 | CHAPTER V. Clarence, or, A tale of our own times |  |
5. CHAPTER V.
And duties press, and tender ties
Forbid the soul from earth to rise,
How awful then it is to die!”
Mrs. Barbauld.
Weary days and nights succeeded. To all Mr.
Carroll's family it seemed as if he were spell-bound.
His color faded, his eye was red and heavy; he
had forgotten his business, his family, every thing
but one single object of intense anxiety and care.
His altered deportment gave rise to strange and
perplexed conjectures; but curious glances and
obscure intimations alike passed by him as if he
were deaf and blind. Dr. Eustace said in reply to
his anxious demand of his medical opinion, “If Mr.
Flavel has quieted his mind by the communication
he has made to you, he may again have an interval
of consciousness. The mind has an inexplicable
influence on the body, even when to us it appears
perfectly inert.” Mr. Carroll made no answer.
Nor, when Conolly's curiosity flashed out in such
exclamations as that “Sure, and its well for him,
any way, that he's made a clear breast of it,” did
he reply word or look to the insinuation. He persevered
in his obstinate silence even when Mrs.
Carroll, impatient at this new exclusion from conjugal
confidence, said, “I am sure I don't wish any
one to tell me any thing about it; but your silence,
Charles, does wear my spirits out; where there is
misgivings from the first; you must do me the justice
to remember that. A great risk it was to take
in such a singular stranger. I always thought so,
you know. We could not tell but he had committed
some great crime. Dear! it makes my blood run
cold to think what sort of a person we may have
been harboring.” All this was said, and passively
endured, while Mr. Carroll was swallowing his
hasty breakfast. He moved abruptly from the table,
and, as usual, hurried to Mr. Flavel's apartment.
Frank was startled by his mother's suggestions.
He dropped his knife and fork, and signed to
his sister to follow him out of the room. “Oh, Gertrude,”
he said, “do you believe Mr. Flavel is a
bad man!”
“No, Frank, I know he is not.”
“How do you know it?”
“Why perfectly well. He does not seem so.”
Gertrude certainly had given an insufficient reason
for the faith that was in her; and it had little
effect in allaying Frank's apprehensions; and impelled
by them he ventured, though he knew it was
forbidden ground, to steal into Mr. Flavel's room.
His father was at his constant station at the bed-side.
Frank drew near softly, took Mr. Flavel's
hand, looked at him intently, and then hiding his
face on his father's breast, he sobbed out, “He has
not committed any crime, has he, father?”
Mr. Carroll disengaged himself from his son,
and locked the door. “My dear child,” he said,
“I am fearful, but I must trust you. While the
breath of life is in him you shall know.”
“Know what, father? Oh, don't stop.”
“You shall know whom you have brought to
me.” He stopped, almost choaked by his emotion.
“Oh! tell me—tell me, sir.”
“My father!”
Frank was confounded; he scarcely comprehended
the words; his mind was still fixed on his
first inquiry. “But has he committed any crime?”
he repeated.
“My dear boy, I do not know; I only know he
is my father.”
“Father—father,” repeated Frank, as if the
words did not yet convey a distinct idea to his
mind, but as he uttered them they penetrated Mr.
Flavel's dull sense, he languidly unclosed his eyes,
and looked up with something like returning intelligence,
but it seemed the mere glimmering of the
dying spark; his eyelids fell, and he was again perfectly
unconscious.
Mr. Carroll shuddered at his own imprudence.
He knew that Mr. Flavel's life hung by a single
thread. Till now he had resolutely acted on this
conviction, and had now been betrayed by a coercive
sympathy with his child. He summoned Conolly,
and taking Frank into his own apartment,
impressed on him the importance of keeping the
secret for the present, and Frank's subsequent discretion
proved what self-government even a child
may attain.
