“Father, you allude to my birth!” exclaimed the young man, starting as he spoke. “Oh! is there any delusion in my recently formed opinions in that respect?”
Mr. Hatfield rose—and paced the room for a few moments: the whelming tide of recollections of the past was now combined with that of the sorrows of the present and the fears for the future;—and his emotions were so powerful, that his voice was choked—his faculty of speech was for the time suffocated by ineffable feelings.
“Father—keep me not in suspense, I implore you!” said Charles, rising from the sofa and accosting his parent. “I am nerved now to hear any thing and every thing, however terrible, in relation to myself! Only keep me not in suspense, I beseech—I implore you!”
“Alas! my dear boy,” exclaimed Mr. Hatfield, turning towards him with tearful eyes,—“if I tell you all connected with your birth—I—I shall unmask myself—I shall stand revealed before you as a monster whom you must henceforth loathe and detest.”
“No—no,” cried Charles, now throwing himself into his father’s arms and embracing him tenderly: “for the fatal difficulties—the cruel embarrassments, in which I have plunged myself by my accursed folly—my insane infatuation,—all these convince me that I need a kind friend and adviser—and in you, my dearest father, I shall find both!”
“Your language—your altered manner—your affection determine me to throw myself upon your mercy, Charles,” said Mr. Hatfield, in a low and profoundly mournful tone; “yes,—’tis the strange—the unnatural spectacle of a father imploring a son to forgive him—the father—the stain and the stigma which mark that son’s birth!”
“Holy God! have I heard aright?” ejaculated Charles, pressing his hand to his brow;—and, staggering back, he sank on the sofa,—not in a swoon—not in a state of insensibility,—but stunned and stupefied, as it were—and yet retaining a maddening consciousness of all!
“Yes,” continued his father, speaking in a sepulchral, unearthly tone, and averting his head,—“you are, alas! illegitimate, my dear boy; and the hopes—the aspirations, which I know you have formed, are all baseless visions!”
“And yet,” cried Charles, again starting suddenly from his seat, “you assured me—emphatically assured me, that my mother was pure—innocent—stainless;—and it was this averment that led me, in connexion with the discovery which I lately made of other great secrets,—it was this declaration on your part, I say, which led me to form those hopes—indulge in those aspirations!”
“Oh! my God—it is now that I am to appear as a monster in your eyes, Charles!” exclaimed the wretched father, in a voice of bitter anguish: “and yet to guard against all future misconceptions, since past ones have wrought such deplorable mischief—I must reveal every thing to you! Yes—your mother was stainless—was pure—was innocent;—and I—villain, miscreant that I was—I forcibly took from her that jewel of chastity——”