They come but twice a year,When the pension-day rolls round,—Old men with hoary hairAnd their faces to the ground.One leans upon his crutch;And one is upright still,As if he bore Time's clutchWith an iron nerve and will.And feeble are the stepsThat so patiently they feel;And they kiss with trembling lipsThe old Bible and the seal;And they lay with care away,In wallets old and worn,The scant and tardy payOf a life of toil and scorn.They love a cheerful pipeAnd a warm place in the sun,From an age so old and ripeTo call memories one by one;—To tell of Arnold's crime,And of Washington's proud formThat beamed, in battle time,A beacon o'er the storm.—To tell of Yorktown's day,When the closing fight was gained,—When Cornwallis went awayAnd the eagle was unchained;To show us, o'er and o'er,The seamed and withered scarsThat many a hero bore,As his passport from the wars.'Tis pride, with these old men,To tell what they have seen,Of battle-fields, againWith their harvest bright and green:'Twill be pride, when we are old,To say that in our youthWe heard the tales they toldAnd looked on them in their truth.They are the last sad linkOf a race of men with ours,Who stood on ruin's brinkAnd built up fair freedom's towers.They are passing, as the foamFrom the ocean wave departs,But finding yet a homeIn heaven, and in our hearts.And when the last is gone,To their memory we will buildA pyramid of stoneWhose top the sun shall gildWhen the name of patriot wealAnd of tyrants' bitter wrongShall be told but in a taleAnd known but in a song.
They come but twice a year,When the pension-day rolls round,—Old men with hoary hairAnd their faces to the ground.One leans upon his crutch;And one is upright still,As if he bore Time's clutchWith an iron nerve and will.
And feeble are the stepsThat so patiently they feel;And they kiss with trembling lipsThe old Bible and the seal;And they lay with care away,In wallets old and worn,The scant and tardy payOf a life of toil and scorn.
They love a cheerful pipeAnd a warm place in the sun,From an age so old and ripeTo call memories one by one;—To tell of Arnold's crime,And of Washington's proud formThat beamed, in battle time,A beacon o'er the storm.—
To tell of Yorktown's day,When the closing fight was gained,—When Cornwallis went awayAnd the eagle was unchained;To show us, o'er and o'er,The seamed and withered scarsThat many a hero bore,As his passport from the wars.
'Tis pride, with these old men,To tell what they have seen,Of battle-fields, againWith their harvest bright and green:'Twill be pride, when we are old,To say that in our youthWe heard the tales they toldAnd looked on them in their truth.
They are the last sad linkOf a race of men with ours,Who stood on ruin's brinkAnd built up fair freedom's towers.They are passing, as the foamFrom the ocean wave departs,But finding yet a homeIn heaven, and in our hearts.
And when the last is gone,To their memory we will buildA pyramid of stoneWhose top the sun shall gildWhen the name of patriot wealAnd of tyrants' bitter wrongShall be told but in a taleAnd known but in a song.
The time then prophesied has come; though the monument then promised has not been erected, and though it may never be, because a later and grander though scarce nobler struggle to preserve what was then first created, almost dwarfs the memory of the first contest and demands all the resources of wealth and art for its commemoration. The Pensioners of the Revolution are all gone, long ago, on the line of march to that great meeting where the last pension, whether of good or evil, shall be told out.
Almost every year, beneath the eye of the Pension Agent, one more withered leaf would drop from the bough where it had feebly fluttered, and sad comments be made by the survivors when they met, with: "Ah, well-a-day!—poor —— is gone!" and "Well, we are very old, and we must all follow him—some day!" with nervous shakings of the head and tremblings of the palsied hand, that told to all but themselves how soon the end must come. Thinner and thinner grew the group, reduced to six—to four—to three—to two! Oh, that sad, mournful, heart-breaking two!—enough gone to mark the coming extinction; enough still left to hold their melancholy converse! And then one day there came butone, who looked vacantly round on the empty space and seemed to remember that others than himself must once have been there, but to remember no more. The "Last Man" had not then been written, andGeoffry Dalewas yet to spring from the imagination or the memory of the dramatist and supply poorJesse RuralBlake with one of his best opportunities for throat-choking pathos; but in the last of the pensioners hishistory was sadly prefigured. One other lonely visit, and then the survivor was gone. All the group had dropped away. Their forms seemed to linger, long after the forms that cast them had mouldered into impalpable dust. It was the most natural thing in life for Robert Brand, months and even years after, to turn when hearing the measured beat of an old man's cane upon the floor, and look to see if the comer was not one of the veterans of Yorktown or of Trenton, yet lingering far behind the time of his companions. But no—death had come to all, and as yet no resurrection. The last pittance had been paid them, and laid away for the last time by their careful fingers; and they, too, had been laid away by the hoarding miser of human forms, in quiet graves in those humble country church-yards dotting the bosom of that land which they had helped to free and to cover with human glory!
Perhaps they died in good time—before the dark hour came back again after a glorious morning and a cloudless noon. Perhaps it is well that the last of the Revolutionary veterans had passed beyond acute pain and heart-felt shame, before the attempt at national suicide came to embitter their last moments with the belief that after all they might have labored and suffered in vain. But their memory does not die. Mecca and Jerusalem are blended in the sacredness of that pilgrimage which the reverent heart travels back through the years to pay them; and if there is yet a leaven of self-sacrificing devotion in our national character sufficient to bear us on triumphantly to the great end, the yeast of true patriotism from which it is made was preserved through the long night of corruption and misrule, in the breasts of the Fathers of the Republic.
