"Oh, my father!" returned Thaddeus, with a modest, but a pathetic energy, "I am thy son! thy happy son, in such acknowledgment! Therefore no longer upbraid yourself. Did you not act, as by a sacred impulse, a father's part to me when you knew me not? You raised my dying head from the earth and laid it on your bosom. O, my father! He who brought us so together in his own appointed time, chasteneth every son whom he receiveth, and has thus proved his love and pardon to your contrite heart, both on earth and in heaven, by the nature of your chastisement and the healing balm at its close!"
At the end of this interview, so interesting and vital to the happiness of both these newly-united parties, father and son, Sir Robert motioned his blessing to that son by laying his hand gently on his head, while the parental tears flowed on that now dear forehead— for he could not then speak. He immediately withdrew, to leave Thaddeus to repose, and himself to retire to pour out his grateful spirit in private.
* * * * * * *
CHAPTER XLVI.
THE SPIRIT OF PEACE.
At dawn on the morning following the preceding eventful but happy conference, Sir Robert, painfully remembering the frantic grief of Pembroke on finding that Sobieski had not only withdrawn himself from Harrowby, but had adjured England forever, and still feeling the merited bitterness of the reproaches which his inexplicable commands, dishonoring to his son, had provoked from that only too-long- preferred offspring of his idolized Edith.—which reproaches, unknowingly so inflicted by the desperation of their utterer, had driven the guilty father to seek a temporary refuge from them, if not from his own accusing conscience, under the then solitary roof of one of his country seats in the adjacent county,—yet somewhat relieved, as by the immediate mercy of Heaven, from the load of his misery, he eagerly wrote by the auspicious beams of the rising sun a few short lines to Pembroke, telling him that "a providential circumstance had occurred since they parted, which he trusted would finally reconcile into a perfect peace all that had recently passed so distressingly between them; therefore he, his ever tenderly-affectioned father, requested him to join him alone, and without delay, at Deerhurst."
This duty done to one beloved child, he then turned to anticipate a second converse to his comfort with the other.
That sickness which is the consequence of mental suffering usually vanishes with its cause. Long before the dinner-hour of this happy day, Thaddeus, refreshed by the peaceful and lengthened sleep from which he awoke late in the morning, rose as if with a renewed principle of life. Quitting his room, he met his glad father in the passage-gallery, who instantly conducted him into a private room, where that now tranquillized parent soon brought him to relate, with every sentence a deepening interest, the rapid incidents of his brief but eventful career. The voice of fame had already blazoned him abroad as "the plume of war, with early laurels crowned;" but it was left to his own ingenuous tongue to prove, in all the modest simplicity of a perfect filial confidence, that the most difficult conflicts are not those which are sustained on the battle-field.
Sir Robert listened to him with affection, admiration, and delight,— ah, with what pride in such a son! He was answering the heartfelt detail with respondent gratefulness to that Almighty Power which had shed on his transgressing head such signal "signs of heavenly amnesty!" when the door opened, and a servant announced that Mr. Somerset was in the library.
Thaddeus started up with joy in his countenance; but Sir Robert gently put him down again. "Remain here, my son," said he, "until I apprize your brother how nearly you are related to him. Yonder door leads into my study; I will call you when he is prepared."