THE DISINHERITED SON.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 91, 23 January 1875, Page 13

THE DISINHERITED SON.

A LEGEND OF FURNESS ABBEY. .n. Chapteb XIII. — Continued. THE LANDS OF CONISTON. " Otjr brother is here !" said the abbot, pointing to a pallet, around which stood several of the community. "We brought him. from his -cell, that he might be ready for removal in case you should forbid his stay !" "It is well," again rejoined Sir Everard. " I will look to him anon. What other request hast thou to make f" The abbot hesitated for a moment, and glanced towards the pallet whereon lay the sick monk in a state of apparent insensibility, his white livid face showing in ghastly contrast to the surrounding gloom. Then in a grave, sad voice, he again addressed Sir Everard — " Not only amid such scenes of wild conflict as those in which thy life has been passed, Sir Knight, do the fiends who wait upon bad thoughts practice upon man's unbridled passions, that they may snatch his soul ! — In this remote district, some fifteen years ago, there lived in apparent prosperity, the descendants of the ancient Lords of Thurston. The head of the family, a proud, — and alas ! I must add — fierce and obdurate man, little thought that in his own life time his race would perish from the face of the carth — for he was the father of three sons !" The abbot paused, and a deep-drawn sigh, that might have been the herald of dissolution, broke from the laboring heart of the sick brother. Was it echoed by a groan at the other end of the chamber ? That could scarce be, for it was not uttered by any of the monks among the group who stood round Sir Everard ; and the knight himself, with head averted, stood leaning heavily on the pommel of his sword, which he had drawn from the scabbard when he entered the monastery. " The father of three sons !" he said, reiterating the abbot's last words, " and what became of them ? How did they live ? how die P where they now ?" "It boots not. Sir Everard," replied the abbot, " that I should tire thee with the details of their history, full of crime, and grief, and horror, it was !" " But not for all, abbot, not for all !" exclaimed Sir Everard, in a hollow voice, " surely of those three sons of Lord Thurston, there waß one over whose brow the angel of darkness did not cast the shadow of his black wing !" "Yes," answered the abbot, "there was one fated brother,

whose pure and innocent soul, was as that of Abel compared to the murderer, Cain ! and like unto Abel was he sacrificed !" "But not by a brother's hand, abbot!" hoarsely interupted Sir Everard. " Fierce and wicked though were the other sons of Lord Thurston, they would neither of them have laid a hurtful hand upon their brother !" " Not of malice, or forethought, directed personally against him," replied the abbot, "but in the conflict of their fierce passions was the poor boy destroyed." "Yes, destroyed ! destroyed !" exclaimed Sir Everard, leaning so heavily on his sword that the finely tempered steel bent upon the tessalated pavement. As if unheeded him the abbot went on. " The eldest son of Lord Thurston died, alas ! as he had lived, in a base broil, hardened, and impenitent. Long before his death, his brother whom he had injured, and who had cruelly injured him in return, had disappeared from his birth-place, gone none knew whither, was perhaps dead, perhaps a penniless wanderer through the world ! That bad eldest son had ever been the favorite of his father !" "Aye! aye! Sir Abbot, and something have I heard of this story before!" broke in Sir Everard fiercely. "And since the prized bad son was dead, and it was doubtful if the reprobate lived, thou, priestlike, didst cunningly take advantage of that doubt, and cozen the doating Lord Thurston to add his broad lands to the already swollen revenue of Furness ! "Slanderous and unknowing is thy speech, Sir Everard Tilney !" answered the abbot in a sterner accent than he had yet used. "Not Oswald de Coniston, if he lives, could hold his father's will as more iniquitous than we did when it was first declared— than we esteem it to this hour! The will was drawn by Earl Thurston, in London, not in Christian charity to our monastery, but in wicked hatred of his unhappy son. A solemn council of the monks was held after the funeral of the earl, and at that council it was resolved that we should hold the lands of Coniston only in trust for the rightful heir or his descendants. It is only on his or their behalf, Sir Everard, that" we beseech your favor. Far and wide extends the patrimony of St. Mary's Abbey. Your appenage will be rich enough, though you generously relinquish the lands which of right belong, if he lives, to the misguided Oswald de Coniston." " The misguided Oswald de Coniston !" repeated Sir Everard, in a dull, monotonous tone, and staring through the 'gloom on vacancy. " Sir Knight, thou art silent, will thou not yield this only boon he asks to the last abbot of Furness ?" These words pronounced in a faint but clear and musical voice, roused Sir Everard from his abstraction. He turned his head and perceived the sick monk sitting on his pallet, his hands stretched out imploringly. Tuneful as the notes of the dying swan, was that melancholy voice, but a thrill of astonishment and horror passed through the frame of Sir Everard at the sound. Darker and darker fell the shadows of the coming night, and the soft sweet accents were hushed in the swell of the gale as it swept round the abbey. " Lights ! lights ! who speaks P are the dead among us ?" ejaculated Sir Everard. With one sweep of his strong arm he turned aside the monks who stood between him and the pallet of their sick brother. Then when a lamp was hastily kindled, he dropped on his knees, and grasped in both his own the outstretched hands of the dying monk. He was very young, that brother of St. Marys. Locks of pale gold fell round the tonsured crown, and the approach of death had not yet dimmed the deep blue eyes, cr marred the angelic sweetness of his features. " Oswald, poor Oswald !" cried the Cistercian, " I believe that he lives ! I have never doubted it ! Oh, Sir Knight, thou wilt be rich enough without the lands of Coniston; mar not the holy design of our hojy abbot, it may be, that the succession to his just inheritance, will win Oswald back from the wild courses, from the evil ways, which, alas ! and alas ! have perhaps been his !" " And who art thou ? who art thou, who dost come before me with the voice and the aspect of the loved and lost ? Of the dead ! of the drowned ! of him whose bones have long since whitened in some ocean cave ?" Thus, with frenzy in his looks and tones, spoke Sir Everard Tilney. "I am brother Angelo," answered the monk. "Good Sir Knight, look not so wildly. Dost thou know poor Oswald, out in the hard and cruel world ? Oh, give him back the land of his fathers ! Bid him repent ! Tell him that I, Walter, his brother, was not drowned, but rescued and borne to the Irish shore. For his sake, for Oswald's sake, I vowed myself to a life of penitence and prayer. I hid myself from my father even as he has done, and day, through all these weary years, I have wept and prayed for him. When news reached me that my father was dead, I prayed our superior to let me visit Furness, I hoped to die in peace in dear Oswald's arms ! For mine own sins am I punished ! But, Jesu Maria, grant mercy and pardon unto him !" The soft blue eyes of brother, Angelo closed as his faint lips gave feeble utterance to that last prayer. He fell heavily backwards, for Sir Everard had loosed his clasp of the pale hands, all relaxed and moist with the dews of death. A shadow darker than that of the coming night settled on the beautiful features. ....,«.-. "Walter! loving and beloved Walter!" cned Sir Everard Tilney, in a despairing voice. "Look up once more ! Pity me ! pardon me! for I am the recreant Oswald !" The white lids, calmly veiling the violet eyes in an eternal night, flew back wild and wide, and a look of horror and surprise displaced the coming rigidity of death.

