CHAPTER VI.
The Residence of Dr. Pomeroy—Nathan Bladesden and Eleanor Hill—A kneeling Woman and a rigid Quaker—The ruin that a Letter had wrought—A Parting that seemed eternal—Carlton Brand alive once more, and a Glance at the fatal Letter.
It sometimes happens, in this world which fast people consider dull and slow, that events crowd themselves very closely, both as to time and space. Within a very limited section, in a period covering scarcely more than an hour, we have seen a complication of occurrences, affecting many persons, sufficient to occupy many hours in the recital. And yet the storehouses of event and circumstance have not yet been at all closely ransacked; and that June-day has yet much to reveal, affecting some of the persons already introduced, and others who have not yet come into the field of observation.
The spot at which the conflict between Carlton Brand and Richard Compton occurred, it will be remembered, was at the intersection of the highway leading down to the Schuylkill at Market Street, by a blind road which ran back southwardly through the wood,—and that the request of the lawyer to Compton that he would open the gate admitting to that blind road, was made by the farmer the occasion of that quarrel and fight which we have seen terminate so singularly.
Following that blind road half a mile through the wood, southward towards the Darby road, the visitor descended the little range of high land crowned by the wood, crossed a wide meadow with the frogs sunning themselves on the banks of the little brooks that ran beneath the bridges of the causeway, and the blackbirds singing in the low clumps of elder-bush that grew beside them, and found himself, on the other side, rising another slight hillock and at the back gate of the residence of Dr. Philip Pomeroy.
This was a house of modern construction, and of a completeness betokening the wealth of the owner; standing near the crown of the hillock, with the garden at the back sloping away towards the meadow (a bad slope, that towards the north, all the agriculturists in the section averred); handsome shrubbery in the broad yard lying before the pillared front or south face of the house; and a good many fine trees of inconsiderable age, with the pine everywhere predominant, promising abundant shade in coming years, both in front and at the rear. The continuation of the blind road which crossed the meadow, extended past the house on the west side, immediately beside the pickets of the yard enclosure, and running across to the Darby road afforded access to both the great highways, with only short distances of travel, and at the price of opening an occasional gate, which merely answered the purpose of stretching the cramped limbs of the rider. Some persons, who knew the extensive practice of Dr. Pomeroy, were disposed to wonder that he had not located himself immediately on one of the great roads, with no necessity for traversing by-ways to reach them; while others, who better knew the peculiarities of his will, believed that his motive was a fancy for being comparatively isolated and a little baronial. Whether he really had any motive whatever in selecting the location, except the desire of pleasing himself, is a matter of very little consequence.
There was a light buggy, drawn by two magnificent horses, standing at a post in the road, very near the house, at a little after noon on that day; and within the house certain developments were at the same moment being made, so illustrative of the depth to which human depravity can descend when the rein is given to all base and unholy passions, that the pen of the narrator, who is merely attempting a feeble recital of actual occurrences in the real life of to-day, pauses at the task before it, the fact being so certain that the circumstances about to be recorded will be supposed to have sprung from the disorder of an unscrupulous imagination, instead of being the fruit of sad research and knowledge that would be avoided if such a thing was possible.
The middle portion of the front of the doctor's residence, immediately over the somewhat narrow portico, was a sitting-room of small dimensions, tastily furnished; while out of it opened a little bed-room, the white curtains and snowy bed-drapery of which, seen in glimpses through the door, suggested maiden purity and peace or that bridal rest which should be quite as pure and holy. The sitting-room had at that moment two occupants; and the picture presented was such as no looker-on would have been likely to forget while he lived.
