There was nothing particularly new or startling in the narration. It was the old old story of sin and sorrow, with perhaps darker hues of melancholy in it, here and there, than usual.
During his University career, at a very early age, Williamson had been attracted by the wild beauty of a woman who was the daughter of an adventurer—a man without principle—seeking in a son-in-law an annuity for himself, as well as a husband for his child. Williamson related by what mean and mercenary arts this man of the world had lured him on, and how the daughter had shared with her father in the shameful plot. A long, long story of love, and doubt, and fear, and unholy passion;—of mad, blind love, and desperate resolves; of a clandestine marriage, and exposure; of a widowed mother’s death; of a son’s sorrow embittered by his wife’s ingratitude, and a father-in-law’s impecunious and drunken habits. A long, long story of woe and violence; of a brave man’s struggle against the miseries of a worse than unloving wife, and a wretched home, in the midst of comparative wealth.
Soon there appeared on the scene an infant with bright eyes, and a young doating father seeking comfort in its innocent loving ways, in its happy smile, and its first words. But this gleam of sunshine quickly disappeared, and then there came clouds again, darker and darker; and, finally, there stood forth in the immoral darkness a husband’s shame, a wife’s infidelity, a father’s miserable death from drink.
Paul shuddered as he traced out the dreary story with the writer’s special notes and comments, intended to apply to Paul’s own position and act as awful warnings.
Then at length the husband was alone. The wife had fled with a cher ami of former days. Her child disappeared, too. She knew that the infant would have been a source of consolation to the forlorn and broken man; hence her fiendish vow that he should see it no more. The wrongs which she had heaped upon him induced all this fierce hatred and malice; and, finally, Williamson was alone in the world with his sorrows.
Years passed away, and he heard a strange story of the death of his wife in connection with a travelling theatre or circus. The name of a celebrated comedian, who had by misconduct been reduced to the booth and the fair, was mixed up with the event in some way; but Williamson could never clear the story up satisfactorily, and all his efforts to obtain tidings of his child proved ineffectual. How he had lived since those terrible days of his early life his friends knew; that there was a dark shadow upon his history they knew also; but of the misery and despair, the blighted career, the hopes destroyed, the opportunities misapplied, the broken-down ambition, the aching heart, they knew nothing.
And this woman—this wife of Shuffleton Gibbs—this scheming, unscrupulous woman, was his child! That Paul Somerton should never see her again would be her father’s chief care; his next, a life-long effort to redeem her from herself, to straighten the crooked mind, to win back to the darkened conscience some faint light at least of purity and truth—to combat with the inborn devil, that some essence of the angel might still revive within that human soul.
And then the writer grew eloquent upon wonderful cases of conversion from the lowest depths of sin to paths of virtue; the faith of the true Christian broke out in burning words, and here and there expressions of parental hope in the future. But so far as Paul was concerned, he was reminded in firm, but kindly words, that there stood between him and this woman marriage vows plighted to another, and the claims of a long suffering father pledged to a great and holy work of religious duty. Some day, ere the deep shadows of the future closed upon them all for ever, and there was an end of passion and repentance, they might meet again, but for the present their paths in the great world lay in different directions.
Wearied and unhappy, Lieutenant Somerton lay down on his bed that night when he received this letter. The next morning he woke with a sense of pain and weakness. For days after this he was delirious. His constant attendant during this time was his gentle sister Phœbe, who came to town with her father on a special summons from the young officer’s medical attendant.
Though in point of time we anticipate slightly some of the events of the next few chapters, we think it well to finish Paul’s “first love” adventure in this place. We take the liberty, therefore, to say that when he had sufficiently recovered his father took him down into Lincolnshire, and in course of time, amidst the bracing air of wolds and fens, health and strength came back to him. What a quiet, dreary time it was these few months, in the heart of the great agricultural district! Sluggish rivers, with sedgy banks; long hard roads; low trim hedges; sleek, short-horned cattle; big hay-ricks and straw stacks—how familiar they became! Then there was an occasional ride to the hounds, visits to the local markets, unsophisticated evening parties, and all the other rural pleasures of the place.