"It was not Olivia"s fault, the blame is entirely mine, Mary. But, ...
is it really come to this? can you look around; can you remember all that pa.s.sed between us in this room; nay, what happened on this very spot--here where our vows of love were plighted?"
"I do remember," she replied in accents low and mournful, and leaning in trembling agitation against the very chair on which on that occasion she had been seated.
"Then surely your heart cannot harden itself against me--cannot doom me to misery."
"My letter," Mary faintly murmured, gently but firmly repulsing the effort he made again to take her hand.
"Oh! that abominable story, cooked up against me, which you are so ready to believe--Olivia will explain...."
"G.o.d grant it!" she murmured, turning her eyes lighted with a brightened expression on his face; but oh! for one calm, clear, truthful glance in return.
Again painfully she averted her head, and saying faintly:
"I will go to Olivia," moved slowly towards the door. Eugene did not attempt to stay her departure, only darkly eyeing her retreating footsteps, he suffered her to leave the room without stirring from the spot whereon he stood.
Slowly and heavily she ascended the familiar staircase to Mrs. de Burgh"s dressing-room. Her cousin, still lying on the sofa, started with affected surprise at her appearance, and stretched out her arms to receive her.
Pale, cold, and silent Mary suffered the embrace, then sinking on a seat, covered her face with her hands, sobbing forth:
"Olivia, this was cruel; this was unkind--untrue; I came here trusting to your word. Where is Louis? he surely would not think this right, would not have allowed me to be drawn into such a distressing position."
"My darling Mary, what do you mean? You have not fallen in with Eugene, I hope? Well, that is too bad of him; and he promised so faithfully that he would leave an hour ago. One of the children let out that you were coming, and you know there is no managing lovers in a case like this; the poor fellow is half mad with wretchedness on your account. However, go he shall, dear, if you wish it--pray make yourself easy on that point. You must have some tea; you are exhausted after your journey; and then we shall be able to talk comfortably together. No one shall interrupt us. Louis has not come home yet, but I expect him every moment; he will be so charmed to see you."
Thus Mrs. de Burgh hurried on with affectionate alacrity, without giving Mary time to renew her reproaches or complaints, but by the tears which from her overcharged heart the poor girl still silently continued to shed.
Mrs. de Burgh did not mind those tears; she rather considered them a favourable sign. Had Mary appeared before her after the meeting into which she well knew she had been surprised--cold, calm, stern, silently upbraiding, she would have feared then for the success of the cause in which she was engaged.
But judging from herself, tears in her s.e.x"s eyes were marks of conscious weakness, and the melting mood of feeling rather than of any firmness or serious effect upon the mind; therefore with secret complacency she watched and awaited the close of her gentle cousin"s agitated paroxysm of emotion. Then she had strong tea brought, of which she insisted upon her drinking, overwhelming Mary with care and tenderness, in the meantime sending for the children to stay a few moments to divert her thoughts, and restore her by their innocent presence to a more natural state of thought and feeling. Then, after partaking herself of some dinner, which Mary declined to share, she saw her guest ensconced in a comfortable arm-chair by the fire, looking very pale, it was true, and eyes bright only from nervous excitement, but her feelings apparently tranquillised and soothed; then struck bravely forth upon the anxious theme.
With tact, skill, and eloquence which would have graced a better cause, Mrs. de Burgh pleaded in her favourite"s behalf--favouritism, alas! we fear drawing its source from principles doing little honour to the object of her partiality, and justifying still less the restless zeal with which she strove to forward a cause, in which the fate of a good and innocent being was so closely implicated.
But though "her tongue dropped manna and could make the worst appear the better reason," the time was past when the willing ear of the auditor could be thus beguiled. She had no longer to deal with the too credulous and easy-to-be-persuaded Mary of other days, but one with eyes too tremblingly awake, and ears too powerfully quickened, to the discernment of falsity from the truth.
Each specious statement rang false and hollow on her unpersuaded mind, touching not one atom of that weight of inward conviction which, alas!
had been too firmly rooted there, for aught but the touch of genuine truth to undermine; and when, with her face buried in her hands, she listened with suspended respiration to the story of the brother"s madness, which flowed so glibly from those eager, fluent lips, little Mrs. de Burgh deemed now every word thus uttered served but more forcibly to confirm the fearful impression which the simple-motived Jane had made upon her listener"s mind.
"And then poor man," Mrs. de Burgh, continued, "after frightening the old man out of his wits by his violence, he fled from the house and hid himself no one knew where. Poor Eugene"s anxiety on his behalf was extreme; but of course, as he supposed him to have gone abroad, all researches were taken on the wrong track. There is no one to vouch for the condition of his mind during that interval--when he came to your part of the world it seems that he had pretty well recovered."
