Mary Marston Part 60

"Is she not come back yet?"

"No, sir, not yet. She'll be in a minute, though. I saw her coming up the avenue."

"Go and bring her here."

"Yes, sir."

Mewks went, and in two minutes returned with the letter, and the message that Miss Marston hadn't time to direct it.

"You d.a.m.ned rascal! I told you to bring the messenger here."

"She ran the whole way, sir, and not being very strong, was that tired, that, the moment she got in, the poor thing dropped in a dead faint.

They ain't got her to yet."

His master gave him one look straight in the eyes, then opened the letter, and read it.

"Miss Marston will call here tomorrow morning," he said; "see that _she_ is shown up at once--here, to my sitting-room. I hope I am explicit."

When the man was gone, Mr. Redmain nodded his head three times, and grinned the skin tight as a drum-head over his cheek-bones.

"There isn't a d.a.m.ned soul of them to be trusted!" he said to himself, and sat silently thoughtful.

Perhaps he was thinking how often he had come short of the hope placed in him; times of reflection arrive to most men; and a threatened attack of the illness he believed must one day carry him off, might well have disposed him to think.

In the evening he was worse.

By midnight he was in agony, and Lady Margaret was up with him all night. In the morning came a lull, and Lady Margaret went to bed. His wife had not come near him. But Sepia might have been seen, more than once or twice, hovering about his door.

Both she and Mewks thought, after such a night, he must have forgotten his appointment with Mary.

When he had had some chocolate, he fell into a doze. But his sleep was far from profound. Often he woke and again dozed off.

The clock in the dressing-room struck eleven.

"Show Miss Marston up the moment she arrives," he said--and his voice was almost like that of a man in health.

"Yes, sir," replied the startled Mewks, and felt he must obey.

So Mary was at once shown to the chamber of the sick man.

To her surprise (for Mewks had given her no warning), he was in bed, and looking as ill as ever she had seen him. His small head was like a skull covered with parchment. He made the slightest of signs to her to come nearer--and again. She went close to the bed. Mewks sat down at the foot of it, out of sight. It was a great four-post-bed, with curtains.

"I'm glad you're come," he said, with a feeble grin, all he had for a smile. "I want to have a little talk with you. But I can't while that brute is sitting there. I have been suffering horribly. Look at me, and tell me if you think I am going to die--not that I take your opinion for worth anything. That's not what I wanted you for, though. I wasn't so ill then. But I want you the more to talk to now. _You_ have a bit of a heart, even for people that don't deserve it--at least I'm going to believe you have; and, if I am wrong, I almost think I would rather not know it till I'm dead and gone!--Good G.o.d! where shall I be then?"

I have already said that, whether in consequence of remnants of mother-teaching or from the movements of a conscience that had more vitality than any of his so-called friends would have credited it with, Mr. Redmain, as often as his sufferings reached a certain point, was subject to fits of terror--horrible anguish it sometimes amounted to--at the thought of h.e.l.l. This, of course, was silly, seeing h.e.l.l is out of fas.h.i.+on in far wider circles than that of Mayfair; but denial does not alter fact, and not always fear. Mr. Redmain laughed when he was well, and shook when he was suffering. In vain he argued with himself that what he held by when in health was much more likely to be true than a dread which might be but the suggestion of the disease that was slowly gnawing him to death: as often as the sickness returned, he received the suggestion afresh, whatever might be its source, and trembled as before. In vain he accused himself of cowardice--the thing was there--_in him_--nothing could drive it out. And, verily, even a madman may be wiser than the prudent of this world; and the courage of not a few would forsake them if they dared but look the danger in the face. I pity the poor ostrich, and must I admire the man of whose kind he is the type, or take him in any sense for a man of courage? Wait till the thing stares you in the face, and then, whether you be brave man or coward, you will at all events care little about courage or cowardice. The nearer a man is to being a true man, the sooner will conscience of wrong make a coward of him; and herein Redmain had a far-off kindred with the just. After the night he had pa.s.sed, he was now in one of his terror-fits; and this much may be said for his good sense--that, if there was anywhere a h.e.l.l for the use of anybody, he was justified in antic.i.p.ating a free entrance.

"Mewks!" he called, suddenly, and his tone was loud and angry.

Mewks was by his bedside instantly.

"Get out with you! If I find you in this room again, without having been called, I will kill you! I am strong enough for that, even without this pain. They won't hang a dying man, and where I am going they will rather like it."

Mewks vanished.

"You need not mind, my girl," he went on, to Mary. "Everybody knows I am ill--very ill. Sit down there, on the foot of the bed, only take care you don't shake it, and let me talk to you. People, you know, say nowadays there ain't any h.e.l.l--or perhaps none to speak of?"

"I should think the former more likely than the latter," said Mary.

"You don't believe there is any? I _am_ glad of that! for you are a good girl, and ought to know."

"You mistake me, sir. How can I imagine there is no h.e.l.l, when _he_ said there was?"

"Who's _he_?"

"The man who knows all about it, and means to put a stop to it some day."

"Oh, yes; I see! Hm!--But I don't for the life of me see what a fellow is to make of it all--don't you know? Those parsons! They will have it there's no way out of it but theirs, and I never could see a handle anywhere to that door!"

"_I_ don't see what the parsons have got to do with it, or, at least, what you have got to do with the parsons. If a thing is true, you have as much to do with it as any parson in England; if it is not true, neither you nor they have anything to do with it."

"But, I tell you, if it be all as true as--as--that we are all sinners, I don't know what to do with it!"

"It seems to me a simple thing. _That_ man as much as said he knew all about it, and came to find men that were lost, and take them home."

"He can't well find one more lost than I am! But how am I to believe it? How can it be true? It's ages since he was here, if ever he was at all, and there hasn't been a sign of him ever since, all the time!"

"There you may be quite wrong. I think I could find you some who believe him just as near them now as ever he was to his own brothers--believe that he hears them when they speak to him, and heeds what they say."

"That's bosh. You would have me believe against the evidence of my senses!"

"You must have strange senses, Mr. Redmain, that give you evidence where they can't possibly know anything! If that man spoke the truth when he was in the world, he is near us now; if he is not near us, there is an end of it all."

"The nearer he is, the worse for me!" sighed Mr. Redmain.

"The nearer he is, the better for the worst man that ever breathed."

"That's queer doctrine! Mind you, I don't say it mayn't be all right.

But it does seem a cowardly thing to go asking him to save you, after you've been all your life doing what ought to d.a.m.n you--if there be a h.e.l.l, mind you, that is."

"But think," said Mary, "if that should be your only chance of being able to make up for the mischief you have done? No punishment you can have will do anything for that. No suffering of yours will do anything for those you have made suffer. But it is so much harder to leave the old way than to go on and let things take their chance!"

"There may be something in what you say; but still I can't see it anything better than sneaking, to do a world of mischief, and then slink away into heaven, leaving all the poor wretches to look after themselves."

"I don't think Jesus Christ is worse pleased with you for feeling like that," said Mary.

"Eh? What? What's that you say?--Jesus Christ worse pleased with me?

That's a good one! As if he ever thought about a fellow like me!"