For as her murderous perspective, before the doing
of the deed, however subtle the precautions for its
commission, would have been closed up by a gigantic
dilatation of the hateful figure, preventing her from
seeing any consequences beyond it; and as those consequences
would have rushed in, in an unimagined flood, the
moment the figure was laid low—which always
happens when a murder is done; so, now she sees that
when he used to be on the watch before her, and she
used to think, “if some mortal stroke would but
fall on this old man and take him from my way!”
it was but wishing that all he held against her in
his hand might be flung to the winds and chance-sown
in many places. So, too, with the wicked relief
she has felt in his death. What was his death
but the key-stone of a gloomy arch removed, and now
the arch begins to fall in a thousand fragments, each
crushing and mangling piecemeal!
Thus, a terrible impression steals upon and overshadows
her that from this pursuer, living or dead—obdurate
and imperturbable before her in his well-remembered
shape, or not more obdurate and imperturbable in his
coffin-bed—there is no escape but in death.
Hunted, she flies. The complication of her shame,
her dread, remorse, and misery, overwhelms her at
its height; and even her strength of self-reliance
is overturned and whirled away like a leaf before
a mighty wind.
She hurriedly addresses these lines to her husband,
seals, and leaves them on her table:
If I am sought for, or accused of, his murder, believe
that I am wholly innocent. Believe no other
good of me, for I am innocent of nothing else that
you have heard, or will hear, laid to my charge.
He prepared me, on that fatal night, for his disclosure
of my guilt to you. After he had left me, I
went out on pretence of walking in the garden where
I sometimes walk, but really to follow him and make
one last petition that he would not protract the dreadful
suspense on which I have been racked by him, you do
not know how long, but would mercifully strike next
morning.
I found his house dark and silent. I rang twice
at his door, but there was no reply, and I came home.
I have no home left. I will encumber you no
more. May you, in your just resentment, be able
to forget the unworthy woman on whom you have wasted
a most generous devotion—who avoids you
only with a deeper shame than that with which she
hurries from herself—and who writes this
last adieu.
She veils and dresses quickly, leaves all her jewels
and her money, listens, goes downstairs at a moment
when the hall is empty, opens and shuts the great
door, flutters away in the shrill frosty wind.
CHAPTER LVI
Pursuit
Copyrights
Bleak House from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
