"Eustace!"--"Eugene!" were the only words or signs of greeting exchanged between them, and Trevor, as if momentarily overcome by the emotions excited by the _rencontre_ with his mysterious visitor, sank upon a chair by the table, and with perturbed and agitated demeanour, passed his burning hand across his heated brow; whilst the other still stood erect, looking down upon him with that stern and steady eye, almost appalling in its intensity.
"To what am I indebted for this visit?" Eugene murmured at length, in hoarse and sullen accents, slightly lifting up his head. "I thought--"
"You thought," replied the same deep, rich voice we last heard sounding (though then in very different accents,) upon the Welsh hill side in Mary Seaham's ear. "You thought, Eugene, that before this coming dawn, many leagues of sea would be between us. And so it would have been, had you not your own self broken the promise which bound me to that vow."
"Pshaw!" was the reply, in accents of impatient irony "a mere accidental, unavoidable meeting, whose only fruit was the further to overwhelm with despairing wretchedness her, for whose happiness and welfare you profess such _disinterested_ regard."
"Yes!" was the calm, unmoved reply. "I saw her face turned towards me at the time, that face I had used to behold serene, happy, innocent as the angels in Heaven, and in its woeful change I read--"
"Your own most righteous work," interrupted Eugene, with a bitter mocking laugh. "Had you seen her some time past, before the day when you, like a spirit of evil, stepped in between us, you might have beheld a sight which perhaps had pleased you even less; that angel face brightened and beautified by her love for _me_."
"You are right, it would have pleased me even less, it would have seemed to my eyes, like the dove spreading her silver plumes, all glittering in the treacherous sunshine, to meet the vulture who has marked it for its prey. Yet to-day, I seemed not to read upon that pale and tear-stained countenance, the mere passing misery of the moment--that misery of which I wish not to deny having been myself the inflictor--but that which I might have seen--that which I once saw settled on a mother's face; or still more haunting, terrible, impression, the despairing misery one might image of a fallen angel, dragged down from her high estate, by an unholy, unnatural alliance with a spirit of another sphere. For, Eugene, your own heart, your own conscience must convict you, that light with darkness, righteousness with unrighteousness, Christ with Belial, have as much in common, as yourself, your nature, your life, your principles, have to do with those of Mary Seaham; and that to unite yourself with her, would be, I repeat, either to draw her down to your own level--or, more blessed alternative, to break her heart. But both of these destinies I had hoped to have seen averted. You had assured me, it was easier for you to resign that 'mess of pottage'
as you slightingly denominated the inestimable treasure your soul had greedily, but more harmlessly marked as your own, than the birthright of which you were iniquitously possessed. You had assured me, that you would find plausible means--and in that, I doubted not your powers, or your will, if it were but to serve your own interest--to break off, not only your engagement, but all further communication with Mary Seaham; but, Eugene, I _doubt_ you. My back once turned--my _espionage_ abandoned, as I promised it should be, from the time I set my foot on another shore, what will there then be to bound or restrain your grasping, avaricious desires. I shall find myself twice trampled in the dust, and Mary," his voice trembled as he spoke, "she whom I would save from a fate, in my eyes, worse than death, she become your prize, your sacrifice, your victim."
He whom Eustace thus severely addressed, retained a moment's moody defiant silence.
"Your intention then, is to remain in England," he said at length, with an assumption of haughty unconcern, though there might be perceived a quivering of the eyelids, and an expression of anxious perturbation in his downcast glance. "The old man," with trembling irony in his tone, "will doubtless receive you gladly, and there will be nothing to retard the nuptials of Mary and myself."
"No, nothing, if she--if Mary Seaham can consent to wed the man"--he slightly unbared his wrist--"the man who has done this--the man whose name must henceforth ring in her ears as a proverb, a reproach, a by-word through the paths of society--the man whose very children shall rise up and scorn him--whom God and man must alike reprobate and condemn."
Eugene Trevor shrank back as from before some deadly serpent discovered to his view. His eye quailed fearfully--his lips and cheek became of a livid, ashy hue.