Nearly in the centre of the room stood a gentleman some years past middle age, large framed and with large hands, tall and commanding in figure, unexceptionably dressed in garments betraying the Quaker cut, and with that air of undeniable respectability which no pretence can ever imitate, conveyed by every motion of the man and every fold of his garments. He was dark-eyed and with features a little prominent; and years had made a perceptible mark on the smoothness of his face, at the same time that they had heavily grayed his neat side-whiskers and dashed heavy masses of gray among the still-curling locks that clustered upon his head. A merchant or banker, evidently, from manner and general appearance—and one to whom the idea of dishonorable conduct and the thought of a disgraced reputation would be alike unendurable. With a face in which sorrow seemed to be struggling with anger, this man stood holding a letter clenched in his right hand, and looking down upon something at his feet. That something was a woman.
The woman was kneeling, with hands clasped in entreaty, hair shaken partially loose, face streaming with tears, and her whole system so shaken by the sobs convulsing it that the most dangerous form of hysterics might be very likely to follow that excitement. Even when kneeling it was to be observed that her figure was tall, finely moulded and upright—that her face was fair, pleasant, and notably handsome, though the features were too small, the dark eyes mournful, and the general impression created that of confiding helplessness very likely to degenerate into dangerous weakness—that her hands were long, taper and delicate, as beseemed her figure—that her brown hair was very full, rich, silken and glossy—and that she had probably numbered some five-and-twenty summers. Formed to be loved, protected and shielded from every harm, and certain to return for that love and protection the most unreserved affection and the most unquestioning obedience; and yet kneeling there with that upon her face which told a tale of the most cruel outrage quite as plainly as the quivering lips could speak it!
Much has been said of the sadness of the spectacle when a strong man weeps, as compared to the same exhibition of feeling by a woman. It is equally sad when a woman is seen kneeling to any other power than that of her God! It seems man's province, given alike by nature and the laws of chivalry, to bend his proud knee in other aspects than that of devotion; and even when he is showing that prostration his eye may be glowing with the conscious pride of the future conqueror; but what except the most abject shame or the most overwhelming sorrow, can be shown when the delicate limb of womanhood kisses the green sod or the floor beneath her tread? To save by pitiful entreaties a perilled honor—to beg through blinding tears and choking sobs the restoration of that honor lost, that can often so easily be given back to her by the hands of the tyrant who will not hear her cry—to implore the concealment of a shame too heavy to bear—to plead for the forfeit life of some one dearer than the very pulses beating in her own bosom—to moan for the restoration of some object of love and protection, her babe perhaps, reft from her and her heart and her arms left alike empty—ay, to wail for the boon of a crust that shall chase starvation from the thin lips of herself or her child and keep them yet a little longer as clinging sufferers upon the earth,—these have been the compelling motives so often bending the knee of woman since the earliest day of recorded time. And yet not one of all the long array of unchronicled martyrs has been bowed under a deeper wrong than was that day made manifest, or uttered a more piteous appeal than that day went up to heaven!
"Oh, do not cast me off!—do not desert me, Mr. Bladesden!" wailed a voice that would have been marvellously sweet and tender had it not been broken and roughened by grief, while her poor hands wrung and agonized themselves in sad sympathy with the writhings of her cowering form. "Do not take away from me my last hope of knowing one hour of peace before they put me into the coffin! I am no worse to-day than I was yesterday! Oh, do pity and save me, even if you cannot love me any longer!"
"I do pity thee, Eleanor Hill, and I should like to save thee if I could!" answered a voice rich, full and strong, with only an occasional tremor in its intonation, and the Quaker phraseology seeming to accord peculiarly with the voice as well as the general appearance of the man. "But thou hast deceived me, and the plain people—"
"Oh, no, I did not deceive you, Mr. Bladesden," the poor girl interrupted. "Do let me speak! Do let me try if I cannot move your heart to believe that I have never willingly done wrong—that I have never been intentionally wicked!"
"Can thee deny what is in this letter, Eleanor Hill?" asked the Quaker, his voice trembling, in spite of himself, a little more than it had before done. Then he added, with something very like a sob in his throat, that seemed strangely at variance with the general calmness of his demeanor: "I am rich, Eleanor—very rich, men say; and yet I would give half of all that I have won in these many years that have made my hair gray, if I could see thee lay thy hand upon thy heart and look up in my face and say: 'The man who writes this writes falsehood!'"
