by John Galt
He sunk down upon a chair, and strange thoughts and forebodings passed through his excited mind.
“What is time?” he asked himself; “what is an hour? A machine artificially produced by human hands determines it, regulates it, and gives to life its significance, and to the mind its warnings. The awe which accompanies the midnight hour does not affect us if the hand of the watch goes wrong. The clock is the despot of man; regulating the actions both of king and beggars. Nay, it is the ruler of time, which has subjected itself to its authority. The clock determines the very thoughts as well as the actions of man; it is the propelling wheel of the human species. The maiden who reposes delighted in the arms of her lover trembles when the ruthless clock strikes the hour which tears him from her. Her grief, her entreaties are all in vain. He must away, for the clock has ordered it. The murderer trembles in the full enjoyment of his fortune, for his eye falls on the hands of the clock, and they denote the hour when the already broken eye of the man he murdered looked upon him for the last time. In vain he endeavored to smile; it is beyond his power; for the clock has spoken, and his conscience awakes when he thinks of the horror of that hour. Shuddering with the feverish chill of mental anguish, the condemned culprit looks upon the clock, the hand of which, slowly moving, brings nearer and nearer the hour of his death. It is not the rising and setting of the sun, it is not the light of day, that determines destruction; but the clock. When the hand, with cruel indifference, moves on and touches the figure of the hour which the judge has appointed for his death, the doors of the dungeon open, and he has ceased to live. As long as we live we are governed by the hour, and death alone frees us from the hour and the clock! Perhaps the whole of eternity, with its bliss, is nothing but an hour-less, clock-less existence; eternal, because without measure; blissful, because not bound to a measured time.”
Manfred had once more entered the desolate residence of his deceased friend, and stood mourning by the corpse, the face of which bore, in its stiffened features, the peace which Karl had never known in life.
He thought of the life of the deceased—how poor it was in joy, and how, during the four years he had known him, he had never seen him smile. Tears came into his eyes, and he turned away from the corpse. Then his glance fell upon the black spot in the floor. The whole frightful scene of the preceding day revived in his soul, and the thought suddenly struck him, whether there might not be some connection between that particular spot and the strange excitement of Karl. Fearful suspicions crossed his mind; he thought how often conscience had unmasked he criminal, in the hour of death; he remembered the frequent mysterious gloom of his friend; he remembered the wife with whom he had long lived unhappily, from whom he had been separated, and after whose residence Manfred had often inquired. On this subject Karl had always preserved silence, and often broke out into an unusual warmth. He reflected with what obstinacy Karl remained in this room, although Manfred had often and earnestly entreated him as a friend and near relative, to go into his house. Nay, he now recollected quite clearly, that in the newspaper in which, years before, he had read the arrival of Count Karl Manfred, it was stated that he had arrived with his wife. A few weeks after he had read of his relative, Manfred had gone to him, and found him alone; and when Karl told him of his separation from his wife, had inquired no further.
All this now passed before his mind. He looked timidly back at the corpse, and it seemed to him as if this were scornfully nodding at him confirmation of his thoughts.
“I must have certainty,” he cried aloud, and stooped down to the floor. He now plainly perceived that the middle boards, upon which was the burn, were looser than the others, and that the nails, which must have been there firmly, and the marks of which were still plainly to be seen, were wanting. He tried to raise the middle board, which at first resisted, but at last gave way a little. With a piece of wood he knocked the thick knife deeper into the floor; the nails became more and more unfastened, and he lifted and pulled with all the might of anxiety and curiosity. With a loud crack the board gave way entirely; he raised it, and—sight of horrors!—saw that a skeleton lay stretched out beneath. Manfred at first almost fainted; then, feeling how necessary was calmness and presence of mind, he collected himself with a strong effort, and looked hard at the skeleton. It held a paper between its teeth, which Manfred, with averted face, drew forth. Opening it, he soon recognized the handwriting of Karl. The words were as follows:
“That no innocent person may be exposed to suspicion, I hereby declare that I, Karl Manfred, am the murderer of this woman. This declaration can never injure me, as I am determined never to quit this room before my death. The small, wretched house is my own property, and as I inhabit it alone, I am secure from discovery. When I am no more the secret will be unveiled, and for the finder of these lines I add, for nearer explanation, a short portion of the history of my life.
