"His curse! Dost comprehend what that word means?
Shot from a father's angry breath."
JAMES SHIRLEY: _The Brothers_.
"This term is fatal, and affrights me."--Ibid.
"Those fond philosophers that magnify
Our human nature . . . . . .
Conversed but little with the world-they knew not
The fierce vexation of community!"--Ibid.
After he had recovered his self-possession, Philip opened the well of the
bureau, and was astonished and affected to find that Catherine had saved
more than L100. Alas! how much must she have pinched herself to have
hoarded this little treasure! After burning his father's love-letters,
and some other papers, which he deemed useless, he made up a little
bundle of those trifling effects belonging to the deceased, which he
valued as memorials and relies of her, quitted the apartment, and
descended to the parlour behind the shop. On the way he met with the
kind servant, and recalling the grief that she had manifested for his
mother since he had been in the house, he placed two sovereigns in her
hand. "And now," said he, as the servant wept while be spoke, "now I can
bear to ask you what I have not before done. How did my poor mother die?
Did she suffer much?--or--or--"
"She went off like a lamb, sir," said the girl, drying her eyes. "You
see the gentleman had been with her all the day, and she was much more
easy and comfortable in her mind after he came."
"The gentleman! Not the gentleman I found here?"
"Oh, dear no! Not the pale middle-aged gentleman nurse and I saw go down
as the clock struck two. But the young, soft-spoken gentleman who came
in the morning, and said as how he was a relation. He stayed with her
till she slept; and, when she woke, she smiled in his face--I shall never
forget that smile--for I was standing on the other side, as it might be
here, and the doctor was by the window, pouring out the doctor's stuff in
the glass; and so she looked on the young gentleman, and then looked
round at us all, and shook her head very gently, but did not speak. And
the gentleman asked her how she felt, and she took both his hands and
kissed them; and then he put his arms round and raised her up to take the
physic like, and she said then, 'You will never forget them?' and he
said, 'Never.' I don't know what that meant, sir!"
"Well, well--go on."
"And her head fell back on his buzzom, and she looked so happy; and, when
the doctor came to the bedside, she was quite gone."
"And the stranger had my post! No matter; God bless him--God bless him.
Who was he? what was his name?"
"I don't know, sir; he did not say. He stayed after the doctor went, and
cried very bitterly; he took on more than you did, sir."
"And the other gentleman came just as he was a-going, and they did not
seem to like each other; for I heard him through the wall, as nurse and I
were in the next room, speak as if he was scolding; but he did not stay
long."
"And has never been seen since?"
"No, sir. Perhaps missus can tell you more about him. But won't you
take something, sir? Do--you look so pale."
Philip, without speaking, pushed her gently aside, and went slowly down
the stairs. He entered the parlour, where two or three children were
seated, playing at dominoes; he despatched one for their mother, the
mistress of the shop, who came in, and dropped him a courtesy, with a
very grave, sad face, as was proper.
"I am going to leave your house, ma'am; and I wish to settle any little
arrears of rent, &c."
"O sir! don't mention it," said the landlady; and, as she spoke, she
took a piece of paper from her bosom, very neatly folded, and laid it on
the table. "And here, sir," she added, taking from the same depository a
card,--"here is the card left by the gentleman who saw to the funeral.
He called half an hour ago, and bade me say, with his compliments, that
he would wait on you to-morrow at eleven o'clock. So I hope you won't go
yet: for I think he means to settle everything for you; he said as much,
sir."
Philip glanced over the card, and read, "Mr. George Blackwell, Lincoln's
Inn." His brow grew dark--he let the card fall on the ground, put his
foot on it with a quiet scorn, and muttered to himself, "The lawyer shall
not bribe me out of my curse!" He turned to the total of the bill--not
heavy, for poor Catherine had regularly defrayed the expense of her
scanty maintenance and humble lodging--paid the money, and, as the
landlady wrote the receipt, he asked, "Who was the gentleman--the younger
gentleman--who called in the morning of the day my mother died?"
"Oh, sir! I am so sorry I did not get his name. Mr. Perkins said that
he was some relation. Very odd he has never been since. But he'll be
sure to call again, sir; you had much better stay here."
"No: it does not signify. All that he could do is done. But stay, give
him this note, if she should call."
