Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  “Good God! What is it?” said Mrs. Marston, shocked and even terrified, while new alarms displaced her old ones. “Is Miss Rhoda — can it be — is she — is my darling well?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am,” answered the maid, “very well, ma’am; she is up, and out walking and knows nothing of all this.”

  “All what?” urged Mrs. Marston. “Tell me, tell me, Willett, what has happened. What is it? Speak, child; say what it is?”

  “Oh, ma’am! Oh my poor dear mistress!” continued the girl, and stopped, almost stifled with sobs.

  “Willett, you must speak; you must say what is the matter. I implore of you — desire you!” urged the distracted lady. Still the girl, having made one or two ineffectual efforts to speak, continued to sob.

  “Willett, you will drive me mad. For mercy’s sake, for God’s sake, speak — tell me what it is!” cried the unhappy lady.

  “Oh, ma’am, it is — it is about the master,” sobbed the girl.

  “Why he can’t — he has not — oh, merciful God! He has not hurt himself,” she almost screamed.

  “No, ma’am, no; not himself; no, no, but— “ and again she hesitated.

  “But what? Speak out, Willett; dear Willett have mercy on me, and speak out,” cried her wretched mistress.

  “Oh, ma’am, don’t be fretted; don’t take it to heart, ma’am,” said the maid, clasping her hands together in anguish.

  “Anything, anything, Willett; only speak at once,” she answered.

  “Well, ma’am, it is soon said — it is easy told. The master, ma’am — the master is gone with the Frenchwoman; they went in the traveling coach last night, ma’am; he is gone away with her, ma’am; that is all.”

  Mrs. Marston looked at the girl with a gaze of stupefied, stony terror; not a muscle of her face moved; not one heaving respiration showed that she was living. Motionless, with this fearful look fixed upon the girl, and her thin hands stretched towards her, she remained, second after second. At last her outstretched hands began to tremble more and more violently; and as if for the first time the knowledge of this calamity had reached her, with a cry, as though body and soul were parting, she fell back motionless in her bed.

  Several hours had passed before Mrs. Marston was restored to consciousness. To this state of utter insensibility, one of silent, terrified stupor succeeded; and it was not until she saw her daughter Rhoda standing at her bedside, weeping, that she found voice and recollection to speak.

  “My child; my darling, my poor child,” she cried, sobbing piteously, as she drew her to her heart and looked in her face alternately— “my darling, my darling child!”

  Rhoda could only weep, and return her poor mother’s caresses in silence. Too young and inexperienced to understand the full extent and nature of this direful calamity, the strange occurrence, the general and apparent consternation of the whole household, and the spectacle of her mother’s agony, had filled her with fear, perplexity, and anguish. Scared and stunned with a vague sense of danger, like a young bird that, for the first time, cowers under a thunderstorm, she nestled in her mother’s bosom; there, with a sense of protection, and of boundless love and tenderness, she lay frightened, wondering, and weeping.

  Two or three days passed, and Dr. Danvers came and sate for several hours with poor Mrs. Marston. To comfort and console were, of course, out of his power. The nature of the bereavement, far more terrible than death — its recent occurrence — the distracting consciousness of all its complicated consequences — rendered this a hopeless task. She bowed herself under the blow with the submission of a broken heart. The hope to which she had clung for years had vanished; the worst that ever her imagination feared had come in earnest.

  One idea was now constantly present in her mind. She felt a sad, but immovable assurance, that she should not live long, and the thought, “what will become of my darling when I am gone; who will guard and love my child when I am in my grave; to whom is she to look for tenderness and protection then?” perpetually haunted her, and superadded the pangs of a still wilder despair to the desolation of a broken heart.

  It was not for more than a week after this event, that one day Willett, with a certain air of anxious mystery, entered the silent and darkened chamber where Mrs. Marston lay. She had a letter in her hand; the seal and handwriting were Mr. Marston’s. It was long before the injured wife was able to open it; when she did so, the following sentences met her eye: —

