DR. POMEROY'S PURPOSED PURSUIT--A PLAIN QUAKER WHO USED VERY
PLAIN LANGUAGE--ALMOST A FIGHT--HOW MRS. BURTON HAYLEY
CONSOLED HER DAUGHTER, AND HOW MARGARET REVEALED THE PAST--A
COMPACT--DR. POMEROY'S CANINE ADVENTURE--OLD ELSPETH ONCE
MORE--A SEARCH THAT FOUND NOTHING.
It will be noticed that with the exception of the somewhat extended glance
at the earlier fortunes of Eleanor Hill, all the occurrences thus far
recorded, and affecting the after lives of so many different people, have
occupied not more than two or three hours of a single June day. The Parcae
were evidently very busy on that day of June, repaying the past and
arranging the future; and not less than three scenes of this veritable
history yet remain, occurring on the same day, a little later, but within
the same space as to distance, that has been covered by those preceding.
The first of these is that presented in the house of Dr. Pomeroy, ten
minutes after he had entered it, and when two or three sharp inquiries
after his "ward," whom he failed to find in her room, had elicited from one
of the frightened servants the information not only that she had left the
house, through the garden, with hat and mantle and in great haste,--but in
the company of the man of all the world towards whom the medical gentleman
entertained that deadliest hatred which would have made his drugs safe and
reliable had he been attending him in a dangerous sickness! He might not
have known the fact quite so soon, from any of the other servants, as he
certainly would not have discovered the truth under a twelvemonth from the
one who had acted as Eleanor's sentinel on the watch tower; but it chanced
that he possessed one creature of his own, who had been in the habit of
playing spy around the house generally and making very considerable
additions to her wages from the "appropriation for secret service"; and
from that open-mouthed person, who seemed to see with that organ as well as
with the eyes, he had no difficulty in extracting all the truth that could
be known, in an inconceivably minute fraction of time.
The rage which broke out in the face of Dr. Philip Pomeroy and set his eyes
ablaze, at about that period, would not have been a pleasant thing to look
upon, for any person liable to the penalties and inflictions which that
rage denoted. For he was a sharp, keen, calculating man, jumping to a
conclusion with great rapidity, and seldomer missing the fact than most men
under corresponding circumstances. Eleanor Hill was gone--had left his
house forever, so far as her own will had any power: he knew the fact
intuitively. She would never have dared to cross the threshold with Carlton
Brand, knowing the hatred which he held against that man of all others, if
she had intended to place herself again in a position where she could feel
his displeasure. Then the doctor knew, as the reader may by this time be
inclined to suspect, reasons why the young girl would have been much more
likely to leave his house forever, that day, than at any previous time of
her sojourn, if aid and protection chanced to offer themselves. They _had_
offered themselves, in the shape of the lawyer: they had been embraced; and
the good physician, hurling a few outward curses at the servant who had
afforded him the intelligence, at all the other servants, at the house and
every thing within it,--mentally included in his malediction every patient
who had assisted in luring him away from his home that day, while such a
spoil was being made of his "domestic happiness."
The worst of the affair--and the doctor saw it--was that Eleanor Hill had
attained her majority years before, and that he had no power whatever to
compel her return, except that power still existed in the impending threat
of public shame. But he was wronged--robbed--outraged! He would pursue the
fugitive--find her--force her to abandon her new protection--drag her by
main force from any arm that dared to interpose! If he failed, he would
make such a general desolation in family peace, in the quiet neighborhood
lying beyond that side the Schuylkill, as had never been known within the
memory of the "oldest inhabitant"--such an expose, convulsion and general
explosion as would put out of countenance any thing in the power of the
advancing rebel Lee!
All this in the two minutes following the knowledge of Eleanor's flight.
The ostler had just led round his heated horse to the stable, before the
discovery; and that functionary had orders shot at him from the back
piazza, in a very loud and commanding voice, to throw the harness on
another of his fastest trotters, and have him round at the gate in less
than half a minute, before his double-seated buggy, on pain of being flayed
alive with his own horse-whip. It may be supposed that under such
incitement the stable official handled strap and buckle with unusual
dexterity; and in very little more time than that allowed by the
regulation, the vehicle dashed round to the gate, and the enraged owner
stood whip in hand, ready to leap into it and urge a pursuit yet madder
than had been the elopement. But Dr. Philip Pomeroy, having prepared to
ride at once and with all diligence, found an unexpected hindrance, and did
not pursue his journey until a much more advantageous start had been
allowed to the fugitives.
For while the doctor was preparing to spring into his vehicle, down the
lane from the Darby road dashed the buggy and pair of Nathan Bladesden,
which had so lately taken that direction--dashed down, driven at such speed
as flung the fine horses into a lather of foam, and utterly belied the calm
reputation of the Quaker merchant. Nor was there any thing of the
deliberation of the sect in the jerk with which he brought up the flying
team by throwing them both back upon their haunches, or the suddenness with
which he sprang from the buggy, leaving the horses unfastened, and strode
to the open gate.
The rencontre was most inopportune and vexatious to the doctor, to whom
minutes just then were hours; and he may have had motives for wishing, that
day, not to be placed beneath an eye so sharpened by age and experience.
But Nathan Bladesden was a man of wealth and a power in the city, and not
even Dr. Pomeroy could afford to treat him with rudeness by driving away at
the very moment of his arrival. He smoothed his bent brows, therefore, and
accosted him with every demonstration of interest.