"I cannot—oh, God, you know that I cannot, Mr. Bladesden!" sobbed the poor girl. "It is true in word, and yet heaven knows how false it is in spirit."
"Thee should not appeal to heaven so much, Eleanor, and thee should rise from thy knees, for I will believe thee just as quickly in the one position as the other, and the friendly people make their yea yea and their nay nay, without taking the name of the Father every moment between their lips."
Eleanor Hill managed to rise from her knees and stagger to her feet; but her position was not the less humble afterward, for she stood grasping the back of a chair with both hands for support, and with her head bowed down in such abject shame and humility that the change of posture seemed rather to have been taking on an added degradation than putting one away.
"See, I have done as you told me to do!" she said, without looking up. "I would be so obedient to you, always, if you would only take me away from this misery and shame. Oh, why would he injure me so cruelly—me to whom he should have been merciful, now, if there was any mercy in his nature!"
"Can thee say that Doctor Philip did not do right, if, as thee says, he wrote this letter?" asked the Quaker, keeping his eyes steadily upon the crouching woman, and making no motion to change the distance between them. "Thee had deceived me, and he knew it. He was sure, perhaps, that thee had not told me all, and—"
"I told you, months ago, when you first spoke of making me your wife, Mr. Bladesden," said the poor girl, with one momentary lifting of the bowed head and one transient flash of womanly spirit—"that I could not give you a whole heart—that my life had been very unfortunate, and that if I consented to marry you, you must promise never to ask me one question of my miserable past. Do you remember that I did?"
"Thee did tell me so much, Eleanor," answered the Quaker. "But thee only indicated misfortune—not guilt."
"I have not been guilty—I was never guilty!" spoke the girl, the momentary flash of womanhood not yet extinguished. "You will not let me appeal to heaven, Mr. Bladesden, yet I must do so once more. I call upon the all-seeing God to punish me with even worse grief and shame than I have already borne, if there has ever been one guilty wish in my mind towards that man or any other—if I have not been forced or deceived into every act which makes you despise me to-day."
The Quaker turned away, the letter still in his hand, and walked toward the window. He lifted the other hand to his brow and seemed to brush away something that troubled him; and he yet retained that position towards the girl, as he said, after the pause of a moment:
"I believe thee speaks the truth, Eleanor Hill."
"You do believe me! Oh, thank you for that mercy, if no more!" and the poor girl had stepped forward, caught his disengaged hand in both hers and lifted it to her lips, before he could prevent her. Then something in his manner, as he turned, seemed to chill her again to the heart, and she fell back silent to the support of the chair.
"I believe thee so far, and yet thee deceived me."
"How could I tell you all, Mr. Bladesden? How could I publish my own shame? Oh, why was I ever born!" and the voice had sunk low again, and the spirit seemed crushed quite as completely as before.
"Thee blames Dr. Philip, and yet Dr. Philip was a better friend to me than thee was; for thee would have allowed me to bring disgrace upon my name, and he would not."
The proverbial worm turns when trodden upon. Eleanor Hill had little native spirit, and she had been the veriest worm of the dust throughout all that terrible interview; but this last deadly stab at the vitals of her faith, given in laudation of her destroyer, seemed too much for human endurance, and there was yet one spark of spirit left in the very ashes of disgrace.
"Nathan Bladesden," she said, standing fully erect, and anger usurping the place of shame in her face, "I am satisfied! I will kneel to you no more—beg you for mercy no more! If you are base enough to defend the man who could write that letter, and to call his action honorable, I would rather crawl out into the road and beg my bread from door to door, than to call you husband; and I thank heaven even for that letter which has saved me from a worse man than Philip Pomeroy!"
