Doubly false

That night, a little after dark, Alfred Seymour came to that almost deserted house, and, letting himself in with a latch-key, walked directly up stairs, not with his usual elastic tread, but heavily, like a man borne down with age or fatigue. He entered Cora’s chamber and looked around, his eyes heavy with such bitter wretchedness that his most fiendish enemy would have pitied him.

“Oh! God help me! God help and forgive me!” he cried, in a dry, feverish voice. “I cannot find her. She avoids me, and I love her so!”

The unhappy man threw himself on that sumptuous bed, soiling its whiteness with his dusty clothes, and crushing one of the laced pillows against his face, kissed it with a wild passion, that seemed almost like insanity.

“Her head had touched it—her warm cheek lay here, and here the breath from her sweet lips floated over this lace. If she shed tears during my absence, they fell upon this linen. Oh! if I knew—if I only knew!”

The terrible sway of his grief shook the bed till all its frost-like draperies trembled above his prostrate form.

“She loved me once. She did love me—but now, when I come home famishing for a sight of her, she is not to be found! Does she know that I am here? I told that woman to tell her, but find the house dark and empty as a grave. I have been to that house. In my disguise I ventured into the very stables. The stupid man I found there told me that she had not yet returned from the city. I saw him too, looking calm and noble, as he always did, riding as I have seen him a hundred times in the desert and on the plains. At first I thought she was with him. The very fear made me faint. Thank God, it was not her, but so like, so like! Can two women on this earth be so beautiful? I would have sworn not till yesterday. Another man might have been deceived; but I was her husband, and after that one look felt the difference. What an angel that girl on the white horse looked. He will marry her; I saw it in his face, in the movement of his stately head as he bent toward her. God bless him! God bless the woman who makes him happy!”

These were the thoughts which tortured that wretched man as he lay there bewailing the past, half frantic with fever, the most pitiable object that the darkness of that night closed in upon.

Later in the evening a slender figure came through the gate and went down to the basement, where a few words were exchanged with the colored woman. Then Brian Nolan sprang up the stairs, mounted both flights like a deer and knocked at the door, from which low sounds of grief reached him.

Seymour got up and opened the door. Brian almost threw himself at the young man’s feet in an ecstasy of joy.

“Oh! Mr. Seymour, you have come back at last! I have waited, and waited—longed for you till the loneliness made me ill.”

“Thank God, there is one human being that loves me!” cried Seymour, straining the lad to his heart with an embrace that would have pained him at another time. “You are glad to find me, Brian?”

“Glad—only feel how my heart beats!”

“It is a good, faithful heart, and beats honestly, I know,” said Seymour, kissing the boy’s upturned forehead. “Ah! if you were a little older, Brian.”

“I am old enough to love you dearly and do anything on earth for you that a strong man is capable of. God will give me strength, and love will make me wise when strength and wisdom are needed to prove how grateful I am.”

Seymour looked wistfully into that eager face. He felt so friendless that the boy’s ardor comforted him.

“I know you love me, Brian.”

“Indeed I do; try me!”

“I shall, perhaps, Brian, and that before long. Look me in the eyes, boy.”

“See, I do.”

“It is an honest look.”

“I am honest, Mr. Seymour.”

“And for that reason would have no charity for dishonesty in others.”

Brian bent his head a moment in thoughtful silence; at last he looked up brightly.

“My father used to say that good people were always the most charitable.”

“Your father was a good man, Brian.”

The words were spoken so impressively that Brian felt his heart swell with a strange, new feeling.

“Did you ever know my father, sir?”

“Yes, boy, I knew him well.”

“What, my own, own father, who is now a grand spirit among the angels?”

“Brian, sit down here—not here, I forget. Come into the next room, it is my own.”

With his arm about the lad, Seymour went into another room and closed the door, shutting out the light of a small lamp filled with perfumed oil, which was always kindled at sundown in the chamber they had left. They were altogether in the dark now, save the moonbeams, which flung a belt of silver half across the carpet.

Seymour sat down on a sofa and drew the boy to his side. Throwing one arm over his shoulder, he sat for some time in silence, sighing heavily.

“Brian,” he said at last, in a voice so changed that it made the boy start, “Brian, I am going to tell you a great secret, and trust you as grown men seldom dare to trust each other.”

“You may—I will keep your secret; trust me, I shall be proud of that.”

Seymour tightened his arm around the lad, and Brian felt that it was trembling violently.

“Brian, I was not good, naturally, as you are.”

Brian interrupted him.

“Oh, I’m not so very good after all. Ellen could tell you that.”

“But I was not good at all in comparison. My boyhood was full of faults—I did my father great wrong—injured his children—almost broke his heart—”

“Poor man,” said Brian, tenderly. “And he must have loved you so!”

“He did love me—never on this earth shall I be so loved again.”

“I will love you dearly, Mr. Seymour.”

“But I did worse than this in the end; I almost ruined my father and his whole family.”

“That was very sad; but I suppose he forgave you?”

“Yes, thank God, he did!”

Seymour’s voice was choked with emotion, for some moments he had no power of speech.

“At last I went into the world alone. I meant to act rightly; I had a great many accomplishments, and made friends wherever I went. There was a man among them who took to me, whom I loved devotedly—as you love me, Brian.”

Brian’s eyes shone like stars in the moonlight, and he drew close to Seymour, murmuring:

“Almost, perhaps.”

