The Twins | Page 9

delighted steps up the many avenues of science to the central
throne of God! Oh, those happy moments, never to return, when her
eyes in gentle thankfulness for some new truth laid open to them,
flashed upon her youthful Mentor, love and intelligence, and pleased
admiring wonder! Sweet spring-tide of their loves, who scarcely knew
they loved, yet thought of nothing but each other; who walked hand in
hand, as brother and sister, in the flowery ways of mutual blessing,
mutual dependence: alas, alas! how brief a space can love, that guest
from heaven, dwell on earth unsullied!
CHAPTER V.
JEALOUSY.
FOR Julian soon perceived that Charles was no despicable rival. At
first, self-flattery, and the habitual contempt wherewith he regarded his
brother, blinded him to Emily's attachment: moreover, in the scenes of
gayety and the common social circle, she never gave him cause to
complain of undue preferences; readily she leant upon his arm,
cheerfully accompanied him in morning-visits, noon-day walks, and
evening parties; and if pale Charles (in addition to the more regular
masters, dancing and music, and other pieces of accomplishment)
thought proper to bore her with his books for sundry hours every day,
Julian found no fault with that;--the girl was getting more a woman of
the world, and all for him: she would like her play-time all the better
for such schoolings, and him to be the truant at her side.
But when, from ordinary civilities, the coarse loud lover proceeded to
particular attentions; when he affected to press her delicate hand, and
ventured to look what he called love into her eyes, and to breathe silly
nothings in her ear--he could deceive himself no longer,
notwithstanding all his vanity; as legibly as looks could write it, he read

disgust upon her face, and from that day forth she shunned him with
undisguised abhorrence. Poor innocent maid! she little knew the man's
black mind, who thus dared to reach up to the height of her affections;
but she saw enough of character in his swart scowling face, and loud
assuming manners, to make her dread his very presence, as a
thunder-cloud across her summer sky.
Then did the baffled Julian begin to look around him, and took notice
of her deepening love of Charles; nay, even purposely, she seemed now
to make a difference between them, as if to check presumption and
encourage merit. And he watched their stolen glances, how tremblingly
they met each other's gaze; and he would often-times roughly break in
upon their studies, to look on their confused disquietude with the pallid
frowns of envy: he would insult poor Charles before her, in hope to
humble him in her esteem; but mild and Christian patience made her
see him as a martyr: he would even cast rude slights on her whom he
professed to love, with the view of raising his brother's chastened wrath,
but was forced to quail and sneak away beneath her quick indignant
glance, ere her more philosophical lover had time to expostulate with
the cowardly savage.
Meanwhile, what were the parents about? The general had given out,
indeed, that he had brought Emily over for schooling; but he seemed so
fond of her (in fact, she was the only thing to prove he wore a heart),
that he never could resolve upon sending her away from, what she now
might well call, home. Often, in some strange dialect of Hindostan, did
they converse together, of old times and distant shores; none but Emily
might read him to sleep--none but Emily wake him in the morning with
a kiss--none but Emily dare approach him in his gouty torments--none
but Emily had any thing like intimate acquaintance with that moody
iron-hearted man.
As to his sons, or the two young men he might presume to be his sons,
he neither knew them, nor cared to know. Bare civilities, as between
man and man, constituted all which their intercourse amounted to: what
were those young fellows, stout or slim, to him? mere accidents of a
soldier's gallantries and of an ill-assorted marriage. He neither had, nor

wished to have, any sympathies with them: Julian might be as bad as he
pleased, and Charles as good, for any thing the general seemed to heed:
they could not dive with him into the past, and the sports of Hindostan:
they reminded him, simply, of his wife, for pleasures of Memory; of
the grave, for pleasures of Hope: he was older when he looked at them:
and they seemed to him only living witnesses of his folly as lieutenant,
in the choice of Mrs. Tracy. I will not take upon myself to say, that he
had any occasion to congratulate himself on the latter reminiscence.
So he quickly acquiesced in Julian's wish for a commission,