It is not necessary to describe with much detail the effect produced by this letter, on the mind of Eustace Trevor, or the mode of conduct he pursued in the emergency.
We have already made the reader acquainted with the half measures he pursued—the crooked paths he attempted, in order to extricate himself from the threefold difficulty in which he found himself placed. His answer in the first instance, to his brother's first startling address, had been of that character which usually marks the tone of the offender, when the injured one dares to rise up and interfere with his ill-deserved security, and ill-earned joys; but though in language fierce and vindictive, he might appear to set fear and threatening at defiance, there was too much implied acquiescence, in the power these threats exercised over his mind—in the testy assurance which accompanied his reply (how far true we have seen) that his marriage was not in any such immediate question as Eustace seemed to imagine—that his father's state of health rendered it an affair of most uncertain termination—till finally, a second letter from his brother, brought him, at last, to declare in terms, the bitterness of which may be well imagined, that he had put off his marriage sine die, in further proof of which, he was to hold no further communication by person or letter with Mary Seaham;—he then hoped that Eustace might be satisfied, and that he would have left England.
That he might prevail on Mary to consent to a private marriage, was now probably the object of Eugene's mind. For to relinquish, without a struggle, any acquisition on which he had set his heart, would have been contrary to his nature; and then there was the probability of his father's death, securing to him so large a provision, rendering him in a pecuniary point of view, independent of any threats his brother might please to put into execution; for as far as Mary was concerned, he relied too much on the power he had gained over her devoted, gentle affections, to fear that any accusation brought against him by his brother, would influence her against him. Eustace might then claim his own rights, and he would not dispute them. Nay, Mary once his own, he reckoned too much on that brother's, (in his heart, acknowledged generosity of spirit,) to fear that he would persevere in carrying out his threatened, and in that case, unavailing exposure. It was in this light, probably, that he viewed the case, when Eugene first came to London. Eustace, too, we find, had not left town. Either he had been led to doubt the truth of his brother's protestations, or was unable to resist the temptation of lingering where Mary was, when he could again, and for the last time, perhaps, hope to catch a passing glance of her sweet face,—pale, sad, and changed, since he had last seen it—but better thus to his mind, than bright and glowing with that dangerous infatuation by which she was to be allured to certain misery.
We will not deny that Eustace Trevor's feelings and course of conduct on the occasion, may seem carried to a morbid, some may almost deem, an unwarrantable excess. But then it must be remembered, that all his lifetime through,
"From mighty wrong to petty perfidy;"
he had suffered enough to bring any man of his sensitively high-pitched tone of mind to this extremity.
There was one point especially, which had become the ruling power of his mind—that phantom which by night or day—haunted his imagination. The remembrance of his mother: her wrongs and misery.
"A potent spell, a mighty talisman,
The imperishable memory of the dead,
Sustained by love, and grief, and indignation,
So vivid were the forms within his brain,
His very eyes, when shut, made pictures of them."
Could he then image forth another? She who had filled up that yearning vacuum in his bleeding heart, the death of his mother had occasioned; imagine her, such was the horrid fancy which had taken possession of his mind—picture Mary entering that same house—assuming that same position—the victim of the same evil influences to which she had been exposed. The thought would have been one almost to turn his brain, had he deemed it not to be averted. As it was, the suffering that its very idea had caused, was sufficient to produce that change in his appearance, on which Arthur Seaham had commented, when to gain more certain information concerning his sister, Eustace Trevor had visited him at the Temple; a change, which no former griefs and trials, dark and dreadful though they had been, had in so striking a manner been able to inflict. For man is Godlike in his strength—his spirit may sustain him under burdens it were otherwise difficult to bear—but touch only a chord—break only a tie which binds him to a woman's delicate love,
"And his strong spirit bendeth like a reed."