The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Old Time English
General
The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Old Time English
Detective and mystery stories; Fiction; Ghost stories
"But my children are there!" she cried in a
voice of unspeakable agony, as she seemed to make another effort;
"here I am--here I am come to save you.--Oh God! They are all
blazing!--Take this arm--no, not that, it is scorched and disabled--
well, any arm--take hold of my clothes--no, they are blazing too!--
Well, take me all on fire as I am!--And their hair, how it
hisses!--Water, one drop of water for my youngest--he is but an
infant--for my youngest, and let me burn!" She paused in horrid
silence, to watch the fall of a blazing rafter that was about to
shatter the staircase on which she stood.--"The roof has fallen on
my head!" she exclaimed. "The earth is weak, and all the
inhabitants thereof," chanted the weaver; "I bear up the pillars of
it."
The maniac marked the destruction of the spot where she thought she
stood by one desperate bound, accompanied by a wild shriek, and
then calmly gazed on her infants as they rolled over the scorching
fragments, and sunk into the abyss of fire below. "There they go,--
one--two--three--all!" and her voice sunk into low mutterings, and
her convulsions into faint, cold shudderings, like the sobbings of
a spent storm, as she imagined herself to "stand in safety and
despair," amid the thousand houseless wretches assembled in the
suburbs of London on the dreadful nights after the fire, without
food, roof, or raiment, all gazing on the burning ruins of their
dwellings and their property. She seemed to listen to their
complaints, and even repeated some of them very affectingly, but
invariably answered them with the same words, "But I have lost all
my children--all!" It was remarkable, that when this sufferer
began to rave, all the others became silent. The cry of nature
hushed every other cry,--she was the only patient in the house who
was not mad from politics, religion, ebriety, or some perverted
passion; and terrifying as the outbreak of her frenzy always was,
Stanton used to await it as a kind of relief from the dissonant,
melancholy, and ludicrous ravings of the others.
But the utmost efforts of his resolution began to sink under the
continued horrors of the place. The impression on his senses began
to defy the power of reason to resist them. He could not shut out
these frightful cries nightly repeated, nor the frightful sound of
the whip employed to still them. Hope began to fail him, as he
observed, that the submissive tranquillity (which he had imagined,
by obtaining increased indulgence, might contribute to his escape,
or perhaps convince the keeper of his sanity) was interpreted by
the callous ruffian, who was acquainted only with the varieties of
MADNESS, as a more refined species of that cunning which he was
well accustomed to watch and baffle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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