First Love: A Novel. Vol. 1 of 3

by Mrs. Loudon

Shortly after this final disappointment respecting Maria’s fortune, St. Aubin found it necessary to take refuge from his creditors in the Isle of Man; whither he went accordingly, carrying with him his wife and child, and settling there with a very reduced establishment.

Not choosing, it would seem, to be hung for declared murder, he appeared determined, by every species of ingenious barbarity, to torture the wretched Maria out of her remaining shred of existence; and, among other devices, he daily and hourly made her shudder, by his vows of deep and black revenge on her sister.

One day, after sitting some time leaning his head on his hand, with a countenance resembling the thunder-cloud, lightning suddenly flashed from his eyes, imprecations exploded from his lips, he started to his feet, stood before his wife, and clenching his hand, uttered these words: “I tell you, Mrs. St. Aubin, that child, that I hate, because it is yours! that child, to whose future provision she has sacrificed me! that child I will rear, I will preserve, for the sole purpose of being the instrument of my revenge!—by his means, were it twenty years hence, were it thirty years hence, I will break her heart! Yes,” he added, as if in reply to a look from Maria of astonishment, almost amounting to incredulity, “and I have determined how I shall do it.” He then resumed his sitting attitude, and again leaning his head on his hand, a long hour of utter silence followed, during which his unhappy wife sat at the other side of the table, not daring to arouse him by rising to leave the room.

Henry, at this time, promised to have in him a strange mixture of the dispositions both of his father and mother; or, in other words, of evil and good. The evil certainly did predominate; yet, had a careful hand early separated the seeds, cultivated the good, and cast out the bad, this ill-fated child might have been saved from perdition; or had he, with all his faults, been supplied with that only unerring standard of right, the practical application of sacred truths to moral obligations, even in after-life there might have been hope; but his father, as we have said, had no religion: he daily scoffed at whatever was most sacred, purposely to insult the feelings of his wife, and this before his child. One morning, he found Maria with the Bible before her, and Henry on her knee. He looked at them for a moment; then taking the child by the shoulder, he raised one foot level with the hand in which he held him, and kicked him, in a contemptuous manner, as he swung him to the middle of the floor, saying, that such a mammy’s brat ought to have been a girl. Mrs. St. Aubin ran to raise the child from the ground. St. Aubin snatched up the sacred volume, open as it lay, and flung it after her, telling her, in a voice of thunder, that she was a psalm-singing fool, and ordering her not to cram the boy’s head with any of her cursed nonsense. Indeed, in his calmest and best disposed moods, “You are a fool, Mrs. St. Aubin!” was his usual remark on any thing his wife ventured to say or do.

Mrs. St. Aubin having ascertained that the child was not hurt, took up the book, arranged its ruffled leaves in silence, and laid it with reverence on the table. Her husband viewed her with a malicious grin till her task was completed; then, walking up to the table, he opened the treasury of sacred knowledge, and deliberately tore out every leaf, flinging them, now on one side, now on the other, to each far corner of the apartment; then striding towards the fire-place, he planted himself on the hearth, with his back to the chimney, his legs spread in the attitude of a colossal statue, the tails of his coat turned apart under his arms, and his hands in his side-pockets.

“Now,” he said, looking at his wife, “pick them up!—pick them up! pick them up!” he continued, till all were collected.

Mrs. St. Aubin was about to place the sheets within their vacant cover on the table; but, with a stamp of his foot, which made every article of furniture in the room shake, and brought a picture that hung against the wall, on its face to the floor, he commanded her to put them in the fire. She hesitated; when seizing her arm, he shook it over the flames, till the paper taking fire, she was compelled to loose her hold.

“I ought to have reserved a sheet to have made a fool’s cap for you, I think,” he said, perceiving that silent tears were following each other down the cheeks of his wife. “Why, what an idiot you are! the child has more sense than you have,” he added, seeing that Henry, occupied by surprise and curiosity, was not crying. “Come, Henry,” he continued, in a voice for him most condescending, “you shall carry my fishing basket to-day.”

Henry had been just going to pity his poor mamma when he saw her crying; but hearing his father say that he had more sense than his mother, he could not help feeling raised in his own estimation, and anxious to show his sense by flying with peculiar alacrity for the basket.

He had viewed the whole of the preceding scene with but little comprehension, as may be supposed, of its meaning, and with very confused ideas of right and wrong, being, at the time, not above six years old; but the practical lesson—and there are no lessons like practical lessons—made an indelible impression: all future efforts, whether of mother or aunt, usher or schoolmaster, layman or divine, to infuse into Henry precepts derived from a source he had seen so contemned by his father, were for ever vain. His father, he was old enough to perceive, was feared and obeyed by every one within the small sphere of his observation: for him, therefore, he felt a sort of spurious deference, though he could not love him. For his mother, who had always indulged him with the too great tenderness of a gentle spirit utterly broken, and who had wept over him many a silent hour, till his little heart was saddened without his knowing why, he naturally felt some affection; but then he daily saw her treated with indignity, and therefore did not respect either her or her lessons: for he was just at the age when a quick child judges wrong, a dull one not at all.