“Ralph,” said the lady, when we were again alone, “I have, through the whole of my life, always detested scenes, and, to the utmost of my power, ever repelled all violent emotions. I am not now going to give you a history of my life—to make my confessions, and ask pardon of you and God, and then die—nonsense; but I must say that your fate has been somewhat strangely connected with my own. I acknowledge to you, at once, that I am a fallen woman—but, as I never had the beauty, so I never had the repentance, of a Magdalen. I fell to one of the greatest upon the earth. I still think that it was a glorious fate. I know that you are going to wound me deeply. I will take it meekly; may it be, in some measure, looked upon as a small expiation for my one great error! But, spare me, as long as you are able, the name of this person you have described with such bitterness—it may not, after all, be he who has been almost the only bitterness that has yet poisoned my cup of a too pleasurable existence—’tis pleasurable, alas! until, even in this, my eleventh hour. Tell me all, and then I shall be able to judge how much it may be my duty to reveal to you.”
It was a fine study, that of observing the gradual emotion of this worldly and magnificent woman, as I proceeded with my eventful tale. I took it up only at that period when Joshua Daunton first made his application to me to be allowed to enter the Eos. The beginning of my narrative fell coldly upon her, and her features were strung up to that tension which I had often before observed in persons who were bracing up their nerves to undergo a dangerous surgical operation. They were certainly not impassive, for, in the fixed eyes that glared upon me, there was a strange restlessness, though not of motion.
The first symptoms of emotion that I could perceive took place when I described the lash descending upon the shrinking shoulders of Daunton. She clasped her hands firmly together, and upturned her eyes, as if imploring Heaven for mercy, or entreating it for vengeance. I perceived, as I proceeded, that I was gradually losing ground in her affections—that she was, in spite of herself, espousing the cause of my pledged enemy; and when I told her of the defiance that I had received in the sick-bay, she murmured forth, “Well done! well done!” followed by a name that was not mine.
When I related to her the documents that he had shown me to convince me that he was no impostor, she said, “Ralph, it is enough—it is of little consequence now what name you may give him. He is my son!”
“And my half-brother?”
“Oh no, no, young sir! Disgraced as he has been, a nobler blood than that of Rattlin flows in his veins. Degraded, disgraced as he is, neither on the side of the father nor of the mother need he blush for his parentage. But you are his sworn enemy—I can now listen more calmly to what you have to say. But, graceless as he is, he should not have denied his own mother.”
“Mrs Causand,” said I, in a tone of voice more cold than any with which I had yet addressed her, “it seems that you have, and that most unreasonably too, taken part against me. In no point have I sinned against you or yours. I have all along been the attacked, the aggrieved party. I will no longer offend your ears, or wring your heart, by a recapitulation of your son’s delinquencies. He has done me much wrong; he is contemplating more—only place me in a situation to do myself justice, and silence on the past shall seal my lips for ever; but know that he has stolen all my documents, and intends passing himself to whomever may be my father, as his legitimate son, as myself.”
“This must not be—foolish, mad, wicked boy! That I, his mother, must stand up his accuser! must act against him as his enemy! but I have long ago discarded him—almost cursed him. Oh, Ralph, Ralph! had he been but like you—but, from his youth upwards, he has been inclined to wickedness—no fortune could have supplied his extravagance—he has exhausted even a mother’s love. I refused him money, and he stole my papers—I never dreamt of the vile use that he intended to put them to. Spare me for a little while, and I will let you know all; but should you once get his neck under your heel, oh! tread lightly on my poor William!” She had evidently another and a most severe attack of her complaint, which passed rapidly over like the rest; but she now had, for the first time in my observation, recourse to her medicines. When sufficiently recovered, she continued:
“Ralph, neither you nor any one else shall know my private history. It is enough for you to understand that I was almost from infancy destined to associate with the greatest of the sterner sex. Early was I involved in this splendid—degradation, the austere would call it, though degradation I never held it to be. Even appearances were preserved; for, before my wretched son was born, I was married to one of the pages of a German court, who was sixty years of age, and properly submissive and distant. To the English ear, this sounds like a confession of infamy. Let me not, Ralph, endeavour to justify it to you—I was taught otherwise—now, if I could, I would not regret it. Your father, then an only son, sometimes visited at the house of the person over whose establishment I presided, and—and, mark me, Ralph, injuriously as you must now think of me, I presided over but one. Deride me not when I tell that to that distinguished personage I was chaste.”
She paused, and I thought that her voice faltered strangely, and that the assertion died upon her lips, and I made no reply. I was by no means astonished at this detail. I could only look upon her most anxiously, and await her future disclosures.