Henry Gabriel and Gabriel Henry St. James, were born in the Highlands of
New York. Their father was of English extraction, though of American
birth; their mother the daughter of a French refugee, who had sought
shelter in the land of freedom from the storms of the Revolution. So the
elements of three nations mingled in their veins.
There was nothing remarkable in their childhood, but their resemblance
to each other, which was so perfect that their own mother was not able
to distinguish the one from the other. Perhaps either of them, seen
separately, would not have excited extraordinary interest, but together
they formed an image of dual beauty as rare as it was attractive. They
were remarkable for their fine physical development, their blooming
health, and its usual accompaniments, sunniness of temper, and gaiety of
spirits; but even in early childhood these twin-born bodies showed that
they were vitalized by far different souls. Their father was a
sea-captain; and while Gabriel would climb his knees and listen with
eager delight to tales of ocean life and stirring adventures, Henry,
seated at his mother's feet, with his hands clasped on her lap and his
eyes riveted on her face, would gather up her gently sparkling words in
his young heart, and they became a pavement of diamonds, indestructible
as it was bright and pure.
As they grew older, the master-passion of each became more apparent.
Gabriel made mimic boats and ships, and launched them on the bosom of a
stream which flowed back of their dwelling, an infant argosy freighted
with golden hopes. Henry drew figures on the sandy shore, of birds and
beasts and creeping things, and converted every possible material into
tablets for the impressions of his dawning genius. Gabriel was his
father's darling, Henry was mother's beloved. I said she could not
distinguish her twin-born boys; but when she looked into their eyes,
there was something in the earnest depths of Henry's, an answering
expression of love and sensibility, which she sought in vain in his
brother's. The soul of the sea-dreaming boy was not with her; it was
following the father on the foaming paths of ocean.
"My boys shall go with me on my next voyage," said the captain. "It is
time to think of making men of them. They have been poring over books
long enough to have a holiday; and, by the living Jove, they shall have
it. It is the ruin of boys to be tied to their mother's apron strings
after they are twelve years old. They are fit for nothing but peddlers
or colporteurs."
Gabriel clapped his hands exultingly; but Henry drew closer to his
mother's side.
"My hero, my young brave," cried the captain, slapping his favorite boy
on the shoulder, "you are worth a dozen such girl-boys as your brother.
Let him be a kitten and cry mew, if he will, while you climb the
topgallant-mast and make ladders of the clouds."
"I am as brave as he is," said Henry, straightening his youthful figure,
and looking at his father with a kindling eye. "I am not afraid of the
water; but who will protect my mother, if I go away with you?"
"Bravo! There is some spirit in the boy after all," exclaimed the
captain, who loved his wife with the devotion and constancy of a sailor.
"He has chosen an honorable post, and by heaven I will not force him to
leave it. I see that nature, when she gave us twins, intended we should
go shares in our boys. It is just. Gabriel shall go with me, but the
silver cup of fortune may after all find its way in Henry's sack."
Thus at twelve years of age the twin brothers separated, and from that
era their life-paths diverged into a constantly widening angle.
The captain discovered too late the error he had committed in
cultivating the roving propensities of his son, to the exclusion of
steady, nobler pursuits. He had intended merely to give him a holiday,
and a taste of a seafaring life; but after revelling in the joys of
freedom, he found it impossible to bind him down to the restraints of
scholastic life. He wanted him to go to college, but the young rover
bravely refused obedience to parental authority, saying, that one genius
in a family was enough; and the father, gazing with pride on the wild,
handsome, and dauntless boy, said there was no use in twisting the vine
the wrong way, and yielded to his will. Henry, imbosomed in classic
shades, gathered the fruits of science and the flowers of literature,
while his genius as an artist, though apparently dormant, waited the
Ithuriel touch of opportunity to wake into life and action.
Captain St. James had prospered in his enterprises and acquired a
handsome fortune, so that his sons would not be dependent on their own
exertions for support. Gabriel unfortunately knew this circumstance too
well, and on the faith of his father's fortune indulged in habits of
extravagance and dissipation as ruinous as they were disgraceful. The
captain did not live to witness the complete degradation of his favorite
son. His vessel was wrecked on a homeward voyage, and the waves became
the sailor's winding-sheet. His wife did not long survive him. She died,
pining for the genial air of her own sunny clime, leaving the impress of
her virtues and her graces on the character of one of her sons. Alas for
the other!
Free now from parental restraint, as he had long been from moral
obligations, Gabriel plunged into the wildest excesses of dissipation.
