The Coward: A Novel of Society and the Field in 1863

by Henry Morford

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.