"Well, Madam, are you too come to a.s.sist me in this delightful business?"
"No, Mr. Trevor," in a trembling voice. "I have come to speak to you upon another subject--about Eugene."
"Eugene! what in the world have you got to say about him?"
"He has returned home in much distress; he has been unfortunate, and requires your a.s.sistance, though at the same time is fearful of your displeasure."
"The devil he is! well, I am a happy individual. Have I not enough on my hands already," with a vindictive glance at Eustace, "without being bored in this fresh quarter? I suppose he wants his allowance advanced; but be so good as to tell him, Madam, that until I have finished the delectable business in which I am engaged, he must please to wait. What the deuce did he come running down here for, wasting his time and my money. A letter, I should think, would have answered his purpose; really, one would suppose I was made of millions."
"But, Mr. Trevor, I am sorry to say that Eugene"s case is of greater, more immediate importance than you imagine. Eugene, I grieve to tell you, has lost a very considerable sum of money at Epsom, and requires an immediate remittance for payment (as it is called) of his debt of honour."
Mr. Trevor changed colour, and an involuntary oath escaped his lips. But something--perhaps it was the glance he saw exchanged between the mother and son--caused him to restrain any further ebullition of the feeling with which this revelation inwardly inspired him.
For he fancied--how unjustly may be imagined--that something of triumphant exultation was expressed in that glance, that it was now the father"s favourite on whom was about to descend his displeasure--perhaps the present forfeiture of his former favour. This was most fortunate for Eugene. It turned the course of his pa.s.sion into another channel.
"And what, allow me to ask," he proceeded with forced composure, "may be the amount of this unfortunate involvement?"
Mrs. Trevor, in a low tone, named the sum.
Its extent probably exceeded Mr. Trevor"s expectation, and the expression of his countenance plainly indicated the struggle of contending feelings within his breast.
He took two or three strides about the room, then ordered Eugene to be sent to him.
"Nay, Madam, pray do not you trouble yourself," as Mrs. Trevor was preparing to leave the room, too willing to escape from the scene of whatever nature which was to follow; and he rang the bell, and desired Eugene to be summoned.
In a few minutes, during which no one spoke--Mrs. Trevor sitting pale and patient, Eustace walking to the window with a look of weary disgust upon his countenance, whilst Mr. Trevor"s dark eye glanced alternately the one from the other, with the wary suspicious glare of an angry animal--Eugene entered, prepared for the worst, with a dogged indifference of countenance and threw himself upon a chair behind his father.
"Well, Sir, and what is this I hear of you?" Mr. Trevor commenced. "Lost a thousand pounds! a pretty story truly; and want me to give you the money. Really one would think you were heir to twenty thousand a-year, instead of a younger son," with a significant glance towards the window, "totally and entirely dependent on my bounty."
There was nothing very encouraging in the letter of this exordium.
Something, however, in the manner in which it was spoken, seemed to give hope and courage to the culprit; for shaking off his sullen moodiness, he sprang from his seat, and approaching his father, began to pour into his ear, in earnest humble strains, a string of protestations, representations, and excuses, relating to the subject of his loss--on the true Spartan principle, accusing the failure rather than the committal of the deed--showing how it had been, by the most unforeseen turn of luck, that he had not won _thousands_, instead of losing _one_; the good fortune which had attended him, on each preceding occasion of the kind; finally declaring his determination to do better for the future, or at any rate so manage, that he would blow his brains out rather than again trouble his father.
"Well, well, Sir, this all sounds very plausible, indeed," was Mr.
Trevor"s reply, having listened with becoming gravity and consideration to the defence; "but I would advise you to give up this losing trade of gambling you have commenced. You will find it, let me tell you, far less profitable in the end than sticking to your bank. In the meantime, to extricate you from your present dilemma, and enable you to turn over a new leaf for the future--this also being in your case the first trouble you have given me--I will write you a cheque for what you require; but remember, this is the last time you must expect from me anything of the sort. Your brother there will tell you how I have plenty to do with one younger son"s worthless extravagance--"
"Mr. Trevor, you are cruelly unjust," interposed the mother"s trembling voice, indignant tears swelling to her eyelids. "You know that one half of what you bestow so freely upon Eugene would amply cover all that Eustace owes--"
"Mrs. Trevor, may I request your silence on the subject?" thundered her husband. "Have I not often told you, that I desire no interference between myself and the affairs of my sons. Supposing I do act with the cruel injustice you so flatteringly ascribe to me, what then? have I not a right to do what I will with my own?"
