CHAPTER II.
The Coming of Carlton Brand—Almost a Paladin of Balaklava—Brother and Sister—A Spasm of Shame—The Confession—The Coward—How Margaret Hayley heard Many Words not intended for her—The Rupture and the Separation.
Not long was the young girl, left at the close of the last chapter bodily ensconced in an easy-chair on the broad piazza, and mentally absorbed in the attractions of one of the choicest books in Margaret Hayley's collection, allowed to pursue her reading undisturbed. Not two minutes had elapsed when a horseman, riding a chestnut horse of handsome appearance and fine action, came rapidly up from the direction of the city, dismounted with the same practised grace that he had shown when in the saddle, threw the rein of his horse over one of the posts standing near the gate, opened that gate and came up the walk, without attracting the attention of the young lady on the piazza, or that of any other occupant of the house he was approaching.
Lifting from his brow, as he approached the house, to wipe away the slight moisture which had gathered there even in riding, the broad-brimmed and low-crowned hat of light gray, which so well accorded with his loose but well-fitting suit of the same color, he gave an opportunity for studying the whole man, which could not well have been attained under other circumstances; and both narrator and reader may be excused for stopping him momentarily in that position, while due examination is made of his most striking outward peculiarities.
He was at least five feet eleven inches in height, with a figure rather slight than stout, but singularly erect, sinewy, and elastic, every movement giving evidence that the body could not well be set to a task beyond its power of endurance. The foot was not very small, but well-shaped, and the ungloved hand which held his riding-whip was almost faultless in shape and color. The hat removed, a brow rather broad than high was seen, with a head well balanced in all the intellectual and moral requirements, densely covered with light, curling hair, of that peculiar shade which the poetical designate as "blonde" and the practical as "sandy." The complexion, though the cheeks were a little browned by the summer sun, was very fair, and that of the brow as stainless as any petted girl's could be. The features were nearly faultless in the Greek severity of their outline, the nose straight and well cut, the mouth small but with full curved lips, the eyes of hazel, widely set. The lower part of his face was effectually concealed by a luxuriant full beard and moustache, a few shades darker than his hair, and showing a propensity to curl on slight provocation. He was a decidedly handsome man of twenty-eight to thirty, erect, gentlemanly, dignified, and with something in his general appearance irresistibly reminding the spectator of the traditional appearance of those blonde Englishmen of good birth, who seem made to dawdle life away without exhibiting one of the sterner qualities of human nature, until deadly danger shows them to have that cool recklessness of life which charged two hundred years ago with Prince Rupert and ten years ago with poor Nolan. Yet this was the idea more likely to be formed of him and his capabilities, by strangers and those who lacked opportunity to examine his face and manner closely, than by those intimately acquainted with both; for there was an occasional nervousness in the movement of the hands, and even of the whole figure, that to a close observer would have belied the first-assumed self-confidence; and a something drooping, tremulous, and undecided in the lower lip at the corners, was so well matched by a sad and even troubled expression that often rested like a cloud over the eyes, that the whole man seemed to be made into another self by them.
Such was Carlton Brand, the brother of Elsie, about whom the tongues of the two young girls had wagged so unreservedly but a few minutes before. Such was his appearance, to the outward eye, as, hat still in hand, he approached the piazza. Elsie was sufficiently absorbed in her book, not to feel his presence; and it was not until he was close upon her that the young girl saw him, flung down the costly illustrated volume in her chair with less care than might have pleased the less impulsive owner, sprang to the step and seized both the occupied hands of the new-comer, with a warmth that showed how cordial was the affection between brother and sister, so widely different in appearance and indication of character.
"How did you come here, pet?" the brother asked, as soon as his mouth was free from the kiss his sister tendered.
"Oh, ran across the fields half an hour ago, and intended to be back home by this time, only that Margaret was alone and wished me to stay; and besides——"
"Well—besides what?"
"Besides, I almost knew that you would stop here before you went home, and I should see more of you before you went away, by remaining."
