ONCE MORE AT WEST PHILADELPHIA--SEPTEMBER AND CHANGE--LAST
GLIMPSES OF KITTY HOOD AND DICK COMPTON--ROBERT BRAND AND
HIS INVITED GUEST--THE NEWS OF DEATH--OLD ESPETH GRAEME AS A
SEERESS--THE DESPATCH FROM ALEXANDRIA--THE QUEST OF BRAND
AND MARGARET HAYLEY.
Hurrying rapidly towards its close, this narration must become yet more
desultory and at times even more fragmentary, than it has been in the past.
The seven-league boots of story must be pulled on, however unwillingly, and
many a spot that would have been lingered lovingly over at the commencement
of the journey, cleared now with a glance and a bound. The few pages that
remain, in fact, may justify a change in the figure, appearing more like
lightning glimpses from railroad-car windows than connected and leisurely
views of the whole landscape of story.
September on West Philadelphia, where it seems but yesterday, though really
three months ago, that we saw the fair June morning and inhaled the perfume
of the sweet June roses. Those roses, the companions in life and death of
that with which Margaret Hayley was toying on the morning when she met the
crushing blow of her life,--had long since sighed out their last breath of
fragrance and faded away, to be followed now by the bright green leaves
amid which they had clustered and peeped and hidden. The waving grain
fields which had formed so pleasant a portion of the June landscape, were
changed as much, though less sadly. Bright golden wheat that had formed
part of it, lay heaped in the farmer's granaries; and puffed loaves with
crisp brown crust, made from that which had still further progressed in its
round of usefulness to man, lay on the baker's counter. There was short
stubble where the grain had waved, and over it the second growth of clover
was weaving its green mantle of concealment. In the peach orchards the
fruit hung ripe to tempt the fingers; the apples were growing more golden
amid the masses of leaves where they coyly sheltered themselves from the
sun; and on the garden trellises there already began to be dots of purple
among the amber green of the grape clusters. There was less of bright,
glossy green in the foliage--nature's summer coat had been some time worn
and began to give tokens of the rain and wind and sun it had encountered.
The birds sang in the branches, but their song seemed more staid and less
sprightly, as if they too had felt the passage of the months, grown older,
and could be playful children no more. Occasionally the long clarionet
chirp of a locust would break out and trill and die away upon the air,
telling of fading summer and the decline of life so sweetly and yet so
sadly that decay became almost a glory. The mellow, golden early afternoon
of the year, as June had been its late morning--not less beautiful,
perhaps, but oh how immeasurably less sprightly and bewitching--how much
more calm, sober and subduing!
Nature moves onward, and humanity seldom stands still, if it does not
outstrip the footsteps of the mother. Something of the changes that had
fallen during the preceding three months upon that widely varied group of
residents beyond the Schuylkill who have supplied characters to this
narration, is already known: what remains may be briefly told at this stage
and in the closing events soon to follow. Of those changes to Eleanor Hill,
Nathan Bladesden and Dr. Pomeroy, directly; of those to the members of the
Brand household, yet sooner; of those to two minor characters who will make
no further appearance upon the stage during this life-drama, at once. Let
that two be Dick Compton, farmer, and Kitty Hood, school-mistress. The
latter yet managed her brood of troublesome children, who still sailed
their vessels that had succeeded to the evanescent three-master "Snorter,
of Philadelphia," at playtime, in the little pond before the rural
school-house, and performed other juvenile operations by sea and shore; but
a great change had fallen upon the merry, self-willed little girl with the
brown eyes and the wavy brown hair. The school had a mistress, but that
mistress had a _master_--a sort of "power behind the throne" not seldom
managed by one sex or the other, towards all persons "in authority." No
bickerings at the school-house door, to be afterwards forgotten in
explanations and kisses, now. Richard Compton found his way there,
occasionally and perhaps oftener, but he always came in at once instead of
the school-mistress going out to meet him with a bashful down-casting of
the eyes and a pretty flush of modesty upon the cheek; and he made so
little concealment about the visits that he often managed them so as to
wait until school was dismissed and then walked all the way home with her!
