Chapter IV

Upon a couch, in one corner of a mean apartment, with folded arms and a countenance livid with despair, sat Edward Clifdon; and before him, with an exulting smile, stood the man who had so dexterously escaped during the confusion in the bar-room.

“It is as I tell you, Clifdon,” he said, “the proofs are in my possession. See you now. The drop of blood and your wounded finger; the broken point which fell from the twist of the rope, and which tallies exactly with the knife found in the possession of your own son—the knife I have seen you use a hundred times; the money due from you to the murdered man; your previous quarrel. Truly as that I now stand before you, Edward Clifdon, it was your hand that tampered with the swing from which Mark Brendon fell to meet his death.”

Huge drops gathered upon the brow of the wretched man, but no words fell from his blanched and quivering lips.

“It was the horror of that thought that killed your wife,” pursued his tormentor. “I knew it; I needed no further proof. But you are in my power now, mine enemy.”

“Do as you will,” said Clifdon, gradually recovering from the shock inflicted by this sudden and terrific accusation, and speaking with a remnant of his ancient pride. “If years of anguish and remorse, and the loss of her who was dearer than life’s self, be not sufficient punishment, death has none darker.”

“Brave words!” said Garvin, sneering. “Will you stand up in the open court, to be branded as a murderer? Will you receive the penalty the law awards your crime?”

“Man!” said Edward Clifdon, sternly, and raising his shaken form from the couch upon which he had fallen, “I tell you that in one moment of remorse, one glance to the dark past, there may be more horror than in all the shame and agony of the hangman’s rope; and if by my death I may expiate before human eyes the sin that I have repented before my God, I tell thee, I will meet it, and never tremble.”

“And your children?” returned the other, with a sardonic smile. “Your little Lilia, and your boy, with his haughty brow and curling lip? Think you they will not die for shame? A goodly heritage would you leave them!”

Clifdon bowed his face upon his hands and groaned aloud.

“Revenge for me!” pursued his companion, tauntingly. “Revenge, to heap ashes upon the head of the old man who looked scorn upon me to-night! Revenge, to humble the gay youth who has already learned his pride! Revenge, to see the beauty I covet cast friendless upon the world, and perchance within my reach!”

With a wild cry Clifdon threw himself at his feet.

“Spare me!” he said; “spare them! By the heaven above us, I swear, that from this moment I will be your slave! See, I kneel to you, mine enemy! I will crouch beneath your feet; I will beg for you, toil for you; I will bind myself to you, body and soul—only spare them!”

“No!—never! never!”

“Hark, man! If you have a human soul, listen to me! When I did the deed, it was to save my wife, my child from starvation, from madness. I thought not of myself, Garvin; by the great God, I did not! And by the loss of the child I loved, of the wife for whom I had periled my soul; by years of lone remorse and agony I was punished. Pity me! Pity them—the boy with her sweet eyes and her smiling lips; the child she left me on her death-bed—my little Lilia! Oh, mercy! mercy!”

Like the shriek of a damned spirit thrilled those last words.

“Give me Lilia,” said Garvin, eagerly, and bending forward.

“Monster!” shouted Clifdon, springing to his feet. “Name her not, lest, tempted to a second crime, I strangle thee on the spot! To thee—thee? My pure, my pretty Lilia? Sooner let her lie before me, with her winding sheet about her! To thee? Off, monster! Off, hell-hound—off!”

Intimidated, Garvin retreated, but with outstretched arms his victim followed. One moment more, and with the blood gushing from his mouth and distended nostril, he had fallen to the floor. The tempest of passion had proved too much for a frame already long shaken by fear and anguish; and as Garvin, horror-stricken, raised him to the couch, life seemed almost extinct.

A physician was called in, whose remedies stopped the immediate flow of blood, but who attempted to give no hope of recovery. Ere he left the room, however, the senses of his patient returned.

“Clear the room,” he said, in a low voice to Garvin, “and call them both. If you are not fiend, do this.”

His orders were obeyed, and marveling at the summons, young Mordaunt shortly after followed his grandfather to the room of the dying man.

A single lamp cast its dull rays through the deserted apartment upon the deathly face of him who, with livid and muttering lips, and glassy, upturned eyes, seemed uttering his last prayer to the unknown God, unto whose throne his spirit was fleeting. But rarely beautiful amid the gloom and horror of that desolate chamber, radiantly fair as a single star shining through the hideous rack of the tempest, knelt by the bedside, a girl—a child of fifteen summers; and with her hands clasped, and the braids and curls of pale-brown hair showering from her upraised face, upon the folds of her white night-robe, she looked up fearlessly, as though through the dark-stained roof, she gazed, amid the blue above, up into the mercy-seat of heaven.

