CHAPTER XXXIII.

Clem. Lift the dark veil of years! Behind, what waits?

A human heart. Vast city, where reside

All glories and all vilenesses; while foul,

Yet silent, through the roar of passions rolls

The river of the Darling Sin, and bears

A life and yet a poison on its tide.

..............

Clem. Thy wife?

Vict. Avaunt! I've changed that word to “scorn”!

Clem. Thy child?

Vict. Ay, that strikes home,--my child, my child!

Love and Hatred, by --------

To an obscure town in ------shire there came to reside a young couple, whose

appearance and habits drew towards them from the neighbouring gossips

a more than ordinary attention. They bore the name of Welford. The man

assumed the profession of a solicitor. He came without introduction

or recommendation; his manner of life bespoke poverty; his address was

reserved and even sour; and despite the notice and scrutiny with which

he was regarded, he gained no clients and made no lawsuits. The want of

all those decent charlatanisms which men of every profession are almost

necessitated to employ, and the sudden and unushered nature of his

coming were, perhaps, the cause of this ill-success. “His house was too

small,” people said, “for respectability.” And little good could be got

from a solicitor the very rails round whose door were so sadly in want

of repainting! Then, too, Mrs. Welford made a vast number of enemies.

She was, beyond all expression, beautiful; and there was a certain

coquetry in her manner which showed she was aware of her attractions.

All the ladies of ------- hated her. A few people called on the young

couple. Welford received them coldly; their invitations were unaccepted,

and, what was worse, they were never returned. The devil himself could

not have supported an attorney under such circumstances. Reserved,

shabby, poor, rude, introductionless, a bad house, an unpainted railing,

and a beautiful wife! Nevertheless, though Welford was not employed,

he was, as we have said, watched. On their first arrival, which was in

summer, the young pair were often seen walking together in the fields or

groves which surrounded their home. Sometimes they walked affectionately

together, and it was observed with what care Welford adjusted his wife's

cloak or shawl around her slender shape, as the cool of the evening

increased. But often his arm was withdrawn; he lingered behind, and

they continued their walk or returned homeward in silence and apart.

By degrees whispers circulated throughout the town that the new-married

couple lived by no means happily. The men laid the fault on the

stern-looking husband; the women, on the minx of a wife. However, the

solitary servant whom they kept declared that though Mr. Welford

did sometimes frown, and Mrs. Welford did sometimes weep, they were

extremely attached to each other, and only quarrelled through love. The

maid had had four lovers herself, and was possibly experienced in such

matters. They received no visitors, near or from a distance; and the

postman declared he had never seen a letter directed to either. Thus a

kind of mystery hung over the pair, and made them still more gazed on

and still more disliked--which is saying a great deal--than they would

have otherwise been. Poor as Welford was, his air and walk eminently

bespoke what common persons term gentility. And in this he had greatly

the advantage of his beautiful wife, who, though there was certainly

nothing vulgar or plebeian in her aspect, altogether wanted the

refinement of manner, look, and phrase which characterized Welford.

For about two years they lived in this manner, and so frugally and

tranquilly that though Welford had not any visible means of subsistence,

no one could well wonder in what manner they did subsist. About the

end of that time Welford suddenly embarked a small sum in a county

speculation. In the course of this adventure, to the great surprise of

his neighbours, he evinced an extraordinary turn for calculation, and

his habits plainly bespoke a man both of business and ability. This

disposal of capital brought a sufficient return to support the Welfords,

if they had been so disposed, in rather a better style than heretofore.

They remained, however, in much the same state; and the only difference

that the event produced was the retirement of Mr. Welford from the

profession he had embraced. He was no longer a solicitor! It must be

allowed that he resigned no great advantages in this retirement. About

this time some officers were quartered at ------; and one of them, a

handsome lieutenant, was so struck with the charms of Mrs. Welford,

whom he saw at church, that he lost no opportunity of testifying his

admiration. It was maliciously yet not unfoundedly remarked that though

no absolute impropriety could be detected in the manner of Mrs. Welford,

she certainly seemed far from displeased with the evident homage of the

young lieutenant. A blush tinged her cheek when she saw him; and the

gallant coxcomb asserted that the blush was not always without a smile.

