He stretched out his hands.
“Father!” he exclaimed, with emotion.
The old man remained rigid as a statue, and made no sign of taking the proffered hands.
How changed he was since Mark had last seen him! Then in a poor lodging, surrounded by poverty and bowed by care and toil, he seemed the poor haggard slave of want; now, the tenant of a noble mansion, attired as a gentleman, conscious of the position to which he had been born, he looked like a patrician, only to be approached with deference and humility.
But for certain characteristics of feature, Mark would not have known him again.
Wilton regarded his son with a glance which, while it noted the change that time and climate had made in him too, abated none of its sternness.
“Mr. Mark Wilton,” he said, in harsh tones, “years have passed since you flung away your title to address me by the name of father. You quitted my roof by an exercise of your own self-will; you return to me, I presume, under a similar influence, not having during the whole interval communicated with me or any of your relatives. I am therefore to attribute, I suppose, your present visit to the circumstance of a change for the better in my condition reaching your filial ear.” Mark’s face became the hue of crimson. He folded his arms, and looked his father steadfastly in the eyes.
“I left home, sir,” he exclaimed, in a firm tone, “under motives which I had hoped you would have appreciated. I was a burden to you, sir, in your poverty. I absorbed a share of that income which was barely enough to support the family without my addition. I had no means of aiding you, for I knew no trade. I left you, therefore, to fight the world as best I could, so that I relieved you of a tax upon your exertions. I left you in silence, because I would spare myself the entreaties, the urgings and implorings, to me to remain at home. They would have deeply affected and pained me without making me swerve from my purpose. I have remained silent during my absence, because my career has been a chequered one. I would not write to you until I could send some earnest of my love for you all with my communication. It was only at the last moment when almost in a day I became the owner of considerable wealth, that I felt the time had come for you to be made acquainted with my existence, and immediately I hastened to England to share with you what I had obtained; and if it were not enough for all, to leave you once more until I had won from Fortune sufficient for myself. Such, sir, are the facts I cannot beg you to believe them, because you know, sir, as a boy, I respected truth too reverently to give you the right to doubt them. I have no more to say, sir, than this. My bursting heart tells me that had my most fondly loved, my sainted mother have been spared by God to have met me here, my reception would not have been such as you have extended to me.”
Mark pressed his hands over his eyes. There was a convulsive twitching about the mouth of old Wilton, and his eyelids filled with water.
“Mark!” he exclaimed, in a husky voice: “Mark—my son! In the name of her whom you have apostrophised, come to my heart!”