“I was poor and he was rich. He wanted a travelling companion, for he was going across the desert to Jerusalem and up the Nile—farther than travellers usually explore—and wanted companionship in his adventures. First we went into Switzerland and Italy.”

Here Seymour stopped, and his heart swelled against Brian’s side with painful throes.

“In Italy I met and loved a lady you have seen once at the hotel.”

“Yes, I saw that you loved her.”

“That is our secret, Brian—keep it sacredly. I have married that lady.”

“I will keep the secret.”

“I thought that she was poor—that poverty would keep us apart forever. It was this thought which ruined me. You are young and cannot know what power love holds over a heart which gives itself for the first and only time to a woman like her.”

“I—I can imagine it,” said Brian, softly.

“We parted. She went one way and I another, following my friend and benefacter—for he was that to me—into the far East. This man was rich and had no relatives that he cared for. Once he said to me, ‘If I should take the fever or be flung from a precipice, it will be a shame that I did not make you my heir, Alfred, when we had lawyers in plenty around us.’ I laughed at this as a joke at the time, but it afterwards suggested a great temptation to me.”

Again Seymour paused. His voice was becoming more and more husky.

“My friend was taken ill. This was on our return from the Holy Land. He had what is call the Syrian fever, and I nursed him faithfully. God is my judge, I loved that man as if he had been my own brother. Night after night I watched by his bedside, trying to pray for him, when I had almost forgotten to pray for myself. One night the coldness of death came upon him—the stillness of Death in all its ghastliness. The people took charge of him then. I will not speak of my grief—that would seem like a mockery after what I must tell you. Brian, when I thought that he was dead, lost to me forever, those words about the heirship of his property came into my head, haunting me with temptations. I knew that he had bills of exchange to a large amount in his travelling-desk. Those bills were enough to make me comparatively a rich man. His relatives would have the great bulk of his wealth, while I, his best friend, beloved more than them all, was left penniless.

“Brian, I took these bills from his desk, leaving all the money there, which was no inconsiderable sum, that nothing might be wanting, and came away.”

Brian had been gradually shrinking from the arm that held him, but he gave no other sign of the shock that seemed to freeze the heart in his bosom.

“I came to this country and found the lady for whom I had done all this, so wealthy that all the gold for which I had cursed myself was nothing to her. She never knew how it had been obtained—I pray God that she never will. But I know it, Brian, and this knowledge makes a coward of me.”

Brian sat perfectly still, with his eyes and his hands hanging listlessly downward. The boy had not expected this. He was prepared for trouble, humiliation, anything but crime. Seymour sat speechless for a moment, waiting for some sign of the feeling his story had excited.

“I am so sorry—so sorry,” said the boy, drawing a deep breath.

“And hereafter you will hate me,” answered the young man, in a voice so mournful that it brought tears into the lad’s eyes.

“No, no; it makes me sad. I love you better than ever, but with a trouble in it.”

“Dear, dear boy! But I have not told you all.”

Brian shuddered. He thought some deeper crime would be in the next words.

“Do not shake so, boy; I cannot bear to make you suffer. What I have more to say is this. The man I supposed dead is alive and in this country.”

Brian started, and grasping Seymour’s arm, looked wildly in his face.

“Then you are in danger, sir?”

“Yes, great danger; that is why our happy home was broken up. I dared not face the man I had so wronged; for her sake, I fled like a coward; for her sake, I have come back again. Her letters have not reached me. I find this house desolate; for we lived here, Brian, so happy—so happy! That man is in the very neighborhood with her. What if she knows the truth?”

“If she loves you there will be pity and forgiveness.”

“But a consciousness of shame and disgrace. My proud, beautiful angel, I would rather die than see scorn on her lips.”

“But this gentleman is brave, you say—generous, kind. Go to him.”

“Heavens! I cannot do that! One glance of his eye would kill me!”

“I would do it,” said Brian, gently. “Indeed I would.”

“If I had used none of the money—if I could replace it—that would be possible. Indeed I have thought of it, but I have already spent three thousand dollars.”

Brian was thoughtful a moment. Then he started to his feet.

“But the lady—she is rich. Ask her for these three thousand dollars.”

“She would give it to me if I dared but ask. Still, what reason can I urge for wanting it? She knows that I have this money.”

“Tell her the truth!”

“Boy, boy, I would die first!”

“Oh! if I only had so much money!”

“You would give it to me, I know; but for a friendless unknown man to raise even three thousand dollars is impossible. In a wild hope that it might be done, I sold my horses and all the valuables in my possession. Everything has been turned into money, but that is all I can do.”

Brian sat down again and laid both hands on Seymour’s arm.

“Let me try and help you?”

“You, Brian?”

The young man looked into the boy’s face, which was singularly pale and earnest in the moonlight. Then, in a voice that trembled with tender gratitude, he said:

“If you only could! If you only could!”

“Even a boy like me can try.”

“How much this is like your father, Brian.”

“Yes, yes, I remember. The other terrible thing drove it out of my mind, but you have seen my father.”

“Brian, he was my father, as well as yours. I was his eldest son.”

With a wail of such exquisite pain and pleasure as goes well nigh to break a young heart, Brian threw both arms around his brother’s neck, sobbed out some inarticulate words, and lay still as death upon his bosom. The boy had fainted.