CHAPTER IX.
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 Parcæ 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 exposé, 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!