Emboldened by the interpretations of his vanity, and contrasting, as

every one else did, his own animated face and glittering garb with the

ascetic and gloomy countenance, the unstudied dress, and austere gait

which destroyed in Welford the effect of a really handsome person, our

lieutenant thought fit to express his passion by a letter, which he

conveyed to Mrs. Welford's pew. Mrs. Welford went not to church that

day; the letter was found by a good-natured neighbour, and inclosed

anonymously to the husband.

Whatever, in the secrecy of domestic intercourse, took place on this

event was necessarily unknown; but the next Sunday the face of Mr.

Welford, which had never before appeared at church, was discerned by one

vigilant neighbour,--probably the anonymous friend,--not in the same

pew with his wife, but in a remote corner of the sacred house. And once,

when the lieutenant was watching to read in Mrs. Welford's face some

answer to his epistle, the same obliging inspector declared that

Welford's countenance assumed a sardonic and withering sneer that

made his very blood to creep. However this be, the lieutenant left

his quarters, and Mrs. Welford's reputation remained dissatisfactorily

untarnished. Shortly after this the county speculation failed, and it

was understood that the Welfords were about to leave the town, whither

none knew,--some said to jail; but then, unhappily, no debts could be

discovered. Their bills had been “next to nothing;” but, at least, they

had been regularly paid. However, before the rumoured emigration took

place, a circumstance equally wonderful to the good people of occurred.

One bright spring morning a party of pleasure from a great house in the

vicinity passed through that town. Most conspicuous of these was a

young horseman, richly dressed, and of a remarkably showy and handsome

appearance. Not a little sensible of the sensation he created,

this cavalier lingered behind his companions in order to eye more

deliberately certain damsels stationed in a window, and who were quite

ready to return his glances with interest. At this moment the horse,

which was fretting itself fiercely against the rein that restrained it

from its fellows, took a fright at a knife-grinder, started violently to

one side, and the graceful cavalier, who had been thinking, not of the

attitude best adapted to preserve his equilibrium, but to display his

figure, was thrown with some force upon a heap of bricks and rubbish

which had long, to the scandal of the neighbourhood, stood before the

paintless railings around Mr. Welford's house. Welford himself came

out at the time, and felt compelled--for he was by no means one whose

sympathetic emotions flowed easily--to give a glance to the condition

of a man who lay motionless before his very door. The horseman quickly

recovered his senses, but found himself unable to rise; one of his legs

was broken. Supported in the arms of his groom, he looked around, and

his eye met Welford's. An instant recognition gave life to the face

of the former, and threw a dark blush over the sullen features of the

latter.

“Heavens!” said the cavalier, “is that--”

“Hist, my lord!” cried Welford, quickly interrupting him, and glancing

round. “But you are hurt,--will you enter my house?”

The horseman signified his assent, and, between the groom and Welford,

was borne within the shabby door of the ex-solicitor. The groom was

then despatched with an excuse to the party, many of whom were already

hastening around the house; and though one or two did force themselves

across the inhospitable threshold, yet so soon as they had uttered a few

expletives, and felt their stare sink beneath the sullen and chilling

asperity of the host, they satisfied themselves that though it was d---d

unlucky for their friend, yet they could do nothing for him at present;

and promising to send to inquire after him the next day, they remounted

and rode homeward, with an eye more attentive than usual to the motion

of their steeds. They did not, however, depart till the surgeon of the

town had made his appearance, and declared that the patient must not on

any account be moved. A lord's leg was a windfall that did not happen

every day to the surgeon of -------. All this while we may imagine the

state of anxiety experienced in the town, and the agonized endurance of

those rural nerves which are produced in scanty populations, and have

so Taliacotian a sympathy with the affairs of other people. One day,

two days, three days, a week, a fortnight, nay, a month, passed, and the

lord was still the inmate of Mr. Welford's abode. Leaving the gossips to

feed on their curiosity,--“cannibals of their own hearts,”--we must

give a glance towards the interior of the inhospitable mansion of the

ex-solicitor.

