No; he disinherits his firstborn, and suffers him to perish, perhaps by
an ignominious death. He leaves his only daughter to drag out her days
in penury--a widow with orphans. The world may condemn, but is silent;
he goes to church every Sabbath, but no preacher denounces punishment on
the unrelenting, the unforgiving parent. Yet how easily might he have
taken them both back to his heart, and loved them better than ever! But
she poisoned my cup of life when it seemed to overflow with heaven. Had
God dashed it from my lips, I could have borne my doom. But with her
own hand which I had clasped at the altar--and with our Lucy at her
knees--she gave me that loathsome draught of shame and sorrow:--I drank
it to the dregs--and it is burning all through my being--now--as if it
had been hell-fire from the hands of a fiend in the shape of an angel.
In what page of the New Testament am I told to forgive her? Let me see
the verse--and then shall I know that Christianity is an imposture; for
the voice of God within me--the conscience which is His still small
voice--commands me never from my memory to obliterate that curse--never
to forgive her, and her wickedness--not even if we should see each
other's shadows in a future state, after the day of judgment."
His countenance grew ghastly--and staggering to a stone, he sat down and
eyed the skies with a vacant stare, like a man whom dreams carry about
in his sleep. His face was like ashes--and he gasped like one about to
fall into a fit. "Bring me water"--and the old man motioned on the
child, who, giving ear to him for a moment, flew away to the Lakeside
with an urn she had brought with her for flowers; and held it to her
father's lips. His eyes saw it not;--there was her sweet pale face all
wet with tears, almost touching his own--her innocent mouth breathing
that pure balm that seems to a father's soul to be inhaled from the
bowers of paradise. He took her into his bosom--and kissed her dewy
eyes--and begged her to cease her sobbing--to smile--to laugh--to
sing--to dance away into the sunshine--_to be happy!_ And Lucy afraid,
not of her father, but of his kindness--for the simple creature was not
able to understand his wild utterance of blessings--returned to the
glade but not to her pastime, and couching like a fawn among the fern,
kept her eyes on her father, and left her flowers to fade unheeded
beside her empty urn.
"Unintelligible mystery of wickedness! That child was just three years
old the very day it was forsaken--she abandoned it and me on its
birthday! Twice had that day been observed by us--as the sweetest--the
most sacred of holidays; and now that it had again come round--but I not
present--for I was on foreign service--thus did she observe it--and
disappeared with her paramour. It so happened that we went that day into
action--and I committed her and our child to the mercy of God in fervent
prayers; for love made me religious--and for their sakes I feared
though I shunned not death. I lay all night among the wounded on the
field of battle--and it was a severe frost. Pain kept me from sleep, but
I saw them as distinctly as in a dream--the mother lying with her child
in her bosom in our own bed. Was not that vision mockery enough to drive
me mad? After a few weeks a letter came to me from herself--and I kissed
it and pressed it to my heart; for no black seal was there--and I knew
that little Lucy was alive. No meaning for a while seemed to be in the
words--and then they began to blacken into ghastly characters--till at
last I gathered from the horrid revelation that she was sunk in sin and
shame, steeped for evermore in utmost pollution.
"A friend was with me, and I gave it to him to read--for in my anguish
at first I felt no shame--and I watched his face as he read it, that I
might see corroboration of the incredible truth, which continued to look
like falsehood, even while it pierced my heart with agonising pangs. 'It
may be a forgery,' was all he could utter--after long agitation; but the
shape of each letter was too familiar to my eyes--the way in which the
paper was folded--and I knew my doom was sealed. Hours must have passed,
for the room grew dark--and I asked him to leave me for the night. He
kissed my forehead--for we had been as brothers. I saw him next
morning--dead--cut nearly in two--yet had he left a paper for me,
written an hour before he fell, so filled with holiest friendship, that
oh! how even in my agony I wept for him, now but a lump of cold clay and
blood, and envied him at the same time a soldier's grave!
"And has the time indeed come that I can thus speak calmly of all that
horror? The body was brought into my room, and it lay all day and all
night close to my bed. But false was I to all our life-long
friendship--and almost with indifference I looked upon the corpse.
