A RETURN TO 1856--NICHOLAS HILL, IRON MERCHANT--HIS DEATH,
HIS DAUGHTER AND HIS FRIEND--HOW DR. POMEROY BECAME A
GUARDIAN, AND HOW HE DISCHARGED THAT DUTY--A RUIN AND AN
AWAKENING--THE MARKET VALUE OF DUNDERHAVEN STOCK IN 1858.
Seven years before 1863, and consequently in 1856, died Nicholas Hill, a
merchant of Philadelphia, whose place of business on Market Street above
Third had been the seat of a respectable though not remarkably extensive
trade, for nearly a quarter of a century. His trade had been in iron and
hardware, but the material of his stock by no means entered into his own
composition, for he was a man somewhat noted for his quiet and retiring
manners and a pliancy of spirit making him at times the victim of the
unscrupulously plausible. His private fortune met with sundry serious
drawbacks on account of this weakness, though a generally prosperous
business enabled him to keep intact the few thousands which he had already
won, and gradually if slowly to add to the accumulation. He had remained a
widower since the death of his wife ten years before his own demise; and
his pleasant though quiet little house on Locust Street, had only contained
one member of his family besides himself, for years before his death--his
only daughter and only child, Eleanor.
The warmest and longest-continued friendships are very often formed by
persons diametrically opposed in character and disposition; and the rule
seemed to hold good in the instance under notice. A friendship formed
several years before between the merchant and Dr. Philip Pomeroy, when the
latter was a practising physician resident in the city proper, had never
died out or become weakened, at least in the heart of the confiding and
quiet dealer in iron, and there was no reason to believe that the sentiment
had been more transient in the breast of the physician. Mr. Hill had been
suffering under the incipient threats of consumption, for years, and the
doctor had been his medical attendant, as before the death of his wife he
had filled the same confidential relation towards that lady and the other
members of his household. Neither personally nor by marriage had the
merchant any near relatives in the city or its vicinity; and his retiring
disposition was such that while he made many friends in the ordinary
acceptation of the word, he had few who stood in that peculiar relation
which the French, supplying a noun which has scarcely yet crept into our
own language, designate as _les intimes_.
It was not strange, then, that when Nicholas Hill was suddenly seized with
hemorrhage of the lungs and brought home in an almost dying condition from
his store, one afternoon in November, 1856, Dr. Pomeroy, who was hurriedly
summoned to his aid, was summoned quite as much in the capacity of friend
as in that of medical attendant. The story of life or death was soon told.
The merchant had believed, from the moment of attack, that his day of
probation was over; and, apart from his natural anxiety for the welfare of
his only child, there was little tie to bind the sufferer to earth. His
wife--his wife that day as much as she had been at any period of their
wedded life,--had long been awaiting him, as he believed, in a better
world; and there is something in the facility with which those quiet, good
people, who seem never to have enjoyed existence with the fiery zest which
tingles in finger and lip of the sons of pleasure and sorrow, give up their
hold upon being and pass away into the infinite unknown which lies beyond
the dark valley,--something that may well make it a matter of question
whether theirs is not after all the golden secret of human happiness, for
which all ages have been studying and delving.
The doctor came, with that rapidity which was usual with him, and with
every mark of intense interest on his face and in his general demeanor. He
found the invalid sinking rapidly, and his attendants, the weeping
Eleanor, then a handsome, promising but defectively-educated girl of near
eighteen, and two or three of the ladies of the near neighborhood who had
gathered in to tender their services when it was known that the merchant
had been brought home in a dying condition. A few words from the sufferer,
uttered in a low tone almost in the ear of the stooping physician, and then
all the others were sent out of the room except his daughter, whose
pleading gesture, asking to be allowed to remain within the room was not
disregarded, but who was motioned by the doctor to take her place at the
window, beyond supposed hearing of the words that were to pass between the
two friends.
"Tell me the exact truth," said the low voice of Nicholas Hill, when these
dispositions had been made. "I am prepared to hear any judgment which your
lips may speak. There is no hope for me?--I am dying?"