Life and society are both full of terrible struggles. Perhaps there is no conflict of them all, more enduring in its character, or more racking to those necessarily engaged in it, than that which is fought by those who take the Sermon on the Mount as their declared pattern, and attempt to carry out the principles it enunciates. To forgive when smitten is God-like; but, oh, how difficult for any mere man! To love an enemy is an injunction coming down to us from a higher and purer source than that which gave the philosophy once taught in the Groves of Academe; but, oh, how impossible for any man to do in reality, until he has been baptized with fire! While others have waged this conflict desultorily and in isolated instances, for nearly three centuries, the Quakers have waged it as a sect, entitling themselves alike to wonder and admiration. They have practised a non-resistance unaccountable to the fiery children of the world, and stark madness on any other supposition than that there is really a special protecting Hand over those who heed the peaceful injunction. They have triumphed alike in society and in savage life, when the strong hand failed and the maxims of worldly wisdom became powerless. And on the faces of the men and women of the sect, to-day—beneath the broad hat of the Friend, under the close gray bonnet of his wife, on brow and cheek of the Quaker maiden with her softly-folded hair, and even in eye and lip of the young man subjected to temptations which have power to fever and wreck all others,—in all, there is the record of a long line of men at peace with God, themselves, and the world, as easily read and as unmistakable as are the traces of toil, unrest, and consuming passion on the countenances of those who have fought through the world with the defiant heart and the strong hand. They have met despisers as well as foes, outside of their own charmed circle; but they have also met admirers. And to-day there are men who could not and who would not take up their cross of self-control and occasional self-denial so long and so patiently carried,—but who cannot and will not refuse to them the tribute of heart-felt admiration, and who often heave fruitless sighs towards that land of mental peace from which they are themselves excluded, because they neither share its blood nor know the tongue of its speech.
But the Quaker has not conquered without struggling, and he has not always conquered at any sacrifice. Twice, the old men of the Revolution used to tell us, the Pater Patriæ was known to vent words of even profane anger—once, when the Continental troops failed him on the day of Long Island, and again, when Lee disappointed his just expectations and almost broke his line of battle at Monmouth. These were the two great exceptions proving the rule of his habitual self-command and his religious purity of speech; and the occasional outburst of anger in the Quaker blood may be held to illustrate the same self-control—to prove its abiding existence by the weight of the shock which momentarily throws it into confusion.
The face of Nathan Bladesden showed, as Eleanor Hill spoke the last words already recorded, a mental conflict to which he was evidently little accustomed. The calm cheek flushed, the smooth brow corrugated, and the dark eye was for the moment so nearly fierce that the purity of the Quaker blood might well have been doubted. And when she had finished, the lips of the merchant uttered words, at which words themselves and their tone the speaker would equally have shuddered half an hour before:
"Doctor Philip Pomeroy is an infernal scoundrel—unfit to live! He deserves to be killed, and I could kill him with my own hands!"
"Ha!" It was something like a cry of joy from the lips of the poor girl. "Oh, I am so glad! You know this man—you hate him—you have only been trying me—you——" and her brow and cheeks glowed with excitement as she looked up in the Quaker's face. Then her eyes fell again, for she did not read there what she had been led to expect by his words. There was anger, but no pity; and even the anger was dying out under the strong habit of self-control, as rapidly as the momentary glow of a slight conflagration goes down under the dense volume of water poured upon it by the engine.
"Thee mistakes me, Eleanor Hill!" he said. "I may follow the evil ways of the world's people so far as to hate the bad man who has ruined thee, but I have been speaking to thee in all earnest. I have not been 'trying thee,' as thee calls it. I pity thee, truly, and would help thee, but—"
"But in the only way in which you could help me, Nathan Bladesden, by lifting me out of this horrible pit in which my feet are sinking lower and lower every day in defiance of all my struggles and all my prayers—you desert me and leave me to perish. I understand you at last, and God help you and me!"
"Thee knows I cannot marry thee, Eleanor Hill, after what has passed," said the Quaker, apologetically.
