E. H.
"Well, I'll be——!"
It was a plump, round oath that Robert Brand uttered—very improper under any circumstances, and especially so in the presence of ladies,—but about as natural, when all things are considered, as the air he breathed. In order to realize the exact position and the blind astonishment that must have lain in that telegraphic despatch, it is necessary to remember that once before he had heard of the death of the young man, from one who had just seen his lifeless body (Kitty Hood), and that only two hours afterwards his house had been visited by the enraged Dr. Pomeroy to reclaim a girl that the man just before dead was alleged to have stolen! Now, only an hour or two before, he had a second time been informed of his son's death at sea, and burial in Ireland, under such circumstances that mistake seemed to be impossible; and yet here was a telegraphic despatch quite as likely to be authentic if not originating in some unfeeling hoax—informing him that he had been nearly killed in battle, and was lying in one of the Virginia hospitals! At short intervals the young man seemed to die, in different places, and then immediately after to be alive again in other places, under aspects scarcely less painful and yet more embarrassing. There was certainly enough in all this to make the old man's brain whirl, and to overspread the faces of the others with such blank astonishment that they seemed to be little else than demented. There was one, however, not puzzled one whit. That was old Elspeth, who muttered, loudly enough for them all to hear, as she abandoned them to their fate, resigned her temporary position as seeress, and went back to the mundane duties of house-keeping:
"It's not the bairn's ainsel at all that's lying down amang the naygurs where they're fechting. It is his double that's come bock frae the auld land to haunt ye! Come awa, Carlo, lad, and let them mak much of it!"
There is no need to recapitulate all that followed between the three remaining people, surprised in such different degrees—the words in which little Elsie was made to understand the first intelligence, followed by her reading of the whole account in the Irish paper—the hopes, fears, fancies and wild surmises which swept through the brains and hearts of each—the thoughts of Robert Brand over the initials appended to the telegraphic despatch, which for some reason made him much more confident of its authenticity than he would otherwise have been, while they embarrassed him terribly in another direction which may or may not be guessed—the weaving together of three minds that had been more or less separated by conflicting feelings with reference to that very person, into one grand total and aggregate of anxiety which dwarfed all other considerations and made the whole outside world a blank and a nothing in comparison. All this may be imagined: until the perfecting of that invention by which the kaleidoscope is to be photographed in the moment of its revolution, it cannot be set in words. But the result may and must be given.
"I shall go to Washington by the train, to-night," said Robert Brand, when the discussion had reached a certain point, with the mystery thicker than ever and the anxiety proportionately increasing.
"You, father? Are you well enough to go?" and little Elsie looked at him with gratified and yet fearful surprise.
"No matter, I am going!" That was enough, and Elsie knew it. Within the last half hour much of his old self seemed to have returned; and when he assumed that tone, life granted, he would go as inevitably as the locomotive.
"I am glad to hear you say so, Mr. Brand—father!" said Margaret Hayley, very calmly. "It will make it much better, no doubt, for I am going."
"You!" This time there were two voices that uttered the word of surprise.