"Lifting at
The thought my timid eyes, I pass them o'er
His brow; and, if I would, I dare not love him:
Yet, dare I never disobey that eye,
Flashing outward fires, while, within its depths,
Where love should dwell, 'tis ever still, and cold,
To look upon."
St. Aubin, Henry's father, was a Frenchman, and totally without
religion. A flourish of worldly honour, as long as no temptation had
arisen, had sustained for him even a showy character. By this, a
showy appearance, and showy manners, he had, what is called, gained
the affections, that is, he had dazzled the fancy, of Maria, the
younger sister of Mrs. Montgomery. Maria was a beautiful girl, and
but seventeen. Her sister, who was also her guardian, for she was some
years her senior, and their parents were dead, disapproved of the
match, but in vain: Maria married St. Aubin, and was miserable! The
marriage being a runaway affair, no settlements were entered into,
which circumstance St. Aubin imagined would be in his favour; but,
when he discovered that the consent of the guardians not having been
obtained, gave them the power of withholding Maria's fortune till she
should be of age, and of then settling it on herself and her children,
without suffering him to touch one shilling, his brutality was such,
that Mrs. St. Aubin, before the birth of her child, for she had but
one, was broken-hearted.
She denied herself the consolation she might have found in the sympathy
of her sister, for she wished to conceal from her the wretchedness she
had brought upon herself, by acting contrary to her advice. She was,
however, shortly removed out of the reach of that sister's penetration.
St. Aubin was deeply in debt when he married, and things had been
ever since becoming worse and worse. He had always flattered himself
that the guardians would not use the full power of which they spoke,
and that by making fair promises he should be able, when once Maria
was of age, to get the money, or the greater part of it, into his own
hands; he had therefore laboured incessantly to put off the payment of
every demand to the day of his wife's coming of age, and made all his
arrangements with reference to that period. At length it arrived. He
made application for his wife's fortune; but Mrs. Montgomery, in reply,
reminded him, that her sister having married without her consent, had
given her, as sole remaining guardian, a power, which she now saw it
was her duty to exert; namely, that of refusing to pay down any part of
the money. She should, therefore, she said, secure the whole of it in
the hands of trustees, as a future provision for Maria and her child.
With this letter open in his hand, St. Aubin, foaming with rage,
entered the room where his wife sat with Henry, then between two
and three years old, playing on the ground at her feet, while she
was absorbed in melancholy anticipations of the probable result of
her husband's application. St. Aubin flung the letter in her face,
swearing, with horrid imprecations, that he would be the death both
of her and her brat, and then blow out his own brains. Mrs. St. Aubin
remained silent; but the shrieks of the child brought servants. By
the time they arrived, however, St. Aubin was striding up and down the
room, venting his rage on the open letter, which he kicked before him
at each step.
Shortly after this final disappointment respecting Maria's fortune, St.
Aubin found it necessary to take refuge from his creditors in the Isle
of Man; whither he went accordingly, carrying with him his wife and
child, and settling there with a very reduced establishment.
Not choosing, it would seem, to be hung for declared murder, he
appeared determined, by every species of ingenious barbarity, to
torture the wretched Maria out of her remaining shred of existence;
and, among other devices, he daily and hourly made her shudder, by his
vows of deep and black revenge on her sister.
One day, after sitting some time leaning his head on his hand, with a
countenance resembling the thunder-cloud, lightning suddenly flashed
from his eyes, imprecations exploded from his lips, he started to his
feet, stood before his wife, and clenching his hand, uttered these
words: "I tell you, Mrs. St. Aubin, that child, that I hate, because
it is yours! that child, to whose future provision she has sacrificed
me! that child I will rear, I will preserve, for the sole purpose of
being the instrument of my revenge!--by his means, were it twenty years
hence, were it thirty years hence, I will break her heart! Yes," he
added, as if in reply to a look from Maria of astonishment, almost
amounting to incredulity, "and I have determined how I shall do it." He
then resumed his sitting attitude, and again leaning his head on his
hand, a long hour of utter silence followed, during which his unhappy
wife sat at the other side of the table, not daring to arouse him by
rising to leave the room.