"I know nothing of the kind, Nathan Bladesden!" answered the girl, no tears in her eyes now, and her words short and even petulant. "You have nothing to do with my past, any more than I with yours, to come to the truth of the matter! You know, in your own soul, that had you despised the malice of that serpent in human shape, and kept the engagement you had made with me, no man on earth would have owned a more faithful or a more loving wife. But you have cast me off, degraded me even lower than before in my own sight, made me kneel to you as I should only have kneeled to my Father in heaven; and this is the end."
"Eleanor—" the Quaker began to say; but the girl interrupted him.
"Please don't say another word to me! I understand you, now, and I know my fate. Let me have that letter, and do not speak any more in the streets, of the shame of a woman whom you once professed to love, than is absolutely necessary; and I shall never ask another favor of you in this world."
"Eleanor Hill, thee is doubting my honor!" said the Quaker, alike forgetting that such idle words as "honor" were only supposed to belong to the "world's people," and that his voice was becoming so low and broken that he could scarcely make himself understood.
"You have done more than doubt mine!" answered the girl, bitterly. "You have told me, in so many words, that because I had been cruelly wronged and outraged by a man who should have cared for me and protected me, I had no 'honor' left. We begin to understand each other."
A moment of silence, the girl weeping again but not convulsively as before; the Quaker with his hand upon his brow and his eyes hidden. How materially the situation had changed within a few minutes, since Eleanor Hill was kneeling with clasped hands and tearing out her heart with sobs. Yet another moment of silence, and then the merchant said:
"I am going away, Eleanor. Has thee nothing more to say to me?"
"Not another word, Mr. Bladesden!" answered the girl, through her set teeth. The Quaker raised his head, looked at her face for one moment, and then slowly moved towards the door, still looking towards her. She made no movement, as he seemed to expect that she would do, and as it seemed possible that some changed action on his part might depend upon her doing.
"Farewell, Eleanor!" The Quaker stood in the door, hat in hand.
"Good-bye, Mr. Bladesden!" The girl still remained on the other side of the room, as if either too much stupefied or too indignant to make any nearer approach. The next moment Nathan Bladesden had left the room and descended the stairs; and within two minutes after, seated alone in the buggy, behind his span of fast horses, he was bowling along towards the Darby road, apparently driving at such speed as if he would willingly fly as fast as possible away from a scene where his manhood had been severely tested and not found proof in extremity.
For an instant after the departure of the Quaker, Eleanor Hill stood erect as he had last seen her. Both hands were pressed upon her heart, and it might have seemed doubtful whether she had nerved herself to that position or lacked power to quit it. Then her eyes fell upon the letter which Bladesden, when she requested him to leave it, had dropped upon a chair; and at the sight the spell, whatever it was, gave way. The poor girl dropped upon her knees before another chair which stood near her, with a cry of such heart-breaking agony as must have moved any heart, not utterly calloused, that listened to it,—dashed her hand into her long, dishevelled hair with such a gesture as indicated that she would madly tear it out by the roots in handfuls, then desisted and broke out through moans and sobs into one of those prayers which the purists believe are seldom or never forgiven by the heaven to which they are addressed—a prayer for immediate death!
"Oh God!—let me die! Do let me die, here and at this moment! I cannot live and be so wretched! Let me die!—oh, let me die!"
Whether unpardonable or not, the prayer was certainly impious; for next to that last extremity of crime which any man commits when he dismisses his own life, is his crime when he becomes a suicide in heart and wish, without daring to use the physical force necessary for that consummation. Despair is cowardice; the theft of time is a sin that no amendment can repay; and the robbery of that time which heaven allots to a human life, whether in act or thought, is something over which humanity well may shudder.
