Master Humphrey's Clock Page 9

  THE CLOCK-CASE

  A CONFESSION FOUND IN A PRISON IN THE TIME OF CHARLES THE SECOND

  I held a lieutenant’s commission in his Majesty’s army, and served abroadin the campaigns of 1677 and 1678. The treaty of Nimeguen beingconcluded, I returned home, and retiring from the service, withdrew to asmall estate lying a few miles east of London, which I had recentlyacquired in right of my wife.

  This is the last night I have to live, and I will set down the nakedtruth without disguise. I was never a brave man, and had always beenfrom my childhood of a secret, sullen, distrustful nature. I speak ofmyself as if I had passed from the world; for while I write this, mygrave is digging, and my name is written in the black-book of death.

  Soon after my return to England, my only brother was seized with mortalillness. This circumstance gave me slight or no pain; for since we hadbeen men, we had associated but very little together. He wasopen-hearted and generous, handsomer than I, more accomplished, andgenerally beloved. Those who sought my acquaintance abroad or at home,because they were friends of his, seldom attached themselves to me long,and would usually say, in our first conversation, that they weresurprised to find two brothers so unlike in their manners and appearance.It was my habit to lead them on to this avowal; for I knew whatcomparisons they must draw between us; and having a rankling envy in myheart, I sought to justify it to myself.

  We had married two sisters. This additional tie between us, as it mayappear to some, only estranged us the more. His wife knew me well. Inever struggled with any secret jealousy or gall when she was present butthat woman knew it as well as I did. I never raised my eyes at suchtimes but I found hers fixed upon me; I never bent them on the ground orlooked another way but I felt that she overlooked me always. It was aninexpressible relief to me when we quarrelled, and a greater relief stillwhen I heard abroad that she was dead. It seems to me now as if somestrange and terrible foreshadowing of what has happened since must havehung over us then. I was afraid of her; she haunted me; her fixed andsteady look comes back upon me now, like the memory of a dark dream, andmakes my blood run cold.

  She died shortly after giving birth to a child—a boy. When my brotherknew that all hope of his own recovery was past, he called my wife to hisbedside, and confided this orphan, a child of four years old, to herprotection. He bequeathed to him all the property he had, and willedthat, in case of his child’s death, it should pass to my wife, as theonly acknowledgment he could make her for her care and love. Heexchanged a few brotherly words with me, deploring our long separation;and being exhausted, fell into a slumber, from which he never awoke.

  We had no children; and as there had been a strong affection between thesisters, and my wife had almost supplied the place of a mother to thisboy, she loved him as if he had been her own. The child was ardentlyattached to her; but he was his mother’s image in face and spirit, andalways mistrusted me.

  I can scarcely fix the date when the feeling first came upon me; but Isoon began to be uneasy when this child was by. I never roused myselffrom some moody train of thought but I marked him looking at me; not withmere childish wonder, but with something of the purpose and meaning thatI had so often noted in his mother. It was no effort of my fancy,founded on close resemblance of feature and expression. I never couldlook the boy down. He feared me, but seemed by some instinct to despiseme while he did so; and even when he drew back beneath my gaze—as hewould when we were alone, to get nearer to the door—he would keep hisbright eyes upon me still.

  Perhaps I hide the truth from myself, but I do not think that, when thisbegan, I meditated to do him any wrong. I may have thought howserviceable his inheritance would be to us, and may have wished him dead;but I believe I had no thought of compassing his death. Neither did theidea come upon me at once, but by very slow degrees, presenting itself atfirst in dim shapes at a very great distance, as men may think of anearthquake or the last day; then drawing nearer and nearer, and losingsomething of its horror and improbability; then coming to be part andparcel—nay nearly the whole sum and substance—of my daily thoughts, andresolving itself into a question of means and safety; not of doing orabstaining from the deed.

  While this was going on within me, I never could bear that the childshould see me looking at him, and yet I was under a fascination whichmade it a kind of business with me to contemplate his slight and fragilefigure and think how easily it might be done. Sometimes I would stealup-stairs and watch him as he slept; but usually I hovered in the gardennear the window of the room in which he learnt his little tasks; andthere, as he sat upon a low seat beside my wife, I would peer at him forhours together from behind a tree; starting, like the guilty wretch Iwas, at every rustling of a leaf, and still gliding back to look andstart again.