If the young lovers yet had secrets, they found some other place than the
neighborhood of the school-house door, for their utterance. And the big
girls and the bigger boys, who used to enjoy such multitudes of sly gibes
at the school-mistress and her "beau," had lost all their material of
amusement. The very last attempt at jocularity in that direction had been
some time before effectually "squelched" by the dictum of the biggest boy
in school: "You boys, jest stop peeking at 'em! He ain't her beau no
more--he's her husband; and you jest let 'em do what they're a mind to!"
That is the fact, precisely--no less assured because approached with a
little necessary circumlocution. Dick Compton had come back from
Gettysburgh with the Reserves, unwounded and a hero. Carlton Brand was
gone, and the only object of jealousy removed. And before Kitty had quite
emerged from her "valley of humiliation" at the unfortunate slap and
unpatriotic upbraiding, she found it too late to emerge at all. The
wedding-day had been set and the marriage taken place, almost before she
had any idea that such things were in immediate contemplation! Kitty Hood
was "Mrs. Richard Compton," and that was the secret of the visits no longer
stolen and the unabashed walking home together. Not that the visits of the
young farmer to the school excited no commotion, now-a-days, but that the
commotion was of a different character. All the big boys and some of the
big girls hated him, as he strode up the aisle with his broad, hearty:
"'Most ready to go home, Kitty?" and his proprietary taking possession of
her with his eyes: hated him because he had to some extent come between her
and them, and because there was a rumor that "after November he was not
going to allow her to keep school any more." Perhaps there were good
reasons for this resolution, into which we shall certainly make no more
attempt to pry than was made by the big boys themselves! God's blessing on
the young couple, with as much content in the farm-house as can well fall
to the lot of a small indefinite number,--and with as few
misunderstandings, coldnesses and jealousies as may be deemed necessary by
the powers that preside over married life, to fit them for that life in
which "they neither marry nor are given in marriage!" And so exit Mr. and
Mrs. Richard Compton, for whom we have done all that the friend and the
minister could do, leaving Providence and the doctor to take care of the
remainder.
* * * * *
That matter properly disposed of, it becomes necessary to visit the house
of Robert Brand once more, on the morning of Friday the eighteenth day of
September, after an absence from it of nearly the three months before
designated. Change here, too. Besides whatever might have been wrought in
the master of the house during that period, of which we shall be soon
advised, there had been a marked difference wrought in the relations
sustained by good, warm-hearted, sisterly, darling little Elsie. There had
been no return to the house, of the old family physician, first
expatriated, so to speak, by word of mouth, and then bull-dogged and
threatened with the protrusion of loaded muskets from convenient windows
and the application of the strong arms of old Elspeth Graeme who could
handle the bull-dog. The doctor's-bill had long before been settled, and
(let us put the whole truth upon record) spent! Then Robert Brand had been
again seized with terrible illness and suffering, rendering a physician
necessary; and what resource was left except the before-despised
professional services of Dr. James Holton? None whatever. So the old man
thought and so Elsie Brand _knew_. Result, Dr. James Holton had suddenly
found himself, in July, the medical adviser of the Brands, and the adviser,
mental, moral and medical, of Elsie. He had since so remained, seeming to
do marvels at re-establishing the shattered constitution of the invalid and
setting him once more on his natural feet, and with a pleasant prospect
that all the difficulties were smoothed out of the way of his eventual
union with Elsie, when a little more time and a little enlarged practice
should make their marriage advisable. And Elsie had grown almost happy once
more--quite happy in the regard of a good man whom she loved with all the
warmth of the big heart in her plump little body, and yet restless, nervous
and tearful when she thought of the brother cherished so dearly, of his
broken love, his alienated father, his absence in a strange land, and the
probability that she could never again lay her golden head upon his breast
and look up into his eyes as to the noblest and most godlike of them all.