"Eustace," he murmured, in a voice of almost abject deprecation--"Eustace, your feelings of revenge and hatred carry you too far. You have repented of the agreement made between us, and have come thus to threaten and intimidate me. _I_ never meant to draw back from my part of the engagement; but if my promise has no weight in your consideration, how am I to give you further pledge of my sincerity? I swear to you," he continued, eagerly, "that, during the meeting to-day with Mary Seaham, into which I was accidentally surprised, I held out no hope--no promise which could give her reason to suppose that the obstacle to our marriage could now or ever be removed. We parted with that understanding; and to-night," he spoke in a low and hurried voice, "she sent her brother here to break off our engagement, which could only be maintained on such uncertain, uncomfortable terms."
"And you consented?"
"What else had I to do?"
"Now may Heaven be praised," was the low, deep, earnest answer--the voice of the speaker swelling as into a strain of rich, clear music; whilst with upraised eyes, and countenance lit up with holy adoration, he thus ejaculated: "Now Heaven be praised, who sends His angels to protect his little ones from the powers and spirits of darkness!
Eugene," he proceeded, again turning to his companion, but with a subdued and softened expression, "you, too, thank your God, that from this additional sin you have been mercifully preserved; from that offence which it were better that a millstone were hung about your neck than that you should commit. You, too, have your reward: take it. I leave it in your hands. I will trouble you no more. Home, name, country, and heritage, I willingly resign; but remember, on that one condition.
Retain it only inviolate, for from the ends of the world, its broken faith, its most secret violation, would recall me. Farewell, Eugene!
Should we never meet again on earth, believe that I forgive you all offences against me. Nor put down either to revenge, or even _madness_, that which He who seeth the heart will, I humbly trust, justify in the eyes of men and angels, before His judgment throne, on the last great day of account; and there and then, where sin and wrong, and wretchedness, shall be done away, may we both meet sanctified, reconciled, and renewed."
He was gone. No other parting sign was given; and he, who had now added one more sin to the already dark catalogue of his offences, the purchase of his freedom from a dreaded evil by a lie, was left darkling and alone.
As those two had met, so they parted--those two men whom our readers may already have divined were brothers.
CHAPTER X.
True, earnest sorrows; rooted miseries; .... vexations, ripe and blown, Sure-footed griefs; solid calamities; Plain demonstrations, evident and clear, Touching their proofs e'en from the very bone-- These are the sorrows here.
HERBERT.
More than six and thirty years have passed since Mr. Trevor, the present proprietor of Montrevor, had taken to himself a wife, young, lovely, of good family, and endowed with much excellence, both of mind and disposition.
Miss Mainwaring had consented, in obedience to her parents' wishes, to bestow her hand upon this rich and handsome suitor, death having deprived her of the first object of her young affections.
Of a gentle and confiding disposition, she had not doubted but that one so pleasing and gentlemanly in his manners and demeanour in society, so assiduous and devoted in his attentions during courtship, would prove an amiable, affectionate husband; and that in resigning her future destiny into his hands, she was securing to herself that calm happiness to which, (the first bright dreams of youth mellowed and subdued), she alone aspired.
Her trust was deceived--her hopes disappointed; too soon was it revealed to her sick heart that Henry Trevor, the courteous and agreeable member of society, was not the same Henry Trevor of domestic life; that Henry Trevor the lover, was a very different person to Henry Trevor the husband; that she had been wedded--for her beauty?--no; woman's natural vanity might have forgiven that:--for her fortune? no; that was comparatively insignificant to count much, even in the close calculations of him, into whose well-stored coffers it was carelessly flung:--for her gentle virtues, her superior qualities of mind?--no,--no abstract love of these had had their part in her lover's choice; but because in the submissive spirit--in the mild and gentle character of her he saw as one
"By suffering made sweet and meek,"
he had thought to find a fitting subject for his purpose and his will--one easy to be bent, moulded, crushed, if it were necessary, into the slave and minister of his favourite lust--his ruling passion--his besetting sin--the grasping, covetous, all-devouring love of money!