“I am the son of a collateral branch of the rich Count Manfred. My father was tolerably rich, and loved me; but he was haughty even to excess, and quite capable of sacrificing the happiness of his child to the pride he took in his ancestors. One day I went to the shop of a clock-maker to buy a watch. The clock-maker’s daughter stood at the counter in the place of her father; her beauty excited my admiration, her innocent air attracted me: I talked with her for a long time, and at last bought a valuable watch set with brilliants. I then departed, but returned in a few days, and again, and again; in short, we were enamored of each other. I told my father that I had resolved to marry the clockmaker’s daughter; he cursed me and disinherited me. But I persuaded my beloved to fly with me, and one night she robbed her father of his money and jewels, and effected her escape. We went far enough to remain undiscovered, and sold our brilliants, which, with the money we had taken, was enough to afford a considerable, nay, rather abundant fortune. As for the clock, which had been the cause of my acquaintance with my beloved Ulrica, I kept that constantly by me.
“Ulrica told me that her father had made it with her own hands. One day it stopped; I tried to wind it up, but all in vain, for it would not go. I laid it aside peevishly, and when, after some hours, I again took it in hand, it went. With a feeling of foreboding, inexplicable even to myself, I observed the hour, and some days afterwards read in the paper that Ulrica’s father had died a beggar. We, however, continued happy in our mutual love. Years had passed away, when, one evening, I received an invitation from one of my friends. I was on the point of going, when Ulrica asked me when I should return. I named a time; ‘Leave me your watch then,’ said she, ‘that I may know exactly the hour at which I am to expect you, and delight myself with the prospect of your return.’ I gave her the watch, and departed. When the appointed hour had arrived, I hastened back to my dwelling, entered Ulrica’s chamber, and—found her in the arms of one of my friends. She screamed with fright, while I stood petrified, and consequently unable to prevent the flight of the seducer. We remained opposite to each other, perfectly silent. ‘You must be more cautious,’ I said at last, and tried to smile; ‘you could have told by your watch when I was coming back, and when it was time to dismiss your other lover.’ At these words, I took the watch, and pointed at it scornfully. ‘It has stopped,’ said Ulrica, turning away. The watch had indeed stopped, and had thus deceived the deceiver, and caused the discovery of her crime. With unspeakable horror, I looked upon the watch, which I still held, when the hands slowly moved, and the watch was going. I swore to be revenged on the faithless woman, but preserved a bland exterior, and, with her, quitted the city. When, after a long journey, we arrived here, I enquired, whether it would be possible to purchase a small house, in which my wife and I might dwell alone. I soon found one, and paid almost the entire remains of my ready money, and entered it with Ulrica. At night, when she was asleep, I tied a handkerchief about her mouth, that her cries might not alarm the neighborhood, and called her by her name. She awoke, and when she saw my ferocious countenance, stooping over her, knew my intention at once. She lay motionless, and I whispered into her
ear: ‘I have awakened you, because I would not murder you in your sleep, and because I felt compelled to tell you why I kill you: it is because you have betrayed me.’ It is enough to say that I slew her. I had already turned the board from the floor, and now placed her in the cavity. I then took out the watch, as if, having betrayed the false one, it had a right to see how I revenged my wrong. It stood still, the unmoved hand pointing to the half-hour after midnight—the time when I murdered Ulrica. I laughed aloud, and sat down to write these lines. ‘Tomorrow morning I shall lock up my house, and travel for a time. When I return, the body will have decayed.’
Manfred had read the manuscript, shuddering, and having finished it, looked again on the corpse of his friend. It had changed frightfully. The features which before had been so calm and clearly marked now bore an aspect of despair, and were distorted by convulsions. At this moment the mysterious watch, which Count Manfred had put into his breast pocket, began its regular sound, but so very loudly, that Manfred could hear plainly, without taking it out, that the watch was going.
