THE RESIDENCE OF THE BRANDS--ROBERT BRAND AND DR. PHILIP
POMEROY--RADICAL AND COPPERHEAD--A PASSAGE-AT-ARMS THAT
ENDED IN A QUARREL--ELSPETH GRAEME THE HOUSEKEEPER--THE
SHADOW OF SHAME--FATHER AND DAUGHTER--THE FALLING OF A
PARENT'S CURSE.
Half a mile northward from the Market street road which has already been
before so many times alluded to--on the north side of that road and at the
distance of a mile westward from the Hayley residence, was located that
before mentioned as the abode of the Brands. It was a fine old house, built
fifty or sixty years before, but within a few years repaired and rebuilt
with a lavish disregard of cost, a railed promenade having been added at
the apex of the steep roof, the whole two stories of height re-enclosed,
the windows and doors comparatively modernized, the piazzas remodelled and
widened, and all done that the carpenter's art could well be expected to
achieve, to add to the comfort and durability of the mansion without
destroying the appearance of respectable age which it had already put on.
The house stood facing southward upon nearly level ground, the lawn in
front of good depth and thickly dotted with forest and other shade trees
that had evidently known all the years of the building; while from the
eastern side a narrow lane ran down to the road and afforded ingress and
egress to carriages passing back towards the handsomely-grouped range of
outbuildings in the rear. Adjoining this lane and behind the house was a
large garden, with grape trellises and many of the appliances of luxury in
horticulture.
At the eastern end of the piazza a broad single door opened into the
somewhat antiquated hall; and from that hall a door opened into a parlor
fitted up with every appliance of convenience that could be needed in such
a country residence. Behind that parlor another door opened into a smaller
apartment correspondingly fitted but with more of those belongings
calculated to show its constant occupancy; and from that rear room still
another door opening to the left disclosed a bed-room of comfortable
appearance and tasteful arrangement. On the other side of the hall the
dining and domestic apartments stretched away, while the spacious upper
story supplied rooms to other members of the family.
It was very evident, at a glance, that wealth presided over the modernized
old house, and that good taste was not forgotten; and yet an impression
could not well be avoided that there must be something of severity, and
repugnance to ornament, conjoined with the wealth. Poverty, or even
struggling pride, would not have afforded so much of the best: warm taste
and lavish liberality would have supplied something more of the costly and
the luxurious.
In the second of the rooms mentioned--that immediately in the rear of the
parlor, two persons were in conversation at about noon of the same day of
the occurrences previously recorded. The one, sitting in an easy-chair with
his right leg raised and resting upon another chair crowned with a
pillow,--was apparently sixty-five to seventy years of age; tall, if his
proportions could properly be judged as he sat, with a figure that must
have been robust in its time; the hair so nearly white as to preclude any
idea of the color which it might have worn in earlier days; the face well
cut and even handsome for its age, though with a shade of severity in the
firm nose and shaven lips, which under some circumstances might grow
threatening; but any accurate judgment of his character rendered difficult,
by the look of pain stamped upon his face by evident bodily suffering.
Resting against a small table partially covered with bandages and
embrocations, was a stout cane, indicating both that the invalid was in the
habit of using a support of that character, and that he could not, even
now, be entirely confined to his chair. Such was Robert Brand, owner of
the mansion into which we have been introduced, and father of two children
apparently as little alike in nature as in sex--Carlton and Elsie Brand.
The second figure was quite as well deserving of notice as the old man in
his easy-chair. Doctor Philip Pomeroy, who was at that moment pacing up and
down the room without any apparent cause for that violent exercise in warm
weather, was a man in whom the acute physiognomist might have found
something illustrated by that seemingly listless motion--something
possessed in common by restless men, in the superior animal kingdom, and
those bears and hyenas which seem to traverse a great many unnecessary
miles in travelling up and down the bars of their cages, in the inferior.