"Glad to see you, Mr. Bladesden! You seem to have been driving fast! But
you come just in time, for I was about starting in a hurry to--to see a
patient."
Had Dr. Pomeroy been aware of all the circumstances connected with the
morning call of the merchant--the shameful revelations made in the little
room overhead--the agony of spirit in which the Quaker had forced himself
away from the presence of Eleanor Hill, deserting her utterly and leaving
her in such a state of suffering as made suicide very possible--and the
continued and ever-deepening conflict which had since been going on in his
mind, as he dashed along roads that led him nowhere, his horses foaming in
the heat but the heat in his brain a thousand times more intense, until at
last he had driven back determined to drag the young girl, at every hazard
and sacrifice, from that moral pest-house which must be sure infection and
death to her soul,--had Dr. Pomeroy known all this, we say, not even his
hardy spirit might have been willing to brave the encounter. But he knew
nothing, and some of the perilous consequences of ignorance followed.
"I did not come to see _thee_, Dr. Philip," replied the Quaker to his
salutation, passing on meanwhile towards the front door, and something
short and choppy in his words indicating that he did not wish to open his
mouth at full freedom. "I saw thy ward, Eleanor Hill, this morning, and I
am going to see her again."
"Ah, you have been here to-day, then, before? And you are going to see her
again, after--." It was surprising, for a man of his age and experience,
how near he came to saying a word too much!
"After receiving _thy letter_?--yes!" answered the Quaker, turning short
and confronting his quondam host, the restraint on his utterance removed.
"_My_ letter? What do you mean by my letter?" Had any one told Philip
Pomeroy, half an hour before, that there was a man living who in five words
could change the color on his cheek, he would have reckoned the informant a
liar and grossly insulted him. Yet so it was; and the flush, though it was
already growing into that of defiant anger, had not been such when it began
to rise.
"Thee does not seem to understand me, Dr. Philip," said the Quaker, his
words still slow and no point of the sectarian idiom lost, but each
dropping short and curtly as if a weighty substance falling heavily. "But
thee will understand me before I am done. Thee wrote me a letter, signed 'A
True Friend'--"
"You lie!" A terrible word, to be flung into the teeth of any man; and
doubly terrible as hurled from lips then ashy white. For just one instant
the Quaker's large hands clutched, and he might have been moved to advance
upon his insulter and avenge Eleanor Hill, himself and all the world, by
choking the insult from his throat. But if such a thought really moved him,
he controlled it and merely smote on with his words.
"Thee wrote me a letter, signed 'A True Friend,' and thee shall have my
opinion of it, before I go into that house and remove from thee, at any
peril that may be necessary, the poor girl thee has disgraced."
"Set a foot nearer that house, if you dare!" was the reply.
"Thee is a base, miserable coward, Dr. Philip!--a scoundrel, a seducer, a
lying slanderer, the offspring of a female dog of the cur species, a
disgrace to thy country and thy profession; and if thee knows any more
hard words that I forget, thee may put them all in on my account."
"Nathan Bladesden, do you think that you will leave this spot alive, after
using such words to _me_!" and the hands of Philip Pomeroy were clutching
at his wristbands as if rolling them up to put them out of the way of
blood! The purpose of attack was reversed: he seemed to be about to spring,
tiger-like, at the Quaker's throat.
"_Thee_ will not kill me, Dr. Philip, if I do not!" the latter said. "I am
stronger than thee, and have a better cause. I think I will not touch thee,
but leave thee to thy Maker, if thee keeps thy hands off; but I have made
up my mind, if thee touches me, to beat thee until thee has no shape of a
man--until thee is dead as yonder gate-post. If thee thinks that I will
not, thee had better try it!"
Dr. Pomeroy did not believe himself a poltroon, nor was he one in that
sense relating to purely physical courage. And had there been merely
involved a conflict with that larger, stronger and better-preserved man, in
which one or the other might suffer severe injury and disfigurement, he
would have carried out his thought and sprung upon him, beyond a question.
But something in those slow dropping pellets of compressed rage falling
from the Quaker's lips, told the medical man (seldom too angry to be subtle
and cunning), that in the event of a struggle, and the merchant getting the
upper hand, he would probably carry out his threat and actually beat him to
death with those heavy fists before any human aid could interpose. And to
be mangled into a corpse by a Quaker--bah! there was really something in
the idea, likely to calm blood quite as hot with rage as that of Dr.
Philip--apart from the slight objection he may have had to being hurried
into eternity in any way, at that moment. Then another thought struck
him--a double one: how completely the Quaker would be at fault, searching
through the house for Eleanor Hill; and how he was himself losing time, in
that miserable quarrel--time that could never be regained. His horse and
buggy stood all the while just within the opened gate, where the ostler
had left it and gone back to his care of the blown animal at the stable;
and as that important reflection forced itself upon his mind, he turned his
back short upon the Quaker, strode to his buggy, stepped into it and dashed
away, only pausing to hurl at his tormentor this one verbal bolt:
"You infernal, snuffling, hypocritical ruffian! I will settle with you for
all this, when I have more time!"
"Thee had better let the account stand as it does, Dr. Philip, if thee is
not a fool as well as a scoundrel!" was the reply of the Quaker, but it is
very doubtful whether the doctor heard half the words. He was already
flying past the garden palings, at the full speed of his trotter, towards
the causeway and the Market Street road, on his errand of reclamation and
perhaps of vengeance. Then Nathan Bladesden pursued his way into the house,
looking for the lost sheep, with that ill success rendered certain by
Eleanor's flight, and that disappointment which often attends noble
resolutions embraced one moment too late.