Thus had Mrs. de Burgh concluded her plausible relation, pausing not a little, anxious for the effect produced upon her ominously silent auditor. Mary then lifted up her eyes, and with an expression upon her face, the fair Olivia did not know exactly how to understand, replied:
"Yes, he came to us, appearing like some being of a higher sphere, and in accordance with Mr. Wynne"s earnest persuasion (Mr. Wynne, a man whose keen and sensitive discernment it would have been difficult to deceive) settled down amongst us at once--unmistakably endued with every attribute which bespeaks the spirit of wisdom and a sound mind. He had spent the winter at ----, and often spoke of the solitary life he led whilst at that wild spot. Since that time we have frequently visited the Lake; and very far seemed the idea of madness to have entered the minds of the poor simple people of the place, in connection with that "great and n.o.ble gentleman," as they called him, who, to their pride and profit, had taken up his abode amongst them for a time. Then he went to ----, and there he was taken very ill at the inn. The landlady and the doctor, who are both familiar to us, never had but one simple idea respecting the nature of his malady. He came to us with the signs of past suffering stamped too plainly on his countenance--suffering which, in such a man, appeared but to exalt and sanctify the sufferer in the eyes of those who beheld him.
"But all this would bear little on the point, were it not for the surer testimony which not myself only, but the many who for five years lived in daily witness of the calm excellency of his life and conduct--the undoubted strength and clearness of his mind and understanding are able to produce. Tell the poorest and most ignorant of the little flock, amongst whom Mr. Eustace Trevor (their beloved Mr. Temple) so familiarly endeared himself, that he--who even, though interchange of language was scarcely permitted between them, they had learned to venerate as some almost supernatural being--that _his_ mind had been ever overthrown by an infirmity which had banished him from society, from his friends; and they would laugh to scorn the imputation, and say "that the world rather must be mad, that imagined such an absurdity against him.""
Slowly and painfully, as if each word was drawn from her by the irresistible conviction of her secret soul, to which some inward power compelled her to give utterance, Mary offered these a.s.sertions. Mrs. de Burgh"s countenance when she concluded showed signs of uneasiness, but she only said with some bitterness of tone:
"Those people must indeed be rather uninformed, who are not aware that it is more frequently the strongest and the wisest minds who are most liable to that most deceptive of all maladies; but really, my dear Mary," she continued with increased asperity, "it seems to me a great pity that you did not sooner appreciate the extraordinary perfections of which you speak with such enthusiasm--both you and poor Eugene might then have been spared all the trouble your mutual attachment has thus unfortunately occasioned--though, of course, this is only according to your own view of the case, for it would enter into few people"s heads to believe it probable that poor Eustace Trevor could ever marry."
The blood flowed with painful intensity over Mary"s face and brow, and a spark of almost fire shot from her usually mild eyes. But from whatever cause the strong emotion proceeded, whether impatient indignation at such unjust and cruel persistance on her cousin"s part, or any other feeling, its unwonted force, though momentary, seemed entirely to over-power her self-possession, for though her lips moved, she found no words to reply, but drooped her head in silent confusion before her cousin.
So Mrs. de Burgh continued:
"You, Mary, would have been the last I thought to put such a construction on an affair of this sort. You cannot know the circ.u.mstances of the case, and the difficult position in which Eugene might have been placed. That a most violent hatred between him and his father always existed is well known. That Eustace Trevor"s feelings in this respect (feelings which it is to be confessed were not without some foundation) after his mother"s death amounted to frenzy, as it is easy with his excitable disposition to believe. His violence must indeed have been extreme, for I know from good authority, that it has been impossible ever since to mention his eldest son"s name in Uncle Trevor"s presence, without sending the old man almost into convulsions. For peace and grief"s sake alone, Eugene might have found it necessary to have his brother removed from the house, especially when sanctioned, as of course the action must have been, by medical certificates; at any rate, it is only charitable to suppose error--rather than malice deliberate and propense--to have been the origin of the proceeding."
Mary"s eyes were by this time lifted up in anxious attention.
"Yes, yes," she murmured, with clasped hands and agitated fervour; "convince me it were _error_, and I should be thankful--oh, how thankful to cherish the idea; but vain, vain will be the endeavour to reason me into the persuasion that anything short of the most generous misconception could have justified any such proceeding with regard to Eustace Trevor, as the cruel course which was pursued against him; and oh, Olivia, I wonder at you--a woman--advocating such a cause."
Then pressing her hand wearily across her brow, as if she felt the overpowering influence of the dark bewildering theme which had taken such painful hold of her imagination.
Mrs. de Burgh lay back upon her sofa, and was silent. She felt herself getting into deeper waters than she had power or ability to struggle with. She had been persuaded to use all her rhetoric, into arguing a serious but gentle-minded girl into marrying a man, towards whom time and experience had much shaken her estimation.