Their children have long been old men now. Their very grandchildren begin to show gray hairs. Following close upon the steps of the Last Man of the Revolution—the last of the men who could say that they saw and took part in that throe which gave birth to a nation,—tread all those who caneven say that they ever saw them and took them by the hand. A few years, and the last of these, too, will be quiet and voiceless. The chain of personal recollection is growing thin,—it may break to-morrow; and "the rest is silence."
Such was the blood of Robert Brand, and such had been the influences and surroundings of his earlier life—himself a soldier when in possession of health and vigor, and the companion, friend and guardian of the noblest of all American soldiery when he became disabled and inactive. He loved his native land with an idolatry bordering on insanity; and during the long struggle between the interests of the sections, preceding the war, he had imbibed love of free institutions and hatred of slavery to a degree little less than fanatical. No regret had weighed so heavily upon him, when the note of conflict sounded in 1861, as the fact that his aged and crippled frame must prevent his striking one blow in a cause so holy; and if he held one pride more dearly than another, it was to be found in the remembrance that he had a noble and gallant son, too busy and too much needed at home, thus far, to join the ranks of his country's defenders in the field, but ready when the day of positive need should come, to maintain unsullied the honor of his race. What marvel, all these surroundings considered, that the knowledge of that son being an abject poltroon should nearly have unseated his reason, and that he should have uttered words which only the partial insanity of wounded pride and rankling shame could supply with any shadow of excuse?
At the close of the last chapter, and before this long explanatory episode intervened to break the progress of the narration, Elsie Brand, the agonized sister and daughter, was seen standing before her father, with hands clasped in agony and lips uttering agonized pleadings. But the very instant after, when the terrible severity of that parental curse had been fully rounded from the lips and that fatal evidence given that for the moment all natural affection had given way to impious rage and denunciation,—the young girl stood erect, herblue eyes still tearful but flashing anger of which they commonly seemed to be little capable, and her lips uttering words as determined as those of the madman, even if they were less furious and vindictive:
"You may strike me if you like, but I do not care for you, now—not one snap of my finger! You are not my father—you are nobody's father, but a bad, wicked, unfeeling old man, gray headed enough to know better, and yet cursing your own flesh and blood as if you wished to go to perdition yourself and carry everybody else along with you!"
The very audacity of this speech partially sobered the enraged man, and he only ejaculated in a lower but still angry tone:
"What!"
"What I say and what I mean!" the young girl went on, oblivious or heedless of any parental authority at the moment. "I do not love you—I hate and shudder at you! I would rather be my poor brother, a coward and disgraced as he may be, than his miserable father cursing him like a brute!"
"Do you dare——" the father began to say, in a louder voice and with the thunder again threatening, but Elsie Brand was proving, just then, that the gift of heedless speech "ran in the family," and that for the moment she "had the floor" in the contest of denunciation.
"Oh, you need not look at me in that manner!" she said, marking the expression of the old man's eyes and conscious that he might at any moment recover himself sufficiently to pour out upon her, for her unpardonable impudence, quite as bitter a denunciation as he had lately vented against her disgraced brother. "I am not afraid of your eyes, or of your tongue. You have turned Carlton out of doors, for a mere nothing, and I am going with him. I will never set foot in this house again, never, until——"
How long was the period the indignant girl intended to set for her absence, must ever remain in doubt, with many other things of much more consequence; for the sentencethus begun, was never completed. In at the open front door, through the parlor and into the room of the invalid, at that moment staggered Kitty Hood. The phrase descriptive of her movement is used advisedly and with good reason; for fright, exhaustion and the terrible heat of the June meridian had reduced the young school-mistress to a most pitiable condition. Her face was one red glow, her brow streamed with perspiration, and she was equally destitute of strength and out of breath.
This strange and unannounced interruption naturally broke the unpleasant chain of conversation between father and daughter; and the eyes of both, during her moment of enforced silence to recover breath, looked upon her with equal wonder and alarm.
"Oh, Mr. Brand!" and here the breath gave out again and she sank exhausted into the chair which Elsie pushed up to her.
"You are sick? Somebody has insulted or hurt you? Whatisthe matter, Kitty?" she asked.
"Oh, no, no!" at last the school-mistress mustered breath to say, at short, jerky intervals. "Nothing ailsme, except that I am out of breath; but your son, Mr. Brand."
"Well, what ofhim?" asked the old man, his tone sharp and angry and his brow frowning, confident that the coming information must have some connection with the disgraceful report of the morning—that Kitty Hood had only run herself out of breath in her anxiety to tell his family unwelcome news that they already knew too well.
"Oh, sir, Mr. Carlton—your poor brother, Elsie!—is dead!"
"Dead!" The word had two echoes—one, from the lips of Robert Brand, little else than a groan; and the other from poor tortured Elsie, compounded between groan and shriek.
"Oh, yes, how can I tell it?" the young school-mistress went on, as fast as her broken breath would allow. "I found him lying dead, only a little while ago, by the gate, down atthe blind-road, as I came across from school; and I have run all the way here to tell you!"
"My poor brother dead! oh, Carlton!" moaned Elsie Brand; then, but an instant after, and before the old man had found time to speak again, the curse came up in connection with the bereavement and she broke out, hysterically: "See what you have done, father! You wished poor Carlton dead, and now you have your cruel wish! Oh, my poor, poor brother!"
"Silence, girl!" spoke Robert Brand, sharply, with a not unnatural dislike to have the school-mistress made aware of what had so lately passed. The old man was terribly affected, but he managed to control himself and to speak with some approach to calmness.
"You are sure, Kitty, that you saw my son lying dead?"
"Oh, yes, Mr. Brand, he was lying dead on the grass close by the gate."
"Lying alone?" The voice of the father trembled, in spite of himself, as he asked the question.
"All alone, and he could only have been dead a few moments. He looked so."
