Flesh and blood,
You brother mine, that entertained ambition,
Expelled remorse and nature,
I do forgive thee,
Unnatural as thou art--
Forgive thy rankest fault.
TEMPEST.
Arthur Seaham stood at the hall door two days after, looking out for the
carriage which was to convey himself and sister from Silverton, some
delay having been occasioned by the non-arrival of the post-horses.
Suddenly a single horse's hoof was heard approaching, and he had but
just time to retreat out of observation, when Eugene Trevor rode up to
the door.
Arthur Seaham could not but feel shocked at his altered appearance--his
haggard countenance, and the strong marks of mental suffering it
exhibited. His very form seemed bowed down by the sudden weight of care
and anxiety which had fallen upon him; and when, having dismounted, and
rang the bell, he stood there, whilst waiting for the servant to attend
the summons, unconscious of human regard, holding his horse's
rein;--there was something touching to the young man's kindly heart, in
the manner in which Eugene Trevor stroked the glossy mane of the noble
animal as it rubbed its head against his master's shoulder, looking up
affectionately into his face.
The action seemed as expressively as words to say:
"Poor fellow! it must go hard indeed with me before I can make up my
mind to part with you; in your eye, at least, is none of the suspicion
and distrust I plainly perceive in every other." And softened by this
touch of nature, and remembering the attachment to his sister--sincere
he believed at the time, which like a fair flower amongst noxious plants
had shewn his nature to be so capable of better things--a feeling of
regret was excited in Arthur Seaham's mind that that "root of all evil,"
the promoter of "every foolish and hurtful lust--the love of money,"
should ever have struck its baneful fibres in this man's heart.
* * * * *
Eugene Trevor had demanded a personal interview with his brother
previous to his departure for London, through the lawyer who for many
years had been the legal adviser of the family, and whom he still
retained on his own account. Eustace Trevor had deemed it expedient to
call in another man of business for himself. This person was now at
Silverton, with some of the necessary documents connected with the
property now devolving upon him; and Mr. de Burgh proposed the meeting
of the brothers should take place there.
It was with perfect unconsciousness of what awaited her, that Mary
Seaham entered the library some few minutes after, in order to bid adieu
to her cousins, who, she had been told, were awaiting her there.
She had closed the door behind her before perceiving her mistake, and
stood rooted to the spot with feelings the nature of which may be better
imagined than described, at finding herself at this critical moment in
the presence of the brothers--those two beings with whom her fate had
been so strangely, so intricately involved.
Yes, there stood the one, with look and bearing almost like that said to
have distinguished man before the Fall:
"Erect and tall--Godlike erect, with native honour clad,
Within whose looks divine the image of the glorious Maker shone,
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude, severe and pure.
His fair large front and eye sublime"--
Irradiated with that attribute of God himself--a free and full
forgiveness of an enemy.
And the other--with whom might his aspect at that moment suggest
comparison? Alas! we fear but to
"That least erected spirit that fell
From Heaven; whose looks and thoughts even in Heaven
Were always downwards bent, admiring more
The riches of Heaven's pavement trodden gold,
Than aught divine or holy there."
For as there he sat, even as he had done when suddenly confronted that
night with his offended, injured brother, in the room of the London
hotel, with bent brow and lowering eye, half defiance and half fear; so
now still more he seemed to shrink into abject nothingness before him,
abashed and confounded by the majestic power of goodness--the awful
loveliness of a virtuous and noble revenge. For a few grave, calm, but
gentle words from Eustace Trevor's lips had already set his anxious
fears at rest--had assured him that the well-merited ruin with which the
overthrow, so sudden and unlooked-for, of his unrighteous hopes and
machinations had threatened to overwhelm him, would be averted.
And there stood Mary, pale and motionless. Whilst from one to another
wandered her distressed and startled glance, she yet saw and marked the
contrast; saw--and mourned in spirit that thus too late her eyes were
opened; that thus, for the first time, had been presented, side by side
to her enlightened perception, the brother whom in her deceived
imagination she had so blindly chosen--the one she had so ignorantly
refused.
Yes, too late--for could she dare now to lift her eyes to own the full,
but tardy abnegation of every thought and feeling of her heart, as well
as understanding, to the noble being it had lost?