At a little before noon on that September morning, a single figure was
moving slowly backward and forward, up and down, the length of the garden
walk in the rear of the house of Robert Brand, the trellises of the grapery
above and on either side, for nearly the whole distance, flecking the
autumn sunshine that fell on the walk and on the moving figure, while from
the vines themselves peeped the thick clusters of amber fruit upon which
the purple bloom was just beginning to throw a hint of October and luscious
ripeness. Late flowers bloomed in the walks and borders on either side;
occasionally a bird sent up its quiet and contented twitter from the top of
the vine where it was tasting a premature grape; a cicala's chirp rang
feebly out, swelled up to a volume that filled the whole garden, then died
away again, an indefinable feeling of stillness seeming to lie in the very
sound. The sunlight was golden, the sky perfectly cloudless, the air balmy
and indolent; beneath the trellis and beside the walk two long rustic
settees combined with the wooing air and beckoned to closed eyes,
day-dreams and repose; and yet the very opposite of repose was expressed in
the appearance and movement of that single figure.
It was that of Robert Brand, three months older than we saw him in the
early summer, far less an invalid than he had been at that time, as
evidenced by the absence of his swathed limb and supporting cane, yet more
broken within that period than most men break in ten twelvemonths--more
than he had himself broken before in the same period of his severest years
of bodily suffering. Something of the iron expression of the mouth was
gone, and in its place were furrowed lines of suffering that the torture of
the body could scarcely have imprinted there without the corresponding
agony of the mind; he was more stooped in the shoulders than he had been
when before observed; and down the side-hair that showed from beneath his
broad hat--hair that had been fast but evenly changing from gray to white,
there now lay great streaks of finger thickness, white as the driven snow
and in painful contrast with the other,--such streaks as are not often made
in hair or beard except by the pressure of terrible want, a great sorrow,
or a month of California fever. This was not all--he walked with head
dejectedly bent, and hands beneath the skirts of his coat; and when he
glanced up for a moment it could be seen that his lip trembled and the eye
had a sad, troubled expression that might have told of tears past, tears
to come, or a feeling far too absorbing for either. Alas!--the old man was
indeed suffering. The shame of a life had been followed by its sorrow. He
had erred terribly in meeting the one, and paid the after penalty: how
could he muster fortitude enough to meet the other?
To him old Elspeth Graeme, large-faced, massive-framed, and powerful
looking as of old, with a countenance no more changed during the preceding
three months than a granite boulder in the mountains might have been
affected by a little wind and storm during the same lapse of time. Behind
her Carlo, who since the disappearance of his young master seemed to have
found no one else except the old Scottish woman who could pretend to
exercise any control over him, and who consequently had attached himself to
her almost exclusively. The master, who was making one of his turns up the
walk, saw her as she emerged from the house, and met her as she approached,
with inquiry in face and voice.
"Well?"
"Stephen has just come ben with the carriage, and the leddy is in the
house, though the Laird kens what ye'r wantin' of her here, ava!"
"Hold your tongue, woman! When I need your opinion I will ask you for it!"
This in a tone very much like that of the Robert Brand of old, in little
squabbles of the same character. Then with the voice much softened: "Is
Margaret Hayley in the house, do you say?"
"'Deed she is, then, and she'll just be tired of waiting for ye, as the
lassie's gone, gin ye dinna haste a bit!"
"I will come--no, ask her to step into the garden; I will see her here."
"He's gettin' dafter than ever, I'm thinkin', to invite a born leddy out
into the garden to see _him_, instead of ganging in till her as he should!"
muttered the old serving-woman as she turned away to obey the injunction,
and in that way satisfying, for the time, her part of the inevitable
quarrel. The moment after the back door of the house opened again, and
Margaret Hayley came out alone. Stately as ever in step, though perhaps a
little slower; the charm of youth and budding womanhood in face and figure,
with the broad sun flashing on her dark hair and seeming to crown her with
a dusky glory; but something calmer, softer, sadder, ay, even older,
visible in her whole appearance and manner, than could have been read there
in that first morning of June, upon the piazza of her own house. She, too,
had been living much within a brief period: it may be that the course of
this narration has furnished the reader with better data for judging _how_
much, than any that lay in the possession of Robert Brand.
She approached the end of the arbor from which he was emerging, and he met
her before she had reached it. Her face, as they met, wore an unmistakable
expression of wonder--his an equally unmistakable one of pain. Neither
spoke for one moment, then the old lawyer held out his hand and said:
"You wonder, Margaret, why I sent for you?"
"Did _you_ send, really, Mr. Brand? I thought that perhaps Stephen had made
a mistake and that Elsie wished to see me for some reason."