"Was there—" and the old lawyer tried to steady his voice as he had many a time before done when asking equally solemn questions concerning the fate of other men's children—"did you see any thing to prove what killed him? He went away from home on horseback—"
"Yes, he was on horseback at Mrs. Hayley's only a little while ago," Elsie mustered strength to interrupt.
"Did you see his horse?—had he fallen from it—or—" and then the voice of the father, who but a few moments before had believed his love for his son crushed out forever, entirely broke down. Heaven only knew the agony of the question he was attempting to put; for the thought had taken possession of him that that son, overwhelmed by the knowledge that he would be pointed out and scoffed as a poltroon, had shown his second lack of courage by layingviolent hands on his own life and rushing unbidden into the presence of his Maker!
"No," answered Kitty Hood, setting her teeth hard as she realized that the time had come when she must prove her own honesty at the possible sacrifice of the life of the man who had been her lover. "No, I did not see his horse. He had not been killed by falling from it, I am sure. He had beenmurdered!"
"Murdered!" Again the word was a double echo from the very dissimilar voices of father and daughter; the latter speaking in the terror of the thought, the former under the conviction that the dreadful truth was being revealed, and that, though the young girl did not suspect the fact, the crime would be found to have beenself-murder.
"There was blood on his face and on the grass," poor Kitty went on, "and there was a bundle lying close beside him, that I had seen under the arm of—of—"
"Eh, what? Under whose arm?" asked the father, in a quick voice, as the relation took this new turn.
"Richard Compton's!" choked out Kitty Hood.
"Richard Compton's!" again echoed the old man. "Why he was your—"
"We were engaged to be married," cried poor Kitty, at last overwrought and bursting into tears. "But I must tell the truth, even if it hangs him and breaks my heart. He was at the school-house only a little while before; he was angry with Mr. Carlton, and threatened him; and I am afraid that he killed him."
"Oh, this is dreadful!" said Elsie.
"Dreadful indeed!" replied Robert Brand, whose own grief and horror were somewhat modified if not lessened by the thought in what a situation the honest young girl was placing herself and her lover. He reached back and pulled the bell-rope again, and again Elspeth Graeme made her appearance, a little surprised to find three persons in the room where she had before left but two, the third coming unannounced,and all three of the faces looking as if their owners had been summoned to execution.
"Tell Stephen to get up the large carriage, instantly, and have it round within five minutes," was the order to the old woman, delivered in a quick and agitated voice.
"Are ye gaein' out, sir?" was the inquiry, in reply.
"Yes, but what is that to you, woman?"
"Naethin', maybe, only you're clean daft if ye'r thinkin' of it, Mr. Robert Brand."
"I am not only thinking of it but going to do it; and the quicker you do my bidding, the better."
"Gang yer ways, then, for an uncanny, unmanageable auld ne'er-do-weel!" was the grumbling comment of the Scotch woman, as she prepared to obey the injunction. She strode half way through the parlor, then returned and fired another shot into the invalid's room before she finally departed: "Hech, but ye've been sendin' away the doctor wi' the grin on his grunzie, and wha' will I ca' when ye come back a' ram-feezled and done over—answer me that, noo!"
Less than five minutes sufficed to bring the carriage to the door, with its team of well-groomed bays, and with much exertion (of which the stalwart Elspeth furnished no small proportion) the invalid was placed in it and so surrounded with cushions that he could ride with comparative ease. Elsie's tearful request to be allowed to accompany him in his quest of the body of her brother was sharply denied, with orders that both Kitty and herself should remain within the house until his return; and the carriage drove rapidly away towards the point designated by the school-mistress, while the housekeeper was learning the fearful tidings from the lips of the two girls, and uttering broken laments and raining tears down her coarse cheeks, over "her winsome bairn that had been sae sair wanchancie!"
Scarcely more time than had been consumed in getting ready the vehicle elapsed before the carriage, driven at rapid speed, dashed up to the spot that had been indicated byKitty, the eyes of the father looking out in advance with an indescribable horror, to catch the first glimpse of the body of a son whom he half accused himself, in his own heart, of murdering. A doctor's top-sulky and a saddled horse, with two men, were seen standing near the gate as they approached; but, strangely enough, they saw no dead body. One of these men, Robert Brand saw, was the young farmer, Richard Compton, who had been accused by Kitty of committing that terrible crime; the other, standing by the side of his professional sulky, was a man of twenty-five, of medium height, very carefully dressed, fair faced, dark haired and dark eyed, with features well rounded and an inexpressibly sweet smile about the handsome mouth, which might have made an impression, under proper circumstances, upon other hearts than the susceptible one of Elsie Brand. Dr. James Holton, as has before been said, was a young physician, in very moderate practice, pleasing though very quiet in manners, irreproachable in character (an unpopular point, as we are all well aware, in one of the heroes of any tale), and considered very much more eligible as a match by the young lady with whom his name has before been connected, than by the parent who was supposed to have the disposal of her hand. Dr. Holton, as many people believed, possessed skill enough and was sufficiently attentive and studious in his profession, to have run a closer race with the local professional autocrat, Dr. Pomeroy, than he had yet been able to do, but for the skilfully managed sneers and quiet undervaluations by which the elder had kept him from winning public confidence. For more than two years he had been a frequent visitor at Robert Brand's, received with undisguised pleasure by Elsie and treated with great consideration by her brother, but meeting from the respected head of the family that peculiar treatment which can no more be construed into cordiality than insult, and which says, quite as plainly as words could speak, "You are a respectable young man enough, and may be received with politeness as a visitor; but you do not amount to enoughin the world, ever to become a member of my family." Quarrel as he might with Dr. Philip Pomeroy, the old gentleman persisted in retaining him as his medical adviser; and it was her knowledge of the antagonism between the two and of the estimation in which each was held, that had induced the housekeeper to make her parting suggestion of the effect which must follow his order to set the dog on Pomeroy if he ever again attempted to approach the house. No one, meanwhile, could better appreciate his own position than Dr. James Holton; and while well aware that he loved Elsie Brand dearly, and firmly believing that she held towards him an unwavering affection, he was content to wait until his fortunes should so improve as to make him a more eligible match for her, or until in some other providential manner the obstacles to their union might be removed.
