"Brother!"
He was gathered to the Legate's breast, who kissed him on the brow, and surveying every line of his face, felt his bosom swell with pride as he called him, "my son!" Then his sister's arms were upon his neck, and Nameless, as he saw her face, so touching, in its quiet loveliness, felt his heart swell with a rapture, never felt before, as he found himself encircled in that atmosphere which is most like heaven,—the atmosphere of a sister's love.
"Listen to me, my son," said the Legate, as he took Nameless by the hand, and his eyes lit up with a new fire, while in abrupt and broken sentences, he poured forth the story of his life. His tone was impassioned, his words electric. Carl Raphael listened, while the emotions of his soul, were written in his changing features.
"And now, my son," concluded the Legate, as he put his arm about the neck of Nameless, "twenty-one years are gone, and I appear again. The estate, from two millions, has swelled into one hundred millions. You will inherit it, and you and I, and this good man, will join together, in applying the awful power embodied in this wealth, to the best interests of the human race."
To the surprise of the Legate, Nameless unwound his arm from his neck, and stepped back from him. His face suddenly became cold and rigid as stone. Rising in every inch of his stature, he surveyed the entire scene at a rapid glance.
On his right, his father and sister. Near him the venerable old man, with Mary by his side. Somewhat apart, stood the somber Godlike, and the weazel-faced Yorke. In the background, the table, with the candles burning dimly round over chest and coffin. Around him that hall, thick on every panel with the memories of the past; and far in the shadows, the white image of the master.
And by yonder window, his form half concealed in the curtains, Randolph looks out upon the black night.
Dilating with an emotion which was incomprehensible to the spectators, Nameless said.
"No, father, I will not touch one dollar of this wealth. It is accursed. Look at the passion it has evoked; look at the calamities which it has wrought! It is accursed,—thrice accursed. It was this wealth which impelled your own brother to attempt to corrupt my mother. It was this wealth which made that brother follow me with remorseless hatred, and to-night, for the sake of this, he planned my death. It was this wealth which drove you from your native land, there to bury all feeling in a church, which makes marriage a sacrament, and, at the same time, prevents her priests from ever enjoying that sacrament, from ever being hailed by the all-holy names of 'husband!' 'father!' There you buried twenty-one years of your life, leaving your children to breast the storm of life alone. It was this wealth which cast me, in childhood, into the streets, without friend or home,—and do you know the life I've lived? While you were saying mass at Rome, I was committing murder, father,—I was being sentenced to death,—I was buried alive in your family vault,—I was passing two years in a madman's cell! Look at the work of your wealth! Let these gentlemen (who, I doubt not, have been heirs of this estate in anticipation,) let them speak, and tell what passions, like fiends evoked from nethermost hell, this wealth has summoned into life! Speak, Martin Fulmer, you, who for twenty-one years, have denied yourself the blessing of wife, home, children; while in sleepless anguish you watched over this wealth,—speak! What evil thought is there in earth or hell which it has not called into deeds? No,—father,—lifting this hand to heaven, I swear by that mother, whom you left to writhe alone upon her dying bed, that I will not touch one dollar of the Van Huyden estate!"
The Legate, that is to say, Gulian Van Huyden, was crushed by these words; they fell upon him like a sentence of death.