She seized his arm, and shook it violently; but still he made no response.
“You will not speak. Listen, then—listen to me, I say; I’ll tell it all now; you’ll hear what you never heard before. I did not tell you before, because I pitied you—because I thought you would work for me, and earn money; but you will not promise it. Now, then, listen. You are the very child of money—brought into existence by the influence of money; you would never have been in being had it not been for money. I always told you I was married to your father; I told you a falsehood—he bound me to him by the ties of money only.”
A violent shudder passed over Andrew’s frame at this intelligence, but still he said nothing.
“You shall hear it all—I shall tell you particularly the whole story. It was not for nothing you were always afraid of being called a bastard. It’s an ugly word, but it belongs to you—ay, ay, ye always trembled at that word, since ye were able to go and play among the children in the street. They called ye that seven years ago—ten years ago, when we came here first, and you used to come crying to me, for you could not bear it, you said. I denied it then—I told you I was married to your father; I told you a lie: I told you that, because I thought you would grow up and work for me, and get me money. You won’t do it; you will only write—write all day and all night, too, though I’ve begged you to quit it. You have me here starving. What signifies the beggarly annuity your father left to me, and you, his child? It’s all spent long before it comes, and here we are with nothing, not a crust, in the house, and it’s two months till next paying time.
“Listen—I’ll tell you the whole story of your birth; maybe that will put you from writing for a while, if you have the spirit you used to have when they told you what you were.”
She shook his arm again, without receiving any answer; his head had fallen on his hands, and he remained fixed in one position. His mother’s eyes glared on him with a look in which madness was visible, together with a tigress-like expression of ferocity which rarely appears on the face of a mother, or of any human being, where insanity does not exist. When she spoke, however, her words were collected, and her manner was impressive and even dignified; the look of maniac anger gradually wore away from her face, and in every sentence she uttered there were proofs that something of power had naturally existed in her fallen and clouded mind.
“Want of money was the earliest thing I remember to feel,” she said, as she seated herself, with something more of composure in her manner. “There was never any money in my father’s house. I wondered at first where it could all go; I watched and reflected, and used all means of finding out the mystery. At last I knew it—my father drank; in the privacy of his room, when no eye was on him, he drank, drank. He paid strict enough attention to my education. I read with him much; he had stores of books. I read the Bible with him, too; often he spent long evenings expounding it to me. But I saw the hollowness of it all—he hardly believed himself; he doubted—doubted all, while he would fain have made me a believer. I saw it well: I heard him rave of it in a fever into which drink had thrown him. All was dark to him, he said, when he was near dying; but he had taught his child to believe; he had done his best to make her believe. He did not know my heart; I was his own child; I longed for sensual things; my heart burned with a wish for money, but it all went for drink. Had I but been able then to procure food and clothes as others of my rank did, the burning wish for money that consumed my heart then and now might never have been kindled, and I might have been rich as those often become who have never wished for riches. Yes, the eagerness of my wishes has always driven money far away from me; that cursed gold and silver, it flows on them who have never worshiped it—never longed for it till their brain turned; and it will not come to such as me, whose whole life has been a desire for it. Well, my father died, and I was left without a penny; all the furniture went to pay the spirit-merchant. I went to Ireland; I lived with relations who were poor and ignorant: I heard the cry of want of money there too. A father and mother and seven children, and me, the penniless orphan: we all wanted money—all cried for it. At last my cry was answered in a black way; I saw the sight of money at last; a purse heaped, overflowing with money, was put into my hands. My brain got giddy at the sight; sin and virtue became all one to me at the sight. Gold, gold! my father would hardly ever give me one poor shilling; the people with whom I lived hardly ever had a shilling among them. I became the mistress of a rich man—a married man; his wife and children were living there before my eyes—a profligate man; his sins were the talk of the countryside. I hated him; he was old, deformed, revolting; but he chained me to him by money. Then I enjoyed money for a while; I kept that purse in my hand; I laid it down so as my eyes would rest on it perpetually. I dressed; I squandered sum after sum; the rich man who kept me had many other expenses: his money became scantier; we quarreled; another offered me more money—I went to him.”
A deep groan shook the whole frame of the unfortunate young poet at this statement—a groan which in its intensity might have separated soul and body.
“Let me go—let me go!” he cried, raising himself for a moment, and then sinking back again in his chair in a passive state.