It was towards evening, the sufferer was supported on a sofa, and the

beautiful Mrs. Welford, who had officiated as his nurse, was placing the

pillow under the shattered limb. He himself was attempting to seize her

hand, which she coyly drew back, and uttering things sweeter and more

polished than she had ever listened to before. At this moment Welford

softly entered; he was unnoticed by either; and he stood at the door

contemplating them with a smile of calm and self-hugging derision. The

face of Mephistopheles regarding Margaret and Faust might suggest some

idea of the picture we design to paint; but the countenance of Welford

was more lofty, as well as comelier, in character, though not less

malignant in expression, than that which the incomparable Retsch has

given to the mocking fiend. So utter, so congratulatory, so lordly was

the contempt on Welford's dark and striking features, that though he

was in that situation in which ridicule usually attaches itself to the

husband, it was the gallant and the wife that would have appeared to the

beholder in a humiliating and unenviable light.

After a momentary pause Welford approached with a heavy step. The wife

started; but with a bland and smooth expression, which since his sojourn

in the town of had been rarely visible in his aspect, the host joined

the pair, smiled on the nurse, and congratulated the patient on his

progress towards recovery. The nobleman, well learned in the usages

of the world, replied easily and gayly; and the conversation flowed

on cheerfully enough till the wife, who had sat abstracted and apart,

stealing ever and anon timid glances towards her husband and looks of a

softer meaning towards the patient, retired from the room. Welford

then gave a turn to the conversation; he reminded the nobleman of the

pleasant days they had passed in Italy,--of the adventures they had

shared, and the intrigues they had enjoyed. As the conversation warmed,

it assumed a more free and licentious turn; and not a little, we ween,

would the good folks of -----have been amazed, could they have listened

to the gay jests and the libertine maxims which flowed from the thin

lips of that cold and severe Welford, whose countenance gave the lie to

mirth. Of women in general they spoke with that lively contempt which is

the customary tone with men of the world; only in Welford it assumed

a bitterer, a deeper, and a more philosophical cast than it did in his

more animated yet less energetic guest.