  “Gertrude,

  “You can be ignorant neither of the nature nor of the consequences of the decisive step I have taken: I do not seek to excuse it. For the censure of the world, its meddling and mouthing hypocrisy, I care absolutely nothing; I have long set it at defiance. And you yourself, Gertrude, when you deliberately reconsider the circumstances of estrangement and coldness under which, though beneath the same roof, we have lived for years, without either sympathy or confidence, can scarcely, if at all, regret the rupture of a tie which had long ceased to be anything better than an irksome and galling formality. I do not desire to attribute to you the smallest blame. There was an incompatibility, not of temper but of feelings, which made us strangers though calling one another man and wife. Upon this fact I rest my own justification; our living together under these circumstances was, I dare say, equally undesired by us both. It was, in fact, but a deference to the formal hypocrisy of the world. At all events, the irrevocable act which separates us forever is done, and I have now merely to state so much of my intentions as may relate in anywise to your future arrangements. I have written to your cousin, and former guardian, Mr. Latimer, telling him how matters stand between us. You, I told him, shall have, without opposition from me, the whole of your own fortune to your own separate use, together with whatever shall be mutually agreed upon as reasonable, from my income, for your support and that of my daughter. It will be necessary to complete your arrangements with expedition, as I purpose returning to Gray Forest in about three weeks; and as, of course, a meeting between you and those by whom I shall be accompanied is wholly out of the question, you will see the expediency of losing no time in adjusting everything for yours and my daughter’s departure. In the details, of course, I shall not interfere. I think I have made myself clearly intelligible, and would recommend your communicating at once with Mr. Latimer, with a view to completing temporary arrangements, until your final plans shall have been decided upon.

  “RICHARD MARSTON”

  The reader can easily conceive the feelings with which this letter was perused. We shall not attempt to describe them; nor shall we weary his patience by a detail of all the circumstances attending Mrs. Marston’s departure. Suffice it to mention that, in less than a fortnight after the receipt of the letter which we have just copied, she had forever left the mansion of Gray Forest.

  In a small house, in a sequestered part of the rich county of Warwick, the residence of Mrs. Marston and her daughter was for the present fixed. And there, for a time, the heartbroken and desolate lady enjoyed, at least, the privilege of an immunity from the intrusions of all external trouble. But the blow, under which the feeble remains of her health and strength were gradually to sink, had struck too surely home; and, from month to month — almost from week to week — the progress of decay was perceptible.

  Meanwhile, though grieved and humbled, and longing to comfort his unhappy mother Charles Marston, for the present absolutely dependant upon his father, had no choice but to remain at Cambridge, and to pursue his studies there.

  At Gray Forest Marston and the partner of his guilt continued to live. The old servants were all gradually dismissed, and new ones hired by Mademoiselle de Barras. There they dwelt, shunned by everybody, in a stricter and more desolate seclusion than ever. The novelty of the unrestraint and licence of their new mode of life speedily passed away, and with it the excited and guilty sense of relief which had for a time produced a false and hollow gaiety. The sense of security prompted in mademoiselle a hundred indulgences which, in her former precarious po
sition, she would not have dreamed of. Outbreaks of temper, sharp and sometimes violent, began to manifest themselves on her part, and renewed disappointment and blacker remorse to darken the soul of Marston himself. Often, in the dead of the night, the servants would overhear their bitter and fierce altercations ringing through the melancholy mansion, and often the reckless use of terrible and mysterious epithets of crime. Their quarrels increased in violence and in frequency, and, before two years had passed, feelings of bitterness, hatred, and dread, alone seemed to subsist between them. Yet upon Marston she continued to exercise a powerful and mysterious influence. There was a dogged, apathetic submission on his part, and a growing insolence on hers, constantly more and more strikingly visible. Neglect, disorder, and decay, too, were more than ever apparent in the dreary air of the place.

  Doctor Danvers, save by rumor and conjecture, knew nothing of Marston and his abandoned companion. He had, more than once, felt a strong disposition to visit Gray Forest, and expostulate, face to face, with its guilty proprietor. This idea, however, he had, upon consideration, dismissed; not on account of any shrinking from the possible repulses and affronts to which the attempt might subject him, but from a thorough conviction that the endeavor would be utterly fruitless for good, while it might, very obviously, expose him to painful misinterpretation and suspicion, and leave it to be imagined that he had been influenced, if by no meaner motive, at least by the promptings of a coarse curiosity.

  Meanwhile he maintained a correspondence with Mrs. Marston, and had even once or twice since her departure visited her. Latterly, however, this correspondence had been a good deal interrupted, and its intervals had been supplied occasionally by Rhoda, whose letters, although she herself appeared unconscious of the mournful event the approach of which they too plainly indicated, were painful records of the rapid progress of mortal decay.

  He had just received one of those ominous letters, at the little post office in the town we have already mentioned, and, full of the melancholy news it contained, Dr. Danvers was returning slowly towards his home. As he rode into a lonely road, traversing an undulating tract of some three miles in length, the singularity, it may be, of his costume attracted the eye of another passenger, who was, as it turned out, no other than Marston himself. For two or three miles of this desolate road, their ways happened to lie together. Marston’s first impulse was to avoid the clergyman; his second, which he obeyed, was to join company, and ride along with him, at all events, for so long as would show that he shrank from no encounter which fortune or accident presented. There was a spirit of bitter defiance in this, which cost him a painful effort.

  “How do you do, Parson Danvers?” said Marston, touching his hat with the handle of his whip.

