CHAPTER II.
In which Mr. Lupton explains to Colin the story of himself and his lady.
WHEN next Colin Clink met his father the Squire, it was under the influence of such feelings of embarrassment as scarcely left him at liberty to speak; while Mr. Lupton, on his part, received him with that quiet melancholy, though unembarrassed air, which marked emphatically a man upon whom the force of unhappy and unusual circumstances has produced a subdued, though lasting, sense of dejection.
“For some time past,” said he, taking Colin's hand, and conducting him to a chair,—“for some time past, my boy, I have felt that one day or other it must come to this. Ever since the time when Providence so singularly threw it in your power to save me from a violent end,—and from such a hand too!—I have been a changed man. By that event Heaven seemed to lay, as it were, a palpable finger upon my soul, the dint of which is everlasting. That from such retributive justice, if justice it could be called, I should have been so saved by one whose very existence itself had called that justice into action, appears to me like a marvellous lesson, in which Providence intended at once to admonish me of my criminality, and at the same time to remind me of its mercy.”
Mr. Lupton here covered his eyes with his hand. In a few minutes he thus continued,—“From that moment I foresaw that, sooner or later, you must know all. Now you do know all; and that knowledge has come to you in such a shape, as to render any farther allusion to it needless. The subject is at best a painful one to us both, but most especially so to me; although I once held such things lightly, and as matter for pleasantry and joke. I now acknowledge you as my son; and I confess that a proud, though painful, time it is, now I can do so face to face. Save in yours and my own, the blood of an ancient and honourable family runs in no human veins. You are grown to manhood, and the circumstances which Providence has brought about enable me to address you thus without impropriety. But you must be told, my boy, that I was the last, the very last of all my race. My father knew it; he lamented over it; but he cherished and guarded me because of it, as though the world contained for him no other treasure. I knew it too; I grew up, as I may say, side by side with that fatal knowledge. With our ideas of long descents, and ancient honourable lines, it is the bitterest thought in a man's breast to think that here the stream must stop; that in this one body it is lost, and the sun shall shine upon its name no longer. Anxiety for my life and welfare helped to bring my father to the grave earlier than otherwise nature would have called him, and he died while yet I was very young. But before he died he bound me, on attaining my twenty-first year, to marry one of the members of an opulent and numerous family, which had long enjoyed his esteem. I did so, and the lady he had selected became my wife. There were circumstances between Mrs. Lupton and myself which need not be explained, but which, while they made her deem herself most unhappy in her fate, left me not a whit less so in opinion of mine. It is sufficient that I say, years passed on, and I was still the last. Beyond this I need not go. In you, my boy, in you—but no, that need not to be said, either. Only this I will and must say, that, under circumstances which the world superficially may deem highly criminal, there may be hidden causes, and feelings, and springs of action, which no heart knows but his that contains them, and which, through the force of perhaps erroneous notions and education from our youth, have become individually equally strong with right principles, and may therefore possibly be in some sort received in palliation.”
Colin was very materially concerned during, and affected at the conclusion of, the above speech; although the author himself of this faithful history cannot refrain from expressing his opinion, that its tenor and tendency seem somewhat inconsistent with Mr. Lupton's apparent neglect of Colin during the early part of his life, and savours more of a plausible attempt to excuse himself, than of a plain exposition of real motives. Possibly, however, by suspending judgment a while, both himself and the reader may on this point become a little wiser before this history be brought to a termination.
For the present, we may continue this scene a few moments longer.
“With regard to Mrs. Lupton,'” continued the Squire, “as I intend shortly to introduce you to her, it may be as well to inform you beforehand, that the satisfaction your presence in my house will give must not be judged from her reception of you. What it may be I cannot foresee. I cannot even judge what steps a woman in her situation may think proper to take; but whatever they be, it is needful you should see her, and be introduced to her as the heir of Kiddal, before she dies. Had she acceded to my wishes years ago,—had we, as I desired, been divorced before you were born, this present necessity and trouble would never have come upon us; but that proceeding she resisted to the last. And though there are circumstances pointed out by the laws which might place the power of adopting such an alternative wholly in my own hands; yet, rather than so deeply wound the feelings and destroy the future peace of a woman who loved me, and whom I had loved, I have rather chosen to endure, to pass years of unavailing regret, and come to this, even this, at last. I have neglected her, it is true, partly in hopes of thereby inducing her to give way, and partly because I had no heart to be a hypocrite. I never could very well affect what I did not feel.”