The outward gate closed after his friend, but Sobieski remained on the seat into which he had thrown himself. He did not venture to move, lest he should by chance catch a second glance of Pembroke from the window. Now that he was gone, he acknowledged the full worth of what he had relinquished. He had resigned a man who loved him; one who had known and revered his ever-lamented grandfather, and his mother—the only one with whom he could have discoursed of their virtues! He had severed the link which had united his present state with his former fortunes! and throwing his arms along a table that stood near him, he leaned his aching head upon them, and in idea followed with a bleeding heart the progress and reception of his friend at the Castle.
The racking misery which tortured the mind of Mr. Somerset was not borne with equal resignation. Conscious of his having inflicted fresh wounds on the breast of his truest friend, his spirits were so ill adapted to any conversation, that he was pleased rather than disappointed when he found the supper-room at the Castle quite vacant, and only one cover on the table awaiting his arrival.
He asked a few questions of the servants, who informed him that it was past twelve o'clock, and that Sir Robert, who had become worse, had retired to bed early in the evening.
"And where are my aunt and cousin?" demanded Pembroke.
One of the men replied that, in consequence of Miss Beaufort having been taken suddenly indisposed, both the ladies left the saloon before eleven. Pembroke readily guessed the cause of her disorder; he too truly ascribed it to Mary's anxiety respecting the reception which the noble Sobieski would give to his disgraceful proposition. Sighing bitterly, he said no more but went to his chamber.
The restless state of his mind awoke Mr. Somerset by times. Anxious for the success of an application which he intended to make to his beloved cousin, whose pure and virgin heart he believed did indeed here sympathize with his own, he traversed the terrace for an hour before he was summoned to breakfast. The baronet continuing too ill to leave his room, the ladies only were in the parlor when he entered. Miss Dorothy, who had learned the particulars of the late events from her niece, longed to ask Pembroke how his noble friend would act on her brother's so strange and lamentable conduct—conduct so unlike himself in any other circumstance of gratitude in his life. But every time she moved her lips to inquire, her nephew's inflamed eyes and wan countenance made her fear to venture on the subject. Mary sat in mute dejection, watching the agitation of his features; and when he rose to quit the room, still in silence, she looked wistfully towards him. Pembroke turned at the same moment, and holding out his hand to her, said, "Come, Mary: I want to say something to you. Will you walk with me on the terrace?"
With a beating heart Miss Beaufort took his arm, and proceeded without a word until they ascended the stone steps and reached the terrace. A mutual deep-drawn sigh was the first opening to a conversation on which the souls of both hung. Pembroke was the first who spoke.
"My dear Mary," cried he, "you are now my sole dependence. From what I told you yesterday of my father's inflexibility, we can have no hope of his relenting: indeed, after what has passed, I could not flatter myself that Thaddeus Sobieski would now submit to any obligation at his hands. Already he has refused, with all the indignation I expected, Sir Robert's offer of an annuity. My dear cousin, how can I exist and yet witness this my best friend in distress, and living without the succor of my friendship? Heaven knows, this cannot be the case, for I would sooner perish than venture to insult the man my father has treated so ill with any pecuniary offers from me! Therefore, dear girl, it is on you alone that I depend. With his whole soul, as our marriage service says, Thaddeus 'worships you;' you love him! In a few days you will become of age. You will be your own mistress. Marry him, my beloved cousin," cried Pembroke, pressing her hand to his lips, "and relieve my heart from a load of misery! Be generous, my sweet Mary," added he, supporting her now trembling frame against his breast; "act up to your noble nature, and offer him, by me, that hand which his calamities and disinterestedness preclude him from wooing himself."
Miss Beaufort, hardly able to articulate, replied, "I would give him all that I possess could it purchase him one tranquil hour. I would serve him forever could I do it and be unknown? but—"
"O, do not hesitate!—do not doubt!" interrupted Pembroke. "To serve your friends, I know you are capable of the most extraordinary exertions. I know there is nothing within the range of possibility that your generous disposition would not attempt; then, my beloved Mary, dare to be what you are, by having the magnanimity to act as you know you ought—by offering your hand to him. Show the noble Sobieski that you really deserve the devotion of a hero's heart— deserves to be his consolation, who, in losing his mother, lost an angel like yourself."
"Dear Pembroke," replied Miss Beaufort, wiping the gliding tears from her burning cheek, "after the confession which you drew from me yesterday, I will not deny that to be this to your friend would render me the happiest of created beings; but I cannot believe what your sanguine affection tells me. I cannot suppose, situated as I was at Lady Dundas's, surrounded by frivolous and contemptible society, that he could discover anything in me to warrant such a vanity. Every way embarrassed as I was, disliking my companions, afraid of my own interest in him, a veil was drawn over my mind, through which he could neither judge of my good nor bad qualities. How, then, can I flatter myself, or do the Count Sobieski so great an injury, as to imagine that he could conceive any preference for so insignificant a being as I must have appeared?"
It was some time before Pembroke could shake this prepossession of a sincere humility from Miss Beaufort's mind. But after having set in every possible light the terms with which his friend had spoken of her, he at length convinced her of what her heart so earnestly wished to believe—that the love of Sobieski was indeed hers.
Mr. Somerset's next achievement was to overcome her scruples against sanctioning him with the commission he was bent on communicating to Thaddeus. But from the continual recurrence of her apprehensions, that the warm affection of her cousin had too highly colored the first part of his representation, this latter task was not more easy to accomplish than the former.
In vain she remonstrated, in vain she doubted, in vain demurred. Pembroke would not be denied. He saw her heart was with him; and when with faltering lips she assented to the permission, which he almost extorted, she threw her arms round his neck, and implored him, "by all he loved and honored, to be careful of her peace; to remember that she put into his charge all that was most precious to woman—the modesty of her sex and her own self-esteem !"
Delighted at this consent, notwithstanding he received it through the medium of many tears, he fondly and gratefully pressed her to his bosom, uttering his own soul's fervent conviction of a future domestic happiness to them all. Having stood till he saw her re-enter the house from a door on the terrace, he mounted his horse and set off on the spur towards Harrow by Hill.
When Thaddeus recovered from the reverie into which he fell on the departure of Mr. Somerset, he considered how he might remove out of a country in which he had only met with and occasioned distress.
The horrid price that Pembroke's father had set on the continuance of his son's friendship with a powerless exile was his curse. Whatever might have been the injury any individual of now annihilated Poland could, in its palmy days of independence, and sometimes pride, inflict on this implacable Englishman, of a nature that appeared to have blinded him to even human feeling, Thaddeus felt so true an indignation against such cruel injustice, and so much of a contrary sentiment towards the noble son of this hard parent, that he determined to at once relieve the warring mind of Pembroke of any further conflict on his account by immediately quitting England. Averse to a second interview with a friend so justly beloved, which could only produce them new pangs, he resolved on instant preparations—that another morn should not rise upon him in the neighborhood of Somerset Castle. Taking up a pen, with all the renewed loneliness of his fate brooding on his heart, he wrote two letters.
One he addressed to Mr. Somerset, bidding him that farewell which he confessed he could never take. As he wrote, his hand trembled, his bosom swelled, and he hastily shut his eyelids, to withhold his tears from showing themselves on the paper. His emotion, his grief, were driven back, were concealed, but the tenderness of his soul flowed over the letter. He forgave Pembroke's father for Pembroke's sake; and in spite of their personal disunion, he vowed that no earthly power should restrain his love from following the steps of his friend, even into the regions of eternity. He closed his melancholy epistle with informing Mr. Somerset that, as he should quit not only England directly, but Europe, any search after him which his generous nature might dictate would be in vain.
Though Thaddeus Sobieski would have disdained a life of dependence on the greatest potentate of the world; though he rejected with the same sincerity a similar proposal from his friend, and despised the degrading offer of Sir Robert, yet he did not disparage his dignity, not infringe on the disinterested nature of friendship, when he retained the money which Pembroke had conveyed to him in prison. Thaddeus never acted but from principle. His honorable and penetrating mind knew exactly at what point to draw the tender thread of delicacy—the cord of independence. But pride and independence were with him distinct terms. Receiving assistance from a friend and leaning on him wholly for support have different meanings. He accepted the first with gratitude; he would have thought it impossible to live and endure the last. Indeed Thaddeus would have considered himself unworthy to confer a benefit if he had not known how to receive one. But had not Pembroke told him "the whole gift was Mary Beaufort's?" And what were his emotions then? They were full of an ineffable sense of happiness inexplicable to himself. Mary Beaufort was the donor, and it was bliss to have it so, and to know it was so. With these impressions again throbbing at his heart, he began a short letter to her, which he felt must crush that heart forever.
"To Miss Beaufort.
"My faculties lose their power when I take up my pen to address, for the first and the last time, Miss Beaufort. I hardly know what I would say—what I ought to say; I dare not venture to write all that I feel. But have you not been my benefactress? Did you not assert my character and give me liberty when I was calumniated and in distress? Did you not ward from me the scorn of unpitying folly? Did you not console me with your own compassion? You have done all this; and surely you will not despise the gratitude of a heart which you have condescended to sooth and to comfort. At least I cannot leave England forever without imploring blessings on the head of Miss Beaufort, without thanking her on my knees, on which I am writing, for that gracious and benign spirit which discovered a breaking heart under the mask of serenity, which penetrated through the garb of poverty and dependence, and saw that the condemned Constantine was not what he seemed! Your smiles, Miss Beaufort, your voice speaking commiseration, were my sweetest consolations during those heavy months of bitterness which I endured at Dundas House. I contemplated you as a pitying angel, sent to reconcile me to a life which had already become a burden. These are the benefits which Miss Beaufort has bestowed on a friendless exile; these are the benefits which she has bestowed on me! and they are written on my soul. Not until I go down into the grave can they be forgotten. Ah! not even then, for when I rise again, I shall find them still registered there.
"Farewell, most respected, most dear, most honored! My passing soul seems in those words. O, may the Father of heaven bless with his almighty care her whose name will ever be the first and the last in the prayer of the far distant
When he had finished this epistle, with a tremulous hand he consigned it to the same cover that contained his letter to Somerset. Then writing a few lines to the worthy master of the inn, (the brother-in- law of the faithful servant of his late lamented maternal friend,) saying that a sudden occasion had required his immediate departure at that untimely hour, he enclosed a liberal compensation in gold for the attentive services of both the honest man and his warm-hearted wife. Having sealed each packet, he disposed them so on the table that they might be the first things seen on entering the room.
He had fixed on deep night as the securest time for commencing unobserved his pedestrian tour. The moon was now full, and would be a sufficient guide, he thought, on his solitary way. He had determined to walk to London by the least public paths; meaning to see kind Mrs. Robson, and bid her a grateful farewell before he should embark, probably never to return, for America.
He had prepared his slender baggage before he sat down to write the two letters which had cost him so many pangs; compressed within a light black leather travelling-bag, he fastened it over his shoulders by its buckled straps, in the manner of a soldier's knapsack. He then put the memorandum-book which contained his "world's wealth," now to be carefully husbanded, into a concealed pocket in the breast of his waistcoat, feeling, while he pressed it down upon his heart, that his mother's locket and Miss Beaufort's chain kept guard over it.
"Ah!" cried he, as he gently closed the low window by which he leaped into the garden; "England, I leave thee forever, and within thee all that on this earth had been left to me to love. Driven from thee! Nay, driven as if I were another Cain, from the face of every spot of earth that ever had been or would be dear to me! Oh, woe to them who began the course. And thou, Austria, ungrateful leader in the destruction of the country which more than once was thy preserver!— could there be any marvel that the last of the Sobieskis should perish with her? What accumulated sins must rest on thy head, thou seducer of other nations into the spoliation and dismemberment of the long-proved bulwark of Christendom? Assuredly, every hasty sigh that rebels in the breasts of Poland's outcast sons against the mystery of her doom will plead against thee at the judgment-seat of Heaven!"
He went on at a rapid pace through several fields, his heart and soul full of those remembrances, and the direful echoes to them he had met in England. Stopping a moment at the boundary-gate of the Harrowby domains,—the property of a disgraceful owner of a name that might have been his, had not his nobler mother preserved to him that of Sobieski,—he stretched out his arms to the heavens, over which a bleak north-west wind was suddenly collecting dark and spreading clouds, and exclaimed, in earnest supplication, "Oh, righteous Power of Mercy! in thy chastening, grant me fortitude to bear with resignation to thy will the miseries I may yet have to encounter, Ah!" added he, his heart melting as the images presented themselves even as visions to his soul, "teach me to forget what I have been. Teach me to forget that on this dreadful October night twelve months ago I clasped the dying body of my revered grandfather in these arms!"
He could not speak further. Leaning his pale face against the gate, he remained for a few minutes dissolved in all a son's sorrow; then, recovering himself by a sudden start, he proceeded with hurried steps through the further extending meadows until they conducted him by a short village-lane into the high road.
It was on the 10th of October, 1795, that the Count Sobieski commenced this lonely and melancholy journey. It was the 10th of October in the preceding year that he found the veteran palatine bleeding to death in the midst of a heap of slain. The coincidence of his renewed banishment and present consequent mental sufferings with those of that fatal period powerfully affected him, recalling, in the vivid colors of an actual existence, scenes and griefs which the numerous successive events he had passed through had considerably toned down into dream-like shades.
But now, when memory, by one unexpected stroke, had once conjured up the happy past of his early life and its as early blighting, true to her nature, she raised before his mind's eye every hope connected with it and his present doom, till, almost distracted, he quickened his speed. He then slackened it; he quickened it again; but nothing could rid him of those successive images which seem to glide around him like mournful apparitions of the long-lamented dead.
When the dawn broke and the sun rose, he found himself advanced several miles on the south side of Ponton Hill. The spiry aisles of Harrowby Abbey were discernible through the mist, and the towers of Somerset Castle, from their height and situation, were as distinctly seen as if he had been at their base. Neither of these objects were calculated to raise the spirits of Thaddeus. The sorrows of the countess, whose eyes he so recently had closed, and the treatment which he afterwards received from the man to whom he owed his life, were recollections which made him turn from the Abbey with a renewed pang and fix his eyes on Somerset. He looked towards its ivied battlements with all the regret and all the tenderness which can overflow a human heart. Under that roof he believed the eyes of his almost, indeed, worshipped Mary were sealed in sleep; and in an instant his agitated soul addressed her as if she had been present.
"Farewell, most lovely, most beloved! The conviction that it is to ensure the peace of my now only friend on earth, my faithful Pembroke, that I resign the hope of ever beholding thee again in this life, will bring me one comfort, at least, in my barren exile!"
Thus communing with his troubled spirit, he walked the whole day on his way to London. Totally absorbed in meditation, he did not remark the gaze of curiosity which followed his elegant yet distressed figure as he passed through the different towns and villages. Musing on the past, the present, and the future, he neither felt hunger nor thirst, but, with a fixed eye and abstracted countenance, pursued his route until night and weariness overtook him near a cross-road, far away from any house.
Thaddeus looked around and above. The sky was then clear and glittering with stars; the moon, shining on a branch of the Ouse which divides Leicestershire from Northamptonshire, lit the green heath which skirted its banks. He wished not for a more magnificent canopy; and placing his bag under his head, he laid himself down beneath a hillock of furze, and slept till morning.
When he awoke from a heavy sleep, which fatigue and fasting had rendered more oppressive than refreshing, he found that the splendors of the night were succeeded by a heavy rain, and that he was wet through. He arose with stiffness in his limbs, pain in his head, and a dimness over his eyes, with a sense of weakness which almost disabled him from moving. He readily judged that he had caught cold; and every moment feeling himself grow worse, he thought it necessary to seek some house where he might procure rest and assistance.
Leaning on his closed umbrella, which, in his precarious circumstances of travelling, he used in preference to a walking- stick, and no longer able to encumber himself with even the light load of his bag, he cast it amongst the brambles near him. Thinking, from the symptoms he felt, that he might not have many more hours to endure the ills of life, he staggered a few yards further. No habitation appeared; his eyes soon seemed totally obscured, and he sunk down on a bank. For a minute he attempted to struggle with the cold grasp of death, which he believed was fastening on his heart.
"And are my days to be so short?—are they to end thus?" was the voice of his thoughts,—for he was speechless. "Oh! thou merciful Providence, pardon my repining, and those who have brought me to this! My only Father, hear me!"
These were the last movements of his soundless lips, while his blood seemed freezing to insensibility. His eyelids were closed, and pale, and without sign of animation, he lay at the foot of a tree nigh which he had dropped.
He remained a quarter of an hour in this dead-like state before he was observed; at length, a gentleman who was passing along that road, on his way to his country-seat in the neighborhood, thought he perceived a man lying amongst the high grass a little onward on the heath. He stopped his carriage instantly, though driven by four spirited horses, and ordering one of the outriders to alight, bade him examine whether the object in view were living or dead.
The servant obeyed; and presently returning with an affrighted countenance, he informed his master that "it was the body of a young man, who, by his dress, appeared to be a gentleman; and being quite senseless, he supposed he had been waylaid and murdered by footpads." The features of the benevolent inquirer immediately reflected the alarm of his informant. Ordering the chariot door to be opened, he took in his hand a bottle of medicine, (which, from his own invalid states was his carriage companion,) and, stepping out, hastened to the side of the apparently lifeless Thaddeus.
By this time all the servants were collected round the spot. The master himself, whilst he gazed with pity on the marble features of the stranger, observed with pleasure that he saw no marks of violence. Supposing that the present accident might have been occasioned by a fit, and thinking it possible to recall life, he desired that the unfortunate person's neck-cloth might be unloosened, and removing his hat, he contrived to pour some drops into his mouth. Their warmth renewed pulsation to the heart, for one of the men, who was stooping, declared that it beat under his hand. When the benevolent gentleman was satisfied of the truth of this report, he bade his servants place the poor traveller in his carriage; having only another mile or two to go, he said he hoped his charge might be restored at the end of so short a drive.
Whilst the postilions drove rapidly towards the house, the cold face of Thaddeus rested on the bosom of his benefactor, who continued to chafe his temples with eau de Cologne until the chariot stopped before the gates. The men carried the count into the house, and leaving him with their master and a medical man, who resided near, other restoratives were applied which in a short time restored him to consciousness. When he was recalled to recollection, and able to distinguish objects, he saw that he was supported by two gentlemen, and in a spacious chamber.
Gratitude was an active virtue in the soul of Thaddeus. At the moment of his awakening from that sleep which, when it fell upon him, he believed would last until time should be lost in eternity, he pressed the hands of those who held his own, not doubting but that they were the good Samaritans who had preserved him from perishing.
The younger of the gentlemen, perceiving, by the animated lustre which spread over his patient's eyes, that he was going to speak, put his hand on his lips, and said, "Pardon me, sir! you must be mute! Your life at present hangs on a thread; the slightest exertion might snap it. As all you want is rest and resuscitation to supply some great loss which the vital powers have sustained, I must require that you neither speak nor be spoken to until I give permission. Meanwhile, be satisfied, sir, that you are in the kindest hands. This gentleman," added he, (pointing to his friend, who bore the noble presence of high rank,) "saw you on the heath, and brought you to his house, where you now are."
Thaddeus bowed his head to them both in sign of obedience and gratitude, and the elder, with a kind bend of his mild eyes, in silence left the room.
Next morning, when the seal was taken off the lips of the object of their care, he expressed in grateful terms his deep sense of the humanity which had actuated both the gentleman to take so generous an interest in his fate.
"You owe no thanks to me," replied the one who had enjoined and released him from silence, and who was now alone with him; "I am only the agent of another. Yet I do not deny that, in obeying the benevolent orders of Sir Robert Somerset, I have frequent opportunities of gratifying my own heart."
Thaddeus was so confounded at this discovery that he could not speak, and the gentleman proceeded.
"I am apothecary to Sir Robert's household, and as my excellent employer has been long afflicted with an ill state of health, I live in a small Lodge at the other end of the park. He is the boast of the county: the best landlord and the kindest neighbor. All ranks of people love him; and when he dies, (which his late apoplectic fits make it too probable may be soon,) both poor and rich will lose their friend. Ill as he was this morning, when I told him you were out of danger, he expressed a pleasure which did him more good than all my medicines."
Not considering the wildness of the question, Thaddeus hastily demanded, "Does he know who I am?"
The honest apothecary stared at the look and tone with which these words were delivered, and then replied, "No, sir; is there any reason to make you wish that he should not?"
"Certainly none," replied Thaddeus, recollecting himself; "but I shall be impatient until I have an opportunity of telling him how grateful I am for the goodness he has shown to me as a stranger."
Surprised at these hints, (which the count, not considering their tendency, allowed to escape him,) the apothecary gathered sufficient from them, united with the speaker's superior mien, to make him suppose that his patient was some emigrant of quality, whom Sir Robert would rejoice in having served. These surmises and conclusions having passed quickly through the worthy gentleman's brain, he bowed his head with that respect which the generous mind is proud to pay to nobility in ruins, and resumed:
"Whoever you may be, sir, a peasant or a prince, you will meet with British hospitality from the noble owner of this mansion. The magnificence of his spirit is equalled by the goodness of his heart; and I am certain that Sir Robert will consider as fortunate the severe attack which, bringing him from Somerset for change of air, has afforded him an opportunity of serving you."
Thaddeus blushed at the strain of this speech. Readily understanding what was passing in the mind of the apothecary, he hardly knew what to reply. He paused for a moment, and then said, "All you have declared, sir, in praise of Sir Robert Somerset I cannot doubt is deserving. I have already felt the effects of his humanity, and shall ever remember that my life was prolonged by his means; but I have no pretensions to the honor of his acquaintance. I only wish to see him, that I may thank him for what he has done; therefore, if you will permit me to rise this evening, instead of to-morrow morning, you will oblige me."
To this request the apothecary gave a respectful yet firm denial, and went down stairs to communicate his observations to his patron. When he returned, he brought back a request for his patient from the baronet, even as a personal consideration for his host's solicitude concerning him, to remain quietly in the perfect repose of his closed chamber until next day; then it might be hoped Sir Robert would find him sufficiently recovered to receive his visit without risk. To this Sobieski could not but assent, in common courtesy, as well as in grateful feeling; yet he passed in anything but repose the rest of the day, and the anxiety which continued to agitate him while reflecting that he was receiving these obligations from his implacable enemy so occupied and disturbed him, that he spent a sleepless night. The dawn found his fever much augmented; but no corporeal sufferings could persuade him to defer seeing the baronet and immediately leaving his house. Believing, as he did, that all this kindness would have been withheld had his host known on whom he was pouring such benefits, he thought that every minute which passed over him while under Sir Robert's roof inflicted a new outrage on his own respect and honor.
To this end, then, as soon as Mr. Middleton, the apothecary, retired to breakfast, Thaddeus rose from his bed, and was completely dressed before he returned. He had effected this without any assistance, for he was in possession of his travelling-bag. One of the outriders having discerned it amongst the herbage, while the others were busied in carrying its helpless owner to the carriage, he had picked it up, and on the arrival of the party at home, delivered it to the baronet's valet to convey to the invalid gentleman's chamber, justly considering that he would require its contents.
When Mr. Middleton re-entered the apartment, and saw his patient not only risen from his bed, but so completely dressed, he expostulated on the rashness of what he had done, and augured no less than a dangerous relapse from the present increased state of his pulse. Thaddeus, for once in his life, was obstinate, though civilly so; and desiring a servant to request that Sir Robert would indulge him with an audience for a few minutes alone in his library, he soon convinced Mr. Middleton that his purpose was not to be shaken.
The baronet returning his compliments, and saying that he should be happy to see his guest, the still anxious apothecary offered him his assistance down stairs. Thaddeus needed no help, and gratefully declined it. The exertion necessary to be summoned for this interview imparted as much momentary strength to his frame as to his mind, and though his color was heightened, he entered the library with a firm step.
Sir Robert met him at the door, and, shaking him by the hand with a warm assurance of pleasure at so rapid a restoration, would have led him to a seat; but Thaddeus only supported himself against the back of it with his hand, whilst in a steady voice he expressed the most earnest thanks for the benefits he had received; then pausing, and casting the proud lustre of his eyes to the ground, lest their language should tell all that he thought, he continued, "I have only to regret, Sir Robert, that your benevolence has been lavished on a man whom you regard with abhorrence. I am the Count Sobieski, that Polander whom you commanded your son to see no more. Respecting even the prejudices of my friend's parent, I was hastening to London, meaning to set sail for America with the first ship, when I swooned on the road. I believe I was expiring. Your humanity saved me; and I now owe to gratitude, as well as to my own satisfaction, the fulfilment of my determination. I shall leave Deerhurst immediately, and England as soon as I am able to embark."
Thaddeus with a second bow, and not quite so firm a step, without venturing a glance at what he supposed must be the abashed or the enraged looks of Pembroke's father, was preparing to quit the room, when Sir Robert, with a pale and ghastly countenance, exclaimed, "Stop!"
Thaddeus looked round, and struck by the change in his preserver's appearance, paused in his movement. The baronet, incapable of saying more, pointed to a chair for him to sit down; then sinking into another himself, took out his handkerchief, and wiping away the large drops which stood on his forehead, panted for respiration. At last, with a desperate kind of haste, he said.
"Was your mother indeed Therese Sobieski?"
Thaddeus, still more astonished, replied in the affirmative. Sir Robert threw himself back on the chair with a deep groan. Hardly knowing what he did, the count rose from his seat and advanced towards him. On his approach, Sir Robert stretched out his hand, and, with a look and tone of agony, said, "Who was your father?" He then, without waiting for a reply, covered his convulsed features with his handkerchief. The baronet's agitation, which now shook him like an earthquake, became contagious. Thaddeus gazed at him with a palsying uncertainty in his heart; laying his hand on his bewildered brain, he answered, "I know not; yet I fear I must believe him to be the Earl of Tinemouth. But here is his picture." With an almost disabling tremor he unclasped it from his neck where his mother's last blessing had placed it, and touching the spring which held it in its little gold case in the manner of a watch, he gave it open to Sir Robert, who had started from his seat at the name of the earl. The moment the baronet's eyes rested on the miniature, he fell senseless upon the chair.
Thaddeus, hardly more alive, sprinkled some water on his face, and with throbbing temples and a bleeding heart stood in wordless expectation over him. Such excessive emotion told him that something more than Sir Robert's hatred of the Polanders had stimulated his late conduct. Too earnest for an explanation to ring for assistance, he rejoiced to see, by the convulsion of the baronet's features and the heaving of his chest, that animation was returning. In a few minutes he opened his eyes, but when he met the anxious gaze of Thaddeus, he closed them as suddenly. Rising from his seat, he staggered against the chimney-piece, exclaiming, "Oh God, direct me!" Thaddeus, whose conjectures were now wrought almost to wildness, followed him, and whilst his exhausted frame was ready to sink to the earth, he implored him to speak.
"Sir Robert," cried he, "if you know anything of my family, if you know anything of my father, I beseech you to answer me. Or only tell me: am I so wretched as to be the son of Lord Tinemouth?"
The violence of the count's emotions during this agonizing address totally overcame him; before he finished speaking, his limbs withdrew their support, and he dropped breathless against the side of the chair.
Sir Robert turned hastily round. He saw him sunk, like a beautiful flower, bruised and trampled on by the foot of him who had given it root. Unable to make any evasive reply to this last appeal of virtue and of nature, he threw himself with a burst of tears upon his neck, and exclaimed, "Wretch that I have been! Oh, Sobieski! I am thy father. Dear, injured son of the too faithful Therese!"
The first words which carried this avowal to the heart of Thaddeus deprived it of motion, and when Sir Robert expected to receive the returning embrace of his son, he found him senseless in his arms.
The cries of the baronet brought Mr. Middleton and the servants into the room. When the former saw the state of the count, and perceived the agonized position of his patron, (who was supporting and leaning over his son,) the honest man declared that he expected nothing less from the gentleman's disobedience of his orders. The presence of the servants having recalled Sir Robert's wandering faculties, he desired them to remove the invalid with the greatest care back to his chamber. Following them in silence, when they had laid their charge on the bed, he watched in extreme but concealed suspense till Mr. Middleton once more succeeded in restoring animation to his patient.
The moment the count unclosed his eyes, they fixed themselves on his father. He drew the hand which held his to his lips. The tears of paternal love again bathed the cheeks of Sir Robert; he felt how warm at his heart was the affection of his deserted son. Making a sign for Mr. Middleton to leave the room, who obeyed, he bent his streaming eyes upon the other hand of Thaddeus, and, in a faltering voice, "Can you pardon me?"
Thaddeus threw himself on his father's bosom, and wept profusely; then raising Sir Robert's clasped hands to his, whilst his eloquent eyes seemed to search the heavens, he said, "My dear, dear mother loved you to her latest hour; and I have all my mother's heart. Whatever may have been his errors, I love and honor my father."
Sir Robert strained him to his breast. After a pause, whilst he shook the tears from his venerated cheeks, he resumed—"Certain, my dear son, that you require repose, and assured that you will not find it until I have offered some apology for my unnatural conduct, I will now explain the circumstances which impelled my actions, and drew distress upon that noble being, your mother."
Sir Robert hesitated a moment to recover breath, and then, with the verity of a grateful penitence, commenced.
"Keep your situation," added he, putting down Thaddeus, who at this opening was raising himself, "I shall tell my melancholy story with less pain if your eyes be not upon me. I will begin from the first."
The baronet, with frequent agitated pauses, proceeded to relate what may be more succinctly expressed as follows: Very early in life he had attached himself to Miss Edith Beaufort, the only sister of the late Admiral Beaufort, who at that time was pursuing his chosen brave career as post-captain in the British navy. By the successive deaths of their parents, they had been left young to the guardianship of Sir Fulke Somerset and their maternal aunt, his then accomplished lady: she and their deceased mother, the Lady Grace Beaufort, having been sisters—the two celebrated beautiful daughters of Robert Earl Studeley of Warwick.
Sir Fulke's family by the amiable twin of the Lady Grace were Robert (who afterwards succeeded him) and Dorothy his only daughter. But he had a son by a former marriage with the brilliantly-endowed widow of a long-resident governor in the East, who having died on his voyage home to England, on her landing she found herself the sole inheritrix of his immense wealth. She possessed charms of person as well as riches, and as soon as "her weeds" could be laid aside, she became the admired wife of the "gay and gallant" Sir Fulke Somerset. Within the twelve subsequent months she presented him with a son and heir, soon to be her own too; for though she lived three or four years after his birth, her health became so delicate that she never bore another child, but gradually declined, and ultimately expired while apparently in a gentle sleep.
Sir Fulke mourned his due time "in the customary suit of solemn black;" but he was a man of a lofty and social spirit, by no means inclined to be disconsolate, and held "a fair help-mate" to be an indispensable appendage to his domestic state. In this temper, (just before the election of a new parliament, when contending interests were running very close,) he obtained the not less eagerly disputed hand of Lady Arabella Studeley, whose elder sister (as has been mentioned) had made a magnificent marriage, only a year or two before, with John of Beaufort, the lord of the noble domain of Beaufort in the Weald of Kent—a lineal endowment from his princely ancestor, John of Gaunt. This illustrious pair dwelt on the land, like its munificent owners in the olden times, revered and beloved; and they were the parents of their two equally-honored representatives— Guy, afterwards Admiral Beaufort, and Edith, who subsequently became the adored wife of her also tenderly-beloved cousin, Robert Somerset.
But before that fondly-anticipated event took place, the young lover had to pass through a path of thorns, some of which pierced him to the end. From his childhood to manhood, he saw little of Algernon, his elder brother, who always seemed to him more like an occasional brilliant phantom, alighting amongst them, than a dear member of the family coming delightedly to cheer and to share his paternal home. Algernon was either at Eaton school, or at one of the universities, or travelling somewhere on the continent; and at all these places, or from them all, he became the enchanted theme of every tongue. Meanwhile, Robert—though, perhaps, equally endowed by nature yet certainly of a milder radiance—was the object of so apprehensive a solicitude in his gentle mother's breast for the puritas well as the intellectual accomplishments of her son, that she obtained Sir Fulke's reluctant consent to his being brought up in what is called "a home education;" that is, under the especial personal care of the best private tutors, and which were found to the great credit of her judgment. He showed an ardent devotedness to his studies; and though, like his mother, he was one of the mildest of human beings in his dealings with those around him, yet his aspirations towards high attainments were as energetic as they were noiseless, and ever on steady wind soaring upward. Robert Somerset was then unconsciously forming himself for what he afterwards became—the boast of the country of his birth, the glory of England, to whose prosperity he dedicated all his noble talents, showing what it is to be a true English country gentleman. Being alike "the oak or laurel" of "Old England's fields and groves."
"With sickle or with sword,Or bardic minstrelsy!"
he was permitted to pass a term or two at Oxford, where he acquitted himself with honor, particularly in the classics, to the repeated admiration of their then celebrated professor, the late Thomas Warton. But the young student was also fond of rural pursuits and domestic occupations. He lived mostly at home, enjoying the gentle solace of elegant modern literature and the graces of music, with the ever blameless delights of an accomplished female society, at the head of which his revered mother had presided, accompanied by his lively sister Dorothy and the sweet Edith Beaufort, whom he had gradually learned to love like his own soul. His heart became yet more closely knit to her when his beloved parent died, which sad event occurred about a year after the death of Edith's own mother, who on her widowhood had continued to live more with her sister, Lady Arabella Somerset, than at her bereaved home. Edith's filial sorrow was renewed in the loss of her maternal aunt, and her tenderest sympathy reciprocated the tears of her son. Their hearts blended together in those tears, and both felt that "they were comforted."
Time did not long pass on before the happy Robert communicated their mutual attachment to his father, petitioning for his consent to woo for the hand of her whose heart he had already gained. But the baronet, in some surprise at what he heard, refused to give his sanction to any such premature engagement, first, on account of the applicant's "extreme youth;" and second, being a younger scion of his house, it might not be deemed well of in the world should he, the guardian of his niece and her splendid fortune, show so much haste to bestow her on his comparatively portionless son. The baronet, with some of his parliamentary acumen, drew another comparison, which touched the disappointed lover with a feeling almost of despair. He compared what he denominated his romantic fancies for "woods and wilds," and book-worm pursuits in the old crypts of the castle or the college, with the distinguished consideration held by his travelled brother in courts and councils, whether abroad or at home, closing the parallel by telling him "to follow Algernon's example, and become more like a man of some account amongst men before he dared pretend to a hand of so much importance as that of the heiress of Beaufort."
Robert was standing silent and dismayed, as one struck by a thunder- flash, when his brother (who had been only a month arrived from a long revisit to the two Sicilies) suddenly entered his father's library, as Sir Fulke had again resumed his discourse with even more severity. At sight of the animated object of his contrasting eulogy, he instantly described to his new auditor what had been mutually said, and referred the subject to him.
"Romance, indeed! whether in merry Sherwood, with hound and horn, or with gentle dames in bower and hall, you have had enough of, my brother," replied the gay-spirited traveller. "Neither men nor women like philandering after deer or doe, or a lady's slipper, beyond the greenwood season. So I say, for the glory of your manhood up and away! Abroad, abroad! My father is right. That is the only ground for such a race and guerdon as you aspire to. I admire your taste, and not less your ambition, my brave boy. Do not thwart him, Sir Fulke," added he, to the baronet, who began to frown: "let him enter the lists with the boldest of us; faint heart never won fair lady! So, forward, Robert! and give me another sweet sister to love and to cherish as I do our blithe little Dora."
At this far from unwelcome advice, Robert smiled and sighed; but the smile swallowed up the sigh, for his soul kindled with hope. His father smiled also; the cloud of a stern authority had passed from his brow, and before that now perfectly reconciled party rose, it was decided that Robert should make immediate preparations for commencing a regulated course of continental travels, the route to be drawn out by his brother and his expenses in the tour to be liberally supplied by his father. The length of the probation was not then thought on, at least not mentioned. Shortly afterwards, when Robert hastened from the library to communicate what had passed to the beloved object of the discussion, he left his father and his brother together to think and to plan all the rest for him.
But Edith Beaufort wept when she heard of the separation; her heart failed within her. For since her first coming under the roof of her guardian uncle, she had never been without seeing her brother-like cousin beyond a few days or weeks at most. He was now going to be banished (and, it was asserted, for her sake too) into far distant countries, and for an indefinite period—months, perhaps years. And these saddening thoughts made her weep afresh, though silently; for her full-flowing tears were soft and noiseless, like the heart from whence they sprung. Robert, with all his now sanguine expectations, sought to cheer her, but in vain. She felt an impression, that should he go, they would never meet again. But she did not betray that feeling to him; yet the infection of her despondency, by its continuance, so wrought on his own consequent depressed spirits, that when his father announced to him that his absence must be for two or three years at least, he ventured to remonstrate, beseeching that it might be limited to the shorter term of two years. The baronet derided the proposal, with many words of contempt towards the urgent pleader. Robert withheld from disclosing to the too often hard mind of his father that the proposition he so scorned had originated in the tender bosom of Edith Beaufort, and Sir Fulke's sarcasm fell so thick on the bending head of his son, that at last the insulted feelings of the generous lover became so indignant at the little confidence placed in the real manliness of his character, which had hitherto been found ever present when actually called for, that his heart began to swell to an almost uncontrollable exasperation, and while struggling to master himself from uttering the disrespectful retort risen to his lips, his brother again accidentally entered the room, and by giving Robert the moment to pause, happily rescued his tottering duty from that regretful offence.
As soon as Algernon appeared, the baronet resumed his sarcastic tone, in a rapid recapitulation of Robert's retrograde request. Algernon again took up the cause of his brother, and, with his usual tact, gained the victory, by the dexterous gayety with which he pleaded for the young noviciate in all the matters for which he was to be sent so far afield to learn. At last the conference ended by Sir Fulke agreeing to a proposition from his eldest son,—that the time for this foreign tutelage might possibly expire within the second year, should the results evoked by the ambitious passion of his youngest born be in any fair progress to fulfilment.
In little more than a week after this final arrangement, every preparation was finished for the wildly-contemplated tour. Robert had taken a heart-plighting adieu from his beloved Edith. But by his father's positive injunction, there was no engagement for a hereafter actual plighting of hands made between them. Yet their eloquent eyes, transparent through their mutual tears, vowed it to each other, and with silent prayers for his indeed early return, they parted.
When taking leave of his father, and receiving his directions relative to a correspondence with his family, permission was peremptorily denied him to hold any with his cousin Edith. He had learned enough lately to avoid all supplications to the paternal quarter, if he would not invite scorn as well as to receive disappointment. But Algernon whispered to him "that nobody should remain whollyincognitato him in that house while he dipped pen in any one of the three hundred and sixty-five inkhorns under its awful towers!" Robert then bowed his farewell with a flushed cheek and grave respect to his father, but gratefully separated from his brother with a warm pressure of the hand. The old household servants blessed him as he passed through the hall, and in a few minutes he found himself seated in the family post-chaise and four that was to convey him from the home of his youth and happy innocence, and, alas! to return to it "an altered man."
When he reached Dover to embark, he fell in with the present Earl of Tinemouth, then Mr. Stanhope, sent abroad on a similar errand with himself. But Stanhope's was to forget a mistress—Somerset's to merit the one he sought. The two young men were kinsfolk by birth, and they now felt themselves so in severing from their parents. Stanhope was in high wrath against his, and he soon rekindled the already excited mind of Somerset to a responsive demonstration of resentment. They determined to show that "they were not such boys as to submit any further in passive obedience to the stern authority dominating over them." Sir Fulke's particular charge against his son was a "womanish softness, unworthy his loftier sex!" "Show him," cried Stanhope, that "you have the hardihood of a true man by an immediate act of independence. Let us travel together, kinsmen as we are, change our names, and let no one in England know anything about us during our tour except the two dear women on whose accounts we are thus transported!"
With these views they landed in France, gave themselves out to be brothers (which a certain resemblance in their persons corroborated), and called themselves Sackville. Agreeably amused with the novelties presented to them at almost every step of their tour from gay Paris to sentimental Italy, they proceeded pretty amicably until they reached Naples. There Mr. Stanhope involved himself in an intrigue with the only daughter of an old British officer, who had retired to that climate for his health. Somerset remonstrated on the villany of seducing an innocent girl, when he knew his heart and hand were pledged to another. Stanhope, enraged at finding a censor in a companion whom he had considered to be as headstrong as himself, ended the argument by drawing his sword, and if the servants of the hotel had not interfered, the affray would probably have terminated with one of their lives. Since that hour they never met. Mr. Stanhope fled from his shame and his bleeding friend, and, fearful of consequences, took temporary refuge in one of the Aonian Isles, not daring to proceed any further against the innocence of the poor officer's daughter, who had been thus rescued from becoming his victim!
When recovered from his wound, Robert Somerset (by some strange infatuation still retaining the name of Sackville) proceeded to Florence, in which interesting city, for works of art, ancient and modern, and the graces of classic society, determining to stay some time, he rather sought than repelled the civilities of the inhabitants. Here he became acquainted with the palatine, and the lovely Countess Therese, his daughter. Her beauty pleased his taste; her gentle virtues and exquisite accomplishments affected both his heart and mind; and he often gazed on her with tenderness, when his fidelity to Edith Beaufort only meant him to convey a look of grateful admiration. The palatine honored England, and was prepared to esteem her sons wherever he might meet them; and very soon he became so attached to this apparently lonely young traveller, that he invited him to all the excursions he and his daughter made into the adjoining states, whether visiting them by the romantic scenery of the land-roads, or coasting the beautiful bays of the sublime shores on either side of those parts of the Mediterranean.
In the midst of this intimacy, as if she were aware of a friendship so hostile to his cousin's love, he suddenly ceased to receive any remembrance-messages from her to him, in the two last letters from his brother,—for he had never allowed himself to so brave his father's parting commands as to write to her himself. Desperate with jealousy of some unknown object supplanting him, he was on the point of setting off for home, to judge with his own eyes, when a large packet from England was put into his hands. On opening it he found a letter from Edith, on which his surprised and eager gaze had immediately fixed. Without looking on any of the rest, he broke the seal, and read, astounded by the contents, "that having for some time been led to consider the probable consequences to him, both from his father's better judgment and the ultimate opinion of the world, should he and she continue their pertinacious adherence to their childish attachment, she had tried to wean both him and herself from so rebellious a folly towards her revered guardian, his honored father; and trusting that the gradual shortening of her cousin-like messages to him, through his brother's letters, must have had the effect intended, she now had permission to write one herself to him, to convince him at once of the unreasonableness and danger of all such premature entanglements. For," she added, "soon after his departure, a journey to town had taught her to know her own heart. She learned to feel that it was still at her disposal; and time did not long pass after she returned to the country before, having compared the object of her awakened taste with that of her former delusion, she persuaded her own better judgment to set a generous example to her ever-dear cousin Robert, by marrying where that judgment now pointed. And so, with the full consent of Sir Fulke (who she well knew had been totally averse to her marriage with his youngest son), she had yielded to the long love of his brother, which had been struggling in his manly bosom many agonizing months against his persistent fidelity to Robert, but whose sister she hoped to shortly become, as his affectionate Edith—then Somerset."
Having read this extraordinary epistle to the end, so monstrous in the character of its sentiments and its language, when compared with all he had hitherto known of the pure and simple mind from which it came, a terrible revulsion seized on his own, and, almost maddened with horror at every name in that letter, he foreswore his family forever! Hastening, as for one drop of heaven's dew upon his burning brain, to seek Therese Sobieski, he found her alone, and though without such aim when he rushed so frenzied into her presence, he besought her "to heal a miserable and broken heart, which could only be saved to endure any continuance of life by an acknowledgment that she loved him!" Alas! the avowal was too soon wrung from that tender and noble spirit! and yielding to a paroxysm of a rash and blinding revenge, he hurried her to a neighboring convent and secretly married her.
This most unrighteous act perpetrated, he in vain sought tranquillity. He was now stung within by a constant sense of increasing guilt. Before this act he was the injured party—injured by those in whom he had confided his dearest earthly happiness; and he could raise his head in conscious truth, though all his fondest hopes had been wrecked by their falsehood. But now he was the betrayer of a young and innocent heart, which had implicitly trusted in him. And he had insulted with a base and treacherous ingratitude, by that act of deceit, without excuse, the honor of her father, whose generous confidence had also been implicitly placed in him. But the effects of these scorpion reproaches in his bosom were not less destructive of her peace than of his own. He saw that his wedded Therese was unweariedly anxious to soothe the mysterious wanderings of his mind with her softest tenderness. But his thoughts were, indeed, far from her, ever hovering over the changed image of his so lately adored Edith—ever agonizing over the lightness of a conduct so unlike her former virgin delicacy, so unlike the clinging vows she breathed to him in their hour of boding separation!—ever execrating the perfidy of his brother, which had brought on him this distracting load of guilt and woe!
In this temper of alienation from all the world, a second packet from England was put into his hand. Again he saw Edith's writing; but he dropped it unopened, in horror of the signature he anticipated would be appended to it. Roused by resentment towards him whose name he believed she then bore, he tore asunder the wax of a letter from his father, which was sealed with black. His eyes were speedily riveted to it. Sir Fulke, in the language of deep contrition, confessed a train of deception that petrified his son. He declared, with bitter invectives against himself, that all which had been communicated to that unhappy son relating to Edith and her intended marriage with Algernon had been devised by that unkind brother, and his no less unnatural father, for the treacherous purpose of that marriage. Devoted to ambition for his own sake, as well as for that of his favorite son, Sir Fulke owned that he had from the first of Edith Beaufort's becoming his ward resolved on her union in due time with Algernon, in order to endow him, in addition to his own rich inheritance, with all the political influence attendant on the vast estate to which she was heiress, and so build up the family, in the consideration of government, to any pitch of coroneted rank their high-reaching parent might choose to reclaim.
With many prayers for pardon from Heaven and the cruelly-injured Robert, the wretched father acknowledged that this confession was wrung from him by the sudden death of his eldest son, who having been thrown off his horse on a heap of stones in the high-road, after three days of severe bodily and mental suffering, now lay a sadly- disfigured corpse, under the vainly mourning blazonry of his house, in the darkened hall of his ancestors. The disconsolate narrator then added, "that in contrite repentance his son had conjured him, with his dying breath, to confess the falsehood of all that had passed to the grossly-abused Robert;" amongst which, was Algernon turning to the account of his own designs every confidence imparted to him by his brother, in hisincognitomovements, and awakened intimacy with the noble Sarmatian family at Florence. And from these unsuspected sources, this false friend and kinsman had contrived to throw out hints of his brother's reported sliding heart to the shrinking object of his own base and perfidious passion. At last, believing Robert to be unfaithful, she sunk into a depression of spirits which Sir Fulke thought would be easy to work to an assent, in mere reckless melancholy, to the union he sought. With that object, and to break the knot at once by a trenchant blow on Robert's side, Algernon forged that letter in Edith Beaufort's handwriting which had announced so unblushingly her preparations for an immediate marriage with the eldest son.
"But," continued Sir Fulke, "death has put an end to this unnatural rivalry. And my poor girl, undeceived in her opinion of you, longs to see you, and to give you that hand which your ill-fated brother and infatuated father so unjustly detained from you. You are now my only son, the only prop of my house, the only comfort of my old age! My son, do not abandon to his remorse and sorrow your only parent."
On receipt of this packet, in a consternation of amazement, and a soul divided between rekindled love in all its fires and pity and honor towards her he had betrayed before the altar of heaven, Robert Somerset sacrificed both to his imperious passion. He adored the woman on whose account he had left the country, and though every tie, sacred and just, bound him to the tender and faithful wife he must forsake to regain that idol, he at once consigned her to the full horrors of desertion and hastened to England.
"Disgraceful to relate!" ejaculated Sir Robert, putting his hand over his face, "I married Edith Beaufort, while in our deepest mourning, but at Somerset, as the place farthest from general notice. My father, eager to efface as fast as possible from my mind and hers all recollection of his past conduct towards us, had prepared everything splendid, though private, for our union; and in her blissful, restored possession, I forgot for a while Therese and her agonies. But when my dear Pembroke first saw the light, when I pressed him to my heart, it seemed as if in the same instant a dagger pierced it. When I would have breathed a blessing over him, the conviction struck me that I durst not—that I had deluded the mother who gave him birth, and that at some future period he might have cause to curse the author of his existence.
"Well," continued the baronet, wiping his forehead, "though the birth of this boy conjured up the image of your mother, to haunt me day and night, I never could summon moral courage to inquire of her destiny after I had left her. When the troubles of Poland commenced, what a dreadful terror seized me! The successes of their allied enemies, and the consequent distress and persecution of the chief nobility, overwhelmed me with apprehension. I knew not but that many, like thenoblesseof France, might be forced to abandon their country; and the bare idea of meeting your grandfather, or the injured Therese, in England, precipitated me into a nervous state that menaced my life. I became abstracted and seriously ill, was forbidden all excitements; hence easily avoided the sight of newspapers; and, on the plea you have heard, my family were withheld from speaking on any public subjects that manifestly gave me pain. But I could not prevent the tongues of our visitors from discoursing on a theme which at that period interested every thinking mind. I heard of the valiant Kosciusko, the good Stanislaus, and the palatine Sobieski, with his brave grandson, spoken of in the same breath. I durst not surmise who this grandson was; I dared not ask—I dreaded to know.
"At length," added the agitated father, quickening his voice, "the idol of my heart—she for whom I had sacrificed my all of human probity, perhaps my soul's eternal peace—died in my arms. Where could a wretch like me turn for consolation? I had forfeited all right to it from Heaven or earth. But at last a benignant spirit seemed to breathe on me, and I bent beneath the stroke with humility; for I embraced it as the just chastisement of a crime which till then, even in the midst of my married felicity, had often pressed on my dearest feelings like the hand of death. I repeat, I bore this chastening trial with the resignation I have described. But when, two years afterwards, my eye fell by accident upon the name of Sobieski in one of the public papers, I could not withdraw it; my sight was fascinated as if by a rattle-snake. In one column I read how bravely the palatine fell, and in the next the dreadful fate of his daughter. She was revenged!" cried Sir Robert, eagerly grasping the hand of Thaddeus, who could not restrain the groan that burst from his breast. "For nearly three months I was deprived of that reason which had abused her noble nature.
"When I recovered my senes," continued he, in a calmer tone, "and found I had so fatally suffered the time of any restitution to her to go by, I began to torture my remorseful heart because that I had not, immediately on the death of my too much loved Edith, hastened to Poland, and besought Therese's pardon from her ever-generous heart. But this vivid approach to a sincere repentance was soon obliterated by the consideration that, the Countess Sobieski having had a prior claim to my name, such restitution on my part must have illegitimatized my darling Pembroke, his dying mother's fondest bequeathment to a father's arms.
"It was this fearful conviction," exclaimed Sir Robert, a sudden horror, indeed, distracting his before affectionate eye, "that caused all my barbarian cruelty. When my dear and long-believed only son described the danger from which you had rescued him, when he told me that Therese had fostered him with a parent's tenderness, I was probed to the heart. But when he added that the young Count Sobieski was now an alien from his country, and relying on my friendship for a home, my terror was too truly manifested. Horror drove all natural remorse from my soul. I thought an avenging power had sent my deserted child to discover his father, to claim his rights, and to publish me as a disgrace to the name I had stolen from him. And when I saw my innocent Pembroke, even to his knees, petitioning for the man who I believed had come to undo him, I became almost deranged. May the Lord of mercy pardon the fury of that derangement! For under that temper," added he, putting the trembling hand of Thaddeus to his streaming eyes, "I drove my first-born to be a wanderer on the face of the earth, not for his own crimes, but for those of his father; and Heaven justly punished in the crime the sin of my injustice. When I thought that evidence of my shame was divided from me by an insuperable barrier, when I believed that the ocean would soon separate me from my fears, a righteous Providence brought thee before me, forlorn and expiring. It was the son of Therese Sobieski I had exposed to such wretchedness. It was the cherished of her heart I had delivered to the raging elements! Oh, Thaddeus, my son," cried he, "can I be forgiven for all this, in this world or in the next?"
"Oh, my father!" returned Thaddeus, with a modest, but a pathetic energy, "I am thy son! thy happy son, in such acknowledgment! Therefore no longer upbraid yourself. Did you not act, as by a sacred impulse, a father's part to me when you knew me not? You raised my dying head from the earth and laid it on your bosom. O, my father! He who brought us so together in his own appointed time, chasteneth every son whom he receiveth, and has thus proved his love and pardon to your contrite heart, both on earth and in heaven, by the nature of your chastisement and the healing balm at its close!"
At the end of this interview, so interesting and vital to the happiness of both these newly-united parties, father and son, Sir Robert motioned his blessing to that son by laying his hand gently on his head, while the parental tears flowed on that now dear forehead— for he could not then speak. He immediately withdrew, to leave Thaddeus to repose, and himself to retire to pour out his grateful spirit in private.
* * * * * * *