Either the doctor could not speak, or he would not. He merely bowed his
head in a manner that the questioner well understood.
"So I thought, from the first," said the dying man. "The life blood does
not flow away in that manner for nothing. And I do not know that I regret
the end, for I have lived almost as long as I could make myself useful, and
I think I am as nearly prepared to die as poor, fallen humanity can hope to
be."
"I hope and believe that you are indeed prepared to die, my dear, good
friend," answered the doctor, with feeling in his tone, and the feeble hand
of the sufferer meanwhile within his. "I cannot hold out a false hope to
you--you cannot live. How gladly science and friendship would both join
hands in doing something to keep you in the world, you know; but how much
we shall all miss you and grieve for you, you do _not_ know."
"That you will miss me, I hope," said the dying man. "But there is no
occasion whatever to grieve for me. It is a peaceful end, I think, and in
God's own good time. I have but one anxiety."
He paused, and the doctor nodded his head towards the side of the room
where poor Eleanor was sitting, trying to distract her own thoughts by
looking out of the window. The father saw that he understood him, and
pressed the hand that he held.
"Yes, you have guessed rightly," he said. "My only anxiety is for the fate
of my child. Eleanor is a good girl, but she is yet very young, and she
will need protection."
"She shall find it!" said the doctor, solemnly.
The face of the dying man lit up with an expression of the sincerest
pleasure and happiness, and his feeble grasp again pressed the hand of high
health which lay so near his own ebbing pulse.
"I believe you and I thank you, my friend as well as physician," he
replied. "I have not been afraid to think of this day, as they tell me that
so many are; and my affairs are in some degree prepared for it. I have a
handsome property, though not a large one, and you will find a will lying
in the private drawer of the safe at the store. With the exception of a few
legacies to friends, a small one to yourself included--it all goes to
Eleanor, and you will find yourself named my executor."
"A confidence which flatters me, and which I hope I shall deserve," said
the doctor, as the enfeebled man again paused for a moment.
"I _know_ that you will," the sufferer resumed. "Thanks to my property,
Eleanor will not be a burthen to you, except in the demand of _care_. Her
few relatives, as you know, are distant ones, and none of them reside
nearer than California. There will be none to interfere with you in guiding
her aright, keeping her pure in her remaining years of girlhood, and
watching over her until she becomes the wife of some honorable man, or in
some other way ceases to need your protection."
"I accept the charge as freely as it is given, and I will perform it as I
would for one of my own blood!" was the solemn answer of the medical man.
"I knew that before I asked, or I should never have asked at all!" said the
dying man. "Eleanor, my daughter, come here."
The young girl obeyed and knelt beside the bed, striving to restrain her
sobs and tears. The father laid his hand on her head and gently smoothed
the masses of dark brown hair with fingers that would so soon be beyond
capacity for such a caress.
"Eleanor," he said, "you are almost a woman in years, and you must be
altogether a woman, now. I am going to leave you--I may leave you in a few
minutes."
"Oh, I know it, father!--dear, dear father! Oh, what will become of me?"
and in spite of her efforts to restrain herself she sobbed and choked
piteously.
"You will be cared for, my child, not only by heaven but by kind friends;
and you must not grieve so over what does not grieve me at all," said the
departing parent. "Dr. Pomeroy is to be the executor of my estate, and your
guardian. Love and obey him, my daughter, in every thing, as you would love
and obey me if I was allowed to remain with you. Do you understand me?--do
you promise me, Eleanor?"
"I do understand you!--I do promise you, dear, dear father!" sobbed the
young girl. "I will obey Dr. Philip, and try to be good all my life, so
that I can meet you where I know that you are going to meet my mother."
"My dear, good child!--you and the doctor have made me so happy! Kiss me
now, Eleanor, and then let me sleep a few moments." And directly after that
kiss of agonized love was given, he fell back upon his pillow--as if he was
indeed dropping into a quiet sleep; but the doctor felt the hand that lay
within his relax its pressure, one or two sighs fluttered from the
quivering lips, while a light foam tinged with blood crept up to them and
bubbled there, and the moment after Eleanor Hill was fatherless.
