CHAPTER VIII.
What followed the revelation of Betrayal—A gleam of Hope for Eleanor Hill—A relative from California, a projected Voyage, and a Disappointment—One more Letter—The broken thread resumed—Carlton Brand's farewell, and a sudden Elopement.
Eleanor Hill should of course have left the house of her guardian, that had proved such a valley of poison to her girlhood, the very moment when she made that discovery of her final and complete betrayal. But then, strictly speaking, she should have left it long before; and the same compliant spirit that had once yielded, could yield again. Pity her who will—blame her who may—she bowed beneath the weight of her own helplessness and remained, instead of fleeing from the spot that very night and shaking off the dust of her feet against it, even if she begged her bread thereafter from door to door. Not with what she should have done, and not with what some others whom we have known would have done under the circumstances, have we to do. She remained. Not the same as she had been before—Dr. Philip Pomeroy knew and felt the difference; and yet submissive and apparently unrepining. Not the same in cheerfulness, as Miss Hester felt and deplored: she spoke less, seldomer went out, even when strongly tempted, and spent much more time in the solitude and silence of her own room.
It is not for us to put upon record precisely what passed between the guardian and his ward in the months that immediately followed that revelation; as unfortunately at that point information otherwise complete and uninterrupted, is defective for a considerable interval. It is beyond doubt that in the breast of Eleanor Hill fear and hatred had taken the place of love towards the man whom she had once idolized—that the sense of shame weighing upon her had become every day heavier and less endurable—and that she would have fled away at any moment, but from the fact that she was utterly helpless, pecuniarily and in any capacity for earning her own subsistence, and that she believed in the probability of Dr. Philip Pomeroy putting in force the cruel threat he had made, and publishing her shame to the world, distorted to suit his own purposes, the moment she should have quitted his abode and his guardianly "protection!"
With reference to the wishes and intentions of Dr. Philip Pomeroy himself, it is not much more easy to form any accurate calculation. That he did not wish to follow the example set him by so many unscrupulous traffickers in female virtue, and drive away at once from his presence the woman whose life he had poisoned, is only too certain. That he had no intention of making her legally his own by marriage, his own tongue had declared. It only remains to believe that he held towards the poor girl some sort of tiger mixture of love and hate, which would not consent to make her happy in the only manner which could secure that end, and which yet would not consent to part with her at any demand or upon any terms. Other than she was, to him, she could not be: as she was, she seemed to minister to some unholy but actual need of his nature; and he held her to himself with an evil tenacity which really seemed to afford a new study in psychology. Circumstances were close at hand, calculated to show something of the completeness of the net drawn around the feet of the young girl, even if they did not clearly point out the hand drawing the cord of continued restraint.
Miss Hester Pomeroy died suddenly in the winter of 1860, alike guiltless and ignorant of the evil which had taken place under the roof which owned her as its mistress, regretted by her brother with as much earnest feeling as he had the capacity of bestowing upon so undemonstrative a relation, and sincerely mourned by the forced dweller beneath that roof, to whom her presence had been a protection in the eyes of the world, and to whose cruel lot she had furnished more alleviations than she had herself capacity to understand.
With this death, the introduction of a mere housekeeper to take the place which she had so worthily filled, the additional loneliness which was inevitable when a hired stranger occupied her room, and the certainty that the last excuse of propriety for her remaining was removed,—it may be supposed that the struggle in the mind of the poor girl began anew, and raged with redoubled violence. The desire to be freed from the presence and the power of her destroyer had by that time grown to be an absorbing thought, ever present with her, and worthy of any possible sacrifice to give it reality. Any possible sacrifice: to poor Eleanor Hill, sacrifices which many others would have embraced without a moment's hesitation, seemed literal madness. The certainty of penury and the probability of open shame pressed her close; and she could not shake off the double fetter. Her tyrant would give her no release; and she succumbed to her living death once more.
