“Have your own way!” exclaimed Bruce, with some impatience of manner. He was annoyed at his sister’s betraying such weakness, provoked at his own arrangements being altered, and disappointed at having taken in vain a good deal of trouble to please. Without uttering another word to Emmie, the young man quitted the room to give needful orders, and did not return till the clang of the hall gong summoned the Trevors to a late dinner.
The meal was very unsociable and dull. The storm of anger between the two brothers had not passed off, and Emmie was too much disheartened by what had occurred to be able to act her usual part of peacemaker between them. Bruce had not forgiven Vibert his foolish prank of driving off with Emmie, which had been the primal cause of the accident which had occurred; and Vibert, stung to the quick, had not forgiven Bruce his bitter rebukes. During the whole of dinner-time neither of the young men addressed a word to the other.
The awkward waiting of the country lad hired as a servant, which, at another time, might have afforded some amusement to the young Trevors, now only provoked their patience. Bruce disliked the clumping tread and the creaking boots of Joe; Emmie started when the noisy clatter of plates ended at last in a crash. Vibert, whose lively conversation usually added so much to the cheerfulness of the family circle, scarcely uttered a syllable, save to find fault with the cookery, which was certainly none of the best. No one, under these circumstances, cared to prolong unnecessarily the time spent at the dinner-table.
But matters were little improved when the party had retired to the drawing-room, to spend there the remainder of the first evening passed together by them in their new home. Neither reading aloud nor music, neither playful converse nor game, lightened the heavy time which intervened before the accustomed hour for family prayers. Emmie thought that the large drawing-room of Myst Court was but dimly lighted by the lamp which had shed such cheerful radiance in Summer Villa. The light scarcely sufficed to enable her to trace the outlines of the time-darkened family portraits which hung on the dingy walls. The apartment was so spacious that one fire could hardly warm it, so that it was chilly as well as dark. The small-sized furniture which had suited Summer Villa would have looked mean in the handsome old saloon of Myst Court; therefore faded carpet and more faded tapestry remained, high-backed heavy chairs of carved oak, and narrow old-fashioned mirrors whose frames the lapse of two centuries had rendered dingy and dull. Emmie’s only occupation on that first evening was examining these relics of the past. She thought to herself that Myst Court was as gloomy as any cloister could be, and sighed when she remembered that she must regard it now as her permanent home.
At last Bruce, who had repeatedly glanced at his watch, saw that it was time to call up the servants for prayers. They came in answer to the summons of the bell which he rang—the three new members of the household looking awkward and shy, being evidently unaccustomed to be present at family worship. Bruce read the prayers, as was his custom whenever his father was absent from home. But there was a coldness, on that night, even in the family devotions, of which no one was more sensible than was he who had to conduct them. It was not because the room felt dreary and cold, nor because a death-bed scene had so lately occurred in the house, that a chilling damp fell over even the observance of a religious duty: Bruce, Vibert, and their sister had all on that day been overcome by their several besetting sins, and those sins were haunting them still. Pride, selfishness, and mistrust cast deeper shadows on the pathway of life than those merely external circumstances which we connect with ideas of gloom.
The spirit of Bruce was out of tune, and the noblest words of prayer were, as it were, turned into discord by the imperfection of the human instrument that gave them sound. The leaven of hypocrisy marred petitions in which the heart had no share. Bruce had to ask for the grace of meekness, whilst he was inwardly scorning a sister for weakness and a brother for folly. Had he been struggling to subdue the pride of his heart, such a prayer would have been a cry for help from above; but Bruce was attempting no such struggle. He was not seeking to imitate One who was meek and lowly; the sinner on his knees was preferring a prayer for a grace which he did not care to possess. If a remembrance of his uncle’s warning against pride had passed through Bruce’s mind on that evening, it had roused anger rather than contrition. “What is Captain Arrows, that he should probe the hearts of others; let him look to his own!”
Thus the high-principled young man, who was so ready to act or to suffer for what he deemed the cause of truth; he whose character was in human sight almost without a blemish, was in a state in which, according to Scripture, all his faith, knowledge, and zeal could profit him nothing. Death, if death had met him now, would not have found Bruce with his face turned heavenwards, though he had long since, with sincerity of purpose, entered on the pilgrim’s narrow path. He stood condemned by the solemn words of inspiration, If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of His.
Emmie noticed with pain, after family prayers were over, that her brothers went to their respective apartments without so much as bidding each other good-night.