The nobleman seemed charmed with his friend; the conversation was just

to his taste; and when Welford had supported him up to bed, he shook

that person cordially by the hand, and hoped he should soon see him

in very different circumstances. When the peer's door was closed on

Welford, he stood motionless for some moments; he then with a soft step

ascended to his own chamber. His wife slept soundly; beside the bed was

the infant's cradle. As his eyes fell on the latter, the rigid irony,

now habitual to his features, relaxed; he bent over the cradle long and

in deep silence. The mother's face, blended with the sire's, was stamped

on the sleeping and cherub countenance before him; and as at length,

rousing from his revery, he kissed it gently, he murmured,--

“When I look on you I will believe that she once loved me. Pah!” he said

abruptly, and rising, “this fatherly sentiment for a -----'s offering

is exquisite in me!” So saying, without glancing towards his wife, who,

disturbed by the loudness of his last words, stirred uneasily, he left

the room, and descended into that where he had conversed with his

guest. He shut the door with caution, and striding to and fro the humble

apartment, gave vent to thoughts marshalled somewhat in the broken array

in which they now appear to the reader:--

“Ay, ay, she has been my ruin! and if I were one of your weak fools who

make a gospel of the silliest and most mawkish follies of this social

state, she would now be my disgrace; but instead of my disgrace, I will

make her my footstool to honour and wealth. And, then, to the devil with

the footstool! Yes! two years I have borne what was enough to turn my

whole blood into gall,--inactivity, hopelessness, a wasted heart

and life in myself; contumely from the world; coldness, bickering,

ingratitude from the one for whom (oh, ass that I was!) I gave up the

most cherished part of my nature,--rather, my nature itself! Two years I

have borne this, and now will I have my revenge. I will sell her,--sell

her! God! I will sell her like the commonest beast of a market! And this

paltry piece of false coin shall buy me--my world! Other men's vengeance

comes from hatred,--a base, rash, unphilosophical sentiment! mine comes

from scorn,--the only wise state for the reason to rest in. Other men's

vengeance ruins themselves; mine shall save me! Ha! how my soul chuckles

when I look at this pitiful pair, who think I see them not, and know

that every movement they make is on a mesh of my web! Yet,” and Welford

paused slowly,--“yet I cannot but mock myself when I think of the arch

gull that this boy's madness, love,--love, indeed! the very word

turns me sick with loathing,--made of me. Had that woman, silly, weak,

automatal as she is, really loved me; had she been sensible of the

unspeakable sacrifice I had made to her (Antony's was nothing to it,--he

lost a real world only; mine was the world of imagination); had she

but condescended to learn my nature, to subdue the woman's devil at

her own,--I could have lived on in this babbling hermitage forever,

and fancied myself happy and resigned,--I could have become a different

being. I fancy I could have become what your moralists (quacks!) call

'good.' But this fretting frivolity of heart, this lust of fool's

praise, this peevishness of temper, this sullenness in answer to the

moody thought, which in me she neither fathomed nor forgave, this

vulgar, daily, hourly pining at the paltry pinches of the body's

poverty, the domestic whine, the household complaint,--when I--I have

not a thought for such pitiful trials of affection; and all this while

my curses, my buried hope and disguised spirit and sunken name not

thought of; the magnitude of my surrender to her not even comprehended;

nay, her 'inconveniences'--a dim hearth, I suppose, or a daintiless

table--compared, ay, absolutely compared, with all which I abandoned for

her sake! As if it were not enough,--had I been a fool, an ambitionless,

soulless fool,-the mere thought that I had linked my name to that of a

tradesman,--I beg pardon, a retired tradesman!--as if that knowledge--a

knowledge I would strangle my whole race, every one who has ever met,

seen me, rather than they should penetrate--were not enough, when she

talks of 'comparing,' to make me gnaw the very flesh from my bones! No,

no, no! Never was there so bright a turn in my fate as when this titled

coxcomb, with his smooth voice and gaudy fripperies, came hither! I

will make her a tool to carve my escape from this cavern wherein she

has plunged me. I will foment 'my lord's' passion, till 'my lord' thinks

'the passion' (a butterfly's passion!) worth any price. I will then

make my own terms, bind 'my lord' to secrecy, and get rid of my wife,

my shame, and the obscurity of Mr. Welford forever. Bright, bright

prospects! let me shut my eyes to enjoy you! But softly! my noble friend

calls himself a man of the world, skilled in human nature, and a derider

of its prejudices; true enough, in his own little way--thanks not to

enlarged views, but a vicious experience--so he is! The book of the

world is a vast miscellany; he is perfectly well acquainted, doubtless,

with those pages that treat of the fashions,--profoundly versed, I

warrant, in the 'Magasin des Modes' tacked to the end of the index. But

shall I, even with all the mastership which my mind must exercise

over his,--shall I be able utterly to free myself in this 'peer of the

world's' mind from a degrading remembrance? Cuckold! cuckold! 't is an

ugly word; a convenient, willing cuckold, humph!--there is no grandeur,

no philosophical varnish in the phrase. Let me see--yes! I have a

remedy for all that. I was married privately,--well! under disguised

names,--well! It was a stolen marriage, far from her town,--well!

witnesses unknown to her,--well! proofs easily secured to my

possession,--excellent! The fool shall believe it a forged marriage, an

ingenious gallantry of mine; I will wash out the stain cuckold with the

water of another word; I will make market of a mistress, not a wife. I

will warn him not to acquaint her with this secret; let me consider for

what reason,--oh! my son's legitimacy may be convenient to me hereafter.

He will understand that reason, and I will have his 'honour' thereon.

And by the way, I do care for that legitimacy, and will guard the

proofs. I love my child,--ambitious men do love their children. I may

become a lord myself, and may wish for a lord to succeed me; and that

son is mine, thank Heaven! I am sure on that point,--the only child,

too, that ever shall arise to me. Never, I swear, will I again put

myself beyond my own power! All my nature, save one passion, I have

hitherto mastered; that passion shall henceforth be my slave, my only

thought be ambition, my only mistress be the world!”