Months longer of weary waiting for deliverance, every spark of love died out from her heart, and yet soul and body alike enslaved. Oh, God of all the suffering!—how often has this been, with no visible hand to deliver, with no pen to chronicle! Months, and then came what seemed the opportunity of the poor girl's life.
It will be remembered that Nicholas Hill, at his dying hour, spoke of his only relatives, and even those removed by several degrees, residing on the Pacific coast. One of these, William Barnes, a distant cousin, and a man of forty, who owned a comfortable ranch near Sacramento, came on to the East in the summer of 1861, bringing his wife, and in one of his visits to Philadelphia casually heard of the whereabouts of the orphaned daughter of his relative. Within a day or two following he pursued his information by driving out to the Schuylkill and calling upon Eleanor, in the absence of the doctor as it chanced. Half an hour's conversation satisfied the large-hearted Californian that the young girl was unhappy, from whatever cause; ten minutes more drew from her the information that all the property left her by her father had melted away in unfortunate speculations, though of course they won no way towards the other and more terrible secret; and the next ten minutes sufficed him to offer her a home, as a relative and companion to his wife, at his pleasant ranch in the Golden State. Girls were scarce in California, he said; girls as handsome as Eleanor were scarce in any quarter of the globe; and if she would accept his invitation they would astonish all his neighbors a little, on their arrival out, while she could select at will among fifty stalwart fellows, with plenty of money, any day when she might fancy a husband.
Here was hope—here was deliverance. How eagerly Eleanor Hill grasped at it can only be known by the wretch who has once been so nearly drowned that the last gasp was on his lip, and then found a helping hand stretched out for his rescue—or that other wretch who has wandered for hours over a trackless waste and then found a landmark at the moment when he was ready to lie down and die! William Barnes was to leave New York on his return to California within a fortnight: he would inform his wife of the arrangement, and she would be delighted with the thought of finding a companion; and on the morning of the sailing of the steamer Eleanor would appear, to fill the state-room already engaged.
Somewhat to the surprise of the escaping prisoner, and immeasurably to her joy, when that evening, with an expression on her lip that was nearer to triumph than any which had rested there during all the four years of her sinful slavery—Dr. Philip Pomeroy neither threatened her with poverty nor exposure as he had before done (perhaps because he felt that when under Mr. Barnes' protection the former would be beyond his power and the latter of little consequence in a State so far removed as California) nor even seriously opposed her accepting the offer made her. At last, then, the cruel heart had relented, her shameful dependence was at an end, and the reformation of her life could find its late beginning.
Three days later came a letter from New York, from William Barnes, reiterating what had been said personally, and accompanied by the indorsement of the arrangement by Mrs. Barnes. The last shadow of doubt, then, was removed out of the way, and the young girl's moderate preparations for removal went on with new vigor. One hundred dollars in money was all that she asked of her guardian for these preparations, and that sum was accorded without hesitation or comment. On the morning of the sailing of the steamer she left Philadelphia by the early train, the doctor himself bringing her down to the depot in his carriage, and bidding her good-bye with a word of kind regret, and a kiss which seemed chaste enough for that of a brother. Her small array of baggage had preceded her, and was no doubt already within the hold of the vessel that was to bear her to the Pacific, to a renewed life, and an opportunity of gathering up the broken threads of lost happiness.
