B. L. Farjeon

“ These men, these villains, are capable of any treachery. Honour is a stranger to their scheming natures. How shall I act? To meet them openly, to accuse them openly, may be my ruin. They are too firmly fixed in the affections of Doctor Louis and his wife--they are too firmly fixed in the affections of even Lauretta herself--for me to hope to expose them upon evidence so slender. Not slender to me, but to them. These treacherous brothers are conspiring secretly against me. I will meet them with their own weapons. Secrecy for secrecy. ”

“ Gabriel Carew was happy. The gloom of his early life, which threatened to cast dark shadows over all his days, seemed banished for ever. He was liked and respected in the village in which he had found his happiness; his charities caused men and women to hold him in something like affectionate regard; he was Father Daniel's friend, and no case of suffering or poverty was mentioned to him which he was not ready to relieve; in Doctor Louis's home he held an honoured place; and he was loved by a good and pure woman, who had consented to link her fate with his. ”

“ Silvain and Avicia were weak, feeble creatures. The man of great heart and resolute will, the man whose sufferings and wrongs made him a martyr, was Kristel. Faithful in love, faithful in hate. Trustful, heroic, unflinching. In a word, a man. But he and his brother, and the woman who had been the instrument of their fate, belonged to the past. They were dead and gone, and in the presence of Doctor Louis I put them aside a while. Time enough to think of them when I was alone. Meanwhile Eric and Emilius remained. ”

“ His love for Lauretta was so all-absorbing that all other considerations--however serious the direct or indirect consequences of them--sank into utter insignificance by the side of it. He did not allow it to weigh against Lauretta that she appeared to be in collusion with Eric and Emilius, and to be favouring their schemes. Her nature was so guileless and unsuspecting that she could be easily led and deceived by friends in whom she placed a trust. It was this that strengthened Carew in his resolve not to rudely make the attempt to open her eyes to the perfidy of Eric and Emilius. ”

“ If he still lives he shall die by my hands!"
"Hush, hush!" murmured Father Daniel. "Vengeance is not yours to deal out. Pray for comfort--pray for mercy."
"Pray for mercy!" cried Hartog with a bitter laugh. "I pray for vengeance! If the monster be not already smitten, Lord, give him into my hands! I will tear him limb from limb! But who, who is he? The cunning villain has not even signed his name!"
Father Daniel took the letter from his unresisting hand, and as his eyes fell upon the writing he started and trembled.
"Emilius's?" asked Gabriel Carew.
"Alas!" sighed the priest. ”

“ I. My Dear Max,--For many months past you have complained that I have been extremely reticent upon domestic matters, and that I have said little or nothing concerning my son Reginald, who, since you quitted the centres of European civilisation to bury yourself in a sparsely populated Paradise, has grown from childhood to manhood. A ripe manhood, my dear Max, such as I, his father, approve of, and to the future development of which, now that a grave and strange crisis in his life has come to a happy ending, I look forward with loving interest. ”

“ A new life is opening for me. I am overwhelmed at the happiness which is within my grasp. As I walked home from Doctor Louis's house through the darkness a spirit walked by my side, illumining the gloom and filling my heart with gladness. ”

“ And here you are, raising up ghosts to make the present more bitter than it is. No, no, Silvain. Black as things appear, there are bright years yet in store for you.'
"'I cannot help my forebodings, Louis. True, I cannot, nor can any man, see into the future, but what can I do to turn my brother's hate from me?' It was a cry of anguish wrung from his suffering heart. 'I think of the days of our childhood, when we strolled in the woods with our arms round each other's necks, I think of the dreams we mapped of the future. ”

“ Eric and Emilius have in them certain qualities which render me doubtful whether, as middle-aged men, they would be in their proper sphere in their village by the sea. The maidens there find no serious favour in their eyes."
"Do they look," I asked, with a torturing pang of jealousy, "with a more appreciative eye upon the maidens in Nerac?"
"Tush, tush," said Doctor Louis, in a kind tone, laying his hand upon my shoulder; "vex not yourself unnecessarily. Youth's hot blood is a torrent, restless by day and night, never satisfied, never content, for ever seeking cause to fret and fume. ”

