Charles Hooton

“ I her father! She my daughter!” He strove to wrench his arms free to clasp her to his bosom, but again he could not.
“Take her away, Robson,” said Mrs. Rowel. “What does all this mean? Take her away!—take her away!”
And Fanny was carried back by the strong man to the room into which she had at first been introduced; while James Woodruff remained standing upon that spot, gazing on that ground where his child had laid, as though the great world contained in it no other place which, even to him, deserved for a moment to be looked upon. ”

“ Then there's that Jenny Calvert too. I have loved that girl ever since she was born: she is a dear good creature, Mary,—a pretty sweet thing; but she cries just like one of the wicked, so there seems the same dish for all of us. Now, I tell her, never to marry one of Walter Lupton's friends, else we may be all alike; and I would not have her like me, not for a silver penny six times counted!”
“But I understand,” replied Miss Shirley, “that he is a very worthy young man, and that Jane is deeply in love with him. She cries for what she has not—not over what she has.” ”

“ The door was pushed violently open, and the village constable, an assistant, and Mr. Longstaff, the steward,—in a state of considerable mental elevation, arising from the combination of punch and revenge,—stood in the middle of the room.
“Now, missis!” bawled the steward, advancing, and clenching his fist before his own face, while he stared at her through a pair of leaden eyes, with much of the expression of an owl in the sun; “You see me, don't you? You see me, I say? Mark that. Did you expect me, I say, missis? No, no, I think not. You thought you were safe enough, but I've got you! ”

“ See you! There about the bed angels are asking me to come. I knew they would. I knew those blessed creatures would pity my misery, and wait for me when the gate of the Everlasting was opened. Heaven bless you—bless you!” And as she uttered those words the gripe of her hand on his became convulsive.
“I will come again!” she exclaimed with preternatural energy, as she strove to rise up towards her husband, but sunk back dying,—dead, in the effort.
If ever grief was in any house it was there on this occasion, when the death of Mrs. Lupton became known. ”

“ He scarcely knew what he said, but faltered out, “Who, sir, has dared to say anything to my mother's dishonour, or to bring her into any disgrace?”
The old man tapped him with serious significance on the shoulder as he replied, “Your father, my boy,—your father!”
“How!” exclaimed the young man in a tone of deep excitement: “who is he? for I never knew who was my father.”
“You!” replied Jerry bitterly, “ought never to have been born!”
“What can you mean, man, by all this?” demanded Colin.
“I tell you,” answered the old man, “your father is a villain, and you—you are—but never mind. ”

“ And bang went his ponderous fist on Colin's organs of Secretiveness and Acquisitiveness, until his head sung again throughout, like a seething caldron.
“That's right!” cried Miss Sowersoft; “make him feel; drag him up; my face burns with shame at him; I'm as hot as a scarlet-fever, I am—a young scoundrel!”
And Colin was pulled up on to the level of the garden, more like a half-killed rat than a half-grown human being.
“We'll know how this is, meesis,” said Mr. Palethorpe, when he had fairly landed his cargo. ”

“ Not one but felt that a friend was lost,—that an emptiness existed in the bosom unknown before, and never to be remedied; while some gave loose to that expression of grief which tells us that all hope was gone with the departed, and that the world had nothing more left in it for man to love, or by man to be beloved.
Amongst those latter must be numbered Mr. Lupton himself. The words of his dying wife had sunk deep into his soul—too deep ever again to be eradicated. Misery had made him wise. ”

“ Without any great strain of the imagination this scene might be mistaken for a splendid dream of Tyre or Palmyra, or of Babylon on the Euphrates, great cities of old, whose giant memories loom in the mind as images that cannot be fully compassed from their very vastness. While under our feet flows the ghastly river, the dull, deceptive stream that has borne on its bosom the wealth of kingdoms; that has found in its bed a thousand last resting-places for human misery, when the link that bound unhappiness and life together became too galling to be any more endured ”