"No, Elsie has been absent all the morning, and may not return for an hour
or two yet," was the reply. "_I_ sent for you. I had a reason. Old men do
not trifle with young women, perhaps you are aware." There was that in his
voice which displayed strong suffering and even an effort to speak. The
young girl saw and heard, and the wonder in her eyes deepened into anxiety
as she said:
"You surprise me by something in your manner, Mr. Brand. You almost alarm
me. Pray do not keep me in suspense. I think I am not so well able to bear
anxiety and mystery as I used to be. Why did you send for me?"
"Poor girl!" the lips of Robert Brand muttered, so low that she did not
catch the words. Much less did she hear the two words that followed, in
little more than a whispered groan: "Poor girl!--poor father!" Then he
took one of the white hands in his, the eyes of the young girl deepening in
wonder and anxiety all the while,--led her a little down the path to one of
the rustic seats under the trellis, dropped down upon it and drew her down
beside him, uttering a sigh, as he took his seat, like that of a person
over-fatigued.
"You loved my son." He did not look at her as he spoke the words.
"Mr. Brand--I beg of you--" and then Margaret Hayley paused, her throat
absolutely choked with that to which she could not give utterance. He did
not seem to heed her, but went on.
"You loved my son. So did I. God knows how _I_ loved him, and I believe
that your love was as true as heaven."
"Mr. Brand--for that heaven's sake, why do you say this, to kill us both? I
cannot listen--" she rose from the seat with a start and stood before him
as if ready to fly; but he yet retained her hand and drew her down again.
"We both loved him, and yet we killed him! You drove him from you. I cast
him off and cursed him. We killed him. He is dead!"
"Dead?" The word was not a question--it was not an exclamation--it was not
a cry of mortal agony--it was all three blended. Then she uttered no other
word but sat as one stupefied, while he went on, his lip quivering with
that most painful expression which has before been noticed, and his hand
fumbling at his pocket for something that he seemed to wish to extract from
it.
"Yes, he is dead. I have known it for two hours--for two long hours I have
known that I had _no son_." Type cannot indicate the melancholy fall of the
last two words, and the heart-broken feeling they conveyed. "My son loved
you, Margaret Hayley, better than he loved his old father. You loved him.
You should have been his wife. When I knew that he was dead, I tried to
conceal it from all until I could send for you, for I felt that it was only
here and from my lips that you should learn the truth. Some other might
have told you with less thought for your feelings, perhaps, than I
who--who--who was so proud of him. I have not been rough, have I? I did not
mean to be--I meant to be very gentle, to _you_, Margaret! See how broken I
am!"
So he was, poor old man!--broken in heart and voice, for then he gave way
and dropped his head upon one of his failing hands, overpowered, helpless,
little more than a child.
Who shall describe the feelings of Margaret Hayley as she heard the words
which told her of that one bereavement beyond hope--as she heard them in
those piteous tones and from that agonized father--a father no more?
Absence, silence, shame, separation of heart from heart upon earth, hope
against hope and fear without a name--all were closed and finished at once
and forever, in that one great earthquake of fact, opening and swallowing
her world of thought--dead! Tears had not yet come--the blind agony that
precedes them if it does not render them impossible, was just then her
terrible portion.
"How did he--when--where--you have not told me--" A child just learning to
speak might have been making that feeble attempt at asking a connected
question. But Robert Brand understood her, too well. His hand, again
fumbling at his pocket, brought out that of which it had been in search,
and his trembling fingers half opened a newspaper and put it into hers, to
blast her sense with that greater certainty which seems to dwell in written
or printed intelligence than in the mere utterance of the lips--to destroy
the last lingering hope that might have remained and put the very dying
scene before the eyes so little fitted to look upon it. A line of ink was
drawn around part of one of the columns uppermost, and the reader had not
even the painful respite of looking to find what she dreaded. And of course
that paper was a copy of the _Dublin Evening Mail_, sent to Robert Brand by
one of his distant relatives in England who had chanced to see what it
contained--the graphic account of the drowning of Carlton Brand from the
deck of the despatch-steamer, of the finding of the body and the burial in
the little graveyard back of the Hill of Howth, written by that attached
friend of a night, Henry Fitzmaurice.
