Page 254 [254]
192
Monks, throwing down his hat and cloak,
“from my father’s oldest friend."
“Tt was because I was your father’s
oldest friend, young man,” returned Mr.
Brownlow: ‘It is because the hopes and
wishes of young and happy years were
bound up with him and that fair creature
of his blood and kindred, who rejoined her
God in youth and left me here a solitary
lonely man—it is because he knelt with
me beside his only sister’s death-bed,
when he was yet a boy, on the morning
that would—but Heaven willed it other¬
wise—have made her my young wife—
it is because my seared heart clung to
him from that time forth, through all his
trials and errors, till he died—it is be¬
cause old. recollections and associations
fill my heart, and even the sight of you
brings with it old thoughts of him—it is
all these things that move me to treat you
gently now.—Yes, Edward Leeford, even
now—and blush for your unworthiness,
who bear the name.”
s What has the name to do with it?"
asked the other after contemplating, half
in silence and half in dogged wonder, the
agitation of his companion. " What is
the name to me?”
“ Nothing,” replied Mr. Brownlow,
“nothing to you. But it was her’s, and
even at this distance of time, brings back
to me, an old man, the glow and thrill
which I once felt, only to hear it repeated
Y a stranger. Iam very glad you have
changed it—very—very.”
c This is all mighty fine,” said Monks
, (to retain his assumed designation) after
a long silence, during which he had jerked
himself, in sullen defiance, to and fro, and
Mr. Brownlow had sat shading his face
with his hand. " But what do you want
witl: me ?" |
6 You have a brother,” said Mr. Brown¬
low rousing himself, “a brother, the whis¬
per of whose name in your ear, when I
came behind you in the street, was in
itself almost enough to make you accom¬
pany me hither in wonder and alarm.”
s] have no brother,” replied Monks.
* You know I was an only child. Why
do you talk to me of brothers? You know
that as well as I.”
* Attend to what I do know and you
may not,” said Mr. Brownlow. “I shall
interest you bye and bye. I know that
of the wretched marriage, into which fa¬
mily pride and the most sordid and nar¬
rowest of all ambition forced your un¬
happy father, when a mere boy, you
were the soe and most unnatural issue,"
returned Mr. Brownlow,
“T don’t care for hard names, inter¬
rupted Monks, with a jeering laugh.
“ You know the fact, and that’s enough
for me.”
“But I also know,” pursued the old
gentleman, “ the misery, the slow torture,
the protracted anguish of that ill-assorted
union: I know how listlessly and wearily
each of that wretched pair dragged on
their heavy chain through a world that
was poisoned to them both. I know how
cold formalities were succeeded by open
taunts; how indifference gave place to
dislike, dislike to hate, and hate to loath¬
ing, until at last they wrenched the
clanking bond asunder, and retiring a
wide space apart, carried each a galling
fragment of which nothing but death
could break the rivets, to hide it in new
society, beneath the gayest looks they
could assume. Your mother succeeded ;
she forgot it soon—but it rusted and
cankered at your father’s heart for
years."
“Well, they were separated," said
Monks, " and what of that ?”
‘When they had been separated for
some time,” returned Mr. Brownlow,
‘and your mother, wholly. given up to
continental frivolities, had utterly. forgot¬
ten the young husband, ten good years
her junior, who with prospects blighted
lingered on at home, he fell among new
friends ; this circumstance you know al
ready ”
“ Not I,” said Monks, turning away his
eyes, and beating his foot upon the ground,
as a man who is determined to deny
everything, " Not I.”
“ Your manner no less than your ac¬
tions assures me that you have never for¬
gotten it, or cease to think of it with bit¬
terness,” returned Mr. Brownlow. “1
speak of fifteen years ago, when you were
not more than eleven years old, and your
father but one-and-thirty—for he was, l
repeat, a boy when Ais father ordered him
to marry. Must I go back to events that
cast a shade upon the memory of your
parent, or will you spare it and disclose
to me the truth ?”
“T have nothing to disclose,” rejoined
Monks, in evident confusion. " You must
talk on, if you will,"
c These new friends, then,” said Mr.
Brownlow, “ were a naval] officer retired
from active service, whose wife had died
some half year before, and left him with
two children—there had been more, but
of all their family happily but two sur¬
vived. They were both daughters; one