The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 60: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE MYSTERIES. But, O horror! what sound is that which now reaches the ears of Mrs. Brace and carries an ice- bolt to her heart? It is the rustling of a garment— the slight, faint, and scar.cly audible noise produced by a human being slowly turning upon a carpet. And that sound came from within a few feet of the horror- stricken woman—aye, from the very direction in which the corpse lay ! To say that she listened with breathless attention, were to inspire the idea that she had power over her respiration ;—whereas, this faculty had remained miraculously suspended from the instant that the tetanos commenced,— her bosom never rising nor sinking once the whole time, but resting stationary and pulseless like the bust of a marble statue. Had not the breath, however, been thus suspended under the influence of the miraculous trance, it would as- suredly have become so, and the blood would have turned to ice in the milliner’s veins, as that rustling sound stole gradually — gradual] y—gradually upon her ears. Conceive that woman chained as it were to the ground by the invisible and impalpable but not less adamantine bonds of a tremendous torpor which locked up the physical powers only, and left the moral perceptions to acquire a more poignant keen- ness from this total release of their allegiance to the substantial being ;—conceive her, we say, thus lying stretched upon her back as powerless and as help- less as if she were made of stone, and yet alive— Oh! God knows how painfully, acutely alive to every circumstance and every influence in any way affecting her ;—conceive her in this appalling posi. lion, with the harrowing conviction slowly, steadily, and surely stealing into her soul that the corpse of the murdered man was not only moving, but was actually creeping towards her! Talk of the horrors of churshyards oy night— talk of the hideous spectres which throng over the grave of the suicide in the cross-road—talk of the ghastly shapes which crowd around the gibbet to which the bleaching bones of the murderer hang— talk of the overwhelming terrors of the night-mare, —and all these, even when combined together, would fall far short in furnishing an adequate idea of the harrowing nature of those feelings which now took possession of the miserable murderess, Was it possible that the man had only been in a fit and had come back to life? No: this hypothesis was absurd—for the dose of poison was sufficient to kill a dozen men as powerful and as full of vigorous health as be:—and, moreover, had be not fallen from his chair as if suddenly struck by lightaing ?— aud had not she seen his corpse-like countenance fixed rigidly in death, ere the Jamp had been so mysteriously extinguished f Then—holy God! was it possible that new life had been infused into the dead man?—had the ter- rible anticipation of the milliner been sigoally and awfully fulfilled ?—and was the corpse endowed witb the motion, the power, and the will either to harm ‘or to affright her? Yes—all this was possible—as possible, she felt assured, that she herself could be thus invisibly enchained and thus stretched motion- lesa and powerless on the carpet by some miraculous and superhuman spell! But while these thoughts were whirling throagh ner brain, the rustling sound—that awful indication ef the movement of the dead—was approaching searer and nearer! Had it been a serpent winding its way towards her, and forcing upon her active injagination all the horrors of its undulating coile and slimy touch,—the effect would not have been half so appalling as was this preternatural, gradient, yet steady and persevering progress of a corpse through the black darkness which filled the chamber. Fearful as was the consternation which now sate upon the soul of Mrs. Brace, and harrowed as her feelings were, she nevertheless had clearness and vigour of perception sufficient to mark every charac- teristic, no matter how trivial, of the astounding in- cident that was now taking place. Thus, her ear becoming accustomed to the rustling sound, she was enabled to form a conjecture of the precise nature of the motion which the body must be undergoing in order to produce that exact noise; and she came to the conclusion that the corpse was being moved—or was moving itself, whichever it might be,—flat along the carpet upon its back. For five minutes did this awful portion of the supernatural drama last,—five mortal minutes, each appearing to be a century and each to contain the essence of whole ages of excruciating torture! At length the wretched woman became aware that the corpse was close beside her;—and yet nota hair's breadth could she recoil from the coming contact— not the distance of a pin’s point could she move a limb away! The natural impulse of an agonising horror was to contract her entire form even within herself, as it were: but this faculty was denied her —so strong, so insuperable was the magic spell thrown upon her by the tetanos. And now came the awful moment—a moment more fully fraught with undiluted horror than even that when the culprit upon the gallows feels the trap- door slipping away beneath his feet, or when the sailor who has fallen overboard in the southern seas hears the gush of the shark through the water close behind him. Such a moment was it—nay, a more harrowing one still, we affirm—that had now arrived in the existence of Mrs. Brace,—the moment when she felt the first marble-cold touch of the hand of the corpse ! And her own hand was it that thus experienced the initiative contact,—her own night hand which lay by her side as powerless and as completely petrified ao far as motion was concerned as all the rest of ber body! Slowly—slowly did the corpse pass its cold, cold hand over that of the milliner, who shuddered inwardly, but without contracting her form in any way or to the slightest degree. That shudder was a sensation—and not a movement,—a fecling—~and not a real tremor! From her own hand the hand of the corpse passed slowly up her arm, which was naked to a little above the elbow ;—and as the touch of the dead traced its way by very slow degrees over her own plump flesh, sbe could feel the animal heat in herself gradually retiring beneath the appalling contact which she was thus doomed to experience. Was it not—oh! was it not hell upon earth ?—and had not her punish- ment already begun in this world with a foretaste of the horrors of Satan’s Kingdom? Though she recoiled as it were within herself from this atrocious penance—though she revolted with a rending anguish against so diabolical a tor- ture,—yet did she remain in a condition of utter inability to make any real or effectual movement, Not to a hair’s-breadth could she suift her poui- tion: a living statue was she! 45 (CO (C (CO DOO