THE VEIL IS FAST DROPPING FROM BEFORE RALPH'S MYSTERIOUS PARENTAGE--
STRANGE DISCLOSURES, AND MUCH GOOD EVIDENCE THAT THIS IS A VERY BAD
WORLD--RALPH'S LOVE-SYMPTOMS ARE FAST SUBSIDING.
"Ralph," said the lady, when we were again alone, "I have, through the
whole of my life, always detested scenes, and, to the utmost of my
power, ever repelled all violent emotions. I am not now going to give
you a history of my life--to make my confessions, and ask pardon of you
and God, and then die--nonsense; but I must say that your fate has been
somewhat strangely connected with my own. I acknowledge to you, at
once, that I am a fallen woman--but, as I never had the beauty, so I
never had the repentance, of a Magdalen. I fell to one of the greatest
upon the earth. I still think that it was a glorious fate. I know that
you are going to wound me deeply. I will take it meekly; may it be, in
some measure, looked upon as a small expiation for my one great error!
But, spare me, as long as you are able, the name of this person you have
described with such bitterness--it may not, after all, be he who has
been almost the only bitterness that has yet poisoned my cup of a too
pleasurable existence--'tis pleasurable, alas! until, even in this, my
eleventh hour. Tell me all, and then I shall be able to judge how much
it may be my duty to reveal to you."
It was a fine study, that of observing the gradual emotion of this
worldly and magnificent woman, as I proceeded with my eventful tale. I
took it up only at that period when Joshua Daunton first made his
application to me to be allowed to enter the _Eos_. The beginning of my
narrative fell coldly upon her, and her features were strung up to that
tension which I had often before observed in persons who were bracing up
their nerves to undergo a dangerous surgical operation. They were
certainly not impassive, for, in the fixed eyes that glared upon me,
there was a strange restlessness, though not of motion.
The first symptoms of emotion that I could perceive took place when I
described the lash descending upon the shrinking shoulders of Daunton.
She clasped her hands firmly together, and upturned her eyes, as if
imploring Heaven for mercy, or entreating it for vengeance. I
perceived, as I proceeded, that I was gradually losing ground in her
affections--that she was, in spite of herself, espousing the cause of my
pledged enemy; and when I told her of the defiance that I had received
in the sick-bay, she murmured forth, "Well done! well done!" followed by
a name that was not mine.
When I related to her the documents that he had shown me to convince me
that he was no impostor, she said, "Ralph, it is enough--it is of little
consequence now what name you may give him. _He is my son_!"
"And my half-brother?"
"Oh no, no, young sir! Disgraced as he has been, a nobler blood than
that of Rattlin flows in his veins. Degraded, disgraced as he is,
neither on the side of the father nor of the mother need he blush for
his parentage. But you are his sworn enemy--I can now listen more
calmly to what you have to say. But, graceless as he is, he should not
have denied his own mother."
"Mrs Causand," said I, in a tone of voice more cold than any with which
I had yet addressed her, "it seems that you have, and that most
unreasonably too, taken part against me. In no point have I sinned
against you or yours. I have all along been the attacked, the aggrieved
party. I will no longer offend your ears, or wring your heart, by a
recapitulation of your son's delinquencies. He has done me much wrong;
he is contemplating more--only place me in a situation to do myself
justice, and silence on the past shall seal my lips for ever; but know
that he has stolen all my documents, and intends passing himself to
whomever may be my father, as his legitimate son, as myself."
"This must not be--foolish, mad, wicked boy! That I, his mother, must
stand up his accuser! must act against him as his enemy! but I have long
ago discarded him--almost cursed him. Oh, Ralph, Ralph! had he been but
like you--but, from his youth upwards, he has been inclined to
wickedness--no fortune could have supplied his extravagance--he has
exhausted even a mother's love. I refused him money, and he stole my
papers--I never dreamt of the vile use that he intended to put them to.
Spare me for a little while, and I will let you know all; but should you
once get his neck under your heel, oh! tread lightly on my poor
William!" She had evidently another and a most severe attack of her
complaint, which passed rapidly over like the rest; but she now had, for
the first time in my observation, recourse to her medicines. When
sufficiently recovered, she continued:
"Ralph, neither you nor any one else shall know my private history. It
is enough for you to understand that I was almost from infancy destined
to associate with the greatest of the sterner sex. Early was I involved
in this splendid--degradation, the austere would call it, though
degradation I never held it to be. Even appearances were preserved;
for, before my wretched son was born, I was married to one of the pages
of a German court, who was sixty years of age, and properly submissive
and distant. To the English ear, this sounds like a confession of
infamy. Let me not, Ralph, endeavour to justify it to you--I was taught
otherwise--now, if I could, I would not regret it. Your father, then an
only son, sometimes visited at the house of the person over whose
establishment I presided, and--and, mark me, Ralph, injuriously as you
must now think of me, I presided over but one. Deride me not when I
tell that to that distinguished personage I was chaste."
