeping gracefully up the twisted trunk, or the sacred mistletoe, luxuriant on the dying bough, wore a fadeless green amidst the desolations that surrounded them. The clear, unsullied sky assumed a deeper, peculiar blue; the night reigned with a clearer, intenser brilliancy, and the thronging stars beamed with an almost unnatural brightness; the cold, hurrying winds awoke from their sluggishness, and took their way over hill and meadow with a dismal tone, like the midnight howl that comes to the ear of the dying with hideous tales of the noisome grave; and the fleecy mass of trooping clouds, driving wildly before every ice-winged impulse of the wintry storm, seemed like sheets of floating snow dotting the vast cerulean. Still another change – the earth was clad in a robe of spotless ermine, and the gray dawn opened her pale eye on iciness and desolation; men hurried to and fro as nature were a plague, and they its victims; the sparkling, tripping, garrulous brooks, whose sweet voices had so long gone up like a spirit's on the air, now sped their way with a faint and death-like gurgle; the laurel, pine, and cedar, disdaining to be poor pensioners on the bounties of a gushing sunshine, or, with a cringing obsequiousness, to yield conformity to the golden mutations of a passing hour, expanded their foliage of living green, unchanged amidst the bleakest ruins of winter, while the stern-browed year, old, wrinkled, and hoary, drew nearer and nearer his death-time. Ere long spring came. As the grim darkness flees before the many-tinted dawn, until at last she stands blushing upon the eastern horizon in perfect beauty, so fled the stern winter before the radiant footsteps of this flower-goddess. At her approach the wooing south-winds swept downward from their sky-built thrones, and stooping to the hill-tops, laid their soft fingers on the expanding buds, stealing a fragrance, and whispering their heaven-taught melody amongst the gnarled old branches; then crept stealthily into the valleys below, and drinking in their rich gush of pleasant sounds, glided back exulting to their high communion. The merry-voiced waters, freed from their icy fetters, and sparkling like a sheet of silver sheen, went dancing and leaping on – on with a winged impetuosity to their ocean home. Anon, the yellow violets shook off their winter slumbers, and opened their smiling cups to the arrowy sunshine; then came a wealth of painted flowers, and soon the life-breathing spring had attained its zenith. A thousand glad voices rose and swelled amid the forest's leaf-wrought canopy; its breezes were awake with spicy odors, and the bird warbled as life were new, and this creation's morn. In the orchards, the peach-trees were glorious with pink blossoms, sprinkling the tall, waving grass with rosy flakes at every gush of the wooing zephyr, which, laden with sweetness, swept sighing across the meadows.

Anon, a spring sunset came on. The lurid disc of the sun wheeled slowly down to the western horizon. Pile on pile of clouds, heaped up in gorgeous magnificence, varying from red to purple, and from purple to gold, gathered fantastically in the sky – now like a molten ocean with uplifting rocks, and then like toppling steeps whose summits reached the stars. Gradually the day went down behind the everlasting hills, and the brilliant hues insensibly died away through all the variations of the many-tinted rainbow, until only a faint golden mellowness suffused the western sky, slowly fading into a deep azure as it approached the zenith. At length twilight, twin sister to the cold, gray dawn, shrouded the heavens in misty dimness. Universal silence seemed to pervade the whole face of nature. The voice of the feathered songsters was hushed in the grove, and the breeze, which all day long had refreshed the deep woods with its joyous ministrations, lulled into stillness, as if its kind office were now completed. Then the brighter stars came out, one by one, and assumed their sapphire thrones in the vaulted cerulean, and the round, bright front of the full moon floated over the eastern mountains, whose dark umbrage glowed with the silver glories of the thronging night – the night whose morrow had but its dawn for David White, the condemned felon. Ten long, weary months had come and passed away with their pomp and mutation, finding and leaving him within a prison's walls; and now, the lapse of a few short, rapid hours would behold a tenement in ruins, and a soul set free. Another day-break, and he would know the untried and unimaginable realities of a shoreless eternity, from whose everlasting portals men have so often shrunk back appalled. Oh, what a bewildering rush of thoughts crowded upon his mind. He stood by the prison-window, through whose iron bars came trooping the silent moonbeams, lighting up his countenance, ghastly and contracted with anguish, then flashing along the darkness, rested upon the floor in mellow radiance. At the farthermost verge of the western horizon, just where the gray outlines of the mountains stood forth like shadows against the deep blue of the sky, huge masses of clouds piled themselves up into strange and fantastic forms, indistinct and dark, from whose bright centre, ever and anon, leaped the fierce lightning, like the tongues of a thousand adders forked in flame, and boomed the loud thunder as the din of a far-off battle. While he gazed, old memories thronged from the past; the fount of tears sent up its gushing libations, and he buried his face in his hands, and strove to pray. Oh, how sorrow, and suffering, and solitude, and the certainty of a near death bow the strong spirit! It may have become darkened by fierce and unruly passions; grown callous and crime-stained amidst the roll of years, and almost destitute of a single virtuous impulse, yet, for a time, under such circumstances, a softness will gather about the heart; a thousand little harps, untuned before, quiver with a rich gush of melody, and the angel in our nature spring up and assert its influence. But no one, in whom the mind has not been crushed or debilitated by the decay of the body, has stood upon time's furthest brink in perfect consciousness, as David White did at that moment, without thinking with an aching intenseness on the dread hour when life must end; and as he leaned his head against the iron bars of the narrow lattice, the balmy breeze laying its cool hands upon his feverish brow, and the soft moonlight playing upon his wan features like the kiss of a tender bride, his soul was wrought with a stern agony, and his frame with a shudder – for dark thoughts and sad images of death and eternity came thronging – for no Jesus was there to light the breathless darkness of the grave – no Hope stood by to point exultant to a sinless heaven! – for him, futurity was a dark and impenetrable gulf, without a wanderer or a voice.