And yet the doctor could not have been called, with any propriety, an
"animal-looking man"--it was the motion which supplied the comparison. He
was apparently forty-five to fifty, tall and slight figured, with face
clean shaven except a heavy dark moustache, features a little aquiline and
decidedly sharp lips that suggested an occasional sneer and a word cutting
like a scimetar, eyes of keen scintillant dark brown or black, and rather
long dark straight hair through which the threads of silver began to show
more as an ornament than a disadvantage. A very fine looking man--a man of
undoubted power and will--a man who had evidently enjoyed the most
favorable associations; and yet how nearly a man to be either braved or
trusted without reserve, it might have needed Lavater's self to decide on a
brief acquaintance. That same Lavater, if acquainted with the peculiarities
of road turn-outs, would have decided one point, at least, from the vehicle
that stood in the lane, near the door--no clumsy and cumbersome gig,
weighing an indefinite number of tons and set down as the proper conveyance
for doctors from the day when the first one grew too lazy to walk,--but a
light, sporting-looking buggy, seated for one, and suggesting fast driving
quite as much as the high-blooded, thorough-bred bay that champed his bit
before it and stamped impatiently for the coming of his master.
From the medical character of the visitor and the disabled appearance of
the man in the easy-chair, it might have been concluded that the call was a
professional one; and such was indeed the fact. An injury to the right limb
of Robert Brand, received many years before, had a habit of asserting
itself at uncertain periods, crippling him materially all the while, and at
those particular times throwing him into all those agonies indifferently
known as the pangs of neuralgia and inflammatory rheumatism. At such
periods, the traditional character of the "gouty old Admiral" of the
English stage, always limping and thumping a heavy cane, and nearly always
venting words more forcible than polite, was very nearly illustrated in the
old gentleman, his desire for active motion being generally in an inverse
ratio to the power of movement. Dr. Pomeroy, one of the most skilful of the
physicians of the section, and a man in very extensive practice, was always
his medical adviser at such times, and re-directed the application of those
warm flannels and neutralizing embrocations which constituted all that even
science could do for the alleviation of his sufferings, and about which old
Elspeth the housekeeper knew a good deal more, all the while, than any
physician could possibly do. For the three days previous, Robert Brand had
been suffering to a most painful degree, and this was the third of the
daily visits of the doctor.
But whatever might have been the professional character of the visit, it
had, before the moment when our attention is called to the two
interlocutors, lost any feature which could have marked it as such. Robert
Brand was a patriot, almost equally warm-hearted and hot-headed in the type
of his attachment to his country; while Dr. Pomeroy was one of those
quasi-loyalists, popularly called "Copperheads," who have the love of
country quite as often on their lips as the most unshrinking war-advocate
can do, but who prefer to show that love by objecting to every effort made
for the preservation of nationality, by denouncing, in every nine words out
of ten, something done by the loyal government, while only the poor tenth
is kept for a wail over the unfortunate character of the "civil war,"--and
by undervaluing every success won by the Union arms, while every momentary
advantage gained by the rebels is correspondingly magnified. He seemed to
take particular delight, always, in tormenting the old gentleman just to
the verge of a positive rupture without quite causing one; and just now, in
the advance of the rebel forces into Pennsylvania, he found a golden
opportunity.
"Bah!" he said, in response to a strongly patriotic expression of his
patron, which had led him to bring down one of his hands upon the disabled
leg with a force causing a new tingle in that limb and a new expression of
agony upon his face--"bah! All you hot-headed people, young and old, use
just such language, all the while. It amounts to nothing, except that
perhaps it eases your minds. Saying that 'the Union must and shall be
preserved,' and prophesying all kinds of good things for the nation, amount
to but very little while a set of incapables sit filling their pockets at
Washington (more than half of them traitors, in my opinion), while the army
is worse mismanaged than it could be if a set of school-boys led it, and
while the enemies you affect to despise are really winning every thing and
overrunning the whole country."
"Out upon you, Dr. Pomeroy!" cried the old man, angrily. "You dare to call
yourself a patriot, and talk in that manner! There are plenty of fools at
Washington, but I would rather see fools there than traitors! If you are
not a perfect block-head, you know that the rebels have lost twice as much
as they have gained, within the past year, and that if the fight goes on in
the same manner for one year more, the miserable mongrel concern will die
of its own weakness! But you do not _want_ it to die--that is just what
ails _you_!--you would rather see Jeff Davis in the Capitol than any loyal
man who would not give all the offices to your miserable broken-down
party!"