" Thou Oswald de Coniston ?" he said. " Thou, the vile parasite of a viler king — the oppressor of the innocent— the blasphemous violator of God's altar. Thou, my rash, but generous and loving brother ? Away ! and trouble not my parting soul. In thy seared j and evil countenance I see no trace of Oswald." " Oswald ! Oswald ! and none other !" raved the miserable man. " Oswald ! the doomed, the thrice condemned ! On whose head thy innocent prayers invoked not a blessing, but la curse ! Oh, precious Walter ! for whose dear sake in my wild vengeance I plunged so deep in crime, believe me when now I speck a fatal truth. I am Oswald ! Oswald who, mid all his guilt, yet never failed in loving thee ! Oh, Walter ! Walter ! angel boy ! oh yet look up again !" "Unhappy man! In this world he will look up no more!" exclaimed the abbot. " Oh, Oswald de Coniston, thy brother, who was a saint on earth, will be an angel in heaven ! Let not his self-sacrifice — the penitential life he led for love of thee — be all in vain ! Oswald, my son, kneel and repent at this the latest !" " Away, away ! old man," said the maddened renegade. " All the prayers of all the saints in heaven could avail me not ! Abandoned of all good angels have I lived, and now despairing will I die !" ****** The wind, which had been so still all day, raged and roared with the fury of a hitricane as night drew on. The green branches were torn from the larger trees, and the young saplings were levelled with the ground. How the wild gust shrieked and tore through the devastated chambers of the abbey! How the rain beat through the dismantled windows ! The precincts of the abbey were, however, not quite abandoned by its late inhabitants. It was towards midnight, when by the murky and fitful light of the torches that swirled in the fierce blast, a procession of some dozen of the monks, with the abbot at their head, made their way across the cemetery to the brink of a newly-dug grave. There they set down the burthen which four of their number bore. A bier, on which, wrapped in his habit, and with a face calm and beautiful in death, lay Walter de Coniston, so long secreted as brother Angelo. The wild winds sang the responses to the funeral chant ; the rain hissed upon the censer, and plashed down with the holy water that was sprinkled on the pale brow. But with the rites of the Church, and the loving regrets of his religious brethren, was Walter de Coniston reverentially laid to his last sleep in the burial-ground of Furness Abbey. At that very hour when the cold earth fell upon the quiet breast, was a death of solitary horror upon the Lever Sands. Again stood Oswald de Coniston on the pointed solitary rock, as in the years long gone. He flung his arms wildly upwards, as if defying the supernal ■wrath he had provoked. He raised his dark face to the darker sky, but no star of hope was gleaming there for him. The wind raved, the tide rushed and roared; between the rock on which Oswald stood, and the mainland, was all a sheet of foam that glared dazzlingly athwart the gloom. The miserable man cast one despairing glance around. All the icene of former years was present with him again. Rash, fierce, headstrong, he was on that bygone night ; but stained with no crime — perhaps "more sinned against than sin ning." Now all was changed — rapine, murder, sacrilege, were on his soul! The adjuncts of the scene around him, too, were changed. No boat showed its black hull through the driving spray ;° no admonishing voice of the good monk John Broughton was heard ; no pitiful entreaties of a dear young brother swept along the gale. Onjy the white surf, the black sky, and the fierce, o'erwhelrning winds, which even while he stood marvelling at his own utter misery and desolation, hurled him as by an invisible hand from hia slippery and precarious footing. Oswald de Coniston was a strong swimmer, and even when plunged into the seething waters might perhaps have saved himself. But the buoyant spirit of youth which had upheld him on that other night, was quenched within him now. Resolved to perish, he had spurned the admonitions of the abbot, and rushed from beside his dead brother straight to the Lever Sands. Who shall tell what thoughts of agony and horror possessed that erring soul, as he sunk amid the wild waves, which 'ere morning's light, dashed him on the shore a lifeless and disfiguredcorpse. **.* * # # The very name of the Conistons of Thurston has passed away, supplanted by those of the parasites of Henry, to whom he awarded the lands of Furness after Oswald's death. A report is still current in the district, that the ruins of the bell-tower are haunted by a spectre of a woman, clad in white robes ; — 'is this a reminiscence of the story of the two wild brothers, and the hapless Evelina of Egremont.