Such was the gentleman who approached Robert Brand's carriage door with a bow, the moment the coachman had reined up his horses, and while that gentleman was looking around with fearful anxiety for an object which his eyes did not discover.
"We are in trouble about your son," he said, before the other had spoken. "Something very extraordinary has occurred. Have you heard—"
"That my son was killed and lying here? Yes. Miss Kitty Hood, the school-mistress, saw the body as she passed, and came to inform me."
"Kitty Hood!" gasped Richard Compton, turning from the fence against which he had been leaning, and exhibiting a face nearly as white as that traditionally supposed to belong to a ghost.
"Is it true?" continued the father. "If so, where is the body?"
"That is what puzzles us," answered the physician. "Mr. Compton, here, had an altercation with your son—"
"Excuse me, Doctor, for telling the story myself," said the farmer, interrupting. "Altercation is not the word—it wasafight. The devil was in me, I suppose, and I insulted Carlton Brand like a fool, and dared him to get off his horse to fight me. He got off, we exchanged a few blows, and directly he knocked me stiff. Perhaps I hit him in some unlucky place at the same time—I do not know. All that I do know is, that when I got my senses again, he lay stiff as a poker there on the grass. I thought him dead or dying, and rode away on his horse for the doctor. When we got here, just a moment ago, the body, or Mr. Carlton Brand with the life in him—the Lord knows which!—was gone."
"My son got off his horse to fight you, you say?" asked Robert Brand, in such a tone of interest as almost seemed to be exulting.
"Yes, sir," answered the farmer.
"And actually fought you?—do not tell me a falsehood on this point, young man, for your life!"
"Fought me? yes, he did more than that—whippedme; and I do not let myself be whipped every day. If I ever found strength to rise again, I was just going to own up beat and ask his pardon."
From that moment, an expression of pain which had been perceptible on Robert Brand's face from the instant of his conversation with Dr. Pomeroy, changed in its character and lightened up, so to speak, if it did not entirely depart. "Not so total and abject a poltroon as I feared!" was his thought. He had not alighted from the carriage, his crippled limb making that step difficult; but leaning over the side of it, he saw something on the grass reminding him of what Kitty had alleged.
"There is blood upon the grass—whose is it?—my son's?" he asked.
"Mine, every drop of it—out of my nose. See, here is the rest of it," answered Dick Compton, drawing from his pocket the bloody handkerchief with which he had tried to improve the appearance of his countenance, while riding away after the doctor.
"What do you make of all this, Doctor?" at length asked Robert Brand.
"It puzzles me, of course," said the medical man. "It is strange how Mr. Brand should have fallen for dead, if he was not. And yet it is not likely that any one would have taken up the body and carried it away, if he was. It would seem most probable that—"
"That he is still alive?"
"That his apparent death was only the result of a fit of some character, and that, coming to after Mr. Compton left, and missing his horse, he has gone homeward, or in some other direction, on foot."
"So I should think," answered the father. "Stephen, drive me home again. If you should hear any thing further, Doctor—"
"I will do myself the honor of letting you know immediately," answered the young physician, with a bow and a quiet consciousness that, from stress of circumstances, the man whom he yet hoped to call father-in-law, had at last given him a tacit invitation to come to his house onhisbusiness.
"And what shall I do with the horse?" asked Compton.
"As it seems that you have been the means of forcing the rider off its back, if you have not killed him, I think you can do no less than to ride him home to Mr. Brand's stables," said the doctor.
"I am sorry that I brought you here for nothing, Doctor. You don't think that I need to go and give myself up, eh?"
"I am verygladthat you brought me here for nothing, as it appears, instead of for something," answered the doctor. "No, I do not think that you will have occasion to give any thing up, except your bad temper and your propensity for fighting peaceable men along public roads. I wish you a very good day, Mr. Brand!" and stepping into his sulky, he drove away down the road to attend to some one of his limited number of patients; while the carriage containing RobertBrand whirled rapidly home again, followed at a little distance by Dick Compton on Carlton Brand's horse, the fear of being proved a murderer somewhat lifted from his mind; his military pants haunting him a little less than they had done during the former ride; and the bundle which had at one time threatened to prove so damning an evidence against him, hugged up under his left arm.
The Residence of Dr. Pomeroy—Nathan Bladesden and Eleanor Hill—A kneeling Woman and a rigid Quaker—The ruin that a Letter had wrought—A Parting that seemed eternal—Carlton Brand alive once more, and a Glance at the fatal Letter.
The Residence of Dr. Pomeroy—Nathan Bladesden and Eleanor Hill—A kneeling Woman and a rigid Quaker—The ruin that a Letter had wrought—A Parting that seemed eternal—Carlton Brand alive once more, and a Glance at the fatal Letter.
It sometimes happens, in this world which fast people consider dull and slow, that events crowd themselves very closely, both as to time and space. Within a very limited section, in a period covering scarcely more than an hour, we have seen a complication of occurrences, affecting many persons, sufficient to occupy many hours in the recital. And yet the storehouses of event and circumstance have not yet been at all closely ransacked; and that June-day has yet much to reveal, affecting some of the persons already introduced, and others who have not yet come into the field of observation.
