"Who forgives? The father his profligate son, or disobedient daughter? No; he disinherits his firstborn, and suffers him to perish, perhaps by an ignominious death. He leaves his only daughter to drag out her days in penury—a widow with orphans. The world may condemn, but is silent; he goes to church every Sabbath, but no preacher denounces punishment on the unrelenting, the unforgiving parent. Yet how easily might he have taken them both back to his heart, and loved them better than ever! But she poisoned my cup of life when it seemed to overflow with heaven. Had God dashed it from my lips, I could have borne my doom. But with her own hand which I had clasped at the altar—and with our Lucy at her knees—she gave me that loathsome draught of shame and sorrow:—I drank it to the dregs—and it is burning all through my being—now—as if it had been hell-fire from the hands of a fiend in the shape of an angel. In what page of the New Testament am I told to forgive her? Let me see the verse—and then shall I know that Christianity is an imposture; for the voice of God within me—the conscience which is His still small voice—commands me never from my memory to obliterate that curse—never to forgive her, and her wickedness—not even if we should see each other's shadows in a future state, after the day of judgment."
His countenance grew ghastly—and staggering to a stone, he sat down and eyed the skies with a vacant stare, like a man whom dreams carry about in his sleep. His face was like ashes—and he gasped like one about to fall into a fit. "Bring me water"—and the old man motioned on the child, who, giving ear to him for a moment, flew away to the Lakeside with an urn she had brought with her for flowers; and held it to her father's lips. His eyes saw it not;—there was her sweet pale face all wet with tears, almost touching his own—her innocent mouth breathing that pure balm that seems to a father's soul to be inhaled from the bowers of paradise. He took her into his bosom—and kissed her dewy eyes—and begged her to cease her sobbing—to smile—to laugh—to sing—to dance away into the sunshine—to be happy! And Lucy afraid, not of her father, but of his kindness—for the simple creature was not able to understand his wild utterance of blessings—returned to the glade but not to her pastime, and couching like a fawn among the fern, kept her eyes on her father, and left her flowers to fade unheeded beside her empty urn.
"Unintelligible mystery of wickedness! That child was just three years old the very day it was forsaken—she abandoned it and me on its birthday! Twice had that day been observed by us—as the sweetest—the most sacred of holidays; and now that it had again come round—but I not present—for I was on foreign service—thus did she observe it—and disappeared with her paramour. It so happened that we went that day into action—and I committed her and our child to the mercy of God in fervent prayers; for love made me religious—and for their sakes I feared though I shunned not death. I lay all night among the wounded on the field of battle—and it was a severe frost. Pain kept me from sleep, but I saw them as distinctly as in a dream—the mother lying with her child in her bosom in our own bed. Was not that vision mockery enough to drive me mad? After a few weeks a letter came to me from herself—and I kissed it and pressed it to my heart; for no black seal was there—and I knew that little Lucy was alive. No meaning for a while seemed to be in the words—and then they began to blacken into ghastly characters—till at last I gathered from the horrid revelation that she was sunk in sin and shame, steeped for evermore in utmost pollution.
"A friend was with me, and I gave it to him to read—for in my anguish at first I felt no shame—and I watched his face as he read it, that I might see corroboration of the incredible truth, which continued to look like falsehood, even while it pierced my heart with agonising pangs. 'It may be a forgery,' was all he could utter—after long agitation; but the shape of each letter was too familiar to my eyes—the way in which the paper was folded—and I knew my doom was sealed. Hours must have passed, for the room grew dark—and I asked him to leave me for the night. He kissed my forehead—for we had been as brothers. I saw him next morning—dead—cut nearly in two—yet had he left a paper for me, written an hour before he fell, so filled with holiest friendship, that oh! how even in my agony I wept for him, now but a lump of cold clay and blood, and envied him at the same time a soldier's grave!
"And has the time indeed come that I can thus speak calmly of all that horror? The body was brought into my room, and it lay all day and all night close to my bed. But false was I to all our life-long friendship—and almost with indifference I looked upon the corpse. Momentary starts of affection seized me—but I cared little or nothing for the death of him, the tender and the true, the gentle and the brave, the pious and the noble-hearted; my anguish was all for her, the cruel and the faithless, dead to honour, to religion dead—dead to all the sanctities of nature—for her, and for her alone, I suffered all ghastliest agonies—nor any comfort came to me in my despair, from the conviction that she was worthless; for desperately wicked as she had shown herself to be—oh! crowding came back upon me all our hours of happiness—all her sweet smiles—all her loving looks—all her affectionate words—all her conjugal and maternal tendernesses; and the loss of all that bliss—the change of it all into strange, sudden, shameful, and everlasting misery, smote me till I swooned, and was delivered up to a trance in which the rueful reality was mixed up with phantasms more horrible than man's mind can suffer out of the hell of sleep!