Momentary starts of affection seized me--but I cared little or nothing
for the death of him, the tender and the true, the gentle and the brave,
the pious and the noble-hearted; my anguish was all for her, the cruel
and the faithless, dead to honour, to religion dead--dead to all the
sanctities of nature--for her, and for her alone, I suffered all
ghastliest agonies--nor any comfort came to me in my despair, from the
conviction that she was worthless; for desperately wicked as she had
shown herself to be--oh! crowding came back upon me all our hours of
happiness--all her sweet smiles--all her loving looks--all her
affectionate words--all her conjugal and maternal tendernesses; and the
loss of all that bliss--the change of it all into strange, sudden,
shameful, and everlasting misery, smote me till I swooned, and was
delivered up to a trance in which the rueful reality was mixed up with
phantasms more horrible than man's mind can suffer out of the hell of
sleep!
"Wretched coward that I was to outlive that night! But my mind was weak
from great loss of blood--and the blow so stunned me that I had not
strength of resolution to die. I might have torn off the bandages--for
nobody watched me--and my wounds were thought mortal. But the love of
life had not welled out with all those vital streams; and as I began to
recover, another passion took possession of me--and I vowed that there
should be atonement and revenge. I was not obscure. My dishonour was
known through the whole army. Not a tent--not a hut--in which my name
was not bandied about--a jest in the mouths of profligate
poltroons--pronounced with pity by the compassionate brave. I had
commanded my men with pride. No need had I ever had to be ashamed when I
looked on our colours; but no wretch led out to execution for desertion
or cowardice ever shrunk from the sun, and from the sight of human faces
arrayed around him, with more shame and horror than did I when, on my
way to a transport, I came suddenly on my own corps, marching to music
as if they were taking up a position in the line of battle--as they had
often done with me at their head--all sternly silent before an
approaching storm of fire. What brought them there? To do me honour! Me,
smeared with infamy, and ashamed to lift my eyes from the mire. Honour
had been the idol I worshipped--alas! too, too passionately far--and now
I lay in my litter like a slave sold to stripes--and heard as if a
legion of demons were mocking me with loud and long huzzas; and then a
confused murmur of blessings on our noble commander, so they called
me--me, despicable in my own esteem--scorned, insulted, forsaken--me,
who could not bind to mine the bosom that for years had touched it--a
wretch so poor in power over a woman's heart, that no sooner had I left
her to her own thoughts than she felt that she had never loved me, and,
opening her fair breast to a new-born bliss, sacrificed me without
remorse--nor could bear to think of me any more as her husband--not even
for sake of that child whom I knew she loved--for no hypocrite was she
there; and oh! lost creature though she was--even now I wonder over that
unaccountable desertion--and much she must have suffered from the image
of that small bed, beside which she used to sit for hours, perfectly
happy from the sight of that face which I too so often blessed in her
hearing, because it was so like her own! Where is my child? Have I
frightened her away into the wood by my unfatherly looks? She too will
come to hate me--oh! see yonder her face and her figure like a fairy's,
gliding through among the broom! Sorrow has no business with her--nor
she with sorrow. Yet--even her how often have I made weep! All the
unhappiness she has ever known has all come from me; and would I but
leave her alone to herself in her affectionate innocence, the smile that
always lies on her face when she is asleep would remain there--only
brighter--all the time her eyes are awake; but I dash it away by my
unhallowed harshness, and people looking on her in her trouble wonder to
think how sad can be the countenance even of a little child. O God of
mercy! what if she were to die!"
"She will not die--she will live," said the pitying pastor; "and many
happy years--my son--are yet in store even for you--sorely as you have
been tried; for it is not in nature that your wretchedness can endure
for ever. She is in herself all-sufficient for a father's happiness. You
prayed just now that the God of Mercy would spare her life--and has He
not spared it? Tender flower as she seems, yet how full of life! Let not
then your gratitude to Heaven be barren in your heart; but let it
produce there resignation--if need be, contrition--and, above all,
forgiveness."