Philip, taking the pen from the landlady's hand, hastily wrote (while
Mrs. Lacy went to bring him sealing-wax and a light) these words:
"I cannot guess who you are: they say that you call yourself a relation;
that must be some mistake. I knew not that my poor mother had relations
so kind. But, whoever you be, you soothed her last hours--she died in
your arms; and if ever--years, long years hence--we should chance to
meet, and I can do anything to aid another, my blood, and my life, and my
heart, and my soul, all are slaves to your will. If you be really of her
kindred, I commend to you my brother: he is at ----, with Mr. Morton.
If you can serve him, my mother's soul will watch over you as a guardian
angel. As for me, I ask no help from any one: I go into the world and
will carve out my own way. So much do I shrink from the thought of
charity from others, that I do not believe I could bless you as I do now
if your kindness to me did not close with the stone upon my mother's
grave. PHILIP."
He sealed this letter, and gave it to the woman.
"Oh, by the by," said she, "I had forgot; the Doctor said that if you
would send for him, he would be most happy to call on you, and give you
any advice."
"Very well."
"And what shall I say to Mr. Blackwell?"
"That he may tell his employer to remember our last interview."
With that Philip took up his bundle and strode from the house. He went
first to the churchyard, where his mother's remains had been that day
interred. It was near at hand, a quiet, almost a rural, spot. The gate
stood ajar, for there was a public path through the churchyard, and
Philip entered with a noiseless tread. It was then near evening; the sun
had broken out from the mists of the earlier day, and the wistering rays
shone bright and holy upon the solemn place.
"Mother! mother!" sobbed the orphan, as he fell prostrate before that
fresh green mound: "here--here I have come to repeat my oath, to swear
again that I will be faithful to the charge you have entrusted to your
wretched son! And at this hour I dare ask if there be on this earth one
more miserable and forlorn?"
As words to this effect struggled from his lips, a loud, shrill voice--
the cracked, painful voice of weak age wrestling with strong passion,
rose close at hand.
"Away, reprobate! thou art accursed!"
Philip started, and shuddered as if the words were addressed to himself,
and from the grave. But, as he rose on his knee, and tossing the wild
hair from his eyes, looked confusedly round, he saw, at a short distance,
and in the shadow of the wall, two forms; the one, an old man with grey
hair, who was seated on a crumbling wooden tomb, facing the setting sun;
the other, a man apparently yet in the vigour of life, who appeared bent
as in humble supplication. The old man's hands were outstretched over
the head of the younger, as if suiting terrible action to the terrible
words, and, after a moment's pause--a moment, but it seemed far longer to
Philip--there was heard a deep, wild, ghastly howl from a dog that
cowered at the old man's feet; a howl, perhaps of fear at the passion of
his master, which the animal might associate with danger.
"Father! father!" said the suppliant reproachfully, "your very dog
rebukes your curse."
"Be dumb! My dog! What hast thou left me on earth but him? Thou hast
made me loathe the sight of friends, for thou hast made me loathe mine
own name. Thou hast covered it with disgrace,--thou hast turned mine old
age into a by-word,--thy crimes leave me solitary in the midst of my
shame!"
"It is many years since we met, father; we may never meet again--shall we
part thus?"
"Thus, aha!" said the old man in a tone of withering sarcasm! "I
comprehend,--you are come for money!"
At this taunt the son started as if stung by a serpent; raised his head
to its full height, folded his arms, and replied:
"Sir, you wrong me: for more than twenty years I have maintained myself--
no matter how, but without taxing you;--and now, I felt remorse for
having suffered you to discard me,--now, when you are old and helpless,
and, I heard, blind: and you might want aid, even from your poor good-
for-nothing son. But I have done. Forget,--not my sins, but this
interview. Repeal your curse, father; I have enough on my head without
yours; and so--let the son at least bless the father who curses him.
Farewell!"
The speaker turned as he thus said, with a voice that trembled at the
close, and brushed rapidly by Philip, whom he did not, however, appear to
perceive; but Philip, by the last red beam of the sun, saw again that
marked storm-beaten face which it was difficult, once seen, to forget,
and recognised the stranger on whose breast be had slept the night of his
fatal visit to R----.
