Ishmael; Or, In the Depths Part 70

"Why don't you tell me what has brought us here, then?"

"I am about to do so," said Ishmael solemnly. "Aunt Hannah, you have often told me that she whose remains lie below us was a saint on earth and is an angel in heaven!"

"Yes, Ishmael. I have told you so, and I have told you truly."

"Aunt Hannah, three years ago I asked you who was my father. You replied by a blow. Well, I was but a boy then, and so of course you must have thought that that was the most judicious answer you could give. But now, Aunt Hannah, I am a young man, and I demand of you, Who was my father?"

"Ishmael, I cannot tell you!"

With a sharp cry of anguish the youth sprang up; but governing his strong excitement he subsided to his seat, only gasping out the question:

"In the name of Heaven, why can you not?"

Hannah's violent sobs were the only answer.

"Aunt Hannah! I know this much--that your name is Hannah Worth; that my dear mother was your sister; that her name was Nora Worth; and that mine is Ishmael Worth! Therefore I know that I bear yours and my mother's maiden name! I always took it for granted that my father belonged to the same family; that he was a relative, perhaps a cousin of my mother, and that he bore the same name, and therefore did not in marrying my mother give her a new one. That was what I always thought, Aunt Hannah; was I right?"

Hannah sobbed on in silence.

"Aunt Hannah! by my mother's grave, I adjure you to answer me! Was I right?"

"No, Ishmael, you were not!" wailed Hannah.

"Then I do not bear my father's name?"

"No."

"But only my poor mother's?"

"Yes."

"Oh, Heaven! how is that?"

"Because you have no legal right to your father's; because the only name to which you have any legal right is your poor, wronged mother's!"

With a groan that seemed to rend body and soul asunder, Ishmael threw himself upon his mother's grave.

"You said she was an angel! And I know that she was!" he cried, as soon as he had recovered the power of speech.

"I said truly, and you know the truth!" wept Hannah.

"How, then, is it, that I, her son, cannot bear my father's name?"

"Ishmael, your mother was the victim of a false marriage!"

Ishmael sprang up from his rec.u.mbent posture, and gazed at his aunt with a fierceness that pierced through the darkness.

"And so pure and proud was she, that the discovery broke her heart!"

Ishmael threw himself once more upon the grave, and clasping the mound in his arms, burst into a pa.s.sionate flood of tears, and wept long and bitterly. And, after a while, through this shower of tears, came forth in gusty sobs these words:

"Oh, mother! Oh, poor, young, wronged, and broken-hearted mother! sleep in peace; for your son lives to vindicate you. Yes, if he has been spared, it was for this purpose--to honor, to vindicate, to avenge you!"

And after these words his voice was again lost and drowned in tears and sobs.

Hannah kneeled down beside him, took his hand, and tried to raise him, saying:

"Ishmael, my love, get up, dear! There was no wrong done, no crime committed, nothing to avenge. Your father was as guiltless as your mother, my boy; there was no sin; nothing from first to last but great misfortune. Come into the house, my Ishmael, and I will tell you all about it."

"Yes; tell me all! tell me every particular; have no more concealments from me!" cried Ishmael, rising to follow his aunt.

"I will not; but oh, my boy! gladly would I have kept the sorrowful story concealed from you forever, but that I know from what I have seen of you to-night, that some rude tongue has told you of your misfortune--and told you wrong besides!" said Hannah, as they re-entered the hut.

They sat down beside the small wood fire that the chill night made not unwelcome, even in August. Hannah sat in her old arm-chair, and Ishmael on the three-legged stool at her feet, with his head in her lap. And there, with her hand caressing his light brown hair, Hannah told him the story of his mother's love and suffering and death.

At some parts of her story his tears gushed forth in floods, and his sobs shook his whole frame. Then Hannah would be forced to pause in her narrative, until he had regained composure enough to listen to the sequel.

Hannah told him all; every particular with which the reader is already acquainted; suppressing nothing but the name of his miserable father.

At the close of the sad story both remained silent for some time; the deathly stillness of the room broken only by Ishmael's deep sighs. At last, however, he spoke:

"Aunt Hannah, still you have not told me the name of him my poor mother loved so fatally."

"Ishmael, I have told you that I cannot; and now I will tell you why I cannot."

And then Hannah related the promise that she had made to her dying sister, never to expose the unhappy but guiltless author of her death.

"Poor mother! poor, young, broken-hearted mother! She was not much older than I am now when she died--was she, Aunt Hannah?"

"Scarcely two years older, my dear."

"So young!" sobbed Ishmael, dropping his head again upon Hannah's knee, and bursting into a tempest of grief.

She allowed the storm to subside a little, and then said:

"Now, my Ishmael, I wish you to tell me what it was that sent you home so early from the party, and in such a sorrowful mood. I knew, of course, that something must have been said to you about your birth. What was said, and who said it?"

"Oh, Aunt Hannah! it was in the very height of my triumph that I was struck down! I was not proud, Heaven knows, that I should have had such a fall! I was not proud--I was feeling rather sad upon account of Walter's having missed the prize; and I was thinking how hard it was in this world that n.o.body could enjoy a triumph without someone else suffering a mortification. I was thinking and feeling so, as I tell you, until Walter came up and talked me out of my gloom. And then all my young companions were doing me honor in their way, when--"

Ishmael's voice was choked for a moment; but with an effort he regained his composure and continued, though in a broken and faltering voice:

"Alfred Burghe left the group, saying that I was not a proper companion for young ladies and gentlemen. And when--she--Miss Merlin, angrily demanded why I was not, he--Oh! Aunt Hannah!" Ishmael suddenly ceased and dropped his face into his hands.

"Compose yourself, my dear boy, and go on," said the weaver.

"He said that I was a--No! I cannot speak the word! I cannot!"

"A young villain! If ever I get my hands on him, I will give him as good a broomsticking as ever a bad boy had in this world! He lied, Ishmael!

You are not what he called you. You are legitimate on your mother's side, because she believed herself to be a lawful wife. You bear her name, and you could lawfully inherit her property, if she had left any.

Tell them that when they insult you!" exclaimed Hannah indignantly.