"Doctor Danvers, don't mistake me," he said, turning sharply, and fixing
his eyes with a strange expression upon his companion. "I dread nothing
human; I fear neither death, nor disgrace, nor eternity; I have no
secrets to keep--no exposures to apprehend; but I dread--I dread--"
He paused, scowled darkly, as if stung with pain, turned away, muttering
to himself, and gradually became much excited.
"I can't tell you now, sir, and I won't," he said, abruptly and fiercely,
and with a countenance darkened with a wild and appalling rage that was
wholly unaccountable. "I see you searching me with your eyes. Suspect
what you will, sir, you shan't inveigle me into admissions. Aye,
pry--whisper--stare--question, conjecture, sir--I suppose I must endure
the world's impertinence, but d----n me if I gratify it."
It would not be easy to describe Dr. Danvers' astonishment at this
unaccountable explosion of fury. He was resolved, however, to bear his
companion's violence with temper.
They rode on slowly for fully ten minutes in utter silence, except that
Marston occasionally muttered to himself, as it seemed, in excited
abstraction. Danvers had at first felt naturally offended at the violent
and insulting tone in which he had been so unexpectedly and unprovokedly
addressed; but this feeling of irritation was but transient, and some
fearful suspicions as to Marston's sanity flitted through his mind. In a
calmer and more dogged tone, his companion now addressed him:--
"There is little profit you see, doctor, in worrying me about your
religion," said Marston. "it is but sowing the wind, and reaping the
whirlwind; and, to say the truth, the longer you pursue it, the less I am
in the mood to listen. If ever you are cursed and persecuted as I have
been, you will understand how little tolerant of gratuitous vexations and
contradictions a man may become. We have squabbled over religion long
enough, and each holds his own faith still. Continue to sun yourself in
your happy delusions, and leave me untroubled to tread the way of my own
dark and cheerless destiny."
Thus saying, he made a sullen gesture of farewell, and spurring his
horse, crossed the broken fence at the roadside, and so, at a listless
pace, through gaps and by farm-roads, penetrated towards his melancholy
and guilty home.
Two years had now passed since the decisive event which had forever
separated Marston from her who had loved him so devotedly and so fatally;
two years to him of disappointment, abasement, and secret rage; two years
to her of gentle and heart-broken submission to the chastening hand of
heaven. At the end of this time she died. Marston read the letter that
announced the event with a stern look, and silently, but the shock he
felt was terrific. No man is so self-abandoned to despair and
degradation, that at some casual moment thoughts of amendment--some
gleams of hope, however faint and transient, from the distant
future--will not visit him. With Marston, those thoughts had somehow ever
been associated with vague ideas of a reconciliation with the being whom
he had forsaken--good and pure, and looking at her from the darkness and
distance of his own fallen state, almost angelic as she seemed. But she
was now dead; he could make her no atonement; she could never smile
forgiveness upon him. This long-familiar image--the last that had
reflected for him one ray of the lost peace and love of happier
times--had vanished, and henceforward there was before him nothing but
storm and fear.
Marston's embarrassed fortunes made it to him an object to resume the
portion of his income heretofore devoted to the separate maintenance of
his wife and daughter. In order to effect this it became, of course,
necessary to recall his daughter, Rhoda, and fix her residence once more
at Gray Forest. No more dreadful penalty could have been inflicted upon
the poor girl--no more agonizing ordeal than that she was thus doomed to
undergo. She had idolized her mother, and now adored her memory. She knew
that Mademoiselle de Barras had betrayed and indirectly murdered the
parent she had so devotedly loved; she knew that that woman had been the
curse, the fate of her family, and she regarded her naturally with
feelings of mingled terror and abhorrence, the intensity of which was
indescribable.
The few scattered friends and relatives, whose sympathies had been moved
by the melancholy fate of poor Mrs. Marston, were unanimously agreed that
the intended removal of the young and innocent daughter to the polluted
mansion of sin and shame, was too intolerably revolting to be permitted.
But each of these virtuous individuals unhappily thought it the duty of
the others to interpose; and with a running commentary of wonder and
reprobation, and much virtuous criticism, events were suffered
uninterruptedly to take their sinister and melancholy course.
It was about two months after the death of Mrs. Marston, and on a bleak
and ominous night at the wintry end of autumn, that poor Rhoda, in deep
mourning, and pale with grief and agitation, descended from a chaise at
the well-known door of the mansion of Gray Forest. Whether from
consideration for her feelings, or, as was more probable, from pure
indifference, Rhoda was conducted, on her arrival, direct to her own
chamber, and it was not until the next morning that she saw her father.
He entered her room unexpectedly, he was very pale, and as she thought,
greatly altered, but he seemed perfectly collected, and free from
agitation. The marked and even shocking change in his appearance, and
perhaps even the trifling though painful circumstance that he wore no
mourning for the beloved being who was gone, caused her, after a moment's
mute gazing in his face, to burst into an irrepressible flood of tears.
Marston waited stoically until the paroxysm had subsided, and then taking
her hand, with a look in which a dogged sternness was contending with
something like shame, he said:--
"There, there; you can weep when I am gone. I shan't say very much to you
at present, Rhoda, and only wish you to attend to me for one minute.
Listen, Rhoda; the lady whom you have been in the habit (here he slightly
averted his eyes) of calling Mademoiselle de Barras, is no longer so; she
is married; she is my wife, and consequently you will treat her with the
respect due to"--he would have said "a mother," but could not, and
supplied the phrase by adding, "to that relation."
Rhoda was unable to speak, but almost unconsciously bowed her head in
token of attention and submission, and her father pressed her hand more
kindly, as he continued:--
"I have always found you a dutiful and obedient child, Rhoda, and
expected no other conduct from you. Mrs. Marston will treat you with
proper kindness and consideration, and desires me to say that you can,
whenever you please, keep strictly to yourself, and need not, unless
you feel so disposed, attend the regular meals of the family. This
privilege may suit your present depressed spirits, and you must not
scruple to use it."
After a few words more, Marston withdrew, leaving his daughter to her
reflections, and bleak and bitter enough they were.
Some weeks passed away, and perhaps we shall best consult our readers'
ease by substituting for the formal precision of narrative, a few
extracts from the letters which Rhoda wrote to her brother, still at
Cambridge. These will convey her own impressions respecting the scenes
and personages among whom she was now to move.
"The house and place are much neglected, and the former in some parts
suffered almost to go to decay. The windows broken in the last storm,
nearly eight months ago, they tell me, are still unmended, and the roof,
too, unrepaired. The pretty garden, near the well, among the lime trees,
that our darling mother was so fond of, is all but obliterated with weeds
and grass, and since my first visit I have not had heart to go near it
again. All the old servants are gone; new faces everywhere.
