Now, thus meeting one who for twelve years he had believed
must rise from the tomb itself to reproach or to accuse him, unstrung
his every nerve, and left him with only one consciousness--the desire,
at all costs, to be saved.
Cecil's eyes rested on him with a strange, melancholy pity. He had loved
his brother as a youth--loved him well enough to take and bear a heavy
burden of disgrace in his stead. The old love was not dead; but stronger
than itself was his hatred of the shame that had touched their race by
the wretched crime that had driven him into exile, and his wondering
scorn for the feeble and self-engrossed character that had lived
contentedly under false colors, and with a hidden blot screened by a
fictitious semblance of honor. He could not linger with him; he did
not know how to support the intolerable pain that oppressed him in the
presence of the only living creature of his race; he could not answer
for himself what passionate and withering words might not escape him;
every instant of their interview was a horrible temptation to him--the
temptation to demand from this coward his own justification before
the world--the temptation to seize out of those unworthy hands his
birthright and his due.
But the temptation--sweet, insidious, intense, strengthened by the
strength of right, and well-nigh overwhelming with all its fair,
delicious promise for the future--did not conquer him. What resisted
it was his own simple instinct of justice; an instinct too straight and
true either to yield to self-pity or to passionate desire--justice which
made him feel that, since he had chosen to save this weakling once for
their lost mother's sake, he was bound forever not to repent nor to
retract.
Pages:
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689
690
691