Could the young girl but have seen the quick spasm of agony that just then passed over the face of Carlton Brand—the agitation and trembling which seized upon lip and hands—she might have been wiser the next moment, but she certainly would not have been happier. Just for that one moment there seemed to be lack-lustre vacancy in the eyes, total want of self-assertion in face and figure, and the handsome, noble-looking man actually seemed to have collapsed, bowed, and sunk within himself, so that he was more an object of pity than of envy. But the sister's eyes were fortunately turned away at that instant, and she saw nothing. When she looked at him again, the spasm, whatever it might have been, was gone, and she only saw his usual self. He did not reply to her last suggestion, but asked, after an instant of hesitation:
"Where is Margaret?"
"Gone down into the kitchen for a few moments, to look after a new Dutch cook, but she will soon return. And so you are really going away, brother, and I shall be so lonesome!" and the hand of the sister sought that of the dearly-loved brother again, as if every moment lost without some touch of one who was so soon to leave her, was lost indeed.
Even to this the brother gave no reply, but made a remark with reference to the rapid ripening of the grain in the wheat-fields that skirted the road beyond. A duller wit than that of Elsie Brand might have become aware that he was avoiding an unpleasant subject; and the young girl recognized the fact, but gave it an entirely erroneous explanation, believing that he must have heard some peculiarly threatening news from the scene of the invasion, making the peril of the troops about to leave more deadly than it would have been under ordinary circumstances, and that he dreaded to enter upon the theme at all, for fear of alarming her. As a consequence, her next words were a disclaimer of her own fears.
"Oh, Carlton, you need not be afraid to speak of it to me. Much as I have dreaded your going away, I know, now, that it is your duty, when your own State is invaded; and I have made up my mind to bear the separation, and even to think of you, my own dear brother, as in danger, without saying one word to hold you back."
"Have you?" That spasm was again upon his face, and the words were hoarse; but again the eye and the ear of the sister missed the recognition of any thing unusual.
"Yes; and so has Margaret."
"Has she?" The spasm had not gone off his face, and the second question was asked even more hoarsely than the first. For some reason that the young girl could not understand, he turned away from her, walked down to the end of the piazza, and stood looking off. What he was suffering at that moment, with three or four of the most powerful passions known to humanity tearing at his heart-strings at once, none may know who have not passed through the same terrible ordeal which he was then enduring. There were only the fays who may have been playing among the green grass, and the dryads yet lingering among the whispering leaves of the maples, looking in at the end of the piazza upon his face: had they been human eyes, what of wrestling and struggle might they not have seen! When he turned to walk back towards the spot where his sister was standing in surprise not unmingled with alarm, his face was again calm, but it would have shown, to the observant eye, a calmness like that of despair. His words, too, were forced when they came:
"You and Margaret both, Elsie, love me so well, I know, that you would give up almost any thing to please me; but I do not intend to task either of you too far. I am not going—that is, business detains me so that I cannot—I am not going to Harrisburgh."
"Business!" Elsie Brand had never before, in her whole young life, uttered a word so hardly or in a tone so nearly approaching to a sneer, as she spoke the single word at that moment. Were the words of Margaret Hayley ringing in her ear, and did she find some terrible confirmation, now, of what had before been so impossible to believe? "Business!—what business, Carlton, can be sufficient to keep you at home when they seem to need you so much?"
"What do you know about it?" and his tones were harsh and almost menacing. "Do we ask you women to decide what we shall do, where we shall go, and where we shall stay?"
"Oh, Carlton!" and the cry seemed to come from the very heart of the young girl. It was perhaps the first harsh word that had ever fallen on her ear, aimed at her from the lips of the brother she so adored. God only knew the agony under which that harsh word had been wrung out, as only he could know the agony it might cause! The cry instantly melted the heart to which it appealed. Carlton Brand took the hand of his sister in his own, kissed her tenderly, and said:
"Forgive me, Elsie, if I spoke as I should never speak to you! But you do not know, sometimes, what moves men to harshness which they afterwards bitterly repent."
"But you are not going with the regiment?" again she asked.
"No!—I have told you I was not, Elsie!" and the tone came very near to being a harsh one, once more.
"I am sorry—very sorry, Carlton!"
