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University of Virginia Library, Modern English collection[X]
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1Author:  Herbert Henry William 1807-1858Add
 Title:  The brothers  
 Published:  2006 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Modern English collection | UVA-LIB-Text 
 Description: It has been a day of storm and darkness—the morning dawned upon the mustering of the elements—vast towering clouds rose mass upon mass, stratum above stratum, till the whole horizon was over-canopied. Then there was a stern and breathless pause, as if the tempest-demon were collecting his energies in silent resolution; anon its own internal weight appeared to rend the vaporous shroud asunder, and the big rain poured down in torrents. At moments, indeed, the sunbeams have struggled through the driving rack, and darted down their pensiles of soft light, showing even more blithely golden than their wont, from the very contrast of the surrounding gloom. Still—noon arrived, and there was no cessation of the strife. At that hour, the blue lightning was splitting the tortured clouds in twain, and the thunder roaring and crashing close above our heads. The melancholy wailing of the winds among the sculptured pinnacles and ivyed turrets of our Elizabethan mansion—the sobbing and creaking of the immemorial oak-trees, their huge branches wrestling with the gale—the dashing and pattering of the heavy rain—and, deeper and more melancholy than all, the gradually increasing moan of the distant river, have conspired all day long to cast a gloom alike upon the face of nature and the heart of man. Yet now evening has brought back peace, and calm delicious sunshine. “They have prevailed, and we are torn asunder —when, oh when to meet? They dragged me from your bleeding body—they bound me on a horse— they bore me—Oh God! Oh God!—that I should VOL. I.—Q not dare to tell you whither!—No, my beloved, I dare not—such is the sole condition on which the miserable satisfaction of writing these few lines is granted. They tell me that your wounds are slight—that you will have regained your strength ere this shall reach you; they tell me that you will again be in the field of glory: but they tell me that I shall never see you more—they tell me that death—your death, Harry, shall follow on the slightest effort at my rescue—and they tell me truly! You know not— oh! may you never know—the boundless wickedness, the wellnigh boundless power of my persecutor. Never have I done aught, planned aught, for my deliverance, but it has been revealed to him, and blighted in the very bud, almost before I had conceived it. And he—this fearful and malignant being—he has sworn an oath, which I have never heard him break, or bend from, that you shall not have well put foot in stirrup to search out my prison, ere the assassin's knife shall reach your heart! Oh, my beloved, mine is a hard, a miserable duty—my heart overflowing with deep unutterable love, I am compelled to hide myself from him whom to see were the very acme of imagined happiness. I am compelled—I am compelled to pray you, as you value—not life, for what noble spirit ever thinks of life save as of a loan that must be one day repaid— but as you value all that is more dear than life—all that ennobles it, and makes it holy—as you value your ancestral name—your own untarnished fame —ay! and—I will write it, though it chokeme—as you value me, I do beseech you to forget—Oh never! never! think not I meant to say forget me!— but to forego me—to be patient—to bear, as I now bear, in silence—and in hope! Were there a chance—a possibility, however slight or desperate, of your success—I would write, Gird yourself up for the task like a warrior for the battle-field—and follow me to the very ends of the earth; but now I know that so to do could not in aught aid our hopes —aid them, did I say!—aid!—them!it would sever them for ever by the pitiless steel—it would bury them in the darkness of an untimely tomb.
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