Doctor Eustace, at his next visit, announced a
slight improvement in his patient, which was followed
by a gradual amendment. This, the Doctor
Of this, Mr. Flavel was himself perfectly
aware, and said, with his characteristic firmness, “if
it is in the power of your art, Doctor, suspend the
last stroke for a little time.”
Medical skill did its utmost; happy circumstances
shed their balmy influence on the hurt mind; and
the mercy of Heaven interposed to protract the
flickering flame of life. Mr. Flavel's countenance
assumed an expression of serenity, and when his
eye met Carroll's, it beamed forth a bright and tender
intelligence, that seemed almost supernatural.
As his strength permitted, he had short and private
interviews with him, during which he communicated
his history. We shall recount it in his own words,
without specifying each particular interruption.
“Do not expect, my son,” he said, “minute particulars.
I scarcely dare to think of past events.
I dare not recall the feelings they excited; you
will sufficiently comprehend them by their ravages.
“My father was a gentleman of Pembrokeshire,
in England. At his death his whole
property, a large entailed estate, went to my
eldest and only brother—Francis Clarence.—
We never loved each other; he had no magnanimity
of temper to reconcile me to the injustice of
fortune. He was a calculating sensualist, governed
by one object and motive, his own interest. I was
naturally of a generous and open temper. Our
paths diverged. He entered the fashionable and
political world. I drudged contentedly in mercantile
business for an humble living. He married a
woman of rank and fortune. I a beautiful unportioned
now almost thirty years since I have pronounced
that name, save in my dreams. She was your mother.
I have forgiven her.
“You were born at a cottage near Clifton. When
I first took you in my arms, I was conscious of a
controlling religious emotion; I feel on my knees
and dedicated you to Heaven; I now believe my
prayer was heard.
“I must not stir the embers of unholy passions; an
evil spirit entered my paradise; I was persuaded
that it was imbecile and ignoble passively to bear
the yoke of a lowly fortune; and to permit my lovely
wife to remain in obscurity. Favor and patronage
were offered, and a road to certain wealth opened
to me in a lucrative business in the West Indies.
My wife and child could not be exposed to a tropical
climate, they were to be left to my brother's
protection. My brother was my tempter. Oh! the
folly of foregoing the certain enjoyment of the best
gifts of Heaven in pursuit of riches—at best a
perilous possession, and when the foundations of
human happiness are gone, virtue and domestic
affection, a scourge, a curse! Two years passed;
my wife's letters, the only solace of my exile, became
infrequent. Some rumors reached my ear. I embarked
for England. My brother and wife were in
France!—Be calm, my son—I can bear no agitation—I
followed them—I found them living in
luxury in Paris. I broke into their apartment;
I aimed a loaded pistol at my wife; my brother
wrested it from me; we fought; I left him
and re-embarked for Jamaica.”
Here, in spite of the force Carroll had put on
his feelings, “My mother?” escaped from his lips.
“Your mother; she died long since in misery
and penitence.”
“In penitence; thank God for that.”
“I returned with a desperate vigor to my business;
by degrees, my son, you won me back to life; but
I had horrid passions; passions, that never slumbered
nor slept, tormenting my soul, and I was not
to be trusted with the training of a spirit destined
for heaven. When you were five years old, your
health drooped. The physicians prescribed a
change of climate. I had a clerk, John Savil, a
patient, and as I thought faithful drudge. He was
going to England on business for me, and was to
return directly. I intrusted you to his care, and
also a large sum of money to be remitted to England.
This money was the price of the sordid
wretch's virtue. While the English ship in which
he was embarked lay in the harbor, awaiting the
serving of the tide, he escaped with you, in a small
boat, to an American vessel. During the night a
hurricane arose. All night, wild with apprehension,
I paced the beach. The morning dawned; the
sun shone out, but I could neither be persuaded
nor compelled from the shore, till the news was
brought in by a pilot-boat, that the English ship was
capsized and that every soul on board had perished.
