Hope Rises.
“It is cruel, monstrous!” exclaimed Sir Philip, after a long pause. “But, O my boy, what have I done? I thought to make you honoured and loved of all. My sole desire was to make you happy and content. But, my boy, you will forgive me. I humble myself to you. I was wrong.”
“Hush, hush, father!” cried Charley sternly, as he raised one arm, and laid it upon his father’s shoulder. “What have I to forgive in you?”
He turned again, gazing with a despairing, stunned expression upon Ella’s face.
“But,” cried Sir Philip hastily, “what has been done?—Mrs Brandon, what medical advice have you had?”
“The best that money can procure,” said Mrs Brandon, in a choking voice. “We have done all that is possible.”
There was a dead silence now reigning in that chamber, broken at last by Sir Philip, as, forgetful of all else but the fearful wrong that had been done the suffering girl before him, he bent over Ella to kiss her tenderly.
“O my child, my child!” he moaned, “my poor child! I came here angry and bitter to upbraid; but has it come to this? that you, so young, so pure, must leave us to go where all is love, to bear witness to my selfish pride and ambition? Heaven forgive me!” he sobbed, as his tears fell fast upon the little hand he held, “heaven forgive me! for, in my blindness, I have broken two loving hearts—sacrificed them to my insensate pride! Blind—blind—blind that I was, not to remember that the love of a pure true-hearted woman was a gem beyond price. Has it indeed come to this, that there is nothing to be done but for a poor, weak, blind old man to ask forgiveness for your wrongs?—Charley,” he sobbed, turning to his son, “my boy—my pride, the hope of my old age, forgive me, for I can never forgive myself!”
“Father, for heaven’s sake, hush!” cried Charley in his blank despair. “This is too much. I cannot bear it. I have nothing to forgive. It was our fate; but, O!” he said huskily, as he drew Ella nearer to his breast, “it is hard—hard—hard to bear!”
Here Mrs Brandon interposed; it was too much for the sufferer to encounter; and gently drawing the young man away, she bent over to whisper to Ella, but, in obedience to a whispered wish, she drew back, as Charley, weak now and trembling, gazed in his father’s quivering face for a few moments, and then, as did the patriarch of old, he fell upon the loving old man’s neck and kissed him, and wept sore.