Mark Hurdlestone Part 22

"A very fitting return for all my services," whimpered Miss Dorothy; "for all the love and care I have bestowed upon you and your ungrateful daughter! Send _me_ from the house--turn _me_ out of doors! _Me_, at my time of life;" using that for argument's sake which, if addressed to her by another, would have been refuted with indignation; "to send _me_ forth into the world, homeless and friendless, to seek my living among strangers! Brother, brother, have you the heart to address this to me?"

"Well, perhaps I was wrong, Dolly," replied the kind-hearted sailor, repenting of his sudden burst of pa.s.sion; "but you do so provoke me by your ill-humor, your eternal contradiction, and your old-maidish ways, that it is impossible for a man always to keep his temper. It's a hard thing for a fellow's wife to have the command of the s.h.i.+p, but it seems deucedly unnatural for him to be ruled by a sister."

"Is it not enough, brother, to make a virtuous woman angry, when she hears the girl, whose morals she has fostered with such care, defending a wicked profligate wretch like Anthony Hurdlestone?"

"Excuse me, aunt, I did not defend his conduct, supposing him guilty,"

said Juliet, with quiet dignity; "for if that be really the case such conduct is indefensible. I only hoped that we had been mistaken."

"Pshaw, girl! You are too credulous," said her father. "I have no doubt of his guilt. But here is Mr. G.o.dfrey; we may learn the truth from him."

With an air of the deepest concern, G.o.dfrey listened to the Captain's indignant recital of the scene he had witnessed in the park, and with his uncle Mark's duplicity (only G.o.dfrey was a laughing villain, always the most dangerous sinner of the two) he affected to commiserate the folly and weakness of his cousin, in suffering himself to be entangled by an artful girl.

"He is a strange lad, a very strange lad, Captain Whitmore. I have known him from a child, but I don't know what to make of him. His father is a bad man, and it would be strange if he did not inherit some of his propensities."

"Weaknesses of this nature were not among his father's faults," said the Captain. "I must confess that I liked the young man, and he had, I am told, a very amiable and beautiful mother."

"I have heard my father say so--but she was his first love, and love is always blind. I should think very little of the moral worth of a woman who would jilt such a man as my father, to marry a selfish miserly wretch like Mark Hurdlestone for his money."

"You are right, Mr. Hurdlestone," said Juliet. "Such a woman was unworthy of your father. Poor Anthony, he has been very unfortunate in his parents; yet I hoped of him better things."

"You think, Mr. G.o.dfrey, that there is no doubt of his guilt?" asked Miss Dorothy.

"The girl must know best," returned G.o.dfrey, evading, whilst at the same moment he confirmed the question. "He always admired her from a boy. We have had many disputes, nay downright quarrels, about her beauty. She was never a great favorite of mine. I admire gentle, not man-like women."

"He is a scoundrel!" cried the Captain, throwing down his pipe with a sound that made his daughter start. "He shall never darken my doors again, and so you may tell him, Mr. G.o.dfrey, from me!"

"This is a severe sentence, but he deserves it!" said G.o.dfrey. "I fear my father will one day repent that he ever fostered this viper in his bosom. Yet, strange to say, he always preferred him to me. Report says that there is a stronger tie between them, but this is a base slander upon the generous nature of my father. He loved Anthony's mother better than he did mine; and he loves her son better than he does me."

"Poor lad," said the Captain, warmly grasping his hand, "You have been unkindly treated among them; and you shall always find a friend and a father in me."

G.o.dfrey was a little ashamed of his duplicity, and would gladly, if possible, have recalled that disgraceful scene; but having so far committed himself, he no longer regarded the consequences; but he determined to bear it out with the most hardened effrontery.

Whilst the victim of his diabolical art was writhing upon a sick bed under the most acute mental and bodily pain, the author of his suffering was enjoying the most flattering demonstrations of regard, which were lavishly bestowed upon him by the inhabitants of the Lodge. But the vengeance of Heaven never sleeps, and though the stratagems of wicked men may for a time prove successful, the end generally proves the truth of the apostle's awful denunciation: "_The wages of sin is death_."

CHAPTER XII.

Art thou a father? did the generous tide Of warm parental love e'er fill thy veins, And bid thee feel an interest in thy kind?

Did the pulsation of that icy heart Quicken and vibrate to some gentle name, Breathed in secret at its sacred shrine?--S.M.

