The lawyer indeed, as was most natural considering the reported facts on which his late business had been founded, cast a timid glance towards the door, and, had he dared, would have risen to seek that aid which he concluded would be requisite.
There was besides something in the appearance of the unhappy man before him, which accorded with Mr. A.'s preconceived idea of his circumstances and condition--his countenance wild and haggard from the recent excitement and exertion which had attended his escape, as well as from the uneffaced effects of grief and illness--his disordered and unusual appearance; and the lawyer turned a glance towards his brother, to ascertain what was to be done; but Eugene sat shrinking and ashy pale, endeavouring but in vain to meet with anything like composure, that steadfast glance the _madman_ fixed upon his face.
A touch upon his arm, made Mr. A. look round. It was Mabel Marryott who thus sought to attract his attention; and in obedience to her significant glance, he was about to rise stealthily and leave the room, when a voice of stern command detained him.
"Be so good, Sir, as to remain where you are for the present. I may be allowed perhaps to glance my eye over this document, in which I have my suspicions I am in no small degree concerned."
There was no resisting the tone in which these words were uttered. No hand save one, and that a woman's, was raised to prevent the firm but quiet movement with which the speaker stretched forth his hand and lifted the parchment from the table--Mabel Marryott alone made a sharp but ineffectual movement, as if with all the power of her malignant will she would have secured the paper from the wronged one's grasp.
Perfect silence reigned whilst Eustace Trevor stood and read the paper through from beginning to end--a deed which, under plea of his own insanity and consequent incompetency, signed over to his brother Eugene, as guardian and trustee, the whole management and power over the entailed estate of Montrevor and the property appertaining thereto, at such time as he, Eustace Trevor, as heir-at-law, should by the testator Henry Trevor's death, come into nominal possession.
This, of course drawn out with legal amplitude and precision, Eustace attentively perused; then, when some probably were expecting its destruction, the document was calmly replaced upon the table.
"And now, Sir," turning to the lawyer, "you will perhaps do me the favour to withdraw; and you, woman, I desire you to do the same."
It was wonderful to see the power which the calm and lofty indignation, swelling in that wronged man's breast, seemed to exercise over the minds of those who so late had triumphantly trampled upon his very heart.
As for the lawyer, he hesitated not to rise, and prepare to obey that implied command; for he saw that neither of his employers were inclined to interfere.
The old man sat as one paralyzed, and the younger with compressed lips, and contracted downcast brow, seemed to await in sullen silence and discomfort the issue of the powerful scene; and Marryott even, though she paused for a moment, considered better of it, and swept from the apartment with the air of a Lady Macbeth. Those three were then left together alone. The injured face to face with the foes of his own household--his father and his brother!
What should he say to these? or rather to him--his brother? To the other, he had long ceased to look but as on one who had forfeited all right to the name of father. "For what one amongst ye, who if his son ask a fish will he give him a serpent; or if he ask for bread will give him a stone," and by what better manner of speech figure forth all that old man had ever done by him, his luckless son? Nay, if this were all--if he could but have paused here, and forgotten how that father had played the part of husband to a sainted mother; but he looked not on _him_ now--he looked only to him, that mother's son; from whom, in spite of all he might have ever had to reprobate and forgive, it had not entered into his thoughts to conceive cruel perfidy such as that, of which since entering that room he had become but the more fully convinced he had been made the victim; and the bitterness of death--during that first instant that he thus stood reading in his brother Eugene's sullen, downcast brow, a too certain confirmation of his guilt--overwhelmed his soul.
But it passed over, and was gone; and a just and righteous indignation re-asserted its dominion in its place.
"Eugene," he said, "that paper," and he pointed to the legal document before him, "throws but too clear a light on the transactions of which I have been made the victim. Oh, how could you allow that demon, covetousness, to gain such empire over your heart? Cain, in the angry passion of the moment, slew his brother; but you, in cold-blooded calculation, could bend yourself to an act which time and circumstances, perhaps remote, could alone turn to your advantage."
"Eustace!" stammered his brother; "I excuse this intemperate language on your part, for of course you cannot appreciate the circumstances of the case; but any one would be ready to justify the necessary, but painful, course of conduct to which we were reduced. In whatever state of mind you may be now, there are others to testify as to the fact--"
"Pshaw! justify--who will justify one, who, during the temporary delirium of a brain fever, confined his own brother to a madhouse!
affixed to his name that stamp and stigma which must cling to it for the remainder of his days; or, still more unwarrantable and cruel, the evident attempts to detain him in that madhouse, long after any reasonable possible excuse was afforded? But I can plainly read the motive which thus influenced you--too plainly, alas! Eugene, two months ago I had not conceived such conduct possible; but I know you _now_. I think I can pretty well divine what has been the course of conduct you have pursued; you have been to London, perhaps--"
He paused. There was no denial.