The steamer, the old Northern Light, of such varying fortunes, was to sail at two. At half-past twelve, the carriage containing Eleanor Hill dashed down to the foot of Warren Street, among all that crush of carriages, baggage-wagons, foot-people with valises and carpet-bags, idlers, policemen, pickpockets, United States Mail vans, weeping women, whining children, and insatiate shakers of human hands, that has attended the departure of every California steamer since the first ploughed her ocean way towards the land of gold. Mr. Barnes had promised to meet her at the gangway or on shipboard, but neither on the dock nor on deck could she discover him. One o'clock was long past, and Eleanor had grown sick at heart under the idea that some mistake as to the steamer must have been made, when from the gangway she saw a carriage drive up and her new protector alight from it. He was assisting out a lady who could be no other than his wife; and the young girl, fairly overjoyed, ran down the plank to meet and welcome them. The lady, who was just starting up the plank as Eleanor reached the foot of it, did not notice her, but continued her ascent: William Barnes did see her, and allowing his wife to proceed alone, he seized her arm and drew her hurriedly away down the pier, and beyond ear-shot. Eleanor noticed that his face seemed flushed, and his whole demeanor agitated; but she was far from being prepared for the startling intelligence that burst from his lips, interlarded with oaths and expressions of honest indignation. The generous-hearted Californian was, in truth, very nearly beside himself with shame and mortification. Eleanor could not accompany his wife and himself to California, after all! And the story of the disappointment, though a little mixed up with those energetic expressions and once interrupted by the necessity of the enraged man's pausing to throw into the dock a package of fruit which his wife had just been purchasing for her comfort on the voyage (the porter who brought it being very nearly included in that sacrifice to Neptune), the story, in spite of all these hindrances, was far too quickly told; and every word, after the first which revealed her fate, fell upon the heart of the poor girl as if it had been the blow of a hammer smiting her living flesh.
Up to that morning—the Californian said—his wife had seemed not only willing to accept Eleanor's society, but highly pleased at the prospect. Her ticket had been bought and various presents selected by Mrs. Barnes' own hands, for the comfort of their guest on the route and in her new home. That morning, and not more than two hours before, the weather in the matrimonial horizon, never entirely reliable in the latitude of Mrs. Barnes, had changed entirely. On coming into the hotel from some business calls, among them a visit to the Post Office (though Mr. Barnes thought, very naturally, that the latter place could have nothing to do with the sudden barometric variation)—she had suddenly declared to him that "he might as well go down to the office and countermand the order for Miss Hill's ticket and save the money; as if she [Miss Hill] went to California with him on the steamer that day, she [Mrs. Barnes] would not stir one step but stay in New York." Inquiry and even demand had failed to secure any explanation of this strange and sudden veering of the marital weathercock; and expostulation and even entreaty, with full representations of the contemptible position in which he would be placed by any change in the arrangements at that hour, had failed to secure any modification of the sentence. She wanted no strangers in her house, or in her company on board ship; and she would not have any—that was flat! If Eleanor Hill went to California, she remained! A full-blown domestic quarrel, lasting with different degrees of gusty violence for nearly an hour, had been the result; and that other result had followed which nearly always follows when husband and wife commence discussion of any matter seriously affecting the feelings (or whims) of the latter—the husband had succumbed, the arrangement had been definitely broken off, and the state-room which the young girl was to have occupied was no doubt by that time in the occupancy of a man with a red beard, long boots, a broad hat and a gray blanket!
Poor Eleanor Hill!—it seemed too hard, indeed—this being plunged back again into the pit of helpless sin and self-reproach, at every effort made for extrication!
