Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/280

 I should have my reward in your redemption--should live to see you honoured, honest, good--live to think your mother watched us from heaven with a smile on both--and that we should both join her at last--you purified by my atonement! Oh, and when I saw you so sunken, so hardened, exulting in vice as in a glory--bravo and partner in a gambler's hell--or, worse still, living on the plunder of miserable women, even the almsman of that vile Desmarets--my son, my son, my lost Lizzy's son blotted out of my world for ever!--then, then I should have died if you had not said, boasting of the lie which had wrung the gold from Darrell, 'But the child lives still.' Believe you--oh, yes, yes--for in that belief something was still left to me to cherish, to love, to live for!"

Here the old man's hurried voice died away in a passionate sob; and the direful son, all reprobate though he was, slid from his chair, and bowed himself at his father's knee, covering his face with fell hands that trembled. "Sir, sir," he said, in broken reverential accents, "do not let me see you weep. You cannot believe me, but I say solemnly that, if there be in me a single remnant of affection for any human being, it is for you. When I consented to leave you to bear the sentence which should have fallen on myself, sure I am that I was less basely selfish than absurdly vain. I fancied myself so born to good fortune!--so formed to captivate some rich girl!--and that you would return to share wealth with me; that the evening of your days would be happy; that you would be repaid by my splendour for your own disgrace! And when I did marry, and did ultimately get from the father-in-law who spurned me the capital of his daughter's fortune, pitifully small though it was compared to my expectations, my first idea was to send half of that sum to you. But--but--I was living with those who thought nothing so silly as a good intention--nothing so bad as a good action. That mocking she-devil, Gabrielle, too! Then the witch's spell of that dd green-table! Luck against one-wait! double the capital ere you send the half. Luck with one--how balk the tide? how fritter the capital just at the turn of doubling? Soon it grew irksome even to think of you; yet still when I did, I said, 'Life is long, I shall win riches; he shall share them some day or other!'--_Basta, basta_!--what idle twaddle or hollow brag all this must seem to you!"