Mark Hurdlestone Part 8

He drew from beneath his pillow a paper, which he placed in his brother's hand. It was a draft upon his banker for ten thousand pounds, payable at sight. "Will that satisfy you for all you lost by me?"

"Money cannot do that."

"You allude to my wife. I saved you from a curse by entailing it upon myself; for which service I at least deserve your thanks."

"What has proved a curse to you would have been to me the greatest earthly blessing. I freely forgive you for wronging me out of my share of the inheritance, but for robbing me of Elinor, I cannot."

He turned from the bed with the tears in his eyes, and was about to quit the room. The miser called him back. "Do not be such a fool as to refuse the money, Algernon; the lady I will bequeath to you as a legacy when I am gone."

"He is mad!" muttered Algernon, "no sane man could act this diabolical part. It is useless to resent his words. He must soon answer for them at a higher tribunal. Yes--I will forgive him--I will not add to his future misery."

He came back to the bed, and taking the burning hand of the miser, said in a broken voice, "Brother, I wronged you when I believed that you were an accountable being; I no longer consider you answerable for your actions, and may G.o.d view your unnatural conduct to me in the same light; by the mercy which He ever shows to His erring creatures. I forgive you for the past." The stony heart of the miser seemed touched, but his pride was wounded. "Mad--mad," he said; "so you look upon me as mad. The world is full of maniacs; I do not differ from my kind. But take the paper, and let there be peace between you and me."

Twenty years ago, and the high-spirited Algernon Hurdlestone would have rejected the miser's offer with contempt, but his long intercourse with the world had taught him the value of money, and his extravagant habits generally exceeded his fine income. Besides, what Mark offered him was, after all, but a small portion of what ought to have been his own. With an air of cheerful good-nature he thanked his brother, and carefully deposited the draft in his pocket-book.

After having absolved his conscience by what he considered not only a good action, but one of sufficient magnitude to save his soul, Mark intimated to his brother that he might now leave him--he had nothing further to say; a permission which Algernon was not slow to accept.

As he groped his way through the dark gallery that led from the miser's chamber, a door was opened cautiously at the far end of the pa.s.sage, and a female figure, holding a dim light in her hand, beckoned to him to approach.

Not without reluctance Algernon obeyed the summons, and found himself in the centre of a large empty apartment which had once been the saloon, and face to face with Mrs. Hurdlestone.

Elinor carefully locked the door, and placing the light on the mantel-shelf, stood before the astonished Algernon, like some memory-haunting phantom of the past.

Yes. It was Elinor--his Elinor; but not a vestige remained of the grace and beauty that had won his youthful heart. So great was the change produced by years of hopeless misery, that Algernon, in the haggard and careworn being before him, did not at first recognise the object of his early love. Painfully conscious of this humiliating fact, Elinor at length said--"I do not wonder that Mr. Algernon Hurdlestone has forgotten me; I once was Elinor Wildegrave."

A gush of tears--of bitter, heart-felt, agonizing tears--followed this avowal, and her whole frame trembled with the overpowering emotions which filled her mind.

Too much overcome by surprise to speak, Algernon took her hand, and for a few minutes looked earnestly in her altered face. What a mournful history of mental and physical suffering was written there! That look of tender regard recalled the blighted hopes and wasted affections of other years; and the wretched Elinor, unable to control her grief, bowed her head upon her hands, and groaned aloud.

"Oh, Elinor!--and is it thus we meet? You might have been happy with me.

How could you, for the paltry love of gain, become the wife of Mark Hurdlestone?"

"Alas, Algernon! necessity left me no alternative in my unhappy choice.

I was deceived--cruelly deceived. Yet would to G.o.d that I had begged my bread, and dared every hardship--been spurned from the presence of the rich, and endured the contempt of the poor, before I consented to become his wife."

"But what strange infatuation induced you to throw away your own happiness, and ruin mine? Did not my letters constantly breathe the most ardent affection? Were not the sums of money constantly remitted in them more than sufficient to supply all your wants?"

"Algernon, I never received the sums you name, not even a letter from you after the third year of our separation."

"Can this be true?" exclaimed Algernon, grasping her arm. "Is it possible that this statement can be true?"

"As true as that I now stand before you a betrayed, forsaken, heart-broken woman."

"Poor Elinor; how can I look into that sad face, and believe you false?"

"G.o.d bless you, my once dear friend, for these kind words. You know not the peace they convey to my aching heart. Oh, Algernon, my sufferings have been dreadful; and there were times when I ceased to know those sufferings. They called me mad, but I was happy then. My dreams were of you. I thought myself your wife, and my misery as Mark's helpmate was forgotten. When sanity returned, the horrible consciousness that you believed me a heartless, ungrateful, avaricious woman, was the worst pang of all. Oh, how I longed to throw myself at your feet, and tell you the whole dreadful truth. I would not have insulted you to-night with my presence, or wounded your peace with a recapitulation of my wrongs, but I could no longer live and bear the imputation of such guilt. When you have heard my sad story, you will, I am sure, not only pity, but forgive me."

With feelings of unalloyed indignation, Algernon listened to the iniquitous manner in which Elinor had been deceived and betrayed, and when she concluded her sad relation, he fiercely declared that he would return to the sick man's chamber--reproach him with his crimes, and revoke his forgiveness.

"Leave the sinner to his G.o.d!" exclaimed the terrified Elinor, placing herself before the door. "For my sake--for your own sake, pity and forgive him. Remember that, monster though he be, he is my husband and your brother, the father of the unfortunate child whose birth I antic.i.p.ate with such sad forebodings."

"Before that period arrives," said Algernon, with deep commiseration.

