HERMAN BRUDENELL
My son! I seem to breathe that word,
In utterance more clear
Than other words, more slowly round
I move my lips, to keep the sound
Still lingering in my ear.
For were my lonely life allowed
To claim that gifted son,
I should be met by straining eyes,
Welcoming tears and grateful sighs
To hallow my return.
But between me and that dear son
There lies a bar, I feel,
More hard to pass, more girt with awe,
Than any power of injured law,
Or front of bristling steel.
--_Milnes_.
When the carriage containing Judge Merlin, Claudia, Beatrice, and Mr.
Brudenell reached the Washington House the party separated in the hall;
the ladies went each to her own chamber to dress for dinner, and Judge
Merlin called a servant to show Mr. Brudenell to a spare room, and then
went to his own apartment.
When Herman Brudenell had dismissed his attendant and found himself
alone he sat down in deep thought.
Since the death of Nora he had been a wanderer over the face of the
earth. The revenues of his estate had been mostly paid over to his
mother for the benefit of herself and her daughters, yet had scarcely
been sufficient for the pride, vanity, and extravagance of those foolish
women, who, living in Paris and introduced into court circles by the
American minister, aped the style of the wealthiest among the French
aristocracy, and indulged in the most expensive establishment, equipage,
retinue, dress, jewelry, balls, etc., in the hope of securing alliances
among the old nobility of France.
They might as well have gambled for thrones. The princes, dukes,
marquises, and counts drank their wines, ate their dinners, danced at
their balls, kissed their hands, and--laughed at them!
The reason was this: the Misses Brudenell, though well-born, pretty,
and accomplished, were not wealthy, and were even suspected of being
heavily in debt, because of all this show.
And I would here inform my ambitious American readers who go abroad in
search of titled husbands whom they cannot find at home, that what is
going on in Paris then is going on in all the Old World capitals now;
and that now, when foreign noblemen marry American girls, it is because
the former want money and the latter have it. If there is any exception
to this rule, I, for one, never heard of it.
And so the Misses Brudenell, failing to marry into the nobility, were
not married at all.
The expenditures of the mother and daughters in this speculation were
enormous, so much so that at length Herman Brudenell, reckless as he
was, became alarmed at finding himself on the very verge of insolvency!
He had signed so many blank checks, which his mother and sisters had
filled up with figures so much higher than he had reckoned upon, that at
last his Paris bankers had written to him informing him that his account
had been so long and so much overdrawn that they had been obliged to
decline cashing his last checks.
It was this that had startled Herman Brudenell out of his lethargy and
goaded him to look into his affairs. After examining his account with
his Paris banker with very unsatisfactory results, he determined to
retrench his own personal expenses, to arrange his estates upon the most
productive plan, and to let out Brudenell Hall.
He wrote to the Countess of Hurstmonceux, requesting her to vacate the
premises, and to his land-agent instructing him to let the estate.
In due course of time he received answers to both his letters. That of
the countess we have already seen; that of the land-agent informing him
of the vast improvement of the estate during the residence of the
Countess of Hurstmonceux upon it, and of the accumulation of its
revenues, and finally of the large sum placed to his credit in the local
bank by her ladyship.
This sum, of course, every sentiment of honor forbade Herman Brudenell
from appropriating. He therefore caused it to be withdrawn and deposited
with Lady Hurstmonceux's London bankers.
Soon after this he received notice that Brudenell Hall, stocked and
furnished as it was, had been let to Mr. Middleton.
The accumulated revenues of the estate he devoted to paying his mother's
debts, and the current revenues to her support, warning her at the same
time of impending embarrassments unless her expenses were retrenched.
But the warning was unheeded, and the folly and extravagance of his
mother and sisters were unabated. Like all other desperate gamblers, the
heavier their losses the greater became their stakes; they went on
living in the best hotels, keeping the most expensive servants, driving
the purest blooded horses, wearing the richest dresses and the rarest
jewels, giving the grandest balls, and--to use a common but strong
phrase--"going it with a rush!" All in the desperate hope of securing
for the young ladies wealthy husbands from among the titled aristocracy.
At length came another crisis; and once more Herman Brudenell was
compelled to intervene between them and ruin. This he did at a vast
sacrifice of property.
He wrote and gave Mr. Middleton warning to leave Brudenell Hall at the
end of the year, because, he said, that he himself wished to return
thither.
He did return thither; but it was only to sell off, gradually and
privately, all the stock on the home-farm, all the plate, rich
furniture, rare pictures, statues, vases, and articles of virtu in the
house, and all the old plantation negroes--ancient servants who had
lived for generations on the premises.
While he was at this work he instituted cautious inquiries about "one of
the tenants, Hannah Worth, the weaver, who lived at Hill hut, with her
nephew"; and he learned that Hannah was prosperously married to Reuben
Gray and had left the neighborhood with her nephew, who had received a
good education from Mr. Middleton's family school. Brudenell
subsequently received a letter from Mr. Middleton himself, recommending
to his favorable notice "a young man named Ishmael Worth, living on the
Brudenell estates."