* * * * *
The second of the supplementary scenes of that day was presented in the
parlors of the residence of Mrs. Burton Hayley--that parlor into which the
reader had only a doubtful glance a few hours earlier, when events which
seemed likely to affect the life-long interests of some of the residents of
that house, were occurring on the piazza.
Rich furniture in rosewood and purple damask; a piano of modern
manufacture, the open bank of keys showing the soft coolness of
mother-of-pearl; carpets of English tapestry; pier glasses that might have
given reflection to the colonel of a Maine regiment or one of the sons of
Anak; tables and mantels strewn but not overloaded with delicate bronzes,
gems in porcelain and Bohemian glass, and articles of fanciful bijouterie;
on one of the mantels--that of the front room--Cleopatra in _ormolu_
upholding the dial of a clock with one hand, but with the other applying
to her voluptuously-rounded bosom the asp so soon to put a period to all
her connection with time;--what need of more than this to indicate the home
in which Margaret Hayley had passed the last few years of her young life
and approached that crisis so momentous to her future happiness? Yet one
thing more must be noticed--the stand of rosewood elaborately carved, set
not far from the centre of the front parlor, and bearing on it a large
Bible in the full luxury of russet morocco and gold, with massive gold
clasps and a heavy marker in silk and bullion dependent from amid the
leaves,--the whole somewhat ostentatiously displayed to the sight of any
one who first entered the room, as if to say: "There may seem to be pomps
and vanities in this house, but any such impression would be a mistake:
this book is the rule by which every thing within it is squared."
On the sofa, wheeled into that corner of the luxurious parlor upon which
the closed shutter threw the deepest and coolest shadow, lay Margaret
Hayley, her head buried in the white pillow which some careful hand had
brought for her, and her thrown-up hands drawing the ends of that pillow
around her face as if she desired to shut away every sight and every sound.
Her slight, tall figure seemed, as she lay at length, to be limp and
unnerved; and there was that in the whole position which seemed to indicate
that the mental energies, if not the vital ones, had recoiled after being
cruelly overtasked, and left her alike incapable of thought and motion.
She was not alone, for beside her sat a lady dressed in very thin and light
but rich and rather showy summer costume, rolling backward and forward in
her Boston rocker, waving a feather fan of such formidable dimensions that
its manufacture must have created a sudden rise in the material immediately
after, and talking all the while with such stately volubility as if she
believed that the hot air of the June afternoon would be less unendurable
if kept constantly in motion by the personal windmill of the tongue. This
was Mrs. Burton Hayley, mother of Margaret, widow of the late Mr. Burton
Hayley, railroad-contractor, snugly jointured with eight or ten thousand
per annum, and endowed (as she herself believed, and as we will certainly
endeavor to believe with her, in charity) with so many of those higher
gifts and graces of a spiritual order that her wealth had become dross and
her liberal income rather a thing to be deplored than otherwise. (It may be
the proper place, here, to say that the gilt Bible on the stand was the
peculiar arrangement of this lady, and the sign--if so mercantile a word
may be applied to any thing really demanding all human respect and
devotion--of that peculiar mental stock in trade which she was to be found
most ready in exhibiting on all occasions.)
Mrs. Burton Hayley was tall--even taller than her daughter; and her form
had assumed, with advancing years, a fulness which the complimentary would
have designated as "plump," the irreverent as "stout," and the vulgar as
"fat." Her face, moulded somewhat after the same fashion as that of
Margaret, must have been undeniably handsome in youth, though now--the
truth must be told--it was not a specially lovable face to the acute
observer. Her dark eyes had still kept their depths of beautiful shadow,
and her intensely dark hair (though she had married late in girlhood and
was now fifty) showed neither thinness nor any touch of gray. But the long
and once classical features had become coarsened a little in the secondary
formation of adipose particles; the possible paleness of girlhood had given
place to a slight red flush (especially in that tropical weather) that was
not by any means becoming to her; and there were all the while two
conflicting expressions fighting for prominence in her face, so different
in themselves and so really impossible of amalgamation, that the most rabid
disciple of "miscegenation" could not have arranged a plan for blending
them both into one. The outer expression, which seemed somehow to lie as a
thin transparent strata over the other, indicated pious and resigned
humility--that feeling which passes by the ordinary accidents and troubles
of life as merely gentle trials of faith and of no consequence in view of
the great truth rooted within. The second and inner, which would persist in
obtruding itself through the transparent mask, was _pride_--pride in its
most intense and concentrated form--pride in blood, wealth, personal
appearance, position, every thing belonging to and going to make up that
marvellous human compound, Mrs. Burton Hayley. The eyes were trained to be
very subdued and decorous in their expression; but they did so want to
flash out authority, if not arrogance! The nose was kept always (or
generally) at the proper subservient level; but it did so itch and tingle
for the privilege of lifting itself high in air and taking a nasal view,
from that altitude, of all the world lying below it! It was very evident,
to any one observing the mother after having examined the daughter's face
in the clear light of physiognomy, that the latter had derived from her
maternal progenitor most of that overweening pride which youth and beauty
yet wore as a crown of glory but age might wear as something much less
attractive,--and that she must have inherited from her dead father that
softness, frankness, and that better-developed love-nature which toned down
in her own all the more decided features of the mother's face and made her
worthy of affection as well as admiration.