And yet the poor girl who sobbed so heart-brokenly over the corpse of one
who had been to her the truest and kindest of parents, was not fatherless
in that desolate sense in which the word is so often used. The ties of
blood might be rudely broken, but did not the hand of true friendship stand
ready to assert itself? Had not Philip Pomeroy promised the friend of
years, that he would be father and protector to her--that he would shelter
her with all the power given to his ripe manhood, and hold her pure as the
very angels, so far as he had power to direct her course? No--not
fatherless: the weeping girl, in the midst of her sobs and unfelt caresses
over what had once been the father of her idolatry, appreciated the truth
and was partially comforted.
It so chanced that Dr. Pomeroy, in his domestic relations, was admirably
placed for offering a home to the daughter of his dead friend. Marrying did
not seem to run in the Pomeroy family, for not only was the doctor a
confirmed bachelor, some years past middle age, but his only living sister
had kept herself free, like him, of matrimonial chains, and presided
pleasantly over his household under her maiden name of Miss Hester Pomeroy.
While the removal of a young girl of eighteen to a bachelor's residence,
without the cover of female society, might have seemed grossly improper in
spite of the color given to it by the guardianship so lately acquired,
there could be no impropriety whatever in her becoming the companion and to
some extent the pupil of the bachelor's maiden sister of forty.
Dr. Pomeroy's residence was at that time within the city limits, though in
that extreme upper section bordering on the Schuylkill; but his practice
had been gradually extending out into the country over the river; and ideas
long cherished, of a residence beyond the reach of the noises of the great
city, were gradually becoming realized. At the time of the death of his
friend, that mansion which it has just been our sad privilege to enter,
was in the course of erection; and in the spring which followed he took up
his abode within it, with his sister, his ward, and that array of domestics
necessary for a man of his supposed wealth and somewhat expensive habits.
It did indeed seem that Eleanor Hill was blessed among orphans if not among
women. Her tears dried easily, as they had good cause to do. The residence
to which she had been removed was a very handsome and even a luxurious one;
Miss Hester Pomeroy was one of those good easy souls who neither possess
any strength of character themselves nor envy it in others,--with an almost
idolizing admiration of her gifted and popular brother, and a belief that
no movement of his could be other than the best possible under the
circumstances; and the doctor himself, a man of fine education,
distinguished manners, admitted professional skill, and an uprightness of
carriage which seemed to more than atone for any lack of suavity in his
demeanor--the doctor himself appeared to be anxious, from the first, that
no shadow of accusation should lie against his name, of inattention to the
ward committed to his charge. From the day of her coming into his house,
whenever his professional engagements would allow, he spent much time in
the society of Eleanor, greatly to the delight of Miss Hester, who had
thought herself very unattractive company and wished that her gifted
brother had some one in the house more worthy to be his companion. He
selected books for the young girl; brought home others; directed her
studies into channels calculated to form her mind (at least some portions
of it); invited the young people of the neighborhood to meet her; drove her
out frequently; took such care of her health as he might have done of that
of a darling daughter or an idolized sweetheart; and gave evidence that
none could doubt, of his intention to fulfil in the most liberal and
conscientious manner the sacred promises he had made over the death-bed of
her father.
To the young girl, meanwhile her surroundings became Elysium. She had warm
affections, of that clinging character which finds no difficulty in
fastening almost anywhere if permitted time and quiet. She had little force
of will and still less of that serpent wisdom which discerns the shadow of
danger before that danger really approaches. She was equally good, by
nature, and weak by disposition--formed of that material out of which good
wives and mothers are so easily made, and which may, on the other hand, be
fashioned so easily into the most melancholy semblance of lost womanhood.
She was handsome, if not strictly beautiful, and the lips of her guardian,
so strict to most others, told her so with smiles and low-breathed words.
She was flattered by his preference, paid her deferentially in public and
yet more unreservedly when none but themselves heard the words he
uttered,--proud to be thus distinguished by one so attractive in appearance
and unimpeachable in position,--bound to him by that obedience enjoined by
her dying father, and by that strong tie of gratitude which she felt to be
due to her willing and unrecompensed protector,--and brought into that
close communion with his strong mind which could not fail to sway an
unmeasured influence over her, by those studies in poetry, romance and
philosophy which he had himself directed.