There is a legend told of the great well in the court-yard of one of the old English castles, at the period of the Parliamentary wars, which comes into mind when the cruel facts of her life are remembered. Sir Hugh, the Cavalier, had seen his castle surprised, taken and sacked by the Cromwellian troopers, guided and led on by a roundhead churl who owed him gratitude instead of ill-service—had been wounded and made prisoner, while the females of his family were maltreated and the pictures that made half his ancestral pride stabbed and hacked in pieces by the ruffians who could not enough outrage the living members of his race. Then the tide of fortune had turned; he had once more regained his strong-hold, with manly arms around him, and those of his dear ones who had not perished by outrage and exposure, once more under his sheltering hand. Then the recreant roundhead neighbor fell one day into his hands, and the cruel blood of the Norman ancestors who had begun their robbery and rapine on English soil at Hastings, rose up in the breast of Sir Hugh and made him for the time a very fiend of revenge. The great well had been ruined by the corpses thrown into it at the sacking of the castle; and into that well, in spite of his struggles, he had the poor wretch lowered by his retainers, then the slight rope cut away and the victim left to cling to the slippery stones at the edge of the water thirty feet below, unable to climb them, too desperate to sink, and wailing out his cries for mercy, while a huge lamp, lowered by another rope, showed the whole terrible spectacle to the pitiless eyes that dared look down upon it. Then another rope was lowered by the great windlass, within reach of the struggling wretch, and he was allowed to seize hold upon it and climb a little way from the water, under the belief that his tyrant had at last relented and that he was to be allowed to save himself after that dreadful trial. Then, when he had climbed for a few feet from the black ooze beneath him, the rope was lowered away and the poor wretch again submerged, to shriek, and wail, and climb again, and to be again dropped back at the moment of transient hope, until the wearied fingers could cling and climb no longer and the life thus outraged and the light which had revealed that sad refinement upon cruelty went horribly out together! And how much less cruel was Fate, thus standing guard over the life of Eleanor Hill and dropping her back again into her own shame at every attempt which she made to escape from it or to rise above it,—than the grim and grizzled old Sir Hugh who had been made a human fiend by his past wrongs and the bandit blood of his race?
There was genuine regret blended with the anger and shame on the honest face of William Barnes, as he made that confession which dashed all the hopes of the young girl,—that he dared not take her to California. But who shall describe the expression of hopeless sorrow and despondency which dwelt upon hers at that moment? Yet despondency was unwise as struggle was unavailing. This, too, must be borne, as a part of the penalty of—no, we cannot write the word "guilt"—the penalty of being unfortunate and abused! The Californian took the privilege of blood, to urge the acceptance of such a sum from his well-filled wallet as would enable her to replace the clothing and other articles in her trunks, then too late to remove from the hold of the vessel,—bade her good-bye and sprung on board just as the last call was given. The poor outcast mustered courage to speak to a hackman as the steamer moved away that she had so lately hoped was to bear her to a more hospitable land and a better life; and half an hour later she was speeding back towards Philadelphia on the Camden and Amboy boat; with strange thoughts running through her mind but happily finding no lodgment there, that under some circumstances of desertion and despair there could not be such a terrible crime in slipping quietly overboard and going to a dreamless sleep in the cool, placid water.
Had Eleanor Hill possessed that energy the want of which has been so many times before deplored, she would have sought out another home, though in the most miserable alley of the overcrowded city, before returning yet more disgraced to that place of misery once abandoned. But she lacked that energy, and perhaps her coming life was foredoomed, as the past had been. That night the bars of her cage closed again upon her. Dr. Philip Pomeroy received her in all kindness, with some expressions of pleased surprise and a few sharp epithets hurled at the man who could be weak enough to change his mind in that manner at the bidding of a woman. But there was something in his tone and demeanor which left the girl in doubt whether he was really so much surprised as he pretended; and later developments were rapidly approaching which made the doubt more tenable.
Among the acquaintances formed by Eleanor Hill in the early days of her residence under the roof of Dr. Pomeroy, had been the family of Robert Brand, which the doctor visited (as he did many others in the neighborhood) both as friend and medical attendant. In those days she had been visited by Elsie Brand and her brother, and had visited them in return. Gradually all intimacy between Elsie and herself had ceased, as that great change, known only to herself and two others, affected the whole tenor of her life. But the friendship at that time formed with Carlton Brand had never weakened, and it perhaps grew the stronger from the hour when each became satisfied that no warmer personal interest would ever rise in the breast of the other. Perhaps Carlton Brand, to some extent a man of the world, and a close student of character by virtue of his profession, may have formed his opinions, long before 1861, of the relations existing between the doctor and his ward; but if so, he had not a thought of blame or any depreciation of respect for the poor girl on account of it; and during all those years, if he indeed harbored such suspicions, he had no means of verifying them, for Eleanor Hill's lips had been and remained quite as closely sealed to him as to others.