"Sorry?" and the often-recurring spasm which again passed over his features, could not have been unobserved by the young girl, for her own face seemed to reflect it. "Sorry? Are you indeed sorry that I am not going into—that I am not going to be absent from you?"
"Oh, no, Carlton! heaven knows I am not!" said Elsie, and the merry blue eyes were filled with tears. "But I think you ought to go; and you do not know, Carlton, how much may hang upon it. Do you love Margaret—really and truly love her?"
"Love her? as my own soul!" answered Carlton Brand. He did not say "as his own life"! "Why do you ask, after all that you have known of our attachment and our engagement?"
"Because, Carlton"—and the young girl, weeping the while under an impulse of feeling that she could scarcely herself understand, caught him by the arm and drew down his head towards her—"because I believe that if you do not go with the Reserves, Margaret will think that you do not do so because—oh, I cannot speak the word!"
"Because what? Speak it out!" and he seemed to be nerving himself to meet some shock that was likely to need all his energies.
"Because"—in a voice very low and broken—"because you are afraid to go—because you are a coward!"
"Has she said as much?" and the eyes of the speaker, very sad, troubled, and almost wild, seemed still to have power to read the very soul of the young girl before him. Elsie could not speak at first, but she nodded twice, and never death-bell of a condemned criminal rung out more clearly or more frightfully on the startled air, tolling the knell of a last hope, than the whisper that came at last from her lips:
"Yes!"
"Then God help me!" came from those of the strong man, in such a manifestation of agony as was painful to behold, while his hands for one moment clasped themselves together as if he would wring them in womanish weakness, then went up to his face and spread themselves as if they would shut it away forever from human sight. "God help me!—and you, Elsie, despise me if you will, but, oh, help me to keep it from her. I dare not go! I am a coward! If I should go into battle I should disgrace myself there forever, by running away at the first fire, and that would break our poor old father's heart!"
"Carlton! Carlton! my poor brother!" and the hands of the young girl closed around one of her brother's, with so warm a pressure as proved that she did not think of any shame, disgrace or fault in the connection, but only as the announcement of some great misfortune.
"Yes, Elsie, you have wrung from me the confession that I hoped never to be obliged to make to any one but my God. I have made it to Him, oh, how many times, and I almost feel that he has forgiven me, as my fellow-men will never do. I have been a coward, I suppose, from my very cradle and heaven only knows how I have managed to conceal the terrible truth from you, all this while! The very sight of blood sickens me, even when it is only the blood of beeves in a slaughter-house. One spirt from the arm of a man when he is being bled sets every nerve to trembling, and sometimes sends me fainting to the floor. One moment among the horrible sights of battle—the groans, and shrieks, and crashing bullets and spouting blood of carnage—would drive me mad or send me flying away with the curses of my whole race ringing in my ears."
"Oh, Carlton! my poor brother!" repeated once more, and in the same tone of heart-broken sympathy, was all that Elsie Brand could answer to this humiliation of the one to whom, perhaps, next to God, she had ever looked up as to His noblest human manifestation of greatness in creative power.
"Do you see what a poor miserable wretch I am?" he went on, apparently forgetful that any one besides his sister might be within hearing, and she so absorbed in the grief and shame of the revelation that she possessed no more forethought. "Think of me as an officer in my regiment, and know with what a reddened face I must have walked the streets when we paraded, conscious that if suddenly called to duty—even the quelling of a mob at the street-corner—I should be obliged to disgrace myself at once and forever! Think what I have suffered since the war broke out!—commission after commission offered me—loving my country as I believe man never loved it before—and yet not daring to strike one blow in its behalf. Obliged to make slight excuses when others have inquired why I did not go to the war—obliged to wear a double face, a mask, everywhere and at all times—dreading detection every day, and in that detection perhaps the loss of my proud father's life and of the love that has made the only hope of my own—cursing the omen that unwittingly gave me the brand of the coward in my very name—racked and tortured thus, and yet obliged to hold an honorable place among my fellow-men—it has been too hard, Elsie, too hard! And now to lose all! If she has learned to suspect me—I know her brave heart and her proud nature—I shall lose her, the richest, noblest thing on earth, half grasped, to be mourned for as never man yet mourned for woman! Do help me, Elsie! Help me to conceal my shame—to deceive her, yes—God help me!—to deceive her before whom my very soul should be laid bare—so that she will not know me for the miserable wretch and coward that I am!"
