Lucr.--What has thy father done?
Beat.--What have I done? Am I not innocent?--The Cenci.
Tam twilight was darkening slowly over a room of noble dimensions and
costly fashion. Although it was the height of summer, a low fire
burned in the grate; and, stretching his hands over the feeble flame,
an old man of about sixty sat in an armchair curiously carved with
armorial bearings. The dim yet fitful flame cast its upward light
upon a countenance, stern, haughty, and repellent, where the passions
of youth and manhood had dug themselves graves in many an iron line
and deep furrow: the forehead, though high, was narrow and compressed;
the brows sullenly overhung the eyes; and the nose, which was
singularly prominent and decided, age had sharpened, and brought out,
as it were, till it gave a stubborn and very forbidding expression to
the more sunken features over which it rose with exaggerated dignity.
Two bottles of wine, a few dried preserves, and a water glass, richly
chased, and ornamented with gold, showed that the inmate of the
apartment had passed the hour of the principal repast, and his
loneliness at a time usually social seemed to indicate that few olive
branches were accustomed to overshadow his table.
The windows of the dining-room reached to the ground, and without the
closing light just enabled one to see a thick copse of wood, which, at
a very brief interval of turf, darkened immediately opposite the
house. While the old man was thus bending over the fire and conning
his evening contemplations, a figure stole from the copse I have
mentioned, and, approaching the window, looked pryingly into the
apartment; then with a noiseless hand it opened the spring of the
casement, which was framed on a peculiar and old-fashioned
construction, that required a practised and familiar touch, entered
the apartment, and crept on, silent and unperceived by the inhabitant
of the room, till it paused and stood motionless, with folded arms,
scarce three steps behind the high back of the old man's chair.
In a few minutes the latter moved from his position, and slowly rose;
the abruptness with which he turned, brought the dark figure of the
intruder full and suddenly before him: he started back, and cried in
an alarmed tone, "Who is there?"
The stranger made no reply.
The old man, in a voice in which anger and pride mingled with fear,
repeated the question. The figure advanced, dropped the cloak in
which it was wrapped, and presenting the features of Clarence Linden,
said, in a low but clear tone,--
"Your son."
The old man dropped his hold of the bell-rope, which he had just
before seized, and leaned as if for support against the oak wainscot;
Clarence approached.
"Yes!" said he, mournfully, "your unfortunate, your offending, but
your guiltless son. More than five years I have been banished from
your house; I have been thrown, while yet a boy, without friends,
without guidance, without name, upon the wide world, and to the mercy
of chance. I come now to you as a man, claiming no assistance, and
uttering no reproach, but to tell you that him whom an earthly father
rejected God has preserved; that without one unworthy or debasing act
I have won for myself the friends who support and the wealth which
dignifies life,--since it renders it independent. Through all the
disadvantages I have struggled against I have preserved unimpaired my
honour, and unsullied my conscience; you have disowned, but you might
have claimed me without shame. Father, these hands are clean!"
A strong and evident emotion shook the old man's frame. He raised
himself to his full height, which was still tall and commanding, and
in a voice, the natural harshness of which was rendered yet more
repellent by passion, replied, "Boy! your presumption is insufferable.
What to me is your wretched fate? Go, go, go to your miserable
mother: find her out; claim kindred there; live together, toil
together, rot together, but come not to me! disgrace to my house, ask
not admittance to my affections; the law may give you my name, but
sooner would I be torn piecemeal than own your right to it. If you
want money, name the sum, take it: cut up my fortune to shreds, seize
my property, revel on it; but come not here. This house is sacred;
pollute it not: I disown you; I discard you; I,--ay, I detest,--I
loathe you!"
And with these words, which came forth as if heaved from the inmost
heart of the speaker, who shook with the fury he endeavoured to
stifle, he fell back into his chair, and fixed his eyes, which glared
fearfully through the increasing darkness upon Linden, who stood high,
erect, and sorrowfully before him.
"Alas, my lord!" said Clarence, with mournful bitterness, "have not
the years which have seared your form and whitened your locks brought
some meekness to your rancour, some mercy to your injustice, for one
whose only crime against you seems to have been his birth. But I said
I came not to reproach, nor do I. Many a bitter hour, many a pang of
shame and mortification and misery, which have made scars in my heart
that will never wear away, my wrongs have cost me; but let them pass.
Let them not swell your future and last account whenever it be
required. I am about to leave this country, with a heavy and
foreboding heart; we may never meet again on earth. I have no longer
any wish, any chance, of resuming the name you have deprived me of. I
shall never thrust myself on your relationship or cross your view.
Lavish your wealth upon him whom you have placed so immeasurably above
me in your affections. But I have not deserved your curse, Father;
give me your blessing, and let me depart in peace."
"Peace! and what peace have I had? what respite from gnawing shame,
the foulness and leprosy of humiliation and reproach, since--since--?
But this is not your fault, you say: no, no,--it is another's; and you
are only the mark of my stigma; my disgrace, not its perpetrator. Ha!
a nice distinction, truly. My blessing you say! Come, kneel; kneel,
boy, and have it!"
Clarence approached, and stood bending and bareheaded before his
father, but he knelt not.
"Why do you not kneel?" cried the old man, vehemently.
"It is the attitude of the injurer, not of the injured!" said
Clarence, firmly.
"Injured! insolent reprobate, is it not I who am injured? Do you not
read it in my brow,--here, here?" and the old man struck his clenched
hand violently against his temples. "Was I not injured?" he
continued, sinking his voice into a key unnaturally low; "did I not
trust implicitly? did I not give up my heart without suspicion? was I
not duped deliciously? was I not kind enough, blind enough, fool
enough and was I not betrayed,--damnably, filthily betrayed? But that
was no injury. Was not my old age turned into a sapless tree, a
poisoned spring? Were not my days made a curse to me, and my nights a
torture? Was I not, am I not, a mock and a by-word, and a miserable,
impotent, unavenged old man? Injured! But this is no injury! Boy,
boy, what are your wrongs to mine?"
"Father!" cried Clarence, deprecatingly, "I am not the cause of your
wrongs: is it just that the innocent should suffer for the guilty?"
"Speak not in that voice!" cried the old man, "that voice!--fie, fie
on it. Hence! away! away, boy! why tarry you? My son! and have that
voice? Pooh, you are not my son. Ha! ha!--my son?"
"What am I, then?" said Clarence, soothingly: for he was shocked and
grieved, rather than irritated by a wrath which partook so strongly of
insanity.
"I will tell you," cried the father, "I will tell you what you are:
you are my curse!"
"Farewell!" said Clarence, much agitated, and retiring to the window
by which he had entered; "may your heart never smite you for your
cruelty! Farewell! may the blessing you have withheld from me be with
you!"
"Stop! stay!" cried the father; for his fury was checked for one
moment, and his nature, fierce as it was, relented: but Clarence was
already gone, and the miserable old man was left alone to darkness,
and solitude, and the passions which can make a hell of the human
heart!