The spot at which the conflict between Carlton Brand and Richard Compton occurred, it will be remembered, was at the intersection of the highway leading down to the Schuylkill at Market Street, by a blind road which ran back southwardly through the wood,—and that the request of the lawyer to Compton that he would open the gate admitting to thatblind road, was made by the farmer the occasion of that quarrel and fight which we have seen terminate so singularly.
Following that blind road half a mile through the wood, southward towards the Darby road, the visitor descended the little range of high land crowned by the wood, crossed a wide meadow with the frogs sunning themselves on the banks of the little brooks that ran beneath the bridges of the causeway, and the blackbirds singing in the low clumps of elder-bush that grew beside them, and found himself, on the other side, rising another slight hillock and at the back gate of the residence of Dr. Philip Pomeroy.
This was a house of modern construction, and of a completeness betokening the wealth of the owner; standing near the crown of the hillock, with the garden at the back sloping away towards the meadow (a bad slope, that towards the north, all the agriculturists in the section averred); handsome shrubbery in the broad yard lying before the pillared front or south face of the house; and a good many fine trees of inconsiderable age, with the pine everywhere predominant, promising abundant shade in coming years, both in front and at the rear. The continuation of the blind road which crossed the meadow, extended past the house on the west side, immediately beside the pickets of the yard enclosure, and running across to the Darby road afforded access to both the great highways, with only short distances of travel, and at the price of opening an occasional gate, which merely answered the purpose of stretching the cramped limbs of the rider. Some persons, who knew the extensive practice of Dr. Pomeroy, were disposed to wonder that he had not located himself immediately on one of the great roads, with no necessity for traversing by-ways to reach them; while others, who better knew the peculiarities of his will, believed that his motive was a fancy for being comparatively isolated and a little baronial. Whether he really had any motive whatever in selecting the location, except the desire of pleasing himself, is a matter of very little consequence.
There was a light buggy, drawn by two magnificent horses, standing at a post in the road, very near the house, at a little after noon on that day; and within the house certain developments were at the same moment being made, so illustrative of the depth to which human depravity can descend when the rein is given to all base and unholy passions, that the pen of the narrator, who is merely attempting a feeble recital of actual occurrences in the real life of to-day, pauses at the task before it, the fact being so certain that the circumstances about to be recorded will be supposed to have sprung from the disorder of an unscrupulous imagination, instead of being the fruit of sad research and knowledge that would be avoided if such a thing was possible.
The middle portion of the front of the doctor's residence, immediately over the somewhat narrow portico, was a sitting-room of small dimensions, tastily furnished; while out of it opened a little bed-room, the white curtains and snowy bed-drapery of which, seen in glimpses through the door, suggested maiden purity and peace or that bridal rest which should be quite as pure and holy. The sitting-room had at that moment two occupants; and the picture presented was such as no looker-on would have been likely to forget while he lived.
Nearly in the centre of the room stood a gentleman some years past middle age, large framed and with large hands, tall and commanding in figure, unexceptionably dressed in garments betraying the Quaker cut, and with that air of undeniable respectability which no pretence can ever imitate, conveyed by every motion of the man and every fold of his garments. He was dark-eyed and with features a little prominent; and years had made a perceptible mark on the smoothness of his face, at the same time that they had heavily grayed his neat side-whiskers and dashed heavy masses of gray among the still-curling locks that clustered upon his head. A merchant or banker, evidently, from manner and general appearance—and one to whom the idea of dishonorable conduct and thethought of a disgraced reputation would be alike unendurable. With a face in which sorrow seemed to be struggling with anger, this man stood holding a letter clenched in his right hand, and looking down upon something at his feet. That something was a woman.
The woman was kneeling, with hands clasped in entreaty, hair shaken partially loose, face streaming with tears, and her whole system so shaken by the sobs convulsing it that the most dangerous form of hysterics might be very likely to follow that excitement. Even when kneeling it was to be observed that her figure was tall, finely moulded and upright—that her face was fair, pleasant, and notably handsome, though the features were too small, the dark eyes mournful, and the general impression created that of confiding helplessness very likely to degenerate into dangerous weakness—that her hands were long, taper and delicate, as beseemed her figure—that her brown hair was very full, rich, silken and glossy—and that she had probably numbered some five-and-twenty summers. Formed to be loved, protected and shielded from every harm, and certain to return for that love and protection the most unreserved affection and the most unquestioning obedience; and yet kneeling there with that upon her face which told a tale of the most cruel outrage quite as plainly as the quivering lips could speak it!
Much has been said of the sadness of the spectacle when a strong man weeps, as compared to the same exhibition of feeling by a woman. It is equally sad when a woman is seen kneeling to any other power than that of her God! It seems man's province, given alike by nature and the laws of chivalry, to bend his proud knee in other aspects than that of devotion; and even when he is showing that prostration his eye may be glowing with the conscious pride of the future conqueror; but what except the most abject shame or the most overwhelming sorrow, can be shown when the delicate limb of womanhood kisses the green sod or the floor beneath her tread? To save by pitiful entreaties a perilled honor—tobeg through blinding tears and choking sobs the restoration of that honor lost, that can often so easily be given back to her by the hands of the tyrant who will not hear her cry—to implore the concealment of a shame too heavy to bear—to plead for the forfeit life of some one dearer than the very pulses beating in her own bosom—to moan for the restoration of some object of love and protection, her babe perhaps, reft from her and her heart and her arms left alike empty—ay, to wail for the boon of a crust that shall chase starvation from the thin lips of herself or her child and keep them yet a little longer as clinging sufferers upon the earth,—these have been the compelling motives so often bending the knee of woman since the earliest day of recorded time. And yet not one of all the long array of unchronicled martyrs has been bowed under a deeper wrong than was that day made manifest, or uttered a more piteous appeal than that day went up to heaven!
