Half a mile northward from the Market street road which has already been before so many times alluded to—on the north side of that road and at the distance of a mile westward from the Hayley residence, was located that before mentioned as the abode of the Brands. It was a fine old house, built fifty or sixty years before, but within a few years repaired and rebuilt with a lavish disregard of cost, a railed promenade having been added at the apex of the steep roof, the whole two stories of height re-enclosed, the windows and doors comparatively modernized, the piazzas remodelled and widened, and all done that the carpenter's art could well be expected to achieve, to add to the comfort and durability of the mansion without destroying the appearance of respectable age which it had already put on. The house stood facing southward upon nearly level ground, the lawn in front of good depth and thickly dotted with forest and other shade trees that had evidently known all the years of the building; while from the eastern side a narrow lane ran down to the road and afforded ingress and egress to carriages passing back towards the handsomely-grouped range of outbuildings in the rear. Adjoining this lane and behind the house was a large garden, with grape trellises and many of the appliances of luxury in horticulture.
At the eastern end of the piazza a broad single door opened into the somewhat antiquated hall; and from that hall a door opened into a parlor fitted up with every appliance of convenience that could be needed in such a country residence. Behind that parlor another door opened into a smaller apartment correspondingly fitted but with more of those belongings calculated to show its constant occupancy; and from that rear room still another door opening to the left disclosed a bed-room of comfortable appearance and tasteful arrangement. On the other side of the hall the dining and domestic apartments stretched away, while the spacious upper story supplied rooms to other members of the family.
It was very evident, at a glance, that wealth presided over the modernized old house, and that good taste was not forgotten; and yet an impression could not well be avoided that there must be something of severity, and repugnance to ornament, conjoined with the wealth. Poverty, or even struggling pride, would not have afforded so much of the best: warm taste and lavish liberality would have supplied something more of the costly and the luxurious.
In the second of the rooms mentioned—that immediately in the rear of the parlor, two persons were in conversation at about noon of the same day of the occurrences previously recorded. The one, sitting in an easy-chair with his right leg raised and resting upon another chair crowned with a pillow,—was apparently sixty-five to seventy years of age; tall, if his proportions could properly be judged as he sat, with a figure that must have been robust in its time; the hair so nearly white as to preclude any idea of the color which it might have worn in earlier days; the face well cut and even handsome for its age, though with a shade of severity in the firm nose and shaven lips, which under some circumstances might grow threatening; but any accurate judgment of his character rendered difficult, by the look of pain stamped upon his face by evident bodily suffering. Resting against a small table partially covered with bandages and embrocations, was a stout cane, indicating both that the invalid was in the habit of using a support of that character, and that he could not, even now, be entirely confined to his chair. Such was Robert Brand, owner of the mansion into which we have been introduced, and father of two children apparently as little alike in nature as in sex—Carlton and Elsie Brand.
The second figure was quite as well deserving of notice as the old man in his easy-chair. Doctor Philip Pomeroy, who was at that moment pacing up and down the room without any apparent cause for that violent exercise in warm weather, was a man in whom the acute physiognomist might have found something illustrated by that seemingly listless motion—something possessed in common by restless men, in the superior animal kingdom, and those bears and hyenas which seem to traverse a great many unnecessary miles in travelling up and down the bars of their cages, in the inferior. And yet the doctor could not have been called, with any propriety, an "animal-looking man"—it was the motion which supplied the comparison. He was apparently forty-five to fifty, tall and slight figured, with face clean shaven except a heavy dark moustache, features a little aquiline and decidedly sharp lips that suggested an occasional sneer and a word cutting like a scimetar, eyes of keen scintillant dark brown or black, and rather long dark straight hair through which the threads of silver began to show more as an ornament than a disadvantage. A very fine looking man—a man of undoubted power and will—a man who had evidently enjoyed the most favorable associations; and yet how nearly a man to be either braved or trusted without reserve, it might have needed Lavater's self to decide on a brief acquaintance. That same Lavater, if acquainted with the peculiarities of road turn-outs, would have decided one point, at least, from the vehicle that stood in the lane, near the door—no clumsy and cumbersome gig, weighing an indefinite number of tons and set down as the proper conveyance for doctors from the day when the first one grew too lazy to walk,—but a light, sporting-looking buggy, seated for one, and suggesting fast driving quite as much as the high-blooded, thorough-bred bay that champed his bit before it and stamped impatiently for the coming of his master.
