For the Term of His Natural Life | Page 5

LIFE.
PROLOGUE.
On the evening of May 3, 1827, the garden of a large red-brick
bow-windowed mansion called North End House, which, enclosed in
spacious grounds, stands on the eastern height of Hampstead Heath,
between Finchley Road and the Chestnut Avenue, was the scene of a
domestic tragedy.
Three persons were the actors in it. One was an old man, whose white
hair and wrinkled face gave token that he was at least sixty years of age.
He stood erect with his back to the wall, which separates the garden
from the Heath, in the attitude of one surprised into sudden passion,
and held uplifted the heavy ebony cane upon which he was ordinarily
accustomed to lean. He was confronted by a man of two-and-twenty,
unusually tall and athletic of figure, dresses in rough seafaring clothes,
and who held in his arms, protecting her, a lady of middle age. The face
of the young man wore an expression of horror-stricken astonishment,

and the slight frame of the grey-haired woman was convulsed with
sobs.
These three people were Sir Richard Devine, his wife, and his only son
Richard, who had returned from abroad that morning.
"So, madam," said Sir Richard, in the high-strung accents which in
crises of great mental agony are common to the most self-restrained of
us, "you have been for twenty years a living lie! For twenty years you
have cheated and mocked me. For twenty years--in company with a
scoundrel whose name is a byword for all that is profligate and
base--you have laughed at me for a credulous and hood-winked fool;
and now, because I dared to raise my hand to that reckless boy, you
confess your shame, and glory in the confession!"
"Mother, dear mother!" cried the young man, in a paroxysm of grief,
"say that you did not mean those words; you said them but in anger!
See, I am calm now, and he may strike me if he will."
Lady Devine shuddered, creeping close, as though to hide herself in the
broad bosom of her son.
The old man continued: "I married you, Ellinor Wade, for your beauty;
you married me for my fortune. I was a plebeian, a ship's carpenter;
you were well born, your father was a man of fashion, a gambler, the
friend of rakes and prodigals. I was rich. I had been knighted. I was in
favour at Court. He wanted money, and he sold you. I paid the price he
asked, but there was nothing of your cousin, my Lord Bellasis and
Wotton, in the bond."
"Spare me, sir, spare me!" said Lady Ellinor faintly.
"Spare you! Ay, you have spared me, have you not? Look ye," he cried,
in sudden fury, "I am not to be fooled so easily. Your family are proud.
Colonel Wade has other daughters. Your lover, my Lord Bellasis, even
now, thinks to retrieve his broken fortunes by marriage. You have
confessed your shame. To-morrow your father, your sisters, all the
world, shall know the story you have told me!"

"By Heaven, sir, you will not do this!" burst out the young man.
"Silence, bastard!" cried Sir Richard. "Ay, bite your lips; the word is of
your precious mother's making!"
Lady Devine slipped through her son's arms and fell on her knees at her
husband's feet.
"Do not do this, Richard. I have been faithful to you for
two-and-twenty years. I have borne all the slights and insults you have
heaped upon me. The shameful secret of my early love broke from me
when in your rage, you threatened him. Let me go away; kill me; but do
not shame me."
Sir Richard, who had turned to walk away, stopped suddenly, and his
great white eyebrows came together in his red face with a savage scowl.
He laughed, and in that laugh his fury seemed to congeal into a cold
and cruel hate.
"You would preserve your good name then. You would conceal this
disgrace from the world. You shall have your wish--upon one
condition."
"What is it, sir?" she asked, rising, but trembling with terror, as she
stood with drooping arms and widely opened eyes.
The old man looked at her for an instant, and then said slowly, "That
this impostor, who so long has falsely borne my name, has wrongfully
squandered my money, and unlawfully eaten my bread, shall pack!
That he abandon for ever the name he has usurped, keep himself from
my sight, and never set foot again in house of mine."
"You would not part me from my only son!" cried the wretched
woman.
"Take him with you to his father then."
Richard Devine gently loosed the arms that again clung around his

neck, kissed the pale face, and turned his own--scarcely less
pale--towards the old man.
"I owe you no