The Lamplighter Part 55

"My first thought had been that they would naturally seek my employer, to learn, if possible, the cause of my prolonged absence; and on finding my home empty I had hastened in search of him. But he too had, within a recent period, fallen a victim to the prevailing distemper. His place of business was closed and the establishment broken up. I continued my inquiries until hope died within me. I was told that scarce an inmate of the fatal neighbourhood where I had left my family had escaped; and convinced, finally, that my fate was still pursuing me with an unmitigated wrath, of which this last blow was but a single expression, that I might have foreseen and expected, I madly agreed to work my pa.s.sage in the first vessel which promised me an escape from scenes so fraught with harrowing recollections.

"And now commenced a course of wretched wandering. With varied ends in view, following strongly contrasted employments, and with fluctuating fortune, I have travelled over the world. My feet have trodden almost every land. I have sailed on every sea and breathed the air of every clime. I am familiar with the city and the wilderness, the civilized man and the savage. I have learned the sad lesson that peace is nowhere, and friendship, for the most part, but a name.

"Once during my wanderings I visited the home of my boyhood. Unseen and unknown I trod a familiar ground and gazed on familiar, though time-worn faces. I stood at the window of Mr. Graham's library; saw the contented, happy countenance of Emily--happy in her blindness and her forgetfulness of the past. A young girl sat near the fire endeavouring to read by its flickering light. I knew not then what gave such a charm to her thoughtful features, nor why my eyes dwelt upon them with a rare pleasure; for there was no voice to proclaim to the father's heart that he looked on the face of his child. I am not sure that the strong impulse which prompted me then to enter, acknowledge my ident.i.ty, and beg Emily to speak to me a word of forgiveness, might not have prevailed over the dread of her displeasure; but Mr. Graham at the moment appeared, cold and implacable as ever; I gazed an instant, then fled from the house.

"Although in the various labours which I was compelled to undertake to earn a decent maintenance, I had more than once met with such success as to give me temporary independence, and to enable me to indulge in expensive travelling, I had never ama.s.sed a fortune; indeed, I had not cared to do so, since I had no use for money, except to employ it in the gratification of my immediate wants. Accident, however, at last thrust upon me a wealth which I could scarcely be said to have sought.

"After a year spent in the wilderness of the west, amid adventures the relation of which now would seem to you almost incredible, I gradually continued my retreat across the country, and after encountering innumerable hardships, which had no other object than the indulgence of my vagrant habits, I found myself in that land which has recently been termed the land of promise, but which has proved to many a greedy emigrant a land of deceit. For me, however, who sought it not, it showered gold. I was among the earliest discoverers of its treasure-vaults--one of the most successful, though the least laborious, of the seekers after gain. Nor was it merely, or indeed chiefly, at the mines that fortune favoured me. With the first results of my labours I purchased an immense tract of land, little dreaming at the time that those desert acres were destined to become the streets and squares of a great and prosperous city. So that without effort, almost without my own knowledge, I achieved the greatness which springs from untold wealth.

But this was not all. The blessed accident which led me to this golden land was the means of disclosing a pearl of price--a treasure in comparison with which California and all its mines shrink, to my mind, into insignificance. You know how the war-cry went forth to all lands, and men of every name and nation brought their arms to the field of fortune. Famine came next, with disease and death in its train; and many a man, hurrying on to reap the golden harvest, fell by the wayside, without once seeing the waving of the yellow grain.

"Half scorning the greedy rabble, I could not refuse in this, my time of prosperity, to minister to the wants of such as fell in the way; and now for once my humanity found its own reward. A miserable, ragged, half-starved, and apparently dying man crept to the door of my tent and asked in a feeble voice for charity. I did not refuse to admit him into my narrow domicile and to relieve his sufferings. He was the victim of want rather than disease, and, his hunger appeased, the savage brutality of his coa.r.s.e nature soon manifested itself in the dogged indifference with which he received a stranger's bounty and the gross ingrat.i.tude with which he abused my hospitality. A few days served to restore him to his strength; and then, anxious to dismiss my visitor, whose conduct had already excited suspicions of his good faith, I gave him warning that he must depart; at the same time placing in his hand a sufficient amount of gold to insure his support until he could reach the mines which were his professed destination.