Scared and dismayed at the prospect opened, like some dark gulf so suddenly before her eyes, Mrs. Trevor yielded nevertheless, not without an effort, to the fate into which she had been betrayed. She had that within her, a degree of sense and spirit, which moved her in her early marriage days to use the gentle influence she hoped in some degree to have obtained over her husband's affections; to effect some change in the general system of affairs she saw daily growing up around her, as well as to assert and maintain her own gentle dignity and comparative independence as a woman and a wife.
Alas! she knew not the nature of the being with whom she had to cope; it was but as the falcon-hunted dove, fluttering within the fowler's snare, or beneath the vulture's claw, the cords are but the tighter drawn--the grasp more crushingly extended, till the victim feeling his impotence to resist, resigns itself powerless to its fate. Mrs. Trevor struggled no more. All thought of influence was at an end, except indeed that which her gentle virtues, her submissive tears, like the droppings of water upon a stone, might in time be permitted to effect.
Her wounded affections withdrew into the still sanctuary of her own mind, whilst in patient meekness she performed her duties as a wife.
This was all Mr. Trevor required. He had gained his point; he had bent her to his will. She superintended and accommodated herself to the close and grinding economy he exacted in his house. She sacrificed all extravagant tastes, all expensive inclinations, bestowed charity and kindness alone from the resources of her own scanty, grudgingly-accorded allowance. Even in her less responsible requirements she gave him full satisfaction.
Mrs. Trevor bore to her husband just three sons--healthy, promising boys--none of those superfluous, money-frittering excrescences--daughters! These sons all were disposable, convertible to some aim or end. There was the heir--that necessary machine to keep the greedily-preserved fortune and property in future train; there was a second son to secure the good fat family living from escaping into extraneous hands, and there was yet another to place in the lucrative and distinguished banking-house, in which Mr. Trevor was a sleeping partner. Yes, in this she had done well and wisely, and the husband was in the end content. But in the first instance, even here, he was not entirely satisfied with his wife's conduct. Nature had rebelled against the young mother's affording nourishment to her eldest born. Other aid was required, and this unwarrantable and unnecessary infraction upon the rules and exactions of maternity, sank the parent considerably in her lord and master's valuation and esteem. The second time she proved more successful--oh, how fully successful, if to that success were to be attributed not only the pure health, the more refined vigour of body which distinguished the mother's own nursling above his eldest brother, the suckling of a farmer's burly daughter; but that nobler nature, those high-toned qualities of mind and disposition, which grew with his growth and strengthened with his years--and oh, how too successful if from that mother's breast he imbibed his own sad heritage of suffering and of wrong!
On the third, and last occasion, which presented itself, the face of affairs assumed a different aspect. Mr. Trevor, either because he grudged his wife as would not have been at all inconsistent with his character, the extreme pleasure she experienced in the former case, and the excessive fondness with which this child had naturally wound itself around its nursing mother's heart. Whether from these, or still more unworthy notices, this time Mr. Trevor, on some capricious arbitrary plea, objected to his wife indulging in the same natural enjoyment, himself selecting the individual, who was to supplant her in this office. The wife of a tenant on his estate, about to emigrate to Australia, but who preferred remaining behind for some years in service.