In vain Henry lifted his warning voice, in vain he extended his guardian
hand, to save him who had now become the slave as well as the votary of
vice. His soul clave to his brother with a tenderness of affection,
which neither his selfishness nor vices, not even his crimes, could
destroy. A gambler, a roueé, every thing but a drunkard, he at length
became involved in so disgraceful a transaction, he was compelled for
safety to flee the country; and Henry, ignorant what course he had
taken, gave him up in despair, and tried to forget the existence of one
whose remembrance could only awaken sorrow and shame. He went to Europe,
as has been previously related, and with the eye of a painter and the
heart of a poet, travelled from clime to clime, and garnered up in his
imagination the sublimities of nature and the wonders of art. His genius
grew and blossomed amid the warm and fostering influences of an elder
world, till it formed, as it were, a bower around him, in whose
perennial shades he could retire from haunting memories and uncongenial
associations.
In the mean time, Gabriel had found refuge in his mother's native land.
During his wild, roving life, he had mingled much with foreigners, and
acquired a perfect knowledge of the French language,--I should rather
say his knowledge was perfected by practice, for the twin brothers had
been taught from infancy the melodious and expressive language of their
mother's native clime. The facility with which he conversed, and his
extremely handsome person, were advantages whose value he well knew how
to appreciate, and to make subservient to his use.
It was at this time that he became acquainted with Therésa Josephine La
Fontaine, and his worn and sated passions were quickened into new life.
She was not beautiful, "but fair and excellent," and of a character that
exercises a commanding influence over the heart of man. Had he known her
before habits of selfish indulgence had become, like the Ethiopian's
skin and the leopard's spots, too deep and indelible for chemic art to
change, she might perhaps have saved him from the transgressor's doom.
She loved him with all the ardor of her pure, yet impassioned nature,
and fully believed that her heart was given to one of the sons of light,
instead of the children of darkness. For awhile his sin-dyed spirit
seemed to bleach in the whitening atmosphere that surrounded him, for a
father's as well as a husband's joy was his. But at length the demon of
ennui possessed him. Satan was discontented in the bowers of Paradise.
Gabriel sighed for his profligate companions, in the bosom of wedded
love and joy. He left home on a false pretence, and never returned. It
was long before Therésa admitted a doubt of his faith, and it was not
till a rumor of his marriage in America reached her ear, that she
believed it possible that he could deceive and betray her. An American
traveller from New York, who knew Henry St. James and was unconscious of
the existence of his brother, spoke of his marriage and his beautiful
bride in terms that roused every dormant passion in the breast of the
deserted Therésa. Yet she waited long in the hope and the faith of
woman's trusting heart, clinging to the belief of her husband's
integrity and truth, with woman's fond adhesiveness. At length, when she
had but convincing reason to believe herself a betrayed and abandoned
wife, she took her boy in her arms, crossed the ocean waste, landed in
New York, and by the aid of a directory sought the home of Henry St.
James, deeming herself the legitimate mistress of the mansion she made
desolate by her presence. The result of her visit has been already told.
She unconsciously destroyed the happiness of others, without securing
her own. It is not strange, that in the moment of agony and distraction
caused by the revelation made by Therésa, Rosalie should not have
noticed in the marriage certificate the difference between the names of
Henry Gabriel and Gabriel Henry St. James.
Henry St. James had been summoned to Texas, then the Botany Bay of
America, by his unhappy brother, who had there commenced a new career of
sin and misery. He had gambled away his fortune, killed a man in a scene
of strife and blasphemy, been convicted of homicide, escaped from the
sentence, and, lurking in by-lanes and accursed places, fell sick, and
wrote to his brother to come and save him from infamy and death.
How could he wound the spotless ears of Rosalie by the tale of his
brother's guilt and shame? He had never spoken to her of his existence,
the subject was so exquisitely painful, for he believed himself for ever
separated from him, and why should his blasted name cast a shadow over
the heaven of his domestic happiness?
Alter having raised his miserable brother from the gulf of degradation
in which he had plunged, and given him the means of establishing himself
in some honorable situation, which he promised to seek, he returned to
find his home occupied by strangers, his wife and child fled, his
happiness wrecked, and his peace destroyed. The deluded and half frantic
Therésa, believing him to be her husband, appealed to him, by the memory
of their former love and wedded felicity, to forgive the steps she had
taken that she might assert the claims of her deserted boy. Maddened by
the loss of the wife whom he adored, he became for the time a maniac;
and so terrible was his indignation and despair, the unhappy victim of
his brother's perfidy fled trembling and dismayed from his presence.
