Francis A. Durivage

The Rifle Shot

A Madman’s Confession

 

 

It is midnight. The stealthy step of the restless maniac is no longer heard in the long, cheerless corridors; the ravings of the incurable cannot penetrate the deep walls of the cells in which their despair is immured; even the guardians of the establishment are asleep.

 

Without, what silence! The branches of the immemorial trees hang pendulous and motionless; the last railway train, with its monster eyes of light, has thundered by. The neighboring city seems like one vast mausoleum, over which the silent stars are keeping watch and ward, and weeping silvery dew like angels' tears. Only crime and despair are sleepless.

 

To my task. They allow me a lamp. They are not afraid that the madman will fire his living tomb and perish in the ruins. Wise men of science! Cunning readers of the human heart, your decrees are infallible. I am mad. But perhaps some eager individual whose eyes shall rest upon these pages will pronounce a different sentence; perhaps he may know how to distinguish crime from madness.

 

A vision of my youth comes over me—a happy boyhood—a tree-embowered home, babbling brooks, fertile lawns—a father's blessing—a mother's kiss that was both joy and blessing—a brother's brave and tender friendship—and first love, that dearest, sweetest, holiest charm of all. O God! that those things were and are not! It is agony to recall them.

 

Pass, too, the brief Elysian period of wedded love. Julia sleeps well in her woodland grave. I was false to her memory.

 

If my boyhood were happy, my manhood was a melancholy one. A morbid temperament, fostered by indulgence, dropped poison even in the cup of bliss. I loved and I hated with intensity.

 

To my widowed home came, after the death of my wife, my fair cousin Amy, and my young brother Norman. Both were orphans like myself. Amy was a glorious young creature—my antithesis in every respect. She was light hearted, I was melancholy; she was beautiful,

I ill favored; she was young, I past the middle age of life, arrived at that period when philosophers falsely tell us that the pulses beat moderately, the blood flows temperately, and the heart is tranquil. Fools! the fierce passions of the soul belong not to the period of youth or early manhood. But let my story illustrate my position.

 

Amy filled my lonely home with mirth and music. She rose with the lark, and carolled as wildly and gayly the livelong day, till, like a child tired of play, she sank from very exhaustion on her pure and peaceful couch. Norman was her playmate. In early manhood he retained the buoyant and elastic spirit of his youth. His was one of those natures which never grow old. Have you ever noticed one of those aged men, whose fresh cheeks and bright eyes, and ardent sympathy with all that is youthful and animated, belie the chronicle of Time? Such might have been the age of Norman, had not——But I am anticipating.

 

Between my cold and exhausted nature and Amy's warm, fresh heart, you might have supposed that there could have been no union. Yet she loved me warmly and well—loved me as a friend and father. I returned her pure and innocent affection with a fierce passion. I longed to possess her. The memory of her I had loved and lost was but as the breath on the surface of a steel mirror, which heat displaces and obliterates.

 

I was not long in perceiving the exact state of her feelings towards me, and with that knowledge came the instantaneous conviction of her fondness for my brother, so well calculated to inspire a young girl's love. I watched them with the keen and angry eyes of jealousy. I followed them in their walks; I played the eavesdropper, and caught up the words of their innocent conversation, endeavoring to turn them to their disadvantage. By degrees I came to hate Norman; and what equals in intensity a brother's hate? It surpasses the hate of woman.

 

In the insanity of my passion—then I was insane indeed—I sought to rival my brother in all those things in which he was my superior.

He was fond of field sports, and a master of all athletic exercises; he was fond of bringing home the trophies of his manly skill and displaying them in the eyes of his mistress. He could bring down the hawk from the clouds, or arrest the career of the deer in full spring. I practised shooting, and failed miserably. His good-natured smile at my maladroitness I treasured up as a deadly wrong. While he rode fearlessly, I trembled at the thought of a leap. He danced gracefully and lightly; my awkward attempts at waltzing made both Amy and her lover smile.

 

But in mental accomplishments I was the superior of Norman; and in my capacity of teacher both to Amy and my brother, I had ample opportunity of displaying the powers of my mind.

 

Amy was gifted with quick intelligence; Norman was a dull scholar. What pleasure I took in humbling him in the eyes of his mistress! what asperity and scorn I threw into my pedantic rebukes! Norman was astonished and wounded at my manner. As he was in a good degree dependent on me, as he owed to me his nurture, sustenance, and training, I took full advantage of our relative position. With well-feigned earnestness and sorrow, I exaggerated my pecuniary embarrassments, and pointed out to him the necessity of his providing for himself, suggesting, with tears in my eyes, that he must adopt some servile trade or calling, as his melancholy deficiencies precluded the possibility of his success in any other line.