As we have said, Mrs. Burton Hayley was using her tongue with great
volubility at the moment of her introduction to the attention of the
reader, though really the mode in which her single auditor kept her head
buried in the pillow and drew the soft folds around her ears with both
hands, did not indicate that desire for steady conversation which could
have made such a continual verbal clatter a thing of necessity. There is
the more occasion for giving Mrs. Burton Hayley her full opportunity for
speech, as she has occasion to utter but little hereafter, in this
connection.
"You should be very thankful, my child, for all that has occurred," the
voluble woman was saying. "A Power higher than ourselves overrules all
these affairs much better than we could do; and it is flying in the face of
Providence to cry and go on over little disappointments."
A pause of one instant, and one instant only, as if in expectation that
some reply would be vouchsafed; and then the band was again thrown upon the
driving-wheel--as one of the machinery-tenders in a factory might say,--and
the human buzz-saw whirled once more.
"I have told you, child, time and again, that you would be punished for
setting your affections on any person who had not given evidence of a
changed heart--a man who had not passed from death unto life, but who still
ran after the pomps and vanities of the world--those pomps and vanities
which religion teaches us to despise and put away from us." (Oh, Mrs.
Burton Hayley, why did you not catch a glance, at that moment, of the room
in which you were sitting, redolent of every luxury within the reach of any
ordinary wealth, and of your own stately and still comely person, arrayed
in garments the least possible like those with which people content
themselves who have really eschewed the "pomps and vanities of the world,"
either from conscientious humility or that other and much commoner
motive--the lack of means to continue them!) "You should be very glad that
you have been providentially delivered from your engagement with an
unbeliever and a man of the world--a man without principle, I dare say, as
you have discovered that he is without courage; and all the money there is
in his family (and they _do_ say that the Brands have not much and never
have had much!)--all their money, I say, acquired in the disreputable
practice of the law, so that if this thing had not happened and you had
been left to depend for subsistence upon his fortune, you might have found
it all melting away in a moment, as money dishonestly acquired is certain
to do; for does not the blessed book that I try to make my rule of life,
say, my child, that moth is certain to corrupt and thieves break through
and steal whatever has been wrung from the widow and the orphan?"
Margaret Hayley had not replied a word during the whole application of that
verbal instrument of torture, though it seemed evident from the context
that some conversation employing the tongues of both must have passed at an
earlier period of the interview. She had merely writhed in body and groaned
in spirit, as every moment told her more and more distinctly that in her
dark hour she had no mother who could understand and sympathize with
her--that cant phrases and pious generalizations were to be hurled against
her at that moment when most of all she needed to be treated by that mother
like a wearied child, drawn home to her bosom and cradled to sleep amid
soothing words and loving kisses.
But Margaret Hayley did something else than writhe when the accusation of
having acquired his wealth by dishonesty was cast upon the man whom she had
worshipped--yes, the man whom she worshipped still, in spite of the one
terrible defect which seemed to draw an eternal line of separation between
them. She started up from her recumbent position, her hair dishevelled, her
eyes red with weeping, and her whole face marked and marred by the anguish
she had been suffering,--sprang up erect at once, with all her mother's
pride manifest in voice and gesture, and said:
"Mother, are you a rank hypocrite, or have you neither sense nor memory?"
A strange question, from a daughter to her mother! The reply was not quite
so strange, and it seemed to have much more of earnest in it than any
portion of the long tirade she had before been delivering:
"Margaret Hayley, how _dare_ you!"
"We can dare a good many things, when we do not care whether we live or
die!" was the reply. "And though I have loved and respected you as my
mother, I do not know that I have ever been afraid of you. Now listen. You
have hated Carlton Brand, ever since he first came to this house, because
he did not treat your religious assumptions with quite as much deference as
you considered proper. He may have been right, or wrong: no matter now, as
he is out of the way! But you have hated him, and you know it--because I
loved him--I am not ashamed to own it!--loved him with my whole soul, as I
believed that he deserved--as any woman _should_ love the man whom she
expects to take her to his heart!"
"Well, what if I did dislike him? I had a right to do that, I suppose!"
answered the mother, her voice no longer religiously calm, but rough and
querulous.
"Do not interrupt me!--hear me out!" said the young girl. "You liked Hector
Coles for a corresponding reason--because he pretended to fall into all
your notions, and complimented you on your 'piety' and 'Christian dignity,'
when he was all the while laughing at you behind your back. You would have
been pleased to see me discard the man I loved, and marry the man I could
never love while I lived,--because your own likes and dislikes were in the
way, and because you believed that in the position of mother-in-law you
could manage the one and could _not_ manage the other."
"Well, what else, to your mother, Miss Impertinence!" broke in the lady who
had been so voluble.
"Oh, a great deal more!" answered Margaret, with a manner not very
different from a sneer. "To-day, since you have known that for one spot on
a character otherwise so noble, I have broken off all relations with
Carlton Brand, you have done nothing but sit here and preach me Christian
resignation in words that your own heart was as steadily denying. When a
true mother would have tried to console, you have tortured. And you have
ended all by alleging that Carlton Brand and his father have acquired their
money dishonorably, because they have both been lawyers,--and that such
money must be accursed in the hands of any one who holds it."
"I have said so, and I have a right to say so!" echoed the mother. "You may
let loose your ribald tongue against the author of your being, ungrateful
girl; but the truth is from heaven, and must be told--wealth obtained in
any manner by day, upon which a blessing cannot be asked at night, is
itself accursed, and curses every one who partakes in the use of it."
