For a minute or so a profound silence reigned, broken only by the heavy inspirations of Nathan Gomer.
And from the prayer of Want, and plaint of Woe,
Oh! what were man, should Heaven refuse to hear?
Nathan Gomer withdrew his hands from before his eyes.
A sharp spasm which had almost convulsed his frame had passed away, and he commenced his revelation.
He addressed himself to Wilton, rather than to his other auditors, and it soon became evident that his story possessed for the old man a most absorbing interest.
“I was separated from my family at a very early age,” he commenced, “being taken under the roof and tender care of a sister of my mother. My father was a wild, dissipated spendthrift, in perpetual pecuniary difficulties. My mother, a gentle, timid, tender creature, passed a life of incessant fright, care and distressing misery, after her union with him. She had been married to him some five years before I was born, and at that period she had reached the very climax of wretchedness with the miserable man to whom she was tied; a series of wild excesses drove him into an infuriated insanity, during a fearful paroxysm of which life was snatched from him. In my mother’s horror at this event, I was prematurely born. My mother never recovered the shock. Within two years of my father’s decease, she was placed in the same grave, and I was taken charge of by her sister.
“My boyhood was passed in comparative seclusion; for I was, from my earliest recollection, possessed of personal defects; and idle, thoughtless boys, when I appeared amongst them, found a delight in wounding my susceptibility, by jeering at me, mocking my stunted growth and my sallow visage. I was on that account kept as much within doors as possible, and was educated at home. I had kind instructors and an extensive library to consult, and naturally acquired a passion for reading, especially as legendary lore was rather an extensive element in the collection. I was, perhaps, the more urged to devote myself to books, because, by comparison, I became quite aware of my physical deficiencies, and because--with a kind motive---my father’s terrible example was always held up _in terrorem_ before me. So I became dull and thoughtful, and shunned society as much as it was possible for me to do, and I began to feel like Cain. Strangers met me with a smile of derision, or their lips were curled with scorn. I was bantered by my own kind; and was the scoff of the other sex. No wonder that I hated the human race; for it appeared to hate me. Even the servants of the house in which I lived made me the butt at which to level the shafts of their vulgar ridicule. How much of this I really deserved I do not now pretend to measure; but I hurled back the contumely I received with fierce; intemperate defiance. I spurned; and spat; and sneered; too; even though beneath that scornful rage my heart was breaking.