"I have been obliged several times, through fear of offending my father,
to join the party in the drawing room. You may conceive what I felt at
seeing mademoiselle in the place once filled by our dear mamma, I was so
choked with sorrow, bitterness, and indignation, and my heart so
palpitated, that I could not speak, and I believe they thought I was
going to faint. Mademoiselle looked very angry, but my father pretending
to show me, heaven knows what, from the window, led me to it, and the
air revived me a little. Mademoiselle (for I cannot call her by her new
name) is altered a good deal--more, however, in the character than in the
contour of her face and figure. Certainly, however, she has grown a good
deal fuller, and her color is higher; and whether it is fancy or not, I
cannot say, but certainly to me it seems that the expression of her face
has acquired something habitually lowering and malicious, and which, I
know not how, inspires me with an undefinable dread. She has, however,
been tolerably civil to me, but seems contemptuous and rude to my father,
and I am afraid he is very wretched, I have seen them exchange such
looks, and overheard such intemperate and even appalling altercations
between them, as indicate something worse and deeper than ordinary
ill-will. This makes me additionally wretched, especially as I cannot
help thinking that some mysterious cause enables her to frighten and
tyrannise over my poor father. I sometimes think he absolutely detests
her; yet, though fiery altercations ensue, he ultimately submits to this
bad and cruel woman. Oh, my dear Charles, you have no idea of the
shocking, or rather the terrifying, reproaches I have heard interchanged
between them, as I accidently passed the room where they were
sitting--such terms as have sent me to my room, feeling as if I were
in a horrid dream, and made me cry and tremble for hours after I got
there.... I see my father very seldom, and when I do, he takes but little
notice of me.... Poor Willett, you know, returned with me. She
accompanies me in my walks, and is constantly dropping hints about
mademoiselle, from which I know not what to gather....
"I often fear that my father has some secret and mortal ailment. He
generally looks ill, and sometimes quite wretchedly. He came twice lately
to my room, I think to speak to me on some matter of importance; but he
said only a sentence or two, and even these broken and incoherent. He
seemed unable to command spirits for the interview; and, indeed, he grew
so agitated and strange, that I was alarmed, and felt greatly relieved
when he left me....
"I do not, you see, disguise my feelings, dear Charles; I do not conceal
from you the melancholy and anguish of my present situation. How
intensely I long for your promised arrival. I have not a creature to whom
I can say one word in confidence, except poor Willett; who, though very
good-natured, and really dear to me, is yet far from being a companion. I
sometimes think my intense anxiety to see you here is almost selfish; for
I know you will feel as acutely as I do, the terrible change observable
everywhere. But I cannot help longing for your return, dear Charles, and
counting the days and the very hours till you arrive....
"Be cautious, in writing to me, not to say anything which you would not
wish mademoiselle to see; for Willett tells me that she knows that she
often examines, and even intercepts the letters that arrive; and, though
Willett may be mistaken, and I hope she is, yet it is better that you
should be upon your guard. Ever since I heard this, I have brought my
letters to the post office myself, instead of leaving them with the rest
upon the hall table; and you know it is a long walk for me....
"I go to church every Sunday, and take Willett along with me. No one from
this seems to think of doing so but ourselves. I see the Mervyns there.
Mrs. Mervyn is particularly kind; and I know that she wishes to offer me
an asylum at Newton Park; and you cannot think with how much tenderness
and delicacy she conveys the wish. But I dare not hint the subject to my
father; and, earnestly as I desire it, I could not but feel that I should
go there, not to visit, but to reside. And so even in this, in many
respects, delightful project, is mingled the bitter apprehension of
dependence--something so humiliating, that, kindly and delicately as the
offer is made, I could not bring myself to embrace it. I have a great
deal to say to you, and long to see you."...
These extracts will enable the reader to form a tolerably accurate idea
of the general state of affairs at Gray Forest. Some particulars must,
however, be added.
Marston continued to be the same gloomy and joyless being as heretofore.
Sometimes moody and apathetic, sometimes wayward and even savage, but
never for a moment at ease, never social--an isolated, disdainful,
ruined man.
One day as Rhoda sate and read under the shade of some closely-interwoven
evergreens, in a lonely and sheltered part of the neglected
pleasure-grounds, with her honest maid Willett in attendance, she was
surprised by the sudden appearance of her father, who stood unexpectedly
before her. Though his attitude for some time was fixed, his countenance
was troubled with anxiety and pain, and his sunken eyes rested upon her
with a fiery and fretted gaze. He seemed lost in thought for a while, and
then, touching Willett sharply on the shoulder, said abruptly:
"Go; I shall call you when you are wanted. Walk down that alley." And,
as he spoke, he indicated with his walking-cane the course he desired
her to take.
When the maid was sufficiently distant to be quite out of hearing,
Marston sate down beside Rhoda upon the bench, and took her hand in
silence. His grasp was cold, and alternately relaxed and contracted
with an agitated uncertainty, while his eyes were fixed upon the
ground, and he seemed meditating how to open the conversation. At last,
as if suddenly awaking from a fearful reverie, he said--"You correspond
with Charles?"
"Yes, sir," she replied, with the respectful formality prescribed by the
usages of the time, "we correspond regularly."
"Aye, aye; and, pray, when did you last hear from him?" he continued.
"About a month since, sir," she replied.
"Ha--and--and--was there nothing strange--nothing--nothing mysterious and
menacing in his letter? Come, come, you know what I speak of." He stopped
abruptly, and stared in her face with an agitated gaze.
"No, indeed, sir; there was not anything of the kind," she replied.
"I have been greatly shocked, I may say incensed," said Marston
excitedly, "by a passage in his last letter to me. Not that it says
anything specific; but--but it amazes me--it enrages me."
He again checked himself, and Rhoda, much surprised, and even shocked,
said, stammeringly--
"I am sure, sir, that dear Charles would not intentionally say or do
anything that could offend you."
"Ah, as to that, I believe so, too. But it is not with him I am
indignant; no, no. Poor Charles! I believe he is, as you say, disposed to
conduct himself as a son ought to do, respectfully and obediently. Yes,
yes, Charles is very well; but I fear he is leading a bad life,
notwithstanding--a very bad life. He is becoming subject to influences
which never visit or torment the good; believe me, he is."
Marston shook his head, and muttered to himself, with a look of almost
craven anxiety, and then whispered to his daughter--
"Just read this, and then tell me is it not so. Read it, read it, and
pronounce."
As he thus spoke, he placed in her hand the letter of which he had
spoken, and with the passage to which he invited her attention folded
down. It was to the following effect:--
"I cannot tell you how shocked I have been by a piece of scandal, as I
must believe it, conveyed to me in an anonymous letter, and which is of
so very delicate a nature, that without your special command I should
hesitate to pain you by its recital. I trust it may be utterly false.
Indeed I assume it to be so. It is enough to say that it is of a very
distressing nature, and affects the lady (Mademoiselle de Barras) whom
you have recently honored with your hand."
