Richard had visited the Tombs, but had not seen his father. The sight, the air, the ponderous gloom of the awful prison-house, was as much as he had fortitude to bear; and though he had at first thought preferred meeting him in the shadows of night, he recoiled from its additional horrors.
Poor fellow! I felt heart-sick for him. On one side the memory of his mother's wrongs,—on the other, his father's sufferings and disgrace. I knew by my own bitter experience the conflict he was enduring.
"After we have once met," he said, "the bitterest pang will be over."
When he returned, I was shocked at the suffering his countenance expressed. I sat down by him in silence, and took his hand in mine, for I saw that his heart was full.
"I cannot take you there, Gabriella," were the first words he uttered. "If my nerves are all unstrung, how will yours sustain the shock? He told me not to bring you, that your presence would only aggravate his sufferings."
"Did I not come to share your duties, Richard? and will it not be easier to go hand in hand, though we do tread a thorny path? I have heard of women who devote their whole lives to visiting the dungeons of the doomed, and pouring oil and balm into the wounds of penitence and remorse; women who know nothing of the prisoner, but that he is a sinful and suffering son of Adam,—angels of compassion, following with lowly hearts the footsteps of their divine Master. O my brother, think me not so weak and selfish. I will convince you that I have fortitude, though you believe it not. Dr. Harlowe thinks I have a great deal. But, Richard, is it too painful to speak of the interview you so much dreaded? Does he look more wretched than you feared?"
"Look, Gabriella! Oh, he is a wreck, a melancholy wreck of a once noble man. Worn, haggard, gloomy, and despairing, he is the very personification of a sin-blasted being, a lost, ruined spirit. I had prepared myself for something mournful and degraded, but not for such a sight as this. O what an awful thing it is to give oneself up to the dominion of evil, till one seems to live, and move, and have their being in it! How awful to be consumed by slow, baleful fires, till nothing but smouldering ashes and smoking cinders are left! My God! Gabriella, I never realized before what accursed meant."
He started up, and walked up and down the room, just as Ernest used to do, unable to control the vehemence of his emotions.
"Father!" he exclaimed, "how I could have loved, revered, adored my father, had he been what my youthful heart has so panted to embrace. I loved my mother,—Heaven knows I did; but there always seemed majesty as well as beauty in the name of father, and I longed to reverence, as well as to love. Mr. Clyde was a good man, and I honored him; he was my benefactor, and I was grateful to him,—but he wanted the intellectual grandeur, to which my soul longed to pay homage. I was always forming an image in my own mind of what a father should be,—pure, upright, and commanding,—a being to whom I could look up as to an earthly divinity, who could satisfy the wants of my venerating nature."
"It is thus I have done," I cried, struck by the peculiar sympathy of our feelings. "In the dreams of my childhood, a vague but glorious form reigned with the sovereignty of a king and the sanctity of a high-priest, and imagination offered daily incense at its throne. Never, till I read my mother's history, was the illusion dispelled. But how did he welcome you, Richard? Surely he was glad and proud to find a son in you."