“ My instinctive distrust of the twin brothers Eric and Emilius, the growth of a groundless jealousy, was for a while forgotten, and at the conclusion of the recital I was lost in the contemplation of the tragic pictures which had been presented to my mind's eye. Singularly enough, the most startling bit of colour in these pictures, that of the two brothers in their life and death struggle on the outer walls of the lighthouse, was not to me the dominant feature of the remarkable story. ”

“ What can I do?--what can I do to bring him back to me in brotherly love? Louis, I have a fear that I have never whispered to living soul. It is that Avicia may have twin children, as Kristel and I are, and they should grow up to be as we are now! Would it not be better that they should be born dead, or die young, when their souls are not stained with hatred of each other and with evil thoughts that render existence a curse?'
"We were alone when he gave expression to his agonised feelings; Avicia had left us to attend to domestic duties. ”

“ It is, I know, your affection for Reginald that causes you to be anxious for news of him. Well do I remember when you informed me of your fixed resolution to seek not only new scenes but new modes of life, how earnestly you strove to prevail upon me to allow him to accompany you.
"He is young and plastic," you said, "and I can train him to happiness. The fewer the wants, the more contented the lot of man." ”

“ Father Daniel returned to Nerac much shaken by the reflection that in this man's case justice had been in error. But if this were so, if the hunchback were innocent, upon whom to fix the guilt? A sadness weighed upon the good priest's heart as he went about his daily duties, and gazed upon his flock with an awful suspicion in his mind that there was a murderer among them, for whose crime an innocent man had been executed. ”

“ That my nature is more melancholy than cheerful is doubtless to be ascribed to the circumstances of my child-life, which was entirely devoid of light and gaiety. This must not be in the future; I have a battle to fight, and I shall conquer because Lauretta's happiness is on the issue.
It will, however, be as well to make the record complete in a certain sense, and I shall therefore take note of certain things which have occurred since my conversation with Pierre in his cell. That done, I shall put these papers aside in a secret place, and shall endeavour to forget them. ”

“ Not alone in your heart, but in the hearts of my dearest friends, Doctor Louis and his family.
"You refer to Eric and Emilius," said the priest.
"Yes, I refer to them."
"What you have already said concerning them has deeply pained me. I do not share your suspicions. Their meetings with Hartog's daughter were, I am convinced, innocent. They are incapable of an act of baseness; they are of noble natures, and it is impossible that they should ever have harboured a thought of treachery to a young maiden." ”

“ The crimes of the two ruffians who had attempted to enter Doctor Louis's house remained for long fresh in the memories of the villagers. They were both dead, one murdered, the other executed for a deed of which only one person in Nerac had an uneasy sense of his innocence--Father Daniel. The good priest, having received from the unfortunate man a full account of his life from childhood, journeyed shortly afterwards to the village in which he had been born and was best known, for the purpose of making inquiries into its truth. ”

“ Silvain,' I said reproachfully, 'this is not as we used to meet. I come to you with open arms, and you receive me with doubt and suspicion. Are we not, as we always were and always shall be, friends staunch and true? You are the same Silvain; I am the same Louis; unchanged, as you will find me if you care to prove me.'
"Avicia had risen and crept close to my side. ”

“ I said, "the murderer, gazing upon his dead comrade, is overcome with fear. He has been rash--he may be caught red-handed; the execution of the robbery will take time. He is not familiar with the habits of the village, and does not know it has no guardians of the night. One may stroll that way and make discovery. Fool that he was! He has not only committed murder, he has robbed himself. ”

“ You wished to educate Reginald according to the primitive views to which you had become so strongly wedded, and you did your best to convert me to them, saying, I remember, that I should doubtless suffer in parting with Reginald, but that it was a father's duty to make sacrifices for his children. You did not succeed. My belief was, and is, that man is born to progress, and that to go back into primitiveness, to commence again, as it were, the history of the world and mankind, as though we had been living in error through all the centuries, is a folly. ”

