Chapter 53

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_ CHAPTER LIII

Lucr.--What has thy father done?
Beat.--What have I done? Am I not innocent?--The Cenci.

Tam twilight was darkening slowly over a room of noble dimensions and costly fashion. Although it was the height of summer, a low fire burned in the grate; and, stretching his hands over the feeble flame, an old man of about sixty sat in an armchair curiously carved with armorial bearings. The dim yet fitful flame cast its upward light upon a countenance, stern, haughty, and repellent, where the passions of youth and manhood had dug themselves graves in many an iron line and deep furrow: the forehead, though high, was narrow and compressed; the brows sullenly overhung the eyes; and the nose, which was singularly prominent and decided, age had sharpened, and brought out, as it were, till it gave a stubborn and very forbidding expression to the more sunken features over which it rose with exaggerated dignity. Two bottles of wine, a few dried preserves, and a water glass, richly chased, and ornamented with gold, showed that the inmate of the apartment had passed the hour of the principal repast, and his loneliness at a time usually social seemed to indicate that few olive branches were accustomed to overshadow his table.

The windows of the dining-room reached to the ground, and without the closing light just enabled one to see a thick copse of wood, which, at a very brief interval of turf, darkened immediately opposite the house. While the old man was thus bending over the fire and conning his evening contemplations, a figure stole from the copse I have mentioned, and, approaching the window, looked pryingly into the apartment; then with a noiseless hand it opened the spring of the casement, which was framed on a peculiar and old-fashioned construction, that required a practised and familiar touch, entered the apartment, and crept on, silent and unperceived by the inhabitant of the room, till it paused and stood motionless, with folded arms, scarce three steps behind the high back of the old man's chair.

In a few minutes the latter moved from his position, and slowly rose; the abruptness with which he turned, brought the dark figure of the intruder full and suddenly before him: he started back, and cried in an alarmed tone, "Who is there?"

The stranger made no reply.

The old man, in a voice in which anger and pride mingled with fear, repeated the question. The figure advanced, dropped the cloak in which it was wrapped, and presenting the features of Clarence Linden, said, in a low but clear tone,--

"Your son."

The old man dropped his hold of the bell-rope, which he had just before seized, and leaned as if for support against the oak wainscot; Clarence approached.

"Yes!" said he, mournfully, "your unfortunate, your offending, but your guiltless son. More than five years I have been banished from your house; I have been thrown, while yet a boy, without friends, without guidance, without name, upon the wide world, and to the mercy of chance. I come now to you as a man, claiming no assistance, and uttering no reproach, but to tell you that him whom an earthly father rejected God has preserved; that without one unworthy or debasing act I have won for myself the friends who support and the wealth which dignifies life,--since it renders it independent. Through all the disadvantages I have struggled against I have preserved unimpaired my honour, and unsullied my conscience; you have disowned, but you might have claimed me without shame. Father, these hands are clean!"

A strong and evident emotion shook the old man's frame. He raised himself to his full height, which was still tall and commanding, and in a voice, the natural harshness of which was rendered yet more repellent by passion, replied, "Boy! your presumption is insufferable. What to me is your wretched fate? Go, go, go to your miserable mother: find her out; claim kindred there; live together, toil together, rot together, but come not to me! disgrace to my house, ask not admittance to my affections; the law may give you my name, but sooner would I be torn piecemeal than own your right to it. If you want money, name the sum, take it: cut up my fortune to shreds, seize my property, revel on it; but come not here. This house is sacred; pollute it not: I disown you; I discard you; I,--ay, I detest,--I loathe you!"

And with these words, which came forth as if heaved from the inmost heart of the speaker, who shook with the fury he endeavoured to stifle, he fell back into his chair, and fixed his eyes, which glared fearfully through the increasing darkness upon Linden, who stood high, erect, and sorrowfully before him.

"Alas, my lord!" said Clarence, with mournful bitterness, "have not the years which have seared your form and whitened your locks brought some meekness to your rancour, some mercy to your injustice, for one whose only crime against you seems to have been his birth. But I said I came not to reproach, nor do I. Many a bitter hour, many a pang of shame and mortification and misery, which have made scars in my heart that will never wear away, my wrongs have cost me; but let them pass. Let them not swell your future and last account whenever it be required. I am about to leave this country, with a heavy and foreboding heart; we may never meet again on earth. I have no longer any wish, any chance, of resuming the name you have deprived me of. I shall never thrust myself on your relationship or cross your view. Lavish your wealth upon him whom you have placed so immeasurably above me in your affections. But I have not deserved your curse, Father; give me your blessing, and let me depart in peace."

"Peace! and what peace have I had? what respite from gnawing shame, the foulness and leprosy of humiliation and reproach, since--since--? But this is not your fault, you say: no, no,--it is another's; and you are only the mark of my stigma; my disgrace, not its perpetrator. Ha! a nice distinction, truly. My blessing you say! Come, kneel; kneel, boy, and have it!"

Clarence approached, and stood bending and bareheaded before his father, but he knelt not.

"Why do you not kneel?" cried the old man, vehemently.

"It is the attitude of the injurer, not of the injured!" said Clarence, firmly.

"Injured! insolent reprobate, is it not I who am injured? Do you not read it in my brow,--here, here?" and the old man struck his clenched hand violently against his temples. "Was I not injured?" he continued, sinking his voice into a key unnaturally low; "did I not trust implicitly? did I not give up my heart without suspicion? was I not duped deliciously? was I not kind enough, blind enough, fool enough and was I not betrayed,--damnably, filthily betrayed? But that was no injury. Was not my old age turned into a sapless tree, a poisoned spring? Were not my days made a curse to me, and my nights a torture? Was I not, am I not, a mock and a by-word, and a miserable, impotent, unavenged old man? Injured! But this is no injury! Boy, boy, what are your wrongs to mine?"

"Father!" cried Clarence, deprecatingly, "I am not the cause of your wrongs: is it just that the innocent should suffer for the guilty?"

"Speak not in that voice!" cried the old man, "that voice!--fie, fie on it. Hence! away! away, boy! why tarry you? My son! and have that voice? Pooh, you are not my son. Ha! ha!--my son?"

"What am I, then?" said Clarence, soothingly: for he was shocked and grieved, rather than irritated by a wrath which partook so strongly of insanity.

"I will tell you," cried the father, "I will tell you what you are: you are my curse!"

"Farewell!" said Clarence, much agitated, and retiring to the window by which he had entered; "may your heart never smite you for your cruelty! Farewell! may the blessing you have withheld from me be with you!"

"Stop! stay!" cried the father; for his fury was checked for one moment, and his nature, fierce as it was, relented: but Clarence was already gone, and the miserable old man was left alone to darkness, and solitude, and the passions which can make a hell of the human heart! _

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