"He appeared dissatisfied, and begged permission to remain until the next morning, as the night was near, and he had no shelter provided. To this I made no objection, little imagining how base a serpent I was harbouring. At midnight I was awakened from my light and easily-disturbed sleep to find my lodger busily engaged in rifling my property and preparing to take an unceremonious leave of my dwelling.

Nor did his villainy end here. Upon my seizing and charging him with the theft, he s.n.a.t.c.hed a weapon and attempted the life of his benefactor.

But I was prepared to ward off the stroke, and succeeded in a few moments in subduing my desperate antagonist. He now crouched at my feet in such abject submission as might be expected from so vile a knave.

Well might he tremble with fear; for the Lynch-law was then in full force for criminals like him. I should probably have handed the traitor over to his fate; but, ere I had time to do so, he held out to my cupidity a bribe so tempting that I forgot the deservings of my knavish guest in the eagerness with which I bartered his freedom as the price of its possession.

"He freely emptied his pockets at my bidding, and restored to me the gold, for the loss of which I never should have repined. As the base metal rolled at my feet, there glittered among the coins a jewel as truly _mine_ as any of the rest, but which, as it met my sight, filled me with greater surprise than if it had been a new-fallen star.

"It was a ring of peculiar design and workmanship, which had once been the property of my father, and after his death had been worn by my mother until the time of her marriage with Mr. Graham, when it was transferred to myself. I had ever prized it as a precious heirloom, and it was one of the few valuables which I took with me when I fled from my step-father's house. This ring, with a watch and some other trinkets, had been left in the possession of Lucy when I parted with her at Rio, and the sight of it once more seemed to me like a voice from the grave.

I eagerly sought to learn from my prisoner the source whence it had been obtained, but he maintained an obstinate silence. It was now my turn to plead; and at length the promise of instant permission to depart, 'unwhipped by justice,' at the conclusion of his tale, wrung from him a secret fraught to me with vital interest.

"This man was Stephen Grant, the son of my old friend Ben. He had heard from his father's lips the story of your mother's misfortunes; and the circ.u.mstance of a violent quarrel which arose between Ben and his vixen wife at the young stranger's introduction to their household impressed the tale upon his recollection. From his account it appeared that my long-continued absence from Lucy, during the time of my illness, was construed by her honest but distrustful counsellor and friend into cruel desertion. The poor girl, to whom my early life was all a mystery which she had never shared, and to whom much of my character and conduct was inexplicable, began soon to feel convinced of the correctness of the old sailor's suspicions and fears. She had already applied to my employer for information concerning me; but he, who had heard of the pestilence to which I was exposed, and fully believed me to be among the dead, forbore to distress her by a communication of his belief, and replied to her questionings with an obscurity which served to give new force to her hitherto uncertain surmises. She positively refused, however, to leave our home; and, clinging to the hope of my final return thither, remained where I had left her until the terrible fever began its ravages. Her small stock of money was by this time consumed; her strength both of mind and body gave way; and Ben, becoming every day more confident that the simple-hearted Lucy had been betrayed and forsaken, persuaded her at last to sell her furniture, and with the sum thus raised flee the infected country before it should be too late. She sailed for Boston in the same vessel in which Ben shipped before the mast; and on reaching that port her humble protector took her to the only home he had to offer.

"There your mother's sad fate found a mournful termination; and you, her infant child, were left to the mercy of the cruel woman who, but for consciousness of guilt and her fear of its betrayal, would doubtless have thrust you at once from the miserable shelter her dwelling afforded. This guilt consisted in a foul robbery committed by Nan and her infamous son upon your innocent mother, now rendered, through her feebleness, an easy prey to their rapacity. The fruits of this vile theft, however, were not partic.i.p.ated in by Nan, whose promising son so far exceeded her in duplicity and craft that, having obtained possession of the jewels for the alleged purpose of bartering them away, he reserved such as he thought proper, and appropriated to his own use the proceeds of the remainder.