It is an old story, and melancholy as old. Before she had been six months
an inmate of the house of Dr. Pomeroy, Eleanor Hill loved him as madly as
young, defenceless and untrained girlhood can love that which supplies its
best ideal and lures it on by the most specious of pretences. Not more than
that time had elapsed, when she would have plucked out her heart and laid
it in his hand, had he asked it and had such an act of bodily
self-sacrifice been possible. Less than a year, and the tale of her destiny
was told. For weeks before, the words of her "guardian" and "father" had
been such as ill became either relation, but not warmer, still, than the
snared heart of the young girl craved and echoed. Then came that promise of
the dearest tie on earth, which falls on the ear of loving woman with a
sweeter sound than any other ever uttered under the sun or stars. He loved
her--that proud, high-spirited, distinguished man, the friend of her
father, and the man for whose hand (so he had told her, not boastingly but
in pity, and so she had every reason to believe) the wealthiest, the most
beautiful and the most arrogant belles of Broad Street and Girard Avenue
had been willing to barter all their pride and all their coyness--he loved
_her_, the poor young and comparatively portionless girl, held her worthy
to be his wife, and was willing to share his high destiny with her!
What marvel that the untutored heart beat faster than its wont, when that
golden gate of paradise was opened in expectation to her eyes? What marvel
that all the lessons of childhood, which stood between her and obedience to
the master of her destiny, were forgotten or only remembered with
abhorrence? What marvel that the past became a dream, the present dull and
unendurable, and only the delirious future worth a wish or a thought? What
marvel that one evening when the full moon of August was peeping in through
the trees which already began to cast their shade over the new home into
the room where the "guardian" and the "ward" were sitting alone
together--when the air seemed balm and the earth heaven--when the
night-sounds of late summer made a sadness that was not sorrow, and
temptation put on the very robes of holy feeling to do its evil work--when
the lips of the subtle, bad, unscrupulous man of the world repeated words
as sweet as they were unmeaning, promises as hollow as they were delicious
and prayers as bewildering as they were sacrilegious--when the heart of the
young girl had proved traitor to her senses and all the guardian angels of
her maidenhood had fled away and left her to a conflict for which she had
neither wisdom nor strength--what marvel that the moment of total madness
came to one and perhaps to both, and that before it ended Eleanor Hill lay
upon the breast of her destroyer, a poor dishonored thing, frightened,
delirious, half-senseless, and yet blindly happier in her shame than she
had ever been while the white doves still folded their wings above her!
We know something of ends and something of intermediary occurrences, but
very little of beginnings. The common eye can see the oak from a tiny
sprout to its lordship of the forest, but none may behold the first
movement of the germ in the buried acorn. The unnatural rebellion of
Absalom, the reckless treason of Arnold, the struggle for universal empire
of Napoleon, all stand out boldly on the historic page, as they appeared at
the moment of culmination; but who sees the disobedient son of David when
he walks out into the night with the first unfilial curse upon his lips, or
the arch-traitor of the Western Continent as he starts from his sleep with
the first thought of his black deed creeping under his hair and curdling
his blood, or the victor of Marengo nursing his first far-off vision of the
dangerous glory yet to be! We can know nothing more of the beginnings of
vice in the hearts of the great criminals of private life. It can never be
known, until all other secrets are unveiled before the eyes of a startled
universe, whether Dr. Pomeroy, (no imaginary character, but a personage too
real and very slightly disguised), in this ruin wrought by his hand had
been acting the part of an unmitigated scoundrel from the beginning, a lie
upon his lip and mockery in his heart when he promised the dying Nicholas
Hill protection to his helpless daughter, and every act and word of his
intercourse with her subtly calculated to bring about the one unholy
end,--or whether he had merely _permitted_ himself, without early
premeditation, to do the unpardonable evil which proved so convenient. For
the welfare of the victim, it seemed a question of little consequence: for
the credit of humanity, always enough disgraced, at best, by its robbers
and cut-throats of the moral highway, it may be at least worth a thought.