Short was the time allowed to Anthony Hurdlestone to brood over his wrongs. His uncle's affairs had reached a crisis, and ruin stared him in the face. Algernon Hurdlestone had ever been the most imprudent of men; and under the fallacious hope of redeeming his fortune, he had, unknown to his son and nephew, during his frequent trips to London, irretrievably involved himself by gambling to a large extent. This false step completed what his reckless profusion had already begun. He found himself always on the losing side, but the indulgence of this fatal propensity had become a pa.s.sion, the excitement necessary to his existence. The management of his estates had always been entrusted entirely to a steward, who, as his master's fortunes declined, was rapidly rising in wealth and consequence. Algernon never troubled himself to enquire into the real state of his finances, whilst Johnstone continued to furnish him with money to gratify all the whims and wants of the pa.s.sing moment.

The embarra.s.sed state of the property was unknown to his young relatives, who deemed his treasures, like those of the celebrated Abulcasem, inexhaustible. G.o.dfrey, it is true, had latterly received some hints from Johnstone how matters stood, but his mind was so wholly occupied with his pursuit of Juliet Whitmore, and the unpleasant predicament in which he was placed by his unfortunate connexion with Mary Mathews, that he had banished the disagreeable subject from his thoughts.

The storm which had been long gathering at length burst. Algernon was arrested, his property seized by the sheriff, himself removed to the jail of the county town of ----. Thither Anthony followed him, anxious to alleviate by his presence the deep dejection into which his Uncle had fallen, and to offer that heartfelt sympathy so precious to the wounded pride of the sufferer.

The gay and joyous disposition of Algernon Hurdlestone yielded to the pressure of misfortune. His mind bowed to the heavy stroke, and he gave himself up to misery. His numerous creditors a.s.sailed him on all sides with their hara.s.sing importunities; and in his dire distress he applied to his rich brother, and, humbly for him, entreated a temporary loan of two thousand pounds until his affairs could be adjusted, and the property sold. This application, as might have been expected, was insultingly rejected on the part of the miser.

Rendered desperate by his situation, Algernon made a second attempt, and pleaded the expense he had been at in bringing up and educating his son, and demanded a moderate remuneration for the same. To this ill-judged application, Mark Hurdlestone returned for answer, "That he had not forced his son upon his protection; that Algernon had pleased himself in adopting the boy; that he had warned him of the consequences when he took that extraordinary step; and that he must now abide by the result; that he, Algernon, had wasted his substance, like the prodigal of old, in riotous living, but that he, Mark, knew better the value of money, and how to take care of it."

"Your father, Tony, is a mean pitiful scoundrel!" cried the heart-broken Algernon, crus.h.i.+ng the unfeeling letter in his hand, and flinging it with violence from him. "But I deserved to be treated with contempt, when I could so far forget myself as to make an application to him!

Thirty years ago, I should have deemed begging my bread from door to door an act of less degradation. But, Tony, time changes us all.

Misfortune makes the proudest neck bow beneath the yoke. My spirit is subdued, Tony, my heart crushed, my pride gone. I am not what I was, my dear boy. It is too late to recall the past. But I can see too late the errors of my conduct. I have acted cruelly and selfishly to poor G.o.dfrey, and squandered in folly the property his mother brought me, and which should have made him rich. And you, my dear Anthony, this blow will deprive you of a father, aye, and of one that loved you too. I would rather share a kennel with my dogs, than become an inmate of the home which now awaits you."

"Home!" sighed the youth. "The wide world is my home, the suffering children of humanity my lawful kinsmen."

Seeing his uncle's lip quiver, he took his hand and affectionately pressed it between his own, while the tears he could not repress fell freely from his eyes. "Father of my heart! would that in this hour of your adversity I could repay to you all your past kindness. But cheer up, something may yet be done. My legitimate father has never seen me as a man. I will go to him. I will plead with him on your behalf, until nature a.s.serts her rights, and the streams of hidden affection, so long pent up in his iron heart, overflow and burst asunder these bars of adamant. Uncle, I will go to him this very day, and may G.o.d grant me success!"

"It is in vain, Anthony. Avarice owns no heart, has no natural affections. You may go, but it is only to mortify your pride, agonize your feelings, and harden your kind nature against the whole world, without producing any ultimate benefit to me."

"It is a trial, uncle, but I will not spare myself. Duty demands the attempt, and successful or unsuccessful, it shall be made."