"Yes! I had a hope to live for--mangled as I was in body, and racked in
mind--a hope that was a faith--and bittersweet it was in imagined
foretaste of fruition--the hope and the faith of revenge. They said he
would not aim at my life. But what was that to me who thirsted for his
blood? Was he to escape death, because he dared not wound bone, or
flesh, or muscle of mine, seeing that the assassin had already stabbed
my soul? Satisfaction! I tell you that I was for revenge. Not that his
blood could wipe out the stain with which my name was imbrued, but let
it be mixed with the mould; and he who invaded my marriage-bed--and
hallowed was it by every generous passion that ever breathed upon
woman's breast--let him fall down in convulsions, and vomit out his
heart's blood, at once in expiation of his guilt, and in retribution
dealt out to him by the hand of him whom he had degraded in the eyes of
the whole world beneath the condition even of a felon, and delivered
over in my misery to contempt and scorn. I found him out;--there he was
before me--in all that beauty by women so beloved--graceful as Apollo;
and with a haughty air, as if proud of an achievement that adorned his
name, he saluted me--_her husband_--on the field,--and let the wind play
with his raven tresses--his curled love-locks--and then presented
himself to my aim in an attitude a statuary would have admired. I shot
him through the heart."
The good old man heard the dreadful words with a shudder--yet they had
come to his ears not unexpectedly, for the speaker's aspect had
gradually been growing black with wrath, long before he ended in an
avowal of murder. Nor, on ceasing his wild words and distracted
demeanour, did it seem that his heart was touched with any remorse. His
eyes retained their savage glare--his teeth were clenched--and he
feasted on his crime.
"Nothing but a full faith in Divine Revelation," solemnly said his aged
friend, "can subdue the evil passions of our nature, or enable
conscience itself to see and repent of sin. Your wrongs were indeed
great--but without a change wrought in all your spirit, alas! my son!
you cannot hope to see the kingdom of heaven."
"Who dares to condemn the deed? He deserved death--and whence was doom
to come but from me the Avenger? I took his life--but once I saved it. I
bore him from the battlements of a fort stormed in vain--after we had
all been blown up by the springing of a mine; and from bayonets that had
drunk my blood as well as his--and his widowed mother blessed me as the
saviour of her son. I told my wife to receive him as a brother--and for
my sake to feel towards him a sister's love. Who shall speak of
temptation--or frailty--or infatuation to me? Let the fools hold their
peace. His wounds became dearer to her abandoned heart than mine had
ever been; yet had her cheek lain many a night on the scars that seamed
this breast--for I was not backward in battle, and our place was in the
van. I was no coward, that she who loved heroism in him should have
dishonoured her husband. True, he was younger by some years than me--and
God had given him pernicious beauty--and she was young, too--oh! the
brightest of all mortal creatures the day she became my bride--nor less
bright with that baby at her bosom--a matron in girlhood's resplendent
spring! Is youth a plea for wickedness? And was I old? I, who, in spite
of all I have suffered, feel the vital blood yet boiling as to a
furnace; but cut off for ever by her crime from fame and glory--and from
a soldier in his proud career, covered with honour in the eyes of all my
countrymen, changed in an hour into an outlawed and nameless slave. My
name has been borne by a race of heroes--the blood in my veins has
flowed down a long line of illustrious ancestors--and here am I now--a
hidden disguised hypocrite--dwelling among peasants--and afraid--ay,
afraid, because ashamed, to lift my eyes freely from the ground even
among the solitudes of the mountains, lest some wandering stranger
should recognise me, and see the brand of ignominy her hand and
his--accursed both--burnt in upon my brow. She forsook this bosom--but
tell me if it was in disgust with these my scars?"
And as he bared it, distractedly, that noble chest was seen indeed
disfigured with many a gash--on which a wife might well have rested her
head with gratitude not less devout because of a lofty pride mingling
with life-deep affection. But the burst of passion was gone by--and,
covering his face with his hands, he wept like a child.