"And every dollar that has been dishonestly obtained, then, should at once
be restored to the rightful owner, I suppose--in order to escape the
curse?" suggested Margaret.
"Every dollar, and at once; for, as the Bible says, the spoiler cometh as a
thief in the night, and no one can say how soon the judgment may fall!"
answered the mother, triumphantly and in full confidence that she had at
last silenced her refractory child by a strictly orthodox quotation.
"How much are we worth, mother?" was the singular question which followed
this supposed annihilation of all argument.
"Why, you know as well as I do that we have eighty thousand in stocks and
in bank; and this property and that at Pottsville is believed to be worth
twenty or thirty thousand more. We are worth, as you call it, more than a
hundred thousand, and the whole of it will be yours some day--not very long
first, when I have gone, as I hope and trust I may say, to my reward. You
are rich, my child, and I am glad to see that you think of these things at
last, as you may be kept from throwing yourself away _again_."
The voice and whole manner of the mother were much more amiable than they
had been at any time since the rising of her daughter from the sofa; for
nothing seemed to restore the tone of her agitated feeling like references,
from whatever source, to her wealth and position.
"A hundred thousand. There is not nearly enough, then!" The words were half
muttered, but Mrs. Burton Hayley distinctly heard them. And she saw
something on the face of the young girl which she by no means understood,
as the latter drew from her bosom the lower ends of the gold chain
depending there, and unclasped the back of a rather large and very thick
locket, the front of which presented a miniature in ivory of the handsome,
well-whiskered and pleasant-looking Mr. Burton Hayley, her deceased father.
Though she raised the locket to her lips and kissed it reverently, that
something on the face had not changed when she took from its unsuspected
concealment a small slip of newspaper, neatly folded and of size enough to
contain some twenty or thirty lines of small type. The mother's eyes were
by this time wide open with astonishment and partial fear that her daughter
had lost her wits in the agitation of that day. The paper looked old and
yellow. Margaret unrolled it and said:
"Mother, here is something that I have carried with me night and day for
five years past. I found it at that time, when clipping old newspapers in
the attic, for my scrap-book. I marked the date on the back--it is eighteen
years old, and the paper was a Harrisburgh one of that time. Have you your
glasses with you, or shall I read it?"
"Why, child, are you crazy? What has that slip of paper to do with the
subject of which we were talking?"
"Perhaps you can tell quite as well as myself, after I read it," answered
Margaret. And she moved nearer to the one unshuttered window of the parlor,
to secure a better light for the small type and dingy paper, the face of
her mother gradually changing, meanwhile, from the surprise which had
filled it, to a whiteness which seemed born of terror. Margaret read:
"SOUTTER AND OTHERS VS. HAYLEY AND OTHERS.--This somewhat
remarkable railroad case closed yesterday, and the complaint
was dismissed. Judge L----, in granting the motion for a
dismissal, took occasion to remark that he had seldom
performed a more painful duty. That the railroad company had
been defrauded to the extent of not less than eighty
thousand dollars by Burton Hayley, the contractor, was one
of the conclusions--the learned judge said--in which all
would unfortunately agree. But the operation had been
managed with great skill, and legal evidence of what was
morally certain had not been produced. He should therefore
grant the motion, with the regret expressed, and with the
hope that in a future prosecution the evidence which was
certainly demanded might be forthcoming, and the defrauded
company at least find themselves in a position to punish the
wrong-doer. We hear it stated, upon authority which seems
reliable, that Hayley has heretofore been known as a
reliable man, and that he has undoubtedly been urged to
steps which he must regret during his whole life, even if
justice does not reach him, or conscience compel him to make
restitution,--by the demands made upon him in behalf of a
ruinously expensive family, and by evil advice which he has
no doubt received from the same quarter. Hayley will
probably leave Harrisburgh at once, to enjoy what may be
left of his ill-gotten gains in some locality where his
antecedents are less fully understood."
Mrs. Burton Hayley had sunk back into her chair at the moment when Margaret
read the first words, and she remained silent till the close. Her face was
white, except that a single red spot burned in the very centre of either
cheek. Her daughter looked steadily upon her for an instant after she had
concluded. Still neither spoke. The mother's eyes had in them something of
that baleful light shown by the orbs of a wild beast when driven to its
corner; and they, with the crimson spotted cheeks, were not pleasant things
to look upon. At last Margaret asked:
"Did you ever hear of this before? Was that man my father?"
"What of it? Yes!" The words were nearer spat out than spoken. Margaret
glanced, perhaps involuntarily, at the ostentatious Bible on its carved
stand.
"Was that money ever repaid to the railroad company?"
For just one instant the lips of Mrs. Burton Hayley moved as if she was
about to utter a falsehood little less black than the original crime had
been. If she had for that instant intended to do so, she thought better of
it and jerked out: "How should I know? I suppose there is no use in telling
a lie about it, to _you_! No!"
"So I thought!" said Margaret Hayley. "That eighty thousand dollars, then,
has been standing for fifteen years, and the interest upon it would nearly
double the sum. We owe that railroad company, or so many members of the
original company as may be yet alive, not less than one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars. We have only an hundred thousand or a very little more,
but that will be something. Of course, after what you have just said of the
curse that clings to ill-gotten gain, you will join me in paying over every
dollar in our possession, at once."
Mrs. Burton Hayley sprang up from her chair with more celerity than she had
before exhibited. "Margaret Hayley, are you a born fool?" she almost
screamed.
