第124章
The confession that I wished to write is written.To what end could I add fresh facts to it now? I hoped to ease my heart by passing in review all the details of this dark story, but I have only revived the dread memory of the scenes in which I have been an actor; from the first--when I saw my father stretched dead upon his bed, and my mother weeping by his side, to the last--when Inoiselessly entered a room in which the unhappy woman was again kneeling and weeping.Again upon the bed there lay a corpse, and she rose as she had done before, and uttered the same despairing cry: "My Andre--my son." And I had to answer her questions; I had to invent for her a false conversation with my stepfather, to tell her that I left him rather depressed, but with nothing in his appearance or manner to indicate a fatal resolution.I had to take the necessary steps to prevent this alleged suicide from getting known, to see the commissary of police and the "doctor of the dead." I had to preside at the funeral ceremonies, to receive the guests and act as chief mourner.And always, always, he was present to me, with the dagger in his breast, writing the lines that had saved me, and looking at me, while his lips moved.
Ah, begone, begone, abhorred phantom! Yes! I have done it; yes! Ihave killed you; yes! it was just.You know well that it was just.
Why are you still here now? Ah! I WILL live; I WILL forget.If Icould only cease to think of you for one day, only one day, just to breathe, and walk, and see the sky, without your image returning to haunt my poor head which is racked by this hallucination, and troubled? My God! have pity on me.I did not ask for this dreadful fate; it is Thou that hast sent it to me.Why dost Thou punish me? Oh, my God, have pity on me! Miserere mei, Domine.
Vain prayers! Is there any God, any justice, is there either good or evil? None, none, none, none! There is nothing but a pitiless destiny which broods over the human race, iniquitous and blind, distributing joy and grief at haphazard.A God who says, "Thou shalt not kill," to him whose father has been killed? No, I don't believe it.No, if hell were there before me, gaping open, I would make answer: "I have done well," and I would not repent.I do not repent.My remorse is not for having seized the weapon and struck the blow, it is that I owe to him--to him--that infamous good service which he did me--that I cannot to the present hour shake from me the horrible gift I have received from that man.If I had destroyed the paper, if I had gone and given myself up, if I had appeared before a jury, revealing, proclaiming my deed, I should not be ashamed; I could still hold up my head.What relief, what joy it would be if I might cry aloud to all men that I killed him, that he lied, and I lied, that it was I, I, who took the weapon and plunged it into him! And yet, I ought not to suffer from having accepted--no--endured the odious immunity.Was it from any motive of cowardice that I acted thus? What was I afraid of? Of torturing my mother, nothing more.Why, then, do I suffer this unendurable anguish? Ah, it is she, it is my mother who, without intending it, makes the dead so living to me, by her own despair.
She lives, shut up in the rooms where they lived together for sixteen years; she has not allowed a single article of furniture to be touched; she surrounds the man's accursed memory with the same pious reverence that my aunt formerly lavished on my unhappy father.I recognize the invincible influence of the dead in the pallor of her cheeks, the wrinkles in her eyelids, the white streaks in her hair.He disputes her with me from the darkness of his coffin; he takes her from me, hour by hour, and I am powerless against that love.If I were to tell her, as I would like to tell her, all the truth, from the hideous crime which he committed, down to the execution carried out by me, it is I whom she would hate, for having killed him.She will grow old thus and I shall see her weep, always, always-- What good is it to have done what I did, since I have not killed him in her heart?
Anonymous The Last of the Costellos After several years' service on the staff of a great daily newspaper in San Francisco, Gerald Ffrench returned to his home in Ireland to enjoy a three months' vacation.A brief visit, when the time consumed in traveling was deducted, and the young journalist, on this January afternoon, realized that it was nearly over, and that his further stay in the country of his birth was now to be reckoned by days.
He had been spending an hour with his old friend, Dr.Lynn, and the clergyman accompanied him to the foot of the rectory lawn, and thence, through a wicket gate that opened upon the churchyard, along the narrow path among the graves.It was an obscure little country burying-ground, and very ancient.The grass sprang luxuriant from the mouldering dust of three hundred years; for so long at least had these few acres been consecrated to their present purpose.
"Well, I won't go any further," says Dr.Lynn, halting at the boundary wall, spanned by a ladder-like flight of wooden steps which connected the churchyard with the little bye-road."I'll say good evening, Gerald, and assure you I appreciate your kindness in coming over to see a stupid old man.""I would not hear thine enemy say that," quoted Gerald with a light laugh."I hope to spend another day as pleasantly before I turn my back on old Ireland." He ran up the steps as he spoke and stood on the top of the wall, looking back to wave a last greeting before he descended.Suddenly he stopped.
"What's that?" he asked, pointing down among the graves.
The rector turned, but the tall grass and taller nettles concealed from his view the object, whatever it might be, which Gerald had seen from his temporary elevation.
"It looks like a coffin," and coming rapidly down again the young man pushed his way through the rank growth.The clergyman followed.