She paused, and I thought that her voice faltered strangely, and that
the assertion died upon her lips, and I made no reply. I was by no
means astonished at this detail. I could only look upon her most
anxiously, and await her future disclosures.
"I have," she continued, "lived for the world, and found it a glorious
one. The husband of my heart, and the husband of ceremony, have long
both been dead. I enjoy a competency--nay, much more--and yet, they
talk to me of dying. To-morrow will decide upon my fate. I have lived
a good life, according to my capabilities--it is no delusion--but,
should the sentence of to-morrow's consultation be fatal, then the
lawyer and the clergyman--"
"And why not to-day?"
"Because it is ours, Ralph, or rather, yours. Well, your mother was of
good, though not of exalted, family--the daughter of a considerable
freeholder in our neighbourhood. She was the eldest of many children,
and the most beautiful born of all in the county. Her father sent her
to London; and she became thus, for her station and the period, over
educated. She foolishly preferred the fashionable, and refined, and
luxurious service in a nobleman's family to a noble independence in her
honest father's spacious house. It was her mistake and her ruin.
"Ralph! I loved your mother--you know it--but as a governess in the
Duke of E's family, I hated and feared her. I don't think that she was
more beautiful than I, but he--he whom I will never mention--began to be
of that opinion--at least, I trembled. Reginald Rathelin loved her--
wooed her; I entered with eagerness into his schemes--his success was my
security. Miss Daventry at first repulsed me; but, at length, I
overcame her repugnance--many ladies, notwithstanding my ambiguous
position, awed by the rank of my protector, received me--we became
friends. The beautiful governess eloped--I managed everything--they
were married. I was myself a witness of the ceremony."
"Thank God!" I exclaimed, fervently.
"Reginald was wild and dissipated, poor and unprincipled--he cajoled his
wife, and suffered her again to return to her menial station in the
duke's family. In due time there was another journey necessary. It was
when you were born at Reading. `A little while, and yet a little
while,' was the constant plea of the now solicited husband, `and I will
own you, my dear Elizabeth, and boast of you before all the world.'"
"My poor mother!"
"About two years after this marriage, Sir Luke, the father of Reginald,
fell ill, and the neglect of the husband became only something a little
short of actual desertion. Your mother had a proud as well as a loving
spirit. She wrote to the father of Reginald--she interested the duke in
her favour--she was now as anxious for publicity as concealment; but the
expectant heir defied us all. He confessed himself a villain, and
avowed that he had entrapped your mother by a fictitious marriage."
"And _he_ my father!--but you, _you, her friend_?"
"He deceived me also. He declared the man who pretended to perform the
marriage ceremony was not in holy orders. He dared us to prove it. His
father, bred up in prejudice of birth and family, did not urge the son
to do justice to your mother, but satisfied his conscience by providing
very amply for yourself: he first took credit to himself for thus having
done his duty, then the sacrament, and died.
"Your father, now Sir Reginald, in due time proposed for the richest
heiress in the three adjacent counties, and was rejected with scorn. We
made a strong party against him--the seat of his ancestors became
hateful to him--he went abroad. His princely mansion was locked up--his
estates left to the management of a grinding steward; and the world
utterly forgot the self-created alien from his country."
"Then, alas! after all, I am illegitimate."
"And if you were?--but, methinks, that you are now feeling more for
yourself than your mother."
"Oh no, no! tell me of her!"
"After this _expose_, she lived some few years respected in the duke's
family; but she changed her name--home to her father's she would never
go--no tidings ever reached her of the man she looked upon as her
seducer. It must be confessed, however, that he took great care of his
child--he appointed agents to watch over your welfare, though I firmly
believe that he never saw you in his life."
"I think that he once made the attempt when I was at Roots' school; but,
before I was brought to him, his conscience smote him, and he fled like
a craven from his only and injured son."
"Most probably. Rumour said that he had made several visits to England
under a strict incognito. But I must pause--the evening is fast
waning--let me repose a little, and then we will have lights and
dinner." She fell back upon her couch, and appeared again to slumber.