First Love. Mrs. Loudon
Edmund; but when she came to his beauty, she faltered and looked at her mother with a beseeching expression.
Mrs. Montgomery laughed, and replied to the look, “Oh, yes! there was a sweetness when he smiled, that made me begin to think he would be pretty if he were fat; but now, the poor child is all eyes and eyelashes.”
“Oh, mamma!” said Frances, “he has the most beautiful mouth I ever saw in my life, and such nice teeth!”
“Has he, my dear?” said Mrs. Montgomery, with provoking indifference: for she happened to be deep in a discussion on the nature of the poor laws, with Mr. Jackson, the clergyman.
Master Henry, meanwhile, was greedily devouring tart and cream, with his face close to his plate, and his eyes levelled at the dish, in great anxiety to be in time to claim the last portion which now remained on it; but, in his attempt to swallow what was before him, he missed his aim, and was a moment too late, though he thrust out his plate with both hands just as he saw a servant coming round; but the tart was dispatched to Lord L., to whom it had been offered, and who, being too much occupied to refuse it, had bowed. It lay before him a few moments, and went away untouched. Henry, vexed extremely, and desirous of revenge on Frances for the disappointment occasioned him by her lover, said, “If you are talking of the beggar brat, he is the image of a monkey! I was quite afraid he would bite me as I passed him in the hall.”
“I am sure, Henry,” retorted Frances, “he seemed more afraid of you, than you could be of him: and, by the bye, you need not, I think, have looked so cross at the poor child.”
“Cross!” repeated Henry, “I did not look cross. What reason do you suppose I had to look cross? I never saw the brat before in my life.”
Henry’s speech was accompanied by that hateful expression, which the eyes of an ill-disposed child assume, when it knows it is uttering falsehood!
“Henry!” said Mrs. Montgomery, with some surprise; “you need not look angry, much less guilty. No one can suppose that you know any thing of the poor boy. But leave the room, sir: and remember you don’t sit at table again, till you know better how to conduct yourself.”
Henry obeyed, but slowly and sulkily; trailing one foot after the other, and determining to have revenge on the cause of his disgrace. He offered no apology, and therefore was not taken into favour again for the evening, though poor Mrs. Montgomery, as she passed to her own apartment, looked into that where he lay, and said, with a sigh, “Good night, and God bless you, child!”
To account, in some degree, for the unprepossessing manners of Master Henry, we shall introduce a few words respecting the young gentleman’s birth, and hitherto unfortunately directed education.
CHAPTER IV.
“Lifting at
The thought my timid eyes, I pass them o’er
His brow; and, if I would, I dare not love him:
Yet, dare I never disobey that eye,
Flashing outward fires, while, within its depths,
Where love should dwell, ’tis ever still, and cold,
To look upon.”
St. Aubin, Henry’s father, was a Frenchman, and totally without religion. A flourish of worldly honour, as long as no temptation had arisen, had sustained for him even a showy character. By this, a showy appearance, and showy manners, he had, what is called, gained the affections, that is, he had dazzled the fancy, of Maria, the younger sister of Mrs. Montgomery. Maria was a beautiful girl, and but seventeen. Her sister, who was also her guardian, for she was some years her senior, and their parents were dead, disapproved of the match, but in vain: Maria married St. Aubin, and was miserable! The marriage being a runaway affair, no settlements were entered into, which circumstance St. Aubin imagined would be in his favour; but, when he discovered that the consent of the guardians not having been obtained, gave them the power of withholding Maria’s fortune till she should be of age, and of then settling it on herself and her children, without suffering him to touch one shilling, his brutality was such, that Mrs. St. Aubin, before the birth of her child, for she had but one, was broken-hearted.
She denied herself the consolation she might have found in the sympathy of her sister, for she wished to conceal from her the wretchedness she had brought upon herself, by acting contrary to her advice. She was, however, shortly removed out of the reach of that sister’s penetration.
St. Aubin was deeply in debt when he married, and things had been ever since becoming worse and worse. He had always flattered himself that the guardians would not use the full power of which they spoke, and that by making fair promises he should be able, when once Maria was of age, to get the money, or the greater part of it, into his own hands; he had therefore laboured incessantly to put off the payment of every demand to the day of his wife’s coming of age, and made all his arrangements with reference to that period. At length it arrived. He made application for his wife’s fortune; but Mrs. Montgomery, in reply, reminded him, that her sister having married without her consent, had given her, as sole remaining guardian, a power, which she now saw it was her duty to exert; namely, that of refusing to pay down any part of the money. She should, therefore, she said, secure the whole of it in the hands of trustees, as a future provision for Maria and her child.
With this letter open in his hand, St. Aubin, foaming with rage, entered the room where his wife sat with Henry, then between two and three years old, playing on the ground at her feet, while she was absorbed in melancholy anticipations of the probable result of her husband’s application. St. Aubin flung the letter in her face, swearing, with horrid imprecations, that he would be the death both of her and her brat, and then blow out his own brains. Mrs. St. Aubin remained silent; but the shrieks of the child brought servants. By the time they arrived, however, St. Aubin was striding up and down the room, venting his rage on the open letter, which he kicked before him at each step.
Shortly after this final disappointment respecting Maria’s fortune, St. Aubin found it necessary to take refuge from his creditors in the Isle of Man; whither he went accordingly, carrying with him his wife and child, and settling there with a very reduced establishment.
Not choosing, it would seem, to be hung for declared murder, he appeared determined, by every species of ingenious barbarity, to torture the wretched Maria out of her remaining shred of existence; and, among other devices, he daily and hourly made her shudder, by his vows of deep and black revenge on her sister.
One day, after sitting some time leaning his head on his hand, with a countenance resembling the thunder-cloud, lightning suddenly flashed from his eyes, imprecations exploded from his lips, he started to his feet, stood before his wife, and clenching his hand, uttered these words: “I tell you, Mrs. St. Aubin, that child, that I hate, because it is yours! that child, to whose future provision she has sacrificed me! that child I will rear, I will preserve, for the sole purpose of being the instrument of my revenge!—by his means, were it twenty years hence, were it thirty years hence, I will break her heart! Yes,” he added, as if in reply to a look from Maria of astonishment, almost amounting to incredulity, “and I have determined how I shall do it.” He then resumed his sitting attitude, and again leaning his head on his hand, a long hour of utter silence followed, during which his unhappy wife sat at the other side of the table, not daring to arouse him by rising to leave the room.
Henry, at this time, promised to have in him a strange mixture of the dispositions both of his father and mother; or, in other words, of evil and good. The evil certainly did predominate; yet, had a careful hand early separated the seeds, cultivated the good, and cast out the bad, this ill-fated child might have been saved from perdition; or had he, with all his faults, been supplied with that only unerring standard of right, the practical application of sacred truths to moral obligations, even in after-life there might have been hope; but his father, as we have said, had no religion: he daily scoffed at whatever was most sacred, purposely to insult the feelings of his wife, and this before his child. One morning,