He spoke of the run of good fortune he had had on the previous night—(for he was a gambler still.) 'Five thousand!' said he, rubbing his hands, 'were mine within five minutes.'
'Five thousand!' I repeated. I took my Catherine's purse in my hand.
Lewis! some demon entered my soul, and extinguished reason. 'Five thousand!' I repeated again; 'it would rescue my Catherine and my child from penury.' I thought of the joy I should feel in placing the money and her purse again in her hands. I accompanied him to the table of destruction. For a time fortune, that it might mock my misery, and not dash the cup from my lips until they were parched, seemed to smile on me. But I will not dwell on particulars; my friend 'laughed to see the madness rise' within me. I became desperate—nay, I was insane—and all that my wife had put into my hands, to the last coin, was lost. Never, until that moment, did I experience how terrible was the torture of self-reproach, or how fathomless the abyss of human wretchedness. I would have raised my hand against my own life; but, vile and contemptible as I was, I had not enough of the coward within me to accomplish the act. I thought of my mother. She had long disowned me, partly from my follies, and partly that she adhered to the house of Hanover. But, though I had squandered the estates which my father had left me, I knew that she was still rich, and that she intended to bestow her wealth upon my sister; for there were but two of us. Yet I remembered how fondly she had loved me, and I did not think that there was a feeling in a mother's breast that could spurn from her a penitent son—for nature, at the slightest spark, bursteth into a flame. I resolved, therefore, to go as the prodigal in the Scriptures, and to throw myself at her feet, and confess that I had sinned against Heaven, and in her sight.
I wrote a note to my injured Catherine, stating that I was suddenly called away, and that I would not see her again perhaps for some weeks. Almost without a coin in my pocket, I took my journey from London to Cumberland, where my mother dwelt.
Night was gathering around me when I left London, on the road leading to St. Alban's. But I will not go through the stages of my tedious journey; it is sufficient to say, that I allowed myself but little time for sleep or rest, and, on the eighth day after my leaving London, I found myself, after an absence of eighteen years, again upon the grounds of my ancestors. Foot-sore, fatigued, and broken down, my appearance bespoke way-worn dejection. I rather halted than walked along, turning my face aside from every passenger, and blushing at the thought of recognition. It was mid-day when I reached an eminence, covered with elm trees, and skirted by a hedge of hawthorn. It commanded a view of what was called the Priory, the house in which I was born, and which was situated within a mile from where I stood. The village church, surrounded by a clump of dreary yews, lay immediately at the foot of the hill to my right, and the road leading from thence to the Priory crossed before me. It was a raw and dismal day; the birds sat shivering on the leafless branches, and the cold, black clouds, seemed wedged together in a solid mass, ready to fall upon the earth and crush it; and the wind moaned over the bare fields. Yet, disconsolate as the scene appeared, it was the soil of childhood on which I trod. The fields, the woods, the river, the mountains, the home of infancy, were before me; and I felt their remembered sunshine rekindling in my bosom the feelings that make a patriot. A thousand recollections flashed before me. Already did fancy hear the congratulations of my mother's voice, welcoming her prodigal—feel the warm pressure of her hand, and her joyous tears falling on my cheek. But again I hesitated, and feared that I might be received as an outcast. The wind howled around me—I felt impatient and benumbed—and, as I stood irresolute, with a moaning chime the church bell knelled upon my ear. A trembling and foreboding fell upon my heart; and, before the first echo of the dull sound died in the distance, a muffled peal from the tower of the Priory answered back the invitation of the house of death, announcing that the earth would receive its sacrifice. A veil came over my eyes, the ground swam beneath my feet; and again and again did the church bell issue forth its slow, funeral tone, and again was it answered from the Priory.
Emerging from the thick elms that spread around the Priory and stretched to the gate, appeared a long and melancholy cavalcade. My eyes became dim with a presentiment of dread, and they were strained to torture. Slowly and silently the sable retinue approached. The waving plumes of the hearse became visible. Every joint in my body trembled with agony, as though agony had become a thing of life. I turned aside to watch it as it passed, and concealed myself behind the hedge. The measured and grating sound of the carriages, the cautious trampling of the horses' feet, and the solemn pace of the poorer followers, became more and more audible on my ear. The air of heaven felt substantial in my throat, and the breathing I endeavoured to suppress became audible, while the cold sweat dropt as icicles from my brow. Sadly, with faces of grief, unlike the expression of hired sorrow, passed the solitary mutes; and, in the countenance of each, I recognised one of our tenantry. Onward moved the hearse and its dismal pageantry. My heart fell, as with a blow, within my bosom. For a moment I would have fancied it a dream; but the train of carriages passed on, their grating roused me from my insensibility, and, rushing from the hedge towards one who for forty years had been a servant in our house—
'Robert!—Robert!' I exclaimed, 'whose funeral is this?'
'Alack! Master Edward!' he cried, 'is it you? It is the funeral of my good lady—your mother!'
The earth swam round with me—the funeral procession, with a sailing motion, seemed to circle me—and I fell with my face upon the ground.
Dejected, way-worn as I was, I accompanied the body of my mother to its last resting-place. I wept over her grave, and returned with the chief mourners to the house of my birth; and there I was all but denied admission. I heard the will read, and in it my name was not once mentioned. I rushed from the house—I knew not, and I cared not where I ran—misery was before, behind, and around me. I thought of my Catherine and my child, and groaned with the tortures of a lost spirit.