He strode towards the door. Algernon called him back. "Do not stay long, Tony. I feel ill and low spirited. G.o.dfrey surely does not know that I am in this accursed place. Perhaps he is ashamed to visit me here. Poor lad, poor lad! I have ruined his prospects in life by my extravagance, but I never thought that it would come to this. If you see him on your way, Anthony, tell him (here his voice faltered), tell him, that his poor old father pines to see him, that his absence is worse than imprisonment--than death itself. I have many faults, but I love him only too well."

This was more than Anthony could bear, and he sprang out of the room.

With a heart overflowing with generous emotions, and deeply sympathising in his uncle's misfortunes, he mounted a horse which he had borrowed of a friend in the neighborhood, and took the road that led to his father's mansion; that father who had abandoned him, while yet a tender boy, to the care of another, and whom he had never met since the memorable hour in which they parted.

Oak Hall was situated about thirty miles from Norgood Park, and it was near sunset when Anthony caught the first glimpse of the picturesque church of Ashton among the trees. With mingled feelings of pride, shame, and bitterness he rode past the venerable mansion of his ancestors, and alighted at the door of the sordid hovel that its miserable possessor had chosen for a home.

The cottage in many places had fallen into decay, and admitted through countless crevices the wind and rain. A broken chair, a three-legged stool, and the shattered remains of an oak table, deficient of one of its supporters, but propped up with bricks, comprised the whole furniture of the wretched apartment.

The door was a-jar that led into an interior room that served for a dormitory. Two old soiled mattresses, in which the straw had not been changed for years, thrown carelessly upon the floor, were the sole garniture of this execrable chamber. Anthony glanced around with feelings of an uncontrollable disgust, and all his boyish antipathy to the place returned. The lapse of nearly twenty years had not improved the aspect of his old prison-house, and he was now more capable of appreciating its revolting features. The harsh words, and still harsher blows and curses, which he had been wont to receive from the miser and his sordid a.s.sociate, Grenard Pike, came up in his heart, and, in spite of his better nature, steeled that heart against his ungracious parent.

The entrance of Mark Hurdlestone, whose high stern features, once seen, could never be forgotten, roused Anthony from his train of gloomy recollections, and called back his thoughts to the unpleasant business that brought him there.

Mark did not at the first glance recognise his son in the tall elegantly-dressed young man before him; and he growled out, "Who are you, sir, and what do you want?"

"Mr. Hurdlestone," said Anthony respectfully, "I am your son."

The old man sat down in the chair. A dark cloud came over his brow, as if he already suspected the nature of his son's mission, and he knitted his straight bushy eyebrows so closely together that his small fiery dark eyes gleamed like sparks from beneath the gloomy shade.

"My son; yes, yes. I've heard say that 'tis a wise son that knows his own father. It must be a very wise father who could instinctively know his own son. Certainly, I should never have recognised mine in the gay magpie before me. But sit down, young sir, and tell me what brought you here. Money, I suppose; money, the everlasting want that the extravagant sons of pleasure strive to extort from the provident, who lay up during the harvest of life a provision for the winter of age. If such be your errand, young man, your time is wasted here. Anthony Hurdlestone, I have nothing to give."

"Not even affection it would appear, to an only son."

"I owe you none."

"In what manner have I forfeited my natural claim upon your heart?"

"By transferring the duty and affection which you owed to me to another.

Go to him who has pampered your appet.i.tes, clothed you with soft raiment, and brought you up daintily to lead the idle life of a gentleman. I disown all relations.h.i.+p with a useless b.u.t.terfly."

Anthony's cheek reddened with indignation. "It was not upon my own account I sought you, sir. From my infancy I have been a neglected and forsaken child, for whom you never showed the least parental regard.

Hard blows and harder words were the only marks of fatherly regard that Anthony Hurdlestone ever received at your hands. To hear you curse me, when, starving with cold and hunger, I have asked you for a morsel of bread--to hear you wish me dead, and to see you watch me with hungry eager eyes, as if in my wasted meagre countenance you wished to find a prophetic answer--were sights and sounds of every-day occurrence. Could such conduct as this beget love in your wretched child? Yet, G.o.d knows!"

exclaimed the young man, clasping his hands forcibly together, while tears started to his eyes--"G.o.d knows how earnestly I have prayed to love you, to forget and forgive these unnatural injuries, which have cast the shadow of care over the bright morning of youth, and made the world and all that it contains a wilderness of woe to my blighted heart."