Between Dr. Philip Pomeroy and the lawyer had always existed, since the young girl had been an inmate of the house, an antagonism which could not well be mistaken. No open rupture had taken place, in the knowledge of any acquaintance of either; but they never met without exchanging looks which told of mutual dislike and distrust. Within the three years between 1858 and 1861 that antagonism, as even the unobservant girl could see, had markedly increased, so that even in his own house the doctor, when he came upon him, seldom addressed a word to his unwelcome guest. Had she known that in the investigations which followed the failure of the Dunderhaven Coal and Mining Company, in the later days of the great commercial crash of 1857-8, Carlton Brand had been one of the counsel employed to prosecute that great swindle in which her own fortune had been swallowed up with hundreds of others,—had she known this, we say, she might have imagined some reason for this increase of dislike which was certainly not founded upon jealousy. But she would not have guessed, even then, one tithe of the causes for deadly and life-long hatred which lay between two men of corresponding eminence in two equally liberal professions. It is not possible, at this stage of the narration, to explain what were those causes, eventually so certain to develop themselves.
On the eve of her attempted transit to California, of which we have already seen the melancholy failure, Eleanor Hill wrote but one letter of farewell, and that letter was addressed to Carlton Brand. On her way homeward from her great disappointment, she paused in the city to drop a pencil note written on board the steamboat; and that was also to Carlton Brand, informing him of her return. No reply was made to the latter note, for three days: then the lawyer called upon her one day during the professional absence of the doctor. He had been absent, at the city of New York and still farther eastward, for more than a week previous. He had returned from the commercial metropolis only the day before, and had taken the very earliest moment to acknowledge the reception of her missive and to express his sympathy in her disappointment—perhaps something more.
After a few moments of conversation on that unfortunate affair, the lawyer remarked that he had chanced to stop at the same hotel in New York, patronized by Mr. Barnes and his wife, and having some recollection of the face of the former, from old Philadelphia rencontres, had made the acquaintance of both. He had known nothing whatever of the intention of Eleanor to accompany them to the Pacific coast, or even that any relationship existed between herself and William Barnes. But Mrs. Barnes had "cottoned to him" a little, apparently, he had been the possessor of a few spare hours, and he had become her companion and escort on some of her shopping excursions when Mr. Barnes was otherwise employed. He had been her escort on the morning of the day on which she sailed, and after her return from the Post-office had been present at her opening of several letters, over one of which she fell into a storm of rage requiring an apology for such an exposure before a comparative stranger. As a part of that apology, she had handed him the letter, bearing the Philadelphia post-mark; and inadvertently, as he then supposed, but providentially, as he afterwards saw reason to believe, he had kept the letter in his hands, dropped it into his pocket with his newspaper, and forgotten to return it until he had parted from the enraged woman and left the hotel. It was only after his return to Philadelphia and reception of the two notes advising him of Eleanor's intended departure and her disappointment, that he had been able to connect that letter with any one in whom he possessed a personal interest.
Eleanor Hill had been gradually growing paler during this recital; and she was chalky white and almost ready to faint, when at that stage the lawyer paused and handed her a letter taken from his pocket, with the inquiry, "if she knew that handwriting." The letter was very brief, but very expressive, and ran as follows—the words being faithfully copied from the shameful original, lying at the writer's hand at this moment:
Philadelphia, —— —, 1861.