"Now you see," cried Marston, with a shuddering fierceness, as she
returned the letter with a blanched cheek and trembling hand--"now you
see it all. Are you stupid?--the stamp of the cloven hoof--eh?"
Rhoda, unable to gather his meaning, but, at the same time, with a heart
full and trembling very much, stammered a few frightened words, and
became silent.
"It is he, I tell you, that does it all; and if Charles were not living
an evil life, he could not have spread his nets for him," said Marston,
vehemently. "He can't go near anything good; but, like a scoundrel, he
knows where to find a congenial nature; and when he does, he has skill
enough to practice upon it. I know him well, and his arts and his smiles;
aye, and his scowls and his grins, too. He goes, like his master, up and
down, and to and fro upon the earth, for ceaseless mischief. There is not
a friend of mine he can get hold of, but he whispered in his ear some
damned slander of me. He is drawing them all into a common understanding
against me; and he takes an actual pleasure in telling me how the thing
goes on--how, one after the other, he has converted my friends into
conspirators and libelers, to blast my character, and take my life, and
now the monster essays to lure my children into the hellish
confederation."
"Who is he, father, who is he?" faltered Rhoda.
"You never saw him," retorted Marston, sternly.
"No, no; you can't have seen him, and you probably never will; but if he
does come here again, don't listen to him. He is half-fiend and
half-idiot, and no good comes of his mouthing and muttering. Avoid him, I
warn you, avoid him. Let me see: how shall I describe him? Let me see.
You remember--you remember Berkley--Sir Wynston Berkley. Well, he greatly
resembles that dead villain: he has all the same grins, and shrugs, and
monkey airs, and his face and figure are like. But he is a grimed,
ragged, wasted piece of sin, little better than a beggar--a shrunken,
malignant libel on the human shape. Avoid him, I tell you, avoid him: he
is steeped in lies and poison, like the very serpent that betrayed us.
Beware of him, I say, for if he once gains your ear, he will delude you,
spite of all your vigilance; he will make you his accomplice, and
thenceforth, inevitably, there is nothing but mortal and implacable
hatred between us!"
Frightened at this wild language, Rhoda did not answer, but looked up in
his face in silence. A fearful transformation was there--a scowl so livid
and maniacal, that her very senses seemed leaving her with terror.
Perhaps the sudden alteration observable in her countenance, as this
spectacle so unexpectedly encountered her, recalled him to himself; for
he added, hurriedly, and in a tone of gentler meaning--
"Rhoda, Rhoda, watch and pray. My daughter, my child! keep your heart
pure, and nothing bad can approach you for ill. No, no; you are good, and
the good need not fear!"
Suddenly Marston burst into tears, as he ended this sentence, and
wept long and convulsively. She did not dare to speak, or even to
move; but after a while he ceased, appeared uneasy, half ashamed and
half angry; and looking with a horrified and bewildered glance into
her face, he said--
"Rhoda, child, what--what have I said? My God! what have I been saying?
Did I--do I look ill? Oh, Rhoda, Rhoda, may you never feel this!"
He turned away from her without awaiting her answer, and walked away
with the appearance of intense agitation, as if to leave her. He turned
again, however, and with a face pallid and sunken as death, approached
her slowly--
"Rhoda," said he, "don't tell what I have said to anyone--don't, I
conjure you, even to Charles. I speak too much at random, and say more
than I mean--a foolish, rambling habit: so do not repeat one word of it,
not one word to any living mortal. You and I, Rhoda, must have our
little secrets."
He ended with an attempt at a smile, so obviously painful and
fear-stricken that as he walked hurriedly away, the astounded girl burst
into a bitter flood of tears. What was, what could be, the meaning of
the shocking scene she had then been forced to witness? She dared not
answer the question. Yet one ghastly doubt haunted her like her
shadow--a suspicion that the malignant and hideous light of madness was
already glaring upon his mind. As, leaning upon the arm of her
astonished attendant, she retracted her steps, the trees, the flowers,
the familiar hall-door, the echoing passages--every object that met her
eye--seemed strange and unsubstantial, and she gliding on among them in
a horrid dream.
Time passed on: there was no renewal of the painful scene which dwelt so
sensibly in the affrighted imagination of Rhoda. Marston's manner was
changed towards her; he seemed shy, cowed, and uneasy in her presence,
and thenceforth she saw less than ever of him. Meanwhile the time
approached which was to witness the long expected, and, by Rhoda, the
intensely prayed for arrival of her brother.
Some four or five days before this event, Mr. Marston, having, as he
said, some business in Chester, and further designing to meet his son
there, took his departure from Gray Forest, leaving poor Rhoda to the
guardianship of her guilty stepmother; and although she had seen so
little of her father, yet the very consciousness of his presence had
given her a certain confidence and sense of security, which vanished at
the moment of his departure. Fear-stricken and wretched as he had been,
his removal, nevertheless, seemed to her to render the lonely and
inauspicious mansion still more desolate and ominous than before.
She had, with a vague and instinctive antipathy, avoided all contact and
intercourse with Mrs. Marston, or as, for distinctness sake, we shall
continue to call her, "Mademoiselle," since her return; and she on her
part had appeared to acquiesce with a sort of scornful nonchalance, in
the tacit understanding that she and her former pupil should see and hear
as little as might be of one another.
Meanwhile poor Willett, with her good-natured honesty and her
inexhaustible gossip, endeavored to amuse and reassure her young
mistress, and sometimes even with some partial success.
We must now follow Mr. Marston in his solitary expedition to Chester.
When he took his place in the stagecoach he had the whole interior of the
vehicle to himself, and thus continued to be its solitary occupant for
several miles. The coach, however, was eventually hailed, brought to, and
the door being opened, Dr. Danvers got in, and took his place opposite to
the passenger already established there. The worthy man was so busied in
directing the disposition of his luggage from the window, and in
arranging the sundry small parcels with which he was charged, that he
did not recognize his companion until they were in motion. When he did so
it was with no very pleasurable feeling; and it is probable that Marston,
too, would have gladly escaped the coincidence which thus reduced them
once more to the temporary necessity of a Tate-à-Tate. Embarrassing as
each felt the situation to be, there was, however, no avoiding it, and,
after a recognition and a few forced attempts at conversation, they
became, by mutual consent, silent and uncommunicative.
The journey, though in point of space a mere trifle, was, in those
slowcoach days, a matter of fully five hours' duration; and before it was
completed the sun had set, and darkness began to close. Whether it was
that the descending twilight dispelled the painful constraint under which
Marston had seemed to labor, or that some more purely spiritual and
genial influence had gradually dissipated the repulsion and distrust with
which, at first, he had shrunk from a renewal of intercourse with Dr.
Danvers, he suddenly accosted him thus.
"Dr. Danvers, I have been fifty times on the point of speaking to
you--confidentially of course--while sitting here opposite to you, what I
believe I could scarcely bring myself to hint to any other man living;
yet I must tell it, and soon, too, or I fear it will have told itself."