But Eleanor Hill's impious prayer had no answer—at least no answer except the denial found in the breath of life which still fluttered from her nostrils and the blood which seemed to flow in torture through the poor frame sympathizing with the mind within. The aspiration was scarcely yet dead upon her lips when there was a footfall on the floor behind her; and she sprung up with one wild desperate hope darting through her brain, that the stern judge had at last relented after leaving her presence—that he had proved himself capable of a great sacrifice and returned to extricate her feet from the pit into which she was so irretrievably sinking. But that hope died on the instant, another and if possible a madder one taking its place; for before her, as she turned, stood Carlton Brand, though so disfigured and changed in appearance that any one except the most intimate of acquaintances might have been excused for doubting his identity.
The young lawyer had always been noted for a neatness of personal appearance approaching to dandyism without reaching that mark; and only an hour before, in face and garb, he would have attracted attention in any circle, from the perfection of every appointment. Now, his face was bruised and swollen; his eyes were bloodshot and fiery; one lappel of his coat was torn from the collar; his coat and his nether garments were soiled and dusty; his hat was crushed and out of shape; and every detail of his presence seemed to be marred in corresponding proportion. A rough peasant's or a highwayman's disguise for a masquerade, would scarcely have changed him more than he had been changed, without the least premeditation, by that little rencontre with Dick Compton, to which we have already been unbidden witnesses. Absorbed as poor Eleanor Hill was in her own situation, she could scarcely suppress a scream when she saw the aspect of a man who always appeared before her so differently; and there was fright as well as concern in her voice as she said:
"Why, Carlton Brand! Good heaven!—what has happened to you?"
"Much, Eleanor!" answered the lawyer, dropping into a chair with every indication of weariness, and wiping his heated brow with a handkerchief which showed that it had been soiled in removing some of the grime from his clothing.
"Your clothes are torn—your face is swollen! Have you been attacked?—beaten? Are you seriously hurt?" inquired the girl, coming close to him and laying her hand on his shoulder with the affectionate anxiety which a sister might have shown. These women have no bounds to that sympathy which alternately makes them angels and lures them on the road to be fiends; and there is probably no true woman, who had ever been wife, sweetheart or mother, but would forget at least one pang of her pain on the rack, in sympathy for some wronged and suffering person who approached her!
"Oh, no!" and Carlton Brand tried to laugh and made a miserable failure of the attempt, with his bruised face and swollen mouth. "Do not be alarmed, Eleanor. I have simply been in a little encounter with one of my neighbors, and—I scarcely know what has happened—I believe my clothes are torn and I suppose that I am disfigured a little."
"Disfigured a little! Good heaven, I should think you were!" said the girl, coming still closer and looking into his face. As she did so, the eyes of the lawyer, not too bloodshot for sight if they were for grace of aspect, detected the swollen condition of her face, the fearful redness of her eyes, and the various symptoms which told through what a storm of shame and sorrow she had lately been passing. He started to his feet at once, grasping her hand:
"Eleanor, you are worse hurt than myself! Tell me what has happened! Has he been torturing you again?"
"Oh, yes," answered the poor girl—"worse than torturing me! I could bear his personal cruelty, for I have grown used to it. But he has just made me lose my last hope in life, and I have nothing left me but to die!"
"Your last hope?" echoed Carlton Brand. "What? Has Mr. Bladesden—"
"Mr. Bladesden has just been here," answered Eleanor Hill, choking down the grief and indignation that were so painfully combating each other in her throat, dropping her head as she had done a few minutes before in the presence of the merchant, and holding out in her hand the crushed letter which Bladesden had dropped as he left the house. "Mr. Bladesden has just been here, and he brought this letter to read to me. It had been sent to his store, and he received it this morning. You can see, after reading it, what hope in life he has left me!"
"Curse him! He deserves eternal perdition, and will find it!"
Carlton Brand had momentarily forgotten his own troubles in the evident anguish of the young girl, just as a few moments before she had merged all those sorrows in anxiety for his personal safety. He took the letter she handed, smoothed out the crumpled folds made in it by the grasp of anger and shame, and read the damning words that follow—words so black and dastardly that one of the fiends from the lower pit might come back to earth to clear away from his name the suspicion that he had ever penned them. A few sentences of this bona fide communication are necessarily omitted, in an interest easily understood:
West Philadelphia, June —, 1863.