Madam:—I have accidentally learned that arrangements have been made by your husband and yourself, to take a young lady back with you to your home in California, on your return. When I tell you that I knew your husband and his family many years ago, you will understand my motive for taking part in what is apparently none of my business. If the report is true, that you do so intend, you have been shamefully deceived and imposed upon. The young lady, whose name I need not mention, has been for years the mistress of the man with whom she is living; and you can judge for yourself the policy of introducing such a person into your household. I have no means of judging whether your husband is or is not acquainted with the real character of the lady; but any doubt on that subject you can have no difficulty in solving for yourself. I have preferred to address you instead of him, with this warning, because in the event of his really being aware of all the circumstances, any communication to him would of course never have reached your eyes. With the highest esteem and regard for yourself, for your husband and his family, I am (only concealing my real name, for the present, from motives which I hope you will readily appreciate,) yours, obediently,
D. T. M.
"My God!—yes, I know that handwriting!" sobbed Eleanor Hill, covering her eyes with both hands, after glancing over the precious epistle.
"So I feared!" said Carlton Brand.
"Oh, how can any man be so cruel!" continued the poor girl.
"How could he dare to utter such a falsehood?" said the lawyer, glancing closely at the young girl meanwhile. Her face, that had the moment before been pale, was now one flush of crimson, and it seemed as if the very veins would burst with the pressure of shamed and indignant blood. Carlton Brand saw, and if he had before doubted, he doubted no longer. He spoke not another word. But the instant after, at last goaded beyond all endurance, Eleanor Hill started to her feet, and said:
"Carlton Brand, I believe that I have but one friend in the world, and you are that friend. I have tried to keep my shame from you, because I could not bear to forfeit your good opinion. You know all, now, but do not believe me guilty and wicked! That man—"
"I do not believe you guilty, Eleanor, whatever may be the errors into which you have been dragged by that worst devil out of torment!" he interrupted her.
"Expose that man to the world, then, or kill him! Do not let my shame stand in the way! I can bear any thing, to see him punished as he deserves, for this last cruel deed!" The girl was for the moment beside herself, and she little thought, just then, what was the penalty she braved! It seemed that Carlton Brand better appreciated the peril, or that some other weighty consideration chained his limbs and his spirit, for his was now the flushed face, and he made none of those physical movements which the avenger inevitably assumes, even if beneath no other eye than God's, when he determines upon a course of action involving exposure and possible danger. He seemed to tremble, but not with anxiety: his was rather the quiver of inertiæ than any nobler incitement.
"Expose him?—kill him?" he gasped rather than said. "You do not know what you ask, Eleanor! I cannot!—dare not—"
"Dare not?" echoed Eleanor Hill, her face that had ordinarily so little pride or courage in it, now expressing wonder not unmingled with contempt. For the first time, she saw the countenance of that man who had seemed to her almost a demi-god, convulsed with pain and shame; and the sad wonder that was almost pity grew in her eyes, as within a moment after, moved by her confidence and assured by it that he need fear no danger of betrayal, Carlton Brand entrusted her with the secret of that skeleton in his mental closet which made him powerless against the bold, unscrupulous and determined Philip Pomeroy. Each had the most dangerous confidence of the other, then; and each realized, if nothing more, a certain painful satisfaction in knowing that the burthen was not thenceforth to be borne entirely without sympathy. But to neither did there appear any hope of unravelling a villany which seemed to both so monstrous.
All this took place in the summer of 1861, it will be remembered; and between that time and the period at which we have seen Eleanor Hill kneeling piteously before Nathan Bladesden and afterwards greeting Carlton Brand with such a sympathy of shame and sorrow,—nearly two years had elapsed. During that time Carlton Brand had seemed to gather more and more dislike of the physician, and, as must be confessed, more and more positive fear of him; while Dr. Pomeroy had more than once treated poor Eleanor with positive bodily indignity for daring to receive his visits at all, though he was the last of all her old acquaintances who kept up the least pretence at intimacy. Finally, for months before the June of 1863, the lawyer had ceased to make any visits to the house, except at times when he knew the doctor to be absent; and then he stayed but briefly at each infrequent call, while one of the female servants, who was devoted to Eleanor, had confidential orders from her to keep watch for the sudden coming of the doctor, so that this man, who seemed born to be a Paladin, could skulk away by one door or the other and avoid a meeting! A most pitiable exhibition, truly!—but the record must be made a faithful one, even in this melancholy instance.
