[CHAPTER VI.]
A LONG ACCOUNT SETTLED.
Back from his brother's gaze, step by step, shrank Tarleton or Charles Van Huyden, his eyes still chained to that face, which the grave seemed to have yielded up, to blast his schemes in the very moment of their triumph.
His own child dead,—the stain of Carl Raphael's blood upon his soul,—he felt like a man who stands amid the ruins of a falling house, when the last prop gives way.
With a cry that was scarcely human, in its awful anguish, he turned and fled. Fled from the banquet-room, and through the adjoining chamber, into the darkness of the corridor. His mind, strained to its utmost tension by the perpetual excitement of the last twenty-four hours, gave way all at once, like a bow that, drawn to its full power, suddenly snaps, even as a withered reed. All was dark around him as he rushed along the corridor, but that darkness was made luminous by his soul. It was peopled with faces, that seemed to be encircled by lurid light. The worst agony that can befall a mortal man fell upon him. Nerves disordered, brain unstrung, his very thoughts became living things, and chased him through the darkness. The face of Evelyn Somers was before him, gazing upon him with fixed eyeballs. And his steps were suddenly checked, by an agonized countenance, which was sinking in wintery waves, that seemed to roll about his very feet. He was touched on the shoulder,—his dead daughter ran beside him in her shroud, linking her arm in his, and bending forward her face, which looked up into his own, with lips that had no blood in them, and eyes that had no life. And if the darkness was full of faces, the air was full of voices; voices whispering, shouting, yelling, all through each other, and yet, every voice distinctly heard,—all the voices that he had heard in his lifetime were speaking to him now. Well might he have exclaimed in the words of Cain,—"My punishment is greater than I can bear."
If he could have only rid himself of Frank, who ran by his side, in her shroud! But no,—there she was,—her arm in his,—her face bent forward looking up into his own, with lips that had no blood, and eyes that had no life.
He talked to those phantoms,—he bade them back,—he rushed on, through the corridor, and ascended the dark stairs with horrid shrieks. And the face of Carl Raphael, struggling in the waves, went before him at every step.
He readied at length the narrow garret, in which years agone, Gulian Van Huyden bid Martin Fulmer, farewell. Here, as he heard the storm beat against the window panes, he for a moment recovered his shattered senses.
"I'm nervous," he cried, "if I had been drinking, I would think I had the mania. Let me recover myself. Where in the deuce am I?"