“ Old George, who had been a distant and silent spectator of the scene, stood at the door as he entered.
“Ay, poor boy!” said he, pityingly, as the child passed by him, “they'd more need to nurse him by the fireside than half drown him this way. It's sad wages—sad wages, indeed, for a nest-babe like him! But they don't heed what I say. I'm an old man, and have no right to speak.”
Miss Sowersoft seized the earliest opportunity she could to place Colin's letter upon the fire, which she did with a spoonful of salt upon it, in order that its flames should be of the same colour as its contents. ”

“ Lupton and Colin might have been seen wending their way along the chilly and silent streets, in the direction of London Bridge. Saving the deliberate footfalls of the night-watch, the far-heard rattle of some early carriage over the resounding pavement, or perhaps now and then the smothered asthmatical cough of some poor old creature or other turned out thus early, in cloak and covered chair, to sit with charcoal fire and coffee in the streets, there were no audible signs that any soul existed there besides themselves. London was asleep. ”

“ All the household, as well as those who were not of it, flocked round the bed whereon she was laid, to weep in truth and earnest heart over the corpse of one who had won all love from all but him who should have loved her most—though from him she had won it even at last when such love became useless. And if ever the living felt truly that the dead should be strewn with flowers—“sweets to the sweet,”—if ever it were felt that a funeral garment ought to be decked with the choicest offerings of the garden, and the melancholy grave be made beautiful,—assuredly was it felt then. ”

“ In this varied storehouse, with poor pale little Fanny for his nurse, until he grew too big for her any longer to carry him, did our hero Colin live and thrive. After he had found his own legs, his nurse became his companion; and many a time, as he grew older,—pitying her hungry looks, and solemn-looking eyes,—has he stolen out with half his own meals in his pinafore, on purpose to give them unseen to her who, he thought, wanted them more than he. But in time the little shop was to be minded, and Fanny had grown up enough to attend to it. ”

“ Calvert; “and remember that even the most favoured cannot say that this world was made for happiness.”
“No, indeed!” exclaimed Colin bitterly,—“it is not indeed.”
“I am afraid,” rejoined his worthy friend, “that on neither side shall we ever cease to feel pain on this subject; but it will be our duty to bow with humility before those decrees which we cannot escape, and to endeavour to persuade ourselves that everything may possibly be after all for the best.”
“It cannot, sir,” replied Colin in the agony of his spirit; “it can never be for the best that we should be separated for ever! ”

“ This word, under a dozen different pronunciations, ran round the room, while Miss Harriet Wintlebury made a profound courtesy, and proceeded to repeat her song.
As Colin gazed, and gazed again, turned away his eyes, and as instantly fixed them upon the same beautiful object again, his bosom burned, and his cheeks grew flushed,—he felt as though in the presence of a being whom he could think scarcely inferior to the angels—at least, he had never in his life seen woman as she is before. ”

“ Now, keep awake, Mary, for sleep is of no use at all to me: and, besides that, she told me the baby was as like her master as snow to the clouds; so that what is to become of me I do not know.—I cannot tell, indeed!”
Here Mrs. Lupton wrung her hands, and wept bitterly.
Miss Shirley grew terrified at this incoherent discourse, and with an unconscious degree of earnestness begged her to go down stairs.
“Never heed,—never heed,” said she, turning towards the table, and apparently forgetting her grief: “there will come an end. Days do not last for ever, nor nights either.” ”

“ Like a meteor that falls unseen when the world is asleep, that little band was only known to have been by the trail of destruction, the dint in the earth it left behind it. Once only in its course was it distinctly recognised. In the very heart, as it were, of deep and peaceful sleep, the Hall of Kiddal was startled by a great and prolonged shout beneath its walls—a huzza three times repeated from above a hundred tongues, in which the names of Woodruff, Lupton, and Colin were distinctly heard ”

“ Peter Veriquear stood solemnly against the door-post, staring into the gloom, and blowing through his teeth a doleful noise, compounded both of singing and whistling, but resembling neither, either in tone or loudness. Colin felt low-spirited, though he strove to seem joyful.
“It grows dark very fast, sir,” said he, addressing Mr. Veriquear as he entered.
“Yes,” replied that gentleman, “it does; but I can't help that. What Nature chooses to do is no businesss of ours.” ”