"The antique ring which I now hold in my possession, the priceless relic of a mournful tragedy, would have shared the fate of the rest but for its apparent worthlessness. To the luckless Stephen, however, it proved at last a temporary salvation from the felon's doom which must finally await that hardened sinner; and to me--ah! to _me_--it remains to be proved whether the knowledge of the secrets to which it has been the key will bless my future life or darken it with a heavier curse!

Notwithstanding the information thus gained, and the exciting idea to which it gave rise, that my child might be still living and finally restored to me, I could not yet feel any security that these daring hopes were not destined to be crushed in their infancy, and that my newly-found treasure might not again elude my eager search. To my inquiries concerning you, Gertrude, Stephen, who had no longer any motives for concealing the truth, declared his inability to acquaint me with any particulars of a later period than the time of your residence with Trueman Flint. He knew that the lamplighter had taken you to his home, and was accidentally made aware, a few months later, of your continuance in that place of refuge from the old man's being such a fool as to call upon his mother and voluntarily make compensation for the injury done to her windows in your outburst of childish revenge.

"I could learn nothing more; but it was enough to inspire all my energies to recover my child. I hastened to Boston, had no difficulty in tracing your benefactor, and, though he had been long dead, found many a truthful witness to his well-known virtues. Nor, when I asked for his adopted child, did I find her forgotten in the quarter of the city where she had pa.s.sed her childhood. More than one grateful voice was ready to respond to my questioning, and to proclaim the cause they had to remember the girl who, having experienced the trials of poverty, made it both her duty and her pleasure of prosperity to administer to the wants of a neighbourhood whose sufferings she had aforetime both witnessed and shared. But, alas! to complete the sum of sad vicissitudes with which my unhappy destiny was already crowded, at the moment when I was a.s.sured of my daughter's safety, and my ears were greeted with the sweet praises that accompanied the mention of her name, there fell upon me like a thunderbolt the startling words, 'She is now the adopted child of sweet Emily Graham, the blind girl.'

"Oh, strange coincidence! Oh, righteous retribution! which, at the very moment when I was picturing to myself the consummation of my cherished hopes, crushed me once more beneath the iron hand of a destiny that would not be cheated of its victim! My child, my only child, bound by the grat.i.tude and love of years to one in whose face I scarcely dared to look, lest my soul should be withered by the expression of condemnation which the consciousness of my presence would inspire!

"The seas and lands which had hitherto divided us seemed not, to my tortured fancy, so insurmountable a barrier between myself and my long-lost daughter as the dreadful reflection that the only earthly being whose love I had hoped in time to win had been reared from her infancy in a household where my name was a thing abhorred.

"Stung to the quick by the harrowing thought that all my prayers, entreaties, and explanations could never undo her early impressions, and that all my labours and all my love could never call forth other than a cold and formal recognition of my claims, I half resolved to leave my child in ignorance of her birth and never seek to look upon her face, rather than subject her to the terrible necessity of choosing between the friend whom she loved and the father from whose crimes she had learned to shrink with horror and dread. After struggling long with contending emotions, I resolved to make one effort to see and recognize you, Gertrude, and at the same time guard myself from discovery. I trusted to the change which time had wrought in my appearance to conceal me effectually from all eyes but those which had known me intimately, and therefore approached Mr. Graham's house without the slightest fear of betrayal. I found it empty and apparently deserted.

"I now directed my steps to the well-remembered counting-house, and here learned from the clerk that the whole household, including yourself, had been pa.s.sing the winter in Paris, and were at present at a German watering-place. Without further inquiry I took the steamer to Liverpool, thence hastened to Baden-Baden--a trifling excursion in the eyes of a traveller of my experience. Without risking myself in the presence of my step-father, I took an early opportunity to obtain an introduction to Mrs. Graham, and, thanks to her unreserved conversation, learned that Emily and yourself were left in Boston, and were under the care of Dr. Jeremy.

"On my return voyage, immediately undertaken, I made the acquaintance of Dr. Gryseworth and his daughter--an acquaintance which proved of great value in facilitating my intercourse with yourself. Once more arrived in Boston, Dr. Jeremy's house looked as if closed for the season. A man making some repairs about the door-step informed me that the family were absent from town. He was not aware of the direction they had taken, but the servants were at home and might acquaint me with their route. Upon this I boldly rung the door-bell. It was answered by Mrs. Ellis, who nearly twenty years ago had cruelly sounded in my ears the death-knell of all my hopes in life. I saw that my incognito was secure, as she met my piercing glance without shrinking or taking flight, as I fully expected she would do at sight of the ghost of my former self.

