The Wildfire Club - The Emma Hardinge Britten Archive

206 THE IMPROVVISATORE,
With curious wonder she would trace the falling masses
of some giant rock tom by the miner's powder from its old,
primeval bed, and speculate upon a crushed and mangled
form beneath, so it might be her husband's. Sometimes
she would picture a carriage plunging over a precipice her
very soul would shrink to dream of. Shrink? not she;
she would trace its downward crash - down, down, lower,
lower yet - tumbling over and over; while in secret joy
she saw its pale, dead inmate, all crushed and tom, dead
- dead! 0 that he were dead! The assassin's knife, or
poison by mistake - ah, yes, such things had been before.
Age after age, good men had died - torn, bruised, drowned,
poisoned, every way they had died, - ,vhy should not bad
ones die? And one, too, every way abhorrent in her path
- that path all clogged with ruin, if he lioed.
She had acted with such open desperation that now she
had no retreat. He· must not, cannot live. Something
will kill him. Ay, but what? In thought, at least, that
something might be murder; for she had murdered him in
thought and wish a thousand, thousand times.· And now,
when doleful winds sighed "murder II in her ear, the
thought embodied in this awful word seemed hateful. She
almost shrieked and started from herself-ran over rocks
and woods to fly from self. And when at last she sat her
down, oppressed and out of breath, beneath the shadow of
the ivied tower, no sooner was she composed, than once
again she wished that he was there, and that the tower
might fall and crush him; she would look on, gaze on his
mangled ferm, and mourn for him. The wotld would
sympathize and honor the noble widow, and all her woes
would end. And Ernest - he would come; and shebut
hark! The deep bells chime eleven. She counts the
beats. The last one sounds out" murder." She sleeps;
Digitized by Goqgle