Frank shook his head. “There are moments,” said he, with a wisdom that comes out of those instincts which awake from the depths of youth’s first great sorrow,—“moments when a woman cannot feign, and there are tones in the voice of a woman which men cannot misinterpret. She does not love me,—she never did love me; I can see that her heart has been elsewhere. No matter,—all is over. I don’t deny that I am suffering an intense grief; it gnaws like a kind of sullen hunger; and I feel so broken, too, as if I had grown old, and there was nothing left worth living for. I don’t deny all that.”
“My poor, dear friend, if you would but believe—”
“I don’t want to believe anything, except that I have been a great fool. I don’t think I can ever commit such follies again. But I’m a man. I shall get the better of this; I should despise myself if I could not. And now let us talk of my dear father. Has he left town?”
“Left last night by the mail. You can write and tell him you have given up the marchesa, and all will be well again between you.”
“Give her up! Fie, Randal! Do you think I should tell such a lie? She gave me up; I can claim no merit out of that.”
“Oh, yes! I can make the squire see all to your advantage. Oh, if it were only the marchesa! but, alas! that cursed postobit! How could Levy betray you? Never trust to usurers again; they cannot resist the temptation of a speedy profit.
“They first buy the son, and then sell him to the father. And the squire has such strange notions on matters of this kind.”
“He is right to have them. There, just read this letter from my mother. It came to me this morning. I could hang myself if I were a dog; but I’m a man, and so I must bear it.”
Randal took Mrs. Hazeldean’s letter from Frank’s trembling hand. The poor mother had learned, though but imperfectly, Frank’s misdeeds from some hurried lines which the squire had despatched to her; and she wrote as good, indulgent, but sensible, right-minded mothers alone can write. More lenient to an imprudent love than the squire, she touched with discreet tenderness on Frank’s rash engagements with a foreigner, but severely on his own open defiance of his father’s wishes. Her anger was, however, reserved for that unholy post-obit. Here the hearty genial wife’s love overcame the mother’s affection. To count, in cold blood, on that husband’s death, and to wound his heart so keenly, just where its jealous, fatherly fondness made it most susceptible!
“O Frank, Frank!” wrote Mrs. Hazeldean, “were it not for this, were
it only for your unfortunate attachment to the Italian lady, only
for your debts, only for the errors of hasty, extravagant youth, I
should be with you now, my arms round your neck, kissing you,
chiding you back to your father’s heart. But—but the thought that
between you and his heart has been the sordid calculation of his
death,—that is a wall between us. I cannot come near you. I
should not like to look on your face, and think how my William’s
tears fell over it, when I placed you, new born, in his arms, and
bade him welcome his heir. What! you a mere boy still, your father
yet in the prime of life, and the heir cannot wait till nature
leaves him fatherless. Frank; Frank this is so unlike you. Can
London have ruined already a disposition so honest and
affectionate?—No; I cannot believe it. There must be some mistake.
Clear it up, I implore you; or, though as a mother I pity you, as a
wife I cannot forgive.”