“ One of our women here insists that he is dumb.'
"'He must be dumb,' said the woman; 'else why should he not speak?'
"'There was a jealousy between him and his brother,' said an elderly woman, 'about Avicia.'
"'What has that to do with it?' exclaimed the woman who pronounced him dumb. 'Jealousy, like love, does not last for ever. She is not the only woman in the world, and men have eyes. They must have made up their quarrel long ago. ”

“ The thought was constantly in my mind. "As Kristel acted, so would I act, in love and hate."
I observed Doctor Louis's eyes fixed earnestly upon my face.
"You are agitated," he said.
"Is not such a story," I said evasively, "enough to agitate one? Its movements are as the movements of a sublime tragedy."
"True," mused Doctor Louis; "even in obscure lives may be found such elements."
"You have told me little," I said, "of Eric and Emilius. Do they reside permanently in the lighthouse in which their mother died?" ”

“ I raced like a madman, tearing at the bushes, and the demon after me. I was struck again and again, but not killed. Wounded and bleeding, I continued my flight, till flat I fell like a log. Not because all my strength was gone; no, there was still a little left; but I showed myself more cunning than the demon, for down I went as if I was dead, and he left me, thinking me so. Then, when he was gone, I opened my eyes, and managed to drag myself away to the place where I was found yesterday more dead than alive. I did not kill my mate; I never raised my hand against him. ”

“ It must be well understood, in this explanation of what was occurring in the lives of these young people at that momentous period, that Gabriel Carew never once suspected that Lauretta was false to him. His great fear was that Eric and Emilius were working warily against him, and were cunningly fabricating some kind of evidence in his disfavour which would rob him of Lauretta's love. They were conspiring to this end, to the destruction of his happiness, and they were waiting for the hour to strike the fatal blow. ”

“ I had imagined a death as sudden as it was violent, a deed from which the murderer had escaped without the least injury to himself; and here, on both sides of me, were the clearest proofs that the man who had fled must have been grievously wounded. My ingenuity was at fault in the endeavour to bring these signs into harmony with the course of events I had invented in my interview with the landlord. ”

“ Apart from this, I was at sincere pains that she should see my life as it had really been, a life stripped of the joys of childhood; a life stripped of the light of home; a life dependent upon itself for comfort and support. ”

“ Intolerance warps the judgment; no less does such a life as Father Daniel has lived, for ever seeking to find excuses for error and crime, for ever seeking to palliate a man's misdeeds. Sweetness of disposition, carried to extremes, may degenerate into positive mental feebleness; to my mind this is the case with Father Daniel. He is not the kind who, in serious matters, can be depended upon for a just estimate of human affairs.
Eric and Emilius, after a longer delay than Doctor Louis anticipated, have taken up their residence in Nerac. ”

“ In darkness they wandered often, the shadow of fate at their heels, in Avicia's imagination lurking in the solitudes through which they passed, amidst thickets of trees, in hollows and ravines, waiting, waiting, waiting to fall upon and destroy them! ”

“ The lighthouse in which Avicia was born is within a hundred miles of this spot. Indirectly it led me to the acquaintance of the lady who became my wife, and to as great a happiness as any man can hope to enjoy.
"Nerac is not my birthplace, and it was in passing through the lovely village on one of my visits to the village by the sea--visits made in the vain hope of obtaining intelligence of Silvain--that I was introduced to her. I pass over the records of a time which lives in my remembrance as a heavenly summer. Happy is the man who has enjoyed such a season. ”

“ The proof was in his hand--the gimlet with which he was working."
"Well conceived, sir," said the landlord, following with approval my speculative explanation.
"This man's face," I continued, "would be turned toward the shutter, his back to his comrade. Into this comrade's mind darts, like a lightning flash, the idea of committing the robbery alone, and so becoming the sole possessor of the treasure."
"Good, sir, good," said the landlord, rubbing his hands.
"No sooner conceived than executed. Out comes his knife, or perhaps he has it ready in his hand, opened." ”