your son, by your beloved Mary Hereford-there is the son you have been in search of for thirteen years-behold him! Hell could not add one crime to his soul, or make him blacker than he is he has been educated, and he stands before you perfect-a finished villain! YOU have brought him to this -he has you to thank for it! But the meeting does not appear to be a cordial one-after so long an absence, he deserves a warmer embrace-why do you not advance and speak to him? Probably he will remember that to you he owes his late good turn. Well, I have fulfilled my promise-I can do no more!" "Liar!" yelled the wretched man; me!-it is not my son?" 66 you have deceived "He is Mary Hereford's at all events-you can look in his face and see if you can trace the resemblance !" St. George uttered a groan so deep that it seemed as if his spirit came forth with it, and he advanced sorrowfully to the felon who lay upon that heap of straw. "My boy-my son-forgive me-forgive me!" he cried, while the tears fell from his eyes like rain, and he kneeled by his offspring's side ;-but, uttering an imprecation too horrible to be set down here, and spitting scornfully in his father's face, the miscreant drew back his unchained foot, and spurned the sorrowing suppliant from his side. Then rang aloud the stranger's scornful laugh. "Spirit of Mary Hereford!" he cried, in exulting tones; "judge! have I redeemed my oath !" "Demon of darkness!" exclaimed the wretched father, springing to his feet; "demon! that laugh'st when the very demons themselves would weep-who and what art thou, when such a scene as this moves not thine iron heart!" My oath has nearly been accomplished," pursued the stranger, as if speaking to himself. "First, on the morning when she accused me of the forged letter. Again on the morning when I found her with this man-and lastly, by her lifeless corpse-was it three several times recorded in the book of fate. The first oath was accomplished, when I left him in the tombs, and deprived him of his betrothed; the second was obliterated when I terrified him with the certain prospect of death for thirteen years, and swept away his honors, fortune and rank; and the third shall have been fulfilled, when he renders up his life-heart-broken that he should have been spurned by the son of his youth and the long-lost child of love! Ha! I said my vengeance should slumber not; I said he should be taught to curse the hour wherein he was born-and he has done so-times unnumbered and unnumbered!" "Fiend of the bottomless pit! what mutter you!" yelled the victim, whose heart was writhing within him; "who are you what are you-man or devil?" The stranger sank his voice to a whisper, and hissed the appalling words— "Lewis, I am George Gerard-the rejected lover of Mary Hereford !" As he thus spake, the unfortunate man clasped his hands upon the swelling veins of his temples, and reeled along the cell, and, as if crushed beneath a weight of punishment greater than he could bear, he sank upon the floor of the dungeon in the sullen torpor of death. The relentless avenger gazed upon him as he fell, and muttered aloud, "his sin has killed him, and not I. I have not been his murderer-I have made his own crime the instrument of his punishment-and my task has been accomplished-henceforth forever, St. George and I are quits." The wretched man opened his eyes with a convulsive spasm-de Waterville drew out his watch; "it wants but a few seconds of twelve," he said as he glanced at it-"if you live, St. George, the son of Mary Hereford dies; if you die, then he may live, as you are the only evidence against him. Farewell! it is twelve o'clock." As he uttered these words, a stream of blood issued from St. George's mouth and nose; and extending himself out at full length, he expired without a groan. In the madness of his despair he had ruptured a blood-vessel, and his spirit took its everlasting flight. That was a strange scene in that prison-cell at midnight! There lay the father-a bleeding corpse-beside him, breathing curses on his captor's head, the son shook his chained hands, and laughed aloud, as he saw the dying struggles of the man who was to have given evidence against him— although that man was the author of his existence—while, like a destroying angel, stood the great avenger, mocking at the desolation which he made, and scanning, by the flickering light of the smoky lamp, the shadows of death as they flitted o'er his victim's writhing face! It was a dreadful scene! "Now, Edmund, with thee I grapple next!"-and with these words on his lips, the avenger left the cell. CHAPTER LI. EDMUND. "My task is done; my strength hath ceased; my theme The spell should break of this protracted dream;— CHILDE HAROLD. Ir is in another apartment of that jail, and on the following day, that our story again opens. The unconquerable Edmund Rodolphe is leaning against the prison wall, his foot shackled to the floor, and his arms pinioned behind him; but his fetterless mind is busy, his unchained, high-reaching thoughts are as unsubdued as ever. "I know not the extent of my danger," he muttered ;— "oh! if I knew but this, I would soon invent a remedy to counteract the evil. Never mind! St. George is dead; he died in the next cell, last night; and now what have I to fear? Oh, had I but known that it was his son I was educating, I would have taken a different course! But it is too late for regrets, and my motto shall be nil desperandum' to the last! That miserable coward St. George gave way to ́despair, and lo, the result! His son will make a better character than the father. Simms, William, St. George-all are gone! The grave will keep them down ;-what have I to fear-shadows? Shadows may have appalled Richard Plantagenet's soul, but never Edmund Rodolphe's! But who is my persecutor? who is this myth—this living dead man who is about to enter the lists with me? I could not hear what name he whispered to St. George, although I heard his last words-' Now, Edmund, thy turn is next!' Well, he will be deserving of the victory if he copes successfully with Edmund. Many champions have tried it, but I have overthrown them all; and never till the dim vail that hides Futurity is withdrawn, and I stand upon the threshold that divides Time from Eternity, never till then will I confess that Edmund has been beaten ! Ah, no! it is not the time to despond now,-now that I have every thing prepared for a sudden blow,-now that the arrangements and the labors of thirteen years have been completed, and I was about to make an empire tremble to its centre !-oh, no, I must not founder now! I must surmount the billow, and survive the storm; and woe to him who shall attempt my ruin!" As he thus reflected, the counsel he had retained entered the cell. Edmund had employed this man more for the purpose of ascertaining the nature of the charges against him than that he should defend his case, since this latter part he has to entrust to no one save himself. Well, Mr. Despard Bloodsuck," said Rodolphe, as he entered, "what chance is there?" "A very slight one-very slight indeed," said Mr. Despard Bloodsuck, putting on his spectacles, and drawing forth some papers with an important air. "To the point, sir," observed Edmund. how many aliases there are?" 66 'Let me see-let me see. Ah, here! "First tell me Erleloff, alias Beauchamp, alias Ferrars, alias Rodolphe, alias Templethorpe, alias Grahame-yes, that's all." "And quite enough," said Edmund, with a sneer; "but," he added internally, "it is far from being all! Well," he VOL. II. 27 |