"Wretched coward that I was to outlive that night! But my mind was weak from great loss of blood—and the blow so stunned me that I had not strength of resolution to die. I might have torn off the bandages—for nobody watched me—and my wounds were thought mortal. But the love of life had not welled out with all those vital streams; and as I began to recover, another passion took possession of me—and I vowed that there should be atonement and revenge. I was not obscure. My dishonour was known through the whole army. Not a tent—not a hut—in which my name was not bandied about—a jest in the mouths of profligate poltroons—pronounced with pity by the compassionate brave. I had commanded my men with pride. No need had I ever had to be ashamed when I looked on our colours; but no wretch led out to execution for desertion or cowardice ever shrunk from the sun, and from the sight of human faces arrayed around him, with more shame and horror than did I when, on my way to a transport, I came suddenly on my own corps, marching to music as if they were taking up a position in the line of battle—as they had often done with me at their head—all sternly silent before an approaching storm of fire. What brought them there? To do me honour! Me, smeared with infamy, and ashamed to lift my eyes from the mire. Honour had been the idol I worshipped—alas! too, too passionately far—and now I lay in my litter like a slave sold to stripes—and heard as if a legion of demons were mocking me with loud and long huzzas; and then a confused murmur of blessings on our noble commander, so they called me—me, despicable in my own esteem—scorned, insulted, forsaken—me, who could not bind to mine the bosom that for years had touched it—a wretch so poor in power over a woman's heart, that no sooner had I left her to her own thoughts than she felt that she had never loved me, and, opening her fair breast to a new-born bliss, sacrificed me without remorse—nor could bear to think of me any more as her husband—not even for sake of that child whom I knew she loved—for no hypocrite was she there; and oh! lost creature though she was—even now I wonder over that unaccountable desertion—and much she must have suffered from the image of that small bed, beside which she used to sit for hours, perfectly happy from the sight of that face which I too so often blessed in her hearing, because it was so like her own! Where is my child? Have I frightened her away into the wood by my unfatherly looks? She too will come to hate me—oh! see yonder her face and her figure like a fairy's, gliding through among the broom! Sorrow has no business with her—nor she with sorrow. Yet—even her how often have I made weep! All the unhappiness she has ever known has all come from me; and would I but leave her alone to herself in her affectionate innocence, the smile that always lies on her face when she is asleep would remain there—only brighter—all the time her eyes are awake; but I dash it away by my unhallowed harshness, and people looking on her in her trouble wonder to think how sad can be the countenance even of a little child. O God of mercy! what if she were to die!"
"She will not die—she will live," said the pitying pastor; "and many happy years—my son—are yet in store even for you—sorely as you have been tried; for it is not in nature that your wretchedness can endure for ever. She is in herself all-sufficient for a father's happiness. You prayed just now that the God of Mercy would spare her life—and has He not spared it? Tender flower as she seems, yet how full of life! Let not then your gratitude to Heaven be barren in your heart; but let it produce there resignation—if need be, contrition—and, above all, forgiveness."
"Yes! I had a hope to live for—mangled as I was in body, and racked in mind—a hope that was a faith—and bittersweet it was in imagined foretaste of fruition—the hope and the faith of revenge. They said he would not aim at my life. But what was that to me who thirsted for his blood? Was he to escape death, because he dared not wound bone, or flesh, or muscle of mine, seeing that the assassin had already stabbed my soul? Satisfaction! I tell you that I was for revenge. Not that his blood could wipe out the stain with which my name was imbrued, but let it be mixed with the mould; and he who invaded my marriage-bed—and hallowed was it by every generous passion that ever breathed upon woman's breast—let him fall down in convulsions, and vomit out his heart's blood, at once in expiation of his guilt, and in retribution dealt out to him by the hand of him whom he had degraded in the eyes of the whole world beneath the condition even of a felon, and delivered over in my misery to contempt and scorn. I found him out;—there he was before me—in all that beauty by women so beloved—graceful as Apollo; and with a haughty air, as if proud of an achievement that adorned his name, he saluted me—her husband—on the field,—and let the wind play with his raven tresses—his curled love-locks—and then presented himself to my aim in an attitude a statuary would have admired. I shot him through the heart."
The good old man heard the dreadful words with a shudder—yet they had come to his ears not unexpectedly, for the speaker's aspect had gradually been growing black with wrath, long before he ended in an avowal of murder. Nor, on ceasing his wild words and distracted demeanour, did it seem that his heart was touched with any remorse. His eyes retained their savage glare—his teeth were clenched—and he feasted on his crime.
"Nothing but a full faith in Divine Revelation," solemnly said his aged friend, "can subdue the evil passions of our nature, or enable conscience itself to see and repent of sin. Your wrongs were indeed great—but without a change wrought in all your spirit, alas! my son! you cannot hope to see the kingdom of heaven."