"Do not, do not," said the tortured Arthur, "believe me capable of repaying your kind commiseration with ingratitude, if I own myself descended from the most cruel and treacherous of men. The murdered Eustace was rightful heir to the title and fortunes which, as the son of Bellingham, I might claim. Shall I own, though my heart recoils at the confession, that I strongly fear a base private motive urged my father to select this victim, as a sacrifice to what he called public expedience.—Oh! Dr. Lloyd, had I never been born, had my ambitious parents laid no base projects for my aggrandizement, the noble Eustace had still lived."
"My good Sir," returned the kind physician, "we must debate this point a little. In the first place, let me assure you the lots were fairly cast. I do not justify, indeed I severely reprobate the cruel policy which required the sacrifice of three victims; but it was resolved on in full council, the blame therefore is divided among all the officers. I also know that Lord Bellingham committed his own safety by endeavouring to preserve the life of Eustace."
An overwhelming load of infamy seemed, at this assurance, removed from the oppressed De Vallance. "Speak it again, dear worthy man, again repeat that my father would have saved him. You know he would? You can swear to the fact? But soft—was not he supreme commander? What, then, prevented him from signing his pardon?"
Dr. Lloyd replied—"The limited power which a general possesses over troops, who, in obeying him, have cancelled the previous obligations of duty and conscience. He who accepts the command of a revolutionary army is ever fearful of being sacrificed by his own soldiers. His office makes him the ostensible champion of liberty; but his army claim a greater licence than consists with the requisite exercise of discipline and authority. His subordinate officers envy his supremacy; for the chain of prescriptive gradation is dissolved by the pretext of preferring merit; and what soldier of fortune is there who does not think himself equal to the highest posts which his machinations and enterprize can procure. We Loyalists (for such, Sir, I now in confidence own myself to be) have often said that Lord Bellingham was only half wicked. He retained too much of the gentleman to practise extortion, or to connive at the rapacity by which his subalterns tried to make the most of their brief authority. He enforced discipline without condescending to that familiarity and occasional indulgence which make severity palatable. He was an agent of the new system, trying to introduce the manners of the old. He saw his own danger when it was too late. He discovered that he served villains who, despising honest praise, renounced every honourable bond of amity, to whom treachery and cruelty were become habitual; and that he commanded desperadoes, who, setting no value on their own lives, kept his in their power. Such, Sir, was the state of your father's army, and such the secret hostility of those for whom he fought. You may condemn his embarking in their cause, his timidity, his irresolution, his fluctuating variableness, but not his deliberate cruelty or private malice. After Eustace had drawn the lot of death, the power of the general could not save him from an army lost to every generous feeling, and thirsting for revenge."
To know that his father had rather been guilty of the transgressions of frail man than of the horrible enormities of a demon, was an invaluable consolation to De Vallance. But still Eustace had fallen under the sentence of Bellingham, and himself consequently been banished from Isabel. Dr. Lloyd interrupted his mournful reverie by inquiring what were his future views.
"When you described Eustace going to execution," returned he, "you appealed to the sympathy of a heart eternally separated from the object of a pure, cherished affection. Read that letter. Conceive it written by a woman whose beauty is her smallest praise, and then advise me how to bestow the unvalued remnant of a life which must be spent in exile from her."
Dr. Lloyd perused Isabel's farewel, and inquired if her brother's death was the only obstacle to their union.
"Yes," replied De Vallance. "I had renounced the principles in which I was educated, abjured the aggrandizement and affluence which my parents' crimes had purchased; I had her promise, sanctioned by her father's full consent, as a reward for services I was so fortunate as to render them. We were to have fled to Holland, rich in the possession of domestic happiness and decent competence, when that fatal intelligence——"
"Come, young gentleman," interrupted Dr. Lloyd, "you meditate too deeply. I see you want society. The hardships you have undergone have overwhelmed you. I must remove you to my own cottage. I keep a cordial there which I never trust out of my own custody. I see your disease, and know my remedy will complete your cure."
"Sir," returned De Vallance, "we are talking of something infinitely more important than life. I know my disease is at present trifling, the effect of anxiety acting too forcibly on a fatigued body. I could say it consoles me, as a proof that my constitution will not be always invincible to the attacks of these mental agonies; and you answer the communications which your sympathy has extorted from me on the soul-piercing subjects of my honour and my love, by telling me you have a nostrum that will relieve my head-aches, and ease my frame of this debilitating languor."