Mr. Nathan Bladesden:
Sir:—You are a merchant of respectability, as well as a member of the Society of Friends—a society for which I have the highest respect, although I do not happen to have been born a member of it. I should very much regret to see you made the victim of a designing woman, and linked for life to one who would bring disgrace upon your name and family. Report says that you are engaged to be married, or that you very probably may be so at an early period, to Miss Eleanor Hill, the ward for some years of Dr. Philip Pomeroy, and who is still resident in the house of that medical gentleman. I suppose that you know very little of the early history of the young lady, as, if you had known, you would never have allowed yourself to be entangled in that manner. Her father left her a few thousands of dollars in property, which she no doubt has the reputation of still possessing, while I have very good reason to know that it has really all (or nearly all) been used up in unfortunate speculations by different persons to whom she intrusted it, and that she is little else than a beggar, except as the Doctor offers her a home. As to her personal character, which is the thing of greatest consequence at the present moment,—Miss Hill was a very giddy girl, and many of her friends had fears for her future; but none of them foresaw what would indeed be the issue of the unfortunate situation in which she was placed. I am writing this letter, as you must be aware, for no purposes of my own, and simply to serve an honorable man who seems to have been tricked and cajoled by unscrupulous people. As a consequence, I must ask of you as a right which you cannot disregard, that you will not show this letter to Dr. Pomeroy, who might know enough of the direction from which such a revelation would be likeliest to come, to awaken his suspicion and put him in the way of injuring me. This promised, I now go on to state what you will never cease to thank me for communicating to you, if you are the high-toned man of honor that I suppose. Dr. Pomeroy is well known to be a man of somewhat violent passions; and though I believe that his conduct has been nearly spotless during his professional career, yet there are stains against him for which he is probably the sorriest of men in his calmer moments. Miss Hill, as I have said, was giddy and thoughtless, if no worse; and very soon after the death of her father, those who happened to see her in company with her guardian, noticed that she paid him attentions which showed a very warm personal attachment, while he received them as a bachelor man of the world could not very well avoid receiving such marks of regard from a young and pretty girl. How long this went on, I am not at liberty to say, even if I have any means of knowing: it is enough that, to my knowledge and that of more than one person with whom you are acquainted, the natural result followed. If there was any seduction, I should be puzzled to say on which side the art was used; but perhaps when you remember that the lady has, during all your acquaintance with her, (at least I presume so, from your continuing to visit her,) passed herself off on you as pure enough to be worthy of the honor of your hand, you may be able to form some idea whether she might not have been quite as much in fault as her partner in crime. I say "partner in crime," as I have no wish or motive to shelter Dr. Pomeroy. Perhaps I ought not to say more, and indeed my pen hesitates when I attempt to set down what I consider so lamentable, as well as so culpable. But I must go on, after going thus far. The secret of Miss Hill's remaining at the house of Dr. Pomeroy after her attainment of majority, is that a guilty attachment and connection has existed between them for not less than five years past, unsuspected by most persons who know them, but well known to myself and some others, at least one of whom has been the accidental witness of their crime. If you should think proper to tax her with this depravity, and she should choose to deny this statement, by way of convincing yourself whether this is a foul calumny or a bitter truth, ask her * * * * * * * * I hope and believe that you will take the warning that I have thus conveyed, and not give yourself any trouble to discover the writer, who does not conceal his name from any other motives than those which you can understand and approve.
A True Friend.
Carlton Brand read through this precious document without speaking—a document not worse in motive than all other anonymous communications, any one of which should subject the perpetrator, if discovered, to cropped ears and slitted tongue,—but worse than all others of its evil kind in the atrocity of its surrounding circumstances, as the reader will have no difficulty in believing when a little additional light is shed upon the personality of the writer by the chapters immediately following.