“ A loud thump on the table, accompanied with corresponding emphasis of speech, made the word child sound a great deal bigger than either man or woman. The squire then went on,—“Look at the effect of it, Longstaff. Any man,—I myself,—you,—any of us, or all of us,—are liable at any time to have fathered upon us a thing, a brat,—any tinkers whelp that ever was bred, very likely in Cumberland or Cornwall, or a thousand miles off,—though, in point of fact, you or I had no more acquaintance with that child's mother—no, no more than we had with Donna Maria! Now mark, Longstaff. ”

“ The landscape that lay far below appeared a black gulf, over which the soughing of the wind sounded like the fitful panting breath, the expiring complaints, of some vast unseen creature of the darkness, whose existence might thus be shadowed to the ear, though not to the eyes, of man. But when associated with the melancholy subject which weighed heavily on all hearts, its influence became far more sensibly felt; and Colin could not but feel as though nature had conspired with death to impress the loss that had just been sustained more solemnly upon the mind. ”

“ I never knew I had a grandfather.”
“Ay, ay, I see how it is,” replied Jerry; “I'm a poor man, and you are apeing the gentleman. But I risked my life once to be revenged for you, only some busy meddler came across and baulked me. I'll do it yet though; and I want you to help me. The cause is yours as well as mine; for the injury is of a mother to you, though of a daughter to me: and the man who will not defend his mother's honour, or revenge her disgrace, ought to be cast into the bottomless pit for everlasting!”
Colin stood astonished at this speech. ”

“ Hold your head up; for you can't be ashamed of seeing a man, I should think.” The surgeon, the steward, the clerk, and the brutal wit himself smiled.
“Come, up with it, and let us look at you.”
Colin's mother sobbed louder, and, instead of complying with this gratuitously insolent request, buried her face so much lower in the folds of the shawl that covered her neck, and hung down upon her bosom, as to present to the gaze of the inquiring overseer almost a full-moon view of the crown of her bonnet.
“Hum!” growled Skinwell; “like all the rest—not a look to be got at them. ”

“ By that event Heaven seemed to lay, as it were, a palpable finger upon my soul, the dint of which is everlasting. That from such retributive justice, if justice it could be called, I should have been so saved by one whose very existence itself had called that justice into action, appears to me like a marvellous lesson, in which Providence intended at once to admonish me of my criminality, and at the same time to remind me of its mercy.”
Mr. Lupton here covered his eyes with his hand. ”

“ And if she really had a father living, and that father was confined in a madhouse, what could she think of herself were she not to make an effort for his deliverance?
On his arrival, Colin thought Fanny looked ill and anxious; and that she spoke less freely to him than heretofore. He felt surprised to hear her allude to Doctor Rowel in a manner so changed from that in which she had always spoken of him formerly. Then it was as a friend, a helper; one from whom, above all others living, she had the most to hope from, and to whom she ought to feel most grateful. ”

“ While Colin, with tears in his eyes, promised implicit compliance with all that had been requested of him, he yet, with the candour and warm-hearted generosity peculiar to his character, declared that Fanny ought to despise him if ever he trusted to the labour of her hands for a single meal, No: he would save all his yearly wages, and bring them home for her and his mother; and in time he should be able to maintain them both by his own labour, without their having any need to struggle for themselves. ”

“ Well-educated, sensible, and good-tempered, she was one of those creatures who, as they grow up to womanhood, and all its nameless witcheries, become unconsciously, as it were, the life and light of the household;—to whom parents, brothers, and sisters,—all instinctively and unknown, perhaps, to themselves,—look up as the soul of the family;—whom all love—none envy; whose presence, in a manner, makes glad, none know why; as the spring delights us unthought on, or the flowers by our way-side inspire pleasure and gratification even when least we know whence our elasticity of spirit is derived. ”