Read Ebook: First Love: A Novel. Vol. 1 of 3 by Loudon Mrs Margracia

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Master Henry, meanwhile, was greedily devouring tart and cream, with his face close to his plate, and his eyes levelled at the dish, in great anxiety to be in time to claim the last portion which now remained on it; but, in his attempt to swallow what was before him, he missed his aim, and was a moment too late, though he thrust out his plate with both hands just as he saw a servant coming round; but the tart was dispatched to Lord L., to whom it had been offered, and who, being too much occupied to refuse it, had bowed. It lay before him a few moments, and went away untouched. Henry, vexed extremely, and desirous of revenge on Frances for the disappointment occasioned him by her lover, said, "If you are talking of the beggar brat, he is the image of a monkey! I was quite afraid he would bite me as I passed him in the hall."

"I am sure, Henry," retorted Frances, "he seemed more afraid of you, than you could be of him: and, by the bye, you need not, I think, have looked so cross at the poor child."

"Cross!" repeated Henry, "I did not look cross. What reason do you suppose I had to look cross? I never saw the brat before in my life."

Henry's speech was accompanied by that hateful expression, which the eyes of an ill-disposed child assume, when it knows it is uttering falsehood!

"Henry!" said Mrs. Montgomery, with some surprise; "you need not look angry, much less guilty. No one can suppose that you know any thing of the poor boy. But leave the room, sir: and remember you don't sit at table again, till you know better how to conduct yourself."

Henry obeyed, but slowly and sulkily; trailing one foot after the other, and determining to have revenge on the cause of his disgrace. He offered no apology, and therefore was not taken into favour again for the evening, though poor Mrs. Montgomery, as she passed to her own apartment, looked into that where he lay, and said, with a sigh, "Good night, and God bless you, child!"

To account, in some degree, for the unprepossessing manners of Master Henry, we shall introduce a few words respecting the young gentleman's birth, and hitherto unfortunately directed education.

"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."

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.

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.

"He To her face looked up, with innocent love, And she looked fondly on him."

We left the family at Lodore House enjoying, we hope, the refreshment of a good night's rest. The next morning Frances, before she thought of breakfast, repaired to the bedside of Edmund. He had been for some time awake; but, unaccustomed, it would seem, to have any friend or confidant, he had not ventured to speak or stir. The tones of Frances' voice, naming him to the servants as she inquired for him, appeared to bring at once happiness and confidence to his heart. He opened his eyes as she bent over him: he started up, clung round her neck, and wept; though now it was evidently for joy. These first transports, over however, he cast, from time to time, doubting glances on the various sides of the apartment, and especially towards that in which the door was placed, and evinced a great anxiety to retain Frances' hand. She thought him feverish; and with great alarm perceived that his poor little frame was covered with fearful bruises. His neck and hands first drew her attention; and Mrs. Smyth, the housekeeper, soon ascertained that the limbs, concealed by the night-dress, had suffered full as much. Frances sent to Keswick for medical aid, and left her charge with Mrs. Smyth. Mrs. Smyth was a good-natured woman, added to which, the patience and gentleness of the little sufferer had begun to win upon her heart, from the very moment her assistance was first ordered to him. She found it necessary to sit by and encourage him while he breakfasted, for, like a wild animal, driven by hunger nearer to the haunts of man than usual, he started, and desisted from eating, at every sound.

"And what might you have for breakfast yesterday's morn, my dear?" said Mrs. Smyth.

"Nothing," he answered.

"And what had you for dinner, then?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing, my dear!" repeated the good woman; "and ye could na ha' less! Ney fault tell the cooking o' sic dinners, to be sure! And wha was it then, that beat and bruised the life and saul out on ye in this shamefoo manner, my dear?" she continued.

Edmund trembled, sighed heavily, and was silent.

"And win't ye tall me wha it was 'at beat ye?"

Tears stood in his eyes, but still he was silent.

"So you win't speak till me! And after the nice breakfast I geed ye, too!"

The tears now flowed, but still he was silent.

"And wha was it then, that droonded ye in the water?"

He looked all round, but did not speak; and Mrs. Smyth soon saw it was vain to persist in questioning him.

Mr. Dixon, the Keswick surgeon, arrived. He inquired of Mrs. Smyth what the child had eaten, and how his food had seemed to agree with him. Having received due replies, he turned to Frances, who by this time was just entering, and addressed her thus:--

"I should not have anticipated, madam--I should not have anticipated, that so great a variety of aliment would have assimilated well in the child's stomach; but, such being the case, I never set my face against facts, madam!--never set my face against facts! I should, therefore, continue the course which has been hitherto pursued, with respect to nutriment."

"Yes, sir; but have you seen his bruises?" asked Frances.

"My practice is very simple, madam," resumed the doctor, without answering her question; "I love to go hand-in-hand with our great instructress, Nature."

"It is too much the custom with men of our profession, to oppose the efforts of nature; but I love to assist them, madam--I love to assist them."

"You are quite right, sir. But, do you think those bruises will be of any consequence?"

"Depend upon it, madam, depend upon it, there is always a revulsion, as it were, towards right; a rebounding, a returning, in nature to her usual functions, as first ordained by her all, wise Creator; and our part, is carefully to watch those movements. And when the elasticity of any power is impaired by the forcible, or long continued pressure of adventitious circumstances; first, to remove the weight of such, and then, by gentle stimulants, to restore buoyancy to the injured spring; thus, madam--thus, I ever doff my cap to Nature!"

The doctor having arrived at what seemed a pause, at least, if not a conclusion, Frances had some hopes of being heard; and, by way of exordium, said,

"Your system, sir, is as judicious as it is pious."

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