“I was then first seized with epileptic fits; the
effect of exposure to a vertical sun, combined with
at every violent excitement of my feelings.
The wretch who robbed me of my only treasure was
the same whom I discovered at my lodgings in
William-street; the miser. In my trunk you will
find a manuscript I obtained from him. It contains
the particulars and explanation of his crime, and
the fullest proof that you are my son. This discovery
brought on a return of my disease, which had
well nigh ended my suffering life, when Frank
brought you to me. God only knows how I survived
that moment of intense joy.
“But I must return to those years which have worn
so deep their furrows. Time seared, without healing
my wounds. I resumed my business; all other
interests were now merged in a passion for the acquisition
of property. I seemed endued with a magic
that turned all I touched to gold. I never mistook
this success for happiness; no, the sweet fountains
of happiness were converted to bitterness. Memory
was cursed and hope blasted; I was not sordid,
but I loved the excitement of a great game, it was
a relief to my feverish mind.
“After a while, I formed one of those liasons
common in those islands, where man is as careless
of the moral as the physical rights of his fellow-creatures.
'Eli Clairon was the daughter of a French
merchant; she had been educated in France, and
added to rare beauty and the fascinations of a versatile
character, the refinements of polished life.
Though tinged with African blood, I would have
married her, but I was then still bound by legal ties.
Her mother, whose ruling passion was a love of expense,
at our intimacy, till the arrival of 'Eli's father
from France. He had contracted there an advantageous
matrimonial alliance for her. I was absent
from her in the upper country. She was forced on
board a vessel, in spite of her pleadings and protestations.
The first accounts from the ship brought
the intelligence that she had refused all sustenance,
and thrown herself into the sea.
“O my son, did not the curse of Heaven fall on
every thing I loved? I believed so. 'Eli left a son;
I resolved never again to see him—never again to
bind myself with cords which I had a too just presentiment
would be torn away, to leave bleeding,
festering wounds. I supplied the child's pecuniary
wants, through his grandmother. She contrlved afterwards
to introduce him, without exciting my suspicion,
among the slaves of my family. He was a
creature of rare talent, and soon insinuated himself
into my affections. It was his custom to sit on a
cushion at my feet after dinner, and sing me to
sleep. There was a Spaniard, a villain, whom I
had detected, and held up to public scorn. The
wretch found his way to my apartment when I was
taking my evening repose. I was awakened by a
scream from Marcelline. He threw himself on my
bosom, and received through his shoulder the thrust
of the Spaniard's dirk. The assassin escaped. I
folded the boy in my arms; I believed him to be
dying; he believed it too, and fondly clinging to
me, exctaimed, `I am glad of it—I am glad of it—
I have saved my father's life!'
“From that moment he recovered the rights of
nature, and became the object of my doating fondness;
but no flower could spring up in my path
but a blight was on it. My temper was poisoned;
I had become jealous and distrustful. Poor Marcelline
was facile in his temper, and was sometimes
the tool of his sordid grandmother, to extract money
from me. I was often unjust to the boy. Oh! how
bitterly I cursed the wealth, that made me uncertain
of the truth of my boy's affection!
“Marcelline was passionate in his attachments,
guileless, unsuspicious, the easy victim of the artifices
of bolder minds. At sixteen, he was seduced into an
affair in which his reputation and life were at hazard.
He believed he owed his salvation to the interference
of a young Englishman. In the excess of his gratitude,
and at the risk of disgrace with me, he disclosed the
whole affair to me, and claimed my favor for the
stranger, who proved to be my nephew, Winstead
Clarence. My soul recoiled from him; he was the
image of my brother: but for Marcelline's sake, I
stifled my feelings, permitted Winstead to become a
member of my family, and thus was myself the passive
instrument of my poor boy's destruction.
“I have not strength for further details. Young
Clarence was no doubt moved to his infernal machinations
by the hope of ruining Marcelline in my favor,
and, as my heir at law, succeeding to my fortune.