"Oh! cruel--cruel was her conduct to me; yet what has mine been to
her--for so many years! I could not tear her image from my memory--not
an hour has it ceased to haunt me; since I came among these mountains,
her ghost is for ever at my side. I have striven to drive it away with
curses, but still there is the phantom. Sometimes--beautiful as on our
marriage-day--all in purest white--adorned with flowers--it wreathes its
arms around my neck--and offers its mouth to my kisses--and then all at
once is changed into a leering wretch, retaining a likeness of my
bride--then into a corpse. And perhaps she is dead--dead of cold and
hunger: she whom I cherished in all luxury--whose delicate frame seemed
to bring round itself all the purest air and sweetest sunshine--she may
have expired in the very mire--and her body been huddled into some hole
called a pauper's grave. And I have suffered all this to happen to her!
Or have I suffered her to become one of the miserable multitude who
support hated and hateful life by prostitution? Black was her crime; yet
hardly did she deserve to be one of that howling crew--she whose voice
was once so sweet, her eyes so pure, and her soul so innocent--for up to
the hour I parted with her weeping, no evil thought had ever been
hers;--then why, ye eternal Heavens! why fell she from that sphere where
she shone like a star? Let that mystery that shrouds my mind in darkness
be lightened--let me see into its heart--and know but the meaning of her
guilt--and then may I be able to forgive it; but for five years, day and
night, it has troubled and confounded me--and from blind and baffled
wrath with an iniquity that remains like a pitch-black night through
which I cannot grope my way, no refuge can I find--and nothing is left
me but to tear my hair out by handfuls--as, like a madman, I have
done--to curse her by name in the solitary glooms, and to call down upon
her the curse of God. O wicked--most wicked! Yet He who judges the
hearts of His creatures knows that I have a thousand and a thousand
times forgiven her, but that a chasm lay between us, from which, the
moment that I came to its brink, a voice drove me back--I know not
whether of a good or evil spirit--and bade me leave her to her fate. But
she must be dead--and needs not now my tears. O friend! judge me not too
sternly--from this my confession; for all my wild words have imperfectly
expressed to you but parts of my miserable being--and if I could lay it
all before you, you would pity me perhaps as much as condemn--for my
worst passions only have now found utterance--all my better feelings
will not return nor abide for words--even I myself have forgotten them;
but your pitying face seems to say, that they will be remembered at the
Throne of Mercy. I forgive her." And with these words he fell down on
his knees, and prayed too for pardon to his own sins. The old man
encouraged him not to despair--it needed but a motion of his hand to
bring the child from her couch in the cover, and Lucy was folded to her
father's heart. The forgiveness was felt to be holy in that embrace.
The day had brightened up into more perfect beauty, and showers were
sporting with sunshine on the blue air of Spring. The sky showed
something like a rainbow--and the Lake, in some parts quite still, and
in some breezy, contained at once shadowy fragments of wood and rock,
and waves that would have murmured round the prow of pleasure-boat
suddenly hoisting a sail. And such a very boat appeared round a
promontory that stretched no great way into the water, and formed with a
crescent of low meadow-land a bay that was the first to feel the wind
coming down Glencoin. The boatman was rowing heedlessly along, when a
sudden squall struck the sail, and in an instant the skiff was upset and
went down. No shrieks were heard--and the boatman swam ashore; but a
figure was seen struggling where the sail disappeared--and starting from
his knees, he who knew not fear plunged into the Lake, and after
desperate exertions brought the drowned creature to the side--a female
meanly attired--seemingly a stranger--and so attenuated that it was
plain she must have been in a dying state, and had she not thus
perished, would have had but few days to live. The hair was grey--but
the face, though withered, was not old--and as she lay on the
greensward, the features were beautiful as well as calm in the sunshine.
He stood over her awhile--as if struck motionless--and then kneeling
beside the body, kissed its lips and eyes--and said only, "It is Lucy!"
The old man was close by--and so was that child. They too knelt--and the
passion of the mourner held him dumb, with his face close to the face of
death--ghastly its glare beside the sleep that knows no waking, and is
forsaken by all dreams. He opened the bosom--wasted to the bone--in the
idle thought that she might yet breathe--and a paper dropt out into his
hand, which he read aloud to himself--unconscious that any one was near.
