The World's Greatest Books - Volume 4 Part 41

Early the next day I walked forward to the races, but saw nothing of my daughter or of Mr. Burch.e.l.l.

The agitations of my mind, and the fatigues I had undergone, now threw me into a fever. I retired to a little ale-house by the roadside, and here I languished for nearly three weeks.

The night coming on as I was twenty miles from home on my return journey, I put up at a little public-house, and asked for the landlord's company over a pint of wine. I could hear the landlady upstairs bitterly reproaching a lodger who could not pay.

"Out, I say," she cried; "pack out this moment!"

"Oh, dear madame," replied the stranger, "pity a poor, abandoned creature for one night and death will soon do the rest!"

I instantly knew the voice of my poor ruined child, Olivia, and flew to her rescue.

"Welcome, anyway welcome, my dearest lost one, to your poor old father's bosom!"

"Oh, my own dear"--for minutes she could say no more--"my own dearest, good papa! You can't forgive me--I know you cannot!"

"Yes, my child, from my heart I do forgive thee." After we had talked ourselves into some tranquillity, I said, "It surprises me how a person of Mr. Burch.e.l.l's seeming honour could be guilty of such deliberate baseness."

"My dear papa," returned my daughter, "you labour under a strange mistake. It is Mr. Thornhill who has ruined me; who employed the two ladies, as he called them, but who, in fact, were abandoned women of the town, to decoy us up to London. Their artifices would certainly have succeeded but for Mr. Burch.e.l.l's letter, who directed those reproaches at them which we all applied to ourselves."

"You amaze me, my dear!" cried I. "But tell me, what temptation was it that could thus obliterate your virtue?"

"He offered me marriage," replied she. "We were indeed married secretly by a popish priest, whose name I was sworn to conceal."

"What!" interrupted I. "And were you indeed married?"

"Alas!" she said, "he has been married already by the same priest to six or eight wives more, whom, like me, he has deceived and abandoned."

"Have patience, my child," cried I, "and I hope things will yet be better. To-morrow I'll carry you home to your mother. Poor woman, this has gone to her heart; but she loves you still, Olivia, and will forget it."

_IV.--Fresh Calamities_

It was late the next night when I approached my own home. I had left Olivia at an inn five miles away, intending to prepare my family for her reception. To my amazement, I saw the house bursting out into a blaze of fire, and every aperture red with conflagration! I gave a loud convulsive outcry, which alarmed my son, and all my family ran out, wild with apprehension. Our neighbours came running to our a.s.sistance; but the flames had taken too strong a hold to be extinguished, and all the neighbours could do was to stand spectators of the calamity. They brought us clothes and furnished one of our outhouses with kitchen utensils; so that by daylight we had another, though a wretched, dwelling to retire to.

In the midst of this affliction our poor lost one returned to us. "Ah, madam," cried her mother, "this is but a poor place to come to after so much finery! I can afford but little entertainment to persons who have kept company only with persons of distinction; but I hope Heaven will forgive you."

The unhappy victim stood pale and trembling, unable to weep or to reply.

"I entreat, woman," I said to my wife, with severity in my voice and manner, "that my words may be now marked once for all. I have here brought you back a poor deluded wanderer--her return to duty demands the revival of our tenderness. The real hards.h.i.+ps of life are now coming fast upon us; let us not increase them by dissensions among each other.

The kindness of Heaven is promised to the penitent, and let ours be directed by the example."

My daughter's grief, however, seemed formed for continuing, and her wretchedness was increased by the news that Mr. Thornhill was going to be married to the rich Miss Wilmot, who had formerly been betrothed to my eldest son.

On a morning of peculiar warmth for the season, when we were breakfasting out of doors, Mr. Thornhill drove up in his chariot, alighted, and inquired after my health with his usual air of familiarity.

"Sir," replied I, "your present a.s.surance only serves to aggravate your baseness."

"My dear sir," returned he, "I cannot understand what this means!"

