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Elisha Cuthbert Gallery Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
of their well-planned scheme,
and their fine prize. It was for me to smile. To smile! To laugh
outright, and tear my hair, and roll upon the ground with shrieks
of merriment. They little thought they had married her to a madman.
Stay. If they had known it, would they have saved her? A
sisters happiness against her husbands gold. The lightest feather
I blow into the air, against the gay chain that ornaments my body!
In one thing I was deceived with all my cunning. If I had not
been mad--for though we madmen are sharp-witted enough, we
get bewildered sometimes--I should have known that the girl
would rather have been placed, stiff and cold in a dull leaden
coffin, than borne an envied bride to my rich, glittering house. I
should have known that her heart was with the dark-eyed boy
whose name I once heard her breathe in her troubled sleep; and
that she had been sacrificed to me, to relieve the poverty of the
old, white-headed man and the haughty brothers.
I dont remember forms or faces now, but I know the girl was
beautiful. I know she was; for in the bright moonlight nights,
when I start up from my sleep, and all is quiet about me, I see,
standing still and motionless in one corner of this cell, a slight
and wasted figure with long black hair, which, streaming down
her back, stirs with no earthly wind, and eyes that fix their gaze
on me, and never wink or close. Hush! the blood chills at my
heart as I write it down--that form is HERS; the face is very pale,
and the eyes are glassy bright; but I know them well. That figure
never moves; it never frowns and mouths as others do, that fill
this place sometimes; but it is much more dreadful to me, even
than the spirits that tempted me many years ago--it comes fresh
from the grave; and is so very death-like.
For nearly a year I saw that face grow paler; for nearly a year
I saw the tears steal down the mournful cheeks, and never knew
the cause. I found it out at last though. They could not keep it
from me long. She had never liked me; I had never thought she
did: she despised my wealth, and hated the splendour in which
she lived; but I had not expected that. She loved another. This I
had never thought of. Strange feelings came over me, and
thoughts, forced upon me by some secret power, whirled round
and round my brain. I did not hate her, though I hated the boy
she still wept for. I pitied--yes, I pitied--the wretched life to
which her cold and selfish relations had doomed her. I knew that
she could not live long; but the thought that before her death she
might give birth to some ill-fated being, destined to hand down
madness to its offspring, determined me. I resolved to kill her.
For many weeks I thought of poison, and then of drowning,
and then of fire. A fine sight, the grand house in flames, and the
madmans wife smouldering away to cinders. Think of the jest of
a large reward, too, and of some sane man swinging in the wind
for a deed he never did, and all through a madmans cunning!
I thought often of this, but I gave it up at last. Oh! the pleasure
of stropping the razor day after day, feeling the sharp edge, and
thinking of the gash one stroke of its thin, bright edge would make!
At last the old spirits who had been with me so often before
whispered in my ear that the time was come, and thrust the open
razor into my hand. I grasped it firmly, rose softly from the bed,
and leaned over my sleeping wife. Her face was buried in her
hands. I withdrew them softly, and they fell listlessly on her
bosom. She had been weeping; for the traces of the tears were
still wet upon her cheek. Her face was calm and placid; and even
as I looked upon it, a tranquil smile lighted up her pale features.
I laid my hand softly on her shoulder. She started--it was only a
passing dream. I leaned forward again. She screamed, and woke.
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