Dr. Danvers intimated his readiness to hear and advise, if desired; and
Marston resumed abruptly, after a pause--
"Pray, Doctor Danvers, have you heard any stories of an odd kind; any
surmises--I don't mean of a moral sort, for those I hold very cheap--to
my prejudice? Indeed I should hardly say to my prejudice; I mean--I ought
to say--in short, have you heard people remark upon any fancied
eccentricities, or that sort of thing, about me?"
He put the question with obvious difficulty, and at last seemed to
overcome his own reluctance with a sort of angry and excited
self-contempt and impatience. Doctor Danvers was a little puzzled by
the interrogatory, and admitted, in reply, that he did not comprehend
its drift.
"Doctor Danvers," he resumed, sternly and dejectedly, "I told you, in the
chance interview we had some months ago, that I was haunted by a certain
fear. I did not define it, nor do I think you suspect its nature. It is a
fear of nothing mortal, but of the immortal tenant of this body. My mind;
sir, is beginning to play me tricks; my guide mocks and terrifies me."
There was a perceptible tinge of horror in the look of astonishment with
which Dr. Danvers listened.
"You are a gentleman, sir, and a Christian clergyman; what I have said
and shall say is confided to your honor; to be held sacred as the
confession of misery, and hidden from the coarse gaze of the world. I
have become subject to a hideous delusion. It comes at intervals. I do
not think any mortal suspects it, except, maybe, my daughter Rhoda. It
comes and disappears, and comes again. I kept my pleasant secret for a
long time, but at last I let it slip, and committed myself fortunately,
to but one person, and that my daughter; and, even so, I hardly think she
understood me. I recollected myself before I had disclosed the grotesque
and infernal chimera that haunts me."
Marston paused. He was stooped forward, and looking upon the floor of the
vehicle, so that his companion could not see his countenance. A silence
ensued, which was interrupted by Marston, who once more resumed.
"Sir," said he, "I know not why, but I have longed, intensely longed,
for some trustworthy ear into which to pour this horrid secret; why I
repeat, I cannot tell, for I expect no sympathy, and hate compassion. It
is, I suppose, the restless nature of the devil that is in me; but, be it
what it may, I will speak to you, but to you only, for the present, at
least, to you alone."
Doctor Danvers again assured him that he might repose the most entire
confidence in his secrecy.
"The human mind, I take it, must have either comfort in the past or hope
in the future," he continued, "otherwise it is in danger. To me, sir, the
past is intolerably repulsive; one boundless, barren, and hideous
Golgotha of dead hopes and murdered opportunities; the future, still
blacker and more furious, peopled with dreadful features of horror and
menace, and losing itself in utter darkness. Sir, I do not exaggerate.
Between such a past and such a future I stand upon this miserable
present; and the only comfort I still am capable of feeling is, that no
human being pities me; that I stand aloof from the insults of compassion
and the hypocrisies of sympathetic morality; and that I can safely defy
all the respectable scoundrels in Christendom to enhance, by one
feather's weight, the load which I myself have accumulated, and which I
myself hourly and unaided sustain."
Doctor Danvers here introduced a word or two in the direction of their
former conversation.
"No, sir, there is no comfort from that quarter either," said Marston,
bitterly; "you but cast your seeds, as the parable terms your teaching,
upon the barren sea, in wasting them on me. My fate, be it what it may,
is as irrevocably fixed, as though I were dead and judged a hundred
years ago.
"This cursed dream," he resumed abruptly, "that everyday enslaves me more
and more, has reference to that--that occurrence about Wynston
Berkley--he is the hero of the hellish illusion. At certain times, sir,
it seems to me as if he, though dead, were still invested with a sort of
spurious life; going about unrecognized, except by me, in squalor and
contempt, and whispering away my fame and life; laboring with the
malignant industry of a fiend to involve me in the meshes of that special
perdition from which alone I shrink, and to which this emissary of hell
seems to have predestined me. Sir, this is a monstrous and hideous
extravagance, a delusion, but, after all, no more than a trick of the
imagination; the reason, the judgment, is untouched. I cannot choose but
see all the damned phantasmagoria, but I do not believe it real, and this
is the difference between my case and--and--madness!"
They were now entering the suburbs of Chester, and Doctor Danvers, pained
and shocked beyond measure by this unlooked-for disclosure, and not
knowing what remark or comfort to offer, relieved his temporary
embarrassment by looking from the window, as though attracted by the
flash of the lamps, among which the vehicle was now moving. Marston,
however, laid his hand upon his arm, and thus recalled him, for a moment,
to a forced attention.
"It must seem strange to you, Doctor, that I should trust this cursed
secret to your keeping," he said; "and, truth to say, it seems so to
myself. I cannot account for the impulse, the irresistible power of which
has forced me to disclose the hateful mystery to you, but the fact is
this, beginning like a speck, this one idea has gradually darkened and
dilated, until it has filled my entire mind. The solitary consciousness
of the gigantic mastery it has established there had grown intolerable; I
must have told it. The sense of solitude under this aggressive and
tremendous delusion was agony, hourly death to my soul. That is the
secret of my talkativeness; my sole excuse for plaguing you with the
dreams of a wretched hypochondriac."
Doctor Danvers assured him that no apologies were needed, and was only
restrained from adding the expression of that pity which he really felt,
by the fear of irritating a temper so full of bitterness, pride and
defiance. A few minutes more, and the coach having reached its
destination, they bid one another farewell, and parted.
At that time there resided in a decent mansion about a mile from the town
of Chester, a dapper little gentleman, whom we shall call Doctor Parkes.
This gentleman was the proprietor and sole professional manager of a
private asylum for the insane and enjoyed a high reputation, and a
proportionate amount of business, in his melancholy calling. It was about
the second day after the conversation we have just sketched, that this
little gentleman, having visited, according to his custom, all his
domestic patients, was about to take his accustomed walk in his somewhat
restricted pleasure grounds, when his servant announced a visitor.
"A gentleman," he repeated; "you have seen him before--eh?"
"No, sir," replied the man; "he is in the study, sir."
"Ha! a professional call. Well, we shall see."
So saying, the little gentleman summoned his gravest look, and hastened
to the chamber of audience.
On entering he found a man dressed well, but gravely, having in his
air and manner something of high breeding. In countenance striking,
dark-featured, and stern, furrowed with the lines of pain or
thought, rather than of age, although his dark hairs were largely
mingled with white.
The physician bowed, and requested the stranger to take a chair; he,
however, nodded slightly and impatiently, as if to intimate an
intolerance of ceremony, and, advancing a step or two, said abruptly--
"My name, sir, is Marston; I have come to give you a patient."
The doctor bowed with a still deeper inclination, and paused for a
continuance of the communication thus auspiciously commenced.