"No, nor a born _hypocrite_!" the young girl replied. Again her eyes went
round to the Bible, and those of the mother followed hers as if they were
compelled by a charm. Then those of the latter drooped, and they did not
rise again as she said, in a much lower voice:
"You know the secret. I am in your power. But I am your mother, and it may
be quite as well for you to be merciful to me as well as to yourself. Upon
what terms will you give me that paper and promise never to speak of it or
of the affair to any one without my consent?"
"I will not give you the paper upon _any_ terms!" was the answer. "That has
been my shame and my torture for five years, and must still accompany me.
But I will be your accomplice in crime and make the promise you require, on
three conditions and those only. _First_, that you drop all hypocrisy when
speaking to _me_, whatever you may do before the world. _Second_, that you
never speak one disrespectful word of Carlton Brand, again, in my hearing.
He is dead to me: let your hatred of him die with him, or at least let me
hear no word of it. _Third_, that you urge no person upon me as a husband.
Present me whom you please--throw me into any company you wish; but say not
one word to force me into marriage with Hector Coles or any other person.
This will not break my heart--I know it. I shall marry some time, no doubt,
when I find the man who can supply that place in my heart which has to-day
been left empty,--without any foible or weakness to make him an unfit match
for my own _stainless_ blood!"
There was a bitter emphasis upon the penultimate word, and Mrs. Burton
Hayley distinctly recognized it. She recognized, too, the somewhat singular
prophecy made by a young girl on the very day of her final parting with the
man she had loved so dearly--that _she would yet find another to fill her
heart more completely_. Most young persons think very differently at the
moment of the great first sorrow, believe that the vacant niche can never
be filled, and make painful promises of hopeless lives and celibacy, to
cancel those promises some day amid blushes of regret or peals of laughter.
Mrs. Burton Hayley recognized the singularity then, and she may have had
reason to recall that prophecy at another day in the near future.
But there was yet something that she must do, to seal that treaty of which
her daughter was the dictator. Her own compact was to be made: she made it.
"I will do as you wish, Margaret. They are hard terms to set, to _your
mother_; but I accept them."
"Very well, then. We understand each other, now; and I hope there will
never be another painful word between us. I will try to speak none, and for
both our sakes I hope you will be as careful. Now leave me, please. I will
draw to this other shutter, for I need darkness, silence and rest--yes,
rest!"
The closed blind left the room in almost total dusk. The mother left the
room, stepping slowly and appearing to bear about with her a dim
consciousness that within the past half-hour her relative position with her
daughter had been most signally changed. Margaret Hayley threw herself once
more on the sofa, buried her fevered brow and her dishevelled hair in the
soft, cool, white pillow, and sought that wished-for "rest." Alas! no
tyrant ever invented a torture-bed so full of weary turnings and agonized
prayers for deliverance or oblivion, as the softest couch whereon young
love, suddenly and hopelessly bereft, reaches out its arms in vain, finds
emptiness, and falls back despairing--moaning for the lost twin of its
soul! The agony may be all forgotten to-morrow, in the sunshine, and the
intoxication of music, and the voices of friends, and the far-off dawning
of a new passion; but oh, what is the martyrdom of to-night.
* * * * *
The third and last of these supplementary scenes, occurring at nearly the
same period in the afternoon as the second, has its location at the house
of Robert Brand, and a part of it in the same room where we have before
seen the testy invalid while receiving the news of his son's defection and
disgrace.
Robert Brand was once more back in his easy-chair, his injured limb again
propped on the pillows, and his face showing all those contortions of
extraordinary pain likely to be induced by his imprudent ride and the
agitation attending it. Satisfied, now, that his son was not dead, the
tender father had again died out in him; but made aware by a succession of
facts, which he could neither understand nor doubt, that that son, just
characterized, even by himself, as a hopeless coward, had since that time
been fighting, and fighting without any evidence of cowardice, in a species
of hand-to-hand conflict likely to try the courage quite as seriously as
the shock of any ordinary battle,--he was mentally in a state of confusion
on the young man's account, altogether unusual with him and not a little
painful. He did not curse any more, or at least no more of his curses were
aimed at the head of his son.
Poor little Elsie had been left without a hope of reconciliation between
her father and her brother, after the hurling of that wild and wicked curse
and the exile from his home which it involved. But the episode of the
supposed death had made a diversion in Carlton's favor; her father had
returned from the search for his son's body, worried and unsettled if not
mollified; and the affectionate soul thought that the opportunity might be
a favorable one for securing the reversal of the cruel sentence, with
concealment from her brother that any such words had ever been uttered, and
his eventual return home as if nothing painful or unpleasant had occurred.
"Blessed are the peace-makers!" says very high authority; and most blessed
of all are those who, like little Elsie, ignoring their own suffering and
ill-treatment, strive to bring together the divided members of a once happy
household!
But the little girl was not half aware how stubborn was the material upon
which she was trying to work, or how deeply seated was the feeling of
mortification which had embittered the whole nature of the man who held
cowardice to be the most unpardonable of vices.
"Hold your tongue, girl!" was the severe reply to her suggestion that there
might be some mistake, after all--that poor Carlton had enemies, and they
had no doubt labored to place him in a false position--and that he would be
sorry, to the last day he lived, if when Carlton returned home, as he
probably would do that night if nothing serious had really happened to him,
he should say one word to drive him away again, to leave himself without a
son, and her without a brother. "Hold your tongue, girl! You are a little
fool, and do not know what you are talking about. If you do not wish to
follow your brother, you had best not meddle any more in the relations
which I choose to establish with a son who has disgraced himself and me!"