"And you would rather see the whole country lying in ruins, with heaps of
dead everywhere and the few who remain starving to death in the midst of
them, than that the country should be in any other hands than those of your
friends who do nothing else than talk about the nigger, legislate for the
nigger, and fight for the nigger!" answered the doctor, still continuing
his walk, and his face showing decided temper.
"It is false, and you know it, Philip Pomeroy!" said the invalid, with a
motion of his hand towards the big cane, which indicated that he would have
liked to use it by breaking it over the doctor's head.
"It is true, and _you_ know it, Robert Brand!" replied the doctor, whose
temper seemed to return to its equanimity the moment he had succeeded in
throwing his patient into a sufficient rage. "But you need not take so much
pains to conceal your opinions, old gentleman! _I_ don't! If the country is
to lie under the control of men who only legislate and fight for the
nigger, who trample upon the Constitution and fill Fort McHenry and Fort
Lafayette and Fort Warren with better men than themselves, who do not
happen to think and act precisely as _they_ do,--why, the sooner that Jeff
Davis, or any one else, gets possession, the better for all concerned."
"Doctor Pomeroy, you ought to be taken and hung, with the other traitors,
and I shouldn't much mind having a pull at the rope!" broke out the old
man, now almost entirely beside himself with indignation.
"Oh, I know that!" answered the doctor, whose temper was still visibly
improving as that of his patient grew worse. "Any of your abolition pack
would have helped to hang every democrat, long ago, if they had only
_dared_! The only trouble is that they did not do it while they had the
opportunity. Now it is too late. You daren't open the doors of your
State-prisons any more, unless it is to let somebody _out_! And before many
days some of you will sing a different tune--take my word for it. Some of
you radicals, even here at Philadelphia, will try to make the Confederate
leaders believe that you have been the truest friends of the South, all the
while."
"What do you mean, you scoundrel?" asked the old gentleman, whose harsh
words to a man somewhat younger than himself appeared to be fully
understood and not taken in quite the sense which they might have borne to
other ears.
"I mean that Lee will take Harrisburgh, and that next he will take
Philadelphia; then--"
"Take Purgatory! He can never take Harrisburgh, let alone Philadelphia!"
"He can and will take it! What is to hinder him?"
"Just what has hindered his taking Washington, any time the last two
years--better troops than his own, and more of them."
"Sheep before butchers'-dogs! The men of the North have never gone into the
war at all, and they never will go. That scum which you call an army cannot
fight the earnest and determined men of the South, and you ought to know
it. Within a week Lee will be in Philadelphia, and then we will see about
the change of tune!"
"Within a week, if he dares advance, he will be eaten up by the State
militia alone, even if the Army of the Potomac does not save them the
trouble!" said the old man.
"The Army of the Potomac has been good for nothing ever since Hooker
blundered its last opportunity away at Chancellorsville!" retorted the
physician. "The army has no confidence in _him_, and the country has no
confidence either in him or the army. The State militia will vigorously
stay at home, or they will behave so badly after they go out, that they had
much better kept where nobody saw them! Oh, by the way!--" and the face of
the doctor lit up with a new expression. A sneer settled itself upon his
well-formed lips, and there came into his scintillant eyes a gleam of
deadly dislike which boded no good to the subject of which he was about to
speak. He might have been only half in earnest, before, while driving the
old man wild with his Copperhead banter; but he was certainly interested in
what he was about to say, now!
"Well?" asked the patient, querulously, as he saw that some new topic was
to interlard that which had already been so unpleasant.
"That State militia you were talking about," said the doctor. "Your son was
expected to take up his old commission and go out with one of the
regiments, was he not?"
"He was not only expected to do so, but he has done so!" answered the
father, with love and pride in his eyes. "Not all the people in the country
are either Copperheads or cowards, doctor; and I am proud to tell you that
if _I_ am too old and too much crippled to take part in the battles of my
country, or even to get up and break my cane over your head when you insult
the very name of patriotism,--I have a son who when his opportunity comes
can do the one and will do the other!"
"When his 'opportunity' comes!" echoed the doctor, sneeringly.
"Yes, his opportunity!" re-echoed the father, who felt that there was
something invidious in the tone, though he could not read that face which
might have given him a better clue to the character of the man with whom he
was dealing. "My son has been too much hampered with business before, to
accept any of the chances which have been offered him; but now that his
native State is invaded, business is thrown by and you will find him, sir,
keeping up the honor of the name."