"You are Dr. Parkes, I take it for granted," said Marston, in the
same tone.
"Your most obedient, humble servant, sir," replied he, with the polite
formality of the day, and another grave bow.
"Doctor," demanded Marston, fixing his eye upon him sternly, and
significantly tapping his own forehead, "can you stay execution?"
The physician looked puzzled, hesitated, and at last requested his
visitor to be more explicit.
"Can you," said Marston, with the same slow and stern articulation, and
after a considerable pause--"can you prevent the malady you profess to
cure?--can you meet and defeat the enemy halfway?--can you scare away the
spirit of madness before it takes actual possession, and while it is
still only hovering about its threatened victim?"
"Sir," he replied, "in certain cases--in very many, indeed--the enemy, as
you well call it, may thus be met, and effectually worsted at a distance.
Timely interposition, in ninety cases out of a hundred, is everything;
and, I assure you, I hear your question with much pleasure, inasmuch as I
assume it to have reference to the case of the patient about whom you
desire to consult me; and who is, therefore, I hope, as yet merely
menaced with the misfortune from which you would save him."
"I, myself, am that patient, sir," said Marston, with an effort; "your
surmise is right. I am not mad, but unequivocally menaced with madness;
it is not to be mistaken. Sir, there is no misunderstanding the
tremendous and intolerable signs that glare upon my mind."
"And pray, sir, have you consulted your friends or your family upon the
course best to be pursued?" inquired Dr. Parkes, with grave interest.
"No, sir," he answered sharply, and almost fiercely; "I have no fancy to
make myself the subject of a writ _de lunatico inquirendo_; I don't want
to lose my liberty and my property at a blow. The course I mean to take
has been advised by no one but myself--is known to no other. I now
disclose it, and the causes of it, to you, a gentleman, and my
professional adviser, in the expectation that you will guard with the
strictest secrecy my spontaneous revelations; this you promise me?"
"Certainly, Mr. Marston; I have neither the disposition nor the right to
withhold such a promise," answered the physician.
"Well, then, I will first tell you the arrangement I propose, with your
permission, to make, and then I shall answer all your questions,
respecting my own case," resumed Marston, gloomily. "I wish to place
myself under your care, to live under your roof, reserving my full
liberty of action. I must be free to come and to go as I will; and on the
other hand, I undertake that you shall find me an amenable and docile
patient enough. In addition, I stipulate that there shall be no attempt
whatever made to communicate with those who are connected with me: these
terms agreed upon, I place myself in your hands. You will find in me, as
I said before, a deferential patient, and I trust not a troublesome one.
I hope you will excuse my adding, that I shall myself pay the charge of
my sojourn here from week to week, in advance."
The proposed arrangement was a strange one; and although Dr. Parkes
dimly foresaw some of the embarrassments which might possibly arise
from his accepting it, there was yet so much that was reasonable as
well as advantageous in the proposal, that he could not bring himself
to decline it.
The preliminary arrangement concluded, Dr. Parkes proceeded to his more
strictly professional investigation. It is, of course, needless to
recapitulate the details of Marston's tormenting fancies, with which the
reader has indeed been already sufficiently acquainted. Doctor Parkes,
having attentively listened to the narrative, and satisfied himself as to
the physical health of his patient, was still sorely puzzled as to the
probable issue of the awful struggle already but too obviously commenced
between the mind and its destroyer in the strange case before him. One
satisfactory symptom unquestionably was, the as yet transitory nature of
the delusion, and the evident and energetic tenacity with which reason
contended for her vital ascendancy. It was a case, however, which for
many reasons sorely perplexed him, but of which, notwithstanding, he was
disposed, whether rightly or wrongly the reader will speedily see, to
take by no means a decidedly gloomy view.
Having disburdened his mind of this horrible secret, Marston felt for a
time a sense of relief amounting almost to elation. With far less of
apprehension and dismay than he had done so for months before, he that
night repaired to his bedroom. There was nothing in his case, Doctor
Parkes believed, to warrant his keeping any watch upon Marston's actions,
and accordingly he bid him good-night, in the full confidence of meeting
him, if not better, at least not worse, on the ensuing morning.
He miscalculated, however. Marston had probably himself been conscious of
some coming crisis in his hideous malady, when he took the decisive step
of placing himself under the care of Doctor Parkes. Certain it is, that
upon that very night the disease broke forth in a new and appalling
development. Doctor Parkes, whose bedroom was next to that occupied by
Marston, was awakened in the dead of night by a howling, more like that
of a beast than a human voice, and which gradually swelled into an
absolute yell; then came some horrid laughter and entreaties, thick and
frantic; then again the same unearthly howl. The practiced ear of Doctor
Parkes recognized but too surely the terrific import of those sounds.
Springing from his bed, and seizing the candle which always burned in his
chamber, in anticipation of such sudden and fearful emergencies, he
hurried with a palpitating heart, and spite of his long habituation to
such scenes as he expected, with a certain sense of horror, to the
chamber of his aristocratic patient.
Late as it was, Marston had not yet gone to bed; his candle was still
burning, and he himself, half dressed, stood in the center of the floor,
shaking and livid, his eyes burning with the preterhuman fires of
insanity. As Doctor Parkes entered the chamber, another shout, or rather
yell, thundered from the lips of this demoniac effigy; and the mad-doctor
stood freezing with horror in the doorway, and yet exerting what remained
to him of presence of mind, in the vain endeavor, in the flaring light of
the candle, to catch and fix with his own practiced eye the gaze of the
maniac. Second after second, and minute after minute, he stood
confronting this frightful slave of Satan, in the momentary expectation
that he would close with and destroy him. On a sudden, however, this
brief agony of suspense was terminated; a change like an awakening
consciousness of realities, or rather like the withdrawal of some hideous
and visible influence from within, passed over the tense and darkened
features of the wretched being; a look of horrified perplexity, doubt,
and inquiry, supervened, and he at last said, in a subdued and sullen
tone, to Doctor Parkes:
"Who are you, sir? What do you want here? Who are you, sir, I say?"
"Who am I? Why, your physician, sir; Doctor Parkes, sir; the owner of
this house, sir," replied he, with all the sternness he could command,
and yet white as a specter with agitation. "For shame, sir, for shame, to
give way thus. What do you mean by creating this causeless alarm, and
disturbing the whole household at so unseasonable an hour? For shame,
sir; go to your bed; undress yourself this moment; for shame."
Doctor Parkes, as he spoke, was reassured by the arrival of one of his
servants, alarmed by the unmistakable sounds of violent frenzy; he
signed, however, to the man not to enter, feeling confident, as he did,
that the paroxysm had spent itself.
"Aye, aye," muttered Marston, looking almost sheepishly; "Doctor Parkes,
to be sure. What was I thinking of? how cursedly absurd! And this," he
continued, glancing at his sword, which he threw impatiently upon a sofa
as he spoke. "Folly--nonsense! A false alarm, as you say, doctor. I beg
your pardon."
