Part 14 (1/2)
”Well, Mr. Danvers, I accept the condition--speak what you will,” said Marston, with a gloomy prompt.i.tude. ”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 circ.u.mstances, 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 a.s.sociated,”
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; ”G.o.d be blessed, I am an humble follower of his gracious Son, our Redeemer; and though, I trust, I should bear with patient submission whatever chastis.e.m.e.nt 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. .h.i.therto 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 G.o.d also,”
said Marston, sarcastically, ”that you are not as other men are, nor even as this publican.”
”Nay, Mr. Marston; G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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, G.o.d--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:--