And all this while his face was wrought and contorted, at short intervals, by those fearful spasms of shame and mental suffering; and ever and anon his hands locked together and seemed to wring themselves even beyond his own volition. How different he looked, at that moment, from the handsome, noble man, in the full pride of mature adolescence, who had stepped upon that piazza but a few moments before!
"I would do any thing in the world to help you, Carlton; but what can I do?" faltered the young girl, who saw no light beyond the thick, black cloud of shame and ruin slowly settling down on the head of her beloved brother.
"Help me to conceal the truth"—he went on—"to enforce any excuse for not leaving the city at this moment! I know it is base and contemptible, but it is for a good purpose, Elsie—to save a heart that is already distracted, and a life that must be wrecked without it. We may never be placed in the same circumstances again—the war may soon be ended—if she can only be kept from knowing this, I may never be placed in the same peril again, and my whole life shall be one long proof that I am not otherwise unworthy of the woman I love so madly."
"It does not need, Carlton Brand!" sounded a voice from within—a voice that both recognized but too well; and out of the hall came the figure of Margaret Hayley.
Her words and her manner alike proved that she had heard all, or at least enough; for there was an expression of withering contempt flashing out of her dark eye and curling her proud lip, not easily to be borne by any person towards whom they were directed. There did not seem, for the moment, to be any thing like pity in her composition; and if there had been love within her heart, it appeared to have been so crushed out by one stunning blow that it could never bloom again any more than the wild flower ground beneath the heel of the wayfarer. Her head was proud, erect, haughty, disdainful; and one who had leisure to examine her closely would have seen that the nostril was opening and shutting convulsively, as if overwhelming passion was only suppressed by the physical act of holding the breath. Elsie Brand was too much dizzied and confused to be quite aware what had happened or what was about to happen. She merely uttered a cry of agitation and fright, and shrunk back alike from her brother and the woman who had come to be his judge. Carlton Brand saw more, with the quick eye of the lawyer and the sharpened perception of the lover. He realized that Margaret Hayley had heard his agonized and unmanly confession—that anger and scorn had driven away from her face the love which had so often and so pleasantly beamed upon him—that his doom was sealed.
With the knowledge came back to him that manliness in demeanor of which he had been so sorely in need a moment before. In the presence only of his sister, and when pleading with her to assist in rescuing him from the pit of grief and shame into which he felt himself to be sinking, he had been humble, abject, even cowering. Now, and in the presence of the woman for whose softened opinion he would have given the world and almost bartered his hopes of heaven,—he stood erect, and if the spasm of pain did not entirely pass away from his face, at least it changed in its character so that he was a man once more.
"I understand you, Miss Hayley," were the first words he spoke. "You have heard some words not intended for your ear. You have been listening."
"If you merely mean that I have heard what was not intended for my ear, you certainly speak the truth, Mr. Brand," she replied, catching the formality of his address at once. "But if you mean that I have listened meanly, or even voluntarily, to words intended to be confidential, you wrong yourself, equally with me, in saying so. You have spoken so loudly that not only I but even the servants in the house could not well avoid hearing you; and there is not much 'listening' in hearing words almost brawled on a piazza."
Her words were very bitter—they beseemed the lips from which they flowed. A man who loved her less or, who had fewer of the natural impulses of the gentleman than Carlton Brand, might only have thought of the taunt conveyed and forgotten its justice. He did not do so, but bowed at once with an air of respectful humility, and said:
"I beg ten thousand pardons for my hasty speech. I was mad when I made it. Certainly you have heard nothing but what you had a right to hear." And then he stood erect but silent.