Suddenly he started. An overpowering, yet unutterable awe crept over him – a fearful but undefined sensation – a presentiment that something terrible was about to happen. He strove to shake it off, but could not – like an icy thrill it ran, slow and curdling, through his veins. A low rustling, as of silken drapery, struck upon his ear. He turned to know the cause, and leaned eagerly forward. A shriek, wild and agonizing, burst from his pallid lips; his hair stood upright, and his arms fell nerveless to his side – his blood ebbed back upon the heart, returned with tenfold violence throughout his system, seemed to thicken, and then stagnate; his pulses bounded, staggered and ceased; cold moisture bathed his wan forehead, and his whole frame appeared stiffening with the death-chill. A few feet distant, by a window the very counterpart of the one near which he stood, loomed forth a shape – a substance, yet it cast no shadow – the moonlight shone through it, resting on the floor like slightly tarnished silver. He looked on speechless and motionless; his whole soul concentrated into an intense and aching gaze. At first, it floated before his fixed and dilating vision, indistinct and mist-like; but, as he gazed, it assumed the outline of a human form – then the features of Mary White, the foster-sister whom he had murdered. The apparition grew still plainer. The ghastly countenance; the fallen lip; the sightless eye, dull and open with a vacant stare; the deep, solemn, mysterious repose which ever accompanies the aspect of death; the deep wound near the heart, from which gushed life's crimson torrent, falling at her feet without a sound – each – all, for one short, passing, fearful, agonizing moment, trembled into terrible distinctness. Then she lifted an arm reeking with blood, and pointing through the window at a new-made gibbet and its dangling rope, smiled a faint and sickly smile, and vanished as a dying spark. The trance passed from his spirit, and nature recommenced her operations like the clanking of a vast machinery. Yet his eye, as if it could not recover from its vision of terror, remained glaring upon the spot where the spectre had been; and it was not until several minutes had elapsed that the sharp agony which had contracted his features died away. He sprung forward with a wild cry, but the echo alone replied. No voice but his own awoke the awful stillness, pulseless it reigned around him. The stars glittered as brightly, the moon shone as gloriously, and, as he held his breath, the faint and confused murmur of the distant water-fall, and the caroling of the night-wind in the gnarled old forest, almost seeming to be a part of the silence, came up through the window to his ear as distinctly and steadily as ever – every thing belied the scene he had just witnessed. Was it a dream? He grasped his arm until it pained him – he was awake – there was no change – all appeared as it had been. He attempted to shake the iron bars of the lattice – they were firm in their sockets. He groped his way to the other side of the room, passed his hands along the walls – nothing but darkness was there. He stood where first he had stood when he beheld the apparition – the unearthly visitant was there no longer. He bent forward, and strained an aching gaze – in vain; nothing underwent a change. Then he felt that he had seen the dead – the murdered. His mind recoiled upon itself, and the very marrow in his bones crept at the thought. He flung himself upon his pallet, and for the hundredth time strove to sleep. Black despair had eaten down into his very heart's core, and remorse, like an old vulture, gnawed at his vitals; yet for a few brief, agonizing moments he slept, but only as the fiends of hell might be supposed to sleep. A dream, a series of change and torture, bewildering and terrible, came, like a blight, over his spirit.

Now he felt the cold hand of death upon his brow, and his whole body seemed to be encompassed in a mass of ice. His blood waxed thick in its courses; his heart staggered, fluttered, gave one agonizing throb, and for a moment ceased to pulsate; cold dews gathered on his brow, and a stinging sensation pervaded his whole system; his eyelids trembled, and the balls rolled, gave out a dying lustre, glazed, grew fixed and sightless in their sockets – then came the last convulsive and impotent contest with the King of Terrors – the groan, the gasping breath, the half-uttered words upon the quivering lip – the death-rattle, the soulless face, and the pulseless silence. He recovered. Above him was a sky of livid flame, upon whose high zenith dread darkness sat enthroned. Around him spread a shoreless ocean of molten fire. No wave agitated its placid bosom – no sound – no wind breathed over its fearful stillness. A lone rock, cold, barren, and dismal, yet like an oasis in a desert, lifted its gray summit from the sluggish surface. Upon this he stood, rigid and motionless, like a marble statue on its pedestal; and, ever and ever, around and above him, rushed to and fro shadowy forms, upon whose countenances was engraven unutterable anguish. Suddenly, over the vast and dreary profound, went the low, deep, muffled tolling of a bell, bursting on the red air like the knell of hope, peace, and mercy, lost forever to another soul. As it ceased, the boundless sea of ebbless and unextinguishable flame, that glowed with a lurid but intolerable light at his feet, began to uplift in one mighty and unbroken mass. Slowly – slowly it rose up – up – up, until the liquid fire was frothing, and the sky and ocean seemed to blend – then flowed back, returned, and closed hissing around him. A groan, deep, intense, and fearful, bubbled up in a gush of blood, and echoed in the distance like fiendish laughter. Higher and higher rose the living flames. They were about to close over him – his head sunk upon his bosom, and a voice – the voice of her whom he had murdered, shrieked in his ear – "The Ocean of Remorse!"