"Oh, do not cast me off!—do not desert me, Mr. Bladesden!" wailed a voice that would have been marvellously sweet and tender had it not been broken and roughened by grief, while her poor hands wrung and agonized themselves in sad sympathy with the writhings of her cowering form. "Do not take away from me my last hope of knowing one hour of peace before they put me into the coffin! I am no worse to-day than I was yesterday! Oh, do pity and save me, even if you cannot love me any longer!"
"I do pity thee, Eleanor Hill, and I should like to save thee if I could!" answered a voice rich, full and strong, with only an occasional tremor in its intonation, and the Quaker phraseology seeming to accord peculiarly with the voice as well as the general appearance of the man. "But thou hast deceived me, and the plain people—"
"Oh, no, I did not deceive you, Mr. Bladesden," the poor girl interrupted. "Do let me speak! Do let me try if I cannot move your heart to believe that I have never willingly done wrong—that I have never been intentionally wicked!"
"Can thee deny what is in this letter, Eleanor Hill?" askedthe Quaker, his voice trembling, in spite of himself, a little more than it had before done. Then he added, with something very like a sob in his throat, that seemed strangely at variance with the general calmness of his demeanor: "I am rich, Eleanor—very rich, men say; and yet I would give half of all that I have won in these many years that have made my hair gray, if I could see thee lay thy hand upon thy heart and look up in my face and say: 'The man who writes this writes falsehood!'"
"I cannot—oh, God, you know that I cannot, Mr. Bladesden!" sobbed the poor girl. "It is true in word, and yet heaven knows how false it is in spirit."
"Thee should not appeal to heaven so much, Eleanor, and thee should rise from thy knees, for I will believe thee just as quickly in the one position as the other, and the friendly people make their yea yea and their nay nay, without taking the name of the Father every moment between their lips."
Eleanor Hill managed to rise from her knees and stagger to her feet; but her position was not the less humble afterward, for she stood grasping the back of a chair with both hands for support, and with her head bowed down in such abject shame and humility that the change of posture seemed rather to have been taking on an added degradation than putting one away.
"See, I have done as you told me to do!" she said, without looking up. "I would be so obedient to you, always, if you would only take me away from this misery and shame. Oh, why would he injure me so cruelly—me to whom he should have been merciful, now, if there was any mercy in his nature!"
"Can thee say that Doctor Philip did not do right, if, as thee says, he wrote this letter?" asked the Quaker, keeping his eyes steadily upon the crouching woman, and making no motion to change the distance between them. "Thee had deceived me, and he knew it. He was sure, perhaps, that thee had not told me all, and—"
"I told you, months ago, when you first spoke of making me your wife, Mr. Bladesden," said the poor girl, with one momentary lifting of the bowed head and one transient flash of womanly spirit—"that I could not give you a whole heart—that my life had been very unfortunate, and that if I consented to marry you, you must promise never to ask me one question of my miserable past. Do you remember that I did?"
"Thee did tell me so much, Eleanor," answered the Quaker. "But thee only indicated misfortune—not guilt."
"I havenotbeen guilty—I was never guilty!" spoke the girl, the momentary flash of womanhood not yet extinguished. "You will not let me appeal to heaven, Mr. Bladesden, yet I must do so once more. I call upon the all-seeing God to punish me with even worse grief and shame than I have already borne, if there has ever been one guilty wish in my mind towards that man or any other—if I have not been forced or deceived into every act which makes you despise me to-day."
The Quaker turned away, the letter still in his hand, and walked toward the window. He lifted the other hand to his brow and seemed to brush away something that troubled him; and he yet retained that position towards the girl, as he said, after the pause of a moment:
"I believe thee speaks the truth, Eleanor Hill."
"You do believe me! Oh, thank you for that mercy, if no more!" and the poor girl had stepped forward, caught his disengaged hand in both hers and lifted it to her lips, before he could prevent her. Then something in his manner, as he turned, seemed to chill her again to the heart, and she fell back silent to the support of the chair.
"I believe thee so far, and yet thee deceived me."
"HowcouldI tell you all, Mr. Bladesden? HowcouldI publish my own shame? Oh, why was I ever born!" and the voice had sunk low again, and the spirit seemed crushed quite as completely as before.
"Thee blames Dr. Philip, and yet Dr. Philip was a better friend to me than thee was; for thee would have allowed me to bring disgrace upon my name, and he would not."
The proverbial worm turns when trodden upon. Eleanor Hill had little native spirit, and she had been the veriest worm of the dust throughout all that terrible interview; but this last deadly stab at the vitals of her faith, given in laudation of her destroyer, seemed too much for human endurance, and there was yet one spark of spirit left in the very ashes of disgrace.
"Nathan Bladesden," she said, standing fully erect, and anger usurping the place of shame in her face, "I am satisfied! I will kneel to you no more—beg you for mercy no more! If you are base enough to defend the man who could write that letter, and to call his action honorable, I would rather crawl out into the road and beg my bread from door to door, than to call you husband; and I thank heaven even for that letter which has saved me from a worse man than Philip Pomeroy!"
