"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."
Even Randal was affected by the letter; for, as we know, even Randal felt in his own person the strength of family ties. The poor squire's choler and bluffness had disguised the parental heart from an eye that, however acute, had not been willing to search for it; and Randal, ever affected through his intellect, had despised the very weakness on which he had preyed. But the mother's letter, so just and sensible (allowing that the squire's opinions had naturally influenced the wife to take what men of the world would call a very exaggerated view of the every-day occurrence of loans raised by a son, payable only at a father's death),—this letter, I say, if exaggerated according to fashionable notions, so sensible if judged by natural affections, touched the dull heart of the schemer, because approved by the quick tact of his intelligence.
"Frank," said he, with a sincerity that afterwards amazed himself, "go down at once to Hazeldean; see your mother, and explain to her how this transaction really happened. The woman you loved, and wooed as wife, in danger of an arrest, your distraction of mind, Levy's counsels, your hope to pay off the debt, so incurred to the usurer, from the fortune you would shortly receive with the marchesa. Speak to your mother,—she is a woman; women have a common interest in forgiving all faults that arise from the source of their power over us men,—I mean love. Go!"
"No, I cannot go; you see she would not like to look on my face. And I cannot repeat what you say so glibly. Besides, somehow or other, as I am so dependent upon my father,—and he has said as much,—I feel as if it would be mean in me to make any excuses. I did the thing, and must suffer for it. But I'm a in—an—no—I 'm not a man here." Frank burst into tears.
At the sight of those tears, Randal gradually recovered from his strange aberration into vulgar and low humanity. His habitual contempt for his kinsman returned; and with contempt came the natural indifference to the sufferings of the thing to be put to use. It is contempt for the worm that makes the angler fix it on the hook, and observe with complacency that the vivacity of its wriggles will attract the bite. If the worm could but make the angler respect, or even fear it, the barb would find some other bait. Few anglers would impale an estimable silkworm, and still fewer the anglers who would finger into service a formidable hornet.
"Pooh, my—dear Frank," said Randal; "I have given you my advice; you reject it. Well, what then will you do?"