"But suppose poor Carlton _should_ be dead, after all, father? Who knows
but some stranger may have come by in a wagon, seen the body lying on the
ground, picked it up and carried it away to the Coroner's?"
"Eh! What is that you say?" For the instant Robert Brand was startled by
the suggestion and his heart sunk as well as softened at the recurring
thought that his son might indeed be dead. But the thought was just as
instantaneous, how general was the objection to touching an unknown dead
body, and how unlikely that any such course should have been adopted by
strangers, while any acquaintance, removing the body at all, would
certainly have brought it home to his own house. No--he was alive; and
that belief was once more full in the mind of Robert Brand as he said:
"What do I care if he _is_ dead! I believe I could forgive him better, if I
knew that he was, and that I should never again set eyes on the likeness of
a man with the soul of a cat or a sheep! If he is alive, as I believe he
is, let him never come near this house again if he does not wish to hear
words said that he will remember and curse the last thing before he dies!"
A sharp spasm of pain concluded this unhallowed utterance, and words
followed that have no business on this page. Elsie Brand fired again, when
she found all her pleading in vain, and broke out with:
"You are a miserable heartless old wretch, and I have a great mind to go
out of this house, this very moment, and never come into it again as long
as I live, unless you send for me to come back with my brother!"
"Go, and the quicker the better!" writhed the miserable man, in the midst
of a spasm of pain. "If I hear one more impertinent word out of you, you
_will_ go, whether you wish to go or not, and you will never come back
again unless you come on your knees!"
What might have been the next word spoken by either, and whether that next
word might not indeed have wrought the separation of father and daughter,
no one can say. For at that moment came a fortunate interruption, in the
sound of carriage wheels coming rapidly up the lane, and easily heard
through the open doors--then the furious barking of a dog, the yell of a
woman's voice, and a volley of fearful curses poured out from the rougher
lips of a man. Elsie, alarmed, but perhaps rather glad than otherwise to
have the threatening conversation so suddenly ended, rushed out of the
room, through the parlor, to the front piazza, where she joined the general
confusion with a scream of affright, hearing which, the invalid, who had
before, more than once that day, proved how superior the mind could be to
the disablements of the body, hurled one more oath at the people who would
not even allow him to suffer in quiet, started again from his chair,
grasped his heavy cane and stumped hurriedly to the door, writhing in agony
and half crazed with pain and vexation. There the sight which had the
instant before met the eyes of his daughter, met his own, though the effect
produced by it upon himself was so very different that instead of screaming
he dropped against the lintel of the front door in a loud explosion of
laughter.
There was a horse and buggy in the lane, very near the gate--the horse
unheld, rearing and squealing, but making no attempt to run away as might
have been expected. Close beside the vehicle, a man easily recognizable as
Dr. Philip Pomeroy, was engaged in a hand-to-hand (or is it
hand-to-_mouth_?) conflict with Carlo, the big watch-dog, using the butt of
his whip, the lash of it, his boots, and any other weapon of offence in his
possession, against the determined assaults of the powerful brute that
really seemed disposed to make a meal of the man of medicine. The doctor
fought well, in that new revival of the sports of the Roman arena, but he
was terribly bested (by which it is only intended to use an old word of the
days of chivalry, and not to make an atrocious pun upon _beast-ed_;) and
just at the moment when Robert Brand's eyes took in all the particulars of
the scene, the human combatant, following up a temporary advantage, lunged
ahead a little too far, lost his balance or caught his foot, and went
headlong on the top of the dog, the contest being thereafter conducted on
the ground and in the partial obscurity of the fence. At the same instant,
too, the tall, bare-headed and bare-armed figure of old Elspeth Graeme
appeared from behind the corner of the house, and the voice of that
Caledonian servitor was heard screaming out:
"Here, Carlo! Here, lad! coom awa, ye daft deevil! Here! here! coom awa,
lad!"
Elsie joined with a feeble "Here, Carlo!" from the piazza; and Robert
Brand, if he could have found voice, would probably have assisted in
calling off the dog; but Carlo, a formidable animal in size, black, with a
few dashes of white, compounded of the Newfoundland and the Mount St.
Bernard, with a surreptitious cross of the bull-dog (such immorality has
been known even in canine families, to the great regret of precisian
dog-fanciers)--Carlo had no idea whatever of "throwing up the sponge,"
(which with a dog consists, we believe, in dropping his tail), and might
have fought on until death, doomsday, or the loss of his teeth from old
age, arrived to stop him--had not Elspeth closed in with a "Hech! ye born
deevil! Ye'll aye be doin' more than ye'r tauld!" grasped the huge animal
by the nape of the neck, and dragged him away very much as if she had been
dealing with a kitten.
Thus relieved, the doctor recovered his feet; but he was--as Elspeth
described him in a communication made not long after--"a sair lookin'
chiel!" He had lost his hat, dusted his coat, and found a sad rent in one
leg of his nether garments, not to mention the rage which flashed in his
eye and almost foamed from his mouth. For the first moment after the rescue
he seemed to have a fancy for "pitching into" old Elspeth, unreasonable as
such a course would have been after her calling off the dog and finally
lugging him off by main force; and he did hurl after her an appellation or
two which might have furnished a rhyme to the name of the Scottish national
disease; but the stout serving woman quelled him with this significant
threat, and went on her way, dragging the dog towards his kennel in the
backyard:
"'Deed, if ye can't keep a ceevil tongue in yer heid, I'll no be holdin'
the tyke awa from ye a bit langer, and he'll eat ye up, I doubt!"