As thus terminated the revery of a man whom the social circumstances

of the world were calculated, as if by system, to render eminently and

basely wicked, Welford slowly ascended the stairs, and re-entered his

chamber. His wife was still sleeping. Her beauty was of the fair and

girlish and harmonized order, which lovers and poets would express by

the word “angelic;” and as Welford looked upon her face, hushed and

almost hallowed by slumber, a certain weakness and irresolution might

have been discernible in the strong lines of his haughty features. At

that moment, as if forever to destroy the return of hope or virtue

to either, her lips moved, they uttered one word,--it was the name of

Welford's courtly guest.

About three weeks from that evening Mrs. Welford eloped with the young

nobleman, and on the morning following that event the distracted husband

with his child disappeared forever from the town of -----. From that day

no tidings whatsoever respecting him ever reached the titillated ears

of his anxious neighbours; and doubt, curiosity, discussion, gradually

settled into the belief that his despair had hurried him into suicide.

Although the unfortunate Mrs. Welford was in reality of a light and

frivolous turn, and, above all, susceptible to personal vanity, she was

not without ardent affections and keen sensibilities. Her marriage had

been one of love,--that is to say, on her part, the ordinary love of

girls, who love not through actual and natural feeling so much as forced

predisposition. Her choice had fallen on one superior to herself in

birth, and far above all, in person and address, whom she had habitually

met. Thus her vanity had assisted her affection, and something strange

and eccentric in the temper and mind of Welford had, though at times it

aroused her fear, greatly contributed to inflame her imagination. Then,

too, though an uncourtly, he had been a passionate and a romantic lover.

She was sensible that he gave up for her much that he had previously

conceived necessary to his existence; and she stopped not to inquire how

far this devotion was likely to last, or what conduct on her part might

best perpetuate the feelings from which it sprang. She had eloped with

him. She had consented to a private marriage. She had passed one happy

month, and then delusion vanished! Mrs. Welford was not a woman who

could give to reality, or find in it, the charm equal to delusion. She

was perfectly unable to comprehend the intricate and dangerous character

of her husband.

She had not the key to his virtues, nor the spell for his vices. Neither

was the state to which poverty compelled them one well calculated

for that tender meditation, heightened by absence and cherished in

indolence, which so often supplies one who loves with the secret to the

nature of the one beloved. Though not equal to her husband in birth or

early prospects, Mrs. Welford had been accustomed to certain comforts,

often more felt by those who belong to the inferior classes than by

those appertaining to the more elevated, who in losing one luxury will

often cheerfully surrender all. A fine lady can submit to more hardships

than her woman; and every gentleman who travels smiles at the privations

which agonize his valet. Poverty and its grim comrades made way for a

whole host of petty irritations and peevish complaints; and as no

guest or visitor ever relieved the domestic discontent, or broke on the

domestic bickering, they generally ended in that moody sullenness which

so often finds love a grave in repentance. Nothing makes people tire of

each other like a familiarity that admits of carelessness in quarrelling

and coarseness in complaining. The biting sneer of Welford gave acrimony

to the murmur of his wife; and when once each conceived the other the

injurer, or him or herself the wronged, it was vain to hope that one

would be more wary, or the other more indulgent. They both exacted too

much, and the wife in especial conceded too little. Mrs. Welford was

altogether and emphatically what a libertine calls “a woman,”--such as

a frivolous education makes a woman,--generous in great things, petty

in small; vain, irritable, full of the littleness of herself and her

complaints, ready to plunge into an abyss with her lover, but equally

ready to fret away all love with reproaches when the plunge had been

made. Of all men, Welford could bear this the least. A woman of a

larger heart, a more settled experience, and an intellect capable of

appreciating his character and sounding all his qualities, might have

made him perhaps a useful and a great man, and, at least, her lover for

life. Amidst a harvest of evil feelings the mere strength of his nature

rendered him especially capable of intense feeling and generous emotion.

