CHAPTER IV.
The morning agreed upon by Julie and Mrs. Colman for the beginning of the former’s labors arrived, but the young girl did not appear. Knowing well her eagerness to enter upon her new duties—the eagerness of a noble spirit to throw off the yoke of dependence—Alice Colman might well feel anxious at Julie’s non-fulfillment of her promise. For the first time a thought crossed her mind that the suspicions of her husband concerning his brother’s continued ill-feeling toward him, might be just, and that Walter Malcolm had resolved to oppose his daughter’s constant association with them. But not long would she allow herself to imagine thus. Perhaps Julie was ill again—or some unforeseen circumstances had prevented her coming. So Mrs. Colman determined to wait till the following day, when if the object of her solicitude was still absent, and she received no message from her, she felt that she would then be more capable of judging the matter.
It was not until near the close of the afternoon that she was relieved of uncertainty upon the subject by the reception of a note from Julie. The latter stated that her father was very ill of a dangerous fever, brought on, as the physician averred, by distress of mind—and that it was doubtful whether in his enfeebled condition he could live a week longer. She added that only a few hours previously he had informed her that their benefactress was the wife of his brother, and also of the unfeeling treatment which that brother had received from him. And Julie said that from the hour when he had learned the circumstance of their relationship, remorse and the knowledge of his unworthiness to accept assistance from the one whom he had injured, preyed upon her father’s spirits, and at last caused the fever that threatened soon to terminate his existence. His last earthly wish now was to see his brother and ask forgiveness of the past—and Julie concluded by begging Mrs. Colman to use all her influence in order to bring her uncle to her parent’s couch, if it were possible, that very evening.
And that evening Mr. Colman, accompanied his wife to the abode of Walter Malcolm. The meeting between the brothers was a painful one. There was mingled shame and penitential sorrow on the part of the elder, while the countenance of the younger was expressive of the deepest agitation as he stood by the bedside of him who had cast so dark a cloud upon his youth. Harry Colman had yielded to the entreaties of Alice for this interview, while he felt that it would have been wrong to have denied it—but it was not until he looked upon Walter’s pallid face, and heard that once stern and familiar voice supplicating forgiveness, even with the humble avowal that it was undeserved, that the lingering spark of resentment was entirely extinguished within his breast—and when he breathed the much-desired word of pardon they were truly heart-felt.
And by returning good for evil he had indeed “heaped coals of fire” upon the head of his brother.
“From your birth, Harry, you were the object of my bitterest envy and hatred,” was the confession of Walter Malcolm, “for upon you was freely lavished the love of that mother whose affection I had never possessed. She had been forced by her family into a union with my father while her heart was another’s—and when her husband died and she was free to wed again, she married the one who had first gained her regard. This was the key to your superior claim upon our mother’s love. I will not now blame her for the wrong of partiality, though it was the basis of my demeanor toward yourself. I should have had sufficient strength of mind to have resisted its influence—but in this I was sadly deficient. To the last hour of her life my mother’s chief thought was of you. Yes, even in her dying moments her principal anxiety was for your future happiness, while there was but little reference to the welfare of her eldest child. When she was no more, and you came to dwell beneath my roof, I scrupled not openly to show the sentiments which during our parent’s life-time I was obliged to conceal. And I had now an additional cause of dislike. I secretly accused you of robbing me of the affection of my little girl, who, as you will perhaps remember, always manifested a decided preference for your society. I did not reflect that my manner toward her was often cold and distant, and widely different from your own; and with such feelings of jealousy concerning you in my heart, it was scarcely to be wondered that I seized the first opportunity of ridding myself of your presence. Though I knew you to be guiltless of the fault for which I blamed you, I drove you from my dwelling, refusing from that moment to own you as a brother. Nor did I then experience the least remorse for the act—and during the years that followed I strove to forget that you had ever existed.
“It was only within the past twelvemonth, when surrounded by poverty, and the victim of an incurable malady, that as I lay restlessly upon my bed, the memory of my cruel conduct toward my innocent brother has pressed heavily upon my mind. Often have I busied my brain with vain conjectures respecting your fate—whether you still lived—and if you had escaped the whirlpool of crime and sin within which the young and unadvised are but too frequently engulfed. When I thought, as I sometimes did, that you might have fallen—my sensations were those of the most acute anguish, for I felt that the sin would all be mine, and that at the judgment day I should be called to the throne of God to hear him pronounce the fearful penalty for the murder of a brother’s soul.
“At length, through the illness of my daughter, who was very unexpectedly thrown upon the benevolence of your wife, I obtained from your servant some information concerning the family to whom I owed so much, and discovered in the hand stretched forth to aid my child, the wife of my discarded brother. It would be vain to attempt a description of my emotions as I learned this fact. Joy that you were not forever lost, predominated—and then was added shame, and a consciousness of my own unworthiness to receive the benefits which henceforth you daily conferred upon me, as I felt that you must have recognized me—for I had given to your wife an account of my previous life. Each successive service lavished upon my family by your own, sunk like a weight of lead upon my heart, while as I saw how generously you repaid me for the evil I had committed against you, I longed to cast myself at your feet and supplicate forgiveness. But one thought deterred me. It was the fear that you might deem me actuated by interested motives—by the desire to leave my daughter at my death under the care of her now wealthy uncle. And so, for a time, I set aside the yearning for a reconciliation. But it returned with double force when this, which I know will be my last illness, came upon me, and I felt that I could not die happily without hearing from your lips a pardon for my misdeed.”
The weeping Julie had stood by the bedside listening attentively as her father spoke, one hand resting affectionately in her uncle’s, while the other was clasped in that of his wife. Though scarcely six years old when Harry Colman was dismissed from his brother’s house, she had ever retained a vivid recollection of the event. She remembered how passionately she had wept when told by her nurse that she would probably never again behold her favorite, and how indignant she had felt when they said that it was owing to his own naughty conduct he had been sent away—while her ignorance of the fact that her uncle’s name was not the same as her father’s prevented a recognition of him when they again met.