Mary Seaham Volume Iii Part 22

"No, the afternoon before it had occurred."

"Had she seen his brother?"

"She had, contrary to her cousin Olivia's promise, that so painful and useless an ordeal should be spared her. She had found him at Silverton on her arrival. It had been an interview most distressing and repugnant to her feelings at the time, though the startling and terrible events, which so closely succeeded, had in a great degree diverted her mind from any selfish consideration. She had since then been very ill. Her illness had detained her at Silverton, but this I shall not regret," she added.

"I shall now depart with the happy consciousness, which I have not experienced for the last few years, that all is right which has been for long so very wrong, my mind relieved of its hara.s.sing weight of doubt, darkness and perplexity."

"Yes, your sense of disinterested justice may be satisfied; but your heart, will it remain equally so? The cause which you have so generously espoused, established; will not other feelings re-a.s.sert their power, and my brother again triumph in the possession of that which, to call my own, I would gladly have cast at his feet the richest inheritance on earth?"

These words were uttered with almost breathless agitation.

"No," was the reply in a voice so low and trembling that the anxious listener had to hold his breath to catch its accents; "such feelings have long been destroyed, and can never re-a.s.sert their influence. Even pity is done away save for the wounded conscience, which he who once I loved must carry with him through life; yes, pity even is now scarcely to be excited; and love--can love survive esteem?"

With a jealous, yearning glance Eustace Trevor watched the tears again falling from the agitated speaker's eyes, kissed away by the sympathising child; and then he rose and began again to pace the room as if to stem some fresh torrent of inward emotion which stirred within his breast. But at this juncture the door opened abruptly, and in another moment Eustace Trevor's hand was clasped in Louis de Burgh's, who, followed by Arthur Seaham, entered the room; and Mary, leaning on her brother's arm, left the re-united friends together.

CHAPTER XXI.

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 n.o.ble 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 l.u.s.t--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 doc.u.ments 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--G.o.dlike erect, with native honour clad, Within whose looks divine the image of the glorious Maker shone, Truth, wisdom, sanct.i.tude, severe and pure.

His fair large front and eye sublime"--

Irradiated with that attribute of G.o.d 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 n.o.ble revenge. For a few grave, calm, but gentle words from Eustace Trevor's lips had already set his anxious fears at rest--had a.s.sured 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 n.o.ble being it had lost?

Oh, no! for those two last days that they had pa.s.sed under the same roof together--in the same manner, as she had seemed to shrink, with timid, lowly, self-abas.e.m.e.nt 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 n.o.ble 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 embarra.s.sment; 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 n.o.ble 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 s.p.a.ce 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.

CHAPTER XXII.

Alas! the maiden sighed since first I said: 'Oh, fountain, read my doom.'

What vainest fancies have I nursed, Of which I am myself the tomb!

L. E. L.

It was a beautiful evening of that next summer year, and a large family-party was a.s.sembled at Glan Pennant, now again inhabited by its rightful owner, Arthur Seaham: the handsome dowry of his lovely bride, Carrie Elliott, joined to the emolument derived from the rapid and promising rise in his profession, having enabled him to take possession of his much loved home on his marriage, about a twelve month since.

Not only were Alice Gillespie and her family the guests of the young couple; but Lady Everingham, their eldest sister, who had returned from India, and the beautiful Selina, whose husband was shortly to follow, was staying with their children at Plas-Glyn, with the Morgans; and no evening pa.s.sed without, as may be supposed, some reunion of this sort taking place at one or the other of the neighbouring residences. But there was one still wanting, on this present occasion, without whom such gatherings could not be complete--one, regarded with a kind of peculiar love by each there present, though by none, perhaps, with such especial tenderness as by the young master and mistress of Glan Pennant; and ever and anon the question as to when Mary would return, and what could have kept her out so late, was heard repeated: the children of the party going back to Plas-Glyn, sorrowful at not having been able to wish that dear Aunt Mary good night.

Some one, at length, remarked that Mr. Wynne had not been seen for the last day or two. Arthur Seaham observed, in reply, that he had been expecting a visitor, with whom he had been probably occupied; and he and Carrie exchanged looks of some significance.