"Go!" cried I. "Thou art a poor, pitiful wretch, and every way a liar; but your meanness secures you from my anger!"

"I find," he said, "you are bent upon obliging me to talk in a harsher manner than I intended. My steward talks of driving for the rent, and it is certain he knows his duty. Yet, still, I could wish to serve you, and even to have you and your daughter present at my marriage."

"Mr. Thornhill," replied I, "as to your marriage with any but my daughter, that I never will consent to! And though your friends.h.i.+p could raise me to a throne, or your resentment sink me to the grave, yet would I despise both."

"Depend upon it," returned he, "you shall feel the effects of this insolence," and departed abruptly.

On the very next morning his steward came to demand my annual rent, which, by reason of the accidents already related, I was unable to pay.

On the following day two officers of justice took me to the county gaol.

There is no situation, however wretched it seems, but has some sort of comfort attending it; and I found mine in the help and kindness of a fellow-prisoner, Mr. Jenkinson by name, who was awaiting trial for several acts of cheating and roguery. I myself, indeed, had been one of his victims.

The fortune of my family, who were lodged in the town, was wholly and distressingly adverse. Olivia was ill, and longed for me to make my submission to Mr. Thornhill by approving his marriage with Miss Wilmot.

When I had been confined a fortnight, Mr. Jenkinson brought me dreadful news--Olivia was dead! And while yet my grief was fresh upon me my wife came weeping to tell me that Sophia had been seized by ruffians and carried off.

The sum of my miseries, thought, I, is now made up; nor is it in the power of anything on earth to give me another pang. Yet another awaited me. My eldest son, George, to whom I had written, went to Thornhill Castle to punish our betrayer; he was attacked by the coward's servants, injured one of them, and was brought into the very prison where I was confined.

The enemy of my family had now triumphed completely. My only hope was in a letter I had written to Sir William Thornhill, telling him of the misdeeds of his nephew. I was by this time myself extremely ill. I sought to break from my heart all ties that bound it to earth, and to fit myself for eternity.

_V.--The Rescue_

On parting from my unhappy son, who was removed to a stronger cell, I laid me down in bed, when Mr. Jenkinson, entering, informed me that there was news of my daughter. He had scarcely delivered his message when my dearest girl entered with Mr. Burch.e.l.l.

"Here, papa," she cried, "here is the brave man to whom I owe my delivery; to this gentleman's intrepidity--"

A kiss from Mr. Burch.e.l.l interrupted what she was going to add.

"Ah, Mr. Burch.e.l.l," said I, "you were ever our friend. We have long discovered our errors with regard to you, and repented our ingrat.i.tude.

And now, as you have delivered my girl, if you think her a recompense, she is yours."

"But I suppose, sir," he replied, "you are apprised of my incapacity to support her as she deserves?"

"I know no man," I returned, "so worthy to deserve her as you."

Without the least reply to my offer, he ordered from the next inn the best dinner that could be provided. While we were at dinner, the gaoler brought a message from Mr. Thornhill, desiring permission to appear before his uncle in order to vindicate his innocence and honour. The poor, harmless Mr. Burch.e.l.l, then, was in reality the celebrated Sir William Thornhill!

Mr. Thornhill entered with a smile, and was going to embrace his uncle.

"No fawning, sir, at present," cried the baronet. "The only way to my heart is by the road of honour; but here I only see complicated instances of falsehood, cowardice, and oppression."

At this moment Jenkinson and the gaoler's two servants entered, hauling in a tall man very genteelly dressed. As soon as Mr. Thornhill perceived the prisoner and Mr. Jenkinson, he seemed to shrink backward with terror, for this was the man whom he had put upon the carrying off of Sophia.

"Heavens," cried Sir William, "what a viper have I been fostering in my bosom!"

"As Mr. Thornhill and I have been old fellow-sporters," said Jenkinson, "I have a friends.h.i.+p for him; and I hope he will show a proper return of friends.h.i.+p to his own honest Jenkinson, who brings him a wife."