"You went to your clubs; and there very surely took means to establish the fact of your eldest brother's melancholy condition--his insanity, his confinement!"
Eugene Trevor in a hoarse and angry voice would have attempted some reply, but Eustace's indignant voice overpowered him.
"And then you brought that man down," he continued, "to fill up the measure of your iniquity, and one scratch of the pen alone was needed now to make it good. Let it be done. That paper of his, that base and villainous forgery, now lies before me at my mercy. But I scorn to touch it. I treat it as it is--a worthless, valueless nothing. If I but chose to follow your example--go, call my friends and neighbours about me, declare before them all the unnatural fraud which has been practised upon me; yes, show them this," and he bared his blackened, wounded wrists, "and ring in their astounded ears, what, and _for what_, it entered a brother's heart to conceive an act of such atrocity; then, do you think that I could not manage to make those who knew, and cared for me, credit my testimony before that of an abandoned woman and two ignorant time-serving country doctors? Ask Dr. Miller, would he even dare to say, my attack was anything but the temporary delirium of fever?"
"Merciful heavens, Eugene!" murmured Mr. Trevor, trying in an under tone to gain his younger son's attention, without being heard by the other.
"Is there no one at hand to stop him--to secure him?"
But Eustace caught the muttered syllables, and turned sternly round.
"No one, Sir; who will dare to do it? Think not that I entered _your_ house without precaution against what I there had every reason to expect. These," drawing a brace of pistols from his pocket, "I found opportunity to obtain; and should one of these poor trembling menials by your orders, dare--"
"Eugene! Eugene! are they loaded? for the love of Heaven save me; he will murder us all!" Mr. Trevor exclaimed in terror.
"Eustace! this is indeed madness!" the brother would have said, but shame choked the words within his throat; "this violence is most uncalled for. What motive could there now be on our part for having recourse to such expedients as you seem to fear. I assure you, you are quite at liberty to remain, or depart at your pleasure; and as for what has been done, I am quite ready to answer for my conduct," he added doggedly, "if you choose to drag the matter forward so publicly."
"Would you be so prepared, Eugene? Dare not repeat that falsehood, wretched man. Fear not, I will not drag you forward to such a test. I hate, I curse you not for what you have done, but the cause, the sin which brought you to commit it. I do abhor, nay, I am sickened unto death, of the very world in which I have suffered so much, and in which sin so despicable and revolting can exist; still more with the home (if it be not sacrilege to use that hallowed name in such a case) in which it asserts such hateful power. The very air I breathe beneath it seems to choke me; if all the gold which fills the coffers of its master were laid in heaps before my feet, that would not make it tolerable to my heart. Rejoice then, when I swear that never under this roof together with you two--my most unnatural relations, shall I again set my foot. I have borne and suffered too much within its walls. I willingly resign all sonship, brotherhood, with those who have trampled on every human tie. I leave you to carry out, as far as in you lies, your hearts'
desires. I shake the very dust off my feet, and depart. I leave this place to-night, this country, perhaps, to-morrow, caring not that for the present the stigma you have cast upon my name must remain. You, Sir, should we never meet again on earth, may Heaven forgive! _You_, Eugene, farewell; _we_ may meet again in this world, but never again as brothers."
He turned, and was gone. None saw him depart. He went out into the dark night; and many within that house who had heard of his startling arrival, concluded that he had been secretly restored to the asylum from which he had made his escape. Only a few days after, an old servant, much attached to Mrs. Trevor and her second son, who on his dismissal from Montrevor had served Eustace during his residence at Oxford, appeared at the hall, with authority from his master to gather and pack up all the effects belonging to him; and having done so without molestation, he silently conveyed them away.
He threw no light upon the subject, or on his master's destination.
Indeed, it was soon afterwards ascertained, by those chiefly interested in the matter, that he was equally ignorant on the point as themselves.
