Rogues and Vagabonds

by George R. Sims

He felt humiliated, as he stood in the presence of his faithful old retainer, to think that this foul wrong should have been done him by one who bore his name, and his anger against the absent scapegrace was fed by the discovery, as flame is fed with oil.

For the mental torture which he endured he sought refuge in the consolations of religion—of a religion which was founded on the fierce moral code of the Old Testament, and ignored the gentler teaching of the New.

He became almost a recluse, and passed his days in the old library, building up around the natural instincts of his heart a wall of bigotry, against which the erring son might throw himself in vain.

With nothing else to occupy his mind or divert his attention, with no society now but that of the fierce old theologians, his favourite authors, he became a prey to religious monomania, and an intellect long threatened was submerged by a flood of fanaticism.

He believed that God called upon him to show his faith as Abraham showed his. His conscience told him that he must cast the erring son off for ever, and that if he shrank from the utmost extremity of punishment he was a weak vessel, who preferred his human affection to his duty to God and man.

When once a lonely, narrow-minded man yields to this morbid view, there is no limit to the sway it has over him. Every natural instinct, every human feeling, becomes subservient to it, and the cruellest and most heartless deeds, surrounded by a false religious glamour, seem to him but so many noble actions performed in the service of the Master.

It was not enough for Squire Heritage that he and his son had parted, and that he was in utter ignorance of the young man’s whereabouts. Such conduct called for the severest punishment it was in his power to inflict. In the first days of their separation, though he had renounced him, he had hesitated at disinheriting him.

That was a vengeance that would survive when the grave had closed over him. While he lived he would never call him son again, but when he was dead—no, he would not make up his mind to carry his just indignation to such a point as that.

But when Bess Marks disappeared, and it was known that George had been seen frequently with her ‘sweethearting,’ as the gossips called it, and when inquiry left no doubt that the girl had gone, and at her young master’s instigation, the old squire shattered his last scruple at a blow.

On the very day that he felt certain the old lodge-keeper’s daughter had been lured from home by his son, he sent to his solicitor in hot haste, and prepared and executed a new will.