My broken constitution stimulated his cupidity.
Practised as I was in the world, his arts deceived
me. My poor boy was a far easier victim.
He destroyed our mutual confidence. While,
to me, he appeared the mentor of my son, he
vice; and while, to Marcelline, he seemed his friend
and advocate, he magnified the poor fellow's real
faults, and imputed to him duplicity and deliberate
ingratitude. Incited by Winstead, Marcelline gamed
deeply; and on the brink of ruin, he confessed to
me his losses, and entreated pardon and relief. I
spurned him from me. He was stung to the heart.
Winstead seized the favorable moment, to aggravate
his resentment and despair. He retired to
his own apartment, and inflicted on himself a mortal
wound. I heard the report of the pistol, and flew
to him. He survived a few hours. We passed them
in mutual explanations, and mutual forgiveness.
Thus did I trample under my feet the sweet flower
that had shed a transient fragrance in my desolate
path!
“I once again saw Winstead Clarence; I invoked
curses on his head. I now most solemnly
revoke those curses.
“As soon as I could adjust my affairs, I left the
West Indies for ever, execrating them as the peculiar
temple of that sordid divinity, on whose altar,
from their discovery to the present day, whatever is
most precious, youth, health, and virtue, have been
sacrificed.
“My brother was dead; but Winstead Clarence
had returned to England: and I abjured my native
land, and came to the United States, where I was
soon known to be a man of great riches, and precarious
health. I was, or fancied myself to be, the object
of sordid attentions, a natural prey to be hunted
down by mean spirits. My petulance was patiently
I was quite too young to abandon the thoughts of
marriage, and scores of discreet widows and estimable
maidens were commended to my favor. Literary
institutions were recommended to my patronage,
and emissaries from benevolent societies opened
their channels to my meritorious gifts. Wearied
with solicitations, and disgusted with interested attentions,
I determined to come to New York, where
I was yet unknown.
“Scorning the consequence of wealth, and indifferent
to its luxuries, I assumed the exterior of poverty;
and the better to secure my incognito, I hired a
lodging at the old Dutch woman's, where I remained
in unviolated solitude till my meeting with Frank
stimulated once more to action, that inextinguishable
thirst of happiness which can alone be obtained
through the ministry of the affections. Frank's
striking resemblance to you at the period when I lost
you revived my parental love—a deathless affection.
He seemed to me an angel moving on the troubled
waters of my life. I sedulously concealed my real
condition from him, even after I had determined to
bestow on him the perilous gift of my fortune. I
distrusted myself—I dreaded awaking those horrid
jealousies that had embittered my life—I wished to
be sure that he loved me for myself alone.
“You may now conceive my emotion when I discovered
that my son lived—was near me—was the
father of Frank Carroll—when you saved me from
being sent to the alms-house, an accident to which
I had exposed myself by my carelessness in not preparing
for the exigency that occurred. But you
into me this sentient spirit, who knows the whole
train of events that have borne it to the brink of
eternal ruin—who but He, the All-Seeing One, can
comprehend my feelings when I found myself beneath
my child's roof: when I found what I believed
did not exist—a disinterested man, and him
my son! when I received disinterested kindness,
and from my children!
“Forgive me, my son, for so long concealing the
truth from you; it was not merely to strengthen my
convictions of your worth, but I deferred emotions
that I doubted my strength to endure. When I am
gone, you will find yourself the heir of a rich inheritance;
it may make you a more useful—I fear it
will not a happier man.
“In my wrongs and sufferings, my son, you must
find the solution, I do not say the expiation, of my
doubts of an overruling Providence—my disbelief
of the immortality of that nature which seemed to
me abandoned to contend with the elements of sin and
suffering, finally to be wrecked on a shoreless ocean.
Believe me, human life, without religious faith, is a
deep mystery.
“But, my dear father,” said Mr. Carroll “you
have now the light of that faith; you now look back
on the dark passages of life without distrust, and forward
with hope?”