From the medical character of the visitor and the disabled appearance of the man in the easy-chair, it might have been concluded that the call was a professional one; and such was indeed the fact. An injury to the right limb of Robert Brand, received many years before, had a habit of asserting itself at uncertain periods, crippling him materially all the while, and at those particular times throwing him into all those agonies indifferently known as the pangs of neuralgia and inflammatory rheumatism. At such periods, the traditional character of the "gouty old Admiral" of the English stage, always limping and thumping a heavy cane, and nearly always venting words more forcible than polite, was very nearly illustrated in the old gentleman, his desire for active motion being generally in an inverse ratio to the power of movement. Dr. Pomeroy, one of the most skilful of the physicians of the section, and a man in very extensive practice, was always his medical adviser at such times, and re-directed the application of those warm flannels and neutralizing embrocations which constituted all that even science could do for the alleviation of his sufferings, and about which old Elspeth the housekeeper knew a good deal more, all the while, than any physician could possibly do. For the three days previous, Robert Brand had been suffering to a most painful degree, and this was the third of the daily visits of the doctor.
But whatever might have been the professional character of the visit, it had, before the moment when our attention is called to the two interlocutors, lost any feature which could have marked it as such. Robert Brand was a patriot, almost equally warm-hearted and hot-headed in the type of his attachment to his country; while Dr. Pomeroy was one of those quasi-loyalists, popularly called "Copperheads," who have the love of country quite as often on their lips as the most unshrinking war-advocate can do, but who prefer to show that love by objecting to every effort made for the preservation of nationality, by denouncing, in every nine words out of ten, something done by the loyal government, while only the poor tenth is kept for a wail over the unfortunate character of the "civil war,"—and by undervaluing every success won by the Union arms, while every momentary advantage gained by the rebels is correspondingly magnified. He seemed to take particular delight, always, in tormenting the old gentleman just to the verge of a positive rupture without quite causing one; and just now, in the advance of the rebel forces into Pennsylvania, he found a golden opportunity.
"Bah!" he said, in response to a strongly patriotic expression of his patron, which had led him to bring down one of his hands upon the disabled leg with a force causing a new tingle in that limb and a new expression of agony upon his face—"bah! All you hot-headed people, young and old, use just such language, all the while. It amounts to nothing, except that perhaps it eases your minds. Saying that 'the Union must and shall be preserved,' and prophesying all kinds of good things for the nation, amount to but very little while a set of incapables sit filling their pockets at Washington (more than half of them traitors, in my opinion), while the army is worse mismanaged than it could be if a set of school-boys led it, and while the enemies you affect to despise are really winning every thing and overrunning the whole country."
"Out upon you, Dr. Pomeroy!" cried the old man, angrily. "You dare to call yourself a patriot, and talk in that manner! There are plenty of fools at Washington, but I would rather see fools there than traitors! If you are not a perfect block-head, you know that the rebels have lost twice as much as they have gained, within the past year, and that if the fight goes on in the same manner for one year more, the miserable mongrel concern will die of its own weakness! But you do not want it to die—that is just what ails you!—you would rather see Jeff Davis in the Capitol than any loyal man who would not give all the offices to your miserable broken-down party!"
"And you would rather see the whole country lying in ruins, with heaps of dead everywhere and the few who remain starving to death in the midst of them, than that the country should be in any other hands than those of your friends who do nothing else than talk about the nigger, legislate for the nigger, and fight for the nigger!" answered the doctor, still continuing his walk, and his face showing decided temper.