And, suiting the action to the words, his hand trembling with agitation, he hastened to achieve--that to him almost incredible thing--to write a cheque and present it to his youngest son for a thousand pounds, with a certain feeling, or at any rate the appearance, of unmurmuring alacrity.
So does one bad feeling at the time being, govern even our worst of pa.s.sions.
Eugene on his part did not, as may well be supposed, trouble himself to a.n.a.lyse the merits of his father"s unexpected generosity.
He was really overcome with grat.i.tude at the ready manner in which his anxiety and trouble were thus alleviated. He thanked his father with earnest emotion, and repeated protestations of never again requiring such beneficence at his hands.
Mr. Trevor waved him away. He had done the deed--he had shown forth his own perfect independence of will and power--satisfied his own bad feelings towards the object of his unnatural aversion, and mortified--as seemed his constant aim--the partial feelings, as he deemed them of his gentle wife towards her second son. And now the ruling pa.s.sion began again to struggle into power.
The remembrance that he had just signed away a thousand pounds of his close-kept h.o.a.rds, without more demur than in former times he might have bestowed a half-crown piece upon the boy, began to stir within his breast no very great feeling of satisfaction.
Eugene knew his father too well to risk any further provocation of the feelings he could pretty plainly divine, and hastened to beat a triumphant retreat, purposing to leave Montrevor that same night.
In the exuberance of his feelings, he would probably, at least by a glance, have thanked his mother for the service she had so auspiciously rendered him; but Mrs. Trevor"s looks were sorrowfully averted, and he pa.s.sed her by, not caring to irritate his father by any more manifest token of attention. He did, however, stop to shake hands with Eustace as he pa.s.sed the window near which he stood--the first greeting exchanged between the brothers, who had not met before for several months.
Eustace Trevor returned his brother"s greeting with no lack of kindly warmth. He had stood mute and motionless as a statue throughout the late trying scene which had been enacted. No sign of dark pa.s.sion--of envious, hateful feeling could have been read upon that countenance, pale as marble, and beautiful in its n.o.bly-suppressed emotion. Only once--that time when his mother had raised her meek voice in his defence, had an expression of strong feeling--a mixture of disdain, indignation, and grateful affection--broke forth over his countenance, and his dark, full eyes turned upon that much-loved champion with a glance not to be described, whilst his lips moved as if he were about to entreat her not to distress herself for his sake, when his father"s angry interruption had more effectually supplied any deprecation on his part to that effect.
But now, having returned, as we have said, his brother"s greeting in a manner which showed no particle of invidious feeling to have been excited against the object of such unjust and unmerited favouritism; when, too, his mother had softly and sadly left the room, without daring to cast another look upon the beloved object for whom her heart was bleeding; he came forth and stood before his father, with a firm and composed mien and countenance.
"Father!" he said.
Mr. Trevor was looking over some drawer in his _escritoire_, with no very happy expression of countenance.
"Well, Sir?" glancing upwards, speaking in the most sharp, irritated tone and manner, "what in the name of ---- do you want now? I must request you to pester me no more to-night, we will return to the pleasant task of settling the rest of your debts to-morrow."
"No, father--that cannot be. I am no longer a child--a boy; and it is not in the nature of man to bear, even from a father, injustice--degradation, such as that to which I am subjected. I ask you then, that this very night, on this very spot, for once, and for ever, to let my account be settled between us; and never I solemnly swear, here or hereafter shall you be troubled by me or my concerns. What I ask is, that you will give me down a sum of money, just sufficient to pay my expenses out of this country, and let me work for my bread by the sweat of my brow, like others whom I know, in one of the distant colonies; for this I say will be preferable, far preferable, to what you now make me endure--far more accordant with my feelings of right and honour, than shackled, degraded in every point, to be goaded, drawn into a profession for which, besides the original disinclination I felt to embrace it, I have been rendered still more unfit by the treatment I have received.
Viewing the office as I do, in a light far too sacred to be entered upon by one, in the spirit and temper of mind to which you have reduced me."