After events make it doubtful whether the very worst had not been intended
and labored for from the outset; and certain it is that if there had before
been one redeeming trait to temper the moral baseness of Philip Pomeroy,
from the moment when that ruin was accomplished no obstacle of goodness
hindered his way towards the end of the irredeemable. If he had before kept
terms with Eleanor Hill and his own soul, he kept those terms no longer.
The poor girl had of course no right to be happy in her new and guilty
relation, and yet she was so for a time--almost entirely happy. She had
been wooed and won (oh, how fearfully _won_!) under an explicit promise of
marriage and with continual repetitions of words of respect which left her
no room to doubt the good faith of the man who uttered them. She was more
than a little weak, as has already been said; very unsuspicious and
clinging in her trust; and neither wise enough to know that the man who
respected her sufficiently to make her his wife, no insurmountable obstacle
lying in his way, would have made her so before laying his hand on the hem
of the garment of her purity,--or precise enough to feel that any disgrace
had really fallen upon her, which would not be removed the moment that
promise of marriage was fulfilled. Then, by a natural law which can be
easily understood if it cannot be explained, the young girl a thousand
times more deeply loved the master of her destiny because he had made
himself entirely so; and for a time, at least, the conduct of the victor
towards his helpless captive was full of such exquisite tenderness in
private that she could not have found room for a regret had her heart even
revolted at the situation in which she was placed. He did not speak of an
immediate fulfilment of his promise of marriage--no, but he had before
hinted that owing to certain temporary circumstances (oh, those "temporary
circumstances"!) the hour when he could make her his own before the world
must be yet a little delayed; and so the young heart took no fright at the
procrastination. Good Miss Hester, meanwhile, saw nothing suspicious and
suspected nothing improper. Perhaps she saw a deeper light of tenderness in
the eyes of the poor betrayed girl, when they beamed upon him who should
have been her husband; and perhaps she saw that her brother treated his
ward with even more delicate attention than he had shown during the months
before; but the spinster's eyes had no skill to read beneath the mask of
either, and if she thought upon the subject at all her impressions were not
likely to go farther than the mental remark: "How good Philip is to
Eleanor; how obedient to him she seems to be; and how happy for both that
he ever became her guardian and she his charge!"
Under such circumstances the awakening, even a partial one, could not come
otherwise than very slowly. But unless the young girl was an absolute idiot
or utterly depraved, an awakening must come at some period or other. Though
weak and ill-trained, Eleanor Hill was by no means an idiot; and the angels
of heaven could look down and see that through all that had occurred there
had been no depravity in her soul, no coarse, sensual passion in her
nature. If she had fallen, she had been sacrificed on the altar of man's
unscrupulous libertinism, and offering up the incense, meanwhile, of a
good, yielding, compliant, worshipping heart. The moral perceptions may
have been blunted, but they were not annihilated; the reason may have been
choked and dizzied in the flood of feeling, but it was immortal and could
not be drowned.
Months had elapsed after the culmination of their intercourse, before the
sense of right became strong enough and the heart bold enough, for the
young girl to hint at the fulfilment of what had been so long delayed. The
answer was a passionate kiss and an assurance that "only a little time more
should elapse--just yet it would not be prudent and was in fact
impossible." Eleanor wondered: she had not yet learned to doubt; and for a
time she kept silent. Again, a few weeks later, and the question was
repeated. This time a light laugh met her ear, and there was more of the
master toying with his slave or the spoiled boy trifling with his
play-thing, than there had been in the first instance. Still the promise
was repeated, and still there were "insurmountable obstacles." Another
interval of silence, then a third request, this time with tears, that he
would do her the justice he had promised. To this ill-nature responded, and
for the first time the young girl learned what a claw of pride and
arrogance lay folded in the velvet palm of the tiger. She shrunk away
within herself, at his first harsh word, almost believing that she must
have committed some wrong in speaking to him of his delayed promise; and
when he kissed her at the end of that conversation and said: "There, run
away and do not bother me about it when I am worried and busy!" she almost
felt--heaven help her poor, weak heart!--that that kiss was one of needed
pardon!