"Humph!" said the doctor, pausing in his walk and for some unexplainable
reason going to the window and looking out; so that he stood with his back
to the old gentleman. "Where is your son, now?"
"Where? Gone down to the rendezvous to take his commission, of course, as I
understand that the troops will leave to-night."
"Humph!" once more said the doctor, in the same insolent tone and retaining
his position at the window. "And yet I happen to know that your son has
discovered some new '_business_,' (with a terribly significant emphasis on
the last word) and that he is not going one step with the regiment."
"Dr. Pomeroy, I know better!" was the reply.
"Mr. Brand, I know what I am talking about, a good deal better than you
imagine!" sneered the doctor, who having by that time managed to get his
face into that shape which he had no objection to being seen by his
patient, now turned about and faced him, with his hands under the tails of
his coat.
"_What_ do you know?" was the inquiry, a little trouble blending with the
anxiety in the face.
"Well, I will tell you, as perhaps you may as well learn the fact from me
as from any one else," answered the doctor, his tones now very smooth, and
his manner almost deferential, as should be the demeanor of any man towards
his victim at the moment of stabbing him under the fifth rib. "I had
occasion to call at the armory of the Reserves, an hour or two ago, to set
the broken arm of one of the fellows who had taken too much Monongahela in
anticipation of his start, and fallen down-stairs. I learned there and
then, with some surprise and not a little grief (the father ought to have
caught the expression of his face at that moment, and thereby measured the
"grief" indicated!) that Mr. Carlton Brand had been down at the armory,
alleged his _business_ to be such that he could not possibly leave the
city, and declined any further connection whatever with the regiment."
"It is impossible!" said the father.
"It is true, however, like a good many impossible things!" again sneered
the physician. "And I have been thinking whether some others of members of
the State militia would not be found like your amiable son--too _busy_ to
pay any attention to the defence of the State!"
"Dr. Pomeroy!" said the father, after one moment of almost stupefied
silence. "Dr. Pomeroy, you have not been friends with my son for a long
time, and I know it, though I do not know what could have caused any
disagreement. But I do not suppose you would deliberately tell a falsehood
about him that could be detected in half an hour; and I want to know what
there is hidden in your words, more than you have chosen to convey."
"You had better ask your son when he comes!" was the reply.
"No--I ask _you, now_, and I think you had better answer me!" said the old
man.
"Well, then," answered the doctor, "if you insist upon it, my love for the
young man is not so warm as to give me a great deal of pain in the telling,
and you may know all you wish. Your son has been doubted a little, ever
since the breaking out of the war, from his repeated refusals of positions
in the army; and--"
"The man who says that my son is disloyal, lies!" cried the old man,
interrupting him. "You, or any other man!"
"It was not on the ground of his _disloyalty_ that he was suspected!"
sneered the doctor.
"And what ground then?" asked the father, his face and his whole manner
showing something terrible within that could be only partially suppressed.
"The ground of his _cowardice_, since you will have it!" spoke the doctor,
in such a tone of fiendish exultation as Mephistopheles may have used to
Faust, at the moment of assuring him that the last hope of happiness on
earth or pardon from heaven had been swept away in the slaughter of
Valentine and the moral murder of Marguerite. "There is not an officer in
the Reserves, who heard him refuse to join the regiment this morning, but
believes him--yes, _knows_ him, to be an arrant poltroon."
"Doctor Philip Pomeroy, you are a liar as well as a traitor and a
scoundrel! If I had two legs, and still was, as I am, old enough to be your
father, you would not leave this house without broken bones! Get out of it,
send me your bill to-morrow, or even to-day, and never let me see you set
foot in it again while I live!"
The face of the old man was fearful, at that juncture. In spite of the pain
of his disabled limb, he had grasped his cane and struggled to a standing
position, before concluding his violent words; and as he concluded, passion
overcame all prudence, and the heavy cane went by the doctor's head,
crashing through the window and taking its way out into the garden, at the
same moment when his limb gave way and he sunk back into his chair with a
groan that was almost a shriek, clutching at the bell-rope that hung near
him and nearly tearing it from its fastenings.
