“Father,” said Charles Hatfield, scarcely able to restrain an outburst of indignation, reproach, and bitter recrimination,—in which, had he allowed that torrent of feelings to force a vent, all that he knew of his family and their secrets would have been revealed, or rather proclaimed, in no measured terms;—“father,” he said, fortunately subduing the evil promptings of the moment,—“I have listened to you with attention—though not without impatience. Yesterday you reviled me—you heaped bitter reproaches upon me—you menaced me with disinheritance: then, in the evening, you enacted the spy upon my actions—you watched me—you followed me——”
“It was my duty—and a most painful one, I can assure you,” interrupted Mr. Hatfield, alarmed by the strange—the ominous coldness that characterised his son’s tone and manner.
“Your duty!” ejaculated Charles, now speaking with an indignation that burst forth in frightful contrast with the unnatural tranquillity on which it so abruptly broke; “and wherefore have you not performed your duty in all things? Duty, indeed! But know, father, that there are other duties to fulfil than merely playing the part of a spy on your son’s actions:—there are such duties as giving him his proper name—allowing him to assume his just rights—and placing him in that social position which he ought to occupy! You menace me with the loss of fortune, father?—Oh! you know how vain and ridiculous is this threat—and how it aggravates the wickedness of all your former conduct towards me! I am no longer a child to be held in leading-strings—no longer a silly sentimentalist who, through maudlin and mawkish feelings of a false delicacy, will consent to have my nearest and dearest interests trampled upon—my privileges altogether withheld—my rights cruelly denied me! You have played the mysterious too long,—you have enacted the cruel and unnatural until endurance has become impossible;—and now you would assume the part of the absolute dictator—expecting to find me still a pliant, docile, grovelling slave,—without spirit—without courage—without even the common feelings of a man! But you are mistaken, father:—and if I have thus been driven to tell you my mind, you have only yourself to reproach, for so distressing—so painful a scene!”
Thus speaking,—and before his father had so far recovered from the amazement into which this volley of words threw him, as to be able even to stretch out a hand to retain him,—Charles seized his hat, and rushed from the room.
In less than a minute the front-door of the house closed behind him; and he hurried on, like one demented, to Suffolk Street.
But before we accompany him thither, we must pause to explain the effect which this scene had upon his father.
Indeed, Mr. Hatfield was struck with an astonishment so profound—a bewilderment so complete, that his heart seemed as if it were numbed against pain. He could not comprehend the drift of Charles’s passionate address,—otherwise than by supposing that the young man required to be recognised as a son, and not as a nephew. For it did not—as, in fact, it could not—for a single moment enter Mr. Hatfield’s head that Charles had discovered all the occurrences of former years, and that he had thence drawn the false and fatal inference that he—this same infatuated young man—was the heir to the proud title and vast estates of the Earldom of Ellingham. He therefore saw in his son’s conduct only the rebellious spirit of an individual who, having formed a connexion of which he was most likely ashamed and which he knew to be improper, endeavoured to meet his parents’ reproaches with recriminations, and seize upon the least shadow of an excuse or pretext for resisting the paternal authority.
When reflection thus diminished the wonderment which Mr. Hatfield experienced at the behaviour of the young man, pain and sorrow succeeded that first feeling. Indeed, the unhappy father was cruelly embarrassed: he knew not how to act. Charles was of that age when,—even did circumstances permit Mr. Hatfield to acknowledge that he really was his son,—no legal authority could be exercised, nor constraint practised; and he felt assured that any farther attempt to interfere with him in the connexion which he had formed, would only aggravate the irritability of the wrong-headed young man.
Then again, it was impossible to abandon him thus to courses which might hurry him on to utter ruin;—and moreover, the Lady Frances Ellingham had been so cruelly trifled with, that an explanation with her parents became absolutely necessary.
Now was it that Mr. Hatfield cursed the hour when he had been induced to leave Italy, and return to England on this visit to his half-brother—a visit which the Earl had by letter urged him to pay, and to which he had assented in full confidence of the complete safety of the step.