Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1887 — AN AWFUL DOOM. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

AN AWFUL DOOM.

A Story of Doom.

BY EDWARD EU.

KLTHOITGH the dark old library seemed not (o have known an occupant for many months, the floor was strewn with closely-writ->n pages of manurijit, the ink was damp on the pen, the inkstand was sred. As the ohi nousneeper passed through Lvf *ar the ball, a strnn ß e cbillness \3n\Wjjsr in the air seemed to penetrate er verv mi,n, ° w * and a sound 'glWv as of a stifled groan met her ear. (jt ' She stood a moment at the library door. Again she felt the strange sensation; again she beard the stifled groan, and then she waited for no more, but ran, with every tooth in her head chattering, to the kitchen. After holding a whispered consultation with the servants.she stealthily approached the heavy onken door and cautiously tried it. The rusty bolt was drawn on the outside, as it had been for many a day. At one glance Mrs. Leaveustock saw this and precipitately retreated with a corps of frightened servants at her heels. As hastily as her rheumatic limbs would permit, the old housekeeper rushed up to her mistress’ boudoir and tapped at the door. In an instant she heard the welcome words, “Come in." Ab she entered, a boantiful, sad-faced woman looked tip from her reading, and a voice in which there was a tremor of sadness asked: “What is it, Mrs. Leavenstock?" “It’s the master himself, ma’am!” The book fell to the ground, and the tall, reclining figure rose quickly and asked in a tone that was almost husky: “What do .you mean, Mrs. Leavenstock?” “Oh, sokes olive, ma’am! don’t be uneasy. I didn’t mean anything ma’am, except that I just wanted to tell you ma’anr, that there’s something uncanny about that library below stairs—l’m just sure of it ma’am, and I can’t make out what it is Dohow, but every time I pass the door my old teeth rattle as *if they were going to break in a thousand tpieces. And I thonght I might ns well tell you about it one time as another, because I’d like to know, Mrs. Leslie, ma’am, if you’d have any objections to taking a peep yourself. It'd kind of ease my mind, ma’am. “Go into the library? Oh, I cannot!” and the gentle voice broke into a sob. “Excuse me, ma’am. I should not have asked you. I ought to have known how you would feel about it,” said the old housekeeper in a conscience-stricken tone, and a tear glistened in her faded eyes as she looked kindly at her young mistress. But Mrs. Leslie, with a great effort at selfcontrol, said calmly enough: “No, I think you were right, Mrs. Leavenstock. The library should be opened and nired. I will go down there now—you must get rid of these foolish notions of yours. I am ready to do anything to discourage such superstitious nonsense." Then as she prepared to lead the wav down stairs, Mrs. Leslie murmured in a low voice as if speaking to herself: “My darling, my love, that any one should fear yon!”

At the library door she paused. One ; year had passed since she had last entered j that dreary room. For a year she had worn j the widow's crape; for a year she had remembered daily the dreadful hour when kindly hands had led her into that room—and a pitying voice had 6aid to her: “It is over; be is dead.” Ah! if she would have guessed long before that such would be the end—that her happiness would be wrested suddenly from her, and dishonor and shame put in its stead. Overcome by , these sorrowful recollections, she stood I leaning against the door and finally arousing herself, turned to the housekeeper who ' stood behind her, followed by the curious servants, and said: “I will go into the j library alone. You may knock at the door | for me in half an hour." Mrs. Leavenstock muttered her acquiesence Awhile her mistress drawing back the rusty bolt, softly o.pened the heavy door. The room was lost in She drew back the thick green curtains and the level rays of the sun streamed in through the long, low Windows and fell over the heaty folds of ter trailing black gown—over the soft masses of her reddish brown hair—over her pale, sorrowful face and glisiened in the depths of her soft brown eyes. Tears lay in those soft eyes now, and tears were bands tightly clasped over her swelling heart: “Ah, Edwin! Edwin! how long ago it seems since you stood with me in this room looking into my eyes and holding my hands in yours; and how like yesterday seems that other day—that terrible afternoon when the mockigg sunlight fell over me as brightly ss it does at this moment! Ahnt! when will your name be washed clean, Edwin—when will the world see in yon the martyr to false accusations that I know yon to be?” These* and other broken, disconnected words fell from her lips as «be pared slowly up and down the room; suddenly, a chair drawn ont from its accustomed corner caught her eye. She languidly threw herself upon it, and, supporting her head npon her hand, bent her weary eyes upon the floor. She looked more earnestly as she perc lived that it was strewn with

bits of paper written over. Her eves mechanically roae to the deek,— it was disordered and covered with writing materials that looked as if they had but recently been put in use. With a sudden gasp, sho clutched the arms of her chair. “Could Mrs. Leavenstock be right?" The thought waa swiftly followed by a grasp of one of the papers lying on the floor. It was in the dear, familiar handwriting! She observed nothing else; that fact w as sufficient to send a tremor throngh her frame. The other scattered papers were hastily gathered from the floor, arranged in order, end closely clasped in her trembling hands while she composed her thoughts to read this Memoir from Hade*. •