Dr. Pomeroy said not another word, whatever he might have felt. He had
dodged the flying cane, by not more than an inch, and such chances are not
likely to improve the temper of even the most amiable. For one instant
there was something in his face that might have threatened personal revenge
of the violence as well as the unpardonable words, in spite of the
difference of age: then the sneer crept over his face again, he stepped out
through the parlor into the hall, took his hat, and the next moment was
bowling down the lane into the road, behind his fast-trotting bay. It
seemed likely that his last professional visit to the Brands had been paid,
even if it had not yet been paid for!
The terrible appeal of the master of the house to the bell-rope at his hand
was answered the moment after by the appearance of a woman of so remarkable
an aspect as to be worthy of quite as much attention as either of the
personages who have before been called, in the same room, to the reader's
attention. Her dress was that of a housekeeper or upper servant, though the
height of her carriage and the erectness of her figure might have stamped
her as an empress. And in truth that figure did not need any such
extraordinary carriage to develop it, for, as compared with the ordinary
stature of woman, it was little else than gigantic. The man who built a
door for Elspeth Graeme, less than six feet in the clear, subjected her to
imminent danger of bringing up with a "bump" every time she entered it; and
her broad, square, bony figure showed that all the power of her frame had
not been frittered away in length. Her hands were large and masculine,
though by no means ill-shaped, and her foot had not only the tread supposed
to belong to that of the coarser sex, but very nearly its size. In face she
was broad yet still longer of feature, with hair that had been light brown
before the gray sifted itself so thickly among it as to render the color
doubtful,--with eyes of bluish gray, a strong and somewhat coarse mouth
with no contemptible approach to a moustache of light hairs bristling at
the corners,--and with complexion wrinkled and browned by the exposures of
at least sixty years, until very nearly the last trace of what had once
been youth and womanhood was worn away and forgotten. Yet there was
something very good and very kindly amid the rugged strength of the face;
and while little children might at the first glance have feared the old
woman and run away from her as a "witch," they would at the second
certainly have crept back to her knees and depended upon a protection which
they were certain to receive.
It is only necessary, to say, in addition, that she was Scottish by birth
as well as by blood and name--that she had come to this country nearly
forty years before, when Robert Brand was a young man, and attached herself
to the fortunes of the family because they were Scottish by blood and she
was the very incarnation of faithful feudality--that his daughter had been
named Elspeth (since softened to Elsie) at her earnest desire, because she
said the name was "the bonniest ava" and she had herself been named after
a noble lady who bore it, in her own land, and who had done much to give
her that upright carriage by standing as her god-mother--and that for many
a long year, now, she had been the working head of the Brand household,
scarcely more so since the death of its weak, hysterical mistress, a dozen
years before, than while she was alive and pretending to a management which
she never understood.
If any one person beneath that roof, more legitimately than another,
belonged to the family and felt herself so belonging, that person was
Elspeth Graeme; and if something of the romantic, which the stern sense of
the father would have been slow to approve, had grown up in both his
children, it was to the partial love of Elspeth and her stories of Scottish
romance, poetry, history, song and superstition, carrying them away from
prosaic America to the wimpling burns and haunted glens of the land from
which their blood had been derived,--that such a feeling, fortunate or
unfortunate as the future might prove, was principally to be credited.
"Did you ring, sir? Ech, Lord, the mon's deein'!" were the two very
different exclamations made by Elspeth as she entered the room, after the
departure of the doctor, and caught sight of the situation in which the
master seemed to be lying.
"No, Elspeth, I am not 'deein' as you call it," he growled out, when the
pain of his exertion had again somewhat subsided and he could find breath
for words. "But I wish I was! Is that cursed doctor gone?"
"He was gettin' to his carriage the minute, and he's awa by this," answered
the housekeeper. "But what ava has he been doin' to ye? Murderin' ye
maybe!--they're a dolefu' uncanny set, the doctors!"
"If you ever see that man here again, and you don't have him shot or set
the dog on him, out of the house you go, neck and crop, the whole pack of
you--do you hear!" was the reply to Elspeth's comment on the medical
profession.