Life and society are both full of terrible struggles. Perhaps there is no conflict of them all, more enduring in its character, or more racking to those necessarily engaged in it, than that which is fought by those who take the Sermon on the Mount as their declared pattern, and attempt to carry out the principles it enunciates. To forgive when smitten is God-like; but, oh, how difficult for any mere man! To love an enemy is an injunction coming down to us from a higher and purer source than that which gave the philosophy once taught in the Groves of Academe; but, oh, how impossible for any man to do in reality, until he has been baptized with fire! While others have waged this conflict desultorily and in isolated instances, for nearly three centuries, the Quakers have waged it as a sect, entitling themselves alike to wonder and admiration. They have practised a non-resistance unaccountable to the fiery children of the world, and stark madness on any other supposition than that thereis really a special protecting Hand over those who heed the peaceful injunction. They have triumphed alike in society and in savage life, when the strong hand failed and the maxims of worldly wisdom became powerless. And on the faces of the men and women of the sect, to-day—beneath the broad hat of the Friend, under the close gray bonnet of his wife, on brow and cheek of the Quaker maiden with her softly-folded hair, and even in eye and lip of the young man subjected to temptations which have power to fever and wreck all others,—in all, there is the record of a long line of men at peace with God, themselves, and the world, as easily read and as unmistakable as are the traces of toil, unrest, and consuming passion on the countenances of those who have fought through the world with the defiant heart and the strong hand. They have met despisers as well as foes, outside of their own charmed circle; but they have also met admirers. And to-day there are men who could not and who would not take up their cross of self-control and occasional self-denial so long and so patiently carried,—but who cannot and will not refuse to them the tribute of heart-felt admiration, and who often heave fruitless sighs towards that land of mental peace from which they are themselves excluded, because they neither share its blood nor know the tongue of its speech.
But the Quaker has not conquered without struggling, and he has not always conquered at any sacrifice. Twice, the old men of the Revolution used to tell us, thePater Patriæwas known to vent words of even profane anger—once, when the Continental troops failed him on the day of Long Island, and again, when Lee disappointed his just expectations and almost broke his line of battle at Monmouth. These were the two great exceptions proving the rule of his habitual self-command and his religious purity of speech; and the occasional outburst of anger in the Quaker blood may be held to illustrate the same self-control—to prove its abiding existence by the weight of the shock which momentarily throws it into confusion.
The face of Nathan Bladesden showed, as Eleanor Hill spoke the last words already recorded, a mental conflict to which he was evidently little accustomed. The calm cheek flushed, the smooth brow corrugated, and the dark eye was for the moment so nearly fierce that the purity of the Quaker blood might well have been doubted. And when she had finished, the lips of the merchant uttered words, at which words themselves and their tone the speaker would equally have shuddered half an hour before:
"Doctor Philip Pomeroy is an infernal scoundrel—unfit to live! He deserves to be killed, and I could kill him with my own hands!"
"Ha!" It was something like a cry of joy from the lips of the poor girl. "Oh, I am so glad! You know this man—you hate him—you have only been trying me—you——" and her brow and cheeks glowed with excitement as she looked up in the Quaker's face. Then her eyes fell again, for she did not read there what she had been led to expect by his words. There was anger, but no pity; and even the anger was dying out under the strong habit of self-control, as rapidly as the momentary glow of a slight conflagration goes down under the dense volume of water poured upon it by the engine.
"Thee mistakes me, Eleanor Hill!" he said. "I may follow the evil ways of the world's people so far as to hate the bad man who has ruined thee, but I have been speaking to thee in all earnest. I have not been 'trying thee,' as thee calls it. I pity thee, truly, and would help thee, but—"
"But in the only way in which youcouldhelp me, Nathan Bladesden, by lifting me out of this horrible pit in which my feet are sinking lower and lower every day in defiance of all my struggles and all my prayers—you desert me and leave me to perish. I understand you at last, and God help you and me!"
"Thee knows I cannot marry thee, Eleanor Hill, after what has passed," said the Quaker, apologetically.
"I know nothing of the kind, Nathan Bladesden!" answered the girl, no tears in her eyes now, and her words short and even petulant. "You have nothing to do with my past, any more than I with yours, to come to the truth of the matter! You know, in your own soul, that had you despised the malice of that serpent in human shape, and kept the engagement you had made with me, no man on earth would have owned a more faithful or a more loving wife. But you have cast me off, degraded me even lower than before in my own sight, made me kneel to you as I should only have kneeled to my Father in heaven; and this is the end."
"Eleanor—" the Quaker began to say; but the girl interrupted him.
"Please don't say another word to me! I understand you, now, and I know my fate. Let me have that letter, and do not speak any more in the streets, of the shame of a woman whom you once professed to love, than is absolutely necessary; and I shall never ask another favor of you in this world."
"Eleanor Hill, thee is doubting my honor!" said the Quaker, alike forgetting that such idle words as "honor" were only supposed to belong to the "world's people," and that his voice was becoming so low and broken that he could scarcely make himself understood.
"You have done more than doubt mine!" answered the girl, bitterly. "You have told me, in so many words, that because I had been cruelly wronged and outraged by a man who should have cared for me and protected me, I had no 'honor' left. We begin to understand each other."
A moment of silence, the girl weeping again but not convulsively as before; the Quaker with his hand upon his brow and his eyes hidden. How materially the situation had changed within a few minutes, since Eleanor Hill was kneeling with clasped hands and tearing out her heart with sobs. Yet another moment of silence, and then the merchant said:
"I am going away, Eleanor. Has thee nothing more to say to me?"
"Not another word, Mr. Bladesden!" answered the girl, through her set teeth. The Quaker raised his head, looked at her face for one moment, and then slowly moved towards the door, still looking towards her. She made no movement, as he seemed to expect that she would do, and as it seemed possible that some changed action on his part might depend upon her doing.
"Farewell, Eleanor!" The Quaker stood in the door, hat in hand.
"Good-bye, Mr. Bladesden!" The girl still remained on the other side of the room, as if either too much stupefied or too indignant to make any nearer approach. The next moment Nathan Bladesden had left the room and descended the stairs; and within two minutes after, seated alone in the buggy, behind his span of fast horses, he was bowling along towards the Darby road, apparently driving at such speed as if he would willingly fly as fast as possible away from a scene where his manhood had been severely tested and not found proof in extremity.