In the calmer moments that succeeded the first paroxysms of his agony,
Henry thought of his brother and of the extraordinary resemblance they
bore to each other, and the mystery which frenzied passion had at first
veiled from his eyes was partially revealed to his understanding. Could
he then have seen her, and could she prove that she was the wife of
Gabriel, he would have protected her with a brother's care and
tenderness. But his first thought was for Rosalie,--the young, the
beloved, the deceived, the fugitive Rosalie, of whose flight no clue
could be discovered, no trace be found. The servants could throw no
light on the mystery, for she had left in the darkness and silence of
night. They only knew that Peggy disappeared at the same time, and was
probably her companion. This circumstance afforded a faint relief to
Henry's distracted mind, for he knew Peggy's physical strength and moral
courage, as well as her remarkable attachment to his lovely and gentle
wife. But whither had they gone? The natural supposition was, that she
would throw herself on the protection of her step-mother, as the only
person on whom she had any legitimate claims,--unkind as she had
formerly been. He immediately started for the embattled walls of
Fortress Monroe,--but before his departure, he put advertisements in
every paper, which, if they met her eye, she could not fail to
understand. Alas! they never reached the gray cottage imbosomed in New
England woods!
In vain he sought her in the wave-washed home of her childhood. He met
with no sympathy from the slighted and jealous step-mother, who had
destroyed the only link that bound them together, the name of her
father. She had married again, and disowned all interest in the daughter
of her former husband. She went still further, and wreaked her vengeance
on St. James for the wounds he had inflicted on her vanity, by aspersing
and slandering the innocent Rosalie. He left her in indignation and
disgust, and wandered without guide or compass, like another Orpheus in
search of the lost Eurydice. Had he known Peggy's native place, he might
have turned in the right direction, but he was ignorant of every thing
but her name and virtues. At length, weary and desponding, he resolved
to seek in foreign lands, and in devotion to his art, oblivion of his
sorrows. Just before his departure he met his brother, and told him of
the circumstances which banished him from home and country. Gabriel,
whose love for Therésa had been the one golden vein in the dark ore of
his nature, was awakened to bitter, though short-lived remorse, not only
for the ruin he brought on her, but the brother, whose fraternal
kindness had met with so sad a requital. Touched by the exhibition of
his grief and self-reproach, Henry committed to his keeping a miniature
of Rosalie, of which he had a duplicate, that he might be able to
identify her, and Gabriel promised, if he discovered one trace of his
wife and child, that he would write to his brother and recall him.
They parted. Henry went to Italy, where images of ideal loveliness
mingled with, though they could not supplant, the taunting memories of
his native clime. As an artist, and as a man, he was admired, respected,
and beloved; and he found consolation, though not happiness. The one
great sorrow of his life fell like a mountain shadow over his heart; but
it darkened its brightness without chilling its warmth. He was still the
sympathizing friend of humanity, the comforter of the afflicted, the
benefactor of the poor.
In the mean time Gabriel continued his reckless and dissolute course,
sometimes on land, sometimes on sea, an adventurer, a speculator, a
gambler, and a wretch. Destiny chanced to throw him into the vortex of
corruption boiling in the heart of New York, when I went there, the
bride of Ernest. He had seen me in the street, before he met me at the
theatre; and, struck by my resemblance to the miniature which his
brother had given him, he inquired and learned my name and history, as
well as the wealth and rank of my husband. Confirmed in his suspicion
that I was the child of Rosalie, he resolved to fill his empty pockets
with my husband's gold, by making me believe that _he_ was my father,
and appealing to my filial compassion. Not satisfied with his success,
he forged the note, whose discovery was followed by detection,
conviction, imprisonment, and despair.
The only avenue to his seared and hardened heart had been found by the
son of Therésa, coming to him like a messenger from heaven, in all his
purity, excellence, and filial piety, not to avenge a mother's wrongs,
but to cheer and illumine a guilty father's doom. His brother, too,
seemed sent by Providence at this moment, that he might receive the
daughter whom, from motives of the basest selfishness, he had claimed as
his own.
When I first saw my father at the Falls, he had just returned to his
native land, in company with Julian, the young artist. Urged by one of
those irresistible impulses which may be the pressure of an angel's
hand, his spirit turned to the soil where he now firmly believed the
ashes of his Rosalie reposed. He and Julian parted on their first
arrival, met again on the morning of our departure, and travelled
together through some of the glowing and luxuriant regions of the West.
After Julian left him to visit Grandison Place, he lingered amid scenes
where nature revelled in all its primeval grandeur and original
simplicity, sketching its boldest and most attractive features, till,
God-directed, he came to the city over which the memory of his brief
wedded life trembled like a misty star throbbing on the lonely heart of
night. Hearing that a St. James was in the dungeons of the Tombs, a
convicted forger, he at once knew that it must be his brother. There he
sought him, and learned from him that the child of Rosalie lived, though
Rosalie was a more.
As simple as sad, was the solution of my life's mystery.
Concealment was the fatal source of our sorrows. Even the noble Henry
St. James erred in concealing his twin brotherhood, though woe and
disgrace tarnished the once golden link. Rosalie and Therésa both erred,
in not giving their children their father's name, though they believed
it accursed by perjury and guilt.
Truth, and truth alone, is safe and omnipotent: "The eternal days of God
are hers." Man may weave, but she will undeceive; man may arrange, but
God will dispose.