self-restraint attendant on the consistent maintenance of the imposture in which she had embarked, were slowly consuming her natural spirits and sapping her strength; during those years of external prosperity she had known little peace, for He whom she had forsaken took his place permanently in her thoughts beside Him whom she had deceived.
Catherine could not forget all that she would; inextinguishable memories and an unwonted tenderness for lost friends and former scenes came over her in her sickness; she found it very difficult to smother these feelings sometimes. The fragrance of her native bean-fields was remembered among the orange-trees of Italy; the shadow of the tall churchyard elms still reached her there; the cheery chiming or measured tolling of the bells in the belfry beside her early home; and the sullen murmurings of that distant restless northern sea.
But the season for the indulgence of mournful sentiments and subdued regrets was past; the uncontrollable terrors of death and judgment were upon her. If she would do anything, it must be done quickly—some decision was imperative; and her heart failed within her as she seemed to be sinking lower and lower in her tenderly guarded deathbed. She could not deceive herself; her crime was utterly selfish. Happily, no voice ever called her mother. No children were born of her second worthless marriage, to give her a motive, colourable even to herself, for maintaining her successful deception. Maternal affection could not interpose to mask the enormity of any part of her guilt; and all that she had acquired, at such a ruinous price, was passing from her,—and become, long before dissolution, entirely void, indifferent, and wearisome. Of the many luxuries with which her lover had surrounded her,—of all the costly, beautiful, and delicious things that she had won or worn,—only a bed to die upon, only some cold water to moisten her lips, could she use or accept then. In her state of painful langour, even the gentle tokens of that lover’s inextinguishable affection, were a trial and trouble to her. Had she dared to act according to her inclinations, she would have thrust away the hand that imprisoned her own, and the fine young face that pressed towards hers. She would have motioned him to stand aside, and turned her face to the wall, while an avenging conscience wrung from her proud, unwilling spirit the graceless and tardy resolution to confess her hidden guilt before, but only just before, she died. She knew that this revelation must change the beloved and honoured wife, the dignified lady of title, into a criminal impostor, with the branding irons, and all the horrors of the prisons of the time, before her. No wonder that she did not wish to survive her confession one hour; her plan was to make it at the last, the very last, and to be gone!
When exhaustion and unconsciousness would have been quieting human care in almost any other brain, that which worked under the pale high forehead before me was engaged in calculating the amount of her diminishing strength, and keeping watch lest death should surprise her before she had completed the work which she had reserved for the last minutes of her life; and she was able to execute her plan, and to time her confession with the utmost accuracy.
She had not over-estimated the strength of her own will, or the tenacious vitality of her brain; she could act deliberately, and reason, after her speech was gone; her mind could dictate, and her hand obey then, and she made signs for pen and ink. With the death-dews bursting over her forehead, she lived to complete these sentences, which, containing no superfluous syllable, reveal the truth, and indicate faintly her own slow repentance.
“I am the wife of the Rev. Alexander St. George, Vicar of Stoke, in Dashshire. My maiden name was Catherine Hancomb. My last request is to be buried at Stoke.”
Great was the dismay of Lord Dalrie on reading the contents of the paper which fell from beneath his wife’s fingers, as her ears closed against his passionate appeals for explanation.
She was gone before he had gathered the astounding meaning of the lines she had written. At first he discredited them altogether: it was quite impossible to believe that the dear companion of his happiest years was so strangely guilty. A shocking hallucination had passed before a diseased and fading mind; the indistinct remembrance of some trouble connected with her early friends might have recurred to her in these last moments, and taken this confused and distressing form. Only one passage of that writing was intelligible to Lord Dalrie, and he instantly prepared to comply with her earnest request “to be buried at Stoke, in Dashshire.”
The body of this beautiful and much loved woman was carefully embalmed, and secured “in a very fine coffin decorated with six large silver plates;” it was then placed in a strong wooden case, which entirely concealed the ominous shape and hue of the burden within. The jewellery and handsome wardrobe which had belonged to the deceased were packed in other chests; and with this cumbrous baggage the young Viscount set forth on his mournful and tedious pilgrimage, from Verona, by land, to the coast of France. The ordinary difficulties of such a journey in those days seem almost incredible in these; but Lord Dalrie considered neither trouble nor cost; he derived his only consolation from fulfilling Catherine’s dying wishes.
Most probably the lurking doubts which must have beset him gathered strength by the way, for we find him engaging a ship to carry him and his freight to Dover, under the assumed name of Mr. Williams, a Hamburg merchant; and he does not seem to have retained a single attendant in his service. On landing, he discharged this vessel, thus destroying one more clue to detection; and he hired another to convey him and his chests to the seaport which lay nearest the village of Stoke. However, all his calculations were disconcerted by contrary winds, which drove him into the harbour of H, several miles lower down the coast. It was here that the Custom-house officers came upon the scene. Though the signature of the King of France was appended to the carefully