Shortly after this, I heard a step on the stairs and a knock at my door.—My father? No! Clara. I tried to speak to her unconcernedly, when she came in.
"Why, you have been walking till it is quite dark, Clara!"
"We have only been in the garden of the Square—neither papa nor I noticed how late it was. We were talking on a subject of the deepest interest to us both."
She paused a moment, and looked down; then hurriedly came nearer to me, and drew a chair to my side. There was a strange expression of sadness and anxiety in her face, as she continued:
"Can't you imagine what the subject was? It was you, Basil. Papa is coming here directly, to speak to you."
She stopped once more. Her cheeks reddened a little, and she mechanically busied herself in arranging some books that lay on the table. Suddenly, she abandoned this employment; the colour left her face; it was quite pale when she addressed me again, speaking in very altered tones; so altered, that I hardly recognised them as hers.
"You know, Basil, that for a long time past, you have kept some secret from us; and you promised that I should know it first; but I—I have changed my mind; I have no wish to know it, dear: I would rather we never said anything about it." (She coloured, and hesitated a little again, then proceeded quickly and earnestly:) "But I hope you will tell it all to papa: he is coming here to ask you—oh, Basil! be candid with him, and tell him everything; let us all be to one another what we were before this time last year! You have nothing to fear, if you only speak openly; for I have begged him to be gentle and forgiving with you, and you know he refuses me nothing. I only came here to prepare you; to beg you to be candid and patient. Hush! there is a step on the stairs. Speak out, Basil, for my sake—pray, pray, speak out, and then leave the rest to me."
She hurriedly left the room. The next minute, my father entered it.
Perhaps my guilty conscience deceived me, but I thought he looked at me more sadly and severely than I had ever seen him look before. His voice, too, was troubled when he spoke. This was a change, which meant much in him.
"I have come to speak to you," he said, "on a subject about which I had much rather you had spoken to me first."
"I think, Sir, I know to what subject you refer. I—"
"I must beg you will listen to me as patiently as you can," he rejoined; "I have not much to say."
He paused, and sighed heavily. I thought he looked at me more kindly. My heart grew very sad; and I yearned to throw my arms round his neck, to give freedom to the repressed tears which half choked me, to weep out on his bosom my confession that I was no more worthy to be called his son. Oh, that I had obeyed the impulse which moved me to do this!
"Basil," pursued my father, gravely and sadly; "I hope and believe that I have little to reproach myself with in my conduct towards you. I think I am justified in saying, that very few fathers would have acted towards a son as I have acted for the last year or more. I may often have grieved over the secresy which has estranged you from us; I may even have shown you by my manner that I resented it; but I have never used my authority to force you into the explanation of your conduct, which you have been so uniformly unwilling to volunteer. I rested on that implicit faith in the honour and integrity of my son, which I will not yet believe to have been ill-placed, but which, I fear, has led me to neglect too long the duty of inquiry which I owed to your own well-being, and to my position towards you. I am now here to atone for this omission; circumstances have left me no choice. It deeply concerns my interest as a father, and my honour as the head of our family, to know what heavy misfortune it was (I can imagine it to be nothing else) that stretched my son senseless in the open street, and afflicted him afterwards with an illness which threatened his reason and his life. You are now sufficiently recovered to reveal this; and I only use my legitimate authority over my own children, when I tell you that I must now know all. If you persist in remaining silent, the relations between us must henceforth change for life."
"I am ready to make my confession, Sir. I only ask you to believe beforehand, that if I have sinned grievously against you, I have been already heavily punished for the sin. I am afraid it is impossible that your worst forebodings can have prepared you—"
"The words you spoke in your delirium—words which I heard, but will not judge you by—justified the worst forebodings."
"My illness has spared me the hardest part of a hard trial, Sir, if it has prepared you for what I have to confess; if you suspect—"
"I do not suspect—I feel but too sure, that you, my second son, from whom I had expected far better things, have imitated in secret—I am afraid, outstripped—the worst vices of your elder brother."
"My brother!—my brother's faults mine! Ralph!"
"Yes, Ralph. It is my last hope that you will now imitate Ralph's candour. Take example from that best part of him, as you have already taken example from the worst."
My heart grew faint and cold as he spoke. Ralph's example! Ralph's vices!—vices of the reckless hour, or the idle day!—vices whose stain, in the world's eye, was not a stain for life!—convenient, reclaimable vices, that men were mercifully unwilling to associate with grinning infamy and irreparable disgrace! How far—how fearfully far, my father was from the remotest suspicion of what had really happened! I tried to answer his last words, but the apprehension of the life-long humiliation and grief which my confession might inflict on him—absolutely incapable, as he appeared to be, of foreboding even the least degrading part of it—kept me speechless. When he resumed, after a momentary silence, his tones were stern, his looks searching—pitilessly searching, and bent full upon my face.
"A person has been calling, named Sherwin," he said, "and inquiring about you every day. What intimate connection between you authorises this perfect stranger to me to come to the house as frequently as he does, and to make his inquiries with a familiarity of tone and manner which has struck every one of the servants who have, on different occasions, opened the door to him? Who is this Mr. Sherwin?"
"It is not with him, Sir, that I can well begin. I must go back—"
"You must go back farther, I am afraid, than you will be able to return. You must go back to the time when you had nothing to conceal from me, and when you could speak to me with the frankness and directness of a gentleman."
"Pray be patient with me, Sir; give me a few minutes to collect myself. I have much need for a little self-possession before I tell you all."
"All? your tones mean more than your words—they are candid, at least! Have I feared the worst, and yet not feared as I ought? Basil!—do you hear me, Basil? You are trembling very strangely; you are growing pale!"
"I shall be better directly, Sir. I am afraid I am not quite so strong yet as I thought myself. Father! I am heart-broken and spirit-broken: be patient and kind to me, or I cannot speak to you."
I thought I saw his eyes moisten. He shaded them a moment with his hand, and sighed again—the same long, trembling sigh that I had heard before. I tried to rise from my chair, and throw myself on my knees at his feet. He mistook the action, and caught me by the arm, believing that I was fainting.
"No more to-night, Basil," he said, hurriedly, but very gently; "no more on this subject till to-morrow."
"I can speak now, Sir; it is better to speak at once."
"No: you are too much agitated; you are weaker than I thought. To-morrow, in the morning, when you are stronger after a night's rest. No! I will hear nothing more. Go to bed now; I will tell your sister not to disturb you to-night. To-morrow, you shall speak to me; and speak in your own way, without interruption. Good-night, Basil, good-night."