Poor little Elsie Brand could contain herself no longer. How she loved her brother, only the angels knew. How easily we pardon, in those of our kindred, what would be indelible disgrace in the characters of others, all close observers of humanity know too well. Little Elsie Brand was only acting the part of nature in espousing the cause of her own blood, and saying, before time enough had elapsed for any additional words between the two principals:
"Margaret Hayley, I say that you are too hard with Carlton! If you had ever loved him, as you pretended, you would not be so! There, you have not asked my opinion, but you have it!"
The words, though kindly meant, were ill-advised. Not even her brother, who had but a few moments before been imploring her assistance, thanked her for what she had then spoken. At least he silenced her for the time with—
"You can do no good now by speaking, Elsie. It is too late. Miss Hayley has something more to say to me, no doubt, after what she has accidently heard; and I am prepared to hear it." He stood almost coolly, then, the bared head bent only a very little, and the face almost as calm as it was inexpressibly mournful. So might a convicted criminal stand, feeling himself innocent of wrong in intent, beaten down under a combination of circumstances too strong to combat, awaiting the words of his sentence, and yet determined that there should be something more of dignity in his reception of the last blow than there had ever been in any previous action of his life.
Twice Margaret Hayley essayed to speak, and twice she failed in the effort. If she had been calmly indignant the moment before, Nature had already begun to take its revenge, and she was the woman again. Her proud head was bent a little lower, and there was a dewy moisture in the dark eyes, that could never be so well dried up as in being kissed away. Who knows that the proud woman was not really relenting—letting the old love come back in one overwhelming tide and sweep away all the barriers erected by indignation and contempt? Who knows how much of change might possibly have been wrought, had the next words of Carlton Brand been such as indicated his belief that the chain between them was not yet severed utterly? Who knows, indeed?—for his words were very different.
"Miss Hayley, I have waited for you to speak what I feel that you have to say. You have heard words that no betrothed woman, I suppose, can hear from her promised husband and yet retain that respect for him which should be the very foundation of the marriage-bond."
"I have." The words came from her lips in tones much lower than those in which she had before spoken, and she did not even look at him as she answered.
"You have heard me declare myself—I know by the face you wore but a moment since, that you have heard all this—what you hold to be the lowest and most contemptible thing on God's footstool—a coward."
"I have. I would rather have died on the spot than heard those words from the lips of the man I have—have loved!" The words still low, and some hesitation in those which concluded the sentence. One would almost have believed, at that moment, that of the two the culprit was the down-looking and low-voiced woman, instead of the man whose godlike presence so contradicted the dastardly vice he was confessing.
"I have no defence to offer," the speaker went on. "If you have heard all that I believe, no further explanation is necessary. You know the worst; and as a proud woman, with honor unspotted and beyond suspicion, you have a right to pass what sentence you choose upon my—my shame, my crime, if you will!"
Perfect silence for an instant, then a broken sob from Elsie, whose face was streaming with tears denied to both the others, and who was leaning her forehead against the sharp corner of one of the columns of the piazza, apparently that the slight physical pain thus inflicted might do something to still the mental agony that raged within. Then Margaret Hayley, as if she had passed through a long struggle but conquered at last with a triumph slaying her own soul, raised her head, drew in a hard breath, shook back one of the tresses of her dark hair which had fallen over her brow, and spoke:
"Do you know, Carlton Brand—I cannot call you Mr. Brand again, for that address is mockery after what we have been to each other—do you know what that sentence must be, in justice to myself and to you?"
"I can guess it, Margaret Hayley," was the answer, the prefix changed again in imitation of her, just as she a moment before had changed it in imitating him. The incident was a mere nothing, and yet suggestive as showing how closely the two seemed to study each other, and how much of real sympathy there must after all have been between them. "I can guess it, and I will try to bear it."
"You can guess it—you do guess it—separation!" said Margaret in a low voice that she could not quite render firm.
"I was not mistaken—I supposed as much," he answered. "You are a proud woman, Margaret, and you could not marry a man for whom you failed to entertain respect—"
"I am a proud woman, but a woman still," said Margaret. "You whom I have loved so truly, can best guess the depth of my woman's nature. But I cannot and will not marry a man to whom I cannot look up and say: 'This man has the courage and the will to protect me in every peril!'"