Henry, at this time, promised to have in him a strange mixture of the
dispositions both of his father and mother; or, in other words, of evil
and good. The evil certainly did predominate; yet, had a careful hand
early separated the seeds, cultivated the good, and cast out the bad,
this ill-fated child might have been saved from perdition; or had he,
with all his faults, been supplied with that only unerring standard of
right, the practical application of sacred truths to moral obligations,
even in after-life there might have been hope; but his father, as we
have said, had no religion: he daily scoffed at whatever was most
sacred, purposely to insult the feelings of his wife, and this before
his child. One morning, he found Maria with the Bible before her, and
Henry on her knee. He looked at them for a moment; then taking the
child by the shoulder, he raised one foot level with the hand in which
he held him, and kicked him, in a contemptuous manner, as he swung him
to the middle of the floor, saying, that such a mammy's brat ought
to have been a girl. Mrs. St. Aubin ran to raise the child from the
ground. St. Aubin snatched up the sacred volume, open as it lay, and
flung it after her, telling her, in a voice of thunder, that she was a
psalm-singing fool, and ordering her not to cram the boy's head with
any of her cursed nonsense. Indeed, in his calmest and best disposed
moods, "You are a fool, Mrs. St. Aubin!" was his usual remark on any
thing his wife ventured to say or do.
Mrs. St. Aubin having ascertained that the child was not hurt, took up
the book, arranged its ruffled leaves in silence, and laid it with
reverence on the table. Her husband viewed her with a malicious grin
till her task was completed; then, walking up to the table, he opened
the treasury of sacred knowledge, and deliberately tore out every leaf,
flinging them, now on one side, now on the other, to each far corner of
the apartment; then striding towards the fire-place, he planted himself
on the hearth, with his back to the chimney, his legs spread in the
attitude of a colossal statue, the tails of his coat turned apart under
his arms, and his hands in his side-pockets.
"Now," he said, looking at his wife, "pick them up!--pick them up! pick
them up!" he continued, till all were collected.
Mrs. St. Aubin was about to place the sheets within their vacant cover
on the table; but, with a stamp of his foot, which made every article
of furniture in the room shake, and brought a picture that hung
against the wall, on its face to the floor, he commanded her to put
them in the fire. She hesitated; when seizing her arm, he shook it over
the flames, till the paper taking fire, she was compelled to loose her
hold.
"I ought to have reserved a sheet to have made a fool's cap for you, I
think," he said, perceiving that silent tears were following each other
down the cheeks of his wife. "Why, what an idiot you are! the child has
more sense than you have," he added, seeing that Henry, occupied by
surprise and curiosity, was not crying. "Come, Henry," he continued, in
a voice for him most condescending, "you shall carry my fishing basket
to-day."
Henry had been just going to pity his poor mamma when he saw her
crying; but hearing his father say that he had more sense than his
mother, he could not help feeling raised in his own estimation, and
anxious to show his sense by flying with peculiar alacrity for the
basket.
He had viewed the whole of the preceding scene with but little
comprehension, as may be supposed, of its meaning, and with very
confused ideas of right and wrong, being, at the time, not above six
years old; but the practical lesson--and there are no lessons like
practical lessons--made an indelible impression: all future efforts,
whether of mother or aunt, usher or schoolmaster, layman or divine,
to infuse into Henry precepts derived from a source he had seen so
contemned by his father, were for ever vain. His father, he was old
enough to perceive, was feared and obeyed by every one within the
small sphere of his observation: for him, therefore, he felt a sort
of spurious deference, though he could not love him. For his mother,
who had always indulged him with the too great tenderness of a
gentle spirit utterly broken, and who had wept over him many a silent
hour, till his little heart was saddened without his knowing why, he
naturally felt some affection; but then he daily saw her treated with
indignity, and therefore did not respect either her or her lessons: for
he was just at the age when a quick child judges wrong, a dull one not
at all.
Henry had much of the violence of his father's temper, with some of the
fearfulness of his mother's. In judicious hands, the latter, though
no virtue, might have been made to assist in correcting the former;
the whole current of his fears might have been turned into a useful
channel: in short, he might have been taught to fear only doing wrong,
and, by a strict administration of justice, proving to him his perfect
security from blame while he did right, he might have been given
all that honest-hearted boldness in a good cause, which, throughout
after-life, is so necessary to ensure dignity to the character of man,
and the early promises of which, it is so delightful to see in the
happy open countenance, in the very step and air of a fine frank boy,
who has never had his spirit broken by undeserved harshness, or been
rendered hopeless of pleasing by inconsistency.
