new alarms displaced her old ones. "Is Miss Rhoda--can it be--isshe--is my darling well?"
"Oh, yes, ma'am," answered the maid, "very well, ma'am; she is up, andout walking and knows nothing of all this."
"All what?" urged Mrs. Marston. "Tell me, tell me, Willett, what hashappened. 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 ofyou--desire you!" urged the distracted lady. Still the girl, having madeone 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 speakout," cried her wretched mistress.
"Oh, ma'am, don't be fretted; don't take it to heart, ma'am," said themaid, 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--themaster is gone with the Frenchwoman; they went in the traveling coachlast 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 thatshe was living. Motionless, with this fearful look fixed upon the girl,and her thin hands stretched towards her, she remained, second aftersecond. At last her outstretched hands began to tremble more and moreviolently; and as if for the first time the knowledge of this calamity hadreached her, with a cry, as though body and soul were parting, she fellback motionless in her bed.
Several hours had passed before Mrs. Marston was restored toconsciousness. To this state of utter insensibility, one of silent,terrified stupor succeeded; and it was not until she saw her daughterRhoda standing at her bedside, weeping, that she found voice andrecollection to speak.
"My child; my darling, my poor child," she cried, sobbing piteously, asshe drew her to her heart and looked in her face alternately--"mydarling, 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 ofthis direful calamity, the strange occurrence, the general and apparentconsternation of the whole household, and the spectacle of her mother'sagony, had filled her with fear, perplexity, and anguish. Scared andstunned with a vague sense of danger, like a young bird that, for thefirst time, cowers under a thunderstorm, she nestled in her mother'sbosom; there, with a sense of protection, and of boundless love andtenderness, she lay frightened, wondering, and weeping.
Two or three days passed, and Dr. Danvers came and sate for several hourswith poor Mrs. Marston. To comfort and console were, of course, out ofhis power. The nature of the bereavement, far more terrible thandeath--its recent occurrence--the distracting consciousness of all itscomplicated consequences--rendered this a hopeless task. She bowedherself under the blow with the submission of a broken heart. The hope towhich she had clung for years had vanished; the worst that ever herimagination feared had come in earnest.
One idea was now constantly present in her mind. She felt a sad, butimmovable assurance, that she should not live long, and the thought,"what will become of my darling when I am gone; who will guard and lovemy child when I am in my grave; to whom is she to look for tendernessand protection then?" perpetually haunted her, and superadded the pangsof a still wilder despair to the desolation of a broken heart.
It was not for more than a week after this event, that one dayWillett, with a certain air of anxious mystery, entered the silent anddarkened chamber where Mrs. Marston lay. She had a letter in her hand;the seal and handwriting were Mr. Marston's. It was long before theinjured wife was able to open it; when she did so, the followingsentences met her eye:--
"Gertrude,
"You can be ignorant neither of the nature nor of the consequences of thedecisive step I have taken: I do not seek to excuse it. For the censureof the world, its meddling and mouthing hypocrisy, I care absolutelynothing; I have long set it at defiance. And you yourself, Gertrude, whenyou deliberately reconsider the circumstances of estrangement andcoldness under which, though beneath the same roof, we have lived foryears, without either sympathy or confidence, can scarcely, if at all,regret the rupture of a tie which had long ceased to be anything betterthan an irksome and galling formality. I do not desire to attribute toyou the smallest blame. There was an incompatibility, not of temper butof feelings, which made us strangers though calling one another man andwife. Upon this fact I rest my own justification; our living togetherunder 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. Atall events, the irrevocable act which separates us forever is done, and Ihave now merely to state so much of my intentions as may relate inanywise to your future arrangements. I have written to your cousin, andformer guardian, Mr. Latimer, telling him how matters stand between us.You, I told him, shall have, without opposition from me, the whole ofyour own fortune to your own separate use, together with whatever shallbe mutually agreed upon as reasonable, from my income, for your supportand that of my daughter. It will be necessary to complete yourarrangements with expedition, as I purpose returning to Gray Forest inabout three weeks; and as, of course, a meeting between you and those bywhom I shall be accompanied is wholly out of the question, you will seethe expediency of losing no time in adjusting everything for yours and mydaughter's departure. In the details, of course, I shall not interfere. Ithink I have made myself clearly intelligible, and would recommend yourcommunicating at once with Mr. Latimer, with a view to completingtemporary arrangements, until your final plans shall have been decidedupon.
"RICHARD MARSTON"
The reader can easily conceive the feelings with which this letter wasperused. We shall not attempt to describe them; nor shall we weary hispatience by a detail of all the circumstances attending Mrs. Marston'sdeparture. Suffice it to mention that, in less than a fortnight after thereceipt of the letter which we have just copied, she had forever left themansion 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 heart-broken and desolate lady enjoyed, atleast, the privilege of an immunity from the intrusions of all externaltrouble. But the blow, under which the feeble remains of her health andstrength were gradually to sink, had struck too surely home; and, frommonth to month--almost from week to week--the progress of decay wasperceptible.
Meanwhile, though grieved and humbled, and longing to comfort his unhappymother Charles Marston, for the present absolutely dependant upon hisfather, had no choice but to remain at Cambridge, and to pursue hisstudies 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 byMademoiselle de Barras. There they dwelt, shunned by everybody, in astricter and more desolate seclusion than ever. The novelty of theunrestraint 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 timeproduced a false and hollow gaiety. The sense of security prompted inmademoiselle a hundred indulgences which, in her former precariousposition, she would not have dreamed of. Outbreaks of temper, sharp andsometimes violent, began to manifest themselves on her part, and reneweddisappointment and blacker remorse to darken the soul of Marston himself.Often, in the dead of the night, the servants would overhear their bitterand fierce altercations ringing through the melancholy mansion, andoften the reckless use o
f terrible and mysterious epithets of crime.Their quarrels increased in violence and in frequency, and, before twoyears had passed, feelings of bitterness, hatred, and dread, alone seemedto subsist between them. Yet upon Marston she continued to exercise apowerful and mysterious influence. There was a dogged, apatheticsubmission on his part, and a growing insolence on hers, constantly moreand more strikingly visible. Neglect, disorder, and decay, too, were morethan ever apparent in the dreary air of the place.
Doctor Danvers, save by rumor and conjecture, knew nothing of Marstonand his abandoned companion. He had, more than once, felt a strongdisposition to visit Gray Forest, and expostulate, face to face, with itsguilty proprietor. This idea, however, he had, upon consideration,dismissed; not on account of any shrinking