The dullest eyes will recognize at last what only the quick and accustomed
discern at first. Eleanor Hill had been blind, but her eyes gradually
opened,--with an agony in the first gleams of light, of which her yielding,
compliant nature had before given little promise. Nearly two years had
elapsed after her becoming the ward of Dr. Philip Pomeroy, and more than
one year after that fatal era in her own destiny, when the wronged girl,
then twenty and within only twelve months of her legal majority, at last
sounded the depths of that man's nature sufficiently to know that he had
been inventing the existence of obstacles--that he had never intended to
marry her, at least at any near period. At that moment of discovery a
higher and prouder nature than hers might have been moved to personal
upbraiding, despair and perhaps to suicide: with Eleanor Hill the only
result was that a sense of shame, before kept in abeyance, came in and
settled down upon her, making her more humble than angry or indignant, and
unnerving her instead of bracing her mind anew for any conflict that might
arise in the future. Aware, at last, of his deception, she could not quite
believe in her guardian's utter baseness; and she still _hoped_ that though
he might demand his own time for the fulfilment of that promise which had
won her from herself, in his own time he would render her that justice in
reality so poor but to her so full of compensation for all the past.
Would it not seem, even to one most fully acquainted with all the falsehood
of the betrayer and all the cruelty of the torturer, that the cup of that
man's infamy was nearly filled? And yet--sorrow that the bitter truth must
be recorded!--not a tithe of that which was to curse him before the end,
has yet been indicated. Slowly and surely the blackening crimes pile up,
when the love of virtue and the fear of heaven have both faded out from the
human heart; and who can measure the height to which those mountain masses
of guilt may tower, after the first foundations have been laid in one
unrepented wrong, and before the coming of that day when the criminal must
call upon those very mountains to fall and bury him away from the wrath
that is inevitable!
Dr. Pomeroy came home late one evening in December, 1858. Hester had long
been in bed, and Eleanor, as was her habit, had waited up for his return.
Some weeks had now elapsed since her discovery of his deception, but hope
had not yet died out, nor had all her confidence been lost in that
affection for her which she believed underlay all the impropriety of his
treatment. So far, except in the one particular, he had treated her with
almost unvarying kindness; and while that pleasant status existed and hope
had yet a little point for the clinging of her tenacious fingers, it was
not in the nature of the young girl to despair. She met him at the door, as
she had done on so many previous occasions, assisted him to divest himself
of the rough wrappers by which he had been sheltered from the winter wind,
and when at last he dropped into his cushioned chair before the grate,
which had been kept broadly aglow to minister to his comfort, took her
place half by his side and half at his feet.
Perhaps there was some malevolent spirit who on that occasion, before the
glow of the winter fire, once more brought to the lips of the poor girl
that subject always lying so near her heart--marriage. She mentioned the
word, and for the first time since he had given her shelter under his
roof, Philip Pomeroy hurled an oath at her. Perhaps he had been taking wine
somewhat too freely, in one of the tempting supper-rooms of the city; or
some other cause may have disturbed his equanimity and brought out the
truth of his worst nature. The reply of Eleanor Hill to this was the not
unnatural one of a burst of tears, and that outburst may have maddened him
still more. The truth came at last, in all its black, bitter, naked
deformity:
"Eleanor, you have made a fool of yourself long enough! No more of this
whining, or it will be the worse for you! When _I_ marry _you_, I shall be
very nearly out of business; and if you have not had judgment enough to
know that fact before, so much the worse for your common sense!"
Eleanor Hill staggered up from her chair and cast one glance full into the
face of her destroyer. Her eyes could read the expression that it bore,
then, if they had never before attained the same power. There was neither
the smile of reckless pleasantry nor the unbent lines of partial pity for
suffering, upon that face. All was cold, hard, determined, cruel earnest,
and the victim read at last aright what she should have been able to
decipher more than two years before. And never the life of a dangerous
infant heir went out beneath the choking fingers of a hired murderer, at
midnight and in silence in one of the thick vaulted chambers of the Tower,
more suddenly or more effectually than at that moment the last honorable
hope of Eleanor Hill expired, strangled by the hand of that "guardian" who
had promised beside a dying bed that he would shield and protect her as his
own child!