  Danvers thought he had seldom seen a man so changed in so short a time. His face had grown sallow and wasted, and his figure slightly stooped, with an appearance almost of feebleness.

  “Mr. Marston,” said the clergyman, gravely, and almost sternly, though with some embarrassment, “it is a long time since you and I have seen one another, and many and painful events have passed in the interval. I scarce know upon what terms we meet. I am prompted to speak to you, and in a tone, perhaps, which you will hardly brook; and yet, if we keep company, as it seems likely we may, I cannot, and I ought not, to be silent.”

  “Well, Mr. Danvers, I accept the condition — speak what you will,” said Marston, with a gloomy promptitude. “If you exceed your privilege, and grow uncivil, I need but use my spurs, and leave you behind me preaching to the winds.”

  “Ah! Mr. Marston,” said Dr. Danvers, almost sadly, after a considerable pause, “when I saw you close beside me, my heart was troubled within me.”

  “You looked on me as something from the nether world, and expected to see the cloven hoof,” said Marston, bitterly, and raising his booted foot a little as he spoke; “but, after all, I am but a vulgar sinner of flesh and blood, without enough of the preternatural about me to frighten an old nurse, much less to agitate a pillar of the Church.”

  “Mr. Marston, you talk sarcastically, but you feel that recent circumstances, as well as old recollections, might well disturb and trouble me at sight of you,” answered Dr. Danvers.

  “Well — yes — perhaps it is so,” said Marston, hastily and sullenly, and became silent for a while.

  “My heart is full, Mr. Marston; charged with grief, when I think of the sad history of those with whom, in my mind, you must ever be associated,” said Doctor Danvers.

  “Aye, to be sure,” said Marston, with stern impatience; “but, then, you have much to console you. You have got your comforts and your respectability; all the dearer, too, from the contrast of other people’s misfortunes and degradations; then you have your religion moreover— “

  “Yes,” interrupted Danvers, earnestly, and hastening to avoid a sneer upon this subject; “God be blessed, I am an humble follower of his gracious Son, our Redeemer; and though, I trust, I should bear with patient submission whatever chastisement in his wisdom and goodness he might see fit to inflict upon me, yet I do praise and bless him for the mercy which has hitherto spared me, and I do feel that mercy all the more profoundly, from the afflictions and troubles with which I daily see others overtaken.”

  “And in the matter of piety and decorum, doubtless, you bless God also,” said Marston, sarcastically, “that you are not as other men are, nor even as this publican.”

  “Nay, Mr. Marston; God forbid I should harden my sinful heart with the wicked pride of the Pharisee. Evil and corrupt am I already over much. Too well I know the vileness of my heart, to make myself righteous in my own eyes,” replied Dr. Danvers, humbly. “But, sinner as I am, I am yet a messenger of God, whose mission is one of authority to his fellow-sinners; and woe is me if I speak not the truth at all seasons, and in all places where my words may be profitably heard.”

  “Well, Doctor Danvers, it seems you think it your duty to speak to me, of course, respecting my conduct and my spiritual state. I shall save you the pain and trouble of opening the subject; I shall state the case for you in two words,” said Marston, almost fiercely. “I have put away my wife without just cause, and am living in sin with another woman. Come, what have you to say on this theme? Speak out. Deal with me as roughly as you will, I will hear it, and answer you again.”

  “Alas, Mr. Marston! And do not these things trouble you?” exclaimed Dr. Danvers, earnestly. “Do they not weigh heavy upon your conscience? Ah, sir, do you not remember that, slowly and surely, you are drawing towards the hour of death, and the Day of Judgment?”

  “The hour or death! Yes, I know it is coming, and I await it with indifference. But, for the Day of Judgment, with its books and trumpets! My dear doctor, pray don’t expect to frighten me with that.”

  Marston spoke with an angry scorn, which had the effect of interrupting the conversation for some moments.

  They rode on, side by side, for a long time, without speaking. At length, however, Marston unexpectedly broke the silence —

  “Doctor Danvers,” said he, “you asked me some time ago if I feared the hour of death, and the Day of Judgment. I answered you truly, I do not fear them; nay death, I think, I could meet with a happier and a quieter heart than any other chance that can befall me; but there are other fears; fears that do trouble me much.”

  Doctor Danvers looked inquiringly at him; but neither spoke for a time.

  “You have not seen the catastrophe of the tragedy yet,” said Marston, with a stern, stony look, made more horrible by a forced smile and something like a shudder. “I wish I could tell you — you, Doctor Danvers — for you are honorable and gentle-hearted. I wish I durst tell you what I fear; the only, only thing I really do fear. No mortal knows it but myself, and I see it coming upon me with slow, but unconquerable power. Oh, God — dreadful Spirit — spare me!”

  Again they were silent, and again Marston resumed —

  “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.