“Is it years or days or months or centuries sines I stood on (hat death-bring-ing scaffolding and looked down, down hundreds of feet beneath me to the curious, upturned faces of that vast crowd of people and listened to the yell of execution that greeted my confession of gnilt—-guilt so supreme that the very scum of the aijls and the prisons turned from me in disgust. The black cap was drawn over my face. There were prayers said for the blackened sonl of this man whose iniquities could scarcely be expressed in human language. Prayers? With my last breath I laughed at the prayers that were echoing in my ears while they drew the awful bandage close around my neck. There was a rattling in my throat; an overwhelming, roaring wave of sound in my ears. My eyes were distended nqd sightless. Life ceased for me on earth and began for me in hell. There was first nn interval of silence and in this otter silence I felt that 1 was sinking through infinite depths in the darkness. A sadness flooded my heart, the hardened heart of a criminal. My imagination flew back to the years that I had forgotten. I waa once again a silenf,’ "sensitive child. Once again the spirit of innocence and of poverty dwelt within me. I lay under the trees that grew before onr ancient demesne and watched the waving blades of grass bend one over the other and their whispers fell nnd remained in the pure recesses of my heart. The singing birds warbled in a language familiar to me until, as I grew onward into . youth, suddenly one day the world around me was no longer an intelligible friend to me. Mv eyes were blurred, my ears were deafened, my face lost its innocent beantv, amt the poetry that had filled my heart vanished and gave place to the hideous reality called nil). I, who had been a human sensitive plant, becamo like the cactus, bard and insensible to a touch or a blow from without. My mind was as stunted in its grow th as a Northern lichen. Sin did not make a man of me as it did of Donatello; it dagged me down to the level of the beasts. When I reached manhood, 1 had long since overleaped the barrier that gentility put between me and crime. I had long since been classed by society among

the scum of the earth, among the vile currents that almost contaminate the stream of culture ami good-breeding from which they flow out. The one redeeming feature of my life was my love for a woman who was so beautiful and as innocent as I had been in my childhood. It was a woman who lovedme and who still loves'me—a woman who believed in me, and who believes in me still. But, even when I was sure of its possession, her love did not stipiultate me to virtue. I led a reckless, double life, a life of romance; and degradation, of refinement and of the lowest crime till, all at once, the truth crept into this sheltered home whose pearl had been promised to me. Irrefutable evidence against me was put in the hands of the enraged family, but when they cast me from among them there was one who refused to believe anything they said against me. Edith even then was faithful to me. She fell upon her knees before them and raised her hands to Heaven while she solemnly called God to witness how utterly she scorned the charges made against me, how utterly she trusted m me! And I knelt beside her and swore that I would not be unworthy of her faith and lover. In the inmost sanctuary: of mv heart, have I ever become so? Thus I went forth from her, as sorrowfully as Adam went from Paradise or Lucifer from Heaven, and with a step as weary and heavy as if I had been a Jewish leper sent with the curse of God upon me, into the .wilderness. So subtly did I live and breathe wilderness of crime-that my name ceased to be a sound of horror m the world. I was nuknown save as one of the masked leaders in the army of sin. Years went by. 1 was surfeited with guilt, but even in the midst of my wretchedness, like an echo from another world, came to me sometimes the memoijy of Edith’s smoothly musical voice of Edith's beautiful and, saintly face, Then, stranger than a dream of the night, it happened that the infamous truth which had covered my name receded from it again. The. world that had bruited my crimes from one corner of the earth to the other, suddenly declared me innocent, and thrust into life-long imprisonment a man who was the victim for my guilt, and who had been for years my unsuspecting tool. Society opened its doors to me once again, and ©nee again I saw the tall, lithe form and the pale, calm face of the woman I worshiped. * My heart once more beat wildly when I looked into her beautiful eyes, when I heard her gentle voice declare that to hie alone, would she give her Heart and her hand. And to me they were given. My ancestral. home came again into my possession, and there it was that the happy months rolled aw ay—there it was that my heart seemed to become softened and purified when Edith was ever at my side. Alas! how little did I know of Mrs, ——, my noble wife,! H©w little did she know of the vile undercurrent that existed unseen in the river of nifTife! 7 Years before. Jin appalling episode—-for a crime was naught else than on episode to me—bad stained my soul. I had half forgotten it. but there came to me one day the information that the emissaries of the secret police ever watchful and never forgetting, were on mv track. There was but one living witness of my guilt. was easy for me if this man were out of the way. I did nor —hesitate- lone. — T Life was precious to me, and this fresh dip into wickedness a mere bagatelle. I stole out from the house one day and when I re-entered this gloomy library, an other soul had been weighed in the balance of judgment, another soul had been sent by my red hands to an untimely account. My security was complete, I thought. Alas! I forgot how inevitably the wages of sin is death. I forgot that man never yet escaped the vengeance of God. And I was not to prove the solitary exception to this terrible