"Have you ever had reason to believe that I could not and would not protect you, if need came, against all the world?" and his eyes momentarily flashed, at that thought, with a light which should not have shone in the orbs of a coward.
"Words are idle, Carlton Brand!" said Margaret. "There is no protection so sacredly due as that of a strong man to his country. You know it, and I know it as well. The man who knows his duty to his country and dares not do it, through sheer bodily fear, could not be trusted in any relation. His wife would not dare trust him, if she knew it; and you have opened my eyes but too painfully. And so, in mercy to both, all must be over between us—"
"Oh, do not say that, Margaret, sister!" broke out Elsie, in a more faltering voice than she had ever used in pleading for herself since the earliest day of childhood. Margaret did not heed her, if she heard, but went on from the point at which she had been interrupted:
"All is over between us, Carlton Brand, at once and forever, unless——"
"Unless?—what is the possibility you would yet hold out to me?" and the speaker showed more agitation, at that one renewed glimpse of hope, than he had done when battling against utter despair.
"Unless you will yet obey the summons that has called you with every other true son of Pennsylvania to the field, and prove to me that you did not know yourself or that you were endeavoring to play a cruel part in deceiving your sister and me!"
The face of Carlton Brand had been comparatively calm, ever since the coming out of Margaret. Suffer as he might, most of the suffering had been hidden. Now that face assumed an aspect that was really fearful to behold. The veins on his forehead swelled as if they would burst, his lip set hard, his eyes glared as if one touch might have made him a maniac, and his hands worked convulsively. All the symptoms of extreme terror and of a repugnance which no effort could overcome, were imminent in every glance and motion; and something of those phenomena was exhibited which we may suppose the Highland seer of old time to have shown, when he was carried beyond himself by the invisible powers, and saw battle, defeat and horrible death for himself or others, slowly unrolling before his spiritual sight. Elsie Brand shuddered and drew back to the column which had before sheltered her. Margaret Hayley still stood erect, though she was evidently laboring under suppressed excitement, and none could say what the end of this scene might be. It was quite a moment before Carlton Brand could command himself sufficiently to speak, and then he said in a low, broken voice:
"No—I cannot. I cannot kill my poor gray-haired old father with the spectacle of the flight and disgrace of his only son."
"And you have decided well," said Margaret. "It is a bitter thing to say, but I am glad that you have marked out my course as you have done. Think—oh heaven!" and she seemed indeed to be for the moment addressing the powers above instead of those regnant upon the earth—"think how near I came to being this man's wife and the possible mother of his children, each one marked with the curse set upon them by their father!" No human ear could have heard the whisper which followed: "Enough of disgraces descending from parents—oh, heaven!"
"You are right, Margaret Hayley—right!" spoke Carlton Brand, his voice lower, more hoarse and broken than it had been at any part of the long interview. "You have reminded me well of your duty and mine. The day may come when you will be sorry for every word that has fallen from your lips; but it may not. To-day you are doing right—let the future take care of itself. Good-bye!"
He took the long, slender white fingers in his, and looked upon them a minute, the tears at last gathering in his eyes. Then, when through the thickening drops he could scarcely see them longer, he raised them to his lips, pressed a kiss upon them, dropped the hand and strode off the piazza and away, never once looking back as he passed down the path towards the gate.
Margaret Hayley had been overstraining both heart and brain, and the penalty asserted itself very soon. Her discarded lover was scarcely half way down the path when the revulsion came, and pride for the moment broke down before her terrible sorrow. The proud neck bent, she stretched out her arms after the retreating figure, the single word, "Carlton!" came half whispered and half groaned through her lips, her eyes closed, and she sunk fainting into the arms of Elsie.
Carlton Brand did not hear the call. A moment, and still without another glance at the house where he was leaving behind the happiness of a life, he had unloosed the splendid chestnut pawing at the gate, swung himself into the saddle and ridden away westward. He reeled a little in his seat as he rode, as a drunken man might have done—that was all the apparent difference between the man with a hope who had arrived half an hour before and the man who now departed without one.