"Stand away! approach me not!" said Hyland, for Falconer was approaching. "Your misfortune has turned your brain. Touch me not, for I remember my sister!"
"Your mother, boy, your mother!" said Elsie.
"Be it my mother, if you will: what then have I but more cause to curse the author of her shame?"
"The author of her death, not shame," said Falconer, with a smothered voice. "Murderer of your brother, even for your sake I will take that veil of disgrace from your mother's memory that must be hung round the brows of my daughter. Do not curse me, my son—Elsie Bell, I deceived you all, and it was the deceit that killed my poor Jessie. This boy was born in wedlock,—the child of the abandoned and broken-hearted, yet wedded, wife of her destroyer."
"Your wife! gracious heaven, your wife!" said Elsie, on whom these words produced as strong an effect as upon the bewildered Hyland. "Now, Richard Falconer, if you have spoken the truth, you are indeed a blacker villain than ever men believed you."
"I am," said Falconer; "for with the lie I killed my wife and laid her in a grave of dishonour. You were made to believe it was but a mock ceremony that united us: it was a legal and honourable tie, and broken only by the death of Jessie. And for what purpose? You know, Elsie Bell, you know very well, yes, surely you know," he added, with much agitation, and as if afraid to speak further. But Elsie sternly affirming her ignorance of any cause he had for destroying the peace and good name of her whom he acknowledged his lawful wife, and Hyland now regarding him with a look of mingled fear and entreaty, he essayed to speak; and again the sweat-drops, oozing from his temples, betrayed the anguish and shame of mind with which he exposed an act of unexampled duplicity and baseness. His confession was indeed one which no light remorse could have wrung from his spirit; but it was made, and made without concealment or attempted extenuation, although it undoubtedly revealed a strong if not just reason for his failure to rescue from shame the memory of his betrayed wife. He had begun the world as a needy adventurer; but was early patronized by a gentleman of great wealth, with whose daughter, an only child, he soon presumed to fall deeply in love; the consequence of which was the withdrawal of his patron's favour, and immediate expulsion from his house. It appeared, that he had not failed to make some impression upon the lady's heart; but she was a spoiled child and coquette, and he left her with but little hope of ever deriving any advantage from her tenderness. He betook himself to the army, was transferred, in course of time, to the frontiers, and in less than two years after his departure, found himself recovering from the wounds he had received at the Moravian town, under the roof of Gilbert's Folly. The youth and beauty of Jessie, his gratitude for her kindness, and still more, perhaps, for her affection, which the simple-hearted maiden gave him almost at first sight, and had not the power to conceal, touched his imagination, if not his feelings; and in a moment of excitement, and folly, he proffered her his hand, and was married. The marriage was secret—it might be added, accidental; for the freedom of manners, at that day, and in that country, allowing such license, he often, as he recovered, found himself galloping with the merry maiden on visits among the settlements a dozen or more miles distant; and it was upon one of these occasions that he gave his love and faith together to the thoughtless maiden. The knot was, however, no sooner tied, than he was seized with fears and regrets: he had already received overtures towards a reconciliation by his old patron, and without well conceiving in what manner he could profit by a return of friendship in such quarter, he persuaded himself, and his bride also, that his interest demanded some temporary concealment of their union. To this Jessie was easily induced to accede; for having no distrust in her lover, she saw in such concealment only an additional frolic, such as she esteemed her marriage to be. She feared no censure from her parent, who had indeed long since signified the pleasure with which he would receive so gallant a gentleman for his son-in-law; and she looked forward with merry anticipation to the hour when she should present herself to him as a bride of a month's standing. She consented therefore, not merely with readiness, but alacrity, to preserve the wedding a strict secret; and in that fatal consent paved the way for her own ruin and untimely end. We will speak the remainder of the mournful story in a word. The overtures from the patron were renewed, and were accompanied by the smiles of his daughter. Falconer looked upon Jessie with anger, perhaps with abhorrence,—she stood in the way of his fortune. The old love smiled again, and forgetting that now the smile came too late, he yielded to the intoxication of his original passion, threw himself at her feet, and became, even with her father's consent, an accepted lover. The state of his mind can be now better imagined than described; love, avarice, and ambition together, as well as a consciousness that he had involved himself beyond all retreat, urged him to persevere in a suit both dishonourable and criminal; and Jessie was now thought of only to be hated. Months passed by, and the jest of the frolic was over; yet the marriage was not divulged; the young bride begged to disclose the secret, and every entreaty filled him with new alarm and anger; until the accidental death of the regimental chaplain by whom they had been united, and the previous decease of the only witnesses to the ceremony, put him upon a scheme for relieving himself from his bonds worthy rather of a fiend than a human being. His witnesses were two soldiers of his company, whom he had bribed to silence so liberally, that they quarrelled together in their cups, and fought, and that with such fury, that one was killed on the spot, and the other died before he could be brought to a trial. The chaplain was drowned five months after in attempting to cross a flooded river. There remained therefore no witness of the union, and the only testimony remaining, to wit, the certificate signed by the unfortunate chaplain, was already in Falconer's hands. Opportunity—the devil that seduces beyond all other fiends—destroyed every vestige of honour and humanity in his bosom; he fled from his betrayed wife, leaving her to believe that the ceremony of marriage between them had been only a brutal mockery, contrived by a villain for her ruin. He left her to believe this, to madden, and to die; and before she had drawn her last sigh,—nay, upon the morning of that dreadful midnight that saw her expire,—he had yielded to the fate he had encouraged, and taken a second wife to his bosom.
"I lived, I prospered," he cried, when he had brought his dark confession to a close; "and two fair infants sat upon my knee; but their looks were curses to me—their birth was infamous; and I myself, though men knew it not, was in the eye of God and the law, a felon!—Now, Hyland, son of the wronged Jessie, I have defended your mother's memory; but I am not less a villain. Expose me to the world, curse me, for I deserve it—yes!" he added, with wildness, and even falling upon his knees before the horror-struck son,—"expose me and curse me, but have pity upon my child,—have mercy upon your sister,—the sister of the brother you slew,—my poor, wretched, dishonoured Harriet."
"God forgive you, sir," said Hyland, with tears. "Leave me—I cannot call you father: but I will not disgrace your daughter. No, I will not—but my mother——And she was my mother then?—my mother's name must rest no longer in infamy. Go, sir; I forgive you—that is, I will not upbraid you; but I cannot, I cannot call you father. I am innocent of Henry's—of my brother's death——Yes, I will call him brother, for surely he never wronged my poor mother. Take this much comfort—my hand never fired the pistol that killed him; and, whether I live or die, it will soon be seen that I am innocent of his blood."
"God grant it," said Colonel Falconer, but with an accent showing how vaguely the thought of Henry now sat on his bosom. "God grant it—but—hark! what is that? They cry again! It is the descent of the jury! Oh Heaven, I am punished indeed for that act of baseness! Farewell, my son: I do not ask you for forgiveness—but touch my hand, grasp my hand but once"——
"I cannot," said Hyland, recoiling with such horror, that the unhappy father bowed his head with shame. He then snatched up the light, unconscious of what he did, and moved towards the door, as if to depart; but a louder cry from the street striking his ear, he again turned round, and looked Hyland in the face.