"She replied to my queries as coolly as she had done during the day to some dozen of the doctor's disappointed patients--telling me that he had left that morning for New York, and would not be back for two or three weeks. Nothing could have been more favourable to my wishes than the chance thus afforded of overtaking your party and, as a travelling companion, introducing myself gradually to your notice.

"You know how this purpose was effected; how, now in the rear, and now in advance, I nevertheless maintained a constant proximity to your footsteps. To add to the comfort of yourself and Emily, to learn your plans, forestall your wishes, secure to your use the best of rooms, and bribe to your service the most devoted of attendants--I spared neither pains, trouble, nor expense. For much of the freedom with which I approached you and made myself an occasional member of your circle, I was indebted to Emily's blindness; for I could not doubt that otherwise time and its changes would fail to conceal from her my ident.i.ty, and I should meet with a premature recognition. Nor until the final act of the drama, when death stared us all in the face, and concealment became impossible, did I once trust my voice to her hearing.

"How closely, during those few weeks, I watched and weighed your every word and action, seeking even to read your thoughts in your face, none can tell whose acuteness is not sharpened and vivified by motives so all-engrossing as mine; and who can measure the anguish of the fond father who day by day learned to worship his child with a more absorbing idolatry, and yet dared not clasp her to his heart?

"Especially when I saw you the victim of grief and trouble did I long to a.s.sert a claim to your confidence; and more than once my self-control would have given way but for the dread inspired by the gentle Emily--gentle to all but me. I could not brook the thought that with my confession I should cease to be the trusted friend and become the abhorred parent. I preferred to maintain my distant and unacknowledged guardianship of my child rather than that she should behold in me the dreaded tyrant who might tear her from the home from which he himself had been driven.

"And so I kept silent; and sometimes present to your sight, but still oftener hid from view, I hovered around your path until that dreadful day, which you will long remember, when, everything forgotten but the safety of yourself and Emily, my heart spoke out and betrayed my secret.

And now you know all--my follies, misfortunes, sufferings, and sins!

"Can you love me, Gertrude? It is all I ask. I seek not to steal you from your present home--to rob poor Emily of a child whom she values perhaps as much as I. The only balm my wounded spirit seeks is the simple, guileless confession that you will at least try to love your father.

"I have no hope in this world, and none, alas! beyond, but in yourself.

Could you feel my heart now beating against its prison bars, you would realize, as I do, that unless soothed it will burst ere long. Will you soothe it by your pity, my sweet, my darling child? Will you bless it by your love? If so, come, clasp your arms around me, and whisper to me words of peace. Within sight of your window, in the old summer-house at the end of the garden, with straining ear, I wait listening for your footsteps."

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE REUNION.

As Gertrude's eyes, after greedily devouring the ma.n.u.script, fell upon its closing words she sprang to her feet, and the next instant she has run down the staircase, run out of the hall door, and approached the summer-house from the opposite entrance to that at which Mr. Amory, with folded arms and a fixed countenance, is watching for her coming.

So noiseless is her light step, that before he is conscious of her presence, she has thrown herself upon his bosom and, her whole frame trembling with the vehemence of long-suppressed agitation, burst into a torrent of pa.s.sionate tears, interrupted only by frequent sobs, so deep and so exhausting that her father, with his arms folded around her, and clasping her so closely to his heart that she feels its irregular beating, endeavours to still the tempest of her grief, whispering softly, as to an infant, "Hush! hush, my child! you frighten me!"

And, gradually soothed by his gentle caresses, her excitement subsides, and she is able to lift her face to his and smile upon him through her tears. They stand thus for many minutes in a silence that speaks far more than words. Wrapped in the folds of his heavy cloak to preserve her from the evening air, and still encircled in his strong embrace, Gertrude feels that their union of spirit is not less complete; while the long-banished man, who for years has never felt the sweet influence of a kindly smile, glows with a melting tenderness which hardening solitude has not the power to subdue. At length Mr. Amory, lifting his daughter's face and gazing into her glistening eyes, while he gently strokes the disordered hair from her forehead, asks, in an accent of touching appeal, "You will love me, then?"