"I am fast dying--and desire to die at your feet. Perhaps you will spurn
me--it is right you should; but you will see how sorrow has killed the
wicked wretch who was once your wife. I have lived in humble servitude
for five years, and have suffered great hardships. I think I am a
penitent--and have been told by religious persons that I may hope for
pardon from Heaven! Oh! that you would forgive me too! and let me have
one look at our Lucy. I will linger about the Field of Flowers--perhaps
you will come there, and see me lie down and die on the very spot where
we passed a summer day the week of our marriage."
"Not thus could I have kissed thy lips--Lucy--had they been red with
life. White are they--and white must they long have been! No pollution
on them--nor on that poor bosom now. Contrite tears had long since
washed out thy sin. A feeble hand traced these lines--and in them a
humble heart said nothing but God's truth. Child--behold your mother.
Art thou afraid to touch the dead?"
"No--father--I am not afraid to kiss her lips--as you did now.
Sometimes, when you thought me asleep, I have heard you praying for my
mother."
"Oh! child! cease--cease--or my heart will burst."
People began to gather about the body--but awe kept them aloof; and as
for removing it to a house, none who saw it but knew such care would
have been vain, for doubt there could be none that there lay death. So
the groups remained for a while at a distance--even the old pastor went
a good many paces apart; and under the shadow of that tree the father
and child composed her limbs, and closed her eyes, and continued to sit
beside her, as still as if they had been watching over one asleep.
That death was seen by all to be a strange calamity to him who had lived
long among them--had adopted many of their customs--and was even as one
of themselves--so it seemed--in the familiar intercourse of man with
man. Some dim notion that this was the dead body of his wife was
entertained by many, they knew not why; and their clergyman felt that
then there needed to be neither concealment nor avowal of the truth. So
in solemn sympathy they approached the body and its watchers; a bier had
been prepared: and walking at the head, as if it had been a funeral, the
Father of little Lucy holding her hand, silently directed the procession
towards his own house--out of the FIELD OF FLOWERS.
COTTAGES.
Have you any intention, dear reader, of building a house in the country?
If you have, pray, for your own sake and ours, let it not be a Cottage.
We presume that you are obliged to live, one half of the year at least,
in a town. Then why change altogether the character of your domicile and
your establishment? You are an inhabitant of Edinburgh, and have a house
in the Circus, or Heriot Row, or Abercromby Place, or Queen Street. The
said house has five or six stories, and is such a palace as one might
expect in the City of Palaces. Your drawing-rooms can, at a pinch, hold
some ten score of modern Athenians--your dining-room might feast one
half of the contributors to _Blackwood's Magazine_--your "placens uxor"
has her boudoir--your eldest daughter, now verging on womanhood, her
music-room--your boys their own studio--the governess her retreat--and
the tutor his den--the housekeeper sits like an overgrown spider in her
own sanctum--the butler bargains for his dim apartment--and the four
maids must have their front area-window. In short, from cellarage to
garret all is complete, and Number Forty-two is really a splendid
mansion.
Now, dear reader, far be it from us to question the propriety or
prudence of such an establishment. Your house was not built for
nothing--it was no easy thing to get the painters out--the furnishing
thereof was no trifle--the feu-duty is really unreasonable--and taxes
are taxes still, notwithstanding the principles of free trade, and the
universal prosperity of the country. Servants are wasteful, and their
wages absurd--and the whole style of living, with long-necked bottles,
most extravagant. But still we do not object to your establishment--far
from it, we admire it much; nor is there a single house in town where we
make ourselves more agreeable to a late hour, or that we leave with a
greater quantity of wine of a good quality under our girdle. Few things
would give us more temporary uneasiness, than to hear of any
embarrassment in your money concerns. We are not people to forget good
fare, we assure you; and long and far may all shapes of sorrow keep
aloof from the hospitable board, whether illuminated by gas, oil, or
mutton.