For an instant after the departure of the Quaker, Eleanor Hill stood erect as he had last seen her. Both hands were pressed upon her heart, and it might have seemed doubtful whether she had nerved herself to that position or lacked power to quit it. Then her eyes fell upon the letter which Bladesden, when she requested him to leave it, had dropped upon a chair; and at the sight the spell, whatever it was, gave way. The poor girl dropped upon her knees before another chair which stood near her, with a cry of such heart-breaking agony as must have moved any heart, not utterly calloused, that listened to it,—dashed her hand into her long, dishevelled hair with such a gesture as indicated that she would madly tear it out by the roots in handfuls, then desisted and broke out through moans and sobs into one of those prayers which the purists believe are seldom or never forgiven by the heaven to which they are addressed—a prayer for immediate death!
"Oh God!—let me die! Do let me die, here and at thismoment! I cannot live and be so wretched! Let me die!—oh, let me die!"
Whether unpardonable or not, the prayer was certainly impious; for next to that last extremity of crime which any man commits when he dismisses his own life, is his crime when he becomes a suicide in heart and wish, without daring to use the physical force necessary for that consummation. Despair is cowardice; the theft of time is a sin that no amendment can repay; and the robbery of that time which heaven allots to a human life, whether in act or thought, is something over which humanity well may shudder.
But Eleanor Hill's impious prayer had no answer—at least no answer except the denial found in the breath of life which still fluttered from her nostrils and the blood which seemed to flow in torture through the poor frame sympathizing with the mind within. The aspiration was scarcely yet dead upon her lips when there was a footfall on the floor behind her; and she sprung up with one wild desperate hope darting through her brain, that the stern judge had at last relented after leaving her presence—that he had proved himself capable of a great sacrifice and returned to extricate her feet from the pit into which she was so irretrievably sinking. But that hope died on the instant, another and if possible a madder one taking its place; for before her, as she turned, stood Carlton Brand, though so disfigured and changed in appearance that any one except the most intimate of acquaintances might have been excused for doubting his identity.
The young lawyer had always been noted for a neatness of personal appearance approaching to dandyism without reaching that mark; and only an hour before, in face and garb, he would have attracted attention in any circle, from the perfection of every appointment. Now, his face was bruised and swollen; his eyes were bloodshot and fiery; one lappel of his coat was torn from the collar; his coat and his nether garments were soiled and dusty; his hat was crushed and out of shape; and every detail of his presence seemed tobe marred in corresponding proportion. A rough peasant's or a highwayman's disguise for a masquerade, would scarcely have changed him more than he had been changed, without the least premeditation, by that little rencontre with Dick Compton, to which we have already been unbidden witnesses. Absorbed as poor Eleanor Hill was in her own situation, she could scarcely suppress a scream when she saw the aspect of a man who always appeared before her so differently; and there was fright as well as concern in her voice as she said:
"Why, Carlton Brand! Good heaven!—whathashappened to you?"
"Much, Eleanor!" answered the lawyer, dropping into a chair with every indication of weariness, and wiping his heated brow with a handkerchief which showed that it had been soiled in removing some of the grime from his clothing.
"Your clothes are torn—your face is swollen! Have you been attacked?—beaten? Are you seriously hurt?" inquired the girl, coming close to him and laying her hand on his shoulder with the affectionate anxiety which a sister might have shown. These women have no bounds to that sympathy which alternately makes them angels and lures them on the road to be fiends; and there is probably no true woman, who had ever been wife, sweetheart or mother, but would forget at least one pang of her pain on the rack, in sympathy for some wronged and suffering person who approached her!
"Oh, no!" and Carlton Brand tried to laugh and made a miserable failure of the attempt, with his bruised face and swollen mouth. "Do not be alarmed, Eleanor. I have simply been in a little encounter with one of my neighbors, and—I scarcely know what has happened—I believe my clothes are torn and I suppose that I am disfigured a little."
"Disfigured a little! Good heaven, I should think you were!" said the girl, coming still closer and looking into his face. As she did so, the eyes of the lawyer, not too bloodshot for sight if they were for grace of aspect, detected theswollen condition of her face, the fearful redness of her eyes, and the various symptoms which told through what a storm of shame and sorrow she had lately been passing. He started to his feet at once, grasping her hand:
"Eleanor,youare worse hurt than myself! Tell me what has happened! Has he been torturing you again?"
"Oh, yes," answered the poor girl—"worse than torturing me! I could bear his personal cruelty, for I have grown used to it. But he has just made me lose my last hope in life, and I have nothing left me but to die!"
"Your last hope?" echoed Carlton Brand. "What? Has Mr. Bladesden—"
"Mr. Bladesden has just been here," answered Eleanor Hill, choking down the grief and indignation that were so painfully combating each other in her throat, dropping her head as she had done a few minutes before in the presence of the merchant, and holding out in her hand the crushed letter which Bladesden had dropped as he left the house. "Mr. Bladesden has just been here, and he brought this letter to read to me. It had been sent to his store, and he received it this morning. You can see, after reading it, what hope in life he has left me!"
"Curse him! He deserves eternal perdition, and will find it!"
Carlton Brand had momentarily forgotten his own troubles in the evident anguish of the young girl, just as a few moments before she had merged all those sorrows in anxiety for his personal safety. He took the letter she handed, smoothed out the crumpled folds made in it by the grasp of anger and shame, and read the damning words that follow—words so black and dastardly that one of the fiends from the lower pit might come back to earth to clear away from his name the suspicion that he had ever penned them. A few sentences of thisbona fidecommunication are necessarily omitted, in an interest easily understood: