"Your own Julia."
And this was the writing which had employed her time for days
before the sad catastrophe! And it was for this reason that she
asked, with so much earnestness, if I had been to my office on the
day when I drove Edgerton out into the woods for the adjustment of
our issue? No wonder that she was anxious at that moment. How much
depended upon that simple and ordinary proceeding. Had I but gone
that day to my office as usual!......
There were no longer doubts. There could be none. There was now
no mystery. It was all clear. The most ambiguous portions of her
conduct had been as easily and simply explained as the rest. But it
availed nothing! The blow had fallen. I was an accursed man--truly
accursed, and miserably desolate.
I still sat, stolid, seemingly, as the insensible chair which
sustained me, when Kingsley came in. He took the papers from my
unresisting hands. He read them in silence. I heard but one sentence
from his lips, and it came from them unconsciously:-"Poor, poor girl!"
I looked round and started to my feet. The tears were on on manly
checks. I hatched none. My eyes were dry! The fountains of tears
seemed shut up, arid and dusty.
"I must make atonement!" I exclaimed. "I must deliver myself up to
justice!"
"This is madness," said he, seizing my arm as I was about to leave
the room.
"No: retribution only! I have destroyed her. I must make the only
atonement which is in my power. I must die!"
"What you design is none," he said solemnly. "Your death will atone
nothing. It is by living only that you can atone!"
"How?"
"By repentance! This is the grand--the only sovereign atonement which
the spirit of man can ever make. There is no other mode provided
in nature. The laws, which would take your life, would deprive you
of the means of atonement. This is due to God; it can be performed
only by living and suffering. Life is a duty because it is an ordeal.
You must preserve life, as a sacred trust, for this reason. Even
if you were a felon--one wilfully resolving and coldly executing
crime--you were yet bound to preserve life! Throw it away, and
though you comply with the demand of social laws, you forfeit the
only chance of making atonement to those which are far superior.
Rather pray that life may be spared you. It was with this merciful
purpose that God not only permitted Cain to live, but commanded
that none should slay him. You must live for this!"
"Yet I slew HER!"
He did with me as he pleased. Three days after beheld us on our way
to the rich empire of Texas--its plains, rich but barren--unstocked,
wild-running to waste with its tangled weeds--needing, imploring
the vigorous hand of cultivation. Even such, at that moment, was
my heart! Rich in fertile affections, yet gone to waste; waiting,
craving, praying for the hand of the cultivator!--Yet who now was
that cultivator?