Falkner: A Novel

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

"'My mother is not vile!' cried Gerard, and there stopped; for a thousand things restrain a child's tongue; inexperience, reverence, ignorance of the effect his words may produce, terror at the mightiness of the power with which he has to contend. After a pause, he muttered, 'I honour my mother; I will tell the whole world that she deserves honour.'

"'Now, Gerard, on my soul,' cried Sir Boyvill, roused to anger, as parents too easily are against their offspring when they show any will of their own, while they expect to move them like puppets; 'on my soul, my fine fellow, I could find it in my heart to knock you down. Enough of this; I don't want to terrify you: be a good boy to-morrow, and I will forgive all.'

"'Forgive me now, father,' cried the youth, bursting into tears; 'forgive me and spare me! I cannot obey you; I cannot do anything that will grieve my mother; she loved me so much—I am sure she loves me still—that I cannot do her a harm. I will not go to-morrow.'

"'This is most extraordinary,' said Sir Boyvill, controlling, as well as he could, the rage swelling within him. 'And are you such an idiot as not to know that your wretched mother has forfeited all claim to your affection? and am I of so little worth in your eyes, I, your father, who have a right to your obedience from the justice of my cause, not to speak of parental authority, am I nothing? to receive no duty, expect no service? I was, indeed, mistaken; I thought you were older than your years, and had that touch of gentlemanly pride about you that would have made you eager to avenge my injuries, to stand by me as a friend and ally, compensating, as well as you could, for the wrongs done me by your mother. I thought I had a son in whose veins my own blood flowed, who would be ready to prove his true birth by siding with me. Are you stone, or a baseborn thing, that you cannot even conceive what thing honour is?'

"Gerard listened, he wept; the tears poured in torrents from his eyes; but, as his father continued, and heaped many an opprobrious epithet on him, a proud and sullen spirit was indeed awakened; he longed to say—'Abuse me, strike me, but I will not yield!' Yet he did not speak; he dried his eyes, and stood in silence before his parent, his face darkening, and something ferocious gleaming in eyes hitherto so soft and sorrowing. Sir Boyvill saw that he was far from making the impression he desired; but he wished to avoid reiterated refusals to obey, and he summed up at last with vague but violent threats of what would ensue—exile from his home, penury, nay, starvation, the abhorrence of the world, his own malediction; and, after having worked himself up into a towering rage, and real detestation of the shivering, feeble, yet determined child before him, he left him to consider and to be vanquished.

"Far other thoughts occupied Gerard. 'I had thought,' he has told me, 'once or twice to throw myself into his arms, and pray for mercy; to kneel at his feet and implore him to spare me; one kind word had made the struggle intolerable, but no kind word did he say; and while he stormed, it seemed to me as if my dear mother were singing as she was used, while I gathered flowers and played beside her in the park, and I thought of her, not of him; the words, "kick me out of doors," suggested but the idea, "I shall be free, and I will find my mother." I feel intensely now; but surely a boy's feelings are far wilder, far more vehement than a man's; for I cannot now, violent as you think me, call up one sensation so whirlwind-like as those that possessed me while my father spoke!'

"Thus has Gerard described his emotions; his father ordered him to quit the room, and he went to brood upon the fate impending over him. On the morrow early he was bid prepare to attend the House of Lords. His father did not appear; he thought that the boy was terrified, and would make no further resistance. Gerard, indeed, obeyed in silence. He disdained to argue with strangers and hirelings; he had an idea that if he openly rebelled he might be carried by force, and his proud heart swelled at the idea of compulsion. He got into the carriage, and, as he went, Mr. Carter, who was with him, thought it advisable to explain the forms, and give some instructions. Gerard listened with composure, nay, asked a question or two concerning the preliminaries; he was told of the oath that would be administered; and how the words he spoke after taking that oath would be implicitly believed, and that he must be careful to say nothing that was not strictly true. The colour, not an indignant blush, but a suffusion as of pleasure, mantled over his cheeks as this was explained.

"They arrived; they were conducted into some outer room to await the call of the peers. What tortures the boy felt as strangers came up, some to speak, and others to gaze; all of indignation, resolution, grief, and more than manhood's struggles that tore his bosom during the annoying delays that always protract this sort of scenes, none cared to scan. He was there unresisting, apparently composed; if now his cheek flushed, and now his lips withered into paleness; if now the sense of suffocation rose in his throat, and now tears rushed into his eyes, as the image of his sweet mother passed across his memory, none regarded, none cared. When I have thought of the spasms and throes which his tender and highwrought soul endured during this interval, I often wonder his heart-strings did not crack, or his reason for ever unsettle; as it is, he has not yet escaped the influence of that hour; it shadows his life with eclipse, it comes whispering agony to him, when otherwise he might forget. Some author has described the effect of misfortune on the virtuous as the crushing of perfumes, so to force them to give forth their fragrance. Gerard is all nobleness, all virtue, all tenderness; do we owe any part of his excellence to this hour of anguish? If so, I may be consoled; but I can never think of it without pain. He says himself, 'Yes! without these sharp goadings, I had not devoted my whole life to clearing my mother's fame.' Is this devotion a good? As yet no apparent benefit has sprung from it.

"At length he was addressed: 'Young gentleman, are you ready?' and he was led into that stately chamber—fit for solemn and high debate—thronged with the judges of his mother's cause. There was a dimness in his eye—a tumult in his heart that confused him, while on his appearance there was first a murmur, then a general hush. Each regarded him with compassion as they discerned the marks of suffering in his countenance. A few moments passed before he was addressed; and when it was supposed that he had had time to collect himself, the proper officer administered the oath, and then the barrister asked him some slight questions, not to startle, but to lead back his memory by insensible degrees to the necessary facts. The boy looked at him with scorn—he tried to be calm, to elevate his voice; twice it faltered—the third time he spoke slowly but distinctly: 'I have sworn to speak the truth, and I am to be believed. My mother is innocent.'

"'But this is not the point, young gentleman,' interrupted his interrogator; 'I only asked if you remembered your father's house in Cumberland.'