"A change came o'er the spirit of his dream."

He stood upon the narrow verge of an awful precipice. Night, black, rayless night, enshrouded the yawning gulf below, save that, ever and anon, hideous and fleshless forms – skeletons wrought in lurid and undying flame – strode to and fro within the thick panoply of gloom; while, at intervals, howls of despair came up from its midst, like howls from the lips of the damned in hell. With a thrill of horror, he turned hurriedly from the scene, and cast his despairing eyes heavenward. In the centre of a massive cloud, burning with the brilliancy of a summer sunset, appeared a vast city, with domes and palaces of pearl and ruby, and whose gates were gates of burnished gold. As he gazed, they were flung open on silent hinges, and a host, clothed in spotless white, entered their portals, welcomed with swelling anthems and seraphic songs. Then the toppling precipice began to reel and stagger beneath his feet – a fierce bright flame burst from amidst the night below, more brilliant than the sun's intensest ray. It drank up the darkness, and filled the gulf with liquid fire. It flashed through his eye-balls like a glance of lightning. He felt his foothold totter on the eve of its awful rush of destruction, and turned to flee, but started aside with a wild cry. The same voice was in his ear, and it shrieked in exulting tones – "The Murderer's Doom!"

But where was the mother during these fearful and agonizing moments! Had she forgotten the son that once nestled on her bosom? Had she forsaken the child she bore, now that the dark hour of adversity had come? Ah! no. It is not a mother's nature to forget or to forsake! Though crime and infamy enshroud his name; though base heartlessness and vile ingratitude shut-to the portals of his soul; though he fling off the hoarded wealth of her affections as the oak the clinging ivy when the storm comes, yet the mother will love – must love – it is the thirst of her immortal nature. No, no! Widow White had not forgotten, neither had she forsaken her son. Villain as he was, and stained with the blood of her foster-child, her heart warmed toward him – the mother was the mother still! Though absent, her mind was racked with agony – stern agony. For hours had she paced up and down her dim-lit chamber, her hands folded across her breast, and her eyes fixed upon the floor – thought and feeling were busy. To the casual observer her features exhibited scarcely an evidence of internal emotion; but the arched lip, bloodless with pressure, and the swollen veins upon her high forehead betokened how severe was the struggle going on within. There are some persons who can stand by the bedside of a dying relative, and, with an almost unruffled countenance, behold him stiffened in the cold arms of death – who can look upon the corpse for the last time, follow it to the grave, and see it laid beneath the heavy sod with so little apparent concern, that the beholder considers him heartless; but draw aside the curtain which separates the inner from the outer being, and the features of the spirit are seen to be distorted with anguish. To this class of individuals belonged Widow White. Oh, how she felt as she trod to and fro within that dim-lit room! Her son – her only son, in the endearing playfulness of whose infantile smiles she had so often exulted; upon whose boyish accents she had so frequently hung with transport, and for whom she had pictured out such a bright and glorious future, was a condemned felon, and the morrow would open its great eye upon him for the last time. The lapse of another day! – and that son, so cherished, and so fondly loved, would fill a murderer's grave, and she would look upon his face no more. She knew that it was appointed for all to "pass through the dark valley of the shadow of death," but what a horrible, detestable, and ignominious death was his! Could it be true? Was he – her son, in the prime of manhood and enjoyment – the life-blood coursing freely and strongly throughout his system – unshattered by disease – to die – to be a sport for the winds – to hang – ay – ay – to hang! – to be cut down – to be thrust into the coffin, blackened, distorted, and hideous, the rope still around his neck – to be laid in the ground with infamy around his name – to rot – to be a banquet for the worms? Horror of horrors! She would not believe it! Surely it was a dream!

Thus that agony-fraught night lapsed away, and the morning, which, from the birth of creation, has never failed, dawned once more – dawned as it ever dawns, bright, glorious, and magnificent, bearing the impress of a mighty God. That morning witnessed a terrible – a horrible scene. Another human being took his exit from the transitory splendors of this decaying world, and entered upon the untried and unimaginable realities of a futurity, whose secrets none can ever know until the silver chord is loosened, and the golden bowl is broken. Upon what state of existence David White entered when eternity closed its everlasting portals, and the enfranchised spirit went up to the Eternal Judge, it is not for me to say. God is just, and whatever was apportioned, it was good and right. Let it suffice to know, that, be his doom what it may, it is irrevocable – sealed forever.