And ever and anon the dying man tossed upon his bed, muttering with ghastly lips, “Pray for me, Lilia; thy lips are pure—pray!” and the child prayed earnestly.

A slight movement of those without attracted his attention, and raising himself in his bed with reviving strength, he beckoned the elder Mordaunt to his side.

“This is death,” he murmured, “terrible, terrible death! Look upon it, old man, and refuse, if you can, the mercy my God will not deny me!”

“What would you with me?” said Mordaunt, moving restlessly. “What would you, Edward Clifdon, for I know you now?”

“Mercy, mercy!” said the dying man. “You cursed her that she clung to me, and I pray for your forgiveness. Let me bear your pardon to her whither I go.”

“Is she then dead?” said Mordaunt, quickly.

“Thank God that I may say it! Thank God, save for Lilia’s sake!”

“And Lilia,” said Mordaunt, after a deep pause.

“Her child, her last-born, who is even now at my side. And for her, and for her only, would I supplicate!” As he spoke, he would have thrown himself from his bed, but his companion forcibly withheld him.

“Kneel not to me!” he said, sternly. “My forgiveness is yours; but I have sworn, and my oath may not be broken. Kneel not to me.” But as he spoke, his eye wandered toward his grandson.

“It shall never pass my lips,” said Clifdon, eagerly, and catching that roving glance. “He shall never hear from me, and Lilia knows it not.”

Mordaunt understood him. “Call him,” he said, turning away. “I forbid you not.” And Philip, summoned, advanced, wondering, to the bedside.

But as Clifdon gazed upon the face of him he yearned to clasp to his bosom and call his son, speech utterly deserted him, and with a face of anguish and wringing hands, he could only point to the crouching form beside him, and the bright head that was now buried amid the drapery of the couch.

And over the soul of the young man there seemed to come a vague and singular remembrance; and pressing his hand upon his brow, he stood like one who strives to recall a bygone thought that ever, despite his efforts, eludes his grasp.

Clifdon was the first to break this dangerous silence.

“Lilia!” he said, and she raised her face, no longer rapt and beaming, but pallid as his own, and deluged with her flowing tears.

“We are strangers,” said Clifdon, turning to Philip, and speaking with difficulty, “nevertheless, as the ear of God is open alike to all, so may one of his creatures in the extremity of need, call upon his fellow. I call upon you now, as you value the mercy of that God, to be merciful.”

“Speak on,” said Philip, with emotion, and bending over the lowly couch.

“Look at my child!” said Clifdon, with a cry of anguish; “on the child I have kept pure as the spirit of her mother! Look upon her. Shall she be cast upon the wide world to eat the bread of shame or starve?”

With a quivering lip the youth averted his eyes.

“Take her, oh, take her!” murmured the dying man. “She is yours! be unto her as a brother! Save her, I pray you! Snatch my lamb from the jaws of the wolf!”

Still hesitating, Philip raised his eyes to his grandfather’s face.

“I leave you free,” said Mordaunt, in a voice hoarse with emotion; “be it as you will.”

With a sudden impulse, the young man bent down and raised in his arms the light and childish form. But she struggled for freedom.

“Ah! no, no!” she shrieked, “I will go with thee, my father!”

“Lilia—child—in mercy!—you harrow my soul!”

Instantly she was motionless, but her face became like death, as it rested on the bosom of her supporter, and from beneath her delicate lids the large tears stole silently.

Deeper and more labored became the respiration of the dying man; and as the agony of death wrung the drops from his working brow, he murmured unconsciously her name.

In a moment she was at his side, with her small arms clasped across his heaving chest, and her eyes turned eagerly upon his face.

“Lilia! my precious one—my child! her blessing, not mine, rest upon thee!”

“Thine! thine, my father!—Leave me thine!”

He raised himself in his bed, and with her little hands clasped in his own, spoke solemnly, and in a firm voice.

“Not with the lips of purity, not with the heart of the upright man may I invoke a blessing on thee, my Lilia. But if love, perfect love, that has never known chill or change; that has kept thee inviolate in the midst of guilt, and lovely, though surrounded by corruption—if such can win a smile from Heaven, it is thine.”

His head sunk lower and lower, until it rested upon her innocent brow, and upon her shining curls. Suddenly she started with a piteous cry.

“He is cold! he is dead! Leave me not yet, oh, my father!” and lifeless as the corse beside her, the orphan fell to the ground.

Yet a few days, and Philip Mordaunt, strong in the hopes of youth and love, passed forever from the house of death. Unconscious that the little being, whose fair head rested upon his bosom, and whose welfare he had sworn to guard with a brother’s love, possessed indeed a sister’s claim; unconscious that his presence had soothed the dying hour of a parent; unconscious how nearly he had been sent forth branded as the son of a felon. Thus tread we ever blindly amid the precipices of our fate.