In the joy of my emancipation from imagined disgrace, I did not forget that the cloud still rested darkly on him,—that he still groaned under the burden which had been lifted from my soul. He told me that he had hope of his father's ultimate regeneration,—that he had found him much softened,—that he wept at the sight of Therésa's Bible, and still more when he read aloud to him the chapters which gave most consolation to her dying hours.
The unexpected visit of his brother, from whom he had been so long separated, and whom he supposed was dead, had stirred still deeper the abysses of memoir and feeling.
I will now turn a little while from myself, and give a brief history of the twin brothers, as I learned it from my father's lips, and Richard's, who narrated to me the story of his father's life as he heard it in the dungeon of the Tombs.
CHAPTER LVI.
Henry Gabriel and Gabriel Henry St. James, were born in the Highlands of New York. Their father was of English extraction, though of American birth; their mother the daughter of a French refugee, who had sought shelter in the land of freedom from the storms of the Revolution. So the elements of three nations mingled in their veins.
There was nothing remarkable in their childhood, but their resemblance to each other, which was so perfect that their own mother was not able to distinguish the one from the other. Perhaps either of them, seen separately, would not have excited extraordinary interest, but together they formed an image of dual beauty as rare as it was attractive. They were remarkable for their fine physical development, their blooming health, and its usual accompaniments, sunniness of temper, and gaiety of spirits; but even in early childhood these twin-born bodies showed that they were vitalized by far different souls. Their father was a sea-captain; and while Gabriel would climb his knees and listen with eager delight to tales of ocean life and stirring adventures, Henry, seated at his mother's feet, with his hands clasped on her lap and his eyes riveted on her face, would gather up her gently sparkling words in his young heart, and they became a pavement of diamonds, indestructible as it was bright and pure.
As they grew older, the master-passion of each became more apparent. Gabriel made mimic boats and ships, and launched them on the bosom of a stream which flowed back of their dwelling, an infant argosy freighted with golden hopes. Henry drew figures on the sandy shore, of birds and beasts and creeping things, and converted every possible material into tablets for the impressions of his dawning genius. Gabriel was his father's darling, Henry was mother's beloved. I said she could not distinguish her twin-born boys; but when she looked into their eyes, there was something in the earnest depths of Henry's, an answering expression of love and sensibility, which she sought in vain in his brother's. The soul of the sea-dreaming boy was not with her; it was following the father on the foaming paths of ocean.
"My boys shall go with me on my next voyage," said the captain. "It is time to think of making men of them. They have been poring over books long enough to have a holiday; and, by the living Jove, they shall have it. It is the ruin of boys to be tied to their mother's apron strings after they are twelve years old. They are fit for nothing but peddlers or colporteurs."
Gabriel clapped his hands exultingly; but Henry drew closer to his mother's side.