"Mark will have paid the forfeit of his crimes, and your child will be the heir of immense wealth."

"You believe him to be a dying man," said Elinor. "He will live. A change has come over him for the better; the surgeon, this morning, gave strong hopes of his recovery. Sinner that I am, if he could but have looked into my heart he would have been shocked at the pain that this communication conveyed. Algernon, I wished his death. G.o.d has reversed the awful sentence; it is the mother, not the father of the unhappy infant, that will be called hence. Heaven knows that I am weary of life--that I would willingly die, could I but take the poor babe with me; should it, however, survive its unfortunate mother, promise me, Algernon, by the love of our early years, to be a guardian and protector to my child."

She endeavored to sink at his feet, but Algernon prevented her.

"Your request is granted, Elinor, and for the dear mother's sake, I promise to cherish the infant as my own."

"It is enough. I thank my G.o.d for this great mercy; and now that I have been permitted to clear my character, leave me, Algernon, and take my blessing with you. Only remember in your prayers that such a miserable wretch as Elinor Wildegrave still lives."

The violent ringing of the miser's bell hurried her away. Algernon remained for some minutes rooted to the spot, his heart still heaving with the sense of intolerable wrong. Elinor did not again appear; and descending to what was once the Servants' Hall, he bade Ruth summon his attendants, and slipping a guinea into that delighted damsel's hand, he bade a long adieu to the home of his ancestors.

CHAPTER VI.

Oh, what a change--a goodly change!

I, too, am changed. I feel my heart expand; My spirit, long bowed down with misery, Grow light and buoyant 'mid these blessed scenes.--S.M.

As Elinor predicted, the miser slowly recovered, and for a few months his severe illness had a salutary effect upon his mind and temper. He was even inclined to treat his wife with more respect; and when informed by Dr. Moore of the birth of his son, he received the intelligence with less impatience than she had antic.i.p.ated. But this gleam of sunshine did not last long. With returning strength his old monomania returned; and he began loudly to complain of the expense which his long illness had incurred, and to rave at the extortion of doctors and nurses; declaring the necessity of making every possible retrenchment, in order to replace the money so lost. Elinor did not live long enough to endure these fresh privations. She sunk into a lingering decline, and before her little boy could lisp her name, the friendly turf had closed over his heart-broken mother.

Small was the grief expressed by the miser for the death of his gentle partner. To avoid all unnecessary expense, she was buried in the churchyard, instead of occupying a place in the family vault; and no stone was erected during the life of the squire, to her memory.

It was a matter of surprise to the whole neighborhood that the young child survived his mother. His father left Nature to supply her place, and, but for the doting affection of Ruth, who came every night and morning to wash and feed him, out of pure affection to her dear mistress, the little Anthony would soon have occupied a place by his ill-fated mother.

The Squire never cast a thought upon his half-clad half-famished babe without bitterly cursing him as an additional and useless expense.

Anthony was a quiet and sweet-tempered little fellow; the school in which he was educated taught him to endure with patience trials that would have broken the spirit of a less neglected child.

Except the kindness which he received from Ruth, who was now married to a laborer, and the mother of children of her own, he was a stranger to sympathy and affection; and he did not expect to receive from strangers the tenderness which he never experienced at home.

The mind of a child, like the mind of a grown person, requires excitement: and, as Anthony could neither read nor write, and his father seldom deigned to notice him, he was forced to seek abroad for those amus.e.m.e.nts which he could not obtain at home. By the time he had completed his eighth year he was to be seen daily mingling with the poor boys in the village, with face unwashed and hair uncombed, and clothes more ragged and dirty than those of his indigent a.s.sociates.

One fine summer afternoon, while engaged in the exciting game of pitch-and-toss, a handsome elderly gentleman rode up to the group of boys, and asked the rosy ragged Anthony if he would run before him and open the gate that led to the Hall.

"Wait awhile," cried the little fellow, adroitly poising the halfpenny that he was about to throw, on the tip of his finger. "If I win by this toss I will show you the way to my father's."

"Your father!" said the gentleman, surveying attentively the ragged child. "Are you the gardener's son?"

"No, no," replied the boy, laughing and winking to his companions; "not quite so bad as that. My father is a rich man, though he acts like a poor one, and lets me, his only son, run about the streets without shoes. But, did I belong to skin-flint Pike, instead of one slice of bread to my milk and water, I might chance to get none. My father is the old Squire, and my name is Anthony Marcus Hurdlestone."

"His father and grandfather's names combined--names of evil omen have they been to me," sighed the stranger, who was, indeed, no other than Algernon Hurdlestone, who for eight long years had forgotten the solemn promise given to Elinor, that he would be a friend and guardian to her child. Nor would he now have remembered the circ.u.mstance, had not his own spoilt G.o.dfrey been earnestly teasing him for a playmate. "Be a good boy, G.o.dfrey, and I will bring you home a cousin to be a brother and playfellow," he said, as his conscience smote him for this long neglected duty; and ordering his groom to saddle his horse, he rode over to Oak Hall to treat with the miser for his son.

"Alas!" he thought, "can this neglected child be the son of my beautiful Elinor, and heir to the richest commoner in England? But the boy resembles my own dear G.o.dfrey, and, for Elinor's sake, I will try and rescue him from the barbarous indifference of such a father."

Then, telling the bare-footed urchin that he was his uncle Algernon, and that he should come to Norgood Hall, and live with him, and have plenty to eat and drink, and pretty clothes to wear, and a nice pony of his own to ride, and a sweet little fellow of his own age to play with, he lifted the astonished and delighted child before him on the saddle, and was about to proceed to the Hall.