Edgar Huntly | Page 2

this spot is equally
beyond my power. To keep thee in ignorance of what has happened
would justly offend thee. There is no method of informing thee except

by letter, and this method must I, therefore, adopt.
How short is the period that has elapsed since thou and I parted, and yet
how full of tumult and dismay has been my soul during that period!
What light has burst upon my ignorance of myself and of mankind!
How sudden and enormous the transition from uncertainty to
knowledge!
But let me recall my thoughts; let me struggle for so much composure
as will permit my pen to trace intelligible characters. Let me place in
order the incidents that are to compose my tale. I need not call on thee
to listen. The fate of Waldegrave was as fertile of torment to thee as to
me. His bloody and mysterious catastrophe equally awakened thy grief,
thy revenge, and thy curiosity. Thou wilt catch from my story every
horror and every sympathy which it paints. Thou wilt shudder with my
foreboding and dissolve with my tears. As the sister of my friend, and
as one who honours me with her affection, thou wilt share in all my
tasks and all my dangers.
You need not be reminded with what reluctance I left you. To reach
this place by evening was impossible, unless I had set out early in the
morning; but your society was too precious not to be enjoyed to the last
moment. It was indispensable to be here on Tuesday, but my duty
required no more than that I should arrive by sunrise on that day. To
travel during the night was productive of no formidable inconvenience.
The air was likely to be frosty and sharp, but these would not
incommode one who walked with speed. A nocturnal journey in
districts so romantic and wild as these, through which lay my road, was
more congenial to my temper than a noonday ramble.
By nightfall I was within ten miles of my uncle's house. As the
darkness increased, and I advanced on my way, my sensations sunk
into melancholy. The scene and the time reminded me of the friend
whom I had lost. I recalled his features, and accents, and gestures, and
mused with unutterable feelings on the circumstances of his death.
My recollections once more plunged me into anguish and perplexity.
Once more I asked, Who was his assassin? By what motives could he

be impelled to a deed like this? Waldegrave was pure from all offence.
His piety was rapturous. His benevolence was a stranger to remissness
or torpor. All who came within the sphere of his influence experienced
and acknowledged his benign activity. His friends were few, because
his habits were timid and reserved; but the existence of an enemy was
impossible.
I recalled the incidents of our last interview, my importunities that he
should postpone his ill-omened journey till the morning, his
inexplicable obstinacy, his resolution to set out on foot during a dark
and tempestuous night, and the horrible disaster that befell him.
The first intimation I received of this misfortune, the insanity of
vengeance and grief into which I was hurried, my fruitless searches for
the author of this guilt, my midnight wanderings and reveries beneath
the shade of that fatal elm, were revived and reacted. I heard the
discharge of the pistol, I witnessed the alarm of Inglefield, I heard his
calls to his servants, and saw them issue forth with lights and hasten to
the spot whence the sound had seemed to proceed. I beheld my friend,
stretched upon the earth, ghastly with a mortal wound, alone, with no
traces of the slayer visible, no tokens by which his place of refuge
might be sought, the motives of his enmity or his instruments of
mischief might be detected.
I hung over the dying youth, whose insensibility forbade him to
recognise his friend, or unfold the cause of his destruction. I
accompanied his remains to the grave; I tended the sacred spot where
he lay; I once more exercised my penetration and my zeal in pursuit of
his assassin. Once more my meditations and exertions were doomed to
be disappointed.
I need not remind thee of what is past. Time and reason seemed to have
dissolved the spell which made me deaf to the dictates of duty and
discretion. Remembrances had ceased to agonize, to urge me to
headlong acts and foster sanguinary purposes. The gloom was half
dispersed, and a radiance had succeeded sweeter than my former joys.
Now, by some unseen concurrence of reflections, my thoughts reverted

into some degree of bitterness. Methought that to ascertain the hand
who killed my friend was not impossible, and to punish the crime was
just. That to forbear inquiry