These last words he did not put as a question, but as a satisfactory reflection. The simplest assent from my mother would have contented him; but she was too truthful to give utterance to it, and all his suspicions were aroused by her silence.
'I repeat--of my after career, they had no knowledge.'
She would have spared him, but he would not allow her to do so.
'They had!' he exclaimed, his rapid breathing showing how deeply he was moved.' What did they know?'
'The rumour was very vague, Bryan----'
'But discreditable. To what effect?'
'I really cannot explain, nor could they have done so, I believe.' My mother was much distressed. 'If Chris were not here----'
'Say no more.' I could not see his face, but his tone indicated that he had recovered his composure. 'I can fill up the blanks. Chris is older than I was when I threw myself upon the world, and it will be best for him to hear the story I shall relate.'
'Whatever impression I might have gained,' said my mother solicitously, 'from the vague rumours I heard has been entirely obliterated since I have known you. Believe me that this is so, dear Bryan.'
'Thank you for saying so much. But I doubt whether my parents would ever have believed that I was not the blackest of black sheep. They were hard and intolerant to me from the first, and I have no pleasurable recollections of even my earliest days. I do not know if it was the same when you were first introduced into it as it is in my remembrance, but the home in which I was born and reared was ruled by cold and formal laws, and by a cold and formal master. How it came about is a mystery I have never tried to solve, but it is a plain fact that I was not a favourite with my parents. My brother--your husband--was; he was much younger than I, but I saw it clearly. His nature was a more pliable one than mine; he could be easily led, not because he was weak, but because he was sympathetic and amiable. I was neither. Perhaps I imbibed some drops of gall with my mother's milk; but I don't pretend to account for my cross grain. My parents might have loved me after their fashion, but their mode of showing their love deprived it of all tenderness. It is a blessing to a man to be able to think of his mother with affection and veneration when she has passed away from him. Such a feeling, and the roads he must have trodden to acquire it, are a counterfoil to much that may be bad in his own nature; but this feeling is not mine. My mother was a weak-minded woman, entirely dominated by the strong mind of her husband. She had no will of her own; she followed the current of his likes and dislikes, of his opinions, of his commands, without question and without inquiry, as a spaniel follows its master. Many persons would see a kind of virtue in this submission; I do not. My father was dogmatic and stern; I could have forgiven him that, if he had been honest-minded. But he was a hypocrite, and I knew it, and he knew that I knew it. With great appearance of candour, he, when conversing with acquaintances in the presence of my mother and myself, would give expression to sentiments in which he did not believe; then, when we were alone, he would take off his mask of dissimulation, and go over the ground again according to his own conviction, and justify his deceit. If my mother ever thought of these things, she must have been bewildered; I did think of him, and I was indignant. Most especially was he a hypocrite in religious matters; his prayers and his practice were utterly at variance. I could not respect one who professed to believe that charity was a good thing, and who declined to practise it. He was intolerant to a degree; his was the only right way--all others were wrong. It was my evil fortune--I suppose I must call it so--to possess a mind which led me to sift things for myself; I could not accept established doctrines, and this, in my father's eyes, was not only a great presumption but a great crime. It is not necessary for me to state how, little by little, I became estranged from such parental affection as might have been bestowed upon me had I been docile and obedient--as might have been mine if I had tried to win it. I sought for congenial companionship away from the social circle in which my parents moved; it is true that I found associates among men who, doubtless with more reason than myself, were dissatisfied with things as they were, and that I identified myself--being, as a youth, proud of the connection--with a body of so-called Freethinkers, whose chief crime was that they were groping to find truth by the light of reason. My father, hearing of this connection, sternly commanded me to relinquish it, and when I refused, threatened me. He declared he would drive the evil spirit out of me, and he tried to do so by blows; but he hurt only my body--my spirit he strengthened. About this time a circumstance occurred which for ever destroyed all chance of peace between us. We had a servant at home, a poor half-witted creature--an orphan without a friend in the world. One would have supposed that my father, being so fond of his prayers, would have been kind to this servant because of her utterly dependent condition, and because she performed her work as well and as faithfully as her dull wits allowed her. Had this been so, I think I might have been inclined to waver in my estimate of him; but the contrary was the case. My father, through his unvarying harshness towards the poor girl, made her life a torture to her. I constituted myself her champion, and stepped between her and his blows many a time. Boy as I was, he chose to place misconstruction upon my championship, and each became more embittered against the other. I fed my bitterness by contemplation of the girl's misery, and the unhappy war went on until it was terminated by a tragic circumstance. One day the servant was missing; the next, the body was found in the river. The idea fixed itself firmly in my mind that my father was accountable for her death; I even hinted as much to him when my blood was boiling with a new injustice inflicted upon myself. What passed between us after that, it will be as well not to recall; the result was that I left my home, and no hand was held out to stay me. I never saw my parents from that day, nor have I ever mentioned them until this evening. Whether I have done them injustice cannot now be decided; but I have no doubt, if the world were to judge between us, the verdict would be against me.