1895
"When Lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth Sin: and Sin, when it is
finished, bringeth forth Death."
About sixty years ago, and somewhat more than twenty miles from the
ancient town of Chester, in a southward direction, there stood a large,
and, even then, an old-fashioned mansion-house. It lay in the midst of a
demesne of considerable extent, and richly wooded with venerable timber;
but, apart from the somber majesty of these giant groups, and the
varieties of the undulating ground on which they stood, there was little
that could be deemed attractive in the place. A certain air of neglect
and decay, and an indescribable gloom and melancholy, hung over it. In
darkness, it seemed darker than any other tract; when the moonlight fell
upon its glades and hollows, they looked spectral and awful, with a sort
of churchyard loneliness; and even when the blush of the morning kissed
its broad woodlands, there was a melancholy in the salute that saddened
rather than cheered the heart of the beholder.
This antique, melancholy, and neglected place, we shall call, for
distinctness sake, Gray Forest. It was then the property of the younger
son of a nobleman, once celebrated for his ability and his daring, but
who had long since passed to that land where human wisdom and courage
avail naught. The representative of this noble house resided at the
family mansion in Sussex, and the cadet, whose fortunes we mean to sketch
in these pages, lived upon the narrow margin of an encumbered income, in
a reserved and unsocial discontent, deep among the solemn shadows of the
old woods of Gray Forest.
The Hon. Richard Marston was now somewhere between forty and fifty years
of age--perhaps nearer the latter; he still, however, retained, in an
eminent degree, the traits of manly beauty, not the less remarkable for
its unquestionably haughty and passionate character. He had married a
beautiful girl, of good family, but without much money, somewhere about
eighteen years before; and two children, a son and a daughter, had been
the fruit of this union. The boy, Harry Marston, was at this time at
Cambridge; and his sister, scarcely fifteen, was at home with her
parents, and under the training of an accomplished governess, who had
been recommended to them by a noble relative of Mrs. Marston. She was a
native of France, but thoroughly mistress of the English language, and,
except for a foreign accent, which gave a certain prettiness to all she
said, she spoke it as perfectly as any native Englishwoman. This young
Frenchwoman was eminently handsome and attractive. Expressive, dark eyes,
a clear olive complexion, small even teeth, and a beautifully-dimpling
smile, more perhaps than a strictly classic regularity of features, were
the secrets of her unquestionable influence, at first sight, upon the
fancy of every man of taste who beheld her.
Mr. Marston's fortune, never very large, had been shattered by early
dissipation. Naturally of a proud and somewhat exacting temper, he
actively felt the mortifying consequences of his poverty. The want of
what he felt ought to have been his position and influence in the county
in which he resided, fretted and galled him; and he cherished a resentful
and bitter sense of every slight, imaginary or real, to which the same
fruitful source of annoyance and humiliation had exposed him. He held,
therefore, but little intercourse with the surrounding gentry, and that
little not of the pleasantest possible kind; for, not being himself in a
condition to entertain, in that style which accorded with his own ideas
of his station, he declined, as far as was compatible with good breeding,
all the proffered hospitalities of the neighborhood; and, from his wild
and neglected park, looked out upon the surrounding world in a spirit of
moroseness and defiance, very unlike, indeed, to that of neighborly
good-will.
In the midst, however, of many of the annoyances attendant upon crippled
means, he enjoyed a few of those shadowy indications of hereditary
importance, which are all the more dearly prized, as the substantial
accessories of wealth have disappeared. The mansion in which he dwelt
was, though old-fashioned, imposing in its aspect, and upon a scale
unequivocally aristocratic; its walls were hung with ancestral portraits,
and he managed to maintain about him a large and tolerably respectable
staff of servants. In addition to these, he had his extensive demesne,
his deer-park, and his unrivalled timber, wherewith to console himself;
and, in the consciousness of these possessions, he found some imperfect
assuagement of those bitter feelings of suppressed scorn and resentment,
which a sense of lost station and slighted importance engendered. Mr.
Marston's early habits had, unhappily, been of a kind to aggravate,
rather than alleviate, the annoyances incidental to reduced means. He had
been a gay man, a voluptuary, and a gambler. His vicious tastes had
survived the means of their gratification. His love for his wife had been
nothing more than one of those vehement and headstrong fancies, which, in
self-indulgent men, sometimes result in marriage, and which seldom
outlive the first few months of that life-long connection. Mrs. Marston
was a gentle, noble-minded woman. After agonies or disappointment, which
none ever suspected, she had at length learned to submit, in sad and
gentle acquiescence, to her fate. Those feelings, which had been the
charm of her young days, were gone, and, as she bitterly felt, forever.
For them there was no recall they could not return; and, without
complaint or reproach, she yielded to what she felt was inevitable. It
was impossible to look at Mrs. Marston, and not to discern, at a glance,
the ruin of a surpassingly beautiful woman; a good deal wasted, pale, and
chastened with a deep, untold sorrow, but still possessing the outlines,
both in face and form, of that noble beauty and matchless grace, which
had made her, in happier days, the admired of all observers. But equally
impossible was it to converse with her, for even a minute, without
hearing, in the gentle and melancholy music of her voice, the sad echoes
of those griefs to which her early beauty had been sacrificed, an undying
sense of lost love, and happiness departed, never to come again.
One morning, Mr. Marston had walked, as was his custom when he expected
the messenger who brought from the neighboring post office his letters,
some way down the broad, straight avenue, with its double rows of lofty
trees at each side, when he encountered the nimble emissary on his
return. He took the letter-bag in silence. It contained but two
letters--one addressed to "Mademoiselle de Barras, chez M. Marston," and
the other to himself. He took them both, dismissed the messenger, and
opening that addressed to himself, read as follows, while he slowly
retraced his steps towards the house:--
Dear Richard,
I am a whimsical fellow, as you doubtless remember, and have lately
grown, they tell me, rather hippish besides. I do not know to which
infirmity I am to attribute a sudden fancy that urges me to pay you a
visit, if you will admit me. To say truth, my dear Dick, I wish to see a
little of your part of the world, and, I will confess it, en passant, to
see a little of you too. I really wish to make acquaintance with your
family; and though they tell me my health is very much shaken, I must
say, in self-defense, I am not a troublesome inmate. I can perfectly take
care of myself, and need no nursing or caudling whatever. Will you
present this, my petition, to Mrs. Marston, and report her decision
thereon to me. Seriously, I know that your house may be full, or some
other contretemps may make it impracticable for me just now to invade
you. If it be so, tell me, my dear Richard, frankly, as my movements are
perfectly free, and my time all my own, so that I can arrange my visit to
suit your convenience.
--Yours, &c.,