As Marston spoke, he proceeded with much agitation slowly to undress
himself. He had, however, but commenced the process, when, turning
abruptly to Doctor Parkes, he said, with a countenance of horror, and in
a whisper--
"By ----, doctor, it has been upon me worse than ever, I would have sworn
I had the villain with me for hours--hours, sir--torturing me with his
damned sneering threats; till, by ----, I could stand it no longer, and
took my sword. Oh, doctor, can't you save me? can nothing be done for
me?"
Pale, covered with the dews of horror, he uttered these last words in
accents of such imploring despair, as might have borne across the
dreadful gulf the prayer of Dives for that one drop of water which never
was to cool his burning tongue.
When Rhoda learned that her father, on leaving Gray Forest, had fixed no
definite period for his return, she began to feel her situation at home
so painful and equivocal, that, having taken honest Willett to counsel,
she came at last to the resolution of accepting the often conveyed
invitation of Mrs. Mervyn and sojourning, at all events until her
father's return, at Newton Park.
"My dear young friend," said the kind lady, as soon as she heard Rhoda's
little speech to its close, "I can scarcely describe the gratification
with which I see you here; the happiness with which I welcome you to
Newton Park; nor, indeed, the anxiety with which I constantly
contemplated your trying and painful position at Gray Forest. Indeed I
ought to be angry with you for having refused me this happiness so long;
but you have made amends at last; though, indeed, it was impossible to
have deferred it longer. You must not fancy, however, that I will consent
to lose you so soon as you seem to have intended. No, no; I have found it
too hard to catch you, to let you take wing so easily; besides, I have
others to consult as well as myself, and persons, too, who are just as
anxious as I am to make a prisoner of you here."
The good Mrs. Mervyn accompanied these words with looks so sly, and
emphasis so significant, that Rhoda was fain to look down, to hide her
blushes; and compassionating the confusion she herself had caused, the
kind old lady led her to the chamber which was henceforward, so long as
she consented to remain, to be her own apartment.
How that day was passed, and how fleetly its hours sped away, it is
needless to tell. Old Mervyn had his gentle as well as his grim aspect;
and no welcome was ever more cordial and tender than that with which he
greeted the unprotected child of his morose and repulsive neighbor. It
would be impossible to convey any idea of the countless assiduities and
the secret delight with which young Mervyn attended their rambles.
The party were assembled at supper. What a contrast did this cheerful,
happy--unutterably happy--gathering, present, in the mind of Rhoda, to
the dull, drear, fearful evenings which she had long been wont to pass at
Gray Forest.
As they sate together in cheerful and happy intercourse, a chaise drove
up to the hall-door, and the knocking had hardly ceased to reverberate,
when a well-known voice was heard in the hall.
Young Mervyn started to his feet, and merrily ejaculating, "Charles
Marston! this is delightful!" disappeared, and in an instant returned
with Charles himself.
We pass over all the embraces of brother and sister; the tears and smiles
of re-united affection. We omit the cordial shaking of hands; the kind
looks; the questions and answers; all these, and all the little
attentions of that good old-fashioned hospitality, which was never weary
of demonstrating the cordiality of its welcome, we abandon to the
imagination of the good-natured reader.
Charles Marston, with the advice of his friend, Mr. Mervyn, resolved to
lose no time in proceeding to Chester, whither it was ascertained his
father had gone, with the declared intention of meeting and accompanying
him home. He arrived in that town in the evening; and having previously
learned that Doctor Danvers had been for some time in Chester, he at once
sought him at his usual lodgings, and found the worthy old gentleman at
his solitary "dish" of tea.
"My dear Charles," said he, greeting his young friend with earnest
warmth, "I am rejoiced beyond measure to see you. Your father is in town,
as you supposed; and I have just had a note from him, which has, I
confess, not a little agitated me, referring, as it does, to a subject of
painful and horrible interest; one with which, I suppose, you are
familiar, but upon which I myself have never yet spoken fully to any
person, excepting your father only."
"And pray, my dear sir, what is this topic?" inquired Charles, with
marked interest.
"Read this note," answered the clergyman, placing one at the same time in
his young visitor's hand.
Charles read as follows:
"My Dear Sir,
"I have a singular communication to make to you, but in the strictest
privacy, with reference to a subject which, merely to name, is to awaken
feelings of doubt and horror; I mean the confession of Merton, with
respect to the murder of Wynston Berkley. I will call upon you this
evening after dark; for I have certain reasons for not caring to meet old
acquaintances about town; and if you can afford me half an hour, I
promise to complete my intended disclosure within that time. Let us be
strictly private; this is my only proviso.
"Yours with much respect,
"Richard Marston"
"Your father has been sorely troubled in mind," said Doctor Danvers, as
soon as the young man had read this communication; "he has told me as
much; it may be that the discovery he has now made may possibly have
relieved him from certain galling anxieties. The fear that unjust
suspicion should light upon himself, or those connected with him, has, I
dare say, tormented him sorely. God grant, that as the providential
unfolding of all the details of this mysterious crime comes about, he
maybe brought to recognize, in the just and terrible process, the hand of
heaven. God grant, that at last his heart may be softened, and his spirit
illuminated by the blessed influence he has so long and so sternly
rejected."
As the old man thus spake--as if in symbolic answering to his prayer--a
sudden glory from the setting sun streamed through the funereal pile of
clouds which filled the western horizon, and flooded the chamber where
they were.
After a silence, Charles Marston said, with some little
embarrassment--"It may be a strange confession to make, though, indeed,
hardly so to you--for you know but too well the gloomy reserve with which
my father has uniformly treated me--that the exact nature of Merton's
confession never reached my ears; and once or twice, when I approached
the subject, in conversation with you, it seemed to me that the subject
was one which, for some reason, it was painful to you to enter upon."
"And so it was, in truth, my young friend--so it was; for that confession
left behind it many fearful doubts, proving, indeed, nothing but the one
fact, that, morally, the wretched man was guilty of the murder."
Charles, urged by a feeling of the keenest interest, requested Dr.
Danvers to detail to him the particulars of the dying man's narration.
"Willingly," answered Dr. Danvers, with a look of gloom, and heaving a
profound sigh--"willingly, for you have now come to an age when you may
safely be entrusted with secrets affecting your own family, and which,
although, thank God, as I believe they in no respect involve the honor of
anyone of its members, yet might deeply involve its peace and its
security against the assaults of vague and horrible slander. Here, then,
is the narrative: Merton, when he was conscious of the approach of death,
qualified, by a circumstantial and detailed statement, the absolute
confession of guilt which he had at first sullenly made. In this he
declared that the guilt of design and intention only was his--that in
the act itself he had been anticipated. He stated, that from the moment
when Sir Wynston's servant had casually mentioned the circumstance of his
master's usually sleeping with his watch and pocketbook under his pillow,
the idea of robbing him had taken possession of his mind. With the idea
of robbing him (under the peculiar circumstances, his servant sleeping in
the apartment close by, and the slightest alarm being, in all
probability, sufficient to call him to the spot) the idea of anticipating
resistance by murder had associated itself. He had contended against
these haunting and growing solicitations of Satan, with an earnest agony.