One who relied on him was safe; one who rebelled against him trusted

only to the caprice of his scorn. Still, however, for two years, love,

though weakening with each hour, fought on in either breast, and could

scarcely be said to be entirely vanquished in the wife, even when she

eloped with her handsome seducer. A French writer has said pithily

enough: “Compare for a moment the apathy of a husband with the

attention, the gallantry, the adoration of a lover, and can you ask the

result?” He was a French writer; but Mrs. Welford had in her temper much

of the Frenchwoman. A suffering patient, young, handsome, well versed

in the arts of intrigue, contrasted with a gloomy husband whom she

had never comprehended, long feared, and had lately doubted if she

disliked,--ah! a much weaker contrast has made many a much better

woman food for the lawyers! Mrs. Welford eloped; but she felt a revived

tenderness for her husband on the very morning that she did so. She

carried away with her his letters of love as well as her own, which

when they first married she had in an hour of fondness collected

together,--then an inestimable board!--and never did her new lover

receive from her beautiful lips half so passionate a kiss as she left on

the cheek of her infant. For some months she enjoyed with her paramour

all for which she had sighed in her home. The one for whom she had

forsaken her legitimate ties was a person so habitually cheerful,

courteous, and what is ordinarily termed “good-natured” (though he

had in him as much of the essence of selfishness as any nobleman can

decently have), that he continued gallant to her without an effort long

after he had begun to think it possible to tire even of so lovely a

face. Yet there were moments when the fickle wife recalled her husband

with regret, and contrasting him with her seducer, did not find all the

colourings of the contrast flattering to the latter. There is something

in a powerful and marked character which women and all weak natures feel

themselves constrained to respect; and Welford's character thus stood in

bold and therefore advantageous though gloomy relief when opposed to the

levities and foibles of this guilty woman's present adorer. However this

be, the die was cast; and it would have been policy for the lady to have

made the best of her present game. But she who had murmured as a wife

was not complaisant as a mistress. Reproaches made an interlude to

caresses, which the noble lover by no means admired. He was not a man

to retort, he was too indolent; but neither was he one to forbear.

“My charming friend,” said he one day, after a scene, “you weary of

me,--nothing more natural! Why torment each other? You say I have ruined

you; my sweet friend, let me make you reparation. Become independent; I

will settle an annuity upon you; fly me,--seek happiness elsewhere, and

leave your unfortunate, your despairing lover to his fate.”

“Do you taunt me, my lord?” cried the angry fair; “or do you believe

that money can replace the rights of which you have robbed me? Can you

make me again a wife,--a happy, a respected wife? Do this, my lord, and

you atone to me!”

The nobleman smiled, and shrugged his shoulders. The lady yet more

angrily repeated her question. The lover answered by an innuendo,

which at once astonished and doubly enraged her. She eagerly demanded

explanation; and his lordship, who had gone further than he intended,

left the room. But his words had sunk deep into the breast of this

unhappy woman, and she resolved to procure an elucidation. Agreeably to

the policy which stripped the fabled traveller of his cloak, she laid

aside the storm and preferred the sunshine: she watched a moment of

tenderness, turned the opportunity to advantage, and by little and

little she possessed herself of a secret which sickened her with shame,

disgust, and dismay. Sold! bartered! the object of a contemptuous

huxtering to the purchaser and the seller, sold, too, with a lie that

debased her at once into an object for whom even pity was mixed with

scorn! Robbed already of the name and honour of a wife, and transferred

as a harlot from the wearied arms of one leman to the capricious

caresses of another! Such was the image that rose before her; and while

it roused at one moment all her fiercer passions into madness, humbled,

with the next, her vanity into the dust. She, who knew the ruling

passion of Welford, saw at a glance the object of scorn and derision

which she had become to him. While she imagined herself the betrayer,

she had been betrayed; she saw vividly before her (and shuddered as she

saw) her husband's icy smile, his serpent eye, his features steeped in

sarcasm, and all his mocking soul stamped upon the countenance, whose

lightest derision was so galling. She turned from this picture, and

saw the courtly face of the purchaser,--his subdued smile at her

reproaches,--his latent sneer at her claims to a station which he had

been taught by the arch plotter to believe she had never possessed.