At that juncture the discomfited doctor caught sight of Robert Brand and
his daughter, in the door and on the piazza, and he strode in to them
without further ado, whip still in hand, rage still in his face, and
threatening enough in his manner to indicate that he intended to cowhide so
many of the family as he could find, male and female.
"Who let out that infernal dog?" was his first salutation, without first
addressing either the old man or his daughter by name.
"He must have broken loose, himself. Indeed, Doctor, we are so sorry--"
began little Elsie, who had really been frightened out of her wits, and who
had that organ unknown to the phrenologists, called Hospitality, very
largely developed.
"Hold your tongue, girl, and let me attend to my own business!" was the
surly interruption of the invalid father, who had stopped laughing, and who
had at that juncture a very low development of the corresponding organ. "We
are not sorry at all. Dr. Pomeroy, I told you this morning, when I ordered
you out of this house, never to come near it again; and you had better paid
attention to the order."
"Then _you_ had that dog set loose!"
"That is a lie!" was the response. The doctor, who had used the same
expression in a still more offensive form, not long before, was getting the
chalice returned to his lips at very short notice. And the old man, in
denying the act, intended to tell the exact truth--he had not turned the
dog loose, or set him upon the doctor, except secondarily. Some hours
before, when the medical man had just been dismissed for the first time, he
had told the Scottish woman that 'he would bundle her out, neck and crop,
if she did not set the dog on that man if he ever came near the house
again!' and she had promised to obey his orders: that was all! Carlo, a
dear friend of his young master, had always hated the doctor, who was his
enemy, and never passed without snapping and growling at him; and the old
woman well knew the fact. Consequently, when she saw the buggy dashing up
the lane, and recognized it, she had religiously kept her promise, darted
round to the kennel, unloosed the dog and directed his attention to the
obnoxious individual, with a "Catch him, laddie!" that sent him flying at
the doctor's throat just as he stepped to the ground. And it was only when
the old woman believed the punishment going a little too far and the
victim likely to be eaten up in very deed, that she had interposed and
dragged the enraged brute from his prey. All this was unknown to both
father and daughter, who merely supposed that the dog had broken loose at
that awkward moment; and Robert Brand's disclaimer, though a very
uncourteous one, had the merit of truth. But the doctor, just then enraged
beyond endurance, literally "boiled over" at the word.
"I lie, do I?" he foamed. "If you were not a miserable cripple, I would
horse-whip you on your own door-step, old as you are!"
"Oh, Doctor! oh, father!" pleaded the frightened Elsie, who did not know
what might be coming after this.
"Hold your tongue, girl!" again spoke Robert Brand, who still stood leaning
against the lintel of the door. "Horsewhip me, would you, you poisoning
Copperhead! If I could not beat out your brains with this stick, I could
set a woman at you who would take you across her knee and spank you till
you were flat like a pancake!"
Dr. Pomeroy thought of the woman who had dragged off the dog, and had some
doubts whether she could not indeed do all that her master promised. He
seemed to have the luck, that day, to fall into the way of people sturdy of
arm and strong of will!
"What do you _want_ here?" was the inquiry of the old man, before the
doctor could answer again, and remembering that there might be some special
errand upon which he had a right to come.
"You have remembered it, have you?" was the response. "Well, then, I want
your thief of a son! Is he in this house?"
"Oh, he was a coward this morning: now he is a thief, is he? What do you
want of him?"
"He committed theft at my house not more than an hour ago; and I am going
to find him if he is in the State. Once more--is he here?"
"What did he steal?" asked the father with a sneer, while poor Elsie stood
nearly fainting and yet unable to move from the spot, at that new charge
against her brother.
"A woman." Elsie felt relieved; the old man sneered.
"Well, I can only say that if he took away any woman belonging to _you_, he
must have a singular taste!"
"Robert Brand"--and the doctor spoke in a tone of low and concentrated
passion--"once more and for the last time I ask you whether your son is in
this house, with Eleanor Hill, my--my adopted daughter, in his company."
"Eleanor Hill!" gasped Elsie, but no one heard her.
"Dr. Pomeroy," answered Robert Brand, "you do not deserve any answer except
a blow, but I will give you one. My son, as you call him, Carlton Brand, is
not here, and will never be here again while I live, unless to be thrust
out like a dog. How many girls he has, or where he conceals them, is none
of my business, or _yours_! Now go, if you know when you are well off, for
as sure as God lets me live, if I ever see you approaching this house
again, I will shoot you from the window with my own hand."
Something in the tone told Dr. Pomeroy that both the assertion and the
threat were true. He turned without another word, stepped to his buggy,
mounted into it and drove away.
"He is alive, father--thank God!" said Elsie Brand, reverently, when the
unwelcome visitor had disappeared and she was assisting the invalid back to
his chair of suffering. That one assurance had been running through her
little head, putting out all other thoughts, since the remark of the doctor
that Carlton had been at his house not an hour before.
"He is as dead to me as if he had been buried ten years!" was the reply of
the implacable father, who stood in momentary peril of the grave from some
sudden turn of his disease, and yet who had not even taken that first step
towards preparation for the Judgment, comprised in pity and forgiveness!