GLANCES AT WILLIAMSON’S STORY, AND TERMINATES
PAUL SOMERTON’S ADVENTURE.
It came at last, that story of Williamson’s life; it came in a heavy
letter franked with foreign postage-stamps; and Paul Somerton read it
with hot curiosity.
There was nothing particularly new or startling in the narration. It
was the old old story of sin and sorrow, with perhaps darker hues of
melancholy in it, here and there, than usual.
During his University career, at a very early age, Williamson had been
attracted by the wild beauty of a woman who was the daughter of an
adventurer--a man without principle--seeking in a son-in-law an annuity
for himself, as well as a husband for his child. Williamson related
by what mean and mercenary arts this man of the world had lured him
on, and how the daughter had shared with her father in the shameful
plot. A long, long story of love, and doubt, and fear, and unholy
passion;--of mad, blind love, and desperate resolves; of a clandestine
marriage, and exposure; of a widowed mother’s death; of a son’s sorrow
embittered by his wife’s ingratitude, and a father-in-law’s impecunious
and drunken habits. A long, long story of woe and violence; of a brave
man’s struggle against the miseries of a worse than unloving wife, and
a wretched home, in the midst of comparative wealth.
Soon there appeared on the scene an infant with bright eyes, and a
young doating father seeking comfort in its innocent loving ways,
in its happy smile, and its first words. But this gleam of sunshine
quickly disappeared, and then there came clouds again, darker and
darker; and, finally, there stood forth in the immoral darkness a
husband’s shame, a wife’s infidelity, a father’s miserable death from
drink.
Paul shuddered as he traced out the dreary story with the writer’s
special notes and comments, intended to apply to Paul’s own position
and act as awful warnings.
Then at length the husband was alone. The wife had fled with a _cher
ami_ of former days. Her child disappeared, too. She knew that the
infant would have been a source of consolation to the forlorn and
broken man; hence her fiendish vow that he should see it no more. The
wrongs which she had heaped upon him induced all this fierce hatred
and malice; and, finally, Williamson was alone in the world with his
sorrows.
Years passed away, and he heard a strange story of the death of his
wife in connection with a travelling theatre or circus. The name of a
celebrated comedian, who had by misconduct been reduced to the booth
and the fair, was mixed up with the event in some way; but Williamson
could never clear the story up satisfactorily, and all his efforts to
obtain tidings of his child proved ineffectual. How he had lived since
those terrible days of his early life his friends knew; that there was
a dark shadow upon his history they knew also; but of the misery and
despair, the blighted career, the hopes destroyed, the opportunities
misapplied, the broken-down ambition, the aching heart, they knew
nothing.
And this woman--this wife of Shuffleton Gibbs--this scheming,
unscrupulous woman, was his child! That Paul Somerton should never
see her again would be her father’s chief care; his next, a life-long
effort to redeem her from herself, to straighten the crooked mind, to
win back to the darkened conscience some faint light at least of purity
and truth--to combat with the inborn devil, that some essence of the
angel might still revive within that human soul.
And then the writer grew eloquent upon wonderful cases of conversion
from the lowest depths of sin to paths of virtue; the faith of the true
Christian broke out in burning words, and here and there expressions
of parental hope in the future. But so far as Paul was concerned, he
was reminded in firm, but kindly words, that there stood between him
and this woman marriage vows plighted to another, and the claims of a
long suffering father pledged to a great and holy work of religious
duty. Some day, ere the deep shadows of the future closed upon them all
for ever, and there was an end of passion and repentance, they might
meet again, but for the present their paths in the great world lay in
different directions.
Wearied and unhappy, Lieutenant Somerton lay down on his bed that night
when he received this letter. The next morning he woke with a sense of
pain and weakness. For days after this he was delirious. His constant
attendant during this time was his gentle sister Phœbe, who came to
town with her father on a special summons from the young officer’s
medical attendant.
Though in point of time we anticipate slightly some of the events of
the next few chapters, we think it well to finish Paul’s “first love”
adventure in this place. We take the liberty, therefore, to say that
when he had sufficiently recovered his father took him down into
Lincolnshire, and in course of time, amidst the bracing air of wolds
and fens, health and strength came back to him. What a quiet, dreary
time it was these few months, in the heart of the great agricultural
district! Sluggish rivers, with sedgy banks; long hard roads; low trim
hedges; sleek, short-horned cattle; big hay-ricks and straw stacks--how
familiar they became! Then there was an occasional ride to the hounds,
visits to the local markets, unsophisticated evening parties, and all
the other rural pleasures of the place.
Paul felt happy in the society of his new sister, as he called her--the
happiness of an aspiring mind in the presence of its superior; and
Arthur Phillips, with his grand thoughts and his quiet manner, was a
welcome guest at the old Lincolnshire house. Mrs. Somerton was not a
happy woman, though she evidently made a constant effort to appear so;
but Luke was full of life and spirits. He was the leading man of the
district, and rapidly becoming the most popular. It was like reading
a book, his Lincolnshire friends said, to hear him talk about farming,
and the newspapers reported his speeches in full when he presided at
the District Agricultural Society.
After a time the Lieutenant rejoined his regiment, and left England for
the Cape of Good Hope, a wiser and a better, though not a happier, man,
for his adventure with the barrister’s mysterious daughter. He kept his
secret all the time in the Lincolnshire fens and marshes, and carried
it with him to Kaffir-land. May we hope to hear of him before our story
closes, that he found consolation in the love of some other woman more
worthy his devotion. The lacerations of young hearts often heal with
astonishing rapidity.