Ishmael; Or, In the Depths

by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

But as the youth had left the neighborhood with his relatives, and as Mr. Brudenell really hoped that he was well provided for by the large sum of money for which he had given Hannah a check on the day of his departure, and as he was overwhelmed with business cares, and lastly, as he dreaded rather than desired a meeting with his unknown son, he deferred seeking him out.

When Brudenell Hall was entirely dismantled, and all the furniture of the house, the stock of the farm, and the negroes of the plantation, and all the land except a few acres immediately around the house had been sold, and the purchase money realized, he returned to Paris, settled his mother's debts, and warning her that they had now barely sufficient to support them in moderate comfort, entreated her to return and live quietly at Brudenell Hall.

But no! "If they were poor, so much the more reason why the girls should marry rich," argued Mrs. Brudenell; and instead of retrenching her expenses, she merely changed the scene of her operations from Paris to London, forgetting the fact everyone else remembered, that her "girls," though still handsome, because well preserved, were now mature women of thirty-two and thirty-five. Herman promised to give them the whole proceeds of his property, reserving to himself barely enough to live on in the most economical manner. And he let Brudenell Hall once more, and took up his abode at a cheap watering-place on the continent, where he remained for years, passing his time in reading, fishing, boating, and other idle seaside pastimes, until he was startled from his repose by a letter from his mother—a letter full of anguish, telling him that her younger daughter, Eleanor, had fled from home in company with a certain Captain Dugald, and that she had traced them to Liverpool, whence they had sailed for New Tork, and entreated him to follow and if possible save his sister.

Upon this miserable errand he had revisited his native country. He had found no such name as Dugald in any of the lists of passengers arrived within the specified time by any of the ocean steamers from Liverpool to New York, and no such name on any of the hotel books; so he left the matter in the hands of a skillful detective, and came down to Washington, in the hope of finding the fugitives here.

On his first walk out he had been attracted by the crowd around the City Hall; had learned that an interesting trial was going on; and that some strange, new lawyer was making a great speech. He had gone in, and on turning his eyes towards the young barrister had been thunderstruck on being confronted by what seemed to him the living face of Nora Worth, elevated to masculine grandeur. Those were Nora's lips, so beautiful in form, color, and expression; Nora's splendid eyes, that blazed with indignation, or melted with pity, or smiled with humor; Nora's magnificent breadth of brow, spanning from temple to temple. He saw in these remarkable features so much of the likeness of Nora, that he failed to see, in the height of the forehead, the outline of the profile, and the occasional expression of the countenance, the striking likeness of himself.

He had been spellbound by this, and by the eloquence of the young barrister until the end of the speech, when he had hastened to Judge Merlin and demanded the name and the history of the débutante.

And the answer had confirmed the prophetic instincts of his heart—this rising star of the forum was Nora's son!

Nora's son, born in the depths of poverty and shame; panting from the hour of his birth for the very breath of life; working from the days of his infancy for daily bread; striving from the years of his boyhood for knowledge; struggling by the most marvelous series of persevering effort out of the slough of infamy into which he had been cast, to his present height of honor! Scarcely twenty-one years old and already recognized not only as the most gifted and promising young member of the bar, but as a rising power among the people.

How proud he, the childless man, would be to own his share in Nora's gifted son, if in doing so he could avoid digging up the old, cruel reproach, the old, forgotten scandal! How proud to hail Ishmael Worth as Ishmael Brudenell!

But this he knew could never, never be. Every principle of honor, delicacy, and prudence forbade him now to interfere in the destiny of Nora's long-ignorant and neglected, but gifted and rising son. With what face could he, the decayed, impoverished, almost forgotten master of Brudenell Hall go to this brilliant young barrister, who had just made a splendid debut and achieved a dazzling success, and say to him: