第33章
He said, 'I have deserved the worst your anger can inflict on me, but I will spare you the scandal of bringing me to justice in open court.The law, if it found me guilty, could at the worst but banish me from my country and my friends.I will go of my own accord.God is my witness that I honestly believed I could save the child from deformity and suffering.I have risked all and lost all.My heart and spirit are broken.I am fit for nothing but to go and hide myself, and my shame and misery, from all eyes that have ever looked on me.I shall never come back, never expect your pity or forgiveness.If you think less harshly of me when I am gone, keep secret what has happened; let no other lips say of me what yours and your wife's have said.I shall think that forbearance atonement enough--atonement greater than I have deserved.Forget me in this world.May we meet in another, where the secrets of all hearts are opened, and where the child who is gone before may make peace between us!' He said those words and went out.Your father never saw him or heard from him again."I knew the reason now why my father had never confided the truth to anyone, his own family included.My mother had evidently confessed all to her sister under the seal of secrecy, and there the dreadful disclosure had been arrested.
"Your uncle told me," the priest continued, "that before he left England he took leave of you by stealth, in a place you were staying at by the sea-side.Tie had not the heart to quit his country and his friends forever without kissing you for the last time.He followed you in the dark, and caught you up in his arms, and left you again before you had a chance of discovering him.
The next day he quitted England."
"For this place?" I asked.
"Yes.He had spent a week here once with a student friend at the time when he was a pupil in the Hotel Dieu, and to this place he returned to hide, to suffer, and to die.We all saw that he was a man crushed and broken by some great sorrow, and we respected him and his affliction.He lived alone, and only came out of doors toward evening, when he used to sit on the brow of the hill yonder, with his head on his hand, looking toward England.That place seemed a favorite with him, and he is buried close by it.
He revealed the story of his past life to no living soul here but me, and to me he only spoke when his last hour was approaching.
What he had suffered during his long exile no man can presume to say.I, who saw more of him than anyone, never heard a word of complaint fall from his lips.He had the courage of the martyrs while he lived, and the resignation of the saints when he died.
Just at the last his mind wandered.He said he saw his little darling waiting by the bedside to lead him away, and he died with a smile on his face--the first I had ever seen there."The priest ceased, and we went out together in the mournful twilight, and stood for a little while on the brow of the hill where Uncle George used to sit, with his face turned toward England.How my heart ached for him as I thought of what he must have suffered in the silence and solitude of his long exile! Was it well for me that I had discovered the Family Secret at last? Ihave sometimes thought not.I have sometimes wished that the darkness had never been cleared away which once hid from me the fate of Uncle George.
THE THIRD DAY.
FINE again.Our guest rode out, with her ragged little groom, as usual.There was no news yet in the paper--that is to say, no news of George or his ship.
On this day Morgan completed his second story, and in two or three days more I expected to finish the last of my own contributions.Owen was still behindhand and still despondent.
The lot drawing to-night was Five.This proved to be the number of the first of Morgan's stories, which he had completed before we began the readings.His second story, finished this day, being still uncorrected by me, could not yet be added to the common stock.
On being informed that it had come to his turn to occupy the attention of the company, Morga n startled us by immediately objecting to the trouble of reading his own composition, and by coolly handing it over to me, on the ground that my numerous corrections had made it, to all intents and purposes, my story.
Owen and I both remonstrated; and Jessie, mischievously persisting in her favorite jest at Morgan's expense, entreated that he would read, if it was only for her sake.Finding that we were all determined, and all against him, he declared that, rather than hear our voices any longer, he would submit to the minor inconvenience of listening to his own.Accordingly, he took his manuscript back again, and, with an air of surly resignation, spread it open before him.
"I don't think you will like this story, miss," he began, addressing Jessie, "but I shall read it, nevertheless, with the greatest pleasure.It begins in a stable--it gropes its way through a dream--it keeps company with a hostler--and it stops without an end.What do you think of that?"After favoring his audience with this promising preface, Morgan indulged himself in a chuckle of supreme satisfaction, and then began to read, without wasting another preliminary word on any one of us.