In that hard, cold face Eleanor Hill at last read her destiny. She had been
weak, compliant and submissive, but never reconciled to her shame; and at
that moment began her revolt.
"I understand you at last," she said. "After all your promises, you will
_not_ marry me!"
"Once for all--no!" was the firm reply, the cruel face not blenching in
the least before that glance, mingled of pain and indignation, and so
steadily bent upon it.
"Then I have lived long enough in this house--too long!" broke from the
lips of the young girl. "I will leave it to-morrow. You cannot give me back
the thing of most value of which you have robbed me--my honor and my peace
of mind; but my father left my property in your hands--give me back that,
so that I may go away and hide myself where I shall never be any more
trouble to you or to any others who know me."
"Humph! your property!" was the reply, in so sneering a tone that even the
unsuspicious ears of the victim caught something more in the manner than in
the words themselves.
"Yes, I said my property--the property my father left in your hands for
me!" answered poor Eleanor, striving to conquer the deadly depression at
her heart and to be calm and dignified. "You have told me the truth at
last; and I will never ask you the question again if you will give me
enough money for my support and let me go away from this life of sin into
which you have dragged me."
"You want to go away, do you!" again spoke the doctor, in the same sneering
tone. "And you expect to support yourself upon what you call 'your
property?'"
"I do want to go away--I must go away, Dr. Philip!" answered the victim,
still managing to choke down the tears and sobs that were rising so
painfully. "You have cruelly deceived a poor girl who trusted you, and we
had better never see each other again while we live."
"Your property, you said! Bring me that large black portfolio from the top
of the closet yonder," was the only and strange reply. With the habit of
her old obedience the young girl went to the place designated, found the
pocket-book and brought it to him. He opened it, took out half a dozen
pieces of what seemed to be bank-note paper, and handed them over to her
without an additional word.
"What are these, and what I am to do with them?" she asked, in surprise.
"They are 'your fortune' that you have been talking about, and you may do
what you like with them if you insist upon leaving my house!" was the
reply.
"I do not understand you!" very naturally answered the recipient, making no
motion to open the papers. "If these are mine, I cannot tell what to do
with them or how much they are worth."
"Oh, I can tell you their value, very easily, though I might be puzzled to
direct you as to the other part of your anxiety!" said the doctor, with a
scarcely-suppressed chuckle at the bottom of his sneer. "They are the scrip
for four thousand shares in the capital stock of the Dunderhaven Coal and
Mining Company, in which, with your consent, I invested the forty thousand
dollars left you by your father; and their present worth is not much, as
the company unfortunately failed about six months ago, paying a dividend of
five-sixteenths of a cent on the dollar. The amount would be--I remember
calculating it up at the time of the failure--just one hundred and
twenty-five dollars."
"And that is all the money that I have in the world!" gasped the young
girl, tottering towards a chair.
"Every penny, if you leave my house!" answered the model guardian. "If you
remain in it, as I wish, and forget all the nonsense that priests and old
women have dinned into your ears, about marriage,--your fortune is just as
much as my own, for you shall find that there is nothing which I can afford
to purchase for myself, that I will not just as freely purchase for you!"
Eleanor Hill said not a word in reply. She had sunk into a chair and
covered her face with both her hands, through the delicate fingers of which
streamed the bright tears, while her whole frame was shaken and racked by
the violence of her mental torture. How utterly and completely desolate she
was at that moment! Refused the justice of marriage by the man for whom
she had perilled all, and bidden no longer even to hope for that
justice--then coldly informed that if she left the house of her betrayer
she went away to beggary, as all the fortune left her by her father had
been squandered by imprudence or dishonesty,--what additional blow could
fall upon her, and what other and heavier bolt could there yet be stored
for her in the clouds of wrath?