Page:The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.djvu/158

108 W POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF

I was not mad, but only dreading- that I might one day become so I And how I used to laugh for joy, when I was alone, and thought how well I kept ray secret, and how quickly my kind friends would have fallen from me, if they had known the truth. I could have screamed with ecstacy when I dined alone with some tine roaring fellow, to think how pale he would have turned, and how fast he would have run, if he had known that the dear friend who sat close to him, sharpening a bright glittering knife, was a madman with all the power, and half the will, to plunge it in his heart. Oh, it was a merry life I

" Riches became mine, wealth poured in upon me, and I rioted in pleasures enhanced a thousand fold to me by the consciousness of my well-kept secret. I inherited an estate. The law — the eagle-eyed law itself, had been deceived, and had handed over disputed thousands to a madman's hands. Where was the wit of the sharp-sighted men of sound mind ? Where the dexterity of the lawyers, eager to discover a flaw ? The madman's cunning had over-reached them all.

" I had money. How I was courted ! I spent it profusely. How I was praised ! How those three proud overbearing brothers humbled themselves before me ! The old white-headed father, too— such deference — such respect — such devoted friendship — why he worshipped me. The old man had a daughter, and the young men a sister; and all the five were poor. I was rich ; and when I married the girl, I saw a smile of triumph play upon the faces of her needy relatives, as they thought 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 sister's aappiness against her husband's gold. The lightest feather I blow into ihe 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 bewil- dered 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 don't 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