“No!” said the tavern-keeper, feigning surprise. “Then what can be your object, in wanting to know whether he left a wife in Sydney?”
“Because that wife, if there be one, is my mother.”
This answer was satisfactory; and Mr Wilson, after healing it, became communicative.
He had no objections to acknowledge acquaintance with a man who had been hung—after my having admitted that man’s wife to be my mother; and, freely confessed, without any further circumlocution, that he had been intimate with a man named Mathews, who had eloped from Sydney with a shopkeeper’s daughter. He supposed it must be the same, that I claimed as my stepfather.
Wilson’s Mathews had arrived in Sydney several years before. About a year after his arrival he was followed by his wife from Dublin—with whom he had lived for a few weeks, and then deserted her.
Wilson had seen this woman; and from the description he gave me of her, I had no doubt that she was my mother.
The tavern-keeper had never heard of her, after she had been deserted by Mathews, nor could he answer any question: as to whether she had brought my children to the colony. He had never heard of her children.
This was the sum and substance of the information I obtained from Mr Wilson.
My mother, then, had actually emigrated to Australia; and there, to her misfortune, no doubt, had once more discovered the ruffian who had ruined her.
Where was she now? Where were her children? My brother William, and my little sister Martha, of whom I was once so fond and proud?