We say, it was but for a moment; but in that little space the blackness of darkness overcame his soul. A shuddering of dread, of doubt, of fear, and all that horrid brood, the birth of rayless and unutterable gloom, passed over him convulsively, and then the whole was gone. He had been too intensely wrought upon by the ecstacies of Faith. He shook off, by one great throe, the giant shadow of its natural enemy, this Doubt, which he now conceived had so long made his life accursed; and the rebound, by a necessary law, carried him to a yet greater and more unreasoning extreme of trust, and unquestioning confidence in this woman, as under God the instrument and medium for restoring him once more to life and the world.
He at once determined to visit her, and prove to his own soul the falsehood of these dark suspicions of the being who had thus moved and spoken his inmost life for good.
CHAPTER XVI.
REMORSE.
The evening was closing in when Manton made his way through a heavy, drifting snow-storm, to the number of the new address, near the corner of Broadway and Eighth Street, which had appeared upon the last notes of his correspondent. He was only made aware, thereby, that she had changed her residence from the rooms where he had visited her in Bond Street, and had thought no more about the matter; for it would have somewhat damped his enthusiasm, or rather have made him furiously indignant, to have been told that the woman he was visiting, with such sublimated sentiment, usually found means to adapt her rooms to the purpose and business in hand.
He was too much excited and pre-occupied to notice the significant appearance of the entry, further than to feel its dreariness, as he rang the bell and waited an unreasonable time for admission. The door was wide enough open to be sure, but he was not sufficiently initiated into the mystery of such places to understand the meaning of this exactly, even if it had been possible for it to have excited his attention, in the then absorbed and abstracted condition of his whole faculties.
A negro servant at length made his appearance, and approaching him closely, answered his inquiries in a tone so insolently confidential that under other circumstances he would surely have been in danger of a flooring at the hands of Manton, who, however, only passed on up the stairs with a feeling of annoyance, the cause of which he made no attempt at apprehending. He ascended three steps at a bound, and in a moment tapped lightly at the door.
A soft voice, “Come!” was the response. The door flew open.
“Yes! yes! I come! Ah, Marie, mother, it must be so!” And dropping his cloak and hat upon the floor, he sprang forward to the woman, who, with her pale face beaming with unnatural light, was seated upon a lounge, where she seemed to have been awaiting him.
“My poor friend!” and she stretched forth her arms towards him. He laid his head upon her bosom, while his whole frame shivered violently, and he sobbed forth—
“Ah, blessed mother, let me rest here! My brain is bursting! I am become as a little child again! Ah, I am so weak! A wisp of straw would bind me! My own vaunted strength is gone—all gone! I have no pride, no scorn, no defiance now! My lips are in the dust! Ah, I am humble, humble, humble, now! Do thou, incarnation of that angel mother who has passed from earth, adopt me for thine own! Thine own, poor, lost, bewildered, panting child!”