Self-Raised | Page 6

stony before him.
"And I--live with a breaking heart! a harder fate, Ishmael. Since her death, I have been a wifeless, childless, homeless wanderer over the wide world! Oh, Ishmael! my son! my son! give me your hand!"
"I am your mother's son! She was your wife, you say; yet she never bore your name! She was your wife; yet her son and yours bears her maiden name! She was your wife; yet she perished miserably in her early youth; and undeserved reproach is suffered to rest upon her memory! Oh, sir! if indeed you were her husband and my father, as you claim to be, explain these things before I give you my hand! for when I give my hand, honor and respect must go with it," said Ishmael in a grave, sweet, earnest tone.
"Is it possible that Hannah has never told you? I thought she would have told you everything, except the name of your father."
"She told me everything that she could tell without violating the oath of secrecy by which she was hound; but what she told me was not satisfactory."
"Sit down then, Ishmael, sit down; and though to recall this woeful history will be to tear open old wounds afresh, I will do so; and when you have heard it, you will know how blameless we both--your mother and myself--really were, and how deep has been the tragedy of my life as well as hers--the difference between us being that hers is a dead trouble, from which she rests eternally, while mine is a living and life-long sorrow!"
Ishmael again dropped into his chair and gave undivided attention to the speaker.
And Mr. Brudenell, after a short pause, commenced and gave a narrative of his own eventful life, beginning with his college days, and detailing all the incidents of his youthful career until it culminated in the dreadful household wreck that had killed Nora, exiled his family and blasted his own happiness forever.
Ishmael listened with the deepest sympathy.
It was indeed the tearing open of old wounds in Herman Brudenell's breast; and it was the inflicting of new ones in Ishmael's heart. It was an hour of unspeakable distress to both. Herman did not spare himself in the relation; yet in the end Ishmael exculpated his father from all blame. We know indeed that in his relations with Nora he was blameless, unless his fatal haste could be called a fault. And so for his long neglect of Ishmael, which really was a great sin, and the greatest he had ever committed, Ishmael never gave a thought to that, it was only a sin against himself, and Ishmael was not selfish enough to feel or resent it.
Herman Brudenell ended his story very much as he had commenced it.
"And since that day of doom, Ishmael, I have been a lonely, homeless, miserable wanderer over the wide world! The fabled Wandering Jew not more wretched than I!" And the bowed head, blanched complexion, and quivering features bore testimony to his words.

CHAPTER III
FATHER AND SON.
For though thou work'st my mother ill I feel thou art my father still! --_Byron._
Yet what no chance could then reveal, And no one would be first to own, Let fate and courage still conceal, When truth could bring reproach alone. --_Milnes._

Ishmael had been violently shaken. It was with much effort that he controlled his own emotions in order to administer consolation to one who was suffering even more than he himself was, because that suffering was blended with a morbid remorse.
"Father," he said, reaching forth his hand to the stricken man; but his voice failed him.
Herman Brudenell looked up; an expression of earnest love chasing away the sorrow from his face, as he said:
"Father? Ah, what a dear name! You call me thus, Ishmael? Me, who worked your mother so much woe?"
"Father, it was your great misfortune, not your fault; she said it on her death-bed, and the words of the dying are sacred," said Ishmael earnestly, and caressing the pale, thin hand that he held.
"Oh, Nora! Oh, Nora!" exclaimed Herman, as all his bosom's wounds bled afresh.
"Father, do not grieve so bitterly; and after all these years so morbidly! God has wiped away all tears from her eyes. She has been a saint in glory these many years!"
"You try to comfort me, Ishmael. You, Nora's son?" exclaimed Herman, with increased emotion.
"Who else of all the world should comfort you but Nora's son?"
"You love me, then, a little, Ishmael?"
"She loved you, my father, and why should not I?"
"Ah, that means that you will love me in time; for love is not born in an instant, my son."
"My heart reaches out to you, my father: I love you even now, and sympathize with you deeply; and I feel that I shall love you more and more, and as I shall