She saw his early weariness of her attractions, expressed with respect

indeed,--an insulting respect,--but felt without a scruple of remorse.

She saw in either--as around--only a reciprocation of contempt. She was

in a web of profound abasement. Even that haughty grief of conscience

for crime committed to another, which if it stings humbles not, was

swallowed up in a far more agonizing sensation, to one so vain as

the adulteress,--the burning sense of shame at having herself, while

sinning, been the duped and deceived. Her very soul was appalled with

her humiliation. The curse of Welford's vengeance was on her, and it

was wreaked to the last! Whatever kindly sentiment she might have

experienced towards her protector, was swallowed up at once by this

discovery. She could not endure the thought of meeting the eye of one

who had been the gainer by this ignominious barter; the foibles and

weaknesses of the lover assumed a despicable as well as hateful dye. And

in feeling herself degraded, she loathed him. The day after she had made

the discovery we have referred to, Mrs. Welford left the house of her

protector, none knew whither. For two years from that date, all trace

of her history was lost. At the end of that time what was Welford? A man

rapidly rising in the world, distinguished at the Bar, where his first

brief had lifted him into notice, commencing a flattering career in

the senate, holding lucrative and honourable offices, esteemed for the

austere rectitude of his moral character, gathering the golden opinions

of all men, as he strode onward to public reputation. He had re-assumed

his hereditary name; his early history was unknown; and no one in the

obscure and distant town of ------ had ever guessed that the humble

Welford was the William Brandon whose praise was echoed in so many

journals, and whose rising genius was acknowledged by all. That

asperity, roughness, and gloom which had noted him at ------, and which,

being natural to him, he deigned not to disguise in a station ungenial

to his talents and below his hopes, were now glitteringly varnished over

by an hypocrisy well calculated to aid his ambition. So learnedly could

this singular man fit himself to others that few among the great met him

as a companion, nor left him without the temper to become his friend.

Through his noble rival--that is (to make our reader's “surety doubly

sure”), through Lord Mauleverer--he had acquired his first lucrative

office, a certain patronage from government, and his seat in parliament.

If he had persevered at the Bar rather than given himself entirely to

State intrigues, it was only because his talents were eminently more

calculated to advance him in the former path to honour than in the

latter. So devoted was he become to public life that he had only

permitted himself to cherish one private source of enjoyment,--his son.

As no one, not even his brother, knew he had been married (during the

two years of his disguised name, he had been supposed abroad), the

appearance of this son made the only piece of scandal whispered against

the rigid morality of his fair fame; but he himself, waiting his own

time for avowing a legitimate heir, gave out that it was the orphan

child of a dear friend whom he had known abroad; and the puritan

demureness not only of life, but manner, which he assumed, gained a

pretty large belief to the statement. This son Brandon idolized. As

we have represented himself to say, ambitious men are commonly fond

of their children, beyond the fondness of other sires. The perpetual

reference which the ambitious make to posterity is perhaps the

main reason. But Brandon was also fond of children generally;

philoprogenitiveness was a marked trait in his character, and would seem

to belie the hardness and artifice belonging to that character, were not

the same love so frequently noticeable in the harsh and the artificial.

It seems as if a half-conscious but pleasing feeling that they too were

once gentle and innocent, makes them delight in reviving any sympathy

with their early state.

Often after the applause and labour of the day, Brandon would repair

to his son's chamber and watch his slumber for hours; often before his

morning toil commenced, he would nurse the infant in his arms with all

a woman's natural tenderness and gushing joy; and often, as a graver

and more characteristic sentiment stole over him, he would mentally say,

“You shall build up our broken name on a better foundation than your

sire. I begin too late in life, and I labour up a painful and stony

road; but I shall make the journey to Fame smooth and accessible for

you. Never, too, while you aspire to honour, shall you steel your heart

to tranquillity. For you, my child, shall be the joys of home and love,

and a mind that does not sicken at the past, and strain, through mere

forgetfulness, towards a solitary and barren distinction for the future.

Not only what your father gains you shall enjoy, but what has cursed him

his vigilance shall lead you to shun!”