But as the youth had left the neighborhood with his relatives, and as
Mr. Brudenell really hoped that he was well provided for by the large
sum of money for which he had given Hannah a check on the day of his
departure, and as he was overwhelmed with business cares, and lastly, as
he dreaded rather than desired a meeting with his unknown son, he
deferred seeking him out.
When Brudenell Hall was entirely dismantled, and all the furniture of
the house, the stock of the farm, and the negroes of the plantation, and
all the land except a few acres immediately around the house had been
sold, and the purchase money realized, he returned to Paris, settled his
mother's debts, and warning her that they had now barely sufficient to
support them in moderate comfort, entreated her to return and live
quietly at Brudenell Hall.
But no! "If they were poor, so much the more reason why the girls should
marry rich," argued Mrs. Brudenell; and instead of retrenching her
expenses, she merely changed the scene of her operations from Paris to
London, forgetting the fact everyone else remembered, that her "girls,"
though still handsome, because well preserved, were now mature women of
thirty-two and thirty-five. Herman promised to give them the whole
proceeds of his property, reserving to himself barely enough to live on
in the most economical manner. And he let Brudenell Hall once more, and
took up his abode at a cheap watering-place on the continent, where he
remained for years, passing his time in reading, fishing, boating, and
other idle seaside pastimes, until he was startled from his repose by a
letter from his mother--a letter full of anguish, telling him that her
younger daughter, Eleanor, had fled from home in company with a certain
Captain Dugald, and that she had traced them to Liverpool, whence they
had sailed for New Tork, and entreated him to follow and if possible
save his sister.
Upon this miserable errand he had revisited his native country. He had
found no such name as Dugald in any of the lists of passengers arrived
within the specified time by any of the ocean steamers from Liverpool to
New York, and no such name on any of the hotel books; so he left the
matter in the hands of a skillful detective, and came down to
Washington, in the hope of finding the fugitives here.
On his first walk out he had been attracted by the crowd around the City
Hall; had learned that an interesting trial was going on; and that some
strange, new lawyer was making a great speech. He had gone in, and on
turning his eyes towards the young barrister had been thunderstruck on
being confronted by what seemed to him the living face of Nora Worth,
elevated to masculine grandeur. Those were Nora's lips, so beautiful in
form, color, and expression; Nora's splendid eyes, that blazed with
indignation, or melted with pity, or smiled with humor; Nora's
magnificent breadth of brow, spanning from temple to temple. He saw in
these remarkable features so much of the likeness of Nora, that he
failed to see, in the height of the forehead, the outline of the
profile, and the occasional expression of the countenance, the striking
likeness of himself.
He had been spellbound by this, and by the eloquence of the young
barrister until the end of the speech, when he had hastened to Judge
Merlin and demanded the name and the history of the débutante.
And the answer had confirmed the prophetic instincts of his heart--this
rising star of the forum was Nora's son!
Nora's son, born in the depths of poverty and shame; panting from the
hour of his birth for the very breath of life; working from the days of
his infancy for daily bread; striving from the years of his boyhood for
knowledge; struggling by the most marvelous series of persevering effort
out of the slough of infamy into which he had been cast, to his present
height of honor! Scarcely twenty-one years old and already recognized
not only as the most gifted and promising young member of the bar, but
as a rising power among the people.
How proud he, the childless man, would be to own his share in Nora's
gifted son, if in doing so he could avoid digging up the old, cruel
reproach, the old, forgotten scandal! How proud to hail Ishmael Worth as
Ishmael Brudenell!
But this he knew could never, never be. Every principle of honor,
delicacy, and prudence forbade him now to interfere in the destiny of
Nora's long-ignorant and neglected, but gifted and rising son. With what
face could he, the decayed, impoverished, almost forgotten master of
Brudenell Hall go to this brilliant young barrister, who had just made a
splendid debut and achieved a dazzling success, and say to him:
"I am your father!"
And how should he explain such a relationship to the astonished young
man? At making the dreadful confession, he felt that he should be likely
to drop at the feet of his own son.
No! Ishmael Worth must remain Ishmael Worth. If he fulfilled the promise
of his youth, it would not be his father's name, but his young mother's
maiden name which would become illustrious in his person.
And yet, from the first moment of his seeing Ishmael and identifying him
as Nora's son, he felt an irresistible desire to meet him face to face,
to shake hands with him, to talk with him, to become acquainted with
him, to be friends with him.
It was this longing that urged Mr. Brudenell to accept Judge Merlin's
invitation and accompany the latter home. And now in a few moments this
longing would be gratified.
In the midst of all other troubled thoughts one question perplexed him.
It was this: What had become of the check he had given Hannah in the
hour of his departure years ago?
That it had never been presented and cashed two circumstances led him to
fear. The first was that he had never seen it among those returned to
him when his bankbook had been made up; and the second was that Hannah
had shared the bitter poverty of her nephew, and therefore could not
have received and appropriated the money to her own uses.
As he had learned from the judge that Hannah was in Washington, he
resolved to seek a private interview with her, and ascertain what had
become of the check, and why, with the large sum of money it
represented, she had neglected to use it, and permitted herself and her
nephew to suffer all the evils of the most abject poverty.