Oh, no! for those two last days that they had passed under the same roof
together--in the same manner, as she had seemed to shrink, with timid,
lowly, self-abasement from the brother of her discarded lover, had
Eustace Trevor appeared almost equally to avoid any close communion with
that brother's alienated love. It was, therefore, influenced by these
considerations, that after her first astounded pause, feeling that it
was now impossible to retreat, and scarcely knowing what she did, Mary
approached the table over which Eugene Trevor had been leaning on her
entrance, but now had risen--holding out her hand, as her kindly heart
perhaps, under any circumstances, would have instinctively dictated
towards any being suffering under like vicissitude; but something in the
grasp which closed over it--a detaining grasp, such as that with which
the miser may be supposed to clasp some treasure on the point of making
itself wings to fly away, seemed to distress and perplex her.
She turned with downcast eyes towards Eustace Trevor. His face, as she
had approached his brother, had been averted with an expression in
which, perhaps, was more of human weakness than it had before exhibited;
but now he turned again and gratefully received the other she extended,
in sign of parting, then as gently released it; and standing thus
between the brothers, all the noble self-forgetfulness of Mary's nature
seemed to revive within her. She felt that through her means the gulph
had further widened which kept them apart--that she had been the shadow
between their hearts, as now she stood in person--it was over now for
ever. She was to go from between them--from him towards whom her heart
had too late inclined, and from him from whom it had declined. Let her
last act be at least one more blest in its effects, than had been
hitherto her destiny to produce concerning them.
With a smile, faint, sad, and tearful, such as might have seemed almost
to plead forgiveness from the one whom she ceased, and the one whom she
had learnt too late, to love, she again extended her hands, and with a
gentle movement joined those of the brothers together; then hurried from
the room.
A few moments more, and Mr. de Burgh who was on his way to seek her had
conducted her to the carriage, and Arthur springing in by her side; once
more Mary Seaham was driven far away from Silverton.
And the brothers--taken by surprise by Mary's abrupt departure, the eyes
of both had followed her from the room with an expression in which
emotion of no common kind was visible; then turned silently from one
another, only too anxious to be released from a situation, of which they
could not but mutually feel the increased delicacy and embarrassment;
the lawyers were summoned to their presence; and if a few minutes before
Eugene Trevor had pursued with wistful glance the retreating form of
Mary, the still more anxious brow and eager eye with which he might have
been seen soon after entering with those gentlemen into the discussion
of the settlement of his intricate affairs, plainly testified that for
him at least there was, as there had ever been closer affections twined
about his heart--deeper interests at stake than any that were connected
with that pale sad girl, who for so long had hovered like a redeeming
angel round his path, but who now turned away her light from him _for
ever_.
Not so Eustace Trevor, as absent and inattentive he sat abstractedly by,
or paced with anxious steps the boundary of the library, joining only
when directly appealed to, or addressed, in the matters under
discussion. It was plainly apparent how light and trifling the weight he
attached to the heavy demand made under his sanction upon his generous
liberality.
Only once he paused, and with more fixed attention looked upon his
brother with an expression in which something of noble contempt seemed
to curl his lip and to flash forth from his eye.
Perhaps the part he saw him play on this occasion recalled to his
remembrance another scene of similar, yet contrary character, when he
had found that brother seated in the library of Montrevor, with as much
anxious avidity superintending arrangements of no such disinterested
nature as those of which he now so graspingly availed himself.
But it was for a moment that any such invidious reminiscences retained
their place within that generous soul. Soon had they vanished, as they
came--the fire from his eye, the curl from his lip. And again Eustace
Trevor paced the room--and thought on Mary.
A few months more, and Eugene Trevor, having settled his affairs to his
entire satisfaction--thanks to the most generous and forgiving of
brothers--had left England for the continent; and that same space of
time found Eustace Trevor established in the neighbourhood of Montrevor,
surrounded by admiring, and congratulating friends; superintending the
improvement of his property, and making arrangements for the erection of
a new mansion on the site of the one destroyed, but chiefly employed in
acts of charity and beneficence towards the hitherto neglected poor and
necessitous surrounding him, causing many a heart to sing for joy, who
for many a long year had prayed and sued in vain at the wealthy miser's
door.