Margaret Hayley read through that account, every word of which seemed to
exhaust one more drop from the life-blood at her heart,--in stony silence
and without a motion that could have been perceived. Then the paper slid
from her hands to the ground, she turned her head towards Robert Brand with
that slow and undecided motion so sad to see because it indicates a
palsying of the quick natural energies; and the instant after, that took
place which told, better than any other action could have done, how much
each had built upon that foundation of an expected near and dear
relationship. Robert Brand met that hopeless gaze, reading her whole secret
even as his own was being read. Then he opened his arms with a cry that was
almost a scream: "My daughter!" and the poor girl fell into them and flung
her own around his neck with the answering cry: "Father!" Both were sobbing
then; both had found the relief of tears. And a sadder spectacle was never
presented; for while Margaret Hayley, in the father of the man she had so
loved, was striving to embrace something of the dead form that never could
be embraced in reality, Robert Brand was still more truly clasping a
shadow--trying to find his lost son who could never come to his arms again,
in the thing which had been dearest to that son while in life!
"My son is dead! Come to me; live with me; be a sister to Elsie and a
daughter to me, or I shall never be able to bear my punishment!" sobbed the
broken old man, his arms still around the pliant form bowed upon his
shoulder; but there came no answer, as there needed none. Another voice
blended with those that had before spoken, at that moment, and again old
Elspeth Graeme stood under the trellis. But was it said a little while
since that no change had come upon her since the fading of the roses of
June?--certainly there had been a change startling and fearful to
contemplate, even in the few moments elapsing since her former speech with
her master. The rough, coarse face had assumed an expression in which
bitter sorrow was contending with terrible anger; the bluish gray eyes
literally blazed with such light as might have filled those of a tigress
robbed of her young; and it would have needed no violent stretch of fancy
to believe that she had revived one of the old traditions of her Gaelic
race and become a mad prophetess of wrath and denunciation. Strangely
enough, too, Carlo was again behind her, his eyes glaring upon the two
figures that occupied the bench, and his heavy tail moving with that slow
threatening motion which precedes the spring of the beast of prey! Was old
Elspeth Graeme indeed a wierd woman, and had the brute changed to be her
familiar and avenging spirit?
The serving-woman held something white in her hand, but neither Robert
Brand nor his visitor saw it. They but saw the tall form and the face
convulsed with wild feeling; and both seemed to shrink before a presence
mightier than themselves. The strange servitor spoke:
"Robert Brand, tell me gin I heard aright! Did ye say that Carlton Brand
was dead?"
"Who called you here, woman? Yes, he is dead! He was drowned on the Irish
coast three weeks ago," answered the bereaved father, oddly blending the
harsh authority of the master with the feeling which really compelled him
to make response.
"Then ye had better baith be dead wi' him--the father who banned his ain
flesh and bluid and wished that he would dee before his very eyne, and the
fause woman who had nae mair heart than to drive him frae her like a dog!"
"Woman!" broke out the master, but the interruption did not check her for
an instant. She went on, broadening yet more in her native dialect as she
grew yet more earnest:
"Nae, ye must e'en bide my wull and tak' it, Robert Brand! It has been
waiting here for mony a day, and I can haud it nae longer! He was my braw,
bonnie lad, and puir auld Elsie loed him better than ye a'! I harkit till
ye, Robert Brand, when yer curse went blawin' through the biggin like an
east win', and I ken'd ye was sawin a fuff to reap a swirl! Ye must ban and
dom yer ain bluid because it wad na fecht, drivin' the bairn awa frae kin
and kintra, and noo ye hae _my_ curse to stay wi ye, sleepin' and
wakin'--ye an' the fause beauty there that helpit ye work his dool!"
"Elspeth Graeme, if you say another word to insult Miss Hayley and outrage
me, I will forget that you are a woman and choke you where you stand!"
cried Robert Brand, no longer able to restrain himself, starting to his
feet and drawing Margaret to the same position, with his arm around her
waist. But the old woman did not flinch, or pause long in her denunciation.
