Stranica 254 [254]
OCR
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 otherwise—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 because 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. Brownlow rousing himself, “a brother, the whisper of whose name in your ear, when I came behind you in the street, was in itself almost enough to make you accompany 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 family pride and the most sordid and narrowest of all ambition forced your unhappy father, when a mere boy, you were the soe and most unnatural issue," returned Mr. Brownlow, “T don’t care for hard names, interrupted 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 loathing, 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. forgotten 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 actions assures me that you have never forgotten it, or cease to think of it with bitterness,” 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 survived. They were both daughters; one
