Blind Love

The newspaper narrative appeared to have produced a vivid impression on

Rhoda's mind. Making allowance for natural hesitations and mistakes,

and difficulties in expressing herself correctly, she repeated with a

singularly clear recollection the substance of what she had read.

IX

The principal characters in the story were an old Irish nobleman, who

was called the Earl, and the youngest of his two sons, mysteriously

distinguished as "the wild lord."

It was said of the Earl that he had not been a good father; he had

cruelly neglected both his sons. The younger one, badly treated at

school, and left to himself in the holidays, began his adventurous

career by running away. He got employment (under an assumed name) as a

ship's boy. At the outset, he did well; learning his work, and being

liked by the Captain and the crew. But the chief mate was a brutal man,

and the young runaway's quick temper resented the disgraceful

infliction of blows. He made up his mind to try his luck on shore, and

attached himself to a company of strolling players. Being a handsome

lad, with a good figure and a fine clear voice, he did very well for a

while on the country stage. Hard times came; salaries were reduced; the

adventurer wearied of the society of actors and actresses. His next

change of life presented him in North Britain as a journalist, employed

on a Scotch newspaper. An unfortunate love affair was the means of

depriving him of this new occupation. He was recognised, soon

afterwards, serving as assistant steward in one of the passenger

steamers voyaging between Liverpool and New York. Arrived in this last

city, he obtained notoriety, of no very respectable kind, as a "medium"

claiming powers of supernatural communication with the world of

spirits. When the imposture was ultimately discovered, he had gained

money by his unworthy appeal to the meanly prosaic superstition of

modern times. A long interval had then elapsed, and nothing had been

heard of him, when a starving man was discovered by a traveller, lost

on a Western prairie. The ill-fated Irish lord had associated himself

with an Indian tribe--had committed some offence against their

laws--and had been deliberately deserted and left to die. On his

recovery, he wrote to his elder brother (who had inherited the title

and estates on the death of the old Earl) to say that he was ashamed of

the life that he had led, and eager to make amendment by accepting any

honest employment that could be offered to him. The traveller who had

saved his life, and whose opinion was to be trusted, declared that the

letter represented a sincerely penitent state of mind. There were good

qualities in the vagabond, which only wanted a little merciful

encouragement to assert themselves. The reply that he received from

England came from the lawyers employed by the new Earl. They had

arranged with their agents in New York to pay to the younger brother a

legacy of a thousand pounds, which represented all that had been left

to him by his father's will. If he wrote again his letters would not be

answered; his brother had done with him. Treated in this inhuman

manner, the wild lord became once more worthy of his name. He tried a

new life as a betting man at races and trotting-matches. Fortune

favoured him at the outset, and he considerably increased his legacy.

With the customary infatuation of men who gain money by risking the

loss of it, he presumed on his good luck. One pecuniary disaster

followed another, and left him literally penniless. He was found again,

in England, exhibiting an open boat in which he and a companion had

made one of those foolhardy voyages across the Atlantic, which have now

happily ceased to interest the public. To a friend who remonstrated

with him, he answered that he reckoned on being lost at sea, and on so

committing a suicide worthy of the desperate life that he had led. The

last accounts of him, after this, were too vague and too contradictory

to be depended on. At one time it was reported that he had returned to

the United States. Not long afterwards unaccountable paragraphs

appeared in newspapers declaring, at one and the same time, that he was

living among bad company in Paris, and that he was hiding disreputably

in an ill famed quarter of the city of Dublin, called "the Liberties."

In any case there was good reason to fear that Irish-American

desperadoes had entangled the wild lord in the network of political

conspiracy.