"Nae, ye'll do naething of the kind, Robert Brand!--ye'll tak what must
come till ye!" And indeed it looked as if the great dog behind her would
have sprung at the throat of even the master if he had dared to lay hands
on his strange servitor. "Ye'll tak the curse, baith o' ye, and ye'll groan
under it until the day ye dee! Gin Carlton Brand is dead, ye murdered him,
and his eldritch ghaist shall come back and haunt ye, by night and by day,
in the mist o' the mountain and the crowd o' the street, till yer blastit
under it and think auld Hornie has grippet ye by the hearts! Ye'll sing
dool belyve, baith of ye! Auld Elsie tells ye so, and slight her if ye
daur!"
Before these last words were spoken, Margaret Hayley had slipped from the
grasp of the old man and was on her knees upon the ground, her proud spirit
fairly broken, her hands raised in piteous entreaty, and her lips uttering
feebly:
"Oh, we have both wronged him--I know it now. But spare me, good Elspeth,
now when my heart is broken; and spare _him_!"
But Robert Brand, as was only natural--Robert Brand, feeble as he was,
viewed the matter in a somewhat different light. Sorrow might have
softened him, but it had by no means entirely cured his temper; and the
serving-woman had certainly gone to such lengths in her freedom as might
have provoked a saint to something very much like anger. He grasped
Margaret from her kneeling position, apparently forgetting pain and
weakness,--set her upon the seat and poured out a volley of sound, strong
plain-English curses upon the old woman, that had no difficulty whatever in
being understood. Dog or no dog, it seemed probable that he might even have
given vent to his rage in a more forcible manner, when another interruption
occurred which somewhat changed the posture of affairs.
Elsie Brand came out from the house, hat upon head, and dressed as for a
ride. She had been taking one, in fact, with Dr. James Holton, who had
driven her over for a call upon one of her friends; and she looked radiant
enough to proclaim the truth that she had just left very pleasant company.
Her plump little form as tempting and Hebe-ish as ever; her bright yellow
hair a little "touzled" (it could not be possible that those people had
been laying their heads too near together in the carriage as they came
across the wood road!); and her blue eyes one flash of pleasure that had
forgotten all the pain and sorrow in the world,--she was a strange element,
just then, to infuse into the blending of griefs within that garden. She
came out with hasty step, calling to Elspeth.
"Elspeth! Elspeth! What keeps you so long? The boy is waiting to know if
father has any answer." Then seeing the others: "What, Margaret here with
father? How do you do, Margaret?" It was notable how the voice fell slowed
and softened, in speaking the last five words, and how the light went out
from her young eyes as she spoke. Though friends always, Margaret Hayley
and Elsie Brand had never been the same as before to each other, since that
painful June morning on the piazza. How could they be? But Margaret was
softened now, and she said, "Dear Elsie!" took the little girl in her arms
and kissed her, so that something of the past seemed to have returned.
But meanwhile another incident of importance was occurring. It may have
been noticed that Elspeth Graeme had something white in her hand when she
came out into the garden the second time. So she had, indeed--a folded note
addressed to Robert Brand, and with a wilderness of printing scattered over
the edges and half the face of the envelope; but she had quite forgotten
the fact in the sudden knowledge of the death of her young master and the
necessity of becoming an avenging Pythoness for the occasion. Now, Elsie's
words called the attention of the old lawyer to that something in her hand,
and he took it from her with a motion very much like a jerk, and the words:
"If you have a letter for me, why did you not give it to me instead of
standing here raving like a bedlamite--you old fool?"
"It is na a letter; it's what they ca' a telegraph, I'm thinkin'!" muttered
the old woman, a good deal taken down from her "high horse" by this
reminder of her delinquency, and with some sort of impression that this
must be a sufficient apology for not being in a hurry. "Somebody else dead,
belike!--we're a' goin' to the deevil as fast as auld Clootie can drag us,
I ken!"
It _was_ a telegraphic despatch which the old woman had delivered with such
signal celerity, and which Robert Brand tore open with celerity of a very
different character. He read, then read again, then his face paled, and a
strange, startled look came into his eyes, and he put one hand to his
forehead with the exclamation:
"What _is_ all this? Am I going mad?"
