Mary Seaham Volume Iii Part 15

"And you do not find it very painful?"

A wan smile was the answer.

"Dear Mary!" the brother exclaimed, turning away to hide a bright drop that started to his eye, "how shall we ever be able to repay you for all you have suffered so long and patiently?"

A smile again played upon her lips, as she marked the _we_ for the first time used in a speech of this nature, and putting her hand in her brother's, she replied:

"By allowing me to witness your happiness, dear Arthur."

Too much occupied with unselfish concern for his sister, the young man did not understand the speech as it was intended; but after a moment's anxious consideration, inquired:

"Mary, has anything occurred since our conversation the day before yesterday, to hasten this step? I know that Trevor went away early this morning, but had you any meeting with him yesterday?"

"I had," she answered, colouring deeply; "but, Arthur," in a faltering voice, "spare me any further questions; let what I have done suffice."

"Selfish--heartless--double-hearted," were the emphatic murmurings of the young man's lips, as he turned away with dark and moody brow, "would that _I_ might ask a few questions of him."

"Arthur!" Mary exclaimed, laying her hands reproachfully on his shoulder, "you will make me believe that after all you are vexed and disturbed that our engagement is over."

"No, Mary, Heaven knows that is not the case; but still, it makes my blood boil to think how you have waited so long and faithfully, and that after all your trust and patience will have been all in vain, that your precious affection should have been wasted."

"Then, Arthur, console yourself with the a.s.surance that I grudge no measure of faith and patience I may have exerted. Faith and patience can never be in vain; would that was all I have now to mourn over. As for wasted affection--affection never can be wasted," unconsciously quoting the words once sounded in her ear, in tones which ever since had lingered there. "My affection, though blind, perhaps, and mistaken, was pure and innocent. G.o.d will not suffer it to return fruitless to my bosom."

Arthur Seaham was obliged to go and prepare himself for the judge's dinner, and Mary to exert herself during her _tete-a-tete_ evening with Miss Elliott.

The next day she was too ill to rise. Her maid was sent for, and with her Mary a day or two after went to a pretty cottage not far distant, belonging to her brother, where he was soon to join her. The Morgans were not then in the country.

CHAPTER XV.

But now, alas! the place seems changed, Thou art no longer here: Part of the suns.h.i.+ne of the scene With thee did disappear.

LONGFELLOW.

Confess! Record myself A villain!

VENICE PRESERVED.

Mary Seaham's letter reached Montrevor the day after Mabel Marryott's funeral. Eugene Trevor tore it open eagerly, turned ashy pale as he perused it, then, thrusting it into his pocket, went about his business as before.

Day after day went by, and the letter remained unanswered--unacted upon.

With sullen defiance, or silent contempt, Eugene Trevor seemed to have determined upon treating the earnest appeal the important requisition it contained. The appeal he endeavoured to consider it of a weak, simple woman, who probably looked upon an affair of so serious--nay, he was forced to acknowledge, so fearful--a nature in no stronger light than that of some romantic fiction, only costing the actor engaged in it the struggle of some heroic and high-wrought feeling to bring the matter to a satisfactory issue; and who little knew that it would have been far easier to him to put a pistol to his head, than to draw down upon himself such ruin--in every sense of the word--as the sacrifice so calmly required of him by the fair and gentle Mary Seaham must entail.

"Senseless girl! what! recall my father's incensed heir to his admiring friends, now all up in arms at the treatment--the persecution, they would call it--that he had received at my hands! restore him in all the strength and brightness of his intellect, striking conviction to every mind as to the truth of the testimonies, which would not fail to start up on every side, to substantiate the false nature of the plea which had alienated him from his lawful rights. Then how would vague reports find confirmation! surmises, suspicions be brought to light! And what would become of _me_? what would become of my debts--my character--my honour--my covetousness?"

If these were in any sort the reflections which influenced Eugene Trevor for the next week or so after the receipt of Mary's letter, that letter seemed to have had at any rate the power of subduing for a time his energies and courage in the prosecution of former designs.

He made no attempt to alter his father's obstinate determination to keep wholly to his bed. He seemed suddenly to have lost his anxiety as to securing the will, and discovering the remaining forged notes. He was moody, gloomy, apathetic. One day chance took him to that part of the house where his mother's boudoir was situated. Pausing as he pa.s.sed the door, he pushed it open, and entered.

The window was open--the sunbeams played upon the old quaint furniture, the room seemed fresh, and bright, and clear, in comparison with the rest of the house; which ever since Marryott's death and funeral seemed to have retained the influence, and impressed him with those revolting ideas attached to the signs and ensigns of mortality entertained by the mind who cannot, or dare not, look beyond those consequences of corruptibility for the object of that fearful power. A dark, pall-like covering seemed spread over the whole house; a close, sickly atmosphere to pervade it throughout.

But here--all this seemed to have been effectually shut out, as if the destroying angel, as he brushed past with hasty wing, had seen the mark upon that door, which forbade him entrance; and Eugene Trevor went and stretched his head out of the window, breathing more freely than he had done for many a day.

Suddenly, however, he drew back; the action had brought to his remembrance just such another clear, bright sunny day, when he had last stood leaning in that position; but alas! how differently accompanied.