  Hard by our cottage, but quite out of sight, and (if there were any windastir) of hearing too, was a deep sheet of water. I spent days inshaping with my pocket-knife a rough model of a boat, which I finished atlast and dropped in the child’s way. Then I withdrew to a secret place,which he must pass if he stole away alone to swim this bauble, and lurkedthere for his coming. He came neither that day nor the next, though Iwaited from noon till nightfall. I was sure that I had him in my net,for I had heard him prattling of the toy, and knew that in his infantpleasure he kept it by his side in bed. I felt no weariness or fatigue,but waited patiently, and on the third day he passed me, running joyouslyalong, with his silken hair streaming in the wind, and he singing—Godhave mercy upon me!—singing a merry ballad,—who could hardly lisp thewords.

  I stole down after him, creeping under certain shrubs which grow in thatplace, and none but devils know with what terror I, a strong, full-grownman, tracked the footsteps of that baby as he approached the water’sbrink. I was close upon him, had sunk upon my knee and raised my hand tothrust him in, when he saw my shadow in the stream and turned him round.

  His mother’s ghost was looking from his eyes. The sun burst forth frombehind a cloud; it shone in the bright sky, the glistening earth, theclear water, the sparkling drops of rain upon the leaves. There wereeyes in everything. The whole great universe of light was there to seethe murder done. I know not what he said; he came of bold and manlyblood, and, child as he was, he did not crouch or fawn upon me. I heardhim cry that he would try to love me,—not that he did,—and then I saw himrunning back towards the house. The next I saw was my own sword naked inmy hand, and he lying at my feet stark dead,—dabbled here and there withblood, but otherwise no different from what I had seen him in hissleep—in the same attitude too, with his cheek resting upon his littlehand.

  I took him in my arms and laid him—very gently now that he was dead—in athicket. My wife was from home that day, and would not return until thenext. Our bedroom window, the only sleeping-room on that side of thehouse, was but a few feet from the ground, and I resolved to descend fromit at night and bury him in the garden. I had no thought that I hadfailed in my design, no thought that the water would be dragged andnothing found, that the money must now lie waste, since I must encouragethe idea that the child was lost or stolen. All my thoughts were boundup and knotted together in the one absorbing necessity of hiding what Ihad done.

  How I felt when they came to tell me that the child was missing, when Iordered scouts in all directions, when I gasped and trembled at everyone’s approach, no tongue can tell or mind of man conceive. I buried himthat night. When I parted the boughs and looked into the dark thicket,there was a glow-worm shining like the visible spirit of God upon themurdered child. I glanced down into his grave when I had placed himthere, and still it gleamed upon his breast; an eye of fire looking up toHeaven in supplication to the stars that watched me at my work.

  I had to meet my wife, and break the news, and give her hope that thechild would soon be found. All this I did,—with some appearance, Isuppose, of being sincere, for I was the object of no suspicion. Thisdone, I sat at the bedroom window all day long, and watched the spotwhere the dreadful sec
ret lay.

  It was in a piece of ground which had been dug up to be newly turfed, andwhich I had chosen on that account, as the traces of my spade were lesslikely to attract attention. The men who laid down the grass must havethought me mad. I called to them continually to expedite their work, ranout and worked beside them, trod down the earth with my feet, and hurriedthem with frantic eagerness. They had finished their task before night,and then I thought myself comparatively safe.

  I slept,—not as men do who awake refreshed and cheerful, but I did sleep,passing from vague and shadowy dreams of being hunted down, to visions ofthe plot of grass, through which now a hand, and now a foot, and now thehead itself was starting out. At this point I always woke and stole tothe window, to make sure that it was not really so. That done, I creptto bed again; and thus I spent the night in fits and starts, getting upand lying down full twenty times, and dreaming the same dream over andover again,—which was far worse than lying awake, for every dream had awhole night’s suffering of its own. Once I thought the child was alive,and that I had never tried to kill him. To wake from that dream was themost dreadful agony of all.

