Night and Morning, Volume 3

by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

TO THE MEMORY OF ONE CALUMNIATED AND WRONGED THIS BURIAL-STONE IS DEDICATED BY HER SON.

Such, with the addition of the dates of birth and death, was the tablet which Philip Morton had directed to be placed over his mother's bones; and around it was set a simple palisade, which defended it from the tread of the children, who sometimes, in defiance of the beadle, played over the dust of the former race.

"Thy son!" muttered the stranger, while the child stood quietly by his side, pleased by the trees, the grass, the song of the birds, and reeking not of grief or death,—"thy son!—but not thy favoured son—thy darling —thy youngest born; on what spot of earth do thine eyes look down on him? Surely in heaven thy love has preserved the one whom on earth thou didst most cherish, from the sufferings and the trials that have visited the less-favoured outcast. Oh, mother—mother!—it was not his crime— not Philip's—that he did not fulfil to the last the trust bequeathed to him! Happier, perhaps, as it is! And, oh, if thy memory be graven as deeply in my brother's heart as my own, how often will it warn and save him! That memory!—it has been to me the angel of my life! To thee—to thee, even in death, I owe it, if, though erring, I am not criminal,—if I have lived with the lepers, and am still undefiled!" His lips then were silent—not his heart!

After a few minutes thus consumed he turned to the child, and said, gently and in a tremulous voice, "Fanny, you have been taught to pray— you will live near this spot,—will you come sometimes here and pray that you may grow up good and innocent, and become a blessing to those who love you?"

"Will papa ever come to hear me pray?"

That sad and unconscious question went to the heart of Morton. The child could not comprehend death. He had sought to explain it, but she had been accustomed to consider her protector dead when he was absent from her, and she still insisted that he must come again to life. And that man of turbulence and crime, who had passed unrepentant, unabsolved, from sin to judgment: it was an awful question, "If he should hear her pray?"

"Yes!" said he, after a pause,—"yes, Fanny, there is a Father who will hear you pray; and pray to Him to be merciful to those who have been kind to you. Fanny, you and I may never meet again!"

"Are you going to die too? Mechant, every one dies to Fanny!" and, clinging to him endearingly, she put up her lips to kiss him. He took her in his arms: and, as a tear fell upon her rosy cheek, she said, "Don't cry, brother, for I love you."

"Do you, dear Fanny? Then, for my sake, when you come to this place, if any one will give you a few flowers, scatter them on that stone. And now we will go to one whom you must love also, and to whom, as I have told you, he sends you; he who—Come!"

As he thus spoke, and placed Fanny again on the ground, he was startled to see: precisely on the spot where he had seen before the like apparition—on the same spot where the father had cursed the son, the motionless form of an old man. Morton recognised, as if by an instinct rather than by an effort of the memory, the person to whom he was bound.