"Dead?" The word was not a question—it was not an exclamation—it was not a cry of mortal agony—it was all three blended. Then she uttered no other word but sat as one stupefied, while he went on, his lip quivering with that most painful expression which has before been noticed, and his hand fumbling at his pocket for something that he seemed to wish to extract from it.
"Yes, he is dead. I have known it for two hours—for two long hours I have known that I had no son." Type cannot indicate the melancholy fall of the last two words, and the heart-broken feeling they conveyed. "My son loved you, Margaret Hayley, better than he loved his old father. You loved him. You should have been his wife. When I knew that he was dead, I tried to conceal it from all until I could send for you, for I felt that it was only here and from my lips that you should learn the truth. Some other might have told you with less thought for your feelings, perhaps, than I who—who—who was so proud of him. I have not been rough, have I? I did not mean to be—I meant to be very gentle, to you, Margaret! See how broken I am!"
So he was, poor old man!—broken in heart and voice, for then he gave way and dropped his head upon one of his failing hands, overpowered, helpless, little more than a child.
Who shall describe the feelings of Margaret Hayley as she heard the words which told her of that one bereavement beyond hope—as she heard them in those piteous tones and from that agonized father—a father no more? Absence, silence, shame, separation of heart from heart upon earth, hope against hope and fear without a name—all were closed and finished at once and forever, in that one great earthquake of fact, opening and swallowing her world of thought—dead! Tears had not yet come—the blind agony that precedes them if it does not render them impossible, was just then her terrible portion.
"How did he—when—where—you have not told me—" A child just learning to speak might have been making that feeble attempt at asking a connected question. But Robert Brand understood her, too well. His hand, again fumbling at his pocket, brought out that of which it had been in search, and his trembling fingers half opened a newspaper and put it into hers, to blast her sense with that greater certainty which seems to dwell in written or printed intelligence than in the mere utterance of the lips—to destroy the last lingering hope that might have remained and put the very dying scene before the eyes so little fitted to look upon it. A line of ink was drawn around part of one of the columns uppermost, and the reader had not even the painful respite of looking to find what she dreaded. And of course that paper was a copy of the Dublin Evening Mail, sent to Robert Brand by one of his distant relatives in England who had chanced to see what it contained—the graphic account of the drowning of Carlton Brand from the deck of the despatch-steamer, of the finding of the body and the burial in the little graveyard back of the Hill of Howth, written by that attached friend of a night, Henry Fitzmaurice.
Margaret Hayley read through that account, every word of which seemed to exhaust one more drop from the life-blood at her heart,—in stony silence and without a motion that could have been perceived. Then the paper slid from her hands to the ground, she turned her head towards Robert Brand with that slow and undecided motion so sad to see because it indicates a palsying of the quick natural energies; and the instant after, that took place which told, better than any other action could have done, how much each had built upon that foundation of an expected near and dear relationship. Robert Brand met that hopeless gaze, reading her whole secret even as his own was being read. Then he opened his arms with a cry that was almost a scream: "My daughter!" and the poor girl fell into them and flung her own around his neck with the answering cry: "Father!" Both were sobbing then; both had found the relief of tears. And a sadder spectacle was never presented; for while Margaret Hayley, in the father of the man she had so loved, was striving to embrace something of the dead form that never could be embraced in reality, Robert Brand was still more truly clasping a shadow—trying to find his lost son who could never come to his arms again, in the thing which had been dearest to that son while in life!
"My son is dead! Come to me; live with me; be a sister to Elsie and a daughter to me, or I shall never be able to bear my punishment!" sobbed the broken old man, his arms still around the pliant form bowed upon his shoulder; but there came no answer, as there needed none. Another voice blended with those that had before spoken, at that moment, and again old Elspeth Graeme stood under the trellis. But was it said a little while since that no change had come upon her since the fading of the roses of June?—certainly there had been a change startling and fearful to contemplate, even in the few moments elapsing since her former speech with her master. The rough, coarse face had assumed an expression in which bitter sorrow was contending with terrible anger; the bluish gray eyes literally blazed with such light as might have filled those of a tigress robbed of her young; and it would have needed no violent stretch of fancy to believe that she had revived one of the old traditions of her Gaelic race and become a mad prophetess of wrath and denunciation. Strangely enough, too, Carlo was again behind her, his eyes glaring upon the two figures that occupied the bench, and his heavy tail moving with that slow threatening motion which precedes the spring of the beast of prey! Was old Elspeth Graeme indeed a wierd woman, and had the brute changed to be her familiar and avenging spirit?
The serving-woman held something white in her hand, but neither Robert Brand nor his visitor saw it. They but saw the tall form and the face convulsed with wild feeling; and both seemed to shrink before a presence mightier than themselves. The strange servitor spoke:
"Robert Brand, tell me gin I heard aright! Did ye say that Carlton Brand was dead?"
"Who called you here, woman? Yes, he is dead! He was drowned on the Irish coast three weeks ago," answered the bereaved father, oddly blending the harsh authority of the master with the feeling which really compelled him to make response.