He had intended to leave his place, and fly from the mysterious
temptation which he felt he wanted power to combat, but accident or fate
prevented him. In a state of ghastly excitement he had, on the memorable
night of Sir Wynston's murder, proceeded, as had afterwards appeared in
evidence, by the back stair to the baronet's chamber; he had softly
stolen into it, and gone to the bedside, with the weapon in his hand. He
drew his breath for the decisive stroke, which was to bereave the
(supposedly) sleeping man of life, and when stretching his left hand
under the clothes, it rested upon a dull, cold corpse, and, at the same
moment, his right hand was immersed in a pool of blood. He dropped the
knife, recoiled a pace or so. With a painful effort, however, he again
grasped with his hand to recover the weapon he had suffered to escape,
and secured, as it afterwards turned out, not the knife with which he had
meditated the commission of his crime, but the dagger which was
afterwards found where he had concealed it. He was now fully alive to the
horror of his situation; he was compromised as fully as if he had in very
deed driven home the weapon. To be found under such circumstances, would
convict him as surely as if fifty eyes had seen him strike the blow. He
had nothing now for it but flight; and in order to guard himself against
the contingency of being surprised from the door opening upon the
corridor, he bolted it; then groped under the murdered man's pillow for
the booty which had so fatally fascinated his imagination. Here he was
disappointed. What further happened you already know."
Charles listened with breathless attention to this recital, and, after a
painful interval, said--
"Then the actual murderer is, after all, unascertained. This is, indeed,
horrible; it was very natural that my father should have felt the danger
to which such a disclosure would have exposed the reputation of our
family, yet I should have preferred encountering it, were it ten times as
great, to the equivocal prudence of suppressing the truth with respect to
a murder committed under my own roof."
"He has, however, it would seem, arrived at some new conclusions," said
Dr. Danvers, "and is now prepared to throw some unanticipated light upon
the whole transaction."
Even as they were talking, a knocking was heard at the hall-door, and
after a brief and hurried consultation, it was agreed, that, considering
the strict condition of privacy attached to this visit by Mr. Marston
himself, as well as his reserved and wayward temper, it might be better
for Charles to avoid presenting himself to his father on this occasion. A
few seconds afterwards the door opened, and Mr. Marston entered the
apartment. It was now dark, and the servant, unbidden, placed candles
upon the table. Without answering one word to Dr. Danvers' greeting,
Marston sat down, as it seemed, in agitated abstraction. Removing his hat
suddenly (for he had not even made this slight homage to the laws of
courtesy), he looked round with a care-worn, fiery eye, and a pale
countenance, and said--
"We are quite alone, Dr. Danvers--no one anywhere near?"
Dr. Danvers assured him that all was secure. After a long and agitated
pause, Marston said--
"You remember Merton's confession. He admitted his intention to kill
Berkley, but denied that he was the actual murderer. He spoke truth--no
one knew it better than I; for I am the murderer."
Dr. Danvers was so shocked and overwhelmed that he was utterly
unable to speak.
"Aye, sir, in point of law and of morals, literally and honestly, the
murderer of Wynston Berkley. I am resolved you shall know it all. Make
what use of it you will--I care for nothing now, but to get rid of the
d----d, unsustainable secret, and that is done. I did not intend to kill
the scoundrel when I went to his room; but with the just feelings of
exasperation with which I regarded him, it would have been wiser had I
avoided the interview; and I meant to have done so. But his candle was
burning; I saw the light through the door, and went in. It was his evil
fortune to indulge in his old strain of sardonic impertinence. He
provoked me; I struck him--he struck me again--and with his own dagger I
stabbed him three times. I did not know what I had done; I could not
believe it. I felt neither remorse nor sorrow--why should I?--but the
thing was horrible, astounding. There he sat in the corner of his
cushioned chair, with the old fiendish smile on still. Sir, I never
thought that any human shape could look so dreadful. I don't know how
long I stayed there, freezing with horror and detestation, and yet
unable to take my eyes from the face. Did you see it in the coffin? Sir,
there was a sneer of triumph on it that was diabolic and prophetic."
Marston was fearfully agitated as he spoke, and repeatedly wiped from his
face the cold sweat that gathered there.
"I could not leave the room by the back stairs," he resumed, "for the
valet slept in the intervening chamber. I felt such an appalled antipathy
to the body, that I could scarcely muster courage to pass it. But, sir, I
am not easily cowed--I mastered this repugnance in a few minutes--or,
rather, I acted spite of it, I knew not how; but instinctively it
seemed to me that it was better to lay the body in the bed, than leave it
where it was, shewing, as its position might, that the thing occurred in
an altercation. So, sir, I raised it, and bore it softly across the room,
and laid it in the bed; and, while I was carrying it, it swayed forward,
the arms glided round my neck, and the head rested against my cheek--that
was a parody upon a brotherly embrace!
"I do not know at what moment it was, but some time when I was carrying
Wynston, or laying him in the bed," continued Marston, who spoke rather
like one pursuing a horrible reverie, than as a man relating facts to a
listener, "I heard a light tread, and soft breathing in the lobby. A
thunderclap would have stunned me less that minute. I moved softly,
holding my breath, to the door. I believe, in moments of strong
excitement, men hear more acutely than at other times; but I thought I
heard the rustling of a gown, going from the door again. I waited--it
ceased; I waited until all was quiet. I then extinguished the candle, and
groped my way to the door; there was a faint light in the corridor, and I
thought I saw a head projected from the chamber-door, next to the
Frenchwoman's--mademoiselle's. As I came on, it was softly withdrawn,
and the door not quite noiselessly closed. I could not be absolutely
certain, but I learned all afterward. And now, sir, you have the story of
Sir Wynston's murder."
Dr. Danvers groaned in spirit, being wrung alike with fear and sorrow.
With hands clasped, and head bowed down, in an exceeding bitter agony of
soul, he murmured only the words of the Litany--"Lord, have mercy upon
us; Christ, have mercy upon us; Lord, have mercy upon us."
Marston had recovered his usual lowering aspect and gloomy
self-possession in a few moments, and was now standing erect and defiant
before the humbled and afflicted minister of God. The contrast was
terrible--almost sublime.
Doctor Danvers resolved to keep this dreadful secret, at least for a
time, to himself. He could not make up his mind to inflict upon those
whom he loved so well as Charles and Rhoda the shame and agony of such a
disclosure; yet he was sorely troubled, for his was a conflict of duty
and mercy, of love and justice.
