"Nathan Bladesden, do you think that you will leave this spot alive, after using such words to me!" and the hands of Philip Pomeroy were clutching at his wristbands as if rolling them up to put them out of the way of blood! The purpose of attack was reversed: he seemed to be about to spring, tiger-like, at the Quaker's throat.
"Thee will not kill me, Dr. Philip, if I do not!" the latter said. "I am stronger than thee, and have a better cause. I think I will not touch thee, but leave thee to thy Maker, if thee keeps thy hands off; but I have made up my mind, if thee touches me, to beat thee until thee has no shape of a man—until thee is dead as yonder gate-post. If thee thinks that I will not, thee had better try it!"
Dr. Pomeroy did not believe himself a poltroon, nor was he one in that sense relating to purely physical courage. And had there been merely involved a conflict with that larger, stronger and better-preserved man, in which one or the other might suffer severe injury and disfigurement, he would have carried out his thought and sprung upon him, beyond a question. But something in those slow dropping pellets of compressed rage falling from the Quaker's lips, told the medical man (seldom too angry to be subtle and cunning), that in the event of a struggle, and the merchant getting the upper hand, he would probably carry out his threat and actually beat him to death with those heavy fists before any human aid could interpose. And to be mangled into a corpse by a Quaker—bah! there was really something in the idea, likely to calm blood quite as hot with rage as that of Dr. Philip—apart from the slight objection he may have had to being hurried into eternity in any way, at that moment. Then another thought struck him—a double one: how completely the Quaker would be at fault, searching through the house for Eleanor Hill; and how he was himself losing time, in that miserable quarrel—time that could never be regained. His horse and buggy stood all the while just within the opened gate, where the ostler had left it and gone back to his care of the blown animal at the stable; and as that important reflection forced itself upon his mind, he turned his back short upon the Quaker, strode to his buggy, stepped into it and dashed away, only pausing to hurl at his tormentor this one verbal bolt:
"You infernal, snuffling, hypocritical ruffian! I will settle with you for all this, when I have more time!"
"Thee had better let the account stand as it does, Dr. Philip, if thee is not a fool as well as a scoundrel!" was the reply of the Quaker, but it is very doubtful whether the doctor heard half the words. He was already flying past the garden palings, at the full speed of his trotter, towards the causeway and the Market Street road, on his errand of reclamation and perhaps of vengeance. Then Nathan Bladesden pursued his way into the house, looking for the lost sheep, with that ill success rendered certain by Eleanor's flight, and that disappointment which often attends noble resolutions embraced one moment too late.
The second of the supplementary scenes of that day was presented in the parlors of the residence of Mrs. Burton Hayley—that parlor into which the reader had only a doubtful glance a few hours earlier, when events which seemed likely to affect the life-long interests of some of the residents of that house, were occurring on the piazza.
Rich furniture in rosewood and purple damask; a piano of modern manufacture, the open bank of keys showing the soft coolness of mother-of-pearl; carpets of English tapestry; pier glasses that might have given reflection to the colonel of a Maine regiment or one of the sons of Anak; tables and mantels strewn but not overloaded with delicate bronzes, gems in porcelain and Bohemian glass, and articles of fanciful bijouterie; on one of the mantels—that of the front room—Cleopatra in ormolu upholding the dial of a clock with one hand, but with the other applying to her voluptuously-rounded bosom the asp so soon to put a period to all her connection with time;—what need of more than this to indicate the home in which Margaret Hayley had passed the last few years of her young life and approached that crisis so momentous to her future happiness? Yet one thing more must be noticed—the stand of rosewood elaborately carved, set not far from the centre of the front parlor, and bearing on it a large Bible in the full luxury of russet morocco and gold, with massive gold clasps and a heavy marker in silk and bullion dependent from amid the leaves,—the whole somewhat ostentatiously displayed to the sight of any one who first entered the room, as if to say: "There may seem to be pomps and vanities in this house, but any such impression would be a mistake: this book is the rule by which every thing within it is squared."
On the sofa, wheeled into that corner of the luxurious parlor upon which the closed shutter threw the deepest and coolest shadow, lay Margaret Hayley, her head buried in the white pillow which some careful hand had brought for her, and her thrown-up hands drawing the ends of that pillow around her face as if she desired to shut away every sight and every sound. Her slight, tall figure seemed, as she lay at length, to be limp and unnerved; and there was that in the whole position which seemed to indicate that the mental energies, if not the vital ones, had recoiled after being cruelly overtasked, and left her alike incapable of thought and motion.
She was not alone, for beside her sat a lady dressed in very thin and light but rich and rather showy summer costume, rolling backward and forward in her Boston rocker, waving a feather fan of such formidable dimensions that its manufacture must have created a sudden rise in the material immediately after, and talking all the while with such stately volubility as if she believed that the hot air of the June afternoon would be less unendurable if kept constantly in motion by the personal windmill of the tongue. This was Mrs. Burton Hayley, mother of Margaret, widow of the late Mr. Burton Hayley, railroad-contractor, snugly jointured with eight or ten thousand per annum, and endowed (as she herself believed, and as we will certainly endeavor to believe with her, in charity) with so many of those higher gifts and graces of a spiritual order that her wealth had become dross and her liberal income rather a thing to be deplored than otherwise. (It may be the proper place, here, to say that the gilt Bible on the stand was the peculiar arrangement of this lady, and the sign—if so mercantile a word may be applied to any thing really demanding all human respect and devotion—of that peculiar mental stock in trade which she was to be found most ready in exhibiting on all occasions.)