An irresistible feeling of horror came over poor Manfred. He darted out of the room, and hurried into his own residence, in which he locked himself for the entire day. He had laid the watch before him, stared at it, and fearful thoughts crossed his mind. On the following day he was calm, but could not summon resolution to see the corpse again. He caused it to be quietly buried. The house he had already bought of poor Karl for the sake of contributing something towards his support. Some nights after the burial, the stillness of night was broken by an alarm of fire, and at the very house in which Count Karl had lived. At first, as the house was uninhabited, the opinion prevailed that it had been purposely set on fire, but, as it had not been insured, this opinion gained no credence. Count Manfred set out on his travels, that with the various scenes of a wanderer’s life he might get rid of the gloomy mind that troubled him. The watch he took with him. He fancied that some great misfortune would befall him if he did not attend to it; he considered it as a sort of demon, always wore it, and regularly wound it up. For years it went well. Count Manfred had recovered his former cheerfulness, and indeed was happier than ever, for he loved and was loved in return. Dreaming of a happy future, he arose from his bed on the day appointed for his wedding. “I have slept long, perhaps too long,” he said to himself. He caught up his watch to see how late it was, but—the watch had stopped. A loud cry of anguish arose from his heart; he hurried on his clothes, and hastened to his bride. She was well and cheerful, and Manfred laughed at himself for his foolish superstition. However, when the wedding was over, he could not refrain from looking at his watch once more. It was going. After some weeks, Count Manfred discovered that the ill-omened watch had spoken truly after all. He had been deceived in his wife, and found that she would bring him nothing but unhappiness. A melancholy gloom took possession of the poor Count. For whole days he would stare at the watch, and grinning specters seemed to rise from the dial-plate and to dance around him in derision. In the morning, when he arose from his bed, he looked trembling at his watch, always expecting that it would stop, and thus indicate some new calamity. He felt revived, and breathed again, when the hands moved on, but yet, from hour to hour, he would cast anxious glances at the watch. His wife bore him a son, and the feeling of parental joy seemed to dissipate his gloom. In an unusually cheerful mood he was seen to play with his child, sitting for half the day at the cradle, and by his own smile teaching the little one to smile also. The very watch, which had been the torment of his soul, must now serve to amuse the child, who laughed when it was held to his ear, and he could hear the soft ticking. One day, however, as Manfred approached the cradle, he found the child uncommonly pale. His heart trembled with anxiety, and, following a momentary impulse, he drew out the watch—which stood still. With a fearful cry Manfred flung it from him, so that it sounded on the ground, and, scarcely in a state of consciousness, buried his face in his hands. The child fell into convulsions, and died in a few hours. Manfred was, at first, beside himself with grief; then he became still, and walked calm and uncomplaining around the room in which the corpse lay. Having struck his fist against something, he looked down, and saw that it was his watch, which was still on the floor. He picked it up and held it to his ear—it was going. Manfred laughed aloud, til he made the silent room echo frightfully with the sound. “Good! Good!” he cried, with an insane look. “You will not leave me, devil! Stop with me then!” From this time, it was his serious conviction that the spirit of Karl the murderer, whom he had called his friend, had found no rest in the grave, but had been placed in the watch, that it might hover round him as a messenger of evil. He ceased to think of, feel, hear anything but his watch; he wound it up, trembling, every evening, and kept awake, gazing upon it. Some months afterwards his wife bore him a daughter, and died in childbed. The news made no further impression upon Manfred than that he had looked at his watch, and whispered, “It has not stopped.”
When his newborn daughter was brought to him, he looked at her with indifference, and glancing at the watch said, “It will stop soon!”
His bodily strength soon gave way under this ceaseless anguish of mind. He fell into a violent fever, and, in a few weeks, was buried by the side of his son.
