"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 pa.s.sage 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 p.r.o.nounce."
As he thus spoke, he placed in her hand the letter of which he had spoken, and with the pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sume 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 d.a.m.ned 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 h.e.l.lish 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 G.o.d! 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 pa.s.sages--every object that met her eye--seemed strange and unsubstantial, and she gliding on among them in a horrid dream.
Time pa.s.sed 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 rea.s.sure 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 pa.s.senger 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-a-Tate. Embarra.s.sing 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 s.p.a.ce 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 coa.r.s.e 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 compa.s.sion. 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 a.s.sured 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 compa.s.sion 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 acc.u.mulated, and which I myself hourly and unaided sustain."
Doctor Danvers here introduced a word or two in the direction of their former conversation.