"Just as ye say, master," said Elspeth. "I'll set Carlo at him myself, if
ye say so; and wo but the brute will just worry him, for he does na like
him and is unco fond of snappin' aboot his heels!"
"Where is Elsie?" was the next question.
"Gone over to Mistress Hayley's the mornin'. Can I do any thing for your
leg, sir?--for the wench in the kitchen's clean daft, and I'll be wanted
there, maybe."
"No--you can do nothing. My leg is better. But send Elsie to me the moment
she comes in."
"Hark!" said the housekeeper, as a light foot sounded on the piazza and
came in through the hall. "There's the lassie hersel--I ken her step among
a thousand. I'll just send her in to you the moment she has thrawn aff her
bonnet." And the old woman departed on her errand.
There must have been an acuteness beyond nature, in the ears of old
Elspeth, if she indeed knew the tread of the young girl; for her step, as
she entered the room, was so slow, laggard and lifeless, so unlike the
usual springing rapidity of her girlish nature, that even her lover might
have been pardoned for failing to recognize it. It was as if some crushing
weight fettered her limbs and bowed down her brow. And a crushing weight
indeed rested upon her--the first unendurable grief of her young life--the
knowledge of her only brother's shame. Robert Brand marked the slow step
and saw the downcast head; and little as he could possibly know of the
connection of that demeanor with the subject of his previous thought, it
was not of that cheerful and reassuring character calculated to restore the
lost equanimity of a man insulted in the tenderest point of his honor and
chafed beyond human endurance. His first words were rough and peremptory:
"Why do you move in that manner, girl, when you come to see _me_? I do not
like it--do not let me see any more of it!"
"I was coming, father!" was poor Elsie's only answer.
"So I see--at the rate of ten feet an hour! What is the matter with you?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?--do not tell me that, girl! I know better, or you would never
carry that gloomy face and move as if you were going to your grandmother's
funeral!"
"Indeed there is nothing the matter with me, father; but there soon will
be, if you scold me!" and the young girl, making a terrible effort to be
cheerful, came up to his side, put her arm around his neck and pressed her
lips to his forehead with a movement so pure and fond that it might have
softened Nero at the moment of ordering his last wholesale murder. It
partially disarmed the pained and querulous father. He put his arm around
the daughter's waist, returned the pressure and seemed to be soothed for a
moment by resting his head against the bosom that pressed close to him. But
the demon that had been roused could only sleep thus temporarily. Directly
he put her away, though not roughly, looked her full in the face, and
asked:
"Where is your brother?"
"You know he went down to town this morning, and he has not yet come home,"
was the reply, with an effort not by any means a successful one, to keep
the voice from quavering. The practised ear of the father detected the
difference between that intonation and the usual unembarrassed utterance of
his daughter; and he naturally connected it at once with the restraint of
her manner, and noticed an evasion in her answer that might otherwise have
escaped him.
"I know he has not come home," he said. "But that was not my question. You
have been at Mrs. Hayley's where he spends quite as much of his time as
here. Have you seen him?"
Elsie Brand would have given the proudest feature of her personal
adornment, at that moment, to be able to lie! She saw that some undefined
anxiety with reference to her brother must have moved her father's repeated
questions, and naturally she feared the worst--that Carlton's mad words
had indeed been overheard, and that even in that brief space of time some
messenger of evil had travelled fast and betrayed the fatal secret. If so,
the storm was about to burst on the devoted head of her brother, not the
less deadly because she must bear the first brunt of its violence.
Yes--Elsie Brand would almost have given her right hand to be able to lie
at that moment. But her education had been as true as was her nature, and
she managed to falter out, yet more suspiciously:
"Yes, father!"
"And you _dared_ to trifle with me, girl, when I asked you a plain
question?" and Robert Brand grasped his daughter by the arm so forcibly
that she nearly screamed with the violent pressure, and tears did indeed
start to her eyes as she sobbed out--
"I did not mean to trifle with you, father. I only thought--"
"You thought that when I asked one question, I meant another, did you?" and
the face that looked upon her was set, hard and very stern. "You had better
not try the experiment again, if you do not wish to suffer for it!"
"Oh, father!" and the young girl, enough broken before, now wept outright.
But he stopped her, very roughly.
"No bawling! not a whimper! Now listen to me. You have seen your brother
since morning--since he went down to the rendezvous."
