"To begin, then, at the commencement I must sail back many years. I am an old man now, and have had a rough cruise through life. I was then a young lad just ready to be launched out on the sea of life; it is forty years gone by now, but I remember all as if it had happened yesterday. The Earl of Wentworth, your father, was then but just of age, and had been celebrating his majority with great merry-making. On his estates the chief retainer was a man named Hermiston, the bailiff of the Dun Edin farm; he was a stout, well-to-do sort of man, and had one only son and two daughters: that son was me—my name was William Hermiston. My mother had died in giving me birth, and my father and sisters spoiled me,—never contradicting me in anything, and letting me grow up as wild a young scapegrace as was in all the country round. I got into bad company when I was about eighteen; idleness is the mother of all mischief, and so it was with me. I drank, betted, swore, and as I had plenty of the rhino, and was hail fellow well met with every companion that knew me, I grew worse and worse. My old father used often to say a word: he would shake his head and tell me he feared I would come to no good with such companions, but I heeded not what the old man said, and went on the same. In the publics I became acquainted with some horse-racing fellows, and was soon at home in the betting way, and could make a book with any man. I ran into debt—or as we say at sea, outstripped the constable—they were debts of honour, and had to be paid. My father steadily refused to refund me any more; I applied to your father, he helped me out easily, but warned me not to expect any future aid. Again I got head over ears—money must be got, and I became acquainted with a set of wild fellows—smugglers. I had always been fond of the sea, and took to the trade readily. Full of risk and danger, it was exactly what I liked; I rapidly made headway, paid my score, and rose to be one of the leading men.
"By the time I was five-and-twenty, or thereabout, I was captain of a lugger craft, and well known as a desperate fellow. When my old father heard of my evil doings he sternly reprimanded me for the first time in my life. I was not able to brook censure, and told him so; he tried entreaty, all was vain. I left him and brought down his gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. My voyages were never very far, Holland was the extent of them at that time, and I had a magnet at home which kept me ever coming back; this was a young and pretty girl, who lived near Musselburgh; her name was Agnes Macgregor, and a finer lass I never saw. I had known her for years, and she had long been my sweetheart; she had no father or mother, and her grandmother was an old, decrepit, blind woman of seventy, so the girl was under little restraint. Many's the time I have walked and talked with her for hours in the evenings when I was ashore; she did not care a straw about the illicit course of life I led, nay, I think she thought all the better of me for it. I left her, as I was to go to Flushing first before our marriage, and promised to bring home lace enough to deck her out like a queen. I remember well how she waved her kerchief to me as our craft put off at moonlight. I thought on her all the way over the rough German Ocean—it was winter time, and a bitter nor'-easter blew in our teeth, with driving sleet and hail. I reached Holland; I got the very finest lace for Agnes. I left again with a rich cargo, and landed in the old country. I had been absent some three months, winter had changed and spring set in; more than winter had changed, too—I found woman as variable as the seasons. I went to seek her at the old house—it was empty. I inquired—they had removed to a cottage near the Towers. I followed, I found her out—the hussy would have nought to say to me. In vain I argued, in vain I tried to get back her heart, it was all no go. I tried to find a reason for the change; she only gave one I would not receive—my manner of life, my being a smuggler. I loved that girl as I loved my own life; I offered to give up all, and seek an honest livelihood; all to no purpose, the wench had no more to say to me, and I was miserable.
"My Lord, you may look at my old weather-beaten features, and wonder any woman would look at me, but I was a well-favoured youngster then. I could put the stone, toss the caber, leap, run, and vault against any young fellow in the county. I was not the sour-faced, hard-featured seaman I am now, and I knew the girl once did love me, and dearly, and I resolved to wait and see what the cause of quarrel really was. But I had to put again to sea. I was away from home nearly a year and a half, but when I came home my ears were assailed right and left with the very thing I had feared—the girl I had promised myself for a wife had been deceived by one in the upper ranks of life; she had fallen, unable to resist the temptation of following one rich, handsome, and with a proud name—he was to be preferred as a lover, before William Hermiston as a husband. He gave her money, handsome dresses, jewels, everything but an honest name and fame, but she could well afford to want them if she had all the conceits a girl's head runs on. In a word she was the dupe of a nobleman. I sought the cottage where I had seen her last: the old woman was there, not the granddaughter; from her I learned who her beguiler had been, and where she then lived. My Lord, it was your father, the young Earl of Wentworth; and he had given her well-furnished apartments near Edinburgh. The Earl had been married more than three years, and he had two children, a little girl and a boy about two years: he visited Agnes on the sly, and only occasionally.
"When I learned all this I almost died with passion. I felt a very devil of vengeance enter into my heart. The pride of my soul, the light of my eyes, my love, my destined wife, had been tempted, betrayed, and was now living in guilty splendour. My Lord, see the misery that light loves in high rank bring on the lower class. Your father was rich, powerful, noble by birth and name, possessed of lands, wife, children,—and his evil conduct robbed the poor man of all; surely this was a case of the rich man who took the poor man's lamb—the tale I used to hear of sometimes when I was a boy. And mark the consequences—ah! you great people little think the pretty and innocent girl you pick up, and deck out in finery, is perhaps the only love of some honest, poor man, whose whole life is altered by their crime. Such was the case with me. Owing to your father's choice, I was made a very demon, and the cause of misery untold, not only to the hapless girl herself, but to your own family. Oh! I loved that girl as I once loved heaven. I lost my heaven in her, and lose Heaven by her."
The old man here paused to rub away the unbidden tear with his rough sleeve. The Earl, deeply interested, and feeling a home thrust in the narrative of his father's folly, bent forward, but spoke not.
"When I found out the true reason of her change, I hurried to see her. Your father had rented a cottage a short way from Edinburgh for her home; I went there,—it was a Saturday night, I remember; I watched and saw the Earl's carriage drive from the door. I did no more that night,—her guilt was now sure, and her deceiver too. On Sunday morning, when her servant was at church, I called: she opened the door, and when she saw me would have shut it in my face, but I pressed in. Her room was elegantly furnished; she was splendidly dressed; her dress enhanced her beauty; she never looked more lovely; and when I thought she might have been mine a demon rose in my breast. I know not what I said, save that I called her every vile name I could think of, and she bandied high words too, and bade me begone and leave her to mind herself and her baby. I had not dreamed of that. I turned and saw a cradle, and therein her firstborn child; it was a fair boy, but the devil was in me. The house was lone, every one at church, no human being near. I rushed to the cradle, and seizing the hapless babe, I dashed its infant brains out against the grate."
He paused: the Earl's face grew pale as he exclaimed, "Inhuman monster! you avow such a deed!"
"Ay, my Lord, reproach me, I deserve it; but see what came of stolen affections. I shall never forget the harrowing scream of Agnes, it was the most awful shriek of heartbroken agony I ever heard, it rings in my ears still. She then fell in a senseless swoon on the floor. The foul fiend prompted me—I heard him speak as though he was beside me—I looked for a weapon—the first I saw was a carving-knife on the sideboard. I whetted it against the fender in diabolical rage—I knew not what I did—I rushed on my prostrate victim, and—"
The wretched old sinner paused again, the drops stood on his brow, his face was contorted with evil passions as he thought on the deed.
"You cruelly murdered her, you bloodthirsty villain," said the Earl.