HERMAN AND ISHMAEL.
With a deep groan he cried--"Oh, gifted one,
I am thy father! Hate me not, my son!"
--_Anon_.
Nor are my mother's wrongs forgot;
Her slighted love and ruined name,
Her offspring's heritage of shame,
Shall witness for thee from the dead
How trusty and how tender were
Thy youthful love--paternal care!
--_Byron_.
Her exit was almost immediately followed by the entrance of Mr.
Brudenell. He also had noticed Ishmael's condition, and attributed
it to overwork, and to the want of rest, with change of air. He was
preparing to leave Washington for Brudenell Hall. He was going a few
days in advance of Judge Merlin and the Middletons, and he intended
to invite Ishmael to accompany him, or to come after him, and make a
visit to Brudenell. He earnestly desired to have Ishmael there to
himself for a week or two. It was with this desire that he now
entered the library.
Ishmael arose from his packing, and, smiling a welcome, set a chair
for his visitor.
"You are not looking well, Mr. Worth," said Herman Brudenell, as he
took the offered seat.
"I am not well just at present, but I shall be so in a day or two,"
returned Ishmael.
"Not if you continue the course you are pursuing now, my young
friend. You require rest and change of air. I shall leave Washington
for Brudenell Hall on Thursday morning. It would give me great
pleasure if you would accompany me thither, and remain my guest for
a few weeks, to recruit your health. The place is noted for its
salubrity; and though the house has been dismantled, and has
remained vacant for some time, yet I hope we will find it fitted up
comfortably again; for I have written down to an upholsterer of
Baymouth to send in some furniture, and I have also written to a
certain genius of all trades, called the 'professor,' to go over and
see it all arranged, and do what else is needed to be done for our
reception."
Ishmael smiled when he heard the name of the professor; but before
he could make any comment, Mr. Brudenell inquired:
"What do you say, Mr. Worth? Will you accompany me thither, or will
you come after me?"
"I thank you very much, Mr. Brudenell. I should like to visit
Brudenell Hall; but--"
"Then you will come? I am very glad! I shall be alone there with my
servants, you know, and your society will be a god-send to me. Had
you not better go down at once when I do? I go by land, in a hired
carriage. The carriage is very comfortable; and we can make the
journey in two days, and lay by during the heat of both days. I
think the trip will be pleasant. We can reach Brudenell Hall on
Friday night, and have a good rest before Sunday, when we can go to
the old country church, where you will be likely to meet the faces
of some of your old friends. I think we shall be very comfortable,
keeping bachelor-hall together at Brudenell Hall this summer, Mr.
Worth," said Herman Brudenell, who longed more than tongue could
tell to have Nora's son at home with him, though it might be only
for a short time.
"I feel your kindness very much indeed, Mr. Brudenell; and I should
be very, very happy to accept your hospitable invitation; but--I was
about to say, it really is quite impossible in the existing state of
my business for me to go anywhere at present," said Ishmael
courteously.
"Indeed? I am very sorry for that. But the reasons you give are
unanswerable, I know. I am seriously disappointed. Yet I trust,
though you may not be able to come just at present, you will follow
me down there after a little while--say in the course of a few days
or weeks--for I shall remain at the hall all summer and shall be
always delighted to receive you. Will you promise to come?"
"Indeed, I fear I cannot promise that either, for I have a very
great pressure of business; but if I can possibly manage to go,
without infringing upon my duties, I shall be grateful for the
privilege and very happy to avail myself of it; for--do you know,
sir?--I was born in that neighborhood and passed my childhood and
youth there. I love the old place, and almost long to see the old
hut where I lived, and the hall where I went to school, and the
wooded valley that lies between them, where I gathered wild-flowers
and fruits in summer and nuts in winter, and--my mother's grave,"
said the unconscious son, speaking confidentially, and looking
straight into his father's eyes.
"Ishmael," said Herman Brudenell, in a faltering voice, and
forgetting to be formal, "you must come to me: that grave should
draw you, if nothing else; it is a pious pilgrimage when a son goes
to visit his mother's grave."
There was something in this new friend's words, look, and manner
that always drew out the young man's confidence, and he said, in a
voice trembling with emotion:
"She died young, sir; and oh! so sorrowfully! She was only nineteen,
two years younger than I am now; and her son was motherless the hour
he was born."
Violent emotion shook the frame of Herman Brudenell. He had not
entered the room with any intention of making a disclosure to
Ishmael; but he felt now that--come life, come death, come whatever
might of it--he must claim Nora's son.