“Yes, yes, my son; my griefs had their appointed
mission; the furnace was kindled to purify; it was
my sin if it consumed. But how shall I express my
sense of that mercy that guided me to this hour of
peace and joy, by those dark passages through which
of feeling in this full trust, this tranquil resignation,
this deep gratitude, that bears to the depths of my
soul the assurance of immortality. I now for the
first time feel a capacity of happiness, over which
death has no power—it is itself immortal life, and
I long to pass the boundary of that world whence
these glorious intimations come.
“My beloved son, do not wish to protract my exhausted
being. I should but linger, not live; to-morrow,
if I am permitted to survive till then, I will
press your children to my bosom and give them my
farewell blessing. Kneel by me, my son, and let us
send up together an offering of faith and thanksgiving
to God.”
During the following evening, Mr. Carroll communicated
the secret to Dr. Eustace and his family.
The doctor commended his prudence in so long
withholding it, sympathized with his sorrow, and
congratulated him on his prospects. Mr. Carroll
shrunk from his congratulations. The wealth that
had been attended by such misery to Mr. Flavel, and
must come to him by the death of his parent, seemed
to him a doubtful good.
Nothing could be more confused than Mrs. Carroll's
sensations. She was half resentful that the
precious secret had so long been detained from her;
and quite overjoyed to find it what it was. She was
afraid some attention to Mr. Flavel might have been
omitted, and from the first he had appeared to her
such an interesting person!—such a perfect gentleman!—and
then there was a deep, unhinted
feeling of relief at finding out at last that her husband—her
From his children Mr. Carroll received the solace
of true sympathy. “Is Mr. Flavel our grandfather?”
said Gertrude, “and must he die?” Frank
remained constantly in a closet adjoining the sick
room, listening and looking, when he might look,
without being perceived. Doctor Eustace made his
morning visit at an earlier hour than usual. He
found his patient had declined so rapidly during the
night, that life was nearly extinct.
“Tell me truly, my good friend,” he said to the
doctor, “how long you think I may live?”
“You life is fast ebbing, my dear sir.”
“Then, my son, call your wife and children: let
me call them mine before I die.”
They were summoned, and came immediately.
Mrs. Carroll's heart was really touched; she said
nothing, but knelt at the bed-side. The children
did not restrain their sorrow; Frank sprang on the
bed, kissed Mr. Flavel's cheek, and poured his tears
over it. Mr. Carroll would have removed him, but
his father signed to him let him remain. “Frank,
my sweet child,” he said, “God sent you to me;
you saved me from dying alone, unknown, and
in ignorance of my treasures—you brought me
to my long lost son!”
Here Conolly, the Irish nurse, who was sitting
behind Mr. Flavel supporting him in an upright position,
gave involuntary expression to his pleasure
at the solution of the riddle that had wrought his
curiosity to the highest pitch. “Sure,” he said, “and
it's what I thought, he's his own son's father, sure
is he!”
This exclamation was unheeded by the parties in
the strong excitement of the moment, but afterwards
they had ample reason to recall it.
“My children, my children;” continued Mr.
Flavel, “live to God; I have lived without Him;
the world has been a desert to me; I die with the
hope of his forgiveness; God bless you, my children;
kiss me, my son; where are you, Frank?
I see you; farewell!” His voice had become
fainter at every sentence, and died away at the
last word. Still his eye, bright and intelligent,
dwelt on his son, till after a few moments he closed
it for ever.
A deep silence ensued; Mr. Carroll remained
kneeling beside his father; his eyes were raised,
and his lips quivering. But who can give utterance
to the thoughts that crowd on the mind at
the death of the beloved;—when aching memory
flashes her light over the past, and faith pours on
the soul her glorious revelations; when the spirit
from its high station surveys and feels the whole of
human destiny!
| CHAPTER V. Clarence, or, A tale of our own times | |