Daylight was nearly gone when I reached the headland so I went to a
spot near the house, where I could watch. It was a glorious September
evening, and nature was on every hand beautiful. The flush of summer
had gone; but the decay of winter had not set in, and the cornfields
which had been shorn of their crops were by no means destitute of
loveliness. The fruit trees were laden with their crimson and golden
clusters, and the first tinge of brown that was just beginning to
appear only added to the beauty of the foliage I felt this rather than
saw it. The spell of the night exists more in my consciousness than in
my memory. The music of the waters comes back to me rather as a
half-forgotten dream than as anything I distinctly remember. My mind
was then too busy with other things. I was thinking of Ruth, Ruth
loving me through long years, and then dying of a broken heart.
Through the wilful deception of my brother and mother I had been bereft
of everything I loved. Through them I had sacrificed love, hope and
comforts; through them my darling--who loved me all the time--was
murdered. Oh! If I had but known. If I had but known we might have
been happy--so happy! But no, they had remorselessly pursued their
course, until they had killed my darling.
If I felt hatred on the morning I left home, I felt it ten times more
now. Then my hatred was blind hatred without knowing the reason, now I
knew that it only foreshadowed what should come after. It was a
prophetic power in my soul, which told me vaguely perhaps, but truly,
what my brother would do; now I realised it. Then, if I may so speak,
it was abstract, now it was concrete. What I had only dimly feared was
become a fact. Ruth, who had loved me, loved me without my knowledge,
had been killed, murdered, as truly as if an assassin had used a knife
or cudgel for his devilish work. Nay, it was worse, it was a slower
and more cruel death. She had died because of the fear that her life
was to be linked to a man she did not love.
I was very calm I remember, even though the fires of hell burnt in my
heart. After all, the anger which is most dangerous is not that which
raves and cries aloud, but that which makes no noise. Calm as I was, I
felt my muscles grow hard, and I had a kind of savage joy within me as
I pictured the death agony on his face and heard the death rattle in
his throat. Nevertheless, I would not act foolishly, and I set myself
to thinking how I could bring my desires to pass.
How should I enter the house? How should I be able to get Wilfred away
alone?
Surely, the powers of darkness were on my side, for while I waited and
watched I saw him come out of the tower entrance, and walk in the
direction of the gate that led out to the headland where I was.
"Ah!" said I, "God is going to give you into my hands. He is a just
God! He will not grant me love, but He will grant me hate, and He will
find a means of vengeance."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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