The World Before Them Volume Iii Part 10

"My poor deceived mother, I have every reason to believe, was pa.s.sionately fond of her husband; but retiring in her habits, she lacked the art to secure the affection of a man of the world, and such a general lover as Colonel Fitzmorris was known to be.

"She was his legal wife, but not the mistress of his heart. In public he treated her with marked attention and politeness, which he considered due to a woman of her rank; in private she was neglected altogether, or regarded with cool indifference; and having no inclination for the ostentatious show of a life spent in public, my dear mother pa.s.sed most of her time in the country with her infant sons, at the beautiful seat which had formed a part of her n.o.ble dower.

"While she continued to love my father, his conduct must have occasioned her great anguish of mind. A faithful female attendant has since informed me that most of her solitary nights were spent in tears. After every tender feeling had been torn and estranged, and indifference succeeded to love, she, unfortunately, transferred the affections which had never been reciprocated by her faithless partner, to a man who, had she known previous to her ill-starred marriage, would have been worthy of her love.

"General Halstead commanded the brigade in which my father was colonel, and was a constant visitor at the house. He was a man in middle life, with a fine, gentlemanly presence, frank, brave, and independent, had read and travelled much, and could talk well on most subjects. He was very kind to us boys, and we both loved him, for we saw a great deal more of him than of our father, who never kissed or played with us as General Halstead did.

"But to hasten a sad story. General Halstead sought and won the heart my father had trampled and spurned, and my mother eloped with her seducer to France. I have often since wondered how she could leave her two young sons, who were rendered worse than orphans by her rash desertion.

"I can just remember my mother. She was always gentle and kind to Francis and me. We so seldom saw our father that we loved her with the most ardent affection. I recollect the fatal night of her departure as well as if it were but yesterday. The weather was July, and oppressively warm, and Mrs. Starling, the nurse, put us early to bed, that we might not disturb Lady Charlotte, who was dressing to go to a large party, she said, 'and could not play with us that night.'

"I was a nervous, irritable boy. I could not sleep for the heat, and lay awake watching the moon, and the strange shadows thrown by the vine-leaves that encircled the window, upon the white curtains of my bed. At last I grew frightened by the grotesque shapes, which my too active imagination endowed with life and motion, when the summer breeze from the open window stirred the drapery.

"I began to cry piteously.

"A figure glided into the room, and sat down beside me on the bed. It was my mother. She was dressed for a journey, and wore a dark cloth riding habit, and a broad black velvet hat and white feathers. She was a tall, elegant-looking woman, more remarkable, I have been told, for her exquisite form than for her face. She was, if anything, too fair, with dark blue eyes and flaxen hair like my own. She used to call me her dear, white-headed boy, and congratulate herself on my being a Granville--her maiden name--and not a Fitzmorris. That night she looked very pale and sad, and seen in the white moon-light, appeared more like a ghost than a creature of warm flesh and blood.

"'What ails my darling boy?' she said, and took me out of the bed into her lap, pressing me tightly to her breast, and kissing the tears from my wet cheeks.

"'I am afraid, mamma.' I trembled and looked timidly towards the curtains.

"'Afraid of what?' and her eyes followed mine with a startled expression.

"'Of those things dancing on the bed curtains. Don't you see the black, ugly creatures, mamma?'

"'They are only shadows; they cannot hurt you, Gerard.'

"'Oh, yes, they can. They are coming for me. Don't let them carry me away.' I clung to her, and hid my face in her bosom. 'Oh, do stay with me, dear mamma, until I go to sleep! Don't leave me alone!'

"I felt her warm tears falling fast over my face. She kissed me over and over again, then tried to lay me down quietly in the bed. I did not want to go to bed, and I flung my arms round her neck, and held her with desperate energy.

"'Don't go! If you love me, mamma, don't go!'

"'I must go, my dear boy.'

"'What, to-night, mamma!'

"'Yes to-night, the carriage is waiting.'

"Her lips quivered, she wrung her hands with an impatient gesture.

'Don't ask any more questions, Gerard, I am going a long journey with a friend. Now lie down like a good boy, and go to sleep.'

"'And when will you come back?'

"She was weeping pa.s.sionately, and didn't answer.

"'To-morrow?'

"She shook her head.

"'Then take me, too. I will be a good boy--indeed I will. But don't go away and leave me.'

"'I can't take you, Gerard. Where I am going, you cannot come.' She tried to unclasp my clinging arms, but it was some time before she succeeded, I held her so fast.

"'Oh my poor little boys! my poor little boys!' she cried, in an agony of grief, as she bent over me and kissed my sleeping brother. 'What a wretch I am to leave you to the care of such a father. Gerard,' she said softly, 'if I never come back, will you sometimes think of me, and continue to love your poor mother?'

"I was growing sleepy, and was too young to comprehend the terrible truth concealed by those words. I dimly remember, as in a dream, a tall man leaning over us, and extricating my mother from my clinging arms.

"'He is going to sleep, Charlotte, dearest, you should have spared yourself this trying scene.'

"'How can I live without them, Charles?' she sobbed, and stretched her arms towards us.

