First Love. Mrs. Loudon
on her knee. He looked at them for a moment; then taking the child by the shoulder, he raised one foot level with the hand in which he held him, and kicked him, in a contemptuous manner, as he swung him to the middle of the floor, saying, that such a mammy’s brat ought to have been a girl. Mrs. St. Aubin ran to raise the child from the ground. St. Aubin snatched up the sacred volume, open as it lay, and flung it after her, telling her, in a voice of thunder, that she was a psalm-singing fool, and ordering her not to cram the boy’s head with any of her cursed nonsense. Indeed, in his calmest and best disposed moods, “You are a fool, Mrs. St. Aubin!” was his usual remark on any thing his wife ventured to say or do.
Mrs. St. Aubin having ascertained that the child was not hurt, took up the book, arranged its ruffled leaves in silence, and laid it with reverence on the table. Her husband viewed her with a malicious grin till her task was completed; then, walking up to the table, he opened the treasury of sacred knowledge, and deliberately tore out every leaf, flinging them, now on one side, now on the other, to each far corner of the apartment; then striding towards the fire-place, he planted himself on the hearth, with his back to the chimney, his legs spread in the attitude of a colossal statue, the tails of his coat turned apart under his arms, and his hands in his side-pockets.
“Now,” he said, looking at his wife, “pick them up!—pick them up! pick them up!” he continued, till all were collected.
Mrs. St. Aubin was about to place the sheets within their vacant cover on the table; but, with a stamp of his foot, which made every article of furniture in the room shake, and brought a picture that hung against the wall, on its face to the floor, he commanded her to put them in the fire. She hesitated; when seizing her arm, he shook it over the flames, till the paper taking fire, she was compelled to loose her hold.
“I ought to have reserved a sheet to have made a fool’s cap for you, I think,” he said, perceiving that silent tears were following each other down the cheeks of his wife. “Why, what an idiot you are! the child has more sense than you have,” he added, seeing that Henry, occupied by surprise and curiosity, was not crying. “Come, Henry,” he continued, in a voice for him most condescending, “you shall carry my fishing basket to-day.”
Henry had been just going to pity his poor mamma when he saw her crying; but hearing his father say that he had more sense than his mother, he could not help feeling raised in his own estimation, and anxious to show his sense by flying with peculiar alacrity for the basket.
He had viewed the whole of the preceding scene with but little comprehension, as may be supposed, of its meaning, and with very confused ideas of right and wrong, being, at the time, not above six years old; but the practical lesson—and there are no lessons like practical lessons—made an indelible impression: all future efforts, whether of mother or aunt, usher or schoolmaster, layman or divine, to infuse into Henry precepts derived from a source he had seen so contemned by his father, were for ever vain. His father, he was old enough to perceive, was feared and obeyed by every one within the small sphere of his observation: for him, therefore, he felt a sort of spurious deference, though he could not love him. For his mother, who had always indulged him with the too great tenderness of a gentle spirit utterly broken, and who had wept over him many a silent hour, till his little heart was saddened without his knowing why, he naturally felt some affection; but then he daily saw her treated with indignity, and therefore did not respect either her or her lessons: for he was just at the age when a quick child judges wrong, a dull one not at all.
Henry had much of the violence of his father’s temper, with some of the fearfulness of his mother’s. In judicious hands, the latter, though no virtue, might have been made to assist in correcting the former; the whole current of his fears might have been turned into a useful channel: in short, he might have been taught to fear only doing wrong, and, by a strict administration of justice, proving to him his perfect security from blame while he did right, he might have been given all that honest-hearted boldness in a good cause, which, throughout after-life, is so necessary to ensure dignity to the character of man, and the early promises of which, it is so delightful to see in the happy open countenance, in the very step and air of a fine frank boy, who has never had his spirit broken by undeserved harshness, or been rendered hopeless of pleasing by inconsistency.
Henry, on the contrary, when he had done no real wrong, was frequently treated with the most violent cruelty; while his very worst faults passed unreproved, if they did not happen to cross the whims of his father: and this cruelty, thus inflicted on a helpless, powerless child, which could not resist, for ever raised in the breast of Henry, who was, as we have said, naturally violent, an ever unsatisfied thirst of vengeance; a sense too of the injustice of the punishments inflicted, a thing early understood by children, embittered his feelings, and the transient impressions thus rendered permanent, corroded inwardly, till they settled into a malice of nature, totally subversive of all that was or might have been good or amiable.
Alas! why will not parents reflect, how much the characters and happiness of their children, in after life, depend on the species of minor experience collected in infancy, and the few years immediately succeeding that period. When intellect is matured, we may call upon it to judge of great events, to guide us in great undertakings, or lead us to signal self-conquests; but by this time, the feelings, the strong holds, whether of vice or virtue, are pre-occupied, and the passions, already in arms and in the field, too probably on the side of error, certainly so, if hitherto undirected. And hence it is, that in so many minds the kingdom within is found in a perpetual state of rebellion against the sovereignty of reason: or, in other words, hence it is, that so many people daily act by impulse, contrary to what they call their better judgment. Here, then, is the true task of the parent; to use, for the benefit of his child, that deliberate sense of right, which, in his own case, comes frequently too late for action. And how shall that parent depart in peace, who has not thus endeavoured, at least, to smooth the path of truth before the footsteps of his child?
When Henry was old enough for public education, Mrs. Montgomery wrote to her sister, to offer an allowance for the expenses of placing him at school. St. Aubin ordered his wife to accept the offer, and selected S—B—school, with the meanest description of lodging in the neighbouring village, as the cheapest he could hear of, that a part of the allowance, which was liberal, might remain in his own hands.
The school-house, at the period of which we speak, could accommodate but a very few of the boys, while the rest were generally lodged in the houses of the poor villagers; where, it is to be feared, they lorded it, and did just as they pleased.
Rather more than a year before the opening of this history, St. Aubin was assailed by a temptation, against which, the fear of detection, in the desperate state of his affairs, was an insufficient defence. He yielded, and became engaged in a swindling transaction to an immense amount. The business was discovered, and St. Aubin apprehended under circumstances which left no doubt of his being hung, unless steps were taken to prevent the prosecution. In this extremity the wretched Maria entreated her sister, if the sacrifice of the fortune so long preserved would suffice, to rescue with it herself and child from the disgrace of having a husband and father die an ignominious death. A compromise was accordingly offered, and accepted. It was not, however, in the power of the persons principally interested, to do more than connive at the escape of St. Aubin, who therefore fled the kingdom, taking with him his miserable wife, and his black factotum, the only slaves utter beggary had left him; and abandoning the child, still at S—B—school, to the compassion of Mrs. Montgomery. Nor did he remit any part of his hatred to that lady, notwithstanding her late concession; on the contrary, he called down fresh imprecations on her head, as being the sole cause, he said, of all his misfortunes, by having withheld the money at the time it would have been really of use, and enabled him to have arranged his affairs before they became quite desperate.
The next accounts Mrs. Montgomery had of her sister and St. Aubin were, that the ship in which they had sailed, with all the crew, and passengers, had perished off the coast of France. The affair was of too public a nature to afford, from the first, the slightest hope of mis-statement; for the vessel, though a merchantman, was of importance, from the value of her cargo, as she had much specie on board. The circumstances too under which she was lost were remarkable, and consequently made a great noise, for the weather was perfectly calm. She had been seen and passed in