"No! perish honour—perish truth—perish all that is noble or virtuous in my nature first!" he cried, with the reckless decision of one who has resolved to sustain wrong at the expense of right.
There was a second motive, the love of Kate Bellamont! Should he resign her for ever? Could he endure the scornful disdain with which he believed she would regard him? Above all, could he bear to have the handsome fisher's lad, whom he already looked upon, in some sort, in the light of a rival, sue successfully as Lord of Lester for her hand? Could he endure all this and be human? Could he resign all to become what he dared not contemplate, and live?
"No!" he cried, vehemently, "away with all justice and truth! let my heart be wrapped in a mesh of falsehoods first! But need there be falsehood? Silence, silence will effect it. Is there injustice when the victim is ignorant of his rights?" he asked, mentally, as if he were arguing with his own soul. "Yes, most foul! and silence will be a living tongue to torture me—a never-ending falsehood to degrade—and will cast over the soul a night that can never know a dawn! Shall I incur this load of guilt? Will what I gain by the purchase repay me for the sacrifice of truth and honesty? Shall I not even be happier, ay, and more noble, as the poor fisher's lad, having done justice, than as Lord of Lester and Castle More, convicted at my soul's tribunal of guilt, and knowing who and what I am?"
Such was the train of reasoning that insensibly passed through his mind, and to which he gave utterance at this extraordinary crisis of his fate, and which promised to overthrow his former criminal resolutions.
"But should I do as my better nature prompts," he continued, after galloping forward a few moments, reining up and pursuing his former train of reasoning, "I need not be compelled to take the place of this Lester in his fishing hut, nor need I to remain within the atmosphere of Castle More, to meet the scorn of the noble, the insults of the lowborn. The world is all before me; I have a ready spirit, and a hand to sustain it, and can carve my own way through it; and with honour, too! Ay, I may yet win a name with the noblest born!"
Suddenly in the midst of this expression of his laudable and honourable purpose he stopped; a gleam of terrible fire shot from his eyes, while his face glowed with crimson shame.
"Ha, ha, ha! honour! Ha, ha, ha! a name! I had forgot," he repeated, with an accent bitter, sarcastic, and scornful beyond expression, yet with a wretched look of hopeless despair and misery; "what has a bastard to do with honour? What is it to him? I had forgotten I was more than lowborn! I'faith, 'twas well thought of! So all my lofty feelings go for nothing." His manner now changed, and his voice rang with passion. "What have I to do with lofty aspirations, with honour, or a name among men? Am I not branded with infamy? infamous by birth; attainted by my father's—yes, for I will acknowledge him—my father's blood! base through my mother's! What have I to do with honour? 'Tis not for me. I know it not. Henceforward I will forget its sound and meaning. What have I to do with honour? Ha, ha, ha! A name? Yes, I will win a name; I will show myself the true son of Hurtel of the Red-Hand. He shall not be ashamed of his blood. No, no! I will win a name that, be he on earth or in hell, shall make him smile and own me as bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh."
The scornful energy, fierceness of spirit, and stern determination with which this guilty resolution was spoken, showed that at a single blow was crushed all pride of character; that the highborn loftiness of spirit in which he had been educated had fallen, and that honour was forever shipwrecked. He felt himself, in anticipation, already an outcast from the world; a shunned and despised alien; an object of the scorn and pity of mankind. And such he was. He felt it to his heart's core. Eventually, perhaps, he might have forgiven the lowness of his birth, and risen superior to this contingency; but he could not forget its illegitimacy. What had a bastard to do among men! What had he to do with the love of highborn maidens? What was to him the luxuries, the pleasures, the social joys of life? Nothing. The honours of earth were not for him; "a bastard shall not enter even into the kingdom of heaven." Who, then, shall condemn the resolution of a proud youth like Lester, without due cultivation of the moral sense; unrestrained by religious principle, and thinking, feeling only as a man? Who shall judge and not pity? Who shall censure and not sympathize with him in his terrible human trial, and regard with charity even the darkest aberrations from morality and virtue to which it might lead him; remembering that he had the moral heroism and godlike virtue to resolve to become his own executioner; the voluntary herald of the sentence that should cut him off from rank, title, wealth, yea, love, and brand him as an exile from his species?
Notwithstanding the array of proofs to substantiate the narrative of Elpsy; notwithstanding the irresistible connexion existing in his own mind in support of its truth, yet there lingered in his heart a faint hope that it might not be as he believed. It became so dreadful when calmly contemplated, that he began to conceive that it was impossible for it to be true. There was but one way of confirming it, viz., to confront Lady Lester, and learn from her lips the truth of what Elpsy had related in reference to herself. If it should prove correct, then he resolved finally to decide on the method he should pursue. Gathering up the reins and pressing his armed heels into his horse's flanks as he came to this determination, he said, as he dashed forward to Cattle More, the towers of which were now full in sight,
"From her lips—Lady Lester's (if I may not call her mother), will I have corroboration of this foul witch's words. Fly, my good horse; we will soon learn whether thou and I are to part! But, if it must be so, no other shall back thee after me, my faithful animal; my own hand shall slay thee first!"