_In which Mr. Lupton explains to Colin the story of himself and his
lady._
When next Colin Clink met his father the Squire, it was under the
influence of such feelings of embarrassment as scarcely left him at
liberty to speak; while Mr. Lupton, on his part, received him with that
quiet melancholy, though unembarrassed air, which marked emphatically
a man upon whom the force of unhappy and unusual circumstances has
produced a subdued, though lasting, sense of dejection.
“For some time past,” said he, taking Colin's hand, and conducting him
to a chair,--“for some time past, my boy, I have felt that one day
or other it must come to this. Ever since the time when Providence so
singularly threw it in your power to save me from a violent end,--and
from _such a_ hand too!--I have been a changed man. By that event Heaven
seemed to lay, as it were, a palpable finger upon my soul, the dint of
which is everlasting. That from such retributive justice, if justice it
could be called, I should have been so saved by one whose very existence
itself had called that justice into action, appears to me like a
marvellous lesson, in which Providence intended at once to admonish me
of my criminality, and at the same time to remind me of its mercy.”
Mr. Lupton here covered his eyes with his hand. In a few minutes he thus
continued,--“From that moment I foresaw that, sooner or later, you must
know all. _Now_ you do know all; and that knowledge has come to you
in such a shape, as to render any farther allusion to it needless. The
subject is at best a painful one to us both, but most especially so
to me; although I once held such things lightly, and as matter for
pleasantry and joke. I now acknowledge you as my son; and I confess that
a proud, though painful, time it is, now I can do so face to face. Save
in yours and my own, the blood of an ancient and honourable family runs
in no human veins. You are grown to manhood, and the circumstances
which Providence has brought about enable me to address you thus without
impropriety. But you must be told, my boy, that I was the last, the
very last of all my race. My father knew it; he lamented over it; but
he cherished and guarded me because of it, as though the world contained
for him no other treasure. _I_ knew it too; I grew up, as I may say,
side by side with that fatal knowledge. With our ideas of long descents,
and ancient honourable lines, it is the bitterest thought in a man's
breast to think that here the stream must stop; that in this one body it
is lost, and the sun shall shine upon its name no longer. Anxiety for
my life and welfare helped to bring my father to the grave earlier than
otherwise nature would have called him, and he died while yet I was
very young. But before he died he bound me, on attaining my twenty-first
year, to marry one of the members of an opulent and numerous family,
which had long enjoyed his esteem. I did so, and the lady he had
selected became my wife. There were circumstances between Mrs. Lupton
and myself which need not be explained, but which, while they made her
deem herself most unhappy in her fate, left me not a whit less so in
opinion of mine. It is sufficient that I say, years passed on, and I was
still the last. Beyond this I need not go. In you, my boy, in you--but
no, that need not to be said, either. Only this I will and must say,
that, under circumstances which the world superficially may deem highly
criminal, there may be hidden causes, and feelings, and springs of
action, which no heart knows but his that contains them, and which,
through the force of perhaps erroneous notions and education from our
youth, have become individually equally strong with right principles,
and may therefore possibly be in some sort received in palliation.”
Colin was very materially concerned during, and affected at the
conclusion of, the above speech; although the author himself of this
faithful history cannot refrain from expressing his opinion, that its
tenor and tendency seem somewhat inconsistent with Mr. Lupton's apparent
neglect of Colin during the early part of his life, and savours more
of a plausible attempt to excuse himself, than of a plain exposition of
real motives. Possibly, however, by suspending judgment a while, both
himself and the reader may on this point become a little wiser before
this history be brought to a termination.
For the present, we may continue this scene a few moments longer.
“With regard to Mrs. Lupton,'” continued the Squire, “as I intend
shortly to introduce you to her, it may be as well to inform you
beforehand, that the satisfaction your presence in my house will give
must not be judged from _her_ reception of you. What it may be I cannot
foresee. I cannot even judge what steps a woman in her situation may
think proper to take; but whatever they be, it is needful you should see
her, and be introduced to her as _the heir of Kiddal_, before she dies.
Had she acceded to my wishes years ago,--had we, as I desired, been
divorced before you were born, this present necessity and trouble would
never have come upon us; but that proceeding she resisted to the last.
And though there are circumstances pointed out by the laws which might
place the power of adopting such an alternative wholly in my own hands;
yet, rather than so deeply wound the feelings and destroy the future
peace of a woman who loved me, and whom I had loved, I have rather
chosen to endure, to pass years of unavailing regret, and come to this,
even this, at last. I have neglected her, it is true, partly in hopes of
thereby inducing her to give way, and partly because I had no heart to
be a hypocrite. I never could very well affect what I did not feel.”
Mr. Lupton subsequently informed Colin, that although the lady of whom
he had been speaking had, during some years past, lived apart from
him, sometimes residing in town, and occasionally abroad, yet that very
recently she had expressed her desire and intention to return to the old
hall once more, and to pass the following winter there. On that occasion
it was purposed by him that Colin should meet her.
I should be doing a great injustice to Colin were I to disguise from the
reader the satisfaction which, notwithstanding all drawbacks, he could
not fail to feel from the, to him, magnificent prospects that Mr.
Lupton's discourse opened before him. To think that, from a poor and
helpless farmer's boy, he should thus suddenly and unexpectedly have
risen, as it were, to the rank of a squire's son, with the certainty of
a great fortune to be bestowed upon him, and such a fine old house as
Kiddal Hall in which to enjoy it, and to pass the remainder of his
days! What a triumph, too, did it not give him over all the paltry and
tyrannical souls who about his native place had made his life miserable,
and even done as much as lay in their power to hunt him out of
existence.
These feelings were far less the result of vindictiveness than of that
just sense of retribution which may be said to exist in every honest
breast.
These matters being thus disposed of, Colin seized his opportunity to
re-introduce the question regarding old Jerry Clink.
“With respect to him,” replied Mr. Lupton, “though I am astonished to
find he is still alive, instead of hearing, as I had anticipated, that
his body had been picked up off Lime-house, I am too sensible of his
feelings, and the cause of them, to entertain against him any ideas of
retaliation. My own security is all I must provide for,--that I am bound
to do; and, so long as that can be insured, I shall take no farther
notice of the past. We have both been wrong already, and had better on
both sides avoid wronging each other any farther.”
Colin expressed his hopes that, bad as matters now appeared to stand,
everything might yet be accommodated in a manner which would leave
all parties the happier for their forgiveness, and the wiser from the
troubles they had undergone.
“It is hopeless,” answered Mr. Lupton. “The man whose sense of injury,
and determination to have revenge, can so vividly outlive the wear of so
many years, is not, I am afraid, of a sufficiently ductile metal to
be ever formed into a kinder shape. Unless some altogether unforeseen
circumstance should happily come between to reverse the present tendency
of events, it is to me a distinct and evident truth, that either that
old man or I will eventually prove the death of the other.”
This opinion he uttered in such a serious and almost prophetical tone,
as left upon the mind of his hearer an impression which all his own most
sanguine hopes and predictions were insufficient to eradicate.