Since Eleanor Hill's return from her temporary Hegira, for a long period, so far as the eye could see no change had taken place in the relations existing between the "guardian" and his "ward." Perhaps he treated her with more coolness than of old; and she may have been more habitually silent, while she had become a virtual recluse and seldom passed beyond the doors of that fated dwelling. Whatever the weakness which the fact may have shown on her part, whatever of persistent evil on his,—the old intimacy of crime had been maintained, though the love once existing in the breast of the young girl had long changed to loathing, and there was every reason to believe that the ignobler passion urging on her destroyer had quite as long before become satiety.
This up to a certain period. One day during the winter of 1862, Nathan Bladesden, a Quaker merchant of the city, gray-headed, eminently respectable and a widower, had found occasion to call at the residence of Dr. Pomeroy. In the host's absence he had been received by his ward; and the blind god, ever fantastic in his dealings, had smitten the calm, strong man with a feeling not to be overcome. He had called again and again, sometimes in the doctor's absence and sometimes when he was at home; but the object of his pursuit had evidently been Eleanor Hill. His visits had seemed to be rather pleasing than otherwise to the master of the house, who could not fail to see towards what they tended; and that he did see and approve had seemed to be evident from his entire withdrawal of himself from Eleanor's private society, from the time of the second visit. The poor girl's heart had leaped with joy, at the possibility of union with a noble man, that should finally remove her from her false position and make her past life only a sad remembrance; and those precisians may blame her who will, while all must sorrow for the circumstances which seemed to render the deception necessary,—that she had not shuddered, as she possibly should have done, at the idea of marriage without full confidence. Two months before, while April was laughing and weeping over the earth, the grave, unimpeachable man, who already held so much of her respect and could so easily induce a much warmer feeling of her nature,—had asked her to be his honored wife and the mistress of his handsome house in the city; and the harrassed girl, the goal of a life of peace once more in sight, had answered him that she would be his wife at any moment if he would consent to accept the remnant of a heart which had been cruelly tortured and to make no inquiries as to a past which must ever remain buried. To these terms the Quaker had consented; this had been Eleanor Hill's betrothal; and with such a redeeming prospect in view had her life remained, until that fatal day of June when the knowledge that her whole secret was betrayed burst upon her in the presence and the reproaches of Nathan Bladesden. What passed between them has already been recorded, at a stage of this narration antecedent to the long but necessary resumé just concluded; and we have seen how, only a few minutes after, Carlton Brand held in his hand the letter of her second denunciation, and what were his brief but burning words as he commenced reading.
"Curse him! He deserves eternal perdition, and he will find it!"
He read through the letter without speaking another word, though there were occasional convulsive twitches of his face which showed how his heart was stirred to indignation by the perusal.
"You are sure, are you not?" Eleanor asked, when he had finished.
"Just as sure as I was in the other case. The deed is the most black and damning that I have ever known; and if I had before been an infidel I should be converted by the knowledge that such an incarnate scoundrel must roast in torment!"
"And what am I to do?" asked the girl, with that helpless and irresolute air which is so pitiable.
"Heaven help us both! I do not know!" was the reply, with the proud head drooping lower on the breast than it should ever have been bowed by any feeling except devotion.
"I cannot remain here after this!" she said. "Can you not take me away—do something for me? Does the—do the same obstacles stand in your way that stood there two years ago?"
"No—not the same, but worse!" answered the lawyer, bitterly. "Oh, there never was a child so helpless as I am at this moment. I have wealth, but I cannot use it for your benefit without exposing you to final and complete ruin in public opinion. And for myself—poor Eleanor, I pity you, God knows I do, but I pity myself still worse. I came to tell you that I am going away this very day,—that I shall not again set foot within my father's house—perhaps never again while I live,—that my spirit is crushed and my heart broken."
"What has happened? tell me! The old trouble, Carlton?" asked the young girl, in a tone of true commiseration.