To sift so particularly a matter, the wrongs and rights of which she had, like the world in general, been contented to take for so many years on credit, she was not prepared; and Mary"s rebuke chafed her spirit, and changed in a manner the current of her thoughts.
"How very disagreeable it would be for Eugene, if his brother should ever come forward, claiming rights, of which he had been dispossessed by his brother, under false pretences--" and the fair lady was beginning, for the first time, seriously to agitate her mind with these reflections, when the door softly opened, and Eugene Trevor himself made his appearance.
One uneasy glance directed towards Mary, as if to see how she would take the intrusion; a slight movement of her shoulders, as she met the look of anxious inquiry which Eugene Trevor fixed upon her, seeming to express: "I have done my best--you must now try for yourself--" and Mrs.
de Burgh took up her work and applied herself to it a.s.siduously. Eugene Trevor said something not very coherent about his horse not being ready and seated himself a little behind Mary"s chair, who had seemed more by feeling than by sight to be aware of her lover"s entrance; for she had not lifted up her downcast eyes, fixed so drearily on the fire. And now only a scarce perceptible shudder and more rigid immovability seemed to announce the knowledge of his proximity.
"Mary is very tired," observed Mrs. de Burgh, glancing up from her work.
Eugene bent gently forward, and looked with earnest solicitude into Mary"s face. He did not speak, but volumes could not have expressed more than the silent concentrated fervour of those dark, pa.s.sionate eyes.
It was impossible not to feel in some degree their power, though the influence which had enthralled her soul in other days, was gone; or remained, to use that most hackneyed of all similes, only as the power of the repellant rattlesnake.
Painfully she turned away her head, whilst the hand of which Eugene gently had managed to possess himself, struggled to free itself from his hold. Probably, Mrs. de Burgh conceived, from all appearance, that this was the momentous crisis which it was her duty to make another effort to a.s.sist.
She had a little piano-forte in her dressing-room, removed there to while away the hours of her confinement to its precincts; and she contrived, without disturbing her companions, to wheel her light sofa in the right direction. She then arranged herself in a moment before the instrument, and saying, playfully, "Mary, my dear, you shall have some of your favourite songs to cheer you up a little," she struck the chords, and without waiting for further encouragement or reply, began to sing--perhaps by accident, but more probably by design--her choice falling upon those plaintive songs and ballads with which she delighted Mary that first evening, more than four years ago, of her last visit to Silverton. That night on which her fair hostess was always pleased to consider the magic of her own sweet singing had in no slight degree contributed to weave the fatal spell, whose broken charm it was now so much her object to renew. What better could she do for Eugene"s interest, than try this method of enchantment once again?
And could Mary listen, and her susceptible soul not be touched by the memories and a.s.sociations which must be naturally awakened? Could she sit by Eugene"s side, and not be carried back in softened fancy to the time--that time to use the impa.s.sioned language of the poet--
"When full of blissful sighs They sat and gazed into each other"s eyes, Silent and happy, as if G.o.d had given Nought else worth looking on this side of heaven."
Alas! for the spell so irremediably broken, that not even this sweet and subtlest of all human influences can restore.
Mary"s soul was stirred indeed within her, but it was with very different emotions than those which were intended to be produced; above all was her heart swelling within her, with wounded, more than indignant feelings, against the pretended friend who had thus made her the unsuspected victim of an unworthy plot.
Therefore the soft music rather seemed to irritate, than to soothe her jarred and shaken nerves--the words of thrilling pathos, which the strain for the most part conveyed, to sound in mocking accents on her ear.
"The sunshine of my life is in those eyes, And when thou leav"st me, all is dark within."
What to her could such words be, but mockery; when now, alone "the image of a wicked, heinous fault lived in the eye," which once, indeed, had seemed too powerfully to absorb the whole sunshine of her life.
But still she sat there, pale, spiritless, and subdued, as if some spell still bound her, she had not energy to break, however unwillingly she yielded herself to its sway. Sat--till from silent looks, it seemed that Eugene, perhaps encouraged by her pa.s.sive conduct, began again to urge in low and pleading tones his anxious suit, his father"s earnest wishes on the subject--his own broken-hearted despair. Then, it seems, her pa.s.sive trance had given way, for very soon after, when Mrs. de Burgh, warned by the sound of Eugene"s voice, that matters were taking a more decisive and particular character, had begun to strike the chords with considerately proportioned force, she was startled by hearing Mary"s low voice close behind her, announcing, in accents tremulous with agitation, her intention of immediately retiring to bed.
The sweet sounds were abruptly suspended; the performer looking up, said, with cheerful _insouciance_ which she did not exactly feel, for she was rather disappointed at this ominous sign of the destruction of her hopes that affairs were taking a more favourable turn:
"Yes, dear Mary, certainly, you shall go directly. I forgot that you had had so fatiguing a journey."