"Only the loss!" cried he, turning upon her like a fury—"only the loss!" Agony and passion stopped his utterance.
Mr Donaldson was in truth a ruined man. Of the fifteen thousand which he had obtained, not three hundred, exclusive of Lottery Hall, and the twenty acres around it, were left. His career had been a brief and a fashionable one. On the following day, his son Jacob returned from abroad. Within twelve months he had cost his father a thousand pounds; and, in exchange for the money spent, he brought home with him all the vices he had met with on his route. But I blame not Jacob: his betters, the learned and the noble, do the same. Poor fellow! he was sent upon the world with a rough garment round his shoulders, which gathered up all the dust that blew, and retained a portion of all the filth with which it came in contact; but polished substances would not adhere to it.
Captain Edwards returned no more to the hotel. He had given the last lesson to his scholar in the science of fashion; he had extorted from him the last fee he could spare. He had gauged the neck of his purse, and he forsook him—in his debt he forsook him. Poor Rebecca! day after day, she inquired after the captain—the captain! Lost, degraded, wretched Rebecca! But I will say no more of her. She became as dead while she yet lived—the confiding victim of a villain!
The barouche, the horses, the trinkets that deformed Mrs. Donaldson, with a piano that had been bought for Rebecca, were sold, and Andrew Donaldson, with his family, left London, and proceeded to Lottery Hall. But there, though he endeavoured to carry his head high, though he still walked with his silver cane, and though he was known (and he took care to make it known) that he had polled within one of being a Member of Parliament—still the squire did not acknowledge him—his old acquaintances did not lift their hats to him—but all seemed certain that he was coming down "by the run" (I think that was the slang or provincial phrase they used) to his old level. They perceived that he kept no horses now, save one to work the twenty acres around the lodge; for he had ploughed up, and sown with barley, and let out as potato ground, what he at first had laid out as a park. This spoke volumes. They also saw that he had parted with his coach, that he kept but one servant, and that servant told tales in the village. He was laughed at by his neighbours and those who had been his fellow-labourers; and with a sardonic chuckle they were wont to speak of his house as "the Member o' Parliament's." I have said that I would say no more of poor Rebecca; but the tongues of the women in the village dwelt also on her. She died, and in the same hour died also a new-born child of the villain Edwards.
Peter had left his father's house, and commenced the profession of an artist, in a town about twenty miles from this. Mr. Donaldson was now humbled. It was his intention with the sorry remnant of his fortune, to take a farm for Jacob; but, oh! Jacob had bathed in a sea of vice, and the bitter waters of adversity could not wash out the pollution it had left behind it. Into his native village he carried the habits he had acquired or witnessed beneath the cerulean skies of Italy, or amidst the dark-eyed daughters of France. Shame followed his footsteps. Yea, although the squire despised Mr. Donaldson, his son, a youth of nineteen, became the boon companion of Jacob. They held midnight orgies together. Jacob initiated the squireling into the mysteries of Paris and Rome, of Naples and Munich, whither he was about to proceed. But I will not dwell upon their short career. Extravagance attended it, shame and tears followed it.
Andrew Donaldson no longer possessed the means of upholding his son in folly and wickedness. He urged him to settle in the world—to take a farm while he had the power left of placing him in it; but Jacob's sins pursued him. He fled from his father's house, and enlisted in a marching regiment about to embark for the East Indies. No more was heard of him for many years, until a letter arrived from one of his comrades, announcing that he had fallen at Corunna.
To defray the expenses which his son Jacob had brought upon him, Mr. Donaldson had not only to part with the small remnant that was left him of his fifteen thousand, but take a heavy mortgage upon Lottery Hall. Again he was compelled to put his hand to the spade and to the plough; and his wife, deprived of her daughters, again became her own servant. Sorrow, shame, and disappointment gnawed in his heart. His garments of pride, now worn threadbare, were cut off for ever. The persecution, the mockery of his neighbours increased. They asked each other "if they had seen the Member of Parliament with the spade in his hand again?" They quoted the text, "A haughty spirit goes before a fall;" and they remembered passages of the preacher's lecture against pride and vanity on the day when Andrew appeared in his purple coat. He became a solitary man; and, on the face of this globe which we inhabit, there existed not a more miserable being than Andrew Donaldson.
Peter was generally admitted to be a young man of great talents, and bade fair to rise to eminence in his profession as an artist. There was to be an exhibition of the works of living artists in Edinburgh; and Peter went through to it, taking with him more than a dozen pictures, on all subjects and of all sizes. He had landscapes, sea pieces, historical paintings, portraits, fish, game, and compositions, the grouping of which would have done credit to a master. In size, they were from five feet square to five inches. His brother Paul, who was still at the college, and who now supported himself by private teaching, was surprised when one morning Peter arrived at his lodgings, with three cadies at his back, bearing his load of pictures. Paul welcomed him with open arms, for he was proud of his brother; he had admired his early talents, and had heard of the progress he had made in his art. With a proud heart and a delighted eye, Peter unpacked his paintings, and placed them round the room for the inspection of his brother; and great was his brother's admiration.
"What may be their value, Peter?" inquired Paul.
"Between ourselves, Paul," replied Peter, "I would not part with the lot under a thousand guineas."