The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector. William Carleton

The fury of domestic affection stimulated his heart, and blazed in his brain even to madness. His daughter was obliged to fly with her infant and conceal herself from his vengeance, though the unhappy girl, until the occurrence of that woful calamity, had been the solace and the sunshine of his life. The guilty seducer, however, was not doomed to escape the penalty of his crime. Morrissey—for that was the poor man's name—cared not for law; whether it was to recompense him for the degradation of his daughter, or to punish him for inflicting the vengeance of outraged nature upon the author of her ruin. What compensation could satisfy his heart for the infamy entailed upon her and him? what paltry damages from a jury could efface her shame or restore her innocence? Then, the man was poor, and to the poor, under such circumstances, there exists no law, and, consequently, no redress. He strove to picture to himself his beautiful and innocent child; but he could not bear to bring the image of her early and guiltless life near him. The injury was irreparable, and could only be atoned for by the blood of the destroyer. He could have seen her borne shameless and unpolluted to the grave, with the deep, but natural, sorrow of a father; he could have lived with her in destitution and misery; he could have begged with her through a hard and harsh world; he could have seen her pine in want; moan upon the bed of sickness; nay, more, he could have seen her spirit pass, as it were, to the God who gave it, so long as that spirit was guiltless, and her humble name without spot or stain; yes, he could have witnessed and borne all this, and the blessed memory of her virtues would have consoled him in his bereavement and his sorrow. But to reflect that she was trampled down into guilt and infamy by the foot of the licentious libertine, was an event that cried for blood; and blood he had, for he murdered the seducer, and that with an insatiable rapacity of revenge that was terrible. He literally battered the head of his victim out of all shape, and left him a dead and worthless mass of inanimate matter. The crime, though desperate, was openly committed, and there were sufficient witnesses at his trial to make it a short one. On that morning, neither arrest, nor friar, nor chaplain, nor jailer, nor sheriff could wring from him one single expression of regret or repentance for what he had done. The only reply he made them was this—“Don't trouble me; I knew what my fate was to be, and will die with satisfaction.”

      After cutting him down, his body, as we have said, was delivered to his friends, who, having wrapped it in a quilt, conveyed it on a common car to his own house, where he received the usual ablutions and offices of death, and was composed upon his own bed into that attitude of the grave which will never change.

      The house was nearly filled with grave and aged people, whose conversation was low, and impressed with solemnity, that originated from the painful and melancholy spirit of the event that had that morning taken place. A deal table was set lengthwise on the floor; on this were candles, pipes, and plates of cut tobacco. In the usual cases of death among the poor, the bed on which the corpse is stretched is festooned with white sheets, borrowed for the occasion from the wealthier neighbors. Here, however, there was nothing of the kind. The associations connected with murder were too appalling and terrible to place the rites required, either for the wake or funeral of the murderer, within the ordinary claims of humanity for these offices of civility to which we have alluded. In this instance none of the neighbors would lend sheets for what they considered an unholy purpose; the bed, therefore, on which the body lay had nothing to ornament it. A plain drugget quilt was his only covering, but he did not feel the want of a better.

      It was not the first time I had ever seen a corpse, but it was the first time I had ever seen that of a murderer. I looked upon it with an impression which it is difficult, if not impossible, to describe. I felt my nerves tingle, and my heart palpitate. To a young man, fresh, and filled with the light-hearted humanity of youth, approximation to such an object as then lay before me is a singular trial of feeling, and a painful test of moral courage. The sight, however, and the reflections connected with it, rendered a long contemplation of it impossible, and, besides, I had other objects to engage my attention. I now began to observe the friends and immediate connections of the deceased. In all, there were only seven or eight women, including his wife. There were four boys and no daughters; for, alas! I forgot to inform the reader that his fallen daughter was his only one; a fact which, notwithstanding his guilt, must surely stir up the elements of our humanity in mitigation of his madness.

      This house of mourning was, indeed, a strange, a solemn, and a peculiar one. The women sat near the bed upon stools, and such other seats as they had prepared. The wife and his two sisters were rocking themselves to and fro, as is the custom when manifesting profound sorrow in Irish wake-houses; the other women talked to each other in a low tone, amounting almost to a whisper. Their conduct was marked, in fact, by a grave and mysterious monotony; but after a little reflection, it soon became painfully intelligible. Here was shame, as well as guilt and sorrow—here was shame endeavoring to restrain sorrow; and hence the silence, and the struggle between them which it occasioned. The wife from time to time turned her heavy eyes upon the countenance of the corpse; and after the first sensations of awe had departed from me, I ventured to look upon it with a purpose of discovering in its features the lineaments of guilt. Owing to the nature of his death, that collapse which causes the flesh to shrink almost immediately after the spirit has departed was not visible here. The face was rather full and livid, but the expression was not such as penitence or a conviction of crime could be supposed to have left behind it. On the contrary, the whole countenance had somewhat of a placid look, and the general contour was unquestionably that of affection and benevolence.

      It was easy, however, to perceive that this agonizing restraint upon the feelings of that loving wife could not last long, and that the task which the poor woman was endeavoring to perform in deference to the conventional opinions of society was beyond her strength. Hers, indeed, was not a common nor an undivided sorrow; for, alas, she had not only the loss of her kind husband and his ignominious death to distract her, but the shame and degradation of their only daughter which occasioned it; and what a trial was that for a single heart! From time to time a deep back-drawing sob would proceed from her lips, and the eye was again fixed upon the still and unconscious features of her husband. At length the chord was touched, and the heart of the wife and mother could restrain itself no longer. The children had been for some time whispering together, evidently endeavoring to keep the youngest of them still; but they found it impossible—he must go to awaken his daddy. This was too much for them, and the poor things burst out into an uncontrollable wail of sorrow. The conversation among the spectators was immediately hushed; but the mother started to her feet, and turning to the bed, bent over it, and raised a cry of agony such as I never heard nor hope ever to hear again. She clapped her hands, and rocking herself up and down over him, gave vent to her accumulated grief, which now rushed like a torrent that had been dammed up and overcome its barriers, from her heart.

      “O Harry,” said she in Irish—but we translate it—“O Harry, the husband of the kind heart, the loving father, and the good man! O Harry, Harry, and is it come to this with you and me and our childre! They may say what they will, but you're not a murderer. It was your love for our unfortunate Nannie that made you do what you did. O, what was the world to you without her! Wasn't she the light of your eyes, and the sweet pulse of your loving heart! And did ever a girl love a father as she loved you, till the destroyer came across her—ay, the destroyer that left us as we now are, sunk in sorrow and misery that will never end in this world more! And now, what is she, and what has the destroyer made her? O, when I think of how you sought after her you loved as you did, to take her life, and when I think of how she that loved you as she did was forced to fly from the hand that would pluck out your own heart sooner than injure a hair of her head—so long as she was innocent—O, when I think of all this, and look upon you lying there now, and all for the love you bore her, how can my heart bear it, and how can I live. O, the destroyer, the villain! the devil! what has he wrought upon us! But, thank God, he is punished—the father's love punished him. They are liars! you are no murderer. The mother's heart within me tells me that you did what was right—you acted like a man, my husband. God bless you, and make your soul happy for its love to Nannie. I'll kiss you, Harry—I'll kiss you, my heart's treasure, for your noble deed—but O Harry, you don't know the lips of sorrow that kiss! you now. Sure they are the lips of your own Rose, that gave her young heart to you, and was happy for it. Don't feel ashamed, Harry; it's a good man's case to die the death you did, and be at rest, as I hope you are, for you are not a murderer; and if you are, it is only in the eye