It was thus not only that his softer feelings, but all the better and

nobler ones, which even in the worst and hardest bosom find some root,

turned towards his child, and that the hollow and vicious man promised

to become the affectionate and perhaps the wise parent.

One night Brandon was returning home on foot from a ministerial dinner.

The night was frosty and clear, the hour was late, and his way lay

through the longest and best-lighted streets of the metropolis. He

was, as usual, buried in thought, when he was suddenly aroused from his

revery by a light touch laid on his arm. He turned, and saw one of the

unhappy persons who haunt the midnight streets of cities, standing right

before his path. The gaze of each fell upon the other; and it was thus,

for the first time since they laid their heads on the same pillow,

that the husband met the wife. The skies were intensely clear, and the

lamplight was bright and calm upon the faces of both. There was no

doubt in the mind of either. Suddenly, and with a startled and ghastly

consciousuess, they recognized each other. The wife staggered, and clung

to a post for support; Brandon's look was calm and unmoved. The hour

that his bitter and malignant spirit had yearned for was come; his

nerves expanded in a voluptuous calmness, as if to give him a deliberate

enjoyment of his hope fulfilled. Whatever the words that in that

unwitnessed and almost awful interview passed between them, we may

be sure that Brandon spared not one atom of his power. The lost and

abandoned wife returned home; and all her nature, embruted as it

had become by guilt and vile habits, hardened into revenge,--that

preternatural feeling which may be termed the hope of despair.

Three nights from that meeting Brandon's house was broken into. Like

the houses of many legal men, it lay in a dangerous and thinly populated

outskirt of the town, and was easily accessible to robbery. He was

awakened by a noise; he started, and found himself in the grasp of two

men. At the foot of the bed stood a female, raising a light; and her

face, haggard with searing passions, and ghastly with the leprous

whiteness of disease and approaching death, glared full upon him.

“It is now my turn,” said the female, with a grin of scorn which Brandon

himself might have envied; “you have cursed me, and I return the curse!

You have told me that my child shall never name me but to blush. Fool!

I triumph over you; you he shall never know to his dying day! You have

told me that to my child and my child's child (a long transmission of

execration) my name--the name of the wife you basely sold to ruin and

to hell--should be left as a legacy of odium and shame! Man, you shall

teach that child no further lesson whatever: you shall know not whether

he live or die, or have children to carry on your boasted race; or

whether, if he have, those children be not outcasts of the earth, the

accursed of man and God, the fit offspring of the thing you have made

me. Wretch! I hurl back on you the denunciation with which, when we

met three nights since, you would have crushed the victim of your

own perfidy. You shall tread the path of your ambition childless and

objectless and hopeless. Disease shall set her stamp upon your frame.

The worm shall batten upon your heart. You shall have honours and enjoy

them not; you shall gain your ambition, and despair; you shall pine for

your son, and find him not; or, if you find him, you shall curse the

hour in which he was born. Mark me, man,--I am dying while I speak,--I

know that I am a prophet in my curse. From this hour I am avenged, and

you are my scorn!”

As the hardest natures sink appalled before the stony eye of the maniac,

so, in the dead of the night, pinioned by ruffians, the wild and solemn

voice, sharpened by passion and partial madness, of the ghastly figure

before him curdling through his veins, even the haughty and daring

character of William Brandon quailed! He uttered not a word. He was

found the next morning bound by strong cords to his bed. He spoke not

when he was released, but went in silence to his child's chamber,--the

child was gone! Several articles of property were also stolen; the

desperate tools the mother had employed worked not perhaps without their

own reward.

We need scarcely add that Brandon set every engine and channel of

justice in motion for the discovery of his son. All the especial

shrewdness and keenness of his own character, aided by his professional

experience, he employed for years in the same pursuit. Every research

was wholly in vain; not the remotest vestige towards discovery could

be traced until were found (we have recorded when) some of the articles

that had been stolen. Fate treasured in her gloomy womb, altogether

undescried by man, the hour and the scene in which the most ardent wish

of William Brandon was to be realized.