Then alone with a fair, pure, gentle girl--her sweet presence, her tender voice, infusing into his soul an influence which for the time had lifted him almost above himself into a paradise of thought--of feeling he had long since forfeited; and now alone--alone with his own dark jarring thoughts--alone with that juggling fiend impenitent remorse gnas.h.i.+ng at his heart--alone with his present disquiet--with the threatening fear of the future--the withering memories of the past. Well might he have cried aloud for the lost dream which suggested this comparison--a dream indeed false and treacherous in its foundation; for except that conscience slept undisturbed, how was he different then to what he is now. And yet he would fain have recalled it, for suddenly with that a.s.sociation seemed to have taken hold upon his fancy a pa.s.sionate yearning, an impatient regret that he had not been able to secure possession of the being who had at that time certainly exercised a very worthy influence over his affections. A tormenting idea that his marriage at that period might have warded off the evils now circling threatening around his head; or at the worst have given him a fond and devoted sharer in his fortunes, such as in the whole world he knew not where to look for now. For how she had loved him! Yes, it was pleasant and soothing to his feelings, in their present ruffled state, to remember that he had been loved so tenderly, so purely, so entirely for himself alone: and then came the stinging reaction--the remembrance that he was no longer loved--that he had seen a look of fear, almost of aversion, usurp the place of confiding affection in those soft and loving eyes: that finally, she had fainted from mere abhorrence at the idea of the promise he had pressed so urgently upon her--then too, when it seemed she had not heard the story which proved the cause and subject of her letter.

No--but she had been in Italy with his brother, that martyr-hero--fascinated, enthralled, no doubt,--and he must lose, relinquish her too. No, by heaven! that he would not do--that weak, pale, soft-hearted girl, should he pa.s.sively resign his power over her also? villain or not as she might deem him, he must make her to believe it were cruelty, perjury, and sordid unfaithfulness, to desert him now--to break her vows, because she had discovered that there was one with better claims than himself to the fortune and expectations she had imagined him to possess.

In this new mood Eugene went to pay his customary morning visit to his father's room, and there fresh fuel was added to the fire lately kindled in his breast.

The old man had for the last few days taken a different turn. At first, as we have said, his disenthralment from Marryott's guardians.h.i.+p had been a relief to his mind; but to this feeling had succeeded a restless disquiet as to the consequences of the removal of this Cerberus of his household, and the destruction both of himself and property, fraud, robbery, poisoning, fire, ruin and destruction in every possible shape, seemed to be hanging over his head by a single hair. He was in a perpetual fear whenever he found his son had left the house.

The day to which we allude, Eugene Trevor was a.s.sailed with the usual amount of murmuring and complaint.

"Eugene, a pretty state we are in now. I should like to know what's to become of us if we go on much longer in this manner."

"In what way, my dear Sir? everything seems to go on very quietly; really, with scarcely half a dozen servants in the house, and all the plate safe in the bank, I do not think there's any chance of much harm being done."

"No harm? Gracious powers! how do you know what abominations of extravagance are not going forward--you who are always sleeping miles away from the wretches, and know not how I may be robbed, and cheated, and eaten out of house and home. I'll tell you one thing, Eugene, I am determined I'll get to the offices, if I'm carried there, and see to a fraction every bit of meat weighed that comes into the house, as _you_ won't help me."

"My dear Sir, I would do everything in my power, I a.s.sure you, but the chief object at present I think will be to try and find some second Marryott, who, I hope," with a sneering emphasis on the words, "you will find an equal treasure of honesty and faithfulness as the other."

"I don't want another Marryott," whined the old man, peevishly; "I won't have a housekeeper at all, with their forty-guinea wages--they are as bad as any of them--Marryott understood my ways--"

"And your coffers too, Sir," added Eugene, with a scornful laugh. "A pretty h.o.a.rd she had at the bank. I am sorry she made no will; I, as her foster-son, might have been the better for it; but as it is, it belongs to her husband, if he is yet alive."

"What's the use of telling me all this _now_," whimpered the father, "when you let her go on doing it without giving me a hint?"

"Oh, my dear Sir, she saved it for you in other ways! 'Set a thief to catch a thief,' you know, at any rate she let no one rob you but herself, which, as so very old and faithful a servant, of course she considered herself privileged to do; but set your mind at ease," he continued more soothingly, as the old man writhed upon his bed, groaning in agony of spirit, "I'll make it my business to find some honest, decent woman, who at least will not be able to claim the privilege of common property on the above-mentioned score."

"But how can you be sure of her being decent and honest?" still persisted Mr. Trevor; "there's not one amongst the race, I believe, that is so. I'll have nothing to do with any of them. I will tell you what, Eugene," and the old man's eyes gleamed at the sudden suggestion, "the only thing that's to be done--why don't you get a wife, and bring her to live here, and keep the house?"

Eugene Trevor's brow darkened.

"A bright idea, Sir," he responded, ironically.

"Yes, yes," continued the old man; "what are you thinking of, Eugene, that you don't marry? you're getting on in life; I was married before I was as old by half. What's to become of the family and fortune--if there's any left of it--if you don't marry?"

His son's eye brightened.