Mabel Marryott fulfilled her hired duties well by her patron's infant; so well, that according to her master's orders, she was afterwards retained, as general superintendant of the nursery establishment, though her influence did not long continue limited to that office; and it was Mabel Marryott, whose daily business it soon became, to attend upon the little Eugene in his morning visits to his father's study; where sometimes, for an hour together, upon table or floor, as accorded best with his age, or fancy, he sat and played the mimic miser, with his favourite toys--the shining heaps of glittering gold or silver, always produced on these occasions, to amuse and keep him quiet; whilst in that distant room above, where we have seen the unconscious Mary spend so happy an hour, sat the wife and mother, struggling with the inward anguish of an injured, wounded spirit, or straining the little Eustace to her heart, calling him, in deep, earnest accents of endearment, her darling--her own boy--her precious nursling; beseeching him never to forsake her, to stand by his own mother--to love, and to protect her, till the boy's dark, fervent eyes, would suffuse with tears, and he would promise, with the little full and throbbing heart beating against her breast, always to be "mamma's own boy," and never to leave her even when he was a man; and the heir--he, in the meantime, had probably made his escape to the stable-yard, to the grooms and stable-boys, for whose society he, from his earliest days, shewed much inclination, to the danger both of his neck and his morals, by the lessons in horse-riding or loose talking he there received--tastes and propensities with which his mother found herself powerless to interfere. Mrs. Marryott did not object. Master Trevor was neither a manageable or engaging child; these tastes and habits took him off her hands; Mr. Trevor saw only that they made the boy bold and healthy. They were propensities and amusements which cost him nothing; so he desired that he might not be pestered any more by the representations of his anxious mother; she might make one milksop if she wished, but leave the other alone; Marryott would see he came to no real harm.
The boy was to go to Eton when he was twelve. He might, his father continued, be allowed to take his own course till then; and Mrs. Trevor, though not suffered to interfere in any other department, was expected to take upon herself the arduous office of instructress to this one, as well as to her other two boys, who were also to be kept at home till they had attained the before-mentioned age.
Mr. Trevor had no idea of his wife's talents being put to no better purpose than the solace and amusement of her own lonely, joyless existence; and the poor lady was too willing to enter on a task, which promised a means of drawing her children towards her in closer intercourse than was otherwise permitted. Such was the cruel jealousy, which dared to prevent the mother from acquiring too great an influence and ascendancy over the children's affections.
Long, however, before the time assigned, Mrs. Trevor was forced to represent to the father her insufficiency and unfitness for the duty imposed upon her.
The thick-headed, mulish-tempered Henry, his heart and mind ever with his dogs and horses, very soon began to require some stronger hand and firmer will than she possessed to force him into any degree of application; whilst the two other boys, the one high-spirited and talented in the extreme--the younger taught to look upon his mother in little better light than that of a slighted and despised dependant--became even earlier, above or beyond her strength and power for the work.
But in vain might she remonstrate.
"You are idle, you are idle," was all the answer or relief she obtained.
So she began again, and persevered--much to the wear and tear of body and nerves. But that was nothing. It was an employment--and should have been an interest and amusement rather than an hardship.
And so the mother laboured on with all a mother's patience and long-suffering, bearing rather than contending against the many difficulties and discouragements which beset the task.
One rich reward was its attendant--the satisfactory fruit which crowned her efforts, however comparatively weak and inefficient they might be, as concerned her noble son, Eustace; not but that pain and trouble of a certain kind were her portion, even here. But it was a pleasureable pain, how exceeded by the ample recompense it afforded.
What fervent gratitude--what deep, strong affection did every tear she shed, every sigh she breathed in his cause, fan into life, water into vigour in that young pupil's breast! How was she adored, revered, upheld supreme at least in the heart of one being in the world.
Eustace Trevor, as those of generous and superior natures generally are found to be, was a child of naturally impetuous disposition and independent spirit. Though full of genius, and promise of bright things to come, it could not be but that he sometimes grieved his gentle teacher, and gave her patient spirit pain.
But ah, the contrite grief; the self-indignant sorrow of the child which ever followed on such occasions; how was he prostrate in body and spirit before the beloved being, whom he had so offended. How the elder brother dull, and unrefined in feeling, rather than unamiable at heart, would stare with stupid amazement at such animated demonstrations in the penitent; whilst the younger--what a glance of cold surprise from his dark eye--what a look almost of disdain in his young countenance, as he sat, and watched, and wondered to see such affection--such zeal displayed in the cause of one he was used to behold, so scorned, so slighted so dishonoured, by those who had gained ascendancy over his young mind.
It was worth while to love his father--to seek to please and propitiate him--or even Mabel Marryott. But _she_! what could she do? what influence, did _she_ possess over her children, or any one else either for good or evil?