 

Norman had little care for money. Before the fatal advent of Amy, I had supplied him freely with the means of gratifying his tastes; but when I found that he expended his allowance in presents for his fair cousin, on the plea of hard necessity I restricted his supplies, and finally limited him to a pittance, which only a feeble regard for the memory of our indulgent mother forced me to grant.

 

One day—I remember it well—he came to me with joy depicted in his countenance, and displayed a recent purchase, the fruits of his forced economy. It was a fine rifle; and he urged me and Amy to come and see him make a trial of the weapon. I rebuked him for his extravagance with a sharpness which brought tears into his eyes—but I consented to witness the trial. His first shot centered the target.

He loaded again, and handed the weapon to me. My bullet was nowhere to be found. Norman's second shot lapped his first. Mine was again wide of the mark. Norman laughed thoughtlessly. Amy looked grave, for with a woman's quickness she had guessed at the truth of my feelings. I cut the scene short by summoning both to their studies. That morning Norman, whose thoughts were with his rifle, blundered sadly in his mathematics, and I rebuked him with more than my usual asperity.

 

Be it understood that my character stood high with the world. I was not undistinguished in public life, and had the rare good fortune to conciliate both parties. I was a working man in many charitable and philanthropic societies. I was a member of a church, and looked up to as a model of piety. As a husband and brother, I was held up as an example. I had so large a capital of character, I could deal in crime to an unlimited amount.

 

Some days after the occurrence just related, I was alone with my brother in the library.

 

"Come, Norman," said I, "leave those stupid books. Study is a poor business for a young free heart like yours. Leave books for old age and the rheumatism."

 

Norman sprang up joyously. "With all my heart, brother; I'm with you for a gallop or a ramble."

 

"I'm but a poor horseman, and an indifferent walker," I answered. "What do you say to a little rifle practice? I should like to try to mend my luck."

 

Norman's rifle was in his hand in a moment, and whistling his favorite spaniel, he sallied forth with me into the bright, sunshiny autumnal day. We hied to a hollow in the woods where he had set up a target. He made the first shot—a splendid one—and then reloaded the rifle.

 

"Take care," said he, "how you handle the trigger; you know the lock is an easy one—I am going to have it altered." And he went forward to set the target firmer in the ground, as his shot had shaken it.

 

He was twenty paces off—his back turned towards me. I lifted the rifle, and covered him with both sights. It was the work of a moment. My hand touched the trigger. A sharp report followed—the puff of blue smoke swirled upward—and my brother fell headlong to the ground. The bullet had gone crashing through his skull. He never moved.

 

A revulsion of feeling instantly followed. All the love of former years—all the tender passages of our boyhood—rushed through my brain in an instant. I flew to him and raised him from the earth. At sight of his pale face, beautiful in death, of his long bright locks dabbled in warm blood, I shrieked in despair. A mother bewailing her first born could not have felt her loss more keenly, or mourned it more wildly. Two or three woodmen rushed to the spot. They saw, as they supposed, the story at a glance. One of those accidents so common to the careless use of firearms—and I was proverbially unacquainted with their use—had produced the catastrophe. We were borne home, for I had fainted, and was as cold and lifeless as my victim. What passed during a day or two I scarcely remember.

 

Something of strange people in the house—of disconnected words of sympathy—of a coffin—a funeral—a pilgrimage to the woodland cemetery, where my parents and my wife slept—are all the memory records of those days.

 

Then I resumed the full possession of my senses. Amy's pale face and shadowy form were all that were left of her—my brother's seat at the table and the fireside were empty. But his clothes, his picture, his riding cap and spurs, a thousand trifles scattered round, called up his dread image every day to the fratricide. His dog left the house every morning, and came not back till evening. One day he was found dead in the graveyard where his master had been laid.

 

Amy clung to me with despairing love. She would talk of the lost one. She would find every day in me some resemblance to him.

Perhaps she would even have wedded in me the memory of the departed. But that thought was too horrible. I loved her no longer.

Friends came to condole with me. Every word of sympathy was a barbed arrow. I could bear it no longer. Conscience stung me not to madness, but confession. I repelled sympathy—I solicited denunciation. I told them I was my brother's murderer. I forced my confession on every one who would hear it. Then it became rumored about that my "fine mind," so they phrased it, had given way beneath the weight of sorrow. I was regarded with fear. A physician of my acquaintance made me a friendly visit, and shook his head when he heard my story. One day this gentleman invited me to ride in his carriage. He left me here. Society believes me mad—that I am not, is to me a miracle.

 

O ye wise ones of the earth,—legislators of the land,—would ye avenge the blood that has been spilt by violence on the ruthless murderer, would ye inflict punishment upon him, spare and slay him not. Take down the gallows, and in its place erect your prisons doubly strong, for there, within their ever-during walls of granite, lies the hell of the villain who has robbed his brother of his life.