"'You must now live for me, Charlotte. We have ventured too far to go back. Come away, my love, it is time we were on board.'

"That was the last time I ever saw my mother. Before she left the room I was asleep, in blissful ignorance of the great calamity that had befallen me.

"Though guilty of a terrible crime, I have never been able to banish her from my heart--where she must ever remain, as one of the most beautiful visions of childhood.

"Poor, gentle, affectionate, ill-used mother, with a heart brimful of love and kindness, how dreadful the conflict must have been, between duty to a husband who never loved her, and fidelity to the man by whom she was pa.s.sionately loved. Terrible must have been her mental struggles, before she resolved to burst those sacred ties asunder, and leave for ever the children so dear to her.

"Was she more guilty than the husband, who in defiance of his marriage vows, lived in open adultery with another woman, on whose children he bestowed the parental love he withheld from those born in lawful wedlock, wasting the n.o.ble fortune he obtained through his injured wife among disreputable companions, in low scenes of debauchery and vice.

"The world can always extenuate the fault of the male offender, and lay the blame solely upon his unhappy partner; insinuating that faults of temper, and a want of sympathy in his tastes and pursuits, was most probably the cause of his estrangement--unscrupulously branding her name with scorn and infamy.

"There is One, however, who weighs in an equal balance the cause and the effects produced by it in the actions of men, who will judge her more leniently. The merciful Saviour who said to the erring woman, dragged into His presence to be made a public example and put to a cruel death, 'Woman where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?

Neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more.'

"Oh, how my bosom thrilled and my heart burned within me, when I read that text seriously for the first time, and thought of my poor mother, and was comforted with the blessed hope that she, too, might be forgiven."

Gerard's voice faltered, and Dorothy felt the strong frame tremble with emotion, but the stronger will conquered the human weakness, and he continued:

"My father's sense of honour, in the world's acceptation of the term, was stung by the desertion of his neglected wife. He learned that the fugitives had been seen in Paris, and lost no time in tracing them out.

A duel was the result, in which my father received a mortal wound. His body was brought home and buried with due pomp in the family vault. My brother was seven years of age; myself a little chubby boy in frocks and trowsers; and we had to act as chief mourners in that melancholy pageant. We saw the coffin that contained the mortal remains of our father, the once handsome and admired Colonel Fitzmorris, placed in due form among the forgotten members of his ancient house; and after the nine days wonder was over, he was as much forgotten by his fas.h.i.+onable a.s.sociates as if he had never been. The night before my father died by the hand of the man who had dishonoured him, he made a will leaving everything he possessed to my brother Francis. The settlement made from my mother's property on younger children, alone falling to my share. As there were no other younger children, and the property was considerable, I was nearly as independent as my brother.

"We were left to the guardians.h.i.+p of the Earl of Wilton, who you will remember was our maternal grandfather. The brothers Fitzmorris having married two daughters of that n.o.ble house, and females not being excluded from the succession, Sir Thomas Fitzmorris, the present Earl's elder brother, was the heir presumptive to the t.i.tle and estates.

"Lord Wilton was a cold proud man of the world, and the slur that my mother's elopement, and subsequent marriage with General Halstead, had cast upon the family, did not enhance his love for her children.

"He took more to Frank than he did to me, though he said that he greatly resembled his rascally father. He was a handsome das.h.i.+ng boy, with the same winning popular manners that had contributed to the ruin of Colonel Fitzmorris. Fond of money, but only with the intent to spend it, from a child he paid great court to his wealthy grandfather, in the hope of becoming heir to the immense private fortune he had the power to bestow.

In this fortune hunting, Edward Fitzmorris, the present Earl, was quite as much interested as my brother, but he pursued his object with a great deal more tact. The Fitzmorrises, though an old family, and highly connected, were not a wealthy family, and Captain Fitzmorris was a younger son, with little more to depend upon than a very handsome person, and his commission in the army.

"He watched us lads with a very jealous eye, giving us very little cause to regard him with affection. He was many years our senior, his father having married early, and ours late in life--in fact, he was a man, when we were noisy boys, not yet in our teens. It was only during the holidays that we ever met, as we were sent to Eton and then to college.

"It is of no use to tell you, Dorothy, of all the thoughts and follies, which too often mark a schoolboy's and a student's life. Suffice it to say that your grave Gerard was no better than the rest. A more frolicsome mischievous imp, never drew the breath of life, always in trouble and difficulties of some sort or another, and when at Oxford, the most daring leader of the wildest and most reckless set of young fellows that ever threw away fortune, health and respectability, at that famous seat of learning. How little I thought of religion in those days, still less of ever mounting a pulpit, or teaching the poor and ignorant.

"At twenty-one, I received from my grandfather a cadets.h.i.+p for India and went out as a soldier, to fight under the present Lord Wellington, who was then Sir Arthur Wellesley.

"You start, Dorothy. Your future husband a soldier! It is pleasant to read your astonishment in those large wondering eyes. I bear the marks of some hot service too, in sundry ugly scars which I regarded as badges of honour in those world-loving days. It was while suffering severely from one of these wounds, that I was sent home, to see if my native air could restore me to health.