Henry, on the contrary, when he had done no real wrong, was frequently
treated with the most violent cruelty; while his very worst faults
passed unreproved, if they did not happen to cross the whims of his
father: and this cruelty, thus inflicted on a helpless, powerless
child, which could not resist, for ever raised in the breast of Henry,
who was, as we have said, naturally violent, an ever unsatisfied
thirst of vengeance; a sense too of the injustice of the punishments
inflicted, a thing early understood by children, embittered his
feelings, and the transient impressions thus rendered permanent,
corroded inwardly, till they settled into a malice of nature, totally
subversive of all that was or might have been good or amiable.
Alas! why will not parents reflect, how much the characters and
happiness of their children, in after life, depend on the species of
minor experience collected in infancy, and the few years immediately
succeeding that period. When intellect is matured, we may call upon it
to judge of great events, to guide us in great undertakings, or lead us
to signal self-conquests; but by this time, the feelings, the strong
holds, whether of vice or virtue, are pre-occupied, and the passions,
already in arms and in the field, too probably on the side of error,
certainly so, if hitherto undirected. And hence it is, that in so many
minds the kingdom within is found in a perpetual state of rebellion
against the sovereignty of reason: or, in other words, hence it is,
that so many people daily act by impulse, contrary to what they call
their better judgment. Here, then, is the true task of the parent; to
use, for the benefit of his child, that deliberate sense of right,
which, in his own case, comes frequently too late for action. And how
shall that parent depart in peace, who has not thus endeavoured, at
least, to smooth the path of truth before the footsteps of his child?
When Henry was old enough for public education, Mrs. Montgomery wrote
to her sister, to offer an allowance for the expenses of placing him at
school. St. Aubin ordered his wife to accept the offer, and selected
S-- B-- school, with the meanest description of lodging in the
neighbouring village, as the cheapest he could hear of, that a part of
the allowance, which was liberal, might remain in his own hands.
The school-house, at the period of which we speak, could accommodate
but a very few of the boys, while the rest were generally lodged in the
houses of the poor villagers; where, it is to be feared, they lorded
it, and did just as they pleased.
Rather more than a year before the opening of this history, St. Aubin
was assailed by a temptation, against which, the fear of detection, in
the desperate state of his affairs, was an insufficient defence. He
yielded, and became engaged in a swindling transaction to an immense
amount. The business was discovered, and St. Aubin apprehended under
circumstances which left no doubt of his being hung, unless steps were
taken to prevent the prosecution. In this extremity the wretched Maria
entreated her sister, if the sacrifice of the fortune so long preserved
would suffice, to rescue with it herself and child from the disgrace
of having a husband and father die an ignominious death. A compromise
was accordingly offered, and accepted. It was not, however, in the
power of the persons principally interested, to do more than connive
at the escape of St. Aubin, who therefore fled the kingdom, taking
with him his miserable wife, and his black factotum, the only slaves
utter beggary had left him; and abandoning the child, still at S-- B--
school, to the compassion of Mrs. Montgomery. Nor did he remit any part
of his hatred to that lady, notwithstanding her late concession; on the
contrary, he called down fresh imprecations on her head, as being the
sole cause, he said, of all his misfortunes, by having withheld the
money at the time it would have been really of use, and enabled him to
have arranged his affairs before they became quite desperate.
The next accounts Mrs. Montgomery had of her sister and St. Aubin
were, that the ship in which they had sailed, with all the crew, and
passengers, had perished off the coast of France. The affair was of
too public a nature to afford, from the first, the slightest hope of
mis-statement; for the vessel, though a merchantman, was of importance,
from the value of her cargo, as she had much specie on board. The
circumstances too under which she was lost were remarkable, and
consequently made a great noise, for the weather was perfectly calm.
She had been seen and passed in the evening by a frigate homeward
bound, but after that was never seen or heard of more, and not even
one individual, it was stated, had escaped, to relate the particulars
of the accident: it was therefore concluded, that she must have
foundered during the night.
Thus was Henry cast entirely on Mrs. Montgomery; who, while she grieved
to trace in him the evil nature of his father, could not help loving
him, as the child of her poor lost sister. Having concluded this
necessary retrospect, we shall, in our next chapter, return to our
narrative.