"What _is_ it, father?" and little Elsie pressed up to his side and took
the despatch from his unresisting fingers. And it was she who read it aloud
to the other wonderers, herself the most startled wonderer of all:
ALEXANDRIA, _Sept. 17th, 1863_.
_Robert Brand, West Philadelphia_,
_Care Messrs. ----, No. -- Market St. Philadelphia_.
Your son, Carlton Brand, dangerously wounded at Culpeper.
Lying in hospital here. If well enough, wish you would come
down and see him. He does not know of this.
E. H.
"Well, I'll be----!"
It was a plump, round oath that Robert Brand uttered--very improper under
any circumstances, and especially so in the presence of ladies,--but about
as natural, when all things are considered, as the air he breathed. In
order to realize the exact position and the blind astonishment that must
have lain in that telegraphic despatch, it is necessary to remember that
once before he had heard of the death of the young man, from one who had
just seen his lifeless body (Kitty Hood), and that only two hours
afterwards his house had been visited by the enraged Dr. Pomeroy to reclaim
a girl that the man just before dead was alleged to have stolen! Now, only
an hour or two before, he had a second time been informed of his son's
death at sea, and burial in Ireland, under such circumstances that mistake
seemed to be impossible; and yet here was a telegraphic despatch quite as
likely to be authentic if not originating in some unfeeling hoax--informing
him that he had been nearly killed in battle, and was lying in one of the
Virginia hospitals! At short intervals the young man seemed to die, in
different places, and then immediately after to be alive again in other
places, under aspects scarcely less painful and yet more embarrassing.
There was certainly enough in all this to make the old man's brain whirl,
and to overspread the faces of the others with such blank astonishment that
they seemed to be little else than demented. There was one, however, not
puzzled one whit. That was old Elspeth, who muttered, loudly enough for
them all to hear, as she abandoned them to their fate, resigned her
temporary position as seeress, and went back to the mundane duties of
house-keeping:
"It's not the bairn's ainsel at all that's lying down amang the naygurs
where they're fechting. It is his double that's come bock frae the auld
land to haunt ye! Come awa, Carlo, lad, and let them mak much of it!"
There is no need to recapitulate all that followed between the three
remaining people, surprised in such different degrees--the words in which
little Elsie was made to understand the first intelligence, followed by her
reading of the whole account in the Irish paper--the hopes, fears, fancies
and wild surmises which swept through the brains and hearts of each--the
thoughts of Robert Brand over the initials appended to the telegraphic
despatch, which for some reason made him much more confident of its
authenticity than he would otherwise have been, while they embarrassed him
terribly in another direction which may or may not be guessed--the weaving
together of three minds that had been more or less separated by conflicting
feelings with reference to that very person, into one grand total and
aggregate of anxiety which dwarfed all other considerations and made the
whole outside world a blank and a nothing in comparison. All this may be
imagined: until the perfecting of that invention by which the kaleidoscope
is to be photographed in the moment of its revolution, it cannot be set in
words. But the result may and must be given.
"I shall go to Washington by the train, to-night," said Robert Brand, when
the discussion had reached a certain point, with the mystery thicker than
ever and the anxiety proportionately increasing.
"You, father? Are you well enough to go?" and little Elsie looked at him
with gratified and yet fearful surprise.
"No matter, I am going!" That was enough, and Elsie knew it. Within the
last half hour much of his old self seemed to have returned; and when he
assumed that tone, life granted, he would go as inevitably as the
locomotive.
"I am glad to hear you say so, Mr. Brand--father!" said Margaret Hayley,
very calmly. "It will make it much better, no doubt, for _I_ am going."
"You!" This time there were two voices that uttered the word of surprise.
"Yes, _I_! If Carlton Brand is lying wounded in a Virginia hospital, I know
my duty; and if I must miss _that_, to _him_, or Heaven, henceforward, I
shall be among the lost!" Strange, wild, mad words; but how much they
conveyed!
"God bless you, _my daughter_!" "My dear, dear _sister_!" And somehow three
people managed to be included in one embrace immediately after. This was
all, worth recording, that the grape trellis saw.
That evening when the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore train left
Broad and Prime, it bore Robert Brand and Margaret Hayley, going southward
on that singular quest which might end in so sad and final a
disappointment.