The Evil Guest
Page 28
twice essayed to drawthe curtain, and twice lost courage; but gathering resolution at last,he pulled the drapery aside, and beheld all he was to see again ofRichard Marston.
The bedclothes were drawn so as nearly to cover the mouth.
"There is the wound, sir," whispered the man, as with coarseofficiousness he drew back the bedclothes from the throat of the corpse,and exhibited a gash, as it seemed, nearly severing the head from thebody. With sickening horror Doctor Danvers turned away from the awfulspectacle. He covered his face in his hands, and it seemed to him as if asoft, solemn voice whispered in his ear the mystic words, "Whososheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."
The hand which, but a few years before, had, unsuspected, consigned afellow-mortal to the grave, had itself avenged the murder--Marston hadperished by his own hand.
Naturally ambitious and intriguing, the perilous tendencies of such aspirit in Mademoiselle de Barras had never been schooled by the mightyand benignant principles of religion; of her accidental acquaintance atRouen with Sir Wynston Berkley, and her subsequent introduction, in anevil hour, into the family at Gray Forest, it is unnecessary to speak.The unhappy terms on which she found Marston living with his wife,suggested, in their mutual alienation, the idea of founding a doubleinfluence in the household; and to conceive the idea, and to act upon it,were, in her active mind, the same. Young, beautiful, fascinating, shewell knew the power of her attractions, and determined, though probablywithout one thought of transgressing the limits of literal propriety, tobring them to bear upon the discontented, retired roue, for whom shecared absolutely nothing, except as the instrument, and in part thevictim of her schemes. Thus yielding to the double instinct that swayedher, she gratified, at the same time, her love of intrigue and her loveof power. At length, however, came the hour which demanded a sacrifice tothe evil influence she had hitherto worshipped on such easy terms. Shefound that her power must now be secured by crime, and she fell. Thencame the arrival of Sir Wynston--his murder--her elopement with Marston,and her guilty and joyless triumph. At last, however, came the blow, longsuspended and terrific, which shattered all her hopes and schemes, anddrove her once again upon the world. The catastrophe we have justdescribed. After it she made her way to Paris. Arrived in the capital ofFrance, she speedily dissipated whatever remained of the money andvaluables which she had taken with her from Gray Forest; and MadameMarston, as she now styled herself, was glad to place herself once moreas a governess in an aristocratic family. So far her good fortune hadprevailed in averting the punishment but too well earned by her pastlife. But a day of reckoning was to come. A few years later France wasinvolved in the uproar and conflagration of revolution. Noble familieswere scattered, beggared, decimated; and their dependants, often draggedalong with them into the flaming abyss, in many instances suffered thelast dire extremities of human ill. It was at this awful period that aretribution so frightful and extraordinary overtook Madame Marston, thatwe may hereafter venture to make it the subject of a separate narrative.Until then the reader will rest satisfied with what he already knows ofher history; and meanwhile bid a long, and as it may possibly turn out,an eternal farewell to that beautiful embodiment of an evil anddisastrous influence.
The concluding chapter in a novel is always brief, though seldom so shortas the world would have it. In a tale like this, the "winding up" must beproportionately contracted. We have scarcely a claim to so many lines asthe formal novelist may occupy pages, in the distribution of poeticjustice, and the final grouping of his characters into that effectivetableau upon which, at last, the curtain gracefully descends. We, too,may be all the briefer, inasmuch as the reader has doubtless anticipatedthe little we have to say. It amounts, then, to this:--Within two yearsafter the fearful event which we have just recorded, an alliance haddrawn together, in nearer and dearer union, the inmates of Gray Forestand Newton Park. Rhoda had given her hand to young Mervyn, of ulteriorconsequences we say nothing--the nursery is above our province. And now,at length, after this Christmas journey through somewhat stern and gloomyscenery, in this long-deferred flood of golden sunshine we bid thee,gentle reader, a fond farewell.
THE END
[Transcriber's note: "Tate-a-Tate" is [sic] twice in the original book.]