vanished atthe moment of his departure. Fear-stricken and wretched as he had been,his removal, nevertheless, seemed to her to render the lonely andinauspicious mansion still more desolate and ominous than before.
She had, with a vague and instinctive antipathy, avoided all contact andintercourse with Mrs. Marston, or as, for distinctness sake, we shallcontinue to call her, "Mademoiselle," since her return; and she on herpart had appeared to acquiesce with a sort of scornful nonchalance, inthe tacit understanding that she and her former pupil should see and hearas little as might be of one another.
Meanwhile poor Willett, with her good-natured honesty and herinexhaustible gossip, endeavored to amuse and reassure her youngmistress, 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 thevehicle to himself, and thus continued to be its solitary occupant forseveral miles. The coach, however, was eventually hailed, brought to, andthe door being opened, Dr. Danvers got in, and took his place opposite tothe passenger already established there. The worthy man was so busied indirecting the disposition of his luggage from the window, and inarranging the sundry small parcels with which he was charged, that hedid not recognize his companion until they were in motion. When he did soit was with no very pleasurable feeling; and it is probable that Marston,too, would have gladly escaped the coincidence which thus reduced themonce more to the temporary necessity of a Tate-a-Tate. Embarrassing aseach felt the situation to be, there was, however, no avoiding it, and,after a recognition and a few forced attempts at conversation, theybecame, by mutual consent, silent and uncommunicative.
The journey, though in point of space a mere trifle, was, in thoseslowcoach days, a matter of fully five hours' duration; and before it wascompleted the sun had set, and darkness began to close. Whether it wasthat the descending twilight dispelled the painful constraint under whichMarston had seemed to labor, or that some more purely spiritual andgenial influence had gradually dissipated the repulsion and distrust withwhich, 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 toyou--confidentially of course--while sitting here opposite to you, what Ibelieve 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; andMarston resumed abruptly, after a pause--
"Pray, Doctor Danvers, have you heard any stories of an odd kind; anysurmises--I don't mean of a moral sort, for those I hold very cheap--tomy prejudice? Indeed I should hardly say to my prejudice; I mean--I oughtto say--in short, have you heard people remark upon any fanciedeccentricities, or that sort of thing, about me?"
He put the question with obvious difficulty, and at last seemed toovercome his own reluctance with a sort of angry and excitedself-contempt and impatience. Doctor Danvers was a little puzzled bythe interrogatory, and admitted, in reply, that he did not comprehendits drift.
"Doctor Danvers," he resumed, sternly and dejectedly, "I told you, in thechance interview we had some months ago, that I was haunted by a certainfear. I did not define it, nor do I think you suspect its nature. It is afear 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 withwhich Dr. Danvers listened.
"You are a gentleman, sir, and a Christian clergyman; what I have saidand shall say is confided to your honor; to be held sacred as theconfession of misery, and hidden from the coarse gaze of the world. Ihave become subject to a hideous delusion. It comes at intervals. I donot think any mortal suspects it, except, maybe, my daughter Rhoda. Itcomes and disappears, and comes again. I kept my pleasant secret for along 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 sheunderstood me. I recollected myself before I had disclosed the grotesqueand infernal chimera that haunts me."
Marston paused. He was stooped forward, and looking upon the floor of thevehicle, so that his companion could not see his countenance. A silenceensued, 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 Irepeat, I cannot tell, for I expect no sympathy, and hate compassion. Itis, I suppose, the restless nature of the devil that is in me; but, be itwhat it may, I will speak to you, but to you only, for the present, atleast, to you alone."
Doctor Danvers again assured him that he might repose the most entireconfidence in his secrecy.
"The human mind, I take it, must have either comfort in the past or hopein the future," he continued, "otherwise it is in danger. To me, sir, thepast is intolerably repulsive; one boundless, barren, and hideousGolgotha of dead hopes and murdered opportunities; the future, stillblacker and more furious, peopled with dreadful features of horror andmenace, and losing itself in utter darkness. Sir, I do not exaggerate.Between such a past and such a future I stand upon this miserablepresent; and the only comfort I still am capable of feeling is, that nohuman being pities me; that I stand aloof from the insults of compassionand the hypocrisies of sympathetic morality; and that I can safely defyall the respectable scoundrels in Christendom to enhance, by onefeather's weight, the load which I myself have accumulated, and which Imyself hourly and unaided sustain."
Doctor Danvers here introduced a word or two in the direction of theirformer 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 hundredyears ago.
"This cursed dream," he resumed abruptly, "that everyday enslaves me moreand more, has reference to that--that occurrence about WynstonBerkley--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 ofspurious life; going about unrecognized, except by me, in squalor andcontempt, and whispering away my fame and life; laboring with themalignant industry of a fiend to involve me in the meshes of that specialperdition from which alone I shrink, and to which this emissary of hellseems to have predestined me. Sir, this is a monstrous and hideousextravagance, a delusion, but, after all, no more than a trick of theimagination; the reason, the judgment, is untouched. I cannot choose butsee all the damned phantasmagoria, but I do not believe it real, and thisis the difference between my case and--and--madness!"
They were now entering the suburbs of Chester, and Doctor Danvers, painedand shocked beyond measure by this unlooked-for disclosure, and notknowing what remark or comfort to offer, relieved his temporaryembarrassment by looking from the window, as though attracted by theflash 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 cursedsecret to your keeping," he said; "and, truth to say, it seems so tomyself. I cannot account for the impulse, the irresistible power of whichhas forced me to disclose the hateful mystery to you, but the fact isthis, beginning like a speck, this one idea has gradually darkened anddilated, until it has filled my entire mind. The solitary consciousnessof the gigantic mastery it has established there had grown intolerable; Imust have told it. The sense of solitude under this aggressive andtremendous delusion was agony, hourly death to my soul. That is thesecret of my talkativeness; my sole excuse for plaguing you with thedreams of a wretched hypochondriac."
Doctor Danvers assured him that no apologies were needed, and was onlyrestrained from adding the expression of that pity which he real
ly felt,by the fear of irritating a temper so full of bitterness, pride anddefiance. A few minutes more, and the coach having reached itsdestination, they bid one another farewell, and parted.
At that time there resided in a decent mansion about a mile from the townof Chester, a dapper little gentleman, whom we shall call Doctor Parkes.This gentleman was the proprietor and sole professional manager of aprivate asylum for the insane and enjoyed a high reputation, and aproportionate amount of business, in his melancholy calling. It was aboutthe second day after the conversation we have just sketched, that thislittle gentleman, having visited, according to his custom, all hisdomestic patients, was about to take his accustomed walk in his somewhatrestricted pleasure grounds, when his servant announced a visitor.
"A gentleman," he repeated; "you have seen him before--eh?"
"No,