Eugene Trevor remained for some time at Montrevor, then returned to the world, to find the general impression apparently continuing as it was before, concerning the derangement and consequent confinement of his brother. Then it was deemed advisable to report that the unhappy young man was so far recovered, that he had gone abroad under proper guardianship; and the world, too busy with its own affairs to keep up any long-sustained interest or inquiry into the fate and fortune of those removed out of their light, were contented to suppose this to be the case; and when some years had run their course, as we have seen, and nothing more had been seen or heard of the unhappy Eustace Trevor, many gave him up as lost for ever to society, and Eugene, gay, prosperous, and invested with all importance and privilege in his father's house, had soon assumed in the eyes of the world a certain--though it might be somewhat equivocal--position as heir, under some few restrictions, to the property and estates of Montrevor.
CHAPTER XXI.
Fain would I fly the haunts of men; I seek to shun, not hate mankind.
My breast requires the sullen glen, Whose gloom may suit a darkened mind.
Oh that to me the wings were given Which bear the turtle to her nest!
Then would I cleave the vault of Heaven, To flee away, and be at rest.
BYRON.
On the borders of a lake in one of the wildest and most remote parts of North Wales, stands a rude inn, the resort, during the proper season of the year, of those who for the sake of the fishing the lake affords, are content to put up with the homely fare and simple accommodation it affords. But when that time has passed away--when the calm, glittering lake is deformed by constant rains, and lashed into fury by the driving storms of winter--when those majestic mountains have exchanged their ever-varying glories for mists and blackness, have donned their wintry garb, and are in character with wintry skies--there cannot be imagined a more desolate and dreary scene than that spot presents; and the inn, of course, stands comparatively tenantless. Yet for three whole winter months, a gentleman of whom none of nobler appearance had ever perhaps honoured it with their presence, made that humble hostelry his abode.
Alone he came, and alone he remained. He dispatched or received no communication from beyond those mist-covered mountains which surrounded him; but little did those simple, unsophisticated people care to wonder or inquire. Unimportuned by curiosity, the visitor pursued his solitary existence, climbing those bleak and trackless mountains, or tossing upon the stormy lake. No sound of human voice, but in the uncouth and unknown language of the country, scarcely every falling on his ear.
He had some few books with him, but he scarcely read, save in one, the Bible. Plenty of money the stranger was provided with, for he paid his expenses handsomely, and gave often freely to those few poor who came in his way; but yet his very name remained a mystery, if that could be called mystery, which none cared to inquire or ascertain; and when the first warm beams of springtide sun melted the snow upon the mountain-tops, as suddenly as he came, so he departed, none knew or asked whither.
But he did not, as it seems, go far. In a small Welsh town, not twenty miles distant, a few days after, and that stranger, who it seemed had, uninjured, so roughly exposed himself to the fatigues and inclemency of the wintry weather during his sojourn in his late retreat, lay dangerously ill in a comfortable little inn belonging to the place; unknown here also, but tended with all the disinterested care and kindness which seldom fails to cheer the stranger in that mountain land.
Skilful medical attendance was happily provided; and the fever, against whose advances the sufferer, with a peculiarly nervous dread, seemed to battle--by proper means was subdued, and the sick man partially recovered.
As he lay upon his bed one of the first mornings after his convalescence, a merry peal from the bells of the neighbouring church burst upon his ear. Merrier and merrier they continued to ring, and the invalid turned sadly and wearily round upon his pillow, as if he would fain have escaped from sounds of joy, harmonizing so little with his lonely heart.
"Truly there is a joy with which the stranger intermeddleth not."
But still those sounds, as if in very mockery and despite, continued to clash forth at intervals during the day, caring little for the sick hearts and wounded spirits upon which that merriment might chance to jar.
"You are very gay," the stranger said with a melancholy smile to his landlady, when she came to attend him that day; and the remark was answered by the ready information, that the bells were this day ringing on occasion of a marriage which that morning had taken place in the neighbourhood, the bride being a young lady of a family of long standing in these parts. The gentleman, a widower and a Scotchman, &c. But all this her listener heeded not.
"Bells thou soundest merrily When the bridal party To the church doth hie; Bells thou soundest solemnly, When on Sabbath mornings, Fields deserted lie."
It was Sunday morning, and all the people of the place were flocking to the Welsh service of the church; but the English stranger mingled not with these. No--rather as he had turned wearily away from the mad music of the marriage-bell, did his languid footsteps turn aside, when now in more solemn cadence it sounded in his ear.
Not as yet was his soul attuned to enter that house of God, and offer up prayers and praises with a thankful heart. To that lonely man, it would have been indeed requiring a song, a melody, in his heaviness--to "sing the Lord's song in a strange land."