"Well, Sir, well; I admire your pious principles; do as you please; give up this living. Many a better man than you, no doubt, will be glad to have it. Go off to Botany Bay, if you will--but beg, borrow, or steal your way out as you like. I must decline advancing you a farthing towards that laudable design; all the money you ever get out of me, goes to making you a parson; choose that, or beggary; for do not suppose that you will be coming over me a second prodigal son. Go, riot as you will, but not from me will ever come the wherewithals. Eat the husks, if you please; but as for the ring, and the fatted calf, and all that--"
"Sir!" interrupted the young man, by a strong effort suppressing the resentment these taunting words fired in his breast from breaking through the limits of filial respect. "Far be it from me, to expect such things at your hands. No, truly, the very husks of the fields _would_ be far sweeter to my taste than the begrudged bread eaten in my father"s house. And, refused as I am the just and reasonable demand I have made to-night--determined as you are to show the cruelly childish dependence to which you have reduced me, willingly would I embrace the other alternative, and by the sweat of my brow, unaided by you, gain my daily subsistence, were it not for the one consideration which draws me back, and renders me powerless to resist--my mother."
"Come, come, Sir; no more of this," interrupted Mr. Trevor impatiently, wincing consciously--as he generally did from any allusion of the kind--at this observation of the zealous son, as if he feared the reflection on his own conduct which it implied. "No doubt, as you have now found that I am not to be threatened out of another thousand pounds to-night, you have plenty of considerations in reserve to reconcile your dainty stomach to the loaves and fishes so cruelly forced upon you, in preference to the husks to which it so n.o.bly aspired. There--you had better go and learn to practise, first, the duty, and obedience, and all that you will have to preach to us bye and bye. Let me hear," in a tone of taunting irony, "what shall be your first text."
"Fathers, provoke not your children to anger!" was the reply which thrilled in low, deep accents from the young man"s voice through the dusky apartment. But the servant for whom Mr. Trevor had some minutes before rang impatiently, entering the next moment with lights, the impression, whatever might have been its nature, which it made upon the hearer, was dissipated, and a conclusion put to one of those dark, painful interviews such as it is our unpleasing task to record, which within that long, low library were enacted. Alas! more dark and dreadful still are those which have to follow.
Poor Mary Seaham! how would your gentle spirit have quailed with shuddering dread, if a vision of what had there been witnessed had dimly pa.s.sed before your sight--those calm, sweet eyes there fixed with such trustful and admiring confidence, upon that venerable old man--have shrunk with horror and aversion, could "the light of other days" but have revealed in all its naked hideousness, the spirit--which now chained and incapacitated in its decrepitude and weakness--had once worked with such hateful power within that aged form; but what even this, to the knowledge of other things which it might also have revealed--the close and active part which he--who then sat by her side, as an angel of light to her infatuated eyes--had taken in some of these deeds of darkness.
CHAPTER XIII.
In its train Follow all things unholy--love of gold--
The phantom comes and lays upon his lids A spell that murders sleep, and in his ear Whispers a deathless word, and on his brain Breathes a fierce thirst no water will allay-- He is its slave henceforth!
N. P. WILLIS.
It is often to be found, that men of strongest and least regulated pa.s.sions, calculating, cautious, as may be the nature of their general character, are the most easily rendered subserviant to any influence or weakness to which they in the first instance, have capriciously chosen to lay themselves open.
Thus it was with Mr. Trevor. His unjust partiality towards his youngest son turned against him, so far, that the latter gradually gained an ascendency over his father"s mind, for we cannot exactly call it his affections, which no one, not even the favourite Marryott, had ever been known to attain in so extended a measure, and effect. To Eugene Trevor"s credit, it may at least be said, that he was not one, so far as his outward conduct and demeanour were concerned, to abuse such a position; on the contrary, he was rather disposed to conciliate the continuance of it, by every seeming mark of grat.i.tude, and duty, never, however, neglecting in any direct, or indirect way to turn to advantage the propitious circ.u.mstances of his case.
This habit had long engendered that peculiar respectfulness of manner and demeanour, which we had occasion to remark so undeviatingly maintained by the son, towards the miserly parent.
But perhaps a bond of union had then been established between the father and son, of a more subtle and secret character, than any were aware; the consciousness on the parent"s part, of having pardoned and covered in the son, more than he had any right ever to have so covered or forgiven; the son subdued in some measure to grateful subjection towards that parent, from the consciousness of what had by him been concealed, and overlooked; a bond of union, the more strengthened and annealed as years wore on, and showed the harmony of character and propensity, however differently they might as yet be shown forth, which subsisted between them.
Alas! when evil, not good cements the union of man with man--when hand joins hand, for deeds or purposes of darkness--especially when by such unholy links are seen connected, parent with child--child with parent!
However, all this might be--there was certainly a suspicious cloak over one era of Eugene Trevor"s early history, under which no member of his family save his father ever penetrated.