Volume Ii Part 7 (1/2)
”Most gladly would I do so, had not Robert Moncton put the finis.h.i.+ng stroke to his tyranny, by tearing my indentures, and by this malicious act destroyed the labour of seven years.”
”The scoundrel! the mean, cowardly scoundrel!” cried Sir Alexander, striking the table with such violence with his clenched hand, that kings, queens, knights, bishops and commoners made a general movement to the other side of the chess-board. ”Never mind, Geoffrey, my boy, give me your hand--I will be your friend. I will restore you to your rights, if it costs me the last s.h.i.+lling in my purse--ay, or the last drop in my veins. Let the future for a short time take care of itself.
Make this your home; look upon me as your father, and we shall yet live to see this villain reap the reward of his evil deeds.”
”Generous, n.o.ble man!” I cried, while tears of joy and grat.i.tude rolled down my cheeks: ”how can I ever hope to repay you for such disinterested goodness?”
”By never alluding to the subject, Geoffrey. Give me back the love your father once felt for me, and I shall be more than repaid.
Besides, my lad, I am neither so good nor so disinterested as you give me credit for. I detest, despise that uncle of yours, and I know the best way to annoy him is to befriend you, and get you safe out of his villainous clutches. This is hardly doing as I would be done by, but I can't help it. No one blames another for taking a fly out of a spider's web, when the poor devil is shrieking for help, although he be the spider's lawful prey; but who does not applaud a man for rescuing his fellow man from the grasp of a scoundrel! By-the-by, Geoffrey,” added he, ”have you dined?”
”At the last inn we stopped at on the road.”
”The Hart; a place not very famous for good cheer. Their beef is generally as hard as their deer's horns. Let me order up refreshments.”
”By no means. You forget, Sir Alexander, that of late I have not been much used to good living. The friend on whose charity I have been boarding is a poor fellow like myself.”
”Well, we must have our chat over a gla.s.s of old wine.”
He rang the bell. The wine was soon placed upon the table, and most excellent wine it proved. I was weak from my long confinement to a sick chamber, and tired with my long journey; I never enjoyed a gla.s.s of wine so much in my life.
”What do you think of Moncton, Geoffrey?”
”It is a glorious old place.”
”Wish it were yours--don't you? Confess the truth, now.”
”Some fifty years hence,” said I, laughing.
”You would then be too old to enjoy it, Geoffrey; but wait patiently G.o.d's good time, and it may be yours yet. There was a period in my life,” and he sighed a long, deep, regretful sigh, ”when I hoped that a son of mine would be master here, but as that cannot be, I am doomed to leave no male heir to my name and t.i.tle, I know no one whom I would rather see in the old place than my cousin Edward's son.”
”Your attachment to my father must have been great, when, after so many years, you extend it to his son.”
”Yes, Geoffrey, I loved that wild, mad-cap father of yours better than I ever loved any man; but I suffered one rash action to separate hearts formed by nature to understand and appreciate each other. You are not acquainted with this portion of the family history. Pa.s.s the bottle this way, and I will enlighten your ignorance.”
”When your grandfather, in the plenitude of his worldly wisdom (for he had a deal of the fox in his character), left the guardians.h.i.+p of his sons to his aged father, it was out of no respect for the old gentleman, whom had cast him off rather unceremoniously, when his plebeian tastes led him to prefer being a rich citizen, rather than a poor gentleman; but he found, that though he ama.s.sed riches, he had lost caste, and he hoped by this act to restore his sons, for whom he had acquired wealth, to their proper position in society.
”My grandfather, Sir Robert, grumbled a good deal at being troubled with the guardians.h.i.+p of the lads in his old age. But when he saw those youthful scions of his old house, he was so struck with their beauty and talents, that from that hour they held an equal place in his affections with myself, the only child of his eldest son, and heir to his estates.
”I was an extravagant, reckless young fellow of eighteen, when my cousins first came to live at Moncton; and I hailed their advent with delight. Edward, I told you before, had been an old chum of mine at school; and when Robert was placed in a lawyer's office, he accompanied me to college to finish my education. He was intended to fill his father's place in the mercantile world, but he had little talent or inclination for such a life. All his tastes were decidedly aristocratic, and I fear that my expensive and dissipated habits operated unfavourably on his open, generous, social disposition.
”With a thousand good qualities, and possessing excellent qualities, Edward Moncton was easily led astray by the bad example of others. He was a fine musician, had an admirable voice, a brilliant wit, and great fluency of speech, which can scarcely be called advantageous gifts, to those who don't know how to make a proper use of them. He was the life of the society in which we moved, courted and admired wherever he went, and a jolly time we had of it, I can tell you, in those cla.s.sical abodes of learning, and frequently of sin.
”Edward gave me his whole heart, and I loved him with the most entire affection. But, though I saw that my example acted most perniciously on his easy disposition, I wanted the moral courage to give up a course of gaiety, in order to save him from ruin.
”Poor Edward!--I would give worlds to recall the past. But the bad seed was sown, and in time we reaped the bitter fruits.
”With all my faults, I was never a gambler; women, wine, and extravagant living, were my chief derelictions from the paths of rect.i.tude. But even while yielding to these temptations, I was neither an habitual drunkard nor a profligate, though I frequented haunts, where both characters were constantly found, and ranked many such men among my chosen friends and a.s.sociates. My moral guilt, was perhaps as great as theirs; for it is vain for a man to boast of his not being intemperate, because nature has furnished him with nerves which enable him to drink, in defiance to reason, quant.i.ties which would deprive the larger portion of men of their senses.
”Your father thought, boy like (for he was full three years my junior), to prove his t.i.tle to manhood by following closely in my steps, and too soon felt the evil effects of such a leader. He wasted his health in debauchery, and wine maddened him. The gaming-table held out its allurements, he wanted fort.i.tude to resist its temptation, and was the loser to a considerable amount. He kept this a secret from me.