"Oh, I do! I do!" exclaimed Gertrude, sealing his lips with kisses. His. .h.i.therto unmoved countenance relaxes at this fervent a.s.surance. He bows his head upon her shoulder, and the strong man weeps. Her self-possession all restored, at seeing him thus overcome, Gertrude places her hand in his, and startles him from his position by the firm and decided tone with which she whispers, "Come!"

"Whither?" exclaims he, looking up in surprise.

"To Emily."

With a half shudder and a mournful shake of the head, he retreats instead of advancing in the direction in which she would lead him--"I cannot."

"But she waits for you; she, too, weeps and longs and prays for your coming."

"Emily!--you know not what you are saying!"

"Indeed, my father; it is you who are deceived. Emily does not hate you; she never did. She believed you dead long ago; but your voice, though heard but once, has half robbed her of her reason so entirely does she love you still. Come, and she will tell you, better than I can, what a wretched mistake has made martyrs of you both."

Emily, who had heard the voice of Willie Sullivan, as he bade Gertrude farewell on the door-step, and rightly conjectured that it was he, forbore making any inquiries for the absent girl at the tea-table, and thinking it probable that she preferred to remain undisturbed, retired to the sitting-room at the conclusion of the meal, where (as Mr. Graham sought the library) she remained alone for more than an hour.

The refined taste which always made Emily's dress an index to the soft purity of her character was never more strikingly developed than when she wore, as on the present occasion, a flowing robe of white cashmere, fastened at the waist with a silken girdle, and with full drapery sleeves, whose lining and border of snowy silk could only have been rivalled by the delicate hand and wrist which had escaped from beneath their folds, and somewhat nervously played with the crimson fringe of a shawl, worn in the chilly dining-room, and thrown carelessly over the arm of the sofa. Supporting herself upon her elbow, she sat with her head bent forward, and apparently deep in thought. Once Mrs. Prime opened the door, looked around the room in search of the housekeeper, and, not finding her, retreated, saying to herself, "Law! dear sakes alive! I wish she only had eyes now, to see how like a picter she looks!"

A low, quick bark from the house-dog attracted her attention, and steps were heard crossing the piazza. Before they had gained the door, Emily was standing upright, straining her ear to catch the sound of every footfall; and, when Gertrude and Mr. Amory entered, she looked more like a statue than a living figure, as with clasped hands, parted lips, and one foot slightly advanced, she silently awaited their approach. One glance at Emily's face, another at that of her agitated father, and Gertrude was gone. She saw the completeness of their mutual recognition, and with instinctive delicacy, forbore to mar by her presence the sacredness of so holy an interview. As the door closed upon her retreating figure, Emily parted her clasped hands, stretched them forth into the dim vacancy, and murmured, "Philip!"

He seized them between both of his, and with one step forward, fell upon his knees. As he did so, the half-fainting Emily dropped upon the seat.

Mr. Amory bowed his head upon the hands which, still held tightly between his own, now rested on her lap, and, hiding his face upon her slender fingers, tremblingly uttered her name.

"The grave has given up its dead!" exclaimed Emily. "My G.o.d, I thank thee!" and she flung her arms around his neck, rested her head upon his bosom, and whispered, in a voice half choked with emotion, "Philip!--dear, dear Philip! am I dreaming, or have you come back again?"

She and Philip had loved each other in their childhood; before that childhood was pa.s.sed they had parted; and as children they met again.

During the lapse of many years she had lived among the cherished memories of the past, she had been safe from worldly contagion, and had retained all the guileless simplicity of girlhood--all the freshness of her spring-time; and Philip, who had never willingly bound himself by any ties save those imposed upon him by necessity, felt his boyhood come rushing upon him, as, with Emily's soft hand resting on his head, she blessed Heaven for his safe return. She could not see how time had silvered his hair and sobered and shaded the face that she loved.