He told Charles Marston, when urged with earnest inquiry, that what he
had heard that evening was intended solely for his own ear, and gently
but peremptorily declined telling, at least until some future time, the
substance of his father's communication.
Charles now felt it necessary to see his father, for the purpose of
letting him know the substance of the letter respecting "mademoiselle"
and the late Sir Wynston which had reached him. Accordingly, he
proceeded, accompanied by Doctor Danvers, on the next morning, to the
hotel where Marston had intimated his intention of passing the night.
On their inquiring for him in the hall, the porter appeared much
perplexed and disturbed, and as they pressed him with questions, his
answers became conflicting and mysterious. Mr. Marston was there--he had
slept there last night; he could not say whether or not he was then in
the house; but he knew that no one could be admitted to see him. He
would, if the gentlemen wished it, send their cards to (not Mr. Marston,
but) the proprietor. And, finally, he concluded by begging that they
would themselves see "the proprietor," and dispatched a waiter to apprise
him of the circumstances of the visit. There was something odd and even
sinister in all this, which, along with the whispering and the curious
glances of the waiters, who happened to hear the errand on which they
came, inspired the two companions with vague misgivings, which they did
not care mutually to disclose.
In a few moments they were shown into a small sitting room up stairs,
where the proprietor, a fussy little gentleman, and apparently very
uneasy and frightened, received them.
"We have called here to see Mr. Marston," said Doctor Danvers, "and the
porter has referred us to you."
"Yes, sir, exactly--precisely so," answered the little man, fidgeting
excessively, and as it seemed, growing paler every instant; "but--but, in
fact, sir, there is, there has been--in short, have you not heard of
the--the accident?"
He wound up with a prodigious effort, and wiped his forehead when
he had done.
"Pray, sir, be explicit: we are near friends of Mr. Marston; in fact,
sir, this is his son," said Doctor Danvers, pointing to Charles Marston;
"and we are both uneasy at the reserve with which our inquiries have been
met. Do, I entreat of you, say what has happened?"
"Why--why," hesitated the man, "I really--I would not for five
hundred pounds it had happened in my house. The--the unhappy
gentleman has, in short--"
He glanced at Charles, as if afraid of the effect of the disclosure he
was on the point of making, and then hurriedly said--"He is dead, sir; he
was found dead in his room, this morning, at eight o'clock. I assure you
I have not been myself ever since."
Charles Marston was so stunned by this sudden blow, that he was upon the
point of fainting. Rallying, however, with a strong effort, he demanded
to be conducted to the chamber where the body lay. The man assented, but
hesitated on reaching the door, and whispered something in the ear of
Doctor Danvers, who, as he heard it, raised his hands and eyes with a
mute expression of horror, and turning to Charles, said--
"My dear young friend, remain where you are for a few moments. I will
return to you immediately, and tell you whatever I have ascertained. You
are in no condition for such a scene at present."
Charles, indeed, felt that the fact was so, and, sick and giddy, suffered
Doctor Danvers, with gentle compulsion, to force him into a seat.
In silence the venerable clergyman followed his conductor. With a
palpitating heart he advanced to the bedside, and twice essayed to draw
the curtain, and twice lost courage; but gathering resolution at last,
he pulled the drapery aside, and beheld all he was to see again of
Richard Marston.
The bedclothes were drawn so as nearly to cover the mouth.
"There is the wound, sir," whispered the man, as with coarse
officiousness he drew back the bedclothes from the throat of the corpse,
and exhibited a gash, as it seemed, nearly severing the head from the
body. With sickening horror Doctor Danvers turned away from the awful
spectacle. He covered his face in his hands, and it seemed to him as if a
soft, solemn voice whispered in his ear the mystic words, "Whoso
sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."
The hand which, but a few years before, had, unsuspected, consigned a
fellow-mortal to the grave, had itself avenged the murder--Marston had
perished by his own hand.
Naturally ambitious and intriguing, the perilous tendencies of such a
spirit in Mademoiselle de Barras had never been schooled by the mighty
and benignant principles of religion; of her accidental acquaintance at
Rouen with Sir Wynston Berkley, and her subsequent introduction, in an
evil hour, into the family at Gray Forest, it is unnecessary to speak.
The unhappy terms on which she found Marston living with his wife,
suggested, in their mutual alienation, the idea of founding a double
influence in the household; and to conceive the idea, and to act upon it,
were, in her active mind, the same. Young, beautiful, fascinating, she
well knew the power of her attractions, and determined, though probably
without one thought of transgressing the limits of literal propriety, to
bring them to bear upon the discontented, retired roué, for whom she
cared absolutely nothing, except as the instrument, and in part the
victim of her schemes. Thus yielding to the double instinct that swayed
her, she gratified, at the same time, her love of intrigue and her love
of power. At length, however, came the hour which demanded a sacrifice to
the evil influence she had hitherto worshipped on such easy terms. She
found that her power must now be secured by crime, and she fell. Then
came the arrival of Sir Wynston--his murder--her elopement with Marston,
and her guilty and joyless triumph. At last, however, came the blow, long
suspended and terrific, which shattered all her hopes and schemes, and
drove her once again upon the world. The catastrophe we have just
described. After it she made her way to Paris. Arrived in the capital of
France, she speedily dissipated whatever remained of the money and
valuables which she had taken with her from Gray Forest; and Madame
Marston, as she now styled herself, was glad to place herself once more
as a governess in an aristocratic family. So far her good fortune had
prevailed in averting the punishment but too well earned by her past
life. But a day of reckoning was to come. A few years later France was
involved in the uproar and conflagration of revolution. Noble families
were scattered, beggared, decimated; and their dependants, often dragged
along with them into the flaming abyss, in many instances suffered the
last dire extremities of human ill. It was at this awful period that a
retribution so frightful and extraordinary overtook Madame Marston, that
we may hereafter venture to make it the subject of a separate narrative.
Until then the reader will rest satisfied with what he already knows of
her history; and meanwhile bid a long, and as it may possibly turn out,
an eternal farewell to that beautiful embodiment of an evil and
disastrous influence.
The concluding chapter in a novel is always brief, though seldom so short
as the world would have it. In a tale like this, the "winding up" must be
proportionately contracted. We have scarcely a claim to so many lines as
the formal novelist may occupy pages, in the distribution of poetic
justice, and the final grouping of his characters into that effective
tableau upon which, at last, the curtain gracefully descends. We, too,
may be all the briefer, inasmuch as the reader has doubtless anticipated
the little we have to say. It amounts, then, to this:--Within two years
after the fearful event which we have just recorded, an alliance had
drawn together, in nearer and dearer union, the inmates of Gray Forest
and Newton Park. Rhoda had given her hand to young Mervyn, of ulterior
consequences we say nothing--the nursery is above our province. And now,
at length, after this Christmas journey through somewhat stern and gloomy
scenery, in this long-deferred flood of golden sunshine we bid thee,
gentle reader, a fond farewell.