"Yes, father."
"You saw him at Mrs. Hayley's."
"Yes, father."
"And he came there to bid Margaret good-bye, before he went away, and you
are such a miserable whining school-girl that you are making all this fuss
about his absence. Is that the fact? Speak!" He still held her arm, though
his grasp was less painful than it had been at first; and his eyes looked
upon her with such a steady, anxious, almost fearful gaze, that it would
have driven away the second temptation to falsehood, even had such a
temptation once obtained power. There was nothing for it, at that moment,
but to speak the truth so far as compelled.
"No, father. Carlton is not going away." The last three words were uttered
so low, and so tangled up among the sobs that she had not been able
entirely to check, that they might not have been distinguishable except to
the preternaturally acute ear of the suspicious father.
"He is not going? Why?" The first words were harsh and loud--the last one
was almost thunder, easily heard, if any one was listening, over the whole
house. Before it the young girl shook like an aspen and broke out into
fresh sobs as she attempted to answer.
"Because--because his business will not allow--"
"Because he is _a coward!_ Answer me that question, girl, or never speak to
me again while you live!" Robert Brand had apparently forgotten all his
pain and risen from his chair, still holding his daughter's arm, as he
hurled out the interrogation and the threat. Poor Elsie saw that he knew
all, too surely; further dissembling was useless; and she dropped upon her
knees, that iron grasp still upon her arm, lifted up both her hands, and
piteously moaned--
"Yes, that is the reason! Oh, how did you hear it? Kill _me_, father, if
you will, but do not kill poor Carlton! He cannot help it--indeed he
cannot!"
They were fearful words that immediately thereafter fell from the lips of
Robert Brand--words that no provocation should ever tempt a father to
utter, but words which have been plentifully showered on the heads of the
shamed or the disobedient, by the thoughtless or the unmerciful, who
arrogated to themselves God's power of judgment and retribution, through
all the long ages.
"Get up, girl, if you do not wish me to forget that you are not yourself
the miserable hound for whom you are pleading!"
"Oh, father!" broke again from the lips of the frightened girl, who did not
move from her kneeling position.
"Get up, I say, or I will strike you with this cane as I would a dog!"
Elsie Brand staggered to her feet, she knew not how, but stood bowed before
the stern judge in an attitude of pleading quite as humble and pitiful as
that of prayer. The next words that fell upon her ears were not addressed
to her, but seemed to be spoken for others' hearing than those who dwell in
tenements of clay, while the voice that uttered them trembled in mingled
grief and indignation, and the disabled frame shook as if it had been
racked with palsy.
"_My_ son a coward! a miserable poltroon to be pointed at, spat upon, and
whipped! _My_ blood made a shame in the land, by the one whom I trusted to
honor it! God's blackest and deepest curse--"
"Oh, father! father!" broke in the young girl in a very wail of agony so
pitiful that it must have moved any heart not calloused for the moment
against all natural feeling, but that availed nothing to stop the impending
curse or even to lower the voice that uttered it.
"--God's deepest and blackest curse 'light upon the coward! shame, sorrow,
and quick death! He shall have neither house, home nor family from this
moment! I disown this bastard of my blood! I devote him to ruin and to
perdition!"
Few men have ever uttered, over the most criminal and degraded of the
offspring of their own loins, so dire an imprecation; and no father, who
has ever uttered one approaching it in horrible earnest, but is doomed here
or hereafter to feel the bitterest weight of that curse resting upon his
own head. Lear was clean distraught by wrongs beyond human endurance,
before he called upon "all the stored vengeances of heaven" to fall on the
"ingrateful top" of Goneril, and threatened both his unnatural daughters
with "such revenges" that they should be the "terrors of the earth"; and
only that incipient madness clears him from the sin and leaves him human to
demand our after pity. There can be no excuse for such paroxysms of
remorseless anger--it is difficult to supply even a palliation. And yet
there was something in the blood, in the past life and associations of
Robert Brand, coming as near to offering excuse for shame and indignation
driving to temporary madness, as could well have been offered in behalf of
any man of his day, committing a sin of such nature. And to circumstances
embodying these it is now necessary to revert, even at the expense of a
temporary pause in the directness of this narration.