  The next day I sat at the window again, never once taking my eyes fromthe place, which, although it was covered by the grass, was as plain tome—its shape, its size, its depth, its jagged sides, and all—as if it hadbeen open to the light of day. When a servant walked across it, I feltas if he must sink in; when he had passed, I looked to see that his feethad not worn the edges. If a bird lighted there, I was in terror lest bysome tremendous interposition it should be instrumental in the discovery;if a breath of air sighed across it, to me it whispered murder. Therewas not a sight or a sound—how ordinary, mean, or unimportant soever—butwas fraught with fear. And in this state of ceaseless watching I spentthree days.

  On the fourth there came to the gate one who had served with me abroad,accompanied by a brother officer of his whom I had never seen. I feltthat I could not bear to be out of sight of the place. It was a summerevening, and I bade my people take a table and a flask of wine into thegarden. Then I sat down _with my chair upon the grave_, and beingassured that nobody could disturb it now without my knowledge, tried todrink and talk.

  They hoped that my wife was well,—that she was not obliged to keep herchamber,—that they had not frightened her away. What could I do but tellthem with a faltering tongue about the child? The officer whom I did notknow was a down-looking man, and kept his eyes upon the ground while Iwas speaking. Even that terrified me. I could not divest myself of theidea that he saw something there which caused him to suspect the truth.I asked him hurriedly if he supposed that—and stopped. ‘That the childhas been murdered?’ said he, looking mildly at me: ‘O no! what could aman gain by murdering a poor child?’ _I_ could have told him what a mangained by such a deed, no one better: but I held my peace and shivered aswith an ague.

  Mistaking my emotion, they were endeavouring to cheer me with the hopethat the boy would certainly be found,—great cheer that was for me!—whenwe heard a low deep howl, and presently there sprung over the wall twogreat dogs, who, bounding into the garden, repeated the baying sound wehad heard before.

  ‘Bloodhounds!’ cried my visitors.

  What need to tell me that! I had never seen one of that kind in all mylife, but I knew what they were and for what purpose they had come. Igrasped the elbows of my chair, and neither spoke nor moved.

  ‘They are of the genuine breed,’ said the man whom I had known abroad,‘and being out for exercise have no doubt escaped from their keeper.’

  Both he and his friend turned to look at the dogs, who with their nosesto the ground moved restlessly about, running to and fro, and up anddown, and across, and round in circles, careering about like wild things,and all this time taking no notice of us, but ever and again repeatingthe yell we had heard already, then dropping their noses to the groundagain and tracking earnestly here and there. They now began to snuff theearth more eagerly than they had done yet, and although they were stillvery restless, no longer beat about in such wide circuits, but kept nearto one spot, and constantly diminished the distance between themselvesand me.

  At last they came up close to the great chair on which I sat, and raisingtheir frightful howl once more, tried to tear away the wooden rails thatkept them from the ground beneath. I saw how I looked, in the faces ofthe two who were with me.

  ‘They scent some prey,’ said they, both together.

  ‘They scent no prey!’ cried I.

  ‘In Heaven’s name, move!’ said the one I knew, very earnestly, ‘or youwill be torn to pieces.’

  ‘Let them tear me from limb to limb, I’ll never leave this place!’ criedI. ‘Are dogs to hurry men to shameful deaths? Hew them down, cut themin pieces.’

  ‘There is some foul mystery here!’ said the officer whom I did not know,drawing his sword. ‘In King Charles’s name, assist me to secure thisman.’

  [Picture: Hunted down]

  They both set upon me and forced me away, though I fought and bit andcaught at them like a madman. After a struggle, they got me quietlybetween them; and then, my God! I saw the angry dogs tearing at theearth and throwing it up into the air like water.

  What more have I to tell? That I fell upon my knees, and with chatteringteeth confessed the truth, and prayed to be forgiven. That I have sincedenied, and now confess to it again. That I have been tried for thecrime, found guilty, and sentenced. That I have not the courage toanticipate my doom, or to bear up manfully against it. That I have nocompassion, no consolation, no hope, no friend. That my wife has happilylost for the time those faculties which would enable her to know mymisery or hers. That I am alone in this stone dungeon with my evilspirit, and that I die to-morrow. {255}