"Yes, the old trouble, and worse!" was the reply, followed by a rapid relation of the events of the morning, and concluding with these hopeless words: "An hour since, I parted with the woman I loved and hoped to make my own. To-morrow my name may be a scoff and a by-word in the mouth of every man who knows me. I cannot and will not meet this shame, which is not hidden like your own, but will be blown abroad by the breath of thousands of personal acquaintances, and perhaps made the subject of jest in the public newspapers. Think how those who have hated and perhaps feared me—criminals whom I have brought to justice and thieves whom I have foiled in their plunderings,—will gloat over the knowledge that I can trouble them no more—that I have fallen lower, in the public eye, than they have ever been! I am going away, where no man who has ever looked upon my face and known it, can look upon it again!"
The tone in which Carlton Brand spoke was one of utter despondency and abandonment. There was nothing of the sharp, vigorous ring of that speech which contains and declares a purpose: the words fell stolid and lifeless as hung the head and drooped the arms of the utterer in her presence with whom he held a sad community of disgrace.
"I understand you, and I believe that your lot is even worse than my own!" said Eleanor Hill, after a moment of silence. "You do right in going away, and you could not help me if you stayed. Nothing can help me, I suppose. Do not think of me any more. I can bear what is to come, quite as well as I have borne all that is past!" She had been nodding her head mechanically when she commenced speaking, and at every nod it sank lower and lower until the face was hidden from the one friend whom she was thus losing beyond recall.
At that moment there was a rapid foot on the stairway above, and the house servant whom Eleanor had managed to keep in her interest spoke quickly at the door.
"If you please, Miss, doctor's carriage is coming through the gate from the Darby road. Thought you would like to know it." And as rapidly as she had come down, she ascended again to her employment in the attic.
"Oh, Carlton, you must not be seen here, now!" exclaimed the poor girl, her face all fright and anxiety, and herself apparently forgotten. Something in that look and tone smote the heart of Carlton Brand more deeply than it had ever been smitten by the sorrow and disgrace of his own situation; and with that feeling of intense compassion a new thought was born within him. "Yesterday I could not have done it—to-day I can!" he muttered, so low that the girl could not understand his words; then he said aloud, and speaking very rapidly:
"I cannot meet him, and you shall not! Throw something on your head and over your shoulders, quick; and come with me!"
For one instant the young girl gazed into his face as if in doubt and hesitation; but the repetition of a single word decided her:
"Quick!"
A glow of delight and surprise that had long been a stranger to her face, broke over it; she ran to the little bed-room adjoining the apartment in which they were speaking, threw on a black-silken mantle and a sober little hat that hung there, and was ready in an instant. In another Carlton Brand had seized her arm, hurried her out of the room, down the stairs, through the hall and out into the garden which lay at the north side of the house and extended down almost to the edge of the causeway. Dr. Pomeroy was driving down the lane leading from the Darby road, and was consequently on the opposite side of the house from the fugitives. Fugitives they may well have been called, though perhaps so strange an elopement had never before been planned—an elopement over a comparatively open country in the broad light of a summer noon, by two persons who held no tie of blood and no warmer feeling for each other than friendship, and who had not dreamed of such an act even five minutes before.
But those operations the most suddenly conceived are not always the worst executed. Necessity, if not genius, is often a successful imitator of that quality. When the doctor drove up at the gate in front of the house, his "ward" and her new companion were just dodging out of the tall bean-poles and shrubbery, over the garden fence, to the edge of the meadow; by the time he had fairly entered the house they were on the causeway and partially sheltered by the elders that ran along it and fringed the bank of the singing brook; and long before he could have discovered the flight and made such inquiries of the servants as might have directed his gaze in that direction, the lawyer in his strangely soiled and unaccustomed attire, and the girl so slightly arrayed for starting out on her travels in the world, were within the circle of woods before mentioned, stretching northward to the great road leading down to the city.