rule of justice. I was aroused from ms sleep one night by the isonnd of manv voices and the tramp of manv feet. I thonght it a nightmare when I wpice to find the house completely surrounded by armed police; to see the warrant of arrest under my eyes; to hear the handcuffs clanking on my wrists. It was no horrid dream—l was ’soon convinced for, iu one honr, I was sitting in a dark, narrow cel). The week* went by and as roy trial approached, th* prison was besieged by the morbidly curious cieatures, who clamored for a sigh l of the man who was loaded with mor« crimes—ghastly, revolting—than they conic number on their fingers. And Edith—th« angel of my life, tha queen of my soulsat with me day after day in that diugj prison cell till the day of trial grew near Through that I would not have her stay I would not have her know what I was though nothing, I believe, could eonvinci her that 1 was not the hero she believed me—nothing conld Convince h*r that I wn; the vile thing men called me. Friends were not lacking her; friends who were

ready to aid me whom they loathed, in all my plans for her. No tpngue whispered to her a syllable of the indictments against me. No person toid her that when the jury, without leaving their seats, gave in their verdict of guilty, the popnlnec stormed the jail in their eagerness to hasten the course of justice; that from one end of the town to the other, went the cry: “Lynch him! Lynch him!” ■Hut the law protected me, only to bring me down more surely to the felon’s grave. The wretched day approached, came, and was over that saw me leave the earth. My body lav with the murderer’s stigma upon it; my soul entered the frightful river whose waves are lurid flames, whose only motion is that caused by the sighs that quiver through its depth. From the earth above, came to my ears the moans and prayers of my gentle wife; the soleuiu wailing notes of the organ; the monotonous chant of the nriest nnd the response of his attendants. The anguish which earth cannot even conceive, took hold of my soul while cries and imprecations and hideous, rattling laughter burst from mill-, inns of despairing throats. “Forever nnd forever!” shriek , furious voices to me and my heart says still morn hopelessly: “Forever and forevermore shalt thou remain as a monument to the wisdom, the justice, the neglected mercies of God, and through thy own fault, thy blind and heedless fault it is that thou nrt eternally exiled from God, from Heaven, and from her!"

Every heart has its chords attuned to happiness—everlasting happiness. When suffering clouds its earthly bliss, harmony* still exists in these chords as when the yi,... •brations of a harp are cut Rbort by the hand falling over its strings, but when the misery of everlasting damnation falls over ■the soul, as harsh a discord reigns in the spirit—as utter a cessation of all melody us when the harp strings are cut in twain by some ruthless hand. In hell there Js no fellowship notwithstanding the universality of suffering, nnd even heli itself cannot compass our wretchedness. The universe is not large enough to contain the misery of one human being who is damned. It is only an immortal soul that can sustain it—that can render perpetual agony without annihilation. He who rules this realm of sin, gives us full permission o tread the earth when and where we will, for wherever we go, we carry bell within ns. Thus it is that wherever crime nnd wretchedness are omnipotent on earth, it is because n lost soul has passed that vay and left an atmosphere of guilt behind. It is this, perhaps, that drives me to inscribe these dreary words. A power stronger than myself forces me to w rite in earthly characters this story of earth and of hell. What matters it? Words cannot paint the despair of the damned, and here there are no intrusive eyes that will seek to know aught of tha secrets of hell. This house is not more silent than when my corpse lay hero in this dingy room. Edith has not entered this library sipce, nor will she do so till this paper into which these words are burning themselves, has mouldered into dust. Oh. Edith! - Edith! will I never cease to love you? CSSS I never, through the centuries that are to^come, clasp you again' in my arms, call you again my own? I do,not wander near the scenes of my atrocious crimes—l do not linger over any spot on earth hut this, where I was happy and almost good. Here in the old library where days of childhood and youth and manhood have been spent, I remain for such long periods of time that I almost believe myself consumed by sorrow and remorse. But false, false hopes!—oh,“worm that never dies!” At every instant I suffer more keenly and I grow more capablq of suffering. And so shall it bo. Almighty God! forever nnd forever unto all eterhity!” The violent knocking' on the oaken panels es the library door ceased after sundry vigorous repetitions during a full quarte-i of an hour. The door rolled slowly back i on its hinges and the old housekeeper’ahead was thrust carefully into the room. It was drawn back in afright, however, as her eyes met the dull senseless gaze of the figure that stood with outstretched arms and pale, rigid face in the center of the room. Edith had been released from sorrow’s clinging arms. Insanity had set her free as suddenly and as mercifully as the twilight releases the earth from the scorching embrace of the sun.

“ It’s the master himself , ma'am."

The victim for my guilt.

Insanity had set her free.