“And what do you think I can do for you?”
“I don’t know. I thought you could tell me something. I cannot live like this! If I had but thought before I did it, and killed myself instead of her! It would have done so much better! Of course I should be in hell now, but that would be all right, and this is all wrong. I have no right to be lying here and Emmeline in her grave. I know I deserve to be miserable for ever and ever, and I don’t want not to be miserable--that is all right--but there is something in this wretchedness that I cannot bear. Tell me something to make me able to endure my misery. That is what you can do for me. I don’t want to go mad. And what is worst of all, I have made my sister miserable, and I can’t bear to see it. She is wasting away with it. And besides I fancy she loves George Bascombe--and who would marry the sister of a murderer? And now she has begun to come to me again--in the daytime--I mean Emmeline!--or I have begun to see her again--I don’t know which;--perhaps she is always there, only I don’t always see her--and it don’t much matter which. Only if other people were to see her!--While she is there nothing could persuade me I do not see her, but afterwards I am not so sure that I did. And at night I keep dreaming the horrible thing over and over again; and the agony is to think I shall never get rid of it, and never never feel clean again. To be for ever and ever a murderer and people not know it, is more than I CAN bear.”
Not seeing yet what he had to say, but knowing that scintillation the smallest is light, the curate let the talk take its natural course, and said the next thing that came to him.
“How do you feel when you think that you may yet be found out?” he asked.
“At first I was more afraid of that than of anything else. Then after that danger seemed past, I was afraid of the life to come. That fear left me next, and now it is the thing itself that is always haunting me. I often wish they would come and take me, and deliver me from myself. It would be a comfort to have it all known, and never need to start again. I think I could even bear to see her in the prison. If it would annihilate the deed, or bring Emmeline back, I cannot tell you how gladly I would be hanged. I would, indeed, Mr. Wingfold. I I hope you will believe me, though I don’t deserve it.”