The old man's imperfect vision did not detect the departure of his son,
but his face changed and softened as the latter strode silently through
the rank grass.
"William!" he said at last, gently; "William!" and the tears rolled down
his furrowed cheeks; "my son!" but that son was gone--the old man
listened for reply--none came. "He has left me--poor William!--we shall
never meet again;" and he sank once more on the old tombstone, dumb,
rigid, motionless--an image of Time himself in his own domain of Graves.
The dog crept closer to his master, and licked his hand. Philip stood
for a moment in thoughtful silence: his exclamation of despair had been
answered as by his better angel. There was a being more miserable than
himself; and the Accursed would have envied the Bereaved!
The twilight had closed in; the earliest star--the star of Memory and
Love, the Hesperus hymned by every poet since the world began--was fair
in the arch of heaven, as Philip quitted the spot, with a spirit more
reconciled to the future, more softened, chastened, attuned to gentle and
pious thoughts than perhaps ever yet had made his soul dominant over the
deep and dark tide of his gloomy passions. He went thence to a
neighbouring sculptor, and paid beforehand for a plain tablet to be
placed above the grave he had left. He had just quitted that shop, in
the same street, not many doors removed from the house in which his
mother had breathed her last. He was pausing by a crossing, irresolute
whether to repair at once to the home assigned to Sidney, or to seek some
shelter in town for that night, when three men who were on the opposite
side of the way suddenly caught sight of him.
"There he is--there he is! Stop, sir!--stop!"
Philip heard these words, looked up, and recognised the voice and the
person of Mr. Plaskwith; the bookseller was accompanied by Mr. Plimmins,
and a sturdy, ill-favoured stranger.
A nameless feeling of fear, rage, and disgust seized the unhappy boy, and
at the same moment a ragged vagabond whispered to him, "Stump it, my
cove; that's a Bow Street runner."
Then there shot through Philip's mind the recollection of the money he
had seized, though but to dash away; was he now--he, still to his own
conviction, the heir of an ancient and spotless name--to be hunted as a
thief; or, at the best, what right over his person and his liberty had he
given to his taskmaster? Ignorant of the law--the law only seemed to
him, as it ever does to the ignorant and the friendless--a Foe. Quicker
than lightning these thoughts, which it takes so many words to describe,
flashed through the storm and darkness of his breast; and at the very
instant that Mr. Plimmins had laid hands on his shoulder his resolution
was formed. The instinct of self beat loud at his heart. With a bound--
a spring that sent Mr. Plimmins sprawling in the kennel, he darted across
the road, and fled down an opposite lane.
"Stop him! stop!" cried the bookseller, and the officer rushed after
him with almost equal speed. Lane after lane, alley after alley, fled
Philip; dodging, winding, breathless, panting; and lane after lane, and
alley after alley, thickened at his heels the crowd that pursued. The
idle and the curious, and the officious,--ragged boys, ragged men, from
stall and from cellar, from corner and from crossing, joined in that
delicious chase, which runs down young Error till it sinks, too often, at
the door of the gaol or the foot of the gallows. But Philip slackened
not his pace; he began to distance his pursuers. He was now in a street
which they had not yet entered--a quiet street, with few, if any, shops.
Before the threshold of a better kind of public-house, or rather tavern,
to judge by its appearance, lounged two men; and while Philip flew on,
the cry of "Stop him!" had changed as the shout passed to new voices,
into "Stop the thief!"--that cry yet howled in the distance. One of the
loungers seized him: Philip, desperate and ferocious, struck at him with
all his force; but the blow was scarcely felt by that Herculean frame.
"Pish!" said the man, scornfully; "I am no spy; if you run from justice,
I would help you to a sign-post."
Struck by the voice, Philip looked hard at the speaker. It was the voice
of the Accursed Son.
"Save me! you remember me?" said the orphan, faintly. "Ah! I think I
do; poor lad! Follow me-this way!" The stranger turned within the
tavern, passed the hall through a sort of corridor that led into a back
yard which opened upon a nest of courts or passages.
"You are safe for the present; I will take you where you can tell me all
at your ease--See!" As he spoke they emerged into an open street, and
the guide pointed to a row of hackney coaches. "Be quick--get in.
Coachman, drive fast to ---"
Philip did not hear the rest of the direction.
Our story returns to Sidney.