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The Caxtons: A Family Picture, a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
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Part 16 - Chapter 2 |
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_ PART XVI CHAPTER II Pisistratus.--"How came you to know we had stayed in the town?" Vivian.--"Do you think I could remain where you left me? I wandered out, wandered hither. Passing at dawn through yon streets, I saw the hostlers loitering by the gates of the yard, overheard them talk, and so knew you were all at the inn,--all!" He sighed heavily. Pisistratus.--"Your poor father is very ill. Oh, cousin, how could you fling from you so much love?" Vivian.--"Love! his! my father's!" Pisistratus.--"Do you really not believe, then, that your father loved you?" Vivian.--"If I had believed it, I had never left him. All the gold of the Indies had never bribed me to leave my mother." Pisistratus.--"This is indeed a strange misconception of yours. If we can remove it, all may be well yet. Need there now be any secrets between us? [persuasively]. Sit down, and tell me all, cousin." After some hesitation, Vivian complied; and by the clearing of his brow and the very tone of his voice I felt sure that he was no longer seeking to disguise the truth. But as I afterwards learned the father's tale as well as now the son's, so, instead of repeating Vivian's words, which--not by design, but by the twist of a mind habitually wrong--distorted the facts, I will state what appears to me the real case, as between the parties so unhappily opposed. Reader, pardon me if the recital be tedious; and if thou thinkest that I bear not hard enough on the erring hero of the story, remember that he who recites, judges as Austin's son must judge of Roland's. _ |
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