"Dislodged from your place, you may be," I now thought, as I stooped to take the book in my hand; "but never to be trampled on!"
I was interrupted by a voice, a groan, I thought from inside the dressing-room.
I was not quite certain; staring breathlessly at the door, I listened; no sound followed. I stepped to the door and knocked. No answer came. With my lips close to the door, and my hand upon the handle, I called, "Papa, papa, papa!" I was frightened; I pushed open the door, and hesitated. I called again, "Papa--answer, answer! Are you there, papa?" I was calling upon silence. With a little effort I stepped in.
The candle was burning on the table; there was a film of blue smoke hovering in the air--a faint smell of burning. I saw papa lying on the floor; he appeared to have dropped from the arm-chair, and to have fallen over on his back; a pistol lay by his half-open hand; the side of his face looked black and torn, as if a thunderbolt had scorched him, and a stream of blood seemed throbbing from his ear.
The smell of powder, the smoke, the pistol on the ground, told what had happened. Freezing with terror, I screamed the words, "Papa, papa! O God! speak! He's killed!" I was on my knees beside him; he was not quite dead. His eyes were fixed in the earnest stare of the last look, and there was a faint movement of the mouth, as if he were trying to speak. It was only for a few seconds. Then all motion ceased--his jaw fell--he was dead.
I staggered back against the wall, uttering a frightful scream.
Under excitement so tremendous as mine, people, I think, are more than half spiritualized. We seem to find ourselves translated from place to place by thought rather than effort.
It seemed to me only a second after I had left that frightful room, that I stood beside Miss Pounden's bed upstairs. She slept with not only her shutters, but the window open. It was so perfectly silent, the street as well as the house, that through the wall from the nursery next door I could faintly hear a little baby crying. The moonlight shone dazzlingly on the white curtains of Miss Pounden's bed. I shook her by the shoulder, and called her. She started up, and I remember the odd effect of her wide open eyes, lighted by the white reflection, and staring from the shadow at me with a horror that she caught from my looks.