AN EVENING OF LUCY ASHTON’S, by Letitia Elizabeth Landon
(1833)
The autumn wind swung the branches of the old trees in the avenue heavily to and fro, and howled amid the battlements—now with a low moan, like that of deep grief; now with a shrill shriek, like that of the sufferer whose frame is wrenched in sudden agony. It was one of those dreary gales which bring thoughts of shipwrecks,—telling of the tall vessel, with her brave crew, tossed in the midnight sea, her sails riven, her guns thrown overboard, and the sailors holding a fierce revel, to shut out the presence of Death riding the black waves around them,—or of a desolate cottage on some lone sea-beach, a drifted boat on the rocks, and a bereaved widow weeping over the dead.
Lucy Ashton turned shivering from the casement. She had watched the stars one by one sink beneath the heavy cloud which, pall-like, had spread over the sky till it quenched even that last and lovely one with which, in a moment of maiden fantasy, she had linked her fate.
“For signs and for seasons are they,” said the youthful watcher, as she closed the lattice. “My light will soon be hidden, my little hour soon past.”
She threw herself into the arm-chair beside the hearth, and the lamp fell upon her beautiful but delicate face, from which the rose had long since departed; the blue veins were singularly distinct on the clear temples, and in the eye was that uncertain brightness which owes not its lustre to health. Her pale golden hair was drawn up in a knot at the top of her small and graceful head, and the rich mass shone as we might fancy shine the light tresses of an angel. The room was large, lofty, and comfortless, with cornices of black carved oak; in the midst stood a huge purple velvet bed, having a heavy bunch of hearse-like feathers at each corner; the walls were old; and the tapestry shook with every current of passing air, while the motion gave a mockery of life to its gaunt and faded group. The subject was mythological—the sacrifice of Niobe’s children. There were the many shapes of death from the young warrior to the laughing child; but all struck by the same inexorable fate. One figure in particular caught Lucy’s eye; it was a youthful female, and she thought it resembled herself: the outlines of the face certainly did, though “the gloss had dropped from the golden hair” of the picture sufferer.
“And yet,” murmured Lucy, “far happier than I! The shaft which struck her in youth did its work at once; but I bear the arrow in my heart that destroys me not. Well, well, its time will come!”
The flickering light of the enormous chimney, whose hearth was piled with turf and wood, now flung its long and variable shadows round the chamber; and the figures on the tapestry seemed animated with strange and ghastly life. Lucy felt their eyes fix upon her, and the thought of death came, cold and terrible. Ay; be resigned,
be hopeful, be brave as we will, death is an awful thing! The nailing down in that close black coffin—the lowering into the darksome grave—the damp mold, with its fearful dwellers, the slimy worm and the loathsome reptile, to be trampled upon you—these are the realities of dread and disgust! And then to die in youth—life unknown, un-enjoyed: no time to satiate of its pleasures, to weary of its troubles, to learn its wretchedness—to feel that you wish to live a little longer—that you could be happy!
“And,” added the miserable girl, “to know that he loves me—that he will kneel in the agony of a last despair by my grave! But no, no; they say he is vowed to another—a tall, dark, stately beauty—what am I, that he should be true to me?”
She wrung her hands, but the paroxysm was transitory; and fixing her eyes on the burning log, she sat listlessly watching the dancing flames that kept struggling through the smoke.
“May I come in, Miss Ashton?” said a voice at the door; and, without waiting for an answer, an old crone entered. She approached the hearth, placed in a warm nook a tankard of mulled wine and plate of spiced apples, drew a low and cushioned settle forward, seated herself, and whispered in a subdued, yet hissing tone, “I thought you would be lonely, so I came up for half an hour’s chat: it is the very night for some of your favorite stories.”
Lucy started from her recumbent position, cast a frightened glance around, and seemed for the first time sensible of her companion’s presence.
“Ah! is it you, Dame Addison? sooth it is but a dreary evening, and I am glad of a companion—these old rooms are so gloomy.”
“You may well say so, for they have many a gloomy memory; the wife has wept for her husband, and the mother for her child; and the hand of the son has been against his father, and that of the father against his son. Why, look at yonder wainscot; see you no dark stains? In this very room—”