"Ishmael," he began, in a voice shaken with agitation, "I knew your
mother."
"You, sir!" exclaimed the young man in surprise.
"Yes, I knew her and her sister, naturally, for they were tenants of
mine."
"I knew that they lived on the outskirts of the Brudenell estate;
but I did not know you were personally acquainted with them, sir;
for I thought that you had resided generally in Europe."
"Not all the time; I was at Brudenell Hall when--you were born and
your mother went to heaven, Ishmael."
Some of the elder man's agitation communicated itself to the
younger, who half arose from his seat and looked intently at the
speaker.
"I knew your mother in those days, Ishmael. She was not only one of
the most beautiful women of her day, but one of the purest, noblest,
and best."
Herman Brudenell hesitated. And Ishmael, who had dropped again into
his seat, bent eagerly forward, holding his breath while he
listened.
Herman continued.
"You resemble her in person and character, Ishmael. All that is best
and noblest and most attractive in you, Ishmael, is derived under
Divine Providence from your mother."
"I know it! Oh, I know it!"
"And, Ishmael, I loved your mother!"
"Oh, Heaven!" breathed the young man, in sickening, deadly
apprehension; for well he remembered that this Mr. Herman Brudenell
was the husband of the Countess of Hurstmonceux at the very time of
which he now spoke.
"Ishmael, do not look so cruelly distressed. I loved her, she loved
me in return, she crowned my days with joy, and--"
A gasping sound of suddenly suspended breath from Ishmael.
"I made her my wife," continued Herman Brudenell, in a grave and
earnest voice.
"It was you then!" cried Ishmael, shaking with agitation.
"It was I!"
Silence like a pall fell between them.
"Oh, Ishmael! my son! my son! speak to me! give me your hand!"
groaned Herman Brudenell.
"She was your wife! Yet she died of want, exposure, and grief!" said
Nora's son, standing pale and stony before him.
"And I--live with a breaking heart! a harder fate, Ishmael. Since
her death, I have been a wifeless, childless, homeless wanderer over
the wide world! Oh, Ishmael! my son! my son! give me your hand!"
"I am your mother's son! She was your wife, you say; yet she never
bore your name! She was your wife; yet her son and yours bears her
maiden name! She was your wife; yet she perished miserably in her
early youth; and undeserved reproach is suffered to rest upon her
memory! Oh, sir! if indeed you were her husband and my father, as
you claim to be, explain these things before I give you my hand! for
when I give my hand, honor and respect must go with it," said
Ishmael in a grave, sweet, earnest tone.
"Is it possible that Hannah has never told you? I thought she would
have told you everything, except the name of your father."
"She told me everything that she could tell without violating the
oath of secrecy by which she was hound; but what she told me was not
satisfactory."
"Sit down then, Ishmael, sit down; and though to recall this woeful
history will be to tear open old wounds afresh, I will do so; and
when you have heard it, you will know how blameless we both--your
mother and myself--really were, and how deep has been the tragedy of
my life as well as hers--the difference between us being that hers
is a dead trouble, from which she rests eternally, while mine is a
living and life-long sorrow!"
Ishmael again dropped into his chair and gave undivided attention to
the speaker.
And Mr. Brudenell, after a short pause, commenced and gave a
narrative of his own eventful life, beginning with his college days,
and detailing all the incidents of his youthful career until it
culminated in the dreadful household wreck that had killed Nora,
exiled his family and blasted his own happiness forever.
Ishmael listened with the deepest sympathy.
It was indeed the tearing open of old wounds in Herman Brudenell's
breast; and it was the inflicting of new ones in Ishmael's heart. It
was an hour of unspeakable distress to both. Herman did not spare
himself in the relation; yet in the end Ishmael exculpated his
father from all blame. We know indeed that in his relations with
Nora he was blameless, unless his fatal haste could be called a
fault. And so for his long neglect of Ishmael, which really was a
great sin, and the greatest he had ever committed, Ishmael never
gave a thought to that, it was only a sin against himself, and
Ishmael was not selfish enough to feel or resent it.
Herman Brudenell ended his story very much as he had commenced it.
"And since that day of doom, Ishmael, I have been a lonely,
homeless, miserable wanderer over the wide world! The fabled
Wandering Jew not more wretched than I!" And the bowed head,
blanched complexion, and quivering features bore testimony to his
words.