Part 15 (1/2)
”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--